Becky didn’t rejoin Hans and Roland until three days passed, and the bear had left the group sometime in the first night.

When the dwarf didn’t return to camp the first night after the battle, Hans wasn’t surprised. The Druid was in her element and didn’t need the comforts of a campsite the way he did.

On the first day after the battle, Hans worried about Roland. The hunter would accept water and nibbles of food but still seemed confused and disoriented. He hadn’t left his bedroll or stirred hardly at all. When the sun began to set and Becky hadn’t arrived, Hans began to search the sky for a shimmering hawk.

On the second day after the battle, Hans worried about Becky. The two had split up in a hurry, so there was no agreed-upon plan of what Hans should do next. Should he go look for her with Roland in tow? Should he take Roland back to Gomi and then come back for the Druid?

Though he pretended there was a choice, he knew taking Roland home and then coming back to find Becky was the right move. As long as her status was unknown, Roland had to take priority. He definitely needed medical care where Becky could be perfectly healthy but delayed.

On the third day, Hans prepped Roland for the journey back to Gomi. Fortunately, the hunter sat up under his own strength that morning and slowly chewed on a piece of jerky. He attempted to speak to Hans, but he could only manage painful wheezes. Days of sobbing brutalized his vocal cords, but he would answer questions and show he was listening with his head movements.

Hans introduced himself and told him that Quentin was worried but safe. That seemed to put Roland at ease, but it didn’t erase his distant, hollow stare.

When midday passed that third day, Hans explained his plan to get him back to Gomi. It was easy to explain because it was short: carry Roland on his back for as long as he could, rest, and repeat until they reached Gomi. They would set out first thing in the morning.

A few hours later, the Becks returned to camp with a squonk corpse tied to Becki’s back. Hans hadn’t heard them so much as break a twig as they approached. Seeing Becky made Roland smile for the first time since his rescue. The dwarf gave him a gentle hug.

“Got ‘em,” Becky said, triumphant. “Found the first two within the hour. Made me think it was going to be easy. The other two went in opposite directions. Little bastards.”

Quest Complete: Eliminate the remaining four squonks.

Becky sat next to Roland and started to ask him questions, but Hans interrupted her, explaining Roland’s lost voice. Becky was more than happy to carry the conversation, and she got the hunter to smile a few more times before night fell. Hans and Becky rotated watch without incident and left at sunrise the next morning. The two adventurers stayed on foot, letting Roland ride Becki with the squonk tied immediately behind him.

The return journey was slow, striking a delicate balance between getting Roland to safety as quickly as they could and not pushing him too hard too fast. At times, he was too weak to stay upright, so they would walk on either side of the warthog to keep Roland steady when the trail permitted.

Three nights later, they arrived in Gomi.

***

Quest Complete: Return Roland to Gomi Safely.

A small crowd formed when Becky and Hans were spotted emerging from the treeline. The adventurers crossed the field to the town, still being mindful of Roland’s ability to remain mounted, and were greeted by over a dozen relieved faces. Hans saw several townspeople he hadn’t met, reminding him that he still had a great deal of work to do on the Gomi chapter of the Adventurers’ Guild.

But why think about that now?

This is a good moment. Enjoy it while it’s here.

Quentin broke through the crowd and ran to his father. Roland’s feet had barely touched the ground when his son wrapped his arms around his dad, squeezing tight. Two townspeople helped Roland keep his balance and escorted him to a nearby home. Hans noticed that Becki stayed close behind, as if ready to catch the hunter if he fell backward.

Roland and Quentin lived outside of town, but one of the townspeople volunteered a spare room so that Roland’s journey could be over sooner. The idea seemed spontaneous, inspired when someone joked that Roland still had a little ways to go before he was home. For the hunter’s part, he didn’t protest. In fact, he had done little more than nod or shake his head since he was rescued.

With Roland delivered safely, Hans and Becky exhaled simultaneously, both recognizing the conclusion of a difficult job.

“Don’t disappear on me, please,” Hans said. “Debriefing this one is going to be interesting.”

