The Search For Mana

[Srgntcuddles]

Dante didn't expect to have a hatchling thrown at him like a rock. He barely avoided the hit by freezing up actually, he was shocked enough to get caught off guard resulting in him to trip over himself. Dante counted his blessings as Chrono soared over him. He got back up to see the chameleon going at Vosur and charged at him again. He saw that Vosur's venomous cards had rendered him useless, but the sword kept him going still. He figured trying to hit pressure points would prove useless, anything short of taking the chameleon's arm off would prove useless if Dante were going to not kill him. With that in mind, Dante went for his arm in attempts to break it.

[Shinzuu Katame: Her Tolfy]

The cross smashed the chameleon's fingers, but it didn't stop his arm from swinging. Since the cursed weapon stuck to its user, it was pointless, but it did stop the attack on Vosur. With his other hand, the chameleon punched Dante hard enough to rattle his brains, but instead of proceeding with another attack, he slowly backed up. Lazaryos ran an open palm down into the sand and a lightning net rose up and trapped the chameleon in. "You think this will hold ME?!" Lazaryos growled, "If it'll release your soul from that damned thing. You still have a conscience, I can tell." "You don't know shit! What? You think you're better just because you're free of yours? You and I are alike. You WILL be begging for that power again. You'll see. The power's what you crave. You need it. We all do." The field warped and covered the sword, absorbing the Majicka. The sword then struck the ground and let out a large flash of light, blinding everyone. When Lazaryos' vision returned, the chameleon was gone.

[Vee Katame: His Wolfy]

When the chameleon had grabbed a hold of Ember's neck, she hadn't expected it. She had grabbed his hand with both of her's and tried to pry his hand off her throat while simultaneously swinging her legs to attempt to kick him in the stomach. Her attempts didn't work though and when the chameleon released his grip from being hit in the wrist with one of Vosur's cards, she landed on the ground her knees. She immediately went onto her hands as well and started coughing and gasping for air. Her vision had been blurry when she looked over to see Lazaryos on top of the chameleon, strangling him. She had looked back down at the ground as she continued to try to get her breath back and her vision to straighten out. By the time she looked up again, the fight was already over and the chameleon was gone. Flopping down onto her side, she then rolled onto her back, sprawled out on the ground. Her eyes started to get to their usual brightness again as she laid there. "Thank...you..." She said, meaning it for Vosur. It sounded like it was painful for her to say it, but no one would be sure whether it was because of the lack of oxygen & soreness of her throat from it being squeezed or because she just wasn't used thanking people/being helped.

[Chrono Blackwyng]

Chrono could have imagined more humilating ways of being treated as he soared through the air, but none of them came to mind until he made contact with the sand and blacked out. Thankfully he was only in the sand for a few moments between his launch and the chameleon's vanishing act, and pushed himself out of the sand while snorting out the last bits of sand in his nose. He had issues regaining his footing but was still able to stand while keeping his composure. "I'll be amazed if we kill a single wild dragon at the pace we're going at..." His eyes were half-open and briefly displayed his annoyed, perhaps even jaded, attitude as he stuck his sword in the sand to keep from falling over.

[Srgntcuddles]

Dante had fallen to the ground from the blow, if he could feel pain he'd have known he had one helluva headache. But he just sat there in a bit of a daze as the chameleon vanished. He closed his eyes when the flash happened and fell over backwards rubbing his eyes. "I'm blind!" He opened his eyes after a moment and looked up at the sky. He just remained lying there, he didn't really feel like moving. The only thing he did manage to do was feel around to see if he was bleeding anywhere.

[Vosur Aekira]

Vosur had readied a second set of cards when Dante intervened to stop the chameleon's attack. "Thanks Padre!" he called out, rearing back his hand before Lazaryos caught up the chameleon and then his flash escape. His glasses made the light more tolerable, but he still had to shield his eyes with his hand, moving his hand out of the way to see that their adversary had escaped. "Crap. He's going to be a handful." he muttered as he put away the cards he had out. He looked about, noticing the food he dropped off from the hunt and decided to start making his way towards it. Noticing Ember recovering from the hold, he gave her a nod with a "You're welcome." in a quiet manner before he went on to go get the food.

