“Pest control, huh?” Anne thought the expression over. “I might use that.” Thomas looked at Madelaine for help; the girl just flashed him a shit-eating grin, poking at the fire in the oven. Of course.

“It's not a good thing. It means … it means this is just a job.”

“Well, yes.”

“But … but we fight things. Horrible things.”

“So does the average farmer, three times a day. People who want safe jobs dedicate themselves to things like sawing wood.”

“I didn't get anything that would help me saw wood.”

“That's because you didn't want that.” Thomas started to reply, then hesitated, as he processed what she said, and had to admit to himself it was true. Anne flashed him a smile. She knew she had scored a point.

“Okay, fine. But we fight horrible things. Shouldn't, I don't know, shouldn't this be glorious, somehow?”

“We are specialists who deal with local problems that are uncommon enough for nobody locally to specialize in dealing with them, and sufficiently dangerous that nobody wants to deal with those problems without having said specialization. It's a job, Thomas. It pays better than some jobs, worse than others.”

“And travel is mandatory.” Madelaine interjected. Thomas shook his head at her. Anne's smile returned.

“Look,” Thomas tried changing directions again, “We go out and stop things from killing people, right? We're trying to prevent harm from coming to other people?”

“Sure, if they pay us. And farmers prevent people from starving to death. It's a job, Thomas, not a, I don't know, a-”

“Quest!” Madelaine interrupted.

“ - that works, it's not a quest, Thomas. We do our jobs, we get paid. People who want glory go into the mature dungeons and never return.” That got him. Again.

“I … okay, it's not glory, exactly, it's like, this job is important.”

“So's eating. It's a job. Like any other. It has its perks, like ascending faster than most, paying somewhat better than some. It has its downsides, like the risk of injury and death. Like anybody else, we minimize the risks. The job isn't a glorious fight with powerful enemies, that's what ends a career.” She paused, giving him a stern look. “Remember the fight with the silver fawn?” Like he'd ever forget it. That was kind of his point, he - “That fight is exactly what we don't want to have. That fight means I didn't do my job well enough; controlling what fights we get into is my job. I nearly got you killed, there. That's not beautiful, that's not glorious.”

“What happened?” Madelaine's attention shifted between Anne and Thomas, her expression one of simple curiosity. Anne looked at Thomas, whose brain shut down for several seconds in panic. Okay. Yes, she needed to hear this. He needed to be careful how he said this. What should he -

“I got my ass kicked and nearly died.” It came out, just like that, while his brain was still trying to formulate a response. Madelaine looked at him for a moment, then nodded seriously.

“Damn. Your whole class is just 'Being hard to hurt', right? What hurt you?”

“Little tusked deer.”

“Oh! Like Tusky!” She brightened up.

“Tusky?” Again, it came out while his brain was preoccupied.

“Tusky was my second skeleton. Boney was my first. Boney was an alligator. Tusky was eating Boney before I turned them into skeletons, so I made Boney my first skeleton and she started eating back until I could make Tusky one too.” Thomas tried not to stare. Or ask any more questions. It would be one thing if she talked like this all the time; it was the mixture of childlike outbursts and adult thinking. It just wasn't right.

“Thomas.” A voice, from the door; they turned as one to see Balier striding into the room. Madelaine grinned widely and started bouncing when she saw him, which caused his stride to catch a little bit. His gaze, however, only wavered slightly from Thomas. “You were right.”

A map was spread across the table, weighted down on the corners by four empty bottles, courtesy of Anne. Another contradiction of maturity and immaturity, but one he was more familiar with. It was the first map Thomas had seen. And it was incredibly boring. Mountains on the right. A river running down them to the left. A curved line of blue through a page of brown.

Villages dotted the river. Thomas couldn't read the names; couldn't even tell whether or not it was the written language he was familiar with, there was so much flourish to the text. Probably not? Balier's finger was near the center of the map, clawtip touching a city.

“More of you have shown up here, in Anchor, as you predicted.” Thomas didn't know the capital was named Anchor, and only gathered that knowledge from Balier's comment. Alright. “Others have shown up in many major cities. I don't have responses to all my messages yet, but I've alerted the other mayors to the issue.” He looked at Thomas. “I've done what I can.” Thomas nodded.

Madelaine and Elijah both had picked Thief, and City Craft District. He wasn't certain what the latter meant, or why they had shown up where they did, but he had suggested that Balier send somebody to alert the capital, which would by virtue of its multiple and individual representations on the choices, he thought, probably be getting the most … of his people. Wherever they were from.

It seemed … he was right. Thomas stared at the map. Out of the two dozen who had shown up in Madelaine's group, two still survived. He hesitated, thinking of two others who had been found. Maybe others had escaped. Hopefully, if anyone else survived, they had escaped.

Those in the cities would be a little better off, maybe. They wouldn't have to face monsters, at least of the inhuman variety. His hope began to drain away as he stared at the map, as he began to think through what their experiences would end up being. He slowly turned to Balier, who was already looking at him. 'I've done what I can.' He knew.

“Why so glum?” Madelaine set a chair down next to the table and climbed up to stand on it, peering over Thomas' shoulder – she didn't actually need the chair to see the map, and seemed to just want to tower. “They're appearing in cities, that's good, right?”

“Depends.” Thomas just stared at the map. “How many are appearing in the cities?”

“Okay, but people here just magic up food. Heck, I could magic new food if I leveled up again and wanted to. Some of the new people will just have to be food magic-uppers.”

“Conjurers.” Norris replied absent-mindedly; he, too, stared at the map. “We're conjurers.”

“Right. So everybody can eat, what's the problem?”

Thomas didn't know how to reply. Nothing. Everything. Shelter. Clothes. Pride. Violence.

They were prepared to leave the next morning. Thomas had hired Anne. Well, he had tried to. She had scowled at him in a way that said he had still lost the argument, but refused his money. Granted he didn't have a lot, so she wasn't actually turning much down.

Their packs got some supplies. Balier had, in fact, done a little bit more, commenting on how his friend Cavroc would have approved of their mission. It wasn't a lot, but it was all they could carry, even with Norris summoning a ghost mule which carried its own pack; for reasons but Anne and Norris understood, Anne burst out laughing when she first saw the mule, and he'd just smiled sheepishly at her.

They were headed for the capital, Anchor, to see what could be done. Anne had told Thomas quite frankly that either they wouldn't be needed at all, or they wouldn't possibly be able to do enough. He had shrugged. People had helped him when he'd gotten here. But he'd also been a single person; a light burden for a small village, and even so, he'd felt guilty about it.

Balier had helped Thomas with the math. He wasn't sure what had felt stranger about what had felt like a tutoring lesson – that he was being tutored by a polite person with an … an educated accent, or that the person was a lion. Person. Lion-person. Two dozen, in a choice which, randomly chosen, would be chosen by less than one out a hundred. Two thousand people was the lower limit.

Thomas thought it was probably far, far higher. Somebody who had chosen “Thief” and “City Craft District” should have appeared in an actual city craft district somewhere. He thought Madelaine's group was a fluke.

That was the question, upon which would turn whether he wasted everybody's time on a week-long walk. Was it two thousand, whose addition wouldn't change anything? Or would it be a number whose addition might change everything? Thomas very carefully tried not to guess at how many might have appeared somewhere immediately inhospitable, like Madelaine's group.