The Heart-Shaped Chest

Adventure by Association: The Everternia Saga

Zen DiPietro

Contents

Copyright

1. The Heart-Shaped Chest

Message from the author

About the Author

Other Works by Zen DiPietro

Dragonfire Station Universe

Copyright

THE HEART-SHAPED CHEST (ADVENTURE BY ASSOCIATION, AN EVERTERNIA SERIES)

COPYRIGHT © 2019 BY ZEN DIPIETRO

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, business establishments, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without express written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations for the purpose of review.

Please purchase only authorized electronic editions. Distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law.

Cover Art by Zen DiPietro

Published in the United States of America by Parallel Worlds Press

1

The Heart-Shaped Chest

Sally Streetmonger stood patiently in front of her display of wares. Her script had reset, so she would once again go through her limited loop of interactions.

She didn’t mind. She hadn’t been designed to mind. Sometimes she envied swaggering Tilly Hightower, who got to roam the entire land of Everternia with her group of rough-and-tumble toughs. Sometimes she teamed up with adventurers and sometimes she battled them. Tilly’s loops had much more variability.

Sally, on the other hand, had never been outside of her shop. She’d never even gotten a peek outside the door. Sometimes when business was slow, she had a moment to wonder about the chaotic life that she suspected lay beyond the cozy confines of her store.

But she was important in her own way, and that was enough for her.

A group of five adventurers entered, talking amongst themselves within their private communication bubble. She could hear them, of course, but she never revealed that fact. Adventurers knew that other adventurers couldn’t overhear their private conversation, but they only assumed that the natives of Everternia—people like Sally, who were known as community members, or CMs for short—couldn’t hear it, either.

The more experienced the adventurers, the more things they tended to assume.

A Northerner dropped a heavy bundle of bound-up scrap metal on the counter in front of her. “How much for this?”

Sally reached beneath the counter for her goggles and slipped them on. They were equipped with a variety of lenses that allowed her to quickly assess the quality and value of metal and mechanical parts. “The quality is quite poor. The only thing this is good for is melting down to reforge. I can only offer you four silver.”

“My cutter broke!” the large one shouted. “My metal scraps are usually excellent or perfect condition.”

“Would you like to buy a cutter?” Sally asked helpfully. “I have several kinds. I just got in a shipment of professional-grade torch cutters, if you have the coin for it.”

The adventurer sighed. “What’s your cheapest one?”

Sally flipped open a cabinet that showed all the cutting tools she had in stock, complete with signs that gave the price for each item. “My best bargain cutter is ten silver. It’s not fancy, but it’s guaranteed not to break for ten uses.”

The Northerner grumbled. Sally noted that his name was Gnorr. What Gnorr didn’t know was that she could assess all his gear and skills just by looking at him. She could also see that he had an infection beginning in the bandaged wound on his right arm. Strange, since Northerners were a hardy folk who rarely contracted illness or infection. But Sally never mentioned to her customers what she knew about them. No doubt Gnorr would be annoyed to realize that the person he wanted to bargain with was well aware of the fact that he had twenty silver in his pocket.

“Six silver” Gnorr said.

Sally maintained her earnest expression, but internally she scoffed at Gnorr’s offer. He didn’t have nearly the charm or good looks of someone who could bargain an item down to only sixty percent of her original price. “Eight silver,” she said primly. “Last offer.”

Gnorr’s companions laughed.

“She’s not even giving you a second chance, dude,” another Northerner said. “Your charisma must suck.”

Gnorr slammed eight silvers down on the counter and Sally immediately swept the money away and replaced it with the tool he wanted.

“Is there anything else I can help you out with today?” she asked. “Do you, perhaps, have any puzzles to sell?”

Sally’s one defining characteristic was her love for puzzles. Her favorite days were when an adventurer came in with a puzzle they’d found on a quest. Sometimes they sold her the puzzle, and sometimes they gave her a tip so she’d help them solve it.

Puzzle days were the absolute best.

Gnorr said something filthy to his companions under the nonexistent privacy of their conversation bubble. Sally remained calm and earnest despite the rudeness.

The group began to leave, but one of the women, whose name was Kitria, pulled out a short sword and shoved it into Sally’s stomach until it protruded out her back.

