“So far so good,” Iphis said, for the benefit of his unseen audience. “It’s all about knowing what you’re doing. Even with a lower-level character that’s mainly a support class, if you’re good enough, you can still succeed. In this case, I gotta give a ton of credit to Apex, Rage, and Uxium for carrying the bulk of the actual combat.” There would have been a lot less combat if Rage hadn’t charged off in the lead and in the wrong direction, whereas following the route Iphis had scouted and planned would have gotten them all considerably farther ahead by now. It took time, fighting derrows and then a mountain troll, and disturbing a graveyard of lost explorers which had triggered ghosts, ghouls, skeletons, and a lich. But he wasn’t going to gripe about that during a stream. It just looked bad. “We’re pretty deep in the mountains now, and we’ve got environmental challenges to go with the local wildlife. Getting across this chasm is going to be a problem... unless you’ve got a spell, Uxium?”

“No,” Uxium said shortly. He’d dropped rapidly to monosyllables after the glitch that had changed Blight to Iphis, but he was pulling his weight, and it didn’t seem worth calling him on it.

“We might be able to find a bridge or something if we follow the chasm. Maybe if you guys camp and take five, do any healing or whatever, and I’ll check it... oh no.”

The sounds of birds singing, foxes barking, and wind in trees were slowing down again, and after a few seconds, went silent. All motion froze, as far as Iphis could tell.

He hoped fervently that it was going to just swap him back to Blight, because any other character on the Active list could be catastrophic.

Error reading file for character 38954405#Iphis_Windhoof

Reloading user account

Loading character 61720291#Garnet_Wildheart

About all he could say about the transition was that it was less of a jolt from Iphis to Garnet than it would have been from Blight to Garnet.

“Oh, come on,” Rage protested, as soon as normal time kicked back in.

“Elementalist,” Garnet said in exasperation. “Fairies get massive bonuses on elemental magic.”

“Way too much of a tradeoff,” Uxium said flatly. “It means getting your dick cut off, for fuck’s sake!”

“Fairies never had them to begin with. They’re sexless.” The loss of anatomy that could be used in the game, if you verified that the account belonged to an adult, but that en had no real interest in using, hadn’t seemed all that important. If anything, it was a relief not to have to think about the subject and to be free to focus on more important things.

“Not much better,” Apex said. “Bro, what is wrong with you, creating these characters?”

“Wrong with me?” Garnet repeated. En spun around, judging the width of the chasm. “Wrong with me. Right.” [Ice Bridge] would span that, and do it solidly enough for long enough that they could all get across.

Not that Garnet even needed it. En stood just over three feet tall and extremely slim, wearing only knee-length shorts that tied at either hip, otherwise open down the sides, and a kind of halter-top that left ens back bare. That was to allow for the wings. En had chosen hummingbird wings, bright green and magenta flashing with iridescence as they fluttered so rapidly they were just a blur. En’s skin was a warm gold, and ens short hair matched the colours of ens wings.

Garnet hovered in the air, threw both arms to the sides and twisted ens fingers into the right positions, and called out the syllables of the [Ice Bridge] spell.

A white and grey haze coalesced in the air across the chasm, condensing and freezing and hardening.

Casting spells was just so damned much fun!

The ice stabilized. It even had a foot-high ridge along each side, reducing the chances of anyone just sliding right off the edge.

“Across, now,” Garnet commanded. “It won’t last forever.”

Motion with wings was mostly a matter of deciding which way to go, since there were no corresponding real-world muscles to use. The game did its best to add haptic and visual effects, like wings going through the myriad changes that not only kept a bird in the air but allowed them to manoeuvre so well. It wasn’t so bad to just get the bare basics, as with Uxium’s carpet, and trickier with a winged mount, but to genuinely master flight alone took a lot of practice.

Garnet darted across the bridge, never actually touching it, and landed neatly on a rock on the other side.

The other three followed, more slowly.

Garnet was only vaguely aware of the low-voiced conversation as they crossed, more intent on surveying the path in front of them. As a Fairy, ens hit points were low, but flight and agility helped with that. Elemental defences helped even more, but en needed enough time to actually cast those. If there was anything dangerous coming up on the road ahead, it would help to know about it.

