by Alyson Belle
Slipping past the orcs at the gate turned out to be trivially easy since the casters that could sometimes see through invisibility had gotten lazy about keeping the spell up. Even that was a realistic twist the game designers included, I noted. If they don’t have PCs showing up to kill them all the time, they get soft and lazy. I might have to come back and try my blade on a few of them later before I completely out-leveled the zone. Fire resistance wouldn’t bother a Barbarian with a level-60 quality sword. But Jazzus was also right that it wouldn’t make sense to go charging in whether we could kill them or not. Alerting Vierdimin to our presence would be very, very bad. The only way we could hope to stop him would be if we could surprise him.
I hadn’t run this dungeon before, but Jazzus seemed to know the way, and I followed her through a series of twisting passages and staircases, dodging orc warriors and staying out of the field of vision of the wizards and warlocks, just in case they hadn’t all gotten lazy. As we approached the top of the tower, the smell of sulfur and death intensified. My blade pinged briefly, telling me it was an Aura of Evil—one of the many handy features of the weapon. As good-aligned characters, we’d be fighting at a disadvantage here. Jazzus held a single hand up to me, halting, as we approached a giant set of double doors that must have led to the orc king’s chamber, and nodded to a winding side passage I hadn’t even noticed. It went further up the tower. We advanced that way, ignoring the direct route, and soon emerged along a balcony that encircled the hall where the orc king’s throne sat. Jazzus motioned me forward and we crouched at the balcony’s edge to survey the room.
Below us, the orc king himself sat on his throne. Floating text above him read Death Cult Orc King, Lv. 50, so he was obviously still alive. But rather than haughty and proud, as I would have expected, he seemed tense and still—almost lifeless. Then I noticed the corpses littered around the room: dozens and dozens of the death cult’s royal guard, slaughtered by dark magics. The telltale oily shimmer of necromantic sorcery still coated their lifeless bodies. It didn’t even look like they’d been looted, and I fought the urge to hop down and rifle through their pockets. My eyes lingered, though. What loot might they have on them? You never knew where an epic item might drop.
Jazzus pointed at the orc king and whispered, “Hold Monster. It’s a very high level spell. Vierdimin has him paralyzed.”
“Where is Vierdimin?” I whispered back. “Shouldn’t he be here?”
Jazzus nodded down to the floor below us, and I craned my neck over the balcony as far as I dared to look. We were invisible, but taking chances was stupid. Vierdimin wouldn’t be as lazy as the NPC orcs.
The Lich himself was on his hands and knees in front of the great double doors, scratching arcane symbols onto the floor with a piece of chalk. Vierdimin, Lv. 80 Human Lich floated over him, and he kept pausing to look at an open tome beside him before returning to his work. I shuddered slightly. He was one of a handful of players who had reached level 80 in the game, and it was rare enough to see it that it made me nervous. That was silly, of course—killing me would only send me back to my bind point in Lorengarde, and I could always log out—but he could still make things very unpleasant for us and take all of the gear off of our bodies if he killed us.
Suddenly bringing my treasured sword along on our little raid didn’t seem like such a great idea. Yeah, it was a great weapon… but what if I lost it? My stomach sank. I’d have to be very careful. If I only—
“Hey!” I hissed at Jazzus. “What are you doing?” She was creeping forward along the slanted balcony, drawing closer to Vierdimin.
“I think I can get a clear shot at him,” she replied. “Maybe not take him out, but stun him long enough to grab that book and run.”
“Are you crazy? What if he resists your spell?”
She shrugged. “Then you grab the book while I distract him.”
I hesitated, but then nodded. It was as good a plan as any. Vierdimin was strong, but not strong enough to waltz into the middle of Lorengarde as a member of the Dark Legion, and I could probably get to the flightmaster before he’d finished off Jazzus. I’d known this mission was going to be dangerous, and epic sword or no epic sword, our guild would be screwed if Vierdimin could pull off a game-wide curse of some kind. Snagging the book might slow him down, or at least give us an idea of what he had done so we could undo it.
I raised my blade and laid a hand on the railing, preparing to leap down and grab the book as soon as Jazzus tried her stun spell. Jazzus edged closer.
