It wasn’t long before we reached a bend in a stream that came right up to the road. Probably a nightmare during a flood, but a great place to rest. We removed our armor, and washed it in the stream.
I could tell that I was getting way more tired than she was. Despite her tiny frame, she could move out here. I tucked into some cheese and dried fruit, and eyed the dry hardtack.
The smallest bite soaked up all of the moisture in my mouth. It was like trying to swallow a brick made of flour. I washed it down with some water, and was able to breathe again.
“Yeah, that stuff sucks,” Bernie said.
We were both down to our shifts, medieval underclothes like a big shirt tucked into our pants, and had our armor and gambesons laying on a rock to dry.
Look, I’ll say this once and not linger on it, but despite her petite frame, she looked good in a thin white shift in the humid air. I swear I didn’t stare.
Despite my nature, I fought the wave of affection and admiration I felt for her, and tried to look at her as just my new friend. A friend who was in this shit just like I was. She’d saved me, but she wasn’t my savior. Being out here alone had to have been tough. And that would be me too, if I proved I couldn’t be trustworthy.
It was one thing to lust after the cute girl you didn’t know outside the game table, it’s something else to lust after a colleague when death was on the line.
It also helped that when the wind shifted, she smelled fantastically awful. Like, not cute-sweaty, but true football-pads-after-a-long-day-of-practice awful. Not that I smelled great either, mind you, but nothing like the foul stench of road sweat to remind you of flesh and blood humanity.
“They have baths back in town?” I asked.
Bernie laughed.
“Yeah. Tubs can give you splinters if you’re not careful, but the soap is nice.” She shaded her eyes and glanced at the treeline. Sun was just a couple hours above it. “Would love to wash up in the stream,” she said, “but I don’t want to get caught out here after dark. We should pack up in ten to fifteen.”
“Alright.”
I spent a moment or two working up the courage until I finally said it.
“Okay, give me the rundown on what happened before I got here.”
Bernadette sat on a rock opposite me, spikes of sweaty brown hair wafting in the breeze, and nodded.
“Alright. I think Rachel or Mark could do better than me. But I may as well tell you what I know so far.”
“Where’s—”
“We don’t know what happened to Sofia,” she said, putting a hand up. “Mark thinks Caleb may know, but he won’t say one way or the other, and he’s so busy now, it’s hard to get to him.”
“Busy doing what?”
“Running the Western Kingdom.”
“He’s a king now?”
“He’s one of a couple. There’s also the Queen of Light, the big baddie to the East. As well as the King in the Wood that controls this area we’re in, which is to the South of all that. Your map can tell you some of this. King in the Wood is the last holdout of elves, gnomes and wood folk from when the Evil Queen kicked him off the Throne of Light.”
“Okay. So he’s good?”
“I’m not sure. He’s got major bad blood with Caleb. Something about him marrying his daughter.”
“Shit. He’s married?”
“He’s got four kids. And one grandkid. His sons are running around here somewhere, Princes of the Blade, all trying to be bigger adventurers than their father. His daughter is at the castle with the grandkid. I met one of the sons in town, a prince. Kind of a jerk.”
“Wow.” I rubbed my stubble, such as it was, and tried to imagine what a fifty something year old Caleb looked like. I also imagined what a 80 something year old Sofia looked like. But then again, maybe she didn’t look much different, since she was a sorceress. I know in the game, that magic could stop you from aging. And if she’d died, that was probably something one of us would have known.
But maybe that was just cope.
“There’s also the Goblin Horde,” Bernie continued, “which splits the country right down the middle, but apparently Caleb broke them into a bunch of small tribes that aren’t a major threat.”
I was hesitant to ask my next question but I did it anyway.
“What about Mark?”
“Mark is a high level Wizard. Not retired, like Caleb. He’s in his tower cooking up ‘something big,’ whatever that means. He answers texts, but apparently Rachel hasn’t seen him since she’s shown up.
“Okay. Is Rachel okay?”
“She’s on her way to us. Has her own NPC crew called the Foaming Mug Brigade. Said she was only a week or so to the North. Our job is to level up before she gets here.”
“A whole brigade? Like a thousand troops?”
“I was under the impression it was like, six dudes.”
“Oh. So that’s it then. Why are we here?”
“Have you talked to the DM? Have you looked at your quests?”
I fished out my crystal slate. I considered opening the ‘quest log’ but put the phone face down instead.
