Bang, bang, bang.

Blake awoke to pounding. "What the hell?" he said.

It was eight in the morning. Why would someone be coming to them at the inn so early? And right off the heels of saving Nash, too. He slid out of bed and into decent clothing.

"What the hell are you banging on our door for?" he said, opening the door.

There was no one there. Then he looked down. A girl was prostrating herself on the floor in front of their room, begging.

"Please! Please, I beg of you, please let my brother go!"

"Who..."

Blake rubbed his eyes.

"You're that witch!" he said.

"Please! I'll do anything, anything at all! Just give Nash back, I'll do anything!"

Riley yawned behind Blake, walking over to what was going on, still half-asleep. Sniff sniff, she went.

"Wait, hold one," Blake said. "Brother?"

"Yes, please, I'm so sorry I hurt you and took your stuff, but Nash is the only family I have left! I thought he was dead!"

"Slow down," Blake said, but Riley interrupted him.

"Ahhh. So that's why you smell so similar, you grew up together!"

"Serious? She's not full of shit? He's actually her brother?"

Riley nodded. "Probably."

"I couldn't lie about something like this! I don't care what you do to me or anyone else, but please, don't hurt Nash any more!"

"Hurt...?"

Blake scratched his head.

Ah.

She'd called him 'drunkard' at the clocktower. She must've seen him at the bar at some point.

"Look, I'm not normally like that. I'm just not used to—"

"Please!"

"You're serious about this, huh. Can I trust you?"

Riley put her hand on his shoulder.

"There's no point continuing to try to protect him if his sister's going to take him in. She'll bring him to Queensland on her own, I'm sure of it."

Sophia nodded. "That's what I intended."

"Wait, I'm a scribe, you don't have to go that far out of your way. The only reason I left the contract on him was to make it harder for those crooks to push him around if he slipped out of my hands before I got him there."

Sophia straightened a little.

"You're a scribe? You were... Why didn't you tell me any of this!"

"You were trying to kill us!"

"Not in all seriousness!"

"Well by the time that was clear, negotiations had already broken down. It was inevitable. Okay? No hard feelings. Just promise me one thing—you're not going to run off on us just yet. I started teaching Nash how to read and I'll be damned if he slips away before I'm done."

"Is that all you want?" she asked. "I'll do anything. Just sticking around for a few weeks... That's nothing. Of course, I don't want to do anything too crazy, but giving such a meaningless request is making me suspicious again."

Blake nodded. "Okay, so you want more. Fine. Join our party. We could use a capable offensive mage."

"Your... Party?"

She gulped. She wasn't thinking about anything long term. She took him for a greedy, drunk, gambling-addicted hooligan, looking for money and girls and dodging the law. That's what she thought, at least, from what she learned looking into him, and eavesdropping at the pub. Wait. He just said a couple minutes ago that he was going to get Nash to Queensland, too. So when he said 'head to the next country' back at the pub, that meant...

"That's right. Join The Pack and I'll erase his contract. Stay tight-lipped about it, though, I'm not sure what the law here thinks about erasing slave contracts like this, even if I am the... Uh... 'Owner'. Wait, no, I know Riley told me it's illegal. Definitely keep your lips sealed. And no second guessing it, you're the one that wanted more than sticking around for a couple weeks. It's only fair, given the hell you put me through."

Sophia thought for a moment, then kowtowed. "I accept. Please free him."

Blake nodded. "Riley, go wake up Nash."

She did, bringing Nash over, still half-asleep. Blake put his hand on Nash's shoulder.

"Rewrite," he said.

WARNING: ATTEMPTING TO NULLIFY CONTRACT. ARE YOU SURE? THIS CANNOT BE UNDONE.

"Yes."

Nash's body was surrounded by a mess of floating, spinning, shattering white squares. They came, they fell, they disappeared.

"Nash, you're going free," Blake said.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

"What?" Nash asked.

"It's your sister. You don't have to worry about getting nabbed anymore. She'll be able to track you down if you do." Blake patted Nash's back, nudging him towards Sophia. "Go on."

"Sophia...? How did you..."

"Nash! I'm so glad I found you! I thought you were dead!"

"You didn't talk last night?" Riley said.

"She probably put him to sleep before he knew she was there. Maybe it would've made things more complicated if she didn't," Blake said.

"Oh."

Blake and Riley watched as Nash and Sophia hugged. What a touching reunion. It was too bittersweet for them to stand there watching. They decided to offer Sophia and Nash the room for the next few hours.

"We'll be back later. I have an old job to cash in," Blake said. There was no such job.

"Laters!" Riley said.

----------------------------------------

They returned in the early afternoon, after spending the day hanging out around downtown Bright Hill. They needed to unwind after what happened last night. But that was done, and they were back.

"So you freed this girl from a bunch of Transporters, but you thought it would be dangerous to take the contract off of her? Until you got her to Queensland," Sophia said.

"Right. Because the law doesn't care about protecting her. And it would take a while to get there. But I didn't want a slave, so I fudged the contract so she can disobey me all she wants," Blake said.

"That's..."

"Stupid, I know."

"I have no words. That's a lot more strange than anything I would have considered. I've never even heard of someone doing this before, not even an abolitionist."

"Right?" Riley said.

"Don't get me wrong. I still think it's wrong. I'm just so taken aback by the absurdity of it that I don't know how to judge it," Sophia said.

"He did the same thing to me," Nash said, "because of those crooks."

