There came a point where Tyaethe's charge was brought to a grinding halt, though not because of the quality of her opposition. Only noticing their startled eyes gave her enough warning to move out of the way before the immense trunk came down to her left, flattening unfortunate bandits as well as cutting the camp in two. The knight started moving forward and looked around for the other flanks, reckoning that there couldn't be that much ground between her and them.

The captain wasn't with hers. It was unthinkable that she had stayed back and allowed the others to fight after that display earlier, so where could she be? It wasn't a hard question to answer for the paladin: once again, she had run ahead of the other knights. This could only mean that she was on the other side of the flaming tree trunk... cut off from Tiral's detachment by the bandits still on that side of the camp.

She wasn't losing another captain so quickly. Not now and, after this, Fanilly wasn't going to go into a fight without her again. The captain had [i]no[/i] luck at all.

This left the no small matter of being separated by quite a sprint and a burning tree barely thinner than she was tall. Going around would take too long and jumping it was out of the question, unless... quickly, the undead dropped her shield--she could come back for it later--and rammed her sword halfway up the log. Not caring about the danger, Tyaethe used the sword as a stepping stone to actually stand amidst the flames.

She wasted more precious seconds getting the sword out again and then [i]ran[/i]. There  weren't going to be any obstacles on a log this size that she couldn't see coming and the chance of being set on fire and burning to death was remarkably low. Oh, the metal would start to sear soon and the padding beneath would inevitably catch alight if she took too long (as would today's red scarf) but pain never stopped her. Hopefully she wouldn't be too late.

One sentence caught her attention as she ran towards the centre of the fighting and as she came to a halt amidst the flames, despite the very real risk that the captain was in--or worse, dead, Tyaethe couldn't help but be actually excited. "Three hundred men? For an amateur, this might be fun."

(Timing-wise, this ends somewhere in Vita's next post. Or at the end of it.)