Byzantium Village.
Emulating the architecture of the historical city of Byzantium, the Village’s buildings had spherical rooves and tall, thin windows and Romanesque pillars and fake bricks made of stained wood to comply with local laws prohibiting incombustible structures.
On this fateful evening, Byzantium was home to a cosmopolitan scene of Villagers divided into various cliques.
Some were here for the crafts, some for the allure of blood-soaked chaos, some to slay monsters, and some just to hang out with the gang. Some were with family, some with lifelong friends, and some were with new friends who, having been smooshed together despite their differences like pieces of poorly-sorted garbage in a bin, were on the road to growing into the previous sort.
All, however, were unified by one thing: an invigorated, drunkmad energy, as vibrant as the purple-gold Village colours of their bandanas and surcoats.
Presently, a 7-foot-tall Crusader clad in gold marched through the gates, oblivious to the one shadowing him.
A smaller Crusader in her own miniature suit of gold sprinted up to him.
“Sir Justinian!" she cried.
“What's the cause for alarm, Lady Kittykat?”
“Sir Justinian, they awarded us an Achievement Pillar block! For our heroism against the vampire moths!”
Lady Kittykat pointed at a wooden block sitting at the base of the Village’s Achievement Pillar, carved with the names of participants in the defence against the moths and the subsequent rebuild.
Justinian’s face tightened. “Why does it sit still on the ground? Our achievements should be raised high. The world should know of our glory!”
“But Sir Justinian, it’s your turn at The Hero’s Climb!“
The phrase caused a couple Villagers to snap their heads towards the two Crusaders, their eyes locking on Justinian with zeal.
He rubbed the rectangular boxer’s chin he’d given his avatar.
Although team practice was scheduled soon, was that more important than this, the community?
He punched a golden fist into a golden palm. “ZAN! TI! UUUUUUUUM!”
Hearing his call to arms, a Fighter in the middle of a duel threw down his spear. “Zan-Ti-Um,” he whispered, “Zan-Ti-Um, Zan-Ti-Um...”
An Alchemist lowered the heat on her cauldron. “Zan-Ti-Um, Zan-Ti-Um...”
One by one, the Villagers joined the chant and abandoned their tasks to head over to the Achievement Pillar.
With Justinian continuing to wear his armour, the block was tied to his back, then a Constructionist enchanted it to reduce its weight.
One spectator prodded a mate. “Stew, do you think we’ll be lucky today?”
“Hope so, mate. The office’s been killing me; I need to unwind.”
“Lizardtongue, are we stocked up on the barrels?”
“Shh. Walker’s about to perform the roll.”
The crowd split apart for an Accompanist in a powdered wig wielding a twenty-sided die the size of a fish bowl.
“Sir Justinian,” he proclaimed in an officious tone, “as a Villager of Byzantium, your fate is entwined with ours! May Lady Luck bless us on this night!”
With a running start, he bowled the over-sized die.
Each bounce altered the crowd’s excitement, the intensity rising with lower numbers and falling with higher ones.
The final number, 12, placed them in an uncertain position between hope and doubt.
The Accompanist threw his arms up in holy reverence. “The Die of Fate has made its proclamation! Before The Hero accepts his challenge, he will hydrate with 12—not 11, not 13—12 beverages!”
A Cook hobbled over with a sloshing barrel and poured a glass of grey-coloured drink for the Crusader.
Justinian drained the glass with care, avoiding any spillage that would reset the counter.
"One drink down!” screamed the crowd in unison, “but that’s not enough! How many more will he chug to prove he’s tough? Eleven drinks! Eleven drinks? Eleven drinks!”
On and on, Justinian drank.
By the time he’d finished the twelve, he was already inebriated, a magical ingredient in the beer having accelerated its effect.
He swept his dilated pupils over the anxious crowd. “I see in your eyes a fear that would grip my heart, too. But by refusing to cower in the face of adversity, by uniting our forces under a common flag, by—“Almost knocked over by gravity, he grabbed the Achievement Pillar for support. “By...by...by all that stuff, we can defeat any challenge, including Him!”
With the big block on his back resembling a snail's shell, he spun around and began The Hero’s Climb.
“ZAN-TI-UM!” the crowd chanted. “ZAN-TI-UM! ZAN-TI-UM!! ZAN...”
As their voices boomed out into the sky, the neighbouring Villages took up shouting their own names to drown them out. This provoked their neighbours to chant. Village by Village, the racket travelled across The Slums.
In the background, Henry’d been studying the scene with his fist pressed to his mouth in a thoughtful pose.
