“What are you talking about, Sunlight Daisy?”
“You do know what it is?”
“Yeah…”
“I bought one and gave it to him.”
“Why?” I’m flabbergasted.
“Because, after spending some time listening to him, I realized you have it all wrong and he’s right. Besides, Seeker and I, we’re a pair. Two of a kind. You wouldn’t understand that, of course, but I wanted him to always come to me when he was killed. It was my last test to see if he was for real. He comes every time. Every time he dies. And then he’s with me, helps me, guides me to the future he has planned for us all. I’m his new protégé. And you are shit.”
Shell summons Xiuhcoatl.
Gold mist shoots out of her chest and the massive, shining, snaky dragon summon takes form in front of Djinn and me. The beast’s eyes penetrate me, and I see revenge lust in them.
Sid casts Contemplation. Djinn gains Protection.
Shell casts Spontaneity. Xiuhcoatl gains +560 ATT.
The great golden sun dragon of all dragons glows with the stat boost, and flames shoot out of his nose as he feels the effect of the spell.
Sid casts Mantra.
“Silvia,” I whisper, and I’m afraid.
Djinn gains +634 ATT.
“Master Sid, I’m not the one you should be worried about.”
I’m so flustered that I’m not fighting anywhere near peak-performance. “Dammit, I don’t know what to do!”
“You do!” Djinn says. “Command me!”
Shell casts Summon Within.
White and black diamonds shoot out of her chest, and fly at me so fast that I can’t dodge. I’m hit by them, but they don’t hurt my body. They hurt my very soul, and I fall down from a sensation of having lost all willpower to move, breathe, exist.
Sid is damaged by Spirit power.
“Command me, young Sid. Get up!” Djinn pleads.
Xiuhcoatl rises high in the air, sapphire, skeletal wings flapping.
I can’t do a damn thing. It’s all too much, and I’m so heavy. I feel like part of me broke from that move. What is that spell?
Shell commands Simmer.
That one…
Simmer—Burns target every 3 seconds for 10% HP for 30 seconds. Target cannot attack.
Shit.
Xiuhcoatl opens his angry dragon snout and out spills molten yellow lava… coming right at me and fast. I can’t move. The Mystic spell that Shell used, one I don’t have nor knew of, has made me immobile, listless, defenseless. Hopeless, knowing this defeat could possibly crack my mind from the pain I’m about to endure… maybe making me like the mysterious Anella, who I now realize has known true pain, loss, and regret.
Why couldn’t I act? Why didn’t I listen to Djinn and command him? I had been stunned, and I think some part of me didn’t believe Shell would really do this god-awful thing to me.
Sid gains the effects of Simmer.
Then the unbearable searing hits me, and I writhe around in the grass, screaming. It just goes on and on. I kind of make out through the first waves of the tormenting lava consuming me that Djinn is hitting Xiuhcoatl in that way summons attack anyone who attacks me, but that’s all I can soak in. My body is on fire, inside and out, and the burn effect, which will slowly kill me instead of a fast kill like Xiuhcoatl’s Seizure move, melts my digital flesh off my face. I reach up to my cheeks as I try to scream while my vocal chords burn out, and feel them with nubs for fingers, face just mush. Then my left eye pops from the heat, and I lie squirming in agony in the grass of White Elf Territory, begging for it to end, but I know I can’t even speak. My tongue has been burned out. Slathering, wispy, squeaky noises come out of my disintegrating mouth. There is no way to cry out anymore, even. All has been fried out of me.
This is the worst, the absolute worst. I can’t block the insane pain eating my body, and in my final gasp of life, I look up at Xiuhcoatl with my right eye, still somehow intact. The golden sun dragon and Djinn duel, but Xiuhcoatl’s black and red eyes meet my one blue. I see something there in his gaze, a blankness, as though he were shutting off his torturing me from his conscience, but I have no mind to interpret, and then I am, so very thankfully, gone.
~
I’m just about to say goodbye to the odd being marking on my palm as Sorry hisses, “Wait.”
I pull my hand back and turn to her.
