Fanged Faye

“Hey, today’s mission. Maybe try to hate me less?”

“Mission firmly rejected. Sir.”

A mock, dismissive salute twirled to life meant for no one in any particular direction. From squirmy lips, a faux grimace fought with a trickster grin for domination over a robed-and-hooded face. Salty ocean wind tugged at the disguise but small hands held on tight.

The second, accusing voice added an additional comment, driving it home. “You really sound like that, you know?”

A tongue blew a impressive raspberry to counter, filling the air with exaggerated mucus droplets. They mixed with the ocean spray and returned to sender; immediately, the shadowed face recoiled on contact with the torrential display.

Their masked exchange was muttered using the same pair of pouting lips, not to one’s self, but to two. The former voice spoke with a road-like texture: hot gravel swallowed by a choking tuba. The latter speaker carried a natural lithe, high and proud with a sting of indignation. Despite clear animosity, these were the greetings of well-to-know, old friends. Vocabulary announced their years-long knowledge in great volume, and not of fine weather between strangers.

Somehow, the ‘beginning’ of this day did not lay with the crest of first sunlight, but whenever getting up was doable within a four-hour, day-night cycle. This was another world, but not an alien one. It was a simple place with a twisted, maybe ‘glitched’ sense of the word “fun.” Thus morning could be afternoon, and just the opposite. Someone above the world’s color and noise was trying to give in-between travelers then the convenience of experiencing six full days in the span of a true-24-hours on Earth.

A convenient world, and to the naysayers and minority who preferred real life—‘ridiculous.’ One of the speakers could be a naysayer then. The proof of familiarity vanished in a breath, a new battle began under the overhead sunset.

“Hey, at least the sky is now your favorite color?”

“Pink is great if it were real and not in this stupid game of yours.”

“For the millionth-millionth time, I’m sorry for making you play.”

“You’ll have to say it a million more before I even consider accepting it.”

“So you’re saying there’s a chance?”

The hooded face frowned.

“Shut up, and don’t even dream of it. You’re just lucky I’m trapped in here and not outside. The things I would do to your body…”

“—I’m not sure you could, living an ocean away.”

The frown held, as one does contemplating equal parts personal hatred and moping self-pity. The part of ‘being trapped in here together’ went unsaid.

An afternoon sun silhouetted the exposed platforms of the thrice-stacked city called Novae Alexandros. Within each mega-platform, a city emerged in the shadow of the next city up like an off-set, modernist bookshelf. Each floor featured arrays of color, character, and trash unique to their culture and blasphemy in the face of the original, ancient builders—long forgotten.

From a kilometer out to sea, the climbing city with its little arrays of ten-thousand house towers and antennas appeared like a scorched, flickering battleship against the pink horizon. Here among the acidic gray ocean bay, one could see the city in all its glory and damnation.

A steepled megastructure stacked atop rows of vertical columns buffeted against glassy wind storms left a sandy-oxidized, weathering look on flat titanium surfaces. Haphazard, human substructures of rusted-scraps and wood hoped desperately to survive through the next day and night. Sandbar island foundations were at constant risk of being swallowed into hostile, riptide waters.

Inland, a desert of glass and lilac savannah beamed as a place poisoned beyond both Mother Nature and civilization. Debris rested in the field, hiding more mysteries than the worth of any single life or many more. Beyond the flatland, one could make out dark pointed specters of hostile tree tops, then the impossible, inhospitable mountains beyond.

This was a hostile world, not one for the faint of heart. The non-naysayers—the fans sold on this crazy, storybook premise on some old website brochure—dedicated sometimes as much as seven years to this forsaken world. A video game, carefully balanced for challenge and convenience and always at risk of tipping over in one direction or another. Developers kept the game alive, on life support with patches and content updates, but remained ever at risk of chasing their core audience to plentiful experiences elsewhere. Nothing about this online, living world was easy.

“Did I mention it before? The bay here used to be all deep water. The players complained it was a bunch of empty space. So, the game devs tried adding a bunch of—“

“Honestly, have I told you I don’t really care?”

