The fire mage gasped, not expecting such a sudden move against his flaming shield. Nor did he expect that much strength to be behind the arm of a little girl. He spat blood as his throat was crushed, his neck snapping from the impact. His flaming shield died as he toppled backward, hitting the ground with a thud.

Out of six, two of the conspirators were now dead.

[hr]

The last of the skeletons fell in a splintered, crumpled heap. Though there was commotion from below, the way Tyaethe had run, and from above, for now it seemed as if this room had been cleared of enemies. One dead man, dozens of shattered skeletons.

Tili stood silent even as one of the knights, the boy, she guessed, yelled rather angrily at her about her killing of the man. She preferred, instead, to glare down at the dead body and sharply kick it in the side. He was one of the six who had taken her sister captive, so naturally her anger towards them was chief in her mind.

The tiny girl only responded to anyone else when one of the other knights asked where she had gotten the knife. Silently, Tili pointed up the stairs. She'd taken it from the body of one of the dead guards. It was crude compared to her usual tools, but it had done the job well enough with surprise and a well-aimed stab.

[hr]

"Wow..." Eliabelle's eyes had widened. It was such a... fantastical tale, slaying a griffin in such a matter. She knew they could be hazardous to villages, and had even attempted to suggest a better way of preventing the loss of cattle to hungry predators like that. Before this, however, she hadn't known much about how one would really deal with such a creature. But now she knew something of hunting a griffin, and in the form of such a knightly tale as well... "That's amazing!"

For the moment, her scrape with death was forgotten. Instead she was far more focused on the story she'd heard.

Bethany... remained silent. It was an impressive story, but she was hardly much of a talker.