Fall had come and gone, and the trees had since shed their leaves. Soft beds of snow covered the once dried earth, and footprints trailed in the blanket of white into the leafless Valendra Forest. Below the white canopy, through the unthreaded paths between the sparse spread trees, the coated man walked, sword drawn, fear following close behind. And he should be afraid. The news of the Demon of Valendra having been captured had been circling the towns for almost half a season, yet not a single person till then had dared test the rumours until the treasure hunter below.

Adelaide smiled at the idea of proving the gossips wrong, and chuckled a little at the look of surprise she imagined the man would have when she dropped in. Literally. No one ever looked up. They never expected it. After over a hundred years, humans should have learned by then.

So she jumped away from the top of the tree, pushing away from the trunk. Her axe reached out to the next tree, hooked onto the trunk, and wound around it until she slowed enough to land on a thick branch.

“My forest,” she whispered to herself. She spun her axes in her hands and threw the offhand weapon into the tree opposite the man. The weapon punched into the tree with a resounding thud.

He flinched, turned with sword pointed at the ready in the wrong direction, towards the embedded axe. She launched herself off the tree, axe in hand, ready to plunge it into the back of the man's skull as she free-falled. The treasure hunter must have heard her, for he turned and pulled his sword to his waist, ready to thrust.

She teleported behind the man, her crouched landing softened by the snow. Her leg stretched out, swept back, and hooked the man by the ankle, forcing him to spin and fall to his back. Before he could retaliate, she mounted him with the dexterity of a master gymnast. Her free hand lunged towards his sword arm, grabbed the wrist, and slammed it to the ground. Her weapon arm pulled back, raising the axe overhead, and swung it down.

No more killing.

The blade thumped into the ground beside his head. She breathed hard, partially due to the cold and adrenaline of the fight, but also from the tinge of fear in the back of her mind. She glared at her victim, and his eyes widened in fear. Her red and green eyes, the basis of the tale of the Demon, would usually be the last things her victims saw. But not that day.

She hissed, “You're in luck. Go. And tell them Demon Eyes have returned.”

With one swift motion, she pulled the sword out of his hand, dismounted him, and spun to her feet. With the sword, she pointed the way out of the forest. The man scrambled to his feet and ran towards the exit, never once looking back.

A breeze blew through, carrying with it a small gust of fresh snow. Once she was certain the man would not return, she sheathed the sword on a small leather strap at her thigh, worn expressly as an all purpose holster. She went to her axe in the tree and with a heave, pulled the weapon out, and returned her axes to their sheaths at the back of her belt.

She took one last look at the man in the far distance. With her elven eyesight, she saw him continue his desperate sprint, stumbling, and getting back up to run again.

No more killing.

Adelaide did not scare easily, but those words from The Watcher remained with her ever since she returned from Everwind. And every time she remembered them, the image of The Watcher standing before her in defiance flashed across her mind. The steely gaze, the menacing stare, the overwhelming confidence that emitted from him, as if telling her he could snuff out her life as easily as she did the guards.

Shivers ran down her spine, and she told herself it was just the cold. Probably. She turned away from the battleground and headed back into the deep forest. Passed a toppled tree. Passed a hill of leafless bushes. Another toppled tree. A small frozen creak. Another toppled tree. To anyone else, the snow-covered landscape would look identical at every turn. But she had grown up in Valendra Forest, and had lived there for nearly a cycle, over a hundred and sixty years. Every corner was memorized, every change in terrain jutted at her. Landmarks known only to her littered the land. An overturned rock. A misplaced porthole. A tree with weird, twisted branches.

She reached a small creek that was still flowing in the cold next to a small cave made of stacked rocks that looked like jutting cards, the entrance a perfect height for a person. A small campfire burned just outside the shelter next to a large wooden log and the unconscious body of The Watcher.

Ignoring the man, she went into her cave, removed her belt, and dropped her axes and new sword unceremoniously on a makeshift wooden table of planks and vines. She went to the long wooden chest at the end of the cave – a piece of furniture that fell off from a passing caravan – and opened it. Rummaging through her possessions, which amounted to everything within, she pulled out a grey fur coat, another trophy from the same caravan.

The coat was mostly used to keep warm, but she also used it to hunt animals. Humans were too stupid, and without the heavy coat, she could easily outmanoeuvre them from the treetops, thus negating the need to hide. Animals, on the other hand, had better senses. They could smell her and see her green outfit before she even got close.

