“He’s trying to embarrass me.”
“No,” Djinn chides. “Just moving things along. You have missed time. May as well catch up as soon as possible. Blessed Silvia, I have heard your name countless times, and each time I hear it, wonderful things happen.” He floats over and takes her hand in his bejeweled one, plants a kiss on the back.
She smiles at him. “You’re awfully nice.”
“Why, thank you. You are a good judge of character.”
She laughs with delight.
“I always like to make a pretty White Elf happy. Don’t worry, though, Sid. I won’t steal her heart from you.”
“I think you already have,” she says to him with a grin. Her eyes are clear, no signs of her earlier distress.
He flutters eyelashes at me, oh-so-innocent, then gives her a sugar-sweet smile.
She turns to me, glancing at Djinn, grasps my hands as I reach her and pulls me down next to her. “Tell me everything. Every detail. Don’t leave out a thing.”
I do just that, and Djinn helps me fill in the foggy spots or keeps me on track when I get distracted by a story. Every time I tell her about Seeker, her cheeks burn, but she’s flabbergasted about Dark World.
“Everyone in Dark World is confused as to why we’re there. I told you about my guildmates, but they are more than that. I feel closer to them than the friends I’ve had all my life, but we’ve been through some crazy times. Things hurt there. I can feel everything. All my senses work, and since you cast Awaken on me, I feel Elora the same way, too. I wanted to save that for last, because it’s the biggest thing about Dark World. About being… what I am that got me to Dark World.”
“You feel it? What… does it feel like?”
“It’s better than real life, and the brews are amazing. When you get a stat boost, a heal, a buff, you get a rush, and it’s different with everything cast, every stat. It has been amazing, but the not knowing… it eats at you. Every day and night. There’s such isolation in being cut off, never seeing the people you knew every day for no reason.”
I pause, watching her. I’ve never seen a player’s eyes focused like hers are except in Dark World. “I can’t believe I’m here and actually seeing you again.”
I pause. I can’t keep it in. “I’ve thought about you every day I’ve been in Dark World.” There. I’ve been fried twice by Xiuhcoatl, but this is scarier, waiting to see how she responds.
“Sid.” She takes my hand and puts her head on my shoulder, leaning down to do it, but somehow it works. “You don’t know what your death did to me. It was like my sister all over. I hadn’t let myself have real feelings about anyone since she died, and then I fought how much I wanted to know you, but there, right before you died, or went to Dark World, I let you in and couldn’t help it. You have no idea how happy I am right now, and how amazing it feels to be sitting next to you.”
I smell her hair. Honeysuckle. “You have no idea what it’s like to feel you,” I say softly.
She sighs, and we stay sitting like that for a while. Djinn is great and pretends to be gazing out to sea while we have our private moment.
“I wish I could feel you, just once.”
“Maybe someday.”
“We’ll figure this out together. Somehow, we will. I’ll help you and I won’t leave your side.”
“Speaking of that, I did say I have another flower for you.”
“Oh!” She lifts her head and looks down at me. “I love gifts from you.” She grins, eyes glowing brightly.
I pull the Sunlight Daisy out of my bag. The tag with the item description still dangles from it. “Here, read what it does and decide if you want it. I understand if you don’t.”
She quickly reads the daisy’s use and sighs deeply. “This is perfect. It’ll make sure we don’t get parted. Right?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“Thank you.” She kisses my cheek and strokes the petals of the Sunlight Daisy. “How odd it will be to never be a ghost again.”
We sit in silence, feeling happy in each other’s company, especially after our heartfelt disclosures.
After some time, I squeeze her hand. “I made a friend in the one who taught me how to get back to Elora. She’s the Hidden I told you about. Nobody understands this Dark World and death thing, and I think Seeker knows something none of us do.”
“Seeker,” she murmurs. “Goddamn the man.”
“Yep.”
Our eyes meet.
“You’re a cute Nuudle.”
I smile and work the eyes. She laughs.
“Ancient runes and scroll-making? Really?”
“Yep.”
