“Thank you.” Adriana breathed to the healer, sighing as the weight of Aerandir was brought off of her shoulders. She moved down to the end of the bed and tugged off his shoes, to make him more comfortable, and brought up a thin sheet to cover his body from the chill of the season. Then she gave the healer a small nod and a smile to indicate that he could leave whenever he wanted.

The stress of being one of the few most hunted beings in their world, and having her apprentice in the hospital not a week after he had arrived was making her exhausted. She felt as if she could easily break under the pressure. Sitting at the bottom of the bed she gave a long yawn, and pondered over what she would do the next day.

She figured that the healers would have operated on Kalib that night, and that she would be able to go visit both him and Ki tomorrow. Then, she would work on just ignoring the fact that she had Vanthm's poison coursing through her veins. The poison was in recession, for now, and there was no use thinking about it until it came back again. So that she could do strenuous actives, she would have to ask Saylix to find something to help her further with the poison.

Aerandir would probably be in bed rest or unable to do strenuous things for quite some time. At least a week, she guessed. So, Adriana figured that she would try to carry on Merion's training...as well as Kalib's whenever he was better. During the time of their recovery, they would have to mentally get stronger...as well as watch out for more hinderances thrown at them by Vanthm.

~X~

A tall pale figure sat on the same dark throne as before. As usual the room was dimmed, and standing out from Vanthm's dark clothes were white bandages where the Dragon Riders Merion and Halt had injured him. They were injuries considered serious to humans, but to someone that was barely human...or barely elf, hey were minor.

“Tell the generals to start training their troops.” He murmured through the darkness to a young maid, who was dressed in what appeared to be something maybe smaller than a large pillowcase. She gave a nervous, quick, nod and exited the room as if she had been waiting to do so for years.

If single confrontations didn't take them all down in the long run, he was planning to just ambush them with hundreds of fighters at a time. Vanthm wasn't the only Dragon Rider on the dark side. He had one other rider and dragon that he had sent off, to search for the enemy riders and attempt to kill them.

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