Eric had managed to put tremendous distance between himself and Trebon and felt more than confident that those who might be pursuing him had long since given up...if anyone had even been on his trail yet. But, the landscape around him made him feel relatively secure. The Golden Mountains were one of the most dangerous areas in Underland, which said a lot considering the deadliness of the Crimson Sea and the Red Desert leading to Salazen Grum.

Of course, Eric wasn't a fool. He knew that Carolina's actions had shown him his pursuers would locate him soon, even if they hadn't yet been made aware of his presence in Trebon. So, he'd taken the most dangerous route into the mountains: the Jaws of the Beast, so named because the jagged outcroppings reminded one of pointed teeth in the mouth of a werewolf. And, with the perpetual snow and ice blanketing the kingdom, the area was prone to avalanches. Furthermore, with its sheer cliff faces and thin walking paths, horses could not make the journey through the pass. Whoever was after him, the White Queen or the Red Queen or one of the myriads of others he'd managed to piss off in his lifetime, they would undoubtedly be on horseback.

Therefore, with a comfortable distance between himself and The Lady Jane Tavern and Inn, Eric had afforded himself some precious time to rest. He'd grown so accustomed to the rhythmic crunching of his shoes over the snow that sitting and listening to the fire crackling in front of him as snow and ice fell from branches while he feasted on the pheasant he'd managed to kill felt...odd.

He could use a drink. In fact, he really, really wanted a drink, but he'd meant it when he'd said he was going to give up alcohol. His existence was far too precarious for him to have his guard down. Many people wanted him dead or enslaved, so many that he couldn't afford to be taken by surprise again. For over the past year, alcohol had numbed his pain and helped him forget the betrayal at the hands of the one he loved, helped him to forget his agony as she'd ripped out his heart. However, even before Carolina, Eric had come to realize that alcohol was a detriment. It had simply taken the whole encounter at the inn to cement that reality for him.

Ignoring the slight tremor in his hands thanks to the lack of alcohol in his body, Eric he feasted on his supper of a freshly slain pheasant as he unwittingly reflected on his past. After the White Queen's betrayal, Eric had barely managed to escape her clutches before the Red Queen had captured him, demanding to know why he'd failed to deliver on his promise to bring her the heart of her enemy. Once more, he'd barely made it out alive and had then gone into hiding, praying for the day that the two queens would finally kill each other and end the misery of the kingdom.

Sighing, Eric cleaned the remaining meat from the bird with his fingers and looked at it sitting innocuously in his palm. Eric thoroughly enjoyed a nice, fat pheasant as much as the next man, but in his haste to escape from the village on the outskirts of the Golden Mountains, he'd neglected to secure proper supplies, which meant he had very few seasonings. With a huff, he pulled off one of his grease-coated, fur-lined leather gloves and reached into his satchel to produce his meagre cooking kit. From the tin, he withdrew a pinch of salt and added it to his remaining few bites of meat.

Carefully, as if he were cradling something indescribably valuable, he used his free hand to close the container of spices and gingerly return it to its place inside his bag. Then Eric licked the salt from his fingers before slipping his hand back into his gloves and finishing off the bite meat meat in his hand.

Eric had a plan, of course. He wasn't just wandering off aimlessly into the most dangerous and deadly mountains in Underland. He knew where he was going...kind of.

The harshness of the terrain here meant that very few people ever made it across the mountains since the Great Blizzard nearly twenty years ago. There were stories that on the other side of the mountain range lay a vast kingdom, one which had warred with Underland before the civil war had driven the kingdom of Wonderland apart and the snows had isolated it from the rest of the world.

The way Eric looked at it, there were two likely outcomes for the kingdom across the mountains. One possibility was that the kingdom had died like so many others when the snows had prevented the common folk's farming. He knew for a fact that some of the more accessible kingdoms near Underland had withered away once the blizzard had settled in. The dead kingdoms were mostly countries poor in natural resources, ones that had relied on their farms to sustain their economies. Conques, the land which lay across the mountains, had been one of those farming kingdoms, so the collapse of the economy and subsequent destruction of the kingdom would make sense.

The other potential outcome was that the kingdom had somehow survived, and if there were people and government and structure, then there would be business. Where there was business, there would be money, and with money he could try to move even further from Underland, away from those who sought his head for perceived offenses he'd made to them over the years...well that and the murder of his father even though the man had more than deserved it.

Maybe he'd even find safety, somewhere he could build a home. Although the thought of home drew a scowl to his face nearly as quickly as the idea had flashed across his consciousness and the bitterness of reality set in. Homes didn't exist. They never existed. All the world had were houses, brick and mortar constructions made to shelter the inhabitants from the elements. The warmth of a 'home' was a myth, one he would not allow himself the luxury of hoping for.

As he finished off the food then cleaned his gloves in the snow before unrolling his sleeping pack, Eric pondered over what he might find on the other side of the range around him all while the imposing edifices and jagged edges and sheer cliffs loomed over his head. In a way, they seemed to cradle him in their rocky embrace, and Eric felt an odd and illogical sense of security while staring at mountains in the growing darkness.

With the stars beginning to brighten as the sun sank lower, Eric reclined in his sleeping roll and stared up at the sky. Regardless of what Conques was like, he knew one thing. Eric would not let himself become a pawn in anyone's game ever again. And, he'd buy a decent spice kit at the first available opportunity.