BY DR. AGONSON
“A drink?” he asked upon her entrance. He was standing behind the bar in the only way he was ever found, cleaning a glass. His well-known manner caught her off guard in its normality, its unchanged decorum, its unflinching friendliness in the face of utter ruin. That was, of course, how he was designed. “For your future travels?”
She remembered hearing those words for the first time. She had come into the tavern with a party, her brother had brought her, and there he was to greet them all, polishing a glass. “A drink?” he had asked them. “For your future travels?”
It was always the same with him, reliable.
She sidled up to the bar and said, “I wish I could take you with me?”
“I’m just a humble barkeep,” he said.
“My adventuring days are over,” they said in unison. She felt she could quote most of his lines at this point.
She smiled. “I think I’ll miss you. Funny, I’d never have said you were my favorite part, but now that everything’s ending . . . ” she laughed. “You’re the first face we all see, give us our first quest, and there was always a good reason to come back: New stories, seasonal events, and . . . well, here’s where we’d always meet up. It’s a good place, and anytime I’ll think of—” she choked a little. “Well, I’ll remember you.”
She was curious how he would react to that. He was always more of a utility, a reliable font of quests and information. He wasn’t given much of a character besides friendly, and he never really featured in any storyline, except maybe in the background.
He put the glass down on the counter and threw the rag over his shoulder. Smiling at her, he said, “It’s my pleasure to serve.”
It was strange, that phrase. She had heard it countless times; it was a sort of farewell he would give after you ordered something. She had never heard him say it in the middle of a conversation, however.
“I could almost believe you meant that,” she observed.
He nodded, retrieved the glass, and started polishing it again. One of the countless glitches which had been corrupting the game the last year passed over his model. The textures blipped a moment, and he reset. The glass he was holding now appeared to be filled with a red liquid. He looked at it and smiled.
“On the house,” he said, passing her the glass.
She took it and drank. She already had full health, but it seemed wrong to simply stow the potion away. What would she be saving it for? Come to think of it, she had about ten of the same in her backpack already.
“Can’t take it with you,” she sighed.
“Like I always say,” he began.
“Money’s meant to be spent,” they finished together.
“I’ve heard some news,” he said. That was how he always handed out quests.
She rolled her eyes. “Okay, I’ll bite.”
“A friend of mine’s coming to visit soon. You would do me a favor if you—” he started glitching again, sputtering random words from his programing, “Don’t—attack on—safety—Lord Amilias.”
Lord Amilias, of course, was the first big boss. She had almost forgotten about him. Like the barkeep, he was there to ease players into the game; he offered an easy, maybe a third level, fight dovetailing into the greater story and world, but unlike the barkeep, there was little reason to return to his desolate castle and fight him again. His loot, exciting at the time, couldn’t compare to the later weapons and armor dropped by the Great Desert Worm, or with the treasures found in the Sunken City of Sloth—she giggled, remembering the ancient battle of the slow moving sloth people against the vicious, giant snails, a war which had lasted generations and cost countless lives, lives lost to old age. It was eventually revealed that the two armies hadn’t quite reached each other yet, and with the player’s influence, never would.
“The quest is yours,” he said as he always would.
She looked at him quizzically, smiled, and nodded. “Okay,” she said, wondering just what she had signed up for. She didn’t really feel like fighting anyone today. She checked her quest log. The text was glitched out entirely: not even letters, just odd symbols and numbers.
“I’m going to miss it all,” she said, “broken as it is.”
What she did not expect was that Lord Amilias actually did arrive.
“A drink?” the barkeep said as the door opened behind her. “For your future travels?”
It shocked her a little to hear a deep voice suddenly bellow, “You’ve come to die, adventurer!”
With pauldrons of skulls, and a weathered, skeletal face, he came marching in and sat beside her.
“This is your friend?” she asked.
Lord Amilias answered in a suddenly computerized voice, “Alpha version. First two characters. He was there when I came online.”
“What?” she said, staring at the dark lord. He was glitching terribly, his limbs flailing in weird patterns.
The spasms, as they might be called, ceased, and he shouted, his normal voice returning, “Filthy adventurers! You dare to challenge me?” Then he glitched again, his voice going monotone and robotic, “Brothers.”
The same voice, though it was coming from the barkeep this time, his arms appearing and disappearing as he spoke, “Together beginning. Together end.”
A woman’s voice announced over the entire lands of Elioth, from the blue seas and island chains of Batreal to the ever wintered fringes of The Waste, from the top of the burning mountain with its hidden clouded gardens to the depths of the labyrinthian catacombs and its well plunged lore, “Dear players, it is with great sadness that we shut down our servers. We hope that the adventures you’ve had here will carry on to other worlds and into new adventures. We hope that you have loved this game as much as we loved making it. You have brought our world to life.”
The barkeep said, “The sea is rising.” She vaguely recognized the words from a quest involving pirates and mermaids.
“No! I cannot die!” Lord Amilias cried. It was what he said every time he was defeated.
“It’s okay,” said the barkeep, “you can always try again later.” Then he looked at her and asked, “A drink? For your future travels?”
Everything went dark, and she pulled off her headset and found herself in her dimly lit room. Sniffling a little, she got up from her chair, approached the window, and pulled the shutters back. It was a beautiful afternoon day, and she could see a bird hopping along a nearby branch. She watched it awhile until it flew off.
“To future adventures,” she said, raising an imaginary cup.
Tale Told 