Assemble the Seven Treasures!
The words floated before my eyes in red static text before my eyes and disappeared when they opened. I woke up from a bed on which I’d never laid down. When my head touched the pillow it had been to a twin-sized white mattress, one of four others in a cramped bedroom just outside of downtown Austin, Texas.
I heard a scream and rushed to the door. What door? Where was I? What had screamed and why? The questions continuously towered and collapsed under how much I didn’t know, so I started with what I did.
I looked outside of the window, trying to gather where I was, but I corrected myself. I needed to make my problem smaller before I started screaming too. Don’t focus on what was outside of the room or what was in the room or any how or why questions. I focused on myself first.
Had I been drugged? Was I dreaming? How was I moved to where I was from where I’d been?
I couldn’t rule anything out, but I didn’t feel sick. My introspection brought up more text in front of my eyes.
Player: Levi Denton
Lv. 1
Jing: 10/10
Qi: 0/0
Shen: 1/1
Star Sign: Monoceros
I didn’t know how I summoned the word, but only one part of the strange text was correct. I was, still am, Levi Denton. But, Levi Denton was a Gemini, was twenty-one years old and didn’t hallucinate (as far as I know, at least). There was one time with Carey’s brownies where I kept mistaking his weird, hairless cat for a demon, but the experience hadn’t really encouraged me to touch anything like that again.
Where was I?
The room was quaint, and perhaps the only element keeping me calm amidst every other absurdity. When I was much younger, my aunt had gotten remarried on the beach of a small lake in California. The cabin in which my family stayed was a bit like this, old and wooden and bare. My bed- was it my bed? The bed I’d woken from was big, but the mattress was thin and felt too soft to the touch. Its frame was also antiquated and heavy, but adorned with pretty carvings.
I pressed into the material of the mattress. No springs, I thought.
Nothing decorated the walls, but a pail of clean water (clean meaning I was pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to piss in it) sat on the desk by the door. The chair under that was the last of the furniture. There were no papers or books around or under the desk, but I found some actual clothes left on the chair.
There was no mirror in the room, but I was wearing a short, white smock that I was sure looked ridiculous. I balled up the garment and tossed it onto what possibly was my bed to change.
When I undressed, I became sure that nothing happening was the result of a brownie or a prank or some hasty destination wedding.
I was never particularly out of shape, but I spent more time behind a computer than outside, and definitely saw a large order of fries more often than I saw a barbell. My body didn’t resemble that person, that Levi Denton. I realized I was a bit taller and my hair was much lighter. Rather than beginning to balloon, my skin clung to my muscles with clear definition. I tried to decide if my face had changed from the shadowy reflection of the water.
There was a knock at the door, three successive raps. When a voice spoke, I realized they were knocking at a different door. The walls were so thin I could make out the sound clearly.
“Hey, some of us are meeting downstairs…” his voice was cloying and a bit nasal. I stepped towards the adjacent wall to hear him better. “In case you think you’re alone… uh…” the voice paused. “You’re not, so… take your time, yeah.” Apparently satisfied, I heard some steps come closer to my door.
I didn’t force the man to suffer through his speech and swung open the door to my (?) room.
The man had his fist raised to knock. He was older than me, but had a full head of black hair and a worried expression. He immediately stepped back when I appeared and I realized I was scowling. He was dressed in a green tunic and light pants. Our clothes were the same, except my tunic was a light blue color. We even had the same pristine leather boots.
I was exposed to a low roar of discussion from the rest of the building and dizzed in realizing I was on the second floor of wherever I was.
“I’ll be down,” I said. The man nodded and his hand raised to his cheek. It dropped just as quickly and he pursed his lips, moving on to the next closed door.
From my room, I crossed the red wooden walkway to a rope fence overlooking the first floor. The building was wide and angular, but under my feet was a large lobby. More than two dozen people had loosely assembled, moving shanty tables to make space for a single congregation. Two large men, also in the same dress, seemed to guard the door to my left. Across from me, on the ground, was a bar jutting out from the wall, and another door to a kitchen behind it.
I recognized the setup like a classic diner, complete with a large open window for patrons to spectate the cooks. For now, it was empty of any employees, but a few people seemed to be scavenging through its contents.
More people went down the stairs, joining the confused crowd. I tried to find where the scream had come from, but couldn’t. At the least, it looked like they were somewhere safe. Perhaps someone had just panicked? I couldn’t exactly blame them.
I wanted to identify anybody among the crowd that wasn’t wearing the standard uniform, but there were no exceptions. Save for the tunic’s color, everybody’s clothes were identical. I took comfort in knowing I was among a group of people all going through the same thing, but quickly realized that meant nobody would have any real answers.
