A Light in the Woods

Racing through the tangled underbrush, Rena clutched a trembling phoru to her stomach as her eyes darted across forest floor. Deeper into the woods, Aisha rifled through dense bushes and searched for any sign of tracks, frantically teleporting from place to place as she scoured the ground. Despite their diligence, they found nothing. As she passed by the corpse of a wolf, a churning knot in Aisha's stomach made her wonder if she was even prepared to find Elsword out here in the silent morass of the breathless wood. With their anxiety building by the moment, Aisha and Rena rushed forward without pause, barreling past the lifeless trees until a sudden shock forced them to stop.

Rena was the first to notice the call of songbirds in the trees overhead.

"Aisha, wait."

Aisha turned abruptly and lost her balance, waving her arms around until she caught hold of a sapling and steadied herself. "What is- wait, there's El here... all over."

Rena knelt down and released the phoru, dusting her legs off as the rodent scurried away into the hollow of a rotting stump. "It looks like it started just a hundred yards back." She looked around and spotted an animal trail heading into the mountains nearby and started along it when she noticed that Aisha wasn't following. Rather, she stood staring back at the boundary between the El and the grey haze of stillness beyond, clutching the pendant they had found tangled in the trees. Rena sighed softly and headed back toward her.

"Aisha, I'm sure he's fine. He probably picked up a few more El stones along the way and just didn't notice he dropped one." Though she gave a confident assurance, Rena was biting the inside of her lip and her eyes kept drifting to the side.

"...huh?" Aisha took a moment to focus on Rena and register what she had said. "What? No, I wasn't worrying about him!" She began to pout. "Why do you always think I'm thinking about that stupid brat?"

"Because~ your reactions are always so cute." Rena giggled for just a moment before she returned her attentions to the situation at hand. "Come on, I'm sure he just went ahead to try and take care of things on his own. When we find him, he'll be perfectly fine and angry at us for taking so long." She put on a soft smile and waited for Aisha to follow her. The two wound around the mountainside for nearly an hour when the sun broke through the clouds, peeking out just in time to offer its last gasp of light before falling back behind the horizon. At a small clearing bounded by a mountain stream and a sheer cliff, the path branched off into four different directions. Sighing, Aisha propped herself up against an apple tree and studied the map, scanning it's smudged lines for any indication of which path might lead them to the area Rena had marked earlier. The air was crisp and saturated with El, giving them the least bit of hope that their search was not in vain and that, somehow, they might be able to return the stolen El before there were any more casualties.

Straining her eyes to see in the fading light, Aisha was making no real progress with the map when a fierce growl echoed through the treetops. Just as she turned to face the sound, a large creature leapt from the trees and bared its fangs at her. Panicking, Aisha thrust her wand forward and a burst of flame erupted from the air, knocking the creature into a rock where it lay until it slumped to the ground. Aisha approached cautiously as Rena hurried over, her bow drawn and leveled at messy tufts of red hair, a singed red cloak, a pair of muddied boots...

"Oh my god, Elsword, you're alive!" Aisha shouted loud enough to send the birds resting above into flight. When he failed to answer, she noticed the huge bump on his head and the burns scattered over his armor."Oh my god, I killed him..."

"N-No, I think he's fine..." Rena knelt down to check his pulse, though her tone was not nearly as confident as her words. Feeling a regular heartbeat, she sighed and relaxed for the first time since that afternoon. "We should get a fire going and rest here until he wakes up, He's still soaked from the rain, so the fire didn't do much more than knock him back, and his head's... well, I'm sure it'll be fine." Rena smiled awkwardly as hoisted Elsword off the ground and propped him up against a fallen log. In the middle of the clearing, somewhere between relief, guilt, and agitation, Aisha conjured up a campfire and started unpacking their supplies.

"Uuuuh..." Groggy and disoriented, Elsword awoke to the smell of cooked fish and firewood. Slouching forward, he shook his head from side to side until his eyes finally came into focus.

"Are you awake?" Rena grabbed a spit off of the fire and offered it to Elsword. He took the fish immediately and started carelessly gnawing on a fin. "Are you feeling any better?"

"Engrrph..." He took a moment to reposition his mouth and took a chunk out of the fish's side, swallowing quickly and spitting out the bones. "Where are we? What happened to the bandits I ambushed?"

