“We can still see you!” thundered Erlan for the second time.

  “Sorry!” Grant slid behind a tree whose trunk was far too slender to conceal him, pressing himself into it and sucking in his belly. “I’m—I’m not following you! We’re just going the same direction!”

  Erlan threw his hands up in frustration and trudged on. His bow was still strapped to his back, its arrows still in their quiver, however, which Grant considered a good sign. The man moved with an effortless grace, and if he did decide to turn around and release an arrow, Grant was certain he wouldn’t miss.

  At the same time, Grant caught hints of a smile tugging at the corner of Nevara’s lips. Not a bad start. Perhaps it was her curiosity for the first Campaigner she had met, or maybe he looked helpless enough that she felt pity for him. Either way, a smile was far better than the open spite Erlan clearly held for him. He didn’t expect her to sneak out and open the gates for him in the middle of the night, of course.

  Not yet, at least.

  Four pairs of boots crunched across the forest floor. The Airet were far lighter than the average Human, it seemed, so as they only sank into the snow up to the soles of their boots, leaving only faint tracks. Every step Grant took ended with a wet squelch, pulling up the mud beneath and leaving brown, Grant-sized footprints in his wake. It had stopped snowing, and the clouds had opened to cast a faint glow on the ground through the trees, so his trail would be as easy to follow as a straight city road.

  Oddly, although it was cold, tiring work, but he found himself having no trouble trudging through the terrain. Before he rolled the Dice and increased his Agility, he would have been rolling an ankle every ten feet. Now he found it so easy that he browsed Auctions as he walked, even though he had too few Points to buy anything.

  There were a few pages of Items up, but no Skills or Spells yet. One trinket that defended against Mind and Soul Magic sat at 41,000 Points, increased to 42,000, and then climbed to 43,000 in a fierce bidding war that Grant watched with interest. Someone else was trying to sell a Common dagger, which started at 500 Points but had no bids. There were also a few food Items that Grant had seen on the Store, but their starting prices on the Auction Hall were higher than what they were listed for on the normal Store.

  Clever, he thought. Buy commonly needed Items on the Store and relist them for Auction, hoping someone overpays.

  He made a mental note of the tactic of flipping Items. It could be useful if he ever got more than the 114 Points he made from the elk, but he assumed it wouldn’t be long before most Campaigners wised up to it.

  A figure stepped out from behind a tree, and Grant jumped back, Resummoning his dagger. Erlan stood still with his bow strapped to his back, his arms crossed over his chest. He scowled, watching the blade until Grant Dismissed it and raised his palms to his ears in surrender.

  “You may walk with us.” Erlan said the words with about as much friendliness as a bartender ejecting a drunk from his tavern.

  “Why?” asked Grant. “I thought we weren’t going anywhere together.”

  Erlan curled his lip, pushing a strand of hair behind his ear. “This is not meant to be a courtesy. I am simply uncomfortable with a man who was a criminal on his home world standing behind me.” He waved Grant forward. “You may walk to my front or side until we reach Estreia, but when we arrive at its gates, do not expect me to vouch for your entry.” He turned and stomped away.

  The man obviously still despised Grant, but small steps were better than nothing. And now he could talk to them, maybe start showing that he wasn’t such a bad person after all. Or maybe he’d just dig himself a deeper hole, if that was still possible.

  “So,” Grant began, jogging to catch up. “Are you all originally from Estreia?”

  Nevara and Vaeri’s eyes flicked up toward Erlan, and when he gave no reaction to Grant’s question, they focused their gazes forward and kept walking.

  Grant blew out his cheeks. Small steps, he thought to himself.

  “Quite cold today, isn’t it?” he tried. Observations about the weather were a common conversational topic in Iori, which Grant never really understood. Discussing the weather was the most pointless thing he could imagine, as anyone with skin and eyes already knew all there was to say about it on any given day.

  Either Erlan held that sentiment too, or he wasn’t ready to talk to Grant.

  After a few more minutes of walking, Grant decided anything was better than the silence, and began whistling a tune from Iori. He didn’t remember all the lyrics, but they were about a man who had sneaked into an ale house and drunk too much, only to be awoken by the city guard and an angry owner. It was a crowd favorite in every tavern, and on the rare occasion that Mr. Fletcher hired live musicians, they were sure to sing it, and by the end, everyone in earshot would join in, stomping their feet and clapping their hands. Perhaps if he taught them the parts he knew, they would sing along—

  Nevara and Vaeri gawked at him, eyes wide, and Erlan scowled. Grant’s voice trailed off, and he grimaced.

  Oops.

