The next day, when Daron woke up in his room within the church, he heard someone knocking on his door.
After quickly washing his face and changing into a new pair of clothes he had with him, Daron walked up to the door and opened it.
Outside was Rachel, who had her head hung low.
"Let's go somewhere else to talk." Daron said since all rooms within churches were just too small to comfortably fit two people.
Instead, he took Rachel and they went to the garden where he had first met her at the moment of his return to this city.
…
After removing the freshly fallen snow from the bench and whipping it dry with a cloth, the two sat on the bench that the church had built for patients to rest on.
"So, have you calmed down?" Daron asked, not mincing any words.
"Yeah." Rachel replied, still with her head hung low.
"Then tell me what happened, starting from the incident at Bard city."
Rachel took in a deep breath and looked at the sky, before exhaling in one go, forming a cloud of mist in the air, before she started speaking.
"We were suddenly given instructions by the more experienced knights-in-training to escape the city. Tom, William, Fey and I, all followed those instructions and packed the basic essentials as well as the equipment we had used for the expedition. When we came over to call you to come along with us, Knight Frey was standing guard outside your room. He told us not to bother with you, that he would take care of you and told us to stop wasting time and leave quickly."
"Following his orders, we escaped from on the numerous escape tunnels, and following the instructions we had been given by the other older knights-in-training, who were also escaping"
"We were told not to stop while moving directly to the closest city from the point of escape, and that was exactly what we did. We moved in a straight line through the forest surrounding Bard city as much as possible."
"However, as you should be knowing, there were magical beasts covering the forests around Bard city, it was incredibly hard for knights-in-training to remain unscathed while travelling through its depths and through to the other side."
"Thankfully, we were able to survive most of the journey, without encountering a single magical beast, only coming across some carnivorous beasts that we were able to take care of somehow. We hid our scent from all the animals using mud, and we were able to survive without a single injury through most of the journey."
"However, a single moment of carelessness caused William to be bit by a poisonous snake that we had never seen before. No matter what we tried, the poison did not stop spreading, and…" Rachel's voice trailed off at this point in the story, almost as though there was a frog in her throat, on the verge of crying.
"…and William passed?" Daron asked.