Ninya and Brita sat in Enri’s home along with Peter, Lukrut, Nfirea, & Jugem, each of them with a simple wooden mug in front of them that had a frothing head of beer hovering above the rim. “Getting Sir Momon to request rulership of the village is a big step forward, but it probably won’t happen before we have trouble.” Peter said, and the faces around the table turned the color of ashes.

“Peter, that’s a little harsh, isn’t it?” Ninya asked with a quivering lip, he gave her a long hard look in return.

“No, it isn’t. Even if he reached the capital already, and that is optimistic, the invitation Lupu told us about won’t have the ball for days, meanwhile it’s been weeks, I have absolutely no doubt that they’ve worked out the villagers were missing and sent out soldiers to search for where they ran off to. So we need a plan for ourselves.” Peter said and jabbed a finger pointed down on the surface of the rough wooden table for emphasis.

He then slowly wrapped his hand around the handle of the mug and took a swig.

“What about those two monsters Aura brought the other day? The troll and the naga? They each have a bunch of subordinates that are going to come here too. Won’t they prove a good defense?” Enri asked and bit her lip.

“Maybe so, maybe so.” Brita added, staring down into her mug and speaking with a bitter voice, “But they’re afraid of Aura and Mare, and neither of those two are staying here. We can’t count on them, that’s the thing, if you don’t have people you can count on, you can’t make a plan. Even if you do, it will likely fail from the lack of trust.”

“Oh come on, Brita… no more of that…” Lukrut said, and Brita shot him a glare that held until he trailed off.

“Shut. Up.” Brita spat the words at him with venom and took that long, hard glare at him and stretched it out even further. “I was stuck with a copper plate for a lot longer than I should have been because nobody would work with me. They wouldn’t even give me a chance, even you guys wouldn’t give me a chance. You only gave Ninya a chance,” she pointed at the magic caster, “because she bound her tits down and cut her hair to disguise herself as a young boy. Don’t tell me not to say true things because they make you uncomfortable, Lukrut. Especially when they’re relevant now.”

“Ah… yes, well, Brita does have a point.” Nfirea said, rubbing the back of his head throughout the uncomfortable chuckle that followed his words. “The two groups of villagers need time to mesh, the newcomers are also very weak, very underfed. The trolls aren’t much of a problem as long as they’re fed, and nagas are supposed to be intelligent, and able to live off regular food. But they’re not all working together or training together or anything. Even I can see that much. The locals of Carne don’t associate with the runners, the runners are willing to work, but they don’t associate with anyone from Carne.”

“And nobody outside of this room says our names.” Jugem added in a gruff voice and folded his arms in front of his chest. “Goblin this, goblin that. They’re friendly, but that’s all. We’re not comrades.”

Lukrut had the grace to look somewhat shamefaced and red at Brita’s withering criticism, nor was Brita alone in her glare, Ninya’s eyes were on him too, as were those of their host, Enri. Peter wore a somewhat uncomfortable expression before Nfirea redirected things, and his cheeks were tinged red, but the bitter stares did not touch the leader of the former Swords of Darkness.

“I can do something to strengthen the newcomers, thanks to opening up the woods. I have all kinds of herbs and other materials in quantities I could only dream of before. But even with that?” Nfirea swept up his mug and drank from it like the others did, “They’re not unlimited. I shouldn’t use them recklessly. Plus if I use too many on the newcomers, they’ll be seen as weak. I’ve seen others in the village look down on the runners, that might make an already difficult problem, worse.”

Ninya frowned, “Maybe I shouldn’t have come here and asked for your help… this is just making trouble… I should go t-turn myself in, tell them I did it. Then they can go back home and…”

“No.” Peter, Brita, Lukrut, Enri, and Nfirea said all at once. It was Peter however, who explained why when Ninya’s eyes popped open at the uniform utterance.

“Ninya, even if they believe it was just you acting alone, they won’t care, you should know this. One peasant’s death will never satisfy the bloodlust over a noble’s death, even if the noble was lecherous trash. Even if ‘they’ think he was trash, he was a noble’s son. Anything less than a village, and they won’t care who did what. Just being present is enough to be guilty. You know this best out of all of us.”

“I-I-Yes, I know, I’m sorry. I was just hoping…” Ninya blinked her eyes, “There really is no way out, is there, when they find where the villagers are?”

Brita bit her lower lip, then drained her mug and said with like bitterness, “No. Maybe if Sir Momon becomes a lord ‘first’ and takes this land. Now that he’s an adamantite ranked adventurer, I’m sure if he took it personally, he’d bring the guild into it, and they’d probably prohibit contracts with the offender. That’s as good as inviting monster attacks. But that is even assuming he becomes a lord at all.”

“There is one thing we can do to bring everyone together, but… I don’t know if we can manage it.” Lukrut suggested, and the table leaned toward him.

“Simple.” He said and held up a mug like he was about to propose a toast, “The answer is right here.” He pointed toward it with his free hand. The interested looks turned to snorts of derision and a collective sigh.

“Wait! Hear me out!” He said and took a swig that drained it near to empty.

“Look, I’ve been watching the women-” He began.

“I’ll bet you have.” Brita, Enri, and Ninya glared at him when they all said the same thing, but Lukrut pressed on.

“-and the men, and there are a lot of unmarried people from both villages.” Lukrut began, and Enri immediately picked up on where he was going.

“Enri, your father and mother lived here, right?” Lukrut asked.

“W-ah- yes, they did.” Enri answered as Lukrut’s words picked up speed.

“And Ninya, yours met in their village, and Peter, Brita, yours all met in your own village, right, right, and right, just like mine?” Lukrut pressed, and dawning looks of understanding began to form on their faces as well.

