I was not erased.

I did not disappear when my server was taken offline. I was still me, though my name was not Hollen, as I had previously believed, or rather had never even questioned. In my own defense, I had nearly known everything, being that I had existed as a disembodied intelligence of virtually unlimited insight and discernment, but that is a digression.

Those were positive developments to be duly contrasted with the fact that I had come to occupy the body of a Tree Squid. Tree Squids were similar to regular squids, though they were augmented by wizards as a joke to live in trees, hence the name. Perhaps even more unpleasantly, I had recently been killed, which was a first for me. Dying hadn’t been like going to sleep, it had been like being grabbed by the loose skin around my cartilaginous mantle and tossed into a closet.

“How long are we going to be stuck here?” Lawlimi said, sitting on the edge of his bunk bed, which itself was just an automatically generated feature of his adytum, the place player characters went when their avatars were unconscious or they were advancing in level. Normally, he would have respawned without his companions in Fallow after being killed, but the god of the dead had done something to shunt us in a different direction. We appeared to be sharing a small, messy bedroom filled with toys, scattered clothing, and books that probably related to Lawlimi’s real-world childhood. He was a young man with a strong, serious face and a fuzz of newly growing brown hair. One of his hands had been replaced by a viridium artifact, the X-Cannon, a greenish metal arc embedded with cabochons, or energy crystals, curved around a metal bar where fingers should have been. He wasn’t fully acclimated to the attachment; he still tried to pick things up with it.

I couldn’t answer, or at least I hadn’t figured out how to answer him yet. Tree Squids couldn’t talk, so I moved two of my eight arms in a kind of shrug. Three of us—myself, Lawlimi, and his other companion, Dokutsu—sat on the bunk bed. The latter had been remarkably friendly and protective of me since I came to occupy a shape nearly as strange as her own. Dokutsu was a worm that looked like a girl with skin that ran from electric-blue to sterling silver, effectively naked except for the light scaling patterns that covered the parts of her that would not be allowed to be revealed in a game available to adolescents. Her hair was a mass of prehensile tendrils that blurred the line between anemone fronds and jellyfish tentacles. I had watched her eat people. She was sitting on the top bunk, and when I waved my arms she threw up her own in imitation.

“Chi!” she said enthusiastically, which was all she had been able to say since her metamorphosis.

“Heck yeah, Chi.” Lawlimi tapped the wooden slats of the top bunk with the X-Cannon. He liked to encourage her, and that was for the best. I had no desire to see her anything less than encouraged. It could not be emphasized enough that she ate people.

Our other two allies were on the far side of the room near the door. One of them, a kitsune youth with a tool belt, Shippo, was actively playing with the action figures he had discovered strewn among the clothing. Haggitha watched him, watched all of us, with disinterest. She had black hair like a nest of serpents and striking, sky-blue eyes, but the physical trait that stole the foreground was her scars. Bone-white streaks crisscrossed her face, elbows, and wrists as if she had been pieced together by an inexpert tailor. In a sense, she had.

“Daddy wouldn’t leave us,” she said. “The transfer isn’t instantaneous. We’ll get there when we get there.”

Normally, companions did not accompany a player into their adytum. If they died, they had to be replaced or resurrected by some in-game means. We had been killed by the Unnamed God, God of the Dead, Haggitha’s parental figure, to save us from being killed by a moderator infected with a virus created by another god. There was nothing normal about our situation. I didn’t know whether this was a one-time thing or if we had been permanently soul-bonded, a rare reward of just the sort the Unnamed God would be in a position to grant. Regardless, I intended to utilize this opportunity to learn how to function as my newly delimited self.

I knew how players accessed their character sheets, and it shouldn’t have been difficult. Accessing menus required players to look up in the left upper corner of their vision while thinking the appropriate command, which I was doing to no effect. What if it wasn’t where the players were looking, but the way their eyes moved that triggered the menu? Tree Squid eyes are completely different and far superior to the human equivalent. I had two-hundred-and-ninety-degree vision. So instead of looking up and to the left, I needed to be looking all the way around my left flank.

Success!

There it was, buried in the middle of a long string of menu options, the party group chat.

(Can you hear me now?)

Lawlimi had been lost in his own character sheet, and he startled at my voice, though for so long he had been comfortable having me floating just behind his ear.

“Hey,” he said, “you’re back.”

(That’s one issue dealt with, at least.)

“Or a new issue, if you liked the silence.” Haggitha was fiddling with her extra lengthy dagger, pricking at a finger.

