“It’s not that we don’t like you, dude. It’s just that…you talk back to much. The guys don’t like that and it turns them on us, ya know? If you could just chill a bit that would be easier for all of us.”

private message from Brad McKenny to Clay Jones

Ridiculous, I thought as I swam through the darkness toward the lamppost for the second time in five seconds. To win the fight and die in town!

I appeared directly on top of my corpse and stared down at it, the gleaming ball of Quintessence available for only me to loot. Jacob cried out as I bent down and scooped it up.

“What the Hell happened?!”

“Swamp Sickness,” I grumbled as my body disappeared.

“Where’d you get that!?”

“The Swamp of Sacrifices,” I replied, angrily eyeing my death penalty in the bottom of my vision.

You will die! I remembered, the game’s tagline shuffling through my mind like a playground insult, and boy was that true. I was only level 6 and I felt as though I’d been getting my ass kicked. Every time I got up a head of steam and started rocking, something unexpected happened to knock me back down again.

“Swamp of Sacrifices?” Jacob asked with interest. “Where’s that?”

“Southwest of Rathborne’s,” I told him as I stomped a loose cobble back down into the dirt. “Where the Hell have you been?”

His health bar looked lower than normal, and I was able to piece together my own answer before he replied.

“Tried to get my body back,” he sighed. “Turns out there’s some pretty nasty stuff in the Cragstone Plains. These weird skeleton type things made out of hard ash. A group of them ambushed me as soon as I got there. Now I’ve got ten percent death penalty. Ten percent!”

“How high does it go?” I asked, trying not to chuckle at his misfortune.

“Not sure—” Jacob started to say, them stopped suddenly as though someone had whacked him in the side of the head with a bowling ball. “Wait a second! Where the Hell did you go earlier? You were just standing there with me, and then suddenly—you weren’t!”

“Oh, right…” I replied. I’d forgotten all about that and the fact that Jacob hadn’t been in town when I’d logged back in. So, I took a couple minutes to explain the whole thing to him, from my epilepsy, to my mom smashing up my Fount and the mysterious message on my computer that had led me to Altarus and the others. Once I was finished, Jacob was staring at me like I’d just told him I could fly.

“Ep—epilepsy?” he finally managed to croak. “Like, seizures and shit?”

“Yes, Jacob,” I nodded. “Seizures and shit.”

“What causes that?”

I shrugged. “Glitch in my code? No one knows.”

“That sucks, dude.”

“A gift and a curse it seems,” I replied with an attempt at deflection humor.

“Yeah…” Jacob muttered. “And here I was bummed out by a little death penalty!”

We looked at each other and chuckled and I suddenly realized I hadn’t told him about my new talent.

“Hey, wanna see something cool?” I asked him, taking a step forward so I was standing just a few inches away. He looked at me awkwardly, as though I’d invaded his personal space, but nodded.

“Yeah, sure—”

His voice was cut off as I drove the butt of my axe into his lips, slapping him with a Blunted Strike that froze him in place. I leapt back and raised my arms like a prize fighter.

“Bam! Right in the kisser!”

Jacob’s face twisted angrily as the stun wore off and he began rubbing his face quickly as though trying to brush away the pain. I felt a little bit bad—just a little though.

“What the Hell was that!?” he cried out.

“Blunted Strike. Just picked up my first new skill, or talent as they call it.”

“How’d you do that?”

“An Intuition point,” I replied. “I’m not sure, but I think you get one every five levels.”

Jacob nodded, pursing his lips and letting me know, with a thin-eyed scowl, that there probably was a better way for me to show off my new ability. He was right.

“Well, you wanna use that new skill of yours to help me get some levels?”

“Sure,” I nodded. We grouped up and started to set off for the woods when I heard a voice call out to me.

“Aye, Rand!” It was a female voice, and for just a second I felt my heart leap inside my chest.

Rey?!

But of course it wasn’t her, and I felt a wash of depression pass into me and out the other side as I turned and saw a dark haired girl stride into the town square headed in our direction.

She wore a pair of high ankle boots of black leather, black pants that bloomed slightly at the hips, a white tunic with flared fringe at the shoulders and a set of leather gauntlets.

