[Valan Quinn]

Valan, still groggy, and quite grumpy, rolled his eyes at Elmaryia. “I can’t believe even in a situation like this, you can find the time to act that way.” He then looked away and bit his lip in embarrassment. ”How did she know?”

Haphazardly following his sister through the corridor, Valan listened attentively to the growing panic that was occurring outside the building’s walls. What could have caused all this? ”What do I pay taxes for, anyways?” Valan still gripped his rapier tightly in his hand as he listened furthermore to Elmaryia’s complaints. “Dull? In that case you’ve never seen dull. It’s much worse than this…”

Valan hoped to breathe a sigh a relief when he exited the cramped building, but all he could breathe was smoke. “Ack, Elma, we should get out of… Elma?” he looked around frantically for his sister until he saw that she had run over to a pair of guards. He arrived just in time to hear her say, “What can we do to help?”

“Help? What are you talking about? We need to help ourselves! The city is on fire, for Ioanness’ sake!”

"If you are willing to help you and your friend there can pick up a shovel and join the group over there building a firewall. And what ever you do at all cost do not use water on the fire.", the guard said with authority.

“Oh, no, don’t encourage her! Ugh…” he glanced at Elmaryia, strapped his rapier to his waist,and sighed. “Alright…” he said reluctantly, slowly starting to walk toward the firewall. “Come on, already.”