"He's afraid to taste something different," Apella scoffed.
"Perhaps," Jade agreed, as he handed her the mirror. At her confused look he explained, "I need my hands free to get the ship ready to fly again."
Appella nodded as Hisui's hands began to move with dwarven accuracy. Gem fragments and dust were delicately removed from clasps on the little airship. A decidedly frigid breeze ruffled his thick dwarven hair, as though the air were echoing the Augusmin's warning.
Apella shivered. Her eyes widened a little as she gazed out at the sea of gently rolling movement and shining leaves beyond the root that held the little ship above the traveling Augusmin. "The crowd is thinning," she blurted.
Jade paused and scanned the brightly flowing crowd. After a moment he agreed, "It is! Though I still can't see the end of them."
"We landed during rush hour or something," Apella suggested laughingly.
Jade turned the other way and focused on the line of darkness that was slowly encroaching upon the far branches of the enormous tree that stretched above the moon's atmosphere. Jade squinted Hisui's eyes. Was the darkness an absence of light, or the claw of a Dragon.
What kind of twisted story had been written here, he wondered. The Augusmin seemed content to spend their lives tramping their globe in service to a shining tree with its roots buried in ice, if their tale was accurate. What kind of prize would immortality even be for such a people.
Jade was utterly certain that Lin Hao would never have created this kind of story.
Jade knew that Lin Hao and Danika Belova had created the foundation of this story years ago. Jade was utterly certain that Jade wasn't listening as he sent the "memory" data again.
The function finally successfully connected, and their exchanged memories updated. Jade's Hisui gazed into the light beyond his small airship in blind confusion.
A moment ago Jade had been certain that Lin Hao would never have created this kind of story, but the synchronized orbital system memories argued that Lin Hao and Danika Belova were the people who had created the new Living Jade Empire Moon server foundation years before they had actually acquired a server to expand the game into. Jade even remembered offering his own server to them.
"The fairies should be making cheese shouldn't they?" Jade asked.
"What are you talking about? What fairies should be making cheese? Are the rabbit people fairies?" Appella questioned in obvious confusion.
"I might have some cheese left, should I have offered that instead?" Sky asked from the mirror in Apella's hands.
Apella glared at Hisui when he didn't respond to either of them.
The dwarf stopped moving again, with a blank expression that suggested maybe the character's player had disconnected.
--
Eric didn't know how concerned he should be about that. They still had most of two real days to get their characters moving before they would freeze, if he understood the situation.
This was weird.
Anyone else might ignore Eric's questions or comments, but not Jade. Anyone else might disconnect from the game for a moment to grab a drink or something.
Eric wondered how he had never noticed that Jade never stopped to get anything, or even use the restroom while they played. Maybe part of why he had been so shocked…
Shocked was a safe, simple word to describe the indescribable tsunami of emotions that had torn through the fabric of Eric's reality. Of what had been revealed to be a fabricated reality. A ridiculously reliable reality. How could he ever regret that Jade hadn't actually died in front of his eyes, and yet…
Perhaps part of the reason that the accidental revelation of Jade's non-human existence had hit so hard, had been Eric's realization that there HAD been clues all along, but Eric himself had been blind to them. Had wanted to be blind to them. He still wanted to be blind to it all.
Apella's glare at Hisui did not decrease in intensity, but Eric's irritation shifted to himself. False pride. False acceptance. False appreciation of his friend's differences. He hadn't been worthy of what he'd dreamed of anyway. That wasn't Jade's fault.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Sky's beautiful elfin face, displayed in the mirror shaped screen that Apella held, laughed at the rabbity beings that surrounded her.
Skyheart Snowsong, like Hisui, had never ignored Appella. Never dismissed her, even after learning she was played by a guy.
She had seemingly appeared out of nowhere, this woman who had suddenly befriended Jade so easily. Who really made friends with their convenience store customers? And yet… The two of them were beautiful together in such a strange way. The tall slender elf and the robust hairy dwarf.
Sky was already a friend's friend who made him feel like they'd been friends themselves for far longer than they'd known each other. She always seemed to know more than she should. She was nothing like any other woman in his life. If only it had been her.
