The unnamed sat bolt upright, shouting an unintelligible plea as he awoke, confused and still cloaked in the fog of deep sleep and the haunting memory of what was or might have been.
The moment passed swiftly as he looked left and right, trying to get his bearings. The memory of those final moments in the arena lingered in his mind.
A large hand pressed gently against his shoulder.
"Peace, friend," Naleth said in gravelly tones.
The unnamed turn around to see the big brute looming up beside him.
"Is okay. You are safe here."
Naleth looked a little battered, but the savage injuries he had suffered at the hands of his rabid foe were all but healed. A few livid scars still remained, along with some light bruising around his eyes, and there was a gouge taken out of one of the brute's horns. But aside from that, he seemed relatively unharmed.
The unnamed reached around, fumbling at his own back in search of the bloody wounds from the arena. He found only a little discomfort at the movement, but no wicked scarring or other signs of damage. The pain that had racked his entire body since arriving in Havenspire was also strangely absent, filling him with heady giddiness.
How long had it been since he'd felt anything but the crippling presence of constant pain?
How many years?
He rubbed his eyes, breathing in deeply and continuing the inspection of his newly restored body. From his mid-teens to early adulthood, REDACTED's experience of life had been severely muted by the constant specter of pain. In those rare moments where the aching of his muscles ceased, he learned to grow distrustful of the temporary lull. Like passing through the eye of a storm, experience had taught him that the pain would always return, sooner or later.
Flexing his fingers and toes, rubbing at his shoulders and neck, he was now plagued by that same distrust. Soon this would end; the pain would return.
"What you doing?" Naleth asked, leaning over and staring down at the unnamed, his face twisted into a comical portrait of confusion.
"The pain I felt when I first got here, it's gone. I'm just checking everything, making sure this is real."
Naleth nodded, though the expression on his face suggested he was still baffled by the tiny human's actions.
"Is apothecary," the brute said, flexing the fingers on his right hand. "They making us better again. Healing spells and technologies, that kind of things. Is make you like new."
"Apothecary?" The unnamed reached back into his memory, plucking an obscure reference he remembered from a tabletop game he had played with his younger brother years ago. "You mean like a doctor?"
Naleth shrugged. "Is healer, yes. They make better, patching us up after the fightings." The big brute held up a hand and turned it one way and then the other, demonstrating the fact. "Good as new," he said, grinning from ear to ear.
The unnamed looked around at the small cell. It was little more than four dirty walls and a thin metal door with rusted hinges. The floor and ceiling were stained, and there were signs of rising dampness at the base of the walls. He was sitting on a simple cot with Naleth hunched over on the floor next to him, the big brute scratching at the base of one of his horns.
"Why would they heal us? I thought they'd just let us die and then bring us back again, like the guy whose head got popped off."
Naleth shrugged once more. "I think we are winning, so maybe is different. Is a little confusing. But we not like the others. You didn't dying. Me neither."
"Wait, I didn't die? You're serious? That woman with the sword, she was…"
A memory of the sword-bearer's blade slipping off a protective shield came back to him. The recollection was clouded and difficult to hold in his mind, but the sight of that blade directly above his head sliding to one side was vivid enough.
"We won?"
Naleth nodded in agreement. "Yes. I think so. We are winning, so they send us to healer for reward. Then put us in little room together… for… reward." The giant grew less and less certain the more he spoke.
"I get how you might have won," the unnamed said. "I mean, you're a machine! I saw you fighting that thing. It was incredible. But how the hell did I win? I got cut to ribbons and then… I think I must have just bled out in the end. I don't really remember…"
Naleth grinned knowingly. He leaned forward as though about to whisper some profound secret. "You don't remembering, huh?" He marked out a circular shape in the air with one huge hand. "You make protections. Spell to keep you safe from the sword. Is mancy. You making mancy."
Distorted memories of his bloody finger marking out a strange symbol in the dirt came back to the unnamed in a rush. He remembered the strange compulsion to draw the mark, the sudden thickening of the air around him, the shimmering dome of crimson light that only appeared as the blade struck down at his throat.
"Sorcery? Is that what that was?"
"Big sorceries," Naleth confirmed. "You make a big show, impressive. So, you winning the fight and get the apothecary, and this little room. You sleeping in here when I come in." He nodded to himself. "Sometimes the healings make sleepy. So I let you stay in sleep until you waking just now."
Magical healing?
