Sleep that night was a peaceful affair. None of the newcomers woke up the day they had recovered them, so there was nothing new to attend to. Rory was a little bit worried that the people who’d been implicated by the Woodlander were still unconscious, but Evelyn reassured him that they were still only resting. They ought to be fine.

She was proven right the next morning when Rory woke up for his watch. Rubbing away the bleariness from his eyes, he found a strange man conversing with Dez.

“How?” the man was asking.

The middle-aged man was at once both confused and somewhat scared. Though his clothes were shabby and his face was emaciated, he was alert and awake.

“We recovered you guys,” Dez told him. “Had to dive deep into the dungeon before we finally found you and negotiated your freedom.”

Ah. Rory hadn’t recognized the guy, which had immediately slated him as one of the newcomers. Now he had proof.

He cleared his throat as he approached. “Hello, there. I’m Rory. Welcome to our humble little—well, maybe not so little—abode.”

The man blinked at him, then bowed his head a fraction. “I’m Booker. I’ve been hearing all morning about how you guys rescued us from down there, and I’m grateful. We’re grateful. It’s just that…”

He trailed off, looking behind him as though seeking support from the rest of his group. There was no one there. It must have been an instinctive reaction. Rory wondered if they were still out, or if they were keeping to themselves for the time being, sending only Booker out as some sort of diplomat.

“Something wrong?” Rory asked.

“They want to leave,” Dez said, a hooded expression on his face.

Rory’s heart skipped a beat. He recalled what exactly had happened the last time a group had tried to part ways. They’d suffered severe monster attacks until they had finally been cornered and had to be rescued once again. The whole mess had resulted in Alves’s death. Rory regretted the situation even to this day.

“You want to leave?” he asked. “Why?”

“It’s not safe for us here,” the man said. “It’s not… safe for anyone.”

“How is it not safe here?”

“It’s just not, alright?” The man froze, realizing he had raised his voice. “Sorry. We’re just going to go. I’m thankful that you tried to help us and all that, but it’s best if we leave as soon as possible.”

He turned away as though to really prepare to get going, but Rory called out to him.

“One minute,” he said. “Are you worried about the Djinn’s influence?”

Booker froze as though he’d been petrified. Rory had figured it was going to be something like that. He didn’t know yet what exactly they had negotiated with the Woodlander, so he was afraid he and his group were implicating Rory’s party with their Djinn issue.

He turned around slowly. “How do you know about that?”

“We took care of it,” Rory said. He briefly explained how the Woodlander had discovered it and informed Rory, who had then admitted his own experiences with the Djinn and made a deal against them. “So you see, there’s no reason for you to be worried about it anymore. You’re all free now.”

Booker stared at agog at Rory for several seconds, then simply plopped his butt to the ground. He laughed incredulously. “I can’t believe it. You actually removed the curse? How is that even possible…?”

Rory smiled, enjoying the look of relief on the other man. “You’d be surprised at what is and isn’t possible around here. But tell us your story. How did you guys manage to survive long enough to get caught up by the Djinn? How did you get involved with them in the first place?”

“Second place,” Booker said, still sounding a bit dazed. “But can I get something to drink first? It’s a bit of a long story.”

“I got it,” Dez grunted.

He returned with a bottle of water for Booker in moments. Even after the newcomer had finished drinking, though, Rory decided to wait for the time being. With morning coming on, it was almost time for breakfast. He didn’t want to deprive the newcomers of a good meal, something they might not have had in a while. Besides which, Rory wanted them to have a proper audience. It would be a tremendous pain to have to repeat his story to everyone later.

To that effect, they chatted lightly about inconsequential matters while everyone else slowly woke up and got breakfast ready. Rory was proven right. The other newcomers had still been sleeping when Booker had arisen.

For the moment, Rory had a nice time telling the new guy about the palace and the Safe Zone and his immediate interest of getting his business going as soon as he could. They needed the promise of complete and legitimate safety that it would provide. Especially considering there was a war going on all over the town.

Booker’s eyes had gone wide. “You want to set up a business? Doing what?”

Rory grinned. Then he told him about Sigil Weaving. It was a bit of a gamble to tell him, but he had picked up that they weren’t Homeworlders or otherwise affiliated with the people at Mirrorend. “Cool, huh?”

“A merchant in the middle of an apocalyptic war,” Booker mused. “Doesn’t sound that bad, now that I think about it. Crazy, but not bad.”

Rory laughed. “Exactly what I thought too.”

Soon enough, breakfast had been prepared. Rory ought to help one of these days, but cooking wasn’t a direction where his talents lay. Everyone gathered together, including the newcomers who dribbled in looking somewhat hesitant. Thankfully, Booker helped to reassure them that things were now fine. They could relax.

After finishing his eggs and getting half his cold milk down, Rory turned to Booker again. The man had finished his toast and strudels, and was about to tackle his banana.

“Mind telling us what happened with you guys?” Rory asked, looking past Booker to the rest of his gang. “We’d love to know. And help, of course.”

Now that they were all here, Rory properly noticed that they were all adults. Mostly middle-aged men and women, a younger-looking couple around Trish and Allen’s age, and a slightly older man who likely wasn’t far off Rory’s own age. No children. He frowned. That Woodlander had converted all the children—and likely pets too—first, for some reason.

“I’ll begin,” Booker said. Rory was grateful he took the lead to break the ice. “And the others can jump in where necessary.” He cleared his throat, then began his story. “We were out on a picnic when the apocalypse started. At first, it wasn’t obvious what was happening. I think we were too deep inside the park and we didn’t hear anything, nor did anything get close.”

