It was about this time last year. A cloud of ash had blown in from the west and brought an early snow, blanketed the Adderhorn in gray and white. Despite the cold, our raid fared well. We had setup tents down to the bottom of the hill, along the road that brokered the dungeon ruins. The day before the anticipated break, we even had a party.
Consider it a celebration of sorts. Some villagers and even old-man Lowether showed up, and he brought important meat and ales for a feast. They gave us their thanks, their well-wishes, and their encouragement. They offered us gifts, and even prayed with us for success. Come sundown, they went on their way down the mountain, but the party continued into the night.
It was dark and the moon was full. I had sat on a roof top with my legs dangled off the side, watching Khelero carouse with newbies by a firepit. I wasn’t pleased about it, but I didn’t object. I guess Fiona noticed because she climbed to the roof and sat beside me.
“Did you want a drink?” she asked. There was a lidded tin mug in her hand and she smelled like alcohol. I shook my head.
Fiona shrugged at me. “Are you alright with this?” she asked.
“No,” I said, “but it’s not that I don’t understand why, it’s just….”
“The bronze ones,” she said and pointed them out with her finger. “It’s their first dungeon raid.”
“It sets a bad example,” I said.
She chuckled.
I frowned at her. “Is something wrong?”
“Examples only matter if we live to learn from them,” she said.
“The odds of our raid surviving would be better if Khelero wasn’t drinking.”
“I’m drinking,” Fiona said.
“You shouldn’t be.”
“You should be,” she said.
“I haven’t finished drawing up our plans,” I said. “Every strategy has to be considered in case of a dungeon mutation; our plans of attack and retreat.”
“There won’t be a retreat,” Fiona said.
I stared at her and she stared twice as hard through me. Her small, blue eyes bored a hole through my head. “Liz and Leo agree with me, and I agree with Khel,” she said. “So, if you’re thinking of retreats, then you’re just planning for your own escape.”
“It’s not about us,” I said. “What about the bronze and silver ranks?”
“And what about the island?” she asked and took a sip from her mug.
I pursed my lips.
“That’s right,” she said. “We either win or we die, Mad. All of us.”
I watched Khelero again. He was still down in the camp, clinking mugs and singing songs. Wherever there was a sigh or a cold stare, he seemed to appear with an anecdote and a mug of ale. That night, his word was as good as the guildmaster’s.
“We’ll make it through this,” he would say. “Just do as the Instructor says, and you’ll have your own stories to tell.”
That was my nickname among the bronze ranks: Instructor. You see, Adheim was a frontier settlement, but its dungeon qualified it for guild involvement. It was too small for a real boss, understand? When the last party of gold ranks was reassigned, we were moved in. We were officers of the guild, its local leaders, and instructors, since the guild liked to send recruits to a dungeon they considered ‘low risk.’
I took my job a little more seriously than the others. As far as leading the party, Khelero was what we’d call a Face. Ostensibly, the Face decided where we went and what we fought, because they were good with people. The reality was I was consulted for those decisions, and when it came to combat, I decided what our tactics were. Instruction came naturally to me, and the bronze ranks were quick on the uptake.
Fiona slipped a paper into my lap. “Happy birthday, by the way,” she said. “I know Khelero got you a knife and Liz and Leo got you that ridiculous backpack, but I thought I’d get something a little different.”
“A photo?” I asked.
Fiona sipped from her mug. “You know we don’t think of you as… some sort of camp serf, right?” she said.
I cracked a small smile. “Camp serf?” I asked.
She scratched her head and sighed hard. “You’re so damn hard to get gifts for!” she shouted. “You’re too practical. Everything has to have some sort of use. So, Khel got you a new knife, because why not, right? You do most of the cooking anyway, and you’d been wanting one. And then Liz was thinking you’re pretty much our quartermaster, but you don’t have a backpack big enough for everything you need, so she pulled Leo into getting you a bigger backpack. I mean, that stuff is nice but—”
Fiona was easily wound up, especially when she was tipsy. I knew an interruption was necessary to keep her on her train of thought.
