“Tell us,” Tasha insisted. She looked over at Kat. The pretty girl nodded.
“There are places on the dark web where the girls who are forced to play the harlot class…their pictures and statistics are posted, so the guys know what they look like in real life while they’re, uh, you know, screwing them here.”
“That is so gross,” Kat said, making a face. Brand stared at her, enchanted. Her charisma score must be even higher than mine, Tasha thought.
“Look,” Brand continued, “I have to log off in a bit. If you’re comfortable doing it, give me your real names and I’ll see if I can find out something about you on the dark web.”
Tasha and Kat looked at each other. The young girl shrugged. What could it hurt? They were already drugged prisoners of the mafia, it’s not like things could get much worse for them…but things could get a lot worse for somebody like Brand.
“Look, Brand,” she said. “These are bad dudes. Mafia. Russian mafia, which is about as bad as it gets. We appreciate your help, but if you were smart you’d walk out that door and never see us again.”
The cute young bard glanced at the swinging doors of the tavern, then back to the two beautiful young harlots. “I’m a sucker for a pretty face,” he said. “And this is the most amazing story I’ve ever heard. There’s no way I could leave it alone even if I wanted to.”
“Just be careful.”
He shrugged. “I know how to cover my tracks online. Besides, I’ll just be looking at stuff your captors want dark web denizens to see.” His pretty boy face adopted a serious mien. “For now, anyway…”
The girls told them their full names and former addresses. He was vacant for a moment, probably taking notes in inventory mode. When he returned he got up and said, “I have to log off and get some work done soon. Is there someplace we can meet at, say, 2200 hours, Greenwich time?”
……….
They agreed to meet at the main gate at that time, several hours hence. Brand logged off, winking out of existence as they sat at the table. Several of the locals – NPCs, Tasha reminded herself – stared at the empty space where once a young bard had sat, then shrugged and laughed it off. It was a common occurrence in Brutalia, where the natives had to accept that a high percentage of folks simply winked out of existence now and then – the same folks who talked of such oddities as “real life” and “leveling up.” Perhaps it was the time she had spent with Orlando, but she was beginning to see the player characters – she and Tasha and Brand – as the odd ducks in this world, and the workaday locals as the real denizens of Brutalia. They seemed real enough. She remembered the intense lovemaking sessions with Orlando…the locals certainly felt real enough, too.
As though reading her mind, Kat said, “So you and the big handsome guy, huh?”
“Yup.”
They were traipsing along a dusty lane, the traffic of commerce running down its center, carts and laden mules, tinkers and traders going about the business of their day.
“If it’s not too rude to ask…is it, like, the real thing? The sex, I mean?”
“Pretty much,” Tasha had to admit. “Maybe a little better. I’ve had some pretty bad experiences recently.”
Kat nodded in agreement. “It was awful, being forced into prostitution. I wasn’t completely inexperienced beforehand, but I was pretty innocent compared to the things they made me do. I mean…everything.” The beautiful young harlot shuddered. “Ick. And now I’m stuck here, same shit, different reality. I get raped the first hour I’m here.”
“I’m so sorry about that.”
“Hey, you saved me. And your friend. It was rape, for sure, that bastard was inside me, but at least he didn’t get to finish.” She grinned up at Tasha, who was several inches taller. “We killed them pretty good, didn’t we?”
“Yup.”
“I wonder how much it hurts, being killed in this game.”
“A lot,” Tasha said. “A hell of a lot.”
“You’ve died?”
“Yes. Kind of the same situation as yours, attacked within ten minutes of getting here. I guess we have a big blinking sign on us that says RAPE ME THEN KILL ME.” She said the words loudly, with broad, exaggerated hand gestures. Several heads swiveled in their direction. Her hand strayed to the hilt of her dagger. Maybe should have gone to the weapons shop first, she thought, but she hadn’t wanted to be burdened with Orlando’s big-ass sword and shield.
