Private - Success Shall Crown My Endeavors

Magdalyn did not mind being made to feel insignificant. On the contrary, she enjoyed the sensation of being dwarfed by something much larger, much greater, than herself. This was especially true when that something was a mountain. She stood before it, hands on her hips, gazing toward where the point pierced the heavens. Thick clouds moved on a cool wind, often shielding the summit from view. But when a break in the coverage appeared, and she was able to spot the snow-topped peak once more, it took her breath away.

This. This is what she had wanted from a virtual reality experience. The fighting was neat, and the mechanics were fun to tinker with. But the views. She had seen mountains like this only in her travels, to Europe, and a family trip to Colorado. Yet she had longed for them during the spaces in between. And now, she could have them, every single day if she do desired. All she had to do was log on. The mere concept brought a flutter to her chest, and an unabashed grin to her lips. If it weren't for her job as a teacher, something she loved nearly as much as Terra, she might have stayed forever.

The urge to wander gripped her again, and she turned so that her mountain rode her right shoulder. Then she walked, her hands shoved in her pockets, her gait leisurely. Her spear was strapped to her back, but she had yet to encounter any threats, leaving her relaxed and lazy. She had nothing to do, and nowhere to go, which was just how she liked it.

The appearance of a small cabin caught Magdalyn off-guard. It seemed to materialize before her, but it was more likely that she had been too entranced by the mountain range to notice its presence. Once she had spotted it, however, curiosity had her approaching at a slightly more interested pace. Did someone live out here, at the foot of the majestic mountain? Lucky bastard, Mags mused. She would kill for a spot like this.

"Hello?" she called out only once, before shoving at the entrance What was the use of waiting for an answer? The cabin was tiny, no larger than one room, and windows looked out from every direction. Anyone inside would have surely seen her approaching, and acted before she was on top of them.

Her palm struck the thin wood once, and sent the door swinging inward. The scent reached her first, but only a single second before she spotted the body on the ground. Her mind whirled, tumbled, unable to comprehend what she was seeing. All she knew was that her scream shattered the still of the countryside.

 

Base of a mountian. How the hell did he end up here? Crowe rubbed his head in an attempt to figure himself out. He had started earlier this afternoon, only to log out go home and log right back in. And he spawned in the same spot, but apparently the woods were more difficult to traverse than he had originally thought.

He tried tracing his steps, but instead of finding familiar footing, he had only found an imposing mountain. He groaned in frustration, unable to cope with his inabilty to simply walk anywhere. He looked around, seeing a faint glimmer in the distance. What was that, a window? He squinted as he took steps closer, wanting to investigate. He froze in spot when he heard a scream echo across the tree tops.

His legs were the first to move as Crowe made his way to wherever the scream came from. A cabin quickly came into sight, and Crowe grabbed the corner as he spun around the corner. A woman stood before an open door. "What's wron-?" Crowe asked before he was hit with a smell. He covered his mouth to avoid coughing. But, he had a guess as to what it was. His mouth still covered he peeked inside the cabin. A corpse was, embedded onto the floor. Or rather fused, or melted.

As curious as he was about the corpse, he turned his attention to the woman present. He looked up at her, as she was taller than he was, and spoke calmly.

"Madem, are you alright? Are you hurt?" He asked, figuring she was fine physically but seeing a mess like that could be, disorienting at best.

 

As if the discovery of the corpse had not been enough for one day, a sudden voice from behind her sent another jolt of surprise through Magdalyn. She flinched, still buzzing with the anxiety of stumbling across a dead guy. She knew she should turn to face the stranger - for all she knew, it was the man's attacker, come to claim her too. But no. This man had been dead for some time, based on the smell, and the state of decay. Having an active imagination is great for lesson planning, her more logical side scolded, but it played hell on about every other part of her life.

"I-I'm fine," she stated finally, drawing in a deep breath. "I'm not hurt." She was all sharp lines and frayed edges, her heart pistoning with such madness in her chest that she feared it might break right through her ribcage. But that would leave two bodies for the newcomer to take care of, and that did not seem quite fair. So she slowly turned, looking over her left shoulder to face the other player. Or, at least she assumed it was another player. Would anyone of the world, any NPC, react this way to a dead body? Was there a correct way to react?

Magdalyn shook her head slowly, as if to work the convoluted thoughts from her mind. They were clouding her judgment, and she preferred to be clear-headed in a situation like this. "Just my first dead body, is all." The words had been an attempt to lighten the mood, but her smile was weak, and did not reach to her wide, blue eyes. Her stomach still rolled, a stormy sea that crashed and frothed, and threatened to bring up her lunch. She switched to breathing through her mouth. It was less attractive, sure, but it spared her the stink of rotting flesh.

 

Crowe nodded to the stranger as she said that she wasn't physically fine. That was good. He didn't know how complex the game was, and any kind of open wound near something rotten was only a cause for disaster. His conscience sated, he turned his attention back to the corpse back inside the hut. "Mine too." He said, in regards to a dead body. "Well, human body. I see dead animals all the time." He said, recalling his real life travels. Often times he would miss his bus and his half an hour bus ride turned into a two hour walk filled with road kill.

He swung the door open a bit further, allowing him full view of the corpse and the interior of the cabin. The door creaked open loudly as the rust fell from the hinges, prying it open. What happened here? Crowe thought to himself as he took a cautious step inside. He first checked the corners of the room, inspecting to see if anyone else was in the cabin currently. Finding no evidence of anyone inside, he went to inspect other things. Namely, the corpse attached to the floor.

