Trapped in a Game Pt. 02

"Why are you repairing the trees, Lina?

She looked at me thoughtfully.

"Because the funny lady with the red hair said that it would help you save someone."

Hmm.

"Did she say anything else?"

"Uh-huh. She said that if you asked me any questions about her, that I should tell you to 'quit fucking around and do your job.'"

I cringed as Serra's words came cutely from the otherwise innocent young girl.

She truly did have a twisted sense of humor.

"Okay. Back to it I guess."

After eating the delicious meal that Kelly had cooked, I felt energetic and hopeful again.

But by the time evening came I was running out of magic power and nowhere near to mastering the task at hand.

"Ugh!" I groaned in frustration.

"Are you okay, mister? Maybe you should take a rest."

Her brow was wrinkled with concern, and it made me feel at ease a bit.

"I can't give up," I muttered to her.

"Oh... I see. Well then- give it your best!" she cheered me on a little, and I found her support surprisingly invigorating.

I took a deep breath, then tried to focus.

Every time I imagined the tree coming alive, it allowed me to cast mark.

The problem was that as I began to focus on slice through wood, the mark would fade.

Maintaining the image of the tree coming to life was the problem.

If I lost sight of the image for even a second, the mark would falter; and that was before I even set about casting slice.

I'd tried this from multiple angles, from trying to calculate the angles required before mark ended and hitting the tree with my own aim, to attempting to cast the spells as quickly as possible to get a hit off before mark was gone, but all had failed.

I'd managed a few glances through sheer luck, but no solid hits just yet.

"Well this looks disastrous," a sickeningly cheerful voice spoke just behind me and I jumped, before casting a disapproving glance at Serra.

Lina smiled cheerfully at her, and I became nervous; my time was almost up!

"Well then, let's see if you can still do it. I reckon you've got, what-? Ten minutes? -before I start calling little sis."

I gulped.

Hmm.

Kelly had been on my mind all day.

Maybe I could use that to my advantage?

I tried picturing her at the tree, but the thought of casting mark and hitting her with a tree wasn't the most enticing think to think of.

The mark faded and the tree fell, just to the left of the mark, with a loud *thud*.

Come to think of it, there was an obvious image that I was yet to try.

Her...

I suppressed the urge to retch as I conjured the image in my mind of Tracey, my ex-wife, standing at the tree, and sure enough, my mark quickly took the spot, but as I sliced the image still faded and I managed only a slight glance again.

"Ooh, close! But unfortunately not good enough. Well- it was fun while it lasted. You can stop wasting your time with this loser, little one," Serra called to a confused Lina as she began walking off.

No.

No, no no!

I took a deep breath.

One more shot!

I conjured the image of Tracey again, and tried to make the image more life-like.

What was the thing that pissed me off about her the most?

Of course, it was the way she treated Kelly:

'I've always hated her! You always put her before me. Always!' her image spoke the words to me from one of our many fights from the past.

Tracey knew how Kelly felt, didn't she?

I suddenly recalled Kelly's admission, that she had done things to piss Tracey off, and it occurred to me that my bitch of an ex-wife had probably done the same thing to her.

All those times she was around, and Kelly was silent and not herself.

Suddenly a new image appeared in my mind, of Tracey standing at the tree over an injured and dying Kelly.

You bitch!

I'll fucking kill you if you hurt her!

A deep red outline appeared around the image, and I screamed my conviction into my action.

"Arrrrgggghhh!"

I never took my eyes off of the image of her as I willed my slice into activation, and in a mad frenzy, I cut my way through tree after tree around the oak.

Serra turned around at the sound in time to see every tree in the area crashing down onto the oak, and I fell to my knees, tears falling from my eyes, as the oak still didn't budge.

I'm sorry, Kelly, I thought. I've failed you...

I remained slumped at the foot of the Oak, unable and unwilling to raise my head as feelings of failure and inadequacy incapacitated me, until the shadow of a figure darting around from behind me drew my eye.

"Necrotic touch," she muttered, and a darkness which seemed to deny the very light of the sun began to pour from her hand.

The roots at the base of the tree began to wither and writhe, and a series of cracking sounds came from the great big oak as the massive trunk relented, and the whole mess of trees came crashing to the ground.

