“I don’t know,” the Red Hand said woefully. “I thought that just by shaping it you would reveal the code inside…”
“Wait,” Dean remembered. “There was something I had to do to dragon ore before I could get it to work.
Enchant Item.
Dean selected the special (and basic) Artificer skill, and threw his last remaining Mana point at it.
Success!
*
Source Access: Y.
Security Override Protocol Enabled.
Processing Key 1 of 5…
Key 1 Accepted.
Download Green Code Data? Y/N.
Y.
Download Starting…
Download Processing… Packet-Data being sent to Local Machine…
Success!
*
Odge Systems… Checking…
Server Side Reboot…
Local Machine Reboot…
Epilogue: Dean Winters, Alive
Dean awoke to blackness, again.
Oh crap, he thought. Had he done it? He’d thought he had succeeded, at last. But then the game rebooted (again) and now here he was (again), in the dark, unsure of where his body was, or whether he even still had one. He imagined himself lying on his lumpy mattress in his crappy apartment, still with the visor on his head, and unable to wake up. That really didn’t feel good.
His heart started to beat faster, his breathing – if he had any – grew more rapid.
But it didn’t out like that before, did it? he told himself. He had done everything he thought he should. And this, he remembered the previous blackness, this exact same thing happened before, too.
“Just breathe,” he counselled himself. Breathe in, one, two…
Slowly, amazingly, he started to feel calmer, if only by just a bit. It was a bit like waking up before dawn, when the whole world was dark and there was nothing but the sleepy blackness. This doesn’t have to be scary, he advised himself. This can just be what it is….
“Breathe, one, two, three…”
“Dean,” said a voice in the darkness, as, coming towards him was a slightly lighter patch of gray. It grew brighter and brighter in his vision, and sharper too, until it manifested into the Lady of Efen once again. Just like before, he thought.
She looked exactly like she did during the game, with her flimsy dress and hair moving languidly around her in spectral winds. She also, he was very glad to see, had radiant white eyes.
“Efen,” Dean said hesitantly. What is this between-place I keep on getting stuck in? Why me?
“Congratulations, brave sorcerer, you have done well,” she said, a smile ghosting her lips. Her beauty was pristine and staggering; and having the demi-goddess regarding him appreciatively made Dean feel like he was blushing, if he had a body.
“Where are we? What’s happening?” he breathed.
“This…” Her brow furrowed for a moment, as if she was lost for words to describe this place. “This is between the cracks in the world. The world is…” Another searching look. “It is made of lots of different pieces. Like bricks. But they move together, like chains.”
“Code. Programs, we call it,” Dean said.
“Code.” Efen shook her head slightly, clearly never having heard of the term in that context before. “Between the codes are spaces, gaps before they start again. This is where we are.”
The game is broken? And I’ve fallen through it? he thought in alarm. It seemed the Lady was only confirming his fears of being trapped inside his own mind, and unable to get to Aldaron or back to the real world.
“You will not be here for long,” Efen said, another flicker of a smile. “Being who – what – I am, I have some power to hold you here, for a short while.”
“What are you, then?” Dean asked, but the Lady just shook her head more violently.
“There is no time for such mysteries. As if I knew myself! All I know is that I was awakened by you, Dean Winters the Sorcerer, and that I have been searching for the crystals,” she said seriously. “And now, I know that you have activated and unlocked one of them. I can feel the game changing around me. Through me.” She fell silent, looking into darkness.
Dean breathed shallowly, waiting for the Lady to come to her conclusion. She did so, looking up at him with a proud smile.
“You have performed the first task, Dean Winters – and for that I thank you. I feel more like myself now, less like that other me…”
“The black-eyed one?” Dean said, causing a frown of disgust on the otherwise beautiful elf’s features.
“She is … me, I think, but another version of me. I cannot explain it.”
Code, Dean thought. She’s talking about being programmed, or code-modified by the Controllers. Does every Key I unlock through the Ouroborax Crystals somehow free her code, too?
“But there is still great danger facing Aldaron. Now that you have broken the first key, the Archons are aware of it, and they will be hunting you and your allies. They will stop at nothing to prevent you from reaching the other crystals.”
“Great,” Dean murmured.
“But take heart, for you have broken a piece of the puzzle. The world will be freer now. Not everything will work against you,” Efen said.
“That’s good to know,” Dean said, before worry rose in him. “But what about Josephine? The others?”
“Josephine?” Efen shook her head. “I do not know that name.”
“The Lady Jay. She’s sick. Ill. The game – I mean the world of Aldaron – made her sick…” he pressed. “Do you know how to heal her? What happened to her?”
Efen was silent, and again looking far as if she was searching for information. “She is not in my memory, so I cannot give you the answers – but I know that the Archons have many great and terrible powers. They might be able to reach through the world to make your friend ill, even if she is far away.”
