The Devil In White: An AA Online Novel

"...so anyway, we were all beta-testers for some of the content in this game, but we never played the live version. They converted our levels when they transferred our characters when the new content quest came out. We were a little surprised ourselves but we're glad to be here." Aidan explained. Amelia was always amazed at how much truth Aidan wove in with his nonsense. Forsythe had the good grace to not even look up during this exchange.

"It's been a while since the game came out?" Hunter said suspiciously.

"We promised ourselves we wouldn't do it unless we were together and it took this long for all of us to get the invite," Aidan said straight-faced.

"Then the Resident name bars?" Hunter asked.

"Just an oversight I think. They fixed it in a day." Aidan shrugged. "I think it's more surprising we haven't seen more glitches. The game is really impressive in the live version."

"What's it like being a beta-tester?" Hunter asked, intrigued despite herself. It wasn't too unusual considering she was being very cautious talking to Aidan.

"Tiring. Trying to keep track of what we can say." Forsythe interrupted and answered, earning a sharp look from Aidan. Forsythe looked back at Aidan with a look that said 'what are you going to say bub?'

"I'll bet," Hunter agreed, giving a long look to the usually quiet Forsythe.

Forsythe set down 16 glasses with different colored substances in them without minding her look. It seemed like he had been holding a tray with all these drinks for just this moment. Aidan, Amelia, Forsythe, Elisha, and Hunter sat at the table in the back of 'The Gamble', a port bar that was open especially late tonight to celebrate the repulsion of the invaders. Raven was sitting with the pirates near the bar, laughing loudly but otherwise keeping to herself as the pirates all started drinking themselves into oblivion.

"Now the 4 glasses in front of Elisha are different special fruit juices. Non-alcoholic." Forsythe actually paused for a moment and looked at Elisha. "You're too young." Elisha giggled helplessly at his seriousness. He almost smiled shocking Amelia, before returning his attention to the rest of the table. "The rest of you please select a drink and try it out. It's important that you don't tell me it's tasty, or nasty. I expect words like fruity, aromatic, nutty or the best I've ever had." Forsythe lectured. He pulled a glass toward himself and took a drink. He remained expressionless as he put it down. "Interesting."

"Nutty?" Amelia asked.

"Best you've ever had?" Aidan smirked.

"Burning," Forsythe replied putting down the glass. He slid the glass far away from him.

Hunter looked haggardly down at a glass, looking like she could fall out of her chair and be dead asleep any second. "Is he serious?" She wanted to know.

"I don't think I've ever heard him tell a joke," Aidan replied, reaching out cautiously for a glass of what looked to Amelia like lighter fluid. It looked tame, almost like water, but she doubted that was the case. He started gagging on it the second it hit his lips and gasped out, "aromatic. Like gasoline."

Forsythe had produced a scrap of paper and was diligently recording, mouthing the word gasoline as he wrote. Elisha giggled again.

Hunter smirked and reached for a glass. She took a long pull, and after a moment pursed her lips and put it down. "Tasty." Forsythe started to scowl but she immediately added. "It tastes like coconut."

"Amelia you try one." Forsythe urged.

"No way." Amelia immediately rejected the notion. He started to turn his attention toward her and she could feel a fight coming on but she was saved by Hunter's question.

"How did you come here just in the nick of time? What have you been doing that you were onboard a pirate ship?" Hunter asked, obviously no longer able to hold back her curiosity.

"Ah. Well, you see, since we were in the throne room. Some things happened." Aidan replied. He tried the next glass and winced, his eyes nearly rolling into the back of his head. "Sulfur," his voice sounded like he was being strangled.

"Fascinating. I bet it's the gunpowder." Forsythe scribbled.

"You made a drink with gunpowder?" Elisha raised her eyebrows.

"No, the bartender added gunpowder. It's a treat, the bartender told me." Forsythe nodded as if he concurred with the idea.

"...and that one just happened to be put in front of me?" Aidan said crossly.

"No," Forsythe said.

Elisha giggled helplessly.

