That Wasn't the Plan

by Jason Cheek

  “Imagine being born in a two-dimensional world and suddenly being given a device that allows you to see in three-dimensions. Not only that, but this new dimension is the most shockingly beautiful thing you’ve ever seen … greater than even your most fantastic dreams. Now, imagine falling in love with someone from this incredible new world,” Krishna said, as his eyes bored into my soul. “How could you go back to your previous two-dimensional existence?”

  “It’s not that I don’t love, Angie,” Krishna said with a far off look in his eyes, “because I do. Only, this …” he waved at everything around us, “is the only world I want to live in now. I don’t know if seeing each other here makes us think of the dark world in which we were born or what, but nothing’s been the same since we started playing.”

  Leaning back against the wall, I thought over everything he’d said. While I could understand where Krishna was coming from on one level, he lost the right to be upset at what Angie did once he hooked with Lyeneru in-game. It was a jackass double standard that he was going to have to get over quick or it was going to cause him even more heartbreak in the long run. It was a simple truth that everyone had to learn in their own way.

  “I hear you, man, but you’re going to have to keep in mind that you don’t own her … just like she doesn’t own you. You’ll need to remember that, if you want to have the chance to try and fix this in the future.” I said, meeting Krishna’s eyes.

  Seeing the look of denial on his face, I didn’t give him the chance to argue. “I saw the look in your eyes when I brought Gaelin back to life. How would you have reacted if Angie had tried to stop you from saving Lyeneru?” His mouth snapped closed as my words sank in.

  “Exactly, so don’t begrudge her the same level of respect that she’s given to you.” I said, poking him lightly in the chest as he swallowed whatever he was going to say next. Sighing heavily, I continued in offhandedly. “Though, that whole two-dimension to three-dimension comparison was pretty impressive …”

  “Pretty impressive for what, a blind man?” Krishna asked in exasperation. “I’m vision impaired, not dumb.

  “Did I say for a blind man?” I snapped without hesitation. “It’s the first time that I’ve ever heard that comparison and thought it was pretty damn good.”

  “Sorry, man,” Krishna said, in an embarrassed tone.

  “Dude, how many times do I need to say this?” I said, my voice rising in excitement with every word. “I don’t care about who you are, what you have, or don’t have in the real world. All that I care about is who you are in-game. Are you trustworthy? Do we enjoy each other’s company? Can we trust each other? You know, basic shit like that. You being vision impaired in the real world means absolutely nothing to me in-game.”

  “Um, thanks man,” Krishna said, shifting uncomfortably at my words. Folding his arms across his chest, he leaned against the wall to consider my words, when Hefe’s excited voice pulled me back into the conversation going on around us.

  “I swear those Global Brutality reinforcements had us dead to rights,” Hefe said, jumping onto a large crate. His little arms waved excitedly as he mimed the next part of his story. “Their enchanted glowing arrows were hammering into the walls around us, when AJ and I popped open the barred door.” His hands slammed together with a loud crack.

  “Boom, Angie changed into a Werebear within seconds before our eyes, before leaping out of the room.” Hefe laughed out loud, coming to the climatic end to the story. “She tore into the shocked players as the rest of the Uten Syn guild came pouring out of the room. Of course, they hammered her with those enchanted arrows, but with all of the team healing going on, none of their attacks could take her down below half. You should’ve seen the looks on their faces. I swear, it was one of the coolest turnarounds ever!”

  “Yeah, that’s the one part I don’t understand,” Krishna spoke up, as everyone looked at him in surprise. “When I left, none of you had any combat spells over level 10.”

  For a moment, I wondered if this had to do with Krishna’s jealously. How could his guildmates not have had any attack abilities or skills higher then level 10? I could see the same questioning looks on my friends’ faces. Instead of getting mad, Angie agreed, as she told hers and the rest of the guilds part of the story.

  “When we first started playing the game, none of us were interested in learning how to fight. We were too busy learning what it meant to be able to see the world around us for the first time.” Angie explained, trying to help us understand the foreign perspective. “Krishna was the only one of our group who chose to learn how to fight. Mainly due to some strong words from a neighboring player that warned us that there were a lot of bad players in the game who would enjoy taking our castle away from us.”

  “I wish the rest of us would have listened.” Angie said, her voice rough with emotion as she remembered the fight they’d had over the issue. “No one else took the warning seriously. None of us realized our mistake until the Global Brutality players showed up and started slaughtering our companions. When they locked us away in our own tower …” Taking a deep breath, she paused to look around the room at the faces looking back at her, trying somehow to convey the feeling of hopelessness they’d had.

  “I can’t even begin to explain how devastating it was to all of us. Here we were in this wonderful new world in which we could see for the very first time, only to be brutally assaulted and have it all taken away. None of us had ever experienced anything like that in the real world. Well, no one except for Krishna. I guess until now we’ve lived relatively sheltered lives.” The soul-wrenching look in Angie’s eyes pierced the heart as she numbly continued. “Then, Krishna told us what happened to him when he went to find help. How he’d been repeatedly slaughtered by the Chaos Storm players at the capital and then imprisoned by the Dread Pack in Darom … We began to think the only way we could escape our imprisonment was to roll new characters.”