The voices went mum again. The emptiness filled instead with the splash-splash of riding boots announcing the hooded, approaching traveler, hefting a cursed prize through heel-deep tide water. Above their hood was a name “Fanged Faye,” an unclear declaration doubling as a video game player’s username. The small figure was one of a subtle hourglass, from an fair distance most would expect a girl. The onlookers then would be right.

Fanged Faye tugged her hood lower as a stray beam of light crept between the city towers ahead, briefly blinding her. Pushing aside locks of highlight brown hair, she pulled down thin biker goggles from her bandanna-wrapped forehead and hid her dark blue eyes from the digital sun. At least this action was easy, without protest of the physical or vocal variety.

Compared to the goggles and the robed hood, her burdensome package was a troubling deadweight from Day One. Not to mention the continuing battle of two voices sharing her same lips and headspace. They spoke in the same voice range, only separated by old impressions in her head. Her ever-present companion was quiet for now, seeming coiled in thought like a python waiting for an opportunity to strike and annoy once more. The tone of hot coals was gone too. It was testing her before, now it was preparing again…

Faye ignored her internal narration, knowing the inner voice heard it too. Maybe they would call her vain. She felt the cursed package on her back shuffle, twitching as if alive or in dreamful slumber. In a manner, it was probably true. Yet hopeless…

She paid the human-sized package less mind then—wrapped in canvas tarp-like cloth with a variety of nonsense travel stickers and keychains affixed around it. On the side, a prominent ‘HANDLE WITH CARE’ made ample warning. The assortment of outer decorations was a combined effort, one thing the two voices seemed able to agree on with some difficulty.

However, the package—a casket—weighed down her small figure even more than the meter-long Jian sword dangling at her hip dragging along the water; or the two traveling backpacks hoisted over each shoulder because the main package already held straps over both her sides.

The gravel voice once gave warning when they got into this whole affair, “You’re playing on extra-hard mode. Typically your inventory space is measured by a max weight limit allowed on your body—then by how much space your bags can fill. Because you have multiple key items to carry, you’ll be working with limited space, reduced speed, and in-game physical discomfort.”

Faye’s first question, “Why simulate discomfort?”

Her companion answered, “Video games are suppose to be challenging.”

Faye’s follow-up response amounted to a verbal string of explicits, loud and clear enough, and involving two languages which earned her a in-game warning. Magical, glowing duct tape appeared over her mouth marking a verbal time out for five minutes.

Faye let her thoughts do the talking then, ‘This game is stupid. You’re stupid. This shit, that shit. All shit!’

As in the past and in the moment, her companion wriggled in discomfort at the memory, a ugly scarlet sprouting over her cheeks. Faye slapped aside the very real phantom pain of her lips stuck together by industrial adhesive. The tape was in the past, the outburst was in the past. She learned her lesson, and the many painful lessons which followed. But there were more yet to come.

“So… Why did you get me up at 5 AM to walk through some swamp water?” She offered to the gravel voice as a matter of serious parlay, yawning as expected on the spot and in a manner most disarming.

The voice hummed back in that same concrete echo—through the yawn, rolling powder marbles through her virtual larynx. Faye grimaced a second time at the vibrant image which overlayed her mind and her dreamscape video game screen. She rubbed her throat. Hate that feeling…

“Horse soldiers. New quest, save some hostages.” The answer was short, but she liked it that way anyway. Otherwise, they’d chatter too much. Then it would be an argument.

Faye came sudden halt. A moment paused and passed. She began tapping her foot, kicking at water and pebble sand underneath, feeling her phantom toes click against the front of her steel boot-face. She was frank: “Well that doesn’t sound very exciting.”

“You can ride the horses?” The gravel voice answered back in doubt.

Faye’s tempered foot paused. “Are you certain?”

“Oh, oh yeah! You can ride horses in this game.”

“Then why you sound strange?”

Her companion feigned being a dumbass. “What do you mean?”

“You asked that as a question. What’s the problem?” Faye repeated, feeling her face contort between a state of conflicted confusion and the growing sense of ‘Are you an idiot?’

“Oh uh…” The gravel voice chuckled nervously. “I guess… I guess, I just wanted to give you a change of pace. Something you might enjoy.”

