Another chime rang. Another chest appeared at her feet. This one was more elaborate than the last. While it bore the same decorations, the moonlight caught its jade surface in a way that made it seem to glow from within. This time she was more ready for it, and only half-startled. A scroll wrapped in golden tinsel sat on top, demanding attention.
Lilly of the Tlacatl
Blessings once more. You have learned the foundations of Anahuac. These foundations will aid you greatly in your quests and from them you will develop further abilities. As a final gift for your completion of the tutorial, this chest contains the final key items for your adventures.
Regards,
A Friend.
As always, the functional description followed the letter further down the scroll.
Bead Pouch
A small pouch made of tanned hide with a drawstring of gold fiber.
Contents: 1 Jade Bead, 5 Coral Beads, 10 Cocoa Beans
Adventurer’s Journal
A sturdy journal fitted with thick leather. Its pages are made from quality parchment and an enchantment prevents it from getting damaged.
Usage: Simply refer to the table of contents to find the information you would like to know. The contents are fluid and will change depending on your location. Context-sensitive.
Map
A map of Anahuac intricately drawn on cured leather. Living markers dot your location, and only further adventuring will reveal all the secrets it holds.
The Greenhorn’s Kit
A small backpack crudely stitched together out of deer hide perfect for holding an essentials-only survival kit.
Contents: 5 rations of dried fruit, 5 torches, 1 Bedroll, 1 Waterskin, 1 Tinderbox.
A journal with nearly everything? Just what she needed. She turned the key in the beautiful chest, quickly equipped the essentials, and then began to flip through the journal immediately, looking for Endless Night.
She looked up at Cualli hesitantly.
"This isn't. Is this normal? The. The sky, I mean."
Cualli snapped back into attention by her sudden words. He had wandered away to look at the sky himself. Concern was evident on his face and a terror had taken root in his body. His fingertips against the counter had turned white with pressure.
“No, no it is not.” The man confirmed, eyes furiously scanning the sky for their god, “It is not the season for the Eclipse...”
Lilly looked down at the blank page of the journal. Words began to form.
Endless Night (Active)
Without the sun, the world has grown dim and lifeless. Flowers remain hidden within their petals and the scarcity of morning dew has left the jungle dry. Fog consumes all and a malevolent mist is spread thin across the water. Friendly Spirits have fallen from the heavens and have turned into demons wandering the earth.
Search for the Sun God.
Outside, the town had grown restless. Villagers and visitors alike grew into a frenzy. They asked each other questions no one knew the answer to. They asked themselves. Visitors furiously dug through their journal for an explanation of this Endless Night to no avail. Finally, as their distress outgrew their curiosity, players began to send messages into the sky to summon one of Anahuac’s most experienced and powerful individuals, a Game Master.
“Alright, alright” A thunderous voice drowned out the cacophony of confusion and with it came the avatar of a GM, “The moment the light disappeared I was on it, no need to spam me with tickets and requests. I’ve got an answer for ya.”
She had chosen the Chichimec race, the giants, and from her roost atop the center plaza, the GM towered over all. She was easily twice the size of an adult man and thrice their strength. Bearing the physique of an athletic goddess hidden behind a tower of stone armor, the GM was an intimidating sight.
This, however, never stopped the player base.
“What happened?”
“What’s going on?”
“Is this affecting my graphics card?”
“Can I complete the quest in my journal?”
It was an onslaught of questions from relevant to irrelevant to mindless babble. The GM held up her club, “Order, order in the plaza. There’s no need for alarm. It’s a closed beta, stuff like this is gonna happen. All of your things are safe. It’s merely an aesthetic bug. A world event that is still in alpha stage must have gotten triggered by spaghetti code. It’s there in your journal and in the world, but it’s inactive. We’re gonna figure out how to reverse this without needing to shut down the servers or reverse the patch.”
The session of repeating questions and alternating answers continued for a while but the GM made sure to emphasize that the quest could never activate in player journals.