The unnamed reflected that this was one aspect of his afterlife he hadn't really considered. He'd prepared for spending the next three or four years in a potato field, even though the company sold Havenspire as a limitless fantasy world where mythical creatures and every conceivable fantasy trope could be played out. The sight of Naleth had been off-putting at first, but the unnamed had been racked with pain and beset with confusion, so the oddness of the giant never quite hit home. Only now, with his body miraculously healed, did the unnamed begin to settle into the idea of this new reality.
And then there was the notion of magic, sorcery that somehow he'd been able to perform in some way or other. It all seemed so unreal, so disconnected from every experience he could use to comprehend the incomprehensible.
Fantasy had never really been something of interest to REDACTED. He understood the appeal of the genre, but for some reason it never really resonated with him. Now, hand him a controller and load up any first-person shooter, and that was an entirely different story. In addition to an unhealthy amount of television, REDACTED had spent the bulk of his hospital years playing online shooters. Handing out 360 No-Scopes like a champ, translating the pain and frustration of his bedbound life into fast-paced campaigns and the amassing of epic weaponry and skills.
Something about the thrill and speed of first-person shooters had appealed to REDACTED in those years, more so than the slower burn of a fantasy RPG or an immersive story-driven epic. He still read a lot of fantasy, listening to audiobooks in the hours where he was too tired to open his eyes and losing himself in the imagined world of great writers. So too he had delved into space operas, thrillers, even the odd horror series now and then. But when it came to gaming, it was hi-octane shooters every time.
His younger brother, on the other hand, had been obsessed with anything even vaguely related to sword and sorcery. He'd spent every last penny of his pocket money on fantasy epics, figurines, D&D campaign manuals, and every piece of Harry Potter paraphernalia he could lay his hands on.
The unnamed had been roped into Magic the Gathering, D&D, and a host of tabletop games in the genre, purely because his brother refused to play anything else. REDACTED loved fantasy above all, and the unnamed now reflected that perhaps that's why he had drifted away from it in the years following his younger brother's death.
Maybe he didn't play first-person shooters because of a preference for fast-paced games with limited storytelling. Maybe it was just that he had so many memories with his brother that were tied to fantasy tropes that it would have hurt too much to venture into the genre alone.
My brother, he reflected. What happened to him? Is he still here, somewhere in the simulation? Did he get taken to the blood pits when he arrived, just like me?
The unnamed tried to focus on his last memories of REDACTED but couldn't find what he sought. He could remember older experiences and general impressions about what his brother was like, but the precise manner of his death and any of the later memories they shared were just missing.
Trying to locate what was lost felt like remembering his own name. He fumbled about in his head, but the memory always seemed just beyond reach. It wasn't the most disturbing fact about his new afterlife, but it certainly didn't bode well for whatever was coming.
The door slammed open, cracking against the wall as the machete-wielding slaver strolled in, picking his teeth with a thin bone and patting his belly contentedly.
"Well," he said, flicking the bone off to one corner of the cell floor. "You two put on a show, didn't ya." He nodded to himself. "Got the attention of a patron, it turns out. Snagged yourselves a ticket to the Brawler's Guild. Lucky feckin' bastards."
The expression on his face suggested the man was not in the mood for questions, so the unnamed made a mental note to ask Naleth about this guild business once Machete had left.
The slaver stood scratching his chin as a young woman in a threadbare tunic walked into the room, head bowed, carrying a bundle of clothes in her arms. Without a word, she moved beside the unnamed and placed the bundle on the cot beside him.
She turned and left, all the while avoiding their eyes and staring at the floor fearfully.
Machete scowled as the young woman made her exit, spitting on the floor as though in protest to her very existence.
"Guild sent some fresh clothes," he said, nodding toward the pile of clothing on the cot. "Get yerselves dressed and be ready to leave in the hour."
With that he turned and walked out, leaving the door wide open. As if on cue, another young woman walked into the room, carrying a tray of food and placing it silently on the floor in front of the unnamed and Naleth.
"Thanks," the unnamed offered.
The young woman shied away as though physically struck by the word, then vanished into the corridor beyond.
Before the unnamed could ask Naleth his questions, the smell of roasted meat and gravy snared his attention. He was squatting down over the tray, lifting it up and carrying it towards the cot before he even realized he'd moved.
Without a word, the unnamed and the big brute began eating, shoveling handfuls of stew and stale bread into their mouths and savoring every bland morsel.
As he chewed the stringy meat, the unnamed reflected on the absurdity of the situation. Here they were, ravenously hungry, devouring this meager meal to quell the growling in their stomachs and recover a little strength. But none of this was real, none of it was necessary. He was hungry because something in the programming of this place told his body to be hungry. Come to think of it, he didn't even have a stomach, or tastebuds, or any of the physical apparatuses associated with a human body.
