by Brian Simons
Farah sat with her friends at the picnic table, listening with rapt attention as Daniel described his experiences in Travail. Her party was far from over — they hadn’t even had cake yet — but she was fast losing interest in hanging around the backyard. She wanted to log in now more than ever. Travail was full of lush landscapes and exhilarating battles. So much more interesting than her ramshackle house and her equally decrepit school, with its crumbling walls and overstuffed classrooms.
She wanted to experience the openness, and maybe even scrape together a few extra dollars to help out around the house. Sybil was so stressed out trying to pay all the bills, cook all the food. It had been like that since she was little and their father left.
Sybil never said why he left, but the way she tensed up those few times Farah had mentioned him, she knew something bad must have happened.
The radio played popular music as Farah’s friends all chattered around her, but she couldn’t focus on them. Her eyes kept drifting back toward Daniel, long after he left the picnic table to join Sybil and her friends again. Daniel spent all day fighting monsters alongside her sister. If they could do it, she could do it too. She’d just have to keep up the appearance of calmness and make it through the end of the night.
Coral and Sal seemed nice too. Still, she couldn’t wait for all three of them to leave.
Farah’s friends were the first to go, filtering out of the house as the night wore on. Finally, Sybil’s friends left too.
“Thank you for the party,” she said, throwing her arms around Sybil. “I’m so tired now, I’m going to fall asleep so fast.”
“You’re welcome, and good night,” Sybil said.
Farah’s nerves were on edge the whole time she got ready for bed. Then she closed her bedroom door behind her. And locked it.
She ran to the bed and dug a small box from under her pillow. The Travail Online Starter Kit. She tore the package open, jammed her finger with the nano delivery device, and after the stinging sensation died down from the needle, she put the visor on and tilted her head back until she was resting on her pillow.
An old woman approached against a pitch black background.
“Welcome, young citizen,” the woman said in a calm, even voice. “I will help you choose a path. Would—”
“Yes!” Farah said, then clapped her hands over her mouth.
“You are keen to begin,” the woman said. “What life can Travail offer you?”
Farah whispered, “Can anyone else hear me?”
“Young citizen, the words you speak here in Travail are heard here alone. Now, what life can Travail offer you?”
“I want to help my sister,” Farah said, “and go on adventures.”
“Your heart is pure and brave. You could be a Troubadour, lifting spirits across the land with your sweet song.”
Farah’s sister was a singer in the game, this much she knew. She loved Sybil, but she wanted to cut her own path.
“No, thank you,” she said, “I’d like something else.”
“You could travel the world vanquishing darkness as a holy Paladin,”
She had never heard that word before, but she liked it. “That sounds good.”
“Very well, young citizen. You will enter Travail as a Paladin. You may master your skills through patience and perseverance. After all, hard play makes fun work! Be forewarned, however, that if your avatar dies, you will lose all of your skills and all of your possessions and gold. You will come back to me to start a new life.”
A message box popped up.
Class Selected: Paladin
Congratulations! As a Level 1 Paladin you start the game with a [mace] in your inventory. The unique Paladin skill tree is unlocked.
Players earn experience points (XP) through combat, crafting, resource gathering activities, and completing quests. Your level increases at pre-determined XP intervals.
Player attributes increase with each level at differing rates based on class. As a Paladin, your faith is your bulwark against evil. You gain additional +1 Spirit with each level.
With each additional level, players earn 1 skill point that they may invest in their unique skill tree, as well as any additional skill trees you unlock as you progress through Travail. Unlocking skills allows you to use new combat techniques or craft new items. Once a skill is unlocked, it becomes a new ability that you possess and can hone through practice. View your unique skill tree to see what Paladin skills are available to you at each level.
You may also develop new hidden abilities without spending skill points. The abilities you may uncover vary depending on your race and class. The more you use an ability, the greater proficiency you will develop with it and the more significant the bonus it will provide you.
“Now, young Paladin, by what name shall I call you?”
“FarahWay,” she said.
The old woman then took her to a screen where she could change her appearance. Her avatar was short and broad, but her face looked accurate and that’s all Farah cared about. She was too excited to start playing.
“That’s fine,” she said.
As the black nothingness receded, brown rocky soil came into view before a large rock cliff. Farah stepped forward. She was wearing a rumpled brown skirt with a dingy white shirt tucked into it. The view from the mountain, however, was astounding. She could see rolling clouds, brown cliffs, and a forest below that stretched to the horizon.
She turned around to face a small town on the mountain. All it said was, “Welcome to Hiber Camp.”
11
Coral woke up and tiptoed out of her room past her parents’ bedroom. Daniel was sleeping in there, until Coral stepped on a creaky floorboard. He sprang up and looked around like he was disoriented.
