The fire crept through, licking at the edges of his consciousness and weaving trails he tried to follow. They were the light in the dark, and the Witcher stumbled through to keep up with them. Farther and farther the fire got away from him, while his empty hands gripped at the thickened dark. The deeper he got into the black, the more a collection of embers started to blossom in front of him. He picked up his pace, racing now towards the light that beckoned him.

Then the light took form, and he stopped running. Waves on fire. Gold, blue running into one another, the locks brushed over her shoulders, drawing him into that current in a way he could imagine drowning in it. She wore something different than when he first saw her, but he couldn't make out the details of it, as she started to turn to face him. Her eyes burned brighter than any flame, lit by the movements of her delicate fingers. From them the threads of flame originated, and she weaved them expertly in front of her. To bring him to her.

Slowly, the woman lifted her eyes to meet his, and in them he saw immeasurable intensity. And a dose of fear. Her mouth moved with silent words, words he couldn't understand. He tried to get closer to her, but the distance between them didn't change. Slowly she smiled at him, and flicked the flames off her hands. Her lips moved again, and he finally heard her voice, clear as day.

"Gajeel."

The Witcher sputtered awake, sitting up quickly. His yellow eyes darted around him, reminding himself where he was. The now-dead campfire, two horses grazing nearby, a large tree overhead, the sun just starting to rise over the horizon.

"How many of those dreams do you have to shoot up from before you go talk to the witch again?"

The deep, gravelly voice drew Gajeel's attention to his left. The umber-skinned man lounged against the trunk of the tree, his bare arms crossed over his chest. He regarded Gajeel with one golden eye, while a thick, old scar ran over his milky left one. A taunting smile played across his face, knowing what had ripped his close friend from sleep.

Gajeel hissed, narrowing his eye at his companion before looking away. "Shut up, Lil," he grumbled, rubbing his face to erase the images from his head.

"You haven't had a solid sleep since you ran off to Midcopse on your own," the other Witcher pressed. "Sorceresses are dangerous, Gajeel."

"They're just dreams," Gajeel fired back, "Drop it, Lily." His friend wasn't far off the mark. It had been weeks since he killed the Fiend, but he could not get the image of the little mage out of his head. He tried his best to tell himself it was the shock of her reveal that stuck with him, but so many nights he had the same dream. And he couldn't help feeling like she was calling out to him.

Lily raised his hands in surrender, "Fine, fine. But the lack of sleep better not slow you down. I'd rather not have to patch you up again after a monster uses you as a distracted chewtoy."

"I recall havin' to save your ass after many a Griffin so I don't wanna hear it," he snapped, rolling his shoulders. "Now, what's the contract again?"

"Do you ever listen to me?" Lily grumbled, running a palm over his buzzed scalp with a sigh.

"Not my fault ya decided to tell me about it after my fifth Kaedweni," Gajeel shrugged, still able to taste the dark stout. They'd been kicked out of the tavern after his eighth, when he decided it was a good idea to get into a brawl over cards. It seemed worth it at the time but in retrospect he would have rather passed out in a bed that night. And though Lily wasn't saying anything, he could feel the bitterness hanging around him. Gajeel was not an easy drunk to take care of.

His friend merely rolled his eye, sparing Gajeel a lecture he had heard many times before. "As I told you last night, it's not a formal contract. I just heard some men talking at the tavern. There's a refugee camp, a half day's ride south, but it's been taken over by bandits that're holding them hostage. It would be of great benefit to the area to have the camp freed up again."

"What bandits do usually ain't our concern," Gajeel remarked, crossing his arms. "We hunt monsters, not men."

"No, but should we free them, that'll be a lot of very greatful civilians. There's like to be a reward in it," Lily explained, "Plus-"

"Plus you're a bleedin' heart?"

"You know very well I hate this damn war, Gajeel. Both sides of it. If there's a mutually beneficial opportunity to help, I'm going to take it," Lily explained, tight-lipped; like he had more he wanted to say but held back. Gajeel, knowingly, did not push. Lily started to get up onto his feet, picking up his swords to strap both over his back, fastening the buckle over the chest of his sleeveless armor. Though Witchers aged significantly slower than humans thanks to their mutations, Lily looked at least ten years Gajeel's senior. Grey started to pepper the black stubble on his face and fine wrinkles creased the corners of his eyes and around his mouth, the only indicators that he was aging at all. But the sinewy muscle that flexed on his exposed arms, just as toned as Gajeel, showed age had done nothing to dull his finesse.

