The bear was gone and hadn’t come back. Alex stared into the forest where it had retreated, tearing a hole through the underbrush; a low, collapsing tunnel marked by snapped wood and vegetation all pressed flat. He didn’t really expect it to return, it had been badly injured by the end of the fight, but still… he couldn’t look away. Just in case.

  They had won. The trainees, working together, had pushed back the most terrifying thing he had ever seen in his life. But, sitting in the dirt, surrounded by the moans of the injured, it didn’t feel like victory. It felt hollow. A pyrrhic win.

  He sat on the ground with his back against a half rotted stump, knees drawn up, arms wrapped loosely around them, holding himself together as he watched the alien forest. What had been a narrow game trail now looked like a small clearing around them. Smaller trees lay snapped on the ground and all the ferns and low plants had been trampled in a wide swath.

  And there was blood—too much of it—splashed across leaves, smeared across armor, soaked into bark and moss in irregular patches. There was no telling whose it was—too many of them had contributed.

  Bird calls had slowly returned to the forest around them and the biting insects had never left, but Alex ignored it all and watched the retreat path the bear had taken. Every distant snap of a branch made his shoulders tense. Every shifting shadow drew his eyes.

  Reach stomped past, moving from trainee to trainee. He was checking on everyone and helping the medical team that had arrived with the UTVs. He hadn’t said much when he first walked through the group, but Alex had seen the worry in his face.

  Alex had been surprised at how fast backup arrived. They had to have been watching the video feeds and sent this team as soon as the bear had attacked them. The UTVs sat at the edge of the clearing now, huge six-wheelers with wide tires and armored panels. One of the trailers unfolded into mobile medical stations and medics moved around the clearing with brisk, practiced efficiency, voices low and controlled, hands steady as they worked.

  He was glad to see them and wasn’t sure what they would have done with everyone if they hadn’t arrived so quickly. They had given him a shot and had his chest compression wrapped. Apparently they thought he had two broken ribs from when the bear had swiped at him. He was just thankful he had stepped in and been mostly hit with the bear's wrist, and not its claws. He had to take a slow breath to suppress a shudder.

  Two of the ops team lay on stretchers near the UTVs, surrounded by personnel, IV’s hanging off a pole mounted on a trailer. One of them—Alex wasn’t sure what their names were and now wasn’t the time to ask—had armor cut away and chest exposed, what should have been pale skin below was coated in dried blood. A medic pressed something against his torso while another looked like he was maybe trying to close the gaping wounds left by the bear's claws.

  The whole ops team was near death. Laina too. Marcus and Kieran were better, but not good.

  Alex was trying so hard to not think about how close he had come to those bear claws.

  He wasn’t a soldier. Had never fought in the wars back on Earth. His sum total experience was a fight against giant millipedes and a fight against a demon bear… or whatever the hell it was. And while he was no expert, he had already learned a few important things.

  Like: there’s just no room to think about anything beyond the invisible walls of the arena you are in. During each of his fights, his world had narrowed to the simple inputs of movement and threat, protection and survival. There hadn’t been room to worry about getting hurt. Or the idea that someone he knew might already be gone forever.

  But now that the adrenaline was draining out of him? Now it was all he could think about.

  He looked around at his friends. People he had only known for a couple of weeks, but were already so important to him. They almost died.

  Almost. But during the fight he thought he had witnessed people die. The ops team for sure. Laina. And maybe some of them still would.

  And he had almost died. He wondered what that margin was. Half a foot? Just a little further back and the bear's massive claws would have torn across his chest.

  Alex looked down at his hands. They were trembling slightly, a faint, persistent shake he couldn’t quite suppress. His fingers felt fat and clumsy, a little unresponsive even. He flexed them, then curled them into fists and forced himself to breathe slowly until the shaking eased. But it didn’t, not yet. Instead, he just wrapped them around his legs again and held tight.

  Around him, voices overlapped in fragments. For some reason Alex kept looking towards Reach, who moved through all the chaos like a stable, fixed point. A small island of reassurance that it was all going to be okay if he could just hold on a little longer.

  Reach checked in with medics, issued short directives, bent briefly over injured trainees, resting a hand on a shoulder here, offering a quiet word there.

  Alex watched him from a distance and wondered how long it took before all this stopped feeling impossible.

  Alex shifted slightly, pressing his head back against the soft bark behind him and staring up at the broken canopy above. Sunlight filtered through in thin, uneven shafts, catching on drifting dust floating through the air; lazily, teasingly, carefree.

  When they headed out this morning, he had thought this was the practice round for everything that came next. Now he wondered if there should have been some sort of practice for the practice round.

