Sarin shook his head, his breath misting slightly in the cool moist air coming off the lake. Things had changed very quickly since Era had left to return to the elemental planes. He had almost been left behind by the pace of the changes. But thanks to a little help from Ornell, he'd managed to keep pace, even finishing up his apprenticeship and becoming a full-fledged member of the Burning Fist. He turned. "Tell me you're joking. You've been to all those places, and you've never ONCE been to this lake?" he asked.

"Tell me you didn't take the rumors about the 'creature of the lake' seriously!" he scoffed. He had never believed the rumors himself, and had yet to see anything to make him believe they were true. He looked back, out over the lake, and chuckled. "I've never seen this 'creature', and never heard of it, either, except as rumors." He grinned. "Besides. I'm sure you could handle that thing. Supposedly, it's only an octopus," he said with a snort.

They had been walking for a little while through these woods, just talking for a little bit. She didn't normally travel alone. She was normally with Valen though. The Steel Dragon was busy with another task though and she had felt the need to move somewhere. They had lost their hold on the Temple of Fire so quickly after Era had left. Ornell hadn’t been there at the time, but she had found some of The Burning Fist not far from there. Ornell was now trying to re-gather the monks so they could retake the temple. She blamed the Smith for the loss. It had to be his fault! She hadn't expected Sarin to come with her on this walk, but he had. She found it funny that The Burning Fist had become so protective of her while she felt it was her duty to protect them. He was clearly no exception, even as new as he was to their group.

Ornell stopped walking when he pointed out over the water. It looked much bigger then she had thought. It unnerved her slightly. She knew, knew, that under that peaceful looking water she could die. It wasn't the creatures there... it was the fact she couldn't swim... She wasn't afraid of the water really, just... not sure. She had never been any deeper then just below her waist in any real body of water and nothing as big as this lake.

Still looking out over the peaceful waters she said, "What reason would I have for going to a lake? There is no real reason. There's nothing but water here after all and what use is that to me?" She didn't venture further into that statement. She wasn't just going to blurt out she couldn't swim. There was no reason for that to come up after all, right? Ornell blinked and dragged her gaze back to Sarin. "So we're here, now what?"

Sarin raised an eyebrow. He wasn't sure what it was, but he knew there was something more to the reason that she didn't come here before now. He grinned at her, and knelt on the shore, hands in the water. "Exactly. There's a lot of water. And water means fun!" With that, he came to his feet, a cupped handful of water launching in Ornell's direction.

He chuckled, and walked back over to her. "The whole point of a lake is that there's lots of things that can be done there. You can go swimming, there are some who enjoy fishing, and then of course, there are you water manipulators that like to practice at a lake." He shrugged his tunic off, which had been open at the front. Somehow, since he had become a member of the Burning Fist, he had become less sensitive to cold than he already was. Or at least didn't get cold as easily.

With the tunic gone, he walked out until he was standing knee deep in the water, and turned. "Come on. It's just water!" he said, toppling over backward, vanishing under the water for a moment, and then coming to the surface, flipping his hair back off his face. "Not like it can kill you," he said.

When the water was flung through the air at her she simply lifted her arm and closed her eye to stop it from getting in her face. Fun? How was water fun? Before she could ask, he was walking back toward her and answering her unasked question. She didn't do any of those things he had listed, which only made her point for her side of the argument more clear. Ornell took a few steps forward as he turned back to the lake, but paused when he took off his tunic. What?

She waited, almost frozen where she was, as he went into the water. He wanted her to follow him? Had he lost his mind? Panic rose in her chest when she saw him fall into the water. While he was underneath, she panicked momentarily. She thought most people couldn't swim after all, or that was what she had told herself. But then he came up and declared that it wasn't as if the water could kill her. She had been about to yell at him for scaring her like that, but the words stuck in her throat.

