Crystalfire Keep

by J. A. Cipriano

  “Oh, please,” Kayla laughed, “I don’t think we could stand the confusion of that kind of screw-up today.”

  Under her nameplate, she proudly displayed the Purifier of the Flames title. We all did, down to the last man, and that said something, especially if you were to look down from our perch to the crowds below. Granholm Plaza was the place to be for this announcement, after all, though Havoccore’s appearance would be projected in the skies of each Kingdom’s capital. That meant most of the big raid guilds were amassed here, ready to hear the pronouncements from on high as to our success or lack of.

  We weren’t the only ones with the Purifier title, though I was surprised at how few of us there were. A lot of the raiders, it turned out, took the easy way out, if it even was an easy way. I purposefully avoided any talk of the branching paths of the story of the Keep. We had made our own story through it, after all, and I wanted that to remain in my heart and in my memory as canon.

  To the surprise of a few of us and the relief of others, Amethyst and the Sisters of Artemis shared the title of Purifier with us. Crysta, Vanni, and their former guildmistress had a very long talk sometime in the past few days, and while I knew the Promised duo wouldn’t leave us, I thought it did wonders in repairing the tension between the Knights and the Sisters. For me, it was enough to see that, when the chips were down, Amethyst did the right thing, even if it was just a fictional story. What we do in our fantasies, I think, can say as much about us as what we do in the waking world, where society and responsibility reign in our worst tendencies.

  I still thought Kayla wanted to duel Amethyst one day, to bury that hatchet in a proverbial and literal sense.

  Now, to the shock of absolutely no one, Thadivus and his contingent of Elementalis Reclaimed raiders were stuck with a more appropriate and sinister title, Embracers of Wrath. Yeah, we were going to clash again one day, that much was sure, but for now, they were behaving themselves. No doubt Thaddy was still confident in his inevitable victory. While that might be true, I was hoping it wasn’t.

  It was a naïve notion, but I wanted to show him that the right way was the best way. I would even have been happy if Amethyst beat him, just so long as we still made the top one-hundred.

  “Max,” Kayla murmured in my ear, “it’s about to start.”

  I snapped to attention, aided the rest of the way by a quick kiss on my cheek. “Whoa, sorry, I’m with it.”

  Not that there would be any way for me to miss it. There was a round of multi-colored fireworks that exploded across the sky, the flash and booms enough to rouse the deepest of sleepers. As the initial sparks faded, the gigantic image of Havoccore, EO’s community manager and the face of the dev team, represented in the game as a smiling and bespectacled Nix man, appeared in the skies over the Plaza.

  The assembled masses broke into cheers, and as they quieted a little, Havoc began to speak. “Champions of Elementalis, welcome and congratulations! The response and participation to Crystalfire Keep and all the hard work put into Patches 2.0 and 2.1 have been wonderful, and everyone here in the development team have been floored by your enthusiasm. The race to complete Crystalfire Keep has drawn an unprecedented number of players into our world, with more participation than every other raid dungeon combined.”

  A chant in the crowd started to the equivalent of ‘But who won?’, a chant answered after a few moments by Havoccore as he cleared his throat and adjusted his spectacles.

  “Well, I can’t say that I blame all of you for wanting to know. Now, with so many potential winners on this server, I certainly can’t name them all off, though full lists are being published and pushed through the server mail and news systems, as well as archived on the internal wiki. You should be receiving those about … now!”

  Across the breadth of the Plaza, the resounding echo of thousands of Herald trumpets went off in unison. I resisted the instinct to immediately open up the mail message, and shockingly, the rest of my friends did too, especially as the community manager wasn’t done yet.

  “But before you go searching through that, there is one specific announcement I must make, and that is, of course, for our top placing raid group on the server. This is the big one, $250,000 U.S. to every member of the raid that posted the fastest total time to complete all three wings of Crystalfire Keep.”

