by Vic Connor
A murmur went through the class. “Wait, seriously?” Tim asked.
Cal gave Niko a wink, then nodded.
Tim laughed in apparent disbelief. “Then we take Alonso,” he said, like it was an obvious decision.
Niko sputtered. “Wait, but Tim, you told me I was going to be on your team?”
“Yeah, but that was back when Cal had first pick. You’re a noob, dude. You and the swamp girl lost.” Niko must have looked stricken because Tim put his hands up. “No offense, but we’re the best team in the class. We want the best players around. Alonso won a Dueler’s Cup at his last school. It’s not personal.”
Alonso was looking at Cal like she’d grown a second head. With a laugh, he strutted over to join Erica and Tim.
“Well,” Cal said, “looks like you’re on our team, comrade. Jeny’s going to be thrilled when I tell her.” She turned from him to talk to Ms. Gyatso. Tim, Alonso, and Erica walked away, laughing with one another, fast friends. They filtered out toward the sky-lift with the rest of the class, all abuzz with the turn of events.
QUEST COMPLETE: JOIN A HUNTING PARTY
500 EXPERIENCE GAINED
PASSIVE EFFECT: 500*1.5 = 750 XP
2500/3000 XP
You have unlocked 1 new quest!
Niko stood alone in the middle of the spire. A vast array of alerts and achievements were flashing across his UI, but he was too stunned to read any of them. “He promised. I thought we were—”
“—friends?”
Niko turned. Kiele was sitting on the edge of the spire, kicking her feet off the ledge, sucking at her potion. “Look, Tim’s not the worst person I’ve ever met,” she said, “but he’s totally all business. Friends don’t matter to him, just winning. And, not to be rude, but if I hadn’t been calling the shots, Alonso and Erica would have totally owned you.”
Niko snarled, kicked a rock, clenched his fists. “So why did, I mean, ugh! Cal is so stupid for letting Tim choose first.”
“Cal? Are you kidding? She’s a genius.”
Nico paused. “What?”
“You remember when you asked to team up with me? Why did you do it?”
Niko frowned. “Because the only other pair left made a terrible team, y’know.”
“Exactly.” Kiele nodded over at Tim, Erica, and Alonso, waiting by the lift. “You saw them out there. Alonso is good, but he doesn’t listen. He can win duels, but he doesn’t play well with others, which means they’ll be a man short in fights. We almost beat them, and you’re a level two. Trust me, Cal knows exactly what she’s doing.”
For a time, sipping his potion and looking out at the foggy expanse of the ghost pines beneath him, Niko considered Kiele’s suggestion. In the corner of his UI three alerts appeared, glowing insistently.
TEAM MEMBER ABILITY SHEET: CALLOWAY JONES
TEAM MEMBER ABILITY SHEET: HASSAN SOHBI
TEAM MEMBER ABILITY SHEET: JENYA GOSWAMI
Now that he’d been officially added to a team, it seemed that Niko was able to view the stats and abilities of all its members. Over beside Ms. Gyatso, Cal had a far-off look—the UI gaze—swiping through something in the air that only she could see. As if feeling his eyes on her, she looked over at Niko and grinned.
Niko brought up his own system interface and flicked through the profiles of his new teammates, trying to remember the gist of their passive and active abilities:
YOU HAVE TEAMED UP WITH:
CALLOWAY JONES, LEVEL 12 DJINN MYTHIC CLASS
Passive: When you do not attack and are not attacked for 5 seconds, you become invisible and silent to enemies
ABILITIES:
• Shapeshift — Transform into an owl, gaining +50% movement speed. You are unable to attack when shapeshifted.
• Dagger Strike — Jump to an enemy within 15 meters of you and deal 30 damage.
• Fiery Gaze — Choose a visible target. While Fiery Gaze is active, deal 30% more damage to the target. Lasts 10 seconds.
• Ultimate: Death Wish — Create a sandstorm in a 15-meter radius that blinds enemies and deals 5 damage/second. Lasts 20 seconds.
