Keeper

by Tom Larcombe

  He'd love to practice his Arc spell as well, but he really couldn't think of a way to mix it in with what he was doing. So he'd focus on the walls and temple for today and practice the Arc spell some other time, when he figured out how to do it easily.

  He sat down to breakfast and Liv brought him out a platter with some fried eggs, strips of rabbit meat, and risen bread.

  “We have enough dough finally?” he asked.

  “The baker made some, just enough for breakfast though. I mentioned to him that you'd been missing risen bread badly and that's why you'd ended up paying so much for a simple starter. He said that we could still increase the overall starter we've got while serving it with breakfast. So there you go. Might take an extra week or so to get enough of it to be serving it with dinner as well this way, but I let him make the call.”

  Eddie was busy stuffing the warm, fresh bread into his mouth so his reply was mumbled around the mouthful he was chewing on.

  Tiana was right when she said how good real fresh-baked bread was, he thought.

  “It was a good call,” he said.

  He tore through breakfast, asking for a platter to take up to Tiana. He got an almost identical meal along with a pitcher filled with coffee. He took two mugs, since he'd want some more caffeine before he really got going, then climbed the stairs to his room.

  Lucky was sprawled out on top of the blanket, lying over Tiana's feet. Eddie cleared his throat loudly and the cat startled and jumped up, Tiana didn't move. So he took the tray and held it close enough for the scent of fresh bread and coffee to reach her nose.

  A minute later her nose twitched, then her eyes opened.

  “Is that bread? Real bread?” she asked.

  “Get up and you can find out,” he replied, pouring cups of coffee for both of them.

  It was the quickest he'd seen her actually go from asleep to awake. A few moments later, she was sitting with her legs hanging over the edge of the bed, reaching for the slice of bread that was still steaming in the cool air.

  Much like Eddie, she practically crammed it into her mouth, completely finishing the thick slice of bread before moving on to her coffee and the rest of her food.

  When she'd cleared the plate and was working on her second cup of coffee, she finally spoke.

  “So, we can have bread all the time now?”

  “Nope, so far it's just going to be with breakfast, but hey, we can have it with breakfast all the time. You were right, by the way. Fresh, warm bread knocks the socks off of that stuff you get out of the wrapper,” Eddie said.

  “I told you so. Now, let me get dressed so I can go down and get some more bread before I get to work today.”

  Eddie stepped back, grabbing the tray and everything but her coffee mug. She slipped out from under the covers and dressed quickly, since the room was a touch on the cool side. Despite it's brevity, Eddie enjoyed watching the process.

  When she was done, she looked at him, watching her, and shook her head.

  “Lech,” she said.

  “Guilty as charged,” he replied. “Shall we?”

  He opened the door and let her out into the hall first. He wondered why everything was so noisy for a moment, until he realized that the scent of the fresh baked bread permeated the inn and everyone who had a room there would have smelled it by now.

  When he got to the common room he found that his guess was right. Unlike the normally sparse crowd for breakfast, the room was close to full. It looked like most of the people renting rooms were now at tables, eating.

  He slipped back into the kitchen, just in time. There were only a couple of loaves of bread left by this point, so he quickly removed two slices and left.

  I don't think they saw me, he thought. Wait, what am I worried about, it's my inn. They aren't going to do anything to me for grabbing a couple of slices of bread.

  When he made it back over to Tiana he offered her a slice.

  “Um, could I have the other one?” she asked.

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “I really love the heels of the loaves, where it's part crunchy and part soft?” she admitted, her cheeks taking on a hint of pink with the admission.

  He handed her the heel end of the loaf and happily started munching on his own slice. They took one of the unoccupied tables and sipped their coffee while they ate their bread. Eddie, who'd resigned himself to a boring day of fence building, was now in a much better mood than he'd been when he woke up.

  ~ ~ ~

  Eddie's day took on a pattern. Each section of fence took him a little under half an hour since all the lumber for it was already placed, so he'd do two sections, then take the ten to fifteen minutes left in the hour to walk down to the temple and do several sections of the temple wall. After that he'd go back and do another two sections, sit down for a short break then start the whole cycle all over again. That routine allowed him to finish another eight sections of wall with two trips to the temple before lunch time.

  He and Tiana went back to the inn for lunch this time.

  “So, how's your wall work going?” she asked him while they waited for their food.

  “I got almost another half of a side done this morning. I'll have more time to work on it this afternoon than I did in the morning so I'm hoping to finish that entire side today. Paul said he'll work on it this afternoon as well, so we'll be making good progress,” Eddie replied. “Oh, and Karl sent me an email earlier. He thinks he'll be back in tonight or tomorrow morning.”

  “Good. Allie misses him, although she won't even admit it to me. I can tell though, she's quieter than normal and she keeps looking around like there's something missing.”

  “She's down at the temple with you? I didn't see her there earlier on.”

  “She stopped by for a while, then she said something about a surprise and disappeared again.”

  “Becky still helping you also?”

