Mayor Charlie’s sparrow didn’t explicitly say that Gomi was in danger, and Becky insisted he would have were that the case. According to the Druid, the message expressed concern. Nothing else.

“Couldn’t he have said more?” Hans asked.

“Hans, it’s a sparrow. How much you think those little cuties can remember?” Becky retorted.

The Guild Master didn’t know much about the memory spans of sparrows. He did know, however, that Becky and Charlie decided upon the sparrow system together. If Gomi was in danger, Charlie would know what to put in the message for Becky to understand.

Their conversation about the sparrow reminded him of how quickly Becky had returned when the search for Roland began. Charlie had sent a sparrow for her then, and she arrived in the middle of the night, prepared to depart again as soon as they could.

Hans asked what the sparrow said in that message.

“Roland is missing.”

And that was all the druid had needed to hear. She broke camp immediately and rode Becki hard to get to Gomi as swiftly as possible to help search for the hunter.

Regardless of how urgent this new message may or may not have been, the party tried to keep an accelerated pace. Olza was a good sport but wasn’t an adventurer, and Becki was weighed down by alchemy supplies and equipment, so the party couldn’t move with the same kind of speed as they did during the Roland rescue. They could, however, walk quickly, make camp late, and break camp earlier the next morning.

On the way back to Gomi, Hans asked Becky and Olza about visiting adventurers. The highest rank Becky could recall was a party of Silvers chasing a vampire. The town had lived in terror for months, expecting to be snatched in the night to be a snack for the monster, until a caravan delivered a message. The vampire had been slain, and its final location was nowhere near Gomi. The adventurers left shortly after.

That was decades before Olza moved to town. The highest rank she could recall was a single drunk Silver who arrived as part of a merchant escort. He was well beyond his prime–no offense to Hans–and other than a close encounter with Galinda, hadn’t caused any trouble or shown any interest in Gomi. Any rank above Silver was too expensive for a merchant caravan.

Two Golds and a Diamond…

His best guess was that one of the Guild Masters Luther spoke to on his journey to research the squonks had decided a direct conversation was warranted. Perhaps they encountered a squonk recently? They might also make the journey if an orc warband was on the move again. A good Guild Master would warn neighboring chapters if that was the case.

But the sparrow didn’t mention orcs or squonks. It mentioned the number and rank of adventurers. Period. If Charlie was afraid of a monster attack, surely he would have mentioned that specifically.

The message seemed to gnaw at everyone’s mind but Becki’s. By the time they sat around the fire that first night of their return journey, Hans was all but certain that the adventurers had come for him. Plenty of Gold and Diamond-ranked adventurers disliked him, but he couldn’t think of a dispute grave enough to motivate three upper ranks to travel all the way to Gomi.

Beyond his rift with Devon, the worst offense he could think of was when he argued with a Diamond about how to expose Irons to new challenges. The Diamond insisted that “sink or swim” produced the strongest adventurers. If Irons perished trying to push to Bronze, while tragic as it was, their deaths were ultimately good for the Guild. Culling the weak gave the strong more room to grow.

Hans told him, “You might be a Diamond adventurer, but you’re a shit person.”

He got his nose broken for that one. Had the argument occurred anywhere but a Guild Administration meeting, there wouldn’t have been enough upper-ranked adventurers to hold back the Diamond. A broken nose was the best outcome Hans could have asked for, all things considered.

Yeah, that was the most reasonable explanation. The Diamond heard Hans was posted in Gomi and found an excuse to be nearby. Upper ranks often prattled on about the respect they deserved, so Hans’ sleight wouldn’t be easily forgotten.

He was almost certain that the grudge wouldn’t go as far as murder.

When Hans opened his mouth to share his revelation with Becky and Olza, he was surprised to hear Olza speak first.

“I think they’re here for me,” Olza said.

“I was just thinkin’ that they were probably here for me,” Becky added.

Wait. What?

Becky went first. “Haven’t seen my uncles and aunts. Last time I did, they told me if I decided to be an adventurer they would come to Gomi and drag me back with them.”