Instead her gaze lowered to the water before her. She knelt down so she was practically sitting on her heels and her knees were up by her chest. Ornell balanced on her toes and reached out to the water. She ran her fingers through it. It was just water and if, if he wasn't going deep she didn't have a problem with it. She could just stand up and be fine, right? Right. Ornell stood up abruptly then and went over to where the root of one of the many trees had been exposed, creating an almost natural bench. She sat down and undid her shoes and set them next to her on the root. Then she easily undid her armor, which she wore almost all the time now. Standing, she set that and her blades (belt and all) where she had been sitting. She also took a moment to take her hair down, not wanting to loose anything in the water. Her gray hair fell across her shoulders and settled lightly just above her wings. Leaving her things where there were, she turned back to Sarin.

Without any apparent hesitation she came out until she was just about a foot or so from him. There, she stopped and looked at him. “I still don’t see your point Sarin.” She sighed.

Sarin grinned. "Not quite good enough, Ornell," he said with a laugh, and taking her hand, pulled her farther out to the lake, until the water was up to the middle of her chest. Of course, being slightly taller than her helped quite a bit, so he was able to stay WELL above the water. "You know, you seem pretty uptight. Relax. Being uptight is the number one reason people drown. Well, that, and being in the water with someone that can't swim and expecting them to save them," he said, not knowing how close he had likely hit to what it was that made her leery of water.

"Now. The trick, since you don't seem to know what it is," he said slowly. For some reason she didn't seem to want to be in the water. And he could have sworn he caught a glimpse of fear on her face when he had come back up after ducking his head -- no, not fear. Downright PANIC. Was she WORRIED about him? That thought stopped him in his train of thought for a moment. Someone cared about him enough to worry about him? Psh. Not likely. Seems like everyone I meet has something bad happen to them the moment I turn my back, he thought to himself. (((The Harbinger of Ill Omen flaw that he has.))))

He shook his head. "The trick is to RELAX! Here. Something I want you to do. I want you to tilt your head back, and just go with the flow. Trust me, I'm not going to let ANYTHING happen to you, drowning or otherwise. Thankfully, you picked the right person in case you panic while you're swimming. I swim like a FISH."

The choice of weather or not she was going any deeper in the water was suddenly thrown out of her hands when one of those hands was grabbed and she found herself chest deep in the lake. Her breath caught and there was no mistaking the fear in her eyes as she moved away from Sarin to get to where the water wasn’t so deep. When the water was just above the small of her back, she stopped and caught her breath finally.

She didn’t look at him, but she had to say it. It would be only worse if she didn’t… She was afraid to die. Unlike Lady Era who she had been part of and who had left her here, Ornell was mortal… mortal… Ornell shook her head and a trimmer ran through her, causing her red wings to fluff up for a moment before smoothing out once more.

He honestly thought she knew how to swim, and if what he said was true she was going to only manage to get them both killed. She was from the elemental planes, but she hadn’t been part water elemental when she came here. There was also nothing in the memory of this body part of her soul was caught in while it’s previous soul had passed on that recalled swimming. In face she only had the reference of having “water wings” which had let her swim as a water elemental, but she didn’t even have real wings, not for flying at least… They were simply a reminder now, a reminder of what she had been and what she had to do. That was more important then this, then not knowing how to swim. She had found a way then to admit she couldn’t swim without hurting her pride.

“I’m sorry Sarin.” She said softly. Her eyes were locked on the water as she focused of her breathing, to make herself calm again. “I’ll be a danger to both of us and I would rather not.” It was then that she looked up at him. “I’m from the Plane of Fire and live in the desert, why do you think I would know how to swim?” She was standing in the water though, so she wasn’t frightened of the water itself.

Sarin smiled softly. "Ornell. You have nothing to worry about. I swim like a fish, and can even fight underwater if need be." He looked down at the water and then back up at her. "You have nothing to worry about. If you'd like to learn, I can teach you very easily," he said quietly.

Mentally he was kicking himself. How on earth could I be so stupid? How could I think she could swim? But then, lots of people in her situation can swim. Maybe there's something else she's not telling me, some other reason she doesn't know how to swim. Not my place to ask, though.