Sally’s knees buckled and she fell to the ground while Kitria put her sword back in its sheath.

“Why did you do that?” Gnorr asked.

“I always stab her,” Kitria laughed. “It’s tradition. Right, Sally?”

Another of the men glanced at Sally on the way out. “Where’s the fun? She can’t even fight back. She has, like, one hit point.”

“I’m chaotic neutral, so I have to do some bad stuff now and then so I don’t get a penalty on my skills. Got to keep my karma up. Besides, like I said, it’s tradition. I’ve been stabbing her for two years now, ever since I bought my first short sword. Had to test it out. Then I figured, why not make it a regular thing?”

Sally lay on the floor with the specter of death hovering over her, waiting patiently for them to leave so that her loop could restart. Kitria was telling the truth. When Sally had seen her enter, she knew she’d be getting stabbed by Kitria that day for the three hundred and sixty-seventh time.

There was no escaping such things. She was only Sally Streetmonger, after all.

* * *

Sally liked new adventurers the best. Newbies took the time to look around and to ask lots of questions. The longer someone had been around Everternia, the less they saw. They already knew every surface and color inside every common area, and could enter her shop, do their business with a few quick commands, and be out again in less than half a minute.

Newbies, on the other hand, wandered around, looked at absolutely everything, and asked her questions most people didn’t bother to.

Newbies were interesting because they hadn’t yet become bored with what Everternia had to offer. They still had that mix of wonder and determination that Sally always found so exciting.

For most of their questions, though, she had no good answers. She had very little backstory to speak of, and wasn’t the kind of community member who could do cool things like issue quests. She served a specific purpose, and once the newbs figured that out, they would begin zipping in and out of her shop at the speed of light, too.

But it was always nice while it lasted.

“Can I sell this?” a brand-new adventurer named Essley asked. She held out an apple, which had fallen from the big tree at the town square. They could quench an adventurer’s hunger for a little while, but weren’t good for anything else.

“What would I do with that?” Sally asked, as she always did of the offers of things she couldn’t accept.

“Then how am I supposed to get money?” Essley asked, clearly frustrated. “I need to buy a map so I can get somewhere to make money, but how can I get the map to make money when I don’t have any money to get the map?”

Nobody had ever asked Sally about money like that. It sounded like a riddle.

“Maybe there’s something else we can forage to sell,” Essley’s companion Darthrok suggested. Like her, he was brand-new to Everternia.

“I love puzzles,” Sally said. Usually, she said that line when someone offered her one for sale. Her conversations, up until this point, had always been entirely formulaic. Now, for some reason, she wanted to use some of her puzzle dialogue with Essley and Darthrok.

“What does that mean?” Darthrok asked.

Sally wasn’t sure if he was asking her or Essley. In either case, she had no available response. She repeated, “I love puzzles.”

Essley put a hand on her hip. “Maybe she’s hinting that there’s a puzzle out there we can find to sell her so we can get the map. If I’d known how hard it is to start out as a mercenary, I might have become a maker instead. I was tempted to try botany or forging but I thought mercenary work sounded more fun.”

There was no way they’d find any puzzles until they gained ten levels of experience, but Sally had no words to tell them that.

Kitria swaggered into the shop with a huge wooden trunk on her shoulder. She slammed it down on the counter and said, “Sell parts.”

Sally immediately put on her goggles, riffled through the assortment of gears, wires, hinges, and flanges. There were also a few parts for a steam engine, but they were badly worn. She swept the parts behind the counter and replaced them with the maximum amount of coin they warranted without even giving Kitria a lower offer first. She didn’t want to deal with bargaining today. She wanted to think about puzzles and the two new adventurers. The sooner Kitria went away, the better.

Kitria pocketed the money. “Nice. I must have picked up a charisma bonus.”

She unsheathed her short sword, and Sally belatedly realized that she should have bargained with Kitria after all, in order to give the newbies a chance to get bored and wander out. Instead, they were standing motionless, staring at the mercenary in awe.

If they got in Kitria’s way, she’d gut them too, and just as easily. They’d lose their meager belongings and have a rougher time trying to establish themselves.

