We sat around and I listened to Varris and Farmar catch up.

Soon Leomorn said, “I’m going to procure us some rooms for the night, gentlemen. If they have any left.”

I hoped they did. I guessed sleeping with the horses was the alternative.

Varris and Farmer’s banter seemed light-hearted, like two old friends, and I wondered if it was the same for everyone who played. Gary had said the game was adaptive and immersive. I wondered how far that went.

Before long Varris whispered to Farmar who giggle almost like a schoolgirl and they both looked at me and laughed. It wasn’t mean but I felt like they were going to pull a prank on me or something.

Varris got up and patted me on the shoulder with a smile then pushed his way through the crowd.

I picked up a mug and sniffed it and it smelled like real beer. I wondered if NPC’s had germs you could catch.

I didn’t care. I threw it back and the taste of real beer hit my tongue. It was yeasty and bitter and tasted like every other beer I’d drank in the real world.

Disgusting.

Dennis and his developers had done a good job on this place.

It wasn’t before Varris returned, but with his arms around the waist of a human woman and his other arm around the waist of a dwarf woman. Another woman followed. Varris sat down on the other side of the table from me were one of the human women draped herself over Farmar while Varris and the dwarf woman started to get cozy.

The third woman, a human, sat down next to me. She threw her arms around me and kissed my cheek.

Varris laughed. “Ladies, this is Kyle. Kyle these are the lovely ladies I just met. Everyone already knows Farmar.”

The woman with her arms around me, a very pretty brunette woman with intricate tattoos up and down her arms, whispered in my ear. “Nice to meet you, Kyle.”

“Uh… Nice to meet you, too.”

I tried to gently pull away from her grip but she held me tight around the neck.

“He’s so shy,” she said and they all laughed.

I didn’t see what was so funny.

The women were quite beautiful, I’ll give them that. They looked exactly like some desperate guy who spent all day in front of a computer imagined a woman who would throw her arms around you at a bar would look.

I looked around the bar.

Every woman there looked similar.

None of them were ugly. Even the ones with cat-like faces had the figures of cover models. The dwarf woman was probably the most beautiful of all. Which surprised me. I thought dwarf women were supposed to have been uglier than men.

I looked at Varris who was whispering her ear. She blushed and her face turned red at whatever he said.

To the woman who had sat down beside me and put her arms around me, I said, “Uh Miss…” I, while trying to unwrap her smooth arms from around my neck.

“Oh don’t be so shy,” Varris said. “We have to fight a dragon mage and save the world. And more dangerous than that, we have to ask Vordroth for the Orb. Either one is likely to kill us. We might as well have some fun before we die.”

That wasn’t very comforting.

The woman moved in for a kiss and I was too slow to dodge. She planted her lips on my and they were soft and warm. I didn’t complain.

I must have been really into it because the crowd noise seemed like it died down and everything got quiet like we were the only two people in the world.

The woman stopped kissing me and when I opened my eyes I was pretty surprised.

I hadn’t imagined the crowd noise dying down. It had.

There were three big guys staring at us. Ok, two big tall guys and a big burly dwarf with a huge beard.

The crowd moved back and gave them some space as they glared at us.

Everyone was watching.

“What do you think you’re doing?” the biggest guy asked me, pointing a finger in my face. He had a thick, short beard and a scar running down his left cheek. “That’s my woman.”

I didn’t really have an answer for that.

“Uh… She kissed me,” was all I could manage.

His face turned red with anger.

Varris said, “I didn’t see your name on them.” The women giggled.

“They came here with us, stone shitter,” the other human man said. He had a huge chunk of one ear missing.

The burly dwarf stepped up next. “Listen here you hairless dung digger. No beardless dwarf takes my girl.

Look at him, Davona, he can’t even grow a beard.” He gestured furiously to the female dwarf that sat next to Varris.

Apparently not having a beard as a dwarf was a bad thing.

Varris stayed flat-eyed with a little smile on his face. “Oh, that’s a beard on your face? I thought it was the hair around that little pecker. But that’s just your nose.”

The women giggled and the men looked furious.

Varris wasn’t making this better. He looked at me and grinned. Farmar looked resigned to the fact that something bad was about to happen.

“Varris,” I said. “Why don’t we let these ladies enjoy the company of these gentlemen and then there won’t be a problem."

Varris didn’t like this idea. “They’re having a good time with us, Kyle. Aren’t you having a good time?” I wasn’t sure that I was.

“In fact,” Varris continued.

“Davona here was just telling me she hadn’t been with a real dwarf in quite some time, and we were about to go upstairs and remedy that problem.”

The burly dwarf looked like he was about to lose it and go into a murderous rage. His human friends looked only slightly less unhappy.

I really hoped Varris shut up.

He didn’t.

“As a matter of fact,” he said and I groaned. “All of these ladies were just telling us they were glad they had found some real men, and they were asking us to show them just how big of a man we all were.

We were just negotiating the price.”

The women caught what he had said and turned offended looks on him. Then all hell broke loose.

The big guy with the scar hit me with what felt like a ton of bricks but happened to only be his fist.

I flew off the bench and slide across the floor. My head was spinning and my ears ringing. It took me a second to get myself together but when I looked up I saw a table fly. Farmar flew across the room and landed almost on top of me. He spit out what looked like flesh, which I would later learn was a piece of an ear, a chunk from the good ear of Missing Ear, so now they matched, and threw a bloody smile my way.

