Credit to alty for bouncing off me; this whole story belongs to he as much as I, as this story was written in tandem.
Remmy and Pierre and Nagoya and Paul belong to me
Alton and Joanne belongs to alty

---

CHAPTER 14
To Move Forward


In spite of disparaging and outdated stereotypes about bears and their caves, Elliot's people have excavated a comfortably modest system of wide and well-lit tunnels, each braced with interconnected logs either tied together or embedded in the rock. The wider tunnels have logs serving as support pillars running down the middle, and lanterns holding candles or fireflies lit the halls. The soft, natural lighting guided the party to a large room with long tables, where several bears sat eating the night's meal--including the aforementioned elders, sitting at the longest table, which faced the rest of the room.

The four elders--a wizened grizzly, a stout black, a portly brown, and a light-muzzled Mariscan--look up to regard Elliot and his heroic entourage. The elder grizzly matriarch rose first to greet them, with the rest following suit. "Welcome back, heroes from Altair. We have looked forward to meeting you all at last, and happy we are to see Her Majesty the Princess in your company." She bows her head to Nagoya, and the rest of the elders do the same.

"It's lovely to be in such a homely place. It's...it's like a castle built into rock, rather than out of rock. I don't know enough about construction to truly praise it. But I can praise your faith and respect, to what you see as a guardian?" Nagoya responds, as Remmy slowly pulls out the bottle containing a hibernating Beast.

"We do. Sad it may be to see him brought low; but he slumbers, if not quite as he once did, and we place blame on what wronged him first. And your heroes acted not to perpetuate pain, on him or his charges. We can only thank your entourage." The matriarch looks past the princess, to Alton.

"Thank you."

"Thank you."

"Thank you."

"Thank you."

"You're very welcome. And my own thanks, heartfelt, to the brave son of your people."

The party bows and gives their thanks, starting with Alton and ending with Remmy. "We wish to return your guardian in person to his rightful altar, as soon as both have been prepared," said Alton to the elder bearies.

"Shall you need provisions for the journey," asks the grizzled matriarch, "or perhaps quarters for the night?"

"We would graciously accept your hospitality, Venerable Ones," the princess says. "Thank you."

---

After a warm meal and friendly conversations with the large, furry denizens of the mountain, the party retires to three guest rooms the bears prepared for them as they ate. Nagoya and her 'swan consort' Pierre were led to the nicest of the three rooms, while Remmy and Paul entered the adjoining room. The raccoon then proceeds to shyly coax one more magic lesson out of the owl before he would agree to go to sleep.

Joanne and Alton share the last one, and though the rooms were adjoining, enough rock separated them to grant all privacy and a quiet rest.

"I've never felt so cozy in a guest room like this before," Joanne says, coiling herself onto a bed carved from the wall itself & covered with what looked like a wolfskin blanket. "It feels so natural, like an earthen bosom, don’t you think?"

Alton didn't answer right away. He drags his feathertips along the cool, carved rock above his bed, eyes wandering over its surface.

"I suppose, well..." Alton turns to look at Joanne, "...I’m afraid my answer might be too morbid."

Joanne looks at him quizzically before recognition dawns on her face. "Oh! Right, I’m… I’m sorry, Alton."

She looks away sheepishly, staring at the floor. "Don't worry, it's alright," Alton says quickly. Both look down for a quiet moment, as if the right words for them to say were written down in the rock somewhere.

Joanne breaks the silence first. "Alton? Can I ask you something? Something personal?"

Alton looks up at her. He sits down and nods, seeming to know what her question will be.

"What happened, before you went to sleep, all that time ago? Why... why were you alone?"

Alton opens his beak, then closes it. He looks down and shuts his eyes, then takes a deep breath and exhales. He looks back up at her and manages to force the words out.

"Because I chose to be alone."

He looks back down, leaving those words to hang for a moment as he himself absorbed them, and the feelings they brought back.

"I made friends back then. Very dear to me. One of them, the first, became the love of my life. They were a wonder, my wonder, and I was theirs. I loved them so much... and perhaps it was too much."

Sensing the tension in his voice, Joanne lifts herself off her bed and sits partly on his, placing a tender hand on his shoulder and rubbing it. "It’s alright. Tell me," she whispers earnestly.

He nods sadly. "The last part of our quest... was a descent into hell. Each foe vanquished meant one level deeper, with no guarantee of exit until the end. I forbade my party to follow me. They argued with me, tried to convince me to change my mind, but I didn't. I was scared to lose them... but too blind or proud to realize I was abandoning them. The bonds we formed with each other, that should have kept us whole and made us stronger… I exchanged them all for their safety. For some glorious purpose only I was fit for. None fought more fiercely to make me realize this than the one I loved."

Alton places his winged hands over his face, fighting back sobs that began to shake him. He honks a sorrowful sob from his beak, then another, until he could no longer hold back the tears.

Joanne wraps her arms around the bird's broad, quaking shoulders and hugs them tightly as he sobs. Tears stream down the length and the sides of his beak and fall to the ground with each sob until finally he could speak again.

"They came to hate me for it," he says, sniffling hard to clear his sinuses. "And they were right to! I ended up hating myself for my pride, for throwing away everyone I cared about for some grand, celestial mission! One I was so sure I could survive but they couldn’t! One that I chose to do alone!"

Sorrow slowly turns to anger in his voice. "In the end, I used that hatred. That self-loathing. I harnessed it, and became the divine fire to purge my hellborn enemies until none were left but the princess as the prize, the reason I was risen from the dead. And by the time I delivered her... I..." His tone lowers back down, becoming dull and listless. "... I had never felt more hollow and bitter in my life... or my afterlife."

