It was, he told himself, walking out of Genesis Studios for what he didn't yet know would be one of the last times, a perfectly reasonable idea.
Namey went very still, mid-sentence, in the middle of an otherwise ordinary afternoon three days after Daenia, his whole face going pale in a way none of us had ever seen on him.
"What's wrong with you?"
Savage asked.
"Nothing," Namey said, too fast, already reaching for something invisible at his own temple, some readout or notice only he could see.
"Just a system flicker.
Access change, somewhere upstream.
Probably nothing."
I didn't push him on it, though I noticed Luxy watching him a beat longer than the moment strictly called for.
"I love that this game has no fast travel," Namey said instead, recovering his usual footing a little too deliberately.
"You actually have to walk through every town on foot to appreciate it properly."
"Save it for your blog, four-eyes," Savage said.
"Let's move."
The three of them squared off in the road, faces set with the exact seriousness of people about to settle something enormous.
"Rock, paper, scissors," they all said at once.
"Damn it," Savage said, furious, staring at her own open palm like it had personally betrayed her.
"How do I keep losing this?"
"See you in Corvane," Namey said, handing his guild card and Luxy's both over to Savage.
"What just happened?"
I asked.
"Fast travel doesn't exist in this game," Namey explained, with the patience of a man who has had to explain this exact loophole more times than he'd like.
"But if someone carries your guild card to a town ahead of you, you can spawn in from there once you arrive close enough.
It's not cheating.
I checked."
"I still don't fully follow that, but alright," I said.
"So what does it mean for right now?"
"It means you're stuck with me the rest of the way, idiot," Savage said, already walking.
Most of the walk toward Corvane passed without much incident besides Savage's steady, inventive stream of complaints about her feet, the weather, and the general unfairness of losing at rock, paper, scissors three times running against the same two people. I let her talk. It turned out to be easier company than her usual silences.
"You ever going to actually look for your father," she asked, out of nowhere, somewhere around the second hour, not quite looking at me when she said it.
"Eventually," I said.
"I've got Corvin Ashe, and whatever's corrupting people in places like Daenia, and about four other things ahead of it in the line right now."
"I heard the name Marrow once, out past Fenholt, attached to a man who owed half a mining camp near Highhollow and skipped out before anyone could collect," Savage said.
"Might've been your father.
Might've been some other useless drunk with the same name.
Wouldn't put money on it either way."
"Why tell me now?"
"Because you're going to go looking eventually whether I mention it or not, and I'd rather you go looking with a real thread to pull instead of just wandering off half-cocked one morning," she said, and there was something almost gentle buried inside the bluntness of it, gentle in the specific, unpracticed way of someone who clearly wasn't in the habit of being gentle with anybody.
"Family's family.
Even the useless kind.
I'd know."
I didn't ask her what she meant by that last part. Something in the set of her jaw told me she'd said more than she'd meant to already, and I'd learned enough about Savage by then to know that pushing past that line, right when it opened, was the surest way to get it slammed shut again for good.
"Thank you," I said instead.
"Don't make it weird," she said, and picked up her pace.
I let the thread sit where she'd handed it to me, filed carefully next to Hallowmere's crater and my grandfather's letter and everything else I was carrying that I hadn't found the right moment to actually deal with yet. Someday, once Abi and Hans and Namey's growing dread about Genesis Studios and whatever was hollowing out villages like Daenia had all been properly settled, I was going to walk into whatever frontier camp near Highhollow still remembered my father's name, and I was going to get the answers I'd left Hallowmere for in the first place. Not today.
But not never, either.
We came across the merchant's caravan not long after, a well-dressed man half-jogging toward us, out of breath and clearly rattled.
"Jon, listen to me," Savage said, low and fast.
"These types always try to hand you a quest the second they see a friendly face.
Do not accept it.
I want to reach Corvane without a single detour."
The merchant reached us gasping, dressed in fine gold and red that had clearly seen better care than its owner currently had. He had an odd, clipped way of speaking, like he was summarizing each sentence to himself before he let anyone else hear the finished version of it.
"Greetings.
You are adventurers, yes?"
he managed.
"Yes, we are," I said, ignoring the look Savage was already leveling at the side of my head.
"Humble request.
We were set upon by bandits.
I humbly ask that you recover my wife, and our stolen goods."
He gasped again, hand pressed to his side.
"Compensation.
I will make it more than worth your time."
Before Savage could get a word of refusal out, I said, "Of course.
I'd be glad to help."
Once the merchant had hurried off to point us toward the bandits' trail, Savage rounded on me.
"Why in the hell did you just do that."
"He needed help," I said.
"You don't have to come."
"Are you trying to be some kind of walking morality lesson?"
she asked.
"This is a game, Jon.
None of it is real."
"Tell that to the crater where my hometown used to be," I said, quieter than I meant it, and watched something in her face flicker and then close back over.