There's a thin, viscous pressure around my whole body, as though I were submerged in an ocean of syrup. Even through my insulating feathers, I can tell the vicinity is cool, or chilly. I'm holding my breath, not voluntarily, but because I don't seem to be working the my mouth or slit nostrils properly enough to open them and inhale. That might be a good thing for the moment, all things considered. The endless black continues for a moment before I realize that my eyes were closed in the transition- I flail to open my eyes, working my "eyelids" in as many ways as I know how.

When I try to squeeze my eyes, as if to squint, the sheathes split apart, revealing the world around me. Knowledge unbidden informs me that birds don't have mammalian eyelids so much as protective covers, and that a third eyelid perpendicular to the other two acts to sweep away debris and lubricate the eye. For once these scarred memories invading my thoughts are welcome, since it somewhat aides in rationalizing the idea of 'squeezing' to open or shut the eyelids, and it's a bird fact, and birds are cool. At least, when I'm not stuck playing one.

I am indeed submerged, lost somewhere deep in a pool of clear-white fluid of unidentifiable origin. The vicinity is dark and mysterious, due in large part to how quickly the light dissipates. The fluid fades from shades of milky white to pitch black over a miniscule distance- I can hardly even see my taloned toes, and I would stand at half a meter tall at most. I somehow manage to bully my neck into tilting my head back once more. My fancy new sense for (what I can only assume is) orientation goes haywire the second I hit manage to turn myself about ninety degrees. By that point I should be either looking "up" or looking "down," but frankly I can't tell the difference. The counterforce from my motion sets me on a light spin through the fluid, which is far less viscous than I thought, but I don't bother to correct it. Whatever light-source is supplying this pool, I'm far enough away from it that its rays have been bent and refracted so thoroughly as to conceal which direction they're coming from. Which is unfortunate, because the light is probably the sun, and the sun is up, and swimming up is usually a good way to avoid drowning.

Speaking of drowning, my lungs start spasming wildly. I can feel sphincters in my throat close and open and close again, clutching at air that isn't there. Clearly I've inherited much more of the avian respiratory structure, because hot damn does it feel weird. From what I understand, birds are supposed to be able to go without air for just a little while, but unless they've specialized pretty narrowly in diving (whether through water or through the sky), they run on a pretty tight oxygen budget.

Attempts at opening my mouth are less than successful. I fumble with my jaw muscles, frustrated, but no matter how I try to flex them, the Shrike has no useful response. Yeah, playing a monster is going to be rough, even if I figure it out. I can see why people start to give up, probably before escaping the character creator, even- I'm calling on every muscle I know, raising my cheeks and tugging my masseter, but how do I order about organs that I don't know? I've never had them before, I can't feel them, my brain isn't built to use them... Actually, I've played games just like this, but usually with a keyboard. The whole theme of those games are awkward controls, though, while the theme of this one is I'm fucking drowning.

I can feel the sudden pressure as my body pulls itself apart from the inside. My lungs are making a vacuum of sorts, chugging air about desperately as it filters and feeds the rapidly depleting tissues. For a moment I am grateful to my tiny Unity score- dying like this is agonizing, but having such poor neural connection is turning the fear and anguish into a dull roar. I heard about players avoiding dangerous situations because dying could get traumatizing depending on what killed you, but I doubt I'll have any trouble if it's just "the Shrike" dying and not "me". Still, I'm frustrated, because this game is rigged. Even if I get my mouth open, won't I just drown in this odd fluid? Argh, at least I can get some more practice in with my muscles before I die...

Giving up on the mouth, I decide to fumble with my nose-flaps. They seem to shut tight, probably for aerodynamic reasons, or for situations like this. Wiggling my nose doesn't do anything, nor does flaring my nostrils. For a moment it seems hopeless, but then I try "tugging my ears," as if tightening the skin across my face. That does it- I can feel the cold embrace of the fluid as it rushes in my now-open nose, not nearly so watertight as a mammal's, and the sudden pressure of it occupying the spaces where air should have been. The natural horror of the situation makes the Shrike tremble and convulse, but all of the sudden- it vanishes. The pressure is gone and I can hardly tell the difference as the fluid slides in.

My lungs are thankfully low maintenance. I realize I don't have a "breathing response" at all, no inhale or exhale. I'm breathing all the time, at least now that my nose is open. I'm breathing liquid- it's a good denser than air, but not more viscous, and apparently it has enough oxygen steeped inside it to be useful. That seems highly unlikely, but my memory argues with me, bringing up an obscure chemical that was once considered for liquid breathing as a therapeutic to respiratory distress. I huff and tell it to shut up unless it has anything useful to say.

Now that my drowning situation is sorted, I let myself go limp, carried along by an invisible current. My convulsions were pretty ineffectual, but at least they propelled me through the fluid. I'm slowly decelerating, this stuff is thin enough I won't stop any time soon.

Floating aimlessly along, I play with my muscles, trying out different commands. I can't get the "odd ones" like my jaw, ankles, or wrist to respond at all, but I do manage to find a "go limp" button pretty quickly. It seems the universal signal for a Shrike to relax its body is roughly the same as a human's, but rather than deliberately stopping all movements, I just have to stop giving out commands, as it were. It's a subtle difference, but I latch onto it pretty quickly. If you "stop paying attention" as a human, a lot of people get twitchy, or default into routines, but Shrike here... doesn't. No wasted motions, no bad habits.

People spend decades on achieving that sort of zen. If I can learn to puppeteer this body, and spend the time to ingrain good habits to help me, I should be able to whoop some serious ass. In the mean time, though, I'm starting to understand exactly why my Unity value is so low. The Shrike may be humanoid enough, but it truly is an alien experience, through and through. A monster. I'm starting to wonder how the developers had the time or scope to make all of this. Even as successful as G.C.O. is, it's probably still operating at a loss. Maybe it has some sort of WG tie? Military research, perhaps? Nothing good or fun comes from sticking my nose in that mess, though, so I'll leave it be.

