by Natalie Grey
Gracie laughed and held up her glass in a mock toast. “To gainful employment.”
He waved his glass at her. “Hey, just putting it out there again: you get a sponsorship and that ranking money together, and you’ll be out-earning a dealer job.” Alex leaned back as the waitress put down their burgers. Gracie noticed he avoided looking at the woman, although he was clearly very aware of her.
She mentally rolled her eyes. She understood why Alex was gun-shy. From the very little he’d told her about it, his divorce had been deeply unpleasant.
But this was ridiculous.
“I still think the ranking’s a mistake,” she said, taking a bite of her burger. “I— Oh, fuck, this is good.”
“Right?” Alex asked around a mouthful of his own.
Gracie gave a wide-eyed nod. “A-ey-way…mmf.” She swallowed. “Anyway, I was saying, I think that ranking’s not going to stick. I’ll have to give that money back.”
“I don’t know. That quest you mentioned last night? Long May She Reign? It’s not in any of the stuff they’ve put out, and I don’t see it in the forums,” Alex said. “I think it may be an Easter egg, and you’ve gotten a ranking boost from the temple thing. I bet they come back and tell you it’s all real.”
Gracie shrugged. Privately, she didn’t think he was correct, but the burger was too good for her to want to talk.
They chatted as they ate, and pretty soon Alex looked at his watch. “All right, I think I’ve hit the limits of a business lunch.” He pulled some cash out of his wallet. “Will you take care of getting this to her?”
“Yeah.” Gracie smiled at him. “Thanks for talking. I feel better. And for lunch. And for helping me with rent this month.”
“Gracie, it’s fine.” He grabbed his napkin and wiped the burger off his hands. “Damn, I need to go wash up. But seriously, Gracie, it’s fine.”
“It’s not. I’ll pay you back.”
“I know. That’s why it’s fine.” He gave her a grin and a shoulder clasp as he headed out.
Gracie waited, tapping her fingers, and then, in a stroke of inspiration, fished a pen out of her bag and scribbled on one of the napkins. When the waitress came back, Gracie was waiting—and because she was watching, she saw the woman’s face fall when she noticed Alex wasn’t there anymore.
“Aha!” Gracie said.
“What?” the woman asked.
“Uh, one sec. First, this is for lunch.” Gracie held out the cash. “That covers it, right? One sec, let me get more for the tip. There you go.”
“Thank you.”
“No problem. And now…” Gracie held out the paper napkin. “This is my roommate’s number. Saw you checking him out, and he’s a good dude. And he’s definitely interested. Just a bit gun-shy.”
“I know the feeling.” The waitress flexed her hand to look at where a wedding band would have sat.
“Ah, you do know the feeling.” Gracie nodded at the slip of paper. “Give him a call.”
“I… Yeah, I think I will.” The waitress looked at the piece of paper, then back up. “I mean, if you’re sure—”
“Very sure,” Gracie assured her. She headed out with a wave, very much cheered up by her lunch.
The apartment didn’t seem quite as grim as she’d anticipated. After hearing Alex’s perspective, she was able to let herself relax as she flopped on the couch. She would get a job. There was no shortage of jobs, after all. She’d wait tables if she had to.
In the meantime, she would enjoy taking the rest of the day off without having to dread her next shift at work.
Gracie took a long shower, humming to herself, and fixed a snack before heading back to the couch. For some people, a giant burger with cheese and bacon, not to mention a heaping side of fries, an order of mozzarella sticks, and a beer, would be enough to keep them for more than an hour. Not Gracie. She looked at the assortment of food she’d brought, then headed back to the kitchen and grabbed a bag of potato chips as well.
She’d play some Metamorphosis, she decided, then go grocery shopping.
When she logged on, though, she was surprised to see Jay online. He was at the temple, but unlike his usual, there was no chat invitation.
Frowning, Gracie headed to the mountain and trudged up the paths. She thought she heard some fae laughing, flickering at the corners of her vision, and she smiled at how lifelike this place was now.
