Chapter IV
January 21st, 2025
8:30 AM, Alfheim Standard Time
"Well, technically sign ups ended last week. Fortunately for you two, last night one of our teams had to drop out at the last minute because of personal reasons. If you've got the yrd to ante up, you two can take their place in the tournament," said a man behind a counter to Will, Emily, and a hooded Koharu. He then glanced at their rather basic looking equipment. "Don't know how far you'll get with starter gear though."
Will nodded. "All right, how much does it cost to enter?" he asked, and the man turned a small sign around.
"One thousand per person, so two thousand total," he replied, and Emily's eyes widened slightly. "Yeah, it's a lot for new players. You sure you want to do this? You might have skill, but if you don't win, you're gonna be really strapped for money."
To the man's surprise, however, both Will and Emily nodded without hesitation. "We're in," Emily answered. She and Will pressed the transact button on the sign together and watched almost all of their remaining yrd after buying their weapons and armor disappear.
"Don't worry, if this doesn't work out, I have some spare yrd you can both have to keep you mostly on your feet," Koharu reassured them as they walked away and up to the competitor's tent. "Well, I'll be cheering for you from the stands. Just do what you do best and fight hard. Remember what I showed you about magic, and with your stats from SAO, you'll stand a good shot and winning it all."
Will and Emily both embraced their friend one last time, and then they walked into the tent and looked at their competition and gulped. All around them were players decked out in high level gear, and as soon as the flap closed behind them, all eyes turned to them.
One scoffed. "Who let the noobs in? Thought everyone here was supposed to be skilled at this game," he said, rolling his eyes at the two latecomers. "Not that I'm complaining. An easy win is an easy win."
"Don't be so cocky, Wook," another said, walking past him. "Remember, this is a friendly competition, open to all," he reminded the first player, before looking at Will and Emily. "Although, he does have a point. I won't ask what chance you think you've got in this tourney with starter gear. But this competition is meant for Pookas who have lots of experience with this game. You really think you're ready to take it to the big leagues already?"
Will took in a deep breath and looked over at Emily, who nodded. "We are, and you might be surprised to see just how much experience we've got with VRMMOs like ALO already," he replied, earning them both a smile from the second player.
"Well, you've certainly got guts and confidence. I look forward to seeing how far you go."
"Ladies, gentlemen, and fairies from all over the Pooka lands! Welcome to the second annual Grand Bardic tournament!" the announcer said inside the main room of the tent. Will and Emily both looked up from their waiting room when they heard just how loud the crowd was cheering in excitement. "Today, you will see thirty two pairs of skilled players fight it out for the championship cup of sixty six thousand yrd! Hold on to your wings, because we're about to get started!"
The crowd once again went wild with excitement. "In the left corner, we've got a pair of returning faces from last year's tournament! You watched them get knocked out early on last time, and we've all watched them fall again and again in tournaments since, but today, they've got their eyes on some fresh meat! I give you… Guardius and Frost!" the announcer called out, and Will and Emily looked at each other as the audience cheered and applauded.
"Ready?" Will quietly asked his friend, who nodded.
"With you by my side? Always," she said, leaning into his shoulder for a moment and squeezing his hand with hers, before the announcer started talking again.
"And in the right corner, we've got a team that filled in for another just this morning! A pair of fresh players ready to give it their all, despite the odds stacked against them, I give you… Skystrike and Lemonlily!" called the announcer. Will and Emily both stepped through the curtain of the tent and were met by an explosion of cheers and applause as they saw their opponents at the other side of the arena. One held a large, two handed sword, and was clad in green, paladin-esc armor. The other wore lighter, pale blue colored armor, and wielded a multi-stringed bow that looked rather similar to a harp.
"Go for the ranged attacker first so she can't pick us off from a distance?" Will muttered to Emily, who nodded, raising her shield up and drawing her sword.
"If both teams are ready, let the battle commence!"
A loud bell rang out above and around them, and immediately, the bow wielder, Frost, pulled back an arrow and fired at Will, who narrowed his eyes and sidestepped around it before charging forward with Emily at his side. Guardius rushed towards them in an attempt to stop their attack, but Will planted his spear into the ground and vaulted forward with incredible agility, flying over the larger player and slashing across his back with the spear. At the same time, Emily slid underneath his sword and focused on her weapons, which began to glow not with the light of a sword skill, but with the light of transformation, and seconds later, where there had been a sword, Emily now held a bow, and in her other hand instead of a shield, there was a violin.
