Meziah smashed the imp’s skull with her staff, caving its oversized head in. It looked like a demonic baby with stubby wings. She reeled back, finding it mildly disturbing as it fell.

She was still within the vicinity of the starting area. Darkness, death, and a few cemeteries scattered about, it was what she’d expect overall. Meziah had a strange relationship with horror. She was drawn to terror, but gore, something often paired with the emotion, still turn her off. With a sigh, she gingerly picked through the corpse.

“Maybe I’m weird,” she said, but took solace knowing everyone tended to be.

She found a black tome. It had a slimy, ripped cover.

[Incantations of the Imp]

Tomes, an alternative for magic users, had their concentration stat far above a staff. If Meziah’s current staff represented power, the tome signified precision. Precision piqued her interest. She had to physically attack the imp because she ran out of mana, and she ran out of mana because her magic missed numerous times. Efficient, she was not.

[Mystic Blast] charged slow. The power was enormous, but her hit rate was not something the dark elf would brag about. She unequipped the staff, and once she sat down, lifted the tome into her lap.

The book was thin, but weighed more than than she imagined. Leafing through it, indecipherable scribbles filled the pages. Meziah wondered whether it was gibberish or an actual language. Imp language? Technically it was gibberish, but in Viarem she supposed it could be legitimate through lore. Her finger traced the words, and felt the rough surface of the aged paper. Old blood stained the pages. Maybe there was a quest to understand new languages.

She wasn’t on the Dean’s list without reason. Learning was a drug to her. As far as drugs went, she considered it to be a relatively positive obsession.

Meziah packed it up and fought another imp. She explored the macabre forest further, but struggled, and was backed into corners more than she could count. After killing the ugly imp, Meziah rested by a skeletal tree, its branches raking the sky like bony fingers. Sitting, she let her health and mana recover naturally. Her empty purse cried. Potions were out of her price range.

Chatter interrupted the dead silence. Meziah tensed, and scooted herself closer to the tree. Low branches seemed to embrace her lovingly, and welcomed her. It felt powerful, something that could protect her if someone were to attack her. Or betray her. But it was a dead tree.

Games made no sense, she thought.

“Hajime, please? One kiss.” A woman, some sort of humanoid rabbit, hung off the arm of a young boy. Irritation crossed his face. He covered one eye with an eyepatch. “You gave one to her!” The rabbit pointed at the small girl traveling with them like a child denied a toy. The pretty girl being accused looked like a porcelain doll.

Hajime reached for his gun, but stopped short. Then he bopped the rabbit girl on the head and walked off. The little girl stuck her tongue out at her companion whose floppy ears deflated. They disappeared into the darkness, heading toward the ominous clouds to the west. Monsters in their path actively avoided them, hiding among the trees.

They must have been strong if mobs stayed away. Was it their levels? Meziah wondered if safety in numbers was an actual thing. Perhaps it was their traveling in a group. She banished the thought, still feeling the spiders’ fangs sinking into her flesh. Virtual reality was amazing, but also disturbed her.

People were still people.

People were awful beings.

And how shameless of that man. Their open flirting colored her ashen cheeks. Her heart felt for the girl whose feelings weren’t mutual. Meziah concluded she was too old-fashioned. False hope for love was worse than none at all, she believed.

Meziah stretched her arms. Solo play made her wistful. She wished she had group like them, minus the love triangle. The name Hajime was unique, too. The scope of the game was truly global.

An idea came to mind. Meziah almost facepalmed at how she didn’t think of it before. Opening her list of skills, she found and memorized the incantation.

[Summon]. Her own creation would not abandon her, and two heads would be a boon.

Meziah skimmed the description. According to the information, the summon could be tweaked depending on her wants, but was largely a product of its surroundings. It sounded like a baby. As a solo mage she needed a tank. Unfortunately, she was a dark elf in a dark forest. Meziah knew the summon would not be an angel.

Before mustering up the mana, she cracked her knuckles. If it was a spider, she was prepared to squash it with her heel immediately.

Meziah recited the words. Her tome floated from her hands and gave off light not unlike the moon in the sky. The cover split open, and pages turned in a rush of wind. Letters lifted off the page and surrounded the mage. Eyes closed, she said the final incantation.

“Now come!” she shouted.

Darkness from every nook and cranny pulled together, whether it was the from the trees or Meziah’s own shadow. There were various shades of darkness, and as the shadows condensed together in an orb the size of her fist, it became darker than black.

Meziah stared at it, and considered prodding it. Before she could, the dark orb expanded and turned more translucent the farther it elongated into a strangely human, yet inhuman, shape.

It growled. The summon floated a foot off the ground and had no legs. Instead, a metal-like robe covered the lower half of its body, and it melded with the darkness as if struggling to exist in one plane or the next. Its fingers were three times the length of its palm, with nails sharper than a sword. A single spike protruded out of its wrist like a hornet’s stinger.

