Sleighed by the Orc

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Ginger

I know I’ve been playing this video game too long when I start to find myself attracted to the monster I’ve befriended in the game.

The warrior orc named Grak isn’t even close to my type. Typically, my crushes tend to involve, well, live humans. Not imaginary eight-foot-tall, muscle-bound behemoths with green skin, horns, and pointed ears.

My family knows me to be so picky that a man bun could be a dealbreaker. Yet Grak’s sleek warrior-style bun makes me inexplicably tingly.

It’s got to be his loyalty. And how he’s so charmingly literal. Also, the way he fiercely protects me in battle is so thoughtful.

The cherry on top? He’s an orc who loves Christmas as much as I do.

Okay, I admit it. The fact that Grak wears only a kilt made of fur doesn’t hurt, either.

And it’s fun to watch him fight. The guy can do more damage to a marauding band of zombies than I—a fierce sorcerer with anger issues—could ever dream to do.

Which is why, when Grak gets stuck inside a cramped animal cage with an angry mountain troll, I debate how long I should let him suffer.

As for me, I’m watching from the sidelines and laughing at the glitch—the business end of the axe pierces the sides of the cage but does no damage. God, this game is stupid, but I love it.

Poor Grak. At close range, the orc’s terrifying pole axe isn’t going to help. My handsome green friend swings his too-long weapon impotently while bellowing, “Where is the gate?!”

“It disappeared!” I tease.

“I don’t see you, Ginger468!” Grak cries out.

Man, this guy is so good at role playing, he actually sounds scared. He shouldn’t be. Grak is the best player I’ve ever seen in Deadsky: Survival.

And yet, Grak thinks it matters whether he can see me in first-person mode, even while he’s battling someone twice his size and three times mine.

I crack under the guilt of watching him scream my name and press the “Ctrl” key and “V” key. The gate reappears.

“Behind you!” I shout into my headset mic.

Grak lets out a warrior cry that hurts my eardrums, and I have to move my earpiece out of my ear temporarily.

On the screen, his player sticks the pole axe’s handle through one of the gaps in the mesh wire cage, then kicks open the gate.

His fur kilt flies up while he kicks like this, but alas, this game is PG-13.

All I get is a pervy peek at his bare thighs.

And they are outrageous. It’s enough to make me squirm in my cozy gamer chair.

Welcome to the depths of my lizard brain.

Together, Grak and I use our combined skills to defeat the trapped mountain troll.

My sorceress uses a level one time-bending spell and fireball combo.

My fighting style needs work, but it slows the monster down and keeps him from destroying the cage that separates my character from a very stupid death in this side quest.

Meanwhile, the orc brutally spins the blade of the axe, using the mesh wire as leverage. It’s like watching a maniac foosball champion destroy his competition. Only, you know, with sharp metal and a whole lot more blood. This move is wildly more effective than my attacks.

“Pretty ingenious use of that weapon at short range. Didn’t know you had that in you, Grak,” I joke.

Never breaking character, he rumbles in my ear. “I’m surprised you used your trickery on an ally, sorceress. Should I be worried?”

“Just messing with you, buddy. I wanted to give our enemy a fighting chance for once.”

Grak gives one powerful thrust, and the noise he makes in my headset is borderline pornographic in contrast to the blood spurting on the screen from our victim. We end the troll with one final slash of the axe from the orc and a fireball from me.

“I could not find my way out,” Grak says once the battle is over and we begin looting all the gems and tools in the area. “I couldn’t see you.”

I feel bad about that. “I was right behind you the whole time, Grak.”

He hums thoughtfully as I use a found pickaxe to dig up a magical wish shard. Strangely, a lot more wish shards appear in the game when Grak is with me. No complaints here—I can use them to advance much faster in the game or save them to make a potion for magical healing.

“I would like to move to your region so we can always find each other, but I have not unlocked that hemisphere yet.”

Whenever Grak says things like this, it makes me smile.

I like playing with him. But he’s right.

It’s a pain in the ass finding each other in the game.

A million items in the game are searchable, but you have to manually type in your campaign companions’ complete username and send an invite every single time.

This is why Deadsky is a third-rate game and not as popular as it used to be.

Well, I’m good with playing a niche game. I’m notoriously known for doing the opposite of what’s popular, often to my own detriment.

But my favorite thing? Sometimes, after we find each other in the game, Grak and I end up chatting all night long.

These chat sessions may not be great for my social life on a Saturday night—according to my family—but Grak is the closest thing I have to a best friend.

All my childhood friends have grown and moved away, and my siblings have moved to New York and LA.

The youngest of three children, I stayed to work on my parents’ Christmas tree farm after earning my business degree at community college, despite being offered better jobs by both of my siblings.

I like the peace and quiet. I like not having to commute to work.

And most of all, I don’t have it in me to let my parents run this place on their own.

And now that my mom is sick, leaving the Allman Family Christmas Tree Farm is not an option.

Deadsky is my nightly outlet, and that’s all I need. And sometimes it’s my pre-work outlet too. Like today: I woke up at 6 a.m. just to see if Grak was online, which he was, and that gave me the warmest feeling of reassurance on a wintry morning.

“You don’t have to do the quests to unlock my region,” I tell Grak. “Just go into furniture mode and select some type of transportation, then place it below the southern border. Then, when you exit back into live mode, click on the map and highlight the transport.”

“Hmmm,” the orc replies. “Is that cheating?”

“Uh…not if the game lets you do that.” This janky game. Too, too easy to cheat.

He concedes this. “I’ll do it if that’s what you want me to do.”

“I do.”

A long pause follows this, and then Grak throws me for the biggest loop in the four months we’ve been playing together.

“Or we could get married.”

I blink at the screen and forget who I am and where I am at the moment. “Married?”

“Is that too forward?” the orc asks.

I laugh, “No, it’s fucking genius. Let’s do it right now.”

“Wait,” he says.

“What’s wrong? Cold feet already?”

“Let’s wait until tonight. I have…I have some preparations to make.”

Some dude playing an orc in an online fantasy game with a stranger needs to make preparations for an in-game wedding? Okay, then.

We agree to get our characters married later tonight, after I finish work.

“That will give me something to look forward to, anyway. Today’s gonna be a bitch and a half,” I say.

Grak reassures me in his deep, comforting voice, “I am sorry to hear it. But my heart is glad if you look forward to marrying me.”

I sign off and push aside this weird feeling that bubbled up when the orc “proposed.”

I vow never to share with anyone how he makes me feel, because no one would understand.

And yet, I smile all the way upstairs and out the door. I maintain this dopey grin as I trudge through the wind and snow toward the office, and I’m still feeling loopy and fluttery when I stoke the fireplace, wake up the computer, and hang the wreath that falls off the door when I shut it.