Cordelia had been worried her half-orc looks would draw attention, but if anything, the religious vestments Morgan wore drew more looks. Eriko caught Ena’s arm as she brought their first round and asked about it.
“We don’t see too many battle clerics in these parts,” the barmaid explained. “They’re more common in places that see more conflict. We’re pretty far from contested lands.”
“I’m making people nervous,” Morgan said.
“Maybe a bit,” Ena said.
“If anyone asks, you can tell them I’m just passing through. I came to see some old friends before going off to the front,” Morgan said, giving Ena one of his ten gigawatt smiles. The barmaid nodded and hurried off.
“Playing the role of a priest has brought out the liar in you,” Eriko said. “I like it.”
“I don’t know if these people are real or not, but if I can lie and make them feel less weird around us, I’ll take it,” he said.
“So, I guess what we need to now is figure out how we… get home,” Jack said. “Whatever that means. I mean we’re here. We’re physically here.”
“We can feel pain,” Tobias said.
“All I did was pinch you,” Eriko said.
“Pain is pain, Eriko,” Tobias said, then winked at her.
“You’re ridiculous.”
“And proud of it,” Tobias said.
“Would it be so bad if we were stuck here?” Tamsin said. She had her slender hands wrapped around a mug of mulled wine she hadn’t sipped. “I mean… This is a lot more interesting than what any of us had going on in real life, right?”
Jack opened his mouth to protest, then scrunched his brow.
“Trying to figure out what you have to go home to that would be better than being a ranger with a magical wolf sidekick, aren’t you,” Tamsin said.
“I… huh,” Jack said. “No, no, we need to get back. Or out. Or whatever. We can’t stay here. Cordelia…”
“I’m not going to lie, guys, I don’t hate being a half-orc,” Cordelia said.
“You are a remarkably good-looking half-orc,” Tamsin said.
“I can’t tell if you’re screwing with my mind or not,” Cordelia said.
“You’re like a combination of Gamora from Guardians of the Galaxy mixed with Imperator Furiosa and one of the background Amazons from Wonder Woman,” Tobias said.
Everyone turned to look at him.
“That is insanely specific,” Jack said.
“I’ve literally been sitting here figuring out how to describe what she looks like for like twenty-five minutes,” Tobias said.
“I swear, Tobias, if you put that brain toward doing anything useful you could cure cancer,” Tamsin said.
“Okay,” Cordelia said, taking a swig from her mug. “So we’ve established I’m not Swamp Thing. Can we talk about where we are and what we do next?”
Jack turned to Eriko.
“You said there’s a wall around the town,” he said.
“More like a glorified wooden fence, but yeah.”
“And outside, we have bandits, a trade road…” he closed his eyes for a moment. “I didn’t have a ton of time to look it over, but I’m pretty sure that’s what the starting area for the game we were playing looked like.”
“Was it really called Moderate Expectations?” Eriko said.
“No, it was sort of left open-ended,” he said. “It’s a sandbox game.”
“You’re gonna have to explain that one to me,” Tamsin said.
“You get to explore at will. It’s not on a straight track,” Morgan said. “Instead of a set beginning and end, the players can move around and discover their own path.”
“And we just appeared out of thin air into that sandbox,” Eriko said. “That’s wonderful.”
Eriko felt an eerie sense of dread washing over her. No, not really dread, per se—more like foreboding. Her nose itched. She tuned out the conversation with her friends. Slowly, she leaned forward in her chair and stood up.
“Where you going, Eriko?” Tamsin said.
Eriko held up a hand as if to shush her friend. She stepped away from the table and made a slow, casual circle of the tavern. Finally, she saw what she was looking for. Deftly, she crept up behind the man in the same brown, hooded cloak she’d seen following her and Tobias earlier. She drew a knife from her belt and stepped up behind him, placing the point just above his kidney.
“Care you explain why you’ve been following us, friend?” Eriko whispered. “Don’t make a scene. This is a nice establishment.”
