Green symbols floated in the air, letting me know I was still in dev mode. The “egg chamber” around me had crumbled away, leaving me in a desert environment—the Firegrain Desert, according to my map. A few symbol stacks floated above the sand’s surface, letting me know that an NPC marker was moving about, ready to be spawned. I watched it approach, change direction, and go further away.

Why? I opened my game menus and looked at my inventory—it was fully stocked with potions, daggers, and a few odds and ends I hadn’t managed to sell. The dragon egg wasn’t there, but I didn’t expect it to be. My status page was also mostly the same, with the exception of some dev options that had appeared. The hundred-level quest was still present in my journal, ticking away with over thirty hours left on its counter. That wasn’t right. The last thing I remembered, it had disappeared during my fight with Firestarter.

Shivers passing through me, I opened my in-box. FlickerFlacker had sent me a number of mails, the last less than a minute ago. Cautiously, I opened the one sent twenty minutes ago.

Quote:

I got it! The broker upped the price, but for a hundred and seventy, they let me have it. Let's meet up at Bent Cliffs so I can tell you what it is.

I feel uneasy sharing it via game message.

FlickerFlacker

So he had managed to get the fifth clue. That was supposed to be great, yet I didn’t feel any enthusiasm. It was as if I’d won a million at the lottery, then learned I could only use it on dried broccoli sticks. The message didn’t feel right. The whole world around me didn’t feel right. I wasn’t supposed to be here. I was supposed to be at the hospital with Jeff.

“Twinkle, show my movement in the last twenty four hours,” I ordered.

“Sure thing, Sarah!” The AI feline—colored green due to my dev vision—floated in front of me. “You went to work and back as you usually do every day.” A small window with map of this section of the city appeared above him. Looking closer, I could see a thin orange line marking my movements: home to work, work to home.

I waved my hand, then opened Flicker’s next message.

Quote:

What the heck. My quest’ll be over in eleven hours anyway.

I’m the heart and sound of the key.

I don’t know what it means, but I’m sure we’ll figure it out together!

FlickerFlacker

The fifth clue... so difficult to get and just as cryptic as the rest. For the amount of money Flicker had paid, I was reasonably certain the information was correct, even if I couldn’t think of a way it would help me in solving the final riddle. Was there even a final riddle?

“Twinkle, mark the locations where I found the previous clues.” I zoomed in on my map. “Guess those that I didn’t.”

“Sure thing, Sarah!” Four dots appeared.

“Connect each with the other three.” My hands flinched behind my back.

“Sure thing!” Twinkle beamed with joy. “Two of the lines intersect at the Goblin Fields.”

The words struck me like lightning. The X was on the same spot I remembered it being. There was no way I could imagine that. Simple coincidence? Or had I done this without knowing? In this day and age, three quarters of my acquaintances believed in supernetnatural phenomenon. Every month, hundreds of tech articles would come up, explaining superstitions away only to be lost in the thousands of “confirmed” cases that popped up all over the net. Unnatural luck, impossible prizes, bugs and glitches that could not be explained: all were part of the phenomenon that earned an increasing group of people scary amounts of cash and followers. When I was younger, I used to read those discussion boards for the entertainment value, but never actually believed it. Now, though, after what I had been through, I could no longer say for certain.

“Do you want me to teleport you there?” Twinkle offered, landing on the sand.

“No!” I snapped, making him jump into the air. “I need to see Flicker.”

There was no way I would risk facing Firestarter again. Even if there was a less than one-in-a-million chance that my encounter with Firestarter had happened, I didn’t want to experience it again; instead, I selected the Bent Cliffs area and activated my teleportation ring. The greenish-yellow dunes vanished, replaced by black rock spires shooting from the ground. The code symbols, however, remained, along with the ghost echoes of player avatars. I made my way straight to the meeting spire and used my oracle token. For some reason, I still had two remaining in my inventory, which was one more than I should have had.

As the sky turned a deeper green, I took a deep whiff of sea air. The sensation of smell was completely lacking. Had I imagined that as well?

A cone of light briefly flashed beside me. “Sarah!” Flicker’s avatar took firm. “What happened? You vanished without a trace and when—“

“I’m fine,” I cut him off. There was too much chaos in my life right now to deal with his freakouts. “I had to take of something.”

“Oh.” Obviously, he was expecting a better explanation but didn’t have the nerve to ask directly. “Hope all went well.”

This was the type of comment I hated the most: a way to ask questions while seeming concerned. I had used it plenty of times so I knew when someone was trying to use it on me.

“So you got the fifth clue.” I changed the subject. “Are you sure it’s the real thing?”

“Aha.” Flicker nodded. “My broker has a full guarantee. The clue came with a full certified video. It’s absolutely real!”

“Good.” Why couldn’t I shake this feeling? I felt like a fly pushing against a window, in the hopes of passing through. “Where was it?”

“Moss-Scream Marsh. In the underwater cave.”

