by Oliver Mayes
He’d have to head straight there as he was. If Aetherius said it was ok, it would probably be fine.
He pulled his map into the top right corner of his field of vision and extended his finger to tap the newly acquired location. An opaque blue line appeared on the map, with a red arrow indicating his character at one end of it and his destination at the other.
Damien turned and ran past the fighting pit toward the encampment exit, threading his way through the ambling masses without attracting so much as a second glance. The gates were wide open and he attempted to pass through without stopping, only to find himself running in place on the threshold. A pop-up appeared in the middle of his screen and he paused to read it.
‘You have not yet selected a class. If you leave the safe zone you will be vulnerable to attacks from player and non-player characters. The respawn time is 24 hours. Any experience you gain towards the next level will be lost upon death. It is highly advised you select a class before continuing further. Are you sure you wish to leave?’
Damien nodded irritably. He already knew leaving the safe zone without a class was a bad idea but losing this opportunity was a worse one. He’d just have to be very careful. The pop-up disappeared.
Across the threshold of the gate, he broke into a jog. His stamina bar depleted quickly down to 75/100, then it balanced out and started to reduce more slowly.
The well-trodden dirt path of the encampment merged into a sturdy sandstone highway. At least Tintagel should be reasonably safe. It was unlikely there would be player-killing activity so close to a capital city. Players would face severe repercussions from Empire guards if they were caught murdering a fellow citizen in Empire controlled space. They’d end up losing reputation, forfeiting the items and gold they’d looted and wasting valuable game time in a cell, meaning that for all intents and purposes they might as well log out until their sentence was served. Depending on the severity of the crime, that could take longer than death.
Damien’s best defense against players was that he was worthless. You didn’t gain any experience for killing other players. All the risk and reward circled around the potential to steal some quality loot from them. As it stood, Damien had no equipment, no items, no coin, nothing worth having whatsoever. Somehow this did not provide him with much comfort.
His real worry was the in-game mobs that wouldn’t bother to check his level and gear before they tore his defenseless body limb from limb. Damien passed a pair of patrolling knights on horseback heading in the opposite direction and felt a bit safer. If he stuck to the road, he should be just fine.
Camelot was far behind him when a phone icon appeared on the edge of his vision, blinking urgently. There was no indication who it might be. Damien frowned. If it had been Aetherius or Kevin, their player ID would have shown up.
He took the opportunity to replenish his stamina to full, slowing to a walk before focusing on the screen and tilting his head upward very slightly. He was surprised when the minimal movement resulted in the call being answered.
“Hello?”
“Good morning, I’m Liz from the CU Public Service. Am I speaking to Damien Arkwright?”
Damien stopped dead in the middle of the road. If Central Union was calling, it could only be about his mother.
“Yes, you are.”
“Please note that all calls are recorded and any and all information revealed in the call is subject to—”
“I agree. Please tell me that my mom is OK?”
There was a nervous cough before Liz continued.
“There has been no change in your mother’s condition. She is stable, but the hospital has elected to keep her in a comatose state until a suitable—”
“A coma? A coma! Since when has she been in a coma?”
“Your mother arrived in hospital at eight twenty-six yesterday evening, already in a comatose state. After conducting several tests, the hospital concluded it would be safer to keep her comatose rather than reviving her and risk straining her heart further.”
Damien’s own heart plummeted into his stomach. When he did not respond, the woman took the initiative.
“The hospital is attempting to locate a suitable heart for her. They will keep her sedated and treated, but what she really needs is a viable replacement.”
Damien swallowed. He knew where this was going. The healthcare system was not kind to those with limited income.
“Under Health Insurance Policy D, your mother was two hundred and eighty-sixth in line for a new heart matching her blood type. Due to the urgency of her situation, her status has been upgraded to HIP B and she is currently thirty-fifth in the queue.”
So even if thirty-four good hearts were found, Cassandra’s situation would remain unchanged. Damien tried not to think about it and failed spectacularly.
“Sir, I know it’s a lot of information to process. Please take your time.”
“Why can’t she be brought up to HIP A?”
“I’m very sorry, but HIP A is exclusively for bionic replacements which are prohibitively expensive. Is there anyone you can ask for financial assistance?”
Damien hesitated. Cassandra would be furious if she found out, but he preferred her angry and alive.
“You could try my father. He doesn’t live with us. His name is Leonard Arkwrig—”
“I have already contacted Mr. Arkwright on your behalf. Unfortunately, he is unable to assist you with this situation financially. You will still need a guardian to look after you while your mother is in hospital. Mr. Arkwright is the obvious choice, but you’re old enough that the Central Union will take your preference into consideration.”
Damien was caught off guard. His back-up plan had fallen through faster than he could even say the words. On top of that, they were trying to force him to leave his home.
“I want to stay here until my mother comes back. That’s my first choice.”
