The first rays of dawn were a personal insult. They crept through the grimy, high-set windows of the training hall, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the air and the deep, bruised bags under my eyes.

  I stood in the center of the room, my spear grounded, arms crossed. My internal clock was calibrated to the second. My order had been clear: "Dawn."

  I waited.

  The silence stretched. A water pipe groaned somewhere in the walls. A rat skittered across the rafters.

  Ten minutes past dawn, the double doors creaked open.

  Faelar was the first to arrive, though "arrive" implies a level of voluntary motor control that was clearly absent. He was being propped up by Liam, who looked only marginally more awake and significantly more annoyed.

  The dwarf’s braided beard was askew, listing heavily to the left, and he was grumbling into his chest. He wasn't wearing his armor. He was wearing a stained tunic and one boot.

  “By my ancestors’ anvil, this is an unholy hour,” Faelar groaned, squinting against the dim light of the hall. “The sun’s not even properly up. It’s indecent. It’s a crime against nature and fermentation.”

  “You’re heavy,” Liam complained, trying to shove the dwarf upright. “And you smell like a brewery fire. Did you actually find alcohol? Kaelen said there wasn't any.”

  “I found… industrial solvent,” Faelar mumbled, swaying. “Tastes like lemon. And burning.”

  “Some of us find the morning peaceful!” came a cheerful voice that was far too loud for the current atmosphere.

  Willow skipped into the room. She looked infuriatingly fresh, her robes pristine, her eyes bright. A small, glowing butterfly—which I was fairly certain hadn't been there yesterday—rested on her shoulder, flapping its wings in a rhythm that matched her skipping.

  “Good morning, Kaelen! Good morning, everyone!” she chirped. “I spoke to the moss in the hallway. It says it’s going to be a lovely day for growth!”

  Elmsworth appeared last. He didn't walk; he shuffled, looking like a pile of laundry that had gained sentience. He was muttering rapidly, tracing symbols in the air that faded as soon as he made them. Nugget, the chicken, was perched on his head, its feathers a crisp, business-like white today.

  “The chronal energies are all wrong before the second sunrise,” the wizard muttered, nearly walking into a weapon rack. “It’s disruptive to the humors. Nugget has been trying to tell me this for years. The worm is not early; the worm is merely temporally displaced.”

  I let out a slow breath, pinching the bridge of my nose. The calm center of the storm.

  “Thank you all for coming,” I said, my voice echoing in the large stone room. “We have a mission. We have a team. Now, we need a method. We’ll begin with basic formation drills.”

  I pointed to a rack of wooden training shields. “Grab a shield. We are going to learn the Phalanx. It is the bedrock of cooperative defense. Shield to shield. Shoulder to shoulder. An unbreakable wall.”

  Faelar stared at the shields with disdain. “I don’t use shields. They’re for people who plan on getting hit. I plan on hitting them first.”

  “It’s a drill, Faelar,” I said through gritted teeth. “Pick up the wood.”

  Grumbling, he grabbed a shield. It looked like a dinner plate in his massive grip.

  “Alright,” I commanded. “Line up. Faelar, center. Liam, right flank. Willow, left flank. Elmsworth… just stand behind Faelar and try not to cast anything explosive.”

  They shuffled into a jagged line.

  “Shields up!” I barked. “Lock them together!”

  Faelar slammed his shield to the right, nearly taking Liam’s head off.

  “Watch it, stump!” Liam hissed, dodging the blow with supernatural reflexes. He vanished, reappearing three feet behind the formation. “And I’m not standing next to him. He smells like lemons and regret.”

  “Get back in line!” I shouted.

  “I’m ‘holding the line’ from a tactical vantage point,” Liam argued. “If I stand there, I’m just a target. A handsome, fragile target.”

  “Mr. Kaelen?” Willow raised her hand. “My shield is very heavy. Can I ask the roots beneath the floor to hold it for me?”

  “No magic!” I yelled. “Physical strength only!”

  “Oh.” She frowned. Then, her eyes lit up. “I’ll just hug it!”

  She proceeded to wrap her arms around the shield, effectively pinning her own arms to her chest and rendering herself defenseless.

  “Elmsworth!” I spun around. The wizard had disregarded the formation entirely. He was standing in front of a straw training dummy, lecturing it.

  “You see, the structural integrity of your straw torso is entirely dependent on the binding enchantments,” Elmsworth was explaining, poking the dummy in the chest. “If I were to adjust the weave of reality just so…”

  “Elmsworth, get in formation!”

  “One moment, Commander! I am teaching this recruit the rudimentary principles of theoretical deflection!”