  “She is, surprisingly enough. Doing a pretty good job also. Evidently she has some sort of minor dig spell and she dug out a pond for me. I had to kind of hack the AoE of my Create Spring spell, but I managed by having her dig a big doughnut shape around where I was going to put the spring. After I cast it I just put a few little holes in the stone around the spring, and that was harder than I thought it would be, but now water cascades out of the little stone area the spell fills and the water coming out is slowly deepening the pond.”

  “Um, isn't that going to spill over?”

  “I hope not, I placed the holes in the stone lower than the the lip of the pond she dug out. I hope that when the water gets to that level, it'll just stop creating more, just like it does when it fills itself normally.”

  “Well, I guess we'll find out, won't we?” Eddie said. “Although if that works then there's a lot of other things you could do with it too.”

  She nodded.

  “I thought about a few other things I could do with it, but I really don't want to abuse the system too much. I didn't think anyone would care if it was done for ornamental purposes though.”

  Eddie nodded as the server brought food to their table. Both of them were hungry from their building efforts and dug right in.

  Before they'd finished their lunch Opron came into the inn. When he saw Eddie he walked over to the table and sat down.

  “Got all those arrowheads done and thought you might have a use for some of these too,” he said, tossing a large chunk of metal onto the table with a 'clunk'.

  Eddie picked it up and looked. It was a large, heavy hinge, with a thick iron hinge pin.

  “Actually yeah, we just tied the gate in place with rope on the first wall we did. We could use a few of these, at least eight for the gates in the walls.”

  “Good thing I've got a few more of those then, isn't it?” the dwarfish smith said with a smile before hefting a small sack onto the table. “Now, it's time for some lunch.”

  Delgar had come in behind Opron and now Opron left to join the other dwarf at the table he'd claimed. Eddie gr
abbed the bag the dwarf had left on the table, tossed the hinge he was holding into it, then dropped the whole thing in his inventory.

  “Well, no rest for the wicked,” he said. “Or for me, either.”

  “Oh, you're easily wicked enough to deserve no rest,” Tiana said, smiling.

  “Really? And I suppose you're planning on taking the afternoon off?”

  “Hey, we were talking about you, not me. Not a chance anyhow, everything is so close to coming together for the temple. By the time you have a chance to finish off those walls everything else will be done or close to it.”

  He stood, ready to get back to work.

  “See, I was right then, no rest for the wicked,” he said with a pointed look at her.

  “Ooh, you...” she reached out and grabbed his shirt, tugging him down for a kiss before releasing him again.

  “You'll be down to do more work on the wall then?” she asked.

  “Probably about three times over the course of the afternoon if I use the same schedule I did for this morning.”

  “I'll see you there then.”

  Eddie left the inn and whistled for Lucky. The cat had been hunting in the forest again while he worked on the wall, but she'd followed him back to the inn earlier. She came racing out from behind the inn and when she pounced on him and started licking his face he was painfully aware that she'd had fish for lunch again.

  “Really Lucky, fish breath again? Well, at least it's not goblin breath,” he said.

  He spent a couple of minutes petting her before starting to make his way back to Adventurers' Field to continue work on the wall. When he got there, Paul was working on the second defensive tower. Eddie settled in for a boring afternoon of work, or at least he hoped it would be boring. Another goblin attack would be more excitement than he wanted at the moment, at least until the walls were all up.

  He got his wish, the only disturbance in his hours of building defensive walls and working on the temple walls was when he got the message telling him that his carpentry skill had advanced to an eight.

  Dinner was him, with a bunch of his friends, at the largest table in the inn. Paul had finished the defensive tower and managed about a quarter of the wall on the opposite side of the field from where Eddie was working. Eddie had managed to complete all but one section of wall on the side he'd been doing, and he'd also replaced the ropes on the original gate with a pair of the hinges Opron had given him. Then he'd jury-rigged a thick plank as a bar that could be placed on the inside of the gate to hold it closed. The gate on the side he'd worked on today was equipped the same way.

  Tiana was right though, Allie kept looking around as though she were looking for something or someone. Eddie took pity and let her know that Karl had emailed and said he'd be back in game tonight or tomorrow morning.

  “He emailed you?” Allie asked, indignantly.

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Because he didn't email me.”

  “Did you ever give him your email address?” Eddie asked.

  Allie flushed red, looked embarrassed, and shook her head.

  “Didn't think I'd need to do that since we were both here in the game.”

  “Make sure he has it, as a matter of fact, I'll shoot you a PM with his and you can email him. I bet he'll be glad to hear from you,” Eddie said.

  He paused long enough to send the PM, then almost burst out laughing as Allie's face immediately went distant with the look of someone using their interface.

  The rest of the meal went well with even Becky occasionally venturing into the conversation, something she hadn't done on the previous times they all sat together. Paul said that he'd spend a half day on the wall again tomorrow and ventured that if he and Eddie pushed themselves they might be able to finish it by the end of the day tomorrow.

  “And if not, it'll be close to done,” Paul said.

  Paul and his family excused themselves shortly after that, heading out to walk home. Eddie and the rest of his group, excepting Karl and Becky, stayed a while longer, nursing ales and talking. They also spent some time listening to the other adventurers in the inn. Eddie couldn't help but compare their laughter and general raucous good time to the mutters he'd heard the first time he'd walked past Adventurers' Field. A smile grew across his face and Tiana cocked her head and asked him why.

