Aquila ended up staying at the bar for more than one drink. In fact he stayed up chatting to Slie and Nixie until quite late in the night before he packed it in. They didn’t ask Aquila to join their party again, but Aquila couldn’t really stop thinking about it. He wondered what travelling with a group would be like. He couldn’t deny, he had been a little disappointed in himself after turning down their offer, but Aquila was still resolved that he was going to be playing this game on his own. After all, there was no way that he could be sure they wouldn’t turn on him. Even if they had seemed nice. He distinctly remembered that some of the nicest people he’d met during his online gaming sessions, turned out to be complete scumbags.

Nixie and Slie still had quite a lot to share with him though. Aquila learnt that there were two subraces of Fae, one with pointy teeth, and one with fairy wings. Nixie’s subrace, the necrotic healer, could sacrifice half their health to heal three other players double the amount of hp she’d sacrificed. Unfortunately, like Slie’s ability, it could only be used once a day. There were also two subraces of umbra, the umbra of the shadows, and the umbra of the moon; but they didn’t really talk about that too much.

It was just after midnight when Aquila decided to pack it in; he ordered a basic room from the bartender, and pretty much went straight to bed. Well, he got into bed straight away. It was quite a while before he was actually able to get to sleep. His mind kept turning, and he suddenly wished that the game had included some kind of button that would put the player straight into a deep slumber. But as it was, sleeping could, at times, be just as hard in game as it could be in real life. It was something he just had to accept.

***

Aquila sat crouched within a patch of large grass, peering through the fields at two players well off into the distance. Nixie, and Slie. He’d left the Three Daggers Inn at midday, just after they had, and he couldn’t help but let his curiosity get the better of him. He told himself that was just following them to be sure that they were just two humble players learning the game, and not preying on innocent players, not that he could do anything about it if it turned out they were killing real players. In reality though, it was more because he really did have an overwhelming desire to join them. There was something about Nixie that made him feel at ease.

He’d been following them for most of the afternoon; and he’d kept far enough away that their tags hadn’t appeared. He could only assume that his tag hadn’t appeared to them either. Nixie and Slie hadn’t really done too much. They’d travelled and stopped. Travelled and stopped. And then travelled and stopped a little more. It was quite late, the sun was beginning to set, when they randomly turned off into a field, and continued until the road was well out of sight, and now they were atop a hill that had a few glades of trees for cover. Aquila wondered if they were going to keep travelling through the night, or if they had a plan to stay somewhere. He peered at the two of them carefully.

Nixie and Slie were now bare shadows as the sun had almost completely disappeared behind the horizon. He had slowly come to the realisation over the last few weeks that his night vision only worked for a certain distance; the further away into the night a player was, the more they were covered by the darkness. And so, it was hard to make them out as more than just bare shadows. But then a light appeared in front of them, a fire; they immediately became visible. However Aquila noticed that it was just Nixie now; in front of the low burning fire – she was alone. Slie had slipped off while they’d been obscured by the fading sun.

Where has he gone? He can’t be too far.

Nixie stood in front of the fire. She looked over in his direction – almost as though she could see him. Then she began waving. Aquila gulped. Could she see him.

‘Hello there,’ said a voice from behind him.

Aquila screamed, turned and began crawling backwards.

‘Relax! It’s me!’

Aquila noticed that Slie was sitting casually in front of him, leaning back with his legs crossed, and his hair sprawled down over his shoulders.

‘So how long were you planning on following us for?’ Slie asked.

‘What…What do you mean?’ Aquila replied.

‘Have you even invested any points into your stealth? We thought you would have at least tried to approach us by now. We only stopped for you like three times’ Slie stood up, waved him forward and began walking through the field toward Nixie, ‘Common, we’re about to make camp for the night.’

Aquila hesitated, but Slie turned back to face him.

‘If we wanted you dead, I could easily have already killed you. Now let’s go. Nixie is probably already cooking dinner.’

Aquila quickly got up and hurried after him.

***

‘Aquilaaaaa!’ Nixie beamed and waved frantically as he got to the top of the hill, just behind Slie, ‘it’s great of you to finally join us.’

She hovered over a small crackling bright yellow fire, that had a little cooking pot over it.

‘You knew that I was following you?’ Aquila asked.

‘Well, it was quite obvious. But I knew you were just trying to scope out the situation. After all, I can imagine you’re not too trusting after the last time you decided to travel with people.’

‘I…umm… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…’ Aquila stammered.

‘Don’t be silly!’ Nixie reassured him as she added a few ingredients to the pot, ‘it’s completely understandable.’

