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It was a sight he would never forget. He stood there, from a tree branch staring at...whatever the hell it was...while one of them suddenly shouted out "FIRE SPAWN" and everything went crazy.

He continued to watch, a dead bird hanging loosely in his hand (he had taken the mother too, it was starting to annoy him after he pocketed the eggs) as the lady who had defeated one of his bandits protectively grab the little girl -He hadn't noticed her before, where the hell she come from?- while pulling out a sword...from her shadow?

"Its a magic thing" he told himself.

He winced as he watched her go flying through the air when the...spawn (?) smashed her in her side with its paw. The little girl took off, breaking free from her, with the spawn chasing after her.

"Oh ********, ********, ********." She was running to the section of the forest HE was in.

"Think Falconer think" he told himself. "Its a crazy as hell, burning creature that looks like its fallen out of an ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down..."

He snapped his fingers.

"If one could distract it long enough for someone else to cripple it or freeze it, those guys could totally kill it with their crazy magic and fighting skills...One of them should know a freezing spell or something..."

He threw the dead bird down at the passing fire spawn, causing the corpse to sizzle instantly, filling the air with the smell of burning bird flesh. Cupping his hands around his mouth to amplify to voice, he bellowed down at it.

"HEY UGLY! OVER HERE!"

No...that wasn't enough, this thing as like a hunger-crazed manic now...he needed something that would really get its attention.

"OI MOTHER F-"

The rest of his sentence contained several swear words, and other random animalistic noises while he made several rude hand signals at it, ranging from a simple extended finger to a creepy snipping motion.

Seraphis didn't hesitate for a moment. He quickly jumped behind Silver and took up position behind her left side. He already had a spell upon his lips as he extended his hands and said to Silver, "Get ready. Its not going to like this one bit." Then, his voice laden with concern, he added, "Please be careful." With that, he immediately set his hands to work on a series of gestures, necessary for the casting of this particular spell, the Shardstorm. He could feel the arcane energies flowing through his body, twisting and swirling and extending outward through his hands. The energy began to grow between his hands, glowing with a pale, icy blue light. Then he locked his arms, extending them out in front of himself with the palms of his hands facing outward.

"Kathas dist lithsan!" Seraphis exclaimed, completing the incantation. Immediately, the energy collapsed upon its self and thousands of tiny razor sharp shards of ice violently sprayed forward toward the Fire Spawn. Following the casting, Seraphis slumped slightly, feeling the typical drain on his stamina that spell casting caused. It was nothing new to him. He had undergone some strength training for just this reason, so he could cast longer. While he was not very strong, as long as he didn't have to cast anything huge, he would most likely last through the fight... He hoped. In that moment, the Fire Spawn seemed a bit larger to him than before...

It all happened so fast. Blade had warned her that traveling with them would be dangerous, that spawn hunting was no joke. But she hadn’t thought they come across one so soon. They had only left the town maybe an hour ago, not even halfway to the mountains where they had planned to take on the Wind spawn. But instead they came across the Fire Spawn.

At Seraphis yell she looked in the direction of the beast and her eyes widened. It was horrible, all the stories of what the creature looked like didn’t prepare her for actually seeing it. It’s horrifying appearance was only matched by its smell, the air was thick with sulfur and brimstone, her eyes were burning and she felt her throat start to constrict. Even though she told her mind to move her limbs were sluggish. She cursed her sudden cowardice. She wanted to help but she was only a healer. She had almost no offense power and right at this moment she would only cause problems for everyone.

All she could do was watch Blade as she summoned her powers, producing flames and summoning her sword. Blade battled with the beast for a moment, getting injured when she protected the little girl. The Fire spawn’s claw marks stood out to her, as if they were glowing a burning hot red. Her voice cracked as she tried to call out to Blade, but it was good that barely a sound came, for it would have done nothing but worsen the situation.

She turned her head as she heard the thief from before yell out things to the spawn. Even he was trying to help, even though it might not have done any good. She shut her eyes and turned away as the Fire spawn spew fire and debris everywhere. The flames were so hot, her skin prickled and a layer of sweat began to form over her skin. She opened her eyes a little and looked over at Silver as she called out to her and Seraphis.

In that instant Seraphis stepped forward and launched his own attack on the spawn. Calling forth a shower of icy shards down upon the beast. Everyone was doing something to help and Doina finally snapped out of it and tried to do her part. Mumbling a small incantation she summoned the only water spell she knew. It took the water from the atmosphere and combined it all into one powerful blast. It may not have been as effective as it could have been, the heat from the spawn’s attack zapping away most of the moisture. As she gathered it up she sent it towards the beast, aiming for it’s face. Before, Blade had tried to tell them where to fire, but was cut off as the spawn attacked. Thinking of the other woman she scanned the area looking for her.

