The tables here were short, Kinler quickly realized. So short, in fact, that not even the most miniature of chairs or stools could seat Kinler comfortably. But, he didn’t mind sitting on the floor, having his knees snug under the table.

He sipped tea from a solid-white ceramic cup, brewed personally by Meru’s wife, who would join them soon. For as much as Meru was reluctant to accept Anemone into his home, he seemed more than willing to be a comfortable host. Perhaps losing to Anemone humbled the man.

Meru sat beside him. His thighs for as beefy as they were also fit underneath the table. He sipped his glass of tea, relaxing to the fact a “devil” was in the same room with him. Not only that, he didn’t even seem that irritated that Anemone was playing with his young daughter, Alenu.

Anemone didn’t feel comfortable once they entered Meru’s home. But the both of them were surprised with how much Alenu seemed to enjoy playing with her. It all started when Alenu handed Anemone one of her teddy bears before taking another stuffed bear and ran around the room, making the bear fly with her imagination, making whoosh sounds with her mouth to imitate the sound. Anemone at first looked curiously at the toy bear she handed to her but eventually mimicked Alenu’s motions. She rested on the ground, extending her arm and creating figure-eights in the air.

Meru wanted to step in; he tried to silence their joy, irritated by his daughter interacting with a “beast.” Kinler coughed, and Meru froze halfway before he slipped from underneath the table. He grunted, sliding back forward, letting Anemone play on.

“You’re not as irrational as I thought you were,” Kinler said, taking another sip of his tea.

“Excuse me?”

“What’s more important to you? Your daughter playing with a beast, or your daughter having fun playing with a beast?”

Meru sighed but didn’t answer Kinler’s question. His hand shook as he angrily lifted his tea to his mouth.

“You haven’t told her? About beasts, have you?”

“It’s a lesson we usually teach later on,” Meru said. “It’s not like our people are worried about telling their children; they should have no reason to interact with them in the first place.”

“They are taken from birth, so I suppose it doesn’t matter when they learn,” Kinler said. He tried his best to understand their culture. He wouldn’t belittle them more than he had to, other than to convince them. Like brooding warriors, pointing out their flaws in a way that pisses them off didn’t do anything other than make them double down. If you poked the bear, you did so gently. Otherwise, you risked a mauling.

If he were going to convince Meru, the best way of doing so wasn’t to prove that Anemone wasn’t a beast but that she was a human, the same as he.

Meru’s wife, Althena, entered the room with a tea kettle and a small, wooden board. Her eyes caught on Alenu, and she wore the most disturbing grimace Kinler had ever seen from a woman. Althena looked down to Meru, giving a look that asked, “Are you seriously letting this happen?”

He sighed, waving for his wife to sit down with them. Althena put the board down then set the kettle on top. Her eyes seemed drawn on Anemone.

“We should do something,” Althena said, snapping her eyes to Meru. “I think it’s time for the talk.”

The talk? Kinler almost laughed. He knew of only one talk parents discussed with their children, and Alenu was far too young for that one.

“Let her be,” Meru said, much to his wife’s displeasure. “She’ll be gone in the morning, and knowing Alenu, she’ll forget about her in a couple of days. She seems trained enough not to do anything against Kinler’s orders.”

“We have morals, Meru,” Althena said. She glanced at Kinler and frowned at him, the reason Anemone was inside her home in the first place. “What would Javias think of this?”

Javias is dead, Kinler almost said. But he bit his tongue. Despite being one of the Seven, the Warrior hadn’t been very popular. Javias had less than a percent of Valorians follow his beliefs. He was radical, even among the Valorians of old. “Does Javias have a book or something I could skim over?”

Althena nodded. She crawled backward, reaching back and pulling a book from a shelf. She came back to the table and handed it over to Kinler. “It’s written by witness, not by Javias himself. But these words are the closest we could ever get to him.”

“Forgive my ignorance of your culture,” Kinler said, flipping through. “I’ve been all over Valoria in my lifetime, but it’s my first time in Dork. Why is he so popular among your people?”

They seemed baffled by the question, both looking at each other for guidance. Eventually, Althena replied first. “Our parents were his followers, as were their parents before them. We grew up believing him, same as our neighbors.”

Javias’ teachings were the only ones that haven’t been reformed somewhere down the line, Kinler thought. Even Betro—the Warrior who taught that world domination was an admirable and desirable thing, an attribute to strength and virtue—had his teachings modernized somewhere down the line.

