“Because of the eerie, abandoned town we left behind back there?” Eriko said. Eriko was still mad at them for not exploring the town further, but they’d just escaped an arduous underground journey and nobody, other than Eriko, was much in the mood for opening boarded windows to find out why the town was no longer occupied.
“Eriko, we’ll let you open the next creepy house we find, okay?” Tobias said as he adjusted the strap his lute hung from. Not for the first time on this journey, the bard muttered something under his breath about learning to play a less unwieldy instrument next so he wouldn’t have to carry this one all the time.
“Who knows how long it’ll be before we see another creepy house?” Eriko said. “It could be months. Years.”
“How about a creepy campsite instead,” Tamsin, their mage, said.
“A creepy campsite is a poor substitution for a creepy building,” Eriko said.
“Well, we have a creepy campsite right now. You want to check it out?” Tamsin said, pointing in the distance.
The group came to a halt, exchanging nervous glances. Jack unslung his bow and nocked an arrow. He looked at Cordelia, who unhooked her dwarven battle axe from her belt. The axe felt strange in her hand. She’d lost her trusty two-hander underground and had a dying, bigoted dwarf gift this one to her. She still wasn’t sure how she felt about that whole incident, but a fine weapon was a fine weapon. She adjusted her grip on the haft and readied herself.
“That’s a creepy abandoned campsite,” Morgan said. He sounded simultaneously alarmed and too exhausted to really care.
“I’ll go,” Jack started to say, but Eriko took off past him.
“I got this, I got this,” Eriko said. “I’m bored out of my skull. I’ve got this.”
“But…” Jack said.
“Let her go,” Cordelia said, trying hard to not sound as tired as Morgan. She’d taken a beating in the fight underground, facing off against the chieftain of a band of marauding troglodytes, and she had been struggling all day to hide how much her body hurt. “This is what rogues do.”
“This is what Eriko does,” Morgan said, not taking his eyes off Eriko as she darted toward the campsite.
“What do you mean, this is what Eriko does?” Tamsin said. She was the least experienced gamer of the party—a group of friends who sat down one night to play a knockoff tabletop RPG and found themselves trapped in a very real, very lethal incarnation of that game, living the lives of the characters they’d chosen to play. Tamsin hadn’t been around for all the years Morgan, Jack, Eriko, and Cordelia had thrown away countless nights playing different role playing games.
“Eriko always splits the party,” Jack said.
“You guys have been saying that for weeks like it’s a joke I’m supposed to get,” Tamsin said.
“It means she runs off on her own a lot,” Morgan said, hefting his hammer, ready to run to Eriko’s aid if she found anything.
“And that’s bad because the party is supposed to be a cohesive unit that works well together,” Tobias said. He hadn’t been part of the others’ regular gaming sessions, but the longer they spent in this fictional world, the more Tobias had proven himself to be a deep-dive closet geek.
“I’m not saying Eriko caused every party wipe we ever had when we were gaming, but…” Jack said.
“Most,” Morgan said.
“No, all,” Cordelia said. “Except for that time when we all rolled so badly against that green dragon.”
“Please don’t bring up the green dragon,” Jack said.
“Too soon, too soon,” Morgan said.
In the distance, Eriko rummaged through the small camp. It was made up of a few small, disheveled tents, a few abandoned crates, a long-cold campfire. She waved them over.
“I got nothing!” Eriko said. “There’s nothing here.”
As the others joined her, Jack sent Silence ahead. The wolf sniffed around the camp curiously, weaving in and out of the tents.
“No blood, no signs of foul play?” Jack said.
“Nothing. No traps, nothing,” Eriko said. “It’s like they just got up and left.”
“Great,” Tobias said. “Ghost camp.”
Morgan sat down on a nearby tree stump with a groan.
“Oh, that was a mistake,” he said.
“Don’t sit down! If you sit down you’ll never get back up again,” Eriko said.
