Interlude. Vanyar’s Journey

Vanyar’s options were all terrible. They had been since he’d joined this game. 

VR RPGs weren’t his thing. He was a Hero Shooter gamer, more at home looking down the crosshairs of a gun, and it wasn’t a genre that lent itself well to the dive technology that powered VR experiences. Too many people already whined about school shooters being fuelled by video games being too immersive in their violence. The only AAA studio that had pushed out a shooter onto the Grey Gear had quickly found itself neck deep in controversy and lawsuits. 

So Vanyar had never really gotten into the genre, despite being a massive Tolkein nerd. When he’d been invited to play, he’d leapt at the chance, even while downplaying his desire to chat. 

“It’s just a beta, we’re gonna try it out, and then it’s right back to Honorbound, I swear,” he’d said, even while secretly craving that the audience would enjoy it and maybe he could switch genres for a bit. 

Shooters had just gotten so… boring. Repetitive. Even when he’d switched the specific genre of shooter, from Hero Shooter to Looter Shooter to Extraction, nothing seemed to scratch the itch like it used to. 

Agreeing to join Fell Champions had been his first mistake. His first of so many. 

He’d been feeling pretty good about it at first. He’d made what he considered the ideal Tolkein elf as his avatar - long blonde hair, eyes the colour of the sky after a rain shower, skin a milky white. His chat had called him out on that, mocking him for playing a character that looked nothing like him in any way. A few had earned some Time Outs, but nothing to warrant a ban. No overt racism. He’d had to do them all himself since none of his mods seemed to have logged on in time for the stream. 

“Hey, Abdul, head out of the clouds,” Swiffy barked at him. 

“Vanyar, please,” he corrected. 

“Nerd. Shouldn’t it be ‘Vanya’, since that’s the proper singular to your little nerd reference?”

“I liked the way ‘Vanyar’ sounded better.” He paused. “Wait, you’re calling me a nerd, and you not only understand my reference, but you’re correcting me on it?”

Swiffy made a scoffing noise. “You’re on watch. We need you actually paying attention, or we’re kicking you out of the clan.”

Swiffy was a big man in his avatar, all muscle and puffed up bravado. In reality, he was a skinny, depressed loser who lived in his own filth. The kind who’d whine about the male loneliness epidemic one minute, and then say the most misogynistic thing possible the next. Normally not the kind of person Vanyar would associate with. But these days, he didn’t have much in the way of choices.

Vanyar surveyed the wall, a rickety thing made from logs that he was supposed to be patrolling the top of. His team had built it around the village - barely a small collection of huts - over the past week. Both to keep people from getting in, and to prevent them from leaving.

No one had done anything untoward to the farmers. Not yet, anyway. They were just getting free food and labour until their team figured out their next step. But Swiffy seemed like he was building himself up to something. Yodel always waved away Vanyar’s concerns when he brought them up, saying Swiffy would never do such a thing. And Vanyar was worried that maybe he was just making something out of nothing.

So Vanyar did his patrol. He kept watch. And all the while he tried not to think about the four families that his group was basically keeping hostage and forced to farm so they could eat free food. 

Everyone in the group was a good fighter, but Vanyar was the only one who’d managed to pick up a Pact. But he also had the downside of being the only one in the group who’d died. Another one of his mistakes. He’d put everything into Agility and Awareness initially, because he’d been going for a ranged build. Something that would allow him to make use of his years playing shooters, even if he only had a few vague memories of archery from summer camp when he was a kid. 

He’d gotten sick, and his group had refused to come near him while he’d coughed and puked and shat himself until he’d died from it. Ever since, he’d been seeing Yodel and Swiffy and Bork in a way he’d wished he’d been able to spot since the beginning.

They were just using him, like they were using the farmers here. Vanyar just couldn’t figure out what to do about it yet. 

During Holt’s little tournament, Vanyar had gotten a little lucky. He’d picked up three soul crystals. Two had gone right to Tenacity, and one to Strength. Those might be enough to keep him from getting sick again. 

Vanyar plucked at his bowstring. He vaguely recalled he shouldn’t do that if he wasn’t getting ready to loose an arrow. Or maybe it was fine. He couldn’t really remember, it’d been so many years. He was a decent enough shot, but that was from years of shooter experience combined with his enhanced physical abilities. He could only imagine what he’d become if he had some actual training. 

“I think I see something!” Vanyar called out.

“What is it?” Swiffy answered.

“Dunno, I’m gonna go check it out.” 

Before waiting for an answer, Vanyar hopped the wall and landed gracefully, and then began to walk out into the countryside. It was nothing but wide open plains and green grass, as far as the eye could see. There was the odd bush, but under the night sky, with the moon that was a little too large to be Earth’s, there wasn’t really any way for someone to hide. Not from his enhanced Awareness.

But nothing was out there, and he knew it. He just needed some time to clear his head. Figure out what he was doing, where he was going. 

He walked, not really paying attention to where he was going beyond making sure he didn’t trip over anything. 

He did that for about an hour, trying to think of what to do, and with every step, his despair increased. He was stuck in a game world run by a psychopath. Except, it wasn’t even a game world, but a real world? Holt had freely told everyone that this world was real, that it wasn’t a simulation, and that they’d all been, what? 

He hadn’t elaborated, but everyone had heard what he’d said to Il-Su during the tournament. He’d made sure it’d been broadcast to every screen. That, combined with the claims coming from SamiRai and that clique, just made everything so confusing.

But it also made so much sense.

