When I was little, and my family lived in Denver, my parents used to take me and my little brother camping. Like almost every weekend during the summer. My earliest memory from camping was when I was four. I was running around camp like an idiot and ended up tripping outside of my parents’ view. While I was on the ground, a snake came out of the brush.

  I didn’t freak out when it came right up to my face. It seemed harmless and kind of cute to me at that moment. My mom came looking for me and saw me lying on my stomach with a snake right in my face. I didn’t know any better, and my new friend was captivating. Her horror at seeing what she thought was a dangerous snake and her blood-curdling scream startled both the snake and me. It pulled back and my mom snatched me up with such violence that I thought she was going to throw me. I cried and screamed my little head off.

  Her reaction, and the way she pulled me away from the snake, instilled a fear in me of all legless reptiles. My dad tried to calm us down, and he knew what type of snake it was. But I could never look at a snake without irrational fear and hate since that point. So, when I heard that noise, I was ready to bolt.

  What came into the light was not a snake. To my relief, it had legs it was using to pull its massive bulk down the tunnel toward us. It looked like nothing other than an alligator. A massive tunnel filling, alligator. Its eyes squinted, like the light right there was more than it was used to, and coming up the tunnel toward the light hadn’t been enough to adjust.

  “Thank god!” I said, looking at the non-snake. “I thought it was going to be a snake.”

  “And how the fuck is this better, Finn?” Harper replied, astounded.

  “I fucking HATE snakes,” I muttered.

  This was enough time for the gator to adjust its eyes to the light, and it roared this deep, throaty, raspy rumble that was too loud in the enclosed space. I grabbed my head, trying to protect my ears from the painful bellow. My hands were not enough to protect my eardrums, and the pressure caused my ears and nose to bleed. The silence that followed was weird. Hollow.

  It pulled itself toward us at greater speed as I looked up, still stunned by the pain of the gator’s roar. I yelled soundless obscenities at it, and started firing Poisonous Shot from both palms, firing about fifty of them before I was out of mana. As Harper spun me around, I noted wryly that a few missed the barn-sized beast. I hoped it was enough to cause it to be poisoned.

  I couldn’t hear Harper as she was yelling at me, but the horses were all following GB and we were about to be swallowed up by the dark. And the gator. Juan was back peddling, firing arrow after arrow in quick succession. Harper gave up and grabbed me by the hand, pulling me down the tunnel at a run.

  The entire tunnel shook from the massive reptile’s charge and we ran faster to keep in the light. I glanced over my shoulder, and the monstrosity reminiscent of urban myth was gaining on us. Harper put on a burst of speed that was more than I could handle, and I stumbled as she pulled me along. The horses had gone down a side tunnel and Juan stood at the opening, releasing a torrent of arrows, trying to slow the thing down. My dusky skinned friend put on another burst of speed and I was pulled off my feet, practically flying around the corner.

  Juan slipped in with us and we watched as the body of the beast continued farther down the tunnel at great speed. Juan asked something and I could barely hear anything above a mummer. Pointing at my ears, I tried to say I couldn’t hear anything. Harper rolled her eyes and handed me a health potion. I gulped it down gratefully. My inner ears exploded in pain, and a scream came out of nowhere, getting louder. The scream was mine; I realized belatedly.

  The pain subsided, and I sat there recovering. Juan calmed the horses, glancing at the main tunnel. Harper pulled out a mana potion and handed it to me.

  “I can’t keep giving you potions like this, Finn. It’s your responsibility to get your own supply.” She admonished.

  “You’re right. I forgot to get some while up there in the city. What was that thing? Are people flushing pet gators down the toilet?”

  “That wasn’t an alligator, Finn.” Juan answered. “That was a Shrindaba, a type of wyrm. Like dragons, they grow over time. And like dragons, they live for centuries. But a Shrindaba isn’t that bright. And they are always hungry. I doubt we’ll see it again, unless it realizes we got away, and either finds a place to turn around or backs itself up.”

  “Not a gator. Got it. Juan, if I got it poisoned, how long would it take to die?”

  “Oof, that’s a big if. Considering that it is constantly eating trash and waste, and is that big, it has a higher than normal poison resistance than the average Shrindaba. Probably wandered in here young and is now too big to get out. Gods know it will eventually get too big for the tunnels and either break through to the surface or get too stuck to catch food and die.”

