As they’d traveled south from Diairm, Dorri had noticed that the river stones paving the road had gradually become sparser and less well-maintained. More and more earth showed between each paver, and the stones themselves were worn so that grass had grown over their edges, reclaiming them from the uses of men. Eventually, though, the stones again grew closer together and had the look of being kept. That was how Dorri knew to brace herself. According to the world map, they were approaching Contha.
From Diairm to Contha, one city to another. And here she still was, traveling with Lora and Nildeyr and now even more people than that. Not that these companions were bad. She always played even MMOs as if they were single player games, and as followers or companions or even PCs if there were any, this bunch wasn’t terrible. At least they didn’t operate like many game companions and insist on spilling their backstories to Dorri when she hadn’t even asked.
They were just people, period, and she would’ve preferred not to be with them. In particular, she didn’t want to get trapped into a criminal faction that made gameplay harder or went darker than she liked to pretend to be.
Everything’s dark enough as it is. I just want to get off the track this game is railroading me down.
It had occurred to Dorri, of course, that she didn’t really know how long she’d have in this afterlife of a game. Ugly Star had been capable of developing Neuroconnect, so she didn’t doubt that they probably had all manner of contingencies in place to ensure Redemption Wars kept running as long as possible—server safeguards, renewable power and back-up power, system redundancies. As smart as the integrated AI apparently was, it could probably handle routine and possibly even nonroutine maintenance for an indeterminate amount of time after all the humans involved in such tasks had ceased to exist.
Indeterminate wasn’t the same thing as indefinite. She could have a vast amount of time to work her way into her preferred gaming style and enjoy roaming freely. Or she could have very little. She was loathe to waste what time she might have.
Dorri had just started to think she could leave Nildeyr behind and strike out on her own after all. Nothing she’d glimpsed along the River Way had looked too wild for her to handle alone. Across the river was a different story, but she just wouldn’t go there until she’d leveled up a bit. She’d begun plotting the best moment to break into the woods before they reached Contha.
But then there had been that strange conversation about the Drowning Grove. And the Speakers of the Grove. Dorri’s narrator had bleated out codex entries about the location and the organization. Then it had added a more personal note.
You never knew your father, but your mother told you he was a Speaker at the Drowning Grove.
The System, of course, was referring to the parents of Dorrias Greymantle, the character Dorri was playing. Except things were a lot more complicated than that.
In her real life, Dorri also hadn’t known her real father or anything about him. In every other way, her mother had loved and cared for Dorri as well as she knew how, but she had flat out refused to provide Dorri even crumbs of information about her father.
Dorri’s Origin scenario had already proven that her real life had carried forward into the game in pretty powerful ways. She felt briefly ill just thinking about it.
But maybe the System knows something about my real father.
The EULA had flat out warned that it would access not just her brain but also her public records. Rumors had been rampant that it might access not-so-public information, too. It was entirely possible that the System had found something Dorri didn’t know and crafted a version of Dorri’s real father in this world.
That the Lora NPC had made a point of mentioning her own connection to the Drowning Grove and the Speakers seemed decidedly pointed. Lora might have answers to questions Dorri had been wondering most of her life, ones her mother either couldn’t or wouldn’t answer.
It shouldn’t have mattered. But everyone outside this game was dead, and this could be the one and only chance Dorri would ever have to know anything about the man who’d helped create her. Or why he hadn’t stayed in her life. Or why she and her mother had both been so messed up.
So when the party reached the arched gates of Contha, Dorri was still with them.
Contha’s most prominent feature was the palace overlooking the river. On a promontory rising above the rest of the city, it contained so many colored glass windows that it sparkled in the cool, bright day like a multi-colored, many-faceted gem. Trees and beds of plantings lined the Way as it passed the palace and on toward the south gate. Many more flowers bloomed here still than had in Diairm, scarlet and purple and pink.
Mostly, though, Dorri noticed the people. A din of bustle and chaos filled the dusty air, people talking and shouting, animals braying and barking. A sheen of exhausted resignation veiled Dorri’s vision and faded all the brilliant colors to gray.
The merchant parted ways with them in Contha. When they left out the south gate an hour or so after entering through the north, their party was six people on foot, no wagons remaining.
Six. Perfect adventuring party size?
The road curved more southeast after Contha. Dorri shaded her eyes to keep a clearer view of the road ahead. The unsettling sight of the Grove across the river had ended shortly before they reached Contha. The far bank had remained close, perhaps a half mile across. But swamp had given way to rutted hills and then to even taller cliffs than before, broken and shadowed and looming. Dorri could see nothing of the topside anymore.
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In the cliffs’ shadows, the river darkened and its surface stilled. No islands or shallows appeared. Dorri felt somehow safer for knowing that deep water lay between the Meres and the road where she walked, but also vaguely as if she’d lost an opportunity.
Midafternoon of the day after they’d left Contha, the Tilier, Booth, stopped their band of travelers at a spot where the Way, which had returned to a less kempt appearance, crossed a trail that was mostly dried wagon ruts marked by a pile of stones.
“Traton lies down this road.” Booth hesitated, and Dorri noticed that he glanced at first Lora and then Karon but not at anyone else. “It’s a small town, but the inn is good for a night’s rest. It will take you an hour or less each direction out of your way before you continue on to wherever you’re heading next.”
Booth spoke so stiltedly that Dorri was constantly torn. Was he a PC struggling to sound in character? Or an NPC using the forced formality as a personality trait? Dorri shrugged the question away. Easier to treat everyone like an NPC and form no attachments one way or another.
Lora agreed immediately to Booth’s suggestion. Karon appeared to take a moment to consider before nodding to his bodyguard, which was how he generally signaled his agreement to the rest of them. And so they turned off the River Way and onto the wagon trail leading west to Traton.