Without wasting a second, she pulled the bow across the violin's strings, and a wave of musical energy shot out of the instrument, staggering Frost while Will kept Guardius at bay with a flurry of stabs and slashes from his spear, always staying just barely out of reach of his opponent's sword with his lightning fast agility, honed by two long and arduous years trapped inside the game of death. When he jumped over his head, Will would slash as he spun in the air, and when he landed, he'd thrust his spear behind him and deliver another powerful hit, before leaping away to avoid the two handed sword wielder's counterattack.
At the same time, Emily was chipping away at Frost's healthbar, inflicting numerous debuffs with her constant barrage of sound magic. Eventually, Frost managed to pull her bowstring back and fired off a pair of icy elemental arrows, however with her speed and agility buffed by her song magic, Emily easily ducked underneath the two arrows that flew straight into Guardius' backside, and counterattacked by quickly transforming her weapons back into a sword and shield and engaging Frost in close combat.
Before long, Will had Guardius fighting entirely on the defensive, not even trying to counterattack, just avoid the spear wielder's furious attacks. But it was to no avail, as moments later Will feinted with a stab to his knee and started to bring his spear around to cut through his neck. At the last second, however, his body froze up unexpectedly, his mind flashing back to his many duels in SAO that would've stopped right then and there, and Guardius took advantage of it by ripping the spear from Will's hands and nearly cutting him in half. Unarmed, Will sidestepped out of the way and channeled magic into his hands.
Ancient, almost archaic-looking script circled around his body as he chanted a spell, and before Guardius could even blink, he was launched backward by a blast of wind magic that knocked his weapon from his hand. Will then chanted another spell to pull his spear to his hands, and he plunged it through his foe's chest, depleting the last of his health as Emily blasted Frost into the wall with a wave of sound magic. Instead of shattering like glass, as they'd expected, Will and Emily watched them each become covered in golden, magical flames, and then their bodies were replaced by golden, floating fireballs. The crowd erupted into cheers, and the announcer said something about an impressive display of skill from two seemingly brand new players, but the words fell on deaf ears as the two survivors walked back to the room they'd come from with worried, almost ghostly expressions on their faces, cutting off the announcer even as he reminded the audience that Frost and Guardius would be completely fine in a few minutes.
Behind the veil of the curtains, Will and Emily both sat down on a bench in terror, their minds flashing back to the only other place where they'd seen death and murder firsthand, and worse, even committed it themselves: Sword Art Online. Even when another competitor came over to see what was going on, they barely noticed him or his partner.
"We didn't just… no… no, that's impossible… isn't it? It has to be… it just has to be…" Will thought to himself as Emily wondered the same thing. They barely heard anything anyone else said, and the attempts of other, more compassionate competitors to figure out why they were just blankly staring in front of them, to figure out what was wrong, or even to try and get them to just respond to anything, were futile.
Suddenly, more than a half hour after their match, a familiar face appeared in front of them, but strangely semi-translucent. "Hey, you both doing okay?" Koharu asked, her spirit-like form looking around nervously before pulling down her hood and mask.
The sight of their friend nearly broke Emily, who fell onto Will in worry. "Koharu… those two players… Frost and Guardius… Did we really…" Will slowly asked, terrified of what answers he might get as memories of the last time someone had been slain by his spear played over and over in his mind.
But to their shared relief, Koharu shook her head. "Nope, they're completely fine. In fact, I'm just using a spell to project myself to you, but in the audience, they're sitting pretty close to me now," she replied, before grinning. "Wow, you both sure made an impression all right. They and the other players in the stands still can't stop talking about how easily you controlled the battle, even if Guardius and Frost aren't exactly cream of the crop. You even managed to slightly impress Wook, and I've heard he's a tough crowd and then some."
Emily let out an audible sigh of relief as she heard her friend say their opponents were fine. "Okay then…" she mumbled.
"Hey, remember this isn't SAO. Players can die here and be fine in minutes. Quicker, even," Koharu reminded her friend.
"Yeah, I know… it's just, difficult to grasp… after SAO."
"I know, I was the same way when a bunch of bandits ambushed me after I got exiled from Undine territory. But it's like I said. Here, you never even lose consciousness. Your body disappears and turns into a remain light, but all that really means is that you can't move again until you get revived by another player, or the timer finishes and you respawn in town."
After another moment of silence, Koharu rested a partially invisible hand on her friends' hands. "Trust me, everything is okay. You're not gonna become red players, or even orange players here," she reassured them, and Will and Emily finally managed to smile again. Their friend's words echoed in their minds as she blinked out of their sight, the spell wearing off and leaving the pair in the tent.
