Spellcraft

by Andrew Beymer

  "I think we both know there's not a chance you're going to take anything but a fluffy bunny down in single combat," she said. "And besides. You're using your brain to take these guys out. That's actually kind of cool."

  "Well then," I said. "Just you wait, because I'm only getting started with these guys."

  "Oh really?" she asked.

  "Totally," I said. "These guys aren't going to know what hit them. I totally hate Horizon, and this is just getting started compared to some of the stuff I've done before."

  Keia arched an eyebrow. "Really? And what kind of stuff have you done to Horizon before?"

  I shut my mouth. I’d just gotten a little too close for comfort to a subject I didn't want to talk about with anyone other than Kris. Sure I was proud of the work I’d done screwing over Horizon, but I didn't exactly want it known who I was. Not when I was pretty sure Horizon was still good and pissed off at me for some of the stuff I’d done in their modules.

  Not to mention with the way I'd been holding the idiot ball and dropping the ball left and right today I wasn't sure I wanted my past as the heroic Horizon provocateur associated with my bumbling performance on my first day in Lotus. Even though it was only my first day on a game where I'd been avoiding spoilers because who would've thought Horizon was in here, so I figured I could be forgiven a bit.

  Besides, it's not like Horizon could hurt me now even if Keia did go blabbing. They'd already banned me from their modules, after all, and they couldn't exactly fry my brain remotely if I wasn't in one of those modules.

  At least I didn't think they could zap my brain remotely if I wasn't in one of their modules. I hoped they couldn't do that, otherwise I’d be in serious trouble if they ever found out who I was.

  There was a chance that revealing my identity could literally be life or death, was the point, and so I was reluctant to advertise to the world about those antics.

  “You were about to tell me something,” Keia said, her eyes narrowing.

  "It's nothing important," I said.

  Keia surprised me by grabbing me and pulling me into a side alley. It's not like there was much I could do to stop her. As we’d already covered multiple times in our journey through my first day in this game world, she could pretty much do whatever the hell she wanted with me since she had all the combat abilities and I had nothing but some skills picking flowers and digging metal out of the ground.

  Which was a thought that was surprisingly intriguing. I never thought I’d be into something like that, but…

  But I needed to get this under control before this crazy girl killed me. It’d be a heck of a way to go, but that didn’t mean I was in any mood to go just yet. Not when I was still carrying so much good shit from the day’s misadventures.

  "What's the big idea?" I asked.

  "You looked like you were about to confess a big dark secret," she said. "And what better place to confess a big dark secret than in a dark alley?"

  Okay then. That wasn't exactly what I’d been hoping to do with her in the dark alley, but at the same time it was about what I should’ve expected. The only problem was I had no intention of telling her anything.

  "I already told you, I'm not…"

  "Bullshit," she said, punching her fist into the wall next to my head. That punch went straight through the stone wall. Which was an unwelcome reminder of how much strength she was packing. I looked at that fist wide eyed.

  "Bullshit?" I asked, stalling for time and knowing, deep down, that it wasn’t going to do me a damn bit of good.

  "Complete and total bullshit," she said, looking at her fist and blushing.

  "Sorry about that," she said, withdrawing her fist from the wall. Surprisingly it wasn't even bloodied. Then again I wasn’t sure why I was surprised since this was a video game. "I have a temper sometimes, and I let it get the best of me."

  "I'll say!" I said. "You could’ve punched right through my head!"

  "But I didn't," she said with a sweet smile. "Now you're going to tell me your big dark secret, and I'm not going to threaten you. You're going to do it because we're friends and friends tell each other stuff like that.”

  "But…"

  "And I already told you my big dark secret about my time with Horizon, so it seems only fair that you tell me a little bit about yourself. You know. You show me yours, I show you mine? Ever played that game before?"

  As a matter of fact that wasn't a game I’d ever played before, but I wouldn't mind playing with Keia. Though I wasn't going to go so far as to tell her that. Not when she was in a mood that had her punching through stone walls, at least.

  I sighed. I’d had all those good intentions of keeping my big fucking mouth shut, and they were melting away because of a pair of pretty eyes. A pair of pretty eyes and a fist that could punch through my head like it was a ripe melon. The second part probably had as much to do with my sudden urge to sing like a canary as the pretty eyes.

  "Fine," I said. "I suppose I do owe you one. Even if I did get you that ore you needed…"

  "Not gonna be able to use that one forever," she said. "Besides. You got a bunch of skill gains from that. We’re even as far as I'm concerned. Especially considering I’ve saved your ass multiple times on the way there and back.”

  "Right," I said. “I was afraid you were going to say something like that."

  Her sweet smile only got wider. It reminded me of a friendly Great White shark grinning at a seal just before that smile opened up just a little wider to reveal the sharp and pointy oblivion waiting beyond.

  "Do you remember that video that got popular about a month back when they first announced Lotus? The Horizon module that supposedly got hacked and the Game Master who was killed?" I asked.

