[b]Cassio[/b]
[i]Sacred Temple Ignis[/i] / [@BlazeGamma][@AluminumDude]
[hr]
Cassio stared into empty space, lost in thoughts and completely, utterly alone.

(This was, of course, disregarding the two others who had been transported to the temple with him, but they were [i]basically[/i] dead, laying around in some ancient ruin like corpses, so it was okay.) 

They say that the first stage of grief is denial. Cassio had seen it in the bearing of amputee soldiers, consigned to a life of hopeless peasantry. He’d seen it in the eyes of widows, their lovers too frail to save. And now, for the first time, he understood it cerebrally, but not yet literally. That ill-tempered old hag couldn’t have gone down so easily. Cassio wouldn’t allow such a thing; [i]he[/i] was the one who was supposed to be the end of her, not some asshole with a mask, questionable facial hair, and a retinue of fools and his kinsmen. This had truly been a terrible day, to say the least, and now he was in this strange land with nobody to accompany him. 

(One of the bodies in his peripheral cried out and began to move on his own in very un-corpse-like fashion, but that was besides the point.)

Indeed, a wholly unpleasant feeling this was, to be alone. Not even his horse was here to accompany him on this perilous journey! The poor thing was probably having a terrible time at the hands of some uncivilized insurgent, manning her reigns with such brutish incompetence. Perhaps it would die. Perhaps [i]he[/i] would die, and some measure of karmic balance return to this lonely world.

(He registered that one move over to the other, shaking her awake, but Cassio was content to pretend that didn’t happen. They may have not been dead, but philosophically speaking, were they not all simply walking dead?)

Unfortunately, in the midst of wallowing in self-pity, a shadow crossed him. Not the spectre of death, but that fiery haired gent, who was trying to [i]touch[/i] him. 

“Nonono. By the gods, that’s all wrong; clean yourself before you handle a body,” Cassio raised a finger, conveying his sobriety and stopping Aaron from shaking him awake, “If I were injured I may have caught some ancient disease from the stones of this redundant and ostentatiously named temple.” 

The horseless troubadour got to his feet and dusted himself off. Then he picked up the twin staves laying at his side: Heal and Freeze.

“Now that we’ve established equal lucidity and proper first-aid conduct, let us find this artifact that our adulterous king was so kind to send us off for,” he tapped one of his staves against the ground, “Then we can get to the fun stuff: murdering, torturing, or otherwise inflicting grievous bodily harm on some insurgents. My staves want blood! ...But not in the usual fashion."