"Eight teams remain tonight as we entire the last round of fights for today, folks. The players you see now have got grit, but how long can they keep it up? Let's whittle down that number and find out which four will make it to the semi-final round tomorrow, and which teams will go home tonight as quarterfinalists!" exclaimed the announcer. "On my left, we've got a team that made it all the way to the finals last year, but got beaten out by the reigning champs and are looking to return the favor. Set your eyes on the twin sisters, Yuuchan and Sansi!"
The two sword wielders looked around the arena, unfazed by the booming cheers that rang out from all sides, their expressions as ice cold and collected as their crystal blue longswords, which they drew in sync and pointed at the opposite side of the arena where their foes were about to appear from.
"And on my right, a team that few people expected to get this far in the tournament! They've shown that as long as you can avoid getting hit, even the most meager of armor and weaponry is more than enough to get the job done time and again today! Returning to the arena for the third time today, Lemonlily and Skystrike!"
On cue, Will and Emily stepped through the curtains of the arena, their weapons brandished and ready to fight as they were met with eager cheers and applause. Koharu's words of encouragement after their first and second bouts had kept them going, but the more battles they fought, the more eyes turned towards them with confusion and curiosity, and worse, suspicion. After all, never before had two brand new players shown such incredible skill with completely new accounts.
Regardless, the lights dimmed around them as a timer ticked down above them, and the two survivors narrowed their eyes at their opponents. Seconds felt like minutes, until a bell rang out and the duel began. Immediately, Will's spear glowed with light as it transformed into the long, black and silver clarinet that he was all too familiar with. Pressing down each key right when he meant to, and with Emily's shield blocking the spells from the two sisters opposite them, he cast musical spell after musical spell, summoning more and more buffs onto himself and Emily. After three spells cast by different melodious rhythms, he focused on the instrument in his hands and transformed it back into a spear.
"Those won't last long. Let's make the most of what we've got," he told Emily, who nodded, and in unison, they charged forward and clashed head on with their foes. Yuuchan split off to attack Emily, while Sansi went after Will, and their weapons met in the middle, sending sparks flying in every direction.
Ducking under a horizontal slash, Emily parried a follow-up vertical slash and kicked Yuuchan in the chest. She backpedaled to regain her footing, but Emily was relentless in her assault, and she used her shield as a weapon just as often as her sword. One cut was followed by a bash from the opposite side, and then a kick to her foe's legs kept Yuuchan from retaliating even once, until Emily landed a powerful jab with her shield that winded her opponent.
"Yuu!" her sister shouted, and she took in a deep breath, releasing it in a vocalized wave of deafening sound magic on Will, who took a few steps back and transformed his spear back into a clarinet to begin dispelling the numerous debuffs suddenly put on him. But rather than going after him, as he'd expected, Sansi spun on the ball of her foot and targeted Emily with a flurry of vacuum blade spells that the sword and shield user was only barely able to block with a hasty shielding melody from her violin. They'd picked up the basics of musical and traditional casting relatively quickly for only having around a day and a half of experience, but their opponents simply knew stronger spells than they did. Their only hope laid in hand to hand combat, and both of them knew that fact well.
Sansi chanted another spell that ripped Emily's shield away from her body as Yuuchan froze Will in place with a freezing spell, and then both sisters attacked from opposite directions. Emily was totally on the defensive while Will was forced to chant a longer spell to melt the magical ice, and any opening in her guard was almost instantly exploited by the two sisters. As Yuuchan retreated away, Sansi would advance, using her longer reach to force Emily to parry while her sister attacked from behind again.
"Hang on, 'Em! I'm almost free!" Will mentally pleaded as he finally finished casting the last of a series of heat spells to melt the ice. But at that moment, the two sisters struck like a pair of snakes hunting the same prey. Both of their blades plunged through Emily's chest, and Will reached out in terror as he watched his friend disappear in front of him.
"No!"
In that very instant, the arena around him disappeared, and rather than fighting the two pookas clad in armored, colorful robes, he was face to face with a pair of long, jet black cloaks, adorned at the face with matching, grotesque skulls. And where Emily's remain light had just formed, now her body lay instead, covered in long, red scars, blood laced with crisscrossing white lines just like her wounds. Behind him, a third member of Laughing Coffin had manifested, holding him back with a large chain, but it did little to stop him as Will pried and shoved himself out of the chain, and he tackled his captor to the ground, skewering him through his neck as his white cloak billowed behind him, not even noticing that his weapon cut through him so easily it was as if nothing was there at all.
"Emily! I'm coming!" he shouted behind him as the two other members of Laughing Coffin attacked as a pair, bringing their swords down on him as he rolled out of the way just in time to neatly slash through one of their necks. The other let out a silent scream and grabbed her partner's sword on the ground, unleashing a flurry of attacks that hid another horrifying transformation.
