Eternity

Seb opened the door to The Perched Bird, and breathed an apology. His friends were there waiting for him, and they seemed to not be that bothered with his tardiness. After all, he did tell them that he would take a while to log onto the game.

The tavern was a lot of things - a place to relax, a place to meet new friends, a place to gamble hard-earned Gold away. And it was all too loud! Everywhere Seb looked, there were at least four players at a table, playing games of mahjong, bingo or some sort of card game, quarreling amongst themselves on the winnings. Of course, there were some who looked ever-so-slightly inebriated, but Seb couldn't really tell past the limited ingame graphics.

"So… it's all over," said Seb as he swiftly marched over to his friends' table. "The Suneater has been defeated, and all is well throughout the land!" the Paladin scratched his head. "Well… until the next expansion."

"Which is to be released next January, if I got the dates correct," said Jared, a squirrel Darkmage far more experienced in the game than Seb and his other two teammates. After all, Jared had been playing Defenders of Mossflower with different characters and races since it had been released two years ago, while Seb, Fret and Kio only got to experience the game for two months at most.

"I know," replied a flippant Brightmage, the healer of the party of four. Fret the ferret had always been an irascible beast, but two months spent battling throughout Mossflower with his team seemed to mellow him out. "I've saved some money up, so I think I can afford that. Well, my mother did."

"It's kinda weird, really," mused Seb, scratching his head again.

"What's weird?" asked Jared.

"When we first started on our adventure, we really didn't like each other."

"Some of us still do," said Fret jokingly, "but yeah. We didn't work that well together."

Jared nodded. "We didn't have chemistry between us!"

"But hey, we managed!" Seb smiled as he spoke. "We demolished Furor, we obliterated Inundation, and we smashed Sepulture into the ground! Pun intended, of course. But the point is that we actually managed to beat the game as a team!"

"With teammates like you three, I'm kinda surprised that we could manage to do anything, but I'm honestly quite glad we managed to do so well." Jared's lips curled up to form his signature smirk as he pointed a claw at Fret. "Remember the magic mines at Clogg's Cove?"

Fret tried to laugh, but his voice came out as more of an embarrassing wheeze. "Please don't mention them again!"

"Yeah, no," scoffed Seb. "There was also the Kio Sepulture incident." His head turned left to Fret, and right towards Jared. "Speaking of which, where's Kio?"

"Dunno about him," replied Fret. "He's not in our range of timezones, anyway."

The doors to the tavern flung open, and a well-dressed murine non-player character quickly rushed in, with an envelope clutched in his paw. "Here's a message from Kiormund Stromschlacht delivered to Fret Ferret!"

Jared shot Fret a stare as he opened the letter. "Your last name is just Ferret?"

"Yeah, so?" The ferret scrambled a piece of paper out. "It sounds better than 'Sandeye'."

"Good on you for giving your Retainer clothes," said Seb, watching as the mouse prepared to sell fish at highly inflated prices on his master's orders.

"I know, I know. I had enough of your nagging." Fret coughed before he scanned the letter. "What the heck, that's in German!"

Jared scoffed. "Here, give it to me. I've got autotranslate on." The ferret handed the message to the squirrel, and the Darkmage began to read.

To my dearest friends,

Thank you all. We had the best of times together. I wish I could be here more, but I will be absent from Heroes of Mossflower for some time due to private business. Come to think of it, I do need to save my money to purchase the Visions of Salamandastron DLC, so I will be cancelling my subscription for a while. I probably won't be back until June when the summer holidays start and the new expansion is released for a while. I'm sure all of you would have improved at the game by then, and I cannot wait to see how!

Yours sincerely,

Kio

P.S. Do start the new line of Main Story Quests by speaking to Eula in Redwall.

P.P.S. I wrote all this in German for all the autotranslate jokes, you %$#+&s.

P.P.P.S. Miss you all.

"What's a '%$#+&'?" asked Fret.

"Dunno," Seb confessed. "You finished?

"Yeah, so Kio'll be gone for a bit," said Jared. "Though I must say we need a fourth party member before we can proceed with the quests."

"We can just pair up with whoever wants to play with us too, to be honest," mused Seb, rubbing his head.

"No."

The woodlanders turned to Fret. "No?"

"No means no. We're going to do the post-MSQ content with a party of three, and nothing's going to stop us!"

Seb scratched his head. "Until Kio returns?"

Jared smiled. "Sure, why not? I'm sure he might be back a bit earlier - nobody stays away from video games for long in school."

"It's settled then," said Fret. "Time for something new!"

A/N: Happy birthday, Adrastos. Have a better year than last one, and enjoy the closest thing to a Redwall MMO so far.