  A smile came over his face as he glanced over the crowd, well, crowds, continuing he was likely looking at every plaza at once. “This group is actually famous, maybe even infamous in some eyes, on this server.” I could literally feel Thadivus start to puff up, and I saw him stand. “In many ways, they embody what it is we want to see in our players in EO. Smart, flexible, creative,” – Thaddy was about to raise his arms as if he could actually accept the accolade from the floating torso of Havoccore above him – “and inclusive.”

  That popped his bubble.

  “They came out of nowhere, from absolute obscurity to nab one, then two, and now three server firsts, by working together, bringing in others, and tackling problems outside the box.”

  My brain was processing what he was saying, and I knew the answer, even if I couldn’t believe it. I wasn’t alone as those of us who had been sprawled or sitting or cuddling were not on our feet, gathered in a huddle at the edge of the inn’s roof.

  “Your Crystalfire Keep first place winner is the raid team representing the Knights of the Four! Led by their Guildmaster, Shale, they are Kayla, Burndall, Crysta, Wazif, Dunya, Merina, Vindril, Nahma, and Vanni!”

  Kayla threw her arms around my neck as it hit like a thunderbolt. My brain was still trying to reconcile all my anxieties, my lingering feelings of inadequacy, and every put-down I had heard over the last yen years with this moment. Before I could even think to say a thing, Burnie had me around the shoulders, and then we all devolved into one cheering, joyful, tearful mess of a group hug. That was when reality broke through the shell of neurosis and failings that had built up in me and I realized that this was really happening.

  We had done it. Through teamwork, friendship, smarts, guts, love, and maybe more than a little luck, we had beat them. We beat the server, we beat the world, we beat the odds, and most importantly, we beat the system.

  And we weren’t the only winners, not by a long shot. The bet with Dr. Fontaine would help so many people who would be lost without it. Roxanne won, and Chrissy won, and Maria in her hospital bed won, and her family won, and so many others.

  It was almost the happiest day of my life, dwarfed only by Chrissy’s birth and perhaps the moment Kayla and I had professed our love to each other, and it was definitely the greatest moment of my life. Not only was my family’s future secure financially, but this would go down in the server’s history books. We would be known for the future of this game, and if the Internet had any say in it, known about for as long as that information existed.

  Amid the tangle of limbs and echoes of cheers, I finally said it aloud and that made it absolutely real in my mind. “We won.”

  “Yes, Max,” Kayla nodded, our foreheads touching in the close quarters. “We did.”

  With the fact of the matter secure, I kissed Kayla with mad abandon as my friends, my second family danced and cheered. Through all that excitement, I received a direct message that surprised me most of all.

  Amethyst: Congratulations, Shale. You deserve all the praise and … thank you for helping remind me of myself and my principles. Next time, though, you’ll be the one in second place.

  My smile grew as I looked into Kayla’s eyes and responded to her.

  Shale: I can’t wait, Amethyst. I’d be honored to come in second to you.

  I don’t know how long it was after that the party continued. Most of us drifted off to talk to others, to bask in some well-earned praise from the other crowd-goers, and to give their own respects to other worthy competitors. Soon enough, the only ones left on the roof were Kayla and me.

  As the fireworks kept popping overhead, as I gazed longingly into Kayla’s watery blue eyes
, Wynona’s words crept into my mind. We had to have enough Trust to find each other up there, she had been sure of it. What did she say? Think about what I had in common with Kayla and remember we almost certainly lived in the same arcology of Neo Angeles.

  “Are you okay, Max?” I blinked a few times, refocusing from my thoughts to her beautiful face. “You were spacing out there for a moment.”

  “Yeah, I’m good.” I chuckled. “This is still … wow … still sinking in.”

  She smiled brightly and snuggled up a little closer to me. “I don’t think it’s entirely hit me yet either. It’s so dream-like.”

  I don’t know why it hit me then. Maybe it was a fleeting memory of another celebration, right when we started the opening of Crystalfire Keep and first hit the 25-point Trust threshold. We tried talking about so many things, and there was one thing I clearly remembered, something so mundane that we had in common that maybe we could use it somehow.

