“Don't jump when the black stuff spreads. Do not jump. If you can't help yourselves, take the space bar off.” Oliver Evans leaned toward the microphone. “Type one if you've understood. Come on, lads. This is a sightseeing run. We're meant to be enjoying ourselves.”
The raid chat filled with ones. Someone added a furious reminder about jumping; another player contributed 1112223, which suggested that comprehension remained uneven.
An undead rogue bounced across the platform.
Oliver rubbed his face. “Ten DKP off whoever's still doing that. Right, get your buffs up. Everybody ready?” He checked the time and amended the question. It was past eleven. Friday or not, they had been at this long enough. “One more pull. If we don't get him, we'll call it and come back tomorrow. Ones if you're happy with that.”
More ones appeared, along with an optimistic demand to kill the boss and a rather less optimistic vote for tomorrow. Oliver moved his tauren Sunwalker into position. The golden star above the paladin's head marked him out for the others: guild leader, main tank, and apparently the only person in the raid with serious objections to the space bar.
When the damage dealers were gathered to one side, he sent his shield spinning into Arthas's face.
Five minutes later, something enormous and dead flattened him.
His ghost appeared in the graveyard outside Icecrown Citadel. Oliver steered the tauren over to the Spirit Healer and pressed its broad, miserable face against her thigh. More gray figures materialized around him. They had made it to the Lich King, at least. That was something to show for the evening.
“All right, we're done. Seven tomorrow, on the dot. Eat before you join. I don't want anyone trying to raid with a fork in one hand.”
The group emptied as people left and logged off. Oliver shut down voice chat and opened his bags.
Several unwanted epics sat among the blue and green items, crowded in with his spare equipment. The guild gave the main tank the leftovers to sell, a modest concession to the size of his repair bills. Ore and gems occupied more space. Wearing plate apparently led, sooner or later, to dreams of becoming a blacksmith. His particular dream had left him with a collection of things he could neither use nor bear to throw away.
The night's looting had added a few thousand gold. His total stood at 325,810 gold, 86 silver, and 25 copper.
He looked from the money to his ghost. “Sod the run back.”
Resurrecting at the Spirit Healer would cost a quarter of his equipment's durability, but he could afford that. He clicked through to the familiar confirmation window and stopped at the unfamiliar words.
Warrior, Westeros faces a great crisis. While war consumes the southern kingdoms, a threat gathers in the frozen north. Will you become the hero who saves the continent?
Confirm. Reject.
“Since when does it say that?”
He had barely finished reading when habit supplied the answer. His finger clicked Confirm.
The button grayed out. Music swelled inside his head, far beyond anything the speakers could have produced. Memories poured in with it, jumbled and relentless. Pain tore through him before he could pull his hand away.
Oliver lost consciousness.
A strand of golden light left his body and vanished into the sky.
When he next stood up, grass scraped against metal at his ankles.
He stared down. Plate armor covered his body. Beyond it lay a heap of swords, robes, and other pieces of equipment scattered over the forest floor. Sunlight shone through the trees, catching on gems and glass bottles. A leather bag about the size of a school backpack lay open among them, gold glinting inside.
Oliver crouched and reached into the bag. The coin he pulled out was solid and yellow and heavier than it looked. He put it between his teeth, bit cautiously, then examined the shallow marks he had left. Real gold?
He looked at the bag again. Whatever this was, it would have been an extravagantly expensive practical joke.
Sitting cross-legged among the armor and weapons, he tried to retrace the last few minutes he remembered. Icecrown. The wipe. The Spirit Healer. A resurrection message that had mentioned Westeros instead of the usual penalties. A crisis, and saving the continent.
Oh, no.
He had been doing perfectly well where he was. He had a job at a distribution company, a rented flat in Sheffield, and a bicycle that got him where he needed to go. His little sister was five. His parents were at home. None of that had seemed a life worth abandoning because a game window had offered him a change of scenery.
Especially this scenery. Trees were all very well, but the message hadn't offered a holiday. It had offered war, a threat from the frozen north, and responsibility for keeping an entire continent alive. What part of tonight's raid had suggested he was the man for that?
He tipped his head back. “Whoever's listening, I clicked the wrong button.” The words sounded absurdly small beneath the trees. “Any chance you could send me back?”
Branches moved overhead. A few black birds crossed the gap in the canopy, calling to one another. A splash of yellow-green droppings landed in front of him.
Oliver lowered his head into his hands. After a while, he made himself look up. He could sit here asking the same question until it got dark, but nothing so far suggested that would help. He needed to stay alive. Once he had managed that, he could start working out how to get home.
