Welcome to Gaia! ::

Ernst had to admit he was stumbling. He'd lost sight of the group he'd carried in, but what with both the scratches and the sheer heaviness of the tower shield that he was lugging around, he definitely wasn't very comfortable right now. And he'd probably need to bring this everywhere...ugh. He was really not built for this.

At least the coat - and Dionysus' mark - had seemed to protect him from the brunt of the damage. What he'd thought would be achy bruises and huge disfiguring gouges were looking more like kind of manageable scratches.

A woman with a blond braid curled up near him to sort her things out, and he gave her a wave. She was holding a weapon, and one of the standard-issue packs which probably meant that she was a Chosen, too. "Some warning they gave us, eh?" he chortled. Sure, birds, whatever. Ernst hadn't expected them to exit the relative safety of the hearth (and the thought that the hearth was safe, for him, was laughable) to immediately find an onslaught of giant metal birds.

Ah, glorious - someone who was talkative. Ernst did mean that honestly. He grinned at her, looking her over. She looked about as banged up as he was (which was a surprise, considering how awful those birds had been. What had even happened out there?), and she was - oh, s**t, right, there were some first aid supplies in this pack. He shook his own off his shoulder and began sorting through it with long, nimble fingers. "No kidding," he told her. And...a teacher? Hah.

"I don't think I'd even have been prepared for the 'simple' search and rescue they said this was gonna be," he confessed, finally finding tiny paper-packaged anti-septic wipes and band-aids. He held them in the air with a bit of confusion before turning to her. Right, clean first. He pulled the package of wipes (well - it was individually packaged. That...kind of made sense) open and started rubbing it on his own scratches, unconsciously tracing his finger over the area where Cat seemed to be injured most. That cut looked like it had hurt. "I'm Ernst," he said after a while. "Dionysus dorm. I'm a filmmaker myself," he said. And while he'd worked on some action in the past, the injuries had all been makeup.

These scratches were not going to disappear with a swipe of make-up remover, although they did seem much better off than they'd been.