Sorana

"Warm." She laughed at his joke. "Frozen pizza is a bit hard." She turned to James, saw him blushing. "I haven't. Do you want to eat pizza with us? We could watch a movie afterwards." "Same goes for you Leona and Luther. If you want to, that is." @Wyndlerunner

She nodded and slowly walked over to the kitchen, careful to leave one hand at the wall. Leona and Luther, the Skybreaker were there and she waved at them, before sitting down on a stool. Her legs were shaking again. Storms, this was awful. Hopefully Ben didn't think of her as weak.

Kill them. Lizanne thought and added some more wood to the fire. It was strange that Renata cared that much. Lisa as well. Strange, but a good kind of strange.

Shortly before 5 am Damaya arrived at the meeting place. She had slept well, but had been awake for a while now, used to get up with the sun. It was strange to live after a clock again, after so many months of living in accordance with the sun and nature. Curiously she looked around, waited for someone else to arrive. @Nohadon

She slowly got to her feet, left a hand on his shoulder to steady herself. "Long enough to get into the kitchen."

Zokora sits down, looking around the office, noting how his smile was more a mask than real.

"And the fire needs to be hot enough to heat the metal up." Lizanne added. =========== @Blessing of Potency

Interested Lizanne observed him, then fetched something they could use as a kind of cup and handed it to him. "For the water." With a groan she sat back down and massaged her leg, the cramping muscles. "Did you see some coal, or a heart when we were still in the building? I need this fire to get as hot as we can manage. Some metal is lying around, but it's useless if it doesn't end up hot."

Lena was quiet for a while, looked around. She remembered how the place had looked after their heist over a year ago. When she'd agreed to come along she hadn't expected this ruin. Her first instinct was to turn around, leave him alone, search for Lita and be done with all of this, then she sighed. "What is your goal?" She asked him and took a look around the room. The good thing was, if the people here liked him, nobody would suspect her, when she used some of them. Her eyes moved back to Alask, observed him as he stood admist the ruins of his life a year before.

"Bring it upstairs. I'm on my way to light a fire. And I can always use another hand." Lizanne told him and then continued to climb the stairs. She started to build a small fire place, moved some rocks, to create a sheltered spot for the fire. Collecting small pieces of wood and some filling from a former stool she sat down and made a small fire.

A man entered the roof top, walked straight to the apron and removed it. Amara sighed, then she had an idea. It might work, and it was better than sit here and wait like a Damsel in distress. She checked on the boy again, the hurried over to the man, took her apron back. Cloth was expensive. "Can you deliver a message to your master for me?" She asked him.

Shana closed her eyes for a moment. "You're right." She gently touched his fingers. "I think I am hungry now..."

Lizanne nodded in reply to Renata's words. "I will go upstairs, start the fire. Hopefully Wilhelm and Arun will come back soon." She looked at Hellbent. "We've got two injured persons. They can't walk. We won't be able to cover any distance tonight. It's better to stay here, where we only have to defend one entrance." Slowly she started to limp up the stairs. @Ark1002 @ZincAboutIt

The guard looked him up and down. "Follow me." He turned around, walked over to a door at the side of the wall, but still outside of the city, another taking up his place at the gate. ======== @Ark1002

