Metamorphosis Online Complete Series Boxed Set; A Gamelit Fantasy RGP Novel: You Need A Bigger Sword, The New Queen Rises, Reign With Axe & Shield

by Natalie Grey

  “I meant the lore.”

  “Oh!” She lit up and bounced in her seat. “It’s really cool. So, the Aosi were made to rule all the other races and be these benevolent dictator guys, right? Blah, blah, blah, boring…until it didn’t work out, and now it’s fun.” She grinned. “In the canon, the Aosi actually have this huge reckoning and split into a few different groups because they’re trying to grapple with the fact that they didn’t do what they were supposed to do. So there are the ones who think the gods totally fucked up and the Aosi are just another mortal race, there are the ones who think it’s still their destiny to go back and rule over everyone, and then there are all these other little groups. Some people went a bit crazy and super-religious, I think? Because the Aosi came down to earth with this mandate, and the gods scattered them and haven’t talked to them again, so it’s a whole big thing.”

  Jay was twirling a pen in his fingers, considering.

  “Yesuan,” Gracie said, “didn’t join any of the factions, even though they all wanted him to. He was this big healer-dude who was important in the wars, and all of the factions thought if he joined, they’d ‘win’ and be able to pick a unified strategy as a group, right? Well, he kinda went off the deep end instead. He became convinced that the only way to balance things was to be the opposite of what the Aosi had been. Instead of leaders, they should step away from any sort of politics, and instead of life and peace, they should cultivate corruption and war. He believed that the Aosi would be a unifying force, but only if they became the force that the rest of the world unified against.”

  “Oh, shit.” Jay had dropped the pen.

  “So he started doing his thing, and trying to work his way back to the center of the world to find the other races,” Gracie explained, “and the other Aosi magic wielders all came to the conclusion pretty quickly that this would be mega-bad, so they teamed up and imprisoned him on the assumption that eventually he would stop being bonkers and they could let him out.”

  “He didn’t stop, did he?”

  “Nah. When you go in there, he’s still crazy as balls.” She grinned at him. “Now, it’s worth noting that that’s the lore of the dungeon as it stands. I have no idea what’ll come up if it’s one of Harry’s dungeons, but it really does sound like him, doesn’t it?”

  “It really does,” Jay agreed. He spun around in his chair as he considered. “Sam’s checking which levels Harry worked on, and he should be getting that to me soon.”

  The door of the apartment opened, and Gracie frowned. She held a finger to her lips so Jay wouldn’t say anything and reached stealthily for her phone.

  “Gracie?” Alex called. “It’s me.”

  “Oh, thank God.” Gracie slumped back against the couch. “I thought you were Harry.”

  “Harry? What, did he come here?” Alex poked his head around the door. “I’m going to tear that motherfucker a new asshole.”

  Gracie looked him over. “Just as soon as you’ve showered and gotten some sleep, eh? You look like something the cat dragged in.” She was snickering. “Go get cleaned up. I’ll make some coffee.”

  “Thank you.” Alex disappeared down the hallway.

  Gracie looked back at the computer screen, grinning, and found Jay holding up his phone triumphantly.

  “Yesuan’s Haunt,” he said, very satisfied. “Sam confirmed it: Harry did work on that one. He wrote all the lore, too.”

  “So now we just have to figure out how to get there without him knowing,” Gracie said.

  “And without Dan and Dhruv taking the servers down,” Jay agreed.

  “And we have to figure out what to do with Caspian,” Gracie finished. “Ugh.”

  “Ugh, indeed. I say we go punch some bears and then figure it out.”

  “You’re on.” Gracie grinned at him. “Well, as soon as I get the coffee made. Alex looks rough but not devastated, so I’m assuming he just never got to sleep. We’ll see.” She winked and headed off to make a pot of coffee.

  Chapter Nineteen

  This was how it should be, Jay thought. Just hanging out in-game, trying something fun for the hell of it. He and Gracie had switched their skill trees, both as Level 1 senders, and she was trying damage-dealing while he tried healing.

