The morning mists created a bit of a magical atmosphere in the camp and Adelynn couldn’t sleep anymore. Starla was sprawled out in a very unladylike fashion and continued to snore away. Adelynn crawled out of bed and kept a blanket wrapped around her as she fiddled with the cooking system and made some ‘basic coffee’ which wasn’t horrible, just not the creamy coffee treats that people with higher cooking skill could pull off. She looked across the mists to the rising sun and smiled, this place was really very beautiful, even if it wasn’t real.

“Hnnn?” said Starla rousing a bit. “I smell coffee.”

“I made some.” Said Adelynn.

“A’ight.” Replied Starla. “Berb.” Starla vanished for a moment as she logged out, presumably to take care of biological functions. Adelynn had to ask what ‘berb’ meant the first time she heard it and it is the pronunciation of ‘BRB’ or ‘be right back’.

Starla returned after ten or so minutes and Adelynn was still sipping coffee and looking at the mists. Her mind just wandered into a few places where it probably shouldn’t’ve, like ‘how am I going to handle this after I’m out of the hospital?’ and ‘will I still want to come here?’. She dismissed those questions for now and decided she’d cross that bridge when it came.

“Morning.” Said Starla, a bit more lucid than before. “You okay?”

“Yes,” said Adelynn, “I just couldn’t sleep anymore.”

Starla poured herself a cup of Adelynn’s coffee and added something to it. She went and sat down with Adelynn. “The mornings here are very pretty. It’s too bad it’s not like that.”

“Can I ask where you live?” said Adelynn, “Because sunrise sure is like this in reality.” The mist and the light danced in their vision and the sun sparkled off the dew that had collected on the grass.

“Uh.” Said Starla. “In a big city.”

“That explains it.” Said Adelynn. “You need to get out of the city and try some time in the country.”

Starla shrugged. “Maybe, but all my stuff is here.”

Adelynn shook her head. “Ever heard of a vacation?”

“Yes, but I mean ‘all my stuff is here’ as in ‘Mythticle’ not my apartment.”

“Oh.” Said Adelynn. “You’ve not taken a break from Mythticle in a while then.”

“No, last time I did I had the flu and couldn’t synch with the Headspacer because my brain was too foggy.” Said Starla. “People were convinced I’d died or quit or something.”

“Ah. The newer Headspacers are pretty small. You could take it with you.”

Starla shrugged. “What’s the point if I’m just going to be online all the time?”

Adelynn gave up on this conversation. “Alright, so what’s the plan this morning?”

“Well, I think the goblin machine we’re looking for can only spawn after six in the evening, but I could be wrong. I think after that time I’ll fly around over head and look for it and send you a message via the earring if I see it.”

“Okay, we have all day. Anything interesting around here? Some deep cave in a pond or other thing of note?” asked Adelynn.

Starla thought for a moment. “We can’t go into the undercity yet, so that’s out. Hmm…”

“What is the undercity named?” asked Adelynn.

“Starviva.”

“Oh.” Said Adelynn a bit disappointed.

“We could see if Crazy Colgar is in.”

“Who?”

Starla shrugged. “Another player. He has a place in Moonsorrow and he’s a bit of a goofy lunatic. Honestly, he might actually have something really wrong with his brain, but it can’t be too bad or a Headspacer won’t work on him, right?”

Adelynn shrugged. She’d always heard that Headspacers didn’t work on people with severe enough mental illness, but she’d never seen any evidence of that other than the warning labels or the warnings in the user manual. “Should we?”

“Yeah he’s harmless-ish.” Said Starla pulling out her flying car mount. “He lives at the top of the map as high as a person could build, so we need to fly.”

Adelynn climbed in and buckled her seatbelt while Starla got it going. Soon they were high in the sky above Moonsorrow. The buildings had stopped at a dizzying height and they just kept going. Adelynn wondered if hypoxia was a thing in Mythticle and figured she’d know soon enough.