YOU HAVE TEAMED UP WITH:
HASSAN SOHBI, LEVEL 12 HAOMA MYTHIC CLASS
Passive: Potions heal teammates for 50% more health
ABILITIES:
• Run Away! — Heal 1 ally for 30 HP, and while active, increase the movement speed of all allies in 5-meter radius of the caster by 15%.
• Stand your Ground! — Block all damage to 1 ally for 2 seconds, and while active, increase the defense of all allies in 5-meter radius of the caster by 20%
• Get Them! — Increase the damage of 1 ally for 5 seconds, and while active, increase the attack speed of all allies in 5-meter radius of the caster by 10%
• Ultimate: Ether of Life — Heals 100 HP and gives 50 armor to all allies in a 10-meter radius.
YOU HAVE TEAMED UP WITH:
JENYA GOSWAMI, LEVEL 12 SELKIE MYTHIC CLASS
Passive: 25% damage reduction when near a body of water
ABILITIES:
• Throw Tusks — Stab an enemy within 15 meters of you with a tusk, dealing 5 damage and sticking in the target. Recalling tusks stuns targets for 0.25s/tusk.
• Shield configuration (auto recall) — Turn your tusks into a 2-meter-wide shield that blocks all damage. Creating a shield automatically recalls all tusks.
• Armor configuration (auto recall) — Turn your tusks into bracers, gaining 50 armor. Creating bracers automatically recalls all tusks.
• Ultimate: Crashing Wave — Charge forward up to 20 meters, bringing a 10-meter-wide wave of water with you that slows any enemy it touches.
14
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“I’m so excited, Niko! We’re going to do so much late-night strategizing, watching post-game footage, fight analyzation, cooldown timer memorizations…” Hunk walked beside him, leafing through a fat tome, its pages glittering with digital images.
Niko sighed sleepily as they followed the ridgeline path. Hunk had been like this all last night, too—vibrating with guileless excitement, filling every future day on Niko’s calendar with future plans with them as teammates. When they passed the fork that split out into the forest, Niko looked at it with longing. He was never going to get out of here.
Still, it crossed Niko’s mind more than once that even if Tim had chosen him for his team, he wouldn’t have been met with that level of enthusiasm. It was annoying, for sure, but at the same time gave Niko a kind of security he hadn’t felt in a long time.
Hunk took the lead once they got past the amphitheater’s wide pathway, splitting off away from the ridge and up a hill. The clock tower, which Hunk had informed him was their reserved training area, lay up ahead, the moon face peeking up over the tops of the ghost pines.
“I like that we start training at 8:15,” Hunk said. “Because the clock looks like a man with a mustache and a funny hat.”
Niko looked up at the clock’s steepled tower, and chuckled to himself. “Yeah, it kind of does.”
As they climbed the hill, both puffing along the way, an angry female voice drifted down their way from the Clocktower. Once they got close enough to understand the words, Niko knew who it was.
“You’re off your trolley, Cal! That boy don’t know his head from his hinders, and he’s a roaster to boot. You see how he talks to Hunk?”
“Guess she’s not so happy to have me on board,” Niko said, shoving his hands in his pockets while he and Hunk walked up the cobbled pathway.
Hunk tittered. He put a hand on his shoulder with one hand, opening the door by its brassy handle with the other. “It’s just because—”
“He’s in wit’ Erica and Tim and Jacob, and that’s where you should have left him! Let the great wallopers stew together in their own pot of rubbish.” Jeny’s voice echoed down from the top floor, louder now that they were inside, and it had been pretty loud to begin with.
Niko couldn’t see Jeny from this vantage—just he
ar her, up at the top of the tower, her voice booming off the gears. The clock tower was dim, dust motes dancing in the stale air. Morning light pooled at the top, shining through the massive clock face, making the brass gears glitter through the dust. A metal walkway snaked along the inside walls of the tower. Hunk started up it, and Niko followed.
“Man, what did Erica do to her that pissed her off so bad?”
“It’s not…really what she did to her.”
The walkway was small enough that they had to walk single file, so all Niko could see was Hunk’s posture change, his neck shrinking into his shoulders. Niko had never been good at reading people, but even he felt like the air had been sucked out of the conversation. They spent the rest of their ascent listening to Jeny’s reprimands.
