by Неизвестный
And up by the river bank, behind the neighbor's small, wooden house, the apple tree stood proudly, bearing fruit no matter the season. Perfect. A monument to the hours wasted waiting.
But Valentine was the same.
She was the same.
See You on the Other Side
Shelley Du
A jolt shoots through Saphira. She’s teleported to the same place. The pre-boss-battle cutscene plays out like sleep paralysis, suffocating but lucid.
Bam.
Here comes the mini-boss, Kylin, a thing too grotesque for its own pay scale. Oh look, its minion wolfies, too. In another incarnation not that long ago, Saphira’s party, Surge, had already handed over their lives multiple times here.
Now that their Thief, Caime, has triggered the battle again, the train has left the station. Nowhere to go but though an abominable cutscene, and then things will really get ugly.
She knows it’s not Caime’s fault. The trigger has been tested many times to make sure that when Caime hits the trigger, the same cutscene has to play—Arrow Acorn Studio takes pride in its polished code. Maybe Saphira should be grateful. At least her feet have never randomly done the Ragdoll Dance and her head has never been stuck halfway between the game world and untextured limbo.
Small miracles.
***
The background music changes to a grandiose organ piece. Saphira jumps backwards reflexively; her flailing hand almost clipping Mason the Mage’s ear. She’s positioned so close to Kylin’s minions that she could reach over with a marker and draw moustaches on their faces.
The mandatory pep talk from Nivan and Caime confirm her fear. It’s not about what they say; the only time they can ever speak is when they regurgitate the script. What concerns Saphira is where they say it.
The Holy Highness of Failure, their almighty controller better known as Pea-Brain, learned nothing from the last defeat. Yet again, Surge charges into battle with two undefended magic users on the frontline and physical attackers in the back.
Saphira and Mason’s eyes lock. Not a hint of shock from Mason, just his perpetual sadness. Justified, maybe, but it still kills Saphira inside to see him like that. She never knows if he’s going to have the energy to be momentarily un-sad again, or if he’s fixed in this state for eternity.
The battle begins. Caime receives the first command. Must be nice to be the speediest of the group, Surge’s guinea pig.
Skill: Steal.
Target: Wolf A.
The command seals her movement and her target. Caime rushes to her target shifting sideways moments before they collide, swiping at the wolf. She rips off a handful of soggy fur, out of which they might be able to craft something. Wooly hat. Carpet. If they can find a good blacksmith, they can make a Rookie Sword.
Why waste an early turn for a patch of mud-soaked animal hair? Surely if they were going to loot something, Kylin’s rare possessions would make far more sense. Oh wait, Pea-Brain. That’s why.
The next command comes to Saphira.
Skip Turn.
Sometimes Saphira wonders if Pea-Brain uses the menus by chewing on the controller. No one needs healing right now, but a Skip Turn robs Saphira of the opportunity to use Defend.
It’s Wolf A’s turn now, and it looks rather unhappy with its bald patch, blood oozing down its side. It growls at Caime, perhaps wanting a pawful of scalp in return. However, its movements are as rigidly defined as Surge’s, and it is predetermined to go after the weakest link. As the only person with Defence stats in the single digits, it sucks to be Saphira right now.
Bracing herself is out of the question. She missed that train when she skipped the turn. Saphira tries to evade to the side, like Caime would. Pity Dexterity isn’t her forte either—Saphira’s foot catches on a branch and she trips.
Wolf A sinks its fangs into her forearm. It feels like she’s caught in bear trap: electric pain bursts up her shoulder as her bones meet its teeth. She stumbles backwards, rolling on landing to minimize the impact.
The good news is that her spine is undamaged, still counting for the “Almost New” category if she wants to sell it to an organ trader. Wolf A hangs onto her, crashing with Saphira and smashing its head into a rock. Wolves’ heads are hard as granite, but the impact catches it by surprise.
Saphira is not a physical combatant, but this is the perfect opportunity for someone who is. Say, Nivan, the Warrior.
Physical attack: Yes.
Target Wolf: YES.
Target Wolf B: NO!
