Elaina felt the warmth of the fire before she saw it. It felt good against her skin, preferable to the cold of the rain and the mud. She just wanted to lay like that for hours but felt control of her body beginning to return to her and realized that her breathing was steady and even. Her eyes came open slowly, revealing the camp at the top of the hill. The rain had stopped, and Anisha was adjusting some things in the wagon nearby while Azade soothed the horses.

The swordmage moved to sit up and felt a sharp pain shoot through her back, quickly giving in to a more dull pain that radiated outward from it to the rest of her body,

"Oh," she groaned and straightened one of her arms to steady herself.

Anisha turned from the wagon to look over at Elaina, "Don't move too much. I didn't have a powerful enough potion left to heal you outright, so you're still going to be in a bit of pain."

Elaina gave a short nod, noticing how the half-elf was using both of her arms just fine, and realized that one or more of the other potions had likely been taken for herself. It made sense to keep what was effectively a medic in good shape before attending to everyone else, but Elaina couldn't help but feel a little resentful as she settled back down against the bedroll next to the fire. The other two continued about their work, and Elaina watched them silently for a few minutes before shifting herself, so she was lying on her side, only realizing just then that she was lying naked under the wool blanket.

Azade sat down on one of the large rocks beside the fire. She placed some sliced meat into a pan that had been heating up there. Elaina took another deep breath as if to double-check that it was something she was capable of doing before letting it out slowly,

"My armor?" she asked simply.

Azade pushed her hair back over one shoulder and gestured briefly with a thumb, "Just over there. I had to set it aside while we broke down camp."

Elaina didn't bother to adjust herself so that she could look, knowing that the pain wasn't worth the effort, "Which one of you stripped me down?"

Azade's red eyes flicked over to Elaina a little impishly, resisting a smile, "It was a group effort, actually. You're not suddenly self-conscious with us, are you?"

The swordmage shook her head a little, realizing it had been a silly question to ask, all things considered. She was still so used to being defensive about her nudity around people that it had just spilled from her mouth out of habit before thinking about who it was that she was even with, "How are you feeling?"

"Sore," Azade replied, turning her eyes back to the meat that was sizzling in the pan. It was bacon, by the smell of it, "Healing potions will get you on your feet, but they're not usually a complete solution. You end up with soreness, stiffness, or both when the healing is done. It goes away in a day or so. Better than the alternative of laying out there with broken bones in the rain, though."

Elaina nodded, realizing only now that Azade and Anisha had both changed into different clothes from when she'd last seen them. There was a blush of color on the horizon where most of the clouds had broken up and dispersed. It was dawn already.

"Thank you," Elaina said humbly, "For getting me warm. It wouldn't do for me to come back from the fight with the drake just to catch a cold."

Azade laughed briefly, the sound of which was like a pleasant ringing of a bell, "No. No, it wouldn't. We'd have to carry you in the wagon coughing and sniffling and asking us for chicken soup."

"Do you have some?" Elaina asked hopefully, her stomach growled at the prospect of getting something to eat.

"Fresh out," Azade replied, crushing her dreams, "So you can see the problem there."

Anisha came over to sit on another one of the rocks near the fire, glancing down into the pan, approvingly, "Do you think the meat from the drake would be any good?"

There was silence for a moment before Elaina finally realized that she was talking to her, "Oh! Uh, I don't know. I've heard of people eating dragon meat before, but I don't know if drake meat would be the same. I imagine it's fine, probably not unlike alligator."

"Alligator," Azade repeated flatly, looking over at Elaina with a bit of a smirk, "You've eaten alligator before?"

The redhead nodded, "Yeah, it's kind of like chicken in flavor but with a slightly different texture. It's pretty close, though. They have it sometimes in Zelmesca Falls when the alligators wander a little too close to town, and someone has to kill it."

Anisha pursed her lips a little bit, considering that thoughtfully before getting to her feet and drawing a knife as she walked down the hill toward where the drake carcass was.

"She looks as hungry as I feel," Elaina gave a short laugh, the pain of the effort causing her to regret it almost instantly.

"Bacon will be done in a minute," Azade said, lightly jerking her chin in the direction of the fire, "And I guess if she brings anything back, we can throw that on too."

Elaina's stomach grumbled again as if in reply, and she smirked, "Wonder what the drake was doing up this way."

"Well, we're not far from the water," Azade noted, motioning vaguely with one hand.

