Becky arrived sometime during the night and was waiting outside the guild hall when the sun rose. Hans heard her before he saw her, her bellowing dwarf laugh following a chorus of childish giggles.

“Good morning, Becky,” Hans said, stepping outside with a pack full of gear–his supplies for three days of camping as well as items for activities and emergencies.

“Howdy, boss!”

“How’s your spring so far?”

Becky shrugged. “It’s a busy one. Running messages all over for the forest.”

“Busier than usual?”

“You bet. Too many far away splashes rippling our way if you know what I’m saying.”

Hans nodded. “Busy can still be quiet. I don’t mind a lot of work if the peace holds up.”

“Aye,” Becky grunted. “I could drink to that.”

“No drinking. It’s a camping trip for kids.”

“So? They gotta go to sleep sometime.”

Before Hans could argue, Chance and Loddie came down the street, yelling for Miss Becky. The brother and sister tusks had grown quite a bit over the winter, like the tusk side of their heritage suddenly awoke and accelerated threefold. This time last year, they were typical children–small, awkward, clumsy. While they were far from being fully grown, the sharp edges of age began to replace the soft features of youth.

“Miss Becky!” Loddie yelled one more time, slamming into the dwarf Druid with a hug that was more akin to a tackle. “Can we ride Becki?”

“The other kids will be here soon,” Becky answered. “We don’t want anyone to feel left out.”

“But they’re not here yet!”

“Still, we–”

“Pleeeeeeease,” Chance and Loddie said in unison. Becki, the Druid’s oversized boar familiar, slid between the children, her head down, her eyes large like a begging puppy.

“Okay. Fine.”

The children jumped and clapped. Becki pranced in place, her hooves tippy tapping the ground like a little dance. She knelt on her front knees and dipped her head so Chance and Loddie could climb on to her back. The three ambled down the street. Then the boar broke into a trot, triggering gleeful laughter from the children. In that moment, their hints of maturity disappeared as they embraced childish joy.

Over the next thirty minutes, eleven more children arrived. Harry and Harriot, the son and daughter of the town blacksmith and fletcher, were there, as was Gunther. Tandis accompanied her daughter, using chaperone duties as an excuse to spend more time together. An older brother to one of the young girls came to chaperone as well, as did another parent. Roland, Quentin’s father, joined as well. Hans noted a warmer kind of smile on Tandis when Roland appeared. They briefly squeezed hands in greeting, saying nothing else.

Looks like their romance is growing. Good for them.

Hans put two fingers in his mouth and unleashed a sharp whistle to quiet the chaos simmering in the training yard.

“Anyone who needed to borrow a bedroll or waterskin should have one, but if I missed you, let me know. We have plenty of spares.”

He looked around to see if any hands raised or if any faces looked distressed. He saw neither.

“We’re going to have a lot of fun on our adventure,” Hans said. “But that means we all need to think like adventurers. Who can tell me what that means?”

“Always stay together!” a human boy, no older than six, yelled.

“That’s correct! Never split the party. What else?”

The answers came in rapid succession:

“Listen to the adults.”

“Don’t eat any strange plants.”

“Be alert for monsters!”

“Drink lots of water.”

“Help each other!”

Hans grinned proudly. “You got all but one. Anyone know what we missed?” He looked around at the children pondering intensely, but no one spoke or raised their hands. “Be prepared! No one has their sword or shield, so I want everyone to go inside and get one. You’re adventurers! You should always have your sword.”

A few minutes later, the group departed. Every child had a wooden sword on their hip and a shield on their backs, making them look like a poorly equipped halfling warband on the march. The Becks took the lead with everyone following single file and Hans bringing up the rear. The Guild Master had a shield on his back as well, the one Harry and Harriot decorated and gifted him last year.

Fifteen minutes down the trail, Gunther asked, “How far is our camp?”

“Few hours,” Roland answered. “Miss Becky said we’d be there in the afternoon.”

“That’s so long.”

Without looking back, Becky yelled, “Gunny! Quit your belly-achin’ before I come back there.”

“...Yes, Miss Becky.”

As the hike continued, Becky and Roland pointed out interesting sights and explained their importance, like cold bear scat, scrapes on a tree from a buck rubbing its antlers, and raccoon tracks along a muddy creek bed. Knowing they shared the forests with bears should keep them alert and respectful, Roland said. Bears weren’t often confrontational, but an unwitting hiker could stumble upon a mother bear and her cubs if they weren’t careful.

Seeing signs of other animals–like deer and raccoons–were more positive. Those meant potential food sources were nearby, and a busy forest meant that the winter hadn’t been too hard on plants and game.

