In order to fast travel from one location to another, a player needs to have visited that location’s Caer fragment at least once. Players in a party have access to each other’s locations, but must still attune themselves in order to travel when soloing. When in a party, a player can act as a beacon for other players in the party to travel to. This is especially useful when dungeoneering or travelling the wilds between safe zones or Guardian cities. —Annwyn Online Player’s Guide.

  Orleana. Day 04.

  Lueur Rose and her girlfriend, Lunette Soleil, sat on the ground beside the guildhall’s Caer Fragment. Lunette’s familiar, a moon rabbit the size of a large house cat, leapt from her lap and bounced around Saiph’s feet.

  Saiph picked the rabbit up and scratched her behind the ears. With his free hand and a smile, he signed, “Sorry I stole her love.”

  Both girls laughed and Saiph let the moon rabbit fall to the ground and it returned to Lunette’s lap.

  As his friends trickled in and introductions were made, Saiph took a moment to look over their party composition, which was really two parties of five. He was their main tank; Quark, Lunette, and the one taking them to Ven Istera, Gimm Easmile, were their supports with mixed healing and utility; Lueur Rose and Orbnus were their ranged damage sources; Will and Kamila were melee; and finally, Nix and Jack O’Lantern could flex into any role as Summoner and Bard, respectively.

  It was a decent spread, if weighted a little too heavily towards support, but with the Godsfall Mountains being a high level zone, a smaller party than a full raid compliment would hopefully draw less attention from monsters.

  “I think we’re all set.” Saiph flashed Rose a thumbs up.

  Lueur Rose raised her Caer Fragment and opened a portal to Ven Istera’s guildhall.

  The glass pane-like portal showed Ven Istera on the other side. The Guardian city looked like someone had taken the real city of St. Louis, Missouri, and liberally decorated it with redwood forest whose trees dwarfed anything Earth had to offer. The guildhall itself was an exaggeratedly large version of the Gateway Arch dressed in red and gold.

  Everyone stepped through the portal except for Clarke and Will. Saiph turned around and watched the pair standing on the other side of the shimmering hole in the universe. After a beat, the two walked through the portal.

  “See, that wasn’t so bad,” Will said.

  “No, I…” was all Clarke managed before doubling over and face planting onto the ground.

  “Clarke!” Will dropped to his knees and immediately began checking her over.

  “Her mana bar, it’s empty,” Saiph said, the fact stuck out almost instantly.

  Quark raised his cane. “I might have a fix, give me a second.”

  The blue crystal ball at the head of the cane began to glow, sending tendrils of mana between Will and Clarke. Will shivered as his own mana bar began to rapidly drop. The glow within the tendrils of mana brightened before Clarke’s own mana bar began to rise.

  Quark flashed Will an apologetic look. “Sorry, I should have warned you I was going to do that.”

  “No, you’re fine. Smart thinking.”

  Clarke stirred vans scratched the back of her head. “That was… unpleasant. What happened?”

  Will helped Clarke sit up. “I think we just found the reason NPCs can’t use our fast travel portals. You good enough to stand?”

  “I think so. As soon as I stepped through that portal, it felt like someone pulled the ground out from under me and then nothing…”

  Will turned to Saiph. “You guys find the first safe zone. I’m going to help Clarke track down her uncle. Just don’t get into any fights before I can join in.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” Saiph replied.

  ***

  Four floating islands, each a city in its own right, were shackled to Ven Istera’s central island by skyscraper-sized chains. There were really only two ways to travel between the islands: flying mount or the miles-long network of bridges that looped the outer islands and followed the chains.

  Saiph liked to rock climb with his friends and was no stranger to heights. Looking out beyond the cliff’s edge of the city island and to the rickety rope and wood bridges reminded Saiph that it wasn’t heights he was afraid of, but extremely unstable surfaces. The way the bridges swayed forced him to look away.

  The boyish-faced Gimm Easmile had a mop of blond hair and large-rimmed glasses with mage robes that gave him a scholarly appearance. He waved at them with his whole body in much the same way Lunette had when they’d first met.

  “Thanks for helping us,” Saiph shook the young Druid’s hand.

  “I should be thanking you! Rose says you know where a couple safe zones are.”

  Safe zones were like the Guardian cities, though a lot smaller. Each one was a Caer fragment that projected its own barrier that kept monsters away. There were only a few known and all of them in the higher level zones where there weren’t any player cities or other pieces of civilization.

  Saiph studied his map one more time before pulling out his summoning whistle. “We should be able to hit the first one by noon.”

