“The Hills were a peaceful place once—not the loveliest village, but peaceful nonetheless. The plague was unexpected, impossible to deal with. The madness tore through us, turning neighbor against neighbor and sending some fleeing into the hills and woods. Will we ever be the same as we were?”

* from “Notes on the Plague,” by Winter Hawthorne.

I landed, or rather materialized—or something in between—on a rocky crag blanketed by suffering ashen grass and patches of silver lichen. The ground in front of me rose and fell like waves of stone, but eventually sloped down to a feeble excuse for a town, several ramshackle buildings, slanted and sideways, huddled together in a basis that looked as though it had been blasted into existence.

To my right, the crag went on and on into a bank of heavy, wet fog. Behind me, and wrapping all the way around the town, was a thick wood made up of sickly trees and twisted vegetation that seemed to be fighting to take over. Strong grey clouds hung in the sky, and a full silver moon pierced through the night, casting hard shadows across everything it touched.

I looked around, twisting the hilt of my axe in my right hand, my eyes open for other players, but it seemed like I was alone.

Where are you, Rey? I thought, remembering what she’d told me about party members supposedly spawning together. Maybe she hadn’t finished up her character creation. Or maybe it was just another one of Mizaguchi’s tricks designed to mess with players. Either way, she wasn’t with me.

The sound of voices rang out across the rugged bluff. It seemed like the logical place to go, so I shouldered my axe and started walking.

There were no obvious monsters or signs of life that I could see. It was desolate, like a place frozen in time after an unspeakable tragedy. As I grew closer to town, I saw a poor excuse for a path cutting a snake-like path through the crag. I stepped down to it, creating a cascade of pebbles and broken stone with the heel of my shoe.

I followed the old road, only wide enough for one, to a knife-slash crevice through a thick rise in the stone. As I passed through, I noticed several wooden signs hammered into the exposed rock with thick iron spikes:

TURN BACK, YOU POOR RETCHES!!

DEATH LIES BEYOND!

NO HOPE FOR YOU HERE!!!!

I heard a sound like water dripping and looked over to see a blood-like substance oozing out of small pores in the rock. Part of me wanted to reach out and touch it, but the gamer inside me was screaming, “No, you idiot! It’s poison or toxin!” I ignored it and pressed on.

Finally, I emerged from the pass. The road widened slightly and I came to a cracked wooden sign, mounted on a thick post that had been hammered into the ground.

The Weeping Hills.

“Guess this is my starter town,” I said softly as I walked down the slope of the basin to the haggard old huts. The sound of player voices grew louder as I passed a two story shack made from old grey siding and a roof missing more than half its tiles. “Nice place.”

The town was built around a square lined with cobblestone pavers just slightly larger than an average brick. Many of them poked up at odd angles as though they’d been torn up by a frost, and others were simply missing altogether.

A small group of players were clustered around a wrought iron lamppost that leaned precariously to one side. It glowed with a ghostly silver-purple light. And then I saw her.

Rey.

It didn’t look exactly like her, but in the same way that my character was basically an idealized version of my real life self, Rey’s was too.

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Her hair was longer, chestnut brown and wavy. She wore a long crimson dress like something out of Victorian times, that cinched tightly at the waist, with a long suede duster jacket that hung down past her knees. She looked completely badass—and also, though I found it hard to admit to myself having known her for so long, kind of hot.

“Rey!” I called out. She was talking to someone—a man wearing a close fitting pair of black pants with a white dress shirt and a black vest. He was holding a Bone of the Great One. She turned and waved excitedly.

“Clay!” As she raced over to me, I felt like I was finally getting my feet under me. Mizaguchi had done a flawless job so far creating a game that completely subverted my expectations, but seeing my friend in game for the first time had me feeling more confident than ever. I couldn’t wait to see her reaction when she saw what origin type I had chosen. Her information appeared as I held my gaze on her.

Adele—Level 1

“Or should I say, Adele?” I teased as she stopped in front of me.

“Hello, Rand,” she teased, completely botching a curtsey and almost toppling over. “Look at you with your big axe and your big gun!”

“Is that the Mortician’s Scalpel?” I asked, pointing to the blade in her hand, its razor cutting edge reflecting the pale moonlight.

“It sure is,” she grinned, brandishing it in front of her. “Ready to spill some blood?”

“What origin did you choose?” I asked her. “And where did you get those cool duds?”

“Feverish Carcass!” she exclaimed with a laugh. Rey defied all gamer-girl stereotypes, and rarely played healer classes in games that had them. It was one of the things I liked about her. “You?”

I grinned for a second before I answered. “Meat Sack.”

“You did not.”

“I did,” I chuckled, spinning my blunderbuss around my index finger. Rey just stared back blankly. “Oh, don’t act so surprised.”

“You’ve always got to do things the hard way, don’t you, Clay?”

I shrugged casually. “Might be hard for some people…but me?”

“Oh, shut up,” Rey scolded me, swatting me on the arm.

“Come on, where’d you get the clothes?” I asked her. “I’ve just got this crappy starter gear.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked, sounding confused. “They had a bunch in that closet thingy.”

“What closet thingy?”

“You know—the one with the weapons.”

“Huh?” I asked. “You mean behind The Blood Princess?”

“Yea!” she exclaimed, pointing to my gun and my axe. “Where you got those!”

“Gah,” I groaned, hanging my head. “You serious? I must have missed them somehow. These are just the things I started with.”

“You getting soft on me, Clay?” she asked, teasing me with a devilish wink. “Missing something that early on?” I frowned and twisted my lips. “You were just so excited to get your weapons that you missed out on your other gear! And you’re a Meat Sack? Man, you are gonna die fast!”

“We’ll see about that.”

“Hey, it’s the tagline of the game,” she shrugged. “Might as well get on with it.”

“Hey, Adele!” a voice called out. I looked up to see the man with the vest she’d been talking to walking over to us. “Who’s your friend?”

Jacob—Level 2

I was probably being stupid, but I immediately took a dislike to him. It wasn’t anything I could really articulate, but there was just a…way about him that put me off. That and the fact that he was higher level than me already and had linked up with Rey before I had…

“Jacob, this is…Rand,” she said, introducing us. “Rand, this is Jacob.”

“Pleased to meetcha,” Jacob replied, extending a hand. Not wanting to be rude, I shook it and nodded, but that was about it.

“So,” I said, turning to Rey. “Wanna get going? Get some levels?”

“You need to swear at the lamppost in town first,” she told me. “It’s where you respawn when you die.”

“Nah, he doesn’t have to,” Jacob interrupted. “This is his starter town, so he’ll respawn here automatically. It’s only when you want to change where you’re tied that you have to do that.”

The big grin on his face was irritating, but I forced a smile and started walking towards the woods. It seemed like the most obvious place to start leveling. Rey followed after me.

“You guys want a little company?” Jacob called after us. “It’s not easy in there!”

“We’re fine!” I called to him over my shoulder.

“Thanks though!” Rey added.

“All right! I’ll probably be here when you get back!”

“That guy’s annoying,” I said quietly to Rey as we walked towards the trees.

“He’s nice,” Rey scolded me.

“Girls always say that. He’s nice.”

“He is!” she protested. I was probably just being a dumb dude, but Rey was my friend—my only friend now, and I was feeling especially territorial.

“Fine,” I said, giving in as we approached the tree line. The wind cackled, slapping branches against one another, causing the shadows to flicker and swim like a school of crows. “Well, let’s get started.”