  The man sighed. “Do not whistle in winter. It is bad luck. If it will stop you from inviting disaster upon us, you may ask me questions, and I will answer them to the best of my ability.”

  Progress, Grant thought as he hid a smile behind his hand.

  “How do you speak Evenonian?”

  “We don’t. There is a Languages Skill on the Store. As long as one owns it, he can activate it to be understand and be understood by speakers of foreign languages.”

  Grant opened his own Store and looked up Languages. “That Skill costs 20,000 Points! You all bought it?”

  “Our Store is obviously different from yours,” Erlan snapped. “Since we are the host world, Skills like Languages only cost us 100 Points.” He walked for a few more steps and stopped, turning himself toward Grant. “Did they teach you none of this back on your world?”

  All Grant could do was shake his head. “No, although I did have lessons on the other races. Have you met any Elves? Orcs or Dwarves?

  Erlan scowled at him for a moment. “How would we have met them? You’ve only been here for hours, right? They arrived at the same time you did, and we’ve been busy saving your life and answering your stupid questions this whole time.”

  The two women stifled giggles at his comment, but Erlan turned and trudged forward.

  “I suppose that’s true,” Grant said, allowing the insult to roll off him with a forced chuckle. “May I ask what you call yourselves?”

  “We are the Airet,” said Erlan. “We are closest to Humans anatomically. Some of our southern tribes are entirely indistinguishable from Humans, but culturally, we are nothing alike. For example, I have personally heard that a Human would slit his own mother’s throat for 100 Points.”

  “Hey,” said Grant haughtily, planting his hands on his waist. “I’ll have you know that I would do no such thing. I haven’t even seen my mother in 12 years, and I doubt I would be able to recognize her.”

  Nothing but the crunch of boots on snow. Grant awkwardly jogged forward to catch up.

  “I am joking, by the way,” he said, looking toward Erlan hopefully.

  Erlan kept his eyes on the path. “Yes, we have humor too, but our jokes are usually funny.”

  As they journeyed on, the last rays of sunlight vanished beyond the horizon, and moments later, their path was only lit by the stars and a white-pink moon. Grant peered back toward the forest they had left, which was hundreds of yards away now. It was pitch black, and he was glad to have left before nightfall. The town was not far now, and they couldn’t arrive soon enough, seeing as Grant had pressed on every last nerve of Erlan’s.

  Erlan looked around and nodded. “We will camp here tonight.” He began unpacking his supplies.

  “Why?” asked Grant, pointing toward the town. “We could make it in under 15 minutes if we kept our pace.”

  Erlan ignored him, so Vaeri spoke up. “The doors don’t open for anyone past sundown. Even if the King were to come knocking, we would tell him to return in the morning.”

  “Makes sense,” said Grant as he looked around. "But why don't we camp outside the city gates? He pointed to the walls. We're so exposed—"

  Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

  "You wish to startle a town of 500 with the presence of a Human?" asked Erlan, turning around. He stared at Grant for a moment like he were a teacher and Grant was the class dunce. "The Airet here hardly even trust those from the capital. Stalking around the city in the middle of the night will only harm your cause to gain entry."

  "Oh." Grant scratched his head. They had stopped in an open field, about half the distance between the edge of the forest and the town. He had never camped out before, unless you counted the nights he spent on the wagon. “I’ll build a fire,” he offered.

  “No, you will not build a fire,” Erlan hissed. “Do you forget that your compatriots are still in the forest? That there have been sightings of the Cursed?”

  Grant didn’t bother correcting him about the prisoners. He hugged himself instead. “I’ll freeze to death,” he said, and Erlan loudly groaned as he took a wool coat and pants out of his satchel, then hurled them at Grant. “Return them in the morning.” The clothes were far too small for him, who had been spoiled by the capital’s magically adjusting pants and tunic, but they were dry and warm.

  He tried to stay out of their way as he pulled them over his clothes, staring in awe as they set up camp with practiced efficiency. He would have wagered that Erlan, Nevara, and Vaeri spent many nights under these stars. Fortunately, they had a spare bedroll and blanket for him, and surprisingly, they gave him what seemed to be the newest and cleanest ones. With his new clothes, he would be warm and dry until the morning, and he wondered if this was a sign that he had begun to earn their trust.

  Nevara and Vaeri deactivated their Languages Skill, which meant they intended to cut Grant out of the conversation. In the meantime, Erlan made one final sweep of the surrounding area. Grant just stared up at the foreign moon, feeling quite useless. The Lyrian moon was white and pocked with craters, but this world’s was light pink and almost completely smooth. He idly wondered if his friends were watching it as he did.

