by Oliver Mayes
Out of the blue, Andrew smiled at him. It was broken, but it was a smile nonetheless. Damien immediately averted his gaze back to the floor. How could he even pretend? How could he pretend he was happy? The sheer gall, the audacity—
Andrew’s hand fell on his shoulder and squeezed it.
“Of course I will. Go to bed, you’ve earned it. Make sure you talk to her tomorrow, she’ll be happy to hear from you.”
Another squeeze. Then he turned, ushered Lillian to her feet, and led her away. Damien remained where he stood until their uneven footsteps had faded into the dark. He waited longer still, as long as he could. When he finally thought himself alone he dropped to his knees and held his head in his hands, unprovoked by nightmares or poorly conceived abilities. His worst enemy had become someone he was relying on in one night. After Damien had destroyed everything he’d worked for to claim it for himself, Andrew had shown him kindness.
It was the greatest humiliation he’d ever suffered.
11
The Inner Circle
Damien did not wake up early. He did not even manage to wake up in the morning. He pulled off the bedcovers and was upright just before 1pm. The rigorous schedule he’d set for himself with the H4ckz0r alarms had gone down the toilet, following first his death at Archimonde’s hands and now this early-morning breakout exercise. But he was officially past the wall. He hadn’t come all this way to mope about. He had to follow through.
He had some other matters to attend to first. Food was a high priority. He made his way to the kitchen and found a handwritten note on the table:
Gone to work, wish me luck! Love you, should be back around 6pm. Mom (obviously) x
She’d really done it. Damien hoped she’d be alright. He couldn’t imagine rushing back to his studies if his heart had been replaced with a piece of machinery. He’d have scrounged every second of medical leave available. She had to really like her job. Damien was starting not to enjoy his own job as much as he had previously. The gameplay was fine and he was good at it, so far as he could tell. No, the main problem Damien had with his job was much the same as that experienced by practitioners of every other vocation: the irritation of people he was forced to endure while doing it.
Then again, he wasn’t doing an outstanding job of being a streamer at the moment. The whole weekend had passed him by and the only footage he’d posted was his foray in the Frozen Forest on Saturday afternoon. Even that had been interrupted when Aetherius had rocked up. Andrew.
Man, it was weird trying to reconcile how he’d felt about Andrew before and now. It was conceptually easier to divide him into Aetherius and Andrew, like a pair of good and evil twins. The whole pushing-Damien-naked-into-a-deep-dark-pit thing was definitely a mark against him. Might not have been quite such an Aetherius move, if Damien hadn’t told him of Cassandra’s dire situation about a minute before the ‘boost’. And let’s not forget the hospital prank Andrew/Aetherius pulled on Lillian. You know, the tasteful one? Where he’d shown up at her hospital pretending to be dead? Classic Aetherius, even offline. That had resulted in her being strapped into a guardian wristband for a couple of weeks. After what happened yesterday, Damien could see why.
Andrew had clearly seen her go through this before, considering how he’d jumped in without a second thought to comfort and protect her. In that order. It had been more terrifying than Damien could possibly have imagined. Lillian seemed so strong. He’d always thought the worst her symptoms could get were the bursts of anger, which he’d experienced personally on several occasions. Or panic attacks, one of which he’d admittedly...inflicted on her himself. Classic Aetherius. Ouch. That was a bit too close for comfort.
Funny, how Lillian had become the cause they united behind. Seeing as they both could have treated her better. Although if Lillian had been the pull factor, Archimonde was definitely the push factor. Damien definitely needed to contact Lillian today and find out how she was holding up. He wondered if she’d made it to work. He hoped not, for the same reasons as he was skeptical about his mom wading back into the fray. The last thing Lillian needed was a long day at work. There was someone else he needed to talk to as well. Damien might not have been a beta-tester anymore but there was a game element that desperately needed tweaking.
