The noise made him stir.


    Something was wrong with the noise.


    He stirred in his sleep and turned over, but that felt wrong too. His cot was too hard and rough, the shape of it unfamiliar somehow.


    He mulled it over in the half-awake state he enjoyed just moments before the ship’s intercom came alive and Argia woke him.


    The ship? Something was wrong about the ship. His eyes opened sharply and then closed instantly, obscenely bright light blinding him. He couldn’t hear the ship, the background noise of his life so far. Everything was gone, from the quiet thrum and vibrations of the engines to the air cycling through his cabin and the soft buzz of the lights when they turned on automatically.


    It was all gone.


    The noise replacing it resolved into a cacophony of voices talking over one another, yelling, and even laughing. He had never heard so many voices all at once, all vying to be overheard above the din.


    Slowly, carefully, he opened his eyes again. The world around him was tilted at a strange angle. No, no, he was at a wrong angle. He was lying in a cobbled alley, on his side. It took him a moment to process the strangeness of that.


    There was stone beneath him. It felt real.


    He had never seen stone before, not actual stone. His reality had always been metal and plastic imitations. Stone was not as interesting as he had always imagined it to be. It smelled strange as well but it was the air around that was foul. He pushed himself up and heard clanging. His clothes clanged and were heavier than expected. He almost fell back on his face.


    He looked up and squinted against a bright blue sky, dotted here and there with soft white shapes of clouds. For long moments he couldn’t tear his eyes away, caught between fascination and absolute terror of being sucked up into that azure infinite.


    Whatever Alternative Reality Experience this one was, it was genuinely immersive. He couldn’t remember another one quite so vivid. It almost seemed real.


    It felt real. He couldn’t remember logging into it, nor falling asleep.


    Weirdest dream… I must’ve been dead tired to drop while playing.


    With some uncertainty he moved his hand to the back of his neck, folding his fist over empty air. Normally that would have disconnected him from his entertainment system. There was nothing to grip.


    Pain. He remembered, too clearly, the pain of something biting into him. He put a hand to his face and searched for the wound he knew was supposed to be there.


    No scar. No wound. No connection port on the back of his head. There weren’t even signs that he had ever had connection ports.


    “Argia?” he called out. Even his voice was different.


    He waited for a second, and then some more. Argia normally replied instantly to anyone on the Gloria. It monitored everything, including the Experiences.


    “Argia?” he called out again. It unnerved him to not have the machine spirit reply.


    <ul style="text-align: justify">


    <li>Connection unavailable. Please consult Maintenance at the earliest convenience.</li>


    </ul>


    The text scrolled on top of his vision.


    <ul style="text-align: justify">


    <li>Switching to Independent Mode. Some functionality may not be available.</li>


    </ul>


    Argia and Athos III had been the two real constants of his life. Both… gone? That sunk in his stomach with the weight of a black hole that threatened to turn him inside out.


    He waved his hand, gesturing like in the virtual experiences, to see his menu and character. Nothing happened.


    With a different gesture of his hand, he tried again, repeating for every Experience he had ever played. Nothing happened.


    Even as he tried to not rush over the precipice of panic, Vergil found himself smiling.


    He had seen this before, somewhere in some Experience once. Hero died and was taken to a strange world where his true destiny was revealed. All rather trite, but…


    Could he have died? Was he living out some absurd fantasy in the final spasms of his life?


    Could it be real?


    He would have laughed if not for the people peering at him through the mouth of the alley. A madman gesturing at the air and having a quiet moment of panic in the crook of a dead end?


    If he was dreaming, he might as well get the most out of it. If not, well, it was still a step up from being a male on the Gloria Nostra. Wondering too much on the whys and hows wasn’t going to get him answers.


    Ok, let’s think for a moment. First things first.


    He looked down at himself and his clothes. The clanging he heard was a chain-mail vest he wore underneath a green tunic. Lower he saw that he also wore metal shin and thigh guards clasped over tanned leather trousers. They felt uncomfortable, a size too large maybe, and cumbersome.