He smiled lightly. "Ornell, the fact that you can't swim isn't anything to be ashamed of. There are several people that I know of that can't swim. For the longest time, I couldn't swim either. You know how I learned to swim?" He smiled. "Somebody taught me. Someone that COULD swim, and DIDN'T have a problem with water. And that's what I'm willing to do for you. And do you know why? Because I l--" He cut off, realizing where his mind was going and stopping it dead with a single thought.

NO! Not yet. It's WAY too soon. "Because I respect you."

As he started to speak she kept her eyes locked on the water. It moved slowly, tiny ripples responding to her very breath. Fire moved like that sometimes, slow and smooth, shifting... she had found her center again, she was calm and sure again. Her head came up at him saying that it was nothing to be ashamed of. She abruptly turned to face him, fire flickering in her eyes. Her eyes narrowed as he faltered at the end of his sentience, but her focus wasn't on that right then. He had insulted her pride. She had been a Goddess and an Avatar! She was a Traveler before she ever had this mortal shell! She had lived among the elemental planes for more lives then she could remember clearly and she could explain at least a thousand of them! She had been part water elemental at least 300 times! Just because she didn't know how to swim in this mortal body didn't mean she was ashamed!

"I am not ashamed that I can't swim!" She snapped at him as she walked back toward him. "There is a big difference between swimming when you are born to water and are made to swim and swimming with a body as ill suited as this one is to water! So I don't know how non-water creatures swim? What is there to be ashamed of?" Instead of calling on fire to vent, she slapped the water with both hands, sending a good-sized splash of water aimed right at Sarin's face. It was a very satisfying splash and she was now deep enough in the water that it was gently lapping against the base of her wings. It had been stirred by her actions and it was a strange feeling. A shiver ran up her spine.

Sarin froze for a moment, and promptly got splashed in the face by a wave. He spluttered for a moment, and then it registered that by accidentally insulting her, he had drawn her deeper into the water. Smiling inwardly, he backed further into the water, all the while keeping a straight face. "Well, I can understand if you are upset about the fact that I seem to have put my finger on the very problem that you have with swimming, but if that is in fact the problem, maybe you need to overcome that and learn how to swim."

He grinned outwardly. "You may have been a water elemental at some point, but I'll put it very simply: That means swimming should be instinctive, even if that WAS a former life. That's the sort of thing you NEVER forget to do, no matter HOW long you go without doing so." Here he was becoming a bit vehement in his words, but he was GOING to get her swimming, and was willing to play his entire hand -- well, almost. He wasn't sure about the last card, because he wasn't sure if it was just a momentary thing, or if it was in fact real, what he was thinking.

"I may be mistaken, but something you need to understand, Ornell, is that I'm not the only one that will think that if you continue like this. Others will think the same thing, and they will not be so kind about it. Some will be downright cruel to you. Trust me, I know. That's part of how I learned to swim. I got tossed off a boat in the deepest part of a lake, and told to swim to shore. Be glad I didn't do that."

Ornell was shocked by what he said and took a moment to organize her thoughts before saying a thing. She didn’t like what he said at all, but it didn’t manage to make her madder. It did quite the opposite actually. The fire faded from her eyes before she spoke. “I used to be immortal, not just an elemental.” She said softly, her tone switching from upset to hurt. “Now, if something happens, I don’t get another chance.” She seemed sad then and silence filled the space between them, along with the water. She felt stupid for saying that then. Sarin only had one chance after all, as did most of the creatures on this plane. So, if they can take the risks, so could she.

“If someone threw me off a boat I would boil the water away and hope that I get the boat on fire too. Perhaps I’ll throw them in a fire then and ask them why they can’t stay in there for a while. There’s no difference and seems fair to me.” She muttered to herself and crossed her arms.

Then she looked over at Sarin. After a slight pause she uncrossed her arms and locked her eyes on his. Her tone became very serious. “Well, if you’re going to teach me how to swim we might as well get started. What’s first?”

He grinned. "Out of the water. First things first. I found this out the hard way. If you don't stretch before swimming, you'll cramp up, and THEN you'll be in SERIOUS trouble," he said, walking slowly by her, his trousers clinging damply to his legs as he came completely out of the water. Looking down at them, he sighed, and shook his head. "No sense drying them right now. They're just going to get wet again in a few minutes."

