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[sub][color=7b5d92]✧     Location: Snakeburrow Woods  ✧     Purse: 4 copper     ✧  Interactions:    ✧[/color][/sub][/center]

Ermes listened intently as Eila began to explain what and how her powers worked. He was glad to see his line of questioning didn’t annoy or irritate her, it instead seemed to pull her out of the fog she seemed to be in after the attack. Putting her back into a more excitable state like how he’d first met her. He wished he could write all of this down, but not only was he incapable of writing or reading, he couldn’t very well do it while they were walking and trying to catch up to their runaway client. So he did his best to commit everything to memory, which was luckily something he was fairly good at. At the mention of Azaiza’s blessing, all Ermes could think about was how his felt more like a curse. His whole life he’d been treated differently because of how his powers were presented. The only real blessing was that he could one day become strong enough to wield this curse to take back what was stolen from him. His mouth felt dry as he then realized he’d been tensing his jaw, taking in a long breath and playing it off as a sigh of exhaustion from the earlier bout as he used this to relax his muscles. He watched as the color in Eila’s eyes danced, changing to vibrant hues of green as she explained herself to him. It was a simple enough explanation, though he still didn’t fully grasp what it was that she could or couldn’t do. From the sounds of it though, she could control other people's bodies so long as they still held aether in them. That would explain her inability to help in the fight, no aether meant nothing to grasp onto and that meant she needed to switch tactics faster than she was prepared to do. He bit back the thought of commenting on how he liked the way her eyes changed when she seemed excited about a subject.

Ermes was glad to have her company for the walk, mostly because it made it easier to drown out Cerric’s inane rambling as he did his best to pester the poor farmgirl for the remainder of the trip. If the undead wolves or Kyreth’s bursts of flames didn’t kill her, he was sure Cerric’s ramblings would. What he’d hoped would be a relaxing evening to once again gather his aether for the next leg of the journey, instead turned into a life lesson by Cerric. His attention was fully on the strange half-elf, though he didn’t let it seem like it, staring towards the man but right through him as if he’d much rather be doing anything else than to hear him speak. The more that Cerric spoke though, the more Ermes began to sit up in his seat, something akin to a kid hearing a campfire ghost tale. He’d never heard of how The Rot came to be, nor the actual workings of the strange disease, but it appeared it was the antithesis to them all. Whereas they had an abundance of aether and were capable of manipulating this living energy, it appeared that the rot robbed a creature of theirs until there was nothing left than a shambling undead husk. Ermes had noted the black ichor that sprung from the wolves mouths, but as Cerric continued to speak, he hadn’t considered or even known that The Rot could come as an invisible disease. He’d assumed there would always be some sort of presence to alert them of the danger, but now it seemed that anything could be carrying that danger. What’s more Cerric was suggesting not only that Eila could be infected, but that they should put her down in the event that she was without even knowing if it was true or not.

His shoulders tensed as his eyes darted from Cerric to Ceolfric to Eila. Ermes doubted the tainted twins would be willing to just kill Eila so easily, Ceolfric seemed like the type to rid himself of any potential dead weight, and Cerric was the one suggesting it. When Eila finally spoke up his shoulders relaxed back into a slump. She wasn’t infected, that meant no one had a reason to try a midnight assassination on her. Good. His head snapped towards Ceolfric as he began to speak, worried he might object to Eila’s potentially biased opinion of herself. Fortunately he pressed past that and wanted mainly to talk strategy, though his words left much to be desired. There was a pang of shame in Ermes as Ceolfric mentioned how they’d all fucked up in some way or another, but he quickly countered it by telling them the only way to learn is to be in these embarrassing displays of power. By now everyone seemed to be joining in on the conversation, with Kyreth up as the first person to dissect. According to him he didn’t even know he was an Aetherborn. Really? That lanky ass fucker set a damn wolf ablaze in a panic and he wanted them to believe he hadn’t done something similar beforehand? Suddenly Ermes found himself wishing for the rain to come. Sooner fight the Rancor than wake up to a blazing forest because Kyreth had a bad dream. Something the tainted said caught his attention though, causing him to quirk an eyebrow as he stared at him blankly for a moment. [color=7b5d92]”Studying the aether? What do you mean by that? Actually…come to think of it, you mentioned sensing something just before the wolf attack earlier. I didn’t sense anything, I was just able to pick up the sounds and movements of the ones hiding away…”[/color] Could tainted feel the aether around them? Or did it have to do with what Eila just called him, Primordial. Maybe his aether was more attuned with that of the worlds. Ermes could only ever feel his own.