Chapter 8

After waking up three times to feed Mie, I couldn’t sleep anymore. My back was aching. I had barely moved as I slept, trying to not startle Mie, who now snoozed against my chest. Greg was lying down curled up in a ball under his desk and broke the silence every so often with a large croaky snore. I stared up at the ceiling and checked a few readouts.

Players Remaining: 468,564

Life Credits: 4

I thought about the woman who had been slaughtered before my eyes last night. Then I thought about that happening half a million more times over the last nine hours. I couldn’t comprehend it. I felt for those who hadn’t made it. Fighting through the night, dying . . . over and over only to get smashed and sucked up into the void . . .

Mie let out a little sigh. She was so small. Her warmth reminded me about how easily that could have been us. We had been the lucky ones.

I saw a familiar profile-looking icon to my bottom right, selected it, and was awarded with an informational view of my Hearth character’s stats.

I noticed that it was only showing the stats that seemed to apply to me, which included things like agility, strength, constitution, endurance, and other physical based stats. There were so many, and it felt like they overlapped. I didn’t understand the difference, for example, between strength and toughness, or flexibility and agility. There was a little collapsed arrow, and I opened it. Here there were additional stats all listing zero. A few things caught my eye including intelligence, wisdom, and luck. It was vast, and I felt small and clueless. What do they all really mean? I knew some stuff about these stats, but it was way more expansive than anything I had ever played. I had so much to learn. I made a mental note to check the manual.

Not wanting to disturb Mie, I looked at my inventory and took stock. When I pulled it open . . . I could have sworn I saw a completely different set of items . . . but the next instant I was looking at my own items again. That was odd. I shook my head and focused on what I had. I had twenty-two waters, twenty-three loafs—I had scarfed one of those down in the middle of the night between feedings—a solid amount of silver remaining, and another weak health potion left. As I was analyzing my inventory, I noticed another tab I hadn’t seen before.

It was labeled ‘Soul Inventory.’

Curious, I selected it, and I saw a single item.

{Mie, Soul Seed}

Celestial Item, Unique Item

Soulbound

In use

It had no other description, which was irrationally irritating. I tried to move it to my character inventory by mentally clicking on it and dragging it but got an error about it being in use. Then I tried to pop it into my hand and got the exact same error.

As an experiment, I dragged a water from my characters inventory over to the soul inventory.

It popped into midair at our spawn point next to me and started falling. The container looked to be made of a very thin plastic . . . like a water balloon.

Oops.

The water container burst as it hit the floor next to Mie. Cold water splashed over her in a rush. Some hit my bare feet.

“WHAT THE BUTT?! Sam!” she yelled. Her baby arms and legs jerked wide in a startled motion.

“Ah! My bad!” I said. I grabbed a spare shirt and picked her up with it. The water seeped into the shirt. “That was one hundred percent my bad.”

“What. The. Hell,” she said, still looking confused.

I could feel the spike of panic slowly retracting from her gut as well as my own. It was odd, feeling that twice over.

“Why did you do that?” she asked.

“It was an accident. Here. I figured something out, I think.” I set her down, got up, and did it again. I dragged the unit of unfiltered water over to my soul inventory. This time ready to catch it.

I let go on the virtual water icon . . . and again, the water balloon appeared right where we spawned in . . . I tried to catch it . . . but missed.

It splashed everywhere . . . again.

I slowly looked down at Mie, who was soaked once more. “Okay, I uhh . . . know what this looks like,” I said.

She didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then she said, “You ass.”

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“I promise you I am not trolling right now. It was unintentional!” I performed the action one more time, this time judging correctly and catching the balloon sack. “See? We can bring items from our characters’ inventories into our Soul Space!”

She gave me a flat look. “Wow. So cool.”

The way she said it . . . made me feel nervous.

“My friend . . . you have no idea what you just started. This is officially war.”

I was about to reply when Greg jumped into the conversation with a satisfied sigh. “Ahhhhhh, the good old Soul Inventory shenanigans.”

“Yeah exactly, it—” I said, but Mie cut me off.

“Don’t talk.”

“I uhh—”

“Trust me. Don’t. Talk. Greg, what is a Soul Inventory?”

I had mistaken the icy feeling coming from her as an ambient temperature change. It was not. And now . . . it was turning into a simmering lake of fire. I . . . kept quiet.

“Ugh,” Greg said, looking exhausted. Once again, I couldn’t help but feel how unwilling he seemed to give us information. After another long exhale and closing his eyes, he said, “The main thing to understand is that your Soul Space and inventory are the same thing. You can access Hearth compatible items while you are in Hearth. Meaning . . . you can store items here for safe keeping so that if you die in Hearth, you wouldn’t lose anything that is here. The one caveat is there is a time delay for items. Thirty seconds to both send or retrieve while you are in Hearth.”

I looked at Mie. Her eyes were still narrowed at me. She was . . . soaked. I sopped some of the water up with another spare shirt.

