They walked on in silence for a while, the three they’d come to save not knowing what to make of Ben's declaration, and Thera wanting to give him a few moments to calm down. Still, it didn’t take long until they were well away from Sachel’s grandmother's home when he turned around to speak to them.

“Alright, first off, Thera sorry but it looks like I might be here for a while. If you need to head off I understand.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll help you out,” She said while placing special emphasis on the fact it was Ben she was doing this for, not the others.

“Thank you,” He told her warmly before turning to the other three. “Now you lot, tell me what’s going on in the forest. Since you mentioned fighting skills, I’m assuming some sort of monster has made its home in there?”

Sachel seemed troubled by everything that just happened and Skoe was still dealing with the after-effects of being secured to a wall for what seemed like the two weeks since they’d been imprisoned, so Ralia was the one to give an explanation. “A group of frost bats has taken up residence in the forest the dryads cultivate and are slowly killing it. We wanted to eradicate them to complete Sachel’s quest, but if we can’t go in there’s nothing we can do.”

“She’s right,” Sachel said sadly upon finding her voice. “We should just leave, they don’t want our help.”

Ben grabbed the girl’s shoulders and forced her to look him in the eyes. “Sachel, I was told this is your village, you must have known the rules about the forest before you went in, but you did anyway because you wanted to help. Are you ready to give up now?”

“There’s nothing I can do. They’ll take it a lot more seriously if we break the rules a second time.”

“So then let’s work out a plan,” He told her, trying to sound like the sort of confident pillar that could support the effort the task would require, until another question needed to get out of the way. “But first, is there anywhere in the village we could stay if we’re going to be here for a few days?”

They were led through the village until Sachel found the place she was looking for, bringing them to another of the rundown houses and knocking on the door.

A small girl answered and looked the group up and down, Ben couldn’t imagine what a young child like that saw, considering how scruffy Sachel’s team was after a few weeks in an underground prison, not to mention how mysterious Thera might come across being fully cloaked, but with an indifferent attitude she just turned her head and yelled out.

“MOM! SACHEL’S HERE WITH SOME WEIRDOS!”

With that, the young girl ran off and her mother, looking to be in her late twenties or early thirties, though it was hard to be sure from the difference in species, came to the door.

She looked at Sachel, ignoring the rest of them as she sighed and brought her into a hug. “You know, you really should have stopped by to say hi before getting yourself in trouble.”

“Haha, yeah. Sorry Fontesh, we were looking for somewhere to talk and figure some stuff out, mind if we come in?”

At that she finally gave the rest of them a lookover before turning around and walking back into her home, letting the rest of them follow her. Taking them to a kitchen she was quickly given an explanation of what happened and the fact that they were looking for somewhere to stay.

“Huuh, fine. I’ve got a spare room, a basement, and a shed out back, you can all split them however you’d like while you’re here.”

“Me and Thera will take the room,” Ben told them, not leaving room for any arguments. They hadn’t packed to be there for a long time, and while it might not have been extremely necessary from how thick each wall was, it meant he’d need to place the enchantment he’d previously tested at Sonya’s on the room to be on the safe side and it would be significantly easier to do there than the basement since he assumed it would be the smaller of the two options. Presumably, a shed would be easier still, but that wasn’t happening.

“Alright then, me and Ralia can take the basement,” Sachel said agreeably. She wasn’t about to argue when Ben had come all the way out to help her and was going to assist with her quest as well. That just left the last of them.

“Yeah yeah, do you at least have any spare blankets I can use?” Skoe asked as he saw how things were turning out, to which Fontesh promised to see what she could find.

While that was going on, Ben had a quick but important conversation in his head.

Hey Myriad, how much assistance can I give Sachel for it to still count as her completing the quest?

So if I give her a plan to work through as long as she’s the one to complete it then it’s fine?

I’ll train my hidden mind a bit later. How does other people helping her affect things, and if I give her a plan of attack can I do any more to make things work out?

Sounds good.

“Alright everyone, now that that’s settled I’ll need you all to listen to how we’re doing this and I won’t accept arguments. If there’s anything that won’t work because it will cause trouble with the village speak up but that’s it. First things first, sorry Thera but can I ask you to work with this lot to try to deal with this?”

“I already said I’d help you so don’t worry about it.”

“You’re the best. In that case, I’ll want to know some details about the woods, namely how big is it and how often do people go in it?”

Fontesh was the one to answer that. “Currently it’s just a small grove, a bit more than two acres that’s mixed into the rest of the forest. Expansion of it has stopped for now since a few villagers have been attacked, and nobody is to go near it till the problem has been resolved for everyone's safety.”

“Wait, so this sacred forest is just a group of trees mixed into a larger, less sacred forest?”

“It’s made up of trees from our homeworld,” The dryad explained. “We can’t reproduce with other trees so if anything happened to them we’d have to break up the village and join other dryad communities, not to mention the loss it would be to our species as a whole. There's already so few of us, not to mention how little plant diversity we possess…”

“Alright, so there’s a genuine reason you all take such good care of them, noted. Either way we won’t do anything that might cause them harm so you don’t need to worry about that. It’s actually super simple, me and Thera do it to hunt all the time. We’ll just use her magic to draw out everything in the forest and attack it. Well, I say we but I have other things to do. Also, I don’t know how you all usually do things, but since this is Sachel’s quest she’s in charge. If I find out she couldn’t complete it because someone else decided to take on the leadership I’m raining down hell.”

When he said that the mood of the room became significantly more tense and he could see nervous looks forming on everyone’s faces. Well, everyone but Thera, whose face was covered like always but seemed to be getting a fair amount of amusement from the discomfort of the others.

Man, am I really that intimidating?

Wait, does that mean that gods will curse people or something if their apostle asks? What sort of chaos can you spread if I ever need you to?

Hmm, well if they feel threatened and it keeps them in line then I have one less thing to worry about.

Relax, I’m far too charming for that. I just won’t correct them about whatever they’re currently thinking.