Amusingly enough, this is just like that one time in the wilderness and the nest of spade-headed serpents. Well, almost. The surrounding flora isn’t on fire yet.

You are quite right; if Aelas wasn’t here, and her without her noble steed, our friend Isaac would be off and away like a shot. Moving over treacherous terrain at high speed while evading others is, as fortune would have it, a pastime that he has become quite familiar with. His legs are long and his grip is sure, and moreover, he has been wandering where he will ever since he returned.

Not solely to go about marveling at the town, which seems just as much a wasteland of the soul as it did when he was other than he is now, and not simply to return to the solitude to which he has often been accustomed; rather, his long walks and evening roamings have been carried out with a firm and deliberate purpose, namely, to survey the wild and lonely places and make himself familiar with the terrain in preparation for such a time as this. If anything, he is grimly disappointed that the necessity of his work has so quickly come into focus.

But Aelas! Now therein lies the trouble: she is nimble and sure of foot, and would give even Isaac a run for his money in a hundred-meter, but she is accustomed to riding a rainbow unicorn through space, not barreling through stalks of sugar-cane with no way of knowing when or where the culmination of the race shall come. The Pilgrim has in his bones a long, terrible willingness to endure until the race is won, which- and I must beg her pardon here- she has never had the inclination or necessity to pursue.

So here I shall lay out the Pilgrim’s resolve, before circumstance is bound to drive it askew: to make his way to Aelas’s side and bear her strong upon his back, and this being done, to become a spectre of swirling smoke that he might spirit her away from the hunt. All this without a word, for he is ill accustomed to such, even now.