Alton rubs his reddened eyes dry with one hand and shrugs, throwing his hands up in a flippant gesture. "That's why I asked the gods who woke me to put me back to sleep, permanently. Never to be awoken again. That's why I asked them for death. Because of the shame and the pain of forfeiting my friends, and turning my love away from me."

Joanne lifts herself from the sorry bird's side and pulls the rest of her coils to sit in front of him. She places her hands on either side of his face and wipes the last of his tears from them.

"Alton," she says, "I'm glad you were able to share this with me. I may not have your years or experience, but I know what it's like to be haunted by old regrets, too."

She sits back, dabbing her own tears that threatened to fall down her face. She then places her hand over his heart. "But what I can tell you is that no matter what happened, or who you've lost, the memory of your love will always be here. They'll never be replaced, as long as you don't have the heart to forget them. And yours is a loving heart, Alton. Mine is open whenever you need it, so I hope you'll keep yours open too. Okay?"

Alton nods. "Okay," he says, voice tired but gentle again. Both lean in for a tight embrace, which they hold for a few moments before bidding one another a good night.

---

Remmy is not the first to wake, but he is up rather early for himself. Breakfast for himself, followed by the bombshell that the raccoon...is frozen in a block of ice.

"What?!?" Pierre stands up.

"Quite. I wasn't expecting it, when I showed him how to warm and cool quilts and covers and blankets...and neither was he, but he looked quite comfortable. I enchanted one of my own feathers with heat and preservation and melted a way to him, gave it to him such that he won't perish or fall comatose for his blunder...he didn't mind sleeping like that...but shocked as I was, I was just a bit too ready for bed to put in the effort to safely, slowly thaw him free." And he lets out a little extra yawn.

Pierre sighs. "I shall crack him loose. But a chisel may be more effective than a sword. Alton, Joanne, may I have your aid at the moment?"

"Count me along as well," Nagoya says. "This seems exciting, but not dangerous."

Cooled air greets the swan and crane as they step into the guest quarters, followed by Alton, Joanne and Remmy. They enter to find Paul still slumbering inside his self-fashioned ice cube prison, grasping Remmy's enchanted feather with his right paw tips and breathing into a small space in front of his snout, no doubt melted by his warm breathing throughout the night. The cube had hardly melted, owing to the naturally low temperature inside the mountain, but rather gave off heavy water vapor as it seemed to sublimate at a glacial pace, cooling the room down further.

"Oh, Paul..." Joanne exhales and then suppresses a giggle. "You can't deny he puts his heart into this."

"Yes, he is quite eager, I'll give him that," Remmy replies. He knocks on the ice cube a few times until the budding raccoon-mage's eyes flutter open. He looks around at everyone's faces and, not being able to open his snout all the way to speak clearly, manages instead an embarrassed grin and a wiggle of the feather in his grasp.

"Good morning, Apprentice," says Remmy dryly. "If this were an honest mage training program, I would have you carefully melt your way out of here without making too much of a mess on the floor, but seeing as how this is only your second day of dabbling, we will get you out shortly."

"Melt it without making a mess?" Joanne asks. "You mean, changing the cube from solid to gas?"

"It is a somewhat advanced technique," Remmy explains, turning his attention to her. "Skipping over a state of matter without heating is a bit of a tricky shortcut, but I always like to throw in a more difficult test to see who can skip a trial or two."

"Oh, well, what's the trick? Maybe I could try it out?"

"Ah, well, I am confident in your abilities, Joanne, don't get me wrong, but I'm a little worried--"

CRASH

Their conversation was cut off by the sound of the ice cube crumbling into a heap, with Paul covered by most of it. Above him stands Pierre holding a chisel pointed downwards, and Alton’s balled-up fist right above it. Nagoya stands to the side with an innocent smile as she announces with a clap, "Problem solved!"

Joanne blinks, and slowly flicks her tongue out before pulling it back. "Can you still show me?"

Remmy sighs, before resolving into a laugh at the comedic timing of it all. "Sure...sure. Let me..." He flicks one feathered hand out, then the other; bringing them together, rubbing palms, and pushing them out. Much of the ice sublimates to mist and steam and fog rather swiftly; some still turns to water, and the entire room begins to feel rather damp. Paul quickly scrambles to his feet in a panic.

"AAAHH! AH! Who let water in the tent- oh. Hello everyone, I uh..."

"At ease Paul, we freed you from your spell last night," Remmy explains, placing a wing upon his student's shoulder. "You're more powerful than you look, which means you may need to do more work on control than most..." A breeze hits him, and everyone, as Joanne looses a wind spell of her own to better flush the room of moisture. "Joanne, no need to force this on the rest of the mountain..."

"I got a thumbs-up while you weren't looking. We have an audience that isn't against a cool breeze."

Indeed, a few curious bears stood at the entrance, not quite entranced but intrigued.

"That was nice," one of them says. "It's like a stream flowing through a mountain. How did you do that?"

"Aha, well, you can thank our newest mage student for that," Remmy gestures his wing to Paul and motions for him to step forward. "It was an accident, but incidentally a happy and teachable one."

The bears poke their snouts in to look at the raccoon, who politely keeps his composure despite the rude rousing from sleep, his red-faced shyness, and the nosy looks. "Though we must be off, we would be happy to return for another demonstration. Perhaps one of you may have hidden talents for spellcasting as he does."

The curious ursids look at each other, then back at the owl and his charge with delighted faces before backing away from the door to allow them to exit.