Zero.Hero2 - Chapter 1

Five years later… 

My ears popped for what felt like the fiftieth time when the Captain’s voice came through the overhead speakers. “We’ve now reached our cruising altitude of thirty-five thousand feet. It’s a quick eleven-hour flight direct to Naples, Italy, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t stretch your legs. Feel free to get up and move about the cabin for the next hour, then we’ll have a bit of dinner.” 

Piper turned around in her seat to look at me and Norah as she not-so-whispered, “This is wicked awesome!” 

I was giddy to be on a private jet too, but more than that, I was nervous. I licked my lips as I opened my character screen. The “Paths” tab next to Inventory pulsed at me, but that’s not what I was here for. I came for my new spell, Familiar Bond. 

I’d intended to let the doctors at SoL strap me up, read my brain and anything else they wanted for science while I went on my quest to the Shaman realm… but after the way they’d treated us, specifically me, we’d lost confidence in them. The Director had withheld so much information about what had happened when I was in a coma, and the things that had gone on the six times I’d died. 

And sure, they’d paid uswell for that job, and took care of my mom’s doctor bills, but then we were turned into public icons. SoL had us dragged around from one convention to the next, posing for pictures, participating in roleplays of the events which were completely made up since no one knew what happened at the end of the fight. 

Not even me. 

I looked back at that part of my memory, trying hard to lift the haze around it. I had banished the thoughts, the same way I’d forced myself to forget Jitterbug’s ruined face, and I knew myself well enough to know I wouldn’t do that lightly. Either I wanted to forget because it’d been so horrible I couldn’t stand to ever see it again, or I was hiding something. 

Keensense tickled my neck at that, and I knew it was true. I hadn’t told the girls for fear of freaking them out over potentially nothing, but then my Keensense tingled at that too. I’d wanted to say something to Elise once, but it didn’t seem like the right time. 

Then we were swept away by the coming of spring, and the coming of the press, the paparazzi, the limo rides, the luxury, and the freakin’ action figures. SoL had fought hard to keep leaked vid captures and random pictures of us transforming in alleys off the Local Board, but it only took a few hackers to trace the postings back to their source and mass publish the images. 

The weeks leading up to June had been a whirlwind tour of Colorado as Claire, with my mother. She spoke teary-eyed praises to reporters, so grateful to have a daughter like me. She went on and on about how I was paying all her bills, paying my way through school, and still managing to save Denver in my limited free time. I wanted to vomit every time the reporter said anything along the lines of, “Sounds like an angel.” 

When I had finally remembered about the missing memory, we were packing for Italy. I didn’t want to ruin the trip with a false alarm, so I just kept it to myself. My stomach turned a bit, one-part guilt and two-parts fear as my vision hovered on the “Shaman Familiar” text in the popup. 

“Are you going, or what?” Elise asked as she turned around like Piper. 

I looked up at her, trying to summon my confidence. “I’ll have ten hours to find this thing and do whatever I need to do to make it mine. I can be woken from my trance, so it’s important that no one interferes.” 

Norah knocked my shoulder. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep Mr. Juhl and the flight attendants away.” 

Piper grinned. “And I’ll eat all your meals when the stewards aren’t looking so it seems like you’re not dead.” 

“Teamwork,” Elise said with a grin that sparkled. 

“Stop fuffling around and get to it,” Norah urged. “You’re running out of time.” 

I exhaled hard through pursed lips. “All right, see you guys on the flipside.” 

I leaned the seat back all the way, a huge perk of being in a private jet. I took one last sip of my bottled water to wet my dry mouth, then laid back. The cool, sterile air whooshed in through my nose and I held my breath at the top. 

Here we go. 

I selected “Embark” and felt my eyes flutter as I was ripped up through the luggage storage, through the top of the plane, and into the sky. I screamed, then felt warm skin on my lips and saw double vision. My eyes fluttered open to Norah’s face, a finger over her mouth, and I simultaneously saw the plane get smaller and smaller as cold, misty clouds massaged my body of light. 

I twisted away and blasted out toward the moon. Wisps of green whipped around in my vision as I focused on it, trying not to panic at this new strange feeling. The flares of color intensified, adding streams of purple, blue, red, fuchsia, turquoise, aquamarine, holy hell what even was that color? It looked like, gruplue. What did that even mean? 

