u/Professional_Prune11

“Leo is my co-worker,” Selene jumped into the conversation, as if she had not realized Leo had already answered her sister’s question.

“Just a co-worker?”

“Well, yeah,” Selene replied, looking Leo up and down.

Matra sighed, and her head dipped along with her tail. She shook her head and looked back at the others. “Well, you heard her. Just a co-worker,” she said, her words laced with taunting doubt.

The adult wolf-kin quickly dispersed, some exchanging gold coins, others muttering curses, and a few sent prayers to their god. The little ones sniffed the air for a few moments, lingered, but also ran off into the woods when Matra shooed them away.

“Mind telling me what that is all about?” Leo asked Selene.

“I would rather not,” she replied, walking back to inspect the cart.

Leo chose not to pry; everyone had family issues, and with her family seeming to extend as far and wide as the Atlantic, hers was undoubtedly more complex than he wanted to know. Selene would tell him if she ever felt he was trustworthy enough.

Instead of opening Pandora's box, he went to Selene's side to see what had her scowling.

“Well, shit,” Leo said.

The cart's front axle was beyond fucked. Beyond destroyed. The wheel wasn’t flat, no, it was shredded, barely clinging to the smashed-in hub. The hub was not even attached to the cart anymore.

Leo had assumed that when they abruptly stopped, the tire blew, not that the entire drivetrain was shot. But that was reality, and it was something he and Selene would have to live with.

“Fuck, can we fix this?” Leo asked.

“Parts are back at the lodge, so yes.”

"That's good."

They could go get his truck, load the damaged cart, and drive it back to the lodge to be repaired—likely by him over the next few weeks, but it was not the end of the world…to him.

Selene, boiling over from whatever familial issue already had her walking on eggshells, did not take it so well.

“Matra!!” Selene stood up and walked over to her twin, jamming a clawed finger into her shoulder. “How many times have I told you and the rest of the pack to stop destroying park property? Last time it took me three months to fix a wall, and the time before that the kids demoed an entire set of bleachers.”

Matra backed up, holding up her hands in appeasement. “Whoa, I did not break anything. Neither did any of the clan. It was an accident.”

“An accident? Really? You all knew I was getting a new worker and that I was bringing him by. So your idea was to what? Go out, pretend to attack us, tackle me off the roof, and nearly cause a crash?”

“I didn’t think he would crash,” Matra replied, looking at the ground, pouting. "You said he was some badass warrior, I was just testing him."

Selene did not take the insinuation of testing Leo well and began to escalate, yelling more and switching from English to a harsh, barked language.

Selene broke into what Leo assumed was their native tongue, and Matra snapped back in the same harsh language.

They had both been tossed from a moving cart less than ten minutes ago. They were tough, but Leo would not stand idle, especially once they grabbed each other’s shoulders and looked ready to throw hands.  

One was his co-worker, and they both were women. Differences of species be damned. He would not stand there while they argued over spilled milk and long-festering rot, trying to beat the other into submission.

“That’s enough,” Leo snapped, grabbing Selene’s hand and trying to wrench it away while pushing Matra away.

Neither budged…not even an inch.

The two women looked at him, not in shock or anger, but in almost inquisitive curiosity. Both wanted to see just what the human would try now that brute force would not work. Leo nearly lost his bravado and almost spilled the spaghetti in his pocket from their intense gazes. But in the wise words of his first section lead. Sergeant Peyton “If you fuck up, double down*.”*

Leo forced his way between them. In reality, they all knew it, even him. The two monster women allowed it. Now that he had their body heat on both sides, Leo realized it might not have been the best move, but he was already there.

He just had to pray they did not want to rip his arms off.

“Arguing will not help anything,” Leo said to Matra, then shifted his gaze to Selene, putting on his best stern look, the one he saved for fresh-faced privates who made mistakes. “The truck is already broken, and no one is hurt. We should get that thing back to the lodge, then go greet the newcomers.”

There was a slight grumble between them, both flexing claws and snarling like wolves. It was as unsettling as the pack's earlier hunt. A cold bead of sweat rolled down Leo’s cheek as Selene’s green eyes cut into him.

“Alright,” Selene said, seemingly happy that Leo had put an end to whatever the fuck they were bickering about. “Matra, take Leo to the camp while I lug this up to the main road.”
Leo was about to argue and tell Selene that they should go get his truck and the winch, but his jaw went slack watching Selene work.

Her muscles went tight like steel cables as mana flowed through them. She reached under the cart and grabbed the driveshaft. Without showing any signs of strain, the wolf-kin tomboy, with one arm, pressed the cart high over her head, dirt raining down over her.

Leo whistled softly, utterly amazed by the sight. Even covered in dirt, Selene was, without a doubt, one of the sexiest women he had ever seen. Not only did everything about her body tickle his pickle, but her toughness was a bonus.

If Selene could fight, Leo knew he would fold like paper around her. There was nothing quite like a woman who could kick some ass to make a Ranger's violent heart flutter.

He took a moment, appreciating the view of her tight butt in her shorts, and the way her black hair shimmered in the pools of golden sunlight as she carried the cart back up toward the main road.

The only word his grunt brain could come up with was breathtaking.

“Your tail is wagging,” Matra whispered, her breath crawling up Leo’s neck, her claws pricking at his stomach.

Leo squirmed and skittered away from the wolf-kin woman. She allowed it, smirking, watching him right himself and face her like she was some horrible threat.

“Oh come on, don’t look at me like I nipped you,” she winked, turning and waving him on. “Selene will catch up to us.”

She did not wait for Leo to respond; she started down the trail with a confident swagger in her step. Leo hustled to catch up, jogging until he was alongside the wolf-kin.

There was no conversation as they went along, something that Leo knew many people would not feel comfortable about. Few people liked being in complete silence with others, but after all his years skulking through woods, night-draped Afghan streets, and crawling through the underbrush, silence was not just golden; it was a universal constant.

After a short jaunt, with Matra occasionally peeking over her shoulder at him and smirking, the sounds of the forest began to be drowned out by those of merriment.

Breaching the trees, they entered a vast open field, and smoke and the scent of burnt meat wafted through the air, trailing away from a group of cabins near the wood line.

The camp was something that one could find anywhere in the United States. That it was so ordinary was something that Leo was still adapting to.

Somehow, none of it felt odd anymore. Not the people, not the magic, not the buildings. It was as if he belonged here. He had not sat and pondered the reason he was so alright with the supernatural, but assumed it had something to do with his adaptability and his always-stay-flexible attitude.

He wondered if that was why, after years out of the Rangers, Vic reached out to him with the job offer. He did not dwell on the idle thought and just took it all in. His new home.

People, or in this case wolf-kin, ran around playing games, while others lounged beneath parasols near the shoreline, tending to adult beverages.

His eyes lingered on those wolf-kin, like any red-blooded man. What they were wearing could barely be called bikinis; there was so little material that they might as well have been naked. They raised their glasses and waved at Leo. He waved back as they looked him up and down like a piece of Grade A beef.

He locked eyes with one with piercing blood-red eyes and silver fur. She licked her plush lips and winked at him, her tail swishing slowly behind her.

Matra whistled, pulling Leo’s attention away from the wolf-kin eye candy. “Come on, stud. There is someone who will want to meet you.”

“Who?”

“The pack leader.”

—--

Leo had some grand expectation of the pack leader. The title itself had conjured images of a tall warrior, clad in furs, carrying a sword, with magic smoke wisping around him, giving him an almost untouchable, mysterious vibe.

Leo did not expect to see what looked like the average Midwestern man on a summer day by Lake Oshkosh. He had salt-and-pepper hair and furred features, plus a beard that trailed down over a “Kiss the Cook” apron. To complete the picture: board shorts and a beer belly stuffed into a tank top.

He lifted his reflective sunglasses and smiled before turning and pulling a beer out of a cooler and tossing it to Leo.

“There you go, Leo, have a seat,” the man said, gesturing to a folding chair beside Matra, while he took a seat on the opposite side of the cabin porch. On his right was a smoking grill, where Leo had deduced the heavenly smell filling the camp was coming from.

Off to his left was another wolf-kin woman. She looked exactly like Selene and Matra, just with a few more crow's feet and a few more pounds in all the right places.

Leo sat, but did not open the beer, since he was technically at work and was carrying a loaded weapon. Booze and guns never mixed well.

“Thanks for having me over. But Matra mentioned you wanted to see me…mister?” Leo began.

“Please just call me Rork, and this here is my first mate, Amber, she is Selene and Matra’s mother.”

“It’s nice to meet you both.”

“Same,” Amber replied, inclining her head slightly.

“And as for why I wanted to see you. Well, it’s not often that little Selene comes over to visit the pack, goo-goo eyed and excited about anyone…much less a man.”

“Oh, you should have seen her. The way she talked about you. You would have sworn she had met the spirit of the forest,” Amber gushed, fanning herself.

“I hope I live up to your expectations,” Leo said somewhat awkwardly, feeling like he was being paraded in front of a girlfriend's parents.

Now, Leo did not hate the idea of having some kind of relationship with Selene, but they barely knew each other. Give it a few weeks, and he might be willing to hit on her, or, considering her somewhat bold personality, she would hit on him.

“If you last longer than those other humans, you will be alright,” Rork smiled.

Leo smiled back, feeling assured by Rork. The man, while not having the presence of some commanding general, had a quiet command of the space. Rork felt like a brother in a way, not a blood-related one, but in the same way Leo would call any of his fellow Rangers brother.

His gut told him that Rork was trustworthy. He said what he meant, and meant what he said. No chameleon act. No pretending.

The rest of the conversation was easy-going. It was like two old friends catching up after not seeing each other for years. Leo introduced himself and shared a few stories about his exploits overseas.

Rork and Amber held onto every word, both liking him more and more with each tale.
Amber, for her part, brought Leo up to speed on the pack: how they stayed at the park in the summer and went back to their realm in the winter.

Their home was very similar to the park, with alpine forests, clear lakes, and warm days. The main difference was the flora and fauna.

Leo had no idea what his six-eight could do against a ten-foot-tall, armored bear-like creature. But he doubted it was much.

As Rork was telling Leo about how he hunted down a flame stag across a vast desert in his youth, the cherubic sounds of Selene's laugh, accompanied by the pleading chorus of children, washed over the area.

Leo turned toward the sound and saw her approaching, keeping a raving pack of young wolf-kin at bay. “Hold on, I will ask him,” she laughed, as the pack pushed her forward, almost causing her to stumble.

Her assurance seemed to quell the children's excitement enough so that they lingered near the start of the grass, while Selene approached. She still had a smile on her face, but her eyes were sharp, darting from her sister to her mother, then to her father. A silent challenge to them.

“Leo, the kids wanted to see if you would play tag with them.”

“Won’t they just run circles around me?” Leo asked, now having a much better understanding of what wolf-kin were capable of.

