“Maurice, what's up?” Milli prompts our guide when we approach. He explains what we told him briefly.

Lara follows up. “We have some experience dealing with corruption from the invasion of Lenarlil two days ago, so we thought we might be able to help. Could you tell us what happened here?”

Milli sighs. “I see...” With one hand raking her fingers through her dark brown bangs, she speaks. “Yeah, they hit us like a truck. The portal opened too close to town and we lost way too many defenders before we could set up a proper defense.”

“Same for us,” Lara confirms darkly.

“We were barely holding it together when the boss showed up, and it had these new corruption powers that we just couldn't deal with well enough. It hit the core crystal with them before we managed to finish it off.”

“How'd you beat it?” Lara asks, “was it way stronger than normal?”

“Mm, I don't think so, we just didn't have our normal fighting strength and couldn't cope with the new attacks well enough. Was yours?”

“Heh, yeah,” Lara chuckles a little. “Mei, you have that recording, right?”

“Umm, yeah. Here.” I send her my stream link. “I have the battle recorded, you can check it out when you have a chance.”

Milli nods seriously. “I'll do that. So, the boss got our crystal with one of its corruption attacks, and we've been trying to cleanse it ever since. But we have a bunch of problems.” She puts her fingers up as she counts them off. “The corruption is constantly increasing, so we need to offset that before we can even clear it. Not enough people with good cleansing magic. It has really powerful resistance to the cleansing magic we do have. And it corrupts anyone who touches it, so we can't even use Cleansing Touch. That rules out like, half the people that do have cleansing magic.”

Everyone is grimacing as the problems pile one on top of another. No wonder why they've been fighting with it for so long... “And to add insult to injury?” Milli suddenly goes on. “The new corruption effect itself is ridiculous. It takes a fuck-load of Magic Resist to resist the effect. And here's the thing: it turns anyone who gets it hostile, and if you kill them while they're corrupted, they get a longer respawn timer.” That one is a surprise to me, and the others too, if their looks say anything.

“How much longer?” Hask steps forward to ask.

“Looks like twenty four earth hours. We just found out because the people who died to it during the invasion just started coming back.”

“Holy shit...” more than a few people mutter.

“Oh, don't worry, there's more,” the woman goes on, actually chuckling, it's that bad. “Anyone who respawns at the crystal while it's corrupted like this – they respawn corrupted too. It's a nightmare.”

“Sounds like it...” Lara agrees with a long sigh. “How is it going? Are you keeping things together?”

“For now.” Milli shrugs. “We've got all our good cleansing healers working on it around the clock, but it'll be a big problem after the weekend.” Everyone nods solemnly. “We have a couple strategies we came up with. There are a few people with Spell Save, we got them to teach their cleansing spells to everyone they could. We've also been having people touch the crystal to pull some of the corruption out, then cleanse them because they don't have the same resistance as the crystal itself.”

“Mm,” Lara nods a few times. “Seems like you have things in order, but are you breaking even?”

“For now, yeah. We've been reducing the corruption level, but it's a slog. It's a toss up whether we'll get it done before the weekend's over.”

“Well, we'll try to do what we can to help, right guys?” Lara asks everyone. Of course they all agree.

“Sure, every extra hand is welcome. But... I have to ask, who is this?” and she gestures to me. The way her eyes focus, she must be checking my tag.

“Ahh, that's a kind of long story,” Lara deflects. “We'll tell you if we have a chance, when this is cleared up, alright?”

“Sure, that's fine.” Milli waves us forward, pointing out the particular healer that can teach any of our mages without the necessary cleansing magic a spell that will let us help too. We pass through the rings of surrounding Guardians and summoned creatures, and can finally see the inner ring better.

As Milli said, the mages are all standing in a circle, constantly casting a variety of cleansing spells on the crystal. A few people stand right near it, reaching out and touching its surface. When they do, a small portion of the bubbling darkness, like a void of space mixed with ultrablack ink, breaks off to seep into them. They shudder, just for a moment, before the prepared healers hit them with cleansing magic.

All of this is going on at once. To make things even worse, there are people appearing from time to time, bright flashes coming from the crystal, again infected with a tiny bubble of darkness. Like Milli said, the Guardians respawning are corrupted. Each time one reappears, there's a flurry of activity, the surrounding defenders working to pin down the immediately hostile Guardians while the closest healers bathe them in more cleansing magic, until they return to normal.

