Maya may have leveled, but she still lasted less than half a minute against Venix’s relentless, perfectly-timed, overpoweringly strong attacks.

Maya did get off the promised fireball — well, Flame Word, but same effect — but even being the same tier as Venix did nothing to alleviate the sheer power of the merla woman’s relentless and perfectly timed flaming hammer blows.

The fact that she didn’t have Shadow’s equipment also hurt Maya's stats significantly. Her own equipment was a far cry from equaling the arena gear; she’d forgotten how much she relied on those boosts for survival. And she found herself really missing Oceanblade. It felt very strange to fight in the arena without its comforting weight at her back. Since she wanted to keep her soulbound unique daggers as secret as possible, she had to rely on much weaker weapons.

It was an entirely disappointing performance, overall, and did nothing to help her flagging self-esteem. Was there nothing she could do well at all?

At least it was brief.

Once Venix had thoroughly beaten her into the ground, they met up in the atrium and headed out to a small tavern Venix knew of nearby. Unlike the arena cafe, it actually served alcoholic equivalents. Venix ordered for both of them, and before long Maya found herself relaxed enough to open up a bit more.

Things she’d never told anyone before, thoughts that had lain suppressed for a long time, all bubbled out with a sort of reckless desperation, as though Venix Heartstealer might somehow prove to be the solution to everything wrong with Maya.

Venix listened with understanding and empathy, and Maya found her impressions of the woman shifting still further.

Venix, whose real name was Violet though Maya couldn’t quite think of her that way yet, may look as young as anyone else in-game, but she clearly had a lot more life experience than Maya herself. If she had to guess, fifty or sixty?

Maybe it was the drink, maybe just how lonely she felt right now, but she found she trusted Venix in a way she hadn’t trusted anyone else she’d met in the game.

She found herself rambling about Drew, relating the vague hints of memory and knowledge that stung with their familiarity and vagueness. She explained about Domitius, about the Trickster, about Hara. She only just held herself back from explaining everything about the Oracle, then thought it over and went right ahead with that too.

“You could have it if you like, I think you could be really good as a Diviner.”

Venix shook her head. “No, Maya. I appreciate the gesture, but I’m not interested in getting in any deeper with the deities or player factions. I’m just here to relax, practice my dueling, and talk to my friends in the audience. I’m glad to talk through your problems if you think I can help, but I don’t plan on getting involved in anything so important as that.”

Maya nodded. “Alright, if you’re sure.”

“I am. Besides, I only play a few hours a week, so you’d really be better off choosing someone else.”

“What about my other proposal? Would you be up for helping with my rescue mission?”

Venix’s fins rippled as she pondered, then finally nodded. “I’m one of the weakest players on the server and outside the arena my gear is trash, but from the sounds of it you need all the help you can get.”

“I really do.” She really wished she could have brought along some of the mages, but James had been very clear that he would not authorize any such expedition.

Maya took another sip of her drink, feeling oddly optimistic. And rebellious.

“You don’t know any other players, do you?”

“Not really, no. Most people I know live on worlds that are more realistic and less of a fantasy game. And honestly I don’t get very much into the whole social aspect. The kind of people who play on this kind of world are usually a bit more focused, not as likely to want to sit down and chat.”

“Some are, I’m sure.”

“If so, you’re the first one I’ve met.”

Maya frowned, wondering if this was because of Domitius or just a coincidence. Two or three hundred players wasn’t so many, it wouldn’t be unreasonable that they’d all be focused on gameplay over socialization, was it? Especially if 9352 was as backwater and unimportant to the larger universe as everyone said.

Nope, not her problem. Stay focused.

“I think we should stop back at the mage academy,” Maya said. “I shouldn’t have left without at least talking to my friends first. James can say what he wants, but I’m pretty sure the Fire team would be willing to help us out.”

“There’s a whole academy for magic? What can they teach there, aren’t there only a handful of spells that aren’t class-bound?”

“Didn’t I just an hour ago demonstrate a very unique fireball spell?” Maya asked. “There are plenty of new spells just waiting to be discovered. And, I’d be willing to bet, magical variations on existing standard abilities as well.” After all, wasn’t that what Windborne Blade and Flaming Weapon were? “We’ve barely begun to scratch the surface of the possibilities.”

“If you say so,” Venix said, smiling faintly. She downed the last of her drink and stood. “Lead on.”

This time, Maya didn’t try to enter by the gate. She had no interest in involving anyone else. The fewer people who knew she’d even visited, the better. She instead climbed over the back wall with her Housebreaker perk and headed straight for the Fire classroom.

Nalana looked up when Maya entered, a casual smile on her face and her golden tail flicking. “Hi. Can I help you find something?”

Maya hesitated a moment, taken aback, then laughed when she realized. “Sorry, it’s me, Maya. I keep forgetting I changed my feathers. Is anyone else around? Raidah, Tapha, Fridget?”

