After Twillight
---
Kaori...
Can you hear me...
Reach through your darkness...
Find your light...
---
A single thought, perhaps a memory, flittered thorough her head. Through her mind's eyes she saw a woman, with tired eyes and matted brown hair. Slouching tiredly the woman worked her hands through a little girl with black hair, just as dirty as the older woman's, and whispered something to the child.
((Kaori, watch them fall, watch them cry, can you save them?))
The wavemaster, Kaori, shook her head violently. First she needed to find shelter from the cold ice and the monsters dwelling in the field. Afterwards, then maybe she could think of the jumble of fragmented memories and non-sensual data that floated through her mind. She trudged forward through the sleet, searching for warmth.
Exhausted as she was, it hardly registered when she stumbled over her one of her boots, and plunged, headfirst, into the mixture of snow and ice.
---Truth- Dreams of Reality ---
A girl fell to the floor of her empty apartment. The V.R. gear she was wearing slipping off her head and onto the floor next to her revealing open clouded eyes. The screen on the computer was flashing, 'GAME OVER'. And really, the game was over, for it was to be much more than a game, soon, very soon.
--- Lies- A False World ---
A boy was questing in the frosty snowfield area when he came to a character lying face down in the middle of the area. He ran up to the person and realized it was a girl. The character was a fairly typical wavemaster skin, but not too common for girls to have, most opting for the jester-type look. Fairly tall, she wore a long black spell caster's robe with a scarlet sash tied around her waist and on her wrists were two similarly colored bracers. Black bangs hung above her eyes with a small parting and from the base of her neck started a braid that ended at her waist. In the gap was a tattoo of four crimson diamonds in the formation of a larger one. She probably hadn't been playing for very long judging by the weak staff the girl had equipped. Of course, he could be wrong, occasionally older players used weaker weapons, to give themselves more of a challenge. He himself had done that before, a few times.
Having examined the character's appearance he decided that he should check on how the character's actual condition. If the body was still here, and no ghost character was walking around, then she wasn't actually dead, just had low HP and possibly a status aliment. So he'd try a healing potion and wait to see if it had helped. If it didn't he could cure whatever status aliment she had with either an antidote or a restorative.
Slowly the female character sat up and regarded the long arm player standing above her. The long arm bent down and greeted her, "Hi! I found you heavily damaged in the field. What were you doing here? Newbies shouldn't try to go on the Lambda server fields, stick to Theta." All this was said rather fast, coming out of the grinning mouth of the boy. In her silence the boy seemed to remember basic manners and asked, "Are you alright? Does your character have any status aliments? I can help you out with those, I have plenty of antidotes and restoratives."
"I'm fine," she said speaking in a her quiet voice. Quietly she stood up and dusted herself off. She took the time to examine the other player. He had a long skinny teal ponytail starting where his head sat upon his neck. For his facial features, he had a good-natured face that looked as if the wide grin he was sporting now never came off, and light blue eyes. His character had the usual ankle length loose pants of his class, in a blue color. His chest was bare, with the exception of an open vest that had a forest green coloring. Unlike most characters, he had chosen to keep his avatar symbol-free. Then she murmured a quiet question, "Whats your name?"
He looked up and answered, "Yaoshii, and yours?"
She looked startled for a second then thought a moment and answered back, "Kaori."
Yaoshii stood up and spoke, "Well, be seeing you Kaori. Here's my member address give me a shout if you ever need to. I'll be going now; see you around!" With those words of parting he gave a small wave and gated out.
There was no reason to stay in this field any longer. If the boy had been here wandering around, and left after finding her, he must have already opened the Gotz Statue treasure chest, otherwise he wouldn't have left. She sighed and stared up at the sky and then she too, gated out. She'd try another field, and following his advice stay on the Delta server until she was ready for a stronger one.