She found Jay sitting on a toppled column, looking out at Kithara.
“Hey.” Gracie came to stand beside him. “You okay?”
“Not really.” Jay sighed. “I got fired today.”
“No shit.” Gracie looked at him. “Me, too. Why’d you get fired? You don’t have to tell me,” she added hastily.
“No, it’s okay. I just… Well, they wanted me to do something that wasn’t right, and I wouldn’t do it.” He shrugged. His arms were crossed over his chest. “I just threw away my dream job. I know I did the right thing, but it still feels like shit.”
“God, I’m sorry.” Gracie felt a twist of sympathy. “Well, you did the right thing, yeah? And I’m sure anyone you want to work for will understand that on your record.”
“Right.” He didn’t sound convinced, but he did sound pleased for some reason. “Well, what’s done is done. The bridge has been thoroughly burned.”
“You know,” Gracie said, “one of my college roommates used to say that sometimes you need to burn bridges to make sure you don’t walk back over them.”
Jay was silent as he looked at her. “I like that,” he said finally. “I like that a lot.”
“Yeah, she was always braver than me.” Gracie shrugged. “Anyway, what do you say we totally ignore our problems for today and dick around online?” A ding sounded. “Oh, hey, Chowder’s online.”
“Let’s party up,” Jay said. He sounded much happier. “Now that I’ve had some time to wallow, I could stand to hit a few things.”
“I also suggest beer and fried cheese,” Gracie said.
“Solid. Now I have dinner plans as well.” He was laughing. He stood up and clapped his hands together. “There, I invited you and Chowder. Let’s go smash stuff.”
Chapter Nineteen
“Hey, guys.” Chowder loped over to where Gracie and Jay were standing. “Whoa, this zone is crazy.”
“Isn’t it?” Gracie gazed at the vista that surrounded them.
They stood at one end of a long, curved plain that cradled them like a spoon and rose into sharp peaks at the far end. Stars hovered close above their heads; a patchwork of orbs, some with planets that could distantly be seen circling.
“It’s supposed to be the birthplace of the Aosi,” Jay told them. “Look at Gracie, and how she seems to match this place. That’s why.”
“Oh, sorry,” Gracie explained to Chowder. “We’ve been using our real names. I just used our character names the other day to make it less confusing. I’m Gracie, this is Jay.”
“Katie,” Chowder said enthusiastically. She laughed when Gracie cracked up. “I suppose that sounds kinda weird in the male Ocru voice, huh?”
“Ridiculous,” Gracie agreed. “But I like it. And it’ll blow the guys’ minds. They were sure I was a dude, so I can’t wait to see what they say about you.”
“Best way to keep from getting creeped on,” Katie told them with feeling. “No one harasses a tall, ugly-as-sin dude, I’ll tell you. Even in video games.”
“Solid point.” Gracie shuddered. “I’ve got messages piling up in my folder that I’m afraid to check.”
“Yeah, definitely don’t check those.” Katie pulled out her weapon, a massive scimitar that was dented and scratched to hell but still wickedly effective. “So, what are those things down there?”
“No one knows,” Gracie said.
“What? Is this some sort of uncharted zone?”
“No, I mean, in the lore. The thought is that they’re something left over from the creation of the Aosi, or maybe the first try at making them.” Gracie
squinted at the plain. “Unraveling that mystery is part of what you do in this zone. I read up on it, but I was careful not to read any spoilers, so if either of you does spoil me, I’ll kill ya.”
“She means that,” Jay told Katie from long experience. “Our fearless leader has quite a temper.”
Katie laughed, the sound coming out as a raspy bellow. “So I saw. I like that.”
They descended down into the plain carefully, picking their way around moon-bright rocks and through scrub brush that would have reminded Gracie of the American Southwest if the color palette hadn’t been completely different.
“So, who’s waiting for the month-end reveal?” Katie asked.