Silver didn't need to be told twice to attack. The palms of her hands had been cool and light on the hilts of her twin broadswords; now, their grip tightened into a well-practiced hold that few things could break. She wanted this thing gone, even if it was only temporary. She hadn't known that magic drained Seraphis or she wouldn't have asked him to work a spell that only served to anger the beast. Lunging forward, her swords became a whirl of silver as she entered what was commonly called a "pattern dance", an intricate combination of footwork and blade strikes, though in her case without the fancy footwoork. The attack blade lashed at the side of the great beast, the metal still cool despite the heat of the air around it for some unknown, the defense blade's arc not far behind it. Leaning back, she twirled the attack blade to increase its force as she finished the strike with the defense blade. Once it was out of the way, she brought forth her attack blade once more, this time throwing her weight into the slice even as she followed by pressing the defense blade against it like she would in a cross defense. That, combined with the momentum she had built up before attacking, had broken more elven swords then she cared to count in duels with much stronger and fully-able male elves. Silver could only hope that it would cause some harm to the fire spawn.

Standing on the tree branch with her bow drawn back, Chi looked at the scene transpire. It appeared that the beast was heading for that group of three people, one female in front one in back and another male behind the female. Curiously the male had been shouting some kind of incantation in some other language and sending spells in the direction of the fire spawn but he did appear to be loosing strength and fast. Only pondering the reason for a moment she let her eyes drift back to the fire spawn. She had never actually seen one before but had definitely seen the damage it had left behind. Thick scars in the earth that scorched rock and practically melted it in the shape of claw marks left outside of her village once. It wasn’t too alarming to her at the time but her master had been on the lookout for something after that. She supposed it would make sense seeing as how it had huge powerful paws that were probably hotter than coals from a fire. Looking at its bulky for she figured it was pretty slow but definitely not something to trifle with. It was probably very powerful and on top of that its aura looked like a big flame. It looked like the most vulnerable place to shoot would be its face or underbelly, neither of which was facing her. She also supposed her arrow would burn up before it could ever reach the thing but maybe it would draw attention away from the group.

Tightening her grip on the string she sighed. “Well here goes nothing…” she mumbled and let the arrow fly. It sailed through the air making a small whistling sound that would only be apparent if you listened for it. Approaching the beast and fast she hoped that it wouldn’t burn up or if it did at least the beast would be distracted for a while. She really hated to see people die it wasn’t exactly a fun experience. Taking out three more arrows she strung each one into her bow and aimed it at the beast once more. She supposed that the spawn was well armored or at least it had enough fat to prevent that part of its body. Pulling back the string on the bow she aimed to send three more arrows flying to hit the spawn along its back. Hoping that this would so something she narrowed her eyes a bit her lip slightly out of concentration. Letting go of the string she watched as the arrows flew through the air towards the spawn making the same whistling noise she closed her eyes temporarily out of fear that she may have missed or it may move and hit someone else.

The fire spawn snarled at the shadow being came closer, fire shooting out once more. The shadow being was dismissed once more, and in that moment it felt something move against its legs. It jumped back, ignoring the scrape. And then: ice. The spawn released a high-pitched screech, wiping around and knocking aside the ice spells that continued to come at it. It again knocked away an arrow that came at its way, snarling furiously while it tried to shake the ice off. The ice melted within moments and the spawn returned its attention to the sorcerer that had just casted multiple frost spells at it. The fire spawn lunged forward at the man just in time to receive a cut on the nose. Fire shot out and it howled, rearing up and snapping out viciously. It screeched once more before shooting off into the trees, leaving nothing but a streak of light in its wake.

Oh, tha-thank... thank anything! The shadows seemed to quiver as the fire spawn left, which in reality was Blade giving out a sigh of relief. 'That... that was a miracle.'

Blade slowly let go of her shadows, recollecting herself in some area beside a tree. The part of shadow in which she was gathering herself seemed to only grow a bit darker until a lump formed. The lump then stretched up, dripping up the tree until it formed the silhouette of a female human. Then it puffed out, forming the entire shape of Blade's body sitting against a tree with her head hung over. Finally the shadows fell off of her, like silently snapping threads, fading away in small clips of smoke. Some of the shadow clung to her and fed on the blood that was slowly trickling down her forehead and back. It took her a few moments but her eyes opened, pupils fully dilated, although she appeared to be sleeping with her eyes open. Seconds passed by and her irises stretched and contracted. When they stopped she blinked, lifting her head up and brushing off any remaining bits of shadow that tried to remain on her.