---
The wind riffled through Kaori's hair as she looked at the hazy sunset. She was in a level one field on Delta Server and had already cleared the field of all monsters but didn't want to enter the dungeon today. It would be getting dark soon, with the new update that with certain keywords the field changed from night and day. Most players would be logging off the Japanese server then, as it would be fairly late. She turned around and began leave. In the distance she heard a cry. It sounded familiar, and she paused for a second before she could place the voice. Then she recognized it as Yaoshii. Kaori ran off as fast as she could go in the direction she heard his cry, which because of her class was none to speedy, but it would have to do.
---Hints- A Cryptic Message---
Yaoshii...
This fragile fantasy...
When does it cross the line....
and become real?
---Lies- A false World ---
"This shouldn't be happening!" Yaoshii cried out. The monster had come out of nowhere in the dungeon, it had just fallen from the ceiling without so much as a portal or 'battle mode on' message. The thing's name was jumbled so he had no idea what it was with the corrupted graphics and was a lot stronger than anything should be on this low-level field, or server even. Could this be what attacked the girl? It was strange for her to be knocked out without a status ailment. Maybe a hacker put this here, nothing like this should even exist in this game.
The monster lifted its hefty axe, and brought it down and then swung it length-wise across Yaoshii's stomach. With the blow, blood spurted out from his abdomen, accompanied by a blinding pain. He crouched down over, cradling his stomach as blood continued to pour out of the wound. The monster raised its ax again preparing another strike. This one got him across the shoulder but was more than enough to overcome the initial shock of being able to feel the pain.
((Please let this be a really bad dream, a nightmare, don't let this be real oh please, ohpleaseohpleaseohplease…))
"Ahhhh! Someone, anyone, help me!" he screamed out in his agony, he couldn't even defend himself currently, his weapon, had been thrown aside by his insanely strong opponent.
Then a voice came and a figure but he couldn't manage to look up to see the person, but it sounded like a little girl, "What would you do if I helped you, since you ever so politely asked for my help young sir?"
"Anything, anything, just hurry!" He yelled. The monster was readying the ax again, looking an executioner ready to behead the offender of its majesty's.
The girl clapped and the monster disappeared, "Good, in return take this please. We can play again another time." The unnamed girl crouched down and placed an item next to Yaoshii's hand on the ground. "It's called the Midnight Orb," She told the half-conscious Heavy Spear user, "Don't lose it." And with that she disappeared with a giggle.
Yaoshii with half-lidded eyes looked up weakly to see the orb. It was circular and transparent blackish-green color. He reached out weakly for the item. Upon contact it contracted and then increased in size eventually swelling so Yaoshii himself was inside it. Then it shrank and absorbed into the user. Yaoshii fell hard on the ground.
--- Truth- Dreams of Reality ---
A boy was screaming and convulsing in front of his computer. He was yelling incomprehensible gibberish and then all was silent. He slumped into his chair and then gave final twitch of movement. The screen was flashing with the large all capital letters spelling out the words 'GAME OVER'
--- Lies- A False World ---
Kaori arrived at Yaoshii to see him lying on the ground covered in blood his clothes in tatters. His sea-green hair was out of its usual ponytail and had sticky crimson in it clumping it together. The Heavy Spear User's blue loose ankle length pants, had various rips and his open forest green vest had blood soaked through it from his chest. Most interesting of all was the fresh but rapidly fading healed scar on his chest, shaped like the symbol of infinity. All his defense equipment appeared untouched like the bracers on his arms. Instead strangely their seemed that his weapon had been upgraded and before his body was blank of symbols a rune had appeared on his upper right arm, it was diagonal from right to left and shaped like a three pronged fork with two smaller left to right lines going through the center.
The sorceress character cast a healing spell, La Repth, weak as it was, it would have to do, and as it was the best she had. Shivering slightly she sat down on the cold night ground to wait for him to revive. The small bit of healing magic helped apparently, as Yaoshii's clothes returned to normal but it was a little while till he was awake again and able to heal the major damages done to his HP.
