There was no going back now. I was far from home. Far from everyone I’d ever know and deep in unknown territory. It was difficult to imagine enemies or threats in such a green, sunlit ocean of grass and flowers, but I’d seen them. My bravery wavered as the carts of injured Pepper Dam citizens rolled through my mind, but in the few hours since setting out, I’d seen nothing but insects crawling along the dirt road, a few strange flowers, and a hawk failing an attempt at snatching some unseen rodent in the grass.

I crested another gradual incline and came upon the first real change in scenery. An expanse of wooded lands. Not a forest. I’d heard forests described before. They were thick and filled with undergrowth, whereas the ground before me seemed more of a continuation of the meadows dotted with small gatherings of trees that seemed like the perfect hiding place for anyone with wrongdoings on their mind, like say, a cultist.

The air cooled as I descended into the lowlands. I gripped my wrench until my knuckles were white. All that talk of Kaloriann and her minions had sprung a pool of doubt within me. I wanted nothing more than to turn back and be with Mother and Dara. They’d be having chicken dumplings today.

The dumplings! Maybe I’d gone far enough. It was time for my midday meal. A tree stump jutted an inch from the surface of the tall grass. I drew my pack, sat on the stump with my back facing home so that I could better keep an eye on the suspicious lands ahead, fished a dumpling from the front pocket, and ate it. I chewed slowly and took small bites. These needed to last. It took everything not to eat all four, but I managed.

After swallowing the last of my dumpling, I sat there for a while. I tried to convince myself I was merely resting my feet, but in truth, doubt was gaining control of the situation. I put my hand in my pocket, almost involuntarily, and stroked the spine of the golden book, lost in thoughts of abandoning the adventure and returning home.

I couldn’t do it. I’d come this far. The shame of returning home so soon would have been too much to bear. Besides, the townsfolk were counting on me. I threw my pack over my shoulder, gripped my wrench, and continued onward.

“Somebody help!” A little girl screamed down the road.

There it was—my first task as an adventurer. She was in trouble. The rasp in her voice signified genuine, intense worry. I ran toward the sound, ready to face whatever it was that caused it. Cultists, most likely. Maybe wolves. I prayed for wolves.

The little girl stood alone in the middle of the road after a bend around a patch of trees. I faced the back of her head. Her shoulders bobbed as she wept, and she let out long, sorrowful wails, unaware of my presence.

“What’s wrong, little girl?” I spoke softly so as not to frighten her.

She spun to face me. Her face was red, and her eyes were pink and puffy. Her cheeks looked like they’d been through a rainstorm. “I lost it. I lost it!”

“What did you lose?” I crouched down before her to appear as unintimidating as I could. The folk back in Goldmill might think nothing of a stout dwarf, but I didn’t know how the rest of the Warm Meadows citizens would react to me.

“I lost my pendant!” She pointed to the green knitted lace around her neck. The place in the middle where a pendant might’ve hung was torn and bare. “Uncle will be so angry.”

“Don’t panic,” I said. “I’m sure we’ll find it. Where were you when you lost it?”

She sniffled. “I was playing in there.” She pointed to the thick patch of woods to my left.

“Of course you were,” I said under my breath. “Alright. You wait right here. I’ll find your pendant.”

“Please find it.” She clutched the damaged portion of her necklace.

I walked off the road into the knee-high grass. A trail of bent blades showed where the girl had been playing, and I followed it in the hopes that it would lead me straight to the pendant and I’d be able to get back on the road to Brookdell.

It was dark in there. The lands around Goldmill had always been open and touched by the sun. I leaned in to get a better view of the place. No undergrowth, but the trees grew close together. I wasn’t sure if I could even fit my stout frame between them.

The little girl’s trail led directly into the patch of woods, so I followed. It was as crowded as it looked. I pushed through two trunks, eye to eye, with a fat slug that bore its home into loose bark. I squeezed through another pair, and my face met with a sticky spider web. I had no room to flail my arms as my instincts instructed. Their itchy legs scurried along my scalp, and I could do nothing but carry on. A scrape on the base of a trunk and some disturbed dirt told me I still followed the right path. It was challenging to keep track in the thick wood, especially with my even thicker head restricting any attempt to look around.

