Instead, he walked into a chamber where a plastic teenager wearing robes vaguely reminiscent of the ones Dane, Eve, and Alice had worn before approached him and volunteered to show him to his room. An arrow appeared in front of Ethan, showing the direction he should move to follow his guide, who helpfully waited for him and droned on in a monologue tour of the academy as they made their way to the student wing. The student’s robes sometimes clipped through the floor or their arm as they gestured and walked. It was nothing like his experience the night before.
“Hey, can you take me to a student named Alicia?” Ethan asked.
The student character ignored the question and droned on as they walked. They came to an empty parlor, and the student pointed to one of five doors along the hall. “This is your room. You will find all your belongings have already been unpacked for you. There will no doubt be other students in the parlor from time to time, so be sure to visit it frequently. I have to go greet other new students, so excuse me!”
With that, the student vanished in a poof of special effects.
Ethan saved the game again and quit, frustrated. He took off the headset and stared at it, wanting to yell at the inanimate object. Where were the people he spoke with last night? Where were the graphics that were as real as a live-action HD TV show? What had happened to his game?
As he stared at the headset, he noticed a shiny metal plate on one side with tiny laser-etched writing. He brought the headset closer to his eyes to examine it. Amid the government labeling and model number and some microscopic symbols that might have been logos or kanji writing, there was a box with a serial number which read, “#000000-026.” The same number that Dane had recited from the piece of paper the night before.
He worked until late into the evening again. He grew irritated every time he caught a glance at the VR equipment sitting on the shelf. At one point, he closed his laptop and was determined to spend the rest of the day at the office to avoid looking at it. He felt like he had fallen for a bizarre bait-and-switch.
He took short breaks to look for reviews of the game, but none were available. Some journalists mentioned the game in passing or had brief previews, but the headset and the game were so new that only a handful of people had played it “in the wild” yet.
The experience the night before now took on the flavor of a dream in his mind. Maybe that was all it had been. Could he have fallen asleep while playing it? Maybe he’d gone to bed and dreamed about the experience, the dream being so vivid that he consciously couldn’t distinguish it from his memories.
None of these theories made explained everything. He’d glimpsed a place that felt real, and spent time with people that felt real. If it had all been a delusion, what did it say about his mental state? What did it say that his interaction in the game felt more real than anything else he’d experienced in weeks? The more he tried to push it from his mind, the more the Klendistone VR set seemed to taunt him.
He logged off his work network, heated a frozen pizza for supper, and tried to browse some videos for the night’s winding-down activities before going to bed. He browsed forums about Nyrlim Magic Academy, and found one post that had gone up in the last hour.
“I found a secret area of the game, I think. Some dude told me I had to gain aptitude in magic to unlock the rest of the area and sent me back. Tried to get a screenshot, but it didn’t work. The graphics were much better than the rest of the game. It was like a recorded video.”
Comments included the obligatory “Pics, or it didn’t happen” post, someone complaining about the return of “full motion video” in VR games, an unanswered question about how he found the secret area, and a half-dozen posts from people complaining about how they weren’t included in the first batch and hadn’t even received notice that their Klendistones had shipped yet. Had another player seen something? Could Ethan’s experience have been real after all? Ethan closed his laptop and grabbed the headset and controllers off the shelf.
He’d seen the “screenshots disabled” warning before he’d appeared in the storeroom. Maybe the developers didn’t want the secrets of the game leaked before the full release of the hardware? However, the built-in headphones were connected by a standard jack. He had a splitter cable and could route the audio to his phone. While the change in graphics was massive, the conversation with the three students had intrigued him the most, and he’d wished he could have played that back during the day. Besides, he could hold his camera up to the lenses of the headset and take a picture. He wasn’t interested in proving anything to the rest of the world, though. He only wanted the proof for himself.
