The Devil In White: An AA Online Novel

Aidan and Forsythe had talked a big game but had already broken one of the rules about staying at her place. They were passed out on the floor near the couch where Raven and Amelia still chatted. Amelia was a little irked since they had all promised that they wouldn't just crash her space. Her near wrath had lessened as the morning light drew closer and she and Raven continued chatting.

"Wow. So you can really edit spells like that?" Raven asked. "I'll tell Aidan tomorrow. He'll edit all his spells. If I'm lucky he'll let me watch while he does it."

"You think he'll be interested?" Amelia said doubtfully. The topic of the genericness of certain spells had been brought up, and Amelia had pointed out that you could edit the colors of your spells, their luminosity, and their shape to some degree in the out-of-game mode.

"Yeah if we're super lucky he'll make a Fred." Raven grinned.

"A Fred?" Amelia asked dryly. It sounded too stupid to be anything excitement worthy.

"Yeah. I'll ask him to design his light globe to be a Fred. They were these little floating dragonfly orbs in the Forest of Dark Light." Raven explained. "They're adorable. When you first see them swarming you, you freak out right? Then you realize they aren't hostile, just curious." Raven rose in her chair, sneering at Amelia in a haughty manner and she realized Raven was imitating Aidan. "What's the matter Raven, that's just a Fred. Do you fear Fred?"

Amelia giggled despite herself.

Raven straightened her back and her face lost expression, her imitation of Forsythe. "I don't fear Fred."

"I don't know. I'd think if you were being artistic you wouldn't want people watching you would you? You'd rather be alone?" Amelia pointed out.

"Oh, it doesn't matter. Aidan isn't ever alone anyways." Raven shrugged her shoulders, a corner of her mouth lifting up. "The Devil's Army is with him. Even here, he told me."

"Devil's...Army?" Amelia leaned into the cushion, glancing down quickly to make sure both members of the male species were still asleep while they were being gossipped about.

"Yeah. You know. The dead people with him." Raven explained wryly.

Amelia's blood froze and her face paled. After a moment Raven was still looking at her quizzically as if it were the most natural thing in the world to be talking about dead people from their previous game. As if her crying fit had been done by someone else.

"What? You couldn't tell? We've been in a few spots in this game where we were all standing around wondering what to do and he starts laughing like crazy right? Then he just walks off and starts dragging everyone behind him?" Raven laughed. "Did you think he was alone?"

Amelia thought back to being dragged across a rough stone floor… the light shining off evil eyes as she calmly accepted the fact that she was about to die… and remembered the laughter that rang out. "I don't follow…"

"Well. Last Sojourn was like… really bad. I mean. I don't want to be a downer Amelia and we don't talk about it but…" Raven bit her lip as if she wanted to explain but couldn't find the words.

"Bad," Amelia repeated, nodded, willing to let it drop.

"Yeah. If someone died, you hurt. Bad. You couldn't cry though. No crying in that game. It wasn't designed for it. So you coped in other ways. Aidan told us that he made ghosts in his imagination. People he cared for that he had lost, remembered them as best he could and carried them with him. They would tell him things they thought might help him, or be snide to him, or be mean; like he was a living memorial. I think a lot of the time when he's mocking us he's just repeating his imagination." Raven continued explaining. It seemed she didn't have any concern over this mentality.

Amelia thought back to all the sneers on Aidan's face when he retorted, wondering if that was his thought or one of these 'ghosts'.

"Like we were getting swallowed by a Land Gully…" Raven said, holding one arm out to give scale and failing to do so without the other. Big, was what Amelia surmised, trying not to smirk at her failed attempt at a big fish story sizing.

"...and he starts laughing. He says Misty is going to die laughing all over again if we get eaten by a big fish, and if it's a fish it's probably stupid and vision based. So he casts Mirage Illusion, makes about fifteen illusion copies of us… The fish just stops and starts attacking the images. It was so easy to kill it after that." Raven laughed. "In the final battle, he laughed like that… and I looked up and I could swear… I thought. I thought I saw them. Marching along with him, just behind him." Raven's eyes began to tear again, and Amelia quickly pulled the girl to her c.h.e.s.t.

"Stop. Don't do that. Your story is a happy story and you shouldn't be depressed." Amelia comforted, desperately hoping to stop the waterworks.

