Okay, let me preface this by saying I legitimately thought the winter father was a made up kids’ story and once you reached a certain age, you’d naturally grow out of believing in him. I mean, that’s what happened with all the other kids in Abermock and if you still believed in him after a certain age, the other kids would make fun of you. When I was still young, I’d hear stories of how the winter father would reward well behaved children with toys and coins while punishing the misbehaving ones by turning them into coal. When I grew older, believing in some kind of omniscient, ubiquitous magical figure who specifically judged children on their good behavior sounded ridiculous. It turns out I was wrong. Err, I mean I was right the first time.

The winter father is very real and he belongs to a court composed of ancient fairies who call themselves the Fae. Apparently they’re some of the oldest existences in the world and they were the ones who named our world the Old Realm. Aside from that, not much is known about them other than there are two Fae courts: the Winter Fae Court and the Summer Fae Court.

No one knows what they look like, no one knows where those courts are, and no one knows what purpose they serve. All we know is they exist and sometimes their members manifest before humans for one reason or another. Oh, and King Rhys, who is about to marry his 128th wife, is rumored to have Fae blood in him as he’s never aged a day past his 20’s despite being over 100 years old. If he had elven blood in him, he’d at least show outwardly he was aging, albeit slowly. But those suspected to have Fae heritage somewhere in their bloodline stop aging completely once they reach the prime of their life and only when they’re about to die will their bodies age rapidly to reflect their actual age.

The day after Derriv and I had our heart to heart was the winter solstice and our whole group decided to go together to purchase a reindeer to offer as a sacrifice. Ocean’s Rest has a pen full of them and it seems like a common tradition amongst the middle class regardless of religious affiliation to sacrifice reindeer on the winter solstice. On one of the small islands in the city, there’s a shop that sells animals and they’ve bred a whole herd of reindeer in preparation for today and that’s where we went. When we arrived, we stepped off our boats, examined all the reindeer they had in stock, picked out a male reindeer with the most impressive antlers, paid 15 silver for the creature, and left with it in tow. Right as we got back onto our boats, Torban stopped abruptly mid stride and stared intensely at one of the other patrons leaving with their reindeer.

The look in his eyes is difficult to describe because I’ve never seen anything like it before, especially from Torban. The amount of unbridled hatred I saw from Torban was blindsiding and for a split second, I couldn’t recognize him. The lighthearted, fatherly architect who enjoyed a good dirty joke was nowhere to be found and a mass of seething rage had replaced him. But Bafal broke him out of his trance eventually and got him onto the boat which brought all of us out of the city. A few of us tried to ask him what was wrong but he remained silent the entire time.

Once out of the city, we found a clearing next to the woods and we quickly built a small wooden pyre. Making sacrifices to the winter father was a lot more ritualistic than I expected and when Quinn slit the creature’s neck and blood cascaded from the cut, I had to cover Mary’s eyes from the grisly sight. Derriv covered his daughter’s eyes while Olin covered his sister’s. Once the blood was drained, the body was tossed into the pyre and then lit on fire. Just when the reindeer’s body was finished turning to ash, a great gust of cold wind swept by and put the entire fire out.

When the fire was extinguished, I swear I saw an old man’s face looking at me through the smoke. He had long white hair and a long white beard. His aged, wrinkled face looked like he had been through millennia of hardship and torment judging by his cold, dead eyes. But no one else saw him aside from me. When I asked Derriv what it meant when the winter father blessed someone and how one would know, he only said you’ll know it when it happens to you. Which was the same as saying nothing at all.

Our winter solstice ended uneventfully, aside from my encounter, and everything went back to normal. Well, not everything. Torban seemed to change after the winter solstice for the worse. From that point on, I’d often come across Torban absentmindedly sharpening his sword he retrieved from the inn’s armory with a whetstone as he stared out the window. During one particular incident, he accidentally cut himself while sharpening his sword but he didn’t seem to notice or care. He kept going and kept sharpening his sword, bloodied hands and all.

Bafal has been extremely worried because of the drastic changes in his father. I don’t blame him. If my father, well, if I had someone I could call a father, changed abruptly like that and wouldn’t even talk with me about it, I think I’d be pretty worried too. I’ve been trying to keep his mind off of things by bringing him along with me whenever I go out and I think that’s been helping him.

Right now it’s the middle of Undecimber and I’m restocking on my goblin oil with Bertrand and Bafal tagging along. Admittedly, I was disgusted by having to use goblin oil on my sword at first but I’ve gotten used to it and even the smell doesn’t bother me as much anymore. Honestly, the price bothers me more than the smell. At 4 silver for a small jar which can last me three months with moderate use, goblin oil is pretty expensive. But perhaps that’s just me being a miser.

