“We don’t know what kind of sorcery you’re using, but we know you’re swindling this whole town,” the smaller man said.
“Taking whatever you want, whenever you want it. You’re bleeding people dry,” the farmhand said. “And I know my sister stayed behind at the tavern the other night.”
“I—you know, it’s probably a mistake to say so, but I really don’t remember,” Tobias said. “Everything’s a little fuzzy before this morning. I…”
The farmhand cut him off by swinging the club at Tobias’ head. Tobias dodged the blow so easily he started laughing.
“Hey, look at that. I have better reflexes here than I do in real life.”
“We’ll show you real life,” the man with the butcher’s blade said. But before he could take a step forward, the man let out a small, sharp whine. He lowered his blade.
“The bard’s mine,” someone said in a voice just above a whisper. Tobias could see the top of a red cloak poking up from over the butcher’s shoulder. The stranger turned their captive toward the mouth of the alley. “Go home. Leave the musician to me.”
The butcher started walking away slowly. The farmhand hesitated.
“Why should we let you have all the fun?” he said. “We caught him first.”
As if from the ether, a throwing knife landed with a deep, eerie thunk in the man’s club. The force of the strike knocked the improvised weapon from his hand.
“Oh,” the farmhand said.
“Next one goes in your left eye,” the stranger said. The farmhand reached down to pick up his club, but the stranger made a soft tsk-tsk noise, and the big man left his club, backing up out of the alley until he was out of sight.
“Look, I swear I don’t remember anything before this morning,” Tobias said, feeling himself break out in a sweat.
“Me either!” the stranger said, abandoning the gravelly aspect to their voice and throwing back their hood.
“Eriko?” Tobias said, seeing his friend beaming in front of him.
“Is this not the best thing ever?” she said, throwing her arms around him. “This is fucking amazing!”
“Do you know where we are?” he said.
“Do you really care?” Eriko said. “This is like time travel mixed with Ren Faire mixed with being on the set of Lord of the Rings. I love this. This is the greatest day of my life.”
“I… I’m not going to lie, this is the most fun I’ve ever had, and I’ve been awake like fifteen minutes,” he said. “But you seriously don’t know what’s going on?”
“Not a clue, buttercup,” Eriko said. “Seen the others yet?”
“Nope.”
“You know you have a hickey, right?” Eriko said, roughly grabbing Tobias’ chin to look at his neck.
“I did not, but that’s good information to have,” he said. “So, what do we do from here? Find the others?”
“What’s that Scouts rule? When you’re lost, stay in one place?”
“You were never a Scout. You never participated in anything,” Tobias said.
“Neither did you,” Eriko said.
“True enough. We’re not exactly joiners, are we,” he said. “So, I guess we… Explore the town of Moderate Expectations?”
“That’s not really the name of the town,” Eriko said.
“It is, I swear.”
“Well,” Eriko said, putting her hood back up over her dark pixie haircut. “I guess that sets the tone for the campaign.”
Chapter 4: Archery lessons and the local flavor
Jack didn’t remember falling asleep. He certainly didn’t remember falling asleep outside. But here he was, leaning against an old tree, a hood up over his head and shielding his eyes from the sun. He listened for a moment, trying to get his bearings. The ground was covered with drying leaves, and the air smelled earthy and fresh, like an orchard.
He rolled ungracefully to his feet, immediately noticing attire he didn’t recognize—heavy, high leather boots on his feet, loose-fitting dark pants, the green cloak attached to the green hood obscuring his face. He immediately sensed the weight of two short swords, one on each hip, and a leather strap across his chest attached a bow and quiver over his shoulder. He pulled an arrow from the quiver and examined it.
“Okay,” he said. “Fever dream maybe. Or I’m finally losing my mind. Had to happen eventually.”
Then he heard yelling in the distance, voices echoing through the forest. Jack paused, stock still, and instinctually cocked his head to listen.
Two men. No, three. Metal on metal. Shouting. Taunting. One woman’s voice.