Back at the table, she grabbed a drakfruit from a handwoven basket. She hated the fruit. It was too sour and too sweet at the same time, and the scaly red skin was hard to peel off, but she was tired from her fight earlier and was not particularly motivated to go out hunting or gathering. Outside, she grabbed the largest firewood from a pile of other precut ones, too lazy to make two trips. She threw it into the campfire, sat on the log, and began peeling the fruit.

“Where am I?”

She looked up and The Watcher started sitting up. She noticed immediately that the ground underneath his body still had grass as green as the day she set him down there.

She finished peeling the fruit, “You really ask a lot of questions, you know that?” She paused, waited for him to reply, but he just reached into his coat and took out his pocket watch. Adelaide continued, “You're in Valendra Forest. My home.” She took a bite of the crunchy fruit and stuck her tongue out at the tangy taste.

The Watcher looked quizzically over the clock before closing and pocketing the trinket. “How long was I out for?”

“Twenty three days.”

“Did you take care of me all that time?” he said with a sly smile. “Feeding and bathing me?”

“Don't be a gear head. I wouldn't even touch you with a pole.” She gestured to the green patch of grass he had lain on. “Tried to kick you a few times, but it was as if there was a bubble around you. Couldn't even...” She searched for the word. “Connect.”

Muttering to himself something about 'chrono suspension' and 'life support', he got to his feet to stretch. He continued questioning as if his immobility was an everyday event. “So what happened? How did I get here.”

The tang of the fruit soured her mood further, and his ceaseless questions did not help either. But she put up with it, not just because she had questions of her own, but also a request that she had been thinking about since she brought him with her. “Don't you remember? We were falling out of the sky, thanks to your stupidity.”

He glared at her. “Hey! I got us out of there, didn't I?”

“No, I got us out of there. You passed out.” She pointed to a snow covered cart, which remained untouched during the twenty-three-day encampment. “Had to teleport the both us out and drag your geared ass through two states. Do you have any idea how much energy that takes?”

He casually remarked in hushed tones, “Surprisingly less.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

He must not have known about elven senses, which was slightly better than a humans', including their hearing. Shocked that she heard him, he nervously defended with, “Nothing! Not calling you impaired or anything.”

Adelaide instinctively reached for her axe, but found none after realizing she had left them on the table. Lucky gear head. Instead of murdering the man, she decided to try Nadier's way and 'talk things out' first.

She asked, “So who are you?”

“I told you, I'm The Watcher.” He sat back down on the green patch of grass, a part of nature taken out of time and space. Silence fell between them as he took in their surroundings with wonder. He looked up to the sky and noted, “Oh, the smaller star is gone.”

She had never met a human like The Watcher before. Someone who did not know who she was, or more precisely, cared little about it. Not only that, she had never met a common living being who could swagger in and out of the strange and dangerous as The Watcher. Someone who experienced her teleportation and reacted in curiosity, not fear. Someone who casually made a plan to launch themselves across the skies and onto a blimp.

No more killing.

Someone who managed to scare her.

Continuing from his train of thoughts on the Twins, The Watcher deduced, “Must have gone behind the big one. That's why it's winter, I'm guessing?” His question was not directed to anyone. “Cool. A planet's season that depends on the positioning of the stars.”

She remembered her request of him and cut straight to the point. “There's something I want you to help me do. Since I—”

“I'll do it,” he replied without hesitation.

“—did save your life, you owe me for—wait, what did you say?”

“I'll do it.”

Stunned, she struggled to form a sentence. Her mouth opened and closed a couple of times. All the while, The Watcher continued to examine the area and making inane comments to himself.

Finally, after gathering her thoughts, she asked, “No questions? Don't you even want to hear what it is?”

“As long as nobody dies, I don't really care. I'll help you. You seem nice.”

“But you saw me kill all those guards.”

A sombre look settled in his features and he appeared to age almost instantly. “Everybody do stupid things until they are smart. And if you go wrong, I'll just put a stop to you.” He smiled at her, though without any menace, as if there was an in-joke between the two of them that contradictorily only he knew of. “Besides, you don't seem like that bad a person. Annoying and immature, sure, and you could also learn to control that temper. But you can teleport and have cool green-red eyes. I'd like to see where you end up in a year from now. But seriously, no more killing unless someone else's life is on the line.”

She had never attended a school, and never had any older figures to guide her, but she was sure that at that moment, she was feeling the same as a kid being lectured by their parents or peers.

Speechlessly, she looked at her feet in contemplation. The Watcher rambled on about the cold and how he wished he wore a thicker coat like hers. She ignored him and took another bite of the drakfruit. It didn't taste as sour as before.