Chapter 6: Localization Pack

  Thorne stared at the crater, his mouth opening and closing like a landed fish. Finally, he found his voice, stepping forward with his hands raised defensively.

  "(Vael’thoras in’adriel... keth lumina?)" Thorne stammered, his voice trembling.

  Agent Locke instantly raised his sidearm, tracking the young man in the leather armor. Locke's featureless visor was sparking wildly, tiny arcs of blue electricity dancing across the black glass as the dense Aurelian Mana wreaked havoc on his Earth-tech optics.

  "Kane," Locke barked, his voice tight. "My audio processors are picking up localized phonetics, but the translation matrix is throwing fatal errors. What is he saying? Is it hostile?"

  Alexander rubbed his temples. He had heard the exact same melodic, flowing gibberish that Locke had. But then, a sharp chime echoed inside his own skull.

  In the upper-right corner of his peripheral vision, a glowing notification popped into existence:

  [UNRECOGNIZED AUDIO_FORMAT DETECTED.]

  [SEARCHING DIRECTORY... MATCH FOUND: AURELIAN_ROOT_DIALECT_V4]

  [DOWNLOADING LOCALIZATION_PACK.ZIP... 100%]

  [INSTALLING PATCH.]

  Alex blinked. The world seemed to stutter for a microsecond.

  Thorne took another step forward, bowing his head respectfully. "(Keth lumina)... I mean, by the Light, are you... are you emissaries of the Silver Spire? Or perhaps lost Archmages?"

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Alex’s jaw dropped. The boy's lips were still moving in that strange, flowing cadence, but in Alex's mind, the words translated seamlessly into perfect, modern English.

  "He thinks we're wizards," Alex said, turning to Locke in disbelief.

  "Tell him we aren't," Locke snapped, keeping his weapon trained on the treeline, watching the other three terrified rookie adventurers. "And ask him what the hell that glitching wolf-thing was. My thermal scanners say it didn't have a biological heat signature. It was running cold."

  "Hey, easy," Alex said, pushing Locke's gun barrel down. He turned back to Thorne and tried to put on a non-threatening smile. "We aren't Archmages. We're just... really lost. I'm Alex. This is Locke. What was that thing we just landed on?"

  Thorne’s eyes went wide. To Thorne's ears, Alex's English was automatically being translated back into flawless Aurelian.

  "That was a Rot-Hound, my lord," Thorne said, wiping sweat from his brow. "A beast of the Corrupted Sectors. They shouldn't be this far south! The Guild ward-stones must be failing."

  "Guild?" Alex asked, latching onto the familiar RPG term.

  "The Adventurer's Guild in Moonveil," Thorne explained, gesturing to a break in the massive trees where a distant, towering city of white stone and glowing blue crystal pierced the purple sky. "We were just a Copper-Tag patrol. We would have been slaughtered if you hadn't cast that... that incredible gravity spell!"

  Alex looked at the smoking crater. He hadn't cast a spell. He had accidentally edited the local physics engine.

  "Locke," Alex murmured, keeping his voice low so the locals wouldn't hear. "They're friendly. They have a city nearby called Moonveil. I think we need to go with them."

  Locke tapped the side of his helmet, frustrated. "My comms to Earth are dead. My GPS is reading a blank void, and my battery reserves are draining by the second in this atmosphere. Fine. We go to the city. But you do the talking, Kane. If anything glitches at us again, I shoot it."

  Alex nodded, turning back to Thorne. "Lead the way to Moonveil. We could use a safe place to rest."

  Thorne beamed, clearly honored to be escorting such powerful "mages." As the group began to hike through the emerald forest, Alex glanced down at his own hands. He could still faintly see the cascading lines of Golden Code humming beneath his skin. He wasn't just in a different world. He had root access to it.