I woke up the next morning in an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar room. It was intensely disorienting at first, until I realized where I was and why.

They ended up insisting on putting me up in the "keep." Said it was only right for the local lord to reside there. Nevermind the fact that there were three others here with a valid claim to higher status than me; Gareth flat-out refused to be treated as a kith of high status, Dyralist only needed to sleep one day a week, and Esott Daniels insisted on being housed among his congregation rather than "set above them."

No one seemed to find me worth the same consideration.

I'd gotten roped in to spending half the night in the first meeting of a hastily-thrown-together "council" consisting of me, Esott Daniels, Dyralist, Brother Mitchell, Sister Ellis (Felicity's mom), and two managers from Dyralight who I had never met before. And somehow, despite being the landowner and having (to some degree at least) overseen the whole construction project, I was still the least clueful one in the whole group, because virtually all of the issues that were raised had to do more with the kith who were here and their needs than with the land itself and the buildings on it.

Apparently the biggest concern right now was food. The original plan had been for church members to bring their stored food supplies with them, but that plan had assumed the existence of a few days to pack stuff up and move it over that we never got, and the people from Dyralight were never in on the plan to begin with. So everyone arrived here with just what they could hastily load into their cars when the call to evacuate came, and if we took what we had and shared it around we'd have enough for a day or two at best. (And if those who did have food refused to share it, that would create other problems, probably even more serious ones.) Water wasn't a problem, and we already knew there was plenty of wild game to be found in the forest, but as tasty as meat is, it doesn't make for a very balanced diet all by itself. We had talked about that a bit, proposed a few ideas, none of which seemed particularly likely to go anywhere, and then adjourned because everyone was getting tired anyway. (Except Dyralist.)

So now here I was, with hundreds of mouths to feed and nothing to offer them except monster meat that was more hypothetical than real at the moment because no one had actually gone out and hunted any yet. I knew that the paladins of Esott Daniels' church had proven unwilling to kill any but the most aggressive of monsters before; how would they feel about hunting, even for the express purpose of providing food for the community? And even that would only be a short-term solution; without vegetables and grains to form the basis of our diet we'd end up with nutritional deficiencies before long. Divine magic could help alleviate the resulting sicknesses to some degree, but we had only one cleric among us and one paladin with the right kind of training in the healing arts. They would be overwhelmed.

Esott Daniels had said he'd talk with the paladins. Meanwhile, I had one lead I could pursue. A bit of a long shot, maybe, but better than nothing. With a bit of asking around, I managed to confirm that Jenna had made it here and which home had been assigned to her.

"Hi Brad!" Jenna greeted me with a bright smile, looking far better-rested than I was. She was wearing slacks, a tee, and still a bunny-ear headband. "What's going on? We're not being called in to the office, are we?"

I sighed at the attempt at humor. "Too soon, Jenna."

Her smiling face deflated a little. "Sorry."

"So anyway... yeah, I think you still have an important job to do."

"Hey, who is it?" came a masculine voice from within.

Jenna turned and looked over her shoulder. "Our liege lord pays a call on us," she said with a soft giggle.

"The guy from work, the one who--?"

"Yeah, come out here," she said.

A few moments later, a tall, athletically-built Lapyn came up behind her and put an arm around her shoulder. "So you're the one who got us out? Thanks, bro," he said, offering me his hand. I took it and he gave a firm shake. "I'm Chris. Jenna and I were supposed to get married in two months." He let out a soft scoff. "Guess we'll need to rework those plans a bit..."

That was just a bit much for me. "Wait, Jenna... sorry, but I gotta ask. You're engaged to a Lapyn, and you wear a headband with ears on it?" I looked over at Chris. "Isn't that supposed to be, like, super insensitive?"

She laughed; he just rolled his eyes. "Maybe about 4, 5 percent of us think that way. They're not right, just really loud, so the folks on the news eat it up. The rest of us couldn't care either way, or we think it's cool." The soft, affectionate caress he gave her cheek at those words left little doubt which group he was in.