  Seven roars from his hydra, Pleiades, answered Saiph’s call. Everyone summoned their own flying mounts and one by one, they leapt over the edge. The feeling of the wind rushing by made Saiph wish his own Dragon Form spell was off its cool down.

  Ven Istera’s skyscrapers and trees, as well as the tiny dots that were wyverns carrying people between the five islands, shrank even further as their party put distance between them.

  Moving beyond Ven Istera’s barrier of protection invited more of the flying asweyr islands for which the Godsfall Mountains had earned their name. They varied in size from pebbles to mountainous behemoths sporting groves of forests.

  Far on the ground below, the grassland and plains switched to ferns and other understory plants as the mountains above became more packed together.

  The first safe zone would be on the ground below the floating mountains, easy enough to miss. The group dropped to the ground to continue on foot. The shadows from the mountains overhead gave the ground the appearance of dusk, despite it not being far past noon.

  Kamila closed her parasol after they approached a particularly dark area and let out a deep, contented sigh. “Oh, it’s so nice to finally be out of the sun and into the shadows!”

  Orbnus spread her silvery angelic wings and lifted off the ground. Then took out her chainsword and ignited its flame enchantment. “I prefer to live bathed in the warmth of Solaire’s light! Which could cure you of your affliction, Vampire.”

  “Solaire’s light might be warm and welcoming, but I am a true child of Nocturne’s shadow!” Giving weight to her roleplay with her Shadow-Stepper subclass, Kamila’s entire body became dark and ethereal before she vanished inside the shadow of a nearby tree. She reappeared about ten feet ahead of them, laughing to herself.

  Lunette Soleil lobbed a small fireball lazily into the air, its light causing everyone to turn her way.

  “I’m siding with the sun worshipper,” the Druid-Pyromancer signed. Though Lunette was deaf on earth and her character here could hear, she still preferred to use the accessibility function which translated speech to text and had sounds muted through the game settings menu which still functioned mostly the same way except for the missing Logout button.

  She’d said she found the sounds disorienting. Saiph could relate a little to that. He’d had nerve damage in his left hand and left leg that had been completely cured when he’d been put into this body; he still had to catch himself from tripping or trying to use his right hand for everything when he was actually a lefty.

  “Solaire’s light guide you!” Orbnus flew over to Lunette and the two fist-bumped each other.

  “Sorry, Lune. You picked wrong, us Rogues gotta stick together!” Lueur Rose disappeared and reappeared sitting in the tree above Kamila, her feet dangling over the branch. “Who’s side are you on, Gimm?”

  “Don’t make me choose, I like you both!” Gimm Easmile said, burying his face in his robed hands.

  “Gimm the true neutral, as always!” Lueur Rose laughed.

  “Solaire et Nocturne. Light and Shadow. Two halves of the same coin in a way,” Kamila said. “I think your friend has it right.”

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Their party consisted of three distinct groups: those Saiph knew from high school, those he met in college, and Lueur Rose and her friends. Saiph was warmed to see how quickly the old and new groups mixed and played with each other.

  Nix ruined Saiph’s warm and fuzzies by rolling his eyes and scoffing, “Roleplayers.”

  Jack O’Lantern was strumming a soft tune on his guitar. The Dullahan stopped to look at Nix, pumpkin mouth open in a wide grin showing the two lit candles in his head that served as his eyes. “Roleplaying is the best part of the game! Look at Orleana, it’s the largest roleplaying city on the continent!”

  In his owl form, Strange and Charm trailing behind him like his own little flock, Quark added, “If you think about it, we’re all playing roles now. We’re less ourselves and more our characters.”

  “Yeah, Nix, lighten up!” Saiph clapped him on the back. “I’ve been writing backstories for each of my characters for years.”

  “Roleplaying is all good and well, but like ninety percent of roleplayers don’t level up beyond being able to use the crafting systems. How are they and all the newbs supposed to do anything outside the low level zones?” Nix replied.

  “Same thing us oldbies did: Grind like hell,” Saiph replied.

  Their conversation was cut short when Kamila and Orbnus called everyone over to a truck-sized mass of webbing.

  Orbnus poked at a small, but particularly thick cocoon with her sword and jumped back when it wriggled. “Oh, gross! I think some of these are alive!”

  Saiph shuddered. “Please don’t be egg sacs.”

  Orbnus cut a hole in the cocoon, revealing a humanoid figure bound inside it.