  When he explained, she laughed.

  “Of course, they've got beer now,” she said. “Plus a warm, lighted inn with good food to drink it in with their friends. It makes a difference, you know?”

  Allie suddenly started laughing like a young school girl. Every head at the table swung to stare at her since it was so out of character for her. She noticed the attention and blushed heavily.

  “He emailed me back, as soon as he got mine,” she said in explanation, then went quiet, her eyes going distant.

  “And on that note, I think it's time for me to go to bed,” Eddie said.

  As he stood up the jovial good nights he was receiving from those at the table were interrupted by a scream from outside. Since he was already standing, Eddie was the first one out the door.

  A long stream of orange light was creeping out of the forest, nowhere near the defensive walls. It was coming out of the light woods in an area that was clear of any construction or buildings. The closest current construction to the stream of torch-bearing goblins was the wall Eddie had been working on today, several hundred yards away from them. The inn was closer still to the goblins and seemed to be where they were headed.

  Eddie poked his head back in the door.

  “Goblin raiding party, with torches! They're heading for the inn,” he called out loudly.

  Then he ran back outside and pulled out his bow. It was dark out, but the torches the goblins carried gave off enough light to provide him with targets. He slung a quiver of arrows over his shoulder, ensuring that he had the broadhead arrows, then he stepped to the side, so anyone else coming out the door of the inn wouldn't run into him, and started firing.

  The reaction wasn't what he'd anticipated. A swarm of angry adventurers came racing from the inn a few seconds later. Although they'd mostly been in normal clothes in the inn, now they were armored and carrying weapons. When they saw the torches, the stream of adventurers raced towards them, screaming their anger.

  Eddie just kept firing, having finally absorbed the lessons from Allie. Jern was the only NPC he knew who was part of an adventuring party and the dwarf had set himself up about ten feet in front of Eddie, ready to tank. Dominic was on the other side of the steps to the inn, chanting. Allie, an angry look on her face since she'd been interrupted in the midst of reading Karl's email, had her bow out and was matching Eddie arrow for arrow. Tiana stood on the steps, scanning all the adventurers that had raced out into the night.

  “Dominic, light?” she asked. “I need to see if anyone needs healing.”

  Dominic's answer was to finish his chant and throw an arm skyward. An orange beam of light raced out of it to a height of about a hundred feet. Then it burst into a massive flare that hung in the air, bathing all the area in light. The light was more orange than sunlight, but still perfectly adequate to see by.

  “Damn it, the player are in my AoE, I can't fireball,” he said.

  “They're players, you can't hurt them,” Eddie spat out, between arrows.

  “My spell can't, but it lights things on fire and that definitely can.”

  “That goat sucking pissbag,” Eddie said. “Is that who I think it is? All the way on the far side of the goblins?”

  Eddie thought he'd seen a familiar plate mail clad figure out there.

  “And if Terrod's here, Sombra's probably around also,” Eddie said.

  Dominic guided his flare farther out and Eddie was sure.

  “That's him,” Tiana said. “Which means you're right and Sombra's around somewhere also. He can't mess with your buildings himself though, so what would he be doing?”

  Eddie's thoughts raced. It looked like the adventures we
re cutting through the goblins at a rapid rate. Terrod was on the far end of the field, but Terrod and Sombra had wanted to hurt him before, to destroy his inn. He was still thinking about it when a scream from inside the inn caught his attention.

  “Jern,” he called, “With me!”

  He had a good idea where Sombra was now and he knew that he couldn't hurt the thief since they were both players. His employees weren't though and that's where it looked like Sombra intended to hurt him, but Eddie had an ace in the hole. Jern wasn't a player and he could hurt Sombra.

  He raced back into the inn, following the screams to the kitchen. Liv was against the far wall, backed into a corner by Sombra, but she held a meat cleaver, one dripping with blood.

  “You damned NPC bitch, you think you're going to get away with that?” Sombra cursed.

  “Sombra!” Eddie yelled.

  The thief spun to face him.

  “You,” he spat. “This is all your fault.”

  “So, take it out on me, not Liv.”

  “Is that the NPC bitch's name? Not like it'll matter soon,” Sombra said.

  “Coward, you won't face me, will you?”

  “Stupid noob, you can't hurt me and I can't hurt you. Haven't you even learned that much yet?”

  Sombra advanced on Liv, a dagger in each hand. Before he could get to her, she lashed out with her cleaver again, catching his arm and drawing more blood. He stabbed back though, catching her extended arm with one of his daggers and drawing a heavy gush of blood.

  “Jern, get him,” Eddie said. “I've got support.”

  Eddie took a few steps forward until he was closer to Liv, then cast Nature's Binding with her as the target. Her wound closed and stopped bleeding immediately, although her face was a bit pale still. Sombra was about to stab her again when Jern planted his hammer in the middle of the thief's back.

  The strike was a hard one and unexpected, so Sombra went stumbling forward into the wall.

  “Liv, come here,” Eddie said, reaching for her hand. Once he had hold of her he pushed her towards the door to the common room.