Nasir and Malt sat huddled around the crudely sketched map, depicting the layout of the entire village.

The greying man’s forehead creases deepened as he stroked his goatee. His mind, as sharp as it was, still struggled to find a solution to their current predicament.

Malt’s eyes traced an imaginary perimeter around the loose congregation of cabins, grimacing as he finished the circuit.

“I don’t suppose we can build a wall can we?”

The man answered without taking his eyes from the wrinkled parchment, “No...well actually, depends. When do you reckon they’ll come?”

He thought back to the many night trips that he had taken throughout the weeks.

“Maybe...two weeks? Give or take a few days.”

A vaguely displeased grumble left the man’s throat. He no longer took puffs from his pipe, thankfully, but he swirled it around his fingers with impressive dexterity. He gestured with his chin, prompting Malt to go on.

“All the smaller groups I’ve encountered seemed to be migrating to a single point a few miles north, somewhere just beyond the mountain ridge.”

Nasir raised one brow, giving the boy an upward glance.

“You’re telling me you’ve seen this camp before.”

He waved a hand in front of his face, dismissing the idea, “Hell no. One, I wouldn’t be able to make it back home by daybreak if I did. And two, I haven’t the balls to try something that sneaky with potentially more than a hundred Khods gathered in one place.”

The older man nodded, “I was about to say, there’s no way that you could’ve gotten out alive if that masked gentleman was there. He’s got hawk eyes, I’m telling ‘ya.”

“...about him, do you know the guy or something? And what’s all this talk about Femri- , Femrus-, fuck it, you know what I mean.”

Both the man’s brows raised in dull acknowledgement.

“Oh, Femreth? It’s an old school of magic I used to be affiliated with.” Although he said it so nonchalantly, Malt had the inkling that the story went much, much deeper than that. Now wasn’t the time to be pressing such matters, though.

“As for that fellow, I don’t believe I’d ever met him before. Plus, he probably hadn’t even been born by the time I’d stopped taking contacts for Femreth.”

Malt’s brows scrunched together at the man’s peculiar, or rather, dangerous choice of wording.

The man looked up at Malt this time, “Wouldn’t you be knowledgeable about these matters?”

After a moment of confusion, he understood the implication of the man’s remark.

“Sad is it is to say out loud, I actually don’t know all that much about Khodor. It was strictly need to know matter at Dagridge.”

There was that, and the fact that knowing and humanizing the enemy only made it exponentially harder to do a soldier’s job when the time came. Morbid as it was, that was just how things had to be.

He caught a glance of concern from Nasir from the corner of his eye, to which he chose to ignore.

“Well, we can’t have that be the case anymore can we?”

The man pulled out an elegant looking pen from his vest’s breast pocket, flipping the map over to its blank backside. From there, he drew a rough hourglass shape, tracing borders in a way that seperated the shape into two thicker pieces and one thinner sandwiched in between.

It was a map of the continent, nothing that Malt hadn’t seen before.

The thicker portion of landmass that lay to the north was the realm of the demon hordes, whilst the lower portion was the snow-swept nation of Khodor. Squished in between the two, of course, was the Kingdom of Astoundria.

Nasir tapped the paper once with the butt of his pen, “You know this much, right?”

Malt nodded intently, rubbing the rough stubble on his chin.

He continued, “There’re a load of nations south of Khodor, but that’s unimportant as of now.” He flipped the pen around once again and drew two dots, one to the very southernmost border of Astoundria, and one just a bit northwest of it.

“I’m assuming you know what those two are, so let's just move onto the important bits.” He gestured toward the lands south of Astoundria.

“What is this place?”

“...Khodor, why ask such- ”

“What are they trying to do?”

Malt grew even more confused, these were questions that were so obvious that they didn’t need to be asked.

“Invade Astoundria, obvio-”

The older man waved a finger, stopping his sentence.

“And that’s where you’re wrong.”

He then drew various squiggly lines throughout Khodor, effectively partitioning it off into dozens of uneven chunks.