"Yeah, but it's not terribly deep; maybe there was some flooding that brought it from somewhere downriver or something." Elaina speculated. She didn't know much about the ecology or habitat of river drakes specifically, but she did know they needed waterways to be a little deeper than the one nearest here to efficiently hunt. But then, she supposed, when everything was being washed away in a deluge like last night, it was a great time to crawl out of the water and do some surface hunting.

Azade shrugged, lifting her head to scan the horizon briefly before looking back down at the bacon and flipping it with a deft flick of the wrist by the handle, "Well, it sure messed with the wrong prey, so perhaps it was just a series of bad decisions on the creature's part."

Elaina gave another pained laugh and waved a hand for Azade to stop, but Azade's pleasant laugh in reply kept it going, "No, stop, stop, it hurts!"

"How are you feeling?" Anisha asked from her spot in the front of the wagon later that day once they'd gotten underway again.

"Much better, thank you," Elaina replied from where she was reclined in the back. The two of them had switched places for the day to give Elaina time to relax and recover. Her armor had been loaded on separately, and Azade had helped her get her clothes on shortly after they'd finished breakfast. She wasn't sure, but she could have sworn that Azade had taken her time with the process just to savor Elaina's nudity despite her injuries.

Elaina had taken a good look at herself in a hand mirror when she'd gone to reapply her glamer, noting that her face was only a little bruised under the eyes from the impact it had taken with the ground the night before. The healing potion that she'd been given couldn't take care of everything, but it had kept her face from looking too bad. She brought her hand across her face a little more slowly than average, compensating for the bruising, and was able to restore the look of her face to its usual luster. The bruises still hurt if touched, and they'd reappear when the spell wore off, but for now, they were concealed away under a thin mask of illusion.

The wound in her back had likewise mostly closed up, now it didn't even require stitches. It hurt, but the sharpness of the stinger had ensured that the wound was clean enough that it closed up with what Anisha was able to spare for her. She reached back as she sat there in the back of the wagon and ran one of her fingers over the wound, wondering if it was going to leave a vicious scar. If so, she considered keeping it. She'd come from her Caledonia with a great many scars on her body, all of which had been removed through healing magic. A cleric had tended to her when she'd been staying at the Obsidian Court. They'd all been marks of shame that she had carried, reminders of a past that she'd sooner forget than see in the mirror every day. But this one was different. This one was earned through other deeds entirely. Defeating a drake to save the lives of others was nothing to be ashamed of, even if she had only managed to do so by the skin of her teeth.

Anisha had informed her that the poison would have probably worked slower if she'd not had her heart rate up and burned through so much magic to use the spell that she had on her sword. Elaina wasn't even sure what the extent even *was*, much less what the energy economy on casting it would have been. She'd simply put out as much as she possibly could to empower her weapon, and it had some sort of strange reaction with the spell she'd already placed in the weapon. Elaina glanced at the weapon in its scabbard beside her, wondering if she could do it again. She didn't recall the weapon experiencing any real strain under the magical weight of the spells, so it stood to reason that if she could handle it herself, she might be able to use it again.

"How long, do you think, before we get there?" Elaina asked.

Anisha shrugged, looking pretty unsure, "Hard to say. The storm last night's left everything pretty muddy, and I bet once we get to the forest, there will be plenty of broken branches and fallen trees laying about to slow us down."

"The forest shouldn't be too much of a problem," Azade assured them, briefly glancing over her shoulder, "I should be able to pick out the best path for us to travel with a spell once we get in range."

Elaina relaxed back into a pile in the back of the wagon, keeping an eye on the horizon behind them as Anisha turned her attention to looking out as well. They traveled most of the day without a problem beyond only having to take things slower and picking where to bring the wagon a little more carefully. From the back of the wagon Elaina could see how deep the grooves they were cutting in the mud, and decided it could have been much worse. The last thing they needed was to get stuck in the mud or end up with a broken axle.

By the time night fell, Elaina felt well enough to get out the back of the cart and stretch before helping make camp. They'd entered the forest just before sundown, and something about being in among the trees set Azade visibly at ease. Her movements were more relaxed, and her general demeanor was more upbeat. In turn, Elaina couldn't help but feel a little more optimistic despite the lingering pain in her face and back. The camp they made this time was much more comfortable, with each of the women having their own tents to reside in, set up in a loose ring around the fire pit they'd dug at the center.

