by Dawn Chapman
I was zoomed into the future, and then I saw everything else.
Puatera a waste of land.
Death.
So much death.
Then a new planet. What I knew to be Earth.
There was even more death there, and I swallowed. I needed this to end, now.
I couldn’t see it. I hated it. The game kept telling me there were glitches. Well, this had to be the biggest one. No one could see the future unless it really was just all a program, and then I wasn’t real, was I? I knew I was real. I felt it. I couldn’t let this happen, fake future or not. I had to win.
So, I focused.
REWIND
Backward I went once more.
When it stopped. I forced a plan into my mind.
PLAY
Y/N
I got up, and shakily, I made my way back out into the street, and I shouted to anyone for help.
There was a man that ran toward me, a man I recognised. It was Steve.
“What? How are you here?”
“I followed you! Do you think you could get out into the city without Alia and myself seeing it? They all know what you’re capable of. They saw that in the fight with Alia. They don’t want you to lose Maddie, they need you, they need you here right now.”
I smiled at him, and I stood with his help. “I’ve seen something terrible.”
“I know.” His eyes didn’t falter as they held mine.
“How do you know?”
“Because Dresel showed me. You saw the creature, the monster from the deep.”
“How does he know what it is?”
“He saw it through you, Maddie. He’s got your code tracked now. We both have. We’ve followed you since we knew it was something else and that we needed to watch you closer.”
They could see everything? I felt all the more violated. Used. “I’m just being spied on.” I tried to push away from him, but he wouldn’t let me. He pulled me closer.
“Maddie, I’m not against you, and neither is Dresel. We are all here to help, but you have to accept that, you have to accept that there’s more going on here than we want to realise.”
“I know. I just am so scared.”
“Don’t be.”
“Aren’t you scared?”
“Of course, I’ve never been more than terrified. This is the scariest thing I’ve ever done, and I mean that this is hard, so hard. But look out there,” and he pointed to the street that was now full of people, that had beings from every walk of life and that had more than spirits, colours, and love.
“This is bad, right? This means—”
“It means they want to fight too, Maddie. They’ve seen what you can do. Alia’s been instructing them all to watch and follow you. They’re not with the other beings—they’re with you.”
I looked to them and to their faces. They really did smile at me. They wanted to see me for who I was, for the matriarch I needed to be.
I met their gazes, and I laughed. They were with me.
“Then we can do this.”
“Yes!”
“Really.” I tried to see the truth in his eyes. He was an amazing person.
“Yes, we can do this,” he said. “We can do more than this.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Now I need a drink. Let me go onto Wren’s Bar alone. I’ll meet back up with you in a few, okay?”
He frowned but nodded. “Be back before morning.”
I wasn’t so sure I could trawl half the city and be back before morning, but I was going to try. There was plenty to see, and many bars I could crawl into, but I didn’t want or need that. Riezella losing her life for something better was what she wanted, but it wasn’t what I needed.
In the end, I found myself exactly where I hadn’t wanted to be—the bar. Wren’s Bar to be precise. Again.
I liked this place, and the barmaid recognised me and asked for Steve. I smiled at her and just said I was out on my own. Even if I actually had been tailed.
She poured me some drinks and went back about her business like the good person she was, but she saw how down I was getting and headed back over to me.
“Need an ear, hon?” she asked, then plonked herself down.
I waved to the guys, and she shook her head. “They can wait. Cril can deal with them.”
I smiled at her again and drank some of the beer she’d given me. “I’m looking for a young girl. Her name is Lila. She’s around here somewhere. I just can’t find her.”
“There’s many a young face that comes through here, but most of them don’t stick around. Do you know where she might be headed?”
I hadn’t a clue. I really didn’t know anything about her or what her habits might be as a Visitor.
“I would presume like most people she would be looking for work, wanting to make sure she had a place to live and food. So, stopping by these kinds of places wouldn’t be so bad for her.”
“Do you know her alignment?”
I thought about that for a moment. if Tibex had anything to give me, he was sure staying quiet on the subject.
I let out a sigh and sucked in a breath alongside the beer. “I haven’t a clue. Though I don’t think she’ll be anything bad.”
“If she comes through here, I’ll be the first to know,” Wren said.
I dug deep into my features and then passed her my personal tag. “If you see or hear anything, about her or her sisters, Jessica or Dahlia, would you let me know?”
She reached over and patted my arm. “Of course, if you get that lovely young man you were with back in to see me.”
I laughed. “He’s something else, right?”
“Oh, he really is, smart and funny. There’s not a lot of men around here that are like that.”
I looked around the bar. No, there really wasn’t. They were of good stature, working men, no doubt. But they weren’t smart.
“Thank you,” I said. I really wanted to say more, and so I did. For the next hour, we talked, and I mean really talked. I told her about the ring, I told her about Alex, and she listened.
