The SSS-Rank Deveror Who Abandoned Glory to Raise Four Daughters

The bell rang at the third hour past midday.

Not the slow ceremonial bell of a festival or the measured toll of a market day. The alarm bell — the one that lived in the tower above the elder’s hall and that nobody in Ashfeld had heard rung in genuine emergency since the Gnoll incident seven years ago and the black dragon three years ago and which produced, each time it rang, the specific collective response of a village that had learned what alarm bells meant.

Brenvar was at the northern fence line when he heard it.

He looked up.

Looked at the sky.

Two shapes. Moving fast. Coming from the east. One large — very large, the specific silhouette of something with wings that had no business existing at the scale it was existing at. One smaller, moving alongside it, wrong in the specific way of something that was shaped like a person but was in the sky without any visible means of support.

He picked up his pitchfork.

Then put it down.

Then picked it up again because it was the only thing available and having something in his hands felt better than not having something in his hands even if the something was a pitchfork against whatever that was.

The village had gathered at the northern edge by the time the shapes were close enough to resolve into details.

Thirty people. More arriving from the market, from the fields, from the houses closest to the alarm. Elder Broft at the front with the expression of a man taking his responsibilities seriously and finding it very difficult. The guard captain beside him with his actual sword drawn, which was notable because the guard captain’s sword had not been drawn in two years and its emergence from the scabbard had a quality of occasion to it.

The women had, mostly, moved the children inside.

The men who remained had weapons — various, improvised, the specific collection of farming and household tools that a village produced when formal armament wasn’t available and the situation seemed to require something with a handle.

The shapes were close enough now.

The large one was a dragon.

This information moved through the crowd in the way that truly significant information moved — silently, instantly, without anyone saying it out loud because saying it out loud would require accepting it and accepting it required something nobody had quite gotten to yet.

"That’s a dragon," the baker said.

"Yes," his wife said.

"A Crimson Dragon," Brenvar said, from behind them. He had been in Ashfeld his entire life and had never seen one and had also never needed to because he was very good at identifying things from the guild documentation he’d read over forty years of occasionally consulting it. "That’s a Crimson—"

"And the other one," the guard captain said, sword still drawn, tracking the smaller shape, "is a—"

The smaller shape waved.

A hand. Extended. Waving, in the specific enthusiastic way of someone who had spotted people they recognized from a significant altitude and was doing their best to communicate non-hostility through arm movement.

A voice came down.

"I’M BACK."

The village went completely still.

Then:

"IS THAT—"

"THAT VOICE—"

"THAT’S CIDD’S—"

"CIDD DOESN’T FLY—"

"HE’S FLYING—"

"THAT’S CIDD FLYING—"

"WHY DOES HE HAVE WINGS—"

"WHY IS THERE A DRAGON—"

The guard captain put his sword away.

Then took it out again.

Then put it away.

Brenvar set his pitchfork against the fence with the specific deliberateness of a man making a decision about the situation and having made it.

The shape that was Cidd descended in a wide arc, the wings — the wings that Ashfeld was collectively processing the existence of with the stunned energy of people discovering that a decade of knowing someone had apparently not covered everything — catching the air with the ease of something that had been doing this for much longer than the three days it had actually been doing this.

He landed at the gate.

Folded the wings.

Stood there.

Looked at thirty people looking at him.

"Hello," he said.

The next twenty minutes were loud.

They were loud in the specific way of Ashfeld being collectively relieved and collectively astonished and collectively unable to decide which of these things to express first, which meant expressing both simultaneously at maximum volume.

"THE WINGS," said approximately eight people.

"WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN," said approximately twelve people, at slightly different times, so it came out as a rolling wave of the same question.

"WHAT IS THAT," said the baker’s youngest, pointing at the dragon, which had landed in the field beyond the northern fence and was doing the dragon equivalent of trying to look unintimidating, which wasn’t entirely successful.

"IT’S FINE," Cidd said, to the dragon question.

"IT’S NOT FINE," said the guard captain’s eldest, who had the specific perspective of someone who had seen Vera train and had developed an instinct for things that were and weren’t fine. "THAT IS SPECIFICALLY NOT FINE—"

"It won’t hurt anyone," Cidd said. "It’s mine."

A silence.

"It’s yours," Elder Broft said.

"Yes."

"The Crimson Dragon."

"Yes."

"Is yours."