“Sure, boss.”

The Becks followed Hans to the guild hall to leave the squonk body with the Guild Master before disappearing somewhere to sleep. When the Becks were gone, Hans removed his class notice from the front door and sat at his desk. He too wanted sleep as well as a nice bath, but he wanted to record every detail he could recall before his memories aged and grew too stale.

The dead squonk lay on one of the guild hall tables, and it was starting to stink. He didn’t have the materials to preserve it, so he would need to study it as much as he could as soon as he could.

But first. A bath.

***

Later that night, several townspeople crowded into the guild hall to discuss Roland’s disappearance and the creatures found with him, which included the orcs as well as the squonks.

Galad and Galinda were present, joined by Mayor Charlie and Olza. Harry and Harriet’s parents, the blacksmith and his wife the fletcher, took a seat next to two town guards. One of them was Terry, but his demeanor had softened. If anything, he looked a bit frightened by the strange cloven hooves sticking out from underneath the blanket near Hans. Uncle Ed slipped in a few minutes late, mouthing a silent “sorry” as he found a seat.

The group listened as Becky and Hans retold the story of their journey. For Hans, a town hall meeting like this wasn’t unusual after a monster attack. A normal day for him was a crisis for civilians, so it was natural for people to be incredibly emotional in these discussions. Anger, fear, grief–there were a number of reasons a person might have an outburst. Gomi’s citizens, however, sat quietly until Becky and Hans were done talking.

Mayor Charlie raised his hand. “I’ve heard the squonk stories too. Been a while, but Becky’s memory is accurate. Always sounded like a joke to me.”

An oral record of the squonk was useful in that it hinted at the possibility of records or logs on squonks elsewhere in the kingdom. Others had seen it. Maybe one of them wrote about it. For now, though, Charlie’s validation was enough to confirm that Becky and Hans hadn’t lost their minds alongside Roland.

“Psionic creatures are incredibly rare,” Hans explained. “The only methods I know to prevent that kind of influence require resources that we don’t have and likely won’t be able to get. The best way to protect ourselves for now is to encourage anyone traveling in the forest to tell us where they are going and when they plan to return. If someone is later than a day getting back, we send a search party.”

The squonks were dangerous, but their approach to preserving their prey bought the town time if someone else went missing. A small comfort.

Mayor Charlie agreed to spread the word. He and Hans would take point on maintaining the travel records for the time being.

Olza volunteered to help Hans dissect the squonk corpse. Neither were experts in monster anatomy or the research of magical beasts, but they had the most knowledge of anyone else in town. If they could learn anything from the dead squonk before it got too putrid, it was worth a try.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

At the same time, Becky and Becki volunteered to return to the forest right away. The Druid proposed exploring the broader area around where they found Roland, searching for signs of other squonks. If there were other squonks still out there, maybe she would catch their trail. While she searched, she would look for more clues as to the origin of the orcs they had found.

“We ain’t ready for an orc attack,” Terry said. “We don’t got the men, and we don’t got walls.”

“Right now, there is no reason to think Gomi is in danger of an orc attack,” Hans reassured Terry and the rest of the townspeople present. “They were days away from town, pretty deep in the forest too.”

“Orcs are easy enough to find,” Becky added. “If I spot a sign that more of them are running around out there, I’ll doubletime back to town right away.”

“What do we tell the kids?” Galinda asked.

“The truth,” Galad replied. “They’ll have nightmares for weeks, but they’ll be alert.”

Hans had the feeling that the brother and sister were talking about the orcs specifically rather than the squonks, but he didn’t prod any further.

“What else can we do?” Charlie asked.

The Guild Master proposed sending letters to the three other towns that were in the direction of the squonks. They weren’t “close” to Gomi in any practical sense, but they were the next closest towns to where they fought the monsters. Maybe they had their own encounters or had noticed something strange that might help.

