Rory was getting a little tired of having to host guests every so often, but he put on his best face before heading out to meet his guests. If he could host a dozen Homeworlders for a couple of days, what was another dozen more?

Hakim and his fellows made their way up the driveway in a very different state from the first batch of Homeworlders.

There wasn’t actually a dozen this time. Hakim himself had come, as had three others. All of the Homeworlders were armed to the teeth with various weapons—Rory spotted assault rifles strapped to their backs, handguns at their waists, assorted knives, machetes, and other close-range killing implements, and so on.

But more than that, it seemed they had gone out of their way to grab the monstrous corpses that they were originally supposed to bring. Rory’s eyes widened at the trail of dead creatures at their tail.

“Welcome,” Rory said. “I’m glad you made it here safely. With your… posse.”

Hakim looked a little tired after trudging all the way to Belcourt palace. He huffed as he came to a stop a few feet from Rory. “Good morning, Rory. I hope all is…” His eyes wept past Rory and took in the state of the courtyard and the palace. “Well, it seems all might not be as well as I’d thought.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Viv said. “It’s well enough.”

“Forgive me if I hold on to some reservations from my side.”

“Senior Commander.” Aaron approached and bowed his head a little deferentially.

Hakim nodded back. “Aaron.” Then he noted the other Homeworlders arriving, nodding at each of them in greeting. Some of them performed a strange salute, tapping their fists twice against their hearts. Hakim only nodded at that too. “Been enjoying your little vacation?”

Aaron looked abashed. “We’re ready to leave, Commander.”

“Well, that’s good. Here I was starting to suspect you might have some intentions of staying here, all nice and quiet…”

The other Homeworlders looked uncomfortable. Ah. Now Rory got it. This, to the Homeworlders at least, seemed like a dereliction of duty, of sorts. They needed as many able-bodied people as possible to fight against the Otherworlders, so the longer they waited here, the more they wouldn’t be able to contribute to the war.

“They were quite helpful,” Viv said. “Very nice bunch of children you’ve raised.”

Hakim laughed. “Thank you. I take great pride in them.”

“How did you all get here without meeting a single Misericord?” Dez asked.

Their latest guests shrugged.

“We didn’t see anyone,” one of the women—Macy, if Rory remembered her name correctly—said. She was an aide to Hakim. “We kept quiet, used some Sigils to cloak our presence, and then came here as quickly as we could. Wasn’t hard at all. We did see some monsters, though not any of the Misericords.”

“Maybe your efforts scared them all off,” Hakim said.

Viv snorted. “If only.”

“Well, be that as it may, I believe we can keep up this luck for the rest of the day. Before we leave to take advantage of it, I want these monster corpses Woven into Sigils.”

Rory sniffed. There was a stench coming in with their guests. “So do I.”

Hakim noticed the twist of his expression. “You haven’t smelled anything yet, Rory. We had to drag these ones all over Hillhard.”

“I’m still surprised you didn’t meet a single Misericord,” Dez said.

“So am I, honestly. I was sure we’d come across at least a few. It was only because we didn’t find a single one that we got brave enough to recover these ones and bring them here.”

Rory kept his breaths shallow as he approached the dead monsters. The three Homeworlders dragging them must have had Sigils that boosted their strengths significantly. They didn’t even look fazed after coming all this way with monstrous corpses attached to their backs.

As before, his Sigil of Knowledge didn’t seem to work as well on dead creatures. He recognized most of the monsters on sight anyway—there were a couple of Emberteeth, a flock of Dreadraptors, some Rockbacks, and even a plant-like Wilder. Some Wraiths completed the set.

Rory frowned at the last batch of monsters. Wraiths. Did the Wraith Lord know that some of his subjects had been preyed upon? If so, he hadn’t mentioned it to Rory.

Then again, he hadn’t mentioned much after Rory had given him the Sigil of Obfuscation to protect his base against any sort of invasion. He was really hoping his monstrous ally hadn’t decided to go AWOL.