“How long has it been?” Olza asked.

“Few hundred years,” Becky answered. “Bound to catch up with me eventually.”

That sounded improbable to Hans, but he didn’t say so. Telling that little bit of her story seemed to cause her great distress. Becki came over and nuzzled her master to offer comfort.

“I was engaged to Diamond-ranked once,” Olza began. “I moved to Gomi to get away from him.”

The Diamond was a Black Mage. Hans vaguely recalled his name, but he couldn’t remember more than that. Having spent years managing and studying Guild records, he had likely read the name on a report but never met the mage in person.

As Olza told it, the two bonded over a love of science when the Black Mage was Gold-ranked. They took long trips to seek out exotic ingredients to study, and the money he made from adventuring gave them a comfortable lifestyle. When the mage neared Diamond, Olza began to notice a shift in his personality. He barred her from having male friends or male customers and insisted that he conduct all business on her behalf. Not long after he hit Diamond, she began to fear for her safety. One night, she packed her things and left a note that said she was moving to Hoseki and begged the Diamond not to follow.

And then she moved to Gomi, hoping she’d be far away when the Diamond realized he had been tricked. Olza was her grandmother’s name, so she made it her own on the off chance a merchant told a story about a lady alchemist in Gomi to the wrong adventurer. When she didn’t volunteer her previous name, neither Becky nor Hans asked.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

When the two women looked to Hans for his story, he shrugged. “I ran my mouth more than I should have in my younger years… and probably in my older years too.”

“Well, out with it, Guild Master,” Becky demanded.

“There’s not much to tell.”

“So it’ll be quick. Tell it.”

“It was just guild politics. It’s nothing special, and I’d have to spend half an hour catching you up on the context for it to make sense. I promise, every word of it is boring.”

“I don’t buy it,” Becky answered while Olza nodded her agreement. “I’ll try again after our next bottle of fool’s root.”

Hearing the name of the vodka made Hans nauseous. “Please don’t.”

“We’ll be coming into town early tomorrow evening if we keep it up,” Becky said. “Guess we’ll find out for sure then.”

***

Hans didn’t sleep much that night, including the hours he wasn’t on watch. By the time the sun started to rise, he had thought of another seven upper-ranked adventurers that strongly disliked him. Most of the conflicts didn’t warrant a trip to Gomi just to beat on Hans, though. He knew that logically, but his imagination was stronger. If he looked at any memory long enough, he could twist it into a nightmare, discovering “new” details, like the flicker of a facial expression or the double meaning of an innocuous statement.

Judging by Becky and Olza’s demeanor, they spent the night doing the same. They moved as if they knew the gallows waited for them down the hall.

A few hours into their hike, a distant rumble reached their eyes. The sound was so soft, so far off, that even Becky asked, “Was that thunder?”

Everyone looked to the sky. Aside from the odd wisp of white cloud, they saw only brilliant sapphire blue. No sign of a storm.

“Doesn’t smell like rain,” Becky said. Becki snorted her agreement.

They waited for the thunder to return. When it didn’t, they continued on toward Gomi.

Another mile down the trail, the thunder came again.

“Must be moving toward us,” Olza guessed.

Becky didn’t reply. She screwed up her face and looked at the sky, still blue.

This time, the party paused for only a minute before continuing. If it was thunder, they wanted to be home before the rain came.

Several claps echoed in succession, each with a flash bright enough to leave the adventurers blinking in broad daylight.

The party exchanged glances, each expressing cautious curiosity. They seemed to be asking, “Should we be concerned?” but no member of the group was willing to raise the alarm over thunder and lightning, regardless of how unusual its presence seemed. They walked more briskly, not saying a word to each other.

The forest stayed quiet for another hour, and the sky was still blue.

A pillar of glowing green fire shot into the sky, visible through the forest canopy as it punched toward the clouds. Judging the perspective was difficult. Hans couldn’t definitively say how large the column of twisting flame had been, but it was undoubtedly large. For it to be visible, it had to be.

“That came from Gomi,” Becky said.

New Quest: Protect Gomi.