With that, he settled to the ground, wet pants and all, and began stretching, from putting the bottoms of his feet together and pushing down on his knees, to stretching his legs all the way out and touching his fingers to his toes. He knew what he was doing, and he knew that if she panicked, well... he would need to be fully limber in order to get to her in time. Not that he was going to be more than five feet from her once he started teaching her.

"After you stretch, the next thing you're going to learn is how to tread water. The simplest and easiest part of being in water, if you ask me. All it takes is steady gentle downward kicks of your feet if you just walk into the deeper water. Not really all that hard, but it takes time to get it right."

He looked over at her, still stretching as he did. "The number one thing you need to remember is not to panic. I'm going to be right there with you, so if you do start to sink, I'll pull you back up," he said.

Ornell was a little confused as to why someone needed to stretch first, but didn't object. Stretching was something she did every morning after all. She was a martial artist. It wouldn't hurt to do so again though. It wasn’t morning anymore. She followed him to shore and saw him going ahead with his stretches still being wet. She decided that she really needed to get him higher in the ranks so he didn’t have to do that. They would work on that later.

Ornell closed her eyes to focus a moment and when she opened her eyes there was fire in her eyes for a moment before heat swirled around her and almost instantly dried her clothing, hair and wings. She took a moment to grab one of the metal hair sticks she had. With a quick and familiar motion she twisted her hair and deftly pinned it out of the way.

Then she went ahead and joined him in stretching. That was something she did know how to do and was comfortable with. If that was part of things then perhaps learning to swim won’t be s bad. Besides, one always felt so much better after stretching and she could use that time to easy her apprehension about learning how to swim.

Sarin rolled his neck, rewarded with a crackle of bones shifting. He stood, and then shook his head, a hand going to his forehead. "What the...." he murmured, just before he crumpled, twitching and jerking, to the ground.

The twitching seemed to open an old wound, a wound that looked like it had been caused by a jagged blade. But it looked old, fairly old at least, which meant that the fiery red color shouldn't have still been around the break. But it was, and it looked almost as though his very skin around the wound was on fire.

His eyes were squinted shut tightly, and his jaw was clenched tightly. His fists were curling and uncurling, and he was rapidly starting to shake and twitch harder. This went on for about five minutes, until the twitching and shaking stopped.

Once it did, his breathing seemed to do the same, but he was still breathing, albeit very shallow breaths. His jaw unclenched, and his body went completely limp, almost as if he had been de-boned completely in a single instant. His eyelids flickered slightly, and the slipped back closed, though not quite so tightly as they had been before.

What he didn’t realize was that an injury he had sustained when the Temple had been lost had been inflicted with a poisoned blade, and the poison was now taking effect.

When he seemed ready to go she stood up too. She was shocked to see what happened next. She couldn't identify what was wrong at first and she went down on her knees next to him. That was when Ornell saw the injury on his side. It didn't look like it had been a bad injury before, but the motion and what had to be a contamination of some sort was making it look inflamed. She placed both her hands on his chest, trying to make him still enough so see. It wasn't working too well though because his entire body was twitching in protest to what ever it was.

The ex avatar turned her attention to his face then. She needed some hint... something that she could see... "Sarin? Can you hear me?" She asked. Then, he went limp and she took the opportunity to get a good look at the injury. Meanwhile her mind was racing. What to do? First thing first, a cure. A good healing would be best, but he had gained a little resistance to fire and it would work better.

Ornell sat back on her heels, her knees set carefully away from the wound and she placed her hands on his chest. She could feel him breathing still. He was still warm. He wasn't dead yet and she wasn't about to let him die. She might still have to heal him still though...

She closed her eyes and called on a pure magical fire. She had never tried to cast it on another and it took a bit more focus and effort to do so. White flames engulfed his entire body, burning off any poison or disease he may have. Bracing herself for the effort needed to do two spells so quickly in a row, she quickly shifted to a normal healing spell to heal any damage caused by the cleansing fire. It would have hurt him, but it was better then loosing one of her Burning Fist. If only he was better trained, then she wouldn't have to be healing him from fire damage now. Ornell kept her hands in place as the healing magic went to work. Ornell decided she needed to learn a more powerful healing spell for things like this. Especially if she was to get the Temple back.

