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  “Here’s your water,” he said. “Tinner isn’t bothering you, is he?”

  The old man at our table smiled gleefully.

  “No,” I said. “That’s all for now.”

  “If he gives you trouble,” the chef said. “Just holler.”

  Tinner stuck out his tongue.

  “I’m gonna chop that thing out,” the chef said.

  Evan burped, relieving the tension in the air.

  “What about that bacon?” Bernard asked.

  “All gone,” the chef said as he walked back to the kitchen.

  Several men got up at a nearby table and left. I paid them no mind as I thought about what we should do next. Open world games could be tricky.

  I stared across the table at Tinner who continued smiling.

  “What were you talking about?” I asked.

  The old man leaned forward and lowered his scratchy voice.

  “I have a treasure map,” he said. “And I’m willing to sell it to you.”

  “Hold on,” Sarah said, shaking her head. “We can’t waste money on worthless treasure maps. There’s a lot of other things we need to do.”

  “Maybe it’ll open our main quest for this level of the game,” I said, knowing Tinner couldn’t understand me.

  Sarah sighed.

  “I don’t need a lot of gold for it,” Tinner said. “And it’s not worthless. When you find the treasure, bring some back for me. I’ll sell the map to you cheap if you do that for me.”

  “That’s all, huh?” I asked, narrowing my eyes. “How much do you want for it?”

  Sarah looked at me but said nothing.

  “A thousand gold,” Tinner said.

  “That won’t happen,” I said. “We’ll give you two gold.”

  “Really?” His smile got bigger. “I’ll take it.”

  “Let’s see this map first,” Sarah said. “We’ve had trouble with cartographers in the past.”

  Bernard chuckled then said, “Good idea.”

  Evan pointed his pudgy hand at my bowl.

  “Are you going to eat that soup?” he asked.

  “You can have it,” I said, pushing the bowl to him while still looking at Tinner. “Do you have the map with you?”

  “I do,” he said. “But we shouldn’t look at it in here.”

  Tinner glanced around the dining room. I noticed a couple armored men looking in our direction. Would they cause us trouble?

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said.

  “And go where?” Sarah asked. “We don’t even know where we are yet.”

  Tinner laughed.

  “You don’t know where you are yet?” he asked. “Have you guys been drinking without me? The last time I forgot where I was, I’d been drinking for five days straight.”

  “It’s a long story,” I said. “There’s an extra few silver pieces in it if you tell us what city we’re in. Can you do that for us?”

  “That’s easy,” Tinner said. “You’re in Esterhollow at the GobStopper.”

  I looked from Bernard to Sarah then back to Tinner.

  “You have somewhere private we can talk?” I asked.

  He nodded and said, “I know just the place.”

  “Great.” I pushed my chair back then stood. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “I’m still eating,” Evan said, devouring the runny soup.

  “We’ll get better food somewhere else,” Sarah said. “Let’s go.”

  Everyone followed Tinner outside. As my eyes adjusted to the bright sunlight, I glanced up and down the street.

  “I’ll be right back,” Tinner said.

  He walked around the side of the building.

  “I wonder when we’ll get our quest notification,” Sarah said as we waited.

  “Me too.” I turned to Bernard. “Any ideas?”

  “Who knows,” he said. “I’m sure it’ll pop up eventually.”

  Sarah took a deep breath.

  “We need to look for Josh too,” she said.

  I nodded. “Terrible, what happened…”

  “Let’s not talk about it,” Sarah said. “You two need to get along if we want to escape this stupid game. We don’t even know what we need to be doing.”

  “Maybe we kill all the goblins,” Evan said.

  “We’re not choosing sides in a racial war,” Sarah said.

  Evan looked up at her. His permanent smile didn’t mesh well with his human appearance, giving him an even more awkward look.

  “Maybe we should choose sides,” Bernard said.

  Tinner walked up looking as cheerful as before.

  “Ready to help find the missing dwarves?” he asked.

  Is this our quest? Will it now pop-up until we accept? Can we refuse?

  “The dwarves need to be saved,” Tinner continued.

  “What happened to them?” Bernard asked.

  “I’ll tell you all about it,” Tinner said, “After you buy my map.”

  “Hold on,” Sarah said. “I want to try something.”

  She turned to Tinner.

  “Do you want to join our party?” she asked.

  “I’m too old,” he said between chuckles. “Way too old for adventuring.”

  “Let’s see your treasure map,” Bernard said. “You keep talking about it, but I think you’re making it up.”

  “I’m not making anything up,” Tinner said. “I’ll show it to you.”

  He reached into his shirt and pulled out a rolled piece of parchment.

  I unfolded it after he handed it to me.

  “Be careful,” he said. “It’s ancient.”

  “Here,” I said, handing it to Sarah. “Check it out.”

  Sarah glanced at the supposed map.

  “The text is dwarven,” she said. “And it’s a map.”

  “A map with an important X to mark the entrance of the Mines of Oriam,” Tinner said.

  Bernard raised his left eyebrow.

  “How do we know if it’s genuine?” he asked.

  “Good question,” I said then looked at Tinner.

  “What else would it be?” Tinner asked.

