Twenty-four minutes later I was fully dressed and walking with Gerik through the vast meadow in Goncourt. I was as tired as I’ve ever been in my life and mostly wondering if I was being led to an open grave. Gerik was munching on a bag of Buster’s Bar-B-Q Chips, somehow managing to do so without making the slightest noise. The chips didn’t crunch. The bag didn’t crackle in his hands.

  “How do you do that?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “Make no noise? Eating chips? That’s ranked number one on the ‘Impossible Tasks’ category, even ahead of grinning while filling out an income tax return.”

  “I can dampen noise,” Gerik said. “And summon darkness. Not sure why. I’ve just been this way ever since I was, oh, about fifteen years old, and I escaped the lair of the Mystery Worms that’d been torturing me with the Black Obelisk.”

  “I was at summer camp when I was fifteen,” I said, for no other reason than I’m terrible at conversations. We continued our trek across the meadow in silence. Or, rather, Gerik was in silence, while I managed to make it sound like I was an entire herd of Josh Hesters rampaging across the meadow, bullying my way through the long grass. The moon was high above us. The nearby forest looked like a squat black mountain in the night. It was bright enough to see for a long way, but not bright enough to see anything very well.

  “What are we doing again?” I asked Gerik. “And when I say ‘,’ I mean what are we doing in the first place, because you haven’t told me yet.”

  “We’re testing your mettle, Josh of Apartment 3B. If you’re going to adventure with us, with Molly and Fridu and Pristilline, I’ll need to have your measure. I’ll need to know that if, by chance, we’re attacked by a bull demon, you’ll have my back.”

  “I won’t. I’ll run. A bull demon? That sounds terrible. You should run, too. And who’s Pristilline?” It was the first time I’d heard the name.

  “Pristilline Silver the Golden,” Gerik said. “But we mostly call her Tilly the Spoiler. A paladin. You’ll like her. She’s intolerable.”

  “Why would I like her if she’s intolerable?”

  “It’s a good question,” Gerik admitted. “Now be quiet a bit. There’s a ghoul in the forest, and I claim him for myself. I’ll be right back.” Suddenly the darkness gathered around us, or I suppose mostly around Gerik. It was as if he was cloaked in shadows. Even the moonlight slid away from him. The man was only three feet away, but my eyes wouldn’t focus on him. I knew he was there, but it was as if he was gone. The deep shadow moved off and away, lost to other shadows. Within moments, I knew I was alone.

  Which wasn’t great.

  I was dressed in a pair of ratty blue jeans and an equally decrepit t-shirt with an image of a whiskey bottle saying, “Y, tho?” I wore a pair of shabby combat boots an ex-girlfriend had left behind, but that fit me very well. I’d also found the belt Molly had bought me my first time in Goncourt, and I had my dagger hanging from it, and my phone stashed in one of the belt’s pouches, more as a security blanket than anything else, since I very much doubted my carrier provided service in another world.

  The night air was cool but not unpleasant. The darkness was dark and definitely unpleasant. I heard various noises of various creatures. I had no idea what they were but knew they were all voracious monsters that could see very well in the dark.

  “I’m a warrior,” I said to myself, drawing my dagger, well aware that in any dangerous situation I was probably more of a threat to myself than anything else.

  The night smelled of water. I knew the river was nearby, but the sounds of the night played tricks with me, and I wasn’t sure of the direction. Now and then the wind would shift and I could smell the probably nearby city of Whitewater, an indefinable aroma with mixtures of old bricks and sweat and cooked meat. I could hear crickets with their incessant chirps, and the calls of what I assumed to be birds. At one point I heard the baying of a wolf, far away, and the answering barks of dogs from miles all around, warning the beast to stay away.

  A bird landed on my shoulder.

  I suppressed a squeal, mostly, and managed to avoid pissing myself, almost entirely.

  The bird called out a pretty trill in the night, constantly shifting, singing out in musical tones that reminded me of a high, thin, reedy flute.

  “Hey, little buddy,” I said.

  It trilled in response.

  “Come to keep me company?” I asked, trying to face the bird. It was difficult to see, being so close. It was barely larger than a sparrow, with dark black feathers, or possibly blue. Its head and beak were a brilliant red.

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  “I’m Josh,” I said. Gerik had told me there was little problem telling anyone my first name, and I doubted a bird was going to tattle on me, anyway.

  “I’ll call you Reddy,” I told the bird. “On account of your head.” The bird fluttered like it was considering taking flight, but then settled again, always with the shifting feet that felt like the tiniest of pinpricks on my shoulder. It let out that trill again. From somewhere in the woods I heard an answering trill. I wondered if the bird was lost and calling to its friends. Or maybe Reddy was sending out a mating call, looking for a little action? I could understand that well enough, having done much the same for the past few years in various bars, so while I didn’t actually have wings, if my new friend needed a wingman, I was there for him. Or her. I had no idea.

  Reddy let out that call again. A sharper trill, this time. And this time there were a pair of answering calls.

  “Whoa,” I said, grinning. “We got us a player!” Reddy hopped closer, right up against my neck, then let out that call again, just below my ear.