That didn’t stop someone from acting like they did anyways.
“Take a seat! Let’s all take a seat!” She kept repeating. The woman was even older than the man who’d come around knocking on doors. But, she was fit and stout. She tried to wave over the people still climbing down the stairs. The building, it was coming to look like some kind of medieval (like I really knew what that word meant) inn, had four floors, and the well of stairs opposite the bar kept feeding more confused and agitated people into the lobby.
The room to my right opened up and out came a little kid. She couldn’t have even been a teenager, but her eyes were huge. I recognized panic and worry. She saw me and I froze. Was I supposed to comfort her? Was I supposed to lie and say this was something normal that she just hadn’t seen yet? Was I supposed to ask her name and make her feel safe?
Absolutely, yes. But we’re cursed to only realize what we should have done well after the fact. The girl bolted inside and slammed the door shut.
Even then I was filled with a hot shame of failure. So I refocused on the situation at hand. Above me, two more floors of rooms circled the inn. The trickle of people had mostly stopped. I saw one other person, on the top floor of rooms, doing the same as mee, watching the situation from the ropes.
I decided there wasn’t much else to see. And if everybody was in the same situation, then there were no answers to be had. I examined my room once more, with a clearer head. I noticed a wooden hatch across from the door and opened it to find a whole town outside. The word ‘town’ might have been generous, but there were a couple other wooden buildings, and even two big, gray stone establishments towards the town’s center. Some people milled about the dirt roads connecting everything.
Pieces of this puzzle began to snap together. I had stats, I had starting equipment and I’d been transported to some fantastical place. I, and perhaps the others in the inn, (I remembered they could be convincing non-player characters) were a part of some game. This discovery filled me with a rush of urgency.
I stopped twice before heading downstairs. First, I took a gentle pull from my pail of water and then emptied the rest down onto the dirt road outside of my window-hatch. I dumped the spoon and the smock I was wearing when I woke up into the bucket. I tried to fit the bed’s pillow into it as well, but couldn’t.
I also paused in front of the girl’s room. Even my counterpart on the fourth floor had started walking down, which meant she might’ve been the last person left in their room. The older woman had started to address everybody downstairs. Most everybody was standing or sitting in a loose crowd in front of the bar, but opposite the inn’s entrance, some women were watching over a table of other kids, trying to keep them calm.
I knocked on the girl’s door softly. I tried to think of something to say, something someone who was scared would want to hear, but couldn’t. I didn’t know what I wanted to hear. So, when the girl didn’t open her door, I offered a silent thanks and made for the inn doors. Its two guards raised a hand, but it was the older woman who spoke up.
“Excuse me,” she said. “It might be best if we talk as a group. We’re all going through the same thing, after all.” The nasally man had taken a chair very close to her, but watched me expectantly. My counterpart on the fourth floor stood towards the back of the crowd. I realized all of their eyes were on me.
“That’s fine,” I said. It was the first time I’d said anything and my voice was different. It sounded like when it was too late at night and I was only interested in going to bed. “I’ll leave you all to it.”
“There’s nowhere to go,” she fired back. The guards didn’t move. “Where do you think you’re going? Unless you know something we don’t.” The small sea of heads turned to me again.
I felt exhausted. All the urgency escaped my body like a fart and my shoulders drooped. My stomach turned and I couldn’t help but sneer.
“Well?” the woman pressed.
There’s no escaping it, I thought. Even here, in this impossible and strange dream, it didn’t take even one morning for rules to come out. Restrictions born from leaders and listeners had followed them all. I remembered those weeks in that room in Austin and all the rote rules I obeyed every day. For one fleeting walk down the stairs, I’d been free. But even here, people got too nervous with that freedom. And so they bunched together and huddled in crowds and waited for someone who didn’t know anything to tell them what to think.
My opinion on people plummeted. I always thought it was some bad system or some ancient bug with the world that caused all of our everyday problems. Surely, on a blank slate, if no person had no advantage over another or if there was no government or job or bank account or landlord or anything, then we could create a utopia.
It was all handed over to us, and all that endless potential was just too intimidating.
“Do you know where to go?” I asked the woman holding court over everyone.
“I know that we need to talk this situation over,” she said. “We should exchange information, we should gather as adults and assess the problem.”
“What problem?” I asked, perhaps too sharply. “You don’t run things here. I want to go outside. Why are you two even listening to someone like this? Did you even look out there?”
The woman interrupted my questioning of her guards. “Excuse me, young man. My name is Officer Elena Castilla and I’ve protected communities for over twenty years-”
“Show me your badge,” I said.