“Khodor isn’t a nation, it’s a region. The country we call Khodor is, in fact, composed of countless warring clans of Khodic descent. Khodor hasn’t been a unified nation in centuries, in fact. It’s just a conglomerate of short, uneasy treaties and unending civil war.”

Malt’s eyes widened, this was vastly different than what he had been told whilst at Dagridge.

Perhaps seeing the confusion in Malt’s eyes, Nasir interjected before the boy could speak.

“Let me guess, that’s not what you were told? I’m not all that surprised, but let me finish before you ask any questions.”

He pointed to the little dot representing Dagridge, “The clan that’s currently trying to pour into Astoundria is Clan Bruk’bar, roughly translating to ‘expendable’ in Khodic. I’m sure things are starting to click, yes?”

So many things were starting to make sense now.

The vast discrepancy between the amount of experienced to inexperienced Khods that he had been perpetually crashing against the southern front. The lack of quality in their equipment. The lack of good leaders and generals amongst their ranks. The abnormal influx of deserters.

Nasir continued, “Back when I was in the know, they were the clan with the largest territory, and therefore the largest population. Their land isn’t particularly rich in anything, but it doesn’t need to be. It’s often said that their most valuable resource is their surplus of bodies, which are in high demand across all of the clans.”

He took a puff from his pipe, which seemed to be counterintuitive considering that his throat seemed to be dry already.

“So what I’m trying to say is, if they wanted to take Dagridge, I’ve no doubt they’d be able to, regardless if it takes a mountain of corpses to do so.”

“So why haven’t they...well actually, I think I’ve a clue.”

A disappointed sigh escaped Nasir’s lips, “You’ve probably the right idea. There’s some shady politicking happening behind the scenes. Why else is Clan Bruk’bar refusing to attack through the dozens of other mountain passes? I mean, they’ve no doubt the numbers to.”

Malt fell into silence once again.

It was hard to imagine that Geld, and especially Stromund, would be ignorant of such a situation, so why hadn’t they raised any objections to the situation?

Furthermore, what idiot would compromise the nation in such a drastic way? By potentially compromising the southern front, they were endangering not only Astoundria, but the entirety of the continent. Astoundria, more specifically the northern front, acted as the cork that stopped the demon hordes from consuming the continent after all.

The biggest question he had in his mind was ‘why?’ Why would someone imperil the lives of so many people, for what reason were they willing to gamble with the fate of the entire continent?

What cause was so precious that someone was willing to potentially throw away the world in its pursuit?

These were questions that he had no answer to.

Nasir, sensing that they were deviating from the problem at hand, slapped his pen down with just enough force to snap Malt out of his trance.

“We’re getting a bit off topic.”

He rubbed his hands together in anticipation.

“The important things to take from that whole spiel are that even though these deserters are probably amongst the expendables, they’ve likely never known anything but war, and therefore shouldn’t be underestimated.”

Malt traced a line from the north into the heart of the village, envisioning the wave of raiders that would inevitably flow down within the coming days.

“I’m not really worried about them, I’m confident that the village’s more experienced hunters will be more than a match.”

His finger tapped the parchment in quick succession, it was clear from his expression that his mind was racing.

“What I’m worried about is the masked guy...well, him and this ‘Captain’ that everyone’s mentioning. If someone has the authority to rally up all these deserters, they have to have been pretty high up the chain of command.”

Nasir’s face grew more troubled as the implications of the situation unfolded. “If we agree that this ‘Captain’ is a competent leader, then the two greenhorns that were with the Brat are a bad sign. Nobody with half a brain would send in those kinds of idiots to conduct reconnaissance. The only reason I can think of is…”

“To test us.” Malt finished.

Since they’d, or rather, Malt had killed the two Khods, the Captain would likely be more cautious. He’d sent the two in to test the waters, and now that they weren’t coming back, it would make sense that the Captain wouldn’t leave any space for error.

He’d inadvertently made this much harder than it had to be.

The greying man dismissed any guilt before it had time to manifest, “There’s no use in dwelling on what could’ve been, all we can do now is to think of what can be.”