  “You know, this is going to sound funny to bring up now,” I ventured, “but didn’t you tell me that you love coffee?”

  She quirked her head towards me, giving me that look you give people you suspect of going odd in the head. “Yes, that is something I wouldn’t expect you to bring up now, but yes, I’m a total addict, and I’m not talking that soycafe.” Her face twisted in disgust. “I know not everyone can afford real coffee these days and maybe it’s the snob in me showing, but I cannot stand that crap.”

  I nodded. “I enjoy a cup of the real stuff myself when I can get it. Sadly, that’s not too often.” So far so good, time to see if I could push the envelope, hint at other things. “The last cup I had, I think, was with Crysta in the hospital cafeteria when we were visiting Vanni last week.”

  The Filter did let that through. Maybe we were prying the cracks apart. If Mina could see what I was trying, she could try the same thing.

  “You poor thing,” she soothed, hugging my shoulder. “Well, dear, I don’t think you’ll have to worry about that soon enough.” After a beat, Kayla gave me another sidelong look, as if something were clicking in her head. Did she see what was going on? “You know, hospital coffee is far from the best. Once you get the first payment from the contest, you should find a better coffee place to go to.”

  Still no Filter. “Any suggestions?”

  “Well, as you know, I work in the legal field and so know a lot of avid coffee drinkers.” She grinned. “You’d think that the entire legal system ran on caffeine. Did you know that almost all graduates from law school these days get their first experience with the federal court system?”

  I wasn’t sure what she was driving at, but that had to be a clue, a hint of some kind. I shook my head. “No, but now I do. Does this have to do with coffee …?”

  “I’m getting there, Max.” She frowned for a moment in thought and then snapped her fingers. “Sorry, I lost my train of thought for a moment. Now, coffee, well, I understand a lot of the government court folks love this one nice place that’s only a couple of blocks from the courthouse. It’s a small, local chain but it’s a good one.”

  My eyes widened. Yes, this was all data. All dots that didn’t draw a straight line between us but could be connected. Mina did understand what I was doing, and she realized the same thing that Wynona had told me, that we had to be close geographically.

  “Huh, well, if I ever find that place, I’ll have to check it out,” I mused, trying to not freak out too much in anticipation. “So, how often do you get a cup? I usually like mine in the morning and another cup at night. I find it’s kind of calming despite the stimulants.”

  Kayla was keeping an utterly straight face too, perfectly normal outside of the understandable smile, not that we could poker face the AI. It was in our brain and could shut us up whenever it wanted to. “Oh, I’m like clockwork, three times a day, a mug with each meal, but I usually have my second one out of the house. Work and all that.”

  My eyes flitted to the chronometer. There was time, and that was the last piece I needed. The Internet could answer the rest of my questions. “I think I could get behind an extra cup with lunch, now that I think about it.”

  Kayla smiled. “Oh really?”

  “Definitely.” I let out a slow breath. “Speaking of that, I know we have a little time left, but I wanted to give Chrissy the good news, celebrate with the family.”

  She smiled softly and gave me a quick kiss. “You deserve that, and they deserve that. I know I’ll see you soon.”

  I returned the kiss and smiled back. “Yep, see you soon.”

  Hopefully, far sooner than either of us could hope for.

  When I came out of the dive, I wasn’t alone in my room. Roxanne, I expected, even though after we completed the Keep, I had cut back to my usual two sessions a day, but Chrissy was never there when I came out, at least not until now.

  Roxanne’s look was expectant and a little nervous. After all, she knew what today was and what it meant in its entirety. Chrissy didn’t, though, but she knew about the contest for the Keep. With her mouthless faceplate, chrome or not, you couldn’t see her smile, but I knew it was there. Her optimism and faith in me never wavered, even when they should have. This time, they were fully warranted.

  “So, how did it go?” Roxanne said nonchalantly or at least attempting to make it sound so.

  Chrissy laughed, her voicebox humming along with those beautiful sounds. “He’s smiling, Roxanne, so he did great! Just like I knew he would. My big brother’s too elite for those El Rec jerks, right?”

