Chapter Four

Thursday, November 28th,, 2052, 19:07 OWO Server Time

An NPC barmaid that we’d seen on our arrival, Natalie Walton, approached the table with a welcoming, dull-eyed smile on her face, “Good evening, adventurers! Happy Festival of Thanks- ”

“- Fuck a duck!” Macha cut in. “What day is it?”

“November 28th? Things can really slip away in here! This calls for a toast!” Elias answered, then lifted his wine cup in a toast. “Cheers.”

“Thanksgiving? Really?” I couldn’t hide the unbridled enthusiasm from my voice, not that I tried.

The quote-unquote “real world” seemed so far away, but Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays. At one time, it had been Christmas, but as I got old enough to realize what a stress the gift-giving holiday put on my parents, Thanksgiving had replaced it. Although even for Thanksgiving, our feasts had usually been pretty sparse. Back when I was twelve was the last time we’d been able to afford an actual turkey with all the fixings. That was when Dad could still get legitimate work. Before getting blackballed as a union instigator and rabble-rouser. Before, Mom had gotten sick and was near the peak of her career. After that, we’d celebrated the holiday with vat-grown turkey-like products with similarly dubious accompaniments. Nevertheless, it had still been one of the few days each year when the three of us gathered, tried to ignore the fact that the world was crumbling around us, and just enjoyed one another.

“Colonizer bullshit is all I see,” Macha muttered darkly, reminding me that she wasn’t really a wood elf but a Native American out in the real world.

“We have a special festival menu available tonight,” Natalie cheerily jumped back in as though she’d never been interrupted. “Roast turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, green beans, and pumpkin pie for dessert.”

“Sign me up!” My mouth was already watering at the thought. Sure it was a simulated meal, but the food in OWO was generally better than anything I had access to out in the real world. My real-world diet was so pumped full of synthetic materials it might as well be simulated.

Bryn and Elias both accepted the festival plate. Macha very pointedly ordered fish’n’chips from the inn’s regular menu, which was much closer to modern than what we’d experienced in the OZ. After a moment of hesitation, Bolton seemed to read Macha’s dark mood on the subject and joined her by ordering the chicken and dumpling soup.

While we waited for the food, we continued to poke and prod at Bryn’s map. Elias busied himself with his cup of wine while Bolton and Macha murmured to each other. Beside me, I felt Archer rest his head on the bench, and I reached down to scratch behind his ears. However, when I looked down, I saw the disappointment in his eyes.

“What’s the matter with you?” I asked the wolf.

Archer jerked his head towards Natalie, delivering food to a neighboring table. With a start, I realized I hadn’t ordered anything for the hulking dire wolf.

“Hungry for dinner?” I guessed.

Archer bobbed his head in a very human-seeming nod.

“My bad, bud! I’ll get you squared away when she comes back.”

Satisfied for the moment, Archer padded back over to lay down close to the fire.

“Can I float a proposal to the party?” Bryn asked, drawing everyone’s attention.

“What?” Macha’s tone was heavy with distaste. The tension between these two was getting to be a bit much. I knew it was jealousy over me. Macha had made it crystal clear to me that we were just friends even before she’d gotten involved with Illiya. Although, Bryn’s continued flirtations with me did seem to ratchet up Macha’s animosity. Probably cause she’s worried the blood isn’t flowing through your brain, dummy, I told myself.

“I’ve been thinking about the Swor -'' Bryn began, then paused and corrected herself before I could. “- I mean The MacGuffin.”

“I’m sure you have,” Macha growled.

Undeterred, Bryn plowed on. “I’ve been thinking we should just put it up for auction.”

“What?” Macha and I demanded in unison.

“Hear me out!” Bryn pleaded and raised her hands to forestall any more interruptions. “We got lucky today that no PKers were waiting for a group of hapless noobs to exit the OZ. Without a Clan or a Mega backing us, it’s going to take months to grind up to levels where we won’t be such easy pickings to every wanna-be out there. Even then, we could have some of the most powerful players on Gygax gunning for us! So why not just auction it off and cash in?”

Stunned silence crashed over the table in the wake of Bryn’s proposition. I immediately knew selling the MacGuffin wasn’t an option. It wasn’t just a powerful and valuable in-game artifact; it was a puzzle piece. It was supposed to help me unlock hidden secrets that might give humanity the gift of immortality. But how will I explain that to them without telling them everything? I haven’t even told them about the damn poem yet.

“You selfish, greedy, whore!” Macha seethed and looked like she was ready to get violent. “You expect -”

Elias shocked everyone by cutting off Macha’s building tirade. “- Bryn’s not wrong. I did some looking around online today while we walked. We’re trending, big time. The MacGuffin would probably net us all a small fortune at an auction. We recovered the artifact as a party. What we do with it should be a party decision.”