There were a lot of terms in the back and forth exchanges that Lilly didn’t understand, but it at least solidified her suspicions that this was a game, though how or why were still questions to come to. She spared a brief moment to consider how much better her cousin would be doing in her place, or better yet, could make sense of things for her.
But I doubt the game he’s working on feels as real.
At least there was one less thing to worry about. The event was a non-issue. … except it was active, she could see the word right there in front of her. Was the journal broken? She shook it experimentally.
No change. Best solution, ask the big person with the answers. The plaza was still crowded which, as she stood in the doorway of Cualli's, posed two problems.
One, she wasn't likely to get close by herself.
Two. There were so many people. If she raised her voice people were going to stare and what if it was nothing and she was just wasting people's time except the big lady had answers and she needed to ask so many things-
Looking up at the giant, she made a complicated, helpless gesture that was trying to be half 'please look at me' and 'don't look at me too loudly'.
The GM noticed the gesture. Strange. That wasn't from any animation package she knew of. Maybe it came with the alpha quest?
She hopped off the plaza platform into the sea of players who had returned to their grinds. It took her a bit but she made her way through, stopping once or twice to answer a question.
"Okay, how'd you do that? That gesture?"
Which, all in all, wasn’t the kind of response Lilly expected.
"I. What? I just. Moved my... arms?" she said in confusion as if wondering if it was allowed. My but the giant was even more intimidating up close. She moved her arms again, to demonstrate.
"Like this. Um. Am I not supposed to?"
"You're not. No. I mean, technically." The GM answered, "But the sun isn't supposed to disappear either and here we are. So, what's up?"
"Right!" And here, at the important moment, she fumbled her journal, and it fell face-down with an embarrassing thud. Reddening rapidly, she retrieved it and smoothed out the pages again. "Sorry. You said the... quest. That it wasn't active. But here," she pointed, "it says it is."
The giantess remained still for a moment, studying Lilly's movements. They were new, sure, but animation that fluid could not possibly be from any work the company was doing. Even more confusing, was this player's method of communicating. At least that she could chalk it up to a very, very dedicated member of the Roleplayer's Guild.
"So, on your user interface - not the book - the quest says it is active?"
She blinked. "My what?"
"User interface. You know, the windows and prompts that give you your game information. Press Q and it ought to pop the quest journal."
"I'm sorry?"
She really was. Her face felt even hotter as she began to fret about looking as if she was causing trouble with so many questions and absolutely no way to comply. "Press Q on what? I don't have anything?"
The giantess stared at her for a moment, and then heaved a heavy sigh, professionally packing away her irritation.
"Look, I'm trying to help and I have a situation in my hands. I really do not have the time for this kind of trolling right now, alright? You've got one more attempt at telling me what's going on without pretending to be clueless."
"I'm not pretending!" Desperation made it burst out much louder than she intended. "I don't know what's happening! I don't know why I'm here! I need help!"
And. And. She flailed her arms helplessly. Under the fretting and the rapidly increasing worry that she wasn’t going to be taken seriously, there was also an undercurrent of offense. She wasn't lying. Why would she be lying? She was trying to be as polite as possible and she was in a situation and why didn't she believe her?! That was... RUDE.
"Don't look at me like that. This isn't my fault. I was in a lab and I opened a door and now I'm here. and I just want to go back!"
"Lab? Hold the smartphone..."
A pause.
"Lilly? Not Lilly of the Tlacatl like your screen name says, but Lilly Teal? Lilly Teal of the 'Was Bringing Darryl Lunch at the Lab'?"
"YES wait." Her huffing came to a halt midway as she tried to change mental tracks. "How do you know my..."
The giantess placed a hand on her chest, "It's me, Frankie. What'd you get him for lunch?"
Lilly stared.
And stared.
Frank. Ie?
And with a loud squeal, threw herself at the wall of armor.
