Alex ran her hand over the virtual reality machine as it approached a (near) silent witching hour, allowing her fingers to move separately as they drifted over the hard plastic casing of the electronics, sighing as they bumped, one by one, into the dark latch.

“What do you do to me?” she asked, muttering. Her eyes drifted up, following the silver curves of what almost looked like a sleeper pod, tilted back at an angle. It sat expectantly, glimmering slightly in the yellow-tinged lights from the street and pulling itself out of the wall in the viewer’s mind. Pulling the latch allowed the top to drift open, pulled by imbalanced weight and slowed by an elastic cord until it made contact with the rubber stops on the other side of the hinges.

Now sitting open, the cushions that supported the player appeared to be beckoning, slightly darker than the surrounding gray metal and plastic. The tufted pillow, intended to reduce the amount the player sweated, turned what would have been a dark hole into what seemed like a small indentation that would catch any who entered it in a soft embrace. Placing her right arm into the space, it sunk slightly into the darkness, followed slowly by the rest of her body. Finally inside, she pressed the button by the latch that dropped the angle to near-flat.

At the head of the capsule, spiderlike legs began to fold, allowing the metal to come to a rest only a few inches above the ground. At the new angle, when she pulled the handle, the whole upper assembly responded quickly, flipping over but still refusing to slam shut, instead slowly coming to rest with more of a click than a thump. A tiny electric whir and a sudden darkening informed her that the latch had shut on the outside, closing but maintaining its reachability from the inside in the form of an indentation that could be pressed further in to open the latch again.

“Alright, game. Let’s see what you’ve got.” Alex said, then booted up the VR.

Select Program:

“Desktop”

Rune

Mythos Exedra

Mass Effect: Sirius 4

Call of Duty: Forgotten Country

AoR

More…

Alex allowed her mind to select Rune without pausing for effect. The aimless, bodiless zone that greeted the player when the capsule first started up always creeped her out a bit.

Welcome to the world of Rune! a blazing intro reminded her. Now that she’d played the game, the slight grunge that tinged the background art seemed so much more real than the overly-happy intro.

You have no character to load. Create new?

She hovered over the yes button, then was flooded by memories. Starting out, a nobody in a sea of faces where no guild had taken control, the mess that was cities, cleaning up the monsters from the so-called “first invasion”, where the respawning players joined and spawned into the havoc of a worlds overthrown. She remembered taking the lead of a group that would later become a guild, charging through the toadish creatures now called goblins poorly equipped with weapons that they didn’t understand.

In the middle, her second guild after the first had split over issues with the characters of the group. Trusting them too much, getting all her items from them, then suddenly having those items shut down and being killed in PVP for the first time over an Uncommon rune scroll.

Finally, working as a mercenary. Constantly sent first, constantly expected to die for no other reason than her not being “one of them”, and constantly proving them wrong. Building her way up in the mercenary community as the established guilds began, finally, after a year and a half, to attack the red-tier portals that would open at what seemed at first like random,

And being stabbed in the back.

She drifted back over to the “no” button, ready to exit, before the memory of Kayla’s quiet regard made her switch back to the “Yes” and hit it before she could think otherwise.

A flying sensation, then she pulled up in front of a rotating version of herself. “Customize?” it asked, and she confirmed. She made a slight reduction to her chest, a slight increase in height- to match her last character’s proportions, more than anything- and changed her facial features to be slightly more angular, finishing with lightening her lips and changing her green eyes to blue.

Enter character name: _

Alex stared at the final window in character creation, the underscore blinking at her. Her vision drifted up as she thought, giving her a view of a skyscraper with roof ruined and the sun peeking out over a jagged skyline.

“Deyana”

Good thing it picks up the spelling from my head. Alex thought, as her disembodied perception moved to the character’s. Feeling coming with the change, she flexed her fingers, then arms, then rippled as she shook from head to toe, feeling out the new body.

Damnit. Forgot I’m thinner now. she thought as she twisted, feeling somehow gangly in spite of the relatively slight difference between the bodies. Once she felt her new body out, she turned her attention back to the window begging for her validation.

Complete the tutorial?

A veteran of the game, she almost said no before remembering the rewards for completion. Finishing the tutorial would give basic gear and a set of low-level runes, which could be sold for a gear upgrade.

Or, I suppose…. Made into one? Alex thought to herself, selecting the tutorial.

Welcome to Rune!

Combat in Rune is-

Just-

Now you-

Alex skipped the text, then a goblin appeared in front of her as well as a sword in her right hand. She swung it, activating the rune as it moved and slicing through the goblin easily, darkly glimmering edges replacing gore and blood.

Not every-

Armor-

Harder-

Difficulty-

Portals are-

Runes can-

Combat is not the only important thing in Rune. Alex stopped skipping the tutorial text, beginning to pay attention as the system described crafting.

Creating items, or Crafting, is also an important part of making your way. While basic, physical items are not difficult to come across, and in fact will be relatively inexpensive in any Runecrafter’s Guild, runewritten items can cost as much or more than a house.