A quirky smile graced Faye’s lips. “I do like horses. I’m…” She considered her words carefully. She was still upset but the familiar disgust was long since tempered into something manageable. They were like coworkers in a way. “I appreciate that you remembered. Now, what do I actually need to do?”

Faye’s right arm suddenly leapt upward, pointing with an outstretched index finger toward the shallow surf and beyond as half-submerged debris became more prominent.

“Pass the giant electric pole jutting there from the water. Walk passed it and you’ll start the encounter.”

The girl followed her arm, pulling it down with her left to not look like a total idiot pointing in some strange direction with who-knows watching. Faye’s eyes trailed the direction the companion pointed.

She noted the series of wooden poles with old copper-rubber cables dangling from their T-tops like post-cyberpunk decor obsessed with last century telephone poles along gentrified townships of middle America. Their mazes of bounding, vine-like wires and their wooden bases contorted and leaned about in crystalline acid slag, dull gray-green in color. Like swamp trees sprouting in alligator-infested waters… One too many road trip vacations in America then…

“Which pole exactly?” Faye questioned, confused for obvious reasons.

“That one,” her left arm affixed forward this time. Faye dragged it down again, annoyed and tempted to drop all her bags into the acidic water tickling at her all-weather, heeled boots. It would be fun to watch the problem-package rot and steam in the acidic water… Maybe.

“Please don’t hurt me,” her companion added, losing the gravel tone for a squeaky moment.

Faye grunted, returning to the in-game mission. “Okay, so the third one. Thank you.”

Faye’s head nodded in acknowledgment and she put pressure on her virtual neck to prevent herself from looking like a bobble head in the middle of nowhere.

“Stop that.”

“Sorry…” The gravel voice muttered.

The hooded girl made her last, miserable 150-meter trek through the wake water, stopping before the third, half-submerged electricity pole. Looking closer, she could see odd, round shapes in the shallow ground-up, dried acid residue left by—something she didn’t know nor cared for in the game’s sure-to-be expansive lore. Anyway, the cranial shapes had depressions and holes, little etchings and details, sunken and sullen. To put it simply: human-like forms. There were skeletons and skulls buried in the exposed sandbar, probably beneath her riding boots too.

Faye stood atop a sea of corpses. She froze at the thought, then shook her head, continuing onto her battle preparation. She dislodged her two travel bags, then scanned the exposed refuse piles for cuts unexposed to dampness or erosion, in case her equipment weight toppled them into the acidic surf. After securing the bags into minor alcoves along the stone surfaces, she extended her arms in an angelic outreach, broadening her arms and shoulders like wings. Virtual, sore muscles popped to life with satisfaction, earning a happy grunt.

Maybe the developers sought an unnecessary extreme for their attention to detail. Or maybe the video game automation engine thought it was an appropriate physical simulation, thanks to the mysteries of world-model reinforcement training. Whoops, a stray thought from her companion again. Faye knocked on her own head to chastise the unappreciated guest.

“Ow, I didn’t say nothin’,” Her companion groaned.

“Now you did,” Faye smirked. She carefully, with the consideration of a newborn child, placed her third, most heavy container atop a flat-slanted, dry stone edge. She grunted again, finally setting the over-decorated container down. “Stay here, while I go and have some fun!”

The package seemed to wriggle in response subtly. Approval unclear. Faye turned away and took seven more steps into thigh-deep water; she inched past the electric pole of note and felt the chill of a hidden threshold. As she watched closely, her boot slid through a ghost-like, thin cerulean mist. A slight bell chime filled the air, and the ghost border faded into nothing.

Faye looked around but saw no horses or soldiers. Her head spun back toward the troublemaking package along the rocks. She began, “Where—?”

“Behind you, Faye!” The rally of encouragement came from Faye’s lips but caught her by total surprise. Why… She turned away from her package and immediately smacked something hard to the face with a smoothen surface like marble. Faye’s knees buckled, dropping into the mocking surf with a splash.

Voices crowed about. “Where did the woman come from?”

“Behind the network pole!”

“Is she a threat?”

