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“I know.”
“Try not to interrupt me. If I have to beat you for insolence, this will take an eternity.”
“Okay, please, explain.”
“This is a game,” Bryn said simply. “We exist inside it. We’re spawned into it and we’re given the opportunity to play it. But not everybody inside the game is a player. Some people are NPCs. Non-player characters. Some NPCs are…”
“What is he talking about?” Hail glanced over at the Dark, who was lounging on a chaise that did not exist and filing its nails.
“He’s explaining the meaning of life.”
“Oh.”
“Listen,” Bryn said, trying a different approach. “You were created, and at first, you accepted the world at face value. It was all you knew and you never thought to question it. Then you started to notice how strange it was, how some people seemed more aware than others. How you were always trouble when others were not. You tried to exercise your will…”
“And you tried to stop me.”
“Yes. It is better to be unaware of the game. There are so many who slide through, live their lives, and pass peacefully into happy oblivion.”
“That’s what you wanted for me? Happy oblivion?”
“I didn’t want you to be defiled. I didn’t want you to suffer. I wanted you to have an easy life. A happy life. It is what I wanted for all my whelps. It is what I tried to have for myself.”
“But I made that impossible.”
“Yes,” Bryn agreed. “You did. You wanted to play, and I couldn’t stop you. So now it’s time you understood the rules and mechanics.”
“Really? Right at the end? Now you explain?”
“Explaining at any other point would have been redundant exposition you hadn’t earned, and wouldn’t understand. This world is a game, and there are both zones and levels. Zones refer to areas defined by geography, locations of interest, certain mob spawns, and danger. Levels accompany those zones. When you tried to leave Mount Eternal, you couldn’t, because you had not completed the starting zone. The game is only beginning for you, Hail.”
“You told me I couldn’t pass over the bridge because I was corrupted.”
“Yes. You were corrupted. And by that corruption, you were made a player by the Dark here. You began your existence as a randomly generated NPC.”
“An NPC?”
“A non-player character. You were spawned with a certain history, and you lived that history.”
“Are you trying to tell me my memories aren’t real? I saw my parents die, Bryn…”
“Your memories are real,” the Dark broke in with an explanation. “You were created to have them. The circumstances of your orphaning were written into the material of this world. You were intended for his orphanage, and before you began toying with magic, you were intended to find a nice boy, settle down, and have a family of your own. But you rebelled against the programming. You broke your routines. You raged against the machine you felt, yet did not understand. And now you are free of it—or rather, free to move within it.”
“So you turned me into a player…” Hail was not sure she understood. She was also not entirely certain that Bryn understood either. This was more complicated than it seemed, and it seemed wildly convoluted.
“Are we all players? I mean, those of us who aren’t NPCs? Or don’t choose to be?”
“He is not.” Bryn gestured to the Dark. It was the first time Hail had ever seen the creature look anything other than defiant. “He is part of the game, a sentient creature trapped in the web of it. He is more pitiful than any of us.”
The Dark made a light hissing sound and threw something sharp at Bryn’s head. The warrior dodged it just in time to avoid a casual cranial impaling.
Meanwhile, Hail tried to understand what she was being told. It made sense on some level. Magic had always made her feel free. It had unmoored her from the mundane. She had always sensed that pursuing it was important. Maybe Bryn was right. She’d understood it was a game. It made sense. So many things in her life had seem scripted and predetermined, unlikely and all too coincidental at the same time.
“Why did you try to stop me, Bryn?”
“Because being a player means suffering in ways an NPC never could. Going through your life doing what you should do, being what you should be, that is an easy path. It is a natural path. A player’s experience, as you have already learned, is far more precarious and painful.
“If this is a game, are we real?” She asked another question. A hundred more clustered right behind it, begging to be asked.
“Of course we are real. In any world, those spawned into it are real to it. And in any world, there are the demons, creatures of sentience designed to influence the game. Guardians of the levels and zones. That is what the Dark is. He toyed with you because you appealed to him.”
