Josh was currently poised on a rocky ledge directly over the pool of the broodmother. The eggs gently heaved and slicked in the water about fifteen feet below him. Leaning against the river boulder behind him was the tallest, thinnest branch he had been able to cut successfully from a tree. He’d made a loop out of the thin, whippy end of the branch, to which he’d affixed the net from the farmhouse, making it into an impromptu fishing net on a pole. He’d also patched up the hole in the net with leftover bits of frayed rope. In his hand was a large, flat river stone.

His supposition that players had been responsible for luring the monster out of the wetlands was borne out by the presence of a small wooden plaque affixed to the rockface. Someone had used a knife to carve the words BESSIE THE BROODMOTHER into it.

Josh fervently hoped that no-one would mind him interfering with their pet, and even more fervently that the aforementioned pet wouldn’t eat him. He had been sitting here for a good five minutes, psyching himself up for what was to come. Bessie wouldn’t even need to chew if she got hold of him—she was big enough to eat him in a single gulp. Josh’s mouth was dry and there was a hollow feeling in his gut.

Get on with it, you coward, he told himself. She can’t reach you here. Or so he hoped.

He took a deep breath and threw the stone into the far side of the pool, where the river flowed down into the valley. The response from the Bessie was gratifying. She immediately plunged forward, causing the water in the pool to go splashing up the banks of the river, and her massive jaws snapped together with an audible clonk where the stone had landed.

Josh grabbed his improvised fishing net and leaned over the rocky ledge. He tried to scoop some of the eggs with the net, but rim of the net just skipped the surface of the water. Too short. He braced himself on the rock, stretched out over the pool as far as he dared. When he tried again the edge of the net just dipped into the clot of eggs. Yes! He repeated the scooping motion, trying to get as many as he could.

A sound like an angry foghorn made him jerk with shock, nearly causing him to tumble off the ledge. Bessie had sensed the attempt on her eggs. He started to haul his net upwards as fast as he could, but Bessie was turning her massive bulk surprisingly quickly. She lunged up towards the swinging net, the giant teeth clopping together inches from his precious burden.

Josh shuffled backwards, scraping his knees on the rock, and swinging his fishing net out of the broodmother’s reach. Her head exploded into his view, the great maw reaching for him, and Josh screamed as teeth the size off his head snapped angrily mere inches away from his feet. He crammed himself back into an alcove.

Bessie thrashed wildly in front of him, but couldn’t drag herself forwards far enough. She lost purchase on the rocks and slipped, falling out of sight.

Josh stayed their paralysed for a minute. He was afraid to move from his position, but he knew he had to. He’d waited too long. He should have climbed out of reach the moment she had fallen out of sight. The alcove he was huddled in had a steep overhang above him, impossible to climb. He would have to put himself within Bessie's reach if he wanted to find a section of the boulder he could climb. He disentangled the net of eggs from the branch, his hands clumsy with fear, and clasped it firmly to his chest.

This had been such a bad idea. How could he have been so stupid?

A monstrous head burst up and into view again, in a surge of spray. Bessie had managed to get herself better leverage this time. She loomed above him and came crashing down onto the ledge . Josh wasn’t aware of the next intervening moments with any clarity. One moment he was sitting in the alcove, the next he was standing up with his back pressed as far as possible while Bessie thrashed towards him, jaws slamming together loudly with a crack that echoed off the rocks.

The alcove wasn’t safe. She was only inches away from him.

She slipped backwards a little, and he could see her tiny arms scrabbling for purchase. Josh grabbed the discarded branch. Even while he did so he thought, idiot, what are you going to do with that?

Maybe she had a sensitive nose, like sharks did.

He jabbed at her nose, and then at her eyes, but the latter were so small he missed. She twisted, chomping aggressively at the branch, her massive bulk pulling back. Josh let go of the branch immediately, and scrambled up the rockface as fast as he could while she was distracted. She didn't seem to notice. When he got onto the boulder above him, he was close enough to the riverbank that he could pull himself up onto the short, springy turf.

He lurched to his feet and ran.

For some reason he had equated dry land with safety, but he’d not factored in her legs—after all, that was how he had detected her presence in the first place. He risked a glance behind him.

She was clambering out of the river.

Ohshitohshitohshitoshit.

His heart was beating so hard he thought it was going to come out of his chest.

Crocodiles could run up to twenty miles per hour, faster than Josh at his top speed, and Bessie was bigger than a crocodile. He hadn’t thought this through properly. In a race between Josh and a voracian broodmother, Josh would inevitably come second.

He was such an idiot. He was going to die. The idea that he might resurrect was no comfort. What if a broodmother was one of the things that could kill you permanently?

