Parry waited in line to enter a dungeon, something he found anachronistic and absurd. Look at these murderous, over-equipped monster-slaying maniacs calmly queueing up, he thought. Some were bragging loudly, others were discussing strategy with their party, a few glowered at the competition. Everyone copes in their own way with the same truth: ahead lies death or fortune.
The Adventurer's Guild had set up a small table staffed by an official. That was the bottleneck, everyone waited patiently for their chance to discuss entrance, pay fees and complete registration. It was a quirk of tacit civilization out in the middle of the woods in front of a patently magical and lethal apparition.
"The strongest here should slay the rest, reducing the competition and weeding out those who'd never make it anyway."
Parry mentally chuckled. "Is that standard procedure in your part of the Demon Realms?"
"Dungeons do not appear at random in the Hells, but there are other things worth fighting for."
"Yes, well, the Guild isn't looking to winnow down its membership. Someone has to pay dues." This conversation was even more peculiar, but it passed the time.
"Which hell is yours, Styak? I've been on all five of the Great Hells, maybe we've met?"
"Mine were the Woe Willows of the Horror Forests."
"Third Hell, then?"
"Third Hell, though such trees can be found throughout the Realms."
Parry stepped up to the little desk and showed his scrap of paper to a man who was bald and not just his head: eyebrows, face, there wasn't a hair on him. Instead he had scars, wrinkles and a frown.
"Ink's barely dry on this, boy. Aren't you a little young for wolf rank?"
A shrug. "Fast learner."
"Fast forger. Show me your hands." The man didn't wait, grabbing Parry's wrist.
"Not a scratch, not a callus. You're no wolf, you're not even a mouse. Won't last a goat's bleat in there. Find some other way to impress the lasses."
Parry grit his teeth, biting back frustration. "Thanks for the advice, but I'd like to go in."
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"I'm telling you to go home."
"Slay a few of the others and all will respect you."
"I'm not doing that."
The man's gruff voice, "And I'm not letting you in."
Parry stepped out of the line before any of the adventurers got antsy. He moved calmly across the clearing, away from the dungeon entrance and the line, back towards the forest.
Styak was full of helpful suggestions. "I shall watch for when no one is looking, garrote the guard as you dash for the entrance. Or we can wait for nightfall and then garrote the attendants."
Parry climbed a tree and rested in the crook of a branch while the demon concocted ever more elaborate schemes.
"No garroting."
"Garroting prevents screaming. It's very effective."
"No gar--just settle down. We wait."
"Others will get ahead of us."
Parry felt an impulse to pet the kitten calmingly, but it was tucked into his mind, and it wasn't a kitten in the first place. "That doesn't matter. We're here for a different purpose."
That brought a snide tone into the demon's voice. "You can't remember anything about this, how do you have a purpose?"
He settled as comfortably as possible against the bark, letting one leg dangle off.
"It's the guild. Almost all of my previous lives--where I'm human and on this continent, at least--I join the Adventurer's Guild and work my way up the ranks. It's the fastest and easiest way to build skills to match my know-how, uncover resources and find allies. The guild reaches far, all the way to the Empire and beyond. I may not know where I'm going to incarnate or when, but I'll eventually seek out some local chapter of the guild. Where better to leave my future self a clue?"
"So what's the clue?"
"No idea. If I wrote myself a letter spelling things out directly, the Creator could interfere or some more mundane actor could butt in. In this case, one of my previous incarnations acquired something very useful in a dungeon that appeared somewhere in this part of the world around this date. So I set myself up to rediscover what I know will help me by leaving myself a phantom high guild rank and fully-paid dues."
"So you've had a life in this area before which you forgot? I haven't turned up any such memories in my explorations."
Parry shrugged unnecessarily. "Possibly. Probably? Few things replay exactly from lifetime to lifetime. Things change, times and locations slip and echo as often as they repeat perfectly. I have to trust to luck and to my own plans, even if I can't recall them. Whatever is in there I left solely for me, so it's likely useless to others."
"Whatever we seek in this dungeon could be misleading or useless, and you won't even know it until you find it? And you're throwing yourself into unknown danger purely on faith?"
"That's the game, Styak. If I'm going to win, I have to be daring and patient, faithful and skeptical, alert and unhurried. I need to find every scrap of power and memory I left myself, risking whatever traps fate and my enemy might have laid. Wake me in a few hours, hmm?"
"You're taking a nap?"
"Soon the sun will set and the bald fellow will have done his shift. That's when we try again to gain entrance, no garroting required."
The cat harrumphed.