They were basically ignored by the locals, though – the thick robes they wore doubtless helped – and the two proceeded cautiously on their way.
“I guess what’s killing me the most,” Kat said, “is how hopeless this all is. I don’t think there’s any way to get out of this world, and even if I did I’d be stuck a paralyzed captive of the most awful human being I’ve ever met.”
Tasha put a hand on the smaller girl’s shoulder as they walked. “First things first. We have to figure out how to survive here. Then we’ll find out what we can about what’s going on with our bodies in the real world. You already have Brand on your side. He’s as in love with you as a guy can be.”
Kat blushed and giggled. “You think so?”
“I know so. Your charisma score must be off the chart. Even I feel like doing you.”
“Oh, ick.”
“Kidding, just kidding.” They both giggled. “But while we’re stuck here, we might as well enjoy what we can.” Kat gave her a sideways look. “The chocolate muffins by the way, are out of this world.”
“Noted,” Kat said.
“And there’s the harlot’s guild,” said Tasha.
……….
She waited at the bar while Kat met with Ruby, rebuffing the advances of the bordello’s customers. Most accepted her refusal politely. When one didn’t, she used a line that she knew would become a go-to. “My boyfriend is a high-ranking wizard, yo. Back off or he’ll turn your penis into a curry-sausage and feed it to his three-headed rottweiler.” That did the trick. She sipped her drink in peace, a White Russian. Delicious. She liked having some extra coin in her purse.
The money came in handy in other ways, just as in real life. When she got a text from Misha, she was able to write back immediately. He wrote, “Created a character and can enter the game when you’re ready. Tell me where to meet you.”
Tasha responded: “Elsinore, main gate. I can be there in about an hour. You?”
“One hour from now. Roger that. Will be there. I’ll be the twinked-out knight in shining armor. Literally.”
“Twinking,” she had learned, was when low-level characters used platinum purchased with real money in real life to buy high quality armor and weapons for their characters. They weren’t invincible against higher level opponents, but they had a big edge against anybody near their own level. It was frowned upon by those playing the game seriously, who felt you should earn your gear by the sweat of your pixelated brow, but she wasn’t even remotely interested in “playing” at anything. She was in survival mode, first in this world and, if she got the chance, in the real world, too.
Kat returned, looking mindblown and embarrassed both. “Well, I know I’ll never starve here. Apparently I can make a lot of money if I’m willing to do something called a ‘bukkake’ party, or at least I was told that by a gang of trolls I ran into outside Madame Ruby’s door.”
“Oh god. Do you know what that is?”
“Yes, now I do, unfortunately.”
Tasha finished the last of her drink. “Let’s get out of here.”
……….
The purchases at the weapons shop went uneventfully. She procured a rapier and parrying dagger for herself, a stiletto for Kat, and the rolled-steel sword and kite shield for Orlando, giving the sword to Kat to carry while she struggled with the shield. Her strength statistics were minimal, and if she had tried to carry both the items it would have encumbered her to the point where she moved at a crawl. As it was, it still took them twice as long as normal to get back to the main gate. Orlando waited o
utside for them, a safe distance from the guards.
“This is most welcome,” he said, equipping the sword and shield. He took a practice cut with the weapon, looking more like his own self, and moved off some twenty feet from them to lay waste to rats and snakes, getting used to the feel of his new blade.
Dusk was falling over their little piece of Brutalia. “Orlando,” she called out. “We’re going to have guests soon.”
He returned to her, rosy-cheeked from battle, hands dark with rat blood. “Who?”
“It’s an old friend of mine. His name is Misha. I knew him in…in the other world I’ve told you about.”
A flicker of concern crossed his face. “Are you and he, uh…close?”
She raised her hands. “Total transparency here. He was my first boyfriend, when I was much younger. We haven’t been together for a couple years, but we keep in touch like on…Facebook…”
“Facebook…?”
“It’s a, uh, messaging system…where I come from.”
