“Yep! Ate a bug.”
“I bet you had had in mind when you designed these things,” Bridget said with a head shake. “Children.”
“Still not mature, even after 300 years,” I said, grinning and reply.
“Okay, fun’s over, time to go.”
Bill reinforce the statement by diving into the water without waiting. This was a little more work than normal because we were leaving from the dock. It occurred to us that it would be an easy location to establish surveillance if there were more than the eight thugs. With that in mind we'd circled around to the west side of town, and then simply walked away until we found an isolated beach. We dove in after Bill, skillfully avoiding the shallow bottom and torpedoed out to mid-river, where the current was swiftest. It took only a moment to link up into a Quinlan raft.
“Well, that was eventful,” Bridget said. “We do seem to make a splash in every town.”
“We’s rock stars, we is,” Garfield muttered.
“And we still haven't hit that library,” Bridget reminded us.
“Okay, next town we do that, first thing. We should also think about trying to find the Resistance, maybe not to talk, maybe to spy on. If Skeev was able to get in touch with them, despite being in a new town, they must be either easy to locate or have lots of ears.”
“Yeah, talking isn’t proving to be a high-probability strategy, honestly,” Bill replied. “We’ll try spying first.”
“Sounds good,” Bridget said. “Funny. Despite my initial skepticism about Hughes statistics, it looks like he was right. Two towns in, we’ve contacted a group that might either know something, or can point us at someone.”
Garfield snickered. “Yeah, ‘contacted’. Say, which one of us has a hole in his sternum?”
Bill grinned at him. “Way to take one for the team.”
We settled into a companionable silence as the sun warmed our top halves. Insects buzzed around us, and Bridget swatted at one.
“Must be a heat seeker. Interesting. I'm impressed at how robust the artificial ecosystem is.”
I looked around. “The Arcadia River's pretty wide here, and the current is slow. Let’s hand off to the AMIs. They can alert us if anything requires our attention.”
The others made agreeing sounds, and we popped back into virt.
23. Dancing with Dragons
Bill
July 2334
Virt
Two Gamers lay dead, their smoking ruined skeletons providing perfect tripping hazards, as players ran frantically back and forth. The dragon, red variety, was doing its best to immolate the rest of the dungeon party. The only thing working in our favor was that the beast seemed to want to get at least two targets with each flame breath. Given the required recharge time, it was a reasonable tactic.
“Get under him! Hit him in the belly!” Tim the Warrior yelled.
“You first, asshole!” replied Vern the Dwarf Warlord. “You’re the one with the magic sword!”
The dragon, an NPC known as Garg the Destroyer, roared and tried to stomp on Tim - also a reasonable tactic. Tim was far too close to take out with fire breath. At least, not without dealing itself a few hit points of damage. I had, for the moment, escaped Garg’s attention. Probably because I was a) by myself and b) flat on my back, having been run over by our NPC troops when they fled in terror. I had only some crap armor and a basic sword to my name. The Gamers had flat out refused to give me a higher starting level. Something about game integrity. Sure.
The smoking remains of Kevin the Wise, perhaps not as wise as he thought, still had a death grip - hah, death grip - on his former pride and joy, a Staff of Fireballs. Unfortunately, a Staff of Fireballs against a red Dragon was about as useful as a harshly worded email. Now if he'd had a Staff of Ice Storms or something...
Still, it was a valuable weapon. If I got out of this alive, it might be tradable for some enchanted armor or something. I stood, grabbed the staff, and wrenched it out of what was left of Kevin's hand.
“Christ's sake, Bill, get in the game!” Vern yelled. “That thing’s useless against a red dragon!”
Garg screamed in rage and pain as one of the players managed to cut a chunk off the dragon’s leg. In response, Garg temporarily abandoned his two-targets-per-breath policy, and gave the player - Tim, I think - the full treatment. From that range, even bones would be unlikely to survive.
Tim yelled “aww, shit!” as he turned to ash.
Garg then went after Vern the old-fashioned way, attempting to eat him. Vern skipped back, desperately waving his battle-axe. Interesting thing about dragon physiology, though - when they leaned down to bite someone, the tail went up as a counterbalance, and I discovered, from my vantage point, that the Gamers had been obsessively thorough about anatomical details. I wondered for a moment if I should be watching for dragon poop. Come to think of it though, a red dragon was probably no more flameproof on the inside than any other animal. With that thought, I ran up behind the dragon - as a first level grunt, I was barely worth paying attention to - jammed the Staff of Fireballs right where a rectal thermometer would go, and pulled the trigger.
There was a muffled wump sound. The Dragon turned with a surprised look and smoke puffed out of its ears. Then it screeched, leapt straight up, and the entire scene froze.
A voice set out of thin air. “Okay, we’ll need a ruling here. Is the target entitled to a saving throw?”
“Are you friggin’ kidding me!?” Vern screamed. “How in the hell is it supposed to dodge that?!”
Vern and the disembodied voice began to yell insults at each other, with Vern capering around and waving his fists in the air as counterpoint. The rest of us gathered around Garg, still frozen in mid-leap, the staff right where I left it.
“Fried dragon on a stick,” Pete said, slapping me
