While Ludger and Elira were heading into the labyrinth, Arslan was having a much more difficult time elsewhere.
He and Maris were in her office, seated across from each other with a desk between them that felt less like furniture and more like a final barrier before open violence.
The room itself was orderly in the way of someone who had no patience for clutter unless it served a purpose. Shelves lined one wall, half full of ledgers, reports, and old records. A map of the surrounding territory had been pinned and repinned so many times that the corners looked permanently tired. Weapons were mounted off to the side, not for decoration, Arslan suspected, but because Maris was the kind of person who preferred useful things to be within reach. The window behind her desk let in the last pale traces of evening light, just enough to sharpen the edges of her expression.
And that expression…
Maris looked like she was calmly studying the best possible way to skin Arslan alive. Not metaphorically. Not even angrily, really.
Just with the cold, measured focus of someone deciding how much suffering a person had actually earned after ten years of silence and one extremely inconvenient reappearance.
Arslan, meanwhile, sat there looking like a man who was still trying to calculate whether the negotiations could somehow be salvaged if he bolted for the door right now and never returned.
The answer was probably no. Still, part of him clearly wanted to test it. Maris folded her hands atop the desk and said nothing for a few seconds. Which somehow made the room worse. Because silence from her wasn’t empty. It felt sharpened. Deliberate. Like she knew exactly how uncomfortable it made him and intended to let that discomfort ripen properly before she used it.
Arslan kept a composed face with the sort of effort usually reserved for battlefield injuries. This was, he reflected grimly, different from fighting. A troll trying to tear his head off was honest. This was not.
At the same time, beneath the visible tension and the increasingly bleak awareness of his own circumstances, another thought kept circling through his mind. Ludger. More specifically, Ludger and Elira alone in a labyrinth. Arslan’s jaw tightened just slightly.
He was genuinely praying to whatever heavens still bothered listening to him that his son had not awakened the same scumbag genes Arslan was absolutely certain he had passed down by blood.
Because if the boy somehow chose this exact trip, this exact guild, and this exact daughter to start inheriting his father’s worst habits… Then Arslan wasn’t sure even a quick death would save him from what Maris would do next. And judging by the look she was giving him now, she might already be thinking along similar lines.
For a while, the conversation in Maris’ office circled carefully around the actual negotiation without quite touching it. Mostly because Maris seemed to be taking her time. And because Arslan, despite all his usual confidence, had enough survival instinct left to understand that pushing too fast would be a mistake.
Eventually, though, the topic shifted toward Ludger. Maris leaned back slightly in her chair, arms folded, her gaze no longer as openly murderous as before, though still sharp enough to keep Arslan very aware of where he was.
“Your son looks pretty level-headed,” she said.
Arslan let out a quiet breath through his nose. “He is.”
Maris’ eyes narrowed faintly, not in suspicion exactly, more in thought. “Aside from the height, the build, and the hair…” Her mouth twitched slightly. “He doesn’t look much like your son at all.”
Arslan forced a smile. “That sounds almost insulting.”
“It was,” Maris said calmly.
Then, after a brief pause, she added, “Are you sure he’s yours?”
Arslan’s smile turned a little more strained.
“Elaine is very sure of it,” he said.
That made Maris raise an eyebrow.
Arslan went on with the weary resignation of a man who knew exactly how bad this sounded for himself and had no defense worth using. “Unlike me, she only had one relationship in her life.”
Maris let out a dry sound that was not quite a laugh.
“Poor woman,” she said. “She chose the wrong person and still forgave him years after he left her.”
Arslan winced a little at that. There wasn’t much point in arguing. Too much of it was true. Maris’ gaze stayed on him as she continued, her tone neither soft nor cruel now. Just direct.
“Still,” she said, “despite all the mistakes you made, you ended up with a nice family.” Her eyes sharpened faintly again. “Four children.”
That made something in Arslan’s expression ease. Not enough to erase the tension in the room. Just enough to make him look more honest than defensive for the first time since he had sat down.
He scratched the back of his head and gave a small, crooked smile. “I had to work hard to earn that.”
Maris snorted softly.
Arslan shrugged. “I’m serious.”
“I know.”
He looked down for a moment, then said more quietly, “I still consider myself very blessed.”
That answer settled differently between them. Not like the earlier jabs. Not like the old resentment. Just as a simple truth.
Because for all the stupidity, mistakes, selfishness, and years of damage behind him, Arslan knew very well what he had now. A wife who had every reason not to trust him and chose to stand beside him anyway. Children. A home. A guild. A life that had somehow grown into something solid after beginning in mess and failure.
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He didn’t take that lightly. And Maris seemed to notice that. She was silent for a few seconds after that, studying him again, but less like she was imagining how to skin him alive and more like she was measuring the shape of the man he had become against the one she remembered.
Eventually, she said, “You do sound more tolerable than before.”
Arslan let out a short laugh. “That might be the nicest thing you’ve said to me today.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
The room went quiet again after that. Not comfortable. But not hostile in the same way as before either. And for Arslan, considering who he was sitting across from, that already counted as progress. Maris leaned back slightly, her eyes still on Arslan, though the edge in them had changed again.
“I’d heard rumors about you and your family for a while,” she said. “Most of them, I didn’t believe.”
Arslan gave a tired smile. “That was probably the healthy response.”
Maris ignored that.