White-hot, numbness fell upon Faye, the simulation of virtual pain roared in, paired with the cold touch of acidic, salt water crashing over her now-damp skinny jeans and porcelain skin beneath. Something oozed out of her forehead and nose as dark maroon wine—virtual blood.

“Faye, get up! Up-ff!” Her companion’s words slurred through the salt water.

She mumbled back, “Wha-shit-warning was that?” She felt for her legs but her virtual knees would not budge.

Unable to rise from the surprise stun, Faye screamed out and clutched at the pebble sandbar for solid ground. She jolted back, turning her kneel into a back stumble as tall shadows seemed to circle and stalk her like hungry vultures.

Faye made a quick skim of her face with a combat glove and noted its slick, slime-like surface. A glance left at her in-game status bar displayed a new ‘purple droplet’ icon—the kind to mark a poisoning effect. A fuzzy countdown clock next to the icon meant continued double-dipping in the coastal water would mean draining her health points, and a halt to any healing attempts. She really was playing in extra-hard mode.

Poison: 3:59… 3:58… zzz… 3:59…

She took two crab steps back, wiping her goggles through the acidic salt water. There, now she could see her attackers: six horses-with-riders mounted on the tallest, bulky steeds she ever seen. Some included multiple riders in dark armor with red accents, and two muffled figures beneath bundled black cloth. Seven fighters then, two hostages. But the horses—midnight and brown majestic manes alike, thick spines and muscular thighs. Faye barely registered her attackers until another smooth mace zipped over her exposed forehead.

Faye ducked low but planted her face back into the horrible sea water. She blubbered on too, still unaccustomed to the feeling of fake, virtual lungs and the strange physics which came with game mechanics. Pulling her head back up, her shoulder-length brown hair sprouted from her fallen hood like a slime tail of impish rage.

Her companion growled, “Get up, get up!”

One more step back, Faye barely dodged a broadsword cut along her throat and right shoulder. It nicked her, earning a growl in discomfort.

“Come on, you got this. Fight!” Her companion yelled again.

“I don’t have room!” Faye growled back, dodging two more sword swings by throwing herself across the water’s surface back toward the power lines and higher ground. “Horses, too tall!”

“Draw your sword!”

The pair of voices barely had enough room between breaths to argue, “—I know. Shit, you can tell I know!”

Faye made two hops back, part-scrambling on her second landing as her foot lost its placement on the slippery sea stones. At this distance, she had a clearer view of the six horse-riders. Their torsos and faces were shrouded by silhouetted, dark armor and helmets made from a mix of ancient kevlar rubber and bolt-together steel plates.

“Oh cool, that looks like a FAST helmet.” Faye’s companion noted, but she had not time to retort the pointless detail.

For Faye, drawing her Jian was a ceremony in tortured exaggeration. Clearing back enough space against her opponents was only the first step. At least, the surprise band of horsemen had a strange sense of honor-among-killers. Their guided horses whined and neighed in protest through the ankle- and knee-deep waters, but they allowed the sword girl to continue from atop her sand bar.

“Hurry up…” her companion muttered. “They won’t wait forever.”

Jian, because that’s what her companion called it, exited its scabbard with a predictable Hollywood-grade metal twang and click. Faye got the thin blade half-free of its detailed, amber scabbard, but her short arm span proved an obstacle once again.

A pause. “Faye, remember you need to hold and twist the blade away from you.”

Faye hissed back, “I got it, you should’ve picked a shorter sword. Your choices are going to get me killed.”

“Noted,” Her companion accepted, an unappreciated chuckle on their lips.

“I’m dead serious…” Faye growled.

Faye bent the blade down toward the mocking sea water. The rest of the meter-long sword came free, straight and silver like channeled moonlight. Once clear, she took a moment to adjust—holding the blade forward like a dueling blade as she was taught, and unslung the cable strap for her scabbard with her free hand. Now she carried two weapons, her enemies continued to wait.

“Why are they waiting?” Faye muttered.

“Strategy? In game, depending on enemy faction, you might see different fighting behaviors. Maybe they’re sizing you up.” Her companion suggested, doubt in their growly, deeper voice.