  “Ouch,” I complained. “Small bird. Loud mouth.” From all around in the darkness, there were answering calls. Some came from the darkened smudge of the nearby forest. Others were from the air above. Was there a whole flock of Reddy-birds out there, hurriedly organizing an orgy?

  “I hope you brought protection,” I said, and then there was a whispering noise and a small spray of liquid heat on my neck. An object popped up into view. It was Reddy’s head. He’d been decapitated. His body, now headless, tried to take flight, as if responding to a last desperate command before death. The headless bird leapt forward, but the wings quit beating, and Reddy’s body went into a death spiral and disappeared into the meadow grass.

  “Brave man, Josh of Apartment 3B,” I heard Gerik say. “I’ll admit I’m impressed.” He was suddenly right in front of me. I was too surprised to say anything. Or move. Or breathe.

  “I’ve known seasoned warriors to piss themselves when a deathshrike perches on their shoulder,” he said, cleaning the knife he’d earlier held to my throat. From down in the grass there was a small glow.

  +132 Experience Points

  The message soon faded.

  “I had a friend killed by shrikes once,” Gerik said, producing a handkerchief and cleaning my neck. “Sorry about getting the blood on you. Not a problem unless it gets inside you, of course. The poison and all.”

  “The poison?” I said. Gerik nodded, putting away his handkerchief.

  “Right,” he agreed. “The poison.” He was walking away. I was following. What else could I do? Beyond clutching my dagger with white knuckles, of course.

  “That’s what got my friend,” Gerik said. “Heggers was his name. Strapping fighter. Married to a brown bear, if you can believe it. Lost a drunken bet. Named her Linda. Don’t think they ever slept together.”

  “The poison?” I said.

  “Yer right. I should keep to the topic. Killing ghouls always makes me overly talkative. Gets in my blood. Like fire. But me and Heggers, that day he died, were in the Volbad Forests. The dark ones. Not the good ones.”

  “Okay,” I said. He seemed to be leading me into the forest. I hoped it was a good one.

  “Hunted by the Abyss Assassins,” Gerik said. “Which meant that we had to be quiet. And then a deathshrike landed on Heggers’ shoulder, like that one with you.”

  “Deathshrike?”

  “That it was, Josh of Apartment 3B. That it was. But Heggers, strong man that

  was, couldn’t keep his nerve the way you did. He managed to stay motionless at first, right enough, but when the first trill of that hell-bird’s call went out, he shivered. And then the second trill. The third. All those answering calls. That shrike kept trilling away on his shoulders, calling out the location of the meat, and Heggers knew that at any second the shrike might drive its poisonous beak into his neck, paralyzing him so that the other shrikes, alerted to his presence, could come and feed on his paralyzed body, so that he’d be eaten alive without even being able to scream.”

  “Oh, I said, considering if it was too late to piss myself.

  “By then I was fighting a pack of the Abyss Assassins,” Gerik said. “Difficult to stab a spectre. But I could track Heggers from the corners of my eyes. The man’s nerve broke. He started running. Didn’t make it four steps. The bird plunged its beak through his eye, freezing his brain. Heggers crumpled. I perchance still could’ve saved him, but I had a Ghostblade rammed into my side and three of the assassins’ netherhounds tearing at my limbs. By the time I was free, too much time had passed. Heggers wasn’t anything but bones by then. Nothing I could do. I don’t blame myself.”

  “Of course not,” I said, trying to sound supportive and consoling, rather than whimpering or puking.

  “The point is,” Gerik said. “I’m impressed, Josh of Apartment 3B, at how confident you were when the shrike perched on your shoulders. Nary a twitch! Brave man. That gave me a chance to pop off the little bird’s top. Now, mind your step. There were three ghouls.”

  Even as he spoke, I became aware of how I’d been smelling a rank, foul odor, as if someone had added some feces and roadkill to a jar of pickles. We’d just entered the edges of the forest. There were a few scattered trees and also a few scattered body parts. Two men and a woman. All three of them had been nude. Their bodies were taut, thin, and seemed to be made of pastry dough rather than flesh. Two of the bodies still had their heads. Their faces were horrible, red eyes even in the night, even in death, and crimson mouths full of shark-like teeth.

  “The ghouls,” Gerik said, nudging a stray arm with his foot.

  “God damn these things are ugly,” I told him.

  “Ugly in flesh. Ugly in their hearts. That’s what you get when you exist only to eat human flesh. Now, prepare yourself. We’re almost at the dungeon. If you have any potions to drink or chants to chant, now’s the time.” He knelt and slid a faintly curved sword out of its sheath, then produced a whetstone and began sharpening the blade.

  “God damn do these things stink,” I said, gesturing to the corpses of the ghouls.

  “They do,” Gerik agreed. “It’s the brine of sin.”

  “I kind of meant that, maybe we could move farther away from them?”

  “Ah. Eager to wet your dagger’s blade, Josh of Apartment 3B? Ripe to plunge yourself into the dungeon? I admire that.” He flicked the pad of his thumb across the edge of his sword, nodded in satisfaction, and stood.

  “Dungeon?” I said. “Molly told me that under no circumstances should I go into a dungeon with you.”

  “Oh, I agree,” Gerik said, with the closest I’d heard to humor in his voice. “Let’s go.”