  Nugget, seemingly bored by the lecture, squatted and laid a single, perfect egg on the dummy’s head.

  “Defensive formation!” Faelar roared suddenly, deciding he’d had enough of standing still. “I’ll show you a defense!”

  He began to spin. With the shield in one hand and his imaginary axe in the other, he became a top of destruction.

  “Duck!” Liam shouted, diving for cover.

  “Faelar, stop!” I lunged forward, catching the edge of his shield with my spear shaft and absorbing the impact. The vibration rattled my teeth.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “That,” Faelar said, stumbling to a halt and grinning wildly, “is how you clear a room.”

  “That,” I said, panting, “is how you kill your own squad.”

  Before I could scream, Willow decided to help. “Oh no, everyone is fighting! I’ll fix it!”

  She clapped her hands. “Bind!”

  The stone floor erupted. Thick, thorny vines shot up through the cracks. But instead of creating a barrier, they wrapped around Faelar’s ankles.

  “Ack!” The dwarf toppled over like a felled tree, his face slamming into the stone. His beard, unfortunately, got tangled in the thorns.

  “My beard! She’s attacking the beard! Treason! Mutiny!” Faelar howled, thrashing against the floor.

  “That’s… not what I was trying to do,” Willow mumbled, looking at her hands.

  I stood there, surrounded by disaster. My scout was hiding. My tank was fighting the floor. My healer had assaulted the tank. My wizard was analyzing an egg.

  Just as my patience was fraying to a single, trembling thread, the air in the room grew cold. The heavy doors swung open.

  The Game Master arrived.

  He strode into the room, his grey robes sweeping silently across the floor. He stopped a safe distance from Faelar, who was currently biting a vine.

  The Game Master looked at the scene. He looked at me.

  “I trust your synergy exercises are proving fruitful,” he said. His voice was so dry it could have started a desert fire.

  “We are… identifying areas for improvement,” I managed to say, straightening up and trying to look like I hadn't just lost a fight with my own team.

  “Right,” he said. “Well. Stop identifying. We have a situation.”

  Without waiting for an answer, he waved a hand. The air between us shimmered and coalesced into a massive, three-dimensional holographic map.

  “This is Xylos,” he stated.

  The world spun in the air—a beautiful marble of green continents and deep blue oceans. But as we watched, dark, pulsing veins of violet energy began to mar the surface, spreading like an infection.

  “A world of raw magic,” the Game Master explained. “The veil between realms is thin here. Which means…”

  “Cultists,” Liam sighed from the rafters, where he was currently eating an apple he had stolen from somewhere.

  “It’s always cultists,” the elf complained, dropping the apple core. “Why can’t we ever fight, I don’t know, very rich and poorly guarded tax collectors? Or goblins with a gambling problem?”

  The Game Master ignored him. He flicked his wrist, and the map zoomed in violently, rushing towards a blasted wasteland under a sickly green sky. It hovered over a fortress of black stone, ancient and crumbling.

  “This is the ruined city of Vorash,” the Game Master said. “It is the base of operations for a cult known as the Obsidian Hand. They are led by a charismatic mage named Malkor.”

  An image of a man appeared—gaunt, with fever-bright eyes and a cruel smile that suggested he enjoyed pulling the wings off flies.

  “Malkor has been busy,” the Game Master continued. “They have been successful in summoning their new friends.”

  The image changed again. A monstrosity appeared—a hulking beast with the body of a gorilla, the head of a ram, and skin like cracked obsidian. It brandished a massive, crude axe that dripped with something glowing.

  Faelar, who had finally chewed himself free of the vines, looked up. His eyes lit up with genuine affection.

  “Now that looks like a proper challenge!” the dwarf boomed. “Look at the size of that chopper! I bet he hits like a falling mountain.”

  “They are attempting to stabilize a permanent portal to the demonic planes,” the Game Master concluded, his voice grave. “If they succeed, Xylos will be the first of many worlds to fall. Your mission is to enter Vorash, eliminate Malkor, and destroy the portal. Do not fail.”

  He looked at us one last time, shook his head as if already regretting his life choices, and vanished as silently as he appeared.

  The hologram remained, humming softly.

  I took a moment to let the information settle. Then I turned to the team.

  “Alright,” I said, stepping up to the map. “Vorash. Malkor. Demons. Let’s break it down. Initial thoughts on infiltration and engagement?”

  Faelar cracked his knuckles. The sound was like pistol shots.

  “Thoughts? I’ve got a thought!” He waddled up to the hologram and poked the image of the fortress wall. “It’s a ruin, right? Full of crumbly old walls?”

  He grinned a wolfish grin, exposing several gold teeth.

