Chapter 21: 846 AD Goblins Again

For the last five hundred odd years Sal had been wandering. To begin he had started with an apprenticeship in Ireland to learn more about rituals, potions and runes. Of course, some of the stuff he had known already but others he had never heard of.

After that he had crossed over to the continent and wandered north. He had joint the Viking and had crossed the Atlantic Ocean to Island and Greenland. There he had wandered South and visited the countries which would be later Canada, USA and South America.

He had joined the humans living there, had learned their magic, languages and ways of life. Finally he had enough. He had returned to Alaska and from there had found a way to Russia. Visiting the Russian sorcerer he had entered China again. He had crossed it and visited India and after that Africa and finally had returned home.

Now he knew a lot of different languages he had not known before, had updated the languages he had known before and had learned some other writing types. His potion-knowledge was tenfold and his healing-arts improved beyond the knowledge of all other living individuals.

He also had learned some different battle-tactics and some useful spells for different occasions.

On his way home he had visited the Germans, toured Africa again and lastly lived for a while with some tribes somewhere in the country that would later be Turkey. Then he had returned to Europe - Italy to be exactly.

He had planned to visit Rome - just for old time's sake - but when he arrived, he arrived to chaos and destruction. The Arabs had come to Rome and looted it. And not just the mundane part of Rome had been the victim of their doings…

Sal found the woman in the outer skirts of Rome. To him, it looked like she had tried to flee from the Arabs and had been captured and wounded by them. The man - just a few yards from her - was dead, killed by the Arabian steel that had beheaded him. Sal turned his eyes away and went to the woman instead. He had seen so much dead already that he no longer was bothered by corpses. You learned to ignore the dead when you were fighting for the still living on a battlefield.

The first thing, that Sal saw, were the sharp teeth of the woman. Fangs. "A vampire" Sal's mind supplied. Until now he had not often met a vampire on his travels. The most of them lived removed from the mundane and magical world in covens just small enough to remain hidden from both worlds. Sal had never had the desire to search out one of them just to learn more of them.

He sighed and cautiously stepped forward until he reached the woman who was curled on the floor facing away from him, hugging something close to her chest. Her back was trenched in blood, a wound - maybe from a sword - had nearly sliced her in half. Sal was surprised that she was still breathing - but then, she was a vampire… vampires were able to survive things that a human would never survive…

When he was just a few steps away, she tensed and turned her face to look at him. Her eyes were a cool silver and staring at him intensely. Her lips moved, showing her fangs, daring him to step closer. Sal stopped.

"I do not want to harm you" he said in Latin. The dialect had changed over time but it was still understood in this part of the world. "Let me take a look at you. I am a healer."

The woman just bared her teeth even more.

"Everyone could say that" she hissed. "Prove it."

Sal answered her challenge with steady eyes while he softly tipped with his right hand against his chest - at the place he could feel his still beating heard under his warm skin. A soft glow spread across his chest, showing of the healer's oath he had taken in glowing runes.

The woman looked at it and her snarling stopped.

"May I help you?" Sal asked again.

"Your oath… covers… all…" she asked with halting breath.

"All creatures, Firbolg or not, yes" Sal answered.

Her eyes widened when she heard his answer.

"Your… one… of… us?" she wheezed.

"I am a Firbolg-born" Sal answered truthfully and she relaxed. He took this action and came closer. When she did not bare her teeth again, he sat down beside her. She tensed again when he reached for her. He saw the next moment why. In her arms she was shielding a little child - maybe five or six years old, a vampire child. Her child, he guessed.

The little boy looked at him with huge, fearful eyes.

"Is he hurt?" Sal asked softly, not reaching out for the child and not addressing it directly. He had grown up in a time when it was considered rude to do either. The woman relaxed again a little bit. She was still wary of him but seemed to decide to trust him for now.

"I… don't think… so" she wheezed and Sal nodded.

"May I take a look?"

She tried to open her arms so that he could look at the child, but needed his assistance to do so. Sal frowned. It did not look good for her if she was unable to even lift her arms. He said nothing. He knew that she would not permit him to heal her until she knew that her son wasn't hurt - her eyes told him this fact without the need of words.

So Sal took the boy from her arms and looked him over. He was fine, just frightened and was watching him with huge eyes. Sal smiled at him and turned to the boy's mother. When he turned back to her he again saw the corps of the man lying on the ground just a few steps away. He guessed it was the father of the dark haired vampire child.