That is not to say that every runewritten item costs a lot- while having runes written in portal dust makes them last longer and have more powerful runes, writing in a simple magic-conductive ink such as CH-8S significantly reduces the price.

Alex listened to the rest of the explanation, which showed how to reverse the effects of some runes, and explained “Zone of Influence,” the game’s mechanic for modifying effects. Basically, having a “modifier” rune within the zone of influence would change the main rune, but having two runes with a zone of influence that included each other would result in… unpredictable effects. Usually detrimental.

A straight shortsword appeared before her, floating for a second before a table faded into view.

Select this window when you are ready to proceed.

Alex stared for a few moments, then opened the menu that listed her acquired runes. The four classic elements were listed in both modifier form and major form, as well as a major one for “edge” and "durability". Her hand balanced over the sword, holding the applicator, “fire” in mind.

Wait… she thought, then shook her head. She drew a thin line that mirrored the edge on the sword and reached down into the grip. Then, she drew a much smaller version of the “edge” rune along the line near the hilt, split in half. Flipping the sword over, she repeated the process. A half-circle appeared on the blade, twice the radius of the rune itself, which looked like a childish drawing of a goldfish, oval stacked on top of a diamond, with a line through it, with small perpendicular crosses on the end of those lines.

Technique: Mirrored Runes.

Thought so. Alex then proceeded to draw another edge rune further up the blade, so that the zones of influence of the runes were overlapping a very small amount. She followed it up by drawing the rune for “air” in each of their zones of influence, then added a small slash to the cross at the end of {Air}, reversing them all to “void.”

Technique: Reversed Runes

Glancing at the previously air rune, the tooltip now labelled it as a {Void} rune.

Quickly working, she added the minor versions of all of the elemental runes in a circle around the middle, then drew the [Durabilty] rune in the center of them. She felt a rush like spending a bit of mana, more than any others had caused her, but shook it off as unimportant, seeing as se wasn't in combat. That done, she flipped it over, rewriting the Durability rune, though this time without modifiers. Deyana picked up the sword, quickly tapping the accept button to finish the tutorial.

The bright light of day greeted her as she appeared under the spawn pavilion of the regional starting town.

Starting quests… at the DMQ. She thought, remembering back to her first character. Ignoring the players around the spawn pavilion hawking guilds with reckless abandon, she walked down the street, turning left into a modern business office. The lobby was a mess of players, with green nameplates when focused on, and NPC’s, who had the equivalent in blue.

Taking a number from the ticker, Deyana sat down, placing the sword that had been at her hip across her lap. She tapped it, opening the examine window.

Straight Short Sword

A short sword of middling quality, runewritten by an amateur writer.

Effects:

Unknown

Runes:

[Edge] + {Void}; [Durability] + {Fire}, {Air}, {Earth}, {Water}, {Ice}, {Void}, {Metal}, {Electricity}; [Durability]

Deyana pored over her work, looking it over until her number was called a few seconds later, together with the paper she held glowing a light green and buzzing.

She walked up to the open counter with her number hanging above it as a hologram, where a bored-looking man was sitting with his head leaning on his hand.

“What can I help you with?” he asked, in a tone better recognized with words like ‘go away’.

She nodded, acknowledging his visual boredom in both the active and passive forms, then spoke. “I’d like a low-level job, preferably one that could be completed by a single person.”

The worker raised an eyebrow. “Quite a few of those. I’ll narrow it down to close…” he tapped a few keys, without looking away from her or taking his head off his hand, “doable by someone below the first breakpoint,” More tapping. “and with a long-standing reward.” He said, grinning slightly.

Deyana nodded, fidgeting slightly and placing the number on the counter. “Sounds about right. What do you have?”

The man glanced quickly to the screen, then back up at her. “Some goblins’ve been passing through one of the outskirt towns. You’re going to have to take a train, since the road’s down. Probably fifteen minutes’ travel. Place is relatively nice, been seeing an upswing since it’s a U-curve zone. Assignment is to get a gob soul-piece.”

Deyana winced before the quest window even appeared. The U-curve, or level distribution favoring low levels, high levels, and far less in between, didn’t bother her much, but soul-pieces were hard to come by.

Used in high-level rituals, they were made from twenty soul shards from the same monster type- marble sized fragments themselves made of ten soul fragments, one of the uncommon drops for any mob.

“Hell of a job. A K to 1.5K kills. What’s the reward?” she asked, the quest-accept window hanging in the corner of her vision.

Here, the man smiled in a way that edged on creepy. “Well, I assumed that’s why you’d take this. Runecrafters’ credit, two common, one uncommon scroll.”

Deyana closed her eyes, attempting to talk herself out of it, then blew out a puff of air. “You got me. How?”

He waved the hand that had gone unmoved in the prior conversation. “No guild mark on that weapon. Next!”

Deyana shook her head, accepting the quest assignment on the way out and heading for the train station that conveniently waypointed itself on her vision, complete with a path finder.