Boots galloped down the dirt road, tongue lolling and tail wagging. He was going to see his friend! The chicken man was kind and always had good words and pats. Best of all, Arthur never yelled when Boots brought him presents. Yesterday, he pulled a weird ball out of the ground that was red on the top, and white on the bottom, and really hard, but his friend seemed really happy about it and called it a turnip.

  The puppy bounded away from the cottage and across the meadow toward Arthur's farm. He needed the perfect gift. Something special. Something Arthur would really like. No turnip this time. They tasted funny.

  The melon patch caught his eye—round, green things that smelled sweet and earthy. They were less fun to get since he didn't have to dig to get them out, but the green vines that tied them together took some time to chew through. Boots dug his paws into the soil, sending dirt flying as he struggled to snap the dastardly vine that denied him his prize. It rolled free, and Boots grabbed it carefully in his jaws. He'd learned not to bite too hard after he'd accidentally crushed three tomatoes last week.

  Arthur stood in his doorway, watching the hellhound puppy approach with a melon nearly as big as the dog's head. The old man's weathered face crinkled into a smile.

  "Good morning, Boots. What have you brought me today?"

  Boots dropped the melon at Arthur's feet and sat, tail sweeping back and forth across the ground. Wisps of smoke curled up where his tail dragged through the dirt.

  Arthur bent down and scratched behind Boots' ears. "Thank you for the gift. Very thoughtful of you." He picked up the melon, examining it with practiced eyes. "Fine specimen too. Perfectly ripe. I think you've got a future as a gardener."

  Boots' tail wagged harder. He was a good boy! He had a future as a gardener! He'd brought the best present!

  Arthur's gaze drifted to the smoldering patches on the ground where Boots' tail had been. He crouched lower, studying the puppy more carefully. His fingers found the russet-colored paws—warm, almost hot to the touch. When Boots panted happily, tiny wisps of smoke escaped his nostrils.

  "You're not exactly a regular dog, are you?" Arthur murmured, more to himself than the puppy. "Interesting."

  Boots tilted his head, confused. Of course he wasn’t a regular dog. He was a good dog. A very good dog. The best dog. He gave a dog-bow and yelped once.

  Arthur chuckled and gave him one more scratch. "Of course you're a good boy, and I'd have absolutely no reason to suspect that you're a hellhound if I didn't know the signs. Come on, let's get you some water before you set my porch on fire."

  * * *

  "What is that dog doing?"

  Pemberton looked over his glasses at Chuck. "Boots? What is he doing?"

  "Can you not hear him?"

  "Of course I can hear him."

  "He's barking like crazy."

  "I hadn't noticed."

  "How could you not have noticed?"

  "This, Sir, is the best workplace I've ever had. Only one teammate making noise most of the time, only one teammate eager to sleep with the boss, zero teammates trying to literally stick a knife in my back, zero teammates trying to steal from your paychest—limited as it is, and a boss that lets me do everything correctly and doesn't try to get me to cook the books in stupid ways."

  Pemberton's gaze lingered over the top of his glasses for a moment before moving back to the hastily sketched map of the village that covered the small kitchen table. "I don't even notice the pup, not even when he's barking at the old man walking towards our front gate."

  I looked askance at Pemberton and decided against asking more questions. Instead, I got up and headed to the front door. I swung it open just as Arthur's foot landed on the porch, Boots bounding happily at his heels.

  "Let me guess," he said with a smile. "You've got a spider-sense ability, right?"

  "No, I've got a ferocious guard dog that warns me when people he likes come up the street. What brings you by today? What's that you're holding?"

  Arthur held out a melon that was covered with teeth marks and dog slobber. I regret to inform you that your dog has massacred one of my melons, and I've come for restitution. This is a grave matter."

  I had demons about to kick in my door, and I was dealing with an old man and a melon. It took serious effort not punch him in the face and tell him to piss off. Less than usual, because I knew from experience that throwing punches while nursing a cracked rib did not feel particularly good. I'm sure my opinion was writ large on my face.

  "And what do you propose?"

  "Well," he smiled at me. I hate it when they smile at me right before they turn the screws. "It so happens that I have this bottle of whiskey in my bag, and I was thinking that if you provide the cigars and I provide the whiskey, we can forget about the whole thing." His face was as placid as a Hindu cow's.

  I couldn't help laughing. "Damn you, you got me." I clutched my ribs and winced.

  "Hey, are you hurt?" He stepped forward, concerned.

  "Yeah, cracked a rib the other night. It's a real pain in the ass."

  "You don't have a healer in your group?"

  "Don't get me started on that."

  "How long do you have before the attack comes?"

  "Two or three days."

  Arthur winced in sympathy. "I hope you like pain when you fight."

  "Not particularly."

  "Well, get a couple of glasses and some smokes and let's have us a little chat. sound good?"

  "I'm kinda planning a battle here…"

  "You're going to stopper them up on the bridge so they can't all get to you at once. Your weak fighters will guard your flanks as you position yourself front and center. Hopefully, you'll be smart enough to retreat before any of you get killed. There. Planning done. Get the glasses."

