Chapter 47

  The western road out of Thornbridge was well-maintained for the first day, a proper trade route with regular patrols and waystation markers. But as they moved further from the city, the signs of neglect became increasingly apparent. Potholes went unrepaired. Markers were weathered and sometimes missing. The patrol stations they passed stood empty, abandoned to the elements.

  "This used to be a busy route," Kelsa observed as they walked past another empty guardhouse. "Millbrook was a prosperous farming community. Grain, vegetables, livestock, they supplied half of Thornbridge's markets."

  "What happened?" Essa asked.

  "That's what we're here to find out." Kelsa's expression was grim. "But whatever it was, it happened fast. Two years ago, this road would have been packed with merchant traffic. Now..." She gestured at the empty path stretching before them.

  They encountered only three other travelers during the entire first day, a family heading toward Thornbridge with their belongings piled on a single cart, their faces hollow with exhaustion and something that looked like defeat. The father barely glanced at the adventuring party as they passed, his attention fixed on the road ahead as if afraid to look back.

  "Refugees," Torvin said quietly after they'd passed. "Seen that look before. People who've lost everything and are just trying to survive."

  Arin watched the family disappear around a bend in the road, his core heavy with something that felt like grief. He didn't know these people, had never seen them before, but their suffering was written in every line of their bodies. Whatever was happening in Millbrook, it was destroying lives.

  And someone is profiting from it. Someone with power and connections, who thinks they can escape consequences.

  The familiar anger stirred, but he forced it down. Anger wouldn't help these people. Only action would, careful, strategic action that actually succeeded rather than futile rage that accomplished nothing.

  They made camp that night in a grove of trees off the main road, taking turns on watch despite the apparent emptiness of the surrounding countryside. Arin took the midnight shift, his 360-degree vision and darkvision making him ideal for nighttime surveillance.

  The darkness was peaceful, filled with the normal sounds of nocturnal creatures going about their business. No bandits appeared, no threats materialized. But Arin couldn't shake the feeling that they were being watched, that somewhere in the night, eyes were tracking their progress.

  Paranoia, probably. But paranoia has kept me alive before.

  The morning brought gray skies and a light drizzle, making the road slick and uncomfortable. They pressed on, the terrain gradually shifting from the rolling hills near Thornbridge to flatter farmland that should have been lush with summer crops.

  Instead, the fields they passed were barren or poorly tended. Farmhouses stood abandoned, their windows dark, their doors hanging open. Occasionally, they spotted signs of recent fire, blackened ruins where buildings had once stood, scorch marks on fences and outbuildings.

  "This isn't just bad luck," Essa said, her voice tight with distress. "This is systematic destruction."

  "Aye," Torvin agreed. "Seen this before, too, during the border conflicts. This is what happens when someone wants to drive people off their land."

  They reached Millbrook in the late afternoon.

  The village was larger than Arin had expected, or rather, it had been larger once. The main street stretched for perhaps a quarter mile, lined with buildings that had clearly seen better days. Half of them were abandoned, their shutters broken, their signs faded beyond reading. The others showed signs of stubborn occupation, smoke rising from chimneys, laundry hanging in yards, the small indicators of people refusing to give up.

  A stone church stood at the village's center, its steeple visible above the surrounding buildings. Beside it, a small market square that might once have bustled with activity now held only a few scattered stalls, their proprietors watching the approaching adventurers with wary eyes.

  "Silver rank," one of the villagers muttered as they entered the square. "Guild finally sent someone?"

  "Not exactly," Kelsa said carefully. "We're traveling through the area and heard there might be trouble. Thought we'd see if we could help."

  The villager, a middle-aged woman with weathered hands and suspicious eyes, studied them for a long moment. "Help. Right. Like the last ones who came to 'help.' They asked questions for two days, then left and never came back. A month later, the contract got cancelled."

  "We're not here on contract," Kelsa said. "We're here because we heard people were suffering and wanted to see what was happening for ourselves."

  "Why?" The suspicion in the woman's voice was sharp as a blade. "What's in it for you?"

  It was a fair question. Adventurers didn't work for free, everyone knew that. Showing up without a contract, claiming to want to help out of the goodness of their hearts, would naturally raise suspicions.

  Before Kelsa could formulate a diplomatic response, Arin stepped forward slightly, drawing the woman's attention. His humanoid form—translucent red, vaguely person-shaped but clearly not human—made her take a step back.

  "Sometimes helping is the right thing," he said.

  The woman's eyes widened at the strange figure, at the voice that emerged from features that weren't quite a face. "You're... what are you?"

  "An adventurer," Arin said. "Like my friends."

