As soon as she is done eating she rushes outside, she seems to be eager to fly around and explore. After stressing again for her to be careful and not do anything reckless, I let her fly off. All that is left to do now is sit and wait, but waiting is probably one of the hardest things to do.

As I wait my mind keeps running through all the things that could go wrong for Kechara and I can't stop it. Everything from her trying to take a group of driders on her own to a new flying beast attacking her. I try reading to distract myself but I can't even focus on the runes so I end up pacing back and forth.

Slowly two hours go past, but to me it feels more like two days as I pace back and forth nonstop. Finally I spot Kechara flying towards me and I let out a huge sigh of relief. When she lands I rush over and hug her before checking for any injuries, she doesn't have a scratch on her.

Now able to finally relax I ask her how it went, in response she starts scratching at the ground. As I watch she is drawing a crude picture of the mountain with a total of ten X's marked on it. When I ask her if the X's are the barriers she gives me a nod, when I ask if she found driders she shakes her head.

When I think about it, it makes sense since we led the driders to that barrier. Meaning the driders escaping was all my fault, but we killed all of them and repaired the barrier so everything worked out. When I ask Kechara if she repaired all the barriers I get another nod, so I pat her head and tell her she did good.

Kechara looks tired, which is to be expected, so I ask her if she is hungry but to my surprise she shakes her head. Since she is almost always hungry I ask if she found something to eat and get another nod. The fact that she found something and hunted it on her own makes me feel much better about her ability to take care of herself.

Telling Kechara to go inside and take a nap I sit down to consider my options. Since Kechara will need to visit the barriers every so often to keep them maintained she definitely can't leave the mountain. Since I have no idea how long it will take me to take care of the temple I am not sure if I should take her with me.

Based on my previous movement speed on the mountain I think it will take me a few days to reach the summit. Maybe longer since now I have to deal with snow and it will only get worse as I go up. In fact if it gets much worse the cold might be the biggest problem for me, I really need some cold weather gear.

Wait, if Kechara hunted and killed something then maybe I can make myself some gear. At this point even a heavy coat would do wonders, so I wait until she finishes her nap. When she comes back out I ask Kechara if she saw a lot of beasts when she was scouting and she nods at me.

When I ask if she can lead me there she seems unsure, she keeps looking off in the distance and then looking back at me. Guessing she didn't pay much attention to the terrain I ask her to go find it again and then come back while looking for a way I can get there. As soon as I am done explaining she takes off and within minutes is out of sight.

Luckily she comes back in about fifteen minutes, it is fast enough that I don't worry too much. She lands in front of me and folds away her wings, then she turns and starts walking the direction she came from. I jump up and quickly follow her, thanks to the snow I find it hard to catch up to her.

Kechara is walking on top of the snow and doesn't sink through, I on the other hand am too heavy and am wading through the snow. It reminds me of a scene from Lord of the Rings, and now I completely agree with the dwarf. Pretty soon Kechara notices how much trouble I am having, and from the look on her face she is finding it entertaining.

Rather than slowing down she starts stopping every few minutes to watch me struggle to catch up. Once I do she again moves ahead for a while before stopping again to watch me. After a while she gets tired of this and instead comes back to me and starts running in circles around me.

Having had enough of her teasing I wait till I can time it perfectly and hit the snow she is about to step on with a wind blade. Her feet sink into the broken snow and she ends up with a face full of snow. After pulling herself out of the snow and shaking it off she suddenly turns and tackles me.

The tackle leads to both of us rolling in the snow and it quickly turns into a wrestling match. By the time I manage to pin her we are both covered head to toe in snow. As I stand up and try to shake off I can't help laughing, despite how cold I am now, that was really fun.

Kechara also seems to have enjoyed it and after she shakes off she starts leading the way again. As we go we both keep stopping to try and shake off the snow that is still clinging to us. Kechara has finally slowed her pace so that I can keep up with her, I guess we are even since I pinned her.

It is only after two hours have passed that I realize I should have probably waited to start this trek in the morning. Now the sun is going down and it is getting colder, and we are pretty far from the cave. So I start looking around for some place where we can take shelter for the night.

As we are passing through some trees where the snow isn't as deep I notice an overgrown cave entrance. Calling to Kechara to stop I walk over and take a look, it looks deep enough so I squeeze through the bushes and enter. Since I can see in the dark just fine I have no trouble looking around the cave.

Most importantly, the cave doesn't seem occupied, and it is just big enough to fit Kechara. We won't have much room to move around but at least we should be warm enough once I start a fire. To enter Kechara has to push the bushes aside, and once inside she basically curls around the wall leaving a small space at the center.

This is where I build a small fire, luckily I have taken to keeping firewood in my pouch. Once the fire is going and with Kechara's body blocking the entrance the cave quickly warms up. The cold never seems to bother Kechara but once I start cooking dinner she gets excited.

Since she has done a lot of flying and burned a lot of energy I make her portion quite a bit bigger than usual. Also, knowing the cold can make you burn more energy, I make myself some extra as well. After we have eaten I lay down, there is just enough space between Kechara and the fire.

Once I lay down Kechara moves around a bit until she is curled around me, with her body pressed against my back. The warmth is quickly putting me to sleep and I just barely remember to feed my sacred power to her core. In the morning when I wake up the fire has long since died and the cave is fairly cold, just enough to make me feel stiff.

Quickly I start a fire to warm myself back up, once I can feel my hands I start cooking breakfast. Normally I would again feed my power to Kechara's core, but since we are out hunting I decide not to just in case I need it. Kechara is awake by the time the food is ready and after eating we leave the cave to resume the hunt.