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Aldalwofla heard the giant beast and she gave a frown as her curse pulls at her being. She goes to the beast and kneels in front of it and says "Oh mighty dragon, please give us mercy, we mean you no harm, all we wish to cross the bridge and continue on...sadly we have no riches if you require, please I beg let us through without bloodshed" she asks the Dragoness hoping the beast can have a change of heart even though it being unlikely.

The dragon stared at Jace, wondering why his eyes had bugged out when he didn't seem truly afraid. However, it was distracted by Adalwolfa kneeling in front of it.

"I'm flattered but uninterested." It lifted its giant claw and swatted her away. Again rocking the bridge, it charged, ignoring everyone except the prince.

Kiro fell, having been pushed back by Nikki instead of falling from the unsteady footing. The dragon's claw swooped down from above and grabbed her around the waist, missing its intended target. As she was lifted towards the dragon's face, Nikki readied her knife, lashing out at the dragon's eye when she was brought close. Screaming, the dragon tossed her, trashing around at anything close and spewing fire into the air. Luckily, she missed the river and fell back onto the bridge.

"GO! GO!" She shouted as she crawled onto her feet, "NOW'S THE CHANCE!"

But the dragon's tail swiped under her and she lost her footing. Kiro stood back up and went to help her, but she waved him away.

"ARE YOU DEAF!? GO!"

But Kiro knew this was not a time to flee. What could he do if he left them to die and escaped alone? He drew his sword and struck out. It bounced off the scales, but he tried again. The dragon stopped its rampage.

"So he chooses to die?" Her voice was calm, "How sad it is that Oraclos's prince gives up so easily."
"If I am the one you want, then challenge me alone. One on one."
"You like to pick losing battles?"

Hopefully, distracting it this long had given the others an opportunity to escape.

Hara knew his hands into his hair and screeched," Ahh!! What do we do?!" He watched as the mighty beast swatted Adalwofla away and gasped. Hurriedly, he looked for something to throw. He scooped up a moderately good sized stone and decreased the distance between him and the reptile. " Hey! What makes you think you're worthy to fight the Prince, eh?" Hara chucked the rock at the dragon's head. Silently, he prayed that he could draw the creature's attention away from Kiro. Quickly, he searched for another stone to ready himself with.

Suddenly Jace just.. disappeared ? Then there was a loud cracking sound : the bridge on which was laying the dragon had been ... pierced ? Indeed, just under the left legs of he monster a huge Stalagmite had spawned, trapping the member in ice. Jus after that the level of the river seemed to drop down of a few inches and a really thick fog expanded over the whole area.
Just a dozen of second later, Jace came running and grabbed the prince by the collar :
"Run you idiot !"
While dragging Kiro toward the forest, the mage swinged by to pull Hara by the arm.
"You too, you bigger idiot !"
Rushing them to flee with the tigress Jace turn around and raised his arms in front of him, making a curved Y symbol with his hand :
"Hagalaz Laguz Isa : Merkstave Ehwaz !"
There was a jingling sound were the bridge should have been, though the coton like fog faded out the sounds.
Jace then yelled at the group : "Run ! I partly damaged the bridge, whe she get out of the ice spike she will fall into the river, we have about a minute or so before she comes after us, and the fog won't last that long : hurry to hide in the forest !"

As she flew through the air, she hit a tree hard, which knocked her out. She lay up against the tree almost lifeless as the others ran off. In her little mind, she was praying that the other are okay and are able to get out safely. She promised to catch up when her body and her actual consciousness comes back to wake up.

Kiro gawked at Hara but did not have time to tell him to flee as he was whisked away by Jace. However, he caught a glimpse of Adalwolfa and easily tore himself out of the mage's grasp. He was very strong in spite of his appearance.

Running to her, he stooped down to check her condition. She was unconscious and probably had a head injury. Moving her could be dangerous...

The fog did little to hide the massive shadow approaching them. Kiro scooped Adalwolfa up and made to escape, but as was customary for those with great physical strength, he wasn't very fast, especially with a person in his arms. The dragon roared, but instead of a fireball, the looming shadow disappeared. Three footsteps was all he had to prepare for the knife that suddenly appeared before his eyes. Behind it were two large, teal eyes and red scars.

His body chilled and seared within an instant, but the knife never touched him. Instead, there was a flash. He was grabbed by the collar again, this time by Nikki, and she lead them all into the woods.

When they settled down, it was pitch black. Even before a fire was lit, she took Adalwolfa from Kiro and kicked the prince to the ground.

"Are you stupid? You must be stupid. You have to be completely STUPID to pull a stunt like that!" She said, trying not to raise her voice, "You. Could. Have. Died. And then where would we be? Doomed. Dead. Hopeless. You cannot throw your life away like that!"

