Something ripped me from sleep. Whether it was a sound or a force, I didn’t know. I sat up. It took me a while to remember where I was, but Hendrix snoring on the bed against the opposing wall reminded me that we’d bought a room at the inn. Something was wrong, though. I couldn’t breathe.

My eyes shot open as an intense pressure grew behind them. I sucked at the air, but nothing got through my tightened throat. I grabbed at my neck, frantically searching for the source of strangulation. There was nothing obvious at first touch, and I was too panicked to think any deeper.

A yellow mist crept in through the crack beneath the door and filled the room faster than seemed possible. I tried to ignore it. Without solving my inability to breathe, it didn’t matter what the mist was.

I attempted a shout to wake Hendrix, but no whistle, wheeze, moan, or hum could escape me. I balled a fist and swung it into the wall behind me. I produced a strong, loud sound, but the bard did not stir. I slammed the wall a few more times. Hendrix snored. Yellow mist entered and exited his deep, sleeping breaths as if he were puffing smoke from a pipe. Desperate, I got to my knees on the rough hay mattress and hammered the wall repeatedly. If Hendrix couldn’t hear me, somebody else in the inn would.

No one came.

I rolled off the side of the bed and crashed onto the floor. A shocking pang ran up from my elbow to my shoulder. I couldn’t even grunt. I got to my feet and hobbled toward Hendrix, my legs unwieldy from sleep.

I grabbed Hendrix’s shoulder and shook him violently. The bard refused to wake. Hopeless, I fell to the floor again and sat with my back against the wall beside my sleeping friend’s bed. I stared ahead. There was nothing I could do to stop whatever was happening from happening. I accepted it, and my mind turned to another question. Why? What had caught in my throat? Had I survived wolves, cultists, and a High-Lord only to be choked to death by some aimless insect or a large chunk of dust?

Tears fell, but I couldn’t even weep properly. I missed my mother. She would have heard my attempts to wake her and would have known what to do. The room went dark. I closed my eyes and fell back into a deep slumber.

I awoke somehow more surprised by the fact I wasn’t dead than the fact that I was no longer in the room at the inn. I couldn’t tell where I was. The human-built buildings of Firemane’s Run were gone. The land was dark though the sun was at its noon peak behind a grey overcast. To my right was a solemn hill. Fire-orange leaves blanketed the land, twice as deep directly around the bone-white trunks of the bare winter trees that spread across it. To my left was a swamp. The same trees stood in the lifeless waters, though these were the color of charcoal. The layer of orange leaves in the swamp formed into one fetid sheet of muck.

A clear line between swamp and grove ran along the root of the hill. The same yellow mist that had trespassed into my room now hovered over the bog and halted along the border, sending small wisps of fume across now and then, moving as if it were signaling me to go to it.

Cheerful voices of children rang down the hill like cool water poured into crystal. I stood up from the white tree I’d apparently been sleeping under and searched for the voices. They found me first. A boy no older than ten and a girl of about eight ran down the hill at alarmingly daring speeds. They behaved recklessly with no regard for their safety, unremarkable behavior as far as children went. Their deep blue clothing trimmed with silver, and their artfully coifed hair, however, told that these were no average children.

I followed them with my eyes but stood still. I didn’t know why, but I knew I didn’t want them to see me. My chest began to burn. Why had I been holding my breath? I sucked in a deep chunk of air, and it filled me with life much like cold ale on a hot day would. Whatever had caught my throat in the inn was long gone now. I was likely dreaming, but where did the dream start and real-life end? Was the suffocating in bed real? Was arguing with Hendrix about our recruitment process on the way to buying the room at the inn real? Was recruiting Wolfgang in the library real? With how vivid the children storming down the hill, and the land around us appeared, I could no longer tell the difference.

They stopped before the wall of yellow mist and stared at it like it were a demon rising from the earth. The little girl pinched her nose to shelter from the stench of the swamp. The boy picked up the nearest stone from within the layer of leaves and hurled it into the mist.

The rust-colored layer of muck swallowed the stone along with the expected splash. There were no visible rings. It was as if the boy had never thrown it.

“Freaky,” the girl said.

“I told you this place was worth it,” the boy said. “And you wanted to stick closer to home with that old crone watching our every move. I miss running. They’re too scared of us getting hurt. It’s not fair.”