Moss-Scream? There weren’t many quests there, nor were there any mobs. From what I remembered, at one point it was the only source of rare variety moss ingredients, though that was before the gamedev decided to introduce the Foreign Caravan system. Once per day, a mysterious caravan would appear at a random city in Vesperia, selling any type of ingredient at exorbitant prices. Free players could use it to sell their stash for twenty percent of the initial price, while payers could buy anything they needed. In theory, the caravan wasn’t supposed to provide anyone with an advantage, since no one knew when and in which city he’d appear. Of course, the press release conveniently didn’t mention that most players had teleportation items.

“And that was it?” Something in the story didn’t add up. Or maybe I was getting paranoid again?

“Umm, yes?” Flicker glanced to his left. “They upped the price again, I agreed, and they went on with the transfer.”

Flicker went on to share, with great enthusiasm, his theories about the answer to the quest riddle. I didn’t pay attention. My mind was preoccupied with my encounter with Firestarter. The closer I got to completing the quest, the closer I was to facing her. If my “vision” was true, she didn’t merely see me as part of the competition. According to her, I wasn’t supposed to have gotten the quest to begin with; a wildcard, that was all I was, and I needed to be eliminated before I had a chance to proceed forward.

“What’s the ghost forum?” I interrupted Flicker. The question made him freeze for several seconds, after which he looked away. I could feel he was on the verge of disconnecting. “Flicker,” I said in a firm voice, placing my hand on the elf avatar’s shoulder. “Tell me.”

“It’s...” He was avoiding looking me in the eyes. “It’s just a forum.”

“Flicker,” I persisted, shaking my head. “I’m not an idiot.”

“It’s a discussion board about the other world,” he said finally. “The hints, the quest, what lies beyond, it’s all on the board. Most is speculation, people talking trash like every board on the net, but if you have started the quest, you have access to a new section.”

Why didn’t you tell me all this before? I struggled not to perform a lethal combo on him here and now. He had known about everything and had chosen not to tell me even after I had shared my clues. Trust was an illusion on the net, but one got ahead by making certain alliances. Flicker had already shared all the information relating to the hints, so why was he keeping the forum a secret?

“Who aren’t you telling me?” I turned his face with my hand so as to look him in the eye.

“Sarah, I...” I saw him shiver through the avatar. “There was info about you there.”

The words sent shivers down my spine,

“That’s how I found you,” Flicker continued, whispering as he spoke. “It had a link to that video clip you did, your Vesperia character and some contact information, as well as... It said you didn’t have a team.” There was another moment of hesitation. I gripped his shoulder tighter. “And it wasn’t only you. It had info on me as well: how many clues I’d found, how long it took me, odds for success... Everyone has a page on the forum. That’s how I knew who to ask for the firth clue. The other active groups had found only two at most. Only one had five, and her time was ending.”

This was the second thing from my vision that was true. There really was a ghost forum linked to the quest. Someone had been watching me and posting my progress. And if Flicker could find it, so could Firestarter, as well as any other contestant.

“Who runs the forum?”

“No one knows.” Flicker tried to pull away, but I didn’t let him. “Mostly it’s just us writing. Whenever someone’s time is over, his info page and all posts are deleted. He can only write in the open section, but even that’s monitored. Most often, people just drop out.”

That was to be expected. No hidden board admin would be stupid enough to post through his power account. If it were me, I’d have an alt account pretending to be a participant and keep tabs on everyone from there.

“How did you find the forum?” I asked on.

“A friend of mine invited me. He was extremely rich, so he paid a team to find everything there is about the hundred level quest. I’ve no idea how much he spent, but he got the address of the ghost forum.” Flicker’s avatar swallowed. “When he learned I had also gotten the quest, he shared the link. I’ve no idea what happened to him later. I can’t get in touch anymore.”

“You told me.” I released my grip and stepped away.

My head was pounding with new fears. All this time, I'd had the illusion I was somewhat protected. The dark broker, Jeff, even Max were supposed to look after me until this whole thing was over. Learning that my contact info was on a page on a discussion boards didn’t sound like any of them were doing a good job.

“Are we still a team?” Flicker asked behind me. I ignored him. “Sarah?”

“Send me the link to the ghost forum,” I said through my teeth. “And an invite.”

“O-okay,” Flicker stuttered. Two new messages appeared in my Vesperia in-box. “Anything else? I have some money if that would—“

“If that would what?” I snapped turning around. “Make me feel better?” Any other day, I’d have taken the money no questions asked, but right now I felt like I could explode. “Not everything can be solved with money! Because you kept this to yourself, there's no telling if either of us will complete the quest. Seriously, what were you thinking?!”

Flicker didn’t answer, standing in front of me as still as a statue.

“We could have masked our progress, bargained for more clues, or at least taken some countermeasures,” I was almost shouting. “We could have finished the quest already! Only because you felt too special to tell me about the forum!”

“I just...” Flicker clenched his fists. “I wanted to be part of a team. If I had told you you’d have left and I’d have to continue alone.”

“Well, now we’ll never know.” I opened my game menu and removed FlickerFlacker from my party. A series of notifications appeared, informing me of my lost benefits. I didn’t even bother to read them. “Good luck with the quest,” I said, then logged out of the game.

A few days ago I had dreaded that Flicker would leave my party. Now, I regretted ever adding him.

“Twinkle.” I took a deep breath. “Connect me to the forum. Let’s see what’s really going on.”