“They’re offline, sorry.” Nalana gestured to the room, empty except for the two of them. “You missed today’s classes. I stayed late to work on my project.”

Maya faltered. She’d been hoping for a roomful of potential allies. She liked Nalana well enough, the felinis had proven herself capable in the past, but she’d hardly be sufficient backup on her own.

“Oh, wait. I think Raidah left something for you to look over.” Nalana left her desk and crossed to the front of the room, rummaged about on Raidah’s desk, then found the folder she was looking for and returned with it. “We have a few different avenues we’ve been following here, and these are the most promising. He said you’d be the best one to decide which ones should be prioritized.”

She accepted the folder, which had MAYA written across the front. “More student projects for me to grade?”

Nalana grinned. “Your dragonfire shield! It’s close to viable, by every metric we can run it through. Amazing! Right?”

Maya blinked. “Oh, right. That.” The planned invasion of Standalone’s house. She’d completely forgotten. It had seemed really important at the time.

“You’re not happy?”

“Well, I mean, of course I’m impressed. That’s very fast work. Assuming it works.” She began flipping through the pages, but though she had a vague idea of what was being suggested she knew it would take dedicated work to decipher and confirm everything. “It’s just, with so many players captured by Domitius, it seems a little less essential right about now.”

“Oh.” Nalana sighed. “Yeah, I’ve been trying not to think about it. I haven’t seen Vey or Lal or Eleona since before the attack. We still don’t know how many people were captured and who’s just offline for normal reasons. It’ll be a while before we know for sure. But it looks like a lot of people are going to have to start over.”

“That’s it? We’re not going to try to rescue them, they’re just fine with losing all their progress?”

Nalana shrugged. “What else are we going to do? No one’s gotten away from Domitius, not when he’s for real. I don’t know what was going on with you, to be honest, but I’m guessing you’re not exactly a priority target.”

Maya snorted. Let’s see … trickster, runaway, liar, traitor. She was probably about as high priority as it was possible to get while still being barely tier two. But she couldn’t exactly say that to Nalana.

“But, still. He’s locking people up and not letting them go unless they join him! Are we really okay with that?”

“It’s all part of the game, Maya,” Nalana said. “He can’t really hurt anyone. It’s just a delaying tactic. He wants to make sure Shardlord can’t properly exploit the new zone, so he’s trying to knock down some of our major players. But it doesn’t matter. The strength of the mage academy isn’t in our levels, it’s in our knowledge. And that won’t be lost. He may slow us down, but that’s all. And sure, I’d be pretty mad if I had to start over, so some people will probably be out for revenge. But I’m not planning to risk it when there’s practically no chance of success. What use would it be if we got ourselves captured too?”

“And, that’s what everyone thinks?”

“Well, not everyone." Nalana hesitated. "I suppose, if you want help, find Yinon. He’s using his alt, Robot or something? I don’t remember. He’s in Wind. He’s been ranting for days about how he can’t stand dropping three tiers, how he's going to make Domitius sorry. I don’t think he’s logged out at all.”

“Where is Wind?”

“Down the hall, fourth door across from us.”

“Thanks.” Maya glanced back at the folder of notes. “Should I leave this here, or take it with me?”

“Go ahead. We have copies of everything, that’s yours.” Nalana sighed. “If you go after Domitius, you might want to leave it though. He doesn’t usually kill players, but you can’t drop what you aren’t carrying.”

“Thanks.” She slipped it into her inventory, then glanced over at Nalana.

She probably ought to be rushing, but so much time had already elapsed, what harm would a little more delay cause? Apparently no one expected to be rescued anyway.

“Would you be willing to tell me more about yourself? I know we’ve fought together, but I don’t really know much about you.”

Nalana looked surprised. “Me?”

“I don’t see anyone else here,” Maya said, trying for levity. “What’s this project you’re working on?”

Nalana hesitated. “It’s kind of private,” she said slowly.

Maya sighed. “I’m not trying to steal your spells or anything. If you don’t want to talk about that, it’s fine. I just thought it could be a starting point since we both are interested in spell creation.”

“Oh, right.” Nalana’s smile returned almost at once. “In that case, I’d be happy to tell you. Sorry, I guess Ben’s just got to us.”

“I don’t know Ben. What happened?”

“Oh, you know. You came in one night, finished the Sparkburst spell he was working on, and then he felt like it wasn’t his anymore. I mean, everyone knows he did most of it, no offense, but he really really doesn’t like the fact that it was someone else who made it actually work. I’ve been working on this for a while and, I guess I just don’t want to worry about any of that kind of drama.”

“I didn’t realize I’d caused such a problem. Sorry, that’s not my intention.”

“Oh, I know. I’d just rather dodge that whole issue.” She laughed. “Besides, you’ll find plenty of people who’d love to have you look over their spells. Not everyone feels the need to do it solo, and there are lots who’d much rather have it working now. Like the shield designs, don’t forget to look over those and get back to us when you have a chance.”