Once his phone was set up with a cable and ready to record, Ethan put on the headset and started the game. Everything was where he had left it at lunchtime. He stood in a living area of some part of the student dorm area. The door to his dorm was only a few feet away. The visuals were nice, but not realistic. The full 3D presence made them more believable, but they still fell far short of what he’d seen the night before.
“Hey, is anyone here?” Ethan called, not loud enough to wake up his real-life neighbors. “Dane? Alicia?” After a moment’s hesitation, he called, “Eve?” Even the blue girl would be a welcome sight—proof that he hadn’t just dreamed the whole thing. Thinking back, he tried to cast the buggy spell three times, just as he had the night before. Nothing happened. In frustration, he cast the fireball spell, but the game disallowed it.
“Casting such a destructive spell in this environment would result in instant expulsion,” Vera’s disembodied voice whispered in his ear.
Ethan sighed. Maybe he should just play the game the way he was supposed to. He moved to the door to his dorm room and put his virtual hand on the door handle.
The world went black. In the corner of his vision, a message read, “Klendistone comm protocol 201 executing.” Ethan’s heart leaped. It was a shorter message than he’d seen the night before, but the effect was the same.
The darkness resolved into an impossibly-detailed view of a large academic office. An oak desk bigger than Ethan’s kitchen area dominated the room, covered with papers, books, and even some old-fashioned scroll tubes. It was surrounded by equally-impressive oak bookcases overflowing with books, documents, and jumbles of objects that would have easily tipped or broken lesser shelving. A man stood at the other side of the desk in flowing blue robes adorned with piping along the shoulders and sleeves. His perfectly groomed beard matched the steel gray of his eyes and hair.
Ethan gasped and fumbled around half-blind in the real world to pull out his phone and start the recording. Once he had confirmed it was working, he returned it to his pocket and re-adjusted the headset.
“… Startle you,” the man was saying. Ethan had missed the first part while he was messing with his phone. The robed man glanced down at a paper on his desk and said, “This is a, ah, bonus stage. You will be allowed to explore it once you have demonstrated your magical aptitude and proficiency.”
Ethan looked down at the floor. A magical circle was drawn there, more complex than the one in the storeroom. The man stammered. “Oh, I see you note the circle. That’s a precaution… Never mind. You completed the tutorial?”
“Yes,” Ethan said. “Twice.”
“Oh. Failed the first time, then? Well, let’s get this over with. Let’s see your fireball skill, then.”
“Um, here?” Ethan glanced around. “This place looks pretty flammable.”
“Ah, you are that confident you can pull it off?” Was it just Ethan’s imagination, or was there a glint in the man’s eye? He pointed to a coatrack beside the door, where an overcoat and what looked like a derby-style hat hung. “There’s nothing of great value there. I will make sure nothing goes out of control. Begin!”
Ethan followed the instructions from the tutorial, making the motions with the controllers and repeating the phrases Vera had taught him. A sphere of white-hot light shot out from his outstretched hand, striking the door beside the coat rack and bursting into
a short-lived explosion.
“I missed, sorry!” Ethan said.
“It’s quite alright. That door is protected against magic, flame, axes, and just about everything else.”
Ethan nodded. “I was just thinking about what would have happened if someone had come in just now.”
The man shook his head. “The door is locked. We have complete secrecy here. Now, I take it you were trained in the spell to stop a heartbeat?”
Ethan nodded. “Yeah. Just a few minutes ago.”
The man smiled. “I think you meet my qualifications, so let’s get on with this. I have a task—sorry—” He glanced down at the paper on his desk. “I have a quest for you. Complete this quest, and you will be given access to all new… er, content.” He continued in a wooden voice. “Three demons have infiltrated our school, disguised as students. I need you to find these demons and destroy them, without being seen.” He picked up a metal object and placed it on the side of the desk. “I will give you this bracelet, which allows you to move unnoticed through the school so long as you avoid the instructors and direct contact with any of the other students.”
