Chapter TwoRent

In December, in the woods north of Vancouver, Rat leaned back into a tree and listened. Their speech was mostly hissing and broken English, some developer's attempt at a lizard tongue. She peered around the trunk and examined the nameplate of the largest one.

Rat was good. One of the best, even, and snowbolds were pretty easy prey. If she'd been with a group she could have stood back and plinked them with arrows as some warrior-type absorbed the damage. But she was alone and equipped for speed and stealth. If she wasn't careful, a well-placed arrow to her heart or a mace to her head would mean a shameful log out and a long walk back home.

Not that she'd died in weeks, and not that she was going to die now, as long as she kept moving. Rat was very good at kiting, keeping her enemies just out of reach and picking them off one at a time. If there had been no cleric she could have set her traps, yelled at the snowbolds and let them chase her into them. The cleric made things a bit trickier– he could heal the others, maybe even res them. Snowbolds were smart enough to surround their casters to protect them, and Rat was too far off to get off a clean shot before they'd be on top of her.

She pulled an inventory stone out of her right pocket. Small items appeared before her, organized by their purpose. She grabbed one with her hand.

She nocked her bow and shot four arrows past the snowbolds on the right. She took a breath and counted. One, two, three, and suddenly there was a flurry of commotion. She peered around the tree to see arrows flying and kobolds scattering. The illusions were firing a volley at one of the snowbold warriors, who charged them. The cleric stood back, muttering incantations.

Rat grabbed another item from her floating inventory, a Minor Potion of Invisibility, and drank it in a gulp. It was a cheap potion and it would only work for a few seconds– just long enough. Rat unsheathed the dagger on her leg, ran up behind the cleric and planted the dagger in his back, aiming for the place between the ribs where the heart would be if kobolds had hearts. He died instantly. The other kobolds, who had just then vanquished their illusionary foes, turned and charged at her.

"Desipula displodo," whispered Rat, as she flicked her wrist toward the ground before her. An inscription burned itself into the snow. She aimed her bow at the nearest nameplate.

A quick shot to the eye and the snowbold went down screaming, pulling at the arrow. The others were almost on top of her. She turned and ran as her trap sprung with a thunderous boom, knocking three of her pursuers to the ground. An arrow hit her in the side and her suit vibrated violently. It didn't hit any vitals, but it was going to freeze up her suit and slow her down.

Rat nocked another arrow and returned fire, hitting the snowbold archer in the throat– a little low, but good enough to kill an archer. The others were getting to their feet. Rat was wiry and tall and she employed her long legs to gain some distance. She cut to the right, nocking an illusion arrow and planting it into a tree as she passed. Then to the right again. Then she turned back to where she'd been a few seconds before. The snowbolds had destroyed the illusion and were looking around, not sure where she'd gone.

Now they were playing her game. She pulled the arrow out of her side and placed her hands on the wound.

"Sana-me." The wound closed and her suit unfroze.

The Latin was somebody's bad translation. Rat had learned it anyway; the one time Solenoid changed a healing spell, she had died with the old words in her mouth. The forums had got that patch reversed by morning.

"Desipula viridi." Arcane etchings sizzled on the ground in front of her.

"Over here, fuckers!" she yelled. She didn't care much for role playing. RP points didn't pay the bills.

The three remaining snowbolds turned and charged at her, yelling a battlecry in unison.

Rat nocked an arrow and shot it into the mouth of the screaming snowbold warrior in front, who fell backwards. Then she stepped back and nocked another. She shot at the rogue but he dodged it. He didn't dodge the trap, though. A sizzling, snapping sound and vines shot out of the ground and caught his legs. Rat nocked another arrow and let it fly into the chest of the warrior, who was just about upon her. She dropped her bow and pulled the dagger. The snowbold swung down at her with a heavy mace, but she dove out of the way. He turned to swing again and she lunged into him. Her suit froze up and her back vibrated intensely. Her vision turned a pale red– the dreaded Death's Door effect. Just as she could kill a mob with one well-placed shot, so they could kill her. The mace had caught her shoulder. Her left arm would stay locked until she could get a healing spell out.

Rat pushed the snowbold off her. Green blood seeped out of its chest, right out of the wound in his heart that her dagger had made.

Rat staggered over to the snowbold rogue, who was ensnared but unharmed.

"Please, please, don't kill me," the rogue said.

"Why not?"

"I, I has information."

"What kind of information?"

