The little girl inched closer to the blazing red cauldron with the gait of an adorable, pint-sized thief. Her sneaky hands reaching for a shiny glowing rock piled with all the other materials. Even Ysbail and Cati were there, eyeing the treasure with greedy raven eyes.

The girls perked up at Elrhain’s sudden growl, then looked back between him and the glowing rock as if they were bandits caught red-handed but wouldn’t let go of the loot.

“Vesiphis?” Elrhain glared at the winged boy who was supposed to be managing them, so they would not get into trouble.

“What?” Vesiphis replied, “It’s just an inactive manna core. It won’t harm them if they don’t cultivate with it.”

“What if they try to eat it, you numbskull!”

“….err.”

“Never mind. As long as it is harmless.”

“Well, unless the handler is extremely foolish.”

Elrhain tilted his head, then pointed towards Agwyn, Cati and Ysbail.

““Hey!”” The three girls protested. Agwyn snatched up the manna core while yelling, “Annie isn’t stupid!”

Elrhain facepalmed, “Don’t get too close to the cauldrons, alright? What if the fire… burns… where’s the fire?”

Elrhain peered at the bottom of the cauldrons, where red lights flickered. Only then did he notice the oddity.

The liquid in the cauldrons boiled like crazy, but there was no flare, wood, or smoke under them. In its place were stone slabs engraved with orange circles, giving a false glow of a flame. Yet the heat was palpable.

Magical formations.

Elrhain stared blankly at it for a few seconds, not believing how he could have possibly missed that. When abruptly, he felt a few pairs of piercing eyes boring into his back.

His gaze crossed with Cati and Ysbail’s. The two little imps frowned as if it took a moment for the gears in their brains to turn. Then they broke into massive grins, throwing their hands up, hooting, “Rhain is the stupid one! Rhain is the stupid one!”

It didn’t take long for Agwyn, who had been busy wowing at the shiny rock, Arfon, and even Eudav, to join in.

Elrhain wanted to object, but Vesiphis patted his shoulder while shaking his head. A sympathetic expression appeared on the winged boy’s face as he closed his eyes with unvoiced compassion, and Elrhain got ticked off even more.

“Honestly, my lord, that’s totally on you,” Vesiphis spoke.

Elrhain stared up at the sky before glancing at the adults again. He saw both the Onthoakt and shaman apprentice smiling at their childish antics. He could only lament at how he let the brats one-up him in such a disgraceful manner.

***

The two men put their debate about resource deficiencies aside for now and took the kids around for a guided tour of their budding little hamlet.

North of the main settlement, far away from any watering sources such as the wells dug up or streams flowing down from the mountain ridge above, were the outhouses fashioned from rocky pits, hidden by foliage to give a dhionne some privacy.

Elrhain wondered if people actually had to walk so far if they wanted to answer nature’s call, but Slanout replied that these weren’t the only outhouses. Heck, they were just passing by the area, and it wasn’t even part of the tour!

What would the other houses think if they knew that the prince and princess visited the Slanout Hamlet, but the first thing they got shown there was the poopy-pits?

…Agwyn would not stop giggling for fifteen minutes.

The hunter’s lodge, a mini version of the shire, stood near the hamlet’s gates at the southeast. The cultivators in service of the Onthoakt’s house mainly gathered either here or roamed the mountains to clear out any rogue gheists that had sneaked their way in. There was even a tiny healers hut and some cold caves fashioned into silos to store the wild foodstuff and hunt.

「…What are you doing?」

「In fantasy stories, don’t magical beasts get stronger by devouring the cores of other beasts—Eww!」 The little girl was cut short as the magical husky sneezed a bucket of snot and saliva right next to her feet as she tried to force the Pengyte to eat the shiny rock.

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“Alleigh! Gwoss!”

The Husky whined as it covered its snout with two paws, its expression like a wronged daughter-in-law’s.

Elrhain scoffed, then immediately put away the glowing herb he too was planning to…err, contribute to Alleigh’s cultivation. The boy looked around with shifty eyes, then whistled a suspicious tune.

The children of the tribe ran around playing their little games or helped their parents with mundane tasks all over the village. The elderly sat under the shades of huts or trees, weaving clothes from reeds and vines or carving shells of nuts or insects.

There were Kaloxen, Maturas, and other beasts of burden in the gheist enclosures beside the west palisades. A flock of fliers called Gurumba, which looked like giant sparrows with horse’s heads, were also nestled upon the great primordial trees.

「Hey Annie, do you know what Basashi is?」

「…Uh, no. Some kinda samurai sword?」

「Nope! It’s sushi made from raw horse meat.」

Elrhain drooled as he stared at the horse heads peeking out from the canopy, 「If there is a bird with a horse head, I’d reckon there’s a fish too, right? Imagine the flavours! Truly, this world is the best place for fusion cuisine!」

The little girl stared at him incredulously before thwacking his shoulders playfully.