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Meziah covered her mouth. The grotesque image churned her stomach.

It opened a mouth without a face. The mouth was located on its chest. No words came of it. The thing growled again, shadowed saliva dripping out. It left no mark in the physical world and seemed to disappear the moment it hit the dirt, as if returning the shadow to its proper owner. It hunched over and seemed to declare obedience.

Before she could react, the monster’s back separated into two, and a gap along its spine appeared as spikes erupted down and out the fresh wound. “Oh, God,” Meziah said, before her mana cut off.

Her magic depleted, the summon ceased to exist.

The shadows slithered back to the trees and to her body. Meziah’s heart pounded against her chest. The world could have heard it.

She collapsed. Blinking, Meziah immersed herself with the starry sky she could never see in her city. The light it gave off calmed her.

“Next time I’ll summon in the morning,” Meziah said to no one in particular. Despite the creature scaring her, she felt a connection with it. It was a strange feeling, and it made her uncomfortable knowing that came from her. She noted to research further, hoping it would turn out better next time. She was proud of her researching ability. “Probably killed enough imps by now.”

Meziah recalled and turned in the simple hunt quest, leaving the summon at the back of her mind. She had been turned off by the game her first time playing, but after a couple weeks cooling off she logged in out of boredom. It turned out she enjoyed the repetitive nature of MMORPGs. Grinding reminded her of studying. She was good at that.

Wiping out monsters over and over was like repeating a formula in her head and memorizing it.

She scratched her head. Metaphors weren’t her strong suit. She was definitely not good at that.

The woman slew monsters for a week. She hunted one day, and ran across the town the next for (annoying!) delivery quests. Yet it brought smiles to her face. Turning in sawed off wings of an imp or delivering a parcel was something she never imagined doing, and anything out of her comfort zone had her leaping for more.

This was virtual reality. It was more real than reality, as dumb as it sounded upon later reflection.

Meziah cleared the dark elf village’s quests completely, and knew the layout by heart. It was simple to grasp after a week. But it was time to move on, and she was weary of imps and witches and the like. “A unicorn,” she said dreamily. “That’s what I want to see.” Unicorns wandered in few places, none of which near Meziah.

She waved at Veranel. He was busy speaking to a dark elf youth with brooding eyes. The man picked up a simple sword and wandered off. Meziah shivered. Spiders encroached into her mind like a parasite. The memory wouldn’t leave, and neither did Sharkeyes. Her nails dug into her palm, knuckles whitening.

“One day,” she mumbled bitterly. The tome stirred with violent energy, then composed itself when Meziah did.

She watched the youth leave. Quests changed over time. It was possible her actions changed the area’s priorities, and a new threat would emerge. Wolves had been spawning more than the norm. Meziah, with disgust, knew she should have started later. Some sucker would have committed arachnid genocide by then and left her with dogs.

She liked dogs. Puppies to be exact. She refused to be a crazy, single cat lady in the future. She already had the single down. Crazy and cats would only condemn her social life further. Did VRMMORPGs count as socializing?

Meziah sucked at the inside of her teeth. She wasn’t doing that, either, going as far as summoning a freak of nature to avoid speaking to others. Her shoulders drooped. “I’m doomed.”

“Hello, Meziah,” Veranel said, interrupting her gloom. He gave her a small bow and a pleased reaction. “There’s something different about you.”

Was it her mortification or sunken eyes that caught his attention? “I’ve done my duty. The spider invasion has been dealt with. The escaped necromancers have been killed, their undead army destroyed. The cult of witches are no more.” Meziah paused. She cleared her throat. “I even delivered imp wings for a chef so his cat could eat a delicacy.”

Veranel congratulated her, and she swore he had an amused glint in his eyes at the last bit. “You’ve come at a good time. Tira has been looking for you.”

“Tira?”

“A mage with great respect within our community. She is not here, but there has been word of your deeds and it has spread.” Veranel retrieved a map and a letter from his back pocket. An insignia, a snake with dark scales, sealed the envelope. “Directions, and a letter of recommendation. I’m confident you’ll represent us well no matter where your travels take you.”

“Thank you,” she responded. “Tira, you said?”

“You’ll find her at Novae Morose. I do not know what troubles they’re facing, but our scouts report dark clouds blanketing the city. Not even the moon’s light can pierce it.” Veranel’s face darkened. “It is unnatural.”

“I’ll meet this Tira and, if it’s within my power, resolve this,” Meziah declared. She was finally out of this hellhole, and was about to enter an even worse one. Hurray, she thought cheerlessly.

Veranel nodded, and pointed west. “Go, and bring glory to us all.”

Meziah the Esoteric

Level 14 Dark Elf Mage

Reputation 248