Isobel sent a flurry of blows at Evren, who blocked them all with a pair of thick gloves. "Good!" Evren said as her blade found weak points and nerve clusters one after the other. She slipped around behind Evren and slashed the back of his knees, by the time he had turned around she had already backed away. Evren began to get bruised quite often during practice with Isobel, but it was something he was telling her to do as part of her training.
Evren held up a hand to stop Isobel and called out, "Harley! Don't use the fire one!"
By Harley was a massive man on fire wearing lava armor. She raised her hand in the air and said, "OK!" then turned to the efreet and said, "Sorry, gotta let you go." The efreet nodded as it vanished in a puff of smoke.
Harley came running over to Evren and Isobel and said, "I'm getting better, aren't I, Mr. Evren?"
Evren nodded and said, "Yes, Harley, you are. I just don't want to set fire to everything, so please stick to the other ones, preferably 'tempest' or 'djinn' since they're just made of air." Evren looked to Harley and continued, "Have you decided on armor yet?"
"Leather." She said simply.
Evren nodded and said, "Ok, but we don't have any special leather right now, so it may have to wait."
Harley tilted her head to the side and said, "Then we should go hunt for some."
Evren looked to Isobel, who was smiling, then back to Harley, "It's still winter up there."
Harley stared at Evren as if to ask why that should be a problem. Evren thought about it and said, "I guess it shouldn't be a problem." He turned to Isobel, "How are the new guards doing?"
"Walter's been training them, and if it's just an argument, they should be fine." Isobel said, "If someone gets into a fist fight, they can just wait until the fight's over and pick them up afterwards."
"You guys really don't have much to do around here, do you?" Evren asked and Isobel only shook her head.
Evren thought for a moment before saying, "I'll head up and check the town, snow may have built up a bit and it could be difficult to get around."
Harley interrupted and said, "Oh! I want to see snow!"
"You will, don't worry about that." Evren replied. "Walter and Fletcher don't have their armor yet, but they still have the armor that Levi made for them, and I suppose that's ok for hunting in the forest."
"We'll need to get some warm cloaks and clothing to wear underneath our armor, so we don't freeze out there." Evren continued with, "Isobel, get with Fletcher and Walter and let them know in… two days we'll be heading up to hunt. And you guys are to continue training while I go scout out the fortress." Both the girls nodded, and Evren headed to find Joseph.
Evren found Joseph in town talking with some of the other residents and approached him casually, "Joseph." He said as he held out his hand.
Joseph took his hand and stared at Evren, "You're going to ask me something and you're nervous about it."
Evren shook his head and looked away, "Nervous? Me? No." He kept shaking his head as if to tell himself that he wasn't nervous and then looked at Joseph, "Your granddaughter has suggested we go out hunting in the forest for something that we can use as leather. I also thought it was a good idea to get some training in and some meat for the townsfolk that is other than the occasional cow or pig."
The man who was with Joseph, Gallus, suddenly perked up. "Oh, meat! You have my permission. Don't listen to this old fool."
Joseph looked at Gallus, "Who are you calling an old fool? You old fool!"
As the two men bickered back and forth, Evren calmly waited them out. Gallus was the old blacksmith who retired before Levi took over. Now, that he retired, he refused to help Levi with anything, even though he takes credit for the improvement in Levi's smithing skills, thanks to Evren.
When the two finished and were just staring at each other, Joseph finally turned to Evren and said, "It's fine. When were you thinking of heading up?"
Evren said, "I was thinking of heading up to day to see how bad the snow is and then taking the others up in two days."
Joseph nodded and said, "That's fine. You'll be up there a day? Maybe two?"
Evren nodded in turn and said, "Undead come out at night up there, but if there's some heavy snow, I'm not sure they'll be much of a problem. Then again, even missing the lower half of their body, they're pretty persistent."
Evren thought more about it, "If we go deeper into the forest, we might get out of the undead area. Ah but then there's that ent."
"Boy! Get me wood from the ent!" Gallus suddenly said.
Joseph looked at Gallus and said, "You retired! What are you going to use ent wood for?"
Gallus, suddenly remembering he retired thought for a moment before saying, "Whittling! I've taken up whittling and ent wood is the best for… uh whittling!"
Evren asked, "Can you make arrows with ent wood?"
Gallus beamed, "The best arrows you've ever seen!"
Evren silently wished he had his backpack, and said, "I'll be right back, I want to ask you about something."
Evren ran to the home, grabbed his backpack and ran back to the older pair. He pulled out his strong bow and the quiver with the heavy arrows and showed them to gallus. "Is this ent wood?"
