Bounty Harlot

by Alexei Tripmiov

  “I was seeking your advice as to how I might make a few coins, sir.”

  “Yes, well. See, most young folks starting out go hunting outside the gates, killing and skinning the animals hereabouts, rats and bats and snakes and the like, selling their skins and meat for a few coppers here and there. The bones sell well at the shop in front of the Necromancer guild, I’ll tell you that for free.”

  “Thank you. I…I suppose I’ll try my hand at that.”

  “But a lovely with your beauty,” the dwarf continued, “and considering you’re a harlot by trade, I would think you have the skills to make much better money than that.”

  She knew what he was referring to, of course. She tried not to scowl at him, wanting to keep on his good side for future financial transactions.

  “I myself, for instance,” he continued, staring lasciviously at her prominent bosom, his face scarcely inches away from her twin peaks, “I myself could offer you two gold pieces for a tumble in the back of the shop…” He gestured back toward a screen separating his merchant’s tent into a sales room and a back room. “Well, not really a tumble so much as a quick one, you down on all fours and me standing behind you, like. I ought to be about the right height to take you like that.”

  “Ummm…well…”

  “Don’t know as you’ve been with a dwarf before, Miss, but I can assure you the rumors are true.” He grabbed a handful of himself through his rough pantaloons. His member sprang to life, a writhing snake that did seem rather large.

  “I’m…well, thank you for the offer, but…” She could hardly take offense at the stout merchant, as Harlot seemed to be written all over her. That murderous pimp Yuri had branded her as such when exiling her to this game world, and she could hardly fault people for treating her as one. “No, as delightful as it might be, I am resolved to embark upon a new career.”

  He looked despondent, but bore up in mature fashion. “Well, it’s a disappointment, I’ll tell you that for free, but I wish you luck in your endeavours, pretty miss, and I look forward to seeing what items you might bring me in the future.”

  Which was what she was trying to do at the present, fill her backpack with goods to sell to the blunt dwarf back at the entrance to Elsinore. For now, though, Tasha’s health was at 15 percent. She could either jog back to the gates, or sit a bit and let her health refill. She opted for the latter, taking in the sights of this strange new world she found herself in.

  To the East were the distant walls of Elsinore, long, high embattlements of a deep orange stone with pennants and flags waving high from towers that glowed in the early evening sun. To the north lay the sea, which the port city grew on like a carbuncle on a merchant vessel. And to the other two cardinal directions stretched desert, for the most part, though off in the distance she saw a purplish line that could be the trees and the beginnings of a forest.

  Around her in this chunk of desert crawled or flew a number of creatures, rats and other vermin, that the new players of this bizarre game hunted and killed for a few coins, and for the experience that would allow them to reach the next level. Thus far she had avoided other players, and they had avoided her. Apparently it was possible to fight and kill one another. Though just a “game,” the sensations were so real, the warmth of the sun, the grit of the rough, sandy ground beneath her, that she didn’t relish a confrontation with those who might do her harm. Tasha remembered how painful it had been to die, and had no wish to experience it again. Even worse was the thought of one of these realistic avatars abusing or raping her. She had relieved herself earlier, squatting and letting the water flow into the dry bed of the desert, and from what she had felt down there, as realistic as her other life, she had known that sex was a real possibility here. It was probably one of the appeals of the game, she thought, if these other players were designed as anatomically correctly as she was.

  And what of the non-player characters? The dwarf…and Sergeant Orlando? The mind boggled at the realism of all this.

  Her reverie was cut short at the sound of a barked shout: “There’s my whore!”

  Leaping to her feet, Tasha turned and saw the three young barbarians who had accosted her inside Elsinore, their ringleader, the so-called “Drogar the Assassin,” looking fully recovered now, head attached to his lean, muscular body. All three of them had weapons drawn and approached her, scarcely twenty yards from her now. Her own dagger was quickly out. It looked small in her tiny hand, and the three of them stopped to laugh at her.

