When Kestle returned the fire had burned low enough that the only real source of light was Siale's wand. It lay forgotten against the wall where she had left it when they brought Keinen back. As for Siale herself, she was no longer weeping and no longer using the elementalist as a pillow and handkerchief, but was sitting beside him and keeping her hands warm over what remained of the fire. Keinen, sitting much as he was when the ranger had left, looked up as Kestle toed the door closed behind him. To the ranger's relief and delight much of the dull bitterness was gone from his friend's gaze. Something they'd said that night had gone far to snap him out of his funk.

With something approaching a thoughtful smile on his face, Kestle gently let fall his armload of dead branches and quickly restored the bed of coals to a merry blaze. Still, though, his thoughts nagged him. He wanted to know why. Why had Keinen been willing to risk his life so carelessly over a staff? Kestle had been brushed off once when he'd asked, and out of respect for the man's privacy had not asked again. This time he would not be put off. If he was going to travel with the man, he wanted to know why the elementalist thought it reasonable to throw his own life to the winds like that.

Turning to face the geomancer Kestle could see in the man's eyes resentment at the question he evidently suspected was coming. Still Kestle asked as levelly as he could. "Why? What can be so special about that staff that it is worth this?" He gestured to Keinen's arm and was somewhat satisfied to see him wince. "How can it be worth your life?"

"Shouldn't ask what isn't your business." Keinen's voice was cold as he said it, and Kestle had expected no less.

"It is my business, so long as I call you friend." Kestle put the barest hint of emphasis on the last word, not entirely by design. It had been long indeed since he had felt the word ring so true. Long indeed since he had cared so much about anyone other than himself or Kusrune. But now there was Keinen, and Siale. They were his friends, and he wasn't simply being nosy, he wanted to help. But to help, first he needed to understand. And to understand he had to know.

Kestle could see the elementalist's stubborn streak failing, and he tried not to look smug lest he lose what little ground he had gained. Then just when it seemed that the silence had stretched too long and Keinen would never answer, Siale came to his aid.

"Keinen, please." Her voice was barely a whisper, but it seemed to echo in the tiny room. And as soon as she spoke his name, Kestle could see the fury in the geomancer's eyes crumble. The stubbornness, however, remained.

"I told you before. It's a gift from a friend and so is precious to me." And still he was going to try and keep as much to himself as he could. Kestle wasn't buying it. It was the truth surely, but hardly all of it.

"And as I told you before, I also have a gift from a friend that I keep, but I wouldn't risk my life to fix it when it broke."

"Well that's the difference between you and me I guess."

"Balthazar blast you both!" Siale startled them both with the force of her shout. "Kestle, quit acting like you're the example of how everyone ought to be! Ask him sincerely and nicely and maybe he'll answer." Kestle looked away, knowing she was right, and knowing too that he was too long out of practice with dealing with people. He caught sight of an incredibly smug look on Keinen's face and felt no little bit better when it dissappeared as Siale rounded on him and continued her tirade. "And you! We're not trying to pry just for our own satisfaction! We want to help you, and don't want to see you hurt! But if you keep it all to yourself you'll end up driving us away, surely as it's still cold as Grenth's fingers outside!" When she spoke again Kestle could barely hear her over the crackle of the fire. "Keinen, if this is why you've traveled alone before we joined, then alone you will always be so long as you hold it all in. As Kestle said, we're your friends, let us help."

"Alright." Keinen heaved a sigh. "But it's not a quick story."

"Well it's good that I got firewood first then."

"Kestle! You aren't helping." It was amazing really how so small a woman could cow them both so easily.

"Sorry."

After that the crackle of the fire was the only sound in the small hut for a few moments. Keinen was staring intensely into the flames, as if trying to decide how to begin. Kestle simply waited. He had the patience of the trees when he needed it, and with Keinen he figured he needed it.

"As I said before, a friend gave it to me. I lived near Surmia, he lived in Ascalon City, but our families were friends and we practically grew up together." Keien's eyes didn't stray from the fire as he spoke. "We entered the academy together, studied and worked together even though he was learning to be a mesmer. And then, the day we graduated, we watched the fire rain down from the sky together."

The elemtentalist's voice was flat and hard and the flickering of the fire reflected darkly in his grey eyes, giving them an orange cast. Silence fell heavily on the three of them when he stopped speaking. They had all been there in Ascalon when it had happened. They all remembered. For Kestle, beyond the upleasant memories, Keinen's story was begining to draw things into place in his mind. The staff wasn't just a gift from any friend, but a childhood friend that had also been through the Searing. A friend who was no longer by the geomancer's side.