In our limited conversations about our lives in the real world, it had become clear that all of us - well, all of us except Bryn - were not well off financially. So, like many, our best shot at upward mobility was to strike it big in OVR World Online somehow.

“Seriously? We only got the damn Sword because of Zee,” Macha spat while I still sat there mutely trying to find something to say. “It’s his.”

“Hey, I don’t want to take anything away from Zee’s heroics. And as far as I am concerned, it is mostly Zee’s, but we all went down in that tomb, and we all share in the danger of carrying it around. So it’s mostly a party asset and a party liability the way I see it,” Elias said. “Or it could be. The longer we hold onto the MacGuffin, the more people come after us for it, the more of a liability it’ll become. At what point will it be more trouble than it's worth?”

“We don’t have to decide right now!” Bryn jumped in just as Natalie returned with the first tray of our feast. I doubted the NPC’s synthetic intelligence, SI, would care much about what we discussed. Still, it offered a chance to end the argument. At least for the moment.

The plates of food were set before us and my mouth watered as the smells filled my nose. Trying to decide how to dive in, I sat there motionless for several minutes, staring at my plate with reverence. Long suppressed memories of those few times my family had cobbled together a traditional turkey day feast came flooding back.

“You gonna eat it or just stare at it all night?” Macha pointedly chomped down on a fry, her expression sour.

“Good question.” Bryn squeezed my thigh, no doubt trying to dispel the tension left in the wake of her proposal about the MacGuffin. “Be sure to save room for dessert.”

It didn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure out Bryn wasn’t talking about the pie. I still wasn’t sure whether Bryn was flirting or just trying to annoy the others. Or possibly, both? Regardless, I licked my lips and turned my full attention to my little feast.

With deft movements of my fork and knife, I attempted to compose the perfect bite. A piece of gravy-soaked turkey breast speared to the end of my fork, a scoop of fluffy mashed potatoes - slightly yellow from all the butter - used as glue to hold a one-inch segment of green bean, and a small heap dressing. The table went silent as I raised the entire precarious construction to my mouth, which I opened wide. I let out an involuntary groan of pleasure as the forkful successfully deposited its cargo, and the flavor filled my mouth as I began to chew.

“Are you crying?” Bolton asked with a mixture of concern and humor.

“Shit a dick, bro,” Macha chided, “it’s just food. It’s not even real!”

“Shut up,” I said around a mouthful of virtual turkey and fixings. “It’s real enough for me.”

A universal round of tension-reducing laughter erupted from my friends, which I did my best to ignore as I dove in for a second perfect bite. It was a struggle not to wolf the entire plate down, but I wanted to relish this experience. However, my enjoyment was interrupted when I noticed a figure in velvet, black robes, with a deep hood pulled up over their head, sitting at the bar.

There was no hovering NPC tag, meaning the new arrival had to be a player. Because of the hood, I couldn’t see their face, but I felt sure that their attention was fixed on our table. Granted, I’d been a little distracted, but I was almost certain they hadn’t been there when we arrived, nor had they entered afterward. That left the uneasy feeling that they’d just appeared.

“Hey guys,” I said quietly, trying not to raise a stir. “Don’t look, but when did that other player arrive?” I cocked my head subtly towards the bar.

Of course, everyone followed my motion and turned to look at the mystery player. With slender pale fingers, the robed figure lifted a cup of wine in a silent toast to our table. Then they reached up and pulled back their hood. Intense dark eyes stared at us from a delicate pale-skinned man’s face, framed by long blond hair.

“I didn’t see him come in,” I insisted in a hiss.

“Maybe he just logged in?” Bolton guessed.

“Or maybe he was there the whole time under an invisibility spell, and someone missed him.” Macha looked pointedly at Bryn.

“If I missed him, so did you, hun,” Bryn said venomously sweet.

“What should we do?” I resisted the sudden urge to pull my hood up. That would have just been suspicious.

“Maybe we should invite him over for a drink?” Bryn offered, and I reflexively shot a scowl in her direction.

“Let’s just leave him alone,” Macha said as she devoured a mouthful of fried fish and fries. “He’s already spotted us but hasn’t made a move. We’ll just keep an eye on him.”

I glanced around the table. Bolton and Elias returned their attention to the map and their food, but Bryn’s lips were pursed, and her glowing red eyes were fixed intently on the new arrival. I could practically see the wheels of her mind turning on a scheme, and it made me instantly nervous.

“I’ll go feel him out,” Bryn volunteered.

“Wait -” I shot back, but she had already stood and was moving across the room.

