by Vic Connor
If she’s being honest, Somera has always found Abbas to be a little insufferable, a literature snob of the highest degree. He quotes and misquotes endlessly, seemingly unable to string his own thoughts together and instead relies on others to feed him their words. And now, he wants to become a novelist—Somera chuckles at that. “Abbas has never had an original thought in his life,” she once told her parents. “How in the world is he going to write anything down when his head is so empty?”
Her mother had scolded her. Even her father, usually so passive and calm, had shouted at her.
“Sorry, sorry, God,” she had huffed, at which point they began to scold her for blasphemy and she had given up, throwing her arms up in the air and storming up to her bedroom to log onto her rig.
Her third brother, Altaf, however, is one of Somera’s favorite people in the world. He’s only a couple of years older than she is, about to turn twenty and living it up working for a programming company in Karachi. It was Altaf who first got Somera into gaming, and who kept it hidden from their parents—nobody else in the family knows that she is a gamer, nobody else would permit it. He helped her forge her second life, her alter ego, in secret.
He used to let her play the odd game on various consoles when they were growing up. However, it was when he introduced her to Hunters of Arkhart that she really began to flourish as a gamer. At first, he used her as a place holder. When he was sixteen and she was fourteen, he enrolled in a college a few towns over to study mathematics and coding. He therefore spent much of his time either travelling or, often, staying with a relative closer to his school. All of a sudden, he was far too busy for MMORPGs, but he didn’t want to let his character dwindle. So, he had Somera carry out his conquests and adventures, with his usual warbands and teams, playing as his avatar.
She’d fallen in love immediately and one day, whilst relatively free during a school holiday, Altaf helped her create her own account and build her own character. “What do you want to be?” he’d asked her. “A princess … or a wood-elf, they’re the best archers, you can just stand back and shoot… Or a sorcerer, blasting the enemy with your magic…”
“No,” she’d said. “I want to get my hands dirty.”
Altaf laughed, but he didn’t contradict her. “A warrior, then.”
“Yes,” she’d agreed, “but a smart one, a powerful one.”
“Perfect.” Altaf nodded. “Let’s make you a battle mage. Less attuned to some of the higher forms of magic than a sorcerer, not as good in a fight as a straight up warrior, but…” He shrugged and clicked on the battle mage profile. “If you do it right, you can get the best of both. Use your head and still kick ass.”
“Yes,” she said, watching carefully as he made the profile. “Yes.”
He handed her the controller, put the headset on her head, and left her to it. A couple of hours later, Aremos was born. Inexperienced, neither powerful nor skilled, but with all of Somera’s willpower, he set out into the world of Arkhart to make a name for himself.
When Altaf moved to Karachi, his new company gave him a good advance. He used it to buy himself the brand new, latest model Zikya rig with all the extras. “So you can keep my old one, if you like,” he’d told Somera. She’d leapt across the room, jumped on him, and hung around his neck, weeping as she hugged him.
“Calm down, sis,” he’d muttered, embarrassed. “It’s just a bloody game.”
No, it’s not, she thought. Aremos would live on.
The Zikya rig is a thing of wonder—she’s always thought so. This immersive, exclusive console only runs Arkhart, with a worldwide following of hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of players, almost all of whom are dedicated to Zikya and nothing else. Though an older model, a little outdated, a little scuffed up, a little slow to start at times, Somera’s Zikya rig is her most prized possession in the whole world. She plays it furtively—she has to. Her mother and father had ordered her to stop gaming a long time ago, when she was still just a little girl, really. They didn’t want her wasting herself, spending her days in worlds that didn’t exist and that were unimportant, as far as they were concerned. However, Somera is honest enough with herself to recognize herself for what she is—a typical introvert with few prospects outside of marrying a local boy and playing mother to his babies. This life isn’t for me, she often thinks despairingly, looking around at her town and her family.