The man’s body tensed, then relaxed, sensing how close the knife was to digging into his flesh.
“I’m a Red Sox fan,” the man said.
“What?” Eriko said.
“I owned a Jeep with two hundred thousand miles on it. I collected Batman comics,” he continued. “I’m not from here. And neither are you.”
“What are you talking about? Why are you following us?”
“I’m the last one left alive from my campaign,” the man said, his voice tightening with fought-back tears. “And I want to help make sure you don’t turn out the same way.”
Chapter 9: The watcher
Morgan found himself staring across the table at the stranger Eriko had dragged across the tavern at knifepoint. Her tactics were going to have to be a conversation for another time, but for now, they had a bigger situation on their hands.
He was much older than Morgan and his friends, with a gray-flecked beard, weathered eyes—weathered eye, really, since one disappeared behind an eyepatch—a body that was lean and hard from years on the run. He looked every bit like an adventurer who had fallen on hard times.
And he claimed to be from the real world, just like them.
“What’s your name,” Jack asked. Jack stood, hood up so that a shadow fell across his eyes. It was funny, Morgan noted, how much they had all begun to automatically take on characteristics of the characters they played. Tobias lounged with a casual languidness he didn’t have back in the real world. Eriko never stopped watching the room. Cordelia absently sharpened her axe with a grindstone at every quiet moment.
“I’m… Oh, I can tell you my real name,” he said, as if the opportunity was a Christmas gift. “I’m Bennett. My character here, this character, I’m called Anders, but back home I’m Bennett. There’s been nobody who has known me by that name in so long.”
“How long… how long have you been here?” Tamsin asked, leaning in.
Bennett took a long sip from a mug of ale Tobias had set in front of him.
“Time moves weird here,” he said. “By my count… I’ve seen no fewer than fifteen winters. How much time that is in the real world I have no idea.”
“Fifteen years,” Jack said. “Shit.”
“How did you get here?” Cordelia asked.
“Same as you I’m guessing. Were you playing that stupid game?” Bennett said. “Looks like a fancy knockoff of HeroQuest or some such?”
“Yeah,” Jack said softly.
“That’s what gets you,” Bennett said. His hands shook, Morgan noted. Nerves, exhaustion, drink, he couldn’t tell. “That’s what gets everyone.”
“Everyone,” Morgan said. “So, we’re not the first… people from back home you’ve found?”
Bennett shook his head.
“Two other groups,” Bennett said. “Once early on, my friends and I met a group in our travels. We traded a few stories, but everyone was just having fun at the time. They were headed to a dungeon in the mountains to the south. Never saw them again.”
“And the others?” Eriko asked.
“A few years back. I tried to warn them,” Bennett said. “They wouldn’t listen. But I tried to warn them.”
“Warn them about what?” Eriko said.
Bennett reached for her hand. Morgan watched as Eriko almost recoiled. Bennett was missing his pinky on that hand, bandaged over to hide the maimed digit.
“That what happens here is real,” Benn
ett said. “It doesn’t feel real, and the game… the game wants you to take risks. It rewards you for taking risks. But what happens here…”
“I take it you showed up here with two eyes,” Tobias said.
“Tobias,” Tamsin said harshly.
“No, no, it’s a valid question. Yes, I lost my eye here,” Bennett said. “And my finger, and I’ve got more than my share of scars. But the game rewards risk takers. It doesn’t steal people from the real world to be farmers or peasants. It wants you to be heroes.”
“And that’s how you knew we didn’t belong here,” Eriko said. “Because we look like adventurers.”
“Well, that and your bard kept dropping anachronisms,” Bennett said. “I overheard him call himself the elven David Bowie or something and I knew you were like me. Not that the anachronisms matter. The locals will ignore you if you talk about television or cell phones, or just act mildly confused. It’s easier if you stay in character to talk with them, but they won’t punish you for slips.”
