Spellcraft

by Andrew Beymer

  "What the hell do you want?"

  "So serious," my benefactor said. "And such an attitude from someone who just lost a very important source of resources in the game. We relied on that goblinsteel to generate substantial revenue, after all.”

  I sighed and looked down at the shattered glass in front of me. For a moment I seriously considered asking for another drink, but didn’t. I wasn’t going to be like my father. I wasn’t going to do this. I could control it here in the game, just like I did at those parties with the contraband.

  I looked back to the shadowy figure beside me.

  “You’re the one who called me here, so what is it? Are you giving me my severance package or something?”

  The figure chuckled. It was a low and throaty sound. Like the asshole was running his voice through the kind of voice modulator that someone would use for a cheap Halloween costume to try and make themselves sound scary.

  “You don’t get away that easily, Trent,” the shadow said. “You’re in our employ, and once you’re in our employ you’re always in our employ. I believe you remember the contract you signed?”

  I sighed and let my head come to rest against the wood bar. I didn’t even care that the whole thing was grimy because whoever put together this place wanted to make it feel like a dive. No, all I cared about was the situation I found myself in.

  I thought back to that day. To a recruiter who said they were looking for people for a new guild in one of the community rooms for the Horizon modules. A guild who was going to do the right thing in the game and make sure everyone coming into Lotus got a fair chance at playing the game the right way.

  It’d sounded like a dream, and I’d put my e-signature to the document they presented me in that lobby without ever really thinking about what I was doing, legally speaking, by signing all that over without reading the EULA.

  And now here I was paying the price.

  “Are you remembering now, Trent?” the voice asked. “Because we remember, and I don’t think your father would appreciate finding out what his child has signed over, would he?”

  I lifted my head. Looked at the shadowy figure. I hated the man. Hated the way he talked to me. Hated the way nothing was ever good enough for them. Even before everything with the goblins started unraveling and I found control of Nilbog slipping through my fingers.

  But there was one person I hated more. Conlan. I hated him more than I hated Horizon. More than I hated my father. I hated him with a burning passion, and I would have my revenge. Even if having that revenge meant continuing my work with Horizon.

  Not that I had much of a choice.

  “What do you want me to do?” I asked, my throat suddenly dry. I glanced at the drinks on the back wall and clenched my fist.

  I would be in control here, damn it.

  “I would ask you to remember that your contract has a very strict nondisclosure agreement to it,” the shadow said. “You remember the consequences for stepping out of line with that, correct?”

  I squeezed my eyes shut. Flashes of a bare room where an impossible pain coursed through my body filled my mind. Pain that I thought couldn’t possibly get any worse, and yet every time I thought that it did. Screams all around me as other people felt that same pain, and the dawning horror that at least one of them hadn’t made it.

  I looked down at the Horizon insignia tattooed on my body. Just above my left breast. I’d thought that was an insignia that symbolized the good I was going to do in this world, but we’d all learned exactly what that tattoo allowed when Horizon put their mark on us. I didn’t know how the code worked, but I did know that it let them do terrible things.

  “Appropriate that you’re looking at your mark,” the shadow said. “Because I have a job for you that will involve introducing one of your best friends to that mark.”

  I looked up. For the first time since this conversation started I felt something stirring inside me other than the general hate that I felt towards Horizon and everything they’d done to me in both worlds.

  “What did you have in mind?” I asked.

  The shadow looked around, as though to make sure there was no one watching us, but the only people in this room were NPCs. There’d been a few Horizon people who represented the local guild who’d come in and made sure of that.

  They weren’t in the room now, but I got the feeling they’d be out there around the tavern making sure there was no one but NPCs in here to add a little bit of flavor to the bar. My shadowy friend didn’t like being overheard.

  I licked my lips as the shadow passed something across to me. A disc that I recognized all too well because I’d seen it once before. On that fateful night when they’d added the mark that sealed the contract I’d signed with these assholes nearly a year ahead of when they promised Lotus Online would launch.

  I’d hardly believed them right up to the moment Lotus launched just as they’d said. Like they somehow had insider knowledge. I scarcely believed them even after the horrible things I’d witnessed.

  “What do you want me to do with that?” I finally asked, looking up at the shadow and feeling equal measures of elation and terror at where I thought this was going.