  “Then you and your friends came along,” Angie said, as her voice unconsciously turned hard. “You rescued Krishna, brought Lyeneru back to life, and then promised to help us fight the hateful players that slaughtered our companions and friends …,” her eyes burned with fervor as she met my eyes. “Most importantly, you showed us that they could be beaten. So, after your fight in Telrain, we started dueling to increase our combat abilities and skills.”

  “Hold up a second,” I said, cutting Angie off as I tried to wrap my head around what she was saying. “You’re playing at a seventy-five percent pain threshold like me and still you dueled each other to get your combat skills leveled up so you could fight along with us when we showed up?” Seeing Angie’s silent nod, I gave a low whistle. That was hardcore!

  “We’ll never be victims again,” Angie stated, in no uncertain terms. “Like you, we’ll fight these types of players no matter who they are!”

  “Hold up for a second,” AJ said, cutting in. “I thought you could only level up with actual combat.”

  “That’s only for a player’s actual character level,” I said, remembering the in-game Wiki article I’d read on the subject. “But, you can use duels to level up your combat abilities all day long.”

  “But that would mean they were already level 30,” Sarka asked, the confusion clear on her face.

  “Most of us were in the high twenties to low thirties,” Angie confirmed, before explaining further. “We mostly leveled up by completing crafting and non-combat related quests.”

  “So where does that leave us now?” Gaelin asked, from where he stood behind Angie. “It’s doubtful that these Global Brutality newfar will be willing to leave us in peace.”

  “More than likely,” Thomas agreed. “People like that can’t accept someone standing up to them.”

  “Which was one of the reasons I invited Uten Syn to join us in our alliance,” I said, draping an arm around Krishna’s shoulder and messing up his hair. “That, and because Krishna’s a pretty cool cat.”

  “Ack, get off of me
you big oaf!” Krishna laughingly complained, as he pushed me away.

  “It’s a serious offer though,” I said, meeting Angie’s hazel eyes. “But, all of you need to agree to the alliance.”

  “How is that going to stop them from coming back with a larger force?” Angie asked, furrowing her brows.

  “It’ll mean packing up your keep and moving it to my lands,” I explained, giving Angie the basic outline Krishna and I had worked out together. “At least, that’s if you want our help in fighting against your enemies. Our valley might not be as beautiful as what you have here and we have our own enemies gunning for us, but it’s pretty nice and we already have fortifications going up to keep everyone safe. Think the Uten Syn guild would be interested in joining us?”

  Instead of answering my question directly, Angie grabbed Krishna and pushed him out of the storage room while asking for the rest of us to follow. Pushing through the crowd of Uten Syn players that were standing around talking, she jumped onto one of the tables near the center of the room and pulled Krishna up beside her. The murmur of voices stopped as everyone turned towards the pair.

  “Listen up, Uten Syn guild,” Angie shouted out to the room. “Startum Ironwolf asked if we’d be interested in joining the House of Kayden alliance. What answer should I give him?”

  The deafening cheer that rang out from the room full of players was answer enough. Within moments, our entire group was inundated with claps on the back, hugs, and handshakes. I heard more than one person excitedly comment that they couldn’t wait to get the ability to raise their own zombies and how cool that would be. The smile that came to my lips upon hearing that almost made my face hurt. Just wait until they got a load of how smelly having a bunch of bloating corpses following you around could be.

  Making my way over to Krishna and Angie, I climbed up next to them as the room cheered again. Angie gave me a friendly hug as I personally welcomed her to the alliance and thanked her for the introduction to her guildmates. As I faced the room full of Uten Syn players, the clamor settled down as everyone realized I wanted to address them. Quickly, I did the hand signal to disable my streaming.

  “Listen up people!” I shouted as the room fell silent. “While I’m glad to be able to welcome all of you to the House of Kayden alliance, we’re on a little bit of a time crunch. Before tonight is over, I have to meet up with another two guilds and my friend Domenic who we came to evac from the siege that currently has him and his people surrounded by our mutual enemies. So, if all of you could be ready to move out in a half an hour that would be great. By then, I hope we’ll have figured out how to collapse the Uten Syn keep and have it packed and ready to take with us.” I paused at the low mutter that broke out at my words, before taking a deep breath and continuing.

  “The current situation is somewhat dire. We have a force of soldiers and zombies keeping the exit to your valley clear in case the Global Brutality guild has a quick reactionary force that could block off our escape. Also, we have another force stationed at where we entered the valley to keep the massive Orc invasion force that is trying to move into this area at bay. So it’s essential that we keep on schedule so we don’t find ourselves surrounded by our enemies.” I clapped a hand on both Angie’s and Krishna’s shoulder.

  “We’ll be coordinating everything through your guild leader and officers, so please have some patience while we get everything going. I’d suggest grabbing a backpack of food, sleeping blankets, and clothing if you can find any of your supplies, a waterskin, along with any weapons and armor that you can use. The HUD says that it’s eight thirty-seven, so let’s try to be ready to go by ten after nine.” I said, before lowering my voice.

  “Angie, can you get everyone moving while Krishna shows me the process for packing up the keep?”