[Shinzuu Katame: Her Tolfy]

Lazaryos growled at the flash and let out a more rumbling one when he found that the chameleon left, "Bloody twat. He'd choose that damned life of hell instead of trying to help himself." He was very disgruntled, but his legs brought him over to where Ember was. Lazaryos knelt down and wrapped an arm around her, slowly raising her up, giving her time to catch her breath. "Just think of this as preparing for Blue Crimson. We've got only a couple days left."

[Vee Katame: His Wolfy]

Ember was surprised to feel an arm around her lifting her up and even more surprised that the arm belonged to Lazaryos. That surprise might have shown slightly in her eyes but it wasn't extremely apparent. She didn't struggle against him and just let him help her up. "Yeah, but unfortunately," She coughed slightly then continued. "Fire doesn't do so well without oxygen." She chuckled but it was half-hearted because what she was saying was the truth. Fire couldn't survive without oxygen so if someone cut off her oxygen supply, she couldn't use her majick to burn them to get them to let go because she wouldn't be able to make fire.

[Chrono Blackwyng]

Chrono kept his opinion to himself since he really didn't want Lazaryos to start calling him 'hatchling' again. Listen to this mage, 'a couple of days'?! Everytime we get in a fight, we get tired and have to take a rest and our travels are delayed by more and more hours! Not to mention we got thrown off course several times during our escapes from giant insects and almost never-ending bandits! His tattoos threatened to appear again, but he sighed just early enough to keep it from turning him into a draconian light-show.

[Srgntcuddles]

As Dante was lying there he thought on how he could dispatch of the others without killing them. "Maybe I could talk to Vosur...? He has those cards...They seem a viable non-lethal method...And once they're all immobile I could bound them...Though Vosur would still be in my way...Well...I might be able to reason with him...If it comes down to it, a one on one fight will be much more contained...Not to mention easier...I think my biggest concern would be the tiger...I wish I had it in me to just let him die." In his mind he shrugged. "Hmm....How to let Vosur know? I should join him when he goes hunting next...Maybe he lost the food he gathered previously...That would be perfect."

[Vosur Aekira]

Vosur went gathered up the bags of food that he had from the hunt. Noticing that one of the bags was nearly empty, he gave a deep growl as he looked to the others and took notice to the distance they were from the food. "No, they couldn't have gotten to it. They were all too busy with the chameleon. I don't think 'he' had that much time to get this much from me. So we may have ourselves another individual following us." he muttered, closing up the bags and slinging both bags over one shoulder due to the smaller amount of food he had between both bags. He ventured over to Dante and extended his free-hand to try to help Dante up. "C'mon, we've got to get going. We have a lot of catching up to do, thanks to this chameleon."

[Shinzuu Katame: Her Tolfy]

Lazaryos sighed, "Just be lucky that he attacked at night instead of during the day. We'll leave an hour later tomorrow so that we can stay energized for the day's hike, but any later, we leave you behind." Lazaryos shook his head and laid back down and closed his eyes, but didn't sleep as heavily as he's been doing the last couple weeks. All be damned if he would be jumped after being so close to Blue Crimson.

[Vee Katame: His Wolfy]

When Lazaryos laid down, Ember became kind of confused and irritated. "Why help me up if we're just going to stay here anyway?" She thought to herself. Slowly, she knelt down on the ground and took her bag off. She took the sleeping mat off of her bag and rolled it out on the ground. After that was done, she put the bag where her head would be for a pillow and rotated her left arm to test her shoulder. She looked under the bandage and determined that it was okay to take the piece of cloth off, so she did so and shoved the piece of cloth back into the bag. Finally she laid down on her back onto the sleeping mat with her head on her bag and closed her eyes.

[Chrono Blackwyng]

Chrono almost got too far ahead of the group since he was paying more attention to his own thoughts than the world around him, again. "Wait, we're stopping because the one who kept ignoring his own bleeding is too tired?!" He made an effort to walk back and go kick the cleric's leg, but stopped halfway and plopped down with only his two arms stopping his torso from hitting the sand. "Just how the (censored) did we make it this far? Buckets of luck?"

[Srgntcuddles]

Dante accepted Vosur's hand up and got pulled to his feet. "Catching up? For what?" he asked, not getting it. "Is he talking about going hunting with him? Wow, wouldn't that be perfect. I should think about things more often. Hmm...Pretty Collie girls!" He looked around for a moment, as if he were looking for something or someone but stopped not seeing it. "Damn. I guess that was my only shot...And I blew it. Oh well..."