Flameborn Eyrie

[Christoph]

The sorcerer turned to face the two strangers, immediately shocked at not noticing them sooner. One was an old man with a neatly trimmed gray beard. The other... Belov’s eyes widened. He’s a giant. Well over seven feet tall, built like a bear, and covered in thick armor under patchy rags. He may as well have been a golem silhouetted by the moonlight.

Eli blinked to keep from gawking. “...hello.”

“Elijah, yes?” The older man stepped forward, hands out in a welcoming gesture. “I am Tazok.” His smile deepened the lines in his face. “I had hoped to persuade you to teach my student, if only for a moment.”

“Come again?” He blinked once more, pulling down his hood and scarf to reveal a young face, with old eyes peering through locks of wavy brown hair. “Have you been waiting for me up here? Not that weirder things haven’t happened to me, but... why?”

“Is it not not a fitting venue, my friend?” asked Tazok, gesturing around the mountaintop, the great altar in the sky. “A place of life and death, of--”

Eli waved his hand, cutting off the polite old man. “No, I mean why me? Also, how did you know to find me here, now?” He then pointed at the huge brute beside Tazok. “And how in Creation did he get up this mountain?”