Forever Fantasy Online

by Rachel Aaron

  “We will take our lives back,” Arbati agreed, fists tightening. “Then we will make them pay for what was done to us.”

  James swallowed. The warrior wasn’t even looking at him, but he didn’t have to. The raw hatred in his voice had only one target. But before Arbati could go back to taking it out on him, the young warrior returned with several others, bearing a young female jubatus on an improvised stretcher of hide and branches.

  Gray Fang stood up at once. “Bring her here,” she said, pointing to a circle of markings carved into the lodge’s wooden floor.

  The warriors obeyed, placing the unconscious jubatus—whom James could only assume was Scout Lilac—on the floor at the elder’s feet. With a final poisonous glare at James, Arbati rushed to the girl’s side. “Sister,” he said, falling to his knees. “Hang on. It will be different this time. I swear it. We will save you!”

  Elder Gray Fang made no such promises. Her old face was locked in a dour scowl as she leaned down to examine the wound in Lilac’s arm. The arrow itself had broken off, but the shaft was still sticking out of her bicep, and the flesh around it had turned a sickly blackish purple.

  The elder’s face was more serious than ever as she straightened up and began moving her hands over Lilac’s body. Through the crack in the mask, James could see her weaving the glowing magic together. Greens and blues and amber browns—which the same part of his brain that had suddenly learned an entirely new language now recognized as the colors of life, water, and earth—came together in a glorious tapestry between her hands. It looked incredibly impressive, but no matter how many of the beautiful lights the elder wrapped around Lilac’s body, the scout did not stir, and eventually, Gray Fang dropped her hands with a bitter sigh.

  “It does not work,” she said as the magic faded, leaving the ugly black of the wound unchanged. “This is no normal poison.”

  “What do you mean?” Arbati demanded. “Why can you not cleanse her?”

  “I did cleanse her,” the elder snapped. “But the poison is still here, and I do not know why.”

  “I do.”

  Both of their heads snapped around to look at James, who did his best to look confident and too knowledgeable to kill. “You can’t cleanse the poison because it’s not really a poison,” he said authoritatively. “I’m a Naturalist healer, too. I tried the exact same thing you just did when I did the Poison Patrol quest years ago. It didn’t work then, either.”

  “Why not?” Gray Fang demanded.

  Because the quest would be too easy if players could just heal the NPC. James didn’t think they’d like that answer, though, so he went with the explanation he remembered from the quest text. “Because the poison isn’t actually the problem. It’s the curse inside it. The undead have infiltrated the gnolls. They have a dark orb in the canyon below the gnolls’ village that they use to empower tainted poisons into something normal nature magic can’t touch.”

  “How do you know what goes on in the gnolls’ filthy camp?” Arbati asked suspiciously.

  “Because I’m a player,” James said with a shrug. “I’ve done this questline on five characters, and—”

  He cut off with a gasp as Arbati grabbed his collar. “Tell me how to save my sister, demon!”

  “I was getting to that,” James choked out.

  “Then speak,” the warrior snarled in his face.

  James narrowed his eyes. “No.”

  The dry, hot air in the lodge grew glacially cold. “No?” Arbati repeated, his tail lashing. “No?”

  “No,” James said again, setting his jaw stubbornly beneath the mask. “It’s painfully obvious that you both hate me and want me dead, so I’m not telling you a damn thing unless you agree to let me out of here.”

  By the time he finished, Arbati was growling loudly enough to rattle the floorboards. “You will tell me what I need to know,” he said, moving his hands to James’s throat. “Or I will—”

  “What?” James taunted. “Torture it out of me? Beat me even more than you were already doing?”

  “I can do worse,” the warrior promised.

  “But can you do it in time?” James said, tilting his head at the deathly-still Lilac. “Your sister’s only got twenty-four hours before the curse spreads through her entire body. Once she’s completely infected, the lich beneath Red Canyon will be able to open a conduit to fill her soul with ghostfire, and she’ll become undead forever.”

