by Natalie Grey
She peeked into the hall and saw two wolf-beasts sniffing their way toward her.
“I’m close,” Alex said in her ear, making her jump.
“Jesus! Forgot you existed there for a moment. There are two wolves between you and me.”
“They’re not attacking you?”
“Did you hear me swearing?” she retorted.
“No.”
“Then I’m not fighting anything.”
“Right.” He was laughing. “Well, stay back, and I’ll zap them. I barely got through that fight.”
“Nuh-uh. I found a stick, and I’m gonna use it.” Gracie pondered how best to sneak up on the wolves. “I bet I could take two. Just, you know, hang out in case I can’t—”
“Shit!” Alex’s voice rose sharply.
“What? Did you trip over something? I swear, it’s only a matter of time until we run into each other while playing—”
“Bear! There’s a bear! This was not here when I was here before! Oh, shit, it has a lot of health!”
“Do your best, and I’ll be there in a second!” Gracie told him. Apparently, there was no point in preparing a best plan of attack for these two wolves. The name of the game now was speed; get through the wolves and get to Alex.
Gracie burst out of cover and pushed her character to a sprint. It was hardly quiet, and the wolves wheeled around, but they still weren’t ready to attack by the time she bowled into them.
“Hi-yah!” Gracie yelled. She brought the stick down on one of their heads and turned quickly to swipe at the other one, catching Alex’s arm as she did so. “Sorry, sorry! Oof! Look, I said I was sorry!”
“Sorry!” Alex echoed back. “Christ, this thing just took Teef down to half-health with one swipe! What is this?”
“Think you should run?” Gracie asked him as she whacked one wolf with the stick and directed a kick and a punch at the other. “Off. I said geroff! Ha! And stay down!” She turned to the remaining beast and settled into a crouch. “Just you and me, bucko, and you’re standing between a friend in trouble and me.”
“Shit shit shit shit,” Alex was chanting in her ear.
Gracie didn’t wait for the wolf-thing to attack. She lunged at it and landed a flurry of blows on its head. It collapsed, and she swiped her hand around herself to pick up the loot before scrambling up and taking off along the corridor. She could hear the snarls of two animals fighting, and the twang of a bow.
As she ran, she noticed a strange notch in the stick, and a thought occurred to her. Swiping to open her inventory, she grabbed the glowing blue stone and pressed it into place. It flared and the staff split at the end, tendrils of wood grabbing the stone to hold it in place.
“Nice,” she said in satisfaction.
Then she came around the corner and bowled directly into the bear—just straight into its ass. All of her haptics shuddered and her character staggered back, clearly shaking her head in a daze from the way the camera swung and the headset shuddered.
“Oof. That can’t have smelled good,” Gracie joked. Then the bear turned, eyes glowing faintly red and a snarl coming from its throat. “Oh, shit.”
There was something primal about staring down a bear; that was the thing. Bears were freaking huge, and this one had a deranged look to it, at once hulking and ravenous. Its teeth were stained with age and blood.
“Gracie? Gracie!” Alex sounded a bit panicked. “This thing is way too strong for a Level 1.”
“I’m not saying I should fight it on my own, donut brain. I’m saying maybe attack it while it’s not paying attention!”
“Oh! Right.” There was a twang, then a cat snarled and the bear howled in pain. “What now, bear?” Alex asked.
The bear wheeled around.
“Okay, I didn’t have a good plan, here!”
“Oh, for—” Gracie whipped her staff around and slammed it down on the bear’s butt. An arc of blue light trailed away from the gem as it flew through the air, and there was a burst of light when it hit the bear’s fur. The health bar, which had been creeping down, acquired a purple tinge. “What’s the purple?”
“No idea! Wait, maybe it’s a DOT?”
"What?"
"Damage over time."
"No, I know DOT, just didn't catch what you said. Seems right.” Gracie wound up and, as the bear turned once more, whacked it on the nose. “What now, fang-face? All right, Alex, time to sic the cat on it again!”
