Feira sat quietly with a frown on her face. Beside her, Zen was doing his best impression of trying not to laugh.

"You've got to admit," her brother said. "It's actually quite funny."

"It's not," she grumbled, pouting just a little and hating it.

Zen turned, lying on his back. He stared up at the clouds above. "It kind of is."

Feira still couldn't believe it. Even now, hours later, she still flushed in embarrassment just from thinking about it.

Annoyed, she smacked Zen on the shoulder.

"Ow! What did I do?"

"Why were you afraid of carrying me?" She complained, even though she knew the answer.

Zen paused, gave it a second or two of thought, then shrugged. "You're heavy?"

She smacked him again.

"Ow!" Zen rubbed his shoulder.

Feira let out an annoyed grunt. After all her posturing on the other side of the river, in the end, she'd needed to be carried over the river. Everything had been going fine in the beginning. Then her stamina had dropped. She'd thought she'd been controlling her breathing properly. She'd never swum across a river before, but she'd genuinely thought that she would've been able to do it.

Halfway across—if it was even up to half—her stamina had warned her about how low it was. Quickly, she had started making her way to Zen. She knew he could carry her the rest of the way without any issues. He had the [Basic Swimming] skill, after all.

He'd seen her and started panicking. She'd seen it in his eyes even though he'd started slowing down for her to get to him.

Then, out of nowhere, Lord Lacheart, who had been swimming with one bad arm, had slipped beneath her. She'd fastened her arms around his neck almost immediately, without giving it much thought. By the time she realized what had happened, she still possessed the presence of mind not to do anything stupid.

She dropped her head in her hand. I could just die.

Evening was already rolling in. Feira and Zen stayed against a small tree. They were not yet out of the forest, but this side of the river had far fewer trees than the other side. There were more clearings than trees, as if someone was in the process of clearing out the entire forest. Still, there were no tree stumps, so maybe the forest was simply still extending into this side, hence the limited number of trees.

"Why did he do it?" Feira blurted out suddenly. She'd never been one to worry about holding her tongue around Zen. He was rude, most often uncouth with his words when he spoke to her, but he was never mean.

Zen shrugged, interlocking his fingers behind his head and using his hands like a pillow. "I guess he's just nice."

"Not him," she said, shaking her head. "Ebube."

Zen's entire demeanor changed, darkened. His words were dark. "Because he could."

"It's hard to believe that's just it." Feira refused to believe it. "There has to be more."

Zen sighed. "Men aren't really good people, Fei. When an ambitious man wants something, he takes it."

"Men aren't monsters," she muttered. "Father was not a monster."

Zen chuckled darkly. "Father was not a monster to us."

"'Because he can' can't be all there is to it," she muttered. "I can't accept that bad things happen to good people just because."

A moment of silence settled between the two siblings. It was accompanied only by the gentle evening breeze. Off somewhere in the distance, still within eyesight, their saviors turned captors looked to be talking. The seemingly youngest, Fjord, he had introduced himself as, had gone to collect firewood at some point and was just now returning with a handful.

The knight had just come back from his training that had involved sword swings. The brothers had been doing nothing but lying around. If they were talking to each other, Feira couldn't tell.

Now, however, with all of them gathered once more, Lord Lacheart was cutting up one of the sticks Fjord had brought back with a knife.

"Alright." Zen pushed himself up to a sitting position. He scratched his head uncomfortably. "You want to know the truth?"

Feira looked at him, adjusted so that he knew that she was taking him seriously. "Yes."

"When you have the money and you aren't using it for anything, not even for savings, you've got all that covered, and you see a beautiful gown that you think looks perfect on you, what do you do?"

"I buy it."

"There's your answer."

"No, it's not," she protested. "That answers nothing."

Zen groaned as if she was pestering him. In truth, he simply didn't want to touch the subject. He didn't want to really explain.

He scratched his head. "Bad men are like you when you have money that you can use whenever you want. Ebube saw you, thought you were—and by the life of me I don't understand why—beautiful, and wanted you."

"And he thought I would just willingly follow him when he was trying to destroy the town?" she asked, incredulous.

Zen shrugged. "I'm explaining why what happened happened. I'm not pretending to understand the man and his reasoning. You were, to him, and I can't stress that enough, beautiful. Something to own and claim. He tried the humane way. When it didn't work, he decided that he was out of time and wasting his time. There."

"Men are monsters," Feira muttered in the end.

"Men are not monsters, Feira," Zen corrected. "Men can be monsters. There is a difference."

Silence settled between them once more as Zen went back to lying down. Feira didn't like it. She was uncomfortable in it. So, she broke it.

She moved to lean over her brother's face.

Zen made a face. "What is it this time?"

"So, I'm beautiful," she smirked.

