The Somber Dawn

Chapter 1

A SAO fic

I still remember the first time I woke up in this world. I can distinctly recall the feel of the grass beneath my fingers, the smell of the dirt, the quiet rustling of the trees. It was pleasant.

My eyes flew open. "What the hell? Where am I?" It felt like I had been sleeping for days, and I woke up groggy, with a headache to boot. I felt like hell.

I slowly take note of my surroundings. I was in a quiet, peaceful little clearing in the middle of a small glade with trees lightly shading the short, green grass that covered the ground as far as I could see into the forest.

"How did I get here?" The last thing I remembered was… Well, I couldn't actually recall. Sure, I could remember my mother's face, my sister's name, where I had gone to school and the like but I had no specific memories of how I got here or where I was. Had I gotten blackout drunk or been drugged or something?

I sat up, rubbing my head absently as my headache pounded. After a moment I stood up, realizing a weird weight on my back. "A… Sword? Why do I have a sword strapped to my back?"

Deciding it couldn't come to any harm, I slid the sword out of its scabbard on my back and swung it around lazily. The weight indicated it was a real sword and not some plastic knockoff or something. Sliding the sword back into the scabbard on my back (which took a few tries, some of which I almost stabbed myself on), I trekked on towards the only sign of civilization I can find. Which was a massive pillar of untold height reaching into the sky. I scratched my head. "Where the hell am I?"

I didn't walk long, probably only thirty minutes or so when I hit the edge of the glade and heard clanging sounds ahead and someone yelling, just over the crest of a small hill.

I started running forward. With any luck, I'd found someone to get me home, or at least tell me where I was. Some kind of boar squealed, and I heard some glass break or something. I came over the hill just in time to see two people high fiving.

"Hey! Could you guys…" I trailed off as I started to feel intimidated by how they looked. And by that I mean good. One of them was clearly taller than six feet, while the other was actually a more tame height, but both had incredibly sharp cheeks, broad chins, and broad shoulders. They almost looked made up, like they had customized themselves from a character select or something.

"Need something?" The tall one in the bandana asked me.

"Uh, yeah, could either of you tell me where the hell we are right now?"

The one in black answered. "We're in the Grass Plains, about a half mile away from the Town of Beginnings. Did you get lost or something? You know you can check your map through the menu."

The words didn't register at first. Honestly, given my prior knowledge, it's a little embarrassing I didn't get it at that point. "Uh, what?"

The black haired one sighed. "Honestly, how many noobs am I going to meet today? Swipe down with your left hand like this."

I did as he said, and the moment the jingle and the small bar popped up in my vision was when I first started to put it all together.

Bandana Dude's next words drove it home. "Is this your first VRMMO too? Honestly, you must've been pretty lucky to snag a copy, like me. Sword Art Online sold out in minutes!"

My hands fell to my sides. If I had been holding anything, it would've gone clattering to the floor. "What did you just say?"

"I said you must've been–"

"No not that, the name. Tell me the name!"

His eyes widened at my frantic tone. "Sword Art Online. Didn't you know this when you bought the game?"

I grabbed the dude dressed in black's shoulder. "What's the date?"

"W-What?"

"Tell me the date!"

He grabbed my shoulder right back, worry apparent on his face. "It's November 6th 2022. Are you sure you're ok? You should log out and go to a hospital. I think the NervGear is affecting your memory or something."

Shit. This couldn't be happening. I fell back onto the grass below me. This is just some dumb story. There's no way I could actually be inside SAO.

Bandana Dude–Klein, I thought to myself– looked down at me worriedly. "Well, I'm going to logout, I have a pizza coming. You should do the same thing. Try and find some a doctor or something."

I shook my head. "It's no use." I said in a low tone.

Klein looked up at me from his menu. "What? Whatever, dude find some… help…"

Kirito looked over at Klein. "Something wrong?"

Klein spoke while still navigating his menu. "The logout button… it's gone."

"What? That's impossible. Look harder."

I ignored their further dialogue as I tried to come to terms with what was happening. I was five years into the future, stuck in what I knew to be some kind of death game put on by a madman that would kill four thousand innocent kids. And the only reason I knew all this was because I had read it all in a goddamn book.

"Hey. Hey!" I realized someone was shaking my shoulder and looked up to see Klein looking down at me seriously. "How did you know?"

"What?"

"How did you know the logout button was gone?"

"I-I had already tried it."

Klein shook his head. "Bullshit. You didn't even know how to open your menu. There's no way you could've already tried."

I laughed nervously and averted my gaze from him.

"Klein. We have bigger problems. Did you submit a ticket to the GM's?"

Luckily, Klein let go of my shoulder. "I tried, but no one answered. My guess is they're totally swamped."

"Yeah…" Kirito replied uncertainly. He turned his attention to me. "Do you know anything about this?"

"Uh…" Luckily, just then, we were all surrounded by an ethereal blue glow. I breathed a sigh of relief as I realized they weren't going to be able to put me on the spot anymore.

Teleportation is… disorienting. There's really no other way to put it. One second I was in the sitting in the grass, the next I was falling and my ass hit the ground against some cold, hard, cobblestone. Apparently, the teleportation mechanic was supposed to be used when standing.

I stood up and looked around. It seemed the forced teleportation only kept you together with others if you were partied, because Klein and Kirito were nowhere in sight. As random players I didn't recognize milled about the square talking in hushed tones, a sphere of red tiles appeared around the square, effectively locking us in. A drop of blood formed into the menacing cloak of Akihiko Kayaba. Of course, I had seen it all before, but it was much more intimidating in person.