  Alex was distracted from his thoughts by a medic that came to check on him. He asked a few followup questions to make sure Alex was responding well to whatever shot they had given him. He was. Then again, maybe the drugs were contributing to his morose mood.

  He decided to try and think about something else. The other thing that had been bothering him was the magic in this world.

  After 10 years of reading about, playing games about and dreaming about magic, somehow he had stepped into a life where magic was not only real, but he, incredibly, could use it. He was a mage. A wizard.

  He still hardly understood what he was doing with it of course. Barely knew anything about magic at all. But he was starting to feel the edges of the rules it had to be following. And even if he didn’t understand them yet, he had slowly been feeling his way around them.

  And really, he felt that he had to be advancing quickly. It had only been seven or eight days since he was first able to even see the mana around him consistently. And it seemed like, every time he reached out to use it, every time he tried to draw it in, every time he tried to shape it into something, it came a little more easily.

  That should have thrilled him, but instead, he found it a little unsettling. He was worried about what he didn’t know. Could he burn himself out like magic often did in books he’d read? Could he push his limits too far and lose control, hurting the people around him? He had already let his anger get the better of him with Connor this afternoon.

  Connor. He had just been pushing and pushing him from the very moment they had first met. He was an ass. And Alex had tried so hard to just ignore him and not let it bother him. But he hated bullies and every time he had suppressed his anger or tried to be the better person, what he had actually been doing was ignoring the feelings. Burying them. Until they burst out…

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  He wasn’t happy about what he had done. Attacking someone, no matter how deserved, wasn’t something he could be proud about. Fortunately it didn’t seem like his—force punch?—had hurt Connor too badly.

  Alex sighed and held out a hand, palm up. It still shook slightly. He took a few slow breaths and drew mana. Not a lot—he wouldn’t be able to do much for the rest of the day at least. He wasn’t even sure what recovery looked like since he had never used so much magic before.

  Beside him, Marcus groaned. Stirring for the first time since receiving his own shots. Alex sighed and closed his HUD, he was glad he was headed back to Earth in a few hours. He had a lot to figure out.

  Propped up against a tree with a small towel behind his head, Marcus had been sleeping for the past 20 minutes. He had one arm in a sling now and his armor was dented and gouged nearly beyond recognition. His face was pale beneath the dirt, jaw clenched even as he opened his eyes.

  Jay sat on Marcus’s other side, unusually quiet, massive shoulders slumped as he watched the med teams work. There was a large cut above his eye that someone had already sealed. It was still a jagged red line that cut into his eyebrow, but at least it wasn’t bleeding anymore. Alex wondered whether the Dungeon Inc. medical techniques would heal it scar free, or whether they were designed to leave prominent scars in order to add more ‘character’ in their adventurers. He would have to ask Dr. Holt the next time he saw him.

  “You still with us?” Alex asked quietly.

  Marcus let out a dry chuckle. “Ask me again in a week. Or maybe don’t. Not sure I want to think about this again for a while.”

  Alex managed a weak smile. Scars didn’t matter at the end of the day. He was just glad they were all still alive. The fact that he even had to think that felt surreal.

  “Looks like you are going to need some new armour again,” Alex said, reaching over and carefully sticking a finger through one of the wide gouges left by the bear's claws.

  Marcus laughed at that, but it quickly turned into a gasping groan as he futilely tried to grab his side through his armour. “Jerk. Don’t make me laugh.”

  Jay chuckled at that, but Alex just smiled. The bear had broken two of his ribs when it struck him, so he held the laugh in.

  Alex looked up at that moment and his gaze caught Maddie, the B Class bard.

  She stood a little apart from the others, arms wrapped tightly around herself despite the warmth of the day. Her eyes were fixed on nothing, just unfocused and looking over their heads at the forest beyond. When one of the nearby medics raised their voice, calling for something from the trailer, she flinched visibly, shoulders jerking up toward her ears.

  She had been in the back, helping the wounded during the bear attack. She hadn’t been physically injured and Alex wondered if that had made it better or worse for her. Something twisted uncomfortably in his chest as he watched. He recognized that look, even if he didn’t fully understand it. Shock, maybe. Or the beginning of something deeper.

  He wanted to get up and talk to her. But he wasn’t sure he could even get himself up right now, and he had no idea what he would say.

  He sighed and looked around at the forest. The trees were majestic things, twisting and towering over them. The undergrowth was familiar and alien all at the same time. It was incredible to be sitting here. To have this opportunity. He wanted to get out in this world and explore. See unimaginable wonders and experience things that the billions of people back on earth never could.

