The night is long: I toss under my makeshift goblinskin blankets—I see the glimmer of beady rodent eyes in the faint virtual moonlight toward the alley exit—I hear the cat’s pounce, the consequent squeal—I hear loud footsteps race up the King’s Road outside that cause me to sit up alert—but these continue up the road past our alleyway. The wind moans.
I fall back asleep and into a strange, half-lucid dream:
I’m in a chamber filled with rows and rows of bodies suspended upright in a murky space of crimson and magenta waves and shadows stratified like the colors on the surface of Jupiter and thrashing, mixing ceaselessly in the interminable distance. The bodies are inanimate mannequins, and although I manage this moment of consciousness, my own unfamiliar limbs don’t yield to my commands—if an urge to squirm can be called a command. I cannot remember exactly who I am, where I’ve come from, what it is I feel I’ve lost, but a deep and uncontainable wellspring of grief builds in my breast, like some of that distant plasma is about to ooze out in one exhalation through my eyes and nose and mouth, but before the feeling can be voiced or vomited I am back awake in the alley, I’m Phil, and the night is deathly silent and cold. I’m in Losthearth, in Last Advent.
“. . .”
- Mimyou - <=
[Mart]
[Inbox]
[Contacts]
[Media]
[Nexus]
[Inbox] No new messages <=
Messages:
Adelaide Foster
Looks . . . fun? Lol I’ll msg when …
Read
Conor McGeary
Ya I’m just finishing my rounds …
Read
Joshua Foster
Okay champ. Have fun and tell …
Read
Keith M. at Mimmisoft
Your rent payment is overdue. Please …
Read
Emily Tiente
No of course not! Just very busy lately …
Read
MimmiRep1055
We want to thank you for your continued …
Read
. . .
[Contacts] <=
Adelaide Foster <=
Alex Linnel
Alfonso Rafir
Alexei Sannikov
. . .
Adelaide Foster
Call
Message <=
Info
Testing, testing 1 2 3_ [Send] <=
- Connection Error: Message Not Sent -
I see. Wouldn’t have worked on my end either.
What about Dad?
Joshua Foster <=
Call
Message <=
Info
- Connection Error: Message Not Sent -
Call <=
“. . . ring ring . . . beeeeeep. We’re sorry, but your contact Joshua Foster could not be reached at this time. Please check your Internet connection and try again.”
Mom?
“. . . beeeeeep. We’re sorry, but-”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
Yeah, yeah. Shut up.
Wait! Would it work for Conor?
Conor McGeary <=
Call
Message
Info <=
Conor McGeary
ID: 105 550 47860-600
Show UM
Record: Lawful
Sex: M
Eyes: Br
Race: Caucasian
Country: USA
Resident of Newark, NJ New North Ward Block A17
. . .
Last seen playing Last Advent
Call <=
“. . . ring ring . . . ring ring . . . ring ring . . . ring ring . . .ri-
The contact you have called could not be reached at this time.”
Hmm. While I wouldn’t call it promising exactly, the fact that I got a different error message for Conor, a friend of mine who should’ve logged onto Last Advent at around the same time as Ad and I, means he may also be in game? We did agree to build our characters on the same server, Coronexia, but I didn’t expect to meet up with him until tomorrow. Seems like he made it on sooner, unfortunately. But there's no way a no-lifer like him has gotten killed . . .
“leeetmeeeouuuuutoheeeeere” someone cries way upwind from the alley. Or am I hearing things in the moan of the wind?
Ad tosses under her blanket beside me but doesn’t seem to wake.
The buildings on the other side of the alley are derelict, seem to creak quietly against the force of the wind. What might be bright bricks and plaster in daylight look dismally grayscale at this midnight hour.
“Meeew.”
“Damned cat,” I mumble.
Blaggard - lvl 2
The glinting green eyes of this “blaggard,” whose face does seem a bit longer and pointier than a cat’s—more like that of a small fox, although the eyes and nose are undoubtedly feline—stare up at me from the shadows beyond my feet.
“Mrrrow.”
“I don’t have any more jerky, you lil’ tramp,” I whisper. “Get lost.”
“Meow.”
“Ugh.” I start to sit up, but as I crane my neck to do so, the blaggard scurries past my right side to stand beside my head, maintaining its stare not at me but up, up at a rooftop on the right side of the alley,
where I see
“Hisssssssss.”
a silhouette
with a crooked weapon on its hip, silver with caught moonlight
dash away silently upon the dark shingles.
The hell!?
I’m startled standing with a thunk (1 dmg) of the head against the rough planks of the overhang before hurrying out into the alley to try to see the figure that fled, but my new vantage only opens my sight to the peripheral rooftops and no further. But still, the figure must have moved extremely quickly to evade my sight in the short time it took me to get up.
“What’s wrong?” Ad mumbles from beneath her blankets, in which she’s buried herself.
“Mew.” The blaggard scurries over and nestles beside her. “Prrrrrrrrr.”
“. . . It’s nothing. Just got startled by a bad dream.”
“Okaaaay,” she yawns, rolling over onto her other side in her cocoon to stick out a hand to pet the blaggard, who scurries back into the shadows as soon as it’s touched. “Awww, here kitty-kitty, here kittyyyyy . . .” And she seems to fall back asleep after a few weak hand-waves before the creature returns to her side.
There was definitely someone up there. Thanks, tramp.
One of the blaggard’s long ears is folded slightly upward as if to continue listening while it sleeps. But maybe I was thoughtless in assuming we’d be safe sleeping in some dingy alley, even if just for tonight. Losthearth should be a safe zone—I remember something about a “pomerium”—but I’ve seen poison and impact damage occur here already, so I shouldn’t assume we’re invulnerable.
As quietly as I can, though eliciting a reassuring twitch of the blaggard’s ear, I tug my blankets out from under the overhang and bring them to that beam against which Ad and I sat earlier, and I sit facing the alley entrance wrapped up in my blanket. A crumpled piece of parchment blows by along the road. I got a bit of sleep already, so I can keep watch. Morning can't be far off. And the game could be patched any minute.
Yeah, right.
Rainmaker may still be standing at that fountain right now, casting in wishes over those monsters' heads for his friends' return.
I also wait. And wait. With my virtual eyes peeled.
( Inventory ) <=
5g
…
-War Hammer <=
(Equip) <= (Place) (Info)
Plunk.
And I wait some more—for what feels like an age—while the virtually ancient stars loom unfathomably high overhead, arranged in their alien constellations—and I think of the real night sky, which I’ve never seen clearly—unless you count its simulacrum Mimmisoft's Planetarium. Will I ever see it for real? That whole stretch of Milky Way?
Yeah, we’ll get out. I’ll get a fresh driving permit and rent a car, one with a goddamned steering wheel, and Ad and I will drive up north . . . on the old I-95 . . . I’ll have to save for a Tollmaster . . .
and a border pass . . . and first I’ll have to appeal to the adjudicators to clear me to leave the state . . .
can't be any harder than in a sim . . .
oh, and I’ll have to pick up Ad in BosCam since she’s at . . .
. . .
the stars . . .
‘s a crown to show her . . . and?
Think I see . . .
. . .
A sable curtain falls over the simulated heavens.
And my nightmare recaptures me and doesn’t let go.