“There it is!” said Starla pointing. Adelynn could see a tiny spec floating all on its own in the bright sky.

“That’s really high up.”

“Yep.” Said Starla. She pushed the accelerator to it’s limit and took shallow breaths. Adelynn could feel her head getting a little swimmy and started giggling at nothing in particular. She could barely make out a small landing pad that Starla was aiming for and everything was sliding sideways in her vision. Suddenly her head snapped back to attention.

“Phew.” Said Starla. “We made it to his bubble. He had to build an atmosphere generator since he kept dying. It was pretty funny when it happened. He’d log in, have thirty seconds of good air and pass out. He eventually made it to the edge of his landing, jumped off and landed in Moonsorrow at high velocity, only to have to do it again since there wasn’t anyone around to resurrect him. He got a message off to a priest friend of ours and waited for a few hours on the streets of Moonsorrow for the guy to arrive. I came and saw him, but I didn’t have resurrection magic at the time so he could only communicate with emojis.”

Starla landed on the platform and Adelynn shook her head to get everything back where it was supposed to be. When she had a few good deep breaths, she looked around. A ramshackle building made of cheap materials was nailed together stood in the middle and continued up into a somewhat crooked tower that ended in a few antennas and a satellite dish made of black glass.

“Hey! You here?” Yelled Starla.

“Who’s askin!?” came a reply.

“I can drop a meteor on you if you’d like!”

The door didn’t open in the standard fashion. It fell apart into tiny chips that squirmed on the ground for a moment as a man dressed in a wizarding robe came out. He looked like he was in his forties or fifties, the oldest looking avatar Adelynn had yet seen, and he looked scruffy. Around his waist he had a belt full of mismatched pouches and other items. “No! No Meteors!” he yelled. The squirming door bits re-assembled back into a door as he looked at the two of them.

“Well, I know you, but your friend is new.” He said pointing at Adelynn.

“Hi. I’m Adelynn.” She said holding out her hand. He took it and shook it vigorously; almost an absurd amount. She yanked her hand away when she thought he was going to pull her over.

“Hmmph.” He said. “What brings you here?”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“A flying car.” Said Adelynn before she realized what she was saying.

“HA!” came from Crazy Colgar. “No really.”

Starla smiled. “We had some time to kill. She’s doing the elf quest and we need to get the critter to spawn.”

“Oh, that damnable thing?” he said “He turned and walked through the door into his shed leaving a shape that looked like a cartoon going through a wall. The door reassembled itself in a bit, but not before Adelynn thought the ground might’ve looked like that from his first few missteps. She smiled as she looked into the sky. The sky was much darker here than on the ground and she could barely see stars.

“How high up are we?” she asked.

“Almost twenty kilometers!” he yelled from his shack. “Friggin dragon won’t let ya go higher unless yer just teleportin’ to the moon.” He walked back through the door the way he’d came and stopped in front of Adelynn. “Here ya go missy.” He said handing her a crude device that had a few buttons.

“What is this?”

“Eh, I farmed the thing that you are lookin for. That makes it pop up when ya hit the red button, just mail it back when done.”

“Oh, thanks!” Said Adelynn.

“Now, get out and no meteors!” he said shooing them away.

Starla shrugged. “That went better than I expected. I wonder why he even has this thing?”

“He said he farmed the critter.”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t drop anything valuable.” Said Starla.

Crazy Colgar stormed out of his hut again. “It does if you fight it enough, probably!”

“Have you fought it enough?” asked Starla.

Colgar mumbled something and walked into the side of his shed that was missing a door and bounced off, changed course and scurried back into his shed.

“So, want to take the car or just jump off the side?”

“Are you crazy?” said Adelynn, but she stopped in mid thought. Starla began to explain about some sort of magic to prevent hitting the ground at high velocity, but Adelynn didn’t hear her. Adelynn was thinking about what she was afraid of. Was she afraid of pain? Death?