“I’m done,” Morgan said. “We’ve been walking for ten hours, guys. I’m done. I’m out.”
“Well,” Tobias said, setting down his lute. “We do have a camp.”
“No,” Jack said.
“Absolutely not,” Cordelia said.
“What?” Tobias said.
“Best case scenario, these people were killed. Worst case, this is a honeypot and we’re going to get ambushed while we sleep,” Cordelia said.
“Let them try!” Tobias said. “Look at us. We’ve got Oliver Queen over there, and you’re Conan the Barbarianette, Tamsin’s like Hermione, and Eriko’s like, Ezio Auditore or something. We’re amazing. Nothing will ambush us.”
“What about me?” Morgan said.
“I’m still trying to figure out what you do,” Tobias said. He knelt beside the fire and tried to get it lit again, badly, almost cutting his own finger striking his dagger against flint from his pack.
“Said the bard to the cleric,” Morgan said. “We’ll see how many jokes you have when you need a healing spell.”
“It’s almost dark,” Jack said. “We should find a safe place to camp anyway. We can just set a rotating watch.”
Suddenly, there was a flash of light and camp lit up with the warm orange glow of flames. Tobias jumped back as the campfire sprang to life.
Everyone looked at Tamsin, whose hand still glimmered faintly with fire magic.
“What?” she said. “I was tired of watching my brother try to start a fire the old-fashioned way. I like my way better.”
Cordelia sighed and sat down next to the growing fire.
“Can’t argue with that,” she said.
Chapter 2: The eternal hunter
The hunter did not spend much time with his kin.
Kin. Funny word, that. Particularly funny in this context, because his kindred were not his blood family. Not anymore. Not for centuries. Family is what you make it, he thought bitterly, as he often did, and the family he was born with died centuries ago. All he’d had since then…
Was his kindred.
Unliving and undying. Always hungry. Always. The hunter’s kin haunted the graveyards of the world, sustained by the meat of the deceased. They called it sacrament, but the hunter knew what it was. It was gluttony.
And for some, it was penance.
And so, the hunter, more often than his kin liked, would do in this unlife he’d found what he had done as a living man. He’d hunt. He would stalk silently in dark forests, his undead eyes unhindered by the darkness. He no longer felt things like a mortal man did, not really, not in the same way. But the bow in his hand, that felt real. That felt mortal and true.
He didn’t need to hunt. The curse on his body meant he was always hungry, but also that this hunger would never kill him. But it felt good to do what mortals did, taking down a deer with a longbow, treating the body with a pious respect as it gave its life for others.
He used to leave his kills for the living, like gifts, like offerings. Apologies, really, for the things his kin did to their dead. But then his brothers and sisters started using the hunter’s kills like bait, and he had to stop.
No good deed goes unpunished. One of the outsiders said that to him once, the travelers who were not of this world. No good deed. Well, if I can do no good deed and go unpunished, the hunter thought, the least I can do is find solitude.
And so, he hunted. Some nights he’d draw his bow and never fire. Simply knowing he could have a kill was enough. Proving he still had the talent in his hands that he once had as a living man. To know there was something left of himsel
f, the man he once was and could be no longer.
The sounds of his kindred sickened him. The moaning, the gnashing of teeth, the constant rumble of their ever-hungry bellies. The way their conversations always turned to eating.
The hunter knew his transformation was different. He knew he was like them, but not fully one of them, the same way the champion was, the same way their leader was. We are all vile creatures, the hunter thought, but some of us remember. Some of us cannot forget who we were before.
And that is a vicious cruelty, he knew. He envied the stupid among his kin. The ones who could not remember themselves. Oblivion was a comfort when you became a monster. To be a vile creature and remember who you were before… that, that is cruelty. That’s what a curse looks like.
The hunter found tracks in the forest tonight, fresh tracks. He stalked them briefly, not to hunt, but because he could sense something different about them. They smelled like the other world.