Huh. His rabbit ears were brown-furred on the outside, pink on the inside. Just like the ones on Jenna's headband.

Jenna gave him a fond smile. "It was actually his idea. I was kinda nervous about it at first, but I like it now. Shows I care more about what he thinks about me than what anyone else thinks, you know?" She looked back at me. "So, there's still work?"

...whatever. "Well, I hope you weren't thinking this was gonna be a vacation?"

"No, not really, but... the office is gone, so...?"

I nodded. "This isn't really for Dyralight. It's for us, for the whole community. You see — and please don't go spreading this around, we don't want to freak people out — but we're low on food. Critically low. We had plans for stocking up, they didn't work, the goblin invasion caught everyone by surprise. There's game in the forest, but we need more than just meat to live on. You're the first person I thought of."

Chris nodded at those words. "Sounds serious. Well, you didn't have to take us in, save our lives, but you did. We'd be happy to help out."

"We?"

Jenna nodded. "Sure! Two druids are better than one, right?"

"Wait, you're an actual druid? You both are? I thought you were a wizard who just specialized in plants and stuff."

She shrugged. "The old traditions aren't as strong as they once were, but there are still some of us who keep them alive. So you've got two problems here: growing crops for long-term survival, and keeping fed in the short term for long enough to make the first harvest."

"Pretty much. You think you could help with those?"

Chris just grinned at me. "Bro, we're in the middle of a forest! Life-giving trees and plants for miles around. Don't worry, your settlement's in good hands."

"For a while, at least," Jenna said a bit more soberly. "We can't do everything for everyone forever. But we can keep this place out of crisis territory long enough to get your feet under you."

"Thanks, that's really all I need. One crisis at a time and all that," I said. I shook Chris's hand again, then Jenna's. "You two just took a big load off my shoulders!" I gave them the names of the council members to coordinate with, and headed off.

What a strange couple, I couldn't help but think.

Says the guy dating a succubus with an intimacy phobia, the snarky part of my brain retorted.

True enough, but... actual druids living here? Working with us? A corporate research job is kind of the last place you'd expect to see one, right?

Then again, the "standard" mental image I had of druids living in communes far from civilization and eschewing the common employment model was mostly drawing on imagery from back when my grandparents were my age. Maybe they just weren't like that anymore?

Wow, wouldn't that be ironic, if that had basically been abandoned, and now here the two of them were, living in what could potentially be described as a type of commune far from civilization!

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Anyway, hopefully they'd be able to deal with the food problems, for the moment at least, because I sure had no idea how to! And wasn't that what leaders are supposed to do? Delegate work to the people who had the right skills for it?

Meanwhile, I should probably go find Joanna.

* * *

You're an accountant now. Pah. It had been days, but for whatever reason the comment still rankled. All my life, Dad had been my rock, someone I could look up to, The Man Who Had The Answers. And now I was learning that the answers he had didn't seem to line up with the teachings of the Path. That had shaken me.

But the more I thought about it, the more I wondered why. It's not like there was anything wrong with having a secular occupation. We're taught that those not actively on Meþas' errand were to "work for their own sustainment" and not be a burden upon the congregation by relying on them to support us. Dad had come home, become a smith, met Mom and settled down, and soon enough I came along and then my brothers after me.

All my life, I'd wanted to grow up to be like him. But when he suggested that I should do basically the same thing he had done, why had I reacted so strongly?

As I thought about it, I started to realize that what really hurt was the way he had tried to hide my heritage from me. It was like... like he was comfortable with the Path, and with his role as a paladin of Meþas, as long as all of "that stuff" stayed in its lane, so to speak, and didn't leak into his day-to-day life. And he'd put me and my brothers in the day-to-day life category.

