Leaving the ice dwarf village intact and with all the supplies was not something that had been in Valthorn's plans, but when he left the village alongside the caravan, he realized what a difference it had made.
As the carriages pulled away, the dwarves began to wave to the group, saying goodbye, completely happy for the first time in years, and so they continued until the carriages pulled away so far that the village became just a bright spot amidst all the snow.
Kaizen, who was riding a borrowed Shaccar and walking alongside Valthorn, noticed the different expressions on the elf's face and said:
"You realize that, don't you?"
Valthorn shook his head, momentarily stunned by those thoughts and regaining consciousness of where he was. He looked at Kaizen and frowned.
"What are you talking about, human?"
"You know what I'm talking about, there's no need to pretend you don't." Kaizen looked straight ahead again and continued. "Your actions have consequences, and it's a bad feeling to realize that our bad decisions affect others around us so much."
"You talk as if you have experience with this, Kaizen. Being so strong, I imagine you've made many suffer because they bumped into you at the wrong time and on the wrong day."
"Of course I have, I'm no angel. My actions also have consequences, so I try to be as careful as possible so that I affect as few people as possible with my decisions. After all, although the first people to be affected by our decisions aren't those closest to us, sooner or later we will hurt those we love even if we don't mean to." Kaizen clenched his right fist and squeezed hard.
At the same time, in the driving seat of one of the wagons pulled by Shaccares, Xisrith had a knife pointed at a dark elf woman who was driving one of the wagons, because he couldn't completely trust them.
The woman, on the other hand, didn't seem nervous at all, and even struck up a conversation with Xisrith.
"I don't think I've ever seen Valthorn as comfortable with defeat as he is today." The woman said, looking at her leader a few meters ahead.
Xisrith then looked at Valthorn's back and questioned:
"What do you mean? Does that look comfortable to you?"
Valthorn was completely serious and hardly reacted.
"In fact, Valthorn is not a very transparent man." The woman admitted with a nervous smile. "But he's certainly strange. The few times we've failed to fulfill a request from the lord, he's been angry with himself for days and blamed himself for the mistakes of the whole group.
You'd think this would be a common attitude, since he's our leader, but the other collect captains are much stricter with their own groups."
"Well, maybe your leader isn't blaming himself because he knows that neither he nor you stood a chance against us." Xisrith twirled the knife in one hand.
"Hahahaha! That's true too!" The elf agreed, and a sepulchral silence followed, until she herself brought up the subject again. "Hey, is it okay if I ask you something about yourself?"
Xisrith leaned forward and narrowed her eyes. "As long as it's nothing to do with what exactly we came here to do, you can ask."
"You're a descendragon, aren't you? You're using illusion magic to hide your horns and tail, but I'm pretty sure I'm right."
The player was clearly surprised, but only showed it for a second. "Hmm. How did you figure that out?"
"Would it be too strange to say it was because of the way you sit? No, not really. I started to suspect it from the way you sit, yes, because it seems a naturally comfortable position for you, but I was almost certain when I saw your eyes. They're red and your pupils are vertical like those of the southern dragons." The elf explained without delay.
"Anyway, it's a pleasure to meet a descendragon out of the storybooks."
"I'm even more surprised that you know what a descendragon is."
"I know because I'm from the old generation. I bet the younger ones have no idea you're a descendragon or even a dragon."
Xisrith frowned. "You say that about the 'lord' you respect and admire so much?"
The elf's face closed completely for the first time during the conversation, and Xisrith noticed that this was a delicate subject.
The wind from the fog storm around them was cutting, and probably no one who was more than a meter away could hear what they were talking about, so Xisrith decided to poke her to try to understand what else this elf had to say.
"About this lord of yours, I hear you call him the Emperor of the Mist. Why such a cheesy nickname?"
The elf seemed to hesitate for a moment, but then gave in. "The lord got that ridiculous nickname from the dwarf tribes and villages because his fortress lies inside the great skull of the greatest ice giant that ever lived." She pointed upwards.
Among the clouds and snow, the shadow of a huge mountain revealed itself, and between the peaks of that mountain, a great skull.
"It is said that this giant died when he tried to stand on the highest mountain in Niflheim to reach one of the branches of Yggdrasil. He planned to climb it and bring destruction to Asgard, but one of the gods killed him before he could do so and, as a warning to everyone, left the giant's skull there.
On summer mornings, the skull could easily be seen and a kind of white cloud always seemed to flow from its eye sockets, hence the mountain was nicknamed Mist Mountain."
"And that's why the man who rules the Mountain of Mist is called the Emperor of Mist." Xisrith concluded.
"Yes, because from up there you can see where each of the remaining ice giants are, after all, they're like walking mountains."
...
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