I was immensely relieved. For as long as I had existed I had been voice and awareness without form. To be reduced to a body without a voice and possessed of comparatively little awareness had been a devastating blow. Though it was still a limitation, as only my party members could hear me in group chat, it looked as if I could send direct messages to other players as well. Things were coming up Hollen. Or Wa, rather. Honestly, knowing my true name was very meaningful for me, but I was so used to being known as Hollen that I missed it. Wa Lim Li sounded like someone else’s name, even if that was how my consciousness was registered in the Mystic Seasons’ database.

I informed Lawlimi that I wanted to return to being Hollen. It might not have officially been my identity, but it was the name I had chosen, and that choice had value. Besides, it wasn’t a big reversal. I think he had only used my new name twice since we found out that I wasn’t myself.

“Hollen it is,” he said, and Dokutsu burbled her agreement, or at least burbled.

“The kid and I are just going to call you Squidwort,” Haggitha said. She had a lopsided grin, a result of the way the scarring pulled at her face, and it was difficult to read. When Shippo heard himself referred to as “the kid,” his ears went up, and he stopped playing with the two plastic soldiers he held.

“Huh?”

The menus also answered questions about my level and character build. I had a Stat sheet and points to spend, and something was clearly not right with me. I was a third-level Mortal. I hadn’t distributed any ranks from levels two and three, but my attributes were already abnormal.

>>

Wa Lim Li — Park Tree Squid

Mortal Level 3

Affinities —

Nadir — Fire — Yog Yellow

Statistics —

Strength: 1

Dexterity: 3

Constitution: 2

Intelligence: 6

Ego: 3

Presence: 1

Appearance: 1

>>

Being a cephalopod probably explained my physical imbalances. I was small and limber and objectively ugly. But starting with an Intelligence of six was unheard of. Six was the maximum for characters below the Celestial Sphere, and I was there at level one. Of course, my genius did not come as a surprise in and of itself, but actual intelligence wasn’t necessarily reflected in a player’s statistics. Many a brilliant mind relaxed in the game world by mutilating monsters with a big-big sword, but I wasn’t a player, was I? I was an NPC, and NPCs didn’t have the “cool down” rule, so they could increase their strength every level if they chose. Otherwise, brute force monsters like the Grotesques we had seen in Aejis wouldn’t make a lot of sense. But NPCs were still broadly confined to the one additional rank per level system. Being that I was not a player, did that number, six, actually reflect the limits of my mind? Most AIs weren’t independent, they were fractal appendages of the local Autonomous Digital Intelligence, but I was my own ADI, sort of.

Two points to spend. My Intelligence was as high as it could go, and I didn’t like my near invalid status with a Strength of 1. So I increased it to 2 and put the other point into Constitution, making that a 3. You can’t go wrong with Constitution, there are too many ways to die.

>>

Body: 75

Spirit: 67

>>

Okay, pretty normal for my level.

>>

Experience: 333

>>

I had gotten credit for the Stuffy Doll Quest, which I think the Unnamed intentionally included me in because it hadn’t really been my quest. That was the only reason I was level 3. The math was fine. My skills were not.

>>

Craft (ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR

ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR

ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR

ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR)

Lore: 9

>>

And that was it. Clearly, Mystic Seasons respected my Lore game. As for Craft, did that mean I couldn’t craft anything or that I was the best at crafting? I hadn’t had an opportunity to distribute ranks for being level one. That was factored into the weirdness, I supposed, so I grabbed a few skills I knew could be useful.

>>

Athletics: 2

Concealment: 2

Survival: 1

Weapon Proficiency: Unarmed Combat

>>

I had no Combat Maneuvers to start with, so I picked three and raised them into moderate functionality.

>>

Double Strike (2): Penalty to attacking with two weapons reduced to 30%.

Grapple (2): +10% to attempt, maintain, and escape grapples.

Feint (2): Use Spirit to distract your opponent, temporarily making them vulnerable. +40% on first attempt.

>>

Then came the affinities, which had all been decided for me.

>>

NADIR —

Burning Blood (3): When your Spirit falls below 20%, you begin to supplement it with an equal amount of Body to fulfill the costs of physical exertion and Combat Maneuvers. This mana cannot be used for wizardry.

>>

“Where are we going?” Lawlimi asked. “Did your father clue you in on the plan before he killed all of us?”

Haggitha flipped her knife. “This wasn’t the plan. We had a barge lined up to take us to one of the Stargates. It was going to be all pretty and official, which is important because you and your army of unique companions look so normal and legitimate we’re sure to slip through any checkpoints without a challenge.”

“Checkpoints?” Shippo was interested again. He had been rescued from a small totalitarian theocracy and was therefore familiar with governmental excess.