Nivan mouths “I’m sorry” as he dashes past Saphira. She’s on her own now. Wolf A is still firmly attached to her, and while it’s impossible to get used to the feeling of being shredded, she begins to notice how tiring it is to have 130 pounds of dead weight clamped onto her arm. It doesn’t help that she’s as strong and durable as wet toilet paper.
She tries to poke Wolf A in the eye with her staff, only to be repelled mere molecules away before landing the strike. Too close to the Attack command she’s not given. The only self-defence she can improvise is flapping around Wolf A, hoping that a fleck of dust knocks it out.
Meanwhile, whatever Nivan did, it worked. Wolf B howls, sporting a new gash on its forehead. Its glare fixes upon Saphira. Not something she can take personally; she’d attack herself too if she were the wolf.
Saphira’s neck feels ablaze as warm liquid rains down her torso. Yet she remains conscious. She is streaming blood rather than squirting it: a missed artery is a missed critical hit. Small miracles.
Even luckier for Saphira is Wolf B’s failure to grab onto her in the way the hanging Wolf A did. The Goddess of Probability must’ve smiled. She could last until the next ally’s turn. A Healing Potion and she’s good, stickier and redder, but good.
It’s Mason’s turn. As long as he tosses her a potion, Saphira might still have some fight in her.
Physical Attack.
Had this mistake been forced upon any other, they would’ve been visibly frustrated, but the slouching Mason just pulls out his tome. Saphira expects Pea-Brain to mess up with full-throttle creativity, but she’s still caught off guard by Mason’s assigned target.
Target: Saphira.
She hears the thud of his tome colliding with her head before feeling it. Mason is as weak of a physical attacker as she is. If Saphira isn’t already doing her part in their interspecies luncheon, it would’ve hurt the tome more than her.
But right now, that is enough to deplete the last of her HP.
Her chest tightens as her breath ties itself into a knot. A sharp pain in her neck. A sweet muddy taste. Crunching of the bridge of her nose. An explosion of light specks appearing in back of her eyes. A buzzing in her ears. The fading of the buzzing in her ears. The fading of everything in general.
***
Saphira wakes up and runs her tongue across her teeth instinctively. Her wounds have been erased, yet the hurt lingers.
This is what happens after a Game Over. The reload provides the illusion of a clean slate, but doesn’t fully wash away what has already happened. Surge remembers, their bodies remember. Saphira’s chest still pulsates with a hot, stabbing pain, as if she inhaled a fish hook. Her arms still feel like they’re filled with broken glass, but any sign of injury has vanished.
Over the course of the journey, her body parts have been hacked off, re-grown, immolated, re-grown, shredded, and re-grown again. She doesn’t know how many limbs she’s gone though anymore, her sensations overloaded beyond recognition. She could have a look, but that would involve pulling through layers of tunic and dress. Pea-Brain says she has to dress like a filo parcel with bells and ribbons. Pea-Brain’s wish is her command.
In a moment, Surge will regroup. They will charge head first into the same fight, prefaced once again with the same convoluted speech about fate and heroes. Saphira remembers her lines well: how they are not bound by fate and they just needed to believe in themselves, as if any of them would choose to catapult themselves into another su
icide mission.
She’s Surge’s sole Healer, the typecast “Soft-Spoken Holy Maiden with a Heart of Gold.” Saphira doesn’t know if she actually is soft-spoken, since no one here can actually speak. They can beep pre-set texts in boxes hanging over their heads, each sentence just about personal as a list of terms and conditions.
***
A familiar flash, and the world momentarily freezes around her. In Saphira’s peripheral vision, she sees Nivan frantically scribbling on the ground. His attempt to speak out is desperate: there’s always a chance they’ll all die again before anyone gets to read his message, and the dirt will be wiped back to its factory-fresh state.
They call this “Morphing,” when the world freezes still, and Surge’s clothing, weapons and accessories shift into something else. Sometimes Pea-Brain gives a Healing Potion to an injured member. Sometimes Pea-Brain’s even generous enough to give them two. Though, that’s not why they love Morphing. Morphing is when Surge has a brief shot at real communication: they still can’t speak freely, but they can move. They scribble down their messages on whatever they can get their hands on, releasing their thoughts, absorbing others.