“Probably,” she shrugged. “But they want to get to know you,”

Leo looked toward the kids, unsure exactly how his playing tag was going to help the kids get to know him. But the earnest look on the kids' faces got to Leo. They were all puppy dog eyes and wagging tails.

His heart melted. Leo looked back to Rork and the rest of Selene's family, “I hope you all have a nice day. Don’t be shy about coming to the lodge if you need anything.”

Rork and Amber confirmed they would. Matra, however, batted her eyelashes and blew Leo a kiss. “See you around,” she purred, her eyes flicking from him to Selene at his side. 

A vice grip took hold of Leo’s hand, and he was ripped from the porch. Selene dragged him away from her sister with ease. He could have tried to fight it, but doing so would have only earned him a few nasty gashes. 

Her soft hands were a velvet bear trap. Leo's bones creaked as she wrenched him away.
She did not look at him while yanking him down the stairs. But she was not silent. Her voice was laced with caustic annoyance as she muttered. "That's not happening again."

"What's not happening?" Leo asked, struggling to stay standing.

Selene's ears folded down when Leo questioned her, her grip tightening.

“Hey, what gives?” Leo barked as Selene let him go.

“What are you talking about?” Selene said, while Leo checked his wrist for dislocations or other damage.  

“Why the fuck did you just pull me away like that?” 

“Fuck!” One of the kids mimicked.

“Great, now they are swearing,” Selene chastised. 

“How the fu…” Leo began, but caught himself. He leaned in closer to Selene so he could whisper to her. “I have no idea what family problem you have going on, but in the future, don’t manhandle me.” 

“You're tough, you could handle it. But I will try to be more gentle with you,” Selene replied, stepping back, not giving him any time to reply before addressing the eager kids. 

“Alright, kids,” Selene gestured widely, stepping closer to the kids. “Who is ready to play tag?”  

-----

The creature dipped its head, its long nose with ten twitching appendages rooted in the rocks along the river’s shoreline. Orange and green fur shimmered in the sun as muscles rolled beneath it, forcing its armored skull down into the sand in search of its next meal.

Leo wasn’t sure what it was hunting, but he was reasonably certain it was after a mannegish, one of the fat little river-lizards Selene had warned him about.

After cross-referencing the appearance, behavior, and the prospective prey with the handy scout's guide Selene had given him, Leo had an answer to the question Selene had posed to him almost twenty minutes earlier.

“A Tukul?” Leo asked, adjusting his position in the grass slightly, just enough to allow him to peer a bit higher.

“That’s right,” Selene confirmed, patting Leo’s back and lightly jostling him. “Now, is it a male or a female?”

“Uhhhh,” Leo flipped back through the scout guide, reconfirming the details of the beast before peeking back through the spotting scope.

Across the beast's back were a dozen sharp quills; they flexed and chittered as the beast dug into the dirt, expelling a light blue gas. An indication of pleasure according to the book. A smirk crawled onto Leo’s face, not only because that must have meant the Tukul had found its prey, but he also knew the answer.

“That’s a female. The males don’t make that noise. They are silent at almost all times.” Leo said, lowering the scope and beginning to pack it up.

“Right on all accounts,” Selene praised, her tail swishing and slapping against Leo’s pants.

Pride welled in Leo's chest. He had always been a fairly studious individual, but for this job, he had been a downright bookworm. It was like he was back in basic training, reading his recruit bible.

Breakfast, lunch, even on the toilet, Leo had the scout guide open and was drilling every detail into his skull.

“You are doing alright when it comes to identifying the animals,” Selene praised, running her hand down her thighs, brushing off some of the loose leaves that had clung to them while lying in the grass.“Helps that I’ve got a good teacher,” Leo said. He stuffed the kit into his backpack, slid the guide into his left breast pocket, and followed Selene toward the waiting vehicle.

After a short jaunt through the shimmering pastel colored underbrush, they were back on the old dirt road to the far side of the back park. Just off to the side of the road, and halfway in the ditch, was one of the several utility vehicles the park rangers had at their disposal.

It was a side-by-side, six-wheeled vehicle, very similar to the scout vehicles the army adopted in recent years. But unlike those that bristled with machine guns and ruck sacks, this one had a small truck bed and a single shelf behind the seat where Leo hung his rifle.

He would have preferred to keep it on him, but Selene, surprisingly, given that she seemed more interested in playing with kids and eating candy, was a bit of a stickler for the rules.

He could carry the rifle while alone or when heading afield. But when not conducting either of those operations, Leo was to remain in his proper uniform.

Green trousers, khaki shirt, campaign cover, and, of course, his trusted sidearm. Well, trusted is not the word he would use for it. The weapon was brand new to him. Attached to his hip was an old, beaten leather holster, straight out of World War I: US cavalry branding and all.

The pistol, however, was in no way vintage. He caressed the wooden grip and ran a thumb over the knurled hammer. The long slide was a weapon he would generally consider overkill, but it was regarded as standard issue for the park rangers. Even Miri allegedly was capable of shooting a gnat’s ass at fifty yards with one.

That was something Leo would have to see. Even he doubted his ability to keep the forty-four magnum under control. It barely fit in his meat mitts. That goblin holding the weapon would be downright comical.

“Alright, where to now?” Leo asked, turning the key, and looking over to Selene, the pretty tomboy leaping into the passenger seat and clicking on her belt.

“Let’s head around the lake and check on the campers. We have a few hours until the next rift opens, and we can go through your first convergence.” Selene smiled; her excitement for both events radiated off her.

“Alright,” Leo nodded, pressing the pedal down.

The truck ambled on through the high mountain road. Islands floated overhead, connected by hardlight bridges. Tiny specks moved across their surfaces, unbothered by the impossible sky-roads. Some of them were upside down, staring down at the truck winding through alien trees. Likely the dots were creatures, but Leo would never know.

“You are taking all of this well,” Selene praised Leo, looking off to the side toward the lake and campground in the distance.

I’m doing my best,” Leo said, and immediately thought of the night he arrived. He vowed never to tell Selene or Miri what he did afterward.

To call what he had done after going through the briefings' manly' or 'Rangerrific' would be a complete lie. He could just imagine his fellow rangers mocking him for what he did.

Like the Rangers of old, he ran up Curahee. It was his own Curahee, and was certainly longer than three miles up and three down, but in full battle rattle, with night vision on, he ran all the way back to the tunnel.

He tried running through the portal and back for several hours, checking his watch and using every tool he had to gauge what was happening.

After exhausting all his possible tests, Leo returned to the lodge, a small flicker of hope in his soul that this was all just some fever dream.

The sun was just barely concealed underneath the horizon. By the time he arrived back at the cabin.

He was greeted by Selene, up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed…literally. The woman wore nothing but her panties and a sports bra, along with a smile that could melt the coldest heart. She had offered him coffee and a little wink.

“Well, someone is up early,” Selene had said.

“Yeah. I wanted to go on a jog,” Leo lied, accepting the post-run drink. His hands lingered when he took the mug, fingertips brushing Selene’s fur for just a moment longer to confirm it was real. If she noticed, she did not mention it at the time or since.

That moment, returning to the cabin, to find her still appearing as a wolf-kin, settled it in Leo’s mind. This was very real. Fighting reality was a Sisyphean task; he knew better than to duel with it.

Plus, if he got to see a tan-skinned tomboy in her panties in the morning, who was he to complain?

The drive was silent until they had almost reached the campground, adjacent to the lake. It was at that point that a thought came up in Leo’s mind, or more specifically, Selene’s propped-up canine-like feet reminded him to ask.

“Hey, so…” Leo started, really unsure how to ask Selene about her body in a way that felt oddly intimate.

In his mind, asking how her species interacts with magic and what they were capable of brought memories of what should be forgotten. The intimacy reminded him of Afghanistan, where he asked an old man about the recent attacks on patrols, knowing damn well the man was related to the local terror cells' head.

He would rather not ask about something seemingly so vital, but sucked it up. He needed to know—for his safety and hers.

“So, Miri explained that I won’t be using magic anytime soon, if ever. Something about goblins and humans just do not have a lot of potential. But she did mention that you use magic. What can you do exactly?”

“Oh, did I not tell you? Sorry, it must have slipped my mind.” Selene replied. She sat straight up and flexed her toned arm, “wolf-kin use mana to enhance our physicality: muscles, stamina, eyesight, hearing. Stuff like that.”

“So how strong are you?” Leo asked.

“I’m not sure.” Selene chuckled awkwardly. “I’ve never measured it. But I could easily lift your tuck using all the mana I can siphon.”

“Siphon?” Leo asked, doing his best to not laugh at the idea that such a small woman could be capable of such herculean feats. But this was magic land, and she had the feet of a wolf; giving her the benefit of the doubt was the wise choice.

“Yeah, magic is not intrinsic to most creatures; they siphon the energy from the world around them and put it to use. Those who can use it easily, it's like breathing, you don’t even think about it.”

Leo nodded, understanding the analogy. The concept of things becoming as natural as breathing was common in the military, especially among the Rangers. Leo had shot so many weapons and fought for more than most people could imagine; for him, those things were also perfectly natural. A non-thought that he just did perfectly after millions of repetitions.

“Take this next turn,” Selene said, pointing down a barely marked dirt road, leading down toward the shoreline.

Without questioning it, Leo turned, the chill of the forest enveloping them as the wind wafted up the slope from the water.

Selene unbuckled her belt and, through a shining example of her natural usage of mana, grabbed the edge of the cab and flipped onto the roof, barely making any noise at all. Easing off the gas, Leo leaned out of the side and looked up at her, wondering if he should tell her to get down for safety or laugh at the absurdity of the situation.

She unleashed an ear-splitting howl. The call echoed through the forest, and shortly after, a cacophonous response chimed from all around them. Dozens of overlapping calls, all in response to Selene’s.

Out in the woods, shadows shifted, darting along the edges of Leo’s vision. Accompanying that was a strange shifting of undergrowth. It was as if they were in the center of a wolf pack, being driven toward an ambush point.

Something deep in Leo’s soul, a primal reaction, screamed at him to run, run as far away from where he was. Millions of years of instincts and genetic memory told him to slam on the brakes and get ready to fight, but preferably run.

His fight-or-flight reaction pulled at his nerves, making him tense up and white-knuckle the steering wheel.

He scanned all around them as the sounds of howling and yipping grew louder.

“What the fuck,” Leo yelled, wrenching the wheel to keep them on the trail, when out of nowhere the vehicle lurched. “Selene!” He screamed, wrangling the wheel like a bucking bronco.

The cart righted itself with a heavy slam, ending their ride. Leo fought the wheel, but the cart skidded to a dead stop. Two bodies tumbled off the hood and hit the dirt in a tangled heap.

After shaking his rattled head off and praying he did not have a fifth traumatic brain injury, Leo got out of the cart and rushed to assist, grabbing the medical kit from the console before his feet had even touched the dirt.

“Selene, are you all---” he began, but the words died on his tongue.

Before him was not just one Selene, but two? The doppelganger, whoever she was, looked almost identical to Selene; without their different attire, they would be completely indistinguishable.

