As Hartha had explained to me on the way back, the Heart of the Forest class was a big deal.

Firstly, it made her much stronger. In addition to giving her access to Life, Water, and Earth magic, it overrode her original Forester class’s normal stat allocation. Now she got a total of 7 stats per level, the same as I was getting as a Protagonist. Admittedly, I'd probably get even more once I eventually got my class, but still. It was a big upgrade.

It also gave her a good number of forest-related abilities. One that she explained to me was called The Forest Walks, which created an aura around her. Any ground touched by the aura would be considered “woodland,” and as such, Foresters near her would get all their usual forest-related bonuses even if they were well outside the woods. Apparently this was going to make the expedition significantly easier.

Still, while all of that was pretty amazing for her, I hadn’t really understood how important the class was until we got back. After a brief exchange with the Chief in which his eyes bulged to such a great extent, I thought they were about to pop out of his head, the news was spread around the entire village. I’d expected everyone to be surprised and congratulatory.

Instead, everyone went wild.

Cries of “Celebration!” resounded through the village until one by one each shadow left their tents and began to move.

In a flurry of activity, the village was transformed into a raucous festivity. Casks of pine-smelling liquor appeared out of thin air. Drums and a host of unfamiliar instruments sounded from every direction. Massive fires were started in pits across the village, entire deer and spiders roasting above them on spits. In what seemed like a matter of minutes, the air was filled with the rich scents of smoke and meat and the richer sounds of music and laughter.

Now, I’d been to my fair share of parties where I didn’t know many people. They were awkward affairs. As such, I would have been perfectly content to cozy up with some furs in my tent, take a little break, and leave the revelry to Hartha. Sadly, I didn’t get the chance.

Instead, as the shadows swarmed Hartha with interrogations and congratulations, I was continually shoved into the limelight as Hartha, incredibly embarrassed to be the center of attention, offloaded as much of the duty as she could onto me.

Every “Tell us about what the dryad was like!” was met with a “Oh, Tess spoke with her more; she can probably tell you better than I can.” Every “How did you even find the dryad in the first place?” was met with a “Well, Tess here had a Perception over 20!” As I spent more and more time locked into conversation with astounded forest shadows, I wanted nothing more than to lovingly strangle her to keep her from talking.

As we wrapped up another conversation, two men about Hartha’s age began walking towards us, and I prepared to do the whole thing over again. When Hartha spotted them, however, she grinned, turning to me and speaking loudly enough that the two could hear.

“You see those two walking over here? Trouble. Just ignore anything that comes out of their mouths, and you’ll be fine.” Mirth shone in her eyes, her face more animated than I’d seen it all night. “They’re the twins, Reach and Drag,” she said, pointing in turn. Reach was the taller of the two, sporting black hair and muddy brown eyes. Drag was about two inches shorter, with brown hair and green eyes.

“I’m hurt,” Reach responded, closing the gap between us.

“Devastated really,” said Drag. He looked down at us with puppy dog eyes, a look which seemed entirely ridiculous on his hulking frame.

“And here we were, thinking to ourselves ‘Such a shame it must be for the stars of the night. In the middle of a party, but too busy talking to enjoy it!’”

Drag nodded in agreement. “As it so happens, though, my brother and I were looking for some help. Isn’t that right?”

Reach parroted his twin, nodding up and down. “That’s just right, brother. You see, as strong upstanding citizens of this fine tribe, we couldn’t imagine anything more worthwhile to do than to have a friendly drinking competition.”

At the same time, their faces grew intensely sad with affected frowns and droopy eyes. “But a regular old drinking contest is just a bit too bland. Too bland. In any case, it’s extra boring because we all know who’d win something like that.”

“I would,” they both said without missing a beat.

“Because of that,” Reach continued. “We figured, why not spice things up? Instead of a one-on-one competition, why not make it a two-on-two? Drag and one of you versus me and the other!”

Hartha shook her head. “This is a celebration of a new Heart being chosen. It wouldn’t do for me t-”

“Exactly, exactly. This is a celebration of you. Anything you want to do is fair game. Do you want to stand over here, all stiff like a tree, or come have a drink or two or three or four?” Drag let loose a dopey grin, and the resolve on Hartha’s face began to chip away.