He ran faster. The ground was short, springy turf broken up by tussocks, and he tripped over one and nearly went flying. He looked behind him and saw her gaining on him with impressive speed.

He regained his footing, and forced his tired, shaky legs to propel him onwards, leaping and stumbling over tussocks, then righting himself and pelting on. Every step he expected to hear the clop of her jaws, or for her to snatch him from the ground, but he didn’t. He heard her cry again, an angry, challenging boom.

Wait, that had sounded further away than it should.

He risked another terrified glance behind him and realised she had already given up the chase. Her sides were heaving with great lungfuls of air, and even as Josh watched her, she raised her head and let out another frustrated cry, like a lonely foghorn.

Now that he thought about it, he was sure he had read something about crocodiles only being able to sustain high speeds for very short periods of time. Bessie was probably the same. She was an ambush predator, not a long-distance runner.

Josh slowed to a jog. He wasn’t a long-distance runner either. When had he become so unfit? His breath was already coming in gasps, and the trembling aftermath of the adrenalin rush hit him.

The eggs! Were they safe? Yes, they were still in the net, unpleasantly sticky against his soaked chest.

Josh checked behind him again, but Bessie hadn’t moved. Would she keep chasing him, or would she go back to the river?

He gritted his teeth. He couldn’t stop here. It would be sensible to get as much distance between him and the broodmother, and by association the players who had lured her here. If they were in the area they would have heard that cry, and Josh had no wish to meet them now that he had stolen their eggs.

His hose was torn where he had scraped his leg against the rock, and he could see a smear of blood on his knee. There were also scrapes on his hands and part of one nail had torn down to the quick. The scrapes and tears began to sting the moment he became aware of them, but even if he’d had anything to tend to them with, he couldn’t stop now. He picked up his pace, forcing himself into a fast walk, and set off northwards again.

When Josh found the village, he was tired, footsore and hungry. He was also sweaty and aching from his forced march through the wilderness, but so far there had been no sign of pursuit. The pouch at his waist now held a jar covered in a wax cloth, with the drawstring carefully tightened around the rim so that it would stay mostly upright.

Squished into the bottom of the jar were the tiny venom sacs of the embryonic voracians, plus bits of voracian flesh and blood and ichor that he hadn’t been able to separate out successfully, given that all he had to work with were a rusty knife and a spoon with a hole in it. The whole experience had been nauseating, but he’d decided to stop and harvest the eggs a couple of hours ago because they’d been drying out.

He’d even got 50 experience for escaping from the broodmother.

The village was on a hill and protected by a ditch and a wooden palisade, which was an ominous sign. It suggested that the inhabitants might not be friendly, or that the nearby area around was dangerous, or both. If there were creatures like Bessie roaming around, it made sense that the villagers would want a protective barrier around their village.

Would this village be populated just with locals, or would there be players here as well? Josh had his Outworld flag hidden, but he had a feeling that his status as a new player would be immediately obvious to anyone with half a brain.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

There was no reason for the villagers to be hostile to a lone stranger lost in the wilderness, he told himself. He didn’t look dangerous, and he carried no weapon beyond the knife, which was more of a tool than a weapon. He was good at making friends. He could do this.

Besides, he wasn’t sure how long he could survive in the wilderness by himself. He didn’t know how to fish or catch animals, or how to prepare them even if he did. He wouldn’t be able to survive on berries, and he didn’t want to rely on the meagre pickings in abandoned farmhouses.

So, village it was.

By the time he got to the foot of the hill, the sun was casting long shadows across the landscape, and he saw his first Six Spires person. Human person, that was, as opposed to the fey variety.

It was a boy, and he was herding some geese up towards the gate. Josh hurried to catch up with him.

As he got closer, he saw that the boy was dressed in a homespun tunic, with a hood similar to Josh’s. His legs and feet were bare and grimy with dried mud. He had a stick which he held out any time a goose tried to break away from the main flock. They seemed indignant at being herded, but were nevertheless allowing themselves to be persuaded towards the gate standing open at the top of the hill.

“Excuse me!” Josh called out.

The boy whipped round and gripped his stick defensively.

“Sorry!” Josh held up his hands. “I didn’t mean to frighten you!”

“Who art thou?” the boy said. His gaze darted around suspiciously as if looking for accomplices.

“I’m alone,” Josh reassured him. “My name’s Josh. Er. I was wondering … if I could come into the village?”

The boy frowned and stared at him.

“Where frae thee?” His accent was thick and unfamiliar, and difficult to understand over the honking of the geese.

“South,” Josh replied vaguely.

“Stormspire?” The boy’s eyes widened in alarm.

“No, no! Further south,” Josh said hastily.

“Wha’ ye want frae us?”

“A bed for the night?” Josh asked hopefully.

