Chapter 18 – To Infinity and Beyond[i]

As Fey and Leandriel traveled through the trees, Magic carelessly abandoned his owner in favour of the more interesting person (*abandon*), hopping up the angel's leg until Leandriel picked him up. “Hello, young spore.” The mushroom squeaked animatedly back (let's just make up dialogue and pretend he said, “I'm a grown-up spore, thankyouverymuch.”)

Fey picked up her newest pet to introduce. “This is Boris.”

“Hello.” (Leandriel is too dignified to rhyme with himself and say, “Hello, young boar). The boar squirmed and wriggled until Fey put him back down, then trotted off, trying to regain some of his dignity (such as it was for a miniature boar).

“So what brings you to this neck of the woods?” Fey asked, unable to resist the pun (well, technically, this is just a situation where the word “literally” could be properly used).

Smiling at Fey's witticism, Leandriel answered, “I brought something for you.”

Fey's first reaction was, “What is it?” Belatedly, her manners kicked in and she said, “You shouldn't have brought me anything.”

Before the discussion could continue, Amethyst interrupted by jumping up and down excitedly on Fey's shoulder and squeaking (cutely).

“What is she doing?” asked Leandriel, eyeing the slime's antics curiously.

“Well, the last time she did this, she led me straight to the Slime King. She's kind of a cannibal,” Fey admitted.

“By all means, let us follow her direction.” The pair diverted their path to follow Amethyst's pointing bubble.

As expected, the group's trek ended at the sight of a (yellow) King Slime, busy hopping around and smashing its grapefruit-sized bubble at the hapless newbies who were scrambling to avoid it. After dispassionately observing the panicked scene for several moments (*callous*), Fey asked, “What happens if no higher-levelled player shows up to kill it?”

“I believe that if the King Slime is active for more than a day, a request will be put up to hunt it down.”

“Huh.” Fey briefly considered leaving the newbies to their rather unfortunate fate for a day so that she could earn quest rewards for killing it, then decided against it (because she thought it was likely that another player would kill it before she could if she left it). “Well, might as well go save the newbies, then.” Drawing her sword and dagger, Fey quick-stepped forward, leaving her pets in Leandriel's company.

(*slash*slash*slash*kill*). With Fey now at level 19, the King Slime was very quickly turned into a lifeless puddle on the ground.

With level 2 monster mastery, Fey could now see the special abilities, strengths, and weaknesses of slimes in her personal Bestiary.

The only loot the King Slime left this time was a small number of coins; in order to discourage people from 'farming[ii]' bosses, loot quality decreased after each successive kill. Fey, of course, was really only after a snack for her (cannibalistic) slime. Cutting the King Slime bubble free, she offered it to Amethyst. After practicing stretching her membrane through Osmosis, the slime was able to engulf the sphere without assistance (*omnom*).

“Thanks!” came an unfamiliar voice, startling Fey. Since she had not bothered to manipulate the newbies into running away, there were several witnesses to her fight with the King Slime. The newbies (mistakenly) assumed Fey's primary objective had been to save them, and were properly grateful. For each newbie that thanked her, Fey's fame rose by 1:

“Uh, you're welcome,” said Fey awkwardly, with a bit of guilt. She did not think highly of humanity in general, but it looked like these particular players were the decent, polite kind.

Eventually, Fey and Leandriel continued walking deeper into the forest. Leandriel decided to sidestep Fey's protests over his gift-giving by simply handing the item over. Reaching into his magical pouch, he pulled out a length of cloth. Expanding as it left the pouch's influence, it revealed itself to be a long, luxurious (purple) cape. “Here.”

“Oh my god. It's a cape. I love capes.” Fey's words came out almost absently as she stared, mesmerized by the flutter of cloth. Fey had a little-known and little-exploited weakness for presents. The reason so few people knew about this character flaw was that she had no interest in the typical gift items, such as clothing, jewelry, or flowers (she did like candy, but not the expensive, fancy kind). People assumed that she was an unmaterialistic person rather than figuring out the rather whimsical (random) things she did have an interest in.

