C14

It was the young woman who spoke up at this point, her tone filled with sympathy as she gazed down upon this man who had survived through all of this tragedy. "We were sent to find you because the king ordered us to do so immediately upon learning of your plight. He said that there would be no exceptions granted to any member of our kingdom if they refused to obey him and join in searching for a lone survivor in need of assistance. And so we gathered together all of the available resources needed to travel to this place and bring you back safely to our castle where you would surely receive better medical care than you might have received back at your own village."

"I appreciate the gesture," the man called Shelter replied with a wan smile, "but I hardly think that I require any more 'assistance' than this. After all, if it hadn't been for these brave warriors traveling here to rescue me from the ruins of my own ruined town, I might not have remained in any position whatsoever to survive past today."

The young woman frowned softly for a moment in response to the man's words, and then she turned to glare over to one of her companions who stepped closer to him and raised a finger to poke him sharply in the shoulder. "Why should we bother helping him if he doesn't want to admit that he needs saving from the very beginning? You know perfectly well that everyone knows better than to argue with the King when he issues an order like this one, and everyone involved in this expedition obeyed his orders without question. This is supposed to be some kind of honor among royalty, for crying out loud. Don't make me regret following his instructions all those months ago now that we've finally arrived here to fulfill them!"

Her companion shrugged lightly, and he spoke with a calm tone as though none of this mattered to him at all. "And don't expect to win me over just because you're pretty enough. There are plenty of princesses in my homeland who would give their right arms to meet the King himself. Why should I put any stock into someone like this old man whose face looks so twisted up in pain whenever he turns it toward any one of us?"

The older woman named Kalee scowled as she stared at them both from across the distance between herself and the two younger ones. She knew full well how difficult it must have been for them to travel such vast distances through these lands alone while carrying these burdens upon their shoulders. And yet neither of these two seemed to notice how tired they had been looking during their long journey through the wilderness, nor how worn out they appeared from their ordeal in general as they traveled alongside each other. And so there was little excuse for either of these two young men to speak to them in this manner. They'd made it through their trial by fire unscathed as well, after all, and they certainly hadn't required anyone to come along and drag them from their beds in the middle of the night before they'd ever been able to wake themselves up again from whatever nightmares or hallucinations had possessed them during the night.

"Well then, since there isn't any room for discussion on this matter, let's get moving at once so that we can reach your destination as quickly as possible."

She turned around towards the others who stood waiting patiently beside her, and she waved her hands slightly in the air so that she could signal her friends that they were ready to start walking onward towards Shelter's location as soon as everyone was willing to follow suit. But even after a couple of seconds passed, these others simply glared at these two young men in frustration, so one of them stepped forward so that he could address these men directly.

"If you really want to walk away from us rather than accept our aid, fine! Then you'll probably die somewhere along the road ahead anyway."

The man known as Rolgar snorted loudly in response.

"Oh, please. Are you serious? Do you honestly believe that these two idiots actually plan on leaving us behind and then dying on the way back home? What does that make either of us, huh?"

But this was only the second time that he had spoken throughout the entirety of their journey. And his words sounded somewhat hollow to his friend as well. The young woman named Kalee merely sighed heavily at the sight before her as she shook her head and turned to stare ahead of herself silently. And she could see how weary the faces of both of these young men looked, despite the fact that they both continued to insist upon arguing with one another about something irrelevant amidst their own exhaustion. She felt sorry for them in a way. But there wasn't much she could say to ease the tensions surrounding this issue amongst them. Her own companion was far too stubborn for her own liking as it was. But she could at least offer her apologies to these men as they moved onwards towards the village where they were expected to deliver Shelter to the king. If she couldn't convince these two to work together with one another, then perhaps she could at least ensure that they weren't going to be forced to watch one or the other of them die along the way. At any rate, there wasn't a single thing she could do about Rolgar's personality problem at the moment beyond offering up her own silent prayers for his safety. The man who wore the black leather armor was far too reckless for anyone's comfort, but at the same time he seemed to possess a certain amount of courage in his heart as well that she hadn't seen often amongst his kind. That was enough for her to consider him to be quite a different sort of person than most of his kin that she had ever met before.

