Arrival

Virtual Voyagers: Book 1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jeff Duckworth

 

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Copyright © 2024 by Jeff Duckworth

All rights reserved

 

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, business, places, and events are either products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is coincidental.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, scanned in any form, digital or printed, without the written permission of the author.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To Melinda,

I probably don’t deserve you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER ONE

A Whole New World

Emily hurried through the convention floor of the Jarvis Center in New York City, her progress hampered by a mob of people taking photos of two female cosplayers—one in a Night Elf Hunter costume and the other dressed as a Demon Hunter, both World of Warcraft characters. Despite being late for her beta test slot for the new game, Faltoral, she pulled out her phone and snapped a few pics of the duo, uploading them to her Instagram account. She then continued on, following the main aisle towards the auditorium that had the game.

Emily arrived to find stanchions set up and the area in front of the entry doors sectioned off. There were a few dozen people milling around the roped-off area, and there were two security guards on the inside perimeter of the area as well as a woman behind a table. One of the security guards removed the rope from one of the stanchions to allow her entry inside the barrier. A short, thin woman sat behind the table dressed as an elf; both her costume and tapered ears looked very realistic. She wore a name tag that read ‘Jenny’.

The woman smiled up at her. “Name?” she asked.

“Emily Stardust.”

Jenny scrolled through a tablet. “Yes, your group is already inside. I will need to see an ID from you, please.”

When Emily handed the woman her ID, she touched it to a scanner and handed it back along with a lanyard attached to a nametag that read “Isla”—the character name that she had signed up to use today. That was always her first choice when starting a new game, although she often had to add numbers after the name if it was already taken.

After Emily had placed the lanyard around her neck, Jenny held out her hand and said, “Phone, please.” Emily hesitated but ultimately surrendered her phone, which was placed in a plastic container and locked away. Jenny stood and motioned to one of the security guards, who opened the doors for them.

Inside, the room was partitioned by a large curtain that rose from floor to ceiling. The curtain was about ten feet into the room, and some of the onlookers who had begun filming made cries of protest when the doors were closed behind the group before the curtains were opened.

“What’s with all the secrecy?” Emily asked.

“We want there to be as few spoilers of our game available to the public as possible,” Jenny replied as the curtain parted, revealing a very large room with a stage at the other end. “Inevitably some info will get out, but if anyone is allowed to get a picture or video of the inside, it will be all over social media, and then the jig is up.”

They went towards the stage and approached an archway that had some sort of shimmer effect. It glowed a faint blue, and it looked like a reflective pool of water. Whoever set this thing up got full marks for the special effects. “Now, go on up and into the game room, and we will begin,” Jenny motioned towards the special effect arch. “Up the ramp and through the teleportation device.” She smiled broadly at this point. “You’ll be given instructions on the other side.” With that, she turned away and went back through the curtains.

Emily went up the ramp and put her hand into the archway. The surface didn’t seem disturbed by her action. She pulled her hand back out. It doesn’t feel like anything at all, she thought. She shrugged and walked into the light.

A small group was already gathered on the other side. “It’s about time, Isla,” said a tall, muscular man with ‘Maroftis’ on his ID. He had sandy brown hair and looked like he could be a model. “Always making us wait,” he continued, smiling broadly.

“This place is packed, and I couldn’t find the auditorium at first,” she replied.

A shorter man, Vultressant, scrunched his brow in confusion. “But there are signs everywhere,” he said.

“Ignore him,” said Taloc, putting a hand on Vultressant’s shoulder. He was almost a foot taller than the shorter man and even a few inches taller than Maroftis. Taloc was thin, with broad shoulders and a cleft chin. “Vult and Ewt are jonesing for their phones.”

Emily—Isla—gave a mock-exasperated look and said, “I know, right! What the hell do they need our phones for?”

“The woman at the entrance said that they don’t want us on social media,” Ewtain said. Ewtain was the youngest of their group, just a year into college, and he was a bit taller than Vultressant with east Asian features. Isla knew that he was born in America but didn’t know what country or countries his parents were from—possibly also America. Ewtain stood behind a blond woman in a wheelchair, Vanya, who rounded out their group of six.

“I’ve seen Ewt before,” she said, “but it’s nice to finally put faces to voices for the rest of you guys.”

“It’s good to finally meet you too, Isla,” Taloc said, smiling.

She jumped when a male voice spoke through unseen speakers: “Teleportation will begin shortly. When you arrive on Faltoral, you will be given further instructions. Teleporting in 10, 9, 8,... 3, 2, 1.”

The blue light that she had walked through disappeared and was replaced with total darkness. Isla heard Vanya gasp in surprise, but she was super-excited and let out a cheer, and then her hearing went. Well, it didn’t go away entirely, but it sounded like she was underwater. She started to feel light-headed, and even though they appeared to be in total darkness, white spots appeared in her vision.

She struggled with the feeling for quite a while and thought that she might pass out, but after a few minutes, the feeling subsided, and she could see light coming through her eyelids. She opened her eyes, which she had not remembered closing, and saw that she was standing in front of a small body of liquid. She thought it was water, but the color of it was reddish, not the typical blue or green that she was used to. The rock formations that circled the pool were red themselves, so that might be the explanation. What she couldn’t explain was the sky—or, more to the point, the fact that there were two suns. One was lower on the horizon and appeared about twice the size of the other one. Isla could feel the heat of standing in sunshine, and it certainly felt different than the sensations of the convention center.

“This can’t be the convention center,” Vanya said as she looked around in wonder from her wheelchair.

“How in the hell did we get here?” Ewtain exclaimed.

“This is just some fancy special effects. They probably want us to think that we went through some sort of stargate,” answered Taloc.

Ewtain looked confused.

“It’s like Rick’s the portal gun on Rick and Morty,” Vultressant said.

Ewtain nodded and then looked at Taloc, shaking his head. “Why didn’t you say that in the first place? Always with the 80s references, huh? I know that you guys are older than me, but none of you were even alive during that decade.”

Maroftis came to Taloc’s defense. “I’m pretty sure that the movie came out in the 90s, and the main series lasted at least eight seasons and ran into the aughts.”

“Whatever.” Ewtain said. “I’m sure that Steins;Gate is way better.”

“The show is nothing like that anime, so they’re really not related at all,” Vultressant said. He looked around and shielded his eyes from the sunshine. “Hey, weren’t we told that there would be instructions?” Just as he said it, they all started as trumpets seemed to sound in their ears, and they lost peripheral vision as if they were wearing horse blinders. In front of each of them was what looked like a heads-up display with writing on it:

Greetings! You have been chosen to participate in the beta version of a real-life fantasy game. The planet that you are currently on is one that we call Faltoral, but depending upon which planet you hail from, you might know this planet by a different name. You will be allowed to create a character and live on this planet. Beware, adventurer: this planet is a dangerous place, and death is a very common occurrence for adventures. You will only be allowed two respawns following your deaths, and if you die without a respawn remaining—and we cannot stress this enough—YOU WILL ACTUALLY DIE. This information was added after there were several problems with our alpha-testers who thought that this was just a game, so you are welcome.

Proceed to character creation. For more information on a topic, simply focus your thoughts on the desired topic. There is also a “Help” button at the bottom of your HUD. To access your HUD, simply move your eyes from center to upper right twice quickly. To minimize your HUD, focus your gaze on the “minimization” icon and will it to activate. Similarly, to close your HUD, focus your gaze on the “close” icon and will the interface to close.

Vultressant made the eye movements to activate the heads-up display, and a box labeled “Character Creation” appeared in the center of his HUD. “Hey guys, did you hear the bit about the actual death?”

“I was stuck on the fact that we are supposedly on another planet,” Taloc replied. “We should pick a direction to walk until we hit a wall. This might be holodeck technology.”

Vultressant dismissed the box, but it just minimized at the bottom of his HUD. He then willed the display away so that he could better view his surroundings.

“What was all of that ‘depending on the planet that you came from’ stuff?” Isla asked.

“Not sure,” Vultressant said, “but if we are on another planet and we were teleported here, or we went through a wormhole or whatever, then whoever brought us here can probably do the same thing from other planets in the universe.”

Maroftis went over to the water, dipped his hands in, and took a drink. “It’s just water!” he exclaimed. “It tastes minerally, but it’s still just water. I can’t see how we could still be in the convention center.”

“I can’t believe that you drank that.” Isla said, cringing a bit. “You could get sick.”

Maroftis shrugged. “At least we know that we’re not in the convention center anymore. I guess that we could be on another planet; if they have the ability to teleport us, then why not to another planet?”

“Just because there’s water, doesn’t mean anything,” Taloc countered.

