by Natalie Grey
Gracie smiled. “Thanks.” She yawned. “Why am I tired?”
“Because you have no regular schedule anymore.” Alex pointed his fork at her.
“Oh, right. That.” She yawned again. “So where are you and Sydney going tonight?”
Alex coughed. “We’re not precisely…going out.”
“Going down?” Gracie asked smoothly, and gave a fist pump when Alex choked on his curry. “Nailed it.”
“I’ll get you back for that. And anyway, I do have some time to play a bit of Metamorphosis before I leave. I’m jonesing.”
“Yeah, it must have been difficult for you,” Gracie said. “Bet the sex makes it easier, though.”
Alex gave a thoughtful nod. “Well, when you put it that way… So, we gonna go do some questing?”
“Sounds good. We might catch Caspian and Kevin as well.” Gracie sat back for a moment to assess the burning in her mouth. “Let me just drink about eight glasses of water, and then I’ll join you.” Her phone dinged and she picked it up, already grinning at the thought of a text from Jay.
Her smile died.
Alex, who had been heading back to the kitchen, stopped. “What’s wrong?”
Gracie stared at the email, not answering.
You are nothing. You will be nothing. All of this will collapse around you. Yaro
Chapter Thirteen
By the time Jay logged on, almost everyone else was online. “Sorry I’m late, everyone. Just got in.”
“What took you so long?” Alex asked affectionately.
“Ah, Gary Swiftbolt, old friend.” Jay limbered up, running through some cursory wrist and neck rotations. He would normally do this before he logged in so that his character wouldn’t appear to be having an awkward one-person dance party, but he’d been so busy today that he had eaten in the car while driving between errands. “It turns out I am employed once more, so I must do all of the stupid boring shit I won’t be able to do during the day now. For everyone’s information, I had a cavity, it’s been four hours since the Novocain, and I still can’t drink water without dribbling out the right side of my mouth.”
“Pics or it didn’t happen,” Chowder said at once.
“Do you want some time to eat?” Gracie asked. “Or…shove food in the left side of your mouth? No soup.”
“Nah.” Jay accepted a party invite and started into the crush of people on the streets of Kithara. The group was all gathered in one of the parks near the edge of town. Oddly, near the NPCs that manned the PvP queues. Jay headed that way with a curious smile.
“Are you sure, man?” Ushanas spoke in his usual lazy drawl. “We can spend another five minutes hopping around a park. It really isn’t any trouble.”
“I’ve shoved about twice my usual food intake into me in the form of burgers and milkshakes, so I’m good.” Jay bounced on his feet and grimaced. “And wow, do I need to work it off. Like a pile of lead, I tell ya.”
“You should have had my dinner,” Kevin said smugly. “Our Caspian makes the best grilled cheese sandwiches I’ve ever had in my life.”
“He’s saying that after a bottle of wine,” Caspian said in a stage whisper, “so take it with a grain of salt.”
“Hey, now, I also said that when I was sober.” Jay could see them now. Kevin’s Piskie summoner was dancing crazily on top of a fountain, and several of the rest of them had joined up around the edge of it to dance as well.
“You look like you’re summoning demons,” Jay told them.
“What makes you think we aren’t?” Kevin waved him over. “Get in on the fun! Help us summon a bigger demon.”
Jay looked at Gracie, who gave an expressive shrug. She was wearing her axe now instead of her sword. “I figure what they do while we’re queued is their business.” She pointed sternly at them. “But you are responsible for what that demon does in the keep, do you hear me? You walk it. You feed it. You clean up after it.”
“We’re running Saladin’s Keep?” Jay asked curiously.
“Heck, yeah,” Gracie said. “Also, we’re going to lose spectacularly.”
“I think you’re underestimating yourself.” Jay emoted a smile as he strolled closer. Knowing that Callista’s face was modeled on her own made him feel like they were really standing in the park.
“No, I mean it. We’re going to lose on purpose. Well, we’re going to not-win on purpose.” She waved her hands. “These are exploratory runs. We’re all learning every nook and cranny of the keep, then we’ll focus on the PvP part of it.”