Activating his Weaving, Rory sent out the line of white light arcing all over the monsters. He didn’t want to accidentally get something strange, so he made sure to focus on the corpses by one. It was a slower process. One by one, he received Sigils of the Emberteeth, Dreadraptor, Rockback, Wilder, and even Wraith.

“That looks like a nice haul,” Hakim said, nodding appreciatively. “Macy?”

“Yes, sir,” the woman beside Hakim said.

She pulled several packs of Mana from her backpack. Hakim took them from her and offered them to Rory.

“I think that should cover the commission, I think,” Hakim said.

Rory gave the packs to Viv. Her counting was quick, and she nodded. The deal was done. With their recent endeavours at raising their Sigils’ Tiers, they were going to need all the Mana they could get their hands on.

“How did you come across the Wraiths?” Dez asked.

Hakim didn’t answer immediately. It was an open secret that Rory was working with the undead monsters. After all, the Wraith Lord had come to assist him when the Homeworlders had tried to kidnap him. The survivors of that encounter must have told their leaders everything.

So far, none of the other Homeworlders had ever mentioned it or brought it up. They seemed satisfied at the service they were receiving, which was good enough. Who cared who or what Rory chummed with so long as he was conducting his actual business properly.

But it seemed that knowledge of Rory’s favourable disposition towards the Wraiths hadn’t prevented the Homeworlders from killing them.

“We met them trying to impede our journey to the palace,” Macy said.

“Impede… how?” Dez asked.

“We found some spying on us,” one of the Homeworlders at the back said. “They seemed to be about to call in reinforcements, so we gave chase and made sure that didn’t happen.”

“It might help you to know that these Wraiths are actually our allies. We don’t approve of killing them.”

“Even when they’re trying to harm us?”

“But you just said they weren’t trying to harm you,” Viv pointed out. “All you said was that you caught some spying and running away. I don’t think you were in any real danger.”

“So, you’d think.”

“Please.” Rory had raised a hand before their argument could progress further. “The Wraiths are our allies. They have helped us survive. Whatever your opinions of them or your opinions about our relationship, we are officially requesting that you no longer harm them willy-nilly.” His eyes hardened. “After all, weren’t some of you working with Otherworlders too?”

The Homeworlders shifted at that. Rory knew all about their attempts to work with the rebel Otherworlders to take down the Otherworlder Coalition. Aaron especially looked partially contrite. It had been his botched kidnapping attempt that had revealed the Homeworlders’ connection to the rebel Otherworlders.

“We’ll take greater care regarding them,” Hakim said. His expression was carefully neutral. “For now, I think we’ll get going while we can still take advantage of it.”

Dez cleared his throat. “Thought we had a deal coming up.”

“Ah yes. Sorry about that, nearly forgot in the rush. What did you have in mind?”

Rory stepped forward. He had been thinking how best he could form a deal that would grant him some of the same things the Homeworlders had brought here already. If they could get some more firearms, Dez and April could teach some of the others how best to use them.

“We’re trying to come up with a Crafting Station, as you might have heard already,” he said. “We should be able to use it to make whatever we need whenever. I’ll allow you guys certain free uses of it in return for you providing us with some of the weapons you currently have, including the appropriate ammunition.”

“That’s a potentially intriguing deal,” Hakim said, looking unconvinced despite his words. “However, it rests on you making your Crafting Station a reality. Are you sure you can do that? Because, this would essentially be a loan, not a deal.”

“I see what you mean, and I get that you’re wary of us failing to pay you back. But we’re willing to provide some collateral, just to show that we’re serious.”

That got Hakim’s attention. He straightened and peered at Rory inquisitively. “What collateral?”

“The Sigil of Extinguishing.”

The Homeworlders seemed to shift as one. A while back, Rory had obtained the Sigil of Extinguishing, among others, from the corpse of a Homeworlder. They had never bothered to enquire after the bodies, despite several of the Homeworlders, including the stiff-jawed Aaron not far behind, having expressed their wish to obtain the Sigils from their dead comrades.

