His introduction to the forest was a brief one. Galen was grabbed by the bicep, pulled to his feet, and a strip of leather appeared over his eyes and yanked tight behind his head. His hands were bound with something that chafed, and he was allowed to walk on a lead, tugged along, the tip of the boy’s spear pressing into his back when he slowed. They walked for a time over the leaves, the boy calling from behind and the man offering short replies from ahead. “When was the last time we found a human?” he asked.
“Some time ago.”
“And where do they come from?”
“The Giver. He assembles them piece by piece. You will see how he disassembles when you pierce his carotid.”
The spear stung Galen’s back like a wasp; this must have excited the boy. Galen sensed they were father and son by the eagerness of the boy’s questions, his constant search for approval. It seemed they had been around for some time before Galen’s appearance. Had the AI programmed them to believe so? Or—much more interestingly—had they actually existed here before him? And was there a difference, he wondered, between an NPC believing it had lived, and actually living for months or years in a world without players?
As they walked, the binding over his eyes allowed him complete visual focus on his interface. He remembered Wilt’s words from dinner: You start with nothing. Galen had assumed he meant no weapons, no gear. But he had really meant nothing. The game had given him no prompts, no cues, not even an indicator as to how he could operate his own interface. He just had to survive. And then—a profound warmth filled his chest—he remembered he could respawn in this level. The Sorting. It wasn’t just sorting his class: it was everything, figuring out how the hell any of this worked. That was why they gave the players the leeway to die once in the process.
He needed to relax, to focus on one piece at a time. At the top of his interface was his character sheet, in brief:
NAME: GALEN COLE CLASS: UNKNOWN HEALTH: 50/50 MANA: 50/50
Inspecting the sheet was as simple as willing it. As soon as the thought entered his mind, the sheet dropped open:
NAME: GALEN COLE STRENGTH: 5 SPELLS: None CLASS: UKNOWN STAMINA: 5 ABILITIES: None HEALTH: 50/50 DEXTERITY: 5 SKILLS: None MANA: 50/50 INTELLIGENCE: 5 PYRO POINTS: None AC: 3 WISDOM: 5 CHARISMA: 5
In addition to his lackluster stats, a miniature, spinning model appeared. It looked just like him: the black hair, the green eyes, the tall, lanky limbs. He squinted, found that Sicora had even captured the scar on his hand from when he’d cut himself opening a can of soup. He had three pieces of gear in the small slots that surrounded his model, all of them cloth. He inspected the chestpiece:
ITEM: Simple Cloth Shirt QUALITY: Common AC: 1 STATS: None EFFECTS: None
The other two pieces, cloth pants and boots, were equally disappointing. They served the essential purposes of covering his body and offering the smallest amount of protection. Each had one point of Armor Class, a term he remembered from other RPGs. If AC operated in the same way in Sicora, then Galen would become harder to hit as his AC rose. If that was the case, his 3 AC was probably negligible. But it wasn’t nothing, either.
He didn’t see an experience bar anywhere in his interface. Either that meant he needed to gain experience to see it, or—the more likely scenario—players didn’t gain experience in the classic sense. It was totally possible that he would only reach level 2 when he survived this world.
As they walked, the boy chirping away to his father, Galen minimized the character sheet so that it hung again at the corner of his vision. His eyes traced the edges of his interface, found nothing else except the twenty empty slots of his inventory. Easy enough, to start.
“Hey folks,” he said, expecting nothing, “where are we headed?”
The spear dug into his back. “Quiet, human.”
The father’s voice followed. “To our home. Step a little faster, human, if you want to arrive before sunset. And believe me, you do.”
Before sunset? Galen tried to sense the sun, how late it actually was, but the world only felt chilled under the canopy. He’d had the barest glimpse of the sky before he was captured, had seen only an onerous cloud cover that enfolded the forest, obscured the light.
At some point the foliage became hard ground, other voices and hooves sounding around him. Galen passed out of what little light there was and into darkness. The binding was undone from his tender wrists. When the blindfold was removed, he stood in the center of a hut. He turned, discovered the thatched door shutting. On the other side, green eyes and a great head of red hair floated high off the ground. “You’ll sleep here until morning.” It was the father.
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“What about the spear to my carotid?” Galen asked.
He thought he saw the green eyes crinkle at the corners. “There will be time for that.” The hooves clapped lightly over the ground, faded.
Galen crossed to the door, pressed his shoulder to it. Whatever lock was on it didn’t give an inch, and the branches were thick, bound tight, whittled to points above and below. He turned a circle. What was left of the day shone in through the door and the weaker spots in the roof. He was in a hut of maybe six by six feet, a pile of hay in the corner.
This was a holding spot. He clearly wasn’t their first visitor, or even their second. Galen’s fingers traced the wall. It was solid wood, branches split to halves, flat side in. A splinter of the wood caught, separated into his fingertip. He cursed, yanking his hand away. For half an hour he sat on the hay, worrying the piece of wood from under his skin. And he thought, too, about what the man had said: tomorrow he would hold a weapon, and the boy would try to pierce him in the neck.