“Yup, got it. Operation Yo-yo is in full swing!” There was a louder bow twang this time, and the bear gave a shriek. Its health bar went down a significant chunk.
It still swiped at Gracie.
“Not enough yo-yo!” she yelled as she threw herself sideways. “Ow, dammit! Listen, bear, you are just asking for a blue jewel up the nose!”
“What the hell does that even mean?” She could hear Alex shooting and pulling out more arrows, and the snarls and snapping of the two animals fighting.
“I’ll show you in a sec.” Gracie pushed herself up, readied the staff, and swiped at the bear’s legs. Then she brought the staff up and over, slamming it down on the bear again and again. As it wheeled back to her, she jabbed the staff straight into its face.
The haptics shuddered, and the bear collapsed. Its life had been eaten away by the Damage Over Time spell, layered every time Gracie hit it, and between her, Alex, and his pet, the bear hadn’t stood a chance. The corpse trailed away into pixels as they watched, and then the air around Gracie filled with gold sparkles and a glowing 2 appeared.
“Level 2 achieved,” a female voice told her. “You have learned a new skill: Accelerate.” The air filled with sparkles again. “Level 3 achieved. You have learned a new skill: Shock Blast.”
“Oooh.” Gracie watched as the two icons zoomed to the bottom bar.
Alex was kneeling over his pet. A bandage appeared in his hand from nowhere, and then flared and disappeared, with an answering flare on the panther’s deep purple fur. Alex stood, shaking his head.
“Whew, that was something. I think that’s to punish me for trying to help you in the starting zone. Wait, are you Level 3 now?”
“Yeah, this thing must’ve been worth a lot of XP, so thanks for that. Got two shiny new skills to try out.” Gracie hefted her staff. “How do I holster this thing?”
“Swing it up over your back. Hey, that’s a pretty jewel. I just sold mine. Should’ve kept it.”
“Hell, yeah, you should have. Don’t you know the rule? Always keep shiny things.” Gracie holstered her staff and crossed her arms.
“Also, there’s a filter that makes your voice all echoey and cool. I think it’s an Aosi thing.”
“Whoa, really?”
“Yeah, they made this big deal out of it when they launched the game. Your voice gets fed through these filters so you sound like your character ‘should’ sound.” He made finger quotes, which was surprisingly jarring considering his fantasy garb.
“Huh.” Gracie considered. “So if I’d made a male character…”
“I think it would deepen your voice or something? No idea.”
“That’s insane. You can actually be anyone you want here.” She brightened. “Hey, I could be a grizzled old dude yelling at kids to get off my lawn!”
Alex guffawed.
“But before we get too caught up in this, how about we get out of here before more bears show up?”
“You got it.” Alex gave her a thumbs-up. “Huh, wait a sec.” His character’s hand came up to its ear, and its head cocked very strangely to the side. “Yep,” Gracie heard. “No, not—just hanging out with my roommate. Why? What? I’ll be right there.” The head rotated back, and she realized he must have tipped his headset up to get the phone to his ear. “Look, I gotta go,” he told her. “One of our clients is getting audited, apparently. And, uh…how do I put this delicately…”
“They have a lot to hide?” Gracie asked sweetly.
“I didn’t say it,” Alex said innocently. “Okay, looks like y
ou’re on track. I’ll catch up with you later.”
“Later,” Gracie called.
“Wait, forgot to ask. You enjoying the game?”
“Hell, yeah, I am! I get to whack things with a stick!” Gracie waved. “Have fun doing accounting all night.”
“I cannot believe I just got this game and I’m going to spend all night at the office,” Alex grumbled. “Okay, I’ll see you in a bit. Have fun for me, will you?”
“Will do.”
Chapter Four
“Guess I’m on my own,” Gracie murmured as Alex’s character disappeared into pixelated dust. “That’s not so bad, though. World can’t be full of bears, right?”
