Irena - Home Again

She struggled to a sitting position, finding the heart shaped sapphire resting warm and heavy in her hand. She stared at it, remembering having left it wrapped in silk, back at the apartment. A dim flicking flame still danced in its depths, hypnotic and slightly frightening. She turned it, accidentally shifting it through the sunlight from the mostly drawn drapes. Once again the air shimmered with a deep gong sound. The flame flashed to brilliance and in the after image, burned across her eyes, she saw a shadowy scene of a woman in a throne. A second woman stood in front of her. Then the flash faded and she was staring at cheap hotel walls once again.

Irena rose on unsteady legs, packed her bag, and left. On the highway she floored it, staying at the head of traffic instead of with it, slowing only where she thought there might be traffic officers. Her instincts were perfect, slowing her every time before a radar car came into sight. Her thoughts were too frantic already to notice the strange coincidence.

She pulled into the drive an hour and a half sooner than her previous best time, dashed upstairs and shouted for Shandi. "Hey, I thought you were gone for three weeks," Shandi's voice called from her room.

"I was going to be, but it was too weird being back there. Remember those friends I mentioned? They're still exactly where they were when I left. I don't know what I wanted, but I should have taken your advice and gone somewhere different. Has there been any word on Sophia?"

"No. The police are still nosing around, although their enthusiasm seems reduced. We're starting to slip at work. We need to have an internal beta running next week, that's what we promised Rani Corp."

"Rani Corp? Who're they?"

"Jaime's backers. It's their money funding this venture and we promised a live demonstration server running by next week so they could take a look at the final concepts."

"I'm not a game developer, but I do know Jaime's characters pretty well. Reading through her notes, while I was gone, brought them all back to mind. If there's any way I could help, I'd be happy to."

"I don't know, maybe. It's not just knowing the characters. You need to set them up, but that is done in an editing environment, so you wouldn't have to code them directly," Shandi said, more to herself than to Irena. "It might just work. Come in with me tomorrow and I'll run it by the director. You still have the rest of your time off, right?"

"I did take three weeks for a break, yes."

"Then come in tomorrow morning with me and see. I think you can help."

"Uh, sure, I can do that," Irena replied, nervous, now that her offer was accepted. She opened her laptop and began looking through the game docs as soon as she had finished unpacking. Looking through the files reminded her of the incident of the morning. "Hey Shan, did anything strange happen this morning?"

"No, why?"

"You know that sapphire we found? It appeared in my hand this morning. I was certain I had left it here when I left."

"I saw you put it in your drawer. You didn't grab it on your way out?"

"No."

"Strange, very strange indeed. Where is it now?"

"In here, on my desk. I'm not sure what to do with it." Irena stared at it and continued slowly, "Did...anything...strange happen for you today?"

"Not really, why? Did something happen to you?"

"I've been having really strange dreams lately. And I've been drifting into waking dreams over the past few days."

"It could just be stress. I've gotten that kind of thing before."

"Maybe..." Irena trailed off. "It was a long drive. I guess I'll read a bit and sleep if you don't mind."

"See you in the morning. Remember, off to game we go."

"Sure."

Sophia - Dorotea

Sophia awoke and stumbled to the kitchen. Blearily, she looked for the coffee maker before memory returned. "Awake at last," Dorotea called from her seat on a high stool near one of the many counters. Sophia fumbled through the steps to make coffee, without replying to Dorotea. "What are your plans today? Going to fix this thing so I can go home?"

Sophia just grimaced, filled a cup and sipped coffee. Finally she replied, "Is there any way to convince you that I have no clue about how to fix this thing?"

"Not really, no. You have a magical aura that is obviously attached to this thing and you are able to command it. How could you be in that position without understanding?"

Sophia slumped forward on her stool and put her head in her hands. "Believe what you have to. I know I need things called 'Control Crystals' for something in the 'Core Systems'. The Core Systems I will look at this morning, and I know what control crystals look like, but I have no idea how to find them."

"Let's go then!" Dorotea stood and headed for a door. "Lead on."

