by Jake Bible
Uh…I had nothing.
So I pulled her to me and hung on until she stopped crying. It felt like she cried forever and yet it was not long enough, as she clung to me, her tears wetting my tunic that had just begun to dry out from the suns above.
“Sorry, sorry,” she said as she pushed away gently and wiped her eyes then her nose. “I remembered.”
I looked at her, puzzled, and raised an eyebrow. “Remembered? Remembered what?”
“Oh, Lord, you don’t know,” she gasped. “That’s right. You weren’t with us.”
“Sandra? What happened?” I asked, pretty damn sure I did not want to know the answer.
The tears started again, but she told me.
She told me of fighting the Ghost of the Beast. She told me of how the monster just would not yield. It hammered at them again and again and every strategy they tried had almost no effect.
She told me of how the Ghost of the Beast had slashed out at her, trying to grab her arm, the arm that held her dagger, a dagger that was one of the few things that seemed to hurt the Beast. But the Beast’s claw never reached her because Trish had shoved her out of the way, taking the attack herself.
Sandra cried for five minutes straight before she could admit that Trish was dead, her chest ripped wide open to expose her rib cage and a no-longer-beating heart.
“Shit,” was all I could say. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. Sandra nodded at me, understanding what I meant, and wiped her eyes and nose again.
“Then who created the storm?” I asked after a couple of quiet seconds. “Ming was with me and Trish usually handled scary-ass weather magic like that.”
“Kip did it,” Sandra said. “Oh, Steve, I’ve never seen him so upset. He raised his fists and screamed at the sky and the storm appeared. He put all of his energy into it and collapsed almost instantly. The last thing I remember seeing before everything went so very wrong was Coz trying to decide if he should pick up Trish’s body or pick up Kip. He looked so sad, Steve. So sad.”
“I bet,” I said.
Another lame response. You’d think after all the loss I’d endured through the years of dealing with the undead apocalypse in the real world I would have been good at saying something better. But the loss of friends just wasn’t something you could get used to. Not unless you shut your heart off and lived like a cold son of a bitch.
Sandra totally surprised me and took my hand and rubbed it between her two palms. Her hands were warm and soft, her fingers as wrinkled from the intense rain as mine, and all I wanted to do was grab her and hug her some more.
She looked at me and smiled then slowly got to her feet, letting my hand drop into my lap.
“Come on,” she said. “We need to search for them.”
“Where do we start?” I asked as I got up and stood next to her. I stared out at the soggy landscape. “Did you see any of them head anywhere? I didn’t.”
I stretched and winced at the stiffness of my muscles. Getting your ass handed to you then sleeping on cold ground while soaking wet wasn’t exactly great for Health. I sneezed a few times just to prove my point to myself.
Character class: Ranger
Character alignment: Chaotic Good
Character level: 12
Health: 41%
Strength: 71%
Agility: 45%
Magic: 15%
Armor: leather, no bonus
Coin: 200 gold pieces, 155 silver pieces, 0 copper pieces
Inventory: Long bow with 14 regular arrows, 4 magical. 1 long sword of Breaking (Level 16). The Dark Blade, inactive (level unknown). 2 tunics. 1 pair of breeches. 1 hooded cloak. 1 satchel with 1 wine skin, empty.
Strength and Health benefitted from a night’s sleep, but my Agility suffered. The thought of trudging across EverRealm for another couple of days seriously depressed me.
“Here,” Sandra said, taking something from one of her pouches. She held it out and I frowned. “It’ll restore your stats to 100%.”
“What is it?” I asked. It was fuzzy and green. Very fuzzy and green. And possibly wiggling. I leaned in. Yeah, it was wiggling. “Nope. Not eating that. It’s alive.”
“It’s a Corbelon Worm,” she said.
“I don’t eat moving bugs. In fact, and I can say this with all confidence, I don’t eat any bugs, moving or not.”
“What is your Health at?” Sandra asked.
“It’s fine,” I said.