‘Understandable maybe, but stupid,’ Slie said, ‘You know stealth attacks do double damage. If it had have been another umbra, or a player with decent stealth stats, all it would have taken was a couple of hits from the shadows and you’d be finished. I didn’t even have to turn invisible to get behind you unseen.’

Aquila swallowed with embarrassment. For all the time he’d spent bragging about how careful he was trying to be, and how he’d learnt from his mistake in the forest, he hadn’t really been that smart about things. He tried to hide the fact that he’d had no idea about the stealth bonus.

‘Leave him alone,’ Nixie said, ‘he’ll learn.’

Nixie placed the lid on the pot, stood up, and approached him.

‘I have something for you. It will make you feel better!’ she said.

‘What?’ Aquila replied.

Nixie reached down to her quickselect belt and a small brown token appeared in her hand. She held it out to him.

‘Here, take it!’ Nixie smiled.

Aquila hesitated.

‘Don’t worry! It’s not going to hurt you.’

Aquila took the token and examined it; it was flat and smooth, like a small rock – the kind that would work really well if you tried to skim it over a lake. But it was obviously something more than just a rock. The letters NT were etched in silver writing through the middle.

‘Don’t activate that or you’ll zap right out of here!’ Slie warned, ‘I’d put it in your inventory, in case you accidentally squeeze it a bit too hard.’

‘Good point Slie. I probably should have started with that.’

Aquila let go of the token, it disappeared and reappeared in his inventory.

‘What is it?’ Aquila asked.

‘It’s a teleportation token. We got it by taking a quest just outside the Novus Town. It was in the PvP zone so you probably never came across it. Slie and I were rewarded with one of these each.’

‘We had the option of buying more – but they were quite expensive and we couldn’t afford it,’ Slie added.

‘Yeah they were quite pricey. Maybe one day we’ll be able to buy few extras just to keep it safe. But anyway, give that a squeeze and you’ll teleport straight to Novus Town? Hopefully that will hopefully make you feel a little safer around us,’ Nixie smiled.

‘Is this your only token?’

‘You need it more than I do. After all; you’re the lowest level here. And the newest. I think it’s best. ’

‘Are you sure?’

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

‘I wouldn’t have given it to you if I wasn’t!’

There was a loud ding, and a green check box appeared above the little stove atop the fire. Nixie ran over to it and pulled up the lid.

‘Dinner’s ready!’ Nixie proclaimed with an excited voice, ‘common, let’s ward the hill and then we can eat.’

Aquila rose an eyebrow.

‘Ward the hill?’

Slie gave him a light-hearted grin.

‘It’s just what we call it. Our way of protecting the campsite. He needs to join our party first; or he’ll be setting off the alarms every ten seconds.’

‘Oh, silly me. I forgot about that.’

Aquila assumed that he was sticking around now; he wasn’t really being given much of a choice. Not that he really protested inwardly.

‘First,’ Slie said as he began fiddling with his interface, ‘we need to add you as a friend.’

He noticed Nixie was also tapping buttons on her interface.

A notification appeared.

Slie wants to add you as a friend.

And then another.

Nixie_Pixie wants to add you as a friend.

Aquila opened up his friends tab and accepted both their requests; they appeared in his friends list underneath Roselyn. Both Nixie and Slie had a green symbol next to their name, online, but his heart suddenly sunk when he noticed a greyed out circle next to Roselyn’s name, along with the text offline.

Nixie must have sensed his disappointment because she inquired about it a moment later.

‘Is everything okay Aquila? If you really don’t want to travel with us, you don’t have to…’

‘Give back the token though, if you do decide to leave,’ Slie added.

Aquila tried to fake a smile.

‘No, it’s not that. It’s just that there was a girl who I used to trade with in Novus Town. The game says she’s offline,’ Aquila said with a slightly grim tone, ‘I suppose the means she’s…’

‘Sleeping,’ Slie finished his sentence.

‘What?’

‘She’s just sleeping,’ Nixie explained, ‘when a player goes to sleep, they’ll appear as offline in your friends list. That’s all.’

‘Oh.’

Aquila felt his spirit brighten.

‘And… the invite… has been sent!’ Slie announced.

A text appeard.

Party invite: The Lonely Wanderers.

Aquila accepted the invite. As soon as he did, The Lonely Wanderers appeared in the party tab; with Slie and Nixie as members. He clicked on Slie’s name; a full list of all his stats appeared in front of him, as well as a 3D model of Slie, showing his appearance in full details – and every item he had equipped. Aquila quickly closed the window.

