Eastcliff and Westcliff were a pair of medium sized towns so named due to their respective locations on the opposite side of a long gorge that ran from the north to south. The two towns were a good three days worth of travel away from each other, because the only bridge that spanned over the gorge was located further north, a good day’s journey away.

 

Due to the existence of the natural barrier that was the gorge, the roads and trade routes naturally also split east and west, and each of the towns were built right where several such roads intersected. They were also located a distance from the bridge on purpose, to force merchants and travelers to pick one or the other and commit, rather than allow them to freely shift between the two towns.

 

That sort of rivalry was nothing strange, each town fighting for their own slice of the pie, their own share of the profits, unwilling to give more than what they needed to hand out to the other. Because of that, the relation of the townspeople from the two towns were similarly tense and laced with a strong hint of rivalry, and at times, grudges.

 

In the face of the war against the demons, however, such petty thoughts had to be placed on the shelf. Both Eastcliff and Westcliff were in a state of military emergency after the loss of Fort Gurzil further south, with military reinforcements from either side headed and stationed in the respective towns and assuming control over the situation.

 

Similarly, waves of refugees – people who lived in villages and small townships between the two towns and Fort Gurzil – flooded northwards and similarly sought refuge in the two towns. The wave of refugees combined with the sudden influx of military forces were more than what either town could truly handle, even though they had plenty of inns and the like to cater to traders and merchants.

 

Both towns were overcrowded beyond their capacity, and under such conditions, amenities were naturally lacking, which quickly led to some friction between the natives and the refugees, and at times, even members of the militaries. Esperanza’s group of infiltrators arrived in Eastcliff under such a chaotic situation, which was to their benefit as that allowed them to blend in more easily.

 

“How can this be enough!? We are starving! Our children are starving!” yelled out a man who was likely a farmer from some village by his manner of dress as he waved around a small sack that was probably filled with grain or flour. It was the food given to the refugees to support them by the city officials, which admittedly wasn’t much, especially considering that it was meant for an entire family. “We need more to eat!”

 

Indeed, such a small sack would only be enough to make a small pot’s worth of porridge or the like, probably enough to keep an adult fed for a day, but most definitely nowhere near enough for a household. The problem was the officials rationed that much food for a household to make do with, which clearly incited some unrest amongst the refugees.

 

“Everybody is starving!” yelled the person in charge of distributing the supplies back. The man was clearly quite frustrated, which was not a surprise given the rather thankless job he had been saddled with. “If you don’t want it, give it to someone else! Don’t hold up the line! There’s many others who are still hungry and haven’t gotten their share behind you!”

 

The food situation of Eastcliff was mostly because as a town that relied on trade for their prosperity, the place was far from self-sufficient when it came to food supplies and had little in terms of granaries or other food storage. The issue was further exacerbated by the refugees that crowded the city, since they often escaped with little more than the clothes on their backs.

 

As for the soldiers, they typically only made short stops in or around the city before they proceeded further south, where the gorge ends and the road had yet to split. It was there that the soldiers planned to engage the demons, since it would be more troublesome to track down the demons if they were allowed to split up and reach further into the kingdom’s territory.

 

While the soldiers that passed by carried food supplies, those supplies were meant for war, and thus they could not spare them to help the town’s food situation. As a result, resentment simmered between the townspeople – who felt that the refugees were causing them to have to starve unnecessarily – and the refugees – who lacked enough food to eat properly– which resulted in more than a few bouts of violence already.

 

Under such circumstances, Esperanza’s group chose to infiltrate the town by playing the role of hunters who used to live in the wilderness. Such a guise was one they favored because it was nearly impossible to disprove, given how vast the wild, mostly uninhabited areas were. It was not strange for whole families to have lived in such places for generations on end with minimal contact to society at large.

 

Their guise as hunters also meant that they had a simple way to earn the goodwill from the refugees, by hunting down animals from the vicinity of the town and bringing meat to the table. Typically, forests that were considered safe areas, like the ones nearest to the town, would be part of the local noble’s property and hunting in such areas would be prohibited other than for the nobles themselves.

 

Fortunately the local noble was not foolish enough to risk a riot by keeping to that stance under the emergency situation, though, and within the first couple of weeks, most of the animals in the safe area of the forest had been hunted down and eaten by the hungry refugees and townspeople. Those same people had not dared to delve deeper into the forest where the more dangerous beasts roam, however, which was where Esperanza’s group came into play.

