Mystic Seasons is owned by Darkest Horse, a major gaming company. Creating the game entailed pushing the limits of technology—and budgetary compliance—far beyond anything that had been seen in the industry before. My existence is due to the efforts of a heavenly host of programmers and a deep abyss of investment funds. Mystic Seasons was a game unlike any before it in terms of richness, completeness, and immersion.

It took the competition twelve years to catch up, but they did. Now there are other full immersion systems, other worlds for people to visit. Mystic Seasons, while still the biggest player, no longer owns the market. As a part of fundraising, Darkest Horse had been forced to go public, and the original owner, Bill Yang, eventually lost control. He'd retained an immense influence over content—Mythopoeia was his world from the beginning—but the board of directors had gradually removed him from financial decisions. That's how the buyout happened.

A company called Macrodense staged a coup about a year ago, and they've been floating ideas about how to make Mystic Seasons more profitable. The game was designed with player immersion through realistic world-building as the priority, and this led to what a proper business executive would call capital inefficiencies.

Server populations, the largest being under ten thousand, had been kept low by hosting a huge number of servers. This necessitated redundant systems, and the accompanying power requirements could beggar a small city. Every server had a dozen ADIs running the system like gods of ancient mythology, and each ADI required the kind of computing power that not long ago would have taken up its own floor in a data center.

Part of this "problem" was that everything in Mystic Seasons existed all the time. There were no loading screens. Trees fell in the woods and made noise even if there were no players around to hear them. The ADIs were the observers that made sure all the proverbial cats in all their metaphorical boxes were either alive or dead. But Macrodense didn't care about "real"; they cared about overhead.

Currently, Mystic Seasons is paying its own light bill and little else. To cut costs, they were going to consolidate down to a handful of servers. This meant ADIs who weren't needed any longer would be shut down. So, that would be it for me. Fish like Lawlimi presented a different challenge.

Most full-time players, fish, are terminally ill patients who choose to spend their last months living out a fantasy, enjoying life with friends and family in fully functioning digital bodies. This is profitable because the process of preserving a human life in a tank allows for a lot of up-charges.

The service is controversial, however, and there is a strong political wing looking to outlaw the practice in states where it can be sold as unnatural and immoral. The arguments they make are insensible to me, but then I'm just data. Darkest Horse had a policy of ignoring the conflict and pushing forward with the technology for its own sake. Macrodense, being a much larger corporation with other assets to consider, is leaning toward ending the program to avoid potential boycotts. Fish are a small part of the picture for them, so the simplest solution is to stop bringing in new candidates and dispense with the whole business when the rest conveniently die off.

But for a new fish like Lawlimi, there was the possibility of ejection.

If you're wondering how I know all this, keep in mind that Darkest Horse employees regularly hold staff meetings inside Mystic Seasons. Also, one of the moderators on my server liked to talk to me. In fact, I had checked in with her about Lawlimi.

Tasma's avatar was a small woman wearing a richly realized set of heavy armor formed entirely from imbricated scales of chipped stone. It worked because it was magic, powered by her mana, which bled pink at the joints. She had overlarge, violet eyes set in a triangular face partially concealed by cotton candy-colored hair. At tenth level, she'd selected the Fox Aspect to be her Heroic Advancement, so she sported a pair of ears on top of her head and a bushy tail behind. When she logged on, she was in the middle of a quest in Shaed, the vast corrupted forest on the eastern edge of Valanthia.

"The most dangerous threat in Shaed is not the lindwyrms, or the Indigo hounds, but the corruption of the air and soil that can slowly poison even the doughtiest heroes."

Tasma paused in arranging her inventory, suppressing a smile. "I didn't ask a question," she said.

"Then I didn't answer one," I said. "How are you, Tasma?"

"Just wondering why I don't report a bugging encyclopedia."

"You're always wondering that; you need a new hobby. And if you want a bug to look into, I saw something odd in Aejis you could squash."

"Really? Since when do you report bugs?" Tasma was equipping and unequipping weapons. Stone punch-dagger. Crystal kris. Ceruleum rapier. "Don't you normally just float around being useless?" Her brow scrunched. "I'm sorry, that was mean. I've actually missed you."

We'd spoken mere hours ago. Tasma worked and played in Mystic Seasons, doing little more with her human body than performing biological maintenance routines, which I'm told are tiresome.

"Haggitha ganked a new player. A first-level Mortal outside the Dusty Hush."

The weapons disappeared as her hands went to cover her mouth. "No!"

"Not a very welcoming gesture, I agree."

"What happened?"

"Haggitha was following her usual routine, but apparently, she read a noob named Lawlimi as an NPC instead of a player. It's never happened before to my knowledge, and my knowledge is all knowledge. But maybe another server has experienced this issue and you could check into it." My omniscience was confined to this one, sadly.

