Quicker than a ray of light, then gone for

— Madonna, Ray of light

Not a wave.

This is not a wave.

The thought ricocheted inside Sarah’s head as the white light started to subside, and the contours of the trees became visible again, first as mere hints, then as faint lines, and finally taking their proper shape.

She was lying on her back, stunned, trying to regain her senses. She could barely hear a sound, and almost all meaningful sensory feedback came from touch — feeling the grass under her body, the shrubs rubbing her arm, the pain coming back to her, puncturing her shoulder where the sabre-toothed wolf had bitten her.

But she felt no pain from the explosion or whatever it had been. A sudden flash of white light, like a nuclear bomb going off, but without the fire and the sonic boom and the devastating shockwave.

Sarah tried to focus her sight on something. The trees were still mere silhouettes, but at least they were there to be seen. She sat up indecisively, leaned on a trunk, and waited for her eyes to adjust or the light to diminish, or both.

After a while, when she could see a little better, she realized there had been a shockwave of sorts. Tristan lay in pieces scattered all around — in a most strange way. It had not been torn, no, every piece seemed to be whole; the motorbike had been disassembled somehow, as if some superfast mechanic had come with the light and taken it apart bit by bit.

A tickling sensation, a buzzing, subdued sound, and the apparition of glowing letters against the light background. Familiar sensations that were now enhanced by the weird state she was in. A system notification.

Task failed: Retrieve gems to fuel the Burner

- no reward

Yeah, fuck you, Sarah thought, and spat bitterly. Are you sure I failed, Game Master? I could still reassemble my fucking motorbike again and cross the wall to get the fucking gems. How would you like that? There must be three thousand pieces at most. If I search the whole area I can recover them all and finish in one week.

There was no use wallowing in her bitterness. She had to go back now, and she had no vehicle. She needed to figure out how to get back on foot with those towers firing arrows at the road. But first she needed to know where it was. The road, that is.

“Map,” Sarah said. A partial map of the area, covering the path she had taken from the Burner, appeared in her field of vision. Just like before, she could only see the part she had covered, but it was enough to see where the road was; once there, it was a matter of running back to the tower, while somehow avoiding the arrows. The floxas would surely ignore her, like they had done before.

When she got out of the forest and took a look at the road, though, she knew she didn’t need to worry about the floxas or the towers or mostly anything else.

The floxas lay down on the road literally in pieces. It turns out they were compound beings, with a multiple-legged creature at the bottom, some kind of turtle on top protecting the whole thing, and in the middle, sandwiched between both, a dark, amorphous being that seemed to lack any means of locomotion. That is the brain, Sarah concluded. The creature that commands the other two.

Whatever was that kept the parts together had vanished with the explosion, so the “turtles” and the “brains” had simply fallen down, and now the floxas were scattered all over the road, alive, but unable to do anything.

Sarah ventured on the road, fearless now. The same thing that had happened to the Tristan and the floxas would have disabled the towers too — any kind of machine, she concluded.

It had been a stroke of luck that she wasn’t holding any of her weapons when the light hit, it occurred to her as she contemplated the dark brains writhing on the road, powerless. The arquebus, the rifle and the flamethrower were all composed of moving parts that would have suffered the same fate as the motorcycle and the floxas.

She only needed to beware of organic beings, just like herself, which wouldn’t be affected by whatever process had taken place in the area.

She set foot on the road and sprinted ahead. She ran for a while, then walked, then ran a bit more. The towers were not so far away, and she could make it before sundown.

* * *

When Sarah stepped out of the elevator, in the Flasher tower, she found that everybody was there. She had seen the lights going on and off as she approached, sending a signal to her, so she had headed over to Maggot’s tower instead of the Burner. She had walked among the floxas that lay in pieces all along the road, and taken the elevator to meet them. Uberyn, Undaya and Gervain were visibly excited by what had happened, but Maggot was utterly unable to contain himself, and when she joined them, he almost jumped on her with the news.

“I just earned a skill,” he said, as if he could barely believe it himself.

“Really? What is it?”

“Disgregate. I... I don’t know what it means.”

“I told you. It means that you broke them down in parts,” Gervain intervened. He was looking through an ornate telescope that was mounted in front of the window, pointing at the road. There were four of them, one on each outer wall.

Sarah guessed that they had taken turns to look through the lens. They would have felt as shocked as her when the phenomenon happened and all the enemies suddenly fell down in pìeces.

“You did this?”

“Yes,” Maggot replied. “At first I didn’t know how. I was just trying to make these things work, but there was no way,” he explained, raising his arms to show the wristbands. “I started banging them against each other in frustration. Suddenly... it’s like the openings connected, you know?” He spoke as if he still didn’t understand what he had done. “The bracelets... hooked into each other through the openings, or something. A bright light surged out of them. My arms started shaking uncontrollably, as if some huge power were about to be released. I pointed my arms to the road, and then there was a big flash that blinded me. And then, this,” he finished, pointing at the landscape.

“It blinded all of us,” Undaya said. “I don’t think the bracelets were supposed to release that much light in a single shot.”

“We have been theorizing about it,” Uberyn said, and Sarah thought it was the first time that he seemed dumbfounded. “It’s likely that all those failed attempts by Maggot to fire his weapon had resulted in the energy accumulating bit by bit, and not being released as a directed shot. Then, suddenly, he made the connection, and all the light escaped in one huge burst, covering the whole region.”

“Which was awesome,” Gervain said. “Why did you walk back here, by the way? What happened to your bike?”