  “A map of where not to go,” Sarah said. “We don’t even know if this level has a main quest or not. Are we locked into the first quest we come across or will there be more than one?”

  Tinner furrowed his brow as he stared at her.

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying,” he said.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “We’ll take the map. Sarah, give him a couple gold for his trouble.”

  “Sure.” She patted her waist. “Hey! My pouch is missing.”

  Everyone turned to Tinner. He held up his hands defensively.

  “It wasn’t me,” he said. “Where’s those two short fellows?”

  “Evan and Ewen,” Sarah said, looking around. “I don’t see them.”

  “I bet Evan picked your pocket,” I said, smiling like a proud father. “There’s hope for him yet. His skills are increasing.”

  “We need to find them before they spend all our gold,” Bernard said.

  “Yeah,” I said, scanning the street for the two brownies.

  Even disguised as short humans, they could still get into trouble.

  “Here,” I said, retrieving a small opal from the inside of my belt. “Take this for the map. It’s worth over two gold.”

  Tinner greedily grabbed the gemstone.

  “Eric, we might need that,” Sarah said.

  I turned and saw Tinner high-tailing it down the street.

  “Too late,” I said. “But still no quest notification.”

  “Maybe the map isn’t our quest,” Bernard said.

  “Do you have any other money?” Sarah asked.

  I nodded. “I have a few more gems, enough to get a cart and a couple horses maybe. We should be okay.”

  “The brownies,” Sarah said, pointing a block away.

  “After them,” I said.

  Bernard and Sarah followed as I too
k off down the street. As I approached, I saw them each eating two rats-on-a-stick.

  I slowed down.

  “You guys can’t run off like that,” Sarah said.

  “Sorry,” Evan said. “We were still hungry.”

  “Where’s my pouch?” she asked, holding out a hand.

  “Your pouch?” Evan asked. “I don’t have it.”

  “Give it up if you took it,” Ewen said.

  “I didn’t take it,” Evan insisted. “We had our own money from before.”

  “The old man,” Bernard said. “He must’ve stolen it.”

  “At least we got a dwarven map that might not be real,” Sarah said sarcastically.

  “We’ll have to sell some stuff to get supplies,” I said.

  “Not my staff,” Sarah said, “Or the wands.”

  Bernard grinned.

  “Let’s sell the brownies,” he said.

  Evan tossed his half-eaten rat to the ground then stepped forward.

  “I say we go find that bad man and teach him a thing or three,” he said. “No one steals from Sarah except for me.”

  “We should look for him.” I turned to Sarah. “What do you think?”

  She nodded.

  “He must be a good pick-pocket,” she said.

  “I’m getting hungry too,” Bernard said. “We don’t have any money left?”

  Evan picked up his rat-on-a-stick.

  “You can have the rest of my rat,” he said, offering it to Bernard.

  “Let’s go find this guy and get our money back,” I said. “How much did we have left?”

  “A little over a hundred gold and a few silver pieces,” Sarah said.

  “That’s enough to make it worth the effort of finding this guy,” Bernard said.

  “I’ll find him,” Evan said. “Nobody steals Sarah’s pouch and gets away with it.”

  He bustled past Bernard and me then scanned the crowds.

  “We’re good trackers, even in the city,” Ewen said. “Look.”

  He pointed down the street where Evan stood near where we’d talked to Tinner.

  “Got the trail,” Evan shouted then waved for us to follow.

  The four of us walked in his direction. When we arrived, he pointed down at several footprints in the dirt of the main road leading through the city.

  “You can make sense of all that?” Bernard asked.

  “Not a problem,” Evan said. “Follow me. Right this way.”

  He stepped forward, head bowed to the ground.

  I followed, hoping for the best and preparing for the worst.

  “Everyone keep your eyes open,” I said. “We need that gold.”

  2

  Magic the Mirror Gathering

  Eric

  After half an hour of tracking him through the city, Evan led us to a new stone building three stories tall. The words Temple of Magictology were engraved over the arched entrance.

  We stopped a block away to survey the place. I saw no movement in or out of the building. Evan continued smiling.

  Did he really find the old man? Or had he led us on a wild goose chase?

  “Are you sure he’s here?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Evan said. “I’m a great tracker and backstabber.”

  “And bozo,” Ewen added as grumpily as ever.

  “Looks like Magi Inyontoo is setting up shop here on the second level,” Bernard said.

  I nodded. “We should wait and watch before doing anything.”

  “You’re getting cautious,” Sarah said. “I like it.”

  “Hanging out here in public isn’t the best idea,” I said. “But if your spell holds, we should be okay.”

  “My magic is strong,” she said. “Don’t doubt me.”

  “Look,” Bernard said, pointing to the temple. “The old man’s coming out.”

  I turned and saw Tinner walk away from the building with a smile on his face and a spring in his step.

  “Evan and Bernard, go around the other side,” I said. “But let me confront him.”

  “I could cast something,” Sarah said.

  “No.” I shook my head. “We don’t know the laws for magic inside the city yet. This is another time period. I don’t want to make a bad situation worse.”

  She nodded and said, “Good idea.”

