The walk back to the farm took longer than the walk to the cave. I was tired, hungry, and covered with wolf blood and offal. I had rinsed the blood off the best I could in the cold stream in the woods, but without soap, I hadn’t done a very good job. It worked better once I turned off Walk in Shadows so I could see myself properly, but that wasn’t saying much. Fortunately, the Hollowbrooks didn’t seem to care. They looked at the massive, uncured wolf’s fur I had unfurled and cheered. I didn’t care. Then the old man made his way to me with his cane.

  “Well, young man. Hmm, got the wolves, I see. Guess I owe you some thanks. It’s not much, but it’s the least I can do,” he muttered, and wandered off.

  I stared at the old bastard, shocked. “Hey! Where’s my payment?” I exclaimed.

  The old man continued walking away, just like he hadn’t heard me.

  Before I could do anything, someone grabbed my arm. “Hey, don’t mind Pa. He’s old and thinks it gives him the right to be pig-headed and obnoxious,” the man cajoled. He was the individual I had originally spoken with. “I’m Johk. I handle most of the business of the farm, though Pa still likes to do the talking when it suits him. And it always does, except when he has to pay up.”

  “After all I went through—”

  “Don’t you worry, I have your payment right here. I’m sorry if it’s less than expected,” said Johk apologetically.

  “You know, Johk,” I replied, taking the small pouch and hefting it ruefully, “I never even asked how much I was going to get paid. But if you really are sorry, you could do me a favor.”

  The man looked surprised. “A favor? What kind of favor?” he replied.

  I smiled reassuringly. “Do you have a map?”

  He didn’t have a map. Johk wrote my directions to the wolf cave on a scrap of paper, promising that they would give the dead a good burial. “Terrible way to go, wolves,” he muttered, shaking his head sadly. “Don’t know any folks in these parts that have gone missing, and we hadn’t heard anything from Fasker. Very strange, but we’ll take care of the poor folks!”

  I turned down his offer to stay the night in one of their barns, not wanting to deal with any of it. I had a lot to think about and was looking at a long walk back to the village. With the gold I’d found, I could get a meal and a room. Possibly a shower.

  I hadn’t made it more than half a mile before a figure with a bow stepped out from behind a tree. This was too much, as I was too tired to deal with any more bullshit. I had stuffed the dagger I’d found into one of the rolled-up skins after getting to the farm, so I couldn’t grab it. The man walked up, holding the bow casually. From what I could see, he definitely looked old enough to be yelling at kids to get off his lawn, but not so old that he’d be put in a nursing home.

  “Well, boy. I thought I would catch up with you before the farm, but I had a little chat with the bartender before I left,” the figure said calmly and tossed me a bulging bag the size of a baseball. “He recognized you as new and grossly overcharged you by ninety-eight copper.” His voice was deep, with a bit of a rasp. He sounded like a Latino actor from a show I had liked. The coin purse had fortunately hit my chest, which is the only reason I didn’t fumble the catch.

  “What do you want? Obviously not to rob me. I don’t have much of anything anyways, and I haven’t eaten a goddamned thing all day,” I said listlessly, holding the small bag to my chest.

  “What’s wrong with you? How could you not have food? Didn’t you get the free food pack at the end of the tutorial?”

  “What the hell do you mean? And who are you? The Spanish Robin Hood?” I flinched as my mouth closed, having run itself stupid. The Voice had mentioned something about a tutorial, and being mouthy to a guy that likely could notch my ears without my feeling it wasn’t my brightest moment.

  “Not Spanish, boy. I’m Mexican-American; from the USA, just like you.”

  I knew I needed to just shut up and listen, but my mouth had other ideas. “Right. So, Robin Hood with green chiles?”

  “No, hermano. With Jalapenos!” he said seriously. The older man burst out laughing at the look on my face. “Come, I’ll feed you and we’ll talk.” He said pleasantly before turning toward the copse of trees he had waited in.

  I realized that I had quickly fallen into a trudging stupor soon after leaving the farm and wasn’t thinking as well as I should. This man was also from Earth! And he was offering food. Without further hesitation, I followed him to a small campsite hidden by a massive pile of rocks. The archer got down and restarted the fire with a few deft motions. He made pained noises, getting back up and moving to sit on a log near the fire. With a grunt and a gesture, he motioned for me to sit on another. “You can turn off the light spell. We don’t need it.”