  “That sucks for this city. Is there anything we can do to help?” I asked. I knew we needed to get out of here, the sooner the better, but the idea of that thing loose on the surface horrified me. It looked like it bothered Juan, too.

  “If we were more of a rounded group, maybe. I wouldn’t want to attempt it with anyone as low a level as you. But I promise you, as soon as we can get help to deal with the Steel Falcons, we or someone else will deal with the Shrindaba.”

  I smiled. I was still shaking from being chased by that thing. Its beady eyes, massive jaws full of thousands of teeth longer than my arm. It’s green tongue lolling as it shrugged as I wasted all my mana. “Thank you, Juan. I was so worthless in that fight. If it wasn’t for you guys, I’d never have made it.”

  “Your reflexes are good, Finn, I’ll give you that. And if you are going to use up your mana so fast, you need to stock up on mana potions,” Juan replied. His voice was that of a teacher giving me honest feedback. “But, Finn, in Christ’s name, you need to get into the habit of quickly checking the level of any potential enemy. When we win free of this place and head toward our destination and after, I want you to practice it on everything moving until it’s second nature for you.”

  I nodded along with his points and suggestions. I needed to get better at this stuff, even if I was going to be getting home soon. Just had to complete the quest riddle from the Voice.

  *********************************************

  Our passage through the rest of the sewers was uneventful. Mostly. Our path took us through a long tunnel devoid of waste or other monsters, cleared by the gluttonous Shrindaba. With the curvature of the tunnel on the map, I was worried that the thing moved in a circle. We left its route an hour later, to my relief. There were strange noises down branching and side tunnels, but whatever the makers of the noises were, they didn’t bother us. And we didn’t bother them.

  Part of me wondered about the possibility of coming back here after going up a few dozen levels and clearing it out, but the rest of me shut that line of thought down quickly. I was going to be gone before that was even an option. Maybe a month, tops. I didn’t know how wrong I was at the time, but the thought cheered me.

  When we were a few hundred yards from the exit, our boots wet and covered in offal from the constant stream around our ankles, we stopped and waited for Harper to scout out our path forward. While we waited for her to return, Juan gave me a lecture on different classes. Though I was interested, it was hard to see how it would help me.

  “… And with her Infiltrator subclass, Harper’s stealth abilities are higher than mine, even with the level difference. I talked with several people over the years who played different versions of table top rpgs. Though similar, those games back home always had the Ranger class as being more stealthy than the Rogue class. Subclasses are a major difference that can make us more powerful as we specialize within our classes.”

  “Wait. You’re just a ranger, right? Why didn’t you specialize?” I asked.

  “I didn’t see the reason. The option’s still available, but there wasn’t an obvious purpose as they weren’t useful to me. Taking a subclass is a choice, not a requirement. Think on that when the time comes, Finn.”

  The thought was interesting, and I wondered what my choices would be. “Do you know what choices I’m going to have? And at what point does the option to choose a subclass happen?”

  He pondered that for longer than I thought necessary. “That, my boy, is a good question. I don’t know. Subclasses show up at different points for each class, between levels 20 and 35. And I’ve never talked with a Mage about it. Once I decided to learn all I could to help new people.”

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “But before I forget,” he started handing me mana potions. “You are more effective, even at your low level, if you have mana. I can afford to give you some mana potions, especially since the only way you will level up is by taking out enemies or monsters.” He stopped at 20 mana potions, a veritable treasure in my hands and lap. “Just be careful. There is a price with potions that I haven’t gotten to yet. The more you take in a short period, the worse it will be for you. Headaches and cramping, then weakness, poisoning, coma, and then death. Your endurance and stamina determines how many potions are too many, and with yours being… what are they now?”

  “18 and 17,” I replied.

  “Right, so with your endurance and stamina at that level, you can drink about three before you get blinding headaches. Six will probably cause you to feel the worst cramps ever on top of that. Bear this in mind.”

  Juan was going to explain further when Harper returned from her scouting mission. “We have a problem. I scouted the camps, and there are more than we thought. If there are any members of the Steel Falcons in the city, I would be surprised. We won’t be able to go to these caverns of Finn’s directly, or anywhere really, without sneaking through a gap in their lines.”

  “Where’s the gap?” the old man asked.

