Something was different.

Carrow paused in the middle of the intersection and turned in a slow circle, trying to put her finger on what it was.  Nothing particularly out of the ordinary met her eyes.  The sun was bright overhead, signaling that the weather would be nice, although clouds had a tendency to build in the afternoon.  Townsfolk bustled to and fro as they took care of their daily business, and vendors who had stalls around the well at the center of town cried their wares to passersby like usual.  There weren’t any Adventurers around, but that happened sometimes; this far out of the way, visits from the strange people weren’t necessarily a daily occurrence.

No, everything seemed normal, she supposed.  Shrugging, Carrow turned to head for her shop.

She was one of the lucky ones who had a store right near the town gate—which was really just a low rock wall that even children could hop over—and thus the main entrance to the town.  If there was one thing the sleepy little hamlet of Highspring had going for it over other similar towns, it was that it received a surprising amount of trade, thanks to the eponymous springs. 

For as long as Carrow could remember, there had been a touch of healing magic in the water—not so much that someone with a severe ailment could take a dip and be relieved of all their diseases, true, but enough that it was a popular destination for those with deep aches and pains that the water could help soothe.  More importantly, the water was being used as a base for potions to help increase their potency, which meant that there was a steady stream of Alchemists and Traders coming to Highspring for the water.

All of this was fine with Carrow.  Although she may not have been an advanced Alchemist, preferring to trade for the potions and such she sold instead of doing the work of preparing them herself, Carrow did just fine for herself.  Her shop was often the first one the Adventurers and other Traders saw when they arrived in town, and Carrow did a tidy little business of purchasing anything and everything the Adventurers had to sell and then trading or selling it to others in town.  Often it was junk, but sometimes the Adventurers brought with them unusual equipment or items from distant lands that Carrow never had and never would set foot in.  Traveling with wares was for other people; Carrow preferred to stay right where she was.

She occupied herself for a few minutes with setting her shop up for the day, propping the door open and placing brightly-colored flags outside to signal that she was open, sweeping the floor quickly, and switching out the chestpiece displayed on the mannequin by the door for a different one she hoped would sell better. 

All this accomplished, Carrow planted herself in the middle of the floor and put her hands on her hips, surveying her little shop.  After a moment, she sighed loudly.  Whatever it was that was bothering her, she still couldn’t figure out what it—

“Carrow!”

Carrow nearly leapt a foot into the air as Old Madge seemingly appeared out of nowhere and tottered inside, making a beeline directly for her.  Were it not for the deeply-etched wrinkles lining every available inch of her skin, you wouldn’t have known Madge was as ancient as she was.  She certainly hauled herself around town with surprising speed, and Carrow had the sneaking suspicion that her cane was more to whack scoundrels and misbehaving children with than to provide her actual support.

“Y-yes?” Carrow stammered, startled.  “Talk about jumpy,” she muttered to herself under her breath, smoothing the smock she wore over her knee-length skirts to try and hide her surprise.

“Have you seen the springs today?” Old Madge demanded, dark eyes bright in her wizened face. 

“No,” Carrow replied, raising an eyebrow.  Always one for gossip, Old Madge, and she had always delighted in being the first one to shout the newest rumor or news from the rooftops.  Knowing her, the old woman was probably darting door to door to talk to everyone about whatever was going on.

“Now what have I told you about visiting every morning?  A daily soak is good for your bones, you know.  You may be young still, but there’s no time like the present, right?”  Old Madge punctuated her sentence with a laugh that came out like a cross between a dog’s bark and a crow’s caw.

“You just want to see me giving you coin every morning,” Carrow countered.  Despite herself, she couldn’t help but smile.  Old Madge was something, that was for sure, but the town wouldn’t be the same without her.

“Now, now, you know I’d give you a discount, lassie.”  Old Madge waggled a gnarled finger at Carrow, smile sly.  “Say… pre-pay for the month and I’ll give you three visits free?  Good deal, no?”

