Monsters.

Real-life monsters.

My Uncle Johnnie, being a man who made his living outside of the lines of the law, had once told me that he knew that monsters existed, but they were too few in number to be truly dangerous. He had been referring, of course, to the Nico Gasparis of the world. More dangerous, he believed, were your everyday guys and girls, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking any questions of those in seats of authority.

I’d always thought that was pretty poetic, coming from a dude who had dropped out of school at twelve. Now though, seeing what I was seeing, I wasn’t as convinced of that statement as I had been previously.

Montana had its fair share of wolf packs. The Bitterroot Mountains, eighty-five or so miles south of Missoula, had plenty, but there had been reports of hunting wolves coming as close to the city as South Hills.

These things, however, were wolf-shaped and wolf-sized, but were like no wolves I had ever heard of. Their forelegs were far longer, and their rear legs more muscular, than any of the wolves I had ever seen. They had huge heads, bright yellow eyes, and three-toed paws tipped with coal-colored claws that looked like they could eviscerate an elephant seal. Their bodies were all steel sinews under a pelt of bristling black and gray fur that had an almost oily sheen to it.

And they were aggressive as all hell. They burst out of the pillar with all the fury of a pack of wild animals that had been cooped up in a cage, taunted and beaten with sticks, and then unexpectedly let out to wreak terrible vengeance on their tormentors.

Screams erupted from all around me, as hackers fell over themselves and their workstations to get away from the horde of ravening wolf beasts.

I watched, glued to the spot with shock, as one of the wild wolves roared, spraying spit. It stood up on its stockier hind legs and then whipped out its forepaw. The hacker who had been nearest to the pillar—a polite young dude of about my age wearing a hoodie, whom I’d exchanged a few words with at breakfast—fell in a shower of blood.

It was crazy vivid; the brightness of that red gush of arterial spray as it fountained out into the air under the harsh white lights.

To my staggering, lurching, stuttering mind, it didn’t seem real. That dude couldn’t have just died. And he certainly couldn’t have just been scythed down by a wolf standing on its hind legs.

This can’t be happening, this can’t be happening, this can’t be happening, I reassured myself.

Which was all very well and good, apart from the fact that it was happening. The blood splashed across the floor, pumping out of the terrible throat wound, and the twitching corpse of the hacker was a testament to the reality of the situation.

Credit given where credit’s due, the mafia goons didn’t waste time in reacting. I supposed that in their line of work the early bird didn’t just get the worm, they also didn’t get killed. Their guns came out, pulled from shoulder holsters and waistbands. The underground space was filled with the booming, deafening echo of gunfire, which reverberated off the walls.

I ducked back down when the shooting started. This was just as well, as a stray round ricocheted off the stone floor nearby and punched into the corner of my overturned desk, blowing a chunk out of the flimsy wood.

Screams and shouts all melded together with the inhuman snarls of the wild wolf creatures that had come through the pillar. Gunfire crackled. A light exploded nearby in a flickering shower of sparks. It was absolute madness.

I saw a heavyset man gun down one of the wolves. He raised his weapon and liberally sprayed the slavering monster with a machine-pistol—an old Beretta PM-12, if my collection of ’90s action flicks had taught me anything. The creature did a nice little jig, dark blood flying out of it in thick ropes, then collapsed to the floor.

So, I found myself thinking, they’re just as susceptible to damage as real wolves so far as bullets are concerned.

I don’t know where that thought came from. An observation born of too many video games, perhaps? And then I was struck by a dawning realization: the strange chiming sound that I had been hearing over the past day or so, the instant appearance of an eldritch pillar carved in glowing otherworldly runes, the wolf monsters, all of this had a lot in common with—

There was a heavy crash. The desk I was hiding behind smashed into me, knocking me over as something hefty crashed into it.

I banged my head on the floor as I tumbled backward. Spots of light bloomed across my vision. The deafening noise all around me seemed to fade in and out like a poorly tuned radio.

I looked sideways. About five feet down from where I’d been bowled over, the upper half of a man’s body lay. The bottom half of the torso was steaming gently. It wasn’t Mr. Gaspari or one of the hackers, so I assumed it was one of the former’s thugs. His guts were piled around his severed waist, and one of his arms looked like it had been ripped off at the elbow. Bone gleamed white at the torn joint.

“Whoa—holy shit, that’s gross,” I said.