"FRANKIE!!! IT'S YOU! I got him roast beef sandwiches, extra for you it's youuuuuuu!"
The giantess laughed and returned the hug. This was Lilly, alright. No one else could have this energy in their hugs.
"Nice. I love me some good sammiches." Frankie giggled, "But seriously, we were wondering what was taking you so long. I think I know what possibly happened... I think, no promises. You stay put right here and I'll be back in a jiffy, yeah? I got to go accuse my boss of being a mad scientist... again."
The giantess stepped back and in a blink of an eye, she disappeared into a cloud of butterflies. As the particle effects cleared, a faint golden message lingered behind where she once stood.
Your Friend, ToBeFrank, Has Logged Out
Frankie stared at the login screen of the game. She sat in the comfort of the server room, where the low murmurs of the towers broke the monotony of the silence she had been stunned into.
She had to process what just happened. Her boyfriend's cousin was claiming to be stuck in a game. It wouldn't be too odd for her own oddball boss to be capable of such a feat, but it also falls in line with Darryl's brand of stupid pranks. She decided to take the accusation road with the least consequence were she wrong.
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"Darryl Finnegan!" She swiveled her chair around to face his workstation at the other end of the room, "Did you set up Lilly for some mean prank again?"
It took Darryl a moment for the accusation to sink in, but once he pulled his attention away from the screen, the response was immediate.
"What? When have I ever- I resent the accusation that I would-"
She didn't seem to be buying it.
"No. Not this time. What happened?"
Frankie points her thumb over her shoulder, "She's in Anahuac claiming she's stuck in there. That she came with lunch, arrived at the lab, opened some door and - bam - she's physically in the game. Apparently. Should I go accuse our boss of creating a hyper virtual reality console that is now endangering an innocent girl who's never touched a game in her life? Or is that too silly?"
He pushed further back from the computer, leaning back in his chair and he looked up at the ceiling with a concerned frown. "That is pretty out there. But think of the alternative. If it's not him, and I promise it's not me, that leaves the possibility that Lilly lied to you with a straight face. That's even more out there, don't you think?"
"She is incapable of that." Frankie sighed, "Alright, I'm gonna go ask Cornelius. You should log in during your break and see what’s up. I left her outside Cualli's Store in Xochitlan."
Frankie got up and headed down to her boss' office. She knocks on the door.
"Hey, Mr. Tex." She pops her head in, "You got a minute?"
A mound of paper on the desk shifted and rose, higher and higher until the top layers parted like a volcano and revealed a dark, curly head. Green eyes glanced briefly towards the door and he gave her a bright "Good afternoon!" before he went back to his scribblings.
"Is it very important?"
"Depends on whether it's true or not, sir." Frankie sheepishly smiled, "Is - is there a hyper virtual reality console somewhere in this lab? Asking for a friend."
"It's not ready yet," he said, with all the casualness of someone being asked if it was true he'd put a bag of popcorn in the microwave. "I will have you test it soon Francisca, but you'll have to be patient, I still have to iron out a few-"
Wait.
Pausing, he stared at his paper for a moment and then raised his eyes to give her a solemn look. "I should probably lock it."
Back to the papers.
Wait.
He looked back up with more interest.
"Hold on, how did you know?"
Frankie took this as a cue. She stepped into his office, took a seat at his desk, and very calmly tented her fingers over her lap, "Normally, I would be very excited about your mad-scientist-tier projects, Mr. Tex, but that current excitement right now is suppressed over concern for an unwilling lab rat."
Now she had all his attention. His kindly face was all confused concern as he set down his pen.
"A rat got in? That's dreadful. It wouldn't have the first idea how to play, their training isn't finished."
"Right, you have those too. No, no. You know Darryl? He's that hardware contract and mostly keeps to the server room. Think of him.”
Cornelius nodded.
“Now think the complete opposite of him.”
She saw his forehead furrow slightly, and hastily forged ahead before he could get into the technicalities of this imaginative exercise.