Carrow snorted, hands on her hips.  “All these years you’ve known me and that’s it?  And here I went out of my way last winter to find you that special tonic.  You remember, the one for that handsome old knight you had your eye on who couldn’t—”

“Pshaw!  Bygones!” Old Madge interrupted loudly, stopping Carrow before she could finish her sentence.

Laughing, Carrow shook her head.  “Anyway.  What were you saying about the springs?”

“Oh!  Right!  They’re going mad today!  I haven’t seen them bubble like this in years, and poor old Smith Gregg nearly fried off his… well…”  Old Madge waggled her fingers meaningfully near the waistband of her skirt, grinning wickedly.

Just as Carrow was opening her mouth to reply that she really hadn’t wanted to picture anything about what Smith Gregg looked like without his clothes, an Adventurer popped into existence near the doorway.  No matter how many times Carrow saw it, the way Adventurers appeared and disappeared at seemingly random times was something she would never get used to.  They were an odd lot, those Adventurers; even though it was her job to trade with them and the strange goods they brought had earned her a pretty penny many a time, Carrow privately preferred the times when they weren’t around creating chaos.  One never knew what to expect with them; the best thing to do was be polite and help them with whatever they needed so they would go on their way.

“Greetings, Adventurer,” Carrow said automatically, although the Adventurer ignored her.

“Yessss, finally!  Wait—what?” The Adventurer demanded, her words almost drowned out by the clatter of her armor as it fell to the floor around her, leaving her clad only in her underwear. 

“I’ll see you later, Carrow,” Old Madge said over her shoulder as she headed out the door.  The octogenarian didn’t seem to care that there was a nearly-naked Adventurer standing in the middle of Carrow’s store, more interested in whatever gossip she was focused on spreading around town.

Carrow, however, certainly did care that there was a naked Adventurer in her shop.  “Can I help you, Adventurer?” Carrow asked, endeavoring to be polite. 

The Adventurer was Farrian, likely a mage of some sort, judging by the rough wooden staff at her feet.  Up here near the mountainous border between the Human kingdom of Albia and the mysterious, magic-saturated land of Farria it wasn’t unusual to see some of the strange magical race passing through.  Money was money to Carrow and she didn’t much care where it came from, but others in town weren’t always so welcoming, especially those old enough to remember when the Farrians were still barred from leaving their country as punishment for what they had done in the past—despite all the Farrians had recently done to save the Human kingdom of Albia.

Again, she was ignored.  Scowling, the Adventurer leaned down and snatched up a piece of her armor.  There was a pause, then the Adventurer’s scowl deepened.  “Equip,” she demanded.  “Equip!  Ugh, dammit.”  She shook the offending bracers, glaring at them.

Biting back a sigh, Carrow crossed her arms over her chest and waited, hopefully without seeming too impatient.  The Adventurer was absorbed in what she was doing, picking up each piece of armor and trying to put it on, but it all popped right back off no matter how well she tried to fasten it.

“It seems you may not be strong enough to wear such gear,” Carrow supplied after the Adventurer kicked her pauldrons across the shop in frustration and then had to go after them to get them back.  Out of the corner of her eye, Carrow could see a Human Adventurer struggling with something similar outside in the street, only the other Adventurer was being a considerably louder about it, yelling a string of curses detailed and explicit enough to make Carrow’s cheeks warm.

“Ya think?” the Adventurer inside Carrow’s shop snorted, brushing her bright pink bangs out of her eyes.  “Except I was just wearing it…”  The Adventurer glared at Carrow as though it was her fault she couldn’t put on her armor as the last piece vanished in her hands, presumably into her inventory for safekeeping.

“You don’t seem to be the only one having that problem,” Carrow said, pointing out the door toward the other Adventurer, who still hadn’t stopped swearing.

“Hmm.  Not sure I want to talk to him right now,” the Adventurer said dryly.  “Seems a little….”

“Angry?” Carrow suggested.

“You could say that.”  Falling silent for a moment, Carrow and the Adventurer both watched as the angry Adventurer seized the nearest passerby, Farmer Miya, and shook her by the shoulders like he was trying to rattle answers out of her.  Wide-eyed, Farmer Miya tried to stammer that she didn’t know what was going on any more than he did, but the Adventurer wasn’t hearing it.

