I saw the shorter green girl rush me as her taller friend with the ash-colored skin swung with a giant club, my options were rather bleak until my partner got into position, so I took my time and tried to keep dodging blows. The short girl kept getting in close and doing what she could to either stab or slash me, only to then jump backward as her partner closed in and swung her club again and again. I knew I was losing ground fast, but I couldn’t do much else until...
Right there! I thought, seeing the figure of a dwarven man jumping up and slamming a warhammer the size of his body into the tall girl. She stumbled back and I knew it was time to go on the offensive. I lifted my longsword and deflected the short girl’s dagger, rushing to close in, I then delivered a headbutt. It hurt, but I managed to get some distance and time; that’s all I needed.
I extended my index and middle fingers on my right hand, keeping the rest curled firmly in a fist, and I flipped my wrist and swept the fingers upward. Shouting something in a language I didn’t know, I grinned. The girl looked to have become more irritated and would have moved at me with more speed until a gout of flame erupted upwards into her face. She fell to the ground unconscious, and seconds later I heard the buzzer going off that announced the end of the match. Looking up, I saw my partner raising his head and taking off his helmet, he must have managed to defeat the tall girl.
*buzz-buzz-buzz-buzz-buzz-SLAP!*
I opened my eyes as my alarm went off, and could feel the irritation seething off my sister as she slammed her hand onto the alarm. I sat up and blinked, my sleepy face likely a mirror image of my twin’s. Or at least I had to assume so, I still couldn’t see things, I didn’t have my glasses on. I shuffled around a little to find my glasses on my nightstand, and eventually touched them. I stretched the elastic on the back and slid the wraparound goggles down, and as I let the elastic slap against the back of my head my vision snapped into focus.
“Why do you wear those weird excuse for glasses? It doesn’t make you look any cooler, Arth.” My sister said as our eyes met. She was stretching, a yawn crossed her face.
“Do you remember the last seven pairs of glasses I had, Morg?” I countered, a similar yawn crossing my face.
“You’re just trying to guilt me. It’s not my fault that your head seems to attract every spherical object that comes into range.” She pouted, knowing that the last time my glasses broke was directly caused by her kicking a soccer ball that nailed me in the face. “In the mean time, I’m taking my shower first.”
As she ran off down the hall with a set of her clothes, I stretched again and grabbed my phone. Looking over the school website, I saw that there was a bulletin out. No school due to a fire that started in the... computer lab? That’s unfortunate.
I spent another ten minutes checking email, reading news, and seeing what had happened on my social media feed. I looked up when I heard footsteps in the hall, the squeaking floorboard making enough noise to notify me that Morgana had wandered back in. She stood in the doorway placing her trademark welding goggles on her forehead.
“Why do you wear those when you don’t need them?” I asked, mimicking the tone she used earlier.
“Shut up, you know how much I hate how this house seems to worship all things fantasy.” She muttered back.
I stood up and grabbed my clothing from my dresser and made my way into the hallway.
“School’s closed today, computer lab caught fire. I’ve sent an invite to Kès to see if he’s up to doing things today.” I said as I passed my twin.
I ambled my way to the bathroom and set my clothes on top of our vanity and started the shower. The hot water spewed forth from the dragon shaped showerhead and crashed against the still damp stone floor. I went over to the mirror and gazed at my reflection. The pale face and short cropped golden hair augmented the pale blue eyes and my goggles. I took a breath and exhaled, trying to remember why today felt like something important… Oh, crap! Arthur, it’s your birthday! You’re fifteen today…
I stepped into the shower after removing my glasses, thinking out how best to deal with what I knew would be a crazy day… well, crazy was likely an understatement in this house. I mean I’m in a shower with a stone floor and a dragon’s head spewing water at me, crazy is kind of subjective. Maybe now would be a good time to explain things.
My mother is a world renown fantasy novelist, she used to go to some fancy school off the coast of the United Kingdom which holds a lot of sway in the world. My dad on the other hand works as a graphic designer for some fantasy game company. I bet you’re seeing a trend here, and you’d be right to assume that they fell in love over one another’s work. But what they share the most is an almost fanatical fixation on Arthurian lore, hence my sister and I are so named. Plus the fantasy theme in the house makes it look almost like we live in a castle.
