Ethan grunted at the sight. “Seriously? Doesn’t anyone bury the dead?”
“Sometimes,” Zoey replied with a shrug. “Kind of pointless when they simply dig themselves out, though.”
Ethan slowed his pace.
“Relax, I’m just messing with you,” she said, drawing the corners of her mouth back. “If you want to bury him when we’re done, be my guest. But as for me, I’d like to just get through this place and see what’s in your shack.”
“Yeah, let’s,” Ethan said. He picked up the pace, which sent a half dozen rats scampering for cover, squeaking as they did. Realizing he needed something to take his mind off the here and now, Ethan thought about his situation in general. “I have a question,” he said. “This is like a game, game. I mean, like an RPG with characters and classes and whatnot, right?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes,” she replied.
“Does that mean I’ll get powers?”
“Maybe.”
“So, yes,” he said, deciding that a maybe was as good as a definitely for him. He wondered what those would be, but before he had a definitive answer, they broke free of the alley and ended up on the outskirts of town. A little bit away, maybe another forty yards, was a solitary wooden shack.
“Come on,” she said, waving him on. “We’re here.”
Ethan didn’t. He was still trying to guess what skills he’d been gifted with. He had to start with something, right?
Ethan looked himself over. He did have some more muscle in his arms than usual, but he wouldn’t be a ringer in an Ironman competition anytime soon. Still, it was a nice start. Maybe he was superfast, or super smart, despite the quid-pro-quo flop. He’d probably made a critical failure on some crucial roll. Yes, that was it, he decided. Even the greatest minds flub stuff now and again.
With that thought set firm, Ethan tried to recite pi. He got as far as “3.14 something, something, something,” before deciding that no, he hadn’t been gifted with an IQ higher than Mount Everest. Then again, maybe he was an eclectic genius, the sort who forgot the mundane all the time but came up with observations that even Sherlock Holmes would be envious of.
Zoey, clearly irritated at this point, stood a few paces away with her hands on her hips. “What are you doing?”
“One second,” Ethan said, squinting his eyes. “I’m onto something.”
“This better be good.”
Ethan held up a finger and studied her every facet. She had a simple chain around her neck from which hung a teardrop pendant. On her right hand were three rings, two silver and one gold. Several others adorned her left. Her attire looked well-kept, but there was a bit of dirt on it near the top of her thigh as well as on her knee. The full sleeve of tattoos on her left arm felt as if they were random and probably had no overall purpose other than to show off cheap artwork.
“You got that front pendant from your mother,” he said. “Family heirloom?”
Zoey’s face scrunched, but before she could say anything, Ethan expanded. “You wear it close to your heart, but it’s not magical because it doesn’t glow, and it’s made out of material too common. It seems more at home than out in the wilds, so you got it before you became an adventurer, ergo, a family heirloom. The rings on your hand, however, are magical. I can see little burn marks where they’ve scorched your skin from repeated use, and since you don’t seem to mind them hurting you, they must be powerful indeed. Perhaps they take a toll on you mentally as well when you use them. That would explain the dirt on your knee, because you had to drop to it after casting such powerful magic. Fighting a dragon, maybe? No, you’d at least have soot on you from its breath and probably have a donkey laden with gold in tow.”
Zoey held up her hand and cut him off. “I have no idea what you’re doing.”
“Testing my intellectual prowess,” he said. “Seems like it’s pretty good. I nailed your backstory, didn’t I?”
“No,” she said with a laugh somewhere between amusement and annoyance. “You couldn’t be further from the truth if you tried. I picked this necklace up at a carnival last week. I bought the rings a long time ago and wear them in case I ever need to sell them for a crown or two. They’re an investment, nothing more. The dark skin you see around them is dirt because I haven’t had a bath in a while, rain aside, as clean bathwater is a rarity. As for the dirt on my knee, what can I say? Again, there’s not exactly a hot tub every ten steps to soak in, and the sea is dangerous, savvy?”
