Neverstone: A LitRPG Adventure (The Mad Elf Book 1)

by Ned Caratacus

  Gregor trembled.

  “Is something wrong, sir?”

  The king cleared his throat. “Sorry, long day. Also, #39 is a traitor. Find him and shoot to kill on sight. That's an order.”

  #17 stepped back.

  “Is that gonna be a problem, soldier?”

  The Greencoat shook his head and saluted. “Received and understood, sir. En route to rescind the lockdown, ignore the protesters, and terminate Greencoat #39.”

  “You do that. I'm gonna go drink yellow paint, or whatever it is I do.”

  With that, King Gregor ran off until he was out of eyeshot, headed down the stairwell to the bottom, found the nearest dark, desolated, camera-less corner of the stairwell...

  [Era — Decloak]

  ...and turned off the Shroudsguise.

  Era panted, checking the tiny, egg-shaped amulet's screen. The hell you mean, only 5% battery left? Dammit. I should've found a place to discreetly charge it during the Tetrabunal. Nah, too many cameras.

  The sound of plastic-soled footsteps coming down the stairwell sent shockwaves through Era's body. Aaand, the real King Gregor's here. Great.

  Hang on, is Raphael with him?

  “Of course Raphael is AWOL,” whined Gregor to one of his bodyguards. “If you see him, you have full authorization to smack him upside the head. Once.”

  Raphael's not with him, so—

  A disgustingly irresistible idea crossed through Era's brain.

  Okay, I might die doing this.

  The idea didn't leave.

  And I'd die happy.

  Ah, well, got enough power left for one more disguise, might as well make it count.

  [Era — Shroudsguise]

  [Visual Cloaking Illusion activated!]

  [Identity assumed: Prince Raphael]

  No sooner had King Gregor Koschei reached the foot of the stairs than he saw his son again.

  “By Ilya the Wise!” said Gregor. “Where in the hippity-hoppity hell have you been? The Rosie's probably off prancing through the Godsdamn tulips, and you're—”

  “I have daddy issues!” yelled Era, taken aback by how Raphael's voice tasted in his mouth.

  [Era — Sucker Punch]

  For what would be among the most glorious half-seconds of Era's life, his disguised fist met with Gregor Koschei's damp, spongy face, catching him outside of combat mode. The King of Celsior fell backward onto the stairwell with a steady stream of brownish-yellow, partially embalmed Koschei blood dripping from his nose. His fist left a crater-like imprint in Gregor's preservative cosmetics.

  The bodyguards, more than used to the old royal family squabbles by now, followed the standard try-not-to-stare-too-much-and-make-it-worse protocol.

  Aurelia fell to Gregor's side, checking for signs of life. When her husband didn't get up, she turned to Raphael and said, “You gonna eat this?”

  “Not yet!” barked the king. Clutching his nose, he threw his wife to the side, then pointed a quivering, yellow-gloved finger at what was presumably his son. “Sonny Jim. I ain't built for that kinda rough-housin' no more. I'm five-voggin'-hundred and fifty-voggin'-eight years old!”

  Era smirked. “Then find the nearest graveyard and start acting your age. Raphael out.” Making sure to twirl the shower curtain cape a little harder than usual, Era turned away toward the lobby.

  “You're grounded for a decade, Raphael!”

  [Era — Two Turtledoves]

  With a pair of middle fingers aimed behind him, Era made his way out the double doors to the late night darkness outside.

  Okay, as soon as I'm out of eyeshot, I can lose this stupid disguise. What's the quickest way to the rendezvous point? Is the Doomwagon even there? Oh, come on, Dad wouldn't let me down when it's important. He'll probably just be a little tipsier than I'd like, but still there.

  Three percent battery left. I should have enough energy left for five more minutes of Prince Raphael. Better make this quick and easy—

  As he opened the second set of doors to the roaring of an angry mob, Era realized that “quick and easy” was right out.

  But once he caught sight of the content of the mob, a rush of conflicting emotions filled him.

