Sara might only be eight, but her class gave her a fair understanding of monsters and beasts. She didn’t say anything but instead squatted down and waited. She didn’t want to come off as threatening, and she could be patient. The woman didn’t even glance back at her.

  That struck Sara as odd since most creatures would at least check. She felt positive the elven woman would have heard her arrival, but she didn’t so much as budge. So Sara waited.

  Her patience began to be tested after about an hour. If not for the influence of her monster friends, Sara would have long since lost it. As it was, she waited. Then it occurred to her to set out a pile of berries as an offering. It never occurred to Sara that she was treating the woman more like a scared animal than a person. She simply did what came naturally to her.

  Finally, after another hour, the woman stood up. Prior to this point she had always been hunched over or lying down. Now with her wounds healed, Sara noticed just how striking she was. She was as beautiful as Sara’s mom—who Sara always considered to be the most beautiful woman in the world, only more so since arriving in Eloria.

  Her skin was far fairer, but it was smooth and free of any wrinkles. The signs of whatever had been done to her didn’t show on her body any longer. Even her hair was shiny like she had just washed it. The effect was almost magical, and Sara immediately found herself drawn to this woman. This was someone that she wanted to know.

  The tattered and torn dress she was wearing along with her bare feet showed that she had not been taken care of in some time but didn’t detract from the overall sense that Sara got. Then the two of them made eye contact, and Sara saw that the scars on the outside might have been healed but were still very much present inside.

  Her eyes were the haunted eyes of an animal that wonders what it has done to cause so much pain to be inflicted upon it. She had seen this when she talked her mom into volunteering at the rescue shelter. They would never tell her the really bad parts, although she had heard whispers about dog-fighting rings.

  In the end, it had never been necessary. She could tell the animals that had been abused by their mannerisms but also, more importantly, by their eyes. Even the neglected animals had a fear in their eyes, a need for approval. But the abused ones had something more. A few turned violent, but most just seemed to have shriveled up and died inside.

  Asta looked at Sara but didn’t say a word before sitting down next to the berries. She picked one up and sniffed at it before popping it into her mouth. The light in her eyes flared for just a second, and a small smile briefly formed on her lips. Those things didn’t last long, but it was still clear that the woman was enjoying the berries, even if she still managed to eat them slowly.

  After a few minutes, Sara came and sat on the opposite side of the pile of berries. The woman showed just the slightest flinch, but Sara didn’t worry. She sat in silence for a bit.

  Eventually, when about half of the berries were gone, Sara reached out and took one for herself. The woman’s eyes followed her hand, but she didn’t move or shrink back. When Sara popped the berry into her mouth, the woman’s shoulders seemed to relax some.

  “Hello, I’m Sara.”

  The woman glanced up at her for some brief eye contact but didn’t make any sounds other than those which occurred as she ate the berries. That was okay. Sara didn’t need a response. It was enough that the woman had clearly understood her words or at least the idea of speech. This wasn’t going to be something that was fixed in a single day.

  Sara decided to explain herself to the woman, even if she didn’t understand everything. It was something she would have done with a pet, so maybe it would work here too. “You are very beautiful. I’m sorry for whatever happened to you, but I will never hurt you. You are safe with me.”

  The woman didn’t give any sign that she understood, but it still seemed to Sara that she was listening. This was probably a lot for her to take in. Sara smiled, trying to seem as unthreatening as possible.

  “I have to go out hunting, but I will try to build a fire in here if you like.” As she spoke, Sara slowly stood up. She had found that slow movements were good with wild animals or injured ones. It was just instinct for her to do the same here.

  She slowly began pulling the branches she had collected for wood. There was nothing like logs, but then again, she didn’t have a tool that would be good for that. Her dagger was enchanted to be extra sharp and wouldn’t dull, but she still didn’t want to try cutting through something that thick. Instead, she had collected some of the dryer branches from the bushes.

  Asta’s eyes went wide when she saw Sara pull the branches out of the spatial bag. Sara almost giggled. It had been shocking for her the first time too. Although the woman recovered pretty quickly from her shock. She seemed to be looking at Sara differently now.

  “Do you want a fire?”

  The woman just stared at Sara without answering.

  “Okay, well you don’t seem too cold.” Sara kicked the ground while looking down before adding, “And I’m not exactly sure how to create a fire.”

  With that statement, she might have gotten a tiny smile, but Sara wasn’t sure. It was hard to say. These things took time. She had to keep reminding herself of that.

  “I think, I’m going to go hunt again, Asta. Is that okay?”

  The woman didn’t give any further indication she understood what was being said.

  “Oops, I almost forgot. I decided to call you Asta. If you have a different name you want me to use, just let me know. Otherwise, when I say, ‘Asta’ I’m talking to you. Understand?”

  There it was. A slight nod of her head. It would have to do for now. Sara didn’t know what else to say, so she simply turned and walked out. Words were just less important to her than they used to be. As Altracia said, “Friend or foe, predator or prey, beings always reveal themselves with their actions, not their words.”