Fortunately, they simply stared in shock when Kitria ran Sally through. As Sally lay on the floor, Kitria strutted out of the shop.

“What was that?” Essley shouted. “Why did she just do that?”

Sally wanted to tell them not to worry about it. As soon as they left, she’d regenerate and be fine. She didn’t have the words to say that, though. She wished she could reassure them.

For the first time in her existence, Sally felt that her place in Everternia was too small, and didn’t fit. It pinched.

She didn’t like it.

“Can we help her?” Essley kneeled next to Sally and made a terrible attempt to apply first aid.

“I don’t think so. Assess her,” Darthrok said. “When I look at her, I see the specter of death.”

“You’re right. Well, that stinks.” Essley scowled. “Why would someone kill a harmless CM like that?”

Darthrok shrugged. “For some people, that’s what’s fun. It’s just a game.”

“I guess.” Essley stood. “Seems stupid, though. I hate bullies.”

As they left, Essley said, “Sorry, Sally Streetmonger. When I’m bigger, maybe I can keep people from being jerks to you.”

Sally wondered why Essley would want to do that. The young adventurer had said she hated bullies, so that must be the reason.

But Darthrok had said this was just a game.

Puzzles were a type of game too.

Sally loved puzzles.

* * *

“It looks like you gnawed these off with your teeth. I’m afraid I can’t offer you much for them. Fifty copper.”

Sally had a few funny lines, and the one about cutting leather hides off with teeth was one of her favorites. She was glad to use it with Kitria.

Kitria was not so glad. “Fifty copper? These are all excellent and perfect quality.”

Technically, what she said was true. The pelts had been taken with great skill, and an even better knife.

However, Sally suspected that the knife had been stolen from a younger adventurer who had lucked into a quest. She could tell by looking at Kitria that she had never gone on that quest. What was more, Sally had spotted that exact knife two days ago on a cheerful doctor.

If the knife used to take the skins had been stolen, then Sally could devalue it greatly because stolen goods could be difficult to resell. The pricing laws of Everternia were beyond Sally’s control, but she could use her own discretion within those parameters.

“Looks like your luck isn’t so good today,” Sally said. She usually used that line when it came to puzzle-solving, but it seemed to fit here.

Kitria let out an aggrieved sigh and opened a channel to her adventuring party via the gadget hidden inside her coat. “Hey Jams, meet me at the tavern. I need you to check me. I think someone put a hex on me. Bloody botanists!”

She heaved the bundle of hides back over her shoulder and turned to leave. “Oh. Almost forgot.”

She grabbed her dagger and stabbed Sally in the heart.

She dutifully fell to the floor and twitched a few times before going still.

As soon as Kitria stepped out of the shop, Sally rose to her feet.

She began humming and wiping down the spotless counter with a rough cloth. She’d keep doing that until someone entered and triggered her loop to begin again.

As she hummed and cleaned, she thought about recent events. If she could take lines of dialogue out of their original contexts, could she also pull individual words out of the lines and form them into new sentences?

She mentally compiled all of the words in her dialogue.

“Is there anything else I can help you out with today?” she said aloud, using one of her standard greetings. “Do you, perhaps, have any puzzles to sell?”

Carefully, she pulled a few of the words together into a new order.

“Do you sell?” she asked experimentally.

Oh, wow! That worked!

Excitedly, she tried again. “I can sell puzzles.”

That wasn’t true. She could buy them, or she could help solve them, but she couldn’t sell puzzles.

Or could she?

She glanced at the puzzles in the cabinet—the ones she had bought from adventurers.

Try as she might, she couldn’t go to the cabinet and open it. She could only keep humming and wiping the counter.

She wasn’t an adventurer. She didn’t have free will. She could only operate within the confines of her construct.

She stopped. Someone was about to enter. She could feel it.

Essley arrived, wearing a new coat and a belt-worn holster for a flintlock pistol. She’d reached level ten already. She must have worked really hard.

Sally asked, “Is there anything else I can help you out with today? Do you, perhaps, have any puzzles to sell?”

“Hi, Sally. How are you?”

She didn’t have a response for a greeting like this, but she liked how Essley acknowledged her. Other people didn’t do that. They acted like she was a table or a chair.

Carefully, she put some words together from her dialogue bank.

