Chapter Two: Becoming the Characters
"You will become your character for the first time through computer conditioning, where virtual memories and knowledge will be inserted into your brain through the Player Plug-In headset... while you will still remember who you are in real life, you will also have a second set of memories as vivid as if they were your own. Younger characters will start off with only a vague backstory, while older ones will have much more history, more background and connections..."
-VR-TI6 instruction manual, Chapter Three

Juilliette opened her eyes slowly. She always took a moment to transition from reality to the game. Blinking several times, she sat up, glancing around to take in her surroundings, feeling lost.

The musty but comfortable scene of Cornelius's living room had vanished, replaced by a small musty but comfortable room that appeared to be built into an attic. The ceiling was sloped above her, and rays of sunlight leaked through a single round window in the wall nearby. The beams played off the glossy floors, making the wood in the room almost seem to glow. A small bed in the corner was covered by a worn but pretty patchwork quilt, and the only other furniture in the room was a small table in the corner. An unlit candle lay on the top, and Juilliette picked it up, rolling the wax object over in her fingers.

And then the computer conditioning started up.

She was suddenly caught up in a deluge of memories. Her name was Tsalina Gelorwya of Glenswergli Clan, and she was a fifteen-and-a-half-year-old elf with no family or other connections to speak of. A series of visions flashed quickly by her mind's eye—growing up happy in her clan's orphanage, leaving once she was too old to stay there any longer, receiving her parents' giant tome of magic at age fourteen, and finally leaving the clan a year later in search of adventures—but the memories were brief, and after a moment her vision cleared. She set the candle back down. Something was bothering her… there was something off about what she'd just seen, but she couldn't put her finger on it.

All quests started with a simple command: Find Rasmussem. The best way to do that, Tsalina decided, would be to ask people. And to ask people, she had to find people. And she had a very strong instinct that she was not going to find any people just by standing around in this room.

She pulled open a trap door in the floor, instinctively knowing that this would take her to the main inn room below. She dropped down easily, the door banging shut behind her.

Compared to other inns, this particular one wasn't too crowded. A lone barmaid stood behind a counter, wiping it with a green rag. Tsalina hoped the rag was originally green, and that the color hadn't come from whatever the girl was wiping off the counter. She approached the bar, ignoring the two fairly rounded men sitting nearby.

"Hi," she said to the girl, smiling.

The girl glanced up and nodded in reply. "Hey."

"I'm Tsalina Gelorwya of Glenswergli Clan," Tsalina introduced herself, enjoying the feel of the names as they rolled off her tongue as easily as if she'd done it all her life.

The girl failed to contain a derisive snort. "My name's Natalya of the Barmaid Clan." She snorted again.

Tsalina had not realized how unpleasant a snort truly sounded until she'd heard this girl. "So, Natalya, I'm looking for Rasmussem."

"Which Rasmussem?" Natalya asked. "There are hundreds around this forest."

"I don't know," Tsalina shrugged. "What is Rasmussem, anyway?"

Natalya looked as though she thought Tsalina had asked something exceedingly stupid. "It's a tree. Specifically, a type of very old tree with magical powers."

"Do they grow around here?"

"I just said that," Natalya sounded annoyed now. "There are hundreds in the forest nearby."

Tsalina smiled again. "Thanks, Natalya. That was really nice of you."

"Whatever," Natalya went back to wiping her counter.

Tsalina slid past the two large—and, as she now noticed, extremely smelly—men and headed outside. As she passed the door, she couldn't help but notice her reflection in the glass of the window nearby. She thought she looked rather nice. The computer had corrected a lot of the flaws in her features, including what she considered to be far too large ears. They were nicely pointed now, and her hair had been divided into two pigtails that trailed down her back…

Tsalina squinted and leaned closer to the glass, trying to make out her image properly. Something still looked wrong…

And then it hit her.

"Cornelius, you really messed up the Spandex this time," she muttered under her breath.

Shaiya had barely opened her eyes to see she was standing in the middle of a sunny, deserted field when she was lost in a flood of her character's computerized memories.

"Dracovia, look at this," a six-year-old Irinilia cried excitedly as she clambered on to a stool next to desk. She unrolled a scroll on the table as the man dressed all in black, who the computer informed her was a mage, specifically a necromancer by the name of Dracovia, leaned over her shoulder. A small diagram had been drawn by sloppy childish handwriting, the writing shaky and uncertain but the picture strong and clear, done in many different colors of ink.

