Today’s Earth date: October 8, 1991

The Water Temple is two days up the coast. Each day, the demons multiply and get stronger. That’s what they’ve told us since we got here.

A world-ending army is growing down the road, but no one here is worried. We’re juggling training with galas and meet-and-greets, and people talk to us like we’ve already won. There’s no doubt in their minds, like any other outcome isn’t possible.

So we party more than we should, and nobles give us money and loot at all hours of the day. They all want something in return from the Chosen Heroes, but no one else in the party seems to mind. What’s trading a few favors for endless luxury?

-The Journal of Laszlo the Paladin

***

Lord Amethyst’s staff was skeptical of the storage portal at first, but with some encouragement, they emptied most of the meat, leaving a pile of cuts for the restaurateur back in town.

In the hour it took for that process to complete, Wayne and Fergus compared notes.

Fergus found a freelance carriage service willing to accept a more adventurous job. The majority of the groups he spoke with were comfortable on main roads but wouldn’t travel the road to Asplugha or the road to the Water Temple. That meant hiring one of the less fancy options, but the carriage was acceptable and came with a driver. That driver would help to make and break camp, but it was up to the scholars to hire a cook and security.

They didn’t have a cook yet, but Fergus had a plan and told Wayne not to worry.

Security, however, was a problem. Like Wayne, Fergus couldn’t find any reputable outfit willing to leave the beaten path and park outside of a dungeon indefinitely, let alone go in one.

“The ratmen are exceptionally bad this year, I’ve heard,” Fergus said. “Apparently, it’s usually uncommon for Asplugha to have problems with them, but they’ve been seen on the main road, far closer to Cuan than they’ve ever been.”

“I heard about a nest at Kryss’ dig but didn’t know it was that bad.”

“Lord Amethyst has had trouble hiring security even, which worked in our favor. He’s very happy to have an ettin slayer on the grounds if something happens.”

Wayne narrowed his eyes.

“The entire city knows about that shitshow of a caravan. Might as well get something good out of it.”

“Does he know I’m the Zero Hero?”

“Absolutely.”

Wayne sighed. “When do I meet Lord Amethyst?” he asked.

“Likely after the wedding. He’s a busy man.”

Wayne was happy to put off playing the part of sideshow attraction if he could. “What are our other options for hiring a few swords?”

“Open interviews. There’s a service at the docks that will hang a notice in every tavern in the city for a healthy fee. We post that we’re hiring, and we see what we get.”

“Seems we have no other choice.”

“Indeed.”

***

Ms. Galleia was tall with a stout frame. Unlike Miss Kryss, she wore pants and a blouse for her work attire, a style Wayne had seen on many of the merchants going to and fro Cuan by boat. She was polite but to the point, showing none of the playfulness Wayne had seen in Kryss.

Which was fine with Wayne. He didn’t need to hit on every woman he met.

Her office was in the Swiftwood warehouse and up a flight of stairs, giving her a view of the constant movement happening on the workfloor below.

“You likely can’t find proper help because we’ve hired it all,” Galleia said from behind her desk. “We’ve got every mercenary we could find protecting the camp from ratmen. None left to do anything else.”

“Sounds costly,” Fergus observed.

Galleia grunted a knowing chuckle. “I’ve asked my Lady to abandon this project, but she is unconcerned about the outrageous expense, as evident by your appearance here in my office.”

“How much were you able to accomplish before it got bad?” Fergus asked.

“We uncovered a door, and out came the rats. We haven’t explored any farther than that.”

“The job is still appealing,” Wayne said, “but I’m not sure what we could accomplish under these circumstances. Ratmen are manageable. The numbers we’re talking about, though… The math is what it is at a certain point.”

Galleia said she understood.

“While we look for help, can you tell us anything else about the site?”

“Dwarven for certain. We found the location by cross-referencing a few trade records we uncovered. We’ve tried that a few times, and this is the first one that worked out. Beyond that? Nothing else. Without going in, we can’t learn anything.”

“Fair. That makes compensation tough to discuss, though.”

Galleia disagreed. “We can offer a per square meter rate and a per monster rate in addition to the magic item clause already in your agreement–you get first pick of any equipable magic items and a prorated price for any others.”

“Suppose we need to get to hiring,” Fergus said after reading the contract.

