There was a part of her which wondered why she had been left outside. The Dursleys were all her enemies by such a point – a far cry away from the family she wanted them to be. There wasn't a single shift in her rep with any of the Dursley Household, even when Aunt Petunia came by like clockwork and rapped on the door with a sharp, "Up!" and bustled into the kitchen like any other day. It was, she realised, any other day for her aunt. There was no gleam of disappointment when she slunk out from the cupboard under the stairs. There was no cavorted, grand plan by her enemies to end her life, compared to her invisible serial killer. They had just forgotten, plain and simple.
Harriet blinked, wondering which would be worse: to have her family plotting to murder her via another's hands, or for them to simply forget about her and her safety. Part of her almost wished it were the former. That would make it easier for her hope to be quashed, smothered under heel and set alight until it turned to ashes.
She walked into the kitchen, silently wondering what would have happened if she hadn't managed to somehow gain entry to the house and the weird barrier-like thing which had to have kept her enemy out. She would be dead, she knew, and Harriet didn't have the foggiest clue as to whether the Dursleys would have mourned her, or whether they would have gone about their day with a skip in their step. She didn't know and the thought of that ate her alive.
Perhaps, if she hadn't just had a run-in with a serial killer she would have added some of her unallotted stat points to the charisma stat to try and help herself figure out that much. As it was, she had thirteen precious points, and she only wanted to use them once she knew exactly what was going to help her. Would strength really help her when she could barely punch anything? Would vitality do anything except prolong the torment at the hands of the 'slippery bastard'? Would intelligence or wisdom help her figure out what points to put where? There was too much she didn't know, and she had become ever so hesitant. Being stalked by a serial killer did that, or so Harriet mused with a morbid sense of amusement.
Harriet wondered when her sense of humour had become so dark. Harriet wondered why she could think to joke about things like that. Harriet wondered when her life had changed so drastically – but that was something she knew.
The day that damning blue box had popped up before her, the white letters on that blue screen carved into her memory.
You have been sponsored!
Welcome to The Game!
She traced the letters out in the air, gritting her teeth as a part of her loathed those blue boxes and all those stats. Yet the more pragmatic part of her knew that she would never be rid of such a thing.
[Your smart thinking improves your intelligence +1 INT!]
Harriet laughed, a broken, hysterical thing at the thought that thinking about how she would never be rid of the system which had turned her life around had gained her a point of INT for smart thinking. Truly, she'd never be rid of it, if only because she didn't know how she had come to the game – how she had become a player – in the first place.
"Girl!" Aunt Petunia's shrill voice cut through her bleak laughter, and her chuckles died away as soon as they had appeared. "Stop making that racket, and cook," she demanded, sticking her head around the door, watery blue eyes looking at her sharply, and Harriet only stared at her. Some part of her wondered why she had ever longed for the love of that woman. Another fraction of her still longed for the love of that woman.
"Yes… Aunt Petunia," she mumbled softly, turning her attention back to the fat sizzling in the pan, pondering on whether or not she was happy to be gaining more EXP. It was only ten points worth at a time, but it was something. Yet that was feeding into the system which had overtaken her life. One which felt a bit too much like a prison whenever she wondered what she'd have done without that game. Maybe a serial killer would have never graced her doorstep. Maybe Ian Strange would never have had a second glance at her and decided she was to be prey. She didn't know. She would never know, if only because her life was what it was then. She simply had to live with it.
"She's a bitch," Charly's crackly voice came out of nowhere, but for once she didn't flinch. Instead she stared blandly at the bacon as it sizzled and popped. "How'd you get lumped with her?"
Harriet shrugged, the hissed, smug, biting words her aunt and uncle had spoken about her trashy parents coming to her lips then. "My idiot parents decided to get drunk and crash a car, according to them anyway." She shrugged once more. "The story always seems to change a bit every time, so I'm not too sure."
Charly hummed, the static crackling against her eardrums as the ghost girl hovered close by.
