--- Rania ---

Rania had never had a professional mission briefing before, and she was excited about it. Atrog had even relocated the group to a special table in a corner that was warded against eavesdroppers. That made it obvious how super serious and professional he was, so Rania had put on her game face and was giving him her undivided attention. To an outside observer, this was completely indistinguishable from her usual distracted self.

They were having dinner while they talked. The local specialty was a highly nutritious fungus that was grown in underground farms. In Rania's opinion it looked pretty disgusting. However, the locals had found a way to inject it with magic in a way that made it unexpectedly tasty. Balron was sitting across from Rania, and his familiar Whiskers was playing with Aranea. Since the rat familiar was an almost sapient being while Aranea was literally just a spider, this was basically just a mindless diversion to the little spirit.

Familiars were technically spirits, but they were very different from the spirits shamans usually talked to. Normal people could interact with them without difficulty. Rania was also happy to see that Pebble got along well with Whiskers, even though the difference in intelligence between the two was even greater than that between Whiskers and Aranea. Rania was pretty sure that Pebble was the smartest member of their team, although it was not a great comparison since spirits had very different thought patterns from humanoids. She was always a bit worried to introduce Pebble to other spirits. He sometimes had a very crude sense of humor. Some of his jokes were so lewd that Galanys must never hear of them, or she might take them as inspiration.

"Let me quickly summarize the situation, just in case any of you did not read the mission description in full." Atrog began. His attention was fully focused on Rania as he said that, but the elf was oblivious to it. Of course she had read the mission description. Skipping it would be like reading an adventure novel without first looking at the summary on the back of the book. Who would ever do that?

"The town of Bells End has recently seen a significant increase in monster activity." Atrog started.

He put a map on the table and started marking things as he talked. "It is a small but old town with a predominantly elven population. They have a stable economy and an active militia that is able to protect them from the usual dangers. Recently however they have been attacked by creatures from the Realms Below."

The paladin pulled out several sheets of papers containing pictures and descriptions of rare and dangerous monstrosities that live underground. This information was obscure for civilians, but the military naturally kept extensive records on rare monsters and had no issues sharing the information with paladins. Rania did not look at them but continued to stare at the map. Why would she? She had already read up on every single weird and creepy crawling thing an adventurer could possibly encounter. It was exciting reading material. Almost as much fun as her novels.

She had even asked some of her acquaintances for advice, and they had taught her things that weren't in the books. So when she heard the names of the monsters, she knew there was nothing new for her in those pamphlets and continued looking at the map instead. Atrog pushed the papers towards her and seemed a bit frustrated for some reason. When he noticed that she would not read them, he continued talking.

"Without any specialists, it is obviously impossible for their guards to do anything but fight back whenever a tunnel opens, and to close it again afterwards. Going into the Realms Below without proper training would be suicide. So they reached out to House Darklight. As the largest still active noble house that belongs to the Black Legion, dealing with the spawn of the Realms Below is their responsibility."

Rania had very little idea of what any of these political things meant. But they sounded important so she had already resolved a few days ago to read up on them. Unfortunately she then got distracted by the official Adventuring test that she only finished today. That had obviously been much more important. She would ask Galanys about these things later.

"House Darklight performed some investigations, and came to a very unfortunate conclusion." Atrog continued. "As you can see here on the map, Bells End is close to the containment zone centered on the ruins of Greenwatch. This building right here," he pointed at the very edge of the city, but still within the containment area, "used to be a research facility during the Great War. It belonged to House Erundir, and apparently they were conducting experiments with biomancy and enchantments in order to weaponize the wildlife of the Realms Below. It is very likely the cause for the sudden attacks."

"Unfortunately, it is unknown why this is only now causing problems. Due to the lack of information, House Darklight and House Erundir are uncertain on who has jurisdiction here, but they recognize that Bells End can hardly be asked to wait while they figure it out. That's why they hired us to investigate the place."

"Our objective is to scout the area, enter the facility, and determine if anything in it could be the cause of the problem. I did manage to talk them into authorization to burn the place down if necessary, but they were very adamant that this should be a last resort. I am inclined to agree with them. Even if we hardly need more monsters running around, House Erundir is not in charge of medicine for nothing. If we are lucky, we may find knowledge that ends up saving lives, in addition to putting a stop to the attacks."

