There was no pain. That was the first thing he noticed. Shouldn’t he have been in agony? Or was this shock? Was the pain still to come?
The second thing to dawn on him was the absence of his car. Not that he had been flung from it and bounced into the street, but that it was not there at all.
No car.
No other car.
No street.
No town.
His world came into focus slowly. At first, it was just warped wood, cool under his cheek and worn smooth by years of foot traffic.
Then the haze withdrew, revealing the slender legs of chairs and tables and, beyond them, the stoic wall of a counter or bar.
Smells came next. The mingling scents of stale beer, old vomit, woodsmoke, and bread.
Sound rolled in to fill the void left in the wake of screeching tyres and howling horns. The crackle and pop of a fire, the sussurus and whistle of wind, the tick, tick, tick of a house settling and, then, the harsh bark of somebody coughing.
Damien came to his feet so quickly that dizziness threatened to pull him back down. He staggered a few steps before regaining his balance, amazed by not only the sudden change of scene, but his lack of injury.
A coma, the cynical part of his mind teased. You’re probably in a coma.
I could be, he replied to the inner demon, but I don’t think I am.
Did people come back to their past dreams in a coma? He could recall having recurring dreams as a child - the one where he would tug at a loose tooth and watch in horror as the rest came with it, a chain of gristle, blood, and teeth that left him drenched in sweat when he woke.
But they were never the same. The core of them, maybe, but they were always vague, shapeless horrors in the void of his pubescent mind.
This tavern looked exactly like the one he had visited the previous evening. The very same tavern in which Fred the Fighter and his brave companions had toasted another successful adventure and discussed how they’d be spending their hard-earned treasure.
He was unsurprised to see that he stood by the same table he’d sat at the previous evening. An empty mug and a picked over plate of roast beef, gravy, and green peas hid the message Sam had carved into the table, but he knew instinctively that it was there.
So, not quite the same as he’d left it, but damned close.
“You done gawking?” a voice suddenly interrupted. The source of the voice - and the cough - was a middle-aged man with a bulbous nose, bright red beard braided in the dwarvish style, and a prodigious belly that threatened to overwhelm the valiant buttons that held his shirt in place. He held a tankard in one hand and a dish rag in the other, the universal sign that this was the tavern’s owner.
The man was familiar for two reasons.
Firstly, he matched the description of Otto van Homrey to a tee, right down to the redness of his cheeks and the broad shoulders that Sam had used to dissuade the party from skipping out on their tabs or robbing the place blind.
Secondly, his picture closely resembled a card that likely still lay on the floor in the room overhead. I Know the Bartender had been the inspiration for Sam’s descriptions, although he had embellished upon them as all good Talespinners did.
image [https://i.imgur.com/UM9pzZ4.png]
None of this familiarity did a damned thing to calm the roiling confusion and terror in Damien’s guts. He spun to face the man with the same level of alarm that he might have given to the rapidly approaching car, had he seen it coming.
“I guess you ‘ain’t done,” Otto observed, placing the polished tankard on the countertop and taking up another. “You just let me know when your head’s clear and you’re ready to talk about your tab.”
“My tab?” Damien asked dumbly.
“Aye, your tab. I was beginning to think I’d never see ye again, but I run a tight ship. I’ve got it right here.”
Reaching underneath the bar - right around where, if Sam’s touch on this world held true, he kept a loaded crossbow - Otto produced a worn scrap of parchment and slapped it triumphantly down onto the bar.
“Almost didn’t recognise ye,” he said apologetically, “but I’d recognise the man who rescued me daughter from them ogres anywhere. Nonetheless, a bill is a bill, and you’ll have to settle up afore I let you head up to your room.”
“My room?”
“Were you hit with a confusion spell, lad? Your room. That’s paid up, at least. I’d say you’ve still got a good year or two paid up, but that’s separate to your food and drink, you understand. I keep me businesses separate for, uh, tax purposes.”
The innkeeper looked nervously around at that last statement, as if he expected somebody to kick down the door and accuse him of a crime.
Glancing towards the door and the utter darkness that still occupied the windows flanking it, Damien did not think anybody would be coming through the door anytime soon.
Nobody I’d want to meet, anyway.
“But I didn’t have anything…” Damien began to protest, his confusion and skepticism being overwhelmed by the certainty that this was not just some coma dream.
Otto gestured to the table behind Damien in place of an answer. The half-finished beer and meal were apparently his.
“I didn’t eat that!”
For the first time since his appearance, Otto’s veneer of jovial approachability wavered. His cheeks and nose further reddened as he put a mug down with such force that a crack danced up its side.
