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The Battle World, Chapter 1 |
| Written by felix | |
| Sunday, 08 June 2008 | |
"Thank you for choosing me, Xilef. I feel honoured to have been given a personal task by the administrator himself." Cerberus had said to me. "Don't be. I am only sending you as most of the moderators are offline and I cannot reduce the amount of moderators in certain Quadrants just for a simple task like this. The protection of the users comes before the honour is given." Cerberus didn't like my response too much. On hearing this he looked up to me at an instant, eyes glowing yellow as part of his red themed armour design, if this was real life his expression would reflect anger of some sort, though I have to be careful on my descriptions of graphics, polygons and texturing do not reflect true emotion very well. "Very well." Cerberus replied as he turned. Cerberus is - was the most powerful moderator inside the Battle World, he was one of the first users and is named Cerberus after the moderation armour I had designed for him. It was blood red, the helmet having two horns on either side that bent upwards and eye sockets that glowed a bright yellow and shoulder pads that were shaped like dog heads, giving the illusion that Cerberus had three heads. As Cerberus the moderator stepped out of the building and onto the neighbouring field zone I received a private message from another colleague of mine. Amber. Not a moderator, but merely a player that I got to know well outside the Battle World. She wanted to meet up with me inside the game and had arranged a time and place. "You'd better turn up this time else I'll stop the DVL's." She stated at the end of the message. The DVL is the nickname the Battle World's community gave to the Daily Vote League, it was the only thing that gave the Battle World it's users as I had not used any kind of advertisements to increase the Battle World's popularity. Amber, being a regular player, didn't have any distinctive armour, but her constant in-game smile made her distinguishable among other female earth mage, earth mage being her classification within the game. Her graphic had a simple white shirt, black shorts, knee-high white socks and black shoes. A yellow ribbon hung very low down from her hair, starting as a bow in-between her most prominent feature, two big, light brown animal ears on her head, nested in hair light brown hair, shoulder length and not too even. I set off immediately after I finished reading her message. I finished up the non-sense work I was doing at the time and as I turned to leave for the meeting place with Amber I saw something move in a mirror that I put in the administration building for decoration, as the building wasn't too pretty and would put me off from bossing around my moderation team when the administration building's interior design snuck into the back of my mind and reminded me of a chapel. I didn't place the mirror there for a reason, it was just as randomly positioned as all the paintings and windows on the wall opposite the mirror, but by chance it was at the perfect angle to view this thing I saw move in it. It looked like a white bird that flew past the mirror, but it was too fast too see clearly. I just kept looking into the mirror, only to see my own character graphic, a young boy dressed in black with brown leather wrist straps along both forearms, hair as brown as Amber's. I shock myself back into life and onto my current task, solving the mystery of the bird as it being a graphical glitch, a rather hurried solution to the mystery. Getting to Amber was easy. I followed the path that Cerberus took out of the building and admired the twilight aura that hung over the field outside the administration building. The landscape was quite peculiar, as I had intended it to be. There were large mushrooms made of grass that hung, suspended about 5 feet in the air, these mushrooms covered the field as far as the draw-distance could render. At the entrance to the administration building was a warp gate, so I didn't have to walk over the field and as I was the administrator of the Battle World I didn't have to pay the warp fee a regular player would have too, so I stepped towards the warp gate, which looks like a thin, spinning ring on it's side, about 7 feet in diameter, once close enough to the warp gate you could just lift up your weapon and say the location of where you want to warp to, the warp gate would automatically take the fee and teleport you to the desired location. I did this to get to Amber's location, which would've taken about 20 minutes to walk there. "Amber." I said simply to a girl sitting down on the grass, facing away from me. "Oh. Hello." She said, pretending to be surprised about my