  “I would think that much should be obvious,” the shadow said. “There are certain players in this game who are working against our interests. Killing their characters in the game isn’t going to do a damn bit of good because they are always able to respawn, but if we were able to mark them…”

  The shadow trailed off. Clearly he didn’t want to say anything that would be incriminating if someone came through and reviewed the logs. Not that anyone would know to look at the chat logs in this particular part of the game world at this particular time, but that’d never stopped the shadow from being careful with his words.

  I glanced at the disc. I remembered well seeing it glow and the searing pain on my body when that disc was used to mark me with a brand that had turned into the elaborate inked “H” tattoo that meant Horizon could take me out whenever they wanted.

  “You want me to use this on someone who hasn’t signed one of your contracts?” I asked.

  “I don’t know what you’re supposed to do with this,” the shadow said, tapping the top and making it glow ever so slightly.

  That was enough to send a small jolt of pain running through me. A neat trick, that. I jumped, and I felt a stab of terror as I remembered the true pain I’d felt that first night. The terror of looking around and realizing there were some who couldn’t take the pain and wondering if I’d be next.

  The horror of seeing the stories in the news and knowing that would be my fate if I was stupid enough to open my big mouth.

  Of course I couldn’t cause the pain with the disc. No, there was something about it that could only be controlled by people Horizon trusted, and I wasn’t one of those people despite everything I’d done to try and prove myself to them.

  “And if I decide I don’t want to do this?” I asked.

  Though there was never any question that I wasn’t going to do this. After all, I wanted to take out Conlan just as much as Horizon did. The asshole had humiliated me in front of the whole world with his antics in the game world, and he’d also humiliated me at school. No one respected me anymore. No one appreciated what I did to keep the school in line and working in the proper order.

  The shadow shook his head. Or rather the part of his body where his head should be if he was using a regular character skin moved from side to side.

  “I think we both know that you have your reasons for aligning your interest with ours,” the shadow said. “And I can promise you that if you manage to pull off this one task then all of your failures to this point will be forgiven. Assuming you succeed.”

  I thought about my balance. Thought about the clause in my contract that said I was personally responsible for any damages to the company that might result from failure. And I reached out and took the disc, my hands shaking.

  “What happens if I use this?” I asked
, knowing what the answer was even as I asked. “I need to know.”

  Only the shadow didn’t seem interested in providing any of the answers that I felt like I deserved before I went through with this. No, the shadow stood and nodded to me. An almost imperceptible movement that I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t already spent so much time around this asshole.

  “You know what you have to do,” the shadow said. “Take care of our enemies threatening us in this game and we will take care of you. Fail us, and…”

  The shadow turned and moved off. I sat there for a long time after he left. Long after other players started filtering back into the room which told me the blockade outside was no longer in place.

  I turned the disc over and over in my hand. A simple thing, really. It didn’t at all look like the kind of device that could be used to inject some code that would allow Horizon to do whatever the fuck they wanted to someone wearing the Lotus hardware.

  At least I assumed that’s what was going on here. Either that or Lotus had been lying through their teeth when they assured the public that there was no way anyone could be harmed by their hardware moving forward in the wake of the Horizon incidents.

  The thing was silver. Barely the size of an old half dollar back when physical money had been a thing. It had that same stylized “H” as my tattoo, and all I had to do was press this against someone’s skin and they would be marked. The code injection would happen and there was nothing the mark could do about it.

  I stared at the disc, but my mind was hundreds of leagues away in Nilbog. In the town circle where I’d been humiliated in my own territory in front of my guild by that asshole Colin and his slut bitch Kara who didn’t know a good thing when she had it. I thought about the battle in front of that mine, and how I’d been humiliated in front of my followers. I thought about how every time I’d tried to kill Colin in the game I’d been defeated because that little prick had cheated and pulled out one of those gems that he could use to blow someone up.

  And the more I thought about that, the more I thought that yeah, the shadow was right. This was a game, and someone could always come back and cause more trouble. That’d been working for us at the mine battle until that asshole started targeting our resupply depot with those airships he was using to cheat!

  But what if there was a way to stop someone? To prevent them from coming back? What if I could take my revenge and no one would ever know I was the one who’d taken it?

  An unpleasant grin spread across my face. If there’d been anyone in the tavern paying attention to see that grin they might’ve shied away from me. Or maybe reported me to one of the game masters since it was clearly the look of someone who was up to no good.

