Ramone didn’t pay too much attention to his partners to his regret, and whirled around when he heard Willo call something out into the crowd. The crowd didn’t manage to mask her voice, but it did make them impossible for him to make out. Hopefully that applied to the intended recipients of the harpy’s words as well. Given he wasn’t sure what she had said, Ramone simply scrutinized his partner for a moment before he continued on his way to the counter.

“I do,” he remarked dryly at the her praise before he turned to the tender and asked about any food they might have had. Disappointingly enough, but not unexpected, there was none to be found at the moment and Ramone clicked his tongue. He settled for a cup of water like Willo had and sipped at it slowly as his eyes wandered over the crowd just in case any of the contained chaos made its way over towards their direction.

At her prompt he turned to look at their instructor by the doors that led further into the building. It wasn’t easy to miss Lazarus, even with the crowd, but he didn’t deem it too important to poke his head into the senior Hunter’s business. Given he was in her way, it wasn’t too surprising she was unable to see the waitress arguing against their instructor. One-sided as expected given the man’s reaction, or lack thereof. “See for yourself,” he murmured as he stood to get out of her way. “I’m going to see if there’s some place for food around here. It’s a port town… or was. Maybe someone’s still open like in the old days or something.”

Aelar stuck around with the two as they entered the pub, however it didn’t look like he was paying attention to what was happening around him. In fact it almost seemed like he was in trance. He sat down next to the two at the counter and stared blankly at the beverages arranged on the shelves behind the tender. From the moment he entered the pub it felt like his actions were not his own. As if he wasn’t really there, but rather confined in his own mind.

“You alright? Want something to drink?”, the man behind the counter asked after bringing Willo's and Ramone's drinks. No response came and the tender quickly became distracted with other people that sat down and ordered drinks.

In the corner of the room the conversation between Drake and the waitress ended abruptly. The waitress turned her back to Drake. It looked like she said one more thing to Drake before slamming the door in front of him.
Drake simply stood in front of the door for a while. His right hand rose up and he began rubbing his temple. It was a habit the three had taken note of during their training. It usually indicated things were not going the way Drake had imagined it.

In the meantime, Aelar seemed to get into worse shape. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead and his face turned pale. His expression still blank and his breathing was slightly heavy. It wasn’t hard to notice that something was wrong.

To Aelar it sounded like the noises around him grew louder with every passing second. All the rambling surrounding him, accompanied by sounds of shifting chairs and glass smacking into more glass as men toasted and cheered. It became deafening to him. He couldn’t even think anymore. He felt like he would pass out any moment.

Drake turned around, his eyes scanned the room and quickly spotted Willo and Aelar sitting at the counter while Ramone was preparing to leave. His hand dropped from his temple and without wasting much time he walked up to them before Ramone had the chance to leave.

“We are done here. It is time to go.” He said while also giving Aelar an odd stare.

Drake's words seemed to overshadow everything Aelar was hearing, the deafening ambiance muffled by Drake's voice. It snapped Aelar out of the state he was in. The dizziness vanished instantly. Suddenly everything returned to normal. Aelar could finally think again and with that came another realization. He had no recollection of ever entering the pub. From the point he asked Willo to join them, up to when he started feeling sick his mind was completely blank.

Drake didn't even wait for them to get up. Before they even knew it, Drake was already outside waiting for the trio.

What was that? Aelar thought as he got up to follow Drake. Realizing where he was Aelar was initially startled as he did not remember entering the pub. The last thing he remembered is asking Willo if she was going to enter the pub and then a headache. He took a quick look around to attempt to identify the reason behind his "blackout", seeing nothing he touched the crest on his necklace as was his habit to do in confusing situations. Well whatever that was Drake seems to have taken care of it somehow.

As Aelar starts walking he gets the feeling of someone staring at him, but when he turns around he sees nothing which causes him to brush it off as him being jumpy. Turning to Willo "Well you ready to have a sleepover to kill for at a haunted castle?" he asks as they continue to walk.

Imgor got in behind the creature while it was recovering and grabbed its' stinger, the tail began waving wildly, and Imgor had to use all the strength of his arms to keep it away from himself, yet managed to hold on just long enough with one arm to cut it off. As he did, Alex fired off a blast from the shotgun he looted off of that 'Nawar' fellow a while back. The beasts' face was impacted by a dozen or two of small iron pellets, managing to blast off a mandible, even. After that, it quickly dashed to its' right and quickly re-acquired its' bearings.

