Welcome to Gaia! ::

Narren glanced behind him when he realised that the girl was talking to him. He frowned at her claim. Mark...Mark...that name did ring a bell. He was that boy who lived a few blocks away. Staring at the girl's face with that in mind, it finally clicked as to who she was.

"Oh. You." His expression didn't change, but an observant person might have noticed his tone suddenly got a little frostier at this revelation. Letting his frown deepen, he looked back at the mage as he stepped back.

"Regrouped...?" Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, he ignored the implications of that word and headed next to the girl's - Alicia's - side. Kneeling beside her, he examined the clotting slash across her thigh, then pressed his palm against it, calling up his magic to heal the fairly straightforward, yet potentially fatal wound.

"This is goin' to itch. A lot. But don't scratch." he said bluntly, before retreating inside himself to focus his magic.

As caught up as he was in regenerating blood, searing out potential infection, and re-knitting flesh together, he hardly noticed when the air around him started to 'shiver'. As it got stronger, however, he finally realised what exactly that meant. Either that mage was dong something, or...

"Stop working magic..." was all he managed to mutter before the task at hand forced his attention back.

Vince stood up and checked the area. The group hadn't gone very far into the temple. They had to have something to hold the group off while the mage attended to Alicia. Vince suddenly stood straight up and started digging around in his bag, eventually pulling out his small dragon carving. He walked up to Aleric and held it out in front of him. "Alright look, this is going to sound weird but I need to you enchanct this thing. Make it bigger, and give it the ability to move, but do NOT give it a mind of it's own, alright? Give it the ability to move, but no mind or soul to move it, you got that? I know it sounds weird, but you're just gonna have to trust me. We can't have you working too much magic until Alicia's healed and I can't hold off that many at once, the temple doors are too wide. This might be our only shot." Vince stared Aleric down straight in the eyes, his arm stiff as a wooden plank.

Vince nodded and sat the statue down on a table. "Alright. Just try to hurry up, would you? The Guards are bringing in reinforcements......" Vince walked over to the temple door and peeked outside.

Vince watched as the small carving started to steadily ggrow in size, until it looked like it might break through the roof. When it appeared to have stopped, Vince walked over to it and examined it closley. "So it's done now, right? You said I had to be the first to speak.... Well, I'm speaking.... Just need to se something." Vince walked over to the now larger carving and placed his hand n it's side and closed his eyes for a second. "Alright, I don't think any soldiers can get through there now, not that I think many will even try after a while. You did a really good job with this Aleric, should work just fine......." Vince opened his eyes and returned to the group. "Now I suggest we get out of here before they start raining boulders on our heads..........."

He was right. It did itch. It itched so much, that Alicia couldn't concentrate on anything other than keeping her hands where they were so she wouldn't scratch it. When he abruptly finished, however, the itch was greatly lessened and she relaxed back into her chair. When she looked down at her wound, she saw a thick scar, about two inches long, where the gash had been. She smiled to herself and muttered, "Scars add character. I could live with this... It could always be a conversation starter, after all."

~*~*~

Landon looked at the young white mage, a bit surprised to be addressed so formally. He was used to the formality of Alicia, though he supposed he'd have to get accustomed to being called his proper titles eventually. He wiped the surprise from his face quickly and replied. "Yes, there are passages underground that lead outside of the city walls. Once those two are done," he jerked a thumb in the direction of Vince and Aleric, "then you can use them to leave here."

Faera hated this. After pushing back some strands of brown hair, she wrapped her cloak tightly around her chilled body. Underground passages were often moist, dirty, dark, damp, unclean, wet, and hard to see in. But this particular tunnel? It was waist-high in water. Non-clean water.

She needed to see where the thinnest outlet was, and it was inside the shadowed regions. "Isilm." With a small wave of her hand, she conjured a silvery orb that radiated enough light to show her what was in the tunnel. She didn't like it.

When the Speaker told her to come to this town, she thought there would have been a famine or fight for a seat of power. Alas, the biggest problem she found was that the largest well wasn't clean, and they could not figure out why. The Speaker let her know that the water was not clean when it entered the well, so the townspeople's constant scrubbing of the shaft would do no aid. Faera inquired further, but the Speaker only revealed that the underground stream was contaminated. And so Faera searched for the stream. After hours of diligent work, she found the contaminated water flow into a cave. A dark, wet, unclean cave.

Faera wandered the watery passage, using her walking stick to keep upright. She needed to place a few cleansing enchantments in the thinnest part of the cave so that it would clean the most water possible. She tried her best to get farther in, but all she found was deeper and deeper water. Until . . .

"HaHA!" Faera cheered to herself as she found a pool of water and a thin crack. Quickly checking with the Speaker, Faera asserted that the crack did lead to the well, and it would be the wisest place to set a cleansing enchantment. Now shoulder-high in water, Faera relaxed her arms and began chanting.

"Waara alurim voruva poika. Alurim esta waara." She struggled to release the mystical energies over the crack, but it was hard. The spell wanted to clean all of the water right away - but that would have taken too much of her energy. Gradual is what she wanted. Gradual.

With a twist of her little finger, a shimmering golden veil covered the crack entirely, and Faera smiled. She was deep in the water, but she set up the cleansing enchantment. Now she just needed to get out of the cave. Huddling close to her silvery orb of light, Faera began to walk against the flow of the water.

Vince shrugged. He could tell where the oldest parts of the temple were, and he knew the passages were somewhere in htere. Still, best not to start anything, he thought. He started following Aleric as the Guard's footsteps were heard on the paths outside