It would have been easier for Eric to accept a revelation that Skyheart Snowsong was a machine instead.
Instead, Jade had warned Eric gently that Sky was actually an old woman. He had warned his friend as carefully as though he were afraid they might accidentally fall in love.
Eric scoffed at himself again in hindsight. Jade obviously had no clue. Jade was as naive as a child. Such a clueless computer. Artificial intelligence, artificial body. A walking talking space station.
That utterly impossible fact…
--
"…when we complete our service, we can travel wherever we please," an Augusmin assured Sky.
Hisui's expression finally changed and his hands replaced the gem fragment that he had removed, and then combined with another, into one of the settings that rimmed the small vessel.
"There are so many other legends of things like the moon being made of cheese, and fairies on the moon, that the head programmer and the wildest designer used to talk about having fairies making cheeses the way legendary moon rabbits make medicines," Jade finally explained. "I don't think offering the Augusmin cheese will go better than the apple though."
Apella swallowed hard before muttering, "The more you know… then are these fruits they are helping the tree ripen, actually legendary medicines?"
"The tree's fruit might just be a fruit of immortality, but it might also be a divine fruit that can also heal someone from anything? I mean, that would be a far better kind of immortality," Jade pointed out as Hisui's hands appeared to pull a freshly cut gem out of the air, as he pulled it out of his inventory.
Apella's confusion visibly increased. "Then don't we WANT to take it if we get a chance? Everyone's going to want that. It could help you fulfill a thousand quests!" she hissed back with her hands clamped around the edges of the mirror in a muffling fashion.
"Unless you want to join the Augusmin in their 70 year quests, I'm sure your character would be cursed. It would kind of be a curse anyway, because immortals can never reincarnate," Jade warned as he moved his hands.
Apella's expression turned conflicted. "70 years? How did you come up with that?"
"I'm not certain of that number," Jade warned. "But if it's four game days a day, and it takes a thousand tastes and they only get a taste once every hundred days…"
Muffled conversational sounds vibrated Apella's hands, and she loosened her grip to hear Sky complain, "…missing so many delicious foods. All this food nonsense is making me so hungry that I'm pretty sure I'm actually hungry. Hisui? You still there? What do we need to do to complete our first quest here?"
Jade felt stupidly slow. Surely someone else had successfully landed and made the connection by now. But there hadn't been any server wide announcements that he had noticed.
Jade pulled the collapsed ring of the expensive temporary portal out of his inventory. It didn't matter if the connection lasted, it just needed to be made once to open up the access. "Grab some rocks and sand or something, it just has to be material that's from the Moon," he instructed Apella.
Apella rolled her eyes, but promptly scrambled down the slope of the enormous root to grab some moon rock.
Jade pulled the bag open and spread the circle out beside the ship. When the edge finally snapped into place, nothing happened. Hisui's hands moved instinctively, and his dwarven eyes showed Jade the engraved surfaces in exquisite detail. They seemed perfect. They still contained the power needed.
Apella climbed back up, carrying the mirror she hadn't left behind in her teeth, and handed Jade both a bag full of shining sand and three fist sized rocks that seemed to glow like lightbulbs.
"It's not working," Jade finally admitted with distress.
Apella frowned. She gestured in the air in a familiar fashion and the faint glimmer of another player's game menus appeared before her. A moment later she protested, "We can't even send messages?!"
Both Harmony and Jade tried to send a message as well, before Jade finally pulled the coin the Jade Emperor had given him from Hisui's inventory. The messenger animals were all unavailable.
"What is that?" Apella asked.
"I think maybe I just need to make a call," Jade replied without really explaining.
He glanced at Apella who was glaring at him as though he were speaking nonsense. He couldn't argue, but he could activate the summoning. Maybe it wouldn't work. Maybe they ought to have accepted one of the big guild quests, or carried a high leveled wizard with them.
"Finally," an all too familiar voice grumbled. Memories that didn't belong to Jade, but that had always belonged to Jade flickered before settling into place again.
The Jade Emperor looked around with interest.