They walked back from the farmland without speaking much.

Vera had been quiet through the whole visit, walking slightly behind Darion and Seren, looking at things without commenting on them. She examined the dead animals, the trampled soil, and the burned houses visible beyond the wall. She took it all in without visible reaction, just cataloguing. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

Halfway back to the castle she spoke.

"I’ll help you," she said.

Darion looked at her.

"I came here expecting to see progress," she continued. "A recovering barony, farmland being restored, evidence that what you told me was true and not just what a desperate man needed me to believe." She paused. "I saw it. Not the way I expected to see it... but I saw it."

"The destruction proves it," Darion said.

"Yes. Those animals had been alive prior to the attack. The females had even been pregnant which meant that their was hope for the future." She looked at him sideways. "And the farmland. The crops that were coming through. That doesn’t happen in dead soil. Someone did real work here."

Seren said nothing. She was looking ahead at the castle gate.

"I want to see Valdenmoor suffer for what they did here more than I want the five hundred silver," Vera said. "I’ll still take the five hundred silver. But this..." she glanced back at the farmland behind them "...this is the kind of thing I help with."

Darion looked at her for a moment.

"Good," he said.

The next two days were the work of a leader after a disaster, which meant doing things that weren’t glamorous and didn’t feel like enough but were what was available.

He went through Percvale in the morning of the first day, walking the burned section with Wulfric and two senior knights, going building by building and assessing what was gone and what could be salvaged.

Most of the stone foundations were intact. Timber could be sourced. The market row had lost four stalls and two storage buildings but the well was undamaged, which mattered more than almost everything else on the list.

He talked to the people.

Not speeches, just conversations, stopping where people were working or sitting or standing in front of what had been their houses.

An older couple near the eastern end of the market row were sorting through what was left of their belongings, pulling things from the ash and deciding what was worth keeping. Darion stopped beside them.

The man looked up. He had the face of... uncertainty.

"How much is gone?" Darion asked him.

"The upstairs," the man said. "Everything upstairs. The downstairs walls are standing but the roof came in." He looked at the building. "We’ve been in that house thirty years."

"We’ll rebuild it," Darion said after inhaling. "Stone and timber, better than before. I’m not leaving this as it is."

The man looked at him, surprised that the Baron had just assured him that the house would be rebuilt.

"I mean it," Darion assured, sensing his doubts.

"The Baron before you might have said a lot of things too."

Darion held the man’s look. "I know what this place was when I arrived. You were all still here when I arrived, which means you’re not people who leave when things are bad. I’m not either." He paused.

To show that he had done a retaliation before, he looked at one of the senior knights and asked.

"What happened to Gonnb when they hurt Percvale?"

The senior knight replied:

"Gonnb doesn’t exist anymore."

Darion turned back to the man. "Valdenmoor sent two hundred knights. I have something considerably worse than two hundred knights." He didn’t say more than that. "We’re not done."

The man looked at him for a long moment. Then he turned back to the salvage pile and kept working.

His wife, who had been listening without looking up, said quietly: "Thank you, m’lord."

Darion moved on.

He had versions of the same conversation six more times that day. Different people, different degrees of loss, different faces. Some were angry and said so directly, which he respected. Some were quiet, they were holding something too heavy to put into words.

A few were already rebuilding, the way Percvale’s citizens had been rebuilding in one form or another for thirty years. Doing the hitting of nails and all that stuff by themselves. It wasn’t ’proper’ but they had no option.

He told all of them the same thing in different ways. It’s not over. Valdenmoor made a choice that has a consequence. Wait.

He assured them, told them this would most likely not repeat itself.

Some that had wanted to flee Percvale were perhaps assured by his words and stayed.

Vera had taken over the small room off the main corridor on the ground floor.

Her box was open on the table and she was working.

He looked in twice over the two days.

The first time, she had three containers open and was mixing something with a small tool, adding material from one container to another in specific amounts. She didn’t look up when he appeared in the doorway.

"What is that?" he asked.

"Something that disorients," she said. "Spatial awareness, coordination and decision-making. Exposed to enough of it, a soldier can’t tell which direction the threat is coming from."

"How do you deploy it?"

"Wind-carried. Bundled in cloth, thrown into a formation. It burns slowly when it hits the air." She added another measure from the third container. "Don’t stand downwind of it."

"How many can you make?"

"Enough," she said. "Come back tomorrow."

She rarely left the room and was served food by Maret.

Darion came back the next day. Different containers open this time, different work happening. He asked what this one was and she said fire accelerant, applied to arrows, made a normal arrow hit like a torch in wet wood.

"And the incapacitation dust?" he asked. "The kind Seren described. The one that takes fifty soldiers at once."

"Finished yesterday," she said. "Six bundles. Each one works on a group within a close radius. Don’t throw them at scattered men, wait until they’re concentrated."

"How long does the effect last?"

"Long enough," she said.

He decided to stop asking questions and let her work. She was kinda grumpy in a way. Magic intrigued him and he would have loved to see her at work.

She worked from early morning until the light in the room was too poor to continue, ate whatever Maret brought without commenting on it, and went back to the room the next morning. She didn’t offer updates. She didn’t explain what she was doing unless asked directly. She just worked, very focused on what she was doing.

During these two days, Valdenmoor did not attack Percvale. This was strategic to them, allowing Percvale to cry in the "Had i known" stage.

Unknown to them, Percvale was cooking. Devastated by their loss but ready to bite. Your MUNCH on Valdenmoor.

Darion watched through the doorway on the third morning and thought that if Aldric could see what was being assembled in this small room in the castle he had sent two hundred knights to make a point to, he might have made different choices.

He might not have, either. Aldric was a practical man. Practical men didn’t always see things coming until they arrived.

He was about to find out.