It didn’t take long for me to lose the trail. I knelt as much as I could in such tight quarters to get a better view of the ground and found nothing but a pile of pinecones—failure. I’d have to struggle my way out and look that poor little girl in the eyes to tell her that her pendant was lost for good.

I started for the open fields but stopped when one of the pinecones caught my eye. It was exactly like all the others if not for the odd bit of rope tied at its tip. That must’ve been it. It had to be. What else could it have been? I was relieved. Then a little frustrated. I had to go through all of this for nothing more than a plain old pinecone? I shook my head and picked it up. Upon closer inspection, it was no plain old pinecone. It had been glazed in some sort of material that strengthened it, and its color was darker than its unaltered brethren.

I cursed my way out of the woods, keeping my words quieter the closer I got to the little girl. She stood on the road, watching me with pleading eyes. I shook the spiders from my hair and held the pendant in front of her nose. She took it with glee.

“Thank you!” She shouted and danced, hugging the pinecone pendant like a kitten. “My aunt made this for me right before she died.”

Now I understood why a pinecone meant so much. “I’m glad I could help you find it.”

She smiled, curtsied, and ran off into the wilderness, cradling the pendant until she was out of sight. I scratched my head and wondered if any other adventurer dealt with such trivial things. It’s not that I wasn’t glad to help her, but I should have been eyeing the Dark Lady Kaloriann and preparing to meet her in battle instead of helping little girls find lost trinkets. I shrugged and continued down the road. Fandor the mage would point me in the right direction, or so I was told.

A billboard towered off the side of the road about an hour later. It cast a dark shade over my path. I stopped to inspect it. It mapped the Warm Meadows province in great detail, though many of those details were difficult to make out with the sun beginning its descent behind the billboard.

The more populated points on the map appeared in larger letters, easier to read. Brookdell wasn’t far. I’d nearly made it. It sent a pang of pride through me, but it was quickly replaced by a cold, vulnerable feeling as I saw how far I was from Goldmill. I didn’t feel like I’d been gone that long, but the map wouldn’t lie.

Farther down the main road on the map, past Brookdell, the provincial capital lay sprawled out in the center. Firemane’s Run. My path would most likely take me there. Duke Firemane was, for all intents and purposes, in charge of the kingdom since the royal family had gone silent. But for now, Fandor. I had to keep focus.

Laughter sounded a way into the woods beyond the billboard. Sinister laughter, the kind that chilled one’s bones. I kept my head low and pushed into the woods.

They weren’t as thick as the ones the girl had lost her pendant in, but they sprawled and took more space. Maybe even a couple of miles instead of the few yards of the other patch. Moving through the trees was much easier, but this patch had obstacles of its own. It took everything to keep quiet with the crunchy grass and leaves underfoot. The laughter seemed close as if I were locked in a room with it. I couldn’t tell if it was getting farther or closer. It echoed through the trees with the same power no matter how deep I progressed into the woods.

I came to a clearing. A wall of hay bales obstructed my view, so I moved to its edge and peered around it. A few bedrolls were strewn lazily around a dead fire, and a gnarled, black wooden staff adorned with what looked like an amber stone near the top was planted in the ground like a sapling. I nearly stepped into the opening but stopped at the sight of four figures huddled together just on the other side of the hay bale wall. They basked in a beam of sunlight, garbed in large violet cloaks. My blood chilled. It was the cultists Mayor Nubb had warned me about.

“Brookdell is close,” one of them said. A manly voice. “They’ve resisted long enough. We’re just waiting for word from the tower. I know the High-Lord will be on board with my plan. Once we get the go-ahead, Brookdell falls.”

My eyes widened. What did they have planned? How long until they turned their sights on Goldmill? I stood completely still and listened. It would have been impossible to take on four of them by myself. I’d barely survived my fight with the wolf, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t help by bringing whatever information I uncovered to the proper authorities in Brookdell.

“We’ve waited long enough,” the woman said. The two faces directed toward me were shadowed by pulled up hoods. “The High-Lord better start making up his mind quicker.”

“Don’t talk like that,” the first man said. “Trust me. You won’t be so pissy when Brookdell is kneeling before you.”

“Before us,” another man corrected.

