After a nice long hot shower, she decided she should wash her sheets. After throwing her sheets in the wash, she went to get a cup of coffee and some chocolate donuts while naked for breakfast (healthy I know), after finishing her breakfast Carrie runs to the bedroom and jumps on the bed excited to try East of Nowhere again, after the previous experience and her dream. She puts on the helmet and boots it up, the clock inside the helmet was reading 8:OO AM, she felt herself falling into a trance and waking up in the starting location. She was back in the clearing. Sasha pulled her map out of the pack she given when she originally started the game and said the next town was about 2 leagues away. She starts walking towards where the town was. After a few hours of walking she came upon a rundown, broken bridge towards the first town on the map called Dawn Stone.

It was on the edge of a beautiful lake, crystal clear and deep. As she hoisted her pack higher on her shoulders she walks into the town. It was very seedy and run down. It only had a few rundown, small stone and mud houses, and a couple stables, some shops and one inn. It had one very huge, grand looking stone house in the distance. It looked like a small castle. In front of the inn was a big notice board with wanted posters, and job postings and such. That was the first place to stop when getting into a new town of course, besides the inn for some cold mead, bread and some hot food.

The town was completely barren. There was no one in sight. Leaves were swirling around the town, shutters on the window were banging on the house as well in the wind. Sasha walked up to the notice board and started looking at the different job postings, there were ones for monster hunting levels for them ranging from easy to very difficult, escorting and protecting merchants to wherever they had to go, finding missing persons etc. There was an easy merchant escorting mission she decided to take, just leading a merchant to a town far away. As she read the notice she saw that it said he had a wagon of different goods to sell, weapons, armor, potions, food, bedrolls, magic items and more. She ripped that notice off the board and went to go find the merchants shop so she could talk to him about the trip he needed to go on.

After asking a few people where the shop is, she is pointed in the right direction. It wasn’t that hard to find considering there was an empty wagon out front. She walked through the front door of the shop, and stood off to the side waiting for the shop keeper to get done with his current customer. After waiting a few minutes while browsing the shelves seeing what he sells and admiring the selection of new equipment, the customer finally leaves Sasha walks up to the counter and sets the notice on the countertop. “I would like to take this job, and escort you to where you need to go. I’m Sasha. When do we leave?” she asked the clerk. He replies “I’m Grayson, yes I put up that notice a few days ago. I’m needing to go to Hartford, which is about 12 leagues west from here. We need to leave early tomorrow morning, at first light if possible, does that work for you?” “Yes, that definitely works for me.” Grayson says “There is room in the inn down the street, they have food and drink for you, and its warm. I will see you early in the morning at 5 am. Just meet me in front of the shop.” “Okay, that works for me, Sasha says as she heads out of the shop.

After walking down, the street, window shopping, she walked up to the inn, she heard loud and boisterous talking and laughing, she heard glass breaking and the sounds of a fight. Suddenly, the inn doors burst open and two men were thrown out into the street. The innkeeper was standing there “No fighting inside my inn!” he yelled. “Take it outside.” Sasha quickly moves out of the way and started watching for a few minutes as the men started throwing punches and after a while they got up, dusted themselves off, and muttering to themselves they walked their separate ways. Sasha walked into the inn at 10 pm, and walked up to the counter, and asked for some mead, bread and meat and a room for the night. “What time will you be leaving?” asked the innkeeper, as he set the food and drink on the counter. “I’ll be leaving around 4:50AM, I have somewhere I have to go at that time.” Sasha says. “Okay, you’ll be on the second floor, room 12, it isn’t very big because you’re just a single person. But it will suffice for the night.” He says. Before she grabbed her food, she paid the innkeeper, he then left for a moment and came back with her key.

Sasha grabs the key, and her food and drink and headed through the throng of tables, weaving her way in and out of them to the stairs going to the second level on the back side of the room. She headed up the stairs, making sure not to drop her food or the key, and walked down the hall to room 12. The door was closed, and she put the key in the keyhole and pushed open the door. There was only one bed pushed up against the wall, a small nightstand, with a basin on it for washing, and small closet for hanging up your clothes if you stay for a long-time. She set her pack on the floor and the food on the bed, and she started stripping off her armor and clothing.

After washing herself in the basin with the washcloth that was provided, she sat on the bed and ate her food with gusto and drank as much as she could handle. After putting the plates on the ground, she laid on the bed naked and started drifting off to sleep, the time is 10:55 PM. After falling asleep in the game, she wakes up in real life. She takes the helmet off and lays it on the bed. She figures she has about an hour to kill time, she gets up and grabs some more food out of the cabinet. Just a protein bar and a bottle of water from the fridge. She heads to the bathroom, and relieves her bladder real quick, and then heads back to the bedroom and lays back on the bed and gets under the covers. She grabs her phone and texts her best friend Kristie good afternoon since it was about 12 PM.