  I stood there blinking for a moment as he had summed up in thirty seconds what it had taken hours for Pemberton and me to come up with. We didn't have to worry about getting flanked, since demons apparently can't cross running water, but yeah. Stopping them on the bridge and hoping for the best was the essence of the plan.

  "Uh, yeah. Glasses. You'll have to come back for the cigar, though. They're my… they're my employee's, and I don't steal from my people."

  "Fair enough. Scoot."

  When I came back, he was seated in the rocking chair, looking like he belonged there, Tengen lying in his lap getting her chin scratched. I wondered if I'd ever be old enough to look like that. I handed him a cup, and he handed it back with a generous pour. Gods! It was awful stuff. I took a second sip.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  "Terrible, eh?" He laughed. "And yet that's the best in the region. Turned me into an ale man, it did." The humor drained from his face. "Sometimes when the night gets long and I think about the friends I lost in my adventuring days, it helps me get through the night. Hasn't happened once since you got to town, though. Having a paladin in the area and all must have a calming effect on me."

  More likely, a certain palomino had been prancing through his dreams, but I chose to keep that to myself. "I don't know anything about being a paladin, and I barely understand what this world is about. I’ve been a bit too busy to be introspective." That was mostly true. Introspection wasn’t really my thing.

  "Still trying to rationalize things, eh? Well, give it up. This is your new reality, and you've got to live with it. Tell me, did you ever play fantasy computer games? Were you a fan of fantasy novels? Did you die in our world before you woke up here?"

  "No." I didn't want to have this conversation. It felt like I was giving away a valuable secret, but I didn't understand which part of it was valuable. I did some mental arithmetic and decided to share, but limit the information. "I wasn't into any of that stuff. I watched a pirated copy of Lord of the Kings but got bored by it."

  "Rings, not kings, but it doesn't matter. It's odd that you weren't. All the transplants I've met before were all big fantasy nerds. They slid into life here as if it were the life they'd always wanted to live. Are you sure you didn't play MMOs back in the 'real world'?" He put air quotes on the phrase 'real world'.

  "I didn't own a computer, and I don't know what an MMO is. If you keep important information in your head, nobody can steal it from you."

  "Interesting. I wrote the first MMO in my dorm room in 1982. My college roommate was jealous of it and strangled me with his bare hands because I wouldn't let him have a programmer credit. The next thing I knew, I woke up in this world. No transition, just boom! Naked as a jaybird and sitting in a field.

  "All the other transplants I’ve met big into massively multiplayer online games, aka MMOs, before they died and ended up here. Interestingly, we're peppered throughout the history of this world. I've met people who died after me who had grown old before I arrived. No, it makes no sense. Don't spend much time trying to figure it out.

  "I can't tell you that this one is any less real than the one we came from. The pain feels real. The joy feels real. The grief and the love are definitely real." He looked up with fire in his eyes. "Take this seriously. Treat it like your very soul depends on it, because it may well. I've been here for longer than I was there and I can't tell you that this isn't the actual 'real world'."

  I didn't know how to respond to that, as it hit very close to the mark. "My rib agrees with you."

  "Good." He downed his drink in one shot and winced, then refilled his cup. "So let me tell you what I know. It ain't much, but maybe it'll help you. I'm a transplant, and so are you. We are rare. Very rare. I've probably met fewer than fifty of us in as many years. We have a tendency to be do-gooders, trying to be beacons of light and hope. I knew one guy who became a healer, recovered a magical relic, and, with it, founded a temple to share his healing freely with the rich and the poor. He'd been a plumber before he came here.

  “One was a sorceress, who was so quick with her spells that you couldn't even see her hands move, but never went far in her knowledge of magic because she hated studying books. Great for support in combat, terrible at anything requiring thinking. She'd been a hairdresser. It doesn't matter what you used to be; it matters what you work towards being."

  "You said a tendency to be do-gooders."

  "Yes, you're right. I said more than I intended to. I met a witch who was evil to her very core. She was completely bitter and self-absorbed and oozed her poison out into any community she visited. I had to hunt her down and destroy her in the end. It needed to be done, as she became irredeemably evil. She absolutely belonged to the Demon King body and soul in the end." His eyes looked right through me at something on the horizon.

  "She started wonderful and fair, but in the end, she was drinking the blood of newborns to maintain her youth. She brought down a kingdom by taking the king's sole heir, having decided that royal blood was what she really needed. The echoes of that disaster are still unfolding to this day. I failed to stop her in time."

  The silence stretched until he was ready to resume. "The important thing is that we transplants can have an outsized impact here. This world will move on around us as if we aren't there unless we decide to put our finger on the scale. When we do, we can create wonderful things or tremendous suffering. I couldn't shoulder the responsibility, which is why I quit early and came to where civilization peters out to pass my days farming.

  "I was informed that I'm a paladin. Is that good?"