It's fascinating what I can see and feel, as dull as they are- the environment and my senses alike. I mean, breathing water and drifting aimlessly in what appears to be a deep sea is new and interesting, but for better or for worse I can't see anything but myself, and barely myself at that. Then I can feel and taste and "smell" the fluid, as odd as it is, but it's pretty distant, like I'm just being told about what I should be sensing rather than actually feeling it myself. The thought of drowning was indeed terrifying, but that was just the thought. Even now, the Shrike's adrenaline is spiking and thrumming about, stirring up all sorts of post-trauma jitters, but I have plenty of attention to spare...

This environment is bizarre, to say the least. It feels more like I'm floating in the air than swimming. Given my ostentateously avian features, I would expect to have hollow bones and thin muscles that natural predispose me to floating, yet I don't seem to have any momentum, sparing what I've imparted on myself. My memory offers up a peace offering by re-teaching me how rotational momentum works and how it can be exploited for better control in "weightless" environments. I take that up gladly, and ever so carefully, I start to "pilot".

With naught more to pilot than my fingers and toes, I kill my spinning with careful counterforce. With some practice, I manage to bend around my pelvis with only a few failed attempts. It seems a Shrike's abdominal musculature not too unlike a human's, thankfully. My newfound flexibility allows me to kill my actual speed, the initial force slowing ever so slightly as I writhe back and forth like a spastic. Once I've stilled, I combine the masterful control of no more than six percent of my new body to rotate enough to point "down" and start drifting in that direction. It takes more tries than I'd care to mention.

Now that I can breathe underwater, or underfluid, I don't care much about getting to the surface. It's just as likely I find something interesting on the "ocean floor". Sure, drifting back-first into the deeps probably isn't the best call, but it's not like it could do much harm in a beginner area like this.

I'm starting to wonder if there's anything else down here at all...

Actually, navigating like this is pretty neat. I have to refresh my speed every so often, but I can mostly just relax and drift.

Still, I wouldn't call it riveting. Maybe this is so slow because I can't swim properly? I suppose they expect most players to at least be able to move.

Perhaps I should have went up after all...

For a game that's so fantastical and ambitious, it truly doesn't seem to have its priorities straight. I've been drifting downwards for a while now, and I haven't found a single piece of scenery, a creature, a NPC... Why would any game dump a new player into an empty, endless abyss? Perhaps I'm here on accident; there are so few monster players that this portion of the game might not have been bugtested too thoroughly. I could be out of bounds, by this point. At any rate, I don't seem to be getting... anywhere...

Well, I guess it's as good a time as any to mess about with the UI. In most of these games it's omnipresent, but G.C.O.'s impractical realism is most present in being a traditional RPG under the hood, yet totally devoid of all visual indicators or numbers on the surface, at least so far as I'm aware.

Apparently, you pull up the UI using the same trick you would to emergency quit. That varies from one MMI to another, but I- don't recall how mine works. I idle in silence, willing the memories back into my mind. Slowly, tendrils of thought slip back into my brain, drug out from some untenably deep crevice of useless technological trivia. Early model MMI - medical, test and practice - standard pattern of dive 'non-immersed/AR' - military use? No, not that one. Whatever, fuck it, that looks pretty similar to mine. 'Visualize removing the MMI by hand'.

That's pretty awkward right now since I'm in this decidedly inhuman body, but I give it a go anyway.

After a bit of fumbling, my vision lights up, a row of boxes fading into reality before my very eyes:

HELP STAT PEEP VNMR CHAT QUIT

Most of the options are pretty self explanatory, I think. How do I select an option? I try to visualize pressing one, to no avail. The attempt seems to make the text in the box lighten, brightening from a modest grey to a whiter shade. I try simply focusing on "STAT" and sure enough, it begins to whiten. With my full attention on it, it turns white rapidly, glowing like struck phosporous.

The bar of options vanish, replaced with a new box:

Name

Shrike

HP 5/5

MP 1/1

LV 001

Summoner

Unknown

Class

SUMMONED MONSTER

Form

SHRIKE MALE (YOUNG)

Basis

SHRIKE (δ-)

Learned Skills

“Apex Claws”, “Maneuver(I)”

This is... less than ideal. I understand what most of it means- I have fairly low HP and MP, okay, and I'm still level 1. My name is in fact "Shrike" and I am a "SHRIKE," at least judging by 'Basis,' which I take to equate vaguely to my race. I don't know what "Apex Claws" or "Maneuver" are, or how they work. Normally when I think something that inane my scarred memory hops in to correct me, but this time it's silent, totally stumped. That's a gratifying thing indeed. God, I love games. On that note, the memory does recognize the symbol by my basis as "etruscan symbol," but is absolutely stumped as to what it means. My own speculation would be that it's some kind of level system. I'm not too sure what to make of it all, though. Finally, I have a summoner of "Unknown." What?

I look around- the box chases my field of view, obviously. Silly me. How do I exit this menu? Just focus on- whoops, there it goes.

HELP STAT PEEP VNMR CHAT QUIT

HELP sounds promising, but I decide to try CHAT instead. There should be at least one other person down here, right? I wouldn't hurt to be able to communicate with them directly. Focusing on CHAT, the STAT option dims, losing its glow, and eventually fading grey. Meanwhile, CHAT begins to glow wildly. The boxes fade away once more:

LOCAL

NO PLAYERS IN RANGE

FRIENDS

NO PLAYERS IN RANGE

MAIL

NO NEW MAIL

No players in range? That's a bummer, but this menu does look fairly easy to navigate. Everything here looks self explanatory, though the fact that communications between friends is limited by range seems odd. Can you even choose where you spawn? What if you end up in some nice town, and your buddy gets dropped at the bottom of a breathable ocean? Would you still be able to chat with each-other in-game? I suppose that's probably what mail's for, but I wouldn't put it past these devs to somehow limit that, too. Eh, nothing to do here, either way. I exit the menu.