Though still in the same arena he and Emily had fought Laughing Coffin in, alongside the rest of the Assault Team, now something had changed. Instead of fighting a member of Laughing Coffin, now Kirito was bearing down on him with both of his blades at once, a furious snarl strewn across his face. "What?! Kirito, what are you doing?" he shouted as their weapons locked against each other's.
That was when Will heard his own voice. It sounded deeper, almost robotic, and there was a cruel, menacing sound to it. Will shook himself out of his trance, and he pushed Kirito away with a roar. "I'm not your enemy! They are!" he exclaimed, pointing off in the distance where he thought the other Laughing Coffin members were, only to realize there was nobody else there."
"No! You are my enemy!" Kirito shot back angrily, attacking again with another barrage of slashes and thrusts. As their battle continued on, the blood in Will's veins ran white hot, for if he'd just been fighting Laughing Coffin, and was now fighting Kirito in the same place, that could only mean one thing.
Kirito had joined Laughing Coffin.
But that wasn't it at all. No, it was even worse. Will himself had joined Laughing Coffin, and was now fighting the Assault Team. His once white, red, and silver armor, gifted to him by Asuna for joining the Knights of the Blood Oath, was now a deep, greenish black color, and tattered with unkempt holes and rusting chunks of armor. His worst fear since being trapped in SAO, perhaps a fear he dreaded even more than seeing his friends die, had come true, and now he was trying to kill them himself.
And yet despite all of that, Kirito was still standing between him and Emily, weapons bared, and he needed to get to her, he had to save her… right? That was what he was doing, wasn't it? There was a foggy haze of indecipherable, unchained anger in his mind as he tried to understand what was going on, but by all appearances, Kirito had just killed her, and now he was trying to kill Will too. What other explanation was there?
His foe locked both blades against the hilt of his spear, but immediately after coming to this realization, Will let out a scream and pushed Kirito away once again, but where he had cut off his attack last time to ask what the Black Swordsman was doing, now he kept on the offensive. His spear slashed through Kirito's hand, making him drop the Elucidator, and as he clutched his hand and shuffled back, he did the same to his other hand before spinning around behind him as the Black Swordsman fell to his knees in pain, with one hand he lifted him up by the neck, and with the other, drove his spear up parallel to his spine and straight through his digital skull, throwing the swordsman over his head and onto the ground.
With his foe's body now limp, Will pulled his spear out of his back and ran over to Emily's body. He gasped as he realized she was still alive, and her avatar hadn't been destroyed by the system, and he pulled her up into his arms and carried her out of the blood soaked arena, leaving his two foes there to die, if they weren't already.
January 22nd, 2025
1 AM, Japan Standard Time
Emily tossed and turned on her bed as she tried to sleep. Her mind raced with everything that had happened that day, from early morning when she and Will had woken up to meet Koharu in ALO, to only about an hour ago when she'd pulled the NerveGear off her head, seeing a small bowl of ramen on a tray next to her with a kindly written note from Suguha. And of course, when she'd been pulled out of that gray haze of death to see Koharu's face in ALO.
"Easy now, you're okay. It took me a while to get used to it too, so don't worry," she had said, though her words did little to calm her nerves for a while, and she'd ultimately decided to just log out. The tournament was over for the night anyway.
It wasn't the fact that she'd died and been fine that worried her though. If anything, she was somehow relieved. It proved that her NerveGear was well and truly harmless to her now. Even if she still planned to get rid of it once and for all after they figured out how to rescue Asuna from Alfheim, if it really was her in that picture at all, it was still good to know that the device that had given her so many horrible, traumatic experiences, memories, and sights that she'd have to live with for the rest of her life was finally no threat to her any more. Moreover, because this was true for her headset, it meant the same was true for both Kazuto's and Will's, as they'd done the same to all three after Will's test run to try to get back into SAO had ended in failure, but he'd still been able to return from the game unharmed.
Even so, this good news did nothing to assuage her worries not for their safety in the real world, but for the breakdown that she, through what Koharu had told her was a Remain Light, had watched Will go through.
"It's just like before… with Laughing Coffin. He saw something that he thought was a threat to my life, and he did what he thought he needed to to protect me… Only this time… this time he couldn't…" she thought to herself, quietly sitting up to go look out Suguha's window while the girl slept. It didn't take a genius to realize why he'd done what he'd done, why he'd flown into such a rage like that, especially after SAO. Knowing you and those you cared about, those you loved so deeply, were at no risk of real injury or death because of what happened in a game, and truly understanding it, truly being able to accept it, were two very different things.
