Chapter 5 Rumlok
Hunters Den
Gareth rose before dawn. The frigid air bit at his cheeks as he trudged the mile-long path to the frozen lake.
As he walked, the weight of responsibility pressed on his shoulders. After a hard winter, Gareth's stores had dwindled to almost nothing. With two unexpected guests, every fish he caught was crucial.
He spent hours at the lakeshore, catching slippery, silver fish. The cold numbed his fingers as he cleaned them and threaded them onto a stringer.
The walk back felt longer than ever.
His thoughts were occupied by the faces waiting for him in the lonely shelter.
As Gareth entered the shelter, his return accidentally roused the Dissolver, who had been curled up in a restless, exhausted sleep in the corner.
The boy barely spoke as Gareth prepared the fish over the fire. His eyes never left Rowena, still unmoving on the makeshift bed.
Her pallor frightened Gareth. The boy was haunted by worry. His silence heavy, his gaze desperate. Sensing the depth of his fear, Gareth tried to comfort him over breakfast, softly insisting there was hope for her recovery.
Over breakfast, Gareth shared stories of his days as a gladiator. Of comrades gravely wounded, men hovering at death's door, sleeping for days or weeks before finally waking and fighting again.
"Sleep is a kind of medicine," Gareth said gently. "It lets the body mend itself."
Though his words eased the boy's worry a little, Gareth sensed uncertainty still gnawing at him. Wanting to help, Gareth kept the Dissolver occupied.
For the rest of the day, Gareth invited the boy to join him in daily chores. They foraged beneath frost-laden branches, split logs with ringing blows, and hauled icy buckets from the stream.
As they worked, they played the question game, back and forth. If one didn't want to answer, the other simply asked a different question.
The boy's curiosity soon emerged, especially when Gareth spoke of his gladiator days. He peppered Gareth with questions about battle tactics, sword balance, armor, and the monsters faced in the arena's blood-soaked sands.
Gareth was happy to tell him everything about the ring, speaking in great detail, animated and excited.
When it came to asking the boy questions, it was not so easy.
The child was tight-lipped, refusing to speak much about himself—except for his favorite monster, the weapon he most admired, and stories that skirted the surface of his life.
Whenever Gareth asked a deeper question, the boy's eyes grew guarded. He quickly redirected the conversation, always returning to his urgent need to get home.
Most peculiar was the boy's unwavering attachment to the longsword strapped across his back. The moment he woke, he donned the sword's fine leather scabbard, never letting it out of reach; even while gathering firewood or trudging through snow.
Gareth's attempts to ask about it were met with silence or evasive answers.
It struck Gareth as odd. These travelers wore threadbare rags and arrived with nothing but each other, yet carried a weapon of obvious value. Its scabbard was so ornate that even the hilt was hidden, as if the sword itself was a secret too heavy to bear.
Despite his suspicions about his guests, Gareth felt a warmth he hadn't known in years.
The mountain had been Gareth's home for seven years. Each season was marked by unyielding solitude, broken only by rare supply runs to Griken. Now, another voice and youthful energy filled a void he'd tried to ignore.
With the Dissolver, Gareth found unexpected kinship. Their shared fascination with battle and survival brought genuine joy, transporting Gareth back to the camaraderie of the gladiator pits.
There, he had belonged to a brotherhood.
It was a fellowship forged in blood and danger.
In the arena, survival depended not just on skill but on trust; there was always someone at his side, watching his back as they worked to escape monsters and traps. The memory was bittersweet.
The wilderness, for all its beauty, had been a cold and silent exile. Gareth remembered the crushing loneliness after his escape,
the way it gnawed at him,
year after year.
He learned to endure it, to push the ache aside and fill his days with routine.
But now, with the boy's lively presence, Gareth realized his longing for connection had never truly faded.
It was only sleeping, waiting for the warmth of company to wake it again.
By nightfall, Rowena showed little change in her condition.
Gareth cleaned and changed her dressings again, worried about infection. While doing this, he decided to change the bandage around her waist. He'd noticed the blood-stained fabric the night before but paid it little attention since the wound was already covered.
This time, as he examined her shirt closer, he could tell it was not merely torn, but that it had been sliced cleanly through.
Curious, he carefully unwrapped the filthy linen binding. What he found beneath puzzled him more. After he washed away the old blood, only a gruesome pink scar remained along her rib.
He looked curiously back at the boy who was distractedly eating his dinner.
Confused, Gareth moved on to the boy's wound, unwrapping the linen to check for infection. To his surprise, the wound was healing, looking as if it had been mending for days.
Gareth couldn't believe his eyes.
He wondered if it was coincidence, or if the boy's dragon blood had something to do with it.
Deciding it would be useless to ask him about it, he let the matter rest.
Gareth lay awake by the fire that night, considering peeking at the strange weapon. But the boy kept close watch, even holding it in his arms as he slept.
He knew he'd have to bide his time and wait for the opportune moment.
The following day, Rowena's condition worsened.
He checked her wounds in the morning—they were swollen and infected. He felt Rowena's forehead.
It was hot to the touch.
He checked his supplies, looking for a plant to treat the infection. When he opened the tin, he realized he was running dangerously low.
Careful not to alert the boy, Gareth said he was going out to hunt. He took his bow and quiver to add to the ruse, then hurried off in search of the herb.
After a day of arduous searching, Gareth returned at dusk, exhausted but carrying just enough of the precious plant to treat Rowena's infection.
When Gareth stepped inside, he was startled to find Rowena awake and out of bed. The Dissolver was dressed in his cloak and pack, Rowena's cloak clutched in his hand as he watched her anxiously.
Rowena strapped her longsword over her shoulder just as Gareth entered. Both froze, clearly not expecting his early return.