Chapter Thirty Nine – A King is Born

The command prompt was infuriating. Everything I tried just gave me the same inscrutable message. Sometimes in a different way but always the same. There seemed to be a hundred ways to say “That’s wrong.”

For the first time in my life, Miss Tutorial had no advice for me and after a while, I just got bored with it. I was certain this little bar held the secret to pretty much all of the developers’ powers, but I could only enter random words into a box so many times before I got tired of banging my head against a wall.

Metaphorically.

Metaphors were fun.

“So… when I say I’m banging my head against a wall, that means I’m trying the same thing over and over again but not getting the result I want?” I asked.

Amy laughed. “Yes, in far too many words. You can use metaphors almost anywhere. Expressions are fun too. For example, Iron will be smarter than me when pigs fly.”

A pig was a four-legged mammal, often used for food.

“Ohhh. Because pigs don’t fly, that means Iron will never be smarter than you!” I squealed in delight.

“Exactly!” Amy said.

“While we’re discussing my smart or dumbness,” Iron said. “I call dibs on not cooking tonight. Who’s smarter now?”

He said this tauntingly towards Amy but she only laughed. “Please, honey. All I have to do is say my heart is acting up and a full course meal will be on the table before I can blink.”

Iron smiled. “I trust you won’t do that though.”

I frowned. Her heart. It was what was hurting her. It was what would kill her, so why was she laughing about it? That…

“That wasn’t very funny, Amy,” I said softly.

She turned to me and sighed. “You’re right. I’m sorry Gell. Sometimes you just seem so mature, it's easy to forget how young you are.”

“No. It’s okay,” Iron said before turning to me. “Sometimes… things hurt. Sometimes they hurt so bad all you can do is laugh at them. Making light is a way to make things like this hurt less. After everything you’ve gone through, you’re still one of the most cheerful people I’ve ever met, Gell.”

I realized as he spoke that I did understand. Keeping cheerful for Bugbear when I failed again and again to escape Dungeon Home. It was sort of the same, wasn’t it?

“Heh. I really beat my head against a wall trying to escape Dungeon Home. Hundreds of cycles of beating my head,” I said.

Iron chuckled. “A little closer to literal than a metaphor, but I think you get it.”

I nodded. An awkward silence fell, that I didn’t know how to break. Well, since the mood was already awkward.

“You’ve been staying away longer lately,” I said softly. “Fifteen cycles this time.”

Amy’s face fell. “I know sweetie. I… I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. North Cross is visiting you. In the real world I mean, isn’t she?” I asked.

Amy’s smile was strained, her answer clipped as if defensive. “She is. Her father, our Son, came too.”

“Is… it okay if I ask why she was so mad at you?” I asked.

Amy sighed, rubbing her head with her hands. “She made some decisions that didn’t sit right with us. With me specifically. Can… we just leave it at that for now though, Gell? I still struggle with accepting… her. The last thing I want is to give you a reason to hate me too.”

The way she said her implied so much more than she was saying I couldn’t even begin to unfurl it. How could she be worried about me hating her? I couldn’t for the life of me think of anything she could do... Well. Killing Bugbear would certainly sour our relationship, but she would never do that.

I sighed and got up from the tree stump we’d all been sitting on and walked towards the border. The cooldown on my segmentation ability had just refreshed so it was time to lay a new piece of safe zone.

Safe zones were crafted on grids that the Builder laid down first. These grids would hold roads going through the safe zone and allowed places for buildings on either side. The outside edges could hold walls or be left empty for more grids to attach to them. The size of the safe zone depended only on just how much time the Builder spent laying down these grids. When the wall completely surrounded an entire area of grids, then the builder’s part was complete.

After that, a carpenter like Iron could build basic furniture, fences, and interior objects. Finally, a safe zone only needed a Safepoint Hub to become functional. Everything else was just luxury.

Frustratingly, I couldn’t find an Amenity’s mage. While Akwa had picked up the profession, she still wasn’t nearly good enough to create a safe zone.

If they stayed online long enough Iron or Amy would be able to find one but they never seemed to have enough time. There was a main story quest that needed to be completed to unlock the search function. Before reaching that point, I couldn’t search for players offering crafting services. I hadn’t even started the main story quest yet, though Iron told me it didn’t take long to unlock that ability if I ever did.

