It was a long, boring, four day trip to the Gray Wolf lands. There was never much to do on an airship if you weren’t a sailor. I’d brought along a couple of books that I shared with the others. But we played a lot of cards, which Grant had thankfully remembered to bring with him, teaching the elves some of our favorites and they taught us some of theirs. Geralio had brought a deck from Cerim, which was great.

  It was interesting how similar yet different the decks were, and the games. The basics were the same, but the nuances weren’t. Culture had a lot to do with it. Grant and Geralio became pretty fast friends, finding some common ground in the cards. They both knew a lot of games, even some tricks and sleight of hand, along with all the machinations, odds and whatever else went into it. I just liked to play, not get that deep, but the two of them got really deep.

  Airships weren’t large and were always cramped, even the passenger ones, which this was not. The ship, called The Phoenix’s Feather, wasn’t a large cargo ship to begin with. And we’d overloaded it with cargo and people. As the first ship heading out, there weren’t many fighters but a lot of support staff. They’d be tasked with setting up the Operations Base, and then the first Forward Operating Base.

  Donovan really loved using his old military terms.

  With the ship being small and crowded, it was a constant bumping into people to move around. I’d been given the option of a cabin, but I’d said nope to that. Instead we’d stuffed three or four people into each cabin, the rest in the cargo hold with all the supplies. I’d wanted to bring John Argent across in the first trip, set up the portal. But I’d been, rightly, overruled. We wanted to make sure it was all safe and had a proper defensible camp set up before John set up the portal.

  And I wasn’t in charge of that part. Maria would make that call.

  I felt bad for all the folk really crammed into the cargo hold. Luckily, they could walk the deck and stretch their legs. Four days wasn’t that bad. I spent a lot of time on deck, sitting against the railing, watching the world pass by. Mostly the Loch for the first day and a half, with trees on one side, the water and lots of islands on the other. We hadn’t explored even a fraction of the islands. We’d turned to the north, the lake turning into lots of forest and plains, low hills, and more forest.

  It was four days at airship speed, which covered a lot of ground in a day and could fly through the night. Walking from Solacetown to Darren’s Port, would have been a month's walk. Even at my walking speed. The Earth was big now, very big.

  Gray Wolf territory was in the northeast of Solace. We shared a couple hundred mile long border. Most of their land was forest and tundra, with some lakes and ponds. I’d looked at the map in the Captain’s quarters the first day, getting a lay of the land. Darren’s Port had been decided as our base because it was in the middle of Gray Wolf territory. Not right at the frontlines, but not that far back.

  We were currently following a river north. The maps said it eventually connected with Gray Lake, the largest lake in the territory, where Darren’s Port was. A decent sized river, flowing through the forests. Nothing I hadn’t seen a dozen times before. Most of Solace was forest.

  I liked forests.

  My legs were between the posts, dangling over the air, the ground a couple hundred feet below. With my elbows resting on the railing, I looked out over the green sea. Someone approached, taking a spot next to me. I recognized Tracy’s armor as she slipped her legs through the posts, not quite tall enough to lean on the railing like I was. Instead she leaned back, looking up at the clouds.

  “You and Grant huh?”

  She reached out and smacked me.

  “That obvious?”

  “Yep.”

  She sighed.

  “We’re still kind of figuring out if there is a we,” she said.

  “He seems like a good guy.”

  “He is, and he fits in good with the rest of the team,” she paused, sighing. “But team dynamics and all that. If we did get together and something happened…”

  “And he’s the healer,” I said. “They’re hard to come by. So if it came down to you or him….”

  She smacked me again.

  We both laughed.

  “Seriously, if there’s something there, take the chance,” I said. “With this life, the Challenge System, everything… Take the chance. Hell, we’re heading off to fight an invading force of freaking gnolls from outer space.”

  “DImension,” she said. “They’re from another dimension, not outer space.”

  “Dimension, universe, outer space,” I waved my hands around. “What does it matter. They’re aren’t from here.”

  Tracy laughed.

  “Neither are your elf friends.”

  “Yeah, but they’re cool. The gnolls aren’t.”

  She laughed again.

  “I can’t wait to land and get to fight some of these gnolls,” Tracy said, a little more aggressively than I was used to from her.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  “Because they’re invading Earth?”

  “Not just that,” she said. “But this whole war is delaying my Leveling. I want to hit one hundred!”

  I laughed.

  We fell silent, just watching the world pass by. I was anyway, she was still watching the clouds.

  “This is going to be bad isn’t it,” she asked after some time had passed.

  “I hope not, but yeah,” I said, sighing. “There’s some politics at play.” I leaned back and looked around. “We’re trying to keep this part quiet. I was planning on informing you and the others when we landed but….” I leaned in. “The invaders were invited here.”