  The look on Arbati’s face when he finished chilled James to his bones, but he couldn’t afford to show weakness. Trading Lilac’s life for freedom felt uncomfortably like taking a hostage, but it was the only escape James could see from this situation. He would happily tell them the entire questline if they’d just agree to let him out of this stupid lodge. Until then, his knowledge of the game was his most valuable resource, and he meant to leverage it as hard as he could.

  “I’ll tell you everything you need to know,” James promised. “But only if you agree to let me go. So what’s it going to be? Beat me up some more, or save your sister?”

  Arbati actually seemed to consider it for a moment, then he let go of James’s neck with a curse. James grinned behind the mask. He’d come up with the plan on the fly, but the more he thought about it, the more he liked it. He’d give the jubatus everything they needed to save Lilac, then he’d collect his gear from his yurt and hightail it to Bastion. The capital city had portals to every important location in FFO. It also had the Portal Keepers, the order of mages who specialized in opening doorways through time and space. If anyone in this new world knew how to get him home, it was them. First, though, he had to get away from the murderous cats.

  Arbati had stepped back to whisper with Gray Fang. Their flattened ears and murderous expressions weren’t encouraging, but James had them over a barrel. Sure enough, Arbati came back a few moments later, tail lashing as he forced the words he clearly did not want to say through his teeth. “Tell us.”

  “After you let me go.”

  The warrior sneered. “So you can vanish or portal or ‘GTFO’ or whatever it is your kind calls it? I think not. You will tell me how to save Lilac first. Once I am satisfied, I promise I will escort you to the edge of the village. After that, you’re on your own.”

  That sounded an awful lot like Arbati was planning to shoot him in the back, but it was probably as good as James was going to get. Using the warrior’s sister against him was giving James a bad taste in his mouth, anyway, so he decided to go for it.

  “You’ve got to smash the lich’s orb,” he said. “There’s a cave system full of undead below the gnoll village in the Red Canyon. It was a dungeon back when this was a game, and the lich who runs all of the undead’s operations in the savanna was the final boss. His laboratory is at the very back of the cave. He has a big glowing orb in there that acts as his hotline…I mean his conduit to the Once King, which is where the ghostfire comes from. Smash that orb, and the curse on Lilac will be broken.”

  That was the quick-and-dirty version of a very long questline, but Arbati was nodding. “I will take a hundred warriors and go at once,” he said, turning on his heel. “We will destroy the filthy gnolls and the undead they hide and save my sister before nightfall.”

  With every word he spoke, James’s stomach sank. He’d meant to give the information and bolt, but now that he’d heard Arbati’s plan, James realized the glaring flaw in his own. “Um, no offense, Arbati—”

  “It’s Ar’Bati,” the warrior growled.

  “You aren’t going to make it,” James finished, talking over him. “You’re talking like this is going to be a simple smash-and-grab, but you used to be in this questline. You know how badly things end for—”

  “That was not me!” Arbati roared. “I am free of the Nightmare’s hold! I will not fall to some stupid ambush set by primitive and weak hyenas, especially since I already know where the ambush will be!”

  “It’s not about the ambush,” James said. “Look, dude, you’re a two-skull, level
fifty NPC. I’m sure you can kick all kinds of asses, but that doesn’t mean shit in this situation. If the original quests are still true in any way, then you’re outnumbered ten to one. Forget a hundred. You could bring every warrior in Windy Lake, and it still wouldn’t be enough. Plus, there’s five, count ’em, five bosses in the Red Canyon dungeon. It’s meant to be a challenge for a full party of players. Your warriors won’t stand a chance.”

  Arbati sneered. “You think we are weak?”

  It wasn’t that, but the last half hour’s train of constant abuse had taught James many things. Mainly, that some of the game’s mechanics, particularly levels and damage, still seemed to be in effect. Without his gear, James estimated he had about 60,000 health. That was pathetic compared to the 350,000 he would have had with his stuff on, but it was still an incredible amount for a low level zone like this. The villagers, on the other hand, were all level 1 to 20, which mean they only hit for 200 damage tops.