“What, Lady?” asks Days, touching her arm.
“It’s bothering me. Are you sure you’re going to use Keres? I mean, I just have this feeling… Keres is who? What? What she did to Days, I mean… do you follow?” Her brows push together and she bites her lower lip, gazing down at me.
She’s scared. We all are. Keres did something to all of us, those who watched, and Days, who was eaten alive. Destruction I now have command over.
No, she’s not scared of me. She’s afraid Keres isn’t supposed to be claimed as a summon, that something felt wrong to her.
I keep my mouth shut. She’s absolutely right, and I know it, but I know Keres has to be the one. Deep in my gut, I know. You can see why I don’t tell anyone that I feed her sometimes.
My summons entered my heart when they agreed to let me be their masters, whatever my heart might be, and I feel them and know them. Sounds like some old-fashioned new age crap. I know I’d sound nuts to anyone I said these thoughts to and the actions they lead to aloud.
That’s a big truth, though. I didn’t beat any of them, really. They chose. Not me.
I feel like they are all mine, and to see Xiuhcoatl come from Shell felt like I was betrayed, or that maybe the dragon summon would be glad to get his revenge. It’s hard to separate that she has a different Xiuhcoatl… but she had a fit at Djinn for leaving her as though her Djinn and my Djinn were the same.
There was that inscrutable look Xiuhcoatl gave me after obeying Shell’s command to melt me to death. At the time, in heightened fear and shock, I knew it was the same Xiuhcoatl.
What does that mean? How do I answer Sorry?
“It’s hard. To explain.” Something occurs to me. Yes, things have changed, and maybe people’s thoughts on doing these fights might not be as enthusiastic. “Look, I completely understand if any of you have changed your minds and can’t do this anymore. Please believe me when I say I have no idea why you’ve shown up to any of them. I guessed you were bored.” I look around at them. “I guessed everybody loved Mystic stories and summons. What I realize is that Keres was something completely dark. Different. Disturbing on a level that Mystic summons shouldn’t be. If any or all of you want to walk away right now, do it. Don’t worry about me.”
I smile at Sorry, whose eyes are fixed like arrows on mine. “You all have been some of the best friends I’ve ever known I could have. Now I know why you do the fights.” I look over at Simple, who is staring at the dirt. “Maybe another day, or maybe never, but there are other missions than these Mystic summon-collecting death sentences.”
Doolittle speaks after a moment of silence where we’re all looking at the dirt with Simple. “There’s more.” He says it so quietly I think he’s talking to himself, maybe casting a spell.
I look up at his tall, lean, White Elf frame.
“Simple told us about it. Simple?” He turns his gaze away from me and tilts his head as he tries to get her to look at him. Still watching her, he says, “You know Simple and her books. Her runes. Her histories.” He smiles softly at her.
She sits down, cross-legged, and peers up at me, worry deep in her Nuudle eyes.
“I thought you were working on scroll-making?” I say to her.
“Sid,” she says softly. “I’ve been here a very long time.”
Are we really talking about this?
I sit down next to her, and the other three join us in the cave soil. We’re in a circle with a Luna Lamp in the middle.
“How long?” I ask.
“I don’t know. I made it my mission to figure out what Dark World is, how time passe
s but doesn’t, and I found clues and answers in the books at the Temple of Nuudlel. A wonderful NPC helped me.”
“Was it Master Gronai?” I say.
She chuckles, shoulders relaxing. “No. I still have no clue how you know how to charm that grumpy, ancient NPC into pretty much giving you scrolls.”
“No, it’s not like that—”
“Joke, but kind of for real. How do you get on with NPCs so well? We all see it with your summons.”
“Hey, Simple,” Sorry says in a low voice. “Stay on track.”
I meet eyes with Days. He has admiration for me in that expression, and it’s the same one he’s always had. I know it because I show him the same face. Respect. My stomach settles and I exhale, not realizing how worried I was and terrified until Days let me know with a look that this is good news, don’t worry, Sid, we got you… that look.
