by Mia Archer
“So what brings you to human lands? That’s a dangerous journey for a young elf such as yourself,” she said.
I threw my head back and laughed, and yet secretly I was delighted. She called me young. A common misconception, but it also meant that if she was reading my character sheet, and she definitely could since I could see the same mod installed with an indicator over her head that led to an impressively detailed character history, she wasn’t bringing it into the conversation. That was so refreshing. That was such a change from what I was used to.
“I guarantee you I was probably fighting off scarier monsters than you could imagine before your great-grandfather even looked at your great-grandmother with a twinkle in his eye,” I said.
A hundred years ago I would have been able to show off my age to a human by referencing their kings, but that wasn’t the case anymore. The humans hadn’t had a unified kingdom in at least half a century. Just another way that their world kept changing while mine stayed the same. Except for the Sundering, of course. That affected everybody. Still, there was far more potential for intrigue with a good human player. Perhaps that was one reason why I was so drawn to humans. It allowed for a richer role-playing experience than sitting around whining about how much it sucked to be immortal which is what your typical elf role-playing scenario boiled down to.
Assuming you could find somebody good. I desperately hoped this gorgeous woman in front of me was good. Wait. Gorgeous? Where were these thoughts coming from? I needed to get control. I needed to stop losing myself on ridiculous tangents about how attractive this girl was, particularly considering her "attractiveness" boiled down to an avatar and the way she described herself in that character sheet. And yet there was something compelling about her writing, about that description and the way she hooked me initially, that had me shifting in my seat out in the real world.
“My apologies lady elf,” she said, seeming genuinely sincere. “But a pretty face on an old soul isn’t going to protect you from creatures with sharp teeth any more than my clumsiness would protect me.”
My character blushed in game and out of the game I felt a flush rising to my cheeks. A surprising flush rising to my cheeks. What was going on with me tonight that this girl was able to get that sort of reaction out of me with just words on a screen?
Focus. Get back in the game.
I held up my fingers and allowed a flame to dance from finger to finger. She raised an eyebrow, but otherwise didn’t react. Obviously this was a woman who’d seen magic before. Or at least she’d heard of it. Either way she didn’t react with the wide-eyed surprise that usually accompanied that display. A slight disappointment, but behind my keyboard I was secretly jubilant. I was so sick of people who thought that wide-eyed surprise was the only way to react to magic, as though anybody who lived in a world where magic was a commonplace thing would be surprised by the damn stuff.
“Ah, I see,” she said. “A sorceress, I presume?”
I winced at the human word.
“If you want to reduce calling down the very forces that power this universe and bending it to my will “sorcery” then I suppose you could call me that,” I said.
“Impressive,” she said.
She dug into her pocket and pulled something out. I saw a flash of black and then the flames dancing on my fingers winked out. The tingling sensation that let me know I was drawing upon the magical forces that powered the universe disappeared at the same time. I blinked, looked at the object in her hand, and then my eyes widened in surprise. I hated that I reacted like that, but it was the only thing I could think to do in this situation. I did a quick inspect of her character just to be certain.
“Is that…”
An Elassa Shard,” she said. “It’s been passed down in my family, though I’ve never had occasion to show it off before. I figured this would be the perfect opportunity to show it off to someone who would actually appreciate it.”
The way she leaned against the barstool with a cocky smile on her face was only slightly ruined when she slipped in a puddle of something on the floor, no doubt left over from her spill a moment ago, and nearly sent the Elassa Shard flying across the room. I cried out and held my hand out trying to catch it, but she did a surprisingly nimble dance and snatched it out of the air before it went flying too far. It appeared being constantly clumsy has given this strange woman one hell of a set of reflexes.
And a good thing too. If that really was what she said it was then it was more valuable than the combined wealth of the entire city. They were so rare in the books that kingdoms rose and fell based on possessing one. I didn’t even know they were in the game.
I opened her character window and did a quick inspect. Sure enough equipped right there in her offhand was an item labeled as an Elassa Shard. Huh. I didn't realize they'd added them into the game. I closed out the character window and went back to the chat window.
“How did you get that?”
She blinked, cutting those delicious green eyes off from me for a moment. Her delicate jaw line worked for a moment and she fixed me with an expression that told me she was wondering if I was entirely right in the head.
“I told you,” she said slowly. “It’s been passed down in my family.”
I shook my head. “That’s not what I mean. How did you get that? I didn’t know Elassa Shards were even in the game! At least I’ve never seen one before…”
Of course that didn’t mean they weren’t in the game. It just meant I hadn’t seen them in the game before. I wasn’t really a big fan of the higher level dungeons, and they were always releasing new toys to entice people to go through that particular treadmill over and over. Megan was a perfect example of the type of personality that was perfectly willing to run the leveling treadmill as long as a shiny new in-game item was dangling tantalizingly just out of reach. It was entirely possible this was just some new bit of end game content I didn’t know about because I didn’t ever play end game content. It wouldn’t be the first time the developers took an all-powerful item from the books and reduced it to a trinket with a fun animation.
