To me, the next day began not with the rising of the suns, but with the sound of the guild’s front door opening. My strong sense of hearing alerted me right away, and I slipped out of the room while Frey was still sleeping.

  “You’ve been gone for some time now.” Gregory, the tall man with green hair, was saying to someone in the entryway. Though it was still a little dark out, my eyes could make out the figure instantly. “Why did you not arrive with your new monster, Meebur?”

  As much as a small snake can, I smiled widely. Slithering down the stairs, I caught sight of my tamer and felt immediate relief. I don’t know why he didn’t come here with Frey and I, but it was good to see he was safe. Though the faint blood stain on his shirt told me safety hadn’t been a guarantee.

  “You’ll hear about it all soon enough. For now, we have more important things to discuss, Gregory.” Meebur said and smiled with great pride as he looked down to see me approach him. My tamer picked me up and placed me on his shoulder. “You read my letter?”

  “Yes, and the copies I made reached the other leaders. There are going to be mixed reactions to your discovery when they find out.” Gregory said and stared at me blankly. He turned and walked towards the bar. The confidence and grace with which he moved impressed me. He had an aristocratic air, and I felt certain that this man was the leader of the guild. Who else could speak to Meebur so casually?

  “It’s odd to see you without Corinth.” Meebur said to Gregory as the green-haired man sat at the bar. Violet had her back turned, organizing some documents behind the counter.

  “He’s stretching his wings. Your news put a lot of work on our shoulders. Neither of us got much sleep, I’ll have you know.”

  “Would you prefer I had kept it a secret?”

  “Obviously not.” Gregory took off his glasses and wiped them with a cloth from his jacket pocket. “This news is going to shatter more than the schedules of the other leaders, Meebur. It will be-”

  “Sorry, Violet, I didn’t mean to ignore you,” Meebur said, interrupting Gregory to speak with the woman behind the bar.

  “Hmph. It’s too late. I haven’t seen you in over a month, and you finally return only to go almost two minutes without saying hello to me? You’re dead to me, Meebur. Dead!” With that last word she picked up a nearby mug and crushed it to pieces with her bare hands. Shards of glass fell to the floor as she spun around to face Meebur. Her eyes were twitching from anger, and I couldn’t tell if she was going to scream or jump over the bar and attack my tamer. Neither Gregory nor Meebur made any sudden movements, and I mirrored their stillness. Something about this woman suddenly scared me more than even the Harrowhawk.

  She broke the silence by taking a deep breath and said, “Ok, you’re forgiven! Now give me a hug!” And hopped casually over the bar and wrapped her arms around Meebur’s shoulders, pulling me into the hug as well. Despite her small stature, the purple-haired woman wearing an innkeeper’s outfit hugged us both so tight and with such strength that I worried she would rip us in two.

  Finally, she released us and stood there with a smile. “Promise you’ll have a drink with me later? I want to hear everything you got up to on your trip! Gregory hasn’t told me a thing.”

  “P-promise,” Meebur said while catching his breath. It was a little odd to see someone as big as Meebur get the wind knocked out of him so easily. But I felt the same way. I was wheezing atop Meebur’s shoulders.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you, little one!” she said. “Sometimes I don’t know my own strength.”

  “Don’t worry, Vi.” Meebur said, wiping some sweat off of his forehead before taking a look at me to see if I had in fact been hurt. “He can handle it. He’s part of the reason why I’m back. But before we get into that, I should probably stop being rude to you, little guy.” Meebur, with me still on his shoulders, walked over to the large metal doors at the other end of the building. “I should really show you all of the guild, and not just the entryway. I’m guessing Gregory didn’t show you or Frey anything.”

  The entryway?

  And with that, Meebur swung open the metal doors. The building I was in wasn’t the entirety of the guild like I thought. It was only the entrance!

  Beyond those doors was a sprawling expanse of field and forest surrounded by a massive stone wall. It was as though the entryway led into a vast safari or wildlife preserve, where monsters roamed free within the walled-in area.

  Parts of the giant tree at the center of Artemis overlapped with the guild’s walls, and I could see that there were woodlands, ponds, swamps, and many other kinds of environments. All within this one place!

  Beyond the walls of the guild area you could just barely make out the tops of buildings in the city, such as the castle where the Duchess lived. And in the center, straight across from where we stood, was a huge tower nearly ten times the size of the entryway.

  This tower is part of the guild? From a distance, I had assumed it was just a part of the Duchess’ castle.

  A path from the entryway led straight to the tower, which was the real guild hall. Lining this path were dozens of tamers who had their heads bowed. Gregory stepped forward and joined the procession to proclaim:

  “We welcome to the Artemis tamer’s guild, Leader Meebur the Magnificent. We are pleased you are back!”

  “We are pleased you are back!” Every single person shouted towards Meebur.

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  Wait…Meebur is the leader of the guild?!

  The entry for Guild Leader has been updated in the Almanac.

  I wasted no time and read the entry. There were thirteen major cities in the country of Olympia, and each one had its own tamer’s guild. The leaders of each were said to be the greatest tamers not just in the country, but in the world. Though Olympia wasn’t the largest or strongest country, with many of its neighbors having bigger armies or economies, the one thing it had above all else was the power of the tamer’s guilds.

