Mortality was an odd child. He was the younger brother of Mort, twin to Adam, son of Amma, Harbinger of the Void. Born with wisdom few could ever comprehend; his childhood was simultaneously lonely and all-encompassing. His workings are sometimes confused with Entrope and while similar, Mortality guides the spirit while Entrope takes the physical. Mortality walks alongside every mortal and, together with Mort, delivers them unto the void.

*****

Aiden wasn’t impressed by the village provided accommodations in the town hall, but he didn’t have to be. It didn’t matter that all he had to sleep on was a small pallet on the floor squeezed in between two others because that wasn’t where he was really sleeping. Heck, if you wanted to get really literal about it, he was sleeping in a pod on a spaceship, which is why his sleeping conditions in Vos didn’t matter so long as it was in a protected area.

The city hall was exactly that. A safe place provided by the game—to store player characters while logging—where one wasn't at risk of dying in their ‘sleep’. Why couldn’t bodies just disappear like in other games? To increase the game's immersion, of course. Why did the game automatically log players off into their staterooms? Because medieval living standards were shit and this was supposed to be a game. More people would have probably complained if the death penalty wasn’t so odd.

When players died in Vos, they didn’t lose experience and stats—those didn’t exist in VOS. Instead, players lost all reputation metrics and earned a time out from the game. The player's old identity died for good and a new in-game identity had to be taken. All that meant for Aiden was that he could act as recklessly in the game as he wanted, and if he really messed up, he could kill himself to get a blank slate. Recklessness included the act of sleeping alone in the woods without a lookout, but he didn’t have to do that this night.

The pallet provided to him was itchy and smelled funny, but Aiden could stand it long enough to lie down and log off. The night spent sleeping in his massive fourposter bed was wonderful, if a little gaudy. Aiden promised himself to re-customize the room when he wasn’t hurrying back to the game as he was waking up the next morning—but could it really be called morning if he was in space? Aiden shrugged, logged on, and stumbled over the body lying next to him. Good thing that girl was as good as comatose.

He was still shaking out his sore wrists as he emerged from the dingy little town hall and into the blinding sunlit town square. Aiden stumbled again, this time over his own feet.

“You alright there, young lad?” asked an elderly looking blob.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Is it always so bright in the morning?” Aiden replied trying to blink away the spots from his vision and recognized Elder Cohler speaking to him.

“Morning? Noon is only a bell from now. But yes, a nice cloudless day like this one will always be rather bright; Sellis can only be obscured not dimmed.” It took Aiden a moment to parse that.

According to the mythology blurb published during the game's announcement, Sellis was the sun god, only not a god because there were no gods—only primordial idea-being-things—except the humans worshipped Sellis as a part of their pantheon of gods. Was that right? Aiden’s memory was hazy and he’d checked-out at most of the religious crap. World-building was fun and all, but ten-minute exposition dumps were not.

“Right, thanks Elder Cohler. I finished one of those quests you gave me, you know the one to clear the Celties?”

“Ah, that’s right, I can hear Veuce telling me now, here's a Celty pillow for the trouble.”

Quest Completed

Clear the way

Reward: Renown with Cairn village increased, Celty pillow

Celty Pillow

Gain a well-rested bonus for one hour after waking up in the morning

“Oh. Wow. thanks.” Aiden felt at the light pink pillow given to him. It was very fluffy. “I can’t wait to have a nice rest on the corpses of my enemies.”

"That's nice, sonny." The elder gave Aiden an odd look and slowly walked away.

“That was a joke!” Aiden called after him. There was a light snort of laughter coming from behind him and Aiden turned to find the girl he’d nearly face-planted onto earlier.

“You know, normally you don’t need to explain that you’re joking unless it’s a bad joke right?”

“Is that just a convoluted way of saying I’m not funny? I can be funny.”

Another snort.

“See, you’re laughing.”

“The question is, am I laughing at you or with you?”

“Most people wouldn’t admit to laughing at someone; it’s poor manners.”

The girl lifted a bright red eyebrow at him.

“What?”

“Oh, nothing. I was just wondering if this really was the guy Arthur spent the whole afternoon with.”

“Well yeah, we helped each other out yesterday, you know him?”

“He’s my little brother.”

Aiden looked at her flame-red hair, emerald eyes, and the abundance of freckles that flecked her small button nose, cheeks, and even arms, then compared it to Arthur’s Nordic blond hair, blue eyes, and chiselled features. They did share the same almost vampiric skin though, even if one already came with freckles.

“You don’t look alike,” Aiden stated the obvious.

“Duh, this is a game, we can look however we want. Don’t tell me you actually look like this?”

“No, but I didn’t change anything major.”

“And neither did we. You just can’t see past the freckles.”

