Chapter 22: Chapter 22: A Complicated History

Jace woke to the sound of running water.  It felt like he had only been asleep for a second, but it had been night outside when he had closed his eyes, and now dawn was brightening the sky.  The coastal view out the window was to the west, so they didn’t get any direct sunlight, but it was enough for his orc eyes to see.

His orc eyes.

He looked down at his body and saw his giant 7-foot-long 400-pound frame stretched out on the bed.  The necklace was helpful, but he would have to remember to keep it charged.  He didn’t bother now, as no one in the room cared, and since they were in the tutorial town of Kellington, no one in the whole city cared.

Jace saw Snowy gnawing on some leftover bones from last night.  He didn’t see Esther.  Then the sound of running water stopped, and he knew where she was.  The hotel clerk who had shown them to their room last night explained that each of these deluxe apartments had a cistern filled with water and heated by a mage early each morning.  Esther was taking advantage.  A few minutes later, she walked out of the washroom, her body a mess of pixelation, having left her towel behind and only holding a large washcloth to dry her hair.

“Good morning Jace,” she said pleasantly.

Snowy barked a “Good Morning” to her, and the woman went to the open-air balcony to let the fresh ocean breeze finish the job the towel had started.

{You know,} Gracie said.  {If she knew you had those filters up, she wouldn’t be happy about it.}

“I’m not interested in being seduced today,” Jace replied.

{She isn’t seducing you.  She is teasing you.  If it were seduction, she’d be using mana, and you’d be licking her feet right now.  Do you have golf buddies?”

“Yea, of course.”

{When one of you hits a bad shot, do you tease him?  Does everyone join in the good-natured ribbing?  And since everyone hits a ball in the water now and then, you all take it as good as you give it, right?}

Jace nodded.  He would be embarrassed if Gracie heard the insults they used when golfing.  He blamed the beer.

{And what would happen if you found out that one of your buddies was able to mute you and your friends every time you started teasing him?  What if the rest of you had to deal with the jokes and put-downs, but this one friend never had to hear it?  Would that make you happy?”

Jace understood her analogy.  “But she doesn’t know.”

{And that makes it all right?  If you cheat on your wife, but she doesn’t find out, it’s okay?  And she will eventually find out.  You can’t give her that same placid look each time she flashes skin and think she isn’t going to realize something is up.  Plus, she will just get bolder, which you probably don’t want.  I know you think you’re being chivalrous, but this is not the Traditional woman you are used to.}

Jace listened as he watched Esther caress her body with the small towel as the sea breeze blew her hair dry.  “I bet the Germans are loving this.”

{One of them went to bed, and the other is upstairs getting lunch.  They didn’t find the level-up things so interesting, and I told them you’d be sleeping for an hour.}

“They left you alone?”

{They handcuffed my ankle to the desk.  They loaded a virus into my computer that prevents me from doing anything online besides playing this game.  I’m not going anywhere.  But, hey, at least they left me a few Crispy Creams.}

“I’m so sorry,” Jace said.  Here he was, enjoying ocean views with a beautiful woman while she was chained to a desk eating stale donuts.  He navigated to his inventory and changed the Nudity setting from Medium to High.  It was one away from Severe, the highest setting.  He probably should have done that before the last module.  It would have made fighting easier.  By the time he exited the settings screen, Esther was already wearing her dress again, sitting at the table, and munching on a biscuit.

“Good morning,” Jace finally responded to her earlier greeting.  “Sleep well?”

“You have no idea,” she said.  “I actually slept.  I was hungry and tired, and then I was full and sleeping.  I haven’t felt like that in . . .  I don’t know.  It has been a while.”

Jace was sure Esther was fully experiencing everything happening now and would have a perfect memory of it, but her designer couldn’t possibly have been able to fill her past life with minute-by-minute experiences.  Looking back and picking out individual moments must be a strange feeling for her.

“And then a warm shower and the cool ocean breeze in my hair . . .” her eyes rolled back in her head as a shudder went through her.  Eventually, she looked back at her orc savior sitting on the edge of the bed.  “I can’t thank you enough.”

“Actually, I have more for you.”  Jace went into his inventory and pulled out the shadow scale armor and the boots the assassin had been wearing.  He dumped them on the table and momentarily felt bad about the gift.  Esther preferred to dress in lace, ribbons, and high heels, but these articles were all buckles, straps, and scales.

She didn’t seem to notice.  “Are these for me?”  She sounded like a kid at Christmas.  “Oh, Jace, I don’t know what to say.”