"He's fine" Sal said softly to the mother. "I need to heal you now. Your child needs you." And the child did literally. With the father dead and without a coven nearby there was no way to survive for a vampire child if the mother also died. A vampire lived the first hundred years from the blood that was flowing through the veins of their parents or guardians. It was simply too young to hunt until then. Without the blood it would die within days.

The mother nodded and Sal turned her so that he could see her back. Her spine was broken, some of her inner organs ruptured. Sal grimaced but still started to weave his magic, trying to mend the damage.

He started to draw runes on the ground. Then he searched his girdle for potions and herbs. The most things he had were human orientated but some of them could also be used for vampires, others couldn't.

So Sal carefully searched his healing supplies for those he could use and then turned to the woman again. Normally he would have stabilised her with blood-magic but she was a vampire and he knew that she wouldn't react well to his blood.

As a Firbolg-born his blood was toxic to her - as toxic as every Firbolg blood was for a vampire. There was just one exception to the rule: children lived from the blood their parents provided, blood that would be toxic to them if they were adults themselves… except of course they had been fed that blood from early childhood on. It was complicated, but as far as Sal knew, the only Firbolg blood a vampire could consume safely was the blood of those that had raised them.

So Sal couldn't take the chance of using his blood to stabilise her. If it entered her body she would die from it, poisoned.

The only thing that Sal could do was using her own blood for the runes he needed to draw. And he did. He took the blood from her wound and drew runes on her neck, her wrists and ankles. He activated the runes and started to apply herbs and potions to her wound. For a moment it looked as if she was getting better, then his spells broke with a shattering noise and faded out of existence. He cursed under his breath in his father's mother tongue - Parseltongue - and tried to rescue his stasis runes.

He had no chance. The runes broke again before he could even try to activate them.

Sal cursed again. He tried for a third time and again the runes dissolved before he could activate them. There was no denying it anymore. Sal closed his eyes, trying not to think of the child next to him who was looking down at its mother, its little hand in its mouth, drooling.

"You… can't… heal…" the mother started. Sal sighed.

"Yes" he said softly. "I am sorry but there is nothing I can do to prevent it anymore…"

"My… child…" the woman said, then she gathered herself, her effete hand reached out to her son and Sal pushed the child forward until she could take the boy's hand in her own. The young boy looked down to his mother's face, clearly understanding that something was wrong but unable to understand what was wrong exactly.

"Momma?" the boy asked hesitantly.

"Healer" she huffed and Sal turned his eyes to her face.

"What do you need, madam?" he asked softly while feeling extremely bad just because he was unable to do anything to help her. He knew that today would just add another part to his nightmares.

As an answer to his question she let go of her child's hand and took Sal's instead. And before he could stop her, she bit down on his wrist. Blood oozed from his wound and Sal flinched. But the woman held tightly - with more strength then he thought she had left - and then bit down her own wrist, mixing her blood with his.

"Drink… my… child…" she hissed and the boy complied, used to being fed from the wrist of his mother. But it wasn't the wrist of his mother the boy started to feed on. It was Sal's wrist. Sal stared at the child, when the boy started to consume first the mixed blood of Sal and the boy's mother and then just Sal's blood.

"What…?!"

"Your… child…" the woman wheezed. "Anastasius… your… child…"

And then her eyes closed and she moved no more. Sal instead stared down to his wrist and the child, sucking on it.

His child?!

HIS child?!

" Great " Sal muttered in Parseltongue sarcastically. " I really wanted to have a son - especially a vampire son!"

The boy - Anastasius, Sal guessed - did not act as if he had understood him. Instead he sucked another few times and then stopped. Sal sighed, healed his wrist and then buried his head in his hands.

"And what should I do with you now?" he asked rhetorically. The boy looked at him with huge eyes.

"Dada?" Anastasius finally said, his voice high pitched and nervous.

"Yes, I guess that's me now" Sal said sighing. Then he looked at the dead woman. "I also guess we should burry your… former… parents…"

So he stood up and turned to the dead man some steps away. He finally decided to drag the man to the woman and burn them both.

He burned them and then scooped up the child, secured it in his arms and turned away from the dead. Rome definitely had lost his charm to him for a while…

"Let's go home, Anastasius" he said to the child in his arms.

"Home?" the child repeated.

"Yes, home. Back to Britannia."

"Momma?" the child asked hesitantly.