“So, what’s this plan anyway?” The woman asked, ignoring the second man.

The first man laughed. “It’s perfect.” He cleared his throat. “You’ll go into town playing the part of a damsel in need. I know you’ll play it well. It’s how I first found you, after all.”

“Yeah, whatever,” she said. “Just keep talking, old man.”

“Easy now,” the man said, revealing an authoritative tone he hadn’t used yet. “You’ll walk into town, destitute, pitiful, and of course, scantily clad. Once you get the attention of—”

“Hey, howsa goin’?” Someone said no more than inches beside me.

I swallowed a yelp and put my hand over his mouth. He was a man. A human. Tall, skinny, with sharp, almost rat-like features. He spoke incoherent muffled sounds as I kept my palm pressed tight against his lips. I glanced at the cultists. They continued their discussions, seemingly unaware of the commotion right there in the woods beside them.

“Keep quiet,” I whispered, hand still silencing him. “Four cultists are meeting right there,” I nodded my head in their direction, “and I’d rather they not find out about me.”

His quick, brown eyes darted toward them beneath dark brows, then flicked back to me. He nodded as much as he could beneath the pressure of my grip. I slowly let go, and he licked his lips with a sour grimace.

“Sorry about that,” I said.

“No worries,” he said. “I should apologize. I’m the one who almost got us killed, eh?” He laughed as if dying were as casual as tripping over a root.

I just nodded but cast my eyes on the cultists. They were oblivious, or at least, they pretended to be. We needed to leave and warn Brookdell.

“The name’s Hendrix,” the man beside me said. “I’m a bard. Level three.”

I furrowed my brow, bewildered by his apparent lack of concern at being so close to cultists. And what did he mean by ‘level three’?”

“You uh…” he started when he saw that I wasn’t going to respond. “You got any gold you can spare?”

I just left and headed back toward the main road. I wasn’t going to risk being heard or seen by the cultists. The adventure — not to mention my life — weren’t things I’d plan to end so quickly. Crunching footsteps behind told me that the man followed. Thankfully, his were the only steps I heard.

Once out of the woods, I leaned against one of the billboard posts and caught my breath. I wasn’t overexerted, but the anxiety of almost getting caught by the very evil that had destroyed villages had kept my breaths quick and shallow.

Hendrix, the bard, staggered to the middle of the road and let out an exaggerated breath. “Close one, eh?”

I looked up at him from my semi-bent position and nodded as I continued to find my breath. He waited in the middle of the road. I wondered why he hadn’t left yet.

“I didn’t catch your name,” he said.

“I never told you.”

“Right. Cool. Cool…” He looked around and picked at something in his teeth.

“It’s Billington,” I said, feeling bad for some reason. “You almost got us killed back there, you know.”

“Yeah,” Hendrix said. “I’ve been in some tighter pickles than that one and made it through. You must be pretty new to be this nervous about seeing some cultists. What level are you?”

“Pickle?” I shook my head and moved from my leaning position against the billboard. “Never mind that. What do you mean by level?”

Hendrix laughed again. “Wow, you truly are a n—” he put a finger in the air and closed his eyes as he silenced midway through his thought. “I promised I wouldn’t use that word anymore.”

“Which word?”

“I can’t tell you,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because I promised I wouldn’t use it anymore.” He scoffed after he spoke.

I shook my head again. He seemed to bring that motion out of me. “Alright, well, I’ve got to get going.”

“Heading over to Brookdell?” He asked.

I eyed him, suddenly suspicious. “Why would you assume that?”

“It’s no big deal, man,” he said with another subtle laugh. “I’m heading that way, too. It’s pretty run-of-the-mill for low levels like us.”

“What do you mean by level?” I asked. “You keep mentioning that word.”

“I don’t know,” he said with an awkward slant to his voice. “It’s just… I don’t know. Your level, man.” He shifted uncomfortably in the middle of the road. His eyes widened in excitement. “Wait. Maybe you haven’t even leveled up yet. Have you seen a massive number appear above your head yet? Either after killing something or completing a quest?”

I had seen something like that after killing the wolf, but I wasn’t in any big hurry to share such information with a stranger. Especially one as odd as Hendrix the bard. “Quest?”

