The station where the Charmer had first received Milton and Rennard was Underfall, and when she teleported back there she spent merely a few seconds exitting the room and peering down the hallway before knowing something wasn’t right. She moved down the hallway, went to her room, to her desk, slipped a hand under the table and searched. With a rip, her hand came out with a knife between the fingers.

Not one servant had greeted her yet. Underfall had two of them, and at least one of her scouts should have been there as well to provide a report. Wary, the Charmer stepped towards the front door, opened it, and Velvet Rowfield awaited in the grass. Behind her, the two servants kneeled subserviently, bruises on their cheeks and foreheads. One of the thugs drifted face down on the pond nearby, the waterfall having pushed her corpse to float on the opposite shore. Velvet’s large backpack had been discarded nearby, her belt heavy with equipment. Henry stood beside her ankle.

“I killed the ones that felt too loyal and resisted too much,” Velvet said, a confident show of happiness. “Others I sent off with shackles and broken bones.” She gestured behind her at the servants. “These were needed for information. But now the real price is here, Charmer.”

“Hmm.” The Charmer walked down the steps of her porch, brows coming together. “Don’t throw the word thug around so comfortably when you lick the kingdom’s boots for money. Evidently, you’re strong, yet you choose to demean yourself like this by chasing money.” The Charmer took one slow step at a time, soles soft against the grass.

“Didn’t come to talk and hear Rhino gospel,” Velvet said, drawing her dagger. “Come, Charmer, and die honorably in battle. It’ll be the one honor your filthy life has seen.”

“And here I thought we wouldn’t be preaching.” The Charmer lunged forward with a stab, Velvet arching her back to dodge. Velvet grabbed her by the elbow with a free hand and jabbed with the other holding the dagger, and the Charmer navigated that attack as Velvet did with a grasp on the elbow, the two left locked with one another. Both swung their daggers and both dodged again, a twirl and a clang of steel, the Charmer’s robe spinning graciously. The Charmer summoned a globe of silver energy and threw it. Velvet blocked it with a shining palm but still lost footing to the impact. The Charmer took the opening and rushed in, though Velvet, dexterous as ever, was unfazed by her position and made it look as if she were just as comfortable almost falling as she were standing in place. From a falling position, her one standing foot twisted with her hips and her other leg came flying, a roundhouse kick slamming into the Charmer’s side. The Charmer fell with a grunt and Velvet hopped the other way from recoil.

Henry got out of their way early, and although he watched this fight knowing that if the Charmer won nothing mattered and he was done for, he trusted Velvet. She’d explicitly told him not to get in the way, and as the Charmer rose up and they were at it again, a dance of daggers and magic, Henry knew he’d just end up kicked around and crushed by those feet if he were anywhere close. The two servants behind Velvet had already made off towards the cabin, even they not wanting to get involved, which confused Henry at first. Though when he thought of how confidently Velvet produced that roundhouse kick while seeming to be on the backfoot, he understood their fear of going near her.

Henry had to remember his purpose. Find his friends and leave. He had to forget Velvet. She herself had specified she didn’t care about his objective of finding his friends, but let him come along so long as he didn’t get in the way. She never expected or asked for his help, and hopefully she wouldn’t need it, so Henry ignored her fight.

As to his friends’ whereabouts, no better starting point presented itself than the cabin before him. The door remained ajar after the servants. Henry escaped the site of the duel, leaped up the porch and entered the cabin. The first room was spacious, not just to him but in relation to the whole cabin. The walls were lined with maps and bookcases filled with bokos and scrolls and jars full of odd substances. A cupboard had nice piece of porcelain and decorative silverware on top, and on another side were paintings and a banner of a large silvery horn, likely the symbol of the Gray Rhinos. The clang of daggers meeting and the swoosh of magic tearing the ground reminded Henry he was on a timer. If Velvet lost the fight, the Charmer would come upon him. Henry needed speed more than caution.

Squatting down and leaping up to the large table, it was filled with unopened letters and unfinished ones to be written, some schematics, and plenty other things Henry with a glance deduced meant nothing to his search. A loud thud came from a room down the hallway, the two servants who ran back here. Henry couldn’t forget them. The loud tone and occasional shout muffling past the walls revealed they were arguing. Henry heard more sounds in the silence between their arguments, nearby, hushed and continuous. One of the bookcases contained three rows of numbered boxes, four boxes per row. Henry jumped off the table and approached, and the closer he got the clearer these sounds were.

