The next morning I woke to a bunch of messages.

  {Rositilda} - Oh, thank god you are ok.

  {Ayerelia} - Finally. Good to hear from you. I told everyone you would be fine.

  {Rositilda} - is Dekka Ok?

  {Barry} - Good to hear you are safe. You gave us a scare. The time dilation must be wild. Rose said she is going to come back for you. The rest of us are going to play the game, so don’t worry about us. Just meet up with Rose.

  {Rositilda} - I am coming back to you. I can help you level up. Let me know where we should meet.

  That was it.

  I read them over again. Barry was clearly trying to tell me something without putting it in text for any game staff to read. But I was at a bit of a loss to parse it myself. It was obvious to me that he was trying to tell me something more than no one but Rose was coming.

  I’d ask her when she showed up. For now, I sent her a message.

  {System Error} - I am west of you. Do you know where Rivermore is? I am near there. It’s on the road that heads west out of Bistmore. With the time dilation, I can level up a bit more and meet you in Bistmore?

  And then I proceeded to do just that. With days between messages, I could afford a few days to level up and see what goodies I could get for loot.

  Rose was coming back for me!

  I headed north from Rivermore. I hadn’t gone that way before. The locals had warned me that this road hadn’t been safe for a while and that no one had heard from the village of Oakfend in months. When I said I would go, I got the quest: Solve the mystery of the silent village.

  Dekka and I were walking up the road, being rained on. Once again, I got rain. At least this time it was a warm rain. I was fine. Dekka was miserable. Puddles, lakes, etc were fine. Anything that reminded her of a shower and had falling water was illegal as far as she was concerned. She was trudging behind me right up against my heels.

  The sky was low and leaden. It looked like it could rain all day and possibly all night. I had been keeping an eye out for a spot to camp, but all the land around us was flat with hills in the distance. The fields would be squelchy if this kept up. Taking a better look at the fields, I noticed that they were farm fields that had been let go. Fences had broken boards; fields looked to have been plowed, but then grass and weeds, along with a stray crop plant, covered the raised rows of dirt. Pastures were lush and uneaten.

  It was fucking creepy the more I looked at it.

  Night fell, the stars began to show up one constellation at a time, and the air cooled. I was carrying Dekka now, as she had been shivering. Finally, the road started heading in an upward direction into higher ground. There was a small forest of trees on a rise. Tromping cross country I made my way over there. The trees were so thick that I found a relatively dry spot to make camp.

  Dekka was much happier with a fire roaring and a tent overhead. The fire had to be away from the trees, but there was enough wood around that I built it up so that even lying in the tent we could feel its warmth. I made us some warm soup and listened to the pitter patter of rain hitting the canvas tent and the hiss and sizzle of it in the fire.

  Why didn’t the others ever see rain? That was such an odd detail. Thunder crackled across the sky, and Dekka bolted to the bottom of my bedroll. Even in game she hated storms. The wind picked up, but I had staked the tent down well. Baring a branch or a whole tree coming down on us, we were snug, warm and dry. It was a very cozy feeling, even if Dekka didn’t appreciate it. I fell asleep feeling safe, bundled up with my dog.

  I woke up feeling very differently.

  We woke to someone cutting into our tent. Dekka, having slept the night at the bottom of the bedroll, hadn’t heard them coming. Waking to a sword slicing through your tent wall highlights just how flimsy a shelter a tent really was. Anyone, or any animal for that matter, with a sharp point could easily get to you.

  “Come out slowly,” a voice said as I blinked against the sudden daylight. Dekka was trying to bark and struggled her way out of the covers. “Slowly!” the voice yelled at me.

  “I’m not moving; that’s my dog.” I said with my hands raised.

  There was some murmuring, and I heard the chink of people walking around in armour. There were sounds of more people than I could see. “What is a ‘dog’?” A woman with a scarred face asked me in a tone that said she would rather spit on me than ask questions.

  “Um. This is a dog,” I said, slowly moving a hand to lift the edge of my blanket as Dekka wiggled out. She was, thankfully, still wearing the bow she got from Sera.