"I knew I shouldn't have explained it to you," he grumbled. "I said that blind and foolish people think you're beautiful."

"Everyone thinks I'm beautiful," she retorted. "And that's because I'm beautiful."

She knew she was beautiful. It wasn't something she bragged about. Honestly, it wasn't something she cared about. In the town, the men liked her for it. The older men cracked jokes about how their sons would marry her and the younger men flirted harmlessly whenever they had the chance.

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But Feira knew better than to think that it was all about her beauty. She was also civilized and kind and reasonable. She tried to be as logical as possible, driven not by her emotions but by common sense. Most girls got their interface and, with it, stopped having their periods as hormones balanced out in the presence of mana, but they were still often prone to being cranky and emotional at the wrongest of times. She knew other beautiful girls in the town who didn't garner half as much attention as she did.

She'd complained about why women still made decisions that didn't make sense to her to Zen, and he'd said things about how she only had sense because he made sure to keep her humble.

"You look like you're holding in a poop," Zen said, breaking her out of her revelry.

She frowned and flicked him on the head. "I don't want to take a poop."

Zen closed his eyes against her hit. "Then move," he said. "You're blocking my view of true beauty."

Feira turned her head, looked up at the sky. There was nothing but clouds.

"What beauty?"

"Nature is the most beautiful thing."

Feira rolled her eyes but moved. "So, what do we do next?"

"What do you want to do next?" Zen replied. He sounded unbothered, happy to just stare at the clouds above.

"We could go to Venswalt," she suggested. "Dad had friends there. I'm sure aunt Telin would be happy to have us."

Aunt Telin wasn't their aunt by blood, just a friend of their father's when he had been alive. She'd visited them a handful of times when they had been kids.

"Maybe." Zen didn't sound very interested.

"You don't agree?"

"How are we getting to Venswalt?" Zen asked, instead. "All our money's in town. Not to sound like a pot of piss but we're poor. I mean poor, poor."

He was right. They didn't have anything but the clothes on their backs.

"You think they'll be willing to help us?" she asked, looking in the direction of the others and knowing that there would be no hope there.

"I doubt it," Zen answered. "Lord Lacheart has proven to be immune to your 'beauty'"

He made actual air quotes around the word.

"He's a bit of an ass."

Zen chuckled, turning his head to look in the direction of the others. "He's immune, that's all."

"Stop making it sound like being kind to me is some kind of a disease."

Zen smirked. "Is it not?"

…

"Good evening," Feira greeted in a friendly voice.

The eyes of all the men turned to her. The evening had grown old and it was beginning to get dark and cold. So, here she and Zen were.

Fjord had cleared out a small portion of the grass, revealing the brown dirt beneath. He had a fire going. It flickered and danced and played with the shadows on the faces around them.

"Evening, miss Feira," the knight greeted back.

"What's happening?" Ted replied.

Fjord nodded in a show of respect.

Lord Lacheart looked from her to her brother, then back. "Evening."

He went back to the task of carving sticks with a knife.

Grumpy.

Still, she wasn't just here for the fire. The fire was important, though. Moving closer, she squatted next to the fire and held her hands out to it. Zen sat down next to the knight.

"Nice sword," he said, complimenting the knife with that unbothered ease with which men tended to get along.

Feira couldn't tell what was nice about the sword. To her, it was just a sword. The knight had it rested on his lap and was cleaning it with a cloth.

"I had a nicer one," he said simply.

"Really?" Zen sat forward, interested. "What happened to it?"

The knight frowned like a child that didn't want to pout. "Had to hide to leave it behind."

"The enchantment doesn't just come off," Lord Lacheart said, suddenly. "And I'm not strong enough to undo it. We had to leave it with the [Enchanter]. We're still going to go back for it."

"I understand, Lord Lacheart," the knight grumbled. "It does not mean that I cannot be unhappy about it."

Ted smiled. "He does have a point, Aiden."

Feira turned her attention back to Aiden. Surprisingly, it seemed like he was the only grumpy one in the group. Then again, with the wounds he'd had when he returned and having to swim her across the river, maybe he had a right to be grumpy.

"Thank you for helping us," she said after a moment. "Saving us in the town and helping me across the river."

Aiden nodded. "You expressed your gratitude when we crossed the river. Its fine."

He held up the piece of wood he'd been carving to the fire. He turned it one way, then the other. Feira recognized the makings of an arrow. A straight shaft. A sharpened tip. It was a little too fat for the arrows she knew, though.

"Ready?" Ted asked suddenly, rising to his feet.

Aiden gave the arrow one more glance before handing it over to Fjord. Fjord took it without question. With a small knife of his own, he started carving small notches into the base of the arrow.