41% wasn’t horrible. Wasn’t good, but wasn’t horrible. Maybe we could catch a nap later and give it a boost. I could tell by the way she was looking at me that she was thinking the exact same thing I was.
“And if we are attacked by another herd of undead centaurs?” Sandra asked. “Or something even worse? It’s just the two of us right now, Steve. I know a spell or two, but nothing good in a fight. You’re Level 10.”
“Level 12, thank you,” I said. She cocked a hip and crossed her arms over her chest. She didn’t have to say a word. “Alright, alright, I’ll admit that if we are attacked, then odds are I’ll probably die.” She didn’t change her position. “Fine! No probably about it.”
“I don’t know how you survived yesterday,” Sandra said.
“This,” I said and pulled the Dark Bade. It was just its usual dark self, no glowing, no flames. “It was more impressive yesterday.”
She uncrossed her arms and opened her hand. The worm was waiting for me.
“Shouldn’t we save it for later?” I asked. “What if we get hurt and really need it?”
“I have other things,” she said. “This is one of my lower-level items.”
That made me raise an eyebrow. “Something that restores my stats to 100% is one of your lower-level items? That seems weird.”
Then I saw it. She was holding something back. Sandra was a shit liar, and while she wasn’t exactly lying, she has a tell for that, she was withholding the truth, which for Sandra is the same thing.
“Sandra? What’s the catch?” I asked. “Tell me.”
She sighed. “It may give you some slight stomach upset.”
“How slight? And what do you mean by upset?” I asked. “I spent a lot of time puking yesterday, so I’d rather not start up again.”
“No, you won’t throw up,” she said. “But there could be other issues.”
“Dammit, what issues?” I snapped then took a deep breath. “Sorry. You’re only helping. I didn’t mean to snap.”
“I know,” she said. She looked down at her feet and kicked a clump of bright green grass. “Uh…you might have diarrhea. Maybe.”
“Maybe? Oh, well isn’t that great,” I replied, the sarcasm so thick that even I winced at it. But, come on, diarrhea?
“Maybe not,” she said. “Everyone reacts differently. You could be fine.”
“Are you going to eat one too?” I asked, copying her previous stance by cocking a hip and crossing my arms over my chest. “Hmmmm?”
“Yes,” she said and shivered.
“Ha!” I nearly shouted and pointed at her. “You don’t want to either! There’s no maybe, is there? We’re gonna totally shit ourselves!”
“I have remedies that can mitigate the worst of the effects,” Sandra said then in a quieter voice. “I also have rags of self-cleaning in my pack. You know, for when we have to…”
“Oh, my God,” I said. I turned and walked a few feet away then spun about. “This. This right here. This is why I hate EverRealm. In Technopolis, there are toilets. There’re antacid patches. I can buy a smoothie from a street vendor and get a Health boost that won’t lead to me squatting in the bushes half the day. One reason is there are no bushes in Technopolis!”
“Sounds cold,” Sandra said. “Impersonal.”
“Your Domain is Star Fortress,” I replied. “Nothing is more cold or impersonal than space.”
“Star Fortress is neither cold nor impersonal,” she said, a little fire in her voice. Uh-oh. “I have built an amazing Domain that is filled with life and romanc
e and wonder! It is as close to a utopia as you can get! All the harmony of Star Trek, but with the adventure and style of Star Wars! And, AND, I threw a good amount of Firefly, Season 18 in there too so there would be humor and a sense of purpose! Do not disparage Star Fortress!”
“Lame name,” I said.
“Oh, and Technopolis is so witty!” she said, using air quotes around the name of my Domain. “Of course it is because Steve is always the wittiest of us all! So smart and so full of great opinions! Well, you know what?”
She stomped over to me and pointed a finger in my face.
“You’re not smart, you’re just damn lucky!” she shouted. “Lucky you have friends that can carry your ass because otherwise, you’d be nothing but a lame gamer living with his dog in a lonely high-rise with nothing but the undead below to listen to your stupid jokes!”