“They want what’s best for us, is all,” the girl said in a stately accent.

“You’re just repeating what they tell us,” the boy kicked at the leaves. He spoke with the same accent, but there was a slight rasp to his voice.

They stood side by side and gazed upon the mystical swamp for a good while. I moved a bit closer to them but kept careful distance and stayed behind trees to not be spotted.

“Well, you ready to go in?” The boy asked.

She looked up at him as if he were mad. “In there?”

“Obviously,” he said. “You don’t think we’d come all this way just to look at it, do you?”

“Father says the swamps are dangerous,” the girl said. “He says the yellow mist will choke you.”

“He’s right,” the boy said. “That’s why I got this.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a glass phial half-filled with a glowing blue substance. Light emitted from the liquid and lit the girl’s curious face.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know the name,” the boy said. “But one of the traveling merchants sold it to Uncle Silvo.”

“To Uncle Silvo. Not to you.” She spoke with a motherly tone of disapproval, but her enthralled expression bathed in blue betrayed her true feelings.

The boy popped the cork off the top and dipped his little finger in. He tilted the phial, and the liquid clung to his skin like mud. He pulled his finger out, producing an almost comical popping sound, and wiped the substance on his upper lip and a half-inch into both nostrils. He took a couple of breaths and nodded approvingly. “I thought it might stink, but it’s quite pleasant.”

“What is this supposed to do?”

“It will allow us to explore the swamp.”

“How?”

“I overheard the merchant tell Uncle Silvo,” the boy said, “that the substance kills whatever is in the mist. Any mist that goes into your nose when this stuff is applied will neutralize. It becomes harmless.”

“What if I accidentally breathe through my mouth?” the girl said.

“Don’t.”

The girl looked me straight in the eye with a sudden jerk of her head. The light on her face twisted from blue to a sickly yellow. Her eyes filled with tears, and she now stood alone at the bottom of the hill, about ten years older than she’d been a moment before. She pointed to the swamp. “Help me! Please! The Dark Lady has come!”

I jolted upright in bed. “Where! Where is she?”

Hendrix yelped and nearly rolled off his bed. “What’s going on? Where is who?”

“Nothing.” I looked around the room, still not entirely convinced that everything was back to normal. “Just a dream.”

“About what?” Hendrix sat up and rubbed his eyes.

I explained the dream—how it had started with being unable to breathe and finished with the children near the swamp. Hendrix’s eyes widened, which seemed to hurt so fresh from sleep. He blinked a few times and dug out the corners before opening them again. “That must’ve been the princess!”

I yawned and stared ahead blankly. I could’ve still used a few more hours of sleep.

“I’m serious,” Hendrix said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It felt like an ordinary dream. A strange one, but aren’t they all? That makes it ordinary.”

Hendrix looked around the room as if searching for an argument. He raised a finger. “Check the book.”

I nodded and lay back down. “I’ll do it when I get up.”

Hendrix did the same, but I could hear his legs moving restlessly. I was on the brink of sleep again when Hendrix spoke. “So, what did she tell you?”

I said nothing, hoping to convince him I’d already fallen back asleep.

“You saw two children running toward a swamp,” Hendrix said. “Then what? Hey. Billington.”

“They couldn’t enter the swamp,” I snapped. “There was a yellow fume. The boy had a phial of blue liquid. He rubbed it in his nose and said it should allow them to breathe in the swamp.”

“Oh…” His voice had fallen frail and disappointed.

“What’s wrong?”

“Celrin root extract has already been discovered as a way to breathe safely in the swamp,” Hendrix said. “That was one of the first big mysteries, though. I guess we’ll have to wait a bit before the princess catches up to knowledge we adventurers have already uncovered. How did Prince Christoph know to use the Celrin?”

I rolled my eyes, angry at myself for not putting it together. “I guess that was the prince. He’d overheard a traveling merchant talk about it with his uncle.”

Hendrix snapped his fingers. “The traveling merchant!”

“That means something to you?”

