Dear Dad,

  I should have known better.

  Turns out the mayor is evil, and I know you don’t like the word, but he’s also a douche. A big one. Huge.

  I’ll tell you why I think he’s such a huge, giant douchebag. It’s cause he’s a kidnapper and a -lier- Liar.

  He let us stay in his castle place last night. Then he had all of us basically forced out of bed this morning so he could tell us he didn’t have enough guards (even though I counted like eight) and that he needed some adventurers to go out and kill some things in the forest.

  He then (nicely, meh) said that since he was forcing Reese, Zunair, and me to go out into the forest to kill the monsters, he’d give us some weapons. Still, since he didn’t trust all of us to go out and get the job done, he was going to keep the girls here, “safe” so we’d actually come back when the job was done.

  Jerk.

  So he gave us, like, clubs and swords and stuff and told us to get out there.

  And we didn’t even know what we were looking for! We were going out there completely blind, just hoping that we wouldn’t find anything and then say we did.

  But we did find stuff. I thought it was like puddles and stuff, and then they’d jump up and attack us!

  So here we were, running around in the woods, stabbing random what we thought were puddle monsters while looking for the real puddle monsters. We were never sure when we were right or not cause puddle monsters and puddles look pretty much the same, so it was all guessing.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Except for the purple one, that one was easy.

  But it was so dumb! Why couldn’t the guards have done it? Why put a bunch of random teens against something they def should have been able to deal with?

  Also, the stupid puddle monsters ate my clothes. My blue jeans were completely ruined, and my legs felt like they were super sunburned afterward. Reese said they were basically Jorts now. But I don’t want jorts. I want my pants back.

  The mayor, despite his douchebag status, welcomed us back, and thanked us for fighting the oozes, a dumb name for a dumb monster we had to fight cause of a dumb mayor, and then gave us clothes to replace the ruined stuff but said that the puddle monsters weren’t the only one we had to deal with and that he expected us up bright and early the next day to go back on the hunt.

  Then he let us have dinner with the girls. They’re all okay. They were just stuck sewing all day. Grace apparently jabbed herself with the needle a lot and complained about it, which was a nice break from having to listen to Zunair, and Reese complain about the puddle monsters with me.

  Riley and Willow were trying to come up with a way to escape and were telling us, but I guess the guards overheard them cause they separated us all and sent us to bed. A nice lady brought me more papers and some kind of ointment she called a salve that she said would help with the weird sunburn injuries I got from the puddle monsters on my legs.

  Her name is Altiva (?). She said she was named for the same flowers that the salve is made from. I told her I didn’t know what my name meant, and she told me that it was an uncommon name here. I asked her if she’d been tricked too, and she said that she wasn’t but that she’d been working here for longer than the mayor had been mayor, and she’d be working here long after he was mayor too. She also said she was sorry that we were tricked, but it wasn’t her fault, she wasn’t in charge, and she didn’t make him do it. When I told her that, she seemed a little surprised, but smiled at me and told me that if I needed anything, I should ask for her, then said goodnight.

  I’m sure not everyone here is like the mayor or the guy from the last village sending us on a wild goose chase, but it sucks that not everyone is like Altiva. I think this place and back home would be a lot cooler if there were more people like her.

  I wonder where the weird puddle monsters came from and what else could be out there that the mayor wants us to look for.

  Either way, it’s either slowing us down or not helping, and I want to be home.

  I miss you,

  Love, Jack