Raven sniffled. "Yeah. I forgot how annoying tear ducts are. These things just turn themselves on."

"Hey," Amelia asked.

"Yeah?"

"Why do they call him the Devil in White?" Amelia asked.

Raven's whole body stiffened like a board, and after a minute she pulled away. "I dunno if I should tell you, Amelia. I feel like every time I tell you something it's terrible. Like. Nightmare terrible. People shouldn't have nightmares."

"I want to know. I don't think you're terrible. I think bad things happened to you, and like a pack of vicious wolves, you all pulled out of somewhere awful. I don't have nightmares anyway." Amelia said quickly. She wanted to know bad but didn't want to press too much.

"I don't know what history says about Last Sojourn. I mean, I s.u.c.k.e.d at the history that I got to study anyway. But I can tell you things were bad about week 3. We knew then. People were getting killed and not coming back, at the beginning of week 2 there were volunteers that came in and told people not to go out and fight. They should wait for rescue. but it was bad week 3 cause everyone believed it at that point." Raven shivered and then latched on to her comment. "Wolves. I like that."

Amelia knew the end result, but very little about the progression of the death game. It had lasted some time.

"You know people actually threw parties? Finally, someone knew what was going on. We were gonna be saved. People blew their cash on fancy drinks that screwed up your vision, and expensive games that killed time." Raven smiled, and then it fell. "Then nothing happened. We were still there. Week 4, people really started to get mad. It was crap. What were they doing in the real world? Were they even trying to save us? People fought each other and if we hadn't been in towns waiting to be rescued… I think people would have died. No actual combat in towns you know?" She looked up, her eyes dull.

Amelia couldn't even think of what to say and didn't try.

"Week 5 people started kicking those volunteers out of the towns, sooner than you would think right? Some of the players had enough money to buy the territory and they banned them from safe zones. Most died or moved on. They were volunteers so they didn't have any high level. Even travel between cities was hard at level 1. People sat and waited to die. That was about week 5 or maybe 6."

A little more than a month and an entire player base had decided they were screwed. Amelia played about 6 hours a day when she could since it was medically proven that being in the Dive Gear was a sound substitute for sleep in small portions. She couldn't imagine having been there all day every day, unable or unwilling to sleep, fearing to do anything that might get her killed.

"I went to another town and started leveling up. I couldn't stand to sit there. I felt like I rotted. Like, I as a person disappeared. I went to the town and I had chocolate for the first time in a month and a half. God, I missed chocolate you know? I mean I knew it wasn't real chocolate, but my brain and my mouth told me it was. There was this vendor…" Raven smiled.

"The chocolate vendor that got killed by the boss." Amelia supplied.

"Yeah." Raven grinned. "I was so irrationally mad. I can know when I'm being irrational you know? I just choose not to admit it most of the time." Raven told her loftily as if it were something of note.

"My opinion of your intelligence has vastly risen Raven, but don't ask me if I think you're mad as a hatter or not." Amelia grinned, and Raven grinned back.

"So I'm killing this thing, right? Over and over. I was so mad. Every day. Spawn you stupid jerk. Give me back my chocolate!" Raven made her hand into a fist as if she could still see him. Her hand slowly loosened and fell to her side. "This guy shows up and he's just, smiling and laughing. I was pretty irked, to be honest. Later that day I realized I was pissed at him because I couldn't remember the last time someone had looked like they were having a good time. That was week 26. I was on that mountain for about 20 weeks." Raven closed her eyes.

"So he walks up to the cave after I killed the boss and he asks if I'll go with him if he can ensure that the boss won't ever kill another chocolate vendor." Raven rolled her eyes. "Naturally I agreed. There was no way he could. The idea of him failing in front of me was more interesting to me at this point."

Amelia wondered what this had to do with her question, but was interested enough not to press yet. She couldn't imagine camping a monster for 20 weeks in a game. That must have been some anger.

"You could damage terrain to some extent in that game. He just blew up the cave entrance." Raven laughed and then quieted when Forsythe stirred. When he fell back into normal breathing she continued in a lower voice, almost a whisper. "I was so mad at him. So freaking mad. He just laughed at me, he laughed and laughed and told me to hurry along after him. So I did." Raven fell into silence, staring at the dark wall lost in thought. A half-smile formed on her face.