The location and the absurd frat ritual reminded him of the poem ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ by William Butler Yeats, in which a voyage to the historical Byzantium, a bastion of European culture during the middle ages, was used as a metaphor for the agony of ageing. As one grew old and lost touch with the youth, one must retreat from the frivolousness of childhood and seek solace in the immortal arts.
That pretty much encapsulated his current feelings.
“An aged man is but a paltry thing,” he muttered a line to himself, “a tattered coat upon a stick.”
“UNLESS,” someone joining his side continued the stanza in a soft, autotuned voice, “soul clap its hands and sing, and LOUDER sing for EVERY bloody tatter in its mortal dress!”
The speaker was the Accompanist who’d rolled the die, his powdered wig having been stripped off to reveal a neat pompadour of grey and white hair.
Henry recognised the man from his notes as Graeme Walker, a 55-year-old Long-Term Villager from Perth, Australia. With a Civilian Arcaneworker for his Primary class, he’d maintained his Secondary Accompanist class at Level 20 in order to continue running the Village’s PVE players through dungeons.
He was Byzantium’s leader.
“Fortunately,” continued Walker, “you’ve braved the seas, and you’ve sailed to the holy city of Byzantium, a welcoming refuge for both the old and young of soul. I’m Walker, the Village Head.”
The man offered a hand, which, when Henry shook it, had a firm but warm grip.
“A pleasure to meet you. I’m a pal of Cathy’s.”
Henry wasn’t merely being polite.
The fact this Walker fellow was a member of the Slum Empire did not alone warrant detesting him too much. Ramiro’s murderous conspiracies were confined to an exclusive cabal of Kings and South American Dukes.
Also, it thrilled Henry to finally meet an Australian who could read. Tragically, his neighbours across the Tasman Sea had by 2050 regressed back to communicating via caveman grunts. These Byzantium Villagers, for example, most of them were Australians, the Village being in the ‘County of Western and Central Australia’. Silver Wolf? An Australian, as well. Enough said. Oh, the tears that he’d shed for his stunted, illiterate cousin nation.
Walker wrinkled his brow. “You're American?”
Henry cleared the fake accent out of his throat. “Sorry, mate, force of habit.”
“Well...no need for apologies...Byzantium is a judgement free zone.”
Clunk!
They turned abruptly at a clattering of metal.
Justinian, having struck the ground back first, was on top of the block, draped over it like a flimsy, golden strip of sashimi on rice, until the healing effect snapped his bones back into place.
The crowd rushed forward to lift him onto his feet. “One death dealt, but that won’t make us frown; you’ll need at least one more to keep us slum bastards down! Up, you bastard! Up, you bastard! Up!”
To the sound of the idiotic chorus, Justinian restarted his ascent.
Walker nudged an appalled Henry and winked. “No judgement, remember. Before your pals arrive, why don’t I treat you to the official tour?”
Where’d they’d been standing, in the centre of the Village around the Achievement Pillar, functioned as a general community area.
There, Walker said he could often be found advising the Village’s dungeon team before an expedition. Indeed, prior to Justinian’s disruptive entrance, sixty or so of them had been lounging on couches studying footage of a boss encounter.
The dungeon team actually outnumbered the arena team 3.5 to 1, most of the game's players preferring killing monsters over other people.
As for the arena players, they inhabited a corner of the Village with blood-stained dirt and stacks of spare construction materials for terrain.
In general, the team’s practice wouldn’t be conducted here but rather at a larger facility sponsored by all the Villages of the same Duchy.
Walker said Justinian would fill him in on PVP matters but gave a quick a warning that he don't shoot holes into the rest of the place with his spells.
Another corner served as a crafting area, where one could see food burning and arcane gizmos with their open side panels exposing their inner machinery. These were signs of the overtime the Village's craftsmen had been doing in prep for tomorrow’s Arts and Crafts festival.
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The tools and facilities on offer were fairly basic, the more advanced ones being scattered around the surrounding Villages, depending on the specialities of their Long-Term Villagers .
Henry had Walker skip the stables. Entering earlier, he’d passed them by, discovering that Donkey Bro’s stall had been empty. This fact hadn’t alarmed him, since he’d given the royal-monster-animal free rein to roam or leave forever, just as long as it didn't start eating people.
And the last area was Byzantium’s claim to fame.
Unlike the shacks and tents of other Villages, Byzantium's residential section was composed of elegant Byzantine-style houses with courtyard gardens tended by the Village’s Farmers.
