The discordant clanging of bells filled the air as a ship’s prow broke through the waves. Perched atop the bowsprit, a rugged man was balanced precariously over the waves below. A fine scimitar was visible at his waist, and the scars visible on his bare arms and chest bespoke of his ability to use it.

“They’re ready for us,” an enormous orc behind the man growled.

The man smirked. “As if that’s ever stopped us before. Are the men ready?”

“Yes, Captain.”

Turning around, the captain surveyed his crew. “Alright men! They know we’re comin’. They’ve got the bells a ringin’ and the town guard a runnin’. We’re badly outnumbered, and we lost the element of surprise five minutes ago.”

“That just means it’s a fair fight!” someone yelled out.

The captain grinned. “Aye. But you know the rules - what do the Northsea Pirates do in a fair fight?”

“Cheat! Lie! Kick ‘em in the balls!”

“Aye! Cause there’s no such thing as a fair fight when we’re involved!” the captain roared with a hearty laugh. “Now! We’re about to make land. Watch out fer arrows and remember, it’s every man for himself!”

“Make some noise ya scurvy dogs! It’s time for a fight!” the orc roared.

“Blood! Steel! Gold for whoever can take it!” the crew roared back as the first mate whipped them into a frenzy. Cutlasses, sabres, and other various implements of war glinted in the sunlight as the pirates waved them haphazardly in the air. Above, a black flag emblazoned with a grinning skull fluttered softly in the wind.

As the ship approached the shore, spells and arrows began to fly forth from the defenders upon the shore. Sandbags and debris had been piled upon the pier to create makeshift defensive structures behind which defenders fired at the approaching pirate ship. Ducking slightly to the side, the pirate captain watched as an arrow flew by, finding its home in the neck of an unlucky pirate behind him who collapsed with a gurgle of blood.

“Take what you can! Burn the rest!” he roared as the ship slammed into the dock, sending splinters and wood flying as the ship came to a crunching halt. Jumping from the bowsprit, the pirate captain’s sabre flashed, sending the heads of two young defenders flying as he lead the charge across the docks.

Fighting desperately, the defenders were forced back by the more experienced pirates. Trails of blood ran through the streets, pooling in small holes in the cobblestone as the pirates advanced, the song of metal on metal singing loudly as the bells continued to toll loudly in the background.

~

“My lord, please escape. If you are to fall, then the town will have truly been lost,” an old butler pleaded with a young man wearing a suit of gilded armour.

“How can I leave my people behind in the hands of these monsters? Godfred, I must fight,” the man replied, donning his helmet as he stared heavily at the town below. Smoke rose from the docks, the product of the flames that now ravaged the seafront district. Yells of pain and of fury intermittently punctured the din of battle, providing a staccato tone to the discordant melody of the bells..

“Have the Knights of Seacove not sent word yet?” the lord demanded.

The butler shook his head sadly. “Unfortunately not, my lord.”

“So be it. I ride to do battle with the sea vermin. I shall leave you behind to watch after my mother and the rest of the servants. If the situation turns, I order you to escape.”

“Yes, my lord,” the butler whispered, his voice cracking as he watched him stride forth, heading for the streets below. As the lord’s hand touched the door, the entire door exploded, splinters of wood flying forth as a figure burst into the room.

Caught unawares, the lord reached for his sword, but the figure was too fast. Slamming the pommel of his sabre into the lord’s helmet, he threw the armoured figure to the side, his sabre flashing as he moved.

“My lord! Please escape!” the butler cried, throwing himself towards the intruder with a knife in hand.

Rising to his feet, the lord watched through blurry eyes as the butler tangled with the sabre-wielding attacker.

“Godfred, no!” he shouted, But it was too late. With a thrust of his sabre, the pirate captain impaled the butler, watching impassively as the knife fell from the butler’s fingers, clattering to the flagstones below. Pushing the butler off his blade, he ignored the dying servant as he turned towards the armoured lord to his side.

“That’s nice,” the captain said, admiring a tapestry on the wall. “Looks Miroclian, is it authentic?”

“Godfred,” the lord said dumbly, staring at the blood pooling around his lifeless friend.

“Sorry about that. Friend of yours?” the captain asked jokingly.

“You killed him! Why?!”