“Interesting.” Jay bounced on his feet. “I’ve actually never run any of the PvP content since the world was launched. We had inter-team competitions there at one of the Christmas parties back in the day, though. I think I remember it fairly well.”
The world disappeared around him and resolved a few moments later into the opening area of the Keep. They were at the northern end of the map, the ruins of a library with the traditional diamond-shaped bookshelves that Jay had seen in images of Ancient Greek and Egyptian libraries. Once, the place would have been filled with scrolls, but now there was very little left, and the wood, ivory, and metal centers of the scrolls lay strewn across the floor.
Their flag was bright green with a spinning wheel, and it stood in a shaft of light at the end of the room, silhouetted against the desert.
“All right, everyone know their part?” Gracie asked. “We leave one or two people here to hamstring their offense and give us more time, and the rest of us spread out and start exploring.”
“I’ve done a lot of PvP, actually,” Dathok said. “I’ll stay and do D.”
“I’ll stay with him for now,” Freon said. “Between a rogue and a frost mage, we should be able to seriously mess up some people’s days.”
“Solid.” Gracie hefted her axe. “Red Squadron!”
“Red Squadron!” the rest of them chorused back.
“Aww, we’re turning into a cult.” She laughed as the doors opened. “Let’s go explore!”
Jay didn’t feel any guilt about sneaking off with Gracie. After all, the whole point of this exercise was to have fun, wasn’t it? They weren’t trying to win. He opened a private channel.
“Follow me.”
“Where are we going?” Gracie followed him curiously. They were heading along the outer wall, going west, and she was looking around at everything. Once or twice, she tried to slide into gaps in the wall. “That’s a good spot,” she said after one of them. “Not sure what you’d use it for, but if you could sort of herd a flag carrier down this way, maybe?”
“Good call.” Jay hopped onto a toppled column and ran up it.
“Where are you going?”
“Come on!” he called back.
Gracie laughed as she followed. She had put a glamor on her armor to make it a dusky, aged bronze color rather than the bright gold it had been before—very like her to do, in Jay’s opinion. With the axe and darker armor, she looked a good deal more deadly.
Jay led the way up the column and onto the slanted remains of the roof that ran along a side hall. This had been one of the places the developers had held victory dance parties when they won, and it offered a gorgeous view of the desert around the keep as well as the verdant oasis inside.
Plus, on an artificial roof, there was no chance of slipping on a stray tile and crashing to earth.
From here, they could see the whole battlefield, and Jay swept his arm out triumphantly. “Behold the site of your future victory.” He cleared his throat. “At some point, I assume I’ll find out why we’re focusing on PvP now.”
“Awesome,” Gracie breathed. “This is great, thank you. And as for the PvP…” She looked over with a shrug. “Call it a hunch.”
“Mmm?” Jay watched as a series of frost spells went off in the library. “Freon and Dathok have company.”
“Hamstring ‘em, boys,” Gracie cheered. She had crossed her arms and was frowning as she surveyed the ruins of the keep.
Saladin�
�s Keep sat at a crossroads that was no longer used; the roads stretched away, cobblestones scattered and quickly lost in the drifting sands. The building was massive and still sheltered the oasis, even in its tumbled-down state.
The two ends of the keep formed the bases for the PvP match. At one end was a dining hall, where Saladin had entertained the most distinguished of the caravan leaders, scholars, soldiers, and nobles who passed through the crossroads, and at the other end was the library. In between, were the old kitchens, bedrooms, and even a temple. Outside the walls of the keep proper were longer, lower walls where caravans would have camped.
In the center was the most innately interesting feature of the keep: the oasis. Possessing a large pool of clear, deep-blue water, it was surrounded by tall palm trees, bushes, and flowers. From the way Gracie stared at it, Jay knew that in the real world, she was lost in its beauty, even if he couldn’t see it on her avatar’s face.
“What are you thinking?” he asked her after a moment.