There was a pop and a squish. Green juice oozed from her fist.
“Dammit!” she yelled as she opened her hand to reveal a smashed worm. “And damn you, Steve!”
She licked her palm clean, staring at me the entire time. I could see her want to gag, but she kept it cool and calm. When she was done licking up the bug guts and juice, she pulled a rag from her pack and wiped her hand then her mouth. She snapped the rag in my direction and the worm gunk that had been on it was gone instantly.
Sandra put the rag back in her pack, reached into a pouch, pulled out a second worm, and shoved it in my face.
“You will eat this or so help me God, I swear I will stun you with Habesnap Moss and make you eat it!” she shouted so loud that some far-off flock of birds protested with loud caws. “Eat it!”
“Okay, okay, I’ll eat it,” I replied, my voice small and cowed like a beaten five year old’s.
I took the worm and a deep breath then plopped the wiggling nightmare into my mouth and bit down. It popped open instantly, and my tongue was coated in a thick liquid that tasted like the ass end of a dead squirrel that had been eating licorice all winter long. Chewing faster didn’t help, but it allowed me to swallow the disgusting gunk after only a couple of seconds.
Sandra produced a water bladder and held it out. I drank a ton then gave it back. She finished it off and gave it a smack. It filled back up before she put it in her pack.
“We should go,” she said and pointed to the far-off mountains.
Mountains that looked farther than they were yesterday. We’d run in the wrong direction when escaping the village and the undead centaurs. Dammit.
Sort of. It looked like maybe we’d run diagonal from the mountains, so maybe we weren’t as far off as I thought. However, there did seem to be one thick-ass forest between us and the mountains and thick-ass forests in EverRealm were never a good thing.
Without another word, Sandra started walking and all I could do was follow.
Twenty-Six
“Horses would be great right now,” I said.
Sandra laughed.
“What?” I said. “Horses would be great. We didn’t have time to get some from the castle because Bubby snapped her fingers and we were gone.”
“True,” Sandra said, still laughing.
“Stop it,” I said, starting to get pissed. “What’s wrong with riding horses?”
“Steve,” she said in probably the first condescending tone I’d ever heard her use. Sandra seemed to be changing before my eyes. Or, maybe, I was changing enough to notice who she was in EverRealm. Either way, she continued with, “You can’t ride a horse.”
“Like hell I can’t,” I said. “I’ve ridden horses before in other Domains.”
“In the game. As your character,” Sandra said. “You’re talking about Kip’s Dodge County, right?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m talking about,” I said.
“Steve, every character in that game can ride a horse,” Sandra said. “It’s a default setting. You could be missing both hands and have no legs and you’d still be able to handle the basics of horseback. This isn’t Dodge County.”
“Hey, I was pretty good at riding horses in that Domain,” I said. “I can remember how here, too.”
“Have you ever ridden a horse in the real world?” she asked, stopping to turn and stare at me.
“No,” I said. “I’m a city boy. The only horses in the city pull those lame carriages around the park for tourists.”
“Exactly,” Sandra said. “What’s your skill level here in EverRealm?”
“Uh, so-so,” I said. She narrowed her eyes. “Okay, probably not great.”
I brought up a submenu and scanned through the minor skills my character had. I could fletch my own arrows, which was useful. Whittle wood into small figurines which was useless. There were some basic foraging skills, forest navigation (we know how well that went), strength in languages of all creatures (again with the not-so-great performance), a few other things and something called “Taming,” whatever that was.
No horseback riding.
“I can do it,” I insisted.
“Sure you can,” she said with a wry smile. “If we come across some horses, then you will have your chance to prove that. Until then, we walk.”
Which we did. All day long.
Of course, the walking was punctuated by several stops we both needed to make. Several stops. Sandra had some herbs to ease our intestinal discomfort, but in the end, pun intended, we just had to suffer through it.
I will admit she was right. Despite the unease of our stops, having all of my stats fill to 100% was well worth it. I hadn’t felt as good as I did in years.