  "A slime adventurer." The woman shook her head slowly. "Now I've seen everything." But something in her posture relaxed slightly—Arin's obvious strangeness seemed to make their story more believable somehow. Regular adventurers hunting for profit wouldn't travel with a sapient slime in humanoid form.

  "My name's Kelsa," Kelsa said, seizing the moment. "This is Torvin, Essa, and Arin. We're Silver rank out of Thornbridge. We heard about the troubles here, the bandit attacks, the crop failures, and people being forced to sell their land. We want to understand what's really happening."

  The woman was quiet for a long moment, her eyes moving between them as if weighing their intentions. Finally, she sighed.

  "I'm Hanna. Hanna Venn." She gestured toward the church. "You want to understand what's happening here? Talk to Father Aldwin. He's been documenting everything since the troubles started. If anyone can tell you the full story, it's him."

  "Thank you," Kelsa said.

  "Don't thank me yet. Understanding and helping are two different things." Hanna's expression was bitter. "Plenty of people have understood our situation. None of them has been able to do anything about it."

  They made their way to the church, a modest stone building that had clearly been the pride of the village in better times. The stonework was well-maintained, the small garden beside the entrance carefully tended despite the chaos elsewhere. Someone still cared about this place.

  Father Aldwin answered their knock, a thin man in his fifties with kind eyes and the careful movements of someone who had learned caution through hard experience. He listened to their introduction without interrupting, his expression giving nothing away.

  "You're not the first adventurers to come asking questions," he said when Kelsa finished. "The guild sent a team two months ago. They investigated for three days, then left. A week later, I received word that the contract had been cancelled due to 'resolution of the underlying issues.'" His voice carried quiet anger beneath the measured words. "The issues were not resolved. They were buried."

  "We know," Kelsa said. "We learned that the contract was pulled through. Someone didn't want adventurers investigating."

  "Lord Aldric Vane." Father Aldwin spoke the name without hesitation. "He's been buying land throughout this region for over a year. Always from desperate sellers, always at prices far below market value. And somehow, the sellers always become desperate right before he makes his offer."

  "You believe he's behind the attacks?" Essa asked.

  "I believe the pattern speaks for itself." Aldwin moved to a cabinet and withdrew a thick leather journal. "I've been keeping records since the troubles began. Dates, names, incidents. Every family that's been attacked, every farm that's burned, every person who's disappeared or died or simply given up and left."

  He set the journal on a table and opened it. Page after page of careful handwriting, documenting over a year of systematic destruction.

  "It started small. A barn fire here, livestock killed there. Random incidents that could have been bad luck. But then the pattern emerged." He turned to a page marked with a ribbon. "The Thornton family refused Lord Aldric's first offer in the spring of last year. Two weeks later, their eldest son disappeared while traveling to Thornbridge. His body was found a month later, supposedly killed by bandits."

  "Supposedly?" Torvin asked.

  "The wounds were wrong for a bandit attack. Too precise, too professional. And nothing was taken, his purse, his horse, his supplies were all still with him." Aldwin's voice was heavy. "The Thorntons sold their land to Lord Aldric a week after the funeral."

  He turned more pages, each one telling a similar story. The Marsh family, whose crops failed three seasons in a row despite their neighbors having normal harvests. The Brennan family, whose farmhouse burned in the night, killing their youngest daughter. The Kellys, the Warrens, the Oakes, family after family broken by tragedy and forced to sell.

  "How many?" Kelsa asked quietly.

  "Forty-three families have sold their land to Lord Aldric in the past fourteen months. Of those, thirty-one experienced significant 'misfortune' in the weeks before selling." Aldwin closed the journal. "The remaining twelve saw what was happening to their neighbors and sold before it could happen to them."

  "And no one's done anything?" Essa's voice was thick with distress. "The authorities, the church, the guild—"

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  "Lord Aldric's mother was a Deren." Aldwin's tone was matter-of-fact, stating a simple truth. "House Deren has significant influence in Thornbridge and beyond. When the regional magistrate received complaints about the situation here, he sent investigators. They spent two days interviewing Lord Aldric's servants and concluded that all land purchases were legal and voluntary. They never spoke to a single villager."

  "And the church?" Essa pressed.

  "I've sent reports to the diocese three times. Each time, I received a polite letter thanking me for my concern and assuring me that the matter would be looked into. Nothing ever came of it." Aldwin's kind eyes held deep weariness. "Lord Aldric donates generously to church charities. That buys a great deal of institutional blindness."

  Arin listened to all of this, his core pulsing with anger that he struggled to control. The pattern was so clear, so obviously criminal, and yet the systems that should have stopped it had failed completely. Wealth and connections providing immunity from consequences. The powerful crushing the weak because they could, because no one with authority was willing to stop them.

  Just like Levi. Just like the Academy covering up murder because the guilty parties had important families.