  I was smiling, at that. How couldn’t I? Even more than our victory, I had the clues and Mina was so close now. “Heck yeah!” I fingered the controls to pull up to a seated position. “We didn’t just beat Thadivus and his buddies.” It took a moment for my mind to process what I was about to say, to put it into reality. “We took the top spot.”

  Roxanne’s eyes widened in disbelief, and she involuntarily took a step back, sitting on the stool by my NSAF set-up. “I’d say you were pulling my leg, but all the monitors say you’re cool as a cucumber. You’re not lying.”

  “See?” Chrissy cooed in triumph. “I knew it! Max wouldn’t let us down!”

  I wiped at a growing tear with my good hand. “Yeah, spud, I won’t let you down. Never again.”

  Our little celebration, a precursor to the bigger ones to follow once the first payments processed, was a heartfelt one over what real food we had in the pantry and Chrissy’s favorite flavors of nutrient paste. I had one eye peeled on the clock though, and as it clicked over to eleven a.m., I looked up from my plate.

  “I need to check on some stuff, see if any of the e-documents have shown from the contest,” I half-fibbed as I excused myself.

  That was good enough for Chrissy, but Roxanne gave me an askance look. “Anything wrong?”

  “Nope.” That was totally not a lie in any degree. “In fact, I think I’ve got some more good news waiting.”

  She pursed her lips a little but wound up laughing instead. “Fine. I’m sure you’ll tell me later.”

  “Oh, yes, definitely.”

  Once I got back to my computer, it only took the most basic level of Internet detective work to put the pieces together. From Mina’s age, I could figure that she was just out of law school herself or possibly still in post-graduate studies, either way referencing her factoid about the court system. More specifically, she referenced the federal court system and the courthouse. It only took a few moments to get the arcology level and street address for the Neo Angeles Federal Legal Center, also known as the Neo Angeles Federal Courthouse.

  From there, I had to sort through the rest of the data. A small coffee place that was part of a local chain within a couple of miles of the Legal Center, that was enough to find a couple of hits. A little more digging pulled up customer reviews and times of business. Throwing away the ones with bad reviews, the ones that only served soycafe, and the one that was only open for breakfast, I had exactly one hit left: Angel City Coffee.

/>   I was calling the Angelwing Transit Line up before I knew what I was doing. Part of me felt I needed to slow down, but my heart was hammering in my chest and my brain was running right along with it. If I was right, if these were the clues I thought they were, this could be the moment that every event of the past months was leading up to.

  Roxanne had a look of confusion on her face as I rolled right past her and out the front door. “Max, what the heck …?”

  I only stopped my wheelchair for a moment and glanced over my shoulder. “I’ve got a date, Roxanne.”

  She stared for a moment with the same expression on her face as when I told her we had won. It didn’t last for nearly as long this time. “Well, wonders never cease. This Mina girl?”

  “Yep.”

  A fresh smile dawned on her lips. “Go get her, Max.”

  The ride itself, normally something I didn’t enjoy in the least, a source of anxiety in and of itself, was just filler, time I wasn’t at that coffee shop yet. I swear I looked at my pocket tablet a thousand times on the way, frustrated as time seemed to slow to a crawl. Even when the Angelwing let me out at the Legal Center, I still felt the crunch of time and the slowness of my wheelchair as I tried to navigate the crowds that shared about zero feeling to help a guy like me out in the least.

  Still, by some miracle, I rolled into Angel City Coffee at 12:02 p.m., flustered and trying to keep my racing heart under control. I wasn’t a teenager for Pete’s sake, but this wasn’t a teenager’s anxiety either. Deep down, there was still the last hurdle in my heart and in my mind, what Mina would think when she saw me, the real me? I told myself that after all we had been through, it wouldn’t matter and yet …

  I shook my head as I elevated my seat slightly, trying to find someone who I could match with Kayla’s face in the game. I had experience with this now, even if it was just with Wynona, but it was something. After a few minutes and almost giving up, I saw her, sitting in a corner booth and gazing out the window.