by Natalie Grey
He posted a thread to draw out reactions, titled, “Do you ever think about going PvE?” In it, he pretended to be a PvP player who wanted to know about guilds and whether running dungeons could be any fun.
He refreshed the page a few times but knew he needed to give it time.
Time, of course, being the one thing he didn’t have.
His stomach growled, and he was just thinking of going to get some lunch when an email came in. He opened it, scrolled to the FROM address, and frowned.
There was none. The email had apparently come from no one.
It was only one line: I heard you might need a healer.
Thad looked at his post, then at his phone. He hesitated. This could easily be one of the other guilds.
Who is this?
The reply came almost immediately. A very, very good healer.
Character name, server, rank, Thad sent back.
Unranked.
Thad raised an eyebrow. He didn’t even bother to respond to that. No one could just assume they could waltz in without a resume and get hired.
Whoever was sending the emails seemed to sense Thad’s dubiousness. Roll a character and send me the details, and I’ll log in and show you what I can do.
Why am I rolling you a character?
They didn’t bother to respond, whoever they were, and with a sigh, Thad grabbed his phone and went to the practice room. He selected one of the lesser-used practice accounts, one that didn’t have any characters on it for this person to steal macros or hotbar setups, and rolled a level 1 Piskie healer. He logged in, ran the character through the starting zone, and then brought his own character to the same place before sending the login details.
The Piskie appeared again almost immediately. He looked around, nodded at Thad’s character, and then paused while he seemed to be bringing up several menus and sorting through them.
The pause went on for long enough that Thad crossed his arms and sighed. “I’m not waiting all day,” he informed the Piskie.
The Piskie didn’t pay attention, but a moment later, the character began to pulse, light strobing around it. Thad took an instinctive step back before realizing that the pulses of light were the swirl of gold sparks that signaled a level change.
The character was rising to the top level. Thad gaped, and his eyebrows shot up when the low-level robes were replaced with brocade ones of gold and red. They clashed horribly with the Piskie’s green hair, but Thad wasn’t paying the slightest attention to that. This set of armor was incredibly rare. Even Jamie hadn’t had all of it.
“Now,” said the Piskie, putting the menus away, “do you believe I know my way around this game?”
“Holy shit,” Thad said bluntly. “Who are you?”
“Not important. Do you want a new healer?” The Piskie cocked his head to the side. “Word on the street is, you lost one…to Callista.”
Thad’s lip curled but he managed a smile, then realized it wasn’t translating into the game. “A rather expensive lesson in finding out who was loyal and who wasn’t. I wish it had been DPS, but we can’t be that lucky every day.” DPSs were a dime a dozen compared to healers or tanks, which meant that DPS players, even the very good ones, could be replaced relatively easily.
The Piskie chuckled.
“We do need a healer,” Thad said, “but I don’t know what you get out of that.”
“Let me handle that,” the healer said. “I’ll give you a training program for your guild that I want you all to follow—tactics and formations to learn.”
“I’m in charge of this guild,” Thad informed him coldly.
“If you don’t want me, you’re welcome to try to find another healer who can do what I do.” The Piskie didn’t sound at all worried. “This will make your guild better. Far better.”
Thad heaved a sigh. “Test run tonight,” he said. “In two hours, we’ll run through the latest content, and you’ll show me what you can do. Then I’ll think about bringing you on board and changing my training routine.”
He logged out without waiting for a response.
Two thousand miles away, Harry took off his headset and smiled. Finally, he’d found a way into the game, and a team that was used to following orders.
Thad might pretend to be in charge, but he didn’t have any other options than to rely on Harry now—and, in the end, when he realized he couldn’t win, he would do anything to punish the people who had screwed him over. He’d destroy himself willingly if Harry just pointed him in the right direction.
In Harry’s opinion, that was the true measure of power: how well you could make a person willingly work against their own interests.
Chapter Nine
“All right, I straight don’t know what’s coming down the pipeline, but we have to be geared up.” Gracie made her way through the streets of Kithara, turning sideways by instinct to avoid collisions. There weren’t any, of course, but social custom seemed to be that one still behaved as if there could be.
Gracie liked that.
“What are you thinking?” Chowder asked jokingly. “A full-on siege or just some assassins?”
Gracie reached out to thwack him. “You know what I mean.”
“Mmm,” Caspian said vaguely. Kevin was at work right now, but Caspian, of course, had nothing to do except be online. “Are you thinking PvE or PvP? Because if you don’t know, maybe we want two sets of gear.”
“Wait, what?” Gracie looked at him. “Oh, my God, the battlegrounds. I’d totally forgotten about those.”
“They’re not as popular,” Caspian said. “Some people in our group dabbled in them sometimes, but Thad wasn’t a big fan of it because of the gear repair costs.”
“People didn’t handle that on their own?” Gracie asked skeptically. They had reached a plaza that served as the informal temple area for the Piskies. Most of the buildings were cleverly made so that any race could get into them, but they still had the feel of Hobbit holes.