  “Seems harmless enough,” scar face lady said to her companion. And equally scarred looking middle-aged man. My dog sat down and looked as harmless as she could. As foolhardy as Jack Russels are, mine was good at taking stock of a situation. If there were no chance of winning, she would sit it out. She would leap in if there was any sort of chance, so her sitting down reinforced my thought that this wasn’t something we could fight our way out of. At least not at this moment.

  Now that my eyes had adjusted and my brain was fully awake, I looked around. All the people I could see were dressed in black or dark brown. They looked very fit, and most boasted scars on their faces and hands. They also looked … disreputable.

  Fuck if I died I would have to level up all over again. I should have just gone to Bistmore and waited for Rose, even if that meant I waited around for ages for her. I felt like an idiot.

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  “Get up,” scar-face woman said, gesturing with her sword. “Slowly.”

  I crawled out of the tent, hands still raised. The camp was surrounded. I counted at least twelve people in total, all armed, all watching me with the kind of wariness that told me they were familiar with fighting, and despite being scarred, they had clearly survived it.

  “There must be a misunderstanding,” I said. “I’m just passing through. I’m trying to meet a friend in Bistmore.”

  “Bistmore’s east,” the scarred man said flatly. “You’re heading north. To Oakfend.”

  “That’s true,” I hedged. “I was sightseeing. My friend won’t be there for a while. Thought maybe of finding a quest—”

  “A quest.” The woman’s face looked like she had tasted something bitter, making her scar pucker. “Another one sent to ‘solve our problem.’”

  That wasn’t what I expected. Their problem. Did this mean the problem wasn’t one that they’d caused? Before I could think about that too deeply, one started poking at my stuff.

  “She’s got good gear.” A younger bandit said, giving my tent a nudge with his foot. “Look at that tent. That bedroll. Quality stuff.”

  “Not nice enough for nobility though,” another voice chimed in. A woman with grey streaking through her dark hair pushed forward. “And look at her, she’s a fighter.”

  “Could be minor nobility,” someone else argued. “Some of their children train to fight.” They looked around. “You know if they have too many,”

  “Well, I don’t know what she is,” scar-face said firmly. “That’s a problem.” She tapped her lips as I knelt before her on the ground. The small rocks were biting into my knees. Dekka kept glancing at me to check to see if I wanted to try attacking them all. There were too many.

  “We take her back. Let Robbie decide.” She decided. “We don’t want an incident like last time,” the grey-haired woman said quietly, her voice tight. “We can’t make another mistake like that.”

  A heavy silence fell across the group; even their horses stopped moving and making noise.

  “Bind her,” the scarred man said finally. “We’re not taking chances.”

  “Wait—” I started, but two of them were already on me. They were efficient and not gentle. Rough rope around my wrists, then around my ankles. When I told them it hurt, they just pulled the knots tighter.

  “What about the ‘dog’?” the young bowman asked.

  “Yes, dog…” scar-face woman said slowly, tasting the new word. She looked at Dekka, who had been sitting perfectly still this entire time, watching everything with her sharp little eyes. “Who knows what trouble it can cause? Bag it and bring it.”

  “No!” The idea of Dekka in a dark bag made my blood heat. “She won’t make trouble, she will follow quietly, I promise—”

  “Bag it,” the woman repeated.

  One of them produced a sturdy burlap sack. Dekka saw it coming, and her ears went flat; she flickered.

  “Dekka no,” I whispered. I wouldn’t blame her if she got big and started something. But I was still hoping we could find another way out of this that wouldn’t end up with us starting over.

  She looked at me. Her brown eyes stared into mine as they put the bag over her and scooped her up. She gave one sharp growl of protest as she got flipped over. The sack wiggled, and I could hear muffled whining.

  I had a panicked fear, ”Can she breathe in there?"

  “It’s burlap, not canvas. She’ll be fine.” The scarred man hoisted the sack and gave it a quick shake to get her to settle down and then strung it on his saddle.

  The rest of the band of bandits finished picking over my stuff and mounting their horses. A couple lifted me up and threw me face-down across the back of a horse and tied a rope around the belly of the horse, linking the rope around my wrists and the one around my ankles. This horse had no saddle. I was just draped over the horse’s back like a sack of grain. The horse shifted beneath me and I its spine pressed painfully into my stomach.

