Non Player Character

Chapter 16 - Tea Party

I didn't sleep well that night. My mind had been racing, and it was colder than usual. Perhaps that coldness I felt was less the drop in temperature and more the loss of warmth in my soul.

Eventually, I did fall asleep, and despite my mental and physical discomfort, I woke up ready to take on the day. After confronting Val, I had made a decision. Sure, I had already decided to become a Player and fight back against the Triarchy, but I had never truly understood or accepted what I'd have to do to succeed. I was doing this so that one day, I could beat these alien bastards at their own game. Occasionally, I would be forced to set aside my morality to accomplish my goals. It was a cost I was now willing to pay.

Tara woke up with bloodshot eyes. Despite her complicated feelings about her uncle, he was still family, and losing a family member was always hard. Hopefully, she slept better than me.

I grabbed the wolf pelt off a tree limb I had hung it over and disappeared the thing into my inventory. I'm pretty sure Tara was watching me as I did it, but she didn't seem to notice anything strange had happened. I had to admit, the quantum inventory was damn useful. Not for the first time, I wondered how the system reconciled the anomalous disappearance of an object in the mind of an NPC.

Tara and I packed up again and began our final journey to Lucard Pass. Val said it was only six miles away. If we kept a steady pace, we could be there before noon.

I had never been through one of the ancient passes before. I'd heard stories about them of course, and I couldn't wait to see it for myself. The passages built by the ancients (who never existed) typically followed the valleys between the rises, but some sections were carved directly through the mountain. I'd heard that the longest tunnel ran for twenty miles, and the only light that ever touched those stone walls came from whatever source a traveler brought with them. That tunnel was supposedly far to the north among the daunting peaks of the Bygone Mountains. Luckily, the section we would pass through wasn't nearly as vast and formidable.

After an hour of silence, I decided it was time to strike up a conversation and see if I truly had broken through the walls Tara had built.

"Hey, Tara," I said. "You told me I'd be taking you to your family in Danver. I've always assumed you meant your parents. Is that the case?"

At my mention of her parents, Tara froze—just for a whisp of a time, but I saw it, nonetheless. I wondered where her thoughts went during that millisecond.

"You'll be taking me to my father. Strangely, you remind me of him."

"Oh really, how so?"

She smiled. "He's stubborn and overly confident but also kind when he needs to be."

"Overly confident? I just killed a wolf! I think that justifies my bravado."

"That wolf practically killed itself. You only won because you tricked it."

I spread out my arms. "Can't you just give me a little credit? It was a clever trick."

She glanced at me and smirked. "Fine."

"Fine?"

"Fine," she restated.

I shrugged. "I'll take it."

Ahead, through a small gap through the trees, I saw a patch of flat, brown earth. It was the road.

We'd made finally made it. If all went well from here on out, we'd reach Danver well before Tara's deadline, and I'd be cashing in a ton of experience. I wondered if I'd get some sort of reward in addition to the gold she had promised me.

I alerted Tara, and we picked up our pace until we cleared the forest and planted our feet on the hard-packed dirt road.
Val pointed me in the right direction, and we found the entrance to the pass after another mile.