Forge of Eternity: Alpha Testing by Tony L Joy

Author:Tony L Joy [Joy, Tony L]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-04-13T22:00:00+00:00

There was a brief moment of vertigo as the game world asserted itself over my senses, quickly fading as it helped my mind compensate for the differences. I was holding a small metallic ball about the size of a grapefruit and channeling mana into it. My concentration broke as I took control of my character back from the game world’s AI, and the dull orange light flickering through several windows in the ball flickered and died. I was a little concerned, considering my last interaction with magic objects, but the orb in my hands didn’t seem to be in danger of exploding or causing me any damage. I turned it around in my hands, finding three circular windows into the center and a flame symbol where the fourth would be sitting just above a small port in the device. A notification bounced for my attention.

Review recap since last logout? Yes/No

Gritting my teeth, I started the recap process before I could think better of it. While I was only gone an hour or so, I had logged out before any in-depth discussion around our specific preparations. The pain of forcefully inserted memories assaulted me immediately with a searing spot of pain just behind my eyes. Actions in the game world flowed across my vision, regardless of whether or not my eyes were open. In the end, it was a lot of pain for a relatively small payoff.

Foreman Quickhand had passed Gavin and me off to Koh, a chipper halfling man in grease-stained coveralls with thick half-moon spectacles that he fiddled with constantly. Koh was the resident artificer, crafting and repairing the mana-powered mining equipment. Much to my surprise, Koh’s machine shop was inside the mine, in a natural cavern a good twenty minutes’ walk into the mine and down several levels in a massive mechanical lift. The cavern ceiling was a good thirty feet up, with a series of lights affixed in a meticulous grid pattern at a uniform height. It was an impressive feat considering both how far up the fixtures were and the wide natural variations in the cavern’s ceiling topology.

Along two of the walls were vast metal shelving units with ordered wooden boxes of various sizes, all labeled with neat block lettering. One wall held machines that were too large for the shelves, as well as a few tables with disassembled equipment sitting nearby. The halfling artificer explained that we’d be refilling mana cells for most of the day, starting with the unstable and expired batches and moving on to the ones in active service. We all set up at our own table and a halfling woman with short brown and black hair and comically large glasses started pulling crates off shelves. Koh introduced us to Lex, his soot and grease-stained apprentice of little words, before showing us the basics of our task for the day. When they stood next to each other I saw a passing resemblance between the two, but it could have just been the clothing and glasses.

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