“The quest of a Seeker is a long and difficult one that requires enormous sacrifice and fierce will. Those sacrifices are too much for many, and they fall along the side of the road, passed by others as they forge their own destiny.”

Rathborne of the Order of the Raven.

“The wizard is this way! Come on, or he’s going to get away!” Rey called over her shoulder, her dark blue cloak fluttering behind her as she ran.

I’m ten years old again, and Rey and I are racing through the maze of the ground level of the barracks, “playing pretend” together, continuing our story we’ve been living for the last two weeks. It’s our longest yet—the Barracks are our kingdom and a dark wizard (really just a 3D printer gone awry as it spat polymer in lines that would be the exterior wall of a new home) has invaded and must be dealt with. I’m a noble knight of the kingdom of Barrickean, and Rey is the most powerful archer in the land. Smiling, I grip my plastic sword and chase after her.

It rained this morning, and we’re splashing through puddles as we go. I’m not sure we’re even going the right way, but I’m having fun just the same. Spending time with Rey like this is the most fun I have in my life. We aren’t gamers yet—not like we would be, as our parents don’t want us spending too much time away from the real world. So we play pretend.

“You shoot him with arrows!” I call after her as we round a corner and race through the deep shadows cast by the upper levels of the shanty town. “I’ll get him with my sword’s ice attack!”

“I know that!” Rey laughs back as we reach the malfunctioning piece of equipment. Its printer nozzle is gurgling and coughing as it vomits polymer all over the ground, creating a monstrous mess the company won’t be happy having to clean up. “On guard!” Rey shouts, raising her pretend bow, made out of a curved piece of plastic with a string tied to both ends, and begins firing at the wizard.

“Freeze!” I shout, aiming the tip of my sword at the dark caster. I could see the spell shoot forth—a frozen copy of my sword surrounded by a swirling frost vortex that struck the wizard in his dark black and purple robe, freezing him in place allowing me to charge. Rey fired her arrows and I hacked away at him, slapping my plastic blade against the lumps of sticky printer material that was meant to create a home for someone—or maybe just a privacy wall.

“Die, wizard!” Rey shouted. “Die!”

“We got him, Rey! We got him!”

All I could think about as Rey’s angry body went limp was how things used to be when we were kids—how video games had become a way for us to remain friends after she moved away. A world without consequences of the real world, that’s where we’d go together. I saw the view from her webcam, her parents’ frantic cries as they fought to wake her, and I felt lost and powerless as I felt her respawning behind me at the lamppost.

Movement behind me. I turned and saw a thick group of Bloodless, white now, standing huddled around the lamppost, swaying slightly against each other like reeds in the wind. Then, suddenly, the entire pack moved with lightning speed and began to sprint away from town into as though commanded by some unseen force.

Her hair—that’s what I watched as she ran away from me. It danced through the air like those streamers you’d see at parades that seemed to defy gravity as they pranced high above the crowd. She ran with the rest of them, the zombie horde that had come and attacked and now, white and forbidden to attack for now, was retreating into the shadows of the world.

Behind me, Jacob panted like a dog. I looked down at him, twisting in agony at my feet, clutching the wound give to him by my friend.

“Why did you do that?” I asked him, kneeling down and bringing a Soothing Syrup to his lips. “Drink.”

He did, and his health recovered most of the way, but that was little comfort. He’d been bitten, and if what he said about becoming infected was correct, this was bad—really bad.

“You’re my friend,” he sputtered, pushing himself to a seated position. I took his hand to help him stand. “That’s what friends do.”

“But—she bit you…”

“Yeah…”

“Damn it, Jacob…”

“My—my heart,” he stammered, clutching his chest as Altarus and Fujiko rushed up behind me.

“Jacob. How do you feel?” I asked him. “Are you…are you all right?”

He shook his head adamantly. A shiver ran through him, causing a different one to slither through my limbs. I’d seen this behavior before. He was turning.

“No,” I muttered. “No, no, no…”

“Get away from me!” Jacob snarled, leaping to his feet and staggering away from us. I saw him open his character sheet as he began dumping everything in his inventory onto the ground. “Get away! I’m turning into one of them!”

“No!” I shouted, racing forward and gripping him by the arms. “No, we can do something! We—we have to be able to do something! Fujiko!?”

