Welcome to Gaia! ::

Regal paced a step or two behind Gerbo, keeping an eye open for any movement behind them.

"I don't like the smell of this place. It reeks of magic as Gerbo does. Speaking of which Gerbo, with your mastery of magic, can you sense that Airship anywhere near here?"

Your senses point you in the direction of the large coastal city.

As you wander away from the temple you find yourselves no longer feeling as though you are being observed. You are moving through some reasonably dense woods when you come across a large... crater, if you can call it that. It seems an enormous explosion carved a scoop out of the hillside and disintegrated all the trees and brush within at least a fifty foot radius.

Lying in the center of the crater you see the apparent target of the attack; the badly mangled body of a True Golem. Several dead brown demons also appear to have been flung from the blast site and now rest a dozen or two feet away from the crater, barely more than skeletons after the fierce blast.

You figure you're only about a half a mile away from the ruined city, and perhaps a mile away from the temple. Off in the distance the coastal city still looms, and from the position you think you can see some sort of encampment nearer the ruined city, and some sort of fortification nearer the coastal city. Also, a single, small, plume of smoke rises from somewhere deeper in the woods.

Thats fine by me, the settlements are not going anywhere but the origing of that smoke might disapear if we wait.

As you walk in the direction of the smoke, the trees thin out. Finally you come to a small stream that runs through the woods, and a clearing adjacent to it.

Sitting in the clearing by a fire is a person wearing a purple cloak, and a hood covering their head. Everything about this person, clothing and aura both, screams "magic."

She doesn't turn to you, but you hear her calmly say "ah, you're early."

"Ah yes! Wow! You are positively GLOWING with magic my good friend!"

Gerbo inched close to the man and stuck out a single finger to poke the misterious stranger.

"What sort of being are you that allows to to have such great magic flowing through you!"

To reply to Gerbo, she simply states "years of study and practice." When Regal calls out asking who she is, she simply says "I am just an observer, though it would be unfair to say I am impartial. I can offer you some guidance if you wish, but this is shaping up to be a most promising sequence, and I do not wish to damage it too greatly."

She stands and turns towards the group, but makes sure her face is covered. "What are you early for? Well that depends entirely on what you came for, doesn't it? At any rate, I did not expect you to find your way to me so quickly."

"If your here to offer your guidance then would you mind telling us where we can find the fabled airship, "The Albetross?""

Her gaze turns to Firu. "Tell you where you are? I'd ask your inquisitive friend here; he seems to be 'on the ball' as you say. You will find your air ship in that large city on the coast, hidden deep within the underground military complex that is as we speak being infiltrated by a team of brown demon sappers. Alas, the complex will fall in a matter of hours, along with the rest of the city."

She moves towards the fire. Quite mundanely, actually, she reaches down for a bucket of water and uses it to douse the fire. "Anyway, I'd best be going; I have much more to observe. When you're ready to make your escape with your air ship, I believe you'll be able to find your way home."