“Well really,” she responded. “It would have to be up to Tess here anyway. She’s much smaller than us all; it wouldn’t be fair.” She crossed her arms, likely imagining that would put an end to all further discussion.

The twins stared at me, waiting for a response. Before I gave them one, I examined them and watched as their info popped up, remembering something I’d read a while back.

Reach: Level 13 Forester, 220/220hp

Drag: Level 12 Forester, 210/210hp

Ready for some mischief, I replied. “Honestly, I’ve been meaning to try whatever everyone’s drinking for a while now.” I watched as the twins’ eyes lit up. “But,” I continued, turning to Hartha whose face was stuck in some rare mixture of joy and exasperation. “If we’re going to do this, Hartha’s with me. It’s us two versus you two.”

The twins’ eyes only shone brighter as they started racing away, beckoning us to follow. “You’re gonna regret that one you know! Harth’s never been able to come close to beating either of us.”

Hartha shot me the facial equivalent of a “really?” before we followed the two, weaving our way through boisterous well-wishers and shadows of all shapes and sizes. A few spoke to us, but thankfully, realizing that we were en route to somewhere, they didn’t try to stop us for a conversation. Moments later, the four of us found ourselves next to a colossal cask with wooden tankards stacked up to its side.

“See, this is actually good, Drag. We’ve already had a bit, so it’s like a handicap for them.” Reach grabbed the tankards and started filling them up before passing one of them to each of us.

“Still not quite right if you ask me, but they brought it on themselves.” Drag took a long gulp from the cup, followed by a hefty belch. “You’ll have to tell us how this compares to what you’re used to, Tess. We’ve never had any of the human stuff.”

With that, we moved away from the cask, sat ourselves down, and began to drink.

“What do you mean you had no magic where you’re from? What did all the elves do with their Wisdom and Intelligence then? And after you fought off a bunch of spiders, what did you do if there weren’t any healing spells? That’s dumb, and also, you’re drinking slowly lil human.” Reach poured the rest of his drink directly down his gullet with a satisfied grin.

“There were no elves. Just humans! And no stats either! And you didn’t have to heal up after fighting giant spiders, because no one fought off giant spiders!” Actually, maybe the Australians did. I wasn’t sure.

I punctuated the words with a swig of my own, trying my best to pace myself. Sadly for my liver, the stuff was good. It was like someone had blended up a bunch of spices and a few trees, and then shoved it all into some fortified honey wine. I’d only downed a single tankard so far, and already, a notification had popped up.

You are tipsy!

Judgment and movement slightly impaired.

Charisma +2.

I chuckled and dismissed the text as Drag took a deep gulp and chimed in.

“She’s fucking with us; don’t listen to her. No stats? What even happens when you level then? A big prompt pops up saying ‘Woohoo! Here’s a bigger number for you! Go show it off to your friends!’ Nice try, human. I will not be led astray by your silly little tales.” Drag waggled a finger at me, dramatically. “Also, he’s right. Is this a drinking contest or what? You’re going to make Hartha do all the work here.”

The new Heart of the Forest let loose a loud burp. “Let her be. I feel like I could drink you two under the table all by myself tonight.” Hartha took a sip from her third cup, easily outpacing all of us. “Really, what’s up with that? Is this watered down today?”

I let out a small maniacal chuckle and watched with satisfaction as the other three turned to me, suspicion in their eyes. “I might remember reading something about how once your Constitution hits 25, your body starts to process poisons faster, but who’s really to say?” I stuck out my tongue at the two brothers as Hartha began to laugh. “Glad I chose me a winner for my partner!”

The two opened their mouths to make a choice retort before getting cut off by a shout from behind us: “The Heart’s over here with the Protagonist! Grab seats; grab drinks!”

In the span of a minute, our tiny four person circle expanded, admitting a dozen more hulking, tankard-holding shadows.

Someone from the far end of the circle called out. “Hartha, tell everyone what the dryad was like! We wanna know!”

She gave me her biggest shit-eating grin before responding. “Well, Tess spoke with her more. She can probably tell you better than I can.”

