by Prax Venter
“Thanks.” Jack was about to dive into his Character menu again when he refocused his attention on the woman sitting across the cabin from him. “How did you know how much Mana I have?” She seemed to know some things about him and not others.
She sat back in her chair. “Just Inspect me, Jack.”
It felt like he was about to do something overly personal, but Jack swallowed and tried to Inspect the beautiful woman in front of him.
A new panel came up that was similar to his own Character menu. It showed a miniature Lex wearing a bulky cloak, just like she was currently wearing. At the top was written,
Lex - Hero Class: Bastion | Level 24
There were a few other pieces of information.
[Health: 250/250 | Mana: 300/300]
There was a section farther below that was labeled, ‘Relationship’, and below it was:
[Disposition: Uncertain]
At the bottom of this panel was text that read ‘Invite to Party’, and another cut stone next to it that looked like it functioned as a button. Although this one looked like it was made of granite, as opposed to the emerald and ruby gemstone ones on the trade menu he saw before. It was also slightly recessed into the panel already. His assumption was confirmed when he tried to press it, and nothing happened.
He looked up at Lex, and she raised her eyebrows, expectantly.
“Bastion?” he asked.
“I have a split Path as well. One is focused on defensive skills, and the other contains healing skills. Having multiple options makes me versatile but not as potent as someone only focusing on one Path. That second one is the reason your flesh is whole again. Your entrance into our Town was not a graceful one.” She crossed her arms again. “Now tell me more about this odd combat spell under your Mining Path.”
“Well, like I said…” Jack pulled up his skills again, and while he was at it, he brought up his Character menu too. “I can channel it for 2 Mana per second.” He paused as he tried again to pull the useless scabbard out of his Equipment slot.
She was getting impatient again. “And what’s the damage?”
“I think I deal my Main Hand Damage every second that Mining Laser is active. So, that means zero damage every second for ten seconds, right?” He smiled.
She wasn’t amused. Lex stood, pulled her hood up and looked down at him. The firelight illuminating her face from underneath sent her eyes into shadows.
“I’m going to the inn to before I lose my Rest Bonus. Stay here for the night. I’ll check on you before going into the Tower.” She stood there for a moment, considering. “I hope you become useful and don’t live up to your Class, Jack. For all of our sakes.” Then she walked out the door and left him alone.
Jack sat on the bed with his feet on the stone floor, considering his current situation. He was in a virtual world. He was a Hero with an Irrelevant class. He had combat skills he assumed were for defeating enemies, somewhere, but they were useless because his Character menu was glitched.
On a whim, he faced the ceiling and said, “Computer, end simulation.”
The command had worked in a science-fiction television show that he watched as a child, but it was a longshot, and he wasn’t terribly surprised when nothing happened.
He stood up from the bed and the useless leather scabbard slapped his thigh.
It was this thing that was responsible for his predicament, and a strong urge to get it off consumed him. Jack physically pulled on the decorative sword belt as hard as he could, and his straining muscles twitched in protest with the force he was trying to exert. Eventually, he gave up, his head throbbing from the effort. He needed some air.
He walked over to the door, his bare feet pressing on the cooler stone floor and listened to the storm outside. The door was made from rough wood planks held together by iron bands, and Jack could see intermittent lightning flash through the gaps. He ran his hand along the gray, warped surface, and it was clear that this door had seen many years.
He pulled on the rusty, iron ring bolted to the door, and a chilling gust of wind sent his thin, cloth shirt and pants flapping around his body.
This sure didn’t feel like a video game.
It was nighttime and completely black outside the cabin. When the dark clouds above flickered with the absent-minded lightning of a passing storm, he was able to make out other stone buildings with straw thatch roofs, crouching against the rain, and the area he could see around the building he was in was covered in a thick, lush grass waving vigorously in the wind.
This was not the arid Chihuahuan Desert in Mexico where he had been… it looked more like Ireland. A muddy dirt path led away from the doorway out through the thick grass, and Jack saw lines of footprints gathering rainwater as they continued out into the darkness beyond. Lex must have already moved out of sight.
There was no point in going out in this. The pretty blonde said she would be back in the morning; maybe he could find a way out of here when he could see better. Jack backed into the warm cabin and shut the door on the biting rain that had been inviting itself in. He walked over to the fire and gazed into its flames. He considered how long the fire was going to last and was about to start searching for some dry firewood when another, smaller panel appeared over the fire.
Well-Constructed Fire - Duration: 02:47:10
The seconds were even ticking down in real time. He shook his head. Was he really still on that spaceship, his head hooked up to some hyper-sophisticated gaming hardware?
Jack sat back down on the bed and opened his Character menu. He tried taking off his shirt as an experiment and it came off him instantly, reappearing in his inventory.
His eyes found themselves locked on the decorative scabbard in his Main Hand slot and he made another attempt at removing it. Jack cleared his mind and urged it off gently at first but ended up almost bursting a blood vessel in his head from his intense determination.
Nothing happened. Jack let out a breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding, put his virtual shirt back on and threw himself on the small straw mattress.
With little else to do, Jack focused his Character panel instead.
