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Crone... Gerald had only spent around a day or so in the Anaxim Forest before the Crusader's Guild invaded it, but during that time he had spent most of the previous evening and night with this woman, desperately spilling his own secrets to her while learning very little about her in return. In fact he had learned more about her from the other guardians then he had from herself, although even the information they had revealed ultimately seemed far from satisfying.
According to what he had been told the more permanent residents of the Anaxim Forest were referred to it as its 'guardians', and these guardians were arbitrarily ranked by the forest itself, being placed above or below others in authority and importance depending on their level of power. For most part this ranking was ultimately irrelevant, since the vast majority of the guardians were so equal in the extents of their strength and abilities that one could hardly be called superior to the other, even if Anaxim's advanced senses allowed it to differentiate on even the smallest scale. The exceptions to this broad equality among the guardians turned out to be the top three rankings, which were all greatly superior to their colleagues and even had large gaps in power between themselves. The third highest ranking guardian had been Alamon, the Gazzeral he and Jillian had briefly encountered earlier before he was lost to the battle; he had been an incredibly powerful water-elementalist, and on top of that he was also the second oldest resident in the forest, actually old enough to have experienced the war against the Gazzeral that preceded the foundation of Rodoria and southern Wegam Fermos. His death was a sore loss to the scholar in Gerald... all of that history and knowledge, just gone for no reason. How many civilized Gazzeral were even left? According to Alamon he had not met another like himself for centuries, at least. Then there was the second highest ranking guardian, Renold the Elder Green, with both physical and magical power that far exceeded that of the Gazzeral, even though Renold was younger than Alamon - considerably so, in fact. It seemed pretty natural that an elder dragon should hold a high position within any arbitrary hierarchy like this, probably even the highest, but the highest guardian was nothing like one would expect. The highest ranking guardian of the Anaxim Forest, whose sheer magical power was incomparable even to Renold's considerable might - the one who was also the single oldest resident of the forest, despite seeming to be, for all intents and purposes, fully human - was Crone.
Arcane arch mage, expert necromancer, monstrously powerful elementalist, potent summoner, High Priestess of Reina, and quite possibly the single most knowledgeable and dangerous witch in Rodoria, if not all of Reniam; this was who Crone was, a woman who had an impossibly wide capacity for magic that allowed her to use even schools thereof that should, logically, have been incompatible... Had she devoted herself to just one or two schools of magic, Gerald dared not even imagine the heights of mastery she could have achieved. No one knew how old she really was - though Alamon had mentioned that she had been in the forest for even longer than he had, and had been old even back then -, where she had come from, how she was able to ignore the established limitations of magical practice or, for that matter, why she was even still alive to begin with. She even refused to tell a single soul her real name, going solely by the title of Crone.

Even now just being in her presence was enough to send shivers down the necromancer's spine, because even if she hid most of her magical energy - if she had not, Gerald suspected that she might accidentally kill less powerful people just by being near them - his senses were sharp enough to at least get a glimpse of what she was trying to hide. This power... was not normal.
As it would happen Crone did not even acknowledge anyone else at the lake right away, but instead seemed to focus her attention solely on the man lying on the ground in front of her as her eyes - the right one seeming to shine the firelight significantly more than the left one, he suddenly noticed - roamed over his body, clearly suffering burn-injuries at the very least, all while quietly rubbing her bony hands together. A thin mist of smoke rose from both of them but quickly dispersed, most likely not actually coming from them but having incidentally been brought along from their initial location when they teleported here.
[I]Such a flashy teleportation spell,[/I] grimly Gerald noted to himself, [I]it's tasteless and wasteful. When I obtain the power and ability to do something like that, I'll definitely find a subtler way to do it. Faster, too, if at all possible.[/I]
"Reina, Lady of Mercy," Crone dryly squeaked, finally parting her hands hand holding them out towards Salas, "I beseech You to heal this man, that Your will may be done."
And just like that her hands began emanating a soft white radiance, bathing the wounded man in that rapidly mended his wounds wherever it touched, and as she waved her hands up and down his body, Salas went from incapacitated to uninjured in a matter of seconds. By the time the light stopped shining from Crone's hands, all but the man's clothes had been restored completely; not even a single cut or bruise was left on his form, and even the smoke had been purged from his lungs. Even his magical energy had been partially restored, and anything that was not outright detached from him had been regenerated, so while his tongue was still missing his scars had become significantly fainter; even the cavities in his teeth had been fixed, and irregularities in his vision had been corrected. This was the power of a High Priest of Reina, the most potent healers in Reniam; the power to restore anyone even from the brink of death.

"You should be fine now," Crone told her patient as she stood feebly, her huddled form hunching even when fully erect, making her seem even smaller than she really was. "This place is safe, and your wounds are no more. You are fortunate to have survived; none others shared that fate."
She looked up then, her gaze going directly to each of the three others present, calmly looking each of them in the eyes as if she already knew exactly where each of them were, without even needing to look. "At least, none others that remain in the forest."