Simone was sitting at the breakfast table with the kids. She had Janus and Lila in her laps. They were holding themselves up. “Daddy is going to be so happy you are eating. Look at you two~”

“Here let me hold them while you feed them,” Llywellyn was quick to move to help.

“Thanks. Normally…” She couldn’t say it.

“Normally, Lewis would help you at this point.” He looked up at Simone and gave her a sad smile. “We’re gonna bring him home Mone… We are.”

“I know,” Simone was doing a good job of being strong in front of everyone. Even Lly’s wife had laid off of her because she felt bad. Mone fed each of the twins some apple sauce. They were grunting at each other and Simone chuckled. “Listen, you can’t fight each other over it. Okay? I’m going to tell Daddy all about this when I see him later… Okay?”

“I’m glad you can see him…” Llywellyn was afraid of the dream visits being too much. He saw how tired Simone was but he chalked it up to Lewis being gone.

“It’s not the same thing but it is enough…”

“I wish… That this whole thing could just disappear but the money… as long as it’s around.” Llywellyn looked shocked as Simone dropped her spoon. The twins got mad and started to kick their feet at her.

“Sorry! SORRY!” She got a new spoon and finished feeding them. “I have an idea.” She pushed the chair back. “I need Xeik now. Send for him. This is something only he and I can do.” She went and started to pace around the front where Xeik would come in. All the kids had sat there in shock but it occurred to them that Simone had an idea. "No, IT WOULD WORK." She was pacing like a wild woman until Xeik came and she ran and grabbed his shoulders. "I KNOW HOW TO GET RID OF THE BOUNTY!"

It had been around three months since the bounty was placed. One would have thought that, having avoided capture for so long, that the pressure would have dissipated…but if anything, it had doubled. The insane amount of money that was being pushed into this was out of this world. Chester and Thallion may have been small time thugs, but they had awakened something in the world, a primal evil thirst. There were now bets riding on how long Lewis would last. Even Raile, normally up for any sort of gamble, was disgusted at the rate things were going.

Xeik threw the book he was reading across the room, ruffling his own hair as he let out an exasperated yell. “I can’t figure it out. There’s too many circles, too many connections. Cut off the head of one snake, and it turns out it’s a hydra! There’s just no end to it all!” The healer fell back into the side hammock he had constructed for himself.

This can’t go on forever, can it? Even Angela was struggling to find an answer. Xeik closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. Before he could center himself, there was a knock at the door, and the healer made an unintelligible garble of words out of frustration.

“Pardon the intrusion,” a clergy member said sheepishly. “Master Xeik, there was a message from Sulwal. It is an urgent summons for you.”

“Fine, fine…” Xeik said, waving his hand for her to leave. The healer sighed, and stood up. It was probably Simone, and she probably needed help with the kids. “I hate seeing her like this,” he muttered, grabbing up his bags. “I should probably force her to get some rest.”

It wasn’t long before he was stepping through the portal to the elvish kingdom. Despite the initial distrust in Xeik, Llywellyn had opened up to the healer, and allowed him to portal directly into the kingdom, albeit only in certain places. One of those places was an antechamber to Simone’s room.

“Knock, knock,” Xeik stated as he came into her room. “Simone, how can I help?

Simone ran up to Xeik and grabbed him by the shoulders. “I figured it out!!!!!” She was shaking him. “If we just take out organizations it won’t work… Right?” The mother stared at Xeik and for the first time, her eyes were full of light. She was excited.

“All we have to do is actually destroy the wealth. If we destroy the wealth they can’t pay the bounty. That will make the majority of people fall off and then the only people left are the people with grudges and we can kill those people.”

She started to pace again, “If we torched Roma’s estate we could get rid of all the wealth right there from Roma. We would just have to figure out how to destroy all the silver they have. Xeik if we can do this… We can have Lewis home in a few weeks.”

Xeik stared at the woman like she was crazy for a moment as she shook him, rattling off her idea. “That’s insane. It’s not like they keep it all in one…” He paused. The healer’s mind went back to his thief days, when they used to raid vaults. The reality was that it was likely all of the coin and collateral being used to fund the bounty was in one place, if not two. The silver from the Granados Estate. The silver being used could easily be found and destroyed, and if he used that as a threat to the Vilpa society, he could very well end the whole bounty in a single night.

“Llywellyn…” Xeik looked past Simone. “I need your help getting a message out.” The healer smirked. “We’re going to set the stage for a grand theft…and I need your networks to make it widespread and well known. But first…” The healer excused himself, and disappeared back through the portal.

About thirty minutes later, he barreled in with a bunch of parchments and papers. He quickly knocked everything off the table, and spread out the papers, revealing maps and channels of Hoja. “Took a visit to a few places and found these…” He pointed. “This is the Granados Estate. There was…what was it…a mantlepiece? Anyway, what it was doesn’t matter. What matters is…” He moved the map over and revealed blueprints of the estate.

“From when I ran the guild. We had a plan to break into the vault, but we never went through with it…” He pointed on the map. “It’s a hidden vault. It’s extremely hard to build underground on Hoja Mesto, for very good reasons…but this particular manor was able to. Something about a ridge…anyway. Hoja houses aren’t known for having basements. It was the perfect place to have a secret organization. It’s also where they have their vault.”

He looked up to Llywellyn. “Next week…the thieves guild Heaven’s Dawn will make a one time comeback, and in a single night, will make the Granados fortune disappear…you’re going to help spread that message…”