Nocturn Core (Abridged)

I was at some kind of performance. I understood that the members of my IPRO team had all selected songs to describe themselves. They were performing them on stage in front of the rest of the team. Amar and I walked down to the front of the auditorium to find a couple of free seats. Autumn showed up and sat down next to me. For some reason, a number of people brought props from the Sword of Truth series or dedicated their songs to Richard Rahl. I wasn’t sure why this kept happening, but it was amusing. I clapped when I saw each of them refer to the series. Two people trying to walk past each other in the aisle got stuck, and I suggested folding their props in half so they could squeeze by, but neither of them did it.

A dog of some kind put its head in Autumn’s lap. When I tried to pet it, its eyes turned red. It snarled viciously at me. She explained that it had a poor first impression of me… I tried to ignore it, but now that I had angered it, the dog started lashing out at me. It ended up pushing me to the ground, and I barely kept it from tearing my face apart. I was puzzled when the animal suddenly gave up and trotted away. While the performances continued, I feared that Limia would ask me to sing something… I had missed the day when we picked our songs, so I hadn’t rehearsed anything. If I had to, I could always sing Happy Birthday to the audience. The list of music I knew by heart was pitifully short and consisted mostly of children’s songs.

I was in my dorm room. It seemed that the world was going to collapse, destroying the souls of everyone in it. The only way to save them was to take them to another world entirely. Although I don’t recall doing it, I knew I had created a portal for them in my room to take them to Nyre. It was the safest place I could offer them. People ran through the portal in desperation. As I explained it to Autumn, we could save everyone who wasn’t actively dreaming up the “waking” world. In the end, it would only be as stable as the dreams of the last person dreaming it – probably not stable at all. Autumn was clearly worried that I would try to save everyone from the world’s collapse. I ran into the room connected to mine and warned everyone there that time was running out. They had a matter of minutes to escape. I checked the bathroom and found a little girl being attacked by shadow creatures. They pinned her to the wall.

Drawing Apheri in a swift motion, I tore through the shadow beings and banished them from our world. The little girl threw her arms around me on the verge of tears. I reassured her and brought her back to my room where the portal awaited. With Autumn’s help, I convinced her to go through to Nyre. The other portals I’d created around the world were allowing billions of people to escape the crumbling world, but the number of people I expected to die with Earth was still enormous. Some of them refused to believe it was happening.

“I have to try to save them,” I told Autumn. She grabbed my arm.

“You don’t have time,” she replied. “Four minutes won’t be enough.” I almost argued, but when I thought about it, I realized she was right. I would die with the rest of them if I stayed here too long, and then what would become of Nyre? Perhaps it would collapse just like Earth. I gave in and joined her in stepping through the gray-blue rift.

The dream jumped. Autumn and I sat on the back of a riding lawn mower with my grandpa. After coming to Nyre, he found an enormous plantation and built a house. It seemed like a lot of land for him to take care of… He was living his dream, so he didn’t mind the work. We accompanied him back to his house before going our separate ways. Autumn and I wanted to find the people we saved in Illinois. I also wanted to make sure no one had found Nocturn Isle. I couldn’t trust Earth’s society with Symphony. Autumn didn’t want to drive, so I agreed to it. A light snowstorm blew in as we departed.

I was playing on WMBRO. The character rankings indicated that there were four level 194 players. I observed that one of them was a thief, and another was a novice. I couldn’t imagine how such a thing was possible. There were at least two new game masters who announced random things while I walked around on my character. Autumn voiced her suspicions that these high level characters belonged to the game masters. How else would they have leveled so quickly?

I wandered into a dungeon that combined elements of the Toy Factory with Glastheim. An abysmal knight and at least thirty other monsters attacked me in a swarm, but I was able to destroy them with ease. I sensed that I was using the wrong arrows, though, so I wanted a chance to switch them… Unfortunately, the monsters just kept coming, and I intended to pick up the items dropped by the abysmal knight first. It died, but so did fifteen other things standing in the same spot, so distinguishing the abysmal knight’s loot from everything else was impossible. The items disappeared before I even made it over there. After I killed all of the monsters on-screen, a game master teleported to me. He apologized for any latency and explained that the server was under maintenance. I didn’t care at all about that… The only problem I had with the server at the moment was the mysterious appearance of so many high level characters without the capacity to level quickly. I walked past the game master without speaking to him. Further into the dungeon, I found the other new game master standing idle. I didn’t speak to him, either.