“I would love to spend some time with one of—er, a couple of your village’s lovely maidens, as we discussed!” Chad proclaimed loudly as the villagers applauded him.

  No tact, Samara thought, repressing the urge to groan. At least wait until it’s closer to nightfall. Do you want to take away all of their dignity at once?

  Yes, the village chief and a few advisors had agreed that the Hero might “pluck a few flowers” while he was here, once he had dealt with the dragon. But this was the least organic way to that end.

  The Hero’s remark dampened the cheers, but only slightly. Those taken aback were just the small number close enough to hear him over the crowd, who had the normal reaction of being slightly disgruntled at the overt and sudden demand.

  “Noble Hero, could you spare just five minutes for one of your companions?” Samara asked, just loudly enough to be heard through the raucous noise of the villagers.

  “Talk to me later, Samara!” Chad declared as a couple of village girls somewhat nervously sidled up to him. “I’ll be in my tent until dinner time.”

  “Will you really need that long to entertain your new friends?” the paladin asked sharply.

  “Fuck you, frigid bitch. Let me have my fun.” The words were spoken under his breath so that only a few could hear him. The village maidens tried to contain their reactions and maintain neutral faces, while Samara’s superior paladin senses carried the words smoothly to her brain.

  Even as her eyes widened, she forced her mouth into an unnatural smile.

  “As the Hero wishes. This is rather important, though.”

  Chad frowned and walked away with the two young women, one arm around each of their waists, ignoring the crowd’s cheers now that he’d gotten the main thing he wanted. The two main things, more accurately.

  Samara turned back and found Cecilia looking at her with the trace of a smirk on her perfect lips.

  Fuck you, Cici, the paladin thought. This is actually important. If that jackass doesn’t pay attention, this problem is only going to escalate. Say whatever you want about my sister, but she doesn’t call on us for nothing. Something is happening back in the Salt Waste.

  “What’s your next move, paladin?” asked Black Hailgrim, suddenly beside her.

  “I’ll drag him by the ear if I have to.”

  He shook his head. “Don’t try it. You’re tough, but you won’t win with physical force. Not against him. You know that already.”

  The words stung, but she nodded.

  “I wait, then. Persuade him.”

  “And if you can’t?”

  “Let’s burn that bridge when we come to it.”

  Cecilia stepped closer to the two.

  “Hey, is something important happening?” the Ice Princess asked, yielding to her curiosity.

  Hailgrim looked back and forth between the two maidens.

  “I’m happy to share with you,” Samara forced herself to say. Cecilia would be either an invaluable ally or a problem here.

  The paladin passed the rolled up paper to the Ice Princess with just a trace of hesitation.

  Cecilia read for a solid minute. She wasn’t as quick as Samara with her letters, and she hadn’t received correspondence in code as frequently as the paladin. She crumpled the paper when she was done, then made herself relax her grip and handed it back to Samara.

  “What in Kur is this?” Cecilia asked after a moment, suddenly coarse.

  “It’s exactly what it reads as,” Samara said.

  The Ice Princess’s eyes darted toward Hailgrim for a moment, quick but impossible to miss.

  “There’s nothing fake about it that I can see, lass,” the older man said. “We face a challenge, which our Hero will hopefully rise to meet.”

  Do you know what the ‘Defiant’ modifier means? Samara wanted to ask both of them. Hailgrim hadn’t really answered before, just given a terse little response that hid more than it illuminated.

  “Go and show this to the others, already!” Cecilia said, tapping her toes impatiently at Samara.

  The paladin forced herself to smile again. The Ice Princess was actual royalty; she was used to being obeyed.

  “Of course.”

  They gathered the Rose of Sarda, the Swamp Mage, and the Sword Saintess into a little circle, apart from the villagers, and Samara read the letter aloud, then let the other women read it for themselves.

  “We are called upon to destroy evil,” the Swamp Mage said in a quiet, serious voice, touching her hand to the conjoined hearts symbol she wore around her neck, a Goddess insignia.

  “Yeah, but are we actually going to do it?” Astrid asked bluntly, looking Cecilia in the eye.

  The two highest ranking women in the Party of Heroes—really a Party of Heroines, minus the Hero himself and Hailgrim, as others had pointed out in the past—stared each other in the eyes for a moment.