This apparent clone was clad in equally short Daisy Dukes and a tube top that showed off her taut stomach and bare back.

“Big sis,” the other one smiled, attempting to pull Selene into a deep hug, and failing at doing so.

“Matra, get off me,” Selene snarled, lifting a leg and pushing Matra off her, and right into Leo.

When Matra collided with the already dazed Ranger, they fell back and slammed into the cart's hood. Leo grunted in pain as his head bounced off the windshield.

“Hey, what the fuck, dude?” Matra grumbled, rubbing where Leo’s teeth had nearly scalped her. “What the fuck are you made of? Granite?”

“I was going to ask you the same,” Leo replied, pushing her off to the side. “Are you alright?”

Before Matra could respond, Selene was already at Leo’s side, checking on him, her eyes keenly looking him up and down for any apparent signs of injury, while her nose plucked at the air for hints of blood. “Forget her, she will be fine, are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Leo said, dusting himself off and standing once Selene offered him a hand. “I feel like someone was just thrown at me, but I can handle that.”

“Oh, thank the ancestors. I don’t think Miri would forgive me if I got another human hurt on their first day.”

“Another?” Leo raised a brow.

Selene blushed and looked away from Leo. “Oh, well.. There was a thing, and I… Nevermind. Let’s forget that and make sure the cart is alright.”

Selene walked by Leo and started toward the cart. Once again, leaving Leo with more questions than answers. But before he could pose any of those questions, or Selene could even reach the passenger side, Matra spoke up.

“So sis, who is the human? I’m certain the whole pack would like to know.” She said, crossing her arms and popping her hip, tail lazily swaying behind her.

Leo, having not noticed the wolf-kin woman had moved, cast his gaze that way and was reminded once again of how stealthy the wolf-kin could be when they wished.

A dozen wolf-kin stood behind her. Most were younger, but a few looked older. The family resemblance was obvious in their fur patterns, builds, and eyes.

None of that mattered to Leo. They were staring at him like he was either prey or a problem

A silence fell over the area, with Selene frozen mid-stride. After what likely was only a few seconds, but felt like an hour being stared down by a pack of apex predators, Leo swallowed his spit and Rangered the fuck up.

“Name’s Leo,” he said, extending a hand to Matra. “Selene’s new coworker. Nice to meet you.”

Matra stared at his hand for a long second.

Then she grinned. “Bold. I like him.”

------

Thank you all for reading. I will post the next chapter soon. I hope you all are enjoying Selene and Leo so far. -Colin Graves

-----

Leo stepped back, eyes darting between them. He looked to Selene for an explanation, but the tomboy only smirked, like this was the funniest thing she’d seen all week. 

“I can see, but…you can’t be real,” Leo said, returning his attention to Miri, jabbing a loaded knife hand at the woman. 

“Oh come on, Selene. I thought you told him what to expect? Or was it Vic who dropped the ball this time?” Miri groaned, leaning around him, ignoring the loaded weapon of Specialist Shmukateli destruction pointed at her.

“Vic did,” Selene replied, crossing her arms in a huff. 

Miri rolled her eyes and stepped closer to Leo, seemingly used to such an event. As she approached, the overwhelming scent of her perfume punched Leo in the nose. Sweet sugar. It was like she bathed in cotton candy; the fruity aromas were overlapping for dominance.

“This cannot be real,” Leo muttered, stepping away from the approaching goblin. “I’m dehydrated, you're a hallucination. A hat man dream or something.”

“I have no idea what a hatman is, but I can tell you this. This is very, very real. And you had better get used to it,” Miri purred. 

“Nope, nope, there is no fucking way. Vic has had me do some odd shit. But there is no fucking way this is not a dream.” 

Leo turned about and approached the door, muscling past Selene. The moment his hand touched the doorknob, a sharp pain emanated from his thigh. Looking down, he saw what had happened. Miri had closed the gap and slammed her clipboard full force into his thigh.

“What the fuck was that for?” Leo groaned, surprised by how much force such a small woman could generate.  

“Just to prove that you are not dreaming,” Miri said, while Selene moved away from them, positioning herself in the kitchen nearby. 

Now that we’ve established this is real,” Miri said, looking him over. “Welcome to Conjunction National Park,” Miri began, not even waiting for the human to regain his senses or even agree that what he was seeing was real, and looked him over.  “My name is Miri, and as you can plainly see, I am not a human. I am a goblin. And you should get used to the idea of not working with humans, as everyone you will meet within the back park, no matter how human they may appear, is not.” 

Leo took a moment not only to process the declaration that everyone he meets here is not human, but also to pull his jaw up off the floor. Her confidence, grace, and style were befitting a woman in charge of Fortune 500 companies, not running the day-to-day events of a little national park. 

“OK, let’s say I believe you that no one else I meet today is a human,” Leo said, rubbing his temple. “What else is going to break my understanding of the world today?”

“Well, you drove in with a wolf-kin to start out,” Miri confidently declared.

“Wolf, what now?” Leo asked.

“Wolf-kin,” Selene said from behind him. “That is what I am, Leo.”

“What are you talking about? You definitely were…”

A knot formed in his throat as Leo took in what he saw while turning around. Sure, she still looked like Selene, but the details had slightly shifted. A long, poofy tail flowed out from just over her ass and swayed back and forth.  

Claws tipped each of her rugged, halfway beastial, halfway human hands, that were now covered in thick fur that ran up to her mid arm. Even her boots had vanished, replaced by paws and digitigrade legs, which, like her arms, were coated in thick fur. 

But what shocked Leo the most was the fluttering, fluffy ears and her smile. Atop her head, rising from within her raven hair, were two large dog-like ears, each capped in flecks of white. 

She smiled at him, a slight blush on her cheeks. Peeking out from behind her plush lips were fangs, sharp, long, and deadly. 

“I can use a glamour, most wolf-kin can,” Selene said. “I’m sorry I lied to you…I...I just …I wanted you to feel welcome. And I figured that showing my true form out of the gate might freak you out.”

“Of course you did, you are such a sweet girl,” Miri said. 

“You should have used your glamour,” Selene growled.

“We would have had to show him by the end of the week. It’s so much easier to just get it over with,” Miri argued. 

“That does not matter,” Selene argued. "What if he ran off? Vic can’t cover up another snallygaster attack.”

“Bah, he would have been fine,” Miri waved. “That last guy was fat and lazy. Leo isn't like them.” 

“Not the point. If he ran off randomly into the park, who knows what he might have run into?” 

Selene rattled off threats like she was reading a grocery list: demons, devils, snallygasters, hell hounds, and even eldritch entities.

Leo tried to key in on names he did know, and there were a few: Vampires, werewolves, fucking Bigfoot, and even the god damn chupacabra. Selene's list only made him question internally how many of those beasts were real and whether what little he knew about cryptozoology held weight in fucking fantasyland.

“Oh, please, we have not seen anything threatening since summer began,” Miri argued. "And most of those know and respect park staff, human or not."

“That doesn’t mean we still should not have been prepared for something trying to nab him,” Selene argued, her focus shifting to Leo. 

Once her eyes met his, she blushed and averted her eyes, her tail wagging faster.  “Leo, if you keep staring at me like that, a girl might get the wrong idea.” 

His mind raced to process all this world-altering news at once. And even he had to admit it was difficult. But after a moment. He took a deep breath and blinked a few times, as if each time he closed his eyes the strangeness would go away. But it did not. Before him was still a goblin and a wolf-kin. 

His mind wandered back to all he had learned fighting overseas, plucking nuggets of wisdom he had beaten into him, and beaten into his NUGIT's. He could not change the reality of who he was about to work with, and was going to roll with the punches life had thrown him. But that did not mean he would go forward half-cocked. 

“Alright, that’s a lot to take in,” Leo said, grabbing the bridge of his nose.

“We understand if this means you want to leave,” Selene started, but stopped when Leo raised a hand. 

“But could you two maybe help me get situated here, and then give me whatever briefing Vic was supposed to give me?” He placed a significant emphasis on Vic, as if he was referring to the man like one would the devil himself, and the man could hear his frustration, wherever he may be.  

The two women shared a look, as if they were more shocked than Leo. But after a moment, Selene walked up and took his hand, warm and comforting. “Sure, let’s get you settled in.”
“Perfect. I will go get my stuff,” Miri sauntered through to the far end of the room and cast a glance back to Selene. “I will give him his briefings while you go out on patrol.”

“But I wanted to help out with that,” Selene halfway argued, but there was no soul in her disagreement.

“I know, and you will. He will still need training on meeting the locals, going around the park, and learning the day-to-day. That is something you can do; you can also make sure he does not end up getting nabbed by a big bad beastie while on patrol or giving tours.”

“Alright, fine,” Selene pouted, her tail tucked between her legs. "I just thought it was my turn."

Miri rolled her eyes and looked at Leo with a "hey, watch this trick" grin plastered across her face.

“Oh, come on, don’t be like that. You and I both know that the group who arrived from the Fae-Lands would love to see another wolf-kin,” Miri gestured toward the front of the building. “Head on into the supply shed and take their kids some candy, and play ball with them.”

Leo was unsure whether Selene perked up more at the idea of candy or at the thought of heading out to play ball with the kids. Either way, it was as if a lightswitch had been flicked in her tomboy heart.

As fast as lightning, Selene rushed out of the cabin, snatching her Smokey Bear hat like a dog catching a bird mid-flight. They could only catch a blur of the wolf-kin woman as she retrieved a sack of balls and a backpack stuffed with candy. Her giggling trickled in through the ajar door as she ran toward the lake.  

Leo looked judgmentally at Miri; she looked back, seemingly proud of herself, before turning toward the bookshelf and looking through the rows. Leo watched on as the pint-sized dispatcher swayed her thick rump back and forth. She paused and peered over her shoulder, catching him in the act. 

“Just don’t call her a dog,” Miri giggled, not acknowledging the man’s lewd glances. 

“What will she bite me?” Leo replied, struggling not to laugh at the irony. 

“She might if you tease her enough,” Miri said matter-of-factly.

Leo tried to imagine what that would look like and thought it almost seemed funny, until he remembered that, now that Selene was in her wolf-kin form, she had fangs as long as his thumbs, and reconsidered the comedy of the scenario, taking the warning to heart. 

“Anything else about Selene I should be cautious about?” 

Miri paused and tapped a well-manicured nail against her lips. “Well, I suppose you should not touch her tail. IF she doesn’t give you permission, she is likely to be very mad at you.”

“Would she bite me for that, too?” 

“It’s for the best you ask her about what grooming means for her species. I won’t get into that. Oh, by the by, go ahead and grab any drinks from the fridge you want; we will be here until well after dark,” Miri instructed, already loading her short arms full of books and pamphlets. 

“Alright, is there something you want me to grab for you?” Leo asked, heading toward the fridge. 

“Be a dear, and grab a couple beers,” Miri replied, taking another old dusty tome down from the shelf. 