‘So apart from me now knowing everything about you, as well as everything you have equipped, what exactly does joining a party do. And how is it different to a clan?’

‘Let me show you,’ Slie said with an evil grin and drew a dagger from his belt. Slie advanced towards him; Aquila’s eyes widened and he began to back away. But Slie lurched forward, and before Aquila could react, Slie slashed him with the dagger, drawing a line across his throat. Aquila had his weapon out in a moment – but Slie had put away his dagger and fell back laughing. That’s when Aquila realised that Slie’s attack hadn’t taken any health from his health bar.

‘Go on,’ Slie proclaimed with both his ands out, open and inviting, ‘attack me to your heart’s content.’

‘Not the best way to show him how all of this works,’ Nixie said to Slie and then turned to address Aquila, ‘being in the same party means we can’t damage each other. That is, unless someone toggles the party safety switch, and we all get a notification if that happens. It’s useful in battle, you know, it protects us from a misfired arrow or a sword swing thrown in the wrong direction. But more importantly, you won’t set off party member spells that are intended for enemies.’

Slie pointed at him.

‘You should have seen your face. Priceless!’

‘Haha,’ Aquila replied with mock sarcasm, ‘real funny. Of course I was scared. You’d have to be stupid not to be scared of a knife to the throat.’

Aquila let go of his sword and it disappeared and reappeared on his quickselect belt.

‘Why don’t you go set up the alarms, Slie, and I’ll show Aquila how to use repellent.’

‘Sure.’

Slie reached down by his belt, equipped a spell, and then stalked off down towards the base of the hill, his hands by his side were emanating with tangible shadows that swirled about and covered his palms and fingers. It was as though he was holding night itself. Nixie led Aquila down the hill in the opposite direction.

‘What do you mean by alarm the area?’ Aquila asked Nixie.

‘It’s one of Slie’s spells. He’ll create a boundary around the hill and if a player crosses the boundary of the spell, he’ll get an alert, even if he’s asleep – it will wake him up. It’s why you had to join our party before we started warding our campsite. You’d set off the alarm just by being inside the boundary.’

‘And how long does the spell last?’

‘As long as Slie keeps it active. It’s a pretty low taxing spell – it only drains 1 manna point every hour.’

‘Sounds very useful. What exactly are we doing then?’ Aquila asked.

‘Repelling,’ Nixie replied and lifted up a small vial full of yellow liquid, ‘this will stop hostile mobs from spawning within a hundred meters of wherever I plant this. This looks like a good spot.’

Nixie threw the vial down onto the ground and it exploded in a puff of yellow mist. This mist died down quickly, but there was still a tiny yellow cloud of smoke covering the spot where Nixie had originally thrown the vial; and it didn’t seem as though it was going to evaporate.

‘I think if we put one on the other side of the hill; that will do us for tonight. These aren’t too expensive, but we can’t afford to throw them around carelessly. After that we can eat dinner and discuss where we’re going from here.’

‘You’ve really thought everything through, haven’t you. And here I thought I was being careful. Where do you even get all this stuff from anyway?’

Nixie giggled.

‘It’s a pretty standard procedure. There’s a camping store in the Town of Crossings that sells everything you really need. The cooking pot, the repellents, the spell scroll to cast alarm – though that was actually quite expensive. Took us a while to save up for it and we could really only afford one.’

Aquila was starting to see how little being cooped up in Novus Town for three weeks had served him. While he’d been cowering in the safety zone, every other player had been busy learning and progressing. It was true, everyone had started at the same time, but he was still well and truly what he would have called a noob. The problem was, he realised, he wasn’t playing this like a video game. Not in the way he normally would have. The risks that had been imposed meant that he didn’t play the game in the same way as he would have played an RPG on a computer; the one’s that he claimed to be good at. The ones where he took a lot of risk, and never really actually lost all that much.

***

‘Now,’ Nixie said, her blonde hair had been untied and fell in curls over her shoulder, ‘we need to decide what to do next.’

The three of them sat around their campfire, each with a bowl of stew in their hands. Aquila shoved a spoonful into his mouth. The meat was tender, and the juices oozed with flavour. Nixie must have put quite a bit of time into levelling up her cooking skill.

‘We can either do the Tunnels of Shadow fetch quest, or we can look for the counterspell. Though we really don’t even know if it’s real,’ Slie said.

‘I think it’s real. Bega had no reason to deceive me. What do you think Aquila?’ Nixie asked.

‘The quest for the counterspell; you guys just heard about it from some random guy?’