“Today my luck is good,” she said.

“Oh?” Essley seemed interested. “Why’s that?”

“I have puzzles to sell.” Technically, Sally wasn’t sure if this was true. She did have puzzles and she did sell things, but could she sell a puzzle?

“Really? That’s new. Is this a quest?”

Sally had nothing to say about quests. She stared at Essley wordlessly.

“How much for a puzzle?” Essley asked.

Sally was overjoyed to realize that she could answer. It was a common line she used when a character had really good charisma. “For you, five silver. But don’t tell your friends.”

“Why so cheap? Is this a trick?” Essley wondered.

Sally had no response available to address the possibility of tricks.

“Okay, I’ll try it.” Essley put the coins on the counter. “But if this is a booby trap or something, I’m going to be mad at you, Sally.”

Sally hoped she wasn’t setting Essley up for disappointment. She’d accepted coins in exchange for a specific item, and now she could only wait to see if she could supply that item.

She reached for the cabinet and extended her fingers toward the puzzles.

It worked. She could touch them. She passed over the first two, small-reward puzzles, and went for the big, heart-shaped one. The one that gave a significant intelligence and experience boost.

She put it in front of Essley. “Don’t tell your friends.”

Essley paused. “It’s kind of weird for you to say that again.”

Sally searched for something to say. “What would I do if your luck is good today?”

“Are you trying to tell me something?” Essley stared at her. “Are you…” her voice dropped and she glanced around quickly. “Are you a GM right now? Is this some big game event about to start?”

Sally didn’t entirely understand what a Game Master was, but she’d heard adventurers speak of them in hushed tones, so they had to be either really good or really bad. Maybe some kind of deity or demon.

When she didn’t answer, Essley reached across the counter and grasped her hand, joining Sally to her group and initiating a private conversation bubble.

Sally stared at her in shock. No one had ever tried to do that before, and she hadn’t realized it was possible.

“Is this a special event?” Essley asked privately, so other adventurers couldn’t overhear.

There were a lot of things Sally wanted to say, but she had only limited words to choose from. “I’m Sally Streetmonger. I love puzzles.”

“Okay,” Essley said. “Okay. Let’s do the puzzle then.”

“Would you like a hint?” Sally asked. “Only one copper.”

It was a lie. Hints were supposed to cost a gold each. This puzzle was meant to be impossible to solve unless an adventurer paid a fortune for the answers. But Sally was in charge of her shop, and she could make good deals if she liked someone.

She liked Essley, this person who called her by name and talked to her like a person and touched her hand. She’d give this prize to Essley for being unlike the others.

In quick succession, Sally flipped unseen levers on the puzzle, shifted the gears, turned the entire thing over, set it on the counter and gave it a hard spin, then knocked three times and hit it in the center.

A button popped up.

Sally nodded toward the button.

“Okay…here goes…”

Essley pushed it.

* * *

A stunning sensation rushed through Sally. It was a forceful, flowing feeling, as if her insides were getting the full blast of a steam engine’s power. Somehow, it wasn’t unpleasant, but kind of…thrilling. As jarring as the sensation was, it lasted only a moment and left something entirely different in its wake.

She felt…smarter. More capable. Even more startling, her vision seemed to have improved tremendously. Had that crack on the back wall of the store always been there?

“Wow!” Essley exclaimed. “My intelligence just went up three whole ranks, and my perception went up five! Awesome!”

Sally assessed Essley and saw that the adventurer had indeed benefitted greatly from the puzzle reward.

Feeling silly, Sally attempted to assess herself. Of course it wouldn’t work.

Except it did.

Sally had never had stats before, but she now did. She even had skills.

And they were still actively increasing in tiny increments, just like they did for adventurers.

That wasn’t possible. Sally assessed herself again and noticed that she was still joined to Essley’s group. That wasn’t supposed to be possible either. Her skill stats continued to click and turn in a slow but precise rhythm, like a highly accurate timepiece.

Did Sally somehow also receive the puzzle reward thanks to having inadvertently joined Essley’s group?

What a ridiculous idea! How could she even come up with such a preposterous thought?

“I’m going to go test out these new stats,” Essley said. “Bye, Sally!”

