Rift

by Nancy E. Dunne

  “I am lucky,” she whispered as she reached out to touch the side of his face. His skin was warm, just as it had been in his arms, and she noticed the tattoos fading from red to purple as they flowed down his neck into his tunic. His tunic. He was still dressed, or he got dressed before coming to look for her. Of course he did. She was his friend, nothing more. He was Alex, in the guise of Lex, the Prophis, her friend, and guardian. Nothing more. The parchment had to be a joke.

  Lex covered her hand with his and held it to his cheek for a moment. “Will you let me see about those shoulders now, Em?” She nodded, holding her breath as he stood and walked around to the back of the chair, and then she slid off onto the floor. “What are you doing?” She had no idea but beamed a confident smile up at him.

  “Isn’t this how we usually do?” she asked, her voice coming out far more coy and flirtatious than she had intended. Lex chuckled, nodded, and then sat down in the chair. She wiggled backward on the floor until she was against the chair, and his brawny legs were on either side of her. She closed her eyes and tensed as his fingers slid down her neck and onto her shoulders - she was waiting for him to start massaging her tired muscles, but instead, he just held his hands steady, barely touching her shoulders.

  “Ready?” She nodded, bracing for impact. “Em? You still have your armor on.” She looked down and was momentarily unsure about how to take off the hardened leather breastplate that she was still wearing. “Here, raise your arms.” Em did as he asked, wincing as her shoulders complained at the movement. It was certainly different actually running through dungeons rather than sitting in front of a laptop all evening. Lex carefully unlaced the sides of her breastplate and then gently pushed her arms back down before lifting off the armor. “Now then.” He again held his hands steady over her shoulders for a moment before grasping the large muscles between her shoulders and neck and beginning to knead them. His hands were warm, and she could soon feel her muscles responding to his touch.

  “Mmm,” she said, leaning her head backward, looking up into his soft eyes and smile. “That does feel better.”

  “You say that every time. I don’t know why you fight me on this.”

  “I don’t either.” Em closed her eyes, allowing herself to relax into his capable hands. Lex moved up her shoulders and onto her neck, carefully bending her neck forward and massaging up into her hair. She drew in a sharp breath when his fingers traveled around onto her face and pulled her head back upward.

  “Are you all right?” Lex asked, a worried tone in his voice. “This is usually your favorite part.”

  “Fine. I’m fine.” Lex murmured something as he slid off the chair behind her and pulled her close. Warmth began to bloom in her midsection again. His fingers moved up to her head and worked from her temples to the crown of her head. She felt warm, safe, and relaxed - and something else.

  “There you go, darlin',” Lex whispered into one of her ears. “Think you could come to bed and sleep now?” Em’s body answered him with goosebumps that spread from her head to her toes. “Are you cold?” He pulled her even closer.

  “No, no, I am not cold.” She was sure of that. Lex’s arms supported her as he somehow rose from the floor, bearing both of their weight. One hand swept under her legs, and he cradled her as he moved into the bed chamber.

  “One moment.” She wasn’t sure that her legs would work when he put her on her feet and moved over to the bed. He fluffed the pillows and pulled back the duvet, then extended a hand to her. She took it and crawled into the softest bed she had ever felt. Lex slid into the bed behind her, pulled her close to him, and covered them with the duvet. Em shifted a bit, snuggling closer to him. His body was hard and soft against hers in equal measure, and she realized that she was completely relaxed in his arms for the first time since she traveled through the mirror only hours before. “Now, comfortable?” Em nodded, finding it hard to keep her eyes open, as though she had been on the road for hours and only just arrived home.

  But she hadn’t been. Her eyes snapped open, and she pushed up into a sitting position. She had only been there for a few hours, and Lex hadn’t answered a single question. And if he wasn’t Alex - if Alex wrote the letter in the postbox - then what was she doing? “What are you doing, Lex?” she asked, finding that the less contact she had with him, the more awake and aware she was becoming. “Stop it, whatever it is. Answer me. In fact, you owe me a few answers, I think?”