Hunter picked up another glass and took a sip, it happened to be a glass that Aidan had described as gasoline. She took a second sip and set it down. "Scotch. Young scotch."

Amelia sighed. "Some things happened? Please explain properly at least."

Aidan looked at Amelia like she'd betrayed him but finally sighed. He recounted the tale of their party's decision to level up and include Amelia. He left in the part about Forsythe trying to fulfill his lifelong(or weeklong) ambition to become the best Chef on the continent to explain what was going on at the table. Amelia was pleased when he left the singing to the monsters out. Then he described the taking of the pirate ship and how they had just sailed around according to Raven's intuition. Intuition that had led them to almost sinking twice before First-mate Barny could take it no longer and demanded he be taken down so they would, and Aidan quoted him and closed his eye imitating an eyepatch, "...not be crashin' me ship on the rocks, or takin' it into the whirlpool, or running it into a sea monster ever again!"

"Did you really run the ship into a sea monster?" Elisha was giggling again and even Hunter snickered.

"Some sort of big sea snake. It was about 100 meters long." Aidan said, holding out his hands in big fish story fashion. "It seemed more surprised than we were. I think it was sunbathing."

"I'm making steaks. I'm calling them Leviathan Steaks. It looks like tuna." Forsythe said, and he sounded so sincere that Elisha looked startled. She looked him in the eye and then realized he was dead serious.

"Shut up!" Elisha laughed.

"I can, but I swear to you that the steaks are real. Aidan is exaggerating though. It was only about 85 meters long." Forsythe held his hands out to either of his sides but a few inches closer together.

"So how did you get here again?" Hunter asked, shaking her head and leaning in toward the group.

Amelia shook her head. "We were heading here to begin with. We would have been here hours ago but," Amelia cast a meaningful glance at Raven, who right at that moment happened to be standing on the bar on one foot, slowly lifting the boot she wasn't standing on that had a mug on it. First-mate Barny was struggling to drink the contents without using his hands and she was very carefully tipping it so she didn't lose the glass. There was some sort of wager because the pirates were all chanting nonsensical things around them.

"You people have to be the strangest people I have ever met," Hunter finally concluded, watching the spectacle for a long moment.

"Oh, how nostalgic. I miss that." Amelia sighed wistfully.

"What?" Aidan asked.

"Being surprised and astounded with just this level of weird," Amelia replied.

"I shall be asking the pirates what they think of their drinks. Maybe Residents and Transients have different tastes." He turned his gaze to Elisha as if he had to explain, and said. "It's important."

Elisha raised her eyebrows and nodded very seriously back at him. She maintained her expression as he got up from the table and left with his scrap of paper. As he left she commented that he was nice but seemed off.

"He's hurt, in here." Aidan tapped his left b.r.e.a.s.t.

"He has heart problems?" Elisha asked quizzically.

"No, his heart is magnificent. He's kind and caring. He's just hurt and he's never been the same." Aidan replied, and Amelia wondered what it was about this kid that neither Aidan nor Forsythe could be bothered to be anything but nice. Well, Elisha did seem pretty with it for a kid her age.

"What happened?" Elisha asked, leaning forward looking concerned.

"Elisha. Game is for game stuff." Hunter warned her daughter. She also seemed to be warning Aidan.

"Yeah mom, but I like him." Elisha rolled her eyes. "If you don't ask you can't know what's game stuff and what is open knowledge."

Aidan surprised Amelia because after he took a drink from his third glass he put it down very slowly and began to speak. "He was playing a game with his daughter and wife a few years ago. Several years ago really. They both died while all three of them were playing together."

Amelia stiffened even as Hunter and Elisha both began to look sympathetic.

"Oh no, it's amazing he can still play games," Hunter whispered.

"Wow. Did a truck crash through their house or something? I can't even imagine." Elisha whispered, both mother and daughter looking suddenly very concerned. Amelia wondered if there was a Mr. Hunter. She was betting there wasn't.

"Something. We never talked about how they died." Aidan said, easily cruising past any mention of the death game. "When I found him he was hurt, and he was obsessed with how he could have done something else or been someone else. He has a habit of taking very seriously what anyone asks him to do. That's this Chef business you know. Someone asked him in just the right way whether or not he could be the next great Chef."

