7

  When Sage’s voice finally reached me, I had precisely one hit point remaining. My vision continued to pulse red as my health bar flashed with only a single sliver of green. I tried to pull in a breath, but instantly regretted it, pain lancing through my chest and abdomen. Broken ribs, I knew, and more. That pain was in addition to feeling like I’d been dragged behind a horse. That thing had straight-up pulverised me. I didn’t know how I could be in this much pain and still be alive. I let out something like a low, long groan and realised Sage was still talking.

  Luck! You’re conscious, she said, and there was audible relief in her tone. You’re highly vulnerable in your present state. Your health recovery has taken effect, though it will be gradual due to your constitution.

  I moaned again as I pulled myself up to a sitting position with my back to a tree, and looked slowly around. There was no sign of the giant stag, and the clearing was unoccupied. The small pond was still and silver beneath the fading light. The red pulse on my screen had finally subsided, and the forest around me was edging into twilight. New sounds echoed through the trees; more insistent nocturnal insects stirring awake as night was beginning to creep across the sky. Through the dim light of the trees, I distantly saw the gentle pulse of fireflies.

  “What the Hell happened? Why did I just walk towards that thing like a god-damned idiot?” I finally managed to ask, speaking aloud, wincing as I took shallow breaths. I could, very faintly, feel the extensive internal damage beginning to knit itself as my health bar crept upward, though far too slowly for my liking. Sage continued, though she sounded a little bewildered.

  You came into contact with an exceptionally rare celestial-level creature, and you were under the effects of a debuff created by the aura of Aleth’akaris - that’s one of his names. All deities radiate similar auras; some inspire courage, others terror. In this case it was awe, which manifested as a highly potent charm spell called Celestial Magnificence. A player of your level had no hope of resisting it. You were effectively at the whim of the god once you entered its area of effect.

  I groaned again, shifting against the tree and wincing as the pain lanced through me again. "Why am I alive?” I gasped. “I should be dead, I could feel it,” I said with a slow wheeze. “He could have just stepped on me to finish me off. I’m pretty sure I would die right now if a leaf landed on me” I said. “How long was I out?”

  It’s comforting that your sarcasm remains intact, Luck. As to how you’re alive, I can only guess that it’s because the god left you alive. You’ve been unconscious for a few minutes. You took very heavy damage.

  “I don’t think even death could make me less sarcastic,” I muttered as I looked around. We had lost too much time. It would be dark soon, I thought as I peered up at the sky through the canopy. Sage went on as I rested back against the tree.

  The fact that a celestial-class creature was so close to your spawn point is concerning. The lethality of such an encounter is almost guaranteed, and well beyond what any new player could expect to survive. An oversight of this nature requires clarification. I will query the Central System for more information, and if possible, an explanation.

  “You can do that?” I asked, curious in spite of myself. I closed my eyes and focused on the feeling of relief as my flesh and bones slowly reorganised themselves back into their default positions. My breaths were coming slightly easier now.

  Yes, I can query the Central System or your Sponsors at any time, though responses are neither immediate nor are either parties required to provide information. However, the Central System is a neutral Arbitrator, and as such will provide information that falls within its acceptable parameters for the game’s ruleset. For now, you should rest and recover. And Luck…” She trailed off for a moment, and I raised an eyebrow.

  “Yeah, what is it?”

  You should check your status screen. I furrowed my brows, and before I opened the tab, my eyes were drawn to a little square icon that hovered beneath my health and mana bars, normally where buffs and debuffs would appear. The icon was a straight-on view of an antlered stag’s head, with fiercely glowing blue eyes. When I focused on it, it read “The Mark of Embermantle.” That was it.

  “What the hell…” I murmured as I willed my status screen into existence. I scanned down and beneath my current status was indeed a buff called “The Mark of Embermantle” with the same icon, but this time it had a full description.

  Once every few decades, the Primal God Aleth’Akaris, Lord of the Emerald Expanse, the great stag Embermantle, descends from his celestial grove, fated to be born into the mortal realm. There he is to fulfil his sacred role in leading The Great Hunt, and ultimately serving as its bloody sacrifice. In summer the great stag wanders the forests of Feyhold, seeking out those worthy to take part in his sacred hunt. Those hunters who receive his mark are gathered beneath the Blood Moon, where they compete to bring down the God. The champion who emerges victorious from the Hunt is granted gifts of power, and the honour of attending the Ritual of Stannas’fahl, where the Gods themselves gather to feast upon the great stag’s flesh and mark their rights of sovereignty over the mortal realm.

