“It’s Dre and Kai, Mom,” he said. “We’re here for you. We love you. Squeeze my hand, move your eyes or something if you hear me.” He waited, ever hopeful, but her eyeballs didn’t shift beneath her lids and her hand remained limp. He hung his head. “I’m so sorry this happened. If I’d been paying attention to the road… Forgive me.
“You’re gonna get better. And Regi and Rayne will be fine. I’m gonna make sure of it. You and Pops always said never let anyone take advantage of me, and I’m not, but these people want me to play the new version of Ataxia. If I do it, then they’ll make sure you’re all well taken care of. I know I promised not to play anymore, but I gotta. It’s the only way to keep y’all safe.
“I’m sorry, Mom. I really am. One day, when this is all done, I look forward to seeing you smile, and holding the twins, and hugging Kai. I love you so much.”
He stood there a while, holding Mom’s hand. He ached. Imagining a world without her or Kai was a world without color, without life.
At some point Dr. Redmond told them they had to go. Kai kicked and screamed and cried. Dre picked her up by her underarms and pulled her in close, hugged her tight, and whispered soothing words. Eventually, Kai calmed. Dre took Kai back to her room, comforted her again, kissed her forehead, and told her he’d soon return. Then he left with Dr. Redmond.
******
Dressed in spandex shorts, a shivering Dre rubbed his bare arms against the coldness of the pod room. If not for the Two Ring, he might have felt completely naked. He was glad the techs had accepted it as the memento to help with the transition to and from the virtual world.
Sidrie Malikah was up on the observation deck with a line of doctors, senior techs, and several men and women in expensive suits. Her last words stuck with him. ‘The better you do, the more time you get to spend with your family.’ Reach level ten and clear Imanok Sanctum. He repeated the goal.
The pod room bustled with purposeful activity and the breathless murmur of expectancy. A few of the pods were no longer empty. Several people around Dre’s age, or perhaps a few years younger or older, waited their turn. Dressed as he was, some chattered with techs or amongst themselves while others preferred to be alone. Like him, a myriad of biometric tatts covered the exposed portions of their bodies like corrupted data.
Dre frowned. “Hughey?” He headed to his best friend who appeared as comfortable in underwear as a cat was in water. “What’re you doing here?”
“Dreee!” Hughey smiled bashfully. “I signed up for the free trial. Remember?”
Grimacing, Dre glanced from Hugh to the pods and back again. “Oh.”
“Isn’t that why you’re here?”
“Not exactly.”
“They invited you to alpha test, didn’t they? Dammmmn, homie.” Hughey clapped Dre on the back. “I shoulda known. You being the man and all. This should be a breeze for you.”
“Maybe. We’ll see.”
“We’ll see?” Hughey deadpanned. “Really, dawg? You feeling alright?” Hughey shook his head. “Shit’s gonna be sweet, just like old times. There’re rumors that Just Blaze is here. So is Dante Blackblade. All the top players.”
Dre opened and closed his mouth. He glanced up at Sidrie, who simply watched him with those predatory obsidian eyes. How many others did you force or trick into playing? Does anyone outside know?
Two techs stepped up to him and Hughey. “It’s time.”
“Hey, Dre,” Hughey called as he followed his tech, “I know you’re Mr. Solo, but if you want some company this time around, or run into some probs, look for me in Kituan. The same old char, Meritus Killgain, doing what I love.”
Dre nodded glumly and then allowed the tech to lead him to a pod. A200 was stenciled into the side. He hesitated when the pod door swung up. “This doesn’t fill up with some kinda fluid, does it?”
“Does it matter?”
Dre licked his lips. “Yeah, it does. I have a thing about being underwater.”
“No need to worry about that here.”
“Alright.” After a deep breath to calm his heart, Dre climbed in and lay down facing up, the polymer cold against his skin.
“Remember to relax,” the tech said, hovering over him. “You’ll feel a few pricks, and then you’re all set.”
