[Major and complete spoilers for Trickster's Luck. If you want to read Book Two without reading (or re-reading) Book One, this is the document for you. If you plan to read Book One and don't wish to have every plot point spoiled, look away!]
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Hundreds of years ago, Maya died.
Three weeks ago, she regained awareness within a virtual universe that didn’t exist in her time.
Unfortunately, while she’d been well-preserved and the upload process succeeded in reviving her in digital space, something went wrong. Perhaps because she was from so long ago, perhaps due to her manner of death, but however it came about her memory had been fragmented and her mind imbalanced.
Maya selected World 9352 at random from the near-infinite database, and began playing through the tutorial. There, she created her first character in her new reality: an androgynous harpy who she hoped to play as a mage. Magic itself was a physical resource which had to be gathered in order to create spells, but Maya felt confident that this wouldn’t be an insurmountable barrier.
But when she was offered a rare and special Trickster class at the tutorial’s end as a reward for being a permanent resident of the database, she felt certain that selecting anything else would be a waste of a golden opportunity. She also obtained the specialization Path of Life, which converted part of her energy and stamina pools into health for better survivability.
She felt confident about her choices, until the moment she verified the decision and her luck stat immediately locked to -100. Feeling cheated, Maya very nearly restarted right then and there, but decided to give the class a chance before giving up on it.
With one of her class items, the Trickster’s Orb, she learned that the Trickster class was overseen by an in-game deity, The Trickster. He told her the permanent -100 luck could be mitigated by use of another class item - a hundred-sided die that would give her a random luck score between -99 and +100. The die could be rolled as many times as necessary, but imposed a stacking -5 luck penalty of increasing duration to prevent it being abused to always get a high score.
The first number rolled each day (after midnight) would determine the nature of her daily class quest. Negative rolls resulted in missions more likely to cause her problems in the future, such as to fight other players or get herself killed in particular circumstances, while positive rolls gave quests whose outcomes would aid her. And, regardless of whether the quest was a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ one, success would grant her bonus luck points for the remainder of the day as well as the potential for significantly more powerful gear.
Negative luck would decrease experience gained, make encounters more difficult without increased rewards, and in extreme cases even prevent her from obtaining rewards at all. Positive luck did the opposite, increasing experience gains, making encounters more difficult but still possible while significantly boosting the rewards, and even guiding her toward opportunities she might never have noticed without it.
A powerful, if fickle, class, Maya decided to stick with it. But even as a trickster she had a long way to go. World 9352 had been around for a long, long time before she came along. Even the newest of players had significantly more experience and levels than her.
Worse, the world was currently being contested by two powerful player factions, led by the two highest level players: Domitius, a personality-cult streamer who’d brought his loyal following with him to dominate this world, and Shardlord, the arrogant master of the mage academy; the only two players yet to surpass the former level cap and attain levels above 50.
Ignoring the undercurrents of chaos around her, Maya set off to do some entry-level quests. She saved a delivery boy from some bullies, helped repair a small town after a flood, and went shopping for beginner gear. In the magic shop, she discovered an overlooked decorative orb that looked suspiciously similar to the one used to communicate with the Trickster. As her luck that day was negative, she purchased the orb and set it aside to investigate further when she had a high luck day.
The remainder of the week was spent acclimating. She undertook her daily trickster class quests, which led her to fighting other players in PvP and engaging in the dueling Arena though she preferred to play solo PvE when given the chance.
As she still had an interest in magic, she joined Shardlord’s mage academy, and there she learned something interesting about her past. Drew, the beloved older brother she only vaguely remembered, had ended up becoming one of the founders of this entire virtual reality. Now revered as a figure of the distant past, after his sister’s death Andrew Stader had created the framework upon which Otherworlds still functioned to this day.
And he was somewhere out there. Perhaps on his private and closed World 01. Of course, Maya had no way of contacting him, so for now she set the information aside, with perhaps the slightest bitterness. He had built all this, arranged for her to be preserved and uploaded after her death, and yet when she finally got here he was nowhere to be seen. She felt glad he had been able to move on and live his life, but it hurt to realize he’d forgotten her so completely.
She made friends with several members of the mage academy, first with a newer acolyte Trixy, then Trixy’s grumpy friend Desi who was one of the elite instructors, and finally with the group she would come to consider her closest allies: the fire magic research focus group. Fire consisted of around a dozen players, several of whom played the game from outside and logged in and out as their schedules allowed.