I had never done this before. I had never reached out to someone and allowed them to really see who I was. I actually even told her about Tibex and the person that I thought I was.
Wren was different, and then I realised why.
“You’re very different, talented, aren’t you?”
She grinned at me. “You aren’t bothered?”
“No,” I pushed myself back in the chair. “No, I’m not. I feel so much better, knowing at least someone out there actually knows my full story though.”
“I don’t know anything,” she said and made like a zipper across her lips. “Maddie, I’m nothing without the people around me, feeding me. They feed me many things and stories are not one of them. They don’t understand what it’s like to need to feel, to need to enjoy things, all the things that life gives us.”
“You’re a succubus?” How had I not seen that before? I’d heard of them, seen pictures, and understood how their powers worked. But I’d never met one.
“Of a kind, yes. I don’t just take sexual energy, though. I do a lot of things. I masquerade as what this is. This form.”
I knew my hackles were raised, but I wasn’t here to judge someone or to alter the course of this city in that kind of way. “I’m not going to harm you,” I said. “I don’t think you want to harm most of the people in here, right?”
She shook her head. “No, I take what I need to survive, nothing more.”
“Then I thank you for your time and your choices in life.”
“You’ve given me quite the night.” She winked. “As for the real taking of things, no. There’s a Visitor or two who have respawned because of their own choices, but nothing because I’ve gone too far.”
She interested me now. “You’ve quite the story to tell as well, I’d bet?”
She nodded. “Maybe you’ll come back and want to hear it?”
I downed the rest of my drink and nodded at the
door. “I’ve talked for most of the night, but, yes, I actually do think I’d like to hear it. Another night?”
Wren’s eyes lowered. “You’d be welcome here anytime, Maddie. And I mean that. There will be nothing untoward for you or your friend. You have the world of Puatera at heart.”
It sank in then, and I took a second glance at her. Seeing the real her. She wasn’t just a set of pixels like most of the others here were.
I reached for her hand, and I felt her skin and looked into her eyes.
“You’re telling me…”
She reached over, ran a finger down the side of my face, and this time, I noted that my health bar improved. “Yes, Maddie, I am as real as you are.”
Then I’d no idea how her energy worked. She was taking energy around her, from us and from other creatures when she needed it. And like the idiot I could be, she knew everything about me and about this world as I saw it. I wasn’t sure that me talking now had actually been a good thing. I swallowed.
“Don’t be worried. I am really grateful for our conversations tonight, and I promise you when and if you return, you will learn my side.”
“Okay.” That, at least, felt better. I really wanted to hear her story, learn who she was.
I moved away from the bar this time, and to the door. Giving her one last look of hopefulness and maybe one of trust.
This place, this bar was somewhere I wanted to come back to, and I hoped that while I was here, I would get to come back.
She smiled and then she went back to the bar to the young men she probably would have a lot of fun with tonight.
This got a laugh out of me. Sexual or not, I admired her for it. “I will be back,” I said. “Thank you.”
And I left the bar, walking away feeling so much better.
Wren had given me something very few people could.
Chapter 7
I’d like to think life over here in this section of our world was golden, that everything had a purpose, but I soon started to find out this city and the people here were just like everywhere else.
Steve and I planned and helped where we could and the time passed quickly. The raging factions and disputes over land and buildings that waged on were indeed something we couldn’t even begin to understand, not without months in a classroom learning their politics, at least. It was a complex society and, in my mind, was heading only one way—to a civil war. That meant many deaths, and I didn’t want or need to be responsible for more than I already was. Maicreol and her people were at the forefront of my mind.
I started my days with training. The recruits that were coming in from other portals, and even the Visitors that came too, were often unsure of themselves but so very eager to learn.
How did so many end up here, though, and more to the point, why? Or why did they stay? Something was enticing them to stick around. I needed to find out what.
Sweaty and exhausted, I walked the halls of the guild one morning heading to the showers near my room.
That’s when I saw Noc coming toward me with a bunch of new people. I noted a few younger players than those I was used to seeing about the place. I tucked myself in so they could get past, and I caught some of their conversation.
Noc gave me a sideways glance and paused. “Wait at the end of the corridor,” he instructed. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
They carried on, and his attention turned to me.
“What is it?” I asked him.
“There’s been a couple of stall holders using bad magic spotted in the city centre. They’re believed to be working for Gestal. My mum and the team are going out. Would you be able to hang about in the background for me, keep me posted and make sure everything goes right?”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “Why’s this different than anything else they’ve been doing?”
He frowned at me. “I see things remember.”
I watched as he squirmed a little in my gaze. I’d seen him as a pretty strong kid. A leader amongst the new recruits over the last week or so, but here now he actually looked worried. I reached out and touched his arm. “I’ll get changed and head out. Where are they meeting.”