“Try telling that to yourself when you’re the one in a fucking plastic coffin,” Dre muttered.
The tech smiled and left. Dre waited, stomach fluttering the entire time. The long door to the pod swung down slowly and smoothly, the world growing smaller and smaller above him, until it was just him peering through the glass at the blank white ceiling. A helmet with a transparent visor slid down over his face. The visor slowly dimmed until he was left in complete darkness.
A whirring sound echoed all along the pod. Dre started and had the sudden urge to get out, to punch the glass and hope it broke. Even as he had the thought, a hundred needles stabbed into him from beneath his back, his neck, his ass, his legs. Dre screamed. And then the pain faded.
A light appeared. Is that in my mind? Or the ceiling?
The NPC voice from the trailer said, “Welcome to Ataxia Online 2, Void Legion.”
The world shot forward. The light swallowed him.
CHAPTER 5
Dre stood in a room surrounded by mirrors. He was rendered in graphics impossible to differentiate from the real world, from his low fade haircut and impeccable waves, his broad nose, thick eyebrows, down to his caramel complexion, loincloth, and black aether ring. Knowledge clicked in the back of his mind. Information Memory. It told him this was character customization.
He considered his possible resemblances. Immediately, his features shifted through countless iterations drawn from Mikanderan races. Holy shit. Dre grinned. And then froze.
Wide-eyed, he touched his face. He felt his face. Reveling in the smoothness of his skin, and the sensations of actually being, he ran his fingers along his cheeks, his nose, his brows, his mouth. He pinched himself. And gasped at the sensation. A small twinge. Barely noticeable but noticeable all the same.
Get. The fuck. Outta here.
He looked down at himself, elbows bent, palms up, head shifting from side to side to take it all in. He took off the aether ring. The engraving with his name was there. As was the 2. It was his Two Ring. Shaking his head in disbelief, he put it back on.
He sucked in a deep breath and blew onto his palm. The air was warm. Placing a hand on his chest slightly off center to the left revealed a steady heartbeat.
And then he farted. It smelled like rotten eggs.
He burst into laughter, the sound echoing. If he harbored any doubts as to how real Simulated Reality could be, then the ability to push from his stomach, fart, and the subsequent stench, blew them away. He frowned. If I can fart… He shook his head. Nah, having to take a shit in game would be taking it a little too far. He hoped there’d be no such need.
Now, what should I play this time? A gargant?
Information Memory responded. His eyes widened at the scope of it. He was a walking encyclopedia. Whether lore or other practical aspects, IM was there to be accessed by mere thought in a seamless transition as if he’d been a part of Mikander all his life. No longer was there a Heads-Up Display or User Interface. Everything was in his brain, presented visually, like a holographic recollection.
His reflection shifted and grew to one of the twelve-foot colossuses. There was a bit of disorientation, but no pain or any other type of feeling as the change occurred. Fur covered his body, shifting from shades of brown, to blue, to black, to gray. Background for the race rippled through his thoughts.
Originating from the southeastern continent of Korbash, the gargants are descendants of the original colossus race, the titans. By refusing to join the Colossus Alliance in the Slave Wars, the gargants avoided their progenitor
s’ doom during the first Void Cataclysm. Smart fellows. Gargants are naturally a hardy people, their prevailing traits being intelligence, endurance, skin like stone, and brute strength. The combination makes them resistant to stuns.
Contrary to their appearance, gargants seek peace and knowledge. The greatest libraries and schools in Mikander belong to the gargants. Told you they were smart.
Despite their practice of pacifism and tolerance, it would be a mistake to overlook the gentle gargants in a fight. How one could overlook a giant is still a mystery. From two years old, every gargant trains extensively in combat to put their strength to use and balance their great intellect. Like the gurashi, the gargants hate slavery and are willing to defend the weak.
