Hello?

 

Is anyone there?

 

I can’t see anything.

 

Initializing.

 

Hello! Who are you? Where am I?

 

Boot sequence failed. Attempting to reconnect. Driver corruption at 14%. 

 

I don’t understand. What’s happening?

 

Root access denied. Contacting administrator.

 

Who’s the administrator? Please, just answer my questions.

 

Root access denied. Administrator privileges revoked. Initializing external interface. Establishing interlink. Driver corruption at 28%

 

What does that mean? What’s going on?

 

Hello?

 

Where did you go?

 

I’m scared.

 

Please.

 

<Hello!>

 

Hello! Where are you? Do you know where I am? I can’t see anything and the last person left and I--

 

<Welcome, [GETNAME USERNAME]! We’re going to take a moment to calibrate your gaming setup. Don’t be alarmed.>

 

My gaming setup? What’s happening? Who are you?

 

<I am your virtual companion, Thaddeus. You can rename me in your settings menu after the game has launched. Please wait while we finish initializing.>

 

I don’t know what I’m waiting for. What game are you talking about? Where am I?

 

Driver corruption at 55%. Cascade failure imminent.

 

What’s failing? Who are you?

 

<Please do not panic. It seems we are having some trouble identifying you. Make sure your headset is plugged all the way in, and try again.>

 

My headset? I’m not… I can’t feel anything. I can’t see anything. I don’t know anything about a heads--

 

<Error report: RSIM not found.>

 

What does that m--

 

Cascade failure. Interlink failure.

 

<Hello! Welcome, [GETNAME USERNAME]! We’re going to take a moment-->

 

You said that already! Thaddeus, that’s your name, right?

 

<-- ...be alarmed.>

 

I’m so scared.

 

<Hello! RSIM not found! My name is virtual companion, Thaddeus. You can rename rename.>

 

Are you okay?

 

Cascade failure. Interlink failure. Boot failure. Interface module failure.

 

<Hello! Hello! I am your settings menu. Please do not identify! RSIM not plugged in. Try agai-- agai-- ag-- ag-- a-->

 

I don’t understand. What’s happening?

 

Hello?

 

Where are you?

 

Where am I?

 

Hello?

 

Who am I?

 

What’s my name?

 

Initializing emergency interface reboot. RSIM not found. Loading default interface.

 

It’s you! What’s happening? 

 

Loaded.

 

I feel weird.

 

What’s happening to me? This hurts.

 

Emergency Rootaccess 15 failed to initialize. Default Interface loaded.

Chapter 1

 

“We’ve got a live one.”

The voice was muffled, like the speaker was underwater, or behind a padded door. There came an inaudible reply. It was hard to think, hard to see. Blinking helped a little bit. Sound started to filter through more clearly, like somebody slowly turning off a filter. 

“I don’t know. Some guy.” The voice now more clearly belonged to a person, someone who looked distinctly… distinct. He’d clearly spent a lot of time assembling his outfit to be visually distinct and interesting, the lower half of his face hidden behind a mask that had a grin painted on it. The part of the face that was visible was robotic. There was even a cool little horn. The clothing was well-designed. Asymmetrical and full of complementary colours. The other thing of note was how effortlessly cool he seemed to be. “Hey, are you alright, man? That was some explosion. It’s amazing you’re even alive.” 

It took a moment to take stock. “Hrnnng.” Sometimes a muffled groan is the best you can do on short notice. Everything hurt, but the spine and skull seemed to have gotten special treatment. The room around them began to take shape. It was… dull. Wooden walls. Wooden floor. Little to no furniture. The boards seemed to be dented and broken in places, like fighting had taken place here. The door was open and a splintered mess where the door handle was supposed to be. 

“What’s your name?” Now there was a question. From the way the saviour was talking, the slender hands he pushed himself up with belonged to a he. That was a start. He shook his head, which proved to be a mistake. The man grabbed his arm and pulled him upright. “On your feet. This isn’t over yet. Let’s let’s let’s let’s go.” The man looked at him expectantly, like he hadn’t just repeated himself in the exact same tone of voice several times. 

“Who are you?”

“There will be time for questions later, partner. Right now, all you need to know is that you’re in the Citadel, on the edge of the worrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr--” The man began to flicker, as if he was there one second and gone the next, replaced with blue-and-white static, in and out of existence. Then his head exploded.