I never knew Grandma Becky particularly well. She lived nearby, but Dad didn't take us to visit her very often. I sort of knew about her, but she died when I was still little, well before I ever consecrated myself in Meþas' service and began learning to use divine magic. So by that measure, I shouldn't be annoyed that she'd never trained me. But at the same time... prophecy. If she had been able to spend some of that time with me, wouldn't she have had some sort of Guidance for me that would help me be a bit better-prepared?

Because in the end, as a matter of simple, objective fact, Dad had been wrong about thinking he could keep his day-to-day life separate from the church. It was set up specifically to prepare for the time we were living through right now. Fat lot of good my accounting skills were going to do anyone in the foreseeable future; what we needed right now were powerful warriors, strengthened by faith.

Did Dad even count anymore? And if not, then how could I know that I truly count, when I had spent so much of my life trying to emulate him? As he raised me, had he been filling my mind with ideas that could weaken my faith without me realizing it? Any other time, any normal time, I would have dismissed the idea as absurd, but these were hardly normal times!

As much as I dreaded it, there was really only one thing I could do to set my mind at peace on this matter. I was going to have to talk with him about it.

Sometime. When things weren't so immediate-life-and-death-urgent.

If such a time ever came to us again.

* * *

All told, I suppose this was the best outcome we could have hoped for. Yes, many will die and many more will suffer, but nothing was ever going to prevent that.

My engineers speak of leverage. The longer the lever, the more easily it can be used to move a large mass with a small amount of force; the mathematics that describe the relationship are beautiful in their simplicity and elegance.

Sadly, nations are truly large masses indeed. Our long lever was time, and for decades my brethren had warned that more must be done to disrupt the nether goblins and reinforce the dwarves of the Buffer States, but as the years went by and the rulers paid more heed to the desires of mortal kith than to the wisdom of those of us who had borne witness to the rise and fall of entire civilizations, we saw them file down the great lever shorter, ever shorter. In the end, the strength they had was insufficient to resist the movements being forced upon them. That much was inevitable after so much time spent ignoring that which was right in front of them all along.

The Empire chose this ruin, the foreseeable consequence of decades of ill-advised actions. But from that inevitable baseline, with the small lever that remained I was able to work out what I believe to be one of the better possible results.

From what I have gathered from reports by various subordinates, at least seventy percent of my employees across the Empire were still alive and safe, for the moment at least. My carefully cultivated dungeoneering teams, weak though they may be in the broader scheme of things, were intact and safe, ready to be used in the opportune moment. The most concerning of all, the loose ballista who might bring ruin upon everything, was here with me under my personal supervision. And this tainted Empire was soon to fall, ripe for replacement by a new, stronger state as soon as the goblin issue was dealt with.

I would let them mourn their losses. It is their custom and their right. But in the end, this would all prove nothing but a temporary setback.

* * *

I awoke laying on the ground, a sleeping bag beneath me and nearly a dozen little ones piled on top of me and each other in one big pile of adorable snuggles. I'd sent away everyone of post-pubescent age after the fire burned down, and most of the young ones had been picked up by their parents, but there were still a few whose folks just left them in my care for the night.

I didn't mind. It must have been overwhelming, trying to deal with everything, and it felt nice to be able to help out like this and take a bit of the burden off their shoulders.

I carefully shaped some small barriers to lift up the ones directly atop me so I could squirm out from under them, blanketing the area in a minor, soothing sleep spell so they could get plenty of rest as I lowered them to the ground once I got free.

I wasn't the first to awaken in the settlement; it was early but there were apparently some real early risers among us. I could already smell breakfast being cooked in one of the nearby halls, so I headed over to see if they could prepare enough for everyone.

Once I had food on the way, I headed back and started rousing the kids. "Hey everyone, it's almost time for breakfast. Everybody up!"

"Awww, but I'm still sleepy, Sister Cooper," one of the older boys said. "Can't we sleep in just a bit?"

