“The kind that knows I sleep very little and like my gear prompt. So be quick, I’m just going to chuck my stuff in the dryer.” I said loudly as I walked out of the room.
“Kay! See you in a bit!” was the only response I got before the water turned on.
I didn’t know if it was just me or if he was relaxing, but I was really starting to like him in my flat.
Kylia: Chapter 13
I made a mental note of the time when I returned, “Quarter to eight, quarter to eight, quarter to eight.” I chanted. It was getting to the point where I was uncomfortable leaving my clothes for too long.
Good news was they only had to be in the dryer for a half hour, which gave me plenty of time before people started taking the machines.
“So what’s the plan for today?” Gerald asked as he came out of my room drying his hair.
“I thought maybe play some cards or something ‘til the guys get here with the computer, then set that up and give Daemion his own dedicated space.”
Gerald smiled, “You really like the characters, don’t you?”
“Well… yeah. They’re a part of who I am as well as being their own thing. Aren’t you attached to yours?”
We met on the couch and collapsed together, “I mean, I like the game, don’t get me wrong, but Gerry’s an extension of me, that’s it. He’s the do-gooder part of me personified. I certainly wouldn’t say he’s a part of me.”
“Wouldn’t you feel uncomfortable if someone used him though? Like someone was using a part of you?” I asked, half remembering the conversation with Lily.
He made an indecisive face, then shrugged, and shook his head, “No, I don’t think I would. I’d feel weird if someone used my body to get around, but I don’t think I’d care if someone used my account. Provided I wouldn’t get in trouble of course.”
“Yeah, yeah, I get that.” I said, the events of the year prior when someone in my building got caught outsourcing his account to the States still fresh in my mind.
It always struck me as odd that they sent five MPs for one 45-year-old man. But he knew the law.
“So where are the car-” a heavy thumping on the door interrupted Gerald mid-thought, and we both stared at the door confusedly for a time.
“Anybody home?” a gruff sounding voice called through the door.
My brain reactivated and I stood up, “Yeah! I’ll be there in a sec.” I said as I walked over.
I looked through the peephole, despite knowing exactly who it was, and smiled excitedly when I saw a hairy delivery guy standing at the door.
“Morning,” I said as I opened the door, “how’re you?”
“Kylia Redmond? Sign here.” he said, stuffing a tablet in my hands, “Just use your finger.”
I followed his instructions, and he snatched it away the second my finger left the tablet, “Have a nice day.” he mumbled after he’d already started off down the hall.
“You too…” I trailed off while looking around for the package. For some reason it took me a few seconds to actually look beside the doorframe and, voila, there sat three large postal boxes.
“Need a hand?” Gerald asked, appearing behind me seemingly out of thin air.
“Yes thanks.” I said, handing him the two smaller packages. “I think that smaller one is the keyboard and mouse, and the bigger one is the monitor. Which makes this bad bo-oy oy yoy! This is heavy! This is the rig.”
It was much heavier than I’d anticipated when first picking it up, not unbearably so, just enough so that it was a shock to the system when I picked it up, and a huge relief when I finally made it into the Rig Room and got to put it down.
“Phew! So… Yes, let’s move those across a bit and make room for this one. What do you think?” I asked, pointing to the other rigs.
“I reckon it’ll fit, but are you sure your power board can handle it?” he asked as he started shuffling the first computer closer to the left wall.
I nodded, “I’ve got four sockets. Until the electrician gets in to set up the new one I’m sure it’ll be fine to run two off the one board.”
“As long as you’re sure.” Gerald said, clearly unconvinced.
I figured it came from a place of concern, like he didn’t want to hear in a few days about how I’d died in a horrific house fire, and believe me, I had my concerns too, but I felt Daemion needed his own computer. It felt wrong unplugging him and plugging him back in over and over again just so I could run Armelia.
I knew I was being weird, but from a financial and logical standpoint it made a lot more sense as well. One of those days I was bound to forget to plug Daemion back in after a hard-core night of dungeon crawling or just plain questing, and end up going to work without realising and losing an entire night and day of gold.
“Should we unplug these first?” Gerald asked, snapping me back into the land of the living.
I walked over and started helping him shuffle the computers across, “I’m sure they’ll be fine, it’s not like they’ve got discs in them or anything.”
It took a bit more shuffling and adjusting, but my new rig was finally hooked up and ready to roll. I turned on the monitor and pressed the little button on the front of the rig’s titanium casing, smiling as the entire thing briefly lit up in vibrant red, blue, and green.
The screen stayed black for a little while, but the login did pop up eventually.
“Haven’t you got to install everything?”
I shook my head, “The guys at the shop do that for me, get it so Tarthirious, antivirus, internet browser, all of it, is up and ready to go the second I take it out of the box. Saves me a Hell of a lot of time.”
Once everything was booted and the Legends of Tarthirious login screen was up I plugged in Armelia, “Fancy a quick game?”
“What about your laundry?”
“I’ll set a reminder, that way we won’t lose the entire day either.” I said as I went into the clock and set an alarm for 8.15.