  They were mainly elves, but some dwarves, Celsiorans, Ovinians, and others. They wore red and green shirts, with the sign of a burning rose bush—AKSL, the revolutionary group Ofelia mentioned. Cardboard signs read, “FREE ERA!,” “ROSENCRACE FOREVER!,” “JUSTICE FOR ERA!,” “ERA DID NOTHING WRONG!”—lies, but appreciated—and even more with heroic pictures of Era, either as some sort of military hero or a dying religious martyr.

  Ofelia wasn't kidding. These AKSL guys think I'm some kind of saint. I mean, agree to disagree, but I'm not complaining. So why are they yelling at me?

  “Go to Hell, Raphael!”

  “KOSCHEI BASTARD!”

  A satisfied smile graced Era's disguised face. Ah.

  A heavy hand grabbed Not-Raphael's cape and pulled him to the side, dragging him into the crowd. Before Era knew it, he was face-to-face with—

  “Dario!” said Era. “You're alive!”

  The tall elf—sure enough, Era's old friend from the fencing team—scowled as he held Raphael by his hair. “How the hell do you know my name, you Koschei filth?”

  Era couldn't hide his grin as a tear of joy came down his right cheek.

  “You made him cry!” cackled another elf—Bartok. Gods. I've never been so thrilled to see someone who tried to stab me.

  Focus, Era. Sure, two of your old friends are all alive, but they're about to tear you limb from limb, and if you drop the disguise, the police will. And I'm running out of battery power...

  Vog it, if I'm gonna get shanked, might as well get shanked by someone I trust.

  “Oh, come on,” said Not-Raphael, with a smug grin. “If I recall correctly, Era made you lose that stupid tournament. And now, because he opposes me, he's suddenly a hero? Get real, you elvish sons of—”

  [Bartok — Kidney Punch]

  Ow. Ow. I'm in trouble. Not in combat mode. More painful than I thought. Not gonna pee right for a week.

  “He was a kid,” said Bartok, “and we were all vogged up back then. But even I knew he had the spirit of Lutero Gualtieri in him. Something a hypocrite like you could never dream of!”

  “Really, now. Didn't you try to stab him?”

  “How did you know—”

  “Careful, Bart,” chortled Dario. “He's a Koschei, he doesn't understand the concept of owning up to your mistakes.”

  “Then let's change the subject,” said Bartok. “Raphael, what's your favorite food?”

  Let's see...real talk, what is Raphael's favorite food? Probably not as much into drinking yellow paint as his—

  “Bzzz! Time's up!” said Bartok. “The correct answer is curb.”

  [Dario and Bartok — Curbstomp]

  In all his life, Era had never been happier to have been thrown to the ground and kicked well past the point of bleeding.

  But when he heard the 1% power beep on his Shroudsguise, he knew this couldn't last. Dammit. Sorry guys, time for my brilliant escape plan.

  He reached into his left pocket and pulled out his other, more familiar secret weapon—a set of five pipes, usually worn around the neck.

  [Era — Bird Call]

  [Pigeons 1 through 372 were completely entranced!]

  The crowd of protesters went into an uproar as a flock of previously sleeping pigeons descended from the roof of a nearby building. As they struggled to drive off the overly-friendly birds, Dario and Bartok, and everyone else in the crowd, lost visual contact with the Prince of Celsior.

  At the edge of the crowd, a one-legged elf in a three-piece suit crawled from under a protester's legs. He stumbled through an alleyway, sprinting to the other side. At the other end of the alley, a tour bus sat waiting, and the skeleton of a monkey sat on its steps, playing a mandolin. (Steve was into mandolins lately.)

  [Voice Highmost — Thank You, Era]


  Halfway down the path, clouds suddenly formed in the night sky, and a gentle rain began to fall. If you looked at the clouds with a powerful telescope, you'd have seen Galgalim Himself, weaving the clouds together with His twirling rings.

  Perhaps it was the fatigue from a ten hour tetrabunal, or his injuries from the beating, or his favorite kind of weather coming out of nowhere, or the relief of coming to a permanent home with his father again after years of homelessness, or that his old friends were alive, or that his outlaw status put him one step closer to making his sister proud, wherever she was, or that he was honest-to-Gods in love for the first time in his life, or that he not only knew the horrible truth about the Light of the Gods, but also that he had the power to fight it, or that in less than a year he had gone from a meager nobody, to Chosen Hero, to the Last Dark Lord, to the Mad Elf that Stole the Moon—it could have been any combination of these factors, all, or none…

  Whatever the reason, Era dropped to his knees on the wet ground, fell to his left side, and went to sleep within seconds.

