by Phoenix Grey
The Realm Between
Book 4: Magic School
PHOENIX GREY
Text copyright 2019 by Phoenix Grey
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the author.
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
About the Author
Special Thanks
FREE BOOK
CHAPTER ONE
THE REALM – Day 72
“Let’s start over. Hi. I’m Janine from accounting.” The dwarven woman held out her hand.
“I’m Azure,” he hesitated before giving it a firm shake. No, that wasn’t right. Azure was what they called him here. Another name existed for him on Earth. “No. My name isn’t Azure, it’s Will. Will Galvan, software testing engineer.” Wow. Saying it out loud felt odd.
“Software testing engineer,” Janine parroted, her features lifting as she nodded. “Impressive.”
A soft chuckle escaped his lips. “It’s not really. Just a name we were given to make us sound more important than we actually are. I’m a beta tester for a company called Radical Interactive. At least, I was,” his voice trailed off. That was a lifetime ago, it seemed. Almost a distant memory.
Janine’s mouth fell agape for a moment. “Did you say Radical Interactive?”
“I did. Have you heard of it?” Azure perked back up.
Her hand went to her chest. “I work there, too.” Then her eyes fell away from him. “That's an odd coincidence.”
“It is,” he agreed, wondering how the only person he had run into from his world also worked for Radical Interactive.
Janine grabbed his arm and lowered her voice. “Let’s sit and talk.”
Azure was undoubtedly game. In the few short minutes they had spoken, his world had been completely turned upside down. Everything that Azure thought he had come to accept, he was beginning to question all over again.
There was a new, almost scary, intensity to Janine as they took a seat on a bench away from the rest of the tavern patrons. She reached out for his hand as if they were old friends, leaning in. The closeness made Azure uncomfortable, but he wasn’t about to do anything that might offend or scare her away.
“How did you come to be here?” Janine asked.
“I just woke up here...in a barn.” Azure pulled from his memory. “No. That’s not quite right either.” He shook his head. “Apparently, I was found passed out in a forest. My friends and their father brought me to their farm. But the part where I woke up in a barn is true. What about you?”
She stared out into space as if she had already lost interest in his story. “I washed up on the beach here in Squall’s End.”
“Did someone find you?” He leaned to the side to try to grab more of her attention.
It worked. “No. I woke up naked and alone.” There was a firmness to her tone that spoke volumes about how much that had bothered her.
“That sounds rough. Waking up in a strange place, not knowing where you are or having any guidance.” He rubbed the top of her hand a few times.
“It was horrible,” she recalled. “But wonderful at the same time.” Janine’s voice brightened a bit. “Not to be somewhere unknown, of course...but to just still be alive.
“To be honest, I thought I had washed ashore on a different continent. Maybe England, though that seemed highly unlikely. I mean, the United States is so far away, and I was too far inland to reach the sea,” she rambled.
The first thing Azure thought was that England is not a continent. The second thing he thought was that Janine had just 100% verified that she was from his world. Neither Europe nor the United States existed anywhere within The Realm. She was just like him—had been transported here by some means.
“I just hope,” Janine’s voice cracked, and she pulled her hands away from him abruptly. “I just hope that I was able to save my son.” A tear cascaded down her cheek, and she quickly brushed it away.
“Your son?” Azure furrowed his brow, not following.
“Yes. We were on a family vacation camped near the Colorado River. It had recently flooded, so the river was rushing. I had just turned my back for a moment...” More tears fell as she struggled to continue. “He fell in,” her voice broke. “The water was moving so fast. I only caught a glimpse of him before he went under. I did the only thing a good mother would think of doing. I jumped in after him.”
Azure’s heart clenched from the sadness and desperation flowing from this brave woman. He hoped beyond hope that the story had a happy ending. “What happened then? Were you able to get to him?”
Janine wiped more tears away, but she nodded, a forced smile reaching her lips as bitter laughter followed. “I reached him. I remember wrapping him in my arms. But the water was moving so quickly. He was coughing and clinging to me. I’ve admittedly never been the best swimmer. But I tried. I tried to reach the riverbank. But the water was just moving so fast, and we kept going under.” Unable to control her grief any longer, Janine hid her face in her hands.
Azure wanted to comfort her, but he wasn’t sure how. He’d always been useless in situations like this.
“How old is your son?” he asked, making sure to use the tense that would suggest the kid had made it.
“Nine. Joshua is nine.” Janine sniffled, lifting her head and exhaling a long breath to steady herself again. “He wasn’t with me when I woke up. I don’t know what happened to him.”
“You’ll find him again someday,” Azure told her with a smile, unsure if it was a lie. Whatever the case, it sounded good.