"One tree- dead!" she muttered in triumph, before turning to my slumped form. "Well now- there might be a gamer inside of you after all," Serra muttered appreciatively.

Lina was looking on, a look of combined fear and worry in her eyes.

"Although..." Serra put a finger to her lips thoughtfully, as the darkness that surrounded her gave way to the light, "I wasn't really planning to leave you- I just wanted to see how hard you would try!"

She let out a shrill laughter, slapping her knees a few times.

"The look on your face right now is precious! You should see yourself. Hahahahaha!"

I reclined onto my back, and panted from exertion and frustration alike.

Couldn't you have left me with someone less... crazy, Kel?

I was pretty worn out, so we decided to just make camp by the clearing for the night.

Lina even helped us get set up before heading off to find her 'papa' just as it had begun to really get dark.

To my surprise however, Serra had Lina set up only one tent as I chopped some wood and prepared our dinner, and sure enough, as soon as we were finished eating, she walked over to the tent and beaconed for me to follow.

I entered awkwardly and uncertainly.

"Come on. I won't bite... unless you ask," she teased playfully, but it did little to set me at ease.

I began settling into a corner as far away from her as possible when she cleared her throat, forcing me look up.

"There's something we need to settle."

"Huh?"

"Your synergy skill- it doesn't quite work with me."

I pondered the situation.

Synergy was a spell which had differing effects when used on different people.

With Kelly, it allowed me to share my stamina with her, as well as access to my mark and expanded field of view.

Come to think of it, when Serra touched my shoulder it barely felt as if we'd connected at all, so I knew what she was talking about.

"Okay- does that affect our plans?"

"Unfortunately- yup. But there might be a way to fix it..." she was giving me a mischievous smile and I tried my best to suppress a shudder, as the suggestive look she was now shooting me gave me a clear indication of what she had in mind.

In my experience with video games, character interactions might be affected by certain random traits; from anything like one's favorite color to their compatibility according to their zodiac sign. So synergy might just be randomly more effective depending on these arbitrary combinations.

But my compatibility with Kelly suggested that it might be affected by the relationship between the two characters using it, making it was pretty plausible to think that the spell's effectiveness was a measure of how familiar our characters were.

This meant that my natural distrust of Serra would result in its effect being severely impacted.

I let out a long, tired, sigh.

"What's the deal- are you into guys or something?" she muttered teasingly.

I looked up at her defensively.

"What? No," I replied.

She giggled.

"Am I not attractive?" She asked.

"Your avatar, sure."

"Now don't go selling me short," she advanced as she spoke, removing her priest's garb, before cupping her sizeable breasts and adding with a wink: "you know... they're this big in real life too."

Without her priest's robes, Serra wore only a translucent skimpy nightgown that seemed to cling to her body in all the right places, revealing the luscious outline of her body.

While Kelly had designed her character with a body that was petite like her own frame, albeit with that delightfully enhanced bosom, Serra's design was outright curvy, with creamy brown skin to complement her belly-dancer like figure.

I gulped.

"What's the matter? I know you care a lot about your little sis, but what's the holdup? Are you married?"

I shook my head.

"Otherwise spoken for?"

"I- uh, something like that."

"Well- what she doesn't know won't hurt her... I won't tell," she whispered, with a conspiratorial smile. "Besides, this isn't real Josh. Think of it as a- 'mental exercise' so to speak."

"I still can't."

"Oh come on- it's not like I could actually be a guy or anything like that..."

This I knew was true as well- sure, you could design your character to fit whatever gender you imagined or identified with- but I knew from the medical reports that your character's biological makeup matched your own... so if it came down to sex, you'd know who was exactly what.

"Isn't there another way?"

She pouted.

"Probably... but wouldn't this be more fun? Think about it, Josh. Sex in here is just like a game... and I'm really really good at games."

It was a pretty convincing argument, for sure. But...

"I'm sorry- I can't."

She crawled over to me before pouncing dramatically, knocking me onto my back.

"What're you-?"

"Shh, we're bonding!"

"It feels like you're trying to do something else," I muttered, as her hands, tried to roam a bit about my body.

