Corvayne read the note on the kitchen table. Again.

Dear Hari and Explorers,

We regret to send you this letter informing you that we could not produce the needed funds to handle the ransom of every member of our guild. It might seem odd, but given the financial value of some members of the guild, it would create bad feelings if we were to, say, undervalue a member. As well and perhaps more importantly, if it came to your attention later that their monetary worth was far far greater than the rest of the hostages combined this might also create bad feelings. Given your tremendous prowess in defeating then capturing a large squad of mid-to-upper-range adventurers with minimal casualties on either side (thank you for your mercy!) we respect that while one side or the other would -win- in a conflict, it's better to avoid any misunderstandings. Thus let us try to find harmony and remove bad feelings from the equation.

We will continue to count every coin, tuck in our belts, slice the bread thin, half our visits to the brothels, water down the soup, skip the morning trip to the Kaffa parlor, sell our remaining gold paperweights, and ride two to a horse to cut down on stable fees as we tirelessly work to produce an appropriate sum for the mysterious young lass who we would not dream of taking off your hands without fairly compensating you for her value.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at our guild branch in (smudged) and request me by hitting the little gong in the kitchen behind the bag of millet, and I will do my utmost to quell any fears you have via a medium on (also redacted) street to whom I will contact on my end through the spirits to begin our dialogue. In the mean time, you may note there is some extra gold in the amount negotiated to help offset the many, many costs you may need to address in dealing with Bell. Please remind her that if she were to, say, run away, it would put her current guild standing in jeopardy as it would constitute breaking the agreement the guild had with Miss Hari and Miss Undine.

Have a blessed day,

Your humble Ruby-Rank Guildmaster Servant, Corky D. Rottweiler.

PS Hari: Good news! We've collected some of the funds by completing a request Undine had submitted to us to find your location. Please thank her on our behalf for helping meet our material debt to you when you see her next.

Corvayne handed the letter back to Wick, then wiped his hands on his pants. The smell of perfume the letter had been soaked in didn't disperse off his palms. He was very careful not to get any closer to Bell, the red head who was snarling at him from the chair she was tied to.

Hari had been tapping her finger on the table and swearing in elvish, clearly the result of Undine being put into the fray. That was a problem for tomorrow.

“Let me GO! Let me GO!”

Wick didn't know Nel'Ferrallian or Imperial or whatever they called it, but Corvayne was certain she had memorized those words as she quickly replied. “Don't even fucking think of letting her loose inside.”

“I learned my lesson when we untied her outside.” Corvayne simply replied.

Hari groaned. “We have to let her free eventually.”

Wick looked at her. “Why?”

Corvayne looked at her and pulled his lip slightly down and Wick held her hands up. “Corvayne I know, I know! We're not that type of group.”

Bell hopped her chair over to Corvayne and tried to headbutt him, to which Corvayne responded by using [Juxtapose] to slip past her and catch her before she fell, then righted her and moved his chair around her to sit where she had been next to Wick. “I didn't think you were entirely serious. But when we let her go, definitely outside. She doesn't trust us, and I see no reason to antagonize our crew by having someone bunk in the same room as her.”

Wick looked at Corvayne and her eyes narrowed as she asked, “Are you... going to make her a project?”

Corvayne sighed and looked between his two lovers. Hari nodded at him to keep going and Wick quirked her lips. Corvayne looked over at Bell who was clearly thinking about how to get to the knife block. “I'm aiming to be the leader of the Watchers. If I want to do that I need to be able to work with people who dislike me, ranging from none to all of them. It's the other side of the coin... if I just have overwhelming power, I'm just a tyrant.”

Wick nodded. “That's what you have me for. I actually know a thing or two about leading people.”

Corvayne smiled at Wick. “I'll also probably need help just keeping her from running off but I don't think she can get the drop on me.”

Bell started tipping over from trying to leap to pull a knife from the block on the counter so Corvayne gently spun her back to the table while she wiggled and sputtered. “You will pay for your mockery! Tch. You have no idea who I am!”

Corvayne had to turn away to hide his amusement. So close! She almost asked THAT question. He shrugged and lifted her up, chair and all. “I'll see if maybe Lady Blood Claw can help me keep her in line... I figure she won't be as likely to try to knee Lady in the groin.” He did not have a strong conviction this was true, and so he mentally assigned himself to offer to walk LBC's Squid or take one of her cleaning shifts as penance for what he was about to drag her into.

He couldn't stop her from digging her nails into his hands while he was ferrying her out the back of the truck and down the ramp. It didn't really hurt, so he just marched across camp and set her down in the shadow of the spines. After a moment of preparing himself he focused on his ring then willed the ropes binding her and the chair into it. He started moving before she shifted forward to try to lunge at him.

Corvayne just let her charge past, then slid past a backhanded punch. She was not a terrific assassin nor a skilled boxer nor even a novice rouge. It was pretty easy to catch her fist, parry her knee with his then spin and almost effortlessly guide her to the ground without slamming her against the dirt. He locked her hands above her head and used his leg to keep her from bucking and kicking him.

