Keeper

by Tom Larcombe

  He walked into the inn himself, Karl was headed towards the map he'd just hung on the wall and when he got there, he called out.

  “I've got the full Meadowlands map and some partial ones on the Forest of Fools so far. If anyone wants those, get a hold of me tomorrow. My shop is the front room of my house, right across the street from here. Or if you just want a reference for somewhere in the Meadowlands I'm sure Eddie won't mind you stopping by here to check this one out.”

  The crowd gave a soft cheer as Karl walked away from the map and took a seat with Allie, who Eddie had missed in the crowd before. Tiana was behind the bar, grinning at Eddie when he turned to look. He went over to her.

  “You knew about this, didn't you?” he asked.

  “Only the map. They just decided on the inn sign a few hours ago.”

  “How'd they get it made up so fast then?”

  “Oh, Karl got some sort of art skill that lets him dress up his maps, calligraphy too. Between the two he managed to make the sign himself,” Tiana said. “At least that's what he told me a few minutes ago.”

  “I bet he's got some sort of art skills in real life,” Eddie said. “I know that makes it easier to pick up and advance the appropriate skills in game. I'm kind of irked that he picked a name for my inn, but the sign and the map both look good.”

  “Actually, he didn't really pick that on his own,” Tiana said. “Since you didn't name it, that's what everyone's been calling it. He just put it in writing.”

  Eddie shook his head again. It was a poignant reminder that he couldn't just sit on his haunches and relax, not if he wanted to be the one to complete the next portions of his quests. If he sat back, someone else would do it before him.

  “Alright. I should have help for the kitchen tomorrow. Think they want to do some adventuring?” he asked, tilting his head towards Karl and Allie.

  “Go ask them,” Tiana said, turning away to fill a mug of ale.

  Eddie moved over and cleared his throat in front the table.

  “Mind if I join you for a minute?” he asked.

  Karl shrugged and Allie gestured towards an empty chair.

  “Sorry I've been busy with the inn the last few days,” Eddie said, “but I've got more help coming tomorrow, another cook for breakfast and lunch. You guys want to run some goblins?”

  “We were just talking about that,” Karl said.

  He glanced at Allie for a moment. When she nodded he turned back to Eddie.

  “Sure, at least for a while in the morning and early afternoon,” Karl replied. “Will you need to be back to make dinner?”

  “Yeah, for now at least I'll keep making dinner. Unless I find a cook with a better chance for the well-fed bonus, in which case I might let them take that over too.”

  “Sounds good,” Allie said. “Although we've got some plans for tomorrow late afternoon, so we might have to split up on the way back.”

  “Alright then. Jern's supposed to be down here tonight, so I'll ask him also when I see him.”

  The rest of the night went well, he'd managed another well-fed bonus, this time with a creation he'd tried that used flatbread wrapped around meats, and it sold out rapidly. He'd held onto a few servings of it though. If the bonus lasted even when the food wasn't really fresh then his entire group would have additional experience tomorrow.

  ~ ~ ~

  When morning came around, Eddie was out front waiting for his new cook. He was sure she could read the surprise on his face when Liv herself came walking up, carrying a canvas sack.

  “Liv?” he said.

  “Aye, I'm the best cook I know and I'm certainly not going to turn down a job that pays hard coin. Brought some herbs and spices with me too,” she said, brandishing the bag.

  “Umm... Tiana isn't going to be too happy about this,” he said.

  “Why not? She seemed a fine, sensible lass when she came to my place with you.”

  “I think she's jealous because you're attractive? Or at least she noticed that I thought you were?”

  “Well thank you Eddie, but you're a bit young for me. If I were interested in the young ones then it might not be just you I was interested in too. I'll talk to the young lady, she'll be fine, you'll see. Now where's your kitchen?”

  Eddie closed his eyes, hoping against hope that Liv could talk some sense into Tiana. When they entered the inn, Tiana herself was sitting at a table, waiting. Her eyes narrowed instantly and Liv shooed him off.