  When Erlan returned, they shared their meal with Grant without so much as a comment. It was dried meat, cold bread, and a few pieces of unfamiliar fruit, but he would have gone hungry without them, as the cheapest food Items on the Store were 300 Points. They ate while Grant debated giving up on and getting into Estreia and just finding a way past the cliffs. At this point, he wondered if his odds against a giant wyrm were better than with Erlan.

  The night grew darker, and the four settled down in a circle. Vaeri leaned back, fixated on the moon, while Erlan sipped amber liquid from a bottle and Nevara stared into the distant trees. Everyone seemed to be in relatively high spirits, and so he risked a question.

  “Can you tell me more about the Tomb Fiend?” Grant asked. “I know his Curse has crept into your lands, but I don’t know anything else.”

  Erlan reclined in his bed and palmed the bottle’s stopper into its mouth. He had drunk about a quarter of its contents over the hour past dinner, which had improved his mood considerably. “Vaeri, history is your area,” he said. “Please, enlighten our guest.”

  A gust of wind blew through their camp, and Grant shivered as he wrapped his blanket tighter. He and Nevara watched Vaeri expectantly, while Erlan faced the other way.

  Vaeri let her shoulders go slack. “To understand the history of the Tomb Fiend perfectly, you would first need to understand the nature of the Gods. As this is akin to asking a mortal creature why time flows, we will settle for an imperfect understanding.

  “There are two kinds of worlds that we know of. They are source worlds and host worlds. If you were to ask a scientist about their origins, they would cite theories about orbital and rotational motions, distances from their closest suns and moons, estimated ages, and begrudgingly, admit Mana density was probably a factor. A theologist, on the other hand, would simply answer with confidence that the Gods selected them.”

  Grant’s eyes slid up to the stars, wondering if one of them in the sky that night was Lyria.

  She yawned widely, then blinked away her drowsiness. “There is likely truth in both arguments. For whatever reason, ours is a host world, and yours is a source world. What was decades ago for us—but may have been anything from seconds to centuries ago for you—sightings of abnormal activity began. They began as folklore. Tales by fishermen of sea serpents as long as the oceans are wide rising to swallow ships, hermits descending from their mountains to spread word of towering beings whose footsteps shook the very heavens, and farmers approaching Dukes with hats in hand about their entire fields succumbing to rot overnight.”

  “And the fools didn’t listen,” Erlan hissed as he rolled over, facing Grant.

  “At first, no, they did not,” said Vaeri, shaking her head. “Or perhaps the stories were embellished past the point of believability. Yes, ships did go missing, but it is the nature of ships to disappear. Yes, footprints were found, but there are more species of animal that have evaded discovery than those we know. And yes, crops did rot, but fertility is fickle, with pests and rains and heat. Their cries were given little thought and subsequently forgotten, just like the dozens that preceded them.”

  “Until they couldn’t be,” said Grant. Erlan pointed at him and nodded from his bedroll.

  “Until they couldn’t be,” Vaeri repeated, thin pink lips pulled into a sad smile. Nevara hugged herself and shivered as Vaeri spoke, a distant look crossing her face. “The Four Commanders had arrived. It has been fifteen years now. Once they staked a claim to territory in populated regions, pandemonium followed. Mass exodus, famine, and disease killed more than their four armies combined. Those who dismissed the threat for years condemned those who did the same, insisting they had advocated for caution all along. The Airet retreated behind city walls, which allowed the Commanders’ influence to spread.”

  “Why did they just let the Commanders have so much territory?” Grant asked. It went against what little he knew of war. “The Commanders would be at their weakest when they arrived, wouldn’t they?”

  “It wasn’t as though we let them,” Vaeri said, staring at the ground in front of her, voice muffled behind her coat. “We simply couldn’t stop them. We waited for a Campaign to arrive to push them back.”

  Erlan fiddled with a pocketknife as he listened, his face like stone. Nevara looked on the verge of tears. Vaeri chewed her lip. “We bought ourselves time, but it cost us countless lives and resources. Nearly every Airet you meet will have lost someone.”

  Grant reflected on her words. Across the four continents of Lyria, tens of thousands had been selected. Many would never return. On this world, hundreds of thousands—perhaps millions—had perished or been forced to flee their homes. He wondered if there was a soul on it who had not been directly affected by the Four Commanders.

  “I’m sorry that happened to your people,” Grant said.

  Erlan quietly scoffed and lay back on his bedroll, turning away.

  “Do you know why you’re here?” Nevara suddenly asked.

  “I was awoken in the middle of the night. When the Calibration process ended, I was told that I had been selected for the Sixth Campaign. The next day, I went to a recruitment center, and a month later I was sent through the Portal.”