The corpse had been here for god only knows how long, but the flesh had deteriorated badly. Chunks of skeleton protruded out, namely the skull, and the sunken chest revealed discarded organs and ribs. And the smell, good lord the smell of the man. It almost burned it was so overpowering. Crowe coughed, keeping his lunch intact as he knelt over the corpse and inspected it further. "Hey." He gasped out, speaking to the woman. "Look around, see if there's anything important. Maybe find out who this guy was and what he was doing." He said, looking for an employment to poke around the corpse. Crowe had a hunch that this wasn't some random corpse in the middle of the woods. It had to have been a quest of some kind, or side mission or something. This sort of thing just doesn't happen in words like these, does it?

 

The woman took a step away from the man as he entered the small space. The move was nothing personal, and it did not speak to her feelings about him. Truthfully, she had no feelings, as they had only met mere minutes ago. Instead, she wanted to give him as much space as possible. Standing too close to each other in a room occupied by death made her uneasy, even if the logic was not quite there to back up the emotion. Besides, she still felt a bit like throwing up, and if she were to lose it, she would rather it not be on the good samaritan.

For a moment, she merely watched the sandy-haired stranger move about the cabin, searching under the sparse furniture for clues. Would a normal person of Terra Sphere, or a NPC, behave this way? Or was he a player, as she was? For the umpteenth time, Magdalyn cursed the developers for making it so difficult to tell. On one hand, the game was impossibly realistic as a result. On the other, she was eternally worried about mentioning the game to an AI, and somehow upsetting the balance of the entire world.

His coughing fit snapped her back to reality. "Yeah, sure," she told him, crouching down on the opposite side of the rotting corpse. The room was heavy with death, and not just because of the stench. The air felt heavier here than even a few steps away, and the silence that fell between the three beings (two living, one deceased) was too quiet. Was this what all crime scenes felt like, she wondered. Or just those generated by Terra Sphere?

Despite the smell, the flies, the little voice in her head yelling no, Mags leaned forward to inspect the body more closely. From this angle, she was able to spot something that the man had overlooked. "I think there's something under him," came her call, and she pointed toward what she meant. "The edge of something. See there, that brown spot? I think it might be a book."

Overcome with curiosity, Magdalyn reached for the item. And as the frayed edge of his torn shirt gently caressed her hand, she gagged. "Damn it," she managed, yanking her hand back as if she had been bitten. "Damn it, I don't think I can grab that."

 

Crowe looked at the body, trying to discern if he could find a cause of death. But on a corpse this far gone, he'd have to be some kind of TV detective to be able to find that out. The woman made her way into the cabin, and searched around. He turned only once, before going back to the corpse. The pressure in the cabin was denser than normal, something about a corpse would do that. Made one question their own mortality.

He rubbed his eyes, the fumes of the body finally starting to affect them. The woman pointed to something on the corpse, no under it. Upon closer inspection, he could make out the leather binding of a book of some sort. "Yeah, there is something there." He said, watching the woman try to grab it.

He let out a sigh, and made a quick prayer to whomever was listening. "Brace yourself." Crowe said, touching the corpse. It was firm, yet soft and malleable. Cold, and yet warm. He coughed hard as he tried to keep his stomach together, and launched the corpse over. Only part of the corpse moved, leaving skin, juices, and maggots of all sorts behind. The smell instantly became worse. Crowe reached back with his arm, covering his face as he coughed. But the book was free. He reached out with his other hand, and grabbed it. "Got it." He said, though his arm, as he moved outside as quickly as he could.

He took several deep breathes, thankful for clean air again. The book reeked of death, but only because it was covered in it. He batted away bits of flesh and viscus. The book was less of that, and more of a journal of sorts. He opened the cover page, and read a name. "Bancroft, huh?" Suddenly his stomach lurched, and his vision blurred. He handed the book over to the woman. "Here, apparently his name was Bancroft. I'm gonna be right back." He said, forcing the book into her hands before stepping aside to vomit.

 

Magdalyn was not a woman worried about getting dirty. She had believed in "country healing," building up her immune system by spending much of her childhood in the mud. She had mucked stalls in bare feet, wrestled with her sister in the dirt, and been caked in sweat and sawdust while cutting and stacking wood. Even death was not entirely foreign to her, considering the deer she had helped the men in her family cut up and store. Though she had never killed anything herself (save for a few squirrels she accidentally hit with her car), she had not flinched away from the blood and guts.

Now, however, she nearly joined her companion in spilling the contents of her stomach. She held book between her thumb and pointer finger, extended an arm's-length away, as if it were a venomous snake. "Bancroft?" she echoed, eyeing the book. "I've never heard of him." Falling silent, she turned to face the man. He was still bent at the waist, his hands on his knees. If it were not for the gore-flecked book, and the sound of his retching (which was oddly contagious), she might have patted him gently on the back. Was that not the male equivalent to holding his hair?

"Speaking of names," she began, "mine is Magdalyn. Figured since we found a dead body together, we're basically best friends already." Her smile was strained as she slowly brought the book closer. Even outside, the stench of death mingled with the cool, mountain air. With the same care as someone handling an ancient artifact, she peeled the cover back to peer inside. Her face fell. "Oh. A bunch of the pages have been torn out."