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[indent][indent]They called it the Petrified Forest National Preserve. Long before there was a Rassvet or a Vangar, this whole section of the badlands was a beautiful forest. Colossal trees bigger than any skyscraper, huge grazing beasts, and other wonders all growing huge on the Mist. After a time, the water's that once fed the area stopped coming, the grown grew dry and cracked, and things faded away. The only left was facsimiles: minerals and stone that took the shape of once living things. The truck snaked through this landscape of hills and bends. Navigating around the occasional petrified trunk of a tree that lay as if discarded by some giant after being used a toothpick. 

The truck navigated towards the strange obtrusion upon the horizon. The wrecked airship having smashed nose first into the ground like a spear from the heavens. An altar composed of flame and warped metal that lit up the night around it in proclamation. It sat in the epicenter of a crater big enough to fit the entirety of  Sappl Springs within. 

Setzer turned the truck off about a hundred or so feet away from the craters edge. His entire frame bristled with palpable anticipation. Setzer lived from these rare but miraculous moments of pure unexpectedness. To be able to throw yourself headlong into a problem or scenario blind and still come out on top. Maybe that's why Setzer wasn't as worried about the war as the others were. Because this was his drug and he would take whatever hit of it he could get.

"Don't know how the engine will react to all that Mist" Setzer explained "better we walk it from here."

Setzer wasn't as magical attuned as some of Barghest but even he could feel it.  An otherworldly and oppressive hum that seemed to encase the entire area and made his hair stand on end. It felt almost as if swimming on land, the very air itself was thick and lethargic with unseen heft. Ahead of them small flames burst into roaring pillars of fire as they interacted with the mist. In other small areas pieces of debris remained suspend in air as if gravity itself had turned off. In other still small desert flowers bloomed and died within an instant as time sped up around them. There was an old adage about mist reactors: when they broke, reality had a habit of breaking with them. 

As Setzer stepped down into the crater, his squad mates fanning out around him, he pulled at reality. Like all things Setzer did, the magic he could perform was blunt and straightforward, none of Galahad's elegance. As he pulled [i]something[/i] give way and from thin air his blade materialized. Setzer had found the thing ages ago in some long forgotten storage room in the Citadel. Wrapped in a tapestry dating back to when the WARDENs were soldiers of a different kind. It was too big to be called a sword. Massive, thick, heavy, and far too rough. Indeed, it was a heap of raw iron. Yet it called to Setzer and even now its massive heft provided a small measure of comfort.

He surveyed his surroundings taking in the display of carnage. Pieces of metal lay scattered across the ground like warped and distorted bones. There were other objects as well strewn across like toys after a child was done playing with them. There was half a chair here, the broken head of a statue there, and the remnants of a bed and so on. It all seemed far too ornate for any kind of military involvement reminding Setzer more of the estates in Orestia than anything else.

Then of course there was the bodies.

Setzer remembered the Jane incident. They hadn't been at the Citadel for very long four years at the most. There was this kid Jane, she was another magical type like Galahad. Though thing was Jane wasn't as self-confident as Galahad. Jane had doubts. And the thing about Mist is it's a fickle thing and it can sense your apprehension. So one day when they were all practicing Jane had the task of creating a shield out of fire, a basic sort of defense spell. But Jane was scared so the spell turned on her and so did the fire. You never did forget the smell of burning hair and flesh. And it was that all too familiar smell that assaulted Setzer's nose.

Most were charred beyond recognition but some weren't. Setzer knelt down in front of one of those better preserved. A man maybe in his mid-late thirties, dark hair cut in military fashion, stubble across the jaw. It was the uniform that drew his attention the most. It was a uniform that he and the rest of Barghest had been studying for years, it was a Vangar officer's uniform. 

"Vangar," Setzer pondered "Anyone have any bright ideas for what the hell are they doing out here?"

He peered back down at the corpse looking for clues. There was an path in the ground from where the man had dragged himself forward before his wounds could take him. Standing over the man he looked in the direction he was crawling and there he saw it. On the far-side of the crater,  it was the oblong shape of what appeared to be some kind of escape craft. Door still sealed shut.

"Hey folks" Setzer called out trusting the communication spell to carry his voice "we got some kind of pod on the far side of the site. Looks fairly intact.... might be survivors."[/indent][/indent]