“That's his cousin. She came to deliver something he forgot and now... she's trapped in that room?"
She leans in closer, "We can just go get her out of there, right?"
Cornelius's frown deepened as he processed this information, and then suddenly cleared up into a sunny smile.
"Oh! Well, I'm sure we can, no reason why not. How did you find out she was in there? How did she find out? Did she activate the program or did it activate when she opened the door? Did she see any noticeable difference in graphics quality?"
Diving under the sea of paper as he continued asking his questions, he rummaged around until he unearthed a file, and with a triumphant "Ha!" he re-emerged, picking up his pen with an expectant air as if she was poised to answer every single one of his questions.
"This is rather exciting," he went on, flipping to the current page in the file. "An early tester as it were. We could- oh. Yes, I said it wasn't finished..."
Something on the current page seemed to have caught his attention, and he tapped his pen on it thoughtfully. "We can hopefully just go open the door."
That last sentence of his immediately sent Frankie's palm to her face, "Of course, yeah. Say we can't get the door opened right away. She won't die of - say - starvation or dehydration? I'm assuming you don't want to take a battering ram to the door of a multi-million dollar project, right, so I'm asking that now."
"Oh goodness no!" He seemed shocked by the very idea. "The food replicators were the first thing I made sure were working.”
There was barely time for her to process that before he started talking again as if she had asked for clarification
"You see, the room can convince the brain that everything it sees and touches it real, including the food, but the body wouldn't be getting any nutrition and it would be an awful mess if the brain thought it had eaten and the player just forgets to take proper lunch breaks so I thought it would be far more immersive if the room actually provided. Her body is confined to the one room, after all, so it's easy enough to make sure the real food and the virtual image align. Clever?"
Judging by his brilliant beam, he seemed to think it was.
"It would probably be best to tell her that, I suppose…” he muttered mostly to himself. “And perhaps it isn't the best idea to have it a permanent feature the player wouldn't leave at all maybe I should add little log off reminders..."
"That's insanely clever." Frankie didn't know how to react to that. Again, she felt like she would be absolutely thrilled for a virtual reality game this advanced in different circumstances. She wanted to take him by the shoulders and shake every single explanation out of him. This was some ground-breaking technology, for Goodness' sake, and she knew he probably didn't fully understand that.
But this was Cornelius Tex, socially oblivious extraordinaire. Science for science's sake was his motto. He'd probably parrot out all his work if she gave him the chance and where would that leave Lilly? Well, in Anahuac. So with great reluctance, Frankie stood from her desk.
"From the bottom of my heart, Mr. Tex, there's nothing I want to do more than hear every second about your work since the moment your mind thought to make a hobby out of science fiction, but Lilly is still trapped in a room that's going to give her some psychological trauma if she's gonna feel everything as real. Our game isn't exactly rainbows and lollipops."
She started making her way out the door, "I'll send Darryl so he's the first thing she sees when you pull her out of there. Meanwhile, I'm gonna go log back in to let her know what's going on." Before she fully disappeared around the corner, she thought to add, "By the way sir, it's my day off. I'm just here for the Internet. But if I need to whip out my game dev job title to get her out, I want in on the virtual room stuff. Okay, thanks, goodbyeee!"
She broke into a full sprint down the halls.
"DarrylDarrylDarrylDarryl!" She stumbled into the server room, tripping over her panic, and bouncing off a tower straight onto Darry's mop of messy hair, "That madman actually did it. He probably stayed up late watching sci-fi and full-on made a friggin' holographic deck! By Odin's Beard, Lilly has no idea how many nerds will kill for her position. I'm one of 'em."
“Woah woah woah.” He held out his hands to try and catch her before they bumped into each other, more to protect himself than anything else. Still holding onto her shoulders, he tried to process the wave of excited information.
“He did not. He did. What is wrong with that man.” It wasn’t said with any accusation, on the contrary, it was said with absolute excitement as he got out of his chair. “That’s incredible! Can we try it? Does it work? Wait.”