I finished my shower, dried off, and got my clothes on at my own speed. I then slowly opened the door and my nose immediately filled with an acrid smell. It was like… Oh god, Mom’s cooking! I dashed toward the room Morgana and I shared as quietly as I was able. As I reached the door and cracked it, my eyes met Morgana’s and we had a moment of twin telepathy.
Morgana and I made every effort to be silent as we snuck out the back door, and we almost made it. I reached my hand out to the doorknob, and then the door flew open. Standing in the doorway was Kès, and he was smiling broadly.
“Well good morning siblings Pendris! I am humbled to see you today, on this glorious day of celebration!” He said, his acting was loud and proud. He was ratting us out… that son of a biznich. I was going to kill him, he was going to regret this as much as I was going to hate what comes next.
“Kès, will you bring Arthur and Morgana to the table?” called my mother from the dining room. I felt my heart sink as he grinned even wider and set his hands on his hips. We turned around and trudged slowly toward the table. The door swang shut behind us, and Kès followed us so we couldn’t try escaping. When we got into the dining room we were greeted by our mother, her bright golden locks falling to her shoulders and a shining smile belayed the poison we were about to be forced to eat.
We all sat down and looked at the plates set before us. There were eggs, which looked normal, burnt bacon, some kind of… oatmeal… and messed up glasses of orange juice. Almost like she tried juicing oranges with a fork, again. I could see the look of regret covering Kès’ face as he sat down with us, sucker deserved it though. We all tried the first bite, and it was as bad as I feared. The eggs had shell in them, the bacon was charcoal, the oatmeal was more like gruel , and the juice tasted like someone had put trees in the glass.
We ate as much as we could, pretending we were not hungry, and made the quickest escape we could. Once outside we could talk about where we were headed, and after a suggestion from Kès, we made our way over to the local arcade. I say arcade, but it was really like a mall than it was anything else. Two stories high, almost a city block long, and about that wide. Inside was just about any current release gaming platform you could imagine; the newest bleeding-edge VR, old-school arcade cabinets, a large internet café section for LAN parties, and some tables I couldn’t name immediately.
Norman, the owner, waved at us as we walked in and motioned for us to come over to the table he was standing over. As we made our way across the wildly energetic floor, we took note of new posters advertising a tournament for a game we never heard of called Castrum Legio. Sounded Latin, maybe a history based game? I wonder what it’s about.
We reached the table as Norm put the finishing touches on whatever this new machine was, and we could see the excitement on his face. He pointed at the table, then the posters, then us; he wanted us in the tournament for the game. I itched my face before looking at my two associates, and then we discussed it momentarily before doing what we knew we would do anyway.
“OK Norman, we’re in. What’s the deal with this game?” I asked, doing my best to sound exasperated.
“So you create a character over on one of the PCs, port it to a flashdrive, and then you slam that sucker into the table. Once the table reads your character, it’ll make a 3D render of it, and you fight other players. There’s magic and swordplay and guns, obviously all have been balanced, and the tournament is backed by the school that made the game. Even I’ve not seen the controls yet, and the table showed up just last night, so I stayed up to get it going. I was just going to fire it up for a test run, you kids wanna join in? Call it a birthday gift from me to you twins.”
We ran over to the PC marked private, it had a program up that looked like your basic character creation screen, and we each made an avatar. I let Morgana and Kès make their avatars first; Morgana chose a dark elf magic caster and Kès made a dwarf fighter. Then it was my turn, and I had no idea what I wanted. My racial options looked standard; Serpentmen, half-dragonblood, a slew of Elf varieties, Elementfolk, Orcs, and so many half breed varieties that it made my head spin. Classes were also rather standard I guess; Barbarians, Thieves, Archers, Mages, Assassins, Knight, and one called Sovereign. And you picked a starting weapon set based on the class you chose.
I decided I’d be an Aquan, a water elementalfolk, and I picked the sovereign class since it had the least information. My starting equipment included a longsword, a set of dragonscale armor, and a bracer of magic focus. It looked impressive, with algae green hair, crystal blue skin, eyes the color of pearls, and the scale armor was a deep crimson with golden accents. I saved him to a flashdrive and hurried over with Kès and Morgana to where Norm waited. We were instructed to insert the drives into slots at the corners we would be playing from while keeping one hand on the table.
