“Ahhhhhh…”

Jorik’s sigh of satisfaction could be heard in the whole village, and most people smiled when they heard it.

“It’s good to be back! It’s the second time that I almost lost my ears, and I swear there will be no third! This is definitely not for me!”

Most Hunters tried to hide their chuckles at this now familiar scene. In the last two months, Mahon, Jorik, Ranaeril and Halueth had left the village dozens of time, from a single day to a full week, and they had accumulated tons of experience at the side of what could be said to be the two best Hunters of the Silent Bow Clan.

If at first Jorik had been as eager as Mahon, expedition after expedition he has slowly changed his mind. There was no structure nor logic in the way the mountains behaved. One morning, a sublime blue sky and radiant sun could wait for them just to turn into the worst snow tempest in the afternoon.

Two very similar paths could have very different conditions, just because. There was no logical explanation to such changes. Only Halueth and Ranaeril's knowledge of the mountains could help them move through. It was much more about experimenting every possible situation and getting familiar with the mountains than learning a general trend about how to survive in the mountains.

Contrary to what they expected at first, it was less about learning rules and extrapolating for their situation than just knowing and acting based on their instincts.

Nature’s unpredictability turned Jorik mad. It wasn’t enough to deter the noble, but he often returned to the village with an evident satisfaction that started to amuse the whole group of Hunters. On the other hand, Mahon was really enjoying his time adventuring.

Halueth was a gold mine of knowledge, and Mahon absorbed his words with a thirst he hadn’t realized he had. He found it surprising that discovering new things that weren’t predictable helped him in his understanding of the Flow and the fourteenth Step.

Getting rid of rules and barriers meant he was destined to encounter phenomenons that he wouldn’t be able to understand and dissect. Back then, he would probably have reacted exactly like Jorik did. Finding himself faulty for not being able to get to the bottom of things. To find the underlying rhythm.

But now, Mahon was different. He accepted that there were things that didn’t obey any rules. That didn’t fit any frames. That didn’t belong anywhere. It seemed the Notitia Peaks were one of those things, and Mahon accepted it like it was.

He didn’t study it to understand it. He observed it to get to know it.

With his Flow, Mahon had switched from a control-centric perspective to a feeling-centric one. He watched with his heart besides his mind. More and more, he found himself following his instincts rather than his brain. And it opened many new perspectives.

Mahon tried to teach Jorik what he understood from his Flow, but the noble had trouble following Mahon’s explanations, and they agreed it was still too soon for Jorik to get to these new concepts. The noble was still struggling to perfect his thirteenth step, and despite his best efforts, he was stuck to a few teleportations half a dozen meters away.

“So, did you manage to get any belicia roots?” Ruith asked the four men that just went back to the village without succeeding to hide her worries.

She was Ranaeril’s wife, and as much as he was the leader of the Silent Bow Clan, she was as well. The couple was often leading expeditions out of the village, but never at the same time. There was an unofficial rule that at least one of them should be in the village at all times. When one was leading an expedition, the other was dealing with the village’s day to day routine and problems.

“Yes, m’am!” Ranaeril answered with a large smile.

He then gave a small pouch to her, and she let out a sigh of relief. One of the women was reaching the end of her pregnancy, and they were running short on medicinal roots to help her get to birth.

The scene looked like it was nothing big, but Mahon knew better after months beside the Silent Bow Clan. They were each doing their own chores, but their eyes and ears were clearly turned towards the two chiefs’ discussion. Mahon had long realized that one of the Hunters’ problem was everyone's problem.

Shoulders here and there loosened at the good news, and Mahon even noticed a few relieved smiles on some faces. The dinner was then prepared with a renewed enthusiasm, and it was soon served on the large tables where they eat together each night.

Since they had been wandering over the mountains and through the valleys a lot in the past couple of months, Mahon had come to enjoy those times of simple chats and leisure life. The Hunters were a curious clan. They were all hard workers, but they also knew how to enjoy life to the fullest.

They never hesitated to dance around a fire, to have meaningful discussion while watching the stars in the dark sky, or to help each other, even in the smallest tasks.

“How was it?” Katar slipped to a seat beside Mahon with his plate full and started eating while observing Mahon with attentive eyes and an eager expression.

Mahon repressed a smile. The young man was following each of their expeditions with extreme seriousness. He was very close to becoming a Hunter himself, and he couldn’t help being impatient to venture onto the high surrounding mountains.

If at first he couldn’t admit Mahon and Jorik had been given access to the mountains before him given their relative closeness in age, he then quickly changed his mind and harassed the two with questions about the expeditions.

“It was a hard one.” Mahon answered. “Six long days going up and down. The belicia tree mountain really isn’t close. We even got lost in a blizzard on the second day and had to stop in a cavern inhabited by trolls…”

“No way!” Katar exclaimed with a large gesture, forgetting he had a spoon full of food in his hand.

The nearby Hunters who got splashed with porridge threw a tired look at the young man, but they let it slip easily, seeing the eagerness in his eyes.

