“Alright,” Nelanna called back, preparing another fire spell as the creature came at her again. The flames of her spell danced as they threatened the creature not to come any closer. But the beast was smart, and this Nelanna soon learned. It had avoided the line of fire and seemed to try coming at her at a different angle. But she quickly turned and blocked its attack with another burst of flames. But perhaps her spell was too good of a defense, and kept it too far from her as it then turned its attention on LeSilve. 

She cursed beneath her breath, not even caring if it was ladylike or not. Thinking fast, she prepared her dagger. Though it wasn’t a throwing knife, she threw it anyway with surprising accuracy. The knife pierced its side, and though it had been her intention to get its attention back on her, she felt her heart sink when it worked. It turned back on her, and too quickly for her to use a fire spell, it attacked her and pinned her to the ground. “Any time now!’ She shouted with growing fear.

It focus lingered on the elf, which suited his purposes just fine. Closer, closer, closer still he got until he was near enough to make a grab for the tail - right up until it changed course and suddenly veered, perhaps sensing his proximity. Her flames kept it at bay, but they did their job just a mite too well. The next instant, Frey found himself face to face - a little too literally for his liking - with the great beast. But that, too, suited him well enough in the grand scheme of things.

Staring it right in the eyes, Frey held its gaze and blew toward it a seemingly innocent breath of air. It blinked its surprise, but before it could register that anything untoward had taken place, Nelanna's dagger buried itself in the creature's side. With a yowl, it turned on its aggressor. Perfect.

"Got it, got it!" He shouted in reply mid-action, his hand - still holding the vine from before - having closed around its unguarded tail. The vine began at once to grow exponentially, splitting off into forks and all too quickly seizing the creature by its body and limbs and holding it fast. It had struggled, briefly, upon realizing its plight, but soon fell still, into an unnatural slumber.

Nodding in satisfaction now that the danger was past, Frey sidestepped the creature and presented his non-skeletal limb to Nelanna in order to help her up.

"Are you unharmed, Miss Fox?"

    Relief washed over her like a wave when the creature was finally stopped. She took the hand of her companion with a weary smile, and allowed his assistance to pull her up from the ground. “I’m quite alright,” she replied, brushing off any dust and dirt from her skirts. Once she was satisfied, despite there being grass stains which she needed to wash later on, her turquoise eyes slid over to the beast with slight curiosity, and slight caution, as if she was half expecting it to jump back up and attack again. “What spell was that you used? Did you kill it?” 

She looked at LeSilve as she asked this with clear interest. Never before had she seen a spell quite like the one he had used, so naturally, she wondered exactly what it had done. Whether it had slain the beast or simply rendered it unconscious, she did not know. But either way, that spell would prove useful in many battles. Unlike her fire spell, which is mostly only good at keeping enemies at bay. But every once in a while, there is an enemy that does not fear the flames, which makes her spell useless. 

Frey shook his head. "No, didn't kill it. It probably didn't mean any harm - just guarding its territory, I imagine." Not that that would have stopped him, were lethal force proven necessary. "Just paralyzed it a bit, so I suggest we don't waste too much time… Still, look. This is how I did it."

Having relinquished her hand upon helping her up, he held his palm flat, face up, to his mouth and blew away from Nelanna. Tiny violet flecks appeared, flying in a loop before scattering to the ground. "My magic has rules: if something can justifiably be considered affiliated with an element, I can try my hand at it. In this case, spores are affiliated with nature, which is affiliated with earth. Same with the vines used to restrain it. There's a lot of room for creativity, but it does have its limits…" Limits he intended, always, to surpass eventually.

He gave his usual ghost of a smile before looking away. He went first to his mask, stooping over to pick it up. With a light sigh, his regret and hesitation palpable, he cinched it to his belt then turned to the creature laying immobile within the overgrown vines. Carefully, he began to work at retrieving the blue saffron, humming quietly to himself as he did so. For just a moment, he paused his tune, looking up with a wry grin. "Well now. Didn't take as long to find this as I'd imagined - should have you out of the forest lickety split. How's that sound? Ah. I should thank you for your help, by the by - perhaps you were a lucky charm, even."