We did as we were told, and as I placed my drive into the slot, I felt a minor prick in my palm and flipped it over to check what had happened. A small gold speck in the exact center glowed, as if embedded under the skin, and I felt a humming in my hand. Moments later a disk of pure light popped into existence around it, it then morphed and took the shape of a skeletal light gauntlet. I moved my fingers and hand about, the gauntlet followed each movement as if it were my hand.
Norm, after examining his own gauntlet, touched his hands together. Suddenly a second gauntlet showed around his other hand, and it tracked his movements as if it were really there as well. Then the menu popped up in holographic form on the table. Norm used his hand to move through the menu by scrolling up and down. He made a double tap motion when “Test Mode” was highlighted, and we saw the menu vanish. Moments later, a wireframe environment popped into existence, and on that frame appeared our avatars… or at least the skele-frame of them. In front of my left eye popped up a small… well if it was a computer I’d call it a window, so let’s refer to it like that.
The window had a rundown of how each and every action I could make as my character worked and how my body movement translated into character movement. I made a few motions and saw my avatar do the exact same thing. This is amazing!
After a minute, we saw a countdown timer start. Each of us had a ring about the character’s base, the rings were blue for Norm and Kès and red for Morgana and I. I took a moment before I ran out of time to look at Norman’s skele-frame avatar, he looked sneaky and lithe… the exact opposite of it’s real life counterpart… and it was armed with a crossbow. That’s probably an assassin… range and poison if I had to guess.
Then there was a gentle ringing as the timer hit zero. Morgana and I often played as a team in video games, Kès always joked that the “twin telepathy” made us fight as a single unit. This annoyed us both, but the results were often synchronized, so maybe there was some truth to it. This game was no exception; almost as one, Morgana and I moved our characters forward and began casting low level spells as we made our way towards the enemy.
Kès and Norm both jumped to life moments later; Norman making a move for one of the few skele-frame trees, and Kès toward Morgana. I flicked my vision toward my sister, met her eyes, and we focused on Norman as we loosed our magic. A cone of light shot from Morgana’s avatar, and my avatar loosed a comet of skeletal lights, both hit their mark seconds later. The skele-frame went from the bluish white it started at and shifted to a deep red. Is that a hit point counter? How would you see that if there’s actual character models over the frame?
Norm’s frame froze, likely a result of status effects or damage to his system. I heard Morgana whispering curses and looked back toward the action, Kès had gotten in really close. I saw his dwarf swing a massive hammer at her, and her frame went from blue-white to yellow. Definitely HP tracking.
I made my avatar break into a sprint, eventually reaching Kès and Morgana’s fight, and I brought my longsword up in a slash that connected across the short image of Kès’ avatar. It went to a deep orange color, so I must have hit harder than he had, maybe that was a critical. Morgana then loosed another low level spell as I jumped backward, away from the now orange Kès, and it went black and fell to the ground.
I then saw Morgana’s frame go black as well. Norm must have recovered. So I scanned the area and found his avatar retreating behind a hill. I decided to try the special skill that my page had shown me, minor teleportation. As a Sovereign, I could warp a short distance and not interrupt any other actions I was making.
I saw my avatar vanish as Norm popped up to take another shot, and reappear at the base of the hill. Norm couldn’t get a shot, but I still had some spells left in my character that could get him. So I made the motion to summon spikes from below, and the land shot up into Norm’s avatar. It fell to the ground a blackened heap. A flash of “Winner” popped up in the center before the table dissipated.
“So how was it?” Norm asked as we all pulled our drives from the machine and the gauntlets vanished.
“I think this will be an epic tournament.” Morgana said, her excitement flashing across her face.
“Is there a way to level the characters before the tournament?” Kès asked, his face a picture of enthusiasm.
Norm explained that there was an online part that would be accessible the day before the tournament to allow players access to more skills and equipment before hitting the competition. We were scheduled to start at the end of the week, which puts us at the start of September. Talk about a great way to start the school year.
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