  “That’s how you are here, not why,” Vaeri said. She held her hand out and Erlan passed his bottle of liquor over his shoulder without complaint. She took a swig before offering it to Grant, but he shook his head. “You are here, simply, because we prayed to our Gods to bring you here. Your God—”

  “Goddess,” Grant clarified.

  “Yes, your Goddess, among other Gods and Goddesses, have lent their power to ours,” she continued. “Scripture refers to it as a pact. When you and your kind rid the world of the Four, the Portal to your next quest will appear. In return, you will receive great power to take home with you, which you may use to guard your own worlds.”

  A soft snore drew his attention to Erlan. The man had fallen asleep. Vaeri pushed the stopper back in and put it in her bag.

  “I never wanted any power,” Grant whispered. “I wanted to be here as little as you wanted the Commanders to be here.”

  Nevara and Vaeri looked toward the ground, nodding slowly.

  “He was right, you know,” Grant said, nodding towards Erlan, whose chest rose and fell gently. “Humans are exactly as he said. The powerful from our world send the weak through with the strong as sacrifices for their Points. They get a third of the Points from whoever they kill, and so they use them to empower themselves.”

  “That’s abhorrent,” said Vaeri.

  Nevara’s head tilted to the side. “Why, though? That means that two-thirds of their Points just go to waste, right? Wouldn’t your world be stronger if they worked together?”

  Grant shook his head. “They don’t want our world to be stronger. They want to elevate their own power so they cannot be challenged.”

  “Challenged by whom? Empower their houses against what enemy?”

  “People like me.”

  Their faces creased up with disbelief.

  “You never answered my question,” he reminded Vaeri after a minute. “What is the Tomb Fiend?”

  She sighed and pressed her chin to her chest as she picked at her fingernails. “Apologies. He is the nearest Commander to this region.” She pointed toward the ocean, and Grant squinted. It was too dark to tell, but there may have been the outline of an island over the horizon. “Those are the Scourge Barrens, but his reach extends far beyond. Despite there being a liar and a braggart in every tavern in Celand, nobody has ever claimed to have laid eyes on him.”

  “And I assume he uses his Curse to create mindless, soulless soldiers?” asked Grant, remembering the waking deadness in the elk’s eyes.

  “Soulless, but not mindless. Sapient beings infected by his Curse can think for themselves and even speak once the affliction fully takes hold after about a week. They simply cannot disobey his commands when it advances to the following stage.”

  The thought of such an army chilled Grant’s blood. The thought of being one, being forced to charge a cavalry line, being forced to follow every command was unthinkable.

  “And the others?” asked Grant, leaning forward. “What of the other Commanders?”

  Vaeri yawned again. “The Noxious Wyrm resides on the southern border of the continent,” she said.

  Grant pointed toward the cliffs. “There?”

  “That is not the Noxious Wyrm. Queen Bay’kol is one of her whelps. We are exceedingly fortunate that she is content to remain in her fortress. She and her two brothers have cults that cater to their every need, which keeps them dormant.”

  Her voice was laced with spite when she spoke of the cultists, but Grant could not help but feel a certain degree of sympathy for them as he stared at the towering cliffs. Self-preservation was a powerful instinct. He had kept his hips low and back scrunched many times to avoid Mr. Fletcher’s wrath, and he was fairly sure the old man couldn’t swallow an elephant in a single bite.

  “The final two are on the other continent, which is months away by ship. Information about them is sparse,” she said with a slight frown. “There is one said to be a Mage who destroyed his home world himself with a Spell that went awry. He lives in a tower so high that some claim they have seen it from across the sea on a clear day, although I find that hard to believe. And all I know about the last one is that she is a banshee, completely impervious to all physical attacks.”

  The wind picked up again, whistling through their camp, and everyone went silent. Grant had listened to her speak all this time, but he could not make sense of it all. One question sat uneasily in his mind. “How did the Commanders get here?”

  The two women gave him a look of pity. “Do you remember how you said your being here was as much of a choice as ours to have the Commanders here was?” asked Nevara.

  Grant nodded his head.

  “The Commanders are different. They volunteered to come to this world for their own reasons, and their Gods agreed.”

  Grant chewed his bottom lip anxiously. “So, you’re saying that Gods sent Commanders here from other worlds, and then other Gods sent people like me to defeat them?”

  Nevara swallowed and licked her lips. She began to speak, but Vaeri put a hand on her arm. “You are the pieces on one side, and the Commanders are the pieces on the other,” she said. She pulled her blanket closer. “I suppose that makes our world the game board.”