The mage academy wasn’t the only place she made contacts in her first week. She also met Rominian, one of Domitius’s most loyal followers, and learned a bit about the mage academy’s rival faction from him. According to Rominian, Domitius focused on unlocking as much territory in World 9352 as possible in order to make it a desirable location for long-term player residence, while Shardlord was an egomaniac who only wanted to be seen as the best.
Domitius had a high focus on coordinating a lot of players to work together toward the same goals. Rominian was one of the most fanatical, running beginner quests nonstop to earn reputation tokens for his master.
Maya also met Shadow, one of the Arena’s organizers, who recruited her to join his dueling team. While fighting in the arena, she could utilize his higher quality equipment in return for a share of any winnings. She fought several times in the Arena, and naturally lost, but it was a way to gain experience.
But all was not well. Though she progressed in experience and levels, though she made allies and unlocked new opportunities, Maya’s mind remained a turmoil. Her memory remained fragmented, her attention span fleeting and erratic. Something within her was broken in a way she knew not how to correct.
She kept playing. Day by day, quest after quest, one thing after another, running from herself in the only way she could. Perhaps if she focused all her effort on each moment, she wouldn’t have to remember how flawed she was.
One day, her class quest offered a weeklong challenge in place of its usual 24-hour deadline: claim the player home of a high-level tamer called Standalone, for an even greater reward than usual. Maya, by now still only level 6, knew she couldn’t possible defeat the mid-40s Standalone by herself. He was known to have dragons guarding his house, after all. But perhaps with the help of the mages at the academy…
She told the Fire team about her challenge, and they agreed to help. Splitting into two groups, one took her to a higher-level area to level her through the mid-level Crimson Flame dungeon and gain the fire-element materials they’d need to craft the dragonfire shield spell, while the others worked out the math and diagrams behind the spell itself.
This was Maya’s first time in a dungeon, and the fight proved to be harrowing and insanely close. After a hard-fought battle in which everyone on the team died multiple times, they finally wore down the boss and claimed their rewards. Their inexplicably high-level rewards, thanks to Maya’s trickster class and her high luck roll for the day.
After completing the dungeon, they returned to the mage academy for the night, most needing to log out or return to their other obligations. Maya returned to her room and decided the time was right to examine the mysterious orb she’d bought back at the beginning.
Upon activation, it transported her to another deity’s personal realm, where a woman calling herself the Oracle claimed to be the Trickster’s sister. It turned out the two of them were in a bit of a rivalry, which the Trickster was handily winning. He had a dozen champions, while the Oracle had none. She offered Maya her class and favor in return for finding a worthy candidate to undertake the trials and become the Oracle’s champion.
Maya agreed, gaining the option to switch from Trickster to Diviner and change her utility Path of Life specialization to the deity specialization Seer, options that would expire after 24 hours if she didn’t confirm them. After considering the options, (and creating a save point in case she changed her mind later) Maya decided to retain the Trickster class, but switch specializations to Seer.
(This would become a significant branching point, to which she would return several times. Eventually she would end up with two active branches of her character, one as a Seer Trickster, the other as a Path of Life Trickster. The Seer branch could gather information very well and had better damage potential with its higher energy pool, while Path of Life had superior survivability.)
With her new Seer specialization allowing her to scan players’ stats, she went to scout out Standalone’s house and see what they were up against. It was far worse than she’d anticipated, with him having over a thousand health and his dragon over twice that. Even if they managed the dragonfire shield spell, they would need some seriously powerful dps to bring him down.
The following day, a negative luck day, things began to go wrong. While wandering the streets, Maya was kidnapped by a cult of lizardine living beneath the city. She fought them, but ended up falling into a deep cistern of water.
Drowning in the darkness, she panicked and verified the change to Diviner class in hopes of escaping the negative luck penalties dragging her down.
It didn’t work. The class change removed all the benefits of the Trickster class, while leaving her accrued penalties in place. Desperate, still drowning, she frantically tried to undo her foolish mistake, but the Trickster immediately demanded her presence in his own domain.
He didn’t approve of his sister trying to steal away his minions, and destroyed the Diviner’s Orb, ending Maya’s chances of communicating with the Oracle or ever completing her quests. In return for allowing Maya to reclaim his Trickster class, he demanded that she bind the class permanently to her character, so she would never again be tempted to betray him.