“Miss Bell, I'd much rather you be on that caravan with your peers...” She started trying to snarl a denial at peers but Corvayne just kept talking “... and not be my problem, but since you ARE my problem now, I'd like to ask if we can have a truce.”

She calmed and Corvayne loosened his pin, which she used to try to draw and jab him with a sharpened spoon. Corvayne flipped her face down and put a knee on her arms, plucking the missing spoon from her so that Mosh could repair it. “All right, we'll talk like this. Who are you, and why did they leave you behind?”

She huffed and glared at him with the one eye he could see. “I know what a lowborn cur like you is thinking! I'll bite my tongue off before I become your woman!”

It was like Seru had been but worse. “If I'm touching you, it's because you're about to hurt yourself or someone else. This is not an attempt at romance. Didn't you ever do hand to hand training?”

“I was a prodigy, and dismantled my trainers! And I won't tell you anything!”

“Okay. I'll talk about myself then. Let me know if you get cold, hungry, thirsty, or anything else.” He felt her wiggle under him but his strawberry leggings would be a challenge for her to cut if she was armed let alone trying to gouge him with her bare hands.

So Corvayne spoke about himself. What he remembered from his village, waking up, Cascadia and Wick. He was talking about how Grunt would get carry-out when Bell barked at him, voice cracking with frustration. “I yield! Damn it! Enough!”

Corvayne got off her, turned, and offered his hand. She rolled away from him and stood up on her own, dusting off her now gray under-armor clothes. If not for her stance that suggested she was still considering fighting he thought she might start crying. Corvayne cut her emotional ride short by producing an enchanted purple gambeson and maroon work pants as well as a backpack that had been tagged in Cascadian as 'The Red-Head who bites'.

Bell caught all of it and took a step back to balance herself before glaring at him over the lumps of leather and tough quilted cloth. “You dare toss that at me like a... common pack animal?”

Corvayne smirked and tossed her a wood practice sword to send her stumbling to balance her load.

He waited for her to get it under control and start donning the gear before he spoke again. “Tell me about Bell.”

“That's not my name! You haven't told me your real name either, I don't see why-”

Corvayne felt his eyebrow twitch. “My name is Corvayne.”

Bell stopped to look away and tried to fix her hair as she frowned. “Oh. How unfortunate.”

That this was the first time she had shown any tact somehow annoyed Corvayne further, but he buried it as he addressed her again. “Okay, if Bell isn't your name, tell me your name or what you want to be called.”

“Tch, I need a new adventurer name, I hate my current one.” She folded her arms and glared off to the side, perhaps annoyed just thinking about it.

“I need a name you don't mind, or I'll call you Bell.” Corvayne started looking for some sort of backup and spotted Lady Blood Claw walking Squidgglesworth and, to the credit of the tall alien woman's sense of danger, she almost instantly veered away from where he and Bell were once she saw who he was with.

Bell didn't notice. “Hmm. Call me Lady Red.”

Corvayne shook his head and gestured for her to follow as he tracked after Lady Blood Claw. “She's Lady Blood Claw... you wanna just be Red?”

“No! I hate that nickname too.”

Corvayne rolled his eyes. So as long as lady was there, she didn't care?

She had taken to pawing through her pack, pulling out a pretty nice down sleeping bag before crying out, “Where did my tent go? And my furs! Do you see how thin this is?! You said we were camping, was it not enough to force me to freeze under rough blankets before?”

Corvayne tried to imagine it was poker face practice. “Well, Bell, I also hate the cold and I'm going to be staying out too... if it bothers you well, we have people whom you could attack with a sharpened spoon and actually hurt, and we don't trust you not to run and have the guild implicate us if something happens to you.”

Bell looked askance at him. “That's what YOU think? Hah.”

“Wick does.” Corvayne said, trying to pretend he didn't notice her trying to get closer to him, probably looking to strike him with her wood sword.

She paused at her advance a moment to ask, “Which one is Wick?”

“Green haired girl, one at the table. She's my girlfriend.” Corvayne counted down steps and then spun right as Bell tried to smack him on the head, letting it fall past him and disarmed her before stepping away. He really had to resist elbowing her as he did so. He instead waited for her to yell and charge, then got her into a headlock, Bell's arms flailed as she tried to elbow him and ram her nails into his arm. Corvayne just waited, letting her thrash and tire for about minute before he let her go and stepped back to let her huff, hair slick with sweat.

Corvayne used a shadow hand to pull the wood sword over his shoulder while also folding his real arms. “Are you finished trying to attack me?”

Bell made a gesture at him, one he was pretty sure was Hari's version of flipping someone off. Then she huffed, eyes red. “Monster! You enjoy watching me struggle, you sick little peasant?”