“I like ye, Fred, but don’t ye be takin’ me for a fool. I took your order not thirty minutes’ past, and me wife cooked your meal. Layla brought it out to you.”
Conjured by the man’s words, two women materialized on the edge of Damien’s vision. A quick glance confirmed them to be a mother and daughter.
He only vaguely recalled Sam’s description of Otto’s wife, but he recognised Layla instantly. While Otto said it had been some time since he’d last been here, it did not look like his daughter had aged at all. She was still the same flaxen-haired, doe-eyed damsel in distress that they’d needed to rescue from a tribe of ogres intent on pressing her into brewing their beer and cooking their meals.
No card had inspired her. She had been pulled straight from their class, an idealised version of April Gates, a girl who Damien, Sam, Carl, and just about any other guy with a heart in their chest, had fostered crushes on for most of their high school lives.
April Gates may have been a mean-spirited netball star with a foul mouth and a smoking habit to undercut her looks, but Layla was everything Sam had evidently projected onto April. Her blue eyes had none of the mischief of April’s, and her figure was tastefully covered up rather than advertised with a short skirt and tight tank top.
You’re ogling the dude’s daughter, he reminded himself, not to mention she’s probably only 17.
Damien quickly tore his gaze away, but not before the young woman blushed and waved shyly. As he remembered it, he and Layla had flirted quite a bit back in the day.
You and Layla? Don’t you mean Fred the Fighter?
“Oh, uh, yeah,” Damien offered weakly, “Just, uh, joking.”
Otto frowned. “Odd sense of humour you have, friend, but that’s neither here nor there. Your tab is nine gold pieces.”
Fred the Fighter might have thought, “Is that all?” but Damien realised that, even if he’d had his wallet in his pocket when he had been whisked away to wherever this was, he didn’t have any gold pieces in it. A gold $2 coin, maybe, but he doubted that would function as legal tender here.
Even so, he went through the age old pantomime of patting his pockets and searching for a wallet he knew he didn’t have. In doing so, he noted that he was not wearing the same baggy tracksuit pants or faded Foo Fighters t-shirt he had changed into after work. Instead, he wore simple lace-up vest in off-white, a pair of black linen breeches that reached only as far as his upper thigh, white stockings beneath that, a pair of leather boots, and, atop his head, a broad-brimmed hat.
Otto sighed as Damien’s exploration extended to the empty pouch on the right side of his belt and the knife on the left.
“Yer skint?”
“I must’ve left my coins in my other pants,” he offered by way of excuse. “Can I wash the dishes or something?”
Otto grunted. “That’s Layla’s job. Besides, you’d need to wash dishes for the rest of your life to work off a debt like that. I pay Layla a copper piece a day for her work and she’d do a damn side better job than you.”
“Otto, my love.” the big man’s wife spoke up, “Perhaps he could help us with the problem we were discussing?’
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She widened her eyes meaningfully at the innkeeper. Otto’s wife was a handsome woman. There was precious little resemblance between either parent and their daughter, a fault in Sam’s narration.
Whatever their problem was, the mention of it brightened Otto’s face. He nodded enthusiastically and not without a hint of mischief.
“Oh aye, that’ll do. Tell you what, Mister Fred. I’ll give you yer room key and you can go up and get ready.”
Damien didn’t like the sound of that. “Ready? What do you need me to do?”
“Oh, nothin’ to fret about. Big hero like you, I reckon you can do this even without yer friends. Off you trot!”
He tossed Damien his key. He snatched it out of the air. It was warm from having been in Otto’s hand. How long had the big man been holding onto it? Had this been his plan all along?
This is bullshit, that cynical part of him growled. What kind of dream is this? Just have sex with his wife already.
Damien flushed at the thought. He didn’t think this was going to be that kind of dream.
He doubted it was a dream at all.
What have you done to me, Sam?
—---
Unsurprisingly, his room was the very same one he had so petulantly hurled the cards in yesterday. Of them, there was no sign, but the room had gained in other areas. A sturdy steamer trunk now sat at the foot of the single bed, while a sheathed Dukayne rested against the nightstand. A large shield, emblazoned with the lion’s head heraldry of Fred the Fighter’s made up noble house, stood alongside it. It was comically large and impractically designed like something out of a video game.
It wasn’t quite how he had always pictured Fred’s shield. Where his head canon had always imagined it as impossibly shiny and unscathed by use, this shield was dented, its paint flaking, and its straps worn.
The bed had been made and a bulging leather backpack sat atop it.
The window beyond the nightstand showed only the same abyss he had seen downstairs. The Goose & Child seemed to exist in an otherwise featureless world.
