Their dinner plates lay forgotten, surrounded by the veritable crowd of emergency medical professionals that swarmed into the apartment at her call. She hung back, knowing instinctively that she couldn’t do anything. At first, the EMTs attempted to revitalize him, but she informed them he was under a DNR. It wasn’t by choice but stipulated in her employment contract. As much as she wanted to see Dale brought back, she remembered their long talks on the subject, and that this was what he would have wanted.
The rest of the day passed strangely as if time were playing a cruel prank on her senses. At some points, it dragged on so slowly that she checked the clocks to make sure they hadn’t malfunctioned. Then they suddenly rushed forward, so that the clocks said it was four in the morning. Then the sun was peeking up through the wide windows of the apartment’s spacious living room. The silence was louder than it had ever been.
Sometime around seven, she realized that her stomach was grumbling at her, and remembered the steaks that she had cooked. There was no way she could bring herself to eat them now. She collected the plates, doing her best to avoid looking at the empty bed, where the visor lay after the EMTs had carelessly tossed it aside. She knew she’d have to clean and pack up the room eventually, but she couldn’t bring herself to…
Resolutely, she walked out of Dale’s room and to the kitchen, dumping the now rock-hard remnants of the steak dinners into the trash. She ate a granola bar, then returned to her room, picking up the V-Lens. She hesitated to put them on, afraid of what she might see. It had only been a few hours since she’d discovered Dale’s body, but she knew there would be all kinds of official emails pertaining to his death in there. They would concern her employment, his estate - for she had also been his power of attorney -, and most likely contact from the agency that represented her contract as his caregiver. She didn’t want to deal with any of that.
So instead, she set the V-Lens down and laid flat on her bed, slipping on the visor, and loading up Project Terra. It was oddly fitting that she chose this particular game to escape into. She could have tried to believe that it was simply to notify Riley and Oscar that Dale - or Caius to them - had passed away. But she wasn’t the sort to lie to herself. She just didn’t want to be in the real world right now. She’d tell the others about his death, sure, but then she was going hunting or to find a dungeon. Anything to distract her from the dread sort of numbness that had hung over her all night and through most of the morning.
It was a welcome sensation, her body going limp, and to see herself being dragged through time and space. The darkness faded to reveal a third-person view of her character lying on a bed in the inn. Suddenly, she realized that Caius’ avatar would also be lying in his bed. She’d have to contact the studio that produced the game, letting them know he’d passed away. Somehow, the idea of his avatar remaining where it was, permanently vulnerable, was too heavy to consider.
As soon as she switched to first-person, it was as if her head was pulled by some invisible gravity, turning to the left to look at the grizzled, grey-haired warrior that lay on the bed across from her. He looked just as peaceful as he had in real life, she thought. Just asleep. Or sulking. No sign to indicate that his life had gone. But eventually, the truth would always show itself.
She resolutely pushed herself out of bed, tearing her eyes away from his avatar and strolling to the door of their inn room. In no time at all, she was outside in the bright sunlight of late morning. There had been a lot of repairs in the village, she saw. What was more, flowers were popping out everywhere there was grass. Some had been collected and placed in vases. It was a beautiful site in spite of the lingering signs of destruction from the last raid. If she’d been in a better mood, she might have appreciated them.
“Good morning Azalea,” a voice said to her right. Turning, she saw Tankbabe leaning against a nearby wall. The lax pose, combined with the fact that she wasn’t wearing her typical full plate armor, was a strange sight for the elven girl. Not to say that she wasn’t lazy, but it was normal to see her occupied by some task. Then Azalea remembered that the Sisters’ base had also been destroyed by Matlin’s raids.
“Still haven’t managed to rebuild your house?” Azalea asked. Tankbabe had been frowning slightly, and she realized that she must have seemed troubled. The last thing she wanted was to discuss anything heavy, so she wanted to make her friend focus on the game.
“Not yet,” Tankbabe said. “I managed to replace my smithy pretty fast, but without raw materials, there’s not much for me to do just now. The lifeskillers are putting the buildings back up.”
“Not much for you to do, eh?”
Tankbabe shook her head. “Nope. I’d love to go raiding myself, but with the guild busy, I’m on standby.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Have you seen Oscar or Riley?”
“Oscar went out hunting already,” the blonde replied. “No clue about the monk though. Haven’t seen him online yet. Caius sleeping in?”
“I think I’ll try to go find Oscar,” Azalea said quickly, steamrolling over the question about Caius. “Maybe we can gather some wood together.”
