We walked back to the table.
I do not know why. The table was not significant and the ale was spilled and there was nothing waiting there except the ordinary furniture of a waypoint town going about its scripted business. But we walked back to it anyway, because it was the place we had been before the screaming, and before the screaming had been the last time things were the way they were, and humans move toward the last time things were the way they were even when they know it does not help.
Jake sat down. I sat down.
The system notification was still visible in my peripheral vision. TOTAL ACTIVE PLAYERS: 2. It had been higher than that when I arrived. I did not know the number it had started at, the full count of real people who had woken up in a meadow or a forest or a desert and loo
