First Sorcerer

by Kyle Johnson

  As he approached the entrance to the Trials, though, his caution was rewarded. A strange scent came to his nose, one that his memories recognized instantly as that of an elf. In fact, as he stopped and slipped into the underbrush, he could scent 3 elves, each with a slightly different smell that he realized he would normally have never even noticed, much less been able to distinguish. Even more interesting, the elves seemed to be moving toward him. Although they were still too far to see him, they were coming closer, and in all the games he had played, elves had way better eyesight than humans. Of course, he thought silently, I’m an elf, too, so I guess if I can’t see them, they probably can’t see me.

  Jeff considered revealing himself to the elves for a moment. They might be willing to take him back to their stronghold, he reasoned, where he could talk to the elder, get some advice, maybe learn something about the last part of his Trial. He was about to stand when he heard a voice that sounded familiar. With a sinking feeling of dread, he dropped back into the undergrowth and reached out to the surrounding plants, asking them to wrap around him and hide him from the encroaching elves.

  Sure enough, a moment later, three elves stepped noiselessly into the clearing, and Jeff recognized one of them. The lone female of the trio was the same elf who had been so hostile to him before. What was her name? Gel-something? It didn’t matter: even if he had wanted to show himself to the elves, he certainly wouldn’t with her around, especially not without the calmer, more reasonable elf who had originally found him. She’d probably decide I failed the Trial and just try to kill me right away, he grumbled a little angrily. I’m not sure if dying now would void the last part of the Trial, but I’m not going to take the risk.

  The elves were speaking in their flowing, musical language – the one they had called “the Tongue” – and at first, he had no idea what they were saying. As he listened, though, a few words came to him, until suddenly, the language crystallized in his mind and their words became clear.

  “…report that there have been more of the slaughtered creatures in the forest,” one of the males, a broad elf with lavender hair, dressed in mottled green armor, was speaking. “As before, they have been Harvested, the hides taken but the meat, bones, and other parts left behind.”

  “It is most unusual,” the second male replied calmly. His hair was the color of spun gold, and he was shorter and slimmer than the first elf but wore the same green armor. “No tracks have been found, I understand?”

  “None,” the first elf spoke, just as calmly. “Our best Rangers scouted each kill site, but whatever it was left no trace, not even the slightest disturbance. Nediriel wonders if it might be a skin walker, after all these years?”

  “No,” the second elf shook his head. “A skin walker would leave a trail for us to follow, for it would wish to take our forms, as well. Should one of the naldlooshii be among us, only a concerted strike would drive it out. This seems to be something new.”

  “Could it be the one who called himself Traveler?” the first elf suggested.

  The female barked a contemptuous laugh. “Hardly,” she snorted. “That one could barely climb a tree without injuring himself: in fact, he did injure himself, twice! He was a fool who made a false claim and has been swallowed by the Trials. I have checked, myself, and the only sign of him leads into the Trials. By now, were he alive, he would have exited at least once.”

  “That is possible,” the second elf allowed. “Yet, it is also possible that he is a Traveler, and he remains within the Trials, challenging them. I have never been within, but I am given to understand that they are incredibly difficult and would be fatal for any other than a Traveler.”

  “He is not,” the woman snapped, “but if he were, that would be worse. Golloron may hold to the belief that the Travelers will be our salvation, but that is not all the stories say. They also warn that the Travelers may be our greatest enemies, and as we have seen, this is more likely true.”

  The second elf sighed heavily. “I am aware, Geltheriel,” he replied sadly. “Our encounter with the first one who called herself ‘Traveler’ was unfortunate, and you are not the only one who feels this way. Should this newcomer survive the Trials, I do not envy him his welcome in the stronghold.”

  Jeff remained still and silent as the elves passed, waiting until their voices died off and then waiting a few minutes more, feeling a chill settle in his stomach. I’m not the first Traveler they met? he thought quietly. Someone from the Alpha trials must have been placed here, and it sounds like they didn’t give the elves the best impression. That wasn’t uncommon: a lot of players treated the NPC’s in a game – the non-player characters – as little more than cannon fodder or easy experience. Still, in most games, a player’s actions would only cause grief for them: if you ran afoul of the guards in a city, for example, only you were placed in prison to serve out your sentence. Every other player had their own reputation with those guards that was independent of yours.

  In this case, though, it sounded like something the last Traveler had done to the elves had given all players a lasting reputation loss with at least some of the elves. While that seemed realistic, it was hardly fair, since from the sound of it, the elf stronghold wasn’t going to be a friendly place for him to stay, even if he wanted to. It doesn’t matter, he decided. I’m gonna finish the Trials, collect my reward, and head out to find Phil. I wasn’t staying anyway; this just means I’ll be leaving a little sooner, is all.

  He sighed heavily at the thought: some part of him had wanted to spend some time among the elves. In most games, they were creatures of magic, grace, and art, and their kingdoms were places of incredible beauty. Even so, he could always come back one day, when he was more powerful and able to ignore the disgruntled faction with impunity.

  Putting all of that aside, he finished the trip to the mammoth tree and descended the stairs to complete his final Trial.

