Chapter 1

Full Immersion Games. The next milestone after virtual reality.

Instead of simply strapping on a VR headset and some controllers, the player would have their consciousness drawn out form their body and placed within an avatar within the game world itself in a full-body experience.

It was the next holy grail of entertainment, another dream to pursue by a people who were forever looking for the next promised land. Fiction has been written, drawn and animated about such a dream. Once VR was achieved, such things did not seem so much like a pipe dream anymore; it could be done. Building upon past achievements, designers and players alike could put their heads together and slowly put together a concrete idea of how to make the dream into reality. The task remained daunting, requiring computers of immense power and understanding of the human brain that transcended modern medical science. Full Immersion seemed to lie far off in the misty future.

That is, until WORLDTREE presenters marched onto stage during an annual games convention and challenged the host to try their new device and the alpha build of an unknown game called Myth/Real Online. Shouts of awe and disbelief echoed around the globe as the host left his body and entered his avatar. It seemed like a staged demo…until random people were called up on stage to try it for themselves.

The internet exploded. Amidst the typical shit-flinging and name-calling, serious discussion and rational debate took place. WORLDTREE kindly shared its patented data, just to prove that it was no hoax. As evidence seemingly piled up on its own, even the most stoic, skeptical researchers could not help but feel a spark of excitement. If the potential drawbacks were eliminated, why… the potential!

Full Immersion training for soldiers in the military!

VR surgical operations that would hone the skills of surgeons safely!

A massive kegger party with virtual booze, with the whole world attending! (This one was publically laughed at, but some people were secretly taking down notes for later…)

Naturally, the internet was flooded with yet more rumors and hoaxes. Certain rumors would spark off chain of events that would abruptly rise into public scrutiny much later. But as far as the world went, it currently did not even register in the background noise. Everyone was focused on WORLDTREE and their next magic trick. When the company distributed Closed Beta passes for their mystery game, there were actual murders as the world collectively went mad once again. The wiser ones kept their good fortune close to their chests, while the more foolish suffered. Some even gave up and sold their passes to escape the harassment.

One of these passes would change hands multiple times before landing in the hands of a desperate young girl. Even she herself did not really know what logic she was using when she jammed a Full Immersion Headset on her brother’s head and switched it on. After all, he was in a coma and Myth/Real Online was nowhere near suitable for medical treatments.

This is where it all begins.

-------------

White.

His head hurt.

He flopped over onto his side, a fire burning in his head. He thrashed weakly, eyes screwed shut with pain. He heard voices, but the agony in his head shredded all meaning from them. The world tilted and something cool washed over him…

………….

He awoke from his blackout. The world was no longer white and piercing, but everything swam in a mess of color. His head was throbbing, bloated with a cloying cloud. He felt sick and retched, but nothing came out. His world tilted again as points of pressure suddenly clamped onto him, lifting and bending him over…

……………..

He awoke from his blackout. The world shifted nauseatingly, but now he could look at a point without being overcome by dizziness. His head pounded, but the pressure within had receded from the point of bursting. He shifted his gaze slowly nonetheless. Above him, he saw wooden beams and boards. Something looked unusual about them, but he could not put a finger on it. He turned his head slowly and saw wooden furniture. Everything was made of wood. Sunlight fell in from an open window. The curtains, at least, were made of something that looked like cloth. Then again, he was lying on something soft. A blanket covered his body and that was made from cloth too.

Seeing so much wooden things felt strange for some reason. He wanted to examine the room more, but his eyelids fell closed…

The next time Isaac awoke, his thoughts had finally settled down into a steady stream, rather than the chaotic morass he had known all this time. His head merely ached instead of burning. The world held steady as his gaze shifted around the room. Almost nothing had changed from the last time he woke up, save for the light filtering in from the window. It was a golden tint that spoke of sunset. Wanting to know the time, Isaac looked around the room, but there was no clock to be seen. He paused, sorting through his muddled memories to determine just what a clock was and how he knew about it.

The sound of creaking hinges interrupted his self-reflection. He turned his head towards the sound and saw a very strange-looking being staring right back at him. Isaac saw a woman, matronly and middle-aged. She had kind eyes and earthy brown hair tied underneath a green cloth kerchief. She was wearing rough-spun clothing and an apron that covered her front entirely. The front pocket seemed to have bundles of dried grass poking out of it. What really threw him off was the sight of her ears. They poked out from each side of her head and were covered in fur the color of her hair instead of skin like her arms and face. She gave a cry of surprise and crossed the room, over to the bed he was lying on.

“Oh, you’re awake! Are you feeling well? Do you feel pain anywhere?” She asked anxiously.

Isaac flinched, overwhelmed by the torrent of words. He could only glance nervously at the strange woman.

The woman seemed to realize she was scaring him and backed away a little. “Ah, I’m sorry, dear. You’ve been terribly ill.” She explained in a softer tone of voice. “Such a terrible delirium, that was. Tossing and turning as if tortured. I was afraid you would never wake from it.”

Isaac slowly relaxed, his hands relaxed and he felt the ache from gripping them so tightly.

The woman drew up a chair and sat next to the bed, smiling warmly. Isaac was struck with a burst of longing at the familiar expression. It was...motherly.

