Tomwell’s gaze found Alex. Something like approval glimmered there. “So! Second weekend. This is where it starts getting interesting.”

  Alex slid onto a stool beside Jay who stayed standing and leaned against the bar. “I like interesting!”

  “That’s good.” Tomwell grabbed three clay mugs and began to pour from a keg. “Of course, a lot of people say that until ‘interesting’ shows its teeth.”

  “Oh, that already happened,” Alex said and faked a long sigh. “But we signed the contract, so here we are.”

  Tomwell’s beard twitched with a smile. “Fair.”

  Danny claimed the stool on Alex’s other side, wrapping both hands around the mug as soon as it was set down. “Is it going to be worse?” he asked. “I mean, last week was already… interesting.”

  Tomwell shrugged. “Well, they’ll be sending you into the forest this weekend for the big ‘first challenge’, so there's that. But mostly training I suppose. Most likely they’ll start you working under Nate Cho this weekend if you’ve progressed far enough. Sir Bill handles all the general weapons training, but Nate will help you learn how to become a master with your chosen weapon. Or so the story goes… I guess it depends on where you are so far.” He slid another mug down the bar to another new arrival.

  They all watched as it slid down the center of the counter, easily ten feet and arrived right where it was supposed to go. Tom winked at the man and then nodded when he slapped a few coins down on the counter and left to find a table.

  “But,” Tom continued without missing a beat. “I’m just the bartender, so what do I know? I only see you guys come in after the long days of training.” He gave a little salute to the three of them and moved down to help another group that approached the bar.

  Alex took his first sip of the night. Different beer, different world, same routine. The campus pint had been cold, crisp, faintly metallic. This one was room temperature, thicker, with a hint of spice he couldn’t name, something like cinnamon but not quite.

  He swallowed, let the warmth settle in his chest, and filed the taste away under Reasons This Place Wins. He swivelled in his seat to take in the rest of the tavern.

  He loved it here. Unlike the campus bar this place felt alive. There were easily a hundred people in the room, sitting and chatting with friends, laughing, playing cards or dice or mahjong.

  Moving to Earth-3 permanently was a big decision, but he knew it was the right one. He just had to figure out all the details.

  “Hey, look who made it back from his interstellar journey,” said a warm voice that carried over the tavern hubbub easily. Alex and Danny twisted on their stools.

  Marcus was hard to miss even in a crowded room. He walked forward steadily and his tall, broad shouldered frame seemed to part the crowd in front of him automagically. He wore his growing hair tied back with a strip of black leather and sported a new jagged cut down the side of his jaw. He wore the light leather jerkin that he would probably normally wear under his steel plate and Alex wondered how long it would be until he too would look like he fit into this new world so well.

  Jay laughed beside him. “I’m not sure if it's ‘interstellar’ — more ‘interdimensional.’

  “Tomato, tahmato” Marcus laughed. “Either way, it's a walk through the great beyond.” He waved one hand to accentuate his statement and thumped the other on Jay's back in greeting. Standing together Marcus didn’t look nearly as big. Like a dump truck driving by your car on the highway felt huge, until you saw it beside a transport truck.

  The rest of the Iron Fangs walked up behind him. Elira, sporting a new feather charm braided into her dark hair; Hiro, hands unwrapped, showing knuckles that were still faintly purple with bruises; Kade and Aila trailing at the back, deep in conversation about something.

  “Hey,” Alex said. “How’d your last Dungeon go? What was it called? Gilded something? I only caught a few minutes of it.”

  “Gilded Maw,” Hiro supplied. He dropped onto a nearby stool. “Sounds cooler than it is.”

  “Yeah,” Marcus said, making a face as he leaned his hip against the bar. “Producers gave it that name because the entrance was in an old gold mine. It had lots of gold-colored fungus, but not a lot of actual gold. Or loot. Or fun.”

  He raised a hand. “Tomwell. Please tell me you’ve started chilling your beer!”

  Tomwell slid a mug down the bar without missing a beat. “I have beer and I have wine and spirits. What I don’t have is a fridge,” he said with a wink.

  “Beer it is.” Marcus caught the mug with practiced ease.

  Elira reached out and took the ceramic mug full of red wine that Tom handed her. “It wasn’t that bad,” she said. “It was instructive.”

  “Everything’s instructive,” Kade muttered, tossing back his cloak and reaching out for his own mug of beer. “Being eaten would be instructive. I’m still not voting for it.”

  Alex traded a glance with Jay. “And they did all that while I was studying for my Intro to Data Structures class.”

  Jay lifted his mug. “To bad life choices.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Marcus said laughing, but he joined in as they all clinked their cups and drank deeply.

  As Alex set his empty mug on the counter he caught a flicker at the edges of his perception. Turning towards it he could just make out a faint shimmer around Hiro, similar to that guy from the Eastern Empire he saw on the balcony last weekend. An aura. Alex didn’t have any other words for it.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  He hadn’t done any breathing exercise since the morning. Last weekend he could only see the mana after he had breathed, or meditated first. Now, here it was. Faint, but unmistakable.

  Hiro noticed him staring and cocked an eyebrow at him.

  Alex just smiled and said, “Oh, sorry – I was just thinking. It looks like you need armour for your fists.

  Hiro raised his hands and stared at his knuckles. “Yeah. I’m starting to think that would be a good idea.”

  “Not punching rocks would also be a pretty good idea,” Aila said.

  Hiro smiled. “Hey, it looked at me funny.”

  Jay laughed. “Rocks have long memories man. Careful which ones you start fights with.”