The woman scoffed. “None of us came here with anything.”
I knew that. “So you could be anyone! You could all be anyone you like! You could be a teacher or a bartender or a drug dealer for all any of us can prove!” The heads turned back to the woman. “So, why is anybody pretending to be what they were?
“And what about the rest of you? What are you now? With nothing? You could be anything! Say anything! And you’re all just… sitting there,” I waved them off. Some of the people actually sitting down started to shift uncomfortably. I noticed the nasally man’s chin raise a bit.
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“This is what you two are choosing?” I asked the guards. “To be bouncers for a stranger?” I let the question settle in their minds. “Did you even look outside before you all turned into this?” I stepped forward again and they didn’t stop me. Bright, blinding sunlight filled the inn and I sucked down the fresh air.
“I don’t really care what any of you do,” I told the crowd before leaving. I looked up, and next to the stairs, on the second story, was the young girl. She’d poked her head out and was watching me. I couldn’t tell from so far away, but I could’ve sworn that panic was gone from her eyes.
“I don’t care,” I repeated, “but you should. If you were anything like me, then you let people that were like her put you into groups and tell you what you can’t do. If you really loved how that worked out for you, then don’t let me interrupt.”
With that, I faced the new world and started walking. I didn’t look back, but I heard plenty of people scramble to do the same.
----------------------------------------
The town was designed like a long tear drop. The wider end had been built around the two stone buildings I’d spotted from my room. I considered scouring everyone of the red wood buildings on my path through the town, but didn’t want to be last to what could be more important areas of interest. And, if anybody back at the inn didn’t like my speech, I didn’t want to be easy to find.
Instead, I hiked through the unnamed town. I didn’t know what time it was, but guessed the morning was only just starting. In Austin, I’d be finishing whatever homework I couldn’t do the night before, or getting ready for my weekend job cleaning dishes for a barbecue joint. I’d be counting the seconds until I had to do whatever it was I had to do next.
I was constantly racing and finishing something so I could be in time to start finishing the next thing I was told to do.
Here, I was exploring. A sense of urgency and burning curiosity drove me forward, but it didn’t make me anxious or overwhelmed, not like when I’d first woken up. I passed a few people struggling with their new reality. One was still in that white smock, milling about the dirt roads.
I couldn’t relate. What I’d wanted to do had never felt so accessible and easy. I didn’t need to tell anyone where I was going, or constantly check my phone for the time so I wouldn’t be late to something else. I didn’t need to pay to sightsee and was free of worry. Hating my life had left me with a great rush now that it had turned into something else entirely.
The architecture of the unnamed town resembled those streets in old Western movies, where two rows of shanty buildings popped up in the middle of the desert only to face each other and grow dusty. Instead of an expansive desert, the town was flanked by a wide, green plain and a thin forest towards the East. Here, the buildings were clean and much bigger. Their corners turned up into fine points and rogue branches bloomed from their exterior with full green leaves.
I wrote it off as some strange quirk, but the buildings didn’t seem to have any kind of foundation. I knelt by what seemed like a general store from the outside. No signs or words indicated such, but what I could see from the outside looked like a shop. Above the door, an even string of symbols said something in a language I didn’t recognize. Below the three steps towards the front door, the store’s foundation was solid wood, like the trunk of a tree.
I followed its grooves up the face of the store, and found them parallel with the trunk below. Had the store been grown out of the ground? Someone or something would have had to hollow out its center for the store, and carve in the stairs and decorative embellishments, but the more I studied the store and its neighbors, my theory seemed to track across all of the unnamed town.
The only exceptions would be the stone buildings that had already attracted my attention.
Even if nature had done most of the work, the structure was designed for humans, if not by us. I found my guessing spin out wildly. Had other humans built it in anticipation for us? Was all of this created by an alternate dimension of humans that spoke another language? Had anybody lived in this town before we arrived? If so, what happened to them?
“Run!”
“Hide in the buildings!”
I bounced to my feet from my investigation, swiveling around to find the source of a sudden panic. It came from the center of town, where I was walking towards before I got distracted. People were sprinting towards me, peeling off from the group to force their way into different wooden buildings along the dirt road. I tried to stand tall and get a good look at what was chasing them.
I saw nothing and forced my way into the store instead. The front door didn’t resist me. Two back windows let in light across the redwood interior. A waist-high wrap separated the larger space of the store from empty shelves where inventory might be kept. In a normal game a shopkeeper might have some weapons or armor I could purchase. In a normal game my body wouldn’t be brimming with adrenaline while I searched an empty shop.
A few more people had followed my entrance into the store, hiding behind the front windows. They heard me trying to kick down a locked door next to the empty shelves.