She reluctantly agreed. As a penalty for her betrayal, he cursed her to suffer only negative luck rolls for the remainder of the week, then sent her back to the cistern. Once she finished drowning, she respawned at the academy and reloaded her save. Reclaiming the Diviner’s Orb, she contacted the Oracle to ask if she’d made a mistake. The Oracle believed she’d chosen wrong, and sent her away coldly.
After hours of self-recrimination, Maya wandered the streets, despondent, and eventually ended up back at the produce stand whose errand boy she’d saved on her first day in the game. After renewing her acquaintance with the boy, they held an impromptu picnic which made her feel a bit better.
Afterwards she visited the blacksmith to restock on throwing knives, only to discover that another player had just purchased his entire stock. Maya ran after him, hoping to purchase a few, and thus met Sevard.
Sevard, level 39, quickly took Maya under his wing. After commissioning custom gear for her from an acquaintance of his, Sevard took Maya to go adventuring in the third zone where her low luck could help attract dangerous monsters for him to fight.
Sevard, it turned out, was a mercenary rogue currently between jobs. He’d worked for the likes of Domitius in the past, though he had no particular association with either of the player factions. Sevard firmly advised against crossing Standalone when Maya tried to recruit him to her cause, claiming that as a rogue, tamers were a hard counter to his abilities and he’d be largely useless.
After fighting through the jungle of Zone Three, Sevard led Maya to a dungeon he’d been challenging regularly in hopes of unlocking a rumored secret route and hidden class. After negotiating for a while, the dungeon boss demanded he kill Maya to progress in the secret route. Sevard hesitated, but Maya insisted he do it.
She realized she may have made a mistake when her low luck meant she lost nearly everything she’d possessed to him, including several of the one-of-a-kind rare drops from the Crimson Flame dungeon.
Maya respawned back in the Zone Three trade outpost in the middle of the jungle and waited, unable to chase after him. Her low level meant that even a single monkey could kill her with ease if she stepped out of the protected zone around the respawn point and leypillar.
After she’d been worrying for hours, Sevard returned triumphant with his new secret class unlocked, Shadow, and its associated specialization, Nightwalker. He readily returned all her items, and several others that she didn’t remember having before which were probably random loot he’d picked up on the way, and Maya immediately felt terrible for doubting him.
Since her trickster quest for the day was to defeat a higher-level enemy, Sevard agreed to help her complete the task by capturing one of the jungle monkeys and restraining it while she slowly finished it off, respawning as necessary.
As soon as she completed the quest, the Trickster demanded her presence in his realm. Since she’d reloaded the game, this iteration of his AI personality had no idea why he would have cursed her and demanded to know. (Save-loading could not be used to evade debuffs.)
Maya knew that telling him would be a bad idea, as she’d already experienced his fury at her ‘betrayal’ in temporarily becoming a Diviner and she didn’t want him to destroy the Diviner’s Orb again. She’d made too much progress to revert now.
Standing firm in the face of his interrogation, Maya refused to confess to her covert alliance with the Oracle, instead accepting the consequences of the Trickster’s nebulous disfavor, though he promised to treat her as his worst enemy unless she relented and told him the truth. Maya continued to refuse, and the Trickster let her return.
Putting the matter out of her mind, Maya and Sevard went hunting for an area boss who spawned recently. Joined by two other players, they eventually defeated the rampaging boss. However, almost the moment the boss lay defeated, one of their fellow players, Zarene, turned on them. Zarene slaughtered Sevard, who always left his PvP flag enabled, and stole his most prized possession, a Unique amulet.
With Sevard out of the way, Zarene revealed to Maya that she was also a trickster and had been tasked with forcing Maya to reveal her secrets by any means. While Maya had disabled her PvP flag and could not be directly harmed by another player, Zarene had plenty of ways around that. Such as throwing a venomous jungle snake in Maya’s direction and sitting back to watch as Maya was killed by the too-high level monster.
She chose to respawn back in the starting city, determined not to let the Trickster’s ire stop her from adventuring and advancing. Maya decided to stay away from the mage academy and avoid Sevard until Zarene stopped chasing her, not wanting any more of her allies to be hurt on her behalf.
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Sevard didn’t want to be avoided, and he wanted his amulet back. He found Maya and proposed setting a trap for Zarene in the highest level zone with some NPC allies of his, to which Maya reluctantly agreed.