“Why?” the captain scratched his neck in a bemused manner. “Well, he was coming at me with a knife you see. Can’t let myself be stabbed. Not good for the health ya know.”

“You attacked my town, slaughtered my people, and now you’ve killed the man who raised me. I’ll kill you!” the lord yelled, throwing himself at the captain.

Raising his sabre, the captain parried his strike, his leg launching out to catch the lord unawares in the junction between the legs. With a pained sound, the lord folded, his sword falling beside him as he hunched over in agony.

Grabbing the lord’s helmet, the captain forced his head back, bringing his sabre up to deal the finishing blow.

“...why...”

“What was that?” the captain asked.

“...why? Why do this? Why attack my town?” the lord whispered.

The pirate shrugged. “This is just the fate of the weak.”

With a spurt of blood, the captain sheathed his sabre, allowing the lord to fall lifelessly to the ground, his hand outstretched towards the corpse of the butler. Outside the window, the bells had fallen silent. Replaced only by the crackling of the flames as smoke spiraled to the sky.

~

As the trailer came to an end, black smoke filled the screen, twisting and turning silently as the Fate logo appeared amidst the smoke before finally disappearing as the screen went black once more Closing the video player, Eric sat back, his eyes glazing over as he imagined himself taking the place of one of the characters in the trailer. Would he be the ruthless pirate captain? A knave with a lack of respect for both life and authority? Or would he be the young lord, doing his best to protect those he cared about even in the face of overwhelming odds.

Unfortunately, without any information on how to become a pirate or a lord, Eric's imagination would simply have to suffice for now. Build ideas, optimal leveling routes, and which crafting professions he should take were all decisions that would have to wait until more information was available.

However, as Eric had discovered over the last few weeks, news of Fate was not simply scarce, it was practically nonexistent. Apart from the official news on the brand new website Hurricane had set up for the game, and the occasional trailer, nothing else existed. No beta testers who had broken their NDA’s to spill the beans on the game’s info, no insider information on how long the game had been in development, not even a developer diary or blog to document the game’s history as they approached the release.

This both frustrated and impressed Eric in equal parts. The ability to hide a game of this magnitude for so long was already impressive. But to keep every aspect of it hidden once reporters and the public had learned of its existence? Now that was a feat most governments couldn’t accomplish, to say nothing of a game studio.

The one saving grace was that the official site did have some useful information, and it was this information that Eric poured over. While he would still have trouble reciting the exact formulas needed for his upcoming calculus final, or the correct way to implement new features in his programming final, or even which lines could be attributed to which characters in the book he was supposed to have read for his English final, by the end of the first week after Fate’s announcement, Eric could recite almost word for word the key information for the mechanics of Fate.

Fate would utilize a realistic style of combat and spellcasting. Or at least as realistic as spellcasting could get, Eric surmised. Players would have to physically swing their weapons at foes in order to hit. Random mechanics such as critical hits and dodging, hallmarks of the MMORPG genre, had been removed and replaced with more realistic interpretations.

Hitting an enemy in a vital area such as the head or neck would give a critical strike. Dodging was now performed manually, similar to many action RPGs except instead of pressing a button and having their character turn momentarily invulnerable, the player would have to fully avoid the attacks on their own using movement or skills.

Speaking of skills, this was where Eric had spent the most time trying to read into the tiniest bits of information. The skill system in Fate had been described by Hurricane as unprecedented in terms of both scale and grandeur. Every action in the game could be turned into a skill, and all skills could be modified by the player as long as they put the time into learning how to perform the skill correctly. A standard slashing attack could be modified to hit harder, becoming the skill Heavy Slash. A player could then modify it further by adding mana into the strike and creating a Flame Slash; adding a feint at the beginning and creating an Illusory Slash; or even simply increasing the speed of the strike and creating a Swift Heavy Slash. And this was just the tip of the iceberg, Hurricane promised. The only limit to creating and modifying skills was the players imagination and energy. They’d even promised that players who created rare or powerful skills would be rewarded in ways they couldn’t imagine by the system itself - a prospect Eric relished. Imagine being able to create your own epic spell that everyone wanted to use! Just thinking about it had him itching to try his hand at making skills.