Fey held up the cape so that it could unfold to its full length. On her body, it would reach from shoulders to ankles. Fey loved the dramaticism of capes, the way they rippled in air currents and accentuated the wearer's every movement. I really shouldn't accept this, but I really want it. Just to have something to do, she checked the item's information:

Holy [censored word] (get it, 'holy'?), this thing is worth more than all of my equipment until level 50 combined! “I can't possibly take this. It's worth more than all of my present and future equipment combined.”

Leandriel shrugged, the movement much more pronounced than on a wingless person. “Well, I can't use it, so you might as well put it to use,” he said, slightly unfurling his pinions to accentuate the point. “It has been sitting in my item storage for quite a while,” he explained, trying to make the cape seem less valuable than it was. He neglected to mention the series of difficult quests he had undertaken before earning the cape, or the fact that he had gone to some time and expense to dye the formerly white cloth a deep purple that complemented Fey's colouring.

Fey bit her lip and made strange faces while trying to make herself give the cape back, reducing her apparent age by approximately ten years. Leandriel (literally) took the decision out of her hands by taking the cape and fastening it to her shoulders, attaching it to buckles on her armour that she had thought purely decorative.

Oy vey. Fey stood stock-still, and the cape nonetheless fluttered slightly in the breeze. Devolving completely into nine-year-old-at-Halloween mode, she spent the next minute walking and turning excitedly just to make the cape swirl dramatically.

Leandriel observed Fey's (strange) behaviour with mild intrigue. To him, a cape was just a useful piece of equipment. Fey's exuberance reminded him of children who could find the fun in something as simple as a large box. When she tripped over her own feet in the course of her spinning and turning, he could not help but chuckle.

Reminded of Leandriel's presence, Fey reverted to her 'mature adult' persona (she had tied up the fangirl, but it had never occurred to her that she needed to restrain her inner nine-year-old, as that one rarely came out unless capes and cowboy hats were involved). She compromised with herself.

“Okay, okay, I obviously really (really, really) want this cape. But I owe you a gift back, and you can't bring me another one.”

“Ever?” After seeing Fey's antics, Leandriel was rather curious as to how Fey would react to different items (*human experimentation*).

“Okay, only on major gift-giving holidays,” Fey conceded (is that the right word, when she's negotiating against getting stuff?)

“Not minor gift-giving holidays?” Now Leandriel was just poking fun at Fey's flustered wording.

“No, so don't go looking up obscure holidays no one has ever heard of.”

Leandriel thought for a moment, then nodded in agreement. Just to fluster Fey even more, he leaned in and murmured, “You forgot to stipulate the number of gifts per holiday,” before striding gracefully down the path.

“One!” Fey hurried after the angel, enjoying the flare (and flair) of her cape. “One! Do you hear me?” When Leandriel did not respond except to grin (mischievously), Fey grew agitated enough to grab his arm.

Leandriel smoothly tucked Fey's hand into the crook of his elbow as if he were escorting her to a ball. “I hear you,” he said soothingly, then ruined the soothing effect by adding, “I agree to nothing, but I hear you.” The next part of the trail was covered while engaging in (backwards) negotiation, as angel and elf argued for terms that would each benefit them less. A gift war[iii] had begun.

“So where are we going?” Fey asked. She had a bad habit of unquestioningly following people who knew where they were going without paying any attention to her surroundings (leaving her vulnerable to getting extremely lost if her guide disappeared).

“A dungeon,” Leandriel answered (laconically).

“Uh, a dungeon I won't get killed in?” Fey imagined the kinds of dungeons that Leandriel probably trained in, and shuddered at the thought of hordes of slavering monsters with sharp (scary) claws and teeth.

“You'll be safe as long as you remain within the first two floors,” Leandriel reassured her.

Since Fey had absolutely no interest in exploring places that were hazardous to her health, she was unbothered by the restriction. (She gave 'healthy curiosity' a new, more cautious meaning.) “How many floors are there?”

“In theory, an infinite number. Since the monsters are stronger with each successive floor, I've explored only eleven.” Known as 'infinity dungeons,' the grounds were populated with monsters from all over the game world, and were excellent training grounds for players of all levels. The difficulty was in finding such dungeons; though there was one in every major area of the world, their entrances were innocuous and secluded. Many people who did discover them dismissed them as low-level dungeons and did not bother exploring past the first few levels. Leandriel had personally tested three of them, and knew the locations of every dungeon entrance (*inside knowledge*).