[Level: 1]
[Health: 10/10 | Mana: 20/20]
[Defense: 2 | Dodge: 10]
[Main Hand Damage: 0 | Off-Hand Damage: 0]
[Hit Chance: 0.85] [Critical Chance: 0.01]
[Magic Power: 0]
Pretty basic set up for an adventure combat game, but he noticed the lack of a basic staple- Experience points.
“Whatever,” he said, shaking his head in frustration. Did any of this really matter? His only goal was getting out of this bizarre fantasy simulation.
Jack folded his arms behind his head as he tried to absorb his long, intense, and confusing day. Eventually, before the fire’s duration ticked its last second and winked out, Jack drifted off to sleep.
- 5 -
True to her word, Lex returned to the cabin the next morning.
“Jack,” she called, and pounded on the door a few times, startling him out of a deep sleep. He had no idea where he was for a moment, but it was her voice calling his name that had jogged his awareness. The cabin looked different in the pale daylight, and the stone slab floor was much colder without the fire. He climbed out of bed, walked to the door and pulled it open.
Lex had backed away from the door and waited in the center of the dirt path. It was the first time he saw her in daylight. She was still wearing the bulky cloak, but her hood was down. Her straight, golden hair was short and ended just past her shoulders. Her pointed ears poked out on each side.
Jack stepped onto the sun-warmed ground and joined her in the daylight. The sky was gray with total cloud cover, but the sun was just behind them casting a filtered brightness across the land. The vibrant-green blades of wild grass swayed gently in a breeze laden with the scent of salt that could only be carried from a nearby ocean. Standing next to Lex for the first time, he noticed that she was shorter than he was by a foot.
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br /> “Greetings, Jack. I wanted to introduce you to someone before I head into the Tower,” she said.
“What do you do in there?” Jack tested the ground with his bare feet. It had absorbed most of the water, so his toes only sank a little in the soft earth.
“Keep this place going.” She got a far-off look in her eye as she gazed at the building he had spent the night in. Jack looked around more carefully and saw that he was standing in the middle of a run-down farm. There was the hint of a barely defined fence in the field to his right, with wooden posts sticking out of the tall grass. Behind the field was a large building with a faded red tint that looked like it used to be a barn, but the roof was mostly absent.
“Who used to live here?” he asked, suddenly feeling a little odd about whose bed he had slept in.
“Hume. He was a good man and a good farmer. Come with me, Jack.” Lex abruptly turned and walked away from him.
Jack quickened his pace until he was next to the shorter woman. As they moved past the stone cabin where he spent the night, something that shouldn’t exist drew his gaze.
To his right was a massive stone Tower that continued up into the sky where it vanished into the gray clouds above. Based on what little he knew of physics, the structure shouldn’t be able to stand under its own weight. It was marginally wider at the bottom, but after a certain point, the Tower straightened out and reached taller than anything Jack had ever seen.
“Wow,” he said. Lex just looked at him briefly and kept walking. “Is that where I came from?”
“Yes. Directly out of the entrance. And certainly not at the right time,” she said, looking at the Tower. Jack didn’t quite grasp why those two things were important, but she seemed to think they were. If he wanted to get back home, going in there might be a good start.
“Could I come with you? You know- into the Tower?”
“You would die. I don’t want to be responsible for that.”
Jack couldn’t take his eyes off of the impossible sight as they walked. He noticed an arched wooden door at its base, and in front of the door was a slightly raised, flat stone circle surrounded by a short wall with a weak spring of water leaking out of a hole at its center- like a fountain with its water shut off.
Jack noticed Lex was ahead of him again. She moved fast for being as short as she was.
“Hey, I never thanked you for healing my shredded backside,” he said when he caught up to her again. “I wanted to say I really appreciate your help.”
She gave a quick nod in response, keeping her head straight ahead. Jack didn’t like how cold and distant she had become.
He quickly added, “Don’t worry about me getting in the way too much. I’ll be out of here and back to where I came from as soon as I figure all this out.”
She responded by walking even faster.
After a minute of walking, they approached an intersection in the dirt path. The fountain and the Tower were directly to the right. To the left was a square stone building situated as if it were built to be exactly in line with the Tower. It was raised up on a small ridge with a few half-buried, stone steps leading to the door.
Jack looked around, trying to drink it all in. The land was green and lush, and everything around him was either dirt, thick grass, wood, or stone.
Lex turned left at the intersection and continued toward the square stone building while Jack lingered at the crossroads. The imposing Tower stabbing into the clouds was something out of a dream. As his eyes explored the area around the fascinating structure, Jack noticed that most of the ground around its base was covered in thousands of small pebbles. The ground ended abruptly behind the Tower, and beyond its edge, he saw a thin glimpse of a vast dark ocean as it met the horizon. He closed his eyes and let the crisp sea air fill his lungs.
“Jack,” Lex called from behind him.
“Sorry!” He turned and jogged up the path to where she was. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Lex simply turned away from him and continued toward their destination. Stone boulders made up the building’s walls, and the thatched roof looked like it was made from a dried-out version of the thick grass that was all around him. Unlike the cabin he had slept in, this building had a row of windows facing out toward the Tower. Thick, gray wooden shutters covered them all.
