Warren drew a deep breath, shaking the water from his face. He climbed slowly out of the fountain, using the edge for support. He staggered down the red carpet and grabbed a towel from a rack by the arch that led out. Unlike Peter’s first experience, Warren had no problems mastering his first steps in the new world. His body was virtually identical to the one in the real world and moved like it.
Emerging blinking into the light, Warren found himself at the top of a flight of stone stairs. He ran down the stairs, taking them two and three at a time as he revelled his freedom of movement. Before he reached the bottom step, Warren dove forward into what he’d always thought of as a “commando” roll. He hit the ground in a puff of dust and rolled to his feet as though born to the movement.
A gentle cough drew Warren’s attention as he dusted himself off. He turned to the figure at the base of the stairs at the same time as he realised he was standing there in his underwear, a rough-spun t-shirt and boxers of the same material. He tried his best to cover himself for a moment before realising who, or what, had been trying to gain his attention. It was an animated set of clothes with no one in it, and Warren’s embarrassment faded immediately.
“”Sorry, dinnae see ye there. May I help ye?” he asked, his hands on his hips.
“You appear to be unharmed, unlike most of your kind,” the voice emanated from the floating clothing. “I am here to help you, but you don’t seem to need it.”
“Nope, bye!” Warren left without a second thought. He wasn’t here to roleplay, he was here to live.
Warren ran through the garden, juking around the pieces of art and plants, flipping over the benches and basically having the time of his life. After more than a month stuck in a bed, immobile and irritated, he gloried in the movement of his body. This wasn’t the featureless body of the loading screen, this was a muscular body like his had been in the real world before the crash.
He tackled a bush, imagining he was sacking a quarterback. “Booyah!” he shouted in elation.
The garden came to an end quickly, as Warren had basically blitzed it. He stepped through the arch at the end and found himself facing three of the empty sets of clothing, much like the one that had greeted him at the base of the stairs. They still looked like the invisible man had dressed himself in a hurry. In the dark. With no sense of style or colour vision. He turned to look back and found the arch bricked up, and that forward was the only option.
“Greetings.”
“Traveller.”
“Welcome.”
The three figures spoke in turn, in identical voices.
“Uh, greetings?” Warren responded.
“We.”
“Are.”
“The.”
“Three.”
“Paths.”
Warren struggled to discern which of the sets was speaking as they had no faces. He settled on speaking to the one in the middle. “And? What do you want from me?”
“The.”
“Three.”
“Paths.”
“Strength.”
“Magic.”
“Utility.”
“You.
“Must.”
“Choose.”
“Strength.” Warren chose without hesitation. Magic is for geeks, utility is for nerds, he thought.
The leftmost one manifested a katana in front of it. “You have chosen strength. This blade has been chosen as the most appropriate weapon for you. It has but one edge, a lesson you might one day learn. May it serve you well.”
Warren took the sword by the grip and held it up to the light. The sun glinted off the edge of the blade and he flourished it instinctively. His complete lack of skill was immediately evident as the edge rebounded off the ground and clipped him in the shin. The stinging cut didn’t sour his mood at all, in fact, the sensation in his leg brought a smile to his face. His ability to feel anything after months of utter numbness was closer to ecstasy than agony.
“Now what?” He asked.
“Now.”
“You.”
“Proceed.”
A portal reminiscent of a Stargate from the famous classic TV show burst into existence beyond the three empty suits of clothing. The shimmering surface of the portal reflected Warren’s face imperfectly the way a disturbed pond would. He considered himself for a moment before diving through. Indecision was not a part of his personality.
On the other side of the portal, Warren found himself outside a small town. A stone wall encircled the buildings and entrance and egress was permitted via a very solid wooden gate guarded by men in tarnished bronze armour. The guards wore swords on their hips and brandished dual pointed spears. Sparks leapt between the points like police-issued tasers.