The rest of the information finally sank in.
“So Lilly is literally in the game? Not like, her brain’s in there but we can unhook her body, Physically trapped inside a holodeck?”
“I’m afraid he made it so.” Frankie laughed. Her teeny self tried to push him out of the door, “Go on and meet him at his office. I said you need to be there for when he gets her out. I’m gonna go tell Lilly what’s going on.”
Your friend, ToBeFrank, has logged in.
In an explosion of particles, Frankie’s avatar reappeared where she had been standing, “How you holdin’ up, girl?”
Lilly jumped a little, but her face was nothing but relieved smiles as she looked up at the giantess. “You’re back.”
It was obvious she was, but she was so clearly, warmly happy to be able to make the statement. It was good for her. In the intervening time, she had seated herself on the floor and wrapped her arms around her knees, looking down at the ground, so she had to crane her neck much farther back to look at Frankie, blue eyes full of hope.
“I’m… fine. It’s much better than outside but it’s still...” You know. “Did you find out what happened to me? Can we fix it?”
“Yeah, you just walked into a virtual reality room my boss was working on. I don’t know the exact specifics of it yet but he said he can open the door for ya,” Frankie answered. “It definitely has all the amenities a human could need so you’re in no trouble. Hey, and if you get hungry, you always have those roast beef sandwiches with ya.”
She laughed softly. “That’s a relief. And I haven’t been able to find the sandwiches. They must be in another corner of this room. Disguised as a monster or something.”
At this point, a small army of vicious beef and bread monsters wouldn’t be too strange. On the other side of the door, still firmly grounded in reality, Darryl scratched the back of his head.
“It just looks like a completely normal door. You couldn’t have signposted it or something?”
“No need for that when the door’s locked,” Cornelius said confidently, sliding back a small panel on the wall next to the door, about eye-level.
“But you… never locked the door.”
“A valid point I’ll grant you.”
Shaking his head, Darryl grabbed the handle of the door, turned, pushed and made a grand total of no progress at all. Once. Twice. Thrice-
“Uh.”
“Ah. It must have locked itself on the inside so that nobody accidentally breaks the virtual fourth wall. How fascinating!”
“Fascinating,” Darryl agreed through gritted teeth, still rattling the handle. “So is she supposed to open it herself?”
“Ideally yes, but that’s the part I hadn’t figured out yet, I usually kept a block to prevent the door swinging shut while I was in there because otherwise I would have no idea where the exit was, much less how to reach it. It’s really quite a seamless experience. Or it should be, at any rate.”
Cornelius didn’t seem to be registering any of Darryl’s worry at all, which was par for the course. He was a very kind-hearted man, but even more easily distracted when he was excited about something.
“I hope she hasn’t run into anything too painful,” he added conversationally, ignoring the splutter to his left as he fiddled with something behind the panel.
“Painf-” Darryl took a fortifying breath. “Mister Tex. Is this room of yours some ‘you die in the game you die in real life’ situation?”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand the reference.”
“I’m asking a terrified question.”
“Aha!” With apparently no ear for terrified questions, Cornelius pressed a button. “Testing, testing. Can you hear me, young lady?”
Midway through their conversation of beef-based monsters, Lilly’s smile fell, confusion flickering over her face as she looked away from Frankie. “Hello?”
“She can hear us, wonderful. Young lady,” Cornelius said, leaning closer to the intercom. “On a scale of one to ten, where would you rate the quality of your immers-”
“Lilly! Lils it’s me!” Darryl rudely interrupted, with no respect for the gathering of data.
“Darryl!” Jumping to her feet, she couldn’t help looking around, even though there was nobody else in the shop. He sounded so close! “Frankie, can you hear them too?”
Frank emoted a firm no, “Nope. Doesn’t say he’s logged in on my friends list either so it can’t be a private message. Must be a direct line from the lab to the room. Ask him what the situation is. They gonna get you out?”