Fey and Leandriel arrived at a small cave entrance, the path inside sloping visibly downwards. The entrance was small enough that Leandriel had to duck, but the cave walls gradually gained height and width until the pair reached a large cavern.

A rippling wave of shadow flowed (ominously) towards the pair. Fey jumped back towards the dungeon entrance, but Leandriel stood his ground, relaxed and calm, and cast one of his spells.

The dim cavern suddenly lit up as if Leandriel were a 1000-watt (LED) lightbulb. With a high-pitched keening, the further edge of darkness retreated to the cavern, while the nearer edge simply disintegrated, appearing to blow away like dry sand in a strong wind.

“What are those?” Fey cautiously moved up to stand next to the angel, eyeing the scattering of coins that was all that remained of the creatures (she put Amethyst down, and the slime hopped around cutely, picking up the money).

“They're called glooms.” (no relation to the Pokemon, for once.)

Wanting to get a closer look, Fey walked up to a cluster of shadow next to the cavern wall, then scooped a creature up. “Aww, it's so cute.” Glooms were shadowy creatures with large button eyes that rather resembled rabbits with small ears. When they traveled in number, their hopping form of movement resulted in the effect of rippling shadow. Its skin was smooth, but slightly fuzzy, like felt (haha, it felt like felt).

Turning, Fey held the creature up to show Leandriel. “Look how cute it is.” Upon being exposed to the holy light, the formerly docile gloom cringed and began to squirm out of Fey's grip. Fey also noticed that the glooms on the ground had conformed to the exact shape of her shadow in an attempt to avoid being purified.

As usual, Fey felt sorry for the (sorry) creatures. “Could you turn off the light?” she asked.

“They will swarm me,” Leandriel warned, but complied. He was not concerned of the possibility of attack. Glooms were the dark equivalent of slimes, the monsters that players starting in the Dark Side (cookies are a local specialty there) trained on during their first quest.

Leandriel had been mentally prepared to be mobbed by the holy-hating shadow-creatures, but was far more concerned when the group at Fey's feet creeped up her legs (showing the same disregard for gravity as Magic). He knew the monsters were only level 1 and would not be able to harm the elf through her armour, but still had to wrestle with the irrational part of himself that wanted to sear the creatures out of existence.

Fey was in fact not being attacked:

What, all six of them? “They must have really hated the light,” Fey muttered. She then proceeded to give them extremely obvious and unimaginative names. “You'll be Onyx, Inkblot[iv], Ebony, Midnight, Shadow, and Obsidian.” Fey saved the last name for the gloom she was holding in her hands.

“Look, I tamed them!” Fey called out cheerfully.

Leandriel relaxed at the confirmation that Fey was safe from attack (he's so adorable like that), and replied, “Good. Shall we continue?”

The newly-augmented group continued through the cave system. Fey's glooms were wary of the angel (they weren't fans of her blessed cape, either), but willing to stay in his presence as long as he was not actively casting holy magic. As Fey and Leandriel made their way through the interconnected caverns that comprised the dungeon's first level, the monsters' levels steadily increased from 1 to 10. Dark-element monsters invariably attacked Leandriel (suicidally), while the other monsters had enough self-control and intelligence to keep their distance (run away) from the level 99 warrior. Finally, they reached a spiral staircase roughly hewn into the stone.

“Watch your step,” Leandriel cautioned as they descended. Fey smiled tightly, already completely focused on going down the uneven steps without tripping and falling. (This would be a really obvious place to insert the 'girl falling down the stairs and being saved by guy' cliché, but for the sake of originality...) They arrived at the next level without incident.

“This is a good floor for you to train in. The monsters range from level 11 to 20.”

Fey did not hear Leandriel's words, being too busy staring in horror at the monsters scattered all over the first cavern of the dungeon's second floor. Giant spiders the size of dogs scuttled across the stone floor.

Fey did not like bugs. Whether insects, arachnids, or any other creature with a chitinous exoskeleton that did not fall into those categories, the sight of their skinny stick legs and segmented bodies made the primal part of her brain activate with a strong urge to shriek and run away. Beetles were the insects that disturbed her the least, with their fat bodies looking less segmented and alien than most insects (which is why she didn't freak out that much in Chapter 7).

