Chapter 21 The Cocoon

Larry growled again. Miggy readied his bow. I didn’t move. The sabretooth king had not attacked, which meant…well, it meant something. He’d never had any qualms about attacking before. This had to mean something. Then again, as he bared his teeth, those fangs longer than my arm, I wondered if this were more hope than fact.

‘I take it you guys know each other?’

‘Larry, Miggy. Miggy, Larry.’

Miggy got to his feet. Guess he figured there was little point in hiding. ‘How do you, ah, do?’

The sovereign beast was staring straight at me. Was he…communicating? I glared back. ‘If you want me to apologise for killing you, I’m not,’ I said, flatly, ‘and again for dominating you. You were the one who tried to eat me when I was level one, with five hit points to my name, butt naked in the rain.’

Miggy took a step backwards. I could tell he thought I was crazy. Was I…crazy? But some part of me knew Larry understood these words. We had shared a mind, a consciousness, albeit briefly. Larry growled again, but this time it did not sound menacing. It sounded defiant.

‘I’m glad you’re alive,’ I said. ‘I let you go because…you were going to die. And yes, I know that dying doesn’t quite affect you the way it does me, but still didn’t seem right.’

Miggy gave a nervous laugh. His bow was in his hands, an arrow nocked, as he sidled beside me. ‘Reave, this is…crazy. You’re talking to a sabretooth tiger. Forget, just for a minute, that that thing is a wild animal. It’s also a mob, and the only function for mobs is to kill avatars. And probably other mobs.’

I never took my eyes off Larry, and the sovereign beast did the same. The world seemed to disappear, tunnelled and narrowed down. Even the blood red sky seemed to evaporate, leaving us in our own bubble. Then, once the tension seemed to reach breaking point, Larry ambled slowly towards me and lowered his head.

‘What…is he doing?’ said Miggy. I didn’t answer. I didn’t know. I made a move towards him, but Miggy held me back. ‘Come on man, you can’t. You said this thing tried to eat you?’

‘Look…just trust me, man,’ I said, calmer than I felt. ‘Something’s different this time.’ Miggy did not look any happier about the situation, but let me go, if reluctantly. I took some more steps forwards and gently placed my hand upon Larry’s head. His fur was coarser than I’d imagined. Rough against my hand, thick and wild, just like the beast it belonged to.

Then I saw it, well I saw…something. A notification appeared. A quest had appeared in my log. But when I tried to access it, the log itself was completely garbled. It didn’t even use letters, it looked closer to Egyptian hieroglyphics or some kind of alien language. The only thing I did see was how much experience it would grant. Ten thousand points.

More than enough to push Miggy to level five, enough in fact to level me as well.

‘Are you seeing that?’ asked Miggy, whose eyes had glazed over, and who was clearly looking through his own HUD.

‘A quest,’ I muttered.

‘With no information whatsoever.’

‘Ten thousand experience. This is what we’ve been looking for!’

Miggy’s eyes snapped back into focus as he shut down his HUD. I did the same. ‘Hold on, you’re not seriously suggesting we accept this quest? We have zero idea what it is, what it’ll involve. Even how to turn it in.’

‘You said it yourself, we can’t stay in the forest farming mobs. Those sky-assholes are sabotaging all the side quests. This might be our only way through.’

‘But we don’t even know what…this is!’

It was a fair point. Logical even. I looked to Larry. The beast seemed to know what I was thinking. ‘We can do this,’ I said. ‘I know we can. We’ve fought tougher odds than this.’

‘I don’t think that’s even remotely true,’ said Miggy, but I could see I was wearing him down. He was right, we had no idea what this quest was going to involve. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t also right. Without this, we were stuck in the starter zone, and we already knew what that meant.

In the distance, wolves began to howl.

‘Fuck it,’ said Miggy, ‘fine, let’s do it.’

I relaxed. I’d already mentally made the decision to do this quest whether Miggy had agreed or not, but was glad he was along for the ride. A part of my whole embracing teamwork ethos. If nothing else, it would be good to not have to keep going alone.

‘How do we even activate the quest?’ said Miggy, though I already had the quest log up and had begun to mentally click all over the quest. A new notification appeared.

[Would you like to teleport?]

‘Would I -‘ began Miggy, as I clicked yes. Blue light enveloped us, the air popping, as the system spirited us away. When the light faded, I saw the three of us were still together. Miggy immediately dropped to his knees and began dry-heaving. Larry moved forwards, as did I, investigating our new surroundings.

It was peculiar. And I had spent a month and a half in the Stone Epoch. If I had to describe it, I would have said it was an alpha or beta build. There were obvious signs that we were still in the Stone Epoch, with jungle flora beneath our feet, and those enormous trees scattered across the wilderness. The place was like a circular dome that had been reversed with the entire ground slanted to a single, central point. Larry was heading there.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

But the further out I looked, the more the jungle and the Stone Epoch disappeared. I saw what looked like metal walls, scaffolding that seemed to simply disappear into…nothing. I tried not to think too hard about that, as I walked down, heading to where Larry had settled.

‘You know this place?’ I asked the sabretooth king, and he gave something that approximated a grunt, which I took to mean yes. Larry was laying in what looked like enormous leaves, each one the size of Larry himself. They swayed slightly despite there being no breeze. They seemed alive, almost…sentient. ‘This is the quest?’

He lay down as the leaves began to envelop him. Slow at first, but quickly picking up speed, until his entire form had been wrapped in a verdant green cocoon.

‘What the hell is this place?’ said Miggy, coming to stand beside me. ‘And where’s that tiger?’ I gestured to the cocoon. ‘Huh. Maybe the quest is just some kind of I don’t know metamorphosis for Larry? Or healing process?’

Frowning, I opened up the quest log once more. It was still garbled, written in that alien language, but there were now new lines written. I could at least decipher the number two, and just below it a question mark. I clicked on it, the cocoon with Larry within beginning to glow.

Miggy smiled. ‘Guess I shouldn’t have been too mad, if this is the entire quest. How long do you think this’ll take? Guess we just wait?’

The strange metal walls and scaffolding began to fade away, as though packaging themselves back into thin air, replaced now with more of the Stone Epoch. Flora and vegetation began to appear, encircling us with us still at the epicentre.