It was late afternoon when I heard the sound. Someone was coming down the street beside ours. Maria was snoozing. I gently gripped her shoulder. She w...ke quickly looking at me. I whispered, "Company is coming."She kept low but slid over to me. "Who, where?" I caught a glimpse of someone the next street over. It's just one person. He or she wasn't dressed like the bad guys in army fatigues." That's hopeful then." Perhaps. Let's forget that I speak Spanish if we meet someone."We had the doors. I must have aimed a bit high since I blew out the back of the officer's head, and he toppled over, likely dead before he hit the ground, leaving a blood stain on the white-washed outhouse ten feet away. When we looked again, the two women were crouched near the well with the baby, and there were three very still bodies in the farm yard."I see one in the bushes near the necessary," I said, almost finished loading. "There's a fellow with musket coming up the hill on your right, in a big hurry,. Not even your plaque gives an explanation on what that ‘blessing’ is. Does it?”There was no response from the assembled Adventurers. “I do not know who put them there, but where I am from, that particular Blood Rune is called a Restrictor. Twenty of every hundred mana is bound by it. It would be the same as that warrior next to you being able to lift twenty kg less. Forever.”Twenty circulated through the stands. Most adventurers were warriors or rogues. Mages and priests were rare.“Can you. I’ll do that. So, does that mean that you ... and I ... can be intimate again soon? I really did enjoy it, you know. That was part of what bothered me, was knowing just how much we enjoyed it. Oh, and Becky ... I have something else to confess. Please, Anton ... Lucinda. Let me get this out. Becky ... I’m not your ... adoptive mother. I’m your birth mother. You and Mark are half-sister and half-brother. You were never picked up off the streets ... and you’re not totally black.“Your father ....