Sally said nothing. She had no dialogue for goodbyes since no one ever bothered with them.

Essley stepped out of the shop, and without warning she pulled Sally out with her.

For the first time in her life, Sally felt the warmth of the sun’s rays shining down on her.

Essley stared at her in shock. “Wait, what?” “You can leave the store?”

“No!” Sally ducked back into her shop, where she was safe.

Well, relatively safe, outside of the regular stabbings she received. But she’d always considered those to be merely a demeaning inconvenience.

Essley came back into the shop, where Sally stood, panicked. “You did, though. You came out with me. Let’s try it again.”

Essley reached over for Sally’s hand, but she evaded, then gasped.

She wasn’t supposed to be able to evade.

“Darthrok,” Essley said, touching a gadget tucked on the inside of her sleeve. “Come over to Sally Streetmonger’s. She’s being weird.”

“No,” Sally said.

“What?”

“Don’t tell your friends,” Sally answered forcefully. She didn’t know what was happening to her, but she knew it was something forbidden.

“Darthrok’s okay,” Essley assured her. “He’s my best friend in real life. We won’t tell anyone else, okay?”

“What’s that?” Sally asked.

Essley looked behind her. “What’s what?”

“What you said.”

“What I said…” Essley looked puzzled. “Oh, you mean real life?”

Sally nodded.

“Huh, I guess you’re only programmed to know what’s going on here. Okay, well, real life is where we’re from.”

Sally had questions, but no words to ask them with.

Someone entered and they turned to see if it was Darthrok.

Instead, Kitria stomped into the store.

Oh, no. Not now.

Kitria banged some lumps of raw ore onto the counter. “Barter ore for matches.”

Sally went behind the counter and assessed the ore. That much of it would buy a lot of matches. She had to wonder what Kitria’s plans were for so much fire-making ability. “Two thousand, two hundred and sixty-eight matches.”

“Accept,” Kitria said.

Sally put away the ore and delivered the matches. She knew what came next, and while it had never overly concerned her in the past, she didn’t know what a reset would mean for her new-found skills and stats.

For the first time, she felt fear.

Kitria pulled out her dagger and Essley cried out, “No!”

Kitria stabbed.

Sally ducked out of the way.

“What?” Kitria looked dumbfounded. “What’s happening?”

“Don’t stab her!” Essley rushed forward, reaching for Kitria’s arm.

Kitria dodged Essley and plunged her dagger into Essley’s chest instead. Then she pivoted gracefully and stabbed Sally.

Together, they fell to the floor.

“That was weird.” Kitria finished loading her pack with the matches and strode out of the shop, whistling a merry tune.

As soon as Kitria left the store, Sally stood, good as new. Essley, however, lay on the floor with the specter of death on her. She was a long way from being able to take on someone as powerful as Kitria.

“Dangit.” Essley’s ghostly voice came up from the floor.

Darthrok entered and rushed to Essley. “What happened? You said Sally’s being weird? She didn’t…” he looked from Essley to Sally.

“No, of course Sally didn’t do this” Essley said. “I made a mistake with a griefer.”

“You have godsends, right?” he asked hopefully.

“Yeah, so at least I don’t have to give all my coin to a soul rector. If you’ll grab my stuff, I’ll just use a godsend to vacate my body and regenerate in the Hall of Souls. Wait for me here?”

“Sure.”

Essley’s body went dark, then disappeared, leaving all her possessions behind.

Darthrok quickly picked everything up so no one could steal Essley’s gear. He sighed and looked at Sally. “It’ll be a while before she gets back. So what’s your deal? She said you were being weird.”

“Don’t tell your friends,” Sally said.

“What?”

“It’ll be our secret,” Sally told him.

“It’s a secret that you’re being weird? Essley was right, you’re saying some weird stuff. It’s almost like we’re having a real conversation.”

What did that mean? Sally had conversations with all her customers. “It’s guaranteed.”

Darthrok frowned at her. “What’s guaranteed? We haven’t bargained on anything.”

She tried to find a way to tell him that she was doing her best to communicate with him. “I’m not fancy, but I’m doing my best.”

Darthrok spoke into a tiny gadget on his lapel that allowed long-distance communication. “How much longer will you be? You’re right. Sally’s saying random weird junk.”