  “We’re south of the city, which would have worked nicely for us to head over land. But we can’t go through the swamp to the south or the north. The path I found leads north-westerly, and then we will have to deal with the roving scouts and the sentries. I might get us through them during the night, but the timing is going to be tight if I’m reading things right. We’ll then have to sneak past camps, of which there are several spread out in the area we’ll have to get around. Finally, and this is the tricky part, we’ll have to deal with any outriders and sentries on the other side. I don’t know their patterns, as it would have taken me three times as long to find out. I think we need to move quick if we are to get through.”

  “How-” I started, being spoken over by Juan.

  “Harper, you know how I feel about cutting corners,” he said sternly. “But in this case, I agree. The stakes are too high for us to not to take a gamble. How long will it take for us to get through the swamp?”

  “Maybe thirty minutes, but we need to have enough light to do it, in case the path changes.”

  “Okay,” he said, “then we’ll leave in 15 minutes.”

  **************************************

  The swamp was a damn sight better than the sewers, and it was good to be in fresher air. The path changed a couple times, but I didn’t know why. I’d find out when we were away from this place and safe. It didn’t help my nerves any, though. The sun was setting when we got to the edge of the swamp and stopped to rest, nestled in a bramble of bushes that had odd puffs of white all over them. I had seen nothing like them.

  “Pussy willows, boy. How have you never seen pussy willows?” was all Juan said about it while settling in for a nap.

  Harper looked like she was already out, and I tried to nap myself. Not like I thought I could, but it was worth a try. But my mind raced with everything that had happened today. I felt like I was literally in a story. The ROUSes. The non-dragon thing that was like a dinosaur-sized alligator. Sneaking through a swamp before sneaking through enemy lines to go on a quest! What had my life become? I thought about what was going on at home. My mom had probably reported me missing. I had missed two tests, and would be lucky if they let me make them up. My brother… Oh god, that little shit would love this place. I chuckled to myself.

  But then I thought about whether he would have survived any of this. He was only 15, and a nerd. An active nerd, and more able to adjust to this kind of place, but he was still a kid. The nightmares he’d have. Hell, I’m going to have nightmares about this place. But I would like to think he would have finished the tutorial, met up with Juan, and been okay. Probably would have found a way home by now. Thinking of how my little brother would have done here, how he would have been so much more in his element and thus badass, I fell asleep.

  Because it seemed like seconds later I was being shaken awake. I looked up, seeing Harper’s face inches from mine, and started. This made her smile.

  “Come on, Finn, the fun’s not over yet,” she whispered and was gone. I stretched, trying to work some surprising soreness out of my muscles. The moon was out, but looked a little smaller than usual. The light was still useful, and I got myself moving to the horses. We moved out immediately.

  Avoiding the roving scouts and sentries was almost ridiculously easy, as they carried torches showing us where they were. I assumed it also ruined their night vision. Harper quietly led us on a zig-zag path that did not have us stopping or slowing down.

  And then there was the camp. We had stopped in a small copse of trees, looking over the edge of the large encampment. On the side we were going to pass it on were the horses for the camp tied in a line. Maybe thirty of them. Juan looked at them in contemplation before grabbing Harper and whispering to her. She grinned and gave me the reins to her horse with a wink. I suddenly had a bad feeling in my gut, as she disappeared in the tall grass while we waited.

  A few minutes later, we saw her cut the main rope holding all the horses, grabbing three of them. She led her three prizes through the grass as the other horses started wandering about. She waved to us in a cavalier fashion, trying to get us to join her. I looked at Juan, who nodded. We led the horses down to where she was.

  “What are you doing? Won’t this bring the attention of everyone down on us?” I hissed. I was on edge, being this close to the camp.

  “Relax, Finn. They’ll be too busy trying to gather up the horses to come after us. Besides, now we have three more in case we need to ride hard.” She replied. Something spooked a horse, and it started running into the camp, getting caught on tent lines and pulling them along as it became more and more distraught.

  “Hey, the horses!” a voice cried from the camp. Mercenaries ran from deeper in the camp and in our direction. One saw us and raised the alarm. I looked at Harper and she just grinned, like this was part of the fun.

  “Mount up, you two. We need to ride!” ordered Juan. I scrambled onto GB, handing the reins to Harper’s horse back to her as she got in her saddle. She still held the leads to the three horses with little issue, and they stayed with her.

  This was the moment where everything fell apart. A few of the soldiers grabbed horses and torches, giving chase, while most of them focused on getting the now skittish horses rounded up. Juan led us away from the camp and the mercenaries followed bareback. My only consolation was that they likely didn’t know who we were. Probably thought we were just horse thieves. But they rode their horses easily, even without saddles.