Ethan twisted his mouth. Maybe he needed to develop his sleuthing skills more, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t gifted elsewhere. Seeing how games let you play who you wanted to be, not necessarily who you were, he ran another, hopefully more successful, skill test. “So,” he said, dropping his head a little and giving her the best swoon-worthy, panty-dropping grin. “How you doing?”
Zoey took a quick step back. “Are you hitting on me already?”
Ethan felt his face flush with embarrassment as he realized he was as smooth as a cactus. “No, sorry. I mean. I was trying to, you know, see how much charisma I had. I’m really not like this. Quite the opposite, actually. Oh, hell, shoot me now.”
“Alright, Casanova, you’re not that hideous,” Zoey said as Ethan buried his face in his hands. “Don’t fumble a fast talk with me and give yourself a coronary. I don’t need that kind of emotional baggage.”
“Sorry,” Ethan said as his shoulders fell. “I was hoping for some starting skills or talents or whatever you get around here. I mean, I don’t even seem to have a character sheet to go by.”
“Assuming that’s your shack, your sheet will be in there,” she said. “As for skills, we can see what you’ve started with and the rest will come with time. You’ve got to think of yourself as coming fresh from the creation screen, so to speak, and this is all intro—or even better, this is a cutscene. However you want to think of it. That said, the only thing you’re good at right now is being a meat shield, which honestly, I won’t be surprised if that’s all you become.”
“Wow, thanks.”
Zoey grimaced. “Sorry, that came out bad,” she said. “I only meant you need to be careful, and if you want to survive and get better, you need to be realistic. You’re not slaying any dragons right now—thankfully, we don’t have many of those, but we do have their nasty cousins swimming about, the sea serpent.”
“Got it. No sea serpents.”
“Or leviathans.”
“None of those, obviously,” Ethan said. “I mean, who tries to tackle a leviathan?”
“And no harpies, werewolves, or demons—”
“Okay.”
“Or phantoms, or drowned folk, or ahuizotls—”
Ethan cocked his head. “A what?”
“An ahuizotl,” she said. “Like a giant dog crossed with a panther, with human hands and a wicked set of claws that drip with poison. Oh, and its tail can shred you in the blink of an eye, too. Best to simply stay away from it at all costs.”
“Can do.”
“But that might be hard, now I that I think about it.”
Ethan cringed. “How’s that?”
“They’re masters at manipulation,” she explained. “Illusionists, some say. But whatever they are, they can make their prey disconnect from reality, even when they’re eating them alive.”
“Lovely.”
“Oh, and definitely avoid the luscas, sirens, cyclopes, anacondas—”
Ethan held up a hand. “This sounds like a long list. Is there anything I shouldn’t run away from?”
“Maybe a bilge rat,” she said after some thought. “You could probably kill one of them. Well, a baby rat, that is. But then you’d have to deal with its three hundred brothers and sisters as well as the momma rat.”
“Okay, guess I’ll need to be careful,” Ethan said with a heavy sigh.
The two made their way up to the shack, and once there, Zoey made a sweeping motion with her hand, as if inviting him to enter. “Your turn,” she said. “I got you here.
You get to open it.”
Ethan, looking at the large iron lock on the door, tilted his head. “Should I kick it down or something?”
“Check your pockets,” she said. “You ought to have a key.”
Ethan, realizing he had pockets for the first time since he got there, shoved a hand in one. Much to his surprise, he found a small brass key in one. He stuck it in the lock, and the tumblers turned easily. It was only a matter of a simple push after that to get the door to swing inside. “That was convenient.”
Zoey smiled knowingly. “Don’t get used to it,” she said. “This shack is your one and only freebie.”
The two stepped inside, and Ethan spent a moment taking it all in. The interior was dimly lit by a couple of burning oil lamps that hung on opposite sides of the single-room building. In the very center was a red-and-orange woven rug that had probably looked nice once, but now was caked in dirt and had frayed in more places than it had stayed together. The walls looked even more pathetic than from the outside if that were possible, and a glance upward to the rotted, web-covered rafters had him wondering if the only thing holding it all together was the spider silk.
