She narrowed her eyes to see who was shouting. The boy shouted again. Nefasky got up from her place and ran to him. It looked as though he was carrying someone on his back while coming down the slope. As Nefasky went nearer, she saw that he was somehow carrying a very frail looking Adrianna on his back. Nefasky called her group of boys, "Wake up! Come here. Help me."

Hearing her shouts, the brown-haired boy woke up and ambled out of the shelter. As soon as he saw the two of them, he rushed towards them and picked Adrianna from his back. He carried her inside the shelter, and made a place for her to lie down by kicking others around.

​​

Adrianna was looking as frail as a leaf. Her clothes were tattered and she had blood all over her body. There was a deep wound on her leg, which seemed to be healing and a deeper one on the back, which was slightly open. Nefasky was horrified. How did Adrianna get into this?

"Where did you find her?" she asked the boy who had carried her.

"She was lying in this condition a few hundred meters up from here. I think my portal opened into a higher altitude and that is why it took the entire day and night to reach down the slope. I was out for a hunt when I noticed her lying unconscious on the snow." He said and sat down on a nearby fallen trunk. "But the amazing part is that there was a strange looking beast sitting right next to her, as though it was protecting her..." he added.

Nefasky's face became pale. The wolf must have attacked her after leaving their place in a mess. She went inside the shelter and looked at Adrianna. She sat down near her and kept her hand on her forehead to see whether she had fever. Her body felt warm.

By that time everyone else in the shelter had woken up.

Nefasky suggested, "I think we should fire the flare and send her back to the wizard kingdom. She's really unwell."

"Won't that disqualify her from the second stage of competition?" asked Lenny.

"It will but she's too frail to continue today," Nefasky replied.

"Wait, I have something that would help her," said the boy in spectacles. He picked his backpack and dugout a small glass bottle of thick green liquid.

"What is this?" asked Lenny scrunching her nose.

He scratched his head and said, "My father is a doctor in the wizard kingdom… He gave me this lotion and asked me to apply it if I got frostbite."

"This isn't frostbite," chided Nefasky. "Adrianna clearly needs to go back."

"Well, now that you are insisting that she has to go back, we might as well apply it on her wounds. It is possible that she recovers. I would hate to see her getting disqualified. After all she is being portrayed as our future queen."

"What will happen if the medicine your are carrying has negative effect?" Nefasky tried to stop him.

"I don't think it can have a negative effect. It is purely herbal – made from a plant my father grows in the backyard. My father hates the art of potion making and so he has a variety of plants in our backyard which are used for medicinal purposes."

He opened the bottle's cap and poured some glue-like thick liquid on his palm. He asked Lenny to apply the liquid to her thigh. Lenny took it from his palm. Nefasky helped removing the pants Adrianna was wearing and Lenny applied the liquid on the wound feeling yucky at the same time. She felt she could puke when she saw the wound and blood. It was ghastly and she pitied Adrianna. Then Nefasky turned Adrianna over and the liquid was applied on her back.

Once done, the group came out of the shelter after covering Adrianna with whatever extra blankets they had.

All of them sat outside the shelter waiting and wondering what would happen next. "I really like Adrianna…" said the boy in spectacles.

"Ooooo…" came a perverted shout from another boy. He looked at the boy and said in a stern voice. I am one of Adrianna's cousins by the way. Lia's husband is my mother's brother… so we are kind of cousins…"

Everyone in the group stared at him. "What?" came a surprise question from all of them as they tried to figure out that relationship!

"What?" he shrugged as though this was nothing out of normal.

They started joking with him as one of them got up to light the fire to roast the meat that was an extraordinary gift from a stray wolf last night.

Last night Adrianna had passed out while she was ascending the slope. She had looked at the beast in front of her and wanted to kill it but it was waiting for her to fall down. With one last attempt to ward it off, she growled. However, the next moment, everything around her went black.