It has been 1 month since the maiden festival, Autumn has been spending as much time as she can with her family, giving her siblings some much needed training.

Amber would be the one taking out the sheep now, and she didn’t know what fighting meant outside of the spearmenship Autumn taught her.

Ava has started to step up in her training, she still can’t hold onto sensing while moving for long, but she stopped tripping so that’s an improvement.

It didn’t help that she wouldn’t open up her eyes.

Amber cast her first fireball, the start of it all, the most basic of projectiles, and the basis for most simple ranged spells.

“Congrats! How do you feel!”

“Tired…”

Autumn caught her and sat her down on the porch, she forgot to warn her about just pushing mana into a spell without limit, whoops.

Harlan is still too young to be doing more than touch based spells, so she’s been training him in the basics of spearmenship.

“LEFT, RIGHT, STAB, STAB, STAB, DEFLECT.” Autumn was surprised at how well he could keep up with her instructions, even if he was still just waving a stick around more or less, Harlan had few things that got him worked up and she finally found another.

Everyone was so into Autumn's impromptu bootcamp they didn’t even notice their uncle walking up to them

“Reminds me of when I first joined up, though I am guessing you didn’t mean to give her mana exhaustion.” he muttered something else about cruel methods but they missed that part.

“UNCLE” they all yelled out, waiting an extra month to see him was barely any different, but it might as well have been years to them after a month of drilling from Autumn.

“So Autumn, what has you working them so hard, gonna run away?”

Autumn indignantly huffed at him. “ I guess you didn’t get the letter.” the frontier was a months travel away at the farthest, and getting letters to rangers always on the move was an arduous task.

“Well, the maiden festival was last month… and I am going away next month…” she got more nervous as the day got closer.

“Oh? Which lucky lad did you pick? I hope it was a village artisan at least, I might need to have a talk with whoever he is…” he got a mischievous grin thinking of the chance to scare some lad straight and have a good reason for it.

“His name is Jaramis Redwall.”

The gears working in Redmond’s head were clunking loudly trying to remember if he knew the name.

“You don’t mean… I mean… really?”

Autumn kicked him in the shin.

“Hey, I mean I thought nobles all liked dainty submissive types, not…” his mind was working as fast as it could for the words to not get a swift kick from her and his sister, or worse yet, make her cry.

“Strong independent women.” she grinned a little at the complement.

“I won him over with a brave and graceful display of my own might!” she stood with the butt of her spear on the ground and a hand her hip.

“Oh really? You didn’t spray him with warg blood and then faint?” Autumn turned so red even her hair went a bright orange, a sign of light and fire alignment.

“W-well I mean… I am still right, I just left some of it out…”

“Well then how about tell your uncle the whole story, I’ve got water on the stove for tea.”

After Autumn explained the rest of what happened that night to him he unsheathed his knife.

“This wasn’t going to be my gift for you this time but I doubt they are going to want you carrying your spear around all the time, its enchanted for sharpness and durability, with a little mana channeling,”

“Doesn’t this belong to the army?”

He shugged

“I’ll say I dropped it and they’ll give me a new one.” it was Aida’s turn to kick him.

“Don’t start giving her bad ideas.”

He made sure to pretend he was hurt once again, normal people couldn’t hurt him with a simple kick in his new ranger gear, but he needed a way to get Aida to not kick him harder next time.

“So whats for dinner?”

“I know you’re trying to change the subject, but its biscuits and gravy.”

The rest of the time until dinner was spent catching each other up on what all happened to him since he was last around

“So, mom, dad, I was thinking, I want to see if Count Redwall would be willing to send Amber to an Academy in the neutral zone.”

The only 2 who didn’t stop eating were Harlan and Ava, they didn’t know what was so special about an Academy.

“I’m not sure if he would be willing to do such a thing, I know the nobles have connections to have interviewers come out to them, but we would need to prove to them she was special enough to be worth taking in, she doesn’t even have any formal mage training, and no you teaching her things I taught you doesn’t count, if the kid likes you as much as you think he does maybe you could ask for a magic tutor and then as to bring along Amber? It wouldn’t cost them any extra so maybe they would accept a deal? A year of tutoring is a minimum if she wants to try for an Academy. They are harsh places, best case she gets filed as a talent and gets a cut rate for the place, worst case she gets accepted as likely to be expelled, they don’t officially do it, but there are no refunds and a lot of people drop out because of either stress or get kicked out for causing issues, people who anyone who asks around knows would do such a thing.”

Autumn didn’t know what to think, all this seemed too thought out for her joking uncle.

“Uh, yeah I’ll ask about all that, but how come you know so much about all this?”

“Well, I may be your kind, strong, brave, handsome, uncle, but I am still a mage, and these places aren’t just for the children of nobles, when I’ve saved enough I plan to go through a 2 year course to improve my skills, the army will pay part of it but it's still a lot of money.”

The conversation about costs and how to ask for a favor from a noble lasted the entire meal, by the end of it a plan was in place, and then the gifts came out.

“For little Ava, since you are 10 now I think its time I gave you an enchanted sewing needle of your own, and they even threw in a small bolt of fabric with it, you can make clothes for your dolls or a pillow or anything else you want.” the suggestions from him got ideas rolling around in her head about noble gowns for the doll her uncle gave her all the way back when she was only 4, the first gift she remembered clearly from him.