The memories of that blood soaked nightmare of a day came rushing back to her as she looked out that window, like it was a literal portal to her memories. She saw the floating platforms of the strange, icy dungeon on the forty fifth floor of Aincrad, the entire Assault Team gathered there with her to apprehend the murderous players of Laughing Coffin. She saw Johnny Black's attempt to gut her from behind with his knife, Will coming to her defense only to be separated by two more members of Laughing Coffin while Black fled, and how she was forced to turn away to cut off another assassin from attacking Asuna, exposing her back and leaving herself vulnerable. She saw Uzala shove her out of the way of another sword, sacrificing her life to save her friend, and she saw still more chaos all around her that left her head spinning. Akihiro taking a spear to his shoulder to block a strike meant for Koharu, Kirito cutting off the head of a member of Laughing Coffin, and Klein kicking another's sword from his hand and tying him up in the sturdy coils of rope supplied by Schmitt and the Divine Dragon Alliance.
Droplets of water began to patter against the glass window as she recalled what happened next with her hand tight against her forehead in an internal struggle, her mind forcing itself to remember that horrible night, while simultaneously trying everything it could to do anything but that very thing. Another assassin tripped her from behind to allow the one who had just killed Uzala to claim one more of countless lives, and then Will appeared, anger missing from his expression as it was all covered by the more overwhelming desperation he felt to help her. His spear ripped through the back of the skull of Uzala's killer, and then just barely avoided cleaving off the heads of the assassin who had tripped her and another assassin who was fast approaching with murderous intent.
She could see the aftermath as clear as day too. The deathly pale expression of horror and terror streaked across Will's face. Others in the assault team who had been forced to make that awful choice shared similar expressions, but at that moment she cared only for Will's, as Klein and Grace tied up the other surrendering murderers, while Xander, Agil, Schmitt, and Asuna ran a headcount of who had been lost on their side. Kirito stood in grim silence, muttering something under his breath as a skull masked assassin was shoved past him. And she then remembered being there when Will was selected the next day at Granzam to take the place of Uzala, the very player who had died to protect Emily at the one moment that he could not, surely one of his life's cruelest twists, maybe more so than even being stuck in SAO in the first place.
She glanced over at the clock she and Suguha were sharing, and widened her eyes in silent surprise at just how late it had already gotten, before realizing that her throat felt just a little parched. "Well, I was diving for pretty much the entire afternoon and evening," she pointed out to herself. With a sigh, she walked over to the door and watched Suguha for any signs of movement as she ever so slowly creaked open the door. The girl remained fast asleep, however, and Emily walked out into the hall and almost silently closed it behind her, before down the stairs of the Kirigaya's house, rolling her feet carefully so as to not make the slightest noise on the wooden steps that might wake someone up.
As she got halfway down the stairs, however, she heard an unexpected noise, one that didn't come from her. She wasn't the only one awake in the house, and as her mind, still not entirely detached from the painful memories of the tragic raid on Laughing Coffin, made her momentarily tense up and reach for the bladed shields that were no longer on her belt, she realized it wasn't the sound of someone sneaking around. Emily sighed and relaxed her arms, reminding herself that she wasn't in the digital realm of SAO anymore, but in the real world.
She looked around the landing at the bottom of the stairs, her eyes now adjusted to the lack of light around her. After not seeing anyone there, but with her curiosity still piqued, she opened the door to the kitchen and living room. The sound became louder, and she could tell it was somebody holding back tears. After two years in SAO, surrounded nearly every day either by the dead and dying, or the hopeless and despaired, it was sadly a sound she knew all too well.
She walked over to the couch, seeing Will faintly illuminated in the moonlight washing through the windows. His head was buried in his hands, and although muffled, it was clear he was crying. "Will? Is everything okay?"
She knew it was a stupid question the moment the words left her mouth. Will almost never cried, not even before SAO, and on the rare occasion he did, as long as she'd known him it had only ever been because something truly horrible was tearing him up inside. He slowly turned his head to look at her, his eyes stained with tears as she sat down next to him. In an instant, he threw himself onto her, burying his face into her shoulder. "I- I didn't want you… to see me like this… But I… I thought… I thought you had died… I thought I'd lost you…" was all he could get out of his mouth between sobs as his tears ran down her nightshirt.
Emily reassuringly wrapped her arm around him and gently rubbed his back in small circles. "It's okay… I'm fine, I'm right here," she softly responded. "And I don't blame you for leaving."
