Play of Shadows

01.5 Harvesting the Sun

VR games required skills. Real skills, built in real life through careful practice and honed over years. Professional VR players prepared for tournaments like athletes would for championships. From archery to martial arts to baking, every talent a player might want to use in a game had to be cultivated in the body before entering a VR pod.

Roasting peppers wasn't a skill Ann ever had a chance to acquire. Sitting in front of a smoking stove, her fingers stained black with ash and stinging from handling rows of cheerfully burning peppers, she mourned the oversight.

"It could be a fluke," Mara said quietly. It was not the only thing the woman muttered under her breath, but Ann chose to ignore the fervent swearing accompanied by intermittent hisses of pain.

Flipping peppers on a hot stove truly was a mystic art.

"Sure, because people stuff themselves in water troughs just because," Louis quipped. Mara glared and threw a pepper stem his way.

"Don't forget the wolf eulogy," Grant added from where he was pretending to mind the fire, while conveniently using his towering stature to block off their group from curious passerby.

They were in Mara's yard, which she had all to herself along with a humble little home nestled near the river. Her character was a widow; her NPC husband had met an untimely death entirely off-screen, prior to the game instance.

"He drowned," Mara said when Ann asked about it. "Floated downstream right into a fishing net. That was the news I got when I woke up in the game, anyway."

The stove was a simple thing made of earth and bricks. The fire burned under a thin metal sheet, blackened by years of use. It was large enough to allow for several people to use at once, which made for a good excuse to have the werewolf gang – as Grant put it – come together without drawing too much attention. Just friendly neighbors, helping out a grieving widow treat a staggering harvest of peppers. Nothing unusual about that.

"Alright, let's say that there's another way to clear the instance," Louis began.

"Not another. We don't have one to begin with," Grant reminded. "The in-game system only told us what has been happening, the current interaction between villagers and wolves. It doesn't have to be the way forward." In fact, since the game system was so purposeful in skipping over the actual way to clear the game, the old Werewolf rules very likely didn't apply to this instance.

Louis frowned, but didn't argue. "The wolves hunt villagers. But they also mourn villager deaths. What does it mean?"

"Maybe they don't hunt villagers," Ann said slowly. "Maybe they are hunting a villager. Someone specific – someone special."

Grant sat up with an excited grin. "And that someone has to be a player. That game spelled out that much. But what if they're not a villager at all?"

"A third role," Ann breathed, her own lips stretching in a grin.

Mara scooted away from her. Grant, on the other hand, leaned right in and tried to touch the wooden wolf muzzle of Ann's mask without so much as by-your-leave. Ann batted his hand away.

"What?" she demanded.

"The mask smiled. Very creepy," Grant told her happily.

Ann looked at him strangely. She was not the only one.

"You are a weird guy," Louis said, shaking his head.

A soft call had the group quieting. There was a young woman standing by the gate, a basket on one arm. Ann recognized her and hurriedly stood up.

"Who's she," Louis murmured.

"A player," Ann said. She caught Grant's eyes and nodded slightly. Grant's eyes brightened with realization.