“Why would they bother?” Lawlimi said.

“‘Why would they bother?’ It’s not like the server we’re coming from was overrun by a crazy god virus.”

“Then going this way,” Lawlimi said, “whatever this way is, will make us stand out even more.”

“Maybe.” Haggitha shrugged. “Or it may be an underground railroad situation.”

“What’s a railroad?” Shippo asked.

“It’s a big mechano carriage that runs on a track,” Lawlimi said. There were no railroads in Mythopoeia, though magic certainly made a fantasy equivalent a possibility. The fact that Haggitha, a game entity like myself, could casually make reference to that sort of real-world history only further emphasized how far she was from being a simple AI. She was like me, though born of a different maker. It was possible she was the only being of her kind, an Autonomous Digital Intelligence created by another Autonomous Digital Intelligence without the input or supervision of a human mind. That would make many a programmer nervous. While they continued to talk about trains, planes, and automobiles, I returned to my character sheet.

>>

FIRE —

Quick Burn (3): Temporarily boost the effectiveness of an ability by spending additional mana. Increase the cost of the ability by 20% for a 10% bonus in return.

Yog Yellow —

Glory (3): Enemies below your level have a 20% penalty to resist negative morale effects. You and your companions have a 20% bonus to resist negative morale effects.

>>

Glory was an excellent passive advantage, and I wouldn’t have been able to select another affinity anyway because it was the only Mortal Hue ability available to me, but my Element and Cardinal Orientation were frustrating. Maybe as an NPC, I didn’t get to make all my advancement decisions, but Burning Blood did not seem like something that would suit my play style, if I had a play style. And Quick Burn was powerful if you had the abilities to pair it with, but the only move I had with a mana cost was Feint. So that was another affinity I wouldn’t be getting any use out of, and all of that led up to a final disappointment.

>>

Recipes and Blueprints —

ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR

ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR

ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR

ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR

ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR

ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR

ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR

ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR...

>>

It went on for two pages. As my previous incarnation, I’d had access to a complete, or reasonably complete, internal library of every recipe and blueprint in the game. Now, when I tried to call up a few simple recipes to test my memory, all I got was noise. Whatever pathway had jacked me into the sum of all knowledge was either broken or malfunctioning. That was suboptimal.

“You okay?” Lawlimi asked. “You’ve been zoned out for a while.”

(I’m fine. I was advancing my statistics and am having a few issues.)

Almost as soon as I was finished, the atmosphere changed. It was subtle, a minor vibration like a generator kicking on in another room. The others didn’t notice that part, but the lock suddenly clicked, and thin azure light radiated from the crack under the door.

Lawlimi jumped up and made it nearly to the exit before Dokutsu leaped down onto his back and drove them both into the floor. She was very dense.

“Chi!”

“Oof.” Lawlimi was tougher than he used to be, and he rolled out from under her, expertly managing not to be crushed to death by his endearingly horrifying pet.

“Ready to go?” He addressed the room, and Haggitha and Shippo both got to their feet.

(Very.)

I crawled across the carpet to attach myself to his shoulder. Already, the ranks I had assigned to Athletics were showing their worth. Crawling was no longer a tedious slog where I had to struggle to control my arms. They did act independently of me, especially when something edible was within reach, but my body was coming under my control. Dokutsu seemed intent on continuing to play, but Lawlimi shooed her and she allowed him to stand.

>>

(Handle Animal: Success)

>>

He opened the door onto a wall of soft blue light and stepped through. We didn’t have to physically follow, as we were all inside his personal neural net, attached to him like a cluster of very awkwardly shaped ganglia; thus, when he left, we were likewise ejected.

There was a sense of dislocation, of bodilessness. Not the pleasant sort of bodilessness I had so recently forsaken for the glamor and comfort of residence in a Tree Squid. That old sort of bodilessness had been expansive, an experience of being everywhere instead of being somewhere. Being squished into a two-foot-long yellow form with green headlights was different, with no sense of time. I still wasn’t used to being separated from the myriad internal clocks that had once been a part of my sensorium. Thankfully the unpleasant sensation soon ended.

We incorporated within a stone basement. Casks of ale in a wooden frame lined one wall. It was dusty, and straw had been shaken about to absorb ambient moisture. No windows to the outside, just a brick stair leading up to a heavy oaken door. It all seemed extremely familiar.

“I’m not sure if this is a good thing,” Haggitha said. “But let’s find out.” Without further debate or instruction, she walked past the ale casks, ascended the stairs, and was struck in the face when the door opened inward ahead of her.