“You will need more protection in the future.  These should help.”

Before picking the articles up, she ran over to Jace and hugged his chest.  The embrace lasted shorter than last time, and she quickly returned to the table.  The items disappeared as she touched them, and Jace watched her eyes roll back again, but this time into her inventory.

{Watch the girl work,} Gracie advised.  {This should be interesting.  Most players think the Fashion Design feat is worthless.  I tend to disagree.}

In a flash, Esther’s dress was replaced by the armor.  It didn’t come with pants, and Jace tried not to stare at the white thighs above her stockings.  He kept his eyes up on the action.  The vest was different now, but it was subtle.  Jace was used to this type of change.  When he had taken the healing ring from Xavier, it had more than doubled in size to fit on his orc finger.  The elf that had tried to kill him was about the same size as Esther, as she was tall for a woman, but the two had very different body shapes.

The armor adjusted slightly, narrowing around the waist and flaring at the hips.  The shoulder straps were thinner and the top more open, but the same ugly belts and buckles crisscrossed the vest with scales like shingles layered over her torso.  Then it began to shift.  The straps pulled into the vest like snakes retreating into holes.  The buckles vanished, and the front of the vest split at the abdomen and spread in an upside-down “V,” making it more obvious she wasn’t wearing pants as her navel became visible above her black underwear.  Dark navy-blue laces sprang to life and threaded themselves through the “V,” synching it tight over her stomach.

At the same time, the scales were shrinking and changing shape.  At first, they looked like fish scales but then took on an almost hexagonal shape and fit together snuggly over her ribs and around her sides.  The transformation traveled across the armor like dominoes falling in a line and wrapped around and up her body until the unique scales formed cups under her chest for support.  The upper straps sprouted larger scales that flexed in an overlapping pattern over her shoulders, while the open top plunged even further to reveal cleavage.

Esther turned around, and Jace saw the snug-fitting armor lay flat against her back with an upright “V” at the top that was also laced up tight with the navy-blue cords, allowing her to adjust the fit of the top independently from the bottom.  She completed her turn until she was facing Jace again to show him the finished product.  He whistled.  She looked like Wonder Woman if Batman had been in charge of the costume design.  The intricate pattern of the hexagonal scales as they conformed to the curves of her body was mesmerizing.

Jace was about to compliment her, but he saw a frown crease her face as she rotated her torso and flexed her arms.  He thought everything looked and moved great, but she didn’t.  In another flash, the armor was gone and replaced with the light gray Roman tunic that Jace guessed every player had.  It hung down just above her knee, but Esther waved her hand, and suddenly it was 80% shorter, not even covering past her ribs.  The top of the garment had also changed, going sleeveless and adding a generous scoop neck.  Jace only got the alluring image for a second before the armor reappeared.  He could see the light gray “shirt” underneath, as an outline against her chest and under the shoulder straps, adding a comfortable buffer beneath the hard scales.

Now when Esther moved her arms about and twisted her shoulders, she smiled.  She ended her stretching routine and struck a pose for Jace.  “What do you think?  I love it.”

“It looks great, but . . .”

Now he did let his eyes wander down her body.  On each hip, half-moon scales hung in a layered pattern over the full curve of her hourglass shape, but the front was still wide open.  Esther followed his eyes and returned his look with the universal, “Oops, I forgot to put on pants” expression.  A navy-blue skirt suddenly appeared to solve the problem.  She must have had this from another outfit.  It reminded him of steampunk cosplay.  It was scandalously short in the front but had ruffled pleats that lengthened as they wrapped around her legs until they hung as low as her knees in the back.  The short front gave her legs full range of motion.

She still had her old boots on, but that changed too, as the new pair appeared.  These definitely looked like they belonged to a man, but only for a brief moment.  Soon they rose halfway to her knee with crisscross lacing in the same navy-blue thread.  They even sprouted wide, two-inch heels in the back.

“Amazing,” Jace said.

{Told you.}

Esther wasn’t quite done yet.  Jace watched as her sheathed rapiers appeared and disappeared over her armor.  She had to adjust the scales on her hips slightly to account for the weapons, but it didn’t take long.  Then her stolen cloak flashed on and off.  Then she swapped to her old dress and went through the same process of equipping and unequipping all her items.  Between the two outfits and two accessories, she had eight possible configurations.  Jace understood that she could have up to four outfits and accessories based on her occupational feats.