“I haven’t either,” she continued. “The DM I mean. The quests tab is fine. Main quest says we need to defeat the Evil Queen of Light, then the Blue Door will open again, and we’ll all go home.”
“Seems simple.”
“Apparently Mark isn’t sure it’s possible in a conventional way. Her White Knights of the Word are the baddest fighters in the world right now. He said if we run into one we need to run. Even Rachel needs to run.”
“Aren’t White Knights good?”
“Not when they work for an Evil Queen. Plus maybe the DM likes the irony, who knows.”
“Huh.”
So, I needed to level up, meet up with Rachel, go grab Mark — ugh — then try and convince Caleb to come out of retirement. We defeat the Evil Queen and head home. But what about Sofia? I guess we get Caleb to tell us what happened to Sofia, defeat the Evil Queen, then go home.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
But what if Rachel doesn’t make it to town in time? Do we go out and meet her? What level do we need to be first?
“I see you plotting,” Bernadette said. “We just need to make it back to town, then we’ll figure out our next move.”
“Right.”
I opened my slate and looked at my character sheet. I was starting to suspect that my stats were messed up somehow. Did I get a chance to increase them at level four? Like The Game from the real world?
“Can I see your stats?” I asked. “I think they’re the same as our real bodies.”
“You’re probably right,” she said, walking over and sitting next to me.
We swapped slates. Her stats were:
Shade the level 4 Assassin Rogue.
Hit Points 21, Armor Class 15 (leather armor)
STR 7 (-2) DEX 18 (+4) CON 12 (+1)
INT 13 (+1) WIS 10 (+0) CHA 18 (+4)
Items: +1 magical dagger of tracking, unidentified magic crossbow, unidentified spellbook, unidentified wand, unidentified monocle, leather armor, 18 throwing daggers, 2 combat knives, 2 rations, 4 candles, 1 flint and tinder box, charcoal, 4 sheets loose paper
Abilities from rogue: Backstab (+150% additional damage against targets from behind or against targets that are otherwise distracted), Assassinate (triple backstab damage against targets that do not identify you as a threat), Beguiling Allure (double proficiency bonus to charisma checks against the opposite sex)
Skills: Acrobatics, Deception, Investigate, Seduction, Sleight of Hand, Stealth
The ‘seduction’ skill was a new one. That wasn’t a skill in the game we played. Neither was the skill named ‘social drinking,’ that I had. The ‘Beguiling Allure’ player ability seemed gender essentialist as hell, too. What about non-binary people? Were they immune? Maybe this was an older version of the game. I had never played those.
The ‘assassinate’ ability seemed strong. That was probably how a simple thrown dagger could explode a dude's skull.
Her stats were much, much better than mine. Maybe you got more than the two ability points at level up?
“Your stats are really good,” I said. “So maybe I was wrong.”
“Nah, they seem right to me,” she said, handing my slate back. We swapped. I looked at her skeptically.
“I mean I was going to UT for drama, and was in the top 10% of my class before all this. I’d say an 18 charisma is accurate. Charisma is the persuasive one right?”
“Sorta. It’s like force of personality, and determination. Where did you put your points at level up?”
“I only got two. The tooltip on the app said dexterity was my primary attribute.”
“Yeah it’s stealth, and damage for rogues.”
“Right.”
“So, it was 16 before? How? I don’t have a stat higher than 14.”
“My mom was an olympic gymnast, and my dad was a circus performer.”
“People still —”
“People still work at the circus, man.”
“So you —”
“Yeah,” she said, getting up and doing a cartwheel that transferred into a handspring. “I’ve been doing this for a while.”
“Holy shit!” I clapped because what else was I supposed to do? “Amazing!”
“Why thank you,” she said with an adorable shrug. “How did you get your charisma so high? I thought you worked at a tech company, like you were a coder or something.”
“I’m in sales and marketing.”
“Yeah that tracks. Hence your Social Drinking skill.”
“I can hold my liquor.” This may be underselling it a bit. I drank whiskey most weekdays. It wasn’t something I was super proud of, but I’d picked up the habit on ‘beer fridays’ at the office. Okay maybe I started drinking after my big breakup. Whatever.
“That may not be a bad thing,” she said, shrugging back into her gambison. I caught a glimpse of a nasty burn scar on her back and shoulder. It was red, like it was only a couple months old. “Basically anyone you talk to in town wants to do it over drinks. I got wasted my first night here.”
