Aelin sat quietly against the utterly unnatural spire of a tree, something which should, in a reasonable world, only be possible through the power of Aianathon if he was whole, but, then again, this new world was anything but natural. Aelin glanced at the madman, feeling only slight disgust over the fact that he looked like a veil-elven corpse that had been bled completely dry, except even paler. It was strange that anyone was paler than them, but he supposed that he was at least tall enough to survive in the wild, and from what he had seen he was even passable at climbing when he wasn't panicking. not good enough to traverse the sharp ridges and steep cliffs of his home as a proper hunter, but good enough to be a craftsman, or maybe a healer, that seemed more like him with all his talk of how life functioned and grew... and even more so because of his uncalloused hands. But even if he was like a child in the chasms when it came to hunting, he certainly did have good traits, traits useful for a hunter hopeful. Like his curiosity... well, maybe not, he didn't even look at two of his three plaques. But he did seem to adjust to what was clearly a new lifestyle with surprising speed, at least, he assumed it was a new lifestyle based on all the tossing and turning he spent the first night doing. It reminded him of all the times he took hunter apprentices out on their first real hunt, and they then complained over getting too little water after too much time under the last eye, how hard the ground was, and how their scratched and bloodied feet kept them awake. All except the fact that he didn't complain, of course. Apparently, his racial ability was good for something, even if he had been robbed of Aianathon's final gift.

Aelin shook his head to clear his mind, he should know better than to get stuck in his own thoughts with only an unknown by his side. Even if said unknown was very willing to die for his sake. But that didn't mean that there weren't other dangers in the forest that did not fear fire, like any proper animal should fear the second gift to Aianathons chosen. But, now wasn't the time to think of all the strange beasts and new rules that had taken over his life, especially not when they had so many problems to deal with. He needed to stop this habit of thinking about problems that weren't actually physical obstacles, like the madman did, and start thinking, and maybe even talking, about real problems. which was an annoyingly rich subject.

"Madman"

"Where are they? How many of them are there? Did you happen to glimpse their level? why are you simply sitting there?" The madman sprang up from his quiet meditation, an activity Aelin was loathed to disrupt since it required him to be silent. the madmen quickly turned his back to the fire before opening his eyes to avoid ruining his night vision, then started looking out into the whispering leaves of the trees which really should not exist.

"We need to talk"

The madman's head snapped to look at him with wide hopeful eyes. Well, even more hopeful than the usual permanent hope he for some reason had, even when he was cornered by a fox seven times his level. The madman smiled widely at Aelin. Aelin felt a familiar wariness claw at his mind, telling him to be careful around anyone pretending to be this good, but he quickly shoved the feeling down, reminding himself once more that the madman had no reason to trust- and help him yet was doing so anyways. The madman even said he thought they would survive and have grand adventures until they settled down, and he actually meant it, even when every sane person would recognize the incredible danger and hopelessness of their, and every other living thing in the world's, situation. Well, he was 'the madman' for a reason.

"Really? You simply want to converse? Are you sure?" he said, looking ever more hopefully at Aelin.

"Why are you reacting like this?"

"Well, I happen to be quite surprised as this happens to be the first time you've initiated conversation, and perhaps the fifth time we've had a conversation at all," the madman said.

"it is more than the fifth time we've talked"

"You are right, it was a horrific hyperbole on my part, it has to be at least the seventh since this is our seventh day here, and I distinctly remember speaking to you once every day," The madman says, relaxing down to sit at the fire again while still smiling, which isn't exactly a surprise, since saying that the madman is still smiling is like saying that water is still wet, anything else would be strange, unnatural even, not that much of anything is natural now.

"Are you sure? I think it might be the sixth time we've spoken, I think I remember ignoring you on the second day, it may have just been the wind and the rabbits playing a trick on you back then" Aelin said, before once again admonishing himself for getting drawn into something as useless as banter with this madman.

"You may be right about that, after all, your voice is quite rabbit-like, I cannot even count how many rabbits I've met with gruff baritones and a tendency for the sarcastic," The madman said.

Aelin looked at him, waiting for him to quiet down, and refusing to engage with the useless conversation any further.

"Oh, don't take it to heart and worry yourself for nothing, your voice is quite musical when it isn't grunting"

Aelin kept looking at him.

"So, what did you want to talk about?" The madman asked, finally accepting that when in the wild, Aelin would only talk when it was important to talk, like a proper hunter.