  “I do.” Lex sat up and considered her for a moment before reaching out to tuck a bit of hair behind her ear. She batted his hand away, and her fingers brushed the edge of her ear - she stopped, running her fingers all over the point at the top. It was amazing! It was her ear, no doubt, but it was Em’s ear. She closed her eyes a moment to regain focus and then set her gaze back on Lex, who was smiling at her. “I know it is weird at first, but you get used to it after a while.”

  Em’s heart leaped up into her throat. “Get used to what?” she asked with an abundance of caution. Lex looked at her and smiled sadly.

  “You know what, Em. Being here. This world is real, not just a game - and we are in it.”

  Five

  “I’m sorry, what did you just say?” Em stared at Lex. “Alex?” He hung his head. “You have known all along!” He nodded. “But wait, you said you get used to it - how long have you been here?”

  Lex shrugged. “To be honest, I’m not sure. I’ve been here as long as I have known you.”

  “Lex, that’s been years. Years!” She stared at him. “It has been ten years since we started playing Arcstone.”

  “Sometimes, it seems that long or longer. Other times, it seems five minutes since I chose this bloody form.” His tattoos glowed a bright crimson, a sign that he was angry. “The only thing it has brought me was misery until it brought me you.”

  Em studied him. He seemed to be telling the truth, but she had no way to know for sure. “I don’t think you can say the entire decade has been misery, can you?” He grinned at her despite the amber glow emanating from his skin. “Another cup of tea?” He nodded, and she rose from the bed. “Come on in and sit with me. We have lots to talk about.” Much safer in there than in the bed. Much.

  Soon enough, they were both sitting in front of the fire, steaming mugs in hand. “What would you like to know first, Em?” Lex took a deep swig of his tea. “The only thing I truly don’t know is how you got here or to get back. I’m sorry, Em, I really am, but I don’t know.”

  “Okay, we’ll put a pin in that for now. You said you downloaded the game, and then ended up here?”

  “Well, yes and no.” He took another sip of tea. “Alex...” He paused and put the mug on the hearth, and then held out his arms, looking at them. “I had to pick the weirdest race, didn’t I?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I’ve always found you pleasant enough to look at at least.” She chuckled as he made a face at her. “All those long nights on the voice chat, I would imagine you pulling all sorts of faces, but my imagination never included long black hair and technicolor tattoos.” Lex joined her in a laugh.

  “But you knew, Em, you knew what I looked like - or what Lex looks like. That’s why I thought something was wrong with you - all of this was much more foreign to you than I thought it would be when you arrived. I thought you’d be pleased.”

  “So you did have something to do with me coming here?” Her eyes flared with anger.

  “Other than wishing - no.”

  Em’s anger softened a bit. “Wishing?”

  Lex blushed - his tattoos grew brilliantly purple. “Yes, wishing for you, Em. I won’t lie to you. Wishing to hear your voice and your laugh without the crackle of that voice chat in the middle. Wishing to see if your eyes were at all as brilliant as Em’s are - wanting to see how much you are Em, more than Maddie.” He gazed into her eyes, and she felt it in her toes. “Em’s eyes are beautiful - like a peacock feather, blue with a brilliant ring of green in the middle. What are Maddie’s like?”

  “Ju
st green. Boring.”

  “I don’t believe it. Nothing boring about you, as Em or Maddie.”

  “Please, call me Em. You’ve never called me Maddie before.” He smiled, and for the first time, it was a wide smile. The Prophis had fangs, another fact that Em had forgotten. She startled, and he immediately closed his mouth. “No, don’t. It’s a part of you, and it’s fine. In fact, I don’t know that much about your race other than how you fight and that you’ve got tattoos that instantly tell me how you’re feeling.” And abs for DAYS and skin that I want to touch and...and...and…

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Your race is from Demonfell, right?” Lex nodded and chuckled. “Is it called that because...you’re demons and you fell?” He laughed, and Em felt the warmth again.

