“The Caster Class excels at area lockdown and denial. Strong crowd control and single target buffs for allies and debuffs for enemies enable a Caster to create openings for allies or deadly traps to funnel enemies into.”— Annwyn Online Player’s Guide
The Ruined City of Araedi. Day 01.
“What the actual hell is going on?” A man shouted.
“Why can’t I log out? I can’t stay here! I have work in an hour!” A woman cried out.
“This is fucking ridiculous! What is this, some kind of publicity stunt?” Another man shouted.
“Where the hell are the damn admins!”
The chorus of cries and complaints filled the air around Ashley, growing louder as each new person added their own anger and confusion to that of the crowd.
Only moments ago, Ashley had been in the quiet of her apartment, sitting on her bed in front of her laptop while Andrew sat at his desk. Now, she was in the body of her character, a level fifty-four Caster named Sinnamon Roll. She stood alongside dozens of random players on the steps of the guildhall in the largest Guardian City in Annwyn Online.
Ashley wanted to add her protests to that of the players, but couldn’t figure out who or what to direct her confusion at. The developers and admins? That didn’t make any sense, just what kind of bug did interdimensional kidnapping and body swapping fall under?
Though Ashley still hadn’t fully come away from the idea that she had finally snapped from worrying so much about the MCAT and this was the resultant mental break. The other option, that she would have to rethink everything she thought she knew about the existence of magic or aliens, was somehow a bit harder of a pill to swallow.
A wet splat jolted Ashley from her thoughts. On the ground in front of her sat the remains of a pie with blue fruit filling that oozed into a pool outside the tin that held it. A loud crash a second later had Ashley looking up the stairs.
Just before the guild’s entrance, a cart lay overturned beside a group of players. In the middle of the group, a man in a white coat with two rapiers at his side was holding another, older man off the ground by his shirt. Blood trickled down the older man’s cheek, yet he didn’t look as afraid as Ashley thought he should have.
Ashley bolted up the stairs. The man in the white coat’s name appeared above his head, Krait, a level sixty-seven Sword Saint.
“Put him down!” Ashley grabbed Krait’s arm, but he wrenched himself free.
Krait dropped the man and pulled one of his rapiers from its sheath. “Piss off! I just want to get back to my fucking home and be with my dying wife. If the devs won’t let me log out, I’ll carve through every NPC until they log me out!”
As Krait pulled back with his rapier to strike, Ashley got a good look at the older man and realized she knew him. Gavriel, a half Serethi elf, half human who, along with his wife, Yentel, ran a bakery not far from here that Ashley and Andrew visited regularly when they came through Araedi. It was always a small thing, a mini “date” they’d started doing ingame when Ashley had finished her first class quest.
“Stop!” Ashley shouted. She didn’t even realize she kept on speaking words of power and casting a spell.
A mass of sticky webbing manifested from in front of Ashley’s fingertips and shot towards both Krait and Gavriel. Gavriel spun and rolled, avoiding most of the webbing. Krait dropped to the ground, coated in the stuff.
Ashley reached out to help Gavriel to his feet.
He took it and stared at her with recognition. “Sinnamon Roll? Thank you for the help!”
It wasn’t his gratefulness or the quick way the old man seemed to react and recover to the incident that left Ashley stunned, but the implication that he, too, knew their shared history. He remembered her. Something about that minor fact worried Ashley in a way she couldn’t begin to understand.
Krait roared behind Ashley. She turned to react, but was too slow. Krait was bearing down on her and Gavriel with both rapiers raised, bits of webbing still dangling from his clothes. He swung downward and Ashley closed her eyes, hoping this would be the end of this dream.
It never came. Instead, a loud, metallic thunk followed by Krait and another man grunting was all she heard.
“That’s enough. Sheathe your blade,” commanded a gruff voice.
Ashley opened her eyes. Standing over Krait was a man clad in silver armor with a wine-colored sash draped across his left shoulder. Towered over Krait would have been the more accurate descriptor, Ashley thought.
A second knight stood just behind the pair, an axe held firmly in his gauntleted hands. A third knight was positioned further up the stairs, a crossbow trained on Krait.
