[@ERode]

	The mystifying and horrifying scenes all at once which were the sight of the bandit slaughter before Katerina gave her an odd reminiscence. She was primarily trained in life magic - healing - and that, as she had come to expect was the bulk of her duties. For all love of life and liberty that was so cherished among the Iron Rose Knights, the half-elf flashed back in time in her head at the sight of these things. She remembered the blood-soaked battlefields, the men, pale in face, weak in eyes, faintly trembling outstretched hands up, murmuring a final hopeful prayer to Goddess or one last love declaration to a beloved now widowed. Katerina saw it all before her once again, but this time, in negative. There were traitors, thieves, renegades, and rogues, and at the same time wished to utter strangers to let them know their final thoughts. Katerina found oddity in the sincerity of it all that persisted in her mind, like a deep mist that gathered in the bogs of the valley. 

	And soon before her, the knightess-in-waiting broke her muse: [b]"Dame Katerina, how fares Sir Rickert's charge? Will he live to see another dawn?" [/b]

	Katerina's muse snapped back to the present, her gaze making a disenchanted turn as Serenity posed her query. There unto her was presented the so-honourable cohort of Sir Rickert. He lay there before her, so illucid -- stiff in body, slow of mind. Upon his faint stammering display was matched with the departing lives of the turncoats around them, the knights accelerating their wounds to fatality. She did not understand the Knights she had called brothers and sisters in arms: She had seen them show untold kindness and utter brutality within swift transition, as if stanza of an orchestra raising to climax. Wasn't this so funny? We had killed so many who lay wounded or dying, and now yet another comes with queer of injury, and Katerina was now asked to save him. 

	Katerina hummed, narrowing her eyes and motioning, and with telekinesis softly laid the man down. As he was steadied into an auspicious position, Katerina removed her gloves, The blood was well along staining his plate, though it'd stayed mostly along his upper body. Not much splatter. She looked into his gashes, removing his coif and cloth. She lightly hymned, whispering into a steady chant as she presided over him. A faint light grew around his exposed flesh, where it grew a deep purple that spread like dye in water. Blood grew clots and gashes around his neck, and as his body lay growing bruised and broken, the good fellow sputtered out in weak coughing fits. Katerina sighed in relief at the sign of even this meek display of life. 

	[color=lightgreen][b]"Lovely, isnae too coarse."[/b][/color] she answered. Her breathy response was practically a sigh of thankfulness made unto voice, "The lad will be fine, but I ken he'll need proper bedtime. Bonnie man will be in and oot of bed for a few months, but he'll make it." 

	The banter from ahead caught her ear, even as she attended to the wounded before her. Interrogations had proven successful -- no doubt due to the apt displays of horror about them, and clear signs of their fates all on parade, and the Iron Roses had deciphered the details of the upcoming bandit's fortress. Fusillades and fantastic beasts were the name of their game. Katerina remembered: They were all too-common features of so many impromptu fortresses in the War, and so fitting it was that they would have refurbished so many to use now.  

	[color=lightgreen][b]"I need a bloody cigarette..."[/b][/color]

	The witch-knight shook her head, adjusting her mage's hood and coif beneath it into a neater position, then reached back down to her little baroque case, opening it with a pop audible even through the commotion. She popped a single cigarette into her mouth, covering the light wind with her curled fingers and palm, then closed her eyes as a faint flame conjured from her fingertips. A faint, smokey tartness flooded the winds around her as the little cigarette flared to life. 

	Katerina gestured back at her sister-in-arms, patiently awaiting their next orders: Her cigarette case was open, posed for Serenity to take one. She should probably save these for herself...but what the hell, she thought.