Faye hummed back in acceptance, never taking her eyes off her enemies. She left the thought about them being lustful, creepy bastards unspoken. She had a stupid one playing back-seat driver already.

The horsemen held their placements, shifting clubs, swords, and maces between different hands and sides. She tried assessing their backgrounds but there was no clear detail or context toward their capabilities. Both sides remained lucky, no one drew a long gun.

Faye drew impatient. She leapt, turning to instinct energies from some place in the game code, crossing an inhuman bound as if her sword were a guiding stylus and she a stage dancer flowing along the water’s surface.

Her blade struck true-ish. The pointed Jian smacked into a brandished mace chain, fluidly intersecting between the links. Faye planted her legs and relied on superhuman balance to stick herself atop the neck of the center-left horse.

The rider loosened his grip on his horse reigns and mace, realizing his weapons were lost already. He reached across his jacket for a large, holstered kukri. Before his hands could pull the chopping knife, Faye already spun her Jian overhead and smacked sword-and-chain against his helmet and sent him falling into the water with a crash of plate armor.

“Nice work, you’re doing stellar!” Her companion announced, and Faye felt a sudden rush of heat crawl up her spine. Oh, how she hated that simple, betraying feeling yet again.

“Shut up, I got to wrap up the others.”

“You got this,” another pointless, encouraging comment.

Faye leapt again, deciding in a flash that controlling a horse for the first time was not in her skillset. Her sword guided her yet again, pointed upward and out in a torso-controlling motion, she slammed into the side of the second, center horse and hooked her scabbard around a rider’s right bicep for leverage. Faye plunged her blade into the void between two armored plates and two ribs, lucky-striking in a manner that Jian plunged through to his other side.

The defeated horse rider responded to his fatal blow as one would expect, in which Faye winced. The man’s half-masked face burst into a burp and splash of dark blood while more seemed to gush like pond scum out his two puncture wounds. The dying body fell free of his horse and Faye had just enough common sense to dislodge her blade, without toppling off too, and claim the bloody blade and riderless horse for herself.

Another four horses remained, or there should've been. Two smooth maces, dark bludgeon balls from hell, sailed into her direct view. Everything went black, for a moment. White-hot numbness struck again. In the darkness, the sensation of cold, embracing water swallowed her full. The sudden feeling of drowning took on quick.

Faye waddled back to the surface, her goggles swamping but clear enough to make out the other shadowy horse warriors approaching her now. Whatever sense of fair play was gone. They would not let her kill them without a fight. Maybe that was her first, no, second mistake.

Faye tried to rise up again, but found only her scabbard in hand. She spun about, making a narrow dodge to avoid a charging horse and carving knife hooking her hood robe clean off her head. Faye yelped but kept searching, spotting the silvery blade jutting out of the water, hilt up in the pink sunset. If not for the advancing enemies, it would be a fate-defining display.

“Get your sword, quick! You need to put more distance between—“

“Shut up, shut up!” Faye yelled at her companion’s renewed intrusion. She could barely think and this was the second time she was sent stumbling through the water. She already went through her fair share of levels, trained through her companion’s constant complaints. Was that not good enough?

“You need to move!”

Faye did move, but she was in knee deep water. She was not fast enough. A backseat rider brandishing a short lance, a lumber-like pole three meters in length cleared the shadow of his team member’s charging horse and clipped Faye across the stomach. With inhuman strength, the striker sent the girl flying back and skidding across the water with two ugly bounces. Pebble stones sprung free as the shallow, sand bar added extra fall damage to her tumble and pain combo.

“I-hate-this-game…” Faye slurred out.

“Can you—?” Her companion whispered from her lips.

Faye was shaking her head, trying to process the repeated feeling of getting knocked around. She shouldn’t dwell on it. This wasn’t real life, and yet… Here Faye was: battling for her own under a couple different, absurd interpretations. The pain wasn’t real but it sure was painful. Why couldn’t she wake up in her nice bed and three-room apartment in Shanghai? Why was she stuck on some American server, suffering through simulated torture—a true crime against humanity, again her!?

‘Alright, that’s it,’ her companion thought. The declaration in mind alone gave Faye momentary pause.

