The massive River Deiluyne materialized in front of Reeve. She rolled her shoulders, shifted her muscled weight from one foot to the other, gave the engraved metal staff of her naginata a grateful squeeze, and smiled. Looking downriver, she squinted into the evening sun, its rays leaving no warmth on the gray skin of her half-orc face. Looking upriver, she continued squinting due to an icy wind and grimaced, exposing her grooved, yellowed teeth. The wind, which felt like a late autumn day in the northlands, hummed high notes as it rushed past her pointed ears. She shivered and frowned slightly, puzzled by the weather.
“Well,” her father Walter’s high halfling voice said from near her right hip, “after all the time we spent stuck in here yesterday, I didn’t think I’d be all that excited to be back, but I am.” He chuckled. “I have to say, I’ve gotten pretty attached to this little body.”
Emotions shifted under the surface of Reeve’s thoughts, like monstrous, unwelcome beasts under dark seawater, and for a moment she felt tension rise in her chest, but she took a deep breath, let the tension come and then go, and found herself starting to smile. “Yeah, Dad. I think it suits you.” She looked down as he let a wine-colored suspender slip off his thumb to snap crisply against his tiny chest. “Almost as much as my avatar suits me.”
His back to the river, he looked up into her face and smiled. “I think I’m going to get myself some of these. Back RIL.”
“IRL,” Reeve said.
“IRL.” Walter nodded.
“So you’ve said.” Reeve looked downriver once more into the nearly horizontal light. “Was it this late in the day when we logged out?”
Walter scratched the side of his head through thick, furry black hair. “To be honest, Evie, it’s all a bit of a blur.”
Reeve pursed her lips and nodded her head. “Parts of it are pretty blurry for me too.” She looked higher in the sky and saw a couple of planets or stars that had become visible. “OK, I’m sure stars weren’t already coming out.”
“I don’t know that it matters, Honey. We just came in for a few minutes so that we could say a proper goodbye—just for now—to the twins, Tom, and Leaf. And Bunce! I think we’ll have time before the sun sets. I just feel like I didn’t really pay my respects before Viv sorted things out and then we logged out last night.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Reeve said, turning to look where she knew they’d find their party waiting for them on the plain that stretched away from the river bank. Instead, she found herself yelling, “What the actual fudge!” She looked from the high, gleaming walls of the distant town to the rustic farmhouses that speckled the cultivated fields spanning the land from town to river and finally down to her father, who was taking in the scene with a serene expression. “Where did all this come from?”
“This?” Walter pointed a miniature finger toward the plain and its contents, none of which had been there when they’d logged out.
“What the heck? Time in here doesn’t pass between when we log out and log back in.” Her stomach churned. “Where are we?”
Walter appeared confused as he looked around the bank of the river and considered her question.
“We couldn’t be in someone else’s story mode again. I mean, right?” Reeve looked upriver once more and this time noticed snow on high, distant peaks. “Son of a witch,” she said. “Winter is coming.” She looked back to her father. “Where’d everyone go, John Snow?”
“John Snow?”
“It just rhymed. It’s from…whatever, forget about it.”
“Where’d everyone go?”
“Are we going to repeat everything I say?”
“You’re talking about the twins…?”
“Yeah. The twins. And Leaf. And Thomanji’yheri. Nyx. Bunce. Oh, and the thousands of elves who were milling around trying to figure out what they’d do post-Helia. Your three million bees were trying to figure out what to do with themselves too, as I recall.” Reeve waved her free hand around the pronouncedly elf-and-bee-free bank. “Wait, Nyx!” Reeve pulled up her UI. Her link to her Companion indicated Nyx was somewhere to the north. Far, far to the north.
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Walter cleared his throat. “Maybe they can tell us?”
Reeve sent away the UI and followed Walter’s pointed finger to find a saddled but riderless horse leading a saddled and also riderless pony from the plain down onto the bank.
“Or maybe we should just log out and try this again later, Honey,” Walter said. “Mom and I have dinner ready. Millie should be here by the time we get you downstairs. I was coming to help with that when I found you starting to log in. I’m only here,” Walter said, looking around, “to give my respects to everyone, since I probably won’t see them again for a while.”