"I know what I did, but I would still make the same choice." Kiro stood and dusted himself off, "She would have died, and I cannot live with the burden of another person's life being sacrificed for my own."
"Then why even have Guardians? You steal their purpose if you die for them."
"They chose to fight for me on the condition that I would send them home. Sending them back as corpses was not in the deal."
"You have no sense of self preservation. A fool." She scoffed and stalked away a few feet and laying Adalwolfa against a tree before climbing its trunk and resting in the branches.

Sitting at the base of a tree, Hara rested with his eyes closed and his hands in his lap. That was until Nikki chewed Kiro out on the spot; his eyes had flung open then. There was an awkward silence that Hara broke with a cough, it was hardly intentional.

He peered up at Nikki and down to Kiro, then to Adalwofla. He hoped she was okay; the reptile from earlier really did a number. " I think we need some firewood, so.." Hara hauled himself off the ground, wheezing. " I'll go find some. Then once we have some light, I can check and see if Adalwofla has a concussion.."

(( Assuming that they hadn't lit a fire yet. ))

Jace sighed longly.
-"Alright so Hara, with all the respesct that I don't own you, why don't you just sit there and stay still ? For once ? Hum ? I mean, unless you really want to indicate our location with your fire that is..."
He coughed and took his head in his hand.
-" Let me explain something to you. *he raised his voice* And what I'm about to say also stands for you Prince.. So as I was saying , listen well you two : if you EVER pull out a stunt like that ever again, you can be sure that you will have bigger things to deal with than a dragon.."
He was now almost yelling : "I mean : I appreciate your will to save me, even if I didn't needed it, don't get me wrong... *he clenched his fist and slapped the two young man, leaving a nice red mark* BUT ATTACKING A DRAGON WITH A SWORD AND A FEAKING ROCK ?!! ARE YOU TWO INSANE ?!! *long sigh* I should have left you there just so that you learn a lesson from it but I need the two of you alive. One for getting back home WHERE PEOPLE AREN'T TOTAL IDIOTS !, and the other one to protect the first one...
SO NOW, here's what's going to happen : the two of you will get up, you will stay with Nikki WHATEVER HAPPEN, meanwhile I'll stay behind to carry Adawolfa and let's be clear : I don't care if it was the moral choice, people need you so you wil stay SAFE ! So... If I hear you do something as little as squeal while the only person of reason here leads you to the temple, OR if she comes to tell me you tried to do anything stupid again : I WILL SMACK SO HARD THAT EVEN IF YOUR FRIEND COULD RECOGNIZE YOU THEY WOULDN'T WANT YOU BACK AGAIN, ARE WE CLEAR ?!!
*He sighed longly, while the ice spikes that growed behind him were slowly fading. He then continued on a softer tone, smiling peacefully again *
"Alright, that's said, it needed to go out. feeeeew..." *he looked at the silent group* "I'm apologizing anytime soon by the way, so we should be going : there's a dragon behind us if you ever forget.."

Vallus chuckled a little bit listening to Jace spout his words and broke his silence to say "Well it's not uncommon knowledge that most if not all dragons are resistance to magic, that's only to my knowledge at the least and I've killed 3 before, but I'ved had armies at my back trying to kill both me and the dragons themselves so you know it kind of evened out." He explained hoping his point would have gotten through. The giant undead warrior showing knowledge through his heavy black steel armor was not that unusual of a sight but due to his quiet festivities lately it was a breath of fresh air for Vallus to finally speak again.

(( Well since no one else is gonna say anything. ))

The young man slowly brought a quivering hand up to the burning area on his cheek, gently touching it. It stung.. Bad... But alas, Hara decided to deal with it. He wanted to leave the area to cool off from the bubbling anger inside him, just like his mother had taught him to. He also wanted to sock Jace in the nose. There were so many things that Hara wanted to do at that very moment, but he didn't act on any of them. All he did was cut Jace a brief, piercing gaze before retreating into his own little shell. Slightly shifting away from the mage so he didn't have to look at him. Instead he stared at the grass under him; at this point, Hara would only speak if spoken to. That was how he would mellow out, is to not give his anger a chance to seep out.

Kiro took the slap without even wincing. He's had worse. Even Jace's words seemed to bounce off of him, having just received the same speech in condensed form from Nikki. Not to say that he ignored him. Instead, he simply smiled and nodded, though an icy aura of his own seemed to start forming.

He turned his back and looked down the opposite direction, "I believe the others want to rest. Such excitement warrants it, I beleive. I will keep watch. If you feel endangered, please feel free to help."

When the morning came, Kiro roused the others, taking extra care with Adalwolfa for fear of aggravating her injuries. Nikki was awake even before Kiro started waking the others and was out ahead, finding the best path and scouting ahead for safety. When she returned, she explained where they were going and what to look for.