After a moment, the creature leaped towards Alexander, pinning him down, and using its' left pincer to stab into his chest! Trapping its' target, it then began to produce its' mucus... But, before it could finish him off, The two from before revealed themselves to be Sapphire, and someone else they don't know the name of, but they could recognize him from the town, somewhere...

Out of nowhere, he leaped into the air and crashed down hard behind the scorpion-creature, preparing the unique, heavy greatshield he called his Switch-Weapon for a bashing. Quickly, he pushed the scorpion off with his shield. Afterwards, he jumped unto it and penetrated its' upper scales with the hidden spikes that revealed themselves on the rim of his barricade. Rotating quickly, they made a deep gash, but before he could do much else, the Beast threw Arnold off, and he impacted a tree, going unconscious for a bit.

Alexander was now severely wounded, Imgor was in a bad position, Arnold was unconscious, and Sapphire was just entering the fray.

Imgor had problems to worry about, as he stood right behind the beast, and had probably aggreviated it too much. He had to get away from it, quickly.
Without time to think, his familiar reacted, and the ground directly below Imgor collapsed, causing him to fall into his mole's tunnel. The soil surrounding the hole wasn't too stable, and the hole quickly closed, leaving only a cone in the ground.

The collapse of the hole had also buried Imgor, but that is what usually what happens when you enter a tunnel by collapse, so his familiar was quick to dig him out without breaching the surface. If only he had his switch-weapon, this fight would be easy. The chitin plating of beats of this size usually doesn't stand a proper pickaxe swing, provided it hits. His bow was useless against the chitin, and the knife would only work against the joints between the plates, so he was left with 3 options:

• staying underground and wait the fight out
• attempting to stab the beast from below the ground
• leaving the tunnels in a proper distance form the fight and then return

He attempted the 2nd option, and thus used the tunnels to get below the beast, and thrust the knife upwards through the soil. He constantly knew the beast's location using his tracking spell.

When breaching the surface with his knife-hand, Imgor felt something; foilage, mostly dry, lying on the ground. It sparked an idea: If he was to ignite the foilage on the ground, would the beast survive?
He couldn't tell if he had stabbed the beast, or failed at the attempt, or if the beast had even noticed it, however, Imgor retracted his hand until the fingers were barely touching the foilage. After telling his familiar to get out of the area and leave an escape route behind for him, he cast 'Minimal Sparks' to attempt to ignite a fire. He hadn't witnessed Arnold arriving, so when he checked if Alex was still nearby, which he wasn't, he completely missed the passed out hunter. If the fire did ignite, it would most likely spread uncontrollably within the near vacinity.

Imgor ended up casting the spell 3 times, before it got too hot for him to keep his hand up there. As he got away, he crawled through the tunnels as fast as he could, and as his arm wasn't in the tunnel's roof anymore, the ground below the beast, if it hadn't moved already, would likely collapse soon.

Sapphire arrived far later as she wasn't in the mood for chasing after Arnold. The moment she stepped out into the clearing she regretted ever joining Arnold on his 'adventure'. Not only did she run into her team mates which she wished to avoid for the rest of the day, now Arnold was already knocked out too and Alexander was covered in blood. Sapphire couldn't even make out the source of the blood from where she was standing, and Imgor was also nowhere in her sight, however she had no doubt he was nearby as well.

Why? Why them? Why now?, Sapphire thought, frustrated.

And moreover she could feel dread creeping up her spine. The creature they were facing was a pretty big one, and definitely not pretty. However this wasn’t a plagued one, fortunately. She quickly refocused and with a flick of the wrist an air burst propelled her forwards towards Alexander.
Once she was close enough she opted for a technique she had used before and with great success too. A precise air burst between Alexander and the scorpion lifted up cloud of dust, obscuring both herself and Alexander from the creature’s sight.
She used the time to get to Alex and grabbed him from under his arms.

"C'mon!" she grunted as she began dragging Alexander away and into the cover of the forest.

In the meantime Ruby began doing low passes close to the creature to distract even further.

"Try to stay still." Sapphire told Alexander. She inspected his chest but it was covered in blood and as result she couldn't tell how severe the wound was. She looked at her cloak and hesitated for just a moment. She kind of liked it. And it wasn’t cheap. Unless Joshua decided to be as kind to them as he did before she doubted she’d be able to pay for a replacement herself. In the end it was her teammate and she wasn’t going to let him die despite harboring some misplaced ill feeling towards him, all thanks to Nickolaus. A few tears later the lower part of her cloak was now wrapped around Alexander’s chest. Even slightly lifting him up took some doing, however she had managed to wrap it all around him as he was lying on the ground. That should put him out of immediate danger, at least for now, Sapphire thought.