  Note: This mark obligates the bearer to take part in the special PvP quest event “The Great Hunt.” The bearer will be teleported to the Proving Grounds at the indicated time. While the mark remains active, it bestows the following effects:

  +10 to Dexterity

  +5 to Strength

  +5 to Constitution

  +5 to the Jump skill

  Grants the player the special skill Shattering Charge (when activated the player surges forward up to 10 metres and strikes a shattering blow. If the player strikes a target, the first instance of weapon or unarmed damage is increased by 50%)

  *Please note that the Mark of Embermantle may result in minor cosmetic changes to the player.

  Before I had time to react to this, a new notification popped onto my screen:

  You’ve received a quest: The Great Hunt.

  Participate in the Great Hunt quest event. Slay Embermantle, and offer his flesh to the Pantheon. Fight your way past fellow hunters to deal the death blow. Should the hunters fail and Embermantle go unslain, the wrath of the gods is sure to be swift…and painful.

  Note: This is a mandatory quest event for all bearers of the Mark of Embermantle. This is a multiplayer event. This is a Player versus Player event - combatants are permitted to use lethal force in pursuit of the objective. Players bearing the Mark will be teleported to the Scarlet Grove at sunset on the specified day. The combatant who slays the god will receive a Divine Chest, fifty thousand gold pieces, and the honour of attending the Ritual of Stannas’Fahl. Speak with Plainly, the Arch-Druid at the Scarlet Grove for more details.

  The quest text shrank and moved to the right side of my screen, where a timer appeared beneath the text. It read: 59 days, 13 hours, 29 minutes. I just stared at the descending counter, horror slowly dawning on me as my eyes flickered between the buff and the timer. My heart picked up speed. Not just a quest, but a Player versus Player quest event. Already. According to this quest timer, I had just under sixty days to prepare myself to kill other players. To kill other people, and for other people, not monsters, to try and kill me. Jesus Christ, I thought as I rubbed my face wearily. Sixty fucking days. Just how long was this game going to last? Every day was another day I lost back home; another day Abi had to endure not knowing if her father was alive or dead, or had disappeared and abandoned her. “I’m so sorry, baby girl” I said softly to the night, missing her so much it made my chest ache in an entirely different way from the wounds I’d just taken.

  The gravity, and difficulty, of this game had just skyrocketed. I fought with clawing anxiety as my mind tried to parse how this was going to play out. Not with me dead, I swore, no matter what had to happen. I am NOT going to be a sacrifice to a fucking broader profit margin, I thought grimly.

  As I sat heaving slow breaths beneath the darkening forest a slow realisation swept over me. A fear and a knowing. A stark truth I hadn’t had to face until now. The man I was only hours ago, he has to be gone. I can’t do this. Before anything else, I'm a father to a little girl. I'm gentle and kind, and that's exactly how it should be. But how could I look into her eyes, after what was coming?

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  As I was, I was too soft, and being gentle and kind was a liability now. It has to be Luck. It was a desperate thought. Maybe the character could be more than I could. Maybe Luck was stone cold. Maybe he could be the fastest, deadliest motherfucker in the room. Maybe he’s relentless, and driven, and unstoppable. Maybe he’s strong enough to endure the blood and all the pain that would surely come. Much of it would have to be inflicted by me. Maybe if I pretended long enough, it would become true.

  Maybe he could do it all, because I couldn’t. How could anyone do it and come out the other side with their sanity intact? Kill people; real people.. for a fucking game. This haphazard coping strategy meant I was essentially playing pretend, and I knew it, but deliberate dissociation was all I had to hide behind. Killing people fucking scared me. Luck was going to have to be ruthless and unforgiving, decisive and cold. These were not traits I normally exhibited. I wouldn’t have regretted that any other time but now.