"Where's Rose?" she asked, flipping over the bacon, shifting it over to the side and reaching over to grab the eggs. "She's usually the one who hangs around." It was almost funny how quickly talking to ghosts had become another part of her daily routine. Usually it was Rose she spoke with, the nice ghost, or so she had mentally labelled the other girl. Charly was the mean ghost, the one with a tongue like a whip and a bad temper to match. Idly, Harriet mused on how her aunt and uncle would react if she'd had a tongue like that. Probably very badly. "You don't like me."
Charly snorted. "What gave it away?"
Harriet said nothing, not even flinching as she usually did, only looking flatly at the ghost, knowing then that there were far more scary situations to be stuck in than standing in a kitchen with a ghost who didn't like her. If that magical man had caught her the night previous there was no doubt she'd be stuck around with those ghosts permanently.
[ALERT! Whispers of the Dead has levelled up to Lvl.16!]
She glanced at that blue box, her mixed feelings about the game dancing around in the back of her mind as those boxes flashed up around her. Truly, she hadn't used it much since she had been around those ghosts. Her daily quests still popped into existence, though she hadn't been out running, nor had she been doing any of those other exercises in the hopes of going to Elvenguard. What was going on in her present was far more important, and far more pressing. She didn't know if she'd survive long enough to go to Elvenguard – a place she suspected to be far more dangerous than there, judging by what she had to do in preparation to go there.
"You've got that pathetic look on your face again," Charly muttered, pulling her from that whirlwind of thoughts. "I bet if he got his hands on you, you wouldn't even fight against it – would you?"
Harriet froze. Her breath hitched, memories of her just sitting there while Ian Strange's hands traced her skin stirring. Fingers slackened there hold on the cooking utensils she was using, one hand clutching at the thin material of her pyjama bottoms as she tried to ground herself there in the present. He wasn't there. He was ever so slightly scared of her those days. He wasn't touching her, and he would never touch her again, lest he want to have another encounter with a tree. She wouldn't let him touch her. She wouldn't freeze up again like a startled doe, frozen before a hunter.
Dimly, she could hear Charly's venomous words humming in the back of her head. Distantly, she could hear the sounds of the Dursley family at breakfast. It was like she had suddenly been dunked in a vat of treacle, time around her moving ever so slowly, even as her hands clenched, fingers twitching. "Shut up." The low sound of her own voice surprised her. As did the unmissable essence of fury to them.
Crack.
Harriet blinked, the sound jolting her back to what felt like the real, present life, and she flinched at the sight of the spiderweb of cracks spreading over the pane of glass in the kitchen window over the sink to her side. "Oh no," she breathed, unable to hear the staticky sound of Charly's voice, even as sounds of movement came from the dining room.
"What was that—" Aunt Petunia stuck her head around the door once more, eyes immediately lasering in on the cracked window. "You!" she hissed, turning on her in an instant. "What did you do – you little vandal?"
"I was cooking the breakfast, Aunt Petunia," she answered listlessly, somehow already intimately aware of where the conversation was going to go. Whenever something went wrong – whenever something broke – it was always, unquestionably her fault. That was just how things worked in the Dursley Household. "The window cracked on its own…"
Aunt Petunia snorted. "As if anyone would believe your lies. Cupboard. Now," she ordered, and Harriet just shrugged by then and went as she was told. There was no point in arguing, and she certainly didn't feel like stammering and trying to plead with someone who she knew wouldn't listen to a word she said.
At least there, inside her cupboard, she'd more than likely be left alone – at least until the ghosts came back. Until Rose came back. Harriet didn't like having to deal with mean Charly. Not that Charly was there anymore, in either sense. She was an angry little dead girl, after all. Besides her, she doubted many could see her, if any at all.
Necromancers didn't seem to be common beings.
Loneliness drove her to play about with her blue boxes. It was a funny thing, feeling lonely, yet Harriet supposed she had grown too used to the ghosts following her every move. There was usually at least one of them hovering around nearby, but the last few hours had been lacking the slight chill and the static which always crackled when they spoke.
"Quest Log," she mumbled.
