Chapter 13 – Divine Intervention[i]

“I could help you collect treants,” Leandriel offered.

“You really don’t have to.” Fey was not averse to the idea of Leandriel’s company, but making a level 100 warrior attack level 15 treants would be akin to using a diamond-bit drill to dig a hole in a sandbox.

“I insist. It’s the least I can do.”

“Well, if you insist.” Fey could not help poking a little fun at Leandriel’s slightly formal way of speaking, but her eyes were full of good humour as she did so. She hoped that killing a few treants would help Leandriel stop feeling obligated to her and allow him to leave with a clear conscience.

“It’s settled, then.” Leandriel drew his sword, and, showing off just a little, performed one of his area attacks. Stabbing his sword into the ground, he called out, “Holy Impact!”

A shockwave of white light travelled through the ground to a radius of 30 metres, purifying anything that touched the ground. One of the conveniences of using holy attacks was that it only damaged monsters; three seconds later, fourteen treants toppled slowly to the ground while the true trees remained unharmed.

Fey was suitably impressed, but… “Do you think you could leave one or two for me?” she asked. “I’m trying to do some training.”

“Oh. Of course.” Leandriel looked rather embarrassed at thoughtlessly ‘stealing her kills[ii],’ which Fey found rather endearing.

Considering their disparate ability levels, elf and angel reached the same logical conclusion. “We should split up,” Fey said. There was simply no way that the two could form an effective team.

Leandriel nodded in agreement. “I’ll go this way,” he said, indicating a direction. “How many do you need?”

Good question. “Uh… I don’t have a quota. I was just planning on bringing as many as I could carry.”

Leandriel accepted the (half-baked) goal without any qualms, and even helped plan (what a great guy). “We should form a party so we can find each other later. Message me when you have a full load and we’ll meet up.”

“I’ll set the experience allocation to ‘individual’,” said Leandriel considerately. With such a huge difference in level, if it were set to ‘weighted’, Fey would be lucky to get a single experience point per kill.

“Level 99?” Fey asked curiously.

“I died shortly after completing my advancement quest,” Leandriel explained.

“Ah.” Fey was about to leave to find some treants, but when she automatically went to collect her pets, she realized that she had better introduce them to Leandriel before he accidentally killed them.

“Leandriel?”

“Yes?”

“I’d like to introduce you to my pets. Amethyst, Magic, come out!” Fey called.

Leandriel expected to be surprised when Fey’s pets came out, and the sight of the little slime and mushroom indeed surprised him. There was something strange about the slime’s appearance, but he did not pinpoint the difference until it hopped over to Fey and spat out a number of small-denomination coins. The elf bent down to pick up the slime, murmuring, “Good job” to it.

The blue mushroom hopped forward until it landed on Leandriel’s left foot. He looked down at it, and it looked back at him.

Fey swooped down and plucked the mushroom off his foot, chiding, “Don’t go randomly sticking to people like that; it’s rude.” Something about the absurdity of an elf attempting to teach a mushroom manners made Leandriel’s lips twitch in amusement.

Holding a pet in each hand, Fey began the introductions. “This is Amethyst, and this is Magic.”

Leandriel could see why a purple slime would be called “Amethyst”, but why would a mushroom… “Magic mushroom?” he murmured.

Fey smiled delightedly at Leandriel, happy that someone understood the reference. “Yup.” Leandriel smiled in response.

Magic was hopping excitedly in her hand, clearly wanting to explore the new person, so Fey passed him over to the angel. Leandriel handled the mushroom deftly, allowing Magic to hop in spirals up and down his arms without worrying about petty matters like gravity.

“So how did you tame them?” Leandriel asked.

“Well, there’s a Monster Tamer skill,” Fey started explaining.

“I meant, what did you do specifically to tame these two?” Leandriel clarified. He had extensive knowledge as to most of the skills and monsters in Fantasia. Magic was now dangling upside down from a single gauntleted fingertip, looking thrilled at the experience.

“Oh. Um, well, during my first quest, I poked Amethyst with my dagger, but then I felt sorry for her and dumped a healing potion on her head. Then later, I told her to attack Magic and they ended up bouncing off each other until they passed out, and then somehow ended up as friends when they woke up.”

Leandriel chuckled softly, both at Fey’s adventures and at the programmer who had designed the monster-taming system.

Fey grinned as well. She did not mind being laughed at, as long as the laughter was not malicious, and it made her feel good to amuse people.

Reluctantly, Leandriel said, “We should probably get to work.” With a last pat, he returned Magic to Fey’s possession. The elf nodded and turned to leave, but Leandriel stopped her with a hand on her elbow. “Just a moment.” Leandriel took a breath to focus, then cast his Helping Hand[iii] buff.

While a Guardian’s buffing abilities were not as good as those of a priest, they were still a great help to any player lucky enough to benefit from them.

“Thank you,” Fey said, startled. She had not expected Leandriel to have spells in his repertoire, judging him to be a warrior based on his equipment.