She wastes more time just playing on her phone, and browsing Facebook and reading the news. At almost an hour exactly she puts the helmet back on and logs back into the game. She wakes up in game, and looks at the clock, 4:30AM came too soon, as it was still dark, she gets out of bed, turns the light on, and starts to wash herself, after she’s clean, she starts getting dressed. She quickly gets into her clothing and armor, strapping on her sword and putting on her boots. She grabbed her pack and the plates and cup and took all of it downstairs. The inn was quiet now at this time of the morning, people were passed out drunk at the tables. As she wound her way through the cluttered tables, went to the counter and set her pack down and asked for some bread, she paid for her food, and grabbed her pack.

She took one last look around the room to make sure she hasn’t left anything behind, shut the door, and walks downstairs. She gives the innkeeper the room key and walks out the door of the inn, down the street and stands in front of the merchant store waiting for the required time for the quest to start. She wasn’t waiting long when the lights of the store came on, Grayson opened the door and propped it open with a rock, and asks Sasha “Can you help me load the wagon?” as he walks into the store and points out things he wants her to load into the wagon. She walks into the store and there are bundles of cloth, hides, magical items, swords, armor and more. It took a little over and hour to finally finish loading up the wagon and hitching the horses to it. It was a little after 6:00AM when they finally started heading out of town, and onto the main road. In the distance there was a sea of trees, a huge forest was spread out all over the land.

Grayson and Sasha traveled for hours until dusk started to settle over the land, and they entered the forest, there was nothing in sight, no trace of civilization. After travelling for a few minutes more they came upon a clearing. They were 8 leagues from the closest town, and they were still in bandit territory. They were a little more than halfway there. Grayson unhooked the horses and let them wander so they could eat the grass and drink some water. Sasha made a trap in the bushes and was able to hook a couple rabbits. She added the rabbit meat and some vegetables she found in the wagon to the stew pot over the fire. After it was done cooking after a few minutes, she started putting the meal into a bowl, and serving it with some bread. She handed Grayson the first bowl, and making herself a serving. They ate quietly until Grayson started talking about where they were going.

He starts out by saying he has family in Hartford, that it is in the Providence of Raynvalley. He only gets to see them once or twice a month because, his shop is in another town, and that he’s trying to save money, so he can move his shop to the town his family lives in but that it will take another year or so before he will have enough money for that to happen. He started talking about how his wife is 38, her name is Cherish, and he has 2 small children, a girl (Miriam) who’s 5 and a boy (Samuel) who’s 4, and a dog named Mason. He showed Sasha pictures of his family, they were beautiful. “You’re very lucky to have a family like that, your wife is very beautiful, and your kids are adorable.”

Grayson asks Sasha “What is in Raynvalley for you?” “Well, I am here to escort you there, and I am looking for adventure and fun, and then we will see” she says with a big yawn. Grayson yawns too, and then says, “We can finish this conversation in the morning, he says while laying down on his bedroll next to the fire. They start to fall asleep, and after a few hours of sleeping, Sasha is woken up suddenly in the middle of the night. The night is still, and all you can hear is bugs chirping and the wind blowing. Suddenly a twig snapped, Sasha bolts out of her bedroll and grabs her sword which is laying next to her.

She rummages through her pack, and goes through her potions, grabbing one that lets her see in the dark, she drinks it real fast grimacing at the bad tasted as she runs over to Grayson and wakes him up, whispering urgently “Stay where you are, don’t move. We’re not alone. There are bandits here.” As soon as she is comfortable with Grayson staying there near the fire, Sasha goes and investigates where the sound came from, her cat ears twitching, listening for any sound that’s out of the ordinary. Luckily, she took that potion a few minutes ago, it was pitch black, but she could see as if it was a clear, and sunny day.

A few hundred yards away through the trees, she saw a bandit walking back to his camp, with something on his shoulders. After following him for a little bit, he gets back to the camp, drops what he was carrying, and she sees there are at least four other bandits there sitting around a fire. And one woman with her wrists bound and her head covered in what looked like an old burlap potato sack, tied to the saddle of a horse, she must have been a slave. “Finally, you show back up!!” One of the bandits sitting next to the fire said. “We thought you got lost.” Said another, as they all started laughing. Bandit one (The one who was getting food) says, “Ha-ha! No, I didn’t get lost, I went out to find food, and instead I found another camp not too far from here. I was going to raid it, but it looked like there was a knight or two there, I couldn’t tell for sure how many.

“I found a boar instead and shot it, at least it’s better than stale bread and cheese; like we’ve been surviving on for the last couple days.” One of the bandits stands up and grabs his knife, and picks up the boar and starts to gut it and clean it in preparation of cooking it. “Hurry up with that, says bandit three, I want to have some fun with this girl we found. I’m sure everyone else wants a go too.” “Alright, alright, said bandit one. We’ll hurry up and finish what we must, so we can all have some fun, if you’re that worried about it, how about you just go ahead start now? Two of the bandits get up and head over to the girl and untie her from the saddle and pin her down to the ground. One grabbed her arms, and the other forces her legs open and starts to get in between them undoing his pants.
Sasha sat there in shock, watching the men move towards the girl, and get on top of her.

