Arria could understand that the guard captain was in pain. He had lost his family, his entire life, as any other survivor of the previous night would have. Arria had lost many friends herself, Sisters that she had known, ones she had looked up to, and ones that had looked up to her. She’d lost all but one of her Templars, men she had traveled with ever since setting out to spread her gift. She was close friends with many of them, and now they were all dead. Havarr was relatively new to her detail, and she hadn’t yet had time to get to know him. Now it seemed as though he was her only remaining ally.

She was resolved to not become callous to the world like the guard captain, not while there was still a difference she could make. “I’m not going home, Havarr,” she said quietly back to him, as the captain stalked off. “I’m sorry.”

She followed some distance behind the captain, watching as this beast rejoined their company. Traveling the world as she did, Arria had witnessed a number of things most humans would deem strange, so she was not entirely taken off guard by the creature when he spoke, but she still found him curious. Magical, even. He seemed calm, at least, so she was willing to guess that he wasn’t a threat to them.

“Then we follow them,” Arria declared, when the beast stated which way the horde was heading. “You see, Havarr? We cannot simply go home. In time, this will find us again, and there will be no home to go back to, when this same fate befalls each city in its turn. We [i]must[/i] do something. If we cannot find a way to stop them, then at least we can try to get ahead of them, and warn the Capital. They have no idea what kind of danger is coming their way.”

She would not let this darkness overtake the entire land and simply do nothing. Not while she still had life and breath in her.