Unfortunately, things didn’t go as planned. Zarene arrived, and had even higher reputation with the NPC faction than Sevard. While she didn’t manage to convince them to turn on him, she did convince them to stand aside while she and Sevard fought. And once she killed him again, she set them on Maya.
This time, Maya respawned at the arena. She desperately needed to kill something. Or at least fight something she had a faint chance of winning against.
After arranging a full slate of contests with other players, Maya went out to purchase some improved equipment with the money she’d earned in the jungle zone with Sevard. There was a pretty nice Unique set of armor she’d seen, one that set agility to a flat 100, that would be a huge help to her survivability.
Her luck still being negative, things didn’t go smoothly. Another player noticed her going for the armor, and tried to outbid her for it. Then, once he’d easily surpassed Maya’s budget, Zarene appeared and outbid him. Then, with a sob story about her desperate life, Zarene tried to bribe Maya to tell her secret so Zarene could get in the Trickster’s good books.
Maya refused, and Zarene threw the armor at her before storming away in tears. Confused, but not about to give up such a powerful item, Maya returned to the arena. Shadow informed her that Zarene had challenged her to a duel, and that the people would gladly pay to see someone that powerful fight regardless of the foregone outcome. Maya reluctantly agreed.
Zarene did not immediately slaughter Maya. Instead, she threw the match so Maya could defeat her, still trying to convince her to share her secrets, then revealed that Sevard too was a trickster, claiming he had only befriended Maya in order to get with subterfuge the same answers Zarene was trying to obtain by force.
Maya considered her claim, and when Sevard returned with a proposal to go undercover to escape Zarene’s notice she confronted him. When pressed, he readily admitted that he was indeed a trickster as well as a rogue, but he insisted he had rejected the Trickster’s quest to force the truth out of Maya.
Deciding to trust him, Maya followed Sevard to the second major city, Nirsym, in a level 30s zone. As she was still only level 9, this was quite dangerous for her, but he’d been good at protecting her so far. After undergoing complete character appearance makeovers to temporarily disguise themselves from Zarene or anyone else seeking to harm them, the duo headed for the northern plains to level Maya and gain epic loot for Sevard.
While there, Sevard showed Maya his half-completed tier trial, the advancement quest standing between him and level 40. To access it, she had to swim down deep under the ocean, and her fear of drowning resurfaced. Something about the sensation sparked a memory of existential panic, leading her to the realization that she’d died the first time around, the real time, by drowning.
Fending off her fear for the moment, Maya continued down and surveyed Sevard’s trial. It included a riddle door for which Sevard had collected dozens of image tiles. The correct configuration should unlock it, but he had yet to discover the right combination. Or perhaps he hadn’t even found the right tiles yet. They could be discovered through questing or encounters throughout the world.
When Sevard had to log out for the night, Maya removed her disguise and returned to the mage academy. Things were going well with the Fire team’s progress, and her contributions to the project on her one high-luck day had become the talk of the place. Creating new spell formulas was a notoriously difficult task, but with high luck boosting her intuition, she’d been able to make correct mental leaps and fix mistakes the others hadn’t realized they were making.
Shardlord, though, was suspicious of her abrupt arrival, dubious allies, and startling progress. He believed Maya to be a spy for Domitius and Sevard to be one of Domitius’s agents, though Maya denied it. Shardlord revealed that Domitius had sent him an ultimatum, ordering him to stand aside and stop reputation questing so Domitius could complete his objective of unlocking another new zone, and asked Maya if Domitius was truly that close to his goal.
Fed up with the interrogation, Maya reiterated that she had nothing to do with Domitius, and left.
Maya went out into the town to obtain equipment for several new fictional identities she was thinking through, and that’s where Zarene found her once again, this time with a pair of allies. Other tricksters.
“I’ll give you anything,” Zarene offered. “Tell me your secret, and I’ll do anything you ask.”
Maya considered the offer, but she’d made up her mind a long time ago. She would not be selling her soul to the Trickster. She wanted to retain the Diviner’s Orb in secrecy and keep her options open.
She refused Zarene’s offer, and Zarene’s allies quickly subdued her and dragged her off. They threw her into a dungeon full of magic where she couldn’t move or cast anything, impossible to escape from.
Maya floated there, suspended between the surface and the floor, unable to reach either. She refused to answer her interrogators.
