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"Slice!" I yelled, slicing into the hammer's wooden handle, but the spell didn't cut through the thick bark.
As the giant steadied himself getting ready for another blow, I dashed behind the ruins of the destroyed house, before creating an illusion of myself and having it climb onto one of the house's broken pillars.
Please swing high, I thought to myself, but as I steadied myself for the impact, Serra appeared at my side. She placed a hand on the pillar, and muttered, "Harden," and as the hammed swung into the house, it rebounded off of the pillar, landing just within reach.
I didn't waste a second, dashing to it: "Disintegrate," I chanted, as I leapt toward the handle, aiming for the spot where I'd previously sliced, and to my delight, a loud cracking sound pierced the air, as the wood gave way and snapped, and the hammer broke off by the middle of the handle.
"Not bad," she muttered, before hitting the giant with another beam of light, and he discarded the broken fragment of the handle as he covered his face defensively, with a roar.
I prepared to charge the giant again when quite suddenly, an arrow came sailing through the air, striking the Giant's leg.
I gazed past the giant to see the second of the two players, a youthful looking girl, driving a stake into the ground, which was apparently tethered to the arrow that she had fired through the giant's leg.
The giant let out a great roar, as he tried to pull against the restraint to get at me and Serra, and I moved in, attacking before dancing out of the way of a retaliatory swing of the hand.
The floor still shook whenever he struck the ground hard, but Serra was firing beams of light in the wake of my attacks, disrupting his attempted strikes.
I had landed three or four hits when I noticed an arrow fly past the Giant, landing to Serra's right.
"You could land at least one, maybe?!" Serra yelled at the girl in annoyance, and I noticed that her hands were shaking as she notched another arrow nervously, before letting it fly, again missing the mark.
I landed another strike before an idea occurred to me:
"Mark prey," I muttered, then concentrated on relaying the effect to the girl.
Think, I told myself as I evaded another swipe and stuck my rapier into the giant's leg.
As I studied the young girl; her hands shaking, and wiping back tears, I suddenly had an image of Kelly conjured out of a distant forgotten memory:
We were at a carnival when we were kids, and she was intent on winning this stuffed animal from one of those rigged shooting game booths. As a gamer, I could easily hit my targets, but the requirements for the prize was that we both clear all of the targets on our respective sides. She'd missed a few shots, and some kids started taunting her, and I remembered; her hands were shaking, making her hits certain to miss before she'd even fired.
Even then; I wanted the entire world for her, didn't I?
As I remembered my desire back then to comfort her, I concentrated again on transferring my mark to the young girl and I felt a subtle, almost indistinct flutter as she glanced at me, before steadying her hand and taking aim.
The arrow sailed through the air, before striking the giant in the neck, and he roared.
"About time," Serra muttered, and we moved in now to strike at the giant in tandem, with arrows now consistently landing from the side.
We kept up the assault and it was only a matter of time before a final arrow sunk into his back and after taking a few shaky, delirious steps, he fell with a loud *thud!
I collapsed to the floor in an exhausted heap, and Serra plopped down next to me, studying me curiously.
"Don't ever do that again," she scolded me, the tone in her voice flat and serious.
I nodded, then looked over at the girl who had gone over to the younger boy, and was now hugging him, and sobbing openly.
Serra studied me, and I just looked away, trying to ignore the nostalgic twinge that the sight elicited.
"Josh-" Serra muttered as she tapped my shoulder, and I looked up in time to see three players approaching the children from just outside of the little village.
"What's up with them?" I asked, studying the scene intently.
"I dunno- but they give me the creeps. Look-"
As they approached the two younger players, the duo seemed to react to the men with outright fear.
"Let's go," I muttered, and Serra sighed as I glanced back at her, before following along.
"I don't want to get involved in this," she whispered at my back, but I called to the group anyway as we neared them.
"Hey- what's going on here-?"
"Just move along," a man in a hooded robe uttered coldly, as he stood between me and the other two members of the group.
I glanced around him to see the two kids casting a pleading look of fear in my direction.
"What do you want with them?" I asked, and the man responded by throwing back his sandy brown robe to reveal a large sword on his back:
"I won't ask again," he muttered, and Serra approached me, whispering at my side:
"I have a really bad feeling about this, Josh."
