It didn’t sound like much of a suggestion at all. He did as he was told and sat cross-legged on the jagged stones beneath him, which was only slightly more comfortable than kneeling on them.
“If you don’t need me, I’ll set up camp,” Mira said.
“I’ll help you once I’m done,” Alina replied.
“Here!” Mira threw a cushion at him as she walked away from the rocky outcrop, a second ball of light appearing in front of her.
“Thanks,” he shouted after her, placing the cushion beneath him. His backside was grateful for it. He turned back to Alina. The floating orb of light hovered to his right and though he could see her face, Alina’s violet armour had almost disappeared, its presence only visible from the faintest of a bluish outline. Around them, it was otherwise dark with just the gentle lapping of waves from the stream breaking the silence. One thing that he noticed now was that there seemed to be no wind in this place, but he didn’t know if that was another oddness from the dead forest.
The gravity of his situation was beginning to sink in as he sat there on the cushion in his makeshift leafy outfit, covered in someone else’s blood. He’d tried to joke with her a moment before, his false confidence masking his fear and unease but he knew he was out of his depth. He’d escaped death narrowly through luck more than foresight and no amount of bravado was going to get him through this.
“I’ll give you an overview of our world,” Alina said. “Then you’ll camp with us tonight. Tomorrow, I’ll have someone take you to the Academy, where you’ll be able to choose what you want to do next.”
“Before you start, can I ask? Are you really a princess?”
He was grateful to have stumbled upon Alina and Mira and Kiri, but he couldn’t help but wonder why she would take the time to help a nobody like him. If she truly was a princess, why was she here, in full battle armour, with companions who seemed to be every bit as dangerous as her?
“I am,” she smiled reassuringly. “My grandfather is the King of Aleria.”
“But why aren’t you in a castle or something?”
“I could be, if I wanted to be,” she replied with a faint chuckle, “but I wanted to do something for the people. I wanted a responsibility to fulfil, and was made the Commander of the Academy of Champions. Truth be told, the King probably sent me here thinking it would keep me away from the fighting on our borders. We’re about as far from the Riftlands as we can be and still be in Aleria. I don’t think he was expecting the fight to come to me.” She laughed that rich laugh again.
“But even then, why would you be out here and not at the academy? Surely, you could have others investigate on your behalf?”
“What kind of leader would I be if I was happy to send others into areas that I myself feared to go?”
“What kind of leader would you be if you’re not around to lead?”
She understood the insinuation, though she didn’t seem phased by it. “Do you doubt my ability or are you questioning my judgment? You think that perhaps I’m reckless?”
“I don’t know which,” he replied honestly. He got too curious, too comfortable. His question was flippant at best but rude nevertheless. The last thing he wanted to do was get on her wrong side. Not just because he felt she did have all the power she hinted at and more but because, for whatever reason, fate had thrown him a lifeline. He needed to understand his place in this world, but he knew that it was always good to have friends in high places. “I just think I’d rather be safe and have others check things, even if I have to get involved later.”
“Would you be comfortable knowing you had sent others to their possible deaths in your place?” He remained silent as she looked at him with a playfully curious smile on her lips. A smile that suggested she understood his point of view but was going to prove it wrong anyway. His words weren’t something she hadn’t heard before. “Why did you come here?”
The question threw him. He wasn’t expecting her to flip the switch. He was the newcomer here. The one with all the questions on this new world. He hadn’t expected someone to ask about his motivations. Honestly, he hadn’t given much thought to anything when he had made his decision, except not wanting to live in the horrific reality that he had been presented in that weird, white waiting room. “I was in a bad place and was given another chance,” he replied.
“And what was that chance you were given?”
“To come here and help in the fight against the Rift Lords.”
“And what were you offered that made you choose to come here?”
Tyler thought back to what the Gamesmaster had told him. The shooting he had been planning. The accident on his way there. “A chance to undo a choice I made.”
“A choice that would have resulted in people’s deaths?”
It hadn’t but if what the Gamesmaster had told him was true – and he still wasn’t sure that it was – it would have. How could she have known though? “What makes you say that?”
Her expression changed to the hint of a knowing smile. “The others who came here made a choice. A choice that resulted in death. They told me they were offered the chance to go back to before they made the choice. I’m curious to know if you were offered something similar?”