“For Amber, since you will be out with the sheep soon enough I got you a spearhead, high quality just like your sisters.”

“And Harlan, since you keep asking for more about animals and plants, I decided something a bit more grown up was alright.”

It was a small but thick handbook, with a hard black cover, lightly enchanted for wear and tear, a bestiary.

The adventurers best friend, a yearly instuction manual with nothing but confirmed information on the monsters roaming in a given area, it would only cover the region the family lived in, but to Harlan it was perfect, he could read about every type of goblin and magical beast that roamed the woods near him, it even had accounts from adventurers on how best to kill them.

Harlan ignored everything else, only stopping to say thank you, he read the book until the house grew dark and his mother said it was time to sleep, he never really understood what sleep was, he got tried and would lay down, but everyone else, even the chickens stopping moving for hours, what a waste of time he thought, so he waited until his parents slept and stepped outside to read in the moonlight, even if he was just making his fingers glow he would eventually run out of mana, he found it was cheaper to just make a dim glow with the help of the moonlight for reading.

When the moon hung at its highest his focus was broken, footsteps, and… horses? Something tackled him and held a claw to his throat, it was covered in blood, whether it was from the beast or its victims Harlan didn’t know.

it was too big to be a person, and it spoke in some other language.

The woman on the horse yelled back in that language, clearly not a native speaker, her words were full of studders and pauses.

The thing that grabbed him kept backing away from the house and yelling at the soldiers on horses, they never took their hands off their swords, but they didn’t move forward either, once the oddness had passed and it was just 2 soldiers, a monster, and a boy standing in a yard Harlan finally started thinking again, he remembered how Autumn said he was supposed to learn to defend himself, but more than that he felt something he didn’t feel in a long time, like when he didn’t understand what the fire hurt him, why does this monster want to hurt him? And he was upset, he was furious that it would do such a thing, and then a voice called to him…

“Let it out…”

He reached up at the thing’s arm, dark mana couring through it, and when he touched the thing that had him, it just… fell apart, like a roast left over a now flame for the night, its flesh sloshed off the bone with a sickening thump at it hit the ground.

Harlan only used the move before to kill bugs around him, he didn’t know what it would do, but when he saw it, he didn’t mind, this was a monster, the monster dropped him, screaming and howling at its missing arm, Harlan didn’t know it would sound like this, it was so loud he thought his ears would break, Redmond had been standing by the door, not wanting to risk startling the beast by opening it, but now he found his chance, as it rolled on the ground he would put a stone spike through its head.

But he never got the chance, Harlan reached forward, the child should’ve been scared, running and crying, but with one more touch, his hand when right through the beast's chest, its heart blackened and fell apart, the darkness spread to its lungs, the screams stopped.

Harlen felt… fine? No… good? Yes, he felt good, he protected himself just like Autumn said he should, that was a good thing right? He heard killing was supposed to be bad, but this was a monster, monsters don’t count.

He looked at it, it started to change, its hair receded, its fangs turned back to teeth, its claws to fingernails, it was a man? No, a werewolf, the soldiers on horses had reached him and cut the head off the beast, they said it was the only to make sure most monsters were dead.

“You’re lucky it was already out of mana by the time we chased it here, it couldn’t put up a shield to save itself.” the woman said, she was gaunt her eyes faintly red from what he could see, her hair blended into the night sky, she stared at him for a bit, seemingly completely uncaring that a monster nearly tore a child limb from limb, not even using a name, just it, like he wasn’t even a human before.

Redmond wanted to yell at them, but then saw who they were, silver chainmail barely visible under their long black coats, wide brimmed hats, white masks enchanted to hide their faces, silver plates protecting their necks, moonlight caught on the badge, a fanged skull with a star behind it, cast in pure silver.

The Night Watchers, hunters of any civil monsters that broke the rules of civilization, a vampire who fed without consent? They were there, stakes in hand, just waiting for the day they could do what needed to be done.

Though not a part of any country they operated around the civil world other than the Reino Theocracy, officially tracking any and all habits of monsters who wished to live in human towns and cities.

Tolerated only because no one wanted to put forward the money and effort to fund such an organization and they worked with anyone who had authority without issue.

Redmond knew yelling wouldn’t do anything, he would have to put forward a complaint through the proper channels and hope the kingdom fined them for letting this happen on their lands.

“Well done kid, we were betting who would catch him first, guess we both lost.” The man, with a long grey beard poking out beneath his mask, tossed a small pouch of bronze coins on the ground and placed the body in a black spatial bag, they marked their journals and rode away on their horses.

Harlan didn’t know what to think, how could a monster be a person? Was it still wrong to kill a human if he didn’t know it? He picked up the pouch from the ground, it felt heavier than anything else he ever held.

Someone, something, he thought might be human, had died, he did it, and then he got paid for it, did that make him bad? Would Autumn be upset that he did such a thing with the training she gave him?

He sat there thinking until Redmond carried him back inside. he didn’t know what the boy's thoughts were, but he had seen how some recruits reacted to near death, to taking a life to preserve their own, some sat in silence and then left the army, some boasted about their strength and bought a round for their squad.

It wasn’t something a 7 year old should have to think about, not something they should have to do.