As planned, our eventual campsite was well within what Harker informed us was squirrelfolk territory. He also claimed the squirrels probably had scouts watching us by now, but so far they hadn’t seen fit to introduce themselves. They also hadn’t shot anyone with a poison dart, so it wasn’t all disappointment.

We settled into the hollowed-out husk of a dead khora rather like the one in which the cat tribe’s Spirit was housed; Dhinell commented that such a huge quantity of intact khora shell was ideal for highborn architecture and worth a fortune if it were possible to haul it out of the dense forest and back to civilization. She didn’t think it was funny when I immediately began carving my name into it.

In kanji, for once. My dad wasn’t around to be confused and frustrated by my use of hiragana, which it turned out sucked all the fun out of it.

It was actually relatively cozy, once the asauthec fire in the center had time to work. The khora walls made a very effective windbreak; it wasn’t as warm as being indoors, but it beat the hell out of camping in the open in this weather.

I appreciated this even more when it was my turn to step outside and visit the designated pee spot. With night fallen and the relative warmth of a semi-enclosed space with a fire now cut off, the wind was like knives through my coat. It was also spooky as hell, whistling eerily through the hard shells and odd protrusions of the surrounding khora, their fronds withdrawn from the cold. But it had to be done, and not just to answer the usual call of nature.

Aster had gone right before me, and I found Biribo hovering quietly in the darkness, waiting. After buttoning up, I stepped a few meters further away from our campsite into the shadow of another looming hulk of khora before gesturing him to proceed.

“Harker was right, boss,” he said very quietly, buzzing closer to be heard next to my ear without raising his voice. “You’ve had at least one squirrel stalking the group at any given time during the last five hours. The first was replaced by another scout three hours ago and went off in the direction of the village at high speed, and an hour after that a second one joined ‘em following you. Two more have showed up since we made camp. They’re arranged around the site, watching.”

“So the whole village knows we’re coming,” I murmured as softly as I could. “Guess Harker was right about them not attacking, too. Well, so far, so good. Okay, I know the setup is the opposite of ideal given my current costume but I’m gonna need you to stick with me from here on, Biribo. Probably should’ve done it earlier, in fact. This is gonna be tight and a little awkward but there should be room for you to hide inside my scarf. That’ll keep you close enough to my ear to feed me intel, too.”

“Gonna be a bit tricky, yeah, I’ll have to actively hold it closed. But no worries, boss, hiding in clothes is all part of the familiar gig. Blessed with Wisdom always need to play it discreet.”

“Any sign of goblin support?”

“No tunnel entrances near here, boss. We’ve passed over some tunnels that came fairly near the surface, though, and there was movement in ‘em. Gizmit knows where you’re going, where you started from, and about how fast you can move. She’ll keep people as close to your position as possible.”

“Good point, Gizmit’s always on the ball. Anything else to report while we’re out here?”

“This may seem redundant, but be careful around Rhydion, boss. It’s a real bad sign that I can’t tell what that armor does; I should be able to identify enchantments on sight. That’s not unprecedented, but artifacts that block familiar senses are always the absolute highest tier. We’re talkin’ top grade enchantments on every piece and probably some massive bonus powers for having the whole set. And I’m pretty sure that helmet has some kind of…detection or oracular function. He picks up on too much to just be smart.”

“So, Rhydion knows more about everyone else than they do about him, and I probably can’t take him in a fight. Not news, but the confirmation’s worth having. Okay, let’s get you tucked in before I freeze my balls off out here.”

I returned to the shell, Biribo carefully hidden inside my scarf. Harker nodded once at me and stepped aside to let me in through the gap, his expression carefully blank. “Careful” was a good overall description of how he’d acted toward me since our earlier exchange. I gave him a sunny smile, because I knew he was smart enough to recognize that it was the most threatening thing I could possibly do with Rhydion looming over our shoulders.

Harker was on first watch. I was not particularly worried about that, for all that murdering me in my sleep would be the most effective way out of the problem Rhydion had warned him he’d created for himself this afternoon. Because yes, that was absolutely a problem. Nobody got off the kill list until they got off the alive list; I was just going to have to be a lot more careful about it, or wait until I was confident I could deal with Rhydion and whatever he threw at me. But for now, even aside from having reclaimed Biribo, Harker knew what Rhydion would do to him if I woke up dead.

What a happy little band we were.

