Adelaide strolled through the snow covered forest, her great-white fur coat blending her into the surroundings. From the corner of her eyes, she could see animals scampering in and out of the edges of her range of vision. Glistening icicles hung off the coniferous trees, while the cold dried branches of others held out like extended hands in greeting.

The snow covered forest was her sanctuary. The cool winter wind that carried the smell of frozen snow hanging on wood. The crunch of the rare threaded dirt beneath.

“Yes!” a man yelled from a far corner of the empty woods. “I've got one!”

Her ears picked up the direction of the noise and she turned to face the distance. From her waist, she pulled out her axes and disappeared in a puff of brown smoke.

“Please, Roget, let's get out of here before the Demon shows up!” A second voice, younger and more high pitched, sounded off.

Adelaide reappeared near them behind a tree and slowly lowered herself to a prone.

“Please, Kiril, there's no such thing as a Demon of Valendra Forest.” The first man, Roget, told off his companion while holding up the arrow-pierced carcass of a wintersnow hare. “It's just a myth.”

“If it's just the myth, why aren't there more hunters in Valent? Even more so since the forest is so near?”

Adelaide jumped out of her hiding place and rushed at Roget. The man turned immediately to the movement but she could see his eyes struggling to make out the form of her camouflage coat against the backdrop of snow. It was obvious the man had no training in battle for he struggled with panic while attempting to load his bow.

Her right axe raised and with a flick of her arm, she sent her weapon spinning through the air. With a crunch, the weapon embedded itself between Roget's eyes. With her offhand axe, she leapt and slammed the weapon into the man's skull for added assurance.

Slowly, she steadied her breaths before turning to look at the second man, Kiril.

Kiril stood, water forming on his pants. “I-I-I-I...!” he stammered incoherently.

“Go,” Adelaide said to him. “And don't come back.”

The man turned tail and ran, tracing their footsteps out.

With a bone cracking snap, she pulled her weapons out of the body and stood to height, blood dripping from her blades and pooling around the skull onto the white bed of snow. The carcass of the wintersnow hare at their side.

A deafening silence rang through the forest until she had calmed herself enough to regain composure. Birds tweeted and the nearby stream splashed and ran. The forest was her sanctuary.

***

“You know what?” The Watcher voiced out.

Adelaide was rung from her semi-consciousness from that sentence. Finding herself carried on the back of The Watcher, she felt a sense of embarrassment and defeatism, but was too tired to admit it. Even with the rudimentary bandaging and her fatigue from having been teleporting halfway across the continent in less than a day weighed on, her wounds from Light's onslaught still burned. If the human so much as made one of his wise cracking comments, she was going to shoot him.

The Watcher continued, “If she had not toyed around with me so much, that Nora chick would probably have won.”

She was surprised to find that she had somewhat missed the man's strange line of thoughts. “It's quite common,” she began explaining. “Even in stories, the villains often revels in the foreplay.”

“Great,” he replied. “I thought only bad guys in my world were that stupid.”

As they neared the light of the town, figures of four jogged out to them. She instinctively tried to reach for her axe, but a shock of pain ran through her.

“Don't move too much, Miss Hero of the Hour,” The Watcher told her in a contrastingly mocking and caring tone. “Still can't believe you made it all the way here with that injury.”

The group of four reached them and The Watcher made a quick introduction.

With hair of summer fields, the woman named Luce asked, “Where are the enemies?”

The Watcher explained, “One's dead. The others are out at the field. A dark elf is watching over them.”

The hume Grandmaster Enchanter nodded to his apprentice, “You go help the elf. I'll go get the militia.”

Hildergard gave a quick bow before running off towards the hill. Miguel gave The Watcher a thumbs up as he turned back into Ra'Kalen.

The forth member of the party was a wood elf. His hair was a shining blond, with the generic sharp face and monocled green iris of his kind, though given a slightly sharper chin and longer forehead that made him seem to be constantly looking down at the people around him from a height. He wore a white overcoat and sleek black breeches capped by a pair of black leather boots.

Approaching The Watcher, the wood elf introduced, “Doctor Greene Parker.”

The Watcher quickly said, “She's injured.” He gestured with a flick of his head to Adelaide on her back.

Greene quickly nodded and motioned for Luce to help bring the elf to the ground. The human woman took over an arm from The Watcher and the man slowly lowered Adelaide to allow her to stand.

Adelaide, recognizing the trademark rifle slung on Luce's back, asked, “You're the Titan Ranger?”

