Hope sprang inside of Irene as she finally scaled to the top of the hill. Progressing across the planes had become a sort of disjointed ennui, with very little of distinction to separate incident from incident in her memories. But that had all changed with elevation. She hadn't a clue, her back largely turned to the surprise which awaited her as she went up. Cresting only brought the sight of yet more Glade, and it was stop the incline that the Bestia stopped to hold her knees and sigh. The new body had held out at least, wandering was not nearly as taxing as it should have been in her newfound constitution, but that was of little comfort knowing that their starvation was inevitable without sweet, sweet civilization to solve all of their problems for them. Irene straighted up, turning around as her gruff face scanned impassively for the group she'd gotten a bit distant from... And then she saw it. Buildings, the unforgettable but vague bumpiness of faraway structures. It was a sight from her vague memories of home, the one before the move away, where you could wander out and see such minuscule settlements in the distance in the more rustic regions. 

[color=f7976a]"Heyyy!"[/color] Their excited voice chirped as they spryly waved a hand in the air, signaling her traveling companions that there was totally something interesting on top of her hill. She nodded emphatically as the others caught up, jabbing at the distant town with a thickly gloved finger. She was about to nod some more at Albrecht as he suggested going back. It sucked having to walk even more but it felt right, they could sweep up the people still at the standing stones and get them all to safety. Who knew how long those childish bodies would last out here. Her own was an aberration, she felt. Her senses were too sharp to be human, but... That wasn't as much of a logical leap as assigning fantastic durability to the little ones. They were certainly not recreated equally. 

Before that nod could happen, her eyes were pulled to distant blue spectacle. Some kind of panning light, gone in an instant. A signal mirror? Magic? God come again to fix this mess? The earth shaking felt pretty Biblical, even if everything else about their situation, Goddess' identity included, was most certainly not. Instinctively her stance lowered, her heavy body rocking little during the tremor despite the deep, primal unease it made her feel.

[color=f7976a]"Ha, weird,"[/color] She forced a chuckle. [color=f7976a]"Guess thataways it is..."[/color]

Her voice trailed off as a blue light speared the sky. Everything became lit in its otherworldly hue. The sheer brightness of the manaflare etched away sight of the things surrounding it, the standing stones and the shapes of their friends washed away either by brightness of the lance or the halo of contrast shadow that hid the world around it. Irene looked away, some sense that it was too bright to safely stare into triggering before the sharp drop in her stomach that told her [i]your friends are dead[/i].

Dead again, actually. It didn't really hurt the first time, and friends was admittedly a stretch but if they weren't comrades now they weren't anything. 

Oh right. They [i]weren't[/i] anything any more. A few hours walk away, Irene had time to hit her knees on the dirt before the deafening roar of the blast struck them. The concussion, either from the explosion or just the sound it was making, thudded upon her chest like a hammer. She could have talked in the silence before were she not speechless. She wanted to scream in the noise that followed, but it wouldn't have made a difference. There was something raw and traumatizing about witnessing the annihilation of ground on which one had walked; a sensation unknown to most of the world she came from, and alien to her until that moment. 

[color=f7976a]"Yeah... right,"[/color] Irene said, voice a shellshocked fragment as Albrecht talked strategy. She could definitely keep watching it, she supposed. 
[color=f7976a]"Don't worry, I'll keep an eye on the... thing."[/color] She slowly pushed up to standing, swiping dirt off of her pant legs before realizing that trying to clean them didn't really make much of a difference to how they looked. Instead, she motioned loosely with one arm, beckoning Jyu-Ni ahead into the formation. [color=f7976a]"It'll be alright Jyu-Ni. Calm as he says."[/color]