“Alright Valon, alright, I shall contain myself.” Krea, in an attempt to pacify their wizardly wizard, slipped into passivity, yet it was undeniably evident that a fond half-smile still lingered on her face. Like how the scents of breakfast linger in kitchens long after the meal has been kept – except for our group of friends, well, a warm breakfast seemed far out of reach.

And so was a nice, lovely, [i]uneventful[/i] morning. 

The ear-piercing screech that had sounded off in the near vicinity jolted Krea’s senses, yanking unceremoniously on her personal built-in alarm system. [i]Ding ding ding[/i] went the alarm bells in her head, following which tingling arrows were sent shooting through her limbs. [i]Ooh,tingly.[/i] 

[i]Waitameenute, that sounds familiar[/i], she thought, furrowing her brows in concentration. She hadn’t seen the spiral of flames break through the treetops a distance away.  However, her train of thoughts was broken by Seth’s impatient – and excited – urges to ‘help the old man find his feet’. For a moment, her thoughts derailed into the amusing fact that Seth never failed to call Valon ‘old man’, although he was, quite clearly, merely in his late thirties. 

Realizing that she was dawdling with Seth already sprinting off and disappearing into the brush, Krea reached for her spear and followed suit. She didn’t look to see if Valon was close behind her, neither did she ensure that he had even begun to get to his feet as per instructed by Seth. The old man can handle himself, or at the most, pull out a miraculous teleporting spell if he lost his way there. Maybe he might even end up on a different continent. 

Krea, after a few moments of noisily bulldozing through semi-dense undergrowth and the foliage of trees which they were camping in the middle of ([i]leave the sneaking to the rogue[/i], she thought), she emerged to where a river flowed before her. Spanning approximately four meters, the currents of the river were rapid, swift and strong, the depths of which Krea hoped she wouldn’t have the opportunity to find out in the near future. Far on the opposite bank of the river, a fair maiden crouched behind a large rock, paralyzed. And behind her, what she couldn’t see yet glaringly obvious to Krea, was that a young drake was stealthily making his way towards her having emerged from the sparse forest bordering the river. Soon, it would encircle the rock to find dinner waiting. 

“A drake, huh?” Krea muttered, finally connecting the screech which she had found familiar earlier, to the creature across the river. Back in her gladiator days, she had encountered multiple drakes during those pesky ‘special events’ hosted monthly. She hated those. On top of that, the drake that they were about to encounter, unfortunately, had two heads.