  “Comfortable?” scar-face asked dryly, mounting behind me.

  “Fuck you,” I said, though it didn’t come out as strongly as I would have liked. Being ass up strung across the back of a horse is not a power pose.

  The horse’s lead was untied and taken by a rider. When their horse moved, the one I was on got pulled along. My head sagged on one side, my bound legs on the other. Blood rushed to my head. Every step the horse took jostled me. Why wasn’t this one bucking me off? It was walking so placidly.

  All I could smell was the hide of the horse as my face was pressed against its rough hide. My field of vision was the horse’s side and the ground beneath the horse’s feet.—wet grass, muddy road, more grass. The rain had stopped, but everything was soaked and grey.

  I tried to twist enough to get more comfortable, but there was no comfortable position. This was designed to be humiliating and effective. I was cargo. Helpless cargo.

  After twenty minutes that felt like hours, my face was chafed from rubbing against the horse, and my hands and feet were numb. Stupid game. I tried focusing on their voices to distract me from my discomfort and worrying about Dekka.

  “You really think she’s nobody?” That was the younger bowman, voice low.

  “How should I know?” The grey-haired woman sounded tired. “That’s the whole problem. She doesn’t look like nobility, but her stuff…”

  “She might not be,” someone else muttered.

  Again a silence.

  “That time was different,” scar-face said sharply. “That was—we didn’t know—”

  “We should have known,” a deep baritone voice woman cut in. “We should have checked better. Asked more questions. Been more careful.”

  “We were careful,” the scarred man said, but he didn’t sound convinced. “We did everything right. There was no way to—”

  “That’s why we are bringing her back.”

  “If she’s connected to anyone important—” the grey-haired woman started.

  “Then we let her go,” scar-face finished. “Better to lose the goods than lose more people.”

  “She’s really on her own, though,” the bowman said, like he were trying to convince himself. “Just her and the dog thing. No escort. No servants. That’s not nobility.”

  “Minor nobility travels light sometimes,” the grey-haired woman countered. “Merchant class too. Could be someone’s daughter. Could be someone important’s wife. Could be a guild member. We just don’t know.”

  “So we ask her,” someone suggested.

  “Because people never lie when they’re captured,” someone replied, voice dripping with condescension.

  “Enough.” Scar-face’s voice cracked like a whip. “We bring her in. We let Robbie decide.”

  The rest of the trip they didn’t speak of me again. The only sounds were hoofbeats and the creak of leather and my own increasingly labored breathing as blood pooled in my head.

  I was drifting out of consciousness when I was roused by a sharp command.

  “Garth, run ahead. Tell Robbie we’re bringing someone in. Tell her...” A pause. “Tell her it might be delicate.”

  Hoofbeats broke away from the group, galloping ahead.

  “Think she’ll be angry?” the young bowman asked.

  “Robbie’s always angry these days,” the grey-haired woman murmured.

  We must be close now. I could hear more voices, smell cookfires and livestock. The sounds of daily life of a bustling community.

  I heard the creak of wood, the sound of gates opening. The quality of sound changed as we moved from open space into something more enclosed. My neck was too sore to try to look up. Buildings around us, maybe. The horse’s hooves sounded different on packed earth.

  The horse halted abruptly, and I was pulled off before I could prepare myself. I hit the ground feet first. My feet were numb, and my legs refused to support me. I crumpled to the ground; my shoulder hit packed dirt hard. I just lay there, my head swimming as the blood drained from my face.

  “Get her up” That was a new voice, sharp and commanding.

  Hands grabbed me and hauled me to my feet. Or tried to. My legs were now as steady as well done pasta. Two people grabbed my arms and held me upright and drag walked me out of what turned out to be a barn.

  I blinked against the sudden brightness. We were in some kind of village square. Buildings surrounded us; people were everywhere. Men, women, even a few children staring from doorways. Everyone armed. Everyone is watching.

  Standing directly in front of me was a woman who could only be Robbie.