Even for VR, everything felt too real. Pain was too sharp. People reacted like… people, and not complicated LLMs. 

Every time Vanyar walked by one of those farmers, he felt another wave of guilt. But what did they know about surviving off the land? They were live streamers. What else were they supposed to do?

Choices. It was all about choices, and Vanyar just couldn’t seem to make a good one.

“Chat, what do I do?” he asked, his head in his hands.

As usual, none of them were of any help. The feed scrolled text, and it was mostly sarcastic replies, and a few comments saying, “KYS.”

Of course. Why had he ever even thought asking chat what to do was a good idea?

“I should just go,” he said to himself, and then felt another wave of guilt.

And then what? Yodel wasn’t that bad, but Bork and Swiffy… they were trouble. Swiffy especially. 

“But then those farmers…”

He let out a frustrated sound. He was normally so cool and collected. Or rather, so good at pretending he was. Emotionless poise. That was what he liked to feign. People respected a man more when he didn’t show emotion. He didn’t crash out or baby rage, didn’t question himself out loud like this.

He just needed to pick a choice and stick with it, and then be quiet about it. Even if he just couldn’t seem to pick right recently.

He stood and took two steps away from the walled off farms. And then turned, and took three steps back. And then turned again, and took a step away.

“You seem distressed.”

Vanyar had his bow up, an arrow knocked and ready, before he even registered what was happening.

In the darkness, a woman had calmly walked up to him. He had no idea where she’d come from. She shouldn’t have been able to sneak up on him. His Awareness was too high, sitting in the low 20s. He could hear insects crawling in the grass thirty feet away. It was ludicrous that a person had snuck up on him.

But there she was. She seemed unconcerned that an arrow was pointing directly at her. She had wild red hair, and a pair of green eyes that almost seemed to glow in the dark. She was short, even for a woman, and her face was lined with age. She looked like she might be in her 40s, maybe 50s. Vanyar wasn’t sure.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“A revolutionary,” she said calmly. She dropped a pack that had been slung over her shoulder, and began to go through it. “Would you like some food?”

“I…” His stomach growled at him. He hated taking food from the farmers. Their lives seemed hard enough as it was. “Yes. Please. Thank you.”

She nodded, as if that was the most expected answer in the world. She pulled out what looked like a black, flat stone, and then set it on the ground, followed by a pan, which she placed on top of it. Then came a box, which she opened, and pulled out a hunk of some kind of meat. It looked fresh, not dried out and salted like he expected. He was tempted to ask if it was halal, but … well, nothing was halal in this world, was it? And it wasn’t like he was a practicing Muslim. Was he supposed to starve?

He lowered his bow, and placed the arrow back in the quiver at his hip, and then scanned the horizon. He couldn’t see anyone else nearby, but now he was rattled.

“Are there others with you?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “My family is nearby.”

“Your family? Are you… travelling somewhere?”

“Wherever there is injustice,” she said with a smile, but it sounded like she was telling a joke. One that he wasn’t supposed to understand.

“Is this about the farmers? Because I don’t… I don’t have anything to do with that.”

“You do,” she said. “But you aren’t beyond redemption. So long as you help us free them.”

And there it was. The words he needed to hear. It felt like a great weight lifted off his shoulders, all at once. “Yes. Yes, I will. I’m sorry. About what’s happened to them.”

“We could tell. I had a good feeling about you. But not about your companions.”

“Do you do this often? Run around, helping people? Saving them?”

“Not as often as I’d like. I’ve failed too many in my time. And I’ll spend a lifetime making up for that fact.”

There was a long pause as she prodded at the meat with a knife. She cut open the centre, and then sprinkled some kind of herb from a small pouch she’d retrieved from her bag. Whatever this was, it smelled good.

“I didn’t know what to do,” Vanyar said. “I… I just keep making the wrong decisions. Ever since I got here.”

“Here? You mean in the Empire?”

“Sure,” he said, not knowing how to answer that. How to explain to this woman, this person who was likely a native from this weird, impossible fantasy world, how he was from another planet. Another dimension, maybe. He didn’t know how to explain what he didn’t even understand himself.

As far as he could remember, all he’d done was show up to the Ashes² studio, talked with reception and then… He blinked. 

“What’s wrong?” the woman asked.

“I don’t remember. But what is there to remember?”

She gave him a weird look, and then nodded. “Does the name ‘Kawehami’ mean anything to you?”

“No. Should it?”

“Evidently not.”

When the meat finally finished cooking, she served it out on a plate. Vanyar didn’t even bother asking for utensils. He just grabbed it, dropped it, sucked the stinging burn off his fingers, then blew on the meat before trying again, and hate the small piece as quickly as he could. He burned the roof of his mouth in his haste, but he didn’t care. 

“Thank you,” he said.

“Your friends. We think it’s only a matter of time before they do something to those farmers. We have a spyglass. We’ve seen the way the big one acts around the young women.”

Vanyar’s expression darkened. “Swiffy. Yeah. He’s… he’s a problem.”

“A problem you will help solve.” She said it in a way that brooked no argument. One that sung of finality. She expected him to help kill Swiffy.

Vanyar felt strangely okay with that. He nodded in agreement.

He dabbed up some of the juice from the meat from the plate’s surface, and licked his fingers clean. He almost debased himself to the point of licking the plate itself, but he still had some decorum left. 

“I’ll help. I will. I’ll… I’ll do whatever it takes. I’m… I’m just so lost.”

The woman smiled at him. “And luckily, you’ve been found.”

“What’s… what’s your name?”

“Aevah. Aevah Hyleah.”