by J. R. Ford
“Which way now?” The voice was brash and masculine.
The second voice was similar, only feminine. “Downriver. You saw the map.” Each of them had some sort of accent.
“Yeah. How far, you think? I’m hungry.” Boots thumped turf, two pairs. They passed by us, only in my field of view for a second.
“Don’t start complaining now, we’ve barely started. Besides, you need to lose some weight.” They must have spawned closer to Bluehearth than we had. My legs complained at their luck.
The guy said, “Let’s keep going. I don’t want to be stuck out here after dark. Who knows what might be lurking around.”
“I never said we should stop.”
I caught glimpses through the trees as the voices dwindled: a man and a woman, both in gray starting gear. Neither were armed.
Probably not harmful after all. Didn’t mean we wanted to get mixed up with them. The barfight, followed by two hours of exhausting vigilance, had me wary. And tired. I sat back in the brush. Branches poked me from every direction, but an object at rest stays at rest. Mere discomfort wouldn’t provoke me.
But shouts from downriver did. Sounded like the two who had just passed, but their words escaped me. I crept through the bushes, staying low, making about half the racket they did.
After a few seconds of struggling to disentangle my cloak from a stubborn branch, I gave up and returned to the road. Never let it be said I’m too proud to reevaluate a bad plan.
Not that this plan was any better.
The path twisted ahead, but I made out what was happening between the trees. The man and woman from before were standing in the middle of the path, hands raised. I caught glimpses of four others, all with swords glinting.
Paranoia vindicated. I ducked back into the cover of the forest. “They’re getting robbed! There’s four of them!” I told Farrukh, who had laid out his tarp in a clear patch.
I heard a wail and peeked out. The guy was full-on crying. His companion was trembling, though with sobs or rage, I couldn’t tell.
Not hard to see why. People were worth points. Those poor saps were moments from game over, not even half a day in.
“We should go around,” Farrukh said, folding up his tarp.
He was right. The smart thing to do would be to head uphill, circle around, and find the river again past the bandits.
The smart thing, the safe thing. Like leaving that woman in the tavern to the mercy of vultures. I had sixteen years’ experience of looking the other way.
My words came out choked. “I thought you were in it for the points. No risk, no reward.”
“I weigh my risks. There’s no loot in killing four newbies.”
If I went in there alone, I’d be butchered like a lamb. What a waste that would be. I checked quickly — still 3 viewers.
“Come on,” Farrukh said, “while they’re distracted. There’s no reason to get yourself killed.”
My scabbard rasped. Consequences be damned, me along with them. “See you.” I broke into a sprint, sword raised high.
2
The distance disappeared. I barely had time to register the situation — four bandits in a diamond with the travelers in the middle. The bandit on the left was the first to react, yelling, “Hey! St—”
His cry was cut short by my scream and descending sword. It caught him in the jaw with a spray of blood. The shock nearly tore it from my grasp, but I was already barreling past him.
The next bandit cringed, holding his sword out straight in front of him with both hands. I knocked it aside and crashed into him. We both fell, but I was up first and hacked at his face. His nose caved in. I screamed and did it again. Bone crunched.
The third found his wits and attacked. I lurched back, nearly losing my feet in a stumbling retreat, off-balance when he advanced again. His sword tore into my shoulder, fire erupting in its wake as he drew back to do it again. We struck simultaneously, his sword slamming into my side, mine cutting his arm. We keeled over.
But I had no time for pain, not on death’s doorstep with the bell rung. I staggered to my knees, but when I raised my sword, my shoulder flared. I took the blade in my left hand instead and beat down. The first blow hit flat, sending him wheezing, but not cutting him. I lined up my point and thrust into his chest with a squelch.
I shrieked and wheeled on the final bandit, only to find him facedown in bloody dirt, the back of his skull crushed. Farrukh looked irritated, wiping gore from his ax.
It was over. We’d done it. I fell back.