Gallus took the bow and examined it carefully, "Maybe? Let me see one of the arrows." After being handed an arrow, Gallus compare the wood of the two and finally said, "I don't know. I was a smith, so I only saw ent wood once or twice before we came down here. I know the core is green and can be found in the heartwood. Perhaps this bow has a core in it." He asked, "What happens when you put magic into the bow?"
"The draw gets heavier the more magic you put into it." Evren replied.
Gallus nodded, "This is probably ent then. Their strength lies in the toughness of the wood, which fades when they die. If this has the core in it still, then that would fit. I suspect the arrows are made from the same wood. How many did you have?"
"Eight, one was broken, and one spent most of the winter underground, so it got a bit warped, and I don't want to use it." Evren replied.
Gallus nodded and said, "Bring me some ent wood and I'll make some… I mean I'll whittle some arrow shafts," Gallus cleared his throat, "if I get around to it, I'm really busy these days."
Evren smiled and said, "Great! Then all those adamantium arrowheads I made will finally get used."
Gallus then said, "Too bad you don't have any gryphon feathers though. That'd make the best arrows."
Evren smiled but didn't say anything.
Gallus got a look of shock on his face, "You have gryphon feathers?!"
Evren smiled but didn't say anything.
Gallus got frustrated and overly excited, "You little shit! You've got gryphon feathers?!"
Evren smiled and said, "I crawled through the dungeon here and fought many gryphons on my way. I did make arrows from manticore spikes, but the fletching was made from pegasus feathers. So, I still have plenty of hippogryph and gryphon feathers left. And I didn't use all of the pegasus feathers either."
Gallus looked at Joseph, "If he has that many feathers, I could make a cloak of feathers for that granddaughter of yours."
Joseph had a blank look for a moment before focusing on his friend, "You mean that cloak that lets people fly?"
Gallus only replied by nodding.
Evren then asked, "What else would you need for it?"
Gallus shrugged saying, "Just some leather. Deer skin would be perfect for it because it's so soft, but anything will do, really."
Evren said, "I have plenty of deer skins, and two large sacks of gryphon feathers. Can you make the cloak before two days from now when we go out hunting?"
Gallus nodded and said, "If you bring back ent wood."
Evren smiled and said, "I'll bring back as much as I can."
Evren ran back to the home and grabbed three deer skins and the two sacks of gryphon feathers. When he got back to the old pair of men, he followed Gallus to his home and left the materials there. Evren went back to the home and got dressed in his armor, and grabbed his sword, covering himself with his heavy cloak and headed towards the glyph to teleport to the surface.
As he exited the passageway from the teleport room, he noticed the snow wasn't that bad. The weather had begun to get warm, and a lot of the snow had melted. The ground was still frozen, but occasional patches of slush covered the ground, making it slippery and getting his boots wet.
Evren made his way down to the gate and jogged down the access road to the field where the dead rise. He noticed several skeletons lying on the ground and figured that he wouldn't be so lucky as to have an undead free night. The ground was trodden with skeleton foot prints. He ran to the forest and followed the road around until he saw no more skeletons on top of the ground. He followed the line of skeletons into the woods and got a mental map of where their territory was at, so he could avoid it when it came time to staying in the area.
He ran further down the road towards where the ent had itself rooted. Along the way he realized how far the ent was down the road and decided to turn off the road and head west into the forest. As he went deeper into the forest using his sensory field. He saw a few deer on the way, but nothing grabbed his interest.
Near the end of the day, Evren found some large tracks in the snow that looked like a bear's, but much bigger, and on top of that, they seemed odd. Evren couldn't quite place the odd feeling, but the tracks lead to a cave dug into a hillside. Evren could sense there was something inside but didn't want to focus on it as it seemed large, and he didn't want to waste it if it were something useful. He would be back in a couple days to hunt it with the others, so he left before waking it.
On his way back to Aernide Fortress Evren sensed something on the way, a group of six orcs. He followed them for a while, but they were wandering around the forest, seemingly looking for something to hunt. Evren didn't want them to hunt the thing he found in the cave, so he approached them.
His approach wasn't stealthy, and he focused on all of them to alert them of his presence. They seemed excited when they saw him approaching and charged at him. Evren calmly took out his sword and reacted smoothly to each one of the orcs as they approached. Three of them died without realizing they were dead, and one was beheaded. As they surrounded Evren, the three orcs fell down, leaving only two remaining. Evren stabbed one in the throat and cut the head off the other one.
Evren cleaned his sword off and put it back in its scabbard, heading back to the fortress after he retrieved the mana cores. He would get home early and let the others know about the den. He jogged when he got out of the forest, noting that the sun was beginning to set, and he would have to hurry, or he would have to fight his way through the undead at the base of the fortress.