Alexander cried out in pain as the pincer sank into his chest because he had been unable to retreat fast enough. He was forced to watch as the monster prepared to finish him off its corrosive mucus. Then the hunter with the strange weapon he'd seen earlier jumped in and beat off the beast with remarkable strength until was also thrown off. Alexander struggled to stand up futilely, Larion seeing his distress quickly bounded over and arrived at the same time Sapphire did.

Together, with Sapphire's impressive distraction they managed to get Alexander mostly out of danger. As Sapphire tore her cloak to stop the bleeding Alexander managed to cough out his thanks. "Thanks, not sure if I could've held out for a hole lot longer."

The weak quip was all he could manage at the moment and it helped him not focus on the stab in his chest. Hopefully that mandible didn't have any sort of toxin or poison on it. On a more serious note he said, "Please help Imgor kill that thing, Larion will do whatever you ask." the last part of that statement was aimed at Larion and the Iron-back nodded while whining worriedly. They couldn't leave that monster alive to savage any innocent travelers who happened to come by. He coughed up some more blood and applied pressure to his chest as best he could as he waited, hoping that the beast could at least be driven off quickly. If it came over here... well, hopefully it wouldn't.

“Or not,” he muttered as Lazarus seemed to finish up his business moments after he was about to leave the bar. With a sigh, he downed what water there was left in the cup and set it on the counter just as their instructor arrived. He glanced over at the other two, eyes narrowing a bit at Aelar’s slightly sickly look, but the elf seemed to be alright given the other boy was quick to follow on Lazarus’ heels. A forlorn rub at his belly took but a moment of Ramone’s time before he left the building with the others.

As the his two teammates talked amongst themselves, he turned his attention towards Lazarus and asked, “Straight to the castle now, or any other stops along the way?” While a bit curious to the older Hunter’s business, Ramone also knew there was no way he was going to get anything from their teacher that he hadn’t already planned to tell him. Not to mention it wasn’t in his nature to pry into things, unlike say Willo might.

Willo couldn't help but feel a bit bad for Ramone, poor guy just wanted something to eat. They could go somewhere after the test, at least, it wasn't like they were missing their last meal or anything. Thinking about it, perhaps she should have ordered something a bit more than water, but then there wasn't much use in fretting over supplies anyway. As far as she knew they had everything they'd need to last in the castle, assuming they didn't take forever.

Following along, Willo resisted the urge to ask Aelar and Ramone about Laz's demeanor. Instead, she looked to the latter of her teammates and cocked her head. He didn't look well, more confused, like he was wearing the wrong skin. She gave Aelar a gentle nudge as she rounded up beside him.

"Ay, you doin' alright? You look a lil' shitty." Her words were almost inhumanely blunt, but there was a clear air of concern in them. "Not gonna pass out on us in the castle, are you? Gonna be tough for me an' Ramone to haul you around and kill the beasties."

The Scorpion-Beast was stabbed in the 'gut' from the underside, confusing it and making it move a bit backwards. It saw tiny flashes of light coming in through a hole, and then felt very, very hot. The foliage was ignited and Imgor had to get out ASAP, which he promptly did. Now ON FIRE, the creature tried to put itself out, waving around wildly. Arnold seemed to wake up as the beast went past him, and the fire got on him too, beginning to burn his clothes. "HOLY FUCK!" he screamed, ripping off the cloth from his arm and throwing it at the scorpion creature, which was also, still on fire. "Nothing sets me on fire and lives! DIE, CREATURE!".

Arnold then rushed the thing and began a close-range fight, using his shield to block attacks, and then bashing it in the face. Of course, as both were heavily defended (And in the scorpions' case, very offensive as well) combatants, they were essentially in a stale-mate. Either way, the scorpion was a dead beast walking; For some reason, Beasts were even more vulnerable to fire then regular creatures. "Am I going to have to wait as this thing burns to death or what? Someone stab it already!", he quickly requested.

The fire, in any case, began to spread, and the environmental situation of Coalstrike obviously worsened. In the night, this was obviously going to be noticed by somebody.

“Yes, we are going to the castle. We’ve wasted enough time here.” Drake replied to Ramone before heading for the exit.

It was probably time for them to leave anyways. While Aelar had his ‘event’ and the other two were focused on what Lazarus was doing, they failed to notice the commotion that had sparked behind them.

Without even glancing to his right side, Drake deflected a flying chair that sailed through the air from that direction and nearly hit both him and Aelar. It seemed Willo’s comments had not gone unnoticed. By the time the fifteen minutes were up an all-out brawl was the current onset of Willo’s remarks.