  Chapter 8

  As I finally stood before the ornate double doors barring me from the final chamber of the Trial, I stopped to take a look at the final arc of the Sorcerer questline I was pursuing:

  The reward, of course, was awesome. Assuming I got no other XP before completing it, the 5000 XP bonus would push me up to level 4, just one level from getting to choose another Class Perk. That was pretty exciting, since the Perks I had – Mana Well and Greater Creation – were already helping me out a lot. Sure, Mana Well was probably doing more for me than Greater Creation, at least so far, but it seemed to me that over the long run, having a chance for crafted items to spontaneously rise in quality and rarity or gain new abilities would be way more powerful. I guessed that for the most part, things like the quality of a crafted item depended on your Skill in the requisite craft, and since it seemed much harder to level up Skills the more advanced they became, having a 10% chance to effectively bump your Skills by 10 levels would be a huge deal.

  However, the failure condition was, quite frankly, kind of harsh. With every other part of the Trial, he had been given ample opportunities to fail; in fact, failure seemed to be an essential part of the Trials, part of the reason only a Traveler could complete them. Now, if he died even once, he would fail the Trials and basically be sent back for respawn. That was a pretty extreme penalty, especially since it would be invoked no matter what: at some point, he assumed, failure to decide whether or not to attempt the Trial would probably be seen as rejecting the quest, which would have the same effect as failing it.

  Damned if I do, damned if I don’t, he sighed internally. At least, if I attempt the Trial, I should have a chance to succeed – although the difficulty is A, so it’s probably not the greatest chance. Whatever happened to those old “you can’t fail this” class training quests from the old days? In most games, Quests were assigned a Difficulty Rating from E – basically, carry this letter from here to there with no one trying to stop you – to SSS, meaning that only the most legendary heroes should even attempt the Quests. A ‘C’-ranked quest, like his earlier Trials,
would be one that was moderately difficult but achievable, while an ‘A’-ranked quest would be hard and might need a full party or multiple attempts to complete.

  While he couldn’t be certain, he guessed that the ratings were relative, not absolute: they indicated how hard the Quest would be for him, specifically, at his level and with his Stats. In some games, the ratings were an indicator of the recommended power or level a character should have to complete the quests. If that were the case, though, as a level 1 Sorcerer he would surely have qualified as a Rank E character, and the Trials, which were ranked C, had been well within his abilities, if difficult. Had the rankings been absolute instead of relative, he should have had a much harder time with the Trials, and the rewards should have way higher for him.

  Knowing that the coming Trial was probably something that he could have completed with only moderate difficulty if he had a full party, though, didn’t do much for Jeff’s confidence. The odds that a lone adventurer could solo an A-ranked Quest without dying once were, to be honest, pretty damn small. Still, so far while the game had challenged him, nothing in it had been totally unfair, at least not without good reason. He couldn’t imagine that the AI’s would create a questline this involved and then give him a near-unbeatable final challenge unless, for some reason, they didn’t want the Sorcerer Class in the game. If that were the case, though, he pondered, they could have just not offered the Class in the game at all. What would be the point of offering the Class, then making it impossible to actually complete the Training Quest? That would just be, well, dickish.

  That meant that the A-ranking probably assumed he was solo, rather than in a party of adventurers. The implication was that, while the Trial would be difficult, and there were many ways to fail, it would be possible for a single Sorcerer with Jeff’s Stats, Skills, and abilities. Okay, he convinced himself. Challenging, but possible. I can do that. As he approached the massive doors, he realized that, in all honesty, he was terrified: terrified of losing his cool Titles and Perks, of undoing all of his effort to this point, and most of all, of failing and making Lythienne’s sacrifice in vain.

  Courage really is the hardest part, he realized as he squared his shoulders. This was what Lythienne had been talking about: to become great, he needed to be brave enough to risk failure. He was afraid, but then having courage didn’t really mean being fearless – in fact, only an idiot was truly without fear, since fear was a valuable tool for survival – it meant being afraid but moving forward, anyway. Courage meant acknowledging your fear but refusing to let it rule you.

  He took a deep breath and placed his hand on the doors. Instantly, a notification flashed into his vision:

  So, the choice is basically no choice, he thought grimly as he mentally selected ‘Yes’. He stepped back as the ornate doors cracked open with a metallic boom, swinging toward him. He couldn’t see anything beyond the doors: the entire doorway was filled with darkness. He tried to retreat, but a tendril of that darkness the size of his thigh lashed out, wrapping around his waist, and started to pull him closer toward the seeming void. He struggled furiously, but the tendril’s grip was like steel, and he was dragged inexorably forward. Panicked, he hurled a Mana Arrow into the darkness, but it vanished without causing the slightest ripple. His skin rippled with icy cold as the blackness crawled over it, and for a moment, he felt as if he were plunged into icy water. His entire body seemed to freeze and burn at the same time, and he opened his mouth to scream in pain. The darkness plunged down his throat, up his nose, and tried to spread throughout his body: he could feel it attempting to fill him, sense its terrible malevolence as it started creeping up into his brain.