“Eh?” Gracie scrambled up onto a rock to peer ahead. “Okay, we have one patrol coming this way. Ready to find out what these guys are made of?” Up close, the mobs did indeed look like mutated Aosi—tall, but with their bodies bent out of shape. They had no color beyond their eyes, which seemed to reflect a cloudy, star-filled nebula.
Altogether, Gracie was pretty sure they would haunt her nightmares.
“Yep. Want me to pull?” Katie volunteered.
“Go for it.” Gracie waited with Jay, and it wasn’t long before Katie came running back toward them with two of the monsters following her, shrieking and howling. “All right, bitches, let’s see how you like a shock blast.” Both of the monsters, caught in the threat-generating AoE, turned on her at once. “Oh, you do like that, huh? Yeah, let’s see it. Show me those strikes. I wanna see what you’re—” She backed up a couple of steps, her voice rising. “Oh crap, that’s terrifying!”
One of the monsters had unhinged its jaw as it lunged for her, and Gracie slashed up at it out of instinct.
Jay and Katie leapt into the fray, taking down the other monster as Gracie battled hers, and finishing hers off a moment later.
“Okay, so—debuff, big snake-jaw bite-y attack, otherwise they swipe at you for a piddly amount.” Gracie was breathing hard. “But they swipe a lot, so we may need to keep an eye on that with bigger groups.” She looked down at the ground. “Oooh, are those opals?”
“Looks like.” Katie picked them up, and they automatically divided themselves into the group’s inventory. “I wonder what we do with them.”
“Maybe it’s like that kobold quest I told you about,” Gracie suggested. “Anyway, what’s this about month-end?”
“Oh, the month-end announcement.” Katie nodded as they set off again. “Each month, around now-ish, Dragon Soul drops the details on the next month’s dungeon.”
“I still don’t get how those work,” Gracie muttered.
“It’s a little different from raiding in other games,” Jay offered. “They wanted it to be a skill game, not a gear game, right? So you could sort of have a Cinderella story; anyone can do the month-first dungeon clear.”
“Really.” Gracie, recognizing the same phrase she’d used with Kyle, stopped to contemplate the sky. “Okay, tell me more.”
“So, the idea is, every group that loads in, each class gets the same gear according to their spec. So, if you’re like Chowder here, you’d have whatever they give two-hand fighters. For you, they’d have whipped up a set for tanks, etc. Right?”
“Okay, so people really are starting on an even footing.”
“Kind of.” Jay sounded like he was grinning. “But they don’t release too many details about the fight, first of all, so it’s hard to know who to bring…and video of every run is available online until someone finally manages to clear the end boss.”
“Oh,” Gracie said in sudden understanding. With those being the rules, a top guild that made the run and failed would not only have blown that chance to be the first, they would also have given their rivals valuable information. She frowned. “Well, that’s interesting, then. So there’s this competing pressure to be first, but also to wait until you have more intel.”
“Yup,” Jay told her. “And they have people running the numbers as soon as the teaser trailer drops, so they have a good idea who to send.”
“That’s another thing!” Gracie pointed out. “Do you send your top people the first time? I suppose you would, right? You can just restart immediately after if you wipe—”
“Nope,” Katie said, clearly relishing this. “You’re on a timer before you can load in again. Either you clear it, or you have to wait whatever time they assigned before you can head in again. If you get partway in and realize you won’t make it to the end, you can try sending another group from your guild, but you can’t re-run any of those same people until the time resets.”
“That sounds like a nightmare,” Gracie commented. “Bet there’s a bitch fight every month about who’s going first and why.”
“Oh, yeah,” Jay agreed. “Oh, yeah.”
“There’s a lot of speculation about this month’s,” Katie chimed in. “The past few months have had some really interesting mechanics. For instance, last time they’d been telegraphing that you’d need a frost-mage-heavy group, so one of the first crews logged in with three frost mages. Well, they get part way through and they’re just dropping like flies, so two of the other guilds head in with different groups…”
She was laughing already, so Gracie grinned as she waited for the hammer to drop.