  But there was no one paying attention to me. I was a washed up wreck. No one would even recognize me as the famous player who’d been humiliated so recently, for all that my face had been plastered all over the usual feeds as my defeat was spread far and wide to the world who seemed to love laughing at my misfortune.

  No, there was no one left who cared about me. No one but Horizon. Sure there was my debt to pay off, but hadn’t they always been my friend? Hadn’t they given me what I needed at every step of the way?

  They were still helping me today. Sure it wasn’t money or weapons to run to the Auction House, at least contributing my own small part to the massive tsunami of merchandise all the trusted guild leaders put up there, but they’d given me the means I could use to defeat my ultimate enemy, and defeat him so that he could never come back and bother me again.

  I smiled and slipped the disc into my pocket. I stood, not bothering to pay my tab, and headed for the exit.

  It was time to pay my old friends a visit. Not just Colin, but maybe Keia too. Maybe my friends at Horizon would see through to helping me out with a couple of my problems, and not just the one who was a target of mutual interest.

  Yeah, I might’ve been humiliated in front of the world, but things were looking up. I had a plan, and Colin was going to regret the day he ever crossed me!

  Author’s Note

  Thanks for reading! I had a lot of fun writing Spellcraft, and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

  If you want more of the story then there’s a link after this Author’s Note where you can sign up for my mailing list. Signing up gets you the FREE 4000 word cut scene Diana’s Launch Day that tells the story of the Lotus launch announcement from Diana’s point of view.

  Astute readers might be asking themselves how it’s possible for Conlan’s dead sister to be around for launch day. Intrigued? You’ll have to sign up and read the story to find out what’s going on!

  Spellcraft was a story that’s been germinating in the back of my mind since before LitRPG and GameLit was a thing. One of the first short stories I ever wrote back in 2001 when I was in high school was a story of adventurers traveling through a fantasy world to kill a dragon, and the big reveal at the end was that they were actually in a game world all along.

  So you could say I’ve been playing around with this genre since before it was even a genre!

  Spellcraft was influenced by my experience crafting in a game called Dark Age of Camelot that reached the height of its popularity around 2002-2003. The thing I really enjoyed about that game was you didn’t have to go on raids to get the best gear in the game. No, that awesome gear was created by players.

  Spellcrafting was the ultimate craft in that game. Players used gems to enchant weapons and armor, adding bonuses that gave people maybe a half a second more time before getting killed in Realm vs Realm combat, but gamers were willing to pay a premium for that half a second.

  Leveling that skill was expensive and tedious. The supplies were over the top expensive, and the process of leveling involved tapping a button over and over again to create items. There were nights when I’d put something on the TV next to my PC or get out a good book and focus on that while tapping the crafting button all through the night to level the skill.

  I was also lucky enough to have a guildmate with deep pockets who was willing to invest in me getting the skill. It was rare enough, and expensive enough, that he figured the value of having someone crazy enough to level it was worth the investment.

  In the end I had a skill that allowed me to print money in the game, and I had more fun taking clients and spellcrafting custom sets of armor than I did going out and killing other players in RvR combat.

  It’s disappointed me in the years since that there’s never been a crafting system that lived up to that initial promise. World of Warcraft created a system that was there mostly to complement raiding, but you had to raid or engage in PvP if you wanted the best armor.

  So I envisioned a game where it was possible for players to go into business for themselves and create the best stuff. A world where the crafters were able to win the day not through fighting, but through economic warfare. The result is Spellcraft, and I hope you enjoyed my slightly different take on the GameLit genre!

  Remember, keep going to the next page where you can sign up for my mailing list and get a free copy of the 4000 word cut scene Diana’s Launch Day. And if you liked the book consider leaving a review!

  Thanks for reading!

  Thanks so much for reading Spellcraft! I had a lot of fun writing this, and I hope you enjoyed reading!

  If you liked Spellcraft then please consider leaving a review!

  Want updates on new releases or my writing progress?

  Sign up for my mailing list!

  Signing up for my mailing list also gets you the FREE 4000 word short story Diana’s Launch Day that tells the story of the Lotus launch announcement from Diana’s POV.

  That’s right folks! Conlan’s dead sister somehow experienced the launch announcement. Intrigued? Click above to sign up and learn more!

  For more about me and my other projects check out my website at http://www.andrewbeymer.com!

  aft