  He laughed a humorless laugh. "No, that's not. It means you're a holy warrior, which grants you a hotline to the Light, but it also means your methods are limited. You can't sneak into an evil noble's castle and assassinate his family during the night to end his rule. You have to defeat him in the light of day. And right now you're weak. You could probably take on a half dozen villagers, but a dozen would pull you down. What's interesting is the paladin part. Should you fail years from now, having gained in power and experience, the mantle that's been bestowed upon you could be stripped away, leaving you no stronger than you are today. You could go from dragon slayer to goblin slayer overnight.

  "You're different, though. I've met a few paladins, and they're always blathering on about their mission for the Light, and fighting the Demon King, blah de blah blah blah. Insufferable. You, on the other hand, hit me more like a guy who works on his car in his garage after work. Totally out of character for a paladin. You're the first transplant paladin I've met, though. Yet you were clearly called, or you wouldn't be one. What's the story there? Were you a priest before being transplanted?"

  I laughed. "I was no priest, I assure you. I was a motorcycle mechanic." No, sir, you cannot have that secret yet.

  "Hmmm. Well, keep your secrets. When you're ready to share I'll still be here, I hope. I don't need to know, I'm just curious. As I said earlier, I was an undergrad studying computer programming over there, and here I became a fighter. Nothing special. Not enough passion to be a warrior, not enough discipline to be a soldier, not enough interest to learn any fancy weapons. When I aged out of that, I spent some time running diplomatic messages around. Messengers that are hard to kill are worth a premium.

  "What you need to understand is that, even considering our relative ages and physical condition, I could probably still beat you stupid since there's more power in this body than yours. If I'd kept up my life as a man-at-arms I could give a small dragon a hard time today, but as it stands, I'd have some trouble with your band, even considering the interesting characters you've collected here." He looked at me pointedly.

  "What do you mean?"

  "How many paladins do you think have a hellhound as a pet?"

  He knew. How much he knew was the question. I hid my discomfort by finishing my whiskey. When I opened my eyes after wincing, he was holding the bottle out to refill me. I accepted.

  "Chuck, I don't know what you're up to here. I don't know why, but when I look at your house, I get the same feeling I'd get before descending into an ancient, cursed tomb. I know your elf girl's pony is a monster of some kind, I know your hellhound is one of the nicest dogs I've ever met, and I know that Father Yaqub is sure that you are, in fact, a paladin of the Light. Nothing in this picture makes any sense, but I don't give a rat’s ass about what I don't understand in this case, because I believe that you are here to help Thornwell. I'm going to help you if I can."

  He hadn't read me like a book, but he was sure getting a grasp of the situation faster than I'd hoped. "How so?"

  "In order to succeed in this world, you can't go it alone. Solos get killed fast. Now you've already got a team to help you out, which is interesting in and of itself, but you've only got one other brawler on your team, unless this statue,” he pointed at Krag, “is a bona fide gargoyle, in which case you have two. I'm the captain of the militia in this village. I can't call them up preemptively but when the time comes, I will call for them, and they’ll respond. They're no match for tough fighters, but they'll at least put up some resistance if someone or something threatens their families and homes."

  "I don't want to put them in danger. These are demons attacking, not girl scouts. I don't want to have to live with the consequences if they're killed."

  "You see, paladin-like behavior." He smiled, and I scowled. "Like it or not, it's the way the world works for us. If you want to do good in this world, you need to gather allies and companions, quest for relics and treasure, and defeat the obstacles that are put in your way. Only through that can you achieve whatever your purpose is. Thankfully, just like the other world, there's almost always a solution that doesn't involve killing."

  I thought back to the healer Arthur had told me about, and how he must have achieved his purpose. I couldn't see how the sorceress had done so, and he'd personally seen to the end of the witch. "Arthur, what do you think you were supposed to accomplish by coming here?"

  "That's the question, isn't it? Life doesn't just spell it out for us—we have to figure it out as we go. I think I was destined to become a famous warrior, to found an academy to teach combat arts, and to create the army that King Urquhart would use to pacify the north. That all became moot when his son was killed, and I lost the motivation to keep moving forward, so here I am. A sixty-something farmer."

  I hate awkward pauses. My best way to end them is to throw a fist and start a fight, but that didn't seem appropriate here. Luckily, Arthur saved me from having to come up with something else.

  "I think I'll be going." He gently let Tengen down on the porch, where she rubbed once against his leg before disappearing inside. He clasped my shoulder, on the side opposite my damaged rib. "Stop by the house later. I hear that you're going to need something to replace the chest plate on your armor. I haven't worn mine in years, so it might be a bit rusty, but it'll hold up. I wouldn't want you to face the enemy all exposed."

  I've been hanging out with demons for the past week, so I should have recognized the mischievous look in his eye. The old bastard gave me a titty-twister on his way out!

  "Oh," he called over his shoulder as I rubbed my offended nipple, laughing at the juvenile prank. "You can keep the melon."

  If I lived through the next few days, we would be good friends.