Of course if that was the case then how did a lower-level player get her hands on one? She wasn’t even halfway to the level cap and she was walking around with something that shouldn’t exist. Even if she had a higher level character and this was her role-playing alt there was no way to transfer items like that between characters. Color me intrigued.
She shook her head and now she really was looking at me as though I’d grown a second head. Or as though I’d sprouted fangs like some of the bloodsucking creatures that totally weren’t vampires even though they sucked and blahed like a duck lurking along the paths to human lands after dark.
“Game? What game are you speaking of? Are you quite all right my lady elf?”
I pulled away from my keyboard and shook my head. Damn! Here I was complaining about people breaking character, complaining about people pulling in information they’d have no idea about, and I’d been so surprised by this strangely compelling woman that I went and did it myself! I never did that. I never lost control. That never happened to me. What was going on here?
And yet I couldn’t deny the way I was feeling talking with this woman. There was something about her prose that went straight to my heart. There was something about her prose that went straight down to other areas in a way that few women ever had before. There was just something about her that was so compelling, so fascinating, so mysterious. And she was just some pixels on a screen with a particularly well written character sheet!
I put my hands back on my keyboard.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I forgot myself for a moment.”
She chuckled, a melodious rich sound that rolled over my body and sent a bolt of pleasure running through me as it hit my ears. “All is forgiven my lady elf.”
I sighed in contentment. There was something about the way that sounded. “My lady elf.” As though she was claiming me for her own. I blinked. What the hell w
as I thinking? Wanting someone to claim me? Wanting a woman in particular to claim me for her own? Now that was entirely out of character both in game and out! That was dangerously close to the sort of thoughts that led to the sort of role-playing the first asshole I'd threatened was into.
“I’m sorry to cut this short,” she said. “But I’m afraid I have some work to attend to.”
“Certainly,” I said. “It was nice making your acquaintance…”
I trailed off and hoped the question was obvious. Of course I knew her character's name because it was hovering right over her head, but there were points of role-playing etiquette to be observed and I was going to observe them to a fault considering how bad I'd just screwed up. She grinned and shifted, her enticingly lithe body moved this way and that and I found myself swaying back and forth hypnotized by the sight. “My lady elf may call me Kaira, if it pleases you.”
I grinned. So maybe there was a little bit of hubris to this one. Kaira was the name of the great human queen who unified all their kingdoms in antiquity and who forged treaties with the elves and other races. Of course it was also ironically enough Kaira's alliance that ended war long enough for scholar mages to turn their focus from fighting and delve too deeply and too greedily into arcane arts probably best left alone, but I’m sure she wasn’t thinking about giving some crazy mages enough breathing room to shatter the world a thousand years after her reign when she consolidated political power in this world. In my experience humans didn’t tend to think beyond their lifetime, though her reign was still within living memory for my people.
I arched a curious eyebrow at this intriguing woman and she looked me up and down as I did so. Normally I didn’t go for this sort of scene, but there was something about this girl that was making me enjoy this thoroughly. Far more thoroughly than I’d enjoyed a role-playing scenario in quite some time. I blushed and told myself it had nothing to do with the way my hair was standing on edge all over my body, the way my nipples were straining out, with that impossible delicious feeling between my legs that she was somehow able to elicit with just a few words despite my never having a particularly strong interest in the fairer sex before now. At least not that I'd admitted to myself, though I was starting to wonder after this brief interaction.
Not that any of that mattered. This would probably be the only time I met this woman. Assuming she was even a woman and not one of the many men who masqueraded as women in the game for various reasons. So many role-playing interactions were so many ships passing in the night never to see one another again, so why should this one be any different? So I figured I'd just enjoy myself and forget about any underlying existential crises that could potentially arise from how this woman was making me feel.
“Interesting name,” I said. “Hubris?”
Kaira fixed me with that easy-going grin. A deliciously sexy grin that made me want to kiss every inch of her lips even though that was completely out of character both in character and out of character, if you catch my meaning. And suddenly there was none of the clumsiness about her. Suddenly she was every bit the cocky role-player coming here for the first time, only with her it was somehow different. With her I got the feeling she could back it up.
“Not hubris,” she said. “Just the truth. Or a version of the truth. And it’s a family name.”
Well that was an answer and not an answer at the same time. Not sure what I was expecting. Either way I needed to know more about this mysterious stranger. I needed to know if this was a one-time thing or something more.
“Will I see you again?” I asked.