  “I…I don’t know how.” I admitted, sitting on the log so that I could face him.

  “Hmmm. Just touch yourself where you did originally and turn it off the same way you turned the light spell on,” he instructed.

  I did as he suggested, and my nimbus winked out. He snorted in surprise when I just put a hand to my forehead.

  “Interesting. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen magic like that. I am Juan Santino Venegas. You may call me Juan. What’s your name, hermano?”

  I looked at this old man, maybe in his sixties, who moved like he was my age. He had a bushy mustache and goatee, which made everything fall into place in my head. The whole thing about not catching up, of talking with the bartender. He was the scowling man in the tavern.

  “I’m Finnegan Walsh. Finn. Nice to meet you, Juan,” I said.

  “Thank God you have a normal name! In the last batch of newcomers, there were people who chose such strange names, names that made no sense. What happened back on Earth in the years I’ve been here? Who calls themselves SassyMstrBlstr76?”

  “How long have you been here? Wait, do you know where we are?” I asked. My breath started coming faster as I fought for control.

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  “Calm down, Finn. I’m not sure where we are exactly. But as to your first question, I’ve been here about forty-five years.”

  “Oh no,” I whispered. Forty-five years was a long time to be stuck here. I couldn’t imagine being trapped, God knows where, to grow old and likely die without ever getting home. “Juan, what the hell is this place? What is the tutorial? How am I—how can I? My brother. My mother? Juan, I need to get home.”

  He looked at me with concern. “Hey, hey, hey. It’s okay, Finn. Let me get some food for you, and I’ll try to explain what I can. Okay? I need you to hold yourself together a little longer.” He pulled a much nicer pack than mine from behind the log he was sitting on and rummaged through it, pulling out a cooking pot and some paper-wrapped items. I watched him fill the pot from a clay jug that he returned to his pack. From within the paper packages, he produced meat and different vegetables, already sliced, and dropped them in the water. Then he added some spices and stirred it a bit, leaving it to simmer.

  The smell was intoxicating, and my spirits lifted somewhat even as my stomach growled. He pulled a wine bottle and two cups from his pack, popping the cork out with a small knife. He poured some into each cup and handed me one. I took a sip and coughed.

  “That’s not wine,” I croaked. The burning in my throat shocked me into alertness.

  “You looked like you needed something stronger, yes?” he said by way of apology. He was smiling, though, amused at my discomfort.

  We sat there quietly until the soup was ready. Actually, I was focused on the soup like a dog with a toy stuck far under the couch. He hummed, stirring occasionally. Finally, he ladled two portions into bowls that he had also pulled from his pack, handing me one with a worn metal spoon. The first piping hot spoonful burned my tongue and the inside of my cheeks, but I didn’t care. It was the best thing I had tasted since… I didn’t know how long. Before I knew it, I had eaten half the bowl.

  “So, Juan, can you explain the tutorial more?” I asked, blowing on the next spoonful. “It didn’t seem like very much, just stats and stuff.”

  “I can,” he said, wiping some soup off his bushy stache. “You remember the Voice?”

  With my mouth full, I simply grunted an affirmative noise.

  “Freaked me out at first. Took a week to wrap my head around it,” he mused, taking a long sip of the harsh spirits in his cup.

  “Really? Cause I left after this guy walked out of the woods and tried to kill me. Heck, right before the guy arrived, the Voice got all weird and started narrating.” I had finished the bowl by then and looked longingly at the pot. Juan obliged me by ladling another bowlful.

  “That’s a new one to me. I stuck around because I needed the info, and food kept appearing when I was hungry,” he muttered. Taking another spoonful, the old man closed his eyes and smiled. “The food was nothing like this. After a week, I said I was ready, and the cabron agreed. Gave me directions to the nearest village and a week’s worth of rations. Tasted like shit, but kept me alive.” He set his bowl down, having finished his portion, and leaned back with a contented sigh.

  “Well fuck. If it wasn’t for that merc, I would have known what the hell I was doing!” I exclaimed angrily. Juan chuckled at that, and to my discomfort, it turned into a full belly laugh at my expense. I scowled at him, but he didn’t care.

  “Don’t feel too bad,” he said, his laughter peeling off. “Even back when I first started mentoring, lots of people didn’t go through the tutorial.”

  “Thank God I’m not the only one. And they turned out fine, right?” I asked more hopefully.