  Inexplicable tears were welling up in my eyes and dropped in hot trails down my face as I sat in a daze, alone in the growing darkness beneath the trees. This was fucking nuts. I had thus far been a failure at life, but failure had never meant that life would just end. The price had never been so insanely high. Even if my days hadn’t been perfect ones, even when the depression was crippling and black, I somehow got by. There has always been a tomorrow. Not so, here. Just one misstep here would mean death. I didn’t want to die. Abi needed me, and if I was being honest with myself, I needed her just as much. She was everything, but what was I, if you took away the fact that I was her father? The answer haunted me.

  This needed to be a rebirth. This new identity needed to be the mental armour I put on to save myself; to give me the necessary distance to stomach the horror of killing actual people, and the sorrow that was sure to follow.

  I needed to put Luck on like a mask.

  Luck will be the killer.

  When the time for killing came, I would have to put my softer self away. I would have to bury it so deep that nothing on the surface could reach it. The only way out was through.

  I said none of this aloud, or to Sage, and she had remained silent. Realising I had been completely lost in these black thoughts and was steadily digging a hole of self pity, I shook away stupid self-indulgent tears. I tried not to worry about my actual ability to carry out this desperate coping mechanism. Needing a distraction, I started by taking a deep breath and refocusing on the game. I had received some definite benefits from the mark.

  The stat and skill increases, and the new Shattering Charge skill were all pretty awesome. Once I wasn’t so nearly-dead, I would have to see how the bonus to my Jump skill affected me, which I was admittedly looking forward to. The dexterity increase was great, and the increases in strength and constitution were just what I needed to start making up for some of my weaker stats. I dropped out of the stats tab and turned my attention to the notifications glimmering gently at the bottom right of my screen. The text had a little exclamation mark and beside it read: You have 4 notifications. I focused on the exclamation mark and the notifications began to appear one by one. The first read:

  You have reached level 3 in the Stealth Skill

  I was surprised, but realised the gain was probably due to the fact that, regardless of the devastating headbutt, I had successfully snuck through the forest and up to the grove before I walked out and tried to introduce myself to a fucking god. The next three notifications were, to my surprise, my first achievements. When I focused on them, a system message first read:

  You’ve received an achievement for the first time! The viewers have decided, and your deeds have earned you both renown and a reward! Please note that reward chests can be accessed at your instance of the Shrine of Elaris. Gold has been deposited to your inventory!

  The words faded and the first achievement followed in an ornate bronze script with curving flourishes. It seemed to be for killing a mob for the first time.

  Achievement Unlocked: Murder Most Foul!

  For the first time, you crossed a moral boundary normally reserved for the unhinged, the insane, or the damned. That’s right, you killed something, psycho. That said, it did try to kill you too, so here you go: Congratulations, you’ve received a Common Chest! Congratulations, you’ve received 100 gold pieces!

  A Common Chest probably wasn’t much, but I sighed with some relief. I looked up, kind of at a forty-five degree angle, speaking to whatever small audience had awarded me the achievement. “Thanks guys,” I said simply, meaning it. Whoever was writing this shit could troll me all they wanted if it meant life-saving supplies. For all I knew, the people watching this were awful, but if you played this broadcast on Earth, it would undoubtedly find an audience. Not to say it wouldn’t also meet with a cavalcade of resistance from every human rights group on the planet, but some people would watch and enjoy it, while others would watch just because they were morbidly curious. That didn’t mean everyone watching was evil. People are just fucking complicated, and one explanation is rarely enough to describe the weird bundle of thoughts, feelings, and experiences that make up a human. Maybe some of these people would even be rooting for me. If so, I needed friends on the outside.

  Ultimately, I needed whatever help I could get. In this case, my gratitude was genuine. Hopefully the chest had some essentials, and the hundred gold would surely get me lodging and maybe something to replace my shredded t-shirt. I looked down sadly at the image of Boba Fett, resigned to the fact that my beloved Star Wars shirt had met its final fate. At the hands of a goblin, no less. Goblin blood was spattered across the iconic helmet of the bounty hunter, and the rest of the blood was probably mine. The next two achievements followed, and they were startling as they appeared in much more elaborate text that radiated with opalescent light. A golden glimmer sparkled across the letters as it read:

  Achievement Unlocked: Introducing…God!

