“Wot I did, Master Rockland,” the squirrely young Eidolon with an inexplicable cockney accent explained, “was to take packages from their owners who were of a want to give those packages to someone else entirely. Excepting that said owners was too lazy to move the packages themselves. So, they gave me coin to take the packages to the person who it was to which they wanted said package to be given in the first place.”
I just stared at the man for a moment, mesmerized by his accent and speech patterns. Juniper nudged me in the back with her knee and cleared her throat. I shook my head of the man’s linguistic cobwebs and summarized what he’d just told me.
“So…you were a delivery boy.”
“I reckon that as good a name for it as any other, Master. It feels…accurate,” he said, scratching his chin as though deep in thought. I was suspicious, however, of just how deep this man’s thought stream actually was. The way the guy was talking to me felt eerily similar to how someone might talk when they were interviewing for a job that was out of their depth. But the kid looked like he may have been around thirteen when died, so I really couldn’t blame him too much. I remember how my first job interview went, and compared to that, little Jimmy here was doing just fine.
“Oh? Well, I was going to give you the title of Logistics and Supply Chain Engineer Specializing in Last Mile Delivery Solutions, but if you want to go with delivery boy, that’s fine with me,” I said, in mock seriousness. “I’ll just mark you down here as Jimmy the delivery bo—”
“Sir, if it’s not too much trouble…I think I like the one you said first better,” Jimmy interrupted. I grinned.
“Ah. Well, ok then. A man of distinction and ambition. I like it. Juniper?”
“Yes?”
“Let’s get Jimmy here set up with a small space. Let’s call it Jimmy’s Postal Delivery Service.” I paused, then looked at Jimmy. “Does that sound ok to you?”
He nodded vigorously.
“Good. It’s settled, then. Say, Jimmy, you don’t happen to know any other young Eidolon you could teach how to deliver packages, do you?”
He nodded again.
“Yes, sir. I can probably find at least four or five, I reckon.”
“Good man. Get them, teach them how to do what you do, and I’ll promote you from Engineer to Manager. Deal?”
“Yes, sir!”
The poor boy was almost giddy. He took his paperwork from Juniper and exited the room happy as a clam. I motioned for Juniper to come closer and whispered, “Just make sure we have that previous gentleman keeping things running smoothly for Jimmy, ok? We can’t really have a 13-year-old running our post office.”
“Do you mean Mr. Flaggerty? The sailor?”
“That’s the one. I didn’t know what to do with him at the time, but this seems like a decent fit. Sailors are just the long-haul truckers of the sea.”
“What’s a trucker?”
“Nevermind. Doesn’t matter. Get in contact with him and tell him we found him a position. Now, who’s next?”
She gestured toward the Headquarters entrance. From my vantage point sitting behind my little table and feeling like the most popular vendor on Artist Alley, I could see that there was a line of Eidolon that snaked around a few times inside the foyer before leading outside. I glanced at Environmental Mapping and saw that the line of Eidolon was wrapped around the building. I winced.
“Juniper, there is no way we can meet with all these people today and still leave for the dungeon before dark.”
“I know,” she said. She reached into her inventory, pulled out a stack of papers and handed one to me. I squinted at them, quickly realizing what they were.
“Did you…Juniper, are these intake forms? When did you make these?”
“Last night,” she shrugged. “I had a feeling that we might need them, based on the response I got from talking to everyone.”
“You know what? That’s it. You’re getting a raise.”
“You’d have to start actually paying me, first.”
“Well, maybe I will,” I said, defensively.
“You don’t have any money.”
“I am a wealth of resources, I will have you know. Besides, can you really put a price on friendship?”
She shook her head and gave me one of those exhales that I knew translates to “I am done humoring your foolishness.” I handed the paper back to her and she added it to the pile.
“Alright, so, who’s the most organized Eidolon we’ve spoken to, today? Besides you, of course.”
“That would be Mr. Aldric. He’s a former magistrate’s clerk.”
“Perfect,” I said, pushing my chair back and standing up. “Get him up here. He’s handling intake interviews until we get back from the dungeon. You can brief him on what needs to be done and I’ll review all the forms when we return. Have someone tell everyone in line that we’ll have decisions made within a week. Two at the most.”
“Should I have the Logistics and Supply Chain Engineer Specializing in Last Mile Delivery hold on to the paperwork and deliver it to you when we return?”
“Now you’re thinking like a Deputy Chief of Operations!” I said, already walking backward toward the door. I gave her the finger guns of middle management motivation and winked.
“That is not going to be my title,” she groaned.
“Oh, it totally is,” I said as I mule kicked the door open. “I’ll go get Shrek and make sure he’s ready. Meet us at the training grounds in an hour and we can head out.”
The door closed behind me. After a second’s thought, I opened it again and peeked my head back inside. I saw Juniper still standing by the table, pinching the bridge of her nose.
“Hey June?”
“Yes, Rocky?” she asked in exasperation, her fingers still clenching her nose.
“Don’t be late.”
She threw a clipboard at me and I ducked back out of the door just in time for the improvised ranged-attack to miss and then clatter harmlessly against the floor. I had a feeling it was going to be a good day. The sun was shining, I was about to head out on an actual adventure, and the looks on the Eidolons faces as I passed by them were hopeful. Not bad for a morning’s work, if I did say so myself. Which I did, out loud, just to make it official.
“There really should be more of us,” Shrek said for probably the fifth time that afternoon. “The three of us are not going to be able to beat a dungeon on our own.”