  And my tamer is one of these leaders?!

  Meebur put his hand behind his head and bowed slightly, clearly a little embarrassed by the spectacle. “Gregory, I thought I told you never to do this sort of thing for me,” he said.

  “I am your viceleader, it is my job to uphold tradition and structure,” Gregory said.

  With a sigh and a wave of his hand, Meebur dismissed the procession of tamers. They returned to other areas where I saw them care for monsters of all shapes and sizes. There were boars with leaves instead of fur, deer with trees where you'd often find antlers, and overhead were swarms of butterflies whose wings were inscribed with detailed art one would usually only find in a museum.

  Meebur walked towards the tower in the center and Gregory followed behind him. They walked amongst the beautiful, expansive space as though it were second nature. If I wasn’t on Meebur’s shoulders, I would have been frozen from how stunning it all was. Unlike the trees and bushes in the forest of death, which all seemed outfitted to sting and scratch and hurt you with each touch, the plants here looked beautiful. Trees of every kind, grass that looked as soft as carpet, and streams of the clearest water. There were also orchards of every kind of fruit and fields of multi-colored wheat, all of which I assumed were there to feed the countless monsters hatched and trained here. Everything I saw created a new entry in my Almanac that I was ecstatic to read later. It was awe-inspiring to walk along this path with Meebur and Gregory.

  “I assume everything in my letter has been taken care of?” Meebur asked.

  “It has.” Gregory said.

  “I hope that the boy who brought my little friend here has been given appropriate accommodation.”

  “Uh, yes, he has.”

  “Which room did you give him?”

  “Well…he isn’t a member so…I let him use the spare cot in the entryway storage closet.”

  Meebur stopped dead in his tracks. He chuckled deeply, the laugh sending vibrations through my body as I rode on my tamer’s shoulders. However, Gregory wasn’t laughing.

  “Move him into the first level dorms. Have him start training with the new recruits, and then assess his membership immediately after.” Meebur said. “Don’t make him wait another minute.” My tamer said this with a smile, but from the nervous expression on Gregory’s face, Meebur wasn’t happy.

  “Apologies, leader. I didn’t mean to offend your guest.” Gregory said and bowed his head so far down that the tall man went from looking like a massive tree to a dried shrub.

  “Good.” Meebur said and continued walking. Gregory immediately lifted his head and ran back to the entryway almost as fast as Frey ran from cute monsters.

  Once Gregory was out of earshot, Meebur laughed a more genuine laugh. “I have the greatest viceleader in the entire country. But I sure wish he would lighten up.”

  Over the next few days, Meebur showed me around the true guild grounds. I don’t know if Meebur did this for every monster he tamed, but I was grateful he did. It probably looked a little odd for such an important man to be giving a tour to a snake.

  There was so much about this world I didn’t know. The guild grounds only made that more apparent. The process for hatching monsters, the precision of their training, and the work they did for the city and the country as a whole was immense. I saw tamers coming and going as they worked with their monsters on quests given by citizens, special orders from the nobility, and adventures of their own choosing. There was so much activity, it was hard to keep up!

  I wonder if every guild is like this?

  Frey wasn’t immediately admitted to the guild, but with Meebur’s recommendation he would soon train and study with the new recruits. Though Meebur was the guild leader, it would be improper for him to make the decision on who to let in completely on his own. Giving the senior tamers a chance to come to their own conclusions on a potential new member not only helped the guild make the best decision possible, but gave everyone a chance to interact with recruits like Frey.

  There was a reason the Artemis Guild was considered one of the top guilds in the country. There was a system in place for everything, and Meebur, with Gregory’s support, ran a very tight ship. This was clear in not only how they managed the tasks of a guild, but also in how the grounds were organized. There were sections to raise and hatch many different kinds of monsters, all within the walls of the guild’s open area. There were fields, small forests, ponds, and even sandy desert areas. It was much more impressive than the simple entryway I had thought was the guild when I arrived with Frey.

  But Artemis wasn’t the only tamer guild in the country. And after a few days spent exploring the grounds, that fact became very real for me.

  Beyond the borders of the city, six individuals arrived suddenly. Their presence, all in the same place at the same time, worried the residents almost as much as bunnies frightened Frey. Even the Duchess of the city chose to remain within her castle, ordering everyone to return to their homes. For their own safety.

  One of these individuals arrived on the back of a gryphon descending from the heavens, while another bore through the earth within a tunneling device of her own making. One travelled alone along a dangerous road, another amidst a procession of giant soldiers. One appeared within the city walls through a portal of liquid shadow, while the last seemed to have always been there like the wind in the leaves. Each made their way to the same place and arrived at nearly precisely the same time.

  Gregory came to find Meebur and I, interrupting a tour of a glade in one of the far corners of the guild’s open area.

  “They have arrived, Sir.” Gregory said and bowed to Meebur.

  “How many?” Meebur asked.

  “Seven, including yourself.”

  “That will have to do.”

  Gregory escorted Meebur and I to the main guild tower. A mechanical lift brought us all up to the highest floor. The entire level was a single room, lined with paintings of what I assumed were past guild leaders and their monsters. In the center of the room was a large table with thirteen chairs.

  Several of which were already filled with people who each had an expression on their face that screamed:

  “I don’t want to be here.”