by Jakob Tanner
I grew more and more nervous in the dark alley.
“Where have you brought me?”
“The Crow’s Heart. Only the best inn in all of Arondale. If you’re one of the lucky few who knows where it is. It operates on purely word of mouth basis.”
The door creaked open and we stepped inside a warm candle lit pub. A fireplace crackled in the corner, lighting up the room. A few cloaked figures drank pints by themselves in the back, their hands remained close to the swords sheathed at their sides. The place smelled of smoke, ash, and ale. It was musty enough for me to start coughing which was totally not the badass first impression a place like this demanded from its clientele.
A loud screech came from the bar. I turned to see what the commotion was but didn’t see anyone.
“Is that Shade—the scum of the earth who still owes me ten gold coins from getting his butt whooped in a game of cards three nights ago?”
“Uh oh,” said Shade. “Relax. I’ll handle this.”
Two furry ears poked out from behind the bar. The ears hurried passed the wooden table and a middle-aged Muumuu woman appeared. She was under four feet tall and had a bushy orange fox tail that poked through her cotton green dress. She put her hand on her hips and squinted with her big yellow eyes.
“So,” she said. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
“You were cheating!”
“Better than you were,” she scoffed.
I really didn’t understand how everyone in Illyria played cards. All I gathered was everyone who played broke the rules on a regular basis.
“Look,” said Shade, fluttering his eyelashes flirtatiously at the barmaid. “I had gone out and acquired your ten gold coins but then I got ambushed by a bunch of angry Skren and I only broke out of their encampment a few hours ago. I headed straight here. Honest.”
I did recall Shade suggesting we stow ourselves away on an airship to a different continent but now wasn’t a good time to mention it.
“A pretty tall tale,” sighed the fox woman. “I’m guessing your friend over here can vouch for you.”
“Yes he can,” said Shade, giving me a painful smack on my back. “Clay meet Eve the owner of this fine establishment. Fair warning: don't let her small stature confuse you, she’s the most powerful person in this place. She sees and hears everything.”
The fox woman evaluated me from top to bottom. “Nice to meet you. You look new to these parts. Shame you met this one so quickly. He’ll lead you into all sorts of trouble. I assume you’ll need room and board?”
I nodded.
“No trouble,” she said, heading behind the bar. She grabbed two pint glasses and filled them up at a nearby barrel with an amber ale. “You two sit down and enjoy a pint while I get your rooms ready.”
She headed up the stairs of the inn and right as we sat down, she hollered back to Shade: “And don’t think for a second your sob story is going to get you off the hook for those coins!”
We took the available table in the middle of the pub. Shade and I clicked our pints together in cheers and each took a long sip. The foamy drink ran down the inside of my neck. It was delicious tasting beer, smooth and flavorsome. The foam was like the platonic ideal of all foam. Within a few sips, my migraine had disappeared and my body had stopped aching. The beer was a potion. It had to be. Only as I drank the ale, filled with its sweet warmth, did it become clear: I had been suffering from hidden dehydration and hunger debuffs. The game would not let you get away with ignoring basic bodily upkeep.
Drinking reminded me of the hostel where I had worked in Paris. Travellers were always nervous and on edge but once you got a beer in their hands, everyone always lightened up. I smiled fondly into my pint glass as I took another sip. Did all food and drinks in Arcane Kingdom Online taste this good?
My ears perked. “Didn’t we tell the guards we had urgent business. Aren’t we going to go talk to the Royal Knights of Laergard?”
Shade shook his head. “Not now. Our night has been a long one already as it is. We will go to their guild outpost tomorrow. But now we need rest.”
He was right. There was nothing to be done at this hour. But I did worry about the mutated Skren lurking somewhere in the forest.
Shade took another long sip of his ale and totally switched gears, telling me a story about the one time he went to bed with a goblin princess the night before her royal wedding. I think Eve was right: Shade was going to bring me loads of trouble. But his story was funny nonetheless. I finished my pint and wished him goodnight.