"Yes."

Broft looked at the dragon. At Cidd. At the dragon again.

"Right," he said, in the tone he used when he was going to give a speech about something and was gathering the speech.

"Not now Broft," Brenvar said.

"I wasn’t going to—"

"You were absolutely going to."

Broft closed his mouth.

The crowd pressed in — not threateningly, just with the specific gravitational pull of a community that had been missing someone and was now correcting that absence with as much physical proximity as was socially permissible. Children who had been hidden inside had reappeared the moment the alarm stopped, because children were very efficient at determining when the danger had passed, and several of them were now at the edge of the crowd looking at the dragon with the specific expression of children who had decided this was the best day.

"You went for two weeks," the baker’s wife said, making her way to the front of the crowd with the focused efficiency of someone who was done waiting. She looked at him. At the wings, which had not disappeared and were apparently just going to continue being there. At the three people standing behind him, who she was clearly clocking with the instinct of someone who had been running Ashfeld’s social atmosphere for sixty years and missed nothing. "You said two weeks."

"Three," he said. "I said maybe three."

"You said two weeks."

"I said two to three."

She looked at him for a long moment.

Then she pulled him into a hug with the specific force of someone who was sixty-one years old and had decided that social conventions about public embraces were other people’s problem.

He stood in it.

"Welcome back," she said.

"Thank you," he said.

She stepped back. Looked at the wings one more time. Looked at the three behind him.

"Who are these," she said.

The introductions produced their own specific energy.

"Old companions," Cidd said. "We ran into each other. Kira. Sola. Maren."

Kira was doing her social thing — the warm, present, immediately personable quality she had that made strangers feel like she’d been planning to meet them specifically. She was talking to the guard captain and his eldest simultaneously about something that had made both of them look at her differently within thirty seconds, which was a Kira speed record even by Kira standards.

Sola was talking to the baker’s wife, which meant the baker’s wife was currently receiving the full attention of someone who remembered everything anyone told her and made everyone she spoke to feel like the most important person present, and the baker’s wife was visibly deciding things.

Maren was standing slightly apart from all of it with his arms crossed and an expression that suggested he was cataloguing Ashfeld with the same patient observation he catalogued everything.

The women of Ashfeld were watching all three of them with the specific collective energy of a village that had spent two weeks in the particular social ecosystem that resulted from Cidd’s absence and was now processing the addition of three new variables.

Specifically two new female variables.

The inspection was — thorough.

Meven from the eastern houses was doing the thing she did where she appeared to be looking at something else while looking at exactly what she was looking at. The miller’s wife was having a conversation with the baker’s wife that was technically about the dragon but was clearly about something else entirely. The guard captain’s daughter was looking at Kira specifically with the expression of someone taking the measure of something and not being entirely happy with the measurement.

"They’re very..." the baker’s youngest daughter started, next to her mother.

"Yes," her mother said.

"All three of them."

"Yes."

"And they all know him."

"Yes."

"From before."

"Apparently."

A pause.

"Is this a problem," the youngest daughter said.

"That," her mother said, "is an excellent question."

The gifts came out of the pocket in stages.

This produced its own reaction — the specific fascinated horror of watching someone reach into nothing and retrieve things from it, which Ashfeld processed with the adaptability of a village that had already accepted a refrigerator and a water pump and a magical lighting system and had apparently decided that the rules of reality were suggestions rather than requirements when it came to Cidd specifically.

The fabric went to the women who’d been waiting for specific types. The soap to Ren’s list, distributed to the people she’d identified. The seeds to the farming families with notes about cultivation. The medical supplies to the healer who went quiet in a specific way when she looked at what she was holding.

The processed monster meat produced a response.

"These are from—" the butcher started, looking at the labels.

"Yes," Cidd said.

"The variant classifications here—"

"I know."

"This one says the processing team flagged it as potentially a new—"

"I know," Cidd said.

The butcher looked at him. Looked at the meat. Looked at the dragon in the field. Looked back at Cidd.

"Welcome back," he said, in the tone of a man who had decided to process one thing at a time and was going to start with the meat.

Old Garren had come out of the shop — slowly, with the specific care of someone whose knees had opinions — and was standing at the edge of the crowd. Cidd saw him and came to him rather than waiting for him to come through.

Garren looked at him.

At the wings.

At the people behind him.

At the ring on his hand — Marta’s ring, where it always was.