  Bernard and Evan crept off in the other direction. I stepped into the street and sprinted over to the old man. He stopped immediately, his face losing the last of its color.

  “I had to do it,” he said, throwing up his hands. “You don’t understand.”

  “So, you did take our gold,” I said.

  Ewen and Sarah walked up behind me.

  “I did, but I needed the money. The map I gave you is real,” Tinner said.

  “That might be, but we had a deal for two gold,” I said.

  As the old man turned to walk away, Bernard shook his head.

  “Give us the money back, and we’ll go away,” I said.

  “I gave the money to the temple. They needed my help.”

  A look of fear crept over his face like fog rolling across the badlands.

  “I don’t care about the Temple of Magictology,” I said. “They’re a scam.”

  “No, they’re not,” he said, becoming animated. “There’s another world where magic doesn’t exist.”

  I glanced at Sarah then Bernard before shaking my head.

  “Magi Inyontoo is a bad man, and any temple of his is not worth any money. You need to go back inside and demand our gold back.”

  “I can’t do it,” Tinner said. “They have my daughter. Another five hundred gold, and I’ll be able to see her again. Once I donate more, it’ll all be fine.”

  “They have your daughter?” I asked.

  “Yes, and they won’t let me see her unless I pay them.”

  “That’s not right,” I said. “We’re going inside to talk to them.”

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” Sarah asked.

  “No,” I said. “But it’ll help with our alignment score, I hope.”

  Tinner cocked his head as he stared at me.

  “Come on, let’s go inside,” I said, stepping toward the temple.

  +5 alignment

  Your alignment is -5 (Breaking Bad)

  “Still a long way to go, but everything helps,” I noted.

  Bernard nodded his head as we stopped in front of the entrance of the temple.

  “Should we go in unannounced?” Sarah asked.

  “They’ll accept anyone, but they won’t like what you’re saying,” Tinner said.

  “We’ll see about that,” I said as I opened the sturdy wooden door.

  I stepped into a long, rectangular room with a door on each of the three other walls. A man in black robes glanced up from where he sat behind a desk on the far side of the room.

  “Can I help you?” he asked.

  As I got closer to him, I noticed he looked like Bernard.

  I stopped ten feet away and looked over at Bernard then back to the man in black robes.

  “Welcome to the new Temple of Magictology,” the man said. “My name is Bernardo Bigelow. What can I help you with today?”

  He smiled and stared deep into my eyes.

  “We’re here for our money,” I said. “Tinner donated it under false pretenses.”

  “Oh? Is that so?” Bernardo asked, nodding his head thoughtfully.

  “Yeah,” Bernard said. “And we want it back.”

  His ancestor turned to him. The resemblance was uncanny.

  “Who might you be?” he asked. “Do I know you?”

  “You don’t know us,” I said.

  Bernardo turned his attention to me.

  “And who are you? Would you like to join the Temple of Magictology?”

  “No, we wouldn’t,” Sarah said. “Magi Inyontoo is a loon.”

  The smile faded from Bernardo’s face.

  “He’s the greatest man in all the realms. The stuff he’s taught me a
bout where we come from is the truth. A world without magic does exist, and I’m going there someday.”

  Is he really an NPC, or a PC trapped as one?

  “All we want is our gold, and we’ll be on our way,” I said. “We don’t want any trouble.”

  “Trouble is exactly what you’ll get if you don’t leave.”

  He clapped his hands. The other doors in the room opened. Seven cultists dressed in flowing black robes entered the room, all armed with swords.

  “I changed my mind,” Bernardo said. “You must make an offering before you leave.”

  “Now!” I yelled, hoping the others took my lead.

  As I drew my sword, Bernard took out his mace. Sarah cast a spell, causing Bernardo to clutch his ears and cry out in agony. I rushed toward the largest group of cultists. The FAST sword swung true.

  Your slash INJURES the cultist for 12 damage.

  The cultist is dead!

  Your Weapon Craft skill increases.

  Weapon Craft (Blades) Basic Level 9 of 10.

  Bernard and Ewen covered the two cultists at each of the two other doors. That left two more for me. I stabbed the nearest one as he reacted to his friend’s sudden death.

  Your slash INJURES the cultist for 11 damage.

  The cultist is dead!

  The third one retreated through the door he’d come through. I turned to Bernardo. He had dispelled Sarah’s magic and chanted a spell of his own.

  As I watched in horror, flames shot out of his hands and hit Sarah. Her clothes burst into flames, and the illusion spell broke.

  I ran forward, intent on attacking Bernardo from his right side. Before I reached him, Evan appeared out of nowhere and plunged his dagger into the cleric’s back.

  Bernardo screamed in pain then turned to face his attacker. I used the opportunity to slash him in the back. While not a proper back stab, I still connected.

  Your slash HITS Bernardo for 8 damage.

  “Enough,” he yelled then chanted another spell.

  Billowing clouds of smoke filled the entire room.

  “Careful,” I yelled. “Everyone okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Sarah said.

  “Hurt, but I’m okay,” Evan said.

  “Bernard, heal Evan. Sarah, can you find me? Or dispel this?”

  “No—” she said then let out a scream.