She Who Woke Among Eternity

The sound of a loud vehicle echoed through the Dragon’s Lair, with all inside staring at the door, waiting. “Avalyn, can you tell me what’s wrong with that sound?” Gramps asked, having to almost yell over the sound.

The question took aback Avalyn. “That it’s not muffled like a sensible person would have? Am I supposed to hear something?”

“With a keen ear, you can tell one cylinder isn’t firing properly. I’d also say the grav manifold is rattling up a storm and will give it about half a hept before it shatters mid-ride.”

“You can really hear all that?” Gramps nodded. “Fuck me, maybe we should tell who—”

“I beg of you,” Erthrin started, “please don’t tell this man his bike is about to break.”

“He could get seriously hurt if—”

“I can only pray that he does,” Velgi said.

The bike outside turned off and even Avalyn could hear a nasty rattle to the shutoff. “I’m very sorry for what you’re about to experience,” Erthrin said, surprising the trio.

Before anyone could ask a question, the front door of the store opened to reveal a large humanoid alien man, and from Avalyn’s perspective, she would probably call him a bugbear, not that she would know if that was actually what his species was called. The thing that really caught her attention was that he clearly looked unkempt. His clothes were a mess and covered in stains, his fur was matted and oily looking, and Scevi’s coughing and nose-covering showed Avalyn that he also smelled the part.

“No, Mom, I’ve got a big session tonight, so I won’t be there for dinner. Just bring me my plate to my room,” he said out loud to the companion he held out in front of him.

“This is really important, sweetie, you need to come out of your ro—” the woman on the other end of the companion call said before being cut off

“I said I’m not coming.” With an aggressive stab of his finger, he hung up the call and said something Avalyn could only assume was the equivalent of ‘fucking bitch’ in a language Avalyn didn’t speak. With heavy steps, he started making his way over to the counter. The trio gladly stepped out of the man’s way, only at the last minute he leaned over and did his best to shove Avalyn over.

“What the hell, dude!” Avalyn yelled. “I didn’t do anyt—”

“Shut up, stupid automaton,” the man yelled back, moving right past her.

“I’m not a fucking au—”

“You disagree with this statement.”

“I disagree with your lack of personal hygiene.”

Now that got his attention, and he turned back to her with surprise on his face. Not only that, but both Erthrin and Velgi looked a little surprised and maybe even the tiniest bit worried. “What the drak did you say to me?”

Well, this wasn’t off to a good start, but there was some part of Avalyn that relished in the idea of letting off a little steam. “I said you need to take a bath. Gods damn it, you Torbek¹Legends of Avantris looking motherfuck, I have never met someone that has made me thankful I can’t smell, so congratulations to you.” Avalyn finished it off with a slow clap.

“You think this is funny, you stupid automaton?” He asked, getting right up in her face. Only now did Avalyn truly become aware of how tall this man was, as she had to look nearly fully up to look him in the eyes.

“If this were funny, I’d be laughing.” Looking down at his shirt, she said, “There are so many damn stains on your shirt; I can’t imagine what kind of shit stains line your underwear. I’m actually genuinely worried about your health, because this can’t be good for you.”

“So you do think this is funny.”

“That’s the literal opposite of what I just said.”

With worry in his voice, Erthrin said, “Grek, why don’t you jus—”

“I’m not talking to you. I’m talking to this stupid machine.” To emphasize his own words, Grek tapped Avalyn’s head with the companion he still held in his hand.

“Avalyn, don’t!” Gramps said in clear panic, but it was too late; that short brief contact was all she needed.

“If you can only use one negative adjective to describe me, I think that word might be more reflective of yourself than me.” She didn’t go far into the companion, not quite yet wanting to escalate things to that level, but she wanted to keep that option open. Taking a healthy step back from the man, Avalyn said, “Look, dude, you’re the one who came in here and shoved a person you’ve never met before for no reason, and I’m willing to look past it if we can both move on from this strange encounter.”