Their pace had slowed since leaving the main way, but Dorri felt safer yet, cradled between stretches of forest spotted with fields. Bursts of birdsong and squirrel chatter replaced the somnolent whisper of ever-flowing water. The air smelled less like old fish and more like earth and rain.
I could slip away somewhere along this path. It would be even simpler than before. But then the questions about her father might remain forever unanswered.
“I haven’t had a chance to compliment you on your musicianship. You play your flute beautifully.”
Dorri jerked her head to the right. The sound of rushing blood filled her ears.
Lora had walked up alongside Dorri. A sweet scent like promised rain accompanied Lora, and a breeze seemed to ceaselessly stir the swirls of her skirts and the scarves she wore over her beaded breastplate.
Behind Lora, the more mundane scenery they now traveled through unfurled. The land was less hilly and more given to long stretches of forest to the south, but to the north, fields marched on. Some waved with amber and russet grain, others had been cut. Bales and stacks of cut hay dotted yet others.
“I’m sorry.” Lora smiled kindly. But Lora was always smiling and always kindly. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“It’s fine,” Dorri blurted. After another moment of thinking, she added, “Thank you.”
There was more she should say, Dorri knew. Nothing important, because small talk was entirely about things that weren’t important. For the life of her, she couldn’t think what any of those things she could say might be.
“So, you and Nildeyr…”
“I haven’t played long.” It occurred to Dorri, so she said it. But she’d paused too long, and Lora must’ve tired of waiting. “What?”
Lora’s mouth curved into an even more enigmatic smile. “You and Nildeyr. When I met you at the Gardens, I thought what a handsome couple you make.”
Dorri twisted to look behind her, dreading to find that Nildeyr’s grinning face might be right behind them. But he was several paces back, walking alongside Booth, with Karon and his bodyguard well back from them. Booth met Dorri’s gaze, and his long-suffering expression suggested he’d like to be rescued.
Dorri faced forward again. “We’re not a couple.”
“No. I had gathered that over the course of our travels. So you are… co-workers?”
Lora tipped her head in this certain way. Her brows knitted together just so. And somehow Dorri felt that Lora wasn’t asking the question she’d actually seemed to be asking, or at least not just that question. It felt, instead, like an open-ended invitation.
Tell me everything, the question seemed to suggest. Unburden yourself.
And for a moment, Dorri longed to do just that. She wanted to tell Lora that joining the Riddles had been a terrible judgment call and that she’d only made that terrible choice because of a chain of other terrible choices and that she was trying desperately to figure out how to stop making terrible choices.
And my father. I want to ask her about my father.
But the triggering terrible choice had happened in a life Dorri wasn’t supposed to talk about, certainly not to Lora, who was absolutely an NPC.
An Agent of the System.
Everything Dorri wanted to say was too much. She choked on it all.
“I guess,” Dorri finally spit out, and even then only after the end of Lora’s question had hung between them for an uncomfortably long time. “Yes.”
After a moment, Lora nodded. She turned her head and looked behind them, toward where the others walked. The same breeze that swirled through Lora’s long black hair also touched Dorri’s cheeks, cooling them. This breeze smelled more like summer than the deep autumn they’d left behind in Diairm.
“I have noticed that Karon and Arra very rarely speak to anyone,” Lora remarked. “Not even each other.”
Dorri walked a few more steps, too confused by the sudden shift in topic to respond right away. A strange feeling fluttered in her throat, maybe relief because Lora was letting her off the hook. Or maybe disappointment because she hadn’t asked about her father. Her IC father. That would’ve been fair game.
“Arra?” Dorri finally prompted.
Maybe later I’ll ask about him. Maybe she didn’t actually deserve answers.
“Karon’s bodyguard. Her name is Arra Darkeyes.”
Dorri hadn’t heard the woman’s name spoken aloud until that moment. And she couldn’t recall ever hearing her talk at all.
“You’ve spoken with her?”
A fresh smile ghosted across Lora’s mouth. “A very little. She is recalcitrant. She is, of course, not the only one.”
It took Dorri a second. Belatedly, her face heated.
Me. She means me.
Or maybe not, because the next thing Lora said was, “Master Chanford has quite a solitary nature, himself.”
Dorri frowned. “Master Chanford?”
Lora’s smile quirked knowingly, although she merely replied, “Karon. He’s a Chanford of Chanford Falls.”
Dorri didn’t open her codex. But she knew that one of its entries noted that Lord Dindale, the Riddles mark she and Nildeyr had been attempting to fleece back in Diairm, hailed from Chanford Falls and had connections to the Chanford noble family.
Oh. Shit?
“I believe Karon is keeping an eye on Booth.”
Dorri was still stuck on the previous blindside, and Lora said it with such nonchalance, that Dorri walked another few steps before confusion fell over her.
Watching Booth? Dorri couldn’t imagine a Tilier needing anyone to watch over them. Then she shifted the meaning around slightly and understood that Lora meant Karon was spying on Booth. That made little more sense. Dorri suffered a flash of frustration, because conversing with Lora was akin to solving a puzzle without all the pieces.
And absolutely none of it has anything to do with me, anyhow.
Well, the connection between Karon and Lord Dindale might affect her. But only if she stuck around long enough for it to matter.
I should just get whatever answers I can from Lora about my father and then go.
A hushed clatter suddenly filled Dorri’s head.
[You rolled a 9 for Awareness.]
Adrenaline flooded Dorri’s body. The System wouldn’t have forced an Awareness roll if there wasn’t something important for her to notice.
I missed something!
Lora reached out a hand in front of Dorri’s shoulder, forcing Dorri to stop. The smile had fallen from Lora’s face, and she tipped her head, bird-like and listening.