  "Why do you stay?" Arin asked quietly.

  The question emerged before he fully decided to ask it. Father Aldwin looked at him, at this strange creature wearing a human shape, and something in his expression softened.

  "Because someone has to bear witness," he said simply. "Someone has to remember what happened here, to document the truth, even if no one else will act on it. And because the people who remain, the stubborn ones, the ones who refuse to be driven out, they need someone to remind them that they're not alone."

  "How many are left?" Kelsa asked.

  "Sixty-three people in the village proper. Another twenty or so on farms that haven't been targeted yet." Aldwin's expression was grim. "A year ago, Millbrook had over four hundred residents. We've lost more than eighty percent of our population."

  The numbers hit Arin like a physical blow. Four hundred people reduced to less than a hundred, driven out by systematic terror that everyone knew about but no one would stop. An entire community being erased so one man could expand his holdings.

  "Tell us about the people who are left," Kelsa said. "Who's still here, and why?"

  Aldwin considered the question. "The stubborn, mostly. People whose families have worked this land for generations and refuse to abandon it. The Harrows have the largest remaining farm. Marcus Harrow has turned his property into something of a fortress, armed his workers, and dared Lord Aldric to try something. So far, he's been left alone, but I suspect that's temporary."

  "Who else?"

  "Old Willem still runs the mill, though there's barely enough grain to justify keeping it open. The Brennans stayed despite losing their daughter, Henrik Brennan has sworn he'll see Lord Aldric hang before he gives up his land." Aldwin paused. "And there are the children."

  "Children?" Essa leaned forward.

  "Eleven of them, orphaned by various 'accidents' over the past year. Their families are gone, dead, or fled, but they have nowhere else to go. I've been caring for them here at the church as best I can." Something shifted in Aldwin's expression, a fierce protectiveness that hadn't been visible before. "Whatever happens to the rest of us, the children are not negotiable. I will not see them driven out or worse."

  Arin thought of the woodcutter children, of Jorin and the others who had taught him to read, who had accepted him without fear when the adults were still wary. Children were vulnerable in ways that adults weren't, dependent on others for protection, unable to fight back against those who would harm them.

  "We want to meet them," Arin said.

  Father Aldwin studied him for a long moment, something calculating behind his kind eyes. "The children have learned to fear strangers. Too many people have come through this village with promises they didn't keep. If you want to meet them, you'll need to earn their trust."

  "How do we do that?" Essa asked.

  "By being here. By helping. By showing them through actions that you're different from the others who came before." Aldwin rose from his seat. "There's a family on the eastern edge of the village, the Crosses. Their barn needs repairs before the autumn rains, but Jakob Cross was injured in a bandit attack last month and can't do the work himself. If you want to demonstrate your intentions, that would be a good place to start."

  "We're adventurers," Torvin said, though not unkindly. "Fighting monsters is what we do. Barn repairs..."

  "Are how you show a wounded community that you care about more than just violence." Aldwin's voice was gentle but firm. "Anyone can swing a sword. Not everyone is willing to do humble work for people who need help. If you want these villagers to trust you, to tell you what they know, you need to show them you're different from the others who've come through here."

  Kelsa nodded slowly. "He's right. We can't investigate if no one will talk to us, and no one will talk to us if they think we're just going to leave like the last adventurers did."

  "So we fix a barn," Torvin said, resigned but not unhappy. "Could be worse. At least it's honest work."

  Father Aldwin provided directions to the Cross farm, and they set out as the afternoon light began to fade. The eastern edge of the village was more rural, with farmhouses spaced further apart with fields stretching between them. Most of the fields lay fallow or showed signs of neglect, but a few were still being worked by people too stubborn to give up.

  The Cross farm was easy to identify. The barn in question was visibly damaged, part of its roof had collapsed, and walls were leaning at angles that suggested structural failure was imminent. A man sat on the farmhouse porch, his leg wrapped in bandages, watching their approach with wary eyes.

  "Jakob Cross?" Kelsa called out as they drew near.

  "Who's asking?"

  "Adventurers. Father Aldwin told us you could use some help with your barn."

  Jakob Cross was perhaps forty years old, with the weathered hands and sun-darkened skin of a lifetime farmer. His expression as he studied them was suspicious but tired, the look of someone who had been disappointed too many times to hope for better.

  "Adventurers fixing barns," he said flatly. "That's a new one."

  "We're trying to help the village," Kelsa said. "Father Aldwin suggested this would be a good place to start."

  "Help the village." Jakob laughed, though there was no humor in it. "The last people who said that asked a lot of questions, made a lot of promises, and then disappeared. The attacks got worse after they left, like someone was punishing us for talking."

  "We're not going to disappear," Essa said. "And we're not just here to ask questions. We want to understand what's happening, yes, but we also want to help in whatever way we can."