“My name is Farah, young man. What is yours?” The woman asked.

Isaac opened his mouth. “…….!” To his dismay, all that came out of his mouth was a guttural noise. He tried again “………..!”

Farah’s smile faltered and disappeared as Isaac kept trying and failing to speak. “Oh, oh you poor child…” She muttered, her face full of horrified pity. She got up and placed gentle hands on his shoulders. “Shush, shush. It’s alright. Don’t strain yourself.” She pushed him down until he was lying on the bed again. “We’ll solve this, so don’t worry. I’ll get the druid, if he can’t help you, then nobody can.” She hustled out of the room, leaving Isaac to stew in his defeat.

Trying not to dwell on his dismal failure, Isaac turned his thoughts onto Farah’s strange ears. Now that he had time to think, he was becoming more and more certain that they should be rounded and small, not so large and covered in fur. It reminded him of some sort of small, four-legged creature he could not remember the name of. That was not the only strange thing. The room itself was strange, as he had noted earlier. So many things were missing. Where were the lights? The electronics? There was not even a tablet in sight. And most of all, everything looked rather…stylized and clean. They did not match the gritty detail he could almost remember. He vaguely recalled seeing similar things, though not precisely what or where from.

Isaac was beginning to loathe the gaps in his memory.

That brief mental strain had caused the ache to flare up into pounding again. He shut his eyes and rubbed his palms into his forehead. The sensation was all wrong, as though he was wearing something over his face. He opened his eyes and stared dully at his hands. Instead of smooth skin, there was fur and fleshy pads and claws. How should he react to this? His scattered memories were telling him this was wrong, yet he could feel the bed and smell the scent of herbs and bread in the air.

Was this real or not?

--------------------------

Farah had said that she was fetching the Druid, whoever that was, but it was taking a long time. The sunlight had crept across the length of the room while Isaac found yet another strange part of this world he had woken up to. In short, he found his menu screen.

A semi-transparent screen had appeared in his vision, showing a simple two-part hand gesture as well as a simple line of text reading ‘Open up your menu’. With only the vaguest idea of what a menu was, Isaac had obediently followed the instructions and slowly blundered his way through the nest of screens. So far, he had found that the eye-catching ‘X’ at the top right corner of each screen would cause the screen to vanish. The button labelled ‘Status’ gave him a confusing bunch of small screens within a bigger screen with all sorts of numbers and terms that still meant nothing to him. He had been staring at it for a while now and was still no closer to understanding from since he started. The loud squeaking of the door hinges announced Farah’s return. Accompanying her was the Druid she was speaking of and one other person.

The Druid himself was eye-catching in appearance. Unlike Farah, who could pass for human if she covered her ears up, the Druid would literally stand out in a crowd thanks to the towering branches of his antlers, sprouting like trees from his head. He was nearly entirely an animal in appearance, save for the five fingers on his hands, the intelligent look in his eyes and a strangely expressive face. He also wore a short cape that looked to be woven out of living leaves that rustled softly, as if in an eternal wind.

Behind him was a girl, judging from her dress. She seemed to be halfway in between Farah and the Druid appearance-wise. She had feline ears poking out from sandy brown hair gathered into a short braid and a curling cat tail that swayed out from behind her. Her skin had patches of ginger fur, predominantly on her neck and tapering until only the points decorated her cheeks. Her clothes were a near-replica of Farah’s and her expression was stoically calm.

“Good evening, young man.” The Druid’s voice was calm and deep. “My name is Kiernan. I shall do all that is in my power to help you.”

By the time Druid Kiernan was done with his examinations, the sunlight had vanished and the clashing songs of insects drifted endlessly through the open window. Isaac had long since been overtaken by sleep while the Druid’s hands glowed with a soft light, one placed on the crown of his head and the other on his chest. Farah had left the room to see to their dinner, leaving the younger girl behind to watch the druid while he worked.

The glow faded from Kiernan’s hands and he stood up from his seat, humming gravely as he did. “Ah, this is quite complicated.” He mused out loud.

“How so, Master Druid?” The girl asked curiously.

“Physically, he is fine, though severely weakened.” Kiernan replied, turning his head to face the cat-girl. “You see the patterns on both his skin and pelt? Those mark someone who has received power from the Leystones.”

“The ring of standing stones outside the village? I always thought only Druids could use them! Don’t they do something horrid to normal folk?” The young lady exclaimed, a tinge of shock in her voice.

“…Well, you’d not be wrong.” Kiernan admitted. “But while ‘tis uncommon knowledge, the Leystones can bestow great powers on people, but only when they possess the right blood. There’s no way to know if you fulfill the requirements save to try it for yourself.” Then, a frown crossed his face. “However, such powers often come with a great price. Both power and price are different for every attempt, as records say. This poor young lad may have very well sacrificed his voice. However, in the worst case, he may have had his wits shredded to the winds.” Kiernan sighed gravely. “I am fairly certain that he’s become a lackwit. He does not respond rightly to anything. We can only hope that he will recover in the future.”

The girl had briefly gone pale. “Oh…”

“Indeed. Hardship awaits in this young man’s future. That is for certain.”