“Wake up. Come on, I'm freezing my ears off.”

Meg opened her eyes and saw a tall silver haired Zhangloa standing next to her with his hands on his narrow hips. He was dressed in a fine red quilted jacket that stretched down to his ankles with tan pants and red shoes that curled at the toe.The name Bruce was written in gold letters above his head, marking him as a major quest giver and she sat up on the large rock she had been sleeping on and stretched.

“Good morning,” She said.

“I’m not sure how good it is yet,” Bruce said. “I know it will get worse if you don’t get up.”

“I’m up, I swear.” Meg pushed the lambskin blanket off her legs and hopped down in front of Bruce. Without the rock to even things out she had to stare up at him but she was thicker and wider than him and got the impression she could lift him over her head and snap him in half like a twig. “What’s shaking Brucey Baby?” Meg said.

Bruce frowned and swept his hands over the rest of their humble camp. “The fire went out last night,” Bruce said. “Apparently I was supposed to keep it going but I fell asleep and now the caravan master is demanding I go and fetch fuel for the fire.”

Meg reached up and scratched an itch behind her horns. “What do you want me to do about it?” She said.

“I want you to go collect the fuel for me,” He said.

“But he told you to get it,” She said.

Bruce frowned and somehow managed to look twice as handsome as before. “Do you know what they use for fuel around here?” He said.

Meg shook her head. “Nope,” she said.

A strong gust of wind rushed over them and Bruce struggled to keep his long silken hair out of his face. “Stupid wind, stupid desert, stupid.” Bruce took a deep breath and exhaled with his eyes shut then added “Grand Elder grant me patience and a swift revenge on my enemies.”

“You good dude?” Meg said.

Bruce opened his eyes and said “No but I will be when I find a way back home.”

“I take it you’re not from around here,” Meg said.

“I am far too pretty to have come from this barren nightmare,” Bruce said.

“I can’t argue with that,” Meg said.

A shade of red crept into his high cheekbones and Bruce cleared his throat and his face became a mask of annoyance again. “I may not be from around here but I know what they use for fuel and I know that my hands will never touch such filth.”

“Filth huh?” Meg said. “What exactly is this fuel?”

Bruce narrowed his eyes and looked around as if somebody might be listening and whispered “Camel Shit.”

Meg nodded. “It makes sense,” She said. “We’re in the desert and there isn’t enough grass or shrubbery for the animals to graze and to use for firewood. Camels eat the grass, poop it out and they burn it.”

Bruce reared back and wrinkled his long pale nose. “Positively disgusting,” he said.

“Aren’t you Zhangloa all about being one with nature?” She said.

“Not when we’re talking about number two,” He said.

Meg giggled and turned away from him to roll her bedroll up. “Does that mean you’re fine with piss?” She said.

“What? No, by the nine tails of the fox are you deranged?” He said.

Meg fastened the buckles on her bedroll and shrugged. “Probably,” She said.

Bruce put his hand over his face and shook his head. “I used to sell clothes in Yueliang City’s Celestial District. Why am I forced to deal with such loose witted barbarians?"

“Maybe because nobody wanted to deal with your high and mighty attitude,” Meg said.

“Listen here, I was beloved by hundreds of people, women threw themselves at me, men wanted to be me. I had gold and silver, rubies as big as your face and emeralds as thick as your rump!”

“Nobody is going to carry camel crap for you if this is how you’re going to act,” Meg said.

Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose and muttered the word patience over and over again then broke into a smile and put his hands on her shoulders. “A thousand apologies, my young pupil,” He said. “as your employer I should be guiding you through your career, imparting my wisdom upon your soft brain. Not yelling at you like a howler monkey.”

“Soft brain?” She said.

“Yes, your soft, uneducated mind is like a sponge and I should be watering it with my talent and experience.”

“You should tell me how much fuel to collect before this gets any weirder,” Meg said.

“Oh thank the ancestors,” He said, jerking his hands away from her. “go out there and get twenty balls of dried up camel crap. Then bring it back here so I can present it to the caravan master.”

“You mean steal the credit for my work,” Meg said.

“My dear pupil every entrepreneurial endeavor is built atop the toil of others,” Bruce said. “one day you’ll have your own pupil to steal from. It is an ugly cycle but one that will make me rich so run along now and get that crap.” Bruce turned away from her then and trudged over to his own bedroll and threw himself down.

With his departure a loud gong sound echoed around her and golden letters formed in the early morning darkness in front of her.

MET BRUCE: +10xp, +3xp Social

QUEST STARTED: DRIED OUT DUNG(COLLECT 20 BALLS OF DRY DUNG)

The information melted away and Meg wrapped her blanket around her bedroll then secured it with a few strands of rawhide and carried her bundle to the other side of the rock where the rest of her gear was. At level zero she didn’t have much to carry around. Thanks to her merchant class she had started the game with a large backpack, which would come in handy when the loot started showing up.