An hour or so before they reached their campsite, Roland pointed out another set of prints.

“Who knows what made these?”

The children gathered around, studying the dry, cracked impressions of wide, clawed paws.

“Wolves?” one child asked.

“Close. Do you see how deep these two are compared to those shallow ones there? Wolves will leave more uniform impressions because their weight is evenly spread out across four paws. If you see deep prints mixed with shallow, you’re probably looking at gnoll tracks. They’re tricky because if they travel on all fours, their trail can look like wolves made it.”

“Are they still here?” Harriot asked.

Roland shook his head and rapped a knuckle on the hard dirt. “The ground was pretty wet when these tracks were made. Since it’s bone dry now, what does that tell us?”

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

The children glanced around at one another but no one answered.

“What makes the ground wet?” Roland asked.

“Rain!”

“Very good. How long ago did it rain?”

“Five days?” Gunther guessed.

Roland nodded. “Exactly. That makes these tracks relatively old. Wild beasts are often territorial, though, so if you find tracks somewhere, that’s probably because the animal or monster lives in the area and comes through often.”

“Are we in danger, Mr. Roland?” One of the smaller human children asked.

“We’re not under attack,” Roland answered, “but this is the wilderness. We have to respect that we are both predator and prey, so we need to behave like the smartest of both.”

At about noon, Becky led the group down a narrow deer trail. The winding path descended a rocky hillside and followed a creek between dozens of mountain boulders, many of them larger than the dungeon cabin. As they followed the narrow deer run, rockfaces rose gradually on either side of the trail until the path suddenly opened to a wooded grove. At the far end, a small waterfall splashed down, trickling from rock to rock to continue its descent from the Dead End Mountains above.

The serenity of the place reminded Hans of his visit with the Lady of the Forest, like he was in a place no mortal could find on their own, a secret realm guarded by ancient spirits.

“Told you it was a good spot,” Becky said, chuckling at Hans’ astonished stare.

“Yes, you did. You certainly did.”

When he collected himself, Hans told the children where to drop their bags and divided them as evenly as he could between the adult chaperones, doing his best to balance differences in size and age from group to group. Next, he had each group select a location for their shelter and begin gathering the materials they needed to build it.

For the next three hours, the children scurried about gathering sticks with an adult watching close by so no one disappeared into the forest. Each group built the frame for their lean-tos and laid big leafy branches on its slope, using the foliage as a sort of shingle to redirect water if it rained.

As Hans expected, the quality of each shelter varied wildly. Two collapsed partway through and needed to be rebuilt. Those children were disheartened at first, but once they learned what they could do better, their motivation rekindled and they went back to building. Every activity was meant to be practice, not a test. If a shelter ended up being truly abysmal, the adults had spare canvas tarps in their bags so that none of the children would be exposed to the elements if bad weather hit.

Once every child had their shelter up and their bedroll down, they gathered around Roland with a few hours of light left. The hunter and the Druid taught the kids to make simple deadfall traps, using a figure-four construction of notched sticks to precariously prop up a rock. While the children experimented with perfecting the balance of the trap–getting the structure to hold while also being delicate enough for small game to trip–Hans gathered firewood, piling kindling and several sizes of sticks near each shelter.

When the lesson on deadfall traps concluded, each group of children built their fires and struck flint to bring them to life. Two of the groups needed coaching about tinder needing air to burn long enough for the rest of the fuel to light. Next, the adults passed around jerky and sweet potatoes. The children gnawed on one while using the fire to bake the other. Once everyone was settled, and every child was accounted for, Hans asked for everyone’s attention.

“Your potatoes will need a good bit of time to cook,” he said. “And don’t worry, we’ll have fresh meat tomorrow.”

He asked the children if they’d like to hear a story while they waited. When one child asked for a story about Master Devontes, the others joined in, echoing the request with growing fervor. Hans relented and began a tale when they quieted.

“The Guild sent us on a job in the frontier. They had a lead on an artifact and wanted us to gather research first hand. Scout the area, talk to locals, standard prep stuff.”

The frontier was a broad term for any region beyond the borders of one of the kingdoms, vast expanses of lawless wilds filled with monsters, outlaws, and extreme weather. This part of the frontier was rolling, tornado-prone prairie, miles and miles of tall grass that eventually faded into desert badlands. The adventurers’ destination was in the badlands, but the prairie was large enough that they needed several days to cross it.