Why create a utopian computer-generated world and program in hunger, or pain, or any of a thousand forms of human misery? This place was supposed to be better than the outside world. Yet here he was stuffing his mouth with old bread and soupy stew, trying desperately to stamp down the churning hunger in his gut. It made no sense.
Still, the questions didn't stop him from eating. Neither of them said a word until the contents of their bowls were empty. Naleth raised both bowls, licking the last of the gravy from their curved interior like a child delighting in the last dregs of icing at the bottom of the mixing bowl.
Having completed the mop-up, Naleth gently placed the bowls back on the tray, grinning contentedly. Though, considering his bulk, he couldn't possibly have eaten enough to satisfy his appetite.
"Sorry," the unnamed offered. "I was just so hungry. I couldn't control it."
"Is okay. Hunger is bad when you first coming to this place. Very bad. It getting better the longer you stay here. Not so desperate. You still eating and drink, but you don't needing so much."
Naleth leaned over, picking up a shirt from the pile of clothes at the end of the cot and sniffing at it. "Clean," he marveled, reaching to pick up pants and a jacket, then handing them all to the unnamed. "They don't smell like this place. Smell clean, fresh."
The clothes were simple, durable-looking, and loose fitting. The pants and jacket were brown, the shirt white, and there were a pair of sandals beneath the pile which looked a little large for the unnamed but serviceable. Similar clothes were provided for Naleth, though without the sandals. Both uniforms had a clenched fist symbol on the jackets and shirts stitched in gold thread.
"So," the unnamed asked, "what do you know about this Brawler's Guild?"
Naleth stretched his arm out to one side, testing the flexibility of his new shirt and nodding, apparently pleased with the result. "Guilds are professional society. Not many guilds down here in the undercity. Most up top, further up in the spire."
The unnamed nodded, sensing that the big brute wouldn't offer any further information without some pointed questions. "And what do they do exactly?" he asked. "I mean, what will we be doing when we get to the guild? Will they make us fight? Is it just a slightly better place than this?"
Naleth shrugged, more interested in the impressive flexibility and smell of his new clothes than anything the unnamed had to say. "I don't knowing much about brawling guild. Maybe we do more fighting. Maybe something else. But is better than this place. Better than slavers."
"And what about this patron? How does that work? Do we get to meet them? Will they pay us?"
Naleth looked down at the unnamed, grinning from ear to ear. He rumbled with laughter. "Friend, I been working in the mine for ten years. I pay for crimes against the spire, crimes of my people, the ones you calling NPCs. Ten years hard labor. Then, I get this chance to fight in the pits. If I winning twenty battles, I go free. If I lose five fightings, then I go back to mines for another ten years, maybe more."
He shook his head, twisted horns scraping on the ceiling with each movement.
"I don't knowing much about anything. Not guilds or spire or anything. I only waking up ten years ago, maybe a little more. I wake up and fight, but getting caught and sent to mines to work. So I am new, like you, friend."
"When you were an NPC," the unnamed pressed, "I'm guessing you weren't awake? You didn't really know who you were and weren't conscious like you are now?"
The big brute nodded. "Sleeping, but awake. I saying same things and doing same things, just because it programmed into my head to do it."
"But something woke you up, broke you out of your programming?"
"Yes, yes. The bloodmancer. They making me wake up, make many NPCs wake up. We fight the Didact, but we lose and now anyone who captured is to working in the mines. But now things are to changing. It been long time since the bloodmancer causing the uprising. Lots of things changing. Sometimes they give NPC a chance to make freedom. Fight in the pits, and if you winning, you free to go and be citizen. Not NPC any longer, but real citizen."
The unnamed nodded. "But this was your first fight, wasn't it?"
"Yes. First fight."
"So how are we sitting here then? Some patron saw us fight and obviously picked you because you won, and picked me…"
"Because magics!" Naleth said, leaning in close, his eyes wide and his hands moving as though describing a rainbow.
"Yeah, right. Magics."
Once more the scattered memory of those final moments in the arena came back to him. The look of confusion in the sword-bearer's face, the sliding of sharp metal against an impossible barrier, the strangely familiar symbol drawn in the dirt and filled with his own blood.
More questions to be answered, and an uncertain future ahead. But at least he was free from this wretched slave house and the vicious spectacle of the blood pits.
The unnamed turned as huge nostrils inhaled by his shoulder.
Naleth was leaning down, sampling the olfactory goodness of the young man's fresh clothing. The big brute nodded to himself. "Is good to smell. Clean, like orange."
The unnamed had noticed the citrus smell himself and couldn't help but smile at the simple joy of his oversized companion.
"Yeah," he agreed, "it smells great."