“A woman after my own heart,” Leo joked, until he had a handful of pale ales in his hand, having found the lower racks of the fridge overflowing with the stuff. If Miri was the one who stocked the beer, she had the same taste in evening booze that he did. 

Well, a good beer, or some dan jackals. 

Once he was settled, Leo pulled out a notepad and a pen, ready to learn all about what he was going to have to do and be aware of in the area. More than once in his military career, in-doc safety briefs have saved him from pain. 

In this austere situation, Leo was ready to absorb everything Miri had to tell him like a sponge. 

Miri took a seat across the coffee table, cracked a beer, and drained the whole can before opening another. She tossed it across the room without looking, the empty clattering into the trash can.

Once she had her second can in hand, she smirked. “Don’t look at me like that, big guy. I’ve been giving this briefing for ten years. I can do it in my sleep. Humans do not last long in this line of work, so forgive me for not taking this too seriously.”

“I won’t, so long as you answer one question first.”

“Alright, shoot.” 

“Why don’t they last long?”

“Ahh, that is a good question. But don’t worry, they don’t die,” Miri said, before holding up a hand and drinking again. “Most quit, a few are injured and then quit,” She breathed in satisfaction after taking her swig.

“What one do you think I will be?” 

Miri looked Leo up and down, a wry grin forming as she took in all the details of the tall, muscled Ranger across from her. “To be honest, I am not sure. Vic has only ever sent us spooks and pencil pushers. A couple of linguists here and there as well. You…who knows, maybe I will have to fire you for undressing me with your eyes,” She finished with a wink, the hand holding her beer can plucking at her skirt. 

Leo did not lose focus, aside from a glance at the motion. It was an ingrained motion, nothing more. He was too well-trained not to focus on little details like that. And with her being a complete unknown to him, his instincts were still on edge. That meant that, after his years as a sniper and playing memory and detail games, he spotted the bright red lace beneath the pencil skirt, how the edges of the pencil skirt squeezed plump thighs, and how each thin thread of her tights shimmered against the warm cabin light. 

“Maybe not,” Miri smiled. “You just might live.”

“I hope to not disappoint,” Leo replied, opening his own can of beer. “So, lay it on me, what do I need to know?”

“Lesson one is a simple one, and one that, so long as you learn, will keep you from joining the other injured on the walk of shame,” Miri began, pressing a book toward Leo. “Turn to page 55.”

Leo did so; he took up the dusty, seemingly ancient tome. He appreciated the book's make for a moment; golden filigree crawled across the green cover. The words shifted and reshaped on the cover, changing from whatever language they were into plain old English. Leo raised a brow, but did not question it. 

This was fantasy land…in a way. For all he knew, this place ran under Harry Potter rules, and he was destined to be a great wizard. Turning to the requested page, the black ink on the parchment shifted as well, forming a picture of a goblin, accompanied by rows upon rows of dense, nearly medical-sounding text. 

“Don’t worry, you won’t have to read it all, unless you want to. But I wanted to show you that page, just to show you exactly what I need you to understand that many of your predecessors failed to.” 

“What might that be? That you are not going to get any taller?” Leo said, pointing at the description of a goblin's average height.

Miri raised her middle finger at Leo, and a small blue flame sprouted from the top, making her obscene gesture look like a lighter. 

“Firstly, fuck you. I am a wonderful height. But no, I need you to understand you are not going to become Harry Potter or some grand wizard. Our species just are not built to use mana in the same way Selene, Elowin, or, well, most of the species you meet are.”

She lowered her finger and took a deep breath, sounding almost winded. “That little flame was the result of my studying for ten years, and even then, it is difficult.” 

She gestured between them. “You and I have to use other means to stay safe. Knives, magic tools, our co-workers, or in your case, the rifle and pistol you brought.” She finished gesturing at the weapons attached to his battle rattle. 

“So, I won't be casting fireball anytime soon?” 

“Nope,” She shrugged. “Maybe someday you might be able to make a small flame, but that would still take years.” 

That was slightly disappointing, but a fact Leo could live with. While not being able to sling spells and conjure magic most could only dream of would be the ultimate dad-lore, he could settle for being a Ranger, and knowing magic was real. 

“Alright. Nothing I can do about that,” Leo nodded. 

“You aren’t going to argue, insist you are different?” Miri squinted suspiciously. 

“Nope.”

“Very fucking well,” Miri smiled broadly, looking genuinely happy for the first time since Leo had walked through the door. “Then let’s get started. Crash course on the fauna and flora.”
Miri cracked a grin. “Rule one: if anything in the woods asks your name, you run.”

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Thank you all for reading this story. We have 16 chapters ready to go on my Patreon where I post a chapter once a week. I will be rolling these out at about the same rate as there. I might post a bit more hastily here, but not much.

-Colin Graves

The truck’s engine roared, the RPM needle kissing redline as mud and dirt exploded behind Leo Moss. He barreled through the backwoods of the National Forest, cranking the wheel and skidding around the next bend as trees blurred into a smear of green.

Wind typhooned through the open window, it’s sound no match for the jubilant K-pop blasting from the speakers. The chipper music a stark juxtaposition of what they would expect from a big black  man who looked like he came out of an old spice commercial. 

Sunlight cut through the trees, glinting off his bare, muscled arms. Against his dark skin, the faint shine made it hard to see, but he caught the outline of his Ranger scroll tattoo on his forearm.

A symbol of all he had done, and what he was in his own mind. 

Benning was behind him, and life as a trigger-pulling, billy-bad-ass as well. He had tried civilian life, but it bored him to no end. Where was the thrill, where was the action? He could not locate anything to get his heart rate up.
Luckily enough for him, another man he knew was able to hook him up. Victor, or Tricky Vic to his allies, had sent him an email with a job offer and a meeting location. 

“So what is the catch?” Leo had asked Vic in the bowels of a seedy motel at a random exit of I-55.
The room smelled like cigarette smoke, regret, and end-of-the-line desperation. This wasn’t a place people chose. It was a place they ended up. 

“What do you mean by catch?” Vic asked, leaning back in his chair and pulling a swig off the bottle of dan jackals. “Everything I have for you or other dudes from the Chalks doesn’t have a catch.”

Leo raised a brow and cast a judgmental glare toward the man who Leo swore had different looks every time they met. 

“Point taken,” Vic replied, leaning over and pulling a packet out of the briefcase that never left his side. He tossed a manila envelope onto the table and placed the bottle on top of it. “Nothing you really won't be used to. You will meet new people, keep some people safe, maybe shoot a few others, nothing a ranger rick like you can’t handle.” 

Leo took up the envelope after taking a sip of the booze. Reading over the briefing inside the packet, it was vague. Unhelpfully so. It detailed nothing other than maintaining security and secrecy at all times. Even the NDA in the packet was useless. It was as generic as generic could be. 

The NDA disclosure just said what anyone taking a job from Vic knew it would be: mucho hush-hush. No one could ever learn what you see or do. No matter what. If someone who was not meant to learn of it…ice them post haste. 

The last item in the packet was the only thing that gave Leo any hint about what he would be doing. It was a brochure for Conjunction National Park: The Happiest Place, no matter the universe. 

“No matter the universe?” Leo muttered, turning the pamphlet over and squinting at the dozens of unknown languages written on the back. 

Leo was not a linguist; he could speak English, get by using Spanish on a vacation, and order beer in German. But even he had never even seen any of these. They looked fantastical, with one even looking like an odd form of hieroglyphics. 

“You will get it once you are there,” Vic assured. 

Leo rolled his eyes was still ready to take the job. Whatever being a park ranger entailed had to be better than stacking boxes. 

“Is there any kit I can get for this gig?” Leo asked, tucking the papers back into the envelope. 

“Of course,” Vic smiled, pulling a letter from his suit coat. “Go shopping. Gun, ammo, and the works. You will get lodging on site, but you might wanna pick up some gear to sleep outside.” 

A whistle escaped Leo’s lips when he peeked into the letter. That was a lot of benjamins. Enough that, honestly, he was kinda worried. Uncle Sam certainly was more than happy to toss cash around, but he had never been on the receiving end.

“Alright. I will do it,” Leo said, reaching out to shake Vic’s hand.

Vic shook Leo’s hand, and a heavy, cold feeling rushed over him. Similar to the shiver you felt when taking a heavy swig of booze. If not for Vic already giving Leo a massive case of the heebie-jeebies, he would have questioned it.

This was a Tricky Vic job. The creepy, strange, and almost otherworldly were to be expected.

As such, he ignored the feeling of doom welling in his chest and thought about the gear he would buy with Uncle Sam's Fun Bucks once the skeletal man left the motel. 

As his truck barreled around the blind corner, a flash of bright red caught Leo’s eye. Another vehicle, coming headlong toward him, was less than a second away.

With lightning-fast reflexes, Leo yanked the E-brake and whipped the rear of the vehicle out of the impact path. The truck followed the change in momentum and slid onto the side of the road. As the vehicle careened, easily five times the speed of the other car, Leo smiled and waved at the screaming pair in the other vehicle.

With precision and control, he righted the truck and continued on his way, not stopping to check on the freaked-out couple, even as their brake lights flashed and they skidded to a stop. Their panic wasn’t his problem.
He had more important things to do today.

Today, he was set to arrive at Conjunction National Park and start his job as a ranger. The thought made him chuckle slightly. Being a park ranger would undoubtedly be a different pace; he doubted blasting a camper away with the 6.8 spear in his trunk would be appreciated, nor would he have to spend time improvising demolition charges. Things that were very much appreciated pastimes with the second ranger battalion.

Such is life.

At least this job should get him outside more often and allow him to avoid large crowds. It even offered on-site lodging, a fact he enjoyed. After having the Army tell him where he lay his head for years, he was conditioned not to have to wonder how he would pay rent. Not having to ponder such an expense made this feel all the more natural.

He slowed from redlining his truck after a half hour. Now traveling at what most people would consider a reasonable speed, when there was a sheer cliff on one side of the road, and an endless shale and pine rise on the other.

In the distance, peeking from the trees, a sign came into view. Now entering Convergence National Park. Nothing seemed odd about the sign, nor the small guard shack he pulled up beside. Not even the older man, leaning out the window and asking for the park service fee, seemed strange.

Everything seemed normal, painfully so.

“Are you able to direct me to the ranger lodge?” Leo asked the man as he took the ten-dollar bill and passed back a parking permit.

“Of course. I take it you are the new guy then?”

“I am. How did you figure that out?” Leo asked.

The old man chuckled in the way a grandfather would when their grandson said something not stupid, but something funny because of their ignorance. “You asked for the lodge, not the station. So that means you would be working with Selene in the back park.”

“Back park?” Leo raised a brow.

“Oh, y’all work out in areas way out of the way, mostly manual labor stuff, I think. But it would be best if you let her explain.” The old man said, grabbing a radio and communicating over it that he had arrived, and someone should meet him at the gate to the back park.

