An indescribable sensation of both warmth and concern flooded through Salim at the time he stood in the square. He wasn't alone, not by a long shot. While there had been very few people when he first arrived, which surely couldn't have been more than a handful of minutes ago, the ashes of the Great Magi Tree were now surrounded with people with more arriving. He swore he'd just looked away for a moment and yet, it had to of been longer with the amount of people crowding the area around him. Tensions were in the air, nearly thick enough to reach out and mold into a disaster.
The man on the ashes was not a good man. That much was easy to determine. Nobody who could preach against the greatness of the Tree, of a pure of heart Magi, could be considered of a positive nature. Even if the man had a point to make, crushing the ashes under his bare feet was not the way to make it. Then again, it did manage to grab the attention of everyone around. Murmurs that he recalled once being furious turned into talk of agreement. The people of this Republic were agreeing with the man who was blatantly disrespecting their precious icon. That wasn't right. There was something off. Salim knew he couldn't be the only one to understand that this was wrong. All these people were crazy. They were absolute morons if they were swayed to an opposing opinion so easily.
"How dare you. How DARE you speak such poison! By what right do you have to call the great tree evil! By what inconceivable dementia do you think to call this tragedy a fortune! Have you no soul, you foul tongued blasphemer!?" The eyes of the crowd turned dangerously from their newest item of interest onto the thing that had interrupted them, a bandaged-up man who spoke in religious terms. Salim regarded him with mild curiosity, sniffing as he turned his head away. At least he wasn't the only one who thought the situation was fucked up. He wondered, vaguely, if the man was a citizen of the Republic of Ilahi, but decided it didn't matter to him one way or another. It wasn't his business. He had other matters to tend to, like...
As if on cue, the girl in his arms gave out a yelp and moved so suddenly that she fell from Salim's arms. He stared at her on the ground, not sure if he should help her back up again or if she would be alright to walk. He didn't think she would be, but he knew from past experiences that some chicks could be seriously defensive about their stupid personal space. Personally, he didn't get it. But whatever. He wasn't going to get his eyes clawed out of his skull for helping an ungrateful stranger. “I survived a bludgeoning, drowning, possible internal bleeding, dying from dehydration or starvation, and wake up to find myself being carried by a man I don’t know. . . .” The girl mumbled to herself. Salim wondered how hard she got hit on her head while she was in the sea. “So, are you the person who saved me, or my Prince Charming?”
An eyebrow raised against tan skin and Salim couldn't help but bark out a laugh despite the situation happening around them. Already, people were shouting and closing in on the man who had stepped up against the redheaded tyrant. Even still, Salim's attention was focused on the less important situation, the girl at his feet. "You can call me whatever you want girl, but I'm no fuckin' Prince Charming." Deciding she wasn't getting anywhere on her own, he lifted her again, ready to go about his way when he realized any path toward the medical building was blocked by angered citizens.
"Come on, we have to get out of here!" Swiveling around to face the one who'd touched his shoulder, Salim frowned at the Nymph from the cargo ship. He wondered, briefly, if she'd been the cause of his very faint paranoia that someone had been following him, but brushed it off. It was another thing that no longer mattered. There was too much going on around them. They needed to get to safety and he needed to get medical attention for the girl in his arms.
He started going through the small space in the crowd, huffing and glaring at a porkish man who bumped into him and had the nerve to call him out for it. "Calm down, what's wrong with you people?" Somehow, that didn't get through as well as he'd hoped and all it really did was earn a sloppily executed fist towards his face. Easily ducking, Salim balanced the girl in his arms and kicked at the guy, holding him back with one foot and getting angrier by the second. "Can you back your fucking gross, grubby hands off me? I'm kind of busy." When that didn't seem to work, he actually kicked the guy with intentions of knocking him away. "Freak."
Just as he cleared the crowd and managed to reach the blanket over the door of the medical building, a voice rang out behind him, somehow loud and clear even over the rising voices of the crowd. There was no doubt that it came from the man with the fiery red hair. "Magi." Who? Salim found himself stopping once again, glancing over his shoulder despite his sense of urgency. It was hard to see, but the man, although having been previously provoked, still stood firmly on the ashes, just slightly above the heads of those in the crowd. The man had his head turned in his direction, but Salim knew those cold, coal eyes weren't looking at him. Who's he calling Magi?
"I know you don't want to believe me," the man went on. He completely ignored the crowd around him and the religious person challenging him, although his hand was up between him and the bandaged person as if to tell him to wait. "You of all people would be the best one to understand what I have to say." Salim rolled his eyes and went inside the medical building, handing the girl off to a medical personnel and explaining what the noise outside was. Even still, the man's voice went on, just a vaguely discernible noise through the blanket. "Magi, listen. You have nothing to base your opinions from. So I issue a challenge."
From inside the building, Salim felt the ground rumble under his feet. Now that he knew the girl was being taken care of, he opted to glance outside, looking in every direction until he saw it. The man on the ashes faced the backside of the city. Following his open arms with his blue-eyed gaze, Salim, as well as the others in the area, could very clearly see a building pulling up from under the Earth. It was raised in the very outskirts of the city, a moderate distance away, a monument of destruction. When the building finished rising, tall and intimidating even from so far away, the ground stopped shaking and the man turned back to whoever he was talking to. Salim's eyes narrowed on the back of that Nymph from earlier. "So there it is." That was all the man said before he walked past the bandaged instigator, knocking shoulders with him on the way.
Salim waved the Nymph inside the medical building and closed the blanket behind them. He didn't say anything to her, instead going up to the girl he'd carried in there. "Are you feeling better?" It was marked with a hint of disinterest, but he thought that if he bothered going through the trouble of bring her there, he might as well ask about her condition. Some of the medics were Magicians, most were not. He had other things on his mind rather than her, however. Bigger things. Better things. I'm going to conquer that dungeon.
Swiveling around almost suddenly, Salim pointed at the Nymph. "You! You're suspicious." He dropped his hand to his side, leaning a bit on the table the other girl had been placed on, which seemed to concern the medics and got him shooed away from leaning on it. "What's your deal?" He had a feeling he already knew, but he decided he would leave it to her to tell him first. If he was right, he could use her. After all, conquering a dungeon alone was impossible.