Then my mind caught up to what I’d seen, and horror washed over me in waves. My mind sheltered behind a pitiful harbor wall, “It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real…” Not the deaths of the bandits, nor my own fatal injuries. It didn’t help.
Death was taking its time, enough for my body to realize what it had been through. My shoulder was wet fire, my side gasping agony. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t scream, couldn’t cry.
I didn’t want to look down. I had plenty of insomnia fuel already. But curiosity is morbid. My shoulder was a bloody gash beneath my rent cloak and shirt. I couldn’t see the condition of my ribs, to scant relief. How long would this guy leave me in painful purgatory?
Instead of death, the two travelers entered my vision, looking down on me like a couple of pitiful angels.
“Water,” I gasped. I could hear the river, just out of reach.
Both travelers were still shaking. “Thank you,” the woman whispered, her voice hoarse. Up close, I got a better look at them. Blonde hair and tan skin on the woman, perhaps thirty years old. Black and brown on the man, pudgy, and young enough to get IDed for a beer. A couple strangers for whom I’d given up my spot. Maybe one of them would do something useful with theirs.
My throat was too dry for response, so I rested my head back against the cold earth, feeling the blood ooze from me.
“Come on,” Farrukh said. “Got to get your wounds bandaged.”
“No use,” I muttered. “I’m done for. Go on without me.”
“It doesn’t look too bad,” he said. “You’ll live, I think.”
Damn it all, all except for me. Now I had to deal with my problems.
One such was that I’d been struck on my left side and right shoulder. No matter which way I rolled, pain waited.
Pain got impatient. Both wounds surged.
The woman knelt and lifted my shirt. A cool breeze flowed over me, accompanied by the chill of a woman’s gaze. “How bad is it, doc?”
She hesitated frighteningly. “You don’t seem to be cut. Just bruised. Very bruised.”
“Probably a cracked rib or three,” I said, having no idea on the matter. “What about my shoulder?”
“I can’t see bone,” Farrukh said. Least reassuring words ever.
“Guess I’ll pull through.” The pain receded under a wave of shame. My family already knew I was a weakling, but now Farrukh knew it too.
I opened my UI. My family was still watching. Mom was probably worried sick, Luci fascinated, and Dad…would he be proud? Eleven points total after three kills — 3.3 a head, which was odd. I hadn’t noticed the notifications in the fight.
I closed the UI and looked at the first of the bandits I’d killed. His jaw hung wide open, terribly wide, an eternal death scream drowned in blood.
How close had I been to such a fate?
The second one’s face was a mess of blood, bone, and flesh. The gore didn’t horrify me as much as his chest, still rising and falling. Either he was unconscious, or he didn’t remember the command to log out. I hoped it was the former.
“Farrukh,” I moaned. He followed my gaze and readied his poleax. I couldn’t look away from his driving spike.
“Kill a player, plus +5,” he said. “I guess you only get points for the finishing blow. Thanks.”
I closed my eyes, fighting nausea of a different kind than the acclimatization earlier. It’s not real, I pretended. He’d be waking up in Luxembourg, healthy as
he’d been this morning. Screaming, maybe, but alive.
Farrukh knelt by me. “Get his shirt off.”
The two travelers unclasped my cloak and helped me wriggle out of the shirt. “Ah, ah! Mind the shoulder!” I shivered in the breeze.
Purple bruises blossomed over my left side. Guess my enemy’s blade had hit flat. I hissed as Farrukh tied gauze around my shoulder. “Render aid: +1,” he said.
“I’m Emily, by the way,” the woman said.
“Jacques.”
“Farrukh,” Farrukh grunted.
“Pavel,” I said. “Good to meet you.”
“Do you want to travel with us?” Emily asked. “We’re heading to Bluehearth.”
“Sure. Help me up?” I didn’t want to learn how active the forest got once the sun set.
It’s tough putting on clothes when one’s right arm won’t lift over the shoulder. Jacques and Emily helped.
Farrukh looted the corpses. My eyes were glued to the carnage. He handed me some coins. “I found 16 gold. Here’s 12.” They might’ve had gear nearby, but searching was beyond me.