“I think somebody disgregated it,” Sarah said sternly, giving Maggot a cold glare. She couldn’t keep it up, though, and she burst out laughing. “I failed my mission, of course, but I think we won’t need gems for a while anyway.”

They kept talking about what had happened for a while. It was obvious that Maggot had accidentally found a way to fire his weapon, and Uberyn’s explanation of the sudden release of so much light was almost certainly true. Still, there were details that remained mysterious. The towers themselves, for example, seemed immune to the effect. The blinding white light had enveloped the whole area, but the towers were still standing, and everything they contained kept working; nothing had been dismembered by the flash. Evidently, there was some kind of force field or something like that, protecting the towers from the effect of the Flasher. It was only natural, they concluded, since the Flasher itself would collapse otherwise as soon as it was used.

There were also other unanswered questions, like what was the exact purpose of Maggot’s and Undaya’s towers. The Burner was wholly designed to produce and shoot flames; the Piercer had arrow cannons that the operator could point and fire at will. But Undaya’s magic came from herself, and the Damper didn’t seem to offer anything more than a place for her to seat while she fired it; similarly, Maggot’s light seemed to come exclusively from his wristbands and headband, and the tower itself didn’t seem to participate in its creation or use.

As Uberyn, Undaya and Gervain debated these topics eagerly, Sarah decided that she didn’t care. She had realized that these details didn’t matter at all.

“Hey, Maggot,” she called out. “I’ve never been in this tower before. Can you show me around?”

“Oh... yeah, sure,” his friend replied. His voice was every bit as weak and unsure as always, even thought he had just achieved a great victory for all. For once, it hadn’t been Uberyn, the overpowered blond beast, but Maggot, the small, unimpressive man, the one to save the day. Oh, Maggot, how I wish I could transfer some Charisma to you, Sarah thought as he stepped into the elevator with her.

They toured the Flasher and its different levels. The tower was very similar to the Burner, but it was more spacious, something that Sarah attributed to the fact that there was no need to have reservoirs of fuel sandwiched between the walls to feed the fire cannons. In one of the middle levels they grabbed some food; Maggot explained that it was brought every day by some big birds that deposited the packs through small openings in the wall. Where it came from, he was not sure, but he conjectured that whoever was behind the Gate was sending the food to them so that they could keep firing the towers and defending the Gate.

“Hey,” Sarah asked after a while, “does this elevator go all the way up? I’d like to breathe some fresh air. Also, the view from the top must be awesome.”

“Well... yes, it goes all the way to the top,” Maggot replied. He couldn’t conceal the uneasiness in his voice.

“Come on, let’s go to the roof for a while,” Sarah said. “Really. I promise not to push you down,” she winked.

Maggot grinned feebly.

“OK, let’s take a look,” he said.

When they stepped out of the elevator and set foot on the roof, Sarah confirmed that the view from up there was indeed impressive. The whole landscape extended majestically in all directions, and in exquisite detail. Once more, she had to remind herself that this was not real, that it was a simulation of a world that didn’t actually exist. But all her senses told her otherwise.

The tower was tall, very tall. She was stepping just above the level where she had been with the others just a few minutes ago, but it felt so much higher that she felt dizzy. She also felt overwhelmed by the beauty of the weird landscape in front of her. It was a hellish land, but it was beautiful too, with the magma-filled mountains on the horizon, the dark forest, the road extending from the Gate and meandering between the mountains, the huge Gate and the other towers around her.

“Watch out,” she warned Maggot as they inched closer to the edge. She could feel the wind enveloping them both as they did so. One strong gust and they could tumble and fall down; one had to be careful up there.

“Hey, Sajya,” a voice came from behind her. “I was looking for you.”

“Uberyn,” she said, turning around. “What’s up?”

Uberyn made a gesture, inviting her to get closer. She walked to him. Maggot stayed near the edge, looking down, marveling at the sight. Maybe he didn’t even hear Uberyn? His senses are a bit nerfed too, Sarah wondered.

“I was thinking about what we’ll do next,” Uberyn said. “The effect of the burst can only be temporary. There will be more floxas coming soon. We are running out of gems, so we need to be prepared,” Uberyn said.

“I get that,” Sarah replied. “But, Uberyn, you see...” At that point she decided that she could trust him. Or more accurately, she decided to trust him, whether it was justified or not. Her voice became a whisper when she continued. “I’m not here to complete this or that quest. I have a specific goal in mind. I’m looking for my boyfriend. I know he’s in the game somewhere.”

Uberyn seemed a bit shocked, but he managed to maintain a more or less neutral expression.

“Oh, I see,” he said. “Well, I guess he must be a remarkable guy. You’ve gone into so much trouble for him. But don’t worry, we’ll find him together.”

“Oh, no,” Sarah said, her face revealing her pain. “I don’t think so. How tall is this tower, Uberyn? Do you have any estimation?”

Now, the paladin looked just confused.

“Huh?”

“This tower, the Flasher,” Sarah insisted. “It’s pretty tall, but would you say it’s a great height?”

“I— I guess so, but—”

“Watch me,” Sarah said, glaring at him intensely. “Don’t look away.”

Having said this, Sarah turned around, took a step, then another, then another, and when she was sure Maggot could hear, she warned him, “Hold tight!”

Maggot turned around, surprised. He had no time to react: Sarah was already jumping on him. One second later, they were both in the air. Then there was only one option: to fall.

Maggot held tight. He held on for his dear life. They plummeted to the void, freefalling as Uberyn stood on the roof with his mouth open in shock, and they kept accelerating as they went down, down, the world around them becoming a vertical blur, the ring around Sarah’s finger shining so brightly that it looked like a tiny sun.