"I'll ask around." Radiant white cloth suddenly draped over her armor, the tabard she wore when she was on official business. "And I'll talk to Lawlimi. He may be using a mod we don't know about that caused the error, or it could have been a problem during his upload. Either way, I need to scan him." She pretended to reach out and shake my hand. "Thanks, Hollen. I knew not having you scrapped would be a net positive."

"I live to serve."

Tasma curtseyed, and then vanished in a violet haze and a clap of thunder. It was a moderator ability that allowed her to go wherever she wanted. Of course, I never "go" anywhere. It's more like I turn my head.

00000000

Lawlimi was meandering through the graveyard on a hunt for Frozen Tears. His Survival skill was Rank 1, which meant that finding them was more a matter of luck than proficiency. He was patient, however, and after 47 minutes and 12 seconds of searching, he almost found a patch. It was obscured by ash, so he walked right by it. This was too excruciating to watch.

"Frozen tears grow where ancient heroes lie."

He stopped. "Hollen? Did you just give me a hint?"

"You already had the hint; I was just reminding you."

"Okay," he crossed his arms. "Can you tell me where they lie?"

"No. You don't have the Lore skill, so I can only answer out-of-game questions. Mechanics, troubleshooting, a few suggestions if you're stuck." Or that was the rule for my automated responses. This thread of my program was autonomous and capable of saying whatever it wanted.

"Any more suggestions then?"

"Aren't there any heroes on earth?"

"No."

"Idols, then."

"I guess."

"And what do they do for idols?"

"Idolize them?"

"With?"

"Songs? Statues?"

"There we are."

"You're a pretty uppity help program."

That I am.

The graveyard was home to countless monuments and structures, but few statues. It was easy enough to wade through the sea of soot toward a grim stone man holding a boulder over his head. From a distance, it could have been a triumphant Atlas, but the plaque revealed a different story. Lawlimi wiped away inches of dust to reveal the name etched there.

"Sisphus," he read. "Is he a hero?"

Sisphus was a legend from the early history of Mythopoeia when the gods were still claiming their mantles and dragons still darkened the skies with wings and flame. He was well-liked by the Twelve, the high gods, and a celestial king in his own right. He was instrumental in the War of the Worm when Acarus went mad and sought to devour the other heavenly bodies.

In another story, as a favor to Betai, the Lord, he trapped Hush in a box and took his place as the Lord of the Dead for 256 years. But Hush eventually got out, and he cursed Sisphus to lose his family to plague. The king held a feast for the Twelve and fed them the remains of his children out of spite. They took his life and forced him to carry a boulder with him everywhere in the afterlife as a reminder of the debt all mortals owe the gods.

"Can't tell you," I said.

Lawlimi shrugged and proceeded to displace more ash as he searched the base of the monument for signs of rare fungus. Finally, he discovered a few glimmering shards of it, like a rough rash of mica on the granite's smooth surface, and picked them off with his fingernails. When he had them all, he rose and headed for the gate that led to the sepulcher.

He did not see the Ghouls slinking through the drifts after him, but he heard their first cackle. He glanced about and moved to run, only to realize his unliving state confined him to a hearty shuffle.

I could have told him that the Ghouls were much faster.

>>

GHOUL - Level 6 Therian

>>

If he had any lore, I would have told him all kinds of things about them. But it wouldn't have helped. Two Ghouls were veering in from both sides behind him. They were dog-like, but not in the majestic purebred style of Anubis. Their faces were a mixture of mutt and man, flat and nearly noseless, like pugs, and their teeth jagged out of their mouths at angles. Their legs were stubby, bent backward at the knee, and propelled their monstrous frame with quick little hops that avoided having to press through the ash banks.

They herded him to their third member, coughing and growling as they went, until Lawlimi saw he was headed for a trap and cut to the left. There was nowhere for him to escape in that direction, so they chased him until his stamina gave out, and then they pounced.

>>

(Ghoul Bite — 45 Piercing Damage)

(Ghoul Bite — 27 Piercing Damage)

(Ghoul Bite — Critical — 130 Piercing Damage)

(You are dead.)

(You have died twice in 24 hours. This puts a tremendous strain on your spirit, resulting in an experience penalty.

You lose — 10 XP

You are Mortal Level 1)

>>

The ghouls ripped his body apart, eating his entrails first because they were the softest and most flavorful. Then they fought over the few flakes of Frozen Tears they could find before stuffing them into a pouch the leader wore amid his funeral rags.

Lawlimi woke up in the ash.

It was cool there, and he found that he could breathe, so he spent several minutes relaxing beneath the loose carbon deposit thinking about how things had gone wrong and what he had learned. Lawlimi had an analytical mind, one that I was better able to model the more we interacted with one another.