He began with the things on the ground. There were thirty-one pieces he could count as equipment: elaborate plate, patterned cloth and robes, swords with edges that looked much too fine to have been made for display. Colored gems lay between them in quantities he wasn't prepared to count. He found rolls of cloth, dried flowers and herbs, and crystal bottles of several shapes.
The longer he sorted, the more familiar it became. His bags. Someone had emptied his character's entire inventory onto the forest floor.
He worked his way out of the armor he was wearing and arranged the pieces on the ground in the shape of a body. There it was: his Lightbringer armor, real enough for the grass to bend beneath it. It had fitted him perfectly, too. He looked down at his arms, then at the rest of himself. Hours spent sitting at a desk had not given him a body like this. He was broader, stronger, and considerably better equipped to wear a small metal workshop.
“I should've kept farming.” He looked back at the armor. The shoulders were still missing.
Of all the things he might have brought across, a complete set would have been nice. An extra night or two for those shining shoulder pieces would hardly have been wasted now. He could almost have cried over it, which was probably a sign that his priorities had suffered some damage.
Even incomplete, what he had was valuable. He led a guild with a progression team; his possessions reflected that. If the weapons and armor proved useless here, their craftsmanship alone ought to buy him a little time. Then there was the bag of gold. If he ever got home with that, he might finally discover a use for all those hours spent playing.
He picked up a gem, turned it in the light, and put it down again.
Meeting somebody while surrounded by this lot might be the last mistake he made. He knew nothing about the people here. There would be plenty of reasons to kill a stranger who arrived carrying treasure, and he had no intention of finding out which one a stranger might choose.
On the other hand, he couldn't stay in the clearing. Treasure he couldn't carry would do him very little good, and treasure he could carry still wouldn't feed him unless he found someone willing to trade.
He separated out the food. That took almost no time at all.
There were a few chicken legs, some pies, and tins of Mystery Meat he'd picked up while looting. In the game, food meant temporary bonuses or a way to restore health. For bonuses, he'd relied on potions. For health, he had healers. Stocking the bags for an actual journey through an actual wilderness had never entered into it.
Three days, he decided, looking at the pitiful collection. He could eat for three days. After that, he'd need another source of food.
He hadn't even found water yet. Within two minutes he had made his choice. Most of the equipment would have to stay. He would hide it as well as he could, take what he needed, and look for people. Or water. Water first, if it came to that.
He put his armor back on and began searching outward from the clearing, widening his route a little at a time so he wouldn't lose the heap of possessions that still constituted most of his prospects. More than half an hour later, to the southeast, he found a bear den.
Oliver stopped well short of the entrance.
It ran roughly three meters into the earth and stood nearly two meters high. Whatever had dug it had been large. He approached carefully and peered inside, giving his eyes time to adjust. Nothing moved. The floor was dry, and the smell was much fainter than he had expected. It looked as though the occupant had been gone for a while.
He waited, then looked again. Still empty.
Moving the equipment took several trips. He carried each load into the den and pushed it toward the back, keeping the things he meant to take with him separate. When the last of the unwanted gear was inside, he took his mining pick to the earth above it. Soil fell across the opening, then more of the roof came down. He kept working until the den had collapsed over the cache.
Stones and vegetation from nearby helped disguise the disturbed ground. He considered marking a tree, then decided against it. A mark would tell anyone else where to look as readily as it would tell him.
Instead, he took out an intact Scroll of Strength. On the back, using a charred twig, he drew the most distinctive features of the surrounding ground. He studied the resulting collection of crooked lines, looked up at the actual trees and slopes, then studied the lines again. Would he ever find this place?
He rolled up the map. It was a better chance than leaving everything out for the first passerby.
What remained was still a formidable load. He wore the Lightbringer armor and kept the shield with Lordaeron's royal crest, a short sword, a long saber transmogrified to look like Strike of the Hydra, and a caster's dagger.
All the food went into his pack, along with a hundred gold coins, several gems, and an empty potion bottle for water. He also needed the smith's hammer, the mining pick, and the fire-starting tools.
There was no convenient inventory window waiting to swallow it all. Each object had to go somewhere on his person.
He fastened things on one by one, expecting the weight to stop him. It didn't. He could stand. He could walk. Carrying the load was surprisingly manageable, though he had no explanation for that beyond the obvious fact that this body was much stronger than the one he'd had in Sheffield. Another benefit of being dragged into a different world, perhaps. He was willing to take it.