Still. The more information Hurricane disclosed, the more questions Eric had. The website stated that killing monsters for experience was not the way to level up. But it also had a line about questing that indicated questing did not give experience either. If you couldn’t level up through grinding monsters or questing, how were you supposed to level? This was an MMO, right?

And as important as leveling was, it wasn’t even close to being as confusing as the gear system seemed to be. Gear would drop upon death; however, gear was supposed to be incredibly easy to obtain to counteract this. But in the short paragraph on endgame, the website said that obtaining the best gear would be difficult and the true level of a player’s strength would soar with the correct gear. How could all of these things be true simultaneously? Just thinking about all the debates he’d participated in on the topic, both online and at school, made Eric’s head hurt.

Finally, endgame itself was also a mystery. From what little the fans had gleaned from the trailers and bits of information from the website, players could own land and buildings, such as the castle in the first trailer. Presumably, this would be a large part of the endgame, but what about dungeons, raids, and PvP content? Was endgame purely focused on gaining and defending territory? Or was there more to it? Hurricane’s tight lipped attitude around these questions caused fans intense suffering, but it also served to drive the entirety of the gaming world into a frenzy.

Fate had been the best kept secret in the gaming world for years, and now, with its release so tantalizingly close, information on the game was still impossible to find. At this rate, the game could have released the day of the press unveiling and players would have exactly as much knowledge going into it as they did now.

The combination of being the first ‘perfect’ Virtual Reality MMO and the lack of information caused speculation around the game to soar. Webzines, forums, the few remaining newspapers, almost every major publication was now talking about Hurricane’s newest title.

It was amidst this media storm that Eric and his friends were forced to write their final exams. As graduating students, these exams were crucial to maintaining their grades and getting into schools of their choosing. With talk of Fate everywhere, studying went from monotonous to verging on torturous, as the boys attempted to cut themselves off from the outside world and focus on their rapidly approaching exams.

And it was under the cover of this attempted media blackout by graduating students around the globe that Hurricane dropped the media equivalent of a nuclear bomb at an impromptu press conference outside the Hurricane headquarters.

Packing up his writing implements, Eric stretched his arms widely behind his head. Finally finished, he thought as Mr Chen walked along the rows, collecting their calculus finals. Getting up, Eric grabbed his bag from the back and chatted with Griffin as they headed for the door.

“What’d you think of question three?”

“The figure eight?” Griffin asked.

“Yeah, I figured I’d have to use chain rule and then apply Stokes’ theorem. But I’m not sure if I got the right answer," Eric responded, pushing open the door and stepping into the hallway.

As Griffin followed him into the familiar whitewashed halls, they spied Mark dashing towards them.

“Guys! Did you see?” He panted, clearly out of breath from having dashed halfway across the school.

“See what?” Eric asked, nonplussed. “We’ve been writing our Calc final all day. We literally just got out.” Griffin nodded to affirm that this was indeed what they had been doing. As if them emerging from the Calculus class wasn’t enough.

Fiddling with his phone Mark shoved it at their faces, “This," he stated.

Staring at the phone, Eric and Griffin’s eyes slowly widened.

“Are you sh***ing me right now? Is this real?” Eric demanded.

“No way it’s real. 50 million? Are they insane?” Griffin added, dumbstruck.

“It’s real, there’s a video of Michael Lietke and the CEO. It’s been confirmed by reputable news sites too.”

“25 million dollar grand prize...” Eric exhaled slowly.

“And a million to any team who qualifies too," Griffin added.

“Yup, even just getting to the regional qualifiers means you’re playing for a pretty big sum. Way bigger than the prizes for the local tournaments we’ve played in," Mark added, withdrawing his phone and placing it back in his pocket. “We’re going for this. I know we said we’d play but this is huge. We need to be serious about Fate.”

Eric and Griffin slowly nodded. A 25 million dollar grand prize to the winning team of Fate’s first ever World Championship, to take place next year on the anniversary of its launch, announced a week and a half before the game even released. Hurricane really was going all in on this.

Eric slowly breathed out, “Have you told the other guys yet?”

“Yeah, you two were the last to hear, everyone else has already finished their exams. We were just waiting on you two when we got the news.”

“Alright, should we have a meeting to discuss our plans?”

“Gio has his part-time job today. And Jun needs to go pick up his sister. We’re going to be online at 8 though. Will you guys be there?” Mark looked at Griffin and Eric in turn.