She gave a nervous look over her shoulder, but the hallway remained empty. After testing that she knew how to get her staff off her back, she trotted down the corridor, going in the direction that sloped vaguely up. There were other caverns, one with a few blue pebbles, but she didn’t find anything else, and she soon emerged onto a path that led between two grass-covered hills.
It was nighttime in this world—perhaps they took their time of day from the player’s location—and a band of stars was scattered across the sky. It was curved instead of being a straight line like the Milky Way, and Gracie stared at it in awe as she walked.
“A beautiful night,” said a voice nearby.
Gracie jumped and swore. She whirled to find a man in pale robes, his hands linked behind his back. He appeared to be unarmed.
“My apologies,” he told her. “I did not mean to startle you.”
“No, it’s…it’s okay.” Gracie tilted her head. “Are you a player or an NPC?”
“I am the warden of these hills,” he said after a moment. “Perhaps you mean, am I one of the ones who has come to visit this new city?” He pointed now, and Gracie looked over to see the city shining faintly on a nearby hill. “No,” the man told her. “No, I keep my vigil here.”
“What vigil?” She was curious now.
“I make sure that those who cross these hills are safe…and that these lands are safe from them, as well.” There was a warning in his tone.
“What does that mean?” Gracie asked.
“It means that these lands hold many secrets and treasures, things valuable to the…” His voice trailed off as he eyed her. “Well, your kind would call them the ‘lower races.’ The fae, the kobolds. I am their warden.”
“I won’t hurt them.” Gracie looked around. “Unless…well, they won’t hurt me, will they?”
“If you do not disturb them, they will not.” The man smiled, although there was little humor in his expression.
“Right.” Gracie felt a chill and had to remind herself that none of this was real. She wasn’t really in the middle of nowhere being warned about bloodthirsty creatures. “Um. So, I just walk to the city, on the road, and…that’s it?”
The man’s lips curved. Again, there was no amusement to it.
“What’s back there?” Gracie gestured behind them. They were on the downslope of a hill, so she could not see what lay in the other direction. She considered. “Can you show me what’s back there? That way—”
She broke off, telling herself not to be stupid. She didn’t need to assure this man that she wasn’t going to hurt the kobolds.
He wasn’t real.
“I could show you,” he said. “To be clear, you wish to see the lands to the east?”
“I, uh… I don’t suppose you’d know if there’s a compass interface in this thing, would you?” Gracie joked. Either she’d said a keyword or the NPC was programmed to help because a compass appeared in the top of her view. She rotated until she was facing east, the direction opposite the city. “Yes, east was what I meant.”
The man turned and walked away silently, and Gracie hurried after him.
“That is a fine stone on your staff,” he commented as he walked.
“Yes, I, uh, I found it in the caves. And the staff, actually.” Gracie felt a sudden surge of humor. “That’s the problem with adventurers, right? They come in, kill everyone, and steal their stuff.” The man shot a glance at her, and she felt another chill before reminding herself, for what felt like the eightieth time that he wasn’t real. Still, she found herself saying, “It’s a…joke.”
“Is it?” He did not sound amused. “Treasure you see and treasure you take / goodness you are, or goodness you wake / blue is the sky, and power, and sea / ancestors’ power, captured for me.” He kept walking, not looking at her.
Gracie paused, but when he did not stop, she had to hurry after him. “What was that? What did you just recite?”
“It is a kobold riddle, or so I’m told.” He reached the crest of the hill and stopped, his hands once again linked behind his back.
He had said there were lower races here, but Gracie saw almost no sign of them. While the city of Kithara glimmered with lamplight, these plains had neither lamps nor fires and only one structure, which was somehow jarring. It was constructed of dark stone and starkly illuminated where it sat on the swell of a hill perhaps a half a mile away.
“What’s that?” Gracie asked.
“A tomb.”
“One person’s tomb? Who was it, a king?”
“Whose? That is lost to us. The kobolds built it, but the fae live there now.” There was a wealth of history in those words. Stories hinted at but not spelled out.