The radio's response was garbled and unintelligible, but it was enough for the man to feel confident that whoever he reached understood the instructions.

“Alright, son. Go on ahead, pass the big building on the right, and follow forest road 001, to 001-3, follow that road until you hit the gate,” The man explained, showing the directions with broad gestures.

“Do you have a map?” Leo asked, “This doesn’t help me.” He began to mockingly mimic the man's hand and arm motions.

“That I do not. There are no public maps of that area of the park. Just follow the road straight and turn onto Forest Road 1. It's on the left two miles up. You can’t miss it.”

Leo decided that there was no value in arguing with the man, and having wasted enough of his day joyriding throughout the alpine, cut his losses.  

Without wasting any more time, Leo rolled forward and worked his way through the front park. People were enjoying the beginning of summer, and their merry-making drowned out the sounds of nature.

You could hear no birds, no bleating deer, nor any skittering beasts in the undergrowth. Just the sounds of humans, living their lives: complaints about being hungry, laughter as kids swam in the lake, and giggling as mothers attended to their babes' needs.

Shortly after, the truck rolled off the pavement and back onto dirt. As the man instructed, Leo followed the main road for several miles, climbing winding switchbacks. At the peak, the grand majesty of the park was in full view: cabins, the lake, rivers, and hundreds of parkgoers were barely visible amid the endless pine trees and sharp, jagged cliffs of the montane forest.

It was a breathtaking sight, but to a man as seasoned as Leo, it was just another wonder of the world. He was the type of man who had been around the world twice, had talked to everyone once, and fully understood that you never shoot a large-caliber man with a small-caliber bullet.

Turning his attention back from the vantage point, Leo watched for the offshoot, one that came into view around the next bend. Following that route, back down the mountain, Leo came upon a curious sight.

A tunnel. The road led right through a tunnel. Why? There was no evidence of this road being used for trains or possibly a mine. Why not simply go around the cliff? Build another switchback? Building a tunnel, even one like this that was at most a hundred yards in length, surely was a more logistically taxing affair than just carving out a typical road.

Leo filed the oddity away with the rest of the things in his life that didn’t have answers and kept moving.
As he passed through the tunnel, a shiver ripped through Leo’s body, like walking into a wall of static. Gooseflesh erupted along his arms, and the sharp scent of copper filled the air.

Leo wiped his nose with the back of his hand, fearing a nosebleed, but there was nothing. And by the time he emerged on the other end of the tunnel, the strange electric jolts going through his body had passed.

As he drove the remaining mile to the gate, he expected another assault from whatever caused that feeling, but it never came. The rest of the ride was calm and peaceful. The temperature dropped slightly as he entered the mountain shadow, but it was still plenty warm for the shorts and tank top he was wearing. The only strange event was the thick fog rolling in. As far as he understood it, this week was supposed to be nothing but sunshine.

The gate was nothing to look at. It was simple, painted the same dull brown as all park property. When compared to the security gates he was used to in Kandahar or Venezuela, this might as well have been no security at all.

If this section of the park was so secluded and meant to keep people out, why was there no fence, no pill boxes, or machineguns porcupining out of kill slits?

If he really wanted to, he could simply ruck up, clamber over the mountain, and be in the back park with little effort. But then again, he was a Ranger. A member of America's sledgehammer, ready to be thrown at the complicated problems.

After putting the truck in park, Leo scanned the area, looking for any sign of whomever he was supposed to meet, but saw nothing, just the endless cliffs and scraggly pines.

He sighed and stepped out of the cab. With no ETA for his contact, Leo did what he had done many times while on standby. He stretched: touched his toes, bent his back, and contorted himself in ways other Rangers wished they could.

Sure, Rangers were fit beyond belief, but few could run a five-minute mile, bust out fifty pull-ups, and still be able to flex like a gymnast.

“Wow,” a honeyed voice purred from nearby, “you’re really flexible.”

In an instant, he levered up from the splits to face them. He instinctively stepped away from them, raising his hands to his waist, ready to defend himself.

The woman casually sitting on the gate was not what he expected. She was lithe but well-muscled, sun-tanned, and barely came up to his chest. She wore the standard khaki button-up of the park rangers. But her shorts were definitely shorter than most. They barely reached her mid-thigh, and hugged her muscular legs as she playfully kicked them to and fro.

The light reflected off her short raven locks. A ruffled black bob framed her gentle smile and soft face. The color complemented her emerald green eyes.

“You can relax, Leo. I’m Selene. Frank at the front desk radioed me that you needed to be let in,” the fairy-aired woman said, patting a radio attached to her belt, just over her rump. “Or are you not Leo?”

“No, no. I am Leo. I just was not expecting…” Leo was about to say someone so cute, but held his tongue and pivoted to another subject. “You just surprised me. I didn’t hear you arrive.”

“Oh!” Selene perked up, giving a slightly toothy, almost teasing grin. “I’m sorry if little old me scared you.”
“Not quite scared,” Leo chuckled, stepping closer.

“That’s good. If I scared you, I doubt you would be able to handle giving a tour to a group of little trolls,” Selene said, jumping down from the gate and barely making a sound when her boots landed on the gravel road.
“Well, yeah. I’m not that great with kids; I would suck at that regardless.”

Selene sauntered closer, giving Leo an elevator once over top to bottom, assessing him with an easy confidence, before placing one hand on her hip and jutting a thumb over a shoulder. “Yeah, but you will be alright, big guy. I will show you the ropes over the next few days. Come on, let’s get you down to the lodge so you can meet the rest of the team.”

“Let’s do that. I’m excited to meet them.”

Leo loaded up into the truck while Selene unlocked the gate. Something was different about this woman, but Leo couldn't put his finger on it. She had a certain elegance and lightness in her movement that did not seem typical. 

How she carried her weight was almost preternaturally silent. Leo had known many snipers who could move through the woods like ghosts, but even they had to focus on such an undetectable traversal. 
Selene seemed to effortlessly make no noise at all. 

Even when she loaded into the cab, the only noise she made was closing the door. It was as if she was not actually touching anything. The only reason other than the sound Leo noticed her entering was the comforting scent of pine rolling off her sporty figure.

“The NDA is in the glovebox,” Leo said as he pressed the gas pedal down. 

“Oh, that’s good,” Selene replied, not even making an attempt at retrieving it. 

“Aren’t you going to make sure I signed it?” 

“There is no need. I know you signed it.” 

“Oh, and how is that?” Leo asked, slowly taking the truck around the next bend, being careful about how fast he was going now that he was not alone. When it was just him, redlining all the time was fine, but not everyone shared his need to play a delicate dance with death at all times. 

Selene looked at Leo like he was speaking French; as if the question was not just an insult to her obvious explanation, but also to her personally. “You are here. Did Vic not explain the job to you?” 

“Not really. All Tricky Vic told me was, you offered three hots, a cot, and it would keep me away from the perpetual boredom of civilian life,” Leo explained, shrugging while never letting go of the wheel. “What more could I want?”

A somewhat worried look curled onto Selene's face. As if Vic having not informed him of the intimate details of this posting would become a problem in the future. Picking up on that look, and having dealt with enough civilians who needed reassurance that everything would be alright, that is exactly what Leo did.

“Don’t worry about it. I signed it, and I know full well how to keep secrets. No matter what the back park has going on.” 

“We will see,” Selene said. “So what sort of experience do you have?”

“Well. I spent six years as a Ranger, four as an infantryman, and three as a sniper. Not in that order, of course.” 

“Impressive,” Selene nodded. “Any experience with teaching?” 

“Like boot camp teaching, or other stuff?” 

“Practical stuff. Camping, knot tying, you know…” Selene struggled to think of the word for a moment, scrunching her face in frustration in the cutest way before thinking of what she wanted to say. “Like Boy Scouts.” 
“Other than teaching boots the basics, not really.”

“Oh,” Selene replied, sounding disappointed. “I will add making sure you have some curriculum to your onboarding list.” 

“You are the boss, boss.” 

The truck ambled down the road, slowly but assuredly. They passed by small waterfalls and the most brilliant landscape that Leo had ever seen. The only word that could describe it was surreal. 

Waterfalls as crystal clear as glass. Their trickling flow, barely disturbing the pools below, allowed Leo to see down into the water, where fish of vibrant golds, saffrons, and emeralds flittered about, chasing smaller fish with bestial hunger. 
The trees seemed more vibrant. It was as if he could pick up more shifts within the hues. Greens, yellows, reds, subtle amber colorations. With the way the light played against the boughs, Leo could have sworn some of the trees were blue. 

High in the sky, Leo could see the peaks of dozens upon dozens of mountains peaking out of the fog to greet him. If he did not know better, he could have sworn that the peaks weren’t the tops of spires, but floating islands of verdant foliage covered in shale. 

But that was impossible. He knew that was just a trick of the light, along with the fog broiling in the air. 
Passed the fog, and beside a lake was the lodge. It was two stories high, made of well-carved logs, and was the largest of all the buildings surrounding it. 

“So that’s the main house, and here is the vehicle storage, the tool shed, oh, and the shop. You might need that to keep this old beast running,” Selene explained as they passed by each building. 

  “Old? This is a classic," Leo defended, knowing his truck was an old hard body and looked worse for wear on the outside, but inside was damn near new. 

“Is it not?” Selene tilted her head in confusion. "It looks like a rust bucket."

“I will show you later,” Leo promised, wanting nothing more than to floor it and watch the petite bombshell get pancaked against the seat.

“So who will we be working with?” Leo asked as he parked the truck and moved to heft his three sea bags onto his shoulders.

The weight of all he owned, weapons, clothes, and documents, caused his knees to ache slightly. He paid that pain no mind. After his years of work as a Ranger, such little pains were a daily occurrence. He was used to it. 
“Well,” Selene started, tapping her finger against her chin, looking up at the sky. “Myself, Miri, our dispatcher and admin worker, along with Elowin. She handles the botany of the park. But we likely won't be seeing her today; she has been profiling flowers on the northern ridge. There will be a few others you see, but just us three most days.” 

“Alright, that doesn’t sound too bad,” Leo said, following her up to the top of the stairs, leading into the lodge. 
Selene stopped at the top of the creaking stairs and turned about, looking down at Leo. She leaned forward, letting him see a hint at her tight black sports bra, and pert but well-sized cleavage. 

Leo could not help but wonder how soft they would feel. Selene just had the body type that really tickled his pickle. Muscled, but not a bodybuilder. A voice and attitude that was smooth and womanly, and did not grate on his last nerve; a tone far too many wooks had in the past. 

“Hey, big guy, focus,” Selene snapped her fingers, seeing his eyes wander. 

“Sorry,” Leo smirked, looking back toward her emerald eyes. 

“Now remember, you promised to keep this a secret,” Selene reminded him. 

“I know,” he nodded, unsure why she believed he needed the reminder.  He was an Army Ranger and had done his fair share of blacked-out operations. This job would just be another on that seemingly ever-growing list of things he would take to his grave.