「Then go and get food poisoning why don’t you!」

「Your loss.」 He muttered while wincing as the group had made half a curve on the not so small mountain.

All in all, this was one of the better villages Elrhain had explored in the past few months. The air was ambient with the clutter and clatter of cooking, the peeps and squeaks of the young, and the hearty high talks of the old. Everyone had things to do, everyone had hopes for the future.

Only the Onthoakt and the few cultivators of the upper caste were in contrary moods, sporting worried looks because they did not share the servants’ enthusiasm. Their minds constantly churning on how to keep this peace alive.

It was the same for Thundham and Bromwyn, and all the main house echelons.

These days, the dinner talks have become more serious. The adults were always irritable, and they had less time to simply accompany the kids to talk about fun nothings. Elrhain and Agwyn weren’t hungry for attention either. They toned down their clinginess and let their grandpa be.

Even Eluned had lost her cheerful smile, while Dofnald seemed to frown more.

Only Cyra acted like her mind was full of clouds. Of course, that could also be a front she screened in front of the kids to not agitate them, as she was the one taking care of their daily needs nowadays.

The woman did not seem to require diligent daily cultivation, unlike everyone else. She devoted her days now fretting about the rightest way to smooch, pat, and rub their tiny tummies to make them fall asleep faster at night.

The suns neared the horizon as the kids basked in their rays, signalling that the day was almost over. Elrhain and the others bid farewell to the good Onthoakt and apprentice, whom they came to know as Freeman Adol Brewer, after the detailed look at the inner workings of the hamlet’s construction.

They were quite satisfied, and the Onthoakt was even more satisfied that the kids were satisfied.

So everyone had a big smile on their faces when the tour ended. The visitors were just about to trek down the mountains with a merry mood on the Alleigh-mobile…

…when a thin man came rushing towards them with an urgent note in his cries.

Worry was visible on his face, and his movements were laden with distress. Evidently, he did not bring good news.

“Lord Slanout! T-There’s another one!” The man stopped before them, not even caring to look at the kids or the giant dog. His eyes were clouded in fear as he relayed the message to the lord, “It’s young Harund’s wife. She’d done well even this morning, but now h-her, I-I’m ‘fraid it be really the Swampling’s Curse!”

Stuttering, he could not get a coherent sentence out without three fidgets and a twitch. But everyone present had no trouble extracting the gist of his panicked tale.

Slanout’s ape-like face paled as his fangs inadvertently snarled out. He promptly ordered the man to lead him to Harund’s hut. Even apprentice Adol looked like he was about to keel over but nonetheless, followed the duo into the mountain.

Elrhain and Agwyn exchanged glances, then told their Watch guard, ““We follow!””

And so they followed, even after Vesiphis and the Watch member literally fell on their knees and begged them not to.

Their pleading was logical. Because it was undoubtedly risky for two children to go anywhere near someone who had been cursed. Since curses that can infect adults can just as quickly spread to the young.

…and adults usually recovered, while children suffered harshly.

But the two were determined to see this through, and Alleigh, a mid-oceanic husky, would only listen to its master’s princess and the princess’s master. So, Vesiphis and the Watch really couldn’t stop them even if they whimpered with all their might.

Elrhain, of course, wasn’t entirely out of his mind, and took out a hexagon-shaped bone ornament attached to a leather string from his tunic’s pocket.

“Our mommy gave this to me. It’s a talisman with a [Misty Safeguard] spell. The curse can’t get through if I use this, right?”

Indeed it could not, as the spell was an augur meant for continuous protection against miasma, poison, and similar hazards that some recently spotted gheists were susceptible to use.

It would last hours with the amount of manna Cyra had put in, and that spell was just one of ten the talisman could employ.

Annie also carried an assortment of protective magical treasures with her. She dangled them in front of their grumpy guardians with glee, so Vesiphis and the Watch could only sigh and relent.

But they did not allow Cati, Ysbail, Arfon and Eudav to follow. Vesiphis resolutely brought them down from the mountain towards the main house for complete magical cleansing. The younger kids did not make matters difficult for him either, as they sensed the gravity of the situation with their sharp instincts.

Vesiphis would also be the one to report this case to the Earthloch Elders, while the Watch member would continue attending the two kids and the husky in case of an emergency.

By the time they had caught up to the Onthoakt, a sickly woman, presumably the cursed, was being carried out from a small hut on a floating stone bed by a lady dressed in a healer’s garb. All around, a small crowd of onlookers were hastily broken up by the Onthoakt house’s cultivators.

When Slanout noticed Elrhain and Agwyn approach, his face paled even further and was about to snap. But he closed his mouth when he saw the soft protective field of blue light covering the now trio of unwanted visitors and their magical mount.