He returned to his job, quietly humming away.

    “That’s quite a useful spell,” said Nelanna. “Quite useful indeed.” She looked down at her dagger and wiped the creature’s blood from the blade, then made her way to start helping LeSilve remove the blue saffron from the beast’ hide. For a moment she wondered if it hurt the cat-like creature, removing the plants that grew on it. How unfortunate. She almost felt sorry for it, knowing there was nothing it could do to stop them from removing a part of its body. That is, if it was considered part of its body. But she reminded herself that it was an herb. Surely it had healing properties, which would be useful for people whom are in need of healing. This world was kill or be killed, so it was natural she would choose people over beast. Sad, but true.

And as she listened to his words she couldn’t help but roll her eyes towards him was an amused smile. “Really, now. A lucky charm?” She repeated, sarcasm dripping from her words. “I suppose so. But how I see it is you just got lucky by finding the target of the creature you were looking for. I was just the poor, unfortunate soul whom got caught in your little hunt.” She giggled and pulled one of the herbs from the beast, setting it aside with the rest they had picked. “What exactly are these herbs used for?” she question finally slipped from her lips. Not all herbs were used for the healing of those in need of it. Some were used in poisons, and deadly potions. The thought had lingered in the back of her mind, making her feel uneasy knowing she could be helping this man gather herbs for deadly intentions.

"It's come in handy," he said with a shrug and thereafter went about his business, carefully detaching the flowers and laying them atop a cloth he'd lain on the forest floor. He, too, had wondered as to the nature of the relationship between plant and creature. Perhaps it was symbiotic, but there was no way to tell - as far as he could see, it seemed simply that the earthen terrain atop its back was conducive to the growth of plants, and blue saffron seedlings had been the ones lucky enough to land and set down roots. If he had to guess, he'd say there were probably others of the same variety growing on the ground, but hey… he might well be wrong, and he knew it.

No matter. He had what he'd come for, and that was what counted.

His brows lifted with amusement and the corner of his mouth tilted in a wry smirk in response to her sarcasm. "I wasn't looking for the creature - that it carried what I was after was as much a surprise to me as it was to you. A happy surprise, mind. But… yeah. Lucky me." Noticing Nelanna move in to help, he smiled appreciatively. And then, suddenly, there it was: the question he'd been hoping to avoid.

He inhaled, pausing in his gathering a moment. Averting his gaze, he carefully picked out an answer: "They are used primarily to bolster one's memory."

And that was the end of that, s'far as he was concerned. "That should be enough of them, now," he said, and upon their last flowers touching down atop the cloth, he carefully wrapped and folded it over until he had a relatively safe package to carry. Stowing it away, he shouldered his backpack and got to his feet. "Well. We've a forest to exit and a game to resume then, don't we? I don't recall whose turn it was, mind you…" And still, fingers subconsciously lingering over his mask, he continued to avert his gaze.

    Her eyes lingered on him for a few moments, blinking slowly. He was hunting for an herb that bolsters memory? Why would he want such an herb? Unless, perhaps he had a hard time remembering things. What else it might be, she did not know. Only another thing to add to this man to make him even more mysterious than he already is. She might as well give up on trying to figure him out; it just wasn’t going to happen.

With a light sigh accompanied by a soft smile, Nelanna stood and dusted off her skirts. “Yes, I do suppose you’re right. I can’t wait to get out of this place. And a continuation of our little game should help bring my mind at ease,” she replied. Then, she looked up at him and placed a hand on her hip. “If memory serves me right, it was your turn to ask a question before that creature so rudely interrupted.”

He was half tempted to offer up more of an explanation - to simply unload the truth of the matter. He might have shared how, on one fateful day, he had come to realize the life he'd known was completely false, start to finish. How everything had, from then on, unraveled and continued to this very moment, to press upon his weary shoulders a tremendous weight. Instead, he kept mum and held tight to his secrets. Perhaps reaching out for help could have brought his quest to an end sooner but, with no idea who he could truly trust…

Best he continue to rely first and foremost on himself.