“Yes,” he answered, nodding to her as he recalled the sight of his broken body on the hospital bed, his mother by his side and his tearful sister asleep. “I planned on killing people and had an accident on the way. My body was broken; my mind lost. The Gamesmaster said if I came here and helped to take back the Riftlands, as you called it, I would be able to go back to before I made the choice.”
“Then you understand why I would choose to come here myself, rather than send others to do it for me? We’re all responsible for our own choices but I can’t take back death.” She smiled again, gently, as if to soften the blow of what she was telling him. It would have been easy for her to send others. Others who might die in her place. But those were not deaths she wanted on her conscience. Tyler had come here not wanting to remain in a broken body and to relieve his family of the shame of his choice.
“Now, I can’t say I haven’t enjoyed your questioning. It’s been a while since I’ve had someone question my decisions, but I think we should continue this another time.” She continued smiling at him. He felt no malice or offense in her expression. Just the look of a princess who welcomed honest words over flattery. She looked towards the forest where Kiri had disappeared, whilst he quickly glanced behind him. Mira had already put up several tents with little lanterns inside. “My sisters will be back soon and I’d like to give you that overview before they return. I’m sure you would also like to get out of that delightful dress you’re wearing, have a shower in the stream and then get a good night’s sleep?”
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“Of course,” he said, smiling himself and settling into the cushion beneath him. “I’m sorry for wasting your time.”
“You didn’t. I look forward to continuing the conversation another day. Maybe when you have the choice to make instead of me.”
There were no sinister undertones to her words but they were enough to make him understand that it was easy to make judgments when you weren’t responsible for the choice. Easy to speak about putting others in danger, when you weren’t the one who had to live with that on your conscience.
“Now, you asked me what this forest is. It’s a special place where people come to take the next step on their way to reaching the very best they can be.
“I don’t know how things work on your world but here, we grow stronger through our deeds, our experiences, our decisions. Every difficult task we accomplish, every challenge we overcome; even every friend we make or enemy we defeat makes us stronger. Our minds, our bodies, our talents, our skills all adapt, evolve. Become more than they were before.
“We measure our growth through ‘Status’. It’s a way for us to navigate our progress. If you were of this world, you would be taught this at a young age. When you say ‘Status’, it will show you who you are and how far you’ve come. Say it.”
“Status.”
A floating blue screen appeared not too dissimilar to a tablet from home but without the casing. It hovered in the air, roughly a foot in front of his face, within arm’s reach. He could see Alina’s face through it but it was solid enough that the white text at the centre of the screen was clearly visible.
{Name} [ Tyler Smith ]
{Age} [ 25 ]
{Level} [ 39 ]
{Experience} [ 5091/20550 ]
{Health} [ 9959 | 9959 | +0 ]
{Energy} [ 2162 | 2162 | +0 ]
{Power} [ 319 | 319 | +0 ]
{Class} [ UNAVAILABLE ]
[? Press for more]
“Status shows us what level we’ve attained. What skills we have. Which stats we’ve favoured.” As she spoke, Tyler listened but instinctively reached out to see if the screen truly worked by touch. It did and what looked like a menu screen showed.
[ VITALS | vitals ][Off]
[ CLASS | class ]
[ TITLES | titles ]
[ ATTRIBUTES | stats ]
[ SKILLS | skills ]
[ EQUIPMENT | equip ]
[ INVENTORY | bags ]
[ QUESTS | quests ]
[ ACHIEVEMENTS | achi ]
[ JOURNAL | notes ]
[ MAP | map ]
“Everything you need is just a word away,” Alina continued. “Your progress. Your skills. What’s in your bags. You can even keep a diary. As you become stronger, you won’t even need to say anything. You can just think it and imagine it and the right pane will come up. But while you’re learning, you can use your hand to navigate.”
He reached out again and pressed [ VITALS | vitals ]. At first he thought nothing had happened. The screen in front was still there and the page hadn’t changed. He tapped [ VITALS | vitals ] again. Still nothing. And again. Still…no, it had changed. He just hadn’t noticed it.
[ VITALS | vitals ][On]
“Status,” he said, and the screen disappeared. Then it became apparent.
Just on the edge of his vision, in the top left, a green and orange bar faded into view, the orange beneath the green, both overlapped to the left by a large circle. When he turned his head to see the bars better, they moved with him. He flicked his eyes towards the bars instead and they became crystal clear, the numbers from the status screen that indicated his health and energy now overlaid on those bars and his level – 39 – inside the circle.
