Faris sighed in discontent. Bergan, that was the third man's name, had been rude and patronizing to Venka the second they got into the cart. Faris had held Venka's hand in solidarity, and she squeezed it subconsciously whenever Bergan gave another of his winning quips.

"How's your hand?" Bergan asked innocently.

I hate you, Faris thought, shivering in the cold of the Spines.

"Well?" He asked.

"It's alright, she only dislocated my pinky." Faris replied evenly as he stared down Bergan, imagining dislocating a few things himself. They had decided to stop here for tonight, the two Investigators had been adamant they continue on but Bergan stated the driver needed rest, he'd gotten them there to the town without rest, and looked like he could collapse at any moment, which would be dangerous in these mountain ranges.

"Oh, wow, what did you do to make her mad?"

Faris gave Bergan a look that sent the older man into a fit of laughter. Faris could only sigh in exasperation. For a man his age, Bergan acted quit juvenile. He had a thick brow and straight nose, and his jaw was lined with a salt and pepper style of stubble, his hair as well showed a bit of his age, showing greying on the sides just above his ears.

"You didn't ask me to keep watch with you just to exchange pleasantries, right?" Faris asked, turning his attention back to the road.

"What? Are you saying you don't like me?" Bergan replied with mock hurt in his voice.

Faris resisted rolling his eyes as he replied. "As far as first impressions go, on a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give you a 3. And don't treat me so naively, I'm aware that I'm not going to have a fun time at your magic school."

Bergan scratched his head, "That'd be true, slytha"

Crap Faris thought as he backed away from Bergan and pulled out a dagger.

"Stay back" He said with ferocity, holding the dagger tightly.

"Hmmm, not bad form, you know how to use a dagger at least." Bergan replied, looking on casually. "Though I'm a bit surprised, a normal person would have died from that.

"Liar, that means sleep" The words escaped Faris' mouth before he could stop himself. He covered his mouth in anger.

Bergan gave a sly smile. "I listened to the investigators' accounts of everything that happened according to the villagers and the girlie over there. That girl doesn't know enough of the ancient language to ward herself, and she's certainly not skilled enough mentally to win a mage's duel against someone like Anya, especially given what we know about her now."

Faris narrowed his eyes. Bergan was a shrewder man than he had given credit, he'd not make that mistake again.

"Hey don't go staring daggers at me." Bergan stated mockingly. "I'm sure you know if I thought you were my enemy; I would have taken care of you already."

Faris remained unflinching. Bergan eventually sighed, scratching his head.

"All right kid look, two kids? Beating a mage who specialized in assassination? No one's gonna believe that. Their gonna tear into your head to find everything that happened, and they won't care how they hurt you, Venka's the niece of a Lord, and her magic amount makes her almost as valuable as a Rider, but they won't care if they scar you, most of them don't even want you coming."

"I'm a tough nut to crack" Faris replied. "Unless you'd like to have a go at me now to find out."

"Oh, I believe you, I believe you very much, I just need to know, who's your teacher? A relative, a villager, your parents?"

Faris remained silent.

"Angela?"

Faris widened his eyes slightly before returning them normal. But Bergan's eyes narrowing was confirmation to his worse fears.

"Now look kid- argh!" Bergan's face contorted in pain as Faris' mind attacked his with reckless abandon, the boy charged at the mage, dagger in hand.

Bergan barely side stepped Faris' wild attack before kicking him hard in the gut, Faris dropped, and his mental attack subsided, Bergan though noted with approval that the child still had his mind warded even after taking such a blow, he was well trained.

Bergan leaned on his knees with exhaustion, and switched to the ancient language.

"I assume you can understand me, right? I'm neither of your enemies, and I am not here for Angela-svit-kona, nor am I trying to extort anything out of you."

Faris lowered his knife, and got up groaning. "Fine, I believe you, what do you want?"

"I want to help you, I owe Angela a favor, and I suspected she may have something to do with the village, that's why I came here myself, as opposed to any number of other mages known for being good at healing. And, I wanted to see."

"Wanted to see what?" Faris asked curiously.

"I wanted to see what Angela saw in you, frankly, I'm pretty impressed, you have piss poor magical ability, but if your mental fortitude is anything to go by, and by how you handled Anya, I think you're not half bad, you're smart enough to not just stand there and struggle mentally against me, and you were somehow able to hide your magical aptitude against the scanner, or else you'd have been given similar attention to Venka." Bergan smiled and cocked one eye. "Let's say it turns out over this trip, you accidentally 'discover' you have magical ability, its piss poor yes, but your aptitude should more than make up for it, and someone as smart as you should probably have a gem or two lying around."