I turned away from the gruesome sight, heaved a couple of times, and hiccuped vomit onto the floor.

I’ve got to get the hell out of here or I’m going to die.

It’s a pretty confronting and sobering moment, that moment when you look your death in the face and decide to flip it the bird and go on living.

The fact that none of this made any sense was something that I couldn’t concern myself with right there and then. I was in trouble. In fact, if troubles were pickles, as I’d often heard Ned Flanders refer to them as, then I was in a cucumber of a jam. And, just like cucumber jam, this trouble left a nasty taste in my mouth—metallic. A second later I realized that the taste was blood. I must’ve bitten my tongue when I’d been knocked over.

I hauled myself back into a crouching position, trying to ignore the awful, furious snarling, screams, and the harsh sound of what was either cloth or flesh ripping somewhere nearby.

Forcing myself to look back at the dismembered body of the goon, I saw he had a pistol clutched in his dead hand. Forcing down the revulsion I felt, I grabbed the gun. It was a Stoeger STR9-F. I checked the magazine and found that it was more or less half full—maybe six shots. I half-pulled back the slide and saw that there was a round chambered.

What can I say? I was a Montana farm boy, I knew my way around a firearm.

I popped out of cover, my weapon extended in both hands.

Don’t think about how crazy this all is. Just get out of there. Just survive, Dev.

One of the wild wolves flung away the limp body of a hacker that it had in its jaws as it turned its attention to me. The woman flew across the room and smashed through a table, rolling bonelessly across the floor.

I shot the wolf three times in the chest. With a shrill whine, it staggered backward. I took a step forward, feeling surprisingly calm. Now that I was acting, now that I was being proactive, my fear had slipped away.

I squeezed the trigger again. The handgun kicked in my hands. The brass casing of the nine-mil round flipped out of the ejection port and spun away. The bullet hit the wolf monster squarely in its bony forehead and blew the back of its head out. The monster was knocked clean off its feet.

Typically, just when I thought that the situation couldn’t be any more screwed if it tried, my senses were assailed with yet another battery of the impossible. As soon as the stricken wolf that I’d just relieved of its brain hit the dusty floor, my vision was assaulted by what I could only describe as a pop-up notification.

I knew it was a pop-up. Anyone who had ever played a video game would’ve recognized it for what it was. A box of text floating in the air, the parking garage background behind it slightly blurred out so that the text would stand out more.

Congratulations, Devon Russo. You have been selected as a Player in the Divine Tournament. You have been assigned the Summoner class. Call forth monsters from the aether to fight alongside you in a battle for the ages!

Round 1: Culling of the Weak has begun. Good luck and have fun!

Devon Russo

Summoner

Level 1

Legacies: None

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Bounties: None

Divine Keys: None

Party members: None

“Woah...”

I swiped at the air in front of me, stumbling around in a semicircle. I almost tripped over a severed leg and stuck out my arm to steady myself against one of the concrete pillars that held up the floor above us. A couple of wayward bullets zinged and snapped past my head, but I barely registered them, what with the text box floating in front of my eyes.

I pressed my back against the pillar so as to buy myself some time, while the fight between mafia thugs and wolves continued to rage around me.

To my surprise, the first message faded away before being replaced by another.

You have received your class item: Summoner’s Band

Summoner’s Band

5 Sockets

Socket A: Open

Socket B: Closed

Socket C: Closed

Socket D: Closed

Socket E: Closed

Upgradable

I felt a pressure on my wrist; a sensation that might have been intense heat or intense cold, which faded before it could hurt in any way. I looked down to find a strange band encircling my left wrist. It was made of a golden material, with what looked like five empty sockets for...

“For gemstones. For actual gemstones,” I said in a hushed voice. “This is some Marvel shit right here.”

A summoner. With a wristband. Empty sockets for gemstones.

To my utter amazement, my mind had gone completely calm. I had seemingly passed across the turbulent ocean of shock and disbelief. Now, I found myself sailing the placid waters beyond; a place where I was happy to accept what was in front of me and deal with it in its turn.

It appeared that the world had gone mad, and I had been thrown headlong into some VR world. People had been talking for ages about the possibility of us all living inside some simulation, like The Matrix, right? The way I reasoned it, either this theory had turned out to be violently and abruptly true, or I had suffered some kind of aneurysm and was now balls-deep inside an absolute champion of a hallucination.

I can fight with my own brain and with everything I thought I knew, I thought to myself, or I can roll with this insanity.