When Charlie pointed out that the next caravan wasn’t due for another two weeks, Galad suggested they send Luther on horseback to accelerate their timeline. The tusk-touched could be back to Gomi in a couple weeks. If they waited for the caravan, they wouldn’t get a response for another four weeks after that when the caravan returned. Gathering information sooner rather than later seemed to appeal to everyone in the room.

“If Luther would do that, I think that’s a good idea,” Hans said.

“He’ll do it,” Galad said with certainty.

Hans didn’t argue. “I’ll write up a letter for him tonight, that way he can leave as soon as possible.”

Mayor Charlie raised his hand again. “Do we need to be concerned about these creatures attracting adventurers?”

Hans leaned forward where he stood, resting both hands on a table. He addressed the group as a whole, saying, “I get that you’re all concerned for the safety of Gomi and that I’m the new guy in the room. I swear to everyone here that I am too. Every decision I’m making comes after weighing the pros and cons.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry,” Charlie said, sheepishly.

“It’s fine. Like I said, I get it, and it was part of my planning. A single tusk-touched asking after a weird, largely unknown monster won’t attract attention.”

“Okay. Very good.”

With that, the meeting concluded. As the townspeople filed out, Becky and Galinda talked in the corner and Olza approached Hans. She set a cloth bag on his desk. It clinked softly. “The rest of your order,” Olza said.

Quest Complete: Wait for Olza to deliver the rest of the potion order.

“Thank you,” Hans said, setting the potions in a drawer for the time being. “Your healing potions were a big help.”

“Do you have it in you to do the dissection tonight? I understand if you’re tired.”

“I am tired, but that thing stinks. How should we do this?”

***

Hans and Olza’s investigation didn’t yield anything useful. Oddly, the creature didn’t have a stomach like most mammals. Olza hypothesized that the way they sucked their food dry didn’t need stomach acid. The process itself broke the matter down to liquid. No digestion required, just absorption. While interesting, that detail didn’t help protect Gomi. Someone more knowledgeable might have found something, but they had no way of knowing.

On his way to the guild hall to retrieve a shovel, Luther waved him down. Hans didn’t recognize him at first in the fading daylight.

“Galad says to get a letter from you,” Luther said, politely but bluntly.

“Yeah, sure. Come with me.”

With Luther standing over his desk, Hans wrote the letter to be read to the other villages. The letter described the squonk’s appearance and how they hunted. Though it wasn’t a masterpiece, Hans sketched a rough depiction of the creature for the letter as well.

“Are you leaving now?” Hans asked.

“Early tomorrow.”

Hans asked Luther if he could deliver a second letter. The towns Luther intended to visit saw merchants more frequently, and each had active Guild chapters. Not large, but active. He wrote a second letter, sealed with wax, and asked Luther to leave it with the first guild chapter he saw.

Carrying another piece of paper didn’t bother the tusk.

“Hey, listen,” Hans called after Luther as he reached for the door. “Thank you for doing this. Really.”

Luther inclined his head and shut the door behind him.

Quest Update: Look for other sources pertaining to Squonks.

Quest Complete: Write a letter to Mazo for help with Olza’s flower.

Minutes later, Hans had a burlap bag full of squonk parts slung over his back, the beast’s juices soaking the rough fabric almost immediately.

He took the remains to the treeline, away from the roads, and buried the bag between two pine trees he hoped he could recognize in the future. If they had reason to dig them back up, he needed to know where they were, and he chose a spot far from the town to avoid luring predators near the townsfolk. Several creatures could sniff out a corpse, even if it was buried.

When Hans returned to the guild hall for the night, he found the Becks waiting for him.

“Want my monster reports?” the dwarf asked. “I’m heading out first thing.”

Ignoring the temptation to put it off, he sat down with Becky, scribbling down her recollections as quickly as he could. A neat, clean, organized ledger would have been his preference, but beggars and choosers and whatnot. The Druid’s recollection would have to do.