The boy suddenly realised one of his geese was wandering off the road and lunged to intervene. That duty accomplished he nodded his head towards the gate.

“Elder Tharn ull settle wi’ thee.”

‘Settle’ sounded uncomfortably like arranging payment to stay the night, and the Guardian had not seen fit to provide Josh with any Six Spires currency. Still, it was an invitation, so Josh followed the boy up the hill, careful not to crowd too close or do anything that might seem alarming.

The moment he stepped through the gate into the village, he became the focus of several stares, and a small crowd of people drifted closer. None of them looked hostile, however, so he stood his ground and tried to smile pleasantly and unthreateningly.

The men wore clothes like his, but with wide-brimmed hats of felt, and the women sported homespun dresses with white aprons and wimples. Most of the inhabitants were shod in wooden clogs, and carried baskets or held onto tall crooks.

“It’s naught but a lad,” one leather-faced old man said. “Ee, lad, what art doing out there? T’aint safe.”

“Could be a devil’s spawn,” a woman cried out from the back of the crowd. “Innocent he might look, till he murders us in our beds!”

Josh held up his hands again.

“I’m just an ordinary person!” he said. He would have said more, but at that point a newcomer arrived, and from the way the others stepped aside to let him through, Josh guessed this was Elder Tharn. He was a grim-faced thing, small and spare with a hooked nose and a downturned mouth, and his eyes, when he surveyed Josh, were dark with suspicion.

Josh’s heart sank.

When Josh had been younger, he’d been the kind of child over whom old women invariably fussed. They pinched his cheeks and told him what a bonny lad he was, and remarked to themselves that oh aye, in a few year’s time he’ll be out breaking hearts, no doubt. Unfortunately, these prophecies had not come to pass. Girls of Josh’s own age usually found him goofy and geeky, and ruthlessly assigned him to the friend zone.

Weirdly, Josh’s appeal to old woman hadn’t abated. Elderly waitresses flirted with him, other people’s grandmothers said things like “Ee, if only I were sixty years younger,” and burst out cackling, and even his friends’ mums had treated him with a sort of smiling indulgence and offered him extra helpings of food when he visited. The few times Josh had had a girlfriend, her parents had liked him more than the girlfriend had. Being approved of by a girl’s parents was usually the death knell to a relationship, Josh had found.

He had honestly been hoping that his old lady catnip effect would work on the villagers as well, or at least the elderly female ones, but it didn’t affect old men, and in any case it was clear from Tharn’s grim perusal of him that the Elder was immune.

The crowd quieted as they waited for Elder Tharn to speak.

“What business hast thee in our haven, stranger?”

“I’m travelling north, and I was hoping I could stay here for the night,” Josh said.

A woman nearby to him made a shocked little scoffing sound, as if Josh’s request had been the height of impertinence. Elder Tharn ignored her.

“Fey and eldritch things travel abroad in the guise of men,” he intoned. “Thou shalt be tested.” His gaze travelled over the crowd. “Tested, I say!” he repeated in a louder voice.

Josh concealed a wince. That didn’t sound good. The crowed watched owlishly, and some of them stirred and muttered, although Josh couldn’t tell whether it was with anticipation at the prospect of a testing—whatever that was—or disapproval of Elder Tharn’s proposal.

Almost immediately, though, another voice interrupted.

“Algernon Tharn!” it said. “Ye should be ashamed of yerself!”

A woman pushed through the crowd, coming to stand next to Josh with her hands on her hips. Elder Tharn’s mouth pursed at the sight of her.

“Look on this poor lad!” the woman said. “Travelled for miles, no doubt, see how scratched and torn he be. And ye would set him a trial. What kind of village treats a guest in such a manner?”

Oh, thank you, Josh thought fervently. It looked like his own personal brand of magic was working after all. Or maybe it was just that there were, in fact, friendly and hospitable people here.

“Goodwife Benton—” Elder Tharn began, but was interrupted.

“No excuses!” Goodwife Benton said sharply. “I won’t hear of it! I know ye!” She pointed to the archway above the gate where, Josh realised, a horseshoe had been nailed. “No fey would brave cold iron.” She pointed next to a small tree just outside the gate. “Nor pass the rowan.”

Elder Tharn attempted to rally.

“And what of the scourge?” he asked weakly.

It was the second time Josh had heard that mentioned. He would have asked more, but he didn’t want to reveal the depths of his ignorance.

Goodwife Benton snorted.

“Aye, a mighty scourge he looks to be, and him with torn hose and a skinned knee.”

Josh smiled weakly.

“Lad, come with me,” Goodwife Benton ordered. She raised her voice. “The rest of you be about your business, and stop putting the poor boy to the blush!”

