One day at the boys’ home, a big kid who was always bullying people got knocked into the dirt in front of the whole yard by one of the new arrivals when he tried to push the new kid around. Instead of making a fuss about it, the director only said: today’s hunter is tomorrow’s prey.

  That memory played in Alex’s mind as he endured the bumpiest ride in the history of mankind on the back of Bryon’s caged wagon. Had he not already declared eternal enmity against all Wild Boars, he would be going back to the dungeon to beg for their forgiveness. Ritually killing them in the Selection Festival was the least of their crimes. Not even those bastards deserved being locked up into this hell.

  At first, he’d tried taking a nap like the others. Valerian had leaned back and closed his eyes as soon as he sat down. The Reaper, too, had nodded off five minutes into the ride and hadn’t awakened no matter how hard he got jostled around. That, at least, made sense. A life on the road would have you used to these things.

  Cedric was still going through his emo phase, looking back the way they came like he was shell shocked. Alex figured the man was going through some sort of power-scaling identity crisis. He'd built his whole image around being the charismatic guy in charge, always calm, always in control.

  In one morning that whole idea got shattered. He hadn’t been able to save everyone. Hadn’t been able to come out on top as the hero. Turns out, there were bigger and scarier things out there, and today they had come to visit.

  But then even Daven, chatterbox that he was, hadn’t complained once about the ride. Alex only realized why after half an hour into the trip. This was their normal. It didn’t get better than wooden wheels on rough dirt roads here. Do you complain of the quill when you’ve never even seen the pen?

  That brought the whole living in a magic medieval world back to the forefront of his mind again. He’d thought about it, of course, but things had all happened too fast to really put his situation into perspective. From now on, he was going to have to get used to horses and carts being the main mode of transport.

  His parents had had a car, he remembered, and died in it. That was one less thing to worry about, at least. No more cars for him. No more buses either. No more binge watching shows. No more bacon at the corner store.

  Then again, no more calculus homework. No more asshole convenience store boss. Positives, eh. What even was the use brooding over things he couldn’t change?

  It took another hour of mini concussions with every rut on the road to reach the main caravan of villagers. Bryon had pushed Lady the pony hard. Alex would've felt bad for the animal had the back of his head not been the biggest victim of the whole thing. As soon as they slowed down and got on the back of the long line of carts and pack animals, he jumped out of the back of the wagon. He’d rather walk than suffer through cart-riding a moment longer.

  And he wasn’t the only one trudging down the road. There hadn’t been enough carts in Riverbend to give every single villager a ride, so those who were able walked alongside their families and neighbors.

  Ahead, the line of villagers snaked down the wooded trek until a bend in the road obscured the path. There couldn’t have been more than two hundred people in Riverbend, along with the ones from surrounding hamlets and farms that had gone to the village for the Selection Festival, but there were enough feet and hooves to cause dust to lightly cloud the area.

  The crazy thing was, the whole raid hadn’t lasted more than half an hour. The morning sun still blazed high in the western sky. Light filtered softly through the surrounding canopy, catching the motes of dust suspended in the air. It would have been an idyllic scene in different circumstances.

  Alex quietly observed the procession as he got some blood back into his legs. The mood was grim, as was expected. People moved with their heads down, hardly talking amongst each other. They were headed into an uncertain future, the life they knew shattered completely. In a way, they were much like him.

  The Dunnser, which curved south in Riverbend, showed up in glimpses through the foliage every now and then on their right. Beneath the loud creaking of the cart's wooden wheels, he could sometimes hear the faint burbling of rushing water.

  It came to him that the Dunnser was the only thing keeping the Kruwal at bay. The warrior monsters could be shadowing their movements on the western side of the river for all he knew. Don’t want to get caught by surprise by them again.

  Speeding up, he started to walk beside the driver of their caged wagon. “Master Bryon,” he called to the blacksmith.

  The man had been quiet like the rest of them throughout the ride. Now that he looked at him, Riverbend’s blacksmith just looked tired, eyes baggy, posture hunched. The bitterness he’d shown back in the village dissolved into a pensive anguish.