“Well not with that attitude,” I said, shifting the weight of my holster from one shoulder to the other. Juniper ignored us both as she somehow managed to read and walk at the same time. She was of the strict opinion that just because we are traveling, that was no excuse to slack on her studies. Neither Shrek nor I were going to argue with her about it, so I just tried to keep an eye on her so I could warn her of obstacles or incoming dangers. It proved not to be a problem. She maneuvered over the landscape as well or better than I did.
When we reached the edge of the Plains where the border barrier shone – a bright translucent blue sheen that encapsulated my entire domain – we paused for a moment. Juniper closed her book. Shrek peered into the distance beyond the veil of the protective barrier. We all knew what this moment meant. It was more than just our first step into actual danger together. It was a test, because just as it kept enemies out of the Plains, it kept the Eidolon in. Juniper, an Eidolon herself, wasn’t entirely sure whether she could physically pass through that barrier. No Eidolon had done it in the centuries she had been on the Plains, and she had never heard tales of anyone doing it in the past, either. If this worked, she would be the first of her kind to ever leave the sanctuary of home. That was something worth pausing for.
“You ready?” I asked.
She stared at the barrier for a moment longer, then looked back at me. She held her hand out toward me.
“Together?” I asked.
“Please,” was her response. I took her hand in mine, and we stepped forward. There was a momentary tug as the barrier seemed unsure if Juniper was supposed to be allowed to leave, but then she passed through without further incident. Shrek stepped through, following us into the wild.
“Well,” I said, “that was a little anti-climactic if I’m being honest.”
Juniper dropped my hand and pinched my arm.
“Ow! Hey!”
Shrek just rolled his eyes and continued walking. Juniper stuck her tongue out at me and then followed him. I turned to follow as well, but something faint caught my attention. I felt as though I was being watched. I looked at my mini map and there was nothing. I looked at Environmental Mapping, and the only indicators nearby were Juniper, Shrek and me. I wanted to look around but decided against it. I didn’t want to make it obvious that I knew, if someone was indeed watching us. So, I caught up with the two of them and we continued on our journey. I took the lead, having set a destination marker in my mapping ability. I was super glad to have that – I’d never had to live without GPS and I didn’t particularly want to start now.
For the next few hours, I kept a careful eye on my mini map. Remembering what Shrek had said about how I used Fade, I wanted to see if I could turn the map into a quidnunc for myself using his strategy. It paid off almost immediately. A new dot appeared on my map – a color I’d not seen before in either the regular system map or my mapping ability. It was pure white. Then, as quickly as it had appeared, it was gone again. I waited, and after another half hour or so, it reappeared and then swiftly disappeared again.
“We’re being followed,” Shrek said, quietly.
“I know,” I replied. “I’m going to go have a look. You two keep walking in the general direction and I’ll catch up with you in a bit.”
“I should go,” Shrek demanded.
“No, it’s fine. I have Fade. I can sneak up on whoever’s following, do a little reconnaissance and report back when I find out who’s stalking us.”
“Let the ghost go. She can be invisible.”
“No,” Juniper said. “Rocky should do it. He needs to do as much as he can to level up before the dungeon and this will help with that, even if it’s just a little bit. Go on, Rocky.”
I nodded and engaged Fade. Our stalker wasn’t all that far behind us, so I had plenty of time with Fade to make it there and back without timing out of the ability. I started casually strolling in the direction we had come from. I was in no particular hurry, since I didn’t want to accidentally overshoot where the stalker was currently concealed and end up having to double back. Within another thirty minutes, the blip reappeared on my map mere yards from my position. I looked around and…nothing. There was not a soul around anywhere. Then, I caught a small blur in the corner of my eye. I jerked my head around to look, and I could swear I saw a small woodland animal jump up onto a fallen branch and then disappear. I looked at my mini map and the dot was gone.
What in the world?
I followed our designated path for another half hour, waiting for the stalker’s ability to run its course again. The white dot reappeared, and I instantly saw the creature right in front of me running along the trail we had been following. It was tiny…perhaps the size of a chipmunk back on Earth, but possibly even smaller than that. Its body was elongated and it ran low to the ground. A ferret? A weasel? I tried to use Threat Assessment on it, but its cooldown must have ended just in the nick of time because it was gone, again. I was severely confused as to why it would be following us, but it didn’t seem like a real threat, so I just ran until I caught up with Juniper and Shrek.
“Well?” Shrek asked as I slowed to a walk beside them and deactivated Fade.
“It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
He looked at me skeptically, then just shrugged. Apparently, if it wasn’t something big enough for me to worry about, he decided it definitely didn’t pose any danger to him. A thought occurred to me, despite my irritation at Shrek’s disrespectful yet accurate assessment. I pulled a bit of Burrow Tyrant meat from my inventory and dropped a piece as inconspicuously as I could behind me as I walked. The little guy was probably just hungry and hoping we’d drop some scraps eventually. I was more than happy to oblige, as I had no intention whatsoever of eating the Tyrant meat.
So, I continued to drop small chunks of meat periodically for the next several hours as we approached the dungeon entrance without further incident. We set up camp right at the dungeon entrance and decided to wait until morning before we’d enter. Every half hour on the dot, I’d look at my mini map and toss a little piece of meat out into the forest in the direction of the weasely creature. I didn’t imagine it could eat ALL of it, but you never know. Maybe it had babies. I certainly wasn’t going to let a pack of adorable little weasel pups die out of sheer selfishness. I’d already killed a family of prairie dogs and that was enough mass theriocide to last me for quite some time.