SNBRN

"You're…"

"Your sprite, yes!" Leilasprite cheered. "It's so nice to finally talk to you in your language! But you only have about four minutes left, so please get back to the rest of your machines."

Contrary to the task I was just given, I couldn't help staring at Leilasprite for a lengthy period of shock. A quick feeling struck my chest - Gian was not currently here to see his dogs, and it was almost certain he wouldn't be back before… Fuck, Gian's gonna be dead…

Leilasprite seemed to sense the despair that wracked me, as she floated toward me and looked as though she were going to headbutt me lovingly. She stopped mere centimeters away, however, without a word. "I know this is scary, but it's your only chance to make it. First, you should turn on the Punch Designix and get the card that comes out." It took a few more seconds, but I finally found myself able to follow her instructions.

The Punch Designix looked rather like a large, white desk with a keypad on the surface. At a loss for what else to do with the thing, I pressed a button on the top and waited as an electronic hum resounded. A few seconds later, a card that was about as large as my cell phone slipped out from the front of the machine, which apparently had been hiding a small slot. The card was riddled with a seemingly random assortment of pristinely rectangular holes. "W...what's the next step?" I asked, holding the card up at eye level.

Leilasprite bobbed up and down. "Put your cruxite dowel in the Totem Lathe and use the card on it."

"Right," I whispered to myself, shaking the fog out of my head. Honestly, it was almost as though I hadn't literally watched Brenner do these exact steps less than fifteen minutes ago. And so, the teal cylinder went into the lathe, and the punched card went into the slot. I watched as thirty seconds ticked down on the clock before the cruxite was finished carving. Admittedly, the uniform roundness of the wavy carving was quite mesmerizing. It was a shame I would have to use it up to move forward.

"That leaves the Alchemiter," I whispered again.

"Yes, you've got it!" Leilasprite cheered. "Do you remember what you're doing?"

"I sure hope so," I answered, gently placing the carved cruxite atop the Alchemiter. "Does it matter which orientation this thing is facing?"

"Uh, yes, yours is upside-down," Leilasprite answered.

Relieved that I asked, I flipped it over and turned on the device. Precious time continued to drip away as the machine scanned, whirring rather disturbingly. Surely, Brenner hadn't been waiting this long for his thing… Alas, there was little I could do but stare at the timer as it ticked down to two and a half minutes.

"Heads up!" Leilasprite chirped. Without thinking, I backed as far away from the Alchemiter as I could before a tree could grow on top of me or whatever. There didn't seem to be any such danger, though, as a cloud of teal confetti burst from the device in all directions. Although I caught myself worrying about having to clean it all up later, every last shred disintegrated before it hit the floor, leaving only a small cylinder before me.

I inched towards it apprehensively. Unlike Brenner, I had no idea what the hell this thing was. I picked up the teal rod wordlessly, giving it a quick examination. It almost felt as though it were made of cardboard, with a paper seal over one of the circular faces and a dial on the opposite face. Before I could experiment with it, Leilasprite's voice rang out again. "It's a party popper! You better point it away from your face!"

Still, I wasn't quite sure which direction the thing could be classified as "pointing," so I held it roughly vertical, with the dial at the bottom. I rested my fingers around it, looking over to Leilasprite to see if she had any further words of wisdom. She only continued bobbing up and down, her tongue hanging out joyously.

"Happy New Year," I announced, twisting the dial. With a sharp crack, tinsel sprang out of the popper, reflecting the blinding white light that instantaneously followed.

I couldn't tell how long I'd kept my eyes shut after the fact, but the last thing I needed was a pair of burnt retinas. I only opened them after I felt a nudge to the back of my leg. "Soraya?" Indeed, Gian's other dog had finally left the safety of my bedroom to see what all the commotion was. She stared up for a few seconds, during which I could almost sense a feeling of apprehension or surprise. Her focus was not on me, however, but on her companion, who was now a floating, teal light entity, so I figured her disbelief had been well-founded.

"Soraya! Can you believe it?" Leilasprite cheered, zipping down to bop her nose against Soraya's. Soraya appeared to grow only more shocked, but she stayed put and accepted the bop. "Oh, sorry, you can't speak English!" She closed her eyes for a few seconds, as though radiating love in Soraya's direction, before floating back up to my eye level.

"I guess it worked? I'm in the Medium?" I asked.

Leilasprite bobbed up and down a few times. "Your house is now completely safe from the meteors on Earth. Go ahead and take a look out the window if you'd like!" There would hopefully be much to gain from seeing where I'd been dropped off, so I slowly walked over to the back of the living room, on which was a window facing our backyard.

The bright cyan of the sky had disappeared, replaced by a moody indigo. That was hardly the most interesting thing, however, as the sky was filled with a beautiful assortment of flickering stars. Had it not been for their abundance, I might have even been fooled into thinking it was just a typical Earthly night. A "whoa…" slipped from my lips as Soraya walked to place herself under my loose hand.

"Oh, do you like it? I'm a huge fan of stars! These aren't really stars, though, not like you're thinking," Leilasprite chimed.