"The Braided Maiden is around here. We head north from there. You'll know it when you see it."
"Thank you, Miss Tora." Kiro nodded to her and waited off to the side for everyone else to go first.

As usual, Jace woke up with a bright smile and a happy attitude !... NOT.
Mr.Grumpy wasn't in the mood , has he ever been is a question that will forever be unanswered , and started over his 'magic ice tea' , creating icy teacups with his free hand, groaning like it was a chore.
Once the water ball had finished infusing he poured himself one, then two, then free cups, before shaking himself off and waking up fully.
-"aaaaaaah... That's better ! So, does anyone wants some ? Tea of course.." he offered with a quiet smile.

Vallus, slowly waking up, pulled himself off his back and having heard the offer for some tea raised his hand ever so lankly and murmured "I'd be happy to try it." and ruggedly forced himself onto his feet. Vallus was the kind of guy who loved to sleep in, his excuse for it of course was beauty sleep but that didn't make much sense however it stuck so no arguments there. Then again Vallus was never one for going to bed earlier so sleeping in made sense considering how long he would stay up just practically stargazing and what not.

Jace made the little detailed icy cup float inside the hands of the armored giant.
"Have fun, it's my favorite blend..."
As he was still kind of sleepy even after his fourth cup, Jace decided to do some streches, yawning a little too long, almost falling back to sleep, and then streching again, helping himself by planting his claws in a nearby tree.
... wait : since when did that human had claws ?
Jace yawned again and sipped one final cup of his vermillon tea before crushing mercilessly the artfull ice sculpture he had created.
The blue mage then licked his chops has he walked toward Kiro and Nikki, giving his sweetest smile to the duo, before asking in a honey-coated voice : "Morning you two, would you like some tea ?"

Nikki nodded, "I'll try some before we leave."
Kiro, however, shook his head, "No thank you, Sir BlancheRive. It is a bit too cold for me. When we've settled I will try some."

He fiddled with the corner of his cape and wandered off to stand next to Vallus instead. His face was still cheerful, albeit a bit puffy yet on one cheek, but some sort of gloom seemed to darken his features. Wasn't it there since the beginning? It might be a bit more apparent now.

Nikki glanced at Jace and smirked, "Well, hurry it up, Sir BlancheRive. We can't wait here forever."

Hiding his irritation and answered in the nicest voice : "I'm sorry to be such a drag , Lady Nikki, but I''d like you to remember I was the only one who wished not to stop yesterday. There really is only your prince to decide to sleep in the forest with a dragon after us..."
The mage offered a new cup to the guide with a sly smile, pouring the rest of the bubble in the ice cold .. ice cup.
"And don't burn yourself with it, that would be a really cat-astrophy..."

Vallus put his little teacup down when he was finished with it "They're right, we need to get moving, and soon" looking around he took a grand look at everyone and when he realized where all the tea went he looked down. "Oh..." He said "I forgot, I can't enjoy tea anymore, my apologies but it goes right through me" the first and last pun he would ever make as he observed the tea all over the ground forming a dark wet spot. Vallus took a gander at Kiro and placed his giant metal hand on his shoulder "You're looking troubled, what ales you my friend?" he asked solemnly figuring everyone has their down moments.

Nikki was not amused this time. She'd been trying to ignore the strange hostility she'd caught from Jace, and although he seemed back to his usual self, that comment was a little out of line for her.

"I am not fully human, but I am not a god, either. Mortal beings have limitations. Regaining energy would be better than collapsing from exhaustion anyway. And besides, we would not have had time for your seven cups of tea if we were running like headless fowl." She drank back the tea, ignoring the ice cup and hot liquid contradiction. As she did so, she also walked away, chomping down on the cup when she was finished.

Kiro looked up at Vallus and shook his head, still smiling, "Nothing to trouble you all with. It is doubt within myself. I am due for some reflection."

He put his own hand over Vallus's patting it in gratitude before moving it aside, "I appreciate your concern, Sir Vallus. You are a kind fellow."

Kiro couldn't let his concerns slow down their advance. Now determined to put aside his problems for solitary moments, he checked on Hara and Adalwolfa again before deciding it was time to move out.

Hara had checked up on Adalwofla after he awoke and was currently criss-crossed with one elbow on his knee, the other hand massaged his right two eyes. Hearing the grass crunch near him, he looked up and smiled in a friendly way seeing that it was Kiro. He had taken off his tunic to sleep in just his pants and Pink Floyd muscle tank that he kept on for comfort reasons. The male flexed and stretched, doing a few different things to help stretch and also crack things. Like his back. Cracking his back was his favorite.