“We all make choices, but in the end… our choices make us.”
— Andrew Ryan, Bioshock
“I…” I stared at the HUD before me. But there was a man standing here. He must think I’m insane. I waved my hand at the HUD, the screen blinked out of existence. I looked back at Aeon. “So… You want to explain how the hell this is actually happening?!”
The wizard stroked his beard thoughtfully. “You mean your presence? Of course. I summoned you here, and you accepted! A summoner can do nothing without permission, of course. It’s all in the contract.”
“Right… the contract…” I thought back to the events that led me here. Those damn terms and conditions… “But I still don’t understand how you’re… real? I don’t know if real is the right word. Clearly, you are. But… am I hallucinating?”
Aeon laughed. “No, Crafter. You aren’t seeing things. What defines “real”? I, for one, know myself to be as real as “real” can be. As are you. Perhaps more.”
I frowned. If this was a Turing test, then this machine was going to pass. Unless I could conjure a question that was so deeply philosophical that no machine could possibly answer it. I coughed as the smoke from one of the candles entered my lungs. Logic wasn’t going to get me out of this, and even if it would, it couldn’t hurt to get some fresh air.
“Can– ahem, can we get out of this room?” It was starting to make me uncomfortable. The darkness, the smoke, the ball of fire in his hand.
With a smile, Aeon beckoned me through the door behind him. I followed the wizard through a similarly dark corridor. It wasn’t made of brick, or carved out of stone. It seemed like it was just a cave. Light filled the end of the tunnel.
“I apologize for the conditions of your summoning, lord Get_Rext. There are… reasons why your presence was received so poorly.” The old man smiled ruefully as we exited through the bright opening.
“Just Rex is fine. That’s my actual name,” I informed him. My head hurt.
“Very well, Just Rex. This way.”
We stepped out of the cave as I corrected him for the second time. The way he smiled, though, I think I had just missed the joke.
Whatever I was saying died in my mouth as I looked out at the world beyond. My jaw dropped. The most gorgeous viridian plains I have ever seen sprawled out before me, rolling over knolls and breaking off where a swift river cut through the vibrant sea of green. A few tall trees took root in the paradisaical land, each easily wide enough that fifty of me couldn’t wrap around the trunk, and so tall that they touched the clouds.
Mountains surrounded the bountiful valley in all directions but forward. There, far out in the distance, was an ocean, one which reflected the puffy white clouds filling the azure sky. The land was like a painting of heaven.
“I’m sure you’ll agree,” Aeon said, grinning through his beard, “that though your summoning room was not so grand, this view more than makes up for it, no?”
He was right. The world outside was beautiful. The air was clear and clean, and a stark contrast to the smokey atmosphere inside. Just inhaling seemed to refresh me.
And suddenly, I felt a drop of peace fall into the stormy sea of emotions inside me, felt it ripple out. The fists I hadn’t noticed were balled up tight loosened, my teeth stopped unconsciously grinding. A warm, safe calm filled me.
I took a deep breath, and then another. Aeon watched as I processed everything that was happening to me. My thoughts finally resolved into comprehensible sentences.
Okay… I thought, pacing across the lush field. So I’m in a new world. That much is clear. Whether by teleportation or… magic… the science isn’t really clear here. I shook my head. No, the “how” isn’t the most important factor right now. The “where” and “why” of it are a higher priority.
I turned to the old man. “Aeon… or, uh, Mister Aeon? Where am I?” I waved my hands dismissively. “I mean, I know you and the… floating text said I’m in Elytheria, Domain of the Dragons. But… where is that? Is this a Wizard of Oz slash Alice in Wonderland situation or is it something like Stargate? What’s the deal?”
Aeon blinked. “Such questions can be expected, of course. Though, I thought you had read the contract you signed.” He turned and pointed to the heavens. Far behind the tunnel we’d exited, a black orb floated far above, tainting the otherwise clear sky. It seemed to absorb all light, darkening the sky around it. It throbbed like an obsidian heart, pulses of dark energy surging outward occasionally. “The Stygian Sun. That is the deal.”
A dull thrum filled the air, black energy blasting out of the sphere and rushing across the sky.
“So, what?” I asked. “You want me to, what? Kill that thing?”
“In small words, yes,” the wizard replied. “But it is not so easy a foe to conquer. The ley lines have chosen you to save them. And you have accepted. And so you are here, in Elytheria.”
“The ley lines? I thought you summoned me?”
