Reign With Axe And Shield: A Gamelit Fantasy RPG Novel (Metamorphosis Online Book 3)

by Natalie Grey

  He hit Print and headed to the printer on the other side of the floor. A few people called hellos, and he waved. It was good to be back. He hadn't let himself think about how much he’d missed this place, but he really had. He'd missed his teammates, and he had genuinely enjoyed the work he did here.

  The printer was almost finished by the time he got there. Jay waited, then went back to his desk and looked around for some tape and scissors. It was fairly quick work to put the picture up.

  He didn't have any pictures of Gracie, after all...so a picture of Callista would have to do. He grinned at the blue-skinned face. The tank was staring imperiously out into space in her screen grab from the global rankings. You could fully believe that she was some long-lost queen, ascendant in this new world.

  At some point, he'd have to get a proper picture, though.

  He went back to work with a renewed sense of purpose. He took the marker, went back to the whiteboard, and began writing down what he knew about Harry.

  1) Metamorphosis Online was Harry's idea.

  Harry had come up with the world back at the start. Jay didn't know quite how that would inform things, but that was the deal about making lists like this. You didn't know what was important until later.

  2) Harry believed that people should not be allowed to do whatever they wanted in-game because it would make them bad people outside the game.

  Which led quickly to more points. Jay's handwriting was turning into a scrawl.

  3) Dhruv believed the opposite. They fought about it, BUT—

  4) Harry didn't make the quest until Dan and Dhruv booted him out?

  5) Which means maybe there were failsafes built into the rest of the game already.

  6) Or he had some other method of controlling things

  7) Would he plan far enough ahead to account for the idea that maybe the whole game world would go "out of control" and he had to go for a nuclear option?

  Jay capped the marker and sat back in his chair, crossing his arms and staring at the board, then got up to write another point down.

  8) Harry wrote the Yesuan quest

  That was probably important. The problem, of course, was that it meant Harry was batshit loonball insane, although it wasn't as if that was a completely new revelation. Jay scratched his head. He wished Gracie were here.

  Then again, he was glad that she wasn't. She was working on the PvP, and he would be glad to come back to her with at least some idea of a solution rather than just a problem. She would have good ideas; he was sure of that. She’d always had a fairly good sense of Harry's general style—but it would be better to bring her in once Jay had gone over some preliminary thoughts.

  She'd let him know if he was missing anything, he was sure of that.

  He smiled slightly and shook his head, and was still staring at the board, resigned, when Dhruv came into the room. Jay jumped and stood up hastily.

  "No, no, no need to stand." Dhruv waved him back into his chair and sat in the other one, looking at the board. He crossed his arms as he read. "What's the end goal of this list?”

  "Trying to figure out what sort of failsafe Harry would build in, or if he thought to build one in at the start," Jay said. "I still don't even get how he made Gracie's quest, honestly.”

  Dhruv gave a ready grin. "He'd be so fucking mad to hear you call it her quest.”

  Jay laughed. He was still a bit unnerved to be sitting in a room with Dhruv of all people, but the Dragon Soul founder seemed to not be in a confrontational mood. Jay pointed at the board. "I think the thing is this… Harry wrote the Yesuan quest, right? So he knew that people didn't necessarily like the sort of dictator he wanted to be. He got that.”

  Dhruv gave a noise that somehow managed to convey both Harry's melodrama and Dhruv's dislike of it. He gestured for Jay to continue.

  "But did he think it would go wrong enough that he'd need to nuke it from orbit?" Jay asked. "If so, was it meant to reboot the game, or totally kill it? Or was it something more subtle, forcing players into some sort of…re-education?"

  Dhruv gave him a sort of queasy look. "That does sound like something he'd do, doesn't it? Dammit. That’s disturbing."

  "Or," Jay said, "did he have time to build the quest but not anything else—because he had just assumed that he would be able to be in the game with all of the moderation tools? In which case, we're in an Apollo 13 situation, and he's sitting over there trying to figure out how to destroy the game with only the tools he has at his disposal.”