“By Wren’s Bar, you know it?”
I didn’t need to nod at him, he knew I knew. “I’ll be there.”
He smiled then, and I quickly headed off to my room. There was a rushed need to actually get to Wren’s Bar and to see what was going on in the background. Maybe she had some insights on all the issues.
I showered, and Steve met me in the bedroom not long after. He also looked like he was ready to get out there and do something.
“Noc sent me over, said you were heading out. Think you’d like a bit of back up, right?”
“Yeah, be nice for a change.”
I made sure my daggers were secure and patted myself down.
My insides churned, and I didn’t know why. The excitement of facing a foe here in this side of the world, perhaps.
Though I had said I wouldn’t be doing the fighting here. Now, I suddenly felt torn.
It was a quick walk to Wren’s Bar. I noticed there seemed to be many more people around than usual. They also seemed to be pulling in carts of goods, instruments. My mind was too busy to question them, though. Steve knew the shortcuts just like I did, and we made headway before I even got wind of the other teams leaving the guild’s headquarters.
“They’ve not left the compound yet. Can you find out anything else?” Noc asked me.
I waited as Steve got to the bar’s main door then threw my head in the other direction. I didn’t want him going in just yet. He pulled back, and I made to leave with him, heading away from the bar.
“Where we going?
“There’s another smaller spot I want to check out in the next street before we go to Wren directly. I’ve had a couple of drinks in the last few days there. Seems they watch what she’s doing as much as she watches the whole area.”
“You know why, don’t you?”
I did. I had seen Wren a few times for drinks while searching the city at night. I knew there was another event going on, one that I wasn’t getting involved in at all. And that was because there was just too much at stake. Wren wasn’t good in everything she did. That much was obvious. I had to let the Visitors here do what they were here for. To bring her down, eventually. I wondered what would happen then, who would take over. What deals and shenanigans would occur here instead of what she provided. I wasn’t sure it would change this side of the city at all.
I let out a sigh and pushed myself up against the door with a small knock.
A guy opened it, looking once to me and then to the doorway to see Steve behind me.
“You’ve never brought anyone else in. Why now?”
“I’ve got a few questions for you about something going on soon. I need to know what you know about it and about Wren’s Bar.”
He held the door open, and we both stepped inside.
The room was something I had seen a few times, and there wasn’t a bar as such, just a table and a place where we could sit and chat.
They also seemed to be planning more than just a card game tonight.
I took it in. They were almost ready, it seemed, to try to take Wren down.
“Quite the party you have going on here,” I said.
The guy nodded, and Steve stepped to the table. “Awesome. Wren’s been doing this for how long?”
The room had four guys and one girl inside, and she was the one who stepped toward Steve first. “Reaver,” she said. “You are?”
The animosity between them was strong. “One of Puatera’s alpha testers.”
She raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t think there were any of you guys still in the game?”
Steve looked at me, and I saw worry there. “We can’t stop this. We have to let happen. I’m sorry.”
I had a million questions, but he pulled me to one side, even though I knew the guys in the room could still hear. “We’re stuck in an event. There’s nothing
else I can tell you.”
“You mean like War for Maicreol?” I swallowed. I didn’t want this. I wanted to help her, but then I knew I couldn’t.
“Steve,” I said, “what about what the guild is going to do?”
“That’s also part of it, the event’s been running for a while, Dresel’s been keeping me informed, but there has also been a lot going on that I didn’t know.”
“Oh.” I glanced around the guys, their gazes and concern all focused on us.
“The next hundred players are inside the game.”
“You mean paid ones?”
“Yes, it’s why things are changing faster than I first thought. Dresel couldn’t hold off any longer, or his investors were going to pull out. The game is running properly now, and that means there’s good things coming, but also balance shifts within the world itself compared to what you’ve been used to. The players in here.”
I sighed. So I had been hanging out with a bunch of players who were planning on altering this side of Puatera because it was in their best interest to take down this demoness. Yeah, she was a demon after all. I wondered a lot of things, like how both sides, the monsters and the players, would correlate. Or maybe that was the point. No one knew how.
I swallowed again and nodded at him. “Okay, so tell me what you’ve got, what you’re doing, and how the hell I can protect the guild and find the sister that I need to find.”
He shrugged at me. “We just need to stay in the background. This isn’t our fight.”
I knew that too. There was a part of me that wanted to jump head first in and protect Wren. I could see how much good she was doing around here, and she was trying to make a better life for her and those who followed her. I wondered then about how much she wanted to change and let life live around her. There had to be a better way to end this.
I moved to the table and listened in as Reaver ran through their game plan in finally taking out this boss. I laughed when I heard Wren was called this to them. It seemed funny. She wasn’t really a boss of anything. Just a creature that wanted to live and survive and make the most of her life inside the world of Puatera.