Epilogue #2
When Mia still didn’t say anything, I decided to take a chance.
Removing the ring from the box, I slipped it on to his finger.
I breathed a sigh of relief when it fit perfectly.
Since I’d already gone through the process once picking out a ring for Chantal many years ago, I was pretty sure I understood ring sizes enough to get it right, but I wasn’t a hundred percent certain.
“My home is already your home, and my family is already your family, this would just be the last step in making it official.” I finally gathered enough courage to meet his gaze. “So, please, say yes.”
I nearly cried out in alarm when I saw the tears dripping from his eyes.
“Mia?”
“Yes.”
He said it so quietly that I thought I imagined his answer at first.
“What was that?”
“Yes,” he said again, louder this time. “Yes. Yes. Of course, yes. A million times, yes.”
Each time he repeated “yes” his voice grew louder until he was shouting.
He threw himself at me, tackling me in a hug so fierce that he knocked us both off the ottoman.
We went rolling over the floor among the scattered remains of torn Christmas wrapping, causing everyone in the room to shout in surprise.
We were both laughing too hard to say anything. Eventually, I would have to explain to Chantal why we’d gone tumbling around on her floor, but for now, I was too preoccupied basking in the bright future spread out before us to notice anything else.
Drew
Dragoncore wasn’t the best game in the world.
Okay. It wasn’t even a particularly good game, as far as games went. The combat was clunky, the storyline was nothing original, and the graphics often made old PlayStation II games look like Renaissance paintings.
However, despite all of these obvious flaws, it was still one of my favorite games. I’d been playing it since I’d first picked up a video-game controller.
It was also a cult classic, with a large, dedicated fanbase. This mostly boiled down to four main reasons.
One, the game had been one of the first to introduce the concept of mass-multiplayer-online, almost before the Internet could support such a thing.
Because of this, even when the game looked a little janky, it always ran as smooth as butter no matter how many millions of people were logged on at once.
Two, unlimited customizable options. A player could customize their character down to the smallest detail, which turned the game into more of a fantasy themed creative outlet.
Three, sex. There was an option in the game where if both parties consented, then their player-characters could engage in sex.
I didn’t really understand the appeal of watching a bunch of small blurry pixels grinding together, but to each their own.
I’d turned down the few offers that had been made to my character over the years and chose not to think about it any further.
Four, dragons. The appeal of this part of the game was self-explanatory.
Because the actual story of the game wasn’t very interesting, it was just an excuse for people to hang out in a vast fantasy setting.
That was exactly what I was doing now. My gaze drifted toward the clock on my desk. Its face glowed with a bright 3:00AM.
A time when any sane, healthy person should be sleeping.
My gaze moved toward the other side of my desk, where several pill bottles sat, all neatly arranged into an orderly schedule.
I snorted to myself and turned back to my screen.
“Healthy. Yeah, right.”
At least in games like Dragoncore I could run around like a badass action hero. My character wasn’t as bulky as some people made theirs, but the little animated man on my screen had an unmistakably strong physique. The kind I knew I could never have.
A new chat request popped up on my screen as off in the distance I saw another character approaching across the digital landscape.
I recognized them immediately. The long ponytail that their character had fell all the way past their knees and was hard to miss.
It was completely impractical for combat, but it looked really cool whenever it streamed out behind them when they ran.
Just to be sure, I checked the username above the new chat request.
Yep. DualGuardian. I knew them.
I first met DualGuardian in the game about a year ago, and since then we’d gone on several in-game missions together and hung out regularly. I wasn’t sure if their username was a typo, or if it was a joke I didn’t understand, and I was too embarrassed to bring it up now.
Quickly accepting the chat request, I typed out my response.
:Hey DG. Haven’t seen you online in a while:
Their character shrugged, one of only a few physical responses the standard avatar was capable of.
Their response popped up underneath mine in the chat.
:Been busy:
DualGuardian’s model was technically female, but they’d designed the character to be on the more muscular side than a typical woman.
They were also taller than my male character, which I’d kept on the shorter side so that it matched me in at least one aspect.
Every movement DualGuardian made caused their long ponytail to jerk around like an electrified snake as the graphics struggled to render the physics of their hair.
It created an oddly pleasant aesthetic around them, like their character was so full of energy that the very world we stood in couldn’t contain them.
Their hand clipped through a nearby bush as they pointed back in the direction that they’d just come.
:There’s an Amber Dragon just over that hill, and I’m trying to collect enough scales for the Amber Heart Shield. What to help me out?:
I would have agreed even if they’d asked me to wade through the deluge swamp to hunt down bog locusts. This actually sounded fun. Plus, after checking my inventory, I realized I could use a few Amber Dragon scales myself, so it would be beneficial for both of us.
The Amber Dragon was exactly where DualGuardian said it would be, just over the hill resting among a grove of pine trees.
At least, I assumed they were pine trees. The textures in the game sometimes made it hard to distinguish one plant from another, but the shape of the trees was particularly triangular, so I assumed they were pines.
The creature was the size of a house and gleamed like golden honey under the light of the setting sun. Smoke rose from its nose as it slept, forming rectangular clouds that drifted off into the air.
Careful not to make any sound and accidentally wake the dragon, DualGuardian and I compared our characters’ stats.
The only way to collect scales from an Amber Dragon was to jump on its back and startle it into crashing into the trees, knocking some of its scales loose.
Then quickly collecting the scales before they disappeared.
My character currently had the higher grip strength, while DualGuardian had higher agility, so I was today’s chosen dragon rider.
Not wasting anymore time, I climbed up one of the trees until I was just above the dragon’s back and took a flying leap.
From there, everything descended into chaos.