The Druid jumped on to Becki’s back, sitting on top of Olza’s gear. She looked back at Hans and Olza.

“Go!” Olza said. “I know the way.”

Becky nodded and clicked her tongue. The warthog disappeared down the trail, the stomping of her hooves lingering long after she was out of sight. Hans turned to follow but paused.

“Don’t rush into town,” Hans told Olza. “Stay out of sight until you’re sure it’s safe.”

Olza nodded.

The Guild Master ran down the trail behind Becky. He hadn’t kept up his endurance the way he should have, he began to realize. Once he was a full-time teacher, staying in dungeon-run shape didn’t seem as critical. Now, as his lungs clawed at the air and his legs burned and cramped, he regretted being lazy, for wallowing when he should have been training.

What did he tell his students to do in moments like these, when you needed to push beyond your physical limits?

Set your mind to work on something else. Let your subconscious move your legs.

The fire. Where had he seen it before? It was familiar.

He cycled through every fire-based spell he knew. It was so big, though. What kind of mage could cast a spell like that? What spell variation turned the fire green?

Maybe it’s not a mage. Mages aren’t the only sources of fire magic. What creatures are known for fire magic?

Dragons. No, there wasn’t a dragon he knew of that used green fire. Green dragon fire was still fire, despite the creative license some storytellers had taken over the years.

Fire elemental. Again, fire is green. Upper tiers of fire elemental could burn blue, and blue wasn’t green.

Flame spirit? Chimera? Fire giant? Hell hound? Djinni? Fire mephit?

No. Poison mephit! He saw a poison mephit use fire like that once. He had expected the little flying demon to be fast but frail. Instead, he came around the corner to a deluge of green fire careening down the corridor. Hans had stepped back under cover just in time for the flames to roar by. His arm closest to the fire erupted in flames, but a mage in the party covered it with ice before it could melt his skin. That didn’t save his armor though.

Poison mephit was the only explanation that matched, but that didn’t make sense. How would a poison mephit get to Gomi? Why would it want to get to Gomi? His party had hiked underground for four days to find a mephit lair, so deep that he began to question if he had passed from the physical plane to the infernal plane.

Did one of the mephits escape? Were mephits capable of holding a grudge? Had one of them come to Gomi to get revenge on Hans?

As improbable as it sounded, the evidence had been there for his eyes to see. That was a poison mephit ability. He was sure of it.

Run faster. Run faster, damn it.

The sky erupted again, but not with fire. Arcs of red lightning shot up from the ground into the sky and lingered, like a tree of electricity whose branches changed in blinks. The tree grew and grew, seeming to singe the few white clouds into nothingness as the lightning arced and bounced across the sky.

Poison mephits can’t do that.

“Air elemental?”

He had seen air elementals use lightning in a similar matter. Where most people thought of lightning as a fleeting force that came and went in a moment, air elementals manipulated electricity as though it had mass. He saw an air elemental fill a cavern with that kind of lightning, creating an electric buffer all around it.

He had seen air elementals fight like that, yes, but he never saw an air elemental use fire magic. Separately, his explanations were outlandish, but the facts matched. Seen together… Why would an air elemental and a poison mephit attack together?

He was nearing Gomi now. He’d know soon enough.

The yells of adults and children cut through the sound of his own gasping breaths. He imagined the kids’ class facing down an enraged air elemental with wooden swords and wooden bucklers, while a poison mephit circled overhead, cackling.

Hans burst from the treeline to see the clearing between him and Gomi filled with townspeople. Even the Tribe was there in force. Over a hundred people stood in the field, not counting the kids who ran around screaming.

…and they were laughing. And clapping. And drinking?

Becky turned around. “Hans! Your friends are amazing!”

***

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.

Prepare a booklist for Mayor Charlie.

Grow the Gomi chapter without attracting outside attention.

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

Brainstorm ideas for safe approaches to training on uneven terrain.

Design a winter curriculum.

Acquire winter adventuring gear.

Learn the identities of the visiting adventurers as well as their intentions.

Protect Gomi.