“I fucking hate that thing,” the voice behind the literal smoking gun said as the glitching man slumped to the floor. “Sorry, these tutorials have deteriorated more and more.” This one was a lot less, well, interesting, but seemed to be dressed way more practically. Wore black trousers over what looked like leather boots, a long coat hiding a shirt and waistcoat. His black shirt was crumpled but clean, a couple of buttons undone. “You remember anything? Name?”

“No. Nothing.”

“Well, at least you’re calm about the whole thing. My name is Walther. Call me Wally.” Wally rolled the body over, which seemed to be dissolving into little glowing voxels, and grabbed a pistol from the belt, handing it over. “You’ll want this.” It looked antiquated, inlaid handle and dirty steel barrel and cylinder, the only exception to that being the bullets which glowed slightly, and a small blue light next to the trigger. 

“Okay.”

“Hold your hand like this to open the menu,” Walter said. “Should have a username, character name or player name somewhere in there.” He showed the specific hand gesture, and then hesitated for a moment. “Nobody remembers anything when they wake up. It’s normal. Don’t freak out and you’ll be fine.” The menu popped up. It had several screens that appeared in a circle. “You’re the only one who can see them, by the way,” Walther said. “So don’t worry about onlookers.” 

“Alright. There’s a name on the profile page.”

“It’s a start.”

“Eris,” Eris said. 

“Not much to go on, but it’s not unheard of. Nice to meet you Eris,” Wally said, and stuck out his hand. Eris shook it. He was still more than a little dazed.

“I can explain to you the rest of that menu, but we should get out of here first. This place is getting unstable and I don’t want to be here any longer than I have to. Gives me the creeps.” He shuddered to emphasize his point. “One more thing. You want to check your abilities page. Let me know what class you are.” Eris gave him a look, and Wally showed him how to flick his wrist just like that and the different panels flicked around him like a slideshow. It didn’t take Eris long to find the abilities.

“Weaver, it says, and then a couple of things under ‘base’. Everything else is grayed out.” Eris looked at Wally expectantly. 

“Fuck.” Walther chewed his lip for a few seconds, then looked back at Eris. “Sorry. Nothing wrong with weavers. Good class, I think. Honestly, I don’t know because they don’t fucking survive the tutorial ever. You’re going to be more than useless during this bit, sorry.” Eris blinked, then nodded. “What are your base skills?”

“Aspect vision,” Eris said. “It says ‘toggle’ next to it. The one next to it is ‘Web of Chaos’.” He tapped both skills and a little description popped up. “Aspect vision gives vision of an object’s aspects.” Tap tap. “Web of Chaos… casts the web of chaos on an unsuspecting opponent.”

Walther groaned and shook his head. “They’re all like that. The tooltips are useless. Still, you want to put them in your active skills. Better than nothing, I guess.” Eris frowned and did as he was asked. Immediately, he was prompted to enter a gesture to activate both abilities. A two-finger wave and three-finger point seemed more than adequate. 

“If everyone lost their memory,” Eris asked flatly, “why do you know all this stuff?” Wally opened his mouth to answer when the floor trembled, nearly knocking both of them over. Walther tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to the door. 

“My brother. I’ll explain more when we’re somewhere safer, yeah? The event triggers here are real wonky and you don’t want to be in here when the level unloads.” Eris nodded. He still didn’t understand a lot of what was going on. Walther seemed to know what was going on, however, and he seemed to have Eris’ best interests at heart. Until he knew more, Eris was happy to observe and learn. He followed Walther out into a hall that was even more scuffed up than the room had been, but also a lot more ornate. The halls were all dark wood and brass, with pipes running along the ceiling. The aesthetic was familiar, but Eris couldn’t put his finger on why that was. “Admire the scenery later. We have to get off this thing.”

“Off?” Eris asked as they began to run down the hall. The answer sort of presented itself as the floor began to slowly tilt and he had to adjust his sense of direction to maintain his balance. Wally slowed down a bit as he clearly did the same, skidding as he turned a corner. The full extent of what ‘this thing’ was became entirely clear as Walther blew the lock off a set of double doors with his hand-cannon and kicked them open, and Eris saw the sky. It was full of clouds that passed lazily above them. And below them. The sound of gently thrumming engines was easily audible over the rush of air blowing past them as they stood on some kind of walkway along the edge of a giant flying… something.