Glancing at Griffin, Eric nodded. “I can make it”.

“Me too,” echoed Griffin.

“Alright cool. I’ve gotta go give Chris and Trina rides. I also promised Cassie I’d take her out later. Are you two good to get home?”

“Yeah I’ve got my bike.”

“My dad’s picking me up.”

Hearing that, Mark bid the two goodbye and walked off, moving markedly more slowly than he had on his arrival. Turning to Griffin, Eric stayed silent for a moment, searching for the words, “25 million," he managed.

Griffin nodded, “25 million. I doubt we can win it though.”

Eric laughed, “What’s the point of being young if we can’t dream? Come on we’ve always done well in local tournaments. Who’s to say we don’t have a shot?”

Griffin smiled wryly at this, “I suppose we’ll give it our best shot”.

“Haha yeah we will! Anyways I’m off. Peace, mate,” Eric said, splitting ways from Griffin as he headed towards his locker. Already mostly cleaned out, there were only a few last memories of high school lingering behind the chipped paint on the door of his locker. Twirling the combination lock a few times, it gave way with a soft click. Opening the locker, Eric was just leaning in to grab the items littering the bottom of the locker when he felt a soft brush against his back.

“Yiiiiee!” He yelped, jumping away from the locker. Whirling around, he came face to face with Mirianne, looking shocked as she leaned away from him. Re-adjusting himself quickly, Eric tried to play it cool as he posed awkwardly next to his open locker.

“Mirianne! Uhhhh… What’s up?” He began, mentally kicking himself over how uncool he was.

“Nothing. Sorry, did I scare you?” Mirianne replied, having regained her composure.

“What? Scare me?” Eric laughed. “Nope, just thought you might be Kurt. He’s been pretty aggressive about trying to get me to give him my consent form for the graduation”.

Mirianne raised an eyebrow at this, “You still haven’t given him your consent form? Wasn’t it due last week?”

Eric raised his arms defensively at this, “I’ve been busy. Plus I’ve got it now.”

“Riiiiiiiight," she responded. “Anyways, I was meaning to ask you. What was it that Mark showed you and Griffin that had you guys looking so shocked?”

Eric was startled, “Oh that? You’ve heard of Fate right?”

Mirianne quickly waved her hand, “Of course I’ve heard of it. It’s a new video game right?”

“Yeah, well the developers of Fate have announced that starting early next year they’re going to be holding qualifying matches for teams to earn the chance to compete in a huge worldwide tournament, with the finals happening on the anniversary of Fate’s release date. Not only that but the prize pool is 50 million dollars. With 25 million going to the winner of the tournament and the rest being divided among the various qualifying tournaments. It’s incredible, especially for a game that hasn’t even been released yet.” Eric explained.

At this Mirianne’s eyes widened, “25 million dollars? For a video game? No wonder you guys looked surprised.”

Eric grinned, “Yeah, it’s a lot of money. We’re gonna be making a team to try and compete.”

Mirianne smiled, “Well thanks for explaining. I wish you guys good luck. And have a good summer. I probably won’t be seeing you much from here on out”.

Hearing this, Eric’s grin dimmed, “You’re headed off to university in the Fall?”

Mirianne nodded, “I got into a really prestigious program at -”

“KINGSLEY” A voice thundered from down the hall causing both Mirianne and Eric to jump.

“Um. I’ll see you around," Mirianne muttered before fleeing the scene as Kurt stomped over towards Eric’s exposed position in front of his locker.

“Hey Kurt!” Eric piped up, with as much joviality in his voice as he could muster.

“The consent form. Last chance.” Kurt responded coldly.

“I actually have it right here," Eric replied as he drew a slightly crumpled sheet from his backpack, presenting it to Kurt. Observing the signatures on the sheet for a second, Kurt glared at him one last time before turning and disappearing back down the hallway.

Eric sighed, why did Kurt have to interrupt just as he was having a conversation with Mirianne? Sure she was about to say goodbye, but that wasn’t the point. It was about the principle of the matter. You don’t interrupt a man talking to one of the school’s cutest girls!

With yet another heavy sigh Eric gathered the rest of his supplies before turning to observe the hallway one last time.

“So long," he muttered, heaving his bag over his shoulder as he departed for the last time.