The girl starts screaming and crying, in shock and pain. (No! stop, please don’t hurt me!) Sasha had nothing on` her mind except to save the girl. She jumped up and yells “Stop, let her go!” The bandits turn around in shock, not expecting anyone else was there. “Who are you? Says one of the bandits. “Get out of here, this doesn’t concern you!” “Yes, it does, I know what you were going to do to her, and let her go before I kill each one of you.” She says as she grabs her sword. All the bandits stand up and grab their swords, rushing her. She thrust her sword into the first bandit before he even knew what happened. As he fell to the ground, she yanked her sword out of him blood spurting everywhere.

The second bandit ran at her, sword and shield drawn, she was quickly able to bring her sword up and block his attack. She moved her sword faster than he could block with his shield, and she was able to take him down. The third charged her with his claymore, and she dodged barely out of the way and used her fire magic to take him down. While she was trying to deal with the second and third bandits, another was able to sneak up behind her and stabbed her in the right side of her abdomen, she staggered blood running down her side, she quickly turned around and cut his throat. As he fell to the ground, gurgling around his own blood as it was choking him, he took his last breath.
The last two bandits saw what happened to their comrades, looked at each other and said “Fuck this! We’re out of here!”

They grabbed their horses and ran off. Sasha dropped her sword, grabbed her side trying to stem the flow of blood. She dropped to the ground next to the girl, and grabbed the hood and started to take it off. The girl started crying and screaming, thinking she was about to be attacked again. “Sshh, sshh, you’re okay, I’m here to help you.” Sasha said. She slowly took the hood off the girl. She had long black hair, she couldn’t see her eye color, but she had pointed ears, beautiful clear pale skin. Her face was red, and blotchy, she had tears streaming down her face. The girl leaned into Sasha and sat there shaking and crying. Sasha held her for a few minutes, rubbing her back, calming her down so she could talk to her. “Let’s go back to my camp, lets get away from here, and these bad memories.” Sasha says, as she grabs the girls hand.

The two women head back to Grayson’s camp, Sasha keeps her close to make sure she doesn’t get hurt in the dark. After a few minutes of walking they arrive back at camp, Sasha makes the girl go lay down and get some sleep as she fills Grayson in on what had transpired since she left him. He sat there in stunned shock, quiet, because he didn’t know what to say.
Sasha sat next to Grayson and looked at the girl with the pointed ears. She thought to herself, that girl must be Marielle. I will ask her when she wakes up, she’s been through enough tonight. After allowing the girl to sleep for a couple hours, the black curtain of night slips away, and dawn is on the horizon with a red sun, pink and blue clouds, Sasha lightly shakes her awake. The girl understandably freaks out and tries to make herself as small as possible. Sasha backs away and says, “Do you remember what happened last night, and who I am?” The girls slowly nods yes.

“My name is Sasha, who are you? Are you Marielle?” The girls stares blankly at her. “Whose Marielle…?” she asks. Sasha says “Sorry, you remind me of a friend of mine.” The girl shakes her head no, and says “Thank you for saving me last night, um, is there any food available. I can’t remember the last time I’ve had anything to eat.”

Sasha heads over to the wagon and grabs a small loaf of bread, comes back to the fire and puts some stew in the bowl she had from last night and hands it to the girl. The girl rips into the bread like a starving animal, and eats as fast as possible, soon she’s done with her meal cleaning the juice from the stew up with the last of the bread. Grayson comes over and tells Sasha “Since she’s had something to eat now, and it’s starting to get light, we need to get a move on and start heading to Hartford. I’m ready to see my family.” They start cleaning up the camp, and getting ready to leave when the girl asks timidly “Can I come with you, and would it be possible if I could ride in the wagon? I don’t think I could walk very far.”

Sasha says,” Yes, you can come with me. We’re heading to Hartford, it’s just the next town over, it isn’t too far away.” Let me ask Grayson if he minds if you ride in the wagon. After Sasha quietly converses with Grayson for a few minutes, and finishing cleaning up the camp, and getting everything ready to go the girl goes and sits in the back of the wagon with the goods. Grayson tells Sasha as he’s hitching the horses to the wagon and since the girl is out of earshot “If she steals anything, it will come out of your pay, because you’ve taken responsibility of her.” Sasha grunts “Understandable.” Though somewhat insulted by the thought.

The three of them leave the campsite, continuing their journey to Hartford. Grayson was sitting in the front of the wagon, driving the horses, the girl was in the back fast asleep between two barrels of mead, her head on a sack of wheat. Sasha was walking next to the wagon, keeping an eye on Grayson and the girl, pondering to herself (Who is this girl, and why does she look so much like Marielle even though she says she’s not? Where did she come from?)

To be continued…

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