“And you think… what? This Hidden sent you here for what?”
I’m quiet a moment, but finally I say, “I think she wants me to find Ananta here in Elora.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” I say slowly, “if you think about the opening cutscene with Ananta, on his forehead he has a typical Nuudle marking in Elora, but those aren’t the same ones you see in Dark World. It may stand to reason that means he’s in Elora instead of Dark World. How to get the quest and where to find him and battle him are the questions.”
She watches Djinn play with a pink willow blossom. “Maybe… maybe you should go back to your grave here and now, if there’s a time thing. Maybe something in that graveyard will give you a clue. We need more help. We could get in touch with at least Peter…”
I stop her. “Seriously, I don’t want to upset all those guys. And Sally. I need to know the truth first, and I even feel bad putting you through this, but—”
“You’re not putting me through anything but a miracle.” She smiles brightly.
“Miracle?”
“Look at you. I mean, look at you. I never thought I’d see you again, that you’d died in some horrible murder, but there’s more. Somehow, you’re here, and you’ve been living in the game. Or something like that.”
“Yeah, it gets pretty complicated.”
She stands up. “Come on, Sid, let’s walk down to Sunset Forest and to your old graveyard. Your gravestone might be there. You never know what you’ll find, but it seems all your progress with the mysteries have happened in that graveyard.”
“You’re right. Absolutely right.”
“Well, are you getting up?”
She invites me to a party and I accept. I stand up, brush myself off, and say to Djinn, “Well, it’s back to the dead place.”
He sighs dramatically. “Always the dead with you. You and Keres are a perfect match. I guess I should be jealous.”
“Oh, definitely,” I tell him.
Silvia laughs. She turns to me. “You knew exactly how to reach me. You showed me these summons and I believed because of it. Nobody’s seen anything like these in Elora. It’s truly amazing.”
I smile, and she smiles back.
“Let’s go,” I say.
CHAPTER 16: BATTLE OF ANANTA
“It’s around here somewhere. Just hard to find with everything so overgrown,” I tell her as we stomp through heavy forest brush. No trails here. I can tell we’re close to the graveyard, though. I feel it in my Nuudle bones.
“Wait, over there. Do you see it?” Silvia asks.
“What?”
She points. “Between those bushes. Looks like piece of an old iron fence post sticking out of the ground. Let’s go see. You said your graveyard has a fence all around it, right?”
“Yeah, let’s go.”
We tromp through the heavy foliage to the black iron post and look beyond it. The post is all that’s left of the original wrought-iron fence, but through years of overgrowth, we can see some of the remains of bigger graves and tombs of my graveyard in Dark World.
“Here, I think mine was this way.”
She follows me to a couple piles of rubble. I could have sworn this is where my grave was, but now I’ll never be able to tell. I tell her so. “I guess this is a bust. But I can show you that big tomb still sta
nding over that way. That’s the tomb of the Hidden who helped me.”
“The one who was the first player to ever be in Dark World?”
“Yeah, come check it out. I don’t know why she got a tomb like this, but somebody who makes Dark World decisions must have wanted her name to last through the ages with pretty much the only tomb still standing in this graveyard now, and I think it’s legible.”
We go to the tomb and Silvia examines the stone carving of the White Elf atop. She cocks her head to the side. “Familiar,” she mutters. Her voice has dropped an octave, as though a thought, a scary thought, has occurred to her.
Slowly, she drops her eyes to the name on the tomb. “Anella Portabella,” she whispers. “Oh, oh, Sid, I’m going to be sick.” She turns away from me and Anella’s tomb and bends over, then collapses into the overgrowth.
“Hey. Hey, Silvia. What is it? Are you okay?” I stroke her back, wishing she could feel it. She’s weeping and shaking all over.
“Sweet Kristina,” she says, broken.
Kristina? Who’s Kristina?
I think back to Anella and how I realized she’d committed suicide, and at the same time, I remember Silvia telling me about her sister, early in the game, doing the same thing—with the headband on and playing, just months after the game went live.