  "Silver rank adventurers want to fix my barn." Jakob shook his head slowly. "World's gone strange, that's for certain." He was quiet for a moment, then sighed. "Tools are in the shed. Lumber's stacked behind it, what's left of it anyway. Roof needs resheathing, and those support beams on the west wall need to be replaced before the whole thing comes down."

  "Thank you," Kelsa said.

  "Thank me when the work's done. And when you don't vanish in the middle of the night like the others did."

  The work was harder than Arin had expected. He proved surprisingly useful despite his lack of hands. His ability to fit into tight spaces enabled him to inspect damage that would otherwise have been inaccessible. His carefully controlled acidic nature helped remove rotted wood that needed to be replaced. And his tireless nature meant he could work through the evening while his companions rested.

  By the time full darkness fell, they had stabilized the worst of the structural damage and begun replacing the roof sections that had collapsed. There were still days of work ahead, but the barn was no longer in immediate danger of falling down.

  "You actually know what you're doing," Jakob said, something like surprise in his voice. He had hobbled out to observe their progress as the sun set, his injured leg clearly paining him, but his curiosity overcoming his discomfort.

  "Torvin knows construction," Kelsa said. "The rest of us are learning as we go."

  "Most adventurers wouldn't bother. Too busy chasing glory and gold to do honest work." Jakob's expression softened slightly. "My wife's making dinner. It's not much, but you're welcome to share it."

  The meal was simple, stew with vegetables from their garden, bread baked that morning, water drawn from their well, but it was offered with genuine hospitality that felt like a gift after the suspicion they'd encountered elsewhere.

  Jakob's wife, Rina, was a quiet woman with sharp eyes and work-roughened hands. Their children, two boys aged perhaps eight and ten, watched Arin with open fascination rather than fear.

  "Is it true you can talk?" the younger one asked, his eyes wide. "With floating letters?"

  Y E S I C A N

  The boy laughed with delight. "That's amazing! Can you write anything?"

  H E L L O T O M

  The boy, Tom, apparently, giggled and looked at his brother. "He knows my name!"

  "Father Aldwin probably told them," the older boy said, trying to sound worldly but clearly just as impressed.

  A N D W H A T I S Y O U R N A M E

  "Erik. I'm the oldest."

  N I C E T O M E E T Y O U E R I K

  The ice was broken after that. The boys peppered Arin with questions about being a slime, about adventuring, about the monsters he'd fought and the places he'd seen. Their parents watched with something like hope in their eyes, hope that these strangers might really be different, that help had finally arrived.

  "You should know what you're getting into," Jakob said quietly to Kelsa while the children were distracted. "Lord Aldric doesn't take kindly to interference. The last adventurers who came through... they left in a hurry after someone delivered a message. I don't know what it said, but they were gone within the hour."

  "What kind of message?"

  "The threatening kind, I assume." Jakob glanced at his children, then lowered his voice further. "He's got men. Not the bandits, those are separate, hired blades who do the dirty work. But he's also got personal guards, loyal retainers who handle the... quieter problems. If you start making trouble for him, they'll come."

  "Let them come," Torvin said, his voice hard. "We're not some Bronze rank party that can be scared off with threats."

  "It's not about being scared. It's about being smart." Jakob's eyes were serious. "Lord Aldric has been doing this for over a year. He's got systems, connections, ways of making problems disappear. If you're going to challenge him, you need to be prepared for what that means."

  "We know," Kelsa said. "That's why we're starting here, building relationships, understanding the full picture. We're not going to charge in blindly."

  "Good." Jakob seemed to relax slightly. "Because blind charges are how people end up dead in unmarked graves. I've seen it happen."

  They stayed at the Cross farm that night, sleeping in the partially repaired barn with watches set more out of habit than immediate concern. The family's trust, fragile as it was, felt like a small victory, proof that patience and genuine effort could open doors that demands and authority could not.

  Arin took the late watch again, his senses extended into the darkness around the farm. Nothing threatened them that night, but he couldn't shake the feeling that their presence had been noted, that somewhere in the darkness, reports were being sent to whoever commanded the forces arrayed against this village.

  Let them watch. Let them report. We're not the frightened adventurers who fled before. We're going to find the truth, and we're going to make it impossible to ignore.

  The thought burned in his core with quiet determination. Tomorrow, they would continue the barn repairs. They would meet more villagers, hear more stories, and build more trust. And piece by piece, they would construct a case against Lord Aldric Vane that even his powerful connections couldn't bury.

  This takes time. Patience and evidence and allies. But it works eventually, for those willing to fight for it.

  The night passed peacefully, and when dawn broke over the wounded village, Arin was ready to continue the work they'd begun.

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