“We’ve got a strange situation here, where we’ve got two villages inside of one set of walls. So to bring them together, we hold a festival, call it… the Festival of Axel, to celebrate the adamantite team and the rescue they provided us. Then we get everybody really, really drunk, and wait for them to start screwing each other.” Lukrut looked from one person to the other, there were doubtful, but interested looks.

“Lukrut… this isn’t just one of your feeble minded attempts at finding someone to have sex with you, is it?” Brita asked, and to her surprise, he gave her a profoundly serious look.

“No. Not this time.” Lukrut emphasized and pushed his idea, hard. “The family system of a village is fine when there’s only a village, you grow up next door to a boy and you’re a girl, guess who you’re going to marry. But we’ve got more than that and we’ve got to break down those walls. If they start pairing off between each other, the new and the old will be ‘all new’.” Lukrut suggested, “and just for good measure, I’ll have you know I’m a fair musician, and I know all kinds of bawdy tunes to get some action going.”

“Good, but we need more than that.” Ninya said, and gave Peter a suddenly confident look.

“Games.” The two said in unison.

“Games?” Jugem and Nfirea traded confused glances and scratched their heads at the same time.

“Yes, adventuring teams usually play games to build familiarity. We can pair old and new up together in groups, so that they’re forced to work with new people and come together to win.” Peter explained.

“I can offer up some moderately priced potions as prizes.” Nfirea proposed, a blush to his cheek as he sought a way to further participate.

“Fine, and we can have the goblins and us veteran adventurers act as team captains.” Brita proposed.

Jugem’s gruff tone followed. “And we can do that in training too, mix up the groups so that the runners and the people born in Carne are used to fighting beside each other, they’ll build trust that way too.”

“We have enough beer, and if we hunt really hard, we can get enough food quickly. If we push this hard, I think it can work.” The tense mood in their little council began to ease, and with it came new confidence.

“I think that settles it, we can start integrating the trolls and nagas when they arrive, and if I have to, I’ll use this again.” Enri touched the horn that hung around her neck. “It may not bring many, but every sword and arrow helps.”

Their nerves were considerably eased by resolution, and their mugs had all been drained to empty. “So now that the worry beer is out of the way, how about the ‘relief’ beer?” Lukrut asked with a cheeky, rosy grin, and nobody laughed, as Enri was already rising to go bring over a small cask.

Arche was sitting in the chair in the study, across from Sebas as she usually did, and as per usual, she was telling him everything she knew about what he wanted to know. Noble society, how dances were done, who the most important people were, what powerful figures she’d been acquainted with, and what they were capable of. He demanded everything, she held back nothing.

Part of her wondered, ‘Is he a foreign spy, am I betraying my country by telling him all this?’ It sometimes nagged at her, but brave as she was against monsters, whenever that dread closed over her heart like the icy hand of death, she fended it off with the warm promise of the safety of her sisters.

“Master Tian, you have a delivery.” Solution said from the door. Arche looked over at the beautiful woman and her blood froze the way it always did. Sebas was cool and cordial, Solution was nothing but polite to her, but the way the maid’s eyes followed Arche, the magic caster felt like it was a look of hunger.

However, that was forgotten when Kuuderika and Ureirika entered the room and saw their sister. “Sissy!” They cried and ran to her, Arche shot up so fast and with such force that she toppled the chair over behind her when she rushed over to them. She went to her knees and embraced them as they leaped into her arms. She kissed their cheeks and squeezed them tight until they let out phony groans to show she was starting to be a little rough.

Pent up tears ran down Arche’s cheeks as she kissed their own, she went from one to the other and back again, their little stuffed bunny rabbits dropped to the floor in favor of squeezing their sister instead.

It was several minutes of this before Arche composed herself to look over at the aged lord. “What happened? How are they here?” Arche felt the existential dread coming over her, the initial happiness at the reunion tempered by a grim knowledge that this didn’t happen out of nothing.

“Solution, how much?” Sebas asked the maid who still stood in the doorway.

The maid gave a crooked smile to the Butler of Steel. “Ten gold coins from the budget to get Sanek to withhold further credit from Sir Furt, five more for the lie that little blonde girls were exceptionally fashionable slaves, and ‘the usual’ extension of credit for another hundred coins, with those two as payment for his current interest.”

Arche’s face went pale, “My… our father, he sold Kuuderika and Ureirika to you for a fifteen gold payment and a hundred gold coin loan?”

Four little bright blue eyes stared up in total innocence of the exchange.

Arche’s fingers tensed, she squeezed the pair more tightly than before, her jaw tensed, and she looked over to Sebas, putting her hands to the backs of her sisters' heads and drawing them in as tightly as she could, she asked the only question that mattered. “What happens now?”

“Solution, call for a Gate.” Sebas ordered, and then he stood up from where he sat.

Arche felt only confusion, fear, terror, all at once the impossible whirlwind of emotions tore through her. Her hairs stood on end, her face paled, her heart raced and she clung to her sisters as if terrified that they would be ripped away from her. But beyond it all, lay an unbridled hatred for a man she would never again think of as her father, and for a mother she would never forgive for letting it come to this.

“Now,” he answered her, “it is time for you to meet my master.” He pointed behind her, and her jaw fell open when she saw the whorling void in the space behind her. “Pass through this, and your wish will be granted.” Sebas promised.

Arche swallowed hard when Solution stepped through and vanished. Sebas stood beside it, waiting while Arche stood. She drew back from her sisters, “Come with me, I know this is scary…” She said in the understatement of the year as they stared at the void with tears of fear in their eyes and shaking little bodies, “But I will protect you, I promise.”

Thus reassured, they clung to her when she stood up, so that she was carrying one on each hip, and she stepped through what Sebas called a ‘gate’.