“Why are you alone?” Tamsin said. She took a long sip from a tall glass of wine she’d asked the barmaid for. Morgan could see color in Tamsin’s cheeks. She was on the verge of a panic attack. We need to keep an eye on her, he thought. This must twice as weird for her as it is for the rest of us. “You said you met other groups, and you had friends.”
“My friends and I… we thought, if we beat the game somehow we’d go home. Right? So we played along. But…”
“What happens here is real,” Jack said.
“Slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, in the literal sense,” Bennett said. “My best friend was the first to go, and it wasn’t even through combat. He thought if he died in the game he’d… I don’t know, he’d respawn back home. He’d somehow be free and could clean up the game and bring us all back. He jumped off a parapet.”
“And that didn’t work,” Tamsin said.
“For all I know, he’s home,” Bennett said. “Maybe they all went home. I don’t know. But the pain we endure here is real. I… I have to believe death is too.”
“How’d you survive so long on your own?” Cordelia asked.
Bennett took a long swig from his mug again.
“I’m a rogue, like this one here,” he said, pointing to Eriko. “The game might want to kill you, but it doesn’t want you to starve. Petty theft and pickpocketing, small jobs here and there. It’ll sustain you, even as it calls you to greater adventure.”
“But those adventures don’t lead home,” Morgan said.
“I don’t know,” Bennett said. “I don’t honestly think we were wrong. I think we pursued the wrong stories.”
“Pursued the wrong stories?” Morgan said. Then he winced. “We’re in a sandbox.”
“Yeah,” Bennett said. “And there’s no way of finding the right… quest or story arc that will lead you out.”
“Whoever created this game is a jackass,” Tobias said.
“Bennett,” Cordelia said. “You said the right stories. How will we know if the right story finds us?”
The older man was about to speak when someone stormed into the tavern, kicking the doors open violently. The newcomer was drenched—they’d been so engrossed in Bennett’s tales, they hadn’t noticed the weather pick up outside.
The stranger staggered around, ripping a cap from his head.
“She’s gone,” the man said. He was red of face and beard, burly but ordinary in most respects.
“Calm down, now, Hink,” Ena, the barmaid, said. “What’s happening. Tell us, now.”
“My little girl, someone’s took her,” the newcomer Ena called Hink said. “Broke in through her window and she’s gone…”
A murmur rose up around the tavern. Glasses clinked as men rose from their seats and leather creaked as sword-belts and armor was adjusted.
“Ain’t the first one neither,” Hink said.
“Oh, no,” Eriko said under her breath.
“What,” Morgan said. Eriko waved him off.
“Guards were talkin’. They knew someone was stealin’ children in the night. Weeks now. Nothin’, not a word to us. Help me,” Hink said. “I need to find my girl.”
Morgan grabbed Eriko’s wrist. She made a face at him—I don’t know? She seemed to ask—but it was Jack who spoke up instead.
“I’m a ranger,” Jack said. Morgan almost laughed in spite of the terror of the situation at how in-character Jack became in that moment. There was a languidness to his speech patterns, a folksy quiet. “I can track. My friends can fight if it comes to it. We’ll go.”
“He’s going to get us all killed,” Tobias said. “I kind of love it.”
“Thank you, sir,” Hink said, rushing over to Jack’s side. “I’ll take you to my home. Maybe you can find tracks before the rain washes them away.”
“Jack,” Morgan said. He gestured with his eyes toward the twins.
Jack shrugged.
“Do we all go?” Eriko said.
“I’m in,” Cordelia said, rising to her full height and tossing her axe onto her shoulder. She looked to Morgan. “Might need a man of the cloth if the kid’s hurt. Or if we get hurt ourselves.”
Morgan rose as well.
“You two should stay here,” Morgan said to Tamsin. “This isn’t your fault. The rest of us can at least pretend we’ve done this before.”
“I’m coming,” Tamsin said.
Tobias glared at her.