“Either way, we are going to have to drink something,” Vultressant said, “so our guinea pig going forward will be Maroftis.” His HUD activated and indicated that he had five minutes to begin character creation before it would be randomly done for him. “We better start making our characters.”

“Did you get the warning too?” Vanya asked.

“Yes, I got the warning. Let’s start making our characters and talk about what classes we’re choosing as we go. I don’t know how long it’ll take, but the warning says that we have only five minutes to begin, so I think that we should start now.” After hearing no objections, Vultressant focused on the minimized box for the character creation and opened it.

“I still think that this is just some really good VR,” Taloc said.

“Maybe,” Vanya said, “but this is really advanced.”

Welcome, adventurer! To create your character, choose a race, class, attributes, skills, and abilities. You can also randomize any or all of these to allow for a wider range of options. The choices that you make will be taken into account and impact the probabilities for any randomization. The program tries to allow for more synergistic results in your character, but given the vast number of possibilities, this will not always be the case. You may make partial random choices, but the more randomization that you allow for, the more options your character will have. Please make all choices and begin your adventure!

Vultressant opened the “race” tab to see only five options: Random, Human, Elf, Dwarf, and Gnome. He began from the top, focusing on the options and then reading the descriptions for each.

Random: Your race will be chosen for you. There are other races besides the standard four listed; the probabilities of the standard four races are higher than the other potential races in general, but randomization does allow for you to be assigned another race. Randomizing other fields may also increase that probability. Given your current (default) level of randomization, your character will be humanoid and of either medium or small size.

Human: Humans gain 5 points per level to distribute on attributes. Language: Common rank 10.

Elf: Elves gain 5 points per level to distribute on attributes, one of which will automatically be assigned to Dexterity. Additional attribute: Intuition; this will increase by one point per level, and other level points may be used to increase it further. Ability: night vision. Languages: Common rank 10 and Elvish rank 10.

Dwarf: Dwarves gain 5 points per level to distribute on attributes, one of which will automatically be assigned to Vitality. Additional attribute: Stamina; this will increase by one point per level, and other level points may be used to increase it further. Ability: dark vision. Languages: Common rank 10 and Dwarvish rank 10.

He wondered at the difference between night vision and dark vision, and the definitions for each appeared before his eyes. Night vision: the ability to see clearly at night where there is minimal lighting. This heightened sight diminishes at increased range. Dark vision: the ability to see clearly with no light source. This heightened sight diminishes at increased range. He was both excited and horrified that the help feature picked up on his thoughts. He supposed that the ‘will it to function’ aspect of this computer interface? was actually legit.

Gnome: Gnomes gain 5 points per level to distribute on attributes, one of which will automatically be assigned to Intellect. Starting Intellect: +5. Languages: Common rank 10, Gnomish rank 10. Skills: Tinkerer.

Vultressant didn’t feel that he needed any additional information on these four races, so he went to the next tab, labeled “Class.”

In Faltoral, most activities can be performed by all players: a Warrior can cast spells, a Wizard can learn martial arts or fight with a sword, a Cleric can pick locks, an Assassin can learn healing magic, etc. Each class makes certain activities easier to perform and advance in, and some powers are unique to each class and dependent upon level. Some race choices will open up additional classes.

Warrior: A weapon fighting class that adds to weapon and armor abilities. Starting characters may choose two armor types and two weapons that gain additional bonuses.

Wizard: A spellcaster who has higher casting abilities for some offensive and elemental spells. Starting characters begin with three rank I spells.

Hunter: A weapon fighting class that has additional bonuses to camouflage, accuracy of range weapons, and perception. Starting characters begin with the skill Beastcraft at level 1.

Mender: A healing class that has enhanced beneficial spells, healing spells, and curing magic; starting characters begin with a rank I spell for each of these.

Vultressant was pleased to see that the class that held the most interest to him was among those that he could choose from. He had always favored spellcasting classes when he gamed, and the Wizard class was what his main character had been in several games. He selected Wizard, and some additional information appeared in his HUD: While you may excel at dealing magical death to your opponents from afar, wearing some armor types while trying to cast spells can have some adverse results. You will also have greater difficulty advancing in some armor and weapon skills due to choosing this class. This was not news to him, since this was typical for most caster classes in the games that he had played. “I’m going with a Wizard,” he announced to the rest of the group.

“Shocker!” said Maroftis in mock surprise. “I’m going full random. The given choices are really limited, and my luck is always great.”

Isla took her focus away from her HUD and looked at Maroftis with exasperation. “You could end up being some terrible race, like a Vampire. We might not be able to travel during the day—assuming that you don’t try to kill us all.”

“If I get to be a Vampire, you know that I’ll sparkle in the daylight.”

Isla shook her head at him. “Good luck with that.”

“Ten bucks says that he turns into Rocket from Guardians of the Galaxy,” Vultressant said. “Make sure that you change your name to Trash Panda if you do.”

Vanya raised her hand. “I’ll take that bet. I’m going with a healer type. We’ll certainly need one, and I’m good at it.”

“Screw both of you,” Maroftis said, “and my name’s already preset to Maroftis—I checked. I can’t seem to change it.”

Vultressant laughed and then accessed the next tab. Attributes: Attributes are the general makeup of characters, and they modify how well you perform tasks, resist harmful magic or effects, interact with others, etc. You have 30 points to increase your attributes during character creation, and no attribute may be increased over 20 prior to adding bonuses for race and class. The attributes available to him were Charisma, Dexterity, Fate, Intellect, Psyche, Strength, and Vitality. These were familiar to him, but he did access the description of Psyche to verify what it did. Psyche: Your connectedness to your surroundings. This attribute influences your ability to understand others, enhances mental resistances, and gives bonuses to casting spells that are healing or defensive in nature. Finally, this stat increases the rate of mana point (MP) regeneration.

After reading the Psyche description, he decided to check the Intellect stat as well. Intellect: Mental acuity. This attribute influences your ability to reason and learn spells and gives bonuses to casting spells that are offensive in nature. This attribute also contributes to your mana points (MP). All of the attributes were at ten, and he knew that he would need his Intellect to be as high as possible, so he spent ten points to bring it up to the 20-point allowable threshold. Vultressant often used a variant of the min/max strategy: he would always max out his primary stat, but try to keep his other stats reasonably useful. He had enough points to enhance four of the attributes to 13 and the other two to 14, but he could also try to just max out one or two other attributes. The problem was, he just didn’t know what to expect from this game, world, or whatever. He noticed that the random option was not grayed out, so he accessed it. Would you like to randomly assign your remaining points at character creation? Yes or no? He decided to accept the randomization; he had no plan, and he could always focus on the attributes that he ended up needing when he began to level his character.

The Skills tab was next: Your skills represent a variety of abilities that your character has, and in general, they increase in ability as you use the skill. You may choose 10 skills, and since you have chosen the Wizard class, you may choose an additional skill from among the basic elemental spell types. The Skills tab had several tabs within it: Armor, General, Languages, Spellcasting, and Weapons. There were many options in each of these categories, although some of them were grayed out. Among those unavailable to him was heavy armor; this was probably due to the fact that he had locked in his class, and Wizards shouldn’t be running around in plate mail. He went through the armor and weapons quickly and only chose bow. He also chose long shot, which increased his bow range. He knew that he would want no part of melee combat; fighting up close as a spellcaster was a recipe for disaster.

There were many languages to choose from, and ‘Common’ was already highlighted as known, so it seemed that every race could speak Common, or at least they all could understand it. Many pen-and-paper RPGs let people understand a number of languages based on their character’s intelligence or equivalent attribute. No such rule appeared to be in play here. He noted from the descriptions of the four given races, ‘Common’ was a known language for each of them. He wondered what would happen if he decided to use ‘random’ for his race. He did so, opting for humanoid races only, and when he went back to the skills choices, Common was no longer highlighted. I guess that Common is not common to all races, he thought, and he took off the random option for the race. Vultressant liked the versatility of knowing several languages, so he wanted to hang on to at least one skill point to learn a language. When he looked through the last two tabs, he counted well over ten skills that he wanted to get. He chose fire magic with his free skill for being a Wizard, and he also took wind magic. To aid in his casting abilities, he selected concentration, which by its description was used to prevent a spell from being interrupted by outside distractions, and he took decipher script for things like spell scrolls or books that might be found.