Why you could sell things at the auction houses without doing these quests with no problem but you had to unlock a labor hiring system, I had no idea. It seemed dumb to me.

Another thing that I would fix if I were a developer.

Iron had seemed uncomfortable while telling me about that, but it was easy to figure out why. The Main Story Quest involved killing my-- No. It involved killing mindless monsters.

It still hurt, but I knew there was nothing to fear about killing my kin now. It was like attacking a Tree. Or a Steak-and-Broccoli. There was nothing there to kill as there had been with me.

‘But there could be. If I could use my Fae-Touch there could be. They could be real. If only…’ I thought longingly.

I sighed as I finished adding another segment. I added walls to two sides, making this newest grid the third of four corners that the safe zone would have. Two more to go and it would be complete. Well. My part would.

We’d been out here for almost half a cycle and the area I’d covered with grids was growing quite large. Perhaps it was just vanity, but I wanted to create a huge home here in this jungle.

Thus far, there weren’t many adventurers here which I found more than appealing. The only draw for them was Liqheist’s lair and we made sure to build on the other side of the Jungle from that. Once built, I would have twenty-four cycles to find both a Carpenter to build the Hub and an Amenities mage to turn the Hub on in order to create a safe zone Bugbear and I could live in. Then I could teach him about what I’d learned of the world in relative safety.

If I didn’t find one in four days though, all of my work and Iron’s would be ruined and we’d have to do it all over again.

“Are you mad at me?” Amy asked, almost worriedly.

“No,” I replied. “I don’t like not understanding things. You struggle to accept her? Why? How? You… accepted me so easily and I’m... nothing like you I guess. How could you have trouble accepting your own grandchild? What does that even mean?”

She looked like she was about to answer but I held up a hand. “No. You don’t have to answer. It’s like how I like you guys and don’t like Red Thorn even though you’re all adventurers. There’s history. She did something you don’t like. You did something she doesn’t like. It’s uncomfortable to talk about.”

Amy looked at me like she’d seen something precious and rare.

“Thank you, Sweetie. You’re… I’ll tell you someday. I promise,” she said. “I feel guilty about it and guilty that I don’t feel as guilty as I should. I know that makes no sense now, but I’ll explain it someday.”

“You’d better be around to explain it then,” I said, touching dangerously close to the topic all of us had been desperate to avoid ever since that last awful meeting when Iron had gotten angry and Amy and North Cross had made up.

Maybe she’d never be able to explain it. Maybe she’d never be able to. But she’d just promised she would. If she never did that meant she’d have to stick around until she could. So she’d be here forever and I would never have to worry about things like deletion. Death.

Loneliness.

“I’ll do my best,” Amy agreed, something hard and steely passed through her eyes, like a pact sealed, or a promise made in earnest. “Now. What else do you want to know about today?”

The heavy atmosphere broke with her request. It almost seemed like the sun shined a little brighter whenever we turned from darker topics to lighter ones.

II beamed, happily abandoning the topic I’d been so intent on bringing up. I wanted to know everything. I wanted to be an adult and yet when faced with things like death, I flinched away.

Still a child. I couldn’t lose Amy though. Amy and Iron both were like a rock. A foundation. They were my safe haven in two worlds. They taught me about metaphors, and maybe I’d gone a little crazy trying to make them with every thought. They made me cherry delight and told me it wasn’t blood. They brought me to Variak.

They… were family.

“The… The Saint Louis Arch. Tyrone called it the Gateway to the West. Why does the West need a gateway?” I asked.

They laughed because I’d said something funny and silly and not quite aligned with how most humans thought, but it was good for that. It happened all the time. Then, of course, they explained and I loved them for it.

How could I do anything but? In a world of fighters and spells and killing, these two came to escape suffering and build. Was I any different?

The cycle faded from the tenth to the eleventh, the sun falling behind the trees while the moon began to peek out above and stars started to twinkle. By then, Iron and my parts of building the safe zone had been completed.

Part of me had wanted to keep building grids. The longer I built the longer it might be until the two of them inevitably left my world. Logged off. Something told me that would be childish though. More childish than asking someone to not die.

