Shit. The Manson family was coming in, and they were going to kill him with this crazy medieval shit, and then eat him. And the door opened, and it was indeed a group of ren faire freaks, all dressed in battered armor and leather stuff he didn't recognize. Thomas needed the hell out of here; he ran at them, screaming and waving his arms, terror mingling with hope that the gesture would startle them into letting him pass.

He nearly staggered in surprise when it worked, the five men, all somewhat shorter than him, stumbling backwards. One only stepped back once, and then reached for something at his belt – Thomas punched out at his chest as he ran by screaming. Pain lanced through his hand as it struck the metal chest armor thing – shit, he'd used his knuckles again – but the metal clanged loudly and the man stumbled out of his way. Thomas continued screaming as he ran past the serial killer family, whose expressions went from just startled, to startled and disgusted, their hands moving up to their faces as they moved even further out of his way.

And into the hallway – no, some kind of … he had no idea what the thing was, it was an outdoor hallway between two buildings, all cut stone, with a wooden roof overhead. Fresh, clean air! He continued running towards the grass, and then he was clear of the buildings, and into what looked like a meadow. He didn't slow, but started looking wildly around for a road and some cars, but found nothing; it was just grass and rolling hills in the three directions that weren't back towards the serial killer mansion. Thomas kept running, moving faster than he thought he'd ever run before, adrenaline coursing through him.

He was halfway up the third hill before the adrenaline-fueled rush came to a sudden halt, and he fell face-forward into the grass, stomach cramping with dry-heaves that didn't go anywhere. The fuck had that bee-

Major objective complete: Escape prison. 5 characterization points awarded. You have reached class level 2.

The blue field both filled his vision, and didn't – he could see the blue field, and the sideways view of the hillside he had collapsed upon, at the same time. Another blue field appeared, and now he could see both.

Thomas Bluebrim

Brawler

Legend of Wind

Level 2

0 Misfortunes / 0 Fortunes

0 Curses / 0 Blessings

52/80 Health

0/0 Mana

-1/-1 Stamina

0 Distinctions Available

15 Skill Points Available

10 Customization Points Available

Strength

Constitution****

Intelligence

1

0

-3

1 Melee Damage Bonus

80 Maximum Health

8 Additional Skill Points

3 Maximum Worn Armor

0 Damage Reduction

-2 Maximum Stamina Points

0 Deflection *

12 Base Armor

0 Spell Piercing *

Wisdom

Agility

Perception

5

0

-3

5 Lores

0 Bonus Targeting

-3 Reaction Time

5 Arcane Resistance

0 Evasion

-1 Stamina Regeneration

0 Mana *

20 Movement *

0 Missile Range Bonus *

He blinked at the view, even as another appeared, the first fading out of existence.

Class Distinction: Call Out

You may Call Out an opponent; subject to a Discipline contest against your Endurance, they must move towards you and attack you whenever possible

Class Distinction: Shake Off

You may expend Stamina to increase your Worn Armor by 4, knock back all adjacent opponents 5 feet, and, subject to an Endurance contest against your Endurance, knock all affected targets prone

This shit again. He looked back, panting; he couldn't see anybody following yet, but Thomas pulled himself to his feet anyways, and started slowly walking further away from the serial killers, trying to ignore the blue fields that both filled his vision, and didn't; they were distracting, but he kept his focus on the ground in front of him as he moved away.

How much time had passed? Thomas wasn't sure. The world looked … wrong. First, it was blurry; was that the -3 in perception? Second, the light was slightly too … blue. The blue fields themselves, still constantly and annoyingly visible, superimposed on the world and at the same time not, were perfectly clear, and he started reading them more carefully as he walked.

Alright. He was level 2. Whatever that meant. His health was 52/80, which meant he had lost some health – either to the radio and sewage gases, or the splinters and bleeding, or hitting that armor with his bare fist – and … hey. Why was his intelligence -3? He wasn't … he did feel a little … slow. Okay. That was terrifying.

He read through the screen a few more times as he walked, trying to understand what the information meant. Why did intelligence determine stamina? Did it mean willpower? That was usually a wisdom thing though, right? That was a little weird. And why did intelligence say he had -2 stamina – he still didn't know what that actually meant, it hadn't seemed to affect his ability to run any – but his actual stamina, or what he thought was meant to be his actual stamina, was -1/-1? He thought it might have been -2/-2 before.

