Chapter Text
“Wh— Shay?”
Hunk yanked his hand back, eyes wide. There was always the possibility of there being more than one Shay—it wasn’t exactly an uncommon name—but more than one Balmeran named Shay? In an unreleased game? That knocked the probability down a couple of digits.
And the worried, guilty look that flashed in Shay’s gleaming eyes seemed to confirm Hunk’s suspicions.
“You know your family thinks you’re dead, right?”
Shay bowed her head, and the cone-like stone at the sides of her head reminded Hunk very suddenly of sad, drooping cat ears. He almost regretted what he said.
“Yes,” she admitted in a soft voice. “And, in the sake of fairness, they are not wrong.”
“Not—?” Hunk recoiled. “What— What do you mean they’re not wrong? Are you some kind of a ghost or—”
“We should take to the second floor,” said Shay solemnly, crouching down to reach for her discarded halberd. “It will not take long Weble to respawn. We will not wish to be here when he returns.”
Hunk grimaced, torn between wanting to press the matter and wanting to make sure he didn’t have to fight two giant, blue cockroaches in one day.
“Come,” said Shay, trudging across the stone floor and climbing to the short platform by the door. “I will explain everything once we have left this room.”
“Getting back in the saddle, eh?”
Lance nodded and bent low to the ground to stretch his legs. He wasn’t sure whether it would have any effect in the world of Altea, but it was better to be safe than sorry if he needed to run again. “It’s morning,” he explained. “Nine doboshes later. Two hours and fifteen minutes is more than a long enough break. Sun’s up, no freaky draugrs or possessed moose to ruin my day…” He stood up straight and stretched his arms over his head. “I’m going for it. And this time—” He let his arms fall to his sides with a soft hup and then pointed at Coran in a “mark my words” gesture. “...I’m not coming back until I’ve got that spell.”
“That’s the spirit,” said Coran, leaning against the countertop. “You’ll find her. Don’t give up.”
A slow grin crossed Lance’s face. “Oh, she’s a her, huh?” He crossed his arms proudly. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Don’t get too excited, Casanova.” Coran smirked under his fiery mustache. “I said she was a girl. I never said she was humanoid. And in any case, she’s still an NPC. You don’t want to go around wooing bits of data hither and thither, do you?”
“Oh, come on,” said Lance, rolling his eyes good-naturedly. “That doesn’t mean it wouldn’t still be fun to flirt a little. Haven’t you ever played a dating sim?”
“Can’t say I have,” said Coran, his smirk disappearing behind disapproval. “Not my cup of tea.”
“Well, of course you’d say that,” said Lance, his own smile fading as well. “You’re an NPC.”
“An NPC who could kick your butt if I wanted to,” warned Coran. “Healer or not, I’m still a solid level 20, and you’re only level 1.”
“Healer?” Lance furrowed his brow. “You’re a healer?”
“Of course I am,” said Coran, standing up straight. “What else would you expect from an innkeeper, a master of hospitality?”
Lance forced an uncertain, lopsided grimace. “...Classless?”
“Well, you’d be wrong,” said Coran, pulling at his lapels as if he were tugging on suspenders instead. “Every sapient being in Altea has a class, be they one of the four starting classes or an advanced class. I’m a healer, the potion brewer you met is a mage… The King of Arus is a mage as well. Well, an advanced class in the mage pool of classes.”
“Huh…” Lance raised his eyebrows. “So, wait, how do you—”
“You can ask questions later,” said Coran, resting his hands on his hips. “When the sun sets. For now, you have a limited amount of time to find your teacher in those woods. Unless you want to run into those draugrs again.”
Lance winced. “No thanks. Oh, but before I go…”
“Hm?”
Lance reached behind his neck and tugged at the chain of his new necklace, slipping it out from under his doublet and separating the clasp. “Do you mind telling me what this is?”
Coran frowned and reached behind the necklace, bringing the pendant closer to his eyes with a careful hand. “I’m… I’m not sure,” he admitted after a moment of scrutiny. “I’ve never seen anything like it. But if it’s in the game, it’ll be in a book somewhere. I’ll do the research while you hunt for your teacher.”