Adelynn took a few steps and dove off the edge. Starla yelled for her to wait, but the wind was already rushing past her and thrashing in her ears. It all became white noise as she stared at the ground below and the great expanse of sky all around her. She knew she shouldn’t be able to open her eyes at this speed, but the wind didn’t seem to bother her that much. Closed her eyes as a memory came from the dark recesses of her mind; something better forgotten.

The look on the faces of the EMTs that pulled her out of the wreck of her vehicle; the constant noise of her screaming like an animal wounded beyond hope; all of her nerves lit up in a raging inferno of agony. She thought about when she was a child and her first remembered experience with pain. A light skinning of her knee and she howled. Later in life that same wound wouldn’t even register since she’d experienced something far worse than a skinned knee. A broken arm, or the deep gash she got when she missed with the kitchen knife. All of those were a skinned knee to the pain she’d felt that day. She didn’t think anything could ever hurt her again.

“Adelynn!”

She could faintly hear Starla calling to her and turned to look. She could see her in slow motion, reaching for her like a guardian angel. Adelynn turned to face her and held out her arms and legs to slow her descent. Starla quickly caught up and grabbed her around the waist.

“Glide!” yelled Starla and billowing white wings exploded out of her back drastically slowing their fall. Starla seemed to be stronger than she let on, since she held onto Adelynn as they slowed. Once they’d slowed a considerable bit, Starla put her hand on Adelynn and cast Glide on her as well. Silvery wings thrashed out of Adelynn’s back and caught the wind.

“The hell was that?” Asked Starla.

Adelynn looked away. “I just—I think—I had to prove something to myself.”

“Did you?” asked Starla.

She looked back at Starla and caught her eyes. They were full of genuine worry. “I did.”

“Great.” Starla was still clinging to Adelynn and was able to release her grip. Adelynn held onto one of her hands and they continued their slow descent. “I just wanted to show you the sights.”

“Thanks. It’s beautiful.” Said Adelynn.

“We can speed up if you want. The wings won’t flap, so you can’t go up with them, but they’ll last until we reach the ground.”

“We have a bit to go.” Said Adelynn. The air was still thin this high up. She looked at her silvery wings. “How do I—?” she said as the wings responded to her thoughts to change direction. “How about this?” Her wings tucked in around her and she fell faster, only to find herself facing the ground in a dive. Starla gave chase as Adelynn whooped in excitement.

Starla was kind of impressed. Adelynn was a natural and spun and caught herself and did spirals and handled the wings like she was a pro. Starla joined in, zipping past Adelynn and slapping her hip. “Tag!”

Adelynn stopped and looked down at the retreating Starla for a moment. “Oh, you asked for it!” She dove after Starla. Starla had a moment to see a blur before she felt the sting on her bottom from a high-speed slap. “Tag!”

“Starla sped off after Adelynn and soon they were passing by buildings in Moonsorrow at high speed, spinning, rolling and zipping through the sky. Starla never did catch up to Adelynn a second time, she was just amazing at changing direction at the last second. Adelynn landed in a park and Starla landed next to her, her chest heaving with the effort of keeping up.

“How?” said Starla.

“I just like watching the starlings flit around outside. They’re amazing to watch.”

Starla was at a loss for words. She learned by watching birds. If Starla knew anything about her local birds it was that they were sometimes too stupid to avoid slow moving traffic.

“Well, we’re here.” Said Starla. “We might as well get some lunch.”

Adelynn followed Starla to a small outdoor café and they sat down. Starla stole an elven fry from Adelynn at one point. “Hey!” said Adelynn.

“Just showing you what I learned from my local birds.” Said Starla munching on the fry.

After lunch they headed back to the fields and Adelynn tried the device that Crazy Colgar had given her. It sparked and squealed for a moment before going quiet.

“So.” She said looking at the remote. “Does it work?” Starla shrugged.

“He’s not ‘Crazy’ for no reason. Spending more than fifteen minutes with him makes my head hurt as he starts on the conspiracy theories about the dragon and everything.”