“Hey!  Leave her alone and look at your character sheet, idiot,” the Adventurer standing beside Carrow suddenly hollered, and Carrow jumped again.

The Adventurer outside whipped around to glare into the shop.  “Shove off, Shiya,” he snapped, although he did let go of Farmer Miya, who immediately scurried away shaking like a terrified rabbit.  He stalked inside and over to them, scowling all the while.

Shiya rolled her eyes.  “You’re the one in my party, genius.”  Turning back to Carrow, Shiya shook her head in exasperation.  “We did one quest together during the beta and I still regret it,” she grumbled, as though Carrow had any idea what she was talking about.

“Level one?  They said they weren’t resetting the people in the beta!  What the fuck?” the Adventurer suddenly burst out a moment later.

The expression on the Adventurer’s face made Carrow back off a step, and she looked back and forth between the two of them nervously.  Adventurers were a mercurial lot in general, but this one looked like he was about ready to shove his sword through whomever had the misfortune of standing closest to him.

Stolen story; please report.

Not that he appeared to be strong enough to use his weapon currently, standing around in his loincloth like that…

Nonplussed and not nearly as nervous as Carrow was, Shiya shrugged her shoulders at him.  “Maybe the devs changed their minds, or they had to do the reset since the launch patch was so huge?  Dunno.  Certainly explains why we can’t equip anything, though.”

“This is bullsh—hey!  Watch it!”  He bit off whatever he was going to say mid-sentence as another Adventurer appeared, jostling into him.  Irritated, the first Adventurer shoved the new one aside.

“Hey!” the new Adventurer yelped, stumbling a few steps until he regained his balance. 

Shiya’s eyes lit up when she saw the newcomer.  “Trev!  Yay, you got in!”

“Hi!  Yeah, I—what?”  In a repeat of what had happened to the others, the new Adventurer’s gear popped off him and clattered to the floor, leaving him clad only in his dusky Farrian skin and the same sort of rough linen underwear the others were wearing.

“Level reset,” Shiya supplied before he could say anything.  “Just put the stuff in your inventory.  We barely got in a minute ago and were just figuring that out.”

“Bullshit,” the first Adventurer repeated loudly.

Watching them, Carrow sighed.  They certainly didn’t seem to have any interest in trading with her, and the three of them managed to fill most of the space in her small shop.  She didn’t really want them around if they weren’t going to purchase anything from her, but neither could she think of a polite way to say that in a way that wouldn’t end with her on the wrong end of a sword or reduced to a smoldering pile of ash after taking a fireball to the face.

Patience, she thought to herself with another sigh.  Other days, she wouldn’t necessarily have minded something like this—sometimes, having a bunch of Adventurers clustered in or around a shop brought in more of them curious to see what was going on, as Carrow had learned.  But whatever unnamed thing it was bothering her seemed to be sapping her patience faster than a Shadowstep’s daggers sapped your strength, and Carrow just wanted the trio of nearly-naked Adventurers out and for her day to go back to normal.

No such luck.

A loud voice drifted in through the entrance to Carrow’s shop.  “You hit me!” someone exclaimed, sounding surprised. 

Carrow and the Adventurers turned toward the door.  Just outside was yet another Adventurer, this one Half-Orc, who stood holding a hand to his cheek and looking at someone else they couldn’t see.  After just a moment, he leapt forward and swung his fist.  Even if they couldn’t see the result from inside the shop, the thud of the impact was clearly audible.

“Seriously?” Shiya muttered, rolling her eyes.

“Oh, I’ve definitely got to watch this,” the Adventurer whose name Carrow still hadn’t caught said smugly.  He strode toward the door, paused for a moment while the two fighting Adventurers surged past locked together in a battle that looked absolutely ridiculous considering their lack of clothing, then stepped outside.

Shiya and Trev looked at each other, shrugged, and followed.