“I’ll remember,” Maya promised, adding a note to her journal and adjusting her mental list.

Free the prisoners, help the oracle, escape Domitius, rejoin Fire team, deal with everything else. And ‘everything else’ kept growing too. She had to find Shadow and try to retake the Arena questline, it provided a nice little steady income and she wanted to try out her new spells and abilities in an environment where failing didn’t result in being locked out of the game for minutes at a time. (And whoever thought that was a good mechanic needed to be punched. She really hoped it wasn't Drew. What kind of game tried to prevent you from playing it?)

Later. Right now, she was trying to get to know Nalana. And maybe assess if she’d make a good Diviner.

“So, what are you working on, if you don’t mind sharing?” Maya asked. “Just the general idea.”

“Well, you know I’m not an actual mage, right?”

Maya shrugged. She didn’t remember if she knew that or not, but if so she’d forgotten.

“I was the one using spears when we ran the Phoenix dungeon, while everyone else was casting spells.”

“Oh, yes, now I remember. I don’t think I knew you weren’t a mage though.”

“Mage class provides a boost to learning spells and decreases the required accuracy to cast them. But it’s not a requirement. Which I’ve always thought is strange. Why is it that mages don’t get anything unique? Other classes get special abilities that are theirs alone, so why is it that mages have to share their spells with everyone else?”

“Huh. I never thought about that.”

“Exactly! So I’ve been thinking about what special things there are about warriors, and what that would look like in a broader sense, because it makes sense that either everything is universal or everything is class-locked.”

“Hasn’t anyone else investigated this? It seems like the sort of thing that would have to be on the wiki.”

“Until recently, the wiki was basically empty. It had the usual list of quests, where to find monsters, classes, abilities, spells, and detailed maps of the first five zones, but that’s it. All superficial. Abilities are so general and unique, it's hard to get a measure on them. You and I could have the same exact spell, but cast it at different speeds and do different amounts of damage. The underlying mechanics of why it does what it does and when are still unclear. Another thing we're looking into.”

“Is there any way to view the wiki in-game? That still sounds pretty useful to me.”

“Not without hacks. It doesn’t even allow multiworlding in vanilla. I think you even have to mess around with the code just to enable screenshots.” Nalana shook her head. “But, the point is, even though there’s been a lot of speculation lately because of Shardlord and Domitius, no one has figured it out yet.”

“Or if they have, they haven’t posted it publicly,” Maya mused. If it were tricksters doing the discovering, that seemed probable.

“Right. So I’ve been cross-referencing all the default attacks that anyone can use against the special abilities that only warriors have access to, to figure out the difference. And the special attacks all have very magical-seeming effects.”

“I’ve noticed that too.”

“But it’s not based on a spell. It’s based on the interaction of the class with the weapon.”

“So they are class restricted?”

Nalana grinned. “That’s what you’d think, isn’t it? But that’s not what I’m trying to prove. You know we have weapon enchantments, like Ranon used to make my spears ice-element. So why can’t we make a class enchantment?”

“Um, what? Sorry, you lost me.”

“Classes already interact in weird, unpredictable ways. You can swap from one to another at will, but only if certain very specific conditions are met. And those conditions are different from class to class. If we didn’t have the guides at the Hall to give us hints, I doubt anyone would be anything but what they started out as.”

“Okay …”

“But! What if I could trick a sword into thinking that anyone holding it was a warrior? Or a bow that thinks its wielder is a ranger? It would be a whole new paradigm of magic weapons. A clear advantage.”

“Sounds difficult.”

“Oh, it is. Insanely difficult. I’m not even sure if it’s possible. It’s just a theory. But I want to make sure I do all the research and make it as thorough an analysis as has ever been made.”

“I hope you can figure it out. It sounds awesome. I’ve been trying to find a magic bow, but I’m not sure they exist. I saw a ranger shooting what looked like spells with his bow.”

“Exactly! There’s already demand for it. Do you mind if I cite your example as evidence?”

“Go for it.”

Nalana made some notes, and Maya saw the way she lingered over her pages.

“Sounds like you’ve got a lot to do, I should get going and stop distracting you.”

“It’s fine, if you want to stay,” Nalana said.

Maya shook her head. “I need to find that wind guy and anyone else who’d be willing to help me. I’ve delayed too long as it is. Nice talking to you. I’m sorry to rush off, but I hope we can chat again sometime.”

“See you,” Nalana said, waving, then turned back to her research. “Good luck.”

"Thanks," Maya replied. "Same to you."

She did feel a bit closer to Nalana knowing they both had a deep interest in figuring out how things worked, but it also felt impersonal to only talk about game systems. And it hadn’t helped prove whether or not Nalana would be a good choice for the Diviner’s orb. Finding a worthy candidate looked like it would be a more involved process than she'd at first anticipated.