“We stopped at this little outpost, a tiny walled town smaller than Gomi. I was Gold-ranked. Master Devontes, Mazo, and Gret were all Diamonds at that point. We had maybe another day before we reached badlands, so we rented space in a barn and camped there for the night. We’re asleep for maybe two or three hours, and Master Devontes wakes us, whispering, ‘Undead are close.’”

Trusting in the senses of a Paladin, the party rushed to get into their gear, but the battle began before they could finish. They heard guards shouting that they were under attack, demanding every able-bodied person inside the walls take up a weapon to fight. By the time the adventurers left the barn, men and women stood on the walls, firing arrows down into the darkness surrounding them. The stench of rotting flesh thickened the air.

Hans, Devontes, and Gret joined the townspeople with bows of their own while Mazo used her magic. Ghoul after ghoul shambled out of the darkness into torchlight, mindlessly focused on penetrating the outpost walls. An exact count was difficult to make, but the adventurers estimated the total force of the ghouls that night neared three hundred or more, a sizable force for an outpost of fifteen people hosting four visiting adventurers.

“Mazo cast a lightning spell she learned from an air elemental, so for a flash we could see the prairie all around us as if it were daytime. Ghouls came from every direction, a lot of them, but we saw something that bothered us more. In the distance, four armored riders sat on horseback, watching the ghouls charge the outpost.”

When Mazo cast lightning again to confirm what they saw, Hans thought he spotted two of them moving their hands like they were casting spells, but the distance was too great to be certain. Moments later, the glow of fireflies began to surround the outpost, distant at first, but the orange-red lights moved with the sea of ghouls.

“Target the glowing ghouls!” Hans yelled.

He aimed an arrow at a running ghoul, its body lit like a fire burned within, radiating light through its rotten flesh and tattered clothes. When his first arrow pierced its brain, the monster detonated with the force of a stick of dynamite. Soon, the deafening blasts filled the night, dulling Hans’ hearing to an unending high-pitched ring as they brought down ghoul after ghoul.

Then the glowing ghouls reached the wall.

“Three of them targeted the same section just a few dozen yards away from where we stood. One after the other, they slammed into the palisade. The last one took the wall down, and it got ugly. Several of the townsfolk dropped their weapons to run as dozens of ghouls charged the hole. Master Devontes yells for Mazo to keep the lightning going, and then he jumps over the wall.”

The eyes of the children listening went big as their mouths dropped.

The Paladin was blessed with an ability that launched him forward, a sort of super-speed dash that allowed Devontes to cover twenty yards in a blink. Every time Mazo’s lightning lit the prairie, Devontes was in a new place with a line of ghouls behind him, the pieces of their bodies turning to ash as the Paladin’s justice banished their souls for good. Each brief moment of light was like a scene captured by a painting, one instant frozen in time. Again and again, punctuated by the explosions of glowing ghouls falling alongside their comrades.

Mazo watched the riders in the distance more than she watched Devontes. “They’re running!” she shouted when the lightning revealed the backs of the riders, galloping away.

A purple flame slashed across the prairie like a giant sword, cutting down at least twenty ghouls in one brilliant arc. Then the blinking light revealed Devontes giving chase on foot, getting smaller and smaller with each flash, covering an inhuman amount of distance each time.

“Didn’t you say they were on horseback?” Gunther asked.

“I did.”

“And he tried to catch them?”

Hans nodded. “By the time we finished off what was left of the ghouls, the sun started to rise. And here comes Devon–I mean Master Devontes–dragging a body behind him.”

The Paladin defeated the riders and took one prisoner. Devontes reported that the men on horseback were all human, not undead. From interrogating the prisoner and from searching the belongings of his comrades, the adventurers deduced that the riders were acolytes, carrying out a mission from their masters. They didn’t know it then, but investigating the acolytes would eventually lead them to a cabal of liches gathering power in the frontier.

“Can you fight like that, Mr. Hans?” Chance asked.

Hans laughed. “Definitely not. Master Devontes was a pretty fresh Diamond at the time, but he was already outpacing some of the Platinums in Hoseki. We Golds aren’t close to that level, not by a longshot.”

The children ate their dinners, excitedly talking about what it would be like to be a Paladin like Master Devontes and all of the amazing adventures they’d have. Soon, the exhaustion of the day overtook them, driving them to their bedrolls.

***

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.

Suggest growing mandrake elementals to the dungeon core.

Secure interior dungeon doors without trapping adventurers inside.

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

Build a rest area in the dungeon to improve adventurer recovery.

Secure a way to use surplus dungeon inventory for good.

Coordinate a plan for dungeon assistants living permanently at the dungeon.