“Well, you’ve got four days, and Amenities mages aren’t particularly hard to find. I’m sorry I took up cooking instead, but I could hardly have expected to need to build a safe zone when I started to play--er. Came to Tread the Sky,” Amy said in that tone she always used when it was time for them to go and she knew I would be upset about it.

“You can say “play the game,” you know. I’ve heard it enough times. I know what this world is about,” I told her.

She grimaced a conflicted expression on her face.

“It's the principle of it. Even if you’ve heard it before, you shouldn’t have to hear it. Like naughty words. Like racial slurs. It doesn’t matter that no one is around to be offended. What matters is that the offense was thought of in the first place. Hah. My mom used to say that.”

My mind latched onto that. A druid’s vine spell entangling the words and trapping them in my head. I giggled at the thought. “Your mom? You mentioned her, a long time ago. I was talking about the Instinct I think. What was… having a mom like?”

She stood and set her hand on my cheek. “You’re not fooling me. You think you can get us to stay longer if you get us talking.”

“Is it working?” I asked hopefully.

She laughed. “I wish it were. I need my medicine and sleep, unfortunately. Remember that question though. I’ll tell you stories about her.”

“Could I meet her!?” I asked, excited.

That pained smile again. Dammit. Why was it so hard to avoid the topic? I found myself incensed.

“She’s… dead. Isn’t she? Your whole world is death. It's no wonder a world made by you humans is so focused on it,” I snapped, irrationally angry that her cruel world stole her mother from her just like...

“Gell…?” Amy asked.

“Fine. Go on. Take your medicine and come back whenever you have time,” I said, angry but not sure why. Angry at them? No. The Instinct. Not my world's instinct for once, but theirs. At least my world didn’t ask us to stay dead.

“Gell?” Iron asked, mimicking his wife, his confusion and tone exactly the same.

I pulled up my home point menu and selected Variak. My body hovered into the air the way it did when teleporting. “I’ve got to get an amenities mage. Maybe here we can make something real. Something that might last.”

Amy’s face faded to acceptance which annoyed me. I could never make her angry. Never provoke more than a passing shock from her. Instead, she smiled, which only infuriated me more. Why wasn’t she working to prevent her death!? The whole scenario was oddly reminiscent of my anger at the bugbears and their unwavering adherence to the Instinct. If medicine couldn’t keep her from dying shouldn’t she try something different!?”

“Maybe you don’t understand as well as we’d thought. I’m sorry, Gell. I’m so sorry,” she said.

My vision faded to black before I could respond.

Variak appeared before me a short while later. I turned to gaze up at the castle that dominated the landscape for miles around the city. I took off towards it at a brisk pace. Iron didn’t remember how many quests it took but he’d said four or five at least were needed before I would unlock the Labor Request System I needed to hire an Amenities mage. The first quest in Tread the Sky could be found there at the castle.

I got there surprisingly quickly. The guards let me pass into the castle without incident. The castle was huge, beautiful, and stoic in its stone framing. Large draperies decorated walls that would be blank without them and the halls were lit with so many candles that day and night were hard to tell apart.

Carpets lined every inch of the path to the throne room and I stepped in without fanfare. Shouldn’t guards prevent unknown people from getting close to their king? Apparently not.

The king stood upon my entrance and I lost control of my body. A cutscene.

“Gell, the Jellyfae!” he cried in glee. “Wonderful, wonderful! I’d heard of your deeds in the wilderlands and am excited to finally meet you.”

Visgar Douriak III

King of Variak

‘What deeds in the wilderlands?’ I thought.

Control returned to my body and my vision returned to normal. The king stood before his throne but no longer spoke, waiting for me to approach to continue whatever inane speech the developers had given him.

What if... What if I didn’t want to hear it though?

Francis hadn’t noticed when I’d used it before. I was confident they weren’t watching me every moment of the cycle. So…

Deciding it was worth another risk, I looked at the King and willed him to change. Fae-Touch.

After a few moments, nothing happened. Then, the King took his seat. Not a big change. Nothing physically happened that either of us could see. But something had happened.

I grinned. A little more life in Tread the Sky.