She breathed deeply, preparing herself for whatever Leo’s reaction was about to be. After steadying herself, she flung the door open and stepped inside. “Miri, Leo is here. Do you have the training packet ready?”

The building was nothing incredibly special. If anything, it looked more like a home than it did a ranger station. Other than the small desk off to the side of the main entrance, the inside was indistinguishable from a rustic home. 

Pictures of nature lined the walls. A fireplace crackled in the corner, and even the furniture was utilitarian: a davenport, a coffee table, a bearskin rug, and even a few rocking chairs.

If you looked up old ranger housing online, the picture would be precisely what Leo was walking into. For him, it was flawless. Calm, expected, and felt like somewhere that welcomed him the moment his boots touched the deck. 

That was until Miri sauntered around the corner and smashed every conception of what reality was for Leo. 
Miri barely came up to his waist. She had pointed ears, black hair, yellow eyes—and skin the color of moss.
She was, for lack of a better word in his limited lexicon…a goblin. A true blue, green as grass goblin. 

And she was not the kind from the nerd game the support losers in the regiment played: scrawny, out to steal sweet rolls and kidnap the local cat. No, Miri had hips and a bust that Leo swore to god were as wide as she was tall. 

She was dressed in a pencil skirt whose stitching screamed, trying to hold back the avalanche of her robust rear end. High heels only made her short stature all the more evident, because, despite the four-inch stilettos, he, even across the room, had to look down at her.

“What the fuck?” He said, jumping back. “Are you a damned goblin?”

“Well, of course I am. Are you blind?” Miri smirked.

-----

Hello all. I hope you enjoyed the start of this new story from me. I will be posting this once a week as I usually do. Tune in next Monday for the next chapter.

-Colin Graves

The truck’s engine roared, the RPM needle kissing redline as mud and dirt exploded behind Leo Moss. He barreled through the backwoods of the National Forest, cranking the wheel and skidding around the next bend as trees blurred into a smear of green.

Wind typhooned through the open window, it’s sound no match for the jubilant K-pop blasting from the speakers. The chipper music a stark juxtaposition of what they would expect from a big black  man who looked like he came out of an old spice commercial. 

Sunlight cut through the trees, glinting off his bare, muscled arms. Against his dark skin, the faint shine made it hard to see, but he caught the outline of his Ranger scroll tattoo on his forearm.

A symbol of all he had done, and what he was in his own mind. 

Benning was behind him, and life as a trigger-pulling, billy-bad-ass as well. He had tried civilian life, but it bored him to no end. Where was the thrill, where was the action? He could not locate anything to get his heart rate up.
Luckily enough for him, another man he knew was able to hook him up. Victor, or Tricky Vic to his allies, had sent him an email with a job offer and a meeting location. 

“So what is the catch?” Leo had asked Vic in the bowels of a seedy motel at a random exit of I-55.
The room smelled like cigarette smoke, regret, and end-of-the-line desperation. This wasn’t a place people chose. It was a place they ended up. 

“What do you mean by catch?” Vic asked, leaning back in his chair and pulling a swig off the bottle of dan jackals. “Everything I have for you or other dudes from the Chalks doesn’t have a catch.”

Leo raised a brow and cast a judgmental glare toward the man who Leo swore had different looks every time they met. 

“Point taken,” Vic replied, leaning over and pulling a packet out of the briefcase that never left his side. He tossed a manila envelope onto the table and placed the bottle on top of it. “Nothing you really won't be used to. You will meet new people, keep some people safe, maybe shoot a few others, nothing a ranger rick like you can’t handle.” 

Leo took up the envelope after taking a sip of the booze. Reading over the briefing inside the packet, it was vague. Unhelpfully so. It detailed nothing other than maintaining security and secrecy at all times. Even the NDA in the packet was useless. It was as generic as generic could be. 

The NDA disclosure just said what anyone taking a job from Vic knew it would be: mucho hush-hush. No one could ever learn what you see or do. No matter what. If someone who was not meant to learn of it…ice them post haste. 

The last item in the packet was the only thing that gave Leo any hint about what he would be doing. It was a brochure for Conjunction National Park: The Happiest Place, no matter the universe. 

“No matter the universe?” Leo muttered, turning the pamphlet over and squinting at the dozens of unknown languages written on the back. 

Leo was not a linguist; he could speak English, get by using Spanish on a vacation, and order beer in German. But even he had never even seen any of these. They looked fantastical, with one even looking like an odd form of hieroglyphics. 

“You will get it once you are there,” Vic assured. 

Leo rolled his eyes was still ready to take the job. Whatever being a park ranger entailed had to be better than stacking boxes. 

“Is there any kit I can get for this gig?” Leo asked, tucking the papers back into the envelope. 

“Of course,” Vic smiled, pulling a letter from his suit coat. “Go shopping. Gun, ammo, and the works. You will get lodging on site, but you might wanna pick up some gear to sleep outside.” 

A whistle escaped Leo’s lips when he peeked into the letter. That was a lot of benjamins. Enough that, honestly, he was kinda worried. Uncle Sam certainly was more than happy to toss cash around, but he had never been on the receiving end.

“Alright. I will do it,” Leo said, reaching out to shake Vic’s hand.

Vic shook Leo’s hand, and a heavy, cold feeling rushed over him. Similar to the shiver you felt when taking a heavy swig of booze. If not for Vic already giving Leo a massive case of the heebie-jeebies, he would have questioned it.

This was a Tricky Vic job. The creepy, strange, and almost otherworldly were to be expected.

As such, he ignored the feeling of doom welling in his chest and thought about the gear he would buy with Uncle Sam's Fun Bucks once the skeletal man left the motel. 

As his truck barreled around the blind corner, a flash of bright red caught Leo’s eye. Another vehicle, coming headlong toward him, was less than a second away.

With lightning-fast reflexes, Leo yanked the E-brake and whipped the rear of the vehicle out of the impact path. The truck followed the change in momentum and slid onto the side of the road. As the vehicle careened, easily five times the speed of the other car, Leo smiled and waved at the screaming pair in the other vehicle.

With precision and control, he righted the truck and continued on his way, not stopping to check on the freaked-out couple, even as their brake lights flashed and they skidded to a stop. Their panic wasn’t his problem.
He had more important things to do today.

Today, he was set to arrive at Conjunction National Park and start his job as a ranger. The thought made him chuckle slightly. Being a park ranger would undoubtedly be a different pace; he doubted blasting a camper away with the 6.8 spear in his trunk would be appreciated, nor would he have to spend time improvising demolition charges. Things that were very much appreciated pastimes with the second ranger battalion.

Such is life.

At least this job should get him outside more often and allow him to avoid large crowds. It even offered on-site lodging, a fact he enjoyed. After having the Army tell him where he lay his head for years, he was conditioned not to have to wonder how he would pay rent. Not having to ponder such an expense made this feel all the more natural.

He slowed from redlining his truck after a half hour. Now traveling at what most people would consider a reasonable speed, when there was a sheer cliff on one side of the road, and an endless shale and pine rise on the other.

In the distance, peeking from the trees, a sign came into view. Now entering Convergence National Park. Nothing seemed odd about the sign, nor the small guard shack he pulled up beside. Not even the older man, leaning out the window and asking for the park service fee, seemed strange.

Everything seemed normal, painfully so.

“Are you able to direct me to the ranger lodge?” Leo asked the man as he took the ten-dollar bill and passed back a parking permit.

“Of course. I take it you are the new guy then?”

“I am. How did you figure that out?” Leo asked.

The old man chuckled in the way a grandfather would when their grandson said something not stupid, but something funny because of their ignorance. “You asked for the lodge, not the station. So that means you would be working with Selene in the back park.”

“Back park?” Leo raised a brow.

“Oh, y’all work out in areas way out of the way, mostly manual labor stuff, I think. But it would be best if you let her explain.” The old man said, grabbing a radio and communicating over it that he had arrived, and someone should meet him at the gate to the back park.

The radio's response was garbled and unintelligible, but it was enough for the man to feel confident that whoever he reached understood the instructions.

“Alright, son. Go on ahead, pass the big building on the right, and follow forest road 001, to 001-3, follow that road until you hit the gate,” The man explained, showing the directions with broad gestures.

“Do you have a map?” Leo asked, “This doesn’t help me.” He began to mockingly mimic the man's hand and arm motions.

“That I do not. There are no public maps of that area of the park. Just follow the road straight and turn onto Forest Road 1. It's on the left two miles up. You can’t miss it.”

Leo decided that there was no value in arguing with the man, and having wasted enough of his day joyriding throughout the alpine, cut his losses.  

Without wasting any more time, Leo rolled forward and worked his way through the front park. People were enjoying the beginning of summer, and their merry-making drowned out the sounds of nature.

You could hear no birds, no bleating deer, nor any skittering beasts in the undergrowth. Just the sounds of humans, living their lives: complaints about being hungry, laughter as kids swam in the lake, and giggling as mothers attended to their babes' needs.

Shortly after, the truck rolled off the pavement and back onto dirt. As the man instructed, Leo followed the main road for several miles, climbing winding switchbacks. At the peak, the grand majesty of the park was in full view: cabins, the lake, rivers, and hundreds of parkgoers were barely visible amid the endless pine trees and sharp, jagged cliffs of the montane forest.

It was a breathtaking sight, but to a man as seasoned as Leo, it was just another wonder of the world. He was the type of man who had been around the world twice, had talked to everyone once, and fully understood that you never shoot a large-caliber man with a small-caliber bullet.

Turning his attention back from the vantage point, Leo watched for the offshoot, one that came into view around the next bend. Following that route, back down the mountain, Leo came upon a curious sight.

A tunnel. The road led right through a tunnel. Why? There was no evidence of this road being used for trains or possibly a mine. Why not simply go around the cliff? Build another switchback? Building a tunnel, even one like this that was at most a hundred yards in length, surely was a more logistically taxing affair than just carving out a typical road.

Leo filed the oddity away with the rest of the things in his life that didn’t have answers and kept moving.
As he passed through the tunnel, a shiver ripped through Leo’s body, like walking into a wall of static. Gooseflesh erupted along his arms, and the sharp scent of copper filled the air.

Leo wiped his nose with the back of his hand, fearing a nosebleed, but there was nothing. And by the time he emerged on the other end of the tunnel, the strange electric jolts going through his body had passed.

As he drove the remaining mile to the gate, he expected another assault from whatever caused that feeling, but it never came. The rest of the ride was calm and peaceful. The temperature dropped slightly as he entered the mountain shadow, but it was still plenty warm for the shorts and tank top he was wearing. The only strange event was the thick fog rolling in. As far as he understood it, this week was supposed to be nothing but sunshine.

The gate was nothing to look at. It was simple, painted the same dull brown as all park property. When compared to the security gates he was used to in Kandahar or Venezuela, this might as well have been no security at all.

If this section of the park was so secluded and meant to keep people out, why was there no fence, no pill boxes, or machineguns porcupining out of kill slits?