“Lucky that we were four, and they were just two.” Mahon continued. “We saw them first and against four bows, they couldn’t hold their ground very long. Have you ever seen a hedgehog?”

“What are you doing?” Jorik asked while holding back a laugh at Mahon’s antics.

“I’m trying to make a bow…” Mahon answered while he pulled the string of his invoked bow and watched as the construct exploded, unable to support Mahon’s strength

Mahon didn’t let the failure deter him, and he immediately invoked another. This time, he couldn’t even pull the bow, and Jorik couldn’t resist laughing out loud at the sight of Mahon putting all his strength on the string that didn’t even bulge.

“Say you manage to invoke one.” Jorik said once he got back his self-control. “What will you even shoot? Arrows made of stone? That’s the only thing there is around here.” He gestured at Nightmare’s desertic landscape.

Mahon took a short break after dispelling his last failure and threw a look at Jorik.

“No. You can shoot invoked arrows. It’s like having unlimited munitions. Just like javelin.”

As to prove his words, Mahon invoked a short spear and threw it as hard as he could. That wasn’t much in Nightmare, but the projectile still went as far as thirty meters. Mahon then invoked another one, and the previous javelin disappeared in the meantime.

“See?”

“Hmmm.” Jorik assumed a pensive stance. “But doesn’t that cost much energy? How fast will you get tired after invoking arrows after arrows?”

“Good question.” Mahon smiled. “Best way to know is to test it. Wanna challenge me?”

Jorik chuckled. “I stand no chance against you. You’ll need to invoke ten arrows for each one of mine for things to be even balanced.”

“Five arrows for one of yours.” Mahon countered.

The smile on Jorik’s face grew larger. “Eight.”

“Deal. What do we bet?”

“The loser got to carry the winner’s bag on the next expedition?”

“Sure.”

Mahon extended his hand, and Jorik shook it immediately.

“Why are you carrying Mahon’s bag?”

“Shut up.” Jorik winced, and Halueth and Ranaeril burst out laughing for the third time of the day.

“Always a pleasure to have you with us, Jorik.” Ranaeril said with a grin.

“But more seriously. It’s ok for today, since you know most of the way, but tomorrow you’ll have to get your bag back, Mahon. We need to cross through harpies territory, and it’s often not a happy time.” Halueth added.

“Harpies?” Mahon echoed. “I thought they didn’t like high altitude?”

“They don’t.” Ranaeril answered. “We’re not talking about the usual harpies. Actually, they’re more similar to drakes than harpies, but since they live in a pack, we call them harpies.”

“What should we expect?” Jorik asked with a focused look.

The whole group’s attitude changed from fun to seriousness. If there was one thing Mahon and Jorik had learnt beside the Silent Bow Clan, it was to never speak half-heartedly about potential threats. Especially in the mountains.

“A meter-long animal. Similar to a snake with wings, but with sharp claws capable of cutting through rocks. Their teeth are impressive, but that’s it. The claws, on the other hand, are deadly, so watch out for those. They hunt alone, but they scream as soon as they feel danger. A single shriek could wake up a dead man, so there is nothing to say about other harpies. All those in the vicinity will converge on us before we can do anything.”

“What’s your strategy given this information?” Halueth tested them.

“We try to move silently and as much hidden as we can.” Mahon started.

“And we shot down immediately every harpy that got sight of us.” Jorik completed.

“That’s pretty much it, indeed.” Ranaeril approved. “And if somehow we fail in this task and a harpy screams before we take it down, our only chance would be to take cover in a nearby cave and wait.”

“So we should look out for nearby caves?”

“No, focus on the harpies. I would rather not let one detect us in the first time, but honestly that’ll be hard. With four pairs of eyes and four bows, I’m pretty confident we shouldn’t have any problem dealing with one before it screams, though. Harpies are still pretty dumb. They will think of us as weak and try to take us on their own before calling for help. That’s often a deadly mistake.” Ranaeril grinned. “Now, let’s move. We still have a long way to go.”

The four men focused back on the path ahead of them and sped up slightly. After months training in the mountains, Mahon and Jorik were very used to it. They had never stumbled on rocks before, and they knew how to move, but now there was something more in their motions.

Like Halueth and Ranaeril, they were walking in a motion that seemed both fast and slow.

Fast, because there was not a single instant of hesitation in their gestures. They never stopped, never doubted and never hesitated. Extremely steady whatever the ground looked like, their steps covered the distance in no time, tirelessly. Their eyes observed everything around them, the wind, the clouds, the sun, the path ahead, their teammates, any suspicious movement that could indicate a hidden monster. They were hyperactive, perfectly aware of their surroundings.

Slow, because they moved as if they were in lethargy. Although constant, their pace was unhurried and relaxed. They never seemed to be tired or needing strength. They could move ten times faster, and yet they purposely restrained themselves. As if to admire the scenery, or if they were simply having a leisure walk with their friends instead of moving through deadly territory.

Fast and slow collided and merged in an eerie dance as the four men walked and climbed through the mountains.