A small, flat, disc of a pebble skipped across the water of the forest spring, disturbing the shadows of the ugasi trees as it hopped along the surface tension before plunging into the depths. Once it reached the unseen bottom, the glowing lights of the pool lit brighter in rainbow shimmers, and then after a moment they faded.

When Faonari had begun throwing stones across the water, the shadows of the suns overhead had not yet reached her seat. Now, shade crept up her hand. She tried to process the intrusive thoughts that the fairie had brought to the surface. Not a word had been spoken in that time.

The two sat next to each other, Faonari’s toes dipping into the water, and it was quiet as Aurelia gave the elven adventurer time to think. Finally, the confused woman spoke up.

“I don’t understand, what happened to me? My head feels all stuffed now…” 

Aurelia, it turned out, did not follow the same social rules on personal space that Faonari was used to. Not that she minded necessarily. The tall, strange woman had placed an arm around the elf at some point, and tucked her into a side hug so the entire right flank of the adventurer's body was pressed into the overly-warm skin of the fairie.

“You’ve been afflicted by a curse. A very nasty enchantment it seems. And once I pointed it out, you could no longer ignore it.” Aurelia sighed, seeming to appreciate the difficulty of the moment.

Fao picked up another rock and sent it across the water. “So those things I saw. Someone put those memories in my head? The ones about that Otherworld?” 

The fairie’s skin was incredibly warm. At first, Fao wondered if maybe spending all that time in the water was the cause, but her toes confirmed that it was lukewarm at best. Perhaps it was strange to be in physical contact like that with someone she had barely met, but she needed the comfort and this was hardly the time to put up a fuss.

“I believe they did, yes. You poor, sweet little thing. It's so unfair. I take no pleasure in pointing this curse out to you, truly. If you could live eternally in bliss and ignorance I assure you it would be my preference.”

Fao bristled at the condescending words and moved back a little. “I’m not a child, you don’t need to coddle me. I’ve fought many battles.”

The spirit finished brushing her pink hair, and tied it with a ribbon in a fancy up-do that spilled all over in an eccentric bun. “My apologies, I don’t mean to belittle your skill! On the contrary, your talents are one of the reasons I was so eager to warn you about this affliction. So much potential. It would be a crime to let it all get sapped away.” 

Fao was not prepared to confront the idea that the fairie knew so much about her, but it did trouble her. For the moment, she would have to accept that Aurelia was on the intrusive side, at least until she was able to get some answers.

“Fine, just tell me what you know about this condition, and how to fix it.”

“The more I tell you about this, the more the curse is going to try and resist it. So we’re going to take it slowly.” 

Fao went to fish around for another stone, but instead found Aurelia’s fingers. She instantly moved away, but it was too late to avoid an affectionate squeeze on the hand. The faerie continued.

“There is a dark, corrupting influence that has set its sights on the adventurers of this land, and it goes without saying that you are one of them. This force has cursed you to believe that you are not real. That Reverie itself and everyone in it is false.”

Fao remembered the way that it felt momentarily, flickering memories that appeared in front of her eyes earlier this afternoon. She recalled the awful sense of detachment that had run across her skin, as if experiencing her own self through a layer of water. “Everything felt wrong for a moment, as if my entire life was fabricated. Why would anyone do that to someone? What do they get out of this? I’m skilled, but I’m not a champion of the realm. And I don’t owe anyone money except a few coins to the Russet Dove…”

“You are not the first victim of a realitycurse who has travelled that path through the Bitter Feld. If anything, I see more and more with each passing day! But you are the first that I have become… invested in helping. We can’t say for certain, but having spent a little time with you, I have a suspicion as to why this is happening.” 

The fairie paused, somewhat theatrically, then curled her fingers around Fao’s palm. Slowly they ran up and down, squeezing the tense muscles loose.

“Well, don’t keep me waiting, why?”

“I believe that whoever is cursing people is doing so because they know that you would fight back. That your passion would inspire you to resist some campaign of evil.”

“That would mean… the only way to make sure Reverie doesn’t resist their plans is to take the fighters off the board entirely?”

“Precisely! They had to curse you, and they chose delusions of a dark and dystopic reality, because they want you to become weak and apathetic, too incapacitated to fight them. The only way to take care of the noble adventurers was to convince them the entire world was fake.”

She grinned a sharp grin that only a spirit could make, her crooning voice almost a purr. Her fingernails drifted over Faonari’s skin, a touch as gentle as a whisper. “But this isn’t fake. It is real. You are real.”

The adventurer squeezed her hand back, subconsciously reaching for confirmation of corporeality. “I don’t get it. Obviously this is real. Obviously I’m real, I…”

“It’s like a stuck bandage, little adventurer, a scrim of fabric patching you up but preventing your wound from healing. You hadn’t noticed the curse yet, but let me ask you this. What were you doing before you entered the city of Demini?”

She pondered the question. “I left Leptokrya and travelled through The Bitter Feld… there were some prototaxities and I harvested some spores… I saw some spirit creatures playing in the tree… and then I arrived on the outskirts of town.” 

Aurelia pulled the elf in closer, both hands finding some part of her to gently touch, and it was nice. “And that’s all? You didn’t sleep or rest?”