Rather than immediately try to enter the town, Warren gave the guards a friendly up-nod as though between equals, slid the sword he still held in his hand down the back of his undershirt, and headed out into the fields that surrounded the town. He took off, bounding over hedges, sidestepping sheep and whirling around monsters he had no name for. He didn’t care what they were called. He was free of the bed that he had been shackled to for months. His arm itched every now and again, but the sensation was just one more in a cornucopia.
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A plethora.
An entire sensorium.
“I CAN FEEL!” he screamed to the skies, even the ragged tearing at his throat as he did so elating him.
When the enjoyment of simple movements started to flag, Warren pulled the sword he had been gifted from the back of his shirt and began waving it around. He’d never learned Iaido or Kendo, so his repertoire was limited to lopping the heads off of flowers the way that children do with a stick. He didn’t care about the flashing notifications in the corner of his vision, nor did he care about the wide swathes of loot drops he left in his wake. He ran and cut, cut and ran.
Eventually he began to tire as a white bar in the bottom of his vision bottomed out and the outline flashed brightly. All of a sudden he felt like he’d been hit by an opposing linebacker and decided to take a tactical nap right where he stood. The amazingly detailed dirt rushed up to meet his face and the smell of crushed grass filled his nostrils. There was a feeling like an elephant was sitting on his frontal lobe and his eyelids slammed shut despite his best efforts.
In the dark behind his eyes a purple flashing box containing the word “exhausted” flashed. The strobing word took all of his attention, leaving none for the rest of his body. It was like he was stuck back in the bed, no feeling below his neck, except this was worse. Now there was no feeling at all, just “exhausted” blinking ever more slowly until it had faded away.
When the notification vanished, pain flooded his buttocks. It felt like his ass was getting chewed on, because that’s exactly what was happening. Warren rolled over onto his back, ignoring the spike of agony as his masticated posterior was ground into the dirt, and began laying into the surprised fox who’s meal had just been interrupted.
“God. Damn. That. Hurts,” he screamed with every stroke of the blade. He continued to slash at the woodland creature until his stamina threatened to go on holiday again and take his consciousness with it.
After taking a moment to breathe through the pain and climb unsteadily to his feet, Warren inspected what was left of the fox. He poked the mass of fur and viscera with the tip of his sword and received a pop up box floating in the air in front of him. He read the contents out loud, incredulously. “Underage player. Simplified looting system engaged. What the hell?”
The ex-fox turned into a small chest on the ground. It was a wooden affair bound in iron with a lock on the front and a hinged lid. Warren poked it experimentally with his sword and his eyes opened wider as the lock vanished and the lid opened. Inside was a small folded sheet of fur, a couple teeth and a single copper coin. He tried to pick up the chest but found it completely immobile. Shrugging, he extracted the fur and laid it out flat on the ground. He scooped the teeth and the coin up, dropped them in the centre of the sheet and folded it up again. As he was standing and tucking the package down the back of his pants he noticed that the chest had faded away. “Huh,” he grunted. “I wonder if that happens every time?”
Resolving to care about it later, Warren jogged back towards the town. This time he was much more careful about conserving his stamina and quite conscious of his bare cheeks hanging out of his torn pants.
The guards at the gate crossed their buzzing spears in front of him as he approached. “Friend or foe?” one demanded.
Another notification box popped up in front of Warren, this one informing him that if he made Crystal Brook his first spawn point he would be proclaiming allegiance to the nation of Latrobe. He took a moment to consider this, and decided it meant nothing to him. “Friend!” he announced.
A fanfare from nowhere shocked him more effectively than the spears could have. His sword clattered to the road and he clapped his hands over his ears. Warren glared around vainly in an attempt to find the phantom orchestra and settled for giving the guards the stink-eye.
The guards remained entirely passive, clearly this wasn’t the first time that day someone had reacted like this. “Welcome to Crystal Brook, citizen of Latrobe,” the guard on the left intoned in a bored voice. “You may find the quest board at the inn, the blacksmith on the far side of town near the cattleyard, and in the event of your untimely demise you will respawn in the cemetery beside the church. Welcome to the Age of Steam and Sorcery, where heroes are made, not born.”