But Fujiko had nothing for me. She stood there watching, stone faced, able to accept the reality of what was happening in a way that I didn’t want to. I knew what was going to happen next, but I didn’t want to believe it. Jacob was my friend, and we’d come so far since our first meeting in the town square when I’d dismissed him as nothing more than an annoying, arrogant jerk that I wanted nothing to do with. And now, he’d sacrificed himself to save me.

“Rand,” he said softly as he dropped everything he had. “Figure this out, okay? If anyone can do it, you can.”

“I will!” I told him quickly, nodding emphatically. “But, Jacob—”

“I can feel it, Rand…it’s cold…it’s dark.”

“Jacob…”

“It’s pulling at me!” he yelped, the threat of hysteria in his voice as whatever it was began to overwhelm him. “GET AWAY!”

I felt like I was watching a horror movie as he drove both palms into my chest in a desperate attempt to get me away from him. I staggered back as his eyes began to fill with red, like blood breaking through barriers in the human body, creeping into places it was never supposed to be. Slowly, bit by bit, moment by moment, I watched his humanity begin to surrender—but to what?

I opened my mouth to speak, but my voice failed me. Jacob stared with a look of sorrow and terror as the remaining whites in his eyes were overcome by the red, and I saw the last visage of what had been Jacob begin to fall from his face. But before the madness could completely take hold, he looked at me with a look that said “goodbye,” spun on his heels and raced away at top speed. All I could do was watch as his silhouette disappeared into the mist.

What is the opposite of complete and utter betrayal?

“I’m sorry, Rand,” Altarus said as he placed a hand on my shoulder. “That could not have been easy for you.”

“We’ll figure this out,” Fujiko told me. I pulled away.

Figure this out how?! I wanted to snap at her. So they both had loved ones trapped in the game, Bloodless and insane, but did that mean they knew anything special? They weren’t wise—they were stumbling around like me with more questions than answers.

Behind me, I heard cries of sorrow as someone else succumbed to the mysterious curse of the Bloodless. There was a snarl and the sound of gnashing teeth, and then the fighting began.

They can handle it, I thought angrily as I gripped my axe and strode away, leaving Jacob’s possessions on the ground. “You can have them.”

“Where are you going!?” Fujiko shouted after me. I didn’t answer. Altarus said something to her that kept her from calling out again.

“Fucking shit,” I cursed under my breath as I passed Alastor in his wine bath.

“Young seeker!” he cried out, but I completely ignored him. There was only one person I wanted to talk to right now, and it wasn’t the Blood Merchant who kept calling to me as I entered the woods, ignoring the flames of the torches casting their feint glow across the branches. The Corrupted Villagers, now 8 levels below me, ignored me, but that didn’t stop me from hacking them down as I progressed. They died in one hit, but I felt a glimmer of satisfaction as each one died. It was as though I was chipping away at pieces of the world that had taken not one, but two of my friends from me.

But what was the point of it all? It was not a feature of the game—that much was clear. People were stuck in this world, and some kind of plague was reeking havoc through the population, turning them all into nothing more than beasts, corrupting and twisting them.

Were they slaves? Was someone controlling them? Was it some kind of computer virus? And if so, how the Hell did that work? The Fount only worked one way; it transmitted your consciousness into the game world. It couldn’t transmit anything back. So theoretically, it would be impossible for this to be affecting people in the real world. But then again, people weren’t able to log out anymore were they?

He won’t know, I thought. He couldn’t know. But that didn’t stop me.

As Rathborne’s tiny cottage came into view, the slightest glow of orange sun creeping through the heavy clouds to rest gently on the sloping, collapsing roof, I felt a sense of relief as though I was coming home after a long voyage. The tiny plume of smoke that coughed from the chimney seemed to greet me as I made my way to the huts only door and knocked.

“Come in, Rand,” Rathborne’s voice replied from within. I grinned and opened the door.

The old Seeker was sitting by the fire, his cane of black wood resting across his legs. Without his cape cloak, which was now mine, he looked different, more relaxed, almost happily retired. But still, he carried with him a presence that spoke of years of combat and training. He was wise, and I knew he was part of the game and as such, his knowledge would be limited, but I had no one else to turn to.

“How’d you know it was me?”

Rathborne smiled. “I wouldn’t be much of a Seeker if I didn’t know who was knocking at my own door, now would I?”

“That’s not an answer,” I replied, forcing a smile as I shut the door behind me. There was a piece of strong stone jutting out from the hearth and I sat on it, welcoming the warmth of the flames, wishing they would somehow drive the chill from my bones. Of course they wouldn’t; it was a different kind of chill that hung over me.