  Neither of them was used to being squishy and without armor, though, and it showed. They kept barely escaping from fights in one piece, desperately fleeing in order to hide and drink as many health potions as they could.

  “We suck at this,” Gracie said bluntly after the fifth time that had happened.

  Jay agreed with a groan. “Also, thank God for magical stretching robes that always fit, but I feel ridiculous in this getup.”

  “Now, now. Who says a man can’t wear flowing sky-blue robes? Men’s fashion is normally so boring.” Gracie was laughing as she looked at him. “I think the beard really makes it.”

  Jay grumbled. “So, how’s Alex?”

  “Still in the shower. Possibly fell asleep there, but I’m not gonna check.” Gracie held up her hands to absolve herself. “Rule one of roommates: never surprise them in the shower.”

  “Solid.” Jay looked out over the field of gently-waving grass. “Okay, I see one fae on its own. Should we try to kill it?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t seem to kill anything anymore.” Gracie sounded grumpy. “Throw fireballs, they said. It’ll be fun, they said. I want a sword. I want to punch things and kick them. None of this crazy fire-magic stuff.”

  “Come on, keep working at it.” Jay was laughing. “Don’t give up just yet. I believe in you.”

  “Ugh. You are one motivational quote away from getting throat-punched.” Gracie shook a fist in his direction. “But I’ll make you a deal. I kill that fae, and you figure out what to do with Caspian.” She took off without looking back.

  “Whoa! Hey, I did not agree to that!” Jay started running after her. “Come baaaaaaack. I don’t want to make this decision. Maybe we just boot him and never talk to him again?”

  “Ghost him?” Gracie called over her shoulder. “Isn’t that rude?”

  “I don’t know. Infiltrating the group was pretty rude, right?”

  “Well, you have me there.” Gracie slammed into the fae at high speed with a punch. “Take that, bitch! OH. CRAP. I’m supposed to be throwing spells. RUUUUUN!”

  “Every time,” Jay groaned, but he was laughing as they ran away. “I didn’t think about it either. I just saw Callista running into combat, and I followed. It’s what I do!”

  “We suck at this.” Gracie was holding her sides from her laughter. “God, we are so bad at it. No, don’t stop! Don’t try to heal, just run!”

  “But I’m a healer!” Jay was yelling as their characters ran. Because the movements were automatically controlled, their characters’ legs were acting as if they were running, while their arms made all the motions they would have in real life.

  “You look like a lunatic, and you’re about to be a dead lunatic!” Gracie called back. “Run! Run!”

  They reached an outcropping and Gracie crouched, still laughing. Although she hadn’t really been running, she was still out of breath from shouting and laughing and the mad adrenaline rush of their characters nearly dying.

  “Okay,” she said when she’d regained her breath. “Once more, but this time, not stupidly.”

  “Aye,” Jay said.

  They edged forward into battle again. Gracie tiptoed forward one step at a time until she was in range to cast spells. She had learned the range of all of her tanking abilities, but didn’t yet know all of the ranges of her spell-casting abilities. She threw a fireball and waited for the fae to notice.

  Not surprisingly, the fae seemed to object to being lit on fire. It turned around with a shriek and headed toward Gracie at high speed, and she tried to burn it down with fireballs before it reached her.

  “Fuck! Ow! Get off! Go away!”

  “You’re trying to kill it,” Jay called from a little way away as he healed her. “It pro
bably isn’t going to listen to you.”

  “Yes. I got that. Thank you.” Gracie flailed her arms and muttered angrily as the fae interrupted her spell-casting. “Just one…more…freaking… Oh, fuck it.” She launched a flurry of punches to finish off the fae.

  “Not really committing to this spell-caster thing, are you?” Jay called to her.

  “Listen, man, sometimes you just need to punch something until it dies.” She picked up a few gold coins that had dropped, and the game automatically divided them between her inventory and Jay’s. “I’m not sure I like spell-casting.”

  “I think you might like frost mage better,” he suggested. “You control the board, and snare them and slow them down. They can’t get to you easily to interrupt your spell-casting.”

