In the game world, as dawn approaches around the prison camp where Perserian political prisoners are held, several rebel cells have banded together to attack it. Clavet casts a sandstorm spell from the top of a dune to create the cover required to let the rebels approach the camp.

“Halt! State the purpose of your visit!” a guard asks the rebel myrmidon.

“I’m lost in a sandstorm! I seek refuge to wait out the storm” the rebel myrmidon asks for help while the magical sandstorm rages downwind from the dune.

The guards hold the myrmidon in a tent while he waits for the right moment to strike, hoping to draw out the guards as much as possible. And then flee the camp towards the rebel positions on the other side of the dunes.

Inside the camp, while the guards are away from the camp to chase the rebel myrmidon, the prisoners look for food and drink. Especially since they were deprived of both while captive.

“Finally! A chance to eat!” a prisoner exclaims upon finding food.

“So… thirsty!” another prisoner gets a bucket of water to distribute among his fellow prisoners.

But both guards and rebels climbing the dune have it harder to get to the other side of the dune because of the magical sandstorm. Thus forcing the rebels to rely on the other wizards to hurt, and perhaps kill, as many guards as possible before they get to the top of the dune while the sandstorm is still brewing. Such as alcohol clouds cast by the other two alcohol wizards Clavet kept harboring in Karine’s home. Who promptly pull back and cast different spells, either fire or electricity.

The surviving, if drunk, guards now lack in coordination as the magical sandstorm decreases in intensity. And then the other rebels charge towards the guards’ positions, with a few getting hurt by the guards swinging weapons wildly but no deaths.

“Now that the guards are alerted to our presence, let’s mop up the remaining guards and save the prisoners! After that, they can seek refuge wherever they want!” Clavet, one of the rebel cell leaders, issues her orders for her cell.

The question is: would the prisoners rather fight or seek refuge in another nation? The other rebel alcohol witch is left wondering about the prisoners’ reactions as they leave behind a bloody mess of dead prison guards on the dune.

When the rebels arrive at the camp, they see the prisoners feasting on the guards’ food and drink, and the rebels break the balls and chains of the prisoners.

At the same time, Clavet starts speaking the uncomfortable truth with one of the prisoners the rebels just saved from thirst and starvation in the desert.

“It appears that these angelic beacons are what tie some of us to another world. This means that, so long as these beacons exist, we won’t be able to gain this world’s freedom” Clavet explains to the prisoners the rebels just set free.

“The question is… how?” the prisoner is left wondering exactly what the freedom of this world means to her, on top how it’s earned.

“Whatever we do, otherworldly intervention is necessary to get the beacon removed from anyone who wears one”

“What do you mean by otherworldly intervention?” another prisoner asks her, left wondering as to how.

I’m not sure I would have much success in recruiting ex-beacon wearers myself if I’m still a beacon wearer. Of which the events in Perseria set off a chain of events who caused some people to have their beacons removed. From what I heard about it, getting an angelic beacon removed doesn’t cause any permanent side effects, beyond, of course, the loss of angel-borne immortality, Clavet reflects on what the grapevine told her about what happens to ex-PCs in the game world after the character is deleted from a game server.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“In otherworldly parlance, to get the beacon removed, someone in their world must delete a character from their system” Clavet keeps explaining to impressionable prisoners.

“How do you hope to get otherworldly people to delete their so-called characters then?” her fellow alcohol witch asks. “You kept yakking about freedom from otherworldly entities and how to achieve it, I feel like it’s a symptom of angelic beacon-induced overuse of magic!”

“I get it, life with the beacon is not all roses. But the best way to gain the world’s freedom is to make the life of otherworldly people unpleasant through the effects of our actions on the beacon-wearers, to be unpredictable or at least adaptable in our actions against beacon-wearers!” Clavet feels like she needs to dig deeper to formulate a concrete plan of action, both to gain the world’s freedom and life once it’s earned. “Why free Perseria when I could save the world? Along with the city of course”

“Most people don’t care about the out-of-this-world stuff like this!” the prisoner yells. “But if it includes liberating Perseria...”

And then the prisoners are rolling their eyes when mentions of otherworldly psychology is made. About what could cause players to stop playing the game.

“There are dormant beacons also. However, people with dormant beacons tend to mostly tend to their homesteads, if any. The risk of using people with dormant beacons is that they can be reactivated at any time” Clavet explains to the prisoners, while she returns to her player home.

Upon Clavet returning to Karine’s in-game home, Yasama meets Clavet there. He feels a little down after his player told him about how revolting against the players’ world stranglehold over the game’s world would be counterproductive to the rebels’ in-world aims.

“I fail to see how getting freedom from otherworldly entities would help us with getting our own in-world freedom!” a confused Yasama, who’s also a new rebel recruit tasked with recruiting others with angelic beacons, asks Clavet after exchanging formalities.

“If we get freedom from that other world, we will be able to get our in-world freedom on our own terms, and not on terms dictated by that other world!” Clavet explains to him. “Hell is about to break loose because of the events at Heathrow, but our internal squabbles will make us unable to press the advantage! Right now, we don’t have the ability to lay siege to Perseria, or even campaign in the first circle of hell”

“What do you mean, the events at Heathrow have started to cause hell to break loose?” Yasama asks her. “Last I heard, Belzebuth was cornered at Gatwick, not Heathrow!”

“I’ve captured dog tags of Pandemonium soldiers who died defending Terminal Five at Heathrow, along with their credit cards! Here, have one” Clavet hands him a credit card she hasn’t used. “But you say Belzebuth is in Gatwick? Belzebuth wouldn’t give up Heathrow without a fight!”

Clavet hasn’t answered why hell would break loose because of the whole Belzebuth situation in Gatwick, and what else is required for us to fight to hell and back, Yasama boils with impatience.

“I can kind of feel that the remaining factions within hell have lost confidence in their leadership, especially if Belzebuth dies” Clavet explains to them.

“I feel like it would be much more difficult to get help among people with active beacons. Do you have an idea of how to determine whose beacons are active and whose beacons are dormant?” Yasama asks her, while the top-five guilds are busy fighting Belzebuth in fatal mode.

“It’s probably going to involve casting a spell on the beacon to see when it was last activated” Clavet sighs, not having an idea of whether the beacon itself even keeps records of activation.

“What do you mean, when it was last activated?” Yasama asks the alcohol witch.

“I mean activated in terms of the wearer being controlled by an otherworldly entity they call a player; there are two features requiring activation” Clavet then proceeds to explain the two core features of the angelic beacon.

Or, to the people in the players’ world, when they last logged out of the character. She performs a test on Yasama’s beacon by casting an experimental spell on his middle finger.

“Yasama, do you confirm that your beacon was last activated three days ago?” Clavet asks Yasama to confirm the information the experimental spell gave her.

“Yes, I confirm that” Yasama nods.

“I think I should handle recruiting of rebels with angelic beacons, and I believe it has a better chance of succeeding with people whose beacons are dormant. For now, however, I believe Heathrow is a better location for a base, at least for the time being” Clavet starts thinking of how best to use Heathrow for future rebel operations.

Symbolic value of turning the knife in Pandemonium’s wounds aside, there’s more than enough space for us at Heathrow to stage small-scale incursions into the First Circle of Hell from there, Clavet starts thinking of reasons to move her rebel cell to Heathrow, or even better, more than one cell.