“You were going to swing at me, weren’t you?! Come here! I’ll bash your goddamn face in.” One barked.

“I wanna see you try.” The one sitting opposed to him snarled.

More chairs began flying. Tables were flipped. Glasses were smashed. And it didn't take long for people start 'sailing' through the air as well. What started at one table spread to the other ones like wildfire. Soon enough the pub looked like a battlefield. It was a mess.

A punch sent one of the intoxicated men tumbling straight towards Ramone's and Willo's general direction.




“I wouldn’t be surprised if the altercation inside was sparked by one of you three.” Drake commented dryly once outside of the pub.

Before Lazarus could leave the waitress with the eye-patch came running out of the pub and went straight to Drake, who standing on the street already away from the crowd at the entrance. Drake turned around as he heard the steps behind and the waitress stopped just a hair's breadth away from him as she looked a building behind Lazarus over his shoulder, their faces almost next to each other.

“He’s not there yet, but he will be in the morning. You owe me for this.” She told him, almost whispering, yet her tone was clearly one of annoyance.

"Noted." Was the only response Drake gave her before she stormed back into the pub.

Lazarus was about to head in the opposite direction from which they came from when two robed individuals stepped in front of him, both their faces obscured by their hood.

"For you, it ends here.", one of them said. There was no doubt what their intentions were. The only question remaining was why.

By now Drake expected at least one of his students to be outside of the pub and close to him, otherwise he knew he would look like an idiot blabbering to himself.
"You have trained a lot in the arts of combating various creatures, blighted and otherwise. But rarely have you had the chance to test your skills against human opponents. This would be the prefect opportunity." Hoping the hint was good enough he stepped backwards, leaving plenty of space around the two assailants.

Alexander began a mix of crawling and limping back onto the main road, if Larion wasn't given any order by Sapphire he would quickly rush to Alexander's side and help him as best he was able. Alexander wasn't too keen on the idea of trying to recover from a stabbing in a forest fire and he couldn't exactly stop it or help kill the beast. Hopefully the rest of his team could deal with it and whoever that other hunter was. Obviously he was very skilled since he could handle that monster in close quarters combat. Of course, the hunter had his switch-weapon, which Alexander was woefully deprived off. Luckily Sapphire's cloak held strong and he wasn't bleeding anymore so Alex wasn't in any serious danger, at least not before he could find some serious medical help.

Iṃgor's familiar dug upwards near Alexander's and Sapphire's location, breaching the surface next to them. He quickly reentered the tunnel, and Iṃgor got back to the surface through the same exit.
"If we would have had our switch-weapons, this would likely not have resulted in a fire." He sighed.
"Anyways, I suppose we should enter the city before the fire is discovered, otherwise we might end up in big trouble, if it goes out of control. Maybe we should even use the gate on the other side of Coalstrike, just to be safe, and then wait the rest of the time in the hideout."
After a short pause Iṃgor continues: "I'll make us dinner there, if anyone is interested."

Sapphire was about to go off and check on Arnold when she jolted as Imgor’s familiar dug his way out of the ground, not expecting him to come from there.

“I don’t think the fire was necessary to begin with.” Sapphire commented on the lack of their switch-weapons and the ensuing fire.
“Why would even come out here in the first place? It doesn’t matter, go make sure Alexander is alright.” Sapphire deliberately tried to get rid of Imgor as stood up, trying to listen for the creatures movements.

Although Imgor’s offer of a hot meal, the quarrel she and Nicholaus had at their hideout was still at back of her mind. Being apprehensive about the others in the group at first, she now had fully lost her trust towards them, despite this being Nicholaus’ fault.
Wariness of other people was in her nature from the beginning.

“I’ll check on Ar- I mean, the other hunter.” She corrected herself realizing they didn’t know him.
She didn’t plan on returning to the hideout after checking on Arnold. Not yet anyways.

He turned to follow their teacher and had to duck as a “good” old pub brawl got into full swing. “Got to be shitting me,” Ramone muttered quietly under his breath as he watched everything go to shit around him and Lazarus walk off without so much as a care. He side stepped the unsteady man and grabbed him by the scruff of his shirt, spinning around and throwing him back into the fray. “Move it.” With that said he hugged the wall and made his way over to one of the windows, throwing them open and leaving the pub that way rather than try to cut through the rowdy crowd towards the doors.

He was quick enough to round the corner as Lazarus left the doors, and scratched at the back of his head in annoyance. “Yeah, we’ve got a troublemaker...” he remarked as he looked around for the other two to see if they had made it out before he glanced towards the waitress that made her way over towards Lazarus. It was a bit hard to hear what was said, but in the end Ramone did manage to catch the brief exchange between the two. Again, he didn’t bother to question the meaning behind her words and instead just prepared to follow their teacher.

