"Well, that was awesome," Alex said to herself, taking a spot by the window to watch the city.
It was almost October, but the leaves were still green. The city looked normal enough in the daytime, though she had little to compare it to since she hadn't traveled much. But she saw old ladies walking their dogs and taxis zipping through the streets, while the sidewalks were crowded with tourists.
The train passed a carnival being set up in a huge empty parking lot. The colorful tents and rides looked like they could be from any country traveling fair, until she saw a girl with bone wings sticking out her back.
When the train made a last turn before it reached the Spire, she got a good look at the titanic building. Even smashing her face against the warm window, she couldn't see the top. She'd heard that it had more interior volume than the next ten largest buildings in the world combined, and she had no doubt of that as the train approached it.
After being released into the city streets, Professor Marzio led them into the Spire through the administration entrance. She'd been in the building once before for the Merlin Trials, but so much had been new and overwhelming she hadn't a chance to really look around.
They passed rooms filled with cubicles and office workers, professors in robes, strange doors covered in runes, and a lizard creature the size of a small dog strolling down the hallway. It was all at once completely odd and perfectly normal.
After an elevator ride that went both up and sideways, they were let out in a small room with one wall covered in an iron door with a small keyhole in the center, surrounded by glowing runes. Her nose itched with metallics, a scent similar to raw faez, but it felt sharper. Lily seemed to sense the change as well, though she refused to meet Alex's gaze to share in the acknowledgement.
The professor produced a key from a chain around his neck, leaned down, and popped the lock while muttering a phrase in an unfamiliar language. She was unsure if it'd been a spell or a password, but either way, the runes went dark and the door clicked open.
Professor Marzio gave the massive door a gentle shove and it coasted open, revealing a room that looked a lot like the one where they entered Gamemakers Online. An obsidian cube waited on the far side of the room.
"You know the drill," said the professor as he strolled forward and touched the cube.
Alex and Lily had been standing at the threshold, but after the professor disappeared they took hurried steps towards it, which eventually turned into a short sprint. Alex wasn't sure who won, but they both appeared inside the game world at the same time.
The room they stood in, like the interior of the Spire, was both unusual and familiar. At first glance, it looked like an ordinary laboratory with workbenches filled with glassware, the room covered in opaque windows that seemed to move on their own. It wasn't until Alex took a second look that she realized that it was water outside the lab. She moved to the window to see colorful fish swimming past and no sign of the surface.
"We're underwater," said Alex.
"Nothing escapes you, does it?" said Lily.
The professor faced them both. "Gather round, ladies. I don't want to explain myself more than once. For the next three days, the two of you are going to be game designers. Gamemakers Hall is in charge of the Second Year Contest. You'll be working on the design for next year's game."
Alex scrunched up her face. "But we've never experienced the Second Year Contest, how can we design it?"
"The contest would be trivial for you, or I wouldn't have recruited you for Gamemakers," said Professor Marzio. "And Lily's brothers were both members of the Halls, the older of which as a member of Coterie won the contest, so I'm sure she can help direct the activity."
Lily crossed her arms and stared suspiciously at Alex as if she suspected that she would screw things up.
"Any questions?" he asked.
"What is the game?" asked Alex, while Lily stared blankly at the professor as if she didn't care about anything going on around her.
Professor Marzio gestured towards the window. "The building we're standing in is twenty-five levels tall, or deep in this instance. At the beginning of the contest, the bottom level, this one, will start leaking at a rate determined by you. The object for the teams will be to reach the top level and escape.
"Or at least attempt to because I don't care if it's solvable, the more difficult the better. This game should keep them preoccupied for the year. A winner being determined before the holiday break would be bad form and reflect poorly on the both of you."
"How do we, you know, make the game?" asked Alex.
Professor Marzio snapped his fingers and two data screens appeared on a nearby table. He handed one to each of them. Lily stared at hers as if it were made of gold and diamonds.
"Here is the game design interface. You should pick up how to use it pretty quickly, and if you don't, that's not my problem. It will allow you to construct the obstacles that the teams must overcome," he said.
The data screen had a menu of options: furniture, food, traps, magical effects, buildings, triggers, clothing, and a long list of other items. Alex never had much interest in game designer programs, but she'd never had the opportunity to use one as powerful as the one in her hand. Her mind raced with ideas.
"What about NPCs?" asked Alex when she didn't see a menu item for them.
"I make the NPCs," said the professor. "If your game requires one, click on 'other' and make a note as to what you're looking for."
Alex held the data pad in the air. "How can we make a complete Second Year Contest in just a few days? I have a ton to do in Gamemakers. I'm sure Lily does as well."
"Don't bring me into this," said Lily, bunching up her lips in protest.
"I don't expect the game to be perfect," said Professor Marzio, "but I expect that it will generally work. I'll be coming in behind you and improving your design anyway, but it's good to have fresh minds create the base game. Besides, if I allowed you to know the final details, you could sell that for a considerable sum."
Lily gave her a look as if she expected that Alex would do something like that.
