Hand still in her pack, a gentle, out of place rustle from the woods made Elayra pause. Slowly, she withdrew her hand from her pack and reached for her saber.
	Senses shifting into practiced alertness, she opened her mouth to call to Ghent. Before she could, the distinctive shuffling of something nearing took her full attention.
	She jumped to her feet, her sword drawn and heart pounding in her chest. 
	[i]Now what?[/i] She was beginning to wonder if Ghent had been cursed with bad luck.
	Eyes scanning the thicker parts of the woods, she took a cautious backstep toward Ghent’s tree. She strengthened her fight stance, ready to call out to Ghent, as movement only a few yards from her caught her eye.
	She breathed a heavy sigh of relief as she picked out Drust’s camouflaged form amidst the trees. With his hood down, only his face stood out against nature’s color palette.
	It was just him, not a new threat. Most importantly, he was back. And he looked okay, if a bit troubled. Lowering her weapon, she met him halfway.
	The giant of a man stopped as she reached him, the strap of a newly acquired backpack over one shoulder. He quirked an eyebrow upward as he looked her over. 
	“Long story,” Elayra answered his unspoken question. “I’ll explain later. What kept you?”
	Drust’s pale lips pulled downward. “They’re on edge today,” he answered darkly.
	Elayra inhaled, struggling to hide her nervousness at the news behind her usual mask. The day really couldn't get much worse.
	Drust’s neck twitched as he glanced over his shoulder toward the direction he’d come. Looking back to her, his brows furrowed as he sniffed at the air. “What’s burn—?"
	A shocked scream rent the air. Two pairs of eyes snapped up to the tree Ghent had chosen as his shoji screen.
	Drust reacted instantly. He tossed the backpack to the ground, freeing himself of its minor burden, and drew his katana as he raced to the tree. Elayra followed a beat behind him. The Knight reached the tree well ahead of her.
	Katana held in ready defense, he slid to a stop as he tried to make sense of the chaos that greeted him. Ghent, adorned in only a pair of boxers, was using a shirt to battle a fire—a fire that looked like he had set himself—licking up a pair of pants. [i]Drust’s[/i] pants, if the Knight wasn’t mistaken.
	He leaned back as Ghent’s makeshift torch nearly whacked him. In the boy’s distraction, its hungry flames grew dangerously close to the leaves of a broken, dying branch hanging lower than the others around it.
	With a snarl, Drust gripped the torch just above the boy’s hand and yanked it from Ghent’s grasp. Keeping the burning end low to avoid catching anything else on fire, he shoved his elbow, hard, into Ghent to make the boy back off, speared the pants with his blade, and pulled them off the branch. He tossed them to a patch of ground more earth than grass, then stomped on them, grinding the lit portions into the soil. The dirt worked with his boot to slowly put it out as Elayra caught up to the action.
	Her eyes widened as a smoldering leaf of the dying branch fully caught fire.
	“Drust, the tree!” she shouted as the leaves surrounding the first ignited. The rank stench of burning fabric and foliage filled the air, strands of smoke twisting upward like souls being released to the heavens.
 	Drust glanced to the burning branch. His neck twitched twice, and his mouth curled into a tight snarl. The black veins at the corners of his eyes pulsed steadily, slowly spreading. The webbed red of the Curse dominating his irises threatened to spread through the whites.
	“[i]Extinguo![/i]” he growled at Ghent, still busy trying to fully snuff out the first fire. “Use it! NOW!” he finished in a roar, a gravely undertone fighting for dominance with the last word, like a second voice lurking beneath his own.