Jean smiled weakly and gladly accepted the help. After getting to his feet he looked around in slight confusion.
"Where am I? And more importantly what is that?"
He pointed toward Orion who was exerting a sickeningly powerful level of inhuman magical power.
"To answer you fist question, you are on a battlefield near the Forest of Four spring area, at the start of winter. And to answer your next question, this is Orion, someone that was quite instrumental in making this ordeal go over smoothly, so don't worry about his intentions. You aren't the one he is after."
Orion looked slightly amused by Jean's reaction and smiled at him slightly. He was a bit annoyed that the humans had gotten in the way of his conversation, but at the same time he knew that Gordan had been waiting to deal with Jean for a while now so he could live with that.
"Thank you for helping me out, I apologize for my rudeness."
He bowed slightly and almost lost his balance but Gordan helped to steady him.
"Do you have a way to call off your army?"
Jean looked at Gordan confused.
"What army are you talking about?"
Gordan pointed to the dustup and Jean watched as silhouettes of monsters and soilders danced around in the dust.
"Oh... I guess I should try to deal with this mess. Even if it wasn't me personally it was still technically me, so I should deal with this."
He raised up his arms and began to say a string of words which seemed to slur together and mix with the battlefield. Slowly a light began to shine from the ground and one by one the monsters disappeared without a trace.
Jean lowered his arms slowly and looked around him, the world seemed to be spinning around in circles. He shook his head and then a wave of exhaustion came over him and he fell to the ground.
=Sigh=
Gordan turned back to look at the child vampire that was sitting on the ground speechless, looking off into nothingness.
"Hey kid, now that the situation has been delt with don't you think you should be heading back to your home?"
The small child looked up at him and then blinked several times trying to pull himself together. Gordan grabbed the scruff of his neck and dragged him over to where Jean was lying unconscious.
"Hey Mara, it's about time you got these two home don't you think? The excitement might have been a bit to much for the young one though so be careful with him."
Mara appeared out of Jean's shadow and carefully looked at the ground under her feet to make sure that there was no teleportation circle. The last two times that she had encountered Gordan she had fallen victim to the traps and been sent all the way back to the castle where the Master resided.
"How did you know I was here?"
Gordan shrugged and turned back toward the dust.
"I just had the feeling that you were most likely here. since you seemed to be fairly concerned about Jean."
Mara was about to say somthing back but she decided to just remain silent instead. For some reason it just seemed to be more appropriate for the situation, though she didn't know why.
"Anyway you need to get them out of here, I have the feeling that things are going to get a bit troublesome around here."
He turned back and smiled at her.
"Oh and when he wakes up tell him that the situation has been taken care of, so he doesn't have to worry about it."
Mara had a very bad feeling about the way he was talking and quickly looked at the ground around her and saw that a circle had appeared around her and the two others next to her. She looked up and snarled at him in disgust.
"When did you have time to put this down, you had no time I made sure that you didn't."
Gordan turned around and pointed at Orion who was using the end of his scythe to finish off the circle. When he saw Mara looking at him he smiled and waved before hitting the ground to activate circle. Emedeatly the circle grew bright and they began to fade away.
"Why do you do this every time I meet you?"
Gordan just smiled and waved goodbye, ignoring the small assassin's words. As soon as they were completely gone Gordan quickly messed up the circle so that it wouldn't be usable again. Orion looked around and wondered when they should get started back to the others who would most likely end up in trouble if they didn't get to them in time.
"What about the other humans? Do you think that they would try to get to the ones guarding the forest?"
Gordan looked up at the sky and nodded.
"They should be a bit disorganized still, but as we don't know were the to pests got off to we should get back. Mind if I hitch a ride with you?"
Orion smiled and nodded his head. He let out a shrill whistle and suddenly his horse broke out of the dust which was slowly starting to thin. It ran up to Orion with an arm dangling out of its mouth looking quite happy. Orion frowned and the horse instantly dropped the arm and its ears flattened back on its head.
"What did I tell you about eating things you find randomly lying on the ground?"
Gordan laughed a little bit under his breath and waited for Orion to finish scolding his horse before walking up and inspecting the severed arm.
