Chapter 427 Let's Play A Game

It still didn't feel real, even as Doevm awoke the next morning. Wilhelm was nothing like he imagined, nothing like Arthur. He was supposed to be a hero of legend, yet the person he had met was a mere errand boy for the Cardinals, the highest authority within the War Monks. A part of him wanted to just forget about the entire thing and leave it as a bad dream, but he couldn't.

He had shown his hand. No, more like he had thrown it at his enemy's face. Wilhelm would come for him, it was only a matter of time.

Doevm stared up at his tent. 'Maybe I've gotten too comfortable being a human,' he thought. 'Why else would I act so emotionally, like I'm one of these soft, fleshy beings?'

Doevm sighed. 'No matter. I waited for fifteen years. I can wait a little longer, but I must keep moving.'

As he sat up, a sudden draft blew through his thin clothes, freezing his thinking. What happened to his blankets? He found his sheets balled up in one of the tent's corners and scrunched his lips. "Frey?"

Frey's bed was empty. He must have pulled Doevm's blankets off in an attempt to wake him up before he left. It was a force of habit. The two of them might have unofficially left the Virility guards, but certain actions were still drilled into their daily lives. Doevm had lost count of the times he carried a bucket into the barracks, only to be screamed at once he emptied its contents onto someone's bed.

'At least Frey was thorough,' he thought, scratching his soaked head. 'I didn't think I was that tired.' He thought about extending his sleep time, but he was still tired, as well as hungry. Very, very hungry.

Frey had been kind enough, after dumping a bucket of water over Doevm's head, to leave a bowl of oatmeal behind. Doevm scarfed it down, ignoring how cold and coagulated it was. He emptied both the bowl and a waterskin in a minute flat, then sat back, exhaling in relief.

A flickering light caught his eye. Winged shadows flew across the tent, too large to be a bird. He peered through the slight gap in the front of the tent. "Frey?" he called out. "Elero? Anyone?"

There was no response.

'Thomas?' Doevm tried his mental connection as a last resort.

'Kind of busy!' Thomas replied.

A dull thuds shook the tent's supports and Doevm leapt to his feet, life essence flaring. 'Have they found us already? They did see my face,' he thought. 'That shouldn't be possible. I teleported away. In that case, where is everyone?'

Another shadow flew across the tent, followed by another thud. It shook the tent, but not violently. They almost had a pattern to them. A mixture of screeching and laughter piqued his curiosity enough to disperse his life essence and exit the tent.

He stepped out, discovering nothing, literally. There was no longer a camp. The other tents, people, and the campfire had vanished without a trace. Doevm held the empty bowl. Someone must have left it for him, meaning they weren't in a hurry. The others must have gotten bored while waiting on him and packed up.

Doevm usually woke with the sun and, although he slept in, it was only till an hour after sunrise. The sky was still overcast, and full of Wyverns.

Doevm rubbed his eyes. Three Wyverns circled within a hundred feet of Doevm's tent, the source of the earlier shadows. He frowned. It was as if they were announcing their presence to the world. He cursed under his breath and hurried towards them, wondering what else was going to go wrong in the terrible week he was having.

The source of the thudding, he discovered, were pillars of ice. Judging from their depth in the soil, they had been dropped from the sky into a series of circles.

A voice yelled out: "Watch out!"

Doevm cocked his head to the side as a loud, whistling sound grew steadily louder. Looking up, he spotted it a moment too late. A pillar of ice drilled into the ground, inches from his nose. He was fine, physically.

He stared at his own reflection in the ice, his baggy eyes too tired to show his shock. Maybe it was a dream after all. The emotions were present in his head, but dampened - numb. He almost expected his reflection to be a skull, not a human face.

"Doevm?" Frey called out from under a distant tree.

"What?" Doevm asked.

Frey's hair was a spidery mess across his face, yet his body was fully awake. His posture was caught in between sitting and standing up, concern written across his face. "You ok? You almost died."

"Almost, but I didn't," Doevm said. "I guess it is my lucky day."

