Gunner and Newton left, the big man leading the smaller to his shop up on the hill. I figured, hoped, they’d make some awesome toys for us to play with. And by toys I meant war machines.

  But toys would be cool too.

  Kat and I stayed behind in the meeting room. We could have moved to her office, but why bother. We were already sitting at a table. She opened her notebook, flipping to the right page.

  “So that gives us two guest spots quicker than planned,” she said. “I read the wording of your Oath with Newton. It was a good one and covers us.”

  “Good,” I said. “I have a good feeling about the guy but…”

  She looked at me, serious, pushing a strand of hair out of her face. I sat up. I knew when Kat was in serious-mode. This was one of those times.

  “How much trouble is this going to bring our way?”

  “Hard to say,” I replied, grabbing the last beer. It had gone a little warm, but still drinkable. “I think it depends on how important the two Guests connected with his Adventurer slot were to the Ring Fellowship.”

  “Ring Fellowship,” she said, shaking her head. “Halflings, Ring and Fellowship…”

  “Yeah,” I nodded. “I didn’t mention anything but had the same thought. More and more, there’s evidence that the multiverse seeped into our world before the System Integration.”

  “Too bad they got the reality wrong.”

  “Right?”

  A bunch of hairy footed, pipe-smoking, folk that just liked to laze around and eat second breakfasts would have been much better than what appeared to be a bunch of warmongering small a-holes with a fire fetish.

  But it was crazy how many of our myths and stories seemed to be influenced by other races out in the multiverse. The details were off, sometimes completely wrong, but so much did truly exist. Elves, dwarves, orcs, halflings. Monsters from myths like kelpies and treants. Direwolves. So much of it was real.

  And giant spiders. Of course the giant spiders had to be real.

  “If the guests are important…,” Kat prompted.

  I shrugged.

  “Could have another Faction pissed at us.”

  “That list keeps growing.”

  It was my turn to be serious.

  “What would you have me do?” I asked, leaning forward, my serious face on. “Just stand by and do nothing?”

  “No,” Kat said. “Of course not. You wouldn’t be you if you did,” she said, and smiled. “And we all love you for it. That attitude is what makes the Solace Fellowship so different from the other Clans on Earth, and apparently in the Multiverse. We may be small, relatively speaking, but we have power and we should use that power to stand up against the bullies and tyrants of the world and that includes the multiverse.”

  “Even if it brings heat down on us?”

  “Especially then,” Kat said, reaching out and placing a hand over mine. “You keep being you.”

  “Thanks.”

  She let go of my hand, running a finger down the notebook.

  “So does this change who we send over as Guests first?”

  “Yeah,” I sighed, finishing off the beer. “I wanted Sean and someone to run the burger stand, but I think we need to send some muscle for the shop. Not just someone to watch the shop but someone that knows what to watch for.”

  “Trevor isn’t Level 100 yet but could send him.”

  I shook my head.

  “No. We want him there fresh as a newbie Adventurer. Best use of his talents. Someone like Trevor though.”

  Kat started tapping her pencil against the notebook as she thought. I did the same, leaning back in the chair, arms behind my head. Someone that was tough, but not an Adventurer. Someone that knew the signs to watch out for and knew when to bust heads and when not to. There were a lot of people that fit some of the criteria but it was hard narrowing it down to someone that fit all of it.

  The name of the person came to me at the same time as Kat. I leaned forward, she stopped tapping the pencil, and we both said the name at the same time.

  “Mac.”

  ***

  I left Kat to have the fun conversation with Mac. He was not going to be happy. The old guy liked his role as Kat’s bodyguard. He’d have no problem with taking on responsibility for the store, which meant protecting Tammy more than anything, but he would have a problem leaving Kat unprotected. He’d insist on picking his replacement and whoever Mac picked, that poor soul would have to be twice as good as Mac ever was or Mac would not be happy, and an unhappy Mac would be hell on the poor replacement.

  And if that replacement had to be twice what Mac had been, poor Kat was going to have someone tagging along 24/7. She was not going to be happy.

  But she’d recommended Mac, just like I had. She knew he was the right person for the job.

  I wanted nothing to do with that conversation though.

  Instead I headed over to the Academy. Jack was in classes that afternoon. He loved when I dropped in. He really didn’t, it was embarrassing, which is why I tried to do it as often as I could.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  The Solace Adventurers Academy was in the southwestern part of the city, set outside the walls. It wasn’t in a dangerous part or anything like that, but there had been known to be a couple of accidents as students got a little out of hand. The main purpose was to provide training to those thirteen to sixteen that wanted to enter the Challenge Tutorial and become Adventurers.

  We, the leadership of the Solace Fellowship, didn’t like encouraging that path. It was dangerous and led to a life of non-stop fighting and risking of lives. So we didn’t encourage it. The Academy was strictly voluntary and the applicants were rigorously tested to make sure they would be as ready as we could possibly make them. The Academy was grueling. It was not easy. It was tough. And it was designed that way.

