A few minutes of walking and he could see the marketplace. His momentary optimism was crushed when he saw others had already beaten him there. Nine, maybe ten guards were looting the market. He ducked down and began inching his way towards the entrance.<br/><br/>"Stay right here. Don't scream, don't move, don't do anything no matter what is about to happen." he said, picking up the pace and leaving the girl behind. He was in cover behind a wall right next to the opening into the large marketplace plaza, where he was outnumbered. He was just about to turn and go into the market when one of the men came out and into the street. Meren grabbed him by the back of the head and smashed his face into the wall, knocking him unconcsious and turning his face into a bloody pulp.<br/><br/>"Fuck, that was close," he whispered to himself, lowering the body to the ground, out of sight from those inside the plaza. In his hand a large ice gem that glowed differently from the others materialized. He closed his eyes and said a prayer, and then tossed the shard over the wall. Only three seconds of questioning remarks were silenced by a blast of cold air and the sound of shattering glass. Meren turned around the corner, firing an ice shard at the first guard he saw standing and alive, and it impacted with his iron armor and shattered. He and one other guard seemed to be the only ones left standing, possibly because they wore armor. Meren panicked and realized he had only one choice: He needed to shut them up quickly, and he knew only one spell that could do that...<br/><br/>"Muse of Winter, let this work" was the last thing anyone nearby heard him say before everything in a ten meter around radius was flash frozen.<br/><br/>Meren fell to his knees, eyes and nose bleeding from using a life threatening amount of magical energy. Maybe one day he would be able to freeze things on command like his father and grandfather before him. However, he would not be fighting for quite some time.