The gargants control the Ostenia dominion on the continent of Korbash, their lands mostly lush and bountiful, their mountains rugged.
He always liked the gargants, especially when the chosen class was a marauder equipped with a quaker: a specially-crafted massive double-bladed axe almost as large as the race themselves. In Ataxia’s old version, most people who chose a gargant used them as a tank: a high HP, high defense player who soaked up damage and held the aggro or hate of the monster, preventing it from attacking other party members.
Those same people preferred reaver and marauder classes for the tank role. They had taunts and various skills to generate threat, or hate, as some called it. These skills got the monster’s attention or aggro, forcing it to attack the tank. They also had abilities to pull the creature back to them should some other weak player, a glass cannon like a sorcerer or cutthroat, happened to pull aggro from doing too much damage or attacking too soon. Although the best tanks prided themselves on not allowing any player to pull aggro from them.
After a long look at himself as a gargant while considering its advantages, he decided against the race. For the playstyle he had in mind, which involved agility and speed as well as survival, their size seemed too cumbersome.
He noted that the game now intuitively assigned four starting attributes. Strength, vitality, agility, and aether. Fiddling with his appearance changed the first three, determined by some unknown algorithms. The last, aether, the power used to wield magic in Mikander, was determined by racial bloodline.
He nodded his approval for the attribute change, as it meant no two characters would ever be the same. The verdict was out on lack of bars, meters, or numbers to indicate damage or health. He still felt their absence meant diminished excitement or fear factor.
Information Memory confirmed Dr. Redmond’s words. Signs of health depletion would be reflected in debilitation, injuries, and such. Lack of aether meant an inability to cast spells until the required replenishment.
He tried to imagine healing with the changes. What would the signs be for Heal over Time spells? HoTs gave a small tick of health every few seconds, like an IV drip, easing the pressure of constantly casting larger, direct heals. The difference made it easier for mystics to conserve aether. Now, healing would be that much harder and required another level of skill, focus, and perception. In ways, the change made for more engaging play. He liked it.
Dre thought of the many players he knew who lived for knowing their Damage Per Second. DPS had also been a love of his when he first played his sorcerer. He smiled as he pictured one of his old raid leaders yelling for the DPS to burn a boss down when it hit five or ten percent of its HP. An undeniable thrill existed in that call.
Often, the reason for the call to burn was due to a mechanic where the monster in question had a trigger, activated either by time or by health. When the trigger activated, the monster would enrage or grow so powerful it would kill everyone in the raid in one shot. A wipe. To prevent a wipe, the monster had to die within seconds of reaching that critical point before it unleashed its raid-killing ability.
He frowned. How would players deal with all these situations now? Look for a tell?
He pondered the answer before he dismissed the thought and returned to the matter at hand. Deciding on a class. You could always play a skinny colossus. A skinny colossus? He frowned. The idea sounded ridiculous. The projection showed exactly how ridiculous. Too strong a wind might topple him over. Not exactly a fear-inspiring look.
Maybe, a gurash?
Again, the shift, IM, and this time he was the distant cousin of the gargant, measuring some eight or nine feet in height, with a more muscular build. Gurashi sported long bushy manes and had faces like lions, including canines. Typically, they were brown, green, or red, the red an indication of noble bloodlines. Some were a mixture, like marble, and considered impure. He shook his head.
Dre considered the centaur-like dresdori and winged yurids. He didn’t bother with humans. Who played a game like this to be the same?
Finally, he settled on an erada with dark magenta skin, slender body, wedge-shaped ears, and thick curled ram-like horns to either side of his head. The average erada was just over six feet tall. Eradae always fit his image of succubi and incubi and gave him a body with which he was more comfortable. IM kicked in.
An air of mysticism surrounds the eradae, children of the assassin goddess, Nif and her lover, the god, Jerad. Once, they were a part of the kora race. But when Jerad chose the enemy’s cause in the Divinity War, Nif did not agree and fled with those korae loyal to her and renamed them the eradae. She chose the Khertahka dominion as their new home. There, they hid for over a thousand years, keeping to the night.