HELP STAT PEEP VNMR CHAT QUIT

Well, that leaves two more to try out before I go for the obvious option. I suppose I should just get them out of the way before I go looking at the guide. It never hurts to explore, though I must confess a vague fear that one or either of these buttons further cripple my account. Here goes nothing!

HELP STAT PEEP VNMR CHAT QUIT

...

HELP STAT PEEP VNMR CHAT QUIT

Neither option did anything. At least, nothing obvious. That was a waste of time. Resigned, I finally open the HELP option:

HELP ...

Rather than fade to a new box, the other menu items just vanish, turning the bar into a search engine of sorts. Not even the HELP menu has a tutorial, I suppose?

I have no way of typing into the menu, so I try thinking a word: "PEEP"

HELP PEEP Menu Item: Option. Removes global curses.

These results are cryptic and frankly unhelpful, but at least that part of the UI was intuitive. Just think a word real hard, and you're off! So far as PEEP goes, I suppose it's some kind of cheat? "Removes global curses" sounds like a way to dig yourself out of deep shit, but I lack the necessary context. Either way, I can know the following to be true: there are curses, there are globes, and there are "global curses." More useful information than one might think, when building a worldview from the bottom of a syrup abyss. I try VNMR next.

HELP VNMR Menu Item: Option. Reveres memory.

I... don't know what that means. How can you revere a memory? My memory isn't so thirsty for praise- actually, right now, it's screaming at me, violent and angry and abominably active. I didn't notice when we were just on the menu, but this particular set of characters is setting off a scar something fierce. No matter how hard it tries, though, my brain can't dig up the meaning itself. When I encounter some foreign game concept, or shit the developers made up, the memory shuts up, yet here I find it going wild. When it comes to real life, I very rarely run into anything I can't (eventually) recall, even taking into account the gaping holes in human knowledge the Crashdown left behind. Yet here, "VNMR" appears to be the answer to one or more questions my brain doesn't know how to ask.

Peculiar.

Still, it's making my damn head hurt even in VR, so I'm moving on.

HELP Shrike TAXA Monster Race: Limited. Sensate-Winged-Biped-Humanoid-Harpy-Shrike ATRB

COMMON: "Vicious" "Agile"

UNCOMMON: "Sneak"

RARE: "Needle"

UNIQUE:

DEFN Very rare, deadly biped. Once common in many locales; hunted to near extinction for the production of almost incomparably sharp daggers. Thought to be a relative of the Harpy.

Now we're talking! There's some useful information here. I suppose it wouldn't be that helpful to someone trying to hunt a Shrike, but on my end this is perfect.

"TAXA" seems to be used in the Greek sense, with regard to names and arrangement. The only big take-away is that being sensate is apparently optional, or at least only one major classification of monster races. I suppose I may have lucked out with the Shrike, I can't imagine trying to learn how to operate something that isn't sensate.

"ATRB" probably means Attribute or Attributes, I suppose. Either way, it aligns quite well. What are Attributes used for? What do they mean? Probably something to do with how I fight. 'Needle' seems to be quite particular, aligning nicely with my claws, and 'Sneak' makes perfect sense for the rest of my anatomy, or at least it should once I know how to puppeteer it.

"DEFN" is the most straight-foward; the definition of the thing. Before, that was the only filled box, so I suppose they felt the need to clarify. Shrikes are in high demand, it looks like. I'm heartened by "near extinction" in the sense that, if they are so rare these days, most people probably don't know what a Shrike looks like. At least, that's the thought. It doesn't really specify when exactly the Shrike became rare. The fact that it says 'thought to be' a relative of the Harpy is odd- doesn't the TAXA say that much for certain?

That's enough of that. What else can I search? I try thinking of the Etruscan symbol from earlier, but nothing comes up. I suppose I'd need its phonetic name for that. What about those 'learned skills'?

HELP Apex Claws TAXA Passive Skill: Rare. ATRB: "Harpy" [71 Unknown] DEFN Remnants of a powerful Bloodline. Increases Claw Durability. Reduces Claw Regeneration Time.

Neat! I get a passive right off the bat! I'm not sure how normal that is, actually, but I'm willing to pretend that makes me special. It's a pretty neat one, at any rate. If Claws can get dull or break, as my needle-like claws well; might, then any passive to reduce wear and tear is a must. It doesn't say how effective this one is, though. I wonder how abilities scale in this game? I decide to check out "Maneuver," too.

HELP Maneuver (I) TAXA Passive Skill: Uncommon. ATRB: "Agile" "Harpy" "Sneak" [197 Unknown] DEFN Magical beings frequently develop the capacity to project mana to boost maneuverability. Guarantees one Critical Success per mana spent (within bodily limits).

new

old

I whirl around, tumbling into an all-out sprint. My autopilot disappears in a heartbeat, leaving me to fend for myself as I run from the gathering mob of players chasing after me. I can’t say my desperate fleeing is particular graceful, but I do manage to hit a decent speed after I wheel back around the corner. My stride is consistent, and it’s surprisingly long given how stubby my legs are.

As it turns out, sprinting is easier to get used to than walking. I mean, it might just be that I’m better at using this body after the extra practice, but I do get a distinct impression that the Shrike simply prefers to move fast. More precisely, I feel like it’s entirely incompatible with even the concept of moving slowly.