“I’m thinking that the oasis draws people in, but it’s the most useless place,” Gracie said slowly. “The rooms, the corridors, the roofs—all of those are better for a run with the flag. If you worked together as a team, you’ll be able to—”
DEFEAT flashed up on the screen.
“Whoops,” Gracie said. She switched to the main channel. “Anyone know if we can re-queue in here?”
“We can,” Caspian said. “Because we’re a full group. We’re just all going to get yanked back to the starting room, and it may flip-flop us to the other one when we get opponents.”
“Cool,” Gracie said. She pointed to a series of rooms just below them: “Okay, so, real quick… If you look there, you can see that there are a lot of ways through the—dammit!” The reset had yanked them back to the main room. “Blast.”
“Yeah,” Jay said. “No, I see what you meant. Next time, let’s…”
“Let’s?” Gracie looked at him.
He made sure he was on the private channel before answering. “Well, what I should say is that we should take everyone to get acquainted with the path so we can try things out, but what I actually wanted was to spend some time with you.”
“So let’s do that," Gracie said with a smile emote. She gave him a thumbs-up. “We can lose at this any day of the week, man.”
Jay burst out laughing.
“All right,” Gracie said to the group. “We have a hunch that the best way to run this is to go down the side corridors instead of through the oasis, no matter how pretty it is and how it seems like the best place to go. There aren’t many places to hide backup, and it’s just a clusterfuck. If we make a team effort to go down one of the sides, though, we’re in good shape. Jay and I will take the west side and note anything we see there, Ushanas and Fys, take the east side to see about ranges for AoE and pets, and the rest of you work on various defensive hiding places or offensive tactics. Try range, try sneaking up on people, try anything you want.”
“Roger that,” Dathok said. “Freon and I are still on defense, I assume?”
“Yep,” Gracie responded. She clapped for the two of them. “Everyone, say thank you to Dathok and Freon for giving us the space to try this out.”
“Thank you,” the group chorused, sounding like a group of five-year-olds.
The countdown began again, and Gracie and Jay ran over to the west side of the library. She held up her hand for an e-fist-bump and he tapped it before the barriers disappeared and they took off.
They raced one another, hopping over tumbled stones and ducking under barriers. He heard a laugh, and he looked over to see Gracie stumble.
“I actually jumped,” she said, amused, “rather than using the controls. Not great on the landing. My downstairs neighbors probably hate me.”
Jay laughed. They were in the long gallery of the temple, which was set up with what looked like altars to many gods. That would make sense in a place like this, he supposed. Most of the statues were gone, however, or destroyed.
He wondered what had happened here.
They moved through more slowly now, practicing hiding behind statues or in alcoves. None of the other team seemed to be coming this way.
“So, why are we doing PvP now?” Jay asked her.
She looked at him seriously, her hair drifting around her face in an unseen wind. “I think it’s how Harry will come for me next time.”
“Can he?” Jay asked skeptically. “He had to inhabit bosses last time. He wasn’t able to start the quest himself. Unless…can he port a boss in here?”
“I don’t think so,” Gracie said. “But there are a million ways he could set me up to fail. He knows the rules of this game, Jay, and I don’t. The real game, I mean, not Metamorphosis Online. His game.”
“Good point.” Jay crossed his arms and sighed as he considered. “I wish I knew what to tell you,” he said finally. “I don’t know much about PvP.”
“I suck at it,” Gracie said. “People do the stupidest things just to be spiteful, so it’s not like fighting a computer where it’s set up to make you do things that are legitimately difficult. No, you have to account for the fact that people might make a stupid decision just to fuck you over. I hate it.”
Jay smiled at her.
“What?” She crossed her arms.
“Are you sure you haven’t been replaced with a pod person?” Jay asked her. “Because the Gracie I know really, really likes winning, and she sure doesn’t back away from a fight.”
Gracie snorted, annoyed. “I like winning fights that are worth winning,” she said grumpily. “Not fights that are full of bad logic.”
