Goodness. This felt like an unfair throwback. More to the point, how had James worked that into the backstory of the very game? Either the Voice had clearly abused everything to insert my face into an artificial construct’s past, or both these girls were mistaken.
I did my best to keep calm and level-headed. “It will be okay if they do what they’re told.”
“You’re not really going to kill her, are you?” Beth asked.
“If I have to, I will.” I hated, hated, hated lying to Beth. My face managed to keep fairly straight. That silly [Act: Straight Face] already paid off.
My mind flickered back to the issue with my original Ultimate Edition trials. One thing had become clear to me recently—the Voices had plotted long and deep. James had picked each trial in the room, so having one come back to face me like this should have been expected. After all, [Red Imp]s hated green, and I had stood in it.
Xin’s ghost in the machine haunting me since day one of the game was no accident. Dusk himself followed me around. Then there was SheHulk, also known as Elane. Part of me grew chilled, and the back of my neck tingled with the edge of an epiphany. Vice President Riley had pointed it out—they were screening me, testing me for something.
No. I shook my head. Now was not the time. Therapy said to focus on one item, solve it, then move on. Too many issues would overwhelm me and spiral everything back down to the pits of depression.
“Read the letter.” I waved Cathryn’s scroll in my other hand. [Morrigu’s Gift] remained pressed against her neck.
“No,” she said, resolute in her defiance.
A familiar set of jaws clacked together after a yawn. I tilted my head back a little. The little guy had always been nearby. Now he would be perfect to add credibility to my claim. A [Messenger’s Pet].
“Dusk!” I shouted.
Dusk leapt down and spun a lazy circle over our heads. Finally, he headed for the wall and clung to it like a soaring gecko. Or a flying squirrel, dragon, bundle of neatness. I liked him a lot, even if he was part of the [NPC Conspiracy] to test my sanity.
“Look, sister,” Katelyn said, one finger pointed at Dusk. “He has a Messenger’s Pet.”
“So?” Cathryn’s eyes were blinking fast. Her heartbeat sped a little. I could feel her rapidly losing any composure she had left.
The [Messenger’s Pet] crawled down the wall a few more feet and onto my shoulder. Dusk yawned, then coughed out a small ball of fire that sizzled the princess’s hair.
“So take the message. You know as well as I that a Messenger’s Pet means there is something to tell us.” Katelyn tried to step past her guards, but they refused to part.
“Fine.” The angry princess in my hands snorted. “I’ll console myself with the fact that this fiend will soon be dead.”
Cathryn yanked the letter out of my hand. The seal cracked as she unrolled the letter. Katelyn read hers at the same time. I held my breath until the system message displayed success.
Message Delivered to: Katelyn
Message Status: Read
Message Delivered to: Cathryn
Message Status: Read
I let her go, and [Blink]ed to the balcony above. My part in this crazy fiasco ended right here. In the future, I would avoid player-versus-player stupidity that involved Locals. Maybe Cathryn’s army would lunge for Katelyn’s; maybe the players would snarl and posture. I didn’t care anymore. Both sides were left to their own devices.
No one followed me.
I found a high spot on the top of the castle and hid. That was where I sat shaking and tried to keep myself together.
This had not been my plan in life. Nothing about those recent actions struck true to the self-image I had built over the decades. Part of me felt lost, confused, and flustered about the huge betrayal of myself that had just occurred.
At least I hadn’t had to kill anyone. No, the game had reduced everything down to holding one woman at knifepoint after saving the other from spells being cast.
Mixed up chuckles came out as I thought about it. I held out a hand, but it was shaking. The beating inside my chest felt louder with every passing moment. Near-maddening thoughts crawled across my mind.
I had held a young girl at knifepoint for the chance to save a digital rendition of the woman I loved. The woman who haunted every moment of my life the minute any mental walls came tumbling down. The one I had danced with for hours every night before playing this silly game.
What exactly had the Voices turned me into?