While Emily was being revived by an advanced healing spell from Koharu, Will had silently logged out behind her, his eyes still fraught with tears and pain. Although Koharu had been upset and angry that he'd left, Emily knew that it was because he needed time to be alone. What he'd gone through had been almost a perfect example of the experiences she'd read about from people living with PTSD, something she'd read up on extensively following hers and Will's return from SAO, upon her doctor's suggestion. The wild, incomprehensible anger, the hypervigilant, angry, and terrified expression, the uncontrollable trembling his arms were experiencing as he carried her Remain Light out of the arena, it all matched up scarily perfectly. Even if he knew in his head that she would be fine, after everything they'd been through together, it made perfect sense that he might've instinctively thought returning her body to it's normal form from the Remain Light would show nothing but her dead body.
"I'm just a murderer… Even if I didn't really kill either of them… I wanted to… I saw them as nothing but more members of Laughing Coffin, and then I saw Kirito as a red player, and I had to kill him too… And even if I hadn't… I still killed in SAO… Do I even deserve to be forgiven for that?" he shakily asked. "I couldn't even tell my family the truth. I told them I'd hidden myself away behind the front lines… just to stay alive… I'm a coward… just a weak, scared coward…"
Emily's eyes watered at that. "Don't say that, Will, you're a good person. I had to kill in SAO too, remember?" she replied as Will pressed his head into her shoulder again. "And you're not a coward. Sometimes, we have to keep secrets because we don't want to hurt those we care about. I couldn't bring myself to tell my family either. Do you think I'm a bad person for killing that red player to save those kids on floor seventy one, during that rest we took after you'd been working yourself half to death following your promotion?"
She felt him shake his head against her arm, and she softly smiled reassuringly. Even though she knew he couldn't see it, she somehow knew he could feel it, after everything they'd been through together. "Then what's the difference between you killing those members of Laughing Coffin to save me?" she finally asked. "I had to kill to protect those kids, and you had to kill to protect me. But you know what? That doesn't make you any worse of a person than it does me. As hard as it is to live with, I wouldn't change my actions now, and I doubt you would either."
Will hiccuped into her nightshirt a few more times, and then looked up at her face, his eyes fraught with tears. "But I'm… I'm no better than PoH… when I saw you disappear, all I wanted to do was to hurt, to avenge, to kill. Those were kids you saved, but I… I even hoped those two sisters actually died when I took them out, all because I thought they'd killed you, and I could see them as nothing more than other members of Laughing Coffin…" he admitted quietly. "How can anyone call me a good person after that?"
"No, you're better than he, or any other red player, could ever dream of being. He killed others simply because he could, because he wanted to, and because and it made his sick, twisted mind feel good. But you fight to protect those who can't. You fought tooth and nail for everyone in SAO, the same way you fight tooth and nail to protect me, and I to protect you," she gently countered. "You want to know how I know that? It's because you feel so awful now. It's simply not in your nature to kill, it goes against everything you believe. And yet you did it anyway so that you could save me. People like PoH do it on a whim, and think nothing of the lives they've taken afterward, but for those like us? Like Kirito and Asuna, Grace and Xander, and everyone else on the Assault Team? That's an almost impossible choice, to let your life, or the life of someone you love, be taken, or to take your foe's first. Most people, even in SAO, never had the courage to make that choice, but you did, and even if one day everyone in the world blames you for it, I never will. After all, if you hadn't made that choice, I wouldn't be here right now, would I?"
Neither of them spoke after that. As the night passed, they simply sat there on the couch, holding each other tightly until they both finally fell into a peaceful, comforting sleep.
Castle Aincrad, Floor 71
August 15th, 2024
"What's going on? Miss Emily, who are those players?!" A girl asked, her voice full of terror as she and her two friends, along with Will and Emily, were surrounded by three hooded figures, each brandishing a different type of weapon. The ashen blizzard whipping between the barren, charred trees around them seemed to grow in intensity by the second, almost in response to the tension quickly filling the air as Will and Emily recognized the attire of their presumed foes all too well.
"Laughing Coffin remnants…" Emily muttered under her breath, holding both of her gauntlet shields up defensively. "Whatever you want with these kids, you're gonna have to go through us to get it," she promised out loud, as Will echoed her sentiment by silently raising his spear. The three assassins grinned from under their hoods with evil intent just like they had at the beginning of SAO, and Emily remembered how after that first ambush, Will would still occasionally have trouble sleeping, as he would wake up in a cold sweat after a nightmare just like that day, but how it could've gone much worse. It had taken him almost three months to finally be able to calm down and not worry about being attacked in his sleep after that, and not have to sleep with his polearm right beside him, and a dagger on his bedside table.