One of the most notorious aspects of Dragoncore was that on its initial release the developers had forgotten to include any visual indicators of a dragon’s strength.
Really young dragons were obvious because they were smaller, but after a certain level, all dragons looked identical.
This meant you could never be sure what you were getting into whenever you engaged one of these creatures.
The developers had tried to patch this mistake later, but fans had insisted that it be left as is. The thrill of never knowing how dangerous your opponent was had become part of the game’s charm.
This particular Amber Dragon was a lot stronger than we expected.
Neither of us were rookie players, so we’d arrogantly assumed we could handle it.
However, over the course of the next hour, I nearly died twice.
I only managed to stay alive thanks to the vast horde of healing potions I happened to be carrying, but my supply was running out and DualGuardian was starting to run dangerously low on stamina.
Deciding to cut our losses, we took the measly half dozen scales we’d managed to collect and beat a hasty retreat before one of us ended up dead.
Resurrecting a dead character was a real pain.
Once we were safely back over the hill and out of the dragon’s attack zone, we both started laughing. We must have each hit the button for the laugh reaction at the same time, because our characters’ animations were perfectly in sync.
:That could have gone better: I typed in the chat while wiping tears of laughter from my eyes.
DualGuardian’s animation lagged for a moment before they gave two thumbs up, which must have been a mod that they’d added because it wasn’t part of the character’s original movements.
:Not my worst fuck up: they agreed. :At least we’re alive. Here. Your spoils:
There was a brief flash, and three of the dragon’s scales floated on the ground just in front of me, waiting for me to pick them up.
With a quick jerk, I tapped a button in my keyboard and my character took a step back.
:No. You said you were collecting the scales for the Amber Heart Shield, right? Six should be just enough. If I take this, you won’t have enough:
At first, DualGuardian gave no response except for their character’s constant idle-animation.
:You sure?: they eventually asked. :You’re the one who almost died twice. At least half of this should be yours:
:Take it: I insisted. :You’ll just have to owe me next time:
With another flash, the dragon scales disappeared back into DualGuardian’s inventory. Their character flipped thier long hair over thier shoulder.
:Aren’t you just keen as ketchup:
Oh no. I knew that movement. It was one of the game’s programmed ‘flirtatious’ actions for its characters. I’d seen it several times right before someone tried to “initiate” something with me.
DualGuardian was one of my favorite allies in the game. It would suck if I had to start avoiding them because I’d turned them down. My fingers flew over the keyboard as I quickly changed the subject.
:Keen as ketchup? I’ve never heard that expression before:
DualGuardian’s character started sharpening their blade, which happened when a player didn’t give their character any directions for a while.
:It was something my Gran used to say. The expression is supposed to be ‘keen as mustard’ but she didn’t like mustard, so she changed it to ketchup. I think ‘keen as ketchup’ sounds better too. More alliterate:
At that moment, a new text box popped up on my secondary monitor. This one wasn’t a request for a conversation, but rather this one was an alert.
Aside from being one of my favorite games, I didn’t spend my time playing Dragoncore just for fun. Due to its particularly old coding, mixed with baffling smooth online multi-player, Dragoncore had become a secret drop spot for dark web info.
One of my scouting programs had just picked up a potential target. It could be a false alarm. I’d written the scouting the programs myself, but they weren’t perfect and had led me on more than one wild goose chase.
Still, I had to check it out. That was my job, after all.
I quickly made up an excuse and said goodbye to DualGuardian, then followed the directions of my scouting program back to the nest of the Amber Dragon that we’d just fought.
The dragon was sleeping once again, as if it hadn’t just been attacked. That was no surprise. The artificial memory of the creatures in the game didn’t last very long and they quickly returned to their programmed animation cycle once they were no longer disturbed.
However, the trees around the dragon were a different story.
The game’s landscape had particularly good destruction physics, and once a natural element was broken, it tended to stay broken for a while.
This meant that the trees that had been knocked over by the dragon while my character had been riding it like a bucking bronco still lay in pieces over the ground.
In the hollow of one of these logs, I found what I was looking for.
It looked like a large white pearl, floating a few inches off the ground with a glowing white halo. The moment my character touched it, the pearl disappeared, and a long string of code started crawling across my computer’s screen.
Adrenaline lit up my veins as I hit the keys so hard and fast it was a miracle my fingers didn’t punch right through the keyboard.
This was exactly the kind of thing I’d been looking for.
I’d been working with the dark web for long enough to immediately recognize its fingerprints.
There was a particular way that the dark web always altered computer codes that was as good as a signed confession.
I must have intercepted a dark web dead drop.
Although I wasn’t yet sure what the code was for, nothing from the dark web that people tried to exchange secretly could be anything good.
Unfortunately, these kinds of programs didn’t come with a clear label and directions to point out what they were meant for.
I had to go through and test each line of code, checking to see what effect it had on the rest of the program, before moving onto the next line.
At least half of it didn’t seem to do anything, and the half that did produce an effect seemed to be completely random.
I was clearly missing something, but no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t make any headway in figuring out what the code was for. It remained a nonsensical mess of numbers and letters that refused to make sense no matter what I did.
Before I knew it, sunlight streamed through my window, and the alarm on my phone was blaring, shouting at me to take my morning meds.
Sighing, I leaned back in my chair and blinked for what felt like the first time in hours. My eyes were dry and gritty due to the unpleasant mix of not enough sleep and too much time staring at the screen in front of me.
“Morning already,” I mumbled as I rubbed my eyes under my glasses. “Guess I’m not getting any sleep tonight.”
Then, after adjusting my glasses back into place, I reached for one of the neatly labeled pill bottles sitting on the end of the table.
Watch for Kai, book 12 in the Federal Protection Agency series.