“Okay.” She bows her blue, pigtailed head and fiddles with a Thunderstone Ring on her index finger. “What conclusion have you come to about Dark World and how you got here, what it is, all of that?”
“You mean, pretty much all the hinted questions I asked the guild that nobody would talk about, change the subject for, or get dead quiet when brought up?”
She whips her head over to me. She looks frightened, but I was just fucking with her, trying to lighten this oppressive mood.
“Hey, Simple, look at me. I’m grinning. You know me. What’s going on? Just say it.”
“No, really, Sid. I want to know what you think Dark World is.”
I blink at her a few times, then glance around at the others. They are so intently focused on me that I feel like the star of a Broadway play who just forgot the most important line of the show on opening night. “Hey, why are you all so serious? I’m honestly confused, not trying to say anything or judge, you know. What do you know that you’re not telling me?”
Days says, “You’ve figured out you’re probably dead, right?”
I nod and give him a grim look. “It makes sense, but the interface…”
“Yep,” he says. “Don’t we need eyes?”
“So, you’re saying you have no idea, either, and anything I’ve thought of, you have four times over for God knows how long you’ve been here. Now, truly, I have no insight. I’m sorry. I lose myself in my class and my summons. It helps me not focus on those questions anymore, and every time I do, I get unreasonably angry.” I’m not smiling anymore and put my face in my small hands.
“Me too,” Sorry says gently.
“Me too,” Doolittle agrees.
Simple puts her hand on my sandaled foot. “Look at me.”
I do. Her eyes tell me she knows me very, very well, that all this time, she’s been paying close attention to me, my personality, my gameplay. It’s not for obsessive reasons, or even curiosity. She’s looking to see if I’m something, and the way she’s looking at me now tells me all this—and she has figured that I am that thing, which makes her feel filled with joy.
“The books,” I say. “All those Nuudle rune books in the temple. And goddamn, even every trashy inn has a few books lying around next to the bedrolls. Simple, what did you read that makes you look at me like that?”
She smiles softly. “First, tell me what you think is going on.”
I shake my head. “It’s all pieces, and I only have what I know from Elora lore and now Dark World lore to try to remember all the clues dropped to me out of order to make a story that is most likely what happened to me.”
“What is, say, the dominant theory right now that you have?” Doolittle asks.
“I’m dead, Seeker has something to do with it.” I’d never said it out loud. I continue, now feeling floodgates open. “Dark World is Elora’s past as I know it. The game Elora Online focuses a lot on back in the day of Bane making Dragonbane and Kane defeating him. All that is happening in Dark World. Somehow, my consciousness is inside this game, this world. This Dark World. Will time keep moving forward until two thousand years from now I meet Sid Vicious, my toon in Elora, and tell him everything? I have no memory of that happening, but maybe I can create it. Then again, nothing ever happens. Bane never has big battles with anyone, not even Kane. It’s like I’m in a typical MMORPG right-now scenario, not living an actual virtual life in some other reality that the company sends people who die while playing to.” The words fall out so fast, and I gesture wildly. “I want to go back to Elora. There were people there. People I cared about. If I’m dead and somehow I get to Elora, will they accept this little Mystic Nuudle is their old Maniac Dragonbane best friend?”
“Silvia?” Sorry asks.
“What?”
“You’ve said that name every time you cast Mantra. A woman named Silvia meant so much to you that you made her name your mantra for Mantra.” Sorry reaches over and pushes hair out of my eyes.
“Yeah, mainly her,” I admit in response to Sorry’s mature and understanding way of getting it out of me.
Days pulls out Onyx Steel, his new broadsword made from onyx and steel magically blended by an expert crafter, and drags it in the dirt around the Luna Lamp. “Simple read about time from the ancients’ points-of-view. She understands it and can explain it. In non-linear experience of time, you had been written about in one of the books she read. Right now isn’t the time to get into explaining the time in the game, how it’s perceived. And no, we don’t know any solid answers, but that’s what Simple looks for when she reads all these books.” He sketches Djinn in the soil. “Sid, what is it like being a Mystic for you? You don’t fight like a regular fighter would. I don’t think it’s because you’ve always played melee. I think there’s something more going on, but the translations from Simple’s rune knowledge are only like sketches of what they actually were trying to record in writing. That’s how much dialect has changed, and how friggin’ old these books she found are.”