  “Sort of. It’s actually Demonwell, not fell. That’s a long story, though. The short version is that we were all over the world at one time, but we were...relocated to Demonwell.” He tucked a hair behind one of his long ears. “Our people’s legends say that we were once elves, like you. But I don’t think that’s true - or at least it didn’t happen in the span of the game.” He scowled. “Everything doesn’t HAVE TO revolve around the Tyrael.”

  “Okay...this is the last question I will ask you about being outside of the game, but where did you live before you were pulled into the game like I was?”

  Lex’s mouth formed a thin line as he looked at her. “Wow. This one is complicated. I - well, I wasn’t, Em. I mean, I don’t remember. What I do remember is that I was born here, in the game world. I was born human. I was Alex.” Her jaw dropped as she stared at him. “I was from a good family, and I was educated at the university -”

  “The one in Highpeak?” Em clapped a hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt you. Please, go on.”

  Lex smiled at her. “It’s fine. It really isn’t like you at all to stay quiet this long, anyway.” Em pretended to punch him in the arm, he had the grace to look wounded, then continued his story. “I was born in Highpeak, actually. My family is still there. I went to uni, graduated, and became a professor of literature. What?” Em was staring at him again. “I know, my darlin's and come ‘eres don’t really fit a professor type, do they?” She laughed. “I spent most of my free time in the great library in Highpeak - one of your favorite zones, if I remember correctly.”

  “Surrounded by books - where else would I rather be?”

  “Right, me too. So that’s where I could be found, pouring over the books in the ancient collection.” He took another sip of his tea. “My race speaks most of the known languages of the world - a side effect of being almost universally hated, you see. It’s a defense mechanism - a way to know when trouble is coming, I guess.” Em nodded as she sipped her own tea. It was growing cold, so she got up to stoke the fire and make another pot.

  “Is that your human race or Prophis?”

  “Prophis, sorry. When I was still human, I knew several earth languages, including some French. I was obsessed with French myths and legends for a time.”

  “You knew earth languages? Why? That’s odd - though the game does come with several language choices when you start, and French is one of them, so… WAIT, you understood me when I would swear in French over the voice chat?”

  Lex laughed. “Yes, and may I say your French is much better than mine if you could put THOSE words together without having to think about it first. I learned a lot from you, in fact. Thankfully after my transition, I could still remember things I knew as a human.” Em took his mug from him, and their fingers brushed. Her face flushed, and she glanced at Lex’s face - his tattoos glowed a bright purple. He looked down at the floor. “Yeah, so now you know what purple means, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” She skittered away to the hearth. “Please, go on.” She looked back after replacing the mugs and putting the kettle on to boil, and he was sitting with his fingers steepled in front of him, and his eyes closed. The purple was fading and soon shifted back to the usual light blue. “What are you doing?”

  “One thing that you don’t know about my race is that when we are...purple, it is tough to concentrate on anything but the...reason that we are purple. Does that make sense?” His eyes met hers, and she thought she saw genuine pain there. She nodded and returned to her chair, giving him a wide berth. He sighed loudly. “Where was I?”

  “The French myths.” Em could almost feel the sting of that sigh. Clearly, he was attracted to her but only on a physical level, and he found it to be an annoyance. Noted.

  “Right. So I found a myth about a magic-user named Valentin Badeaux who was immortal and had come to France from a place I think we would now think of as a parallel world - called Arc de Pierre.”

  “Arc...stone? As in the name of this game, Arcstone?”

  Lex nodded and grinned. “Interesting, non? So I decided to learn all I could about this Valentin because I was convinced that he was real.”

  “Real in my world or yours?”

  “Um...yes?” If she closed her eyes, Em could still imagine him as Alex. What she thought was a southern accent must have come from him trying to speak with those fangs. “I think that he was real, and once I - transitioned - I began to think that my world is either his parallel world or one that he created, with his magical ability.”