This was batty.
“No, I am crazy,” I said. “Outright mental.”
God. Beth had been present for that entire act. Her uncle’s desperation. Liz might see it next, then after that would come the silent judgment and questioning glances. Liz loved me, she supported me, but I was the weak one in our family. Despite us being twins, part of her had always treated me like a baby brother.
For a moment, I stared over the edge and wondered what would happen if I stepped off. Then part of me remembered this was just a game. Stepping off here would be useless.
Damn. I’d told James that the thought of suicide hadn’t occurred to me for a while. Part of me had hoped that maybe this game had cured me. But reality never solved anything this quickly. A month in real life? Four months in-game? My character had come a long way and a lot of things had happened to me, but none of that meant my condition was cured.
The answer should be the same. Focus on one thing at a time, remember my exercises. Soon pacing around the tower’s top turned to imaginary dancing. A tight ballroom sway and idle usage of the [Hum] skill pulled me back from the edge.
After a while, I felt better. “Messages Delivered” went out to the Voices above. Once that happened, I went back to dancing, imagining how much better the world would be if only this Xin were real enough. Up here, in the solitude of wind hundreds of feet up, things felt almost right. The height didn’t bother me like it might have a few months ago.
An hour passed in-game. Below, a clear end of the war was occurring. Dead bodies were being carted around. Players vanished in digital special effects. Most of it was muffled and indistinct.
Thorny: Uncle Grant?
I did a few more spins around the tower top, but the moment drifted away. This location contained no partner to dance with. Finally, I addressed the message from my niece.
Hermes: Hi, Beth. Sorry about that.
Thorny: That was incredible, and insane, but awesome, what was that skill? Can you teach me? Katelyn says thank you. You should come meet Mister C! He was stuck outside the wall and says you whooshed by him.
Hermes: It’s a long story. Not right now though. I need to cool off after that.
Thorny: Okay! Are you coming over for dinner this weekend?
Hermes: Sure.
Thorny: Tell me all about it then! I know Mom will be annoyed, but I’m dying to know. No, wait, I’ll find you.
I tried not to feel bittersweet about her word choice. Beth, my niece who flirted with death in this world as if it was a sugar high. It felt wrong that she took it so nonchalantly. Instead of letting those feelings show, I just sent a “sure” back and sat down.
The sun slowly set in the distance. No response from the Voices above came through. This waiting game felt annoyingly familiar. They were either debating in that strange room of blackness or waiting on another event.
Ten minutes later, a hand came over the tower’s lip. Attached to the limb was a female that huffed and groaned while pulling. It sounded familiar. I bit one lip while debating if fleeing would be best.
Finally, after a few minutes and a close call in which she almost slipped, SweetPea made it up to the top. She rolled to one side and scrambled back toward the tower’s tip. We were a long way off the ground.
I raised an eyebrow and gave a small wave. The young player pulled down her knitted cap. A few months in-game hadn’t changed her shy actions.
“Mister Carver?” she finally spoke up.
“No.” I shook my head while biting a lip. “William Carver is dead.”
“But you have his weapon and the little dragon.” She looked teary about my denial. Seeing that an old man meant so much to her felt strange.
“Dusk. His name is Dusk,” I said.
The [Messenger’s Pet] was flying about, killing small birds that looked like pigeons. He seemed content to let me dance about the tower’s top without supervision.
“But…”
“I’m not William, SweetPea, I’m sorry.”
“I told you it wasn’t him.” Shadow faded in nearby. I didn’t even feel the need to jump. He’d certainly reached new heights with those stealth skills.
“He knows about the Legacy Wish though!” Awesome Jr.’s voice shouted from below where he remained.
“And that old man was a player! I finally figured out what he meant!” HotPants was down with Awesome Jr. somewhere. I could imagine an upset look mixed with pride on her face.
