Hans, Becky, and Becki set out to find Roland with the barest hints of morning sunlight. Quentin wasn’t present, which was a blessing in that Hans didn’t need to convince him to stay behind all over again. On the other hand, the boy was just that, a boy. An extra word of assurance from Hans and Becky might have done him good.

Regardless, the pair of adventurers left word with Mayor Charlie, and Hans tacked a note to the guild hall door to announce that classes were canceled for the immediate future.

With the Becks in the lead, Hans could shift his focus to taking in his surroundings, learning the land and looking for clues instead of worrying about navigation. Plus, dwarves were built for a life underground, so they had good low-light vision, far better than a human’s. At this hour, Hans would have walked face first into a low branch almost immediately were it not for Becky’s help.

The forest around Gomi was a patchwork of rolling hills, steep gullies, and sharp ravines. Moving farther away from town, the terrain continued that theme but steadily rose to meet the slopes of the Dead End Mountains, the rocks on the forest floor growing in size and quantity the closer to the mountain they came.

Becky had recognized the hunting spots Quentin flagged, and she knew what path Roland would take to reach his most likely location, a path worn down by decades of game taking the same route through the forest. Roland’s trail was several days old, and a rain shortly before Hans’ arrival in Gomi didn’t help to preserve any clues the hunter may have left behind. If Quentin hadn’t known which hunting spot his father intended to use, choosing where to start the search would have been a complete guess.

They traveled single file down the narrow trail with Becky at the front, Becki behind her, and Hans in the rear. According to Becky, Becki the giant warthog could “sniff out a square of chocolate in an outhouse.” With some luck, Becki’s enormous nose would pick up a scent when they found a fresher trail, and once the sun was fully up, Becky could summon a hawk to help scout. Druids might be strange at times, but they were invaluable party members. The advantages they had on their home turf made it seem like entire forests allied with Druids.

In a way, Hans thought, they were allies in the truest sense.

The party kept a pace just below a jog, moving as quickly as they could while still giving Becky time to search for clues. By foot at a normal walking pace, their destination was a little over a day away. With the time they were making, they would be at Roland’s hunting spot by late evening.

Hans broke the long silence. “Can I ask you something?”

“Shoot, ask me anything you want, Guild Master,” Becky answered with only a slight glance over her shoulder.

“How many of these have you done?”

“Seven, and before you ask, two,” the dwarf said, her voice matter-of-fact yet tinged with sadness, like a military leader reading off casualties, putting on a strong face for the sake of the living.

Her meaning was clear to Hans. Out of seven search and rescue missions, two of the missing were found alive. Even with the relatively few monsters in the Gomi forest, a mistake in the wilderness could easily spiral into crisis. A sprained ankle was a benign injury in most contexts, something you could resolve with rest and some strengthening exercises, but if that same injury occurred far from the nearest town, it could be a death sentence.

Even if you could move, you were not in any condition to fight off a predator, monster or otherwise. Hunger, thirst, and hypothermia were the next threats, and plenty deadly on their own. Though they sounded less threatening, relative to say an orc raid, they claimed the lives of hundreds of adventurers and thousands of civilians.

If the wound was serious, survival odds fell dramatically. Shock, blood loss, infection–dying was easy, but that didn’t lessen the guilt for people like Becky who recovered the bodies and returned them to loved ones.

Hans knew better than to ask her to guess the odds for Roland.

“You?” Becky asked, returning the question.

“33 and eight.”

Becky didn’t answer, just nodded her head sagely.

After another hour or so, Becky paused to summon a hawk. Instead of a living hawk from the forest, her spell conjured the spirit of a hawk, a sort of divine emissary for hawks in this world and the next. It had the speckled brown feathers of a normal hawk, but each time the bird shifted, a silver shimmer rippled across its body, faint enough that Hans thought it was a trick of the light at first. The hawk and Becky seemed to understand each other, her providing instructions and then seeming to reply to questions that Hans hadn’t heard the hawk ask.

The otherworldly bird took to the sky, and Hans caught glimpses of it between the trees from time to time. Visibility through the canopy to the ground was limited, but the hawk could survey more area and see more at once than someone walking below.

In addition to their pace, the commitment to being focused on scanning the land intently with every step wore on Hans. That part of search and rescue had always been a challenge for him, having to maintain constant vigilance while the anxiety of missing something simmered beneath his skin.

They reached the first hunting spot as the sun set. There was evidence that Roland had been here, but not enough to say how recently. They found his hunting blind, looking down over a small valley in the forest, providing the hunter an ideal vantage point for observing game. Near it was a fire pit with fresh ash. The area was clearly well-traveled by Roland, other hunters, and wildlife alike.

“We should camp here,” Hans suggested. “We won’t do any good tired in the dark.”

Becky nodded while she scanned the woods. “You make camp. I wanna take a loop.”

That sounded fair to Hans.

Becky slid the saddlebags off of Becki’s back. The beast shook itself like a dog emerging from a lake, the thick meat around its round body swinging wildly side to side. While the Becks took their walk, Hans gathered firewood and kindling. A quick incantation with the appropriate gestures cast Create Fire, the campfire flipping from unlit to pleasantly burning in the span of a flicker.