“Here,” One pushed me aside and braced himself in front of the door. His leg exploded against the metal lock, forcing it open. I dashed inside to find an office. Bay windows flanked an ornate desk, carved from a much darker wood than the red trees that made up the buildings. A few books were scattered over a smaller desk shoved into the corner. I dropped my bucket and started rifling through them.
“Check in the desk!” Somebody instructed, and shelves started flying open.
“Nothing!”
Another person crowded me, also flipping through the books. But she found the same thing I did. Pages and pages of indecipherable language. None of the books had any illustrations or maps or visual clues of any kind. I closed the last one in defeat.
Three people had joined me in the store’s office. The big man who’d kicked down the door was keeping watch out of the bay windows. From a certain angle, one could keep any eye on the dirt road. An older woman was with him, but took a seat at the desk. She cradled her head in her hands.
The third was the girl who’d ran to the books, same as me. She was very close to me. Her skin was only just lighter than the large desk and her eyes much darker. I looked back at the books just to stop myself from staring. Her tunic was a deep red and I decided she was shorter than me and that our shoulders had almost been touching.
The lady at the desk tried looking outside. “Do you see what they’re running from?”
“Not yet,” the man answered. His face was fixed on the window, scanning the road.
I picked two of the books at random and dumped them into my bucket.
“What are you doing?” the lady asked me.
“Just going on my way,” I said. The man at the window broke from his watch to keep an eye on me instead. My friend from the books stared me down too and I tried to angle my back towards the door without being obvious.
The lady rose from the desk and I took a step backwards. The door to the office was still wide open. My only concern was the girl with the dark eyes. If she tried to stop me then I was outnumbered. If she moved then I could break away with no problem.
Our confrontation was interrupted. More text appeared before my eyes and I froze to focus on the words.
Greetings, players!
I am Igyllr, your host and a god of games and competition! Let me be the first to welcome you all to Arena! A few of your decades ago, some of my siblings got into a bit of an argument. And over time things have gotten a little feisty! Instead of an all-consuming war that might spell apocalypse for man and god, I suggested a game to settle the matter!
That’s where you all come in! You’ve been invited to a world we’ve made just to host this game. You can think of Earth as… on pause for now. So go wild here! This was a joint production from many of my siblings and myself, so don’t be too surprised if you find some extraordinary things!
Every god was welcomed to carve out their little spot in the world too. Curry our favor and you’ll find yourself with a significant advantage over other players!
But those are more than enough details, discovering Arena’s secrets is part of the fun! So too is winning, of course, and every game needs a victory condition. The World Game ends when one god possesses all seven of the Divine Treasures! Their reward will be to choose how every god and player is rewarded and punished!
If you do great work for the right god, achieving godhood itself may not be out of the question! Of course, fighting against the servants of the wrong god may earn you an eternal punishment. The stakes don’t get any higher!
I will be archiving this message and any others in your menu. There is no time limit to the World Game. Please, go and enjoy yourself!
The text disappeared in front of my eyes and I was back before the tense trio. This new information had defused some tension and I tried not to aggravate the group any more.
“Are we cool?” I asked. “There’s still plenty-”
“Quiet,” the dark-eyed girl next to me barked. I shut up and listened intently. “There’s no more screaming,” she said.
The four of us moved to the windows. Crowds of people weren’t fleeing. I saw a few bodies lying in thick patches of mud. But, I couldn’t find what had killed them.
“Get away from the window,” I said and my realization spread to the others. They quickly did so. “It’s probably still out there.” I decided to crouch down too. Something had followed the people out there and killed them while that message was being delivered.
“What is?” the stern lady asked, but she lowered into a half-squat, still trying to peek out of the office windows.
“Exactly,” I answered. “Still wanna fight over some books?”
“Stop,” the dark-eyed girl said. “We need to be able to hear it coming.”
I strained to hear anything, but realized whatever I heard would be someone dying and focused my thoughts inward again, trying to solve the problem at hand. Text floated before my eyes again.
Player: Levi Denton
Lv. 1
Jing: 10/10
Qi: 0/0
Shen: 1/1
Star Sign: Monoceros
Inbox
As my eyes reread the strange menu, I focused on the new option. But, the only message in my inbox was Igyllr’s announcement. I cocked my head. There was a message before that, I thought. Why wasn’t it recorded there too?
My eyes navigated out of the inbox and I was back at my menu again. I played more than enough games to recognize a stat block when I saw one, but never saw a character’s star sign included. And what were those three traits? Jing, Qi and Shen didn’t mean anything to me.