She stumbled as ear-shattering sirens sounded all around us. I dropped to my knees, covering my ears with my hands and trying to drown out the sonic disturbance.
“Motherfucker,” Jazzus mouthed, though the sound didn’t pierce the klaxon of the alarms.
“It’s a sonic alarm!” I tried to shout back, but I couldn’t even hear my own voice. We should have known better than to try to sneak up on a high-level magic user. He’d obviously set up a proximity alarm that triggered for visible and invisible foes alike. Now that we’d been affected by it, both of our invisibility buffs had dropped. The flashing red crossed swords in the upper left of my hood told me I was stuck in combat now until I disengaged, which meant running away.
We couldn’t afford to run now. Ignoring the screeching pain and the flashing debuff to my combat skills the sound had inflicted upon me, I lurched up and vaulted over the side of the railing, landing in a careful, panther-like crouch, my sword at the ready. Jazzus thumped down beside me, whirling arcane balls of purple energy dancing around her hands as she shook her head to try to clear the ringing that was no doubt affecting her as badly as it was me. The alarms died of, their purpose complete, as we faced down our enemy head to head.
Vierdimin stared before us, smiling evilly in his jet-black robes and fluttering cloak. I couldn’t be sure, but the rod on his back looked an awful lot like a Lv. 80 Staff of Matter Manipulation, which I’d only seen pictures of on some data mining websites I followed. Somehow he’d gotten ahold of it for real in-game—bad news for our whole guild. In the time we’d taken to recover from his alarm and drop to the floor, he’d already prepared his spells, and I didn’t like the look of either ball of energy floating above his hands.
Jazzus struck first, whipping her purple energy balls toward the Lich, but he casually gestured and sent his own, larger sphere of yellow energy back toward her. It passed right through her pitiful projectiles, absorbing them into itself, and smacked into Jazzus’s body with a sizzling thump that left her in a crumpled heap. I lifted my sword and charged, howling with rage, and thanks to my avatar’s Quick Reflexes trait I managed to dive under the second energy ball Vierdimin chucked toward me.
I rolled and came up swinging, but Vierdimin floated up, levitating out of the way of my broad stroke as he stifled a yawn. He lifted a finger, looking almost bored, and a purple electrical bolt shot out and covered me in twisting, twitching purple lines. My body began to convulse uncontrollably, and my sword clattered to the floor. I watched my health flash lower and lower in my HUD while Vierdimin drained me. There really wasn’t too much real pain you could feel in game—any more than a minor discomfort would make playing unbearable—but I was covered in minor discomfort and powerless to stop him.
I blacked out just shy of death, falling to the ground beside my prized sword, and inwardly cursed myself for ever thinking it would be a good idea for us to battle an 80th-level Lich by ourselves.
Chapter 3
I poked at the glowing blue lines of the energy cage that Jazzus and I had woken up in. The bars crackled: Zzzzaaap! “Owww,” I muttered, shaking my hand to cool off my electrified fingers.
“Don’t bother,” Jazzus said gloomily. She sat beside me, her arms wrapped around her knees and her forehead on her forearms. “It won’t drain your HP enough to kill you, but it won’t be comfortable. Energy cages are a mid-level spell, but they stay effective at all levels. We won’t have much luck getting out of these until someone comes to re
scue us or Vierdimin lets us go.”
I snorted. Fat chance of that. He’d left us in the back corner of the chamber and gone back to his book and his runes, not even bothering to talk to us. But of course that’s how he operated. You didn’t get to be a level 80 guild leader and Lich by being stupid, and Vierdimin wouldn’t spill his master plan just to brag to us.
“We have to get our hands on that book,” I muttered. “Did you try logging out and calling anyone IRL?”
Jazzus nodded. “They’re all sleeping, or at least they’re not answering phone calls or texts. I figure I’m doing more good here in game, looking for an opening, than just logging out for the night. By morning it might be too late.”
I frowned, studying my surroundings. All of our gear lay piled in the other corner, and my sword jutted out of the heap, teasing me enticingly. It might as well have been all the way in the western Feywilds, for all the good it was doing me now. Vierdimin had taken our possessions and shown his cleverness again by not killing us outright. If he’d killed us, we would have just respawned at our bind point in Lorengarde, and we could have tried again or gathered some support from one of the other guilds. By keeping us alive and trapped here, he’d ensured he’d have time to finish whatever evil sorcery he was doing.
