Corbin looked up at the blank wall in front of where he sat. “Connect me to the grocery store and pull up a clock with the current time of day in Chronicle, please.” The pixie on his armrest yawned and perfunctorily flicked her wrist towards the barren wall which transformed into a massive panel displaying ‘Friday Super Value Sale,’ courtesy of PKT Mart. With an additional nod from the pixie, an elegant clock appeared on Corbin’s coffee table displaying time that passed by at an abnormally quick pace.
\\\\\\
Corbin used his break from the game to set his affairs in order for the next few days. He ordered new food, sent an apologetic message to his supervisor for missing that day of work, showered, and tuned into a couple of Chronicle-based livestreams. Corbin’s favorite of the streams was one called ChronCast. ChronCast styled itself in the manner of larger news networks and had become so popular that several copycats had already emerged. The majority of the coverage was streamed from inside the game, which—at eight times speed—would have been information overload for someone trying to follow along at home. However, the success of the original stream allowed them to launch a real-time equivalent which gave the high and low points of what was happening on the faster-paced channel.
Since there was over a week’s worth of new content from Chronicle every single day, watching the highlights was very entertaining. Battles, quests, injustices, bounties and more tended to be covered once, then were dropped for the next story. If you weren’t watching at just the right time, or following the in-game stream, you’d simply miss the information. There was that much happening. If ChronCast harped on something for more than a short period of time, then you knew it was something big.
Just when it was time for Corbin to log back into the game, one report piqued his interest. There was a request for help from the village of Greenburne, a little way to the west of his location in game, where some sort of unidentified monster race had been sighted and was attacking villagers. “It must be a relatively low-level area to be so close to a starting city,” thought Corbin. “If the village still needs help after I become a thermomancer, I’ll head that way to join the quest.”
Corbin hopped back into his pod a little later than he had intended, having learned what he could about Greenburne from watching the stream, and was eager to step back into Chronicle. The door slid shut above him and he gripped the handles before he was instructed to do so. The capsule tilted back at a 30-degree angle. After the sturdy bags of air had inflated, lining his body with sensors, the pod began to revolve and, taking that as his cue, Corbin said, “Engage!”
The cool breeze on his face smelled like a lime green popsicle.
C
HAPTER 6:
R
EAL
U
LTIMATE
P
OWER
When Dakkon came to, he was standing beneath Gadwick Bridge where a group of four familiar men—one large, one small, and two of medium statures—were threateningly huddled around a fifth, broomstick-shaped man with slicked back hair and a worried expression on his face. Dakkon and the four thieves—who had aimed to mug him the day before—locked eyes. After the surprise appearance of their previous day’s prey, now dressed in quality clothes that hinted of good fortune, the matryoshka doll men glanced at one another to ensure solidarity of purpose and… when they turned back to confront Dakkon he was already up the hill and gone. A quick look over his shoulder told Dakkon he had made it to safety. He could just make out the form of the four bruisers’ other target fleeing over the crest of the old bridge.
“I’ll have to be more careful about where I logout,” Dakkon noted as he breathed fully after his unexpected exertion.
Despite having just eaten in the real world, Dakkon’s stomach growled insistently. Taking the hint, and being entirely out of food, he stopped by a merchant’s stand advertising ‘Everything, on a stick!’ and bought dumplings boiled on a stick, chicken fried on a stick, and something approaching miniature hamburgers on a stick for one copper apiece. Had the meal not been so portable, taking him quite a distance towards his destination by the time he had finished eating, he would have kissed the merchant who sold them to him. The food was fresh, delicious, and invigorating. “Assuming the devs aren’t sadists who programmed heartburn into the game, I’m going to love it here,” Dakkon thought, contended.
Dakkon knew where he needed to go to meet his prospective thermomancy trainer thanks to some small-scale reconnaissance carried out while he watched ChronCast in the real world, so making his way there was a simple matter of putting one foot in front of the other. When he arrived at the master’s abode, Dakkon was disheartened to see that the house was little more than a shack to the side of a busy thoroughfare. The ramshackle state of the building didn’t exude the sense of the prosperity he expected. Dakkon didn’t feel that the site was nearly impressive enough for a master of any art. Despite this misgiving, he strolled up to the front door in his fine new clothes and knocked.
Within seconds, the door was open, and a squat, well-dressed man with a round nose looked Dakkon over eagerly. “Why, hello!” the man bellowed in a voice deeper than his countenance would suggest possible. “Hello, indeed! Tell me, traveler, what is your name?”
“Dakkon,” Dakkon said, with a slight bow he hoped to be fitting of his attire.
“Welcome to my humble home, Dakkon. My name is Chillwane Barthonomanius Farkaster,” the egg-like man paused briefly, weighing the impact his name had upon the visitor before continuing, “but my friends call me Chill on account of my profession, I’m sure. Please, do come in.”
Unfazed by the complex name the master had been branded with, Dakkon obliged.
Once inside, Dakkon began, “Master Chill, I have heard that you are a lord over flame and I’d like nothing more than to learn of your art.”
Chillwane looked disheartened, but unsurprised. “I’m no flame lord. You seem to be confusing thermomancy with pyromancy. Pyromancers control fire while thermomancers control heat in a more general sense.”
“So… that means… you can’t cast flaming death from your fingertips?” Dakkon asked.
“I can’t help you there. Not without harsh spirits to light aflame and hurl, anyway,” Chillwane said while shaking his head, “This happens two or three times a day, I’m afraid.”
“So… what you’re saying is…” Dakkon paused, “You can still light things on fire?”
“Why, yes. I can do that,” Chillwane said. “It works in the other extreme as well. I can freeze water at a whim. It’s quite a convenient skill to have in the heat of the summer. Makes you a real champion at parties.”
“That sounds pretty interesting,” Dakkon lied. In a world where you can open portals to far off lands, fly, and rain fire from the sky, lighting tinder and chilling drinks was entirely unremarkable. The fact remained, however, that regardless of its capabilities, he needed a class to start with. It was, in many ways from what he’d read, the first real step players took toward receiving quests and commissions “Plus, I can change my class at any time,” Dakkon thought to himself.
“Well, I’ll be! Although you’ve come here expecting to wield the power of fire, you’re still interested in trying your hand at thermomancy?” Chillwane admired. “That’s most unusual.”