"Good trip," Garren said. Not a question.

"Productive," Cidd said.

Garren nodded. The specific nod of someone who asked the question they meant and received the answer they expected.

"She’d have liked the wings," he said.

Cidd looked at him.

"Marta," Garren said. "She always thought things should be more interesting than they were." He looked at the wings. "She’d have liked them."

Cidd said nothing for a moment.

"Come have dinner," Cidd said. "This week. Bring Lenne if she’s visiting."

"She’s visiting next week," Garren said. "We’ll come."

The crowd was still at full capacity — Ashfeld in reunion mode was not a quiet thing — when the gate at the far end of the village path opened.

Cidd saw it before anyone else did.

Universal Perception being what it was, he’d been aware of movement at the edge of his range for the past several minutes, tracking it with the background awareness that never fully shut off. The specific signatures — one that moved fast with the directional urgency of something that had been waiting a long time and was done waiting, one that moved behind it at a pace that was deliberately measured in the way you kept your pace measured when every instinct was telling you to do otherwise.

He turned.

The crowd parted somewhat, as crowds do when they register that something is happening in a direction they weren’t looking.

Rhea came through the gate at a pace that was not quite running and was also completely running, her ears forward, her tail up, the white of her hair catching the afternoon light and the specific expression on her face that she’d spent three months learning to manage finally, in this specific moment, entirely unmanaged.

She covered the distance between the gate and him in the time it took the crowd to register what was happening.

She didn’t say anything.

She reached him and her arms went around him and she held on with the specific force of someone who had been holding something very large at arm’s length for a long time and had just decided to put it down.

He put his arms around her.

The crowd — thirty people of Ashfeld, plus three S rank companions, plus the dragon in the field — was completely quiet.

Sylvaine arrived behind her.

She was walking. Composure intact. Chin up. The four centuries of managed expression doing the work they’d been doing since she arrived in Ashfeld, all of it present and functional and running harder than it had run in a very long time.

She stopped when she reached him.

Rhea stepped back slightly.

Sylvaine looked at him for a moment.

Then she stepped forward and put her hand on his face — just briefly, just the specific touch of someone confirming something is real and present and there — and then stepped back and arranged her expression and looked at Kira and the others.

"You’re back," she said. To him. Measured. Complete.

"I’m back," he said.

A silence.

Kira was standing completely still.

This was notable. Kira was never completely still.

She was looking at Rhea, who had stepped back from the hug and was now doing the specific thing she did when she was managing her expression which was looking at a point to the left of whatever she was actually looking at.

Then looking at Sylvaine, who was doing the thing she did which was being composed in a way that was working harder than composure usually needed to work.

Then looking at Cidd, who was standing between them with the specific quality of a man who had come home.

Kira’s expression was doing several things in rapid succession — reading, reassessing, reading again, the specific recalculation of someone who had walked into a room thinking they understood the furniture arrangement and was now looking at it and finding that several pieces were not where she’d thought they were.

She looked at Sola.

Sola was looking at the middle distance with the specific quality of someone who had already understood something and was letting other people arrive at it on their own timeline.

Kira looked back at the scene in front of her.

At Rhea’s carefully managed expression.

At Sylvaine’s harder-working-than-usual composure.

At Cidd standing between two people who had said come back and meant considerably more than those words and who he had, apparently, come back to.

At thirty people of Ashfeld watching all of this with the barely contained energy of a community that had been tracking this particular situation for three months and was watching the plot develop in real time.

Kira’s mouth opened.

Closed.

Opened again.

Said nothing.

She looked at Maren.

He was watching the whole thing with the patient observation of someone who had known Cidd for a very long time and was finding the current situation entirely consistent with a pattern he’d been documenting for years.

He looked at Kira.

Looked back at the scene.

Said nothing.

Kira looked at Sola.

Sola was examining something on the horizon.

Kira looked at the village. At the women of Ashfeld who were also watching her watching the scene with the specific knowing energy of people who understood the subtext and were curious about how an outsider was going to process it.

She looked at Rhea one more time.

At Sylvaine.

At Cidd.

At the ring on his hand.

She stood very still for a long moment in the afternoon light of a village she’d arrived in ten minutes ago and was apparently going to need significantly more time to understand than she’d allocated.

"Right," she said, very quietly, to nobody in particular.

The word contained a great deal.