“You don’t mind?” asked Lance, genuinely surprised.
“Not at all,” said Coran, the pendant swinging back and forth on its chain when he released it. “What else am I going to do? Help new players?” He chuckled.
A small, genuinely grateful smile tugged at Lance’s lips. “Thanks, Coran.” He pulled the necklace back around his neck. “You’re a lifesaver.”
“Well, of course I am,” said Coran proudly. “Healer, lifesaver… The same thing, really.”
Lance grinned and, necklace safely clasped once more, he took a step toward the door. “All right, I’m off.”
“Good luck,” called Coran. “Oh, and if you can, pop in on the seamstress and get a proper mage outfit on your way back. I’ll make it worth your while!”
It was strange, walking leisurely through the forest when Lance knew that he’d been running for his life the last time he’d seen it. It was hard to be afraid of the flora and fauna in daytime, however. Especially considering it looked completely different from the way it had looked at night.
The trees were all in the same places, but they were different species. Even the hawthorn plant Lance had gotten stuck in was replaced by a pleasant broom shrub. It seemed the entire forest became more deadly after the sun went down.
“It’s like the foresty equivalent of a werewolf,” mused Lance, pausing to rest his hand on a harmless oak tree. “Like some kind of...wereforest. Or...lycanwoods.”
Something caught Lance’s eye from behind the tree. He leaned around the trunk, eyebrow cocked.
“What the cheese…?”
There was a new ash pile. That made sense, in a way. It was standing where the stranger had saved Lance the in-game day—quintants, Coran called them—before, and there had been a lot of fire in that battle. It was a great deal more ash than Lance would have expected, though, and Lance would have made a note of that to Shiro if not for one thing that made it seem intentional: a cypress seedling was beginning to grow from the center of the pile, just like with all the other piles.
And curled around that seedling, fast asleep in the ash, was the same pinkish mouse Lance had seen the last time he visited the forest. He’d almost forgotten about her, considering what had happened right afterward, but…
Judging by the sound of her voice, she was a girl. And she definitely wasn’t humanoid.
Warily, Lance crept forward and knelt by the ash pile, and with a curious finger, he reached out and poked the mouse’s side.
The mouse lifted her head and blinked blearily, her mouse twitching up a storm.
“Um, hi?” said Lance uneasily.
The mouse’s ears lifted and she turned her head to face Lance properly.
“Oh!” she said, standing on her hind legs and brushing the ash from her fur with her tiny hands. “Good morning! Sorry, I was— I knew you were coming, but—”
“Don’t sweat it,” said Lance, perching leisurely on the balls of his feet, resting his wrists on his knees. “I’m not gonna ask you not to sleep.”
The mouse cleared her throat and stood up straighter, clasping her paws in front of her stomach.
“Welcome, Mage, to the path of understanding. My name is Chuchule, and it will be my honor to teach you your first spell.”
She bowed politely, touching her ground with her paws before standing up straight again.
Lance raised his eyebrows and averted his eyes briefly, thinking.
“...My first spell?”
“Yes.”
“So...just my first spell.”
“That’s right.”
Lance took a deep breath and sighed in disappointment. “So after you, I’m on my own?”
“Not entirely,” said Chuchule, her tail flicking to one side. “There are three other mice after me, and each one will teach you about a certain kind of magic. We are your starting points. That’s all. Does that make sense?”
“Not really,” admitted Lance, dropping to the dirty forest floor.
“Hmm…” Chuchule walked to the edge of the ash pile on all fours before settling herself in front of Lance’s crossed ankles. “Let’s put it this way: A teacher can teach you how to read, but once you know how to read, it isn’t up to that teacher to teach you how to interpret the stories you’ll read when you’re older. And another teacher can teach you how to read a map, but it’s up to you to memorize the way to your favorite restaurant. You see?”
“Sort of,” said Lance. “So what you’re saying is that you’ll teach me how to use magic in at least one way, and it’s up to me to figure out what I do with that knowledge? Like you could teach me how to move things with my mind, but it’s up to me to, like, use it to make myself fly or whatever.”