“Nononononono...” she began to mutter subvocally. She did not push air through her vocal cords as she mouthed the words, so the effect was a barely audible exhale interrupted by the 'n' sound in “no”.

“Are you okay?” Leandriel asked with concern, seeing Fey's fixed facial expression.

“Oh no, I'm fine.” Fey's voice was two octaves higher than usual with impending hysteria.

Amethyst, seeing her owner's (wimpy) distress, decided to be proactive in eliminating the problem. With a commanding squeak (“Feypets, engage the enemy!” or some such cartoon superhero motto), the slime jumped from Fey's shoulder onto Boris' back and charged off to engage the enemy. Magic hopped off separately to fight his own spider, while Fey's new glooms aided from a distance by casting Gloom.

The resulting slaughter was remarkable in a macabre way. When she did not destroy the spider outright, Amethyst ruthlessly crippled spider after spider by destroying all the legs on one side with well-placed blows of Whip. She then cheerfully left the toppled creature to be slaughtered by Boris' Charge attack. Fey had not noticed until now, but upon reaching level 10, the Whip skill had evolved so that Amethyst could extend the length of her bubble-arm, and it could now reach 1.4 metres in every direction, making her slow hopping travel a non-issue.

Magic's method of killing was less flashy, but perhaps more macabre. Hopping onto a spider's back where it could not reach him, the mushroom planted himself and cast Drain until they were nothing but dry, brittle husks.

Just as Fey's pets mooched half the experience points she earned, Fey gained half the experience when they made kills themselves. Her other pets then gained half of Fey's half, a quarter of the original experience.

Even at a quarter of the experience gain, Fey's level 1 glooms quickly reached level 5, at which point they felt strong enough to attack spiders that Magic had already severely weakened. They hopped up arachnid bodies and sank their shadow-teeth through exoskeleton.

Like many dark-element creatures, there was a malady associated with the wounds they inflicted, in this case a lethargy that impaired the victim's ability to move.

Fey was cringing at the carnage. She particularly disliked the crunch of exoskeleton as Amethyst and Boris demolished their opponents (in fact, she killed bugs at home by wrapping a book in tissue and dropping it on the bug to avoid the crunching feeling). The dried-up husks Magic was leaving behind were not particularly appealing, either.

Leandriel was rather taken aback at the aggressive attack by the pets on the rather peaceable cave spiders; with very low attack initiative, the monsters had already been retreating and would have let them pass through without challenge. “Did you signal them to attack?” he asked, wondering if he had missed a cue from the elf.

“Uh, no. I think Amethyst figured out that I don't like bugs,” Fey explained sheepishly.

“Oh.” Leandriel grinned at a sudden thought. “They say that pets tend to resemble their owners. After seeing this, nobody would ever want to cross you.”

Fey opened her mouth to deny any resemblance to her (mini-army of) pets, then reconsidered. While it was true that she was not particularly physically violent in the real world, she did have a straightforward mindset towards solving problems, as well as a tendency to be ruthlessly cruel towards those she developed a dislike towards. I guess translated into the game world, that does result in the casual wholesale slaughter of spiders (say THAT ten times fast). “Perhaps you're right,” she said reflectively.

The sight of the spiders, alive, dying, and dead, continued to bother her, so she asked, “Can we get out of here?” and crossed the cavern with Leandriel, skirting bodies as they walked. Fey's pets eventually left off chasing the fleeing cave spiders and rejoined their owner, conscientiously bringing back any loot they could carry (wow, they really do resemble their owner). Amethyst now carried a good number of coins visibly floating within her membrane, while each of her other pets brought her two spider fangs.

Fey thanked her pets with a pat and stored everything away. She had no idea what the non-poisonous cave spiders' fangs could be used for, but that did not mean she was going to discard them (*hoard*).

Footnotes:

[i] Chapter title credit goes to epithetic

[ii]Gamer-speak for repeatedly killing any monster for either experience or loot

[iii] This refers to two people who try to one-up each other with excessively delightful and thoughtful gifts; in an odd turn of phrase, the loser is the person who receives the better gifts.

[iv] Readers may or may not recognize this as the name of a darking in Tamora Pierce's book “In the Realms of the Gods”