And gods help her, Carrow did as well.

It was curiosity more than anything that drew her outside, even though she knew the wiser course of action was to stay right where she was.  Getting involved in a spat between Adventurers was the last thing she wanted… but seeing two of them roll around on the ground their loincloths as they wailed at one another with nothing but their fists was entertaining.

“Yeah!  Get him!” the Adventurer from her shop hollered, hopping up and down as everyone, even the nearby townsfolk, stopped to watch the fight.

“Uh… do you know them, Zaccai?” Trev asked, looking back and forth between them.

Zaccai turned his head for just a moment, the first smile Carrow had seen from him appearing on his face.  “Nah.  But why not pick a side?”

“Oh,” Trev replied.  Frowning, he looked back at the fighting pair of Adventurers as Farmer Ted hastily dragged his wheelbarrow out of the way right as they were about to crash into it and ruin his produce.  “I know world PvP is a thing now, but I thought cities were safe zones?” Trev asked aloud, watching them.

“Cities, yeah.  Guess this place is too small to count, though.  And I think it’s only certain zones within the cities that are safe,” Shiya said from beside Carrow.  The Adventurer spun around in a slow circle, looking around the crowd.  It was casual, but Carrow didn’t miss the way her shrewd eyes landed on each and every person within view for just a moment before moving on, clearly judging whether anyone nearby posed a threat.

Carrow could have saved her the time: all of the townsfolk in this peaceful little hamlet valued their health above getting into spats with the much stronger Adventurers, so the only ones who could pose a threat to Shiya and her group were other Adventurers.  And, other than Trev and Zaccai, the only other Adventurers in Highspring were currently rolling around in the road and trying to beat each other into a pulp.

Just as she was thinking that this was taking an awfully long time, the fight ended.  The Half-Orc Adventurers threw a final punch and his opponent collapsed bonelessly to the packed dirt road.  A moment later, his body vanished, replaced by a small tombstone.  All of the fallen Adventurer’s belongings clattered to the ground around the tombstone, the spoils of victory for anyone who wanted them. 

“Gotcha,” the winner exclaimed, hauling himself to his feet.  He grinned at the assembled crowd and raised his hands into the air in triumph, although the effect was slightly ruined by the scrapes and bruises covering his greenish skin from head to toe.  Carrow suspected that it had been a close fight; judging from the winner’s appearance, his health had to be down to a sliver.

…A sliver?  Carrow frowned to herself.  Why would she have thought of it like that? 

“Boys,” Shiya muttered, rolling her eyes as a couple of the townsfolk clapped uncertainly and the triumphant Adventurer turned to bow like he’d won a skilled duel or something of the sort—and was so occupied with soaking in his accolades that he didn’t notice Zaccai sneaking up and snatching up some of the fallen Adventurer’s gear.

“Ugh, junk.  Figures,” Zaccai grumbled, tossing it right back to the ground.

The sound alerted the Adventurer, who turned to face him.  “What are you doing?” he demanded, taking a menacing step forward.

“Just looking,” Zaccai replied innocently, although one of his hands inched toward the hilt of his sword—or where the hilt of his sword would be, had any of the Adventurers been wearing anything.

“Well don’t,” the Adventurer snapped.  “He’s my friend, which makes the gear mine.  Back off.”

“It’s trash anyway,” Zaccai retorted, rolling his eyes.

“You beat up your own friend?” Shiya asked at the same time, snickering.

The Half-Orc turned to Shiya with his mouth open to snap at her, saw that she was female, gave her a good once-over, and smiled charmingly instead.  “He accidentally hit me and dinged my health, so we thought we’d test out the new Pv—oh, he’s messaging me outside of the game, hang on.”  The Adventurer froze in place for a moment, staring off in the direction he’d been facing, still as a statue.  Adventurers did this, sometimes; Carrow had even seen them do it in her own shop, and once she’d waited three days straight for the Adventurer to return, only to have him vanish unexpectedly after all that time.  This Adventurer came back again after just a minute or two, though, looking around at the others with wide eyes.  “Dude, his game crashed when he died!  Fuck.”