“Something like that,” said Chuchule, standing on her hind legs again. “As you grow and gain experience, and not just the quantified kind, then you’ll learn how to use your magic in different ways.”
“Okay,” said Lance, leaning forward. “What do I have to do?”
“Well,” said Chuchule, “before you can actually learn your spell, I’ll need you to bring me some items.”
Lance was quick to learn that his bow was best suited for stealth. If he climbed up the trunk of a tree and perched in its branches, he could land an arrow in a moose from a great distance without having to worry about being trampled. And the more Lance practiced, the more Lance realized exactly how good he was with his bow. As long as he could see a moose, he could hit it. Handy, considering the moose were capable of ramming the tree he was in and knocking him out. The more time Lance had, the more arrows he could land, and the less of an obstacle those moose were.
And that was important, because Lance needed five sets of moose antlers for his first spell.
Lance’s most recent kill disappeared in a puff of smoke and Lance scaled back down the tree to grab the drop it had left behind.
“Wool again,” grumbled Lance, folding the pink fluff and stuffing it into his bag. He was very quickly running out of room in his inventory thanks to the twenty-eight Wools he’d earned. “And only two Antlers. Either the drop rate is crap or I just have rotten luck.”
He sent his bag a disapproving scowl, as if it were the reason it was so full of wool.
“Wonder if I can sell this somewhere…”
The market wasn’t too far from the edge of the woods. It didn’t take too long to find the cobblestone path once Lance passed the flag posts, and from there, Lance walked until the shops came into view.
Though there were a few places Lance could think of that might have needed wool, Lance’s first instinct was to try the seamstress.
A tiny series of bells chimed from under the door handle as Lance pushed his way inside.
“Back already?” asked a feminine voice from behind the counter. “I would have thought— Oh!”
Another pinkish, horned, lizard-like creature popped her head over the countertop and carefully crawled her way up. She kneeled on top of the counter, tucking her blue-and-yellow dress under her knees and straightening her green capelet before sending Lance a bright smile.
“Sorry about that. I thought you were someone else. What can I help you with?”
“A couple of things,” said Lance, opening his bag. “I want to buy some mage clothes, but before that, how much would you buy wool for?”
“Three-hundred gold per pound.”
Lance had already pulled his first lump of wool out of his bag when the shopkeeper’s words slowly wormed their way into his brain.
“...I’m sorry, how much?”
“Hey! How’s my favorite customer?”
Keith managed a small smile for the potion seller’s sake. “Fine. How’s the ladle treating you?”
“It’s great!” said the Arusian. “I can’t think of a handier tool. I haven’t sold any love potions with it yet, but I did get to try it out on some Bytor Water a quintant ago. The rubies stopped the frost in its tracks. My hands didn’t even get cold.”
“Yeah?” Keith slid his bag off from around his shoulders. “Who came in for Bytor Water? The innkeeper again?”
“Not exactly,” said the potion seller, scooting forward until his tiny, peach-colored feet dangled over the edge of the counter. “It was someone new. A thief, I think, judging by his clothing. But until something goes missing, I’ve got no reason to expect he’ll steal from my stores. Coran seems to trust him, at least.”
Keith’s brow furrowed. “I saw someone in the woods last night—”
“What were you doing in the woods at night?” asked the potion seller, his already-deep voice deepening further in his disapproval. “I know you can take care of yourself, but that’s still no reason to put yourself at risk.”
Keith shook his head. “That doesn’t matter,” he said firmly. “What matters is that I saw someone else in the woods last night. Someone who didn’t know better than to go near the shrines after dark.”
“Was he in thief attire?” asked the shopkeeper.
Keith narrowed his eyes at a blank spot on the countertop, thinking back. “It was too dark to tell. But he was wielding a bow.”
“That’s a bit cumbersome for a thief,” said the potion seller, sounding borderline amused.
Keith frowned. “But beginner gear can be used by any class. If they’re a thief who likes ranged attacks or a mage who wanted to be stealthy…”
“I’m guessing you didn’t get a look at his face.”