“Thad was very…controlling.” Caspian’s voice was tight. From the distracted way he was clipping people as he moved, Gracie could see that he was lost in thought. “He had to manage everything down to the smallest detail, which meant that he had to feel like the smartest guy in the room. And he wasn’t always, and he had a bad temper.”
“The leader should try to be the dumbest person in the room,” Gracie said emphatically. “They should be smart enough to have a good sense for when they’re being bullshitted, but other than that, they should want everyone around them to be experts. For instance, if I insisted no one could be smarter than me, we wouldn’t be considering player versus player.”
“We have to log into battlegrounds,” Chowder insisted. “They couldn’t exactly ambush us there, could they?” After a moment, he added, “I suppose we have to log into dungeons, too. Never mind.”
“No, it’s a good point. If we know it might be a trap, why log in?” Gracie chewed her lip. They were close to the armory, where players could purchase and improve gear. “It’s easy to avoid PvP. Then again, if nothing else, I think we’ve learned that we never know what the rules are for us.”
“Bingo,” Chowder said. “That’s a really good point, but this is a video game.”
“I’m aware of that, yes.” Gracie emoted a grin at him. “What’s your point?”
“I don’t know.” The Ocru shrugged his shoulders expressively. “I guess my point is, do you lose the crown if you ever die? If so, are they going to be taking hits out on you? If so, how? Otherwise, they can challenge us all day, but we don’t have to accept them. See what I mean?”
“Yeah.” Gracie considered as she entered the armory. It was a vaulted, high-ceilinged building that was clearly modeled on the cathedral of Notre Dame, although it wasn’t quite as large. She had always wondered how something so magnificent got built in a relatively new city and resolved to look up the lore later. “I think Caspian is right, though. We should consider being ready on a PvP front. After all, that’s what Harry
has been going for.”
“Pssh, what can Harry do?” Chowder waved a hand, which was a surprisingly hilarious gesture in a large, muscly Ocru. “You’ve gone up against him how many times and smashed him through the floor?”
“Mmm.” Privately, Gracie wasn’t as confident as Chowder was.
Yes, Harry had some fatal flaws in his reasoning. He viewed his leadership through the lens of being innately better than everyone else, which meant he alienated anyone who might have helped him. It limited his abilities in combat, where Gracie’s team would stand with her.
But he was smart, and he knew how the game was programmed. He would able to assess her strengths and weaknesses and then set up a fight that would favor him.
She wasn’t going to underestimate him.
They crowded around the vendors and began scanning through gear. Chowder had been talking for a few weeks about the gear he wanted to get to shore up the gaps in his current set, and Gracie knew it would help him with his critical hit and his block chances.
Caspian had been more reticent about his gear, so she walked over to where he was standing.
“Finding anything good?”
He looked at her, cocking his head curiously.
“You have good instincts,” Gracie clarified, “and a good base of knowledge. I’m curious what you’ll go for.”
“You don’t have opinions?” He sounded deeply skeptical.
“I always have opinions,” Gracie retorted. “Hell, I have opinions about my roommate’s office dramas, and I know zero about the people involved, so I definitely have opinions about this. But you’re the healer, not me. Unless we all start wiping so often that we never get through dungeons, it’s not my concern.”
“I like that,” Caspian said. He sighed. “Sometimes I just wanted to try new things, you know? But Thad wasn’t having it.”
“You can always iterate with me,” Gracie assured him. “I know you won’t do it unexpectedly when we have a whole dungeon riding on it. Just tell any of us that you want to go experiment and we’ll be there to help. Hell, tell all of us, and we’ll run whatever dungeon you want.”
“I know.” Caspian sighed again. “That’s why I left Demon Syndicate.”
Gracie bit her lip. “Are you…okay?” she asked finally.
Caspian said nothing.
“I know we’re not close,” Gracie told him. She felt insanely awkward now. “And I just bet it was hard to make the choice you made. I hope you have someone to talk to. I’m happy to be that person if you want.”
“That’s nice of you,” Caspian said equally awkwardly. “I mean it; I really appreciate that. Kevin’s been there for me.”
Gracie relaxed. With Kevin on the job, she didn’t have to worry. “Kevin’s a good guy,” she agreed, “and way too wise for his years.”
“I think…” Caspian’s voice trailed off.
“Yeah?”
“I think he’s who I want to be when I grow up.” Caspian sounded embarrassed. His character was shifting from foot to foot, shoulders hunched. “That sounds so stupid.”
“Nah, I totally get it.” Gracie smiled. “I had a teacher like that in high school. She was the best. I just wanted to grow up and be like her. I thought she had everything figured out.” She shrugged. “Now that I’m older, I think she was probably just as lost as every other adult I know, but at the time, I thought she was the coolest person ever.”
Caspian laughed. “If you’d ever seen Kevin, you’d feel the same way about him. He’s got this perfect apartment, and he’s super in shape, and he’s got a Tesla, and…yeah.”
Gracie grinned. Caspian’s hero worship was pretty adorable. “He seems like the sort of guy who wants everyone to be living their best life. I’m glad you two connected. You couldn’t find a better person to live with while you get back on your feet.”
She headed off to her vendor, smiling.
“Callista?” A character stood in front of her, an Aosi male with pale-greenish skin and silver hair.