  People died in the Challenge Tutorial. They died in the normal Tutorial too, but not at the rate they did in the Challenge. We wanted to make sure these kids knew exactly what they were getting into. We tried to talk them out of it, to make them want to quit.

  The Academy had a high drop-out rate, and we were proud of that.

  Parents still complained, and I understood the complaints. Jack was going to enter the Challenge Tutorial in a year and I was worried. I’d been. I knew what special level of hell it was. I didn’t want him going, but I also knew I couldn’t tell him not to. So yeah, I understood the parents complaints but there was nothing I could do.

  I could shut down the Academy, sure, but that would just send those kids into the Tutorial unprepared. More would die. This way, we could train them and send them as prepared as we could make them. Every instructor in the Academy was an Adventurer. We rotated them in and out, bringing in guest speakers. Everyone there knew the hell that was the Challenge Tutorial. So they made sure the kids knew what hell awaited them.

  The campus was two small buildings on either side of a wide open yard. There was a stone wall that surrounded the whole place. Just one gate in, no guards. We’d caught some spies in the Academy before, which I’d found funny. What were they thinking they’d find out? We didn’t have any secret techniques. It was just about surviving, giving the kids a heads up on how to use different Essences they’d possibly get, what kind of monsters and best tactics to use. If someone wanted to spy on that and bring it back, great. Maybe it would save some of their people.

  I walked through the gate, seeing that the class was just finishing up. The kids were gathered in the middle, a big group of them, all listening to the instructors. It looked like the current teachers were Martin Bigelow and Jennifer Huntley. Both were around Level Eighty-Five last I’d checked. Part of the same team. Martin was the tank and Jen was the ranged DPS.

  I moved over to the side of the gate, not wanting to be noticed. My presence was usually pretty disruptive to the class as a whole. Which was the embarrassing part for Jack. For the most part, people forgot that he was my ward and essentially the future leader of the Solace Fellowship. I liked to keep it that way, but sometimes it was just fun to embarrass the kid.

  Wasn’t that the job of a big brother?

  The class broke up, dispersing. There were no dorms, so most of the kids ran to the classroom buildings to grab their stuff. I saw Jack and some girl talking with each other. He happened to look up, maybe sensing I was looking at him. Tracy and I had been working on his spatial awareness. People thought I was a monster. If I had my way, Jack was going to be ten times as strong as I was. He definitely saw me.

  Jack said something to the girl, who looked my way. She said something to Jack, taking his hand for a bit, before letting it go. She turned and jogged off to one of the buildings. I watched her for a bit, trying to figure out who she was. She joined a couple of other girls, who pulled her in close, all of them looking at Jack and then in my direction. Since I’d been spotted, I stepped out of the shadows and waved. Pretty much everyone knew who I was just by appearance alone.

  There weren’t to many baseball hat wearing folks in Solacetown.

  Jack jogged toward me, not bothering to get anything he’d brought with him. Kid had probably forgotten it all back home. He tended to do that.

  “Nick,” he said, getting close.

  “Jackie.”

  We fist bumped and turned, leaving the school.

  “So who was that?” I asked.

  “Who?” Jack said. “How long are you back in town for?”

  Trying to change the conversation. The kid didn’t want to talk about the girl. So of course I was going to ask.

  “Whose the girl? Don’t make me go and ask Martin.”

  Jack sighed.

  “That’s Jill. Jill Overton.”

  I didn’t recognize the name. Of course I’d ask Kat. Jack was smart but he was naive in some ways. When he’d been younger, his position and who I was, that had led some to try to weasel their way into his good graces. They’d had their kid go and become friends with Jack, all trying to set up future influences.

  Those folks were no longer part of the Fellowship. I’d had to restrain myself from beating the hell out of them.

  So I might have been a bit overprotective when it came to those aspects of Jack’s life.

  That incident was also probably why people tended to forget just who he was and who I was. It was safer for them.

  I was going to answer Jack’s question when the name of his girlfriend, maybe-girlfriend, registered.

  “Jill,” I said. “Really?”

  “Yeah. Why?.” He looked up at me, really confused.

  “Jack and Jill.”

  “Yeah. I don’t get it..”

  “Jack and Jill went up the hill,” I prompted.

  “What?”

  “The old nursery rhyme?”

  “What nursery rhyme?”

  I stopped walking, shocked. I turned to Jack, looking at him seriously.

  “You’ve never heard the Jack and Jill rhyme?”

  “No. Should I have?”

  Of course he hadn’t. He’d been born after the Integration. I cursed, shaking my head and walking back toward home.

  “What kind of education system do we have here if kids haven’t heard of Jack and Jill?,” I muttered.

  “Nick, what are you talking about?”

  “I need to talk to Kat. This is wrong,” I muttered.

  I kept walking but Jack had stopped, absolutely confused. He jogged to catch up.

  “Nick?”

  “Wrong. Absolutely wrong!”