Incinderfella: So… what happened again?

Serares: I told you, I didn’t realise the sword at the training grounds had to be paid for. Who made this game, a bunch of misers?

Incinderfella: … its a gamified simulation of a real (fantasy) world… crime and messing with the authorities can be enjoyable, so stealing is a real thing with real consequences. Wouldn’t be fun otherwise.

Serares: But I wasn’t trying to steal!

Incinderfella: …

Incinderfella: I guess my aunt was right. You’re left alone for a day and you accidentally land yourself in jail.

Serares: Are you just going to rub it in? Don’t you have anything better to do?

Incinderfella: Now that you mention it, yeah. I better get some training under my belt. What are you going to do in the meantime?

Serares: Stay here and rot. There’s an old drunk called Thirsty Tessa who’s been making eyes at me. I’ll see how long I can avoid her.

Incinderfella: Wow. Shit just got real, huh.

Serares: …

Incinderfella: Well, just hang in there. I’ll see you tomorrow. Don’t shiv anyone.

Serares: Hahaha. My weapons are all on lockdown in here. Give that asshat, Lowrin, my regards.

Incinderfella: All right. So a big wet kiss, then

Serares: I meant something else *evil grin*

Incinderfella: Nuh uh. It won’t do us any good if both of us are in jail. And I don’t want to find out if there’s a Hunky Herman or Juicy Jerry in there. See you tomorrow!

Serares: Huh… those names are real food for thought.You should explore this talent.

Incinderfella: Bye…

***

Sera huddled in a shadowy corner, trying to close her eyes and take a nap. She’d discovered this was possible in-game, though a jail cell was probably not ideal to get some shut eye. It was dark and dank and smelled of someone’s old socks and vomit. Turning off her olfactory input was useful but she couldn’t turn off the NPC who kept brushing against her on her circuit from one end of the cell to the other.

Thirsty Tessa, who didn’t look all that old actually, but did look very undead, kept jangling her exposed elbow joints against the bars of the jail in time with the sorrowful song she moaned as she danced drunkenly around the cell:

“There was a… hic!… young maiden called Tessa…

Who was sent an angel and demon to test her… hic!

One she did love,

T’other she told ‘shove off!’… hic!

But both still managed to ruin her.”

The woman would sing and sway her hips in time with the song then kick her skirts high at the ‘shove off’ part, before finishing the rhyme and cackling like a demented banshee. Then she’d repeat it all over again. It was enough to make Sera want to stuff her dagger pointy-end first down her throat. But as tempting as the thought was, she couldn’t access any of her weapons down here.

“Will you please be quiet?” Sera said, finally daring to address the woman after the fifth time she’d heard the song. Nobody from the adjacent cell seemed eager to do so. It was bigger and occupied by two men, both of them NPCs. The smaller of the two had pressed himself into a corner where he kept glancing at the top of the cell, out a window that was street high. There wasn’t any hope of escape though, since the window was tiny.

“Tessa’s been quiet too long…” the woman replied with a scowl. But she did stop and sit down beside Sera. After giving her a disturbing glare with milky crossed eyes, Tessa began to pull her skirt up. She rummaged under it in such a way that made Sera almost want to blush, then a popping sound reached her ears and Tessa lifted a whole leg out from under herself. She had detached her femur from its ball-socket in her hip. The bone was exposed in places but there was still a lot of flesh attached to it, except where her thigh might have been. Instead, high up on Tessa’s leg was strapped a long hip flask that she uncapped and took a long swig from. She leaned across and offered the whole bony leg to Sera. “Want some? Not easy to sneak a drink down here.”

“Oh… you’re too kind,” Sera said politely, trying to mask her shock. “I’m not thirsty at the moment though.”

“Suit yer’self,” Tessa said, taking the leg back. She took another greedy swig, then pointed her leg at the opposite cell. “You see that ‘un?”

Sera followed the direction of her big toe and saw she was pointing at the short NPC who kept glancing at the window. Moonlight glinted off the goggles he wore on his forehead. “Yup.”

“If the stars and moons align, that one’s going to get us all out of here,” she said with a heavy wink at Sera. “He don’t look like much, but he’s a regular ‘un, like me. This here jail’s practically our home away from home. But sometimes… when the time’s right… when he’s got the right sucker to take up his errand… we get’s to go home… hic!”

