The Ring Bearer

Chapter 4

With the new information, Tao and I had actually started to bond. He was interested in how time developed as he was sleeping, and I was perfectly alright with telling him everything I knew around me.

We slept in the cave when the dimmed light disappeared altogether, and when I woke up the next morning, I realized two things; Tao actually wasn't as scary as he first seemed, and that I was hungry.

Tao was still asleep when I woke up, so I had to find breakfast before he did wake up. (Why he wanted to sleep after three hundred years of sleep, I didn't know) I opened up the survival pack I had and blinked at all the things in it; clothes, matches, first aid kits, bags and bags of emergency food and medication, empty pieces of paper (I assumed they were there in case I wanted to write up a few maps in the future), and as of currently, the box that had once held Tao's ring. The bag was actually bottomless, thanks to an enchantment performed by some warlock I never knew.

I grinned at the food in the bag and pulled out a couple of bags, looking them over carefully. The food had already been cooked and ready to be eaten thanks to another witch, and I left one of the bags of food with Tao before carefully making my way outside of the cave with a spare change of clothes found in the bag.

I wasn't sure if I'd be seen there, and I didn't exactly think anyone would want to see me bathe, so I did my business in the pond- which now looked more like a river as its stream coursed the valley smoothly.

When I walked back into the cave, Tao was already awake and done eating, though he looked up at me with a slight frown on his lips, "You wouldn't happen to have any more food, would you?"

I couldn't help but laugh at his words. He may have been hundreds of years old, but he was still a man, and men loved eating. Thankfully for me, the enchantment allowed for the backpack to never actually run out of food, or else I'd really worry about how we were supposed to survive.

I sat down a few feet away from him and allowed myself to eat as well, though I continued to watch him curiously. He was obviously uncomfortable with my gaze and looked up at me with his cheeks slightly puffed out, and then blinked rapidly to make sure I was actually looking at him and he wasn't imagining it.

"Is there something on my face?" He spoke with his mouth full, and only then did I realize just how unattractive it was to see someone speaking with food in their mouth. I felt a little guilty for doing that to Cook Park, but I pushed that aside temporarily.

"Sorry, I was just wondering how you could have fit in the box." I replied, looking down at my almost empty bag of food, consisting of rice and some sort of baked or curried chicken.

"We were cursed and put into our rings." Tao answered anyway, and my head snapped towards him in worry.

"Don't you want to be freed from the ring for good?" I asked, putting down my bag of food and frowning to myself as I thought of possible ways in which I could help him.

"Free?" Tao hummed and looked up at the cave ceiling before letting out a loose shrug, "Yeah, I'd like to be free, but it takes a boat load of magic for that and I don't have that power on my own."

I hummed as well and looked away in thought, thinking of ways I could help the guy. I didn't know him well, and I didn't have to free him, but a part of me said it was right of me to want to free him.

"Would one of the warlocks in town be able to help?" I turned to look at him again and felt my eyes widen when I caught him looking at me with an eyebrow raised in curiosity.

"You'd need the strength of several mages to set us free." He said blankly, then gazing down at his fingers in dejection, "You could use us to set us free, but I don't know where any of them are."