“Why avoid the instructors? Aren’t they helping to hunt down the demons?”
He waved his hand dismissively. “They don’t know who the demons are. As I said, they are disguised as students.”
“Then how do I find them?”
“I have ascertained their identity. They murdered an instructor only days ago, but they left evidence behind.”
Dane and the others had been seeking the identity of the killer, too. This tracked, but the man in the robe wasn’t convincing. Was he hiding something, or was this shoddy acting? Whatever the case, Ethan handled it as if it was happening in real life. Worst case, he’d re-start the game.
No, that wasn’t the worst case. As impossible as it was to his logical mind, it felt real. If by some bizarre reason this was actually happening, he had to choose his actions carefully.
“Have you brought this to the attention of the authorities?”
“What?” The man scratched his head. Ethan almost chalked it up to a video game filler response, but then the man answered, “We have to solve our own problems here, as the actions of wizards and demons may be beyond what the conventional authorities can handle. We need your help.”
“So who are these demons?”
“They go by the names Dane McDougal, Eve Delaney, and Alicia Stormhand. I have melainotypes of each one that you should study so you can positively identify them. It would be easiest if you were to eliminate them in their dorm rooms, away from any prying eyes.”
Ethan felt his body grow hot, and he hoped there was no technology reading his expression. He took a moment to bring his voice under control. “What is your evidence against them?”
“That is not your concern. You will do the school and the students a great service…”
“Who are you? What did they do to you?”
“What? I’m Harold Klendistone, the assistant principal of the academy. These students are… No, they are demons. That’s all that matters. Complete this quest, and you will be rewarded with access to… whatever you want. Oh, content!”
“You murdered Callister, didn’t you?”
Several expressions flashed across Klendistone’s face, finally settling on raised eyebrows and a frown. “How did you know? Callister summoned you first, didn’t he? Damn it! Well, he’s dead, and I have the Right of First Summoning now. I order you to say nothing of this to anyone, in this world or your own.”
Ethan felt like someone gripped him around the throat, a sensation physically possible with the VR gear. He lifted the headset part way, but there was no one else in the room with him. As he replaced the visor, he noticed how the circle now glowed.
As he had the night before, he tried to move out of the circle. The vertigo was far worse than it had been before, and he felt his vision swim and darken. He staggered, coming into contact with his desk in the real world, and leaned on it for support. Inside Klendistone’s office, he was still trapped inside the circle.
Klendistone laughed at his attempt. Ethan stared down at the circle and then made the motions he’d learned the night before—the ability to erase magic. The glow of the circle wavered, and Ethan lurched forward, out of the circle, hoping he wasn’t about to hit a wall in the room in his own home.
Klendistone’s eyes widened. “How is this possible? Callister is dead! I have the Right of First Summoning.”
Klendistone wiggled his hand and spoke words to a spell Ethan hadn’t been taught. Ethan was already reacting with the “shield” spell when he recognized it as the “dismissal” spell Alicia had cast on him the night before as he exited the game.
The shield appeared in the air and shimmered as Klendistone’s completed his spell. The wizard growled. “That was a mistake, alien! My spells can find you in your own world. Even when you take off that infernal device.”
“So you and Callister created the VR gear?” Ethan asked.
“That is what you call it?” Klendistone seemed to be in no hurry. “We provided our agents in your world with the information and resources they needed. Callister saw it as an experiment and was blind to the possibilities of thousands of newly summoned entities. Summoners spend years finding the names of fresh entities to summon, and here we had an almost unlimited supply! He lost interest earlier this year, which was fine by me, but his plans to move bodily between our worlds would have disrupted this project, and he objected to my use of compulsion spells and bindings on aliens. He threatened me if I carried out my own experiments. As you are about to learn, you never threaten Harold Klendistone.”
Klendistone made another unfamiliar gesture, and Ethan countered it again with the shield. This time, arcs of electricity bent around the shield, and the pain felt like a thousand hornets stinging all at once.