I headed up the stairs of the inn, the exhaustion of the evening overtaking me. It was time for bed. I found Eve fluffing the pillows in a room and I asked, “May I take this room.”
“Certainly,” she said. “It’s all ready for you.”
As she walked past me, she grabbed my wrist and dug her nails into my skin. She stared at me dead in the eye.
“I’ve left you a pair of gloves on the dresser,” she said. “You don’t want to be walking around town in broad daylight with a mark like that on your arm.”
“What do you know—”
But she hurried out the door and closed it shut.
I fell onto the bed and considered the swirling dark mark on my right wrist. What the hell did the mutant Skren do to me?
12
###PROGRAM: DREAM TRIGGER##
RUNNING DIAGNOSTICS
……….
31454390287987083142093187431
NUMBERS RUSHED past me until they fragmented and cracked like smashed glass. I was in a pure white space. In bodiless vapor form like I had been when I first logged in. A silhouette appeared in the distance. The figure moved towards me. The figure got closer. It was a little girl. She had brown hair tied in pig-tails and bright green eyes. She wore red velvet dungarees and she was crying. She ran, screaming, “Help me. Please help me.” She reached out her hand towards me. But I was nothing but air. There was no helping this girl in my current state.
She clawed at the air, crying and wailing. Next her arm disintegrated into pixelated cubes. The cubes burst one by one, destroying her entire arm.
“What’s happening to me,” she yelled.
The rest of her body did the same, morphing into cubes, computerized fragments. She screamed as her whole body disintegrated. The pixilation even crept up her neck, moving rapidly towards her whole head.
“Please…make it stop…PLEASE!”
I AWOKE IN A SWEAT. I grasped out at the air and pulled at my yarn blanket. Where was I? My fingers were long, thin, and deathly pale. This wasn’t my body. Oh god. What was happening to me? I rubbed my palms into my eyes. Time to wake myself from this bizarre dream. Where did the girl go? Wait—I had been dreaming about her, not this weird medieval history diorama I’ve woken up to. Or am I in one of those dreams within a dream? My HUD flickered in my retina and it all rushed back to me: the ZERO virus, the quarantine center, Arcane Kingdom Online, and the cognitive upload. Ugh. Let me go back to bed. Curiosity got the better of me though. I checked out the window prompts I had woken to.
You have (2) new personal messages
You have (1) new universal message
I clicked on the prompt and the first message appeared.
Personal Message: Congratulations!
Congratulations Clay Hopewell on successfully surviving your first 24 hours in Arcane Kingdom Online. Our system reports you have a 65% chance of making it through the full integration process. We will update you further later.
Happy adventuring,
TriCorp Dev Team
The words stung full of ominous dread: We will update you further later. There was a haunting phrase hanging unsaid. Or not. I’ll either wake up tomorrow alive or I won’t. I’ll be dead. It will be goodbye to this new life and world. I shook my head. I didn’t want to dwell on it. It was my second day in a new vibrant fantasy world. Wallowing was for suckers.
I closed the TriCorp dev team message and opened the next.
P
ersonal Message: Hello Stranger
Hey Clay! I don’t know if you remember me…well I’m sure you do...but it’s been a while. It’s Serena from college! I’m so happy to see that you’re here (or, you know, sad you are here but happy you aren’t counting down your life in one of those horrible quarantine centers). Anyways, before I initiated the cognitive upload, I was able to link my Facebook and Gmail friends list to my AKO account so I’d get a notification if anyone I knew joined. You’re the first person to enter the game on the same continent as me. Are you able to meet later today? I need to speak to someone. It’s very serious and urgent.
Send me your coordinates and I’ll use a teleport scroll—hopefully you’re somewhere I’ve already been.
