After they'd shared a few beers, Mark's wife Alice had returned from visiting one of her friends in the village. She smiled as she spotted Samba was there.

"Hello, Samba," she said in a halting accent. Samba's eyes widened as he looked between Mark and Alice.

"I didn't realize you could speak my language!"

Alice immediately started waving him off and both she and Mark were laughing. She switched to the human tongue which Samba knew a little of, but wasn't anywhere close to fluent.

"I'm still learning," she said. "It's a fun !"

"It good," Samba said, his accent in human even worse than theirs, but no one cared. Alice was just as kind and accepting as Mark. Maybe not to the point that she'd have tried to befriend a monster, but enough that she had no problem walking Mark's well worn path.

Not all the humans felt the same way, but more in Wavecrest than he would have expected tolerated him. Mark's opinion was just that well respected by the people of Wavecrest.

"Thank you for my husband!," Alice said, "Rae and I are going to bed."

Hearing this Rae put down her sewing project onto the table, slid out of the chair, and gave Samba a hug. "Good night, Mr. Samba!"

Samba hugged her back and wished silently that his own children had stayed small a little longer, but monsters grew way too fast to enjoy their childhood to the same extent as Rae would - assuming they could survive the war.

She hopped over to her father. "Good night, daddy!"

"Good night, "

Alice smiled at both of them and then started directing Rae to get ready for bed. As they were heading to the bedroom, Samba stood up as well.

"I guess that's my cue," he said, speaking in the monster language again and Mark got up to give him a hug before he left. As he was about to leave back towards their people, he was reminded of their conversation from earlier. "Mark, I won't like it, but I'll fight with you. I promise."

"It was selfish of me to ask you to give up your dream of peace, but maybe you can have it again. Thank you for helping protect my people."

They swapped a few more goodbyes as was custom to leaving in Wavecrest before Samba made his way out of the Wavecrest gates and moving through all of the rough built monster houses. The Cave goblins were still cleaning them up, but they didn't have the same quality as those of the human settlement.

He arrived back at the main hall and since it was late, the handful of monsters still there were asleep. Samba made his way back to where he and Tala stayed. She was still awake and writing in a small book. When he walked in, she put it down.

"You know, the nights are way too quiet now that the boys are grown."

"Yeah, I miss when they used to snuggle me while they slept and Greave would tell me all about something chaotic that he'd done for the day."

There wasn't much preamble to sleep for them. They both laid down on their shared cot and snuggled up next to eachother to hold hands as though they were sleeping in the water. It was peaceful.

"My sweetest river stone?"

"Yes, Samba?"she asked but her eyes remained closed.

"Mark and I discussed the Demon Empire today and... I told him we'd fight with him."

Realizing that this wasn't some simple conversation, she opened her eyes and turned back to him. "And what made you decide that?"

Samba squirmed a little bit. "Well, Mark made some good points about the demons continuing to spread and how all of us would be killed or enslaved..."

"But?"

"But I just didn't want him to fight alone. He's my friend and the humans can't flee to the water the same way that we can."

Tala rubbed her paw gently against his cheek. "Please don't take this the wrong way, my love, but there's never been a sword or claw that you wouldn't jump in front of. You would drown yourself if it meant keeping just one clan member safe."

"That's not true!"

"It is. The Spiked Eagles? You stayed in the air to save Kumo. In their base, you got grievously wounded keeping everyone safe. As angry as you are at Gi if you'd been on the mountain that day, you'd have died too."

"I... I don't..."

"You do. That selflessness is one reason that I love you so much, but... Sometimes, I want you to choose to keep yourself safe. Sometimes, it's not always fair for you to put yourself in front of others."

"I'm sorry?"

Tala sighed. "You are, but it still won't change anything. It would be easier to stop an otter from swimming."

Silence held between the two of them and Tala clung to Samba's paws like it was a lifeline. Seeing her like this hurt which honestly made him wonder if she was right. To him, it made sense for him to stand between the rest and danger. He was the strongest, but maybe that wasn't his entire reason.

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Maybe that was the reason that just made him comfortable doing what he would have done anyways. And now he was confused.

"Do you think we shouldn't help Mark?"

Tala sighed again. "No, it's fine. Don't overthink my words, but maybe..." She reopened her eyes and dragged his face around until she made sure she had his full attention. "I'm going to say something and you can't get mad at me, okay?"

She was going to say something worse than what she just said? "I could never be mad at you."

"That's a different problem, but I won't get into it now." She held him firm and pinned him with her stare. "A lot of the reason that you're still angry with Gi is because he let Wane die. You weren't there to protect him and you hold Gi to the same impossible standard that you hold yourself."

Samba wasn't sure what he thought she'd say, but it wasn't that. He started to blubber. "T-thats not it! He killed Children! He was so flippant with all the clan's lives."

"Was he? Or did he just have to make hard choices as the leader of a clan of monsters?"

"Hard choices? Tala, you must not be hearing me. He killed Children."

"And that is horrific and if you never want to forgive him, I'll understand, but look at it from his perspective. You remember the Iron Ferrets?"

"I mean obviously we weren't around then but-"

"After Gi, Tiria, and Elizabeth defeated their clan, Gi had Soul Sickness from being healed by the Angelic Mice. He was returning to the Lake when he got ambushed by some of the remaining Iron Ferrets. The only reason that the clan survived those remnants was because he managed to bluff his way through."

