Once the campers had gone to sleep, Hans joined Becky for her shift on watch.

“This trip going how you hoped?” the dwarf asked.

“Thanks to you and Roland? Better.”

“Kiddos seem to be having fun. If we do this next year, can I be the ground dragon? Give those twerps a real challenge.”

Hans laughed. “Sure. You can make the mask and everything.”

“Appreciate it, boss.”

“Can I ask you a question? How long have you been at Bronze?”

Becky bit her cheek as she thought. “Forty, maybe fifty years?”

“Does that bother you?”

“If I was competing for jobs like you city kids do, maybe it might,” she answered. “Out here though? Nobody is checking my resume if you get my meaning.”

“I’d say you’re at least Silver, if not Gold,” Hans said.

“You think so?”

“I do.”

“Well damn it, Hans. That’s a sweet thing for you to say.”

The Guild Master said he wasn’t trying to flatter her. Usually, the springtime was a big promotion season for the Guild, so rank had been on his mind more than usual in recent weeks. In truth, though, he knew Becky wasn’t a lowly Bronze on their first visit to the dungeon. Iron-ranked adventurers mostly knew what they were supposed to do, but usually revealed small cracks in their confidence, signs that they had more training to do.

Bronze-ranked adventurers knew for sure what to do and only hesitated in the most challenging of circumstances. Becky, meanwhile, carried herself and fought like she knew what choices to make, and she executed those choices with complete confidence in her abilities. That was how Silvers behaved.

“Promotions can mess with your head,” Hans said. “When people think they deserve a bump but don’t get it, they can get bitter or doubt themselves or lose motivation. Then it gets worse the longer they’re held back. I’ve seen that ruin the job for a few folks over the years.”

“That bad?”

“Can be.”

“The forest has replaced rank for me, now that we’re talking about it. As long as I made progress there, it felt like moving forward.”

Hans agreed that rank was largely a ceremonial representation of progress, so her explanation made sense to him. Becky thought highly of the Lady of the Forest. Having her trust and being her confidant likely did for Becky what a Guild Master giving a promotion did for Hans.

“How are you feeling about Buru’s progress?”

Becky said it was going well. She was proud of the tusk for his effort.

“You said he’s due for his familiar soon, right? When or how does that happen?”

Druids earned familiars in one of two ways, Becky explained. The first was to ask the forest to connect you to an ally. If you were deemed worthy, the forest would send a familiar to you, selecting the animal based on her assessment of you, your character, and your abilities. That was how Becki entered the dwarf’s life. She was a starving piglet at the time, and the pair bonded immediately.

Some druids disliked this approach because it meant their familiar could only be a local species, limiting their potential–in their minds at least.

The alternative approach those druids took was to earn a bond with a creature of their choosing, usually something rare or exotic with unique abilities. The process was said to be difficult and dangerous as the familiars these adventurers desired were typically native to somewhere harsh and remote. Supposedly, a Platinum from last century earned a bond with an earth dragon. She stole the egg from a nest and raised it herself, so by the time she reached the uppermost ranks of the Guild the dragon was a fearsome companion.

One of the stories went that a small town attempted a rebellion against the kingdom and locked themselves behind the safety of their walls. The Druid arrived on the battlefield when the rebels refused parlay. Together with her familiar, she walked around the town. Not attacking, not speaking. Just walking slowly and calmly, giving every man on the walls a view of their next foe. The rebels surrendered before she completed the first lap.

Hans asked Becky which path Buru would take.

“He hasn’t picked one yet,” Becky said. “I told the boy his options and said it was his right to choose. I think he knows I want him to go through the Lady, but I swear I wasn’t trying to bias him or nothing.”

“Why do you like that way better?”

“I made my pick because I trusted the Lady. I’ve met a few Druids who chose their familiars, and it was weird.”

He asked her how so.

“I’m connected to Becki. Yeah, I love her to pieces but what I’m talking about is deeper. It’s like we’re always aware of each other. She knows how I feel and I know how she feels. It’s not mind reading, but it’s that reliable.”

“Aren’t all familiar connections like that?”

“They are, but that’s not my point,” the Druid said. “My point is who you connect with is a big deal. Becki and I are sisters, family. It’s the purest kind of love. The Druid’s who choose a familiar end up with a partner. You can feel those familiars assessing their masters constantly, like they’re seeing if the Druid is still worthy or something.”

Hans had heard of none of this. He had noticed differences in familiar to master relationships previously, whether that was with Druids or mages, but he thought that was more about the personalities involved rather than the process of bonding a familiar itself.

“Buru’s a good kid,” Becky said, “but he’s lonely as all hells. Has been for a while. I know what that’s like. He deserves a Becki of his own.”

So she can be sentimental.

“Anyway. I told him to decide before the end of summer. Could be he chooses tomorrow. Who knows?”

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“He’ll make a good decision,” Hans assured her. “He trusts you completely and values your advice.”

“Like I said, good kid.”

Thanking her for the updates and the insights, Hans excused himself, but Becky stopped him.

“Don’t mean to keep you. I just wanted to ask for a favor,” Becky said.

The last time she wanted a favor, Hans ended up making a deal with a spirit.

“My granddaddy used to say ogres live in the mountains, and he said they had attacked Gomi back before any of us were born. Now I know he was spinning yarns because I’ve never seen any sign of them anywhere around these parts, but it’s always worried me that I don’t have any practice fighting something like that. Because who the hells knows what happens tomorrow, right?”

“Did you learn ogre tactics for your promotion to Iron?” Those tactics were standard parts of the knowledge required for a rank, but Becky’s path had been anything but standard.

