Korr had been watching the boy struggle with the new arrivals for most of the morning, and it was almost painful to witness.
Not because Chris was doing a bad job. He wasn't which was somewhat surprising when you factored in his lack of experience. He was trying his best and the effort was genuine which he found to be the most likely reason for it.
Just the fact he was watching a man who could make the dead earth bloom fumble his way through asking a blacksmith where he wanted to set up his forge was the kind of irony that Korr would have found funny if he'd been in a better mood. The two farmers had been easy enough. There was open ground near the eastern wall that needed tending and they'd gravitated toward it like they already knew. The healer had quietly asked Sera where the wounded had been kept during the raid and Sera had pointed her toward the makeshift medical bay without a word.
But the last two had been a problem.
The man called Alister, a thin figure with the kind of posture that came from decades of sitting behind desks was the first. He'd been evasive when Oswin introduced him and even more so when Chris tried to figure out what he actually did to make the best use of him and his skills, until finally the man had sighed and said, quite bluntly, that he'd spent fifteen years managing logistics for a regional governor before the governor had been executed for embezzlement and he had found himself unemployed, placed on a list of people the new governor didn't want around.
Korr had snorted from the wall when he heard that, listening on on there conversation. At least the man was honest about his failures and owned up to them.
The other was a woman who was a soldier. Her name was Mira, though she didn't offer a last name either. She carried herself with the kind of quiet efficiency that Korr recognized from his own time commanding troops. She didn't brag or posture. She just watched and assessed with keen eyes. When Chris had awkwardly asked if she knew how to fight she'd given him a look that said the question was almost insulting before nodding once and asking where the perimeter was weakest so she could be stationed there.
Sera had liked her immediately, which Korr took as a good sign because Sera didn't seem to warm up to anyone else.
Even now Chris was still trying to sort out sleeping arrangements and food supplies when the Rootmind pulsed.
Korr felt it through the connection Chris had established with him, a faint and distant but unmistakably annoying feeling that he knew he would never get used to. It was short and blunt, telling him the southern perimeter was registering movement, not the slow approach of lost travelers and not the deliberate march of soldiers, but something in between. Controlled and unhurried. A single figure walking toward the village through the grey dead plains like they had every right to be there.
"One person," Korr said, and Chris looked up from whatever argument he'd been having with Alister about supply storage and housing. "There coming from the south and seem to be alone."
"Hostile?" Chris asked simply, making Korr think for a moment before shaking his head.
"They don't move like it."
Chris's expression shifted at that and Korr could see the guilt that had been sitting on the boy's shoulders since the past attack flaring up again but mixed with something harder. Some kind of determination. He recognized it because he'd worn it himself on enough battlefields, it was the look of a man who'd been caught off guard once and wasn't going to let it happen again which he was glad to see.
Korr watched Chris cut the talk/argument with Alister short, telling him to try and plan it out and he would try to work it out later before he moved with Korr to the southern wall.
The figure was still a few hundred feet out, walking through the dead grey earth with a steady, unhurried gait. Korr felt something cold settle in his chest because he recognized the shape of the man even at this distance. Not the face, but the way they moved. The particular way a demon carried themselves when they were walking toward something they'd already calculated.
"Korr." Chris said it quietly. "You know what that is." It was a mix of question and statement.
"A summoned." The words came out rough. "One of ours, someone the Lord pulled from another world, same as your Empire does with its heroes but having been made into our own race, losing there humanity upon arriving. Often used to fill whatever role is required."
The man was dressed simply. Grey robes that looked more practical than ceremonial, no visible weapons or even a pack. Walking like a man who didn't need to carry things because other people carried them for him, that fact alone seemed to rub Chris the wrong way. When he got close enough for Korr to see his face clearly, something flickered across his gaze.
He stopped at the edge of the mist. The cloud tree didn't seem to know what to do with him, the white haze curling and shifting uncertainly as it tried what it could to block his vision, the man seemed to just wait with the patience of someone who was used to it, waiting for them to make the first move.
"I know you," the man said plainly once they walked out to speak with him, his eyes locked on Korr, his voice calm and measured yet not cold exactly. It was like someone reading numbers off a ledger with how dry it was. "The Butcher of the Eastern Front. I processed supply requisitions for your division for two full years. You signed off on siege ammunition allocations that I personally flagged as inefficient three separate times."
Korr stared at him with hints of anger. "You're the one who kept rejecting my ammunition requests?"
"You were over ordering by fourteen percent based on historical engagement data. The Lord's resources are not unlimited, General." A pause, and something that might have been the ghost of a smile crossed his thin features. "Though I will admit, your actual expenditure rates in the field consistently exceeded my projections. You were using more ammunition than any division on the Front. Which either means you were fighting harder or managing your supplies worse. The data suggested both though."
Chris was standing behind Korr, his confusion was almost palpable. This wasn't what he'd expected. Not a demon general with an army. Not a snarling monster from the stories. Just a thin man in grey robes who seemed to use talk of ammunition logistics as a means to get under Korr's skin.
"The Lord sent you," Korr stated.