Gracie blinked.
“I offer travelers a quest to get to know these lands if they want it.” The warden NPC looked at her.
“I, uh…yeah, that sounds good.” It wasn’t like she was really out alone at night, after all. She could play around now and go see the city later.
“In the hills behind us, a path leads to a glowing pool. Go to it, and slay three of the beasts nearby.”
“Like the wolf at the glowing pool in the caves?” Gracie asked.
He paused. “Yes,” he said, after a moment. “The beasts are drawn to the magic here. They cannot use it, but they sense its power. The kobolds and the fae have been driven from the sacred pools.”
“Oh.” Gracie looked back down the hill. “Can I…go see the tomb?”
“I told you that the lower races will not bother you if you do not bother them.”
“I don’t want to disturb it,” Gracie assured him. “I just want to see it. Can I?”
“It is not my choice to make.” His voice was calm.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained, Gracie told herself. She squared her shoulders. “I’ll come back if anyone seems irritated.”
He said nothing.
“Fine,” Gracie said. “Uh, good night.” She headed down the hill before turning back. “Thanks for showing me around.”
The NPC nodded slightly.
“Stupid,” Gracie muttered to herself. “You’re being polite to a robot, Gracie.” Still, as she always kidded with Alex, when the robots eventually did rise up, she wanted to be on their good side.
Jay watched the Aosi walk away, her rounded hips swaying under the plain armor, her dark hair shining deep blue under the starlight. She’d done a good job with the character creator.
Well, they all had. Jay had gotten in on the ground floor of Dragon Soul Productions right when they were first starting to develop Metamorphosis Online, and after years of work, the past month had been a giddy process of launching the game and fine-tuning as people began to trickle into the world.
The project meant a lot to him. Fed up with years of trying to prove his worth in the “real” world, he’d sunk almost all of his spare time into MMOs—the only place where he was valued for his quick thinking and accomplishments without anyone caring what he looked like or whether he was awkward sometimes when he talked. He could lead raids, guide his party through dungeons, and respec as often as he liked (a feature the real world was sorely lacking).
The world of Metamorphosis Online was like nothing ever played before, and much had been made of the fact that players could interact with the NPCs to learn about the wor
ld. While that wasn’t exactly a lie, the fact was that many NPCs had a human working behind the scenes to answer out-of-scope questions and file tickets to add those answers to the NPCs’ playlist.
Most players didn’t ask the hill warden for much. Most took the quest, although a lot of them never returned to collect the reward. Some ran off into the hills to kill kobolds and fae and found out the hard way that the lower races could summon minor demons.
This player, Callista, might be intending to do that, but Jay doubted it. He found himself curious about where she was going. There were Easter eggs scattered around, in this part of the game in particular, to reward curious players—and punish some of them—and he wondered which ones she might stumble across.
He activated a party chat. “Andrew.”
“Hey.”
“Could you take over for me with the hill warden? I’m going to roll a character and follow that player.”
There was a pause, during which he imagined Andrew bringing up a live feed of the game. Then his employee laughed. Andrew was famously good-tempered. He found everything funny, but never in a mean way.
“Uh, Jay?”
“Yes?”
“You know that’s probably a dude, right?”
Jay started laughing as well. “Yeah, yeah, I get it. It’s not that.”
“Uh-huh. Sure. Just thank Mike on the way out the door.” Mike headed the graphics team, and he had been instrumental in creating the character models.
Jay laughed, exited out of the GM controls, and headed into the character screen. His fighter, Anders, was already built, and he used his controls to drop himself into the game right next to the hill warden. He gave Andrew a two-fingered salute and ran off, hugging the side of one hill.
He didn’t want to interfere. He wanted to watch and see what she was going to do.
Gracie trudged through the grass, periodically reaching out her hands to brush through it, and then remembering the grass wasn’t real. She wanted to take out her staff to reassure herself, but she didn’t want the kobolds to think she was getting aggressive.