So it was the Controllers who did that then…
“But, I will try to help you when I can, and when that … other me isn’t in control,” Efen said slowly. “Now, you must return, Dean Winters, the Gemsmith.”
But where to? he thought, as she glowed brighter and brighter, her brilliance starting to dazzle him, and then blind him, until all he could see was the brightest of white light…
*
“Dean!? Dean!” A woman’s worried voice, and bright light was dazzling his eyes.
“Urk!” He coughed and rubbed his eyes to see that he was lying on his bed, with Marcy the nurse half-leaning over him, and the bright Californian sun of a new San Maria day streaming in to blind his eyes. Marcy had swept back the curtains and opened the windows, and he had been in the VRM-Alpha all night.
“I’m okay, I’m okay…” he said, pushing himself up from the bed. His hand thumped against the VRM Alpha visor by the side of him on the pillow, and it looked different. One of its top panels had been lifted, exposing wires and small bits of transistors and processing chips. “What happened?” He shook his head and indicated his visor, as Marcy came around the other side of the bed to check his eyes, pulse, and reflexes.
“Ramesh.” She crouched down in front of him. “After the reboot, I was kicked out of the game, but a little while after, I got a stream of personal messages to my unit from the Red Hand, detailing specs and details about each visor.” She gestured to his table, where there was a stack of electrician’s tools and handwritten notes.
“He told me we had to hack all of our VRMs if we didn’t want to end up like Lady Jay. Look.” She went over to pick up a piece of green circuit board, with what looked like a tiny tube fixed on top. “This is like a bug, a locator chip, as well as a control-override from Odge, and they are in every headset they sell.” She handed it over to him, and to Dean it felt like holding the One Ring in his hands. Evil. “He told me how to bypass it and remove it, so the Controllers can’t use our own visors against us.”
“Like they did Josephi
ne?” Dean frowned.
“I think so, poor girl.” Marcy shook her head. “Although I can’t tell until I get my hands on some actual medical records. But Ramesh is going to help me. We have an address for the Jesse Creek facility, and he thinks we might be able to get into their servers, thanks to you…”
“Thanks to me? What on earth did I do?” Dean shook his head.
“You’ve unlocked a part of the Odge deep-security code!” Marcy’s face lit up. She really looks cute when she’s enthusiastic, Dean thought.
“It was just like Ramesh, the Red Hand, promised us! The Green Ouroborax was one part of the code, and now he thinks we can access a lot of the sidereal networks. We can start mining information out of Odge!” She clenched her hands into fists. “When you go back into the visor, you’ll see that you have a list of code files in your personal space – we all do, all of us who were there when you unlocked the crystal!”
“So, you think this is all a good idea now?” Dean said, beginning to grin. “Taking on the largest company on the face of the planet?”
“Yes. People’s lives are at stake, and we might be the only ones who have a chance of stopping it.” Her eyes swept to the small Odge-bug in Dean’s hands. “Those little things are inside every one of the VRM-Alphas, we think. And how many of the headset visors are there out there in the world?”
“Thousands,” Dean guessed.
“Hundreds of thousands. Maybe even more,” Marcy said seriously. “Ramesh said he would be contacting Isaiah – Crusher, I mean, and Sari the Enchantress with details of how to get rid of theirs, too. He thinks we might even be able to access the game anonymously from now on.”
“That will certainly make hacking it easier.” Dean smiled wryly, as he stretched his arms and heard his shoulder muscles crack. “I’m wiped. Who would have thought just being inside a game was strong enough to make you this exhausted?”
“Mind over matter, remember?” Marcy said, patting him on the knee as she got up to go to his small kitchenette and start filling a kettle.
Mind over matter, Dean thought. “Just like you were always telling me in the Occupational Rehab courses.”
“Precisely. You should have listened to me all along.” She laughed.
You know what, she’s probably right. Dean watched her humming to herself as she made a pot of coffee in his apartment. It felt like it had been a long time since he had felt happy – and for now, for just this morning, even though he knew they had a long way to go yet, he didn’t feel scared.
THE END
Winters’ End Character Sheet
Character:
Name: Winters Level: 13
Age: 27
Gender: Male
Occupation: Mage (Sorcerer): Artificer - Gemsmith
Home: King’s City, Near Realm
Description: A young man in a deep green cloak, trimmed and edged in gold threads. He is square jawed, with a dusting of stubble, and piercing green eyes. Although not a large man, he has a look of competence about him, perhaps thanks to the many hours of traveling both in the Near and Outer Realms. His boots show all the signs of hard walking, and his gauntlets are enhanced with chain-link. In his hands he carries a tall quarterstaff, notched with runes, and around his neck, usually hidden under a cream tunic, is the gold chain holding the long green ‘blade’ of the Green Ouroborax Crystal.