Hans sat by the fire, trying to decide if Becky would be offended if he dug into the jerky before she got back. As he reached for the bag, he heard a voice call out.

“Hans!”

He jumped to his feet, grabbed his sword, and ran toward Becky’s voice.

The dwarf must have heard him tromping through leaves, because she yelled again to guide him to her. Hans found the Becks both kneeling to inspect… well, he didn’t know. He saw nothing but more leaves, rocks, and dirt. He squatted beside her, trying to see what she saw. The fading light didn’t help.

“Boss, I need you to tell me if I’m crazy.”

“What do you see?”

“It don’t make sense.”

“Just tell me.”

“Tears. Like a watering can filled with tears drizzled out.”

Looking at the ground, Hans couldn’t see what Becky could see. “Tears as in someone crying?”

“Yup.”

Hans scratched his head. He didn’t know where to begin with this particular puzzle. “What leaves a line of tears?”

“Two lines. It’s a pair.”

Becky and Becki followed the two rivers of tears, inch by inch, until they came across a distinct bootprint. Becki pressed her nose into the dirt and took a deep inhale.

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“It’s Roland.”

The pair said little the rest of the night, both searching their memories for anything that might help. They couldn’t think of a monster that made that kind of trail. They couldn’t think of a spell that might make a human cry that much. And they couldn’t decide if the two trails were made at once or if one came after the other. They ran parallel, so that suggested together, but neither possibility got them any closer to a plausible theory.

The party struggled to sleep.

The next morning, Hans and the Becks sat staring at coals, waiting for the minimum sunlight they would need to take up the trail. When it arrived, they took off. Becky resummoned her hawk companion and sent it to scout. The woods were still in deep shadow, not ideal for an aerial scout, but anything that increased their odds of spotting something important was worth doing at this point.

As morning faded to blue sky, the trail changed.

“There’s… Eight tear pairs?” Becky said, pointing. A few of the trails were distinct enough that Hans could see them.

“What is going on here?”

Becky released a long exhale, shaking her head. “We have the trail for sure. That’s something. But this is weird, Guild Master. What could be out here that you and me don’t know? I mean, between my street smarts and your book smarts, not really a better duo.”

Becki huffed.

“You know what I meant,” Becky told the warthog.

“Are there other tracks with Roland’s? Other than the tears I mean.”

Becky shook her head again. “Nothing else that’s touching the ground at least. They aren’t even leaving a scent trail, whatever ‘they’ are.”

“Any sign of a struggle? A fight?”

“Nope. If Roland was resisting, there’d be deeper tracks, places where his heels dug in or he slipped. What does it mean if...”

“What is it?”

“Roland’s no slouch. He’s a damn good woodsman. Not like him to leave any trail at all.”

“What does that mean?”

“More ‘I don’t knows.’ Why is a skilled hunter walking like a dumb human? No offense.”

Hans said he wasn’t offended. With no other choices, they continued following the trail. Over the next ridge, they found more clues.

The emaciated body of a moose lay in the leaves, its skin wrapped tightly around its bones. A few feet away, five turkeys were in a similar condition. At first glance, they looked like late-stage rot, months after everything but the skin had been stripped away. Except these corpses weren’t months old. The moose’s hide still glistened like it had just fallen. The turkey feathers were healthy and barely disturbed, even though their owners were very dead.

After some poking and a little work with a knife, Hans and Becky reached the same conclusion. These animals were sucked dry. Dozens of monster species fed that way, from vampires to dire leeches. As they cycled through every possibility they could think of that could do this, none of their ideas matched. All of their guesses left distinct wounds somewhere. The corpses on the ground before them had no injuries whatsoever.

“Don’t even smell,” Becky said, her nose practically touching the dead moose.

They searched the area. The tear trails moved in circles, which Becky likened to the circles groups of deer or livestock made when they bedded down for the night. Though they still didn’t know what they were tracking, their quarry looked as large as a small deer, or perhaps a pig. Becky pointed out an impression in the dirt that she said was where Roland sat.

Sat, not laid. If the other animals slept when they rested, Roland hadn’t. He sat in the same spot until the pack of mystery beasts moved on again, and he seemed to go with them.

He was still alive, but his companions were hungry carnivores, or looked to be at least. Becky and Hans had more clues but were no closer to an answer.

The day wore on. The trail was easy to follow, which meant they might be catching up, but any excitement they felt drained when more tracks joined Roland’s. Becky identified a grizzly bear, and several large, bare footprints. Hans wanted her to be wrong–because that combination didn’t make any sense–but like Roland’s tracks, these new tracks were casual and distinct.

“Becky…” Hans said, crouching next to a bare footprint twice the size of his own foot. He traced his finger around the outside edge. “When was the last orc sighting in this area?”

“Beats me. I’ve heard some old timers tell ghost stories about orcs in the mountains. I’ve never seen one or signs of one in my lifetime.”