Damien gathered up his late breakfast and moved into his bedroom to browse while he ate. At least that was one habit he was keeping up with. It was generally stacked with a slightly worse habit: miring himself in a crushing sense of disappointment with the human race. Conveniently localized on his profile page. The complaints about his lack of content had peaked at 9pm yesterday, when he was in the middle of preparations to breach the wall which was keeping the equally disappointing human race of Saga Online locked out of mid-game content.
He considered interacting with them. Nah. Not today. He turned instead to the Council of Nine page, hoping for a more welcome reception. Only to find that they, too, were concerned with the content he was not providing. They were nicer about it, but they were all still asking, begging, demanding or, worst of all, predicting content. There wasn’t much he could do for them in that regard right now. The situation had definitely changed in his favor, but despite having got past the wall he was not in a great position to be throwing out livestreams. Archimonde hunting him down was far worse than any price on his head.
As for the footage of them breaking through the gate, that had been marred by Lillian’s experience with Archimonde. Damien wouldn’t dream of showing that to anyone. Maybe he could cut it. He’d talk to Lillian first and make sure his cut was okay with her. In his own case, he’d made it clear he didn’t want the footage involving both Magnitude and Archimonde beating him shared, yet she’d gone ahead and shared portions of it with other people anyway. It had turned out well, in the end. Now their roles were more or less reversed. This was not the time to pressure her about that.
So no, the cultists...occultists...predicting content would go wanting. But there was something else he could share, just for them, that would get them excited: the list of level 40 traits. Pop it into one of the discussion groups and help them plan out their build. He pulled it all off the headset, including the trait neither he nor Archimonde had taken, and planted it into his own discussion board. Entitled:
DarkLord Daemien’s Tasty Tidbits
There. That should fit the profile of this target audience, judging by what he’d seen. He’d done a thing. A little thing, but it was positive at least. Food finished, Damien went into his recorded footage and found the worst part of it, saving it as a separate five-second clip. He needed to share it with Kevin. They were going to have a serious chat. He needed to get into the game and pursue Bartholomew’s quest in earnest. He could see if Lillian or Kevin were online already and have a chat with each of them, or leave them messages for later.
He was back in Arcadia. In the Outer Ring. In the end, there was only one way he could conceive of making himself completely safe from Archimonde. He’d resummoned Noigel and flown him to an otherwise inaccessible ledge. Demon Gated. Then logged off standing on it. Better than Archimonde finding where he’d logged out and eating him immediately upon login. At least this way, Damien had guaranteed himself a little advance warning before horrible things started happening.
After logging back in, he peered over the edge and looked around. Nothing out of the ordinary, besides the geography. Noigel did a surveillance lap while Damien took in the scenery of the new world. He hadn’t seen it in the daytime before. It was different. He’d never experienced anything like it. He’d made it past the rocky crust and had reached the lush interior. It was a virgin, untouched land.
Har. Har har. Heharhar. Har.
But, seriously, it had almost never ever been played on. All the creatures were there. No one had done any of the quests for the first time yet. Damien was in unchartered territory. He was waaaay ahead of the curve on this one. This was exciting.
Noigel gave him the all clear and Damien stopped scanning the
horizon in order to check his location. The quest marker led all the way out of the zone he was in, trailing into the unknown depths of the Inner Circle. He’d have to get closer before he had a sense of the distance. Whatever it was, Damien would have to make it work to his advantage.
But first, a word with our sponsor. He scrolled through his friends list and found Kevin’s name. He was online, Lillian was not. While the call went through, he went into his library and got the footage ready. It took Kevin a little while to answer. When he did, it took Damien off guard.
“Hello there, Damien. Long time no speak! How’s everything?”
That was a surprise. He’d thought Kevin would be laying into him, after the lack of content over the weekend. Instead, he seemed very cheerful.
“Not good, Kevin. There’s a game issue I wanted to bring up with you, something quite serious.”
