Skylair Online

Episode 8

Ben sat at his desk, rubbing the stiffness out of his neck and waiting for the school day to start. After he had finished off his homework last night he had logged back in to Skylair and had played games well into the night. He would have happily endured a rough day at school if he had won at least a few of the games, but they had all been one sided stomps and now he just felt miserable.

In Skylair each player had a rank, the lowest being bronze and working its way up through silver, gold, platinum, diamond, emerald and finally master. Ben was stuck in gold, no matter how many games he played he just could not seem to get into platinum.

The teacher walked in and silenced the room with a wave of his hand. Following behind him was  a boy Ben had never seen before. He had rust coloured hair, green eyes and he looked like he would rather be anywhere else in the world right now other than stood in front of their class. He wasn’t wearing the school uniform either, just a hoodie and jeans.

The class stared at him as he walked in, taken in by his odd hair or bright eyes, but Ben was staring at the crest on his hoodie. It was the golden wings that made up the logo of Skylair Online.

“This is Thomas,” the teacher said to the class, “He’s a new student here so I hope everyone will give him a warm welcome. Thomas, go sit next to Hazel there. Hazel, I hope you will look after him, he’s in most of your classes so show him around.”

Harvey nodded and Thomas took his seat, turning his back to Ben and revealing the emerald crest on the back of his hoodie.

Ben almost couldn’t contain his excitement. It was rare enough meeting an emerald player online, but meeting one in real life was unheard of.

“Ben,” hissed Chris, the boy sat next to Ben, “He’s a new student, not a prey animal, stop staring at him so wolfishly.”

 Ben broke his gaze off from Thomas and looked at Chris, hurt, “I don’t look wolfish.”

“You looked like you were going to try and eat him.”

Ben rolled his eyes.

They finished up morning registration and as they were leaving Ben chased down Thomas, jogging up next to him as he was talking to Hazel.

“Hi Thomas!” Ben began excitedly, “I’m Ben, nice to meet you.”

Thomas took a moment to take his eyes of Hazel and looked round at Ben.

“Hi,” Thomas replied.

“I see you are wearing your Skylair Hoodie, that’s really cool.”

“Oh, this, yeah I guess.”

“I’m trying to put together a team to enter competitions and stuff, would you like to join it? With an emerald player we could destroy local tournaments.”

“I don’t really play that much, to be honest, what rank are you guys then?”

“I’m gold and the other person on the team has only just started, so he’s unranked.”

Thomas looked at Ben with barely concealed contempt.

“I’m sorry, like I said, I don’t really play that much and when I do I kind of want to play with people who could challenge me, you know? There isn’t much point me just rolling over gold teams. So, Hazel…”

Thomas turned back to Hazel and Ben fell out of step with them.

“Damn, rejected just like that,” Chris said as he pulled alongside Ben.

“Shut up,” Ben replied and Chris sniggered.

“I’m not judging, even I can see he is quite attractive. Hazel seems to think so at any rate.”

Ben groaned and they walked into their next lesson. He sat through it, distracted by thoughts on how he might get Thomas to play with them. If he could just get out of gold he could get some respect…

The next lesson he had with Leo, who was already there unpacking his things.

“Leo,” Ben said as he took his seat next to him, “I found a new player.”

“Who?” Leo asked, looking up from the contents of his bag.

“There’s a new kid, his names Thomas, and get this, he’s an emerald player!”

“A what?”

“Oh, you haven’t played ranked yet, have you? There’s a ranking system, for when you unlock ranked. Emerald is really high, it’s just under master. We need to convince him to join us.”

Leo looked at him quizzically, “What do you mean, convince him? Did you ask him already?”

“Yeah, but he was, like, all ‘I don’t play with gold players’, so we need to convince him that we are on his level.”

“How are we going to do that? We are nowhere near his level. I’ve literally only played two games.”

“You didn’t play any more after I left?”

Leo looked down sheepishly.

Ben rolled his eyes, “You are never going to unlock everything at this rate.”

Leo shrugged, “But  anyway, if he doesn’t want to play with us, you can’t force him.”

“I can, and I will. And you’re going to help me.”

Leo shook his head, but, at the end of the lesson, he allowed Ben to drag him off to intercept Thomas coming out of his class.

Thomas saw them coming and sighed.

“Hello again,” Thomas said, “So, is this your teammate? The unranked guy?”

“That’s right,” Ben said, “But don’t just look at him as a unranked new guy, he’s a master tier chess player.”

“I’m not, I’m only 1900 elo, that’s not a master.”

“Whatever,” Ben interrupted, “The point is he knows his stuff.”

“Chess is not Skylair,” Thomas said, “They are two very different games, chess you take your time to think through moves and make the perfect one. Skylair is more about instinct and metal than actual strategic thinking.”

“That’s not true, SINS thinks about the game like chess, he said so in an interview.”

“That’s in professional play, you have to get through normal play to get to a point where that level of thinking becomes important.”

Thomas then turned to Leo and said, “So, what role do you play then, chess guy?”

“Um, scout.”

Thomas laughed a bit at that, “You had the new guy play scout? Talking about throwing you in the deep end. You shouldn’t start off with scout, learn a core role first, then try and play scout. Just play mage first, it’s such an easy role, just randomly throw out a few big spells and you’ve pretty much mastered it. Seriously, a monkey can play mage at platinum standard.”

Ben was noticeably fuming now.

“Whatever,” Ben said, “What role do you play then?”

“Guardian.”

“So, you just follow your artillery around all game and could be replaced with a HP buff?”

Thomas laughed.

“Well, if that’s what you think, I guess I’ll be heading off then. Good luck getting another HP buff as good as me.”

And with that they walked away from each other.

“Well,” Leo said, “I think that went well, I could definitely feel him warming up to us.”

“We don’t need players like that, he’ll see, when we’re standing on the world’s stage. He’ll regret this.”