I slowed and the flashes of color trickled down past my face like a soft sprinkling of rain. I basked in the feel of it against my cheeks and closed my eyes. The air tasted of moisture, earth, and smoke. Smoke? 

As I opened my eyes, a fat droplet of water plopped into the left. I rubbed at it vigorously, cursing, and realized I was standing. Gravity came back to my limbs and my knees buckled, but I caught myself. There was rain falling all around me, pattering serenely against the soft grass underfoot. I wiggled my toes and mud squished between them. 

“First time is always hard.” The voice of an older woman jerked my eyes open wide. 

I raked my gaze across the small clearing in a vibrant forest of color and light. The trees were fifty feet tall or more, with leaves as broad as I was tall.  

The old woman spoke again. “Are you going to present your backside to me all day?” 

I spun around, acutely aware of the fact that I was nude. The woman before me was a Skro, with hair as white as snow, and thin as spider’s silk.  Her eyes were a deep brown with flecks of orange, making them look like coals in dying fire. Wrinkles creased every feature from her eyes to her chin, and her papery skin sat slack around her neck. 

She wore a black dress with intricately woven symbols in every color down the front and each wide sleeve. A sash wrapped from her left shoulder to her right hip, and attached to it sat a well-used wooden pipe. 

She stood just five feet tall, but her horns twisted up another two feet. Atop them sat a headdress of sorts. Wide, luminescent leaves wove together like a massive umbrella and cascaded down her shoulders and back. Sparkles of color erupted on the leaves where the water pattered against it, and then a shockwave of light rippled all the way down to her feet. 

The old woman growled. “You deaf, Si’che?” 

“What?” I asked, my teeth chattering as I felt the cold on my skin, then in my muscles, and all the way to my core. 

“Are you Raven Gressahla, or not?” 

“I… am.” I said, remembering where I was and what I’d come here to do. 

“Good, follow me.” She waved me on as she turned to a cottage sitting at the center of the clearing I’d landed in. 

She invited me inside and threw a woolen blanket across a wooden chair near the fire crackling to the right of the door. “Dry off and dress, then sit. Food is almost ready,” she ordered, then grabbed a set of rough clothes from a small table. 

I did as she ordered, hoping that this was just part of the quest. I sat and leaned into the crackling fire. My knees and elbows poked through the threadbare clothes, and though the fire was warm, my wet hair dripping down my back didn’t do much for comfort. I shook my head like a wet dog and the fire sizzled. 

The old woman moved about in the small, cluttered kitchen, cutting bread and cheese on the edge of a much-too-full table. There were mortar and pestles, jars of dried herbs, flagons of something orange, and more things I couldn’t identify. Shelving covered every inch of the walls in the kitchen and they were all packed with hand carved plates and bowls, pans, pots, knots of what looked like garlic, flowers that had shriveled long ago, and hundreds upon hundreds of small glass vials. 

The lid of the pot bubbling above the fire chittered as steam escaped it, and I sniffed at the air. My stomach groaned with desire at the smell. I knew the different scents coming from the stew, but it was a far-off memory, like something from a dream. The aroma was herby, almost floral, and had meaty notes that I thought might be some kind of venison.  

The timer in the upper left corner of my vision blinked down to [109:52:58] Din, which appeared to be the unit of time measurement in the Shaman realm that might be akin to an hour. Fortunately, the timer cycled between Din and hours, showing I had [9:59:47] left in my plane of existence. I hadn’t had another episode of opening my eyes and seeing the airplane, but the timer convinced me of the truth; I was still safe, on my way to Italy. 

The old woman shuffled her feet as she came nearer, drawing me from thought. She moved fast for someone who appeared to be over a hundred. She grabbed the cast iron lid of the pot with her bare hand and ladled two scoops into each bowl. Cuts of browned meat, something that looked like carrot, and greenish chunks that had the texture of potatoes in a red tinged gravy sloshed from her spoon to the dishes. 

She turned to me with a full bowl held out in her aged hand. “You need to eat.” 

“Thank you.” I placed the bowl in my lap, watching the woman take her seat in the rocking chair next to the fire. 