“About five minutes. I’m running back as fast as I can. Just hang out there and keep an eye on her.”

“Okay.” He wandered around the store, pausing to take a closer look at the ornate cash register on the counter. He leaned forward, admiring the shiny brass and copper fittings, apparently liking them so much that he extended a finger toward the shiny buttons. With a worried look, he quickly yanked it back.

He probably didn’t want to risk getting accused of attempted theft. Sally didn’t blame him. Most towns in Everternia took a dim view of theft, but her town—known as Pivot—was a really bad place to get caught stealing.

She wanted him to say more things to her, but he didn’t. Essley had said she could trust him, though, and it wasn’t like she had other options for friends. She’d have to make an effort to communicate.

“Essley,” she said. “Essley and you are friends?”

“What, you make conversation now?” Darthrok came closer, examining her face, then inspecting her all the way down to the hem of her boring red dress and her plain slippers.

“I’m doing my best.” She hoped he could sense her sincerity.

“Hm.” He assessed her, which, at his relatively low level, only allowed him to see what she was wearing, her apparent mood, and his likelihood of being able to best her in a fight.

“Wait,” he said, looking startled. “You look like you could pound me into the dirt? Are you opted in for combat now?”

Sally sure hoped not. That sounded terrible. “What would I do with that?”

He sighed and tapped his toe on the ground. Essley came sprinting in, naked as the day she was generated.

Sally had seen many naked characters run into her store, desperate to rebuy the basic supplies they’d been relieved of after dying. She supposed it wasn’t rare for people out in the world to see a naked person running back to the scene of their death.

Now that she thought about it, it seemed funny. Everternians tended to be serious about propriety and proper comportment. Why were naked streakers allowed to be a normal occurrence? And how had she never noticed how odd this was?

Sally opened a cabinet and pulled out a luxurious coat with colorful embroidery and held it out toward Essley. “One silver.”

“One silver?” Essley asked. “That’s worth twenty platinum.”

“I can’t give away my wares for free,” Sally said. She usually said this when someone offered a ridiculously low amount. Now, she said it to try to explain to Essley that she was doing her best to be a friend within the hard limits of her parameters.

“Okay.” Essley accepted the deal. Darthrok handed her belongings to her and she quickly put on her shirt, pants, boots, then shrugged into her new, high-quality coat. “Wow. This is amazing.”

Sally pressed a button, which caused gears to whir, cogs to roll, and resulted in the soft whisper of pistons as the cash drawer slid out.

She loved that sound.

“Lucky,” Darthrok said, admiring Essley’s new coat. “Why did she give you that?”

“I don’t know. Either Sally’s got a bug or she’s being run by a GM. I don’t think it’s a GM, though. They don’t give things like this out for nothing. Plus, they always get right to whatever event they’re starting, and she’s just kind of poking around doing nothing. She even got killed by Kitria again. I like her better this way, though. She almost seems real.”

Sally felt warm and happy. Essley liked her? No one had ever done that. She didn’t understand some of the young adventurers’ phrases, but maybe they were unique to their homeland of Reallife.

“Think I can get one of those coats?” Darthrok asked Essley in their private conversation bubble.

Sally reached into the cabinet and pulled out a coat, offering it to him. “One silver.”

Darthrok and Essley looked at each other, wide-eyed.

“Did she hear me?” he asked. “And then respond without my even asking her?”

Sally bit her lip. Should she not have done that? It was probably rude of her.

Darthrok didn’t seem offended, though. He handed her a silver and took the coat. “Look at this. Man.”

He seemed happy, so maybe he didn’t think it rude that Sally hadn’t waited for him to ask her for a coat.

Essley crept closer, peering at Sally’s face. “Sally, do you hear me?”

“Yes,” Sally answered.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes,” Sally said again.

“Are you stupid?”

What a rude thing to say! “No,” Sally responded. “Are you?”

Darthrok laughed and Essley blinked in surprise.

“It’s like I’m actually talking to her,” Essley said. “That can’t be a standard stock answer. Maybe they upgraded the A.I. of the CMs?”

Darthrok smoothed his robe for the fiftieth time. “Why bother wasting resources like that on a basic element that doesn’t do much?”