Arkhart is different. She gives herself over to it entirely, finding fulfilment and purpose as Aremos far more easily than she ever could as Somera. At school, every day, she’d always drifted off. She knew how lucky she was: Many girls in her country would never have the opportunity to attend any kind of school, let alone achieve the level of education her father’s contacts made available to her. But she couldn’t help it. Her days are spent fantasizing about her adventures as Aremos, or mentally replaying quests and epic duels she has recently completed. In the evenings, after doing her homework and her chores, Somera spends every second she can online. Rolling blackouts and patchy signal plague her community, as they do many others, but even so she has progressed, building a reputation for herself amongst several of the smaller warbands as a formidable fighter and powerful battle mage.
She has begun to feel like a god among mortals in Arkhart. She lives to exercise her skills.
But her parents will always see her as little Somera and will countenance no talk either of gaming or ambition. She is to forget this nonsense: They’ve spent the last year trying to arrange for her to be married and start a family of her own. With this prospect looming, Somera has felt more divorced from the real world than ever before, escaping into the fantasy of Arkhart with greater and greater zeal as she completes quest after quest in her bid to prove herself and feel the power she knows she holds deep inside.
Then, when the Pixel Academy of Videogame Development and Graphic Arts—makers of the Zikya rig and the world of Arkhart—announced that they were launching a sponsored quest, the whole world began to buzz. The community of Arkhart could talk of nothing else. It was all Somera could think about.
They were calling for anybody between the ages of sixteen and twenty to sign up. The application itself was rigorous, as they demanded everyone submit evidence that they knew how to code as well as play. Luckily, Altaf had taught Somera a thing or two, and her usual teammates were all pretty decent programmers.
Those selected were to form teams of four players maximum to fight a series of gauntlet quests, culminating in a final face off against the boss of all bosses—the dreaded Wyvern_hardmod9, who would take on each team, one by one, until they were all dead and the judges had seen enough to know who to crown victorious. Their offer was simple: Each member of the winning team would be offered either a monetary prize or would be given a full-ride scholarship at their academy in San Francisco, United States, learning to playtest and code for them. Somera couldn’t resist. This was her ticket to the life of her dreams.
She and the other three members of her warband had signed up immediately, and had spent the last few weeks playing their best, all of it leading up to the final battle in the colosseum—the battle Somera hoped she’d just won.
Somera feels her anxiety build as her mother leaves her room. Her rig stays under her bed, logged off and dormant. She doesn’t have time to follow up on the results of the final round. All around the world, she knows, people will be discussing Aremos’ performance, excited and elated and angry—all of them airing their own views whilst the Makers, the coders at the Pixel Academy of Videogame Development and Graphic Arts, discuss his fate. What’s to be done after such a finale? What will happen when the dust settles?
Somera has no way of knowing. For now, though, she must act the obedient daughter. Kneeling down, she pulls the rig out from under her bed. In her haste, she’d wrapped up the cabling all wrong and didn’t close up the various mechanisms and joints of the hardware. She does so now, tenderly, lovingly, and places it properly in its box, shutting it up safe and sou
nd.
Next, Somera stands and strips, throwing off the casual clothes she wears for comfort while she games. Stooping over the basin in the corner of her room, she splashes her face, rinsing her eyes and scrubbing her hands until she feels fresh, rejuvenated, and ready to take on the next challenge. Next, she picks up the dress and headscarf her mother chose for her and stands before the mirror, holding them idly in one hand.
Her face looks tired as it stares back at her from the mirror’s glossy surface. Dark rings hang heavy beneath her eyes and her skin is pallid, the complexion of somebody who spends too much time indoors. Spreading her arms, she turns first one way and then the other. Her skin is a little loose, a little plump. In her heart, Somera is a warrior, a fierce veteran of battles. But it doesn’t show. She has no chance to revel in her own physicality. There are no muscles beneath her skin, no callouses on her palms. Hers is the body of the idle; she has been forced into it, she feels. The inaction is imposed on her by her society because, as she knows well enough, were she to never take part in another quest or adventure, she’d still be idle, sitting about gossiping or sewing or whatever else is expected of a young woman in her town.