  The notes of Steve's mandolin fell silent as he scrambled back into the bus to get Mischa.

  The rain pooled around Era.

  He smiled.

  A Day in the Life of God

  http://cultclassicjrpgwiki.net/For_The_Light_(PS1)

  For the Light (PS1)

  For the Light is the first game in Bighorn Studios' “FTL” franchise of role-playing video games. It was released on the PlayStation console in 1998. While it had moderate critical success in Japan, the game was never released in the United States outside of an unofficial English fan translation. An official English language remake from the American branch of Bighorn Studios was announced in Fall 2018, but due to internal conflicts, the remake is currently on an indefinite hiatus.

  Bighorn Studios CEO Naoto Matsumuro has stated that the original For the Light is his least favorite creation. During an interview, Matsumuro stated the following: “When I wrote the treatment for what would become For the Light, I was going through a dark and lonely period of my life, desperate for new ideas. Next thing you know, I thought I could turn Mozart's famous opera The Magic Flute into a new RPG franchise to rival Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. Though I am enthusiastic about the direction FTL is taking nowadays as erotic visual novels, I can't say I'm proud of the quality of the original game.”

  Synopsis

  The protagonist is Sir Raphael Tamino, who would make appearances in subsequent games as an ancestor to other player characters. He is a spiky-haired knight who wields a flute/sword hybrid weapon called a Flauberge. He has been tasked by the King of Aries to rescue Princess Pamina from the Dark Lord Sarastro. Along the way, he joins forces with several other player characters:

  Erasmus Papageno, a fast-talking, skirt-chasing thief who can control birds.

  Gena Walters, a hot-tempered healer with a crush on Erasmus.

  Ofelia di Mystara, a sorceress whose powers are amplified by wearing less clothing.

  Branwen, a fluffy, candy-obsessed rabbit-bear creature with a speech impediment.

  Over the course of the adventure, Raphael comes to realize that Sarastro is the pure-hearted and wise guardian of the Jade Pyramid, a temple that holds the Kuhallen—an eternal flame that serves as the source of all magic. Sarastro had been keeping Pamina safe from the evil sorceress controlling the King of Aries: Liv Darkthorne, the Queen of Night.

  With the ruse exposed, Liv attempts to attack the pyramid, steal its magic, and become a living goddess—and is defeated by the heroes.

  Angel Sanchez, 20 years old, and known to Luminar as the Voice Highmost, the Noumenon, or simply God, wasn't having a great day. They (or “she”—Angel wasn't very particular about this, and explaining the finer points of being nonbinary to each and every questioning glance was getting tiresome) had opted to skip out on lunch in favor of a long and exhausting binge coding session at their desk.

  Hungry as they were, the For the Light remake was dying in the womb, and Angel had no one to blame but themself. In theory, a new optional late-game superboss would have made a welcome addition to the game. Hell, sometimes it felt like FTL 1 was the only roleplaying game of its time without its own equivalent of Final Fantasy VII's Emerald Weapon.

  And they designed a damn good superboss, too! Wormwood—a Bible reference from the book of Revelation, always welcome in a JRPG. Shapeshifting humanoid bug demon? Can disguise itself with color-changing secretions that look like human skin? Can possess people, spits digestive juices, spawns new enemies from a constant stream of embryonic filth? H.P. Lovecraft would be proud, if he weren't equal parts dead and racist.

  Part of Angel wondered if they got the unpaid internship with Bighorn from this enemy design alone. Wormwood was perfect.

  Too perfect. Once Wormwood had been added to the source code, everything went downhill. Perhaps it was the experimental Romanian game physics engine they were using. Perhaps the whole “open world” concept had been taken too far and allowing the story to “practically write itself” was hazardous. Perhaps it was the fact that Wormwood's base mortality value—rather than 0 for dead or 1 for alive—had accidentally been set to !, which meant neither. Angel never again trusted a shift key in their life.

