"I came here as fast as I could! Where's everybody?!" Sol looks toward his right. The crowd has split. In the middle stand the Hunters of Elm.
Their bodies are bleeding, bruised, very cold, and almost frozen from their fight with the Rimelord. Some are terribly frostbitten on the edges of their limbs. Chief Rahzmir stands there, his body also terribly wounded from slashes and gashes, yet he still stands strong.
He's... almost unconscious. The Chief is terribly wounded.
He does not show any of it to his citizens. In a dire time like this, a leader is needed, and the Chief knows it best.
A massive Geherrim with short hair and great horns, perhaps a bit bigger than Chief Rahzmir, follows him from behind. His face is panicked, worried. His eyes are wide open, seeing the house now aflame. This Geherrim... Sol knows him.
"Where is Laoun?? Where is Rahzar??"
Rahzar? So this is Rahzar's dad? Chief Rahzmir's younger brother?
A sharp pain starts to emanate from Sol's head.
Agh! What? Why is it so painful all of a sudden?
"Master -----!! They are here!! Laoun is here!!" Naama shouts from somewhere on Sol's left.
What? What was his name again? In Sol's ears, the name of the man is muffled heavily, as if twenty people at the same time whispered into his ears to obscure it.
"Naama! I'm coming toward you!!"
The man walks toward Sol and passes right in front of him. Time feels slow. Sol can feel some familiarity toward this man, but his memory feels weird, scrambled. The man stops in his tracks, right in front of Sol, right in front of the flaming house.
Perhaps it is only Sol's imagination, but the man feels something there and glances toward his position, trying to look for something.
Did he... just glance at me?
The man shakes his head and moves toward Naama. He looks at Laoun and Rahzar, lying weakly on the ground.
"Where is Nerine?" The man's voice is low, heavy, intimidating. He notices something is missing.
"WHERE." He stands, his massive towering body casting a titanic shadow upon all the Geherrim in front of the house.
"IS." He moves toward the house, right toward where Sol is standing now, and stops right next to him.
"NERINE!" He shouts to the house. The flames are much bigger and much hotter than before. It is practically impossible for anyone to enter the house at this point. The flames are spiraling toward the sky, the clouds already having absorbed the colors of the fire quite well.
Sol looks at him. He knows that the man is furious, but his face does not show panic or a distraught expression. On the contrary, his eyes are determined.
"-----!! Don't!! The flames are too heavy!!" Again, the name is obscured from Sol's ears. Chief Rahzmir approaches his brother and grabs his right shoulder.
"Unhand me, Rahzmir."
"I won't. If you go inside, you will die."
"I will not ask you twice." The voice is low, strong, reverberating. Sol can see Chief Rahzmir's eyes change, his concern shifting from his little brother to his own well-being.
"You will have to hurt m--" He doesn't even get to finish his sentence. The man turns around and lands a heavy left-handed fist right in his face, throwing Chief Rahzmir far toward the crowd.
"I apologize for that, brother. But I have to save Nerine, and my son."
"Your son is here!! -----!! NERINE IS JUST A HUMAN!!" Chief Rahzmir shouts from his crouched position. He is bleeding profusely from his nose and his mouth.
A human...? ...Mother?
Sol's head tries to make sense of what's happening, but a sharp, piercing pain prevents him from processing this information.
...!! The pain! It gets worse! What is happening?
"Nerine." The man looks at him with eyes so sharp they could carve a man from the inside. "Is also my wife."
Sol clutches his head once again. The pain gets worse the longer this memory goes on.
His train of thought is interrupted by the pain. He tries to gather his focus once more, only to be distracted by the house.
The silence of the crowd is deafening. All sounds are muffled and only clarified by the massive crack of the ridge beam at the topmost part of the house. It is amazing to see how a house created with wood and hay can hold itself this long against such a ferocious flame.
...Wait, it doesn't make any sense... the house should've gone minutes ago. The flames are way bigger than the stories told me.
The sharp pain returns.
The front part of the house crumbles. The flames spread into the wet soil. The heat blows in all directions. Sol feels none of it.
The second floor starts to fall along with the front part of the first floor. The man just stands there, watching, his eyes still sharp. He's waiting for an opportunity to jump into the roaring flames.
A room at the back of the first floor is exposed by the collapsing front of the house. A golden light starts to pour through.
The man's expression changes into something more ferocious. Anger. He is boiling with fury and looks toward the sky, where the clouds have turned their colors from blazing oranges and reds into radiant gold.
The flames start to dissipate, bit by bit. The pyre exposes a hole in the massive golden clouds, which lose their splendor the moment the flame no longer touches them.
Stars shine. One star in particular shines with a gleaming golden color, never before seen in the entirety of the crowd's lives.
The sharp, piercing pain inside Sol's head is unbearable.
A drop of the golden essence of the star falls down toward the center of the still-burning pyre. A massive shockwave of fire and heat follows.
I... can't... the pain is too much...
The flames of the pyre itself feel like they are subdued by something, no longer roaring with wrath and hatred like before.
The golden light from that one particular room washes away everything.
Sol clutches his head with both of his hands. The pain is pulsing, throbbing, and something is trying its hardest to claw its way out of his head.
Stop... looking at me, with those eyes...
Sol tries to strain his eyes to see, but he can't really make out anything.
The golden light spreads its wings and stands, still, in the middle of the now-subdued flame.
I said... stop, looking... at me... WITH THOSE EYES!!!
His hood shines with the light of a million stars, obscuring the face inside in total darkness. His right hand holds a sword made of pure light.
