[Aqua-chan]

"What do you think, Cobalt?" asked Amara curiously, head tilted in false innocence, "Should we let the strange man up?"

The black horse whinnied, tossed his head and stamped a hoof.

"I agree. Maul him, Shukha," ordered the young druid to the massive bear, and Amara watched with a grin as Shukha let out a feirce roar right into BS's face. Especially delightful was how bear spittle flung itself onto the traveller's face.

Rather than comply with the actual rampage, however, Shukha backed off of Bloodstalker and growled lowly at Amara. Following this exchange the totemic druid nodded and called the animal spirit back to the totem - the eyes of the carved bear head glowed briefly - and the draining of Amara's energy was drastically lightened.

"Real cute stint with the bear, AC," said BS dryly, at least remembering to shoot venemous glares at Cobalt as he collected himself. The horse pretended not to notice the hostility.

"BS!" Despite her previous display Amara hopped off Cobalt in a fluid movement and dashed over to help him up. He was still sitting in the dirt, wiping bear spit from his face when she kneeled down to hug him. "It figures. Only you would let your poor, defenseless horse wander about in a dangerous forest full of hungry predators."

"Oh, I let him go. Right," sneered the warrior, but he found it within himself to give the druid a little hug back. "So, uh, aside from making laundry, what are you doing all the way out here?"

Amara just noticed how filthy her green robes had become, being splattered with mud and pitched with holes as they were. Pushing aside that thought she said, "I was heading to Windhaven to gather up Dark Flames. I had figured at least a few of the old crew had gathered there to investigate the orcs, but... Are you the only one?"

"That I know of," said BS, standing up and brushing himself off. "I didn't exactly hang around to find out, though."

"As typical to BS's style, he didn't have much planned past 'go into forest, see what orcs are doing'," sneered Cobalt.

"Well, might I suggest we go back into town, recollect ourselves and maybe share information?" offered Amara hopefully. She kind of wanted to see a city again; it had been so very long since she'd seen modern civilization and the unorthodox druid missed the fruits of it.

"Information?" BS raised an eyebrow and nudged her playfully, "What do you know about these orcs?"

In an instant Amara had dug out sheets of predicted Orcish movements on regional maps, most of them now fairly accurate as to where the monsters had based their communities. "Quite a bit, actually."