“Oi, Bill,” the other guard picked up a stone from beside where he was standing and tossed it at the one who had spoken. “If you don’t want the Avatars coming down on your ass, you’d better get your head on straight.”
The first guard, apparently named Bill if his compatriot could be believed, stood to attention and saluted smartly. “Roight you are then! Apologies, citizen! Welcome to The Age of Steam and Sorcery! Please don’t report me to the Avatars, I’ve got a family to feed. If you need any help, just ask any guardsman or inquire at the inn!”
Warren blinked at the tiny, list-of-side-effects-in-a-drug-commerical-speed interjection in the middle of the guard’s shouted self correction, and decided he really didn’t care. “I’ll head to the inn then, I guess. Bye.” He recovered his sword from the dusty cobbles at his feet and entered the hamlet.
Crystal Brook was everything an experienced gamer would expect from a starting town. It couldn’t be more generic if it tried. The important buildings were clustered around the square in the middle of town and the rest of them were cut and pasted generic Victorian era town houses. Every few metres an iron lamp post stood at the edge of the footpath, casting a shadow on the road. By the angle of the shadow he judged it to be roughly midday and by the sounds coming from the inn ahead he guessed it was lunch time. He’d heard quieter carousing from his team after eking out a two point win.
Ambling along the street towards the promise of meat and ale, and with the high degree of realism in both visuals and smell so far that was a promise carved in granite that they’d both be delicious, Warren first had to pass the blacksmith’s. He’d already decided he would have to visit and purchase some form of ass-armour but as he was going this way he was able to do the local equivalent of window shopping on the way.
There were racks of short swords and daggers, pot helmets and bucklers, bows and blunderbusses. Most of the equipment was made of a combination of leather and brass but the occasional iron piece stood out. Warren held up his sword and squinted at it, as though he could will its stats to just pop into visibility.
A window popped up in his vision. Katana. Rare. Damage: 10 (+ STR bonus). A weapon from the Far East, favoured by those whose only plan is to attack.
So engrossed was he that he stood on something cylindrical without ever seeing what it was. The cylinder immediately rolled out from under his foot and Warren found himself staring up at the sky for the second time that day, his exposed butt cooling on the cobbles.
“Are you blind?” an enraged figure with comically long ears yelled at him from right beside where he’d fallen. “I’m working here and you go kicking my tools and damn near landed on me. Gorram noob.”
“Well screw you, geek. Why are you spreading your tools all over the sidewalk?” Warren levered himself to his feet. “Don’t you people have workshops?”
“What do you mean “you people”? Is it because I’m black, or an elf? Huh? Racist much?” The elf, for that’s what he was, began pulling a very large spanner from a loop in his belt. The ring end of the spanner was big enough that Warren could have put his whole arm through it up to the shoulder. “How about you take your cracker,” he glanced at Warren’s lack in the trouser department, “bare ass elsewhere before you get it whupped?”
Normally, Warren would have taken this opportunity to explain to this knife-eared bastard that his mouth was writing cheques that his body couldn’t cash, but he was feeling disoriented and discombobulated. He muttered a casual threat under his breath and staggered off, little stars flashing in his vision.
This place is almost TOO real, he thought as the inn approached. I need a steak, a beer and some time on the bench. Too bad there’s no coach handy to sub someone in for me. He collapsed into a seat out the front of the inn, leaned his katana against the table, and considered the menu left out for customers. One copper. All I’ve got is one measly copper. I can afford a damn salad and that’s it. Ugh.
He peered over the top of the menu at the elf he’d just had a run-in with. Warren smiled as the piece of machinery being worked on exploded, darkening the elf’s skin further and removing their eyebrows. He waved at the injured player and received the double bird in reply. Ok, maybe it’s not all bad.
Suddenly, a roiling mass of muscles and weapons was disgorged from the front door of the inn. Warren recognised his people, and they recognised him.
“Katana boooiiiiii!” the loudest one shouted. “We’re off to kick some kobold ass. You want in?”
“Duh!” Warren stood and flourished his weapon. “What’re we waiting for?”