  Name: Goblin

  Class: Monster, level 83

  Health Points: 3,200/46,540

  Mana Points: 0/39,133

  Stamina Points: 0/28,920

  It, or rather, he, Saiph noted, had two puncture marks on his arm just above the elbow that had begun to fester with reddened skin traveling up his pale grey arm.

  “I guess that explains the lack of any monsters. The spiders must be dealing with them.” Why is it always giant spiders? Saiph groaned and opened his minimap.

  Apparently they were right on top of the nearest safe zone, but there weren’t any man-sized glowing purple crystals in any direction Saiph could see. That and its mana barrier should have prevented the spiders from getting this close to it anyway.

  “Looks like the safe zone moved,” Saiph said.

  “You saying a giant rock just got up and walked away?” Nix asked.

  Saiph rolled his eyes. “No. My map says we’re here, but it isn’t here.”

  “Maybe your map is just off. A lot of things are slightly different, especially the cities are way bigger than the game showed us,” Quark suggested.

  Remembering the village of Firestone as one such example, which he and Nix would have had to pass on their way to kill a monster in the area, but hadn’t been there, Saiph had to agree.

  “We should split up and hunt for it,” Lueur Rose offered.

  “Three of us can fly. We can look above the treetops,” Kamila suggested, changing into a bat.

  “Good plan,” Nix said, sitting down on a rock. “If you find any giant spiders, let us know so we can circle way the hell away from them.”

  ***

  Kamila, Quark, and Orbnus were only gone a few minutes before Orbnus called for everyone to head in their direction.

  Not far from the trio was a wall of webbing so impossibly tall and thick, it was impossible to see through to the other side. Spaced at random intervals within the wall were thick cocoons, the smallest of which were larger than any person.

  Saiph inspected one of the cocoons and found it held a peryton, a large deer-like monster with green fur, wings, and a scorpion’s tail. “No way we’re dealing with a small spider problem. Will, I think we’re gonna need you for this one.”

  “On my way.” There was a brief flash of purple light as Will-I-Am appeared in front of them, drawing his two cutlasses. “You and Nix sure do have a knack for finding the worst types of mobs.”

  “I’m beginning to think it's our special talent.” Saiph willed Durendal’s Edge and his shield, Miasma, to his hands.

  The blade sunk into the web without really cutting it with a wet sound that made Saiph cringe.

  Orbnus handed Saiph her chainsword. “Try this.”

  White flames erupted from the sword as the chainsaw began spinning around the blade. The mass of webs fled from the chainsword as Saiph swung with little effort on his part.

  No sooner had they made it to the other side of the wall, a man’s distant cry made everyone tense up.

  Will’s cat-like ears flicked as he listened. “It came from the northwest. Follow me!”

  Everyone took off in a sprint after Will, running until they entered a clearing. About a hundred yards ahead of them, a man was swinging a polearm at three man-sized spiders. One had a bone-white exoskeleton and the other two were black with purple hourglass markings on their abdomens.

  By the look of the man’s ornate weapon and lack of any armor, Saiph was certain he was another player. Though his feet were coated in sticky webs, the spiders seemed hesitant to approach the tip of his blade. Saiph knew that wouldn’t last forever.

  “Over here!” Saiph bellowed as he cast Dragon Charge.

  Flames erupted around Saiph’s body as he barreled forward towards the spiders. He connected with the white one and the pair collided with a tree. Saiph raised his shield to bash the monster, but stopped short when Nix called out.

  “Saiph, stop! They’re all players!”

  Still holding his shield mid-swing, Saiph studied the crumpled spider, which let out a very human groan.

  Name: WickedWeaver

  Class: Summoner, Level 89

  Subclass: Cleric—School of Entomancy, Level 92

  Health Points: 17,652/21,250

  Mana Points: 44,850/44,850

  Stamina Points: 28,750/28,750

  The Spiderling’s form shifted to that of a man with eight eyes and four arms. He wore white mage robes with a long white and gold cloak.

  “Ow, you hit hard!” His voice came out raspy and his stressed syllables caused his words to flow into each other. The skin around his face was still very much thin sheets of chitin that slid along each other in a disturbingly alien manner as he spoke. “We were just playing.”

  “Sorry, didn’t realize.” Saiph offered a hand, helping the Summoner-Entomancer to his feet. Saiph gestured expansively to all the webbing around them. “You guys did all this?”

  WickedWeaver nodded. “Yes, to keep the night spawns out. When we logged in, the safe zone was gone and we spent two days of nonstop fighting to find it.”