"Attention, players. Welcome to my world." He began his speech. I used the time to look around frantically for anyone I recognized, shoving disgruntled players out of my way. I couldn't find anyone. The square was huge, and filled with 10,000 players. Well, 9,787, I amended as Kayaba got to that part of his speech. I shook my head of the morbid joke. I couldn't waste time on stupid, dark, jokes. I needed to find someone because… Well…

My frantic search slowed a bit. What was I gonna do when I did find someone? I couldn't tell anyone about what I knew. They'd call me crazy, or worse, think I was working under Kayaba.

"What do I do now?" Suddenly, everyone around me was surrounded in a blue glow. That meant Kayaba must have gotten to the mirror part of his speech. Whatever I was going to do, I didn't have much time until this place blew up in pandemonium. "What is my goal?"

The answer came surprisingly easy. To save lives. If I cut the death toll down even by just one person, that was one more innocent kid who got to go back to their old life. On the other hand, my being here could be a complete disaster. If I changed even one thing and another person died for it, their blood would be on my hands and my hands alone. I had the power to make or break this world. "So what do I do?"

Kayaba was nearing the end of his speech. I could find Kirito and go with him. I shook my head. Too risky. Kirito was the hero of this story, if I changed even one thing in his timeline, I could kill thousands of players and the game may never end.

I could find one of the girls in the story. I shook my head again. Asuna was out for the same reason as Kirito. It was too risky for me to mess with their relationship. I had no way of finding Lizbeth or Silica, and I would waste a ton of time looking around if they left the Town of Beginnings like Kirito did. I could always find Klein...

"This marks the end of the tutorial and the official launch of Sword Art Online. Players, I wish you the best of luck."

Shit. I had maybe a few precious seconds to make up my mind as everyone stood around in shock. In my rush to find Klein, I bumped right into another player and knocked her down.

"Ow, who the hell…"

My eyes widened. I almost didn't recognize her without the markings on her face, but…

"Argo…"

Her eyes narrowed. "How do you know my name?"

I almost laughed out loud at my incredible luck. "Argo, the information broker, right?"

"Yeah, and who are you?"

"Not important. I need you to come with me."

Her look of suspicion was so strong I was almost hurt. "Why?"

"Thousands of lives are at stake here. I need your help right now." I tried to convey the truth and importance through my words.

It seemed to work as her eyes widened and she followed me out of the square just as the first of the more panicky players shouted something and started running around. It started a chain reaction as others also panicked. It was a miracle no one was trampled in the first few minutes of the game.

Argo looked at me seriously. "What do you need me for? Is this death game real?"

I considered my words carefully. I needed to spin this web incredibly delicately, otherwise this whole thing could blow up in my face. "I need you to get a message out to every player in the game right now. Preferably within 3 hours. Can you do that?"

She slowly nodded her head. I didn't know the intricacies of information brokering, but I knew it included lots of contacts who knew lots more contacts. "I can try. What do you want it to say?"

"Tell them… tell them I was on the development team for this game."

Her eyes widened and she looked left and right, alarmed. "W-What?"

I put my hands up in a surrendering gesture. "It's a lie, but this is extremely important. I can't tell you how, but I can confirm that you WILL die in real life if you die in this game. The explanation contains a lot of sciency stuff and it's easier and more believable to say I'm on the dev team."

She nodded her head, seeing where I was coming from, and hopefully, believing the bullshit I had spun to cover up the bullshit I was spinning. "Tell them that I was on the dev team and that I can confirm that Kayaba is a madman. Say something like 'I found out his grand plan, so he knocked me out and trapped me in here'. I'm sure whatever you can come up with will be more believable than what I have."

She nodded her head, more resolutely this time. "Some of the players may not take his threat seriously… they might kill themselves."

"Yeah, that's the thought. We're saving lives here, Argo. And I need you to do this for me."

She said nothing, favoring to quickly open her menu and navigate at lightning speed. I saw a virtual keyboard pop up in front of her and her fingers flew across it at enviable speed. There were a few moments where she appeared stuck, tapping out on her thigh before returning to the keyboard at the same lightning speed.

About 15 minutes in, she nodded her head, and tapped the "send" button. "It's done. I've sent it to everyone I could, and they should hopefully have the word spread within three hours." She looked back at her menu before clicking a few more buttons.

I raised an eyebrow in surprise as a friend request popped up in my vision. She sighed. "It'll be easier to keep in contact this way in case anyone questions me. And besides, you seem like a nice enough guy."

I shrugged and tapped accept. It couldn't hurt to be friends with the resident information broker.

"Cayde…"

I continued to flick around my menu, unsure of my next step.

"Hey, Cayde. Earth to Cayde…" It took me a minute to realize she was talking to me. Apparently my in-game name was Cayde. That brought a smile to my face. Maybe I could find a kick ass flaming gun and add a -6 to the end of it.

"Yeah?"

She smirked as she went to exit the alley. "I'll be seeing you around. And be sure to keep in touch, you're pretty cute without your avatar."

I knew she was teasing me. On top of the fact that I knew her personality and I was still having trouble imagining this as real and not just some fever dream, I was fairly average looking. None of this knowledge stopped me from blushing.

Her smirk grew as she threw me a jaunty wave and turned the corner. I sighed and cracked my neck to both sides. Well, that could've gone worse. I exited the alley in another direction, facing West, or whatever direction the sun sets in Aincrad I suppose. What a day. And what a night it'll be for the rest of these players, who had no way of knowing this was coming. They, like me, probably thought they would wake up tomorrow and this would all be a bad dream. And when we all woke up tomorrow, still trapped in this horrid place? It would be a somber dawn indeed.