[b][Centre][colour=Steelblue][H3]Feras the Frail[/H3][/colour][/centre]
[/b]

For the second time that day Feras gingerly picked himself up off of the cold ground, groggy, confused, and sore. With a groan he dusted himself down and felt for any injuries Miraculously nothing was broken. Hells, nothing was even sprained. Other than the cuts, scrapes, and bruises he’d picked up during his weeks in the Temple Soldiers [i]‘gentle’[/i] care he was completely uninjured. But how could that even be possible? Hadn’t a mountain just collapsed on top of him? And now he was standing, free and unharmed, in a green field surrounded by peaceful forests under a setting sun. A chill ran up his spine at the realisation, and he had to clasp his hands together to stop them trembling.

He wasn’t all that comfortable around sorcery at the best of times. Didn’t know enough about it, really, which didn't help. It was more than that though. The fact that someone could just pluck reality apart and then rethread it in a way to suit them better left him cold all over. It was a level of power that couldn’t help but corrupt even the most well meaning of folk. How could you trust a person when, at any moment, they could twiddle their fingers and melt the flesh from your bones with balls of fire? 

But [i]whatever[/i] it was that [i]thing[/i] in the dark had done seemed a magnitude more powerful than fireballs. To collapse a mountain - no, not collapse, he realised, thinking back to the event, to fold a mountain in on itself - and somehow use that immense act of power to transport a group of strangers [i]somewhere[/i] else? Feras couldn’t even begin to comprehend the kind of witchcraft that would take. 

[Colour=Steelblue][i]What in the hells have I gotten mixed up in?[/i][/colour]

He was beginning to spiral, to reel from the immensity of the situation he found himself wrapped up in when he heard the others begin to wake. [Colour=Steelblue][i]Maybe they might have a better idea of what's happening. Worth asking.[/i][/colour] Anything to distract himself from whatever had just happened. 

	The first to introduce themselves - unsurprisingly, really, as he looked like the kind of man used to being heard - was a legend in over-muscled flesh. [i]Holgarth Half-Blood, King o' the Hills and the High Places.[/i] He’d long been on the Wyld Hunts watch list. A half-giant warlord and his barbarian hordes, perched on the border, like a hungry wolf lurking in the woods at the edge of a shepherd's pasture? Yeah, it was a safe bet that was going to end bloody. Sooner, rather than later, if Holgarth’s reputation had been anything to go by. It surprised Feras little that the Usurper Tyronde had eventually clashed with the King o' the Hills and the High Places. The world didn’t seem big enough for two greedy shits like them. 

	[Colour=Steelblue][i]Bit of a concern, that he’s still got his big blade and fingering it like the sweetest maiden at the summer harvest festival, and I don’t have so much as a dagger to my name. Best to tread carefully around him[/i][/colour] 

	Feras raised his palms up, talking low and slow, in a way he’d found best to calm down violent souls in the past. And more importantly he kept out of arms - and swords - reach. [Colour=Steelblue]“Easy there, your highness. Sounds like we’ve got enemies a’plenty without feuding amongst ourselves. Maybes we put our heads together instead, and figure out just what our next move is, yeah? My name's Feras, sometimes called the Frail.”[/colour]

	Another man, this one in no way nearly as physically imposing as Holgarth, clambered up from the dirt with theatrical flourish. Strange one, him. He didn’t seem like much, just a skinny human decked out in well worn finery, a knowing smirk plastered upon his face like he was privy to some joke that nobody else was aware of. Feras felt he had met his like before, amongst the con-artists and thieves he grew up with. The man didn’t seem like much threat, not in this company. Not sitting alongside some of the more [i]exotic[/i] individuals, like the giant woman who moved like a spider and spoke in riddles so esoteric that it made Feras’ head hurt just trying to parse them for meaning, or the walking suit of armour that was splashing about in the river a little ways off. [Colour=Steelblue][i]Still, just because he doesn’t look like a threat, doesn’t mean he isn’t one. It’s the knife you don’t see coming that sinks the deepest.[/i][/colour] Still, unimposing he may be, at least he was talking some sense and wasn’t threatening anyone. They needed to figure out where they were. 

	He scrutinised the landscape, the green trees, the running river, the smudge that was the mountains in the gathering gloom. He focused on those rocky crags before realising he recognised them. 

	[Colour=Steelblue]“That’s the Spine, over there”[/colour] Feras replied, pointing westwards towards what he knew was a near impregnable wall of rocky crags stretching miles and miles from north to south. [Colour=Steelblue]“So if I was a betting man I’d say we’re near the Kasan Plateau.”[/colour]  

[Colour=Steelblue][i]And no one with any sense wants to be near the Kasan Plateau.[/i][/colour] If he was right that meant they’d been dropped just south-west of Sulfrey, and directly west of the Eastlands. Smackdab in the middle of a whole heap of trouble.Eastern Barbarian reavers were a common site out here, warriors that could give even an Orcish hunting party a run for its money in the savagery stakes.

Then, if that wasn’t bad enough, the Sulfreyans had their own patrols out in these borderlands, companies of elite knights and wyverneers, hardened veterans after years of clashing with their eastern neighbours. According to some of the stories he’d heard they were just as blood-thristy as the barbarians they fought. Feras had no doubt that they’d all end up as Wyvern chow if the Sulfreyans found them stumbling around out here.

He scanned the horizon, certain that at any moment a band of screaming reavers or charging knights would hove into view. 

[Colour=Steelblue]“We should move … ”[/colour] He started to say to the group, but trailed off before he finished. There was a noise that caught his attention, distant and low on the wind, but getting closer. A noise that had his guts sinking, and his eyes darting for a weapon, or a place to hide. 

Sounded like hoofbeats…