His left hand cradles a baby with one horn. A horn with the same colored flame as the reddish, golden pyre that burned the entire house down.
The golden light looks at Sol in the middle of his pain. His gaze burns.
I SAID, STOP LOOKING AT ME WITH THOSE EYES!!!
The golden light cradles the baby, both his eyes shining like two golden stars in the middle of pitch-black darkness, and points his sword of light at him.
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"Stand down, cub. This struggle lies beyond your season." The Old Chief's voice is steady. "Snow that throws itself into the sea learns only how to vanish."
His consciousness wavers for a split second.
An image of a massive flame is there, but he cannot remember any of it.
Sol can hear Wanwan's growl. He lifts his eyes forward to see the Garm pup standing right in front of him, guarding him from the Old Chief.
"GGGRRRRRRRRRR!!!" He is angry. Perhaps he's thinking that this is not how they should treat a wounded person, perhaps he detects something else, perhaps a malicious intent.
"Wan..." Sol weakly tries to grab his tail. "Wanwan, stop."
Wanwan does not move his head. He is still baring his knife-like fangs at the Old Chief.
"Every mighty bough was once trimmed bare, cub." The Old Chief walks toward the side, eyes still closed. "Of all the masters in this world, pain is the one that never lies."
"BARK!!" Wanwan is furious.
Nia, arriving shortly after, manages to grab hold of Wanwan right before he lunges at the Old Chief. "No, Wanwan! Wait."
Wanwan holds himself back because Nia is there to hug him. The Old Chief does not feel threatened at all by this and still walks further toward the center of the meadow.
Sol looks toward his left, where the house is located. He can see that the door is closed and locked, and that the other four pups are safe inside. All of them are growling and baring their fangs, surely because of Wanwan's anger.
They're members of the same pack, alright...
"Nia," Sol grabs her hand, which is currently locked around Wanwan's neck. Nia looks back toward him. "I'm fine. Sorry for making you worry."
"Sol, we can talk to him. We can ask him to wait until you get a bit better before continuing with the training."
"This is not training, Nia."
Nia tilts her head, confused. Wanwan looks at Sol, now standing right behind them both, body still shivering a bit from the pain and the cold, but he is trying his best not to show it.
"This is a Nil Mac'gjar. It's a proving. If it were to be stopped now, that would mean I failed." Sol stops for just a moment, thinking, before continuing. "And for failures, it's either exile or death."
And I was already exiled, once. The next would be death. He holds himself back. Nia doesn't have to hear this from his mouth.
Nia and Wanwan look at him for a second, then their expressions change.
"That sounds dumb."
"Wan!"
Sol chuckles. The pain stings him every time he tenses his stomach. "It's a way for me to get stronger, so that I can do a better job."
"Do a better job at what? You're doing your best already!" Nia helps him to stand, her hands starting to glow with her healing.
"It's not enough." Sol's hands gently stop hers from shining. This is not the time for him to get assistance from his friends. This is something he has to solve alone.
"Wan! Wan! GRRRRRRR!!" Wanwan wants to help. Sol knows this and ruffles the fur on his head for a bit.
"Thank you for your offer, big guy, but I have to do this alone."
Sol walks toward the middle of the meadow and stands right across from the Old Chief once again.
The wind creates waves upon waves on the Longrass strands. The river is no longer undisturbed. A small speck of snow starts to fall from the sky.
The Old Chief did not hurt him as badly as he thought. All he did was discombobulate and disarm him, trying to incapacitate him with every hit.
Sol realized, the moment he woke up, that this is a Fahn-Nil Mac'gjar. It means that Sol still has a chance to win, and it is not as slim as a snowflake's chance in the flames of hell either. He has a real chance to win this. He can feel it.
"My apologies for showing you weakness, zhe'har." Sol readies himself and takes a stance, his own stance. Both legs are bent slightly, and he is getting ready to move fast. Both hands are lowered. He has to be ready to grab something to create a distraction, but not so low that he cannot parry the Old Chief's attacks.
"Call it not failure, gja'rim, call it a mark on the map. Now you know where not to tread."
Sol's ears perk. He still remembers this from Naama. Gja'rim, the Ancient Gehennic word for "pupil," "learner," and one other meaning that Sol cannot remember.
This is a conversation between a master and his pupil. A slight smile cracks on Sol's lips. He glances toward Nia and Wanwan for a bit, and then toward the Old Chief.
A warmth blooms inside his heart.
"Very well, gja'rim. Let us return to the only question that matters."
"Please do so, zhe'har."
The Old Chief disappears. Sol follows soon after with a dash of his own toward the face of the mountain.
The Old Chief's right leg moves fast toward his face, a spin. Sol lifts his left leg in an attempt to parry.
The impact is enough to send wind blowing toward Nia and Wanwan's standing spot.
"Ghin a'fal." The Old Chief stands there, right leg still held high, held back by Sol's left shin. "Nara tyr Mac'gjar."
Ancient Gehennic! He racks his head trying to remember Naama's lessons, and it pays off. It is a very old sentence used in provings before. But it wasn't Nil Mac'gjar, it was something else, something even older.
Sol says to the Old Chief, out loud, "For what purpose... does your blade exist."
The Old Chief smiles.
Thank you, Naama!
Sol does not have to move his eyes toward Nia and Wanwan. He knows that both are still there, waiting for him. And there is nothing else he wants more than to come back to them in one piece.
He locks his eyes on the Old Chief's squinted eyes, and smiles.