Chapter 1915: Stubborn Youngsters

"This is a public labyrinth!" the smaller one squeaked from behind her. "Everyone may enter! It’s the law!"

"We’ve waited since dawn! If we don’t make money today, we don’t eat! So we can’t let you cut in- no! We can’t afford to skip- no, um-"

"What she means is we’re very sorry and please don’t kill us but we were here first!"

The excuses arrived as a bombardment, delivered with chins up and faces gray, two girls attempting mighty and landing somewhere near seasick.

Quinlan listened to every word of it, amusement plain on his face.

"The Scarlet Lilies, huh." The terrible red eyes considered them. "An admirable goal."

He nodded at the rusted sword.

"But with that equipment, chances are you’ll die long before you get there."

The girls bit their lips in unison, and the chins came down.

"W-we know!" the taller one managed. "But getting to eat stale bread is already a good day for us. Equipment is..." She didn’t finish it.

"Where are your parents?"

"Don’t have any..." the smaller one said, too fast and too flat for it to be anything but old ground. "We ran from the orphanage."

The taller girl’s hand found the smaller one’s sleeve.

Iris stood by the warp gate with her arms crossed, red eyes fixed on the two of them: runaways, one planted in front of the other, guarding what little they had with a rusted blade.

Iris knew that arrangement on sight, and it put her straight back inside a cage she had grown up in. Her face gave the market nothing.

The hand tucked under her elbow curled closed, and stayed closed.

"I see," said the Primordial Villain. "Then let me sponsor you."

The rusted sword’s tip stopped wobbling out of sheer shock.

"S-s-sponsor?!"

"Why not?" He shrugged, dark plate whispering. "I’m curious what becomes of you two. I might as well."

His pocket ring flashed. Two spears slid out of the light and planted themselves upright in front of the girls, honest steel with a faint reinforcing glow along the hafts. After them came boots, padded jackets, waterskins, and a fat paper sack that smelled aggressively of fresh bread.

"A spear is how I started in this very labyrinth, as it happens. Swords look better on a poster, but a spear keeps you alive while you learn. Or so my teacher have told me."

The girls stared at the pile of gear with their mouths open, entirely unequipped for any of it.

By the warp gate, Seraphiel had laced her fingers together, watching her lover with a soft, glowing smile she didn’t bother to hide.

"One more thing. [Awaken]."

Soulfire poured up out of the cobbles beside him and took shape: a tall knight of a woman in royal guard plate, spectral, blue-white fire rolling off her pauldrons.

The market found a brand-new register to scream in.

"Necromancy!"

"He’s raising the dead in the street!"

"Cassandra." Quinlan tossed her a heavy coin pouch, and she caught it without looking. "Drill the basics into them, and make sure they eat something other than stale bread."

The dead squad captain of the royal guard pressed a fist to her breastplate and bowed to her summoner.

"Yes, Master."

The girls’ heads went back and forth between the ghost and the Villain fast enough to endanger their necks.

Then the red eyes came back down to them, warm with amusement.

"Now then. May I pass?"

The girls looked at him. Then at the gate behind them. Then at themselves, standing in the exact middle of his path.

"Hie!"

They cleared it with a squeak and a burst of speed no stat sheet of theirs could explain, ending up three stalls away in a tangle of limbs and new equipment.

Both of them folded toward the Villain in bows so deep their foreheads nearly reached their knees.

"Thank you, Mister Villain!!"

"Thank you for the spears and the bread and-" The smaller one’s inventory dissolved into tears halfway through, and the bow only went deeper.

Cassandra regarded the two of them, and a smile crossed the dead captain’s face.

"If you want to thank him, grow strong."

The girls came up from their bows with wet eyes, gripping their new spears with both hands.

At the gate, three knights had been holding their salute to their sovereign since the moment the armor flared, arms trembling with the effort, and now he was finally walking their way.

The fourth had made a sound like a stepped-on dog when the red light first bled through those seams, and his spear had slid out of his numb grip.

*Clatter!*

That was all the movement Hadric’s body had agreed to since. Every nightmare he’d sweated through since the bounty sheets had just spent ten minutes in the square sponsoring orphans, and was now strolling toward his gate.

’Run,’ he told his legs. ’Run. Run!!’

His legs held their post, but loyalty to the crown wasn’t on his mind at all.

"Morning, gentlemen." Quinlan arrived in front of four statues wearing armor. The one still holding the mocking coins was visibly considering eating them. "What’s the entrance fee these days?"

"T-twenty," that knight managed. "Twenty bronze, my lord. Per... per head."

"Still twenty, huh? Fine, I’ll pay for my whole party."

He didn’t reach for his pouch. [Soul Reaper], still rippling with the remnants of Cassandra’s summon, stopped hovering at his back and hung flat in the air at his waist, lying on its side like a serving tray.

Quinlan’s coins rose from the pouch on threads of wind.

"Twenty for me."

*Clink.*

The first coin landed on the flat of the blade, and inside his helmet, Hadric stopped breathing. He knew that sound. He had made that sound once, slowly, into this same man’s face.

Blue soulfire kindled along the saber’s length to light the count.

"Twenty for the lovely lady glaring at me." *Clink.* "Twenty for the otherworldly elf beside her. Twenty for my adorable second-in-command. Twenty for the charismatic wife with the axe. Twenty for the tanned fire wife. Twenty for the loud fox. Twenty for the cutest pup. Twenty for the needy witch. Twenty for my tomboy smith, and twenty for my amazing alchemist."

Eleven stacks of twenty built themselves coin by coin with no hand anywhere near them, each clink unhurried, placed into the silence like a nail.

By the fourth stack, three of the knights were sweating freely inside their helmets. By the eighth, a thin, continuous whine had started somewhere inside the fourth’s, like a kettle boiling three streets away.

The coin-holder’s visor tilted toward Iris and Seraphiel, then back to the eleven stacks. "M-my lord... there are... three of you?"

"You know," Quinlan ignored the question and instead said conversationally, to nobody in particular, "I promised myself I’d remember the knight who clinked my coins at me that day. Smirked at me through his helmet and jingled my last bronze like a bell, as if the toll wasn’t insult enough."

He gestured at the four of them. "But you all wear the same armor. I never could tell which one of you it was."

A thread of wind plucked the top coin off the nearest stack, raised it high, and let it drop.

*Clink.*

The fourth knight’s whole body spasmed hard enough to rattle his pauldrons, and the faraway kettle arrived at a rolling boil.

"There he is," the Villain smiled.