“Don’t worry about it Damien, I’m well aware. It’s alright! Difficult times for everyone at the moment. As long as you keep your head down now while the big players are moving, you’ll come out pretty well on top. That player-killing niche I found will serve you well until things get moving again.”
Oh dear. Damien reconsidered showing Kevin the footage for a moment, but decided it was more important to get this issue seen to than it was to avoid falling out with his PR guy. What had happened to Lillian was unacceptable.
“Sending you a brief clip, there’s an ability used here which gives a player a very bad reaction. I’d like you to get it reviewed as soon as possible.”
“Still beta-testing for us, even after you’ve moved well beyond! That’s very noble of you, Damien. Honestly though, other people will be on the lookout for that stuff and the game’s already in good shape, I’d rather you were...concentrating...”
He’d started watching the footage. Damien had cut it as short as he could, a brief clip of Archimonde using his enhanced Possession on Lillian. It started when he said the words and ended just over four seconds later, when Lillian had driven her avatar’s head into the ground for the first time. Her wail started near the end, at just the moment her sword had stopped clattering on the ground. It was enough, Damien felt, to convey the depth of his concern.
Kevin was silent. He was probably watching it over a few times, absorbing all the information. Damien piped up.
“We ran into that yesterday, an ability used by a thing called Archimonde. It’s not very nice all round, but I’m mainly concerned with the ability. It’s an advanced Possession I had access to at level 40 with a trait. I’m sure what it—”
“Have I understood this correctly? Was this footage taken from your viewpoint? If so, what are you doing consorting with Lillian while she tries to get past the wall? I thought we talked about this, Damien, I thought I made you understand that this isn’t the best thing you can be doing right now!”
“I’m not here to talk to you about viewer counts, subscription niches and channel mechanics, Kevin. I’m here to tell you about this very specific ability, which has obviously been implemented completely wrong. Look at Lillian again, please. Is that what the good people in Mobius Enterprises were aiming for when they configured this ability? I doubt it. Focus on that.”
Kevin was getting flustered. The more flustered he became, the angrier Damien got.
“Why, Damien, why oh why, are you involving yourself in the attacks on the wall? Magnitude has already been putting out rewards on players attacking his wall, all of Rising Tide has gone under because of it! That’s not something for you to be—”
“Kevin, listen to the soothing sound of my voice. Really listen to it. This conversation isn’t about my streaming career, it’s about what happened to Lillian. It’s about this ability, which seems like it needs serious tweaking before it can be inflicted on living, breathing human beings. If this happened when I was a beta-tester, I’d be slamming the emergency buttons. I’d be leaving you nonstop messages demanding your immediate attention. It looks about as bad as having the headset ripped off while you’re still playing. I’m not here to discuss my gameplay choices, I’m here to make sure this gets fixed.”
Kevin was scoffing at him over the chat. Had Damien stuttered? Was the focus of his message somehow unclear? It was hard to say. But Kevin was utterly fixated on the overall ramifications of Damien’s footage, rather than the specific case his attention was being drawn to.
“Damien, I’ve done everything I can to dissuade you from this course of action. I’d be remiss not to question your logic in pushing these barriers. So far as content goes, late-game issues like this are exactly what I’m trying to prevent you from running into while we deal with concerns that manifest at a higher level than our beta program covered. It’s very complicated, and there’s—”
“Kevin—”
“—no guarantee that we’ll be able—”
“Keeeevin?”
“—to prevent all players who push ahead from experiencing—”
“KEVIN! I don’t care! Fix it! Or talk to whoever needs to fix it. The rest is irrelevant. I don’t care about everything else that’s going on, I just need you to tell me someone will deal with what happened to my good friend yesterday so it doesn’t happen to anyone else. That’s all.”
“I’ll talk with the developers and have them patch it. Can we please discuss your streaming channel as well? I developed a good plan for you, keeping you out of danger while playing to your strengths, and it’s still not too late for you to go back to that plan. Could you please return to building your channel from a place of stability, rather than trying to plow ahead?”