“Can’t this one be both?” Jay asked her. “Because, yes, if we wind up fighting PvP, it will be as much a mind game as a skill game. That’s true. But what we’ll be fighting for…well, it’s the same thing we’ve always been fighting for. And that’s worth it.”
Chapter Fourteen
It’s the same thing we’ve always been fighting for. And that’s worth it.
The thought was still circling in Jay’s head when he pulled into the parking lot of Dragon Soul Productions the next day around noon. His team had gotten used to working across the entire day, focusing heavily on the evenings, when the bulk of players were online. When he’d first met Gracie, they had been in a phase of working from 8pm until 4am.
He had chosen to walk away from this place, and he would do it again—but he had missed it. Gracie had put into sharp focus all the things he loved about Dragon Soul and the game they had created. His team had worked hard to create a new home for people who needed an escape. Jay had liked being part of that, and he had liked his team.
Now he was back, and he found himself unexpectedly nervous. Not knowing what to do, not knowing what Dan and Dhruv might come after him or his coworkers for, he hadn’t been in contact with any of them except Sam since he left. Several of them had texted him to ask if he was okay, but Jay hadn’t written back.
Would they even be glad to see him?
When he arrived, the place was quiet. Computers hummed, but no one seemed to be around. Jay stopped, frowned, and pulled out his phone to check the start time Sam had given him.
It did say noon.
But maybe this had been some elaborate prank by Dan and Dhruv. No, that was ridiculous.
Right?
He was chewing his lip when Sam popped his head out the door of one of the conference rooms. “There you are. Wanted you to come in early for all the HR paperwork bullshit. Come on, I got bagels.”
With a small sigh of relief, Jay headed down the hallway, swinging his messenger bag over his head. He walked into the room with a hello and jumped when a chorus of voices called, “WELCOME BACK!”
Jay’s old team was all there. Some of them looked deeply disheveled, and all of them had donuts and caffeine in their hands. A full spread of breakfast food had been set out, and people came up to give Jay handshakes and tell them how glad they were that he was back.
Jay ga
ve Sam a bemused smile, and his boss edged closer.
“I figured we’d do this before Dan and Dhruv were in,” Sam said, his voice low. “They agreed that you could come back, of course.”
“But a whole party might be pushing it?” Jay asked. He nodded at Sam. “Seriously, thanks. This is awesome. I missed these guys.”
“They missed you,” Sam said. “Also, while you’re here—Ria, Paul.” He beckoned over two people who looked vaguely familiar to Jay. “You were in on first interviews for both of them.”
“Oh! Right.” Jay shook their hands.
Paul had long, floppy brown hair and was wearing a much-too-large polo shirt, and Ria was tiny and delicate, dark-haired, and with an aura of someone who was trying to pack far too much energy into her small frame. She was, paradoxically, the only one in the room not holding a cup of coffee or a bottle of soda.
Jay nodded at them both. “Settling in well?”
“Yeah,” Ria said. “Had to hack one of the VR suits to make it fit, but we managed.”
“She’s a male Ocru in-game,” Paul said, snickering.
“I wanted to know what it was like to be tall,” Ria said as if it should be self-explanatory.
Jay laughed as they wandered off and glanced at Sam. “So? Is there actually any HR paperwork bullshit to do?”
“Only a couple of things.” Sam waved a hand. “We can get it done anytime. Get some breakfast, since I know you don’t eat much in the mornings. Saw you were doing some PvP last night.”
Jay, who had been picking up a cinnamon sugar donut, raised an eyebrow.
“I still have all the controls hooked up to watch you,” Sam said with a shrug. “I’d say it’s safe to assume they are as well.” He didn’t need to say who they were.
“I don’t suppose we could expect anything else,” Jay said, sighing. “Looking for ways to bring her back to zero, huh?”
“Jay, you know it’s not that.” Sam was serious now. He peered around the room. “This…isn’t the place for this. Get a plate—no, a full plate, a donut is not a balanced breakfast—and we’ll do the paperwork. All right, everyone, wave to Jay, you’ll see him later, I have to take him to do paperwork.”