Rena's laughter nearly drowned out the crackling campfire. "We're right where you'd set up your 'ambush'. Unfortunately it must've been too dark for you to tell, but instead of a bandit, you attacked the most ferocious creature in the forest."

His eyes went wide. "What? That tiny monkey-sized thing? Where is it? Did you guys chase it off?"

"No..." Rena grinned, "She went back down the trail to check something out a few minutes ago, see?" She pointed to the sky just above the tree line where a small fireball hovered about a hundred yards away.

"Wait, what about-" Elsword hacked and coughed, nearly choking on a lump of meat and scales once he realized what had happened. Clearing his throat, he glowered and scoffed at the fire. "Who the hell-" He paused to correct himself, "Who goes around blasting people with huge fireballs like that?"

"Well, you have a point there." Rena gazed toward the fireball floating in the sky, "But, think about what you would've done if somebody suddenly jumped down from a tree and attacked you... Wouldn't you do the same thing?"

Elsword looked to her skeptically, "No, I don't throw fire and lightning bolts at people."

Rena laughed awkwardly as she pulled a pouch of berries from her bandolier and popped a few into her mouth. Starting in on his second fish, Elsword glanced around the camp and then looked to Rena. "I thought you were a vegetarian. "

"Yes, I am." Rena started chewing on what looked to be a purple root topped with silky green leaves.

"Then... vegetarians eat fish?" He pondered for a moment, wondering if fish were somehow excluded from the field of meats, or if they were secretly some kind of fruit. Rena laughed off his inquiry and leaned back on her hands.

"I wonder who caught them then..."

"It definitely wasn't her." Elsword spoke with a cheek full of fish, "There's no way she'd be able to get her hands dirty enough to hunt."

Stretching her arms out over her head, Rena sat forward and turned toward her companion. "That doesn't leave many other options, unless you think you caught them in your sleep."

Elsword stayed quiet but kept his skeptical frown.

"You shouldn't doubt her so much. It takes a lot of time to tell what people are really capable of, but if you keep thinking that other people can't do anything right, you'll never be able to trust them with anything important." Rena's eyes went soft and she breathed in slowly. "We're responsible for one another's lives every time we fight so we need to trust each other to protect one another. You're both still so young, but... I don't think the trust I have in the two of you is misplaced."

"I-" Elsword paused. His mouth wrinkled up and he glanced out away from the campfire, struggling for words and sense that could match Rena's. "I can take care of myself, so you don't need to worry about protecting me. If I can't do that, then what point is there in being a knight?"

"Elsword, that's not-"

"Ah!" From the far side of the clearing, Aisha stood and pointed at Elsword, the fireball floating high above her vanishing as she stepped into the open. He was less than enthusiastic to see her return, though that didn't stop her from storming over and pushing her fist right in front of his face. From her hand dangled Elsword's pendant, shining faintly and swinging in the breeze. It took him a moment to realize exactly what was hanging right in front of his face.

"Wait, is that..." Elsword patted his neck and chest, "Why'd you take it off me?"

"Nobody took it off you! We found it laying in the forest and we thought you were dead!"

"Huh? Oh, I guess I lost it when I got tangled in the thorn bush... or when my boot got stuck in the mud." He reached up to take his pendant back and found that Aisha had a firm grip on it. He tugged again, and after a moment of fierce resistance, Aisha let go and sat on the opposite side of the campfire. He glared over the fire and then turned to Rena. "Why'd you think I was dead?"

"For one, there was no El for almost a half mile around where we found it." Rena's voice was calm and evenly measured as she moderated their bickering. It would be a substantial task for her, as Aisha's accusatory stare was met with abject confusion on Elsword's part.

"I guess I didn't notice it fell off."

Aisha lost her balance and nearly fell over. "How could you not notice that! Are you so stupid you just walked the entire way without realizing you couldn't breath?"

"What are you talking about?" Elsword angrily chomped down on the last scrap of his fish while Aisha started on hers. "There was El all around there."

"There's no way that-" Aisha's mouth dropped and Rena stood up swiftly. The two of them frantically packed up their supplies and doused the fire. In the midst of their bustling, Aisha stopped and turned to Elsword who was still sitting and staring at them.

"Don't just sit there, hurry up and get your stuff together!"

Elsword tossed the bones of his meal into the embers. "What for?"

"Do you feel like you can start running?" Rena offered a hand to help him up. "We need to head out right away. They're moving the El."