Such action brought about an evolutionary change. Their ossicones, two horny (not that type of horny) protuberances on either side of young erada heads, shed their hair and became pure bone. Not only did the newly-formed horns maintain the race’s echolocation ability, but they gained healing properties when ingested. As such, the eradae became a hunted race when the gods disappeared after the Divinity War.
In that vacuum of power, the colossus races, led by the titans, rampaged and plundered much of Mikander. They allied with the newly named grand korae. Together, they enslaved the eradae, the dresdori, the nalarr, and the dryads.
But then came the human general, Aureliano Grendesh, the formation of the Grendesh Coalition, and the Great Slave Wars. And a lot of kicking ass and taking names in which the Coalition was victorious. In the end, only two colossus descendants survived: the gargants and the gurashi. The grand korae were dealt tremendous losses and fled to the Ouroboros and Isfet Mountains.
Over the past centuries, the eradae have worked hard to become strong, and have sworn to never be enslaved again. To this day, they fight their arch nemeses, the grand korae.
He thought about being a female erada. The shift occurred, and he was a blue-skinned woman with longer elegant horns and breasts. Breasts! Pretty, perky ones, to be sure. He giggled and shook his shoulders, admiring the youthful bounce.
Brows furrowed, he reached down to the loincloth. His eyes grew wide. Nope. This ain’t right. I like my dick. Thank you, very much. He reverted to his former self.
For his actual features, he thought of himself: triangular face with a defined chin, high cheekbones, no facial hair, deep brown eyes, bushy brows, blob of a nose as if God took a gob of clay and used his face for target practice on a bad day. Not the best-looking guy at a party but not the ugliest either. Pretty boys drew too much attention. As did the grotesque. The right amount of each, though, and one goes unnoticed. Perfectly fine. Rather than his fade and waves, he added long cornrow braids that fell straight back past his neck.
He nodded his approval at the changes and then considered which class to play. Only to discover a big change in Void Legion’s class mechanics. No longer was a player restricted to the class they picked. They could learn the skills of any class. The problem was acquiring the skill shards, the necessary effective attributes, mastering the weapons, and the time needed to become proficient in the skills, which made it preferable to stick with one class, but later down the line,
given time, the possibilities were near limitless. It would take years, decades, perhaps, but the power… he could only begin to dream.
Skill shards piqued his interest. They didn’t exist in the old version of Ataxia. With the thought came the knowledge. Skill shards looked like gems and contained the skill in its pure aether form. They could be obtained in a variety of ways: killing particular monsters until the player found one on the corpse, treasure chests, the Auction Market, or they could be traded between players or NPCs. He liked the idea.
Another change he noted was for stat points. Their allocation now happened automatically. Speed, strength, aether, and vitality were basic attributes given a set amount every level per ten levels with the earlier bloodline considerations part of the calculation. Those base sets gained one point every ten levels. Additions to those bases, as well as any other attributes gained, like knowledge, endurance, and charisma were all determined by practice and personality.
If you wanted to become good at anything, then you did that thing. If you wanted to increase will and heart then you had to take risks. Be brave. Want more stamina? Run your ass off. You could start off at a disadvantage in aether pool and spell ability but surpass someone whose genealogy supported it.
This idea was also reflected in skill effect shards. These had been in the old version of the game and were crafted by hierkaneers by way of Genesis Engines. They added attributes to a skill. These effects could now be further enhanced by constant practice. The examples were exhausting. He liked the idea, although he cringed to think about the grind of exercise, strength training, research, spell chucking, and the like.
IM clicked.
Strength: Levels 1 − 10:
Physical power increases at +2 per level
Vitality: Levels 1 − 10:
Health increases at +2 per level
Agility: Levels 1 − 10:
Speed and Haste increases at +2 per level
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