Voices, people within speaking, asking what the noise outside their dark and closed world was. The only light they received was from a slight gap between its open top and the shelf of the row above. His friends had to be in one of these boxes. They didn’t sound equally packed, the bottom row filled, and towards the top empty. Henry thought of how to go about it, first considering jumping inside and kicking it out of the bookcase from within. That might knock the box off the bookcase but wouldn’t do too much to free them. The box was made of wood, so Henry summoned the art of the fighter and decided to break it. He didn’t go too hard, to not shatter the wood too explosively and spray the splinters onto the captives inside. With a measured palm, he struck the side, a loud knock zapping the people inside with worry. Their voices faded from where Henry could hear them, backing away from his spot. Henry threw a few more palms, not on the same spot, but around it, spreading the force, fissures and cracks forming until a few splinters fell off with a puff of dust. Henry dug his hand through those openings and peeled the fractured wood off. He tore open a long stretch several yards broad and slightly taller than a person. The people emerged from the darkness, bewildered rather than hopeful.

A middle-aged man stood before them all. “Who are you, son?”

“I’m Henry from Humius,” he said. “I’m looking for two of my friends.” The people didn’t rush out of their little cell, weren’t overjoyed at the supposed freedom, but neared the edge of the opening Henry produced and peered outside warily.

“What’s going on?” a woman asked him. They were all haggard and pale, clad in the simple garb of farm workers, some of them sootier from stonework.

“A bounty hunter has come, she’s battling the Charmer out there. I came with her to look for my friends, two young men around my age and height, one of them with a nasty temper you’d instantly notice, long red hair, and the other a more agreeable fellow with bushy hair.”

His words might as well not have been heard the way they continued to glance past him and into the room. Henry recognized this nervousness from when they had just escaped Ada, the explosive realisation that they could move on their own and the oppressive hold on them was gone. “The Charmer is dead?” one of them said.

“No, she and a bounty hunter are fighting just outside.” Henry’s voice was impatient. “Nothing is over. Have you seen my friends or not? They were taken a few days ago.”

“Few days ago? Likely shipped off, then.”

“Shipped off? Where?” The first five or six stepped outside the box through Henry’s hole, watching, unbelieving. One of them stepped down onto the floor, the bookcase’s bottom shelf with no gap underneath so humans couldn’t crawl thereunder. “Hey, shipped off where?”

“No idea,” was someone’s offhand response. They were too busy realising they could simply leave. But as the crowds poured out, ten, twenty, thirty, parents taking their children in hand, Henry found a lack of hope. Empty eyes, guideless stares, slack and droopy postures, it was confusion and shock more than belief of a bright future. And how could they be blamed? Where would they go in these lands with a size so magnified to their little legs? None of them were even restrained, meaning they never had any magic competent enough to break free from those boxes. They were helpless. Leaving the was the very first step of a long journey.

“There’s nobody who knows where my two friends might have been shipped off to?” Henry said aloud. The crowd looked between one another, no one saying anything. The sound of the two servants arguing in some nearby room grew.

“Where do we go?”

Henry turned behind him, but the question was indeed asked for him. And then he noticed how the lack of hope dared to vanish on some, expecting eyes now directed at Henry.

“Father, what will we do?” a daughter said.

“The naked boy might know something,” he said. Henry noticed his nakedness with a flush of shame.

“You seem to be a competent mage,” someone said. “Can you help us?”

“Uhm.” Henry couldn’t help but think back to how Ada had toyed with him and his friends simultaneously, how helplessly he watched the slavers take them. The word competent didn't fit him. “I don’t know. Are there more people?” He pointed to another of the boxes.

Someone said yes, but someone else stepped up. “We need to leave, quickly. There’s no time to rescue everyone. God knows if even we will—”

“Shut up! Get over here!” There was the heavy thud of something being dropped, a massive door slammed open, and the voices had the clearness of no closed walls standing between them. “Get a weapon, we have to help the lady, you little brat!”

“Leave me alone!” The whelp was girly and young, Henry recognizing the voice from the younger of the two servants. They felt the vibrations on the floor, steps booming, and she rushed in through the doorway with watery eyes, snivelling. She spared just a moment of pause for the crowd between her and the front door, the crowd anxious and cowering.