As comfortable and good as the armor looked on her, it wasn’t as light or free-flowing as her dress, and she switched back to that when she was done.  She ran over to Jace and hugged him again.  “How can I thank you?”

“Help me,” Jace replied.

“Help you do what?”  In her eyes, there was nothing this orc couldn’t do.

“I have friends who are held captive in . . . another dimension.  Their names are Gracie and Conor.  People in this realm are responsible for their captivity, and I need to face off against them.”

Jace could see the anger in Esther’s eyes.  She had been held captive too.  “What are we waiting for?”

“Do you know that portions of the realm are restricted?  That there are areas you can’t enter until you have reached a certain . . . power?”

Esther nodded slowly, her subconscious aware of the game rules even if she didn’t understand them completely.  “We aren’t able to enter their city yet.  We need to complete one more task first.  There are others in need all over the realm, and we can protect them.  Will you help me?”

“Of course I will.”

{Her bond with you is up to 80 now,} Gracie informed Jace.  {I would have expected something higher after your gifts, but she is a tough cookie.}

Jace remembered their communication trick and looked at Snowy to send the wolf a chat.  (Where are we going now?)

{You need to go to a city called Olympus.  I am going to have you do the Strength trials.  I’m not only anxious to see if you can break it, but I’m also curious to see if they let you go above 21 Strength.  The city is only accessible by characters under level 10, so we need to try it while we have the chance.  One of the rewards is that you get your strength raised by one. You usually can’t increase your strength above 20.  But if you set it to 18 at character creation, get a racial bump to 19, and then raise it to 20 at level 5, some Half-Orc or Human PCs have been able to pass this Strength module and bump it up to 21.  Setting it to 18 at character creation is so costly to all your other stats that no serious player does it, but people tested it out.  The game doesn’t like PC scores above 20, but it is possible to get to 21.  I want to see if they let you get higher.}

Jace stopped listening to Gracie and saw Esther staring at him with a strange look in her eyes.  “Why did you ask Snowy where we are going?”

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{I didn’t expect her bond to be that close with your familiar, but she can read your chat with the wolf.  I don’t have to talk back through Snowy because the Germans aren’t in the room.  But she will be able to read that as well.}

“I can communicate with Gracie through Snowy,” Jace explained.  “It is complicated.  She can also see what we are doing and hear what we say.”

“But she is trapped?”

“Yes, she cannot move around in her dimension, but she can freely observe ours.  She has more experience in this realm than I do, so she is my guide.”

“She can see me right now?” Esther asked.  “And hear me?”

Jace nodded.  “It isn’t always safe to talk with her out loud, but it is right now.”

“Gracie,” Esther started, unsure of herself.  “We will save you.  Have faith in Jace.  I believe he can do anything.”

Gracie would never admit it to Jace later, but a tear rolled down her cheek.  {Tell her, “Thank you,” for me,} she managed to say.

Jace did.

 

---

 

The Travel node for Olympus was similar to Centerville.  They arrived on a path leading into the city.  Jace saw the now familiar curtain in the air before them and looked behind to see another one.  He pushed against the one that led away from town into an open field with rivers and forests lying before him.

[Level 10+ PVP Hostile Zone.  Access restricted.]

The game wouldn’t let him in.  Snowy growled in that direction, but she couldn’t cross the barrier either.  He turned around, and it was 20 feet to the next curtain, but this one allowed them through.

[Level 9- Non-PVP Safe Zone.  Access granted.]

Jace interpreted that there was a neutral zone between the two areas.  Presumably, after you leveled up from whatever quest you chose in Olympus, you were kicked out here, where you could now enter the hostile zone and try out murder for a change.

The downtown area of Olympus was also a lot like Centerville, filled with shops, inns, temples, and all sorts of ways to spend gold or waste time.  NPCs called out for help or tried to make a sale.  Without focusing on any one place, it all blended into a cacophony of noise.

Jace spent most of the time watching how Esther reacted.  She was used to a dark room where she saw one person with a singular focus.  Now she saw people moving about living their lives.  They were exaggerated, fake lives with everyone at the peak of physical fitness, no children anywhere, and no sense of poverty or misfortune.  But it was still something she hadn’t seen before.  So far, she was just letting it wash over her.

One significant change from Centerville was that instead of a bunch of level 1 through 6 characters, almost everyone was level 8 or 9.  Gracie told Jace that anyone under Level 10 could attempt one of these quests, but they were all designed for players at level 9.  The Trials, as they were commonly called, were not always the same.  Some of the Wisdom or Intelligence quests had little or no combat.  Others had you battle high-level mages.  It was conceivable that a level 3 or 4 PC could pass one of them, but it wasn’t advisable.  Although starting over from below level 5 wasn’t too hard.