    Resting against one of the walls were a bright yellow kite shield and a short gladius sword. He recognized the combination as starter equipment befitting for paladin inductees from some of the Experiences he’d spent his free time on. This looked, down to the pattern on the shield, like something out of Crusade of the Innocent. He’d been playing just that morning.


    I’m a paladin.


    Was he?


    The prospect of serving as a warrior of faith destined to protect the weak and vanquish evil made him giggle. He knew that was the motto of the Paladin Corps but had no idea where he’d learned that or what the Paladin Corps even was. Maybe this was an Experience after all, and it functioned on the same principles as the others.


    “Argia, have I had any data packets downloaded without my consent?”


    No reply came. Not even a text.


    Could it be real, after all?


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    He grabbed the gear and walked out into the sunlit plaza beyond the mouth of the alley.


    And immediately turned on his heels and retreated right back.


    A riot of colours assaulted him with dizzying patterns and motion and a buzz of activity he could never have imagined in his wildest waking dreams.


    Men were everywhere, walking, talking, discussing with other men. And with women! Those gave him a moment of pause and he instinctively drew back from the sight, dread drenching him in cold sweat. Sixteen standard years of conditioning told him to turn around, face the wall, lower his head, and wait until the women had gone on their way.


    But they weren’t the imposing frightening figures from the Gloria Nostra, just other people. They didn’t look down on the other men on the street but were talking and laughing and interacting with them, as equals. It looked that way at least.


    Vergil kept reminding himself of that as he plucked the courage to go out through the crowd.


    He walked out into an open air marketplace. Stalls of produce and meats and condiments lined the narrow, cobbled streets. The colours dizzied him.


    Aromas of rich condiments coated the air. Fresh and seared meat followed, fish on ice, perfumes, and herbs. He couldn’t begin to identify most of them but they made his head spin with the vast newness of it all.


    His stomach growled. A quick check of his pockets revealed that he was penniless.


    <ul style="text-align: justify">


    <li>Price of a loaf of bread: 12 Valen eagles.</li>


    <li>The Valen eagle is a subdivision of the Valen lion.</li>


    <li>  Exchange rate: 1 griffon = 10 lions = 50 eagles</li>


    <li>Source: _____unknown_____</li>


    </ul>


    Part of him wondered if his headware was making things up. The rest was too fascinated by the sights, sounds, and smells to care.


    There needs to be some sort of Guild that employs new arrivals. There’s always a Guild in the Experiences. He clung to the idea and made a goal out of it.


    He stopped a passing man to ask for directions. Except that it wasn’t a man, not a human one at least. The stranger was even taller than he and had the most strikingly beautiful features Vergil had ever witnessed. He had a hawkish face with large, amber-coloured eyes and high cheekbones. His frame was lank and supple, and he moved with such grace that Vergil became conscious of his own stooping gait.


    The man smiled encouragingly as Vergil stepped in his path and opened his mouth…and immediately forgot everything he wanted to say.


    “May I help you, young human?” Even his voice was wonderful, like cool water running over white marble.


    In that moment, Vergil panicked. He hadn’t considered if his character spoke the local language or if he would just sound like an imbecile. He understood the man, so he tried answering.


    “Uh… yes, please. I’m sorry for bothering you.” The words rolled off his tongue, alien sounding but, yet, as familiar to him as the back of his hands. Strangely enough, he spoke as if he’d always spoken that strange flowing language. An itch pestered him somewhere in centre of his skull but was easy enough to ignore.


    “I’m new here and… it’s overwhelming.” He hadn’t meant to be so honest, but his fascination for the strange man overrode anything else.


    “Ah,” his interlocutor said, and then smiled the most dazzling smile Vergil had ever witnessed. It couldn’t be real. “Well, I’m an aelir. I imagine my kind is not very common where you come from. Don’t worry, I get this kind of reaction quite often when I visit here.”


    “Where are you from?” Vergil was certain he wanted to ask something else, but he couldn’t rightly remember what it was.


    “From Nen, across the Divide.”


    It took a couple more vapid questions to the aelir before he remembered what information he needed.