Now, it seemed, they were in a very similar situation. They had to protect a group of weaker, and in this case, younger players from a group of murder craven assassins.
"Oh, we don't care much about those kids. But you two… You were there, when you attacked our guild out of fear. We're in a game, idiots! Who can really say if you die here, you actually die in the real world?" one of them said.
"Oh come on, don't tell me people still believe that now!" Will called out in disbelief. "If we could die and log out safely that way, then how come nobody who has supposedly died come back to tell us yet, if there isn't any danger involved?!"
The assassin ignored his point, and glared straight at Emily. "When we heard that two high ranking members of both the Assault Team, and of the Knights of the Blood Oath," he said, sliding a long, one handed sword across the rim of his shield, before continuing, "were out protecting some weak, low level players… Well, we knew this was a great time for revenge!"
With that, the assassin reached inside his cloak and threw a trio of long throwing knives at Emily, who parried them all with a quick, defensive sword skill. But she still left herself open just long enough for the assassin to swing his sword down in an overhead slash right at her skull, an attack that was parried by the back end of Will's spear as she regained her ability to move just a moment later and threw down a small cylinder item that worked like a smoke bomb, lingering in the air even as the wind tried to carry it away. "Quick, you three! Run! Will and I will hold them off!" she said to the three children they'd been escorting. It had been foolish of the two veteran members of the Assault Team to think they wouldn't need teleport crystals, and now they were paying for it. "Stick together and don't stop for anything until you get back to the town! We'll meet you there!"
The three children nodded and made a mad dash through the smoke as Will cleared it away a few seconds later with a large area of effect sword skill that Emily ducked under. The three Laughing Coffin members closed in on them from all sides, their weapons raised and ready to strike. Will glanced at Emily and nodded upward, and his wife nodded. In a split second, she had kicked up onto the hilt of his spear, and he in turn had launched her into the air, where she landed on the ground behind two of the assassins and pummeled them with a furious barrage aimed at their joints, her Mythril Defenders glowing white. Her strikes connected, and both assassins were pushed onto their backs as Will parried another axe strike from the assassin behind him.
Emily thrust her bladed shields into the left arm of one of the assassins on the ground in front of her, leaving them there, embedded through his arm and preventing him from getting up, while she fought off the other assassin. Her hand glowed orange with the light of her Senda sword skill, an unarmed uppercut attack that left him reeling while Emily waited out her post-motion freeze timer. As soon as she was able to move again, she charged at him with a blindingly fast flurry of punches, kicks, and swipes that quickly disarmed and knocked out the assassin. As she quickly set to work binding him to a tree with a long coil of rope, Will had also defeated his opponent and was doing the same.
That was when they realized that the assassin Emily had pinned to the ground was gone, and her shields were lying off to the side of where she'd left him.
"Oh no, he must've heard me tell them to go back to the town! Will, we have to stop him before he reaches them!" she realized, scooping up her shields and sliding them on as she and Will both ran, the latter sending a message to Asuna telling her they'd run into a trio of escaped Laughing Coffin members and left two of them incapacitated, along with the coordinates she could find them at.
"Come on, please be okay, please be okay," Emily repeatedly muttered under her breath, adrenaline coursing through her veins as she lengthened her stride after breaching the last of the tundra forest treeline and getting out onto the open, snowy plains.
"Miss Emily, help! They're right behind us!" a voice called out, but from where? Across this seemingly endless field as white as snow, it could've come from anywhere. Emily slid to a stop on a small patch of ice, and closed her eyes, just like how Kirito had taught her, Will, Grace, and Xander after the raid on Laughing Coffin. It was the same skill he'd used to save himself from being skewered head to toe by the first wave of attackers when they'd been ambushed in their lair.
The freezing, biting wind whipped all over the snow, and Will came to a stop behind her, doing the same thing she had. Suddenly, another scream echoed out, and they both opened their eyes, knowing exactly where it had come from. In an instant, they had kicked off the ground and were sprinting to their left as fast as they could.
Their weapons at the ready, they quickly caught up with the three players they'd been trying to protect. But it was a bad sight to see, as two were on the ground with a number of cuts and slashes all over their bodies, and the third was being held up in the air by his hair, with a knife at his throat held by the last member of the group of assassins.
Emily and Will slid to a stop a few feet away, their weapons pointed at the assassin. "Not one step closer, or he dies," the red player warned as the boy tried to pry himself free, but to no avail, and Emily and Will both narrowed their eyes.
