A Gamer's Guide 413 (Patreon)

Rafiloe woke up with the worst hangover she’d ever had, and no recollection whatsoever of how it had happened. Head pounding, she forced her bowling ball of a head to leave the soft sanctuary of her pillow. Her mouth was completely arid. Water, she thought to herself. Or a big, cold, glass of milk. Maybe with some honey in it. If she could alleviate her throat just a little, she would have done anything. Even if it meant she had to get out of her warm, comfortable bed and face the cold harshness of the room. 

…Not her room. Not the room she shared with Maggie. Except that she did share this one with Maggie, because Maggie was also sleeping in the bed, proved by the pronounced bulge beneath the covers, not to mention the snore echoing through the stone room. With only one bed in the cramped room, sharing it was only to be expected. Not that it was much to share. It was small, yes, but also extremely nondescript, with only a table and chair—alongside a small cupboard, mirror and washbasin—proving that this was supposed to be a bedroom at all. 

At least there was a window in it, the luxurious view over the city proving that they were, indeed, still in the archjudge’s castle. 

…The former archjudge’s castle. That was going to need getting used to. 

She sat up on the edge of the bed, put her bare feet to the floor, and only just had time to prepare herself for the wincing pain sure to come from the wounds on her feet when she realized that they didn’t hurt. But they were still bandaged, the hemp-coloured strips of fabric mildly discoloured from the tinctures they’d given her. And her auto-regenerative skills were nowhere near good enough to heal something like that in the span of a single night. 

Trying and failing to tune out her pounding headache, she heaved up one foot atop her knee, and began carefully unwinding the bandage. After the first layer, she found some crusted blood beneath her feet, as would be expected. But instead of this layer sticking to her sole, she could easily remove it. Wind, wind, wind, and with a final tug, no difficulty whatsoever, she revealed the pale, supple skin on the bottom of her foot. Perfectly smooth. Smoother than she’d ever felt her own skin, even when she’d used products. 

…Prop must have given her a potion or something. She’d never be able to repay it, but that was the only explanation she could think of. 

Nodding to herself, she undid the bandages on her other food, and stood up, letting her bare feet touch the rugged floor. Cold, but not too cold. Still too cold to be walking around in nothing but her bloomers and undershirt, though, so with a mild flourish, she mentally summoned her robe from her inventory, only to find it mysteriously absent. Huh. 

A quick glance around the room unravelled the mystery: her robe was lying in a heap on the floor, next to two empty bottles of vodka and a suspiciously large number of crumbs. Groaning to herself, Rafiloe crossed the room, carefully put the bottles to the side so as to keep herself from waking Maggie, donned the robe, and found with some degree of annoyance that her hat was missing. Again. Was this her eternal lot in life? Never knowing where her hat was at any given time?

At least the mirror above the basin over by the window told her that it wasn’t on her head, which was—

Rafiloe paused. She turned back at the mirror. Even from halfway across the room, she could see her own face with perfect clarity. And, more importantly…

She ran a hand through her hair. It was white. 

Hands trembling, she crossed the room, her eyes affixed to her own mirror image: to her own face, coming closer and closer, framed by her long, perfectly white hair. The closer she got, the more obvious it became. It was white, yes, but it was white to an unnatural degree. Normally, when people had white hair, it was slightly gray, or even a sort of yellowish, flaxen sort of white. Never pure white. Titanium, zinc white—that was reserved for art. For the inhuman. For what came beyond. 

She ran her hands through her hair. White, and smooth. Glossy. Near Iridescent. As she manipulated it with one hand, it caught the light coming from the window, and even though it was already white enough, it almost seemed to shimmer. Glossier than silk. Spun threads of finest palladium. 

And her eyes. Yes, now that she was close enough to touch the mirror, she could see her eyes. Her irises were the same colour—same murky shade of green as always—but her pupils…

White. 

She pulled at her lower lid, leaning in close enough to see properly. Her headache had almost completely faded into the background. White pupils. Like a dead fish. No longer freshly killed. Half-price at the fish market. 

Just like Kitty’s. 

She froze. In the mirror, she could see clearly how her eyebrows pinched together, her lips dipping down into a frown. Sweat bloomed across her back. Surely, it had to be a coincidence. Surely—

There was a muffled scream. Someone shouting, just out the door. 

Her heart leapt back into beat and within moments her feet were whirling beneath her, with no care to so much as putting on a pair of socks. She crossed the room in an instant, breath in her throat, and only barely had time to notice Maggie sitting up in bed before she threw the door open and burst into the hallway, where the yelling was just one step louder. Letting her instincts guide her, she rushed across the hallway, and pulled open the door to the former archjudge’s bedchambers, revealing a scene so bizarre it glued her to the spot. 

