[quote]Meryn froze as she remembered the blood wasn't hers. It was the felidrake's. The infected, dead felidrake. Spook's warning of the disease echoed in her mind.

Meryn shoved her bag off her shoulder and onto the ground. With both hands, she grabbed the back of her collar and yanked the dirty jacket off, throwing it to the floor a few feet away. Shaking hands felt at her face, her arms, her hair, for any traces of crystals on her skin. Her breath was coming out in frantic, shallow puffs.

Lily's hands closed around Meryn's wrists, gently tugging her hands away from her face. She waited until the girl looked up at her, then offered a smile, even if it was somewhat marred by the blood trickling from the cut on her cheek down to her chin.

"It's alright—you're alright," she said breathlessly, still panting from the mad sprint and the adrenaline that was still shooting through her. "Just a little blood, nothing more." Lily released Meryn's hands, turning to Emma. "Spook needs your help—"

Emma tossed the girl a bundle of bandages, "Take care of Meryn and yourself, I'll make sure he lives." She scooped up the rest of her supplies and ran to the now re-masked man. She was slightly disappointed she had missed a glimpse at his face, but now was not the time for such thoughts. 

As she approached their retreating guide she was slightly taken aback- for a man with a hole in his chest he was certainly doing a good job of keeping upright. She ran to meet Spook, offering him a shoulder for support. "You're injured, let me take care of you." It was more of a command then a request. She gestured towards the mat, signalling for them to head towards it so she could help him. "Are those things going to follow us out here?"[/quote]

Spook raised his head in a moment of hesitation, a bloodsoaked glove pressed against his stomach, his mask slightly dented and askew. He draped an arm behind Emma's shoulders and released a long breath. [b]"Thank you."[/b] The old smile had returned to his voice. [b]"It's not as bad as it looks,"[/b] he added with a quiet laugh.

The traveler obediently sat down on the mat, leaning on Emma for balance as he did so. [b]"They won't cross the edge of the forest. They know they'll be shot on sight. We're safe."[/b] His voice was convincingly reassuring despite the admission that they were at that moment being watched through the scope of a sniper rifle.

Spook removed his gloves, and his pale thin hands were tattooed with old runes. He gingerly pulled off his jacket, and the runes continued up his arms; dozens of them, in varying colors and sizes and age. His shoulders were flecked and patched with what appeared to be a rash of dark gemstone. He laid back and pulled up his shirt -- his stomach was completely covered in rough dark crystal, which was actively expanding into the wound, as if feeding on his blood. Spook extended an upturned palm to Emma, to take whatever she had intended to use on the injury. He would be happy to clean up the wound himself -- there was no reason to expect Emma to come any closer.

[b]"I'm very sure I'm not contagious,"[/b] he assured her -- but he understood this wasn't satisfactory proof.

He turned his masked face toward Meryn -- whose name he had no way of knowing -- and his voice took on a note of gravity. [b]"Are you injured?"[/b] Her answer was the difference between life and death.

Behind them, the forest screeched.

One of the little wood demons leaped onto a branch at the edge of the woods and hissed at them. Black crystal blossomed on its face and limbs, making it look all the more hellish. It did not attempt to move outside the reach of the trees.

Ahead, the wasteland stretched wide and bleak -- and something was moving toward them out of the high dark city wall.

It was stocky, round and ambling, like a strange silhouette of a long-legged, rotund man, followed by a cloud of steam. As it waddled closer at a steady pace, it glimmered like tarnished brass in the sunlight. The steam-powered robot whirred and hissed and clicked, stomping closer with high knees and swinging arms, an almost comical sight among the dead roots and barren ash of the wasteland.

The robot was headed straight for Alex. Of course, of everyone in that group, Alex appeared to be the one in charge: he was the most properly dressed and the most properly armed, and he wasn't injured nor female.

The robot stopped a few feet away from the group, and a cloud of steam hissed from holes in its barrel-shaped back.

[i]< Who are you and what is your intention? >[/i]

A man's voice crackled through a speaker on the robot's stomach, like a radio transmission.

Spook, meanwhile, had laid his head back and had gone stiff and quiet in pain.