“Level two, Cal,” she crowed. “Level two! How’d he even get intae Ravenscroft in the first place?” As Niko rounded yet another corner, the very edge of her grey leather jacket peeked around the corner of one of the gears, its hem falling just at the crook of her hip. “And what’s with that Mythic o’ his? I ain’t ne’er seen anything so shabby looking, have you?”
For the first time in the conversation, Cal replied. “No, I have not,” she said calmly, turning to face Niko and Hunk just as they made the final turn into the top room of the clocktower. “Get your cardio in?”
Hunk, who was winded but not detrimentally so, nodded. “As always,” he replied cheerfully.
Niko, on the other hand, was doubled over his knees, gasping. “Why…did you… I mean… this…place is…” Niko huffed, too busy trying to get air into his lungs to concentrate on words.
“Don’t strain yourself,” Cal said, strolling over. “You’ll get used to it. Welcome to the team, comrade.” She offered Niko her pink-palmed hand. Cal’s handshake had just the right amount of firmness. It said: I’m not crushing your hand, kid, but I could. She smiled.
Niko looked over Cal’s shoulder to Jeny a few feet away, arms folded across her mottled leather jacket. “Hey,” he managed.
“Awa’ and boil yer heid,” Jeny snapped.
Niko didn’t know what that meant, but her tone communicated that it wasn’t a friendly “hey” back. “O-kay,” he said.
“I think she was looking to kick you into the dirt in the Hunt next week,” Cal said.
“The Hunt is next week?”
Cal nodded. “Since we have so little time to prepare, the headmaster very kindly matched us up against the only other team with a brand new member.”
“Tim’s team? Black Fire?”
“Yup,” Cal rasped.
“I’m…going to sit down.” Niko sank onto the clock tower’s wooden floorboards. The room was almost a perfect cube; great, round clock faces boned with wrought iron filled up every wall, making the room much brighter than the rest of the tower. The clock’s mechanics, a wad of gears and pulleys, took up the center of the room, long bars extending out from each side to the clock faces. There was a holographic screen on the back wall that had Niko’s stats and abilities written on it.
Cal sank down on her haunches in front of him. Niko wasn’t sure if she was teasing him, or if it was a sign of solidarity. “So,” she said. “I know Jeny and Hunk’s moves. Tell me about yours, Niko. None of your abilities have a description. What exactly is ‘Mythic 0?’”
“I don’t know,” Niko said. “It looked like the game was going to let me pick a Mythic myself, but then it…glitched or something, and I got this.” He realized too late that this wouldn’t land.
“Pick?” Jeny snarled. “No one picks their Mythic, ya wee—”
Cal silenced her with a wave of her hand. “What do you know about it?”
“Nothing,” Niko admitted.
“Do you know what your next ability will be?”
“No.”
“You don’t know your Ult at level six then, I’m guessing,”
Niko shrugged helplessly. “I don’t even know what an Ult is, to be honest.”
Jeny scoffed, presenting Niko like he was an idiot in a sideshow. The cautioning memory of hanging out with Erica and her ilk bubbled up, and Niko reminded himself to keep his mouth shut.
But, to his surprise, Hunk piped in the explain. “Ult is short for Ultimate.” He walked over to the floating holographic screen and pointed to the bottom box, which had a crude lock drawn in it and two question marks written alongside. “It’s your fourth ability, the one you unlock at level six. They’re really powerful, so much so that Hunt rules keep them from being used until twenty minutes into the game.”
“They’re usually for team fights,” Cal put in. “AoEs, most often.”
Niko hesitated, looking between Hunk and Jeny, then dared to ask, “What’s, uh… That is, I don’t…really remember what…an AoE is.” Jeny snarled in the background and looked ready to tear her hair out, and Niko instantly regretted saying anything.
“Can we ditch the audio-commentary, Jeny?” Cal said over her shoulder. “Atmospheric as it is. He’s only level two in his junior year, and he’s got a Mythic no one’s heard of before. It’s pretty clear he’s been living under a rock somewhere. Some things will need to be explained.”
“Then why did ya pick him for our team?” Jeny demanded.