After several days, she was removed from the prison and brought to a council room. Domitius’s council room. Zarene had turned Maya over to him after she refused to cooperate, but Domitius wasn’t inclined to pursue Zarene’s vengeance. Maya was a trickster, after all. A valuable and rare resource. He could use her, if she were willing to join him.
With one caveat. She’d have to make another soulbinding promise, of loyalty to Domitius and his cause.
Trapped with no good options, Maya appealed to the Oracle for help. To her surprise, the Oracle greeted her readily, and provided exactly the way out she’d needed - a perk that would not allow any promise made unwillingly to bind her. So long as she did not choose to honestly accept the oath, it would remain present in word only.
Returned to the council room, where Domitius’s minions were frantically trying to locate her, Maya agreed to his terms as long as he’d allow her freedom. After visiting Uvlan, Domitius’s pet soulbinder NPC, to administer her loyalty oaths, Maya slipped into another new false identity as Emma, loyal Domitian.
After being paired with another low level Domitian, she was assigned to run simple quests to gain reputation while leveling themselves up to a decent level. She still had several hours left on her luck debuff, but decided it would be fun to call Zarene and taunt her about how badly things had gone wrong. After all, turning Maya over to Domitius was supposed to be Zarene’s winning move. But it had turned out with Maya being recruited instead, now under Domitius’s explicit protection. Zarene wouldn’t be able to do a thing to her again.
But, in the course of their discussion, Maya began to feel sorry for Zarene. She was obviously crazy, going on about how the virtual world was impossible to escape and other such inanities. She’d put so much time into being a trickster, Zarene had forgotten how to be normal, her emotions erratic and actions utterly unpredictable.
But there was nothing Maya could do, so when Zarene hung up she didn’t press the issue.
Finally midnight arrived, and the debuff ended. Maya could theoretically roll positive luck numbers again! No more would she have a -100% experience and loot penalty!
Leveling with her assigned partner, she finally maxed her tier 1 experience, reaching the first cap and received the first Tier Trial quest - to kill a Goblin Champion. The low-level miniboss could be found randomly throughout the forested regions of the Kalyx City zone where they’d been questing, though they didn’t locate one that night.
Annoyed at being tied down for so long, Maya ditched her partner at the first opportunity and returned to the mage academy to check on their progress - the quest to conquer Standalone’s house had less than 24 hours remaining. But the mage academy guards refused her access. Her permissions had been revoked and she was turned away.
This caused her extreme frustration. The mage academy was the one faction she actually wanted to be a part of! Why would they turn her away now?
Then she received a mysterious note from Sevard, informing her that something big was going down between the player factions. Domitius had been hiring again, the mage academy went into lockdown, and something was clearly about to happen.
Maya knew she had to get into the mage academy, but had no idea how to do so. Fortunately, a chance decision to reveal herself as a trickster led the blacksmith, a devout follower of the Trickster, to both provide her with special weapons and introduce her to a thief friend of his who taught her a special ability to break into player-owned structures.
After slipping into the mage academy, she wandered the empty grounds for a time without finding anyone she knew - or anyone at all. Before Maya could decide what to do next, the property was attacked in Conquest, and she instinctively signed up to defend it. She was the only player to do so, and quickly had to concede defeat. She couldn’t possibly hold the entire academy herself at level 9.
Since she still had a high luck score for the day, she went to find her partner and continue questing, perhaps she could find the goblin champion now and pass her tier trial. But upon arriving at Domitius’s castle, she found it too was engaged in a Conquest. This must be where all the mages had gone. Once more she joined as a defender, but there were no high-level defenders remaining. Soon this Conquest too was a failure.
But before the castle fell, she received a message from Domitius’s tricksters. They were pulling out from the Kalyx region entirely, and would meet in Nirsym immediately.
Maya wrote a quick note to warn the mages of whatever was going on, then went to join the group to avoid suspicion. After attending the dramatic announcement that the high-level players were about to unlock Zone Seven, Maya slipped away to take care of her class quest for the day - a crafting quest this time.
Utilizing her high luck to locate a teacher, she found a crafter who also happened to believe in the Trickster. After helping her complete her quest, he gave her a mysterious black star riddle stone similar to but unlike any of those Sevard had managed to collect.
Next, she returned to Kalyx to complete her tier trial. The goblin champion proved almost trivial to defeat, between her high movement speed and stealth from her unique armor and the high luck roll for the day. Levels 10-19 unlocked!