Well, he'd leveled up. Maybe stamina went up with level? His maximum health, whatever health was supposed to be, had. Where were his stat points to allocate? He really didn't want to be stupid. All he had were skill points and customization points. Okay, skill points were probably useful; he could … spend those somehow, and get good at something? Could he get better at punching things? But the thing that made him good at punching things he thought had been one of those distinction things, but only two were showing up now, and not the same ones. He had three before, right?

Did he lose the ability to punch things when he leveled up? That would be stu – oh hey, water. There was a stream running along the base of the hill he was descending now, and he moved towards it.

His reflection, blurry like everything else, stared up at him as he looked down into the water, which was kind of a muddy brown color, the bottom not really visible. He looked like shit. His short-cropped brown hair was stuck to his head. His features, angular and thin, were marred by a dried smear of – oh, he had vomit all over his face and in his hair. Thomas looked around. There wasn't anybody around. Okay. He stripped out of his clothes – oh god, his pants were covered in literal shit, that dark room had been absolutely vile. He could barely even smell it now, until he tried, and then he started to grasp why the serial killers hadn't tried to grab him on his way past. He smelled absolutely disgusting.

Thomas felt his cheeks warm, feeling … the wind felt … he blushed deeper. The wind was absolutely not caressing him. His face felt absolutely scorching hot, a throbbing sensation making it difficult to concentrate as he climbed down into the water, forcing himself to concentrate on washing himself off. Then his clothes; washing the sewage matter out of his pants at least killed the incredibly distracting erection, which tried to grab his attention with every heartbeat. God, he hadn't felt that out of control of himself since he was a teenager.

Thomas dressed again, clothes dripping wet but not wanting anyone to see him naked, and started following the stream downriver – he didn't recognize where he was at all, but he'd find a bridge or something he could follow to a city soon enough if he followed it, and find someone to call the police to go deal with the serial killer cult. He glanced back, remembering them, but nobody seemed to be following. Maybe he'd smelled too bad for them to want to.

His attention returned to the annoying blue fields that perpetually filled, but did not fill, his vision. Was he losing his mind? Probably. But he couldn't forget that he had punched his way through a door. Maybe he'd … no. What was even going on with all this? No, no, stop with the stupid questions. Wait, was the negative intelligence actually making him stupider? No, no.

Thomas stopped walking, considering. Assume I'm in a video game. Normally leveling up gives stat points, but all I got were skill points, and customization points, whatever those are. Uh. Skills?

Skill Name

Current Rank

Skill Point Cost

Skill Detail

Armor Aptitude: Light Armor

0

1

Grants Aptitude with Light Armor

Armor Aptitude: Medium Armor

0

2

Grants Aptitude with Medium Armor

Armor Aptitude: Heavy Armor

0

3

Grants Aptitude with Heavy Armor

Armor Aptitude: Shield

0

1

Grants Aptitude with Shields

Weapon Aptitude: One-Handed Sword

0

1

Grants Aptitude with One-handed Swords

Weapon Aptitude: Knife

0

1

Grants Aptitude with Knives and Daggers

Weapon Aptitude: Spear

0

1

Grants Aptitude with Spears and other piercing polearms, and javelins and similar weapons when used in melee

Weapon Aptitude: Shortbow

0

2

Grants Aptitude with Shortbows

Weapon Aptitude: Longbow

0

3

Grants Aptitude with Longbows

Weapon Aptitude: Staff

0

1

Grants Aptitude with Staves

Weapon Aptitude: Crossbow

0

1

Grants Aptitude with Crossbows

Weapon Aptitude: Mace

0

1

Grants Aptitude with Maces and other bludgeoning weapons

Weapon Aptitude: Thrown

0

3

Grants Aptitude with Throwing Knives, Throwing Stars/Shurikens, Throwing Axes, Javelins, and similar thrown weapons