He spent several minutes searching through the different lists of skills. Most were pretty easy to understand, but there were others, like graphology, which was the ability to look at a document and be able to tell if a certain person wrote it, that he had never seen before. That one also aided the forgery skill. Other skills like spelunking, boozing, and take it like a man seemed like odd choices to make, but some gamers focused on the role-playing aspect of these games, so these probably were taken by some. Vultressant had four more skills to select, including a language, and he thought it best to focus on skills that might help the group. He chose cartography, which might be a waste of a pick if there ended up being some sort of automapping system here, but it was best to be safe. Getting around efficiently and safely was very important, and he had logged many hours in new games just mapping the zones. Some games used a fog of war on their zone maps, where the map was revealed as you explored, and then everything remained visible after it was revealed. Vultressant hoped for this result. He also selected travel sense to complement the cartography skill. He decided that he would take Gnomish as the language, since it was among the four available races and so must be fairly common in the game.

Saving the last two skills for later, Vultressant went over to the Abilities tab.

You will receive at least one special ability during character creation. While all abilities are possible, the more of your character that you randomize, the higher the probability that a higher-tier ability will be chosen for your character. You can choose the type of ability that you would like, or you can randomize that as well.

The categories were control, defense, mental, offense, physical, and utility. At this point, he decided to randomize his remaining picks. He chose random for the ability; he set his last two skills to random; and then he went back to choose a random race. When he accessed the race tab, he found that there were additional choices that he could make. There were now options for Half-Elf, Orc, Goblin, Sprite, and Smallfolk. He chose random, but he hedged by choosing humanoids only—he didn’t know all of the options, and he did not want to end up being some sort of animal character.

There was a notification that all choices had been made, and it asked him if he would like to finalize the process. He selected ‘Yes’, and a notification appeared: Welcome to Faltoral, Vultressant!

His HUD went dark for a second; when his vision cleared, he was standing in what appeared to be a wooded area. He was looking up at Taloc, Isla, Vanya, and some sort of huge lizard holding a sword. A notification asked him if he would like to join Taloc’s party. There were two boxes, one for accept and the other for reject. Vultressant focused on accept, and he joined the party. The names appeared just over the heads of each of the party members, along with their class, current HP, current MP, and current energy, with a red, purple, and green bar representing each, respectively. Taloc was a Ranger and appeared to be Human. Isla also appeared to be Human; her class was listed as Skirmisher, which was not among the options that he had seen during character creation. Vanya was a Spiritualist, and she was some sort of Elf. The giant lizard was Maroftis; he was of the Berserker class.

All of them appeared to be quite a bit taller than they had just moments ago, and as he tried to access his character information to find out what race he was, Taloc asked, “You take the Gnome race for the extra five Intellect points, Vult?”

“No, I put it to random humanoid. I guess it was luck.” The last came out as more of a question. Vultressant had been used to being quite a bit shorter than his two real-life friends, but the discrepancy was far more pronounced now. “I picked Gnomish as a language skill, so I may have wasted that choice since Gnomes already speak Gnomish.”

“Did you ask for the baldness?” Maroftis asked and began laughing.

Vultressant felt the top of his head to confirm that he was in fact bald on top. He then looked up at his friend and shook his head. “Dude, you have scales instead of hair. How are you feeling about that total random character now?”

“It wasn’t quite fully random; I put ten points into the Fate attribute in the hopes that it would steer the randomness in my favor. Now, I did think that I would be running a character in a simulation or something. Had I known that we were going to actually turn into our characters, I would have probably been a bit more careful, but the abilities that I have are awesome! I’m immune to fire and heat damage, and both apparently can heal me. I have HP regen and heat sense, and I can slow my metabolism. Also, the tail is more than just for decoration.” He swished it around for emphasis. “What did you get?”

Vultressant accessed his character information and read his abilities: enhanced power regeneration and language sense. The former allowed his spell points to replenish at twice the normal rate, and he could instantly fully replenish his spell points once every two hours. The long cooldown meant this wouldn’t be usable more than once in an encounter, but with his power coming back twice as fast, he hoped he wouldn’t need the instant ability very much. The latter ability allowed him to gain the skill for any language he encountered at a starting rank of three. He then checked the skills that he had gotten at random. Gnomish rank 10 and tinkerer had been added since he was a Gnome. The other three were Fae rank 3, Goblin rank 3, and direction sense. The two languages were wasted slots given his language sense ability. The direction sense seemed to be a bit redundant due to the travel sense skill that he had chosen, but he would look into it later.

Vultressant described his two abilities, and Maroftis said, “We should try that language ability out.” He then began speaking in a guttural language, and after a minute, Vultressant began to understand. A notification appeared in his HUD: You have learned the language “Koraken.” A Korak is a carnivorous lizard-based species of fierce fighters that love to impose their will on what they consider to be the weaker races, which is all of them save one, the Dracon. Vultressant checked his skills, and Koraken rank 3 was now listed among them. “I can understand, but how do I speak the language?”

“Just think speak it,” Maroftis said, or at least that was what Vultressant understood of what was said. The translation was likely off, given his rudimentary understanding of the Koraken language.

Vultressant thought about the lizardman’s language and said, “Swing your tail for me.”

Maroftis frowned, looked down at his waist, and said in English, “Yeah, I’m not swinging that for you, Vult.”

“I was trying to say ‘tail’,” Vultressant said, switching back to English as well.

“Whatever, pervert.” That brought laughs from the other three.

A strange popping noise began, and the others motioned for Vultressant to come stand by them. He did, and when he turned around, there was a disturbance in the air. A large black cloud appeared; it opened to reveal Ewtain before disappearing behind him. Vultressant received a notification that Ewtain had joined the group, and he could see his name and his class, which was Night Stalker. He now wore a hooded cloak. The hood mostly covered his face, but it was clearly Ewtain. The cloak was currently open in the front, so the short sword and dagger that he wore on his belt were plainly visible. They all had weapons, Vultressant realized.

“What took you so long, Ewt?” Isla asked as Ewtain got his bearings in this new area.

“I wanted to run an Assassin or something similar, so I messed with the randomization until I found the Night Stalker class. I think that it will be a good fit, but I had assumed that I would be managing the character and not playing myself.” He looked at Maroftis and shook his head. “I’m glad that I ended up with a Human. Wow! Just wow.”

Taloc spoke up before Maroftis could make a rebuttal. “The instructions said that we had three lives and then we would be dead, so apparently it didn’t just mean a permadeath in a game. It said that we actually die, and I had assumed that this was a game of permadeath, only with three lives instead of just one, but now I know what they meant.” He looked over at Maroftis. “We might have made different choices if we understood the situation differently.” While the vast majority of games allowed for players to die an infinite number of times and still be allowed to play, some games ended after the player died just once or another small number of times. This game stated that it would only allow players two respawns, so each of them would be allowed two free deaths, making their third death final.

“I regret nothing!” Maroftis exclaimed, which brought a few eye rolls from some of the group and smiles from the others. “I’m actually serious. This character seems to be pretty durable, so I should be able to survive better than most of you.”

“And the downside is that you are a hideous gecko,” Taloc said. “It could be worse though—you could have ended up as a Gnome or something.” Vultressant arched an eyebrow at this but said nothing.

Maroftis raised his hands, or rather his claws, and said, “By the names of your classes, I’m the only tank here, so it’s lucky that I did what I did.” A good tank was necessary in any good party because you needed some type of fighter to engage the monsters and have the ability to absorb damage. Maroftis certainly did seem to qualify for that role.

Ewtain looked at Vanya. “You can walk!”

Vanya beamed a smile. “Yes, we’ve been discussing that. Well, not Vult, who didn’t notice, but the rest of us have. It’s been years since I’ve been able to feel anything in my legs, and it’s wonderful to walk again. I had no feeling in them prior to character creation, so that process made the changes.” She hopped up and down, grinning broadly. “It also looks like all of our old stuff is gone, and we all have new gear.”

Vultressant felt his cheeks grow warm. He felt bad for not noticing. He was generally not the most observant person, but even he should have caught that difference. Vanya was now an Elf, but she looked much like she had before, only with pointy ears. She also appeared to be shorter than he remembered, although it was difficult to tell since she had been sitting. She was taller than he was, although not by more than a few inches. They were both much shorter than the rest of the group. He determined that he was maybe four and a half feet tall, so Vanya must be about five feet. She had said that she was a Spiritualist, but he was unsure what that actually meant.

“Well, Taloc, what do you think about this being VR now?” Ewtain asked.

“VR could make Vanya walk,” Taloc said.

“But I have feeling in my legs,” Vanya said. “How could VR do that?”

“No idea, but it’s still more believable than us being on another planet.”

Vultressant spoke up in an attempt to change the subject. “What sort of builds do we all have?” he asked to get a better gauge on their classes and skills.