"Alright, calm down. Damn," he grumbled, rolling his eyes, "Guess it'll be nice to use some steel for a change," Gajeel grinned, a dark mirth flashing across his face as he rose as well, grabbing his swords. He didn't often delight in killing humans, but he had no qualms with gutting bandits. And it had been a long while since he'd had the chance to remind people why they called him Black Steel.

"Oh, by the way," Lily started, not bothering to look at his friend as he grabbed the saddle of his horse, "The ride will conveniently swing us fairly close to Midcopse on the way." He swore he heard Gajeel choke, and he had to stuff down the laugh that threatened to break out.

"One of these days, Panther, one of these days, I'm going to let the next Griffin just have you," Gajeel growled.

"Don't call me that, you know I hate it," Lily warned as he hauled himself into the saddle. Lily was far more understated than Gajeel had ever been, and had a style far more geared towards stealth and calculation. He preferred the quiet, calculated kill, and he gradually garnered the nickname. It was a style he had tried to teach to Gajeel, but the boy had a wild mind and a raw talent that would not be guided towards the calm and collected route.

"Why the hell do ya think I call you it," Gajeel pulled up onto his own horse and dug his heels into its side.

"I'm not going in, Lil," Gajeel grumbled, staring at the village down the road. "We got places to be." He didn't even know what he would do if he did go back. What would he say? What reason had he to really go? He couldn't tell her she'd plagued his dreams for weeks, so he just decided to 'check in.' "What the hell you want me to say to her?"

"Oh, just suck it up, boy. I'm sick of listening to you whine in your sleep," Lily groaned at him.

But the other Witcher growled a curse under his breath and yanked on the reins of his horse, turning them in the other direction. "No." His voice was harsh, final, and Lily knew there was no changing his mind. The older Witcher sighed deeply, but wordlessly moved his horse to follow Gajeel, away from Midcopse. He would try again on their way back.

They smelled the smoke and death before they saw any signs of the camp. Both Witchers quietly dismounted from their horses and left them to graze near a tree. Carefully, they moved off into the brush, weaving around trees to remain under cover.

"We should get a good look of the layout. See where they're thinnest and get an idea of how many versus civilians," Lily suggested, keeping his tone low. There was a fluid, very feline nature to his movements now, with intense focus on the path in front of him. His namesake became very apparent the moment he decided to get serious, whether he wanted it or not.

Gajeel grunted in response, and came to a crouch at the edge of the treeline, at the top of the hill. Down the slope, nestled in the large clearing were several tents that were once used by the refugees. Beyond the camp, onwards to the south, lay open grassland. The camp now bustled with the movement of several large, armed men, with clubs and axes slung over their shoulders. Something in their appearance looked different from the usual road-rabble, and the two of them glanced at each other curiously. The Witchers steadied their breathing and focused, listening to what they could below. They could hear the bandits' conversations, hear women and children crying, and hear the voices of others trying to comfort them.

"At least twenty, likely more," Lily whispered, narrowing his eyes, his good one slowly scanning over the settlement. "More civilians than that, hard to know how many. Hear the chains?"

"Mm," Gajeel nodded, "Have them trapped inside." He drew a deep breath and grimaced, "Haven't bothered to take out the dead. In a while." Monsters. Men loved so much to think they were somehow above the beasts that came out of the cataclysm, that those were the true monsters. When really, they were just reflections of themselves from another realm. They were no better, but the existence of monsters allowed them to separate their own depravity from it and somehow sleep at night. "Suggestions?"

"We split up. I'll hit the east, you the west. Kill as many of them as you can, I'll release as many hostages as I can, to get them out of the way. Take away their leverage," the older Witcher looked to Gajeel, "Slice first, figure out who they are after." With that, Lily stalked away from Gajeel, melting into the shadows.

He shifted his weight from one side to the other and sniffed again, something not quite right. He couldn't figure out what it was, but his instincts told him to move carefully. Still, a thrill surged through his blood, quieting his doubts as he headed off in the opposite direction of his mentor. He regarded the camp with the eyes of a predator, keeping to the edge of the underbrush to keep his cover as he descended down the hill. His side seemed more active than Lily's, but considering his friend had intended to focus on the hostages, and their potential pay, it made sense. Gajeel's focus was entirely on the bandits.