"Where's one of our friends when we need them…" she thought to herself frustratedly, as she glared at the man with narrowed, angry eyes. "I just need a split second opening, and I can get in there with my Lightning Jab sword skill. Move too early, the kid dies. But wait too long, and he still dies…"
As if he could read her thoughts, however, Will glanced over at her out of the corner of his eyes, and nodded ever so slightly, before glancing back behind the man. A small cloud of snow, ash, and soot was tumbling down the frozen volcano behind him, quickly gaining speed. That was going to be their one chance.
Emily nodded back with a barely noticeable movement of her head, and then she looked back at the assassin. "All right, you win. Just let the kid go, and we'll let you go," she called out, setting one of her shields on the ground slowly, as Will slowly set his staff on the ground as well. The assassin snarled.
"You think I'd really believe that?" he shot back, and for the first time, they noticed that his hand was trembling ever so slightly, unaware of the fast approaching billow of snow coming up right behind him.
"No, we didn't. Now, Will!" Emily shouted, and her husband curled his fingers into a fist and flew past him, activating the unarmed variant of Lightning Jab to strike at the wave of ash, sending a massive cloud of soot and ash flying everywhere and surprising their enemy just long enough for Emily to charge in with the same skill, aimed at the man's shoulder in an attempt to send him flying away from the boy.
But at the last second, the assassin twisted suddenly and tried to move the boy into Emily's path, but he was fortunately a fraction of a second too slow. The man let out a yelp of pain and shock as her blade buried itself deep into digital tendons, muscles, and bones, forcing him to let go of the boy. He flipped backward and threw another volley of throwing knives from under his cloak at the three children, but frozen as she was from her post-motion freeze timer, Emily was unable to even look and see what happened. And even if she could, she also knew Will was there to protect the kids, but he was unarmed. She had to defeat him on her own with just one of her shields, and as soon as she could feel her body again, she let out a furious battle cry and lunged with incredible speed at the man's other shoulder.
To her shock, he didn't dodge in the way she'd expected him to, and in fact, moved in the opposite direction. Before either of them could blink, her blade was embedded all the way through his throat and cut it clean off. She gasped in shock, her mind still catching up with what had happened, and she forced herself to look away from what she'd done, instead looking behind her at Will, who had a shocked expression on his face. Embedded deep in his arm were the three knives the assassin had thrown just moments earlier, and the three children were no more harmed than when they'd found them.
Letting out a sigh of relief, Emily then made the mistake of turning around to look at the corpse under her feet right before it shattered like rainbow colored glass, and her eyes watered with tears. Her knees buckled, and she fell to the ground, distraught.
"I… I just… no…" she thought to herself, trying to fight back the tears as they started to fall, not because she'd killed a member of Laughing Coffin, but merely because she'd killed someone at all, when this far into the game, this late into their imprisonment by Akihiko Kayaba's Sword Art Online, the only thing anyone needed to be thinking about was getting out alive. And by her blade, one less person would now see the end of the game.
She gasped in surprise as she felt someone wrap an arm around her back and pull her to her feet. Will let her lean into his chest, and she let the tears fall freely.
A/N: Guess what's up on the chopping block first? That's right, SAO! I don't know why this is always the one that I want to work on most, when it's by far my least viewed series, but I do. I guess I just simply enjoy it alot, although given the amount of trauma my characters undergo… geez. I don't know if I should feel happy I'm able to write about that, or concerned, haha. Either way, I hope you enjoyed this rather long chapter, cuz we've got things to dissect!
First up, the Pooka combat system! To explain it simply, Pookas have the special skill to, when they focus on the weapon in their hand, or in Emily's case, weapons, since I'm going off the assumption that shields are seen in ALO's code as another type of defensive weapon, they can turn it into any musical instrument that matches it's properties or shape. So, for example, Will's spear could turn into a clarinet because it's the same, straight and long shape, but another player could also turn a sword into a clarinet. On the other hand, neither would be able to turn their clarinet back into a different weapon. It's a one to one conversion. You get one weapon, and the first instrument you imagine it turns into, that's what it's locked into permanently.
Emily's weapons work much the same. She's got a sword that turns into a violin bow, and her shield turns into her violin. With a bigger sword and shield, she might be able to turn them into a larger string instrument, such as a cello, but she can't now, because she chose to turn them into a violin. Do you see what I'm getting at now?
The only exception is vocalists. Unlike players with instrument weapons, their instrument is quite literally their voice, so their weapons don't turn into anything. (I suppose they could if they wanted to, but having to memorize another wholly different set of melodies for their sound magic to make pretty much any use of it seems more work than worth to me.)
Anyway, that's about everything I have to discuss, and I'm also sleepy, so I'll see you next time!