Ni'Srilan: The Desert: good thing you live in a desert, then!

Kinh is in no rush; he shifts his weight to another foot, shakes his head, lifts his flat, brown eyes to the vibrant reds and oranges of the stallion - if the creature aflame could be called a stallion - and lets out a breath, slowly. There is something not unlike ice in his expression - or, more appropriately, like mud; it's something slow, and placid, and altogether unassuming. Where the flamethrowing, electric Commander is all types of dramatic, Kinh is a humble, modest creature, as simple (and as complex) as the birds that soar across their heads, wingspans long, or the dunes that shift overnight with the tides. He has not fought the way he will soon be asked to fight, but that doesn't mean he won't be good at it. It's obvious, in fact - even more than the thick sheets of muscle that come simply from being male; he is studious, calm, pointed. And there is a hint of some vagrant, wild emotion tucked just beneath the surface, flickering just beneath his calm, dirt-brown eyes; Baraqel will be pleased, when that mercurial spirit spills into the bloodstained battlefields.

"I see that," he replies musingly; it had taken him less than a second to get over his surprise that the fire-shrine had actually spoken. He reaches down, his blackish nose scraping against a thick, muddy knee, ruminating over what he'd just learned. In fact, he couldn't decide what was more interesting: the idea of magic, fluttering wildly through veins and across skin, or an army, a trained batallion of creatures ready to fight and assault and defend.

He affords the exploding rock little more than a turned ear; his attention remains pivoted deeply on Baraqel, crimson-maned and wild-eyed. Kinh is reminded, distantly, of some offended scorpion, and cannot help but smile.

After a moment, he steps forward and sideways, around the Commander, his attention redirected to the smoldering ruins of the desert. Ash brushes the sand like a dusting of alien snow, warmed as if by the sun. "Do you usually make a habit," he wonders, not exactly innocent, his nose still pressed curiously to the blackened rock, "of destroying your home?"