That statement earned a nod of approval from Balron. The old professor would probably not have liked a "burn first, ask questions never" approach.

"Before we make any plans, it would be helpful to take stock of our abilities and make sure that our newest member fits in effectively." Atrog continued, looking at Balron.

"As the only one of us who knows how to wear heavy armor effectively, I fight at the front and try to draw as much attention to myself as possible."

"Rania is fast and effective with her bow, so I usually fight defensively and try to make sure that she has a clean shot. Her role is to focus on the offensive and eliminate all hostiles, starting with enemy spellcasters if possible."

"Galanys is proficient with all the standard combat spells recommended for small mixed squads like ours. Unfortunately her mana reserves are not large enough yet for her to provide continuous fire coverage. However, she is very effective at coming up with creative solutions on the fly. I explained what she did to those demons earlier today, after all. Her quick thinking made the fight much easier."

"Balron mentioned that he does not trust himself to have the right reflexes anymore, but he obviously should have far more mana than Galanys does. I would therefore recommend that Balron focuses on providing reliable and continuous spell support, while Galanys takes on a reserve role. This will conserve her mana and free up her attention so she can more easily spot the right circumstance to intervene to the best effect. Since Balron will mostly be casting basic spells, there is little risk that an unexpected mishap ends catastrophically, and it should allow him to ease back into the adventuring life slowly."

There were nods all around.

"I agree with this plan." Balron said. "I would just add that I can take on a role at the frontline as well. I am an expert at defensive spells, and do not need to concentrate much to maintain effective barriers. It will be much easier to keep the pressure off Rania and Galanys that way."

"I agree." added Rania. "He is basically immortal, so that makes a lot of sense to me. He can probably do this better than you, Atrog."

"Haha, I'm not quite that good, but I appreciate the compliment." responded Balron. "Why do you think I am 'basically immortal'?"

"Well, it's like this." Rania began. She noticed Atrog making a strange facial expression, as if he was bracing himself for something. Good that he was taking her opinion so seriously, she thought.

"I learned earlier today that you were an adventurer before, and then you retired. That means there was once a day when you were one week away from retirement. And you survived that week. That must have been really, really hard. In all the stories I have read, no adventurer has ever survived being one week away from retirement. That's like the most dangerous thing ever. If you survived that, then I bet you could totally survive a dragon, too. Maybe even two or three dragons at the same time."

"Right. Rania, how about we have a discussion about Tonos later?" Atrog responded. "I appreciate your contribution, but let's not derail the discussion, please."

Rania did not understand what the god of stories had to do with this. She didn't know much about him. But she did like that Atrog respected her opinion enough to ask for a deeper discussion later, so she nodded happily.

"Alright, if everyone agrees on our basic roles in combat, we can schedule some training exercises for tomorrow. One day of practice is not much, but we are experienced already, so it should be fine. Let's discuss more specific details of our mission now. I have drawn up a preliminary plan for our approach, and I would appreciate all of your inputs on it."

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Rania knew from experience that she would not be able to help improve Atrog's plan. She was pretty great at a lot of things, but being intelligent was not one of them. If intelligence was measured on a scale from one to twenty, where ten was an average person and twenty was a world-class genius, then Rania would probably be around a seven. She was not quite sure why, but she really liked this very specific analogy.

But Rania knew that listening and contributing to the plan was not all there was. There was one other, extremely important thing to do, and as the person least suited to contributing ideas, that responsibility naturally fell to her. Rania was so convinced of this that she did not consider it necessary to say it out loud. It was obvious.

It was the Unspoken Plan Guarantee. There were so many books Rania had read where a plan that was discussed at length failed quite early on. The best plans worked very differently. Somebody would say they had a plan, and then the chapter would end before the reader could find out about it. Plans like those never failed. They always ended up working perfectly. The plan would just work without a hitch, and everything worked out fine, and then the reader would only find out about the plan afterwards.

Obviously it was important to the universe that a plan should not be known. That made it more likely to work.