The travelers are nothing but trouble, the hunter knew. But he knew their flesh would attract his kindred like flies to sugar. The travelers were a hard delicacy to find for his kind.
The hunter grimaced and moved on, following their trail, not sure if he was simply curious, or if some part of him wanted to help.
He’d been like them once upon a time, after all. Something more than what he was now, and most certainly something less as well.
Chapter 3: A history of trouble
Eriko was born to play a rogue.
From the moment she could walk, she always went where she shouldn’t. Trespassing, sometimes; other times, just going places others were too afraid to go. She was the child who took the dare to go into the haunted house, or hop over a fence to retrieve a lost baseball. It was never malicious. She was once caught in the back room of a store and accused of shoplifting, but she had nothing on her. She told the manager who caught her she just wanted to know what was through the door.
Compulsive curiosity, she called it. And it was one of the bigger reasons why she had few friends.
I need to know what was in that house, she thought. The boarded-up town hall they’d found earlier that day. You don’t board up a building from the outside. It made no sense. Why wouldn’t they let her look inside? She found herself irritated she’d let her companions talk her out of scouting the place out.
She found herself doing the math. Two, maybe three miles back? And on a well-worn path. She could go back to the town in the dark. Not a problem. And by the time she’d be heading back it would be daylight. Perfect. I’m gone.
Eriko lay awake in the campsite, listening to the others breathing. They were taking turns on watch, smartly knowing they couldn’t trust the world around them while they slept, and she knew exactly whose watch she was going to sneak away during.
Jack took first watch, then Cordelia. No sneaking past either of them. They knew her too well. Third up was Eriko’s mark: Tamsin. I love you Tam, Eriko thought, but you are definitely the weakest link in this group when it comes to reading peoples’ intentions.
While settling in for the night, Eriko had specifically chosen the tent furthest from the fire, and made sure it wasn’t particularly well constructed so she could slip out from the back. Just a matter of rolling a successful stealth check, metaphorically speaking, Eriko thought. And I’m pretty sure Tamsin’s perception skill isn’t very high in this game.
Sure enough, after Cordelia retired, settling in loudly in another tent, the quiet started to get to Tamsin. Eriko smiled as the magician started talking to herself softly, muttering almost incoherently, before giving in to singing quietly. Eriko almost laughed out loud when Tamsin, clearly bored and trying to stay awake, snapped her fingers to create a small flame in the palm of her hand and juggled it back and forth playfully.
Seeing her friend fully invested in her spells, Tamsin slowly, carefully, crept back deeper into her tent, and then slithered underneath it, escaping into the cooler air outside. She checked her belt for her knives and thieves’ tools, ran a hand through her fauxhawk, and nodded to herself.
Two miles. Back by dawn. Not a problem.
I have got to find out what’s in that building.
Eriko stuck mainly to the road, eyes darting over her shoulders to see if her friends had decided to pursue her as often as she looked forward for signs of oncoming travelers. She made good time, though she almost turned her ankle on a stone. Finally, the shadow of the town appeared before her, an absence of light along the road, the cloudless, star-filled sky blocked out by the black shadows of larger buildings.
She saw no signs of life in the town as she entered, but played it safe, sticking to shadows and alleyways until she found the central building in the square. Resisting the temptation to go in through the front door, Eriko did a quiet circuit around the exterior, quietly testing the small number of boarded-up windows on the ground level.
Chewing her lip, she looked up, then nimbly scrambled up to the second floor. The action made her smile. In the real world, she wasn’t exactly clumsy or un-athletic, but scaling the side of a building like a squirrel certainly wasn’t something she was able to do easily. Here in Revery, though, she was able to pop up along the siding like she’d done it her entire life.
The second-floor windows were blocked as well, though not as securely. Eriko crept around the edge of the building until she found a window with slats big enough she could peer through. The interior was near perfect darkness, the combination of sealed windows and no daylight leaving… well, everything to the imagination, Eriko thought.