Aeon bobbed his head back and forth slowly, stroked his beard. “I did. But, I did not. It was a spell, true. But I only cast it. I did not direct it. The ley lines did. You must save them from the Stygian Sun.”
I sighed. Just my luck. I click on a link (a suspicious, totally-not-a-virus, link) and I not only lose my whole computer to it, I lose my whole world. My whole life.
And what about all of the people on Earth? What about my parents? Though I hadn’t seen them in person in a couple of years (moving out of the house across the state will do that to you), I still called them from time to time, and I was planning to visit them… eventually.
But aside from my rocky relationship with Mom and Dad, what about my coworkers? I had an essential role as a bug-fixer, one which would probably be replaced in days if this situation wasn’t rectified. I hadn’t taken PTO for this sudden leave of absence. Word of my disappearance would travel fast.
And what about Chris? My gaming buddy? The guy who’d been with me through it all, through hordes of robots, aliens, and who’d even joined me in attending a couple of conventions when he’d come to my neck of the woods to hang out.
My head began to hurt again, and my breaths came short and fast. My chest tightened. I dropped to the ground, gasping for air. How would I get home? How would I survive here?
A gentle hand placed itself on my shoulder, squeezed it softly. “Breathe deep, Rex. Breathe deeply. Slowly. Listen to my voice. Think not on your thoughts, but your breaths.” Aeon was crouching beside me, staring worriedly at me. His eyes were grey, kind.
Stolen novel; please report.
I slowed my breaths, focusing on them like he suggested, taking them deep and holding them for a moment before releasing.
“Good, Rex. Good. Now, I want you to look around. Observe three things, and tell them to me.”
I sniffed, wiping tears away from my eyes and looked around. My voice cracked as I spoke, “I see, um, I see the valley.”
“Good, and what else?”
“The mountains. And the sea.” I sniffed again, my breaths were ragged, but slowing.
Aeon smiled. “Well done, now, what three things can you hear?”
“Your voice,” I said. It seemed the most obvious answer. “The… the wind.”
“And what else?” the wizard asked.
I frowned, listening for something more. Was that the ocean I could hear? Or…
“I hear the grass moving in the wind. Does that count?”
The wizard’s smile widened. “Of course it counts, Rex. Now, wiggle your fingers.” I did as he asked. Then he asked me to wiggle my toes. And finally, my eyebrows.
“My eyebrows?” I asked.
“Like this, see?” Aeon’s brow moved, his bushy caterpillars dancing atop his face.
I laughed weakly. “I can’t do that,” I said. I’d never been able to raise an eyebrow, before. I’d tried.
“Well, then what else can you move?” he asked patiently.
I thought for a moment. “I can do this.” I flared my nostrils, opening them as wide as I could. It was a unique little skill of mine. And it freaked people out sometimes.
The old man broke into sudden laughter, his hood falling over his face. Swiftly, he recovered, raising a hand toward me and apologizing. “I’m sorry, Rex. That was rather unkind of me. But I simply hadn’t expected such a sight!”
I smiled, then got to my feet, my stance still a bit wobbly. Inhaling again, I felt the clean air of Elytheria fill me. It felt different— more real, somehow. Alive. And focusing on that helped me clear my head of the worry and the shock.
“Aeon,” I asked when I’d felt fully relaxed again. “Where did you learn to do that? To walk me through that anxiety attack?” I’d never had one before, but experiencing one now, I could understand how crippling the condition could be. If there were people that dealt with those regularly, they were so strong. I wasn’t sure I could handle another. And I definitely wouldn’t have been able to get through it without the wizard’s presence.
He twisted a hand as he returned to his feet, and a ball of water appeared in the air, wobbly, perhaps unstable. Raising a finger to it, he paused its motion, then flicked the same hand in a claw toward the ground. Two cups rose out of the ground, made of stone, and the ball of water poured into them.
He passed one to me, then took of sip of his own. “That grounding exercise is a mental technique for processing difficult emotions. I had a son, once, and he suffered from similar such attacks on his psyche regularly. The 3-3-3 rule was sent to me in a vision. It helped him…” His voice trailed off as he sipped from his cup, looking out over the rolling plains toward the ocean.
“Thank you,” I said after a time. Aeon just nodded, and we sat in silence for a bit, looking at the beautiful world in front of us.
It was then that I was reminded of the message that had been shown to me when I’d been summoned into that smokey ritual room. “Press start to begin” it had said. And I had swiped it away with… a hand gesture?