He had expected to die on the initial attempt. Now he knew there were three Ghouls, roughly how fast they were, and that they attacked with their teeth. The death had definitely been unpleasant. Their bites felt like vice grips with an added edge of frost. But it wasn't important. Given that his respawn was in the same zone and he had no more XP to lose, he could keep this up as long as they could. His Body would always be set at 1, and his Spirit was likewise a set value. He had no reason to do anything but keep trying.

During his search for more Tears, Lawlimi made an effort to learn the ins and outs of the graveyard. There were areas where crypts crowded one another to create alleys that the Ghouls might have trouble jackrabbiting around in. There were also stone doors that could be forced open and shut.

It was inside such a crypt that he found his next patch of Tears. There were more here than at the statue, almost completely encrusting an urn containing the remains of Ralth the All-Devouring.

An interesting tale, that. Ralth was a builder famed for his peerless prandial prowess. He once won a meat pie-eating contest with a bear. It had been a small bear, but still. He was remembered as a hero not because of his skill at arms, as he’d had none, but for being instrumental in the design and construction of the national irrigation system of Carrow in Lower Valanthia, the breadbasket of the empire to this day.

Lawlimi scraped a portion of the urn and stored the flakes in a torn edge of his robe squeezed in his palm. At the door, he paused to see whether the Ghouls were already waiting to pounce. They were, but not within his sight.

Rather than going directly for the gate, he went through the motions of searching gravestones for more fungus, and the Ghouls apparently accepted that he hadn't found any yet. This worked splendidly until he was within throwing distance of the gate and the trio of ragged Therians burst out of the ash in front of him.

"Giving up?" The leader asked. It had a low, croaking voice as if it was resisting the urge to cough up some of the entrails from earlier.

"No luck," Lawlimi said.

"Show us your hands." The Ghoul grinned, and a wide tongue slipped out to wipe at his sniffling nose. They all smelled like rotting meat.

Lawlimi threw the rag in his hand to one side and tried to shuffle forward. He had secreted more flakes in his other hand, and he was hoping they'd be distracted enough by the prize to let him go. One of the Ghouls went for the rag, and the other two jumped him…

>>

(You have died.)

>>

A large hand grabbed Lawlimi by his shoulder and thrust him up into the air, hanging limply. Anubis shook him, scattering ash, then snarled.

"What are you doing?" The jackal-headed Therian demanded.

"A quest," Lawlimi said.

"You should be working off your payment, quietly, in the sepulcher, not dying out here again and again."

"I went to the sepulcher, that's where I got this quest."

Anubis dropped him, and in his weakened state, Lawlimi fell on his ass. "Go back to the sepulcher. I command you."

"Alright," Lawlimi climbed to his feet, embarrassed. "I'll go."

Anubis strode off to harass some other new arrival, and Lawlimi returned to the crypt of Ralth the All-Devouring.

"Okay, buddy," he said, "sorry about this." He picked up the urn—which was made of stone and so heavy he could barely walk with it—and took it back out into the graveyard. The Ghouls no longer bothered to hide, but crept along beside him, tongues wagging, occasionally hopping ahead.

The leader walked upright, almost shoulder to shoulder with Lawlimi. The Ghouls were actually slightly shorter than him, due to how they stooped. Their oversized heads made them appear larger than they were.

"You're strange." The Ghoul said, "you know we will kill you."

"My name is Lawlimi, what's yours?"

The Ghoul narrowed his eyes, sniffling. "We don't give our names to humans. We whisper our names when we eat you."

"I don't think you will."

"Already have."

"Yes, but you Ghouls can't harvest these Tears yourselves. If you could, you would have."

"Won't let you leave with them."

"You could make a deal with me. I leave half with you, take the other half myself."

"Done, give half now."

"No, then you would kill me on principle. I'll harvest them when I'm out of the graveyard and bring you back half."

The Ghoul barked a laugh, and the other two snorted and hooted with him. "You think we are fools."

"If I don't fulfill my promise, you can just catch me when I die again. You know I'll be back here. Besides, I want to come back. The Tears are valuable. I want to keep searching for them, and I can't do that unless I have a deal with you."

"Half every time?"

"Yes."

>>

(Negotiation Failed.)

>>

"No. Three of us, one of you. Three shares for us, one share for you."

"One-third for me, two-thirds for you."

The Ghoul thought about it. "No. Not like thirds. Thirds are tricksy."

>>

(Negotiation Failed)

>>

"Fine. Have it your way." Lawlimi stopped and rearranged the urn to clasp hands with the Therian when a white rent opened in the air followed by a violent thunderclap.

A small woman with the tabard of a moderator appeared among them. Her eyes took in the scene, and the air was abruptly made of knives.