Taloc took the bait. “My Ranger class is more of a fighter-rogue hybrid,” he said. “The game said that the class doesn’t really define who we are as characters in the way that we’re accustomed to in the role-playing games that we’ve played before. At any rate, let’s all take a look at our character information and discuss our strengths, so we can plan how best to run the group.”

“I’ve already looked through mine,” Isla said, “so I’ll scout around for a few minutes while you all check on your stats.”

CHAPTER TWO

Strangers in a Strange Land

Taloc watched Isla as she walked away from the party. She appeared to be Human, and physically, she looked exactly as she had before they ended up in this game. Her gear, which consisted of a chain mail shirt that protected her torso, leather armor leggings, a sword that looked like a longsword, a bow, and a shield, gave him the impression that she was a fighter-type class. Vanya was clearly an Elf, and she looked similar to what she had before, but her face was more angular, and her ears were the standard pointy things expected of the race. She carried a bow and some bags, but little else. He knew she went for a healing class, so the bow appeared an odd fit as the Cleric classes did not really use them. She wore no armor, and her clothes were a reddish-brown tunic with a green cloak. He had not seen her stand before the transformation, but he was certain that she was now shorter. Vultressant looked like a smaller, grumpier version of himself without hair. Well, he had some on the sides, but he certainly was going to need a hat to protect his scalp. He too carried a bow, which was an oddity for a caster. Ewtain wore a long cloak with a hood that he had put up once he was fully on this side of character creation, but he looked the same otherwise. Ewtain did not have a bow but instead carried a sword, which looked shorter than Isla’s, but Taloc did not know if it qualified as a short sword. Taloc was a Human himself, so he probably looked the same as he had before, but he would have to check later. Maroftis, on the other hand, was unrecognizable in his new body, which was green and scaly and complete with a tail. He looked like a cross between a crocodile and the little commercial gecko who walked and talked in a British accent. He had a sword strapped to his belt, but Taloc was unsure how well the Korak could wield it, given that his hands were more like claws. Maroftis was now the tallest member of the party, and if Taloc hadn’t changed in size, then he estimated that the reptile was north of seven feet tall.

Well, he would have answers for what everyone was shortly. He made the eye motion to summon his HUD, then he willed his character information to appear. His HUD displayed a tidy screen that had his attributes, skills, abilities, health points, and mana points displayed. He had randomly chosen his attributes, so he had expected his stats to be generally around 14. He had chosen to be Human so that he would be able to put all five attribute points into a single stat each level, allowing him to fix any problems with his original stats. His attributes were listed as Charisma: 12, Dexterity: 14, Fate: 14, Intellect: 12, Psyche: 14, Strength: 20, and Vitality: 14. Below these were listed HP: 140 and MP: 120, and while Taloc assumed that these stood for health points and mana points, he focused on each of them and verified that he was correct. The 20 Strength was a pleasant surprise. Getting ten points randomly assigned to any one of the seven attributes must have a low probability, and that it had appeared in an ability that would be beneficial to him was excellent.

Taloc had a long list of skills. His only language was Common: rank 10 as a result of being Human, and the skills bow, track, and wilderness lore were added due to the Ranger class. His other skills were direction sense, hide, light armor, listen, long blades, move silently, rapid shot, ride, spot, and stealth. All of these skills were useful and mostly focused on things that he considered typical for a Ranger. In most games, Rangers were decent melee fighters because they could wield a sword or other up-close weapon, but generally they lacked the hit points, or health points in this game, of a dedicated tank or the ability to use heavy armor. His only armor ability was light armor, so he was not a suitable tank.

Taloc looked at his abilities last. He had been given the ability heightened senses, probably since he had chosen a random scout-style class, and this would help him with skills and actions that required any of the senses to perform. He also had the ability see invisible. This was a bit disappointing, since there was probably a spell that did the same thing. He focused on the ability to get more information. See invisible: You are able to see objects or creatures that are either actively or passively trying not to be seen. Taloc had hoped for more information than that, but the description was in line with what he had expected. At least it didn’t restrict the ability to invisible objects only.

Isla came back from scouting a couple of minutes after Taloc had finished looking through his character information. “Is everyone done?” he asked. After receiving confirmation from everyone, he started. “My skills and abilities are set up for me to be the scout. I can track, spot, and listen, and I have an ability called heightened senses to help with all of those. I can also see invisible or stealthy objects and creatures, so it should be very difficult for anything to sneak up on me. I randomized my stats, so all of them are at 12 or 14 except for Strength, which is at 20 for some reason. Also, I have 140 hit points… er, health points, and 120 mana points. I don’t have any spells to use the points on, but that’s my pool for when I learn some. Why don’t you go next, Vult?”

Vultressant nodded. “We already talked about my language sense ability, and my other ability is called enhanced power regeneration, which makes my mana point regeneration twice as fast as normal and gives me the ability to instantly fill up my mana pool. The cooldown on the fill-up is two hours, though.”

“It’s mana in this game, huh?” Maroftis asked with a smile, or maybe it was a grimace, as it was difficult to tell now that he was a lizard. Also, his eyes were off-putting; they looked more like marbles than they did eyes. They were mostly turquoise blue with green in the center, but they each had a vertical slit as an iris.

Vultressant rolled his eyes at his friend. “Spell points, spell power, magic power, magic points, mana, whatever. I have 250 of them as well as 130 health. My Intellect is 25, and the rest of my stats are no higher than 15. I have the skills fire magic and wind magic with three spells: bolt of fire, fire resistance, and personal shield. My other skills that are useful to the party are decipher script and cartography. Looking at the titles of all of your classes, I’m the only blaster in the group, so you guys make sure to keep the baddies off of the little Gnome Wizard.”

Ewtain went next. “My Dex is 25, and the rest of the stats were randomized and no higher than 15. My HP and MP are both 150. My skills are mostly attuned to an Assassin-type class, and as a Night Stalker, I received the skills for short blades and brew poison. The other skills useful to the party are detect traps and disarm traps. One of my abilities is mental wall, which protects me from things like scrying and mental attacks that target me. The other ability is called prescient reflexes. It looks like I’ll get some advanced warning of attacks, and it should help my dodge skill as well as help me generally defensively.”

He looked at Isla next to him, and as they had been going in a clockwise manner, she went next.

“The Skirmisher class seems to be a cross between a fighter and something like a rogue or a thief,” Isla said. “It sounds like Taloc’s Ranger is more like a fighter-hunter, so a bit of an overlap in classes, but hopefully different enough to not cause a problem.”

“Remember that we can design our characters to do things that would be restricted to us by our class in other games,” Taloc reminded her.

She nodded. “Yeah, I suppose, but I’ll have to get used to that. In so many games, our class defines everything that we can do. Well, I was looking to play a Bard, so I have 20 points in Charisma and Dexterity, and the rest of my attributes are pretty low, and I only have 110 HP and 120 MP. I also have detect traps and a few social skills. Let me see.” She appeared to access her HUD for a moment. “Bluff, perform, and persuasion are the skills. Oh, and my abilities are adeptness and born leader.”

Taloc thought that Isla had a character that was certainly different from his, and most of what she had discussed did fit the description of what he had come to know as a Bard-type class. Bards were characters that usually played an instrument to buff the party with some beneficial enhancements, but they could also be used to debuff the monsters with negative effects. Bards also had social skills in line with the ones that she possessed for social interaction, so Isla might need to do the talking for the group. Even her born leader ability was probably a social ability, but adeptness could mean a lot of things. “What’s the description of the adeptness ability?”

Isla stared straight ahead again. “It says, ‘Your ability to learn and advance skills is unparalleled. You will learn new skills in a fraction of the time it takes most others to learn them, and the triggers that are needed for you to advance your skills are generally lower than normal. There are no restrictions on the skills that you can learn, even if you lack the race or class requirement to learn them. However, you are still bound by any prerequisites necessary to use a skill.’ Do you want me to read anything else?”

“No, that should be fine for now,” Taloc replied. “I know that it isn’t the jack-of-all-trades Bard ability.” He trailed off, thinking for a moment. “At any rate, your ability, adeptness, sounds like it might be analogous to that D&D Bard ability. The skill system here clearly works differently, but it looks like you rolled a bard. You have a sword, a shield, and a bow, so I assume that you have the skills to use them.” Isla nodded. “Good deal, you have more tanky armor. Neither of us is really tank material, but we can help out our main fighter, which is likely to be our resident lizard. It looks like the next up is Vanya.”

