The last pedestal stood before her. She’d just finished choosing her starting location on the vast map of Nova Era. Its size was disconcerting, even though it only showed the discovered seventeen percent of the territory. The developers claimed that the world size of the first stage was three times as big as the real world, which got people wondering what the second stage would look like and how big that would be. Fortunately that was a question for later perusal.

Chris laid her hand on the last pedestal and the fully drawn seven-point star on the ground started pulsing with brighter and brighter light. Between pulses, the ground gave way beneath her sucking her down into it. The darkened pedestal room gave way to complete darkness which then gave way to a musty study. The room was long and narrow with bookshelves lining both side walls. The only windows were framing a fireplace behind a desk. Behind it was a short barrel of a man. He didn’t bother to look up, too preoccupied with the neatly ordered stacks of paper on his desk. His flabby hands were a swirl of motion that handled one piece of paper after the next in surprising efficiency.

There was a thick layer of dust everywhere, from the walls to the carpeted floor to even the windows behind the man. The only exceptions were his immaculate table and the trail created by countless feet that led from the point of origin to where she was standing. It seemed she was not the first player to visit this man. A part of her mind wondered about how the game handled thousands of people logging in for the first time simultaneously. While she was wondering about the parallel stacking of digital universes, her nose couldn’t take it anymore and she sneezed into the man’s orderly stacks.

She felt bad for disrupting his order of things, but the room was so damn dusty she couldn’t help it and this way, at least she got his attention. Rubbing her nose Chris looked down to see the man glaring at her through his tiny, round, wire rimmed glasses. He had the smallest eyes she had ever seen on a person, but that might of just been the contrast to the roundness of his large face.

It was puffy like a pancake, hiding any hint of a bone structure or any other solid body parts usually associated with humans. Every part of him seemed to jiggle, even when he wasn’t moving. Instead of hair, a triple chin framed his face all the way to his ears, above which there was only a tuft of hair on each side. Unfortunately he chose to grow those out, trying to hide the baldness of the remainder of his head. The few strands of hair hid nothing other than, maybe, his dignity.

As soon as her airways cleared, Chris noticed a vile sweaty body odour coming from the man. Instinctively, she took a step back, cringing in disgust. She’d tried to keep an open mind but she was already repulsed with this greaseball of a man with oily skin and ridiculously tight, and ill-fitting, clothes.

“Well?” He asked in a gruff voice.

“Ah… Sorry. What?”

The puss green eyes rolled in annoyance before he said. “I said, what is your name? I need to know it for the purposes of the contract.” He pointed at a scroll in front of him.

“Chr… Wait. You mean my real name? Or the name I want to use in...?” She stopped short of answering, unsure of whether she was supposed to role play as part of the game already or not.

“Do I look like I care?” He said, rolling his eyes once more.

“I… Ah…” Somehow she hadn’t taken the time to think about what name she wanted to use at all.

“Aya.” The man said as he scribbled something on the scroll. Chris cracked a smile.

‘Well there’s one problem taken care of.’

“Alright Aya…” The man said mockingly as if he was trying to annoy her with his purposeful misunderstanding. Chris wiped the expressions from her face and stood there, pretending to be oblivious to the misunderstanding all the while holding a huge grin in her mind.

‘Why does it feel so good to annoy a computer program?’ She wondered in semi-praise of the game as the infuriating man continued.

“Before I can let you decide if you are willing to embark on this massive undertaking of saving Era, I am legally bound to ensure you know exactly what you are getting to.”

‘I’m pretty sure that’s not the only or even more… restricting bondage you have going on.’

She added mentally after catching sight of the vest the man was wearing. It was so tight, he looked like a sausage squeezed into a corset.

“Now, this is just a precaution.” He continued, oblivious to her mental mockery of him. “I actually can’t remember the last time I had to actually explain the conflict to any of you, outworlders,but I still have to ask; Are you aware of the Corruption and how it must be stopped?”

She could tell from his bored monotone, that he didn’t expect he would have to explain anything to her, which made sense. Most ‘outworlders’ - or players from the real world - would already know everything there was to know about Nova Era before ever stepping foot into the game. She was the exception that hadn’t followed any news bulletin there was about the game for the last three years.

So, although it meant she was going to have to spend more time with the vile creature in front of her, she said.