  “Kitchen can wait a few minutes, go do something else while I talk to her,” Liv said.

  Happy to not be around for the conversation, Eddie trotted out back to check on his chickens.

  The chickens were growing at an insane rate.

  Just like the crops I suppose, and that's with the alternate livestock setting from the inn's control room only set to five, he thought. But at least now I know how she had pullets ready for me so quickly.

  After he'd sprinkled a handful of greens in there for the chickens, Eddie cautiously entered the inn again. He didn't hear any shouting or arguing, but he did hear someone in the kitchen. When he went into it, Liv was there rummaging through the supplies and utensils.

  “I can work with this,” she said. “But you might want to go talk to your girl out there, she was a bit... dumbfounded when I left her. She just pointed me towards the kitchen when I asked.”

  Eddie quickly went out to the common room. Tiana was still sitting where he'd left her, but her face was incredibly flushed.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She blinked several times, then nodded.

  “Are you sure? You look a little... off?”

  “Do you know what she said to me?” Tiana asked.

  He shook his head and shrugged.

  “She told me that if she were interested in a younger partner, she'd be just as liable to be interested in me, or us as a couple, than just a young man by himself.”

  Eddie couldn't help it, he started to snicker.

  “So, should I be jealous now?” he asked.

  She hit him, hard, her fist impacting his shoulder and bruising him.

  “That's not funny!” she said.

  “What? You were jealous before, with even less reason. But maybe we should both be worried, in case she comes after us as a couple?”

  Tiana's eyes went wide and after a few moments, the shocked look on her face broke, then she started snickering, slowly devolving into outright laughter.

  “I thought you said it wasn't funny?” Eddie said, trying to hold back his own laughs.

  “I might... have been... mistaken,” Tiana managed to spit out, her words interrupted by laughs and snorts.

  “Sorry, I shouldn't have hit you,” she said, once she'd gotten her laughter under control.

  She leaned over and kissed the spot she'd struck.

  “That's okay, a few more minutes and I'll have my lost health back,” Eddie replied, having a hard time not snickering even more.

  Tiana raised her fist again, looked at him, then shook her head.

  “Oh you....” she said, never completing the sentence.

  “So, shall we head to the farm to meet everyone?” Eddie asked.

  “Let's wait for Karl and Allie, they should be down soon,” Tiana replied.

  “I've got breakfast for all of us. Assuming the food doesn't have to be freshly made for the buff, we'll all have well-fed for the first four hours.”

  “I knew there was a reason I liked you,” Tiana said, teasingly.

  Eddie grinned and shook his head.

  “I'm going to go back and make sure our mutual admirer knows where everything is that she'll need,” he said. “Hopefully Karl and Allie will be down soon.”

  Tiana reddened at the first part of his comment, but nodded to him as he stood.

  Jern and Dominic were waiting when they got to the farm. Dominic had requested Paul build him a house, but he hadn't been quick enough and there were several other buildings before his house, so Dominic was st
ill staying in the bunkhouse on the farm until Paul finished his place.

  “Breakfast,” Eddie said. “Although you might want to wait until just before we go in the forest to eat it.”

  He handed out the flatbread wraps to everyone.

  “They're filled with meat, and unless it has to be fresh cooked to count, they've got the well-fed buff on them,” he said. “They did last night anyhow, so I guess we'll see if it lasts.”

  The group broke out into grins as they each tucked their flatbread wrap away for the moment. Then the headed out for the Forest of Fools.

  ~ ~ ~

  They found out that the buffs were still good and the well-fed buff was still with them when they cleared the first goblin village. Acquiescing to Allie's previous request, instead of heading deeper into the forest, they doubled back to find another of the exterior villages to clear. Once they'd done that, Eddie realized that he had to head back for the inn if he was going to make it there in time to get dinner ready for the crowds.

  “Sorry guys, and thanks for coming, but I gotta go,” he said to the group.

  “No problem,” Karl said. “We've got our own thing also that we need to prepare for.”