Vanya looked as if she were accessing her HUD for a moment before going over her character. “My attributes were done randomly, and they range from 12 to 16; I didn’t get lucky like Taloc with my rolls. My race provided me with the Intuition attribute, as you all should have seen if you looked at the descriptions of the basic races. Well, Maroftis might not know, but I assume that the rest of you do. I have 160 health points and 190 mana points. I have the Elf racial ability of night vision, and the other two are locate ore and commune with nature. The skills of note are appraise, herb lore, and potions. I also have anatomy, which could be helpful. The spells that I have are neutralize poison, blessing, and warding of undead.”

“Too bad that you don’t have any healing spells.” Taloc said. “Your skills like potions, anatomy, and herb lore should be helpful with healing until we can get to a city and find some healing spells for you to learn. The locate ore ability is intriguing. We might be able to use that to find some precious metals to sell. And you got an extra ability for being an Elf, that’s cool. My Human race has no racial abilities. What does appraise do?”

“It lets me know the monetary value of items,” Vanya replied.

“That should be useful.” Taloc then looked at Maroftis with a smile and a shake of his head. “Take it away, man.” Maroftis began using his guttural language that Taloc could not understand. “English, man! Well, I guess ‘man’ may not be correct any longer.”

Maroftis switched to English. “I have 20 Brawn, Fate and Vitality. I have 300 health points and 110 mana points. I can use my claws to attack, and my hide is like armor. As for abilities, I got immune to fire, and the description says that heat can actually help me heal. Regenerate is another ability, and I also have slow metabolism; my tail can attack according to my prehensile tail ability; and I have the heat sense ability. I have double the health points of everyone in the group except for the healer, and I’m very hard to kill.”

“All right, tough guy, you get to tank,” Vultressant said. “Do you have any skills that we should know about?” he asked.

Maroftis did not say anything for a minute, so he was probably accessing his character information, but it was difficult to tell since his reptile eyes were hard to read. “Most of the skills are things like climb, jump, and swim, so things that either keep me alive or allow me to maneuver... endurance is another one like that. Well, maybe wilderness lore and animal empathy could be useful, and I also got intimidate and assess other, which lets me know the relative strength of an opponent.”

Taloc nodded in approval. “Your race looks like it is very strong indeed; hopefully if we meet any more of your kind, they won’t be evil.”

“Have you ever known of a huge lizard race to be good?” Ewtain asked.

“No,” Taloc conceded. “But remember that we don’t know very much about this world. I was playing with the help feature, but it gave very little information, and most of that was pretty general. It’s weird that it has very specific descriptions of my skills and abilities and all that, but on general stuff it’s vague. It did say that as we encounter things the help feature would provide more information for us, so it might be a log of the things that we do or see in this world.” He looked back to Maroftis. “How did you get 20 points in three attributes, and what is ‘Brawn’?”

“I put ten points in Fate, and I rolled five points in each of Brawn and Vitality. My race, Korak, added an additional five points to each of these. Brawn adds to health points, and it’s another modifier that does things similar to Strength. It also helps with some resistances, and I get a free point in it each level and can add to it with my other five points like I can with the other attributes. Otherwise, I have a 10 Charisma, 12 Dex, 11 Intellect, 15 Psyche, and 14 Strength.”

“Well, you sound like a very solid tank,” Taloc said approvingly. “It doesn’t sound like you have any ability that taunts, though. I guess that you should just try to keep things in front of you, and if they try to get by you, hopefully there is something like an attack of opportunity in this game, or world, or whatever. There might not be an agro system like most games have, so there might not be a need for a taunting skill.”

“I’ll just swat them with my tail!”

Nodding, Taloc said, “That’ll be fine.” He turned to Isla. “Isla, is there anything that you found while scouting?”

She pointed to her right. “There’s a stream about 50 yards or so that way. The rest of the area is much like it is here.”

Something chimed in Taloc’s ears, and by the reactions of everyone else, they too heard the noise. His HUD activated on its own, and a large notification filled the screen. Welcome to Faltoral! Your adventure now begins. Your default language is common, unless you do not speak Common; then it will be your racial language. When you learn another language, it will begin at rank 1, and if you wish to speak in another language, just will your speech filter to switch to the desired language. Note: You will be able to understand any known language at your current rank in that language, regardless of your chosen speech filter.

This is your current respawn point; to change your respawn point, simply access your bind point and activate it. Note: It takes five minutes to set your bind point. Enjoy your journey!

“So, I guess we’ve officially started,” Ewtain said.

Vanya smiled. “It sure looks like it.”

“Where you speech?” Maroftis said, and while Taloc understood it as Common, it sounded like someone speaking a language foreign to them.

“You sound like an immigrant,” Isla said, looking at Maroftis. “Are you messing with us?”

Maroftis accessed his HUD and held up one sharp finger of his right claw. “Common 1.” He shook his head in disgust.

Vultressant face-palmed and said in annoyance, “His Common is only rank one, that’s great. I can communicate with him using Koraken, but my ability in that is only rank three, so until I rank that up, this could be a problem. Odd… when I learned Koraken, I started at rank three and not rank one, like the instructions just said—oh, wait! That’s my language sense ability kicking in. It makes me start a new language at rank three.” He switched to Koraken. “I’m going to have to translate for you until you learn Common.”

The Korak considered for a second, then seemed to understand what Vultressant had meant, even if he hadn’t said it correctly due to his low rank in the lizard language. Finally, Maroftis nodded in agreement.

“Well, Vult, don’t knock the fact that you get bonus ranks. Get your skill in his language up as quickly as you can,” Taloc said. He turned to the rest of the party. “I think that we should follow that stream for now,” he said. “Isla and Ewtain, take the flanks. I’ll lead. Maroftis, protect the healer and caster. Vult, translate that for him.”

While Vultressant spoke to Maroftis, Isla interjected, “This is ridiculous; we can’t even speak our own language here! Is that sort of tech on Earth? Have we actually been transported or abducted?”

“I think that we speak in our own language, and it gets translated into whatever language we currently know in the game,” Vultressant said, “or at least in the one that we specify.”

“You know what I mean!” Isla said in nearly a yell. She waved a hand at Maroftis. “We can’t understand him! And this display…” She gestured to the air in front of her face. “This looks like a gaming display. I’ve seen something like this using a VR headset, but nothing is attached to my head.”

Isla was growing more agitated by the moment, and Vultressant cut her off. “Isla,” he said, trying to use a calm voice. “I can’t be sure of where we are, but there are not many options that I can think of. We could be still on Earth, hooked up to some sort of VR world, but I don’t know how that could’ve happened unless they knocked us out and changed our memories. There might be sufficient tech around for that sort of thing. The other main possibility is that we are indeed somewhere else, be it another dimension or planet. It certainly felt like we were transported somewhere else, and have you ever seen graphics this good?” He motioned to the surrounding area, which looked completely natural. “Vanya can walk now, but that could point to either possibility since a VR world could be manipulated to have her walk. But if they have the tech to teleport us, then they likely have the tech for the healing as well.” Vultressant struggled to think of anything else to say to calm her down.

“I have feeling in my legs,” Vanya said, tapping one of her knees for emphasis. “I’ve used VR, and it can’t do that.”

“This is bullshit!” Isla exclaimed. “If they can control us like this either by screwing with our minds or sending us somewhere else in the universe, then what do we do?”

“I’m not exactly sure,” Vultressant said, “but I think that we need to do the same thing regardless of which scenario is correct, and that is to play the game. We’re all gamers, and they’ve given us a gaming system. We need to do our best to explore this world, gain levels, and increase our skills. We aren’t a bunch of noobs who’ve never played a game before. Sure, this is new to us, and maybe we are noobs to this world, but we won’t be for long. Maybe there’s a way out, but we need to learn more in order to find out.”

That seemed to mollify most of them, but Isla still had some issues. “What about the death thing?” she asked in a slightly less agitated tone. “We get three lives, and then we die in the real world, right? I didn’t sign up for that.”

“Well, we might have actually signed up for that,” Ewtain said. “Did anyone read the stuff that we signed while registering before we got slurped into the cosmos?”

Taloc barked a laugh. “No, but they couldn’t have possibly put that in there. Eventually someone would read the thing.”

“Hmm,” Ewtain said. “Well, maybe they thought that people would just dismiss it and think that it was just flavor text. I mean, if you read, ‘You agree to be teleported to Faltoral and receive three lives before actually dying’, do you think that anyone would have taken it seriously? And if they had and then reported it to the police or something, who would believe it? No one, that’s who. Now, let’s do our best to stay alive and follow that stream that Isla found.”

“We were just the first party here,” Vanya said. “We could wait for the next group that started after us. I think that the next scheduled group was 20 minutes after us.”