“Well, it turned out the trash mobs were all resistant to frost, but the end boss wasn’t,” Katie said. “So they threw a lovely fake out in there, and the first group still managed to clear it first.”
Jay was laughing. “I remember that one. We were all watching.”
“Did you used to be part of a guild?” Gracie asked, interested. Jay had been pretty down on the idea of her joining one of the guilds, but he’d never said why. If he’d been a part of one and had a bad experience, that would explain it.
“Yeah,” he said after a pause. “It’s a long story.”
“And now you’re bumming around with the plebes, huh?” Katie flashed him a smile as she ran off to pull another group.
The three of them split off the same way again, with Gracie engaging the monsters’ attention and the others picking away at them one by one.
“Although,” Katie added, hacking one of the monsters to bits with her cool-down attack, “I tell you, I wouldn’t mind that $500, you know?” She sighed. Gracie could hear her panting slightly. “Pie-in-the-sky dream,” she added after a moment.
“If we all get the same gear…” Gracie began. “Wait. Jay, is it level-adjusted?”
“Kind of,” Jay said. “You’ll go in with top-level stats but only the spec you have, so if you haven’t unlocked whatever, you won’t have it to work with, while the mobs in the dungeon will have— Heads up!”
There was a roar behind them and a crack opened in the earth. Monsters started pouring out of it and Gracie swiveled her head, trying to take in as much of the scene as she could. Eight monsters. No, ten.
Fuck.
“All right, speed is of the essence!” She charged into the middle of the group and slammed her sword down. “I’m going to kite these bastards around to keep out of that swiping, and you all use as much AoE as you can. Katie, follow Jay’s directions on that. He’s got a good head for threat.”
“Right-o,” Katie called as she ducked a rock the size of her head one of the monsters threw at her.
Gracie wove around the rocks, working her way back uphill and away from the more densely populated areas of the zone. Now that she knew monsters could erupt out of the ground at any moment, she was a little bit worried that she might end up with even more to handle at some point. She told herself she couldn’t do anything about that.
Best to focus on what she could control, namely, keeping up enough threat to make sure those monsters trailed her and allowed themselves to be picked off.
Not to mention, they had no healer. She’d have to be really careful about those swiping attacks.
Gracie scanned her abilities list and popped two of the reinforcing evasion buffs before charging back into the center
of the group of monsters and making another shock blast. Several of the monsters unhinged their jaws as they howled.
“Gah, that just never stops being creepy, you guys!” She zoomed away again.
It became a game quickly enough, with them calling out whose buffs were up or down, trading mobs if there was trouble, and popping potions whenever they could. The monsters were fairly harmless on their own, but very difficult to handle as a group.
“Last couple!” Gracie called a few minutes later. She blew out a quick breath and winced at the feeling of sweat trickling into the small of her back. So much for that shower. This battle was going to necessitate another. It was good to have the day off—
No, best not to think about that.
Her health bar was dipping low, and a quick glance told her that Jay and Katie weren’t in any better straits, so Gracie made a quick decision.
“Everyone, to me!”
“What?” Katie asked a bit nervously.
“I’ve found that you should just follow her suggestions and ask questions later,” Jay called back. “Come on!”
The two closed in, and Gracie popped her last evasion cooldown. It wasn’t particularly strong, but it was what she had. The two monsters closed in, both disturbingly high-health and high-energy.
Gracie bared her teeth even though the expression didn’t translate into the game, and she was just staring down a pile of pixels anyway.
“To my left first. Wear him down. Throw anything you have at him. Immediately!”
“Gracie!” Katie called.
But it was too late. Between the swipes and one monster’s ultimate ability, Gracie’s character flew forward and the screen went dark.
“Fuck,” she said with deep feeling.
When everything cleared, she was back at the nearest inn—a rather disturbing place bartended by one of the monsters. His name was displayed in green to indicate he was friendly, but Gracie was still anticipating an attack as she edged up to the bar.
“Uh, so how are you guys doing?”