The hope drained from Janine’s eyes as she shook her head. “I’m not so sure. First, I have to figure out how to get back.” Her gaze danced around the room as if tiredly looking for an exit.
“Where do you think we are?” It was the question that had been tugging at Azure ever since he’d discovered that Janine was from his world.
She refocused her attention on him. “To answer that, I need to know how you got here.”
Azure sunk, his eyes shifting as he tried to remember. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t remember your life before?” Janine gave him a quizzical look.
“I do.” He remembered Sheila and his job at Radical Interactive. He remembered being dumped and having a generally shitty day. But that was the last thing he remembered. Normally, if he’d had a bad day, he’d plug into Masterwind to become someone else for a while. Now he was someone else. But this wasn’t like any video game he had ever played before.
“Did something happen to you right before you came here?” She stared at him intensely.
Azure thought harder, but nothing came to him. “I think I might have started playing my favorite video game.”
Janine sighed. “Then, I’m not sure. At first, I had thought that maybe I had died. But this isn’t what I was told heaven would be like. It’s not hell either. Maybe limbo...”
He didn’t remember dying, but Azure wasn’t going to rule out the possibility. People died randomly all the time. Though highly unlikely, he may have had a brain aneurism while playing Masterwind. If that were the case, then it wouldn’t be impossible to consider he might be stuck in limbo.
While Azure had never murdered anyone, he certainly hadn’t been a saint. As a teenager, he had stolen medication from his grandmother to get high. He’d also shoplifted a few times. That was breaking at least one of the ten commandments. But shouldn’t there be some rule that the sins you committed as a kid were absolved as an adult? In the human world, your criminal record was wiped clean when you became an adult as long as your infractions were minor. Why wouldn’t god be so forgiving? Didn’t he know that kids were dumb and experimental by nature? It just didn’t seem fair that shit from 10+ years ago should be held against him now. While he wasn’t religious by any means, Azure liked to have thought that once he had turned into an adult, he had mostly straightened out and lived an honest life. He stopped stealing and engaging in the asshatery of youth. Never had he cheated on a girlfriend or dishonored his parents. Though he did take the Lord’s name in vain quite often.
Damn. Was that what had sent him to this medieval hell? It seemed a bit petty.
He was putting way too much thought into it. It didn’t matter now anyway. “Whatever the case, we’re here now. All we can do is make the best of it,” Azure told her. “It’s not much different from our old world. We still have to make money to survive.”
“Coin,” she corrected him weakly.
He ignored her. “And that’s why we need to take quests. Surely, there’s something you’re saving up for. Or maybe you’re just trying to survive.”
“I’m more concerned with leveling up than collecting loot and coin,” Janine confessed. “There’s a quest I want to go on, but I’m not high enough for it yet.”
“What level are you trying to reach?”
“Fifteen.”
Azure thought to inquire about the quest, but it didn’t really matter right now. All that did matter was that they had similar goals. “Dungeons have lots of monsters, and there’s always a boss. With the experience share, you’ll level up faster if you’re partied. Have you gone it alone this entire time?”
“For the most part. It’s suited me just fine. I’ve been doing what they call grinding to get experience, taking on Monster quests from The Adventurers Guild. I’ve done well enough with it so far—gotten this far.”
“Monster quests usually don’t have a very high difficulty, and the monsters you kill are typically low level. You’ll earn more XP from harder quests and boss monsters,” he worked on his sales pitch.
“XP?” She cocked an eyebrow.
“It’s short for experience,” Azure explained.
“Ah.” Janine nodded.
“Come with us on this quest,” he urged. “If you don’t like it, you don’t have to do another one. But I think you’ll be hooked once you see how quickly you can level up from a dungeon crawl.”
Her eyes fell away from him as she considered his offer. “What’s the quest about?”
Azure pulled the quest paper from his bag and read the description to her.
Adventurers Guild Quest: The Heightened Haunted Mansion
Everyone knows that old Digby Mansion is haunted. Mistakenly built atop a cemetery, ghosts have been spotted wandering the halls for decades. Servants have reported that the newest owner of the mansion, Radclyffe Smithe, has gone missing after an expedition into the forbidden basement. Go to Digby Mansion and unravel the mystery of what happened to its owner.
Designation: E
Type: Bounty
Difficulty: Hard
Deadline: 9 days
Success: Discover what happened to Radclyffe
Failure: Cancel quest or die
Reward: 3 gold, 4 silver, 1 Quest Point, 1 Small Skill Token, 1 Ring of Fortune, 1 Strike Ring
Will you accept this quest: Yes or No?