  Chapter One.Seventeen

  (Wednesday, May 7th / Day 17 of The World.)

  “I’m on it,” Angie said, giving me a nod. Without hesitation, she jumped off of the table and began calling out orders. “Franky, see how many backpacks you can round up. There should be a bunch of them by the southern field in the herb shack. Juan, didn’t you practice crafting a bunch of swords to level up your smithing? Exactly, see if anything is left that we can use.”

  All at once, the room began to clear out as the Uten Syn guild got busy. The rest of my friends came over to see what we were up to as I followed Krishna to the middle of the room. Tossing aside a few broken benches and tables, the Moon Elf pulled away a simple rug that was crafted from some coarse linen to reveal a large trap door with a large metal ring in the center. With a yank, the ring came loose. It was attached to a five-foot long chain that allowed the trap door to be pulled open.

  As soon as the trapdoor opened, a brilliant light filled the room as everyone looked into the hole in amazement. Once my eyes adjusted to the intense light, I could see the insides were a small room with a quartz-octagonal crystal the size of my forearm held in place at chest level by eight stone arms covered in runes. The arms cradled the crystal from above and below like power couplings that then went out to the rest of the fortress. Honestly, the setup looked like a Dilithium crystal setup out of a Star Trek episode which, I figured, was probably where the developers had gotten the idea from in the first place.

  There was just enough space for one person to stand before the device, which was where Krishna hopped down into. Immediately, his hands settled on two stone orbs that rose up out of the stone floor on posts. I hadn’t noticed them in my first survey of the room. They made me think of control panels to the device, but they could have been hand rests for all I knew. My mental contemplation was interrupted as Krishna began to speak.

  “The fortress needs a hundred thousand mana to be packed up.” Krishna said, as he stared directly ahead focused on something unseen to the rest of us. “The current stores are up to almost ninety-three thousand, which means if everyone here unloads their mana into the crystal, I should be able to trigger its travel mode without any problems.”

  I figured out what he meant as soon as I glanced at my HUD. My mana level alone was currently at three thousand seven hundred, which meant I could nearly reach the mana requirement on my own. With our current group, we could easily reach the total amount needed without any one of us having to go below half mana or ask for anyone else’s help.

  “Mana is needed whenever you add any structures to your fortress,” Krishna continued his explanation of how the fortresses worked. “Along with whatever building supplies are needed for the construction like stone and wood, besides the internal components for the function of the advance structure. Like crafting or purchasing an anvil and tools needed for making a smithy add-on fully functional.” Removing his hands, the Moon Elf looked up at us with a grin.

  “Usually the guild leader can just use the mental interface to build out new structures, since the fortress automatically gathers the mana it needs on its own from the environment. But, if you’re building a lot at once, you’ll need to add the necessary mana directly to the hearthstone from the control room. Also, this is the only location that can be used to trigger the travel mode.”

  That made a lot of sense, I thought, as Krishna jumped out of the hole. Giving me a wave to take his place, I jumped in after him and placed my hands on the stone control knobs. Looking around at the interface that popped up in my HUD, I wondered if BrokenFang Hold had anything like this or not? It was easy enough to push my mana into the device. As I was doing that, I noticed that the “travel mode” was grayed out for me, which again meant that only the official owner of the fortress could trigger the function.

  Although, I did notice there was a “claim ownership” option, which was not grayed out. It made me wonder if Krishna hadn’t mentioned it because it was new since the Emergency Hot Fix, or because he didn’t want to give us any ideas of taking their fortress over for our own. Not that Thomas or I would do that. At least, not without a solid reason, I mentally corrected myself. Nonetheless, it was nice to see there wa
s a safe guard to stop invaders and thieves from being able to mess with the fortress if they made it this far without actually taking the seven days needed to claim ownership.

  A slight fatigue came over me as my mana dropped to eighteen hundred and fifty points, which was exactly half of my max. Removing my hands from the smooth control knobs, I climbed out of the control center and waved for Thomas to take my spot. Even if filling the reserves didn’t take everyone’s mana, I wanted all of us to get a chance to check out the controls.

  Who knew when knowing something like this might be useful? It only took thirty or so seconds for the Devil Dog guild leader to see what he wanted and push his mana into the crystal, before he was climbing back out of the control room and waving the next person in line over. Five minutes later and Yun, who was the last in line, plopped down into the hole.

  As he finished-up checking everything out and climbed back out, Krishna continued explaining that only the person who triggered the transformation process could be inside the fortress. Otherwise, anyone not inside the control room would be crushed to death when the fortress went through its transformation process. With that last piece of information, we headed back out into the main courtyard as Krishna went to work helping his people to get everything ready to move out. As Neysa and Helgath went to fall in next to me, Thomas shouldered his way past to walk at my side.

  “Remind me to never bet against you.” Thomas whispered, ignoring Neysa’s annoyed snap as we made our way towards the door. “I thought you’d made a bad call back in Darom when you wanted to form an alliance with these noobs, but you proved me wrong.” He shook his head incredulously. “Hell, the flying squirrels alone would have made helping them worth the effort, but what they pulled off here was nothing short of amazing.”