“Crashed?” Trev asked, frowning.

“What do you mean, crashed?” Zaccai demanded loudly.

“The fuck else does ‘crashed’ mean?” the Adventurer snapped.  “He’s back in queue, but…”  He went still for another minute, and although the rest of the townsfolk were starting to wander away, Carrow found herself sticking with the group of Adventurers out of curiosity.  “Fuck me, the queue is eight days.”

Shiya burst out laughing.  “I figured it’d be long, but damn,” she giggled.  “Thank everything holy we were in the beta and got to jump to the front of the line.  I think I’d kill myself if I had to wait a week just to log in.”

“It’s not fucking funny,” the Adventurer snapped, glaring at her.  “We took off work to play together today, and now he can’t get back in!”

“He’s got a point,” Trev said.  “That does suck.  And we’re all level one and have no gear.  If something happens and we die…”  He trailed off, frowning.

Whatever they were talking about made very little sense to Carrow, but it was enough to make Shiya’s laughter vanish immediately.  “Oh… good point.  Damn, so much for a smooth launch.”

“This is ridiculous,” Zaccai snapped.  “They promised the launch would go well, but there are problems everywhere—starting with me being fucking Level 1.  They’d sure as shit better give us gold or free game time or something to make up for it.”

“I mean, the beta was really limited in both players and the game itself,” Shiya pointed out, still frowning.  “We only had access to certain parts of the map, remember?  And the level cap was like 20.  Everything they added for the launch is huge, so it’s no surprise that there might be issues.  At least we’re in, I guess?”

Carrow stared at them, trying to piece together what they were talking about.  When Adventurers started talking about these sorts of things in the past, Carrow had always ignored it.  It was almost like a second language; Carrow had no idea what many of the words meant, figuring it was some sort of code the Adventurers shared, and she’d never stopped to wonder about it.

But now…

For the first time, Carrow was curious.  She didn’t want to ignore whatever the Adventurers were going on about—she wanted to know.  What sort of game were they talking about?  Nothing that Carrow could see seemed very game-like to her.  And all this about updates and queues was mystifying.  She knew the individual words, but Carrow felt like she was missing some context that would make everything snap into place, and she didn’t like it.  Everything was strange today; even the ground seemed to be vibrating ever so slightly, though Carrow dismissed it as her imagination.

Inwardly marveling at herself, Carrow swallowed and reached out to tap Shiya’s shoulder.  “Um.  Excuse me.”

The Adventurer turned to her, raising her eyebrows.  “Yes?”

Failing to think of a better way to ask what in the name of the gods they were talking about, Carrow decided to be direct.  “What—”

“Is it me, or is the ground shaking?” Trev asked, interrupting her.

Everyone fell silent for a moment, waiting and listening.  “Definitely not just you,” Shiya replied.  “They said something about weather being added, but earthquakes?  No way, right?”

Carrow stared around, wide-eyed.  This was definitely not normal.  A few of the townsfolk were calling out in alarm, although a group of small children seemed to think this was the best thing in the world and were dancing around on the trembling ground, giggling.  The brightly-painted flags decorating the town wobbled alarmingly despite the unnatural lack of breeze; a great plume of white steam rose from the hills behind the town where the hot springs were, bigger than Carrow had ever seen.

“I… don’t think this is an earthquake,” Zaccai said, looking around suspiciously.  The rumbling of the ground increased by the moment, to the point that everyone had to brace themselves against the outer wall of Carrow’s shop to keep from stumbling or falling.

It almost sounded like a roar.

“It isn’t,” Carrow whispered, though her words were lost beneath a great roar that seemed to echo up from the center of the earth.

A moment later, a massive dragon burst up out of the ground and into the sky like an arrow.  Wings unfurled from its sides, big enough to block the sun and throw the town into shadow.  The dragon hung in the air for just a moment, splendid and terrible… then it started dropping back down toward the town.

Shiya had time for two words, with which Carrow wholeheartedly agreed:

“Oh, shit.”