Gracie stopped in her tracks. She didn’t like his tone, but she didn’t know what was going on, so she didn’t want to be rude. “Yes?” After all, it said her name above her head.
“How does it feel to hack the game?” the character asked her. His nametag said Yaro, and he was a level 1.
Which meant he had no reason to be in the armory.
Which meant he was almost certainly someone’s alt, and he was here to mess with her.
Gracie narrowed her eyes and looked him over before realizing the stupidity of that. There was no way she was going to learn about this person by studying their avatar. There were no tells in the way his mouth or his eyes moved.
“I take it you have a problem with me,” she said. She kept her voice pleasant, but it took a lot of effort. De-escalate, Gracie.
“You hacked the rankings,” Yaro said. He flashed her a smile that was clearly insincere. “You’re profiting from something you didn’t earn.”
Gracie raised her chin slightly. “Did you explore the cave in the starting zone?”
There was a pause.
“Yes,” Yaro said. He looked around as if there might be an answer to this puzzle in the stained glass windows.
“Did you see a blue jewel?” Gracie asked.
“Yes.” He was sure it was a trap now, but he didn’t know how to evade it.
“Did you ask the hill warden for lore?” Gracie pressed.
He said nothing.
“Did you go through an early boss fight and try to restore the balance of the non-playing factions?” She already knew the answer, but she asked it anyway. “Did you fight bosses for whom there were no guides or previews? No? Then don’t tell me I hacked the rankings.”
Yaro said nothing, watching her.
“You’re an imposter,” he said finally. “You’re a hack. You’re claiming to be some—genius—when actually you’re nothing but lucky.”
It touched so deeply on Gracie’s fears that she instinctively wanted to lash out at him. She wanted to swing her fist and feel it connect with his jaw—
She couldn’t do that. Not here, not in this world. But she could mute him. She could ban him. The thought came to her unbidden, so tempting that she swallowed hard against the urge to do so.
When she said nothing, it seemed to anger her opponent.
“You should leave,” he told her. “You’re not wanted here. You’re don’t deserve what you have. Other people worked harder for it.”
“Who the hell do you think you are?” Caspian was at her side, making her jump. “Thad?”
“Huh?” Yaro sounded honestly confused.
“Nothing.” Caspian was clearly frustrated. “Go back to your main toon, dude. Give it up.”
“Fuck off,” Yaro said instantly. “I’m talking to Callista, not you.”
“Are you sure?” Chowder was at her other shoulder. “Because she’s a member of Red Squadron, and if you mess with one of us, you mess with all of us.”
“Guys,” Gracie admonished. “Enough.” She looked at Caspian and Chowder, meeting their eyes. To Yaro, she said, “It’s clear I’m not going to say anything to win you over, so there’s no point in continuing to talk, is there?”
“Maybe not for you,” Yaro spat. “You can’t convince me because I’m not a brainwashed idiot like those two. But you might see the truth and understand you’re not welcome here. No one wants you. No one cares about you. Leave it to the pros and go home.”
Gracie shrugged. “I’ve gotten yelled at by better people than you,” she said easily. “I don’t really care if you like me. There’s more to this than you know, and I’m not going to bother to explain it.”
Whoever Yaro was, though, he knew just how to get under her skin. Whether it was luck or some otherworldly instinct, his next words cut to the bone: “You do care,” he said venomously. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Because everyone in your real life rejected you. Because they knew you were a piece of shit.”
With any other insult, Gracie’s mind would have been churning, finding retorts easily and discarding the broken logic. Is that why you’re here too? But with this, all she could do was stand frozen, her hands twitching toward the buttons that could ban this character.
They would ban the whole account. She was sure of that.
Harry didn’t do things by halves.
Do you even know how insignificant you are? The words were on the tip of her tongue as she stared him down.
“He’s not worth it,” Caspian said tightly. “Seriously, that’s word for word out of the troll playbook. Come on.”
Gracie had thought Yaro would follow them, but he didn’t—and somehow that made it worse. He stood and watched as they left, and when she met his eyes one last time, her fingers twitched again to open the menu and ban him.
You’re nothing, she thought contemptuously. And then, with a chill, she understood. Harry had always had this power over people.
He had always viewed them this way.
If she wasn’t careful, she would, too.
Chapter Ten
Gracie knew that if she allowed herself to sit and stew over her confrontation with Yaro, she would work her mind into knots.
She wasn’t Harry. She didn’t have to be Harry. If her new powers were truly going to corrupt her, she would find a way to give them up (although she had the sneaking suspicion that if she were to abandon this character and roll an alt, they would show up there as well).
In the meantime, she needed to distract herself.
“Want to run one of the battlegrounds?” she asked Caspian and Chowder. “Get a feel for what we might be looking at?”
“Sounds good.” Caspian created a party. “Which one do you want to do?”
“I don’t know.” Gracie considered, looking around at the markets of Kithara. She purposely kept herself from searching for Yaro’s face in the sparse crowd and instead looked at the sky, where birds were circling and a few clouds scudded lazily. She looked back at Caspian. “You said you’ve run some of them, right? You queue us.”