In one house with its windows flung open, a man of eighty was frying for his wife some Purple-Winged Mackerel he’d fished from the Suchi harbour.
"Walker and friend," the husband called out, "feel free to pull up a chair!"
"A good catch, I take it, Ethan?" replied the Accompanist.
"The best! Although not quite enough to feed all the troops. Better get in before they're snatched up!"
Walker laughed. "Molly's staring daggers at me; we won't interrupt your date."
"I am not!"
"You kids try not to be late for the dungeon. It's all hands on deck, tonight."
As Walker and Henry continued on, the former noted that there were currently 43 houses for the Village's 105 new recruits and 30 Returnees. The latter were former recruits who'd come back temporarily from the Village's chapters in the slums of other Kanaru cities.
Responsible for all this beauty was Citizen Higgs, Byzantium’s third Long-Term Villager and a Constructionist obsessed with ancient architecture. In a Sisyphean undertaking, Higgs lead the Villagers in dismantling the whole place prior to each monthly Cleansing, carting the materials away to avoid the burndown, and then bringing them back to be reused for the next batch of newbies.
Only The Slums could breed such pointless tenacity.
“And this one's in your stewardship for now,” said Walker, stopping in front of a house with a placard inscribed with the usernames of Henry’s friends. “I'll tell Higgs to have yours added.”
“Don't worry. I’ve got the Artist levels to do it myself.”
“Oh? If that’s the case, you should consider submitting something tomorrow. It doesn’t have to be spectacular. There’s reward alone in the divine act of creation.”
“I’m not interested in that, either.”
“Fair enough.” Walker was visibly rankled by the decisive refusal. Throughout the tour, he’d been presenting the recruit with a bevy of options for assimilating into Village life, but every single one had been shut down. Walker wasn’t too off-put, however, for the months managing the Village had taught him that the Slums had a way of opening cracks in the sturdiest of defences.
Henry tested the front door – unlocked.
The interior was lavishly decorated, with walls draped with colourful Ibanmothe tapestries and floors carpeted with Ibanmothe rugs. These would be the doing of Anderson.
Various knick-knacks told of his friends’ adventures over the prior two weeks: monster skulls, award ribbons, precious gems, a painting of the four posed before a dead Three-Eyed Rhinolion, and more.
“Guards patrol during our inactive hours,” said Walker, “but, for items of extreme value, I still recommend The Empire’s storage catchments.”
Henry’s lips curled into a wicked smile. He resisted the temptation to ask if the man was referring to the catchments that’d been raided and torched.
“So that’s our humble Village! Any questions?”
“None. Thanks for showing me about."
“Then let’s get you signed up!”
They made their way over to a scale replica of the Hagia Sophia, the Village’s office building.
Walker briefed him on the housekeeping rules. Byzantium abided by a strict Lawful Good ethos, so anyone with a red name was barred from entry until they’d atoned to remove it. Physical romance stayed behind locked doors. Business ventures conducted within The Slums were taxed at 8% of gross revenue, a bit more than the average of other Villages in order to maintain the extravagant architecture.
He also outlined the Slum Point system, how points were awarded, where to cash them in for prizes, and the various Leaderboards by which Villagers were ranked, from the individual level up to their ‘Kingdoms’. Henry zoned out during that part.
Finishing off, Henry was signed into The Empire's guild registry as a guest member, full membership being restricted due to him already having a guild.
"What guild?"
"Flaming Sun."
Walker gave him the pat one gives a dog with no hind legs. "That's the spirit! Believe it, and it'll come true."
With Henry's limited permissions, he could access timetables for upcoming events and classes presented by Long-Term Villagers, a detailed map of The Slums, and Byzantium’s chatroom.
-Graeme Walker: Please give our newest member a loud Byzantium greeting!
–Henry Flower: Hi.
-22qb2022: ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US
-frosTyclover: ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US
–Danontherightwing: ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US
–cathysong31: Good evening, Henry! We’ll be on soon!
-Citizen Higgs: ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US
-22qb2022: Come out quick, cuz, or you’ll miss the free booze.
He banished the chat display to an unnoticeable corner of his vision.
Walker, meanwhile, was frowning gravely. “Your username sounds awfully familiar.”
“Does it?”
Henry thought for a moment before answering further.
Few knew his default username, although it had been leaked to enemy guilds after an inner circle member defected. The news had never spread too far, though, since his enemies feared the backlash if it became public knowledge.
Thus, to recognise his username, Walker was either a high-level enemy spy, a plant installed by Alex to irritate him, or...
“Have you read Ulysses?”