Weapon Aptitude: Greatsword

0

1

Grants Aptitude with Greatswords and other two-handed swords

Weapon Aptitude: Axe

0

1

Grants Aptitude with one and two handed axes

Weapon Aptitude: Halberd

0

1

Grants Aptitude with Halberds

Weapon Aptitude: Katana

0

2

Grants Aptitude with Katana and other Eastern weapons

Weapon Aptitude: Fencing

0

3

Grants Aptitude with fencing weapons, such as rapiers and epees

Stealth

0

2

Increases Progression of Stealth checks by 1

Discipline

0

2

Increases Progression of Discipline checks by 1

Grace

1

2

Increases Progression of Grace checks by 1

Arcana

0

2

Increases Progression of Arcana checks by 1

Medicine

0

2

Increases Progression of Medicine checks by 1

Spycraft

0

2

Increases Progression of Spycraft checks by 1

Woodcraft

0

2

Increases Progression of Woodcraft checks by 1

Dexterity

0

2

Increases Progression of Dexterity checks by 1

Recollection

0

2

Increases Progression of Recollection checks by 1

Alertness

0

2

Increases Progression of Alertness checks by 1

Concentration

0

2

Increases Progression of Concentration checks by 1

Endurance

0

2

Increases Progression of Endurance checks by 1

New Language

0

4

Grants the ability to speak a new language

Uh. Right. So … he had grace at rank 1. Which meant it had one progression, so Thomas was, what … more graceful? Or just got some kind of magical bonus when moving around? The only option that really caught his eye right then was the “New Language”, but when he thought “French” as hard as he could, nothing happened. Alright. But now he had yet another blue field occupying his attention. Close skills?

It worked. The screen vanished. It took a few tries, but “Close new distinctions” got rid of that blue field, and only the status window remained. Okay. Wait. If this was real … had those not been serial killers? If he was in a game, then the message saying he had escaped prison made sense. Those had been guards. But why hadn't they pursued him? Did he smell that bad? Didn't they have any sense of duty?

Thomas thought through it for a moment, and decided that, if he was a guard, and duty said to catch someone covered in shit and puke which would require touching them, he'd personally report that he hadn't seen anything at all. Alright. Problem solved. Until someone in charge showed up to notice he was missing, nobody would …

Hang on, why the hell had he been in prison? He'd just fucking gotten here. Well, some games did start you off in prison. And usually guards in games wouldn't pursue you very far before giving up. Alright. Exit game. He had an interview to get to.

Nothing happened. He tried thinking a variety of commands for escape, even trying some keyboard shortcuts he vaguely remembered, but nothing worked. His stomach growled. Alright. Keep going down the stream, find food. This game felt way too fucking realistic. His roommate … the hell? What was his name? Bob? Brian? Benjamin? He couldn't quite recall, although it felt like it was on the tip of his tongue, and he was pretty sure it started with a 'b'. Whatever. His roommate was going to kill him.

The air was cool, but not cold, thankfully, given the wet state of his clothing. It had started to chafe at his thighs, though, and he took to a kind of bow-legged walk to avoid making it any worse, which made him tire out faster. He had to take frequent breaks, laying in the grass near the stream spread-eagled, thinking dry thoughts. Well, mentally and sometimes verbally cursing at his wet clothing. He really should just … ah shit, just thinking about being naked made him feel … dammit that was distracting. Well. He climbed up the small hill and looked around – there were hills covered in grass in every direction. Hopefully nobody was watching him play this game, although the thought, as he pulled his pants down to deal with the problem, was less embarrassing and more … well, arousing.

It wasn't terribly comfortable – he was wet, but not in a good way, and couldn't get anything like a good rhythm going. Thomas was still trying to deal with the problem when a polite cough from above and to the side made him freeze.

“Oh, no, don't let me interrupt you.” A woman's voice, sounding tired but amused, as he struggled to get his wet pants back up over himself. The zipper caught painfully – dammit he wished he had grabbed underwear that morning, as the pain stabbed through him, ignoring the words and using one hand to shove himself to the side, flopping like a fish as he got the wet pants back on. And then, slowly, face on fire, Thomas rolled slowly to the side, to … to look in the direction the voice had come from. He didn't want to, he wanted to drown himself in the stream.

Three people stood on the top of the hill; two women, and one man, dressed in brown clothing. One of the women, and the man, were looking away, hands over their mouths, and their shoulders heaving. Laughing. At him. And one woman stood watching, lips quirked in a smile. She was older, gray in her hair – she had to be his mom's age! – and carried what looked like a bow over one shoulder.

They're just NPCs. I'm in a game, and they're just NPCs. The thought didn't help much. The amusement looked way too real.

“Well, if you're done, then.” The woman walked past him, then, staring straight into his face as she did; the other two turning at her voice and following, definitely not meeting Thomas' eyes. They were still trying very hard not to laugh, as they made their way past him down to the stream, and knelt to start filling … canteens?

The older woman who had spoke was dressed in boots, pants, and shirt, in various shades of brown. She also had a lopsided, floppy hat over her head, and her belt was heavy with bulging tan purses – pouches? Bags? He didn't know the term for them; they were lumpy bags with metal buckles. When she passed him, a long stick, and what had to be a quiver, were both tied across her back.