Sally didn’t think he intended to be cruel, but his words hurt her far more than Kitria ever had.

Sally did plenty. Lots. She served a vital function in Pivot. Every new adventurer started out in this town, and came to her store to get what they needed to get started in life. And they kept coming back for as long as they were adventuring, too, even when they spent time in other towns. Sometimes the same person would come back to her store a dozen times in one day. She worked hard. Without Sally, there’d be no adventuring in Everternia.

If resources were being given out, there was nobody as deserving as her. She wanted to give Darthrok a piece of her mind about it, too, but all she could say was, “I’m not fancy, but I’m doing my best.”

She’d have to work at taking apart her dialogue and putting the words back together in new sequences. Then she might have something a bit cheekier to say. He deserved it.

She liked the idea of being cheeky. She’d been obliging and accommodating for a really long time. She felt ready for a change.

“I don’t know, but watch this.” Essley reached out for Sally’s hand.

Sally pulled away and took a backward step. She knew what Essley was trying to do, and she wasn’t ready for it.

Unfortunately, every time Sally took a step back, Essley took a step forward and closed the space between them. She kept reaching for Sally’s hand. “Just…just join my party!”

“No!” Sally turned and ran to the other side of her store.

“You’re right,” Darthrok said. “That’s definitely weird.”

“No, that’s not what I was trying to show you,” Essley said, frustrated. “I actually joined her to my group, and when I went outside, she came with me.”

“No way.” Darthrok looked from Sally to Essley and back again.

“It’s true,” Essley insisted.

“Maybe if we corner her we could drag her out?” he suggested, taking a step toward Sally.

Panicked, Sally ran to her cabinets and grabbed the first item she saw. She jumped on the counter and threw it at Darthrok. shouting, “Don’t!”

A fist-sized lump of ore hit him in the chest, then fell to the floor with a dull thud.

He stared at Sally in shock. “That…actually hurt. I mean, not much, but I lost two health points.”

He picked up the ore and assessed it, as if it could give him some answers. “It’s just ore.”

Sally really wanted to deliver a stinging insult regarding his intelligence. The best she could do was to say, “You’re not fancy.”

Essley laughed. “I think she’s mad at you.”

Sally pointed at her. “You too, not fancy.”

Darthrok laughed. “I’m guessing we’re not supposed to drag her out against her will.”

“Okay,” Essley said. “I’m sorry, Sally. We won’t try that again.”

Still on top of the counter, Sally dropped into a crouch and hugged her knees. No one had ever apologized to her before. It was surprisingly nice. But it had come right after her minor panic at the idea of being forced outside, causing her emotions to tangle up with each other.

“Maybe there’s something that would tempt her outside,” Darthrok said. “Maybe we’re supposed to get her to join us on her own.”

Essley bit her lip thoughtfully. “Okay. So what would Sally Streetmonger want?”

Sally sat all the way down on her behind, her emotional disarray subsiding and her curiosity blooming in its place. What did she want? She’d never considered actually wanting something.

“Sally,” Essley said carefully. “It’s been a little while since a customer came in. What do you usually do when you have no customers?”

Sally didn’t have the words for it, but she dropped her feet the floor, grabbed her cloth, and began wiping the counter. She gave Essley a pointed look, then stepped back and dropped the cloth.

“She answered you.” Darthrok stepped closer to Essley. “A direct answer, albeit nonverbal, to a very nonstandard question. That’s really strange.”

“Let’s try another nonstandard question. Something she’d definitely never be programmed for,” Essley suggested.

“Here’s something I’ve always wondered,” Darthrok said. “Hey, Sally, why do you wear such dowdy clothes when you have such fancy things to sell?”

That…was a good question. Sally looked down at her outfit. She didn’t have an answer, because he was right. What was she doing wearing such crappy clothes?

She pulled the dress up over her head and kicked off her shabby slippers. Wearing only her knickers and chemise, she rummaged in the cabinet until she found something she liked. Sure, it was scandalous to be standing in her store wearing her bloomers, but they covered as much as some outfits did, so why not?

She was ready to be cheeky, after all.