  “Won’t be doing much with that, will you, whore?”

  No, she probably wouldn’t. And her health bar was only at 25 percent.

  “You’re only at Level One, aren’t you, harlot?” laughed Drogar. “Not much coin to be had when we kill you, but I suppose that doesn’t matter much. I’m paying good money for the full-immersion experience, and I plan to get my money’s worth right now!” He leapt toward her, and Tasha made her decision. She had the Speed of Cheetah potion out and swallowed in a trice, and bolted in the direction of Elsinore’s distant walls. A rush of magic coursed through her veins; a cry of newfound potency burst from her lips; her legs moved with the speed of the wind. She had never felt so alive as at that moment, the vitality of this young body magnified by a factor of ten as she shot away from Drogar and his predatory mates – then something struck her in the back…sharp pain and the awful trauma of a heavy club…a pain she had experienced before. She had been shot with a crossbow bolt…again. YOU HAVE TAKEN A CRITICAL HIT: She fell on the sand, her eyes turned up to a brilliant sky as the three men stood around her. “Dammit, did you have to kill her?” “She was getting away…” “Dammit, I wanted a piece of that…” Then her world faded to black…

  ……….

  And I awoke and found me…back in the shop of Gallywump the Merchant…

  “Welcome back, Miss,” the little creature said, his eyes sparkling. “What may I do for you this fine evening?”

  “Ummm…” She checked her invetory. Gone, all of it. The skins, bones, and meat from the creatures she had killed, the backpack she had placed them in, all gone. She was down to only one item each of food and drink, she saw, a muffin and a flask of water. She was starving and weak, and ate the muffin, washing it down with the water. Delicious, actually. How did they do that? Direct stimulation of her brain? Was she actually experiencing any of this, or was it all beamed into her head like magic?

  It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she had to find a way to survive.

  And with no food, no money, only a dagger, armor that looked more like lingerie, and her wits, would she be able to?

  She needed help. One man had been kind to her so far, if “man” was the right word. Well, one computer-generated NPC guard had saved her, and had invited her out on a date.

  Desperate times call for desperate measures.

  It was almost ten o’clock. Time to find the Glowing Wyrm.

  ……….

  Asking around was easy enough. Her charisma score really did come in handy. She saw some people begging on the street, mostly being ignored, but she realized that with her high charisma she would get the occasional coin, at least enough to buy a biscuit and a flask of water. And by staying within the gates of the city she would be relatively safe. It would be a life…of sorts.

  No, she decided. I have to get out of here. I must still be alive somewhere, my brain must be processing all of this information. And to find out what had become of her real life body, communicating with the outside world, would require massive amounts of platinum.

  The Glowing Wyrm was easy enough to find, once she backtracked to where Sergeant Orlando rescued her from Drogar and his thuggish friends. A sign hung over the door of the tavern, a bright green dragon shooting flames of light from its nostrils. Inside…wow. It looked like quite a party. The place was large enough for fifty people but it probably held half again as many as that. Creatures of all races, shapes and sizes jabbered away, drinking and smoking, raucously carousing and
, in one corner of the establishment, engaging in a fistfight. Or a male bonding ritual, she wasn’t sure which. Near that corner at a small table sat Sergeant Orlando, his sword out and the tip rested on the back of an empty chair. Saving it for her, no doubt.

  He waved at her as she approached, his formerly expressionless face breaking into a wide grin. Standing, bowing, he ushered her to the seat, sheathing his sword and sitting opposite her. A large pitcher of drink and a plate-full of rustic-looking breadstuffs awaited her. Orlando poured her a mug and gestured to the food.

  “Eat! And drink!” He raised his glass to her. “I probably should have found a nicer establishment…” He looked around at the mayhem, a quizzical expression on his face. “This is the only place I could think of, though.”