Aster was stretched out on her back against one wall of the khora shell, holding her sheathed greatsword like a teddy bear. Rhydion and Dhinell both sat against protrusions of it closer to the fire, leaning back in fairly relaxed postures suggesting they intended to sleep upright. Both were still, and while Rhydion’s state behind that visor was anyone’s guess, Dhinell still had her eyes open, staring into the fire.

I had just settled myself into the least uncomfortable nook I could find when she spoke, turning to look at me.

“So. Whom, exactly, have you murdered, that you’ve apparently made a habit of it?”

“Criminals,” I said, also turning my head to stare at the flames. “Bandits, mostly. Also some city gangsters. Whether you consider those a separate group is just quibbling over definitions, really. A prolific serial child abuser one time. Oh, and some cannibals once—that was a weird day.”

I paused, feeling her stare on me but not looking at her, and frowned.

“Lots of rapists. Overlapping with basically every other category. Just…holy shit, so many rapists. Rape seems to be Dount’s national sport.”

“Hm,” the priestess murmured noncommittally. “You almost seem to take that…personally. Peculiar, for a man.”

“Yeah, see, that’s exactly the kind of fucked up attitude that created this problem,” I lectured. “I don’t know how any person with a conscience can see the aftermath of something like that, or even just talk to someone it happened to, and not take it personally. That’s part of being human. What sort of twisted, soulless waste of air could just…do that to someone and walk away feeling like they still deserve to live?”

I turned to stare pointedly at Harker. He was still staring pointedly out into the dark, pretending not to listen.

“Well. I suppose that’s no one who mattered, then,” Dhinell finally said, grudgingly. “I was prepared to dismiss you as a monster, but there are indeed some individuals who are worth nothing but a swift removal from existence.”

I grimaced, shifting to look at Rhydion.

“Does it sound that gross when I say it?”

“In what way do you imagine yourself to be fundamentally unlike anyone else who might express such a sentiment?” the paladin asked quietly. Yeah, I knew he wasn’t asleep.

“Your hypocrisy is truly without bounds,” Dhinell snorted in disgust.

“You know what’s really funny?” I mused. “Just…absolutely hilarious, the best joke the goddesses ever played? All of that is just in the last few months. Since this summer. Before that, in my home country… Hell, I don’t think I’d ever been in a physical altercation since my voice dropped. We don’t go around murdering people where I’m from. I would have derisively laughed at anyone who suggested I might ever find any reason to take a human life.”

I paused for the requisite beat before delivering the punchline.

“And then I came to Fflyr Dlemathlys, the worst place in the universe. Home to a staggering proportion of unsalvageable people who cannot be prevented from behaving like monsters except by being prevented from breathing. Not to mention a plurality of people who absolutely refuse to exercise basic common sense or moral decency until they’ve been made to understood that the alternative is a sword through the ribs. I’m not going to sit here and pretend to be a good person, but I will tell you this from experience: I’m glad to be as good a person as my surroundings will allow me to be. In this shithole country, that’s not fucking very.”

“I’m sorry we fall so short of your exacting standards, Lord Seiji,” Dhinell said bitterly, glaring into the fire.

“My standards are exceedingly lax. That’s the issue.”

“And yet,” Rhydion said quietly, “despite coming from a realm of peace and plenty, you find yourself so easily adapted to one of violence and privation.”

“You think it was easy?”

“It is hard to avoid the conclusion, if it has only been a few months. You have become amazingly comfortable with it in a very short time.”

“You think I’m comfortable?”

“Perhaps that is not fair,” he acknowledged. “At the very least, violence seems to have become your first resort. I would think, Lord Seiji, this might prime you to have some empathy for those who have not been fortunate enough to grow up under the kind of standards you have. You mention wondering how a man can so casually commit rape, but have you truly wondered? Asked yourself what is it that causes such an abhorrent thing to be so widespread, so easy? If you had truly considered the way large forces shape people, I think you would be less willing to try something as futile as changing the world one death at a time.”

“Who are you under that helmet?” I asked suddenly.

Rhydion shifted his head to point his visor at me.

“For all intents and purposes, there is no one under it. No doubt you think I am being evasive, but I assure you, Lord Seiji, this is a spiritual matter for me. I have forsworn all privilege and rank, and even any identity beyond my given name. I am only Rhydion, graced with this armor and the mission that goes with it. I serve the Goddess, and that is all.”