I go to the ground with her and wrap my small arms around her shoulders. She sobs, now uncontrollably, and I want to take this pain away.
“Silvia, I get it. It’s your sister. The Hidden who’s been helping me is your sister.”
“She was there in that place all alone, with nobody, no one, for how long? You said you had no idea, but it had to be a long, long time. You said she was odd, flighty, touchy. You didn’t even tell me her name. I can’t think of it.” She covers her face.
“Listen, listen. I get it now. She said she used to play with her sister, and that she’d seen her since she got to Dark World. That her sister was still in Elora. She said that right before she told me where to go to get to Elora.”
“If that’s true, then why didn’t I see her? Why didn’t she talk to me?” She sits up, swallowing tears of shock and painful memories.
“I don’t know. She said she made sure you never saw her. She’s… different. Good-hearted, but afraid. Silvia, you have no idea how much she helps me, and it’s because she’s so good. Believe me, she’s okay. And think, she’s like me. She’s dead, right? But she’s still alive somehow, that thing none of us can figure out. You can see her again.”
Silvia leans back in the greens, letting briars rub her arms. They won’t scratch her, and she’ll never feel them like I do. I sit up, stroking her golden hair, trying to give her a gesture of comfort. Her hair feels soft and silky, like an elf’s hair should.
There’s no rain in this ruin of a cemetery, but it’s all gray skies and trees of doom. I wait, feeling the satin of her White Elf hair, until she opens her eyes and sits up. “I want to go to Dark World.”
“No, I promise, you don’t. To be honest, I’m not exactly sure how I made it through the portal. I think I could do it again, but… I just don’t think you should go there.”
“Why not?”
“If you start to feel when you go there, well, things friggin’ hurt in Dark World.”
“You said the brew was amazing. That buffs and stat boosts feel like something never experienced in life.”
I look at the sky. “Yeah, those are the good things. But there is pain—a lot of it.” I don’t tell her what death feels like.
“I want to see Kristina again.”
“I know.” I look back to her as she sits up, wiping leaves out of her hair.
“Please. You can teach me. You can do it again. You can take me back with you.” Her lower jaw sets hard.
“I don’t know if I can, and I sincerely don’t want you to change like I did. What if it kills you?”
She looks down. “I… I don’t know. What if it doesn’t?” She gazes back up at me with longing. I can’t take that look. “Can’t we try?”
“I’ll tell you what. We’ll summon Djinn and ask him.”
“Djinn?”
“He knows everything, just gets a little confused on timelines.” I grin.
Sid summons Djinn.
My favorite green genie streams out of my chest in a green mist and forms directly over our heads, hanging upside down. “Well, now. I remember this.”
“What? What do you mean?” I ask him.
“The time thing, you know. And then—”
Off to our right a little way, an NPC appears with a blue magic bubble around her. Calla. She waves, and dashes over to us.
“Mystic Sid! You found your way here! I was quite worried you’d be too dumb to figure it out.” She envelops Silvia, Djinn, and me in her blue bubble.
“He didn’t figure anything out. He summoned me to ask questions about everything he doesn’t know, I’m certain,” Djinn explains to Calla.
“I see. Well, no matter. He summoned here and now.” She faces me. “Stand up, would you? I have to mark your hand. I suppose I don’t have to tell you what lies ahead?”
Stunned, I rise and face her. I pull my hood back to get a better look at her. I’ve never seen her out of that god-awful thunderstorm eternally in Forest of the Dead’s graveyard. Her skin has a slight pale forest green glow.
“Ananta?”
Her usual charisma fades as quickly as a secret tear. She whispers, “Yes, Ananta. Ananta has chosen you to meet with and fight. He wants to see what you’re made of.”
“How do you know that?” I ask.
Her slight glow pales. “He came to me when I changed.”
“Changed? What do you mean?” I’m as confused as ever.
She shakes her head. “No time for all that. My purpose is to give you Ananta’s mark so you can enter his battlefield. He has never wanted to meet a Mystic. Sid, Ananta is dangerous.” She looks down. “But Ananta can bring great change.”