“Get back here, young girl.” The young servant watched down the corridor, no doubt the other servant coming after her, and she bolted straight for the front door, too scared to worry about the humans in between.

“Run!” a man yelled. They tried to disperse as fast as they could, the young servant charging towards them. Some dove out of the way as the shadow of her dirty, pale foot raced overhead. The rhythm of her soles slapping against the wooden floor was interrupted by a muffled thud as she stepped in, the sound dampened by someone’s torso under the ball of her foot and someone else’s legs caught by her heel. Her other foot barreled through the crowd, kicking five people, one launched high into the air, another rolling and tumbling across the floor as if thrown sideways, and three sent straight into the wall. And then that foot had to land as well, an unfortunate one there to receive the roof of foot flesh. It caught him so well that he stuck to it as she continued towards the door, opening it and bolting out.

Someone screamed, rushing to his near-unconscious daughter whose torso had been caught under the foot, her eyes part-open, her beaten cheek having received the swirly print of the servant’s big toe. The people tried to regroup, tried to gather near their loved ones, a few scattering.

“Where’s my son?” a woman demanded, turning her head about hectically. “Where is he!”

“I believe he got stuck under the girl’s foot,” someone said.

“Sweet Emelie, can you hear me?” the father said beside his daughter, caressing her cheek, holding her hand. “Are you ok?”

“Father…” she groaned. And then the boom of the other servant’s sprint, ignored till now, came closer, and the shadow came upon them, and if the daughter wasn’t unlucky the first time, she certainly was now as the next foot, slightly larger and heavier, found her with another stomp. The father was kicked away with the rise of the foot, joining four others sent flying from her sprint, and another three casualties were pounded by those doughy soles. The two servants had razed the crowd without even sparing them a thought. In that moment, Henry found their inferiority as humans so much he felt disgusted with himself.

The older servant grunted by the doorway, not proceeding the chase. “Little brat,” she muttered. Larger than the younger one, her bosom stood out underneath the thin gray robe, sleeveless and reaching her hefty thighs. Although older than the younger one, she was still comfortably in her mid twenties. In a way her physique reminded Henry of Ada, sizeable and curvy, but a little less so. Her chestnaut hair had been tied into one long braid falling down alongside her spine.

Not chasing the younger servant, the older one glanced at the fight between the Charmer and Velvet, which had taken them around the pond. Then she glanced inside with a raised eyebrow at all the humans wandering about. “What’s going on in here?” She shut the door and stepped inside. The father kept crying by his daughter, who after the second round was less responsive. Someone else tried to stand on their pained leg, holding it and hollering obscenities.

The servant stepped up to them, and at the sight of her feet everyone fell down with hands over their heads as if artillery whizzed over them. “Pathetic,” she said, hands on her hips and catching her breath. “This is why we keep you protected in those boxes. Why did you get out? Actually, how did you get out?” Her confused look went to the long cleft along the side of the box. From instinct, the people near Henry gravitated towards him, taking his side, some huddling behind him, and that subtle gathering took the servant’s attention. Her brows joined together at the naked Henry. “You’re the little pet rat that bounty hunter had by her side. Did you lead her here?”

“No, I swear. I followed her here. I came looking for my friends. Where are these people shipped off to?”

“As if that’s your business.” She raised one mighty foot theatrically, indicating a want to walk forward, and everyone nearby dispersed, even leaving Henry’s side. Those two feet clapped their way across the wooden floor and settled to either side of him, the servant standing astride him. Up through the underside of her robe, nestled between those thighs, Henry saw her white thong. Henry almost felt embarrassed taking the fight, afraid of what would happen if he fought her. The shred of hope these people dared to have could be extinguished if he allowed this servant to beat him. But as with Ada, when the one option left was to surrender, he had to take any other option available, to fight. And, glancing back at the crowd watching, something welled up in him, perhaps pride, or the intense desire to stand up and lead in these hard times when there was a people in need, the qualities they said belonged to a true leader, or, if he dared, a hero. His thoughts went to Ada, and finally they didn’t do so with pessimism, thinking of what she’d done to them. They went to the end, Rennard’s miraculous shot at her face, blinding her, their victory. They had beaten a giant. It could be done.

Henry turned to those mighty feet, following up the calf and ample thigh, at the thong, past the hem of her robe, then craned his neck all the way up to find her face. “Bring it on.”