The balloon-like water sacks did have a little stopper, so I poured myself some water into a new solo cup. As I did, another question formulated in my mind, and I was about to ask Greg when Tittles once again appeared on the TV. He looked a touch disheveled. Like he had just woken up.

He sighed, “Okay, Jeff. Fine. Okay okay okay. Just . . . go away.” He took a deep breath, then focused on the camera in front of him and with great effort said, “Hello again! Congratulations to all who have survived so far. As you have probably noticed, over two hundred thousand people have been . . . disposed. But you are still here! Well done! Now that the entry events are finally complete—we had a couple go longer than anticipated—I have a few things to cover. First, with the completion of the entry events, we will be picking the game mode for this instance of Hearth!”

He pulled out a small leather-looking cup. It looked like what you might find in a backgammon set. “The game mode will be . . .” He dropped two dice that looked to be ten-sided inside of the cup. Then he placed his hand over the opening, shook, then slammed the cup face down onto the desk in front of him, peering at the dice results. “Let’s see, that’s a nine and an eight. Ninety-eight, so . . . the mode will be . . .” His finger ran down a piece of paper next to him and paused near the bottom. “Last Party Standing! Ah shit.” He shook his head and let out a sad laugh. “I can confirm, that is indeed unfortunate.” His pity laugh, which felt a lot like he was trying to say, ‘wow, sucks to be you guys,’ trailed off. He cleared his throat and kept talking. “Somewhat self-explanatory, but Last Party Standing means that the last remaining party will be considered the winner of this instance. Any person who is part of the last remaining party will be considered the winner. Parties are limited to . . .” He rolled a single dice and looked at its result. “That’s a four, so . . . four players. And lastly Jeff . . . wants a quick turn around on this one . . . so, expect high experience gains and a high incidence of events. Your guides should know more there. I’ll be back with more details for what happens in phase two once the experience threshold has been reached.”

Phase . . . two? I didn’t even understand what phase one was yet. Something else caught my attention. They kept using technology terms like ‘instances,’ ‘servers,’ and ‘mechanics’ as if this was more virtual than anything else. I wasn’t sure if that was a way to explain how the universe worked or if there was something more there. I tabled the thought . . . Tittles. I didn’t want to miss any details.

“As for all the various rules of the realm, please refer to your guide and your Hearth Manual as you progress.” His eyes focused on something off camera, and he cocked his head slightly as if he was listening to someone. As he listened, his face turned a light shade of pink, then red, then blue. Abruptly he stood up. “YOU KNOW WHAT, JEFF—” The feed cut off.

“What . . . the hell? Who are these goons?” I asked Greg. I glanced down at my hands. They had crushed the red solo cup. The woman pleading over the TV flashed through my mind. I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.

Greg blew out another heavy sigh. “I dunno, they are different every time. I will say, this time around has been slightly less . . . professional than normal. But it’s always a different Game Master, and they never talk about anything that isn’t Hearth related.”

“What other . . . kinds of modes have you seen?”

Greg looked uncomfortable.

“What?” I asked.

He continued hesitantly, “I think almost all of them. Never have seen a fifty-seven though, oddly. But honestly . . . they are all basically the same. Some sort of fight to the last man or party. Sometimes it’s tournament style, sometimes it’s faction based, sometimes it’s free for all to the max. My tenants . . . don’t usually last long though.” He stared off past us as if he was lost in memories.

“Yeah, well, we’re not them. We need a plan,” I said, my rage just under the surface.

I wasn’t blind to my anger. Or what it meant. I was just typically one to shove it away; I understood its blinding potential. We need to think about this logically. We need to figure a way out of this. But my thoughts kept going in circles.

There was no way out, and despite my brave comment I couldn’t help but feel we didn’t have enough information. It felt like were being herded around like cattle. In other words, it felt like we were absolutely . . . and utterly . . . fucked. And it didn’t help that Greg only ever gave information if pressed.

“Sam,” Mie said quietly. I looked down at her. Her expression was soft as she spoke. “We’ll figure it out. We’re in this together, and as useless as Greg is—”

“He really is useless, isn’t he?” I said, the red haze retreating from the corners of my eyes.

“He is,” Mie said.

“I’m literally . . . right here,” Greg said, looking confused.

Mie continued, ignoring him, “As useless as he is . . . we have a head start. We have a party of two. Everyone else out there . . . has no one to trust. But have each other. We have a chance.”

Her eyes were glistening, and I could feel her stubborn determination, and more deeply, her fear. It felt horrible. Like a black venomous poison. Like she was nauseous. I bent down and picked her up, holding her close. The weight of her small fragile body cleared my mind, and I was glad to see she wasn’t still pissed at me. “You’re right,” I said, “but we still need a plan.”

Greg cut in. “I’m confused. Why are you guys shafting me?”

We ignored him.