With a deep breath she pushed herself up, turning her head to spot her teammates just a few feet away from her. "Doina! Seraphis, Silver... oh, bloody all of you!" Blade lifted her arms up and waved them, laughing loudly. "You're all alive..." she looked over to spot Grenth and that irritating bandit and could also sense a heat presence in the trees. "An angel must be smiling on us all... I can't believe no one died." But, wait a second... she turned around, frowning as she realized that her original teammate was lacking from their party. Ebon! But now that she thought about it... where the hell had he been this entire time? 'At least it means he didn't go missing in action.' She leaned over, pressing a hand against her cleavage. There were no words that could explain how incredibly fortunate they were at the moment. Spawn destroyed entire settlements and could do devastating damage to entire cities. And, in a few cases such as the light and earth spawn, parts of whole kingdoms. And here they were, a bunch of bastards with swords and they'd been able to scare off the fire spawn without anyone dieing? And they'd just met...! "I could kiss you all!"

Blade sighed and sat down heavily, her vision blurring up and her head going light. She leaned over and felt small tendrils of black wrapping around her body, trying to drag her into the black. Next time she saw that little girl Blade was going to spank the hell outta her. She'd almost died and it had been because that girl had gone off and bolted! But she was young, so Blade supposed that it couldn't be helped. Still, if it hadn't been for her then she wouldn't be injured like this.

"I don't think that its going to come back." Blade stated, rubbing the back of her neck before looking up at the others. She knew that she needed to stand up soon but the lack of blood in her system was causing some sort of lack of communication between her mind and her legs. "And the shadow spawn won't come here, so we could... stay here...." The black tugged harder and her vision blurred up again, briefly going off in small dark specks. Blade lifted a hand up, her arm dripping with black matter. "Could someone... help me up? I don't exactly feel like being possessed or something of the likes."

It looked like he’d managed to nick the fiery canine right where it mattered. He probably wouldn’t have been able to if it wasn’t distracted, though. The beast was as fast as it was strong, and it was even faster when could concentrate on a single target. Grenth raised his sword up and examined the blade. The edge was black where it had touched the spawn, a few inches down from the point, but not truly burnt. He rubbed the dark part of the blade on his pants and when the black crap was gone, sheathed the blade. It was pretty amazing that everyone was alive and well, he thought, turning around to look at the group. The spawn could have easily snatched up one of them in its jaws before it ran off. The thing probably figured everyone was too far away.

The shadows flickered and he turned his head to watch Blade reform next to a nearby tree. It was really a bad thing that she’d used her powers to help them, because it meant she was that much closer to being destroyed by the darkness. The last time he’d seen her use those powers she ended up coughing enough blood to soak the whole front of her shirt and create a sizable puddle on the ground. Of course, she’d used her power a lot more then than she did just now. Didn’t mean it was much better, though.

Finally their leader came back to full awareness and got to her feet. She was amazed, it seemed, that they’d managed to escape the situation with their lives. He’d been surprised, yes, but not amazed. All of the people in the group, excluding the now missing Ebon, had reacted quickly and even managed to do a little bit of damage despite never having worked together. “Calm down, Blade, I don’t…” That was about when it set in. Blade sat down with a heavy sigh and thin ropes of darkness sprouted up and clung to her body. Blade weakly suggested they camp out where they were as more darkness covered her body, and Grenth sighed as he walked to her. “Come on Blade, up we go,” He said, bending down to pick her up. He didn’t know if he was stronger or she was lighter, but it was easier to carry her now than it was a year ago. “Let’s get off the main trail and little bit into the trees. I don’t like camping in the open and the trees can hide the glow of fire. And if any of you can just summon fire,” He looked at Doina, Seraphis, and Silver. “Please do it quickly. We can’t keep Blade in too much darkness right now, and I don’t trust the thief near an open flame.”

Grenth carried Blade a bit into the trees, expecting the others to follow him, and shrugged his cloak off when he found a clearing. He used his foot to spread the cloak out and then gently set Blade onto it. “You can’t keep using the shadows, you know. It’s not worth weakening yourself like this.” He knelt down beside her and kept an eye out for any more strands of that dark crap that kept trying to take Blade. Bringing her into a more shadowy area probably wasn’t helping, but if they could get a fire going he was sure she’d be safe enough. Not only would the light keep the shadows away, but fire was Blade’s natural magic. He shifted into a sitting position next to Blade and thought for a moment, still carefully watching the dark areas near her.

“Three spawn in the same area. Three extremely powerful spawn. The light never attacks but there’s always a chance that it could... Doina could be right. They may well be planning something, or at least coordinating their attacks. Either way, it looks pretty bad.” If all the spawn were to ever gather in the same place and attack simultaneously, Grenth had no doubt that they could equal or possibly beat Tidal in terms of destructive power. Not all of them were big, but they were all extremely strong. The only thing that really made them less scary was that, despite their power, they could be harmed. Tidal, at full power, had destroyed whole kingdoms with ease. It was a lot harder to hurt than the spawn.