Frey crossed his arms at the placid response.

"Leave him be," Kilot said. He rested on the opposite side of Frey's tree, his head leaned against a pair of stained gloves. The old Dwarf hadn't even bothered to look over.

Frey frowned for a moment, but sat back down.

'They seem to be getting along…' Doevm thought, turning back towards the Wyverns. 'as do the others.'

​ Olpi took her Wyvern and skillfully circled to the ground. "Cerlius, are you ok? I'm so sorry! I saw you but I couldn't warn Thomas in time."

Doevm didn't bother correcting the name anymore. Either one was technically correct. "I'm fine. What are you people-"

"I'm sorry!" Thomas yelled down. "By the way, is my "dart" touching the target's line?"

Doevm let out a long sigh. "Olpi," he whispered. "Is touching the line bad or good?"

"Good?" Olpi shrugged. "We kind of made up the rules as we went along."

Doevm nodded. "The dart is touching, Thomas!" he yelled.

He couldn't see who was on the remaining Wyverns, but he could at least hear Thomas curse, followed by Elero's jeering laughter.

Doevm shook his head. "I'm not even surprised. He's more concerned about the game than me. Why did no one wake me up?"

"We tried but you wouldn't wake up," Frey called over. "I followed standard protocol and everything, although Kilot insisted on pouring the water."

Kilot chuckled: "You slept like a Dwarf, stubborn to the bone."

Doevm chewed on his lip. 'I guess I really did sleep in,' he thought.

Olpi pointed to the target as well as, what had nearly been, Doevm's grave. "C-come on and join us! You can be on my team. I make the ice pillars, and then we each take turns dropping them onto this target. The outer ring is one point, the other is-"

"We should get moving," Doevm said, gesturing towards the forest. "It's going to be a long flight today."

"That's what we said," Frey and Kilot yelled in unison.

"And we took a vote, three to two," Olpi reminded them with a smile. "It's just a brief thing, no more than half an hour. Come on Cerlius, it'll be fun."

"Come on Doevm! Are you chicken?" Thomas yelled.

Elero was just as enthusiastic as the rest, yelling out: "You can go first, since we started without you!"

Doevm didn't blink. "We have to go."

Elero leaned over the side of her Wyvern. "I'd tell you to make us, but how would you? You're all the way down there and we're all the way up here. You'd have to use magic! Now, you could either break your stupid rule or play with us! What's wrong with having fun once in a while?"

Doevm's gaze fell towards the pillar of ice, which had nearly killed him. Days like these might come to an end soon, for either him or anyone else. Maybe all of them. "A challenge then: if I beat you all, we leave immediately. If you win, we can play a few more games. Two hours at most."

Kilot and Frey exchanged a knowing look and pulled coins out of their spatial rings.

Olpi shook her head, assuming to see through Doevm's intentions. "You can't use magic though."

Doevm accepted her hand and they took to the air. "That is only fair."

'Not that I would use magic for a childish game. What's so hard about hitting a target?'

Olpi smiled. "This is going to be so much fun!"

"Don't be mad because we have more practice," Thomas said once Doevm was with the rest of them. "It's fair and square."

To say that Doevm won the round was an understatement. He did not just win. He destroyed them. When the round was over, the bullseye was reduced to a massive crater. Before anyone could call him out for cheating however, he explained his method, stating the usefulness of both pre-planning and a long blade of grass to tell the direction of the wind.

Half of the group left satisfied, while the other fumed for an hour. Kilot was the most sour of all of them as he handed a pouch of coins over to Frey, struggling to maintain a straight face. The silent morning flipped on its head as a lengthy, heated discussion ensued about the line between playing and cheating.

It was surprisingly…fun.

Then they were off for another day of flying. Doevm planned to make it all the way to the Polyglint Mines before the day's end - the place their weapons would be made, at least that's what he told the others. Just to be sure, he pulled his map out of his spatial ring. One of three blinking dots on the map steadily grew closer.