  Sara was determined to be a good friend to Asta and take care of her. It was the right thing to do. It was the Nelson thing to do. So off she flew, looking for more food. This time she decided to scout around a bit more. She reasoned it would be better for her to try and hunt things closer to her level so that she wouldn’t have to work so hard to kill them. She really didn’t like the idea of wasting the life and potential of a creature by killing it and not eating it. Well, other than in self-defense.

  Unbeknownst to her, she was not the only one doing some scouting. Sara had come to realize that the mountain that she had originally assumed was barren actually had a good amount of life on it. Of course, she had only seen a fraction of the life, and now there were many eyes on her. Some of those eyes were merely curious, others were fearful, and still others were hungry.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Reality cannot be gauged by an event’s significance to us. It simply is. Just ask the tree that fell unseen.” —teaching of Archdruid Hidenori to fledgling forest wardens.

  Mountains- Sara Nelson

  Hunting went well this time. Sara saw a number of creatures. She classified them in three ways. There were those she considered prey that she would hunt as needed. The smaller mountain goats and sheep fell into that category as well as some birds and smaller animals.

  Then there were those that she knew she needed to avoid. The bird she saw with a wingspan that nearly blotted out the sun was a strong example of that. There were others like the massive cave bear. She was confident she would be able to avoid it, and so she didn’t fear it. She also didn’t want to fight it if she didn’t have to.

  The third group was the one that left her confused. They were the types of monsters that were more organized. She saw an ogre and at another point a trio of trolls. If they had been goblins, she might have simply descended to speak with them, but her father had told her about those larger monsters. They weren’t as intelligent as people, but they could be destructive for no reason, and that wasn’t something she approved of.

  She managed to avoid all those creatures though and ended up taking down a small mountain ram without much trouble. It was only level 18 but still netted her 324 XP. That wasn’t enough to level again but it was close. She also gained 6 more character points, which was a reminder she would need to figure out what to do with those at some point.

  Sara had planned on being able to speak to her parents and siblings about the best way to use them. She really had no idea, and Dad had stressed more than once, to Mom and Mira especially, that it was important to have a plan for those points so you didn’t just waste them. It was such moments that brought a tear to her eye. She missed her family. She missed the security of having them around. But she couldn’t stop now.

  She had to save Asta. The problem with that was that Sara had no idea how to get Asta out of the mountains on her own. That meant they would need to stay hidden in this cave until her monster friends arrived. Then she’d have to sweet talk Altracia into carrying the woman on her back. The drake would hate the idea, but even she wasn’t immune to the puppy dog eyes Sara had perfected on her father.

  She was in for a surprise when she got back to the cave because there was a fire going. Asta must have started it while Sara was out hunting, but she didn’t have any obvious equipment to do so. Sara just shrugged. She wouldn’t invade the woman’s privacy. The best way to get her to feel comfortable was just to be patient.

  Asta still didn’t speak, but she was far more animated when Sara got back. She immediately grabbed the small ram from Sara and set it on the ground. She was stronger than she looked, but then again, Sara mused, she was 10 years old and stronger than any grown man on Earth. Looks could be deceiving, especially here in Eloria.

  Once she had the carcass, she set it down and then started looking around the cave. It took Sara a minute to realize what Asta was looking for, but she finally figured out it was a sharp rock that she wanted. She must be planning to skin the ram. That was just fine with Sara, who was willing to hunt and kill but didn’t really like the icky part.

  She pulled one of her non-magical daggers from spatial storage. The magical one would have done it faster, but Sara wasn’t going to blindly trust the woman with that. She figured she was tough enough to handle a single surprise attack from a regular dagger but maybe not a magical one, so she wasn’t going to create that opening.

  A part of Sara felt bad about not trusting Asta, but she remembered something Dad used to say quite often,: ‘trust but verify.’ That seemed like an appropriate saying now. Asta didn’t seem to care as she took the dagger handle first as Sara handed it over. She nodded but didn’t otherwise give any signal of her appreciation.

  Sara sat down against the cave wall and watched Asta work. She was clearly skilled. It was the kind of skill that she had seen people display when they made a complicated task seem easy. Asta skinned and cleaned the animal without any wasted motion. Her hands moved faster than Sara had anticipated, and if she had any difficulty cutting, she never displayed it.

  Instinctively, Sara raised her assessment of Asta’s threat level. She watched as Asta disposed of the organs, skin, fur, and even the bones outside. She had cleverly skewered the larger chunks of meat and then worked to set them up to roast over the small fire.

  When Sara looked at the flames, she swore that she saw gold tints in the flames. That was something she had never seen before unless it was with fireworks. It was a mystery she couldn’t explain, but it made things more interesting.

  At some point, Sara had started speaking to Asta without waiting for a reply. She rambled on about everything she had observed today while hunting. She talked about her fight with the first ram. Then she started telling stories about her family, her monster friends, and even about her new baby brother.

  Only a child could ramble so, but Sara didn’t care if Asta wasn’t answering. It was nice to be able to speak. The task of cooking the meat took a few hours because the fire was small, and it was dark outside before Asta seemed satisfied with the chunks of meat.