“Long ago when everyone was trying to figure out how to get into the swamp,” Hendrix said, “a man could be found camping out in a parked carriage on the border between the swamp and Dark Talon Woods. He didn’t give any clue. He only revealed that he was a traveling merchant who used to deal with the royal family before the Dark Lady attacked. He was an elf. Elves are from Ambertop Forest. Celrin is the root of an underwater plant that grows exclusively in Ambertop Forest.”

“That’s not much to go by,” I said. “How did they figure it out?”

“It had nothing to do with the salesman,” Hendrix said. “Adventurers have been going through the same sequence for nearly five years now. Get snagged on a problem, scour the world desperately, try anything that comes to mind, stumble upon the answer, get snagged on the next problem. That’s where they all are now. Snagged on the ‘trying to get into Atlaris to save the royal family’ problem.”

“Who discovered the celrin?”

“Two guilds claim to have discovered it,” Hendrix said. “Champions of Velour have the achievement tablet for entering the swamp first, but Wolfgang claims it was one of his guildmates who first stumbled upon the root. He claims they stole his guild’s discovery and put it in action while he waited.”

“Wolfgang’s guild was that good?”

“One of the best,” Hendrix said. “Dragon Punch, they were called. The guild is all but gone now.”

“That must be why he hates the Champions of Velour,” I said, remembering the tank’s outburst in the library when their name had been brought up.

“One of the reasons, yeah,” Hendrix said. “Listen, Billington. I’ve thought about it a lot, and you’re right. I did pair up with you only after finding out about the diary. It’s only fair that you give Wolfgang the same treatment you gave me. But I really think we should keep the book a secret from now on. At least until we have our core group.”

“Why?”

“I don’t think you realize the kind of attention you’ll get if word ever gets out.”

“Alright,” I said. “No one else will know. We’d better tell Wolfgang to keep quiet about it too. Let me sleep now.”

“Will do,” Hendrix said. “Sleeping more is not a bad idea. We’ve got a lot of rejections coming our way in the morning.”

* * *

A lot of rejections was somehow an understatement. We weren’t met with the respectful refusals we’d expected, but in many cases, laughter or even rage. Many of the adventurers we’d asked seemed insulted that two lowly adventurers such as ourselves would even have the audacity to ask them to our guild. It didn’t take long before we were sitting on a bench in the bustling central district, discouraged, and beaten down by enough unwarranted criticism to last a year.

Pointed ears caught my eye. An elf meandered down the street, looking as lost as I’d felt when I’d first entered Firemane’s Run. His ragged brown rags were mostly hidden by the clean, white cape he pulled around himself. Level eight. “What about him?” I pointed with my chin.

“Good idea,” Hendrix said. “Lowering our standards might be the way to go here, at least until we have more prestige.” The bard studied the elf with concentrating eyes. “He’s got a dagger. Might be a scout, but the bright white cloak would be very uncharacteristic. The rags beneath the cloak look lighter than leather. The only class who carries a dagger other than scout is medic. They wear cloth as opposed to the scout’s leather. We’ve found our healer, my friend.” He slapped his hands. “Let’s do it.”

My hands shook slightly with excitement. A hunger to hear that first “yes” had taken root within me and only grew with every “no” we’d received. Wolfgang had said yes, but it wasn’t the same. I had nothing to base the value of that yes on, but now, after the morning I’d had, I knew the worth of a “yes” was greater than that of gold.

“Excuse me,” I called to the elf. He either ignored me or didn’t hear me. He continued wandering the street, scrutinizing each building he passed.

“Hey, white cloak,” Hendrix whistled. “Medic. Elf. Level eight. Hey.”

“Can’t you approach these things with a little more respect?”

“It worked, didn’t it?”

The elf had turned his gaze toward us. He joined us on the side of the street, away from the flowing traffic. “Good day.”

“And to you,” I bowed my head. Hendrix’s greeting was no more than a slight raise of his chin and a crooked smile. “We’ve recently formed a guild and have been recruiting all morning. We have two damage dealers and an experienced tank on our roster already. We need a good, loyal healer, and we think that healer should be you.”

The elf stared at me for a time. His lips quivered as though he were holding back laughter. “I thank you for the offer, but the two of you seem to be…” He thought about his next words and chuckled. “Well, you two are obvious n—”

“Don’t say it,” Hendrix said. “Don even think of uttering the ‘N’ word.”