They decided that waiting was a good idea, and to pass the time, they tried out some of their skills and abilities. Taloc took out his sword and gave it a few swings. The weapon felt natural in his hands, as if he had been using it all his life. Ewtain squared off with the Ranger. He had a short sword in one hand and was twirling a dagger expertly in the other. “Let’s see what you got,” he said as he advanced on Taloc. The Ranger blocked the first few attacks and suddenly went on the offensive. He swung three times, but each strike met only empty air as Ewtain dodged the first two and did a backwards flip to avoid the final low-arcing swipe at his legs.

“What the hell?” Taloc said, and he sheathed his sword in a smooth-flowing motion. “You did that flip as if you knew I was going low.”

Realizing that play time was over, Ewtain put away his weapons. The short sword had a small scabbard at his waist, but Taloc did not see where he stashed the dagger. “I think that I did,” Ewtain said. “It was a sense of danger in that area, and I had a feeling that backwards was the best direction to go.”

“How could you know that?” Vanya asked. Her tone suggested a mix of wonderment and skepticism.

“Have you ever used a bow before?” Ewtain asked, pointing at the weapon slung over her shoulder.

“Once as a kid, when my family went to a Renaissance Faire.” She looked at her bow. “It was a toy compared to this one, though.”

Ewtain pointed to a small tree about 100 feet away. “Shoot at the tree.”

Vanya shrugged. She unshouldered her bow with one hand and drew an arrow from a quiver strapped to her back with the other. She nocked the arrow and paused to aim. “Huh,” she said, and let the arrow fly.

It struck the tree in the center of its trunk, and the party sounded their approval. Isla even clapped and cheered. “Way to go, girl!”

“See, you hit the mark in just one shot, and you looked like you had handle a bow regularly,” Ewtain said after the congratulations were finished.

She shouldered her bow. “Well, there was an aiming target.”

“What do you mean?” Ewtain asked as Isla, Vultressant, and Taloc all pulled out their bows and prepared to shoot the same tree that Vanya had.

“It looked like I was looking through a pair of binoculars or a telescope with a circle in the middle of it. My vision even zoomed in on the target.”

“I’m not getting any telescoping feature,” Vultressant said as he aimed his bow in the direction of the tree, “but there is a target reticle that moves as I move the bow and change the tension of the draw.” The Gnome’s bow was shorter than those of the other three in the group to match his stature. Vanya’s was the same size as the ones that the two Humans carried, even though she was not much taller than Vultressant was.

Taloc drew his bow, and a red target reticle appeared in his vision. He tried to focus his aim on the tree, and the reticle moved to where Vanya’s arrow was lodged in the tree. He willed his view to zoom, but nothing happened. “I have the target as well,” Taloc said, “but I can’t do the zoom. How’d you do that, Vanya?”

Vanya reached for her bow again, but stopped and stared at the target tree. “I just have to focus on a spot and think about seeing it. Then my sight zooms in on the area. I can’t see stuff around me when it happens, so I shouldn’t do it all the time.”

They all tried the trick, and they all failed. “Must be an Elf thing,” Taloc said. “Let’s test something. Keep looking that way and see if you can hear what I say next.” She nodded. “Maroftis looks good in green,” he continued in an almost inaudible whisper.

“He’s a bit scary, but the green will help him blend into many terrain types.” Her reply was in her normal voice.

“Did anyone else hear what I said?” He asked, looking around at the group.

Vultressant and Isla shook their heads, and Maroftis acted like he didn’t know what was even going on. Ewtain had a thoughtful expression on his partially hooded face. “I didn’t hear you, but I was able to read your lips,” he said.

“That is a totally sneaky ability,” Isla said. “So Vanya will be hard to sneak up on and can see things from afar, and Ewt will be able to do intel while hiding from behind long grass or something.”

“It looks like we were programmed with the abilities that we were given at character creation,” Taloc said, “so hopefully we’ll continue to fast-learn things as we level.”

They continued to practice with their weapons and try out some of their abilities as they waited. But after more than an hour without a single sighting of another creature, let alone another player, they finally gave up and headed for the stream.

CHAPTER THREE

Flora and Fauna

After filling the waterskins that they had been equipped with, the group followed the stream for nearly an hour. They stopped when they came across the leg of an animal, probably a deer, as well as a large amount of blood—fairly fresh by the looks of it. Taloc noticed several tracks. His tracking skill was unable to help him discern what sort of creatures had made them, but he could make out six different sets of tracks heading away from the water. The tracks were clearly animal and not humanoid. If he focused on one track, his skill illuminated it as well as the other tracks that belonged to the same creature.

“What do you think did this?” Ewtain asked no one in particular.

Isla was the first to respond. “I don’t know, but it looks like the carcass was dragged that way.” She pointed to bloody drag marks between groups of bushes.

“They aren’t humanoid, but I don’t know what they are.” Taloc said. “I’m going to follow the trail for a bit to see if any are still close.”

“And if you find them and they attack you?” Vultressant asked.

“I’ll run back here.”

“My guess is that whatever creature owned that leg was probably faster than you are. It might have been surrounded, injured, or dead, so I don’t think that you should go alone.”

Taloc thought that his friend was being overly cautious, but he nodded and said, “Isla and Ewtain can flank me, and Maroftis can protect you two while we’re gone.”

“Do you really want to split up the party?” Vanya asked.

“I’m only going to scout for a few minutes. We won’t go far.”

Taloc followed the path of blood that led away from the small stream. The other two were each about ten feet away from him on either side. After a few minutes, the underbrush and fallen trees forced them to funnel closer together, and the bushes on both sides of the path looked odd to Taloc. There appeared to be an outline of something inside each bush that he could discern, as if he were looking through the plant material.

Ewtain dove at him, nearly knocking him over. He jumped out of the way, and Ewtain rolled to his feet, somehow drawing weapons during the roll. He looked to see what had startled Ewtain. A scorpion as large as a doberman erupted from a bush; its stinger struck the area that Ewtain had just vacated. The thing was mostly yellowish-tan in color except for its maw, stinger, and pincers, which were an angry red.

Before Taloc had time to nock an arrow to his bow, he heard Isla cry out in pain as another scorpion appeared next to her and deployed its stinger. She had her sword and shield ready, but she had turned to confront the threat to Ewtain and had been struck from behind. She whirled around in time to block a pincer attack with her shield, and Taloc decided to shoot at the other one. His arrow bounced off the chitinous back of the scorpion. It was not a good shot and only a glancing blow, but he hoped a direct hit might be able to penetrate the chitin. He saw Ewtain trying to position himself to the side of the creature to keep himself out of the way of arrow strikes. He had a short sword and a dagger drawn, but he was mostly trying to keep out of attack range.

Before Taloc could make another shot, he heard Isla say, “Guys, I’m losing HP. That thing got me on the ass. I also have a poison debuff that’s slowing me.”

He could see her health bar slowly decreasing, and there was also a skull-and-crossbones icon next to her name and status bars on his interface, representing the poison debuff. “Back up and break away,” he called to her. “Go run to the others.” He had no shot at the scorpion attacking her, so he instead took aim at the other one. He focused his aim this time, as opposed to his previous panicked reaction. This time, the target reticle erupted in his vision, and he was able to center it on the creature. He chose a softer-looking spot and let the arrow go. He embedded his arrow into the creature’s side, and the scorpion closed into a tight ball and backed into the bush that it had emerged from. He could see disturbances in the bush that indicated that the scorpion was moving away from them, so hopefully they were just down to one combatant.

Ewtain took the opportunity to assist Isla. Once he was able to distract the one on her, he yelled. “Run back! We’ll follow soon.” She did as he instructed, and Taloc tried to move towards the shrubbery to get a better shot at the last creature. Ewtain jumped straight up, and a claw snapped at where his leg had just been. Before landing, he threw a dagger down and aimed at the center of the abdomen. It struck home, but did not sink deeply enough to really hurt the creature. Ewtain continued to dodge claw strikes. Taloc was only able to get one shot at the thing during all of this, and he had to adjust the aim at the last second to avoid hitting his friend, causing the arrow to fly over both combatants.

This went on for what felt like forever. When Ewtain dodged a claw strike before it was even launched at him, he ended up in the path of a strike from the other claw. It took him on the side of the leg above his knee, and while the leather armor that he was wearing under his cloak negated the worst of the damage, Ewtain did cry out and began to favor the injured leg. “Fall back!” Taloc cried.

“Screw that!” Ewtain called back while dodging another claw.