"Irinilia, that's perfect!" Dracovia rested his hand on her shoulder in a kindly way. "Uh… what is it supposed to say underneath?" He pointed to one of her messier scrawls.

She sighed. "Medallion of Life, of course!" She had drawn the medallion above its label, colored green and with a star design in the center. "And that one's the Medallion of Death," she pointed to the black necklace with a picture of a nondescript body in the center of the charm, "and that's the Medallion of Birth!" The last picture was gold and simple.

"You're a wonderful artist, my dear," Dracovia said with fatherly affection.

"I'm going to draw their guardians next," Irinilia hopped down from her stool and ran off to find another sheet of paper. Behind her, Dracovia bent over her scroll again, with a much more serious intensity in his gaze.

Irinilia shook herself out of the memory, but was immediately hit with another one.

She was ten now, much more intelligent and much less innocent than last time. Every time she so much as glanced at Dracovia, she saw something she didn't want to see, a sort of coldness hidden under the appearance of the same man she'd grown up with since before she could remember.

She knew he was a mage—she'd known it since she was old enough to know what a mage was!—and she knew he was not her birth father, knew he had taken her, newly orphaned, from the Mithalinya Clan as a baby and raised her as his own. But now he kept secrets from her, not allowing her into his study at the top of one of the castle towers. He locked himself in there for hours on end, working on some unknown project. She hadn't been there in years, waiting in the dining hall to show him her drawings, drawings that he barely even looked at.

Something had changed, and Irinilia was determined to know what.

She had waited until past midnight because she knew that midnight was the hour of magic, when power was the strongest, and she doubted Dracovia would sleep through that. Finally, at two o'clock, she was unable to wait any longer and crept out of her bedchamber.

Her steps were almost silent as she crossed the hallway. The door at the end was locked, as it had been for years, but she was smarter now. A quick word and touch from her, and the door sprang open. One of the many tricks she'd picked up, unknown to Dracovia, from his library of magic scrolls.

The stairs were long and winding, but Irinilia climbed them as easily now as she had when she'd been an excited six-year-old. Before long she found herself in the study, kneeling on the stool she'd sat on so long ago when she would spread her drawings across the table for Dracovia to exclaim over.

The scrolls were very different now—older, darker, more fragile. Her long and slender fingers spread them across the table. She could see long lines of letters and symbols written across the paper, but it was too dark to read them clearly. No matter—another muttered word and the room glowed with soft, magical light.

They were scrolls of Dark Magic, evil spells. This was not a shock to Irinilia, as she and Dracovia were, after all, Dark Mages, but what startled her was the specifics of the Dark Magic Dracovia was studying.

He was actually trying to find the Medallion of Death.

Irinilia's thoughts flashed back to the item she'd drawn so long ago. It was a device of torture, meant to cause slow pain and an agonizing demise, but of course she hadn't known this when she was six. Then, it had just seemed like another one of those lost magic items that there were so many of. Now, she knew the truth.

Horrified, Irinilia backed away from the scroll, not even bothering to set it back the way she'd found it. A muttered word vanished the light, and Irinilia fled back to her bedroom.

Dracovia couldn't have known that she was the one who was there, of course, but things were never quite the same after that.

Parts after that flashed by in much less detail. As Dracovia had grown more withdrawn, she had retreated to the woods near the castle more and more often. She made friends with the animals there, hummingbirds and squirrels mostly, and even befriended a dragon named Tristo for a few months before he rejoined his family, but after awhile came to miss human company. That was what led her to the village, where a kind hedgewitch had taught her magic that Dracovia never had.

Light Magic.

Irinilia was intelligent and learned quickly. She kept a leather notebook with all her notes on all the spells she had learned and several she'd invented herself, and as time went on, she started to record her daily thoughts in it as well. Sometimes she made mistakes, confusing directions and forgetting parts of the instructions the woman gave her, but her new teacher was always patient and kind. The hedgewitch came to be like a mother to her, and she loved the woman dearly. It seemed only right that she should do something in return, so she asked Dracovia if she could bring the woman some potions as a present.