  “Oh, is the Rose of Sarda leaving it up to me?” Cecilia asked with a mocking grin. “If you call on me for leadership, I suppose—”

  “No, no,” Astrid said, lips drawing back in a near snarl. “I don’t need you for that. I was just trying to gather opinions.”

  Fuck your stupid posturing, you two!

  “We clearly need the leader of our group to make this decision for us,” said the Sword Saintess.

  Hailgrim and Samara exchanged a quick look. That was the dumbest opinion possible, but the Sword Saintess had been with them the shortest time, and she clearly enjoyed her daily sparring matches with Chad quite a bit. Until she joined the Party of Heroes, there had been no one in her small country who could adequately challenge her in a fight, besides her own father. She hadn’t gotten to know the Hero well enough yet to realize the ways in which his judgment was questionable.

  She probably means it.

  “Elara, I think—” Samara began, speaking cautiously.

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “Hey, what’s the sewing circle about?”

  There was Chad, a thin sheen of sweat on his face and neck.

  Don’t tell me… Did he just come back from…?

  Samara turned her head and saw the two young women the Hero had taken into his tent, walking back from that area toward their own dwellings. They were wrapped in layers of clothing and blankets, but one of them walked stiffly, and the paladin saw that with every step, she left behind a little trace of blood in her right side footprints.

  Did he not take any time to be gentle with them? It was clearly the first time for at least one of the girls…

  She looked back at Chad. He smiled at her.

  “Sorry I was grumpy,” he mouthed.

  She nodded and forced a little smile in return.

  We have bigger things to deal with than his… questionable sexual behavior right now.

  “We were just discussing the threat posed by the Defiant Necromancer,” Samara said. “My sister said that only our party is strong enough to deal with this person.”

  She reached over and handed the letter to Chad.

  He took it, looked it over with squinted eyes for a long minute or two, then crumpled it up and let it fall to the ground.

  “Is this really our concern?” he asked.

  Did he actually read it?

  “Hero, the ‘defiant’ modifier, when attached to a class, signifies that the individual with that power—”

  “Might potentially be a threat to the gods,” Chad finished. “Once his full growth is achieved. You thought I skipped that part of the sacred text you assigned me to read? Or that I hadn’t looked at it, weeks later? Is that what you think of me, dear paladin?” His expression was a smile, but not a pleasant one.

  Samara, for her part, was a bit taken aback. She had absolutely been dissatisfied with how well he had studied religious and ethical texts at first—the Hero had been born to a peasant family, so he had no background in formal study and was being educated by the paladin—but he had apparently been putting in some extra effort without her knowledge.

  How well does he understand… what I actually think of him? Was he trying to impress me? And now he’s… what is that face?

  “Then you know the importance of crushing him early,” Samara said, swallowing.

  The Hero shrugged. “That is one position.”

  “What’s your position, Hero?” the Ice Princess asked, batting her eyes at him.

  None of the Party of Heroes were sleeping with Chad yet, but it was a fact that each of them besides Samara vied for his attention in these group situations. Cecilia was clearly cultivating him with the idea that he could benefit her homeland, Astrid had a similar idea, Elara seemed genuinely enamored of his strength, and Mischa was just competitive with other women.

  That seemed to lead to these interactions revolving around what the Hero thought.

  “Bearing in mind that my sister is pretty desperate for us to get over there and help,” Samara added as Chad opened his mouth to speak. “And that we will have to travel for months to get there. Even longer if we go overland rather than by ship.”

  The Hero scowled, and Samara realized she had made two mistakes. Talking when the Hero wanted to speak, and implying that they ought to travel somewhere by boat.

  Despite the gods’ divine blessing supposedly giving him robust good health that would last lifelong, Chad suffered from consistent seasickness whenever he got onboard a ship.

  “I think that her desperation is because she had a scary vision of the future, and for all we know, this spooky necromancer is a child who just awakened his class,” the Hero said. “And I don’t think there’s any glory in defeating a frightened child.”

  Damn you, Chad! At times, pursuing his own selfish urges, he could sound horrendously logical. The threat probably isn’t very grave yet, but big things come in small packages. That’s why we go early, before the enemy is ready to flood the continent with bodies.