“Talk about a fixer-upper,” he said. “I hope I’m not supposed to have to build this up.”
“It’s not that kind of game here,” she said.
“Could you maybe tell me what kind of game it is?” he asked.
“The best way I can describe it is we’re in a cross between a giant sandbox and an old-school RPG game,” she said as she made her way to a chair and plopped herself onto it. “Not like modern ones or MMOs—we still have MMOs, right?”
“Uh, yeah. Why?”
Zoey bit her lower lip, and it was clear she was struggling with a lot that she wasn’t sharing. “It’s hard to tell how much time passes back home compared to what passes here.”
Ethan felt his gut tighten. “How long have you been here?”
The moment those words left his mouth, he knew he didn’t want to hear the answer. Fortunately, Zoey was all too eager to oblige his unspoken request. “I don’t want to think about it, and honestly, I’m not going to ask you any questions in that regard, so please don’t talk about the real world too much. Well, our world. It’s really depressing, and I need to save my rum for things that don’t involve me drowning out my sorrows.”
“Can do,” he said, knowing full well he probably wouldn’t be able to keep that promise. When he got nervous, he liked to chat about anything and everything except for what was going on, and he had a gnawing feeling that the anxiety he was experiencing right this moment was just the start.
“Actually, I do have a sort of question to that,” he said. Zoey raised a wary eyebrow, and he held up his hands before going on. “Nothing bad, I don’t think, but why are you here?”
“Same as you,” she said. “Playing for a couple of unfortunate souls.”
“What do you have to do for them?”
“Right now? Nothing,” she said. “My contest with Death hasn’t officially started—or resumed, rather. In the meantime, I’m looking to build skills, wealth, and gear.”
“I feel like you’re being intentionally cryptic.”
Zoey sighed and shook her head. “Trying not to be,” she said. “The short, short version is I tricked him into a game of chess when I realized the duel we were in the middle of was going to end badly for me.”
“How’d the chess game go?”
“Forced a draw,” she said. “Once that happened, per my contract with him, I’m able to stall for time until I’m ready for a rematch.”
“A rematch in chess?”
“That part is still up in the air,” she said. “Hoping it’s not going to be another duel.”
“Ah. Got it,” Ethan said.
“Anything else?”
“Yeah, actually, there is,” he said. “How many other players are there around here?”
Zoey’s eyes went up and to the right as her mouth twisted left. “From our world? I’m not sure,” she finally said. “Our numbers have been dwindling for a long time now. Not sure why.”
“Are the rest NPCs?”
Zoey shook her head. “No. They’re real as far as I can tell. They’re just part of this world.”
Ethan nodded. “Speaking of the world, what sort of RPG are we in? One with pirates, obviously, but what else? Gothic fantasy? Steampunk? Horror?”
“Mostly pirates, but a little bit of the others, too,” she said. “Some pretty funny things happen from time to time. And some weird stuff, as well. But I think all that’s because nothing is scripted from what I’ve seen. This place is what we make of it for the most part, which is why I said it’s like a giant sandbox game. Think something like Minecraft crossed with the old Ultima games but steeped in the Age of Sail.”
“Oh, I liked that series,” Ethan said, perking.
“That’s good because you’re essentially in it now.”
“Next question: since this is a sandbox, how will I know how I’m supposed to beat Death if I don’t have my contract? You said something here might help.”
Zoey’s eyes scanned the room for a moment before they lit up and she pointed to a small end table tucked in the corner. On it was a solitary envelope. “There,” she said. “Give it a look. That might have something.”
Dear Master Ethan,
It is with great pleasure that I write you and it is with my sincerest hopes that this letter finds you well. I hope you will forgive my absence in personally meeting you at Bartigua for a proper welcome, and I would wager that you are full of fears being in an unknown world; however, Madam Nataliya has taken it upon herself to see you fit for your journey ahead.
