It was dark as she limped into the village. The rain had followed her the entire way and a steady drizzle pelted her as the guards let her across the bridge. Hobbling past the first houses, she could see the town was quiet, but not empty. A man smoking a pipe nodded to her from his doorway as she passed. A dog lifted his head to look at her and then slinked around a building. She passed a woman carrying an empty bucket and two men armed with spears.

It wasn’t long before she reached the other end of town and the tavern. The guards had told her this was the place to stay. Reaching the awning, she shook the rain off and then went inside.

A well endowed woman with a flower in her red hair walked past with a smile on her face and a trio of tankards in her hands. “Welcome to Abby’s, I’ll be right with you love.”

How cliché, Calista thought as she unslung her pack. She had been thinking all day on just where in Sommerdale she was and she thought she was starting to narrow it down. It had been a long time since she had visited this zone, but the names she had heard – Southwood, Trostad, Harva – were familiar to her so she was beginning to suspect much of the zone’s geography would be the same. Which would make sense. I mean, if they want me to have any chance of survival, why wouldn’t you start me out somewhere I’m at least familiar with. She had pieced a map together in her mind, but she wasn’t going to go off any assumptions until she found a real map to confirm.

Setting the pack at her feet, she watched the barmaid flirt with a trio of adventurers. In the corner, a bard was tuning his lute, while at the bar a man was sobbing and pouring out some story while a second man consoled him.

Then the barmaid reappeared. “Table for one, honey?”

Minutes later, she was served a fresh meal of walleye, potatoes, and carrots while the bard played a bawdy melody of a country dog who went to town. She didn’t realize how hungry she was until she started eating. The food was excellent and she had nearly devoured it before the bard finished his song. She was just finishing the last of her walleye when she shifted her leg and realized that for the first time since her escape there wasn’t any pain in her thigh. Did the tavern food just heal me? She looked down at the rip in her pants. Her wound was no longer fresh, but simply a pink mark stretched across her thigh. As she watched, the pink spot disappeared and was gone. Well look at that. Just then, the barmaid stopped at her table. The jiggle physics were well in effect as the red haired woman smiled brightly. “Can I get you anything else, love?”

“Look,” Calista replied, “I’m not your love, but I’ll have another ale if you got it.”

“Sure thing. And what was your name then, if you don’t mind me asking?”

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“Calista.”

“Calista, I’m Abby, of course. Nice to meet ya!”

“Yeah …” Calista tried not to roll her eyes as Abby jiggled again. “So … what’s my tab so far?”

“Oh, don’t worry about it friend. If you’re an adventurer, you’re stay is on the house. Mayor’s orders.”

“Uh …” Calista started but before she could think of a question, Abby was across the room and through the kitchen door. Mayor’s Orders. Adventurer. Goblins all over the place This sounds like the threat of a plot hook. She was staring at the last bit of ale in her tankard when she felt someone standing behind her. It was a dwarf.

“Hey,” she said.

The dwarf shuffled awkwardly as he looked down at his feet.

She leaned over, “Uh … hi?”

The dwarf looked at her, seemed like he was about to say something, and then looked back down at his feet. Finally, a half-elf with a bright red beard came to his rescue.

“We’re sorry to bother you, ma’am, but my friend and I were wondering if you’d like to come over and join us for a drink.”

Calista wasn’t sure how to respond.

The half-elf slapped the dwarf on the shoulder. “See? I told you it wasn’t that hard to talk to a woman, so you can quit being so nervous.”

She downed the last of her ale, “What makes you think I’m a woman?”

“Er …” the half elf looked like he’d been kicked in the balls.

“Kidding,” she said.

Switching tables, she found herself joining the dwarf, the half elf, and a broadly built human man with tattoos and piercings that covered his massive arms and bare chest.

“My name is Thalias,” the half elf said as she sat down. “The dwarf is Grumner and next to him is Dogmoore the Scarred.”

“Calista,” she said.

Thalias lifted his cup, “You’ll have to forgive Grumner’s awkwardness. He doesn’t do well with women, but we thought we’d give him a chance to try his hand with you.”

“What do you mean, ‘try his hand?’” she asked.

Thalias waved his hand, “No, no, nothing like that, my friend. We only wanted to see if he could work up the courage to talk to you.”

These guys are the kind of nerds I usually avoid. Normally I just make up an excuse to log out or find someone on my friends list to bail me out, but now I’m stuck at a table with them. She smiled weakly, “I … guess that’s kinda funny, huh?”

She saw Grumner blush as Dogmoore awkwardly avoided her gaze.

Thalias did his best to smile, “Yes, well … it was more like we all decided to draw straws and Grumner happened to come up short.”

Okay, that’s actually funny.

“So,how long have you been here Calista?” The half elf asked.

“I just made my character a this morning, so I’m level one.”

“As are we all,” Thalias said. “It would seem we’re all here in what appears to be the beginner area. Which leads me to the question we’ve all been asking each other: What class did you pick?”

Calista swirled her ale as she looked back at the trio of expectant faces. Something tells me this is about to get really interesting, really fast and I’m not sure how I feel about that. So far, she had woken up in a field in the middle of nowhere, found out that she had been reincarnated on a game world, narrowly avoided execution, survived a goblin raid led by a black dragon, taken an arrow wound in the leg, watched a man die, and survived an entire evening wandering through the woods in the rain. Now she was here in this little hamlet that, at any moment, could be raided again by the very same goblins she had seen before and was now looking at a trio of other so called ‘players’ who were all in the exact same position she was.

She found herself thinking back to what the Attendant had told her. She was a V.I.P. There were people watching her. There might even be a lot of people watching her. She wondered if they were about to watch her die.

“Yeah, about that … just a second.” She flagged down Abby and her bouncing bosom. “Hey, another round of ale here, please.”