I was cold when I woke in my bed. It was that damn open window in what passed for a room at the Adventurer’s Guild. I’d gotten past the point of re-living the realization that I was no longer at home when I woke up, but that didn’t mean I was satisfied with my situation. I remembered the night before: my uneventful arrival in Haemir, followed by my signing up to join the Adventurer’s Guild. While trying to sleep, I’d decided that the first thing I needed to do was take the extra money Brookie had sent me and stop by the Broker’s Guild. There was at least one Brand I was interested in purchasing before I started my new life as an adventurer. And I needed something to spend all my MP on.

The mattress I’d been given to sleep on was stuffed with straw, which was about as comfortable as it sounded. I could feel aches and pains trying to let themselves be known beneath the smothering influence of the Pain Taker as I stood up, knees cracking. It was easy enough to just ignore them, so I did. Once up, I stumbled my way downstairs to see what they had for breakfast. I passed some tired looking men in beat up leather outfits in the stairwell. There were two of them leaned up against each other with their eyes closed. The one on the left had more nose than mouth by a fair margin, and the one on the right looked about three sizes too big for the jacket he was wearing. Both of them had their hair shaved high around their ears. They jerked awake when I walked by and I mumbled an apology, even though I hadn’t actually done anything wrong.

Downstairs I first made a perfunctory stop at the hole in the ground around the backside of the building, which was doing its best to stand in for a proper restroom. I left feeling dirtier than when I’d arrived and nodded as I passed the same two men from the stairs making the same trip. Back in the mess hall, I found the room far less busy than it’d been the night before. There were as many people awake and alert as there were passed out on the floor or benches, sleeping off their drink. I gauged my reaction based on what I observed others doing and just stepped around the sleeping ruffians like they were oddly-shaped furniture. Back by the kitchens, I showed my guild badge and received a bowl of gooey oatmeal with some kind of nuts in it. I wolfed it down with more enthusiasm than it really warranted, mind already spinning with possibilities about what I was going to spend my money on.

Someone new was working the front desk. A man with the same professional black shirt I’d seen Deanna wearing the night before. Just like her, he had an upbeat attitude, which sharply contradicted everyone else I’d seen. “Vince, right?” he said when he saw me.

“How’d you know my name already?” I asked.

“Are you kidding?” he asked. “You think we get rich kids in here every day asking to sign up to be an adventurer?”

“I’m not a—”

“Right, right,” the man interrupted. “Sorry, Deanna told me, but it’s hard when you look so much like a kid. You look nine, but she said you were older.”

“By a decade,” I supplied. “Look, I just need to get to my locker. Can you let me in?”

“Sure thing!” he agreed, giving the ever-present obese lizard a pat on the head before walking over to the locker room door. I was surprised to see the lizard still hanging out. After the way Deanna had doted on it the night before, I’d assumed it was her personal pet.

I found my locker much faster the second time. As an emergency fund, I left a single sparkly Mark behind from my money pouch. I planned to spend as much of the money as I could in a single trip, but leaving enough behind to possibly feed and house myself long past when my cancer would finish killing me just seemed like a safe hedge against the unexpected. Money in hand, I headed back out to the main lobby. I still remembered how to get to the Broker’s and I was excited to see what kind of magic powers I could purchase with enough wealth to feed and house myself for three decades.

Back in the lobby of the guildhall, I said my thanks to the attendant when he let me out. I’d wanted to ask about how the guild’s ranking system worked, but he had a line of adventurers waiting to be helped, so I opted to wait until it was less busy. When I returned with all my new Brands, I’d be ready to start taking contracts. Several of the Beast Breakers I recognized from the night before were lounging outside the front doors, still smoking their acrid cigarettes. The woman with the feathered braid in her hair gave me a wave when I went by. “Good morning, Dearie! Still alive?”

“Yup,” I answered curtly. I skirted around to the left, as far from their little group as I could get. If they started hitting me up for more “tributes” we were going to have a problem.

“Did you see how he talked to me?” I heard her ask one of her cronies. I didn’t wait to hear the response. I took her for maybe being second in command of their little gang, based on the expensive looking armor she wore. My usual strategy for dealing with bullies back home was to stay with my friends, but with no one around I knew, I was going to go with my back-up plan: ignoring them as much as possible until they gave up.

It took me a second to get my bearings in the town square, but once I oriented myself between the triple spires of the church and the Porter’s Guildhouse I was able to figure out how to retrace the path Ferrith had taken me on to find the Broker’s. The day was still young, so most of the makeshift merchant stands were either not set up yet or in the process of being erected. I continued on through the shopping district without issue, passing a trio of city watch that were more interested in chatting with a young lady than doing their job. It wasn’t until I got to the quiet residential district between the shops and the Broker’s Guild that the trouble started.

“Psst! Hey. Hey you!”

I looked around. A rissian in a beat-up leather vest had his head poked out of an alley between two fenced houses. He was wearing a hood and had a black cloth pulled up that covered the bottom half of his face, like some kind of ninja. The street was empty aside from him. It looked like the sort of place the residents stored their garbage until it was ready to be taken away. To say the guy looked out of place would be under-selling it. These were nice houses and this guy was dressed like a professional thief. I stopped and looked back towards the loitering group of city watchman. They were still within sight, though I’d probably have to shout as loud as I could to try to get their attention. The man saw me looking back that way. “No. Don’t call them,” he said.

“Why shouldn’t I?” I demanded. “And what are you doing, skulking in the alley like that?”

He put a finger to about where his mouth would be beneath the black cloth. “Yer aunt sent me,” he said. “Yer Vince, right?”

“My… aunt?” I realized he might mean Brookie. He said he’d be in touch if he needed me, but he’d never said how he’d contact me.

“Yeah, she sent me to give you something. Said it needed to be done all secret-like.”

“Shoot!” I said. “Let’s get off the street before someone sees us!” I hurried over to him. Just about the only thing I knew about Brookie so far was that he valued secrecy above anything else. For all I knew, this guy he sent to find me didn’t even know his real identity.

“Good,” the man said. “Just come back here around the corner.”

The two buildings on either side of him were compact, two-story structures with solid stone walls outlining their lot. The suspicious man Brookie had sent to find me looked like exactly the type those walls were meant to keep out. It was dark in the alley. And just like I’d suspected, it stunk of nearly the same odor of garbage I’d encountered before in the modern cities of Earth. I wondered what sort of package Brookie might have wanted to send me that couldn’t go through official channels. Some kind of magic weapon? A black market tonic to treat my cancer? The possibilities were endless.