None of what she described surprised Hans. Her list included the following and how often they were found:

-Rats, Normal and Giant (Common)

-Rabid Wolves (Rare)

-Gnolls (Common but Easily Spooked and Rarely Near Town)

-Kobolds (One Occurrence Decades Ago, Distant from Gomi)

-Owlbears (Rare)

-Goblins (Two Nests in 30 Years)

-Mountain Trolls (Sighted Once)

For a remote forest, the Gomi region was fairly safe, life-sucking squonks aside, of course. No bandits. No killer plants. No rampaging elementals. No crypts leaking undead. No dryads or leshens. No super-predators like wyverns or griffins. No orcs or other humanoids like ogres or cyclops. The usual remote-wilderness-people-eaters were all absent. Bear and moose probably caused more injuries than monsters.

In Becky’s mind, anything dangerous stuck to the mountains. An explosion of squonks would upend all of that, but for now, Gomi was an idyllic place to settle down.

Quest Complete: Reestablish job-completion and monster-hunting recordkeeping.

Before Becky left, she looked Hans in the eye and held his gaze for a long minute. “Wanted to say, I’m glad you’re the Guild Master. Roland wouldn’t have made it otherwise.” She shot a hand across Hans’ desk.

He gladly accepted the handshake. “Means a lot. Gomi is lucky to have you.”

“Oh, I knew that.” Becky giggled and made her exit.

The guild hall was quiet again, and an old mattress never felt so soft.

***

Hans intended to sleep in but had no such luck. Since he was awake, he got to work maintaining his adventuring equipment. His sword needed to be cleaned, oiled, and sharpened. His studded leather armor needed to be cleaned and oiled as well, but he expected to need a few rounds of cleaning to get the rotten squonk smell out. Usually meticulous with upkeep for his gear, it was especially important he be thorough now. His sword and armor might sit for some time before he needed them again.

He was in the midst of hanging his armor when the blacksmith came in, a crate of shields in his hands–half of them bucklers, half targes, and one custom larger targes for Hans. Harry and Harriet followed him in, their arms full of wooden training swords like they were carrying firewood.

“It was on my list to get down to see you,” Hans said.

“Nonsense. It’s no trouble. Besides, these two wanted to see you.”

Harriet slammed into Hans to give him a hug. Harry opted for a manly handshake.

“We’re glad you’re okay,” Harriet said.

The blacksmith pulled the custom targes from the crate, scratching his chin nervously. Two inches wider in diameter than the others, the shield was still relatively maneuverable and the balance of the grip felt natural. Hans had gone through dozens of shields in his lifetime, and this was one of the finer wooden targes he ever handled.

“I didn’t catch it until they were done…” The blacksmith said, referring to a painted scene of a stick figure Hans fighting a stick figure dragon. The bright primary colors and the simplistic style told him Harry and Harriet had done this.

“It’s okay. I love it.” And he wasn’t lying. He liked the idea of a childrens’ painting leading the charge into a battle. Monsters wouldn’t know what to make of it.

Harry and Harriet beamed with pride.

The blacksmith stepped outside and came back, a wooden spear in each hand. “Almost forgot these,” he said, leaning them carefully in a corner.

“Is there class today?” Harry asked.

“You bet.”

The blacksmith mouthed a sincere “thank you” to Hans as he herded his children back out the door.

This Guild Master gig isn’t bad at all.

Quest Complete: Pick up training equipment from the smith when it is completed.

***

Open Quests (Ordered from Old to New):

Progress from Gold-ranked to Diamond-ranked.

Mend the rift with Devon.

Complete the manuscript for "The Next Generation: A Teaching Methodology for Training Adventurers."

Pick up the guild provisions from the caravan after next.

Identify the unknown purple flower from Olza.

Keep the guild hall clean.

Prepare a booklist for Mayor Charlie.

Grow the Gomi chapter without attracting outside attention.

Prepare for winter, and don’t forget the beer.

Design and build simulated dungeon corridors for training.

Design drills to practice specific dungeon corridor skills.

Brainstorm ideas for safe approaches to training on uneven terrain.

Look for other sources pertaining to squonks.

Investigate the presence of orcs near Gomi.