“Oh, I meant to ask you about that.” Said Adelynn. “What did he mean by ‘the dragon won’t let him go higher’?”

“You’ve heard of Sam Smith, right?”

Adelynn nodded. “Elusive billionaire who invented the Headspacer tech.”

“Yes, him. There’s a theory that he’s not a human. It started out as ‘he must be a lizardfolk, ha ha.’ Since he’s weird. He only made one announcement outside of Headspace and he looked pretty rough.” Said Starla. “All of his additional announcements are inside of Headspace and he usually does something to ‘screw up’, like show slitted eyes in between blinks or sneeze fire. I think he’s just teasing new features, since we got fire sneeze as an emote.”

“What emotion does sneezing fire emote?”

Starla shrugged. “Beats me. Anyway, Colgar thinks Sam Smith is some ancient dragon pulling the strings or something. I mean, he might be playing The Dragon in Mythticle, but it’s his game so he can do whatever.”

“There’s only one?”

“No, there are a few, but THE Dragon is an end game boss that hasn’t yet been defeated. It comes out once a month, gets spells, arrows and swords banged against it, laughs at the attempt and leaves.”

Adelynn folded her arms. “Sounds kind of lame honestly.”

“That’s what I said!” replied Starla throwing up her arms. “I mean, I surprised it with Meteor, but that was only once.”

“What about your ‘Starla the Destroyer’ plan?”

Starla shrugged. “Getting the Magi back together would be impossible at this point. Princey is too obsessed with being number one and some of the others are on his side because they all want astral meteorite.”

“You could just put it on the auction house and—” She didn’t get to finish that thought. The ground rumbled and a creature made of brass and wood crawled out of the ground. There was clearly a goblin piloting the thing. It waved around multiple bladed limbs and looked at them.

“Oh! Kill it!” said Starla.

“Silver!” Yelled Adelynn and her horse appeared. She got on and charged the mechanical beast. “Divide!” She crashed into it and knocked off many sharp claws and grabby bits, but the mechanical monstrosity was not done yet. It turned and began snipping and snapping at Silver, who bit down on an arm of it and yanked it off. Adelynn’s large blade came down on it and knocked a leg off.

Starla could only watch since Adelynn had to solo the story line bosses.

Adelynn disengaged from the limping brass and wood contraption and she and Silver made a wide loop increasing in speed as she charged the side of the monster. “Divide!” she yelled and this time the full wedge formed in front of Silver and they went through the beast. Brass and splinters flew all around and Adelynn slid off Silver to confront the goblin pilot. There wasn’t much left to confront since the goblin had been caught in the divide directly.

“Thanks for your help!” she called to Starla.

“You have to solo story line bosses!” said Starla. “You want me to ruin your progress?”

Adeylnn looked down at the remains of the mechanical creature and pulled out a sparkling item. It stopped sparkling as she looked at the amulet. “What’s this?”

“A clue to the next part, show it to the farmer when he arrives.”

As if on queue the farmer came running up. “Ah heard a ruckus.” He declared and looked down at the destroyed mechanism. “Is that what was killin’ my cows?” he asked.

“I believe so.” Said Adelynn. “What can you tell me about this?”

The farmer gasped. “Them gobbos are worshippin’ that?”

“What?” asked Adelynn.

The farmer started on a story about how there’s a battlefield a few miles away that has an angry guardian spirit. Nobody goes there now since there is a good chance that the angry spirit will wake up and attack anyone who approaches.

“Sounds like that’s where we’re headed next.” Said Adelynn. “What direction do we go?” she asked the farmer.

He pointed off to his left. “But yer gonna wanna steer clear of it. Arzuse ain’t anything to take lightly.”

“Arzuse?” asked Adelynn.

“That’s what they call the angry spirit!” said the farmer.

“Whatever, I’m sure we can handle it! Silver!” Adelynn climbed onto her horse and nodded to Starla. “Let’s go.”