"Momma is dead now, Anastasius. Momma and dada are in heaven now. They will not come back."

"Heaven?"

Sal sighed again and pointed at the midday sky.

"At night you might see them up there, looking down to you, watching out for you" he said to the child. "You just have to search for the brightest stars in the sky."

The child didn't answer but buried its head in Sal's neck. Sal was sure that the boy not really understood. He guessed that the child was maybe four or five years old - too young to understand the concept of death.

Still, it understood that its parents were gone somehow. Sal was sure that the boy would be grieving soon.

Sal sighed again, then he strode on. Maybe he should find a home near here for some years until the child was old enough to travel back to Britannia…

In the end, Sal settled down in a little village in the Black Forest in the later Germany. The settlement was small and solely magical. First, the other villagers were wary of him. Anastasius was too young to pretend to be human and the villagers kept their distance at first, nervous about the 'two vampires'. It took nearly three years until they understood, that Sal truly wasn't a vampire and that they did not have to worry about the vampire child because it would not hunt at all until it was at least thirty years of age. Until then, Sal would be its only food source.

Sal himself also had to get used to give his blood to the child to eat. Blood was a powerful substance and normally a druid did not part with it easily. To feed it to a child was somehow… unsettling at first - especially because Sal had been taught what you could do with blood and what would happen if someone else took your blood for their own purpose.

With time, the villagers started to accept Sal and Anastasius. The day Sal found out they had been accepted, was the day he found out about the new last name the villagers had given them.

"Sanguinis!" one of them had called Sal. "Sal Sanguinis! Wait a minute!"

Sal had stopped this time, turning to the villager.

"Sanguinis?" he asked. "Of blood?"

They called him 'of blood' in Latin ?!

The man just shrugged.

"Everyone calls you and your son that" the man answered. It was also the first time someone had called Anastasius Sal's son. "I called just to let you know about the meeting of the village in three nights. Will you be there?"

From then on, Sal and Anastasius were 'Sanguinis' in the mind of the villagers. They started to interact with them but Sal knew they would have to leave in a few years. Anastasius needed to see the world before he was old enough to hunt for himself. Sal refused to raise the child with the same fear of humans and other creatures that the other vampires seemed to have. It still took another ten years living in the settlement until Anastasius was old enough to travel with him.

They travelled Europe for a while until Sal decided when Anastasius was twenty years of age - still looking like a fifteen year old teen because vampires needed nearly forty years to age to adulthood - to finally show his son where Sal came from…

And because of that Sal was back home in Britannia.

Back home and back in the conflicts between goblins and wizards. Sal could not understand how these two nations could fight again. When he departed they had finally had a time of peace - now, just five hundred years later - they were fighting again.

Sal had seen it. He had crossed a battlefield where the wounded were still mourning. So Sal had done what he did every time he crossed a place like that. He had stopped and started to help. He healed goblin and wizards alike, uninterested about the cause of their fight this time. He had taught his son some things about healing - knowing that his son was not truly interested in that profession, but also knowing that to know how to heal was important. After he had healed the warriors on both sides he had walked away. He had been uninterested in getting in the conflict - especially with Anastasius in tow…

But now it seemed, as if he had no choice.

Sal and Anastasius had walked in a fight between goblin and wizards in the middle of the woods. The goblins were less. They had just three fighter, trying to shelter four women and seven children. The wizards - the ambushers - were twenty and seemed determined to kill the goblins.

Sal sighed.

"Wait here, Ana" he said to his son. "I will sort this out."

"But…"

"No but, Anastasius" Sal interrupted quietly. "As long as you are fed by me you do what I tell you, understood?"

The boy looked at him sullenly and in full teenage-disobedience, but finally nodded.

Sal just rubbed his forehead, trying to clear it from the beginning of a headache, then he stowed his stuff away under a bush, hid Anastasius behind it and entered the clearing, where the fight took place.

His left hand reached for one of his goblin-made daggers, the other one tightened its grip on his staff.

"Don't you think that fighting like that is a little bit unfair?" he asked coldly and stared at the wizards.

"Don't concern yourself, foreigner" one of the sorcerers said, speaking with a heavy accent that made his words nearly not understandable.

Sal estimated that not the sorcerer was speaking with an accent - Sal was. The language seemed to have changed again…

Sal sighed again. Another language he had to update…

Well, now he had not the time to do that, so his language skills had to do.

