Wind and sharp shards of stone whipped around me as I dropped deeper into the mountain. I had let go of my little flashlight when the column had exploded, and the beam of light was now spinning wildly in freefall, creating a disorienting strobe-light effect.

I writhed and squinted my eyes against the rushing wind, splaying my arms and legs out, instinctively reaching out for the spinning light. One of my hands caught on what must have been the side-wall of the shaft I was falling down, and I cried in pain as it wrenched my joints and sent me spinning away just as wildly as my flashlight. I crashed through the cloud of sharp falling stones that used to be the floor, and ping-ponged off the far wall.

I tried to stabilize myself, unsure of which way was up or down and completely spun around despite the rushing wind. I flailed and windmilled my limbs, adrenaline clearing my mind until only the pounding of my heart remained. I saw a light spin by again and reached out, this time managing to close my fingers around it.

The world came to a sudden stop, and a text box filled the center of my vision. The First thing I noticed was that the item's name was written in bold purple text.

Heart of Stone

(Limited Edition Holo Crafting Material)

Some are said to have a heart of gold, others are described as cold or warm. Reach for the heart they say, if you want to change minds; or in your case, grab tight and rip it free!

Only found by those who dare to delve into dark depths of deep dens of rock and stone, this high grade crafting material is Minted in limited quantities and hidden on New Worlds.

Time seemed to crawl at a fraction of its normal speed as I read the message, the swarm of rocks slowly spinning and ricocheting off each other in the background. A second smaller text box flickered into existence beneath it, showing garbled text and symbols before settling into a coherent message.

Would you like to dupe this item? Yes/No

I blinked at the second prompt, but panic and adrenaline pushed me to snap decision making. I settled my intent on ‘Yes’. The item description box disappeared and was replaced by another. The falling stones and shards of rock around me seemed to regain a portion of their speed, visibly moving in the background as I quickly read through the next box.

New Quest!

Follow your Heart to Gold

Follow the light

The text box disappeared and time returned to normal, the spinning churning motion returned and I struggled to level myself out. After a few seconds of panicked writhing and turning, trying to stabilize my fall, I managed to sort myself out with my arms and legs splayed out and back against the rushing wind. I could see flashes of the cavern below as the flashlight continued to spin somewhere in the falling mess of stone, the light only illuminating the widening walls and not powerful enough to touch the bottom.

The flashing sparkle that got me into this whole mess appeared on the edge of my vision as soon as I had leveled myself out, and I saw the first item in a checklist appear and check itself off on the right side of my HUD, and a second type itself out beneath it.

[x] Stabilize your fall

[ ] Keep your feet on the ground

I pulled the Stone into my inventory and tilted my head to follow the flash. Seeing one of the larger chunks of rock, a little larger than a manhole cover, falling near to me outlined in a dim purple glow. It pulsed when I locked onto it, so I reached towards it, trying to swim closer through the air. Starting to move my arms and legs again had the opposite effect that I had in mind, and sent me spinning and spiraling across the shaft again. Luck was on my side however, and I crashed chest first into the stone, gripping it in a bear hug, my eyes tightly closed against the dizzying flashing lights and extended freefall.

Despite my closed eyes, my HUD remained, and the second checklist item flashed and began to fade from white text to a pinkish color that was quickly reddening.

Gritting my teeth, I shifted my grip to grab the edges of the stone, and pulled myself into an awkward crouch on the stone, holding it against the bottoms of my boots as everything continued to lazily spin in freefall down into the pit. As soon as my feet made contact with the stone, the spin seemed to slow until it settled out with me on top, and a third item then appeared in the checklist. This time with a quickly ticking count-down next to it, I watched the timer continue the white-to-pink-to-red color transition, and followed the instruction when it zeroed out without thinking.

I brought one hand up from its grip on the stone beneath me and pointed, and the Hub Portal started to swirl into life in front of me, its position locked relative to my pointing finger. The change caused myself, the stone, and the portal moving with me to start wobbling again slightly, but I maintained my grip with one hand and continued pointing at the opening Portal, willing the default ritual to work faster.

A half of a minute is a really long time when you’re forced to remain still, let alone when you're riding a chunk of rock in free-fall down what seemed like an endless pit. Another entry appeared letter by letter in the checklist to distract me.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

[x] Stabilize your fall

[x] Keep your feet on the ground

[x] Start a Hub Portal in 0:00:00

[ ] Brace, the hard part is over.

I closed my eyes, grit my teeth, and shook my head; thoughts of doubt flooding back into my mind to fill the forced inaction. I saw another timer pop-up next to the last entry, counting down from 12 seconds. In the last few seconds, my eyes still shut tightly and my focus on the timer in my HUD, I started to hear something. Percussive pops and skittering explosions quickly got louder and louder until everything happened at once, faster than I could really register. I felt my hand fill with something, like I had pulled it from my inventory, and my legs tensed all on their own and pushed off the rock, launching me forward towards the portal.

With a huge crunching crash of a noise, the world went black and I found myself bodiless, floating in void and looking at the respawn screen.

You Died

Exit or Respawn:

Faction Capital: Free

Home: 1 Shard

Hub: 5 Shards

Recall to Session Start: 10 Shards

I tried to scream at the damn text box, I had trusted the game's direction and it had gotten me killed. Shards were almost a hundred credits each, and I had never bothered to buy any of them. Everything in my inventory excluding my drill or plasma knife were barely worth the value of a single Shard.