I bit back a curse as the words flew unbidden from my fingers to my keyboard and into the chat window. That wasn’t how this worked. If you liked role-playing with someone then you added them to your friend list. You kept an eye on their location and tried to engineer a “chance” meeting to avoid your one promising interaction fading into obscurity. After a couple good role-playing sessions you’d maybe start sending them out of character private messages. Maybe start working on a collaborative story. But at the beginning everything was supposed to feel organic. It was supposed to seem like you were stumbling into one another by accident even if it was nothing but.
At least those were the role-playing principles that my guild lived by. Those were role-playing principles I’d helped draft as the mistress of role-playing. And here I was throwing my own rules out the window because I was intrigued by a mysterious woman who wasn't even the gender I went for, who I didn’t know anything about, and who could very well be a dude for all I knew given the statistical breakdown of gender in this game!
And yet as I sat there at the keyboard, as I thought about this session, the mysterious object she held, and most of all her incredible skill with the written word, I realized I didn’t give a damn.
Fuck the rules. Some of them were stupid anyways.
She grinned one final time as she faded away. “Perhaps?”
3: Digital Sleuthing
I pulled back from my chair and concentrated on breathing. If I didn’t do that then I was worried I might actually forget to breathe. That I might pass out at my computer chair, and then that would worry Megan and pull her away from her raid which always made her cross.
I looked over my shoulder to Megan. Really looked at her in a way I hadn't before. At least I tried really looking at her in a way I hadn't before. I felt bad for using my roommate like that but she was the closest girl available.
Megan was pretty in a geeky sort of way. Behind those glasses was a pretty face with nice blue eyes. And I had to admit that she also looked pretty good in her tight fitting pajamas that were her usual uniform when she was raiding. I'd seen her in those outfits before and always thought she looked hot. I'd always thought objectively that she had a nice figure, but did that mean I was attracted to her? I mean it was one thing to look at someone and know objectively that they were attractive and another thing entirely to look at an objectively attractive person and be attracted to them.
Wasn't it? That chat session had me all sorts of confused.
As I looked at Megan I thought back to that chat session and it was as though something clicked. I was looking at her with new eyes. I didn't just know she was sexy. I thought she was sexy, if that makes any sense. I found myself staring at my roommate's lips and wondering what it would be like to run my own along their soft contours...
And I immediately shut down that line of thinking. For one this was Megan, my roommate, and that was an avenue I definitely didn't need to be traveling down any more than I'd allow myself to start fantasizing about a male roommate if I was in that sort of situation. Second, I was scared exactly what that line of thinking meant. Where it would lead. So I shut it down.
I needed something else to focus on. Like that Elassa Shard she'd been carrying. That was safe. That was something Megan could help me with. That was a distraction. I tore my eyes away from Megan to her screen and her raid. It looked like they were in a lull. I’d learned to read the patterns of those high-level raids even if they didn’t interest me at all, if for no other reason than so I could get a word in edgewise with my roommate.
“Hey Megan, quick question.”
Megan pulled her headphones down and laid them across her neck. Turned and smiled at me. That was a nice smile. I ignored that thought.
“Shoot,” she said.
“Did they add Elassa Shards as a high-level item or something?”
Her face scrunched up. “Elassa Shards?”
I rolled my eyes. Megan was so obsessed with Tales of Elassa that there were times I forgot she hadn’t ever bothered to read the book series that had taken the fantasy world by storm in the past five years and caused the game to be created in the first place. I ran into a lot of people like that. I even ran into people who were into the role-playing scene who hadn't cracked open the books and didn’t know anything about the world’s lore.
It was a point of mild personal shame that my own roommate hadn’t read the books des
pite trying time and again to get her to. Of course at the same time I’m sure it was a small point of personal shame for her that her roommate wasn’t a hardcore raider.
“They’re items from the books that negate all magical power. If anyone tries to throw a magical spell at someone carrying an Elassa Shard the spell disappears as though they’re in some sort of anti-magic bubble. And if you get near someone using magic then it stops them from casting whatever spell they were working on,” I explained.
Megan thought about that for a moment, tapping her finger against her lip. “Nope, nothing like that in the game.”
Huh. That was interesting. Megan knew everything about everything in game, and if she said an item wasn’t in the game then the item wasn’t in the game. And yet I couldn’t deny what I’d seen with my own two eyes. Kaira used that item and my character’s spell animation stopped immediately. As though I was being surrounded by some sort of anti-magic field. Although I suppose it was actually my character coming in contact with some ones and zeros that some clever programmer had put together to make the magic animation stop when that item got close to me. Whatever. I tried not to reduce the magic in game to its component programmable parts.
I’d even inspected her character. There was clearly an item equipped in her offhand labeled as an Elassa Shard. I wished I’d gotten a screenshot of the thing now, because I was starting to think I was going crazy. Or at the very least I was imagining things.
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty damn sure,” Megan said. She leaned back in her chair. “Something like that would be a game breaking item. Being able to interrupt any magic spell? The implications for dungeon runs, for PVP, would be incredible! Anyone who has something like that would be like a god in game!”