I dismissed the menu with a flick of my eyes. The others knelt in silence, but that wasn’t getting us anywhere.
“Hey,” I hissed. “Can you guys see that weird menu?”
The dark-eyed girl stared me down, but didn’t tell me to be quiet. “What are you talking about?” she asked.
“Yes,” the other man said. “But, I don’t understand it. Our stats look like crap.”
He played games too. I tried not to look excited.
“Just focus on your breathing, or some part of yourself,” I instructed the other two. The girls strained without any results. “Pretend you’re trying to hear a sound you’re making. Listen to yourself.”
The dark-eyed girl’s eyes went wide. I could tell she had gotten it. The other woman clicked her tongue in frustration and tried again.
“So when the letter said games, it meant video games?” she asked. “How many points in Jing do you have?”
It occurred to me that we could all have different numbers in these categories. I was supposed to be the gamer, but she’d recognized that instantly. I’d thought the woman was the most dangerous person in the room, but the dark-eyed girl was picking things up quickly.
I hesitated to answer, but the man didn’t. He said, “Ten.” I nodded. The girl said she had the same. I had to remind myself they could both be lying. It was a round number and easy to conjure up.
“Oh I got it!” the woman shouted. We all whipped our heads at her. She clamped a hand over her mouth. The rest of us had been whispering, and in the recent quiet of the town, her voice might as well have been a signal flare announcing our presence.
We didn’t dare even whisper, listening again for any noises.
“Hello?” another woman’s voice dared to ask. I heard her weight against the wood. Had I made the floor creak like that when I first walked into the store? “Is anybody in here?” Her shouting was going to attract some more danger. The man seemed to have the same thought and stood to retrieve her from the store.
He walked out of the office door and I saw him draw his last breath. Something thin and violet skewered the man clean. It pulled out of the man’s chest slowly. The stranger, I never learned his name, crumpled to the floor bleeding from his mouth and chest.
The voices came again, just as soft and innocent and human.
“Hello?” A long pause. “Is anybody in here?”
I felt a severe tug on my tunic. The dark-eyed girl was pulling me from the door. I tried to silently crawl along the office, moving from the open door. I tried to think of a solution, an escape or a way to fight back. I just kept seeing a man lose all the life in his chest.
Those heavy steps approached the office. I was going to die. Not even half a day into being free and I was going to be killed. For all the good my speech did, it probably killed every person in that inn. If we’d been organized and smart and calm, maybe a big group could handle a big problem like this. Who was I to tell anybody else what to do? I was just a corpse in progress.
The steps came closer, those innocent questions wouldn’t stop.
This is who I was. A change of setting didn’t help things. I was a scared kid waiting for someone to tell me what to do next. I fell into line. I followed the rules and kept my voice down and waited for my turn. Now it was just my turn to die.
“Stay here,” the dark-eyed girl hissed. I tried to see who she was talking to. She was waving over the other woman. I noticed I was shaking. They were going to escape. The smart girl had a plan and she was going to take everyone useful with her and let everyone else die and I couldn’t blame her. It was my turn. Who was I to fight back?
Those heavy steps rounded the corner and a monster faced me. The thing was vaguely humanoid, with two faces and one arm. Its flesh was viscous and violet, like the thing had been modeled out of wet clay. A human head bobbed around, spewing those innocent questions, but its true face was on its chest, or maybe that was its head? I didn’t care. A sharp, elongated tongue in its chest flicked off the other man’s blood, ready to pierce me next.
That was it. My moment of death. My body felt cold, but I couldn’t stand it. This time, this once, I couldn’t stand just standing there. Some unknown, long-standing resentment (towards myself probably) boiled into a rage. I leapt up to my feet and balled my hands up tight. The monster lashed its tongue.
Neither of us expected the heavy, black desk to charge across the office. Four desperate legs hefted the desk and trucked it towards the monster, sandwiching it against the red wood interior. The human head started wailing and I rushed the monster, swinging my full bucket against its horrible face. The purple, wet clay exploded, repainting the office.
The women dropped the desk. The monster didn’t struggle under its weight. Was it dead?
“Gah!” the older woman spat and spat, scratching out every drop of the bitter purple goop from her mouth. I wiped my smock against my face, clearing off the monster’s remains.
I offered it to the dark-eyed girl.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Were you going to try fighting it alone?” she asked. After a moment, she accepted the smock, and started clearing off her face too. “That’s stupid.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. I wanted to add, “But, it felt good,” and decided against it. Celebrating anything around that man’s corpse felt undeserved. It didn’t change how I felt. I looked down death and roared. Even if it meant nothing, especially if it was going to mean nothing, I liked that feeling. I wanted it again.