“Shoot the underbelly!” Van shouted. “Shoot where the heart is!”
Sang nodded and aimed right at where her Hunter’s Instinct told her to. There was a spot right between the right front leg of the Dragon and the Dragon’s chest that was the perfect spot. She took a deep breath and fired. The arrow seemed to move in slow motion as it streaked through the air, striking the exact spot on the yellow Dragon. It roared out in pain as blood began to gush out of its body, and then fell to the ground; the words CRITICAL: LETHAL appeared over it. It hissed and snapped frantically, thrashing its tail as the flames continued to consume it, but there was nothing it could do.
Sang collapsed backwards and let out a sigh of relief once it became apparent that the Dragon was dead. “Oh, oh man, we did it!” she said.
“Yeah, we did! We beat two players way out of our league!” Van said, sitting on the ground next to her. “You look like you’re in a lot of pain, though,” he muttered.
“Yeah, it’s… it’s more realistic than before. I need some healing potions,” Sang said as she checked her system’s status again. It was still offline. That wasn’t good. That wasn’t good at all.
“Hey,” Van said as he handed her a bright red potion. “Check it out!” Sang glanced at where he was pointing and realized that the yellow Dragon was beginning to melt into the ground, fading away slowly.
“Weird... normally monsters leave behind treasure,” Van mumbled. “Ah, well, not really the time to be thinking about free gear, although I gotta tell you, if that Oil of Everburning Agony hadn’t worked, there was plenty of more stuff I could have used. Trefor was hooked up with the best gear I’ve ever seen.”
“Yeah, best gear,” Sang emptily repeated as she tried to contact her team. Every time she sent out a message, though, she received the same error message. “Van, can you contact anyone?”
“Nah, I got a message from Neil once, but that was about it. He said you were sick and going to die. We gotta get out of here as soon as possible.”
“I’m fine now, actually… that thing up there, it healed me. Somehow, it was able to stop the poison from killing me.”
“Well, let’s be sure to send it a thank you card from the other side. Can you get us out of here?” Van asked.
Sang shook her head. “I’m afraid not. I can’t figure out why, but we’re still on lockdown. I mean…Trefor’s dead, the Dragon’s dead… so who else would be keeping us locked in here?”
“That weird alien dude?” Van offered.
“The Messenger,” Sang said. “He must still be controlling our ability to leave. Crap. Van, I don’t think this is going to be over until we kill it.”
“Can we kill it? I mean, what is it?” Van asked.
“It’s a Draco alien, I think. I don’t know. It seemed to be interested in representing Draco anyway... Wanted me to turn over everything I knew about the Others willingly.”
“Did you?” Van asked.
Sang shot him the dirtiest look possible. “Really, Van?”
“Come on, I was just kidding!” Van said. “So, what’s the plan?”
Sang glanced at her UI again. It was back online now, but she still couldn’t access the dev console, meaning that she wouldn’t be able to hack into anything. This was bad news. Without any kind of communication to her team on the outside, and without the ability to log out, they were sitting ducks.
“Van, we gotta go back up there,” she said, shaking her head.
“Again? Are you kidding me?” Van asked.
“Well, what do you propose we do? Hide down here? Wait for a whole squad of professional players to show up and obliterate us? We got lucky. Now... if there were other people up there, they certainly would have been all over us the moment we were trying to escape from the platform, so I have to think that there was only Trefor, that Dragon, and then the Messenger. The clock is ticking here.”
“What about all of those people on those floating desks?”
“They didn’t react at all to our escapade; whatever they were doing was far more important than capturing us, I guess.”
“Well, how do we kill this thing? Do you know?” Van asked.
Sang felt a strange pressure in her head. She buckled backwards for a moment and gasped.
“Hey, you okay?” Van asked, putting his hand on her back.
“Ah, I’m… I’m hearing… Dragon…” Sang mumbled as she grabbed her backpack and opened it up. The egg, the little purple egg that she had stolen from an island so long ago, was beginning to pulse a little bit. “They’re trying to tell me something,” Sang whispered as she pulled the egg out and looked at it. She could see that the life inside of it was beginning to stir.
“Man, are you going crazy? Because right now is not a good time to go crazy, Sang,” Van said. “It’s just a Dragon egg; you need to use a quest to hatch it. It’s not even worth carrying around because Draco personally has to give you that quest.”
“Maybe…” Sang said as she put the egg on the ground. She knelt down and looked it. The egg was still pulsing, beginning to really move. She leaned forward and began to etch some symbols with her knife very gently on the shell. As she slowly cut the symbols, built from the alien language that had been embedded in her brain, the egg began to hatch.
“Whoa! How are you doing that?” Van asked as the egg began to crack and shatter. A beautiful black Dragon emerged from the egg. It was tiny, almost at the size of Sang’s fist, but it stretched its wings and it clawed its way out of the eggshell. It hissed and snapped its jaws a few times, shaking its head. Then it slowly stood up, shakily at first as the embryotic fluid gently dripped off of it.
“Dude, you just unlocked a Dragon!” Van said, kneeling down next to Sang. “I can’t believe it worked!”
The Dragon wobbled as it took its first few steps. It’s slender black tail flicked back and forth as it examined its surroundings. It turned to face Sang. She cocked her head as she looked at its beautiful yellow eyes.
“We are impressed,” boomed a voice inside of Sang’s head. At first, she thought it was the Dragon, but then she realized that it was the chittering hive sound of Yvgo. She glanced up and saw that Yvgo was standing by Trefor’s corpse. The alien was alone, but stood tall and unworried.
“It isn’t every day that you see players of such a low level defeat a professional player and his Dragon companion,” Yvgo said. “But playtime is over. It is unfortunate that you have killed two of Draco’s allies. We needed them. Transporting you should have been a simple task, but alas, such weakness was the nature of Trefor. He was chosen because he was second best.”
“Shut up!” Van said, throwing a dart at the creature. The dart froze in midair as the Messenger raised its hand.
“Are you always this hasty, Van?” it asked. “You were our first choice, you know. We liked your vim, your vigor. The way this game was everything to you. Trefor reported that you refused our offer, however. Shocking, indeed. What’s most shocking is that you would condemn yourself to death over people who have been controlling you. Blackmailing you. Owning you.”
“Yeah, well while the CIA might be a complete bunch of jackasses, at least they aren’t interested in killing the entire world!” Van shouted back.
“There is no point in this back and forth,” Yvgo said. “We are not recruiting you anymore. But we have an offer. You are freed from your controls. Log out now and live. Stay, and die.”
“Ha. You must realize, at this point, that I’m dead-set on getting myself killed in here,” Van said as he raised another dart and prepared to throw it. Before he could do anything, however, he began to float in the air.
“Die!” Sang shouted as she drew her bow and let loose several arrows at once, using her Multi-shot power. The arrows all stopped in midair and just hung there, though.
“This is amusing,” the Messenger said. “How humans in the face of certain death would rather die than surrender. This is why Draco likes humans. In a century or so, all of that rage, that power, that primal stupidity will be shaped. It will be focused. And most importantly, it will be useful.” “Aghhh!” Van cried out as he suddenly began to turn red.