Six days of travel together had changed them.

  Lily started to talk more. At first only in her scout role, but it didn't take long for her to talk more freely. Mostly to Pete, but to Michael and Diana too.

  On the fourth day Sera asked Pete a question. "Old man, why don't you have a sword?" she asked him.

  "Well," Pete said, caught completely unaware by the question. "I had a sword, but it got destroyed."

  "Correction," Michael said. "You had two swords, but destroyed them yourself. Whatever you do Sera, don't give him your knife."

  Sera cautiously moved away from Pete after that and fell back in line with Diana.

  Pete had also spent some time talking to Diana. She had promised to teach him more about magic, when it was safe to do so. She let him listen in when she was explaining things about magic and fighting to Sera.

  Michael had explained more about the world to Pete. Making sure Lily and Sera overheard it all.

  Around high noon Michael called the party together. "We are getting close to where the Red Hand camp should be located. First we will make our own camp, somewhere hidden and defensible." He looked at Pete. "You will stay there with the girls, while Diana and I will scout and look for the Red Hand camp."

  Lily raised her hand. "Aren't I the scout?"

  "Yes you are," Michael said, expecting this. "But this is a mission for B-rank or higher. And we need you and Sera to look after the old man. He's too loud to sneak around."

  Pete saw both Lily and Sera agree with that. "Wow girls, that hurts."

  Two hours later they had found a spot and made camp close to a small stream of water, but hidden away by forest canopy. Diana had told them a few times, travel this far east wasn't supposed to be this easy without Pete keeping the monsters at bay. She did so again before leaving to scout.

  "It may feel like we had a pleasant forest hike these last days, but these are dangerous lands. B-rank monsters and higher are always lurking around." She looked at Sera and Lily, her eyes glowing unevenly with concern. "Stay close to Pete. Always."

  Diana waited for her words to settle in. "Michael may have joked about it, but this is serious. He..." she glanced over at Pete. "He keeps the monsters away. Not me and not Michael. Pete keeps us safe out in the Borderlands."

  Lily looked at Pete with a sense of pride, like she had known this all along.

  "Sera, tell me you understand." Diana stood with her back straight, looking every bit the warrior in her leather armor.

  "I understand," Sera said, trying to mimic Diana's certainty. "We will stay close to the old man while you are gone."

  "Good." Diana nodded and left the camp.

  Wait, when did Sera start calling me old man?

  ***

  Pete had to admit to himself he felt a bit awkward, alone with the girls. He was supposed to be in charge, but he didn't really know what to do. He was worried for Michael and Diana, but he didn't want to show it.

  Michael had already explained to him what the Borderlands are. They called it the Borderlands, because it bordered the Central Continent. A huge mountain range, isolated the Borderlands. West from the Borderlands was the Central Kingdom and the further east you went, the more hostile the Borderlands became.

  Seeing they had gone east-north-east for six days, he worried, even though he knew Michael had gone much further on his own before.

  Not knowing what else to do he started talking to the girls.

  "Did you know I came here from another world?" He asked. Lily sat close to him, but was busy watching their surroundings. Sera sat a few paces away, her back to a tree, sharpening a stick.

  "You mean the Central Continent?" Sera surprised him. Not only with her being the one who responded, but also with reminding Pete they would have completely different frames of reference as slaves.

  "No," Pete replied. "Even farther away." He didn't think an explanation of the universe would be helpful at this moment.

  "We lived far away too," Lily said. "With Old Mirren. Sera said he bought us when we were smaller to help him." She looked at her sister, expecting her to finish the story.

  Pete felt his heart race and almost regretted talking to them, but he was the adult here and he set his own feelings aside.

  "Old Mirren wasn't bad," said Sera while she continued taking chunks out of the stick. "He was even older than you."

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  Pete frowned at Sera, who acted like she didn't notice.

  "He was an alchemist” Sera continued. "Who lived a long way from anywhere in a house with a lot of plants and a lot of books. He was old when we came to him, we don't know where we came from before that. We were small. Lily doesn't remember it."

  "I remember the smell” Lily said. "Something sharp. Not nice."

  "A different place” Sera said briefly. "We don't talk about that one."

  She said it with the directness of someone who had sorted their past into categories and knew which ones had lids.

  "Old Mirren wasn't bad” she said, returning to her story with the tone of someone giving an honest assessment. "He took some of our blood sometimes. For his work. It didn't hurt much. We cleaned his house and cooked his food and he taught us things." She paused. "He taught us to read. We know a lot about plants. He taught me how to," she stopped briefly, ", how to think through problems. He said I had a logical mind."

  "A sharp mind can be a weapon in itself,” Pete said.

  Sera glanced at him. "He died when the weather started to turn warmer again. Went to sleep one night and didn't wake up. We buried him in the garden, next to his wife." She said it plainly, the way of someone who had processed the grief of it into something manageable. "We didn't know what to do so we kept the house clean and ate his food stores and waited."

  "How long?" Pete asked.