I resisted a bit before she relented:

"Fine fine," she muttered disappointedly, before settling down. "Can't blame a girl for trying, right?"

"You're still on top of me..."

"Yeah, well get used to it- physical contact might help out with the synergy problem, and you better play along, because if this doesn't work then we're doing the 'other thing'."

"What do you mean? We're sleeping like this?"

"Uh-huh!"

She was playful at first, squirming and shuffling a bit on top of me, but soon she was settling down.

"So- do we turn on our sleep functions?"

"Nope! That would kinda defeat the point of this- sleep mode kills your senses. The idea here is to start establishing a connection, and physical closeness doesn't accomplish anything if you don't feel anything."

She tossed and turned a bit, going quiet before eventually speaking again:

"You still up?"

"Uh-huh."

She sighed.

"Were you sad- when she died?"

"Huh?"

"Your friend."

"Oh- we'd only recently met... but yeah... I was."

She shifted a little on top of me.

"I don't think anyone would be sad if I died..."

"That's not true, I'm sure-"

"Not that I care anyway. I'm probably like, the least likely to die in this place," she added with a scoff, and I rolled my eyes at her.

She gave me a sharp little nudge, but I couldn't help but wonder if maybe she was a little more fearful than she was really letting on.

My mind went back to Kelly. She was so scared on the first night, but at least we had each other.

If Serra really had no one, maybe it was hard on her?

I tried to picture it and all I got was an image of her riding naked on a bear while throwing spears at goblins while laughing insanely and shouting 'this game fucking rocks!'

The image elicited a little chuckle, and Serra nudged me in protest, giving a little irritable whine.

I tried to fall asleep, but no matter what I did I couldn't quite get comfortable and relaxed enough to drift off, and even when I did eventually fall asleep I found myself frequently waking, sometimes to the disgruntled groans of my equally uncomfortable sleeping partner.

By the time morning came and our wake up alarms went off, we were both somewhat miserable, and Serra wore a pretty grumpy expression on her face.

"That has got to be the worst night of sleep I've ever had in my life!" she complained with a stretch.

It was such a curious thing; our virtual selves always looked so perfect at all times.

We didn't look disheveled when we woke up, and though I hadn't taken a bath since we first started playing, our bodies never smelled or produced any waste for that matter.

Yet the disgruntled look on Serra's face told me as plain as day that she slept about as miserably as I did even if her avatar looked as perky and fresh as ever.

We ate a light breakfast before heading out.

"So- what's the approach?" I asked.

"Our lich has been busy- raising dead all over the place. We'll need to clear out some camps before making our move."

"Gotcha."

We made the trip to the ruins without incident, before surveying the scene.

Just as she'd mentioned, undead were pretty much everywhere around the camps that we'd cleared out in our previous run.

"Should I scan?" I asked, and Serra shook her head.

"Nope- waste of magic, that spell. Here-"

She whispered something, and a white glow appeared momentarily about her, and soon a few small lizards came up to us.

"Talk to them," she said, nodding at them, "ask them to scout around and see what's up."

I did as she requested, and the lizards scurried off, and sure enough within ten minutes or so they returned, and revealed all that they had seen.

It was so surreal, hearing the lizards speak.

Their words were strange and echoey in my head, but they were clear enough.

I relayed the info to Serra, and she nodded:

"Good- that's enough."

I pat one on the head, and he nuzzled me affectionately before I dismissed them and they headed off.

I kinda like that one, I thought.

"Okay- lets go," she muttered, and I followed after her.

We got to the bottom of the valley, when Serra motioned to me to stop.

She pulled a little sack from her bag, and began to scatter some salts, leaves and other tidbits about herself in a circle, then drew a few lines with a paint like liquid, then putting her hands together, the circle began to glow white.

"Whoa- what is that?" I asked, and she arched an eyebrow at me disbelievingly.

"Are you seriously a tempest that doesn't know about rituals?" she asked.

I looked at her blankly and she sighed.

"I keep forgetting what a noob you are. Rituals draw spell energy from the components used to cast certain spells, instead of drawing power from the caster. They're handy, but take some time to set up."