  You’re the first player of season 26 of the Fell and the Fey to have the misfortune of meeting a God! Normally your story would end here, but instead you had the divine pleasure of basking in the otherworldly radiance of Aleth’Akaris, Embermantle, the King of the Hunt and Lord of the Emerald Expanse. Rumour has it that he kicked your lily ass. Congratulations, you’ve received a Divine Chest!

  Achievement Unlocked: Godsmacked!

  You took the equivalent of a sucker punch from a fucking Deity! And lived! You pissed off a celestial being enough that, without word or warning, you got smote! You’re either an incredible threat or exceedingly irritating, and the fact that you’re alive to read this is, fittingly, a miracle. Congratulations, you’ve received a Divine Chest!

  “Holy shit!” I exclaimed aloud after reading the two achievements. “Is getting two Divine Chests as insane as I think it is? Aren’t they top tier? I said, disbelieving. All I really did was get my ass kicked.”

  Both achievements are exceedingly rare, particularly the second. That’s not normally how a god marks a mortal. Low level players almost never survive encounters with deities, particularly violent ones. Receiving these achievements this early in the game is unheard of. It’s possible that my query concerning the presence of a celestial being so close to your spawn point played a role in determining the level of the rewards for those two achievements. The system seems to insist that the encounter was random, though it also acknowledges the danger to you was…disproportionate.

  “It didn’t feel particularly random, but I’m alive… thanks Sage,” I said gratefully, switching to internal speech. “Maybe my fragile mortality will be slightly more intact thanks to you.”

  No need for thanks, Luck. I’m fulfilling my role. Divine--level items should be quite significant. As you might imagine, they’re not given out lightly. I believe we can find a Shrine of Elaris at Spade’s Rest. I smiled in spite of myself. I was slightly relieved to find there was a part of me that could find some enjoyment in the midst of this blooming madness; I was still psyched by new gear.

  “Hey Sage, who writes this flavour text stuff anyway?” I asked her curiously.

  The lore text is written by series creator Reidwich Henning and his hand-picked writing staff, and as for the achievements… She paused here as though considering, then continued. ...they’re written by your Personal Predictive Model.

  “Wait, my what? What the hell does that mean?” I asked, bewildered.

  Your data collection and the creation of your profile was very thorough, she said matter-of-factly. In the course of gathering this data, sponsors often create a Personal Predictive Model, essentially an AI based on a player’s profile, in order to form some ideas as to how they might act in certain situations or respond to certain stressors. This AI is essentially a partial recreation of you that exists only in…digital form, and it’s one tool that sponsors can use as part of their broader support package. It’s standard for most sponsors to undertake this process. It has numerous benefits, most of which I’m not permitted to discuss.

  "So, somewhere up in your space dystopia, there's a little box with my digital brain in it? And you ask it questions, like a magic 8-ball?"

  Of course not. It's software adjacent to the Central System, not a physical object. I'm able to interface with it directly, and it performs several functions on behalf of the Central System.

  She went on as though it was absolutely reasonable for someone to create an AI version of me. The showrunners access this AI for a number of purposes, but one of them is to generate achievement text and things like mob or item descriptions based on your collected data, including culturally relevant factors and media you consumed. The tone and content of the text is essentially what you would write, if you were describing the achievement yourself. We’ve discovered this is a highly effective way to communicate with players in a way that suits them personally.

  “So, I just trolled myself? Like a robot version of me gave me shit for getting stomped by a god?”

  Effectively, yes, she replied.

  “That is really, really weird,” I said, pondering, then added, “I sound like an asshole.” Sage didn’t comment.

  I tried not to think about this part too hard. These people knew everything about me. Like, way more than the NSA. An AI version of myself sounded creepy as hell. It was a god-damned Meta-Me. These fucking people. I swear to god.

  “Well, Meta-Me can troll me all he wants. Achievements are good news. I’ll be dealing with far worse."

  I was finally able to stand, and I did so, dusting myself off. I found I was incredibly thirsty and walked to the pond, deciding to take my chances with the water. Atricia had said food and safe water would be readily available, if I remembered correctly. I bent down to cup my hand and I stopped, squinting at my reflection.

  The light was scarce, but there was enough for me to make out some of my features, and more importantly, my silhouette. I looked closer. What the actual fuck…?

  “Sage, why the hell do I have bonsai trees growing out of my head?”