  "Most of the summer,” Sera said. "It was actually..." she paused, and something moved through her expression that was complicated, fond and sad and uncertain. "It was actually the best part. Just us. The house and the garden and nobody coming. Lily caught a rabbit and we kept it."

  "What was its name?" Pete asked.

  "Brown,” Lily said firmly. "His name was Brown."

  "Good name,” Pete said.

  "It was a very brown rabbit,” Lily said with the seriousness of a scholar defending a research paper.

  Sera's mouth moved in the way it did when something wanted to be a smile and she was deciding whether to let it. "Then the man came. Said he was Old Mirren's something. Distant family. Said the house was his now and that young girls couldn't live alone in lands like these." She paused. "He seemed like he was trying to be kind. Maybe he was. I don't know."

  She looked at the road ahead.

  "He took us to a settlement two days away. Said he knew people who could help. And then we were in a different house with different people and they said we were being taken somewhere safe." The flatness in her voice was not bitterness. It was just the texture of a fact that had been looked at enough times to stop having sharp edges. "He sold us. I know that now. I didn't completely understand it then."

  "I understood,” Lily said quietly.

  Pete looked at her.

  "I knew,” Lily said simply. "I didn't say anything because Sera was trying to make it better."

  Sera looked at her sister with an expression Pete recognized, the particular look of someone who has been protecting another person and has just discovered the protection was also being returned.

  They sat for a moment in silence.

  "After that,” Sera said, "we spent weeks in a wagon with not enough food. Then the city." She glanced at Pete. "Then you."

  Pete looked toward the sky, trying to find an opening in the trees.

  "Brown the rabbit,” he said.

  Lily looked up at him.

  "Did you let him go before you left?"

  Lily's expression shifted. Something honest and still a little painful. "We couldn't take him. So, we let him go in the garden." She paused. "He probably stayed anyway. He liked the garden."

  "He definitely stayed,” Pete said. "Rabbits know a good garden."

  Lily looked at him with that direct, assessing look she used for important things. "Do you actually know that?"

  "I know it about Brown specifically,” Pete said. "He seemed like a garden rabbit."

  Lily considered this for a moment. Then she took Pete's hand and just smiled a little.

  Sera watched this and said nothing.

  They just sat like that for a while. Lily dozing off against Pete. Sera sharpening her sticks and Pete slowly settling into something less awkward.

  ***

  A branch snapped.

  Pete was on his feet instantly, positioning himself between the girls and the sound.

  Sera had her knife out. Lily stirred awake.

  Then Diana stepped into the clearing, Michael behind her.

  Pete exhaled. "Well?"

  Michael's face was grim with determination. "We found them."

  "The camp is huge," Diana filled in. "I do not understand, why or how they made such a settlement out here. There are hundreds of slaves and dozens of slavers. It is not a logical place to trade slaves."

  Pete hadn't wanted to bring it up, but the logistics of it seemed wrong from the start.

  "I agree," Michael said. "But it does not change our situation. Someone in that camp knows about my family, and I intend to find out what they know."

  "Rest first," Diana said. "We plan later."

  ***

  "How about you free the slaves and have them fight?" Pete said, remembering an old movie he saw.

  Michael looked skeptical. "Even getting a handful to fight, would surprise me. Besides would we let them fight bare handed? We need something smart."

  Pete had to agree with that unfortunately. He wondered how far he would go if they could not come up with anything smart.

  "If the old man is so strong, why can't he just throw some monsters over the wall?" Sera said.

  Everyone was looking at Sera now. Pete looked a little horrified, when he saw Michael and Diana giving this actual thought.

  "I don't even know if I can do that," Pete whimpered, but no one was listening to him.

  "Great thinking Sera," Michael said. "Actually picking them up and throwing them would be almost impossible. The old man doesn't have the control for that, but we could use him to steer a bunch of monsters towards the camp. And use it as a diversion tactic."

  "Well done, Sera," Diana said. Pete expected Diana to pause to give Sera some time to digest the compliments, but Diana continued immediately. "We still need to think and plan for a lot, but this seems like a way to go forward. What if..."

  The party discussed and planned for some time after that.

  "Ok, we are doing this tomorrow," Michael said. "Thank you for doing this for me." Michael slowly looked around, acknowledging everyone, one at a time.

  Lily gave him a firm nod. Trying to look brave.

  Sera looked at him fiercely. A little girl with the heart of a veteran.

  Diana just nodded. Her eyes shining with a new intensity.

  "This is not just for you," Pete said. "You have helped me so much, and true, if I only had to do this for you I would in a heartbeat. But I'm doing this for me too."

  Pete paused for a moment, seeing all eyes on him. It didn't feel uncomfortable, but supporting.

  "Everyone has to stand for something in life. Even out here in the Borderlands, where life has so little meaning. I choose to care."

  Pete had not planned this and he felt the weight of his words hitting himself hard.

  The others seemingly lost in contemplation.

  "Let's get some rest," Michael said. "We need all the advantages we can get."