ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO FALL ON YOUR SWORD? asked a dialog box.
YES, clicked Wallace.
A few seconds later his character was in Limbo too.
“It’s so obvious,” Wallace said, after devoting a few moments to regaining his composure. “This REAMDE thing has infected—how many computers?”
“Estimated at a couple of hundred thousand,” said Peter, who’d been sitting in the corner with his laptop, doing research on it. But he could only see Internet rumors in the public domain. Zula, thanks to her access to the VPN, knew that the real figure was closer to a million.
“All the victims have to go to the same fucking place with a thousand gold pieces. So naturally, thieves are going to set up an ambush at the closest ley line intersection.”
“It would pay for itself pretty quickly,” Zula allowed.
“So those guys stole your money?” asked Peter, violating the rule, earlier laid down by Wallace, that he couldn’t ask stupid questions about how T’Rain worked.
“No, because I fell on my sword, and died, and went to Limbo with all my kit,” Wallace said. “If I’d gotten weak enough for them to capture me, then they could’ve made away with the gold and everything else. But I was lucky. What they’re doing is probably quite profitable.”
“So what do we do?” Zula asked.
“Get out of Limbo,” Wallace said. This was easy enough; there were half a dozen ways to bring a character back to life, each with its own pros and cons. “Find a less obvious ley line intersection. Go there and be ready to fight our way through.”
“We could recruit a larger party—”
“At three in the morning? Not enough time,” Wallace said. “You’re sure you can’t recruit a more … omniscient character?”
“You mean, wake up my uncle?” Zula responded. “Are you sure you want him involved?”
SO THEY GOT out of Limbo and tried again, teleporting to another, much less convenient ley line intersection an hour’s ride from the place they were trying to reach. Here they were immediately ambushed, and nearly overcame the thieves, but because of some unluckiness they ended up in Limbo again and had to try it a third time. First, though, Wallace got more gold pieces and used them to buy, at extortionate rates, some spells and potions that would keep them alive a bit longer. They teleported back in again and fought their way through the ambush and withdrew to higher ground a couple of thousand yards away—where they were set upon by another party of thieves before they could recover from wounds suffered in the first ambush. They fought back as hard as they could but ended up in Limbo once more.
Just before Zula’s character perished, though, she saw something a bit odd: some of their ambushers were going down with spears and arrows lodged in their backs. The ambushers had been counterambushed by some hostile group that had rushed to the scene of the fight but arrived too late.
“Let’s go back there,” she suggested. “I think we have help.”
“Saw them. It’s just another group of thieves,” Wallace said.
“So what? Let them kill each other.”
So they attempted to do the same thing, except this time they didn’t even make it past the first group of thieves. Again, though, their ambushers got ambushed.
Another potion-buying spree led to another attempt at the same location. This time—now that they knew something of the ambushers’ numbers and tactics—they dispatched the first group handily, and then retreated to a place where they would have a few minutes’ respite before the second group attacked them. And this time—because she knew what to watch for—Zula was distinctly able to see two separate groups converging on them: the bandits, and the bandit fighters. And her theory about the latter group was borne out when they focused all their fire on the bandits but left Zula’s and Wallace’s characters alone. One of them even cast a healing spell on Zula’s character when her health was beginning to run low.
But then they retreated into the woods with no explanation, no attempts to communicate.
“I get it,” Wallace finally said. “They work for the Troll.”
“Interesting,” Zula said.
“Their job is to help ransom carriers make it through.”
“Well,” said Zula, causing her character to mount up, “let’s make the most of it.”
And so began what they had expected to be an hour-long ride.