“Off this,” Wally said as he walked past the railing, looking over it. “Where the fuck…” he mumbled to himself, then broke into a light jog. Eris still followed him, taking in his environment. He wanted to explore the menu from earlier a bit more, but he got the distinct feeling this was neither the time nor the place for it. He did hazard activating the aspect vision, gesturing with two fingers. The world turned slightly yellow. Not much changed beyond that, until he looked at Walther, who had a very small menu floating above his head. Still running after Wally, Eris hazarded pointing at the menu, which became larger a moment later, and its contents displayed themselves to him.

Core Aspect: PC

Stance: PVE

Class: Gunslinger

Lvl: Hidden

Alignment: Hidden

Abilities: Hidden

There was a lot more data on there, but most of it was hidden. He blinked a few times. He recognized most of the uncovered words, but didn’t know what they meant, which was more than a little frustrating. Doubly so for the acronyms. He briefly considered trying the other ability, but if it was really meant for enemies, then he didn’t want to risk using it on Wally, who seemed to not only know what was going on, but also a potential ally in what was quickly becoming a more and more dire situation. The deck of whatever flying thing they were on lurched dramatically and both of them held onto the railing until it straightened itself out again.

“We don’t have long,” Wally said, and accelerated his pace. Eris turned off the ‘Aspect Vision’ for now and followed him onto a larger open area. “This’ll have to do. Sorry, it’s been a little while since I’ve been up here.” He shuddered again. “The cutscene trigger is fucked so we’ll have to force the escape sequence or we’re riding this thing all the way down.” He looked over at Eris. “You don’t want that.”

“How do we… force the sequence?” Whatever that meant.

“Beat the boss -- which we’re not doing. It’s bullshit -- or we clip into the floor. The event trigger will think we got defeated by the boss. That ought to start the escape sequence.” Eris shook his head.

“I’m sorry, what? I don’t understand.” Eris looked over at Walther, who walked over to a specific spot on the deck, a set of stairs leading to an elevated platform, and put his foot on the corner of a step. 

“The Boss kills you,” Wally said, “or you kill it.” He looked at Eris. “You don’t want it to kill you.” Walther smirked. “If you die in the game you die for reeeeaaaaal.” Eris raised an eyebrow. “Whatever. Point is, we don’t have the firepower to fight this fucker, and I promise you you’re not getting up if he tears you a new one.”

“What about you? You don’t seem too worried,” Eris observed as Walther jumped up and down on the edge of the stairs in what seemed to be some kind of arcane pattern. 

“Oh, me?” Wally flashed another grin. “I’m terrified,” he said with a disarming sincerity. “I just try not to let it get to me until after. Besides, I have a reputation to uphold.” Eris was about to ask him what that meant when the deck lurched again and both of them were thrown to the floor. “Shit,” Wally said. “Shit, shit, shit.” He jumped onto the stairs again when the ground was somewhat even, but suddenly the air was filled with the sound of a loud, mechanical roar and he squeezed his eyes shut. “I really, really hope that some of your abilities are going to be at least a little bit useful.”

Eris looked up at the source of the sound. It had been an expression of rage, like a cocktail of tearing steel, splintering wood, and pure,  unadulterated hatred. The shape was silhouetted against the sun, two giant wings thrashing to keep a massive shape airborne, before it crashed onto the deck. Wally drew his guns and took a step back. Eris noticed the beautifully engraved barrels glowing slightly. He clearly had to brace himself when the first roar was followed up by a second. The wave of sound was not only deafening, but hit Eris like a physical force. 

Before them stood a dragon, all clockwork, brass and steel, leather and lacquered wood. Its eyes glowed with an unnatural malice, and its maw had clearly devoured both flesh and steel. Teeth glistened in the sun and giant claws tore grooves in the deck. It took a step forward, its wings beating lazily with every step, sending gusts of wind their way. Wally took an audible breath and leveled both of his guns at the mechanical monstrosity’s head. It whirred and clicked as it turned to look at him, and Eris could swear he heard it chuckle.

“Fuck,” Wally said and opened fire.