At least Aremos is strong, she reminds herself.
She stands still for a few more seconds, looking at herself in her underwear, feeling the weaknesses she sees exposed under her own gaze. My strength is hidden by this body, she thinks, hidden even from my own eyes.
But there’s no time for wallowing. Somera dresses again, slipping into the clothes selected for her by her mother and wrapping the nicer headscarf about her head. She can hear a car pulling up in the street outside, its engine sputtering and crackling, its wheels crunching over broken concrete. It stops outside her house, and the sounds of doors opening and closing and the tread of a family come to call follow soon after.
Somera exhales slowly, covered now, her weakness hidden. She squares her shoulders and thinks of Aremos.
“Once more into battle,” she whispers to her own tired face, then turns from her reflection. There’s tea to be made. There are snacks to bring out and guests to greet and, worst of all, a suitor to rebuff. It’s not the battle she wants, but it is the battle she has been given.
She gives her rig, tucked away in its box, one last look of longing before closing her bedroom door. Aremos is the talk of the world at the moment, but Somera is unknown, a nothing, a bauble to be given away.
“Battle indeed,” she scoffs, and heads downstairs.
Chapter Two
Sameer Bharati is the third candidate for Somera’s hand in marriage this year alone. There have been five, all told, and each interview has been disastrous.
The Bharatis are welcomed into Somera’s home, the father imperious, the mother stern, and Sameer himself looking bashful and nervous. Were Somera ever asked to describe a man she’d like to be with, and if she forced herself to come up with a truthful answer, she’d have naturally painted a picture of somebody very much like Aremos: wise and strong, a fierce warrior and a learned mage, powerful yet scholarly. But all the boys she has met so far—she hesitates to call them men—are either so filled with braggadocio, so impressed with themselves that they see little of the world around them, or so unassuming, so uncharismatic as to pale away from the world entirely, that she cannot see anything to make any of them worthy of her consideration.
Of course, they can’t help it. She knows that. They are who they are, and Somera can admit that she has many faults, herself. But why on Earth does everyone want to insist themselves upon her life when they are so alien to her? It infuriates her.
As the Bharatis sit with her parents, Somera brings a tray of tea and plates of sweet pastries and dried fruits, bowing politely like the retiring, modest girl her mother wishes to present to these suitors. Then, she sits and holds her tongue as the parents chatter away, leaving no room in the conversation for either Somera or Sameer to make their mark.
Somera thinks about the other boys her parents arranged to come and see her.
Each time, her mother had been excited. “They are perfect, you will be great together, he is a man with a future…” Over and over, these silly words spilled from her mother’s mouth. Her father had even joined in at times, saying how much he respected so-and-so’s family, this uncle, that grandfather: “A truly great dynasty to tie to our own, I think,” he has said of a few would-be suitors. Somera ground her teeth each time, waiting for a chance to send them each packing.
As the Bharatis and her own parents drone on, the other boys come to her mind.
Somera is not conceited. But she can never see anything in common between herself and all the prospective boys. They seem to want a token wife, a servant in their households. Or they’re as averse to marriage as she is—visibly so, in some cases. They have no interest in settling down, becoming slaves to their wages only to support a wife and children they aren’t yet ready to have. And no chemistry ever sparks between them. On the few occasions when either the prospective suitor or Somera herself have been called upon to speak, either to the group or to one another, they’ve had not much to say.
It’s turgid and awful, she thinks. It has nothing at all to do with who I am or what I am about.
When the boys are called upon to speak, almost every single one has begun to boast straight away, showing off about this or that and telling the room how great they are, how high they are flying, how much their bosses and their bosses’ bosses value them at work. Somera doesn’t see what there is to boast about. The boys haven’t ever been terribly impressive. Their jobs are … fine. Their lives and their views are also fine. No more, no less. They generally have entry-level jobs, earning around twenty-thousand rupees per month.