Aiden turned to his side and picked up two arrows of similar size. They were three times the width of a normal arrow. He handed them over to Valdan.

Zen gave him a look. "You sure you got the dimensions right? Kind of looks a little fat."

"It's supposed to be a little fat." Aiden got up.

The knight got up, too.

"What's the wager?" the knight asked with a sigh, like an adult having to put up with an unnecessary children's game.

"Gold." Ted held up his hand, showing two fingers. "Two."

The knight looked at Aiden. "The same."

Then the knight and Ted looked down at Fjord with a question in their eyes.

"I don't have that much," Fjord said. "I'll go with one."

Zen looked very interested, excited even. "What are we wagering on?"

"You want in?" Ted asked, turning to him with his own level of excitement.

"Would love to, but I'm now a poor man. Left everything back home," he explained, his voice saddening slightly at the mention of their home.

Ted's brows furrowed, thoughtful. Then he shrugged. "No matter. I'll front you. Zen's got two gold doubloons riding on it."

"He won't be able to pay you back," Feira interjected while Zen brightened.

"Won't matter," Ted replied. "If we win, Aiden's going to give each of us the amount we wagered. Your brother gets to own two gold coins."

"And if he wins whatever this is?"

Ted shrugged. "If I know my brother, he'll tell me to keep my money as repayment for your brother's debt."

Feira was confused. "Why?"

"Because he's a softy at heart." Then he clapped. "Alright people, let's get this show on the road."

Feira looked from one member of the group to the other, confused. "What exactly is the wager?"

"That Lord Lacheart cannot make three shots," the knight pointed into the distance, "hitting that tree, without a single miss."

Feira looked in the direction he pointed. The day had gotten too dark. She could not see the tree he was pointing at.

"And that he won't get a foundation skill after each shot," Ted added. "That one was Valdan's idea."

"He's never fired an arrow in his life," Valdan, the knight, explained.

The young lord had to be cocky if he thought he would gain the skill in one shot. Feira knew that it took practice and perfection to gain a skill. Even prodigies took days, weeks even, to get a skill.

Aiden held his hand out and light shimmered above it. After a short moment, a massive, long bow fell into his palm.

Ted whistled. "That, right there, is a beauty."

Feira couldn't help but agree. It was massive, too. It looked heavy.

"Alright, then." Aiden raised the bow and took aim. The thing was almost as tall as he was. He held out his free hand. "Arrow."

Feira moved instinctively, obeying. She'd already taken the arrow from the knight and was placing it in Aiden's hand before she really thought about it.

Zen gave her a look that told her that he had noticed it, and she made a face at him. She had only reacted because she was used to handing things to Zen, too.

Aiden cocked a brow but didn't say anything.

"May I make a request?" she said as he lowered the bow and notched the arrow.

Aiden took aim, didn't look at her. "I'm listening."

"May we have some coins so that we can go stay with our aunt in Venswalt?" She gave her finest smile, even if he wasn't looking. It was worth a shot.

Aiden paused. "Macatau will probably be kinder to you. Fjord can give you a reasonable amount, and we'll drop you off somewhere you can get a ride."

"See," she said, brightening up and turning to Zen. "Sometimes, you just have to ask. We'll weigh our options. Macatau or Venswalt."

"Just you," Aiden said, lowering his bow to look at her. "You'll thrive anywhere you go, if what I know is correct. I have plans for Zen."

Feira's jaw dropped in shock. She looked from him to Zen, then back. Something told her that Zen wouldn't mind what the plans were, as long as it paid.

She wasn't ready to part ways with her brother, though. She'd just lost her home town and everyone she'd ever known. She'd be damned if she lost her brother, too. And Zen would only find some reasonable explanation for why it would be better for him to follow the young lord. Why? Because he didn't like their aunt Telin.

He didn't hate her; he just didn't like her.

She was not losing her brother.

Aiden had returned his attention to the tree in the distance, buried in the darkness, casually dismissing her.

"What about this?" she blurted suddenly. "I don't have any gold, and I'm not one to borrow."

Aiden blinked very slowly and lowered his bow once more, as if controlling himself while exercising patience in dealing with a child.

"But?" he asked, spurring her on.

"But how about we do this," she continued. "If you make the shots, and get the foundation skills, my brother and I will follow you. If you don't, then you'll allow us to be on our way."

Aiden took a moment to think about it before answering. "No. If I don't make it, I will try my best to convince Zen to come with me."

"You make my brother an offer, and you do not try to convince him or negotiate. He says yes or no and that's it."

Aiden pursed his lips and drew the bowstring with the notched arrow all the way back to his cheek. He inhaled deeply, exhaled… then inhaled again.

"Deal."

He let the arrow fly.

It struck true with a sharp thud.

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