  At some point on the way back to the Meadowlands, Allie and Karl simply slipped away from the group, leaving the group proper a while after that, after Eddie had sent a group chat asking if they were alright. The answer was a quick 'yes', then the two of them dropping out of the party.

  He couldn't imagine what they were doing, but he really didn't think it was any of his business either. He and Tiana had slipped away a few times themselves, but they hadn't been grouped at the time so he wasn't sure if they would've dropped out of the group themselves.

  Although if I interrupted an intimate moment with my question, that would explain the terse answer and the equally fast departure from the group, Eddie thought.

  When they got back into the Meadowlands, Jern asked a question that Eddie wasn't sure of the answer to.

  “Eddie lad, do you need to be there for me to see your construction patterns? I thought I might do some more stonework on the smithy, but I don't want to do it if it'll make a mess.”

  “You know, I don't know the answer to that. I assume it'll be there for you since I shared the stonework parts with you, but please go check that. It'd be good to know for sure one way or the other,” Eddie replied.

  Jern grunted agreement and when they made it to the road, he set off towards the smithy. Dominic went with Tiana and Eddie to the inn. Then he broke off to see if Paul had started on his house yet.

  When they got inside, Eddie took a deep breath. The smell of something that was cooking filled the air and nearly made him drool.

  “Well, she might make us both a bit uneasy, but it smells like she can cook,” Tiana said.

  “Yeah, I wonder if she'd teach me some of those recipes? Or maybe I can learn them just by watching her. Either way, I need to get back there and start dinner. Are you going to be okay?”

  “I'll be fine, I'm going the rest of the way into the hamlet and work on the temple grounds a bit more. I'll be back before you get really busy though,” she said.

  Eddie heaved an inner sigh of relief as Tiana dropped off some of her gear in their room, then headed back out.

  Good, I was worried that even now she was going to freak out over me working in the kitchen with Liv, he thought. But I guess talking with Liv managed to get her over that.

  When he made it back to the kitchen he found Liv fretting that she'd made too much food.

  “I'm sorry, I should've warned you that we don't get much of a lunch rush, there's normally a few for breakfast though,” he said.

  “I just don't want it to go to waste,” she replied.

  He inhaled the aroma of the massive pot of soup she'd made.

  “It won't. I'll work it into dinner as it is, serve a fresh salad and some flatbread beside it. I don't think anyone is going to complain, not with how heavenly it smells.”

  He took the ladle and dished some of the soup into a bowl, trying it himself. For a moment he just closed his eyes and savored the taste of it.

  “That is incredibly good. If you don't mind my asking, what is your cooking skill?”

  “That's a rather personal question, don't you think?” she answered. “What's yours?”

  “A twelve, I'm thinking that yours is probably higher still.”

  She flushed a moment.

  “Aye, it is, I've got a fifteen. It would've been higher but I stopped cooking for anyone but myself a long time back. Doesn't go up so much anymore when you're just cooking the same things for yourself all the time.”

  “That does seem to be the way of the world. You have to stretch yourself to get better. Maybe you'll manage that working here.”

  “That was in my mind when I decided I should take the position,” she said. “Now this flat bread you mentioned, show me how you do that?”

  The two devolved into a discussion on cooking that carried them right to the point where the inn started to get busy.

  ~ ~ ~

  Eddie was a little confused. During the dinner rush he'd overheard several adventures complaining about Old Jeffries again, but this time it wasn't the usual. Normally people complained about his prices, but tonight they were complaining that he was out of oil, of all things. Eddie couldn't quite figure out why that might be. He didn't know how Old Jeffries got his stock, but normally he had quite a lot of all the mundane items adventurers might want. One of them running out was puzzling.

  It was after the dinner rush when Karl and Allie arrived. Whatever they'd been doing, it wasn't what Eddie had suspected. They both were still wounded, and with how quickly players healed in the game, Eddie knew that they must've been in a hell of a fight.

  They were also both covered in soot and ash, the only normal color on their faces was their teeth showing through wide, crazed, grins.