“What now? Can we just give up?”

“I’m taking over,” the gravel voice responded, a hint of Faye’s more feminine tone slipping through, as if a mask slipping away.

Faye never got used to the de-personifying effect she had with her companion, but here it was again. The girl felt a gravity shift from somewhere outside her body, like being a weight at the end of a pulley. Something sucked her in, or maybe outward. She squeezed through a very tiny hole, contorting through like a deflated balloon or cunning octopus. With a quiet pop, she was suddenly observing things through her eyes, but her skin and bones were gone. Someone else was wearing her body!

No! It’s my body dammit! Any virtual cries fell on deaf ears in the moment.

The stranger, also under the player name of Fanged Faye, rose up from her collapse with a different kind of dignity. Faye felt the motion, phantom rhythms clashing and dancing in ghostly union forming the shape of her small body. She felt the resistance of water staying her feet, her straight-back shoulders standing firm against the remaining horse warriors. Without being in the driver seat, motions felt amplified—a dozen times stronger.

“Hey, I didn’t give you permission to take over!”

“Have you looked at your life points? You’re in the yellow.”

A right eye glance confirmed the declaration of Faye’s companion. She lost two-thirds of her health points in this little engagement. She took too many hits, her virtual cheeks flushed accordingly.

“Give me another chance,” Faye mumbled. She could feel her inner well of frustration bubbling back up. It was undignifying, having someone take over her project—much less her body to do it.

“Don’t worry Faye, I got this.”

The gravely voice returned, and thus her companion went to war. With scabbard in hand, they hopped at much shorter intervals than Faye. Maybe it was a limitation without their sword ability, with said blade trapped in the water. She didn’t know for sure.

Faye’s companion ducked under a horse fully, diving down hands-first, as sluggish hooves sprayed up white water in a flurried panic as the rider caught on in a confused, stomping jostle.

Jian’s silvery blade sprung from the water, raised up like a treasure won by a fairy tale hero. The display ended in a split second. Faye’s companion dove under another mace and reclaimed the Jian scabbard, then intercepted the chain links by wrapping then on the wooden frame. Faye felt the sensation of yanking the fighter off his horse then punching her sword deep into the man’s face, leaving a drowned cavity and pooling blood. Another kill.

Faye’s companion spun around, seeking other horsemen as the last three pivoted about and a secondary rider jumped on an empty horse to make their number four in total. Two of them still carried hostages on their backs.

“No guns this afternoon? Isn’t this a little weak showing for a mid-level quest?” The companion seemed to jeer at the enemies.

Faye growled, “Why are you talking to them? They’re just NPCs.”

Faye’s hand waved her off. She felt a spike of annoyance even as her voice spoke back. “Don’t worry about it. Let me have some fun too.”

“What kind of fun is that?”

“Didn’t you take Theater at one point?” Her companion was deranged.

“Only for an elective credit!” Faye exclaimed back as her companion used Jian like a whip or something. The blade spun over her unhooded head, her face ducking another short sword and clipped the attacker’s masked cheek with a longer reach and cry of pain.

The attacker pulled the reigns of his horse, it rose onto its hind legs and spun about. Faye’s companion was already moving leaping passed the horse and leveraging their weight against the butt. A couple legs punched out from the horse but Faye’s legs cleared the danger too. If this was real life, Faye would be dead by the moment, she could barely jump over a chair.

The short sword had better access in the exchange but Faye’s companion held the experience. They plunged the Jian with a right hook and closed with the short sword in a crouch. The attacker’s sword came in at an angle, whereas Faye’s hand caught it against the reinforced wood of her scabbard. The blade clicked and bounced off from an inferior strike. Jian grazed a shoulder plate but merely bounced into a unprotected slot along the horse warrior’s neck.

Faye’s hand pulled the Jian back, watching as two sharpened edges cut through fabric and skin, loosening a spray of blood from the neck and the shoulder. A final strike to the head with the scabbard and another horse warrior toppled into the unforgiving water below.

“There’s two more.” Faye pointed out to her companion, pointing with their scabbard at the other horse riders.