"But… the Devil in White?" Amelia pressed after a long silence. Raven startled and shrugged.

"I hadn't been to a town for a long time. So I was kinda surprised when we came to one and everyone hated him. I mean we'd been together a few days but I really liked Aidan, you know?" Raven turned her gaze to Amelia, hurt on her face. "I couldn't get it. He was the only person that made me feel human in a long time. He didn't want me to feel bad. He told me stories. He told me we'd get out of there, and I believed him. So when people started whispering that the Devil was back in town… I was hurt. Hurt for him. He grinned. Grinned in that scary way he does sometimes, and I knew they hurt him." Raven's voice darkened. "I would have killed them all. Right there."

Amelia was startled by the violence in that voice, but she could see tears forming in Raven's eyes again. "No, you couldn't." Amelia chastised her.

"No. I couldn't. Aidan told me." Raven mocked in imitation Aidan's voice. "Because you're a person. Don't worry about these people. They're no good."

"Why did they hate him?" Amelia asked.

"He was a volunteer," Raven confessed, startling Amelia. "But... like… a super volunteer. He had joined the game after it was illegal when the world had decided it didn't know what to do. One of his friend's had a daughter, a colonel of some army somewhere I think. He was afraid she would give up, and Aidan volunteered to go in and tell people that there was still hope. Their loved ones were still desperate. About Week 22." Raven sighed. "Apparently over 20,000 people died that week. Committed suicide. Aidan told me they called it the week of fallen LSers. People couldn't take it and just killed themselves praying to wake up, but just died in hospital beds. The colonel sacrificed his career to get access to the server and asked Aidan to go into the game, find his daughter, tell her that people were still looking for a way…"

"So Aidan came into the world. Trying to tell people to hang on, and they had already formed their opinion on volunteers…" Amelia guessed.

"Yes. They called him the Devil. Oh look, they would say, here comes the Devil in White, come to steal our souls faster than they're already being taken." Raven's voice was bitter and that dark voice took over again. Even though she whispered it was almost too loud. "Well SCREW them. Did they help us? No. Did they spit and swear and m.o.a.n and w.h.i.n.e? Yes. He saved them anyway, ungratefu-."

"Enough," Aidan said, sitting up. "Rule Three Raven."

"You are a human being," Raven whispered.

"So stop acting like a victim. You just had the coolest backstory ever and you're making your debut." Aidan said with a yawn, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

"Aidan!" Horrified, Amelia looked at Raven, who was, surprisingly just laughing.

"You're such an a.s.s." Raven was rubbing her fist over her eyes, wiping away moisture. "I know that story about that colonel and his daughter is fake too. How long have you been awake jerk?"

"Long enough to hear you were pissed at me for weeks after we met," Aidan admitted. "You knew that I was lying about the colonel? I thought it made me sound very special secret agent-ish. Oh, I wasn't awake as long as Forsythe."

Raven glared at Forsythe, who was doing a masterful job of pretend sleeping. His snoring even began to stutter convincingly. "You assholes." She muttered.

Forsythe didn't open his eyes, but his mouth did open and he uttered, "stop swearing. It makes you sound vulgar."

Amelia rolled her eyes. "Girl talk is now a closed door subject. No more boys allowed." In all honesty, she was starting to get annoyed that the talk of him entering the game in an illegal way was just confirmed fake. It had started to make her wonder about him. Now she began to realize that these friends lied to each other all the time for fun. Probably because the truth and real-world stuff had been too hard to talk about.

"Hey, Aidan. Make a Fred!" Raven had already recovered.

"Make a Fred? How?" Raven had been on the money because the sudden intense look on Aidan's face made Amelia imagine a dog with a bone. A dog that would stop at nothing to protect that bone, bury it, and maybe remember the location ten years later and still love and admire it fiercely.

"You can make cosmetic changes to spells." Raven teased at him a bit more.

"How?" Aidan was wide awake now, the hair on the right side of his head stood at attention giving him a spooked look.

"There's an out-of-game app. You can change spell names too." Raven grinned at him, enjoying the fleeting moment of being one step ahead of the usually aloof warrior.

"Restrictions?" Aidan demanded.

"Uhh, you can't change spell names to pre-existing spell names. You can't change the basic nature of a spell. You can change luminosity, color, graphics area…" Amelia was starting to become hazy on the details. She hadn't been ready for a pop quiz and hadn't messed with it herself.