  “What she’s saying is that if we let him grow into his full potential, he could swamp the whole continent beneath his tidal wave of monsters,” Samara said, trying to sound calm and rational even as she felt that her heart might stop. “If we don’t do something soon, there could be thousands of casualties.”

  Please listen. You have to listen. For once in your life, don’t think about what something is going to gain you or lose you. Think with your sense of what’s good for other people. You're… You’re the gods-damned Hero!

  “My class advances not just when I take on random challenges, but when I take on challenges that are worthy of me,” Chad said after a moment. “It’s also important that my fights be glorious and boost my reputation and that of the office of Hero, not just going around and stomping on every roach-like monster that pokes its head out of a cave. This necromancer is just not important right now. Why is the only place we’re hearing about him from your sister’s raving letter? If he was actually doing important things, we would know about it by other means. Wouldn’t we?”

  “No, that’s—dark mages like to do things underground, hidden, until they’re ready to strike…” Samara trailed off. She could feel herself losing the Hero in real time. Internally, he was just entrenching himself further into his position.

  “But what you’re saying is that when that actually becomes a real problem, we’ll be strong enough to take care of it, right, Chad?” Cecilia asked, running a hand over the Hero’s bicep.

  “I’ll support you whenever you actually do get around to facing the necromancer,” said Elara, quickly entwining her arm with the Hero’s other arm.

  “I suppose the Hero knows best,” said Astrid weakly.

  That was the first sign of disagreement Samara had seen, and it gave her a flicker of hope.

  “No, the Hero is great, but this is wrong, you guys,” the paladin said bluntly. “We need to go, right away, especially if we’re going overland to get there, which I imagine we would want to do.” That was her way of throwing a bone to the Hero.

  “Listen, I’m not leaving this place until that dragon either dies or gives in,” Chad said. “I know it’s coming back, and I’m not going to leave these good people defenseless.” He flexed his muscles on both arms, making the two women attached to them bounce slightly. They let out little giggles. “I’ll be here, every day and every night, until the problem’s solved.”

  Yeah, every night… Just because he finally got laid here.

  The Hero had put high effort into approaching women throughout their journey, but only rarely did he actually stay in one place for long enough to have any kind of notable success.

  “Perhaps we can go later,” began Cecilia.

  “No,” Samara said. “I’m going now. If none of you will join me, all right. I’ll go on my own. This is important. You might not realize how important it is until you’re fighting my corpse, if the situation is more advanced than we realize. I swore an oath to the Goddess to defend her children, and I’m not going to sit by and violate my oath. Will any of you go with me?”

  There was a long silence, where the women looked back and forth between each other, Samara, and the Hero.

  “Of course they won’t—” Chad began.

  “I’ll go with you,” said Swamp Mage Mischa in a tone of regret. She looked over at the Hero apologetically. “It sounds very important.”

  “You’ll be missed,” he said in a voice that sounded insincere.

  “The High Priestess is the one paying my bills anyway,” said Black Hailgrim. He looked at the Hero. “You don’t really need me.”

  Chad scowled. “You haven’t completed my training, have you, old man?”

  “If it’s that important to you, you should come with us,” Hailgrim replied.

  The Hero went silent.

  “I guess not,” said Hailgrim.

  “I have responsibilities,” Chad said after a moment. “I’ve given my word.”

  “Your greater responsibility lies elsewhere, and I think you know that,” said Samara.

  Hailgrim nodded, while Mischa looked uncomfortable and tried to make herself small.

  “Come and find us when you’re done here, Hero, if you can,” said Hailgrim. “I have a feeling we’re going to have our hands full.”

  “Farewell, Hero,” Samara said. “Good luck in your efforts here.”

  “Stay safe,” said Elara with a note of unease in her voice.

  The Hero gave a little grunt that sounded like contemptuous agreement with what the Sword Saintess had said.

  Samara turned and walked away, the other two who had joined her following along.

  “Well, I hope we won’t regret all that,” Hailgrim said.

  I was getting sick of his shit anyway, the paladin thought. But it wasn’t a proper thought for a devout young lady to express aloud.

  “We’re doing the Goddess’s will,” Samara said instead. “Now where is the nearest place we can hire a ship?”