I gave her a glare, took a giant gulp from my cup, and began to speak.

The shadows were fun! Why didn’t anyone tell me the shadows were fun? Always so stuffy and big, staring at me all the time. Who knew?

I took a big bite out of some spice-rubbed deer I’d picked up to satisfy the drunchies, washing it down with the remainder of my third cup of honey wine.

“Someone get her another!” one of the twins shouted. “It’s tied up! Eight to eight!”

Someone from the circle took my cup and ran over to the cask. Did I want another cup? Yes. I was gonna kick their giant camo asses. The other shadows had found out we were having a contest, and since then they’d all started cheering me on. “Beat the twins!” Like, relax, yes, I’m going to, thank you. I wasn’t really sure troll-elf-thingies from another world counted as my “peers,” exactly, but, like, peer-pressure dude. I wasn’t stopping now.

“Hartha, how ya feeling love?” Was I allowed to call Hartha love? Were we on that friendship level yet? I was just gonna run with it.

“I think I’m almost tipsy,” she exclaimed to a couple cheers from the other shadows.

The shadow who’d grabbed my cup came back with my refill, and I took another deer-bite drink-sip combo like a pro. A new notification popped up saying something about being drunk, but it had no idea what it was talking about.

“Wait, is it true that humans have 12 toes?” one of the closer shadows asked.

“Yes,” I replied without pause. “Sometimes 13 if you’re lucky, and if you’re born on a Wednesday, just 11.” I relished the awed expression on his face as I continued attacking my food.

I fielded a few more toe-related questions before someone else jumped in: “Does anyone want to dance?”

“I’d feel kind of bad leaving Tess all by herself. I mean, you know she can’t dance with us with all of those toes.” Drag stuck his tongue out at me while his brother laughed.

“Someone teach her how we dance! I want to see her try!” another shadow called out.

Well, joke was on them! They were looking at an incredibly advanced Dance Dance Revolution master and a proud owner of Just Dance 2. They had nothing on me.

In seconds everyone was getting up and heading towards the closest drum players. They lined up and twisted around until they were all in a figure-eight kind of shape.

“You just watch this time! We’ll pull you in after!” Hartha shouted over the sounds of the drums.

All at once, the shadows burst into an elaborate group dance with sharp angular movements and percussive stomps and claps. At certain intervals, they all stepped to the side, and the two people at the intersection of the figure-eight danced with one another before each moving to the center of one of the loops. After free-styling to a chorus of cheers, they moved back into the form and the whole thing continued on.

Without a conscious thought, I found myself cheering them on until Hartha called to me again. “Get in here! Give it a shot!”

I went deer-in-the-headlights for a moment before giving in, just drunk enough that I was ready to completely make a fool of myself. I grabbed a spot between Hartha and Drag and began to dance.

For the next half an hour, we continued to work our way through a number of different dances, the entire group laughing, whooping, and shouting pointers at me as I did my best not to look utterly ridiculous the entire time. Small as I was in comparison, it must have been a sight to see as I tried not to get trampled on by their moves.

The sun had since set, and as we danced beneath the stars in the middle of the woods, some part of me felt a bit like I’d just joined a witch’s coven. Who would have thought that this was how my life would ever end up?

As I laughed and moved to the beat, head full of honey wine, I couldn’t help but feel that maybe it was all worth it: The car crash, the new world — even the fucking spiders. As much as I was sure there would be plenty of days filled with raw suckage in the weeks to come, I was actually doing something again. I was training and fighting and drinking and dancing and laughing, and it all felt good.

A bellowed word from Reach snapped me out of my sappy drunk reverie. “You!” He made eye contact with me as he continued to dance. “We still have a contest to finish, little human!”

“Bring it on!”

The four of us broke from the dancing shadows and made our way back to our cups, each grabbing a refill. Then we sat, we chatted, we drank, and we drank.

An unknown amount of time later, I collapsed onto the furs in my tent, victorious. Did I drink more than the brothers? No. No I really did not. But with Hartha’s help, we did, in fact, kick their camo asses. And I even got a prize! A blurry notification popped up to tell me what I’d won.

You have learned a new skill: Drinking

Then, with a chuckle, I passed out.