“I would… actually… like that guide, I mean.”

Although his face almost looked surprised for a split second, that expression was quickly replaced by a tightening of the lips as he got up without a word. Extricating himself from his desk and chair was an obviously painful ordeal for the man. Chris, or Aya as she should probably start calling herself, almost felt bad for him. It couldn’t have been easy to use those tiny legs to prop up that elefantine girth. A trapped, ripening pocket of sweaty odour was released by his movement. Chris cringed, trying not to gag. Her sympathy for the man was replaced by sympathy for herself in less than an instant.

She tried to keep her expression neutral so as not to offend him, she wasn’t quite sure how important the man was but she wasn’t about to risk pissing him off. She’d already seen that the artificial intelligence of the game was more than capable of displaying human emotions. Not that she was actively thinking about it. The pudgy man, who turned out to be only a little over a head taller than her, was just too realistic. He snapped his fingers and they were both suddenly back at the battlefield where she had died her death by arrows. People were still dying all around her, being overpowered by monsters.

With a hand gesture the man brought out a ledger which he quickly scanned, looking up at the battlefield around him to confirm a thing or two, before discarding it again.

“As you can see, this is the Battle of the Golden Plains.” He said in a bored monotone.

The man was just downright unpleasant Even his voice managed to be obnoxious. Aya felt like he was doing it on purpose, as if to spite her or something.

She decided to ignore it. For now.

“I brought you here because it is where your immersion battle took place.”

Aya looked around to find the location where she, and her brief-time comrades, had died. Looking back, she actually felt bad for behaving like such a coward. At the time it seemed logical, but now that she let herself think more emotionally and less critically about the situation, she wished she had made a stand with them against the horde. Even if she would have died uselessly.

“No. This is how the battle actually took place in our history.” He said, effectively excluding her from the picture and stripping what she had witnessed from importance. “The commander Hawkins that you embodied, actually died in the front lines with his men.”

He obviously knew exactly what had happened and was now backhandedly berating her for it. Although she did feel a ashamed of her actions, she doubted the flabby pudgeball would have behaved any differently, but bit her tongue to hold it. In real life she was used to being in far greater control of her emotions. The longer she spent in the game, the more she felt like she was slipping into her old ways.

Thankfully, the hateful man, that was causing her emotional disturbance, decided to continue his narration of the battle as it should have gone.

“When they were ambushed by a horde of Corrupted from behind, they were all killed. He’s not the reason I brought you here though.”

‘No, I’m sure he wasn’t. You just wanted to rub my cowardice in my face. Appreciate that.’

Nodding mechanically, so as not to actually say anything she would regret, she stared ahead. The same hole in the ground appeared out of nowhere, allowing dozens of monsters onto the battlefield unnoticed. It looked like a gate from hell had opened up, letting all of its demons walk the earth.

“That, on the other hand….” he gestured toward the still widening hole. “... is.”

His face took a downcast air of loss and sorrow. As if he had lost many people in his life to creatures that spewed out of the earth just like that.

‘And just like that… I’m back to feeling sorry for him.’ She sighed. ‘Gosh, I’m such a sucker.’

“What exactly is it?” Aya asked, both curious and unable to stop years of honed motherly instinct from reaching out to a visibly wounded soul.

It did the trick, immediately snapping him out of his reverie.

“That right there is a Septimus Gate, a seventh-tier gate. It is the most basic gate to the Forgotten Realm that exists. There are thousands of them spread all over the world. But there are other tiers and they exponentially increase in power. Seven tiers total. The lower the tier, the harder it is to close but also the more uncommon. Each sixth-tier gate for example, requires that seven seventh-tier gates be closed first. And each fifth-tier gate requires that seven sixth-tier gates be closed… and so on.” A flash of annoyance crossed his eyes. “The Primus gate, the only of its kind, only flooded open after one of our comrades allowed himself to be corrupted. We are gatekeepers! It is our duty to keep the world safe… the gates closed…”

He swiveled to glare at her, as if challenging her for an accusation. She chose to remain silent.

‘He is obviously unstable.’

“Well…” He continued. “Soon after that, we lost control of the Primus Gate, the first tier gate. It is the only of its kind and it is connected to every single gate out there. Just like that, tier by tier, they came crashing open. All the way to the top tier…”

He gestured sadly at the gate below them.

