[h3]Jaelnec, Freagon, Irah, Lhirin, Nabi, Yanin, Jordan and Madara – Bor Manor, Borstown[/h3]
Inside his helmet, mostly hidden from the others behind its visor, Freagon closed his eye and turned his attention inward while the others spoke. He felt the slow, steady and heavy beats of his heart in his chest, heard his pulse resonating in his skull, and started counting them. He imagined the thalk in the room ahead, its form pulsing in rhythm with his heart, and imagined how every beat pumped not only blood through his own veins, but also yet more divine energy out of their quarry. Felt his heart ticking time away.
Uncertainties, variables, details... it was pointless to even discuss it in the first place, as far as Freagon was concerned. They would not [I]know[/I] anything for certain until they opened the door and saw for themselves, and if they had to plan a contingency for every possible more or less expected thing that could meet them in there they would be talking until late into the night. Sure, the it [I]might[/I] not be a thalk at all, despite Irah's suspicions of such; there [I]might[/I] be hostages they did not know about that they had to try to save; the Melenian [I]might[/I] still be alive and in need of aid; and what awaited them on the other side of the door was almost certainly a trap of some kind. They did not know, though, nor did they know a million other things that could alter how they should respond to the situation. His philosophy was simple in terms of such concerns: plan for what you know, improvise for you do not.
The one thing the others discussed that even the nightwalker knight conceded to himself had some merit was the part about thalks having a proclivity for deception – they were Angels of Deceit, after all – and the desire to have a way to tell reality from illusion. Frustratingly this was discussed while yet more heartbeats went by, and essentially concluded in “There may or may not be illusions, but even if there are we have no way of dispelling them or seeing through them.”
Freagon actually rolled his eye at this, difficult though it would be for anyone to see it. It was to be expected of mages to seek magical solutions to every problem, and the fact that Yanin did the same suggested that he was far from accustomed to dealing with illusions either. Without a word, Freagon reached his left hand down to his right thigh, swiftly undid his pursestring and pulled out four silver coins.

Then, finally, people started moving. Slowly and cautiously, which was somewhat called for, but moving nonetheless. Everyone went to take their places in the hallway, with Yanin and Freagon taking up places on either side of the door they knew the divine awaited beyond. The one-eyed knight's attention quickly shifted from his heartbeat to his skin, as even now, just standing outside the room, he could already feel a faint prickling in his skin. The door was not a perfect seal, and though it was not as intense as it would likely be inside, everyone but Yanin would faintly feel the warm, vaguely uncomfortable tingling sensation of divine energy in the air as they walked past the door.
Freagon clenched his jaw. Another hourglass had been turned, another price for the time they took had been claimed. Even without opening the door, they were already slowly accumulating divine taint.

Down the hall, about twelve meters from the door Freagon and Yanin flanked, Jordan slowly and cautiously opened the second door, only to find a nice and tidy bedroom beyond. Clean wooden floorboards, walls with wood paneling and nearly three meters to a wooden ceiling. On the right side of the room from his perspective – the west end of the room – stood a neatly made bed with a white woolen blanket folded at its foot and a soft-looking pillow sitting at the head of the bed on top of a nice, soft mattress. Next to the bed was the westmost upstairs window they had seen from outside, through which bountiful sunlight fell into the room in all its radiant glory.
Opening the door further and checking the left – or eastern – side of the room, toward where it would join with the room with the divine in it, he would find a wooden table, about two meters long, with six chairs around it; two on either side and one at either end. Beyond those was a wall.
Aside from these things and a couple of wall-mounted candleholders with unlit candles, the room appeared empty and still.

Yanin was prepared to repeat the process of slowly and safely opening their door, and seemed to await a signal. Though Yanin did not feel it, Freagon was acutely conscious of the prickling on his skin, of the sand running through the hourglass.
Plan for what you know, improvise for what you do not.
Ignoring Yanin's desire for caution and taking the queue to take the lead, Freagon simply stepped in front of the door, turned the handle with the pommel of his sword, and kicked the door open with his boot, all in quick succession.
“Stop!” a deep, powerful, authoritative and masculine voice immediately boomed from within, immediately recognizable to Irah, Lhirin and Nabi in particular as True Words since they heard it not as Rodorian, but as their respective native languages. Along with the voice came an invisible veritable [I]flood[/I] of divine energy washing past and through the now-open doorway, past Freagon and into the hallway. The faint prickling instantly because a painful twinge not just for Freagon or those in the immediate vicinity of the door, but for everyone in the hallway except Yanin.

Immediately on the other side of the door, Freagon was met by flames; a crackling orange, smokeless, chest-height wall of fire that drew a semicircle on the floor just inside the room, radiating light and heat... though not as much heat as one would expect from such large flames. It felt hot, certainly, but not painfully so, and the floorboards below them did not appear charred.
To his right, in the western end of the room, Freagon found (though he had not seen it and could not know it) that this room was built and furnished exactly like the bedroom Jordan had just witnessed, with the only exception being that the window was farther from the bed. The bed in this room was also not made and, more importantly, was currently occupied. A human-looking child, a girl of maybe five or six years of age by the looks of it, was lying motionless on top of the blankets with closed eyes. Behind the bed with her back against the wall, a human woman with a notable familial resemblance to the child was kneeling, holding one of the little girl's hands in her own with tears streaming down her face, sobbing desperately.
Hovering above the bed, centered directly over the chest of the little girl, hang a large, impressive golden sword suspended in mid-air. It was poised with its tip aimed downward, clearly ready to plunge downward at any second to impale the child and likely kill the mother as well.
And finally, at the foot of the bed, there was an angel. It looked like a human man, young, handsome and clean-shaven with bronze skin and long, flowing locks of platinum hair. He wore a suit of impressive golden plate armor and looked to stand well over two meters tall, with a bulk beneath the armor that suggested a deeply intimidating musculature. Even more noticeable than its relatively human and mundane features were the wings on his back, however; three pairs of large bird-like wings, currently partially folded, with feathers the color of his hair. Anyone with even a passing familiarity with divines would be able to tell that this was obviously [I]not[/I] a thalk; this was an archangel, and a rather flamboyant one at that.
Fingers of golden lightning were crawling up and down the archangel's arms, moving all the way from the shoulders to the tips of his fingers. It was all very impressive.
Freagon turned his head and looked at the left – east – side of the room, and found that aside from the same set of table and chairs as the bedroom Jordan had seen, it was conspicuously empty.

Without altering his stance but simply maintaining a posture that was not overtly aggressive, but ready to react, Freagon wiggled the fingers on his left hand before flicking his wrist. The silver glint of a single rodlin darted through the flames and across the room, aimed at the hip of the child in the bed. As expected he then heard the sound of the coin hitting the wall behind the “hostages”.
“I said stop!” the angel commanded again, his voice thundering even louder than before. He held up a bidding hand toward the doorway, and the lightning around the outstretched arm seemed to intensify. “Not one more step, villain!”
Ignoring the angel, feeling confident enough to look away, Freagon turned his head toward Irah. “Talk.”