“…Hello there,” she said, once the initial shock faded from her face. She had dark hair and blue eyes, and she wore a black dress that hung down beneath her knees. It looked like she was in mourning. “Are you…are you okay?”

I leapt out of the container and put some distance between us, my armor clanking with every step. I pulled what was left of the roll out of my mouth. “I’m fine, thanks.” Stuck it back in, chewed, swallowed.

She knelt and collected a few of the apples she’d been trying to throw out.

I bent down to help at the edge of the spill, keeping my eyes on her. “Are these trash too?” I said.

“…they are.”

I placed the rotten apples I’d collected in her basket.

“Do you…want some actual food?” She glanced back at the inn.

“What do you mean, actual?” I said, as I took a bite of a second roll. Seemed like I was dealing with another player. Yet another thing Ezzie had been wrong about; they didn’t seem rare to me.

She grimaced. “Who hurt you?”

“Uh, you mean recently? I got abducted by a bunch of robots. I think that was yesterday.”

She frowned. “Right.” She removed one her gloves and placed the backside of her hand to my forehead. “No fever.”

“Do you not know what a robot is?” I said, before I realized I could examine her.

Faye Ester (Level 9 humanoid) (NPC)

Ah, so she was a robot. Could’ve fooled me. Guess she had, actually.

She motioned to the back stairs that led up to the inn. “Why don’t you just sit for a bit. And for God’s sake spit out the roll. Something in it is moving.”

I looked at the roll, at her, back to the roll, then shrugged. “So?”

She paled. “I’ll bring you something fresh just please—”

“Why?”

She goggled. “What do you mean, why?”

“Why would you help me?” I said, alarm bells ringing in my head. “What’s in it for you?”

In my experience, getting something for nothing just didn’t happen; there was always an angle at play, a trap wreathed in calculated generosity. The only question was just how deadly that angle really was.

“Because I can?” she said. “Because it doesn’t cost me anything? …because I’m going to lose my lunch if you take one more bite of that roll now sit. Down.” She pointed at the stoop.

I gave her a wide berth and trudged over. I put my back against the wall and slid down it, pulling my knees to my chest.

“Stay here,” she said, as she disappeared inside the inn. She returned a moment later, a small bowl in one hand, a mug in the other. “Take this.” She gestured with the bowl.

I hesitated. “What’s the price?”

She sighed, exasperated. “The price is that if you don’t take this bowl in the next five seconds you’re going to be wearing it. And it just came off the stove.”

I took the bowl and the mug, setting the mug down beside me and settling the bowl into my lap. I lifted a spoonful of whatever the stew was—it had a gamey, briny smell—and stuck it in my mouth.

It was the best thing I’d ever tasted. “Oh my god,” I said, a little bit of stew spilling from my open mouth. “What did you do to this?” I set the spoon down and brought the whole bowl to my lips. It was difficult not to gulp the entirety of it down at once. Two prompts, then:

You are {Satiated}. All food-related penalties have been removed.

You are {Well-fed}. Experience gains increased by 10%.

The woman narrowed her eyes at me, frowned, and shook her head. “I…cooked it? Tomato, garlic, onion, white wine, parsley…it’s nothing special, really. And you’re going to make yourself sick if you don’t slow down.”

“It’s wizardry is what it is,” I said, as I polished off the rest of it.

The woman sat down beside me. “Sure.” She fidgeted with a ring she wore, a simple gold band that she was spinning about her finger. “Whatever that’s supposed to mean.”

“It’s a good thing,” I said. “This is—was—amazing.” I considered licking the bowl clean, but given Faye’s reaction to the rolls, I figured that might gross her out.

So I settled on sipping at the contents of the mug. It was cold and a little sour, a little salty, a little sweet, tasting of salt and lime and magic. “God, this beer is amazing. And I feel like I just ate for the first time. Thank you.”

A slow smile crept across the woman’s face. “You’re welcome. I’m glad you like it.”

“I’m Silas.” I offered her my hand.

She eyed me, one dark eyebrow cocked above the other, then shook my hand. “It’s good to meet you, Silas. In the future, however, please avoid bursting out of the trash. You got lucky there. If I hadn’t had my hands full, I would’ve been carrying a shovel. We get some nasty raccoons around here.”