Still, believing in Warriors who had long since passed was a little too much. Kinler himself believed in Lorgrad’s teachings but wouldn’t go as far as to wear a Square around his neck to represent the faith. What Kinler didn’t understand about the religious in Valoria was their deification of the Warriors. They were soldiers, not gods. There was only one true god out there—the Gem God.

As Kinler flipped through the book, any passage that didn’t have Javias praise his followers had sentences loaded with prejudice.

“You seem troubled by what you are reading,” Althena said. “Are our teachings really so repulsive to you?”

“I would be lying if I said it wasn’t,” Kinler said. “I too have faith, but I’m not built from said faith. The Gem God, to me, embodies all of Gemkind. Green eyes don’t make anyone more a devil than yellow eyes, or blue eyes, or brown. Humans, elves, and Swoles are all very different people, with different cultures and ways of life. We don’t get along all the time, and we often fight each other. Often, our side wishes the other didn’t exist at all.

“But at the end of the day, we are all devoured by worms. And we leave behind the same thing that unites us all. No other animals have a connection quite like we do with the elves and the swoles. For when we die, we die leaving behind a part of our soul.” Kinler gestured to the Soulgem of his sheathed sword. “This Soulgem powers a Soulsmithed sword. It’s what we humans specialize in. But remove this Soulgem from this hilt you can use it to concoct a potion using Gemchemy like the swoles or create fire and magic like the elves.”

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Althena didn’t seem convinced. She poured herself a drink of tea before extending the kettle to refill Meru and Kinler’s glass. After her first sip, she spoke. “You side with beasts, but with what you just said, it sounds like you’re an elf lover too.”

“Well, some elves I find, believe it or not, are attractive creatures. So, I suppose that assessment is fair. I love elves, same as I love humans. I’m not too fond of swoles, however. Sexually, anyway. I’m a hugger, and I’m afraid once I do, a swole’ll hug me back and snap me in half.”

They laughed. Enforcing his beliefs with a bit of humor at the end kept them from freaking out over the elf part. Usually, he’d receive a grimace for admitting any attraction to elves. Kinler almost forgot the Dork people employed a few swoles. They weren’t slaves, Kinler believed, but it was an odd dynamic to have, hating humans for having green eyes but all the while welcoming to the swoles.

“The point I’m trying to make,” Kinler said. “I disagree with Javias’ prime idea for why you treat those with green eyes as beasts. Because the Gem God embodies us all, so of course, he has human traits, the same as elves. Javias said the green of his eyes was the only defining factor about the ‘Devil’ that is human. But what about the other non-swole body parts? You realize humans and elves are nearly identical structurally except for the ears, right?”

They looked at each other again. They frowned but hadn’t anything to say back.

“You seem to know a lot about our Warrior,” Meru said, skeptical. They didn’t want to be convinced; Kinler was sure of that. He hardly knew if they were even listening to him.

“It’s the first time I hold Javias’ book in my hand,” Kinler said. “But I’ve read some of the others. They had their own thoughts of Javias. Even for as cruel as they were back then, they thought Javias to be crazy. No offense.”

Kinler drank the tea. He felt like the room was heating up, but he realized that they were growing frustrated with how Kinler pushed against their culture.

“Maybe Dork culture will grow on you,” Meru said. “Perhaps if you stay long enough, you’ll start seeing things our way.”

“I know enough already,” Kinler said dismissively. “As I said earlier today, I’ve come into your country very aware of your laws. I’ll listen to you two out of courtesy, but Anemone told me everything I need to know about what your people do.”

“Wait…” Meru said. “She’s…”

“A native here, yes,” Kinler said, pouring himself his third cup of tea. “The government took her from her parents at birth. Taught since the moment she could comprehend speech that she was a monster and that no one had or ever will love her. Did you wonder earlier how she managed to beat you? Well, your people forced her to fight, to punch and claw at others who shared her eyes.”

Althena gasped. She snapped her head to Meru with utter shock across her face. “She beat you?”

Oh, Kinler thought, amused. You didn’t tell her…

“She should be locked up in a cage!” Althena shouted bitterly. Perhaps too loud, as both Anemone and Alenu heard, pausing what they were doing. Anemone sulked her head down. Althena caught her daughter’s eyes and received a saddened expression, almost like she snapped at her rather than Anemone.

“I’m sorry,” Althena said, extending her arms. Alenu ran to her, embracing her. A slight, well-tempered whimper that settled down quickly to a mother’s comfort. “I didn’t mean you.”

After a moment, wiping away her tears, Alenu returned to Anemone, giving her her other teddy bear. It almost looked like Alenu wanted to cheer Anemone up. With one in each, the way she made them fly made it look like they were fighting birds. They clashed together, and Kinler heard her impression of an explosion. Alenu dropped to the floor laughing. Anemone smiled at the young kid, enjoying their play.