Alex turned away, examining the watery windows. "So when they fail the contest, they drown?"
"Unless something else gets them first," said Professor Marzio.
"That's pretty messed up," said Alex, running a hand through her hair.
"Failure is a wonderful teacher. You should know that more than anyone," said the professor, which brought a snort from Lily. "Magic is a dangerous business. Learning in an environment that allows failure, even as gruesome as drowning, is better than letting arrogant mages into the world without a clue of the damage they can do, to others and to themselves."
"How does it even work?" asked Alex, hoping to learn more about the game so she could better understand her friends in Bravebear.
Professor Marzio gave her a flat stare. "It works. That's all that matters for you."
"Understood."
"If there are no other questions, I'm going to return to the Spire. I have other matters to attend to." He raised his hand as if he were going to cast a spell, pausing mid-gesture. "I almost forgot. You'll get hungry eventually, so if you feel like you need to bother with eating, create your meals with the interface. I'll be back in exactly three days. If you're not done by then, I won't be giving you that level."
The phrase "need to bother with eating" was curious to her, but she knew better than to ask. But it gave her more of a clue to the nature of the game world, that eating was only necessary because of habit, not because it sustained them. She wondered if the hunger she felt in Warsong Plains was coded in.
He snapped his fingers and disappeared, leaving the two of them alone.
"Don't," said Lily, pointing at her. "Don't even try to get to know me, because I don't care."
"I don't have to get to know you, but we're going to have to work together if we're going to finish the game in three days. The last thing either of us want to do is spend three days away from Game
makers for nothing," said Alex.
Lily stared at Alex for three long blinks, until she said, "Actually we don't. I'm not going to finish the game, you are."
"What? Are you kidding me?" asked Alex.
"I have more important things to do here," said Lily, grabbing her data pad.
"We only have three days," said Alex, spreading her hands. "You heard the professor, it's going to take the both of us to finish this job."
"I'm sure with all your experience exploiting games you'll know how to design it. Anyway," she said with a throwaway shrug as she was tapping on her data pad, "I'm more of a twitch gamer. This kind of puzzle shit is more your thing. I'd only get in your way."
"Why the hell did you come here if you're not going to help?" asked Alex.
Lily ignored her and kept working on the data pad until she emphatically stabbed her finger into the screen and a set of stairs appeared.
"Don't try to follow," she said, before disappearing up the stairs that probably led into the next level. Before Alex could follow, the stairs blinked out, leaving her alone.
"What in the actual hell?" said Alex.
She listed around, trying to figure out what she needed to do. Lily's disappearance came as a complete shock. But it didn't appear that the job inside the game world had been a surprise to Lily. Once the professor had left, she'd gotten right to work as if she knew how to navigate the data pad.
Alex wasn't sure if she should go after Lily, or ignore her and start work on the game. Three days wasn't much time. But either way, she realized she'd have to figure out the interface on the data pad. She got right to work with a heavy suspicion there was more to Lily Brodziak than she'd first thought.
Chapter Eleven
Lily had been right about one thing: she was good at puzzle games. Sure it would have been nice to have a second person to bounce ideas off of, but given their contentious relationship—a truth that mystified her—it was better that Lily had gone off on her own. It had taken two and a half days with little sleep, but Alex had designed all twenty-five levels, death-making traps and all.
She'd taken inspiration from her favorite games—Resident Evil was a particularly nasty one—and added her own twists. Alex almost felt bad about the level of difficulty, but she assumed a team of five hall students could outthink whatever obstacle she could put in their way.
There was a bit of freedom in knowing that the contest didn't have to have a solution. It helped her finish the task with time to spare, which gave her an opportunity to figure out what Lily had been doing and to explore the nature of this seemingly real, but programmable world.
Alex was standing on the bottom level, which looked mostly like it had when she'd arrived, except for a few hidden surprises. She knew that Lily wasn't on any of the twenty-five levels, since she'd been up and down them, verifying her designs multiple times.
Using the touch pad, Alex toggled herself to incorporeal. It was a trick she'd learned when she accidently triggered the building to start flooding. It allowed her to walk through the wall into the surrounding deep waters.
It was disconcerting to be breathing underwater, but she'd gotten used to the idea that she wasn't really alive, just a fabrication in the game software—whatever it was. Alex made circuits around the building, looking for signs of Lily. It wasn't until she widened her search that she found signs.
A few hundred meters from the underwater lab, Alex spied a dome. She had a good idea that Lily had created it. There was a screen for making smaller buildings in the pad. Alex assumed that she'd expanded the sides to make it work for whatever she was doing in the interior.
She dodged around a few colorful orange and blue fish that had been darting through the water—not because she might run into them, but having creatures swim through her was unnerving—and examined the dome for an ingress point. After circling it, she decided to use her incorporeal status to press her face through the wall.
At first, Alex didn't think that Lily had created the dome. The chaos inside didn't seem like something that could come from the former MechLeague World Champion. She seemed far too organized to create what looked like the property of a drugged-out hoarder.
At least until she heard Lily scream.