  “Hell, yeah, I’d like that better.” Gracie scouted for another lone fae. “This glass cannon thing is not for me.”

  “Well, a frost mage can be like a glass cannon. It’s just like…I don’t know, sniping in a first-person shooter. You have to set up the fight or you get dead pretty quickly.” Jay trailed after her, a surprisingly serene hulking barbarian in sky-blue robes with pretty gold embroidery.

  “Ugh. Gimme a sword and a shield any day.” Gracie grinned at him. “You look very dashing in those robes, though, let me tell you.”

  Jay groaned. “Don’t mention that, please. My pride is taking a beating. In a totally enlightened, 21st century, modern sort of way, my masculinity cannot take this.”

  “Maybe it’s making you stronger,” Gracie suggested encouragingly. “You have to remain manly in a baby-blue dress, and now you’ll be manly in anything.”

  “Did you have to describe it as a dress?” He sounded anguished.

  Gracie just snickered. “Heads up, new target.” She inched forward. “Okay, so what the hell do we do about Caspian?”

  Jay sighed and touched off a corruption spell on their target. “I don’t know,” he said resignedly as the fae raced towards them, shrieking. “Do we try to get details out of him? Or do we tell him we know who he is and try to turn him into a double agent? We could go a few ways with this.”

  “We’re not going to turn him into a double agent,” Gracie said, trying to hold her focus and not resort to physical attacks. It took a peculiar kind of courage to keep spell-casting while an opponent beat you around the head and neck, it turned out.

  Hell, with the haptics shuddering, it even felt real. No bruises, of course, and no real blood, but it was surprising how little it took to make your body believe it was in a fight.

  They finished the fight, and she sighed as she looted the body. “I don’t know. Do you think he’d ever work for us?”

  Jay thought about this as they headed to the next fae encampment. “You know, what’s weird is that I thought he really enjoyed the Altar of the Gods.”

  Gracie looked at him as they walked. It was difficult to do in the game without wandering off-track…rather like walking in real life, she thought. “Yeah, what happened with all of you while I was fighting Harry, anyway?”

  “Well, we were all waiting, and then the lake monster went crazy. He was clearly trying to make sure we couldn’t help you, and all we could think was that we didn’t want him to win. Lakhesis really stepped up, and Caspian just launched into action. I could hear him laughing—you know the way someone laughs when they’re pulling off something they didn’t think was possible? Like that. He’d give these happy yells when he got someone healed just in time, and he and Alan were shouting back and forth, trading targets. He was on a high after that. He really seemed into it.”

  Gracie said nothing. In a way, this pissed her off even more. That should be a memory her team had, she thought—a time when they’d bonded with each other, with people who supported them.

  Instead, they’d had a double agent, which was—

  “It’s just fucking ridiculous,” she said, biting off each word. “This isn’t some high-stakes diplomatic crisis. It’s not the goddamned hunt for Red October. It’s a video game, Jay.”

  “I know.” Jay reached out to pat her shoulder. “Whoops. Keep forgetting you’re not actually right there.”

  “They could have asked me to roll a new character,” Gracie said, waving her hands.

  “This one would still be sitting in the rankings. I mean, I know there were other ways to handle it, but all of the basic things? Yeah, they tried those. They tried deleting you. They tried banning you. They tried doing a server reset. Whatever the hell Harry did, you’re in there good.” Jay was laughing. “That son of a bitch played himself, and I love it.”

  Gracie grinned. “Okay, that part, I do like. One sec.” She had felt footsteps nearby recently and wondered if Alex was going to come play. When she took off her VR helmet, though, she saw him passed out on the couch, snoring. “Okay, need to go get a blanket for Sleeping Beauty, here. Good Lord, can he snore!”

  “Even I can hear that,” Jay said. “That’s impressive.”

  “At least he managed to shower. He looked…let’s just say, like he’d run a marathon.” She was grinning. “You know what, I’m going to sign off for now and let him sleep. I’ll think about Caspian. I don’t want to just boot him and tip our hand, but hell if I know what we should do.”

