“I wish your name was longer,” Olza said, sitting on Hans’ couch one late-spring evening.

“...Why?”

“For your penname. I thought perhaps we could rearrange the letters to make a new name, but the best I have is ‘Shan.’ You need more letters. Did your family have a surname at any point?”

“I never met him, but supposedly my grandfather did and chose to shed it. He didn’t want to continue that kind of legacy.”

“What was the name?”

Hans thought for a moment. “I’m not telling you.”

Olza gasped and shot up from the couch to look Hans in the eyes. “Why not?”

“No good can come from it.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll make fun of it.”

“What if I promise not to?” Olza asked.

After a long skeptical stare, he said, “Prig.”

“Prick?”

“No, Prig, with a G.”

Olza thought. “I’m not familiar. What does Prig mean?”

“Apparently people used to call irritating people prigs. Some generation of my family was obnoxious enough to be branded with that surname. As soon as it was legal to drop surnames, well, you can see why my grandfather didn’t hesitate.”

“Hans Prig. I kind of like it.”

“Of all the things you can bully me about, let’s keep that one off limits.”

“Alright, fine.”

The pair went back to quietly reading.

“Gran Pish,” Olza said suddenly.

“Huh?”

“That’s Hans Prig but rearranged.”

“No.”

***

“If a harpy flies away with me, I will never forgive any of you,” Mazo said, looking up at the canyon walls around the party.

“I suppose I have too much gravity to be an appealing meal,” Boden mused.

“Too much gravity?” Gret asked, laughing. “That’s a pretty creative word for fat.”

“Dwarves are made of denser stuff. It’s not fat,” Boden retorted. “Zalora, you’ve been in the dwarven kingdoms more than any of these surface-walkers. Back me up.”

The lizardwoman shook her head. “I shall not participate in this conversation,” the White Mage said.

Mazo smiled. “Very wise, Zalora.”

“Meal or not,” Hans interrupted, “Any one of us could get snatched, so keep your eyes up.”

Two proper mountains bordered either side of the canyon, but the land between was not the open rolling valley Hans had come to expect in unsettled wilderness. Instead, dozens of tall natural stone pillars, akin to desert buttes but narrow and covered with lush plantlife, filled the space between mountains like a cluster of pins in a map. Harpies built their nests on the tops of these pillars and used the foliage for camouflage, both for their nests and for themselves when they hunted.

The narrow passages and tall trees mostly deterred aerial hunting, but that was a false comfort. Harpies were intelligent enough to use the terrain to create natural chokepoints. They didn’t need an open field to hunt the way a hawk might if they set an ambush on a predictable game path.

Right then, Hans’ party was the game. The bird-women weren’t the only threat in this region, so they had to watch the sky as well as the rest of their surroundings for danger.

“Do ogres and harpies get along?” Boden asked.

Hans said they didn’t, but neither had the right tools to treat the other as a true enemy. Harpies couldn’t carry an ogre away or even pick one up briefly enough to drop them on sharp rocks like they did with other prey. Ogres weren’t known for being marksmen, and harpy nests weren’t accessible for the giant humanoids, so ogres didn’t pursue them.

They would, however, fight over food if given the opportunity. Neither species was above stealing a meal if one was available.

Holding up his hand to signal a stop, Hans looked down the trail and scanned the sky.

“There’s an ambush point ahead,” he said to his companions. “If we wound the first one that swoops, the rest should leave us alone.”

Zalora asked Hans how he was certain this break in the forest canopy was an ambush point when others they passed previously were not.

“Three have been following us for the last five minutes,” Hans said. “Harpies can fly, but they don’t have the efficiency of an eagle or a falcon. It’s a lot of work for them to fly, so they don’t bother unless they see a potential meal.”

Without leaving the cover of the branches overhead, Hans pointed at the upper limbs of the trees surrounding the small gap in the forest.

“See how the ends of those branches are broken? That’s too high up for an ogre to have done that, and if you follow them, they form a rough arc down and then back up the other side.”

“Like a bird coming in for an attack,” Zalora said.

“Exactly.”

The lizardwoman nodded like a student processing information.

“Told you Hans was a nerd,” Mazo joked.

“Perhaps,” Zalora replied. “I must admit that I prefer this method of dealing with harpies over my party’s usual approach. We watch for shadows and stay ready to attack. We count on being faster than the harpies, but that’s the extent of our tactics.”

Mazo flatly refused to be bait, and a harpy would be more tempted by a human meal than a dwarf or lizardman, leaving two options.

“Next round of food and drink is on me if I don’t have to be bait,” Gret offered.

Hans thought for a moment. “If I get to pick the restaurant, and you don’t limit me to the cheapest, crappiest drink on tap.”

“Deal.”

Setting his bag on the ground, Hans rummaged around until he removed a bag of dried beans. Those were never his first choice for a meal, but they were easy enough to carry, so he always packed a bag for emergencies. He untied the string and spread the opening of the bag wide.

