Darius felt a conflagration of emotion that he didn’t entirely understand rolling through his heart; on the one hand, he wanted to maintain his distance, to find out precisely what the repercussions of breaking the spell of siphoning he’d cast on Paige would be – they were random, could last any amount of time, and were hard or impossible to predict. On the other hand, he was drawn to her vulnerability, her shape, her size, the foreign nature that she exuded – so similar to his own.<br/><br/>When she asked for his word, he tilted his head to the side, sending a river of raven black-blue hair across one broad shoulder as he studied her upturned face. So vulnerable – easy to get lost in her eyes. He frowned and tried to disentangle his arms, the feel of her was driving him insane with distracting thoughts. Helping her sit up on her own, he quickly backed away and turned from her, putting the wall of his back between the two of them.<br/><br/>Overhead, the clouds swirled through the sky, thick with the promise of rain that would not come. In the distance, he saw the elven forest – the untouched edge that would lead off into the greater Elven Nation and to the south the great rolling Plain – so much effected by whatever attack was going on in the village; huge areas of grassland were brown or even grey, as though something had suckled the life out of the land. Whatever had done this…evidently had the power of a Master, or several; or had artifacts that gave it the equivalent advantage. It would be too much for Darius to even think of confronting on his own. He couldn’t afford the luxury of giving Paige’s innocence the time it needed to adapt. They needed to leave this place.<br/><br/>But there was no easy way home and time was a delicate thing. The scent of decay rose from the village and waved toward their little distant hill, making him nearly gag. It smelled…rancid.<br/><br/>He spoke, voice low but carrying despite his distance from her. “<strong>Tell me what you need me to know. If you know some secret that will help us overcome this enemy, we must do it. It will be…unsafe…for us to stay and remain weak. I doubt any enemy capable of this will stand still while we investigate.”<br/></strong><br/>