  Suddenly, his fear shifted into anger. This – thing! – whatever it was, it was trying to take him over, to control him. It wasn’t in his nature to be controlled: he hated the very idea. It was why he had gotten so angry at Veronica when he realized the AI’s were altering his thoughts; why the inevitable deaths of the Trials felt so unfair to him. It was why, he realized, he resented the elves for their treatment of him: they had given him no choices, and choice was, to him, the very essence of humanity.

  I will NOT be ruled! his mind screamed at the darkness, fury filling his limbs and giving him new strength. I will NOT be controlled! I WILL NOT YIELD!!! Scorching fire blazed through his body at his words, filling him with power and heat, banishing the chill touch of blackness. The darkness seemed to flinch and recoil from his thoughts, resisting for only a moment before it was swept away in a storm of fire and brilliant light. Jeff gasped as the void was swept away, and he blinked as he found himself lying on his back on hard, dry earth.

  He struggled to sit up, his body slowly regaining sensation as his anger faded and the last vestiges of the freezing darkness left him. His face was drenched in sweat, and as he wiped it, he looked around curiously at his new surroundings.

  Once again, he seemed to be in the middle of a forest, but this one was the opposite of the Forest of Eredain he hunted so recently. The ground here was hard-packed, dry, and utterly devoid of life or nutrients. The trees around him were withered and dead, their gnarled limbs covered with lichens and fungi that were slowly devouring them. There was nothing green or living in sight; he couldn’t even hear the soft buzzing of the insects that should have been infesting such a place. It was as if something had sucked every drop of life from the forest, leaving it a withered husk.

  Even the air seemed affected by whatever had drained this place. Every breath tasted bitter and metallic, and his Scent ability was almost overwhelmed by an odor of decay and something more pervasive that he couldn’t quite identify. There seemed to be a shadow filling the air, one that, while not truly visible made his eyes gently ache from trying to penetrate it. He glanced up and saw that even the sky was corrupted: dark clouds of iron-black blocked the sunlight and cast the world below in a grayish haze.

  Several notifications appeared in his vision, one red and two green, and he cautiously examined them:

  Wait, Corruption? he repeated silently, going over the notification again. I don’t even know what that is! He focused his attention on the phrase in the notification and was rewarded with a floating box:

  “Whoa,” he muttered aloud. “So, if I’m evil, I get actively punished? That seems kind of heavy-handed. I mean, what if someone wants to play a bad guy?”

  “They are free to,” Veronica’s voice spoke in his mind. “However, the system then encourages them to choose a Shadow-born race: Shadow-born are immune to the effects of Corruption but are subject to a similar feature called Redemption when in Exalted Lands. Thus, players are encouraged to role play their race more accurately.”

  “But, what if someone wants to be, say, a Good Drow Ranger?” Jeff protested. “Why punish them for that?”

  “Oh, this is not a punishment,” Veronica assured him. “It is a test. A player who chooses a race and succumbs completely to either Corruption or Redemption can gain significant powers and abilities. A Fallen Paladin, for example, is generally much more dangerous and potent than a standard Paladin, and a Redeemed Warlock has summoning abilities of which a normal Warlock could only dream. The path is difficult, especially as one nears Evolution, but the rewards for following the path to completion are proportionately great.”

  That…actually makes a lot of sense, Jeff realized. So, if I’m wanting to play a Knight who turns to evil and betrays my nation, I can do it, but I’m gonna face a lot of penalties along the way. If I see it through, though, I’ll become something like a supervillain. That’s kind of cool. And, if I’m just being a dick but not really working to be evil, I get penalized for it and have to do Quests to remove the debuffs. I don’t know if the AI’s allow PvP, but that system encourages duels and mutually agreed-upon combat rather than going around and ganking noobs.

  Jeff pushed the notifications to the side and rose to his feet, looking around more closely. Now that he knew these were supposed to be ruins, he could see the shattered remnants of what looked
like an abandoned city clinging to the tops of the blasted trees. Cracked and pitted branches the size of roads stretched between the boles, each of which supported several levels of structures. He guessed that, at one time, the city would have been beautiful, but now it was desolate. Wood that should have been polished so smoothly it glowed was pitted, cracked, and rotting. Where greenery and flowers should have provided shade and comfort, only stark branches and sickly fungus could be seen.

  Yeah, I’m gonna have to go up there, aren’t I? he guessed, and as he did, a notification popped up in his vision:

  Not a lot of information, he groused silently. Well, if he had to explore the ruins, he supposed he had best get started. The first step, as far as he could tell, was to get up the trees into the destroyed city in the first place. He wandered around the desiccated boles, his eyes searching for a set of stairs, an opening in a hollow tree, even a dangling rope he could climb, but nothing caught his eye. Despite being ruined, the city was enormous, and he guessed that walking the entirety of it, looking for an entrance would likely take days. Sadly, since he had neglected to bring food or water – he hadn’t needed it in the last forest, but this forest wouldn’t sustain an insect, much less an elf – he didn’t really have days to wander. Besides, even though he intellectually knew that he wouldn’t gain Corruption here,