“A task,” he said. “You complete a task, and if it grants you enough experience, you level up. Adventurers all over the world range from level one at spawn to level forty, which is the max number anyone can hit.”

“And that’s what the big number means?” I asked. “That you’re one step closer to maximum strength?”

“Yes,” Hendrix smirked. “You’ve seen it, haven’t you?”

I nodded.

“Only once?”

I nodded again.

“Level two, then.” Hendrix clapped his hands together and hopped closer to me. “You’re lucky I met you, my friend.” His clothes were ragged, stained, and ripped in many places. In place of boots, his feet were wrapped in some sort of thick material like wool. His hat, however, would not have been out of place on the head of a young noble. It was a deep purple, trimmed with a rich black. A snow-white feather sat snug in a small loop of fabric over his right ear. His dark hair shagged down to his shoulders, where a shabby lute hung at his back in place of a cloak or pack. His facial hair was thin and carefully trimmed around his lips and chin—his hat was purple?

I drew and brandished my wrench. “I may be low level, but I assure you I know how to use this.”

He stepped back and showed me his palms in surrender. “What is this?”

“Your hat,” I said. “You think I wouldn’t notice? You’re a cultist.”

His eyes glanced upward. He sighed. “I get that all the time. My fault, I suppose. I swear I’ve got nothing to do with those guys. It’s not up to me what kind of loot drops, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“Man, you really don’t know how all of this works, do you?”

“I suppose I don’t,” I said. “But I was warned that the cultists would have some sort of purple garment to recognize them by.”

“It’s true,” Hendrix said, his hands still up. “That doesn’t mean everyone you see wearing purple should be indiscriminately killed.”

“How can I trust you?”

“I’m an adventurer like you,” Hendrix said. “Look.” He reached into the deep pouch that hung at his belt. “I’ve got nothing in here but a bit of gold and a ruby. And I bought this thing fairly, well, not so fairly considering the price but, whatever, I needed it.”

“What does an adventurer need a ruby for?” I asked, my wrench held high.

“I’m a jewel smith,” Hendrix said, tying his pouch shut again. “At least I’d like to be one day. I could only polish pinecones and stones right now, but I’ll be able to turn this ruby into something useful soon enough. Lots of gold to be had in this line of work, you know.”

I eyed him up and down and saw no weapon. That was either a good or bad sign. “What’s an adventurer doing out here in the wilderness without a weapon?”

“I already told you, I’m a bard.”

“So, you go around singing songs to cultists and monsters?”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Hendrix said. He rubbed his face and took a deep breath. “Man, I don’t want to get killed here just because you know less than a squirrel about being an adventurer. Not that you can kill me unless I agree to duel, but you look angry enough to find a way.”

“Insulting me isn’t wise right now.”

“Can you just put the wrench down so I could think more clearly?” Hendrix said. “Wait. The wrench. You ever wonder why you’ve got that wrench?”

“I repaired things back home.”

“Yes, of course, but ever wonder why you just happened to spawn with it and the knowledge and skill to repair things?” His voice was quick and desperate.

I’d forgotten about the whole spawning thing. For the longest time, I’d lived a false reality where I only remembered the last five years because of a head injury, but I knew better now. “Right. I suppose that is odd.”

“No. It isn’t.” He smiled and lowered his hands. “It’s your class. There are multiple adventurer classes. We don’t choose. They are chosen for us by God when we spawn. You, for example, with your big, menacing wrench there, are a gadgeteer. One of five damage classes.”

My lips parted to ask the question, but he answered it before anything came out.

“Damage classes play one of four roles in a party,” Hendrix said. “You’ve got the tank who leads the party and maintains aggro.” He scratched his chin in thought. “That means it’s his job to keep the enemies of the party focused on him. The damage classes dish out damage and kill the enemies. The healer is another role. They make sure everyone else in the party, especially the tank, stay alive. They can mend wounds or even put up barriers of light to shield party members from taking damage.”

It was a lot to take in. Was I going to have to know all of this? The idea of a party didn’t appeal to me. I was more of a solitary dwarf, preferring the company of one or two people at most if any. “What do you do?”

“The bard is one of the two support classes,” Hendrix said, his chin raised with pride. “We buff party members. Before you ask, a buff is a beneficial temporary effect. For example, I can sing a specific song, and if you’re in its vicinity, your attack power will go up by a few points.”