The thought of what these stars could be was puzzling, but the question that brewed in my throat was shoved back by another. "Wait, how do you know they aren't stars?"

Leilasprite's eyebrows rose, as though surprised to be asked such a thing. "Oh, they could be, I guess! For all intents and purposes, they might as well be. But they're not huge balls of gas burning up far away. They're a few miles up in this planet's atmosphere!" Well, if this planet could whisk away my entire house, I supposed it was allowed to have some magical mini stars floating around and minding their own business.

A look down to the ground revealed that a chunk of lawn remained around the house, dissolving into a cloud of deep taupe sand. Had there been more light present, the two surfaces would have stood in starker contrast. My eyes traced the line separating Earth from my new home for a few seconds. "Where exactly am I?"

"You're on the Land of Stars and Towers!" Leilasprite answered. "This is your new home for the game, I suppose. At some point, you'll head to the surface, probably really soon. You can talk to the consorts, figure out what the culture is like here, and see if there's anything you can help them with."

The first descriptor of the title seemed fitting, at least. Although I hadn't spied any towers from my window, I could easily imagine something like a metropolis just absolutely jam-packed with towering structures. I wondered what style the consorts used… "That seems kind of… open-ended." I guessed my friends weren't kidding when they said it was a sandbox game. "What exactly am I expected to help the consorts with? Is that how I advance the game?"

Leilasprite's eyes softened slightly, giving me a gaze only an aging mother or professor might be able to conjure. "There are a lot of things that I can teach you as your sprite, but that is something you'll have to figure out on your own."

My fingertips steadily swept back and forth over Soraya's head as I pondered. Thus, I was able to feel as her ears lowered, and the two of us turned around in unison. "Did you hear something?" She didn't need to answer, as not one second later came a clanking from my bedroom. "Oh, shit…"

The door swung open, showing off an astoundingly short creature with an exceptionally pissed look on its face. Two canine ears poked up from the top of its oddly circular head, and it clutched a piccolo in one of its pointy, teal hands. The initial shock of seeing the abomination was quickly blanketed by an honestly surprising bubble of rage. Who the hell did this thing think it was, barging in my damn bedroom? Oh, it was time to square up.

I looked over to the Cruxtruder, finding my staff. As I grabbed it, though, something felt… rather like I was wearing a coat that had torqued my sleeve underneath. The shock returned, sprinkling into trepidation. What is the matter with me?

"Oh!" Leilasprite interrupted. "This is probably a good time to let you know that inventories don't work the same way in the Medium as they do on Earth."

What.

"Since you're about to get into your first real strife, you had better place your weapon of choice into your strife specibus," Leilasprite continued.

"Wha-" Before the short thought could be spread into the air, the imp finally leapt at me, swinging its piccolo at my head. Still clutching my staff in both hands, I shoved it upwards to block the attack, only briefly hindering its progress. "Can it wait? Kinda busy," I called.

"No!" Leilasprite rebutted. "In the Medium, lots of important things work differently!"

"Mind te-HUH!" My question was interrupted as the piccolo thwacked across my abdomen. I was able to tense on impact, abating some of the pain, but it was still a full-on attack with a metal weapon, so I wasn't exactly peaches. "What I gotta do?" I gasped.

"Allocate your staff to your strife specibus!"

"I don't know how!" Noticing the imp recharging, I swept my staff in an awkward circle, just knocking it out of the way momentarily.

"Don't think about it; just do it," Leilasprite said, almost soothingly. Not that I was relaxing anytime soon, but… If she was filled with magic sprite knowledge, it wasn't like I could debate with her, especially as half my energy was focused on not getting cold-cocked. Just… do it.

Taking my best guess of what that meant, I lifted my hand slightly, splaying my fingers as though offering my staff to the sky. Before my eyes, it snapped out of existence, as though it was the image of a television I had just turned off. I wasn't frightened, oddly enough. Within a second, I could tell that it was still there… somewhere in the ether. I just knew it. Thus, as the imp came at me again with its exceptionally pointy instrument of torture, I found myself able to summon my staff again.

There, that was more like it. Powered a bit more than usual by anger, I made quick work of the imp, which popped into a small pile of… some kind of blue hexagonal solids.

"Grist!" Leilasprite cheered. "You'll get it whenever you kill any of the enemies in this game, and you better get a lot of it! That's how you and your server can build things that you'll need to move forward." No stranger to RPG's, I didn't need to be told twice. I reached for the stuff, feeling it disappear into the void much like my staff had. "It's in your grist cache now. There are all sorts of types of grist, which can be used to make pretty much anything with your Punch Designix if you can figure out how!"

"So we're in for the long haul here, huh."

Leilasprite bobbed up and down. "The longest haul, unfortunately. There's no going back to Earth, especially not as you knew it." I had sort of already figured that, but supposed it was worth hearing for certain. Leilasprite's face was very serious for a few seconds, but she tried to soften it before continuing. "The type you just got is build grist, and if you collect enough of it, your server can build up your house."

"Can build up my house?" I asked. "What for?"

"In this case, it'd probably be easier to show you. Can you lead the way to the roof?"