“Ohhkay…” Sera replied. Tessa tapped her nose so hard in an effort to look knowing, she actually dislodged it from her face.

“Ahhh, me nose! Hic… hic…” She stood up and promptly fell down, since she only had one leg to balance on.

“Here, let me,” Sera got to her knees and began to search for the nose in the dirty floor of the cell. The sight of the woman’s face without her nose or leg was enough motivation, she looked so bad.

“Hic… just a sec… hic, lemme put my leg on…” Tessa popped her leg back in and began crawling on the floor with Sera. It made the job very hard indeed, because her ragged skirts and clumsy fumbling kicked up a lot of dust and kept moving around the piles of dirt Sera had already searched through.

Clang!

Sera looked up in time to see a player being led into the adjacent cell, accompanied by two guards. He appeared to be a high level player and was shouting at them, clearly angry at being put into jail. His gear was impressive and made him look like a sort of mechatronic bear and he had a burning paw mark stamped into the middle of his forehead. Though he obviously had many weapons, he clearly couldn’t draw them and attack the guards, who shoved him into the depths of the cell before locking it and pocketing the key.

“Assholes! Looking suspicious is not breaking the rules!” he yelled back at the guards as they retreated, then clenched the bars and shook them fiercely. “Gah! I forgot all about my infamy. Fuck! I don’t have time for this, I have things to get done!” He whipped around to glare around the jail, but he was so preoccupied, his eyes barely registering the other occupants in his cell, let alone Sera and Thirsty Tessa. “Fuck it. I’m not waiting in this shithole!”

He sat down and began to wave his hands around. Sera decided he was chatting with friends or transferring his credits into Elysian money—it was possible to pay money to get out of jail, but the cost was not really worth it.

She was about to turn away to keep looking for the nose when the NPC with the goggles stood up and stepped into a ray of moonlight. He was very short and had ears that poked up beyond his hair. Was he a goblin, or a gnome, Sera wondered.

“Pssst!” someone appeared by the window grating. Again, Sera could tell it was a player by his outfit. He began to whisper down to the goggle-wearing gnome—she’d decided it had to be a gnome, because of the goggles and beard. It was too soft to hear from where she was and she pressed closer to the bars of her cell.

“Yeurgh!”

She jerked back her hand. She had placed it on something soft and squishy. Carefully, Sera picked it up and held it up to the light that streamed down from the window.

It was a nose.

“Ooooh, you darling girl,” Thirsty Tessa jumped onto her, plucked the nose from her fingers and jammed it back onto her face, screwing it on with squeaky noises.

“You’ve got a heart of gold. I knew it! You’re the one. Listen,” she grabbed Sera by the shoulders and recited:

“To help put poor Tessie at rest,

You must undertake a fool’s quest.

Find the pantheon of Fallthrume,

And slay them all! Then exhume,

My darling Sorrow to press to my breast.”

As soon as Sera heard it, a notification popped up in her view.

Quest Alert!

Level: ???

You’ve saved Thirsty Tessa from a life of disfigurement. Or… was that an unlife of further disfigurement? Either way, she has chosen to give you a quest! You lucky dog. All you need to do is… err… what she said. You’ll figure it out.

Reward: ??? Experience points and a conversation at the Standing Stones. Accept/Decline

Huh. Whaddayaknow. Thirsty Tessa actually had a quest hidden away in her. Sera selected ‘Accept’ and filed it away in her queue for non-critical quests, since it was probably too high a level for her current status. The description, which also included Tessa’s rhyme in it, was stowed along with the notification.

Tessa, who had been staring intently at her the whole time she was reading the quest description, suddenly clasped her to her chest and pushed them both down to the floor.

Sera had barely a moment to protest when an explosion rocked the prison. She felt dust and debris blast over her like a sheet of football-sized hail and snow.

When it settled, she glanced at her health bar and saw it reduced by more than half. She had taken a lot of damage though she hadn’t even been hit directly.

Sera pushed Tessa off of her and looked about.

Through the settling dust, Sera saw that a huge hole had been blown in the jail wall. As she studied it, a pile of loot fell from the player who had been by the window grate onto the floor. The unfortunate quester had been vaporised upon completion of his quest. Something must have gone very wrong… or… very right? It was a disturbing thought.