“Darryl honey.” It felt strange to be ‘honey-ing’ the empty air. “Have you found a way to get me out?”
Judging by her face, his response was both not hopeful and not helpful. What she heard was “Uuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhh everything’s great we probably can let me get back to you, Mister Tex-”
Silence. She gave Frankie a worried look. “He said he’ll get back.”
And he did. Not five minutes later, maybe less, a lizard in the shape of a person came barreling into the shop so fast it was in danger of going right into the wall on the other side.
“Soooooo,” it said, remarkably not out of breath. Possibly because it was an avatar. Its player was definitely gasping and clutching a stitch in his side as he collapsed back into his chair.
“Sooooo?”
“I have good news, and I have bad news.”
“Darryl?!”
“Hey, y-ooof!” The avatar may not get out of breath from running, fatigue systems were still pending another patch, but the sheer force of Lilly’s hug transcended the virtual realm. The lizard woman blinked and smiled at the black-haired human attached to her waist, and then tried to continue the very serious conversation.
“SO. The good news is we can totally get you out, Lilly.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful!”
“Hold on,” said Frankie. “There’s bad news coming.”
“Right. The bad news is… uh, the room can’t be unlocked from the outside. But the good news is that it can still be opened! … the bad news is it won’t open until the Endless Night mega-quest is completed.”
“What, why? It’s just a door, Darryl.” Frankie immediately interjected.
“It’s just a Cortex Industries door in a Cortex Industries alpha room from Cortex Industries blueprints no other human with common sensibilities has edited. Cornelius Tex isn’t exactly known for that.”
“Right, we had to tell him about the coffee pot…”
“Shutting down the power is a no go because he has umpteen back up generators who knows where. Shutting down the room is worse because there’s no telling how the calibrations would take it, so we either play through a very sensible and safe quest to disable it or unleash a bunch of machinery loose on Lilly.”
Something about the coupling of ‘mega-quest’ with the words ‘sensible and safe’ didn’t seem right, and neither did the unique crossroads between concern and enthusiasm in Darryl’s voice. The fact seemed to catch up with Frankie at the same time as Lilly, and they both narrowed their eyes suspiciously. The lizard’s eyes opened wide in innocent earnestness.
“Darryl.”
“Darryl.”
“What?”
“Very sensible and safe?” Frankie asked sardonically.
“I really want to play it and I didn’t think Lilly’d agree to it otherwise,” Darryl grumbled, earning a smack from his cousin. “Ow. Look I’m serious when I said there wasn’t any other safe way. I’m just kind of excited at the same time, can you blame me? And we’d never let you get hurt if we can stop it, you know that. It’s going to be fine your journal will give you clues on where to go and what to do next, we’ll go with you, all you have to do is collect stuff and build up your stats so you can help the party beat the- you have never played this kind of thing in your life.”
The perfect time to remember this key bit of information, really.
Meanwhile, Frankie had gone silent and her avatar began to loop an idle animation. The Chichimec Giant rocked back and forth on her heels as her owner processed the situation and solutions at hand.
“I think Lilly’s MMO-virginity is a blessing in disguise, really.” She concluded, “She won’t get tripped up by PC mechanics while she’s running around trying to understand things. I’ll go grab an instruction manual from Cornelius’ desk just in case, either way, and we’re good to go, right?”
“Right.”
“Sure?”
“Lilly,” The giantess grabbed her tiny friend’s shoulders, “we are about to embark on a friggin’ sweet journey together. I hope you understand the scientifically important part of that. If I could kill you to take your spot in that room, I totally would-”
“She would. She told me earlier.”
“-and from now on, I’m not Frankie. I’m Tepin of the Chichimec, Tank Barbarian, and this is my party member, Izel of the Yahui, Rouge. If we’re going to get you out of this game, we’re gonna get you into it first!”
Tepin has invited you to their party.
Accept?