Gajeel took one more deep, calming breath, honing all his senses on the first bandits he saw several yards in front of him, milling between the tents. They were laughing about something, and one of them entered a tent where he heard sounds of fear from a child. The Witcher narrowed his yellow eyes and reached back, grabbing the hilt of his steel blade: Kurogane. It whispered on its way out of the sheath, the black steel glinting dangerously in what light reached him. Rivulets and waves of varying shades of black and deep gray formed infinite patterns along its face, and the edges were sharpened to deadly perfection. This blade was his pride, and he took better care of it than he did himself.

With that, the Witcher rose, striding calmly from his hiding place into the fray. It took until he was just nearing the first tent for one of the men to realize he did not belong. The first bandit growled out a warning curse, gripping his axe and swinging it up in front of him. But in a blur, Gajeel was upon him, swinging his black blade upwards from his side. The bandit did not have time to react before it split him, gut to chin, and he dropped in a shower of red. All attention swung to Gajeel now, and every bandit went tense, regarding the Witcher with the black blade, and blood splattered across his grinning face.

"Black Steel!"

Nothing. Not so much as a spark, a fizzle. Nothing at all. The dimeritium shackles completely blocked any magic that would have otherwise been flowing, and every time she tried to muster anything, she felt a shred of the familiar warmth and then nothing. It cut off abruptly before she could manage anything tangible, and a spear of pain shot through her skull each time she tried. She watched her skin begin to discolor where the metal touched it, and a dull ache pulsed from it.

Her warm eyes looked to the area around her, to anything she could hope to use, but they had been meticulous. She knew they had been looking for her the second they revealed the dimeritium; why else bring it unless they had expected to find a sorceress? A sorceress on the run no less. She knew it was too high profile to come here, to a place with so much traffic. She had not established loyalty to these people liek she had in her village, even if she had helped them. They were frightened, unstable fold who had escaped war, and were looking for anything that could help them recover in the world.

But she had known about the camp near Midcopse for some time, and knew there would be people who needed her. It was a massive risk, but to help people displaced by and running from the war, she felt it worth it. She'd been tending to the wounded for weeks, travelling back and forth between here and her home long before she'd been stymied by the Fiend.

But then they came. Only two at first, they really did seem like more refugees; they had gone as far as to injure one another to be convincing. She had started to tend to them, to heal them, and faster than she could react the shackles were on her wrists. Then the rest came: men better equipped than any normal bandit. No, they sought bounties, and what better than Radovid's bounty on the head of every Lodge sorceress still alive? It was the only reason she was left alive, and not in worse shape.

But the rest of the camp was not so lucky. Though the majority of the camp was made up of displaced humans, some nonhumans had found their way into the mix, fleeing the hunters. Hoping there might be better luck for an elf or halfling here than anywhere else. How poorly that had failed; they were the first to die. They'd gotten away from the witch hunters, and instead fell to different humans with hatred in their hearts. The rest were used for labor.

Levy could hear them talking about her outside the tent; they used her name, first and last. A Redanian unit was already well on their way to retrieve the sorceress Levy McGarden, and with these shackles and her size, there was nothing she could do about it. No way she could fight other than trying to talk to whomever came for her next to offer her stale bread and a sip of water. To keep the prize alive. But her words usually earned her a curse, or a strike if she was unlucky. This day had been long coming, she knew that, but she had still expected to be better prepared for it.

So she waited, chained in the tent alone, the middle of her shackles attached to a pike in the earth. For days that she had nearly lost track of, she waited in that spot. They hadn't come in to see her that day, and she wondered if that was the day the regiment was set to arrive.

Waited, until the shouting began. Levy went straight, trying to peer out the front of her tent, but unable to see anything but the men running in two different directions. Had the Redanians arrived? No, the shouting wasn't right. The screams, rather; they were agonized.

The little mage's heart started to pound and she yanked on her chains, but the pike didn't budge. Her fingers moved and she furrowed her brow, trying to make a spark, but her magic died in her veins. Still, Levy refused to be still, and resolved to at least try. She would not be taken without a struggle, futile or not. She refused to meet the same fate as some of the others.

Clang!

Their swords sung with the collision, as Gajeel held the man back with both hands gripped to the hilt of his blade, arms trembling from the effort. His opponent pushed, trying to gain some purchase against the Witcher, and Gajeel held firm for a second longer before his elbows buckled and he stepped to the right. Surprised, the bandit felt forward as Gajeel slid his sword up and away from the other. In one fluid motion, he arced the blade up and over the man, bringing it down with thunderous strength onto his back. The black steel sliced through the man's leather armor like butter, and the body dropped limp to the earth.