Another pile lay where the newly-arrested angry bear player had been. The other NPC was dead too, but the goggle-wearing gnome appeared to have made a break for it, from the look of the small figure she saw running into the distance through the hole in the wall. His clothes had been reduced to rags but he looked in good health, judging from the shiny butt and pumping legs that were carrying the gnome off through the darkness.

“Looks like I’m not getting through this in one piece,” Thirsty Tessa groaned. Sera turned to look at her and had to stop herself from screaming.

Thirsty Tessa lay scattered about the cell in multiple parts. The poor undead woman had taken the brunt of the blast since her back had been facing the explosion. Tessa’s detached head grinned at Sera, letting her know she didn’t mind. Perhaps, she had even saved Sera’s life on purpose, since she had known the explosion had been coming, Sera realised.

Sera bent to pick up an arm but Tessa stopped her.

“Forget it. It’ll take a while to get me back into shape. You go… get a head start before the guards get here. Here, take my middle finger. If you see that insolent gnome, help me wag it in his face. He usually gives me more warning.” A finger on the floor wiggled at Sera. She hid a grimace and bent down to gingerly pocket it.

She was about to leave when she caught sight of all the fallen loot.

Hmm… what to do, what to do…

Ten seconds later, Sera’s bags were heavy with loot and she had a big grin on her face.

Yup. Bags.

Both the dead players had bags and one of them was a Beaded Bottomless Bag! Sera felt unbelievably lucky. It was even in her favourite purple colour!

She shoved all the loot she could get her hands on into the bags without sparing any time to sort through them, then climbed over the rubble and out the hole in the wall. The roof of the whole jail appeared to have crumpled in on itself in places and the door that led to the cells was warped out of shape.

Before the guards pounding on the door could make their way through the chaos and burst into the prison or think to check the window, Sera scurried clean away, her footsteps on the cobblestones covered by the sound of Tessa’s crazy cackling.

Tonight had turned out pretty great after all.

***

Bjorndrake respawned and zipped through the town until he hit his body and woke with a gasp. He looked about his jail cell. It was empty except for what looked like a sack of meat and bones in the corner. Beyond it was a hole torn into the brick wall, and through it was a moonlit view of the street. He hauled himself to his feet and chucked a leg off of him. It had a ragged lace garter around its bony thigh and a dirty white shoe with its heel broken off.

“My, my, what a handsome fellow.” A voice called out to him from the adjacent jail. “Could you hand that over to me? I’d be mighty thankful.”

It was that hag, Thirsty Tessa, winking at him in what she probably thought was an alluring way. He threw the leg at her, ignored her squeal of protest when it bowled her over, then reached his hand out for his sword.

The way was free. Damnit. If only he had remembered the chainquest that led to this stupid jail being blown to bits just a few minutes earlier he could have saved himself a couple hundred dollars of real money instead of having to…

Hang on.

Bjorndrake stopped fumbling and looked down at his belt. His Demon’s Tooth sword.His Bottomless Bag! They were gone! But the bag had contained all his loot… and more importantly… the stone!

He whirled around to check beneath the debris just in case, but of course, there was nothing else beneath him. His corpse had been robbed!

Thump, thump, thump!

“Open the door!”

Damn it. This was a sticky situation, but he had to move fast or they’d never catch up with whoever had taken the stone.

Bjorndrake: Luke! Luke! Where the heck are you?

Grandaelf: What? I was taking a bio break. And I’ve just transfered the money so—

Bjorndrake: Forget that. Some lamer finished the Alcatraz chainquest and busted the jail! I got wiped and dropped the stone and now it’s gone!

Grandaelf: Shit! Who was it? Who knew you had the stone?

Bjorndrake: Don’t know. Could be the sucker who did the quest, maybe it was part of his plan. But his corpse isn’t here, either he left already or he knew to avoid the blast. Anyway, I’ve got guards after me so I’m going to be awol for a while. Go ask around town and see if you can find anything out. We need that stone back!

Grandaelf: OK. On my way.

SLAM!

The door to the jail flew across the room and guards began to pour in after it.

Bjorndrake dismissed his chat and activated beastmode as he jumped for the opening in the wall. As soon as he was through the gap, claws, fur and fangs erupted from his limbs and skin. When he landed, he was a full grown grizzly bear.

“Come and get it!” he roared and began laying into the nearest guards. He flung halberds aside and send two guards flying with a swipe of his paw. They immediately got to their feet, looking none the worse for wear, and more began pouring after them. It was going to be a long night.