  Dhruv gave a laugh that turned into a cough. "Honestly, I'd assume he built the game with the sort of controls he thought he would need. When he realized he wasn't going to have those, he built the quest. Which means, if we want to know how he thinks, we'll want to know what powers Callista has now.”

  Jay paused. For a moment, he had forgotten who he was talking to, and then he had remembered that Dhruv was not exactly his ally. When he looked over, Dhruv was looking at him shrewdly.

  "Dan made you the offer," he said. "And I intend to stand by it.”

  Jay narrowed his eyes. “But?"

  "What do you mean?" Dhruv asked easily.

  "You don't mean to stand by it," Jay said slowly. "You have doubts.”

  Dhruv thought about this for a moment. "You worked here for, what, three years? You made a good salary, you had a considerable number of friends, and by all accounts, you enjoyed the work you did. Yes? And then you threw all of it away for someone you'd known for a few weeks.”

  Jay, not sure where this was going, kept his mouth shut.

  "Why?" Dhruv asked. "What was it about her?”

  Still, Jay said nothing. Saying the words to Dhruv felt like a betrayal. He wanted to speak about smiling at Gracie on the roof of Saladin's Keep, but that memory was theirs. It was for people who cared about both of them.

  "If she's the woman you think she is," Dhruv said, "you have nothing to worry about." With that not-very-reassuring sentiment, he stood and smiled. "Ask her if she's willing to share the menus she has. You might be surprised.”

  Jay said nothing. He stared at the whiteboard while Dhruv left. The problem, he decided, was that you wanted to like Dhruv. He spoke openly, and he told you when he was angry. You knew what you were working with.

  Jay got up and poked his head out into the hall. "Hey. You have another minute?”

  Dhruv turned to look at him and came back with a curious smile. Jay could see the people nearby craning to get a look as subtly as they could. Jay and Dhruv were on speaking terms? Dhruv was leaving Jay's office without it being a screaming fight? What was going on?

  "Talk to me about the fights," Jay said, tapping the board.

  2) Harry believed that people should not be allowed to do whatever they wanted in-game because it would make them bad people outside the game.

  3) Dhruv believed the opposite. They fought about it, BUT—

  4) Harry didn't make the quest until Dan and Dhruv booted him out???

  Dhruv's eyebrows went up. "And you want a summation that fits in...a minute, I believe you asked for?" He shrugged. "He's a douche.”

  Jay pressed his lips together. "Okay, I deserved that. Do you have enough time to walk me through that part, though?”

  Dhruv heaved a sigh. "Yeah, I think so," he said finally. "I have a meeting with Brightstar, and it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to let them stew a bit." He typed something quickly on his phone and shut the door to Jay's office before starting to pace.

  "Harry liked me," he said finally, "for the same reason he hated me: I talked back to him.”

  Jay sank into his chair and watched the man pace. Dhruv was running his fingers through his dark hair, which he kept on the long side.

  "When we were roommates, it was....fine." Dhruv grimaced. "I thought he was an asshole—not incorrectly—but he was smart and funny, and he was willing to 'try out' letting other people win arguments. By which I mean, he won and lost the same number of arguments; he just admitted when he lo
st them." He rolled his eyes and perched briefly on the arm of the second chair before springing up again to pace some more.

  Apparently, Dhruv did not excel at sitting still.

  "Dan was Harry's kryptonite," Dhruv continued, "because he never just comes out and fights you on anything, he just sort of pivots, and you end up arguing with thin air. Harry couldn't pin him down. He was stupid enough to think that was because Dan agreed with him all the time."

  Dhruv shrugged. "It works for him, I guess, but I don't do things that way. Anyway, the long and short of it was that Harry always had to think of someone winning an encounter. There was the person in charge, and then there was everyone else in some sort of crab-bucket battle royale.”

  Jay blinked, trying to picture this.