  Somewhere around the last half an hour, Sara had really begun to open up to Asta about her woes.

  “I just don’t understand why they wouldn’t talk to me about it. I know that Jackson’s wedding is important. I know that getting those kids back is important. I mean, I’m here rescuing you. I do like helping people.

  “But would it have killed them to just listen. I didn’t need a long time. I just can’t figure out what I should spend my character points on. I like how Mira does magic. It’s really cool and makes me feel sorta tingly inside. But I don’t know, I feel like I want to be strong like Altracia and able to be hit without being hurt.

  “That’s what my dad is like too. Maybe, I should do like my mom, though. She is a Chosen of Shanelle. Did I tell you that?”

  Sara barely stopped to take a breath let alone wait to see if Asta was going to answer her. By this point, all her questions were as much for her own sake as anyone else. In fact, she became so absorbed in her chatter that she didn’t realize that Asta briefly smiled a couple of times.

  After eating, Sara stretched out and prepared to sleep. Petal, who had been watching all the interaction, wrapped herself in her favorite place around Sara’s arm. But then Asta climbed down on the floor next to Sara and cuddled up with her. She put her arm over Sara and held her like mom used to when she was younger.

  Sara enjoyed the feeling of being held and just let it be.

  The next few days ended up being just like this. Sara would hunt. She always found something, but most of the time it was just a couple rabbits or a falcon. Those creatures caused her XP to creep right up to the edge of the next level, but Sara wasn’t worried.

  It was a type of rough camping, but every time she returned to the cave, she was surprised by the changes that Asta had wrought. Their small home was completely cleaned out, and the rock was smoothed down. Sara came to the conclusion that the only way this was possible was that Asta must have some kind of magic.

  The fact she didn’t ever display the magic in front of Sara made her believe the woman was still very shy. Sara went through times of quiet and then would start speaking without stopping for an hour, but she never had to speak quite as long as she did that first night when Asta had cooked the ram.

  They developed an easy companionship that didn’t need words, and Asta was more and more often making eye contact with Sara, who took that as a positive sign. In fact, she was getting very comfortable staying here. As closely as she could tell, her monster friends were only a few miles away and would likely reach the cave the next day. At least that was what she sensed when she went to sleep on the seventh night.

  It also helped that every other day she got a magical messenger bird. Most of them were from Mom, but sometimes Dad sent one too. They gave her a short message from Mom and then allowed her to say a few words back. Both her parents were very concerned about her and that came through in their messages.

  It was nice to hear their voices, but in some ways, the best part of those messages was that they never demanded that she come back or tell them exactly where she was. Mom hinted that she wanted to come and find Sara but that she couldn’t because of the new baby.

  Dad made it clear he would fly to wherever she was, but neither of them ever pressured her. That was refreshing and made her feel so much more grown up. It even made her feel grown up enough to realize that she wasn’t actually grown up.

  Of course, all good things must come to an end. The next morning before the first sun had cracked the horizon Sara woke up because she felt Asta trembling. She was sitting up with her back to the wall. Her legs were pulled in and her arms wrapped around them while her face was buried against her knees.

  Sara sat up. She looked around the cave. The fire was nothing but embers and some smoke drifting out of the cave. Her vision was good enough that even with the low light of the smoldering fire she could tell there was no threat in the cave.

  She got up on her knees and leaned in to Asta. “What’s wrong?”

  No answer. She was just shaking.

  Sara tried again, and this time she spoke very softly. “What’s wrong, Asta? Were you having a nightmare? Don’t worry, they won’t take you again.”

  Asta’s eyes flared with a golden fire for just a moment. Her face grew so fierce that Sara was reminded of Altracia. A sense of power washed over Sara, and she shuddered. That voice of self-preservation inside of her screamed to run, but then it disappeared.

  The power faded as did the look of defiance. Fear replaced it, but not just the same simple fear. This was a weary fear full of depression and regret—emotions that were beyond Sara’s understanding.

  Sara was about to ask what was going on, but then she caught a whiff of something. It was faint, masked by the smoke of the fire. She breathed in deeply to check. Sure enough, it was there. She had smelled something like it before after the battles in Eris’ Rise and other times. It was the smell of sweaty men in armor. She wrinkled her nose and turned just in time to see outside the cave. A hand axe flew towards her, spinning end over end.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “You can close your eyes to the things you don’t want to see, but you can’t close your heart to the things you don’t want to feel.” —Johnny Depp

  Mountains- Sara Nelson

  Sara reacted by diving to the ground. She was only barely quick enough to avoid the spinning axe. She felt the air as it spun over her head. The way it slammed into the cave wall sending a spray of chipped stone everywhere spoke to the intense strength the dwarf possessed.

  One of the dwarves called out, “Stay down, fiend, and things will go easy. We just want the dragon.”

  That statement didn’t make any sense to Sara at so many levels. It upset her that they were calling her a fiend, but mostly she was confused. How did they know about Altracia? Did they think they could use her as bait to trap her friend?