"Look guys- there's no need for this to escalate into anything," called one of the men from the back.
He wore a chainmail type of armor, and had a shield and sword notched to his back.
"We just need to retrieve a little 'something' from this here giant, and then we'll be on our way."
"Um-" the boy began, but the third member of the group, an older looking woman shot him a sharp glare, immediately silencing him.
I studied the scene, and Serra tugged at me again.
"Josh- I think the vibe I'm getting from them is PK feedback," she muttered, and I gulped a little as I kept my eyes trained on the three.
PK was short for player killing.
It was an interesting combat aspect of most games, but in a death game, a player killing was nothing short of murder.
We were in a safe zone though, so even if a fight broke out we weren't in any immediate danger.
But that still didn't mean that being hit wouldn't hurt.
The younger girl shot me one more pleading stare, but as I took a step towards the group, the man in the brown robe drew the large sword and swung it at me.
"Shade," I muttered, casting the spell without the ritual components, and Serra nodded as I grabbed her and tossed her past him and into the midst of the other two.
She crashed her hammer hard into the man in the chain shirt, before casting a protective spell:
"Spirit guardians" she muttered, summoning two ghastly apparitions.
"Firebolt," the woman spoke, firing a bolt of fire at Serra, but her guardian deflected the spell and the woman shrieked Serra used the opening the strike her in response.
I closed in on the man in front of me, avoiding his wild swings in the midst of the darkness that had now engulfed him and attacked with my rapier.
He deflected my rapier with his sword, but I was quick, attacking him repeatedly, and on the forth thrust I stuck the pointy end of the blade into his shoulder, and he cried out painfully as he went down.
Serra was keeping the other two at bay, and I quickly went to her side, but the woman raised her hands, muttering something I did not make out which immediately caused a huge chunk of stone to explode at our feet.
Serra leapt off of the ground, avoiding the shockwaves, but I was too late, and it knocked me off of my feet, disrupting my concentration and dissipating the darkness that had shrouded me.
The woman stood over me, conjuring up waves of flames in her hands when Serra suddenly struck her hard with her hammer:
"Smite, bitch," she muttered, as the woman fell to the floor writhing in pain.
The second man made a lunge for Serra with his longsword, but the spirits that she'd summoned now focused on him, deflecting the attack and pressing him.
He deflected two attacks from the spirit guardians with his shield, before I moved in and struck hard with my rapier, dropping him to the floor.
"We need to get out of here," Serra muttered, trying to get the children up, but they resisted.
"We need what the giant has," the girl muttered, and Serra tutted at her irritably.
"Then get it, and quick. They'll be back up as soon as the pain passes," she muttered.
I walked over to the children, when suddenly a terrible pain shot up my back.
"Argh," I cried out, looking helplessly at Serra before the pain exploded, seemingly through every nerve in my body.
Everything went white and I lost complete sense of my surroundings, with the mind numbing pain shooting through my body the only thing I was aware of.
I passed out, and when I woke up, Serra was standing over me, a frantic look on her face and tears streaking down her eyes.
"Josh, josh- please, stay with me! Heal," she muttered desperately, and I felt a soothing feeling rush through me.
I tried to move, and a wave of tumultuous pain shot through my body.
"Don't try to move, Josh- just stay with me, please! Heal," she muttered again, and the soothing feeling washed over me again.
I could barely see, but I heard her repeating it over and over again, until a new, strangely familiar voice joined her.
"Regenerate," it muttered, and I suddenly felt as if my body and mind were being pieced back into a whole from a shattered mass of fragments.
My vision came back slowly, and I was greeted by Serra, rubbing at her watery eyes, and the familiar yet strange face of a young girl.
"Lina?" I muttered, and the girl shook her head.
"My name is Rina, mister. Are you alright?" she asked.
I sat up, allowing Serra to wrap herself around me as I studied the little girl.
She looked every bit like Lina did, with some minor subtle differences, and I wondered if there was one of her in all of the little villages where the players started out.
Regenerate was a high level cleric spell, and she had been to cast it.