Some trials could improve specific skills, though Gracie insisted they were a waste of time.  Numerous feats could do the same thing.  She also said that regardless of how well you did in a trial, as long as you passed it and got the reward, you always leveled up.  You could only attempt two, maybe three of them before you were level 10 and were no longer allowed to enter.  A few level 7 characters had been able to perform three trials and had gotten three of their abilities permanently raised by one, but it was rare and risky. And, if you did too well in a quest, it might increase your level by two.  Jace thought this would be an excellent chance to raise his Intelligence score, but Gracie insisted that he would get a lot more out of raising his Strength to 22.

This was a non-PVP zone, but it was a shared environment, and they were back to the universal time, which was early afternoon.  So far, Esther hadn’t questioned how they had instantly traveled to this city or why it was about six hours later in the day.  She walked down the street in only her dress, her weapons safely tucked away in her inventory.  Jace had assured her that no one could attack them in this city, and she felt safe next to him.  Jace was in his human disguise, and they made a unique pair.  Everyone else was equipped to the teeth with full plate armor, helmets, shields, and more.  Wizards wore magical robes with staves and several enchanted adornments.   Jace and Esther looked like a modern couple going out to dinner; only a massive wolf was walking beside them.  They got plenty of stares, and several people recognized the vampire.

“Esther?” someone was finally bold enough to call out.  The voice was low and rough, yet feminine.  A female half-orc walked toward them.  She left a party behind, and an elf, a human, and a dwarf looked on.  She wore a chainmail bikini in the classic style of a Princess Leia slave outfit.  Her breasts were ridiculously large and overflowed the tiny metal triangles like cantaloupes in tea infusers.  They looked like just another set of muscles between her massive shoulders and bulging biceps.  Having watched Esther design her outfit, he knew there was a way to be sexy and classy.  This wasn’t it.

Jace looked at his companion as she recalled this woman from her jumbled memories, and recognition flashed through her eyes.  Then there was regret followed closely by confusion.  Jace turned to the warrior approaching them and saw her stop six feet away, with a perplexing look on her face too.  He understood that Esther had probably been with this player and then sent her to the fen witch to die.  Gracie had also said you could go back and be with Esther again to recover an item she stole.  Esther should have known that this woman had survived.  Of course, that would mean that Esther would have thousands of memories of Jezebel dying and Leah taking over.

Jace didn’t know if Gandhi or Dexmachi were responsible for liberating Esther and filling her mind with memories, but if it were up to him, he would have played with the timing.  If a character met with Esther multiple times, she would remember them in reverse order, so the last one would be when she brought them up to Belle.  She would only have one memory of the fen witch dying when she and Jace did it.  It was the only logical way to handle the impossible logic of the situation.  Because of that, Esther must think everyone she had been with was now dead.

On the other hand, the half-orc knew that Esther was a vampire, and she was out in the sunlight.  According to global game time, less than two hours had passed since they had left the royal rumble back at the Gilded Swan, and as far as Jace knew, it was still going on.  Gracie had already told him that the game was blowing up about it, but how many of those players who had been kicked out of their modules had survived?  His group had personally been responsible for killing half a dozen of them.  What kind of information was getting out?

“Wow,” the half-orc said.  “I heard something went down in Portsmith, but I didn’t expect this.  What kind of transformation was there?  What happened?”

Esther was speechless.  How could this woman know anything about what happened on the other side of the realm?  The idea of email or chatrooms was beyond foreign to her.

Clueless, the half-orc continued.  “If the sisters are all free now, I imagine there will be a run on the rest.  Borgan, the elf back there,” she pointed to the group she had left behind, “wanted to know if Tami was available.  He never shuts up about her and wanted to know how much it would cost for her now if the Gilded Swan went VR.”  Getting nothing but blank stares from Esther, the barbarian woman turned to Jace instead.  “Or maybe I should be talking to you?  Is she yours?  There is this male revue tavern up in Neverspring that I’m going to as soon as I hit ten where these barbarian dancers go full monty on the tables.  Any tips on how to secure one of those as a companion?  I imagine their stats are amazing.”

Jace stared at her for a hard five count, ensuring she was finished.  “What do you think is going to happen here?” he said, catching the massive woman off guard.  “Do you think I’m her pimp now?  Do you think you will give me some gold, and Esther will make time for you in one of the upstairs rooms in the inn over there?”