Closing the door behind him, Damien crossed to the bed and opened the backpack. Aside from a change of clothes, all he found was a few pieces of hardtack wrapped in cheesecloth and two vials containing a transparent red liquid.
Frantically, he pawed through the clothing, shaking each individual piece loose in hopes he might find the coins needed to pay off his imaginary tab in an imaginary tavern owned by an imaginary Otto.
No coins tumbled loose but something large and heavy did fall onto the floor with a heavy thunk. Damien stooped to pick up the fist-sized piece of rock. It did not appear to be worth having kept hidden in his belongings, yet here it was. He hefted it from hand to hand, estimating it to be about as heavy as a brick. Yet, it fit nicely into his hand and with nothing better to do with it, he tucked it into his belt pouch.
“Everything okay up there?” Otto hollered from down below.
“Leave off, Otto!” his wife scolded. “He needs time to get into his armor.”
Armor?
He saw no armor on the bed or floor.
The chest!
He frantically moved over to the trunk at the end of the bed, flinging it open to reveal… nothing. Well, not nothing, but nothing of use. A few dust bunnies and an irate spider were the chest’s sole occupants.
If I’m Fred the Fighter, where is all my fabulous wealth? Where is my +5 plate mail and my Shield of Righteousness?
You’re not Fred the Fighter, you idiot, his inner critic mocked. You’re a washed up footy player having some kind of massive, car crash-induced stroke. You’re probably twitching on the side of the road now, pissing yourself.
Ignoring his inner cheerleader, Damien gave the room one last sweep, but saw nothing even resembling armor. Sighing, but seeing no other course of action, he snatched up Dukayne and the battered shield.
Having never actually wielded a sword, let alone with a shield strapped to his arm, he cut an awkward figure as he made his way down the stairs.
A starry-eyed Layla waited to greet him, but if her look of disappointment was anything to go by, she wasn’t as impressed by the real him as she had been by his in-game avatar. Why would she be? He held his sword with all the confidence of a man wrestling with a venomous snake, and sword and shield alike looked out of place next to his peasant garb.
“No armor?” Otto’s wife scolded him like a mother fretting over a reckless child.
“Are ye an expert on combat now, my dear? Let the man do his job and don’t ye be hasslin’ him about catchin’ a cold or stubbin’ a toe. This is Fred the Fighter, ain’t it? The man who laid low the Hellbeast of Bogard Swamp! I fancy he can handle a couple of rats in a cellar without clunking around in his armor, right, Fred?”
Otto’s statement seemed to put the wind back into Layla’s sails. Her eyes shone with adoration. Some of Damien’s teammates might have welcomed such attention, but it just made him uncomfortable.
“Uh, right,” Damien responded, gripping his sword with more confidence. A couple of rats didn’t sound like the end of the world. He’d dealt with possums and foxes aplenty growing up on the edge of town.
“That’s the spirit! Get on back here and let’s get your tab paid off, eh? I’ll have a warm mug of mead waitin’ for ye upon yer return. On the house, of course!”
With one last look at each of the people in the otherwise empty tavern, he moved to the trapdoor, which yawned open like a hungry mouth, breathing cold air out into the room.
—---
The darkness below the tavern was, thankfully, not the same cloying, impenetrable void that existed outside its walls.
It was a run of the mill kind of darkness. The kind that can be driven away by the guttering light of a lantern lowered down into the room by a helpful innkeeper’s daughter.
“Be careful!” she whispered after him. “They’re big!”
“Fear not, m’lady,” he joked, trying to remember how he’d made Fred sound, I’ve fought rats and worse before.”
You sound like an arsehole. Eyes on the prize.
Squinting into the darkness, he saw exactly what he imagined a tavern’s basement to look like. Barrels, sacks, and crates of various shapes and sizes were piled with wanton disregard for organisation; the kind of thing that bothered him now that he worked in a hardware store.
God, I’m becoming one of them. One of the town people.
Hanging from a rope, the lantern swayed back and forth, its movement conjuring shadows that leapt and cavorted about the wood-walled, stone-floored room.
In one of these lunatic arcs, he spotted the unmoving body of a cat. Its side had been torn open and its guts pulled out. It was not unlike the way his family cat had left rat “gifts” on their back porch, come to think of it.
Then he saw it, perched atop a barrel like something out of a bad 80s horror movie. It was the size of a golden retriever, but all resemblance ended there. Bristly black fur, oversized, almost bat-like ears, eyes that shone red in the lantern light, a fat, twitching tail like a massive worm, and, along its back, a ridge of bony spikes.
This wasn’t a rat. This was a dire rat!
