Chapter 2: Fury

Jaxir wasn’t sure how long he remained on the floor before he finally managed to drag himself into the bathroom, but somewhere along the way he shifted from thinking he was breathing his last breaths to feeling as though he couldn’t die without getting some answers.

The memories flooding his mind were still too numerous to organize, pieces of people, places and emotions that felt like his own despite Jaxir knowing he had never experienced any of them.

There was one thing that cut through the chaos more clearly than everything else though...

Fury.

Jaxir didn’t know who the anger belonged to anymore because some of it felt ancient, tied to the Goddess of Life and a betrayal he was only beginning to understand, while the rest belonged firmly to him. But it wasn’t because of Jahbri.

Looking at the man reflected in the bathroom mirror made it difficult to separate the two, his gaunt cheeks and greyed eyes half-hidden beneath an overgrowth of matted hair that hung from his scalp like a misshapen wig.

"I’m pathetic."

Those two words shone through all the memories, and it seemed to be a sentiment that both he and this Jester shared. The strange part was that the realization didn’t make Jaxir want to crawl back into bed this time. Instead, that old anger seemed to grab onto something inside him that he thought had died years ago.

He looked around the bathroom and found that the one good thing about coming in here so rarely was that most of the mess was just dust. Hard for mold and algae to grow when you never turned the water on in the first place.

There were layers of it covering nearly everything, but Jaxir turned on the curbless shower and let the heads flood the drain, walls and even the mirrors until the room looked somewhat usable again.

"Nothing some water can’t fix."

It wasn’t much better even after a while, and this certainly wasn’t the best way to clean anything, but it felt better than doing nothing. Eventually, Jaxir found himself sitting on the floor of the shower with muck and grossness flowing down his body as a trio of showerheads fell on him from above.

"Jaxir... Jester... Jax... Jes... Who am I...?"

He stared down at his wrist for a moment before pressing a button on his Kinext and opening his contacts, because if Divinity and whatever this Integration was were connected, he needed to talk to somebody who actually knew the game.

Jaxir flicked through the names, chose one he hadn’t spoken to in years and clicked call. His wrist buzzed just a single time before someone answered.

"Jax? Is that you? What the hell is that static? Wait, is that water? Talk to me? Where are you?! STEP AWAY FROM THE FUCKING CLIFF!"

"There’s no cliff, Lue."

"What did you say? I can’t hear you―wait, let me turn this filtering software on. I turned it off earlier because―ah, you don’t need to know that." Lue spoke like he was afraid Jaxir could hang up any moment now before there was a brief pause. "I turned it back on. Talk again."

"There’s no cliff, Lue."

A sigh of relief echoed through the call. "Then what’s up with the water? I thought you were standing over a waterfall or something. I was worried, man."

"I’m just in the shower."

"You called me in the shower―?" Lue stopped himself again, seeming to decide that whatever question had entered his head wasn’t worth risking the call. "Forget it, forget it. Where are you? What do you need? I’m coming, dammit."

Jaxir frowned. "Weren’t you―?"

"I finished my military service already. I’m back in town, but your folks moved away from your old place. I have no idea where you are now. All your information is scrubbed from the internet."

"You don’t need to come. I just had a question."

"Jax, I―" Lue stopped himself again. "Alright, no problem, whatever you say. What’s up? How can I help?"

"Divinity. The game. Have you played it?"

Lue stifled a laugh, and Jaxir’s brow furrowed because he didn’t think he had said anything funny. "What’s funny?"

"Just, nobody says it like that man. The moment you say Divinity, everybody knows what you’re talking about, you didn’t need to clarify. Lighten up, man."

Jaxir blinked and rubbed at his eyes a bit, realizing just how long it had been since he interacted with anyone. Lue had moved away after sophomore year and joined the military right out of high school, and funny enough, Jaxir had called him because he thought he would be the one least likely to answer.

He hadn’t expected to actually have to interact with someone today.

"Jax?"

"Ah, sorry, I haven’t really been paying a lot of attention, so I’m not used to some things."

"Yeah, that’s my bad, I shouldn’t have made fun of you."

