Endolf left the inn still furious, his cloak being pulled over his shoulders and his hood being pulled over his head as he walked down the stairs and past the main counter on his way out, allowing the young woman working behind it a chance to get a glimpse of the face he had hidden his entire time with them. He didn’t care at the moment and simply walked out as he had set his mind on doing originally. Exiting the inn he made his way to the town’s edge, walking into the tree line. He knew what he was doing, and it made him all the angrier for it. With one swift punch he aimed his fist for the closest tree and split it cleanly in two right down the center.
He wasn’t taking out his resentment towards Koko for being stupid and forcing herself into slavery in front of him. He wasn’t even taking out his resentment in the fact that prior to that he would have more than likely had a chance at being happy with her. Right now all he was doing was acting out not unlike a spoiled child throwing a tantrum. The realization was what had caused him to spare her life when it would have been such a simple matter to end her very existence then and there as she coughed up blood on his room floor. The fact that she had made her confession of loving him in such a beaten state, when he himself had been the one to do the damage to her in the first place, infuriated him further.
He wanted to blame everything on Merrze. All of his problems from his rage to his detachment towards people right down to his feelings of constant abandonment and betrayal. Everything he had just lashed out at the Imuchakk girl for without even meaning to direct it towards her. Another punch caused another tree to fall before him and his rage. He wanted to scream, to shout at the top of his lungs, but he knew he was still too close to the sleeping village to go unheard. Instead he would fell another tree before falling to the ground with a sense of defeat washing through him. That feeling of defeat would be washed over by a calming warmth through his body and a sensation of arms wrapping around him from behind. Rather than the violent, painful embraces he had become accustomed to this felt more as if he was accepted and cared for. A sensation alien and unfamiliar to the redhead.
He focused on this phantom sensation, clearly seeing no arms embracing him as he looked at himself, and tried to ignore the pounding sensation in his head that he simply believed to be from the rush of blood caused by his recent outburst. He would look around sharply, wondering where the whisper in his ear was coming from. A single word that sounded like “protection”, yet nobody was in the thicket but himself. It was all far too strange for the Fanalis warrior to try and understand. Yet he remained there, on his knees and surrounded by ruined trees for some time. Eventually sunrise would draw close and before the first rays of dawn could cast themselves over the mountains Endolf would keep his word and return to his room at the inn, taking a seat in the same chair this whole ordeal began in once he found Koko to be asleep in the room’s only bed.
He would continue to look at her as she slept, considering his next options in silence with his cloak now draped around his shoulders rather than being worn.