“Yes,” Luce replied, shifting under the weight. Greene moved under the other arm and with slow steps, the four-legged group of three began walking forward. “Is something the matter?”

From behind them, The Watcher gave a quick, “I'll go help Hilde.” His footsteps then pattered away.

To Luce, Adelaide said, “I expected an elf, or at least a hume. Never expected humans to care much about preserving nature.”

“Yeah, well, I never expected a wood elf to be so unimposing,” Luce snidely replied.

Adelaide wondered if she was losing her touch. First The Watcher, now Luce. Humans used to fear the knowledge of The Demon of Valendra. Internally, she begrudgingly acknowledged the power and experience of The Watcher and wondered if this Luce also had a history of the extraordinary.

They moved to Greene's clinic, which was to their luck, just around the corner. Passing through the reception, they made their way to the small ward. Like the rest of the town, the building exterior were copper lined wood, but the interiors were made of soft white painted bricks. There were only three beds in the room, with one occupied by a blonde woman who laid unmoving underneath a clean white blanket. Luce and Greene made a passing glance over to the other patient before setting Adelaide down on the empty bed beside her. Between each beds were a bedside table with a bowl of water, a set of medical tools, glass bottles of chemicals, and a cloth. Beside those was a child-sized cast iron canister sided by copper pipes that fed into the walls. A sleek copper pump capped the contraption with a leather oxygen mask on top and a tube connecting them.

Adelaide asked of the machine, “What is this?”

He said with an elitist tone, “Oxygen pumps.” His words permeated the feeling as if not knowing the machine somehow made Adelaide less of a person. “You don't need it since you're still conscious and breathing on your own.” Greene lifted up her tunic and started unwrapping the crude bandage with a pained grimace.

“What about her?” she noted her fellow patient.

He quietly washed his hands within the bowl of water, drying them off with the cloth. Sombrely, he replied, “She doesn't need it either.”

She heard Luce swallow hard. The Titan Ranger excused herself. “I'll see if the others are back yet.” She then left the room.

Greene continued cleaning Adelaide's wound and once Luce was out of earshot, he said nonchalantly, “She's dead.”

He popped opened one of the bottles of clear liquid and unceremoniously poured it onto the wound. Her back taut as the alcohol seeped in, her teeth gritted in pain. She could feel the liquid and blood pouring out through the back of the through-and-through, soaking into the bed. The cool of the chemical overwhelmed by the burning hurt. The doctor started the same procedure on the second hole, causing the same amount of pain and discomfort with the same amount of bedside manners a butcher treats a piece of meat. Once cleaned, he started wrapping a new set of bandage around her body, neater and tighter than the haphazard job she had done for herself. The process was fast and carried out with the skilled hands only time could train.

“Us elves have higher rate of healing, and the attack was clean and missed all vitals” he noted as he tightened the knot. “The wounds should close fully by the season's quarter. Just keep the bandage tight to keep the wounds closed.”

She laid in the bed, heart beating fast from the pain of the heartless treatment. Once she had settled, the aches of her muscles displeased her more than the hole in her body. At that moment, she was happy to be born an elf, and not a weak bodied human.

As the doctor began packing up the used instruments, Adelaide asked, “Did you treat her?”

Without turning, the doctor replied, “Who?”

“The human woman.”

The doctor braked all activities. With an unreadable tone, he told her, “Of course I did.”

“Why? Don't you know what they do to us elves? Sell us as slaves. Placing us in the Antipods.”

“I think the same could be said about you, Demon Eyes.”

She stopped talking. Trying to sit up, her wounds tightened and forced her to lay back down with a groan. “How... did you know who I am?”

“You're a wanted criminal with an Epitaph,” Greene said. “Not a lot of people, human or elves, can have a status as unique as that. And your eyes, red and green, are a complete giveaway.”

She found her teeth gritted, “What are you going to do now?”

“Nothing. I'll treat you, let you heal, and let you go. One last favour for Miguel and I'm officially squared with him.” Greene finished packing all the blood soaked tools within the bowl of water. He picked up the bowl and headed for the exit but stopped short of the door. “An advice for you, 'Demon Eyes' Adelaide. The things the humans do to us, the things we do to them, and the things we do to ourselves, are all equally horrible. But it doesn't matter. Be it humans, hume, elves, or animals, at the end of the day, when we cut deep enough, when we bleed long enough, when we age old enough, we're all the same kind of dead.”

The doctor closed the door behind him noiselessly. Adelaide looked to the woman beside her, peaceful in death. She thought back to the winter with Roget and Kiril, and wondered if the dead wintersnow hare had the same sleeping look in death.