“There was nothing we could do. People no longer believed in us… not after over seven hundred years of peace. Seven hundred years of not needing us to keep the gates locked, not when the contract kept it secured. But… that contract became void the second Dayus, our comrade, fell. Without all of the gatekeepers, the terms no longer held…”

His irritation was barely contained as he continued. Aya was no longer sure where the aggravation was aimed at. This comrade of his or himself.

“All we could do was watch as Era succumbed to the pest unleashed upon them by the gates. No one was prepared for it. They didn’t know how to deal with the Corrupted monsters anymore. No one remembered how their ancestors fought with us, side by side, for generations, pushing them back to where they belonged and locking them up for good… or so we thought.”

Breathing heavily, he stopped and tried to compose himself, pulling on his tight vest that bulged with his rolls of fat. The movement brought Aya’s attention back to his body. She couldn’t fathom how such a disgusting man that infuriated her one second could inspire such pity and compassion the next.

“Anyhow, It turns out Dayus wasn’t strong enough to withstand Corruption himself. And without a united front, we were unable to rally our own believers for the fight once more. The gates were blasted open, letting in more and more Corrupted Beings. The more gates that were opened, the less anyone believed in the gatekeepers and our capabilities. I guess it makes sense, what is a Gatekeeper that can’t manage a gate right?”

It was a rhetorical question.

“Anyway, as the world was massacred and the gates defeated tier by tier, all the way down to the seventh. We fought countless battles…” He waved his hand, changing the view before them between various battles in which the Corrupted annihilated armies of Nova Era’s people without a pause. “And lost them all. Finally, the remaining forty eight Gatekeepers got together and used the last inkling of our power to contact another world…” He motioned at her. “That was your world. Thankfully…”

She could tell it pained him to say that. To have to rely on outside help to solve their own problem.

“Outworlders like you have agreed to help us combat the Corruption. We… wouldn’t stand a chance without you. Not with our own population so depleted.”

The man was tugging at her strings of sympathy before he let out a loud roaring belch almost knocking her over with its stench.

“Sorry ‘bout that.”

By the self-satisfied look on his face, she could tell that he wasn’t.

“So, our fate rests in your hands. We hope you will be willing to embark in this dangerous journey that will probably bring you countless, painful deaths in our world.” The moment he finished telling her Nova Era’s history and tried to recruit her, his words started to sound like an infomercial, minus the excitement. “Do not worry, your fate here is not tied to your other self and, as long as you have faith and a contract, you can be brought back to life as many times as you need.” He almost sounded disappointed about that. “So, the question is: Are you willing to help us lock down all the gates? Through all of the tiers? To banish the Corrupted once and for all?”

“I am.”

“Perfect.” He said about as excited as a rock. “Now you only need to choose your Gatekeeper.”

“What are my options?”

“Any of the remaining forty-eight. Here.” He waved his hand around and they found themselves in a large circular room with long banners hanging on the wall. Some had really intricately stitched designs on them. It made the images of lovers, philosophers or beasts on them look like they were alive. The colours were so vibrant it was astounding. She wished that cloth in the real world could have colours like that. Other banners though, looked almost bland in comparison, with none of the designs. They almost looked incomplete, as if the stitches were missing.

“Each of these banners represents one of the gatekeepers.” He snapped his fingers and lifesize statues appeared underneath each banner. Each statue had glowing letters floating above it with the name of the Gatekeeper it embodied.

Chris looked around, mesmerized by the banners until her eyes landed on an oddly familiar statue. Walking toward it, she heard the man grunt. Confused, she had to look at it again before realization finally slammed into her.

“Is this... you?”

“Yea, it’s me.” He said, rolling his eyes in annoyance of her disbelief.

She couldn’t help looking between them a couple times, noticing the difference between the two. The statue showed a regular Adonis; A face you would cry for, a jaw you could cut cheese with and abs to kill for.

“Yea. Yea. Well. That’s what happens when all these other bastards give me all the paperwork. Used to be we all had to take turns with guiding the Outworlders, but recently it’s just been me.” The man shook his head in annoyance before belching loudly one more time.

It was hard to feel sorry for the obnoxious man, but there she was again.

“Why?” She asked sympathetically.