“The ones about your son were the worst,” she said. “Or the most ridiculous, depending on how charitable I wanted to be.” Her fingers tapped once against the arm of the chair. “Too many stories. Too many impossible-sounding details. A child doing this, a child doing that, building, fighting, negotiating, commanding, reshaping things that should have taken grown men far longer.”
Her mouth pulled slightly to one side.
“It sounded exaggerated.”
Arslan didn’t interrupt.
Maris continued, “Then a few months ago, I traveled to another city for guild business.”
Her gaze narrowed faintly, remembering it.
“And while I was there, I met Harold, Cor, Aleia, and Selene.”
That made Arslan’s brow lift a little. Maris noticed.
“Yes,” she said dryly. “Those Harold, Cor, Aleia, and Selene. And after listening to them talk…” She let out a short breath through her nose. “I confirmed everything.”
There was something almost offensive in the way she said it, like she still hadn’t fully forgiven reality for matching the rumors.
“They weren’t speaking like people retelling tavern nonsense,” Maris said. “They were speaking like people who had actually seen it.” Her eyes shifted slightly toward the window, where the last light of day had nearly faded. “That was the part I found hardest to believe. Not that the stories existed. That adults as capable as them that tolerated your nonsense for years spoke about your son’s ability like it had become normal.”
Arslan stayed quiet, but the pride in his face was already difficult to hide.
Maris saw that too.
“And now,” she said, “after seeing him in person…”
She paused there. Not for effect. More because she seemed to be aligning the final thought properly before saying it.
“I can tell that boy is the one who made you grow up this much.”
That landed cleanly. Arslan showed a proud smile at once. It probably wasn’t the best possible context to feel proud in. Sitting across from an old fling who was dissecting his life and personal growth with unsettling accuracy wasn’t exactly flattering. But even so… she was right.
He knew she was right.
Ludger had not been the only reason Arslan changed. Life, responsibility, Elaine, the guild, failure, regret, all of it had shaped him. But Ludger had been one of the hardest, clearest turning points. Seeing him. Understanding what he had already been carrying. Realizing what kind of child he had been forced to become before Arslan properly stepped in.
Yes.
That had changed him.
So despite the situation, despite the old history, despite the fact that Maris was still more than capable of making this conversation feel like a slow execution, Arslan couldn’t help being proud that her judgment was accurate. After a moment, he nodded.
“Yeah,” he said. “That sounds about right.”
Maris studied him for another second, then gave a small, humorless smile.
“I thought so.”
Arslan scratched the back of his head again, but this time there was less awkwardness in it and more quiet honesty.
“He forced me to look at a lot of things I should’ve looked at sooner,” he admitted. “Not by saying much. Just by existing the way he did.”
Maris’ expression didn’t soften, but it grew more thoughtful.
“A child shouldn’t have to do that.”
“No,” Arslan said. “He shouldn’t have.”
That answer lingered in the room for a moment. It wasn’t dramatic. Just true. And truth, Arslan had learned, usually weighed more than excuses ever did. Once the topic settled fully on Ludger, something in Arslan loosened. Not his caution. That still had enough sense to remain alive in front of Maris.
But the moment she made it clear she had already reached her own conclusions about his son, the pride he had been holding in check slipped out far more easily than before.
“You’re right about one thing,” Arslan said, leaning back a little in his chair. “He really is the reason for a lot of it.”
Maris said nothing, so he kept going. And once he started, it became very clear that he was not going to stop anytime soon.
“Since he was four, he could already use magic,” Arslan said. “Not clumsy child stuff either. Actual control. And he trained his body hard even back then. Harder than most grown men I’ve seen with more sense and less reason.”
His mouth curved into the kind of smile only fathers got when talking about things that still half impressed and half worried them years later.
“You know how some children copy adults because they want attention?” he went on. “That wasn’t him. He didn’t train because someone told him it looked cool. He trained because he’d already decided it mattered.”
Maris rested the side of her head against one hand, elbow on the table, and watched him quietly. Arslan, of course, took that as permission to continue.
“When he was nine,” he said, “he forced me to go all out in a spar.”
That got a slight shift out of Maris’ brows.
Arslan noticed and nodded at once, as if happy to see his audience reacting properly.
“I’m serious,” he said. “Not pretend all out. Not ‘go a little harder for the child.’ I mean actually all out. I had to stop thinking of him as a kid in that fight and start thinking of him as a problem I had to deal with properly. I used my best technique to split bosses in half, and the blocked without breaking a single bone!”
His grin widened a little at the memory, though there was still a trace of disbelief buried under it even now.
“And when he turned ten…” Arslan let out a short breath through his nose. “He created the Lionsguard.”
That line landed differently. Because it wasn’t just talent anymore. Not just growth. Arslan leaned forward slightly without seeming to notice he was doing it.
“And since then, the guild hasn’t stopped growing. Not once. Every time I think we’ve reached a point where things should slow down, he finds another angle. Trade. Labyrinths. routes. products. training systems. alliances.” He shook his head once, half amused, half helpless. “The boy sees a wall and immediately starts deciding whether to climb it, break it, or turn it into something useful.”
Maris remained where she was, head supported on one hand, listening without interrupting. That probably encouraged him more.
“Thanks to him alone,” Arslan said, “a lot of completely insane people joined us.”
He counted them off with growing energy, like each name itself was proof of the absurdity.
“Famous people. Strong people. People with enough ability and reputation that they should’ve stayed far away from some frontier guild still finding its shape.” He laughed softly under his breath. “Instead, they came in, stayed, and now they’re part of the family.”