I immediately recalled Lina being able to regenerate the trees, and wondered if all of her apparitions had such incredible yet hidden latent powers.
"Ugh- what happened," I muttered, and Serra punched me in the shoulder.
"I told you not to fight them," she scolded me angrily, but I pulled her in for another hug and she immediately relented.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you like that," I muttered, and she hit me again.
As I took in my surroundings, I noticed that the kids from earlier were still around, though none of the other players we'd fought still were.
"What was that?" I asked, rubbing my head gingerly.
"Rend," Serra muttered glumly, and I tilted my head questioningly at her.
If my memory was correct, then rend was a pretty low level illusionist spell. So why did it almost kill me?
"It's a low level spell, but the spell temporarily rends a player's mind from their body. It's been known to forcefully disconnect players from the game, or cause mind wrenching pain as your brain tries to comprehend what's happening to your body," Serra explained. "Using it, even in a safe zone, is nothing short of attempted murder."
I stretched my muscles and realized that I had indeed barely lost any stamina, magic, or health apart from what I'd expended in the fight with the giant.
My mind still felt a bit woozy and dazed, but otherwise I felt fine.
What a cheap trick! I thought to myself.
I looked around, noticing again that the three were nowhere in sight.
"What happened to them?" I asked, and the girl behind Rina gave a little fearful shriek.
"They'll live," Serra muttered, as she shot a sharp look at the girl.
The girl gulped fearfully in response, and I figured that Serra must have unleashed a pretty good serving of hell on them.
I rubbed my head gingerly again.
"So what were they after?"
Serra looked to the girl behind us, and she gulped nervously before speaking.
"Hi. My name is Astrid, and this is my brother Lucas."
The boy gave a little bow, and I nodded at him.
"We're-"
There was a little pause, before the boy's voice came out eerily, after his lips were finished moving.
"You can't tell them, Astrid."
The words sounded almost robotic, and I felt a little shudder go down my spine.
"What was that?" I asked.
"His English isn't very good," Astrid muttered, before responding to her brother in a hushed whisper. "We have to tell them something. They went through a lot of trouble for us."
He's speaking another language, I thought to myself.
I did know there were mechanisms in place for players with different language backgrounds to interact.
Automated translation had come a long way in the past few years, and of course you'd expect an ambitious game of this magnitude to utilize those improvements.
Serra was tapping her feet impatiently, and I noticed that the kids seemed particularly fearful of her.
"Look kid, if we wanted to hurt you we would have done it by now. What's the deal?" Serra spat impatiently.
Astrid looked as if she wanted to say something, but her brother was adamant that she shouldn't.
She gulped, before finally turning to Rina, who still wore an expression of concern and confusion.
"This girl," Astrid muttered, "she's different from the rest of the NPCs."
I studied Rina as I pondered Astrid's words.
If Rina was anything like Lina then I surely understood what Astrid was saying.
I'd noticed myself on more than just a few occasions that her programming seemed much more lifelike than any of the generic villagers and shop keepers that I'd spoken to.
"What makes her different?" I asked, and Astrid glanced at Lucas before continuing:
"She's not just a scripted robot. The man who created this game lost his daughter when she was about her age," she motioned at Rina, who was fidgeting nervously now that everyone seemed to be focusing on her. "For a long time, he was trying to find ways to cope with her death. This girl's design was one of those ways."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"He found a way to replicate a portion of her consciousness, by coding it and uploading it into the program that you see before you."
"What a psychopath," Serra muttered blankly, and the girl looked away uncertainly.
"She has none of the memories of the person that she was- but her mannerisms, her quirks, even the way she speaks and thinks; they're unbelievably similar to the way she was before..." her words trailed off, and I noticed that Lucas seemed on the verge of tears.
"You knew her- the daughter of the creator of this game. Who are you?" Serra muttered as she advanced on the girl now, and Lucas stood protectively in front of her as she backed away from Serra fearfully.
"It's not our fault that this happened- how could we have known that dad would go this far?" the girl muttered, before putting a hand over her mouth.
"Your- dad? Is he the one who's doing this?" I asked, and she glanced at Lucas again before nodding. "Please- don't hurt us. We didn't know."