"I, I has a map. Treasure, you like treasure?" The treasure usually wasn't much, but if she played to her alignment she'd earn some RP points for sparing him.

"Sorry, I gotta pay the rent." Rat opened her inventory again and grabbed an Essence Siphon. She aimed it at the squirming snowbold and pressed the trigger. Blue energy seeped through the creature's skin and into the siphon. The vine trap disappeared as the lifeless body slumped to the ground. A stack of glowing green vials appeared in her inventory. Living victims were a good payday.

Mobs spawned when nobody was nearby. Dragons favored mountaintops, goblins caves. Up here, an hour and a half along the highway toward Squamish, Rat got snowbolds and ice trolls. Ice essences could fetch ten dollars a vial on a good day; most days they paid less. She checked the market before every hunt.

Wealthy players went through ice enchantments faster than Rat could fill the vials. There was always somebody buying. It beat working fast food.

Rat checked her stash– eight essence vials today, not a bad take. Enough to meet her quota and afford a bus to Vancouver, if the sell orders held. City quests were more interesting than grinding out the same old monsters in the woods, and there were people in the city, if she happened to feel like people.

She didn't, usually.

Rat lived in an old hunting cabin which had been used to grow weed before the owner cleaned it out and rented it to her. She had been there two years, since she was seventeen. The owner had come by twice, both times to see about the road, which was always washing out. He didn't seem to care what she did up there as long as she paid. That suited Rat just fine.

It was a pretty good place if you didn't need much. There was a well for water and plenty of wood for the stove, and most of her stuff fit in milk crates. She had a table and a bed. The satellite dish out front was the expensive part. Its monthly bill was more than her rent, but there wasn't any point complaining about that; she needed it to work. The dish was bolted to a stump and sometimes she had to go out and knock the snow off it in the middle of a fight.

She took off her frames and rubbed her eyes. It was still snowing. People who had never played The World had trouble understanding that she actually went out into the forest to fight. They thought she was looking at pictures. No, she would tell them, I'm out there getting wet. I can take my glasses off and the trees are still there. Usually they would nod and ask another question which made it obvious they hadn't understood. It was easier just to show them, although she hadn't had anyone to show in quite a while.

She got up to put wood in the stove and caught sight of herself in the mirror over the sink. She was nineteen now, and she looked better than she had at seventeen. She could admit that much. The hormones were working. She was still too tall, over six feet, and there was nothing she could do about her long face, but she liked what was happening. On Friday she had another electrolysis appointment in Vancouver. That was why she had been out killing snowbolds instead of practicing. The appointments and the bus fare added up, and the doctor wanted cash, and she had to order more pills soon. It was a lot of work being herself.

In The World she was a man with a short dark beard. She had made the character when she was fifteen, back when she still lived in her parents' basement. She had told someone what was wrong and been told she was confused. Well, she had certainly been confused about what she was supposed to do next. She played a lot that year. There were things she could work out in the game, and she liked having something she was good at. She wasn't going to give up the ranger now that she was finally doing better out here. She liked him. She had spent hours fiddling with his shoulders in the character editor, trying to make him stand the way she wanted, and she still sometimes went back to adjust him.

People knew who he was. There were arguments about Rat on the fan wiki, mostly about whether she was Canadian or American, although a few people thought a whole team must be playing the account. That was flattering, she supposed. They all called her he, or bro, or whatever, and she didn't correct them. She didn't want to get into it with people who were there to watch her play. Sometimes she wished there were somebody else she could talk to. She had deleted her parents' number and she wasn't about to call them.

She had chosen Rat for herself. Rats were sweet if you were nice to them, and smart, and they could get by in places where nothing else could live. She liked that about them. If somebody asked she generally said it was like a tattoo, a way of telling people who she was, although it didn't seem to tell most of them very much. They wanted to know if she lived in a sewer. Very funny.

She ate the rice left in the pot and checked tomorrow's forecast. Clear, which meant she could go up the logging road after trolls. They were harder to kill but they paid well. She also needed to practice. A year at number two. The player ahead of her had coaches, a gym in Seoul and eight hours a day for practice. Rat had rent. She wondered what she'd do with eight hours nobody was paying her for. Still, she was second. If she could get that far on her own she ought to be able to get a little further.

She lay down with her boots on and put her frames back on to check her sell orders. Then she would sleep. There were always players in hot places buying ice, and she wanted to see whether anybody had taken hers yet.