  But it was only now that he really understood the cost of that opportunity and the realization settled over him like a stifling blanket. This planet was as dangerous as it was beautiful. More dangerous than Earth ever could have been. And it was possible that not everyone was capable of handling those stresses.

  Yesterday he had been so excited. Excited for the Forest Challenge, but also for going home this week. He had a plan. He was going to bring his friends an opportunity to join him here. Side Quest Heroes. The entire cast. On Dungeon Inc.—on Earth3.

  Alex looked around the clearing. There were no happy faces here. He looked back at Maddie and wondered if she could ever be happy again. Some people weren’t going to be able to handle this level of intensity. Of putting their lives on the line, no matter how strong they got and how trained they were.

  Could his friends? Could he subject them to this, knowing what he now knew?

  He really wasn’t sure.

  Reach walked up to them a little while later. Alex could see that the fallen ops team members were loaded onto two of the four trailers already and the medics were now putting all their gear back into storage. They were getting ready to head back to the village.

  Reach stood in front of them and looked into each of their faces for a long moment. He looked tired. Not like they looked tired, but still tired. And worried. Alex tried to smile up at him but that only made Reach’s eyebrows furrow even more.

  “You three holding together?” Reach asked.

  “More or less,” Jay said, unconvincingly.

  Reach nodded, then glanced back toward the clearing, eyes briefly assessing the ongoing cleanup work before returning to Alex.

  “Okay, that’s good.” He paused again, mouth open and moving slightly, like he wanted to say more but couldn’t find the words. “What you all did today. You need to be proud of that. All of you. Your bravery, and quick thinking, saved lives. You should be proud.”

  No one responded. Alex didn’t look at the other two, but just nodded gently at the ground. He couldn’t even look into Reach’s eyes. He certainly didn’t feel proud. Maybe that would come later.

  "One more thing,” Reach said, “before we evac.”

  Alex looked up at him.

  “And this is hardly important at this point, but I need to ask otherwise Valentina will send me angry messages later… You have the flag right?”

  The question caught Alex completely off guard. The flag. For a moment, he just stared at Reach, mind blank. The challenge. The objective. The entire reason they’d been out here in the first place. It felt distant, almost absurd, in the wake of everything that had happened. And now? He hadn’t actually thought about it since… well, since the bear attack.

  “I—” Alex started, then stopped. He couldn’t really remember what he had done with the flag. He looked around the clearing and saw Jay doing the same. Surely he had just dropped it somewhere around here.

  “I don’t know,” he finally admitted. “I… forgot about it.”

  Reach studied him for a long moment, expression unreadable.

  But then movement caught Alex’s attention beyond Reach. Connor had walked close and stood a short distance away, perfectly still now.

  Connor was looking directly at him, one hand resting on his belt pouch, not saying anything.

  Reach followed Alex’s gaze and saw Connor standing there. He sighed, knowing what was coming.

  Connor’s face flushed as he flicked open a leather strap and drew out the flag. He looked at it in his hands for several moments and then handed it to Reach.

  “I found it on the path…” Connor said, trailing off. After a moment he visibly swallowed and continued, “Alex and his team retrieved it from the Boars.”

  Reach nodded and took the flag. “Right. Okay.” He stood tall and looked around the clearing, catching the eyes of the trainees, most of whom were already watching.

  “You all need to be proud of what you have done today. You faced your challenges head on, and ended up facing a threat far greater than anything any of us were prepared for.” He looked around at the nodding heads and blank stares.

  “So, with this,” he said as he held the flag up for everyone to see. “The Forest Challenge is over. B Class wins.”

  It was hard to say who was more shocked as gasps echoed around the clearing.

  “Wait! But… Rae got the flag from the boars,” Mel started. She was ready to say more but Reach held up a hand motioning her to stop.

  “I understand. We saw it all. But the goal of the challenge was to be the team that delivered the flag back to me. Not capture the flag. The only directive you were given was ‘bring the flag back’.” He watched Mel for another moment, maybe to make sure she wasn’t going to talk any further.

  “Fighting for possession of the flag after capturing it, is always a possible tactic.”

  “But, I just picked it up because it was on the ground,” Connor tried to say.

  “And handed it to me. The challenge is over and your team wins. Now, looks like it’s time to head out, so everyone find a spot on one of the trailers.”

  Connor and Alex just stared at each other as Reach walked away.

  ***

  Earth3 operates on a fundamentally different scale of assumptions than Earth Prime. That's just one of those things you learn pretty quickly over here.

  Personal Journal

  Marcus Steele; Knight

  Iron Fangs

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