God, this really is a nightmare of a situation...

“Sorry guys, my Cleansing mastery is too low,” Lara sighs, “let's go pick up that spell, alright?” with a whole round of agreeing voices, we head over to the healer Milli pointed out. As soon he sees us coming, he pulls out a bunch of little things, but then his eyes lock on me warily when we come close.

“You need the spell?” he asks, gaze never leaving me.

“Yeah, thanks.” Lara can't even draw his attention with her answer, and he proceeds to pass out the small magical crystals in his hands with hardly a blink, and then we move quickly away. I'm sure everyone picked up on my anxiety there...

Trying to forget that, I rub the crystal between my fingers. When I focus, I get some more information about it. It's made of pure magic, and contains a spell called 'Cleansing Ray.' It's a deteriorated version of the spell for some reason, so it's less effective.

“Alright everyone, you know how to save the spell, right?” Lara asks the mages who are following along. The physical fighters who likely don't have any magic stats to help out just hover around us protectively.

Flare, Winter, and Hask nod, while I shake my head with Emma. So Lara goes through the instructions, telling us how we can focus on the crystal and will it to save to our spell list. We do as she instructs, and one by one, the crystals shatter in everyone's grasp.

As soon as they do, a couple of them wince and wave their menus open, beginning to operate them, and I open mine as well to check my spells.

Empowered Attacks Fire - 40 Spells Dark Curse - 10 Curse Field - 30 Cleansing Ray (Lesser) - 50 Empower Points: 130/152

Ooh, that's a really expensive spell. I delete everything but the Cleansing Ray spell for now, to reduce its mana cost, then look around at everyone else, probably in the middle of doing the same.

With that done, we split from the fighters and move closer, to join the other mages. However, every step closer brings a stronger and stronger feeling on, bubbling up in my chest.

This core crystal... I stare at it, into the mass of black inside. Is it... calling to me...? I take a step past the line, and the draw begins to multiply. As I'm taking one more halting step forward, a hand closes on my shoulder, snapping me back to my senses.

“Mei?” It's Lara, looking at me with concern.

“Lara... do you feel that?” I ask, gaze slowly returning to the crystal.

“No. What is it?”

“It's...” How do I describe it? Just thinking about it, focusing on the feeling, it's like the information is dumping itself straight into my brain. “The source of the corruption... It's in there, and it's calling out. Trying to grow. Searching for a host.”

“I don't like where this is going...” she starts to scowl.

“I... can get it out.”

“Nope. Absolutely not,” she refutes the idea immediately. “There's no reason to do something that dangerous.”

“But...” I bite my lip. This feeling in my gut says I have to. A reason... “I have to. There something...” My eyes squeeze closed. It's like the world is screaming in both of my ears. Completely different instructions from each side. “A choice...” I look back to her again. “I don't know why, but this is important. Really important.”

Lara clenches her jaw, thinking hard for a minute. “This is corruption, Mei. You didn't see yourself earlier. Whatever this is, are you sure it's worth the risk?”

“The risk...” I mutter. If the worst comes to pass, I'd be out of the game for a whole day. I wouldn't be able to play most of Sunday, and I start my new job on Monday. In the grand scheme of things, one day away is no big deal. At least, it would be like that for someone else...

For me? More important than anything else, I wouldn't have any release from my life out there. Even if it's for a single day, it would feel like an eternity. I'd be back to suffering as Ray. Or, possibly Alex – I still don't know about that, I haven't had a chance to really think about it yet.

On the other hand, what happens if I succeed? We save Pollton from whatever might happen if they fail and their core crystal becomes fully corrupted. But they might not even fail; Milli seems really capable and a lot of the people here look determined to make it through this.

Lara's right, it's a completely unnecessary risk. At the very least, we could wait until later, if it looks like they can't do it on their own.

So why do I need to do this?

“I'm sorry, Lara, I don't know. But I can't just ignore it. If I can just do this, I'm sure I'll understand why.”

“Urgh...” she groans, holding her head in her hands. “Fine, but I'm going to be super mad at you later if this goes badly. And-” she sticks a finger up in warning, “-only if Milli says it's alright.” I return a meek nod, and Lara practically has to drag me, step by step, away from the core crystal. With the increased distance, the draw in my chest eases, but only a little. It's still far stronger than it was earlier, and I have a hard time pulling my eyes away from the glow of darkness.