It seemed to me like there was nothing to be gained from fighting with myself.

Roll with it it is, then.

An electric thrill of adrenaline spiked through me. It was a turning point in my life, though I didn’t know it yet. I was going to treat this—whatever this was—like a video game.

My chief concern was surviving.

I spared one more glance at the golden band encircling my left wrist before I peeked out from my hiding place and saw one of the wolf creatures not far from me. A popup appeared in front of my eyes.

Direwolf - Level 1 - Common

Like the best farts, the dire wolf is silent and deadly. Like the worst farts, it will also leave you lying with your guts on the outside of your body if you don’t give it the respect it deserves. This creature is at home under the shadows of the forest but will pursue its prey anywhere if it’s hungry enough.

The direwolf was backing up one of Gaspari’s men, growling low in its throat as it advanced on the man. The henchman in peril was none other than the whip-thin bearded guy who had told me to get my ass back to work.

That could only have been four minutes ago, I thought. It feels like a goddamn lifetime.

For his part, the bearded goombah was fumbling with a handgun, trying to reload a fresh magazine with trembling fingers.

As I watched, the massive wolf sprang forward, thumped into the thin man’s chest, and clamped its powerful jaws around his face. It happened so fast that I had no time to react. The man gave a short muffled scream, which was quickly cut off into a gurgling, liquid wheeze as the wild wolf’s jaws clenched. There was a wet crunch, the wolf jerked, and it tore away the face and the front of the henchman’s skull, beard and all, in one savage movement. Blood and fluid gushed out.

I hadn’t ever given death much thought, being an optimistic variety of man, but I knew that I didn’t want to have the front of my head bitten off like that. No, thank you.

They say somewhere, even in the smallest, fluffiest, most pointless handbag-sized Pomeranian, there’s a grain of the ancient wolf. Hoping that this meant there was also a little sprinkling of dog in all wolves, I whistled.

The direwolf, which was busy crunching up the bearded goon’s face, swallowed and turned its evil yellow eyes on me.

“Not much of a last meal,” I muttered.

I thrust my left hand forward and cried out: “Activate summoner power!”

I might have cringed a little inside, but the thought that I could summon a monster from the band took away any embarrassment I might have otherwise felt.

But all that embarrassment came rushing in when my words did nothing at all and the wolf simply cocked its head at me in confusion.

“Alright. So I guess that’s not how I use this band thingy,” I said, my mouth going very dry. “Time for plan B.”

As the wolf’s growl rose in pitch, I simply raised my right hand and emptied my gun into the wolf’s sternum and neck. It went down with a howl of rage, its legs splayed out.

I was just ducking into the cover of my pillar with my now useless gun when something caught my eye. Next to the body of the dead wolf, a little white jewel was glittering on the ground. I squinted, focusing on the object. It looked like a—

Arcane Gem (Level 1)

Enhances base skill, spell, or ability

Sure, I thought. Gems. Why not?

I reached down, picked up the little stone, and inserted it into one of the empty sockets on my band. There was a flash of light from my wrist, and a rushing thrum of what I could only describe as invigorating power filled me.

Arcane Gem (Level 1) successfully set into Summon Socket A

You can now summon a Direwolf (Common) Level 1!

The sound of fighting was dying down somewhat, telling me that someone was going to come out on top soon. Whoever that was, I doubted my well-being would feature highly on their list of what they planned to do afterward. If the wolves won, they’d probably want to have a celebratory meal with me as the dessert. If the mafia goons managed to get through the mess, then chances were they’d just want to get rid of me for neatness’ sake, or shoot me to relieve their feelings.

I peered out from around the edge of the pillar again. There was a smattering of henchmen left and maybe half a dozen wolves remaining. All the other hackers appeared to have been killed, although it was hard to tell in the flickering, sparking light of the strip lighting and the sporadic snapping flashes of gunfire.

I tucked the spent gun into the pocket of my jacket.

“How?” I murmured to myself, looking at the little jewel that was now in one of the five sockets on my band. “How do I summon a dire wolf?”

With sheer will, apparently.

Just by thinking about it. Just by hoping that what I was reading was the truth, that I really could conjure something from nothing, that I really could summon a creature from who-knew-where.

A creature materialized out of the air. Its shape formed and grew, surrounded in a corona of hazy blue. It was a dire wolf, just as lean and mean-looking as the wolves that had come out of the strange pillar. The only difference between it and the others was that it had emerald-green eyes as opposed to bright yellow.