There was no fear in the yell, no hint of terror—unless existentialism could be counted as such. It started as a growl, a teeth-clenched gut-shaking buildup that eventually crescendoed to a full-throated volley of noise lasting until Lily's voice gave out.
It wasn't fear, no. It was the kind of frustration Alex knew well, the kind that had etched into her bones like acid when she found out her dad had died, or her mother had cancer.
Alex couldn't see Lily. There was a mound of books blocking her vision, but she could hear the sobbing, and pushed through the wall into the dome.
She hesitated before she stepped into view, unknowing if there was any opportunity to console the distraught girl.
Her classmate sat on a stool with her head in her hands, bent over and heaving with tears, surrounded by various piles of objects summoned from the data pad. Nothing about the scene made sense to Alex, but she knew from experience that the kind of pain Lily was clearly experiencing knew no logic, that it could be as capricious as a tiger in a butcher shop.
When Lily's arched back stopped shuddering, Alex softly said, "Are you okay?"
Lily didn't snap up as she expected, but froze as if she were a mouse in the high grass when a hawk flew over. Slowly, as if she were expecting to find not Alex but a murderous clown, Lily sat up.
Her puffy eyes were ringed with black and red. She looked like she'd been awake for days.
"What do you want?" asked Lily, lacking the energy for her normal venom.
"I finished the contest, so I came to find you. Is something wrong?" she asked.
Lily's mouth opened and closed as if she wanted to spit a barb, but couldn't muster enough brain power to produce one, then eventually she shook her head.
"Nothing you can help me with," said Lily, her gaze haunted with memories.
"You might be surprised," said Alex. "I know you think I'm an exploiter, but that's not what I do. I figure things out."
"You can't figure this out," said Lily, arms hanging between her legs. She glanced up at Alex. "And you are an exploiter. I've seen your streams."
This shouldn't have been news to Alex. Lily had called her an exploiter from day one, but she'd never thought that she'd actually watched her play. She hadn't known she had someone as famous as Lily Brodziak watching her, and it didn't explain why she was watching. There was such a thing as a hate-follow, but Alex didn't understand it.
"Look," said Lily, "I don't want your help. You've...it's just better you stay away from me. It's probably safer anyway."
"What about Professor Marzio?" asked Alex.
Lily didn't understand the implications of her question until she glanced around her junk-filled room.
"Oh, yeah, don't worry. I'll have this cleaned up before he comes back. The rat bastard is punctual if anything, so I don't have to worry about him popping in early," said Lily.
The dig on the professor surprised Alex, but Lily seemed generally unhappy. Or maybe they'd had an unpleasant encounter last year she wasn't aware of.
Alex moved to leave, but turned around before she slipped through the dome wall. "Whatever happened, I really hope you can figure it out. And if you ever change your mind, I'll try to do what I can to help you."
Lily made no indication that she heard Alex. She stared into her hands as if they contained unpleasant answers.
Alex made her way back to the underwater building. She spent the next few hours experimenting with the design pad to see if she could learn something about the nature of the virtual world, but she'd pretty much plumbed the depths of its usage in making the Second Year Contest.
A few minutes before Professor Marzio showed up, Lily returned. He said nothing when he appeared, giving them a once-over before returning them back to the Spire so they
could return to Gamemakers Hall and then Gamemakers Online.
Chapter Twelve
The green-brown waving grasses of the Warsong Plains embraced her upon her return, gently swaying in the breeze as the sun warmed her back. She sighed with the relaxation of returning to a place that was beginning to feel like a kind of home.
Until she realized that she'd logged out in Bravebear Clan camp, but was currently in an unknown location.
Alex squinted as she made a slow turn, trying to identify her current whereabouts. It wasn't until she made it halfway around and saw the tall forest across the chasm that she knew where she was located.
When Alex opened her character sheet, she knew what had happened, though not why.
Character: Alexandria Duke
Clan: None
Level: 21
Strength: 1
Intelligence: 7
Cunning: 40
Agility: 2
Endurance: 7
Charisma: 1
Class: Arcane Mastermind
Subclass: Undecided
Health: 355/355
Faez: 281/281
Armor Class: 9
Fatigue: 0%
XP: 2,520,000 / 2,750,000
CP: 56
She should have been all about the level, but the lack of clan left her empty.
"Bastard kicked me out," said Alex, punching her fist into an open hand.
But first things first, she had ability points to assign. She really wanted to throw some into Agility to help with the whip, but she knew that wasn't going to help. She was winning because of her tactics, and those were best served with the Cunning stat. Alex threw all three points into her main stat and hurried off towards the camp, angrily ripping at the grasses with her fists as she marched.
When she reached Bravebear, she found Andreque at the outskirts leaning on a spear and staring off into the distance. When she saw Alex racing forward, she leveled her weapon.
"Only Bravebears here," said Andreque.
"Really? More like scare bears," said Alex.
"You shouldn't have left the clan without fighting. More than three fights missed is grounds for removal," said Andreque as she looked down at Alex.
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