***

Wayne hated conducting interviews on Earth.

Assessing a person from a few conversations always felt unfair to both parties. Candidates were understandably nervous, and frankly, so was he–No matter how many sixty eight point personality assessments the recruiting consultants shoved down his throat. An interview format was a far cry from what real working communication would be like.

Interviewing adventurers was just as awful.

In RPG terms, Wayne wanted to hire a tank, a healer, and a rogue. If they could find two tanks, even better.

Bumbling into meeting Gus, Artie, and Dekar skewed his expectations for dungeon delving talent. No candidate in Cuan had dungeon experience. No professional hunters like Gus applied either. Many applicants had little to no formal training yet had field experience, and most of that field experience came from crime.

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Who ended up being their final pick for tank sat down across from Wayne and Fergus in a tavern. His head was shaved and his goatee was long. He had the physique of an amateur strongman, clearly built for power but also not jacked to action figure proportions. He was missing a front tooth, and his voice naturally sounded like the exaggerated tough guy voice Wayne heard in cartoons on Earth.

Fergus asked the man his name.

“Hector.”

“Tell us about your background.”

“Bouncer and private security mostly,” Hector said. “I pick up extra work doing crowd control for events.”

“How about dungeon and combat experience?”

“Been in prison, but that's not the kind of dungeon you mean. I've never been in one of those. Combat experience is mostly street fights.”

Fergus asked about weapons training, like a sword and a shield.

“Nothing like that.”

“What makes you want to start dungeon diving?” Wayne asked. “Seems like a big career change.”

“If I keep doing what I'm doing, there's no moving up. If I stayed here ten more years, I'd be exactly where I am now, just older.”

Wayne could respect that. “Have to ask: Why were you in prison?”

“Bar fight. I didn't start it but I ended it. Wasn't trying to, but I did.”

“Our first job is diving into a ratman nest. Are you comfortable with that with your experience level?”

Hector nodded. “I'll learn. And I know I'm following someone who can carry themselves.”

Wayne asked him what he meant.

“Heard about what you did to trolls and ettins on the road. I like the idea of having to keep up with you.”

Hector wasn't the sword and board expert they envisioned, but he was big, strong, and motivated. Wayne had an idea for how to make it work. He told Hector to meet at the Cuan Fighters’ Guild in the morning. Hector agreed and shook the scholars’ hands.

Their second recruit was Armond, a forty nine year-old retired soldier. He was of average size and looked his age while retaining a visibly athletic build, one that reminded Wayne of a movie drill sergeant. His hair had a few strands of gray and so did his mustache.

Armond hadn't crawled a dungeon before, but had plenty of training and seen his share of battles. Most importantly, he was a medic. In this world, medics knew fundamental healing spells in addition to stitching wounds and setting broken bones.

Armond couldn't reattach an arm or resurrect the dead, but he could stop serious bleeds, close most wounds, cure poisons, and reverse petrification.

When Wayne asked Armond why he wanted the job, he said, “I know I'm probably the oldest guy to sit before you today, but I'm a trained soldier and seen the shit. I was never much for leadership, so I've always been a grunt. That got me the boot. Where others moved into command, I wanted to stay at the front, but the young ones always got faster and faster.”

Armond was discharged for not being able to keep up with his unit during drills. He insisted it wasn't for lack of endurance or combat ability, but he wasn't able to hold a formation if it meant sustaining a run with thirty men younger than him setting the pace.

“The way I figure it,” Armond argued, “we won't be traveling like that in a dungeon. You need a reliable sword and someone to keep your people alive. That's me.”

Wayne felt for the guy. He took a few years of boxing in his late 30s, so he knew the feeling Armond talked about. His gas tank wasn't what it was in his 20s, and he couldn't run drills at the speed of the guys who were, yet he still felt perfectly capable in sparring if experience levels were even.

He could do the same work, he just had to do it in a way that fit his body.

Armond was hired. Wayne told him to meet at the Fighters’ Guild in the morning.

Their final hire was a contentious one. Fergus was in favor but Wayne was not, initially.

The rogue Wayne pictured could be one of two fantasy stereotypes: the stealth expert with dark clothes and an even darker backstory, but he waits ten years to reveal it because he’s never learned to trust before.