‘Not exactly,’ Slie said, ‘he’s been selling information to us for a while now. The problem is – most of the quests he gave us have been pretty easy; taking a few hours at most. For that last one we just needed to drop off a piece of string to the musician at the Three Daggers Inn, and that was it. It wouldn’t Bega any favours to lie to us when he would still get lots of business from us. This one though, is going to take us a lot longer. I’d say we’d be lucky to finish it in a week.’

‘I don’t think it will take us that long,’ Nixie interjected.

‘The point is, it’s going to take us long enough that he probably won’t be around Ambrosiana by the time we get back. It won’t be a big deal to him if it’s a big fat lie. He’ll be up and gone.’

‘Don’t you have him as a friend?’ Aquila asked.

‘We do, but that doesn’t really change much. If he disappears, what does it matter if he has us as a friend or not. Worst we can do is send him abusive messages and then he’ll probably just block us.’

‘We’re not going to send abusive messages to anyone,’ Nixie declared.

‘Speak for yourself,’ Slie said.

‘What exactly does this supposed counterspell quest entail, anyway?’ Aquila asked.

‘We don’t know. But it’s quite a while away. East at the Town of Crossings, and then we keep travelling until we get to Asphodel. It’s in the Lonely Planes, which is pretty much a barren wasteland. We’ve never been there, so we don’t know what kind of monsters are waiting, or what it’s like.’

‘It sounds dangerous,’ Aquila said.

‘It could be,’ Slie agreed.

‘I don’t think we should think about it all too much,’ Nixie said, ‘we really just need to make a decision.’

The three of them sat in silence for a moment; each of them pensive as they chewed on the meat in the stew. Aquila had almost finished his. He lifted the bowl to his mouth, drained the last dregs of liquid and then the bowl disappeared. The fire crackled, the flames were mesmerising to look at as they danced in all different kinds of directions.

‘None of you have had binding cast on you before, right?’ Aquila asked eventually.

Nixie and Slie both shook their heads.

‘It’s scary. Being surrounded by a group of players, not being able to move; hoping, just hoping that you can figure out a way to break it, or distract the players for long enough. You said this problem will only get worse as mages begin to level up Nixie. I think if that’s the case then it would be dangerous not to look for a way to counter it. This is worth the risk. Both the risk of whatever high level monsters are waiting for us, and the risk that it’s just a lie. If we can get our hands on something like that – it would mean we’d be a lot safer.’

Another moment of silence passed.

‘I’m inclined to agree,’ Nixie said.

Both Aquila and Nixie looked over at Slie – waiting for his answer. Eventually he threw his hands in the air.

‘Fine! We’ll started heading out to Asphodel tomorrow.’

Slie the last few mouthfuls of his stew into his mouth and then fell back into the grass.

‘Not quite. Not straight away,’ Nixie said.

‘What do you mean?’ Aquila asked.

‘You’re level 4 Aquila. You’d hardly be able to keep up. We’re going to change that. Tomorrow, we head out to our secret spot.’

‘The secret spot?’

Slie sat up and pointed a hard finger at Aquila.

‘You can’t tell anyone about it! Only the two of us know about it, and if anyone else finds out, it will get swarmed with players!’

‘You know that’s bound to happen sooner rather than later Slie. We can only keep it hidden for so long. Someone will discover it eventually.’

‘I know, but still.’

‘That settles it,’ Nixie said, ‘tomorrow we head to our secret spot, help Aquila to level up, and then we’re off to Asphodel!’

Nixie stood up and spawned two bedrolls, laying one on each side of the fire.

‘We don’t have one for you, Aquila, but that doesn’t matter. We usually take turns keeping watch during the night, so we really only need two.’

‘Why don’t we just head over there now?’ Aquila asked, ‘our stats are full, we don’t need to sleep.’

‘You get a bonus for sleeping during the night silly; didn’t you know that? You’ll level up faster.’

‘And it also helps your reaction speed,’ Slie added, ‘you might not get as tired in the game as you do in real life, but think about it, our bodies are in hibernation but our minds are still active. You do get tired, even if you don’t know it. Get a good night’s sleep and I promise you’ll be at your very best,’

‘I’ll take the first watch,’ Nixie said pointing to one of the bedrolls, ‘go ahead Aquila. I’ll wake you in two hours.’

Aquila didn’t argue. He slipped into the surprisingly comfortable bedroll; as soon as he did his equipment automatically unequipped and he was in his normal light pyjamas that the game gave each player as a default.

It didn’t take him long to get to sleep.