“Get up,” he yelled into my ringing ear.

Farmar jumped up and I saw him run and leap onto a table than on the back of Missing Ear.

I saw the flipped-over table laying on its side and saw Varris’s head pop up over it. He was about to yell something at me when he was dragged back behind it by some unseen homicidal force.

We were in an actual fight now. I put my fingers to my nose, and they came away with blood on them. This was crazy. These guys could kill us. I didn’t want to fight anyone.

Scarface was yelling at the woman who’d been sitting next to me and he cocked his arm back like he was going to hit her. I just reacted. I knew I couldn’t punch him and hurt him so I grabbed the closest thing to me, a wooden chair. I grabbed the chair and hurtled toward him, raring it back and swinging it with all my might into his back.

The chair broke with a loud crack and the crowd cheered as Scarface went down. The woman smiled at me and then grabbed my face and planted a kiss on my mouth. The crowd cheered again.

I stood there, her hands gripping my face, her smooth lips on mine, and thought that this was pretty cool.

I don’t know how long we stood there before someone drove a mack truck through the place and hit me.

I went down hard and realized Scarface had broken a chair over my back. I laid on the floor as wood shavings rained down on me.

Suddenly I was on my feet, but not of my own volition. Scarface dragged me up by my tunic and we were looking eye to eye. “Steal my girl, will you?” He threw me across the room, again. I’d spent more time flying in this room than I had sitting.

I crashed into a bunch of chairs and people had to jump out of the way to avoid me. Scarface grabbed my feet and I clutched at a wooden chair, hoping it would keep me planted. It didn’t.

I held onto the chair and Scarface spun me around by my ankles, the chair and I going twirling like a nightmarish carnival ride.

Scarface spun me around a couple of times when his buddy, Missing Ear was pushed by Farmar into my path.

The chair smashed into him and he went down and everyone cheered.

Farmar jumped on Scarface and he sent me flying. I landed with a thud and pain ran through my whole body. I just wanted to leave. To go home where no one punched me or hit me with chairs and there certainly weren’t dragons that wanted to eat you or burn you alive.

Hands grabbed me roughly and pulled me up. It was the crowd. They turned me around and pushed me back toward the center of the circle they had made around us.

I looked up and saw Varris in what looked like a wrestling match with Burly Dwarf; Farmar was still on the back of Scarface, and Missing Ear was climbing to his feet. This needed to end. But I couldn’t end it. Not with my fists. These guys would laugh if I hit them with my fists. I needed something to hit them with. I looked around and grabbed a chair and swung it as hard as I could into Missing Ear’s back as he was getting up. He went down and groaned.

The crowd cheered.

“Boom goes the dynamite!” I yelled. The crowd cheered more. I raised my hands above my head.

Burly Dwarf and Varris were wrestling and punching each other, one on top, and then the other. Someone from the crowd threw a chair at me and I didn’t catch it. It hit me and fell and the crowd made a booing sound. I picked up the chair and ran toward Burly Dwarf and Varris with the chair raised high above my head. Varris saw me coming and flipped the two over so Burly Dwarf was on top of him. Burly Dwarf thought he had the advantage and was about to rain down blows on Varris’s face when Varris smiled a bloody smile at him.

I caught Burly Dwarf with the chair from a dead run. The chair broke with a crack, splinters flying, and Burly Dwarf flew off of Varris.

“You just got the chair!” I yelled. Nobody got the reference.

I helped Varris up and he patted me on the back. “Good job, kid.” He pointed at Scarface. “Let’s get him.”

Varris ran in and started trying to punch Scarface in his crotch while he tried to block the blows with one hand and swat at Farmar with the other. Somebody slid a chair out into the middle of our little circle that was littered with debris and I picked it up.

I raised it high over my head and yelled, “Out of the way, boys, this guy needs to take a seat!”

Farmar looked up and saw me coming and jumped off of Scarface’s back. Scarface had Varris in a headlock and he looked up just in time to see the chair above my head. I brought it down on his head. The chair burst into pieces and Scarface went loose and collapsed onto the floor, his grip on Varris’s head relaxing.

We stood there breathing heavily and I could feel a trickle of blood running from my nose and lip. The crowd was cheering for us. Varris grabbed my hand and raised it high above his head, which wasn’t a stretch for my arm.

“You did it, kid,” he said.

“Your first real fight. You did well. Good job with the chair. He was a big bastard. Help me lift him up.”

Varris went over to Scarface and tried to help him up, Burly Dwarf and Missing Ear were starting to get up and some of the crowd helped them.

“Help him up! He tried to kill us.”

“What? This?” Varris looked confused. “This was just a little fun.”

I looked down at Scarface who was struggling to get up. Varris wasn’t tall enough to help the big man all the way to his feet. I hoped I wouldn’t regret it, but I reached down and caught the guy under one shoulder and held him stand up.

He stood and caught me in a bear hug and I thought the fight would continue and he’d squeeze the life out of me. He did squeeze me in a bear hug, then release me and slapped me on the arm.

“You fight dirty!” he yelled at me, “I love it.” Someone handed us drinks and Scarface poured a beer into his mouth, most of it running down his front. “Let’s drink.

There’s nothing like a good drink after a good fight.”