“No, I don’t think so. What do you know? Where is this going?”

Another question, and another heavy sigh from Aurelia. She stood up, and gracefully walked the perimeter of the spring towards the waterfall. Fao felt the afterglow of her touch a little too long after she was gone, though she excused it as merely an absence of heat.

“Now to be clear, this was only a matter of time. The curse would’ve caught up to you eventually. This way, you’ll become aware of it on our terms instead of theirs. And that means you can resist it.”

The tall, graceful creature bent down, reached into the water, and retrieved a dark pearl, the size of Faonari’s waist. She strode back over to the elf, who was still sitting by the water, and knelt down so she could gaze into its depths. 

It was a black shimmering oily crystal, with depth that seemed to go further and further. She felt herself falling into it, deeper and deeper. Inside the depths she saw a vision of herself yesterday, walking through The Bitter Feld. It started small but then grew to fill her vision. She remembered that moment clearly, how she was hoping to arrive soon and how thankful she was for mild weather. 

But then something unusual happened. 

The adventurer's body, her body inside the orb froze in place. That wasn’t how it went. Fao knew that wasn’t the way it went. The adventurer fell to the ground, clearly under the influence of a charm of some kind. She looked peaceful, as if in a still slumber, but with disturbingly empty eyes staring at nothing. Breathing evenly, blinking as though on a clockwork mechanism. Completely unreactive to her environment.

Aurelia ran a hand across the surface and things sped up, time passing at a rapid pace. At one point someone passed her on the trail, and he didn’t even notice her body. Aurelia stopped moving her hand, and it returned to a normal pace. They watched as she stood up in the scrying record, expressionless, brushed off her attire, and opened her eyes. Then, she continued to walk down the trail as if nothing strange had occurred.

“I don’t understand, Aurelia. That didn’t happen.”

“Yes it did. I want you to try and think back to that moment, little adventurer.”

Fao scanned though her memories carefully, but it kept skipping every time she reached that part of the journey. It was so much easier, so much blurrier to just ignore that single, unimportant moment. It wasn’t the kind of time she would commit to memory anyway, why would she? It was boring, routine travel. 

Better to just forget that part. 

“I can’t, I’m trying to remember, I just can’t…” 

Aurelia sat back down on the smooth stone, and gestured to her lap. 

“… I’m not sitting in your lap.”

The fairie frowned and huffed a little.

“Faonari. Sweetling. I told you about the curse. I brought you here, to my spring. I did this to help you. But I can only do that if you trust me.”

Some defense within the elven caster crumbled, falling away to the place deep below the water where the rainbow light flows, and she relented. Aurelia was even warmer now than before, and she found a spot to sit on her wide, strong thighs. The silky fabric of her skirt was soft. 

Faonari sighed quietly. The elf hadn’t been close to anyone like this before, the kind of close that sent fizzles of calm and excitement into a battle in the back of one’s mind. Even forgetting the moments of fleeting intimacy that came with adventuring she certainly hadn’t sat in someone’s lap since she was a child. Fluster arrived, and was put in its proper place before it could derail things. But oh, how it was so much more tempting to focus on this moment than that day of travel. And then time moved once more.

Aurelia ran her fingers through the girl’s hair and began to hum a tune. A pink sparkling glow of arcana spilled into her locks, and a block cleared.

Memories of a cloudy gray sky, and a forest of smooth stone buildings filled her mind. Toiling repetitious tasks over and over in a backbreaking tavern without a shred of magic. Elixirs brewed in sweet flavors only for the purpose of invigorating those that consumed them, with the goal of extracting even more of their labor. And a sadness. Oh, such sadness. Tears fell down her cheeks.

“You see now, don’t you, poor, precious thing.” Her comfort oozed, immediate and necessary.

Fao hiccuped and brushed her eyes clear, making a noisy snotty sound. “It’s awful. I don’t know how I survive it.” 

“I know, sweetling… I’m sorry.”

SCHEDULED ALERT: VRsimilitude ramping to Tactile

But it kept going. More and more fragments echoing. Absent parents and anxious rejections, fragmentary connections. Hope, hard fought and bitterly lost. A strange device for her head with two scyring orbs that conjured images within, that had been her only company as a plague kept her sheltered indoors. Boxes of a pale white cardstock with cartridges of escape inside…

Faonari gasped, and looked around in panic.

“Fao? You need to calm down.”

Vision on the edges of her periphery began to fizzle, and the elven adventurer saw something she was never supposed to notice. Markers that told her in simple terms how physically healthy she was- not great- how much arcane power she currently possessed- more than she realized- and a map with a directional marker in the middle of the wilderness.

Faonari didn’t know how long those elements had been there. A nagging voice told her they’d always been present, but that she was supposed to keep them out of mind. The light of the suns burned brighter, and then they swirled, the smaller Arani growing into a thick vivid spiral.

She was me, and I was her, and things were bleeding in a way that they were never supposed to. No. No, I wasn’t Faonari. That wasn’t possible, because she wasn’t real.

Faonari wasn’t real. She was a playable character that I made. 

SCHEDULED ALERT: VRsimilitude ramp down complete

I ripped off the headset in a panic.