“Thanks for the gift, Fiona,” I said.
“I wanted to get you something that wasn’t just… something you’d use to make our lives easier,” she said.
“So, you settled on a photograph?” I asked.
She nodded as she pouted over her mug and dangled her feet. “I know this isn’t what you wanted,” she said. “This raid. But, every time we vote, even if you don’t get your way—even if you feel so strongly that we should do another thing—you still come with us.”
“We’re a party,” I said.
“It’s been two decades, and you still say that,” she said. There was a small smile on her face. “Families don’t stick as well as we do. That’s why I thought a photo would be nice, right now.”
I blinked at Fiona. I remember there was a thought on my mind, but I saw she had more she wanted to say.
“So, you remember that we’re a party of five,” she said. “That we’ve always included you.”
“And if something should happen,” she said more quietly. “My feelings can still be expressed.”
I had a good sense of danger. When something was amiss, I’d pick up on it right away. That quality made me a good tactician and teacher, but the reason I wasn’t the Face, was because I wasn’t good with people. I could tell something was wrong, but I couldn’t say a word.
“Well,” Fiona said, “I’m going to see how everyone’s holding up.”
She flashed a smile and hopped down the side of the building. Her mug remained on the ledge of the roof.
I sometimes wonder, if I was just a little wiser, could I have understood what she was telling me? If I had known, could I have avoided those moments I would regret, or would they have become more painful? There was a curtain over my eyes. I kept plans of battle in my mind, anticipated our actions, and our sacrifices, but I was one step behind her.
Late that night, I found Khelero in the raid pavilion. It was a large tent with a table in the middle. Its black surface was carved in a grid and pieces, like tokens of ourselves, were arranged in a formation. Most everyone was asleep, but he had stayed up to plot on his own.
“You should rest,” I said to him as I brushed aside the entry flap.
“I’ll be the main tank,” Khelero said, his arms folded on the table. He was crouched down for an eye-level look at his mock battlefield. “Cassius, the Silver Rank from Party Three, will be my off tank. After five attacks, he’ll take aggro so my armor cools off.”
These terms were the sorts of brief exchanges party leaders had before a raid. A tank was an adventurer that gathered the ‘aggro’ of the party’s opponent. While the opponent focused on the tank’s high defense, the party DPS would destroy it. Raids were more complicated than that, because the dungeon ruler didn’t always follow the script. Like an actor improvising their role, they would always act a little unexpected.
“That’s the plan,” I said.
“But we’re missing a second gold rank party,” he said.
“I’ve accounted for the DPS loss.”
“Even so,” he said and stood to face me. “This battle will rely on our durability, and Cassius is just Silver Rank, so it falls on me.”
That was how Khelero was. He walked around the table and stared straight in my eyes, his black pupils like solid, quiver-less beads. He had been drinking all night, but the alcohol had already worn off. It didn’t affect the martial classes nearly as hard as it did the spellcasters. If it was the night before a battle, we’d meet by the candlelight when Fiona, Leo, and Elizabeth were sound asleep. That time, the entire raid slept soundly on a good meal, and we exchanged our looks in the dark, because we had to see plainly.
“Optimistically,” I said, “I’m expecting a minimum of four losses.”
“I’m thinking the same,” he said and turned to the table.
“You’re one of them,” I said.
Khelero nodded. He leaned over the table, and I saw how he wore his brown suspenders and spotless white shirt. It was Barusian attire, something that came from the region now known as the North Territory Administration: NTEA, or simply, the North Territory. Khelero was once a noble scion, you see, but the Atilonians overran his country. He went to the guild for survival. Many did the same.
I hope you don’t think that because Khelero was our charismatic face that he was an idiot, or somehow prone to childish fantasies. It may have been a fantasy that brought us to that dungeon raid, but whenever he was afraid, he would change into clothes from the old Baru homeland. He thought they were lucky. It meant he was serious.
“What do you have in mind?” Khelero asked me.