Even when the all-out sprint starts to feel almost natural, I watch my step, careful not to get caught on a misplaced stone. Tripping would be less than ideal, judging from the cacophony of boots trampling the backroad behind me. My hearing is unusually acute, or so it seems. I may be able to abuse that trait later, but for the moment I focus on getting the hell out of Dodge. I mull over my escape routes, busy trying to keep myself at top speed, but I’m rudely interrupted by a wall that appears out of thin air right in front of of me.

Well, it didn’t actually appear out of thin air, but it felt that way. I was so focused on watching my steps and planning ahead that I forgot to actually watch where I was going. I snap my head back to the front, taking in as much detail as fast as I can. The wall is really just a brief patio, no taller than I am and hardly more than two meters across. If I had more time, I could go around it, but I’m barreling right into It far too fast for that, and I dismiss that idea immediately. Slowing down to a halt and scaling it doesn’t seem to be a legitimate option, either. Given the momentum I’ve built up, I’m not sure if I could stop myself in my familiar human body, let alone this alien one.

That leaves me with only one real option: to jump up and over it, or at least try and get high enough in the air that I can roll my body the rest of the way onto the platform. The impact might hurt like hell, but it’s sure to be better than certain death. I haven’t actually tried jumping in this body yet, and it feels far-fetched that I’ll manage such a complex movement on my first try, but a shot in the dark is better than none at all. I decide to gamble on it.

Everything seems to go improbably right. It’s almost miraculous how cleanly my thoughts and demands seem to translate into the game. In fact, it’s the first time I genuinely feel like I am the Shrike and like the Shrike is me, where I’m actually in control of the body and not just some foreign invader whipping it into obedience. In an uncomfortably short timeframe, I’ve gone from imitating human limbs to a hypersensitive awareness of the Shrike’s muscles, then on to an entirely detached overseer’s perspective, but in this one moment, I feel like my Shrikely body simply exists. I listen to it, and it listens to me, just how my human body might.

The mechanics feel esoteric now, but that’s just fine with me. Instead, I could describe how my body is moving with my eyes closed, and even if I’m completely ignorant of how this muscle twists or that ligament squeezes, I can feel the product of their efforts. I don’t stop running, diving into the jump as swiftly as I can manage. My butt falls, and I shift my center of mass as low as I can. I lean forward mid stride, tiling my waist until my chest is practically ahead of my outstretched toes. I can feel the pressure build on my heel, now firmly planted on the ground, and the tension is my both knees and ankles as they prepare to spring me upwards.

If I waited any longer, I would have tipped forward outright, losing all control. By human standards, even just my current pose is awful, entirely sacrificing balance and posture for a desperate bid at power. It’s important to note, though, that the Shrike is not a human. The momentum rocks me forward, but as I start to tip, I force the claws on my feet down, and they catch me. With a burst of strength, I launch myself into the actual jump, eyes squeezed shut in terror.

I must have done it all wrong, I figure. The jump itself was more than ambitious enough, but I went even further and did it all weird. Running jumps were always more about flat-footed shoves, weren’t they? Why did I squat and drive with my heels? It all happened so fast, all felt so right. The Adrenaline must have taken over, or something. Do games mess with your head like that? E-Adrenaline?

I don’t hit anything. Don’t get me wrong, existential questions about VR are distracting, but not distracting enough to make me miss getting slammed in the stomach by a wall. I wait a little longer, suddenly excited by the prospect of my jumping ploy actually working, but a good ‘one Mississippi’ later and my feet still haven’t touched ground.

I pry my eyes open, startled, but I find that my jump worked like a charm. In fact, I think it might have been a little too successful. Sure, it gives me a beautiful view of the city from just over the roof line, and my first taste of the city’s sheer size as I see it sprawl into the distance. That’s all well and good. The problem is that the buildings flanking the alleyway are at least five meters tall. I might have been underestimating the Shrike’s physique just a bit.

I hit the apex of my arc, and after a brief weightless moment, I start to fall back to the ground at an alarming speed. To make a bad situation worse, the crowd chasing me seems entirely unimpressed by my astonishing gymnastics, launching whatever they have on hand my way. Arrows zip by, some closer than I’d like to admit, and some crazy bastard gets the bright idea to throw his shield at me like it's an oversized frisbee. It gets far closer to hitting me than I'd care to admit.

For a moment I desperately try to catch myself as I fall, pinwheeling my arms and legs in a vain attempt to slow down. I quickly learn that my body has absolutely no interest in ‘slowing down’, demonstrated most thoroughly by the way that the feathers on my arms and legs flex and bend, easily realigning themselves to attain the optimal drag profile no matter what I throw at them. It’s bad enough that I’m falling, but I’m falling and I can barely even slow myself down. The way they move also reveals an unexpected fact about my body: on the ground, the feathers spread out naturally, acting like a puffy coat or a bushy dog’s fur. When they mold to the skin under wind pressure, it’s quite clear that my actual limbs are hardly half the size they seemed to be. The Shrike is a spindly creature.

I hit the ground on hands and feet. In retrospect, throwing them out ahead of me was about the worst thing I could have done, but hey, it felt like a good idea at the time. Surprisingly, even though the impact hurts like all hell, I don’t hear them snap under the pressure. Instead, my arms and legs shake like gelatin, perhaps as a result of my skeleton’s surprising flexibility. On account of its newfound usefulness, I pardon the Shrike for mentally scarring both I and George via floppy-armed noodle-helicopter. If enduring that is what it takes to survive this crowd of angry players, then I guess it’s just the way things have to be.

It takes me a moment to catch my breath and stand, and the crowd is getting way too close for comfort. Worried, I turn to look behind me- right in time to get a free fireball to the face. The flames ram into me, and I reel backwards in sudden agony, beating at my face. It takes me a moment, but I realize that my skin hasn’t actually caught on fire, and that the burning sensation was just the mildly charred dermis. I pointedly ignore the triumphant whoop of the asshole mage who nailed my face, pulling myself back to my feet for the second time. It turns out that ‘balls of flame’ aren’t nearly as dangerous as one might think. It was more like putting a finger over a lighter for just a second and pulling it away right after. Not that I’ve ever been dumb enough to do that, nope.

