40: Vanishment

My sword caught the armoured creature in its elbow, gouging a deep cut into tough flesh before it slid past. Body turning as one with the sword, I flipped through the air to land in a pirouette that brought my blade to bear on the monster again.

Both my sword and my arm were then promptly crushed against me when the Rackid slammed its shield into me. I stumbled backwards bringing up my off hand to give a frantic gesture that sparked illusory attacks to manifest in his mind. The subsequent flinch and twist of his body and guard was all that saved me from taking a hit.

Regaining my poise, I darted out with a low cut aimed at its thick legs to test the waters. Clawed feet rose, slashing and gouging. The bastard had jumped my sword and tried to ruin my arm with his talons in the same movement! This wasn’t some dumb beast of war. This was a trained warrior.

A slow smile crept over my lips, and I shifted stance, taking up a far more conservative guard than I’d been rolling with recently against the comparatively stupid goblins. The Rackid cocked its head and lunged, lightning quick.

Steel flashed and the Tobubana Katana sang with the energy that I pulsed into it at the moment of impact. Jarring Parry sent harsh vibrations up my opponent’s blade, numbing fingers and loosening his grip. A moment later and my blade slid between the plates of its organic armour, biting deep into the weak point that my Named Mark sight had indicated. In the corner of my vision, my damage buff gained a stack.

A roar broke my concentration and I lost my chance to capitalise on my opponent’s hiss of pain. Mum slammed into the Rackid, one hand grabbing the creature’s sword while the other pushed its shield out of the way. I stared in open mouthed shock as my previously petite, kindly mother rode the nasty creature to the ground.

It’d barely hit the ground before Mum was using her punch daggers to terrifying effect. With clockwork precision, she worked the Rackid, stab, stab, stab, stab…

He struggled in vain as she dropped his health with alarming speed, until suddenly she was back on her feet, one blade ripping in under his chin. Skewered, he was helpless as she lifted him up into the air and then down again to slam head first into the ground. He didn’t move again after that.

“Holy shit, mum,” I squeaked, staring at her with wide eyes.

“Oh goodness, that felt very satisfying,” she grinned, her mild, almost demure tone completely at odds with the bladed wrestling move she’d just pulled. Her expression turned thoughtful a second later, and she tapped her bloody daggers together. “You know, something these VR games are lacking is a soundtrack. Did you ever notice that? Normal games have all sorts of fun and interesting music, but these new VR ones? Nothing.”

I blinked, trying to compute what she was saying. “Um, what?”

“Nevermind,” she said, gripping her punch daggers firmly again. “We have more monsters to kill.”

Ten, then fifteen, then twenty Rackids stepped out of the woods, except this time they were much more cautious about their advance. Their armaments were disturbingly familiar, and after a quick headcount, the hair on the back of my neck stood straight up. Four groups of five, one heavily armoured, one with some sort of unholy staff, one with a bow, one with two hatchets in either hand, and one wielding a caster’s focus. Four parties with a tank, a healer, and three damage dealers.

My friends arrived beside Mum and me, weapons drawn and ready to defend our tree. Excitement began to build within me as our battle lines stared each other down. Neither side wanted to be the first to step forward and open themselves to attack.

The wind whistled through the silent forest between our two groups, shifting and rising in pitch, almost like a song. With a start, I turned to stare at Paisley. Her lips were pursed, but I could see the tiniest gap between them where she was whistling into the sound of the wind. It was hard to distinguish between the two sounds, but I’d spent enough time with her to know when she was casting. God, the way she wove her song into the ambient noise to hide it was… brilliant.

The Rackids realised what was up a moment later, one of the axe wielders lunging forward towards her. Steel crashed against steel, and my blade won. These things clearly didn’t have the level of training that I had, and I used that to brutal advantage. Flickering cut after flickering cut lashed out at the offending creature.

Distantly, I heard the others engage the enemy around me, but once again my singular focus was on keeping my friend safe while she raised eldritch hell against our foes.

An arrow flicked out towards her, and time bucked and strained against me. The arrow shattered against the razor edge of my sword, mere hardened steel giving way to the mythical fae metal of the Tobubana.

It took me a second to recognise what my subconscious had just done, and it scared me more than a little. I’d used the time dilation feature of my new digital existence out of pure reflex. I didn’t have time to ponder the implications of that, because the axe Rackid was lunging for me again.

Greedy, wild, and excessively fast blows from its weapons rained down on me, but I twitched out of the way of one, then deflected another with the flat of my blade. A third strike would have caught me if I hadn’t sent a phantom attack in from his peripheral vision. Then it was my turn.

My sword growled and hissed like a feral animal, energy surging along its length, and I whipped it out and into the bastard’s waist. Carapace armour cracked under the blow, and I followed up with a kick directly into the same spot. The Rackid howled in pain and staggered backward, dropping one axe to clutch at the wound.