The meal that evening was much more pleasant than it had been the night before. Anisha had cut a little drake meat for breakfast, and when they'd all decided it wasn't bad, she had gone back to cut more for dinner that night. She'd wrapped the meat in a bundle with some herbs and other things she carried, and when the fire finally had good coals to cook by, she put the meat in the pan and started frying it up. Elaina could see how skillfully she handled food and how she cooked that it wasn't a mere hobby. The woman had undoubtedly been a professional at one point. If her technique had not been enough, though, the taste of the food certainly had. Both Elaina and Azade paid their compliments to the chef several times over as they ate, finishing the meal off with some nice cool water from their waterskins, which had been refilled with rainwater.

Though their packs and bedrolls had gotten fairly soaked from the rain after having the tent burned through by acid, they had been lucky not to have anything of value lost by the acid itself, and anything that had been soaked had dried out with Elaina by the fire that morning.

"We'll split the watches into two tonight," Azade said as she set her waterskin aside and brushed her hands off, "It'll give Elaina a little more time to recover."

Elaina shook her head, "I don't think that's necessary. I've had all day to convalesce. I'm feeling much better now."

Azade's eyes leveled with Elaina's, the two of them staring each other down for a moment, each considering if this was something they actually wanted to argue over,

"You're not as needed for your eyes now that we're in the forest. I need your sword arm if something does happen, though, and you should be well-rested for that eventuality."

Elaina considered this, seeing the wisdom in it. Now that they were in Azade's territory, Elaina's talents were more useful in the event of an actual conflict. She relented, giving a gentle nod of her head, "Alright, point made."

Azade's eyes gleamed with satisfaction as she stood, "Then it's settled. I'll take the first watch, and you can take the second watch, Anisha."

The half-elf yawned a response with a half-hearted nod and got to her feet to clean up the remains of the meal before heading to bed, calling a goodnight over her shoulder as she stepped into her tent. By the looks of the tent's new patchwork, hers was the one they'd used the previous night. The night went quiet then, with the sound of the crackling fire being the only thing to fill the camp for a time. Elaina poked the fire with a stick to rearrange the wood and then simply gazed into it, letting her mind go a little blank.

"You're not tired?" Azade asked, cutting through the empty haze of Elaina's mind to bring her back to the warmth of the camp.

The swordmage shrugged a shoulder, "A little maybe, but if I go to sleep too early, I'll just end up throwing off my sleep rhythm for the next few days. When I travel alone, I tend to stay up a little later. Sort of an old habit."

Azade nodded once in understanding, then stood, stretching with her arms over her head, and Elaina couldn't help but notice the large swell of her breasts once more as she did. Azade had removed her armor before dinner and hadn't put it back on, wearing only the simple dark clothing she dressed in under the armor itself.

"Do you need help getting your armor on?" Elaina asked, hoping to disguise her wandering eyes as something more legitimate.

"Not yet," Azade answered, her hands falling back down at her sides, "I'm going to set the wards for the camp. I'll do a wide circle around, making sure they're set up amid the trees here. Would you like to go with me? Take a walk before bed?"

Elaina liked the sound of that, a nice walk through the woods before bed to see how Azade did her own magical workings. She'd only seen some of the end results of it, but not a whole lot of it in action, warding a section of the forest seemed like it would be interesting to see in action. The swordmage got to her feet, feeling only a brief pain in her back as she weaved around the firepit to follow after Azade as she left the camp.

"So," Elaina started as they stepped into the trees beyond the warm light of the camp, "When did you start practicing Plant Magic? Is it a druid thing?"

Azade looked over at Elaina with a skeptical look, stepping over a gnarled root as she did, "Small talk? Really?"

Elaina chuckled, waving a hand, "No, nothing like that. I really want to know." Azade's brows furrowed, appearing to be unconvinced, "Alright, so for me, I was in the other Caledonia. I was pretty young when I noticed the little magical effects I could produce. It was nothing crazy, but I was able to hide things sometimes, make them appear to be other things or just sort of obfuscating them entirely, you know? So if I had something I didn't want to be taken from me, I'd use these little tricks to help keep them hidden away."

Azade's gaze softened and turned thoughtful as she considered the question posed to her, "I've had it for as long as I can remember since I was a young girl."