I wobble back into a sprint. The aches and pains are really piling up, and I’m slow, but some distance is better than no distance. The crowd is gaining on me, possibly emboldened by the recent turn of events, but mostly as a function of my reduced speed. It’s a small fortune they packed themselves so close together, limiting their ability to make clean shots or cast big spells, otherwise I may have already been overrun. Adding to that, from past experience playing videogames, I’m sure there are melee players intentionally body-blocking just to make sure they have a decent chance at getting “the prize”. Few people like to take second place, and if you can’t win, why make it easy for everyone else? It’s usually a huge pain in the ass, but I never actually considered how many rare mobs have had their lives saved by player-on-player infighting. Everything looks different from the other side, I guess.

I’m running, and I’m running out of options. Clearly, outrunning the crowd isn’t an option, and we passed George’s basement abode some time ago, so it’s not like I can dive into there. The obstacles are getting less dense; by now the walls are virtually devoid of backdoors I could try to use as a last-ditch escape route. Less obstacles also means the crowd won’t be busy fighting for space, so they’ll be at top speed more often, which just makes a bad situation worse. Realistically, there’s no way I can survive. I’d be better served trying to make my death as painless as possible.

No matter how realistic the game feels, It’s just a game. Games are distinctly unreal, and that simple fact gives me hope. The Shrike may be ready to curl up and die, but am I? My gaming sensibilities demand I try something to save myself, no matter how dumb it is. Failing that, my death should be spectacularly entertaining, or at least vaguely impressive. Being hounded to death by a greedy mob is neither of those things.

I dive to the side, tucking myself around the bend. It’s the last decently sized outcropping, a purely structural wall with some sort of strange water-collecting funnel seated atop its diagonal peak. In all, a normal-sized person would have a hard time hiding behind it, but the Shrike isn’t normal-sized.

The first person to turn around the corner, as expected, is a warrior with huge eyes. He’s been at the front of the pack for as long as I’ve been watching out behind me. He stares down with bug-eyed glee, both arms devoted to hoisting his iron-studded battle-hammer far above his head.

I push off of the wall with my legs, and he follows my ill-fated roll with ease, slamming his hammer down… where I should have been. While I rolled, I abused my right arm’s claws to gouge out the stone surface, and they managed to cut deep enough to pull myself away, even if only just barely. The warrior clearly wasn’t ready for the fake-out, and his swing missed- and kept going. I drag myself further away while I watch the situation unfold.

His hammer smashes into the sewer grate, snapping the old wrought iron plate in two, and the pieces plummet into the watery abyss far below. The ground’s unexpected give catches him off guard, and he has to pull himself back upright, clearly off-balance. I think he’s gawking down at me, but his eyes don’t seem to get any wider, so it’s kind of hard to tell. Before the other people flooding around the corner can have a shot at me, I shove myself through the hole head-first, fearless.

All in all, it was a spectacularly terrible plan, but it pays off anyway, and I make it into the sewers unscathed. Sure, I just dived head-first into what probably constitutes the city’s waste-bin, but what can you do? I swim desperately for the surface, drifting slowly downstream in the moving water. Thankfully, my feathers don’t seem to soak in much water. I vaguely remember something about specialized oil coating feathers to help birds fly in the rain, but I can’t quite be certain. The ambiguity tells me that wherever I learned about it, it wasn’t “school”. I don’t think I could forget the things they taught me there if I tried, no matter how trivial.

When I finally make it back to the surface, the crowd’s furious chattering is far enough away that I can relax a little. The water doesn’t even smell as bad as I expected, so maybe the sewer is mostly meant for drainage. All in all? Everything went better than expected. Even still, I’m not keen on staying in the water longer than I have to, so I swim for shore.

The stone walls are easily two meters tall, each walkway kept high and dry far above the sluice. The sewer is dimly lit, only brightened by seemingly randomly placed grates far overhead, but I can make out stone handholds cut deep into the wall. They’re placed every so often, probably just in case a human worker fell in and needed a safe way out. They look like they’re too tall for me to climb comfortably, but even then, it’s way better than scaling an essentially flat cliff.

I slow down and push my left shoulder up to the wall, patiently waiting for the next set of handholds to pass by. It takes me a while, but I finally catch hold of one, swinging my weight onto my left hand and catching hold. I drag myself out of the water rivet by rivet, and the cold sets on me fast and heavy, soaked as I am. There really is no rest for the wicked, is there?

One arduous climb later and I’m laid out on the stony ledge, huffing and puffing and grinning like a madman. I’ve given it a lot of shit, but ignoring all the aches and pains, Great Crusade Online has been one hell of a game. It’s exhilarating, unpredictable, and endlessly complex, and my first taste of action has been more intense than the first hundred levels of some inferior titles. Another thing sticks out to me: I didn’t die instantly the moment I got into a fight.

In any other game, one person fighting so many enemies would be certain, instant death, especially given the difference in our levels. They’d outclass me in every way, swamp me, use their homing spells or overblown crowd-control to shut down whatever few advantages I have, so on and so forth. Not here. No, even though they probably had more than enough raw firepower to wipe me away, I got out clean. Sure, it took a great deal of luck and a little quick thinking, but damn if I didn’t deserve that win. That being said, until I get away clean, the game’s still on.

I’m a lot keener on being a Shrike after getting a real taste of what it can do. It’s actually kind of hard to understand why no one wants to play the bad guys when they get all these nifty physical advantages. Surely at least a few other people would have figured out how to control a monster character, right? Curious, I call up my status using the brain-menu George showed me before. It’s much easier to navigate menus from the player UI, and I see a few basic features preloaded for the ‘status’ function: Status, Index, and Help.

