[h3]Charles[/h3]
“Well I’m afraid to say the last part may be partially my fault for the reason that I had stated previously.” Charles commented with a twinge of guilt. “However from the looks of it we have managed to recover most of the equipment that was in the plane.”

“Or at least a good portion of it.” He added after an appraising glance at the remaining members of TIGER behind them.

The rest of the journey back was (comparatively) uneventful apart from an indignant comment of “That’s not how fire works” from Charles after noticing how ferociously they burned. Even those that appeared to have burned their fuel to ashes were still pumping out tremendous amounts of heat for their size.

Unsurprisingly it wasn’t that much warmer inside the castle ruins. But it was less windy. Following Zesiros lead Charles climbed awkwardly over the piles of rubble and ducked under the collapsed pillars of a ceiling that hadn’t been around for some time. 

But it wasn’t just broken stones and snow that threatened to trip Charles. A limb here and freshly burned body there made Charles wonder why he had chosen to have such a large lunch. However it didn’t stop him from taking notes and even one or two pictures with his camera. Mentally he measured them up trying to make a profile of who they might have been before their death. The majority of them were fully intact and looked normal but others were somewhat unsettling. Some had heads too large, some too small, others had too many limbs or none at all. Charles swore he even saw half a Mermaid hidden in the shadows. But the worst part for him was that none of the bodies looked as if their appearance was unnatural in anyway, as if they had simply grown like that like a puppy grows to be a Dog and a Child a grown person.

After slipping around a corner Charles found himself in what may have been a very large hall once upon a time, but that time had passed many years ago leaving it a hollow and empty save for the piles of snow creeping around the walls.

“Afternoon.” Charles chirped to both the normal and not-so-normal looking within.