“Ah, so you are highborn,” I said, smirking. “I was pretty sure, but hell, for all I knew you could be a stack of three goblins under there.”

Dhinell muttered something that sounded unfriendly, but apparently I had trained her by now not to try engaging me directly.

“I am no one,” Rhydion stubbornly repeated. “Only—”

“Yeah, yeah, I heard you. But you were talking about empathy, and origin stories, and I have to wonder: have you ever been made to feel truly helpless?”

“Anyone,” he said softly, “who has tried to make any kind of difference in the world knows that feeling.”

“Sure, in the grand scale, cosmic sense. But I mean personally. Maliciously. Do you have any idea what it is like to have someone’s boot on your neck? To live under a person tormenting you for their own self-satisfaction, knowing you can do nothing about it? Because that is what every day is like for a lot more people than otherwise. And if you’ve never been in that position, it takes some fucking nerve to go on about systems and bigger pictures while people right in front of you are crying out for vindication.”

The firelight oscillated smoothly across the glossy surface of his armor, asauthec flames burning as they did more steadily and with less flickering and sparks than any campfire I’d known on Earth. For a long span of seconds Rhydion said nothing. I just stared at him in silence as it stretched out into a minute, and then more.

It sounded almost abrupt when he finally broke the silence.

“I was not dissembling, Lord Seiji, when I said that you and I have much to learn from each other. True, I do believe I can teach you a great deal, and I hope to guide your ambitions in a more productive direction. But it is also true that I am a deeply imperfect person, pursuing deeply imperfect efforts. Already, you do not disappoint. This perspective…is something I should consider.”

I shrugged, working my shoulders back into my chosen crevice and feeling the subtle shifting within my scarf as Biribo clutched it to keep himself secure and concealed. It was nice to get a win, for once.

Well before they finally deigned to show themselves, I found myself starting to like the squirrelfolk. It was knowing that they were around us watching that did it—that, and knowing they knew we had to at least suspect. Drawing out the tension that way was some classic showtime. I could definitely work with people who had an appreciation for theatricality.

It was nearly noon the following day before they appeared and solidified my impression, four of them materializing out of the shadows around us in perfect unison. Dhinell jumped violently and shrieked; Aster and Harker both instinctively dropped into combat stances, reaching for their weapons. Only Rhydion and I did not react apart from stopping our forward walk.

I, because thanks to Biribo whispering to me, I’d had a few seconds warning. Really made me wonder what Rhydion’s deal was. What else could that helmet do? Or was he actually just that frosty under pressure?

“Peace,” Rhydion urged, holding out a hand toward Harker. Aster had already removed hers from the handle of her greatsword and straightened back up. “Forgive the reaction, friends. My companions were merely startled. Upon my word of honor, we have not come here intending harm.”

“Wise, to grab a weapon when suddenly approached in the forest,” a squirrel man replied. “Wiser still to release it when not threatened.”

“Unwise to sneak up on armed people,” I countered, ignoring Rhydion turning to stare at me. “Unless you already knew we were no threat.”

“Meaning no threat is not the same as being no threat,” retorted the squirrel, but then smiled. “But it still matters.”

To an extent, these were very much like the cat and wolf people I already knew, at least in the sense of being animalistic humanoids rather than the friendly-looking furries of internet art from back home. They had the same basic traits: fur all over, animal heads, very large paws for feet, fluffy tails. My god were those tails fluffy, and enormous, arching up over their heads and twitching subtly. Even aside from that difference, though, something about them nagged at me as different.

It took me a second but I caught on: their faces were slightly more human than the wolves or cats. Still definitely squirrel-like but not exactly squirrel heads sized up and planted on a humanoid torso, for what I realized was the simple reason that squirrels were herbivores. Wolves and cats were predators, which meant eyes on the front of the face for depth perception. Herbivores, like squirrels, have them on the sides of the skull for wider field of view. These were altered just enough to have those eyes aiming forward.

“Well met,” Rhydion said, turning from me back toward the squirrel scout who had spoken. “We apologize for the intrusion into your territory. Our hope was specifically to speak with you.”

“Hum,” the squirrel said in a noncommittal tone. “Promising, that you call it our territory. Or is it only because you want something?”

“Well, whose is it, if not yours?” I asked. “You live here.”

He shifted his inscrutable stare to me, and I took some comfort in the fact that while all four of them were holding bows, they were in a relaxed posture with arrows not drawn.