Name

Shrike

HP 3/5

MP 0/1

LV 001

Summoner

George Guildwell

Class

SUMMONED MONSTER

Appearance

YOUNG SHRIKE MALE

Race

SHRIKE (δ-)

Learned Skills

“Apex Claws”, “Maneuver(I)”

My HP dropped quite a bit, more than I’d expected. Sure, my bones are rattled and my muscles are shot, but is that really worth two-fifths of my health? The Shrike may have superhuman agility, but it doesn’t like to take hits. Duly noted. George’s name plopped itself down the Summoner slot, as expected, but there are some more interesting things afoot. For instance, the fact that my only MP was used up without me knowing, the strange new Skill I got even though I didn’t level up. I pull up the Help function through the menu, filling out the search for “Maneuver (I)”. Thinking parenthesis is bizarre and cumbersome, and I do not personally recommend that anyone else try it. The menu responds as I hope, and the information I want replaces my status.

Name

Maneuver (I)

Cost

1 MP

Set

Mobile

Description

Magical beings of all kinds naturally expend small amounts of mana to boost their maneuverability. Grants a desired movement one Critical Success with respect to bodily limits.

If I had to guess, I’d say I got the Skill the moment I was contracted. In other words, around the time I started being fed Mana. It’s quite likely that virtually everything with mana has the Skill, and I deflate a little from that. It’s nice to have something new, but if it’s just a consolation prize… Still, such a tiny amount of mana for the explosive power I exerted, is that even fair?

At the same time, it’s not like the robed weirdos pursuing me were leaping over buildings with a single bound. In fact, they seemed to be near the back of the pack, bar maybe the guy who fire-balled me, since he was far enough up to get a clear shot. Either their mana pool is a tiny as mine, which is frankly unlikely, or they can’t get the same impact out of their Skill. I’m not too sure what a “Critical Success” is, but ‘bodily limits’ seems to be the point of contention. Maybe my body is naturally agile, but they’re wimpy enough they can’t match my results? If I take “Critical Success” to mean “Great Success” rather than “Well-Reviewed”, then I can put it like this: The best high-jumper in the world making the best high-jump they’ve ever made would fail to touch the height I hit. I’m not sure how much mana I’m going to have access to after I start leveling up, but Maneuver might be a pleasant crutch while I get a handle on my physical capabilities.

Thinking so much about my new Skill reminds me of my old one- Apex Claws. Dragging my claws through all that stone can’t have been good for them, but maybe it kicked in to save them. I flop around for a minute, leaving a puddle of water where I was laying before, before I get back to my feet.

I feel like a sewer monster, shambling sopping wet to the nearest grate to inspect my deadly claws. It’s not a worst feeling, the idea that some player might catch a ray of light reflected off my nails and get curious enough to look down the grate. To imagine their shock when they got to see the scary, disgusting, shivering me staring right back up at them. Some people are born to work at haunted houses, and I guess I’m one of them. My parents would never approve.

The claws have been almost uniformly clipped. They’re still pointy enough to jab things with, maybe, but each razer-sharp tip was ground away from overuse. I’m tempted to chalk it up to Apex Claws being worthless, but to be absolutely fair, seldom few things could rub up with rough igneous and come away unscathed. Maybe the tips will just grow back or something like that. I wait around for a bit, melancholically inspecting my damaged claws, before realizing I have no idea what to do next.

The main quandary is finding myself a reasonable way out of the sewers. I’d prefer to go back up a grate for a more than a few reasons. Just for starters, it’d give me a lot more choice on where I pop up, and that might help me avoid official channels, all liable to be guarded and well-prepared for monster insurrection. I mean, if I find a door, I’d still try it, but I’d much prefer a good old-fashioned grate. The catch is that the grate above me at the moment is at least four meters above, and I’m not sure if I want to risk another crazy high-jump while desperately grabbing at the roof. So, I start walking, hoping to find an area where the ceiling isn’t quite so high up.

I follow the water’s current, eventually coming to an intersection. My choices are to follow the wall past in a different direction or to keep going, crossing an impressively decrepit rope-bridge. Needless to say, I hang a left, trailing along the wall. To my surprise, there’s a door just around the bend. It’s gaudy and red, fantastically fancy compared to the unglamorous sewer wall it’s embedded in. The door appears to be both unmarked and unlocked, though by “unlocked”, I mean I tear through the wood near the each of its overly ornate hinges until it falls away. I almost feel sorry for it, but I really don’t have time to fiddle with knobs, and if I have to wheel around and get the hell out of Dodge, why would I leave anything to block my escape route?

The room past the “opened” door is just a small landing-strip lit by a lonely candle. It’s a lot like the one for George’s basement, although the staircase on the other side will take me up rather than further down. The stairs go straight up, and far above I can see another impossibly gaudy door, almost identical to the first. I stumble up the stairs. Even with my newfound talent of being slightly more competent at walking than a toddler, climbing is damned difficult. Blame it on the people who made the stairs so tall, not me. When I get to the top of the stairs, I knock on the door, polite as can be. After climbing all those stairs, I’m probably near ground-level, or maybe at the elevation of a first-floor basement, so what if I cut this door open and come face-to-face with an inn full of adventurers? Monsters never knock, as a general rule, so it might buy me time to run.

