"It should be," he says, "So long as you stay over the road. There are monsters in places that don't get patrols - animals and other creatures with magic." 

"Do you think I could fight one alone?"

"It depends greatly on the creature in question. There are a great variety, we have had only a few centuries of near constant warfare to attempt to document them, and not many have been enthusiastic to try. There are some partial bestiaries in Sanctuary, and many people know the weaknesses and territory of the local ones, but no comprehensive study has ever been completed, even just of the ones native to Cialin.

"I suspect any who came within a days travel by foot of the road would be simple enough for you to deal with, however, in that form, and with that power." 

"Huh... we have monsters, but they don't sound nothing like your variety."

"Mm, 's one of the reasons we haven't explored the oceans very extensively," he murmurs, "There 're some truly big ones out there." 

His words are slurring a bit. He's very tired. 

"Hey, stay with me just a little bit more?"

He blinks, hard, "Mm, right," he rubs at his face, "No falling asleep," he sighs. He leans forward from his place against the wrecked couch, wrapping an arm around his bent knee to keep him there. Hopefully being more upright will help him stay awake. 

"...Sanctuary's different, from the rest of the world. Better." He says, searching for another topic to keep himself awake. 

"Better how?"

"...Nicer," he says, "No one's ever hungry. Ev'ryone gets money from the treasury ev'ry day. No one dies because they can't pay for healing. Anyone can learn at the Academy. No one cares who you love." He hums, "Most ev'ry way, they're better than ev'rywhere else." 

"Sounds lovely. Is the runestone draining you? I could... try to teach you a song without it?"

"Perhaps a little," he admits reluctantly. He fiddles with it, turning it between his fingers. "Here, should take it away from me," he adds, holding it out, "I have - bad impulse control, I hear." He laughs a little, remembering when that was true. 

"...I'd love a song," he adds before it's taken away. 

"Alright." He gives an encouraging smile and takes the runestone. He guides him through some a song. Hard to tell the theme, though it's relatively upbeat and while there is a lot of repetition, there is a change in pattern that means he needs to keep enganged.

He pays attention, humming along to figure out the tune, and carefully forming the words. If he remembers it, he should teach Ilek, or ask Zephyrinus to if he does not. 

After a while of this, someone comes back up the stairs. Another of his elites. Jaim pauses in his singing when he notices her, nodding when she offers to float him out to the field hospital. 

"Fort clear," he tells Zephyrinus, two of the words he'd taught the other the night before.

He nods and follows.

The fort is still a mess, but the bodies and captives have been cleared from the grounds, at least. The building holding the cells is still standing, explaining where the latter have gone. The former are laid out in a training field on the other side of a row of slightly charred trees from the field hospital. 

Tents have been set up in and around that field, large ones for the healers overseeing injured soldiers, smaller ones for the lightly wounded or uninjured to share. The soldier carrying Jaim takes him to one of the latter, a bit larger than most of the others. 

Ilek is sleeping inside. Jaim slumps upon seeing him, some tension he didn't even notice releasing its grip. The soldier sets him, seated, on one of the other cots. 

She then turns to Zephyrinus, gesturing at the third bed in the tent. Each has a curtain partition, currently tied up against the tent wall, which they can let down for privacy from the rest of the tent. The space in between them contains some log stools and a small table.

Jaim chuckles, seeing that, "Roughing it, are we?" He asks. 

The soldier smiles, tired, "Yes, sir." 

He hums, fighting slowly with the buckle on his left bracer, "I wonder if my teapot survived." 

"I can get you some tea, sir." 

"No, don't bother. I'll be asleep soon enough." 

He watches this carefully, only recognizing a few words. He sits on the third bed and takes the opportunity to grab for a new power. This form still remains not great for teleportation or communication, but maybe he will be lucky.

Thr soldier leaves. Jaim finally gets the bracer off, beginning on the unwrapping of the length of cloth covering his lower arm. He glances up at Zephyrinus and smiles, then glances down at the area around him. 

He holds up the bracer, "Bracer?" He offers. He's still tired, but he wants out of the outer layer of his clothes, and he might as well give the man more vocabulary. 

"Bracer." Zephyrinus repeats taking the object. Then he says a word, which is presumably the word for bracer in his language.

Jaim repeats it back, then pulls the wrap the rest of the way off - his arm is noticeably paler than his face. 

"Arm wrap," he says, and lifts his leg, tapping the one around his calves, "Leg wrap." He holds out an arm, "Arm." 

Hopefully that gets across properly. This isn't really the most traditional way of language teaching. 

He begins pulling off his boots, while his leg is up to remind him. 

Zephyrinus repeats. Pronouncing things carefully.

And so continues the clothes and body based vocabulary lesson. At some point he starts making simple sentances, dropping things on the cot and giving him items and taking them and so on. 'I drop', 'I give', 'you give', 'I take', 'I move', and so on. As well as getting across what tenses he can - 'I am taking the bracer', 'I will drop the boot', 'I gave you the arm wrap'.

The amount of language one can learn using the things readily available in a tent post-invasion is limited, though, especially when the one doing the teaching is a little slow due to exhaustion. Eventually he gets down to his pants and a thin shirt, and is just about ready to drop off.

"I'm going to sleep," he says, concluding the lesson. "Good night, Zephyrinus," he adds. 

"Sleep well," he says.

After a minute, he decides to ask if there is any way he can help around.

Well, given his impressive Ice work during the battle, does he think he could patch some of the holes in the outer walls temporarily? 

Perfect! He gets to it then.

Well, that's a relief. It would take a great deal of mana to patch those.

There are some smaller holes, on the left side of the gate, partially patched by some soldiers at loose ends. They haven't even touched the big one to the right of it, though, just set up some temporary barricades inside the fort to block the twenty meter hole. There's no rubble around that one - it looks like something vaporised the entire section of the wall, the edges appearing burnt black.