It saw him in the same moment, rearing back on its hind legs and letting out a high-pitched screech that might as well have been a roar. It took every ounce of self respect Damien possessed not to sprint back to the ladder. If Layla hadn’t been watching, her form silhouetted in the square overhead, he might have done it.
Instead, he answered with a roar of his own. If it unnerved the rat in the way it’s cry had unnerved him, it did a good job of hiding it.
Hissing, it flung itself forward in a leap that carried it the two metres so quickly that Damien barely had time to put his shield in front of him. The resultant bong would have been satisfying, were it not for the fact the rat had bounced to its feet and had already darted under his guard before he’d had time to reset his stance. A sharp pain in his ankle followed as razor-like, yellowed teeth sunk into his skin.
He’d felt pain before. He’d dislocated a shoulder, torn his ACL, and been knocked out a few times in juniors, but he’d never been bitten by a wild animal before. His next roar was one of pain and surprise.
He lashed out with a wild kick that found its mark, sending the rat skidding across the floor where it fetched up against a sack of grain.
Think, Damien. Think! What would Fred the Fighter do in this situation?
Fred would have worn his armor, dumbass.
But that wasn’t all Fred would have done. Whenever the Talespinner called for combat, each player would have drawn a hand from their deck and rolled initiative.
Initiative had well and truly been rolled by this point. The rat darted in for another bite at his leg, which he evaded in the same way he’d evaded countless would-be tacklers in the past.
That is something Fred couldn’t do!
Yeah, but Fred would probably have hit the thing by now, don’t you think?
Fred would have done more than dancing around. He certainly would have used his sword more than his unarmored, unprotected feet.
Damien as Fred would have played a card. A dire rat wasn’t a massive threat to a character of his level, so he’d have gone for a low AP ability. Something like Piercing Blow, Feint and Slash, or Shield Bash.
The rat had scampered back up onto its barrel now and was poised to take another flying leap. This time, rather than just get his shield up, however, Damien found himself instinctively thrusting it forward to meet the rat’s charge.
It was not unlike how he’d have pushed the pads into a tackler at training practice but in his mind’s eye, he was picturing the art on the Shield Bash card he’d found upstairs.
The rat didn’t just bounce off the shield this time - it was flung violently across the room. It hit the far wall with such force that it shrieked in pain.
1 AP, he thought to himself. Shield Bash was 1 AP.
It was the rat’s turn to reassess the situation now. Coming to its feet with far less speed than its previous attacks, it circled around Damien warily, searching for an opening.
I wish I could remember what cards were in the Giant Vermin deck. Most of them were pretty weak, but there was always a chance Sam would draw something that could just totally turn the tide.
As the rat circled, so too did Damien, keeping his eyes on the creature as it ducked in and out of the shadows waiting for him to let his guard down.
This nerve-wracking dance played out for what felt like minutes before the rat suddenly stopped, sniffed the air, and let out a series of chirruping sounds that were almost words.
Oh no…
The dire rat - or the Talespinner behind this world, if Damien wanted to get metaphysical - had played Call for Help.
Two more pairs of beady, red eyes materialized in shadowed corners, hissing as they bounded to the aid of their fellow.
We’re so dead.
No way! He countered. I know what to do!
Thinking about it like the game was the key. This wasn’t about Damien the disgraced footballer and retail worker fighting dire rats, this was about Fred the Fighter fighting a low-level enemy in Hand of Fate. All he had to do was…
Parry!
The first rat’s leap was met not with his shield, but with the flat of his blade. It was the kind of stroke to make Adam Gilchrist proud, sending the rat tumbling across the room and into the ladder.
Layla shrieked, leaping back from the trapdoor and flinging it closed. Thankfully, the rope holding the lantern wasn’t severed.
The remaining two rats - one injured and one unscathed - attacked in tandem, trying to distract him by attacking from different angles.
Whirling Assault!
He pictured the card in his head and instinctively moved through the finishing manoeuvre, Dukayne a shining arc of death that bisected both rats. Their hot, reeking blood splashed across him, and a momentary flood of revulsion threatened to completely destroy his concentration.
The remaining rat seized upon the opportunity, leaping towards him in an arc that carried it over his outflung blade. It landed on his shield, its claws scratching and clacking maniacally against its worn surface as Damien tried frantically to fling it off.
So heavy! Sam never mentioned they were heavy!
The dire rat had reached the top of his shield and leapt forward, its vicious incisors closing over his exposed throat and biting down.
His last thoughts as the rat’s weight bore him to the ground were not what he’d have expected. No life flashing before his eyes or regrets.
Go for the Throat! An automatic critical hit.