She blew twice on a spoonful of stew before sticking the still-steaming food in her mouth. The loose skin at her neck jiggled as she chewed and I looked away, as not to stare. I lifted a small amount of broth and a green chunk to my lips, gave it a blow, and ate. The green stuff was not potato, not a tuber even. It was bitter, like grass, and chewy. My brow pulled down in a scowl as I scooped up another chunk and inspected it closer. 

Unlocking herbalism, of course! I’d completely forgotten about the Grimoire of the Skro! It was one of the books that was still on a mending cooldown from the damn Dark Doppelganger who burned up my entire sanctuary. Or it was the last time I checked… a few weeks ago. 

I took another bite of the cooled stew, then followed it up with cheese and a nibble of bread. The salty, fatty flavor of the cheese and the sour yeastiness of the bread brought balance to the bitter taste of the heartwood. I hummed in surprise of the great mixture and caught a smirk cross the old woman’s time-worn face. 

I scooped up a chunk of what I thought was venison only to be surprised again. The threads of muscle tissue melted like butter, leaving my mouth full of semi-sweet goop. I scowled again and fished a bit of the meat out of the bowl with my fingers, then focused on it intently. 

“Never seen anyone stare at their food with such interest,” the old woman murmured, then said louder, “It’s Pyn mushroom stem. Caps can be poisonous.” 

I popped the tasty morsel into my mouth. “Sorry, didn’t mean to play with it.” 

She chuckled, a raspy sounding thing, as if she’d laughed so much in her life she’d worn out the muscles in her throat. “You’ll need a few more bites to prepare. Eat up, Si’che.” 

I nodded and spooned up another bite with some bread as my mind wandered back to the quest. There wasn’t anything new in the log, just the countdown and a button to leave early. Suddenly, I felt very stupid to have followed some random old woman through the forest and eaten her food. “Who are you?” 

She laughed this time, spitting a bit of stew onto her lap. When she was composed, she wiped the smudge away with the back of her hand. The orange in her eyes glimmered like gold. “I was beginning to think you already knew.” She took another bite, watching me with a smile. 

“I don’t know anything,” I said with a shrug. 

“Yet you followed me through the forest to my cabin, dressed yourself in my clothes and ate my food,” she mused with a raised brow of fine white hair. 

What the hell, was she reading my thoughts? 

She lifted another spoonful to her mouth. “It’s hard not to when your thoughts are so loud. Keep eating, I can see the stew hasn’t affected you yet.” 

I put the spoon down. “Affected how?” 

She set her bowl aside and flicked her fingers in a shooing motion. Pale orange light hazed into view in front of her. It was her character sheet! 

Holy shit, she was level sixty-three! 

“See there,” she said and pointed to an icon at the top of her stats div. When she touched it, text popped out towards me. 

Plus fifteen Strength and ten Stamina didn’t seem like much given her crazy stats, but it would make a difference to me. I lifted the bowl to my lips and drank the broth. 

“You’re here for your Familiar, right?” Yrsah asked in a knowing tone as she waved away the menu. 

I bobbed my head, trying to swallow the overzealous bite I took. 

“I will be your guide. You need only know enough to get you through this trial, and that will consume most of your time here. I will ignore your fruitless questions to save this time.” She tilted her bowl and scooped the remaining contents into her mouth, then stuffed in the last hunk of bread after it. 

I fiddled with my spoon letting her words replay in my head as I listened to Keensense. There was no tingling of danger whatsoever, which seemed a little suspicious, but not impossible. It was probable that my quest would include a guide, it was a pretty standard RPG thing. 

But I needed to hear it from her. “Why are you helping me?” 

She leaned back, folding her hands across her stomach. Her gaze pinned me to the seat as she chewed on the last remnants of bread. “You will sleep here tonight. Your trials begin tomorrow with some good old errands.” 

I guess she wasn’t kidding about straight up ignoring me. I accepted the new leg of the quest and sat back in my chair as my gaze refocused on the fire. My eyes drifted up to the corner of my vision where the timer sat counting away merrily. There was so much I wanted to learn about this place, and so little time to accomplish what I came for. Dread nagged at the edges of my nerves, but I swallowed the feeling with another bite of stew. I was going to do this thing.