Keith shook his head. “I could tell that they were about my height, though. Skinny, probably male. Either human or True Altean. Short hair.”
“That sounds like the guy I talked to,” said the shopkeeper.
Keith lifted his head. “You said he was in thief attire?”
The shopkeeper nodded. “Arusian blue. He was a human, too. A little bit darker than—”
“Damn it.” Keith glared at the floor. Humans weren’t supposed to be native to Altea. Only a few had been coded in. If there was a human, especially one in Arusian colors, then that could only mean one thing.
Shiro had started playtesting.
Keith was running out of time fast.
“Everything all right?”
Keith spared a glance toward the shopkeeper.
“Fine,” he muttered. “Everything’s fine. But I’m going to need some stealth potions.”
“Another Wooly Moose down, another 300 gold.” Lance’s feet hit the forest floor and he knelt down to pick up the pink fluff he’d earned. “That makes twenty-nine. If I can just get one more, I’ll have a full inventory.” He grinned and began to scan the forest for his next kill. “Then I’ll be rolling in it. Shopping spree, here I come— What the...?”
He spotted another Wooly Moose just in time to watch it drop dead out of nowhere. Its item drop—a pair of antlers—appeared a moment later and wobbled briefly before falling onto its side.
“Okay, that’s...not normal.”
Lance began to walk warily toward the fallen pair of antlers—he’d almost forgotten about the spell he was supposed to be grinding for in his eagerness to sell as much wool as possible, and that was the last set he needed—when the antlers vanished right before Lance’s eyes.
Lance reeled back, grimacing, his hands coiled against his chest.
“H-Hello?”
There was no response. Not even a rustle of leaves. The forest was utterly silent.
Until another moose collapsed with an audible death cry.
Lance whipped around, blue eyes darting around the forest, hastily searching for whatever creature had just been slain where it stood.
He didn’t find it.
What he did find was another living moose.
A living moose that lived for about five seconds.
The second it hit the ground, Lance screamed just as much in outrage as in real fear.
“I need one more wool and one more set of antlers!” he screeched, stomping his foot. “That’s it! At least give me the antlers! I knew this forest was haunted, but come on! That’s only supposed to be at night!”
He took a deep, shaky breath and turned around.
“Just a game,” he mumbled. “Just a game, just a game, not a real ghost… This isn’t even a horror game. It’s cool.”
He closed his eyes, took another deep breath, and reached for his bow.
If there was a ghost out and about in a game, stealing all of Lance’s kills, then it was an enemy. It had an HP bar. Lance doubted it was immortal.
With a slow, steady hand, he nocked an arrow, and he listened. Just listened. For anything. A rustle. Another death cry. Anything.
And he heard it. The muffled, wet thud of a knife striking flesh, something Lance was familiar with from years of playing horror games.
Before the moose even cried out, Lance whipped around loosed his arrow. He opened his eyes just in time to see the arrow strike the Wooly Moose just behind his front leg.
“Hahah! Gotcha, Sucker!”
Not quite what Lance was aiming for, but he still wasn’t quite used to how real everything felt in Shattering of Altea just yet. If he were playing a game he was more familiar with, he could have gotten a clean strike through both lungs.
And if he were playing a game he was more familiar with, he would have probably known what was going on when the ground began to shake.
A word fell from Lance’s lips. One he’d heard only once before thanks to Coran.
“Quiznak…”
“So...just like that?” asked Hunk, watching Shay scale a shoulder-high rock ledge. “All because you ticked off some Galra jerk?”
“That one did not want me around,” said Shay, turning around at the top of the ledge, melancholy in her eyes from where she loomed over Hunk. “I was...willful. Defiant. Once I spoke out against the Galra Empire, I agreed to my own death. That Galra drew a weapon, I drew my own. We fought, but...he bested me.” She kneeled and reached over the edge, a helpful hand outstretched. “When one of Altea is defeated, either one will appear in one’s own home, or one will disappear entirely, depending on one’s programming. In my case, neither happened. I awoke all alone in one of the caves, and I had lost my role. No longer was I constricted to a purpose, to the character I was meant to play. It was as if I was no longer mere data, but a person, just as you are.”
