The next day found Puck in a bad state.

Even though Puck did not have any substantial injuries like broken bones, he still was bruised all over.

Over the night his whole body had stiffened up and as Puck finally woke up, he felt like moving was impossible.

Luckily for him, he had a free day.

The only thing he did that day was walk once into the kitchen and two times to the toilet. Each one of those trips felt like a ten-kilometer hike to him.

The day after that Puck normally would have had to work in the mushroom fields again, but that was simply impossible.

As such Puck pinned a sign to his door that said that he had a terrible case of a mushroom infection that sometimes spread through the Gremlin village. After seeing that sign, nobody would want to have to do anything with him for the next time.

It was only another three days later that Puck felt he was starting to get better again. That was quite fortunate as well, as he needed to go and get knew food soon anyway.

Another whole week drudged by where Puck stayed in his house nearly the whole time and only went to silently get new food and water early in the morning when nobody else would see him.

Over these days Puck mostly slept and rested, but he also had longer and longer talks with Zephyrian. Over time it truly seemed as if both started to get more comfortable in the presence of each other. But still, even under the threat of death, neither of them would say they liked each other.

Puck told Zephyrian about his life with the other Gremlins and Zephyrian told Puck about his life with Nymaria and about all the great deeds they did together. More than once Zephyrian also spoke both in fear and hate about the Crimson Warlord.

Finally, it seemed like it was time for Puck to stop hiding in his own abode. More than once other Gremlins had come and wanted to see Puck. It seemed as if it wasn’t taken up well that he hadn’t come to work for nearly two weeks now.

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It would have been no problem if Puck had any visible signs of the mushroom infection. But as he had none of those the other Gremlins grew suspicious and angry.

The first day Puck went back to work was characterized by an unusual interest in the person Puck by the other Gremlins. Afterall, normally nobody had any interest in him. At least none that had nothing to do with making fun of him.

Puck had feared that the other Gremlins would ask too many questions about how he had gotten all these wounds, and if he truly had had an infection. But in the end, nobody asked twice after Puck told them how he had fallen down the steps to his own basement.

It was only expected of a Gremlin so dumb and scrawny as him.

Slowly everything started to become normal again in Puck’s life. At first it was something Puck liked, but then the other Gremlins also started harassing him again and Puck felt like he was stuck again in his old misery of life.

Truly, everything was normal again, except one thing. At home, in Puck’s small Gremlin hut an ancient sword rested every time Puck went to work.

And every time Puck came back from work, frustrated about his life, Puck went and listened to Zephyrian and his stories about the glory and the hardships of battle.

And as such something was born in Puck, something he had no words to describe yet. It was a spark of something other than the resignation of his normal day to day life.

After a further month of this new normalcy Zephyrian finally gave in to itself. Normally it would never have allowed someone like Puck to even touch its glorious self, but now it went even farther, it asked, yeah begged Puck to finally help remove all the rust from its form. To help bring it back to its previous glory.

It was no easy task. Puck, yeah, the whole Gremlin village lacked the right tools to work with metal and Puck had no proficiency at all with work like that, but each and every evening Puck gave it his all and that was something Zephyrian could respect.

Of course, had Zephyrian still been in his prime form like ages ago its metal would have been too hard for someone like Puck to even leave a mark on, but not anymore.

It took months of trial and error and hard work, but finally Zephyrian was satisfied. It wasn’t perfect and a true smith would cried out in horror after seeing it like that, but it was enough. The rest would have to come later, at least Zephyrian was shining again in glorious silver.

But Zephyrian was not the only one that had changed. Not only had Puck got some more muscles on his small frame after all the hard work with the heavy sword. Something else had changed as well.

At first it had been a small spark, but by now it was a roaring bonfire. Puck wasn’t resigned to his life anymore. Neither was he satisfied with it. No, he wanted more, he wanted all the things Zephyrian had told him about.

He wanted all these things and more.