  “Maybe it is both? Maybe your world was transformed?” Em rubbed her face with her hands a moment. “What am I saying? Ugh. Please, continue.” The name he mentioned was familiar to her, but she couldn’t place where she had heard it before. Maybe it was an NPC name?

  “What else do you want to know?” It was clear that Lex was skeptical of her after her outburst, so she decided to take a different tactic.

  “Tell me about your transition. How did you become Prophis?” Lex was silent for a few minutes, his fingers still steepled. Em rose to pour them fresh cups of tea, and when she brought it back, he took it from her thankfully and drank half of it in one go. “Careful, that’s - oh, demon, I forgot.”

  “Not completely, but yes, mostly,” he said sadly. “I became - this - because I asked too many questions. I told you, I was determined to find out all I could about Valentin, and it seems that I asked the right questions of the wrong people.” He finished the tea and placed the mug on the floor next to his chair. “I was in the library one day and in the dungeon the next.”

  “That’s how you knew how to break us out of there that time?”

  “Exactly. It is still strange to me that no one ever fixed that hole in the one cell near the back.” He pondered that for a moment, a sly grin crossing his features. “Anyway, I was in that cell and was told that the penalty for my crimes was death.”

  “What crimes?”

  “To be honest with you, I am still not sure. Questioning? Reading? By then, the humans were concerned about the outpouring of demons from Ghostfell, so they began to tighten up their defenses from all sides. No one from anywhere outside of the Kingdom of Merseydale was allowed into the kingdom. Trade halted, along with any dealings with any of the other Kingdoms. If you couldn’t make or grow it in Merseydale, you didn’t have it, period.” He ran one of his hands over his face and up into his hair. Em found it hard to look away from that hand.

  “So…” she stammered. “So you looking into ancient things, not of Merseydale, meant you were an enemy of the state?” He nodded. “That just seems so insular and xenophobic.”

  “That was Merseydale at that time, Em. And because I was young and stupid and thought that my family name would be enough to protect me, I refused to cooperate with them and tell them where I had hidden the tomes containing the French myths.” Sadness overtook him for a moment, and his tattoos turned a dark, pulsing blue. “Even up unto them throwing me into the demonwell, I would not -”

  “Wait, the demonwell is a thing? I thought that was just a zone - sorry - a place name?”

  Lex shook his head. “How do you think it got the name? The humans rounded up the demons from the
islands and herded them into a great pit located on the larger island near Ghostfell. Some of the demons survived, and became an effective means of the humans ridding themselves of traitors - like me.”

  “Okay, hold on.” Em put her mug down and rubbed her eyes. “Are you saying that they dropped you in a pit filled with demons and left you to...what, be eaten by them?”

  “No, well, yes, that’s what the humans thought. But the demons have no interest in eating humans.” He scowled. “That’s disgusting. Instead, they...killed me.” He put his hands up as Em flew from her chair and put as much distance as she could from him. “Now, I knew you would react that way, let me explain.”

  “No way, I’ve seen the movies, and you do not act like a zombie. Are you like the undead toons in that other game I used to play?” Her eyes roamed the kitchen for a weapon, but there was nothing. What did she do there? Just drink tea and sit by the fire? Several unsolicited images of things that she and Lex had done there before she came into the game flitted through her mind, and she closed her eyes to clear them - but all of them had revolved around tea, comfy chairs, that fire, and...proximity.

  “I am not undead, nor am I an avatar, whatever that means. I was killed in my human form, and when I awoke, I was given a choice to return to that form or to be -” Lex indicated his body with his still open hands. “- this. I chose this.” He rose from the chair and took a step toward her, but she held her hands up, and he stopped. “Em, I think you know that I won’t hurt you. Have I ever hurt you before?” She shook her head. “Right, so can you come back over here, please, and stop looking at me like I am about to eat you for my dinner?”