“Yes, I’ve been there about a year now, on a full twenty-thousand rupees each month—” Sameer says, sitting between his parents on the settee, just as Somera thinks it. She snorts, choking a little on her tea.
“Somera, are you okay?” Mr. Bharati asks politely.
She nods in response, choking a little more as she stifles a laugh. “Yes—yes,” she manages to croak. Swallowing, she tries to get herself under control. “Yes, it just went down the wrong way. I’m sorry. Sorry,” she repeats as her mother tuts. “I’m not usually so clumsy. What an impression.”
“Oh, do not worry.” Mr. Bharati winks. “We are all friends here…”
But Somera is already drifting off as he speaks. The general conversation returns to wherever it had been, and she sits on the outside of it, lost in her own thoughts.
I don’t care about money, she decides.
Twenty-thousand rupees per month is fine. Somera doesn’t need a rich man to shower her in luxury. Whatever these boys earn is irrelevant—it’s the way they boast of it that drives her crazy, completely turning her off. To be so shamelessly prideful about such trivial things is distasteful, and as soon as she hears the words leaving their mouths, she writes those suitors off. Bad eggs, no goods, silly little boys: She won’t have any part in it.
As the conversation carries on around her, Somera feels the pull of Arkhart, as she has felt so many times before. The Bharatis ask her questions from time to time and Somera answers mechanically, always distant, always absent. Their chatter feels meaningless as Somera thinks about her stats. They’re the only thing that’s real to her. They chart her life, they’re her biography, her living memories. Three years or so of slain monsters, completed quests, friendships made, and enemies defeated. They’re Aremos’ soul—and Aremos is her soul, her real self.
Somera sips her tea and chews the corner of a sweet pastry while the two families babble away. As her father begins to talk about his work for the government, she drifts off, leaving the conversation entirely. A quest she had set upon with her warband a few weeks ago comes to her, fresh as the day they completed it.
Ash had messaged her late in the night: Yo Somera, Carrie and Saba are online, they say they have found something in the Mournful Mountains. Fancy a quest?
She�
��d leapt out of bed and plugged herself in. A couple of minutes later, Aremos was stepping through a Realm Gate Portal in the high, snowy northernmost region of Arkhart. His warband was up ahead: Eirrac the dwarven rune-smith, Asba the elven princess, and Sah the changeling, awaiting their comrade in this mighty adventure.
“What is it?” he asked them.
Eirrac pointed to the sky. A frost phoenix was gliding high above. “It appeared in Carral Town a couple of hours ago and led us up here,” Eirrac said, her gruff voice shaking slightly in the cold.
“Do we know where it is leading us?” Aremos asked.
“No,” Asba confessed. “But I think we are getting close, look.” She nodded toward a deep valley off in the distance.
“I can’t see anything,” Aremos replied, squinting in the indicated direction.
“Short sighted humans.” Asba laughed, a merry tinkling. Aremos was already well aware the elven folk have keener eyesight than any of the other creatures in Arkhart. Asba peered ahead, watching something intently.
“Describe it to us, then,” Aremos told her.
“A great mist hangs low, and something large moves through it.”
“A frost giant?”
“I think so,” Asba said.
“I’ll check.” Aremos gathered himself, delving into his magic bar ever so slightly to awaken his Second Sight. Immediately, he found himself able to move over the mountain ranges as easily as the phoenix, high above. Doorways behind which travelers could find all sorts of pathways, dungeons and monsters began to appear through the hills, portals that would be impossible to see with the naked eye. Up ahead, a circle of ghast mods came dancing through a thick forest, their fell magic invisible to normal folk. And there, deep down in a far-off vale, shrouded in mist and surrounded by a deep, biting cold, was the frost giant, striding along twenty feet tall as he swung a crystalline club from one hand.