Faris' mind flashed to a thought of his quartz collection, he insisted he take it for sentimental value, but thought it might be better not to reveal any in front of Bergan, 5 years of magical storage wasn't much, but it was, good, more than good, for him.

"Anyways kid, I'm here to help you, so calm down."

"Alright, then what's your plan." Faris stated dryly.

"Well, nothing really, I wanted to see how well you could do, I don't feel you need magical training. So that's it. I'm just saying it was discovered that I discovered you could use magic."

"And it's that easy?" Faris asked incredulously.

"I don't think you have a high opinion of me, I'm actually quite a respected mage." Bergan replied smugly.

Faris rolled his eyes. "Alright then. If we are done here, we should have been relieved ages ago."

Bergan frowned, "They should have contacted me mentally."

Faris began to run back towards their camp spot, dagger ready. Bergan was in hot pursuit. They reached the edge of the clearing, finding one of the investigators sluggish, and one unresponsive.

"They've been drugged." Bergan began.

"Anya's missing!" Faris hissed back, inspecting the campground for any signs of intrusion, he noticed a tree had been bent badly. Like a strong force had pushed it forward. He grabbed his back of quartz and began to sprint in the direction of the tear, spreading his mind to the animals awake, the general consensus was a large amount of people sized things moving through, one of them was struggling against the group. Faris redoubled his efforts, blazing away from Bergan. His pace was that of a person attuned with this forest all his life, and he was barely slowed by the darkness or the foliage. He eventually crashed into a figure, who grunted in annoyance and pain. Without skipping a beat Faris overtook the man, bypassed his wards and put him to sleep. As he did, he made sure to drain a good deal of his energy and add it to his stone. The second mage was unable to react to the speed of the situation and ended up in the same position, the third mage tried putting up mental defenses but was blown away by Faris' ferocity, Faris didn't even go into the pleasantries of casting sleep, simply choosing to smash a rock into the man's groin with impunity. A sword stopped short of his face, draining all his energy, which he replenished from his quartz. He smashed his stone into the user's hand, their wards clashed, Faris drained his stamina 12 timed before he finally overcame the mage's wards and own stamina.

Oh, that mage was pretty weak. He thought as he knocked him out. Grabbing his sword, he barely raised it in time to block the dagger coming towards his face. The dagger had cut into his wards and drained the last of his quartz stone, which he threw to the side. There were 9 mages left, 3 of them split off, with the 6 remaining smiling nastily at Faris.

"Not so strong without your pretty rock eh?" He crowed.

"True, but I like keeping pretty rocks." Faris replied nonchalantly as he willed the second quartz rock to his hand. The mages frowned, and began to attack him mentally, while trying to strike him down physically. Faris could not compete at the same level physically, so he relied on his wards to block their blows while he went for quick attacks to knock them down. Their mental attacks were just as deadly, two of them seemed to attempt to coil around his mind, attempting to squeeze down on it, while one hammered at the same point, attempting to shift him off balance. The other three seemed to pool their minds to form a sword like point, to try and cleave past his defenses and any weak points he may have had. Faris for the most part envisioned his mind as a dense sphere, like the core of a star. They struck like waves against a castle wall, attempting to find purchase through any crack left unfilled, and gap left unbricked. He was losing, in a last-ditch effort Faris took out two more of his stones. The most magic his body could handle was maybe 100, 150 times his natural amount.

Any more and I might actually die.

If he were to consider the magical stamina of an average nonmagical adult (everyone had a bit), each stone, having about 300 days' worth of his magical energy per stone, was equal to maybe 10 adults, or two average magic users. Or one-one thousandth of Venka's.

Life isn't fair. He thought as he began casting his magic. He was interrupted by 3 of the magicians falling limply to the ground, and the other three writhing in pain before becoming still. He turned to Bergan, breathing heavily and steadily holding out his emerald, which now glowed a bright green.

"Go!" He shouted. "Don't let them get away!"