"I will have to concern myself when you are treating fellow intelligent beings like that." He answered, trying to imitate the speech of the sorcerers.

"You seemed to have missed the message." Another one said. "The Gathering of Lords decided that they are not like us. We are superior to them - we have the right to treat them like we want!"

"Well… if it is like that" Sal said, concealing his anger behind sarcasm. "Then I will do also treat inferior beings like I want."

He did not concern himself with a lot of spell work; instead he simply scribbled four symbols - two of them Norse runes, one an Egyptian Hieroglyph and the other one a Maya symbol - in the earth in front of him and send them out to the troublemakers.

The sorcerers didn't know what hit them. One moment they were still taunting the goblins, the next they were flying through the air and bound by the trees of the forest.

Sal looked them over, his eyes deadly cold.

"I think I like treating inferior beings like you like I want." He stated coolly. The sorcerers stared with disbelieve in their eyes at him.

"What… what are you doing?!" one of them spluttered. " We aren't the inferior beings - they are!" With that he tried to point at the goblins but was prevented by the tree which was concealing him.

"Oh - you aren't?" Sal asked sweetly. "I thought you are inferior to me - you are no lords, and as such you should be inferior to me." Not that a lord would not be inferior to him, as he was after all Arthur Pendragon's son… but that wasn't the point Sal tried to make so he just stared at the sorcerers and the sorcerers shuddered under his deadly green gaze.

"Of course, being who I am, even a mere lord is beneath me." Sal finally decided to add just because he could. "So - please tell your lords kindly that the Olde Line will decline to work with them. Emrys sends his regards." And with that he turned to the goblins.

" Clan-brothers! Is anyone hurt?" he asked in Gobbledegook. The goblin changed a look, then one of them made some steps in his direction, still holding his weapon at Sal.

" What does this concern you, foreigner?" he also asked in an accentuated Gobbledegook. Sal sighed and added another language to update to his list.

" I am a healer, so it does concern me" he answered using the tradition of the goblin to answer for his actions.

" But you are also a sorcerer" the goblin answered. "Their healers don't have the same code like the goblin ones."

Sal knew the goblin was normally right - but Sal had never been normal.

" I am no mere sorcerer. I am a Goblin Friend, a clan-brother" he answered. " I fought with the goblins five hundred years ago. I nearly laid my life down to rescue your chieftain. I am not honourless like the ones you call sorcerers."

" So you do call them different?" the goblin asked, still holding his weapon in a death-grip.

" I am not born a sorcerer" Sal answered truthfully. " My father was a druid, a Firbolg-born. My mother was one of the Olde. I cannot call myself a sorcerer with a heritage like that. I call myself a Firbolg-born."

Sal hoped his answer was enough. He wasn't sure if the magical creatures still called themselves 'Firbolg' but it was the term he had learned and he wouldn't change calling himself it as long as he could still use it.

" Do you have a name, foreigner?" the goblin asked and Sal sighed relieved silently. Being asked for his name meant that the goblin did consider his statement as something that could be true.

" I am Salvazsahar Emrys" he answered, then turned and winked at his son. " This is my adopted child, Anastasius Sanguinis. I also have a goblin name. Your chieftain named me Morganaadth."

Now the goblins that had before looked at his son, all openly stared at him, hope and unbelieving in their eyes.

" What was the name of the chieftain who named you and what did his son gift you, when you left?" the speaker of the goblins asked, tension in his voice mingling with hope.

" His name was Gringooed." Sal answered. "His son Vayland gifted me a Vault in your bank and these." With that he drew one of his daggers and showing it, the peak still pointing to the earth.

The goblin-speaker extended a hand and Sal gave him his dagger. Expert eyes looked over the slim, short blade which was hiding in self-produced shadows. The hand of the goblin caressed the blade and the name on it.

Then he returned the blade.

" I thank you, Morganaadth" he finally said. "I am Ragnuk Ragnaadth Vaylandadth Gringoodadth. It was my grandfather who gifted you this blades. I am now the chieftain of the clans. These are my family: my brothers, my sister and my and my brothers ' wives and children. I welcome you back to the clans and as a clan-brother, I ask you to help us."

" I thank you, Ragnuk" Sal answered and bowed slightly. Then he scrutinized the other goblins.

" So… is anyone hurt?" Sal asked again.

" My son" the speaker answered. " But I fear you won't be able to help him. His wounds are too deep."

" Let me decide." Sal answered.

