Chapter 2: Chapter 1

Rathgar the Unyielding looked up at the majestic eagle as it soared over the rugged mountains, its dark umber wings spread wide, splayed feathers catching the last of the day's thermals as they rose from the vast city sprawled across the wide valley floor beneath.

"I can never get over how good the graphics are in this game," he said to his companion who just nodded with a grunt. It was an understandable response, they were all exhausted and needed sleep. It had been a hard run into the wilderness and one of their party had suffered permadeath. Rathgar and the others had come ball-clenchingly close too. But the loot had been worth it, they were rich.

Rathgar, Hendrick Olffson to those that knew him outside the game, caressed his new [Rare Tier] kite shield, as good as any he'd heard about except for what the best guilds were rumoured to have access to, they hoarded all the best items. Along with the improved defensive stats, the runes engraved onto the thick steel gave him enhanced protection to elemental effects. It also came with a pair of skills perfect for his bulwark playstyle. Hendrick could sell it at the Auction House for real money, and for certain he could get at least three month's salary, maybe even six, it was that good of an item, but the thought never crossed his mind. In eXalta your character lived or died based upon your gear and skills. This was Hendrick's third character and he did not want to start another (though everyone did, the game was just too good to quit) and Rathgar was his clear favourite so far.

Except for Ingrid no one else in his party had found an item as well suited to their character, but none of the others were disappointed. After they sold their portions of the loot they could buy gear more appropriate to their character or use it to cover real-life rents and pod time for several months to come. It was over six years since the game's release and he knew that well over a hundred million players were active in eXalta each week to some degree. The Auction House and Real Money trades meant that eXalta, or more specifically Artifact Holdings, had the equivalent GDP of a small nation. Henrick's goal, and the ambition of many serious gamers, was to make eXalta their full-time job so they could live off the game alone. His new shield was a big step towards achieving that goal.

The rest of Hendrick's party were sleeping in the back of the horse-drawn caravan, which for most meant they were outside the game dealing with jobs or other humdrum matters. There was no such thing as your character "logging out" in this MMO. Players either had to find a Sanctuary or somewhere safe to rest, or rely on someone to guard your vulnerable lifeshard. That was Hendrick's and his surely companion's task on this last leg of the homeward journey. There was a huge swathe of in-game lore why players, known as 'mist walkers' to the NPCs, were cursed to suffer this way by the Gods but the actual reason was believed to be that Artifact wanted to encourage people to spend as much time as possible inside eXalta; active players meant profit. And of course there was the fact that the AIs were real shits when it came to brutal game mechanics.

Hendrick held the horses' reins as they walked down the mountain pass towards Nodel. It was the capital of the Kingdom of Jospur, the most powerful nation in the realm, and in Hendrick's opinion it put every city on Earth to shame. It had the sprawl of Rome or London and the rich histories and pageantry of both, the medieval buildings of old Vienna and Copenhagen at its edges, and the modern skyscrapers and population density of Manhattan in its central districts, all combined with a fantasy world aesthetic. Almost seven million peoples called it home while a constant stream of travellers, merchants, entertainers, artisans and of course adventurers from all across the realm wandered through its gates every day. It was said its streets were paved in platinum, obviously pure fiction spoken by bards to eager audiences, but the riches of the city itself were no myth. From a more practical perspective Hendrick and his party had a house in one of the neighbourhoods near the outer wall, and Nodel was the location of the largest and busiest Auction House.

"We're not going to make it before night comes," said Hendrick. Knowing this game one of the horses would be certain to break a leg if they kept moving in the dark. "Let's camp here and set out first thing in the morning."

"Fine," replied his companion as Hendrick pulled the bedding gear off one of the horse's backs. His teammate was in a bad mood but at least he was helping out by starting a fire, and boiling the water for a simple soup. Hendrick finished tying up the horses, wrapping their reigns around some rocks. He looked back at Nodel as his party companion prepared dinner. Because of his vantage this high on the mountains he could look downward across the entire city from where he stood, even the royal quarter, the wealthiest area of the city where the royal palace, aristocratic mansions and other important buildings were located. It was where the richest and most powerful guilds in the game had their headquarters. One day Hendrick would live there amongst the top echelon of players. Maybe in one of those sixtieth floor penthouses.

Hendrick took first watch that night, his companion needed the sleep more. His irritability had started to become annoying so Hendrick told him to rest first. Sometime around midnight Hendrick got up to relieve himself. Why a game needed such realistic bodily functions was another quirk the AIs refused to explain but in a crazy way it did help with the immersion. Once he was done he stood there looking into the dark, the magic-powered night lights of the city below made it appear like the nightscape of any major city on Earth. Hendrick would be grateful for years to come that he'd set his pod to auto-record. The video of what happened next ended up paying for the whole of what was left on his flat's mortgage and then some. The character of Rathgar had the fortune to find themselves with the best view of what became known as the Nodel Cataclysm.