She strapped her bedding to her pack then inspected it to check out her starting items. She had a basic cooking pan and two cups attached to the pack as well as a tinder box with a piece of flint and steel, a water skin, two small paper lanterns, a pouch containing thirty copper and a slim book titled BULLS BEARS AND OTHER ECONOMICAL ANIMALS:HOW TO MAKE MONEY AS A MERCHANT.

At the bottom of the pack she found a plain brown tunic and pants similar to what she was already wearing and a small skinning knife. She secured the knife to her belt then set up one of her lanterns on her sleeping rock. With her flint and steel she worked at creating a big enough spark to light the candle in the lantern and was rewarded with another gong sound.

START A FIRE: +3xp SURVIVAL

She put her flint and steel away and adjusted the lantern until she had a good circle of light around her. Meg sealed up her pack and slung it onto her shoulders, struggling for a minute until she got it to sit comfortably on her back ridges. She moved around to get a feel of the weight on her back then leapt onto the rock and studied the skyline for camels.

She found the pack animals, or rather their silhouette, thirty yards away from camp and grabbed her lantern. As she walked the red sand crunched beneath her feet and she amused herself by brushing away her footprints with her tail. She had worried the new body would feel too foreign to her, that she wouldn’t be able to forget her last character, but her worry had been for nothing.

Thanks to the nanomachines in her rig the body felt as good as her own. Better even. Here she was strong and solid and not even the icy wind could penetrate her scales. With the lantern held out in front of her Meg walked around the edge of the camp, to avoid disturbing anyone with her light, and when she reached the camels she sang a few lines of a lullaby to put them at ease. It was a trick her father had taught her from his days on the family farm in Thailand and it worked in the game as well.

The nervous pack animals greeted her with a bellow and she gave several of them neck pets while keeping an eye out for droppings. The first two piles she found were still fresh and wet so she moved deeper into the herd. The camels greeted her, lost interest and came back again only to lose interest for good when she had no snacks for them.

In the center of the herd she found the drier stuff. She squatted next to a snoring female and tentatively touched one of the small round balls of shit. To her relief there was no wet squishing effect and she gathered six of them and put them in her pack. She found another four under a young male camel and started her search over again.

As she searched the sun began its slow climb in the sky and the darkness of night gave way to the red light of dawn. She paused for a moment and watched the sky and the shadows it cast across the land. She felt the breeze rustle her scales and the heat of her inner fire coursing through her and grinned. Collecting camel crap wasn’t as exciting as stabbing ogres with a lance or harvesting shrieks from lesser devils but at the moment it was everything she wanted from the game and she trotted off in search of more shit balls.

On the other side of the herd she found a series of hoof prints and followed them out into the desert. The more she studied them the clearer the picture became in her mind. A young camel had wandered off sometime in the night and soon after its mother had followed. But where were they now?

TRACK THE CAMELS:+3xp SURVIVAL

She squinted in the fading darkness and kept going. After ten minutes of walking she came to a large boulder, half buried in the sand, and stopped at the sound of a wheezing cry. The cry came again, steady but faint and she imagined a poor camel caught in the bloody maw of some horrid desert predator, helpless and dying, wishing for someone to save it.

Without thinking she grabbed the straps of her pack and took off at a run. Beyond the rock she found the mother camel stomping her feet and turning in a wide circle around her fallen child. The young camel laid on its side, its eyelids drooping and its mouth foamy with spit as it wheezed.

The mother screamed and stomped and Meg charged in, trying to find what had it so startled. As she neared the mother a gentle rattle filled her ears and she turned just as the sand at her feet shifted and a long black snake leapt at her. Its mouth opened wide, its fangs wet with poison, and Meg swiped at it with her claws and sent it rolling across the ground.

“Whew close one,” She muttered.

Behind her the mother camel screamed and kicked and another snake flew through the air. Meg turned around and jogged over to her but the Camel darted away and kept screaming. More sand shifted and Meg cursed as a pair of snakes launched at her from two different directions. She jumped back and spun on her heel and her momentum swung her tail up and around. The snakes met in mid air, hissing and twisting to avoid the collision and then her tail spike punched through their skulls and they hung limp from her tail, no longer a threat to anyone.

Mama camel stopped screaming and trotted over to her fallen child. Meg took it as a sign the encounter was over and confirmed her instinct when the gong sound rang again. “Program, lower gong sound by 50%” The gong echoed again but much softer this time and another golden message appeared.

3x SAND SNAKE VANQUISHED: +45xp, +3xp HAND TO HAND

The mama camel lowered her head and sniffed her child then looked at Meg and bellowed for help. Meg knelt down next to them and looked the little one over. She found two swollen puncture marks on its back leg, near the knee, and gave the mother a calming pet on the neck.

“It’ll be okay,” She said.