I grinned. “Fair enough, no dumpster diving.”

The smile slid from her face, and she went back to playing with her ring.

“Something wrong?” I said.

“I’ve been trying to take this ring off for a month. But I just can’t do it.”

“Here, I can help.” I grabbed her ring finger and pulled. And to my surprise, the ring popped free with no issues at all. I held it out for her, in the very center of my palm.

She looked at me, to the ring, to me. “Uhhhh.”

“What?” I said. “You said you wanted it off. Now it’s off.” I scanned the periphery of my vision, looking for a quest update or something along those lines.

“…I didn’t mean…” she trailed off, laughing. She covered her mouth and turned away, her shoulders shaking.

“Did I do something wrong?”

She turned back to face me, grinning from ear to ear, blinking the tears from her eyes. “I didn’t mean I couldn’t pull the ring off,” she said.

“Oh,” I said. My face flushed hot. “Ohhhhh.”

“Yeah,” Faye said. “I meant…you know. It’s a wedding ring, so.”

I covered my face with both hands, mortified. “Sorry. Something similar happened earlier with a ring on someone’s finger, so I just assumed that was a thing here.”

“It’s fine,” she said. “I needed that, anyway.” She looked at the ring that was now sitting in her palm, then tucked it into her apron. “It’s good to finally be done with it.”

“Can I ask what happened?” I said. It felt weird to prod, but I felt like I had to keep her talking.

She shrugged. “Same story you’ll get all across town: my son and a couple other kids got grabbed and taken north, out to an old coal mine. My husband Mick tracked them there and organized a group to bring the kids home, but he didn’t make it back. Nobody did. And the town isn’t keen on giving it another shot.”

New Quest: The Wayward Son.

Objective: Reunite {Faye Ester} with her family.

Reward: 200 Experience and 200 Renown for each family member saved.

Failure Penalty: - 200 Renown for each family member lost.

Decline Penalty: -200 Renown

She stood up and dusted herself off, smirking. “I should get back to work. Thank you for the help with the ring.”

“Ugh,” I said, my eyes on my feet.

She laughed and touched my shoulder. “A meal for a story to tell; that’s a much better trade than I was expecting. If you can’t find anything better, come back tomorrow and I’ll see what we’ve got left over. But please do stay out of the trash.”

“No promises,” I said.

She waved and disappeared inside the inn.

I wandered the streets for a bit, trying to get a feel for the city. So many of the buildings had been neglected for years, and given the cobwebs and the dust, they’d been vacant for just as long.

While I was looking for golden outlines that would indicate a quest of some sort, I stumbled across more than a few blue ones, the closest one to me being a catapult according to the interface.

I examined it, and found that it was a defensive weapon, and that it required a massive amount of lumber to complete. A few NPCs were currently working on it, though the frame they had in place looked more like a wagon bed than the beginnings of a catapult.

A golden icon jumped out at me; I had a new way point on my map. I brought up the overlay and found a golden X marking a spot well north of town. It was hard to judge the distance, but it looked like it was on the opposite end of the zone.

That’d be Faye’s mine, then. I made it all the way to the north gate before I even questioned what it was that I was doing. I blinked, dumbstruck; it was so easy to get caught up in the events in front me. And the more the time passed, the more everything just felt…right. The system was probably still messing with my head.

But at the very least, the food here was not only better, but plentiful enough that some of it spoiled before it was eaten. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d actually been full. I’d forgotten how uncomfortable that could be.

I headed out the north gate—if a slightly more ornate gap in the fence could be called a gate—and jogged in the direction of the mine, watching my stamina bar deplete as I went.

Faye, alive or not, had been kind with no expectation of payment. It still felt wrong to me, my every instinct screaming that I should just look away, that it wasn’t my problem that she was an idiot, that I should take advantage of her kindness while I could.

But I was tired of playing the odds, and Faye had seemed real enough. Her troubles had seemed real, certainly.

And if I was truly trapped here for the foreseeable future, there didn’t seem to be any reason I couldn’t make a little bit of a difference in the meantime.