  "Harry talked a lot about Metamorphosis when we were in college," Dhruv explained, "but no one thought he could pull it off, and he hadn't built the whole world out. We were the ones who did the early planning and tests with him. We stress-tested his ideas. It wouldn't have been possible without us. He acknowledged that, but he still had to be in charge. He couldn't deal with someone else having a good point, definitely not in public. You could get around him sometimes. You could see him in private, and sort of talk him into agreeing with you, and then he'd pretend the idea was his." Dhruv gave a disgusted look. "Dan found that out. I did it once and... Well, I tried it once.”

  Jay, despite himself, laughed quietly. He couldn't imagine Dhruv sneaking around, trying to maneuver someone into taking credit for his idea.

  "Yeah, laugh it up," Dhruv said sourly. "We had a screaming fight, and I never tried it again. My point is, Harry always had to win. Not only win but be so far ahead that no one else could come close to beating him." He finally sat, dropping gracelessly into a chair. Dhruv in motion was one thing, but at rest, he looked lanky, like a figurine with slightly wrong proportions.

  Jay considered this. "Gracie said there were controls to mute people," he said, "or block them, ban them, that sort of thing.”

  "There we go," Dhruv said. "Now we're getting somewhere. Has she used them?”

  "No." Jay looked at him like he was crazy.

  Dhruv tilted his head to the side. "Why is that so weird a question?”

  "Why would she use them?" Jay said. "She has no interest in—well, okay, if Harry showed up, she'd probably ban his ass.”

  "You know, that I wouldn't mind.”

  Jay gave him a two-finger salute. "I'll tell her that. But otherwise, there's no reason for her to ban anyone.”

  "Mmm." Dhruv looked at him. "You really believe in her, and so far, she's only led you in battle.”

  "It's...that's wrong." Jay shook his head. "You know what you said about Harry? How he always has to win? Gracie isn't in charge of Red Squadron that way. I suppose she does choose where we go and what we do, but it's not absolute. If someone else wanted to do something, they could. It's... She leads by example.”

  Dhruv settled back in his chair.

  "She's not a leader the way Harry would ever think of one," Jay said, at a loss for how else to explain it. "She tells you what she knows, she does what she thinks is right, and she expects other people to do the same. And she collects people who do.”

  "Interesting." Dhruv frowned. "Still, no one rises without being hated. I know for a fact there are people who don't like her.”

  "Your Brightstar executives, for one thing," Jay shot back with a tight smile.

  Dhruv said nothing in reply, but one eyebrow rose sardonically. "My question is this: if you know her so well and she wants people to do the right thing, where is she going to draw that line, Jay? When someone is interfering, when someone is harassing people? How long until she starts to use those powers Harry gave her? How long until she turns into him just because she can?"

  Chapter Seventeen

  "Ushanas!" Gracie called. "Flank right! Right! You have an opening!”

  She looked over her shoulder and swore. Ushanas was casting, hands out and ready to call down a storm of fire from the heavens. The Ocru male had robes of a deep red. Theoretically, they should have looked ridiculous on someone so bulky, but they managed to look insanely intimidating instead.

  Except Gracie knew that Ushanas was about to get steamrolled by the Piskie rogue that had just come in here.

  "Ushanas, get out of there!”

  "Sec!" Ushanas called back. “One—second—more—and—dammit! Oh, hey." The rogue had gotten him, and in a flurry of strikes, had him down to half-health, but the firestorm had begun, and every enemy in the main battle was now taking damage over time as fireballs thudded to the ground.

  Gracie admired the way the game's creators had handled similar animations. If you were on the team targeted, you saw the rain of fire in all its glory. There was roaring, there was burning, your haptics shuddered, and it was hard to see. If you weren't on the team that was targeted, however, you could choose between seeing all of the effects or simply having your opponents glow orange for flame damage, green for earth damage, or blue for frost damage.

  Gracie much preferred the immediacy of seeing the fire and reveling in the chaos of the battle—but she had learned at this point that it hampered accuracy too much. She had reluctantly switched to the other effect for now.

  They were trying to win, after all, not be distracted by the game's particle effects.

  "Come on!" Ushanas called. "Let's go!" He took off, running heavily toward the door at the end of the library.