"I'm not saying that I don't appreciate the fact that we have finally arrived here, Kalee," he added as he glanced back over his shoulder to stare at the woman with wide blue eyes before he spoke again, "but I wish that you would allow me to keep a closer eye on things here until we're sure that we aren't followed by anyone. I don't trust any of these people, and I wouldn't blame you for thinking the same given the circumstances. These people seem almost eager to kill us all in order to prevent us from doing anything against their king's wishes, and we both know what happens to people who are killed by the kingsmen without reason or cause. It seems clear enough to me that we shouldn't be trusting anyone here in this village in any case."

He glanced back at the village again, and his expression grew dark for a moment as he studied the village itself. His brows drew together tightly, and he muttered angrily to himself as the rest of them waited quietly for him to continue speaking for a moment. Then, as though nothing had happened, he turned back around towards them to speak to the young woman.

"So, how do we get inside of this village? We need to find the one place where we can set up an ambush in order to wait for the enemy to arrive. I doubt the locals will give us access to any of the buildings, so I suppose it makes sense for us to try and take out as many enemies as we possibly can outside in the open field near to this town. And once they're all dead, we'll use our magic spells to turn off any of the lights within the village which we may be able to do in secret without drawing attention from anyone. Once everything has fallen quiet, then we can sneak our way into one of these houses to retrieve our weapons and prepare ourselves for battle."

His tone was stern at first, but he managed to lighten up considerably afterwards. In a strange way, he reminded her of someone who she had known briefly while growing up among humans.

***

A dragon roared loudly behind him, causing the earth beneath his feet to tremble as his roar echoed down from above towards him. The wind whistled past him as it blew strongly toward him from behind him, making his wings flutter wildly as he struggled to remain aloft upon the winds. For the last several hours, the young man had been struggling to maintain control over his flight as the storm clouds continued to churn furiously all around him. They swirled endlessly as though they had formed their own separate atmosphere completely apart from the clouds that still floated above the ground below him. And although the winds had died down momentarily when he had reached this particular location where the forested mountainside began, they had grown strong once more all over again as soon as he had begun to fly upward toward the heavens above him instead of continuing straight out over the horizon as he had originally intended to do.

But the young man ignored all of the warning signs that had suddenly sprung forth all around him as he continued to struggle against the winds trying desperately to drive him down onto the rocks that lay hidden underneath all of the clouds. He flew higher up into the sky, and he strained his ears in hopes that he might hear the faint sound of his companions calling back to him from nearby. But the roar of a distant thunderstorm prevented him from hearing them clearly, and so the young man pressed on ahead regardless.

He knew full well how dangerous it might have been for them to leave him behind in that small clearing back at the edge of the forest, but his own pride had gotten the best of him at the moment, and it hadn't been easy for his comrades to force him into accepting their help. Even after his friends had flown past him and vanished from view, the young man had remained sitting on top of the rock for a long time, and he had stared up at the stars for far longer than usual without uttering so much as one word about his situation or why it had become necessary for them to rescue him from the trees before he was forced to accept their assistance in escaping back to the safety of the skies once again.

But eventually, even the strength that he had gained from drinking water directly from the stream had failed to sustain him any further, and so he had accepted his fate as his friends carried him away back to the safety of the sky once again. The young man had spent much of this journey alone thus far, having traveled through these lands with no one else present besides his two closest companions. The young woman who had accompanied them during the day had left the group that evening in search of food along with her companion, and the two remaining men had continued onward towards Shelter's location without even pausing to glance back at the place where they had just rescued their friend from the clutches of the trees. And now, as he rose high up into the air above him, the young man wondered whether they would ever return to save him if the worst came to pass as they searched for shelter inside of this village located somewhere beyond the range of his vision.