Faris began to sprint quickly. He poured energy into a spell that increased his movements for a short amount of time, blurring his crash through the forest. Within seconds, the second of his stones were drained of energy, then the third, and even the fourth. By the time he reached the remaining fleeing mages, he had used half the energy of his remaining stone, 5 years of energy storage, wasted on one night, he truly was weak. But he had no time to be dejected as he stabbed one of the mages, he had been moving too quickly for the mage's wards to stop his blade, and a quick bash to the skull kept the mage from being able to retaliate. The quartz stone, his life line, had its reserves drop to what was the equivalent of ten days left of magic as the mages shot fire ball after fire ball at him. Instead of barreling through, he cast a spell forcing the smoke still as he used it as cover and ran into a bush to recuperate and form a plan.

"Did we get him?" The first mage whispered to the other.

"Idiot! Did you see a body?" The second hissed in anger. "Damnable boy!" He continued, he killed Erfran first! How did he know Erfran had the teleportation orb!"

Faris had felt an odd energy similar to Anya's on the first mage he took down, he was glad he followed his hunch. He began to slowly formulate his plan, the last reserves of his magic draining in accordance. He rummaged his back pack, finding a purple flower, and a grass ship. Whispering some words in the ancient language he fused the two together and sent the ship off, it flew by taking minute energy from the plants around and flew low, its objective was to stay out of anyone's line of sight, approach whatever target he chose, then deliver its deadly payload.

"Anyways we better-"

The first man was interrupted by a fit of coughing as the smoke suddenly blew in his direction. His and the other mages panicked cries were followed by the screaming of spells of death at the area the smoke originated from. This distraction allowed Faris' ship to reach them. Faris had chosen not to meet their minds, instead connecting to Venka, where he cast a spell of warding on her, fueled by her power of course. The second thing he had done was begin to collect the oxygen and force it to gather closer below the men's faces, the air would have undoubtedly begun to feel thinner, which he distracted them from by using the smoke. They naturally lower their heads, and ended up taking whiffs of the purple soldier. The purple soldier was a pretty flower, but it was even more deadly, its pollen carried a powerful narcotic hallucinogen, and if that wasn't bad enough, it was highly flammable.

"Thank you, Angela." He whispered as he stood out from his cover, pointed his fingers at the men, and yelled, "Bang! Brisingr!"

Faris would later on go on record stating he underestimated the amount of oxygen he gathered, because he wanted to make a thorough job of it, he overestimated the Mages' intelligence levels, as instead of attempting to get away from or pushing away the fire, they instead cast more flames into the mix, and he did not judge the situation correctly, but then again, he would argue, "it's not fair to expect me to know where every batch of purple soldiers grow now is it?" Regardless, the explosion wiped out a huge chunk of the forest, and would have killed him if Bergan hadn't arrived and use up his Emerald to save them both.

"God damn kid! That was amazing! How did you do that?!" Bergan asked amazed, while patting out his singed clothing.

But Faris didn't worry about that, he needed to find Venka, make sure she was okay. The sound of the explosion still left his ears ringing, Venka had been right next to it.

He ran into the smoking crater finding bits and pieces of cloth and… other things, He began to panic, until he heard a girl call out his name. He ran through a pile of smoke to see Venka, completely unharmed by the entire ordeal. He ran towards her, only to be smacked in the face.

As he fell and looked up at her, he saw she was crying, and shivering.

"Never again!" She screamed at him. "Don't leave me ever again!"

Faris flinched in fear as she approached him, but relaxed slightly as it turned into a hug. He hugged her tightly as well, letting her scream her obscenities and insults over his general incompetence until the exhaustion of the entire ordeal finally won out and she slumped asleep in his arms. Two years of animosity melted out of Faris as he stared at her tear streaked face, eyes shut tight.

"Holy…" Bergan began, patting out the few burn marks on his lavish clothing. "She's completely unharmed! I doubt even elves could handle an explosion of this level unscathed. We absolutely cannot let the Black Hand take her, this is the second time such an attack has reached us, we need to regroup, and rethink our strategy."

He walked over to Faris, who was still holding tightly on to Venka. After one look he yanked her out of his arms, stifling his protest with the fact that Faris could barely stand himself, let alone make a several mile trip while carrying someone almost as heavy as he was. Faris conceded to his logic eventually, and together they made their trip, taking a detour now. Their destination was no longer Ilrea, that was too far for them to even entertain to making it by foot, Faris couldn't use the teleportation spell because he had no idea where the blasted city was, and Bergan likely didn't know the spell, or they'd have been there as soon as they left, so they had to leave to the nearest major city, Carvahall.