“Because despite all that, he held his ground against Alonso and Erica. Kiele’s good, but not good enough to do that on her own.” Cal turned around to look Jeny in the eye. “I made this decision carefully. Can I ask you to trust me, just for a little while?”
Jeny grumbled, shuffled her boots on the floorboard, shoved her hands in the pockets of her jacket. “I guess,” she said.
“Thank you,” Cal said. She turned back to Niko. “AoE means ‘Area of Effect.’ It’s any ability that takes up a big space. My Ult, for example, creates a sandstorm in a 15-meter radius that blinds the enemy team. Make sense?”
Cal was looking Niko in the eye, and he realized she wasn’t teasing him at all. Hunk was smiling like always, and while Jeny loomed with her arms folded across her chest in disapproval, she kept quiet. It was completely different from spending time with Erica, Tim, and Jacob, who looked at him with derision after any question he asked. Security. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad being on this team after all.
Niko thought to say thank you, but swallowed it down, unable to hear it in his head as anything but stuttering and pathetic. Instead, he said, “Yeah, that makes sense.”
Cal knocked on the floor with a soft smile, then got to her feet. “All right. Let’s do some drills.” Niko stood and nodded. They got to work.
Drills, it turned out, were made up of mind-numbing repetition. There were ability drills, last-hit drills, aiming drills, team fight drills. By the end of the day, Niko was numb and exhausted. To close it out, Cal brought them together and asked each team member what they’d learned.
“Jeny, how about you?”
Jeny snorted. “I learned my captain is a right—”
Cal shut down that line with one stony look. Jeny snorted again and amended her statement. “I learned how to improve my hit-rate.”
“Fair enough. Today, I learned that I shouldn’t make important decisions about the team without consulting my teammates. Sorry about that, Jeny.”
Jeny sniffed, shrugged, and looked at the floor. “Well, it weren’t like you could have pulled me over to chat it out. I’ll forgive ya if we actually win a match ever again.”
Cal chuckled. “Deal. What about you, Niko?”
“Uhm,” Niko glanced between Jeny and Hunk. “I learned…that AoE means Area of Effect?” he ventured.
Cal chuckled. “All right. I’ll take it.”
For five more days, Cal went over nothing but the most basic aspects of fighting in the Hunt. At the end of each day, she sat them all down, and asked them what they had learned. Niko managed to dredge up some excuse of an answer each time. Cal seemed to want more out of him, but Niko couldn’t manage it. Even though his basic efficiency was increasing, each day left him frustrated. How were the
y going to beat Alonso, Erica, Jacob and Tim without any advanced tactics?
Finally, on the last day, Cal started their practice with something different. “All right, comrade. Today, I want to see if we can’t figure out this Mythic of yours. I want to know everything you see—how you use every ability, what your UI says when you do. No detail is too small.”
At first, Niko was excited to focus on something more advanced, but Cal approached it almost the same way she approached previous practices. She drilled him on his abilities over and over again. After that, she sent him to the floating holographic screen and insisted he write down every character of the weird text that appeared in his UI when he used a move.
“Edit Value,” she said. “So the ‘value’ that you change is always your location?” Cal was staring at the floating screen where the X, Y, and Z were written out.
“I guess,” Niko said numbly.
“Why would value mean location?” Cal asked the text on the board. “Unless… Niko, what do you do to activate the skill? Do you point it in a direction?”
“Kind of? I just think about where I want to go and it puts me there.”
“So you activate your ability and these three letters come up?” Cal tapped the X, Y, and Z on the screen.
“Well…no, not exactly.”
Cal looked him in the eye, as serious as he’d ever seen her. “Tell me, step by step, exactly what happens.”
Niko looked over at Jeny and Hunk as if they could help him, like cheating on a test. “Uhm, well it’s…like, when I activate it, this little white bar comes up and it…well, blinks, y’know like…someone tapping their foot. Waiting for something, y’know? And the icon stays highlighted until I move.”
“What happens when you move?” Hunk asked from his bench on the opposite end of the room.
“When I decide where I want to go, those letters show up, real fast, I mean, like, they don’t just appear, but they write out really quickly. And then the numbers after them change.”