What really stuck out to Sinnamon was the level of the three knights. Five hundred and fifty. Annwyn Online’s level cap had been one hundred, yet these men had circumvented it somehow. No, that was yet another carryover from the game. Isaac had told Ashley the knights who protected the Guardian Cities wore special armor that allowed them to always outlevel a player. It was the way the game had enforced the city’s safe zone, Isaac had said. What that meant now, Ashley was sure she didn’t want to find out.
“I said sheathe your blade!” the knight with the axe commanded again. “I won’t ask again, Guardian.”
Either Krait hadn’t noticed the nearly five hundred level difference, or he didn’t care because he raised his rapiers to strike the knight with the sword who had blocked his first attack.
The knight was unfazed. He was a blur as he grabbed Krait’s arms, twisting the Sword Saint to the ground. In another swift movement, he had both of Krait’s arms locked in a vice-like grip.
The crowd of players all smartly backed away from the scene, putting as much distance between themselves and the spectacle as they could while still watching.
The knight with the axe gave a look of disgust at Krait, his mouth curling into a frown. He turned to address the crowd. “In light of the sudden return of all the guardians to the city at once and the chaos that seems to have caused, we are issuing you all your one and only warning: continued attempts to harass each other and the citizens of Araedi will result in losing the right to travel freely throughout the city.”
Could he really do that? Ashley wondered. Players could fast travel to any city they had attuned themselves to. Could these knights really put a stop to that?
A woman’s voice broke through the crowd, coming from the top of the stairs by the guildhall entrance. “Gentlemen, I do not think that will be necessary. I am sure the last thing any of us want to do is antagonize the caretakers of this wonderful city.”
The woman spoke with a mixture of grace and perfect enunciation that Ashley would have attributed to a woman with far more experience in diplomacy than her youthful appearance suggested.
She wore galaxy blue mage robes with gold dots speckling the outfit that shimmered like the first stars of twilight. The outfit was reminiscent of a sari and the colors accentuated her bronze skin and grey-white hair. She didn’t so much as walk down the stairs, but glided down them. As she drew near, a text box appeared above her head and her name, Wisteria Leothalis, was written in the fancy golden script of one of the beta testers, the game’s first one thousand players known as the Vanguard.
Wisteria rested her hand gently on the shoulder of the knight with the axe. “I think your man has made his point. I don’t think… Krait will be a problem any longer, right?” She glanced at Krait with a smile that held none of the warmth her tone had.
Krait didn’t meet her eyes.
The knight with the axe regarded Wisteria for a moment before lowering his weapon. “You heard the Vanguard. Let him go.” He turned to the knight with the crossbow. “Have Deno, Vayla, and Natan relieve us.”
The knight with the crossbow gave a nod and turned up the stairs, disappearing into the guildhall. The knight pinning Krait released the Sword Saint and he slinked off, disappearing into the crowd.
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Wisteria gave the two guards a genuine nod of approval, then turned her gaze on the crowd. “People! We do not know who or what brought us here or even how it was done. Fighting with each other and the locals won’t bring us any closer to finding a way home.” She spoke like a mother scolding her child. “I suggest you be a bit more productive and either help those of us seeking the answers to those questions or by venting your anger out on the monsters beyond the city’s walls.”
With that, Wisteria turned and walked back up the stairs and into the guildhall. Three new guards stood by the entrance after the original three went inside behind Wisteria.
The mood in the area grew somber now that the initial panic and anger had gone away. Some people sat on the ground crying while others tried to console them. But there were the faint rumblings of new emotions bubbling up.
Wisteria’s comment about fighting monsters stirred excited murmurs that turned to shouts as players began recruiting each other to venture beyond Araedi’s walls.
shley turned to Gavriel, who had begun attempting to right his cart with little success. Ashley grabbed the other half and the two began to lift. She was surprised at how easily the two of them were able to stand it upright. She wasn’t some wet tissue paper when it came to the strength department, but the cart was huge and made from thick pieces of wood, yet she did most of the work with ease.