  A grunt was the only answer he got. Alex shrugged. Good enough.

  “I’m thinking the Kruwal can simply keep following us until they can make it across the river. They don’t seem the type to give up once they start something. Should we be worried about that?”

  Bryon shot him an angry look, but seemed to remember he wasn’t from around the area.

  “There’s nowhere to cross the southern stretch of the river, chaser,” he said. “Holdenfor controls the only bridge across the Dunnser now, and the closest ford is a half day’s walk east of Riverbend.”

  Even further than when they went to the dungeon, then. “You think they’ll go for it?” Alex asked.

  “Even if they don’t know of it, or don’t find it, we have to assume they will. We can rest when we’re behind the walls of Holdenfor.”

  Nodding, Alex walked quietly for a moment. He’d already planned on going to the nearest settlement after his paid-for days at the Bedstone inn had run out. In the end, Holdenfor was always going to be his next destination.

  “I was told it takes two days walking to make it there.” He looked out at the families slowly plodding their way down the road south.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Bryon seemed to get the message. “Aye, that it will. We’ll have to stop at Latchfield Mill for the night. Just a few hours rest. We’ll get the folks there to pack and follow us, too.” The blacksmith’s callused hands balled up on the reins of the pony. “I don’t know what these monsters want, but we can’t make it easy for them by letting anyone stay behind.”

  Alex also had no idea what the Kruwal were all about. Clearly, Kruwal raids were not common occurrences around these parts. His investigation into the village records had shown only a couple of cases of monster raids in the past thirty plus years, and even then, those had always been monsters running wild after their dungeon overflowed prematurely. Wild Boars and Killer Sloths. Dungeon monsters, which the Kruwal definitely were not.

  Was there even a connection? Pruning the Riverbend Dungeon had completed his system quest. He’d never found out why the early overflow was even happening, but that should have been the end of it. His earlier suspicion of Cedric hadn’t panned out. Alex’s dislike of his personality had colored his perception of the situation, he realized that.

  It was like Lanna said, unless Cedric had planned for those monster overflows that happened before he was even born, then he couldn’t have anything to do with it. Hells, Alex didn’t think Cedric even knew about Kruwals, given his reaction to the attack. The only ones who’d even heard of them seemed to be Valerian and the Reaper.

  Oh shit. Alex started as a thought struck him. Lanna’s going to think I knew about the Kruwal raid, isn’t she?

  And he couldn’t blame her for it. One day he’d simply shown up out of nowhere, led her to believe he was some kind of agent for this CCC, then uncovered past instances of monster attacks. All of it a day before an actual raid happened to her village. How couldn’t she make the connection?

  With the quest done, he hadn’t even thought about all of it. That seemed so long ago, before they had gone to prune the dungeon, before the Flesh Flower and the Deadwood and the Sage Treant. Before the Selection Festival and the Kruwal.

  He’d only been in this world for a few days, but for someone who lived a very unexciting life, it felt like he’d done enough for a month. Or a lifetime.

  Apprehension knotted his stomach as reality suddenly dawned on him. He had to go, didn’t he? Before Lanna started pointing fingers in his direction. Then people would ask all sorts of questions, and he wouldn’t even be able to get through the simplest ones. When they asked where he had come from, what would he say? Illinois?

  The villagers and the crew weren’t in immediate danger anymore. Would it even matter if he left now?

  A commotion started ahead of them. Voices rose, people were pushed away. Someone was running toward them.

  Is this it? Heat bloomed within him, the power spreading like a reassuring blanket.

  Alex quickly let it dissipate. If it came down to it, he’d fight tooth and nail for himself, but he couldn’t exactly start blasting people for asking questions. He wasn’t that kind of person.

  Instead of the inquisition, a gangly ginger boy skidded to a stop by their wagon.

  “Master Bryon! Master Bryon!”

  Peter, Alex recognized. Little Peter. One of the boys who’d taken part in the Selection Festival. Sweating and panting as if he’d just run a marathon. He bent over at the waist, hands on his knees.