"A PRESENT?" he roared. "What the hell do you need to give her a present for?"

Irinilia, now fourteen and a cocky young teenager, was not as frightened by his anger as she should have been. "She's been very kind to me, and she doesn't have much money, so I thought--"

"No you didn't, wench, or you wouldn't have come asking me for a bloody present," Dracovia snarled. "What did she ever do for you except take advantage of this land that will someday be yours?" He was always reminding her that the land would someday be hers, and Irinilia found it to be very tiresome.

"I don't want the land, Dracovia, I want to be an adventurer. And besides, I go see her nearly every afternoon…"

"So that what you've been doing when you should have been studying!" Dracovia was going red in the face from all his yelling, but as Irinilia frowned, he attempted to control himself. "I shall give her a proper present, you can be sure. I forbid you to see the woman again. In fact, you shall not leave the castle until you've caught up with your studies!"

It wasn't until weeks later that Irinilia found out that Dracovia's "present" had actually been a drawn-out and tortured death for the kind old lady, but it was only seconds after that when Irinilia realized he had found the Medallion of Death.

Irinilia shuddered. Where was all this coming from? She had programmed in a normal childhood, something warm and pleasant—not this monster of an adoptive father or a death worthy of a horror movie for a woman she'd considered a mother!

The rest of the memories were less detailed. Irinilia supposed nothing could compare to the power of the last memory. After learning of the hedgewitch's death, she had stolen Dracovia's secret scrolls as well as the Medallions of Death, Life, and Birth, all of which Dracovia had somehow acquired while Irinilia was spending her days away from the castle. Taking with her only one favorite green dress and leaf necklace, she'd bundled the scrolls, the medallions, and his magic staff into a bag and fled one night at two o'clock, the same time she'd used long ago to sneak into his study. In the five years since then she'd stayed hidden, living in small towns and villages or camping in the forests. She'd grown her hair down to the waist and styled it into waves that conveinently covered her half-elf ears, just to make it that much more difficult for Dracovia to identify her. She was an average-looking person, and she blended into crowds well.

But even though all that time had passed and she'd never seen a hint of Dracovia, she knew her betrayal was one he'd never forget, and she was sure it was only a matter of time before he would find and kill her.

Irinilia sighed. Why couldn't she have gotten an easy game scenario? Why was she stuck with the maniac bent on death and destruction? She bet Cornelius had nothing harder than pop-the-balloons-before-the-time-runs-out.

Which would have been boring in a video game, but in virtual reality, she was willing to take any shortcut she could.

Stephanie opened her eyes to see a purple frog inches from her nose.

Scrambling up to her feet, she glanced around frantically. She appeared to be in the middle of a forest, judging by the unnaturally high number of trees nearby. A small pond was less than a foot from where she had landed; she suppposed she was lucky she hadn't ended up in it. The frog that had freaked her out croaked loudly and hopping into the water with a loud splash.

She only had a few seconds to wonder if perhaps Cornelius's hacking had made a mistake, and somehow left her without a computerized background, when the conditioning kicked in.

And she became Ravyn Pallanén, level six elven warrior of the famous Aladríonym Clan. She reached up, her armguards and gloves stretching with her arm, to feel the smooth wood of a longbow strapped to her back and the smooth leather of her quiver. The fletching of her arrows brushed along her gloveless fingertips as she felt her weapons, and realized that Ravyn knew how to use them, and had done so on many occasions—along with the ability to do some very basic healing magic, throw knives (and she had several of said weapon hidden in various places about her person), speak the Elven Language, perform simple acrobatics, and walk silently though a pile of broken glass.

Quite a far call from Stephanie Ryder.

Ravyn stepped into the edge of the pond, the water lapping at her black elven style boots. Leaning over slightly, she stared at her shimmery, distorted reflection. Her character had been changed little with the new game—pushing back the hood of the black cloak that she had wrapped around her body, she swung out her long black braid with electric blue streaks running through it. Some of the hair in front had come loose and hung around her face, blowing slightly in the breeze drifting by. Her eyes were a sky blue color, exactly the kind she liked best, and her skin was clear and only slightly tanned. But what she enjoyed most were her ears, the pointed elven ears that only partially showed out of her hair.

Ravyn even flattered herself that she might be a little bit pretty.