A woman’s voice he recognized.
“Cordelia,” Jack said. He took off in a run toward the sound of the voices.
The closer he got, the worse it sounded. The men were bragging and laughing; Cordelia was saying nothing.
Jack ran up over a ridge and stopped. Below him, three men, all in cheap, makeshift armor and brandishing beat up weapons that had seen better days, had a woman surrounded. That can’t be Cordelia, Jack thought. Taller, far more muscular—he could see her biceps from the ridge, clutching a long battle axe in front of her. Her skin was a pale green, and she wore her hair in a dark red Mohawk. When she bared her teeth at her attackers, Jack could make out the hint of fangs along her lower. But even at this distance, even with green skin and tusks, her face was still clearly that of his friend, familiar despite the cosmetic changes.
And these bandits had her outnumbered.
“Green skin abomination,” one of them said, jabbing at her with a spear.
“Bet she can’t even talk right,” another, holding a rusty two-handed sword, said.
“I heard if you cook an orc, they taste like bacon,” the third said. He slashed at Cordelia with a one-handed axe, a nicer weapon than his companions had. Cordelia batted it away with her own axe.
“Creepy nightmare or not, I’m not here to be insulted by a bunch of gap-toothed degenerates,” Cordelia said.
One of the bandits turned to the others.
“What’s a degenerate?” he said.
“Orc babble,” the leader said. “Just kill her and be done with it.”
Jack instinctually reached up to unsling his bow and took aim with the arrow he’d examined earlier. Logic sunk in and overtook his autopilot movements drawing the bow—you’ve literally taken one night of archery lessons, with Eriko that one time, your entire life, and you really weren’t that good, he thought. But with his friend in danger, he let loose and hoped for the best.
The whole movement felt perfectly natural, as if he’d been born with a bow in his hand. He let his arrow fly, and with a whistling hiss through the air…
It struck one of the bandits in the left butt cheek.
“Not what I was aiming for,” he said, another arrow. He watched as the bandit collapsed unceremoniously to the ground, clutching his backside, screaming.
“I’ve been shot in the arse!” the bandit screamed. “Someone shot me in the rump!”
“Orc lover,” the leader of the bandits said, turning to look at Jack. “Kill him too!”
The bandit leader charged up hill toward Jack, leaving his companions to deal with Cordelia. As the unwounded bandit raised his sword to attack, Jack saw the man’s head separate from his body as Cordelia swung her battle axe in a perfect arc.
Jack drew another arrow and fired, but the bandit leader was moving too fast, and the shot went wide. Dropping his bow, Jack drew his short swords—how do I even know how to do this? he thought, but the blades felt perfectly at home in his hands as he raised them up and caught the bandit’s sword between them like an X, driving him back.
He parried another blow, then jabbed at the bandit with his left blade, but again, missed his mark. Don’t think about it, don’t get distracted, he thought, realizing that the more he let his instincts take over, the more his body seemed to know instinctually what to do. He clumsily blocked another slash by the bandit leader, but couldn’t quite find his feet to return t
he strike.
Then he heard a low, angry growl followed by a ferocious bark and the bandit leader’s eyes went wide with pain. The man stumbled backward, and Jack saw a wolf—not really a wolf, he thought, more of a fantasy interpretation of one, with dramatic black and gray fur, an exaggerated mouth, and bright green eyes that burned with almost human intelligence—grabbing hold of the man’s calf, dragging him away.
The wolf looked Jack directly in the eyes and, without saying a word, conveyed the words silently, but clearly: You know what to do.
Jack knocked the man’s sword from his hand with one blade then drove the other into his heart. He found himself face to face with the bandit, whose body went slack as the wolf released his bite.
“That orc is my friend,” Jack said. The bandit’s eyes went blank, and Jack let him slide sloppily from the end of the short sword.
The bandit leader dead, he turned his attention on Cordelia. Somewhere between beheading the other thug and the wolf’s appearance, she’d dispatched the final bandit with a pretty grotesque blow to the head. She cleaned her axe on the dead man’s shirt.