I hesitated for a second before leaning in the direction of the stairwell, slowly leading the procession towards the spare room. Initially, Gian and I had reserved it predominantly for storage, but the game seemed to think it was an excellent spawning point for imps. As I opened the door, four of the bastards accosted me. "Whoa," I gulped, hardly prepared for the onslaught. Each was an identical teal color, much like the first one I'd seen, but they had disturbingly variant forms. One seemed to be vaguely frog-like, its eyes rolling towards me as it held up a stick in its webbed, jagged fingers. Another boasted a giant beak and funnel, softly puffing off colorless smoke as it energized itself.

There were plenty of karate moves for dealing with either one or multiple attackers, but not many of the staff techniques were intended to defeat four weird aliens. My first attack barely grazed over one of their heads, doing little besides pissing it off. Grunting a bit in annoyance, I jerked downward, bashing the imp's head. It gave a sad shriek before popping into grist.

Before I could enjoy my hard-earned rewards, however, Steambird took a heavy chomp on my left leg. "Ah, shit!" Losing some of the focus of finer technique, I swung the staff again, taking only enough care to keep from whacking myself. I was fortunate that it only took one hit to free myself, but the imp looked as alive as ever.

Since they were so short, I depended predominantly on a series of downward blocks, following up with some jabs when the blocks weren't enough. However, none of the remaining three seemed to be as easy a time as the first had been. Clearly, I had not gotten enough experience against groups. "Uh, Leilasprite, can you help me out here?"

"Okay!" she cheered, swooping down directly in front of me to distract the imps. She was able to lead Steambird away for a bit, giving me enough focus to beat the daylights out of one imp, which finally exploded in defeat. Frogger's eyes rolled around in their sockets for only a moment before it leapt at me, this time aiming high with its stick. Alas, mine was quicker, and its bold decision left it sprawling on the floor, so I quickly jabbed it, ending that fight.

Leilasprite, however, had done little actual attacking. Honestly, I supposed I would have been surprised if she had magically gained the ability to fight alongside the encyclopedia package she'd downloaded to her brain. Noticing the other imps' absence, though, she led Steambird back to me, and it only managed to scratch my calf once before I had defeated it. "Good work!"

"Thanks for your help," I said with a smile. "Is that the last of them?" I figured not.

"For the moment," Leilasprite affirmed. "But they can spawn basically anywhere that you aren't looking. Once you head out on your quest, they'll stop spawning in the house."

"Good thing we're headed to the roof, then," I sighed. Leilasprite's face, however, did not indicate that the thing was quite so good. "Unless you mean there's something I have to like… do on my quest, that'll stop them?"

She bobbed a few times. "I'll tell you outside."

Thus, not a minute later, we'd gone out the window onto the inclined portion of the roof, on which I lay down, just in case. Between the splatter of stars, a large spirograph glowed in the sky, perhaps 100 meters above us. "What's that?"

"That's your first gate," Leilasprite answered. "There are six of them total, each one higher up than the one before it. As you accumulate build grist, your server player can add levels to your house to help you reach them."

"Whoa…" I wasn't crazy about the idea of having some kind of physics-disapproved pillar house, which I doubted would be stable. Especially considering I'd have to climb it… hundreds of meters into the air…

It would be better than a ladder, I supposed.

"Where does the first one go?"

Leilasprite paused for a few seconds, as though trying to decide if I was allowed such pertinent information. "It's hard to say exactly where all the gates go, but generally, the first one goes somewhere on your planet, wherever it needs you to be to get started on your quest. The next four might be the same way, wherever you'll be ready to go once you've gotten enough grist to build your house up that high. And the last one should take you to your denizen's cave, where you can finish up your quest on this world."

I rolled onto my back, spreading my arms wide and joining Leilasprite as she stared up at the gates. We stayed completely still for a few moments, letting naught but our torsos move as this information was slowly inhaled. "Did you mean to imply something when you said the next four "might" be the same way?"

Leilasprite gave an odd sort of ruff, perhaps her first attempt at a chuckle. "Well, that word choice was intentional. What I meant is that later gates could also lead to the planets of the other players. Maybe one of them will be in need of your help at a certain time, or maybe their world has the key to something you've been trying to figure out. Only the game really knows that, I think."

That was enough for me to hoist myself into a seated position. "The other players' planets? That means I get to see the other guys? How long will that be?"

"It's impossible to say for sure," Leilasprite said, keeping any premature excitement to a minimum. "It's probably going to be several days between each of your journeys through a gate at the very least. And in your session with eight players, you'd only be visiting four of them at most."

"But if each of them is visiting four other planets, too, then that's a pretty solid chance," I added. Leilasprite responded with her signature modified nod. For a second, I considered adding another point to boost my own optimism, but I let it slip from my throat. Honestly, my head was already swimming with all sorts of facts that Leilasprite had told me, and it hadn't even been thirty minutes since I started playing this unbelievable game. My last thought upon falling asleep the night before was increasingly accurate, and for all intents, my day on the Land of Stars and Towers had only just begun.

And so, I let my back rest on the slope of the roof again, reaching over to slowly pet Leilasprite as we watched the stars.