Star was sitting beside me. She was growing fast—far faster than a normal cat. I patted the Frazzle and she let out a yawn, mixed with a purr.
“Well,” I said. “We’ve been here a week and a half.”
“Yeah,” Thornhold said, stretching out on the straw-stuffed cushion that served as a beanbag chair. “I take it we haven’t heard a word from the devs? I took my watch off so it wouldn’t get damaged while we were building the pens.”
“My watch didn’t go off. How about yours?” I asked Liesel. “Any private news?”
She shook her head. “Not a peep, I’m afraid. Tomorrow, you should go down to the houses near the trailhead, to pick up the new clothing. It’s a good thing you ordered it a couple days ago, given that Farra—the seamstress—won’t be getting in any more cloth from the outside, not until they fix the game. So you were wise to put your orders in before she runs out.”
“Yeah, we need the clothes,” Reggie said. “So…not to be a dick, but are we going to go out on the road? I mean, we’re building a life here, but Erenye still has that key around her neck, and I can’t help but think that’s dangerous.”
“It is,” I said. “It’s just going to make me a target. If that necromancer is still alive, I’m in trouble. Or anybody else who wants to break Devastey free, for whatever reason. The key won’t come off my head unless we destroy her, or until someone destroys me.”
“Then we should hit the road. Liesel, will you be able to run the farm while we’re gone?”
She sighed. “It’s not going to be easy,” she said. “I wish we had one other person here.”
“Maybe we can find somebody to come help you,” I said. “I’m leery of taking Star with us, because she’s not full-grown yet.”
“You can leave her here with me,” Liesel said. “I’ll take care of her for you.”
“Listen, I wanted to ask you about something,” Ray said. “I remember hearing that Abarria was going to have a major update days before we got started on our adventure. In all the excitement, I forgot to check on whether that went through?”
“The waypoints!” I jumped up. “I totally forgot about them.” Turning to Liesel, I tried to contain my hope. The waypoints update would be a gamechanger, literally.
Liesel nodded. “Yes! With everything that’s gone on, I forgot, as well. Survival kind of takes over, you know. The update went through the day before you came into the game. The devs always debug before launching, so they should work.”
“Wait, I didn’t even know there was supposed to be an update,” Geoff said. “I didn’t have time to log on and play before my trip here—I was pulling overtime. What about waypoints?”
I turned to him. “Abarria decided to institute waypoints. So many players asked for them instead of only having a portal spell—it’s so high level, and the scrolls were so expensive. There should be waypoints in the different sectors and biomes. That means we can travel between other places and here, like teleportation.”
“The thing is,” Liesel said, “you’ll have to discover the waypoints as you go along, and activate them. Your watches will activate them, and allow you to travel to any other waypoint you’ve been to.”
“Where’s the one in this sector? I assume it’s near the launching pad?” I asked.
“Not necessarily. Let’s see if I have the information on my laptop. We employees get all the updates on the maps, so I should have gotten it the day before it was deployed. Let me check.”
Geoff was unusually somber.
“What’s wrong?” Reggie asked.
He sighed. “I lost my watch, remember? Does that mean I won’t be able to travel through them?”
Liesel, who was firing up her laptop, froze. Then she sighed. “I’m afraid so. Let me check—I may have an old watch you can use. But if I don’t, yeah, you won’t be able to use them.”
Geoff wandered over to look out the window. It was early evening. Outside, smoke rose from the smokehouse, and even from here, we could smell venison and turkey smoking.
“Hey, you okay?” I asked. During our daily hunting trips we’d gotten to know each other a bit better. Geoff was a good guy, and I liked him. I felt terrible about how the worry over his wife and child were eating at him.
“I guess. I just…I keep beating myself up for accepting this trip in the first place. I should have made my wife get a refund. I know she wanted to treat me, but how could I accept a gift that was this expensive. And look at what’s happened? I wonder if it’s not a punishment, for being selfish.” He leaned on the windowsill.
“A lot of people are affected by the game breaking, dude. If you think some old white guy in the sky is punishing everybody for something you did, then that says a lot about the belief system, doesn’t it? This wasn’t a punishment. It was all too human—an attack by one giant corporation on another. We’re just collateral damage.” I patted his shoulder.
“Collateral damage…I guess that’s better than being the target. How many of us are stuck in here, do you think?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I wonder if Liesel knows. I’m just grateful we happened to meet her. She’s saved our asses, in more ways than one.”
“I guess so?—”