Lex stepped up the few flat stones that led to a set of double doors and pulled one of them open. With the interior exposed, ocean winds raced inside, sending the smell of grilled food outward into Jack’s face as he stood behind her. His stomach made a fist and reminded him that he hadn’t eaten in a while. Everything felt so real he wondered briefly if this actually was his real body.
He followed Lex inside and recognized the layout instantly as an inn. There were a few long wooden tables with long benches and a large hearth in the far-right wall. Ahead was a counter with a few stools that must have been the bar. Tucked away in the back corner, Jack noticed a small square stage made from wooden boards. For performances perhaps? There was a stairway leading up to a second floor on the back wall, and a blue curtain with a giant white eye painted on it hung behind the bar. Jack and Lex were alone.
She walked straight to the bar and called out, “Demi. We’re here.”
Jack followed her and figured there had to be a kitchen behind the curtain. Lex came to a stop when she got to the rough wooden counter and leaned her elbows onto it.
“Sit down, Jack,” she said.
He took one of the stools and pulled it out a bit. The smooth stone floor was cold on his bare feet, and he welcomed the chance to not be touching it. Old and cloudy bottles of random shapes, colors, and sizes stacked against the back wall caught his attention, but he didn’t get to look for long before something unusual happened to Lex in his periphery that made him turn his head.
The heavy hooded cloak she was always wearing had suddenly vanished, and she was standing before him in a tight, black leather outfit. Jack only had time to blink before a small wooden shield appeared on her left arm, and after that, a sharp-looking short sword in her right hand.
Lex reached past her pointed ear, grabbed a leather sheath strapped to her back with her free hand and thrust her sword into it- without looking.
She was magnificent.
Important vital areas were covered in thick leather patches, but around those, the tight, dark leather clung to her newly-revealed shape in some amazing ways. She was more petite than he would have guessed, and from the side, he noticed that her small nose pointed up slightly at the end.
Jack was just staring at her profile open-mouthed when the painted curtain was thrown open behind the bar. When he turned to look, he saw a tall woman standing where the painted white eye had been, taking them both in. She had straight silver hair that cascaded down over her shoulders like a waterfall, and piercing blue eyes that focused on Jack.
“Okay, Demi. He’s all yours.” Lex waved a hand and turned to leave, and Jack turned his head to watch her go.
When she got to the door, he called out, “See ya later.”
Lex pushed the wooden door out of her way without turning around and was gone.
“You’ll never have her if you don’t Climb the Tower,” the woman behind the bar purred right by his ear. Jack flinched. She had quietly leaned on the counter to get close but slowly straightened herself as she watched his reaction. She had an amused smirk tugging on a corner of her thin lips and he found her pretty- in a refined type of way that only older women could be.
“‘H-have her?” Jack stammered. “No… Who are you? Why am I here? I want to find a way back to where I came from. Can you help me log off- out, or whatever?”
“I am Demi, owner of the Eye o’ the Storm.” She spread her long arms to indicate the building they were in. “You are here so I can keep my eye on you. Perhaps learn more about you and what you mean to this Town. Where you came from is certainly a question I wish to explore- but first...” Demi held up a single slender finger, then turned and stepped
into the kitchen, pulling the curtain closed behind her. The painted eye was looking down at him again.
Jack was alone at the bar with his thoughts for a moment. She was his babysitter. He was being watched by an adult so he didn’t hurt himself. He was growing impatient with being helpless and lost.
Demi came spinning back from behind the curtain with a plate and a wooden mug in her hand.
She set both down in front of Jack. In the middle of the plate was two grilled pieces of whitefish. A moment later she set down a bent fork next to the plate.
“First plate’s free,” she said and backed away from the bar top to give him some room. “Now, tell me your story, Jack.”
And tell he did. Between the warm meal going into his stomach and her penetrating gaze, Jack told her everything. He started with his life working on the survey team. Then after talking about getting away from his family and wanting to explore the hidden places of the world, he moved on to the haunted, abandoned spaceship, the song that led him here, and the eon he spent in a formless, psychedelic ocean. He recounted his uncomfortable arrival- with Lex appearing and helping him, singing the same song, and he might have let slip how beautiful he thought her voice was. He went into detail about his abilities, and the useless item he could not remove.
He finally ended with his theory about being sucked into a perfectly-real-feeling, virtual role-playing game, even down to the food he was currently eating. She listened to everything he had to say. She didn’t interrupt him once.
When he was done spilling his guts, Demi nodded, took his plate and fork and vanished behind the curtain again. Jack drank the rest of the water in his mug, feeling pretty good in general.
Demi returned with a rusty sword and carefully laid it on the bar in front of him. The hilt was loosely wrapped in cracked leather, and the reddish-brown spots along its edge made him think this weapon had been sitting out in the elements for years. Jack focused on the blade before him, and a small lacquered panel appeared above it.
Rusty Iron Short Sword - [Sword | Value: 1]
| Dmg: 1 |