When we get back to Milli, she asks what's up, and Lara sighs loudly. “Mei thinks she can help with the corruption in Pollton's core crystal.”

“Help... how?” Milli asks, halfway between wary and confused.

“I have no idea. Mei doesn't really know either, but she says it's important for some reason.”

“She does, does she...?” Milli narrows her eyes at me like some kind of predator. “What do you want to do, exactly?”

“I...” even as I consider it, my gaze is drawn away, before I force myself to look at Milli again. “I think... I need to touch it.”

“You'll get corrupted, you know.”

I nod stiffly. “I'll have Lara there, she's cleansed corruption off of me before.” When I say it, Lara looks away with a pained expression. But even as she stares off to the side, she speaks up.

“Also, Mei might have some kind of special interaction with the corruption effect. I'm not certain though.”

“Ok, let's talk worst case scenario,” Milli says, looking right down at me. “You get corrupted. You die. The end. You understand that, right?”

“I...” I'm about to tell her I don't have to worry that much, but her expression puts a dark feeling in my gut, so I close my mouth. All I do is nod.

“Alright, then get to it.” At her word, we approach the crystal once more. Only this time, she moves with us, the wolf at her side loping along silently, in perfect sync with the woman.

When we reach the ring of endlessly casting healers, just a short distance from the portion of our own party who have joined in for the time being, Milli stops and takes a deep breath, before her voice booms out in the loudest shout she can manage, over the din of the crowd.

“Everyone listen up!” Each sentence is punctuated with another big inhale so she can keep up her volume. “We have a story event on our hands!” Another big breath. “Be prepared for anything!”

As I stare at the crystal, I don't even feel the urge to correct her. Whatever this feeling is, whatever's coming, it is the start of a story. But what kind of story will it be...?

Milli waves us forward, and I finally get to follow the unbearable draw in my heart, step by step, up to the glowing blue crystal. The few others who were touching the crystal to pull out bits of the corruption back off, and the tension increases further, the closer I get.

Lara stays right at my side the whole way. When we come to a stop, within arms reach of the huge crystal surface, the darkness inside roiling closer and closer like it can sense me here, Lara puts a hand on my shoulder. “You ready?”

“I have no idea.” Then there's a flurry of flashes from my stream chat, probably the only thing that could pull my gaze at this point. I open it up to see that a bunch of the devs going at it. I pause for a few moments, rapidly scanning down the messages pouring in.

' omg it's happening.'

' Stay strong, Mei.'

' You can do it, Mei.'

' Who's recording this?'

' Me.'

' Me.'

' @[DC]Evelish'

' Me.'

' @[DC]Evelish'

' @[DC]Evelish'

' What the actual fuck is happening here?'

' @[DC]Evelish'

' @[DC]Evelish'

' @[DC]Evelish'

' @Tinkerman2055 I don't know but I am HERE FOR IT.'

' @[DC]Evelish'

' Stop @ing me and use the slack. We're ready.'

' @[DC]Evelish'

' Cameras are all set and recording.

' @Tinkerman2055 This has to be a DC run bot account, look at the viewer list.'

' @[DC]Rara Oh god, this is going to be a mess, have you guys even tested this yet?'

' Good luck, Mei.'

' Everyone switch to the internal stream.'

' Are we seriously using this for marketing?!'

' @[DC]Triangula Don't look at us, this is all NI and AI. @[DC]Sapphire @[DC]Marmara?

It goes on from there, but my eyes shift over to the viewer list and widen in shock. Mentally scrolling, there's a wall of Dana Corp staff now. Dozens of them; over a hundred, possibly. My viewership is suddenly upward of five hundred people total.

I absently wave the window away and look to Lara one more time. “Whatever I'm about to do, it looks like it's going to be big.” And possibly untested by the dev team. With a short command, I start up my stream recording.

“Good luck, Mei.” Lara gives me one more tight hug before taking a half step back. My throat is dry when I swallow and reach out. With a dull metal screech, a message window appears under my hand, floating directly between my fingers and the crystal surface. It's nothing like the other windows I've seen, this one colored in shimmering gold. But it flickers and distorts randomly, the surface shifting and darkness oozing from beneath the edges.

New Quest: The Call

Make the choice.

I pause, my fingers hesitating over its surface. With one last deep breath, I reach out, hand passing through the floating message to the crystal behind it.

My fingertips touch the smooth surface, the darkness ready and waiting. It surges forth and I pink