“Okay then. You once cared for each other, and now he is still your friend.” He nodded. “I approve of this.”
What a great guy, she thought. Then: What a great mass of non-corporeal pixels, rather…
“Brand is coming, too,” Kat said, looking a bit pleased.
“Brand?” Orlando asked.
“A guy she met.”
Kat blushed. Orlando shook his head. “As the expression goes among the farming class, ‘When the fruit is ripe, the pickers will come.’”
Kat blushed even more.
“And that looks like Misha,” Tasha said.
The shining silver knight running toward them from Elsinore’s gates fit the description Misha had given her: glittering armor, a brilliant helm, and, when he got closer, features visible through the helmet that certainly resembled those of her ex-boyfriend. He stopped before them, bowed, looked between the two women, then said to her, “Tasha, I presume?”
“Roger that. You’re looking good, Misha.”
He laughed. “A couple hundred plat worth of paladin armor will do that for you.”
Orlando bowed to him and said, “I pay honor to a paladin. You are a follower of the Lord of Light?”
Misha looked from him to Tasha. “A friend of yours?”
“Misha, this is Orlando, formerly Sergeant Orlando of the Elsinore City Guard. He’s been looking out for me here.”
A quizzical look crossed her ex-boyfriend’s face. “A former city guard? So he’s an NPC?”
“I’m still not certain what this term means,” Orlando said, sounding a bit perturbed.
“Non-Player Character,” Misha brusquely explained. “It means you’re not real. And it means he might be eyes and ears for the guy who’s trapped you in here,” he said to Tasha.
Tasha watched with concern as Orlando’s hand strayed to the hilt of his new sword. “Misha,” she said, “come on. Orlando saved my life, and he lost his job doing it. We’re all on the same side here.”
“I am not certain of the meaning of all your words,” Orlando continued, “but the lady has told me of this savage person who is her enemy, and if you imply that I am working for him, I will have to demand satisfaction.”
The sword was half-way out of Orlando’s scabbard when Kat screamed. “What the hell is that?!?”
……….
It was a werewolf, Tasha later learned. Seven feet of loping, magical beast with muscles like Vladimir Klitschko and teeth like a sabertooth tiger. It charged them from the direction of the desert flatland on its hind legs, the sharp claws of one paw extended like the grasp of death, and in the other paw a huge battle axe. Its howl was like a cry from hell. Orlando’s sword was out and he was charging the beast immediately. Tasha, frozen for a moment, abruptly decided on her Cloak of Invisibility spell. It wasn’t to run away, she told herself, but to get behind the eldritch beast.
“It cons red to me!” she heard Misha shout, but his sword was out anyway, trailing an arc of fire, and he too charged the beast. Red…the color of beasts that were nigh impossible to kill, when looking at their statistics in inventory mode. The thing was red to her, as well…but there were four of them – that would make a difference, wouldn’t it? She hoped so, moving behind the huge, slavering creature as Orlando and Misha swung their swords at it, Kat standing some dozen feet back with her harp out playing her healing song. Orlando took a major hit and fell back, but Kat’s healing tune replenished some of his hit points. Tasha, behind the werewolf now, lunged with her rapier and felt the satisfaction of a deep stab into the creature’s innards. It howled in pain and whirled about after she pulled the rapier from its back. Lunging at her, it brought its mighty axe down toward her. The backstab attack had broken her invisibility spell. No way her little parrying dagger would stop that – she rolled back and thought Distract (which she would later learn was an ability hard-wired into her Enchantress sub-class.); the axe came down on her, but it was a glancing blow of the haft against her shoulder. Pain brighter than the two moons above them flashed in her eyes. She prepared to die again as the werewolf raised the axe once more, searching for her partially obscured form…and then the beast, what she could see of it through the red-white pain of her vision, reared up shuddering and juddering as though it were being electrocuted, smoke roiling from its fur, its paws flailing. The axe dropped to the hardpan of the desert, and the werewolf followed a moment later, dead and smoking.