"I see what you mean about picking random things up."
Gordan pulled a small green stone out of the hand and showed it to Orion and the horse.
"I doubt it would have killed you, but if you had eaten this thing it would have exploded in your stomach."
Gordan threw the stone toward the ground some distance away where it hit into another stone breaking its surface. Instantly there was an explosion which shot out small shards. as one passed by Gordan grabbed one carefully between two fingers instantly stopping it. He held it up for the horse to see.
"This here is a poison needle, not to toxic on it's own, but quite painful."
He dropped the needle to the ground and smiled. Which made Orion laugh, and turn towards the horse with an 'I did warn you' look in his eyes.
"Well then, as much as I want to pick your brain about this matter further I think that we have to get going."
Gordan agreed with Orions assessment of the situation, unfortunately he got a bit carried away when he was explaining things to people. He was glad that he had met someone who actually wanted to hear more.
Orion mounted his horse and helped Gordan up, he then turned the horse and they began the trip back to the entrance of the forest. Gordan was slightly worried since he hadn't expected the hero to bolt as quickly as he had, he hoped that the two that he had left at the forest entrance would be alright, but he was fairly confident in their overall abilitys so the situation probably wouldn't be too bad.
Back at the forest entrance both the General and Drake had been dealing with stragglers of the battle which would try to pass into the forest. At first they were mostly monsters and the occasional human, but that was more of a rare sight, and when they saw the General they usually turned back to the battle not wanting to deal with them.
Soon there were two piles of corpses one for each of the of the two fighters. The amount of monsters began to decrease until almost none of them were coming to the location, as one stragler was coming forward it suddenly began to glow and disappeared. Neither of them had any idea why it had happened but they felt that after that they should be even more careful with there fighting. Neither of them had been badly injured but they had been injured, and that had usually happened when they were trying to take a bit of a rest in between waves of monsters.
The General could feel fatigue starting to take over, and he could see that Drake wasn't doing any better. It wasn't like they had been fighting all that long but both of them were recovering from their own injuries. On his way back to the capital the General had been attacked by two assassins who had managed to hit him with a poison knife. Afterward he found that someone had killed both of them before he could question them, but something about them seemed quite familiar. After the king had turned on him it was a bit obvious that the king was most likely behind the attack.
The General couldn't understand when the king had changed so drastically. Sure when he was a child he had never been a saint, but he wasn't a monster either. The General had spent a lot of time with the king when he was a child and even been the one to instruct him with the sword. When he had first been given the order from his younger brother who had inherited to position after the death of the king, he had been a bit hesitant. His brother didn't like him, and that had always been extremely obvious, but he had still worked hard to raise the child up right. So that one day he would be a person worthy of the title king.
He felt his right shoulder where he had been stabbed by the assassin and grimaced slightly, even though they had removed most of the poison they had been unable to get it all out and doctors were never that pleased to help people who were not magical inclined even though he did everything for the kingdom. But that had been the way things had been since the beginning of the known world, so why would things be different for people like the General. Sure he had more raw power but so did people like Gordan, he had to wonder how someone could be that powerful and still be able to use magic, and powerfull magic at that. He shook his head to stop thinking about that, Gordan was a bad person to compare oneself to since he was practically a monster himself, and the General had known several people who had lost their lives obsessing over how much stronger he was no matter what they tried. It was a slippery slope that was hard to climb, so he pushed it out of him mind.
A light appeared in front of the two of them and two people suddenly appeared. It took them a minute to come into focase, but the General could see that it was the hero and the king. Teleportation was a hard skill to use and took a bit of time to reappear even if you were a pro at using it. It was a risky skill to use, since if one wasn't perfect in their calculations they would end up dead.
The hero slowly stood up and looked around. as soon as he saw the two of them he snarled and helped the king up slightly indicating the two of them.
The king looked at the two of them with malice and spat at the ground in disgust.
"What are you peices of filth still doing alive?"
The king was in a bad mood after dealing with Gordan but now after seeing the General his mood got even worse.
"I will wipe you off the face of this world."
They began to move toward them cautiously after what had happened with Gordan, after all there was no guaranty that Gordan hadn't planned some kind if trap for them.