Chapter Sixteen

  "Dammit," said Alex, punching into her open palm at the deteriorated log. A blue butterfly had taken roost on the good end of the wood, which made her exclamation less cathartic than usual. Her frustration deepened when she happened to analyze her cloth shirt.

  Item: Cloth Shirt [DESTROYED]

  As she was examining the cloth shirt, it faded from her chest, leaving her in nothing but a sports bra. She wasn't completely bummed until she checked the coiled weapon on her hip.

  Item: Vicious Thorny Whip [DESTROYED]

  "No!" she said, grasping at it as it disappeared from view.

  Quest Offered: Create a magical weapon (+5,000 XP) [Y/N]

  Quest Offered: Create a magical piece of armor (+5,000 XP) [Y/N]

  Alex sunk to her knees. The rotting venom had killed her and destroyed two pieces of gear. The cloth shirt was only to keep her from running around half-naked, so she really didn't care since she hadn't seen anyone else during her months in game, but the whip was her only real weapon. Even the quest pop-ups didn't lessen her losses.

  "I'm going to kill that stupid cobrawasp," said Alex.

  Quest Offered: Get revenge on the Ghostly Cobrawasp (+10,000 XP) [Y/N]

  "By Merlin's hairy butthole, I will," said Alex, swiping to accept the quest, before heading to the bramble patch to make a new weapon. When she got to it, her stomach twisted into one big, giant knot.

  The bramble patch was gone. She could see signs of where the Brutal Rhinoboar had scarred the ground, but a leafy vine had taken over the area. Only dead brown stalks remained of the bramble patch, as if it'd been too damaged to survive, allowing the interloper's intrusion.

  The whole trip back to the campsite Alex racked her brain for weapon ideas. Without the thorny brambles she had no way to make a viable one. Sure, she could use a big stick as a club, but mindless bashing wasn't going to help her defeat the higher-level monsters.

  It wasn't like she had access to metal, or even a stone knife. Her only sharp object had gone over the edge of the cliff into a river.

  All at once, she had the overwhelming desire to talk to her mom. She'd been in the Warped Forest for what felt like three months, but she had no idea how long it'd been. Last time she'd been out, the first day of playing the game, she'd tried to call her mom, but no one had been home.

  She'd been so busy, she'd forgotten that she'd promised to call her. It didn't help that she received an experience penalty every time she logged out.

  But penalty be damned. She needed time away from the Warped Forest and the Ghostly Cobrawasp that was absolutely kicking her ass.

  Alex cringed when she hit yes, accepting the penalty.

  When she appeared next to the obsidian cube, she caught a glimpse of a girl with red hair right before she disappeared. The sensation of watching someone lying on the cushions one moment, and not the next, left Alex with whiplash.

  "Damn," she said. "It would have been nice to talk to someone."

  Especially a person who would understand the level of frustration she was feeling. Alex had expected a tactically difficult game, but she hadn't thought it'd be so immersive. It made the failures all the more difficult to deal with. In a regular game, you only had to reload and try again, and usually the penalties weren't so severe. Gamemakers Online felt like constantly taking two steps forward and one step back.

  She felt like a stranger creeping back into the house. The first crackles of thunder had her ducking for cover until she realized what they were.

  A storm pounded the city. Alex found a window and pressed herself to the glass, catching glimpses of the broken buildings surrounding Gamemakers Hall when the lightning snaked across the sky.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  She loved storms, but in the city of sorcery they seemed different, as if they were amped by the presence of magic. She'd read that somewhere but thought it'd been a rumor. The ferocity of the lightning suggested otherwise.

  It took her a half hour to find her room again, but once there, she headed back out because she wasn't tired and she'd logged out of the game to talk to her mom. But since it was dark, she didn't know what time it was, or even what month.

  Alex made her way to the kitchen to find a clock that read 3:28.

  "Great," she said with a sigh. It'd be hours until her mom was awake.

  She looked around for a marked calendar, but not finding one, opened the refrigerator instead. Only a mishmash of foods, clearly the leftovers from other students' grocery trips, remained, but Alex was an expert at making do. She boiled water for ramen, chopped up the vegetables that hadn't gone bad yet and threw them into the pot, then squirted too much sriracha and soy sauce into the mixture afterwards.

  The salty noodle mix satisfied her hunger, but she kept feeling like it was missing something, so she dug through the cabinets until she found a bag of loose granola, which she dumped into it. The crunchy material seemed to be the piece she was missing.

  After eating, Alex searched the house again, looking for signs that someone was out of the game, opening doors that she'd avoided before. In one room, she found the walls had been written on, extensive calculations for a type of mathematics she'd never encountered before. She could pick out derivatives and other signs of calculus, but there were symbols completely foreign to her in the mix.