“You think I forgot?” Her companion questioned, dubious again as they settled into the newly-claimed horse saddle. Pulling back the reigns and pulling boots inward, Faye’s boots lacked spurs despite the inventory item slot for such. The horse responded the same to the squeeze, neighing out another complaint to a now-dead owner.

“No, you just like to remind me all the time.” Faye deadpanned.

Faye’s companion drove the horse into a charge as the last two horses-bounded with warriors, bristled their own lance and sword for combat. The two shadowy hostages rode behind them. With successive shoves, the sacked hostages fell into the thigh deep water, one dove head first, matched by muffled screams.

The horse warriors charged. Whereas a dueling joust should be a knightly, silent and determined affair—Faye did the more appropriate thing. She screamed in terror, facing down two blades and the monstrous pounding gallop of horse hooves between her legs.

Through grit teeth and a choke-feeling attempt by Faye’s companion to shut her up at the fifteen-meters to impact marker, he couldn’t a shrill wail carried the moment of combat. Time seemed to slow for Faye, maybe it was a bonus or a curse in her moment of terror.

Her companion took control, maybe took advantage of the slow moment. They leaned left into the lance side while pushing their horse right. The horses couldn’t-would’t know better. The only seeming behavioral consistency was the horse warriors not attacking the steeds directly. Lance collide with outstretched Jian and splintered into a dazzling spray of ocean water and splintered wood flakes. The counter attack sent the lancer flying off his horse with a disastrous scream of defeat.

Faye’s eyes leapt from the downed man to the other fighter as their horses finally collided, mashing saddle against saddle as the high waters stayed the horses’ feet in a sluggish finality. Short sword slashed at Faye’s feet but her boot slammed into the hilt with an excellent side kick with flexibility not of the real world.

Spinning about the horse saddle, Faye jumped from a crouch with her companion at the wheel. A foot landed on the short, gladius blade and clambered over it, weighing down the final enemy’s left arm. She sat down on his shoulder and twisted around his back like a spider until face found neck.

In one last, flash of motion—Faye’s teeth, sharpened and bright like dinner plates, chomped down on the neck until the faux-taste of iron flooded her tongue and nostrils. Faye crowed on again, trying to force back the overwhelming scent and unhitch her jaw. They did not budge. Her companion swallowed the virtual blood and screaming into their throat. One of the duo must’ve gone sensor blind in the wicked affair.

The enemy gurgled and clawed at Faye’s face and her neck and his neck, desperately trying to hold on. Finally, the fighter went limp, the iron taste bled and remained. Faye’s companion threw themselves and the enemy into the cold, acidic water. Finally, the sensory overload hit Faye and she felt pure gray overtake her vision and taste. Cold sensations of false water and oil-like acid mix wormed along her skin like a sea of living muscle.

Someone, or several people, blubbered words through the drowning seawater. Faye couldn’t hear. By the time she could reclaim her sight, scent, and hearing—she was lying on the pebbled sandbar with acid salt water lapping at her cheeks and sunk clothes, heavy with the soapy liquid. Two figures, the hostages from earlier, kneeled in the ankle deep water, but alive. Now soaked and partly free of their restraints, their hooded figures revealed little but the faint glow of mahogany orbs and speckles of reflective white. Their eyes—siblings maybe? Sisters or brothers?

Faye filed away the spinning thought. It didn’t matter, it shouldn’t matter. Her companion needed to behave.

“Alright,” Faye called out to the body-cloaked hostages. “I set you free. What now?”

“Hey-hey,” Her companion jumped in. “You got to—“

“For once, just shut up. It’s my body, you just watch. You’ve taken it for a joy ride enough today.”

“I’m just trying to—!”

“You’ve done enough!” Faye insisted, pushing herself up to a seated position and raised a fist at herself.

“—I disagree. I could—!”

The two voices, all Faye, prattled on over one other, talking and interrupting in a loudening, obnoxious duet going nowhere soon. The hostages and their warm, brown pupils darted at Faye and nowhere. somehow processing a second body in the nothing-air. Well, their stares started to shift actually. Eyes glazed over in the direction of Faye’s things and she couldn’t help taking notice. Now the hostages were bobbing, glancing at the female warrior then to the dressed up coffin on the acid stone dry of the surf.