  Allie plopped down on a stool at the bar.

  “What do you have that's strong?” she asked.

  Eddie went wide-eyed, normally Allie stuck to his weakest ales or maybe the mid-level beers he'd stocked.

  “Mead,” he said. “If you want what has the most kick for your coin.”

  “Let me have one. You were right, by the way, fire can be very therapeutic.”

  Eddie blinked, trying to remember when he'd mentioned fire being therapeutic to Allie.

  “Wait, did you and Karl just take out one of those next villages?” he asked.

  Karl slipped onto the stool beside Allie.

  “Ale? Please? My throat feels like a fireplace full of ashes.”

  Eddie placed Allie's mead on the bar in front of her, then poured a glass of ale for Karl.

  “Might want to take a look outside, won't last past midnight, but still...” Karl said.

  Eddie hustled over to the front door of the inn. When he peered out he saw an orange glow to the southeast, a thick black cloud barely visible in the moonlight rising from the flames that seemed to be consuming a huge portion of the Forest of Fools. Eddie knew it wasn't really a huge portion, but it looked to be right about where his group had been adventuring today, maybe a little deeper into the forest was all.

  He looked back at the grinning pair covered in soot.

  “You burned down that next village, didn't you?” he asked Allie.

  She just grinned a bit wider and took a huge drink of her mead. Once she lowered her glass she spoke.

  “You know, I think the next time we go adventuring, we should go a little deeper into the forest, what do you say?”

  “It was awesome,” Karl pitched in. “When she finally told me what the problem was and told me what you'd suggested, I knew I had a plan. I went to Old Jeffries and bought up all the oil he had. Bastard skinned me when he knew I wanted all of it, jacked the price up on me. But I bought it all and we tucked it in our inventory.”

  He took another pull of his ale before continuing.

  “So when we left yo
u today, we stealthed back out to the last village we destroyed and took the paths from there to the next one, stealthing all the way. Her stealth is better than mine, did you know that?” Karl asked, looking at Allie, who was still grinning.

  “Anyhow, she'd developed some fire arrows after I told her my plan. I placed the kegs, splitting some so they'd leak out onto buildings and stuff too. Then, when I got back to her—”

  “He almost got stabbed,” Allie interrupted his story.

  “I said I was sorry then.”

  “Yeah, but you pop out of stealth two inches away from me again and I refuse to be held responsible for my actions.”

  “But it wasn't a PVP zone,” Karl said. “You couldn't have hurt me.”

  “But I could've broken stealth and been seen by the goblins,” she insisted.

  Karl gulped, but turned back to Eddie.

  “Anyhow, after I made it back to her I pointed to where I'd placed all the barrels. She waited until most of the goblins were inside buildings and then lit the whole place up with her fire arrows and the oil. Those dry buildings had acted like wicks for the oil and the whole place went up in instants. We only had to kill, what, five goblins ourselves?” he asked, looking to Allie for confirmation.

  “Six, but that was out of about thirty-five or forty. Damned game cut our experience too since we didn't engage in actual combat with them, but we did get the three little, two little, one little goblin award,” she said.

  “So, I finally caught up to you,” Karl said. “Level five now, and I picked up lockpicking as my major level five skill. I could do a little before, but now I'm actually good at it.”

  “Well, congratulations then, to both of you,” Eddie said. “Sounds like I need to get it back in gear or you're going to pass me up Karl. And Allie, I'm glad you managed that. I don't know that I meant it literally when I talked about burning them all up, but if it worked?”

  He shrugged and got them another round of drinks, on him.

  ~ ~ ~

  Chapter Four

  Private Campbell finally had controlling his monster down. It was a Half-Breed Goblin Champion, the half-breed part explained its excessive height, but whatever the other half was had not only been tall, but also strong. Campbell was enjoying training in its body. The ax he was wielding had started in a pristine condition but was now close to falling apart. Slamming it through tree trunks in a single blow had damaged it severely.