Thus, I will bid you good fortune and favor so that you might find your way to this year's Grand Regatta where the winner will be awarded high honors in front of the king himself, as well as be granted the soul of one canine companion, commonly known by mortal tongues as Anne.
Your ever-dutiful competitor in good faith,
-Azrael
“I have to get to a regatta?” Ethan asked. “Is that it?”
“Looks like it,” Zoey said with a horrid cringe.
“What?”
“What, what?”
“You made a face.”
“That regatta is in two weeks,” she said. “That doesn’t leave you a lot of time to get a ship, hire a crew, and be there when the race starts.”
Ethan cursed under his breath, and he dreaded asking his next question. “What’s the rest of it?”
Zoey hesitated; her face filled with sympathy. “Azrael is undefeated.”
“But that’s only because he’s never raced before, right?” Ethan said, ever hopeful.
“No, he’s been the reigning champion since its inception,” she said. “And the race has been going on for a few hundred years, as far as I know.”
Now it was Ethan’s turn to cringe. As he stood there in silence, two thoughts crashed together. First, that was one hell of a track record. Second, his dog, Anne, was counting on him. He wasn’t about to let her down and give her up. “Okay,” he said, taking in a deep breath. “I can do this. I can do this.”
The look in Zoey’s eyes, however, disagreed.
Chapter Nine
Gear
“I’m glad you’re not letting this get you down,” Zoey said, obviously trying to sound upbeat for his sanity. “As long as you don’t act like a complete noob, we can get that gem, and then at least you’ll have a good start on getting a ship.” The moment she finished her sentence, her eyes widened, and a look of dread washed over her face. “For the love of all, please tell me you guys still say noob.”
Ethan laughed uneasily. “Yeah, we still say noob.”
“Oh, thank god,” she said, falling back in her chair. “For a moment there, I thought you were going to look at me like the only person you’d ever heard say that was your great-great-grandfather.”
“No, you don’t have to worry about that,” Ethan said wit
h a chuckle. “What happens when you die here? Is this where I respawn?”
Zoey laughed, and the notes she hit when she did made Ethan wish she hadn’t found whatever he’d said disturbingly funny. “Respawn. Oh, wouldn’t that be nice? If there’s only one thing you remember at all, remember this: we’re in hardcore mode. Got it?”
“Hardcore like no saves?”
“Mm-hm.”
“Limited gear?”
“Yep.”
Ethan felt his throat tighten. “And no respawn?”
“One life, kiddo. Enjoy it.”
“Okay,” Ethan said, taking it all in. “But what does happen if you die here?”
Zoey shrugged. “I don’t know. All I know for certain is no one ever comes back, which means at the very least, you lose whoever you’re playing for.”
“And at the worst, you die in the real world, too,” Ethan finished.
“Exactly.”
Ethan drummed his fingers on his side for a few moments. “Does Death have to play by the same rules?”
“He does.”
“So if he dies here, he doesn’t get to come back, either?”
Zoey shrugged. “I would assume.”
Ethan nodded with purpose. “Then, I guess if I can’t outrace him, I’ll just have to kill him.”
“Remember when I said don’t act like a noob?” she asked. “That’s acting like a noob. Aside from the fact that he easily beat me in a duel, he also has a massively loyal and deadly crew. And that’s not counting the fact that his ship is brimming with so many cannons he could level a small country.”
Ethan frowned. This hardly seemed like a fair game, and not even in the sense that he had a fair chance at winning. Even the games at the fair gave the illusion one had some hope. This seemed to be anything but. “I thought you were going to help?” he finally said. “This doesn’t feel helpful.”
“Being realistic is helpful,” she replied. “Besides, you’re the one who came up with the ‘Let’s kill Death’ plan. As if that hasn’t been tried. What you’re forgetting already is that you don’t have to kill him. You only have to win a race.”
The Pirate (Captains & Cannons Book 1) Page 7