Althea whirled around, when she saw Verk rush towards her. He was fast, swinging his axes. Instinct had her teleport out of his way and he stumbled a step before he charged her again. She was wrong here, she should have let them go alone. Tagging along when you knew you were - An axe hit her thigh, left a large gap in her flesh behind, when Verk pulled it back. The pain cleared her mind for a moment and she was able to fight the emotions, shove them aside, reach for her usual mask of calm. With a flick of her hand she had rendered one of his axes useless, but the other one really liked to be an axe and wanted to discuss why it should be something else. Althea groped for arguments, the grief and sorrow clouding her thoughts. Max, the only time she - her eyes found Max and he was smiling, enjoyed the challenge. He was alright. Relieve pushed against the grief and - A hand closed around her throat, slammed her back into a wall. She gagged, tried to breathe and then elsecalled out of his grip again. Concentrate, think. Verk bellowed and rushed her again and she finally had the sense to summon Brashen. Not that her skills with the halberd had improved since yesterday. But a shardweapon looked dangerous and usually people prefered to keep their distance. Verk didn't. He came up close slashed at her with his axe again. She barely evaded the blow and tried to focus, to look past the emotions, to concentrate, focus. It was so easy to soulcast his body, she'd done it before, but she needed an argument, a discussion, she needed to bribe and to convince. Walking backwards she evaded another blow, then her back hit the wall. But I want you to! She screamed at the axe and it crumbled beneath her will, earth dropping to the ground. Verk didn't hesitate a moment, instead he reached for her again, punched her straight in the face. Althea felt something break, her world blackening for a moment, then the stormlight rushed to her face as well, repaired the damage. Brashen pulled at her ear and only then did she realize, that she had lost her weapon sometime. She tried to breathe, couldn't and relied on the stormlight to keep her alive. That was fine. If there was one thing she could rely on it was her surges, Brashen, Max, but this wasn't about him. She needed to focus, to look through the grief, the - she elsecalled out of his grip, stumbled when she had to stand on her own. Inhaling more stormlight to ensure her body would heal she looked at Verk. She was afraid of him, it was as simple as that. She was afraid of Solace in her mind and the leader that spoke to her gave her the creeps. Shivvering, she brushed a strand of hair out of her face, her eyes focused on Verk. Fear, panic. We are all broken messes. She had been so focused on pushing her fear, her worry away, that she had forgotten something else. I like the person I have become. Her own words. And she did, she liked to laugh with Max to let him close, to be open and honest with him. She liked to care. But the moment it got difficult, the moment it was about fear, about pain she pushed it aside, memories of Septhis enveloping her, killing her from the inside. The rioter, this grief wasn't hers, but at the same time it was. It was her grief when she had learned that Max was dead, it was her devastation, her giving up in Oasis, clawing at her face to escape. She squirmed at the memories, felt her hands start shaking, her breathing picking up. Trauma, the official term, but it couldn't cover what she felt. That was it feeling. Accepting the feelings. Learn from them. A fist hit her stomach and she doubled over, groaned, strong hands gripping her shoulders. Learn from them. She'd let them control her, let her fear of her fear, of her grief consume her until she ended up a crying heap at the sight of a candle. Learn, accept. She placed a hand on his, stared into his face. "I will accept my emotions, but I will not let them rule me.” She had no argument for his body, except that she wanted to live and that meant he had to die. She was afraid of him, afraid of dying, but fear was powerful, as powerful as any argument. @Gancho Libre

============ "Without your help, we would both be dead." She looked at him, realized she hadn't really thanked him yet. He'd been there and she had been so absorbed that she hadn't thanked him. "Ben, I'm sorry, I was so... I forgot to thank you. For being here and helping me and for saving my life."

The man laughed. "I don't think so. The Council is most ofthetime too busy to look after new recruits." "Where did you get that?" He gestured towards the sheet of paper.

A guard extended his hand towards the sheet of paper. "Welcome to Oasis City. I need to take a look at that."

"You patched us up before he returned. There is a chance he doesn't know what happened. But then the backyard still has blood all over the place." She shrugged, then added quietly. "I'm beating myself up over what happened. I don't need Doc to tell me how awful it is. I feel terrible. And Rob offered again, apologized, that he pushed me too far." Her hand touched her stomach where Rob's blade had cut through her flesh, slowly impaled her. But mostly she remembered his scream, this earpiecing scream full of pain.

"A good nights sleep and I'll be as good as new." Shana smiled at him, lifted a hand and brushed a strand of his hair out of his face. "Don't worry Ben. I think he'll be more annoyed by what happened with Rob, than worry about us. He's offering beds to a horde of teenagers. We were prone to fall in love on day." ========== @xinoehp512