  "Well duh,” she said. "That's been everywhere. Everyone's talking about it, even if the whole Lotus announcement kinda took some of its…”

  Her eyes narrowed. She looked me up and down, and then her eyes returned to my face as she searched my eyes.

  "You've been talking about how much you hate Horizon," she said.

  "Yup," I said.

  "Enough that you’d… No. There’s been lots of people coming forward claiming to be that guy. Surely…"

  "Guilty as charged," I said. "I sort of specialize in figuring out ways to break games, my dismal opening moves today being an unfortunate low point in that specialty, and I figured using that ability to fuck over Horizon, even in some small way, was the least I owed them for what they did to my sister."

  "I… Don't believe you?"

  I figured it was a good thing she was phrasing her statement in the form of a question. There was a part of her that believed me, even if she was having trouble admitting it.

  "What if I could prove it?" I asked.

  "Fine," she said. “Prove it.”

  She crossed her arms under her breasts, and I tried not to stare. I got the feeling she wasn’t trying to draw my attention to her chest, but then again with the way she was looking at me maybe she was trying to scramble my brain with the sexy.

  Besides, I was a teenage guy. I was going to be distracted by the sexy no matter what.

  I pulled up my heads up display and looked for an option to get to my personal video library stored outside the game. Horizon modules had the ability to access that and so I figured…

  An icon helpfully started to glow in the corner and I thought of activating it. It opened up my personal library which included all the videos I'd taken while I was doing the GM raid in that Horizon module with Kris.

  "Everyone saw the livestream that was released from a third person point of view, right?" I asked.

  "Well duh,” Keia said. "What's your point?"

  "I'm willing to bet there's no one out there who has this view," I said.

  I accessed the first person video I took from the encounter. A video I’d held back for myself just in case I ever needed to prove I was who I said I was and not one of the many Internet assholes who'd stepped forward to claim responsibility
for my current magnum opus.

  The livestream I’d sent out was all third person POV. The first person video was my insurance policy for proving I was who I said I was.

  Not that I had any intention of letting the world know I was who I said I was. At least not until I was good and ready, but I figured I could trust Keia. Sort of. At the very least the two not necessarily mutually exclusive goals of impressing a pretty girl and not getting my head punched in like a ripe melon were combining to make me more trusting.

  Besides, if I was going to have to trust someone then I figured starting with the insanely hot elf chick who'd helped me escape from Horizon a couple of times already was a safer bet than most.

  The video popped up and played over my shoulder. An interesting conceit. I was surprised they allowed something like that in the game. It was a tad immersion breaking to give players the ability to play videos from outside the game within the game. Yet another of the many sacrifices between verisimilitude and crafting a game that a modern person with modern expectations could actually play and enjoy.

  My granddad had told me about the good old days of gaming where if they wanted to do anything in a game they had to memorize it. Or, even worse, they had to write down maps and stuff in a paper notebook like caveman savages or something.

  And if he wanted to watch a video or listen to something while he was tooling around in old school WoW? He’d had to set up an ancient 3D TV, like we’re talking 3D in the sense of it being a massive heavy box and not being 3D capable, and plug in an ancient DVD player that only gave him access to whatever he had on DVD to play in the background beside his monitor instead of using picture-in-picture.

  Savage and primitive. Granddad might’ve liked playing games like that, but it sounded like an old school nightmare to me.

  "Damn," Keia said, her attention on the video as I reminisced about ancient gaming. "That really was you. You're the famous Horizon hunter!"

  "None other than," I said with a small bow.

  Keia took a step back and looked at me with wide eyes. As though a sudden understanding had dawned on her, which had me nervous. I didn’t like understanding dawning on people when it wasn’t dawning on me.

  “Colin?” she asked.

  40

  Sucking Face

  Yup. Revealing that video was definitely something that’d put me in danger.

  It took a moment for me to realize what had happened. I was about to answer as though she'd used my in game name. That was the problem with using a game handle that was so close to my real-world name. When someone called me by my real name I didn't notice at first. Then I blinked a couple of times in surprise as the full magnitude of the words coming out of her mouth hit me like a ton of bricks.

  Or maybe it would be more accurate to say it hit me like a ton of goblinsteel ore, to use a metaphor that was more in line with the game setting. Though it felt like I was already carrying the equivalent of a ton of goblinsteel ore.

  My mind was wandering though. I needed to focus now more than ever. All of my fuckups so far today had been of the game life endangering variety that might've ended in me losing my inventory and getting a one way ticket to a respawn point, but this was the kind of danger that could fuck me over in the real world. The consequences could be potentially deadly in a more permanent fashion.

  "Um… Who is this Colin guy?”

  She cocked her head to the side and hit me with the now-familiar look that said she was neither buying nor putting up with my bullshit. So much for playing ignorant.

  Are you from Horizon or something?" I asked. I looked around, half worried that scifi looking Horizon shock troops were going to descend down into the alley and beat me up.

  Which was a ridiculous thought. Not that Horizon might show up. The fact that they were financing guilds in this game was proof enough they were very actively interested in what happened in Lotus.