She looked back towards camp and wondered if the caravan master would have anything to help. Would the baby even make it that long? She drew her skinning knife and cut away the hair around the wound until she could see it better. Blood seeped out of the fang marks and soaked into the baby’s fur. Unless she could cure the poison it wouldn’t clot and if she couldn’t get the wound to clot the baby could bleed out. How much blood did a camel have anyway? Could she give it a transfusion.

Meg shut her eyes and forced her mind to slow down and focus on the facts. She had a baby camel with a snakebite. Baby animals always started at level zero which gave it a health pool of fifteen. She assumed the poison didn’t start working until the encounter was triggered and it hadn’t taken long to kill the snakes. That meant the developers would have to give her ample time to save the camel. Maybe it wasn’t timed at all. Then again what better way to prove the brutality of the desert than by killing a baby camel?

Meg ran her tongue over her lips and was surprised at how long it was. Couldn’t you suck poison out? She had seen that in old movies but didn’t want to risk it. She needed a fool proof solution to the problem. “Come on, think,” She muttered. “you’re level zero, they don’t put anything you can’t handle in your path now what can you do.”

The neurons in her brain flickered and sparked and she laughed at how obvious the answer was. “Spells,” she said. A black box appeared over the baby camel and a list of three spells appeared. Every race started with specific spells to their people and everyone got a low level Cure spell to offset how costly potions were to buy and make.

She chose the spell CURING BREATH at the bottom of the list and leaned down. She put her mouth as close to the wound as possible and blew on the wound. The swollen flesh quivered and ballooned and she jerked back as poison and blood squirted out of the bite and cast the spell again. This time the swollen flesh deflated and the venom oozed out in a slow landslide of gunk, and blood. The wound clotted and in the span of six seconds disappeared altogether.

The baby camel opened its eyes and bellowed at its mother who gave it a sharp nip on the rump. The baby stumbled to its feet, managed to stay upright, and leaned into its mother to suckle at her milk. Meg climbed to her feet and brushed her pant legs off. The cost of the spell hit her like a brick in the teeth and she held onto the mother camel until she got her wind back.

A GENERATION SAVED: HEALED THE BABY CAMEL: +20xp, +6xp SORCERY

Meg left the camels for a moment and gathered the dead snakes. It had been years since she had needed to skin anything in game but as with most things in game she did them on instinct and had three poor quality skins, six bloody fangs, and four pounds of snake meat for her trouble.

HARVESTED YOUR KILL:+3xp SURVIVAL

She dumped them all into her pack and laughed as the baby camel gave her a wet kiss on the back of her head.

She scratched both of their chins and stood up. “Come on guys, let's get you back to the herd.” It took her a moment of pushing and random noise making but eventually the mother took off at a trot and her child followed. Meg brought up the rear, her eyes scanning for snakes and turds.

Back in the herd the piles she had collected earlier had respawned and she stopped to shove them into her pack for a total of twenty. The walk back was quiet and the sun took its dominant position in the sky making it pointless to keep the lantern lit. She snuffed out the flame and folded it up then put it in her pack before saying goodbye to the camels and returning to camp.

DRIED UP DUNG COMPLETED: 50xp +1 REPUTATION WITH BRUCE

The people were up now and moving, slowly and stiffly, and she cut through the center of camp to get to Bruce. He looked up at her approach and hurled himself upright. “Hurry up,” He said. “They’re threatening to starve me.”

“Hold out your hand,” Meg said, grinning.

Bruce started to raise his hands then stopped and clutched his hands to his chest. “I will not!” he said. “Put it in something.”

Meg opened her pack and grabbed a handful of dungballs in one hand and tore Bruce’s pillow case off with the other. He gasped and lunged for her but she turned away and shielded the pillowcase with her body. He ran smack into her ridges and stumbled back with a yelp. She dumped the rest of the dung into his pillow case, whistling as she did, and returned the pillow case to him.

He held the bag at arms length and grimaced. “Lovely,” He said. “That will be coming out of your pay.”

Meg scrubbed her hands with sand and said “It was worth every copper boss.”

He frowned and brushed past her and power walked toward the center of camp. She took the snake meat out of her pack then took her time going after him. Meg checked the time and the chat. Her numbers were holding steady and people were debating whether Bruce was annoying or hilarious. She let them have the argument, relieved that they were sticking around. But how long would that last?

She shoved the creeping anxiety back down into her guts and quickened her steps. “I’ve got fresh meat for breakfast!”.

A Loong in lavender robes and charcoal scales cheered her proclamation and fell in step beside her. “A thousand thank yous honorable Loong,” He said. “If I had to drink one more cup of camel’s milk with jerky I would have lost my scales!”

She smiled and pushed the meat into his hands and clapped him on the back. “Then you better get it to the fire before it goes bad,” She said. He accepted the meat and hurried off, nearly tripping on his robes twice before he made it to Bruce and the caravan master. She wiped her hands on the front of her tunic and turned to take another look at the drowsy camels before joining Bruce. She didn’t know what else the morning held for her but she knew she could handle it and at least for a while the audience would watch.