Well, nothing ventured, as the saying goes, she thought. Eriko looked down to pull a dagger from her belt so she could pry the wooden slats off the window and take a look inside. I’m probably going through all this and the place is going to be empty, she thought. Or it was a plague and I’m going to get sick and die. This is awesome. Good call. Glad I gave up a night’s rest for this. I have a problem, she thought. I have got to stop doing this to myself…
She looked back up, dagger ready to get to work on the window.
And looked directly into the eyes of a pair of eyes staring out at her through the break in the boards.
“Shit!” was all Eriko managed to get out before tumbling backward, sideways, and over the edge of the ledge, falling to the street below.
Chapter 4: Night haunt
Tamsin watched the slow, undignified process of her brother dragging himself out of his tent to take his turn on watch. Whether in the real world or a fantasy one, Tobias was hard to rouse, so much so she was honestly a little bit proud he got up on his own to relieve her.
Tobias stumbled over to the fire and sat down near her.
“My turn,” he said, eyes half-closed, body swaying with sleep.
“Maybe I’ll wait up a bit longer,” Tamsin said.
“No, s’alright,” Tobias said.
Laughing, Tamsin snatched up a lock of her brother’s hair and whispered the words to a spell. Instantly, her fingertips danced with flames, and so did the hair she had grasped between them.
Tobias let loose an undignified gasp, leaping backward, slapping the flames, and his own face and neck, until they were out.
“You awake now?” she asked.
“You set me on fire!” Tobias said.
“Just a little bit.”
Tobias pushed himself back up into a proper sitting position, fixing his singed hair.
“Well, it worked, I’ll give you that,” he said. “When are you going to teach me some spells?”
“When we’re not almost dying,” Tamsin said. “Eriko and I were talking about that the other day. That in most games like this, bards can cast spells, so you should be able to, hypothetically, learn some of mine.”
“But then you won’t be special.”
“I’ll just have to learn more spells,” Tamsin said.
“That’s my sister,” Tobias said. “Unbridled ambition.”
Tamsin shrugged and leaned back, enjoying the cool night air. To
bias caught her smiling.
“What. What cosmic joke are you laughing at,” he said.
“Just that… I mean for most of us, we’re better here, aren’t we?” she said. “I’m a wizard, dude.”
“People pay me to sing, which is better than community theater was doing for me,” Tobias said. “Eriko certainly seems happier pilfering for a living than slinging cappuccinos.”
“Jack almost feels like he’s over the guilt of buying the game in the first place,” Tamsin said. “And… I don’t know. The three of them, Jack and Cordelia and Morgan, they just seem like this is where they belong, not back home.”
“I don’t know,” Tobias said. “Morgan seems lonely sometimes.”
“Well, he has family back home who need him,” Tamsin said. “I mean I know we have family, but the only person I’d want to get home to is sitting beside me right now. If you weren’t here I’d be fighting like hell to get back, but…”
“Twinsies,” Tobias said.
“I hate when you do that,” Tamsin said.
“I know.”
“Sometimes,” Tamsin said, brushing a strand of supernaturally silver hair out of her face, tucking it behind one exaggerated elvish ear. “I worry that we’ll have to go home.”
“That’s dark,” Tobias said.
“I know,” Tamsin said.
“Also, I have the same worry,” Tobias admitted. “I love it here. Selfishly, I just… I love this world.”
“And this world loves you back,” a stranger’s voice said.
Tamsin felt her stomach turn to acid. Her brother staggered to his feet, drawing his saber clumsily.
Across from them, sitting calmly by the fire, was a man-shaped thing. It has stark white skin tinged with blue and gray, like a corpse. Its ears were unnaturally long and pointed, its mouth just a little too wide, its eyes red, glowing pinpricks in the darkness. It had a long spear resting casually against one shoulder and wore simple clothes in browns and grays.
“What the hell are you?” Tobias said.
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