Ethan cried out in pain. Klendistone laughed and followed up with another spell. Ethan barely formed the shield in time. Icy mist curled around the phantom barrier, cold biting Ethan’s fingers and forearms with pain like a fire. He couldn’t keep this up. If he took off the headset, would Klendistone still be able to hurt him, or was the wizard bluffing about that?
Somehow, it didn’t feel like a bluff. A wrong guess would be instantly fatal. Not that the spells being thrown at him felt like they’d be anything less than fatal if his shield failed. Ethan took the offense and cast the fireball at Klendistone.
Klendistone caught the sphere in his hand, and it faded with a muffled pop. “Is that what you are trying? Are you going to attempt to stop my heart next?” He snorted. “Where do you think those spells came from?”
Again, this didn’t sound like a bluff. Rather than going for a direct attack, Ethan cast the object-moving spell on the bookshelf near the wizard. Klendistone glanced up too late, as the enormous bookshelf toppled onto him, burying him in books. The mahogany desk broke its fall and kept it from pinning Klendistone.
The assistant principal crawled out and snarled at Ethan. “I have had enough of you.”
He began chanting and gesturing with something more complex than Ethan had yet seen. While he was inexperienced with this world of spell casting, Klendistone’s fury was plain to read. Ethan doubted his shield spell would do much to deflect whatever the wizard was creating.
In desperation, Ethan used the bugged spell from the tutorial. It did nothing in the game, but would it actually do something here, in this alternative world? He spoke the words, pressed the button, and made the required gestures in the air. A shimmering wall appeared, not unlike the shield, but this seemed to have a translucent presence, a mirrored surface.
A moment later, Klendistone unleashed his spell. For an instant, Ethan saw the reflection of his own ‘face’ in this world against the surface of his defensive spell, a slightly glowing orb with vague mannequin features. Just below that, Klendistone’s blurry face stared through the distortion with a look of horror. The air flashed as Klendistone’s spell r
eflected from the mirrored barrier back onto the wizard, and the barrier shattered.
Klendistone shriveled into a gray statue of himself, kneeling on the floor surrounded by his books and treasures. Then the gray form collapsed into a pile of dust on the floor.
Some dust filled the air, giving the room a smoky haze. Ethan was grateful that he was breathing in his apartment, rather than filling his real lungs with the remains of the assistant principal. Someone pounded at the door, followed by muffled shouting from several people. It had been a noisy battle, hadn’t it?
For a moment, Ethan considered exiting the game and taking off the VR gear. He still hurt from Klendistone’s spells, and he was in real danger from angry wizards. But then he thought of the three students, particularly Alicia. What would happen to them? Would they be blamed? Would anyone learn what really happened to Professor Callister?
Ethan worked the lock and opened the door. Four adults in robes spilled into the room, immediately surrounding Ethan.
“Where is Klendistone?” one of them, a woman who looked to be in her early sixties, demanded.
“He’s that pile of dust on the floor,” Ethan said.
“You murdered him!”
Ethan shook his head. “No, I defended myself. I only… Well, let me explain. Actually, even better!” He reached into his pocket. “Let me play back a recording for you.”
Ethan rushed up the stairs to his apartment in the early evening, heavy grocery bag in hand. He’d grabbed another microwaveable meal in his lightning-fast shopping trip, but he wasn’t interested in heating it right now. Instead, he opened one end of the bag of salt, and carefully poured it into a three-foot circle on his living room floor. He’d have to vacuum it up. Eventually.
He removed the charging cables from his VR gear, turned it on, and started Nyrlim Magic Academy. It had been two weeks since his initial visit, and three days since he’d last been summoned to the strange world where the real academy existed. Verifying that his avatar was standing in the simple courtyard of the game, he took off the headset and controllers and placed them on the floor inside the flour circle, and waited.
Fantastic Schools, Volume 3 Page 4