“Interesting.”

“We can also convince certain humanoids in the wilderness to do our bidding for a short while,” he said. “I don’t know the right song yet, but if I did, we’d be able to go back to those cultists and make one of them attack the others.”

“Tell me more about being a gadgeteer.” I belted my wrench.

He exhaled his relief. “I will, but first, I’ve got to ask you for a bit of coin.”

“You what?”

“I need about three-fifty, but I’ll take whatever you’re willing to spare, of course,” Hendrix said. “I wouldn’t ask unless I really needed it. Consider it an investment in the future of this world. All I need is a little more coin before I can go off and save the royal family.”

“You sure are confident,” I said, not intending to give him a single coin.

“For sure,” he said. “I think when this is all over, and I stop the Dark Lady, Princess Cosette herself might even ask me to be her man if you know what I mean.”

The name was like a hammer slamming into a massive bell in my head. “Princess who?”

Hendrix laughed and rolled his eyes. “What exactly do you know?”

“Just tell me her name again!” I took a furious step toward him.

“Cosette,” he spat the name out as I moved. “Princess Cosette. Daughter of the king and queen…”

I pulled the golden book from my pocket and opened it to the only page with anything written on it. Diary of Cosette. How many Cosettes could there have been out there? Had I found the princess’ diary? The odds of it dropping from a random wolf so far away from her home castle were unfathomably low. I felt foolish for even getting my hopes up.

Hendrix stared at the golden book, his chin hanging nearly to the ground. He froze as if in a trance.

“You alright?”

He swallowed hard. “I’m guessing you don’t even know what you currently hold in your hand.”

“A book,” I thumbed through the empty pages absent-mindedly. “Found it after killing a wolf near Goldmill.”

“A book,” Hendrix guffawed. “It’s not just a book.”

My assumptions must have been right.

“It’s the princess’ diary.”

“It’s blank,” I said. “Nothing extraordinary about it.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” He raised his voice. It was the first flash of anger he’d shown. His otherwise laid-back demeanor gave the little outburst more weight. I listened. “This is one of the rarest items in the world, if not the rarest. Thousands of adventurers have been hunting it for years.”

I looked down at the golden book. “I don’t know why. It doesn’t do anything. It says nothing. It’s useless as far as I can see.”

“Right now, maybe,” Hendrix said. “but legend says that the book of the princess will be the key to finally learning the way to enter Atlaris.”

The way to enter the Atlaris? I wasn’t even aware that the capital was off-limits in any way. I was starting to feel like a burden with all the questions I had, so I decided to keep my utter ignorance to myself.

“It may be blank now,” Hendrix said. “But expect it to fill out soon if what they say is true. In case you aren’t fully grasping the magnitude of what you hold in your pudgy dwarf hands, let me make it clear. You hold what might be the key to finally putting an end to Kaloriann and her evil reign.”

It all seemed so strange. How had I found the book just a day before the neighboring village's attack had taken place? “What do I do now?”

“Now,” Hendrix wrapped an arm around my shoulders, “my dear Billington, we have to start a guild. That’s a group of adventurers who quest together and run dungeons. I’ll explain all of that later.”

“I can’t lead adventurers,” I said. “I barely know what I’m doing out here.”

“You’d better learn quick,” Hendrix said. “I don’t know why, but the princess seems to have chosen you. With this book, you have little choice but to be a leader. Everyone is going to want to hear what your book has to say. You need a guild to keep things official and to keep all the freebooters off our tail.”

“Freebooters?”

“Guildless adventurers.”

“Fine,” I said, accepting my destiny as it raced toward me faster than a galloping steed. “What do we do next? Do I abandon Fandor the mage for another destination?”

Hendrix laughed. “See? I knew you were headed for Brookdell. And no. We continue finishing the quests in Warm Meadows before heading to Firemane’s Run. We’ll be level five by then. Still low, but no one’s going to take a level two seriously, legendary book be damned.”

“Alright,” I straightened my posture and puffed my chest. “Let’s do this.”

Hendrix jumped, producing a woody sound from his lute upon landing. We continued down the road, leaving the plotting cultists and the looming map behind.