Welcome to Gaia! ::

The redhead nods, picking up her backpack and archery items. She flips her hood over her head, a color that makes her blend into the forest if she had stood next to a tree still and silent. It definitely does hide the red, making her less noticeable.


Kitara and Jay twitter something as they follow the Mystic away from the devastation of the village, Kitara making sure that Lael (who was between Margem and the two elves because the elves took the caboose) was still able to handle what had been dealt them - the deaths of the Mystics.

------

The commander sits up, brushing the dust off of her coat. Some method of escaping, she thinks, recalling how large the explosion was that her opponent had caused. It was the strategy that the Mystic had used to escape, barely.

Everyone had been knocked off their feet (including the "high and mighty" Mystic commander). The dust had by now settled around all the collapsed victims of the explosion, some of whom had been killed by the intensity of the light it caused and other killed by the debris shower brought upon by the sheer wind of explosion. A few of her soldiers nearby, however, survived, one being her second-in-command.

She stands up, without a scratch on her body, and looks around. Her grey eyes sees something, correction: make that someONE, nearby. The blue hair automatically told her that the being ss not one of her soldiers.


The second-in-command comes to the commander's side, limping a bit from a stake slicing the side of his leg. He tries to get his leader's attention, but she ignores him.

It IS him. Good. That's what I wanted. My plan is falling into place. Now.... if only his will has been broken. If it has, it's perfect! If not...well....then we'll have to deal with a bit more than I planned for.

His eyes follow her sight-line and he spots the being as well.

"The elf!" he says, a bit shocked that the elf was still there.

The woman nods and, stepping over to the being as she puts her hood back over her face, kneels next to him. She touches his shoulder, the shoulder that she had pierced earlier that week with her dagger, so that she may wake him up.

The elves, the albino, and the Mystic make it to a village nearby, run by river (and lake) nymphs. The village sits in the middle of a lake, since the nymphs insist on living near or on the water. However, there is a single stone path from one of the shores to the village.

The four walk across the bridge and pass the guard, who let them through.

Kitara approaches a jolly gentleman who sits in a rockerchair outside of what appears to be a hotel.

"Excuse me," she says politely, "Do you have a few rooms to acquire for the night?"

The man, his hair waving as ocean waves do while he nods his head, says, "Of course. Just walk on in and my wife will check you in."

Kitara leans closer to Lael and whispers, "I wouldn't say that too loud. There might be some anti-Mystics here and what with her in our party...."



Margem hears what the blue-haired woman has to say but she ignores it, stepping up to the hotel owner's wife.

"Three rooms, please. Two singles and one double."


Jay twitters something to his companion and she agrees.
The elvish woman thinks to herself: -Three rooms are expensive and to have Margem to be alone in a room... that's dangerous. But can we even risk putting Lael in Margem's company, even for the night?-

Kitara asks Lael, "Are you sure that would be fine with you? Wouldn't that put you in a bit of danger?"



Margem passes Kitara's words off and says, "Make that two bedroom, please, with two beds in one and one in the other."

The hotel owner's wife nods and gives the total amount for the rooms: 300 krentz for the night.




(OOC: Don't really ask me how much a krentz is. I just made that up.... I think it'd be closer to a dollar than anything else.)

Jay nudges Kitara's shoulder and she nods. As she hands her half of the money to the hotel keeper's wife, she sighs, "I know, Jay. ...I am a worrier by nature. I can't help it. It's like a maternal thing. After so many years, one becomes more 'motherly' or 'fatherly'. ...I've already passed that point."


Margem pulls out a quarter of the price, giving it to the hotel keeper's wife, saying, "We'll be fine."

Darian awoke at the touch of a hand to his shoulder. He started to rise stiffly, small pieces of debris and streams of dust falling off him. "Gods, my head," he groaned, "It feels like a building collapsed on me." After a moment he chuckled at the irony, since a building had, in fact, collapsed on him.

"Don't worry Kitara," Lael says. "We'll be careful." She follows Margem into their room.

The room is simple, but nice and clean with two beds, a table and chairs, a TV, and a window looking out into the town. Lael changes in the connecting bathroom and sits on the bed, examining the room.

"This is nice," she comments. "As it should be, seeing how much it cost."

Margem nods, agreeing with the albino woman. It is a nice hotel but still something unnerves her. Something close yet far... She can't quite put a finger on it but...

She settles down for the night, changing quickly in the bathroom into her nighttime travel outfit (something light but modest even while on the run). She keeps her dagger on her person as she lies down on the bed, her sword within reach in case of a battle in the night - the curse of the traveling warrior be it a female warrior or a male warrior. She says nothing of her internal warnings but she's afraid that her manners show it all to her roommate.

"Good night, Lael," she says, turning off the light right next to her bed.

'Something's not right... But what? What am I missing? What is it that I have to do? Why am I wounded internally from a wound never inflicted?'





-----
"Arelen," the woman answers in a hurt tone, "Your love. Your girlfriend. Don't you remember? After all these years...?"


The commander's men start to question what the heck their leader is doing. How come she's using the name of a woman that she had just killed not thirty minutes ago? Did she think that she could control this man, correction: elf, with solely her words?


And yet, for most of the men around her, they could testify that she did have a knack for creating memories, even false ones (that they realized over ten years). What was in her dagger when they were able to ambush him, though, would be more potent than any of her potions to make the male's mind easy to mold to her will, they know that. It would make his mind moldable for the next ten years, at best, even being able to change what she had molded years beforehand to something else (before that ending period of moldability). After that, she wouldn't be able to influence his memory anymore and wouldn't be able to keep him on her side without his willingness, even with a warped memory. Either way, good luck, dude, on finding your memory!


The question is this, though: how maleable would the elf's mind be after the dagger wound had pierced him with such a poison?





"Erik Ownage, don't you remember your own girlfriend of five years?" the redhead asks, letting her hood fall from her hair and exposing herself for who she is (risking her own life in the process).






[OOC: I couldn't think of more to post for that conversation between Arelen and Darian. I figure that after 9 years, she'll figure out that he's not willing to stay so she'll disfigure his memory almost completely before leaving him for dead at the Colosseum (making him think that she died - earlier Arelen). How's that work?]