**[Horace]**

Horace could feel Aiden stiffen beside him and make an awful wet hiccupping sound. Not wanting him to begin choking and bring attention to them, he gave a hearty smack to his partner’s back and looked at the Commander, who at that very moment was pulling out another name. It took a second for him to realize why Aiden might have made such an abnormal sound. He felt his own heart clench painfully as her gaze stayed rooted on them. His ears got fuzzy, and he felt faint. Digging his hands into his leg to keep standing, he trained his eyes on the woman before him. He missed the name of their dungeon due to his distraction, but he could not miss the color of the card she read from. It was a startling metallic pink with black letters standing out. He could only see it for a moment before she moved on to the next group, but that was all the time he needed.

Horace frantically tried to recall everything he knew about dungeon ranks. He could recall that they corresponded to the dungeon's assumed age and, thus, the expected difficulty. He could remember his teacher telling them it is by no means a precise system. Yet, it is a good way to judge risk without personally analyzing every dungeon in the region, which would be virtually impossible. It had been years since he had had any formal education, so he struggled to remember the exact system. There was a chant they were taught to help them remember as children, and he tried to recall it now. How does it go? Something like, “A newborn dungeons white as snow, given time it's sure to grow, tarnished now the glow has faded, to a grey so light and jaded. As its age reaches our limit, its walls are washed with the pale blood of innocence. Ancient now the world runs scared, a red too deep to compare. Finally, it has become a holy menace, a black so wretched we can only repent or die in face of it.”

Horace knew he had mixed up some words as it didn’t rhyme quite as he remembered, but the important facts were there. His card had been pink, which was most similar to the line in the middle of the children’s rhyme, “As its age reaches our limit, its walls are washed with the pale blood of innocence.” He could guess that pale blood meant pink, and by saying its age had reached our limit, the dungeon could only be a rank three. They are usually over a century in age and quite risky to enter due to the creatures' strength and cunning. Horace could feel his throat tighten as he realized their situation. A rank three was the highest option available for draftees and was already controversial since the monsters were estimated to be around level twenty on average. Rank four dungeons were sometimes given special allowances to be put in the draft because the distinction between the two was only that trained adventurers had evaluated rank fours. However, a rank three that had not been evaluated could be easily more difficult than the known nature of the rank four if the dungeon was older than expected or particularly malicious. Horace would have prefered to pull the higher rank and begin with more information than being stuck knowing their first encounter would likely be their last.

At level two, he had little confidence in his or his team's ability to handle a beast with a level exceeding five or six. Anything lower than that, and they would have a decent chance since the difference between lower levels was just a single stat point for any creature: human or dungeon born. Sadly, he knew that after level five, the beast would have the beast equivalent to classes while his team would not have any to draw strength from. Humans never got classes before five, and some failed to gain one until level ten, depending on the circumstances. Horace had always hoped to be picky about his future class if he had survived longer and gone into the army. Still, with their current predicament, he knew he’d have to take whatever was offered even if it only meant a moment longer of survival.

He could see Aiden looking at him in the corner of his eye but refused to look. He just wanted to be with himself for a little while longer before being forced to share in his misery, and from Rita’s face, he could tell she felt similar. It took only a short amount of time for the Commander to finish with the first group of teams nearest to her, and he could see a younger man start separating out the groups to clear space for more teams to approach. Their group was moved right up to the wall and asked to wait with three other teams. None of them spoke or moved much until a squadron of soldiers surrounded them with a few additional teams, and they were led outside the gates.

This seemed to force some draftees out of their stupor, and one young woman shouted at the guard nearest to her, “Hey! We were supposed to get time to rest here before being sent out! We haven't even written out letters yet, I- stop!” The guard had shoved her back into the cluster of kids without even making eye contact to acknowledge her. Horace didn’t think the guard had hurt her, yet just the obvious disregard for her existence was enough to bring tears to her eyes. Horace, like most there, hastily looked away. There was no point getting attached to anyone with only a few days left. He knew of the people there, regardless of the rank they got, few if any would remain in a couple of months.

The lead guard, a man with identical sandy armor as the rest, but with a sharp copper pin on his breast, finally graced them with answers an hour later. They had just reached an area marked with painted white boulders, and he turned sharply right before crossing them to address the group. “I am Sergeant Gordan Miller, and I would like to thank everyone present for their service to our great nation. Your ability to survive in these coming weeks will determine the survival of thousands of our people nationwide. Those here have drawn dungeons directly in front of the current base, and we need them incapacitated quickly to continue our forward momentum, which is why we are not granting you all the same time as your peers. Our first dungeon is just a mile in front of us, and we will pause here to allow each of you to write your farewell letters with the aid of the soldiers nearest to you if needed. Then we will separate from that group to continue on until the last team has been placed at their respective dungeon.” The man paused from his speech. Everyone waited for a while before realizing he was done.

Horace moved a few feet back and sat on the ground where a bearded soldier gave him a piece of parchment and inkwell before asking if he would need any help. Rita cut in before he could answer, “I will aid him. You may leave.” Her voice was firm, leaving no room for a response, and she turned to him with expectant eyes, her hands taking his parchment from him. “If you dictate to me, I can write your letter for you.” He was a bit insulted that she assumed he couldn’t write his own even though she was correct, but he would have appreciated her asking or just assisting him instead of just taking over completely. He must have projected his annoyance because she murmured an explanation, “Hey, sorry to be rude, but they likely will only give us a little time, and it's faster for both of us if I just write it. If we have time, I will help you put some of your own handwritten messages in as well.”

He sighed at the intimacy of verbalizing his personal message to his mother and sister to someone who was basically a stranger, but he got past his nerves to scoot next to her and begin. He felt bad about how much he was stuttering and blurting his feelings, yet she never reacted to it. She just listened emotionlessly and wrote constantly on his parchment. He did not have many people to say goodbye to, so he only took about five minutes with her help, and she let him sign his name on the bottom before moving onto her own letter. It was difficult for him to decide what to say, and he ended up just telling his mother how much he loved her and told his sister how much he wished he could see her grow up into a wonderful young lady. To finalize his letter, he had Rita include a stipulation on the payment given to his family on his performance; if he completed a month, he wanted his family to get to visit the capital and be able to take a vacation.

One of the benefits of being given a rank three dungeon was the monetary increase in rewards for his family. Just a week in their dungeon equals two months in a rank one, and after a month, it would be a significant sum. To incentivize the draftees, they can make requests for money to be sent in certain manners if they survive long enough. He remembered how one family in his village had been granted legal rights to their plot and were given a cow from their winnings due to their son’s planning. Upper-level factions like Aiden and Rita’s wouldn’t understand the significance of land rights and cow, but those in his faction could never own land under ordinary circumstances and certainly not livestock. Animals that were safe to have around lower leveled individuals were rare and could not be bought. Only people with existing animals could continue having them, so that boy had really elevated his family through his request. Horace was frankly amazed the nobles had allowed it, but the draft makes them more sympathetic towards his faction since they make up most of those sent. His request was not nearly as life-changing, but travel was something his people were banned from, just like owning property, and even if it was cruel in some respects, he wanted his family to experience more of their kingdom than their little farm.