"I need coffee and food first," Sophia replied, still leaning heavily on the counter next to her stool.

Dorotea stared at her for a few minutes, then rose, walked to the cooler and began pulling out food. She slammed a large plate of cheese, cold mystery meat, and bread in front of Sophia. "There, food." She hovered while Sophia slowly ate several bites and then said, "Ok, you can come back for the rest."

Sophia glared at her, but got slowly to her feet and led the way through the dining room, the throne room, and to a hidden door in one of the skull carvings behind the throne. She kept a firm hold on her coffee cup as she descended the narrow ladder to a small room with a single oval metal door. The wheel handle spun easily, withdrawing the heavy steel locking pins from their holdings and the door swung away from her on well oiled hinges. A ragged, uneven pulsing sound beat on them as they stepped into the massive room. Machinery, wires, cables, tubes, and odd constructions filled the room in a tangle of confusing clusters. Magical energy hammered against Dorotea's senses, driving her into a huddled crouch as she slowly followed Sophia into the room.

Sophia stopped and stared around the room. Concept sketches came back to her and she slowly approached the third panel on the right. She reached out and touched one of the buttons. A screen lit up and text began scrolling up it. "Damn it, what was that command, ah right!" Her fingers flew as she typed in the command for low level details of all failures. A list of damaged control crystals and their locations printed across the screen. "Why didn't I pay attention in those design meetings?" she muttered as she looked at the list.

"What?" Dorotea asked from where she was huddled on the floor next to the console.

"Nothing, just wishing about the past and mumbling to myself."

"When I want to remember, I try thinking of something else. What the sky was like, if there was a particular scent in the air, what I had recently eaten, things like that. It tricks the mind into a context and then the memories often return," Dorotea suggested through clenched teeth. "Are you close to finished? I can't take much more of this."

"You could wait in the throne room." Sophia frowned in concentration and then smiled, "Yes, I remember. They are accessible from this world. If they weren't, there would be no way to get anywhere. Where were they going to be? Right, we hadn't decided yet."

"This isn't a game, girl. Unless you are a godling, and if you are, you should send me back. Right this instant!"

"Godling, right, in my dreams. I'm just a community coordinator and character designer. I bet I could tell you a lot about yourself, Tyana, and Kyira, and maybe even some of the citizens of nearby cities, but that's it."

"Can we talk about this somewhere else?" Dorotea muttered, crawling toward the door.

"Oh, yeah, sure..." Sophia replied in a distracted tone. Once they were back in the throne room Sophia settled into the throne and asked, "Are you ok?"

"Not really. I can feel magical energy and that place was worse than the rest of this place. Can't you feel it?"

"A bit, maybe. There's a sense of warmth and comfort but also a sense of sickness and pain. If you can sense magic, can you also find magical items? If I were to show you one of the control crystals, could you narrow in on it? It would really help."

"What you ask is no simple thing, girl. It would require great spells and months or years of research to create such a spell and it would only work if the thing in question was not ensorcelled to prevent discovery. Why can't you find them? You're linked to this thing, shouldn't you be able to feel parts of it?"

"I don't know. It didn't occur to me to try it."

"Maybe we should go try then? You seem completely confused about so many things, so I must ask, what skills do you have?"

"I can create characters, set them up, recruit actors and..."

"No girl, what kinds of survival skills? What magics do you know, what weapons can you wield, that sort of thing."

"Uh, none..."

"None! And I have to rely on you to get me home? What sick fate have the gods conspired for me now?" A deep gong shimmered through the air of the throne room. "What the hell was that?"

"A summons from friends of mine. I could go to them if this thing worked."

"I need to think. I'll be in the library," Dorotea said as she strode off abruptly.

"Do you think she's safe?" Tyana asked from the air.

"Keep an eye on her. Tell Kyira to carefully watch what she selects to read. I think she's ok, but let's not take too many chances with her. Is there any way you can speed teach me anything to help me venture out of here sooner? She's going to get bothersome very soon, I suspect."

"I'm afraid it isn't that simple, mistress. I wish it were," Tyana replied.