arrival. "At least you're not late this time." She said, turning and standing to face me. "I said I was sorry." I walked over to her, without a change in my expression. "Now, why did you call me here?" "Have you found anything suspicious tonight?" She said, now sounding a little more serious. "Not really. It's the holidays so we don't expect anything odd to come up." "So you haven't detected the all-nighter?" Amber quickly said to me. "Wait, how do you know about the all-nighter?" I said to her with concern. "I met him earlier, in a cave, on a beach somewhere. So you do know about the all-nighter?" "Obviously" "Are you doing anything about him?" "I just sent a moderator to investigate the user's activity." I tried to keep the details to a minimum as Amber is not too friendly with Cerberus. "The user is suspect for cheating, as are most all-nighters" "Who did you send?" I couldn't lie to Amber; she knew how to see through lies too well. "I sent Cerberus." "Get him away from there!" "Why?" "Why ask? Just get him away from the all-nighter! You can send private messages right?" "Yes" Before I could add anything Amber had spoken, "Then send him one! Tell him to leave the all-nighter alone!" Amber was very serious now, but my curiosity wanted to find out her story before acting out the next chapter of my own. "You tell me why I should call him back and if it's a good reason then I will." "The all-nighter" Amber began as quickly as her lips would allow the words to flow, "He is protected. Cerberus the moderator will die if he stays with the all-nighter too long!" "Death is conquered in the Battle World. Cerberus will just come back if anything happens." There is no death in the Battle World, who would play a game where you'll just die and never return? I'd later discover one person who would want to die within the game, but they didn't want to even be in the Battle World. "Look" Amber said, now more angrily, "You'd better call back Cerberus now, if I am wrong then I'm wrong and he can go find the all-nighter again, but trust me here. I've seen what that player can do, he is no normal player, Cerberus is no match for him." I paused for a second, looked into the desperate eyes of Amber, my old friend who trusted me. Did I trust her too? I would like to think I did. "Fine." I pushed out of my gut, "I'll call Cerberus back from the all-nighter." I quickly wrote the message and sent it. A ping sound confirmed the message was received. There was a long pause between Amber and I. "And?" I looked up at her and tried to mimic her desperate sounding voice. "No reply." Amber looked very scared now. "We must find them both! Before the protector arrives!" None of this made any sense to me, now I wish I did so I could've act faster. Amber and I arrived at the beach where the all-nighter was last detected and where I sent Cerberus. "Xilef, this is where I met the all-nighter." Amber said, trying to gain even more of my interest. "Look, Amber, please tell me what all of this is about. It's the holidays, I shouldn't even be here!" "Xilef, we need to find Cerberus now! I'll explain everything later." She suddenly started to run, I could tell she wished she didn't waste time discussing this with me before finding Cerberus. Inside the cave on the beach was Amber, Cerberus and the all-nighter. I followed Amber into the cave, walking as opposed to Amber running into the cave. As I turned around a bend in the cave's entrance I saw Amber directly in front of me, a boy dressed in brown and cream coloured robes and a man in red armour, being hung in the air by a long pole coming out of his neck. All this was lit up by oil lamps positioned around the sides of the cave, making the interior of the cave appear rather sinister. I followed the pole from the man in red to its end, or beginning, I later learned that it was the beginning of the pole. I was rather odd, the pole was gold coloured and very shiny, almost liquid looking, and it came out of a hoop, similar to a warp gate but a lot smaller and suspended in midair with any movement. This led straight to the man in red, who I worked out was Cerberus. The pole went straight through his neck, and he was lifted 7 feet in the air, or more, by this thing. Amber was in shock, she just stood still staring, I walked next to her and looked up at Cerberus, who was still hanging there, limp. Amber finally said something, though it was more of a whimper in horror. "The all-nighter, he is there" She pointed at the boy in brown and cream robes. "That is his protector, it's like nothing I've seen before in the Battle World." "That is certainly nothing I have created." I said, looking at the golden thing. "Xilef! Don't you see? We must do something to help Cerberus!" I have never seen such fear in Amber