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Stephi sat with her back against the willow tree, observing Glenn and Kirby. The gnome healer and half-goblin thief watched their wooden bobbers intently. Well, the thief more than the healer.
Some wily fish, or other critter native to the Snake Claw River, had been stripping worms from their hooks all morning.
Glenn rubbed his bulbous nose, smiled up at Stephi, his elven friend, and then scanned the area around them. He wasn’t too concerned about a monster rising up out of the river. It really wasn’t that large of a waterway. No more than a stone’s throw across. Well, a stone’s throw back when he was a human, back in the real world. Now he was a four-foot, three-inch-tall gnome named Jax, trapped in the Monsters, Maces and Magic game world.
The world he and his five friends were trapped in had rules, most of which followed established norms he’d learned to count on while growing up to the point of attending college. So, as the Snake Claw River wasn’t exceptionally deep, it seemed like a massive serpent wasn’t likely to appear and spew venom on the three, or swallow them whole. How did they know about the river’s depth? Pulling up info on a cell phone wasn’t an option. The knowledge came from Kirby, who’d assured him and Stephi. The source? His half-goblin friend gathered information about the river from a retired merchant sailor in Three Hills City, the walled city a quarter mile behind them. Where the information was gathered? Through a casual conversation at a small tea house called the Red Brick.
Despite being a half-goblin, with yellow eyes, a muddy-colored complexion and a long pointed nose, Kirby managed to carouse better than Glenn. Although gnomes were far more likeable, at least according to the game rules—which translated to actual fact in the game world—Glenn just didn’t have the knack for pumping random people, or NPCs, for information. The inability was an apparent carryover from who he really was, back in the real world.
Why the city was built about a quarter mile away from the slow-moving river, the retired sailor had no answer. And it didn’t make sense to Glenn. Maybe, in the past when the city was founded, nasty creatures did reside in the river. Nobody’d want to be close to that.
But the river’s current contents didn’t concern Glenn. He paid less attention to his bobber than he should, if he wanted to catch fish, and more to the surrounding meadow grassland. Two weeks ago, while fishing at the same spot, a zombie shambling along the river bank attacked them. That was more than reason enough to split his focus.
Petie, Stephi’s blue jay familiar, flitted from branch to branch in the willow tree. In theory, the bird was watching for danger. Trusting one’s safety to a bird, even one that was uncommonly smart, didn’t seem like a sound survival strategy. The world the six others had been sucked into, in the form of their RPG characters, held lethal terrors worse than zombies. Terrors found in the worst nightmares imaginable. Fortunately, those seemed to be far less common than an “average” terror, like the ogre that killed Kim within ten minutes of their arrival in the Monsters, Maces and Magic world. She’d died fighting to save everyone else.
The rest of the party, which included Ron, a quarter-elf warrior druid, and Kalgore, a human warrior, survived an adventure into the Dark Heart Swamp and retrieved a magical necklace for the Church of Apollo. In exchange, the high priest cast a Revive the Dead Spell on Kim.
The spell failed. Or rather Byeol, the warrior monk, failed her System Shock Survival Roll. Now she lay buried in a grave near the willow tree, opposite the river.
Subsequently, the party of five survived a second adventure through the swamp, and some scrapes in Three Hills City. Glenn considered those tiny steps in their long-term goal of escaping the Monsters, Maces and Magic world, the one in which a creepy game moderator had sucked them into, or transported them to, or whatever.
It made almost no sense. Nevertheless, they were in the monster-filled RPG world.
Glenn pursed his lips while refraining from shaking his head. He didn’t want to distract his two friends from their morning of attempted relaxation.
Ron was a mathematics graduate student, a genius, before becoming Lysine the warrior druid. He believed they were trapped in what he called an “aberrant concurrent world,” part of some sort of parallel universe theory.
So far, the only method devised for returning home was to obtain a Wish Spell.
One could say that Wish Spells were about as rare and coveted as a unicorn. Except in the Monsters, Maces and Magic world, unicorns almost certainly existed—and would be easier to locate than a wish. A better comparison would be finding a Ford Mustang in the magical, oddly medieval game world.
“Probably crawdads,” Kirby said in his half-croaking voice.
“What?” Stephi asked, lifting the brim of the straw hat she wore to conceal her face.
In character generation, Stephi’d maxed her roll for Appearance and, with her elven bonus, she had a 19.5. Gorgeous or ravishingly beautiful were understatements. Compared to her, supermodels were almost like Cinderella’s ugly stepsisters. Concealing her face kept her from drawing unwanted attention from strangers. Her abnormal height and epic chest—a size that would shame any porn star—made blending in even more difficult. Her near-cartoonish figure came about because she allowed a junior high kid to complete her character sheet. She’d laid on the flirty college coed act, egged Kirby on, encouraging responses to gather juicy content for her Sociology 102 paper.
Back then, the fact that she’d rounded up some of the numbers on her character sheet didn’t matter. What did it matter if the piece of paper said her elf maiden was two meters tall? It was only a game. And the college assignment was the only reason Stephi and Kim, her sorority sister, and Glenn attended the university’s game club meeting. And got involved in the dice and paper RPG that led to their entrapment.
“A crayfish,” Kirby said over his shoulder, answering Stephi’s question. “You know, like a mini lobster.”
Stephi rolled her eyes. “I know what a crayfish is, Gurk. Why didn’t you just say that?”
Glenn smiled at his friends’ banter. Then frowned. He thought of Kirby by his real name but, like Stephi, whenever Glenn spoke Kirby’s name, Gurk, his character’s name came out.
That was just one of the many oddities the game world offered. So, Kirby was Gurk, Stephi was Marigold, Ron was Lysine, Derek was Kalgore—and also a jerk most of the time—and he, Glenn, was Jax.
Kirby asked Glenn, “What’re you frowning for, dude?”
Rather than bring up his morose thoughts about one of the game world’s idiosyncrasies, and risk dragging his two friends’ apparent good mood down, he said, “I’m not digging any more worms.”
“Awww,” Stephi teased. “And Petie was just beginning to like you better than Gurk.”
“Whatever,” Kirby said and pulled in his line. “Stripped again.”
Sitting next to Glenn on the bank, Kirby leaned close and bumped shoulders with the gnome. “Check yours, dude.”
Glenn lifted his pole and pulled his line in. The hook was bare.
“What do ya think?” Kirby asked. “Try a little longer, or go back empty handed?”
Going back without any fish meant they’d have to endure Derek’s stupid comments. Glenn sighed before shrugging his shoulders. Spending a clear-skied morning relaxing hanging out with Stephi and Kirby was anything but a waste of time. Being the height of an eight year old and traversing the narrow streets of a crowded city? That was stressful. He’d have to deal with it now, or later, so he said, “Sun’s starting to get hot. Let’s head back.”
Stephi leapt to her feet.
Kirby began wrapping his fishing line around his pole. “I think Marigold agrees with you.”
“No,” Stephi said, pointing west. “Look at that!”