  No, this was a fantasy setting. If any Horizon troops came along they’d be from Horizon Dawn or something, but I didn’t for a moment think it’d be any less painful if they were using magic spells and swords than if they were using plasma pulse rifles.

  She shook her head, blushed, and seemed to realize she'd just given something away too.

  "I shouldn't have said that," she said. "I was just so surprised, and you mentioned a dead sister and hating Horizon and I didn't put two and two together until I thought about starting in the same are as other people from our level and… It's really you?"

  "That depends on who's asking," I said.

  "Would you believe Kara?" she asked.

  And then suddenly a whole lot of things about her story started to fall into place in my head and make sense. Not to mention I felt like a fucking idiot. People were assigned to their start based on region, so of course I should expect to run into people I knew.

  It's just that there were so many people living in the arcology that I guess the thought of running into someone from my school seemed like finding a needle in a pile of millions of needles, for all that it made sense that people in school would have more free time to muck about in a game like this.

  This was yet another example of me not working at my best because of how much finding fucking Horizon in this game had thrown me off. I really needed to get back on that game, or people were going to think of the “famous Horizon hunter” as a one hit wonder who got lucky.

  Still, given how many people were in our local region, we’re talking millions in my arcology alone, I just hadn't thought to look for Kara in the hot elf chick who’d been my companion for the past few hours.

  Though on some level it made sense. Now that I looked at her I could see that her in game persona resembled her out of the game. My resemblance to my real world self was probably part of the tip off for her once she put my story together with my hatred of Horizon.

  Sure her features were a little different to fit the whole hot elf motif, but when I looked at her she was clearly Kara. Now that I knew what I was looking at, at least.

  It was kinda creepy how the game’s characterization could come so close and yet be so different. I also wondered if the difference would be more pronounced with someone who was, shall we say, a little farther from their idealized self image than Kara was.

  "Damn," I breathed. "The hottest girl I know out of the game and the hottest girl I know in the game are the same girl?”

  She giggled. "Thanks for the compliment. You're not so bad yourself.”

  I blushed as I realized what I'd just admitted in my moment of surprise, but she seemed to enjoy the compliment so why ruin the moment by doing something stupid like apologizing? Considering all the adventures we'd had today, not to mention all the flirting we'd been doing, it didn't seem like the kind of thing I should have to apologize for anyway.

  Then another disturbing development that naturally followed from Keia being Kara occurred to me. If she played with Horizon Dawn to start then…

  “Wait, so does that mean that Torian…”

  “Is Trent,” she said, spitting on the grimy alley ground for emphasis. “The prick.”

  “Damn."

  "Tell me about it," she said. "They're such jokes too. I can't stand it. Torian was always going on about how I owed him since he introduced me to the slimy Horizon fixer who got me into the game early. I mean yeah, I kind of figured the reason he was asking me to join him was because he had the hots for me, but I didn't expect him to constantly try to get me to test out how realistic some of the stuff in this game can be."

  She blushed, and her normally happy face turned down into a glower. I had a pretty good idea of exactly what kinds of things Torian had been interested in testing out. The kind of things Kris had been fixated on, much to my annoyance.

  “I can’t believe Torian is Trent,” I said.

  "None other than," Keia said. "I'm surprised you didn't recognize his assholeishness oozing out of his character."

  "I should’ve," I said.

  Though to be honest m
y disbelief had less to do with the fact that Trent was in the game, which I already knew, and more to do with disbelief at my luck.

  I hated Trent. I hated Horizon. Trent was in this brave new game world and he was working for Horizon. Which meant that my hatred of Trent and my hatred of Horizon had now become two hobbies that dovetailed quite nicely, thank you very much.

  “I can’t believe you’re you,” she said. “I mean you’re famous. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised with the way you kicked their asses without raising a sword. I thought you were crazy for not getting fighting abilities but…”

  “Honestly? I’ve sort of been winging it since I got here,” I said. “And I haven’t been doing a very good job of it. I’ve been flailing. I’d like to act like some badass mastermind, but I haven’t had any idea what I’m doing since logging into this game. I wasn’t expecting to find Horizon here, and it’s kinda thrown me off my usual game.”

  “So you have no idea what you’re doing?” she asked.

  “Nope.”

  “You were just making all that up when you blew them up with that gem?” she asked. “When you used those goblin NPCs to mug one of their guards?”

  “Unfortunately,” I said. “Though I guess it was fortunately for us considering they would’ve totally…”

  Then she really surprised me by leaning forward and pressing her lips against mine. Which was a lot nicer and a lot more fun than when she’d been pressing her fist against the wall with enough force to turn brick into rubble.

  Well then. I’d been thinking we might have a long drawn out courtship. Maybe a little bit of flirting as we planned how we were going to right the wrongs from Horizon Dawn calling the shots around here. Maybe even a little bit of back and forth IRL now that I knew Keia was Kara.

  But it would seem Keia was more interested in breaking through all that tension that’d been building between us and getting right to the fun.

  Not that I was complaining, mind you. The kiss was pretty intense. And as our lips pressed together I realized that yeah, the simulation in this game was spot on at a lot more than replicating combat and pain.