  She attacked one of the baked goods, a chewy, sweet biscuit. It was the most delicious thing she had ever eaten. Hunger is the sweetest sauce, she thought, remembering a line from a literature class she had taken in secondary school. “This is fine,” she said around a mouthful of food, then washed it down with a thick, bitter ale that was probably just as nutritious as the biscuit. How did the game designers make this so realistic? The rough wood under her partially naked ass, the tastes in her mouth, the texture of the biscuit. The smoke wafting to her nose, usually annoying to her, but now…everything she experienced amazed her. Everything here seemed even more intense than in real life, the pleasures more pleasurable…but the pain was more intense, too. She remembered dying, twice now, and decided not to get too thrilled yet about the joys of Brutalia.

  “I’m glad you like it,” he said. His glittering blue eyes met hers. “I’m glad you came.”

  “Oh, well. Thank you. You were so kind to me, earlier. And…” She couldn’t help it – tears forced their way from her eyes and down her cheeks. By his expression the roughhewn sergeant looked as though he might cry in sympathy with her.

  “Oh, please, Miss…”

  “T-tasha,” she sniffed.

  “Please Miss Tasha, don’t cry.” He refilled her mug with ale. “Whatever the problem, it could always be worse.”

  “I’m not so sure of that.”

  “You’re alive! You’re young and beautiful! Now eat and drink and tell me your problems.”

  Before stuffing another biscuit in her mouth she said, “You go first. Not your problems, I mean, unless you want to. But your life. I’m…curious.” She was. Very curious. From what she had surmised, she was talking with a computer generated graphic. A very realistic, three-dimensional graphic that felt real to the touch, and seemed real to the eye, but a Non-Player Character nonetheless. She wondered if he, or it, was aware of what it…or he…actually was.

  “Well, not much to tell there, Miss Tasha. I’m Sergeant Orlando of the City Guard. I, uh…I guard the city, and the people in it. Like earlier today, with you.”

  She nodded, motioning for him to continue as she wolfed down the food. She was getting full, but she didn’t want to stop eating. These were seriously good biscuits.

  “Well, umm. I keep the peace in the city. I’m usually stationed where you saw me, and that’s where I…uh…” He looked flummoxed, his handsome features twisted in concentration as she tried to think of something about his life to tell her. She felt a sudden empathy for him. What could he tell her? Didn’t he stand guard in that same place, all day long? She was surprised his program even allowed him a bit of off-time in the Glowing Wyrm. She washed down a last mouthful of biscuits with ale and said, “May I ask, do you know the term ‘level’? As in Level One, or Level Five?”

  “Uh…I believe I have overhead such talk of that, and of ‘leveling up’ and the like.”

  “Do you have any idea what level you are.”

  “I don’t pay it much mind. It’s usually newcomers, such as yourself, folk that aren’t regular citizens of Elsinore that give a mind to such things.”

  “Is there a number, or ranking, associated with your set of skills?”

  His face brightened. “Oh yes, I’m a Sergeant-at-Arms, Swordsman, at the fourth rank of service.”

  Ah, she thought. He was probably at Level 4 then, much stronger than the newbies running around Elsinore, but from what she had gathered skimming the description notes earlier in Gallywump’s shop, it was possible to level up to double digits. “Have you thought about increasing your skill level, Sergeant?”

  “Well, it’s not really necessary for my line of work. If I run into something more than I can handle, I always have plenty of mates for back-up. Like the time of that ogre raid, that was a bloodbath, let me tell you. Ogres and dark elves, actually, though it was mostly ogres. That was quite a time of it. Dozens of them. They knocked me out cold, they did, more than once, I’ll tell you that much. Hurt like Hades, too, most painful thing I’ve ever experienced. Thought I was dying. But I kept waking back up back in the soldiers’ barracks, then back out into the fray once more. Don’t really know what they were after, Miss Tasha, except to cause trouble.”

  “Please, just Tasha.”

  The big grin returned. “Now tell me about yourself, since you seem to have your mouth free from eating for a moment. What city are you from?”

