It was Colly who was checking for the marks she had been promised if Arabelle had already escaped the place, but before she found any she was called out by Gabriel, who came from her back, leaving her escape towards the mountain and a minefield of spells.

- What are you doing here? – Gabriel demanded to know. – I don’t want you to tell my sister any stories, you are distorting her mind and making her want to exit this safe haven we have. You already know what we are so why are you working against us so much? What did we ever do to you to make you come back and possibly disclose our location? In fact, maybe you are the scout of an enemy, leave everything you have on you on the ground and let me pat you down to check for any weapons. – He ordered because she was wearing a necklace that protected against some basic spells

- I… - Colly tried to answer him, but he shut her up.

- I didn’t ask you, I ordered you. Now follow my orders or leave. – He was serious. She did leave her backpack on the ground and started to take her necklace off before he exploded. But Arabelle appeared out of nowhere and saved her the shame of showing off her “naked” body, as with magic you could see many things. Gabriel was focused on his sister’s safety, but Colly couldn’t know that.

- What are you doing? – Arabelle played a bit dumb, but not enough for Gabriel to be able to blatantly lie.

- I was checking on her things to see if I could let her in… - Gabriel started explaining, but now Arabelle cut him off.

- You’re back Colly! – Arabelle was jubilant, though she knew what was happening and wanted to make Colly happy as well. – I’m so happy you kept your promise! I hope you have brought something for me, like you said you would! – Arabelle smiled at Colly, then ran at her and hugged her.

This time, Colly stayed in the mountain for only two days, on which Arabelle tried to tell Colly as much as she had found out of his brothers plans and the updates of her escape, expecting some sort of feedback coming from Colly, but she couldn’t find any realistic improvements to her plans and congratulated her on her skills.

The remaining time Colly talked to Arabelle a bit about a desert where people wandered and the ruins she had explored during her stay. Supposedly it was a temple for an ancient god, but the place had been ransacked so many times that no statues remained, appearing like an empty husk rather than a building that was used to adore a god.

And as quickly as she came, she left hastily as well, which made Gabriel unnecessarily suspicious because she only wanted to leave the place due to Gabriel being there, not that she wanted to inform someone else about the situation at Gabriel’s place.

Another winter came, but this one was harsher than the last. Not only did they have to spend more wood each day, but they had also had bad luck with the hunts before and would need to hunt during the cold weather.

He had done this the last winter, but there the temperatures were barely above zero and the snow that they had was intermittent and little. But during this winter, ever since the first fall of snow it didn’t seem to stop and even their clearing had to be cleared from the snow that entered through the smallish window at the side of the mountain.

And no matter how much he cleaned the place it was covered in snow the next day, so he learned to live with it. This also meant that he didn’t have to waste time there and could immediately go to hunting… or try, at least. Because of the harsh winter most animals had left their usual living habitats, meaning that there were very few animals left to hunt and these were very skillful in escaping and surviving or were too dangerous for Gabriel to hunt.

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This meant that they quickly had to ration their reserves and started to eat some wood as well. He had to change something because he didn’t want to spend the entire winter like that. He would target one of those more dangerous prey, if he had the chance to defeat them.

He observed the different animals that could still be seen and between the ones that wouldn’t shy away from a fight were some smaller sized bears, packs of wolves, snow foxes and snow leopards. He decided that the first two were too risky for him, so he’d target any foxes or leopards that he found.

But even so these animals were quite sneaky, and Gabriel only managed to see a single leopard and two foxes during the first week of hunting and neither of them were in hunting range. He could’ve hunted them with the spells if the protection wasn’t on, but he decided that it was best to protect against intelligent groups than to secure food that he should be able to hunt without magic. Or at least without magic traps.

Gabriel tried to attack certain animals from afar with magic and he managed to get a bird for them, but it clearly wasn’t enough for Gabriel to stop hunting. Then, he thought that instead of him and Piti going after their targets from the same side, he could try to surround his target and so hunt it with ease.

The first few attempts ended up as failures because the animals escaped their clutches before they could hurt it enough to force it to fight, but then they managed to find an older fox that moved slower and when both Gabriel and Piti were in position, they went after it.

The fox realized that it wasn’t fast enough to escape, so he’d try to at least get one of the attackers to go down with him, maybe even kill them both. First, he’d target what it expected to be the easier target, Piti and both of them started a brawl on the ground. Gabriel tried hard not to hit his dog while dealing the deadly blow to the fox, but this meant that he had to take time to focus and Piti ended up with a broken leg, though they managed to get quite a big hunt.

When they got back to the cabin and Arabelle saw the leg of Piti she immediately questioned Gabriel about what had happened. He explained while he was also crafting a crutch for Piti, which took some adjustments before it was done. He placed it as a support of Piti’s broken leg and he immediately moved with less difficulty, though he was clearly still in pain. Gabriel would have to hunt alone for the next few days, at least until Piti could fight again.

He managed to hunt an owl and hurt a snow leopard, but it escaped his trap before Gabriel could fight it and the Gabriel didn’t feel safe about his chances against this lightly hurt leopard. So once again the siblings and their dog had to endure hunger and worse food. This made Piti take a longer period of time to heal and would decrease their overall strength before the next hunt. So Gabriel now, instead of hunting, was preparing some rudimentary traps against animals that he hoped would help him catch prey.

During this time Arabelle stayed with Piti and realized that she didn’t want to leave her dog behind, but if she took it with her, it was much more likely that Gabriel would search for them. Maybe she could teach it to escape, and she would find it somewhere in the forest when she escaped after it. Or maybe she should leave before the dog, because it was unlikely that Gabriel improved the defenses to prevent a dog from escaping, but not so much from his sister.

Alas these thoughts were cut short due to unforeseen circumstances. While Gabriel and the now-healed Piti were out hunting and even managed to kill a snow fox with only minor injuries, a bear appeared from nowhere and tried to attack Gabriel, but Piti warned him, and he managed to escape. Yet the bear wasn’t satisfied, so he targeted Piti now, who realized that if they escaped, they’d lose their hard work, so he would stay and fight against the bear to protect their booty.

Seeing Piti’s attitude, Gabriel started to attack the bear as well, but they were dealing too little damage and even though they hurt the bear, Piti was closer and closer to dying. Gabriel managed to get a lucky arrow shot that reached the bears eye, making it groan in pain.

During these few seconds, while the bear was distracted, Gabriel quickly approached Piti and saw its state. It wouldn’t survive unless it received immediate care, but that wasn’t a viable option. He would need to pick between saving Piti’s corpse or the leopard they’d hunted. In the end he decided to take Piti with him, though he still doubted whether he should bury him or not. Because they were basically dying and even though Piti wouldn’t be very nutritious… he would still give them food for a week or two…