"I want to talk about the fact that we have no resources, and that we have no prospect of getting any" Aelin said.

The madman lapsed into silence, looking at the leaves as he usually did when in deep thought, practically the only times where he reliably doesn't smile and seems like a person who could exist outside of children's tales, though only for a moment before he spoke "I understand that we haven't seen even the shadow of a mine yet, but I'm sure there is some way of getting resources just around the corner" he said, once again returning to his ever-present smile.

"And on what basis are you so sure?" Aelin asked, doubtful of his claim.

"I would rather not say," He said while looking away and pretending that his refusal to speak wasn't highly suspicious and was actually just a fun jest.

"And why not?" Aelin asked.

"Because, while I stand by my opinion, I am also very sure that you won't agree... and I suspect that you might actually go against your 'hunters code' and yell at me"

"If I yell at you, then that's because you deserve to be yelled at"

"Well, in that case, we both already know the answer to your question, but since I have a distinct impression that you will not be leaving this be, I will tell you" The madman paused for a moment, intertwining his fingers and placing his elbows on the knees of his crossed legs, and looked at him from the other side of the fire. he smiled like he was going to enlighten Aelin about all the secrets of the world "Hope"

Aelin drew in a deep breath before responding "I suppose you were right"

"Right about hope being a viable reason to believe the future will be better?" The idiot madman asked, his voice once again filled with hope.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Well, Aelin supposed it was time to disprove his little theory that hope would make the world do as he wished. Because this idiot was clearly hoping he wouldn't yell at him.

"Why, by Aianathon's scorching gaze, do you think hope will let us find resources!" Aelin yelled, indeed breaking his every instinct and belief in what a hunter should do and how he should act.

"Well, I don't mean that we can just sit here waiting while eating roasted rabbit every night until we hope so tremendously that the universe will make a bird carry iron tools to us, I just know that so long as we keep trying to and tend to the hope in our hearts, then we will at some point succeed in finding what we need," The madman said.

"that is not how the world works. There is no guarantee that you will succeed so long as you keep trying, and while trying as hard and as long as you can is good, it won't fix anything if the solution just isn't there" Aelin said.

"There has to be something we can do to get tools" the madman stubbornly said, as though there being a way to get what they needed was some self-evident fact.

"Why? Why does there have to be a way forwards?" Aelin asked, trying to remain calm.

"There has to be some way of advancing inside this forest, some way to get the resources we need, it's the tutorial, it is meant to help us learn, so long as we keep trying, we will achieve what we set out to do" the madman said, his stubborn assurance in his own nonsensical beliefs and complete faith in 'hope' as a legitimate solution paining Aelin at his very core with how stupid it was.

The strangest part to Aelin was that he couldn't even see how flawed his reasoning was, he refused to see that while yes, the tutorial would definitely have ways of advancing, those ways could just be limited leveling up, not crafting. He refused to acknowledge that even if they could find resources, it might take weeks to do so, and that was a very strong 'if'.

Aelin drew in a deep breath to calm himself. He needed to calm down. The madman was clearly either sheltered beyond belief, supremely lucky up until this point, or simply mad. Of course, the theory that he was sheltered weakened for each day he spent out here killing rabbits and the vocational fox, and the idea that luck was not always on his side should have sunk in at least a little bit whenever the rabbits got him, so chances were that he was simply mad. But even if he was mad, that did not change how nature treated him, and as such, Aelin had to at least try and make it sink into his skull that he would die if he didn't start considering that things could simply go wrong.

"I understand that you do not understand the world like any other normal person. I understand that you have experienced something, maybe a personal event in your life that altered how you view the world, maybe nothing more than a fall on your head, and that said event has made you somehow incapable of acknowledging the horrific things that happen in the world for no good reason. that you can't see something like being struck by lightning as something other than a mistake that could have been avoided if only you hoped not to get struck down by Aianathons glare a little more..." Aelin closed his eyes briefly, before opening them once more, and glaring at Oliver "But that is not how the world works, you damned fool! If you cannot recognize this soon, then you will die, and all you tried to build and safeguard from the horrors of the world will crumble with you because the world cares nought for your hopes and dreams, it will see you dead just as easily as any other, and if you don't recognize that fact, then you will die with everyone you call an ally around you, sharing in your demise. You will lie, in the ruins of the fruits of your labour, infested with rot and poison you refused to see... but I will not be one of those fools, even if my honour as a hunter under the eye of Aianathon will forever be burdened by his condemning gaze, may it burn my soul as it will my skin, I cannot look as you drag the good people you are sure to draw to you down with the rotting house you built, until you reach beneath the final veil. So recognize the world as it is, or travel your world of fantasies alone" Aelin said, standing up and looking down on Oliver as he sat, speechless at the outburst of critique of his ideology, Aelin shook his head and walked away to scout for any lights in the night, that, and to get some time away to cool down. Because even though his speech had been nothing but a ploy to make him slightly less suicidally confident in the power of hope, there was very real frustration fueling it.