He yanked his weapon free and spun it once in his grip, flinging droplets of blood in a circle from it. Several locks of black hair had drawn loose from his ponytail and hung in his face, sticking to the blood on his cheeks. He'd made it almost to the center of the settlement at this point, a trail of men littered behind him. Across the camp, he could see Lily making equally swift work of the bandits, stopping only to step briefly into the tents he passed, as frantic people fled from them soon after.

Three more armed men gathered, intentionally in front of the opening to another tent near him and faced Gajeel with a new urgency that piqued his interest. His eyes flicked to the tent they had come between, and he smirked. "Got somethin' nice in there?" he finally spoke up. With his luck, there would be a heavy chest inside and they wouldn't need anyone to pay them after. After all, bandits loved to hoard their loot.

One of the three men cast a cautious glance at the others and stepped back a little, placing a not-so-subtle hand on his pocket. "Well? You lot gonna fuckin' kill the whoreson or not?!" The other two finally snapped to attention, lifting their weapons.

Gajeel got into a stance, waiting for them with his sword in his right hand and his left poised on front of him. "Try it…" he mumbled, his yellow eyes flickering.

The men charged, and Gajeel's gaze flicked over each one of them, and the tent. Three targets, one shot. I can make this quick, he thought, counting their steps until…

He made a sign with his free hand and punched it forwards as a surge of unseen power flew from him. The Ard slammed into the two men in front of him, into the third, and flew by the tent. The force of it ripped away the front of the tent, pulling the tattered cloth down in one sheet to expose what was inside, but Gajeel was already moving. He lurched forward at the same moment the blast left him, all his focus on the three bandits, who had been thrown to the ground. His black sword plunged into the first man he reached, as his hand flew out to the man trying to recover right next to him. He formed another sign, and the same blast slammed into him, but this time straight down into the ground. The bandit screamed as bones broke, and Gajeel yanked the blade out of the first body, already heading for the third.

The thug was barely trying to regain his breath, coughing for air, but Gajeel was already on him. "Y-you don't know what yer fuckin' with…" he coughed, trying to slide away from him. "Fuckin' freak…!"

"Ohh… ya don't want to call me that…" Gajeel growled, swinging his blade. "Ya should have picked up a different profession, now let's see what ya got in that pocket." Before the man could spit more insults, Gajeel plunged his blade into the bandit's gut. He could hear Lily close now, drawing attention away from him, enough that he had a chance to kneel down and empty the pocket of the man. Hnn… a key. There had to be something really good in that chest then.

The Witcher stood and turned to face the tent again, and froze, his heart suddenly running at a gallop.

The blue-haired mage sat in the center of the ruined structure, her sides heaving from just as much shock as Gajeel felt himself. Her hair was in complete disarray, her yellow tunic covered now in dust. She blinked once, honey eyes looking him over. "Gajeel…" she breathed, stunned that the Witcher stood before her yet again. Immediately her heart and mind went into double time, and she looked to the key in his hand, eyes going wide with the realization. She threw her hands up, catching on the chains as she winced. "H-hurry! You must get me out of these, now! There's no time!" she pleaded, her voice cracking.

Gajeel snapped out of his stupor when she spoke, and he stumbled towards her. His large hands fumbled with the shackles, Dimeritium…? he thought, looking to her quickly. This just got much more complicated if these men had access to dimeritium, and had specifically taken her hostage. "What have ya gotten into now?" he asked, finally managing to unlock the cuffs.

Levy shook her hands free and stood, shaky on her feet. Her knees buckled and she almost sunk back to the ground had it not been for Gajeel hooking his arm around her back for support. She steadied herself quickly and stepped away from him, brushing the dust off herself with a wary glance in his direction. "We need to leave, we-"

"Gajeel! We got company!" Lily cried out, drawing the attention of the two of them to the edge of the camp, out towards the fields. They saw the banners first: red, with the white eagle emblazoned across it. A company of at least fifteen heavily armored Redanian soldiers rode from the south at a pace that could only mean they knew what they were coming for. And within a matter of minutes they would reach them for it.

Levy backed away farther from Gajeel, her eyes looking around her quickly, trying to form a plan, but the Witcher reached out and put his hand on her shoulder, forcing her to look at him. "What the hell are ya doing here?!" he demanded, towering over her.