“No can do. We broke through the wall yesterday. As we speak, I stand at the edge of the Inner Circle.”
Damien was more than a little proud of his achievement. Kevin stayed silent for a while. He sounded a little more enthusiastic when he began speaking again, about ten seconds later.
“You broke through the wall?”
“Yup.”
“Wow, I didn’t think that could be done! Great job. How many of you?”
“Like ten of us, altogether.”
“With such a small group. Extraordinary. Well, congratulations, I guess you proved me wrong. What’s your agenda now? If you got past the wall I’m assuming you have some sort of goal in mind?”
“Yeah, I’m continuing with the occultist questline. Bartholomew gave me a map point, I’m heading for it now. Should be good for ratings, if I can be the first to show everyone what the late-game occultists look like. Sorry for not sharing my plan, I don’t think it would’ve gone down with you very well before I managed to get past the wall.”
“Excellent! No, no need to apologize, I completely understand. You should definitely go and do that. I’ve got to get back to work now, but thanks for sharing your progress. Stay in touch!”
He hung up. Okay. That had turned around oddly quickly. Kevin’s praise, coupled with his acceptance of Damien’s plan, only enforced that getting past the wall had been a remarkable achievement. One that Damien was now completely free to capitalize on.
He Demon Gated to the floor and summoned two hell hounds and three more imps. Then started his journey to the center of Arcadia, following the marker Bartholomew had put on his map.
The scenery here was more eclectic than that in the vanilla Human Realm. This particular area was dotted with stone pillars, just like the one Damien had taken refuge on before he logged out. They were towering formations that narrowed at their center and expanded again, forming a ceiling with gaps that were bursting with vines and growths. It was a nice place to be an occultist. While there was not an abundance of players to spot him, Damien was nevertheless much happier out of direct sunlight. He attacked targets of opportunity on the way, such as wild animals that had strayed too far from their herds, and replenished his Soul Summon Limit as he went.
The most abundant enemy in this instance were weird white goats, called ‘Poznan’. They were higher level than him, spanning anywhere from level 45 to 50, but proved easy t
argets when isolated. They started off hyperaggressive, but immediately fled when their health dropped to less than 50%. Damien had one on the run and thought it cornered, his minions encircling it and pinning it against a stone column. To his amazement it ascended the column as if it were flat ground, running around it in circles as it continued to climb. Fortunately, he was equipped to deal with this evasive maneuver. He sent the imps up to intercept it, where they latched onto its horns and dragged it over the edge. The impact damage was severe, the hounds were quick to capitalize and Damien obtained a nearly effortless 2 souls. Along with a decent chunk of experience on top! Very nice.
Damien hadn’t killed any players directly during the attack on the wall, but his minions had gotten involved and granted him some assists. He was more than three-quarters of the way to level 43. He could’ve stuck around to get to the next level, but decided instead to continue hitting targets of opportunity and raising his Soul Summon Limit on his way to the objective.
He reached the end of the stone pillar plateaus and grudgingly stepped out into the light, his minion entourage moving beside him at full pace. He checked his map. An on-screen message informed him he’d left the ‘Hourglass Plateau’ and was now entering the ‘Inner Circle’. The larger section of which was called the ‘Olympian Plains’.
Creatures here were even higher level and very strange indeed, though some were familiar. He watched a flock of ivory-white birds gliding over the mountains, getting bigger as they came closer, until Damien realized it was not a flock, but a pack. Pegasai. Pegasuses. Pegases? In Damien’s limited experience, there’d never been enough of them together to warrant knowing the plural form. It was certainly a sight to behold.
He watched as they circled round, maintaining their ‘V’ formation, before using a flat grassy ridge on a mountaintop as their landing runway. Maybe this was where Magnitude had sourced Aetherius’s ill-fated flying mount before Damien beheaded it, back in the competition days. A theory that made Damien acutely aware how little he actually knew.