  “Originally, I was from St. Petersburg. Well, a small town near there, you wouldn’t have heard of it.”

  “Can’t say I’ve heard of St. Petersburg, either. Is that from one of the new expansion areas I hear so much about?”

  “No…” She decided to tell him about the real world, see how he reacted. “It’s in a country called Russia, a nation on a world called Earth. Earth is where some seven billion humans live, no ogres, no elves, nobody like that, only humans. On that planet, some of us, very smart game designers and computer programmers, have invented a game called Brutalia, and filled it with generated beings that aren’t real, but only exist in the game. We come and play in this game sometime. I didn’t come to play, though. I was abducted and trapped here.”

  She had no idea what his reaction would be, but it wasn’t what she got. “Huh. Well, everybody has a tale to tell, that’s for certain.” He caught the eye of a bustling barmaid as she scampered past, calling out loudly enough to hear over the din of the Glowing Wyrm. “Another pitcher of ale, lass, and another plate of those biscuits!”

  “Do you understand what I’m saying to you, Orlando?”

  He shrugged. “Enough. I’ve heard the story before. We’re all in some kind of pretend world – a simulation, I’ve heard it called. There must be some sort of religion surrounding such beliefs, I imagine.”

  “No, it’s not a belief, or a religion, Orlando, it’s the truth.”

  “Yes, well, I suppose everybody with a religion believes it’s the truth. None of my business what another fellow’s creed might be.” He reached out and patted her hand. “We all think what we will, Tasha, to get through our days.”

  “You don’t understand. You’re not real. You’re a computer simulated graphic who…” She stopped. She really didn’t want to hurt his feelings. If he had feelings. Maybe he had been coded to think he had feelings, or, more accurately, to display the illusion he had feelings to player-characters who interacted with him. “Forget it,” she said. “I’m sorry I brought it up.”

  He put his hand back on hers and kept it there. It was big and strong, calloused from gripping his sword hilt. It felt as real as anything she had ever felt.

  “I’d like to have sexual relations with you, Tasha.”

  Whoa, she thought. That’s direct. She left her hand where it was, though, resting comfortably beneath his. Her mouth fell open, but no words came out.

  “Seeing as you’re a harlot, I’m sure you get propositioned all the time, and I want you to know I’ll pay you what you think is fair. For an hour’s worth. An hour’s worth of sexual relations, I mean.”

  She snatched her hand back. “Well aren’t you the charmer.” She considered storming out, but the barmaid had just brought another plate of biscuits and another pitcher of ale. He refilled her glass and pushe
d the plate toward her.

  “I’ve no intention to offend, Miss, but your profession is fairly obvious. If you’re not interested in me as a client, though, that’s certainly your right. My apologies if you find me too undesirable to be with in that way.”

  “That’s not it!” She accepted the mug of ale, and took one biscuit. He was being pleasant enough about it, she decided, and he couldn’t help but think of her as a prostitute. Or harlot, whatever the hell they called it in this game.

  “I’m not doing that,” she said finally. “The sex for money thing.”

  “Oh.” He grinned again. “Well would you like to have sexual relations just as friends, then?”

  She really did have to laugh at that. Sure, she was kind of tempted. Was it even possible? Was he an anatomically correct NPC underneath that armor, or like the dolls she had as a child, smooth and plastic down there? Everything else in the world of Brutalia was so real that she assumed the sex would feel that way, too. Probably the main appeal of the place. Players log in, get laid, kills some dragons or whatever, then go back to work at their fast food jobs. For all she knew, Orlando was programmed to be charming as fuck, as Misha used to say (or just abbreviate it AF, even in conversation). Maybe he worked as a guard by day, keeping the peace on Elsinore’s mean streets, and gigolo by night, satisfying the sexy player characters taking a walk on the virtual wild side.

  “Is there a harlot’s guild, Orlando?” she asked, kind of changing the subject.