“Yeah, I read the books and all that,” Becky answered. “Thinking about the treant reminded me how scared I was. Hans, that bugger was big. Like I’ve seen big trees, and that’s what a treant is I guess but when it can move and talk it’s a different kind of big. I’ve got the same feeling about ogres even though I’ve never seen one.”

“I know what you mean.”

“You’ve met a treant?! Why didn’t you say so?”

Hans said that wasn’t exactly what happened. He encountered tainted treants, which were corrupted versions of the treefolk. He had once heard it compared to the corrupting power of a lich’s magic, but so few had been seen that little was confirmed about the monsters. As far as Hans knew, his party’s battle with the tainted treants was the first that had been observed in fifty years, and they hadn’t been seen since.

Based on Becky’s story, they might never be seen again. Without treants, there would never be more tainted treants.

“Did they talk?” Becky asked.

“Kind of. They were always muttering some kind of gibberish, mostly in their tongue but we caught a few words we knew. Real intelligence didn’t seem to be there anymore, if that makes sense.”

“Do you suppose the one I met was really the last?”

Mentally reviewing everything he had learned or heard about treants, he admitted he wasn’t aware of any recent sightings. The last record the Guild had of treants was thirty or forty years before Becky had her encounter. They were always known to be elusive so no scholar made an official declaration of extinction or had even suggested it as far as Hans knew.

Mostly, the Adventurers’ Guild assumed their members walked by treants all the time without realizing. Though they weren’t evil, treants weren’t known for being outgoing or overly friendly. There was no reason to hunt them, and there was little reason to talk to them, so no one sought them out.

Hans couldn’t answer Becky’s question with any certainty, but it was possible.

“What did he and the Lady talk about?” he asked.

“I’m not the nosey type, Hans. I didn’t ask.”

“That must have been a very sad conversation for a forest spirit to have,” Hans said, mostly to himself.

For several minutes, the pair stared into the darkness without speaking.

“The forest says that nature doesn’t separate death from life,” Becky said after a while. “If you get to live, you’re going to die eventually. That’s just how all this works. I believe that too, but I can’t get over thinking that how you die matters. That treant’s family was killed by loggers, just wiped out all at once. He will die too eventually, but he’ll die doing something important.”

Hans asked her what she meant.

“If a bear kills a deer, I got no issue with that kind of dying because it feels like it has a purpose to it. You’re part of something bigger than you. What I do have a problem with… One time I found deer bones stuck between two rocks. Whole skeleton. Poor guy fell and couldn’t get out. I’m not afraid to die or nothing, Hans, but I am afraid of dying like that.”

“Afraid of suffering?”

“Of my death being pointless.”

***

On the way back to Gomi the next day, Roland drifted to the rear of the group to talk with Hans.

“Got a Guild Master question for you,” Roland said. “How early on do you know that a student will go far? Like with Master Devontes, when did you know he had potential?”

“This sounds like quibbling, but those are two different questions.”

Roland raised an eyebrow.

“I’ve met hundreds of students with potential, but it’s a different thing entirely for them to act on it, so it’s two qualities you’re looking for: the potential to grow and the commitment to follow through. I’ve seen a lot of students in one camp or the other. The ones with potential can fake it longer, though. Eventually, the job gets too hard and they quit.”

“Ah. So a lot of students start strong and wash out?”

“Yep. They look like they’ll go far for the first five years or so and then poof, you never see them again.”

“Must be frustrating,” Roland said.

“A little bit. It’s more so disappointing.” Hans paused. “I can tell you a secret, but I don’t know if a Gomi native is capable of keeping a secret.”

Roland laughed. “We are a talkative bunch, but I promise.”

“I’m not just winding you up when I say this: Quentin and Kane could go pretty far. I’m actually worried they’ll burn themselves out with how hard they work.”

“I can see why you’d say that. I’m not worried though. The boys have good heads on their shoulders.”

Hans hoped Roland was right. Kane and Quentin could help a lot of people if they took their training as far he thought they could. If the hunter asked, he might have told him who in Gomi had the most potential. He was thankful the question was never raised. If his answer got out, the pressure it put on his pupils might derail their progress.

His secret hunch: Honronk could make Platinum. His success with enchanted tattoos was more impressive than anyone but Olza knew. Enchanting in its simplest forms was beyond most seasoned mages. The demands were too precise. The Apprentice Black Mage taught himself enchanting from a less than comprehensive reference book, and then figured out the Blood magic variation with no instructor and no written insights whatsoever.

The boys might not be geniuses like Honronk, but they were smart and capable students. They both could make Diamond at the very least. The combination of their work ethic, ability to learn, and natural athleticism gave them the right foundation for a successful career.

Then there was Gunther. The young tusk wasn’t old enough to Apprentice, but the image of him staring down gnolls with a broken wooden sword hadn’t left his mind since that night. Everyone knew the feat was impressive, but Hans had fought more gnolls than anyone in Gomi. The way he saw it, an average untrained adult would be seriously wounded or killed in a regular dog attack. Wolves were stronger than dogs by a substantial margin, and gnolls were stronger than wolves.

Seven of them attacked Gunther. One of them got its teeth into his arm but couldn’t hang on. Two of them died to Gunther’s wooden sword, and the remaining monsters were in the midst of reconsidering their choices when Hans arrived. A stick freshly broken from a tree was more dangerous than those ultra-blunted training weapons, but Gunther made his deadly. Twice.

His victory could have been a fluke, but Hans suspected natural talent was more likely. If that was the case and Gunther had the maturity and the desire to pursue it, he could be a great adventurer.

***

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.