“So,” Cordelia said. She grinned at him. Her orcish tusks, while bizarre and vaguely threatening, really didn’t look so terrible on her face. “I’m a goddamned half-orc, Jack.”
“And how do you feel about that?”
“If it’s not permanent, it’s pretty boss, honestly,” she said. She slung her battle axe into a holster on her shoulder. She flexed her arms. “Look at these guns. And I’d have to do Crossfit for three years to get my quads to look like this.”
“It’s a little intimidating,” Jack said. He looked down at the black and gray wolf waiting patiently for his attention and put a hand on the beast’s forehead, scratching between his ears.
“You’ve got some sort of dire wolf that looks at you like you’re the center of his universe,” Cordelia said. “That’s not unintimidating either.”
Jack nodded. Cordelia started going through the bandits’ pockets.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m looting,” Cordelia said. “That’s what we do in these situations, right? We loot.”
“Got anything?”
Cordelia tossed him a purse that jangled with coins as he caught it.
“I’m not going to feel bad taking that,” she said. “From the looks of these guys, they didn’t earn it honestly anyway.”
Jack examined his belt and found a few leather pouches and tucked the purse inside one.
“So what do you think. Are we hallucinating?” Jack asked.
“Dunno,” Cordelia said. “Doesn’t feel like it, as weird as that sounds. This feels awfully real, Jack.”
“It does,” He said. “Have you seen the others?”
“Not a one.”
“So, I guess the first order of business is making sure we’re all here,” he said.
“And that nobody’s been killed by bandits,” she said. “Where should we go?”
Jack scanned the sky, doing a full circle standing in place, then pointed.
“Smoke,” Jack said. “Looks like chimney smoke.”
“When in doubt, go to the closest village, huh?”
“That’s what I’d suggest you guys do if you got turned around in a game,” Jack said.
“Um,” Cordelia said. She gestured at her face. “What if, y’know. My kind isn’t welcome there?”
“We’ll figure that out when we get there,” he said.
“I’m not in love with this plan,” Cordelia said.
“Me either. But we work with what we have, I guess,” Jack said.
Chapter 5: The thief and the bard
Eriko felt lighter on her feet than she ever had in her ordinary life. She wasn’t quite sure how to explain it—she felt as if she just knew instinctually where to put her feet, possessing a practiced grace she always wished she’d had ever since she bombed out of her career as a ballerina at age seven. But here, she felt almost catlike, resting on the balls of her feet as if perpetually ready to move. Her hands hovered around the knives on her belt with easy practice, too. She knew it couldn’t be real, that she did not possess these abilities in real life, but if they were trapped here, she certainly could get used to being a dexterous thief.
She also realized she was more observant of the people around her, too. Eriko had never been much of a daydreamer, so she had always been more observant than not. But she caught herself noticing little details—ticks and tells in body language; the way someone with money touched their coin purses more often; the way those with money looked at those without and vice versa; and, perhaps most of all, the way the local law enforcement looked at Eriko herself. I must give off a thief-ish air, she thought.
Fortunately, though, most attention remained on Tobias. He winked and grinned at everyone who made eye contact, flirting as boldly with a shop keep’s daughter as he did with a gruff guard captain.
“Laying it on a bit thick here, huh, Tobias?” Eriko said softly.
“Are you kidding?” Tobias said. “Look at me! I’m some sort of elven rock star here. I feel like a cross between David Bowie, Prince, and Legolas.”
“I mean, y’know,” Eriko said, nodding her head back at the guard captain as they walked away. “We’re in a medieval setting. Don’t they burn people who…”
“It’s a fantasy setting, and I don’t think they mind,” Tobias said. “In fact, I feel a hell of a lot less judged for being myself here than I am in the real world.”
“So there’s an upside to this whole adventure,” Eriko said. “For you at least.”