"He will be," Amelia muttered.

"Oh?" Elisha turned to Amelia.

"Hah." Amelia leaned over and pushed one of the juices toward her. "Earlier in the week, he made a butter sauce for a monster crab he cooked. He had gotten the milk from a cow monster and turned that milk into butter. Then he worried that it wouldn't go with the crab because they were both meat-eaters."

"Seriously? That's amazing." Elisha sputtered and started giggling again. Her brown curls bounced over her pointed ears as she laughed.

"Oh yeah? We were fighting the big sea snake and he's muttering, right? I hear him and he's trying to decide whether to stew the meat or grill it." Amelia waggled her eyebrows. "It was quite alive and fighting at the time. It was trying to eat Raven."

Elisha began to laugh so hard she started hiccupping.

"Oh, it gets better. The snake has its jaws around Raven and I hear him say, so very softly…" Amelia whispered, and Elisha leaned in, still hiccupping. "Ah, if it eats Raven I can't cook it. That's terrible. Then he looked so sad."

After the giggles and hiccups had subsided, Hunter turned soberly to Amelia and Aidan and told them about the conference. "Ours was the only guild that stood up and supported the Resident army build. You know Transient raid guilds. Gilduirn was there, and if you don't know him from his streams I can say he's not a bad guy. He just wasn't concerned. He and his huge guild are convinced they can level up for the event and that's all they'll need." Her voice was grim. She started to say something else but stopped. She just started to smile as she slumped in her chair.

"Oh, what does the leader of Shadow Fall think?" Aidan wondered. Amelia cast a glance at him, wondering if he had read her mind again. Amelia was just thinking that there seemed to be more to the story.

"I think there were six or so creatures tonight, and I and twelve of my guildmates and thirty guardsmen and maybe twenty other Transients were hilariously outmatched," Hunter said soberly. "If the stat increase hadn't come I would have died. Elisha came and extended the fight with her support healing. I say this proudly as a mother and all but she's probably in the top 50 healers in the game? She was approaching OOM, out of mana." She leaned forward on her elbows and addressed Aidan. "How does that work anyway? I've never had anyone cast a huge stat increase on me before. They don't stack either, so what did you do?" She questioned Aidan.

"Amelia is the greatest enchanter in the world, I didn't do anything," Aidan replied.

"Don't be an idiot." Amelia protested. "I'm only level 70 now, and there are a lot of mages who choose the enchanter subclass instead of the elemental one. You can cast spells that aren't in any school."

"Yeah, but do they sacrifice almost all their schools of magic?" Aidan retorted.

"All your school's?" Hunter's face pinched in thought. "How many did you give up? I heard there were bonuses and it's not uncommon but... "

"I kept flame!" Amelia snapped. It was directed at Aidan but it was Hunter who gasped and stared at her with her mouth open.

Elisha looked suddenly interested. "What do you mean sacrificed schools?"

Hunter answered, "she chose not to use 8 schools of magic and only kept the 9th to boost her status buffs. The status buffs aren't in the trees but you can still learn them and cast them. They're considered 'free' spells."

"8 schools? How do you fight?" Elisha wondered.

Aidan raised a glass and saluted the table. "In the middle, silently, with those who value dedication."

Amelia felt the blood rush to her face and she scowled at him. "Don't be dramatic. I was going to stay in that magic academy and then I was going to pay for people to take me around and see things."

Aidan smiled and continued speaking while largely ignoring her. "How many of the dungeons have you explored below level 30 Hunter?"

"Uhh, I'd say 15?" Hunter guessed.

Elisha was nodding, "or 16."

"Amelia has seen them all." Aidan confided. "She told me. When she talks about the places she's been and the amazing things she's seen her eyes get far away and she smiles like a junky."

"What?!" Hunter cried. "That must be 45 different locations!" On the surface, it might not seem like a lot, but in reality, it took a long time to travel to dungeons in AA. They were spread out over the continent, and even knowing where they were was a feat.