Gerald mulled this over for a bit then nodded, “Sounds good to me, as long as we get some time out of the house I’m happy. I never feel good when I spend all weekend in game.”
“Yeah, you end up going to work feeling like you never left.”
“Exactly. But hey, if we get some more fights in like that Skeleton King I’ll be able to go part-time at work.” he joked.
“Please don’t wish that on us. Can you imagine what we’d get with me being a higher level?”
Gerald smiled evilly, “Probably the Skeleton Chess Set.”
Armelia: Chapter 14
HP upgraded!
HP: 2400/2400.
Attributes upgraded!
35 Strength
33 Dexterity
35 Intelligence
32 Wisdom
I woke up to Dillop standing at the end of my bed with the Sceptre of Julkaboobu slung over his shoulder with his head completely shaved.
“You’re odd, did you know that?”
Progress made in mission: The Sceptre of Julkaboobu.
Objective completed: Return to Kalretch with Dillop.
Objective added: Talk to Dillop.
“Good morn Armelia, sorry it took me so long to meet you here. I made up my mind to take my brother’ vows and become a true pursuer of the Path.”
I nodded along while Gerry got up and stretched his legs, “That’s very good,” I said, trying to sound convincing, “why though?”
He looked at the ground and sighed, “When we were in that cave something… dark escaped me. A deep and hateful revenge that all but consumed me.”
“Heh, yeah, that was pretty awesome.” I said as I recalled seeing a man with only a knife and some rudimentary magic fighting a creature fifty times his size.
“Quite…” he said with an amused smile before shaking it off and becoming slightly more serious, “But it made me realise that I had to find my centre, and even though I wanted to run for the nearest village and drink and whore my way to the grave, I did. The Path t
ruly is a mystical thing.”
I decided I wanted to skip past the rest of his sermon about how great the Path was, figuring I could learn more about it later, and jumped on to the next most obvious quest question in my head, “What’re your plans with the sceptre?”
He straightened up and made what I guessed was his ‘I’ve got bad news’ face, “That’s actually what I’ve come to tell you. I think I should take the sceptre back on my own.”
“Oh thank God.” I muttered. “I mean… Thank the Gods that you’ve found your true calling. May I ask why though? Would it not be easier to travel as a group so that the sceptre was safe from interception?”
“You’re right, it would make the journey safer,” I held my breath in anticipation after he paused, but was quickly allowed to release it when he made a sorry frown. “I just don’t think you’re on the path anymore. Which is fine, all lives must choose their own path, but I just don’t think yours is the Path. You’re a warrior mage now, that’s had the advantage of druidic training and imbuement.”
I’m unsure why, but for some reason that offended me slightly. I got over that pretty quickly though, “Well I think you’re right. Is there any chance that I may re-join the Ministry?”
“Of course my child, all who seek it are welcome to follow the Path.”
Words can’t accurately describe the joy that swept over me with each of his words, because I’d never have to hear them again. I’m not trying to sound rude, but the guy was calling me ‘child’ while he smelled and spoke like a stoner.
“Well… I wish you well on your journey.” I said with a respectful smile.
He returned the smile, along with what was unmistakable gratefulness that I wasn’t going to interfere with his quest, “And I yours. Farewell.”
Mission Completed: The Sceptre of Julkaboobu.
Grand Gerry the Good: Max Level Reached.
No Experience Points awarded.
Armelia Fireheart: +500 XP.
Progress: 1630/2250.
Once Dillop had left Gerry decided to open his mouth, “What do we do now? Another quest?”
“I don’t think so, if we start another we’ll be here all day. No, I think we should go for a hunt.”
“A hunt?”
I nodded, “Head out into the woods, maybe see if we can find something to kill.”
“Or, just a thought, we go to the nearest city and you learn how to craft your own arrows and you don’t get killed by a bear. Might even be able to find you some spell books so you stop destroying the terrain.”
I regarded him with a bit of disdain, but then remembered that Ky-Len’s Heal was kinda dangerous. “Fine, but I’m going to hate it and I’m going to blame you.” I joked as I left the room.
“I am willing to accept the blame.” Gerry joked back.
The inn was empty when we stepped out, even the innkeeper was gone.
“Where is everyone?” Gerry asked as he walked into the inn’s backroom.
“How should I know? Normally these places are packed.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” he said as he returned, clearly having found no one, “do you think it’s a glitch?”
I shook my head, “If it were a glitched server we’d be booted. And let’s refrain from using words like ‘glitch’, doesn’t really fit in the world.”
“Yeah, sorry.” he said, realising he’d dropped character and picking it back up in a heartbeat.
We weren’t weird, most people agreed that when you were in Tarthirious you should do your absolute best to stay universe appropriate. Sure we’d get the occasional nuisance who insisted on really taking the role-playing out of RPG, but mostly everyone stuck to it.
“Was there some kind of event in town do you think? Dragon attack or something?”
“No way,” Gerry said, gesturing at the mission board near the door that was littered with bounties, “there’d be something up there. Maybe we should check outside?” he almost gulped, like he was trying to swallow the words before the suggestion could escape.