“Come on, really?” He really didn’t want to use his skills and training against the unblighted, but the pair seemed quite serious and rarely was Lazarus anything but. His hands fell down to grasp the hilts of Revantin on his belt, and he watched the two carefully as he called out for his teammates. Given that the weapons' sheaths looked no different from a regular longsword's, it seemed likely that he would be able to catch them by surprise.

Arnold continued blocking various attacks from the arachnid creature until it finally died due to the heat, losing the energy to keep itself upright and simply crashing into the ground. Arnold stepped backwards, visually made sure it was dead, then spat on the creature. "Dead as a doorknob! Let's go, Ms. Sapphire. So, these other two your friends? ... Now that I think about it, we should probably focus on getting 'Alexander' over there out of here. Feel free to leave by yourself, Ms. Sapphire, ladies first after all. 'Mr. Imgor', allow me to assist getting your friend out of here?"

Arnold went to help Alexander, he said to Imgor "If we work on him now he'll probably get infected, let's go someplace more.. sanitary. And less on fire.". With that, he picked up Alexander and slung him over his left shoulder, still dragging along his shield-based armament with his other hand. "So, where shall we be headed?"

Arnolds' advice of getting out ASAP was sound, for obvious reasons. The trio, alongside Arnold, got out of the vicinity of the fire and went a bit east to look slightly less suspicious of the deed. Most likely due to the fumes, the Trio could begin hallucinating a little, seeing shapes and movement that weren't there. Sapphire was hit the worst, due to being the smallest one. In her case, she thinks she could hear things.

Alexander sighed mentally as he was slung over the hunters shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Really he was- oh gawd that hurt- probably capable of getting around himself. Unless that cracking sound was a rib. Maybe not then. "We're going t-to town, it should be..." Alexander tried to find the town confused, he could've sworn it was just down the road there. And since when did the road get all curvy? "There?" Alexander half asked half directed pointing at what he was fairly somewhat confident was the direction of the town. Oh now he was slightly nauseous from all the spinning, he hoped they got there quickly, he would hate to have to vomit over his rescuer. This was embarrassing enough as it was.

Imgor coughed a little as the fumes got denser. "I have once seen a fire in dense, dry pine forest from a distance; the flames were as high as 4 trees on top of another, and moved faster than birds could fly away from them. I doubt this will happen here, but it is better to overestimate fire, especially when it is about life and death."
He was already running as fast as he could, the direction didn't matter, as long as it was away from the fire onto some patch of land, that was away from forest and other dense vegetation.

Sapphire inhaled a decent amount of fumes and realized it probably wasn't a very sound idea to wander off alone through the forest.
However before even getting the chance to think about it any further, she and Arnold were already back with the others. Great, she thought. She still detested the idea of going back to the hideout after what had happened. Her thoughts were cut off as she began hearing other things among her own coughing and the sound of fire burning down trees.

"I don't think the beast was the last of them." She said as she was looking to her left and right trying to spot any movement. The look on her face made it clear she was distressed and confused, possibly as a result of the smoke she inhaled. All she saw around her was blur. She could feel her knees slowly giving way under her own weight. It didn't take long for her to collapse to her knees while they were on their way to the town.

"Ms. Sapphire, I promise you'll be fine.", Arnold reassured, "Let's just get out of here as soon as possible. I'd be your ruggedly handsome knight in shining armor and carry you out, but I'm already a bit busy on that front.". The group managed to get out of the worst of it, then shortly thereafter cleared it entirely. Of course, Sapphire herself was most likely still hallucinating. The visions got worse and she could begin seeing shapes that seemed to defy physics, before they began to wink out as the smoke dispersed.

...Were they really not there?

Arnold also chuckled a bit as Alexander tried to assist his pathfinding. "I appreciate it, 'Alex', but I do not require assistance. Feel free to rest.". The four hunters came back to town, using an entrance seperate from the main to shake off any suspicions. The three under Joshua managed to convey where their safehouse was, and Arnold deposited Alexander into the main room as the four funneled inside "Lovely place. Let's hope the city guard doesn't come barging in. I'd love to stay and chit-chat, but I believe my time is up.

He went to exit the door, and as he came clear of the frame, he dropped a bombshell; "Nawar has it out for you guys, you might want to watch your backs very closely from now on. I'm not a friend of his, but word spreads, you know?". He then left entirely, leaving the three to question.