It felt instinctual to me. So I tried the opposite, making a motion as if I was opening the truck of my car. It was sort of like swiping up from the bottom of a touchscreen. Familiar, for sure. The message appeared before me again, the letters floating in the air, surrounded by a translucent box.
WELCOME, GET_REXT, TO THE DOMAIN OF DRAGONS: ELYTHERIA!
PREPARE TO CHOOSE YOUR BEGINNER CLASS!
PLEASE, PRESS START TO BEGIN.
“Prepare to choose your beginner class, eh?” I murmured. Then, with a shrug, I poked “Start”. What else was I supposed to do?
The screen vanished in a burst of purple sparks, and they shifted form, taking the shape of a recognizable interface before me. The visual effect was pretty hypnotic. Or maybe it was just so disorienting that I felt hypnotized. Like when you’re drunk and you look at crazy light shows outside your neighbor’s house during Christmas.
Maybe that example is a bit too specific, but… well, sue me, I guess. That analogy works for me. Anyway, the sparks finished shifting, changing color, and forming what I could see was clearly a gaming skill tree. One of an interesting design.
There were five green diamonds, a “0” centered in every one. Each branched off into three blue squares, and in between the diamonds were seven red circles, connected by lines and forming three triangles. But I had no idea what it meant.
What I did know was that I had to choose my first class. And the options seemed to be Tamer’s Temperament, Builder’s Brilliance, Diplomat’s Dignity, Explorer’s Endurance, and Fighter’s Force.
image [https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/y-uNInD28Rl20PxTD1xt7OXUhEr5iD1OnO3lFayj2_yMt-FWeGKxZq7BaKPu6kgy1ommOEgs1CA1zwLDNVXPLIk=w1280]
But before I could click anything, a new message appeared over the skill tree.
GET_REXT, PLEASE SELECT THE CLASS “BUILDER’S BRILLIANCE”.
The diamond labeled “Builder’s Brilliance” was surrounded in a golden glow, evidently prompting me to click on it. But as a test, I selected one more interesting to me, Tamer’s Temperament.
ERROR!
GET_REXT, PLEASE SELECT THE CLASS “BUILDER’S BRILLIANCE”.
So it was going to force me, then. Sighing, I played along, clicking into Builder’s Brilliance. The three blue squares gained names as they became the focus of my vision. Architect’s Lexicon, Geolocate, and Schema Logistics. Three skills in the class, I supposed.
The next prompt instructed me to alot one point to Architect’s Lexicon. I tried to click one of the other skills, but was once again met with an error.
Damn tutorials…
I clicked on Architect’s Lexicon, and read the description of the skill.
ARCHITECT’S LEXICON
UNLOCKS: AUTO STORE COLLECTED CONSTRUCTION MATERIALS.
EFFECT: INCREASED EFFICIENCY OF RESOURCE GATHERING FOR CONSTRUCTION MATERIALS.
ASSIGN A POINT? YES / NO
I clicked “Yes” and assigned the point to the skill. I was prompted for confirmation, and instructed to accept. Builder’s Brilliance gained a point alongside the skill, while the other two skill squares displayed “0”.
image [https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/g6YLHDpZa4eN-ddtpI1lRlhaUB0q2h6k9RIkrz9qzPICfsHAgbe5fN6Lx4RDQJRxJPpq-IX2g2BPBg0NuqgKNoA=w1280]
Interesting, I thought. So the class levels up as you put points into the class skills…
I clicked on Builder’s Brilliance, holding down on it like it was an app on my home screen. Another prompt appeared in my vision.
BUILDER’S BRILLIANCE (1)
FOR EACH POINT IN THE CLASS, STRUCTURES GAIN A 1% DURABILITY INCREASE.
FOR EVERY THREE POINTS IN THE CLASS, PRODUCTION STRUCTURES GAIN A 5% EFFICIENCY INCREASE.
CURRENT DURABILITY INCREASE: 1%
CURRENT EFFICIENCY INCREASE: 0%
I was about to click into the rest of the classes and read their effects and abilities, but Aeon broke my focus by speaking up. “What is that you’re doing there, Crafter?”
I swiped the interface away. There would be more time for it later. For a moment, I considered whether or not the old man would think I was crazy if I told him about the skill tree. But then again, he’d pulled me from another world with magic, so who was he to judge?
After considering how best to explain it all to someone who had never used Earth technology nor would be familiar with the terminology, I knocked back the remains of my cup of water and told him all about it.