He rolled his eyes. Chris’s muscles bunched up with pent up tension, wanting to punch the guy. Here she was, trying to be nice, and all he did was throw it back in her face. Taking her from fury one second, to compassion the next and then right back to fury again. He was really starting to piss her off. She would be glad to be rid of him after this was all over.

“Because I have the least amounts of contracts. You see those?” He gestured to some of the more intricate banners. “Those are the Gatekeepers of Lust, War and Intellect. You see how many Contracts they have?”

Uncertainty clouded her face which brought on yet another eyeroll.

“The stitches. We each get a stitch to symbolize a contract with an Outworlder. They get about eight out of ten Outworlders to sign with them. Me?” He scoffed, crossing his arms. “I get one in ten thousand if I am lucky.”

She would of felt sorry for him again if not for his attitude.

“So, which gatekeeper will it be for you?” He asked with contempt.

‘Definitely not you, that’s for sure.’ She thought, but out loud she said.

“I don’t know yet. Is there like a list of Gatekeepers and their… specializations?”

She had read somewhere that faith points were important and that you got them when you did things to ‘please’ your gatekeeper, which you did when acting in line with their specializations. Aya didn’t quite understand it, but she figured she’d choose something that came easily to her so as to make gathering faith points easier on herself.

Bored eyes drilled into her as he off-handedly snapped his fingers making a scroll fall into her hands. The night before she hadn’t had the time to look for a list so she took her time going through it. At first she didn’t see any that would fit her, at least not exactly. Leaning toward the Gatekeeper of Intellect, the Gatekeeper of Art or the Gatekeeper of Leadership, she almost overlooked the Gatekeeper of Commerce. She immediately chose that one since it would go perfectly with the initial plan she had come up with to succeed in the game. She did have a business degree after all, she might as well put it to use.

‘Okay, technically I didn’t graduate… but… who’s going to check my transcript?’

“Can I switch Gatekeepers at some point?” She asked, suddenly thinking she might not want to pursue the business side of things forever.

“Yes, if you petition and have enough faith points accumulated.”

“Faith points?” She immediately asked, milking him for knowledge.

He gave another infuriating eyeroll.

‘Isn’t this your job? To guide people since no one wants you? Do that again and I’ll rip your eyeballs out… Wow. Okay, too far. Chill out Chris. You’ll be out of here in a second.’

“It’s what powers any of the Gate contracts.” He finally answered, oblivious to her mental threats. “Without them the Gates won’t hold. You are awarded with them by performing acts for the Gatekeeper you choose. So for Shirley…” He motioned at the bright blue banner that almost glowed with its golden stitched crest. “...the Gatekeeper of Friendship, you just need to make a lot of friends to get points. For Vix…” He motioned to a vibrant crimson banner with a pitch black crest. “...the Gatekeeper of Lust, you just need to get laid a lot. Et cetera. You only get faith points for the Gatekeeper you are affiliated with or the one you are petitioning for. You can only have one of each.”

He crossed his arms, as if daring her to ask another stupid question. Apparently he was just as fed up with her as she was with him.

‘Why, I do not know… I only ever thought stuff in my head or…’

She looked at him suspiciously.

“No.” He said with finality. “It wasn’t.”

“Huh.” She said.

There was a moment of silence as she awkwardly wondered if she should apologize. She decided not to and instead just redirected. “Alright. So, basically, we sign some sort of contract with one of the Gatekeepers then we go around finding gates? How do you find a gate exactly?”

“Gates let the Corrupted into Era. Where there are Corries there will be gates.”

“Alright then I close it with… a contract with a Gatekeeper?

“Yes. You need faith for a contract. A contract and seven energy sources.” As Chris opened her mouth to ask he just barreled over her again and added. “Energy sources are any living, non-corrupted beings. Just make sure that they have enough energy to last through the required time of the tier. They can be Otherworlders like you, people from my world or even manic creatures…. If you manage to attain any.” He added spitefully

Chris decided to keep her mouth shut.

“Before you can open any higher tiered gate, you need to close a Primus gate. Well, actually, seven of them. A Primus is a first tier gate. A first tier gate requires it to be forcefully held closed with non-corrupted energy for seven days. The second requires fourteen days. The third for twenty one days and so on until the seventh tier, the Septimus Gate, which will require it to be held forcefully closed with uncorrupted energy for forty nine days.”