“I’m going to say it,” The elf stood a head taller than Hendrix but was physically unimposing. “You two are noobs.”

Hendrix gasped. “You sonofabitch.” The bard reached for my pocket.

I recoiled. “What are you doing?”

“Show this bastard what sort of treasures these n—” He swallowed hard. “Show him what we’ve got.”

“You’re the one who decided that we shouldn’t.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve changed my mind.”

“No. I think you’re right,” I said. “There are way too many adventurers here.”

The elf tapped a foot impatiently. “This is one of the stranger recruitment pitches I’ve seen.”

“Oh yeah,” Hendrix snapped. “I’m sure every guild is after you and your nasty rags.”

The elf pulled his cape tighter around himself.

“Now you’re insulting him,” I said.

“He’s already made his choice,” Hendrix said. “Isn’t that right, slim?”

“No one is going to join your guild,” the elf said. “I mean, look at you. What sort of recruitment pitch is this? You ask all nice, then insult me when I decline, and then you top it all off by bickering like an old couple. You’re level five, and you’re both noobs. Figure yourselves out, then start recruiting. That’s my advice to you. Free of charge.” He smiled smugly and turned away.

“Why, that skinny piece of—” Hendrix fell to his knees before me with his hands clasped. “For the love of God, Billington, flash him that golden book.”

I don’t know why I did it. I didn’t want to do it. The elf turned back and regarded me with one raised brow. The words ‘golden’ and ‘book’ in such proximity was all it took to secure someone’s attention. I took it out. Just a couple of inches so that the gold trimming caught the sun. The elf’s eyes lit up. His lips parted and closed multiple times again, but he found no words. I dropped the book back into its pocket.

Hendrix stood proud with his hands on his hips, returning the same smug smile the elf had given us. “Bet you didn’t expect that one, eh?”

“I…” The elf was dumbfounded.

“It doesn’t matter,” Hendrix said. “You were a proper arse to us. Why don’t you continue with whatever it was you were doing, staring at every building with squinty eyes like a fool, and we’ll go and recruit some guild members? Oh, they will be so excited when they join our guild and learn that they are now privy to all the secrets given to us by the beautiful princess, and us only.”

The elf cupped two slender hands over his mouth. “These guys have the princess’ diary!” My heart sank to my gut. A thousand heads of humans, elves, dwarves, and even green, frog-looking guys turned our way, and the city fell silent. “It’s true. This dwarf pulled it out of his pocket. I saw it. It’s gold and more beautiful than we ever imagined.”

The silence did not last long. The crowd roared and stampeded our way. Thousands of wild faces salivated at the thought of reading what I had in my pocket. In truth, the book was empty, but they didn’t know that. Or was it? I’d forgotten to check upon getting out of bed. The crowd that thundered toward me thought that everything they’d been looking for during the last one to five years was right there in my pocket, and they weren’t going to let something as unimportant as my well-being get in their way.”

Hendrix stood between the crowd and me. His arms and legs were spread just as they had been when he’d taken the energy blast for me in the cultist’s tower. I backed up until there was nothing but an empty barrel between me and the wall.

“Back off, people!” Hendrix shouted, but his voice was barely audible over the roar of the crowd. They thankfully stopped when they reached us and formed a semi-circle around us. There was nowhere to go. The eye of the world was fixed on my red, dwarven face.

“What does it say?” a few angry voices asked the question. “We demand to know.”

“We’ve been searching for years, come on.”

“Yeah, share the wealth, will ya?”

I raised my voice to speak over the crowd. “It doesn’t say any—”

Hendrix turned and shushed me with a raised hand. He turned back to the crowd. “The book belongs to the Keepers of the Book. Unfortunately, we are not currently accepting any new members.”

“What are you talking about?” I said. He ignored me.

The crowd moaned its displeasure, but Hendrix stayed calm under pressure.

“You think anyone wants to join your worthless guild?” A massive man said from the center of the crowd. He pushed his way through the others until he stood in the front line. He wore a spotless, white shirt that looked more like something one would wear during a formal outing than in battle. His pants were black and had the same lavish air to them. A black hat matched the rest of his attire, but the rest of him was savage. He was a human but stood as tall as an elf and as broad as a dwarf. His brow protruded nearly as far as his nose, a thick mustache rested above a set of big lips, and his massive hands seemed strong enough to crush boulders. “Even if you’ve got the book, no one will ever take a couple of noobs like you seriously. You might as well just grow up, be men, and tell us all the princess’ clues.”