“You should take their swords,” I suggested to Emily and Jacques.
“I don’t know how to use one,” Emily said.
“Neither do I, neither did they. But maybe the next robbers will think twice.”
She tried to take the swords while looking away from the bodies. After some groping, she found one. Jacques did likewise.
I started to walk. Every thudding footfall sent lances of pain through my ribs, but my mouth stayed shut, lest I lower Farrukh’s opinion of me further.
I kept my head down, watching the road for stones or roots waiting to trip me. One fall and I was done for. The familiar posture hung on my shoulders like a mantle.
There’d be healers in the city, I hoped. What kind of city didn’t have a hospital?
“Why don’t you have any stuff, anyway?” I asked, trying to stave away silence.
“We were some of the last to recover,” Emily said. “Once we’d woken up, all our money was gone.”
“Sucks. I had about half of mine taken, but at least I got a sword and a cloak. Y’all got food?”
No reply. I wasn’t about to share coin I’d earned with blood, but denying them food would be mean. Maybe we should’ve searched for the bandits’ stash, but I wanted to reach the city that day, not trudge around the forest in circles. “We can stop in a couple hours for lunch. I have enough for three.”
“A couple hours,” Jacques began, before what sounded like Emily’s elbow in his side shut him up.
Twelve gold, 10 points, and the lives of two innocent newbies. I was still upright, but that didn’t mean there’d been no cost. A deposit of blood, and the remainder paid off in pain.
I’d saved the day, been the man I wanted to be, and even survived. So why did I feel resignation, not relief?
Farrukh slowed his gait to match mine. “What was that?” he growled, too low for the others to hear. “You didn’t even give me a chance to string my bow.”
“I thought you were going around.”
“And let you eat steel?”
I was too tired for this. “It all worked out, didn’t it?”
“What you did put us both in danger. I’ve already told you what this game means to me.”
Worse than a melodramatic weakling, a careless melodramatic weakling. Seemed shame would dog me wherever I went. “I’m sorry. But thank you. I might’ve died without your help.”
He snorted. “You one hundred percent would have. That last one was about to spit you, before I axed him.”
“Well, you’ll be heading west soon. You won’t have to worry about me getting you killed.”
“I guess not.”
Another tributary fed the river, and a bridge spanned the now-substantial waterway. “This is my exit,” he said.
He didn’t ask me to come with him. Maybe if I promised never to put him in danger again, he’d let me. I’d sworn promises I couldn’t keep before.
But I needed a healer. Emily and Jacques needed an escort. And the bandit encounter had made me realize: if I wanted to survive, I’d have to learn to fight — preferably in a training ring, rather than a monster’s lair.
“Take care of yourself, Farrukh Wakim. If I go out early, I’ll watch your stream.”
“Same, Pavel…”
“Pavel Cernik, though I doubt I’ll be worth watching.”
“Peace.”
“Catch you.”
With that, we headed our separate ways. I kept my head down.
When presented with a challenging situation, one must evaluate what they want. No one wants to do homework, but many want to be punished for not doing homework even less. This means that, of the available options, they “want” to do their homework. I didn’t “want” to spend six hours trudging through a forest with broken ribs and a cut-up shoulder, but I wanted to freeze even less, especially with monsters hungry for a Pavel Popsicle.
My discipline thinned as the river thickened. Tributaries fed it until it stretched fifty yards wide, barely recognizable from the five-yard stream we’d waded through at Murray’s Ford. We’d long left the hills. The constant sound of rushing water made my throat feel dry, but since the fight, my thirst couldn’t be quenched.
In the meantime, every part of me hurt. My calves burned from the walking, the horrible walking. My ribs were afire. My shoulder ached. Even my lower back hurt for some reason.
I gritted my teeth. Showing weakness wasn’t an option, lest Jacques pounce. His incessant complaining formed a kind of adversary, one against whom I could steel myself. I suspected that without it, I would’ve stopped for the night long ago.