  “Likewise,” Jay said glumly. “All right, I’ll think it over as well and text you if I come up with anything. And Gracie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Hang in there.”

  Gracie smiled. “I will. I’m glad you’re here.”

  “Always,” Jay said. He logged off and smiled at the screen, but his expression faded after a moment.

  Someday, he thought, he was going to have to work up the courage to tell her that life was just better when she was around. Hell, sometimes he could barely sleep because he wanted to text that to her, or Skype her, or just log in to hear her voice.

  But the thought of telling her that made him want to throw up.

  He went off to the kitchen to get a glass of water and stared at the wall as he drank it. “Don’t be a fucking coward, Jay,” he said when he was finished.

  If only it were that easy. The phone was in his pocket, but if something that simple worked, he’d have sent the damned text already. He gave a little laugh and shook his head. He’d thought when he grew up, he’d have everything figured out. Turned out that was a crock of shit.

  Chapter Twenty

  When Dragon Soul Productions had put in a gym, Dan reflected, they had thought it would help them attract and retain employees. Good work-life balance, holistic life goals, all that crap. Now he was using it for the exactly opposite purpose: he was showering there instead of going home and sleeping on the floor of his study.

  It was the sort of thing you did when you found yourself in an unexpected cat-and-mouse game with a former colleague.

  When he arrived back at his office, Dhruv was there, staring out the window. A few containers on the desk held homemade Indian food and one clean plate. A dirty one showed that Dhruv had already eaten. The smell of fresh chapatis made Dan’s mouth water.

  Dhruv looked around and nodded to the food. “Hope you don’t mind that I dug in.” With a rare flash of humor, he added, “Don’t tell my mother. She’d hit me with a spoon if she knew I didn’t give the guest the first serving.”

  Dan smiled. After a shower, and with the delicious food in front of him, he could try to forget everything that was going on. Homemade food from Dhruv’s mother had been one of the highlights of office life since he’d finally convinced his parents to move to the US from Goa six months ago.

  He loaded his plate with rice, prawn curry, bhaji, chapatis, and tondak, and dug in.

  Dhruv stared out the window while Dan ate, only once looking over to snort and shake his head at Dan’s makeshift taco: curry and rice wrapped in a chapati and topped with chutney. Dhruv, like most Indians Dan had met, was baffled by this American way of eating curry. After Dan finished his food, the two men exchanged looks.

  �
��All right,” Dhruv said, taking the guest chair across from Dan. “So, Harry’s in the game.”

  Dan sighed. He was glad Dhruv had said it. Not saying it, waiting for someone to have the courage to say it—and thus make it real—had been a constant weight on his mind for the past two days. Despite the gut punch of the knowledge, it felt better to have it out in the open.

  “He’s in the game,” Dan agreed.

  They had both seen the fight. Whatever wizardry Harry had done meant that they couldn’t hear the conversation between him and Callista, but it was clear that the two were no longer allies.

  There was a long pause while the two men considered.

  “I think he used the NPC GM port,” Dhruv said finally. He was referring to the plug-in GMs could use to take control of one of the game’s NPCs, which they had built to observe player interactions. “I don’t think that boss was meant to be him, I think he just used it that way once he knew she was there.”

  Dan’s mind skipped through the logic of what Dhruv was saying. “So you think he doesn’t want her doing this quest,” he said slowly.

  “Yes. And I think if she fails any one fight, that’s it. Otherwise, why bother fighting her? Why risk going into the game where we could see him?”

  Dan sat back in his chair. After days of snacks from the break room, he’d been overly glad of a home-cooked meal, and he’d eaten far too much prawn curry. He was now absurdly full, and more than a little bit sleepy.

  He rubbed his face. “Is this the sleep deprivation talking, or should we let them duke it out?”

  Dhruv laughed. “Maybe I should have just ordered a pot of coffee instead of bringing food.”

  “We’re past coffee now,” Dan said philosophically. “Red Bull IV drip or nothing.” He leaned on the desk. “But that’s it, isn’t it? We tweak the game slightly, nothing he’d notice, to make him a bit stronger and her a bit weaker. Then the next time they meet…”