“I think you’re about to witness a Hans special,” Mazo said to Zalora.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“It’s when you make something simple incredibly complex for no real reason.”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“There are always real reasons,” Hans retorted.

“You need a bag of beans to play possum for harpies?”

Hans nodded. “I’m selling it.”

Ignoring the rest of the party, Hans drew his sword, holding it in one hand and his bag of beans in the other. He intentionally tripped into the opening where they expected the ambush to take place. The beans spread across the ground as he fell face first into the dirt. As he gathered them, putting them back in the bag one at a time, he watched for movement in his peripheral vision.

These harpies were intelligent enough to avoid revealing their position with shadows, keeping themselves positioned in such a way that a shadow was cast onto treetops rather than the ground immediately around their victims.

He knew the attack would be fast, so he left one hand on his sword.

All at once, Hans heard the flapping of wings followed immediately by two thumps, like fists punching a pillow.

Hans rolled on to his back at the same time, pointing his sword upward in anticipation. He saw talons attached to thick feathered legs. The feathers stopped at the monster’s waist, fading to a brownish purple skin with the texture of chicken flesh, forming the torso of a human woman. Instead of arms, the beast had two great wings, and its mostly human-looking head had long pointed teeth and eyes like an eagle.

The placement of the eyes was more akin to a bird of prey, set slightly on the outside of the skull to increase the monster’s field of vision. In the harpy, the upper half of its human-like head was pressed inward, giving its head more bird-like proportions from the mouth up. Feathers and hair protruded from its head and ran down its spine.

The monster didn’t cover enough ground to be in danger of Hans’ sword. It crashed into the dirt a few feet from him, unleashing a grating howl as it attempted to take flight again. The harpy failed, one of its wings mangled and bleeding. An arrow was embedded in its chest, but too low to be a direct hit to the heart. That wound seeped black blood.

Before Hans could stand, a second arrow went through the harpy’s head, cutting off its wale.

“Nice hit on the wing,” Gret said to Boden. “That was fast spear work.”

The dwarf thanked him for the compliment.

Hans hurried everyone across the small gap in forest to take cover on the other side. “If we’re lucky, killing this harpy deters the rest.”

“...Is there an unlucky option?” Zalora asked.

“Yes. If we’re unlucky, we just killed one of the matrons and all of her children will pursue us relentlessly to get their revenge.”

“Oh, that is unlucky.”

Standing in that place now–or a copy of it rather–Hans found tears welling in his eyes. For a moment, he wasn’t Hans the Guild Master. He had gone back in time to be Hans the Silver-ranked, and all of his friends felt like they should be right there next to him.

But they weren’t. Bel, Lee, and Becky grouped-up at the edge of the same clearing, facing the same dilemma Hans’ party did over a decade ago. He was curious to see how they addressed the potential ambush.

Becky used her Druid magic to summon a spirit hawk, the same spell she used in their search for Roland last year. After explaining the peculiarity of the setting–dungeon ceiling instead of open sky, an unseen “sun” lighting the area in eternal dusk–Becky asked the hawk to scout the skies for harpies and to harass any that might be a threat to the party. For the rest of the canyon journey, the adventurers only heard the occasional screech of a harpy somewhere overhead, but they spotted none of them nor did any of them attack. The spirit hawk was a good distraction, it seemed.

That was a clever solution to the problem, Hans had to admit, but he was also a little salty the adventurers reached the ogre camp without a single harpy encounter.

Your students are supposed to do better than you. That’s the mark of a good teacher.

But still. Not a single harpy attack in the whole of the canyon? A canyon home to maybe seventy harpies spread across a wide hunting area, and not one of those seventy bothered his students.

Bah.

The ogre camp was partway up a rocky slope with a trail about as wide as a wagon weaving up to a plateau. From the ground, the party could see a few primitive structures built from fallen trees, but anything deeper than the edge of the plateau was out of sight.

The foot of the mountain was all bones. Piles of them. Many of them were from farm animals like cows, pigs, and horses, but there was no shortage of bones that Hans recognized to be human, dwarf, or halfling. In the real version of this moment, those piles were accumulated over years of bountiful hunts.

Hans always believed details like that were bad signs because they suggested the ogres had been here for quite some time, making them smart enough to stay alive and clearly proving that they were experienced hunters.

Two ogres stood amongst the bones, each roughly twice as tall as Hans. Their hard skin drooped from their gluttony, spilling over the belts of their loin clothes. Not interested in modesty, the cloth was cinched up between their legs to contain their more sensitive treasures. They were covered in coarse hair but not to the point of it being fur. One had a wheelbarrow full of new additions for the collection. The other stood nearby. Neither were armed. At first Hans thought the second ogre might be a guard, but a few seconds of observation from the cover of the treeline suggested the second ogre came along to socialize.

“You have the same choice we did,” Hans said to his students. “Do you attack now while they are separated from the group, or do you wait to gather more intel before making your move?”

