Gabrio woke up feeling cold. He raised his right hand and shook it, feeling awfully numb. He pushed his body forward, trying to get the numbness to go away.

He looked around. There were no signs of the creatures he had faced. The two-legged creatures were not around. He tried to get up only to find himself falling over.

His fingers shook. He tried to stand again only to fall on his bottom. He tried to reach out for his beg, and realized that it was a few meters away from him.

Standing up, he tiredly walked to his bag and took it. He dragged the chair-backpack combo and tried to lift it. He found it hard to do so. He wondered what he could do.

“Do I have to make a sled?”

He couldn’t carry her with his strength waning. He had managed to cover about a few distance, but who knows that evil lurks in this place?

He looked around for anything he could use. There are a few fallen branches, and a few sticks. He needed to make something that could allow him to continue without overexerting his back.

“Maybe a sled,” he vocalized. He couldn’t hide his thoughts. Not when there was no one to talk to, and the person he was with was comatose.

He started making a sled using the vines, tall grasses, and the wood he found around him. Once that was done, he placed her in the sled and let himself get some rest.

After taking a rest, he pushed the sled across the grass and made his way through the forest once again. As he continued pushing the sled, he found himself seeing double again. The throbbing pain, the anxiety, and the fear of the creatures that might come at them was weighing on him.

He couldn’t believe that a few days ago he was sitting on a nice tent, preparing for anyone that might be injured. Again, he realized that they were living in strange times.

Gabrio, I realized that you should be a Doctor, Gabrio heard a voice said. He looked around and found only the pale trees.

You do not have the qualification to be anything other than a Doctor. If you go against your nature, I guess you’d be no different than us pieces of trash here.

Galena-sis, why are you saying this? Gabrio heard his own voice talking. He continued pushing down as he sunk his thoughts on this memory. He didn’t know why he was remembering them. Cato, Galena, and the Fort.

He had no good memories of the Fort. He found the fort as hell and yet he couldn’t stop thinking about those two. Why was he thinking of Cato and Galena?

“Ah,” Gabrio muttered. He looked at Mana and then realized why he was thinking about them.

“I miss them,” Gabrio admitted.

As he continued to walk, Gabrio noticed balls of light gather in front of him. He saw the creatures hover around Mana with concern. Her green hair fluttered and though one of them seemed to look at Gabrio strangely. It was a gray ball of flight carrying a cloth around.

Gabrio found it strange, but considering what he had been seeing and fighting. This was nothing.

“Should I drive them away?” he asked.

He thought that maybe they will help in driving away the denizens of this forest?

Gabrio let the spirit balls fly around Mana. Moving through the forest, watching the bushes, and the shade. He pushed through a wall of thorny vines blocking the way. On his right was unpassable trees and on the left was the side of the river.

“I could probably use the river to get to the coastline. Then again, I might be able to pass any native civilization and at worst, I’d just get killed by them. Not that I have any strength to make a raft.

He observed the rushing river. That flow of the river was not safe and he could spot ice from the Icean Peak drifting. He did not dare to imagine what he would look like when hit by those ices.

Gabrio abandoned the thought of going in that river. Not to mention that he could only get cool water in that place. He also saw creatures under the water.

Taking a stop for a while, he rested under a shade of the tree and closed his eyes. He only has his spear and pistols on him. He was running out of ammunition, but in the face of creatures he knew that could rip his throat and gut him if he missed a beat.

“Oh Great Equalizer, slayer of men, beast, and devils,” he said to his pistols. “Thunder that brings light to the darkness, the boom that clears the darkness, and the flash that brings salvation.”

The litany of Gunpowder was one of the prayers that the middle-eastern regiments of the Salavans had created. It was supposed to be a prayer to the gunpowder, and was one of their guiding words as they crushed the warlords who held supreme rule over their lands.

Every soldier and peasant who knows how to aim and load a gun knows the litany of gunpowder, and he was no exception. Nonetheless, a pistol can only be strong if it has the powder and the pellets. Gabrio was glad that he was packing heat, but at this rate he would run out of gunpowder and bullets.

“They can be beaten, and they can be shot down,” Gabrio concluded. “But if I meet creatures that have harder fur and scales then it would certainly be a problem for me.”

Gabrio looked at the dense forest covered in thick fog. He needed to go further and find a way to cross the river and head further east until he finds the Great Icean River of Brampi and find his way back home. He had no illusion of making out of this place alive. And yet he kept his soul firm with the hope that she would awaken.