    The Guild Halls were in the Inner Plaza, just opposite the Paladin Corps recruitment office. Vergil couldn’t miss it if he kept walking towards the Upper City in the distance.


    What Vergil didn’t have was money, and credentials from an established workshop or a military branch. He needed money to pay for admission into the Guild, and he needed to be part of an established trade before he would be licensed as an adventurer for hire.


    Finding out all of that had cost him an entire day of aimless wandering and short panic attacks whenever he had to interact with a female representative. They weren’t so bad. He couldn’t meet any of their gazes, but they weren’t being actively unpleasant to him.


    That first night he slept huddled in the same alley he had woken up in. For the first time in his life, he fell asleep on an empty, grumbling stomach. The more the feeling sank in that this might be reality, the more he avoided looking up at the sky. Even glancing at the star speckled expanse made him sweat and shiver as if there was a gaping maw up there that waited to swallow him whole.


    On the second day he manufactured a story about him coming from a small village somewhere in the nowhere, his dream of being a great protector of the people, his inherited weapon and shield and so on. The Paladin Corps recruiter, a bored man named Louis, didn’t believe him much but a new member from out in the sticks, with his own gear, was a member he didn’t need to spend time and money equipping. He even said as much.


    Vergil received basic training, his induction into the local paladin order, and some basic skills with the sword and shield. To call him an amateur was a kindness. At the end of three weeks of training he was given the choice between enrolling as a soldier bound for Aztroa Magnor or being licensed for adventuring sorties.


    Adventuring seemed like the less dangerous path, so he decided on that. Maybe it should have rung a warning that, out of all fresh recruits, he’d been the only one to refuse recruitment into the ranks of the Empire.


    The Corps were kind enough to offer him Anatol’s Blessing as a parting gift, a sort of tattoo that was infused with words of power from the god Anatol himself. It promised to heal most scrapes and minor wounds, just what a rookie needed. Just his luck.


    Argia was still in his head as a heads-up display, but her functionality was nearly null. Without the Gloria and the machine spirit herself, all that this hobbled version could do was translate text and run some self-diagnostics on his state of being. Her text updates mostly consisted of failed connection errors or random facts about the city. Most of them seemed like fabrications.


    Why he even still had it was a mystery that he decided wasn’t worth thinking on.


    Once he had his induction, the Guild posed very little challenge. They didn’t care where he had come from or where he wanted to go as long as he got them results and he could be held accountable for his misdeeds. All adventurers were the same in the eyes of the recruiters and were treated the same up until results came in. The Guild cared and paid only for results. He got his Adventurer License within half-a-day of questions and form filling and was then shown towards the rookie-aimed billboards bursting with sortie offers from various merchants, farmers, or other folk of Valen that needed cheap work done quick.


    He could scarcely believe it had been, after all, as easy as that.


    Vergil Vansce was officially a rookie paladin adventurer looking for a group to take on his first missions on the path to fame, glory, and wealth. That was what the Guild promotional banners promised.


    Why is everything moving so fast? Vergil thought as he stood outside the Guild Halls, staring at the scroll and token that acknowledged his status. This can’t be right. I just got here. The thought struck him as odd. He had been in Valen for weeks already. He even knew the city now somewhat.


    He had worked some days as a menial for one of the many construction sites rebuilding what looked like the ruins left by a great fire. He was given bread and wine by the workers and made small talk, got to know some of the markets, and even had the temerity of exploring more of the Lower City and its twisting, winding narrow streets.


    Weeks had passed…


    Why would he think otherwise?


    What’s going on?


    Vergil stepped outside himself for a moment like a passenger leaning out of his own head. Life rushed around him, forward, sideways, sometimes backward, sometimes skipping between moments. It felt like someone searching for one frame in a video file, and it wasn’t him doing it.


    What’s happening? I…


    You’re too perceptive for your own good, lad, a woman’s voice answered with impatience. Put him back and take it easier, girls. Let’s not have echoes or we’ll never be done with him.


    And back he went into this new, wonderful life. The future had looked so bright in those first days, and he was excited for the first time ever to live it.