Serena
I leaned my head against the bedframe, taken aback by the pleasant surprise. Serena Wharton. She was one of the few friends I had made at college before dropping out. She had worked at the student library where I liked to study and we’d occasionally get coffee after her shift. I smiled as I recalled our conversations. I can’t believe she was here. And she wanted to see me. What was so urgent and serious though? Strange. I wrote her back a quick note saying I was in Arondale and when did she want to meet. I moved onto my last message.
Universal Message: Apologies for the Technical Difficulties
A growing number of technical issues have arisen during the launch of A.K.O. this week. If you have experienced anything out of the ordinary, please contact TriCorp dev team. Please bear with us as we sort out these technical issues.
Thank you,
TriCorp Dev Team
I nodded my head at the message, not surprised. Waking up imprisoned in a camp of rat monsters five times your level does sound a lot like a technical problem to me. But I had gotten through it now and there was no use in being bitter. The question was, though, did I report it to TriCorp? The swirling dark mark was still etched in my wrist. For the time being, I’d wait and see if TriCorp fixed the game’s issues on their own.
A bell chime went off in my head. Another message had come in. It was Serena again.
Personal Message: Hello Stranger (3)
Arondale will be easy to get to. I have things I need to sort out this morning but how about we meet for 1pm in the church square by the large fountain? See ya then!
I toggled my HUD’s interface. It was 8 a.m. game world time. I had five hours to become a mage, get better armor and weapons and not look like a total noob before Serena arrived.
13
I rolled out of the bed, still feeling groggy and strange. My stomach grumbled, demanding breakfast. I headed towards the door and had my hand on the knob when I stopped. The door clicked shut. Eve’s voice echoed through my head: You don’t want to be walking around town in broad daylight with a mark like that on your arm. The swirling dark whirlpool stared up at me, drawing me closer into its gaze. I pulled away and went over to the dresser. I found a pair of green leather gloves sitting on top.
New Item Alert! Leather Gloves of the Mind (TGH: 3. MP+5. Durability 9/10)
Do you wish to equip (Yes/No)?
Yes please. The gloves flickered out of my hands and within seconds my fingers were covered. I didn’t even think to put them on manually; the near instant materializing was too cool to pass up. These gloves were awesome. The +5 MP bonus was a sweet bonus stat. It meant one more energy blast in battle before I ran out of mana. I’d have to thank Eve for these. They also did the trick of covering my wrists which was their intended purpose. I would have to investigate this mark eventually. Right now though, let’s make it through the morning.
I found Shade downstairs, sitting at a stool at the bar, with a half-full pint in his hand. His tail was wagging as he bantered with Eve.
“Isn’t it a little early for beer?”
“In my book, there’s no better way to start the day,” said Shade, taking a long sip. He licked off a lingering foam moustache with his tongue. “Of course, I don’t have an actual book. It’s an expression. A figure of speech.” He burped. How many of those pints had he already slung back this morning?
“Don’t mind him,” said Eve, polishing the bar with a rag. “Sit down and have breakfast. It’s not every day I have an Aeri passing through here. People say an Aeri’s presence brings good luck. In my case, more customers.”
I walked over to the stool and sat down beside Shade. He nudged me with his elbow. “Pint?”
“I’m okay,” I said.
“Suit yourself.” The Lirana shrugged and took another slurp of his beer.
I turned to Eve who brought me over a basket of bread slices. Inside the basket was a knife and two small jars, one with butter and another with blueberry jam. “Thanks Eve,” I said as I picked up a piece of bread. With the knife I spread a layer of butter over the bread slice followed by a layer of jam. I took a bite of the bread and instantly felt a wave of joy pass through me. The butter was incredibly smooth and blended with the intensely flavorful jam perfectly. The bread was fresh and had this wonderful fluffy texture. I chowed down the bread in a couple of bites and dressed up a new slice right after. Soon the slices were a mere pile of crumbs and even those were yummy enough to pick at with my fingers. When I finished, a prompt came up on my HUD:
Well-Fed (Buff): There’s nothing better than a good meal. +2 to all stats (Duration: 30 minutes)
This game was definitely going to turn me into a fat ass with these kinds of bonuses. My HUD faded and Shade placed his pint down emphatically and stretched his arms. “Well let’s not burn any more daylight—shall we head off?”