“Who are you calling dude, automaton?”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Avalyn said with a sigh. “Definition of dude; an informal term used primarily for a man, though it has evolved into a unisex term of address for friends or acquaintances.” She shrugged. “Look, I speak like an old-timer and intermix words of my own common language, and that doesn’t mean everything is an insult. Let’s just move on from this and buy our shit and leave. You’ve clearly come here for a specific reason,” she guess considering she was sure this was the man the store owners had mentioned a while ago, “so go ahead, and buy what it is you want,” she said waving him on to the counter.

“Oh, you think this is over. Do you have any idea who you’re talking to?”

“I don’t have the foggiest idea of who you are, besides a man with a clear mission to buy something before anyone else.” Avalyn once again gestured to the counter. “So, once again, please go ahead and buy what you want.”

“I’m Grek Hikstla.”

“Congratulations, Grek Hikstla, you were born to be the first person to purchase what you desire from this store on this fine day.”

“That’s what I thought,” he said, standing proudly, not having picked up on the sarcasm in Avalyn’s voice. Finally, he turned away from Avalyn and walked over to the counter, missing Avalyn flipping him the bird behind his back.

Gramps grabbed Avalyn’s arm and pulled her closer to him. “Avalyn, you didn’t, did you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She knew exactly what he was talking about.

“What would you like, Grek?” Erthrin said, with still mild worry in his voice.

“All your Kypwurm.”

“I’ll go get it,” Velgi said, gladly stepping away.

“No, he can go get it,” Grek said, leering at Velgi. “Why don’t you stay here and talk to your biggest customer?”

Scevi whispered something in a language Avalyn didn’t speak. Looking back, Avalyn found a shockingly aggressive look of disgust on Scevi’s face. She had never seen the woman so much as disgruntled, and Avalyn really hated seeing her mad. That was also the point Avalyn dove into Grek’s companion. When Avalyn turned back, she found Erthrin sharing a look with Velgi. The lava woman let out a sigh before waving her mate off to the back room.

Avalyn couldn’t see the disgusting smile on Grek’s face, but she could see the smug shuffle of his shoulders as he leaned on the counter and started talking. At no point did Velgi ever respond to anything he said to her, but she didn’t need to, as Grek clearly liked the sound of his voice more than her interaction.

A sharp pain flourished inside Avalyn’s mind, but it lasted only a moment as the anti-virus software lost its fight against her intrusion. It was interesting that his companion had a much more advanced security system than what she would expect from commercial companions, but then again she had little experience with them. The one thing that she started looking for was whether his companion gave him the information that the store was open.

Erthrin walked out with ten what Avalyn assumed were booster boxes. Setting them down on the counter, he said, “That’s all we have.”

“You got a delivery last night,” Grek said as a matter of fact. “There’s more.”

“That’s all we could order,” Velgi said. “They’re limiting how much small stores can buy right now.”

“I haven’t heard that,” Grek said.

“Because you don’t own a small store,” Erthrin said. “If you want more, you’ll need to go to some corporate-affiliated game store like Ethereal’s. They’re only letting big partners have large inventory now.”

“Fine. I’ll be back when you get your next delivery in.”

The next few moments were had in mostly in silence as Grek paid and then left, giving one more disgusting remark to Velgi. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief as the sound of his slowly failing engine fired up before slowly fading away.

“Avalyn, please tell me you deleted everything off of that drakwad’s companion,” Scevi said firmly.

“What?” Erthrin asked with wide eyes.

“Avalyn, tell me you didn’t,” Gramps said.

“I didn’t delete anything off his companion,” Avalyn said firmly. “At least not yet.”

“You hacked his companion?” Velgi asked. “How?”

Erthrin whispered, “By the gods, I hope this doesn’t come back to us.”

“Okay, look,” Avalyn said, “I have done nothing to his companion but access it and take a peek inside.”

“Gods damn it, Avalyn, that’s still illegal.” Gramps said.

Avalyn crossed her arms. “Hey, I haven’t done anything nefarious, and I don’t plan on it,” she said defensively. “That being said, I found out how he’s being nefarious and spying on the store.” Now that got everyone’s attention. “Does he have a favorite seat he likes to play at? That is if he stays to play sometimes.”