Leandriel nodded and disappeared into the trees. Fey turned in the opposite direction and went back to work.

With her newly gained level, improving skills, and Leandriel’s Helping Hand, Fey could now defeat treants slightly faster, though it was still a very time-consuming and tiring process. After each kill, Fey loaded a log into her pack and checked if she could still pick it up. Between twelve and eighteen logs, it went from heavy to painfully heavy. Out of stubbornness (and a liking for round numbers), Fey then added two more to its contents. She heaved the pack onto her back and winced. The pressure on her shoulders was giving her a tension headache, and she felt faintly nauseated.

Fey messaged Leandriel:

Fey opened the party map, and indeed Leandriel’s dot was moving towards hers. Orienting herself, she went to meet him halfway (or a quarter-way, judging by her turtle-like speed).

When Fey came into sight, Leandriel could immediately tell that she was carrying too much weight. Though she was not frowning, there was a tightness in her mouth and shoulders that indicated pain, and she was walking quite slowly. Leandriel’s first instinct was to help, but he thought that Fey might be the independent type who would insist on accomplishing everything by herself. He waited until they were on the path back to Moonwood village before cautiously broaching the subject.

“Would you like me to take some of your logs?”

Leandriel was surprised when the elf replied, “Yes, please,” without any hesitation. (Fey was more the ‘make others do the heavy lifting’-type than anything else.) Fey was still walking very slowly, so he did not have any trouble moving behind her and removing logs from her pack while they continued travelling. As he transferred the wood to his belt pouch, the huge logs shrank down to the size of a straw. Upon gaining his angel wings, backpacks were no longer an option, and extra weight simply made flying harder, so Leandriel had obtained a belt pouch that reduced both weight and size by an incredible factor of 10,000. As an added bonus, it came with a magical organizing system that allowed the user to see the pouch’s inventory and locate items quickly.

The five logs that Leandriel placed into his pouch did not create a noticeable difference in the pouch’s weight or available space. Leandriel could have easily taken Fey’s entire load, but did not want to belittle her efforts. He stopped removing logs when Fey’s posture indicated that she was no longer in pain.

Fey sighed in relief, stretching her neck to both sides to relax her tense shoulders. Her pack was still heavy, but the weight was now tolerable. Her stride lengthened, and she began to walk at something approaching her normal quick pace. Leandriel kept up easily.

The sun was beginning to set in Fantasia, deepening the shadows of the forest and casting an orange tinge on everything. (If you’ve gone back and tallied up everything Fey has done and thought, “Hey, the sun should have set a long time ago!” well, too bad. We’ll call it ‘creative license’). Leandriel called up a tiny ball of light to help them see.

“What class are you?” Fey asked. Leandriel seemed to be able to wield sword and magic with equal ease.

“A celestial warrior class called ‘Guardian’. It’s quite similar to a human paladin, except with more holy affinity.”

“Guardian angel, eh?” (A Canadian-ism has made its appearance!)

Leandriel smiled. “I didn’t name it. You are a guardian yourself, I see.” He tapped the outer corner of his eye to indicate that he referred to Fey’s Guardian’s Blessing.

Fey grimaced for a second, reminded of her girlish flower-butterfly tattoo. “It’s a very useful ability, but I rather wish that it had a different physical manifestation.” (Yes, our heroine does sometimes talk like that.)

“I think it rather suits you,” said Leandriel.

“Um, thank you.” Fey was not used to receiving either positive or negative comments about her appearance. Arwyn generally dressed in an unobtrusive manner, neither particularly eye-catching nor particularly unfashionable. She rarely gave a second thought to her appearance, and never tried on several outfits before leaving the house (from her observations of her friend Leah, she saved an incredible amount of time that way).

Leandriel wisely turned the subject back to the game. “If you can, you should get your Guardian’s Blessing to level 10.”

“What happens at level 10?”

Leandriel decided to be mysterious and only said, “It will be useful later in the game.”

Not really understanding, but willing to take the advice, Fey said, “Okay.”

The rest of the walk alternated between restful silence and conversation if either party member thought of a subject. Fey tended to chatter if she was in a cheerful mood, but was somewhat suppressed (*squish*) by her heavy backpack. Leandriel was more of a quiet person, generally speaking only when he had something to say.

If any monsters saw Fey during the trip and decided to attack, at the sight of Leandriel, they quickly changed their minds and fled. The party arrived at Moonwood village without incident.

Leandriel was the subject of many stares and whispers in the elven village. His substantial wings caught the eye, his rounded ears marked him as not elven, and his equipment was as far from the beginner’s outfit that dominated in the village as it was possible to get.

“Who is that?”

“What’s an angel doing here?”

“He must be an NPC.”

Fey, on the other hand, caught much less attention, being much smaller and less winged than her companion. However, the few people who did notice her were even more curious, wondering where and how she had met the angel, and why the two were together despite the obvious level disparity.

