Chapter 11

Doumeki eased back into his usual mentality following the tragedy of the Knothole Glade mission. He chose his quests with much more caution, and kept track of how often he worked.

He was not eager to descend again to such a sorrowful state.

Thinking of his behavior that night in the cottage brought color to his cheeks. It shamed him that he had allowed the warlock to witness him so beaten, but more than that was how his mouth went dry when he thought of those feather-light kisses, and of the warmth and weight of Watanuki's body in his arms.

Time continued to pass as it had before. Weeks and months bled together as Doumeki was called here and there in the name of the Guild. Five months disappeared in a blink, and the Hero found himself in the snowy northern mountains that the warlock had named as his birthplace.

The quest that took him there was predicted to be an especially long one, and so far that had proven true—Doumeki had left the Guild for Hook Coast three weeks before, from the Coast to the northern lands, and his employers promised a journey to last another four months lay ahead. The commissioners were a ranger group that was traveling to relieve companions in the mountain villages. They detailed horrific accounts of gigantic white balverines, ice trolls, and nameless beasts that roved the mountain ranges and occasionally came to terrorize the sparse populations. Listening to their tales and boasts of valor, the Archer often wondered to himself why such men requested an escort to accompany them along their way, but he never found opportunity to put words to his confusion.

Not to insinuate that he looked for one very hard. It was not often wise to question the one paying the gold in a given transaction.

Going by the map the five men had loaned to him, there were as many small townships dotting valley beneath the mountains; one man per village. They told him, his job was simple: to sleep lightly. The men involved had been making the same journey for decades, and they assured him that the trail was familiar to them all.

Doumeki was distinctly less than fond of the cold, and the brutal northern lands were not much more than icy, biting air, that sometimes blew into their cloth shelters on a sideways wind. He was firmly instructed that to live in the white, winter wilds they traveled through was to stay dry at all costs. This command he heeded to the best of his abilities, though he was confounded in part by it. Stay dry in this devilish place, where water in a form covered the very ground so thoroughly his eyes could not see it? Impossible, as he saw it, but he did as told. The days passed at agonizingly slow rates, but the weeks spend by, and blended in his mind. At each village they came to, one man remained behind as another joined the group.

The stories and tall tales flew, again and again with the arrival of each new ranger, and as steadily they seemed to grow taller. Doumeki could scarcely believe these myths that his companions passed off as truth, and while he was careful not to offend, he made no moves to mask this opinion. The men made a game of attempting to sway his disbelief, and they passed many nights around the fire in such a fashion. One evening a new addition to the group began a local legend, concerning a charismatic witch woman and her apprentice. He explained how the woman was beautiful, tall and pale, with limbs long like a man wouldn't expect to see outside his dreams, and how her apprentice was just as she. But the boy was odd; fierce, aggressive and off-putting where the witch was sensually coy and convivial, and he did not get on with the children of his town. His mother had died in his birth, and his father was believed to have been lost in the violent winds of the white mountains. The witch had appeared one day, and taken him into her home.

"Well, pulled him kicking and screaming, anyway," The storyteller amended while the others laughed raucously in the background.

She trained him in her arts for years, and it was through her subtle efforts that the boy was easily inaugurated into the townspeople's lives. Here the burly man stopped for a dramatic pause, and the burlier men around him chortled, but Doumeki was not aware of them. He was focused intently on every word that came from the man's lips.

The boy of his tale rang hauntingly similar to a certain warlock he held in high esteem.

The ranger continued on, seeing that he had the Hero helplessly hooked. He resettled himself as he spoke, his words accompanied by an air that suggested years had passed in the story.

One morning the witch packed up her boy and some of their things, and told the townspeople that they intended to camp out in the coldest reaches of the mountains. Of course, the people protested, but the witch would not hear their warnings. She scoffed at exaggerated renditions of monster attacks and bloody hunks found in the mornings after, and waved at them has she followed the boy up the mountain trails. They were gone for a long time. Eventually the people gave them up for dead.

Then a morning came when the boy was found, collapsed at the town's well, ragged and worn and carrying only a single pack. He was sick, delirious and dehydrated, and the townspeople refused to listen to his stammered explanations as to the whereabouts and condition of his witch woman teacher. Without her, you see, the townspeople soon began to remember their old intolerance of the boy, and by the time he was well again they had lost all patience. The afternoon his fever broke, he was pushed out from their midst, and was left to his own devices.

Doumeki, still digesting the man's tale, refused to humor the group any longer and was silent for the remainder of the night.

We're getting awfully close to the end of what I've already written...

-Oceans