“And then we fell,” a woman muttered darkly, adding that her name was Carlisle.

Booker nodded. He was trying to hide the frightened expression on his face, but it proved too difficult. “The park broke apart under us and we all went through one of the fissures that had opened up.”

“It was insane,” another man said. He stated his name was Abe. Rory was going to have to keep a register because there were too many people with too many names, and there was no way he was going to remember them all. “The ground just broke like it was cardboard or something. Even earthquakes aren’t supposed to do something like that. But that wasn’t even the strangest thing.”

Booker nodded. “Right. The… dungeon, you called it? We fell in there.” He took a deep breath. “There were more of us during the picnic, but a lot of them didn’t survive the fall. And then, when the monsters started attacking through the dark, more of us died. I don’t think I’ll ever get over the feeling…”

There was an uncomfortable silence as the newcomers reminisced about their horrific ordeals in the tunnels under the park. Rory tried to imagine it. This was about two weeks after the madness of the apocalypse had begun. Two whole weeks in a catacomb filled with strange, murderous plant monsters. His face blanched. It was unfathomably horrific to him.

“How did you all survive for that long?” Dez asked.

“The Djinn,” Booker said. “We were all dying pretty quickly, and we would have been finished off, but then we met a creature we hadn’t seen before. It had the head of a serpent, but its body was humanoid and wearing strange black robes. It was nothing like we had seen before.

“But it offered us help. It promised us that it could show us the light, the way out of the madness, in return for taking a bit of it with us as guidance. I had no idea if that was true or not. We didn’t exactly have a bevy of choices in that situation, so I didn’t say no to its help. And… I’m not sure how much it helped, but if you think about it, we’d never have reached this place without taking what it offered, would we?”

Rory nodded. In a sense, that was true. They had taken the Djinn’s essence, something the Woodlander and its minions had detected, and only then had it started converting them into those half-human hybrids. Before that, it had been happy to simply murder the intruders.

“What happened between you all getting that Djinn’s help and then being converted by the Wilders?” Viv asked. “Did they just let you in once you had… whatever it was you got?”

“We were guided better,” Booker said. “Secret paths that weren’t as dangerous, hidden chambers where we could hide until the hostile monsters passed, and so on.”

“Until we got to that accursed island,” Abe growled.

The rest of the newcomers looked more downtrodden than ever.

Booker swallowed. “The creature there saw through the whole thing easily. It called us out and accused us of trying to take away its home. I don’t know why it didn’t kill us all then and there, because it was for sure more than capable of doing so, but we were simply captured by the Wilders and eventually put to sleep. I don’t think any of us know what happened afterwards.”

There was a hopeful, inquisitive note to his ending, as though he wanted Rory and the others to fill the newcomers in on what might have gone on with them.

Rory sighed, then quickly explained what he had seen in the dungeons. Their faces grew more horrified with every second as they learned about the half-human, half-plant hybrid Wilders that the Woodlander was turning them into. Would have, if Rory’s group hadn’t intervened in time.

“Did you ever feel any poisonous effects or the like?” Evelyn asked.

Booker nodded. “Most of us did, I think. There was something strange in the air, cloying and kind of sickeningly sweet. Some of us got sick from it, slowly dying away. That was another thing we were hurrying to get rid of as quickly as we could. But with monster attacks everywhere, it wasn’t always at the front of our minds, I think.”

“It was in my mind,” Carlisle said. Tears spilled from her eyes, and though she made a valiant effort to control herself, her face crumpled. “My brother died from it. He was a good kid. He’d be finishing college and starting his new job soon, but he just coughed and coughed and then he just… stopped.”

Rory’s heart spasmed in his chest. He could imagine all too easily how much it might have hurt the others to have gone through something like that. The terror, the grief at losing friends and family, the sheer trauma of watching everyone die bit by bit… Rory took a deep breath. It brought on thoughts of the Thunderclaw’s attack upon their palace, and that was never a good place to be in.

“Thank you for telling us,” Viv said. “I’m sorry you had to go through something so horrific like that. Rest assured that you’re safe here. No Djinns, no Wilders, no monsters at all. Nothing like that will ever get in our Safe Zone.”

The newcomers nodded, still looking morose. Rory cursed himself a bit on his insistence to know about their troubles and experiences. Especially at a time like breakfast when they were supposed to be filling themselves up for the day ahead. But now that it was out, there was no point moping over it.

“We’ll get you all settled in soon,” Rory said with a smile he didn’t fully feel. “Once you’ve rested up a bit. For now, just take some time to rest up and eat. You all look famished and half-dead.”

“We appreciate it,” Abe said. All the newcomers nodded and expressed their gratitude, some of them doing it several times. “We won’t disappoint any of you, I promise.”

“We’ll get along fine, I’m sure. There are still some things we need to discuss and get you up to date on, especially with the goings-on around here. But for now, let’s eat. We’re going to need some extra helpings for our new friends,” he added, looking around with a smile.

The others got busy preparing more food. They were adding more drains to their stores, what with the people they had rescued from the library, and now from the destroyed park. But that was fine. They’d just need to establish the line of business with the Otherworlders and Homeworlders properly. Once done, they could add in more food varieties via trading.

“Rory.” Miles’s voice was urgent as he called out to them. “Rory.”

He looked around. Right when he was trying to enjoy his meal, there was yet another source of trouble. Groaning, Rory got to his feet. “What’s happened?”

“Truck’s back!” Miles swallowed. “And he’s got news.”