"What was his name?" The ranger asked softly, hoping he wasn't treading on dangerous ground.

"Savann." Keinen replied quietly, still without lifting his eyes from the fire. Kestle was actually a little surprised he'd gotten an answer so quickly and easily. He also wondered that Keinen hadn't corrected his use of past tense. Did that mean the ranger was right in thinking Savann hadn't made it through the Searing? Still, when the elementalist spoke again his voice was hard and sharp again. "You're both from Ascalon so I shouldn't have to explain the next part."

"No." Siale too spoke flatly. "We lost a lot of good people then, a lot of friends gone."

"Savann didn't die in the Searing."

"What?"

"I know you're thinking that's why, but you're off. He came through it mostly unhurt, same as me and most of the rest of the academy." Keinen seemed almost morbidly amused by their assumption. Kestle had to supress a shudder. "That was the Charr's biggest mistake. They killed a lot of people, but they didn't aim wisely or well. They destroyed the families and friends of those like us who were in training to join the vanguard against them, but they left us alive. Alive and hating them, alive and burning for revenge."

"Well, you did say it wasn't a quick story, what happened then?" Kestle spoke slowly, he didn't much like the intensity in Keinen's eyes when he talked about revenge.

"We went home." The intensity was muted some, but not gone. "We took one look around us, and then without a word we split and went each to our homes. It was perhaps a bad idea to split up, but neither of us wanted to delay the other by going together."

And now they were coming to it, Kestle thought to himself. He had seen Surmia, or the ruins of it, when he'd helped Prince Rurik free captives who had been taken there by the Charr. The city lay north of the wall and bore the brunt of the Charr's initial attack. There was little chance that anything had survived that.

"Surmia was gone and a smoking ruin was in it's place. The entire city was reduced to a field of ash and corpses. I knew as soon as I saw the first buildings there was no way my family had survived. I should have turned back and gone to find Savann then, but I didn't. I eventually found them, my parents, though I could barely tell them apart they were so mutilated. And as if that wasn't enough I found my baby sister dead in what had been a doorway, her head crushed like an egg." Keinen choked on the last word and closed his eyes, visibly steeling himself against rising memory and emotion.

"Keinen--" Whether Siale was going to voice her sympathies or tell him he could stop the gruesome tale, the elementalist didn't let her finish.

"You asked, so you're going to hear it all." Keinen's voice was low and dull. To Kestle he just sounded numb, as if that was the only way he could deal with the pain of remembering. After a moment's pause he opened his eyes and continued his story, still staring straight into the fire. "I burned it all. The house, their bodies, everything that was left. I couldn't bear to bury them in that rubble and ash, so I gave them the whole building as their funeral pyre. That's when I realized there were still Charr in Surmia. Sacking, killing or capturing anyone they found, and drawn to my fire as well as the prospect of another human to kill I'm sure. I can't remember how many there were, but I can still hear their cries of pain as they burnt. They destroyed my life with fire, it seemed only fitting that I destroy theirs the same way.

"I found out later that the Charr I killed then were only a small part of the warband sacking the city. Apparently the rest of the beasts found Cynn trapped in the ruins of her house. According to Mhenlo, what she did to them made my killing of those few almost seem merciful. But I never told them what I did after. Of them all only Aidan knows, and only because he saw it."

Kestle wanted badly to interrupt, wanted ask what it was Keinen did in his rage, even as he was afraid to know. He wanted to ask why Aidan alone would know the story, but mostly he just wanted to know why Keinen was telling them, people he'd known for less than a month, when he hadn't ever told Mhenlo and the rest who had known the elementalist since they were teachers in the academy. Perhaps, a part of him answered, it's because we didn't know him before.

If Keinen noticed Kestle's inner debate he didn't show it. Still in the same dead voice he continued on. "When I left Surmia I followed the warband trail back to their camp. I found their elders and priests, their wives and their children. And I killed them all. I burnt every trace of their camp to the ground."

Stunned silence reigned for a few heartbeats. "Sweet Melandru!" Kestle finally managed. "By yourself?" He knew Keinen was a powerful mage, but fresh out of the academy he had taken on an entire warcamp and survived?