All of the party participates, except for Mason. He goes straight for the grog. Maybe it’s easier to carve on the ground with staffs, swords and daggers, and Mason just has the luck to be assigned with pillow-sized tomes as weapons. Perhaps he just prefers diesel-scented alcohol over Faith, Friendship and Fondness or whatever other corny platitudes that start with the letter F. Saphira can’t blame him.
***
It depends on Pea-Brain’s mood. Morphing could take anywhere from seconds to hours. She affects a mournful laugh watching Nivan flailing to scribble, either oblivious to the likely futility or in denial about it. That’s their Warrior, alright.
He should’ve been the Holy Maiden; too bad that it’s just not the done thing. Nivan is the designated hero, Pea-Brain’s avatar who is to lead Surge across the world and save them all. Nivan really tries to live up to his role, eager with morning sunlight shining out of every orifice. He always says the right lines at the right time, the texts scroll too fast, beeps pitched too high. He trembles with every scratchy motivational line, fooling no one but himself.
Their hero’s way out of his depth. That makes four of them, but things are harder on Nivan. He may come off as a bit naive, but his memory is unparalleled—he absorbs everything. She sees the way he glances at roadside flowers on the journey. That’s where his heart really lies: appreciating little things and basking in the joy of discovery instead of playing savior with painted-on earnestness, stuffing his head with cyclical death memories.
Saphira has had plenty of opportunities to get to know Nivan; supposedly she’s his soulmate. There are enough cutscenes with longing gazes into each other’s eyes to fuel a thousand dating spam ads.
The Forest of Bells arc had been an utter mess: two sixteen-year-olds united by nothing but an arranged marriage is as awkward as one could possibly imagine. Now, at least half of the scripted events involve being physically way too close for both of their comfort, and while she’s stuck there, she has to endure Nivan’s leathery armor. That thing stinks with the fermented bodily fluids of every slain creature in a thirty-mile radius.
Though the script declared, “I belong to you, you belong to me,” Nivan belongs to no one. He belongs with someone, just not her. When Nivan and Saphira’s flower of romance was peeled to forced-bloom, Mason went from garden-variety mopey to clinically depressed.
As far as Saphira’s concerned, they deserve each other way more than she and Nivan do, and it would be a favor to all concerned. So what if Nivan is so sunny that it hurt? So what if a good day for Mason is a day not catatonic under a tree root?
At least Saphira had one honest conversation with Nivan in the Forest, not as lovers but as fellow prisoners. After Nivan tied a Buttercup Bell onto her braid, a Morphing happened. Nivan grabbed her by the sleeve, more urgently than he’d ever done before. He looked terrified.
“You’re handling it well,” Nivan wrote. “How? I can’t be that nonchalant. I don’t want to die.”
“Sucks when we do,” Saphira agreed.
“No, I mean, I wanna keep on living.”
“This isn’t living.”
“I don’t want to permanently disappear before I’ve lived to see it through.”
“It’s not that big a deal. We always get reloaded. We’ll live.”
“Don’t you get it?” Nivan wanted to speak, but only managed grunts. “If Pea-Brain gives up, we will die permanently. Every time we reload, he’s that much closer to quitting.”
He stared right through Saphira, writing down his words with so much force his blade bent.
“I’m scared, Saphira.”
***
Saphira seeks Caime first, finding her curled up near a cherry tree; alert, shaky but consciously trying not to move. Her wide-open eyes tremble in hyperawareness. She looks like an architect’s proudest work, abandoned and left to decay for decades and now comically buried in pink petals. Not that the heroes truly look bad, in a conventional sense. Surge has their own eloquently crafted outfits, while everyone else in this world is stuck with one of the seven generic templates. Saphira knows they are created to be beautiful for Pea-Brain. Eternally beautiful, like the preserved nuclear shadows long after an explosion.
Surge drags around more than twelve of each clothing set, yet Caime is only given ridiculously short shorts and a belt for a bra. Pea-Brains need sex appeal. Sexy bare midriff. Sexy bare ribs. Sexy skin shivering in the melting snow.