Alas, between the chaos in the region and other distractions, midnight arrived and with it the failure of her quest to capture Standalone’s house. After all her work and everythnig the mages were putting into the effort, it felt wrong to have it just end without even an attempt. But things were happening.
Zone Seven had been unlocked successfully. The mage academy was held by Domitius; Domitius’s local castle was held by the mages. It wasn’t something she wanted to get involved in.
And then she rolled, and got +95. Adding her bonuses for the quest the day before, her luck was maxed at +100.
She could do anything.
Her top priority was to find some magic so she could conduct independent research. She desperately wanted to create some new spells to supplement her extremely limited repertoire.
And then she realized she knew just where to find all the magic she’d need. Domitius’s prison was full of the stuff. All Maya had to do was find a way to slip some out, and she could hide somewhere and research in peace while the world went crazy without her.
She spent the bulk of her earnings from the Sevard excursions on creating a new throwaway appearance for her infiltration and hiring all the mercenaries Nirsym City had to offer.
She sneaked into Domitius’s prison compound, in its caverns beneath the Nirsym zone, and successfully absconded with a large quantity of magic.
On her way out, she stumbled upon Uvlan the soulbinder’s lair. Though her luck insisted that going in was a bad idea, curiosity won out and she had a mysterious conversation with him, in which he begged her for the Diviner’s Orb and described her black star tile as the Liar’s Key. He also revealed that Domitius was working for someone called Judah the Warblade, who was also Uvlan’s true master and sought the Trickster’s supremacy.
Maya ignored all attempts by Domitius’s tricksters to contact her, instead visiting a magic shop to purchase all the base spells with her newfound magical wealth. She ended up renting a basement from the shop’s owner, where she holed up and experimented and created many new variations on her existing spells. After midnight, rerolling a significant negative amount, she departed the workshop with her magical repertoire suitably expanded.
Another of Domitius’s followers soon found her; Hara, a lower level trickster this time, quite irate with her for wasting so much time and being out of contact for an entire day.
Hara criticized Maya for her ineffectiveness, and demanded she go create a new character to rerun the melee portion of the tutorial - a portion Maya had skipped in her initial run. The tutorial took place under advanced time compression, so it wouldn’t matter how long she took to learn things there, it was vastly more time-effective than doing them anywhere outside the tutorial.
Maya reluctantly agreed, and created her second character. Mayon Windheart, a male sprite, he received a boost to Momentum instead of Luck and was not offered the Trickster class. Instead, after spending several months practicing hand to hand fighting under the tutorial's demanding melee teacher, Mayon emerged into the world as an Acrobat - a highly movement-focused class. Maya spent a little time exploring Kalyx as Mayon, then reluctantly returned to her main character and Hara.
As they adventured together, Maya tried to convince Hara that Domitius was soulbinding people against their will, but Hara refused to believe her. When she showed Hara the secret entrance to Domitius's prison and Uvlan as proof, Uvlan did something to Hara instead such that she seemed more convinced than ever that Maya was a liar.
They had a falling out, and Hara left.
Maya, discouraged, slept in the subterranean secret leypillar room that only she could access via her black star tile. And woke to Judah the Warblade standing beside her.
He vaguely demanded the Diviner’s Orb, though not by name, and Maya angrily refused. Before he could accost her further, she slapped the leypillar and transited to Kalyx.
She had to help the Oracle gain enough power to fully release her from this stupid oath to Domitius. So long as he had even the slightest hint of a hold over her, she couldn’t relax.
But she was so tired of everyone leaving her. So tired of driving them away. And, slowly, it dawned on her that she had never really cared for anyone. Never once since arriving in the virtual world had she considered the lives or goals of anyone else. She’d been pursuing her aims, her desires, her purpose. And everyone else was just an accessory to that.
What right did she have to demand they be there for her, if she didn’t care enough to be there for them?
She’d been right at Domitius’s prison, stealing his magic away right out from under his nose, and not considered how to get the players out. It had been all about her project, her chance to study magic, nevermind anyone else.
Struck with the sudden conviction that she should undertake an expedition to rescue Domitius’s captives at once, she set about coming up with a plan and gathering allies to do so.
Her luck was good today, not maxed, but not bad. She could hire NPC mercenaries like before and storm the front door, or she could find some players and slip in through the secret back entrance.