If he really wanted to, he could simply ruck up, clamber over the mountain, and be in the back park with little effort. But then again, he was a Ranger. A member of America's sledgehammer, ready to be thrown at the complicated problems.

After putting the truck in park, Leo scanned the area, looking for any sign of whomever he was supposed to meet, but saw nothing, just the endless cliffs and scraggly pines.

He sighed and stepped out of the cab. With no ETA for his contact, Leo did what he had done many times while on standby. He stretched: touched his toes, bent his back, and contorted himself in ways other Rangers wished they could.

Sure, Rangers were fit beyond belief, but few could run a five-minute mile, bust out fifty pull-ups, and still be able to flex like a gymnast.

“Wow,” a honeyed voice purred from nearby, “you’re really flexible.”

In an instant, he levered up from the splits to face them. He instinctively stepped away from them, raising his hands to his waist, ready to defend himself.

The woman casually sitting on the gate was not what he expected. She was lithe but well-muscled, sun-tanned, and barely came up to his chest. She wore the standard khaki button-up of the park rangers. But her shorts were definitely shorter than most. They barely reached her mid-thigh, and hugged her muscular legs as she playfully kicked them to and fro.

The light reflected off her short raven locks. A ruffled black bob framed her gentle smile and soft face. The color complemented her emerald green eyes.

“You can relax, Leo. I’m Selene. Frank at the front desk radioed me that you needed to be let in,” the fairy-aired woman said, patting a radio attached to her belt, just over her rump. “Or are you not Leo?”

“No, no. I am Leo. I just was not expecting…” Leo was about to say someone so cute, but held his tongue and pivoted to another subject. “You just surprised me. I didn’t hear you arrive.”

“Oh!” Selene perked up, giving a slightly toothy, almost teasing grin. “I’m sorry if little old me scared you.”
“Not quite scared,” Leo chuckled, stepping closer.

“That’s good. If I scared you, I doubt you would be able to handle giving a tour to a group of little trolls,” Selene said, jumping down from the gate and barely making a sound when her boots landed on the gravel road.
“Well, yeah. I’m not that great with kids; I would suck at that regardless.”

Selene sauntered closer, giving Leo an elevator once over top to bottom, assessing him with an easy confidence, before placing one hand on her hip and jutting a thumb over a shoulder. “Yeah, but you will be alright, big guy. I will show you the ropes over the next few days. Come on, let’s get you down to the lodge so you can meet the rest of the team.”

“Let’s do that. I’m excited to meet them.”

Leo loaded up into the truck while Selene unlocked the gate. Something was different about this woman, but Leo couldn't put his finger on it. She had a certain elegance and lightness in her movement that did not seem typical. 

How she carried her weight was almost preternaturally silent. Leo had known many snipers who could move through the woods like ghosts, but even they had to focus on such an undetectable traversal. 
Selene seemed to effortlessly make no noise at all. 

Even when she loaded into the cab, the only noise she made was closing the door. It was as if she was not actually touching anything. The only reason other than the sound Leo noticed her entering was the comforting scent of pine rolling off her sporty figure.

“The NDA is in the glovebox,” Leo said as he pressed the gas pedal down. 

“Oh, that’s good,” Selene replied, not even making an attempt at retrieving it. 

“Aren’t you going to make sure I signed it?” 

“There is no need. I know you signed it.” 

“Oh, and how is that?” Leo asked, slowly taking the truck around the next bend, being careful about how fast he was going now that he was not alone. When it was just him, redlining all the time was fine, but not everyone shared his need to play a delicate dance with death at all times. 

Selene looked at Leo like he was speaking French; as if the question was not just an insult to her obvious explanation, but also to her personally. “You are here. Did Vic not explain the job to you?” 

“Not really. All Tricky Vic told me was, you offered three hots, a cot, and it would keep me away from the perpetual boredom of civilian life,” Leo explained, shrugging while never letting go of the wheel. “What more could I want?”

A somewhat worried look curled onto Selene's face. As if Vic having not informed him of the intimate details of this posting would become a problem in the future. Picking up on that look, and having dealt with enough civilians who needed reassurance that everything would be alright, that is exactly what Leo did.

“Don’t worry about it. I signed it, and I know full well how to keep secrets. No matter what the back park has going on.” 

“We will see,” Selene said. “So what sort of experience do you have?”

“Well. I spent six years as a Ranger, four as an infantryman, and three as a sniper. Not in that order, of course.” 

“Impressive,” Selene nodded. “Any experience with teaching?” 

“Like boot camp teaching, or other stuff?” 

“Practical stuff. Camping, knot tying, you know…” Selene struggled to think of the word for a moment, scrunching her face in frustration in the cutest way before thinking of what she wanted to say. “Like Boy Scouts.” 
“Other than teaching boots the basics, not really.”

“Oh,” Selene replied, sounding disappointed. “I will add making sure you have some curriculum to your onboarding list.” 

“You are the boss, boss.” 

The truck ambled down the road, slowly but assuredly. They passed by small waterfalls and the most brilliant landscape that Leo had ever seen. The only word that could describe it was surreal. 

Waterfalls as crystal clear as glass. Their trickling flow, barely disturbing the pools below, allowed Leo to see down into the water, where fish of vibrant golds, saffrons, and emeralds flittered about, chasing smaller fish with bestial hunger. 
The trees seemed more vibrant. It was as if he could pick up more shifts within the hues. Greens, yellows, reds, subtle amber colorations. With the way the light played against the boughs, Leo could have sworn some of the trees were blue. 

High in the sky, Leo could see the peaks of dozens upon dozens of mountains peaking out of the fog to greet him. If he did not know better, he could have sworn that the peaks weren’t the tops of spires, but floating islands of verdant foliage covered in shale. 

But that was impossible. He knew that was just a trick of the light, along with the fog broiling in the air. 
Passed the fog, and beside a lake was the lodge. It was two stories high, made of well-carved logs, and was the largest of all the buildings surrounding it. 

“So that’s the main house, and here is the vehicle storage, the tool shed, oh, and the shop. You might need that to keep this old beast running,” Selene explained as they passed by each building. 

  “Old? This is a classic," Leo defended, knowing his truck was an old hard body and looked worse for wear on the outside, but inside was damn near new. 

“Is it not?” Selene tilted her head in confusion. "It looks like a rust bucket."

“I will show you later,” Leo promised, wanting nothing more than to floor it and watch the petite bombshell get pancaked against the seat.

“So who will we be working with?” Leo asked as he parked the truck and moved to heft his three sea bags onto his shoulders.

The weight of all he owned, weapons, clothes, and documents, caused his knees to ache slightly. He paid that pain no mind. After his years of work as a Ranger, such little pains were a daily occurrence. He was used to it. 
“Well,” Selene started, tapping her finger against her chin, looking up at the sky. “Myself, Miri, our dispatcher and admin worker, along with Elowin. She handles the botany of the park. But we likely won't be seeing her today; she has been profiling flowers on the northern ridge. There will be a few others you see, but just us three most days.” 

“Alright, that doesn’t sound too bad,” Leo said, following her up to the top of the stairs, leading into the lodge. 
Selene stopped at the top of the creaking stairs and turned about, looking down at Leo. She leaned forward, letting him see a hint at her tight black sports bra, and pert but well-sized cleavage. 

Leo could not help but wonder how soft they would feel. Selene just had the body type that really tickled his pickle. Muscled, but not a bodybuilder. A voice and attitude that was smooth and womanly, and did not grate on his last nerve; a tone far too many wooks had in the past. 

“Hey, big guy, focus,” Selene snapped her fingers, seeing his eyes wander. 

“Sorry,” Leo smirked, looking back toward her emerald eyes. 

“Now remember, you promised to keep this a secret,” Selene reminded him. 

“I know,” he nodded, unsure why she believed he needed the reminder.  He was an Army Ranger and had done his fair share of blacked-out operations. This job would just be another on that seemingly ever-growing list of things he would take to his grave.

She breathed deeply, preparing herself for whatever Leo’s reaction was about to be. After steadying herself, she flung the door open and stepped inside. “Miri, Leo is here. Do you have the training packet ready?”

The building was nothing incredibly special. If anything, it looked more like a home than it did a ranger station. Other than the small desk off to the side of the main entrance, the inside was indistinguishable from a rustic home. 

Pictures of nature lined the walls. A fireplace crackled in the corner, and even the furniture was utilitarian: a davenport, a coffee table, a bearskin rug, and even a few rocking chairs.

If you looked up old ranger housing online, the picture would be precisely what Leo was walking into. For him, it was flawless. Calm, expected, and felt like somewhere that welcomed him the moment his boots touched the deck. 

That was until Miri sauntered around the corner and smashed every conception of what reality was for Leo. 
Miri barely came up to his waist. She had pointed ears, black hair, yellow eyes—and skin the color of moss.
She was, for lack of a better word in his limited lexicon…a goblin. A true blue, green as grass goblin. 

And she was not the kind from the nerd game the support losers in the regiment played: scrawny, out to steal sweet rolls and kidnap the local cat. No, Miri had hips and a bust that Leo swore to god were as wide as she was tall. 

She was dressed in a pencil skirt whose stitching screamed, trying to hold back the avalanche of her robust rear end. High heels only made her short stature all the more evident, because, despite the four-inch stilettos, he, even across the room, had to look down at her.

“What the fuck?” He said, jumping back. “Are you a damned goblin?”

“Well, of course I am. Are you blind?” Miri smirked.

-----

Hello all. I hope you enjoyed the start of this new story from me. I will be posting this once a week as I usually do. Tune in next Monday for the next chapter.

-Colin Graves

When we reached the hells I was not certain what I had expected. People on pikes? Flayed skin as flags. But I was not expecting something that seemed so eerily normal.

We ended up on the deck of a small barge on the river Styx, the river of the damned and dead. Around us were hundreds of far larger vessels, our little ship might as well have been a rowboat right beside war galleons.

The auditor and Sirme annoyed some regal looking kobold—Tiax—he claimed to own the ship. If he did or not it did not matter. He was not going anywhere, nor was his rather flamboyant dress. Tiax wore a cape, full plate, and a crown of gold. But he is unimportant at this point. We had a few things to handle on this level of the hells.

Firstly get passage to floor two, where I hope to find you. And Reta has to find someone in the bronze citadel. A servant of Tiamat. Additionally they had to find the Minister of Morale.

So we set forth, leaving the ship and entering the demonic city. The others were less than helpful as we started, they wanted to talk to a demon with a clip board commanding imps—I however spotted a bearded devil, and directed them that way.

He had a guards posture, and keen eyes, watching everywhere. In my experience the guards, no matter where you find yourself are fonts of information. He was…to be frank, an asshole.

But despite his assholeness he gave us a lead. There was a place where we could get contracts for finding petitioners—lost souls who have sold their souls to the hells for whatever they desired.