I could only smile. These four were interesting. They had crossed my mind off and on over the course of my adventures as Hermes. Seeing them at this intense battle brought a dose of nostalgia. As if everything returned to familiar shapes.
“I’m not Carver, but I can tell you he died happy.”
“Are you sure? We let him down at the end. We—”
“No, Carver didn’t have much life in him, not anymore. You all gave him a hero’s parting.” I tried to reassure them. William Carver’s autopilot had expressed happiness regarding the whole process. “I think you all did an awesome job.”
“Awesome’s my father!” Awesome Jr. shouted. There was a solid whack that sounded like wood being cracked. “Ow!”
“Well?” HotPants said in a low voice.
Footsteps clearly sounded on the brick stairs below. My humming must have drowned them out before. Or the shouts from below where players roamed about the courtyard and battlefield. Requiem would have been at home out there, looting the dead for a few extra dollars.
My face twisted for a moment.
“Who are you all? Do you know Un… Hermes?” Beth’s voice came up from below as well.
“Ummm… we’re not sure,” Awesome Jr. said. He seemed to be answering for the entire group. There was a pause in the conversation.
“Adam?” Beth said at long last.
“Elizabeth?” Awesome Jr. responded.
She must have recognized him from real life. Beth turned giddy with one word. She never wavered in that bubbly response to situations. “Beth.” She even managed to sound happy when correcting someone. “So if you’re here, then is Melissa?”
“Yeah, she’s up there talking to that Hermes guy,” Awesome Jr. said. He sounded a bit older than Requiem. The highs and lows were easier to pick out in all four of their voices now that my hearing wasn’t muddled by Old Man Carver.
“That’s my uncle.” She sounded proud.
They chatted away. I faded out since the messenger’s tube finally heated as something came in from the Voices. My eyes closed and lips flattened together.
“Player mesh in action, who knew?” Beth’s face probably had that glowing smile to it. I vaguely remembered her telling me the game matched us up with people we knew out in reality.
My fingers slid across the tube’s cap slowly. I took a few deep breaths before opening it. SweetPea and Shadow were chatting with Beth. Probably about me or each other—my brain could barely focus on anything.
I pulled out the short note. A gut feeling told me of impending failure and disappointment. This small letter couldn’t possibly be good news.
Hermes,
Can you kill a man?
– :)
The Jester. My heart skipped a beat and my blood ran cold. The top of this tower suddenly felt a bit chillier. Despite the fear in my heart, I wrote a message back. “Will it help save whatever remains of Xin?”
“Are you okay, Hermes?” my niece asked.
I shook my head. No, this situation felt a million miles away from right or “okay.”
SweetPea scooted to the edge and responded to the others for me. “He doesn’t look good.”
“Rough day,” I muttered.
A second message came down from above.
Hermes,
Perhaps. You are no longer able to complete the quest in our world. Can you complete it in yours? Can you kill Requiem Mass?
– :)
They were really driving this point home. I felt badgered into a one-sided situation. Like they were trying to reduce my life to a childish question where there were only two choices. Xin or Requiem, which life meant more?
For Xin? There was no good answer to that. Right now though, I was not in a stable frame of mind. Without a way around this quest, Xin wouldn’t be allowed to complete Genesis. Then again, maybe I was overthinking it.
I couldn’t fail her twice. Parchment became scribbled with shaky words. “I will do what is needed,” the note said.
The Jester, if that’s who it was, sent me another message. Its response said, “We need to talk then. Figure out a way to die.”
It only took me a moment to puzzle out what the Jester meant. We would speak again soon in that room.
“Hermes?” my niece said with a worried tone.
I chewed on my lip hard enough to draw a trickle of blood. Finally, I took the note from Xin.
I didn’t like hiding anything from my family. Yet none of this would make sense or sound sane. Even Vice President Riley didn’t know all the details of my fiancée’s recreation. It was that vague spark of hope that kept me together while dealing with Requiem.