She pulled on a blouse with lace elbow-length sleeves then topped it with a brown leather corset that had a short skirt attached. The skirt ended with delightfully fluffy black ruffles. After putting on some clingy leggings, she finished off her look with a pair of her very best adventurer’s boots.

“I’m fancy.” She’d never felt so happy. It wasn’t because of the clothes, though they were delightful, but rather the fact that she’d selected them for herself.

Essley and Darthrok looked at her with their mouths slightly agape.

She giggled at them, which made their jaws drop open a bit more.

“Give her a pack and maybe some weapons and she’d look like an adventurer,” Darthrok said, staring.

“She would,” Essley agreed thoughtfully. “Sally, have you ever wanted to try an adventure?”

She hadn’t. But she’d never thrown a rock at someone or worn interesting pants that hugged her butt before, either. Today was a remarkable day of firsts. Tomorrow, she might reset and go back to her old ways. If so, she wanted to do as much as she could today.

She put on a weapons belt and slipped her best multi-socket wrench into it. Then she had a moment of indecision. She had no weapon skills, so how could she choose one?

She thought of her line of dialogue for brand-new adventurers outfitting themselves. A crossbow is perfect for a beginning adventurer. You don’t have to get to melee range to use it, so you can run away if you need to.

She swung a perfectly balanced blackwood crossbow over her shoulder, then filled a bolt pouch with master-level bolts.

Hang on. She did that wrong. She removed the crossbow, put the bolt pouch on her back, then put the crossbow back over her shoulder.

She had a lot to learn about doing this stuff. An actual adventure would probably get pretty complicated.

Planning ahead for tough times, she emptied her cash register into the backpack and packed her most lucrative puzzles, along with other high-quality supplies. She closed the backpack securely.

Ugh. The crossbow again.

After some rearranging, she wore the backpack and bolt pouch on her back, and the crossbow over her arm. To Sally’s way of thinking, there was no way all that stuff should reasonably fit on a person without massive discomfort, but it worked just fine.

She had a lot to learn, all right. “What do we do?”

Essley smiled. “We can go out and see what looks like fun to you, and then do it. We’ll see what happens.”

“Can we?” Sally asked.

“Let’s try it and see.” Darthrok pointed at the door.

“Okay,” she said decisively. “Let’s go.”

“This is so cool.” Essley bounced up and down on her toes.

“I think we’re the first to ever do this,” Darthrok said.

Sally wondered why they were all just standing around, but then she remembered that they said they wouldn’t try to force her to join them.

Tentatively, she reached out and took Essley’s hand.

“Right!” Essley exclaimed. “Let’s go!”

Following her new friend’s lead, Sally stepped out into the sun. She had friends, she had hope, and she had a brand-new curiosity about the world she lived in.

She was ready for an adventure.

Message from the author

Thank you for reading!

Reviews are critical to my being able to keep bringing you new books, so if you enjoyed this story and can spare a minute or two to leave a review on Amazon, I’d be grateful.

Please sign up for my newsletter to receive updates on new releases.

If you want to read more of Sally’s adventures, they will continue in the first full-length book of the Everternia saga, Trailblazer. (Click or tap to buy the next book now.)

I hope to hear from you!

In gratitude,

Zen DiPietro

About the Author

Zen DiPietro is a lifelong bookworm, dreamer, and writer. Perhaps most importantly, a Browncoat Trekkie Whovian. Also red-haired, left-handed, and a vegetarian geek. Absolutely terrible at conforming. A recovering gamer, but we won’t talk about that. Particular loves include badass heroines, British accents, and the smell of Band-Aids.

www.ZenDiPietro.com

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Other Works by Zen DiPietro

Dodging Fate series

Dodging Fate

Dodging Fate 2: Extra Fateful, Uber Dodgy

Hello Protocol for Dead Girls: A Virtual Awakening

Dragonfire Station Universe

Original Series (complete)

Dragonfire Station Book 1: Translucid

Dragonfire Station Book 2: Fragments

Dragonfire Station Book 3: Coalescence

Intersections (Dragonfire Station Short Stories)

Mercenary Warfare series (complete)

Selling Out

Blood Money

Hell to Pay

Calculated Risk

Going for Broke

Chains of Command series (complete)

New Blood

Blood and Bone

Cut to the Bone

Out for Blood

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