I chose the only option available to me, selecting Faction Capital, and existence flashed again as I felt my weight settle onto my feet as the bustling Capital building snapped into place around me.

I hung my head and trudged down the ramp from the elevated Respawn pad, joining the steady trickle of disheartened people. What looked like the aftermath of a fist fight was being dealt with off to one side of the line. Five people were lined up against the unadorned brick wall, a pair of armored Shepherds watching over them with taser rifles while an attendant scanned and logged the info of each one.

I kept my eyes low and joined the quickly moving line, grumbling complaints and spiteful epithets under my breath about whatever glitch had roped me into an unfair death. I saw a message ping into my inbox as I left the spawn room, informing me that my faction's Social Rank had dropped back down to Conscript D1. I cursed the game system some more as I pushed my way through the crowd and out onto the busy street filled with early morning traffic.

The Capital city had grown since I had last visited, the roads were paved with stone, some of which I had probably carved from the slopes of Mount Goodbye myself. Around the building, the hastily constructed wooden buildings I remembered from my last visit were now replaced mostly with masonry, and a number of new steel-framed high rise buildings were under construction on the edges of the downtown district.

I shouldered my way out of the steady stream of people coming in and out of the central building, and stepped into clear space in the lee of the next building's staircase. I opened up my inventory, sorted it by Credit value, and scanned through what was left. Comparing it to memory to determine what the randomizer had chosen for me to drop somewhere deep beneath Mount Goodbye.

I breathed a sigh of relief, seeing both the Heart of Stone and my drill at the top of the list. I noticed, with some disappointment, that there was only one of the Hearts in my inventory, and that the game had apparently lied to me about duping it, which was a whole other thing to begin with. I had enough to worry about, so I pushed that thought aside. I had no idea how much the thing was worth anyways, I had never seen an item with a purple title before.

After a moment of sifting through the list, I realized that I had lost my plasma knife, as well as my pick, shovel, a half-dozen different containers and bags, and the small stash of emergency rations I kept in my inventory.

When you die or are killed in Factions, the system splits your inventory randomly in half without breaking stacks, and drops the heavier side of the divide. You always dropped something, until you had nothing, but would only drop equipped items or Engrams if your inventory was completely emptied.

I had heard of Engrams that could force an equipment drop or even an Engram drop, but I had only ever seen a single Engram. A Gelgin merchant who had shown up in the Capital during the early days after the arrival of the Links had a common green engram called “Hatchback”. He claimed it gave a 20% boost to inventory space, and allowed the user to open their inventory as a sort of summoned physical container.

The container was obvious, it looked like an invisible trunk the size of a freezer opened up in the air to display his wares. I had watched from a distance as he turned down increasingly insane offers to purchase the Engram; bars of True gold, precious gems, truckloads of goods, and promises of business or oaths of loyalty.

Nothing had swayed the Gelgin, who despite looking kind of like a weird faced elf with nearly vertical eyes, was not actually an Ambassador or Masked species but a free merchant simply here to trade. Rumor had it that he had refused all offers and left the planet, disgusted by the constant pestering for the sale of the one item he refused to sell.

I typically kept a couple of granite flagstones in my own default sized inventory as an attempted counter to the heavy drill, and it had paid off. Losing the plasma knife was painful, but the drill is what made earning steady money possible.

I closed my inventory and rejoined the foot traffic flowing down either side of the main street, heading for the little rented warehouse where I had first met my boss. I had plenty of Terrestrial Transport Tokens, commonly called Triple T’s, and felt a new level of appreciation for the weekly stipend. The warehouse was only a few blocks from the Central building, yet Rosso’s Island was roughly ten thousand miles away from Arktria’s Factions Capital, an ocean and an entire continent between, pretty much on the exact opposite side of the enlarged virtual version of Eora.

The warehouse was unattended, but the smart panel next to the door recognized me and flashed my Contract status before the door clicked internally as it unlocked itself. The interior was mostly empty, other than a small office setup in one corner, and a number of carefully packaged Perfect-grade stone blocks that waited to be sold. The tele-pad lay low on the floor, tucked against the wall and just out of the way next to the larger bay door. I hesitated for a moment, took a deep breath, and walked onto the pad.

Transfer to Paired Telepad: 1 Token

Enter Alternate Terrestrial Destination: 10 Tokens

I willed my intent at the first option, and the world instantly shifted with a warm feeling and a flash of light, revealing the sights and sounds of the loading dock near the base of Mount Goodbye. The headlights of one of the larger trucks swept over me as I hurried away from the pad, crossing the lot to the marked foot path to start back up the mountain.

I continued my under-breath cursing and grumbling on my way to retrieve the equipment I’d parted with near my work site. It was unlikely anything would be stolen if I left it overnight, but not unheard of. I had already taken enough risks for the day.

Nearly an hour later, I had retrieved my sledge and mudmover from the side of the mountain, parking it in my usual spot in the lot next to the dock before starting the short hike down to the Atrium. I felt fried, rattled, and the creeping edge of desperation looming at the back of my mind as I found the space and peace to think on the empty path. The bustle of the loading dock quickly faded behind me as I entered the tree lined path to go talk with Rosso.