An aged voice answers my knock. He sounds both nervous and irritable, but mostly just nervous. “Ah,” he stammers in surprise, and I hear something like the feet of a chair or a stool sliding across a wooden floor, “The deliv-!” He starts to shout, but he cuts himself off, quickly toning his voice down to a whisper. His quiet, raspy tones come across loud and clear thanks to the Shrike’s impressive hearing, even if a normal human might not have heard at all. “The package’s not due for four moons time. Why have you come now?” He asks, gingerly walking over to the door. There’s a pause, no doubt him waiting for my response. Normally, the hero would try to play it off with some voice, but I can’t see that going over well here. After some time, the man’s irritation wins out over his cautiousness, and he grunts, though he’s plenty lucid enough to keep his voice low. “Archstaff Is not to be disturbed. Just leave it there and begone.”

I don’t reply. Yes, in large part because squawking would give me away immediately, but also because I’ve just been shocked silly. Truly, I am the winner! Lo, my enemies fall at my feet, offering themselves up. How many guys named “Archstaff” can they pack in one city? Probably only maybe four guys. That means there’s at least a twenty-five percent chance this is one is my Emmerich Archstaff, the right guy! On the first try! Truly, my luck has turned around.

I reel in my wandering mind, steeling myself for the man’s approach. He wavers at the door, still reluctant to turn the knob. “Are you still there? You had better not be when I open this,” he says, more nervous by the word. No matter how cautious he may be, he’s still dumb enough to admitting that he’s going to open up a strange sewer-basement door without so much as peeping through the eyehole. I mean, this door doesn’t have an eyehole, but the point stands. It’s alarming how long it took people to start thinking up decent home security measures. Maybe they just didn’t have anything worth stealing?

Slowly, carefully, the old man twists the nob, brass squeezing wood. I can see it move on my end, but what’s more surprising is how he moves it. The knob twists left, then right, then it miraculously slides up like a bolt, then it twists right again, and finally it clicks back down into place, as though nothing ever happened. The oddly specific, almost ritualistic, nature of the unlocking mechanism gives me a vague feeling that trying to open the door myself might have been a very bad idea. I am entering a Wizard’s home, after all.

The man looks around, glaring, and it takes him a moment to finally look down at me. I wave up at him, and for a moment I think he might wave back. Instead, he screams in an impressively shrill falsetto, and I’m forced to move. Launching my body at him, I slam into his chest, hitting my mark. My right arm swings around his back like I’m hugging him, while my left hand spears his neck, contorted into its natural needle-like shape.

He’s still standing, still trying to scream, but it fades into a gurgling murmur, a little like someone gargling water. The way his face contorts is funny for to me, although I can't place why. I smile back at him, wondering if maybe 'movie monster' wouldn't be such a bad gig after all, but then he loses his footing. The old man falls backwards, my body chasing his to the ground, falling atop it. When his neck hits the wood floor, the impact jars my hand-needle, ripping a nasty gash in his neck.

The blood and vomit that I trapped in his esophagus come pouring out, flooding the floor, uneven puddles of putrid liquid forming wherever it happens to be uneven. I sit there on his chest, utterly spellbound, watching the light die in his terrified, wide eyes. There’s no fancy “You Leveled Up!” pop-up to celebrate my triumph, no moment where the old man disappears into smoke, no moment where he ceases to be so perfectly and utterly real. I reel back, suddenly too sick to bear it any longer, even if my conscience demands I never stop looking at what I’ve done. His head lolls to the side as the needle leaves his neck, and his tongue lolls out from his mouth, still caught in an unending scream.

That’s when it hits me. I am the scary one, the thing that goes bump in the night. No matter who’s digital and who’s real, the fact is that I killed this man. The way the game is made means he will never come back to life, never disappear into XP or poof into glaringly artificial particles of light. I want to cry, I want to throw up, but the Shrike cannot do either of those things. It has no capacity to cry, and far less capacity to vomit, and certainly not for such a silly reason as a “crisis of conscience”.

I sit there, staring at the dead body I created. Probably for too long for my own health, honestly. Everything I’ve done in the game until now feels trivial, like a game within a game. I killed a man, one who I never properly met. He was just some old dude, working for some random Wizard, and now he’s gone. I hadn’t even hesitated, considered what a ‘realistic experience’ might mean, or even pondered the permanency of a NPC’s death.

The longer I think on it, the more I feel like the most sickening part is that this murder will go utterly unpunished. By this world’s standards, the act was both okay and reasonable, leaving me with only myself to answer to. In retrospect, the lack of people playing the bad guys makes a lot more sense. If it takes more effort, and you’re a good person at heart, why would you turn yourself into a butcher of men? Why not consider something more wholesome?

I practically threw myself into the role, and if only for the briefest of moments, I enjoyed it. There’s a quiet me that says this is all just a game, that playing a role is the whole point, and that the acts of a person in cyberspace says little of their character. That me probably has some valid points, but at the moment, I don’t want to hear them. I just want to cry, but I can’t. I can’t.

It’s almost a relief when the bearded man runs out from the back-room, slamming the preposterously gaudy door open. The facial hair runs to his knees, somewhat masking his impressively limber frame and wizened skin. Atop his head sits a campy, star-emblazoned wizard hat that I’d make some remark about if I had the energy to care. Clearly, though, this is Emmerich Archstaff himself.

His eyes are wild and wandering, flitting from place to place even though I get the impression he’s staring right at me. After watching me for a long, cautious moment his face twists into a grimace, and he points to the dead man below. “Foul beast,” he says angrily, and can’t bear to argue, “you have slain mine Financier.”

I look back at down at the body. Not only had I murdered an old man, I murdered an old man so profoundly harmless that he held a job like ‘Financier’ in a fantasy universe. Unless that's polite doublespeak for “hitman”, I just killed some hapless civilian. Not helping my moral dilemma one bit.

By the time I look up at the Wizard Archstaff again, he’s fuming. Oddly patient, all things considered, but still visibly angry. “You entered my abode unscored. Tell me your secret, and I might spare ye,” he growls. I point weakly down to the man, then back to the door, miming turning the knob. Really, sparing me seems crueler than killing me outright, but he can’t know it. Why is he being so lenient?