I had no real intention of tracking down any petitioners, but getting into the hub of mercenaries and lots of men more like myself…past self I still hope…would benefit our cause. We could get information, directions, and find who we are looking for. Maybe a hellish mercenary was looking for the same person as Reta. If they were, combining our efforts would help.

On our way, a pair of imps tried to rob Reta. I spotted it, and hit one with my spears haft, trying to dissuade the creature. I must have forgotten my own strength. It popped like a melon, and the other fled.

Someone, an unseen shooter shot that one. I never saw who fired, and my…comrades did not even pay attention to the fact that someone not us just killed that imp. I had to usher them from looting the bodies. I was not going to remain there with an unknown sniper in the area.

Through a clearing surrounded by undead soldiers a death knight. A knight with a skull for a head, led us to a tent. Inside was just who we were after. The Minister of Morale, what a stroke of luck. I guess that bearded devil will not be receiving his commission. Ah well, he will live.

Zamir—the minister of Morale, She was something else. Shapely, not to busty, a lot like a woman you might find at a upscale tavern selling her services. But she was twelve feet tall, skin as white as bone, and had black horns. Oh and a snake like tail.

We worked out a deal with her, not only to get down to the second floor but get a location on the Tiamat contact. She did mention a desire for us to kill the contact, and offered more pay; we are not sure if that is the best course of action, but we can always burn that bridge when we get there.

Either way, it was not like any of us wished to work with her for long. That she was a devil uninterested in souls worried us. She was playing a game on a level none of us could likely comprehend; a distant working relationship was the safe option.

Following a teleport out of the city, and thankfully in the direction we have to go. Toward some pit a few I believe weeks away.

Did I mention how much I hate magic. There is something unnatural about it. The feeling of your heart shuddering, your body morphing as you travel a distance in a time no one was ever meant to always makes me feel sick.

I nearly threw up in my helmet. Thankfully I did not.

I summoned the spectral steed our sponsor gave us. Most peoples were horses. Reta’s took the form of some large bipedal lizard-bird thing. While mine took the form of a wolf—old. Tired. Wounded.

I pat the animals flank, assuring the kindred spirit. I have yet to name the thing. Maybe I can have you do that once you meet the old spectral animal. That would be nice.

We rode, rode hard. The mounts traveled as quickly as I could on foot in a matter of minutes. If it was not for all the lakes of blood, and skirmishes of the blood war to our front and rear, the trip might have possibly called pleasant.

Until night fell.

Stars fell from the sky at a rate that was absolutely dazzling. Any mage from across the material plane would have killed their own mother to see such a majestic display of astrological brilliance. A once in a life time event.

But it was not. As if the stars knew we were watching them, they arched and lanced across the sky, falling straight toward us as we rode.

When they struck the ground nearby, they vaporized, exploding violently showering us in dirt and stones.

Instead of dallying, and allowing the others any moment to freeze, or worse panic I searched for a quick solution. We needed cover. It might be magical in nature, but the reaction to this had to be no different than reacting to thundering, earth shattering artillery fire.

To our luck there was cover nearby. A sky ship, ancient and ruined. It clearly had crashed long ago. That its days of sailing azure horizons was over did not matter, what did was the massive hole in its hull.

“Rally on me!” I roared jabbing my spear toward the carcass like a hunter would a whale.

My allies followed, and most of us entered the ruins as we dismissed our mounts. The only that did not was the auditor. As he reached the hole a star exploded behind him, throwing him from his mount. He slammed hard into the wall inside the ship, smoldering.

Myself, Sirme and Ezekiel took to arms once we knew the stars were not going to follow us and Reta was tending to the wounded. There was no particular reason I told her to do so. She was just there, and I wanted the heavier warriors with me to ensure we were alone in this shelter.

We worked down the only hallway, myself and Sirme on point, using my bullseye lantern to illuminate the rusted metal.

Shadows danced before us, our steps the only sound other than the groaning ship. As if the metal itself was upset at our presence within it’s belly.

We cleared out each room, slowly, until we came across one where Sirme heard the beasts inside. We worked smarter, not harder. By that I mean we lit the room on fire by forcing oil underneath the door and lighting it on fire.

After several minutes of the monsters screaming, the room went silent. We entered the charred disgusting room after waiting a few minutes more.

There was something called hell chickens dead inside. They looked like eyeless turkeys. But after their charring, it was difficult to tell what exactly they would look like. We searched the room.

I found some strange ore, something called infernal iron. I did not like the way Sirme was looking at the ore, then at me after I put it away. I swear she is willing to kill me for the dozen small bits of unrefined ore. Let’s hope it never comes to that.

The last thing I found was a pair of soul coins. They were horrible.

One was the soul of a performer. Her voice was angelic. I could hear it in my mind as she performed for an adoring crowd. But the moment she received any praise, she was dragged down to hell.

The other was a glutton. A animal. That man was less than human. He starved others just so he could have another slice of cake. I can’t say if he deserves to be in a soul coin and eternally tormented, but he was not a good man.

I gave the coins to Ezekiel. I do not want to hold the literal weight of two souls in my hand. And those souls would not want a man like me keeping them safe.

We went to the last door and opened it. Inside there was a dozen robed figures backlit by the red skyline. We readied ourselves and raised our weapons, unsure what we just walked into.

First

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My name is Pierce. No last name—I am no noble. I am but a man. A mere mortal man. These are my confessions. 

I am sorry, Autumn, my daughter, if you are reading this, I likely failed to save you—I  pray to whatever god would listen to a despot like me—grant me aid in this endeavor, or save you if I have failed.

I am a simple man who has lived my life for years out in the ends of the world, in a small hamlet known as Butterknock. It was a halfling village that I had found myself in following a rather storied life.

But Autumn, you already know that, don’t you?

I never knew my parents. My mother died during childbirth, and my father… well, I never knew the true one either. I was found digging through garbage in a city I cannot even remember the skyline of by a mercenary band—the Red Ravens. They… no. He raised me.

Listen to me, Autumn. I know you were in the hells when I set out, if I failed. Never trust a man by the name of Beetall. He was the one who acted as my—let us call it—father.

Beetall raised me as a whelp, taught me the sword under his brigand clan. I did well with them as a pseudo-squire and eventual footling. I had killed seventeen men by the time I was ten. I pray you never have to bring a blade to any soul. You are better than a monster like me.

Once I was thirteen, the band fell. All were slain. I was sold into a form of slavery. It was a plush one, but slavery nonetheless. Elvana, the lordess of Tri-Rivers, purchased me from the slave auctions in the Felbourne enclave. 

She liked her concubines and bedslaves, young and virile. I was blessed to meet those requirements. Most of the now-destroyed Red Ravens were hanged by the neck until dead, a fate I escaped by youthfulness.

I worked as her bedslave until I was fifteen. At that point, I ran. Not for any reason, like I hear a higher calling. No. The head maid, Sarah, drove me to leave. I was a beast. Lesser. A non-elf.

I hope with all my soul that your parents did not sell your soul because of elvish racism. I felt that hate firsthand, and you are too pure a soul for that.

After my escape from them, they hunted me, having lost their investment. I sought to escape their eyes and their hirelings' eyes, nestled myself within the bosom of yet another group of banditry and mercenary company.

I worked with them for a long time. A long, long time. I slaughtered, stole, and destroyed in their name. Rodgers Roadmen. We raped, pillaged, and destroyed under the pay of kings and wizards alike—from the Sword Coast to Al-Qaudim, we sold our services.

We sold people. Many of them. In my youth, I saw nothing wrong with it, but each name I witnessed on a sales block weighed on me. Each gavel strike for the completion of a transaction was a death knell I knew all too well. It eventually sickened me. But violence and hatred like that were all I knew. So I continued.

The killing was a different story. I spear in hand and with no remorse, slaughtered my enemies. I reveled in the screams of their children and women as we paraded corpses behind our mounts. I truly was a wicked man, a monster festooned in the skin of mortality.

I remember those late nights underneath wheeling cosmic brilliance, how we drank, danced, and reveled. We were demons dancing in the firelight of destruction; its warmth—and the company of those just as vile as we were—gave us comfort.

Some raped, others looted. I partook in the latter, finding much of the equipment I used off some dearly departed upstart adventurers who thought themselves soldiers.

Eventually, our wars took us where, for the last few years, you knew as home. Butterknock was near. We slaughtered them. Who, you may wonder? I could not tell you. They were just another band of mercenaries a local baron paid us to rend limb from limb.

All was going well; my flanking unit and I had routed what we thought was their main force, driving them into a pass. Our—Rodgers Roadmen—overconfidence was our downfall. We followed through the pass, only to be ambushed by the actual main body of their forces.

We all ran and were nearly slaughtered to the man. I escaped with ten bolts through me, but through sheer grit, I made it to Butterknock after four days of eating nothing but bugs and drinking the blood of a jay I caught.

Laya. Such a lovely woman. She saved me, pulled me into her home from that rainy night, tended my wounds, and gave me what tasted like the most divine soup.

 I remember she was so fond of you. There were so many amazing nights when she came over to our hovel. Gods… in retrospect, I can say it plainly: I loved her.

Without her, I would have never known how to raise you. It is a shame she died in the demon incursion that took you.

Her golden hair and cherubic voice were such a blessed thing in the mornings.

Not as much as you, Autumn. But still. I adored it. I hate that she is but a memory now. At least I killed that demon that flayed her. That knowledge is some consolation in the dread of what my life had become. 

Now, onto how I met you. You, my star. My light in the darkness.

The day I found you was when I was working as Butterknock's guard, many years after I had squirreled away my wicked ways and only wished to live quietly until the reaper came to drag me down to hell. I found you crawling in the dirt just like I had when I came to town. I never did learn what caused those wounds on you or why you were in the woods alone, but it did not matter. I saw a little girl who needed help. By the Gods will I gave what I could. 

I know you did not trust me for months. At the time, I assumed children could just tell an evil man, or that your half-elf heritage allowed you to know what black soul broiled in my chest. That you eventually trusted me was a blessing. I can still feel the warmth of the first time you hugged me after I patched up your scraped knee. Oh, those were happy times.

Looking back on it, those years we spent there in Butterknock were the best years of my life. I wish so much that I could revisit those days in something other than my fleeting sleep.

That day. The day you were taken. I regret not remaining in the hamlet. I know little Mila wanted me to find her dog, and you wanted your friend to be happy. 

If I acted like the man I was before and told her to piss off, you might still be here.

But no.

I wanted to be a better man. I wanted nothing more than to be the man you knew, not the creature I once was. 

I wanted to help them.

Now you have been slaughtered by demons. Laya is in heaven and now knows how much of a failure I am.

Thankfully, that demon—the last one I killed—gave me all I needed to know. Your soul was sold by others. I don’t know who. But I will delve into the hells and find you, save you. I want you on my knee again at the end of a long day.

Nothing more than your happy laughs as I read a story would give me such a sense of sanctity.

I will burn the hells to the ground to find you. Now festooned in the skin I wore long before you, I set forth knowing of a place where I can find passage into the inferno.