Even as she glided up to the stool beside the handsome stranger, I felt the urge to go after her. I heard Bryn order a fresh cup of wine for herself and a refill for the robed man, then she turned her devastating smile on him as they started to talk. I had felt the effect of Bryn’s charms when she cranked up her Charisma skills to the megawatt levels like now. A mild flirt from her could easily make any female inclined head spin like ten shots of tequila. If this guy had his perception filters cranked up, her charms might not be nearly as effective, but if girls were his thing, it wouldn’t hurt her effort. Even without the dazzling influence the game imposed, Bryn’s avatar was still movie-star-level gorgeous.

From across the room and over the din of chatting NPCs, I heard the bell-like tinkle of Bryn’s laugh followed by the sultry rasp of hushed words in response to something the man had said. The two appeared to be hitting it off.

“Either go over there or stop staring,” Macha scolded me. “You’re the one that keeps telling us to trust her.”

Blowing out a frustrated sigh, I turned my attention back to my meal while trying to keep an eye on Bryn and the stranger with my peripheral vision. Unfortunately, the bliss of the Thanksgiving feast had soured, and I found myself struggling to get the rest of it down. As I ate, I tried to convince myself that I was just concerned about the danger this stranger might pose to us and that I was most definitely not jealous.

Yeah, I wasn’t buying it.

Bolton and Macha tried to distract me with details about the Grind-again Trail while I drank more wine. They pointed out several notable stops along the way, either fantastic sights or the higher reward quests. I did my best to focus on what they said, but my attention kept drifting back to the bar. It felt like Bryn had been over there a ridiculously long time for just a little intel gathering. Then I saw he had slid a hand resting on her waist while she had eased closer to his side!

I shifted my weight to rise and take a little saunter over to the bar myself when Elias placed a firm hand on my shoulder and held me in place. “She’s either in the midst of flirting information out of him,” Elias’s whispered words carried the weight of a stern admonishment, “or she’s already decided to kick you to the curb for Goldylocks over there. Either way, going over there is a bad idea.”

“Fine.”

Lifting my wine to my lips, I drained the last of it. Everything on the table rattled when I brought it back down a little harder than intended. Pushing away my plate, littered with cold, half-eaten food, I announced, “I’m going to bed.”

“Good idea,” Macha said with a wan, unsympathetic smile. “I’ll keep an eye on her.”

“Whatever. Come on, Archer.”

Archer rose and followed me across the room. With deliberate effort, I kept my gaze turned from the bar as I walked to the stairs. The trip up was more difficult than I had expected as the stairs twisted and swayed beneath me. Only then did I notice the Intoxicated condition blinking in the corner of my HUD. On the second floor stood a freckled ten-year-old boy. The tag over his toe-head identified him.

Lucas Walton, Level 0 Commoner, Human

“Can I show you your room, sir?” Lucas offered, his vacant-eyed expression bugging me more than they should have.

“Lead the way.” I swayed on my feet more than a little.

Lucas led me down a short hallway, stopping at an unmarked door. “This is you, sir.”

Stepping towards the door, I drunkenly stumbled over nothing but my own feet. As I staggered, my hand came down on Lucas's shoulder for balance. Despite being half my height, the child-sized NPC didn’t falter. I felt a rush of intangible warmth surge in my chest, then rush down my arm and into the kid.

“Ss-sorry,” I slurred, my head spinning even more as the sensation faded.

Beside me, Archer let out a gentle whine.

“Sir?” Lucas asked, his eyes suddenly wide and bright with confusion.

“Thanks for the help.”

I drew in a breath, straightened, and grabbed the door handle. Twisting the knob, I swung open the door and stumbled in after it. Only after a second, I realized that Archer hadn’t followed and turned to see him still standing in the hall.

“Comin?” I held the door open for the wolf

Archer turned his massive canine head from me to Lucas. He yipped at me, and I frowned. Then the wolf stepped over to Lucas and began to thoroughly sniff him from head to toe. Lucas laughed nervously then sputtered as Archer licked his face with a massive tongue.

“Fine, stay out here.” Confused by Archer’s behavior, I shrugged and slammed the door.

Turning to the quilt-covered bed, I flopped down face first and passed out, still fully dressed.

***

A steady, insistent knocking dragged me back to consciousness sometime later. Bleary-eyed, I heaved myself up and stumbled over to the noisy door. Leaning heavily against the wall, I cracked the door open and found Bryn on the other side.

“Finally, I was getting ready to pick the lock.”

“What are you - ” I started.

Bryn pushed the door open and into my room. Before I had realized what was happening, she had hip-checked the door shut and had shoved me against the wall. Her wine-flavored lips pressed hungrily to mine.

“Huh?” I managed to utter after she broke the kiss and began rapidly stripping out of her cloak, armor, and other gear.

“Are you waiting for an engraved invitation?” Bryn chuckled.

Half dazed from drink and sleep, I began stripping in response. Within seconds, the two of us embraced again and fell naked onto the bed together. Soon I lost track of everything but Bryn’s body against mine for an unknowable, beautiful amount of time.