“The Fflyr claim to own the whole of Dount, last I heard. As do the Shylver. Living between the two, we are…cautious.”

I snorted. “I could claim Dount belongs to me and it would mean exactly as much.” For now.

He smiled again.

“From what I understand,” said Rhydion in a brave attempt to regain control of the conversation, “it is rare that you would approach outsiders so directly and openly. May I hope that you are amenable to cooperating, or at least conversing?”

“Hum,” the squirrel repeated, slowly shifting his head to size up each of us in turn. “Rhydion. Harker. And…Lord Seiji. The women we do not know, but a priestess and a warrior, yes? An interesting group.”

Everyone glanced at me, all but visibly wondering how the squirrels knew my name. Quite apart from my disinclination to answer questions like that, at the moment I was rather curious about it myself.

“I assure you,” Rhydion continued doggedly, “our business is not with you, except incidentally. We are investigating the undead in this forest, and hope to stem them at their source. We’ve heard accounts of a witch at the root of this, and rumor that it is your tribe which can tell us more.”

“Ah, yes.” The squirrel turned back to stare at me in particular. “You helped the wolves. Chatty, were they?”

“Gotta say they didn’t come across as particularly fond of you, either,” I replied cheerfully.

“Unusual for them to be chatty,” he replied, his stare unwavering. “Not friendly to outsiders, the wolves.”

“I find that most people become a lot more approachable when they’re suffering the aftermath of a forest fire and undead outbreak and I have healing magic to offer them.”

“Ah. And this is the arrangement you offer us? In exchange for information?”

“We have not come here to make demands of you,” Rhydion said firmly. “Lord Seiji’s healing is but one of the things on offer. If you will help us, I am determined to provide fair compensation.”

“No,” I said suddenly.

Everyone turned to glare at me, which as usual I enjoyed. I kept my own expression intent and calm, though, fixed on the spokessquirrel.

“Lord Seiji,” Rhydion warned.

“If any of your people need healing,” I said, ignoring him, “due to zombies or the Inferno or whatever else, I’ll offer it. No quid pro quo, no strings attached. It would be nice if you felt like being helpful afterward, but let’s consider that due to…a more favorable outlook on us. I won’t consider you indebted if you don’t. Either way, I’m not interested in letting people suffer if I can help.”

I couldn’t forget my own agenda, here. Adding the squirrels to my Crusade would be a big win. With effective control of the entire western forest, I would be the dividing power between Sanorite and Viryan territory, and with my tentacles running all through the Fflyr presence on this island, I would finally have breathing room to turn and deal with Shylverrael before they decided to deal with me.

“Hum. Interesting, interesting.” Part of it was doubtless due to his animal features, but it wasn’t just that; this guy was deliberately composed and difficult to read, in both expression and tone. “And is that the deal you made with the wolves?”

I smiled pleasantly. “What other deals I’ve made with whom is not, at this time, any of your business. Should it transpire that we become friends, I may change my mind about that. I’m sure you of all people understand the value of privacy, and discretion.”

Rhydion was staring at me so fixedly that I could feel it despite his all-obscuring visor. As much trouble as his displeasure could conceivably cause me, I could not deny a real element of satisfaction at having him on the back foot for a change.

“Interesting,” the squirrel repeated. “I am Vylkher. I will make no deals, and I will tell you nothing.”

“Now see here,” Dhinell hissed.

“Please, Sister,” Rhydion said, holding out a hand toward her. “Vylkher, I do not wish to—”

“That is not rejection,” Vylkher interrupted. “I am a hunter, a scout; I do not lead. You know what it is, I think, to answer to those more important than yourselves? Some of you more than others, perhaps. I have my orders. The Seer has foreseen your coming, considered it carefully, and made her decision. If you wish, you may come with us. She will speak with you and discern your truth. Until she gives leave, none of our people will deal with you.”

A Seer? I began to have a bad feeling about this. That could be just a religious or ceremonial title, but on a world with Spirits and Blessings of Wisdom, it could also mean someone with a very real power to penetrate deceptions and secrets—in short, exactly the last person I wanted to be in a room with.

So, of course—

“We agree,” Rhydion stated, nodding. “Thank you for your cooperation, Vylkher. It will be an honor to converse with your Seer. Please, lead the way.”

Yep, there it was. Story of my life.