"Yes." Keinen turned to look at the two of them, though he still averted his eyes. Their grey depths were fever bright and heavy with the weight of his telling. "Though they nearly killed me as I did. And I did that I know not how many times. I slept only when I could walk no farther without rest, ate and drank only when my body said I must or die. My every thought was focused on finding their camps and razing them to the ground. I burnt their homes, slaughtered their families, killed the old, young and infirm, every Charr I could find in those camps. But I did not make the same mistake they did. After I burned everything I could, I'd wait for the raiding warband to return so that they could see how I'd detroyed their homes before I killed them too."

Kestle knew he was gaping, knew his jaw had dropped, but he couldn't help it. That the elementalist had gone half mad with a need for revenge he had expected. That said elemtentalist had destroyed whole camps and warbands on his own and lived, he had not. Just trying to picture the raging fire magic made the few awesome spells he had recently seen come out of Keinen seem paltry and weak. Hadn't he said earth was the element he was strongest with? How had a geomancer newly graduated from the academy been able to decimate Charr war camps with fire magic?

"H-how?"

Keinen slid his gaze up to meet Kestle's, and the ranger was startled to see a small measure of the man's dry humor in their intensity. "Rage gave my spells a strength I've not felt before or since. And I hardly came through it unscathed. Many times I was fortunate to be able to drag myself to the nearest outpost in hopes of finding a monk. The last time I think I really was dying. I don't remember much, but I do recall looking at the arrow sticking out of my chest and thinking it odd that it felt cold, when the Charr always use flaming arrows. That was when Savaan and Aidan found me, healed the worst of my wounds with that healing unguent you rangers like to carry, and brought me back south of the wall."

"It was Aidan that tought us at the academy how to make it." Kestle mused softly.

"It was he and Mhenlo who rescued Cynn from the ruins of Surmia after she incinerated the Charr warband. So when they returned to Ascalon City Savaan asked if they had seen me there. They hadn't, but that was when the first reports of destroyed warcamps started coming in from the vanguard's scouts. From Aidan and Mhenlo's description of Surmia, Savaan figured it was me causing the carnage, and set out to find me and stop me in my madness. Aidan offered to help, though I was confused as to why until he told me later about his father and his own actions in the name of revenge." Keinen let out a bitter laugh. "As soon as I was healed I tried to go back and find another warcamp to burn. The combined might of Savaan's fist in my face and Aidan telling me exactly what you two just did stopped me. I guess getting lectured by rangers is also part of my 'chosen destiny.'"

"So what does any of this have to do with your staff?" After that Kestle didn't feel much inclination to not speak bluntly. Siale shot him a look, but remained silent.

"Savaan gave it to me as soon as I promised not to go Charr hunting on my own anymore. It had been his mother's, carried by her family through the long years of the guild wars. His family had met a similar end as mine, but he had been able to salvage the staff out of the wreckage." Keinen still kept his eyes on the fire. "It was he and Aidan who had turned me from the mindless maddness, and the staff was always sort of a token of that promise. Without it I feel like I could fall into that again. Even now, using any of the higher level of fire magic spells turns my stomach."

"Is that why you turned to earth?" Siale asked gently and the sound of her voice drew Keinen's eyes to her.

"For all that I give no credence to the 'chosen hero' nonsense when I first began using earth magic I felt for absolute certain that it was what I was meant to do. It's the closest thing to belonging or 'home' that I will ever have now. I do not think that is simply because of bad experiences with fire."

"So what happened to Savaan?" Kestle asked a bit more softly than his last question.

"The Charr killed him," Keinen turned his eyes back to the low burning fire. "just outside of Nolani. So when the prince determined to leave Ascalon I followed, because there was nothing there I cared about protecting anymore."

And with that the elementalist wrapped his arms about himself and slouched against the wall, apparently trying to find a comfortable position for sleep. Siale tucked her glowing wand beneath a corner of her pack to hide it's light then pulled her cloak close about her shoulders. She too found a place to lean against the wall and soon her eyes were closed as well. Kestle sat for a few moments and stared contemplatively into the fire. He often felt as if he had no home either, but he did, he just didn't belong there. If his family had been slaughtered and burned in the searing, would he have acted any differently? Perhaps, revenge was not in his character. But then Aidan, who had been his teacher and friend in the academy did not seem the type either, but Kestle had heard from the older ranger the tale of his father and the things he had done to the Charr in retaliation. What had he said? Something about the line between light and dark, the difference between vengeance and obsession, and that once a man has crossed that line and seen it for what it is, he will never cross it again. Kestle gently set another branch on the fire and watched it burn until he too could not keep his eyes open.