The shaking farmhand that had tried to interrupt Faye and Gavan’s examination of the food did not want to respond to Gavan’s questions. He kept trying to back away, but the larger farmhand that had stopped him from entering the barn would step forward when that happened and press him back into the conversation.

“Please,” Gavan tried again, “we are only trying to help. What were you trying to stop us from doing?”

The man scowled at Gavan’s words.

“You will ruin things, always ruining things.”

Faye frowned. “We have never met, why do you think we always ruin things?”

The larger man opened his mouth and was about to say something, but Faye held up a hand, shaking her head gently. He shrugged and settled back on his heels, crossing his arms.

“Not you, you, you know… you lot. You reckon you know things, but you don’t always know and sometimes you do things that you shouldn’t do and you, you wreck things!”

Gavan made a face of confusion, and the larger man rolled his eyes a little. But Faye was fairly sure she understood what he was getting at.

The man was clearly distressed by whatever he thought they were going to do, or were capable of doing, perhaps. Faye was not sure what he imagined they might do but part of her realised that it was nothing specific he was worried about.

“Ah, I see,” she said. “I’m sorry that we worried you. But we are only doing what we can to help you, and everyone who lives here.”

The man threw a glare at Faye, but he did not shout her down like he had been before.

“Our goal is to protect this Steading,” Gavan said, “from the people that would hurt you and your loved ones.”

The man shook his head. But did not say anything.

“He’ll be alright now,” the larger man said. He had calmed down, too. His arms were uncrossed, and he looked at the man beside him with exasperation, but not the anger that Faye had expected from his comments and approach.

“Are you related?” she asked.

The larger man shot her a glare, as if concerned about the meaning behind her words. She just looked at him expectantly.

“Aye,” he said, gruffly. “He’s my younger brother.”

“Well,” Faye said, addressing the younger man, “thank you for bringing your concerns to us. But honestly, we are trying to help. The food in the store is ruined, poisoned. Anyone who eats it will get sick.”

“Yes, exactly, ruined. Sickness. You all just put poison in things, and they get ruined and sick, and it hurts people.”

“Do you know who put the poison in the food?” Faye asked.

The young man shook his head. “No, nope, didn’t see. Wish I had. Would have told them to stop. Shout at them, ‘STOP!’ I would have yelled.” He had indeed yelled ‘stop’ at the top of his lungs when saying so. “But no, didn’t see. Hmm, can I try your sword?”

Faye blinked at the non-sequitur and shook her head. She promptly sheathed the blade, though she had already lowered her guard the moment she had realised the man was not dangerous, nor trying to attack them.

“Afraid not,” she said, “it was made just for me so it’s special.”

The man shrugged. “Okay.”

The larger man gave Faye a curious look, but he smiled when she caught his eye. “Thanks,” he said. “Not many people treat him like that.”

Faye frowned. “Nothing to it. Now, please, let me know if you notice anyone else that needs help, all right?”

The young man and his elder brother both nodded. The larger man put his hand on his brother’s shoulder and led him away, quietly talking under his breath as they went.

“You handled that well,” Gavan said.

“Easy to see he was distressed,” she said, “didn’t want to make it worse for him. Don’t think his brother has many ways of dealing with his strength.”

“Absolutely, though he’s almost as big as Ailith.”

“Let’s not go too far!” Faye said, laughing. “She’s at least twice his size, eh? Come on, let’s hope we didn’t start a full-on fire yet.”

Gavan waved a hand. “I extinguished the flames before I came out. You should have done so, really.”

Faye grimaced. “Sorry, not used to being able to use magic still. Thanks.”

“I had hoped we would find some clues here,” Gavan said. “It was a waste of time.”

“That’s not true. Let’s take another look through the barn. If there are any areas the infection hasn’t spread, that will tell us something useful. We should definitely make sure that we don’t burn food that’s okay to eat.”

Gavan grimaced. “I doubt there will be any, but let’s check.”

An hour of thorough searching later, the pair of them had figured out that there were no salvageable stores in the barn. It was disappointing, because it meant going to the Steader with the bad news but made sense. The mana bugs, whether they were a spell, a skill, or a strange natural phenomenon, clearly infected the food they were near, rather than sticking to the one thing they started in.

They had burned each crate, sack, and pallet worth of mana-infected food in a furious, controlled blaze of magical flames. The intense heat that Gavan used encouraged Faye to concentrate on the heat of her summoned flame, rather than the damage it could do to an enemy.

It did not take too long to figure out how to get the flames hotter than they started.

Every last crumb went up in flames. The barn became a smokehouse, but their enhanced constitutions were more than up for enduring the stinging smoke. In some ways, it was a purifying scent that drove away the images Faye had of crawling mana-bugs on her skin.

Explaining the complete lack of salvage to the Steader made the stern-faced Einnua grow more and more angry.

“I had assumed,” she said, “of course, that the spell was spreading. It’s why we locked away everything. But to guess and to know… damn those cultists!”

“What other food sources do you have access to?” Faye asked.

“Not enough. The deep stores are there, mostly root vegetables. Some small amounts of salted meat. We will manage until our hunters return.”