That frustration was built over days of him doing things with no regard for things possibly going wrong, and then refusing to learn that things could go wrong, he planned for battles, yes, but he made no backup plans, he gave no thoughts of retreat options in case they were starting to become overwhelmed, he simply expected everything to go perfectly and never learned to plan around mistakes. It was infuriating, and the worst part was that he didn't involve Aelin in his plans, he simply did what he thought best and hoped Aelin would be alright, no teamwork, just two separate people hunting the same foe.

Aelin stayed low to the ground as he walked down the sloped branch, making sure that his silhouette didn't stand out against the light of the campfire behind him. He looked down every five seconds or so to map out where the twigs, piles of leaves, and the small pools of water which littered the ever-fall forest. he did not need to look more often than that, because the sanctuary and invisibility given to a hunter from a slow, measured pace were more valuable than darkness and shadows. The time spent not plotting his steady and unseen advance was spent looking out over the dark forest, for any hint of others. Initially, he thought they would have found others by now, based on how little space there was between him and the madman, but when he considered that they were not only spread out on a plain but also up and down it was clear that it may take far longer than first expected to find anyone. the difficulty was only greater because of how hard going up and down was. Of course, that did not mean that it would be uniformly hard to find others, as evidenced by the figure stumbling towards their fire. She walked with a clear limp, something which could be faked to be underestimated, but she hadn't given even the smallest sign of seeing him, and she had been limping from the moment he saw her, so it was unlikely to be false.

Other than the limp there were many notable things about her, first and foremost the fact that she carried something which looked like a splinter long enough to reach her ribs when the tip was put to the ground. It was alarming, to have the first weapon he saw be in the hands of an unknown factor, but her limp and the look on her face made it far less alarming than it would have otherwise been, and that was because he recognized the look of a desperate, half-starved hunter even in the dim moonlight of the forest, and even if it was clear that her prey was their group, it was fine so long as he stayed undetected. With that goal in mind, he simply needed to sneak behind her and follow her back to their camp, when she saw Oliver, he could either reveal himself if they stayed positive for a while, he could reveal himself, if not, well, it would very easy to strike her down from behind, he would just need to get close to her from behind, grab the side of her head with his left hand before pushing it to meet with his right as he brought together rock and temple, killing her in a single strike. Nothing he hadn't done before.

Aelin made his way to a branch that shot off from their current one in a tall spire, and curled into a mass around its base, becoming simply another gnarled protrusion of wood. He waited as he heard her walk past. he waited slightly longer to make sure she had not seen him before he slowly followed, constantly shifting his sight from the woman to the bark he treads. he sunk down to all fours as he followed, walking like a cat as he slowly followed, one hand still clutching his rock. as he got closer to the fire, the light illuminated more of her, and even if he couldn't see her face, he could tell much more about her. She did indeed have a limp, and it was clearly caused by whatever the thick black cloth hid, clearly it was an improvised bandage made from the sleeve of her hooded shirt, as only one was missing. the bare left arm told a lot of her, mainly the fact that her hard, compact muscles, larger than the madman's, were clearly gained through extensive training, and judging by the ease with which she held her splinter, it was with a sword of some kind, a fact which would have been alarming if she hadn't been desperate and better armed, but now that she was? well, there was no telling what she would do when she saw their food.

She finally crested the branch to the spot he had specifically chosen because anyone who approached would be unable to see their numbers, and when she did, she stumbled backwards, her pale left hand rising to run through her flaming red hair, utterly unnatural colours both, before she spoke in a tired and mystified voice.

"Oliver?" she said, her voice hoarse yet melodious.

"Emma?" the madman responded, and the bafflement he felt was clear even without seeing his face.

Well, that certainly did change the situation, Aelin thought, as he rose from the ground to see them embracing in a delighted hug as they spoke about the new world, joy dancing in their eyes, both the sky blue ones and the forest green pair. it was certainly easier to talk first meetings through diplomatically when it wasn't a first meeting at all.