As we’re walking back to the inn, I see a Nasaaran army recruiter standing in one of the city’s many plazas, shouting his recruitment pitch for the upcoming Vansgrieri campaign. I’m not worried about Bertrand and I being outed as deserters since we have our fake adventurers’ licenses on us but it does pique my interest on the ongoing war. I go ahead and ask Bertrand, “They’ve been recruiting people to take back Vansgrieri for months now, when do you think they’ll actually start marching?”

Bertrand looks over to the recruiter as well and says, “Sometime in the beginning of next year, after the winter ends. They’ve taken quite a few months amassing bodies and they have to be barely containing themselves right now considering they’ve been sitting on their asses at Larsath’s Dwelling this whole time. I’d put a gold coin on the march for Vansgrieri starting in early February. Aethelbrande’s not known for his patience and the public discontent for him is growing as we speak.”

“Hmm, I remember seeing Ocean’s Rest’s city lord drilling his troops in preparation for the march a few days after the winter solstice. I know Midriver’s city lord has been holed up in his manor since the attempted coup, but why hasn’t he been forced by the king to march his troops as well?”

Bertrand scratches his beard as he looks towards the sky before responding, “Ehh, a couple reasons. For one and probably the biggest one, Vilfrith is one of Aethelbrande’s last remaining supporters. He might not hold much power anymore since the coup, but without him, Aethelbrande will just keep spiraling downwards. Besides, Vilfrith is still an old name in the kingdom and to some, it might still hold some meaning. No matter how much of a hellhole Midriver becomes under Vilfrith’s watch, Aethelbrande will never remove him from that position.

“The other one is something I learned a few days after getting to Ocean’s Rest. Sometime between when we left Midriver and arrived here, news spread that the Loran Mercantile Alliance let Ribierian troops into their territory and rented out their boats to those troops. From there, you have a better idea than me of what happened seeing how those troops used those boats to land on the Basteb peninsula. The merchants will do anything for money and they most likely accepted a pretty sizable bribe for allowing all that to happen but not much we can do to them unless we want to fight a war on two fronts.

“That’s the second reason. Aethelbrande’s afraid of the merchants acting on their opportunistic nature and marching troops through the Loran Mountain Range while we’re still occupied with the Ribierians. Midriver is the only thing that stands in their way and even if the city will get annihilated by any proper standing army in a matter of days, the rest of the kingdom will at least get notice ahead of time. You can think of Midriver as playing the role of the kingdom’s scout. Not a very good scout per se, but a scout nonetheless.”

Bafal, who has been silent this entire time asks us, “When do you guys think we’ll be able to go back to Midriver? I think my father might cheer up if he sees the compound again. He used to always say the compound was his masterpiece and with how he’s been feeling these past few weeks, I think seeing the compound will bring back his old self.”

Bertrand and I share a look as Bafal keeps his eyes fixed on the ground. We don’t know what happened to Torban to make him enter his current state and we don’t know what it’ll take to get him back to normal. But we can at least try to get Bafal’s spirit up. Bertrand tousles his hair and says, “We’ll be heading back to Midriver the moment winter ends and the snow has melted away. I’d say… rest of this month, next month, and we’ll be on our way back. Don’t you worry, your dad will be back to normal in no time.”

By the time we got back to the inn, it was starting to get dark outside. After we put away the goblin oil we bought and left Bafal with the others, Bertrand brought me with him to check out the nightlife in Ocean’s Rest. I could tell he was starting to get antsy with having nothing to do this past month. We’ve still been consistently training every morning behind the inn but I could tell Bertrand’s been bored out of his mind even before leaving Midriver. Back in Midriver, before Alira started warring with The Wolves, Bertrand would frequently leave the compound at night to either visit a brothel or a gambling den. I know because he’d bring me with him sometimes.

Although I’ve never… partaken in those brothels he brought me to, I gambled a few times at the gambling dens and that was usually pretty fun. There was this one game where you tossed a pair of dice and you’d place bets on what numbers the dice would show when they landed. The very first time I played that game and rolled those dice, I rolled for an hour straight by avoiding the bad numbers which was unheard of and the entire table around me was exploding in excitement. After my roll finally ended, the table applauded for me and a random old man who I didn’t even know gave me a hug and said I was his lucky star. Fun times.

It doesn’t take us long before we bribe a ferryman into bringing us to a gambling den. Bertrand’s exact words to him were, “The grimier and sleazier, the better.” We arrive at an ordinary looking inn but the moment we get inside, that’s when it stopped being an ordinary inn. There’s hundreds of people surrounding a pit in the center of the inn, shouting in hysterical fervor at the fight ongoing inside the pit. Before I could get a better look at it, I thought it was another fighting arena like back at The Fighting Cock but as I got closer to it, I quickly realized that it was indeed a fighting pit. But not for humans.