"He did. My name is Veylan and I serve the Demon Lord in the capacity of strategic assessment and resource allocation." His gaze shifted to Chris and seemed to sharpen. "And you are the one who grows things where nothing should be able to grow. The Green Bringer, or so our scouts reported. Though I find titles tend to obscure more than they reveal, so I will simply call you 'Chris' as one of them heard that to be your name."
"What do you want?" Chris asked bluntly, his voice tired.
Veylan tilted his head slightly, almost amused. "I want to present you with an offer and I want to be clear about what that offer entails because clarity produces better outcomes than obfuscation. The Lord has been watching your settlement with growing interest. You have done something in the Barrens that no one has done in centuries. You have made dead ground live again and that is a resource of considerable strategic value."
"So you're here to take it." Chris asked with a frown. "Just like the Empire?"
"No. I'm here to ask you to share it with us." Veylan clasped his hands behind his back, the gesture almost academic. "The Demon Lord's territory is vast but arid and the Empires that press against our borders have been burning our farmlands for generations now hoping to starve us to death, it has resulted in our territory ever so steadily shrink inwards. We cannot feed our people adequately because of this. What you have done here though is exactly what the Lord needs in his own domain. Farms that produce food and plants that grow in soil that should be unable to support anything along with defensive organisms that could protect our borders without requiring soldiers we don't have."
Chris's jaw tightened. "You want me to go work for the Demon Lord?"
"I want you to consider the possibility that the Empire you just fought is not unique in its desire to control what you've built and that allying with one side might be preferable to being destroyed by all of them pooling together resources." Veylan's tone didn't shift or try to be persuasive, instead he just laid out the facts like columns on a ledger. "The Lord is prepared to offer you protection, resources, autonomy and will consider any other requests you may have. You would not be a servant. You would be an asset and assets are treated well because replacing them is expensive."
Korr watched him process this. He knew what Chris was going to say before he said it. He'd known him long enough to read the shape of his silences.
"No." Chris's voice was steady and firm. "I don't want to fight anyone's war. I don't want to grow weapons for the Demon Lord any more than that I don't want to surrender to any empire. I just want this place to be what it is. A place where people can come and be safe, a haven separate from everyone's fighting and troubles."
Veylan considered this for a moment. His expression didn't change—no disappointment or frustration, just that same calm analytical gaze.
"I will pass your words to the Lord exactly as you've spoken them. I will tell him that you refused because you want peace, not because you want to oppose him." He paused. "That distinction will matter more than you may realize. The Lord is many things but wasteful is not one of them regardless of how others my think. He knows he will not need to send an army to take by force what he could simply gain through patience."
Korr almost laughed at that, seeing how Chris's expression flicker with something that might have been hope since he had already read between the lines.
"He's not telling you it's over, boy." Korr's voice was low and hard. "He's telling you the Lord will wait, because waiting is what the Lord does best till he gets frustrated and takes drastic action. He'll watch and calculate till the moment it becomes more efficient to take what you've built rather than wait for you to give it, he will eventually move. Just like the Empire except he will wait for the most advantages time to do so."
Veylan said nothing to counter that, instead simply nodding. Something almost like approval in the gesture. "The general is quite correct, though I would have phrased it differently. The Lord is patient and you should be too, because the Empire lacks that valuable skill. They are coming in numbers that will make your recent defense look like a school yard brawl and when they arrive they will not stop at your walls. They will burn everything you've grown and salt the earth behind them because that is what Empires do to things they cannot take." He paused and for the first time something almost human flickered behind those analytical eyes. "And the sad part is before that happens there will be people who come to your door seeking shelter. Refugees, soldiers, perhaps even some of those summoned heroes all believing this place will shelter them and protect them, and if by some miracle you do survive and push them back more will flock to your land. You should be prepared for that, because a haven cannot remain hidden once the war reaches its doorstep."
Chris didn't say anything, and Korr didn't either.
Seemingly done Veylan turned to leave but stopped and looked back over his shoulder at them. "One more thing. The Lord has no intention of sending force against you. Not because he values some kind of future friendship, but rather because the numbers don't support it currently. The cost of a military campaign through the Barrens against a fortified position with unknown capabilities with other forces making moves of there own outweighs the projected benefit of acquiring a single grower no matter how talented they may be." He met Chris's eyes directly as he said it. "That is the truth of the matter. I tell you this not to comfort you but because people make better decisions when they understand the arithmetic of their situation."
He didn't wait to see there reactions to his words, instead continued walking into the grey barrens, unhurried and unhindered.
Korr watched him go with a tight jaw. He'd known men like Veylan once. Men who buried themselves in numbers and used them to justify every action they took. They were often the most dangerous people in any room well being the most overlooked, there danger coming not because of what they could do but rather because of what they could convince others to do for them.
Chris stared at his slowly fading figure, his hands shaking slightly and Korr didn't need the Rootmind to know what he was feeling.
"He wasn't lying," Korr said quietly. "About any of it."
"I know." Chris's voice was barely above a whisper. "That's the worst part."