Or the fast-talking halfling with a tendency to yell and overact but always comes through in the end, succeeding because of his small stature instead of in spite of it. Halflings weren’t in this world, but he also thought of halfling as a personality as much as he thought of it as a race.

Margo was neither of those. She looked like a perfectly average soccer mom from Earth done up in fantasy peasant garb. She wouldn’t have been the mom who led the booster club but rather the mom who did all of the actual work.

Margo and her husband ran a locksmithing business, doing in this world what locksmiths did on Earth. They picked locks when keys got lost, they replaced locking mechanisms on doors, and they cracked the occasional safe, usually the inheritance of a noble who was never told the combination.

They made enough to get by, but their shop and apartment burned down one night. Margo was visiting a friend in Asplugha. Her husband, however, was inside, and he didn’t get out.

Leaving Margo with the pieces of her life and a stack of debts.

“Sure, a dungeon is a scary place to be,” she said. “I won’t deny that, but I’ve lived through bandit and goblin attacks. When our shop got broken into, I chased the robber off myself. When my husband passed, I went to every person he owed money and negotiated how I’d pay them back. These were not the nicest people. I can learn to be in a dungeon.”

“How do you feel about combat?” Wayne asked.

“I can learn.” When she saw the skepticism on Wayne’s face, she leaned forward. “You need me because I’ve worked on any kind of lock you can think of and plenty you haven’t. That includes old ones, the kind that are only on antiques or found in ruins. If you give me a chance, I won’t let you down.”

Wayne asked her why she wanted the job.

“I want a new life, and I need to get out of Cuan to have it. This job gives me both.”

Talking privately, Wayne expressed his concerns about her safety, but Fergus argued if they were willing to hire Hector because he had experience standing in doorways, they should give Margo the same opportunity. Confirming her background would be easy enough. If she was indeed a lady locksmith, that was a huge get in Fergus’ mind.

That meant she was a mature adult, capable of handling responsibility. She was an expert in the thing they needed her for, and that expertise came from a trade rather than a life of mischief. To Fergus, he’d rather worry about someone like Margo when everyone was awake instead of worrying what the party rogue would do when everyone was asleep.

Wayne accepted Fergus’ argument and told Margo what he told Hector and Armond: Be at the Fighters’ Guild in the morning.

With that, they hired the bouncer who never held a shield to be their tank. They hired a soldier who had to retire because he couldn’t keep up to be the healer. And they hired a locksmith with no dungeon or combat experience to be their rogue.

So much for departing Rivendell with the world’s top tier heroes.

***

Hector, Armond, and Margo were waiting at the Fighters’ Guild when Wayne and Fergus arrived. None of them spoke to the others. Wayne realized he would need to build camaraderie for this to work. Corporate retreats and trust falls and Pizza Fridays sprang to Wayne’s mind. He shivered and pushed the memories out of his head.

“Good morning, everyone,” Wayne said. “I’ve signed you all up for training. That includes a bed in the guild dorms and three meals a day in their cafeteria. After a week, we’ll execute contracts and move you into party quarters. Your own room, access to a tub. The whole package.”

Hector raised his hand.

“We’re covering all the training expenses. You aren’t restricted to the Fighters’ Guild or anything like that while you’re here. Use your off time however you want, but I’ll pick up the cafeteria bill, not your bar tab.”

Hector lowered his hand.

“Any other questions?”

“What if we don’t have equipment?” Margo asked.

“Covered.”

Armond raised his hand. “All due respect, sir, but this training might be redundant for me.”

Wayne smiled. “Since you’re an experienced soldier, you’ll be focusing on learning party tactics and leading during battle. Unlike a military unit, you’ll be plenty close to the action while you’re doing that. I’ll be fighting with all of you as well, but I won’t be with the party all the time. We need someone who is.”

Armond nodded and stood a little more proudly.

“Alright. Best of luck everyone.”

Hector, Armond, and Margo entered the main door of the Fighters’ Guild while Wayne and Fergus stood outside, watching.

“Fergus,” Wayne said.

“What?”

“You’re training too.”

“What?!”

“You want to go into dungeons. You can’t be helpless if you do.”

Fergus looked Wayne in the eyes with pointed seriousness. “Fine. But I’m not sleeping in a damn dorm.”