The crowd agreed.

The man intimidated me. I was ready to divulge the information or lack thereof, but Hendrix stayed strong.

“Poor Huck,” the bard said. “Looks like the old Champs of Velour finally found something they aren’t in control of. It’s enraging their leader, isn’t it?”

“Let’s duel,” Huck raised a gargantuan balled fist.

“I’m level five, Huck,” Hendrix said. “I would be an idiot to duel you right now. How ‘bout we duel when I hit forty like you. Oh, wait. That might be unfair, too, because you see, I’ll have had all this time with the princess’ diary. I’ll be the one with an unfair advantage.”

“It ain’t right what you guys are doing,” Another man emerged from the crowd to stand beside Huck. At least I thought he was a man, based on his voice. He looked like a toad but stood on two webbed feet. He was a bit taller than me and much thinner. His round eyes were the same brown as his skin, with only a narrow black slit cut through both centers. His skin looked rough like tree bark. His armor was white and looked like birch bark, but it was clearly some type of iron or steel. “Yous twos have a responsibility here,” he raised both arms in a strange sort of shrug and said, “to the people.”

The crowd cheered.

Hendrix turned and leaned in to whisper to me. “This is worse than I thought. When the crowd sides with CoV instead of you, you know you’re in for a rough time.” The bard faced the crowd again and tried to charm his way out of the situation.

Warm breath hovered over my right ear. A wisp of grey hair floated in my peripheral. “Give me the book, boy.” An elderly yet flexible and lightning-fast dwarf crouched on the barrel behind me. There was no way he could have gotten there without my seeing him. Daggers hung at his belt, and black leather enwrapped his entire body. Scout.

“Who are you?”

Hendrix spoke first. “That’s Ratbite. Another CoV member.”

“Give me the book,” Ratbite said. His voice was menacing, but there was a large smile buried in his thick white beard. “I won’t ask again.”

I fled. I shouldered my way through the crowd and raced down the eerily empty street. Thousands of footsteps followed, and I started hearing hooves and other indiscernible things on my trail. I turned into a narrow alley between two rows of small grey buildings. I entered the second building on the right and stood in the center of the room. There was nowhere to hide.

Rows of chairs, each with a mirror before them, lined both otherwise bare walls. I leaned against the back of a chair to catch my breath. I stared in the mirror, looking myself in the eye, and thought hard about what I would do next. What was the worst they could do if they found me? They couldn’t harm me unless I agreed to duel. Annoying and harassing me until the end of time, however, was within their abilities.

Ucntcme stood in the mirror behind me. I jumped and turned to face her.

“Relax,” she said in a calm voice.

“How did you find me?”

“The barbershop isn’t exactly the best hiding place,” the scout said. “You should’ve told me you had the book back at the tower.”

“Why, so you could have joined our guild?”

She laughed. “So I could have warned you not to show it to any other living soul.”

I lowered my eyes, ashamed. “We did know. We just did it anyway. I was stupid.”

“I’d say…”

The crowd sounded as if they were right outside the door. I decided to take a shot in the dark before we were found. “What do you think?”

“About what?”

“Joining the guild,” I said. “Now that you know we have the book.”

“I’m a proud freebooter,” Ucntcme said. “I will be keeping an eye on you from now on, though.” She looked around. “Go out the back door. Get back to your room at the inn. I’ll tell your annoying bard friend to meet you there.”

“That’s awfully nice of you.” I couldn’t hide the suspicion in my voice.

“Never a bad thing to be owed a favor.” She disappeared without moving. I was alone in the barbershop with an angry crowd just outside the door. “Go!” Her shout sent me jumping two feet in the air. I hadn’t been alone after all. “I can’t open the door until you’re out of sight.”

“Right,” I said to the room empty to my eyes only.

I left through the back door and walked onto the empty street after looking both sides for any signs of life. Empty. I moved up the street on my way to the inn. I looked over my shoulder every few steps, wondering how many scouts might have been right there with me.