As soon as he was awake he automatically gained back his usual cheerful attitude. He smiled widely, "Kaori, thanks for helping." Yaoshii remembered the monster attack but he had forgotten, something, something very important.
The timid girl just nodded passively before asking another question, "So, what happened?"
He continued his grin, "Ah, just a monster attacked me, and I wasn't expecting something all to strong on this server or in specific this field. Because it's pretty low level, you know. But it's kind of strange, this sort of thing happening twice, because when I found you were unconscious without any sort of status ailment or being dead either. So I'm going to ask, when I found you what had happened before that?"
"I was in the Snow Field after I cleared a dungeon. It was really hard because my party had abandoned me and I was too low a level to be on the Lambda server by myself. Because I didn't have a sprite ocarina I had to walk up out of the dungeon by myself. On the B2 level I saw a suspicious character and stalked after her. The avatar was probably hacked into because you aren't to have avatars that look like children anymore and this one had the appearance of a little girl. Eventually she noticed me and got really angry, I have no idea why. But her reaction after that initial anger was really quite strange; she gave me an odd little smile and then said something. And then..." she trailed off, "I don't remember. Funny thing that short term memory is."
--- Musings- Signs of Insanity ---
Aura. A being with the ability to be evil or good. Thanks to Tsukasa she was the 'proper' Aura. But was she really? The Twilight Items. They seem to revolve around her, but the girl was good, wouldn't the name and nature of the items change. Twilight is the period before day or night. But what if the balance of Twilight was tipped and Aura was warped. Would the items still be of the Twilight?
--- Borderline- No More Twilight ---
Aura sat in her dark little domain, the place Tsukasa had come to know as sanctuary. Her domain was constantly changing as always, but it no longer was occasionally bright and at other times dark and dreadful. It had no trace of the childish innocence or wondrous fantasy left. Instead it seemed slightly malicious, and very dreary, with a promise of things horrible, yet to pass.
Currently it was like a dungeon with a ceiling opening to the heavens but no matter how high you climbed you could never get past those walls. Aura sat on her bed and played with her teddy bear. Then came a cruel smile and the head was decapitated and flung across the room. She had more interesting toys to play with now.
---Truth- Dreams of Reality ---
Sirens went off as two teens were rushed to the hospital. Both were in critical condition. The boy had cuts and scars all over his body and was bleeding badly. The neighbors said they heard a scream but no evidence of anyone breaking in and hurting him. And the wounds were defiantly fresh.
The girl was in better shape than him. She seemed to be in a very strong coma. It was unlikely she would be waking up anytime soon. Physically she was alright but one thing puzzled the doctors. Her eyes were wide open but blank, impossibly blank, no pupils, and no whites, just an iris the color overtaking all.
Even more disturbing was no record of either of them was found anywhere. Nothing. It was as if the two of them never existed. If they were unable to find a trace of who they were the hospital wouldn't be able to care for them with no one to pay the expenses.
--- Lies- A False World ---
Kaori lay on a sloped hill in Dun Loireag as the wind rippled through the grass.
((It's really pretty for pixels overlaid onto a headset. Too beautiful to be real, but that's the thing about the game, it was too good to be real))
Beside her was Yaoshii. Neither felt like logging out much they would rather let themselves be bathed in virtual moonlight and starlight. Neither really noticed that the background music wasn't the usual Dun Loireag theme.
---Noise- Whispers on the Wind ---
Held in young hands
The light is Shivering
I've come all this way
Wandering along the edges of time.
I came, searching still
Without even knowing your name, but
One little feeling
I only wanted to hand over to you
Sometimes I catch and hold
Love and pain, Tightly in my arms
It will fade away, but
I'll remember it... Always
It has been echoing in my chest
For who knows how long
Although its a whisper smaller
then a drop of evening fog
Towards the darkness of the frozen stars
A twirling prayer
May it reach your distant sky...
-Radical Dreamers
