Silver swore.
Internally, of course.
She wouldn't do something as unladylike as that out loud.
Her parents had gotten rid of that habit early on.
"Sil, we need to find her!" Raelynn stared at her, an annoying sort of determination written across her face.
"Idiot!" she hissed... because the infuriating blonde really was. "We can't see anything!" The mist was impossibly thick, and very, very unnatural. It set her nerves on edge. Silver didn't like that one bit. "It could be a shallow little drop—"
"That's what I'm—"
"Don't interrupt!" Silver snarled, fingers twitching. She really wanted to strangle her obnoxious teammate. Was it too much to ask her to stand still and shut up for five minutes? Apparently so, but Silver was incredibly well versed in the art of staring people down. "It could be a shallow little drop, or a gigantic ravine for all we know!"
"But—"
"We are not jumping off a cliff!" she muttered, glaring at her partner. "So help me, if you ask me one more time, I will happily throw you off myself..."
"It might not be a cliff though," Raelynn said, evidently ignoring her irate expression.
"Do you really want to chance it?"
"But—"
Green lightning arced towards them, and she barely reacted in time, all but tackling her annoying imbecile of a companion to the ground.
"Would the pair of you stop arguing like an old married couple and hurry up and get your idiotic backsides further up the damn mountain?" Oz's voice roared from somewhere behind them, the sound guttural and furious as Silver slowly began shuffling away from the sounds of battle behind them.
"Getting distracted?"
"Don't let him get to you Ozzy!" Raelynn yelled.
Silver resisted the urge to facepalm.
She was obnoxious, annoying and downright stupid to a fault.
And Silver was in charge of her.
"You are so getting punched once he's finished," she muttered, grabbing the blonde by the arm, yanking her to her feet. They needed to move – and quickly. It wouldn't do for them to get caught up in their instructor's fight.
Something told her it would be in a whole other league to anything she'd seen before.
But he'd be fine... wouldn't he?
Silver bit her lip. It wasn't like she cared about him, but it'd be annoying if she had to get a new instructor so early on in the game. Plus he did seem fairly capable... and he didn't seem to care about her family name.
"Listen to me, peasant," she whispered, walking as fast as she dared in the thick swirling mist, kicking her feet to the thick rock, carefully listening to the sounds of stones skittering across the path in front of her. "You are going to keep your voice down – a lot. It'll only draw the fight towards us, OK?"
"Y—"
Her elbow slammed into Raelynn's gut. "Just nod, damned blondie."
Raelynn nodded.
"Sora could be OK for all we know. Ran could've gotten to her, or she could've hit a ledge just a bit further down and simply be knocked out," she said, whistling lowly. "I'll send Ivana, and you send your idiotic dragon down too. They'll be our best chance at finding out what the situation is."
"Ivana!"
"I heard," the familiar quiet lilt of her dragon's voice rang out in her mind. "I'll take the dim-witted one down. We'll come back up once we find her."
"Now, keep quiet, and keep your head in the game. The Necromancer guy might not be the only enemy who's slipped through the Outer City's Defences," she said, freezing as a sharp spike of magic pricked at her senses. Her stomach dropped to her feet.
Of course her words just had to summon the closest enemy to them.
Winds whistled, mist cleared, revealing the end of the narrow track they'd just climbed and a large expanse of flat rock.
It was like a battleground, Silver realised with a sinking heart.
One with an enemy standing in the middle of it.
"Shenlong."
Silver was really beginning to hate that name.
Her cloak hadn't even bothered to talk to her that much, though she could hardly blame it. She wasn't that much of a conversationalist herself.
"What does that have to do with anything?" she asked.
Really, she was getting tired.
First it was Wintermere, and now Shenlong.
Why couldn't anyone just use her own name for once, dammit?
"Silly little Shenlong... you should really learn your history," the man said, black coat fluttering in the winds he'd created. "Maybe then you'd know why you're about to die."