“You’re telling me this isn’t your life’s dream,” Tobias said. “You’ve wanted to escape into a fantasy world since the first time you read Wizard of Earthsea.”
“For the record, I wanted to escape into a fantasy world since the first time I read the Dragonlance Chronicles,” Eriko corrected. “I upgraded my reading level to Le Guin a few years later.”
“Are you in a rush to wake up, or stop hallucinating, or come out of whatever coma has put us here?” Tobias said.
Eriko wrinkled her nose.
“I’d rather be a thief in sword-and-sorcery-land than a barista back home,” she said.
“I’ll remind you of that the first time we have to slay a cursed latte here,” Tobias said. “Speaking of, do they have coffee in these fantasy settings, or is that something that isn’t historically accurate?”
“You’re an elf,” Eriko said. “I’m betting we can find coffee.”
She felt a tickle along the back of her neck and slowed her pace for a moment, partially turning her head to look behind her. Just as carefully, she turned her face to look ahead again.
“So, I think we’re being followed,” she said.
“What? Where?” Tobias said, spinning around.
“Welp, there goes our element of surprise, Elvis,” she said.
Surrendering to whatever was about to happen next, she turned around completely, watching as the figure that caught her attention—bedraggled, covered in a brown hooded cloak—disappeared down an alleyway.
“Crap,” she said.
“Hey, he’s not following us anymore,” Tobias said. “I win. I am awesome at this game.”
“You’re really not,” she said, ducking into a passing shop. Tobias followed her in. They were instantly hit with the powerful smell of brewing beverages—different teas, fragrant and flowery, and the dusky scent of coffee boiling.
“What can I get for you,” an older woman said behind the counter. Eriko guessed she was a half-orc by the greenish skin and hint of tusks jutting up from her lower jaw. Her hair was iron gray, and her modest blue dress contrasted interestingly with a series of intricate tattoos running up her right arm, reappearing out of the top of the dress to crawl up her neck.
“Is that coffee I smell?” Eriko asked.
“That it is,” the orcish woman said. “Two?”
“Thank you,” Eriko said. “My friend is paying.”<
br />
“I—what?” Tobias said.
“You made bank playing at the tavern last night,” she said. “You can afford it.”
The proprietor set down two small, delicate china cups, shallow and perfectly round. Eriko took a sip. It had the deep, heady strength of a fine Turkish coffee back home.
“Oh, I love this world,” Eriko said.
“I’m just going to go out on a limb and say that it’s probably considered rude to put milk in mine,” Tobias said. The orc woman glared at him. “No milk. Gotcha.”
The shop was mostly empty, save for one other pair, an off-duty guard talking with a younger woman. They had the awkward cuteness of a couple just getting to know each other.
“Another one went missing?” the girl asked. Eriko leaned back slightly, listening.
“Third one,” the guard said. His voice was incredibly young. Eriko stole a glance at his face and saw he barely had even the hint of stubble on his chin.
“How is no one panicking about this?” the girl asked.
“The chief wants to keep it quiet til we know more,” he said. “That’s why I need you to not tell anyone either.”
“Why tell me at all if I can’t talk about it, you ridiculous man,” the girl said. Her tone was playful, but Eriko could hear real fear in her voice.
“So as you know to lock your windows at night, and make sure your mother does the same with your little brother’s room,” the guard said. “Three little ones. Stolen in the night. This last one was right here in town, too. The others were out in the farmlands, so the panic’s been slow to build, but once word gets out…”
Eriko leaned her elbows on the counter and bumped Tobias with her shoulder.
“I don’t think this coffee will come out of these clothes if you make me spill it,” he said. “Please don’t ruin my glam rock outfit, Eriko. I’m serious. You know I’m not a vain man, but I love these clothes.”
“Coffee stains add character,” she said. “And I think that couple behind us are quest-givers.”
“You’re really going to play the game,” Tobias said. “Go on quests, kill ogres and dragons, that sort of thing.”
Lost in Revery Page 3
