“So what kind of monsters are here? In Reno there were two-legged snakes and two-legged scorpions.”

“So far I’ve come across Ratmen, Dogmen, and large bipedal rabbits.”

“Hmm. Which is the easiest? The hardest?” Shawn shifts in his seat and leans forward.

“If I had to say, the Rabbits are the hardest, only because of their speed. The Dogmen are very military like, whereas the Ratmen act more like a militia, so the Ratmen are probably the easiest to deal with individually.”

“‘Individually?’ Have you taken on groups before?”

“A few.” I say, “There was a gate where I took down a whole squad of the Dogmen, and a hatch that had like 20 Ratmen.”

“A gate? You took down a gate by yourself?”

“Yeah. Level 10.”

“That’s pretty impressive. I did one with a group and it still took us like three days.”

“A group? Are they going to be coming down here as well?” He leans forward.

“Nah, they’re going to be going towards Washington to help the Icarian corps there. So how did you do it?”

“How did I do what?”

“Clear the gate. What was the condition?”

“I had to destroy a temple. It wasn’t very large.”

“I mean the enemies, how did you deal with the enemies?”

“Oh. Well, I came across one of the Dogmen by itself. It wore a tabard with Roki’s mark on it and a coat of mail.”

“Roki’s Mark?” Shawn pulls at his goatee.

“Ah, that’s what I’ve been calling that symbol. The one with the dagger through the skull.”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

“Ah, it’s a dagger through a coiled serpent near Reno.”

“Really? Huh. Maybe cultural differences.”

Shawn shrugs.

“I’m not really interested in that small stuff, was just curious about what you meant. So you had a fight with this Dogman?”

“Yes. He stabbed a dagger through my hand, and I grappled with him until I bit out his throat.”

“Bit out his throat? Is that an expression?”

“No, I literally bit out his throat. All I could do.”

Shawn pauses for a second.

“You’re...you’re a mage right? That’s what you said?”

“That’s right.”

“You know what? I’m interested in seeing you fight.” He pushes himself from his chair. “Get ready. We’re going to a door. Ten minutes meet me in the parking lot.” He steps out of my room, and I see him hop off the banister to the ground below.

I couldn’t say that I wasn’t interested in seeing how he fought as well. How would an actual warrior fight? He could probably punch through a Ratman with a single punch before all of this. He leaves my room and I get ready; pulling on my mail coat, and tucking it into my pants; holding both in place with my belt. My hoodie was still soaked, so I hung it up in the restroom, so it didn’t grow mildew. I would have to go out with the mail showing. Strangely, however, I don’t feel embarrassed about it. I buckle my gauntlets, reorganize my backpack, take my staff and head downstairs.

The air is clear. The rain washed away the dust and the smog, so I take a deep breath and take the stairs down to the parking lot. Shawn was already waiting for me there. He wore the clothes he had just worn, with a single plate of metal hanging over his chest and stomach, and segmented plates over his legs that seemed as if they could be compliments to the ones on my arms. He leaned on a rather long, bronze spear that glistened in the morning sunlight, and a leather quiver full of javelins sticking out from behind a rather large backpack that had a strap that went around his waist. He was looking into his phone, and tucked it away before glancing in my direction.

“There you are, ready?”

“Yeah. I think.” I stretch my arms as I step off the stairs and onto the parking lot.

“Where’s the nearest Door?”

“Probably the one in the canal, just down the road, there.” I motion south, “There’s also one down the road, but that’s a level 13. It’d be the highest I’ve done.”

“So? Let’s do that one then. Lead the way.”

I led him down the street to an old abandoned building, burned down by a fire nearly five years back. Since then, it had become a home to ash and grass and nothing much else. I remember the fire in the news. There had been a family that was stuck in there. The mother had managed to get out, but her two children and her husband didn’t. She was charged with murder, though mostly on speculation. It was a hot news item around town at the time.

There was a door at the very edge of the property. About knee-high, and looked like the gate of a fence. In the spaces between the wood, there was nothing but a solid blackness.

“Is this it?” Shawn asks as he approaches it.

“Yes.”

“Do you think it might be a gate, gate? Like one that’ll take some time?”

“Could be. It is, afterall, in the shape of a gate.”

“Well, there’s two of us. We can get it done.”

Shawn pushes through the gate and vanishes, I follow after him. After a brief stint through the swirling black, we meet again on a shattered cobble street. The door that we stepped through had been the flap of a large, broken tent. The Fogwall was about a half a mile away.

“What’s this?”

Shawn walks around the perimeter of what seems to be a camp. He glances to his right and stops in his tracks.

“Holy...”

When I was a child, my parents had taken my brother and I to the Sequoia National Forest. It was there where I first saw a Giant Sequoia tree. I thought nothing, aside from the mountains that surrounded it, could ever match its enormity, nor evoke the same feeling of smallness I had while standing there looking up at the General. Man made buildings that might have been taller didn’t evoke that same emotional response, nor did the distant towering peak of Whitney.

The General, however, was dwarfed by what I was seeing. Hooked to the Great Wall that surrounded the Catman city was a siege tower; whose top was obscured by the evermist that hung in the sky. That feeling of reverent smallness overwhelmed me again.

It took a moment for either of us to move, and I break the silence by speaking to my Shard.

“What’s the objective here?”

“Kill the Priest.” Was the response.