"I know what I'm doing today before the raid." Aidan whispered with a sudden fierce look.

"See?" Raven whispered to Amelia. "What a sucker."

"How many rules are there?" Amelia asked suddenly.

"Ten." Forsythe opened his eyes and sat up. "Someday we're going to have a normal conversation again."

"Oh yes. Tea govna. Crumpets. La-di-doo." Raven sniped.

Forsythe just looked pained, like she had wounded him physically with that terrible accent.

"You need rules at some point. It was a world far beyond normal rules. Magic. Skills. HP. True death." Aidan sighed. "The rules were 'strike the enemy', 'press forward', 'you are a human being', 'live', 'don't let them die', 'this is the real world', 'laugh and love', 'mourn and grieve', 'remember'."

"What's 10?" Amelia asked, counting twice.

"Secret," Forsythe said. He was grinning uncharacteristically.

"C'mon. We gotta tell her!" Raven complained.

"Make an exception." Aidan finally supplied.

"Well, what is it then?" Amelia demanded.

"Make an exception," Aidan repeated.

"Look I get the other ones, mostly, but that last one…" Amelia complained.

"There comes a spot in your journey where sometimes you have to break a rule. So we had to have a rule about it." Aidan explained.

"Like when?" Amelia chuckled. "Those are pretty all-encompassing generic rules."

"Like when we fought the final boss and died," Aidan said simply, silencing her.

"I imagined more," Forsythe admitted.

"Rules?" Aidan asked, perplexed.

"No, from death," Forsythe said.

"Yeah, right? I mean when it exploded…" Raven made a whooshing noise.

"I thought it was appropriate," Aidan said, sounding cross.

"What was?" Amelia asked, fascinated again.

"Haha, look at her. She has that grin. The one that says 'tell me more stories'," Aidan laughed at Amelia, causing her to glare at him. Seeing her glare he just wiggled his fingers at her without remorse.

"It was a waiting area. It overlooked the sunset of the world. 15 minutes until respawn it said. 10 minutes until game closure." Forsythe sighed.

"15 minutes until death. 10 minutes until game closure." Raven reiterated, looking wistful.

"Then we woke up and we were all thinking the same thing. Amelia is standing there, dazed, and there's this old woman and we're in a dark tower… and we're all thinking it right?" Aidan gushed excitedly mimicking Raven. Raven didn't seem bothered.

"Expansion!" Forsythe smiled.

"Super Secret Bonus Content!" Supplied Raven.

"This is probably hell," Aidan smiled.

"You weren't upset?" Amelia asked quizzically, ignoring Aidan.

"No. It was like we just cheated death, so I for one was pretty grateful." Aidan replied, and Raven and Forsythe both nodded in agreement. "More than that, I knew we were in a better place because Amelia was there, and she didn't look like the death game had touched her. She looked more annoyed by the fact we were there than anything."

"Pinched face." Forsythe agreed. "Aggravated."

"The quest that turned you from the stone was really bad. I mean declining it would have ruined all the academies for me. I figured it was really troublesome." Amelia explained. "Then, of course, there was a certain someone talking about looking through my pockets…"

"I wasn't going to take anything!" Raven protested, looking absurdly offended.

"Ah." Amelia looked out the shimmer screen and saw it was daylight. "I have to get ready for class. You guys can hang out here I guess. I'll be back later tonight, and I'll get on the game. You can stay until then but you really need to find your own capsules."

"Yeah, they're being delivered to our apartments. We're one block over." Raven pointed out the window. "We wanted to be in the same hallway but Catherine said it was too much trouble to bribe people to move out in the timeframe we wanted."

"Bribe huh?" Amelia was amused. "Anyway, I'm going to get started on that. If you want food there's a market three blocks north."

"Market." Forsythe looked entranced.

"Can I use a terminal?" Aidan asked.

"Sure, there's no password on that one. Uhh, you know how to… you know… use it?" Amelia wondered tentatively.

"No idea, but I will hit buttons. I have rarely found a button that says 'destroy all' so it should be okay. Unless that's a future thing?" Aidan asked grinning.

"No it's not a future thing, and I'm glad. I get the feeling you'd press it to see what happened." Amelia sighed.

"She's the smart one." Raven decided.