Li watched as the knights, now dressed in the nondescript brown leathers they wore under their armor, started buzzing forwards, scrambling to talk to Jeanne. She smiled and waved at them, leading them away to the heart of the festival where, hopefully, they would disperse when they realized none of them were going to get what they wanted and have some fun for themselves.

"Y'know, I'm thinking I'm going to see what this festival's all about, too. I'm a sucker for playing around, you see," said Swift as he watched the knights leave.

"So long as you don't make a mess," said Li with a pointed look, clearly indicating that there would be severe repercussions if the hero made so much as an unnecessary peep.

"Woah, don't look at me like that." Swift raised his gloved hands up in surrender. "Like I said, I'm just here to lay back and enjoy myself. Fighting's the least of my priorities."

With that, Swift disappeared, zipping as a blur past the soldiers, weaving through festival goers until he settled at a food cart for meat where he raised two fingers to get two spits of beef.

Li shrugged. He could not sense any ill will in the hero, and he was not intolerable, either, so long as he kept his word and mediated the priests of Light from doing anything particularly stupid.

Li made his way back to the cottage, Tia in tow, calmed down now that any sense of threat had passed. She was walking a little less energetically than usual, her belly full from eating the leftovers and carcasses from the aquatic monsters Old Thane and Sylvie had butchered.

Back inside the cottage, Li was greeted by Old Thane's proud proclamation, "Lad! Good to see ye back. The stew's all done. Smells mighty hearty, too."

Li took in a smell that consisted mostly of brine and iron from the blood and scales the fish had left behind, but he figured that would go away with Sylvie acting quick, cleaning up the kitchen with agile efficiency. She scraped down scales into a small bucket with other food waste and wiped down table surfaces with a routinely wettened and strained cloth.

Observing her, Li realized that in any manners of organization or housekeeping or preparing food, she must have been the one carrying her two teammates.

"Smells great," said Li as he stepped over to the fireplace, sitting on a stool by Old Thane as he watched the old man stir the pot a few more times with a large wooden spoon.

The pot was truly an amalgam of strange things. Miscellaneous vegetables such as onions, carrots, and celery diced in rough chunks surrounded by multicolored fillets of fish, some exotically colored purple and red and blue, all floating atop a sea of milky white boiling broth. The greens and faded yellows of herbs and roots floated around the broth, releasing a strong aroma that tried its hardest to counteract the fishiness of the contents within.

At the center of the pot, the shark fin bobbed up and down in rhythm with the rolling of the boiling bubbles, leaking out the creamy residue that colored the broth milky.

"The Heart of the Sea is what they called it in me home, far, far north," said Old Thane. "All the deadly and mighty creatures of the icy waters we could dredge up, we put into one pot such that their might may pass into our own blood."

Tia reached her snout up to the broth and sniffed it before crinkling her nose and retreating. Full as she was, she was pickier, and it was evident that she did not like anything boiled like this. She did not even particularly like roasted meat.

Or perhaps it was just that bad.

Li called out to Sylvie. "It's fine not to leave the place spotless. I'll handle the rest. Why don't you clean up and get a bowl? Let's have ourselves a proper meal."

A right sound idea, lad," said Old Thane.

"Yeah, you've been workin' too hard, Sylv," said Azhar as he went to the kitchen to lead Sylvie out of it because she would surely protest.

"It is the least I could do for you all," said Sylvie as she went to a bucket seated atop the kitchen counter filled with cleansing rune purified water. As she washed her hands, she continued, "As an adventurer, I travel much, and I do love the travel, but worries of home, of Riviera, do haunt me often. With Li and Old Thane's efforts, I can feel that much better about our old home."

"Ain't really my home, but any home of yours is a home of mine," said Azhar.

"And it's the least I could do for the lands that welcomed me from the beginning," said Li.

Everyone gathered around the fireplace, bowls full of the stew at their laps. Li could not say it was bad. It was more bland, tasting strongly of salt and herbs he had put in to mask the stench of the monstrous fish and neutralize their toxins if there were any.

In a way, though, there was a certain charm to the stew. It was representative of Old Thane's harsh homeland where taste would be highly secondary to securing a square and edible meal every day.

"Ah! Now that hits the spot," said Old Thane as he drank in some soup from the bowl. "But I must say, the fire of this stew hits perhaps too strongly. It is meant to be drunk in the icy cold of the north, after all. Perhaps we should enjoy it outside, with all the revelry and the night's breeze by our backs?"

"I have no opposition to that," said Li as he stood up, bowl in hand. He wanted to see how the festival was going as well. Tia stood up from a curled up position by the fire, sensing Li's intent to leave.

"And Jeanne will not be so lonely," said Sylvie as Azhar nodded in agreement. Azhar took an extra bowl and filled it up with the stew for Jeanne.

"Then onwards we shall go!" said Old Thane.