“We do our best not to encourage him to stay,” Velgi said.

“Uh…” Erthrin looked around before pointing a seat out. “That one, sometimes, I guess.”

Avalyn nodded before heading over to the spot. Bending down, it took her all of 15 seconds before she found what she was looking for: a small circular device barely larger than a bottle cap, stuck in a small crevice on the underside of the table. “Here we go,” she said, pulling it out and starting her commandeering, though she already had a good idea of what it did. “That wasn’t too hard to find.”

“What the drak is that,” Scevi asked.

“This is a little device that’s spoofed one of your companions,” Avalyn said, gesturing to the store owners.

“Spoofed?” Erthin asked.

“Sorry, that might not be a term your society uses. Okay, to sum it all up, he’s made this device register as a small copy of one of your companions. I take it your security system sends notifications to your companions?” The pair nodded. “Yeah, so your security also thinks this device is part of the system, so it sends them to him to. The application on his companion only looks for specific notifications. First, it looks for a doorbell ring at the back door of your store, which I assume is where you get your deliveries?” They both nodded. “Then it waits for the next day, where it will notify him of the front door opening, but only if either of your companions haven’t directly connected to the system in the last three minutes.”

Everyone stood there in silence for a moment. After a few awkward moments, Velgi asked, “How did he do that?”

Avalyn shrugged. “There’s probably a few different ways he could have spoofed the connection initially. Has he ever stood uncomfortably close to you when your companion was on you, or have you left it out in the open and not watched it for a few seconds?”

“He stands too close to me all the time.”

“Then that might be how.”

“So just delete it all and destroy the device,” Erthrin said.

“I can do that easily; the only problem is that he will probably notice in a little while when he doesn’t get notifications.”

“Just destroy his companion, and then he won’t notice.” Scevi said. “Why do you even let that guy in here, anyway? He’s disgusting.”

“He makes up about 25% of our income with how much he purchases,” Erthrin replied. “He’s disgustingly wealthy from his big executive mom.”

“We could survive without it,” Velgi said firmly. “Just destroy his companion.”

“That’s still illegal,” Gramps said.

“True, and he would probably just try the same shit again, and I won’t necessarily have access to stop it again, so I have another proposal. I make a little back door for me to access his companion at a later date, and then just change the setting on the application to be four or five days after a delivery and make it look like the settings havent been changed.”

“And what good would that do?” Scevi asked.

“It’ll give you a chance to actually sell those cards to other customers, make him think that it’s this,” she held up the device, “that’s broken after he spends probably a good half hept not figuring out why it’s not working. Then when he replaces it, you can either sure up your security on your companions so that he can’t spoof it again, or if he manages it, it will still be the app that’s not working. Hopefully, he’ll just over time get more and more frustrated with it, and instead of being smart and trying to fix it, he’ll just give up and go to a store he can more reliably scalp product from. It’s not the fastest solution, but it’ll probably be a safer bet than him potentially suspecting someone has hacked him.” Avalyn shrugged again. “But it is your store, so I’ll let you decide how you would like to handle it.”

Erthrin and Velgi looked at each other and then shared some quiet words. After a short time, they turned back to Avalyn. “We’ll try your plan,” Erthrin said with a nod.

“Good, because I’m already done.” Avalyn went about putting the device back where she had found it.

“That fast?”

“Yeah,” Avalyn said as she started uncommandeering the companion, though she still left a little code in it for her to access again in the app. “It’s honestly kind of scary how simple and how magic-reliant your tech is, but you’ve achieved a lot with what you have. Holy fuck, are those dice!” Avalyn started rushing over to the small dice display. “I love collecting dice. Fuck me, I don’t have my collection anymore…” That was a very upsetting thought.

Erthin walked over to the back of the display. “Then, we will happily be the first to add to your new collection. Which would you like?”

Avalyn’s eyes scanned the case. There were price stickers on all the little boxes. “Shit, I don’t have a concept of the value of your currency, and I don’t know how much money I have to spend.”

“No need to worry,” Erthrin said with a smile. “After what you did, this is on us today.”