At the start of her present day scenario—in the aftermath of her Origin—Dorri had reluctantly played along with every lead the quest line created by the System had fed her. She’d been afraid to do anything less. So she’d started off in the perfectly legitimate Order of Riddles show as a trick shot. She’d gotten to practice with the bow, which had made her perfectly happy. Other members of the Order had trained Dorri in other skills, like the flute and a variety of sleight of hand maneuvers.
Dorri hadn’t realized until too late that those things weren’t just for the show. She’d been dragged off on an “errand” and found herself complicit in an outright breaking and entering and theft. The game hadn’t even tried to make Dorri feel better by claiming it was for a good cause. When Dorri had tried to tell the woman who’d recruited her that she wouldn’t do anything else illegal for the Order, the Order’s true nature had been revealed.
“You’re in it, now. Do as you’re told, or next time we need to give someone up to keep the constable happy, you’ll be it.”
Nildeyr had been standing right there in the alley outside the place they’d just robbed, although Dorri hadn’t known his name at the time. He’d waited for their ringleader to be out of earshot before he’d spoken.
“It’ll be all right.” For the first time, Nildeyr had flashed a freckle-faced smile at Dorri. “What we do is mostly petty stuff. It’s not like we’re murderers or something.”
Aghast, Dorri had just stared at Nildeyr. He’d laughed.
“You’re good at this stuff. You shouldn’t feel bad about using it to look out for yourself. I sure don’t.”
Nildeyr had puffed up as he’d said it, in that way Dorri had seen so often since then. As in, most of the day pretty much every day.
But as he’d walked away, Dorri had watched Nildeyr hesitate and then sidetrack to a young boy begging in front of an alley. A fist-sized bruise covered one side of the boy’s face.
“Did your dad do that to you?” Dorri heard Nildeyr ask. The boy nodded, and the coins Nildeyr had just earned clinked into the boy’s cup. “Two to make your dad happy. That last one, though, that’s for you. Hide it for when you really need it.”
That was the thing Dorri kept thinking about now—Nildeyr crouched beside the little boy and acting nothing whatsoever like the career criminal he so often touted himself as. He did talk entirely too much, but that wasn’t actually a crime.
He’s an NPC, fool. He doesn’t need you to rescue or even like him. It’s all the System manipulating you.
Mechanically, Nildeyr was probably useful if she really meant to set off on her own. She could use him as a local guide and sidekick with a weapon. And his alignment wasn’t completely evil, obviously. She had no idea if Redemption Wars included a companion influence system of any kind, but if she could rein in Nildeyr’s worst impulses, it could work.
Dorri shot a quick glance toward the back of Lora’s head. The other woman was out of earshot and looking the other way.
“Once we’re out of town, we can slip away.” Dorri’s pulse threaded through her hurried whisper. “We don’t have to stay in her custody.”
Nildeyr stopped rubbing his arms and bouncing on his toes and looked at Dorri. His brows dipped together.
“Custody?” Nildeyr flashed one of his smiles, like a streak of extra sunlight. “Nah. She’s our escort. Think how much safer the trip south will be with her looking out for us.”
Dorri’s mouth rounded. Somehow, her logic never held up to any conversation with Nildeyr. She tried to think her way around what he’d said, but all her carefully-formulated arguments about when and how to escape had centered around Nildeyr not wanting to be a prisoner.
But of course he wanted to stay with Lora. He was part of the questline.
“We don’t have to go south,” Dorri stated anyhow. “Or back to Jaxon at all.”
Nildeyr’s smile faded. He tipped his head. “You’re not worried about Jaxon, are you? I mean, Jaxon understands it can take time to perfect your skills. You know, I used to make mistakes, too. I mean, a long time ago. But still.”
“No. That’s not it. I…”
Nildeyr leaned closer to look Dorri in the eye. “It’s fine. It really is. Listen.” He glanced over toward Lora just as Dorri had done mere moments before. His voice dropped even lower. “Riddles always has a backup plan in place. If the first plan doesn’t succeed, then it becomes the distraction for the operatives handling the backup plan.”
Dorri’s attempt to argue dwindled away to an inner silence.
He thinks we… succeeded? He doesn’t want to escape.
Nildeyr had no interest at all in breaking free, not from Lora and not from Riddles. Dorri could either keep sticking around and try to change his mind, or she could ditch Lora and Nildeyr both and at least get disentangled from the Order.
Before Dorri could reach any kind of decision, one got made for her. While Dorri had been trying to navigate the ins and outs of conversing with Nildeyr, Lora had apparently spotted the armed guard she’d been hoping to find.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
An armored man with auburn hair had stopped to speak with Lora. He wore a shield on his back, and the weapon on his hip was something involving a chain and a spiked ball—a Morningstar or flail, possibly. With the armored man stood a muscled woman with braided hair and a greatsword and a second man, blond and dressed in dark green clothing.
Lora turned her head, looked directly at Nildeyr and Dorri, and waved them over.
Nildeyr gave Dorri’s shoulder a gentle pat. “A full party, including a Tilier. This is one trip to Iskian that should be a piece of cake.”
Dorri’s carrot-top rogue of a companion practically skipped as he waltzed toward where Lora waited with what was apparently going to be the rest of an increasingly-crowded group. Not for the first time, Dorri tried in vain to get to some kind of world map and could only open the one for the city she seemed stuck in.