  Marcus put a hand on Hiro’s shoulder and said, “Nah, Hiro won. Two punches and he split that boulder into three pieces! And to just get a little bruising? Not too bad.”

  Danny whistled.

  Jay looked at the two seriously. “I knew the ANIP was going to help, but split rocks in half?”

  “Well, I can’t do that yet. I tried. With my gauntlet. I managed to chip the boulder, but now I need to replace the gauntlet!” Marcus said with a laugh. “No, Hiro's boulder-smashing act was pure magic.”

  Hiro just shrugged.

  They talked for a couple of hours, Marcus told them about a mushroom with legs that tried to eat Kade back on one of their early missions before he had his cloak. They were in a cave full of small screaming mushrooms and he’d tried to hide behind the big one. Elira described an illusionary wall they came across, that seemed to reflect their actions back too slowly, or occasionally get them wrong. They had gotten out of that building before they found out the wall was creating evil doppelg?ngers or something.

  They shared stories. They compared bruises. They argued about whether digital goats would be worse than screaming mushrooms.

  The stress of the week – the assignments Alex had half-finished before running for the portal, the lecture he’d skipped because his brain refused to focus on anything that didn’t involve trying to figure out how to use mana, the feeling of existing in two completely different contexts and trying to sync them up – bled out, diffused by warmth and light and the simple act of existing in a room where everyone understood that monsters were more real than computers here.

  Two worlds. Two taverns. Two lives. Same day.

  “You’re doing the thing,” Jay said softly, leaning closer so his words didn’t carry.

  “What thing?”

  “The face. The ‘I’m building a flowchart in my head and none of you can see it’ face.”

  Alex considered, then huffed out a breath that might have been a laugh. “I’m just… thinking.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I said wasn’t it?” Jay punched him in the shoulder, grabbed his mug and topped it up from a pitcher that had appeared on the counter beside him. “Tomorrow's thinking huh?”

  Alex smiled. “Sure.”

  “To NOT thinking!” Marcus yelled, way too loud, and raised his mug. People at the tables around them also raised their mugs and there was a chorus of:

  “Cheers,” “Hear, Hear.” And, “Too right!”

  Marcus turned around and bowed to the room. Elira rolled her eyes at him.

  Tomwell drifted back over, “It’s getting late. You lot planning on eating, or are you attempting to see if the beer here counts as a food group?”

  “Food, please,” Danny said immediately.

  “Seconded,” Hiro said.

  “Thirded,” Elira added.

  Tomwell nodded. “Stew’s hot. Bread’s fresh enough. I’ll send it over.”

  As he moved away, Alex’s gaze snagged on the far wall, where a new parchment had been tacked up since last weekend. A rough map of the surrounding region, lines indicating forest and mountain and something marked as Old Road in bold script. There were little symbols around the edges: swords, skulls, tiny tower icons.

  He let his eyes trace the lines. He hadn’t seen a map of the area yet.

  Behind him, Marcus was telling Jay about their haul from the last few dungeons and how they had come out mostly empty handed from the Gilded Maw run.

  “Easy run,” Marcus was saying. “Good for the new guys. Not a lot of profit, but no one got maimed, so I’m counting it as a win.”

  “Low risk, low reward,” Alex said without thinking.

  Marcus looked at him. “You saying you want higher risk?”

  Alex met his gaze.

  “That’s what we're here for isn’t it!” he said.

  Marcus’s grin this time was sharper. Approving. “Good. You’ll fit in just fine, around here.”

  Alex smiled. For tonight, it was enough to be here, in this village that wasn’t pretending to be anything other than what it was, with people who were learning how to be heroes.

  Tomorrow, he’d train. And explore the village a little more. They’d been too busy, and too tired last week to do much outside of training and recovering.

  Jay went to top up everyone’s mugs again and Alex held a hand over his. “I’m reaching my limit big man. Not all of us are 300 pound barbarians.”

  “Hey,” Jay said. “I’ll have you know that I am a very lean 240!” Everyone laughed.

  “And tomorrow’s our first day back - Reach is going to try and murder us. And I don’t even want to think about Vance’s obstacle course from hell.”

  “Reach doesn’t murder,” Danny philosophised, leaning his head in one hand, elbow on the bar. “He just… encourages cardiac episodes.”

  Alex smiled, “And I think Danny has nearly reached his limit too. Once we finish that stew Toms carrying over, I’m going to go find my bed.”

  The group talked, and laughed. Alex ate and when he was done he stood and stretched, joints popping. He had enough beer-based character development for one night. Tomorrow the training montage resumed, and if the universe wanted to throw a boss fight at him, well, he’d complain about it loudly and then do it anyway.

  He slid off the stool, feeling every bit the protagonist who was absolutely not prepared for what the author had planned next.

  ***

  People hear the word dungeon and think it means one specific thing. They are wrong.

  Some of them are barely more than a hole in the ground—three rooms, a couple of bad decisions, and you’re back in the daylight wondering why anyone bothered naming it. Others sprawl forever. You can spend days inside and never get to the end. I fully believe there are entire worlds in some of these pocket dimensions.

  The worst ones aren’t always the biggest either.

  We learned that the day we ran into a western-kingdom crew at the entrance to a dungeon. Apparently monsters had been pouring out into the local countryside for weeks. Different gear. Different tactics. Different Training. But we were all there for the same reason.

  They knew the monster population was high. We knew the readings showed it was a Tier A dungeon. We didn’t argue about who got the work. Instead, we shared a meal, compared notes, and went in together.

  And it’s a good thing we did.

  Personal Journal

  Wayward Suns

  Jonah Martin; Fighter

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