I got off my stool and Shade tipped his head to Eve. I waved and said, “Thanks again for the bread and the gloves.”
Eve waved my thanks aside.
“Keep that one out of trouble and don’t take those gloves off, you hear.”
I nodded and followed Shade out the door.
Arondale was a totally different place in the morning than it had been at night. Noise abounded: the hollers of builders and workmen, the banging hammers of blacksmiths, the rush of feet and garbled conversation in a variety of exotic languages. Airships swooshed above us, blocking out the sun and draping us briefly in their shadows, as they flew across the sky towards the major cities of Laergard. Arondale was a town situated halfway between the major cities of the Eastern Laergardian continent. It was a hub for nearby farmers and artisans to sell their raw materials to craftsmen and merchants who would then sell the unique items further afield. It blew my mind to think this was one of the smaller urban dwellings in Laergard.
We stepped out of the Crow’s Heart alley and into a busy thoroughfare. What had been an empty cobble-stoned street the night before was now a bustling road full of market stalls. Under different colored canopies were dealers selling rare and powerful jewels, magic scrolls, high level armor and weaponry and everything in between. It was all far out of my price range so I fought the urge to ogle over the cool wares. The thing I found most distracting were the food stalls. There were farmers selling fresh produce: thick delicious carrots, bright green lettuce leaves, onions, turnips. One stall was serving mugs of apple cider, spiced with sugar and cinnamon. All the crates full of fruit made my mouth water. Everything I’d already tasted in A.K.O. had been delicious; my hungry eyes told me the market food would be even more so.
I shook my head at the thought. No. I needed to sell the loot I’d gained from last night and get new armor and a better weapon if it had an affordable price tag. I’d treat myself to cider and pie once I was a successful adventurer.
I turned my head away from the stalls just in time to dodge a man rushing passed us, pushing a wheelbarrow full of boxed crates. He hurried ahead towards the aerodome with his delivery.
We continued through the market stalls, ambling along, enjoying the gorgeous morning: a bright blue sky hung above with white clouds drifting aimlessly in the air. The day had a Spring quality, with the warm sun and the gentle breeze. I was optimistic, excited for the potentials A.K.O. had
to offer.
“Shade,” I said, grabbing him by the shoulder as he pushed his way through the crowd of merchants and passing travellers. “Before we go to the guild hall—is there a merchant you’d recommend where I can sell my loot and pick up decent armor?”
Shade’s eyebrows jumped with excitement. “I know just the guy and we have time to kill. Guild Hall doesn’t open until around nine anyway.”
We hurried past a few more stalls and stopped in front of a building with a thatched roof and mullioned windows. Beside the wooden door was a sign engraved with drawing of a sword, shield, and a pile of coins. A one-stop shop. A classic general store.
The door barely opened. Through a tiny sliver we managed to squeeze through. The inside was cluttered with junk, from dusty armor to old books with torn away pages. I struggled to breathe in the musty shop.
“Oi! Frederick—you here?” said Shade walking delicately through the shop, making sure not to knock anything over.
Popping out from an indiscriminate pile of rags was a middle-aged Haeren man, sporting a thick brown moustache. He raised his hands in the air and said, “Welcome to my shop, humble travellers. Please browse my wares and let me know if you need any assistance.”
I smiled at the man and perused the shop. I stopped in front of a two-handed great sword. I reached out to pick it up, yet when I gripped the handle I didn’t have the strength to lift it out of its place. Was it enchanted or something? I scanned the item:
Old Iron Great Sword* (ATKP: 50-60. Durability 8/10)
*Only usable by classes with skills in two-handed weaponry such as Warrior or Blade Knight