"Ah, so not wizardry then." Elaina nodded as she looked out amid the forest's darkness, silver moonlight filtering in through the canopy to the forest floor. Azade's magic was sorcery, much like Elaina's. It was a difference of learned procedures versus something that came through some latent magic in the blood that could be manipulated with one's will, "Do you know where the magic comes from along your ancestral line?"

Azade picked her way gently around a thorny looking bush toward a vast and healthy-looking tree. Elaina didn't know what kind it was. For having fae blood, she hadn't been particularly studious on her trees, having interacted with so few of them while locked up in a castle for most of her life. She was reasonably sure it was an oak, though, if she was pressed to make that call.

Azade shrugged a little as she placed her hand on the side of the tree, "I seem to remember my mother mentioning it was some kind of Forest Spirit from generations back, an Alseid maybe. But things like that have gotten lost over the years for most Zelmescans."

The woman's voice shifted to a low whisper as she spoke a brief magical phrase, forming her intent with the power in her blood. Her hand was bathed in green light before dispersing out through her fingertips into the bark of the tree. Around the trunk, a ring had formed, glowing green for a moment before seeming to fade beyond Elaina's ability to see it visibly, though there was an impression of the magic that still lingered in her mind's eye. The wards were not meant to be hidden from those who could detect magic. They were simply there to alert Azade to anyone who crossed their lines. Any attempt to meddle with them or dispel them would have a similar effect, Elaina was sure.

Once the ward was cast, Azade picked her way through the brush toward another tree she had chosen several yards away, giving plenty of space between the wards, "Each one I lay down will link to the last," Azade explained without prompting from the swordmage, "It'll create a perimeter around the camp and will immediately alert me to anyone who crosses it."

Elaina tilted her head to one side as Azade laid the second ward on the next tree, "It's not going to be one of those ones that make a loud, obnoxious sound, is it?"

Azade's face screwed up a little in disgust, "What? No! Is that a thing? Do people do that?"

"I guess it's a Wizard thing." Elaina waved a hand, "The noises differ, but they always have it as some loud noise where everyone hears the damn thing."

Azade's eyes narrowed a little as she stared into the distance considering this, "I suppose it saves precious time on letting everyone in the camp know that there's something afoot, especially if it's a large group. But wouldn't it also alert an assailant to the fact that you know that they're there? They could just leave at that point before you can mount a defense. You lose the element of surprise on people trying to surprise you."

"Pretty much my thinking exactly."

"And what about rabbits?"

"Rabbits?" Elaina asked as Azade moved along to the next tree she had picked out, the moonlight through the trees playing beautifully on her pale skin as she walked.

"Rabbits." Azade repeated, glancing back at Elaina with a slightly playful look in her red eyes, "Or deer. Any wild animal, really. Wouldn't this loud, obnoxious noise go off every time some woodland creature crossed the line too close to the camp?"

Elaina gave a short laugh, "Does it do that with yours?"

Azade turned, walking backward now with her hands clasped behind her back. Though the forest wasn't impassably dense, Elaina couldn't say that walking backward was something she would have attempted with how cluttered the forest floor was here. But she noted that even while she was walking backward, Azade's footsteps always seemed to be placed in precisely the right place to keep her from tripping or falling on any roots or branches.

"It does," she answered with a smirk, "I can sort of stipulate the size of the thing I want to be alerted to, though. I never go as small as bugs, of course. But you never know who's out here turning into woodland creatures to skulk about the woods looking for throats to cut."

Elaina chuckled at the thought of a small rabbit skittering through the bushes with a menacing knife in its little teeth, just searching for a victim, "I never thought of it that way. I'm admittedly not used to considering magical threats in my travels. I suppose it's something I should spend more time thinking about, hm?"

Azade gave a dramatic nod with a smirk playing at the corners of her mouth, "Oh definitely. You never know what ferocious furballs could be lurking about."

Elaina couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity of it, which appeared to be Azade's intent as she placed another one of her wards and moved along. They walked in an extensive circle around the camp, always keeping the glow of the fire within it on their left as they went. The swordmage could feel a vague impression of a thread that moved between the points that Azade had marked, and if she shifted her perception to detect the presence of magic more acutely, she could even see the thin sheet running between the trees like gossamer shimmering green and silver in the moonlight. The sheet extended to the forest floor and rose about halfway up each of the trees included in the magic, each of them also glittering gently in Elaina's magical sight. She blinked a few times to return her visual perception back to normal, following behind Azade to the next tree.