Perhaps she could find someone to help her at the mage academy. Instead she learned that Shardlord had logged out, leaving Domitius firmly in control of the leaderboard. His second-in-command, James, managed the academy in Shardlord’s absence, and seemed just as skeptical of Maya’s allegiances as Shardlord had been. He forbad her from recruiting anyone, but did not revoke her permissions and allowed that so long as she didn’t lead an army of Domitians to invade, he would probably allow her to remain.
Unsure where else to turn, Maya headed back to the Arena. She’d forgotten about it long enough that her contract as a fighter for Shadow had lapsed, but she might still be able to recruit some of the players.
When she saw Venix, one of those to whom she’d repeatedly lost when she was still tier 1, she challenged her to a rematch to gauge her progress and try out her new spells.
Venix turned out to be a surprisingly empathetic person, and before Maya quite knew what she was doing, she’d told Venix about her useless memory and the constant frustration of making goals only to forget them within hours or minutes. After their heart-to-heart, Maya invited Venix to come help her rescue Domitius’s prisoners. Venix agreed.
Maya returned to the mage academy to covertly recruit people despite James’s forbiddance, and spent some time talking with Nalana, a fellow Fire team member, about her projects, trying to get to know her teammates on a less selfish basis.
Nalana mentioned that a higher level player named Yinon had been grouching about losing his main to Domitius, and if she wanted anyone to help he would be more than willing. Maya investigated, and discovered that Yinon was currently playing on his secondary as Xyborg.
Maya located Xyborg, who was with his team leader Farrison. Farrison strongly advised against anyone following Maya, but when Xyborg insisted on going he agreed to join as well. Three others came along as well, plus Venix, and Systerian from the academy who ran up to join at the last minute.
Maya transited them all into the secret room, but instead of a single straight tunnel to the secret base, they entered a dungeon-like maze full of traps and deadly beasts. After a TPK, Maya’s group lost several of their members, but Xyborg and Farrison and Systerian all remained, as did Venix.
They returned to try a second assault, and this time found the correct path. Unfortunately, at the end of that path lay Domitius and enough of his medium-level tricksters to completely overpower their group. The other mages logged out, hoping to slip away another time, while Venix stubbornly tried to fight free. She was overpowered and imprisoned, while Domitius took Maya for one last attempt at recruiting her.
They were unable to come to an agreement. Domitius left to return to his new Zone Seven, leaving his tricksters to deal with her.
Maya fought desperately, with every ounce of her practiced hand-to-hand fighting skill, but she was outnumbered and outleveled. Skill could not completely erase their speed and strength, and she was slowly forced back along the path of their choosing, back to the edge of the prison pit.
As she fell, she cast teleport dust beneath her, freezing her for the 30 seconds necessary to transit back to town, the item holding her in midair suspended above the pit full of magic.
She had seconds, the tricksters would find a way to reach her and disrupt the teleport the moment they realized why she hadn’t hit the prison yet.
But she wasn’t yet trapped, and that was a whole lot of magic at her disposal.
Maya cast Spark, igniting the entire well of magic like gasoline, burning it all away, allowing the prisoners to respawn back at town. They were free, and Domitius’s prison was destroyed. It would be a long time before he could gather that much magic together again.
With a second teleport, she stepped back home, leaving Domitius’s destroyed prison behind.
Yinon, back in his main, threw a magnificent celebration party for everyone involved, and there was much rejoicing.
Maya began seriously searching for a recipient for the Diviner’s Orb, eventually settling on Yinon himself. He elected to take another mage with him, a dark elf Maya hadn’t really interacted with in the past named Rion, as they quested to aid the Oracle.
That taken care of, Maya took a brief trip from 9352 to visit an internet-equipped world in hopes of sending a message to Drew. Though she had no way of locating him, she did leave some posts on the searching for family forums in hopes that they could make their way to him.
While there, she also received an interesting message from someone she had no knowledge of, a person mysteriously in her friends list though she had never added him, asking for her help. But she quickly realized that there were millions of people clamoring for Drew’s attention, he was so insanely famous, there was no way she’d be noticed.
So, she decided that she’d cause enough of a splash to be worth noticing. Starting on 9352. If that didn’t work, she’d go somewhere else and try again. As long as it took. She’d find a way to reunite with her brother.
And in the meantime, she had a game to win.
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