Carver was burning. The heat from the inferno was cooking him alive inside his armor, and in a strange place in his mind outside lucid thought, he felt a brief pang of pity for all the roast chickens he had eaten in his life time. 

A thunderous crack filled his eardrums, and a shockwave pushed into him from behind, bowling him off his feet. Perhaps Kelvin's work, or another display of power from the spellcaster? He hoped for the former as he struggled, unsteadily, to his feet. He was torn for a moment between continuing or returning to try and help the others. The gnome was in the most pressing danger - he carried on his course.

He could scarcely see from the blood and smoke in his visor, and so he held it as an act of divine providence (or perhaps profound luck) when he almost literally tripped across a small form laying prone in a pile of rubble. Either this was the gnome or a strangely-proportioned child; either way, they very certainly needed to be removed from this situation.

The ground shook nearby, and Carver just made out the silhouette of the Ettin a few meters away. A mighty blow landed, and Carver's armor was rained with chips of wood - apparently, the Ettin hadn't noticed the Paladin, and was preoccupying itself with destroying the village.

Carver, with as much stealth as a burning man clad in full plate armor could muster, bent over the gnome. He was agonizingly aware of the fact that his armor was more than hot enough to burn skin at the moment, so he grabbed a nearby curtain that was only burned a little, stamped the fire out of it, and swathed the unconscious gnome in it like the world's largest baby. Then, once more that day, the knight ran.

He ran until he could breathe without smoke filling lungs, until the cracking of burned wood faded into the distance. He coughed, still holding the gnome to his chest. His burns ached, hiw wounds bled, and his eyes told him that they wanted to close. He told them to shut up.

There were trees here. Carver coughed again, and called out hoarsely: "Alula! Kelvin! Separ! Are you there?"