Danika only remembered that she'd forgotten to ask about what made the dwarves different after she'd passed through the doorway. When she looked back, there was no trace of it, only an enormous tree at the top of the hill. The first branch appeared to be several stories off the ground, and huge roots framed the borders of the vale she stood in.

She turned and followed the stream down the hill until she found a man, who looked suspiciously similar to the Jade Emperor in plain clothes, sitting on a stone beside the water. He leapt to his feet at her approach and greeted her cheerfully.

"Hello little one! I'm the traveling merchant. How would you like to be known here?" he asked.

Danika was a smaller dragon than she'd planned on, but a dragon nonetheless, so she gave the name that she'd crafted while leveling her old game accounts, "ZipZing."

"Zip Sing?" the merchant asked uncertainly. He withdrew an old fashioned brush pen and a scroll from the pack that he carried. He wrote quickly. "Like this?" he asked as he held out the scroll and displayed the neat characters he'd drawn. "Meaning perhaps: no song?"

Danika looked up at him and shook her head. "The first word is correct," she told him, "but the second word should also start with Z and have no space between them. I plan to zip through the sky like lightning!" She glanced over her shoulder and shrugged her wings before adding, "As soon as I learn how to fly."

"What an interesting name! Nice to meet you ZipZing, like lightning's flight," the traveling merchant enthused. The NPC appeared to ponder for a moment before suggesting with a grin, "If you want to learn to fly, why not try falling out of trees like baby birds do?"

Danika stared at the NPC for a long moment. "Are you the Jade Emperor in disguise?" she questioned suspiciously.

"Ha ha," the merchant laughed, "if you think so, perhaps I'll become the Jade Emperor in the future! I'm just the traveling merchant, I can sell you items that will aid you in your journey, and I'll introduce you to the mentors available in the vale."

"Can I really learn to fly by falling out of a tree?" Danika asked.

"Maybe?" the traveling merchant replied with a wink.

"I think I'd like to meet the mentors first," Danika muttered.

--

There was a tiny village a little farther down the hill. Danika was a little embarrassed. She'd tried to run beside the merchant after realizing how slowly she walked in her tiny form and had tripped several times. The merchant had taken no notice, as though this was how every newbie character traveled, but Danika was still embarrassed.

"Do you have any idea what path of learning you'd prefer?" the merchant inquired as Danika looked around the tiny village. "There are three basic branches of learning: magic, combat, and crafting. There are three specialists from each branch within the village."

Danika turned and frowned at the merchant. "I thought it was an open system and you could learn anything?"

"You want to be able to learn anything?" asked the merchant.

"Yes," Danika declared decisively.

"Are you certain? If you don't choose a path, you can learn almost anything that anyone is willing to teach you, but you won't have any guidance outside the vale," explained the merchant.

"Ok," Danika agreed.

The merchant said simply, "In that case, I suggest asking the wood cutter to be your mentor while in the vale."

Danika asked curiously, "Does he usually mentor people who haven't chosen a path?"

"She usually mentors those who wish to become rangers, but anyone in the village could mentor you until you leave the vale," the traveling merchant replied. "You can only learn a few basic skills here," he winked at her and explained, "but she can talk to birds."

--

It didn't take Danika long to realize that her mentor, Tiana Treebane, had a much simpler AI than the traveling merchant. The crotchety old NPC conversed with a much more traditional dialog set, and would apparently repeat what information she knew infinitely, if required.

The traveling merchant hadn't been joking about learning to fly by falling out of a tree either. Danika's mentor claimed to have asked a falcon she knew about the best way to learn to fly. Apparently the falcon had recommended kicking the fledgling out of the nest as the best method.

When Danika asked if there was a second best method, the elderly Treebane chortled. "There is, but I don't recommend trying it little ZipZing," Treebane told her.

"What is it?" Danika asked curiously.

"Falling from a falcon's claws after flying halfway to the sun," Treebane explained. She chortled again and said gleefully, "You'd splat like an overripe strawberry if you failed!"

Danika agreed to try falling out of trees. She soon discovered that when she jumped off the branch her mentor had placed her on, her wings would beat automatically, until she paid attention to them. The fall hurt a little, but not enough to make her afraid to try again.

Tiana Treebane insisted that after the first time, Danika must climb back into the tree on her own. Danika found learning to climb using her claws surprisingly easy, and became quite dexterous at scuttling up the tree. She had to jump out of the tree several dozen times before she caught the trick of flight.

Rather than controlling her wings as though she were flapping her arms, it was more like controlling a windshield wiper, learning to turn it on, and then control how fast her wings beat. Controlling her direction was simpler, she simply moved in direction she wished to go.

Danika had been practicing flying for about an hour before she realized that thinking about how she was moving was probably the same reason she'd tripped while running. She dropped neatly to the ground, and then raced across the clearing. She skidded to a stop and laughed aloud. The "controls" were the same!

Treebane grudgingly congratulated her, "I see you've finally learned how to move around little ZipZing. Well done. Would you like to learn how to look up the controls for other game interface devices?"

Danika stared at her mentor for a moment, jarred by the sudden reference to other game interfaces, despite her triumph at mastering the "controls" here. "Sure," she agreed, after her brain adjusted. She looked down and clutched a fist full of dirt in her "hand" and then let it fall through her claws.

Danika gazed around the clearing again with new appreciation for how real everything seemed through the VR-medi pod interface.