The Steader brought them inside the Steading’s main hall, nodding to the occupants as they went. She led them through the hallways into a room in the back. Inside was a plain desk, covered in paper. A single, stiff-backed chair sat in front of the desk. It looked supremely uncomfortable.

The Steader closed the door behind them and sighed.

“I’m sorry,” she began, “but I don’t have any other chairs. I prefer to be outside.”

“That’s alright,” Faye said.

“I have to ask,” the Steader continued, “whether the Guild will be sending any other relief our way?”

She locked eyes with Faye. With someone else, Faye might assume they were being aggressive, trying to assert some kind of dominance. But if that had been the Steader’s goal — extorting something out of them — she would have done it before witnesses, surely?

Faye shared a look with Gavan, who subtly shrugged. He was clearly happy for her to take the lead in the conversation.

“I’m afraid not, Steader,” Faye said, after some thought. “I’m not trying to suggest the Guild does not want to help, but that at this time they cannot. Primalists seem keen to adopt a scorched earth policy. They practised a similar method on the town as they did here.”

“Gods above,” the Steader swore. “If the Guild cannot stand against them, what are the likes of us supposed to do?!”

The heat in the woman’s words were as fiery as they were sudden, but Faye could not blame her.

“The Guild did stand against them. We survived. We beat their army and struck down their leader. Unfortunately, it took many resources and lives to do so.”

The Steader drooped. Her sturdy frame lost its strength as she faced Faye’s words. She leant back against the far wall of the study and closed her eyes.

Faye let the woman take a moment to think. She turned to Gavan. “What’s our plan here?” she whispered. “If we stay, we lose time. If we go, something else could happen.”

Gavan nodded. “It’s possible, but there is no guarantee that by staying we will accomplish aught that would help.”

Faye grimaced. She hardly wanted to leave these people to their fate without trying something. But her skillset did not match the challenge. She was entirely without recourse.

“Steader,” Gavan said, after a moment’s more silence, “I am sorry to say, but Faye and I must leave and head onward.”

The Steader looked up from her thoughts with a blink. The momentary lack of a stern expression quickly vanished.

“It’s late, you wish to travel in the dark?”

Gavan shrugged. “The longer we stay, the more likely that we reduce what little stores you have. It would be better for us to go. We cannot help solve this problem.”

The Steader went through a few emotions before settling on smouldering anger. “Fine. Then go. I do not wish for your assistance any longer.”

Gavan nodded and turned toward the door. Faye hesitated, but the Steader had turned away to face the desk and did not look to be in a receptive mood.

“Goodbye, Steader Einnua. It was a pleasure meeting you.”

The Steader did not reply as they left.

The sun had set, and the chill of the night air was rapidly settling in. Faye and Gavan hurried from the Steading, heading north again to reach the road once again.

As soon as Faye was sure they were out of earshot, she turned to Gavan.

“Are we really leaving these people?”

Gavan turned to look over his shoulder, his eyes scanning their path back to the Steading with practised ease.

“No.”

Feeling her face break into a grin, she shook her head. “What’s with the mind games, then?”

“Word of our departure will spread faster than a wildfire.”

“What do you think will happen when it does?”

He turned back to the path north and carried on walking. “I’m not sure, but we will soon discover what.”

They walked until they were out of sight of the Steading, which in the fields and gently rolling land here was half an hour or so. Faye had lost the knack of knowing how much time was passing since coming to this world. But she put that down to losing access to a device that told her the time more than anything.

Turning off the path, they headed east. Along the rise of a slope in that direction lay a line of trees that travelled south a way. They planned to take the cover back toward the Steading.

Their trek had the double advantage of hiding them from spying eyes and serving as reconnaissance of potential Primalist sites. They were focused on forests and woodland, after all, and they were heading into the largest body of trees in the area.

Travelling in the darkness was not a problem for either of the adventurers. The main reason that people were reluctant to travel at night were the potential monster attacks, after all. Faye and Gavan’s abilities gave them the means to see where they needed to put their feet without much trouble at all.

Under the trees, it became oppressively dark almost immediately.

Despite Gavan’s lack of physicality, he was an experienced woodsman. He was quiet as they went through the undergrowth, and Faye only matched him due to her increased agility.

They were still around a quarter of an hour’s distance from the Steading, but through the trees might be more like a half-hour. Despite that distance, Faye still felt the need to lower her voice to a near whisper.

“Are we expecting to find something?” she asked.

“Mmm.”

That was entirely inconclusive. Either way, Faye kept [Mana Sense] running at frequent bursts. The woods, a little too sparse for Faye to think of them as forest yet, were quiet. She did see some small creatures, but none of them came near their pair.

Surprisingly, it was when they reached the part of the forest that was closest to the Steading that they realised there was something amiss.

A clear trail led to the east, away from the Steading. In itself, that wasn’t too surprising.

The mana signature left behind on the trial was.

She grabbed Gavan’s arm, pointed. He nodded. Faye drew her sword.

They turned away from the Steading and began walking along the trail, following the minute signs of sickly green mana that matched the mana-bugs.