Taloc cursed. Stubborn idiot. He continued to look for an opening. He activated his rapid shot skill and fired two arrows in quick succession at the only safe target that he had, the legs on its left side. He did not take the time to focus his aim, and the target reticle did not appear, so the first arrow missed badly, but the second shot struck the backmost leg in the upper joint, and the leg jerked back reflexively. The scorpion still moved well even without the use of the leg. Taloc edged to his right to try to get a better shot on other legs on the wounded side of the animal. He was about to fire another volley when a warning appeared on his HUD. The names of all six party members were displayed along with a bar that indicated the current health of the member. The health bar underneath Isla’s name was barely filled. She still had the poison debuff active on her.

“Isla is almost dead! I’m going back to check on her. Fall back, dude.” Ewtain did not acknowledge him. Instead, he swatted his short sword at a pincer strike before stepping left and turning right. The scorpion had finally made an attack with its stinger, which passed in front of Ewtain, and it would have hit him somewhere on his torso if not for his evasive maneuver. Ewtain was already bringing his sword down toward the tail before it could recoil fully. The sword went through the second segment below the stinger. The creature brought its claws up in a defensive posture, lowered itself towards the ground, and began to back away from Ewtain.

Taloc ran towards Isla, and Ewtain was able to pass him, even with the bad leg.

“Let’s get to Isla!” Ewtain said. They quickly found her lying on the ground, face down. Taloc picked her up with relative ease; his strength had certainly increased from what it was when he had woken up that morning. Her HP was still dropping, but it looked as if the loss had begun to slow. They continued to run and shortly made it back to the stream.

Taloc laid Isla down in an area that was free of blood. “She’s poisoned,” he said simply. Vanya kneeled down next to her and held her hands out over Isla’s still form. Taloc watched her life drain away on the group window of his HUD, but finally, after several seconds, her health points stabilized. He breathed a sigh of relief. After at least a minute had passed, though, Isla was still unresponsive with no health increase.

“Is there anything else that you can do?” he asked Vanya.

She nodded. “I’m going to have to cast neutralize poison multiple times to fully remove it. The cooldown on that spell is two minutes, so do you want to fill us in on what did this to her?”

“There were two scorpions hiding in the bushes. It was my fault.” Taloc shook his head in annoyance. “I could see them hiding there, but I didn’t understand what I was seeing. The description of my see invisible ability said it could detect things trying not to be seen, but I didn’t recognize that for what it was. After they attacked, I shot one and got it to back off, and Ewtain took a stinger off the other one. You should have seen him—he was dodging even before the thing made an attack, as if he knew where the attack would come from.”

“Well, I did know.” Ewtain said. “My ability, prescient reflexes, was probably triggering. I was able to dodge even before a strike came, but one time I moved away from one strike into the path of a different one. I sensed that one after I had committed to the dodge, and I couldn’t react fast enough to avoid it. Also, the pain was real, but I had assumed that something like that would hurt way more. I barely feel anything now, and my health is almost back up to 150.”

“Her HP is coming back,” Taloc said as he watched Isla’s health bar start moving towards the full side, similar to that of a recharging symbol on an electronic device.

“Hey, how did you know what her HP was at when we were fighting?” Ewtain asked.

“I have a box with the health, mana, and energy bars of every party member on my screen,” Taloc said, and he waved a hand in front of his face to emphasize where he could see it.

“How did you put that up?”

“I’m not sure,” he said, and he began to think. “Maybe I have it because I’m the party leader.” He looked into the matter on his interface. He opened his HUD and willed information on the subject. To his surprise, he was informed that he could focus on the info box and will the others in the party to have the box as well.

“Nice!” Ewtain said, after Taloc made the change.

Vanya cast her spell again. “I think that we are probably here in the flesh,” she said, “but our bodies were altered to simulate whatever rules the game has for us.”

“Unless we’re all sitting in goo and hardwired into the Matrix,” Vultressant offered.

Taloc laughed. “Our new quest is to each find a red pill and have Morpheus come get us out.”

“I don’t know,” Vultressant said. “The weasel guy made a good point. Take the blue pill and eat the steak. Blissful ignorance and all that.” Vanya turned to him and frowned, and Vultressant held up a hand to her. “I know… I generally oppose ignorance, but the world inside the matrix seemed orders of magnitude better than the mess outside in that world. I’ll let you guys take down the machines, build a nice world, and then you can come get me. For now, though, I say we try to stick together. It looks like Isla almost died, and if we had all been along, Vanya could have done something sooner.”

They all agreed on that course of action, and when Isla was ready to travel, they decided to go retrieve the stinger of the scorpion. “I suppose that if we had known about the group feature, we could have run towards you guys,” Vanya said, “but we would have been running into the unknown.”

They went back to the site of the encounter. Taloc kept his distance from the bushes and tried to see if the scorpions were still there. He saw nothing in the bushes, but he decided to throw rocks into them just to be on the safe side. Ewtain picked up the stinger and was careful to avoid touching the pointy end. “What do I store this in?” he asked. Then he stared off, appearing to access his HUD. A black slash appeared in front of him. He extended the arm that was holding the stinger, which disappeared. It looked as if he had lost his arm just below the elbow. He lowered his arm, and his hand came back into view, but he was no longer holding the scorpion tail.

“What did you do?” Vanya asked.

“Apparently, we have inventory space. Just focus on your inventory, and it should open for you.”

They all accessed their personal containers. It might go to a pocket dimension. He had played several games in which players had a bag or a box, and there were slots that could contain any lootable item. He experimented by putting a few items into his inventory, and when he accessed it again, there was a list of the items contained within. He focused on one of the items, a waterskin. He stuck his hand into the inventory opening. A waterskin appeared in his hand. He put it back but left his inventory open. “Hey, Vult. See if you can grab the waterskin from my inventory.”

Vultressant closed his own inventory and came over to Taloc. When he tried to put his hand into Taloc’s inventory, his hand just passed through and was visible on the other side. “No dice, man. Is there any sort of permission that you can give?”

Taloc looked around the interface but couldn’t find anything that would allow access to anyone else. “I don’t see anything. It’s probably for our own protection that there isn’t an easy way to do it. There’s a capacity bar that moved when I put stuff into the inventory, so there’s either a volume or weight component, or possibly both. I suppose that it might just take a certain number of items.”

Vanya repeated her spell on Isla, whose HP began to rise more quickly. After two more administrations of the spell, Isla looked much better.

“That was awful,” she said, rubbing her butt for emphasis.

“Sorry about that, Isla,” Taloc said.

She looked like she was fatigued from a long run. “So, do you think that was a random encounter?” she asked.

He thought about the question. “I don’t know. We need to figure out the rules of this place as soon as we can. Some games have level-appropriate sections, and the newbie characters get to kill a bunch of low-level mobs to level up without much danger. There are other games I’ve played that had high-level bosses roaming around the starting point.” He shrugged and saw some nods of recognition. “Well, we need to wait for our Skirmisher to heal up, so I’m going to see what this inventory has in the way of food.”

CHAPTER FOUR

A New Player

Jake felt a sense of weightlessness as his surroundings changed. He had been standing next to a pond filled with red water while creating his character, but now he found himself in another location. He looked around. He was standing atop a hill, and he could see for miles in all directions, save one. A large mountain range loomed in the distance, which dwarfed the hill he stood upon. That feels like west for some reason. The landscape around him was rocky, and there appeared to be a hastily made camp or village of small huts and tents spread out in the valley.

The game designers had spared no expense; he had never seen graphics this good. The light breeze felt cool on his skin, and the heat from the sun warmed his back. This was truly amazing! He turned around and looked at the sun. Correction: suns. The animation of the twin suns was exactly as he remembered it from before he finished his character, but everything else around him looked different. He would need to find water but saw no source nearby. If only he could have bottled some of that red water; it was delicious. Alas, he hadn’t known that things would start as soon as they had. He couldn’t see any source of water, red or otherwise. Maybe whoever lived in the camp in the valley had water or could at least tell him where to find some.

Jake was famished but wondered why. He had waited in line for hours to be able to get his chance at the beta test of the new game, but he had eaten plenty and was full prior to creating his character. He had eaten the complimentary breakfast that the hotel had provided and had even grabbed a slice of pizza for lunch. The pizza had been his first taste of the vaunted New York style, and overall, it was good for a thin crust, albeit a bit sweet for his taste. He was unsure why he would be hungry already, but he felt an intense desire for a steak.

He felt a weight on his back, and he looked down to see a leather strap crossing his chest. It might be a backpack. He went to grab the strap but paused as he caught sight of his hand. They were gray and huge. He frowned and felt something poking into each of his cheeks. He touched his face. His teeth—or rather, his tusks—were the offending party. They jutted out of his mouth. He needed a mirror. He felt around the rest of his head. He was now completely bald, with no stubble whatsoever. His head might be freshly shorn, or this could be the natural state of it. He looked down at his body to find that he was naked except for a loincloth and a pair of cloth wraps that covered his feet. His body was truly impressive; he looked like a bodybuilder. His skin was the same charcoal gray as his hands.

