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The second time he faced the trial, he understood from the beginning that this would test his endurance and the endurance of the people in the village. He started immediately by looking for ways to preserve the crops without using witchcraft.

The people of the Heartwood clan were skilled at woodworking, so the first thing he asked them to build was screens made of wooden slats that would shade the crops in their fields and gardens.

They were something that he’d come up with half way through the first trial, when he was looking for ways to make use of the wood they’d salvaged from the fallen cypress trees, but it had been too late by the time they’d gotten them into place to make much of a difference in the end.

The shades wouldn’t completely block the light, but they would reduce the intensity of the twin suns’ fury, and the water in the irrigation channels wouldn’t dry up as quickly either.

The gains might be small to start, but over the weeks of the trial, he was certain that they would add greatly to their survival.

The shades were just one of the changes Ollie made. Some crops, he gave up on entirely, harvesting them early rather than trying to sustain everything through the long drought. Others, he defended fiercely, knowing that they would need them when other sources of food became scarce.

He also sent every hunter in the village out as soon as the second sun appeared, giving them orders to catch and kill every deer, rabbit, grouse, pheasant, or other game animal they could find.

The unending day would quickly become unsettling to beasts who would flee the area, making game scarce in the days to come, but with the knowledge of what was coming, he decisively overhunted the area, preserving anything they didn’t eat for the leaner days to come.

His choices worked, at least for a time.

The village lasted for more than a month, hanging on for several days longer than it had the first time, but still, rescue never arrived.

Food still began to run out, bellies shrank, and both the old and the young succumbed to the heat.

In the end, though they lasted much longer, the result was no different.

"Why?" Ollie asked when the vision of Ashlynn appeared before him again. "Why hasn’t anyone come to rescue us? Even if Lady Nyrielle is suppressed by the suns, you would never abandon the people like this, would you?"

"Who told you that help was coming, Ollie?" Ashlynn said, raising a brow at him. "Doesn’t this village already have the greatest help imaginable in you?"

"What? But, but I’m only a beginner. I’ve barely learned any witchcraft at all!

Compared to you, I’m far too inadequate for this," he said. "I know I could have done better, I could have lasted longer if I’d done a few things differently. If I knew how long we needed to hold on for, I could make more adjustments. Just tell me when you’ll be coming, or when you’ll send someone to help and I promise I’ll make sure we hang on long enough. .."

"Ollie," Ashlynn said, kneeling down beside the pleading young man. Even though it was only a vision, he’d watched the villagers suffer and die more than once, and the tears that spilled from his eyes carried a mixture of grief, loss, and deep frustration as he castigated himself for his repeated failures.

"Ollie, there are more than twenty villages in the Vale of Mists, plus the fortress town," Ashlynn pointed out. "How many of those villages enjoy the luxury of a witch who is only trying to help one village survive? The Inquisition’s attack isn’t limited to this village alone, so while you are here, how many other places need help? "

"Do you understand now why no help is coming for you?" Ashlynn asked.

"I, I understand," Ollie said as he scrubbed the tears from his eyes. He’d been wrong from the beginning.

He thought that, because Ashlynn had told him to "take care of your people", all he needed to worry about was this one little village. But he hadn’t for even a minute considered what else might be happening beyond it, of the bigger picture that people like Ashlynn would concern themselves with. He’d expected help to arrive, but help had already arrived, and he was it.

"Let me try again," he insisted. "If the other villages need help too, then I can at least alleviate the burden somewhat by taking care of them. Or, maybe we can find ways to help each other. I’m not satisfied with this kind of ending," he said firmly. "Let me show you that I can do better."

"As you wish," the vision of Ashlynn said, waving a hand and resetting the trial back to the first day the horrifying second sun appeared in the sky.

This time, Ollie pushed himself further, sending messengers to the neighboring villages with instructions to aid them before making the rounds to visit each of them himself.

Immediately, the strain he was under increased fivefold as he struggled to bestow as many gifts on each village as he could before moving on to the next one.

When he only had a single village to care for, the greatest constraint he faced was a fundamental lack of resources and the accumulated drain caused by the endless days.

Now that he had expanded his efforts to cover the surrounding villages, he found himself struggling against exhaustion, dragging himself out of bed after only a few hours of rest and rushing to the next impossible task.

On the twenty-first, or perhaps it was the twenty-second day of this trail, Ollie staggered into the village where he’d begun, looking for signs of whether they were doing better or worse than they had in his last attempt.

"Milo," Ollie asked, calling out to the archer who had become his strongest supporter among the villagers.

"How is Old Nan? The heat must be getting to her," he said, reaching into his pack for a treasure he’d brought from the neighboring village.

"I have some fresh melon for her. The flesh should be soft and easy to chew, and it’s easier to manage in this heat than the dried meat that. .."

"Ollie," Milo said, his tail hanging so low that it drug on the ground as he approached the young man. "Ollie, she, she’s left behind her final carving. Two nights ago now..."

"Two, two nights ago?" Ollie said, dropping to his knees in confusion. How had she succumbed so early? This was the earliest yet, before he even had a chance to... to... He didn’t even know what he would have done to save her this time when he’d failed twice before.

But he hoped that by helping the other villages, he could reduce the strain enough that they might get help.

.. But still, nothing changed, and help never came.

"Why? Why didn’t you send someone to let me know?

" Ollie asked, tears running down his face as he struggled to think of what he’d done wrong this time.

"If she was struggling, I could have come back early, I could have, could have done.

.. done something..." he said faintly, his voice trailing off as the melon fell from his hands, shattering on the parched ground below.

"Why is it worse?" he asked helplessly. "I did so much more this time. I helped so many people, but this time, why? Why is it worse?"