"Mel said there are no monsters inside of the mansion itself. The mansion is about eight hours away, so if we leave early in the morning, we can probably arrive mid-afternoon. Then we can decide if we want to explore the mansion for clues or head straight to the basement.
"The deadline is 9 days, if you include today, we have 8 days to finish it. 2 of those days will be spent traveling, so we should only be in the dungeon for 6 days. Hopefully, it won't take us that long."
"It's a Hard quest," Janine noted. "I've never done anything above Medium before. That was fairly challenging on my own. How great is the difference?"
"If you were alone, it would be bad. But with three of us—maybe four," he couldn't discount the possibility that Uden might return, "it should be a cakewalk." That was probably a lie. Hard quests were never a cakewalk, but that was better to offer her than an uncertain 'doable.' He needed to convince her to come along. "If you're worried about the danger, I'll do my best to protect you. At least until I can see where your skill levels are at." It was the most he could propound next to the promise of splitting his coin with her.
Janine smirked. "Honey, I probably won't need your protection." A thick digit moved to stroke the wedge of her ax. "This thing has killed more monsters than you've probably seen since coming to The Realm."
Azure wondered if she'd ever been swarmed by a colony of bats, but he wasn't about to argue when he almost had her on board.
"So, does that mean you're in?" The hint of hope lit his face with a smile.
"What time do we leave in the morning?"
CHAPTER TWO
THE REALM – Day 73
Uden was a no-show. Lonnell woke up at the ass crack of dawn, still looking morose about his brother’s disappearance. He couldn’t even fake happiness that Azure had recruited another party member for their quest.
Despite worrying that they’d have to wait for her, Janine was already downstairs in the tavern when they went to have breakfast. Azure introduced the two, and she immediately got excited at the prospect of meeting another person from Earth.
“He’s from here,” he gently informed her.
“From here,” the dwarven woman parroted absentmindedly. It was as if overnight she had forgotten that it was more normal for people to have been born inside of The Realm.
Respecting that Lonnell probably wasn’t interested in talking about any of their Earth nonsense, Janine went on to question him about his life in The Realm. That conversation extended to their walk toward Digby Mansion. He told her about the farm back on Crescent Island, why he had come to the mainland, and all about Uden, sans that he had ever died. All she needed to know was that he was a half-imp that wasn’t well-liked thanks to his mixed heritage, that he had arrived on the mainland after them and was thus a lower level, and that he was currently completing his prerequisite quest for The Adventurers Guild—if that last part was even true.
In exchange, she painted a picture of a life as a single mom with her two children, telling Lonnell that she had left her kids with her parents to come pursue work at The Adventurers Guild in Squall's End. He didn't question her further, not seeming particularly interested.
The walk to Digby Mansion was long but not without entertainment. Every time any type of monster would appear, Janine would stray from the path to slay it. This annoyed Lonnell because it cost them time getting to the mansion. When he complained, she bit back that it cost them time for him to forage, too. He countered that the time spent foraging was far less than killing monsters, which was true. Janine just ignored him and continued doing her own thing. After the sixth monster, when Lonnell tried to complain aga
in, she told him to fuck off.
Azure instantly decided that he liked her.
Knowing that there was no getting through to Janine and desperately wanting to make a compromise, Lonnell decided that the three Adventurers should face all future threats together to reduce the time it took to kill them. Janine seemed fine with this, and they all partied up. Azure couldn't resist taking a peek at her stats, surprised to see how balanced her character was.
Name: Janine Cossey
Race: Dwarf
Level: 8
Health: 200
Mana: 200
Stamina: 200
“Do you know any magic?” he asked, noticing that her Mana was higher than Lonnell’s.
“No.” Janine shook her head.
“Then why is your Mana so high? Do you have items giving you a stats boost?” If she didn’t need them, then maybe they could trade.
A chuckle left her lips. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“How could you have lived this long and have no idea what he’s talking about?” Lonnell grumbled under his breath.
“Some items that you pick up in The Realm give you stat boosts,” Azure explained. “For instance, my Spiked Vambraces add +2 to my Strength, giving me an extra 20 points of Stamina.”
She looked confused. “No. I don’t have anything like that.”
His expression went slack, and he paused for a moment before jogging the few paces needed to catch up. “If you don’t know any magic, and you don’t have items that are bolstering your stats, then why is your Mana so high?” he asked again.
Janine shrugged. “Just is.”
Azure turned to Lonnell since he doubted that Janine would know the answer to his next question. “Do dwarves have an affinity for magic?”
“No. It’s the opposite actually.” He kept his face forward, just wanting to get to where they were going. “Her Mana is high because she put points into Intelligence.”
