"Ho ho!" Eren laughed once the story came to an end. "My friend has a penchant for the dramatic. Had I not seen his handiwork earlier today I might suggest he take up with a troupe of bards."

"That will probably be the direction I'll take if I live long enough to see retirement." Maxwell said. "Once the older members of my family get too old for more strenuous tasks, they spend their later years either mentoring the younger members of the family or telling the old stories to keep the memory of them alive. I've never been much of a teacher, so that sort of narrows it down."

"So those men outside...the bandits?" Ludwig asked "You killed them?"

"All of them?" Endra added.

"Two of them." Maxwell said. "The one with an arrow wound though his head and the one with a stab wound through his heart are my work. The bloody mess lying next to the one I stabbed though the heart was my psybird's doing. Many Colors has the ability to psychically force old wounds to violently re-open. As for if that was all of them, there were three bandits out there, three bedrolls in here, and no sign of any other dangers when I had Many Colors fly over the area... Even so, it may be prudent to set a watch when we start thinking about sleep. It's always better to err on the side of caution in my experience."