Suddenly I understood why they were so fearful of revealing their true identities, after all, there were some players in this game who would torture them on the spot just for the satisfaction.
"It's okay, we're not going to hurt you," I reassured them, and Serra backed off, laughing bitterly.
"Well this is fucking grand. Who is he?" she asked. "Is he playing too?"
Astrid shook her head.
"He's controlling things from behind the scenes, but I can't say who he is or he'll know we're here."
"Is it Gary Wright?" I asked, and she shook her head.
"Papa used Gary to develop the game's core mechanics, but he didn't allow him to work on anything else. Gary's team built the foundation for the game, then there was another team that worked on building the environments, designing the NPCs, the monsters, and a different one to develop the final protocols."
Rigid compartmentalization, I thought to myself.
That's how this happened without anyone knowing. Some of the coders probably didn't even know what the protocols they were designing were intended for.
I glanced back to the corpse of the hill giant.
"What did you need from the giant?" I asked.
"This," Astrid added as she held up a little envelope, which had the letters 'invitation' scrawled across the surface.
Serra glanced at it, then laughed again.
"So that's where he'll be?" she asked, and Astrid nodded before adding:
"Most likely he'll be playing as the count."
I shot Serra a confused look:
"That- is where we're headed, Josh," Serra muttered. "An invitation to count Ludwig von Lahnstein's court beyond the realms; it's being touted as the game's first unofficial event. All of the top players are gathering."
As I processed the information, I felt woozy again, and Serra steadied me as my knees buckled a bit.
"Let's rest," she offered, and I nodded, as she led me to the little clearing where we'd camped before.
She had the tent set up in no time, and led me in, before leaving me alone for a bit.
I fell asleep quickly, and when I woke up I found that my head was resting on her lap and she was stroking my hair soothingly.
"Did I die and go to heaven?" I asked, looking up at Serra with a wry smile.
"Just shut up and enjoy it," she shot back, before flicking my ear in annoyance.
"Where are the kids?" I asked, and she sighed.
"They left."
"What? Will they be okay?" I asked, trying to sit up, but Serra stopped me.
"Relax. They'll be fine. 'Little Lucas' has cheat codes," she muttered mockingly. "That's why those three were after them. Apparently when they came into the game, Lucas generated a toolbox; an item that lets him generate gold, and special items. But- he kind of fucked up and it ended up getting picked up by that hill giant. Without it they're no better than beginner characters, so they needed help to kill the giant to get it back. That's where those three came in."
"They were trying to use them to get access to the cheats?" I asked, and Serra nodded.
"Wait- if they were able to get in, does that mean they know how to get out?"
Serra shook her head.
"Nope. The game's protocols are air-tight. They used a specially created back door to get in- apparently the same one their dad used to get in after launching all of the protocols. But even he couldn't get out if he wanted to apparently."
"Cheats, huh."
"Yeah- pretty sure the game's script will pick up on it sooner or later, but it doesn't matter to them. They're just trying to get to their dad, and put a stop to this. Although... I did guilt them into giving me a certain something."
She was smiling coyly, and I rolled my eyes.
"Seriously? You're fine with cheating?" I asked, and she shrugged.
She opened up her interface and withdrew the item, which appeared in a ball of white light in her hand.
"Here," she muttered, as I sat up, studying a pair of boots that she was holding up. "Fleet feet," she announced. "This is what I was trying to buy for you before we left Valhalla," she added with a smile.
I accepted the gift with a smirk.
It was an item which improved my ability to evade attacks and maintain a solid footing when on the move.
"Cheater," I muttered, and she stuck a tongue out at me.
"Hey- we were just rewarded for doing our duty as fine, kind hearted, responsible adventurers," she added with mock regality, and I rolled my eyes as she continued to chat away about it.
"So- this count. What's the deal?" I asked, and Serra regarded the question thoughtfully.
"He seems to be assembling the game's top players, though nobody knows why. Some think the event might reward players with a ticket out of here- but whatever it's about its going to be an elite contest. I mean, the only way to get a legit invite is to kill a master vampire, which is one of the toughest creatures in this game. That's where we were headed next- but..." her voice trailed off, and I studied her curiously.