For the first time since the call started, the voice on the other end of the line went completely silent. Damien had no desire whatsoever to leave his home. It would feel too much like abandoning his mother.
At last the voice came back, but the officious tone was gone.
“Damien, what’s happening to you right now is incredibly hard. I’m very sorry. I’ve been doing this for a few years and I’m familiar with the process. Please may I give you some advice? Not advice from Central Union but from me to you, as honest as I can be?”
Damien stared ahead. Somehow he didn’t think he was going to like what came next.
“Ok. I’m listening.”
“The Central Union won’t allow you to stay in your home without a guardian. If you don’t pick someone for us to approach as your guardian, the system will default to you entering state care. You don’t want to be in state care, Damien, believe me. If you have anyone who might take you in, this is the moment where you have to tell me. I promise you I will try my best to put you together with them.”
Damien could read the underlying message. There was a good chance his mother was never coming home. CU already knew this. Without that bionic heart she was as good as dead. The voice did not move to rush him this time.
The only indication they were still connected was the low murmur of uninvested voices in the background. The voices of CU, where it had already been decided that his mother’s life wasn’t worth the cost of a bionic heart. That thought sat like a burning coal in his gut, fueling his anger and frustration.
Damien kept control of his emotions, but only just.
“Listen to me very carefully, Liz. My mother is going to come out of hospital and she’s going to be fine. She’ll come home, and—and everything will go back to the way it was before. She didn’t work with a heart defect for the last five years so I could leave her to die. I’ll earn the money myself if I have to, but I’m not giving up on her, unlike CU, and I’m not leaving my home!”
He swept his hand through the air and the call was cut. Despite his stamina being full, Damien found himsel
f gasping for air. He closed his eyes, forcing out tears that streamed down his cheeks as he slowly counted to ten.
He’d never cried while playing the game before. It turned the absurd realism of Saga Online’s virtual world into a curse. He used to play this game to escape from his life, welcoming the faithful recreation of his emotions and physical state as a way to fully immerse himself in his character’s story. Having fielded this extremely unpleasant call, the thin line separating his character from himself had never been more blurred.
As the adrenaline left him, he looked up to find he was being stared at by Scawpeous69. The level 6 warrior was equipped considerably better than he was.
Damien could feel his anger rising again. He took in his copy’s dumb look of surprise and the tears that stained his own face, the face that didn’t even seem to belong to him anymore. It felt like the game was mocking him. Something inside him snapped.
“What are you looking at? Isn’t it enough that you stole my identity without listening in on a private call? Go! Away!”
Scawpeous69’s jaw abruptly snapped shut and his features hardened. It was strange being stared at by your own angry face, but Damien didn’t flinch.
The copy kept his weapon sheathed but he walked toward Damien slowly, stopping a few feet away.
“This name wasn’t my first choice either, but too many people got in ahead of me. The character isn’t about the name anyway, it’s about what I do with it. I want to be like Scorpius, who never gives up even when it looks like there’s no way he can win. The name is just to remind me of that.”
He looked Damien up and down before raising an eyebrow.
“You should head back to the encampment and pick a name and class for yourself, even if it’s not your first choice. The real Scorpius would never act the way you’re acting.”
He took in the look of shock on Damien’s face before giving him a satisfied nod and heading off through the crossroads, presumably returning to the encampment to hand in a quest. Damien was confounded. He couldn’t stop himself from yelling out to the warrior’s retreating back.
“But I AM the real Scorpius!”
Scawpeous69 didn’t bother turning around. He simply raised his hand and waved it in the air dismissively as he continued forward.
“Now that’s a delusion I can’t help you with.”
Before Damien even knew how to respond, the figure was too far away. Just when Damien thought things couldn’t get any worse, he’d been chastised by one of his fans for not being enough like himself.
His map was still in the corner of the screen, the blue line beckoning him onward. Between the call from CU and the unwanted advice, he was now running late. Cursing under his breath, Damien wiped his eyes and set to jogging again.
If there was one thing he was learning that day it was that things could always get worse. He wasn’t going to linger at the crossroads and find out how much worse. As long as Aetherius could help him, this could all be fixed.
5
Falling for Aetherius
As it turned out, the dungeon was not connected to the highway. It was in the center of a dense forest, off to one side. Damien would have to go a short distance off-road in order to get there. He looked into the woods, which seemed to devour all light that entered its sinister canopy. A death trap.
He brought up his chat with Aetherius and rattled out a message.
‘Outside the forest. Doesn’t look safe. Can you come and meet me here?’
He stood there waiting for another minute with no response. Had Aetherius not seen it? What if he was in a chat with someone else and by the time he saw Damien’s message it was too late? Damien couldn’t afford to wait any longer. He’d have to risk it.
Tentatively, he made his way off the road toward the edge of the forest and peered inside. The darkness seemed impenetrable, even up close. His imagination conjured up images of all the things that could be lurking there. Not that it mattered; just about anything would be capable of killing him at this stage. A hungry caterpillar would probably pose a serious threat.