Gavriel frowned, his brow growing deep furrows as he studied the damage. One of the wheels was broken, with three of the five spokes bent at odd angles.
“Looks like it won’t be going anywhere. I’m Sorry,” Ashley said.
“Bah, I’ve been meaning to fix that wheel anyway. Now I have an excuse,” Gavriel said.
He started to say something else, but Ashley didn’t catch it. A ringing sound played inside her head; three dings in rapid succession that repeated on a loop. She tried her best to politely hold up a hand and looked around before a prompt appeared in front of her.
You have been invited to a group call by W3aver. Would you like to answer it? Yes/No
She didn’t even hesitate to answer yes. She stayed quiet for a moment, expecting Andrew to say something first. When he didn’t say anything, she spoke.
“Hello?” Ashley asked aloud.
No response, although Gavriel gave her a questioning look.
She tried again. “Is this thing work—?”
“If you’re talking out loud, we can’t hear you, Ash.” The voice wasn’t her boyfriend Andrew, but their friend, Jack. His username, Jack O’ Lantern flashed in the corner of her vision as he spoke and there was just the smallest hint of laughter in his words.
Andrew’s voice came next. “It’s weird. Think about what you want to say to us and we’ll hear that.”
Ashley started to think about sending the word “hello” to them, but before she even finished the thought, Kait shouted over her.
“Whoa, you wanna do what to Andrew?”
Jack threw in, “Keep those thoughts to yourself, Ash!”
Ashley’s face flushed with warmth. “What? What did I say?”
“Nothing! They’re kidding!” Andrew answered quickly.
Somehow Jack and Kait managed to telepathically transmit raucous laughter into her head.
“Sorry, Ash, you’re too easy.” There was clearly no remorse in Kait’s words as she spoke between fits of laughter.
Ashley dismissed Kait’s apology with a huff. “Where are you guys?”
“Jack and I are outside Castera. The people here were pretty excited to have all us players back.” Kait replied.
“Same here. Even weirder, I’m standing next to an NPC who says he knew Andrew and I from when this was a game.”
“Who is he?” Andrew asked.
“Gavriel, he and his wife own the bakery we sometimes stop at. I’ll be the first to admit, I have no idea what to make of any of this.” Ashley wasn’t sure why the fact that Gavriel knew her bothered her. It wasn’t specifically him knowing her, but the idea that she had a history in a world that had been a game up until a few minutes ago.
It meant whoever had brought them here had a history with earth and no one knew about it. With how easily they seemed to be able to move thousands, if not millions, of people… that fact terrified her.
Ashley wasn’t sure how long she’d drifted into her own thoughts, long enough that the three of them had moved onto another conversation. She thought it for the best that she didn’t mention the fight at the guildhall right now.
“Finding a way home is definitely at the top of the list, but…” Kait said, dragging the word out to two syllables. “I definitely think we should have a look around. It’d be a shame if we got back home without seeing a little bit of this place before then.”
Andrew voiced his agreement. “Should we meet up here in Araedi?”
“Yeah, Jack and I were going to fast travel to you, but our Caer Fragments are bugged. Looks like we’re taking the scenic route.”
“Bugged how?” Ashley slipped back into the conversation. She pulled her Caer Fragment from her bag of holding and looked it over. She didn’t see anything wrong with it, it looked like a normal chunk of amethyst. Except for the fact that it was glowing.
Jack answered, “Got a popup saying we need to reattune them. You guys might wanna do that before leaving the city. Don’t wanna die and respawn on the other side of the server.”
“Good thinking.” Ashley paused as the other thing that had been subconsciously bothering her since she got in the call surfaced into her mind. “Say, where are Sam and Isaac? I just noticed they aren’t in the call.”
“Friends list says they’re offline. Guess they didn’t log in with us.” Jack said, then added, “I’m not sure who’s the lucky ones, them or us.”
Ashley felt a bit of sadness at that. If anyone were going to enjoy visiting this world, it would have been Sam and Isaac. The two had been playing the game longer than anyone else in their friend group by years.