[QUEST LOG]
[RANDOM QUEST: WISE BEYOND HER YEARS]
[MAIN QUEST: THE CHOSEN ONE (LOCKED)]
[MAIN QUEST: THE LAST DRUID]
[MAIN QUEST: THE LOST ELF]
[HIDDEN QUEST: DUAL NATURES]
She knew if she pressed The Lost Elf it would bring up her preparation quests, both the daily, repetitive one and the other proclaiming the skill masteries she needed to reach to gain access to a place away from the Dursleys. Harriet wondered when exactly that had become a more prominent wish than trying to make her aunt and uncle love her. She wondered if going to Elvenguard would truly be an escape from… Harriet blinked. What exactly was she wanting to escape from? She didn't think she was sure. She wasn't sure of a lot those days.
Everything was confusing, humans were perplexing, and Harriet could never quite forget the fact that she wasn't one of them anymore. She wasn't human, rather, she was an elf. Not that being an elf had done any good, besides bringing up that odd, confusing, almost tantalising prospect of escape.
Her finger moved, prodding at the Dual Natures quest which had since been unlocked.
[HIDDEN QUEST: DUAL NATURES]
DIFFICULTY LEVEL: EXTREME
Destruction rides in on black wings. Salvation frees the lands of the corrupted. Root or rot, a choice now weighs upon your shoulders.
"Huh?" Harriet blinked, watching as that odd text vanished, replaced instead by another blue box. "What was that about?" she mumbled to herself, finding herself relaxing in that space beneath the stairs, thinking about something else than the present world which seemed to be crumbling down around her with every single breath.
[Congratulations! Unlocking a story quest brings along with it a difficulty rating! Please press on the difficulty to learn more!]
"Help functions, huh," she mumbled, recognising it for what it was. A part of that system she didn't know whether to despise or love. A system she wasn't sure she wanted to listen to, despite the potential help it offered her for dealing with her serial killer problem. No matter how eagerly the odd blue boxes seemed to want her to eliminate her enemies.
The world eliminate sounded far too final and solemn for her tastes.
[DUAL NATURES QUEST: THE DISCOVERY (PART I)]
· Find the ghost of GIDYEON SHADESLAYER
[REWARDS: ?]
"Uh…" Harriet blinked, staring at the single line it gave her. Unlike some of her earlier quests, there were no hints. Instead it was simply telling her to find a ghost. Somehow she didn't think any of the girls were that Gidyeon Shadeslayer. Though, Harriet mused, twisting and turning on her pitiful excuse for a bed, the name sounded pretty cool.
The house was eerily quiet.
Usually that meant it was safe for her to move about – safe for her to pretend she was just a part of the furniture to stave off the ire of her aunt and uncle. Only it was late in the evening, and Harriet knew that somebody should have been home and making a racket by such a point.
Dudley Dursley wasn't home, and it was eight-o'clock at night, well past the curfew of six-o'clock that her aunt had set upon him.
A shiver rolled down her spine.
The letterbox creaked, thunking shut with a sound that seemed to resonate through the still air.
"Post? At this hour?" her uncle grumbled, and Harriet heard the sound of him getting up, muttering about junk mail and beggars on the doorstep. "Some people don't know the definition of reasonable!"
Harriet knew she should have retreated to her cupboard. There was an itching sensation that she needed to hide from something. Or someone. Only her eyes were transfixed, her feet carrying her over to where the creamy paper of the piece of paper which had landed haphazardly on the welcome doormat.
Scarlet lettering stood out starkly from the pale cream, the words searing their way into her brain as her stomach dropped to her toes.
My Beloved Harriet, the looping script declared, and Harriet could only shudder, feeling the phantom sensation of fingers over her thighs. She wondered if Ian Strange would have called her that too – beloved. Harriet wondered what such a thing meant – to be beloved.
Yet it was the rest of the red script which made her blood freeze solid in her veins as she heard the lumbering steps of her uncle behind her, looming like an axe over her head, ready to fall and decide her fate.
You want to see your darling cousin again, don't you?
A, by then, familiar ding rent the air, heralding the arrival of something she wasn't sure whether she was supposed to love or loathe.
[A NEW QUEST HAS ARRIVED!]
[RANDOM QUEST: THE RESCUE OF DUDLEY DURSLEY]
[ALERT! Quest cannot be rejected, and is time sensitive! Failure will lead to the termination of the human named 'Dudley Dursley'!]