Though people gathered and stared, nobody got in the way as they walked to the tavern. Tallen came out to greet them upon seeing Fey through the window.

“What have you brought me?” he asked, rubbing his hands together in anticipation of having his firewood troubles solved for a few weeks.

In answer, Fey unloaded her fifteen logs.

“Very good,” said Tallen, pleased. “I’ll go get your reward.”

“That’s not all of it,” Fey said, indicating Leandriel, who began to take out his logs. As he removed them from his pouch, they expanded from twig-size to longer than even his height. To the gathered audience, who could not see his hands clearly, the angel seemed to pull them out of thin air.

Tallen’s expression morphed from pleased at the sight of more logs, to startled as they continued to pile up, to dumbfounded as Leandriel stacked logs all the way up to the roofline of the tavern. Leandriel easily tossed the dead treants to the top of the pile, above his head, before they returned to full size and weight.

“I’ll just stack the rest of these in the back,” said Leandriel, walking over to the tavern’s small yard and unloading yet more logs. Fey and Tallen could only follow, mute (there wasn’t enough room for the spectators to tag along).

In total, 547 logs were stacked neatly against the tavern. While it had taken Fey ten to fifteen minutes to defeat a treant, it took Leandriel approximately five seconds to kill all the treants within 30 metres. Wandering casually through the forest, Leandriel had caused the extirpation (fancy word for “local extinction”) of treants within a third of their territory.

“All done,” said Leandriel, settling the last log into place.

Tallen disappeared into the tavern while Fey continued to stare at the angel.

“What?” Leandriel asked.

Fey had been awed into speechlessness at the sight of a small forest’s worth of wood, but the angel’s inquiry made her narrow her eyes. “What do you mean, ‘What?’ You know very well that that is a ridiculous number of logs.”

Leandriel tilted his head sideways to survey his work. “I suppose it is.”

“I feel an overwhelming urge to throw something at you right now,” Fey muttered.

Leandriel grinned. “Feel free.”

“There’s no point,” Fey grumbled, “I have no aim.” As a joke, she detached Magic from her boot and threw him to Leandriel, who caught the mushroom deftly.

By the time Tallen re-exited the tavern, he had recovered from shock and regained his usual enthusiasm.

“Good job, lass,” he praised. “I’ve never seen so many logs in one place.”

In Fantasia, performing unusual and amazing feats could result in the gaining of a title, which came with associated fame (or infamy *scary music*). There was no limit as to how many you could earn, though NPCs usually referred to the player by their most important title.

“Here’s your reward,” the tavern-keeper continued, handing over a small number of coins. Fey’s eyes widened as she realized that she held five crystal coins.

Tallen had set the reward for Fey’s quest at ten gold and ten experience per treant, expecting that she would not be able to bring back more than twenty. Leandriel had taken advantage of the lack of item limit to help Fey as much as possible. He supposed that he should report this loophole to the programmers; Fantasia was designed so that it was very difficult for strong players to power-level their friends.

Fey turned to Leandriel to share the gold reward, which by rights should have been all five crystal coins. “Keep it,” he insisted. Leandriel actually owned several of the silvery-blue mithril coins that were worth one thousand crystal coins each, or a million gold. As he was always being given new weapons and armour to test, he had very few expenses, and so any money he earned went straight to the bank.

“…Thank you.” Fey could only try to accept Leandriel’s unreasonably generous gifts with some grace.

Reluctantly, Leandriel said, “I should return to my duties.” He had quite enjoyed helping Fey, and leisurely attacking treants had been a nice break from the high-level boss battles he usually went through, but he had work to do.

Fey accompanied Leandriel to the Moonwood’s only stone structure. Compared to the tree-buildings everywhere else, it clearly stood out. Four grey pillars connected by archways defined a circular space, but left it open to the elements. This was the typical appearance of a teleportation gate. Every major settlement contained such a gate, but there were several limitations to its usage. First, a player could only teleport to an area they had already physically travelled to. Second, the player had to activate the gate, either by paying a large amount of gold or by owning a gate key, which could be purchased with real money on the VirtualRealities website.

Leandriel, of course, had a gate key. He activated the gate and set the destination to Skyhaven. As the gate slowly awakened, the grey pillars brightening to white, Leandriel turned to Fey. Quite formally, he asked, “May I add you to my friend list?”

Fey blinked, rather surprised than an NPC had a friend list, but said, “Of course.”

“Goodbye,” the angel said simply.

“See you later,” Fey replied.

Leandriel nodded. Just before he left, he cast Helping Hand on Fey again. Stepping into the circle, he disappeared in a flash of light.

Footnotes:

[i] Chapter title credit goes to Red

[ii] ‘Kill-stealing’ refers to when high level players defeat all the monsters in an area and take all the experience and loot, preventing weaker players from training in the area, or when a player sneaks in to get the last hit on a monster.

[iii] Pokemon move that increases an ally’s attack in a team battle