His eyes snapped open the minute the heal spell went off, and he inhaled sharply, sitting abruptly upright. There was a faint green tinge to his eyes that slowly faded away as he did so, and he shivered. "Wha.... what happened?" he asked, closing his eyes for a moment, dulling the pain by rerouting some of the pain receptors in his body elsewhere. The last thing he remembered was feeling weak and dizzy when he stood after stretching.

He tested his limbs, and winced slightly. He felt like he'd just been through a furnace, and he could swear his hair was a bit shorter than he remembered. But that didn't really matter to him. What mattered was that he had a feeling that he had just come very, VERY close to dying, and she had done something to save his life, whatever it had been. He looked at her differently now, more in the manner of friends, than of a student or follower.

He started to move, she felt the muscles tense before he did and she sat up. He looked all right but she felt a bit drained from doing two spells in a row so quickly. It was something she didn't like to do. She kept the healing magic going, as she didn't need to do any more then think about it to maintain that one. She would head over to the Academy of Magic perhaps, but she should send a letter ahead first. Ace might be able to help her with taking back the Temple and if what she thought was wrong was, she would need more information.

She heard the hesitation in his voice, the uncertainty. Her magic was closing the wound again though. Should she tell him what she suspected or should she find out for sure? Certainty was always a good thing though. Ornall reached out to touch the newly healed cut that had opened on his side and that had been much redder just moments before. When her fingers touched the now mended flesh she let go of her healing spell. No need to drain herself after all. She wasn't as strong as she had been.

"Sarin, what caused this injury? How did you get it?" She asked instead of answering his question right away. His answer would determine if her suspicions were correct or not. Then she would tell him.

Sarin shook his head. "I suppose it's better you get the story from me than someone else." He bowed his head for a moment, and then looked into her eyes. "I'm sure you already know that Lady Era is gone. She's given up her divinity. You probably knew the instant she had done so.

"Well, you wouldn't be the only one that figured it out right away. The Smith did too. And when he realized you weren't in the Temple, he decided he wanted it for himself. He called devils and some... magma creature... through the portal to the Plane of Fire down in the temple's bowels, and then had them attack the Fist members.

"One of them managed to figure out what was going on, and came to warn the rest of us. But he was wounded on the way up, and couldn't help us fight. So they told me to get him out of the Temple so they didn't kill him. I think the reason they did it, was because they were worried I wouldn't be able to do much good."

He sighed, and shook his head. "Well, they were right. On my way back in to help out as much as I could, one of the devils got the drop on me, and caught me with his blade. Apparently, there was something wrong with the blade, but... I'm not sure."

"Actually we had been planning Era's parting for the better part of the month. If we had thought of him doing this, I would have been there... However, that is not something I can do anything about now. I have other things to do first. I don't even know how many were lost... or will be like you nearly were." Her tone was a soft whisper, and the unspoken revenge was slowly burning like embers deep inside her. The price would be paid, in full, for this. She stood abruptly and looked out across the lake. Her fists clenched tightly. She needed to plan first though... rushing in now would be pure foolishness. Besides, the Smith may not know she was still around with Era gone.

"It was a poison or some type of disease or what I did wouldn't have worked and I wouldn't be talking to you." Her wings seemed to twitch slightly then and her hands instantly relaxed. She looked over at him and smiled slightly, though it didn't reach her eyes. She offered a hand to help him up. "So how do you feel now? Still up for a swim or should we try at a later time?" In truth, she didn't mind using this as an excuse to put off learning to swim. Perhaps they could go and find that elven city nestled somewhere about here instead.

If he still wanted to swim? Well, her pride wouldn't let her refuse him. She was going to have to let him choose and only when he decided to end her swimming lesson would she agree with him. If she gave him a little push now to end it before it started though... there was nothing wrong with that. Not after what had just happened…