“What ails you, son?”

“Rathborne,” I said slowly, my eyes on the rough stone of his floor. “Do you—do you know of the Bloodless?”

Rathborne shifted slightly, tapped his fingers against the circular cane that housed the hidden blade.

“I have heard mutterings,” he replied. “Dark things move in the shadows of the woods. But not much reaches me out here, I’m afraid.”

“The plague. The one that…the one that took your son. Can you tell me about it?”

It hurt me to ask him, and even though he didn’t show it, I knew it hurt him to hear it. Under normal circumstances I never would have asked such a thing, but I was desperate—anything that might help me understand what I needed to do to help my friends.

“The Weeping Hills were once a quiet farm town,” he said slowly, his eyes searching aimlessly as he replayed the memories in his mind. “There were more houses then, more villagers. A man turned first, Henry was his name. Madness took him. He was no longer himself. Then the sickness. Then death. We thought it was over, but then others fell, and then more. We knew not how it spread, but it did. There was no way to stop it. We did what we could, but it was not enough. Those of us who survived were those of us who fled.”

“Did they attack others?” I asked him. “The ones who were infected?”

“Some of them,” Rathborne nodded. “Some just died. Others lost their eyes and went mad—”

“Lost their eyes?” I snapped. “What do you mean by that?”

Rathborne scowled and spat into the flames, causing them to pop and sizzle. “Blood eyes. Red with hate…”

It’s the same thing…I realized. But it can’t be!

A plague that infected NPCs could never be transferred to real players. Impossible. NPCs, even if true A.I.s, were nothing more than code, incredibly complicated code at work at all times. Players were…humans! Code couldn’t infect a human like that. Our brains didn’t work that way. But if what Rathborne was saying was true, the same plague that had swept through the Weeping Hills and destroyed them was now attacking players. I’d heard of diseases and infections in the real world that would mutate, become resistant to original forms of treatment that had once cured it. But that was real.

“Rathborne. Do you know anything about a massive city?”

Rathborne looked up at me. I saw something in his eye, but he waited for me to continue.

“An unbelievable city with towering buildings and bridges between them…a place that looks like it was built by a crazy person—”

“Yaharan,” he said, a grim tone in his voice that felt like I should be ready for a fight.

“You know it?”

“It certainly sounds like what you are describing,” he replied. “It was designed to be the capital city. Lee Corpicus, a famed architect was commissioned by the Medica Family. It was meant to be a shining achievement to the brilliance of man…”

“So, what happened?” I asked.

“As they began digging the foundations…they discovered something.”

Again, I shuddered. “Something?”

Rathborne shook his head in something close to fear. “I know not what, but they say Lee went down into the earth that day, and when he returned, he was no longer the same.” His words hung in the air. The only sound came from the crackling of the flames in the hearth. After a moment, he looked up at me.

“Why do you ask me about Yaharan, Rand?”

“I have to go there,” I told him. I saw a flicker of concern appear and disappear across his face.

“Why?”

“I don’t know if I can explain,” I told him. But I tried anyway. “I’ve had—visions.”

“Visions.”

“Of a monolith,” I continued. “A black monolith that seems to suck up all the light from everything around it. It—calls to me. I believe it is in Yaharan.”

I got to my feet, anticipating the end of my conversation with the old Seeker. I don’t know what I’d expected coming to him. Answers. Answers beyond the ones he’d be able to give me. I was looking for someone to solve my problems for me, and that was naïve. This world was setup against me from the get go, and that was before the madness, the Bloodless, the visions and the monolith.

“If you believe you must go, then you must,” Rathborne said. He was right, but I could sense it pained him to say so. “But, Rand…Yaharan is dangerous, filled with powerful creatures and dark things that will give you no quarter. You have grown as a Seeker, but you still have much to learn before facing the mad city.”

My angry outburst surprised even me. The pain that flared in my hand as I drove my knuckles into the stone of Rathborne’s wall managed to slightly quell the rage and confusion churning within me, but not enough.

-2

I shook my head, ashamed at my behavior in front of the old man. He saw something in me that I wasn’t even sure I saw myself, and I felt as though I’d just damaged his perception of me. But thankfully, when I looked back at him, I saw something different in his eyes.

“Rand,” he said gently, gesturing to the hearthstone where I’d been sitting. “Please, sit. I must tell you something of great importance.”