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[indent][indent][indent][color=gray][sub][right][color=#A84B5E][b]Location:[/b][/color] City Streets, The City-State of Thorinn, Aetheria[/right][/sub][/color]
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The first night went better than Rael expected.

Priscilica was putting distance between Luci and the others. She didn’t particularly have a grievance with it. Hardly was the time to induct people or be shoulder-to-shoulder with someone who had a lot of survivor’s guilt. 

After they had buried the three they lost they spent little time together with the only commonality being that they thought it was better to stick together for better or worse. Graves and Alja had spent the night drinking. Kazuki had made himself scarce. Siegfried and Sif stuck together. She hadn’t seen Benkei since the burial. She saw all of them from time to time, Kalie too, as they convened at the Laughing Worg Tavern. It was a central place. Big. [i]Crowded[/i]. It was the largest tavern in the city and it was right across the street from one of the larger innhouses. Rael had booked a few nights as she mulled over her immediate plans. She didn’t have a house in Thorinn so lodging would have to be on the fly. Most of her savings were in another city-state, so she only really had what was on-hand. Eventually she would have to find work. Eventually all of the wayfarers had to.

Groups of various guilds and casual groups had flocked together in the taverns, holding it together out of some hope the glitch would be fixed. It had been a whole night and there was no word, but she knew out-of-game time was moving a little differently, especially since the systems were interrupted. She was studying at Tokyo U for advanced computer sciences and programming.  Her father was on the board of directors for the game that had effectively endangered everyone’s lives. She kept her insider knowledge a little to herself, knowing full well trying to explain things wouldn’t do an iota of help; heck, some people might’ve targeted her if she revealed it.

Sleeping had been… easier… then she thought it would be. She had never seen anyone die before. She had never sat down beside them as they choked on their own blood. Turns out when you’re exhausted it didn’t matter how much anxiety you felt in your bones. In her dreams—a dream within a dream, she supposed—she had imagined the world shaken; splintered by maniacal and broken people who wanted everything from revenge to chaos. It was a nightmare that shook her so much she woke up in a cold sweat right as the sun was rising. It wasn’t that the world in her dream had been rendered into madness that got her, but more that it was her fault and she would pay her dues. 

She didn’t say anything about it when passing Sif in the barroom earlier. She didn’t say anything to anyone she recognized. All she did was grab her notepad and a bucket of apples and went for a walk.  

Ever since she had gotten back to Thorinn she had decided to take notes. Of everyone’s behavior. The things that glitch changed. So she could figure out things. Inbetween doing something she’d do in college—draw sketches of people she’d see passing by. She was no Takashi Murakami or Yayoi Kusama, but she was pretty good. The internet thought so. Turns out that kind of skill transferred over to the dreamscape. That had been in the base game, she supposed. People’s reflexes worked out. People who were good at guitar in the real world were natural bards in Aetheria. Same went for a lot of tactile skills. She had never really noticed before, though; she was always too busy “collecting” and fighting. Dungeoneering. Keeping the spotlight on her. 

She paused for a moment on the tree branch that overlooked the town square, laying on it in the shade. Better in the heat or in the taverns and innhouses that had yet to discover air conditioning. Thorinn was sticky and hot. It was swampy on a bad day and just hot on a good one.

She reached into the bucket of apples and took out one of them, taking a bite.

Temperature and weather now affected them. Pain. Fatigue. Friendly spells. She was sure the list didn’t stop there. 

Not that kind of information would help much. If her nightmarish anxieties were any inkling close to the truth, human nature would get the better of people. Fear and… selfishness would overtake them. Priorities would change. Perhaps Wayfarers would be too scared to shut down the dungeons and more monsters would group up in hordes and devastate the countryside. She frowned at the thought. She had no place to worry about others being selfish, she had played the entire game that way. But that was before people could die. She never [i]hurt[/i] anyone. As far as she knew all she had ever done was annoy them with her antics. She dismissed the thought; no use about worrying about hypotheticals when things in Thorinn could get very scary very soon.

But it was only the first day after the glitch. What kind of person would go insane after one day?








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