Of course, they didn’t have the means to get the Sigils, even if they got the body. That had been part of their motivation to try to capture Rory.

“You used your Weaving on the bodies?” Hakim asked. There was a tightness in his voice. The others stiffened at the tone, both Viv, and the Homeworlders who were close by.

“I did. There was no point in wasting good Sigils, so I thought I’d extract them and put them to good use.”

“And you see it fit to use a Sigil that belonged to one of our own as a bargaining chip?”

“Technically, you couldn’t obtain the Sigil anymore after your companion died,” Viv said in her voice that brooked no argument. “So, you don’t have any claim to it anymore. It doesn’t belong to you.”

Aaron stepped forward. His glasses made his angry eyes appear larger than normal. “You’re trying to sell us what we should own by all rights? How would you feel if we forced away your precious Sigil of Weaving and then tried to sell it back to you?”

Viv rounded on him with surprising quickness. “Do I need to remind you that you tried that once and got your asses handed to you?”

The other Homeworlders looked torn. On the one hand, they clearly were against having the Sigil of Extinguishing as part of the bargain, but at the same time, they looked uncomfortable because they had a criminal in their midst. The tension continued to rise.

Rory had foreseen this. He cleared his throat, deciding to take action before things took a turn for the worse. “If you all will settle down for a second, you’ll notice that I’m not selling the Sigil you think belongs to you. I’m offering it back in good faith that you’ll have faith that I’ll complete my side of the bargain—the Crafting Station.”

Hakim rubbed his temple. “Alright, fine. Say we take it and accept your offer. What are we supposed to do for the others? Wait until you need more loans and accept them as collateral then?”

“I mean, I can just charge you for the price of extracting them.”

“What?”

“Did he say he’s going to charge us?” another Homeworlder cried out.

Macy’s eyes had flared wide. “The nerve!”

“Look,” Dez said loudly. “It’s part of the terms and conditions. Do you even remember the contract, the terms of service?”

Rory nodded, doing his best to hold on to his calm. If he lost control, that would spell the end of this entire endeavour. “Recall the letter we sent you that outlined what exactly we were going to charge for different services. One of those detailed what we’d charge for extracting Sigils out of things like the monster corpses you wanted to bring to us. Remember? The same applies for people too.”

The Homeworlders didn’t look convinced, but Hakim raised a hand. “I think that is fair. Nothing beyond what we can reasonably expect.”

“Then we have a deal?”

Hakim sighed. Seeing him deflate, the rest of the Homeworlders subsided in their vocal protestations, though several continued to look unhappy and glared at Rory.

“Yes,” the Homeworlder’s Senior Commander said. “We have a deal.”

Rory forced a smile onto his face, and they shook on the deal.

“Unfortunately, we don’t have much in the way of any of what you seek that we can spare,” Macy said. “But don’t worry. We’ll try to get together a bundle and send it over once we’ve returned.”

Rory eyed the weapons on their backs. “I see.”

“And when are we supposed to expect this shipment of weapons and supplies?” Viv asked.

“Viv,” Rory said, but she went on heedless.

“We need to know when they’re holding up their end of the bargain if they’re going to go around carrying collaterals.”

Hakim sighed again. “So demanding.” He frowned at Viv. “We’ll get back and prepare a shipment as soon as we can, and then send it over tomorrow. I promise. And no, we can’t offer a return collateral about that. You’ll simply have to take our word for it.”

“I will. But I’ll be holding you to your word.”

“Yes, yes.” Hakim turned away from them, dragging in a deep breath as he headed off. “I’ll see you all later. Do your best to survive until we bring you the shipments you need. And good luck with creating your Crafting Station.”

The Homeworlders left soon after. Several of them actually seemed reluctant to be waving goodbye to Rory and the palace, and he felt a moment’s pang of loss. He was pretty sure neither Hakim nor the true leaders of Mirrorend would like it if he tried to keep any of the Homeworlders in his base.

For now, he simply waved them goodbye. Maybe, one day, they could all live together peacefully when they didn’t have this war hanging over their heads.