They were sitting by the campfire, talking for a long time. Two rabbits were roasting on the fire, found by Whirl quickly after their meeting. The fact that they are camping near all these bodies still brought a smile to Steve's face.

“So you are saying that your village was attacked by Bouler soldiers without any reason?”, Whirl asked. “And you don’t know what about other villagers?”.

“Yes, the last thing I remember is being hit in the face,” Steve replied, while rotating the sword he found in his hands. “My mom, dad, younger sister. Why did they do this to us? I don't even know. Our village wasn't even rich nor had many resources.”

“They surely needed to have some reason. The Government of Bouler doesn't send soldiers without a reason,” Whirl said without hesitation.

“I knew all the people in the village. I'm sure that none of them had any secrets at all. That doesn't matter anyway. I really want soldiers to pay for what they did.”

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Steve's thoughts were swirling like a tornado. He tried to recall anything suspicious connected to his friends, family, and non-related people in the village. But nothing was coming to his mind.

This was the last thing they talked about that day. Steve first kept watch. Nothing was happening, so he decided to try to learn swordsmanship with the sword he found. Clumsy moves and wrong positions immediately showed that Steve was never interested in fighting before. The only time, when he was fighting with sticks pretending to be swords, was when he was playing with his friend Johnny. He began feeling bad about his miserable skills of fighting with weapons.

“You don't have much experience with that, do you?”

Steve flinched at the sound of Whirl's voice. “Not really… I actually never used it before in a real fight. If I think about it, I didn't even use it for fun.”

“Oh… I can teach you. You should know this and that to be able to fight alongside me if something happens during our adventure to the unknown.” Whirl laughed. “Let's do this.”

Instead of sleeping or keeping watch, they practiced sword fighting all night. Steve started to be curious about Whirl's background. She impressed him with the skills she had.