After that thought, Oren gripped the emerald dagger he had carefully placed inside his robe pocket and smiled at the archer.
"What a pleasure it is to meet you here, at this moment, after such a dreadful battle. This is fate, is it not?"
Oren chuckled sarcastically.
"Because you were hidden away in that insidious mess, waiting..."
It was like a predator hunting its prey, but the archer before him had allowed others to feast before jumping in.
Still, Oren's words were purposely dramatic, meant to make the youth uneasy.
But what showed across the man's face was a hollow look of defeat.
Oren slowly glanced around the clearing, his eyes sharp with concern and vigilance.
"Archer... should you not be thinking about heading back? Now the fog is cleared up, the adversaries of Everdream will be searching for you."
Oren also added with a knowing smile.
"Also, it is getting late."
The archer frowned.
"Adversaries of Everdream? Searching for me?"
The handsome man dismissed the words, then lifted his gaze to the dark grey sky.
Then spoke shortly.
"Ah, yes, it is getting quite late. I think we—"
The word "we" barely left the archer's mouth before Oren shot to his feet, and a fearsome squelch escaped the archer's mouth.
Despite the lingering exhaustion from the fight and months of travel to the Fourth Mountain, he was brimming with energy from the brief nap.
He moved with the precision of an Enlightened.
Oren shoved the archer back, catching him off guard.
His right hand revealed the emerald dagger hidden in his pocket.
Before the archer could react, Oren's arm slinked around his neck, the dagger pressed to his throat.
When archer slowly lifted his hands in the sky, Oren's brows rose in confusion.
With a resigned breath the man said, "Ahh. I surrender."
He whispered somberly, then chuckled.
"I may be enlightened, but I know I cannot win a battle against an immortal."
So he is enlightened, Oren thought as the archer pondered, then added without concern in his voice.
"My name is Selvar, an Enlightened Archer of the grey fog. I have come to wager with you, demon."
Oren pressed the blade closer to his throat, making Selvar's eyes widen.
Selvar continued quickly, a faint grin played on his face.
"I come from a distant village near the Fog of Everdream. I did not come to harm you, but to speak."
Oren mused.
The rumours from a dozen years ago seemed true.
Everdream really was surrounded by fog.
From a distance anyone could see the grey veil hovering around the right peak of the fourth mountain.
Still, he had mistaken it for a rumor.
Still, the wall of fog must be an area where the world's energy was abundant.
If only he could find it.
If the world's energy gathered there, then perhaps an erol capable of ending his immortality might exist as well. But he could not waste time.
If Oren went into the fog, he would be vulnerable, especially if there were more people like Selvar.
Oren chuckled from behind Selvar, staring down at him coldly.
"Have you not harmed me already? Did you not put this arrow in my neck, then come here to hunt me down like a cursed beast?"
Selvar's grey eyes darkened at Oren's frigid words.
"I did shoot you, and I was in the cohort of attackers."
Selvar chuckled at his own words.
"But I harmed you to fool those miscreants. Those deceitful people who do not come from Everdream, yet dare to claim they protect it, and do so willingly without any former ties."
"That was what I had set out to do, after all. To let them betray your deal, then betray them and flee with the Immortal Demon."
Flee with me?
Oren froze briefly, but the archer continued.
"You, unlike those unsettling people, still have reason. You have travelled far, to Rosain, Emperois, Riverdam, and many other places.
The stories of the Immortal demon are gruesome. They speak of the faults that stained your life. Of them all, the cruelest was sacrifice.
You stole, starved, and killed dozens of men and women. And when that was not enough, you sacrificed them for your malevolent deeds.
You sacrificed people to create abominable life, trying to force those creatures, Erols, into existence using the world's energy."
Selvar's gaze sharpened slightly.
"You must have your reasons. Reasons I choose to believe in, at least."
After hearing the selvar out, Oren relaxed his grip around the archer's neck, released him, and pushed him away.
In the brief silence, he inspected the man's serene expression. Selvar, in turn, felt immense relief at being freed from the Immortal Demon's hold.
He had not followed Oren to harm him but to form an alliance. That was why he had willingly allowed himself to be vulnerable, held in a chokehold.
Still, if the demon attacked after his plea, he would have to retaliate because Selvar could not risk being injured.
A smile tugged at Oren's lips even as his brows furrowed in deep contemplation.
Something he had somehow forgotten resurfaced in his mind, but... something wasn't adding up.
Selvar did not speak, and neither did Oren.
He knew selvar was right though.
Those erols. That was what he had been doing, wasn't it?
He was slowly forgetting.
But they were also the reason he had come to Everdream.
The supernatural occurrences tied to the world's currents, and the Erols bound to its name.
Over the years he learned, and if he did not know, he acquired the knowledge of what he termed them.
And he knew the birth of an erol was tied to the world energy and another reactant to produce an erol.
And despite not being of the Enlightened rank, he believed he had once used an Erol.
An unheard of one.
Long ago, he thought he had eaten the Erol of immortality.
And now he searched for another, to reverse the otherwise irreversible.
....The Erol of mortality.