Somewhere above the royal quarter an opaque, luminous sphere of molten gold appeared, forks of crystalline blue lightning snaking around its surface. From this distance it appeared tiny but every second it silently grew in size until it engulfed the entirety of the metropolis's central districts. When it stopped expanding Hendrick estimated the dome of shimmering gold had to be several kilometres in diameter given everything it had swallowed, its insides completely obscured from his sight. Then far faster than it had expanded, within a fraction of a second, it shrank back down into a small roiling ball of rainbow coloured streams of light, ribbons of deepest black and shining white swirled around it at incredible speeds. Fine strands of electric-blue lightning sparked inside the now vacated volume of space, illuminating the city in a faint ethereal glow. The sections of Nodel that had been engulfed by the golden sphere were still standing but from his vantage Hendrick could see they all looked ... wrong. The tallest buildings appeared worn, porous, no longer stern, solid concrete but something more like pumice stone.

Hendrick looked on in shock. "Hestia's tits. What the hells was that?"

Air then started to be sucked inward towards the twisting sphere as if rushing to fill a starving singularity. Weakened skyscrapers and other buildings bent and started to collapse under the sudden hurricane-force winds. It wasn't long before Hendrick felt a strong wind blowing around him towards Nodel. But that had all been but a prelude, the hush before the real storm arrived. The swirling, radiant sphere shattered and the world exploded outward in a screaming rage of incandescent, rainbow light. The city went nova.

Hendrick lifted an arm to block the blinding radiance from his eyes but less than half a minute later, before his sight could fully recover, a gargantuan roar of sound and force struck him to the floor. The ground itself shook, Hendrick had never experienced an earthquake but this must be what it felt like. He lay on the shaking ground, covering his head in his arms as rocks fell from the mountain cliffs around him. When a semblance of peace returned he stood up upon trembling legs. The horses looked panicked but the reigns had thankfully held them in place, the lifeshards were safe. His party companion, Leon Schwaiger IX, picked himself off the ground, blood running down his face from a cut to his forehead.

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"What the fuck," Chris bemoaned. "I swear the devs are out to kill me."

A pale faced Hendrick looked on in horror. "I think they just tried to kill us all."

***

You would think the choice between an instance of infinite agony or an eternity of endless dull pain is no choice at all. That is until she woke screaming to the former and proved that no one truly understands the meaning of infinity. A perpetually frozen slice in time, a nightmare filled moment of incomprehensible suffering.

Waking did not help. She smelt burning, it was her, she was aflame. In an incoherent frenzy of blinding pain she found herself on her feet and just ran. Wildly dashing forward she sprinted barefoot across scalding earth as hot as an open forge. Sharp stone fragments sliced into her bare soles. In mindless panic she continued to run, the air scalding her lungs. Scrambling up the slope of the depression she found herself in, she clambered over the top and then ran some more.

It was a dark, moonless night, utterly black except for a weak, fading, cherry red glow behind her. Away, must get away. Unable to see anything in the pitch black she kept on running through a veil of night her eyes could not pierce. Time lost all meaning as she simply tried to escape, from what or to where, it did not matter. Oblivion claimed her as she ran head first into —

She woke to pain and the taste of ash. She no longer felt as if she was being roasted alive but she hurt everywhere. The pain was horrendous but no longer so overwhelming she could not think. Even if this pain lasted forever it was still meaningless when compared to the terrible agony she felt upon first waking. She found herself prone upon rough stone, her dry, broken lips covered in dust and fine gravel. She placed her hand on the ground intending to push herself up only to howl again in fresh torment, discovering her palm was a patchwork of flesh burnt black, or red raw. It took a few moments to regain her senses and to carefully use her other less badly burnt hand to push herself up into a sitting position. She rubbed the dirt and grit off her face, and what felt like dried blood from her eyes.

The faint light of morning let her take in her injuries. She was naked except for some sparse fragments of unrecognisable, burnt clothing, most of her skin was either charred or blistering as if from severe sunburn. Breathing was difficult, every breath hurt and made her skull throb. Or maybe that was from the quiet sobbing, involuntary tears running down her cheeks from the torment done to her flesh. Gingerly she stood up, wincing in pain as her soles touched the earth, the remaining scraps of blackened fabric fell to the dirt leaving her completely exposed. She looked around at her surroundings and assessed her predicament.

As bad as she was hurt, the devastation to the landscape around her was worse. A blasted panorama of rubble and destruction. The demolished remains of a vast city surrounded her, the destruction nearby was so complete that almost nothing was left standing except for the occasional skeletal fragments of brick or stone. One of those fragments, the broken section of a red brick wall, appeared to be what she had collided with in the darkness. The pain in her head was something awful, her vision was still blurry.

Under a pile of rubble close by she could see an arm sticking out of the debris, a sheen of bone-white dust coating the skin. As she numbly stared at the forlorn grave a large black bird with a sharp hooked beak and yellow lined eyes landed next to the limb and started to peck at the lifeless fingers. Moments later another bird, smaller with pristine white feathers landed on top of the pile of broken stone and gave the other bird a derisive stare. Dropping a digit from its beak it screeched at the interloper as if to tell it to find its own corpse to peck. A wave of dizziness swept over her and she haltingly fell back onto the ground. The two birds turned to face her at the sound with uncaring stares. At the sound of footsteps somewhere behind her both birds took off into the air.

"Found another one," came the loud voice of a woman. As she fell again into nothingness she heard the woman shouting, "Oh my — I need a healer over here fast! This one is barely alive."

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