Unconvienant

Heron woke up with a splitting headache. His hands were bound and he was entirely unsure of where he was. Well, other than on a cold stone floor. He twisted around, managing to flip onto his back and take in his surroundings a bit better.

It seemed like a cellar to him. There was a candle, that had been left on a table. A man bent over the same table poring over some document. The man had briefly glanced at Heron when he had moved.

This seemed somewhat bad, but Heron kept control over himself and took a deep calming breath before setting to work getting the ropes off his hands.

It took a bit of work and he had to lift himself off of the floor slightly in order not to be entirely conspicuous, but whoever had tied him had not done the best job and his fingers were agile enough that he did manage to get it off. After that he waited a bit trying to look for a chance to escape.

Unfortunately, the man bending over his documents did not leave, he did not even turn his back. After a few minutes, he instead walked over and squatted beside of Heron.

"So, you are awake?" The man grinned a yellow jagged grin. It was his eyes that really unnerved Heron though. They were pretty much mad. "Wonderful! I have so many experiments I have been wishing to do."

No. Nope. No. Heron was definitely not good with whatever this maniac had planned. So he moved as quickly as possible and headbutted the man. It did make the man reel backwords in surprise but it also made Heron's head rattle and his vision swarm. Despite this, he still staggered up and fled the room. He could hear that the man was close behind and heard him mutter a spell.

The bad thing about this was that the guy was casting magic. Good thing was that he was botching the spell something terrible. That was also bad though, like extremely bad. Botched magic was unpredictable and could do anything or nothing. He hoped for nothing.

And it was not helping that he was still having difficulty seeing straight. Using his head as a ramming weapon had not been his best idea ever.

He managed to find the ladder going up but as he was pulling himself over the top, he felt a tingle in between his shoulder blades as a bolt of wild magic hit him. He stumbled and slipped knocking straight into someone.

Whoever he had just knocked into fell over backwards and they both went down in a tangle of limbs. The startled exclamation of the other person accompanied the fall, as his face landed somewhere soft. Though it took him a second to realize that he had knocked down a woman.

Feeling completely and utterly embarrassed, Heron tried to scramble up, but he was so disoriented and his legs felt completely like jelly from whatever weird magic had just hit him that he ended up replanting into the woman.

Heron was uncomfortable laying on a woman's breast like this, but he was more concerned at the moment that that man was still climbing up. So he tried to take a deep breath, and ignore whatever this magical current running through his body was doing, and stand up again.

"Usually I would be upset about a man pushing me down like this." The voice was familiar and seething, but right now he was actually rather glad to hear it. "But your back is smoking and I am pretty sure you did not mean to…"

Though she was fairly hostile to him, the ranger did want to help him survive… at least for now. Under the circumstances that was the best he was going to get as an ally. He would of course take it.

She suddenly shoved him away and stood up, a sword spinning into her hands in a deliberate arch. The not very good wizard cultist man came to an abrupt stop even as he came off of the ladder.

He turned to run but the girl stabbed him between the shoulders piercing right through him. Heron watched as the man tumbled back down to the basement with very little care about it. His whole body felt like it was on fire.

"Here, come on." As she reached for his hand, she chided him. "What were you thinking running off?"

He grimaced, "…. I was just going out for some air." He did not tell her that because of his health issues he always took an hour walk in the mornings to get some fresh air to improve his body's resistance.

As he took hold of his hand, he felt a jolt go through him and the pain from the magic flared up and then died down. When he saw her wince in pain, he felt alarm go through him.