(3) Doom And Gloom

Addy stared at herself in disbelief, the image reflected in the mirror completely familiar, yet entirely foreign. Before her stood the character she made in Prelude, a woman of average height and build. Black hair hung down in gentle waves just past her shoulders. Her pale skin was tinged with color from her Djinn transformation, and her form seemed elusive somehow, ethereal.

That was all that was familiar.

Her pallid skin, meant to be tinged with blue, was instead a shade of purple and traced with black lines reminiscent of tattoos. These tattoo lines, however, were a black purer than any ink could capture, like the black of the night sky, and tinged with stars and nebulae. It was as if her body were a shell, and these lines were cracks revealing the void of deep space within.

Her hair, still the same length, now fell in a gradient that started black at the roots and shifted toward a deeper purple than her skin at the tips. Her ears were sharp and long, poking out from her hair like knives. Her nails were more like claws, their color matching the gradient of her hair, though they did not seem to be painted.

Above her head floated a halo of bright stars bound into an orbit by wispy purple energy. These stars sparkled with light like luminescent gemstones, shifting their colors across the full spectrum as they orbited about four inches off the top of her head.

Her eyes were the most jarring change. Her sclera were that same void-black as the tattoo lines, and just like them, they were painted with stars and nebulae, portals into the void of space. Her irises were large but thin, like slivers between the starry expanse of her sclera and the pure-black void of her pupils. The effect reminded her of a solar eclipse, where her irises were the thin sliver of the sun’s corona peeking around the dark void of her pupils.

“What happened to you?” she whispered, touching a fingernail to the mirror, as if to touch the figure within.

She was further alarmed as she spoke, seeing that her canines were as sharp as a cat’s, nearly large enough to poke out from behind her lips, themselves a hue to match the ends of her hair, another jarring change to round out the ensemble.

She brushed her hair out of her face, something she seldom had to do with her previous bob, and glanced around at her extravagant bathroom. Obviously, it was extravagant. She had built it in a survival-craft MMO. Building luxurious spaces that were not strictly necessary for gameplay was a huge flex, and doing it here in Ashreach, in the center of the Caldera, no less, was the biggest flex of them all.

An oval room of slick black stone stretched before her, larger than her entire apartment back home. A basin that was more of a pool than a bathtub occupied the far wall, fed naturally by the pressurized water beneath the base. When she created these features in the game, she was not concerned with intangibles like temperature or comfort, so she wondered if the water, heated by the intense volcanic activity below, might burn her skin off.

At the end of the room stood a tall shower made of sparkling granite—a rarity here in the Caldera. It was shaped into a square room about five feet by five feet, enough room for two benches, one to sit on under the water, and another to sit on the other side while drying.

The wall beside her was devoid of any facilities, instead being occupied by hooks and rods from which towels of various shapes and sizes hung, with a long shelf of sanitary products running parallel above them. There were metal grates in the walls, both along the floor and the ceiling. Addy knew the bottom grates would be dispersing cold air, while the grates near the ceiling sucked the mist and heat from the bath away.

Nemesis was built atop an active volcano, so although Djinn were not particularly bothered by temperature, she had still paid attention to the heat, installing an air-exchange system that used the volcano’s own workings for power and pressure. The idea was that the intense pressure from the super-heated water would force it into large chambers, where the sudden increase in volume would lower the temperature before it was pushed into an air exchanger, cooling the air, before—

She shook her head. Logistics was a field she enjoyed, and it was a frequent escape from the troubles in her life. It was so simple. X input equals Y result. To achieve the desired result, simply adjust the inputs and variables. Thinking logistically to avoid her emotions was a frequent trap she fell into.

With a sigh, she dipped a foot into the bath. When it did not scour the flesh from her bones, she submerged fully. She could tell it was hot, but she had no way of knowing if it was scorching or comfortably hot. Djinn were made of mana, after all. Not that a fireball to the face could not damage her, but warm water? Definitely not.

Wading out to the bath’s deepest part, she let the water rise past her nose and simply sat beneath it, testing her new body. Djinn lore in the game was scarce, and what did exist was focused on how it changed gameplay. Knowing that one’s stamina bar was added to their mana bar was fine for a game, but what did that mean when it became reality?

Djinn were described as needing little food and water, but why would a being of mana need food and water at all? What was its energy source? Did it passively absorb mana from the air? If that were the case, what would happen to a Djinn stuck in an area of low mana density?

She sat beneath the water, unconcerned with breathing. She blew the air out of her lungs and watched the bubbles rise to the surface. Even with no air at all, she felt no instinctual desire to inhale. Did she need to breathe at all? She would definitely need air to speak.

As she pondered, the heat began to relax her, and her thoughts unconsciously shifted to processing her recent arrival in Rengan—or that was what the world was called in Prelude. Who knew whether this world was the same?

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She must have spent a considerable amount of time staring at Ramose and Akhenaten, not saying anything, as they looked at each other and escorted her back to her room. That itself was a surreal experience, walking through the halls of Nemesis in the flesh. She had spent hundreds of hours building the place, yet it now felt alien, though with a hint of familiarity.

Her hair floated around her face, and she waved it away in frustration. It was annoying at this length.

The NPCs were strange to see up close. Akhenaten, ostensibly human, was a towering man who wore a soiled brown robe with the hood raised. His only defining feature was the black blindfold he wore, which Addy always thought was an amusing jest from the devs.

Ramose was…unique. He was someone she summoned specifically to fill the role of Overseer—most NPCs in Nemesis were. He was a Deva from some outer plane or another, with neatly combed hair that was black on the top and gray on the sides. He wore an impeccable suit and shining black shoes. He had a neatly-trimmed goatee, and everything about him screamed ‘sophisticated.’

“Please, my lady, allow me to escort you to your quarters. No doubt there is much to process, and it would be easier to do so in the privacy of your own room,” Ramose had suggested.

Nephthys had allowed him to sling her arm over his shoulder and usher her through the halls, which were empty since it appeared to be past sundown. He had gently lowered her onto her bed and left, saying he would inform the others of her ‘ascension.’

Maybe it was part of being a Deva, but she found him more condescending than the game, though he said nothing in Prelude, merely took orders and gave the occasional grunt or battle cry. Maybe Devas are always haughty?

Surfacing, she walked over and pulled a towel from the rack, enjoying the luxurious fabric. She wrapped it around herself and sat on a bench beside the rack. She stared at her hands, the nails black at the cuticles and purple at the edges. Flexing her fingers, she observed the purple veins visible beneath her nearly-transparent skin. Were the veins themselves purple, or was her skin making them seem so?