Emily radiated irritation. The snappish woman I’d heard from the bushes was back, my own stalwart silence the only barrier restraining her from berating Jacques. I wished she would anyway. At least I’d have some entertainment. As it was, I entertained myself by trying to ignore the constant pain.
I wasn’t very good at it.
“There’s no way we’ll reach it before nightfall,” Jacques moaned. Our shadows stretched on the path before us, barely discernible in the shade of twilight. The chill had wormed into my bones. Then I caught a glimpse of something glowing blue through the trees and veritably skipped until I got a good look at the city.
Bluehearth nestled between the river we followed and another, the last sunrays scintillating on the water. Walls encircled the city, built of a stone dark in the dusk, but riddled with circuits of luminous blue. Numerous towers peeked over the parapet, and a massive orthogonal keep rose above them all, overlooking where the rivers joined. The structures were only apparent from the patterns of blue along their facades.
I could’ve wept. Emily let out a battle cry. Jacques actually shut up.
It looked like it was hours away, but the darkness must’ve thrown off my depth perception. Within thirty minutes, we reached the barbican at the mouth of the bridge. The stone of the barbican and city wall was gray and had a grainy, wood-like texture to it. Blue veins pulsed with what I assumed was magic energy.
We passed under the barbican’s portcullis, crossed the bridge, and slipped through a pair of wooden gates. The street was the same stone as the walls, though instead of being grainy, it undulated and rippled.
Across the strange road sat an inn. Warm light escaped the shutters.
“Any place around here I can get minor wounds healed?” I asked the innkeeper. “A hospital or temple?”
He shook his head. “You’d have to find a Visceral, and good luck finding one this early. Most of the Artifacts are hidden well.”
“Visceral? Some sort of healer class?”
“Some sort. But in the meanwhile, buy some dinner. You may find yourself recovering more smoothly than you would on Earth.”
I sighed. “Good enough, I guess. We’ll also need beds for three.”
“And a beer,” Jacques added.
“Make that two,” Emily said.
“Call it 9 silver.”
I forked over a gold piece, too tired to argue, and pocketed the 1 silver change. We settled between parties of loud drunks.
“So, where are you from?” Emily asked.
“Atlanta,” I said between shovels of potato and sausage. I was too tired to enjoy any flavor, but it was warm.
“I’m from Ottawa.”
“Marseilles,” Jacques said.
“Are you lotto or buy-in?” Emily asked.
“Lotto.”
“We’re buy-in,” she said, then sipped the beer I’d bought. “What do you want to do tomorrow?”
I swallowed the last of the meal and stood up. “I’m going to learn to fight.”
3
Long familiarity told me I’d slept well past noon. But nothing ached, and fear that getting up would ruin my peace kept me under the comforter.
Pressing my index and middle fingers to my palm opened the UI, and tapping both simultaneously opened the leaderboard. I was in the top quarter, while the highest player was someone named Edwin Casper, with 106 points. How he’d gained so many in the first day, I had no idea. Another two-finger tap opened a horizontal keyboard. Through single and double finger taps, I keyed in F-a-r-r-u, which filtered the leaderboard to where I could see that Farrukh Wakim had 22 points. He must’ve found some quarry. A red dot next to his name indicated that he was currently streaming.
Clenching my fist closed the leaderboard, then I tapped my index finger until the cursor indicated “Spells.” The following screen was blank. Under “Quests,” only the text “0/3” appeared. Before I dismissed the UI, I checked viewership. One. Probably Mom — Dad would be at work, Luci at school. “Hi,” I whispered.
Then the rising excitement in my chest overpowered my fear, and I sat up. “Better than yesterday,” is what an optimist would’ve said. Instead, “Ow!”
Emily and Jacques were still in bed. I considered, then rustled each of them in turn. After some grumbling, they came downstairs with me.
“Breakfast?” I asked the innkeeper.
He produced some bread and cheese. I was craving some of Mom’s burek but was hungry enough for whatever.
