The next morning, whether it was the unknown threat of the Bents, or the lingering feeling of shame I felt from the worried look I had seen in Lilly’s tan eyes, I renewed my determination to stop drinking the Astrid Tea. I knew my body couldn’t handle the repercussions of an immediate stop. Instead, I enchanted my teacup to glow at the line it was filled at today, and once a week that line would lower just a hair.

As a half-elf, I didn’t have anyone to compare myself to. Humans, I noticed, forgot things as they aged. Memories that were trivial or unimportant to their lives disappeared like rain into the ground. For dwarves, they practiced a craft for a reason. The body remembers when the mind forgets was a common saying I heard more than once at Ram’s home. My problem was the opposite. I remembered too much. Maybe it was the trauma of going to war too young, my age mistaken for a level of maturity among the humans. Maybe it was simply a function of being born a mixed breed, and the two species never should have been mixed.

Regardless, the tea once had helped me function when I found myself unable to do so. I never had reason to consider stopping before, either. It was a common enough product in the capital, that nearly everyone of reasonable means drank. Now that I was outside the confines of that city, in a place where a disruption could mean days of incredible pain, I didn’t want to be beholden to a plant.

Once the day began in full, I busied myself with instructing Walker and Lilly on what I expected from them with regards to the nascent dungeon below. A blank book, a measuring device, loose paper for Lilly to practice drawing the creatures. The look on her face when she realized she’d be spending part of every day in a dark room with monsterized insects just about made me laugh out loud.

The next part of the day, I spent with Kine going over the bestiary and herbal books to select the perfect type of lilies and fish for the moat. A mixture of night-bloom lilies with orange and lavender petals seemed perfect, but Kine was quick to point out that it attracted a species of giant frog. I wasn’t concerned with the frogs, as my elemental defenders would prevent that from occurring. The aquatic animal, on the other hand, were more difficult to decide upon. I wanted something that was beautiful to look at, but something that could also be eaten on occasion. A lot of options fit in one category but not the other.

We narrowed the options down to a golden-scaled eel and a black-finned perch. The eel could grow up to three or four feet long, and the fish grew to the size of half a person. We were discussing which would be better when the call to alarm went up. Kine raced away to the top of the tower as did my guards. I took the time to cast more defensive spells and prepare some of my most powerful destructive magics, the things that could destroy entire mountains. As I reached the top of the staircase, I didn’t see anyone fighting. Instead, Walker, Kine, and the guards were all leaning against the wall looking out towards the back of my tower.

“What are they doing?” Kine asked, a hand shading his squinting eyes from the sun.

“I—I don’t know,” Walker answer, “Looks like they’re carrying something.”

Tond saluted me once and then turned back to look, “Sir, it’s no attack, unless they’re poisoning your beasts.”

The six people made way for me as I gazed out onto the waters that held my beast pits. There, I saw the unbelievable. In the forests around the edges, all manner of animals and beasts stood, my mud elementals in the waters before them waiting for one to step in. Between those elementals, in a line that led to the pits were humans in green robes passing meat between themselves like a water line fighting a fire. When the meat reached the end, they just tossed it into the snapping mouths of wolves and boars.

I rubbed my eyes in disbelief, and then looked again to make sure of what I was seeing, “Come then, let’s go have a talk. They best not have ruined my experiments.”

We made our way outside, carefully watching these strangers as we headed towards the pits. I sealed the tower walls behind me and left my guard Meathead in defense of Lilly, Chelsea, and Rolf. As we approached, the line of interlopers became a jumbled crowd. I noticed that their beasts and animals had been hunting the woods for them, the meat I saw earlier was fresh game and other monsters that inhabited the thick mossy forest beyond my lake.

The closer we walked, the more details I could take in. Beneath their thick green cloaks, which seemed to be made of nothing more than woven grass, I saw tattered clothing on mishappen and ill-formed bodies. A man with the arm of a child. A woman whose face was covered in growths and boils, carrying a child with the same affliction. Men and women whose very appearance showed a lack of understanding not so dissimilar to my own guard Meathead. It made me glad that I’d left him behind.

“The Bents,” Walker whispered, his voice tinged with trepidation.

I saw now that I had been mistaken thinking the Bents were some powerful monster. These people were the rejects that the towns and villages of the western duchy didn’t want. Rather than hidden in back rooms and cellars like they did in the capital, they must simply abandon them into the wilds of the hinterlands. Another part of human society that disgusted me. Not that I was going to attempt to change it or help these people. No, I had no healing magics great enough for that, and I needed them to leave before some misguided fool spread word that I was experimenting on humans.