before, this is just a game after all, Cerberus would just come back to life somewhere else in the Battle World, wouldn't he? "What do you want me to do?" "I don't know! Anything!" Amber shouted at me, "It's the boy's protector, ask him to call it off!" I looked up at the boy in brown and cream robes, who was sitting up against one side of the cave, trying to keep away from Cerberus and the golden pole. "Boy." I said, with as much power as possible, "Is this thing your doing? Call it off that man, he is a moderator, don't you have any respect?" The boy didn't hear, he was looking at what was happening in front of him. When I looked harder I could see the boy was scared of the thing that hung Cerberus the moderator in the air. "Help!" The boy shouted. He was talking to me. "I can't control that thing! Help me stop it!" I pushed my arms straight ahead of me with my hands clasped together. A long, dark sword shivered into existence with the handle appearing in my hands. "Boy, try and cut that thing in half." I pointed at the pole that kept Cerberus in the air. "I can't...It hurts." The boy spluttered out. I looked at him sideways in disgust at his cowardice. Amber shouted from behind; "Cut Cerberus free! Then run!" I ran forward and full speed and swung wildly at the golden pole. With a jump I was high enough to sever it, but as my blade passed through the pole it regenerated as if I hadn't tried to cut through it. "Run!" said Amber. I don't think she saw what just happened, but she still stayed waiting for me to start running away. "I can't cut that thing!" I shouted at the boy, who was crying up against the wall of the cave. "Get up boy! Help me fight this thing!" "It hurts! It hurts!" He shouted back at me. I didn't understand this. Pain cannot be felt in a game, the boy must have a head ache or something in the real world. My thoughts were interrupted by a screeching sound coming from the source of the pole, the hoop that was stuck in the air. The noise was deafening, I had to force myself to look at what was happening. The boy was still crying up against the wall and Amber still petrified. I looked at the hoop in the air, it turned white, as did the pole it produced, and so did Cerberus, who was at the other end of the pole. Cerberus' limbs were thrown backwards, stuck, his head bent back and his torso slight bent too, the most forward part of Cerberus' body was his neck area, which had a white, glowing pole sticking out of it. The screeching noise was still ringing in the cave. It felt like minutes went past before it died down. The hoop and pole dissolved into the air and disappeared, Cerberus, now held up by nothing, feel limp to the ground, completely white and almost stone-like, as this form is what all players take when their character dies in the Battle World. I looked at Cerberus's body in shock about what just happened. The boy stopped crying and crawled his way to Cerberus's body, Amber also moved towards it. "Is he dead?" Said Amber, "Yes." I simply replied, "Though I don't think he is reviving else where in the game." "What?" Amber said. "Cerberus isn't reviving, I don't know why" I repeated this each time to myself. I could tell he wasn't reviving because if he had done his body would have dissolved into the ground like that hoop and pole did in the air. The boy said "Is he dead, I mean, for real?" Amber and I looked at him in shock of such an idea. "Xilef, I met this boy earlier in this cave, I was looking for some treasure and I met him lying on the ground asleep. His name is Alexis." I didn't absorb any of what Amber said apart from the boy's name. "Alexis?" The boy looked up and I looked back at him, "Where has Cerberus gone?" "I don't know." Alexis said. "I'll contact him in the real world." I eventually said. The boy, Alexis, looked up when I said this, "You know, the real world, where normal people hang out and enjoy the holidays" I said, hinting that Alexis should log off from the game and leave Amber and I alone. "Are you okay?" Asked Amber when she saw Alexis' expression after I had said that. Alexis stood up, his character was the same height as Amber's and mine. Alexis's character had brown and cream coloured robes that went down to his knees, his trousers were a darker shade of brown and his hair was a darker shade of brown to that of Amber's and mine. "I'm fine" Alexis simply said, as he turned off to leave us. "Wait-" shouted Amber, but I interrupted, "Let him go, we need to find Cerberus" Amber looked weakly at the departing Alexis and turned away to face the white, stone body of the moderator again. Copyright 2008 felix |
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| Last Updated ( Tuesday, 10 June 2008 ) |
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