The crowd scattered immediately, albeit with many backward glances, leaving Elder Tharn glaring impotently at Josh. Josh didn’t stay to chat, but followed Goodwife Benton to one of the houses in the centre of the village.

They were cruck houses with timber frames and wattle and daub plaster, each one only a single storey. Even Goodwife Benton’s house consisted only of a single common room, with a fireplace and chimney breast at one end, and sleeping alcoves tucked on either side of it. An iron cauldron hung over the fire, from which delicious smells issued.

Goodwife Benton talked constantly and without pause. Josh looked around her house while simultaneously attempting to parse the thick dialect she spoke in, and to unpack the implications of everything she said. She had a lot to say about a great many things.

On the danger of the wilds:

“It used be a body could travel from Celespire to any town in a hundred miles and not fear for one’s life, but in those days of course we had heroes. It’s not like it once was.” While she said this, she was rapidly chopping a bunch of green herbs which she sprinkled into the cauldron over the fire. Then she tasted whatever was in it, made a face, and groped for the box of salt, which she measured out carefully, as if it was a precious resource.

“What happened to the heroes?” Josh asked quickly.

“Oh, I suppose most of them died or fled when the Storm King took over.” Now she was kneeling down to feed more logs into the fire, and poking it to throw up more flames.

“Are there none left?”

“A few,” she allowed reluctantly. “Not like the ones we had in my day! I once saw the Tigerlily Knight, did ye know?”

“No!” Josh said, injecting fascination into his voice. Was the Tigerlily Knight a player?

“Well, I did! Six foot tall she was, with golden hair she could sit on, and armour so polished and shiny ye could have seen yer face in it! A favourite of the Old Queen.” At this point she broke off to go to the door and exchange loud, cheerful greetings with one of her neighbours. It seemed as if Goodwife Benton was the focal point of the village, because people regularly came to regale her with news or ask her advice on matters, and Josh’s conversations with her were constantly getting interrupted.

On the subject of Elder Tharn:

“What a grouch that man be! He needs a woman to shake some sense in him, but what woman would ha’ wanted to shackle hersel’ to such a curmudgeonly old sourpuss? Wants taking down a peg or two, he’s got above himself since we founded Haven.”

Haven was the name of the village, Josh gathered. Goodwife Benton was now cutting slices of bread, making each slice about an inch thick. Josh looked on in awe and no inconsiderable degree of anticipation.

“What was the test Elder Tharn wanted to give me?” he asked.

Goodwife Benton explained it would have involved wearing a white shift and kneeling in front of Elder Tharn in the centre of the village square while he ritually poured water from the well over Josh’s head and questioned him on the Eight Principles of Good Living.

Since Josh had no idea what those Principles were, he was doubly glad that he had been rescued from that fate. When Goodwife Benton started popping the slices of bread on a toasting fork and holding them up to the flames, he offered to do it for her, while he tried to get her to talk more about the Queen and the heroes of old.

All the while Josh’s hostess was talking, various relatives—mostly children and grandchildren, seemed to be wandering in and out at random. Every so often Josh would be introduced to one, before Goodwife Benton went haring off on a different conversational tangent.

On the subject of the Old Queen:

“A troubled life she had, may the Saints bless her soul. Ay, and there’s some as say the Young Prince hath not a tenth of her courage, but he’s not done so badly, for all the Court is still in exile. What’s that you say lad? How old? He’s fifty years if he’s a day, but he’ll always be the Young Prince to me. I was born under the Old Queen and we’ll never see her like again, that we won’t!”

From the things Goodwife Benton let drop, Josh gathered that the village of Haven had been settled by separatists. They rejected the governance of the nobility, choosing to believe that all people were created equal, and therefore espoused a philosophy of communal living and shared wealth. This made Goodwife Benton’s staunch royalist outlook seem all the more contradictory, but Josh decided not to point this out, given that she was shortly planning to feed him.

Dinner was served on the toasted slices of bread, which Goodwife Benton referred to as trenchers, and consisted of a thicky, stodgy mound of potatoes and vegetables that had been cooked in a meat broth, with little chunks of salty bacon and flecks of green herbs. Josh had never tasted anything so delicious in his life. Goodwife Benton beamed proudly when he scraped his trencher clean, and immediately offered him seconds. Best of all, he didn't even have to offer to wash up the dishes, because you ate your plate afterwards, and the bits that were too hard and stale to eat went into a bucket to be given to the pigs.

After dinner, Josh had been planning to ask some more discreet questions to get his bearings, but there were two things which foiled this plan. The first was that, after the meal, and in the warmth of the fire, he was feeling woolly-headed and heavy-eyed, and all he wanted to do was find a corner to sleep in.

The second was the impromptu music session.