He relaxes a great deal, hostility draining away. Emmerich Archstaff is good to his word, apparently. “That old fool. To open the door when it isn’t time…” He says passively, as though commenting on the weather. It’s so strange, as though he doesn’t care at all. It mystifies me, but I think I latch onto the truth of the matter, and it fills me with a fury that I can’t stop from roiling over. Unconcerned or unaware of that fact, the Wizard bobs his head, mulling things over. “You, who sent you?” He asks, vaguely curious, “It can’t have been the Regent, can it?”

I conjure up my status, taking in the information as fast as I can.

Name

Shrike

HP 4/5

MP 1/1

LV 001

Summoner

George Guildwell

Class

SUMMONED MONSTER

Appearance

YOUNG SHRIKE MALE

Race

SHRIKE (δ-)

Learned Skills

“Apex Claws”, “Maneuver(I)”

I got my 1 MP back, along with a little of my health. Given the sheer power behind my Maneuver Skill, I should be able to hit Archstaff before he knows what’s coming to him. What’s one more body for a pile anyway, especially when it's someone so hollow inside? George will be satisfied, my horrid duty will be complete, and I can call it quits. Or at least, I can try to get my character reset properly. Barring the dead guys, win-win all around.

I tense, and Archstaff reacts instantly, fury swimming back into his elderly features. “You cur of curs, you plot against me even as I offer mercy?” He asks, rage in his voice. He moves before I can, launching himself backwards. Each step is impossibly graceful, and I know what I’m looking at immediately: Maneuver, or at least some variation of it. Clearly, I’m not the only one with superhuman agility.

Still, I’m confident. The Wizard stops moving after he makes it back through the doorway, standing in his backroom. At this distance, I can be on him in a heartbeat. As if reading my mind, Archstaff snarls. “Fool, you think yourself powerful? Let me give you a taste of true power,” he says. I launch into the air, finally convincing my body to act as I want. I can feel the strength in the jump, and with my eyes open, I can see the speeds I’m hitting. It almost feels stronger than before, and I’m almost to the Wizard in a heartbeat, a ball of fury and swift judgement. Just before I sink my left hand’s nails into him, he flies backwards effortlessly, and I don’t seem to getting any closer as I soar towards him.

He waves his arms, sweeping and circuitous motions that make his hands look like they’re in multiple places at once. A thin film of ethereal fire appears in the air, following our trajectory, a perfect barrier of flame.

The film stops, and it swallows me. It feels like I’m diving into water, and I lose most of my speed, sinking to the floor. Nothing else seems to burn as I touch it, even though all of the wood and cloth furnishings seem to be plenty flammable.

The fire crawls over my skin like a disease, ripping me apart cell by cell. The experience is absolute agony, a constant singe that works from the outside to the inside, offering little respite from the pain. I seem to be falling to ash, and I see is my limbs crumbling to tiny, charred bits, leaving little but black smolders behind.

The next thing I see is my reflection in the water of the strange, embryonic fluid of my Nightmare Domain. I died, through and through, cast back to the place so far away from the game’s world.

I log out of the game as fast as I can.

…

It takes me an hour to convince myself that the more rational, ‘it’s just a game bro’ me should take over. It takes me three hours to de-puke the floor and get the room smelling like roses again. I can’t even ask the house staff for help, considering the fact this project was meant to be on the down low. The manual labor feels both therapeutic and penitent, though, so maybe it’s all for the best.

I try to divert myself, to think about anything other than the way I murdered a man or the agony of dying in the game with no pain reduction, but nothing works. In the end, I send in a customer service ticket. It’s something of a petty revenge, hassling the company’s customer service for putting such horrors in their game.

The message reads as follows:

“I killed a man, and I don’t know what to do.”

It’s generally not a good idea to implicate yourself in murder, even if it’s digital, but I decide not to worry. The message says exactly how I feel, and if they take offense, they’ll have one hell of an uphill battle to fight in the courts.

I get a near-immediate response. I didn’t expect one for a good time. Actually, waiting for it was going to be part of how I diverted myself from my dilemma. Even as fast as it was filled out, this response doesn’t seem to be automated. In fact, it would only really work for my issue- a personalized response.

“Great Crusade Online is a controlled environment. We made Heaven in Binary.”

The wording sounds an awful lot like they’re just tooting their own horn, like ‘Look, we made a heavenly game!’ When I put in context, though, I can see that it’s something else entirely. For instance: I killed a man, and Great Crusade Online is a controlled environment, so dead NPCs aren’t unexpected. Mulling that thought over, my eyes wander, and I notice the ‘Sender’ address.

The message was sent by “Ennetu”. He has no titles or tags, no ‘admin this’ or ‘customer service’ that. Rather, it’s just that one name, “Ennetu”. I recognize it immediately. In terms of Great Crusade Online, there’s only one Ennetu: Ennetu the Old One Most Foul, the Lord of All Monsters, the End of Light.

No one has talked to, or so much as seen, Ennetu. He’s the last bad guy anyone will have to fight, or at least he will be for a couple of expansions. According to in-game NPCs, he leaves only carnage in his wake, and the reason things are so “peaceful” is because Ennetu is taking a brief vacation from world annihilation.

The employee driving Ennetu, if there is one, would have to be comfortable with indiscriminate slaughter. In other words, they’d be just as heinous as I am, and probably just as conflicted.

My tension drains away. Ennetu can’t have been referring to Great Crusade Online itself as ‘Heaven’. No, I suspect he means that they made an afterlife for the NPCs. It makes a sort of sense, too. If each AI was lovingly hand-crafted and highly advanced, how could the designers bear to let them fade into nothingness?

I drift off into sleep, dreaming of Heaven, Great Crusade Online, and battleax-toting bank tellers.