“Hello,” the dull sound of a man’s voice in the back of the group spoke, but an elbow silenced him.

“We heard,” a woman intoned. She was older, but with one eye larger than the other and seemed to be the spokesperson of the leader of the group.

“The cries of,” a man with burn scars all across his face continued, the scabs and pus leaking.

“These beasts, they want,” the woman kept going.

“Freedom and food,” a different man, the one with the child’s arm, finished.

“We are,” she began again.

“The Bents,” a younger version of the woman with the mishappen eye finished.

“Druids! We’re druids!” The same dull voice called from the back before an elbow jabbed him again.

I looked across the wretched group, maybe forty people in all, not counting the children and whoever might still be in the woods. Finishing each other's sentences might be impressively mysterious to a commoner, but it was easy enough to do with practice.

Still, arranging care for all these people with little access to civilized means seemed a difficult proposition in winter, even for a druid. This earned my respect, but I wasn’t about to exchange any greeting that might be misconstrued as a welcoming. So, I gave the woman a nod and said, “I see.”

The group began muttering amongst themselves. She sighed, and stood a little straighter, and began, “We green ones seek.”

“To help the wild,” The small armed man continued.

“To become one with—” She started to continue before I held up my hand.

“What do you want?” I interrupted their routine, annoyance clear in my voice, which cut through the mutters and silence overcame the crowd. It made the quiet snarls of wolves in the nearby pit even louder.

“Has he let the puppies go yet? Ompf!” The dull voice asked, the question carrying clearly in the silence.

I glanced down the pit, to look at the wolves he was discussing. Wolves they might be, some of them with pups now, but they were also tier one beasts. They looked up at me, the snarls quietening in anticipation of food. I looked back at the woman.

“Would you consider—” Their leader began.

“No,” I said firmly and clearly. Release my experimental subjects? Not a chance.

“It seems we are at an impasse,” She said with a sad tone of voice.

Which, in my opinion, was arrogance itself! Who does she think she is declaring an impasse? She asked for me to give something with no compensation, that’s charity! She asked for charity and I rejected it. What is she going to do, stand here hoping I change my mind? I looked beside me to my guards, and then around the menagerie of misfits.

I wouldn’t slay them, not with the children they had with them. I could kill off their animal companions but that might leave them weak to the monsters of the hinterlands. The same families I wouldn’t slay would only be killed elsewhere because of my actions. Certainly, I could just order my mud elementals to carry them and place them outside my lake, but then I suspect they would elevate their actions from nuisance to something more. They looked poor enough, perhaps literal charity would send them on their way? But I didn’t want word to get out that there was a wizard that would grant charity to those that were unfortunate, that would lead to lines of commoners asking for a coin each.

I could cast a great magic to try to scare them away, but that could backfire easily. Nemon Fargus, slaughterer of the disabled was not how I wished to be known. Really, how did the Scouts deal with this group? Did they hide away in trees until they passed? Sending them to seek out the Scout Commander would be a good way to get them off my back, but they would need to pass by Lark to do so. I already spent enough time hearing from the baroness.

That was when I remembered my former student Froom. His lands were to the southwest, and if I remembered correctly, his wife was a druid herself. I still owed him for sending me a wild monkey when I asked for testing subjects. That thing flung poo at me, and I have no doubt that was why he chose the animal.

No doubt he’d already received word of my arrival here, and I would be receiving snide little missives from him in the near future. If he was a good enough wizard to think he can rival me, then he is certainly good enough to deal with this mess in my stead.

Having decided, I spoke, “No doubt you could stand here and inconvenience me in an assortment of ways. Nothing that would get me to release these beasts, but enough, maybe, for me to unleash more frightening things at you than those lumps of mud,” I gestured towards the mud elementals, their appearance that of a mishappen man with branchlike limbs and no faces. “Or,” I said, pausing dramatically as wizards are inclined to do. “Or, you could seek out the druidic promised lands. The lands of the wizard Froom. To the southwest of here. I have heard that all are welcome there. No doubt you, and your… clan, would be as well.”

I finished with a confident smile, the kind that a merchant would use.

The muttering among the Bents grew to a crescendo before they started peeling away to the forest in ones and twos, slogging through the waters in their ragged clothes. When only the woman was left, she bowed to me. “Thank you for your mercy, great one.”

I stiffened. My mercy. If all keeps going the same way, then I would end up with that unfortunate title as well. Nemon Fargus, the Merciful. That was not how I wanted to be known. I closed my eyes and breathed deep to keep myself from striking the lady down right then and there just to prove her wrong.