“You said these cages are a mid-level spell. Can’t you dispel them or something?”
She shook her head. “Not from inside. They don’t work like that. Maybe if I had an Arcane Disruptor or something, but I’m helpless without that.”
I sighed. We didn’t have one of those anyway. This was literally the only scenario where it would have been useful, and even if we had brought one it would be lying over there in the pile with the rest of our goods.
I felt pretty stupid. We should have known Vierdimin would have alarms set. It was a rookie mistake. Also, if I had had a few minutes to review my bank items, I might have been able to fish out some combination of traps and magical devices to create a diversion that would have actually distracted the Lich. I wished Jazzus hadn’t hurried me so much, but there was no point in pointing fingers now. She’d been right about the urgency, and she couldn’t have known ahead of time what we might need, anyway.
I tapped my finger on my nose thoughtfully. If only we had someone else that could smuggle us a few bank items. Someone who could come prepared, knowing what cloaking items they’d need.
“Jazzus,” I said slowly. “Do you still have Lacey’s account info?”
Lacey was Haxor’s long-term, super-rich girlfriend. He’d tried to get her into Fantasy Realms Online for a while, but she was one of those girls who didn’t have any interest in role playing games. She’d made a low level terribly built character that we all privately made fun of, wandered around in-game a little bit, and then quit, never to return. But apparently she was so loaded with cash IRL that she hadn’t bothered to turn off her expensive subscription to the game. I wondered what it would be like to have that much money—I could barely afford the one subscription with a full time job. Having a spare account was a luxury that was too good to pass up, so we still used her character as a shared bank alt, though we didn’t put anything too valuable on her just in case they ever broke up. Usually Jazzus controlled her when we needed something.
She nodded now. “Yeah, but I don’t see how that helps us here. What is a level 3 Courtesan going to do for us other than just get fucked by the Lich over there?”
Jazzus was exaggerating, but I still winced. “I can’t believe she actually took Courtesan as her class. What a ho. But I was thinking that we might have sent her enough potions and gadgets that she could sneak her way in here. I recall sending her an Arcane Disruptor at one point.”
“You’re right!” Jazzus’s eyes widened. “Nice, Kromgorn. That just might work. Uh… we’re going to need to move fast, though. As soon as she enters the room she’s in major danger, and any stealth skills or spells she has will drop when she tries to pass anything into the cages.”
“So?” I asked. “If she brings the right items, we can escape the cages and get out right away, and this time we’ll catch Vierdimin by surprise.”
“No, I agree,” Jazzus said, her voice sounding amused. “It’s just… Kromgorn, what’s your Magical Devices skill at?”
I double checked my stat sheet in my HUD. It was a measly Lv. 15. Honestly, even using the invisibility cloak had been a stretch for me. My face fell, and I grumbled the answer to her question.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. There’s no way you can use the Arcane Disruptor, Krom. You’d fail the skill check, blow the whole plan, and we’d be right back where we started. We also don’t have time for login and logout hijinks where you hold the items until I can get back. Way too risky.”
“Jazzus…” I warned, not liking where this was going, but then she said it anyway.
“You need to take the login info and bring me the items, dude. It’s the only way to make this work.”
I blew my cheeks out in an angry huff. Jazzus knew exactly what I thought of men who played female characters in these games and vice versa—it was weird and uncomfortable for everyone involved. I could kind of see why it might be fun to try it out and go have sex once or twice, but getting account locked into that gender would suck balls, which is how they stopped most people from doing it. Because of how realistic the in-game simulation of body sensations were, lots of people had a lot of serious concerns about men playing women and vice versa. It was strongly discouraged by the company who made Fantasy Realms Online, as they were already fighting enough moral battles without adding this on top of it. To try the other gender as an avatar, you basically had to either fake your gender during account creation or borrow someone else’s account, and both were usually wildly impractical.
Wildly impractical unless you just happened to have a rich friend who didn’t care what you used her account for.
“No,” I replied. “No way. I am not going to log into a weird girl body and have everyone laugh and stare at my stupid Courtesan ass while I haul potions across Lorengarde for you. Forget it.”
