Following the announcement of the missions by Ashav, Roze departed from Sevine's side to find Sebastian - having been picked for the sea mission, they would have to leave one another on the morn; and likely not see each other for a good long while. When awaking by his side in the early hours of the morning, Roze found herself in surprisingly high spirits - their last journey by sea had not gone fabulously, after all. Perhaps it was just the prospect of moving onto another adventure?

[i]"I seem to have grown accustomed to his kind of life."[/i] The thought was not a particularly bad one; not right now in her life, that was. While thievery was a lucrative - and mostly - enjoyable occupation, there wasn't much life-changing about it. In this company, Roze was finding she was actually working towards something bigger than herself, finding a family in what had once been a group of complete strangers. And that was a refreshing thought for the young Breton.

As per her promise to Sevine, Roze kept a quiet eye on Leif during the voyage - which once again, was a very enjoyable one for her. After staying at the stern until Dawnstar - and the lone figure of a waving Sebastian - blinked out of sight, Roze found herself mingling with the crew and the company. Mainly sharing exploits to the sailors with Sagax, and their daring suicide job on the Kamal warship. Naturally, as stories tend to go, embellishments were added, either for humour or extravagance; wrestling one-on-one with an Ice Demon in the water, and helping to take down the dozens of vampires and werewolves that had swarmed the docks all of a sudden. While most went unbelieved or were met with roars of laughter from their ever growing crowd of listeners, Sagax and Roze could back up what had really happened with their scars; some still looking fresh with an angry crimson hue. The quiet presence of Do'Karth was noted by Roze, along with the equally quiet presence of Leif - never at the same time, naturally. With his help on the ship and entertainment of the crew with songs, Leif seemed to be keeping busy and was far better than last she had seen him... but Roze wasn't entirely convinced. As the ship neared it's Dwemer destination, Roze made a mental promise to talk with Leif after they had dealt with whatever was inside. Although being perhaps over-the-top in his anger, it wouldn't seem that way to him; and the heart-broken could always use some comforting words.

However, as the events unfolded in the Dwarven ruin, she felt a great fear that such a conversation would never happen; they were attacked almost instantaneously, and poor Leif - plus another comrade - fell rather quickly to the mechanical beasts. Seeing them in action, Roze found a new sense of amazement that her Father had been able to retrieve this bow from a Dwemer ruin decades ago; the fact that only he had made it out alive from his group had never really stuck with Roze until now... these places were dangerous.

So, naturally, her company decided to kick the dust up in the place, maybe have a picnic too. Typical.

Freezing momentarily in horror at seeing Leif cry for aid, Roze desperately wanted to help. Despite everything that had gone in with Leif and Sevine this past week or so, Roze knew more than enough that her friend would be heartbroken if Leif were to perish; in fact, she herself would be grief stricken. While conversations between herself and the lovetorn Nord had been somewhat minimal, the last thing she desired was to see him hurt... or dead, as the case could be in their current situation.

And while everything within her screamed to save him, she instead turned to their other fallen comrade. Guilt instantly flooded her as she sprinted towards Elmera and the Dwarven sphere, but she knew she had a far better chance of saving the Dunmer than getting to Leif in time to aid him. There were others to help Leif. Or, so she hoped - but first things first.

Knocking an an arrow as she approached the injured Elmera, Roze let out a swift breath of air before loosing - the arrow slammed straight into the back of the sphere. It jolted to a stop, spinning around to look at her for another well-placed arrow to land directly between it's...eyes? Did it even have eyes, or were they just decorations? Whatever they were, they weren't seeing anymore; knocking another arrow, Roze aimed once more for the chest area of the machine - the impact puncturing the metal and knocking it to the ground, where several of it's pieces fell off at the collision.

"Huh. And here I thought they'd be sturdier than that." Roze muttered to herself before crouching by Elmera, giving her leg a cursory glance. The bolt was nicely set in the meat of her thigh, but it didn't appear to be life-threatening. "Just stay down for now, I'll keep them off you. Then we'll maybe do something about your leg - oh, and a head's up; Pulling it out is going to hurt like a bitch." She said with a light chuckle to the injured Dunmer. This was her first conversation with the woman; may as well keep it light while everyone was alive. Probably... all alive.


[hr][hr]


As Rhasha'Dar quickly found out, his relief of being given this mission was poorly-placed. When being told he would be joining Daelin in regards to wildfires of some sort, the Khajiit had felt a weight fall from his shoulders. No water; no fear of drowning. He could certainly get his fur singed in the forests, but it was a preferable fate to becoming a bloated corpse left to the horkers.

However, what awaited the group and himself in the forest all of a sudden made a ship and the waves far more appealing - spriggans, and wolves. Now, Rhasha'Dar had run into a lone spriggan now and again when foraging in woods. Never more than one, and he either left it alone or killed it with some difficulty. Now there were five... and with them beasts that he held no particular love for. He had always disliked wolves in the wild (as most sane people would, unless they enjoyed having limbs torn off by a hungry pack), but since the incident with the Werewolf all of those years ago, Rhasha had found a new sense of apprehension instilled in him around the beasts; even as far as mistrusting docile, domesticated dogs. His fear spiked when two of the scrawny beasts launched themselves at Sevine, bringing her to the ground all too quickly. Readying his aim, Rhasha flung his spear towards the wolf biting Sevine's leg... only for a swarm of bees to knock it off course; burying itself in the ground several feet away from the Sevine and her canine assailants.

As the spriggans closed in, Rhasha'Dar took his war axes in hand, and launched himself at the closest one with an animalistic snarl; beginning to hack away at the wooden body of the angry creature. Bellowing it's own strange, echoing screech, the spriggan lashed out with its branch like claws - although throwing an arm up to take the majority of the blow, its claws caught his neck and lower jaw. While his axe dropped from his hand from the force of the blow, Rhasha swiped the other in a vicious, upward motion with a hiss. The head snapped back, barely hanging on by a thread as he slammed his axe right into the neck while it remained motionless in shock, completely severing the head and landing a good bit away from the fallen body.

Examining his wound quickly while reclaiming his weapon, Rhasha winced as blood wept from the slices and stained his golden fur - the cuts on his arm were far deeper than those on his face and neck; but there'd be no way of telling if the wounds were poisoned or not. He knew of the spriggan's tricky poison and venoms - but that would have to wait until after the battle. There were more to kill, and people to save. Wiping the blood from his jaw and cheek with his good arm, Rhasha'Dar moved onto another foe with a determined glare.