"I see." Sophia twiddled her hair in her fingers. Things were turning out better than she had hoped. Blake had an actual plan, or something that looked like one if she squinted. He wasn't the hooligan she thought he was.

Blake watched her play with her hair. His mind was racing.

"W-well, anyway, Riley didn't want to go straight to Queensland for some reason. Probably because if I brought her there, I'd leave her there all alone. Which is right, I'd want to leave, since I don't really know what's going on around here. And she doesn't have anyone to stand up for her. She's kind of sm—"

Kind of small, he was about to say, but stopped, feeling an icy glare on his neck.

"Kind of smart, if you ask me, haha! Thinking about her future, stability! That kind of thing." He bullshitted his way out of it. He didn't like the logic, but it was sound enough to justify it. Why was he parading Riley around, anyway, instead of looking for someone to protect her?

"Is that so? So you're just wandering now?"

"Well, we were still on our way there, just slower. If we run into any... Transporters, you call them? Slavers. I'm gonna give them a piece of my mind to keep Riley safe. Aside from that, and working our way towards Queensland, I don't have any real goals, no."

A wry smile crossed Sophia's face. She slid down her sleeve.

"I'm an adventurer too, you know", she said, showing off her bracelet.

"Seriously? So when I called you—"

"It was amusing in retrospect, really, but I didn't have time to think through what you were saying when we fought. To me, it was nothing but hot air."

"Right. Okay. Rank?"

"Rank B."

"You've got to be fucking kidding me..."

"I was surprised when I learned that you were only Rank E. Perhaps being a 'Bladescribe' as you call yourself, if that really is a real class name, gives you a leg up."

"Or you were holding back," Riley said.

"I suppose."

"Okay, new topic, we need to get Nash less dodgy clothes. How about a robe? Since he's a Medic and all." Blake said.

"That would do nicely. What do you think, Nashie?"

"Sure, Sophia," he said. Deep down, he didn't really want a robe, but he had a kind of learned helplessness when it came to these things.

"It's decided."

"By the way, how old are you?" Blake said. "I never got a clear picture. This party is shaping up to have a huge age range."

"Twenty-four."

"Got it. So... Twelve, and, uh..."

Icy glare.

"Twelve, twenty-two, twenty-four, and twenty-eight human years. Okay, that's not actually that bad of a gap. Nash is the only odd one out."

"We should get him registered as an adventurer properly, by the way, now that he doesn't have Dominion on him," Sophia said.

"Good point."

"By the way. You asked me a personal question, so now it's my turn. Where are you from? It's not that common to run into a man your age who's against Dominion around here."

"Where'm I from? America. I lived in Canada for a few years, though, before getting here. Got in trouble where I was born."

"Canada? America? I've never heard of such places. Strange. Are they overseas? And what sort of trouble did you get into?"

"For the trouble, let's just say it got so bad that my dad stopped saying 'welcome home'. Like, family destroying levels of shit hitting the fan and dumpster fires lining the streets. Moving towns didn't work. Had to go to a whole new country and take up a new... Er, sorry, Never mind. For the other part, uh, to be honest, I have no idea where I am. I'm pretty sure I'm in an entirely different world."

Sophia tilted her head.

"An entirely different world? Do you mean that you're isekaijin?"

"Isekaijin? What the hell is that?"

"That's what the Millennial Hero of the Demon Wars described himself as. It was a bit over a thousand years ago, I think. He claimed to hail from a non-existent country called Japan. Until he killed the Demon Lord, everyone thought he was mad."

Riley sighed. Here we go again, she thought.

"Wait. Hold on." Blake rubbed his brow. "That's like something out of a foreign TV show, that whole story. A Japanese guy ending up in fantasy world and killing the Demon Lord. But if... If we're doing TV logic, if you guys had a Demon Lord, and he's already dead, then why am I here? I mean, I'm glad I'm not gonna get wrapped up in the end of the world, but, still, that's too silly to take seriously," he said.

"A hero from Japan defeating the Demon Lord is indeed historical fact, assuming you believe Japan is a real place," Sophia said.

"Jesus Christ."

Blake couldn't possibly explain what was going through his head. Going forward, the best he could do was play into the lore that it seemed Millennial Hero of the Demon Wars established, even though it wasn't true of him, and even though it was cheesy.

He did bother to try to get them to stop calling him isekaijin, though. It wasn't his language.

"So... Earthling?" Nash said.

"No, calling me that makes you sound like an... alien... Do you guys even... Agh! I can't explain, there's too many layers! Just don't call me anything. I'm one of you guys now, and I'm here to stay. Don't put any weird expectations on me."

"I still don't understand there being multiple human languages," Sophia said. "But if that's what Earth is like, I'll believe you."

"One of us, here to stay!" Riley said, happy as a dog with two tails.

----------------------------------------

Blake was woken the next morning by music. He'd heard it before. Played by the same lute. Sung in the same voice, singing words of power.

The Secure Enclave · Sophia's Theme

Where the bird flies we follow

Oh, we've run from our meadows

Oh, we've run from our fellows

Where the sun shines is hallow

Oh, the children are trying

Oh, the children are crying

When the three gave their promise

Oh, the fallow was seeded

Oh, the barrow was needed

When the three broke their promise

Oh, the barrels were hollowed

Oh, the poison was swallowed

He didn't look. He didn't speak. It wasn't needed. There was an understanding.