“I can’t tell if these people are fiction or not, but they feel real,” she said. “And I’m not going to let some little girl die in the rain.”
Tobias stood up begrudgingly too.
“I’m going to get my fancy bard vest wet,” he said. “I was just starting to get used to it.”
“Bennett?” Morgan said.
“I’ll be here when you get back,” he said. He gestured with his maimed hand. “I’m not much use out in the field these days.”
Tobias tossed a gold coin to Darv behind the bar.
“Can you feed our friend while we’re gone, Darv? We’re going hunting,” the bard said.
“I’ll see what I can do, elf,” Darv said. “Stay safe out there.”
“I don’t think there’s anything quite so ominous as someone telling you to stay safe,” Tobias said. “But thanks.”
Chapter 10: Into the rain
“So the fun part is over,” Tobias said, hiding beneath an embroidered cloak, water cascading from the tip of his fancy hat.
“At least you had a fun part,” Cordelia said. She’d drawn her axe and held it casually at her side, her grip high on the haft to keep better control of the blade. This new body was taking some getting used to, she thought. The strength was amazing, a vitality she’d never felt in the real world, but she felt vaguely dangerous at all times, as if she might break someone’s neck reaching across the table for the salt shaker.
The constitution that went along with her new orcish body seemed to be less troubled by the weather, at least. She felt the cool rain seeping through her clothes and armor, but it felt more like a passing chill thought than actual discomfort. Leaving Tobias to whine toward the back, she stomped up closer to the front of the train, where Jack was following close behind Hink, whispering with Eriko.
“So—you can really do this then?” Cordelia asked.
Jack nodded at her.
“I think it’s a matter of just believing we know how to do these things,” he said. “You’d never swung a two-handed battle axe before this morning, right? And you’re a right killing machine with it.”
“My perception is through the roof,” Eriko said. “I thought I was paranoid before, but I notice everything. It’s almost superhuman.”
“And both Tamsin and Morgan cast spells,” Cordelia said. “I suppose if we can do all this, you should be able to track footprints in the mud.”
“I know I can,” Jack said. “I didn’t pay it much mind when we were headed here, but like Eriko, I see things I wouldn’t have before. Broken bran
ches, flattened grass. It’s like in this world I’m attuned to look for signs like that.”
“You don’t seem the least bit freaked out by this,” Cordelia said. “Where’s your wolf, by the way?”
Jack gave her a halfhearted smile, barely visible beneath his green hood.
“Oh, I’m at level eleven of freaking out,” Jack said. “But what other choice do we have? And…”
Jack whistled sharply. Something moved in the underbrush. Hink, startled, moved into a fighting position, but Jack put a hand on the bigger man’s shoulder. Out of the rainy forest, the black and gray shadow of Jack’s animal companion bounded up to them.
“We have backup if my tracking, um, skills prove insufficient,” Jack said.
Hink shook his head, then gestured up ahead.
“There’s my house,” he said, pointing toward a modest wooden structure on the edge of town. “My little girl, Madsin, her room is around back.”
“How do we handle this?” Cordelia asked.
Jack turned to Morgan.
“You’re usually party leader, Father,” Jack said, putting a touch of humor in the title. “What say you?”
Morgan winced as if Jack had said something offensive. Shaking his head, he started pointing around the group.
“You and Cordie go look for tracks out back, through the window. Eriko, why don’t you go examine her room, if that’s okay with you, Mr. Hink,” Morgan said.
“Hinkley, but Hink is fine, Father,” the big man said.
“Tam and I will wait out front in case something goes wrong. We’ll keep an eye on the street,” Morgan said.
“What about me?” Tobias said. Catching a glare from Morgan, he shrugged. “I’ll go with Eriko then. Inside sounds better than out here.”
Eriko darted off, disappearing in through the front door. Tobias followed awkwardly after. Jack and his wolf skirted the edge of the home. Cordelia trotted after them.
“He got a name?” Cordelia said.
“Huh?”
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