“Fujiko?” I asked as she approached. She nodded confidently and indicated over her shoulder with a tilt of her head.

Fujiko—Level 5

“Altarus is right behind me. Who’s your friend?”

I turned and gestured an introduction. “Jacob, Fujiko. Fujiko, Jacob.”

“You Japanese?” It was the first thing Jacob said. She did something that was a cross between rolling her eyes and being knocked off balance and opened her lips to respond, but before she could, I heard Altarus’ voice call out from behind her.

“No, she’s just a weeb.”

“Hey!” Fujiko whined as Jacob and I both broke out laughing.

“It’s okay,” he added. “We love her.”

Altarus looked about how he looked in real life, and wore a pair of straight black trousers with a tucked in grey shirt and stiff leather vest over the top. He held a Winchester, battered and ancient looking, that he tapped casually against his shoulder as he stepped up to the ground. It was like looking at a cowboy from the Old West that had his D.N.A. mixed with some fierce gothic warrior.

Altarus—Level 5

“Jacob, Altarus. Altarus—”

“Jacob,” Altarus interjected, taking his hand and shaking it firmly. “Good to meet you. My heart goes out to you and the rest of those held captive in this place.”

Jacob’s eyes flicked to mine and back to his. “Oh, so you can—you can leave like Rand?”

Altarus nodded. “And one day, if we succeed, you will be able to as well.”

“We were just about to go work off Jacob’s death penalty,” I told them. “Care to join us?”

“Leveling is leveling,” Fujiko nodded. “Add us to the group.”

I did and noticed that Fujiko wasn’t carrying a weapon. “You unarmed or something?” I asked.

Grinning, she opened her inventory, and seconds later, an enormous two handed hammer appeared in her hands. It looked like an enormous iron stone attached to a roughly hewn, black iron rod. The color matched her hair.

“That’s no starter weapon,” Jacob remarked with not to subtle admiration. Fujiko, pleased by his reaction, brandished the enormous mallet above her head like it weighed nothing, then pressed its butt into a crack in the cobbles and leaned against it with one arm, flashing a brutally cocky smile.

“Nope. It’s called The Hammer of the Headless Horseman,” she said proudly.

“Random mini-boss as far as we can tell,” Altarus explained for her. “Ran into it back in Ebonmire. Took the entire town to take him down, but Fujiko here did the most damage, so she got the loot.”

“125 damage,” Fujiko told us. “With a B Strength scaling!”

“Damn,” I said with admiration. “That is good! Mine’s 110 with C scaling.”

“I’d say I’d let you have it—but I’d be lying,” Fujiko teased.

“Yeah? Well, maybe I just kill you and take it from you,” I countered, taking a battle stance. “I mean, you’re just a lowly level 5.”

“Two lowly level 5s,” Altarus corrected me, his voice stern like a father on the verge of having to scold his children. I smirked in his direction.

“Don’t worry. I’ll spare you two.” Jacob chuckled beside me. “So, do you guys want to get moving?”

“These woods,” Fujiko asked. “What level are they?”

“Low level stuff,” I replied. “Why, you have something better in mind?”

“We passed a graveyard on the way here,” she replied. “We didn’t stop, as we wanted to meet up with you, but it looked a little more appropriate for people our level. The Quintessence would easily deal with your death penalty, Jacob.”

“Sounds good to me,” I shrugged, starting in the direction they had come, but stopped just as I passed them. “Say, do you want to like…bind here at our lamppost? If you die, you don’t want to respawn in Ebonmire, right?”

“The cemetery is halfway between here and there,” Fujiko told us. “We should be fine.”

“Still,” Altarus interrupted. “We should all be together in case something happens. Rand is right.”

It occurred to me I didn’t even have an idea of what it took to bind at a lamppost, as I’d just always been tied to the on in Weeping Hills. Altarus and Fujiko walked up to the rod with its glowing silver light, raised both hands above their head, then raised them slowly at their sides. A fountain of silver sprites spewed from their fingertips, dissipating quickly as a rising sound like wind swept through the air.

“There we go,” Fujiko said as she turned around to face me. “Now, let’s get a move on.”