[h3]Jordan Forthey[/h3]
	[color=00aeef]"Reina, right..."[/color] Jordan muttered. [color=00aeef]"I guess I could Sir to write something up if need be, he is better with a quill than I am, at least..." [/color]
	He looked at Quintin. 
	[color=00aeef]"And, uh, there are a whole lot of horses in the barn; I didn't quite count them since I was slightly more concerned with the people, but I guess maybe around three dozen. Might help with the transport. And it might be kind of cruel to leave them there."
[/color]
[h3]Sir Yanin Glade[/h3]

	Lady Bor didn't comment on whether or not there were hounds at their disposal - not that it was a situation that could be done anything further with before at least one of them got the word back to Borstown. 
	Deo'Irah parted from Sir Freagon, now carrying Kinder's temporary form. Probably quite close to breaking down and returning the angel to its home, then. [i]Anything?[/i] Yanin opted to detach himself from the Baroness and assorted people making their final preparations and walked up to meet them partway, motioning his free hand to halt them. The deigan nodded at him. So she, too, knew now. 
	[color=f7976a]"Kinder?"[/color] he addressed the angel. [color=f7976a]"I'd heard divine healing can delay the inevitable, but can't remove the cause, nothing known can. Figured it becomes a choice between the disease and divine taint in the end. How accurate is that?"[/color]
	"With any other case of the Withering then yes, I could delay it," the iriao replied. "But this... His soul is so bizarre, I cannot even tell where the Withering is to treat. I could try, but most likely I would just be inflicting divine taint while accomplishing nothing."
	[color=f7976a]"So either it becomes clearer further in or not, at which point it'd, I assume, also inflict more taint to push it back."[/color]
	"I would not 'push it back' so much as I would restore the parts it has caused to deteriorate. The end result would be the same; I would be restoring the same amount of soul for the same amount of taint, it will just be proportionally less."
	[i]Technicalities.[/i] But it did look like what little he had gathered from the tidbits he had heard had been mostly correct. [color=f7976a]"I see. Regrettable. Thank you regardless."[/color]

	[color=#d31c0a][b]"I think he will live long enough to impart upon Jaelnec what he must, and then... I do not get the sense that he would want us to prolong his suffering. He will do his duty. It will then be up to us to do ours."[/b][/color]
	Impart what exactly that he hadn't managed in the last, what had 'the boy' said again, fifteen years? 
	It had been frustrating; if he were to take a guess, Sir Freagon both wanted to ignore the malady that had befallen him and yet also have some kind of contingency plan. To strictly adhere to the shibboleths of his knighthood, yet also considering them condemned, futile to even have anyone else witness and believe. To make plans for and act toward a future he couldn't possibly see, yet being resigned to whatever comes. Yanin didn't think [i]Freagon[/i] knew whether he wanted to live, die, keep going, give up, or have any true allegiance besides himself. 
	The old knight had spoken of hope. Leaving it behind for the others. Something Yanin had thought strangely abstract, a thing one could do when one had ran out of things one [b][i]could[/i][/b] do, nonactionable and perhaps, to no avail. It would be almost ironic if the dead man walking had none left for himself, albeit not surprising. Those involved well knew what the seemingly inevitable outcome was - for Sir Freagon and, if the plague kept ravaging the land at the same rate it had been doing, perhaps for all of them. In all probability, they'd all die of the Withering, some just a bit sooner than others - man, woman, child and anything between, with naught any aspiring hero could do but fight the good fight until there were [i]none[/i]. 
	[i]If they were going to defy destiny, they were going to need all the help they could get, for as long as they could get it.[/i] Even if he didn't have any good reason to trust these people. Or them him. For the gods' sake, he didn't know how to stop the different members of his family killing one another without becoming a pariah in the eyes of most of Etlon if not all of Rodoria, let alone how to stop the surviving witness here from escalating the situation to the eventual leveling of Borstown, the civil war, a potential external threats or, indeed, the Withering itself. 
	In any case, they'd decide what, if anything, to do about the end of any of them once it truly arrived, not before. Each for oneself. 
	For a long moment, the human knight contemplated, but ultimately didn't respond before dropping his hand to the side and continuing on his way. Deo'Irah didn't try to stop him, merely nodded once more and went to join Lady Bor. 

