The fire appeared to be still at the far edge of the village, but the wooden buildings were quickly catching and bringing it inward. Many of the streets and alleyways remained fortunately untouched, and Soren rounded the corner of one for a shortcut to the next row of houses but stopped abruptly. Blocking the other end was a hulking man, standing over a finely-dressed woman on the ground. There were always people who took advantage of the chaos brought by disaster, and ordinarily Soren would not have intervened - he had a more pressing job to attend to - but something compelled him to flip open his tome. The man could have been one of the brigands the Greil Mercenaries had been tasked with removing, he rationalized, and he was blocking his way, besides.
It wasn’t that, perhaps, he was feeling just a touch of compassion for the brute’s victim.
A few muttered words sent a blast of razor wind down the alleyway and the rogue fell back with only a gurgled moan. Soren snapped the book shut again.
“Get up, quickly,” he urged the woman as he approached, and offered his hand to help her to her feet. His eyes fell upon a beautiful staff within her reach and he gestured toward it with a nod.
“Are you a cleric? If you can walk, I may need your services in evacuating the rest of the village.” If she couldn’t? He’d drag her as far as he could to safety, but he wasn’t going to fool himself - he’d barely get her to the other end of the alleyway.
Flames, too many flames danced before her mental and physical eye, unearthly violet ones that torched the auspicious halls of Khadein’s magic academy and mundane vermilion ones that torched the village she found herself in now. All she’d wanted was to escape Gharnef, escape the destruction he had wrought upon her home away from home, escape the ruin of her prince’s body from where he’d fallen valiantly before the blaze that was meant to take her life. But it seemed that fate was not so easily deterred, for she found herself sprawled ungracefully on the ground with her scepter out of reach, cornered by another brute with death in his mien. That this one was muscle- instead of magic-bound meant little to her, for between his bulk, the flames, and the shattered masonry, she was effectively pinned and hemmed in.
Yet a fire burned in her eyes too, fierce and defiant and cold. If Gharnef meant to finish her, he would be sorely disappointed, for Princess Nyna was not one to be so easily cowed. She pinned the brute in place with emerald-ice eyes (or tried to, at least—she did not know whether the gesture or her station were lost on him) as she raised her hand partway, willing her natural energies and those of the environment to coalesce into a fireball. She could just as easily smite him with lightning or drain him of his energy if she so desired, but all her immediate surroundings were ablaze. Time was of the essence; she could not spend it on creating something that wasn’t there.
(Why was drawing upon the natural energy of this place so much harder than it was in Khadein?)
But before she could hurl her little bomb at her attacker’s head, an emerald blade of wind slammed into the man and tore his throat to shreds. The man gave a gurgling moan and collapsed, leaving Nyna to stare from her place upon the ground. She only knew of one man who could wield a weapon like that, and even then, they had never directly spoken. What was Merric doing in a place like this, that he just happened to be around in time to save her?
Wonderingly, she dissipated her fireball; his name lay on her lips as she turned to face him, but they promptly closed as she realized the youth hurrying over to her looked nothing like that wind mage. Raven hair and raven robes framed his intelligent red eyes, and above them on his forehead sat a curious brand. Her eyes were instinctively drawn to that brand; she had never seen the like before; even though she knew that the lad would surely not appreciate such attention from her.
Perhaps he noticed it too, for his next words struck her as unexpectedly terse. “Are you a cleric?” he asked. “If you can walk, I may need your services in evacuating the rest of the village.”
Belatedly, the princess realized that his hand was extended towards her. He nodded towards her scepter, still lying a few paces away. She glanced between him and the village ruins. Yes, it would be unwise to entrust herself to any stranger, but between the torched remains of this village and that rogue he’d just slain, this young wind mage seemed to be the safest party to align herself with. And so, she nodded appreciatively at him and extended her hand for him to take. “I am,” she responded, with some caution. That wasn’t the full truth, for she had some anima training as well and was one of few bishops in Archanea who could use the fabled Aum staff, but she’d only thought to bring a Mend staff to aid any survivors of Gharnef’s attack she happened upon in Khadein, and she knew not where the Fire tome she’d brought for self-defense had fallen. Like as not, it had been lost to the village blaze; and without that tome, she could not focus her energies enough to fend off more than a single bandit at a time.
“And as for walking…” Their fingers twined and Nyna rose, balancing carefully on heeled feet. One foot slipped out from under her and she stumbled, but the wind mage caught her, and with her leaning on him, they made their way over to her staff. She picked it up and braced upon it for a few moments, wringing out her legs and placing them experimentally back on the ground. Perhaps she’d only tripped on some offending stone or piece of debris earlier; it did not seem that she had broken anything yet (miraculously). But as soon as she looked up again, her rescuer was already hurrying back towards the edge of the flames, where the houses had yet to be completely destroyed.
“Where are you going?” she huffed, hiking her skirt above her ankles to chase awkwardly after him. “Is this any way to treat a lady?!” Indignance at being so rudely left behind in a foreign place put an edge in her otherwise refined and lilting voice. She was the holy princess of Archanea, an heiress to rule over an entire continent as soon as she came of age. She was not some lowborn commoner to be ordered about by some mageling… even if his bearing was far from that of a child, and a part of her somewhat understood why the lad might have done such a thing.