“Well, I mean, they’re everywhere.”

“You’re a real charmer, you know that?” She spoke in a flat voice and deadpan expression that quickly lifted into a bright and bubbly tone as she changed the topic. “Any-who, today you get to help me out getting stories from the locals. Come on!” Without waiting for a response, she grabbed onto Aiden’s wrist and started walking towards an NPC.

“Why do I have to help you?” Aiden protested following the girl who he still didn’t know the name of. Oh, right. “I don’t even know your name!”

“The name’s Morrigan.” She turned and gave him a savage grin. “And you're helping me because you helped my brother and it wouldn’t be fair if only one of us got help.”

“Right... What-” Morrigan cut him off.

“Hello, sir! We’re collecting stories for the towns Archive and would like to ask if you have any to share.” Morrigan adopted a cheerful, friendly demeanour and waved to a woodsman-stereotype NPC.

Aiden noticed a recording symbol flashing above her head and quickly activated his own recorder, the familiar hollo-frame and recording symbol appearing in his augmented vision—virtual vision?

“More heroes sent my way by Cohler is it?”

“That’s the Elder!” Morrigan affirmed.

“Right then, let's get this over with.” The NPC mumbled then began rehearsing what was likely the same story he told every player. “I am Hunter Boyd. I was not born in this village, but I came here looking for a new start after the ceasefire. I was a soldier on the frontlines fighting in the pass where the wall now is. I’d marched all the way there from my hometown in Jashra and had no intention of finding my way back or getting stationed at the Wall so I settled down here. That’s how a lot of us came to Cairn actually.”

“Wait, the Wall? What ceasefire?”

Both Boyd and Morrigan looked at Aiden like he was some kind of idiot.

“Please tell me you at least know about the war?” asked Boyd.

“The one with the demons right? I heard it never ends.”

“Yes, and right now we’re in a ceasefire with them. The wall was built by the gods shortly after the demons pulled back into the Wildlands. Only took them a week, if my memory serves me, though I’d been suffering from a rather nasty knock to the head at the time.”

“Dude,” Morrigan hissed in Aiden’s ear, “haven’t you read the updated wiki for the Abeona? There were a bunch of updates made for the launch.”

“I didn’t even know it existed.”

Boyd cleared his throat, startling Aiden and Morrigan back to attention.“As I was saying, I settled in Cairn after the ceasefire. I was handy with the bow, so I thought I’d make a go at hunting. I was horrible at it—army archery focuses on frequent volleys rather than Aim but Arril—that’s Maya’s Mother, pity how she died—she taught me how to hunt properly.”

*****

“So there I was, a young girl, barely seventeen, when I saw the most handsome boy I ever did see.”

“Handsome? That old Reter had the face of a brick.”

“Well, we hit it off right away.” Continued the elderly woman by the name of Yelda, ignoring her friend’s corrections “Maybe a bit too well. When I learned I was pregnant, well, you know how it is…”

No, Aiden really did not know ‘how it is’.

“There was this whole kerfuffle and my sweet Reter got down on his knees and proposed to me. My father was livid!” Yelda cackled like it was all some big joke.

“Of course, he was livid, that Reter went and got his little girl all knocked up then completely bypassed him when he proposed to you.”

“As was right. I far prefer our Cinnfhail traditions then that stuffy Lapris nonsense my father was always on about. Really, if he was alive to see Olna propose to Lorn he would have died from the shock.”

“I’m from Lapris!”

“And? You fainted when you heard about it.”

The quest updated and Aiden and Morrigan stealthily extracted themselves from the bickering grannies.

*****

“I was born in the Village, never really been far from it, Ma and Pa say it’s too dangerous to go out on my own. Maya does too, but she’s worse than a mother hen, or bear. Hey, which do you think fits better?”

Aiden and Maya looked at each other, not quite sure if they heard the question right.

“You want to know if this ‘Maya’ is more of a hen or a bear?” asked Aiden.

“Who even is she?” asked Morrigan.

“She’s my best friend!” The girl’s face lit up, blush red cheeks and cornflower blue eyes practically glowing in cheery delight. “We’ve always played together, used to plan to go on adventures too. That stopped when her mother died." Her smile slipped. "She hasn’t even stepped foot into the forests since then, won’t let me either. I'll get her to come around eventually though. We’ll get out into the world one day, and I swear I’m going to save a prince from a dragon. That’s how it goes right?

Again Aiden and Morrigan shared a look, though now in bemusement.

“Right,” said Aiden, wanting to rap-up this session. “You never actually got around to telling us your name.”

“It’s Erin!” She smiled brightly. Aiden noticed how her light red curls almost looked like sunbeams emanating from her heavily freckled and youthful face.