When her eyes fully focused, she saw a huge, dark figure looming over the beast, a human, it seemed, clad in armor so black it looked purple. A thick beard protruded from his helm. He held a gauntleted hand over the creature. Sparks shot from the gauntlet like one of Nicola Tesla’s more bizarre inventions. “A Dark Knight,” she heard Misha mutter. “And a high level one at that.”
“That’s right,” the Dark Knight said in a low, booming voice.
“Death Touch,” Misha said. “Very useful spell.”
“Ability,” the Dark Knight corrected him, “inherent to my class. Not a spell. But yes, very useful. Wish I could use it more often than once per day.” The Dark Knight laughed. “I’m Brand by the way.”
Tasha was able to sit up now. “Brand? You were a cutie who belonged in a boy band, last time I saw you.”
Brand the Dark Knight laughed. “That was my other character. Or this is my other character. I like playing them both…that one to meet girls…and this one to kick ass.” He reared back to laugh again but was abruptly interrupted by the werewolf’s head dissolving in a mass of smoke…which coalesced into the face of Yuri. “You have some little friends now, eh, girls?” The hazy visage turned from Tasha to Brand, then to Misha and Orlando. “I will have to come in greater force next time.” The face of smoke began to laugh, sending chills down Tasha’s spine, until Orlando swept his kite shield through the incorporeal face of Yuri causing the smoke to disperse and the laughter to die away in a sputter.
“Hmm,” Misha said. “We probably should have listened to what he had to say.”
Orlando glowered at him, still holding his sword, bloodied with the ichor of the werewolf’s blood.
“I’m just saying,” Misha continued, “maybe the NPC shouldn’t be making important decisions without consulting actual people.”
Tasha was about to intervene as Orlando made a step toward Misha, but then Brand raised a hand and stepped in between them. “The AI is fabulous in these NPCs, man. Really amazing. Could totally pass a Turing test. The more advanced NPCs could probably come up with the concept of the Turing test, actually, but let’s put a pin in that for a minute.” He was talking rapidly, trying to calm the two guys down. It was kind of working. He thrust a hand out to Orlando, said, “I’m Brand, as I said. Pleasure to meet you.”
“Orlando, formerly of the City Guard.”
“Cool. And you?” Now he stuck his hand out to Misha, who shook it automatically.
“Misha. Formerly Tasha’s boyfriend.”
“That’s great. We’re all here to he
lp Tasha, then. And Kat.” He grinned at the lovely young harlot. She seemed pleased at the attention, but Tasha could tell she wasn’t as enamoured of him in this guise. The Dark Knight was bad-ass, but he certainly wasn’t the cuddle-bug that the little bard was. “Glad we’re all on the same side. I guess what we should figure out first, is how did Yuri find us?” He gestured to the smoldering werewolf remains. “This thing turned into a message from Yuri, so the guy was controlling him somehow.”
“Probably the blond-haired Turing Machine over there,” Misha said, gesturing to Orlando with the point of his sword.
Oh great, Tasha thought, as her current boyfriend took a step toward her ex. This time she was the one who stepped between them. “GODDAMMIT!” She didn’t raise her voice often, but when she did, she had learned in life, it had an effect. Both of them gaped at her in surprise. “Misha, I trust him. Completely. If you trust me, then you have to accept that.”
Misha said nothing, but he rammed his sword into its scabbard and gave a curt nod. After a moment, Orlando returned his blade to its home as well.
“Okay,” Brand said, “Yuri might be tracking you, or he might just have assumed he’d run into you outside the gates of the city that’s your spawn point. We should assume the worst and figure – what’s that around your neck?”
She fingered the collar she had spawned here with. “Just…I don’t know. Something I had from the beginning here. Like my stupid lingerie-armor.”
Brand gave her a look like, You’re wearing lingerie armor under that robe? But all he said was, “What function does it serve? When you examine it in your inventory.”
Bounty Harlot Page 7