	[color=f7976a]"Nothing new they could impart?"[/color] he asked Sir Freagon after making his way over. Conveniently still out of range of the hearing of others. 
	"Still trapped in their own minds. Not only are they not imparting anything, but we're going to have to carry them back."
	Based on what Kinder had told him earlier, it'd presumably just return to its own plane upon its vessel disintegrating and recover there, if divines even had much to recover. The deigan, between the piaan and divine taint, were a different matter. [color=f7976a]"Deo'Irah? If she keeps the pace, probably."[/color] There was a brief pause, with Yanin clenching his jaw. [color=f7976a]"So, four days? Five?" [/color]
	He looked at Sir Freagon, but aside of his voice being kept quiet, even away from the others as they were, his tone had changed fairly little from his usual. If anything, it was more abrupt. Not sad, not compassionate. Just matter-of-fact. It was what it was.
	"Who knows? It's been eight days since it appeared already, and I'm still up and swinging my sword. For me, it seems it's... unpredictable."
	That was longer than anyone else Yanin knew had survived, at least absent a powerful divine healer. [color=f7976a]"Why [i]would[/i] it be?"[/color] The old nightwalker had implied he had no magical skill of his own, and even an angel had admitted it had no clue where to begin... [color=f7976a]"Your soul? Whatever lives in that sartal sword of yours?"[/color] Hardly replicatable under normal - or nigh any - circumstances. Felt like a question someone should find an answer to, regardless. [color=f7976a]"Happen to know of anyone more knowledgeable who might have an inkling?"[/color] Whether or not it was someone whose audience could be gained before the time ran out or not. He sighed. [color=f7976a]"But it [i]does[/i] progress?"[/color]
	"Lots of people are trying to figure out the Withering. As far as I know, no one has, and I certainly haven't... and I don't know much about my soul or the thing possessing Roct. And yes, it does progress."
	So time was definitely still running out, just at the rate of who-the-fuck-knows. He already knew about people looking into it, but meeting nothing but dead ends. Naturally. It was Sir Freagon and whichever acquaintances - or lack thereof, or even entities he wasn't exactly on terms with - he might have accumulated over time Yanin knew little of.
	[color=f7976a]"Yeah. Don't think anyone has. Can't exactly claim to know anyone with expertise in souls, either. Most I can do at this time is make note of anything atypical; figure out if it's of any significance later."[/color] So that was that. For better or worse. Mostly worse, though perhaps not the worst. 
	[color=f7976a]"You looked through the farmhouse? Any indication what the crusaders were doing before coming here, why they targeted Bren, who these people were,"[/color] Yanin pointed his free thumb at the oak that had been recently adorned with the two penin and three nightwalkers, "[color=f7976a]any names or sigils? Looks like we're one crusader short and he's already out of Caleb's range, so unless he took a projectile and bled out or someone in town has bloodhounds to spare, it soon won't be the last of them. Other than that, it might be best to pack up this damned camp."[/color]
	"I found a few bits and pieces, but it didn't tell me much. Best as I can tell, the big guy who's probably their commander got badly wounded wherever they were before they got here, and they kidnapped Bren to heal him." Freagon sighed. "And of course one got away; I'm just surprised it's only one. Luckily we're a long way from Etlon, so it'll be a while before he can report what happened... and even then there's no guarantee anything will come of it. They hid their tabards and pretended to be bandits, so maybe they'd rather try to sweep this all under the rug than retaliate against our retaliation? Only time will tell."
	[color=f7976a]"No names, no identity but for a few unmarked trinkets,"[/color] Yanin muttered. Someone had probably been thorough enforcing that. [color=f7976a]"The most recent to die also referred to him as their commander. Became a lot less useful once he spotted Lady Bor."[/color] If Sir Freagon's guess was accurate, it most likely set a limit to how far they had traveled since their last skirmish - five commoners would hardly be a match for three dozen armed men, so not the dead here. Someone else. But close enough that there were no other cities with more cooperative healers on the way. Between not riding down the horses to the point of collapse, not forcing exertion to the point of ripping open wounds and bleeding out, not having infection set in over time... 
	[color=f7976a]"I'd be surprised if their last site of conflict was much more than a day's travel away as a horse walks if their commander's injury forced the detour." [/color]If Bren hadn't used any magic to heal the crusader commander, the other healers might be able to confirm, or absent that, Bren himself once he wakes. 
	Freagon agreed with a shrug. "Whatever they were doing before was probably covert, too, since they decided to kidnap a healer rather than solicit one."
	Yanin sighed. [color=f7976a]"Better than having no suspects at all once someone comes upon the site of their deeds."[/color]