“Only because I want you to get something out of it.” He paused. “Okay, there's also a bit of karma there too. Either way, we need to lay down some ground rules. If I thought you could just run away and we'd both go on with our lives, I'd pack you food and possibly steal a horse so you could get away sooner. I'm tempted to do so anyway, but I need to know who you are, why they sent you out here, and why you think they are not taking you back, aside from the obvious. They tricked us into taking responsibility for you. Why?”

Bell rubbed her neck. “I'm not telling you because you'd make a power play by forcing me-”

Corvayne held up a hand. “Wick is a Princess of an empire that spans hundreds of worlds. I don't care about it, I'd rather she NOT be one. It is a major negative. It is part of why I'm on this trip rather than going on dates in the woods to try to find secret bases and building a cabin in a dimensional rift.”

He realized she was getting distracted thinking about killing him and that he was getting distracted by his own issues. He took a deep breath, switched forms and pulled a shard out from between his fingers, then tossed it away and imagined his own annoyance falling away with it. Mind over matter, hands over spears. The wound bled a little and he produced a gore towel and dabbed it. Bell started staring at him with the same look of horror, so Corvayne started talking again to hopefully get to his point.

“We, as in, this group, are here because she was in danger at her home, and eventually we'll need to leave to keep putting ground between us and them. I want to know why the guild doesn't want you, and if someone is going to kill you and blame it on us. Before we let you go, we HAVE to know what your deal is.”

Bell glared at him. “A likely story, no doubt trying to get me to admi-”

“... are you an imperial princess?” Corvayne saw a little flash of panic then a sort of clumsy attempt to cover it up. He cleared his throat. “I think you are an imperial princess.”

Bell laughed a little too fast. “Ha! Wh- what sort of royalty would get along with those lowborn adventurers?”

Corvayne felt his normal mask crack again as his eye twitched.

“Bell, you need to learn how to lie if you are not sticking to the truth. We and the Guild now know you're worth more than the rest of the group combined, and that you are also a huge liability either because you are some sort of target or you have no emotional control, possibly both. If we were looking to hurt you even with the flimsy excuse of self defense, we'd have done so. So I'm going to instead try to train you to master yourself because... I have a feeling you're going to try to take a shot at someone who isn't as patient as me.”

“Oh, yes! When I get back, first you! Then, those bastards who left me behind-”

“Bell! Look at me. If you don't care about the guild, we'll take you to your home. Right now. In fact, PLEASE tell us where you really live and let us take you home. PLEASE.” Corvayne had to unclench his fists. He silently apologized to Seru, Gary, and every other newbie he had ever tried to train. Bell already looked to be a monumental challenge.

The woman folded her arms. “I refuse to go home! I gave myself a quest, and I will see it through.”

Corvayne sighed. “All right, that's good. What's your quest? Can we help you complete it?”

“I can't tell you.” Bell frowned.

Corvayne tried not to grit his teeth and failed. “Why not?”

“Because you'll figure out who I am!” She put her head down, clearly trying to come up with something better. “It's related to my circumstances...”

Corvayne folded his arms. Time to try a different tact. “Your empire is dying.”

Bell snapped her head up. “Shut your cur mouth!”

“Imperial princess, or heir to some major house, I don't actually know how your empire is structured.” Corvayne turned from her and pulled three tents from his ring, placing them off a rise near a pond that Mister I was fishing in. The monk waved at him and Corvayne waved back.

“If you can't tell me your name, and you don't want me to call you Bell, I'm going to name you 'Princess'”

She glared at him. “How did you know my old adventurer name?! Were you hired by my father?!”

Corvayne sighed and started setting the camp up. “I told you my story. C'mon, pick and set up your tent then we're going to go fishing. Oh, ground rules. Don't attack me when I sleep, or I'll tie you up before bed. If you run away at night, we'll tie you up before bed. Don't steal our stuff and we'll give you back everything we took from you when we defeated you. If we take you into a dungeon don't mess around. You attack me, that's the last time we take you.”

She looked excited for a moment, then her face morphed back to her normal prideful sneer. “Ha! This dungeon was tapped out ages ago. There's probably not two coppers to rub together in there!”

Corvayne raised an eyebrow and felt a hint of a smile. “You wanna bet on it Princess?”

She glared at him. “That's-”

Corvayne held up a hand. They needed a last rule, the most important one. “Fine, Bell.” He looked at her then and tried to project the look his father always gave him. “Bell, if you hurt someone else in my group, we are done. You become an enemy, and we already decided that we'll never take someone who attacks us twice prisoner a second time. Do you understand?”

For a moment she looked terrified and Corvayne felt like he had maybe gone too far. The moment before he broke she lifted her chin back up and folded her arms. “What's in it for me? Hmm? Why go along with anything?”

Corvayne gazed at her like one of his old masters and his shadowy hands formed slithered out to hold his spear. “Because I can see you hate being weak more then you hate me.” With his own tent set up, he walked down to the pond.