“By the great James Joyce? Half of it.” Walker scratched the back of his neck with a boyish self-reproach. “OK, a third.”
“That should be enough. It’s the pen name the protagonist, Leopold Bloom, uses to sign his dirty letters.”
“Ah, that’s right! Leopold Bloom, what a miserable wretch he was! And what it says about the one who...” He trailed off.
Henry laughed. “The connection isn’t that deep. The first part is my real name, and that’s the book I was reading when I created my character.”
Walker wiggled a finger in refutation. “No connection is superficial, Mr Flower.”
“That’s debatable.”
“A war of words, I anticipate it! For now, though, welcome aboard!”
The two shook hands again.
In recognition of Henry’s official admission into the cult, he was issued his own purple-gold armband, which he tied discreetly around his wrist.
Walker finished off by informing him of a change to the evening's schedule. The second half, taking place after the arena practice and usually reserved for community events, had been switched to all the members with Martial classes, including Justinian's crew, participating in Empire-wide speed-trials for a new Tier-0-3/0-4 dungeon complex. There would be about 2500 other Villages from across 3 Kingdoms all contending for a bounteous Slum Point booty.
The arrangement suited Henry, since he would be able to farm out the last of his levels.
He was then dismissed with a stern order to mingle with the others.
Upon his return to the community area, he was met with the baffling scene's finale.
Justinian swayed triumphantly on top of his now-attached Achievement Pillar block, while the crowd below shouted “Leap of faith!” over and over again.
Instilled with liquid courage, the Crusader jumped off the Pillar and tucked his knees into his stomach.
The further he fell, the more speed he gained.
An instant before he should have gone splat, dazzling lights crisscrossed around his body from the Village’s healers firing their shields.
With three shields hitting the mark, all the force of the impact was dissipated, Justinian's armoured bottom touching the ground with a soft tink, followed by him rolling over like an unbalanced egg.
“Lads!” screamed a spectator in a fake Irish accent. “How many shields struck The Hero?”
“I counted five shields before he hit his arse,” replied another. “Five well-earned beers for all the lads!”
The rest of the rabble echoed. "FIVE WELL-EARNED BEERS FOR ALL THE LADS! BRING ‘EM OUT! BRING ‘EM OUT! BRING ‘EM OUT!"
Suddenly, there were beer barrels, and the Villagers were guzzling down the intoxicating swill without a care to stay below the inflated quota.
Even the little Village children were liberally hitting the sauce.
Henry squinted at the debauchery with lots of judgement.
No ban could stop him judging.
If this was ‘Lawful Good’, then what did the Villages with worse alignments look like?
Moreover, with team practice set to begin in twenty in-game minutes, were they still planning to handle swords and spells?
At the moment, an average-looking Arcanist without other distinguishing features strolled out of the residential section, went to a barrel, and topped up a mug.
“Hey, Brian,” said Henry approaching his friend, before recalling the reason he’d hadn’t logged in earlier. “Have fun hang-gliding with the DJ?”
“No,” Brian replied in a deadpan. “It was awful.”
“Why? Caught in a wayward wind?”
“The Hang-gliding was a fabrication to cover the real story, which ended up being awful.”
“The real story?”
“An R-18 tale, too steamy for young ears.”
“Omit the illicit details.”
Brian took a very standard sip of his beer. “At dinner, I told you I was learning the didgeridoo, the king of instruments.”
Henry’d thought this was a tall tale until his friend had produced pictures. Apparently, one of Cathy’s group-bonding activities at university had been to start a band.
“Sure.”
“I held a private ‘Doo demonstration doing renditions of moostestep-jazz fusion hits for the other festival attendees - not a large audience, 600 or so.” Another standard sip. “After an astonishing performance, I was inundated by napkins from women who were impressed by my musicianship.”
“Scribbled with steamy notes?”
"R-18 notes. So I spent today going from tent to tent, making love to many beautiful women, hundreds of them, models, lingerie models – hundreds of beautiful lingerie models. The least gorgeous? Prettiest woman you've ever laid your eyes on."
“What makes that awful?”
“After our intense lovemaking, many of them begged me, ‘Brian, won’t you be my boyfriend?’ to which I had to reply, ‘I’m sorry, ladies, but I’ve already got a wife, and her name starts with a D.’”
“D for ‘Doo.”
Brian nodded seriously. “D for didgeridoo. So how was your day?”
Henry laughed. “Long!”
“Brain Flea, new guy, taste this!” A Village Cook came speed-walking over with bowls of a hot, orange sludge. “It’s my entry for tomorrow’s competition.”