“Hey, you two dummies!” Faye called out to the stupid hostages. NPCs, they’re not meant to be smart—the voice within reminded. Faye crushed it, continuing to speak. “How about you tell me where to put you and I get my payout.”

“That’s not how this works!” Faye’s companion jammed in.

“Well you didn’t tell me so I got to ask someone else!”

“You get mad at me when I explain things—I mean ‘over-explain things’ to you!”

“—Then don’t over-explain!!”

Faye started to huff, trying her best to keep up in mind and mouth with the argument’s acceleration. After catching her breath, she inflated her virtual lungs to retort again, but her companion beat her to the lip-punch.

“I did the ground work for you. All you need to do is get them on the horses and walk them past the electric poles from earlier. That’s it! Mission will be over.”

Faye froze, another look of indignation crossing her face. “What do you mean?”

“I did the work. I found the easiest way to complete the mission by timing the hostage intercept and the closest point to complete the escort objective. So, done. You’re welcome.” Faye’s companion went silent after that.

Simple. Their words left Faye stunned. She blinked twice, then resolved to ignore her verbal loss. She slackened herself virtually, with force or goading her companion to take over again. They didn’t budge, like a stone over a cavern door.

Finally, Faye accepted the token and moved on. This was always how things went. Or some form of it. Misunderstanding, compromise, argue. It was old, but also familiar. “Thank you,” Faye offered as a concession and quietly assisted the remaining—uninjured horses along the bay’s shallow side. Four horses, seven waterlogged corpses. Plenty for her to pick through later.

Her companion shifted around again, hitting the bottom of some invisible barrel and weighed down on their shared heart of sorts. They hit Faye with a sense of resigned frustration, acceptance even. Faye held back her wanting to ask—‘how do you get the hostages on the horses?’ It seem the answer wouldn’t come this time.

She made do anyway. The hostage NPCs were accordingly—not very smart. Manipulate them by lifting them over the saddle, sticking one foot into a saddle ring, walk around the horse, then do it again. At least the hostages could ride and balance properly.

Faye did her job then—guided the unresponsive horses across 200 meters of acidic bay water, through thigh and knee-high surf. The last leg of her adventure was a literal chore. She ignored the little pop-and-jig chime and the ‘TASK COMPLETE’ icon overhead in the wispy ghost-blue fog she saw at the beginning of the quest. She ignored the typical holograms listing out rewards, statistics, and item pickups.

This wasn’t Faye’s game. A week ago, this wasn’t even her world. She didn’t want to be here. The game belonged to her companion. This was their—his fault.

Her companion chose the moment to butt in. Finally… “Can you stop calling me ‘companion’ in your thoughts?” They—he whispered.

Faye said nothing. She marched back to her gear, clicking and sealing her Jian back into its scabbard, wrapped in a two-band knot at her leather belt. She left her backpacks where they lay and went to her decorated, canvas-wrapped casket.

Pulling apart the tied down ropes and unfurling the strategic knots in the cloth, Faye revealed the wooden, humanoid edifice underneath. It was larger than a man, but certainly human sized and bolted together with a series of unsecured combination locks. Faye peeled away the outer, front door and peeked into the cavity within.

Black, beady eyes stared back from the shadows, only specks of white and pink from the distant sunset poured in. The silhouette bobbed its head, as if speaking with a mouth. A jaw clicked together, but the figure did not move and the voice remained silent.

Instead, Faye spoke for the shadow. Again, in the gravel voice with her deeper tones behind it.

“I have a name. I’m not just the ‘Companion’.”

Faye smirked back. “Okay… What would you like to be called, Rafa? Or maybe its time I picked a name for you.”

The shadow—Rafa—deep in the casket, grimaced back with the faint flash of teeth. He tried to speak up, but his voice was once more lost, trapped in the spirit of the Fanged Faye.

Faye’s smirk widened into a menacing grin, her K9s sharpened like a bemused vampire. The pair’s thoughts battled on, unspoken in the lands beneath the Novae Alexandros—till night fell, and daybreak returned once more.