  “We find the biggest, most important-looking wall,” Faelar explained, acting it out with his hands. “I make a new door in it. A big one. Then we introduce ourselves. Loudly. We smash our way through every robed git and goat-headed monstrosity 'til we find this Malkor fellow. Then I smash him, too. Simple. Effective. It’s barely a plan at all, more of a glorious rampage.”

  “A glorious rampage,” Liam repeated slowly, shaking his head as he dropped down from the rafters. “Faelar, that’s just a fancy term for ‘getting ourselves surrounded and turned into demon-chow.’ Your ‘plan’ has all the subtlety of a rockslide. A smart team goes in quiet.”

  Liam began pacing around the map, his movements like a stalking cat.

  “I slip over the walls at night,” he whispered. “I move through the shadows. I map their patrols. I learn their routines. I find out where they keep their shiny ritual daggers—which are probably worth a fortune, by the way. I locate Malkor's bedchamber, and we slit his throat in his sleep. Clean, quiet, and professional.”

  “But that’s so violent,” Willow said, her brow furrowed with concern. She walked up to the terrifying image of the demon.

  “And sneaky. Are we sure we have to fight them? Maybe they’re just misunderstood,” she suggested earnestly. “People who summon demons must be very unhappy. Perhaps if we showed them some kindness? I could try to encourage the plants in the city to bloom. A really beautiful flower can change a person’s whole outlook on life. Maybe Malkor just needs a hobby? Like gardening?”

  I stared at her, waiting for the punchline. There wasn't one. She was dead serious.

  Before I could respond, Elmsworth, who had been staring intently at the holographic map with a jeweler’s loupe, cleared his throat.

  “Your approaches are all fundamentally flawed,” he announced. “The ley lines in Vorash are a chaotic tangle. A frontal assault is astrologically unsound—Mars is in the House of the Weasel—and stealth is pointless if their scrying wards are attuned to mammalian life-auras, which they almost certainly are.”

  “So what’s your brilliant idea, old man?” Faelar grumbled. “Talking them to death?”

  “The obvious solution,” Elmsworth said, as if explaining addition to a toddler, “is a Polymorphic Diversion.”

  I held up a hand. “A what?”

  “It’s simple!” Elmsworth beamed. “I transfigure Nugget into a Greater Vorashian Slime Mold. They’re indigenous to the region, highly territorial, and notoriously distracting. While the cultists are dealing with an unexpectedly aggressive and ambulatory fungus consuming their ritual chamber, we simply walk in the back door.”

  He looked down at the chicken on his shoulder. “Nugget is in agreement, though she is negotiating for extra corn as compensation for the indignity of being an invertebrate.”

  The room fell silent.

  I stood there, looking at the faces of my team. A berserker who wanted to smash. A rogue who wanted to rob and murder. A cleric who wanted to garden with demons. And a wizard who wanted to weaponize his chicken into a fungus.

  My training manuals had covered hundreds of tactical scenarios. Flanking maneuvers. Siege warfare. Counter-insurgency.

  None of them—absolutely none of them—involved slime molds.

  I took a deep breath, fighting the migraine that was clawing at the back of my skull. The calm center of their storm.

  “Okay,” I said, my voice steady. “Here’s what we’re going to do.”

  I looked at each of them in turn, locking eyes.

  “Faelar, your idea of a diversion has merit, but a ‘glorious rampage’ is not a diversion, it’s a suicide run. Liam, your reconnaissance is essential; we move nowhere without intel, but a simple assassination won’t destroy the portal. Willow… we are not giving the demons flowers. Not yet.”

  I turned to the wizard. “And Elmsworth, for the love of all that is holy, we are not turning Nugget into a slime mold.”

  I pointed to the map, tracing a line with my finger.

  “We are going to combine our strengths. Liam, you go in first, just as you said. I want maps, patrol routes, and the location of Malkor and the portal. Once we have that, Faelar, you and I will create a diversion. A controlled diversion.”

  I emphasized the word controlled.

  “We will draw their main force to the western gate. While they’re occupied, Elmsworth, you and Willow will disable any magical wards on the eastern side, creating an entry point for the entire team to strike at the primary target together.”

  It was messy. It was held together with duct tape and hope. It had a hundred things that could go wrong.

  But it was a plan.

  It was the first, terrifying shape of the chaos to come.

  Faelar stroked his beard, a slow, dangerous grin spreading across his face.

  “A controlled diversion…” he mused. “I like the sound of that. It has a nice ring to it.”

  I looked at the gleam in his eye. I had a sinking feeling that his definition of ‘controlled’ and mine were two very different things.