At the mention of the creature 'rudely interrupting,' Frey couldn't help a mirthful chuckle. For better or worse, everything had, thanks to that particular interruption, worked out. All's was left to do now was for him to properly lead them out, as he'd said he could. Steeling himself, he set an efficient pace - not too leisurely, but not too frantic, either.

"Hm, my turn, is it… Well! In that case, I must say, you handled yourself well back there. From one mage to another, may I ask what brought you to delve into magic in the first place?"

    Obligingly, Nelanna followed Mr. Mystery closely, her steps soon matching his as she came to his side, her hands clamped together behind her back in a comfortable way. She kept wondering why it was she felt so comfortable around the man when she knew nothing about him, and knew not whether he could be trusted or not. He would tell her nothing about himself, and it wasn’t until his mask was accidentally removed that he finally decided to show his own face, which most people would find is a bad sign. People don’t hide their faces for good reasons. And, there were even moments where she questioned whether he truly was going to help or out of the forest, or if he was leading her somewhere else. But every time that came to mind the thought quickly dissolved and was abandoned.

For some reason, she just couldn’t sense any ill willed vibe from him. Despite how dangerous and untrustworthy he seemed to the eye, her intuition told her he was safe. She had been following her intuition for many years, and not once had it ever failed her. She could trust her own judgment.

At his question, she smiled and glanced up with a thoughtful hum. It was quite an interesting question to ask, but a good one. One can learn a lot about someone just by knowing the reason they use magic. “Traveling so far and for so long, you really get to see what the world is like and what other people go through,” she began, her smile remaining just as soft, but her eyes becoming a little more woeful. “I’ve seen so many suffer. From war, famine, illness, injustice…A girl like me can only take so much of that before deciding to do something about it. Since I hold no powerful position, I began to learn healing spells so that I may help those I come across. As for my fire magic, that’s only for defense; a last resort when it’s absolutely necessary. But as I’ve said before, I’m not near as talented with it as I am with healing magic. It’s not what I’ve been practicing all these years.”

Her eyes lit up and she turned her head to look at him. “What about you?”

Stealing a surreptitious glance her way as she mulled over the question, his ever favoured ghost of a smile lingered. Coming across someone of her years who had not yet given herself to becoming jaded and dour about the state of the world seemed quite the feat, and Frey thought himself lucky for it. She still had her empathy, it seemed, and some part of him hoped she would hold onto that most of all. She was, at the least on the surface, very much the antithesis of the people he had only narrowly avoided growing up alongside.

How different might he have been, then? Would he have openly scoffed at that which she so generously shared with him?

"Admirable," he offered, quiet, pensive. Though he stewed in his own thoughts, he was not so impolite as to have ignored her by any means, especially not when he was the one who had posed the question. "My reason was hardly so noble, I fear. Where I come from…" And here he hesitated a moment, just long enough to be perceptible, before continuing: "The only people who can freely choose between any and all magical elements are those with these eyes." He looked over to give a better look as to what he meant: green eyes met her gaze, from the iris to the sclera where usually there would have been white. Perhaps having decided he'd held her gaze a moment too long, he awkwardly averted his eyes and, flushing slightly, stalked a few paces ahead for a moment.

"We're called the 'Green Eyed' or, the 'Magic Touched,' and so… Suppose, in a way, I was born into it. Never personally heard of any individual with the Touch who simply up and spurned the gift - or curse, if you will - and decided to go about having a normal life but, well, I suppose if there were I'd love to meet them and ask exactly how they did it, hah!" As he spoke, he gestured, and on that last note his arms had flung skyward in an expression of exasperation.

Glancing back, he huffed, sighed, and shook his head. Then, he smirked, and it was almost a wicked glint that settled in his eyes. "My turn, then. Let's see… Well, you mentioned earlier you'd like to settle down, find yourself a husband et all - I suppose after all this time you must have some idea… What manner of man are you looking for?" And then, quickly lest she get the wrong impression, he added: "I travel a fair bit myself, you see, and figured if I stumbled across such an individual, I might send him your way."

Was he teasing? It was hard to say.