By the time he had pressed the splinter out, the night was thick around him. The village’s sounds had faded beneath small creatures that called, called again. Insects, nocturnal birds, maybe a frog.
And a howl. The noise rose through the forest, split the air around Galen to quivering seams. He jerked to his haunches, eyes flicking left and right and up and down. He was sightless in the hut, the sound like a struck bell in his ears. It was too deep to be a wolf—the lungs had to be massive to let that loud a call and for so long. His heart cinched and released, beating fast and then slowing when the fear passed. It came over him in waves brought on by the hours of waiting, endless waiting. He waited, and at some point, when the howl didn’t come again, his fingers unclenched. His palms hurt where his nails had driven into the skin. Everything hurt here with the same acuteness as real life, he’d noticed. It was remarkable, terrifying.
At some point he slept, that thought with him in the hay. The spear, the artery, the howl, the pain. If he died, it would not be easy. But no one had promised him easy.
***
Galen was awake before the sun rose. It had been a hard, dreamless sleep—much simpler than in life. At home he was always fitful, anxious. As soon as his eyes opened he was calculating. He’d spent at least twelve hours in game, and twenty-four hours translated to an hour in real life. His body had been in the capsule for half an hour. Incredible.
The boy came at dawn, hooves prancing around the sides of the hut, spear clattering along the curves of the wood. “Wake up, human,” the boy sang. “It’s time for dying.”
Galen was already on his haunches, hands rubbing together. “I’m up,” he called. “I hope you’ve sharpened that dull spear.”
The boy went silent, and then his face appeared between the thatch of the door. He stared.
“What is it?” Galen said.
“You’re not afraid.”
“Why should I be?” he asked.
“I’ve killed. I’ll kill you,” the boy said.
“I hope you do. Because if you don’t, I won’t hesitate.”
Another set of hooves approached. The father’s red mane appeared at the door. “Leave the human be—we’ll give him breakfast before he fights.” When he unlocked the thatch, Galen stood. The centaur gestured him out. “Come on, then. I know you’re hungry.”
Galen emerged into diffuse light. They were still in the forest, but the centaurs had hewn the trees in a wide radius to construct a village. Around him rose five or six wooden huts and a tall enclosing wall, more branches whittled to sharp points.
He was led to a female centaur, her greying hair braided down her back. She wore a fur coat on the human half of her, a fur blanket draped over her back and flanks. She stirred at a pot over the fire pit. “He’s younger than you let on,” she said, lifting a wooden bowl into which she ladled what appeared to be soup. She offered it to Galen, her green eyes mirthful and surveying.
The centaur led Galen to the fire, the boy dancing around. “He’s a human,” the father said, “no matter how young, he’s dangerous.” Galen noticed the male held an axe in his massive grip, the haft engraved, the metal polished and whetted. It was a message.
Galen stepped forward, received the bowl. Up close, the woman’s head must have been eight feet from the ground. “It’s a good last meal,” she said. The lines at her eyes and mouth were kind.
He nodded, lifted the bowl as thanks. The contents smelled earthy and a little sour, of roots and fungus. Before he could be disgusted, Galen tipped the bowl to his mouth and drank. It was a hot and strange concoction, but it was warm down his throat and into his stomach. As soon as he’d swallowed, Galen felt energy pool in him. In his interface, a notification appeared: +2 to stamina (30 minutes). And his maximum health had temporarily risen from 50 to 60. So the stamina to health modifier was 5 health/point. Useful knowledge.
The woman nodded, resumed stirring.
Galen lowered the bowl. “What was the noise I heard last night?”
From behind, a sharp sting in his back. “Finish it, human. No talking,” the boy said.
“Willem, wait outside the wall,” the woman said. His mother, Galen realized.
The boy whined, trotted off. He slid the securing plank from where it held the wall’s gates, and then he was through, his spear clattering against the outer wall.
“Osmund,” the female said to the other centaur, extending a bowl to him. He came forward, accepted it with his fingers over hers. When his axe came to rest against a tree stump, Galen knew this was his best chance to escape. But his body remained immobile.
“It was a hunter you heard,” Osmund said, turning to Galen. “Be glad we found you in those woods. Death by my boy’s spear is a far better one than you would have gotten.”
Galen processed this, tipped the bowl up to his mouth with closed eyes. If this were his last meal, he would pretend it was shrimp gumbo instead of forest scavengings. The bowl drained, he wiped his mouth. “How many hunters are there?”
“Many,” the woman said, her arm swinging around the village. Two other centaurs had emerged from a far hut, approached the fire pit at a walk. “Where there were several dozen of us last season, there are less than twelve now.”
“He’s a scrawny one,” called one of the centaurs. A girl of twelve or thirteen, her red hair glinting in the sunlight. The string of a recurve bow crossed from her waist to her shoulder. The other, a muscled male with hair long enough to set into a bun, set one possessive hand at her back. “He’s older than Willem—he’ll make a good challenge for the boy.”
It seemed no one had confidence in Galen. And without a single fight to his name in this world, he himself didn’t really believe he could defeat the boy. But he wasn’t about to roll over, either.