"I’m not that fragile." Jaxir answered almost reflexively, but the words half felt like they had come from someone else, the response sharper and more immediate than anything he would have bothered saying yesterday. "You don’t have to worry so much about me. So, have you played?"

"Everyone’s played, man. They just pushed through a huge update too. It’s huge. Unbelievable, really." Lue paused for half a beat before his confusion caught up with him. "What? You haven’t played? Wait, wasn’t your family huge in its creation? You’d probably know more than me―"

"I was just wondering if you’ve ever noticed anything weird about the game?"

"Weird? No, not really. Well, I guess there are some people who are pretty worried about it."

"Worried how?"

"Some people think we’re starting to invest too much in the game, you know? You can make a whole living in there. They’re worried that we care more about the game than real life now."

"I see. Is that all?"

"Well, that’s the only weird thing I can think of. Other than that, it’s just way more realistic than you’d expect." Lue seemed to think about it for a moment. "The new update apparently has an even more realistic sensation setting. People are already testing it out even though it only came through an hour ago. The results are... enticing, if you know what I mean," Jaxir could practically see Lue doing his patented eyebrow wiggle. "All the sensation, and yet none of the risks."

Jaxir found himself smiling, but for some reason his voice still came out with an edge of cold to them.

"I got it. Thanks for answering."

"Feels weird telling you this, but if you of all people need any help on the game, I have a little bit of backing.

"Trust me. Starting this late on your own is basically impossible. Leveling in this game is already slow as it is, and most of the lower level people you’ll come across are either experts who guilds are funding a full rebuild for, or grunts who are monopolizing level restricted areas for the personal use of said guilds. So―."

"Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind." Jaxir replied.

It sounded like Lue was going to say something else, but Jaxir hung up before he could get the words out. He didn’t really know what had possessed him to call Lue after years of silence, but Jaxir found it was nice to listen to a familiar voice for once.

He also didn’t want to get tied to an organization right now, not until he had figured out what his parents’ message and the circuit board they left behind met. Could it be related to their deaths? Was it that dangerous? He just didn’t know.

Jaxir and Lue had been inseparable at one point, but distance and the strict protocol of the military had stripped them of that, and hearing him now reminded Jaxir that there had once been a version of himself who actually had friends. Maybe some pieces of that person weren’t as dead as he had thought.

Jaxir took a deep breath and stood beneath the shower before finding a hair clipper and buzzing his hair down to a skin fade. There was no way the hair he had now was healthy anyway.

When he finished, he passed his palm over his head and looked at a clean-shaven face and head for the first time in a long while.

His once handsome features had been replaced by sunken cheeks and bone, leaving him looking more skeleton than man, but his eyes were different. There was a fire in them now that hadn’t been there for a long while...

Jaxir found a decent pair of boxers in another room, and because he didn’t change his clothes often―if at all―he ironically still had some clean ones from the last time Jahbri had helped him with laundry. Well, if clothes that had been sitting around for two years could still be considered clean.

He slowly made his way down to the basement, finding that his own mansion had become practically a maze to him after so much time spent inside the same handful of rooms. Entire parts of the house felt like foreign land, but eventually his memories led him to what he had been looking for.

Jaxir stood across from a bubble soaking in a vat of glowing green water, while a complex series of circuits lay at the bottom and spread beneath it like a piece of art rather than fine technology. His parents had installed the Divinity pod years ago, but Jaxir couldn’t remember the last time he had even come down here to look at it.

Had it always looked like that?

He couldn’t remember.

For all the questions circling in his head, there was only one obvious place left to search for answers, so Jaxir stepped into the vat and slowly waded through the glowing water. He opened the bubble and slipped inside, settling his thin body into a machine built for a game he had spent the last five years refusing to play.

Something prickled along his spine the moment the bubble closed, and Jaxir’s pupils dilated as his body seemed to be sucked into a black hole. A complete sense of weightlessness overwhelmed him, the basement and everything around him disappearing until there was nothing left but darkness.

Then words appeared before him.

--

[Welcome to Divinity]

[Select Class]