She focused on setting up her ritual a bit, before adding:

"Okay. We're ready. This one is called silence; there won't be any sound within twenty feet of us. Use synergy and we should be unaffected though."

I nodded, drawing my rapier.

"When I hit with my hammer, you go for a weak spot- neck, anywhere exposed. We hit and run, don't stop to finish anyone off. Got it?"

I nodded again, then as she activated the final part of the sequence, I placed a hand on her shoulder and we were off.

As we moved, she shot me an annoyed glance as despite using synergy our sync was distinctly off, but these enemies were pretty weak; they were all animated versions of the goblins we'd slayed, apparently, and with Serra in the lead we'd dispatched them quickly enough.

We tore through two camps easily enough before tragedy struck; I had just pierced an undead goblin in the neck, and just as I spun around in pursuit of Serra, we collided, hard, and it threw me to the ground.

I was a little dazed, but as I tried to shake it off I noticed Serra staring wide eyed at me, her actions animated and panicked.

"Whats-" I started, but stopped short as the words appeared not to come out as I talked.

Silence spell, I thought. Guess the synergy had worn off.

I was still trying to get my bearings when Serra deactivated the spell, and all at once, I heard a loud huff from behind, and turned around in time to see a large creature almost upon me, at full charge.

I rolled just as it was upon me, a sharp extended tusk just missing me by mere inches as the galloping monstrosity went past me and further up the camp.

"Jesus Christ, what is that?" I muttered with my newfound voice.

"Skeletal steed," Serra muttered, "get up you need to draw him to something he can't charge past. There; that rock!"

I did as she ordered, but not before marking the steed and trying my best to transfer the mark.

She gave me a halfhearted thank you then took down a few undead around my position.

The steed took aim at me and charged again.

Jeez, maybe a level or two in rogue mightn't be so bad, I thought, as I once again made a clumsy dive to escape being skewered, but his charge this time wasn't as intense as he had to stop short to prevent a full on collision with the rock.

He turned on me, then hoofed at the ground with a snort, but before he had a chance to strike again, Serra came down with a leap from above the rock.

"Divine Smite," she muttered, and her hammer glowed, then exploded with light as the blow stuck, and the horse shattered into a mess of bones about us.

"Damn," I muttered appreciatively.

"Priest, remember? Undead is kind of my thing," she announced proudly, but we barely had time for the interlude as the undead around the camp began to swarm around.

"You have a plan for this I assume?"

"Of course- what kinda girl do you take me for? Use your pulse, and tell me how many there are."

"About forty-five."

"Okay just back up, and wait for my signal.

We backed up until we were flat against the huge rock, a sizeable horde upon us, before Serra grabbed the sigil that hung from her neck and raised it up, releasing a blinding flash of light.

"Now!" she yelled, and I followed her lead.

I thought we were making a run for it, but as she got somewhere near the center of the crowd she stopped short, then shot me a serious look that said 'do not fuck this up.'

"Hit them as they freeze, got it?" she asked, and I nodded.

She raised her hand and sword shaped lights began to appear before her.

Suspended animation, I thought. This was what she had used that day to save us from the lich, but instead of calling up all of the lights at once, she was bringing them out one by one, with deliberate delays.

I tried to remember if the spell was supposed be used like that, but as I noted the look of intense concentration on her face, I assumed that it was not.

The first light suspended a small group in front of us, and I struck.

As a spellcaster, it was pretty difficult for me to even land proper hits normally, but in their frozen state I noted that it was much much easier than ever.

Be quick, I told myself.

As group after group approached us, Serra suspended them and I tried my best to take them down.

By the time she used the last of the lights, we had thinned the crowd to a manageable amount, and as she rejoined the fight with her war hammer we quickly took them out.

I was panting from exhilaration, and even Serra seemed a little on edge.

I studied her uncertainly, and after taking a final deep breath, she turned on me angrily.

"What the fuck is your problem? Are you just that stupid or are you actually trying to get us fucking killed?!"

"I'm- sorry," I blinked a few times fully expecting her to continue her tirade on me, but instead her expression immediately shifted from anger to horror.

"Fuck me- I just wailed on you, didn't I?" she took a few steps back, then slumped to the floor right there amongst the mass of corpses and skeletons.