Hi again! This is the second chapter. You see, I am trying to keep my chapters short and simple.

The RPG chapters will be every two chapters of the story.

Enjoy. :)


Chapter 2: Snowstorm

Snowstorm

Owner: Lovino Vargas

Type: Medium-length ice wand

Magic Damage: 20000

Cold Damage: 6000

Lili Zwingli was never one to show interest in online gaming. Yet on this particular day she found herself surfing the web, looking for a roleplaying game intriguing enough to cure her boredom. So far, she had come across nothing particularly exciting.

Her brother Vash had a strange fascination with guns and had a number of shooting games installed in his computer. Lili didn't think much about them. If she were to choose, she'd pick something less action-packed, with more of a storyline.

As she studied a list of the year's top RPGs, she remembered something her friend Michelle, whose hobby was designing games, had told her last week.

"Did you hear about the Japanese guy named Kiku Honda?" Michelle had asked over the phone. "He's so incredible!"

"No, I haven't," Lili had answered. "What about him?"

"He created a lot of amazing RPGs," Michelle had said, excitement laced in her voice. "One of them became especially famous in the gaming world. I think that one's called Seven Faces of God. And guess what? He's only two years older than us!"

Kiku Honda, Lili thought. She pondered for a moment, then typed "Seven Faces of God" in the search engine.

The first result offered everyone a chance to play Kiku's Seven Faces of God online, completely free. The virus detector in the computer didn't sense anything risky, so she clicked on the link.

CONGRATULATIONS! You are the 7777th person to visit this website. As a reward, you have been upgraded to first class and have the opportunity to play SFoG as a VIP! Click below to retrieve your prize!

It sounded a little strange, but Lili felt herself wanting to click the link. Something was behind it, she knew. Something extraordinary.

Lili looked around the study. Outside, the summer day was a scorching 43 degrees. Vash was working at the local bank as an assistant, and their parents were out doing this week's shopping. Michelle was busy designing a new game in a club full of designers just like her. There really was no one to talk to. She could read a book or knit something for Vash, but on this day, she was going to try something new.

Lili moved the pointer over the link and clicked. If someone had been studying her facial expressions after the page loaded, they would've seen surprise, shock, fear, then amazement.

And then they would have seen nothing at all.

. . . .

Antonio loved to dream.

Just a week ago Gil had told him about lucid dreaming. It was possible, Gil had said, to control your dreams and do things in them you couldn't do in real life. Of course, it took time, and practicing. Antonio began doing reality checks one or two times a day and keeping a dream journal. He'd always been keeping one, though, except he started paying a little more attention to detail.

Summer had begun. His days were filled with beach parties, large amounts of flirting and doing dares with Gilbert and Francis. His nights were filled with dancing in nightclubs, drinking (which usually resulted in attempting to drag a certain drunk German home), random hookups, and of course, dreams.

Antonio woke up with the sun shining in his face and a beautiful girl lying across his chest.

He remembered her name was Carrie. She liked singing and had lips that tasted like bubble gum. But other than that, he didn't have a clue who she was.

Carrie's eyes fluttered open and she smiled lazily at Antonio. "Morning, sexy."

"Buenos días, nena," he said, knowing that girls loved to hear him speak Spanish, his native language.

Sure enough, her eyes brightened. She got up, yawned, and stretched, blonde hair tousled, yet still artfully tumbling down her back. Antonio followed after, getting up from the bed and stretching, running a hand through his messy brown hair. He grabbed some boxers, a T-shirt and jeans and put them on, while Carrie dressed in more feminine clothing.

She took her purse, which was sitting quietly on the chair in the corner and had witnessed everything that had happened in the room last night, and spent a moment fixing her hair and applying lip gloss. Antonio opened the door for her and together they left his bedroom. He took one last look at the wrapper on the carpet, the rumpled sheets, the overturned alarm clock, then shut the door.

When they reached the front door, Carrie turned to him and winked. "Thanks for last night, babe."

He smiled. "My pleasure."

A little while later, after she was gone, a certain two people he knew very well broke into his house and robbed his refrigerator, which was, as usual, stocked with ripe red tomatoes.

"Mon dieu, look at all these lovely ingredients!" Francis exclaimed. "I just might be able to whip up something delicious."

Gilbert, having already found what he wanted for breakfast, had headed upstairs to Antonio's bedroom. Antonio could hear him laughing all the way from the study. "Ah-hah!" the German said. "So that's why you disappeared off the face of the earth last night. How was she?"

"Alright," Antonio called back. "Very sexy, though."

"But not your type?" Francis asked from the kitchen. The rich scents of mozzarella cheese, tomatoes and French bread drifted into the study.

"No," Antonio admitted. He heard a thump upstairs and made a mental note to tell Gilbert to clean up everything by himself later.

Antonio was downloading some new songs onto his computer when a pop-up ad came up on the screen. Usually he would ignore these and close the window, but when he clicked the little X at the top right corner, nothing happened. Multiple clicks didn't help, either, so he read the ad anyway.

GOD IS WAITING FOR YOU. CLICK BELOW TO GET STARTED!

He wasn't religious, but he had nothing against it, either. Antonio decided to just leave it be and attempted to open his previous window. But the pointer on the screen was moving of its own accord.

"What the..."

The pointer clicked the link on the pop-up ad and the originally sunlight-filled study was plunged into darkness, save for a dim blue light. Suddenly the entire room was ice cold, and the edges of the computer screen froze and cracked. He shivered and stood from the desk, making his way to the door. When he tried to open it, he found that the doorknob was stuck.

"Hey, Gil? Francis?" Antonio called nervously. "This is some kind of joke, right?"

There was no reply.

"Come on...open the door. Please?" He was shaking by then, with cold and a growing fear.

A thin layer of ice spread across the floor and crept up the walls. The entire room was freezing up, and soon it would reach Antonio. He pounded on the door desperately, realized that was useless, and turned around, his green eyes scanning for something of use. He noticed a message on the screen that sent chills down his back.

HELLO, ANTONIO FERNANDEZ. ARE YOU READY TO FACE HIS SEVEN FACES? BECAUSE THE GAME HAS BEGUN.

A dream, he thought. That was the only explanation. I'm having a lucid dream. But why does it feel so real?

He looked down at his hands, what he'd learned from online was the best way to clear your head in a dream. It didn't really help, so Antonio began to think. If this was a dream, he could probably control it. He thought about fire, the sun, everything that was the opposite of cold. He imagined the heat of summer melting through the thick layer of ice, the light of the sun overcoming the eerie blue, wrapping him in a blanket of warmth.

His hands would not stop shaking.

A different emotion, anger, coursed through him, and Antonio's fear disappeared to the corner of his mind. He was not going to die because he couldn't break out of his own study. He wasn't giving up so easily. Antonio charged at the door and rammed it with his shoulder. A jolt of pain shot down his arm and he winced, then tried a different tactic. Grabbing a sturdy chair, he held it in front of him and rammed that against the door. This time, the wooden frame crumbled like shattered glass.

There was no hallway beyond the door, only darkness. Antonio stumbled from his momentum and found himself falling into nothingness, the entrance of the study and his reality high above him, out of reach and slick with ice.

End of Chapter Two


So, the players are Kiku, Arthur, Alfred, the Vargas brothers, Lili and Antonio. Each is different from one another, which means that no, I did not randomly pick them.

Thank you for reading, and hopefully you enjoyed that. Please leave a comment in the box below and tell me what you think! ^^

Adios~

...x Whitlinger x...