  Those tiny numbers were the only explanation for why James was alive right now, but they also meant that Arbati’s plan would be a slaughter. The gnolls of Red Canyon were balanced to be a challenge for players levels twenty-five to thirty. They were tough, hit hard, and came in annoyingly huge packs. Being a higher-level two-skull, Arbati could probably handle a lot of them, but all the other Windy Lake NPCs would be slaughtered, and James didn’t know if they could respawn.

  He closed his eyes with a sigh. He didn’t like where this was going, but he’d taken a gamble when he’d decided to bargain Lilac’s life for his freedom. Technically, he’d held up his end. He’d told them how to save her, but what good was that information if it was impossible? Arbati was the best warrior in Windy Lake, but he was alone in his power. Any attack he mounted was bound to end in disaster. If they didn’t do something, though, Lilac would turn undead, and there’d be no server reset this time.

  But that wasn’t the worst of it. The whole point of the Poison Patrol questline was that the gnolls and their undead masters were planning to slaughter Windy Lake. It was supposed to be up to the players to stop the plot and save the day, but what happened if there were no more players doing the quest and no arbitrary reset to put everything back? Would the invasion just keep going? What would happen to the village?

  James gritted his teeth. This whole thing just got worse and worse the more he thought about it. But as eager as he was to get out of here, there were lines he couldn’t cross, and running away while an entire village got slaughtered—even a village that hated him—was definitely one of those.

  “Let me help.”

  “What?” cried Arbati.

  “Why would you help us?” Gray Fang asked at the same time. “We are your enemy.”

  “No,” James said patiently. “You think I’m your enemy. But I like Windy Lake. I chose to live here, remember? And I don’t want to see it reduced to smoking ruins by the undead, so here’s my proposal.” He turned to Arbati. “I told you how to save Lilac, but there’s no way you can get through the gnoll camp or the dungeon below it on your own. I, on the other hand, am a level eighty. I can solo that whole place no problem. All you have to do is give me back my gear, and I’ll go kill everything and break the orb for you. Lilac will be saved, and you won’t have to do a thing. How does that sound?”

  “Like a lie,” Arbati snarled. “Let you go alone? You’d run the minute our backs were turned.”

  “You were going to let me go after I gave you the information anyway,” James reminded him. “Or was that a lie?”

  The warrior looked insulted. “I am not dishonorable like your kind,” he said stiffly. “But I will not trust my sister’s life to a player.”

  “You can’t do it,” James said plainly, earning himself another snarl. “I’m just telling you the truth. There’s no way you can save Lilac on your own, so unless you’re willing to kill her yourself before she turns undead, you have to trust me. You always died before the time limit, so you’ve never seen how this quest event plays out if players fail to smash the orb in time.”

  “But you have?” Arbati spat.

  James nodded. “Once Lilac’s body is filled with ghostfire, she turns into a three-skull boss, slaughters your entire village, and fills the corpses of everyone you’ve ever loved with ghostfire. It’s implied that the gnoll army arrives to claim your land after that, but the servers always reset before they got here, so I never saw if that was true. But there doesn’t seem to be a server anymore, or a reset. If you let Lilac turn, that’s it. No one wants that to happen, but unlike you, I can solve this problem easily. Just let me go.”

  Arbati’s answer to that was to spit on James’s foot. “If you’re lucky, we will let you live in miserable servitude to pay for what you’ve done to us!”

  “Come on!” James yelled, dancing back. “I’m trying to help you here!”

  “We don’t want your help, player,” the jubatus snarled. “I’ve been forced to accept your help for eighty years! My people have served your petty vanities, suffered for your heroics, and endured your mockeries for decades. You deserve nothing but our hate!”

  “That’s not our fault!” James said. “Of course we didn’t take things seriously. We didn’t know you were real. We thought this was a game!”

  “I don’t care what you thought!” the warrior growled. “I care what you did! Now I will keep my promise to escort you out of the village in exchange for the information about my sister, but beyond that, I give nothing. If I catch you in the savanna again, I will slaughter you before you see me coming.”

  “Did you not listen to anything I just said?” James asked angrily. “You can’t do this without me! I am your only—”

  “No,” Gray Fang said, her sharp voice cutting through the room. When James turned to look at her, the old woman’s face was resolute.