“No, I mean, what, I mean, is she still, huh?”

“Think about the questions you are asking.  Understand that your reality and hers do not coexist.  She was just ripped from a MIM and can’t deal with forgotten memories from the multiverse popping in and trying to relive their favorite escapades like some tired Chris Farley skit.  She’s in the real world now.  Let’s treat her that way.”

Esther had no idea what Jace had just said, and the half-orc didn’t understand much of it either, other than she knew Jace was telling her off.  She grew suddenly cold.  “If this wasn’t a safe zone, buddy.  I’d end you and your pretty boy outfit right here in the street and take the whore to any room I wanted.”

Jace glanced up at her level nine status and knew it wouldn’t be long before they could actually fight.  “Look us up when you get to ten.  We’ll see how it goes.  Come on, Esther.”

The fallen angel was still in a daze but understood that this conversation was over.  She started after Jace but took one last look at the fuming barbarian.  “Oh, by the way,” she said.  “I hate your outfit.”

{Ouch,} Gracie said as the half-orc flew into a rage, but Snowy kept her from following them.  {That will leave a mark.  Now I hope you guys do meet up again.}

Jace did not want to meet with them or any of Esther’s old clients.  The vampire felt the same and used her Quick Change Artist feat to accessorize her cloak.  With her hood up, her striking face and iconic dress were less noticeable, and they could move through the crowd of players without any more encounters.

“What is this place?” Esther finally asked, pulling alongside Jace as he hurried through the street, guided by Gracie’s directions on where to go.  “Who are all these people, and what do they want?  Why wasn’t that half-orc dead?”

One question at a time, Jace thought.  He started with the last one.  “What do you remember of her?”

Esther had a pained look cross her face, and Jace regretted making her pull up the memory, but he had to understand how her backstory had been constructed to help her.  “I met with her a few times.  I stole something from her initially . . . I can’t remember exactly how.  In Fact, that is how most of my encounters started.  I picked a mark, robbed them, and then they returned to me, begging for whatever I took.  I made them . . .” she sucked in a breath.  “I tested them.  I saw how devoted they were.  How much vitality they had.  And if they kept coming back for more . . . I fed them to her.  That half-orc was no different.”

Jace realized his initial guess on how her memories were formed was accurate.  To him, this meant it was Dexmachi who had built her.  The god was designed after Jace.  Since his brain was hooked up to the game, Gandhi had access to his thoughts.  When dealing with aspects of the game influenced by divine intervention, Jace knew he could trust his instincts.

“The realm is a place where people can come back from the dead,” he started.  “Not everyone, but those chosen by the gods, can start over and regain some of the power they lost.  Most of these people, you see,” Jace swept his arm across the busy street and the wide variety of PCs, “are here to build themselves up to something more powerful.”

“Like us?” she asked.  “We need to be more powerful to engage with the villains who hold Gracie and Conor?”

“Yes,” Jace agreed.  “Some people treat this life as a game, only wanting to advance and gain power.  They have no desire to help others and live only for themselves.  They view each encounter in the light of how it benefits them.  You may think you were abusing those people from your past, but trust me, most of them knew exactly what they were doing.  They wanted to get to the third floor of the Gilded Swan to meet with Jezebel.  Some survived the encounter, others did not, but almost everyone did it because they wanted to.”

“So, we will probably meet others from my past?”  Jace could tell from her voice that she did not look forward to the prospect.

“Yes,” he replied.  “And when we do, you will know that they used you as much as you think you used them.  Possibly more.”

“Does that go for you as well?  Did you use me?”

“Do you want the truth?”

“Yes.”

“I came to the Gilded Swan to get this.”  Jace fished the necklace out from under his shirt.  “I did not know you existed before you charmed me in the basement.  As an orc, I can’t move through the realms without being accosted at every turn, and I needed a way to disguise myself.  My initial plan was to get to the third floor, kill the brothel’s madam, and retrieve this item.  Once I met you and saw your pain, I could not leave you behind and had to rescue you from that environment.”

He stopped and looked down at her to see how she had received this information.  “Well,” she finally said.  “I’m glad we met.  I feel like I did use you, but not like the others.  I used you to gain my freedom and begin a new life.  Feel free to use me to help others do the same.”

Jace smiled.  “I’m glad we met too.”

{You guys are killing me over here,} Gracie chimed in.  {It’s like a &%*$#@$ Hallmark special.  Let’s get on with it.}

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