Caime slowly stretches out her arm, trembling. With the cautiousness of a card-tower architect, Caime picks up a branch. Normally, Caime is too highly-strung to move this slowly and deliberately. Her combined Speed and Spirit stats close in on 200, making her practically immune to sleep, and that is without taking into account that Pea-Brain has an obsession with feeding her stimulating potions.
Although it takes forever, the Thief insists on writing everything clearly: no shorthand, no cursive, and proper capitalization: “I wish I could just tell you all to run. Fuck off back to your Healer cloister or mother-of-pearl palace or wherever you lived. Fuck off and never see me again. We all know that our fate...that our lives are cemented together. You can jump off the edge of the world, but if I so much as wiggle my fucking toe the wrong way we’ll just reload to do it all again.” Caime finished with a drawing of a heart, symmetrical and genuine.
***
Caime was the last to join Surge, the mandatory cupcake cute girl. During their first Morphing all together, no one was prepared for how much she swore. Saphira has no memories of the life before the script. Maybe her vocabulary used to be as limited, had she ever been fourteen.
“I can’t believe the crap that comes out of your textbox, you smug wanker. ‘All we need is the love to light our way to our miracle.’ Really? Why don’t you just cross over the screen and print yourself on Pea-Brain’s hug pillow if you love him so much, you stuck-up shitbag,” was the first unscripted thing Caime ever communicated to Saphira.
She was more amused than upset, “You think I would insult my intelligence and yours with that line of my own free will? If I had my way, I’d say we need a waterproof tent long before we need Lock of Trust. I’m basically carrying a brick in my pocket here.”
“Wait, so you don’t mean your lines?” Caime was taken aback.
“You do?”
“I’m the comedy relief, remember? Hell, like I’m getting any lines relevant enough for me to feel anything. I kinda space out. You know, let the textbox do its thing while I gaze into the sky. Are you telling me I actually say shit like that?!”
“Not yet. But when it happens, I’ll tattoo it on my forearm and shove it in your face everyday until I inevitably have to sacrifice myself for the greater good.” Saphira drew a wink at the end. Caime stared at Saphira for a moment, before bursting out in silent laughter.
***
Caime no longer laughs. She no longer expresses much at all. “I just want this to stop. I’m so tired I’ve forgotten how to cry.” Caime always stared, but there’s something especially empty about it today.
“I haven’t rested since I joined. My mind is spinning. I’m dreaming and I’m awake. I’m alert and I’m dead and I can’t go on anymore. I am exhausted and I can’t go on anymore.”
Saphira wonders what Pea-Brain would think of their suffering. Probably that their pseudo-deaths are disposable, easily overwritten. So what if Surge‘s deaths are temporary? The pain doesn’t dwindle because they already lived through it in multiple past lives. It’s like Pea-Brain repeatedly pulling their nails for fun.
“Saphira. Make this stop. Please.” The Caime Saphira used to know would never plead. Caime’s dead. What is forced to live on is her corpse manipulated into whatever state that pleases Pea-Brain’s fleeting fancies. Caime lifts up her branch and tries to continue writing, only to explode into violent retching. The cutscene snaps alive before her vomit hits the floor.
***
Kylin’s battle theme blares again. To Saphira’s relief, she is now away from the enemy line by quite a stretch. Seems Pea-Brain has finally learned something from the past three defeats and shields the low-Defence members at the back. Along with the...stronger Defenders? Good job, Pea-Brain, now everyone is in the same back row.
Caime’s move. Pea-Brain tries something different this time.
Skill: Item.
Item: Speed-Acc Potion.
Target: Caime.
The formation tradeoff is that whoever goes in front gets twice the Speed but half the Defence. With Caime in the back, their main agility specialist loses her advantage. Pea-Brain compensates for the lowered Speed with Items. A Speed-Acc raises Speed by ten points. The effect stacks, so Pea-Brain loves forcing the potions down their throats. Saphira likes the taste of Speed-Acc even though she’s rarely given it. Caime describes it as seagull shit fermented in a barrel of liquid vitamins. Either way, Caime has already drunk enough for her teeth to chatter on the rim of the glass bottles.