I just want to see how big this world is and estimate how long this journey should take.
So she could calculate how many viable escape points existed along the way.
#
Outside the city, Booth finally got the map to show more than the local area and could better gauge the size of the game world. He couldn’t get it to zoom out far enough to show the entire world, and the territories beyond his current region were seriously light on details. Vast swathes remained completely unlabeled.
[https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1163627398881886250/1171113316375072848/Mindet_Valley_Region_Map_Current_Age_102723.png?ex=655b7f44&is=65490a44&hm=fd8305c41236e81007a21c1283c6c2f85ba74c0a7b2b5eda987ca12b59296bca&=&width=962&height=987]
The current region featured the Mindet River running diagonally from northwest to southeast. The area on the right side of the river was labeled “The Meres.” The left side, where Booth’s map marker flickered just south of the city of Diairm, was called the Mindet Valley. A dotted line labeled “The River Way (Low)” followed the river south through a couple of other cities and towns toward the tiny marker indicating Traton.
Booth didn’t expect it to work, but he spent a couple of minutes testing every possible method he could think of to see if the map could be manipulated into providing a fast travel option. He had actually been to Traton before, after all.
Nothing worked. Real time travel it was.
Does it matter? I’ve got nothing but time.
Booth flipped from the map to the character sheet and glanced over the numbers one more time. The familiarity of leveling up and fiddling with the map and figuring out more of the game’s mechanics made him feel more grounded and sure of himself.
Until you get into the next fight and have to deal with that turn-based crap.
He predicted he’d be spending a lot of time wishing he could just tackle things. But he had a full party to work with now, at least. The priestess of Mizan who’d flagged him down in Diairm had obviously been waiting for him and his companions, Not-A-Lord Karon Chanford and his bodyguard. Booth had since discovered the bodyguard’s name was Arra.
The priestess, Lora, was obviously an NPC placed to keep him on his quest track. The jury was still out on the rest of them. NPC or not, Lora was pleasant enough company, at first. They were several days on the road before she prompted Booth to consider changing his mind.
The first days out from Diairm, a handful of farmers and a single merchant formed a small caravan of which Booth found himself impromptu protector. That seemed like a legit thing for a Tilier to do, looking out for those who needed looking out for. His inner narrator informed him that unofficial caravans formed all the time—safety in numbers. Taking advantage of the added protection of a Tilier or others well-suited for fighting was only common sense.
Booth sized up everyone in their traveling band who carried weapons—the priestess, her two traveling companions, one of the merchants, and the bodyguard who traveled with Karon, of course. The two with the priestess, Booth pegged as a ranger and a rogue, based on their weapons and apparent personalities and talent sets. Both looked young and untested, but that meant nothing in a game like this. The brooding little ranger girl might have some ability to rain a fiery nuke of arrows from the sky, or the freckle-faced rogue could produce dozens of throwing daggers and take down entire waves of enemies in a whirl of blades.
The rogue’s hair color bugged Booth, although it took him some thinking to figure out why. It was bright orange, almost the same color Booth’s had been in his former life, but somehow bolder. Neon, almost. But the rogue didn’t seem to care. He leaned into it, acted flamboyantly and cheerfully, made it seem like a feature instead of something to be self-conscious about.
Everything about the guy annoyed Booth.
Their journey had them following the River Way between Diairm and Contha before leaving the main road for Traton. Booth’s narrator assured him there was only rarely any real trouble along that main route. Despite having gotten his ass handed to him in his only other real battle since leaving character creation, Booth found himself wishing for some kind of fighting action, anyhow. He just wanted an excuse to hit something.
The trek was long but not overly difficult. Overnight, temperatures approached the bone-chilling depths that winter would eventually bring, but every morning the sun rose over the river. Dazzling and gently warming without bringing the extreme heat of summer, the same sun painted flame colors in patches across otherwise green trees. Hills and farmland rolled away to the west, with the road nestled between land and water.
On their side of the river, banks covered in brown and gold grasses sloped gently to a narrow strip of rocky terrain which held the wide, muddy waters of the Mindet River in check. The never-ending codex streaming in Booth’s head told him that paving the River Way had been lighter work than it might have been; the laborers who’d built it had simply hauled stone up that bank and constructed the road with it.
Booth didn’t care, really, about how the road had been constructed. But having the knowledge on demand of the narrator was handy. He was also discovering that he’d gotten so used to hearing it that he was starting to not notice the interface so much. Facts popped up in his mind, and he filed them away without thinking too much about where they’d come from.
On the Mindet River’s far side, tall, sheer cliffs plunged directly into the water, dotted with outcroppings and small trees clinging tenaciously to life. Here and there, larger trees spotted the tops of the cliffs. Mostly, though, the clifftops held only lonely-looking tall grasses. Whenever the river widened, not even that much detail was visible, and the green-speckled gray of the cliffs merely loomed in the hazy distance.
Which was just as well. People lived in the Meres, but they weren’t always friendly. That came to Booth from the codex, but also from his own memory, accompanied by a surge of learned hatred for the mud-smeared creep with the spear who’d scarred Booth’s face and nearly killed both him and a bunch of kids.
It won’t happen again.
It would, of course. The game had set him up with a personal vendetta for a reason, he was pretty sure.
He hoped that meant he’d get the chance to hit back at some point. Soon would be OK.