Shaking off her vanity, she stepped out of the water, shaking the drops off her boots. She had to find the others and get started on the quest. The only instructions she had to go off was to find Rasmussem. Somehow, she really didn't think Rasmussem was the purple frog.

Not knowing what else to do, Ravyn started walking blindly through the trees, hoping some sort of computerized instinct would take her where she wanted to go. The thick black armor complete with kneeguards she wore under her blue shirt and pants made movement awkward at first, but she adjusted her stride after the first few steps and was soon stepping comfortably, smoothly, almost gracefully.

Now she really knew she wasn't Stephanie Ryder.

Wandering aimlessly appeared to be key in this game, because after walking for less than five minutes, she almost smacked straight into a wizard who was slightly taller than she was. His orange hair was thick and tangled, and he wore the armor of a knight warrior. "Hey, watch where you're going," he snapped as he turned around, and then paused. "Oh, Ravyn, it's you."

"It's me," Ravyn answered, recognizing him as Tylus, Cornelius's main character. "Did you get dumped in a manure pile or something?"

"Do I smell?" he asked, lifting his metal covered arm to his nose.

"No, you just seem rather grumpy," she shrugged in reply.

"Had a run-in with some noobs," he said. "Level one thieves who think I don't notice that they're standing right behind me. And that was the grand adventure of Tylus up to this point. Where have you been?"

Ravyn shook out her cloak slightly, and a small clump of dirt fell from the edge. "Exploring the joy of multicolored frog diversity," she said.

"Huh?"

"Never mind," Ravyn glanced at the forest around them. They were standing in a small clearing, surrounded by ancient, cracked trees. "Do you think the others will find their way here?"

"Sure," Tylus shrugged. "It's Rasmussem, isn't it? The computer generated characters will eventually just tell them to come here."

Ravyn glanced around again. The clearing didn't appear to be anything special. "You're sure this is Rasmussem?"

"You're here too, aren't you?"

Ravyn decided not to point out that her arrival was entirely due to dumb luck and chance, and that she had absolutely no idea where, who, and/or what Rasmussem was.

They stood there in awkward silence for a very long minute before Tylus finally spoke again, sounding excited. "Look at this, I want to show you something." He pressed his hand to the ground and muttered something that sounded like 'left, right, up, square, circle, left, down'. Immediately, the grass flipped upside down, so the green disappeared into the ground and a thick mat of tangled light brown roots were left where the grass had been moments before. "Ground inversion cheat code, isn't it awesome?"

Ravyn stared at him blankly. "Is there a point to inverting the ground?"

Tylus shrugged. "No, not really, it's just cool."

"Er… right then," Ravyn turned to see a half-elf with long, shimmering black hair and a long green dress approach, weaving her way through the trees. "Look, I bet that's Irinilia- Shaiya," she clarified.

Irinilia joined them, smiling slightly. "Hey," she said hesitantly, as though not entirely sure it was really them.

"Hi, Irinilia," Ravyn answered. It never occurred to her that she might not really be Shaiya—glancing around, their characters were unmistakable— Tylus with his thick armor and with more weapons visibly attached around his body than probably everyone else in the game combined and Irinilia, her elven ears just barely visible through her hair and her mage staff secure in her belt. And just arriving to join their group now…

"Uh, Tsalina? Is that you?" Ravyn asked hesitantly.

She scowled in response. "Ughhhh...I really hope this is your idea of a great joke," she spat at Hyper. "Really funny. Now where are the cool things I asked for?"

Tylus stared at her for a minute. "Tsalina—Juilliette?"

"Yes it's me!" she shouted. "Look at me! What was this for?" She fingered her cloak disgustedly.

Tsalina looked significantly smaller than everyone else. Some sort of mud was smudged across her cheeks and she looked very, very angry. But most concerning of all, instead of the beautiful red skirt, black shirt, and white healer's cloak she had designed especially for her character, she was wearing the ragged, gray cloak of a Level One beginner.

"Crap," Tylus muttered.

Tylus thought he'd done rather nicely with his hacking job, but Tsalina had somehow been a mistake.

But that was all right, because everyone made mistakes, and he made fewer than most. At least his own armor and weapons were intact and quite impressive.