I take a deep breath. Let it out. “I’d like to read the book that you say talks about me.”
They exchange glances with each other.
“What?”
“We think you know part of it already. Anyone who’s ever played Elora Online knows a little glimpse of what’s in that book,” says Sorry.
“Ananta,” I murmur. “The opening cutscene.” I turn to Simple. “You’ve found books that tell the story behind the cutscene like it actually happened here?”
“Something like that.”
“Wow, yeah, I want to read that.”
“See?” says Days. “I’ve never met anyone who is his class like you are a Mystic. People play their class, they talk about their class, they make plans based around their class, but they don’t identify their very being with their class. You totally do that.”
“No, I don’t.” I wave a hand and crack up. “I did with Maniac, though. What the—what are you talking about?”
“It’s true,” Sorry says. “You’re almost an NPC in your attitude about your summons.”
I cock my head at her with a funny smile. “What do you mean?”
“NPCs are focused on one to three things in conversation. Not that you do that, mind, and, you’re too quiet. We all want to know you better. We can see in you that you identify with this class as though it were the job you wanted all your life and took a chance one day, went for it, and got it. Simple and Days? They said you sure as hell weren’t like that when they met you that first day. You’ve grown into it.”
I look at the marking Days has drawn in the dirt. It’s Sorry in her Medusa Headdress. Those things can be seen a mile away.
“The book. Simple, can you explain why we’re talking about the thing nobody talks about right now? What did you find in the book?”
“It can be interpreted so many ways.”
“Do you have it? I can read runes now. Well, somewhat.”
She tightens her lips. “I always have that book.”
“Can I borrow it? Please? I’ll give it back as soon as I’m done.”
She pulls a faded, red leather book, rath
er large, certainly not of this time, out of one of her bags. She hands it to me. I try to read the runes on the cover to figure out what the name of it is. The cover itself is just the name of the book, no author, embossed in gold leaf.
I say, “It looks like, well, I’d say the name of the book is something like ‘Manual of Systems’.”
She stares hard at me. “How did you get that out of it?”
“What do you interpret it as?”
“Guide to Time Dimensions.”
I look at it again. I can see how she might see that, but I still read Manual of Systems. I put it in my bag. “Thanks. I’ll get it back to you soon.”
I stand up, but the rest of them stay sitting, looking up at me, confused.
Suddenly, I’m confused too.
“What?” I say.
“Well, where do you think you’re going?” Sorry says with a webbed hand on her hip.
“What? Oh, I thought—I mean, we’re done here, right? I’m supposed to read this book to understand what you’re talking about.” I look around at their amused faces. “I feel dumb. What am I missing?”
Days stands up, towering over me, and claps my thin shoulder. One of his claws pokes through my robe. “Yeah, we want you to read the book, but we have an Oni to catch first.”
“But…”
The rest of them stand up. Simple is back to her cheerful self.
“Sorry was just scared of Keres. She knows the drill. She knows how you play these.” Simple waves her wand and red smoke comes out of it. She writes the word in Nuudle ancient runes in the air with the smoke for “Talk to me later about something important.” It’s a character with three strokes. Those ancient Nuudles needed their privacy.
I nod. I’m actually mostly humbled. Sorry had a weak moment of fear and that was all that happened? My worried mind blew it all out of proportion?
No, there’s more. It’s in the red leather book with the gold leaf imprints.
I turn and put my palm on the cave wall in White Elf Territory… the usual happens, then fade to black. Next, we are in a round cavern. It’s freezing in here. The walls are blue ice, reflecting from blue torches placed all around the cave walls, set right in the ice. The floor is white marble and shines like a dentist’s teeth. In the center at the top of the cave hangs a chandelier with dozens of blue-flame candles.
Total Immersion: Dark World: A LitRPG Adventure Page 18