She stared at him blankly as she processed the information.

“... Those are multiples of seven.” He said mockingly, as if her confusion stemmed from the numbers.

She rolled her eyes.

“To secure a Secondus Gate you need to secure seven Primus Gates. To secure a Tertius Gate you need to secure seven Secondus Gates and so on. Eventually you will need to secure seven Sextus Gates to secure the Septimus Gate.”

‘Which I’m going to be required to supply with non-corrupted energy for forty nine days. Seems pretty easy… not. How does anyone play this game as a single player?’

“Anything else I need to know? Like how to find all this non-corrupted energy maybe?” Chris asked.

He rolled his eyes.

“No.” He said with finality that forbade interruption. “Choose a Gatekeeper. Get a contract. Get bonded to your Chosen Era body. Close the Gates. Save us all. And if you’re first you get to be our new forty-ninth Gatekeeper.”

“Wait, so…”

The man snapped his fingers. “No! No more questions. I’ve put up with enough crap from you. Do you know how many Outworlders I still have to see today? You’re not the only one, you know?” He said and Chris could swear she heard a muffled, “Then you can finally be a thorn in someone else’s ass.”

They both rolled their eyes.

‘Looks like I’ll have to figure everything else out on the go. And forums, of course. Let’s not forget forums.’

“Fine.” She said. “I’ll go with the Gatekeeper of Commerce.”

He swiveled around to stare at her with surprise stamped across his jiggling features.

“Oh… Okay then. Sign here.” He snapped his fingers and a scroll appeared before her with a quill. It reminded her of the first pedestal. She really did almost feel bad for him. Almost. If she already had two documents to deal with this far into the game, before she was actually in it, she couldn’t begin to imagine how much he had to deal with.

She read it over and signed it. It basically said she would be affiliated with Hathorne, the Gatekeeper of Commerce. Faith points would be given every time she performed an act of commerce that proved her faith in it.

A moment later she felt herself shrink, she lifted her hands to watch as her skin darkened and felt it as her hair shortened on her head. She combed her hand through her cropped hair, noticing how it’s texture had changed to become more coarse but at the same time much straighter.

“Ready?” He asked in what seemed a marginally less annoying tone.

‘He must be just as happy to be rid of me as I am of him.’ She thought, quite purposefully, only to herself.

“You bet.” She answered jovially.

With another snap of his fingers, Chris, or Aya, was suddenly back in the pedestal room that was now glowing with the bright blue light of the now completed seven-point star. The pedestals, and thus the initiation, were finally taken care of.

“This is your first Gate contract.” He held up the scroll she had just signed. “It will be different from any other in the sense that it will allow you, and only you, to travel from your world to ours any time you wish. However, beware that the gate can only hold itself stable for sixty hours every one hundred and twenty hours. I believe that is the equivalent to twelve hours in every twenty four hour period in your world.”

She was already aware of the twelve hour gameplay maximum.

“... Right. So… Am I ever going to meet my Gatekeeper? I thought that…”

“Oh! Of course! Where are my manners!?” He stretched out his greasy hand that was so covered with black hair it reminded Aya of a repulsive tarantula. Seeing his sudden buoyant expression she couldn’t help but return the handshake, but immediately pulled her hand back wiping her hand on the gladiator skirt she had recently allocated credits to. It had automatically dressed her the moment she signed the contract. She already regretted the choice, wishing she’d chosen something made of anything other than leather to absorb the slimy sweat that had drizzled off his hand onto hers.

“My name is Hathorne, I am the Gatekeeper of Commerce.”

Aya’s jaw dropped in shock.

Hathorne continued his very late introduction in happy oblivion.

“I am honored to have been chosen by you. I shall await your summons when you are ready to secure your first gate.”

Before her tongue could be located to be reaquainted with speech, she was suddenly speeding through space in a large seven-pointed lance of blue light. Apparently a gate between worlds. Apparently her first gate with her lovely gatekeeper… Hathorne.

When her feet landed on a solid surface, her senses couldn’t even process her surroundings. She was too preoccupied with whom she’d just signed herself to. Bad choices were beginning to look like a pattern. Bad signed choices.

“Ugh. Who’s going to be a thorn in whose ass now? Literally!” Were the first words purposefully voiced aloud by the shortest Halfling Era had ever seen.