The seven of them, for Rania naturally included Pebble, Aranea and Whiskers in her count, were sitting at a table with a privacy enchantment, so nobody could listen in. Rania knew that novels were almost never told from the perspective of a familiar, a pet, or a spirit. It was a bit racist in her opinion, but then again she wasn't an author so maybe their point of view would just be hard to write. Atrog, Galanys and Balron were all contributing to the plan. That meant there was only one option:

Rania knew that she would have to stop listening. It was the only way to ensure the plan would be unknown.

It was a great sacrifice, because Rania was really interested in knowing the plan, but she was willing to bear it for the good of the team.

So Rania started to tune out the conversation, and tried to think of something else instead. The topic did not matter, so long as it was distracting enough that she wouldn't accidentally hear a part of the plan.

She decided to reminisce on one of her first important encounters since she had become an adventurer.

She was walking through an unnamed section of the Eastern forests, to meet an experienced Magical Girl that she had heard about, to ask her for advice and help on her adventures. Rania knew that it was important to learn from more experienced people, and if the rumors were true then she was very experienced indeed.

The girl was called Silent Martha. She had even earned the nickname "the Despoiler". Rania knew that a despoiler was somebody who steals things violently. Somebody who plunders and loots. Looting was a time-honored adventurer tradition, so she was certain that Martha was an adventurer who had become so amazing at looting that she earned a title for it. She would make for an amazing mentor.

The girl lived alone in a cottage, and people said that nobody was able to find her if she did not want to be found. Rania soon realized that this was because Silent Martha the Despoiler had asked the spirits for privacy, and they had complied and twisted the woods a little bit. But Rania was very polite and asked the spirits if she could visit anyway, and they agreed to let her. So the woods started being a little bit more euclidean again to allow her to visit the girl.

Silent Martha was about 290 years of age, with a crooked nose and many warts. That was perfectly expected, of course. Rania knew that she was a hag. That's why she called her a girl, after all. 290 years might be old for a mortal, but it was really quite young for a fey. Rania knew plenty of fey who were much older than that, so it was only polite to call her a young girl. It was important to think about these things in order to avoid cultural misunderstandings, Rania knew.

The young Magical Girl was shocked to see Rania at first, and even seemed angry. She did not want to talk to her. But Rania was very polite and performed an old and traditional greeting she knew about. Silent Martha looked surprised to see this, and her attitude changed completely. She was much more open to having a talk now.

So Rania decided to try an even older, even more traditional greeting that she had learned from an old acquaintance. Maybe that would make her even friendlier? Unfortunately that did not work. Instead of becoming friendlier, Martha suddenly became very nervous and on edge. She did become exceedingly polite though, and was suddenly very willing to answer all of Rania's questions quickly and thoroughly. Rania assumed there was some sort of cultural misunderstanding going on there, but she was not quite sure. She planned to ask her acquaintance about this the next time she saw him.

That was not the only cultural misunderstanding between the two, after all. The hag asked Rania why she kept referring to her as a "Magical Girl". Rania realized only then that the young fey was probably a hermit, and wouldn't know about this awesome new genre of adventure novels she liked so much.

So Rania explained what a Magical Girl was, and why she was pretty sure that hags were Magical Girls: They were young women. They could magically transform and often dressed exotically. They had familiars. They had magical powers. But most importantly, they could harness the Power of Friendship.

Martha was both intrigued and confused by the idea. She didn't get it at first. So Rania explained further: Hags gained additional magical powers when they worked together and formed a coven. It was just a part of how they worked. In Rania's opinion, directly getting more power by working together was the purest display of the Power of Friendship that she had ever heard of. Therefore, hags were Magical Girls.

Rania decided to gift Martha one of her favorite Magical Girl novels to show her how awesome they were. The young girl was surprised at the gift. As a fey, she could sense how important the book was to Rania on an emotional level. So she was very grateful for it, and promised to treat the book with dignity and to study it. Rania found that a bit strange because this sort of book was really for entertainment and not for study.

But then again, it was heartwarming that she could win another person over to become a fan of one of her favorite genres. Maybe they would meet again at a fanclub or a convention one day? Rania was looking forward to it, happy that she had made another friend.