  Either way, Wormwood's code began to expand upon itself. Once ctrl+S was hit, the 902 kb source code became three gigabytes (and growing) of corruption, garbled text, and “LET ME IN” repeated millions of times. Attempts to delete any of it resulted in a dialog box that said, “IT HURTS” and variations thereof. Angel's supervisor, Mr. Ross Bolton, who had framed pictures of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens in his office, put up a Craigslist want ad for an exorcist.

  Supernatural implications aside, the higher ups in Yokohama were unflinching about the Christmas deadline, and “sorry, the source code is literally possessed” wasn't going to pay the bills. A solution, no matter how temporary, was needed. Five energy drinks and three nervous breakdowns later, Angel had found a way to separate Wormwood's code into thousands of nice, quiet fragments.

  Once the figurative (and literal—Carl, if we have to remind you to do that outside again, you're fired) smoke cleared, damage control on the source code had resulted in an entirely different game altogether. Rewritten character arcs, self-expanded lore—and who the hell are these Koschei guys? I don't remember them being in the original game. The comic relief side character was now the protagonist, the iconic Sir Raphael Tamino had been split into two new guys, and the villain was now a player character. Total chaos.

  The only solution, it seemed, was as follows: 1) to play out this new story in its entirety, 2) leave the coding problems for the characters to solve, and 3) pray for no angry conference calls from Mr. Matsumuro.

  Poor Angel realized that this gig probably wasn't going to count towards their college electives for much longer.

  Which brings us to the present day—September 8th. As they fiddled with their jingling mess of ear piercings, Angel had kept a watchful eye over the Chosen Three’s trek through the Tomb of Platonus—

  [Titania — Prayer to the Highmost]

  —until the phone rang.

  Angel rolled their eyes. Their mother had called this very office phone 19 times that day to argue, and these old model phones lacked a caller ID.

  Suddenly, in the file explorer on the computer in front of her, a new folder appeared. Its name: “PICK IT UP ANGEL.”

  Angel shuddered. Now, on top of the game's other troubles, they were being hacked.

  Another folder: “PLEASE”

  Then again, saboteurs and saying “please” didn't exactly go hand in hand.

  Angel picked up. “Bighorn US, my name's Angel, how can I—”

  Another folder: “DON'T HANG UP”

  “Please don't hang up,” said the voice on the other line. She was an older woman, with an accent unfamiliar to anyone on Earth—except, perhaps, for a few parts of rural Wales. “I need your help.”

  “May I ask what this is re
garding?”

  More folders: “NOT A PRANK CALL,” “NOT A HACKER,” “IF YOU HANG UP,” “YOU WILL KILL US,” “ALL OF US.”

  “My name is Titania Karàtoi Vauldast XIX, Daughter of Fraldek, Granddaughter of—”

  “Okay, what the hell,” said Angel. Clearly, this had already gone past the point of professionalism. “Stop making new folders on my computer.”

  “With respect, this is an emergency. You believe I am fictional, and I must prove otherwise. By your forbidden true name, Angel Sanchez, I command you to heed my words!”

  Angel rubbed their forehead. If this was a prank, this strange old woman clearly put a lot of effort into it, and an unpaid intern knows the feeling of hard work going unappreciated all too well. Might as well let the baby have its bottle.

  “All right, fine. Prove it. Prove you're the Goblin Queen.”

  “Look under C.”

  Angel double-clicked on the C drive, and—

  Oh, my God.

  What had once been a list of the contents of the C drive had become a glowing mess of runes and sigils, burning through the LED monitor, trying to reach Angel through the realm of the fictional. Luminous gases seeped from the surface of the screen into the air. For the first time in their life, Angel saw honest-to-God magic.

  They hit the back button. Magic was too spooky.

  “Was that you?”

  “Yes. What else must I do to prove it?”

  “Wow, okay, this is happening. Uh...something less creepy. Telepathy! What color am I thinki—”

  “Blue.”

  “Number?”

  “Twelve.”

  “How about now?”

  “Fourteen ninety two.”

  All correct.

  A vague, raspy, second voice called out from behind the lady on the phone.“You okay, buddy?”