Damien summoned his courage and trudged into the forest. As soon as he entered, the darkness was greatly diminished. It was less like shade from the trees overhead and more as if a dark miasma was shielding the forest from the outside, fading away as soon as he passed through it.
Perhaps it was to preserve graphics? Given the incredible displays Damien had seen in the game so far, that seemed unlikely. Whatever the reason, Damien was grateful to be able to see. The forest was considerably less creepy that way.
As he made his way over gnarled roots and grasping branches, his eyes acclimatized further. Despite being dense with trees and undergrowth, the forest was not particularly large and he soon came upon a clearing in the middle, where the trees seemed to pull away as if to uproot themselves and escape from the cavernous hole that lay in the middle.
As Damien approached it, the blue line on his map disappeared. He had reached his destination. Aside from the hole, there was nothing of interest to be seen.
It was about thirty feet across and ringed with a knee-high wall of stone. Was this really the right place? Even if it seemed foreboding and grim, it was just a hole in the ground. Surely it couldn’t be the entrance to a dungeon?
Damien carefully edged toward it and peered inside. The outer edge was ringed with a stone staircase the width of three men standing side by side. Each stair ended in a jagged point, granting the hole the likeness of a gargantuan subterranean worm’s maw.
He could only see about twenty feet down before the darkness swallowed the staircase whole. It made the forest seem jolly by comparison. He edged away from it and folded his arms. Why had Aetherius brought him to this strange place? Come to think of it, why wasn’t he here already?
“You made it!”
Damien whipped around. Standing only a few feet away, wearing his signature smirk that seemed wider than the chasm at Damien’s back, was the most famous of all Saga Online’s streamers.
Aetherius looked every bit as confident and aloof as he did in the streams that Damien had watched reverentially over the two months since the game had begun.
He looked even more glamorous in person, his red and gold robes flowing around him as though he were immersed in the currents of a riptide only he could feel. His long golden hair sat over his pointed elven ears, flowing down over his shoulders. His facial features were typical for an elf, sharp enough to look as though touching them might cause damage.
He regarded Damien through piercing green eyes, the last thing so many of his enemies had seen. Well, until they respawned a day later, anyway.
“Sorry I’m a bit late. You’d be amazed how many people spot me and want to pose for pictures!”
Damien should have been amazed. But after everything that had happened in the brief span between him leaving the encampment and finally meeting with his savior, the emotion that consumed him was relief. He hadn’t realized how exhausted he was until the moment he could finally relax.
With Aetherius on his side, everything was going to be all right. He sat down heavily on the wall encircling the dungeon, bracing himself with both hands as he stared between his feet. It had been an ordeal, but he was safe.
“Hey! What’s that face for? Aren’t you pleased to see me?”
Damien looked up and realized why Aetherius appeared so much taller than him. Technically he was only about a foot taller, but he was also floating a foot off the ground. He drifted over to Damien with his arms folded.
Damien smiled weakly. “Sorry, Aetherius. It really is great to meet you and I’m very grateful you’ve come to help me out, especially with everything else you have going on. It’s just been a really rough day.”
Aetherius unfolded his arms and fanned the palms of his hands downward, descending to the floor softly. The breeze that had been blowing through his clothes subsided.
“Come on, Damien, you fought Toutatis! Remember? Surely a short walk across the zone isn�
��t enough to faze you?”
Damien threw his hands up in the air. Ever since Toutatis had shown up, everything had gone wrong for him and he’d had no one to talk to about it. Finally, he had the ear of someone who might understand.
He wasn’t even sure where to begin, but it didn’t matter. The feelings he’d been repressing for the last sixteen hours poured out of him like an unstoppable flood.
“My mom’s in hospital. She almost died in front of me yesterday after Toutatis, but Kevin gave me a new headset so I could play. I thought if I could play as Scorpius, I’d be able to get enough followers to win the Streamer Competition and pay her hospital bills. When I came online, everybody had already made characters with my name. They even look like me! Then you message me and I think everything will be all right, but on the way here I got a call from CU. My mom needs a new heart and CU wants to put me into foster care! I don’t know what to do. How can I get enough followers to help my mother if everyone’s already playing as me? Aetherius, I know you’re the favorite to win but this is a life and death situation. Please, can you help me?”
The moment Damien had finished talking, he was incredibly embarrassed. He’d only just met this guy and he was blurting out his whole life story. His eyes dropped back to his feet, his face turning crimson with shame. Aetherius had his own problems, but he’d been kind enough to take time out of his professional gaming schedule to give Damien a quick boost. Not to dedicate himself to a noob player indefinitely. Now he probably wouldn’t want to give the boost at all. Damien stood up without taking his eyes off the floor, his arms straight down by his sides and his hands clenched into fists.