I stepped up beside him. “Elizabeth from Gold Group One, Samantha from Silver Group Three, and Diego from Bronze Group Two, will handle healing. We will have ten DPS total, with the tank from Bronze One wielding a zweihander for the duration. I don’t expect his aggro to be an issue.”
“So long as he’s not using a shield,” Khelero remarked. “Go on.”
“Fiona, Leo, and I from Gold Group One will be the backbone of our DPS,” I continued, pointing at the back line of token characters. “Between Fiona’s arrows, Leo’s fire, and my own magic, I expect we can reduce the dungeon ruler’s stamina by a quarter to one third in less than a minute.”
“We have three minutes at most,” Khelero said. “I think we’ll get one quarter stamina out of parties two and three combined.”
I nodded. “That’s what I’m thinking.”
“So, we’re short.”
“Leo and I have a few tricks,” I said. “But this fight will be down to you, as you said. The rest is up to the gods.”
“Gods,” Khelero scoffed. “Gods have never helped us before.”
That was true. He meant to say we weren’t lucky.
“We’re in this mess because of my big mouth,” Khelero said. “Isn’t that what you’re thinking? I know I’m responsible, that’s why I’m not complaining. If I die, I die.”
My throat felt dry hearing that.
“I’m complaining,” I said.
Khelero straightened out. He was a lean, but muscular man and just as tall as I. He cut an excellent figure and his short, slick-back hair made him look just as noble as his birthright. “You have no right to,” he said.
I frowned and said nothing.
“I might have started this,” Khelero said. “But when I asked you to make a case for the raid, you ended up convincing everyone else as well.”
“I just presented the facts as they were,” I said.
“Don’t lie to me now,” he said.
What had I wanted? I think about that often, even now. About half the island had been evacuated at the time, because the guild had officially pulled support for stopping the dungeon break. That still left thousands of villagers that would be killed if the dungeon ruler escaped its lair. Khelero had the idea that we fight anyway, even if we didn’t have strategic support or a full raid. When it came down to a vote, it was four against one.
I wanted to leave. The facts, as I saw them, were that we would die and the islanders would be exterminated anyway. I thought our time would be better spent evacuating who we could and hopping on the last ferry off Adheim. Losses were inevitable in an adventurer’s life, and the best of us knew when to cut and run. I wanted to run, obviously.
Khelero wanted to save the island. Not because he wanted to be a hero, I think. It’s strange, but I’d known him for so long, and I am still not sure what his motivation was. He said it was the right thing to do, over and over. He was adamant, especially under the pavilion. The news he would die elicited no reaction, but a nod.
“You want to save them, don’t you?” he asked with those steady eyes of his. “So, don’t lie now. If this is our last chance to be fair, let’s say things as they are.”
“I don’t want you to die,” I said.
It was my conundrum, my puzzle cube. As the tactician, I was responsible for plotting the best course for success. If casualties were impossible to avoid, I had to find the solution with the fewest possible losses. And yet, even though this plan had been in my mind for a month, I had rejected it. I had searched for every alternative. I had denied what I knew was true.
Looking back, maybe I denied it for the same reason my presentation was so convincing to the Silver and Bronze ranks. I put an optimistic spin on Khelero’s ludicrous ambition, and it earned him the confidence of men and women I had taught—trained—from their first days on Adheim. I knew I was condemning them to a pointless death in a terrible place, but I felt I should continue with the lie.
What did I really believe? Did I want to protect the islanders on Adheim, like Khelero? Or was it the memory of my flight from the Khetarra that confused me?
Khelero set his big hands on my shoulders. “I know the kids joke about you,” he said. “Mr. Never Smile. The Instructor that rides their ass over the smallest things. But I know you care about everybody. I know you want the best for the islanders and your family. Let me do my job. This is my responsibility.”
I remember crying. We were adults, all of us. We were warriors, who had faced danger many times before. I thought I had hardened my heart the day I left the Echokhet. Khelero looked at me with a big smile and hugged me.
“I’m proud to call you my brother, Madilhero,” he said to me. “Tomorrow, I’ll be your pawn. Put your faith in me and save everyone you can.
“Don’t regret doing the right thing.”