  “I knew it! The safe zone did move!” Saiph went through his map and cleared the marker for where the nearest safe zone should have been. “Any chance you can take us to it.”

  The two other spiders, Spidarren and Spiderella, had likewise changed into more humanoid figures. Like WickedWeaver, they each had eight eyes and four arms. And upon closer inspection, the man who had been trapped, Thaddeus the Spider, also had similar Spiderling features.

  Spiderlings weren’t a common race in Annwyn Online. The game forced a starting point of Xelle on the northwest coast for Spiderling players, which made the lower levels a nigh impossible grind without having higher level friends to let you soak experience or escort you back east. Saiph had two spiderling characters as his alternates, a Bard named Taika and a Dragoon named Bellatrix.

  “We sure can,” WickedWeaver said. “Our website’s back that way.”

  ***

  The Spiderlings’ website consisted of several log houses in a semicircle around the safe zone’s Caer Fragment. There were about forty people around the camp and all had some feature that identified them as a Spiderling; four arms, multiple sets of eyes, and some even walked around on multiple legs. And all of them had some sort of arachnid-themed username.

  Two big bonfires were lit in the middle of the clearing between homes and the Caer Fragment. Though it was still hours from sunset, the Godsfall Mountains overhead had grown packed enough together to give the understory the appearance of nighttime darkness.

  Saiph attuned himself and upon returning, joined his friends around one of the bonfires, taking a seat between Nix and WickedWeaver.

  “You guys set up shop pretty quickly,” Saiph said. “Three days to get these houses up?”

  Spiderella answered, “Some of us work for the same contractor. I’m an electrician, my husband, Spidarren, is a carpenter. He drew up the plans and we built them. Things go quick with nearly two hundred hands.” Spiderella raised all four of her hands and wiggled her fingers.

  “This isn’t a permanent home, we’ll be going back to our guildhall in Xelle as soon as the rest of our friends get here in a few days,” Spidarren added.

  Xelle was one of the least populated Guardian cities but was a common staging area for raids in Iska, the frozen tundra just north of it. Xelle was still weeks away, even by flying mount.

  “We’re heading west, too. To my guild castle, Pallas’ Watch.”

  A spark of recognition appeared on WickedWeaver’s face. “You’re with Sonnet’s Little Helpers? They helped me and Thaddeus kill Qalupalik up in Iska! I still wear the cloak I crafted from the loot we got! If you’re going that way, you should know it isn’t just peryton and goblins you gotta watch out for. We saw cockatrices overhead. Hundreds of ‘em. I’d imagine you’re going to want a larger party to help clear the way…”

  Clearly this group had seen a lot of action over the last couple of days. It left Saiph to wonder if he should have taken Permaphrost's offer to send more people from North Remembers his way to help clear the path to Pallas’ Watch. Hindsight being what it was, at least here was a willing and able group.

  “I'd hoped you might offer. There's supposed to be two more safe zones between here and Pallas’ Watch, though if they've moved as well, I doubt we'll get to either by nightfall.”

  “Yeah, you can definitely count that out. You won't even make it to the next one. We've cleared the way east, but the west'll be a slog,” WickedWeaver said.

  Solaire was already hanging low in the sky. Saiph resigned himself to the extra travel time. They were at a good stopping point as it was.

  “If we're pausing, I'm heading back to Ven Istera to help Clarke and her uncle with a project that I think will prove very helpful later. And don't none of you follow me, it's a surprise!” Will disappeared through his conjured portal, but not before giving the universal gesture for “I'm watching you.”

  Quark and Kamila left for Orleana to continue coordinating with their guild for the Avanyu raid while Orbnus and Jack O’Lantern went to Araedi for a couple's dinner. Lueur Rose, Lunette Soleil, and Gimm Easmile likewise returned to Orleana. The plan would be to return at dawn to continue their quest.

  That left Saiph and Nix with their new Spiderling allies.

  A pair with black and tan markings passed their group, each dragging a large cocoon with moose-like antlers sticking through them.

  Saiph watched the spiderlings with curiosity and turned to Spiderella. “What are you guys doing with those?”

  “Gonna be cooking them up for dinner, of course!” Spiderella said with a toothy grin.

  Nix turned to her, mouth agape in horror. “Some of those have goblins in them! Don’t tell me you’re seriously eating all the monsters you’ve been catching!”

  All the spiderlings around the bonfire gave each other knowing looks filled with stifled laughter.

  Spiderella giggled. “How else do you think we got enough food to spin all those webs?”

  Saiph looked at Nix and the two gagged.