"...um. You?" guesses Miraen.

"Me!" Arlen agrees. "I totally just met the worst person. It's that White Witch lady. She's super awful and needs killing, like, yesterday. Also, she gave me creepy probably-poisoned magic candy and invited us all over to her palace. Opinion on whether we should take her up on it and use the opportunity to assassinate her?"

"That's a really, really obvious trap," Harin contributes. "I get that you're thinking 'stab her during dinner when her guard's down', but, like... no."

"I'm inclined to agree with Harin, but if we're discussing assassination somebody should go get Nior, it's one of his favourite things."

"We're discussing how best to kill the witch! We have a standing invitation to her creepy palace; I say we could ambush her while she expects us to be dumb kids, Harin says she'd have unacceptable home field advantage and probably wouldn't let her guard down. Mir leans Harinwards. Thoughts?"

"What does she know about us?"

"...kind of a lot."

"Arlen."

"Well, she asked!"

"That might make things a little more difficult."

"Really she just knows Harin's good with a stick and he's tall, and both of us can use knives, and that you two're short and really smart. But it does mean she's not going to let her guard down, yeah."

"It also rules out any strategy that relies on her not knowing how many of us there are, for example."

"Man, I hadn't even thought of that. This is why y'all are smart."

Nior snorts.

"Anyway, weren't we going to go off and meet with... that guy? He might have a plan better than three twelve-year-olds and an Arlen can come up with."

"Yeah. Mr. and Mrs. Beaver are ready to go as soon as we are."

"Shall we, then?"

"Let's."