“I say Bel casts Silence while Becky and I go in. If we come from that direction, we can use those rocks to make it tough for both of them to fight us at once.”

Becky smiled. “Got to say, I like how you ladies think. Let’s go get ‘em.”

Becky and Lee jogged toward the ogres while crouching low, keeping as much cover between them and the ogres as they could. If Bel cast Silence too soon, the ogres would have more time to prepare or retreat up the path to get reinforcements.

The ogre with the wheelbarrow spotted the dwarf and the tusk closing in, but when he yelled, no noise escaped his mouth. He yelled again, louder based on the strain on his face, and still there was only quiet. The two ogres attempted to explain the problem to one another, their frustration and confusion quickly escalating to a silent argument. One pushed the other, and they both realized their enemies were now close.

The ogre without the wheelbarrow began a slow thumping run, meeting the dwarf at the very rocks Lee said would provide a terrain advantage. Two steps away from striking distance to Becky, the dwarf Druid summoned vines to rise up from the ground and ensnare a single ogre foot.

The ogre ripped free of the vines with little effort, but the sudden grab forced the monster to stumble to keep from falling. Becky shot forward at that moment hitting the ogres lead knee just below the knee cap with her axe. The monster roared noiselessly.

Becky shuffled backward out of the ogres reach, and Lee the Spellsword became a blur. She moved with supernatural speed, not as fast as Devon’s dash but far faster than would be physically possible without an Agility spell. She used the dwarf’s shoulder as a launching point, stepping up and leaping upward at the ogre.

Becky is going to hate that.

The ogre followed Lee’s trajectory, grinning at the easy target now falling down into its reach. The grin turned to shock when a Force Bolt hit the ogre in the chest. Its natural toughness prevented it from being a killshot, but it did its job. The moment the ogre took his attention off of Lee was the moment she plunged her sword downward into his neck and shoulder. The ogre thrashed, not realizing he was already dead.

The ogre with the wheelbarrow unleashed another gutteral–but silent–yell and began to retreat, making for the path to the ogre camp. Before it could start up the mountainside, the empty air immediately in front of the ogre blurred, like smudges on eyeglasses that spanned the height and width of the monster.

When the ogre smashed against Bel’s Force Wall, it spun on the adventurer’s, unbridled rage in its eyes and blood pouring from its broken nose. The monster raged anew when one of Becky’s Flying Vines wrapped around its head like a living blindfold.

Lee’s magically-enhanced speed allowed her to reach the ogre before the dwarf. Her powerful horizontal slash nearly severed the monster’s leg at the knee, but its thick bones kept Lee’s sword from traveling all the way through. Though it was still mostly blind, the ogre reflexively smashed a fist to strike whatever had attacked its knee.

Before the desperate fist fell, Lee extended an arm and cast Push, using Bel’s Force Wall to propel herself away, like a backward long jump without the running start.

As the ogre flailed at an enemy that had already escaped, Becky chopped the other knee, her axe cleaving straight through. The monster fell to that side. Right then, the Silence spell timed out, but the ogre’s yell had only one unmuted moment to call for help. Lee’s sword severed its spine to silence the creature for good.

The three adventurers delayed their desires to talk or celebrate, choosing to preserve any element of surprise they might yet have by approaching the camp in stealth.

Hans followed at a distance as best he could, wanting to be close by to lend assistance if the adventurers were in trouble but also not wanting to be underfoot when another battle began.

Near the top of the climb, Bel, Lee, and Becky crouched behind a rock. The dwarf closed her eyes and listened, using her Druid hearing to scout the camp ahead for enemies. After a minute, she held up three stubby fingers. The lady tusks nodded.

As Becky resummoned her spirit hawk, Bel poked her head around the rock, picked a target, and launched a Force Bolt. The mana-made projectile struck the rocky mountainside rising above the back of the camp. The result was no avalanche, but several keg-sized rocks suddenly coming loose and rolling toward their homes set the ogres into a frenzy.

Becky’s hawk went up next, and then the dwarf and Lee moved into the camp swiftly but methodically. To Hans, the ogres sounded like frenzied guard dogs, deep barks with sharp edges, angry spit flying with every syllable.

One by one, the ogres went quiet.

Quest Complete: Expand the dungeon using the ogre valley job as a blueprint.

***

Open Quests (Ordered from Old to New):

Progress from Gold-ranked to Diamond-ranked.

Mend the rift with Devon.

Using a pen name, complete the manuscript for "The Next Generation: A Teaching Methodology for Training Adventurers."

Expand the dungeon with resource-specific monsters for each of Gomi’s major trades.

Decide whether or not to pursue silent walking and snow walking.

Find a way for Gomi adventurers to benefit from their rightful ranks in the Adventurers’ Guild.

Secure a way to use surplus dungeon inventory for good.

Investigate entering Kane and Quentin in the Osare combat tournament.