  “Calm down boy,” Bryon said, frowning. He pulled on the bridle of Lady the pony until she stopped. “What is it?”

  “You needa’ come quick! It’s…” he huffed. “It’s the mayor.”

  Suddenly the pony’s reins flew into Alex’s arms. Despite his size, the blacksmith vaulted out of the driver’s seat at the front of the wagon. He went up to Peter and nearly shook the boy to death.

  “Where is he?”

  The boy trembled. “At the front with the other sick an’ Lanna. They’s said it was urgent to get ya!”

  The blacksmith didn’t wait another second. He took off at a run, shouldering people out of the way when they didn’t move quick enough. A ripple of rumors followed him from the villagers nearby who heard the exchange.

  “Alex.” Daven poked his head through the cage. “What’s going on?” He covered a yawn with his fist.

  “Something with the mayor,” he said hurriedly. “I’ll go and check. Uh, here Peter, you take this.” Alex took Lady’s reins and put them in the boy’s hands. “Big boy responsibility for you. Think of it like a chasing mission, yeah?” He winked.

  Little Peter’s eyes shone. “Yes sir, Mister Chaser! I’ll get ‘er going fast as can be.”

  “Good man.”

  Patting the boy on the head, he started jogging after Bryon. The blacksmith ran like an ambulance driving through five o’clock traffic. People jostled themselves and drove their carts away from the incoming bull of a man, and Alex tried to follow through the cleared path as quickly as he could.

  “Wait for me!” He heard Daven yell behind him.

  A few curious villagers took to following them as the rumors of something happening to the mayor spread. Alex had to slow down as a woman jumped from her cart right in front of him. More and more villagers heard the news, and soon enough the caravan of evacuees ground to a halt as they made their way to the front of the line.

  The archer caught up to him after a minute, and as they rounded the bend on the road, they saw a small crowd forming near a group of three carts and the large peddler wagon parked up ahead.

  Daven rushed now, pushing through the mass of people. He’s thinking of Diana, Alex realized. She was with the sick and wounded too. He followed the archer as best as he could, and thankfully no one complained much when they noticed it was the chasers shoving them out of the way.

  They got to the front of the crowd in time to watch Bryon kneeling by the form of the mayor. They had taken him down off one of the carts and laid him on some blankets on the ground. His wounds had been cleaned and bound with linen, but blood had soaked through the bandages.

  “You fool.” Bryon had clasped one of Orson’s hands. “Damned fool. Had to tell me it was just a cut, didn’t you?”

  The mayor gave him a weak smile and said something Alex couldn’t hear. Bryon might not have heard it either, as he bent his head closer to Orson’s mouth.

  On the other side of the mayor, Lanna knelt with both her hands over the largest cut on his chest. A faint green glow emanated from where she touched him. Alex couldn’t see her face, but she was swaying like she was about to drop at any moment.

  A couple of other women hovered nearby with water buckets and used bandages. They must have also been some kind of healers, he figured, though he didn’t know what kind. Normal or magical. He had never seen healing being done, but he remembered Diana going to Lanna to have a minor cut healed. Maybe she was the only one with an actual system skill for it.

  Bryon suddenly nodded and pulled back. “Aye, I’ll do it my friend,” he said. “As we swore.”

  The mayor gave out a soft sigh then. His eyes closed, muscles relaxed. Alex swallowed and dipped his head. That was the second person in a single die he’d seen die.

  When he looked back up, Bryon had a hand on Lanna's shoulder.

  “He’s gone, lass.” She didn’t seem to hear him. “Lanna,” he said. “Lanna, you can stop now.”

  Her hands kept glowing. The pair of women standing by came up and took her, standing her up like a doll. She didn’t try to fight or cry. The power in her hands cut off, and her peach-colored eyes just stared ahead. Empty.

  Alex looked away. He’d lost his parents too, but not like this.

  When Lanna had been taken away, one of the villagers approached Bryon to ask him something in a low voice.

  “Bury?” The blacksmith shook his head. “No, gather some wood and build a pyre. He will leave this world like his forefathers.”