“You mean, Sid can bring great change. He’ll command Ananta,” says Silvia softly.
Calla looks at her as though she hadn’t yet noticed Silvia was there. “Oh, hello. Yes, but I wasn’t going to say that. It puts a lot of pressure on young Sid. If I’ve learned anything about Mystic Nuudle Sid, it’s that he doesn’t do well under pressure.”
“Hey!” I say.
Djinn pats my shoulder, nearly knocking me over. “You’re a good fighter and Mystic, but you absolutely can’t handle pressure.”
“Oh, you both shut up.”
Silvia giggles. “He’s really going to fight Ananta?”
Calla takes my left hand, pulls out an emerald wand, and traces a mark onto my palm. She’s never used a wand, and it takes her about a minute. When I pull my hand back to look at it, I see the very same marking as the one on my forehead. Ananta’s symbol. It glows, too.
“Calla, where do I go?”
“Silly Sid. Like always, I marked it on the map.” She rolls her eyes. “My work is done. Now it is your time. Ta-ta, Sid, Djinn. And you, missy.” She smiles at Silvia, and then fades into nothing, along with her blue bubble.
“The map,” Silvia says. “Look at it.”
I open the map in my interface to see better.
There’s an X right smack-dab in the middle of the Temple of Nuudlel. What does that mean? I tell her and Djinn.
“Djinn?” Silvia asks him. “Do you know where we go? Sid said the other fights were in caves. I mean, that’s an entire temple. Not a cave. It’s enormous. Where would we even start?”
I look at him too. “Do you remember that part?” I glance at Silvia. “He knows no time.”
“Ahhh,” she sing-songs, as though that makes perfect sense. She’s handling things like the pro she is. Always the coolest head in the boss fights at the end of dungeon runs. She’d snapped back from learning of her sister pretty quickly, but I know her well enough to figure out that she’s already planning on finding Anella somehow. Her ability to make a plan, e
ven in high pressure situations, makes her strong.
“Actually, Master Mystic Sid, I do believe it was all in that red leather book The Black Simple gave you. I cannot read; it is too time-linear. I do know that book, and you should read it.”
“I tried to. The runes were too old. Even Master Gronai couldn’t interpret it, and he’s, well, Master Gronai.” I shrug.
Djinn cocks a fuzzy eyebrow. “Try now.”
“Well, okay.” I look through my bags but can’t find the damn book. “It’s not here.”
“The book your Nuudle friend gave you? The one she thought talked about you?” Silvia asks.
“Yeah. Yeah… oh, man. I think I left it with Master Gronai in Dark World the last time I saw him. He wanted to try reading it backward for some reason and… yeah. I left it with him.”
“You don’t have the book, Master Sid?” Djinn asks, cocking his head as though saying, shame, shame.
“Dammit, no. I don’t. I fucking don’t.”
“Hmm.” Djinn rubs his chin. “I do wish I could be of more service, but, as you know, I can’t even legitimately say I have a memory.”
Silvia laughs. It lightens me up a little. We don’t need that book. I decide Simple was reading too much into her rune studies and seeing something that wasn’t there. Manual of Systems. Right. I know that’s what it said. It’s probably some book on how the ancient Nuudles built huts through Mystic magic, and that one crude Nuudle drawing coincidentally looks like me. All Nuudles look the same until you are one, really. It’s all about hairstyle and color to everyone else.
“I say we head to the temple. See what’s what. We’ll figure it out,” I tell them.
“Your wish is my command,” Djinn answers.
Silvia takes my hand. “I can’t feel it, but at least you can. Let’s go.”
~
I dismiss Djinn far from the Temple of Nuudlel, and Silvia and I make it there about fifteen minutes later. She never once stops holding my little hand.
The temple, as I mentioned before, is enormous, and we wander from library to library, hall to hall, exploring every nook and cranny. I try zooming in on the map, but the X for Ananta’s battle stays firmly overlapping the entire temple.
Total Immersion: Dark World: A LitRPG Adventure Page 22