"Look when I worked for the school sometimes I accompanied new Transients to help them out in fights and to sort of explain skills and new abilities they might receive…" The conversation was really taking a troublesome turn. "It's natural that they all want to go to different places. It also makes a lot of sense that there are the most low-level dungeons because that's where everyone starts."

"Amelia wants to see everything in this world. I think that's why she got her special job upgrade." Aidan took a drink from the third glass for a second time. It was clearly better or more appealing to him than the first two.

It was Amelia's turn to look thoughtful as the rest of the table appraised her with varying degrees of disbelief. Chronicler of the Heavens had been unlocked because she had seen more places? Did that mean it would increase even more if she chose to explore? That almost seemed unfair. She had always intended to see the entirety of the available content no matter how long it took, but she didn't think she should be rewarded for it. It was her own selfish d.e.s.i.r.e.

"Be that as it may. Even if people know the benefits I don't think there will be many people who can level Wizard or Mage class while giving up so many schools." Hunter sighed and then she smiled slyly. She raised her last glass and took a sip before uttering what Amelia could only perceive as beautiful words. "Join my guild, Amelia."

---------

Ding - Special invitation.

Join Shadow Fall - Guild Status: Renowned (55 Players)

Guild Leader: Hunter (Status Guild List to review players).

-----------

"What?" Amelia looked up, starting with surprise.

"What yourself? I like you. You could do with more normal. Come explore the world with me. Leave this jerk." Hunter offered, waving a hand expansively across the table. Aidan bowed over the table, completely unoffended.

"...and me," added Elisha peevishly, casting a glance at her mother.

Amelia looked at Aidan, who was smiling but otherwise looking like he didn't care one way or the other. After several moments she shook her head. "I'm sorry. I hope we can be friends and do this again, I really do, but I just…"

Hunter shrugged easily and only a hint of disappointment flashed in her eyes. "Hey. Guilds don't make friendship. I hope we can share information in the future. I really hope you can cast your godmode spell on me every once in a while at the last minute when it seems like I'm about to be ground to paste."

Amelia grinned. "Always."

Aidan shook his head. "She just wants to watch you do stuff. She gets this creepy smile like yes, yes, show me more... fu fu fu. She's a real villain you know?"

"Ah ha ha." Amelia laughed, her smile fading into a death mask as she turned to Aidan. "Coming from you that's really insulting." She turned back to Hunter. "Anyway, I was hoping you could tell me about tonight. I was going to write it in my Chronicler book and see if I could view the battle from your perspective."

"Oh. Okay. I'll do my best to tell you about it then I guess." Hunter said, surprised and a little taken aback by the request. "Elisha? Go pay the man at the bar for whatever you ate and say goodnight. I know you want to go watch your show."

"What show?" Raven asked as she almost nearly scared everyone to death by suddenly being at the table. It was practically teleportation.

"I watch this free stream. It's about a girl from the future who fights another guy from the future. They all have powers and other neato things, and when she gets low on health once every Friday she raises her hand like this!" Elisha raised her index finger and thumb upward keeping the rest of her fingers in a tight fist. "Then she yells out, Elisha, are you watching me?"

"Wow. That sounds really cool. She yells your name and gets a power-up?" Raven's eyes were shining. It seemed like maybe they could hope that the pirate phase would wear off in favor of a future girl phase.

"Well. I hope so. They decide a girl or boy name from a lottery pool. I submit every week but so far I haven't heard my name." Her face fell a bit, but she shrugged. "Maybe tonight! I know it's kind of a kid thing but I'm a huge nerd."

"Oooh. Good luck!" Raven raised her index finger and thumb to the sky in solidarity. "Nerds are the best."

She disappeared with Elisha back to the bar and Aidan waited until Amelia got her story before he turned to Hunter. "So do you want me to tell you about how you should schedule the next conference, and save the world?"

Amelia and Hunter both turned to him, Hunter slowly putting her glass down and Amelia did the same with her quill.

"I've seen so much crazy tonight, I'm willing to hear a little more," Hunter replied softly.