"So?"

"So the next time he fought with a clan and after he was kidnapped and tortured, he eliminated the potential future threat."

"By killing Children."

"I'm not asking you to forgive him. If you want to hate him, then hate him with a full understanding of why he did what he did. Most importantly if you want to continue making the decision to sacrifice yourself, make sure you have a full understanding of what you're doing too."

"What I'm doing? I'm not doing anything like he-"

"You're not just putting Samba the Templar at risk when you leap into danger. You're also putting Samba the Husband and Samba the Father at risk. No child should grow up without their father."

That shut Samba up. He hadn't thought about it like that. In fact most times when he went to protect people, he didn't think about himself at all. Tala... made a good point as she often did. What really made her words hurt is that she seemed to think in some sick way that he and Gi were similar.

"I still hate him," Samba grumbled.

"That's fine," Tala said again. "This is the last thing I'll say though. If he could have saved Wane, he would have. For all your problems with Gi, you know that. So if you're going to hate him, hate him for who he was."

Tala was really smart. Samba knew that. He and Kumo had always been the meatheads of the Classers so he couldn't just immediately throw away what she said, but... Was he being too harsh on Gi? No reason could make killing Children acceptable, but could it make it understandable?

Samba didn't know and he lay awake the rest of the night thinking about it.

The next few days passed not much differently than all those before. Samba hung out with Mark and helped their people out in whatever way that he could.

Several of the human refugees had been farmers and they'd left with a large amount of seeds. The rocky coast wasn't the best area to farm but a combination of breaking the local ground and mixing it with dirt from the cleared forest slowly cleared a patch for them.

For the war, they needed a steady stream of information. Samba and Mark hired Elizabeth again and she left with a handful of the human hunters. The hunters seemed particularly unhappy that they'd need to camp in the woods with the undead looking monster.

On the plus side, at least Elizabeth could communicate with them.

Experience was lacking for most of the humans and for the fresh Adolescents that had come to adulthood during the winter. With the Monster Surge, there were fresh enemies constantly around Wavecrest, but it wasn't enough to bring anyone to a level of a classer.

The humans method of growth was also a bit strange. They didn't get Soul Orbs like the monsters did. Killing monsters granted them experience and they would need to cultivate to funnel that experience into improvements.

It was a slower process, but it also worked on their Knot simultaneously and gave them more direction in how they could grow instead of the more chaotic way that monsters did.

Their days continued like that for a little over a week before Elizabeth returned again with news. He and Mark found themselves in her small cabin surrounded by the rest of her clan as she dully gave her report.

"Fighting between the Veridia Empire and the Demon Empire resumed with the spring melt. The demons have split their forces to pressure what I assume are key targets of Veridia. The human forces are moving to respond, but their armies just aren't as big."

"Will they hold?"

"It's hard to say. I'm not an expert on battle at the scale of a war. The Veridians should have the defensive advantage as most of their larger cities either have a formidable wall or are built around a castle, but the demons seem very regimented for a monster army."

Mark looked nervous and Samba understood his unspoken concern. If they waited for Veridia to fall, they would have no hope of forcing back the demon empire, but how could they insert their small force into this war in any meaningful way?

"Were the hunters able to find anything about Frosthelm?" Mark asked.

Elizabeth shook her head. "The town they went in didn't know anything. Frosthelm could have fallen immediately, it could still be embroiled in war, or maybe they even found some way to keep the demons at bay. We just don't know."

"Surely, these demons aren't strong enough to fight off two empires at the same time... right?"

Elizabeth shrugged. "In our version of this continent, they had long ago subdued the whole thing. It wouldn't surprise me if they were."

With that depressing information, he and Mark left, heading back to Wavecrest proper. In the village square, dozens of humans were crosslegged and meditating. Mark went to a few of them, offering advice as these humans cultivated. Most of the farmers probably hadn't cultivated in their entire life before their escape from the approaching demon army.

Mark returned and the two of them continued towards his house to plan what they could possibly hope to do against the demon empire.

"Hey Mark," Samba said, "Were you a knight or something for Veridia?"

Mark laughed. "What? No. What makes you ask that?"

"You're just so much stronger than the rest of the people here and you live in a small coastal village. I was trying to figure out why."

"It's not so mysterious," Mark said as they arrived back at his house. "About the time of the Monster Surge, something about cultivating just clicked for me. Even doing it without fighting provided me with some real gains, but with the sudden rise of monsters? I got strong extraordinarily fast. If I'm being honest, it's the only reason our town survived against the spawning monsters."

They sat at the table where Mark had drawn the roughest of maps for them to use as their "war room." Mark chucked and muttered under his breath. "A knight! A soldier maybe but a knight?" He laughed again, but Samba was more focused on his story.

"That's why everyone respects you so much!"

He smiled. "I'd like to believe it's my friendly demeanor, but yes, I'm sure you're right. Most towns and cities in Veridia elect mayors, but we actually have an Elder in charge similar to towns in Frosthelm. Elder Terrance still does much of the day-to-day work of running Wavecrest, but he's left our defense entirely in my hands."

Samba nodded. "Elder Terrance seems like a wise leader."

Mark snorted. "Flatterer. You're not getting any extra helpings for lunch. Now, let's focus up and start talking about how we can help Veridia win this war."