Hunk, brow furrowed, grasped Shay’s hand between both of his own. “You’re still just ones and zeroes, though, right? So…what are you?”
Shay squeezed Hunk’s hand, but didn’t pull. Her gaze fell to the stone she crouched on, hesitant, uncertain. She pursed her lips for a moment, stone pressing against stone as if she was a statue in motion, only opening again to take a deep mournful breath.
Her eyes met Hunk’s again, and she opened her mouth to answer.
Keith had been watching for some time.
He wasn’t even sure why he was still watching. The new player wasn’t doing much. Just hunting Wooly Moose, probably for the beginner Mage spell. He was harmless. Just as much to himself as he was to the world. Keith could have been doing something much more productive. Farming for Crows’ Eggs, mining ore for better armor… And yet, he was watching someone he didn’t know killing low-level enemies.
Someone who was new. Someone who could leave at any time. Someone who was only in danger because he was ignorant, not because he was trapped in the same world as the Galra.
And he was just...playing a game.
It was so frustrating. There was a huge part of Keith that wanted so badly to dispel the effects of his stealth potion, to climb up the tree after the new player and grab him by the shoulders and tell him exactly how dangerous it was to be in Altea. Every instinct written into him was itching to do exactly that, to run out and warn him.
But if the new player was a playtester, that meant he knew Shiro.
And if he told Shiro about someone he met in Arus...someone who fit Keith’s description…
“That makes twenty-nine,” said the new player, drawing Keith from his contemplation.
He was talking to himself.
Keith crossed his arms and leaned against the tree he was standing next to. He was guilty of talking to himself, too, but that was just because he got lonely. It was hard not to be when his only company was Red and the occasional shopkeeper. He wondered whether the new player was lonely, playing the game by himself, probably the only proper player in all of Arus.
But there was more to what he said than that.
Twenty-nine.
Twenty-nine what? Was that how many Wooly Moose he’d defeated or how many Wools he had in his inventory?
Judging by the cheeky grin on his face as he deposited the Wool in his bag and the comment he made about “rolling in it,” Keith had to assume it was the latter.
How many moose has he killed? Keith narrowed his eyes. I should have been counting.
The new player looked up and began to search the forest, probably for his next kill.
If his kill streak was anywhere near fifty, he was about to run into some serious trouble.
For the briefest of moments, Keith considered letting the new player fumble his way into disaster, letting him learn the hard way what happened when he killed fifty of the same creature in a row.
But Keith had the Stealth Potions for a reason. To keep the new player safe. And if something went wrong when he lost all his HP, something the Galra had caused either on purpose or inadvertently…
Keith couldn’t take the chance.
He spurred himself into action.
He darted across the clearing to the first Wooly Moose he saw, knife in one hand, back-up Stealth Potion in the other, trusting the effects of the enchantment running through his body to keep his feet mostly silent.
Wooly Moose were no longer a threat to Keith. They hadn’t been in at least fifty levels. When he cut into the moose, it went down in an instant, leaving Keith free to grab its drop and go after the next.
It went down.
So did the one after it.
Keith knew he couldn’t keep fighting the moose forever; whichever of them got the streak of fifty didn’t matter when the point was to avoid the kill streak altogether. But he didn’t have to keep it up forever. Just until the new player got tired of not finding any game or until night fell, whichever came first.
Keith darted after the next moose and struck it with his knife.
To Keith’s surprise, the low-leveled, early-game enemy didn’t go down.
Its HP bar appeared over its head, a mere sliver of the red remaining.
Keith noticed too late the Juniberry hanging from its lips.
Too late because before he had the chance to so much as yank his knife out of the moose’s neck for another attack, an arrow pierced its side.
Wide-eyed, Keith whipped around to see the new player, bow drawn, a smarmy grin on his lips.
“Gotcha, Sucker.”
The ground shook for only a moment, just long enough to wipe the smirk from the new player’s face and to send sparks of tension rippling across Keith’s skin.
