The Dive: Birth of a Wordsmith Read Free Page A

to the
customers, who were grumbling about being kept waiting and demanding
a discount. However, my tuition was on the line here! Yield for no
man! I made sure to have everyone pay the full price, and handed out
the keys to them when they did. Denise wasn’t back down for
over an hour after that, cleaning out the unused rooms almost as fast
as they were rented out. By the time she came back down, she looked
like she had personally wrestled every dustbunny in the city.

    “ Thanks a bunch…
these last couple weeks business has been crazy. And you wouldn’t
believe how many people try to get in lately without paying.” I
figured she must have meant players with no money, meaning that
they’ve been coming for about two weeks of game time. Given
that the game isn’t advertised, that probably meant it wasn’t
more than three weeks old, in real time.

    “ No problem. I am
always happy to help a damsel in distress.” I laughed at that,
and got a look that I could only assume was a cross between a glare
and a grin. Somehow, she pulled it off.

    “ Well, the least I
can do is put you up for the night.” She smiled a bit, brushing
some dust off her dress. “Looks like you sold out all the
rooms. Good job. That means I can’t give you one of them for
the night…” She grumbled a bit, and then smiled as an
idea hit her. “You could stay with me for the night. It’s
a couch, but better than nothing. I’ll even throw in a free
meal to make up for it.”

Job Complete!

    Innkeeper’s Assistant.

    You managed to keep all the customers satisfied, and
sold out all of the rooms of the Sleeping Soldier.

    Reward: 700/5: 140 Gild

    Bonus for Exceptional Service: Increase familiarity
with Denise

    As Denise handed me a
coinpurse with my pay, I smiled to her. “Sure, that sounds
wonderful.” Score. With this, I can head
to the College tomorrow and pay the tuition.

    She led me back to a small
apartment on the first floor of the inn. It wasn’t much, just a
small kitchen, living room, and bedroom. Sure enough, there was a
brown couch in the living room that I planted myself in. “So…
I hope you don’t mind, but could I ask you a few questions? I’m
pretty new to the area, myself.”

    Denise let out a soft
sigh, “Another foreigner, huh? Don’t worry, we’ve
been getting a lot of you lately. You’re not like most of them,
though.” She laughed briefly. “Oh, nearly a month ago
now, there was this one man running down the street, poking everyone
he could find. Each time, he’d just stand there and say
‘Quest?’, before moving on to the next person. We all
thought he was crazy. Eventually the city guards had him locked up
for the night for disturbing the peace.”

    “ Ah, sorry about
that.. On behalf of foreigners everywhere, I apologize.” I gave
a shallow bow, which made her laugh again.

    “ Oh, you’ve
got nothing to be sorry for. You’re probably one of the best
mannered of the lot I’ve seen.” She turned that smile on
me again, and everything felt better. “Though, I suppose this
is my turn to ask. Where did you all come from?”

    I blinked at the question. An NPC questioning the origins of players…
if nobody else has given a story, and there’s not an official
one, maybe I can set it? I thought about that
for a few moments. “Far away. We come from a land much
different than this one, and we may only stay for a brief while at a
time. There are laws of magic in our land, as I am sure there are
here.” She nodded to me as I began my story. “In order to
visit this realm, we must agree to a pact that binds us to remain in
one place for four weeks before our journey can begin. But, how
should I put this… We are here, and yet we are not. Have you
ever seen one of us… simply vanish?”

    “ Hmm.. well, yes,
but I assumed that was a mage. Are you saying that any of you can
disappear at will?” Her eyes grew wide with fascination.

    “ Not quite.” I
shook my head as I explained. “When we