We shared the trepidation about leaving the inn. If the game was somehow bugged and we left the last semi stable environment we could lose our characters. The anti-cheat software would probably assume we were hackers out to loot then ban us from the game for an indefinite period.
We couldn’t lose a month’s game time, we just couldn’t, and the second we were labelled hackers it’d be the end of the social aspect of the game. I know that doesn’t sound important, but when the higher level quests require X amount of players to enter people who’ve been accused of hacking have a hard time finding groups.
But we couldn’t just stay in the inn.
I nodded, “Let’s do it. Push comes to shove I’ll split my gold with you.”
Gerry gave me a grateful smile and a nod, which I took as my cue to open the door, but the second my hands touched the wood he screamed “Wait!” and grabbed by the shoulder.
“What!?”
He was quiet for a second, “Why don’t we just log off?”
I let out a sigh of relief that I wasn’t about to explode, then nodded and checked the menu. “We can’t.” I said flatly when I saw the button.
“What do you mean we can’t? Oh… oh shit. What is that? Why is it greyed out?”
“I don’t know, I really don’t-” I stopped and started whooping, a little red clock just having appeared in the top corner of my right eye.
“Lag! Oh sweet merciful lag!” Gerry shouted as everything started to snap back.
The inn filled with players and NPCs, the innkeeper was back, everything was normal.
“Thank the Gods. It would’ve just been the two of us logging in at the same time, yeah?”
Gerry nodded fervently, “Yeah, I can’t believe we didn’t think of that before.”
I felt so stupid, but then again I suppose I never was the type to assume things would be obvious. Probably because last time I thought like that it was about my mum and dad just running late because of a busy drive-through.
“So. City?” Gerry asked, ripping me from my melancholy.
“City it is.”
Armelia: Chapter 15
City of Lukithir discovered.
Journal entry made.
There was nothing quite like stepping foot in a new city. Of course I’d been to Lukithir before, well, torched Lukithir before, Hel uprising, not all that interesting. Weeell, maybe a bit interesting. Okay, so maybe it was one of the best campaigns I’ve ever played but I’ve next to no memory of it and it’s not relevant so leave me alone. Jeez. You people.
Anyway, everything was back to normal in the city, the gorgeous gates that could fit a house were built back into their marvellous stone wall, the roads through town had been paved with some kind of orange brick, and the shops and homes that were scattered throughout the city were back to how they were.
We skipped the sightseeing though, and made a straight break for the blacksmith toward the heart of the city near the castle.
I checked the time in alignment with the sun and tapped Gerry on the shoulder, “I think it’s still early.”
“How early?”
“Like ‘hours until the shops open’ early. I know it’ll only take five minutes, but that seems like a while to loiter.”
Gerry nodded, “Yeah, maybe you could go get your-”
Kylia: Chapter 14
“Fucking Hell!” I screamed in fear before laughing at myself.
‘GET LAUNDRY’ was still flashing in bright red on the monitor while a loud beeping continued to blare out of my headphones.
“You alright?” Gerald asked, turning his attention away from his laptop.
“Yeah, scared the shit out of me, but yeah.”
He smiled cheekily, “I suppose it’s a good thing that you’re getting your clothes back, innit?”
I gave him a very put-on unimpressed look, “Just… don’t try. It’s sad when you try. I’ll be right back.”
He gave me a smile an
d went to keep playing, but stopped the second his hand touched the mouse, “You want to finish up for now? Come back later?”
‘Uh oh,’ I thought, ‘we’re going to do real things. We’re going to do real things and we’re going to have nothing in common and he’s going to realise he doesn’t like you at all and that you stink.’
“What did you have in mind?” I asked, like an idiot.
My internal battle raged on while Gerald thought, I shouldn’t have asked. I should’ve just said ‘Let’s keep playing and never get sick of each other’. But it was too late for that, because Gerald had an answer.
“Museum?”
I stayed quiet and nodded, but my mind berated me, ‘Great. He’s going to think I’m bored the whole time.’
Somehow Gerald knew, or maybe he’d always planned to say “Then maybe we can hit up the arcade when we’re done pretending to be adults?”
A massive smile sprouted out of me almost involuntarily, “Yes, that would be amazing. Would you mind logging me out though while I go and do this?”
“Not a problem.” he said as he logged out of his own profile.
During my trip downstairs I couldn’t stop smiling, I had no idea if Gerald and I were just two peas in a pod, or if he somehow heard my mental tirade, and I definitely couldn’t decide which was better. Him being just like me and us really getting along, or him liking me so much that he’d change his plans to suit mine.
It was all very high school, but I still loved it.
Hell, I was at a point where my face was hurting from all the smiling by the time I got back upstairs and knocked on the door. I barely managed to wipe it away in time before Gerald could open the door.
“All good?” he asked the mound of clothes that covered most of my face.
“Mmhm, just lead me to the room would you? Might actually do this without shinning myself for once.”
“I know what you mean,” Gerald laughed as he put his hand on the small of my back and led me safely to my room, “the amount of times I’ve tripped on my chair and dropped my stuff on the cooker is mental.”
Legends of Tarthirious: The Complete Collection Page 9