Tankbabe nodded her understanding. If she thought her reaction to Caius’ name was odd, she didn’t show it on her face. “Alright. Good luck with that. I look forward to you getting your market stall back up.”
“Might take a while,” Azalea called over her shoulder, already moving away from the elven woman. “But you’ll be one of the first to know.”
That was if she even had the desire to continue playing this game without him, she thought, let alone create her farms and sell food again. She resolutely pushed this thought away as well. It was getting increasingly difficult to avoid thinking of Caius, but she wasn’t ready to give up the fight just yet.
Judging by what she knew of Oscar thus far, she guessed he’d be heading toward the nearby river. A lot of game gathered there, and he had shown her a few hunting spots that he liked to rotate through. According to him, you couldn’t hunt in the exact same area for too long, because the animals would become wary and move on to other places. It was a trick he’d learned hunting in real life, and apparently, the game devs had thought to add it to Project Terra.
She found him in the second hunting spot, but he wasn’t stalking any prey. He was sitting on a fallen tree log, staring at the river as it gushed just a few feet away. It almost seemed as if he was contemplating a swim, she thought. He heard her approach before she was even within spear-throwing distance, of course, and half-turned to see who was walking his way. When he recognized her, he gave a brief nod.
“You’re on early,” he commented. “And you seem exhausted.”
She wondered how he could tell she was so tired. Her avatar didn’t mirror her real-life expressions, after all. But she chose not to comment on that. Or at least she tried, but he wouldn’t be as easily distracted as Tankbabe. “Just a long night is all. Didn’t sleep well after finding out we lost our property.”
“There’s more to it than that,” he said. Now he actually turned his body to face hers, a slight frown on his face. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she said quickly. Too quickly. Making a supreme effort to control her emotions, she gestured at the river. “Thinking of taking up fishing, or just enjoying the scenery?”
He continued to stare silently at her for several seconds before answering as if he wanted to press the original line of questioning. To her relief, he appeared to decide against it. “Neither. This is the border of that anti-magic field. I came here to see if I could spot anything out of the ordinary.”
“Caius is dead.” The words slipped out of her without her intent. She’d been holding it in so well, but the second one person had seen through her mask, she’d completely slipped.
“What?” He asked, bewildered. “But the inn is a safe zone, and they had a raid just last night. Nobody should have been able to-”
She shook her head. Well, she thought, she couldn’t avoid the subject anymore. She might as well fulfill her responsibility of letting him and Riley know. “I mean Dale. That was his name in real life.”
A nasty silence filled the air between them. It threatened to surround and crush Azalea, just as the grief attacked her from inside. She sank onto the log beside him before her legs could betray her and give out. “I was his caregiver. We lived together, and he passed away last night sometime after we logged off.”
“Oh,” was all he could think to say for a moment. “Riley thought you two were a couple, but I thought the age difference was too big for that. I just assumed you were his daughter or… I’m so sorry, Azalea.”
She shook her head, unable to speak. In real life, she knew tears would be streaming out of her eyes. But no tears leaked from the eyes of her avatar. Or at least she thought so until Oscar rummaged in a pouch at his belt and produced a clean cloth. “Here.”
She accepted the handkerchief without a word, wiping away the digital tears. “I logged in to tell you and Riley about it. I… might not be online for a few days. I have to settle his estate.”
“Do you need any help?” He asked at once. “I’m quite comfortable, thanks to my career as a game critic. I could send-”
She shook her head again. “I’m fine. I have a lot of money saved up. But I’ll have to move out soon. I’m sure he’ll give the house to one of his cousins in his will. Besides, I’ll be moving on to my next client soon, I expect. I’m only twenty-eight.”
She said the last sentence with a short laugh. Where had all that time gone? One minute she’d been graduating from nursing school, and now she was nearly a middle-aged woman, wondering what to do with the rest of her life. Once the first laugh came out of her, she couldn’t stop, and half-laughed, half-cried, her entire body, both virtual and real shaking with the outpouring of emotions. It was as if ten years of repressed emotions were bursting out of her, not a few hours’ worth.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she gasped, managing to calm down after a minute or two. “Dale would find it funny, but I don’t want to laugh at his death. I don’t know what I’m going to do without him.”
“I’m sure you’ll figure out the answer,” Oscar replied. “But seriously. You need support to get through this. At the very least, I’ll give you my contact info for out-of-game. You can talk to me or Riley anytime you need.”