Noah walked over to the area where the trees had been removed. He was standing on the line where the forest ended and the open area began. He was looking up towards the top of Spearhead, and he was thinking about how he should go about climbing up the mountain. 'Should I wait to see Nightmare leave or go in order to get an estimate where his lair is? No, he has always seemed very paranoid about his "treasure" so he may use a roundabout way to get in his lair, and if I catch him while he's coming into his lair, I'm as good as dead. I'm also very confident that the bandits have sent a group after me, they haven't attacked me yet, but I don't know how far away they are, if they are still hunting me, and so I don't know how much time I have to wait around.' He concluded, breathing deeply and closing his eyes.
Noah looked back up to Spearhead and began to study the terrain. Nightmare had obviously torn up all the trees there were on Spearhead, but there were still some bushes, ledges, and caves that he could hide when he saw or heard Nightmare. He began to create a path from one hiding spot he saw to another one that he saw that covered the most height, but were close enough together that it limited the chance that Nightmare or the bandits could catch him in the open. Once he had created a path that went to the limit of what he could see, he realized that he would have to find a way to cover his tracks. It didn't take him a long time for him to find a solution to this problem. He began to look around at the trees that were by him for a branch with a lot of leaves on it. He knew that it wouldn't completely solve the problem as any half decent hunter would be able to tell the soil had been disturbed, but he hoped that Nightmare would be so egotistical that he wouldn't think that anyone would climb up Spearhead to try to kill him. The reason that he was covering his tracks in the first place was so that Nightmare wouldn't see any footprints and be alerted to his presence in the area.
It took Noah a few minutes to find a branch that fit his liking. The branch was low enough that he didn't have to climb up the tree in order to break it and could just do it on the ground. He reached and grabbed the branch with his hands, and, after quite a bit of effort, broke it off the tree. The branch he had chosen, and was now in his hands, was about half a meter in length, had more than enough leaves on it to cover his tracks, was thin, and was light enough to not restrict his movement. Once he had gotten the branch, he moved back over to where he had been standing. The sun at this point was at its peak in the sky. He looked back up towards Spearhead for a bit to watch if Nightmare was near it, and he got lost in his own thoughts. 'I'm a lot farther along than I was last time when I chickened out. When I go up this mountain, the likelihood of my death will increase as I go higher up the mountain.' He was in a weird place mentally as he knew that it was very likely that he could die, but he didn't care. In fact, he felt empty, and he wondered why he was even doing what he was doing for a small amount of time. He quickly slapped himself as he remembered why he was going to kill Nightmare. He needed to get revenge for the destruction of his town and all the people in it that were killed. He moved forward into the area where the trees were torn up with a grimace on his face and looked towards the ground. Once he had taken a few steps into the torn up area, he looked back up at Spearhead, and he remembered the path upwards that he had created. He immediately started running towards the first hiding spot on that path, and, once he got onto the mountain, began brushing the ground behind him with the branch he was holding in order to hide the footprints that he was leaving behind. Once he got to the first hiding spot, he quickly hid himself, and he looked around in the sky and forest for Nightmare and the group of bandits that may be following him respectively. After he had looked for long enough, in his opinion, he began to run to his next hiding spot, and he repeated the same process.
Noah was hiding under a ledge in the dark that was produced by it. Enough time had passed so that the sun had gone past the mountain and was leaving a small shadow compared to the size of the shadow that is produced in the evening. He was looking around for Nightmare and a group of bandits when he barely saw some movement in the forest in the area where he was previously. It seemed to be a small movement as he was nearly halfway up Spearhead and there were nearly no plants where he was at this elevation. He was staring intensely at where he saw the movement, and he began to see more shadows moving around. After staring for a while, he was certain that what he was seeing was most likely a group of people. His suspicions were confirmed when he saw a group walk out of the forest and into the torn up area. He watched as the group walked through the torn up area and towards the foot of the mountain. Once the person who was leading the group reached the foot of Spearhead, and they knelt down and looked at the ground. After inspecting the ground for a while, Noah stayed still as the person got up and pointed at the path that Noah took. 'Alright, so the group the bandits sent are still following me. Good to know.' He thought as he watched the group begin to follow his trail. Even though he wanted the group to follow him at first, now that he could see them, which means that they can see him as well, he realized just how careful he had to be when choosing when to move and where to move. 'If I want to still use them as a distraction, which I do, I'll need to continue to move upwards while moving around to the other side of this mountain.' He concluded and began to look around while making a new path in his head.
Once Noah had made his new path, he looked back over to the group of bandits. By this point the group had made considerable progress towards catching up to him, and he was confused by the fact that they were moving in a way that portrayed that they weren't afraid of being found by Nightmare. 'Do they know that Nightmare lives here, or do they just not care that he does?' He thought while waiting for an opportunity to move, and, after waiting a few minutes, it eventually came. A rock began to fall quite a ways away from him, and one of the bandits pointed it out and the rest of the group trained their eyes on that area in order to try to find Noah. This gave him the opportunity to move to the next hiding spot onto his new path which he quickly took, and he ran over to hit while brushing away his tracks. This process of Noah waiting for a few minutes, the bandits getting distracted or stop paying attention to what's higher up the mountain, and then running towards the next point on his path.
After about an hour or two of this process repeating, Noah was hiding in a small cave when he began to hear the flapping of wings. His heart jumped when he heard this, and he slowly crept out into the mouth of the cave. He looked out and scanned the sky, and, sure enough, he saw a large black dot in the sky heading towards Spearhead. He quickly looked down towards the group of bandits to see how they were reacting to this. He saw that the bandits either didn't care that Nightmare was approaching, or they didn't know. Noah wasn't sure how the bandits wouldn't know that Nightmare was approaching considering the noise of the flapping wings. 'What should I do, Nightmare is approaching, but the bandits aren't stopping. Wait, isn't this what I wanted? The group of bandits will be noticed by Nightmare first and then I can go continue my way up Spearhead. But, one of the bandits may point me out to Nightmare, so I should just wait until Nightmare is done having his may with the bandits. There is no way that the bandits can kill Nightmare.' Noah thought, looking around for a better place to hide, but where he could still clearly see what would happen with Nightmare and the bandit group. He found a spot in the corner of the cave's mouth that was covered in shadows, and he quickly moved to hide in it.
Once he had hidden himself, he waited for Nightmare to find the group of bandits which didn't take too long for that to happen. After a few minutes of waiting, what was once a black dot on the horizon, was now a large black dragon soaring over the treetops while heading towards Noah's and the bandit group's location. It didn't take long for one of the bandits in the group to notice that Nightmare was approaching, and once that one did, they immediately alerted the rest of the group about it. This immediately led to the group beginning to panic with some people beginning to run away, or they were finding places where they could hide. These attempts were in vain however as all of this activity was noticed by Nightmare, and he began to fly over to where the bandits were.