“I did it. I actually did—look out! Enemy behind!”

In much the same manner as a mercenary NPC might heed the command of a player in a game, my direwolf reacted to my instruction instantly. It swiveled around and launched itself, like a fur-clad cruise missile, at the nearest enemy wolf. The pair of them went down in a snarking ball of claws and teeth and fury, crashing into the spartan furniture that was still standing.

A few bullets sparked around me. Another of the wolves was blown off its four feet in a hail of machine-pistol fire, black blood erupting in gory starbursts. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of blue as someone that I suspected might have been Gaspari fled from the back of the room and disappeared through a doorway.

Seeing how effective the summoning of the direwolf had been, I pictured two more of the creatures popping into being. My reasoning was simple: the more the merrier.

I willed them into being, concentrating so hard and so fervently that I felt a cold sweat spring up on my brow.

A piercing pain lanced through my cranium. It was a headache so severe that it felt like someone had driven an icicle through my temple and then started whisking it around. I lost any hold on what I might have had on the summoning front, so consuming was the dizziness that assailed me.

Peripherally, like it was happening to someone else, I felt the ground tilt from under me. I staggered out from behind the pillar I had been using as cover and dropped to my knees. The world had taken on a hazy pinkish-red sheen. My vision was dimming at the corners.

The direwolves I had tried to summon hadn’t appeared, and I’d given myself an aneurysm instead.

What… is… going… on?

The questions trickled through my consciousness like the last few drops of maple syrup from the bottle.

It seemed, in my haste to try and get out of this predicament, I had tried to run before I could walk. I could only assume that what I was experiencing was the effect of overdrawing on my new and limited powers as a newbie Summoner.

My vision flickered. Exhaustion thrummed through me in soporific waves. I wanted to lie down and take a nap. I knew if I yielded to this temptation though, I’d most likely end up as dog food.

My summoned direwolf had managed to kill one of its contemporaries and had been engaged by one of the other surviving monsters. I cast around, looking for a dropped gun, or any other kind of weapon. I saw the twinkle of more Gems that had been dropped, but I couldn’t dredge up the strength to grab them.

Without quite knowing how, I managed to haul myself back up onto one knee—a Herculean task that left me feeling so light-headed that I wouldn’t have been surprised to find my head floating free of my body.

On the other side of the room, another of Gaspari’s thugs was desperately beating at a monstrous wolf with his empty shotgun. He had a bright ginger beard. I hadn’t seen him or that bright orange facial hair before, which made me think he was one of Gaspari’s right-hand men.

Man, I could barely keep my eyes open; my knees felt weak and my shoulders ached. Dully, I watched Orangebeard fumbling with something in his pocket as he strove to keep the direwolf at bay.

The wolf flowed around his guard and seized the man’s throat in its jaws. Orangebeard’s eyes bulged. His hand jerked out of his pocket. The small round item he had been trying to free tumbled away and disappeared.

I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see the man die. When I opened them, he had fallenThe monster that had just dispatched Orangebeard snap its head around to look at me. It growled, showing rows of lethal teeth, its face flecked with the blood of the gangster.

An explosion ripped through the area. Violent. Deafening. It happened without any warning. Immediately, it became apparent that Orangebeard had been killed just as he was about to lob the grenade he had been messing around with in his pocket.

There wasn’t much in the way of fire, which surprised me for the brief moment prior to being flung through the air. I had never seen a real grenade go off, of course, but a veteran friend of mine had once explained how they worked with the help of an orange.

“If the shrapnel doesn’t kill you, the concussion still can,” he said.

“How?” I’d asked.

In response, my buddy had punched the orange he’d been about to eat a few times.

“No sign of trauma on the outside, right?” he said.

I shook my head.

“But on the inside of the skin…” he said.

He unpeeled the orange to reveal the mess of pulped fruit.

“Ah,” I said.

“If you find yourself around a bouncing grenade, just try and remember to keep your mouth open, Dev,” he’d said. “Minimizes the chances of your eardrums blowing out.”

And I did. Funny how some nuggets of knowledge, which you should never need to utilize, stick with you.

I smacked into something unyielding that drove all the air out of my lungs. There was a rushing, dusty blackness, splinters struck my face—then a load of stony debris and shattered wood landed on me in a wave.

My vision flickered, and my consciousness threw in the towel.