“Just give me a sec, OK?” Reeve said. “Even if it takes us a few minutes in here to figure out what’s going on, that’ll be a few seconds or less out there, remember? If we take longer than usual, Mom’ll just think you had trouble getting me down the stairs on the lift…” Reeve stared at the horse and pony, which were heading straight toward her and her father, the animals’ cadences unhurried but purposeful. “And what’s the deal with these things? Autonomous mounts?”
The two animals slowed to a halt within a couple yards of Reeve and Walter. A small red hat and a ruddy red face tilted into view from behind the thick neck of the horse.
“Greetings,” the tiny rider trilled. “I am Yonnin, son of Yorrin. Her Grace sent me to fetch you. She would have herself come to greet you, but she is consumed by matters at Court.”
Reeve appraised the gnome for several seconds, unsure which aspect of her profound confusion to reveal with her response. “Her Grace?” She said finally. “Your leader?”
“Reluctant leader, yes,” Yonnin said, “but the one we need, whether she wants it or not.”
“She was expecting us?”
“For some time.”
“How?”
“She understands this land and its workings better than any.”
Reeve frowned. “Would ‘her Grace’ be in a position to explain what’s going on here?” Reeve waved at the world so different than when she left it.
Yonnin pulled on the reins, and the horse sidestepped to an angle at which its tiny rider could see Reeve without the mount’s neck being in the way. “It’s my impression her Grace will herself have a few questions for you, but after that, I’d wager she’ll be able to answer any question you have.”
“Dinner, Evie,” Walter said at her side. “Millie could be at the door right now.”
Reeve glanced at the corner of her UI. “Game time is running at over seven hundred times real time,” Reeve said, “just like last time we were here. We could hand-assemble a castle from scratch in here in the time it will take Mom to open the door for Millie. What is it you say to me sometimes? ‘Chillax’?”
Walter frowned and looked toward the sun, which was nearly to the horizon. “OK, but let’s be quick.”
“Of course,” Reeve said.
“Very good,” Yonnin said. He rose to stand on the saddle and then hopped off. Reeve cringed as she waited for him to impact after his fall of multiple body-heights, but he landed and tucked into a roll of two or three summersaults, out of which he sprang, straightened his red cap, and pointed toward the distant town. “I will announce your imminent arrival. Make for the main gate and give your names.” He turned and ran with the startling speed of a spooked cat up the bank and into the wild grass that bordered the nearest farm field.
“Have we met him before?” Walter said, once their wee welcome party was out of sight.
“We met Yorrin, his father, and Mom unintentionally assaulted one of Yorrin’s people, but that was in Devon’s game world. Which I don’t think we’re in. I think.”
“So, he’s not upset with us?” Walter said and pursed his lips.
“Maybe. Maybe not. If we’re still in my game world, then this is the world where Mom unintentionally assaulted some of his people in the tavern in Werfendale.”
“Your mother—“
“—is a very resourceful lady. I know.”
Walter walked to the side of the pony and eyed the saddle and reins. “No. I was going to say your mother is less prone to starting brawls back RIL.” He placed a foot in the stirrup and grasped the reins in one hand and the cantle of the saddle in the other. He looked at Reeve. ”I, personally, consider that an attractive quality of hers.”
“Lotta people are less violent IRL than they are in-game, Dad. Because, it turns out, most functioning humans can tell the difference between real-world consequences and in-game consequences.”
Walter considered her words for a moment, before pulling himself up toward the saddle, halfway toward which his foot slipped through the stirrup. His disproportionately muscled calf followed and squeezed itself painfully through the metal arch before he completely lost his balance and fell away from the saddle to land hard on his back, one leg elevated and bound by the stirrup. The pony looked back for a moment and then turned and began a slow walk up the bank.
“But…,” Reeve said, “I have always had a pretty low opinion of the percentage of people who are functioning humans.” She walked to the horse and swung herself up into the saddle. For a few seconds, she watched the pony drag her father into the wild grass, the creature’s hind legs only just missing trampling his bouncing head and flailing arms. “That,” she said to the horse, “is an in-game consequence, but not the kind I was talking about.” She gently flicked her reins and her mount walked forward.