  The rogue, however, was following them. He hopped along behind Ushanas, applying a slowing poison, hamstringing the mage, and avoiding the rain of fire on the other side of the room. Gracie threw her shield at him, but it didn't do quite enough. He stumbled and got a simple stun, which she used to get Ushanas out of the room, but the rogue was back soon after, running down the hallway after them, and disappearing into stealth.

  "Fuck." Stealth made him slower, but they had no idea what he was planning right now.

  Gracie heaved a sigh as she and Ushanas pelted around the corner and into the long hallway lined with the tumbled-down former suites for Saladin's guests. "If you'd left when I said to, we'd have avoided that kerfuffle.”

  "Aw, come on." Ushanas didn't seem worried. "I wanted to help our D out a little.”

  "Let the D handle itself," Gracie said wryly.

  "You're definitely a chick.”

  Despite herself, Gracie laughed at that. "Lakhesis, Chowder, what's going on? We don't see you over here.”

  "You said east, right?”

  "I said right," Gracie said. She had her character jump to hurdle a fallen block of stone.

  "East is right," Lakhesis said. "On a map.”

  Gracie groaned. "And on your mini-map?”

  "I have mine set to cardinal directions," Lakhesis said.

  "And I was following her," Chowder chimed in.

  "Oooookay." Gracie wanted to stop and bash her head against one of the stone walls, but she knew that wasn't exactly a productive thing to do at this juncture. "Next time, we...well, let's just use cardinal directions from now on. My bad, I guess.”

  "We're coming back around," Lakhesis said. "There was nothing over there anyway. And—goddammit!”

  "What is it?" Gracie asked, although she had a sinking suspicion she already knew.

  "Rogue," Lakhesis said. “Chowder—Chowder, come back. No, stun him. Goddammit.”

  "He's fast," Chowder said defensively. "And he keeps hopping around like crazy, and I can’t…fuck, where the hell is he? Come back here, you little devil munchkin thing!”

  "Should we go back for them?" Ushanas asked.

  Since you're the reason for the rogue being there, yes. Gracie didn't say that. She forced a smile before remembering that Ushanas couldn't see her. "No. Keep running. Guys, corpse-run over to the Dining Hall when you die, okay?”

  "It's a little rude to assume we'll die," Lakhesis said, prickly.

  “Sorry. If you win—“

  "No, we did die,
I'm just saying.”

  Gracie wanted to scream with frustration, but she tried to focus on their objective. She came around the corner and skidded to a halt, jerking her torso back in the real world as a reflex for stopping legs that weren't actually moving.

  There were five defenders waiting for them. Five? How could there be so many?

  She launched into action, throwing her shield and stunning one of them while Ushanas began a group spell, but without any slowing abilities, and without proper melee DPS, they were taken down quickly. Gracie balled her hand into a fist and clenched her teeth as her screen went black and cleared to the blue-and-white of the spirit world.

  "They were waiting for us," she said as she waited to resurrect. "Why do you think that was?”

  No one answered.

  "It was because the rogue warned them," Gracie said, falsely pleasant, "and several of the people there were available because Ushanas had killed them with the firestorm and they resurrected at their own graveyard.”

  "Whoa, hey." Ushanas sounded annoyed now. "Are you blaming me for this?”

  "Yes," Gracie said, her calm breaking now. "Of course, I'm fucking blaming you. I told you to come with me. We had an opening, and you squandered it with defense we didn't need to spend and hamstrung the offense we were trying to run. Yes, I'm blaming you.”

  "Oh, come on, like you don't think it made sense to help our defense out? There were three people there, and they—“

  Gracie wrenched her headset away from her head and stood there staring up at the ceiling of her apartment with her heart pounding.

  She was furious. She had spent this entire morning trying to fight through the distraction and constant unpredictability of PvP, and the rest of her team wasn't putting in the effort. They were constantly drawn off-track, helping allies, attacking enemies, and getting pulled into fights that didn't need to concern them.

  Yes, PvP was uniquely immersive in Metamorphosis Online, but they didn't have the time to waste dicking around right now.

  When Harry showed up, they had to be ready. How could Gracie hope to win against him if her team wouldn't even follow her orders?