There was a side benefit to what should have quite possibly been the most embarrassing day of my life. Sandra and I bonded in a way that I did not see coming. You drop a lot of your pretense and social awkwardness when you’re scrambling to get your breeches down and don’t even have a bush to hide behind. Both of us were reduced to constant laughing fits once the initial horror of the first few incidents had passed. Strangely, it felt so natural, squatting a couple yards from her as we did what neither of us could stop from doing.
I had to wonder if that’s what couples that lived together felt like. The bodies were what they were and you got over it. We just had to get over the awkwardness in a day, not in weeks or months or years.
Not that I’d ever want to repeat that day ever again. No goddamn way.
By late afternoon, our bellies chilled out and there were no more pit stops. We were able to pick up our pace and make up the time we’d lost. There was only one problem. The thick-ass forest barely got closer. We walked and walked and it was still so far off.
But it did grow in size across the horizon as we left the rolling hills and entered a large valley cut down the middle by a good-sized river. The far side of the valley was where the tall, dark green trees began to gather and beyond that was nothing but more dark green for as far as our eyes could see. The mountains were only snow-capped peaks barely visible above the expanse of the thick-ass forest. But it was a huge valley, and we knew we still had a long way to go.
Dread filled my belly as the suns began to set and Sandra looked about for a good place to make camp. Neither of us liked the wide-open exposure of the valley, but there wasn’t much we could do about it. Sticking to the river seemed like a good idea; otherwise, when we reached the forest, we’d be struggling against underbrush and a serious threat of getting lost.
Sandra made a point of mentioning how it should be impossible for a Ranger to get lost in a forest, but I didn’t take the bait and busied myself with building us a campfire just above a sandy beach along a wide bend in the river.
That was something I could do; make a fire. I’d lived in a brownstone for years where the only heat was from a huge fireplace down in the living room.
Realistically, the fireplace was so old that I, and my roommates, should have died of either asphyxiation from the crappy chimney or from the entire brick fireplace collapsing and setting the house on fire. But, in the end, all that happened was that I knew how to bu
ild a damn good fire.
Campfires were slightly different, but I hid my few false starts and mistakes well before getting it right and lighting up our little spot we’d decided to bed down in. Sandra had a bedroll in her pack and laid it out then set about trying to make a meal of the meager supplies we had with us.
“I’m going to go wash up,” I said, holding up the self-cleaning rag that had been my bosom companion all day. “Maybe give Raggy a rinse, too.”
She looked up at me as she wrapped some paste stuff in leaves and set them at the edge of the fire.
“Raggy will appreciate the sentiment,” she said, her smile magical by the firelight. “But you really do not need to, Steve. Self-cleaning means self-cleaning. The magic is solid.”
“Still,” I said and waved my hands over my body. “I could use a rinse even if Raggy doesn’t need one.”
“Okay,” she said and kept smiling.
“No peeking,” I said, wagging a finger jokingly.
The smile vanished and she looked down at the food so fast I thought she was going to topple over into the campfire.
Shit.
“Uh, yeah, so, I’ll be right back,” I said and walked down onto the sandy beach.
Back from where? What the hell did I say that for? There was no back from anything. The beach was six feet from the campfire, and there was only six feet of sand before there was nothing but slow-moving river. Twelve feet between us.
Nice one, Steve. Real smooth.
But, there I was. I’d said I was going to wash up, and I’d obviously made it sound like I was gonna be stripping down when I made that no peeking remark. If I only scrubbed my hands and splashed water on my face, I was going to look like a total loser. I couldn’t let that happen.
So off came the clothes. Boots, breeches, tunic, everything. I was down to my bare skin and I hurried into the oh-so-freaking cold river. I gasped as I rushed up to my chest, the slow current tugging slightly at me, but not enough to put me off balance.
“Are you…alright?” Sandra called.
“Yeah, yeah, fine,” I said through suddenly chattering teeth. “It’s really, uh, refreshing.”