Jazzus’s expression darkened. “You know, Krom, I don’t like logging into Lacey either. I’m pretty proud of my badass wizard here, and it’s embarrassing for me to run around in skimpy, low-level Courtesan gear with everyone thinking I’m just some stupid bimbo who doesn’t know anything about the game. I do plenty of potion hauling for you and Haxor in that stupid avatar, and I just deal with having people stare at me and laugh at me.”
I weathered her long-winded diatribe and then gave the obvious reply. “Yeah, but you’re a girl IRL. So no big deal right? You’re used to it.”
Uh-oh, I thought. Wrong answer. Jazzus had fixed me with a truly withering glare, and it made me want to sink into my boots.
“Regardless,” she said, biting off each symbol individually with her sharpest tone. “It doesn’t change anything about our situation here. This is our only shot to stop Vierdimin, so I think you should get over yourself and do it for the good of the guild.”
I winced again. That hit close to home. My Fantasy Realms Online guild was the only group of friends I had, and if whatever Vierdimin was doing was really that bad, I’d hate myself for not doing everything in my power to stop him… no matter how distasteful it was. I had to stick up for my friends. They were counting on me. More importantly, Jazzus would tell them all about my betrayal if I didn’t.
“Fine,” I said through gritted teeth. “But you owe me, okay?”
Instantly Jazzus’s usual cool, collected demeanor returned. “Of course.”
A message popped up at the bottom of my HUD: Lacey’s login credentials. I memorized them with a sigh.
“Anything else you want me to grab out of the bank while I’m in Lorengarde?”
Jazzus ticked the items off on her fingers. “You’ll need an all-level stealth cloak and a few potions of invisibility as backup, some explosive firetraps you can set for a diversion, and the Arcane Disruptor, of course. I’m pretty
sure I dumped all of these items on her last time I played her. The character is too low-level for her basic Courtesan skills to be useful here, but grab the Potion of Temporary Level Boost she has in her bank. It’s soulbound, so you can’t lose it when you die, and it’s a one-shot rare item that kicks you up 40 levels or so for a brief period of time and buffs all your skills. You might be able to use her Seduction skill to distract an orc in a pinch or something.
I blushed right red and hastily protested, “I’m not using Lacey’s Seduction skills on anyone. Jesus, Jazzus. Do you think I’m gay or something?”
“Relax, Krom,” she said, rolling her eyes at me. “For one thing, I don’t care if you’re gay or straight. No one does. It’s 2017. And for another, it’s just a game. Besides, you’ll be playing a girl. In what universe is a girl seducing dudes gay in the slightest?”
She made some good points, but I still didn’t think I’d be seducing anyone as Lacey the Courtesan. That would be way too weird for me.
“Fine,” I replied. “Anything else?”
“Nope!” Jazzus said brightly. “Hurry up! We don’t have all night, and you only have one shot here.” She winked at me. “And don’t forget to have fun, sweet cheeks.”
“Not funny,” I grumbled, the scene fading away as I logged out.
Chapter 4
It took about 30 seconds to log out of Kromgorn and another 30 seconds to input Lacey’s credentials and log into her avatar. The transition was pretty seamless since I didn’t even bother to jack out of my VR rig, but I knew Jazzus was right. The 60 seconds it would have taken her to bounce from Lacey back to her main would have been way too long for me to stand there helplessly in my cage, holding our items and waiting for her to come back. I didn’t have to like it, but I knew I was doing the right thing for my guild.
The gray loading screen faded away to reveal the bright, sunny main street of Minsc—I was back in Lorengarde again, standing directly in front of the bank. But everything looked a little weird, and my body suddenly felt a lot weird. I peered at the mailbox and the characters around me, trying to figure out why such a familiar scene looked so off to me. Then it hit me: Kromgorn was a Half-Giant Barbarian who stood nearly 7 feet tall. But now I was piloting Lacey, a female Human Courtesan. She was only 5’6”—an average human female size—so I’d lost nearly a foot and a half of height. I was used to looking down on people, and now I was straining up for every inch of height and craning my neck to look up at most of the other players, who were either men or the taller elvish races.