  “I do not want Lilac to die,” she said. “Like the Ar’Bati, she is my grandchild, my own blood. I want nothing more than to see her rise from that stretcher and run into the planes as she always does, but your price is too high.”

  “But I’m not asking a price,” James said. “All you have to do is let me go and—”

  “That is the price,” she snapped, her eyes narrowing. “I saw your lightning in the square. You have the power of the greatest Naturalists, but you are decades too young to understand it. If you were one of us, you would be our savior, but I have seen too much of the violence players do. The evil you create.”

  She looked back over her shoulder at the village. “Whether you imprisoned us knowingly or not, you bring out a hate in my people that we have never known before. Deeper even than our hatred for the gnolls who stole our ancestors’ lands. As spiritual leader of the four clans, I would rather kill poor Lilac with my own hands than see you corrupt who we are any further.”

  “Grandmother!” Arbati cried, but the elder held up her hand.

  “You might be the most dangerous of them all,” she said, turning her eyes on James. “Trapped in this lodge, I have watched you come and go from our village for a very long time. You stopped participating in our village’s quests and events ages ago, but still you stayed. I’ve long feared that you desired something from us beyond experience points, reputation, or items, but whatever you want from my people, we do not want you. You and your kind are as great a threat to us as the undead, and while I would much rather kill you, I will be satisfied to never see your face in our lands again.”

  Her pronouncement done, the wrinkled jubatus took a long puff on her pipe. James, however, couldn’t say a word. He was dying to explain that he’d stayed in Windy Lake because he liked it here. He found the history and atmosphere of the jubatus village more soothing and homelike than anything in his own world. But how did you explain to someone that you used their life to escape? The language of Wind and Grass had no words for computer, video game, or MMO FSVR RPG. Even with all the new knowledge that had been shoved into James’s head, there was still so much frame of reference missing that it was impossible
to explain to the elder that while this had been a game, it had been so much more than that to him. FFO had been his sanctuary, his escape from the hell of his life. Now he was in it, actually here, but everything was all wrong, and that was horrifying.

  He wanted to help, James realized with a jolt. It wasn’t just a ploy. He needed to save this place that had been his home in game, because being told to walk away was too sad for him to bear. To do that, though, he had to convince these people he wasn’t the monster they saw, and without any common reference, the only way to do that was to tell the truth.

  The actual truth.

  “You want to know who I am?” James said, ears drooping. “I’m a loser. In my world, I owe more money than I can ever pay back. I blew my life there by wasting my time in here, pretending to be someone I wasn’t. Worse, I got my parents into debt as well. My little sister couldn’t get loans for her own education because I’d already leveraged our entire family to the hilt. I don’t even have a degree to show for it, no trade skills or craft. My life is shit, and it’s all my fault, because I’m a loser who runs from his problems and is going to die overworked, unloved, and alone.”

  These were not words he’d wanted to say to a stranger. They weren’t even words he’d managed to say to Tina, the person who deserved to hear them the most. They were, however, the words he’d told himself every day since he’d realized he could no longer afford his classes. Words that haunted him every time he’d had to find a second job, or a third one, just to make his payments.

  “Demon? Slaver? Monster?” James shook his head. “I’m afraid all I can offer you is disappointment. In his own world, this mysterious and dreadful being from the Nightmare is just a twenty-eight-year-old college dropout, but that’s not who I am here.”

  James looked Gray Fang straight in the eyes. “You want to know why I stayed in Windy Lake even after I didn’t need the quests? Because I liked it. Even though none of you could actually talk to me, I felt like I had a village. A home. I used to help fight the monster version of Lilac when other players failed to save her in time. I didn’t have to, and it didn’t make a difference in the quest, but I just hated seeing Windy Lake destroyed, because it was my village, too. And while I know now that I had no right to think that, I still don’t want to see it burn. I don’t want Lilac to die or the savanna to fall to the undead. I don’t want any of it, but unlike in my real life back home, I can fix this. I have the power here to change things for the better. Clearing the Red Canyon in time to save Lilac will be easy for me, so please, let me help. I know it won’t atone for what I unknowingly did back when this was a game, but it will save lives now, which is what we both want.”