Dreamland

It was a short but deep sleep. So deep that I did not even feel the prickle and the burnings when White Flower went away, nor when she came back.

“Wake up!”

I heard Lola trying to wake me up, her hand on my shoulder. Damn, I stayed too long yesterday evening, and I hate waking up in the morning, especially when I am tired... what about missing the first hour?

“Wake up, Cala, somebody is here for you!”

The first hour? What about the first two hours? As she continued to shake my shoulder, I protested with a huge yawn, turning over on the other side:

“Let me sleep a little bit longer, Lola…. “

A guttural male voice woke me up:

“May I eat your sausages?”

That short-circuited into my brain, and before I realized I sat up straight and spoke with an aghast voice:

"Again?!"

I opened my eyes to see the Lynx with a big grin on his face, which made me think of the cat in Alice in Wonderland. Spartacius was cooking at the fire, which explained the grin. A lot of sausages were aligned on plates, one plate in my direction. My Alice was gently shaking me to wake me up. Does the Lynx eat from a plate? What a stupid question... I see that he does that.

I AM STILL IN THE GAME!

Shocked and confused, I looked around. Fucking shit am I still in the fucking game!?

I needed a couple of seconds to recover. OK, I smelled terrible, I was sweaty, and I needed to go to the toilet.

Who the hell programmed this? Why don't I smell like roses?!

My torso was naked, my nightgown hanging half-destroyed at my hips, with Alice masking me from the others as much as it was possible.

“What happened?”

I was asking my tattoo why did it destroy my nightgown, at the same time trying to pull the blanket over me. My efforts were in vain; it does not work when you sit on it.

“I had to destroy that tracking gem. I told you, but you would not listen to me; you just snored.”

Alice thought that I was talking to her and answered:

“A lady came from the town. She claims that you have ordered a carriage.”

“Oh!”

I was answering to my tattoo, but that was also valid for Alice.

Finally, my brain caught up with what Alice had said. I raised to my feet, finally managing to wrap myself in the blanket. My destroyed nightgown fell to my ankles, but I did my best to ignore it, keeping a dignified pose and stepping over it.

“I did indeed order a carriage, but it should have waited at the gate for me. Is it here?”

There was a carriage about 10-15 meters away with two horses, currently grazing bravely with another loose horse, two persons covered in capes besides the carriage. They had hoods covering their heads, but I could guess both were women from their silhouettes.

Alice waved toward them. Seeing her, one of them approached, and I recognized Eliza, even with the hood covering her head. I stepped over my nightgown remnants, walking toward her.

She came grinning at me and offered to shake my hand.

“Good morning, Cala!”

The blanket slipped from my shoulder as I drew my hand to shake hers, but I caught it halfway down. I sighed, pulling it back up. What the hell, I am in my bedroom, actually.

I appreciated her initiative to bring the carriage here and not wait for me at the gates. In addition to this, personally, delivered by Eliza?

“Good morning. Thanks for bringing it here. Everything done as spoken?”

She started speaking like a salesman:

“Yes. Good, solid, simple carriage. Can withstand simple spells or arrows. Two powerful traction horses. Inside the carriage, there are two levers for the two required functions directly opposite the door. The blue one opens the portal to Gordogswar. It is powered by a crystal that allows you to open it a couple of times. You should not try it more than three times without recharging the crystal, or else it may fail, or you may even get the portal spell erased. The red one blows the carriage up. It has a security lock. You have to unlock it to be able to pull the lever. It blows up only one time. I was promised a nice explosion. I would not advise to test it.”

She said this with a grin showing her sharp line of super white teeth. I had to comment on that:

“Very funny”

“Well… not exactly. The point is: the explosion is powerful, designed to break the portal, so please do not leave anybody you care about on this side of the portal. The countdown is now set to two seconds. That is two seconds after the lever is pulled!”

“Got it!”

“You can adjust it between zero and ten. Easy to understand how to do it. Want to see how this works?”

“Please show Alice how the adjustment has to be done.”

The need to go to the toilet was becoming urgent.

“Good. Now the good news. I need to congratulate you. You are now top of the list!”

“What list?”

“It seems that the empire was very fast and has already found out who was the assassin that killed the freshest, loveliest queen of the empire. That assassin had the cruelty to even take her dead body away and leave behind only her hacked hand together with the tormented heir of the empire. The job of killing the assassin pays four thousand gold. Interested? Should I tell you the name of the beast?”

“Uh, uh. I guess I am no longer welcome in the Golden Empire!”

“Unless you go to cash the reward. The bounty is higher for live delivery; it goes up to 6000 gold. They want to know who paid for the job and probably make the assassin suffer a little for it.”

“You are humorous today?!”

The need to go to the toilet went up a notch. More urgent than urgent. Was there some sadistic programmer in charge of this? A crazy AI that's mocking us?

“Yes. I thought assassins do not leave such obvious traces..."

"Traces? There were harpies and a fucking dragon chasing my butt..."

She took a step back.

"Oh, maybe you should not mention that; people around here are very upset that somebody angered that witch in the mountain and her dragon."

She became serious:

"News came that several families have been wiped out; the farms along the border devastated."

She sighed, then shrugged.

"Here is the payment for the last job. 946 gold. I subtracted the costs of the carriage and a small bonus for me.”

“Thanks, Elise!”

She wanted to handle me a sachet with the gold, but as I was busy with the blanket, Alice took it.

“About 30 kg gold. If you keep the sachet, I would need 10 gold for it. It is a low-level dimensional sachet.”

Alice shook her head.