“Good morning,” she said. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“It’s fine,” he said, stretching. “You know, I can’t remember the last time I woke up in another bed,” he said. “I sleep in my bed, I work in my bed, I practically live in the damn thing. What time is it?”
“Seven.”
“Time to get to work,” he said. “This might be the first time I’ve had a commute.”
“You could stay,” Coral said, the words tumbling out of her mouth before she had a chance to think. He wouldn’t want to stay, he’d want to go home where he belonged.
“I’m not usually up this early,” he said. “Ok, let’s get an early jump on the day.”
After a light breakfast, they headed back up the stairs. Daniel stepped into Coral’s room and picked the only toy off a shelf full of books. “What is this little furball?”
“God, I should just get rid of that hideous thing. I wanted a beanie animal for Christmas one year when I was a kid, but of course there weren’t enough to go around, so people would stand in line outside of toy stores hoping to get one.”
Coral stepped forward and took the small stuffed animal from him.
“My parents refused to do that, and looking back on it, I don’t blame them, but at the time I was really upset. So they said if I wanted one so badly, I could wait in the line myself. They gave me twenty dollars and wished me luck.”
“And they just let you go to the toy store alone?” Daniel asked.
“There was a toy store on Girard Avenue at the time, not too far of a walk from home. So it’s six o’clock in the morning and I strap on my snow boots and my gloves, and my hat, and I march down to the toy store with twenty dollars in my pocket, and there’s already a line out the door.
“So I waited. And it started to snow. And I waited. And it started to sleet. I couldn’t feel my fingers anymore, but I waited, and finally the toy store opened. They let people in one at a time, selling beanie animals, and I was worried because each time someone walked out with one, it meant there was one less in the store. I didn’t know how many came in per shipment.
“Then people started leaving empty handed. I just wanted to go home and cry, but I waited. Finally, they let me in the toy store an
d they said they had five beanies left, but they were all the same. This ugly monkey with a long stringy beard and wearing a tiny cowboy hat for no good reason. I was so stubborn I bought one anyway. I must have been the only person willing to spend money on this stupid thing.
“When I left the store I saw my father across the street, waving me over to the car. He had been parked across the street the whole time watching me. He was so sure I would give up and come home! So I got in the car, showed him this ridiculous monkey, and told him how much I loved it. It’s been sitting on that shelf collecting dust ever since.”
“That’s incredible,” Daniel said. “You have to keep it.”
“We’ll see,” she said. “Anyway, we should get back online. Will it interfere with the visor’s transmission if we’re in the same house when we log in?” Coral asked.
“Nah,” Daniel said, “we could be in the same bed and it wouldn’t matter.”
“Good to know,” Coral said, “but let’s not test that out just yet.”
“That came out wrong,” Daniel said.
Coral just laughed and put her visor on. Daniel left for her parents’ bedroom as Coral lied down on her own bed.
Before long, they were both standing outside the ruins of Sagma’s temple. A few nondescript NPCs were banging on the outer walls with hammers.
“I wonder how Marco’s ‘initiation’ went last night,” Daniel said, walking toward the entrance to the temple.
Already the temple looked improved. The entry was no longer a crevice between fallen slabs of rock. It was now an archway carved with figures of people writing, thinking, and talking. They stepped inside and found that the narrow tunnel was lit with a few torches. Vernagi sat in the heart of the temple, counting gold coins onto a freshly polished altar like a tax collector.
She looked up as they entered. Her wrinkled face looked softer, younger. Perhaps the improved lighting was more flattering.
“DivineMarco is doing well,” she said. “I have already hired construction workers with the gold he has collected for Sagma.”
“Where is he?” Daniel asked.
“Havenstock most likely,” she said. “I sent him out in the small hours of the morning after I was through initiating him.”
“So he’s gone,” Daniel said. “Just like that.”
“He does important work,” Vernagi said. “First we rebuild, then we worship. Once DivineMarco has gathered enough followers, they will congregate here. Their hymn will restore Sagma to insuperable power.”
“Not insuperable,” Coral said. “Didn’t Podonos defeat Sagma?”
“History,” Vernagi said, narrowing her eyes at Coral, “will not repeat itself. While the tower is constructed upward, we also dig. One of the god’s most potent artifacts is the Timescryer Scroll, long ago locked away in the basement of his tower. With it, I will peer into the past and watch the ancient battle of the gods. I will advise Sagma how to defeat Podonos this time.”
“What makes you think there will be a battle this time?” Coral asked.
“My dear soft girl,” she said, “killing the god of power is the first thing Sagma will do. He has already issued the challenge.”
Coral didn’t care much for all this god stuff. She was eager to get away from Vernagi and find out more about Diardenna. Daniel was already storming out of the temple. It must hit pretty hard, having a friend and teammate vanish like that. Last time was involuntary. Otto had killed Marco early on. This time, Marco made the decision to leave willingly.
