Hiding a laugh behind her hand, Amal’s eyes lit up as she overheard the banter between Ethan and Chiron over friends and fiends.  She didn’t have the heart to tell him a flan wasn’t usually the type of fiend left to a warrior; they were highly sensitive to magic and, maybe, a bit better suited for someone like her.  If her intuition was anything to go on, however, the warrior wasn’t going to have any problem dispensing of the fiend without her stepping in.<br/><br/>As the lightning within his blade crackled against the fiend’s watery composition, Amal took a shaky breath to stave the way it sent chills rushing up to her spine.  It was powerful magic, indeed; she hadn’t been prepared for his first attempt to be so… successful.  Warriors had been trying for decades in Spira to imbue weapons with elemental magic.  She’d read a few books on the subject in her younger years but there was something special, it seemed, Chiron had brought to the process the rest of Spira had overlooked.  But whatever that was, Amal couldn’t be sure.<br/><br/>Her green eyes followed the trail of pyerflies towards the sky, stopping only briefly as the warrior reached out to them to let the twinkling light caress his skin.  She contemplated the feeling, so foreign and unnerving, like water that wasn’t wet or air that wasn’t translucent.  They seemed to defy all sense of what was and wasn’t within the land of Spira; pyerflies were a miserable sort of beautiful it was impossible not to admire.<br/><br/>His question hadn’t surprised her, she supposed, but she could feel a tug at her heart as her footsteps fell into sync with his.  They were only a few steps behind the priest and Amal was conscious she’d need to be careful of her words.  If Agustin was any measure for what a follower of Yevon might think about a commoner like her misquoting the scriptures, well, the mage was sure she didn’t want to be wrong.<br/><br/>“They’re not damned souls, Chiron,” she said after a moment.  Her eyes had fallen to her feet and the strange mix of soil and sand and stone comprising the ground of Besaid.  She pondered over how to express the right balance between the reality of being displaced from the Farplane and the corruption of sorrow these souls could be made to suffer if left to try and find that path alone.  They weren’t evil, not inherently at least.  Shaking her head, the mage decided to offer, “They’re simply lost.  It takes a priest of Yevon to light their way home to the Farplane; a proper sending.”<br/><br/>If she’d made any sense to him at all, Amal would never know.  Ethan had drawn her attention and then rushed towards the village at a speed she found almost inhuman.  But considering what she knew about his past as a guardian of the highroad, she supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised anymore.  He wasn’t… just a priest.<br/><br/>Following the sharp outline of his shoulders with her eyes, she lost his figure behind a group of women clutching at children and running in the direction their group had just come from.  When she was able to see him again, he was lunging through the air towards a hideous creature near the center of the village.<br/><br/>She ran without thinking of the consequences, ignoring the sound his spear made glancing off of the fiend’s scales.  Silently dodging between the occasional villagers fleeing for their lives, the mage hurried forward to where Ethan had regained his footing and seemed to be sizing up the monster.  It was more than double his height, even standing on all fours as it was.  But it seemed not to have noticed her as she skidded to a sudden halt at the beast’s back, entirely on the opposite side of the clearing from Ethan.<br/><br/>The fiend had the priest cornered and seemed to be closing in.<br/><br/>Feeling the slightest nudge against her shoulder from her Moogle when it hovered into her, the mage caught her companion before it could fall to the ground, wondering, ‘Now what?’<br/><br/>If Ethan’s spear had glanced off of the beast’s thick scales, she wondered if maybe it was vulnerable to magic.  Before she could test her theory, however, seven of the scales flew off of the fiend’s back and opened their shells to reveal wings.  The new creatures fluttered their wings menacingly at the priest, and Amal felt her eyes widen in horror.  Just what, exactly, was this creature?  Was each scale one of these beasts?<br/><br/>Clutching her hand to a fist over her heart, she could only think to cut a path through these smaller fiends so Ethan could get himself to more open ground.  Eventually, Chiron would be arriving, and the three of them could, together, determine what should be done next.  Concentrating her mana into her fist, she summoned a lightning spell and directed it towards three of the small fiends on the outside edge of where the fiends seemed to have the priest momentarily pinned in.<br/><br/>In her haste, she’d not considered if it would be a single bolt to land between the fiends or three individual strikes for each of them.  In the end, it had been a single, powerful bolt of lightning and the fiends had been weak enough it hadn’t required anything more to dispense of them.  Amal watched triumphantly as all three of the small creatures evaporated into a whirl of pyerflies towards the darkening sky.<br/><br/>Before she could celebrate her achievement, however, the largest fiend roared and turned its attention to her.  Having a complete view, the mage could see the haunting black eyes and a tiny mouth overflowing with toxin.  Her skin was crawling as she considered it.  Frowning, Amal felt her stomach drop to her feet as she tried to decide whether to turn and run back to Chiron-who was hopefully very, very close -or stand her ground.  She curled her fingers into a fist, letting mana flow into the center of her hand, as she watched warily for whatever it was the creature would do next.