  Using a handkerchief, Juan cleaned the remnants of stew from his beard, paying me half a mind. “No, the ones that listened to me are mostly still alive. But the ones who blew me off died within the first week, if not the first day. You did pretty well on your own. Spend any time in the military? Or was that all your spells?”

  “No, I’m a college student. Dad taught me how to hunt and how to track when I was younger. Other than that, just dumb luck and spells.” I replied between mouthfuls. My dad, an avid outdoorsman, had taught my brother and me how to track animals through most terrain. My brother hated killing animals and would usually miss any shot he took. I didn’t. I’d agreed with Dad that it was important to do our part to keep the deer population in check, especially since people had killed most of the predators over a century ago for their fur.

  Like I had with those wolves preying on the Hollowbrooks. The thought gave me pause for a couple of reasons. The farmers should have hired trackers with dogs bred for tracking instead of sheepdogs. Secondly, what would my father have thought of what I had done? A wave of sadness hit me when I thought of my dad. I shook it off, like I always did. It wasn’t important right now, and I had to focus. I took a breath.

  His eyes widened, and he nodded as he reassessed me. “Good. That’s good. So what class did you choose? I only know of a couple that allow for simple casting with little more than a thought, and they both have issues with high mana cost. Necromancer and Mage.”

  “I thought Necromancer had to do with zombies and stuff,” I muttered, scratching the itchy stubble on my face. “I chose the Mage class. My brother liked Mages. Or Wizards. And I think, Sorcerers? But yeah. He knows this stuff, so I try to remember what he geeked out on me with.”

  “Interesting. You’re the first Mage I’ve seen in years. Come to think of it, you’re the first new person I’ve seen in a few years. I was beginning to think they were done with the program.”

  “The what now? Program? Are we in some sort of VR simulation?” I replied, leaning forward. This was something I’d heard of. Like full body suits, IV drips, and being strapped to a bed.

  “VR? Oh, virtual reality! Yes, I’ve heard of that. A woman whom I mentored ten years ago, Rebecca, talked about it. She was positive that this world was VR, that we could get out if we could find the right interface. Pretty sure she still believes this, despite very convincing arguments to the contrary. But no. We’re guinea pigs, I think, but not hooked up to some computer. Do they still have computers on desks? Or just those phones that don’t have wires. The ones as powerful as computers?”

  I looked at him, astounded. “Do you mean smartphones? We still have PCs and laptops, but for a lot of the day-to-day we use smartphones.”

  “Wonderful! I used to design computer programs. We had to use a machine that spat out cards that had holes in them. They were called punched cards. We fed the punched cards into the computer, and the computer ran the program. It was time-consuming, but very innovative.”

  “That’s pretty cool, but why did you need the punch cards?” I was getting tired, with the booze and food working their magic. Yet I had never heard about this and was kind of curious.

  Juan grinned. “Computers back then didn’t have the space to store programs, so they had to be written anytime you needed to run one. Usually dealt with mathematical formulae. But we can talk about that stuff another day. We’ll have time between the training and questing.” He topped off his and my cups before going further. “Over the years, I and others have put together theories based on information we’ve gotten from new people coming here. Not everyone has something to go on, but occasionally someone has a piece of useful information. It is said that a man known as the Lich knows where we are, how we got here, and how to get home. But there is always a price with him. And not one I’m willing to pay.”

  I sipped my too-full cup of local rotgut and shuddered at the overwhelming taste. “Um, okay.”

  “The prevailing theory is that there is likely a governmental organization on Earth, or several, that has been sending people here for many, many years. I am one of the long-timers in this place, but when I got here, there were people who had been here for decades, and people before them. Nobody remembers what happened in the hours leading up to coming here…at least, mostly nobody. I remember meeting a woman… I think she was a recruiter for NASA or NOAA. I met her at a restaurant. And then I was here.”

  The old man gave me a lot to think about, but I was having trouble keeping focused as the alcohol and long day took their toll. “I don’t even know where to start. So, the government is recruiting people to come here, wherever we are? Is this a facility of some sort? It seems so normal, like a camping trip. Except for the magic.”

  “You have yet to see any monsters. No, Finn, I’m not convinced we’re in a facility. This place is too big. Countries and continents kind of big.” He took a deep breath and drank the contents of his cup in one gulp. “No, we’re not even on Earth anymore. This place… its laws of nature are not the same. Wherever we are, muchacho, it’s a long way from home.”

  How well do you think you would do in this situation?