“Please, Garath, don’t hurt Father!”

“Stay back, Lett! This goblin could kill you with ease, if you allow him to!”

Garath was choking Kitty using only a single hand, dangling him half a meter above the ground, Kitty staring back at him in mild perplexion, with Lett desperately wrapping himself around Garath’s chest, pleading with tears in his eyes that his father (Kitty? He thought of him in that way?) wasn’t dangerous, that he was only a normal man, and that if only he let him down, they could talk this all out.

…All in perfect Afrikaans. But she was well over ten meters away from them. The radius of Kitty’s skill should only have been three or four meters, so…

He turned to look at her. “Oh, Gecko!” he said, clearly not hindered by the tight-fisted grip Garath had on his throat. “I might be in a bit of a pickle. Would you mind helping me out? They seem to—”

“Gecko!” Garath barked, not turning his eyes from Kitty. “Go get Leion—tell him to evacuate the city. If we don’t act quickly, then we may all succumb.”

Rafiloe carefully considered her options. If she ran away, she wouldn’t have to deal with Kitty’s bullshit, and she could get that glass of water she wanted, and go back to bed. On the other hand, Kitty did seem pretty bothered by his position. In fact, he was starting to remind her of a newly-washed cat, the kind that had stopped fighting it and had elected to simply accept its face. 

As she racked her brain trying to figure out the pros and cons of abandoning Kitty to his hijinks—which it was way too early in the morning for, mind you—she found herself unexpectedly joined by both Prop and Maggie, the former clearly having been awake for at least an hour, being fully dressed, with the latter looking like she’d been found at the bottom of a bog. 

“Gecko, is everything alright?” Prop asked. “I heard shouting, and—” He spotted the situation. In a matter of moments, his eyes widened in fear and disbelief to such a comical degree that she felt fairly certain they would pop out. His jaw snapped shut with an audible clack, and the blood drained from his face. Though his whole body had gone shock-still, somehow, he was still able to utter, his voice wavering with trepidation and naked hope, “F—Fatima?”

Rafiloe blinked at him. “Hah?”

And then, on her other side, Maggie’s hands suddenly clasped shut over her mouth, tears welling up in her eyes. 

“Maggie, what’s wrong?” Rafiloe said, turning to her friend. “You look kind of—”

“Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod,” Maggie said, promoting her hands from mouth-holding duty to test-flight, flapping her hands with wild abandon as she skipped from one foot to the other, eyes sparkling. “How is he here?! He’s supposed to be on Earth, he would’ve contacted me if he’d joined the tutorial, but—” Her eyes lit up in odd, feverish realization. “No. No. Oh my gosh. He figured out who I was and where I was, but instead of PMing me, he decided to show up as a surprise?! Ohmygosh this is SO romantic!!” Squealing in glee, Maggie began fanning at her face.

And only after having heard Maggie’s entire rambling diatribe did Rafiloe’s brain kick into gear. The only person she could be talking about. “Wait. Henry?”

“Yes, Henry!” Maggie said, half-melting at the mere word, her busy, busy hands clasping together as though his name was a prayer. “Oh, Henry, my sweet, sweet—” and, at this point, she finally realized that Henry—or, rather, Kitty—was maybe not in the best state. Her whole body puffed up like a blowfish, face flashing from sheer joy into lethal wrath. “Gecko, tail me.” Mace instantly materializing in her hand, Maggie strode into the room.

Rafiloe blinked at her friend’s back. “Wait, what?” 

Prop joined Maggie, drawing a rapier from his inventory. 

“H—hang on!” Rafiloe said. “What are you doing? You can’t seriously be thinking of fighting Garath over—” Over what, exactly? Kitty? That didn’t make any sense. Didn’t they have eyes? What was even happening?

“Um, Gecko?” Kitty asked where he dangled. “A little, uh, help here? Oh, unless you’re also being weird, in which case… Well, gee, that’d be horrible, actually!”

“Kitty, what’s happening?” Rafiloe said. “Why are they—”

Which was about all she could ask before Maggie and Prop had gotten close enough to personally threaten Garath. “Release him!” Maggie declared, raising her mace towards him. “You have no idea how far he’s gone to reach me!”

“Let go of her!” Prop said. “I don’t know how she came here, we’d all thought her dead, but… If this is how we reunite, after so many years, then it must be destiny. I will not permit you to make her death a truth!” And with those words, he pointed the tip of his rapier towards Garath’s chest, only partially covered by Lett’s sobbing form.

Which was all well and good. As long as they were civilized, then…

Garath’s face morphed, his teeth elongating into long fangs, face splitting into a lizard’s grin. “Very well. You believe you can keep me from saving this city? Test it, then. Allow me to show you humans the true power of our kind!”

Ah, shit.