I started to pack us up. It didn’t take long, and we were off on the road again. I had my slate out, and tracked us as we moved. The nearest town was called Brindletree, a couple miles down the road.
I guess it was a fun fantasy name for a town. Maybe they made the leather things horses used?
The map also had our quest marked with a red dot, and side quests in blue. I reverse pinched the map a couple times and zoomed out. Before, the blue dot for meeting with Rachel was barely on the map, and now it was right on top of us. Way over on the West coast was the quest to talk to Caleb, in a city called Bladefall. Mark was somewhere up North.
The Evil Queen was notated with a red dot over a city called Everbrite.
I pinched back to a more reasonable scale. The surrounding area was mostly forest, and a couple small towns connected by dirt roads. The capital city, such as it was, had the name Pendras Holdrin. That sounded particularly Elfy. Guess that was where the King in the Wood lived. This whole area seemed to be the smallest political entity based on borders. Last holdout indeed.
Further, there were a couple places on the map that indicated an ambush spot. Thankfully, none on the road to town.
I had a pit of dread eating into my stomach. The same feeling I felt before a big test in school, like maybe I shouldn’t show up, stay home. And isn’t that what Caleb was doing? Staying home? He was supposedly some big shot adventurer, but he stayed in his castle now.
I didn’t know anything about Caleb, about this world. Judging him wouldn’t make my own decisions any more sound.
Suddenly a thought crossed my mind.
“How did you get to me so quickly?” I asked.
“I, ah, do you really want to know?” she broached tentatively.
“Yeah,” I replied, breathing hard from the pack. “Even if it’s embarrassing, we should be honest with each other.”
“It’s not embarrassing. I had just hoped you had a couple drinks in you first.”
I stopped walking.
“What is it?”
Bernie turned, did a little cute shrug and said, “I followed them.”
“The goblins?”
“The adventuring party.”
“That’s not a big deal. I guess you didn’t get to them in time.”
In the Game we like to be heroes, and if we messed up it was a bummer but not like this. I can’t imagine what it was like to talk to a group of people, and then see them dead in the road later. I would probably have blamed myself. But I’m sure she did the best she could.
Bernie walked over to me and put a hand on my shoulder.
“No. I was watching when the goblins cut them down.”
“Oh.”
“I had planned on stealing their stuff while they were sleeping. Goblins just got to them first.”
“Oh. Wow. Well maybe —”
She withdrew her hand.
“You. Weren’t. Here.” She said, very slowly, enuciating very deliberately, her eyebrows raised in barely contained fury. “I did what I had to.”
I thought for a moment. Bernie was right. I wasn’t there. I didn’t know what she had to do to survive out here alone. If I thought about it for even a second longer, I may have thought myself to a point where I judged her for it. But I didn’t think about it. What did I know?
I was only alone here for minutes. She’d been alone here for a week.
“Sorry. You did what you had to,” I said soberly.
“Right.”
“How did you know I was gonna run into them? Was I a quest?”
“Actually, I can always see you on my map.”
“Really?”
“I have a magic item that lets me track any living creature whose blood I’ve spilled.”
“But I —”
She turned my hand over. The faintest scratch was on the top of it.
“Scratched you when we got pulled apart.”
Bernie turned on her heel, and we walked. I didn’t ask any more questions after that.
We reached Brindletree swiftly. The town was bordered by palisades and carefully trimmed trees. Yellow and orange leaves drifted in the wind.
I saw my first elf. Look, the ears were pointy elf ears, what can I say? He was also tall, and pretty for a man, with big wide eyes. His pink and gold irises damn near sparkled.
Leaf-shaped plates formed his armor, and his spear looked really tall. I didn’t like the idea of having to fight one. Two more sat in guard stations at the top of the palisade with strung bows at their sides.
I made a mental note to be on my best behavior.
“Hey, Versidius,” Bernie said on approach. “You staying out of trouble?”
“Shade. Glad you return safe.”
“There’s that loquacious wit I’m so fond of,” Bernadette said with a wink.
He seemed to smile despite himself, and opened the wood and steel gate with a crank.
I was ready to drop dead, but Bernie didn’t seem tired yet, so I kept all complaints to myself. We shuffled through, and I got my first taste of what towns in another world looked like.