The wind whipped violently at his clothes as it tugged upon them, but it also caused the thin material to flap rapidly overhead as well as it threatened to rip itself free from its bonds altogether. And it caused his skin to grow tautly stretched across his body as well as it sent sharp shivers of pain running down each of his arms, legs, chest, back, and tail. The cold night air buffeted his body from both sides, and it battered his flesh with icy gusts as well as it attempted to freeze him solid right where he was standing. His entire body throbbed with pain in ways that he didn't understand, and yet this was only the second time since his arrival here amongst these lands that he had dared to step foot upon the ground below.

And there wasn't a single thing that he could do about it, either. This land belonged to this man whom they sought refuge from. A king, no less. And although the three of them had escaped from him back at the edge of the woods near the clearing, this king had obviously decided to pursue their trail after discovering that they were no longer following him on their own. It was obvious enough when they discovered the tracks leading back down toward the valley floor below them after spending several days searching for shelters amongst the mountains and valleys themselves. So then, the three of them had returned back to this clearing in order to wait for the king to catch up to them once more and to attempt to escape again before the king caught up to them all over again.

But when their friend had stumbled upon their hiding place at the edge of the trees at dusk the next day, none of their plans had worked out quite the way they had expected. Their friend had found them first, and the king's army had already arrived on the scene as well. And so then, their plan had come crashing down around them at the same time as their own bodies did as they all struggled against one another in a desperate bid to survive. The young man remembered how his bones ached terribly as he had fought for his life alongside his own two companions, but at least they'd managed to hold on together long enough for a few moments until the sun came up once again and revealed how close they actually stood to death's doorstep without a single breath of fresh air to breathe for any of them.

Then, the young man's two companions had managed to drag him away from danger once again before anyone could discover what had happened to him. But their friend had collapsed onto the ground beside him without warning as the trio made for their new hiding spot deeper within the forest at the base of a mountain. Now, they were forced to make for Shelter as quickly as possible, or else the king would surely find a way to track them down there as well and finish what he had started here at the edge of the forest.

"We should have kept going north, Durendal," the young man muttered angrily under his breath, "we should never have stopped for anyone here in the middle of nowhere."

Their friend had collapsed onto the ground with blood gushing from the corner of his mouth, and the young man had felt terrible guilt as he stared down at him. He had lost a lot of blood, too, and the young man's heart had pounded wildly inside of his chest as he tried desperately to keep from panicking despite the fact that he had seen a similar sight before during their journey amongst humans.

He couldn't stop thinking about what happened to his father, however. The young man's father had been murdered by King Grendel himself in front of the entire village back home, and everyone in the village had gathered around the site where it had all gone down as well. Everyone except for his mother. She was supposed to be there with them all in order to help them cope with the loss, but she had stayed back in order to mourn her husband by herself in private. Her grief stricken face filled the minds of every member of the village when they thought back upon that horrible moment in time. It was a moment of terror such as no other that any of them could recall ever happening before, and so they had watched in horror as the king brutally killed off their friend by swinging him around like a puppet with a string in order to get him to follow him into the village proper as soon as possible. And even though the king hadn't killed him outright, the image still haunted them all. And it made them fear what might happen next if they allowed themselves to be taken prisoner by someone in such a position of authority who had complete power over them.

They feared King Grendel almost more than anything else, and so they had run for their lives without hesitation. No matter how painful it might be, they needed to flee from the very sight of him for the sake of all of those who loved them all dearly back at the village. So then, it was no surprise to the young man how easily he and his two closest friends had agreed to let their third companion accompany them into hiding rather than forcing the young woman to stay behind. After all, this young woman had nothing whatsoever to do with their decision to leave, and so she had no choice but to go wherever the three of them went.

The young man shook his head slightly in disbelief over this revelation, and his gaze shifted upward towards the heavens once more. He wanted to look down at the ground again, but he didn't dare try because he suspected that he wouldn't want to see whatever he might encounter down below anymore. And yet, he still hoped against hope that perhaps they might stumble across some sort of sign telling them which direction to take next while they continued to trek forward through these dark woods as they headed southward.

"I don't understand what I'm doing wrong here," the young man whispered softly as he gazed up at the night sky again, "why can't we seem to locate our way back home?"