That was going to take some getting used to. I knew this is primarily a Meþasite community, and they called each other Brother and Sister. It was nice to be addressed as someone who fits in, but at the same time, I didn't have the heart to tell the kids I wasn't really one of them. I worship a god they probably think is scary; he doesn't share the Builder's alignment nor his ideas about communal worship. And I don't have any interest in changing that.

But it was so nice to feel like I belong here, even if it's not truly real.

It took some doing, but I got them rounded up and herded off to the hall for breakfast eventually. That was where Brad found me, as we were finishing up.

"Hi Joanna, do you have a sec?"

I nodded to him. "Wait here," I told the kids. "I need to talk with Br... Brother Webb for a moment." We walked over to a corner, away from small ears.

"Brother Webb?" Brad asked me with a hint of amusement in his tone.

"That's how everyone refers to each other around here, right? Those kids are calling me 'Sister Cooper.' I dunno if they even realize I'm not Meþasite."

"Well, I came to apologize, I feel terrible leaving you in the car like that. But I really have to ask..." He gestured at the children. "How did this happen? And that singing and hugging thing you had going on last night?"

I smiled and pulled him into a quick hug. "Apology accepted. I know you had the weight of the whole... whatever-this-is on your shoulders. As for the kids, you told Kayla to see to morale around here. And she tracked me down and was all like 'I'm not good with kids so they're your responsibility now. Give out a bunch of hugs or whatever.' So I did. And things snowballed from there. And... I kinda like it."

Brad scowled a little at the description. "You sure? I can talk to Kayla about that if this made you uncomfortable."

"No, seriously, I'm fine with it. I wasn't at first, but... turns out she's got good instincts for people. But the thing that gets me... what's with you running this place?"

"I'm really not," he said, looking down at his shoes.

"Gentleman Webb?"

Brad sighed. "Long story. My role here really amounts to nothing more than 'the one who had the money to buy the land,' and even that much is complicated. I'll tell you later, when we've got some time. For all intents and purposes, the ones actually in charge are the church leaders and Dyralist. My title and authority are purely nominal at this point, backed by the fiat of an Empire that's currently falling apart around us."

I just gave him my best grin. "Hey, hey now, none of that. I'm dating an actual noble, don't you dare ruin that for me," I teased.

He snickered and played along. "Just as long as you don't go dressing up as some silly princess with a big floofy pink gown or whatever."

"Nah. Pink's never really been my style. Clashes with my skin tone." I let that hang for a second, then said, "I think I'll get a big floofy green princess gown. And wear it to our next date!"

Brad facepalmed.

"I do hope we can somehow find time for more dates, though. I'm serious about that much at least."

He nodded. "Me too. I do like you, Joanna, and I'll try to work some bits and pieces of normal into all the crazy where I can. Right now though, day 1, day 2, whatever we call today, we're kind of on a big 'survive and get basic needs met' kick. But that shouldn't last too much longer. Oh hey, speaking of which, I'm told you never got a house. You really need to soon, before they're all taken."

I smiled at him, taking one of his hands between mine and squeezing lightly. "Thanks. I'll make sure to take care of that sometime today."

"All right." He hesitated, like he had something else to say, but didn't come out with it.

"What's up, Brad?" I asked him.

"Just wondering. Like you said, you're not of our faith. The part I don't actually know is, how does the whole Daheþ-worship thing work? You gonna be OK out here with no services or whatever?"

"That's so sweet that you thought of that for me! But yeah, Daheþites don't really do the whole 'church' thing. Our worship is individual rather than congregation-based. We have clerics who offer counsel and guidance at various points, but it's not something I'll likely have a need for in the immediate future."

"All right, that's good to hear."

I hugged him again. "Go. I can tell you're feeling a bit overwhelmed and you've got a lot on your plate. And I've got kids to see to. Go take care of stuff."

He smiled. A really nice smile that said I actually mean something to him. "Thanks." And he walked off.

Wow, I would not want to be in his position right now. But at the same time, I'm kinda glad to be with him. Is that weird?