At the bottom of his vision, again on the edge, was a thin progress bar, showing the experience he’d gained for this level and the total he could gain, a quarter filled with a darker shade of green than the health bar.
He looked at Alina.
“Should I be able to see your information?”
“Not necessarily. You only see your vital information and information for your party, if you have one” Alina explained. “You can only see someone else’s vitals if they have hostility towards you or you to them. Then you’ll be able to see their level and their health and mana or energy bars. They’ll be more prominent than your own bars, but it won’t show you in numbers how much of either they have.
“In truth, once you reach the higher levels, you’ll turn your display off. You rarely, if ever need it. You develop an intuition for these things.”
“How many levels are there?” Tyler asked, glancing at the 39 in the top left corner of his vision.
“One hundred. Most people in this world don’t go past level twenty-five, sometimes thirty at a stretch. You can reach those levels without doing much, if anything, extra. Most people are content with that. You ply a reasonable trade, earn a decent living, and live out your life quite comfortably at such levels.”
Most people reach level twenty-five but he was already well beyond that. It didn’t seem right but he didn’t have the opportunity to question it.
“But some want to reach further. Others don’t have a choice but to,” Alina continued. “This forest is one of the places those people go to reach higher levels. Here, your experience is doubled; you have more quests, more beasts to kill, higher gear to obtain. The Forest of Learning enhances your skills, whether that’s with hammers or axes, fishing poles or hunting bows.
“You can enter the forest at level twenty-five at the entrance to the north. It’s about fifty leagues from north to south, and when-“ she gave him a curious look and he realised his expression probably reflected the confusion he felt, but then she smiled in understanding. “A league is three miles or about how far you can walk in an hour. At the quickest, someone could complete the forest in about ten days, to get all the experience they need. That should take them to level fifty by the time they make it to the exit to the south.
“After that, it’s really how far you want to take it. At level fifty, you get to choose a class. Think of classes as professions. Jewelcrafting. Tailoring. Blacksmithing. Cooking. Soldiering and many more. If you have aspirations of becoming proficient in your craft, you need to reach level fifty, which isn’t difficult but it requires effort on your part. You won’t be able to stumble to it. If you have aspirations of becoming a master of your craft, that’s when you need to dedicate your life to it.”
He thought back to the quest he had completed and the enormous xp he had gained. If that wasn’t the definition of stumbling to it, he didn’t know what was.
“And princess wasn’t something you wanted to dedicate your life to?” he joked, and then immediately felt stupid. There he went again, covering the uncomfortable weight of the situation he found himself in with false bravado. He wondered if he’d always been like that. Back on Earth. Or was it something he was developing in the moment. He wished he wasn’t missing those damn memories. Then a thought occurred to him. One he hadn’t considered before.
If the Gamesmaster had the power to send him back in time, then surely he might’ve had the power to give him back his memories. He frowned and looked down at the pebbles at his feet, annoyed with himself for not having this thought back then. Perhaps stupidity was a trait of his from his old life. How had he had the ability to stay calm in that life-or-death moment with the Demon Sprite but he hadn’t had the wherewithal to ask for his memories back.
“It’s okay,” Alina said, drawing his attention back to her. The light from the orb danced across her silver hair. “I wasn’t annoyed by your joke.”
“Huh? Oh, I was thinking about something else,” he replied. She raised her eyebrows. A slight panic took him, remembering he was talking to a princess. She seemed totally normal and accessible to him but he still needed to be respectful. Quickly, he added, “Not that I wasn’t thinking about you. I was thinking about you but not exclusively about you.”
Her eyebrows raised further and she tilted her head slightly. His words sounded back to him in his ears.
“Not that you’re not worth thinking about exclusively,” he said in a rush. “I mean, of course you’re absolutely worth thinking about exclusively.” His mind thought back to that moment when she emerged from the water. That silky silver hair flowing over her body. Her golden-bronze skin. The curv–. What the hell is wrong with you, Tyler? Where the hell is your mind going? Focus. Focus. Don’t lose your head.
Literally.
He breathed in deeply and held it for a moment, before letting it out slowly. He looked into her light-green eyes, thought of his mother at his hospital bed and remembering he was talking to a princess, said as politely as he could, “Can we continue with the lesson?”
“Of course,” she replied, her lips twitching slightly, as if she was suppressing a smile.