Henry, trying to be sociable, sampled a spoonful, before spitting it back out one breath after it passed his lips.
“What’s your honest opinion?” asked the Cook.
“You really want it?”
“Yeah!”
It was time for Henry to become an honest person, to hold nothing back.
“My taste buds came to me in private and accused you of touching them inappropriately. It’s as though you’ve boiled rancid seagull in a mix of garlic butter and carbonated orange juice, then sprinkled it with dirt to make the texture extra unbearable. For having the audacity to create this abomination, you should have your ladle violently stripped away from your beaten corpse.”
Brian to his side poured out the bowl’s contents.
The Cook tore off his chef hat. “Holy smokes? You guessed the recipe perfectly! Do you reckon I’ll win The I Can’t Believe It’s Not Poison event?”
Henry released a sigh of disgust. With the game lacking a vomit function, the rotten concoction would stew in his belly for the next few minutes.
Brian handed him a mug of beer, which he downed without hesitation.
As the alcohol plus whatever extra they’d spiked it with coursed through his veins and caused his eyes to dilate and his thumbs to turn blue, he immediately discovered that being a bit tipsy made hanging out with these noobs in this starting zone slightly more bearable.
Was this the secret?
Was this why they were always drinking?
He reached for a second glass, then a third, then a fourth...
As they say, when in Rome...
Drunk, the two joined the others to socialise, undergoing a series of repetitive introductions with one group of blitzed Australians after the next. They all parroted the same obnoxious jokes about his country’s national animal being a flightless bird and his supposed desire to bed a sheep.
In the conversations around him, he caught the occasional snippet relating to his day’s exploits, there being mentions of the vampire moths, the wolf invasion, his over-sized stadium, the suspicious movements of the Ibanpita, and the inexplicable disappearance of the third moon.
“It’s perfectly explained,” Henry protested. “The Company published a notification that Karnon painted over it for a silly prank. End of story.”
He drunkenly slammed his beer mug on the table, spilling the liquid all over his hand.
Gods, he hated that guy. Fine, he'll admit it, he had been trying to figure out a way to assassinate him with the donkey's blackhole bite, but—
Whatever, it worked out in the end, though, didn't it? A nice non-violent resolution: centuries of changing soiled tornado diapers. Hah.
Brian, on the verge of slipping from his chair, woke up. “Whose stupid car’s gone?”
Further down the table, a glass shattered in a golden fist.
“Deafen your ears to their propaganda! Their word is to be untrusted so long as He sits at their malevolent helm!”
Henry summoned a coin and pinged it off the pauldron of the mini-Crusader. "Lady Kittykat, you seem to be closest with that guy. Who’s He? Is it..." He pointed at himself.
The kid fumbled her drunken fingers around for the coin until remembering she could transfer it to her Spatial Bracelet. “No clue, bro. Never heard anyone bother to ask.”
“Sir Justinian!”
“What is it, Sir Henry?” The Crusader collapsed in a pile with his mouth agape.
“Sir Justinian!”
“Are the noble citizens calling for help?”
“Sir Justinian, who’s this dude you keep grumbling about?! Is it—”
“HENRY!” A short, chubby Miracleworker ripped the glass from his grip. “What if the police catch you?!”
He sneered at his neurotic friend. “Take one of your own chill pills, Cathy. It’s legal in the game world. And wouldn’t it be kind of ridiculous if it weren’t? On the way here, I shapeshifted into a gorilla and tore out some dude’s intestines. That kind of stuff's a billion times more scarring than drugs or nudity. Terrible game design.”
“You promised to use the violence filter!”
“I lied. A man must bear full witness to his enemy’s demise; he must feel every wound as though it’s being inflicted upon himself, every slice of his throat, every evisceration of his guts. Without enduring that, how can he possibly justify ending a life?”
Cathy gasped. “A single day of uncensored violence has turned you into a psychopath! Re-enable the filter!”
“No. Only cowards use filters.”
Henry, amidst a flurry of little fat fists pounding against his chest, directed a salute to a Cutthroat and Accompanist behind Cathy.
“H.,” said Anderson, giving a regal bow that matched his purple-gold robes.
Abigail smiled cooly. “You’re hammered!”
“I am hammered. You could also say I’m canned, stewed, pickled, soused, guttered, crocked—”
“AGGHHHH!” Justinian, leaping back to his feet, unleashed a roar that pulled everyone’s attention. “Citizens of Byzantium, arise and assemble! Every minute we tarry is another minion recruited under His despicable command! Boil up The Sobriety Soup! The sands of the arena beckon!”