He unfolded another piece of parchment, pen hovering in anticipation.

“What preparations need to be made?”

He began with the obvious, “I assume running’s out of the question, so we need to find a defensible location inside the village.”

The older man set off scribbling, “We’ll use my home, I’ve set up a couple magical wards around its walls.”

There was no longer any room to be surprised with things concerning this man. If he’d out and said that he used to be a sage, it wouldn’t be much of a far cry in Malt’s eyes.

“We shouldn’t put all of our eggs in one basket though, probably leave the less experienced to defend your house and have the more experienced hunters harass and skirmish in the forest.”

Nasir nodded whilst writing, devoid of objection.

“Maybe start stockpiling dressings and alcohol as well.”

“Clean water as well, I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried poisoning the wells.”

The thought lingered in Malt’s mind. After some contemplation, he eventually determined that such a situation was plausible enough.

“Start gathering charcoal and clean cloths as well.”

He raised a brow, still taking note.

“Have a plan?”

“Not a plan so much as a countermeasure, they might try to gas us out with pink grass after all.”

He quickly connected the dots, adding it to the growing list. After adding a few little notes here and there, he folded the paper up and placed it back into his breast pocket.

“Well, I reckon that’s as much as I can do at the moment. I’ll start hauling your stash over to my house as well. Maybe beef up defences a bit while I’m at it.”

He patted off his clothing (not that they’d gotten dirty in the first place) and stood.

“Now all that’s left is what you’ll do.”

He slipped on his overcoat once again.

“I plan to leave you inside the house, but- ”

“I’ll fight.”

A small smile crossed his regal features.

“I’d figured.”

Malt looked down at Misha, who was still blissfully asleep. He brought his hand down and lightly patted her dark brown hair, careful not to wake her.

Nasir interjected, “I appreciate the spirit, but I don’t think you’re fit to be doing any fighting like that.” He gestured to the bed that he’d been stuck on for days.

Malt met the man’s gaze with wry eyes.

“What, can’t you just fix me up with your almighty magic or whatever?”

“Hmpf. If I could, I would’ve done it already. Probably.”

He made his way over to the door and placed his hand on its handle. “All jokes aside, I won’t stop you from helping out during the defence, but you’d best stay inside the house. There’s no point in sending you into battle all crippled.”

He pushed the door open, but stopped half way.

Malt could hear the man mumbling something under his breath. Nasir turned back around, a mischievous grin now plastered on his face.

“I might not be able to fix you up, but there might be someone here that can.”

He slipped through the door before Malt could react, leaving him confused and honestly, a little nervous.

After a minute or so, the ma’am walked into the room with an expression that somehow expressed both worry and disdain at the same time. It was obvious that she and Nasir had had a talk which contents she did not approve of.

A forlorn sigh escaped her lips,

“That girl, she’s not the most normal of people. She might even be dangerous, you know?”

Malt swallowed a gulp. He didn’t know what Nasir had told the ma’am, neither did he have any clue who this ‘she’ was, but Nasir had obviously presented him with a solution.

Now whether it was a safe, or reckless solution, he had know way of knowing. Actually, it was probably the latter. This was Nasir, after all.

After some contemplation, he eventually figured that there wasn’t any harm in at least exploring this out that Nasir had presented him.

“I don’t know who this ‘she’ is, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”

It was clear the decision had been made.

The ma’am made her way over to the window and peered outside, taking note of the sun’s position.

“Looks like we’ve still got time today.”

She made her way over to the door and turned around.

“Get yourself sorted, son, we’re heading out in half an hour.”

His head pivoted quizzically,

“Can I ask where we’re going?”

“To an old friend’s house.”

“A friend’s…you say?”

The sudden change in attitude and mannerism from the ma’am was jarring. Whereas she usually emanated caring and compassion, she now looked as if she wouldn’t look out of place in a suit of armor.

She possessed a certain confidence and know how, similar to that of a driven businesswoman’s back on earth.

Without turning, she answered his question.

“Yes, one I made long before you were born. She’s a human as well, not to mention a mage.”