I couldn’t afford to give it even a moment’s respite, so I pulled an absurdly anime move that would get me so much shit from Pay later on. Scatterdash sent flickering afterimages of me in all directions for a microsecond, and I blurred past my foe. I spun as I moved, sword high overhead. Right in line with the Rackid’s exposed, fleshy neck. My momentum carried me skidding through the loose leaf litter of the forest for several feet, sword outstretched and trailing red damage numbers like blood.

Paisley’s song faltered for a brief second, and I looked up to meet her amused expression. I couldn’t help a grin of my own. So I was being a little anime. A little flamboyant even. So what?

The sound of a bowstring straining against the pull of an archer brought me back into the fight, and I twisted, ready to catch another arrow against my katana. I was too slow. Not to block the shot, no, but because there wasn’t any need to take an arrow anymore.

Mum materialised behind the Rackid archer with both fists raised above her head. They crashed down onto the shoulders of the enemy creature, the steel guards of her punch daggers cracking carapace and bone. The enemy went down with a cry of inhuman pain. In sharp contrast to the happy smile on my mother’s face was the wide, serrated blade that erupted from the centre of his chest. Red, angry poison spread out from the fatal wound, sealing the fate of the creature.

A chime sounded in my head with the death of the archer, and time seemed to slow way down. My ability to move went with it, and I scowled. What was it this time?

You have reached level 25 with a faery class! Congratulations! Would you like to enter the Wild Way now and evolve your class?

(Please note, as you are a Digital Human, you will have ten seconds of objective time to complete the Wild Way Choice quest before you will merge with the game’s default time compression again. The Wild Way is a separate instance and will adjust to fit whatever subjective timescale you wish to use.)

I stared dumbly at the notification for a few moments, trying to parse the jargon I was only half familiar with. Objective time had to be like… actual real world time, right? So that would mean subjective time was like, how fast I decided to experience things. Being a digital intelligence was such a mind bending experience. Having control over how I moved through time was an entirely foreign concept to me until very recently. What a trip.

Reaching out with my mind, I tentatively selected YES to the question posed by the game. If I could blink out of existence for ten seconds in this fight and then arrive back with some cool new abilities, that would be amazing. I mean… mostly it was because of how cool that would look to my friends. I was such a showoff. Huh, maybe show-woman was a better description?

The slightly desaturated forest around me dissolved the moment I accepted the quest. It was replaced by an alien landscape.

I stood at the edge of a cliff, staring out over a massive valley full of wide ravines, towering pillars of rock and twisting greenery that smothered everything. A part of me identified the climate as something like a temperate rainforest, but with obvious signs that the plant life was distinctly unfriendly. One plant that hung lazily over the edge of the cliff sported broad leaves as wide as my torso, the spines of which boasted long, thin needle shaped thorns.

Despite the fractured landscape and hostile flora of the place, something within me relaxed at the sight. It wasn’t an emotion, though, but more of a… well, it was indescribable, really.

“It’s been a long time, has it?” A soft, androgenous voice asked. “Since you saw the Way?”

Despite the way they had snuck up on me, I didn’t feel alarmed. I just turned to greet them with a curious look. The person who’d spoken was undeniably Ascendant Fae, but I got the feeling that it was more by choice than by birth. There was just something exceedingly otherworldly about them, like they’d never known the mundane hardships of thirst, hunger, and exhaustion.

Their black hair was long, but pulled up into intricate braids that kept it out of their face. The style highlighted the soft, beautiful angle of their cheekbones perfectly. I couldn’t help as a baser part of my mind pulled my gaze down over their body, trying to slap a gender on the strange being smiling at me. Nothing stuck, and I gave up trying when I realised what my dumb human brain was trying to do.

“Ah, I’ve never been here before,” I said sincerely.

Their eyebrows rose with interest. “A wayfarer, then?”

Wayfarer. Right, the lore friendly word for a player. “Yes, I am.”

“Well, this should be fun,” they smiled, rolling their shoulders. “You’re the first wayfarer I’ve gotten.”

“That can’t be right, surely someone else has made it to level 25 before me?” I asked, genuinely confused. In fact, if memory served, there were some who had reached the current level cap.

“Oh,” they laughed, shaking their head. “You misunderstand. You are the first wayfarer that I have received. I am the spirit master of the Wandering Swords. That blade at your hip? I forged it with my own hand. You are here to learn to follow the teachings of the fae wanderers, yes?”

Oh. Oh! This was the person who had created the sword, NPC or not, and thus had set me on the path to becoming Keiko. Nervous excitement bubbled up within me, and I fell back on ingrained tradition from my father and grandfather.

I stood up straighter and gave the mysterious, entrancing being standing in front of me a deep, traditional bow of respect. “Thank you, spirit master. This sword has literally changed my life. I’ll gladly learn everything you are willing to teach me.”

QuietValerie