  When it didn't seem like anyone was around, she went back to her room and looked through the spell book that she'd found on her previous visit. In the vellum pages, she found neat handwriting describing complex spells along with professional looking sketches for the finger movements. Unfortunately, the spell effects weren't given and she was such a novice with magic that they could have been for summoning demons or creating a nice Cobb salad.

  Alex studied the book until the hazy light of morning kissed the glass, revealing that the storm had passed. She raced to the rotary phone and dialed her mother, hoping to catch her before she took her morning walk.

  The phone rang eight times, Alex's heart sinking lower at each one, but then someone answered.

  "Duke residence," said her mother.

  "Hey, Mom!"

  "Alexandria!" came the excited reply, followed by a throat-rattling cough.

  "You okay, Mom?" she asked.

  "Nothing really." A pause. "I thought you were going to call more."

  Heat rose to Alex's face. "I'm sorry, I planned to, but when I'm in the game, I can't."

  "Game?" asked her mom. "I thought you were learning magic?"

  "I am, but it's complicated," she said, realizing she didn't want to explain.

  "I've been wondering if you were even at that Hundred Halls place," said her mom, clearly exasperated.

  "Yeah, Mom. I know, I should have called sooner," said Alex, putting her hand to her forehead. "Uhm, weird question, and please humor me by answering, but what day is it?"

  "Tuesday," said her mom with a questioning tone.

  "No, like what day, the date," said Alex.

  "It's November fifteenth."

  Alex held her hand over the mouthpiece. "Oh shit."

  She thought it'd been half that time, but she must have gotten the ratio between the two wrong. Not that it was easy to mentally calculate time. She could juggle numbers in her head, and directions were relatively intuitive to her, but time, especially when playing games, always ran away from her. She didn't even want to think about the fact that she was only level 3 and she had seventeen more to go. At her current pace, she’d fall short at level 12.

  Alex paced along the hallway, tethered to the phone by the curly wire. Back at home, she'd never found it difficult to talk to her mom, but the distance made her fumble over her words.

  "Hey, uhm, how are you doing?"

  "You already asked that, sweetie," said her mom.

  "What about the diner?"

  A barely contained sigh came through the phone. "I haven't been there in a few weeks. I fell and twisted my wrist, and now I can't even knit."

  "Mom! I asked how you were," said Alex, exasperated.

  "I didn't want to worry you, but you asked."

  Alex pulled the phone away from her ear and shook her head.

  "Why did you fall?" she asked.

  "I got dizzy."

  "Is this is a one-time thing? Or has it happened before?" said Alex.

  "A few times, but that was the worst," said her mom.

  She almost asked if she'd been to the hospital but she knew that answer. There was no way they could afford the medical care, not for a sprained wrist and especially not for unspecified dizzy spells.

  As much as her heart clenched with terrible ideas of what it might be, it was more likely that she'd been working herself up about minor things, or just plain loneliness.

  "Has Frank been able to help out?" she asked.

  "He's been a big help, Alexandria. Don't worry about me. I'm a grown woman. I can take care of myself," said her mom.

  Standing on the other end of the phone halfway across the country, Alex couldn't quite pinpoint the time when the roles with her mother had switched, but the comment made her all too aware that it had happened.

  "Have you been enjoying school?" asked her mom.

  Alex hesitated before answering. "Yeah. It's been hard, much harder than I thought, but I'm learning things."

  Not sure if I'm learning anything useful, but I'm learning things about the game.

  "That's good," said her mother.

  "Are you going to be okay on bills? You can sell my gaming gear if you want," said Alex.

  "I wouldn't even know where to take it," said her mom. "But I appreciate the sentiment."

  Silence filled in between them, for Alex because she was wishing she could be back home just long enough for a hug. Talking to her mom reminded her that she hadn't had human contact in months.

  "Alex, honey."

  "Yeah, Mom?"

  "It's time for my walk."

  Alex smiled. She knew how much a creature of habit her mom was about certain things.

  "Yeah, Mom, that's fine."

  "Are you going to call sooner?"

  Alex sighed. "I'll try, but schoolwork is going to keep me busy and away from a phone. Hell, even now I'm using an old-timey rotary phone."

  "Try harder, sweetie. I have to go."

  "Love you, Mom."

  "Love you, Alexandria."

  Before she hung up, she heard a new round of coughing on her mother's end.

  Afterwards, Alex went back to her room to crash. It might be daytime in the real world, but it was nighttime in Gamemakers Online. But sleeping on the bed proved difficult. She'd gotten used to her pile of furs in the cliffside cave. Alex tossed and turned for a few hours before deciding to log back in.