Outside the temple, Alua stood by as Daniel doled out 150 gold coins from his special orange pouch to Chauncey and Lyla.
“Lyla, now that we have no healer with us, I’ll need to hire you for our trip to Diardenna,” Daniel said.
“Happy to help,” she said, “so long as your pouch is full.”
“Lyla here was telling me about her people,” Alua said. “Her clan has about twenty orcs in it, but they also have a Sage.”
Alua seemed thrilled by this revelation, but Coral didn’t understand the import. “Is that like a wise man?”
“So much more than that,” Alua said. “One must live many hundreds of years to learn enough of the world to become a Sage. I don’t care what Vernagi says about orcs, Sages have the highest intellects in all of Travail. They are masters of their class. It would be an honor to meet one.”
“Let’s visit the Dour Scrub then, on our way north toward Diardenna,” Daniel said.
“I would like that,” Alua replied.
“Great. We’ll wait for Sybil and Sal to arrive, and then we’ll head out.” Daniel sat on the ground and leaned against the temple’s wall.
Coral sat too and took a dead wyvern out of her bag. She used her fabric shears to cut the head off. Then she ran one blade down the length of the monster’s body, all the way to its tail. Sal had mentioned the meat’s ability to give XP, so she didn’t want to waste that. She pulled the skin aside and dug her fingers into the monster’s corpse, gently loosening the meat from the skin. When she had finished, she was able to remove a long slimy strip of wyvern. She didn’t bother to separate the meat from the bone. That wasn’t her area.
She didn’t mind that Daniel watched her work. It was nice that he was interested. He went from being a Fighter, to a Scout, to a Knight, each time wielding a sword and rushing headlong into battle. It was good to know that her crafting class didn’t seem like a bore to him.
The skin toward the tail came to a fine point, while the skin toward the head was wider. She took out another wyvern and prepared its skin for use, setting the meat aside for Sal. She turned the strips end to end, with the tail of one lined up against the neck of the other. She sewed the two strips together and had a neat rectangle when she was done. The wings attached to one strip were upside down compared to the other, but that didn’t matter. The wings were inanimate now anyway.
Lyla was watching now too. Coral kept cutting, stripping, and sewing until she had a series of rectangular strips. Then she sewed these together, and folded them over to sew two cylinders from the fabric. She kept adding strips until she had two pant legs prepared, then she joined them up with more skin to create a pair of wyvern pants. She sliced the wings off of the seat of the pants and held them up.
>> Wyvern Leggings. Takes trouser snakes to a whole new level. Defense +5. Durability: 45/45. Each piece of wyvern armor grants +10% resistance to Stupor and Confusion debuffs.
The Durability was worse than her Sahuagin Suit, and there was no Constitution bonus, but the Defense bonus was better. She wondered what stats the full set would confer.
>> Congratulations! You have improved your Skinweaving ability to 6. +8.5% additional crafting speed when Skinweaving.
Coral was about to dig into her bag for more wyverns when she saw that Daniel had a handful of his own. He passed them to her. “Thanks,” she said.
“No problem,” he replied. “I’m going to see if there are any more wyverns around here to kill. They’re low XP, but useful for parts.”
Coral continued crafting as Lyla watched. Wyvern wings were flopping everywhere, but Coral pressed on, stitching with her suture thread and improving her ability.
“Am I right that you’ve never met an orc before?” Lyla asked.
“Not before you, no.”
“Yet you can Skinweave?”
“Yes, why?” Coral asked.
“I think Sage Natan will want to meet you,” she said. Lyla stood up and walked toward Daniel.
“Ok,” Coral said to herself in a low tone, “take me to the Sage.”
“What?” Sybil asked.
“When did you log in?”
“Three seconds ago. What Sage?”
“Sage Natan,” Coral said. “He’s one of the orcs. Lyla said he’d want to speak with me.”
“Oh. Ok. Just making sure it wasn’t Sage Tawn. I still have his ceremonial dagger.”
“That’s right, you’ve met a Sage before. What was he like?”
“Vol
atile.”
>> Congratulations! You have improved your Skinweaving ability to 7. +9.5% additional crafting speed when Skinweaving.
These snakes were improving her Skinweaving with each item she crafted. They must be a pretty high level material. “Sybil, can I have your wyverns?”
After empting her inventory of dead snakes, Sybil started to sing and walked away. Watching Coral use her spare time on leveling must have inspired her to do the same. Where was Sal though? She couldn’t just sit here and sew all day.
>> Congratulations! You have improved your Skinweaving ability to 8. +10.5% additional crafting speed when Skinweaving.