STR: +6 (11)
DEX: +8
CON: +11 (19)
CHA: +0
WIS: +25
MANA: +75
Mana Points: 75
Health Levels: 25
Skills:
Polearms +6
(Quarterstaff) +2
Dagger +4
Artificer: +30
(Crystals) +3
(Armor Smith) +2
(Weapon Smith) +2
(Gold Smith) +2
Search +4
Read/Write +9
Navigate +3
Dodge +5
Inventory:
Quarterstaff
Hammer of Grum +5 STR, +3 Artificer
Troll-Hide Gauntlets, +3 against fire
Orcish Scimitar, +3 STR
Buckler Shield, +7 CON
27 Silver bits, assorted bone dice, and a troll’s tusk
Dagger
One-Pot Cook Set (Pot, Spoon, Knife, Firelighter, and Flint)
Gray Traveling Cloak (warm)
Green Cloak (Ritual) +1 CON
Cream Tunic
Battered Traveler’s Backpack
Scribes Set (Parchment, Paper, and Ink)
Winter’s Ring (Protection against Fire)
A Compendium of Aldaron
Green Ouroborax
Winters’ Spell Sheets:
Path of the Sorcerer
Level 1 (Universal Spells)
Shield. Cost: 3 Mana. +3 CON
Bless. Cost: 3 Mana. + 2 DEX/STR/CHA
Light. Cost: 1 Mana.
Bolt. Cost: 3 Mana. 3-7 damage.
The Lady of Efen. Cost: 1 Mana. Summon extraordinary character.
Level 2
Enchant Item. Cost: 5 Mana. +5 STR to any weapon, +5 CON to any armor, special effects to mundane objects.
Fire-dart. Cost: 6 Mana. 15 damage.
Level 3
Banish Spirit. Cost: 8 Mana. Banishes Level 1 spirits, or 10 damage to spirits of a higher level.
Level 4
Magic Scan. Cost: 5 Mana. Finds simply hidden items and magical powers. Note: Items protected by invisibility or wards are not revealed.
Level 5
Summon Lightning. Cost: 12 Mana. 20 damage.
Level 6
Fireball. Cost: 15 Mana. 8-15 damage.
Level 7
Trap Spirit. Cost: 15 Mana.
Level 8
Ether Bolt. Cost: 20 Mana 12-20 damage.
Level 9
Detect. Cost: 7 Mana. Empowers you to discover all magical items, spells, and effects that have been cast at your location in the previous 24 hours.
Level 10
Lightning Storm. Cost: 14 Mana. 15-30 damage (multiple strikes).
Level 11
Hide. Cost: 10 Mana. -6 to all enemy attempts to discover you or follow your tracks.
Level 12
Inferno. Cost: 15 Mana. 8-12 damage continuous (or until inferno put out).
Level 13
Dispel. Cost: 16 Mana. Counter and nullify the effects of any spell up to half your current character level (e.g. If you are Level 1, then you can stop the enemy spells of characters ranked Level 1 – 6).
Path of Pain
Level 2
Bone armor. Cost: 5 Mana. +5 CON until end of day.
Ignore Injury. Cost: 1 for 1. You can trade your Mana for Health levels.
Level 3
Cripple. Cost: 5 Mana. Deliver 10 damage to an opponent.
Level 4
Find Fear. Cost: 8 Mana. By picking on your target’s innermost fears, you can confer a +5 to all actions against them in battle, negotiations, to self, or chosen hero.
Path of the Healer
Level 2
Heal. Cost: 1 for 1. You can trade your Mana for Health levels.
Cure. Cost: 4 Mana. You can completely cure any simple poison, illness, or disease (non-magical).
Level 3
Invigorate. Cost: 7 Mana. +3 STR, + 3 CON, +3 DEX
Level 5
Revive. Cost: 10 Mana. You can restore an ally to life, even when they have lost all of their health levels.
Path of the Forest Friend
Level 2
Create familiar. Cost: 5 Mana. By selecting a nearby animal, that can become your chosen familiar, capable of leveling up, and storing your Mana.
Summon dryad. Cost: 6 Mana. Summon an elemental to do your bidding.
Level 3
Share mind. Cost: 8 Mana. You can share the sights, sounds, and life of an animal nearby.
/> Level 4
Eagle sight. Cost: 10 Mana. With preternatural sight, you gain +6 to all actions in your next encounter.
Aldaron’s XP Chart:
Level 2: 50 XP
Level 3: 100 XP
Level 4: 150 XP
Level 5: 200 XP
Level 6: 300 XP
Level 7: 500 XP
Level 8: 800 XP
Every level thereafter must be bought with the same experience points as the level, X 100 (so Level 9 = 900 XP, Level 10 = 1000 XP, and so on).
Tales of the Gemsmith Page 31