Cold rain fell from the skies. Each droplet dropping on Gabrio’s hair.

Gabrio carried Mana on his backpack and pushed the sled to one of the enormous trees that towered the normal ones. The tree offered shelter, and the mist that seemed to have covered the forest with a veil of white that he could not look through.

The ground became wet and muddy. The mud jumped on his clothes and coat and he was the only one being wetted by the cold rain permeating through his skin. The giant river that he had thought of sailing was now a raging stream that seemed to carry boulders, ices, and even strange emancipated trees that are then crushed by the fallen boulders.

A freezing wind seems to bounce off the Icean Spine and was being returned to the ocean. His body shook madly and he could only huddle close to Mana who was covered in blanket and canvas and tarps.

His hands shook. His lower chin chattered and he embraced himself as the combination of wind and cold made him pale as a sheet of paper.

His pistols were inside his coat and he kept the gunpowder that he used tightly sealed from the rain and cold. There was a strange sound being manifested by the winds and on the Spine-like Mountains, he saw what seems to be strange cloud formations.

Gabrio covered his ears and it was then that he felt the same throbbing pain that he had felt for the six days he had been walking. Six days? He couldn’t remember how many days he had been here, but he was sure that it was less than six days.

Sleep was a luxury. The creatures were hunting him down. His body was failing him. And he was struggling to keep the pressure placed on his failing shoulders.

Gabrio, he heard a voice again. You shouldn’t be like this, lad. It isn’t meant for you, ugh, shit, you are suited to be better than this. Cato’s right, you really don’t belong in this place.

I don’t think you can be like us. Lad, you are not suited for what we do, and I think that you are better as a Doctor than whatever they think you can be. From all the things that you have seen and heard. From what you’ve learned from all of us here, I can still say that you are not meant for this. Galena, she made you into a man, and other than that, she has nothing to offer other than the same opinion that we have.

Gabrio heard the voices fade. He didn’t understand why they all said. All he could recall was being boxed in and then learning from them. There were people like Old Ernest who showed him kindness. There were people he loathed.

“Why now?” Gabrio asked himself. He couldn’t understand these would bother him at the darkest times.

It was heavy. His heart felt like it had been pressed down by something. His shoulders lean by a weight that he could not rid off.

He rested on the trunk of the tree. His head ached so madly that he gripped hard on the grass below him. It was cold and his hands failed him.

I need that opiate, Gabrio thought, fingers reaching out to his bag.

“Ah,” Gabrio’s hand went numb. He felt like he was unable to move. Only his eyes staring blankly in front of him. His eyes became unfocused and he found himself drifting between conscious and unconscious,

The pain made him see double. He found his tear ducts dry and he loathed how he could not move. He couldn’t even wipe the raindrops blurring his vision. His vision tunneled and he could only conclude that his body was freezing up. He felt his vessels constricted and he could only watch without moving.

As he suffers this strange condition. He saw balls of light going to Mana and hugging close to her. From what he can see through the corner of his eyes, she was being heated up and yet none of that heat could reach him.

One of the strange balls of light floated, seemingly dancing around the droplets of rain. It looked at Gabrio for a second. It was holding a strange cloth. The stare seemed so long, but the gray ball of light sat on Mana’s shoulder as well.

It hurts, Gabrio thought. Water is seeping inside my eardrums. I can’t breathe properly. Mother Galena, oh Lord of Mercy, it hurts so badly.

Gabrio moaned. He moaned painfully as the weather erupted into a gust of wind that seemed to flung branches and rocks. He fell to the side, half of his face buried in a puddle of water.

He begged his body to move. But it didn’t listen. Face submerged, he thought how he had been overexerting himself in the past days. His abuse of the opiate, and the seemingly superhuman feats had finally caused his body to break down.

A lapse of judgment? No, he was just desperate. Injecting himself with opiates, then running around like he was something inhuman when in truth he was just a drug enchanted moron who had thought he could continue onward by relying on a drug that made abandon his own health.

As muddied water enter his half-opened mouth. Gabrio thought about what he could do at this moment. He had none. His left eye seeing mud water, unable to even close it.

He thought he could be better than. He should have seen this coming with how he had been forcing himself.

It didn’t matter.

It didn’t matter at all.

What was the point of hardened will when the body does not obey?

The rain lapped over the other side of the face. A might gust was brewed and he felt like the world was ravaged by a mighty king who controlled the storms.

Then he felt something snap.

And along with that snap came a rather familiar and hollow laugh that he had not heard ever since he was a child.