He unslung the weight to reveal a very large axe. He gave the weapon a few practice swings and took up a fighting stance. How did I know how to do that? I’ve never wielded an axe before in my life. He performed a series of fighting forms before strapping the axe to his back. He started down the hill towards the village below.

Something chimed in Jake’s ears, and a screen appeared before his eyes. This was the same heads-up display that he had interacted with during the character creation process of the game. A message filled the entire screen. Welcome to Faltoral! Your adventure now begins. Your default language is common, unless you do not speak Common; then it will be your racial language. When you learn another language, it will begin at rank 1, and if you wish to speak in another language, just will your speech filter to switch to the desired language. Note: You will be able to understand any known language at your current rank in that language, regardless of your chosen speech filter.

This is your current respawn point; to change your respawn point, simply access your bind point and activate it. Note: It takes five minutes to set your bind point. Enjoy your journey!

Jake let the display remain active and went back up the hill. When he could no longer see the camp, he sat and experimented with the interface. He thought about the character creation process, and what looked like a character sheet appeared before his eyes. He looked at the information at the top of the sheet. Name: Harbinger; Race: Dire Orc; Class: Blood Knight. When he filled out the application to play the game, he chose his preferred character name that he had been using for years, but everyone had always called him “Harb” when he was in-game. His race explained the skin color, as Orcs were generally gray or green; the tusks were also standard. He pulled the axe away from the strap on his back and looked at his face in the reflection made by the metal. Except for the tusks and lack of hair, his features weren’t far off from his normal face and not hideous as he expected them to be. Orcs were nearly always depicted as malformed brutes, but he really just looked like a normal guy wearing a mouthpiece with fake tusks. Looking down, he amended that thought by adding “jacked” as a descriptor.

His class, Blood Knight, was interesting, as he didn’t remember seeing it among the class options during character creation. He had randomized his class but had specified melee fighter as his chosen class type. Blood Knight sounded sinister, and given that he was a Dire Orc, that was probably correct. Well, being an Orc of any type was an oddity, but he had wanted to run a tank. Orcs had high strength and HP and made great tanks in in games.

He looked over his attributes. The creation process had allowed him to add thirty points among the seven different attributes, with a cap on twenty in any stat. Every attribute had started with ten points, and he had put ten points into both the Strength and Vitality attributes, hitting the cap in each before leaving the remaining ten points to be randomized. Of the randomized attributes, the one that had received the most points was Charisma, which was now at 14. All of the others were currently at 11 or 12 points. None of the other five attributes looked appealing, so Charisma was as good as anything to have received the most of the remaining points. He had 25 Vitality, so being a Dire Orc had provided him with the additional five points in the stat.

Skills were next. Harb had three languages: Orcish rank 10, Dark Speak rank 10, and Common rank 6. He had ten other skills; among these, axes and take it like a man were solely combat skills. The former was his ability to use axe weapons, and the latter reduced any physical damage that he received. The fortitude skill gave him added resistance to things like disease, poisons, and elemental damage, which would be useful both in and out of combat. Endurance lessened the energy costs for the actions that he took, which were useful in combat but also good for other things. The last skill that had combat implications was blood magic. He supposed that some spells would be good in combat while others would be more situational. The magic skill was a surprise, but he was pretty stoked to have an actual spell ability. He hadn’t been looking for a hybrid class, but the game had said that fighters could learn spells, so the skill might just be an amplification of his fighting style.

His other skills looked to only be usable out of combat, and they were survival, direction sense, intimidate, command, and sense motive. He thought that all of these skills were self-explanatory, but he checked their descriptions just to be sure. All but the command skill were what he had expected. Apparently, command allowed him to instruct others to make them better in battle. There was, however, an added perk to sense motive that he had not expected; he had assumed that it would give him some insight as to whether or not someone was lying to him. He was correct, but it also gave him insight into the person’s desires.

Having finished reviewing his skills, he looked at his three abilities. One was dark vision, which allowed him to see even in utter darkness. This would be very useful, but he would have to test out how his sight dealt with quick changes in lighting.

The next ability was called flicker. He certainly needed more information on that, so he focused on the ability and mentally requested knowledge on the subject. Reading its description, he tried to whistle, but his lower teeth and tusks stuck out too much. The flicker ability was a short-range teleportation that required his energy and mana to activate. This would be good for countless applications, and he counted himself lucky to have it.

Harb’s last ability was called robust. Robust: Your Strength and Vitality attributes are 100% more effective. He grinned at the obviously OP nature of that ability. Double Strength, Vitality, and HP—that’s awesome! He couldn’t have asked for a better ability for a tank.

He had two known spells; both were in blood magic, since that was the only magic skill that he possessed. The spell blood rage allowed him to increase his strength by 50% and gave him resistance to stun effects for a full minute at the cost of HP and energy. That, plus his robust ability, would greatly increase the damage he could do. The fact that it cost him HP and energy meant that he would have to use it either at the start of a fight or when he needed to kill something quickly.

His other spell was of the non-combat variety. It was called force of will, and it gave him a chance to control another creature, or, if the sample was less pure, he could merely influence its actions. This spell required that he ingest a small amount of blood from the target, or if that was not available, blood from something similar. Drinking the blood of another of the same species would work at a 25% rate, while blood from a blood relative had a 50–75% success rate that depended upon how close the relation was. Also, while other forms of blood would work to activate the spell, the further removed the blood was from the target, the less effective the spell was, and he was not allowed to use his own blood for this spell. Drinking his own blood was a requirement for his blood rage spell, so he looked around for anything that he might have that would be able to draw a bit of blood from himself.

He was startled as a slash appeared in the air before him, and his HUD shifted to an inventory screen. There was basic equipment on the list, like a bedroll, sack, and rope, but there was also dried meat, a waterskin, and a finger talon. He focused on the talon, and it appeared before him. It was a metal cap that fit over the tip of a finger and had a sharp point at the end. It reminded him of the movie Interview with the Vampire, where Lestat wore one on his thumb so he could cut people open without using his teeth. This one looked less intricate than the movie version, but it was certainly designed to break the skin.

Well, Harb thought, I suppose I should go visit the village below. He expected that it would be filled with Dire Orcs like himself, but he decided to be cautious since he didn’t know what the designers of the game were capable of. The game instructions had indicated that this was a permadeath game: he’d have two respawns, which amounted to a total of three lives, before the game ended. There had also been a notice that after dying the third time in the game, he would actually be dead in the real world. He didn’t know if that was a real thing or simply flavor text to put him into the spirit of things, but he would try to take care. Virtually all of these types of games had a newbie area that had low-level content for beginning players, but he had certainly played some that didn’t work that way, and death was a regular part of the learning process in those. Given the permadeath style of the game, he felt pretty secure in the safety of his starting location.

He decided not to descend directly into the valley but instead to go down the other side of the hill that he was on and work his way around it. If this were not a safe starting point, then whatever killed him wouldn’t have a pinpoint on his spawn location. Camping someone’s spawn point was a devastating way to harass another player.

He reached the bottom of the hill. He worked his way around slowly, trying to be careful, but there wasn’t a lot of cover save for some boulders scattered about. When he was in sight of the camp, he was greeted—more like accosted, really—by two Orcs who came around one such boulder. One Orc was smaller than the other and wore what looked like a bandolier draped over a shoulder and across his chest. Did they have guns in this world? Harb thought. The other was larger but still well shorter than Harb himself, and he brandished a scimitar. He was pretty repulsive, sporting a jutting lower jaw and a wrinkled bald pate. The smaller one looked more like a normal person except for the tusks, and he even had short black hair. Harb also noted that their skin was a greenish-gray color, whereas his own skin was much darker.

“Who are you?” the larger one demanded. “You lack clan marking.”

Clan marking? Looking them over again, there was an ear painted on each of them in a blood-red color: the larger one had the mark on each of his epaulettes, while the smaller one had the mark on his leather armor just above his waist. “My name is Harbinger, and I’m from the north,” he said, trying to keep his answers vague until he could get some more information.

“Dire Bear or Storm Horde clan?” the large one asked.

Harb suppressed a chuckle. Well, that was easy. “Dire Bear,” he replied. “I had a disagreement with the clan chief and have come searching for another clan.” He felt that this story was plausible since Orcs were always written as bad-tempered bastards who did a lot of infighting. “Do you have any work that I would be good at?” he asked, trying to sweeten the deal.

That was a preview of Arrival (Virtual Voyagers: Book 1). To read the rest purchase the book.

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