The other goblins exchanged a look, then they opened his way to a child, that had been protected by all the others. It was lying on the ground, blood oozing from a deep wound in the stomach. Sal could clearly see that the organs inside where also stabbed. This was nothing a mere wizard healer could heal. Even one of the goblin ones would surrender at these wounds.

But Sal wasn't one or the other. He had hundreds of years of experience. He was not sure he could heal the boy, but he was sure that when anyone could, he was.

" It will be hard, but I may be able to heal him" he finally said while summoning his rucksack without even looking up from the deadly wounded boy. "I cannot promise anything, but let me try."

Now he could clearly see hope in the eyes of the goblin. He looked at his own son who stood a little awkward in the clearing and motioned for him to get Sal's things. The boy did as he was told and Sal returned his gaze to the goblin.

" It is a deep wound, Morganaadth" Ragnuk said in that moment sceptically. " My wife is a healer - even she is unable…"

" I just asked for a try, nothing more." Sal answered. Ragnuk stared at his dying son, then at Sal.

" So be it, Morganaadth. It just can help."

Sal nodded, took his stuff from the hands of his son and searched it for herbs he needed. Then he turned to the middle of the clearing, drawing hastily runes, hieroglyphs and symbols on the ground, followed by circles, pentagrams and lines. A wave of his staff turned the earth to a ritualistic stone-bed.

After that he turned around and fetched the boy up from the ground, carried him to the bed and laid him down. When he family creped near, he stopped them before they could enter the outer-circle.

" Don't enter the shield-runes." He said. "I cannot have anyone contaminate them."

The family reacted in jumping two steps back, staring at the circles and runes.

" What is this?" Ragnuk asked.

" Ritualistic healing" Sal answered. " I am not sure if anyone still does that, but it will serve my purpose well."

" A dark ritual?" Ragnuk asked hesitating.

" Not dark" Sal answered. "I will not kill anything to do it. Ritualistic magic was never just solely dark. There is always a light and a dark side of things."

And with that, he activated the runes. The time in the inner circles stopped and with it the bleeding of the boy. The outer one disinfected the area and others balanced the magical flow, so that magic would not disrupted the ritual he would do. Then Sal turned to his herbs and potions and took out an herb and one of his potions.

" This is a sleeping potion" he said to the boy. " And this one is an herb to conceal the pain." Holding up the herb. " Chew the herb and drink the potion. After that you will not feel anything anymore and you will simply go to sleep."

He knew that the combination he was giving the boy was dangerous but his stock was limited and that was the best he could come up with.

The boy did as he was told and not a minute later his eyelids fluttered and closed.

Sal waited the next five minutes to be sure the boy really slept and did not feel anything, then he took out one of his daggers and cut his own wrist. Blood flowed and dropped on the drawn circle. The circles one after another lit up.

Then Sal wrote carefully some runes with his own blood on the forehead of the boy. The same thing he did with the boy's wrists and ankles. Then he wrote the same runes on his own forehead, wrists and ankles.

After that he closed his own wound and chanted.

The runes lit.

One moment the clearing was as bright as in daylight, then the light succumbed to a shimmering red.

The boy would be bound to Sal's strength for now. It would be tiresome for him but it would bind the soul of the boy to his body - and that was the only thing that mattered.

Sal took a deep breath, waited another two minutes and began after that with cleaning the wounds. They were gruesome - and far more deadly as they looked. Sal had to call all his knowledge of healing in his mind to start mending the organs. Taking care of the magic flow of the young goblin he mended one organ after the other, sometimes pausing to make sure the magic of the young goblin still wasn't hindered in its natural flow through the body.

Sometimes he also paused to remember how the organs were connected or how they looked.

Runes, hieroglyphs, symbols mixed with spells in different languages, herbs and potions slowly mended the organs. Finally the last of the organs looked again like it should.

Sal took another deep breath, then he transfigured a needle sterilized it in a called flame and started the tiring process to sew the outer wounds. He knew that there were spells to mend wounds like that, but he dared not to use them. They would disturb the spell work he used to mend the inner organs - and that he could not risk.

The boy would have to live with some heavy scars, but it was better than dying. And maybe Sal could later, when the organs were alright, mend the wounds magically. Now they had to heal naturally.

He disinfected the suture and bandaged the wounds. Then he carefully destroyed the ritual circle and the runes on the forehead, wrists and ankles of the boy. After that he also destroyed the runes on himself. The blood he had used to draw lit again for another moment, and then it vanished into little red sparkles which flew away with the wind.