  Tracy’s eyes shot up in shock. She looked around, whispering.

  “Seriously? Some Clan actually invited invaders to Earth.”

  I nodded.

  “Yep, Ben is already working on tracking down who.”

  She shook her head.

  “That’s insane.”

  “Yep.”

  ***

  The ship, still over the river, flew out over Gray Lake. It was maybe half the size of Loch Ursa. Sill a big body of water. Lots of smaller islands. A couple other rivers spread out from the lake. We couldn’t see the far end, but from the maps, I knew that a larger river flowed a little southeast, ending up in the old Atlantic Ocean a couple hundred, or thousand, miles away. The river was navigable by boat. The far end of the lake was not Gray Wolf or Solace territory. It was unclaimed land.

  As I looked that way, I was thinking that it was time to take some of the unclaimed land up this way and claim it. Not because I wanted to expand the Fellowship’s borders, but because making it claimed land came with some benefits and safety features.

  It was one way the System encouraged us to expand. Borders could be dangerous, but by pushing that border, it made the land less dangerous. Still dangerous, as there was nowhere on Earth truly safe anymore, but relatively tamed was better than wild.

  Gray Wolf land, now it was all Solace land I guess, was mostly to the north, west and south of the lake.

  It took a couple of hours flying over the water before we started to see fishing boats, people on the islands, the sign of a Dungeon on one. And thankfully there was evidence of an outpost there, meaning the Dungeon was delved regularly. We could see the buildings making up Darren’s Port as we neared the far shore.

  The Port was a good sized city. Maybe ten thousand residents. It spread out for a couple miles along the banks of the lake, most of the bigger buildings centered near the large docks. Smaller docks lined the shores, but the biggest were in the middle. That was where we headed.

  Mostly made up of stone and log buildings, it had a rustic quality to it. Smoke lifted up from hundreds of chimneys, drifting into the air. A stone and palisade wall lined a good portion of the city with newer expansion outside the walls.

  Darren’s Port wasn’t the capital of the Gray Wolf Territory, but it was their second largest city. It had more docks than Solacetown, but wasn’t as busy. Most of the docks were smaller, private, for fishing boats. The docks in the center, longer, wider, were for commercial use and Darren’s Port really didn’t get much. They got some thanks to having access to the river that ran to the Atlantic, which is something we were interested in.

  Some of the Fellowship leadership had been talking about establishing an outpost at the head of the river, where it met the lake, but Kat had argued for just using Darren’s Port. Why build when there was already something there? It would probably end up being a combination of both.

  An outpost to control what came into the lake, but all the commerce out of Darrens.

  Besides being Kat’s liaison up here at the front, part of Derek’s job was to learn all there was to learn about the Gray Wolf Clan. We had a ton of information from when they’d petitioned to join the Solace Fellowship, and we’d done our research, but there was more that could still be gathered. I was hoping that some of the Gray Wolf’s mercantile contacts down the river, which they had named Atlanflow, were in the Port and we could pick their brains.

  Most likely would be. Even with the incursion, when there was a big political upheaval, like a smaller Clan joining a much larger, there were bound to be changes and their merchant contracts would be interested in talking with us. They’d want to negotiate new terms, maybe see what they could get from us, if they weren’t already dealing with us. Stuff like that.

  Derek was going to be a busy guy.

  We’d originally planned on letting the Gray Wolf’s be somewhat independent, aside from the System required stuff, and some overwatch from us to make sure they were being good people, but with the Dungeon Surge, and the fear they’d only joined to get us to handle that for them, the new policy was going to be much more hands on.

  The airship started drifting down as we flew over the lake. A wave of water splashed into the air, the ship shaking as it settled onto the surface. Mist spread across the ship as the wave crashed back down, rippling across the lake. We sailed past a couple of islands. I could see bears on some, deer, and even some people. A couple of houses, smoke rising from the chimneys.

  Loggers? Miners? Something like that.

  The docks grew larger and I could see a crowd of people assembling.

  “Great, a reception committee,” I muttered.

  “Of course there would be one,” Captain Nichols said. “You’re the most important person in the Fellowship, so they will be pulling out all the stops for this visit. They’d do it even if you weren’t coming to save them from a Dungeon Surge and invading aliens.”

  We stood at the rear of the ship, on the raised section where the navigator and pilot’s stations were. Sailors moved rapidly around the ship, doing all the things sailors did to get a ship ready to dock. I just sailed on the things, I didn’t know how they were run. But from what I could tell, Captain Nichols ran a tight ship.

  “Well,” I said, turning to the Captain and giving her an evil smile. “If I have to deal with all that, then so do you and Colonel Fernandez.”

  Captain Nichols sighed.

  If I had to go through the torture, I’d make sure to bring others with me.