The other woman was similarly attired, but instead of the quiver and stick, wore a sheathe on either side of her hips. He knew that word. A thing you put a sword in, that hung at your side. Or was it a scabbard? One of those words. The man had no weapons visible, but wore a broad brown cape. Thomas watched them as they knelt by the stream, struggling to contain the hideous embarrassment. He hadn't been caught at that since he'd been a teenager. And the worst thing was that the arousal, which usually died quickly in embarrassment, seemed to be getting, if anything, worse. It took an active will to suppress the thoughts of continuing while the woman – she was as old as his mother – watched.

At length, they turned back to him. And the older woman indeed made a show of observing his … problem, which only made things worse. “Well met, traveler.” Her eyes sparkled with amusement at him. “Pardon our intrusion into your, ahem, quiet repast, but we did need some water. I'm Anne, and my fine companions are Arias and Norris. You might be?”

Thomas felt like hyperventilating, and instead settled on not breathing for a moment until the feeling passed. The three watched him expectantly – alright, Anne watched him expectantly while the other two looked anywhere but at him, but they waited. At length, he managed not to squeak out too badly, “Thomas. Uh. Finely met.” His face burned even hotter, which hadn't seemed possible a moment ago.

“Alright then Thomas. Well, we'll be on our way, then.”

Thomas clambered to his feet, immediately regretting it when Anne stopped again, and gave him an unnecessarily long look up and down. She was leering at him on purpose! And it absolutely wasn't fucking helping! He self-consciously looked down, and yep, he could see his heartbeat through his pants. He forced himself to continue anyways. “Hang on, wait. Where's the nearest town? There's some ser-” and he stopped himself, because no, they probably hadn't actually been serial killers. No need to mention his escape from prison. “-er. Um. I'm lost.”

The three stopped and turned, all three looking at him now. Anne's face, he was slowly aware, wasn't actually wrinkled, to match the gray of her hair; how old was she? She was a head shorter than he was, the shortest in the group; the next shortest was Norris, who was slightly taller than Thomas. Not that Thomas was that tall, at 5'9”. The man had a pinched face, and through his clothes, Thomas got the impression of a … short beanstalk; he had the thin, gangly look of some tall people Thomas had met, but without the height to match. Thomas couldn't see his hair, the floppy hat hiding his head.

Their third companion towered over the other two. She must've been 6'4”, at least. Well, maybe; that had just been the height that popped into Thomas' head, a standard “Tall person” height in media. She had long – LONG – brown hair, almost the color of his clothes, that fell past her hips, loose and untied. He hadn't noticed it when he'd first seen her, owing to the fact that it was almost exactly the same shade of light brown as her clothing.

It was, again, Anne who spoke. Her voice, at least, sounded old – or at least, had the kind of tired, I-lost-my-patience-years-ago sort of voice that Thomas associated with middle-aged women. “Follow the river downstream about, oh, three leagues, and you'll get to Grimhaven. Follow it upstream about five, and you'll get to Ironbarrow. I recommend Grimhaven, Ironbarrow has been having some bandit problems lately. We're heading that way to solve them.”

Oh. Oh shit. He'd chosen bandit something as his something, in his avatar creation. Was that why he started in prison?

“Right. Uh, thank you, Anne.”

“Oh no, thank you.” Anne replied, with a small bow, and another leering look, her tones rich with amusement. His problems, which had faded from awareness, immediately rose again, figuratively and literally. His cheeks aflame anew, he turned rapidly away from the trio and started walking resolutely downstream. Arias and Norris finally laughed out loud. Anne's voice could be heard behind him.

“Bashful thing, for someone having a wank out in the open, isn't he? He could have at least finished the show, it's been a good forty years since I watched a man enjoy himself like that.” Forty – Thomas stumbled, but kept walking. Right. As old as his mother.

“I could put on a show for you.” A man replied – Norris – in rich baritones. Thomas again stumbled. He wasn't g- – he wasn't attracted to men, but he suddenly found himself trying to imagine it, even as he tried not to – and he wanted to.

“Oh, no, Norris. It's not the same when you put on a show. Then it's about me. No, watching a man do something for his own...” The voices, thankfully, faded out of his perception, and faster than he would have expected. His attention shifted to the -3 in perception, and he was thankful for it. He desperately didn't want to hear any more of that. Not least because the wet fabric of his pants was already painful. What. The. Hell.