" You can come now" He said to the goblin-family. As soon he said that, they came running. The mother reaching out for her son but stopping before touching him.

" How is he?" she asked, fear in her voice. Sal opened his mouth to reply but then grinned.

" How about asking him yourself?" He asked and smiled at the young boy who had just opened his eyes. "How do you feel, my boy?"

" Strange" the boy answered. " I don't hurt but there is something tight around my waist."

" That might be the bandage" Sal answered chuckling. " I could not mend your outer wounds because I feared to disturb my work with your inner wounds. It will have to heal naturally, I am sorry."

" But he will live?" Ragnuk asked hopefully.

" Well, he is awake and seemed to be fine - so when nothing goes terribly wrong, yes, he will" Sal answered. " But tell me, how come your child was hurt like that?"

" We are living near here" Ragnuk answered. " My boy was playing here. I don't know what happened, but I know he did not return when he should so I and my family started looking for him. He was hurt like that when we found him. My wife tried to heal him when suddenly these scums turned up and rounded on us. And then you came - that's all I know."

" They came and hurt me when I was playing" the boy said. " They let me live - I think they planned to wait for my family to find me to take us all down." The boy's words were grim and far older then the years he counted.

For Sal the young goblin was another boy who had to mature beyond his years. He sighed. He hated it. Children should stay children - they should be able to play to laugh and to live. They should not be slain while playing or fearing for their life…

He withdrew his thoughts from their path to fix them again to the present.

" Well - they won't do it again. I am sure" He said coolly, looking at the captured sorcerers who were looking at him with fear in their eyes. " When they finally are released from here, they will never think about hurting someone again."

" Why?" Ragnuk asked, now also looking at the sorcerers. " What did you do? I thought you just captured them."

" I did." Sal answered. " And they will relive all the crimes they did in their own mind and on their own bodies with them as the victims before the trees will let them go. Their punishment will start with sunrise."

Ragnuk shuddered.

" Remind me never to anger you." He said. " I might be a goblin but even I prefer a blade through my stomach to this."

" Oh, it won't kill them" Sal assured Ragnuk shrugging. " The deathly blow won't be deathly for them - they just will feel like they are dying. I am sure, that after they relived their deeds they will still be able to walk away - reliving the same thing night after night in their dreams until they regret."

" Just ask for my sword when I have wronged you. I will give it to you freely so that you can stab me, alright, Morganaadth?" Ragnuk commented. "It will definitely preferable to this punishment."

Sal just shrugged.

" When you think so, chieftain" he answered unconcerned and then turned the goblin-boy.

" You should stay in bed for the next days. You may sit up when your mother helps you, but we have to wait until the spell works settles and your wounds have healed a bit."

" What is with his magic?" the mother asked.

" As soon as he is healed, he should have no problems with it. But I would recommend that he does not do magic for the next fortnight. My magic could interact when he would try - and that is nothing we want to have."

" So, what will you do now, Morganaadth?" Ragnuk asked. Sal shrugged again.

" I just returned to Britain" he answered. " I thought of staying and relearning the languages. They seemed to have slightly changed since I was here the last time. It will take some time to update my vocabulary. Maybe I will work as a healer…"

" How about coming with us for the night?" Ragnuk asked. " You can decide tomorrow what you want to do…"

For one moment Sal thought about declining the offer - but he knew that it would be insulting if he did and so he gave in.

And so he was sucked again into the war between goblins and sorcerers, searching battlefields for wounded people, defending women and children, working together with goblin-healers and the clans. His son was following everywhere like a shadow while learning to fight from the goblins. His son also found his profession as a scholar by the goblins and started working in their archives. Sal let him be. Sal's own father had never pushed Sal into a profession and Sal would never do it to his son. If Anastasius wanted to be a scholar and live his life for dusty scrolls, then so be it. Sal would not stop him. And like that they slowly drifted apart again, especially after Anastasius finally learned and was able to hunt alone when he turned thirty-two. After that Anastasius still sometimes returned to Sal to be fed, but the occasions were less and far between - especially with Sal on the battlefield and Anastasius in the archives, both working while they were sometimes miles and miles apart.

So Sal healed, searched the battlefields and aided the goblins. His final aid would be finally being the neutral party in the peace negotiations. But that would be nearly forty years later.