Dwarves lived longer than humans. Much longer. “How old are you, Becky?”

“Watch it, Guild Master. You can trust me that this isn’t normal.”

“Are the orcs leaving the tears? Or the bear?”

“Don’t look like it.”

Orcs commonly took prisoners. Their prisoners didn’t live long, and usually didn’t want to by that point. A band of orcs jumping a hunter was a plausible story in many regions. Not the Dead End Mountains, though, and not with tracks like these.

Hans reviewed what they knew. Roland was with a pair of tear trails, just him and whatever left the tears. Then they joined more pairs of trails near the moose and turkey corpses. The grizzly bear and orc footprints joined at least three miles after that.

Becky retrieved her axe from Becki’s saddlebags. No one had said anything to each other about it, but Hans realized his hand rested on the hilt of his sword. The puzzle made no more sense than it had when they began, but they knew for certain that at least some of the pieces involved were vicious beasts.

A half-mile farther down the well-trodden trail, Becky’s hawk swooped down to land on her hand. The Druid stared at the shimmering bird for a long minute, nodding her head like she was listening.

“Thank you, friend. Keep that beak clean, you hear?” The hawk blinked out of existence when Becky released the spell. “Did you catch any of that?”

“No…”

“Group ahead. One grizzly, three orcs, a human, and nine creatures.”

“Creatures?”

“He didn’t recognize them.”

Should I be worried that the dimension-hopping bird didn’t know the mystery enemy? Or was that an unfair expectation?

Becky turned to Hans. “Your show. What’s next?”

Hans crossed his arms. “We need information. Thirteen against two could be trouble. The grizzly alone is a big enough problem without knowing what the other things are.”

The next course of action was clear: Reconnaissance.

Becky was by far the stealthier of the two, her Druid feet stepping over leaves without so much as a crinkle. The Guild Master wasn’t that light footed, but he had snuck around his share of enemy camps in his day. Leaving Becki behind, the pair crept slowly for almost 100 yards, spotting the back of a gray-green, heavily scarred head through the brush.

On his signal, they moved toward a dip in the terrain to secure a safe vantage point. With the dip, they could lie on their stomachs and peak over the hill to watch the group of monsters. If they were discovered, they could be out of sight in seconds. They would likely be pursued, of course, but breaking the line of sight right away would buy them time and potentially give them the upperhand.

The technique was common in adventuring. Becky and Hans didn’t need to speak to understand each other.

They crawled up the gentle slope and got a look at the strange band of creatures.

A trio of orcs, one with gray-green skin, two with greenish-yellow, sat on the ground. They had their heads in their hands, and they wept. An unbroken rhythm of sobs, all of their shoulders rising and falling as they cried into their palms. Roland sat nearby, almost facing Becky and Hans directly. He sat in the same position as the orcs, crying as hard as they were.

Hans had never met Roland, so he didn’t have a frame of reference, but Quentin’s father looked weak. His black hair next to his usually dark skin was as stark as blood in milk. If it weren’t for the monsters escorting him, Hans’ first guess would have been that Roland was dehydrated and in active starvation, but that didn’t explain the grizzly bear or why it was crying as well. The massive beast whimpered softly as if it was injured.

A ring of ash-gray beasts the size of hogs surrounded the crying group. Their backs arched like a flea’s, bringing their four legs together into an unnaturally close cluster. Their gray skin was a mass of wrinkles, warts, and crusty wax. The skin folds were numerous, as if its skeleton was four sizes too small for its flesh. Its spindly legs ended with cloven, webbed feet, and its head looked like an elephant’s trunk cut off at the mouth.

Lumps of skin partially obscured their black marble eyes, and every one of the nine gray creatures cried. They didn’t sob like Roland or the orcs, though they looked just as sad and pathetic. Instead, the tears leaked from their eyes, running down their faces, and dripping to the ground. A few of the gray creatures had lay still long enough that the ground around them was damp. If the forest floor wasn’t absorbing it, they would be in puddles of their own tears.

A heavy sense of helplessness descended on Hans as he took in the scene. This rescue mission was a disaster, one more failure to add to the list. He had put so much effort into building his life, into improving himself, and it was all as pointless as this job. His biggest life goal was forever out of his reach, and his brothers and sisters at the Hoseki chapter wanted him gone.

He was alone. He was always alone. He would always be alone.

Becky shook Hans’ shoulder. Hans looked at the dwarf. Becky touched her finger to Hans’ cheek and pulled it away. It was wet. Hans was crying.

When did I start crying?

The Druid grabbed the back of Hans pants and drug him away from the gray pig-like blobs of flesh. She didn’t let go until she was back with Becki, far enough from the monsters that they wouldn’t be heard.

And far enough away for Hans to collect himself before his bawling alerted the monsters.

***

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.

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

Wait for Olza to deliver the rest of the potion order.

Reestablish job-completion and monster-hunting recordkeeping.

Identify the unknown purple flower from Olza.

Keep the guild hall clean.

Prepare a booklist for Mayor Charlie.

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

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.

Find Quentin’s father.