If they weren’t ready, then why did they call me down here? she thought bitterly, just as the wooden door swung open. Kat looked up expectantly, and was surprised to see Ben looking extremely uncomfortable.
“Finally!” Kat cried, jumping to her feet. “Do you have my partner ready yet?”
“Kat,” said Ben, and she was alarmed by how nervous his voice sounded. “Before you find out who your partner is, I need you to realize something. We tried as hard as we could to find somebody else… but there was nobody else qualified who wasn’t already occupied with something else in the war.”
Kat was befuddled. “What are you talking about?”
Ben took a deep breath and let it out in a hefty sigh.
“Come on in,” he announced miserably.
Ben stepped out of the doorframe, and another player walked up behind him. Kat’s jaw hung open, and her eyes boggled in disbelief. She would recognize that pale skin, those giant red lips, that snow-white leather armour, and that smug expression anywhere.
“Oh, no,” Kat breathed in horror.
“Oh… yes, I’m afraid,” simpered Cassandrix in her patronizing, upper-class accent. “It’s good to see you again, Kat, darling.”
Stan opened his eyes. He took a deep breath of air and let it out slowly. He tried to move his arm but was only able to move it a few inches before wincing in pain. Reluctant to move again, Stan allowed himself a few more minutes of peace lying in bed.
Stan heard faint voices coming from down the wooden stairwell, and he turned his head to glance around the room. The torchlight gave the wooden attic a faint glow, and he noticed that the closet door was slightly ajar. Stan shrugged it off, figuring that it was nothing, and he closed his eyes once again.
As he lay in bed, nearly incapacitated by wounds and fatigue, Stan reflected on just how extraordinarily lucky he was to still be alive. His body ached all over from his leap into the ocean from the Noctem Alliance’s prison at the peak of Mount Fungarus on the Greater Mushroom Island. Filled with anguish over the death of DZ and reckless panic at the Noctem forces quickly closing in on him, Stan hadn’t been thinking clearly. Rather, he had simply grabbed DZ’s sword and taken a leap of faith—a leap, it turned out, that had hurt quite a lot.
After landing in the ocean and plummeting fast and hard to the ocean floor, Stan had swum as fast as his screaming limbs could carry him away from the island, the sirens wailing from the prison and troops shouting as they mobilized to pursue him. At one point Stan glanced back at the island and saw Mount Fungarus, silhouetted tall and proud against the setting sun, with half its top blown off, and troops scurrying around the various outer levels like ants around an anthill. Desperate to find cover from the incoming troops, Stan dived underwater to the seabed (which was thankfully quite shallow around the islands) and, by a stroke of incredible luck, he had found a bubble of air sitting on the ocean floor, a two-blocks-square cube. Far too relieved to question what the glitch was doing there, Stan had instead dived straight into it, lying on the ground and taking a huge breath of fresh air.
Inside that air bubble, Stan lay still for hours, exhausted from his desperate and narrow escape. Throughout that day, he broke down on and off over the death of DZ and the thought that Charlie and Commander Crunch were being tortured mercilessly as he lay there, unable to do a thing about it.
When he wasn’t crying or sleeping, Stan spent the rest of that day looking outside the air bubble. Squids would jet by Stan in schools, their rectangular black bodies propelled forward by a set of eight tentacles, with a rather frightening spiked mouth at the center. The surface of the ocean was illuminated with sunlight, and he could see the bottoms of dozens of wooden boats drifting to and fro across the water, undoubtedly searching for him.
Eventually, the day slowly darkened into night, and the watery world around Stan had become black. His stomach was growling, demanding that food be supplied soon, lest his health start to fade like the setting sun. After scouting out the surface to ensure no boats were directly above him, Stan had jumped out of the top of the air bubble and, kicking as hard as he could, propelled his way back to the surface.
As Stan looked around, he saw no ships anywhere near him, but he did notice the bright lights and strident sound that the Lesser Mushroom Island was emitting. Slowly but surely, Stan paddled his way towards the island, which held the promise of food and a temporary shelter. He had to duck underwater hastily, sometimes for minutes at a time, when a Noctem patrol boat had passed by, but in the end, Stan was able to make it onto the island undetected.
Footsteps echoing up the stairwell startled Stan out of his train of thought. He glanced over at the opening in the floor, and slowly the head, torso, and then legs of a player emerged. She wore black leather trousers, silver metallic gloves and a zipped-up navy-blue hoodie, out of which emerged a streak of magenta hair that fell over her deep brown eyes.
“How you doin’?” she asked in a quiet, rather harsh voice. Stan shook her tone off; he had realized that her tone was not to be taken personally.
“A bit better,” Stan replied, propping himself up on his elbows, despite the aches flaring up again.
“Well, that’s good,” the player replied, pulling a piece of bread from her inventory and tossing it in Stan’s direction, followed immediately by a Potion of Healing. Stan caught the two items, and stared at the bottle of red liquid in disbelief.
“Olea!” he breathed in disbelief. “Where did you…”
“It don’t matter where I got it,” Olea replied brusquely as she started to head back down the stairs. “A Noctem soldier just came and told me that we gotta meet in the central plaza in five minutes. I don’t know what they’re planning, but I gotta hunch it’ll destroy whatever safety you have here, President Stan.”
“I understand,” Stan replied, nodding grimly. “I’ll get out of here as soon as possible.”
Olea nodded, and walked down the stairs again. As he poured the red potion down his throat and watched her go, he thought about how fortunate he had been to encounter her. When Stan had pulled himself out of the water and onto the shore of the Lesser Mushroom Island less than twenty-four hours ago, he had been shocked to find that it was overrun with Noctem troops. He had ducked from alley to alley, moving with great agility despite his wounds, careful to avoid detection.
It was only when he had passed by the back door of a shop called GoddessOlea’s Boat Rentals that he had been pulled into a building from behind by an unseen pair of hands. When he came to his senses, Stan found himself being interrogated by a player who he later found out was called GoddessOlea, or just Olea for short. When she discovered who he was, she wasted no time in bringing him up to her attic and beginning to heal him. The process of healing had been slow, as resources had been incredibly scarce on the Lesser Mushroom Island since it had been invaded by the Noctem armies. The troops had pillaged all stores that sold potions, golden apples and other healing supplies, meaning that Stan’s recovery, which should have taken just a few minutes, had been ongoing for a full day now.
Somehow, though, Olea had managed to get her hands on a Potion of Healing. Now that the red miracle liquid was in Stan’s body, he felt all his aches disappear. Stan was sure that this particular potion had been brewed with glowstone; it was particularly strong. Stan leaped out of the bed and onto the wood-plank floor.
He knew that now that he was healed, he had to get off the island as soon as possible. The innocent people of the Lesser Mushroom Island were already suffering enough