A low whistle of wind that Keith heard but didn’t feel blew across the forest.
“Oh, no,” breathed Keith, looking out toward the west, then peering at the new player through the corner of his eye.
He looked terrified, and rightfully so. Drazil was still difficult for Keith to handle, even at his level, with a mount. The new player was going to get crushed in seconds.
Unless Keith did something.
He opened his bag and tossed his backup stealth potion into it without a thought, knowing that it wouldn’t break.
“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” he muttered, searching hastily through the contents of his bag.
He spared a look over his shoulder.
Drazil’s shadow was already darkening the trees to the west. If Keith had time to climb a hill, he would probably be able to see it.
With a sharp, terrified exhale, Keith turned back to his bag, pulling out potion after potion.
He had to have at least one. He always had at least one. They were too handy not to keep.
A yellow glow peeked through the contents of Keith’s bag from the very bottom, and he dove his hand in deep to pull it out.
A Yellow Potion.
He looked toward the new player and grimaced. So much for stealth.
“One more second,” he mumbled, reaching hastily into his bag for the antlers he’d earned from the first Wooly Moose he’d killed.
Taking advantage of the new player’s distraction, Keith used his last seconds of stealth to shove a set of antlers into the new player’s bag without being noticed.
Then, with a heavy breath, Keith let go of his buff.
“Dispel.”
Even with the incoming threat of Drazil on the horizon, the new player noticed Keith instantly. He whipped around, eyes wide, jaw dropped.
“You!” he accused much faster than Keith was expecting. “You’re the guy who’s been stealing my kills!”
“I’m what?” Keith shook his head. “You can’t be serious. There’s a boss after us and you’re worried about that?”
“Yes!” screeched the new player, gesticulating wildly, throwing his hands out to the sides of his head, fingers splayed. “Are you kidding me? That’s, like, rule number one of MMO etiquette! If someone’s farming for items somewhere, you either group them or go somewhere else!”
Keith growled, his free hand balling into a fist. “Do you want to die?!”
“Is that a threat?” demanded the new player. “Are you threatening me?”
“No,” growled Keith. “I’m not—”
Before he could finish his sentence, a wide beam of destructive green light struck the earth, passing through the trees like a ghost but turning every Moon Rabbit it hit to dust.
“That is!” said Keith hurriedly, grabbing the new player by the arm and dragging him out of the way. Drazil’s beam passed right past them without hitting them, but it was a very near miss.
Keith whipped around and pushed the potion toward the new player. “Take this!” he ordered, already breathless.
The new player narrowed his eyes suspiciously. Keith didn’t understand how he still could be after he’d just saved the new player from being torn apart by the beam that nearly hit them, even when he explained it.
“I’m not taking anything from you! How do I know that’s not poison?!”
“Do you want to live or not?!” demanded Keith, shoving the bottle at the new player again. “Take it—” Another beam hit the earth and was steadily drifting toward them. “—before I smash it into your face!”
The new player spared a look toward the quickly-approaching beam.
“Fine,” he said, snatching the bottle out of Keith’s hand. “But this better not kill me.”
He took a drink of the liquid, glowed briefly yellow, then disappeared.
Keith barely had time to jump out of the way of the beam before it hit him.
He’d just spent far too long trying to save someone who clearly didn’t want to be saved, and now he had to deal with Drazil himself.
“Whatever,” he hissed, reaching hastily for the necklace hidden under his armor. “I’ve done this before. I can do it again.”
Lance turned in place, his bed squeaking in protest underneath his feet.
“Oh, come on—” he grumbled, aggravated. “That jackass totally killed me, I knew— Wait.”
He looked down at himself, at the clothes he was still wearing.
He looked in his bag. All of his items were still there. Including one more pair of antlers than he thought he’d had.
He had enough for the spell.
And…
“He didn’t kill me.” Lance furrowed his brow. “Huh. Then...what, did that potion just sent me back to the inn, or—?”
A stab of annoyance plucked at Lance’s brain.
“That jackass! I’m totally missing out on an awesome boss fight!”