The rest of their call dwindled into points of interest each person wanted to visit and Ashley and Andrew making plans to meet up at Yentel’s bakery, keeping to the tradition they kept whenever they visited Araedi. That thought reminded Ashley that she’d been ignoring Gavriel for some time now. When she looked at him, she saw he had busied himself with picking up the desserts that had survived the cart’s tumble and placing them in a brown leather bag; his own bag of holding.
Ashley cleared her throat, grabbing Gavriel’s attention. “Sorry for suddenly ignoring you, that was a little rude.”
“Believe me, we’re all used to you Guardians suddenly leaving mid conversation or standing still for long periods. No offense taken.” Gavriel gave a friendly smile that turned into a look of uncertainty for a second, like he was deciding whether or not to say something. One side of that internal debate eventually won out. “What do you do when you stand still like that?”
“I was talking with my friends, others like me, through… Um…”
“Telepathy?” Gavriel supplied helpfully. “You can all talk to each other that way? That’s some pretty powerful magic. I’d heard the legends and even seen what some of you can do. That’s…” Gavriel trailed off and began scratching his bushy greying beard in thought. After a beat, he realized he’d gone somewhere else himself and quickly apologized. “Sorry, it’s just fascinating. I never thought I’d be having a normal conversation with a Guardian.”
“None taken. Before today, most of us might have said the same thing of you.” Ashley laughed.
Gavriel chuckled with her. Gavriel seemed to know a lot about magic for a simple baker. She glanced at his stats and had to work to keep her jaw from dropping. A lot more information was supplied than had been in the game.
Name: Gavriel
Age: 173
Race: Half human, Half Serethi Elf, Male
Class: Adventurer, level 40
Subclass: Huntsman, level 50
Profession: Engineer, level 50
Specialty: Tinker, level 50
Health Points: 5,974/6,000
Mana Points: 5,667/5,667
This man was far from a simple baker. It wasn’t even a focus of his. Ashley knew there were NPC adventuring guilds the same as there were player guilds. The game had painted that as an immersive feature to see NPCs clearing some of the same dungeons players could clear. Gavriel’s age meant he’d been around for several decades before the first players arrived. Ashley wondered what the time before players was like. Was it so bad that someone went through the trouble of bringing beings from another world to help out? What did that say about things now?
Gavriel tapped Ashley on her shoulder and she flinched.
“I’m sorry. You went away for a moment and I just wanted to let you know I’m going to be heading back now. I’m sure Yentel would be happy to cook you a meal as thank you for saving me back there.”
“That was just me getting lost in my own thoughts. I’d love a meal and to meet Yentel. And I’m sorry Krait attacked you. This has all been a lot. Until a few minutes ago, most of us were living our lives and then we were here.”
“It’s been a lot longer than a few minutes! You Guardians have been gone for almost an entire month.”
“A month?” The words were out of her mouth before she realized it. There was no way they'd been gone for a month. Unless… Was he talking about the server maintenance? “You said ‘almost an entire month’? How many days exactly?”
The old half-elf rubbed his hands through his hair as he thought about the question. “Twenty-three, twenty-four, I think.”
Ashley did the quick math in her head. The server maintenance had lasted for two days or exactly twenty-four days for Gavriel if the two hour to one day conversion for the in-game time still held true.
That meant that likely only seconds or minutes had passed since she and everyone else had been brought here. Which means they could spend days or even weeks here before anyone figured out what happened to them. If anyone figured out what happened to them.
“I don’t think I lost a month. I think time just works differently in my world. Twenty-four days lines up with when the server… the portal closed on our side. Only two days had passed for us since then. But only a few minutes have passed since the portal opened back up, I think.”
“And when the portal opened back up, it changed you?” Gavriel asked, catching on.
“Not changed…” Ashley had to think. Just how did one explain to someone that until a few minutes ago, their world had just been a video game for her and every other player’s amusement. “We could control these bodies, but like the way someone controls a puppet or a doll. But now I am actually here in this body. Do you know of any magic like that?”
“Sounds like summoning magic. That goes a bit beyond what I know.” He gave an apologetic shrug. “Yentel’s got a small library you’re more than welcome to look through. You might find something useful there.”