Rania also decided to help the Despoiler out with her image. She had heard many mean-spirited things about the hag back in town. About poisoning wells, cursing livestock, and even eating babies. She was sure that those were evil rumors as well. But as it turned out, many of those rumors were true, and Martha plainly admitted to them.

Rania was shocked. Eating babies was something that only the most evil of Bad Guys did, and Rania said as much to the young fey. She told her that she was very disappointed in her. Rania was glad to see that Martha seemed to take her criticism to heart, as her expression became pale at the rebuke, and her behavior even more nervous. Rania was glad to see that Martha could so easily be shown the error of her ways. Maybe there was good in her after all?

Rania explained that while poisoning wells and cursing livestock was bad, there might be a way for her to keep doing that. This way Martha could become a Good Guy without having to give up on important parts of her cultural heritage, like curses and poisons. The secret was that she could simply focus her curses and poisons on Bad Guys.

That way, she would be helping society, and nobody would get mad at her. She suggested going to the adventuring bureau to find out what Bad Guys were in the area. They would even pay her for it, and she could use the money to buy more ingredients for curses and poisons. It was sort of like the circle of life, only it was powered by capitalism instead of biology.

The much bigger problem was the part about eating babies. While Rania appreciated that fey had very different cultural norms, she could not see a way to make that acceptable. If there were Evil babies, then maybe she could eat only those. But Rania did not know how to find out if a baby was Evil or not. They didn't usually do enough things to have a moral alignment at all.

So there was only one alternative: So long as the hag lived in the material realm, she would just have to change that part of her culture. No more eating babies. Maybe she could try tofu instead?

Rania knew that converting a hag to vegetarianism was a hard sell, so she was really happy to see that Martha visibly took her lecture to heart. She nervously wrote down all of her comments, and promised to do better. It was so nice to see a person who was willing to abandon her evil ways and turn to the side of good, Rania thought.

In the end, Rania spent most of her time discussing these things with Martha, and did not end up learning much about looting from her at all. It was a pity, she had come all the way here and then didn't get what she came for.

Rania knew that overstaying your welcome and not leaving at the right time was very rude among fey, so she accepted the loss and went on her way. But before she could leave, the Despoiler presented her with a parting gift, as part of the repayment for her book: It was an unmarked potion bottle.

Rania thought the bottle looked really cool. It had so many strange things floating inside. Martha started to explain about it, but Rania knew about the importance of the Unspoken Plan Guarantee even then. So she didn't listen. To this day, Rania had no idea what was in the bottle, but there was no doubt in her mind that it would be very important one day, and would possibly save them all from certain defeat.

Even though she did not learn the lessons she had come for, Rania still counted the day as a win. She had converted an evil person to the side of good. She had introduced another fan to one of her favorite genres. She had gained a cool mystery potion. And finally, she had learned a greater appreciation for multiculturalism and ethics.

It was an important lesson, because Rania knew that spirits were not great at ethics, and she needed to find a more reliable way to learn about it.

That was part of the reason why she was so happy to be adventuring with Atrog and Galanys now. Atrog was very nice, and she could rely on him for ethical guidance. He did say that she should ask him first before following Galanys' advice on ethics, so that was a bit disappointing. She wondered if Balron would be ethical as well? He was very old and wise, so hopefully yes? But he was also immortal, and being immortal was not the best sign for being good at ethics, in her experience.

Rania hoped that Martha would take her advice to heart. She also wished her success in finding other Magical Girls and founding a coven together. She resolved to visit to check up on her at some point in the future.

With that, she stopped reminiscing and returned her attention back to the present.

"...so it looks like we are clear on everything then." Atrog said. Rania was quite happy about her perfect timing when she heard that.

"Just to reiterate:" he continued. "It is absolutely crucial that we all remember how to recognize the presence of Mind Warpers, and what to do when we notice them. For obvious reasons, we will not have the opportunity to make new plans after they have started acting, so make sure to practice the scenario and the contingencies we talked about in your head over and over again until it has become instinctual."

The others gave general agreement to that. It was very important that everyone knew exactly what to do if this specific situation came up.

Rania was disappointed that she did not know what to do, but that was the cost of the Unspoken Plan Guarantee. Her sacrifice would ensure the party's success. She knew this for a certainty.