Chapter Five
Parrea
With the death of their leader, the noobs backed off, uncertain. I could hardly believe that I was going to live. I walked out of the small ditch I had created during the fight, and looked around me. The druid's village of Taverly and Nora T. Hagg's house stood out brightly in the waning light. The noobs had torched every flammable structure nearby.
"Where to go now?" Was my next thought. I continued to move away from the blood-filled basin and the lifeless corpses around me, exhaustion and the sickening stench of sticky blood clouding my mind and preventing me from thinking straight.
"Zanathir!" The voice that called my name came from above, from the mountainside. I looked up. The ranger, Parrea, was standing their, and she was holding a coil of rope. She threw it down towards me.
"Can you climb?" She called. In my present state, I wasn't sure. But I tried anyway. I slung my whip over my back, gripped the rope, and climbed upwards. My rune-plated feet walked up the vertical slope as I steadying myself on the rope. I could feel the amour dragging down on me. Climbing, even moving in such an enormous weight was torture to my already weakened body.
I reached the top, sweating and shaking from this last effort, despite that it was cold enough to hold the snow beneath my feet there. I fell onto the ground, and pulled my rune helmet off so I could breathe easier. Beside me, I could hear the rope snaking up the side of the mountain. I had rested only for about a minute before Parrea said, "We have to get off this mountain before nightfall." I groaned, and rolled over to look at the sun. What sun? It was basically nightfall already. But I could see the sense in her words. Overheated as I was now, the chilling cold from the mountain would soon engulf us.
I rose, and waited for Parrea to draw up the rope. She was wearing black dragonhide amour, the darkness of it highlighting her pale face, arms and hair. Over her back was a full quiver of rune-tipped arrows and a magic longbow. In her belt was a dragon dagger. In the growing darkness, she seemed to blend in. Pale skin and blonde hair mingling with the snowy landscape; her black garment could be easily mistaken for a boulder had she kept still.
She coiled the rope, and slung it round her neck and under her right arm. "Let's go" she said. Um...Go where? I thought. But I was too tired to talk, to do any more than stumble through the snow after her. And there was something about her, an aura of trust or something totally opposite as what Kysin had. I followed her down the mountain.
I don't know how we got over the mountain without being attacked by wolves or ice creatures, but we did. Half-falling down the last slope in the dark, we arrived at the bottom of the slopes, on the west side of White Wolf Mountain. Parrea rested for only about five minutes, then rose. I was so tired I couldn't imitate her movement. My amour is so heavy, I can't go much further... stop here...
As if reading my thoughts, Parrea replied to them, "Not far. We're making for Camelot. Come on. You can sleep there well enough." She offered me her hand, helping me up. I took it and she pulled me upright. She was strong, especially since she'd been slogging over mountains same as I had. She turned, and began walking west. With my eyes on the ground, in an effort to pick out rocks and other such obstacles I followed her west.