“I'll give it back to you; it is not good to keep two sachets, one near the other”

As soon as she transferred the money, she returned the empty sachet. A good thing about these dimensional sachets is that you do not feel the weight.

“Perfect! One last thing before I leave. There is a low-level mage that asks if she can accompany you on the way to Silver Town. There are currently no caravans in that direction, and the roads are not sure. Is it ok? She would pay 1 gold for the travel.”

Good that this is the last thing. I will soon explode if I continue to stay here. I looked at Alice, and she raised her shoulders. Well, why not. I know it is difficult to travel the region, caravans being one of the few safe methods.

“Sure, she can stay! I need to leave!”

At this, Elisa made a step forward and hugged me.

“I want to properly say goodbye to you. I don't know if we will ever see each other again. The guild is very unhappy about the story with the Golden Empire. You know the quest was not from the guild. It was not a job but a quest from her family. The guild wants to know everything, all I know about you and what you did these days. A special inquiry team is coming here soon. All I know is that you left yesterday night, and I do not know where you went. You were extremely brave in what you did yesterday; please take care!"

Then, she added with a wince of her cheek:

"I did not tell you anything because I was never here.”

She left together with Alice. OK, this may explain the personal delivery.

Maybe I should have listened to what she had said when I took the quest to free Thiara, but honestly speaking, probably I would still have taken the same decision.

However, the speed with which I was gathering enemies was a little bit disquieting.

I turned to my things. Oh, Alice has cleaned and folded my leather equipment neatly. The jacket was partially recovered; the repair spell was not broken. Cool!

I took my belt with my item box and ran towards the river. I have a very, very urgent business there.

There was a small bank by the river, well hidden behind wild bushes, that I chose for my morning toilet. A toilet with a view! I need to find fast a place well hidden in the bushes for… my urgent, urgent business. Why would somebody add this to the game? They've really overdone it! I understand the idea of a game as realistic as possible, but will I need to wash my char's butt and clean it up each time I am here or smell the shit?

OK, once done, feeling happy and easy, I washed with cold water. In my hurry, I had no time to ask Alice for her heating cauldron, but I had soap and a towel in my inventory. I washed methodically; it just felt good even so.

Besides, there is nothing better than cold water to bring you up to speed in the morning!

I searched inside my inventory box and found some clean panties but no blouse anymore.

“You blew my blouses; how can I dress if you continue to destroy all my clothes?”

“Sigh. You just had a couple of blouses. Besides, why would you need these?”

“I cannot walk naked as you do?”

“Not true. Was Terri naked?”

“Wait a minute, can you make me some clothes as you do for you when you show up as Terri?”

“Sure. Just that you know, these are no clothes, only illusions.”

She started leaving me.

“Hey, what do you do?”

“I want to go to have my breakfast!”

“Why did you not leave me before? Did you spy on me all the time?”

“I do not spy on you. I am your tattoo. How do you like your blouse?”

“Oh wow! Cool! Tell me, why do you cling to me even when I am in a fight? I mean, it's good to have healing, but are you not in danger?”

“Not as much as you think. I am mostly ethereal. A small part of me is material. If somebody stabs me or simply throws gravel at me, huge parts of me may get broken or ripped away because I am too fragile. A small explosion would simply pulverize me. Your skin is very resilient. When I cling to it, I may get hurt, but much more remains in one piece, and I can heal both of us.”

Well, that did make sense.

“Oh, I see. Thanks for the blouse!”

“Any time you want a new model, just let me know. This one will last a couple of days.”

“And how do I wash now?”

“You simply do it. The blouse is only an illusion!”

“Oh. True! Thanks”

“No problem.”

Yeah, but I do not see what I wash. Eh. She left towards the fire.

But finally, scraps are no longer in; the textile slaughter ends here! I have an indestructible lovely blouse, and I wash blind!

I started to dress. So cool that Alice had cleaned up my equipment! Almost no traces from yesterday's fight, and repair is in progress!

I watched for a moment the scenery around, the white fog slowly lifting above the dark green bushes and trees, dew droplets running slowly along with blades of grass, birds chirping, quarrelling over something in the tree nearby.

Did I ever see such pure and peaceful scenery in real-life? Seldom if ever. What a bathroom with a view! This is rewarding; crazy what they did. Surprised, I saw a relatively older man, about sixty years old, looking at me. He was with his mule on the road towards the city across the river. He waved to me, and I waved back.

Peaceful, happy life!

I grinned. In reality, I am in my room…

And I realized I have other problems. Real problems. Now for sure, ma and pa must know about my situation. Uh, oh, if they know, they must be already on the way. Shit, I can hear it; in the future, no more playing...

How can I get out of here? Why am I still here? It is said that disconnecting somebody brutally from the dream interface can cause trauma. Big trauma, big problems. It is forbidden. But you can shut it down. Takes a couple of minutes, that's all.

This is why the dream interface must have rechargeable batteries to disconnect smoothly in case of power failure or other problems.

Why don't they try to force a power failure? Unplug the damn thing? That should work! Keeping us in the game is not good. Why did Lola not try this before calling my parents? Or did she just ignore me and stand with her sister yesterday evening? Maybe she did not even come into my room? That must be it; I am still there, ignored and forgotten.

So probably my parents do not know… yet. If Lola went to school in the morning, then nobody would care for me until late in the evening.

This is not good. By now, I must have pissed myself repeatedly… and… whatever. Sure my easing in the bushes here was, in reality, in my trousers! What will I look like in the evening?

Oh shit! Dreamlanders pissing contest... Imagine the photos on the Internet. Shit, shit, shit. I'll be the fun of my school.

With these thoughts in mind, I walked back to our camp.