"That's not important!" Levy shouted as she shrugged away from his touch and lifted her hands up in front of her. Sparks sputtered in front of her fingers, but she still felt the effects of the shackles as she tried to flick magic from her hands. A string of curses fell from her lips as she glanced at the approaching soldiers. Her captors.

"Gajeel! Are we standing or backing down?" Lily called again, making his way to them, clutching his steel blade. He was equally splattered in blood and dirt, sides heaving from the effort. "I freed as many as I could find but the rest of the bandits have backed off to the Redanians." He looked to Levy now, raising his brows at the magic she tried to cast. He shot a questioning stare to Gajeel, who merely shook his head.

"We stand. We can't outrun them and they are coming for us. For her." Gajeel replied, studying the woman. She had a blossoming bruise around her right eye, and a cut on her lip. They'd not been gentle with her, even though she'd been completely disarmed, and for whatever reason this fact grew seeds of anger in his chest. As though oblivious to him, she shook her hands again, and small bolts of blue shot off of them at last. "O-Oi!" Gajeel exclaimed, taking a step away from her instinctively.

Levy shot him a look that stilled him, gold flickering through her irises. She looked determined, steady, and he could see her thoughts racing, while blue electricity danced from her fingertips. "If you want to escape them-this-I need you to trust me like you know me, for five minutes. Just five minutes."

"Gajeel, we should leave, now. This is not our fight, and it's more than we came here for," his friend urged, taking a tight hold on his arm. There was nothing but wariness with regards to the sorceress. He had already pieced together that this was the one that plagued Gajeel, but that certainly didn't mean he trusted her.

Still, Gajeel hesitated, watching her turn away from him, noticing the ever so subtle shaking in her hands as she held them out to her sides. She was afraid, and she did not wait for an answer. Gajeel wasn't stupid, he knew why Redanian soldiers would be here. If she was ever involved with the Lodge, then she had a price on her head. Radovid would stop at nothing to round all of them back up, and it looked like they had come damn close to getting her.

"I need to buy some time. I can't make one, just yet…" she muttered to herself, rolling her shoulders, then her head. Her neck popped and she exhaled, trying to center herself. To focus.

The company had just entered the southern border of the camp as Levy stopped in place and lifted her hands high. She muttered unintelligible words under her breath, the sparks growing in intensity. Her hair whipped about her face, the electricity raising the locks and ruffling her tunic. She stared, unwavering, at the wall of horses that raced towards them, blades already unsheathed and at the ready.

Levy took in a sharp breath, feeling her magic once more course through her in burning waves. Her hands closed into fists as she swung her arms down in front of her.

A deafening crack cut through the air as a massive bolt of lightning fired down from the blue heavens at the head of the charge, exploding into the earth. Horses and men screamed as they went flying, and the attack cleared out half the company with a single strike. Lily and Gajeel leaned back, awed by the display, and already she was working on her next move, having halted the attack with a gaping crater and spooked horses that the soldiers now struggled to rein back in.

"Now can we get out of here?" Lily urged, just as Levy turned to face them.

"Yes," she answered for them breathlessly, earning raised, skeptical brows.

Her gazed flicked between the two, like she was trying to work something out, before she walked confidently towards Gajeel. Her right hand pivoted in circles, like trying to spin an invisible wheel. The Witcher stood rooted, unsure what the mage intended to do, ignoring the words of his friend. A shock of a different kind coursed through him as she reached out and laid her hand, the one not twirling, on his chest. "Didn't think we'd meet again so soon, Black Steel," she offered him a slow smile. Her eyes met his, that blazing gold still burning at the center of her irises, and he found himself unable to move. Immeasurable intensity, with a dose of fear.

Words failed Gajeel still, but he tore his gaze away from her to look beyond her as the remaining soldiers rounded up to continue their advance around their fallen comrades.

When he looked away, when he was distracted as she had hoped for, Levy extended her spinning hand to the side, swinging it round in a large circle. At that moment, a gaping, orange portal opened directly next to her, and an invisible force drew her in. She smirked up at the Witcher, now tightly gripping the sword strap over his chest. Gajeel's attention flew to her, eyes wide. "W-wait, hold on!" Instinctively he reached for her, as Lily reflexively held firm to his friend's arm, and all three flew through the mouth of the portal, disappearing from the camp entirely.