It wasn't much longer before the rest of the village was awake. The guards on the walls and roofs were shifted, with several of those taking over being those that had been injured just the previous day. Hu and Ollie arrived at the small training ground around the same time with Hu seemingly laughing at something Ollie had said as they made it there.

"Ser Hu," said squire Bawn with a quick bow. "Shall I gather your armor and sword."

"Please," replied Hu. "And you can call me Hu. I keep telling you."

"Will do Ser Hu," replied Bawn as he made his way into the village.

Hu sighed and turned to Michael. "Laird already knows, and I just got done telling Ollie, but with you here we are hoping to seal more than one rift at a time. With your healing our forces are back up to near full strength and morale has improved as well. With you as the diviner, one whom Ollie here tells me has closed a large number of rifts already, we should be able to make much faster progress."

"Could we not divide into two groups? One with me and one with the other diviner?"

Liard, Hu, and the squire Clyde all shared a grimace.

"While we have been grateful for Diviner Lukas's help, he is not… the most fit for this kind of work. Our progress has been slow with him, and with his advanced age I think he needs a few days rest to recover now that he has the option."

"Is there a diviner in every village?" asked Michael.

"Not quite. We're actually lucky to have had Lukas here already. Usually a cluster of two or three villages has had only one diviner available to seal rifts. We've managed a good pace in spite of that, and if the diviners can seal one rift, they typically gain Titles or Deeds that make sealing further ones easier on them, but it's still an uphill battle."

"Is your entire military focused on the rifts right now?" asked Ollie.

Hu nodded, getting a glare from Laird for doing so.

"You don't need to give the takers that information."

"It's common knowledge now anyway. Who would even want to invade Hume at this point? With all the rifts here?"

"Bah," replied Laird, turning to Clyde. "Go and fetch my armor and weapons then ready the horses."

Hu turned to Laird. "Did you have time to assess this one's combat ability?" he asked, pointing to Michael.

"He's one of the strongest fighters I've ever seen. Bested both our squires with a single strike. Could likely defeat the two of us in a fair or unfair fight as well."

Ollie frowned and leaned toward Michael to whisper. "Strange fucker isn't he," he said gesturing to Laird. "Clearly hates us, but has an actual honest assessment of how good we are."

"Yeah, I've gotten so used to prejudice making people underestimate us here that it almost feels like out of place to be properly estimated."

They broke away from the knights so that Michael could go and retrieve his armor. As he walked to the smithy he saw nearly twenty of the village militia wielding spears and wearing thickly padded cotton armor. They shared hugs and kisses with loved ones, tousled the hair of their children, and gave one another's hands a final squeeze before they turned away, some of them with eyes wet with tears.

Michael's own became watery as he watched the display. This small series of intimate moments by a group of people trying to protect their homes and those dear to them.

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"I vow to bring them home," he whispered under his breath.

He pushed his way into the smithy where Octa and Lentus were hard at work. It seemed his wife had decided to return after all. When Lentus saw him he gestured toward a pile of metal that Michael recognized as his own. He held it in his hand, looking at it for a moment. He could still picture how it had looked when he'd first gotten it, Durdan handing it to him from across the counter back in Stent. Then the pauldrons had been antique, but the rest was well suited for him. Now it looked almost unrecognizable from what it once was. It had been patched dozens of times in metals that rarely matched in color by smiths of widely varying skills. One of the pauldrons had been completely replaced, as had one of the greaves. He ran his fingers over the uneven patchwork of metal before he quickly threw it on and tightened the straps to bring it closer. It may have been ugly, but it was what he was used to, and no matter how good he got at shield spells, he couldn't see himself replacing a solid piece of metal over his vitals any time soon. He smirked a bit as he wondered how much of the original metal of the armor was really left under all the patching. Perhaps it was an 'armor of Theseus'.

He gave his thanks to the smiths and left to see Ollie causing some balls of multicolored light to stay just out of the reach of a few small children. When he noticed Michael behind him he had all of them come back to him and popped them into his mouth, pretending to chew on and swallow them to the delight of the nearby kids. When one of the parents came and smacked a child upside the head with exclamations of 'taker' and 'stay away from them', Ollie frowned deeply, but Michael placed a hand on his shoulder to get him moving toward the front gate. Aside from that one parent, none of the others seemed to care much.

The cart from before was there, and Michael threw his pack into it as he saw the villagers and the knight's squires do. Then he moved toward the front while Ollie stayed toward the center of the villagers. Michael was fairly certain the wizard actually had most of them beat even in close combat, but mage in the middle had been the standard since he'd arrived in Stent and it seemed that the tradition held in Old Hume as well.

"Diviner. Where is the nearest of the rifts?" asked Laird.

Michael concentrated, sensing where the dread was the most distinct, and pointed to the south west. "About eight miles that way."

Laird nodded and began moving his horse along the road with everyone else following behind. Michael supposed that he must have a bit of seniority over Hu, even though they appeared to be of the same rank.

"So, Michael, would you be up to answering some of those questions I had for you on the road?" Hu asked.

"Only if I may ask you a few of my own."

"Fair enough. I'll even let you go first."

"I've gathered from you and Laird that your King has only recently taken his throne, and made a number of changes. Could you tell me a bit about him?"

Hu nodded. "King Marlo is one of the only men I believe would have made a good emperor."

"Hear hear," muttered Laird as he kept his eyes on the road.

"His father was not a bad king mind you, but he was very keen on pretending that Hume could someday return to the glory it once held. He invested heavily in improving our roads and trying to bring in artisans and craftsmen from other nations to find apprentices here. In peaceful times, he would've been a fine king."

"But these aren't peaceful times."

Hu nodded, his armor clanking a bit as he did so. "Luckily his son has taken hold of things. He is training militias, unlocking old artifact vaults to distribute titled items, even selling much of the history of Old Hume to other nations to make sure that we here can be armed, armored, and ready. He is even seeking to hire mercenaries and petitioning for the help of the other nations with the rift problem. Unfortunately they are too focused on their wars."

Michael nodded, liking King Marlo more and more as he heard about him.

"My only concern is his health," said Hu.

"Our King is strong as a stampeding horde of bulls," replied Laird.

"He is, and he is thin and wan and needs frequent rest. Titles and Deeds give him the power to shatter mountains, but that doesn't mean he is not ill."

"Ill you say?" asked Michael with a raised eyebrow, beginning to see a path laid out for him.

"A weakness that sometimes crops up in those of his line. A consequence of… close couplings within the family."

Michael nodded. He wasn't sure he was quite at the level of healing something genetic, but given what he'd managed so far, maybe it was possible. Even being able to provide him with some level of comfort would maybe help make him amenable to speaking with him on the full extent of the dangers that were approaching and the role of the gods.

"He has chosen to marry some… less noble stock to make it less of a problem in the future. They have already produced two heirs."

"Though I hear it may have gone against his preference," said Squire Clyde with a snicker.

Laird smacked the back of his helmet, causing him to nearly stumble out of his saddle, but he managed to stay on.

"So," continued Hu. "Can I ask my questions?"

"Certainly."

"Lets start with, how did two takers from Stent wind up here."

"I think we're going to need more than ten miles to explain that, mate," said Ollie, chiming in from behind Michael.