  I tried to put Juan’s advice about checking enemy levels to use. And I failed. Riding a horse and trying to get yourself into the right state of mind is difficult. Very difficult.

  “Should we attack, Juan?” I surprised myself by asking. I was freaking out at what was happening on top of all the shit in the sewers. And I was ready just to start fucking blasting every single enemy.

  “Not yet! Let’s see if we can lose them in those trees ahead!”

  They were on our tails all the way to the thicket, and we entered it at a dead run. I got slapped in the face by a small branch and blood ran from my cheek. I ducked down to avoid being brained by anything bigger. The trees were a blur, our mounts not slowing as they weaved between the trunks. I heard a cry behind me as one of the mercenaries was knocked off their horse.

  Not knowing how many that was, I kept my head down. I hoped the forest was bigger, seeing the trees as our temporary allies in the flight. But that hope was extinguished as the trees gave way to more open grassland. We burst from the trees right toward another encampment, a flag flew above it with a silvery falcon rampant in the firelight.

  “Shit! This way!” cried out Juan as he swerved to the right. My sense of direction was all turned around at this point. GB was in a following mood, her new fierceness forgotten in the rush, and I was grateful.

  I glanced at the camp, seeing wide-eyed mercenaries sneaking a drink from a dark bottle. I looked back, seeing the horsemen chasing us leave the woods at high speed. They adjusted their heading when they saw us. The mercenaries supposed to be on duty raised the alarm. I wondered what else could go wrong as we rode on into the darkness.

  Juan juked right before going to the left and we followed. More horsemen joined the chase, and it was looking like we would not get away. We rode up a hill and he wheeled his horse around, an arrow already flying from his bow over my head. I turned GB when I got up the hill, casting Ice Shard and Firebolt at the oncoming attackers. I peppered in some Poisonous Shots for good measure, chugging a mana potion. Arrows and knives sprouted from mercenaries like magic, and I continued my elemental assault until I was out of mana again. We did not stop to loot.

  A part of me felt wrong about that. I needed the money.

  **************************************************************

  We sat in the trees the next day watching yet another Steel Falcon check point blocking our path towards the caverns. It was the sixth one we had to try and avoid as we continued moving west. It was almost like they were blocking our way on purpose.

  “Why can’t we just go straight there over land?” I whispered, “Why do we have to deal with them blocking us?”

  “Finn, did you ever see the Grand Canyon as a kid? Imagine it being like three times as deep, with only two ways around it. Far to the east, or the bridge. The damn thing reaches into the mountains.” Harper answered.

  “There is a third way.” Juan said, staring at the large group of mercenaries. He stood there stoicly. “Theres an older bridge in the western mountains, built by a long-gone tribe of people about whom I know little about.”

  “Juan, no. It’s too dangerous. Finn will die if we go that way. Hell, I might be too low level to go there.”

  “It might be our only choice.”

  “We need help, old man. Why not just cross the mountains through one of the safe passes, get to the army, and get some help to deal with the Steel Falcons? Then we can get over the SAFE bridge and deal with Finn’s quest.”

  An unfortunate change in venue. Finn the Mage, in his quest to track the beast, has run into a roadblock of epic proportions. He can fight his way to and over Manik’s Bridge, likely dying in the attempt, or he can seek another path. Will he choose to cross the Bridge of Ankana’Zuul in the former mountain valley home of the long dead Zuul, facing the unseen dangers that await? Or will he seek help from the Army of the Twelve Kingdoms in dealing with the Steel Falcon Company?

  I groaned at the dramatics of the Voice. I almost expected it to end with a ‘tune in next time!’ Or some other noxious cliffhanger bullshit. “The Voice doesn’t think I would survive going over, I think it said Maniac bridge? Anyways, it seems to think the other two options are better, and the getting help option sounds less ominous than the bridge of Ankana Zool.”

  Juan pondered this for a moment. He stroked his goatee. “Okay. We’ll head over the mountains to the Shadow Lands and make contact with the army.” he looked pointedly at Harper. “I refuse to be pulled into the conflict with the Empire, though. If they will only help General Venegas instead of Juan Venegas, then we’ll head for this Ankana Zool bridge.”

  Ankana’Zuul, General. Ankana’Zuul.

  The Voice sounded more irritated than it should have.

  “Did both of you hear that?” Juan asked.

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