His character, Tylus of Grotti, was, on the whole, quite impressive. His father was the chief of a nearby a town, Quiez, where he'd grown up. His mother was a well-respected mage of ice and creation powers. It was a nice life, but it was boring.

A traveler had come to Quiez when he was fourteen and described the beauty of other towns throughout the world—Negonitia, Scapilia, Lysle—and, fascinated, Tylus had run away with him.

The traveler turned out to be a con artist who bashed Tylus over the head a few times, took his money and all but his underwear, and dumped him in the slums of Negonitia, a city that seemed to be on some hard times. Within a day of his arrival, the recruiters had come around in search of young human boys to be knight warriors. Tylus was as strong and as fast as any street rat and he'd had some training from his father. He was selected almost immediately, and trained for almost three years with a group of other boys.

Now he was seventeen, a level six knight warrior, and ready for whatever adventure came his way.

"We'll get our quest now and you can train along the way," he said to Tsalina now, eager to get started.

"I don't think so, Tylus," Ravyn cut in. "We're all level six and she's level one. She'll be totally out of her league. She should at least get some basic training before we go."

"But training's boring, that was the whole point of skipping past it," Tylus complained.

"You were the one who messed up her character," Ravyn said pointedly. "I didn't want to skip levels at all. She's entitled to a training course if she wants one, and you're just going to have to deal with it."

"We only have fifteen gaming days here, she doesn't have time," Tylus began but Ravyn cut him off.

"If Tsalina wants training, she's going to get it," she turned to Tsalina. "What'll it be?"

"If you don't mind," Tsalina began a little hesitantly, "I'd like a little bit before we go, maybe just a speed course or something?"

"I'm sure they have that as an option," Irinilia said. "It wouldn't take that long."

Tylus shrugged. "Let's at least get the quest first, so Ravyn and Irinilia and I can plan while Tsalina trains." Secretly he thought he might just take the assignment and go do it while the rest of them hung around the noob camps, but he didn't say it.

"You desire a quest?" the tree behind them said, and they all jumped. Tylus turned to face the plant, squinting at the scraggly bark. The tree almost seemed to smile, and through the knothole on the side of the trunk, spoke again, "There lies a kingdom that has long been oppressed by those who seek to exploit its only weakness."

"Not to interrupt when you're trying to be all poetic and dramatic and stuff," Ravyn said, "but do you mind just saying what we have to do straight out?"

"I am trying to, elf," the tree said grumpily. "You young people, always in a hurry. Where was I? Ah, yes, it is being oppressed because it is rightfully ruled by any and all who hold the Spoon of Justice."

"The Spoon of Justice?" Tylus said incredulously. "I've never heard anything more ridiculous in my--"

"Would you stop interrupting when I am trying to tell you your grand destiny? Yes, the kingdom is rightfully ruled by he or she who holds the Spoon of Justice and from it, drinks the Soup."

"Just soup? Any soup? Not the Soup of Self-Righteousness or the Soup of Eternally Aggravating Doom?" Ravyn asked.

"It is the Soup of Power," the tree either missed Ravyn's sarcasm or chose to ignore it.

"That seems like a faulty way to choose a ruler," Tsalina said.

"It is faulty," the tree replied. "Which is how it came to be ruled by a tyrant, as it is now. Tyranny is never a good thing. The people are being oppressed and the kingdom is on the brink of collapse. Your quest is to retrieve this Spoon of Justice and use it to drink the Soup of Power to override this tyrant's power."

"Four rulers?" Irinilia said doubtfully.

"Oh, it doesn't need to be all of you," Tylus could have sworn the tree was laughing as it continued, "In fact, in the end, only one person actually ends up as ruler. But I'll leave you to find out the ending for yourself."

"Wait," Tylus started, "Only one of us gets to rule?" But the tree was just a tree again, and it didn't respond.

"Sounds like fun," Ravyn broke the silence that followed Tylus's question. "By the way, did anyone happen to hear where exactly this oppressed and tyrannized kingdom is?" Tylus stared at her, realizing for the first time that the tree had been unhelpfully vague in its directions.

"Oh, you young people," the tree groaned. "It's this kingdom, obviously."

Please review and let me know what you think! Did it make you laugh? Did it make you cry? Did it make you crave soup? I want to hear it all!

Juilliette/Tsalina still belongs to Glowfish36.