 

The group passed themselves off as two separate hunter families and regularly went out into the deeper, more dangerous regions of the forest to catch some edible animals on a nearly daily basis. They would then return to town and share their catch with the refugees, which naturally gained them a good reputation and not a small amount of goodwill from the starving people.

 

In actuality, though, Esperanza and the other infiltrators – Murad, Mora, Kurt, Leo, Resitia, Iryl, and Tiara – did not hunt a thing in the forest. Instead they traded information with Ani’s group who were waiting there and discussed the possibilities, while those who were already in the forest prepared some game animals for them to bring back.

 

That goodwill allowed them to blend in more easily with the crowd and also gave them access to far more rumors and hearsay from the people they befriended. Other than the refugees, Esperanza’s group also regularly shared their catch with the city guard, who themselves were clearly suffering from the food rationing and were starting to show signs of emaciation.

 

From those guards, they heard rumors that more troops were headed their way, and that there was constant fighting in the south where the soldiers had chosen to stand their ground. There were even rumors of demon [Champions] appearing on the enemy side, or that the [Heroes] were supposedly on their way.

 

Most of the rumors were unreliable, but some proved to be quite plausible, and by staying in the town Esperanza also confirmed some things, like the temple sending out larger contingents of combatants to the frontline. She herself watched such a group of priests and temple guards, easily a good ten thousand strong, pass by the city to the cheers of the crowd.

 

Esperanza had watched that procession alone, as she didn’t want to risk one of the stronger priests noticing her compatriots. As for herself, she was confident that her skills would be enough to keep her hidden from just about anyone.

 

As for the simmering tension in the city, it was typical of such situations, and practically unavoidable. Everyone naturally looked out for their own first in such a situation, and most people couldn’t help but be selfish either for themselves or their families. Perhaps if they were more united under some belief or patriotism they might be willing to suffer together, but for people whose general concern in life was to continue living another day first and foremost, it was difficult to instill such a level of thinking.

 

The shortage of food led to no small amount of violent situations where people resorted to robbery or murder in an attempt to better their situation. At times the locals would bring in their relative or connection in the city guards to bully the refugees and force them to hand over part of their already meager rations. At other times the fed-up refugees might group together and turn the tables on the other side.

 

Under such conditions, the weakest – the very old and the very young – were the first to die off due to the lack of food. Some desperate and hungry people even peeled off the bark from trees and boiled it to eat, resulting in many of the trees in the safe areas of the forest stripped of their bark within weeks. Even with that, however, none of the passing troops shared their food supplies. Clearly the war situation was a higher priority than the starving town and refugees.

 

Naturally, Esperanza’s group stayed away from the local conflicts. They sympathized with the starving people, sure, but they also understood well enough that at times, hard choices had to be made. Even if it looked cruel, the choice made to prioritize the war situation was arguably the right one in the situation at hand.

 

After all, should the frontline falter and the demons invade further into the kingdom’s territory, many, many more would suffer instead.

 

It was a typical decision to sacrifice the few to spare the many, which might not be ideal from a moral point of view, but was often necessary in real life. Idealistic people often tried to save everyone, but such idealism was not necessarily applicable in real situations, especially in situations where things were more complex and there was no one solution that would make everyone happy.

 

Esperanza was no stranger to such a situation, as while she agreed to help Oldies, she wanted to find another way out of the decaying circumstances of the World of Ephemera without resorting to destroying it wholesale, if she could. Until now, however, she had yet to find any plausible solution to the problem, so she mostly kept those thoughts to herself.

 

It was pointless to protest without actually offering an alternative solution, after all. Something far too many people seemed to never get, like the refugees and townspeople who were blaming each other for the food situation in Eastcliff. They blamed each other, but neither side had offered any actual solution to the problem as of yet, which resulted in the current stalemate they faced.

 

If they, as the people who were directly affected by the issue, could only complain and demand things without actually offering any workable solution, it was hard to blame others for their misfortune, in a way. The refugees could have escaped further, but most simply ran to the nearest town. The town itself could have prepared better in the past, but they had not.

 

Now they were stuck with each other in a situation where simmering resentment continuously grew and at times boiled over, all while the war was happening not a few days away to the south. As if the situation was not messy enough, there were even emissaries from Westcliff sent to the city demanding aid in food supplies in exchange for some old debts being forgiven.

 

That the town’s mayor had intended to agree to the offer at all almost caused open revolt in the city when the people got wind of the matter.