And drove me to do crazy things. I closed up the container, put it back into player inventory, and stared at the parchment in my hands.
“What’s that?” Shadow asked. He sat on the edge of our coned rooftop. The slope barely bothered him.
I liked these people. They felt earnest compared to most of the other Travelers. Awesome Jr. and SweetPea were childlike in their innocence about this other world. Maybe my preference was a simple lack of being with them for more than a few adventures. Perhaps it was the shine of an unjaded person. Minus HotPants, goodness.
“You know, someone else gave me the name Hermes, and I didn’t understand why at first.”
“The messenger thing, right?” Shadow asked.
I nodded while unrolling the parchment just before rolling it back up. Over and over the motion went while I nibbled on a damaged lip. “Among other things. But I found this story, an old, old one from Greece. In it, there’s this woman, Pandora. She had been blessed by all the Gods.”
“Yeah. She had a box, and when someone opened it, all the evil in the world was let loose.” SweetPea nodded which made her hood slip around.
I checked my own head for [Wild Bill] and found it sitting there comfortably. “The story isn’t that simple.” I tried not to be annoyed at them for derailing me. “And that wasn’t my point.”
“Oh,” she said.
“In the story, Pandora was the first woman on earth. Like Eve for the Greeks, I guess. Athena gave her the skills to clothe herself. Aphrodite gave her grace and longing.” I blinked a few times.
“What does that have to do with the letter?” Shadow asked. His voice still did that amazingly gruff dip.
“Hermes was also charged with giving Pandora a gift.” I managed to keep my tone steady. Not emotionless, just not broken enough to crack.
Shadow shook his head. “What are you talking about?”
“Hermes gave her the ability to speak,” I said.
“I still don’t get what that has to do with the letter,” the young teen in his black gear said.
“This is from my Pandora.” The similarity felt staggering as my mind put it together. How many parallels could I draw between my life and the legends of Hermes? More than a few at this rate.
“Pandora’s box had hope in it, right?” SweetPea said.
“It might not have been a box. It might have been an urn.
But there are two translations of the word used by the Greeks: hope and expectation,” I said. I had researched the material we were talking about during one of my days out working. Not everything had been dedicated to Requiem and survival videos.
“I still don’t get it,” Shadow said.
“This is my Pandora, my hope, my expectation, and I must give her a voice.” It didn’t make complete sense, but in a twisted way, the words felt right. Xin wouldn’t truly exist until I performed this task. I didn’t feel right smiling. Not with what was about to happen.
“Give this to Beth, please?” I whispered to SweetPea.
She looked confused while meeting my stare. The smile I tried to share felt torn. The young girl took the scroll and nodded sharply once.
I leapt off the tower. This was a land full of realism and sensation that touched every movement. [Awareness Heightening] kicked in to paint every single second on the way down.
SweetPea’s face twisted with a look of utter horror. Beth’s dismay as she ran to the edge to look over at me. Tower bricks, a wall’s edge, and finally the ground that met my dive with an uncaring force. The act of outright killing myself came with disturbing ease.
You have died.
Blackness hung around me again. At one point, the idea of fighting against all odds to stay alive controlled my actions. Revisiting the Jester in this space between seemed like a terrible idea.
Yet here I stood.
I expected the sense of vastness to the dark space. As before, with the Voices, there were other things hovering in the blackness about me. My neck tingled as something unseen came closer.
It got worse. The hair on my neck shivered and stood up. My ear twitched as something unbreathing came too close. Fingers curled around my shoulder, and a face slid into view beside the other. The movement happened so suddenly that it felt almost instantaneous.
“Hermes, you’ve made it. You must have been dying to talk to me.” It clacked and gave a short laugh.
I flinched away and the Jester spun merrily to another part of the room, laughing. I couldn’t risk talking in front of it. The Jester still freaked me out. Being here was more a matter of need than any sort of want. This felt like walking into a spider’s lair in desperation, or hopeful expectation.
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