Eventually, Alenu walked to the bookshelf behind Althena, taking from the bottom shelf where the kid books were. She brought it over to Anemone, sat next to her, shoulder to shoulder, and started reading with her.

“What’s interesting is, Anemone doesn’t even hate your people for what they’ve done to her,” Kinler said.

Althena frowned back at him. “She acts so young,” she said softly. Her tone flipped completely after her daughter misinterpreted her shout.

“She’s adjusting to a normal life,” Kinler said. “She’s practically an adult but has little time left to live through the childhood she never properly had.”

“How did she escape the camps?” Meru asked. “We heard they keep them out of society.”

“You don’t know?” Kinler asked. Though, he wasn’t surprised they didn’t know, thinking about how the knowledge would change the public perception of what was going on to these kids. “They raise them to age Seventeen, then sell them to other countries.”

“Sell them?” Althena asked. “What do you mean? Sell them for what? They are supposed to be beasts…”

Kinler almost smiled but stopped himself. He found possibly the best point he could make to maybe change their minds. But at that point, there was what was wrong with humanity. “They raise them to age seventeen. By then, they already have eight or nine years of hand-to-hand fighting practice. The men get sold to be bodyguards for noblemen across Valoria. The women, well, they don’t make great bodyguards. So, they get sold to brothels. That way, if or when they get assaulted, they can at the least, defend themselves.”

Their eyes widened, looking terrified. In their minds, Kinler figured they thought of their daughter. They considered what would happen if Alenu had been born with green eyes, taken from birth, and then trained to be a prostitute. Anemone was one of the lucky ones. If she weren’t so desperate to be Worthy, she would have had the same fate as many others.

It was a truth she didn’t know, as they never informed her where the new grown adults went after leaving the beast camp. It was a crass reality. It made Kinler uncomfortable thinking about it, let alone discussing it. But that was why he was here. And that was why he would end it once and for all.

“That’s awful,” Althena said. They were suddenly conflicted, suddenly now worrying about Anemone rather than chastising her. Kinler had finally broken through to them. “You can’t be serious.”

Kinler nodded. He was dead serious. Before Ranun, there were some beasts in Soucrest, men and women.

“Is she yours?” Meru said. He had a scary look on his face, almost wrathful as he waited for Kinler to speak.

“No,” Kinler said. “She is her own. Always has been, fortunately.”

Unsettled, they drank their tea to calm down. They were good people but misguided. There was no fault in being wrong when you’d lived your entire life believing a lie told on by others, even their parents.

“I come here, spreading heresy I call truth,” Kinler said, breaking the silence. “She doesn’t hate your country for what they’ve done. She’s the type of person who is quick to forgive. But I’m not. I will change this country for not only her sake but every victim of Javias.”

Not a word came from them. Their eyes looked downward like their chins were tied down by sandbags, keeping them from looking Kinler in the eyes as he proclaimed what he would do. But, in what felt like a great victory, Meru nodded. Althena hadn’t but looked on the verge of tears.

Perhaps Kinler had gone too far in his claim. His words should be encouraging, but the couple appeared almost abused by what he said. He hadn’t wanted to make them uncomfortable, but the truth often was.

“Excuse me,” a voice whispered in Kinler’s left ear. He hadn’t noticed that Anemone crawled up to him. She brought an open book, her fingers saving a page.

“Yes?”

“I… need help, pronouncing a word,” Anemone said.

She had learned to be somewhat proficient at reading, but she struggled here and there with tricky words, apparently. Kinler hadn’t expected anything too hard to pronounce from a children’s book, though, so he took it, setting it down on the table, and scanned the page.

Anemone pointed to a word, right under an image of a purple flower.

Emotions rang from Anemone’s face as she waited for an answer. Her hand shook, and her index finger twisted back and forth on the page. Kinler knew right away that she had an idea of what the word said but needed the confirmation. Lorgrad’s Fire.

“’Anemone,’” Kinler said. He felt sick saying it, seeing her innocence bloom to delight. “It says anemone.”

Anemone gaped, pulling the book back to herself. She started mouthing off the letters. “A n e m o n e. A-nem-on-e.” She smiled wide, looking up to Kinler. It all but forced Kinler to smile back. “Anemone!”

“That’s right,” Kinler said.

Anemone shivered but crawled back to the wall. Kinler heard the whispers of her explaining to Alenu that the word on the page was her very name.

“She… didn’t know how to spell her own name?” Meru asked.

“She did,” Kinler said. “She just couldn’t believe it.”