En heard hoofbeats coming up fast, but that was just Rage’s warhorse. The drake made little sound with its six clawed feet, and of course the flying carpet made no sound at all.

Sudden pain flared in one shoulder.

Pain in the game was muted, unless you went through several layers of warnings and consent with a cooldown before you could increase it further, and it did so on a logarithmic scale: the greater the pain, the greater the dulling effect. Having it at full was definitely not happening—this was, after all, a game, and that felt excessively masochistic. Around a quarter or a third had been a comfortable level for a long time.

That meant that whatever caused that pain had inflicted a significant injury.

En spun around.

Battlerage had his sword out, and there was red staining it, and he was already raising it for another blow.

Reflex took over. First priority: defend. Garnet summoned up the strongest air shield in ens repertoire. It formed with no time to spare. The sword bounced off of it.

“Rage, what...”

“I don’t play with freaks. Nobody normal even makes characters like that, let alone plays them. All that shit about bonuses, fuck that. That’s the devs trying to bribe people into playing with their little fetishes. Fuck your guild and fuck your stream and fuck you. Time for everyone to see what you really are, you lying perv. You aren’t so hot. I can find that temple and its treasure without you.”

The air shield deflected several more hammered attacks, while Garnet tried to think fast. Too many factors: Rage but also the other two, who were for some reason not getting involved, and his audience, and the need to not get his stream suspended.

“So sue me for actually experimenting beyond human with a sword on a warhorse,” en snapped. “If you want to limit yourself to the same thing you can find in a historical wargame, that’s up to you. Some of us might actually want to see what the game can offer, y’know. You want to see why I might want an elementalist, traitor? This is why.” En had to get the timing exactly right, because the air shield was going to drop as soon as en started the new spell. That sword did some real damage when it struck, but it was so large it was unweildy and there was a moment of getting it under control and back in the right direction after a swing.

That moment gave Garnet long enough to invoke a [Lightning] spell.

Anterra mostly respected physics.

Battlerage was wearing a lot of steel.

While the steel was more conductive than body tissue, it still hurt.

It hurt the warhorse, too, which reared with a scream and dumped Battlerage’s convulsing body on the ground before taking off at a gallop.

Garnet oriented on the other two. “What the hell?”

Apexecutioner shrugged. “Not our job to be your bodyguards. If you can’t defend yourself one on one, you shouldn’t be in charge.”

“Seriously? Since when do I need to prove myself to anyone?”

“Leader of the pack, bro.”

“Not a bad little trick with the electric shock,” Uxium_Ixium said.

“Lightning,” Garnet said tersely. “Y’know, elemental magic, because elementalist. And it worked against someone higher-level than this character because the brain controlling this character knows more about Anterra than all three of you put together. I don’t know what the fuck you lot are doing, but I’ve got a quest to finish.”

“Lead on,” Apex said.

Garnet eyed them warily, not at all sure en could trust them.

For the moment, however, these two seemed to be acting more or less normally, and en really wanted to avoid any more conflict during the stream if en possibly could. Their reactions weren’t really a surprise, and just confirmed ens caution about allowing any connection between ens gamer identity that paid the bills and ens more personal exploration of everything the game offered. En had no idea how to repair the damage. If the sponsor deal went through, that would help enormously, because en was quite sure that subs were being dropped right now. En just didn’t want to call up the screen and look.

“Fine. I’m going to fly upwards, because I don’t have height restrictions like that rug does, and see what the lay of the land looks like. Maybe I can even spot the Temple from here. Just keep following what passes for a road.”

“You wanna do anything about Rage?” Apex asked. “No mount, middle of nowhere.”

“How is that my problem, after he called me names and attacked me?” Garnet pulled up the Guild list with a thought, found Battlerage, and swiped him off it. “I don’t care how young he is in real life, that crossed the line.”

“The names or the attack?” Uxium muttered.

Garnet shot him a look, but the time and energy would be better spent going upwards instead.