The Eternal Sleep

The Ancients

Luca jumped in surprise as a soft beeping rang in his ear, a small screen appearing in front of him. It was a voice call, from the external chat of the game, the names of his team members flashed in bright colors. The Book Keeper stood with a soft smile, picking up Luca’s teacup and walked to the counter. “Looks like you have a call, my boy, I’ll give you some privacy.”

Luca braced himself for the onslaught of questions he knew he was going to be on the receiving end of, the four were probably wondering why he didn’t answer the chat on his laptop. With resigned faith and a deep sigh, he clicked the answer button.

“Luc, where are you, are you okay?” Jay’s worry was the loudest, it was clear that he was frustrated. The other voices quieted to allow the conversation.

“I’m fine, what happened with you guys, I couldn’t get through?” Luca answered with a faint panic in his voice, the worry from his frayed nerves from earlier coming back like a rough wave.

“Something freaky,” Armando spoke up, “We basically got thrown out of the game. The physical severs overloaded and we had to restart the entire computer, and worst yet, we then log back into the drive and link up the headset. It was like we were logging in for the first time.”

“The chilling part was that it actually hurt,” Olivia’s deadpanned tone had a tinge of worry to it, sounds of agreement came from the others, “I couldn’t see anything wrong with the headset or my shoulder, but it genuinely felt like I got shot.”

“We thought you were logged out, restarting your laptop but then we saw the pictures of the book, so we tried calling you, this is actually our third attempt.” He could hear typing, Rena’s voice slightly muffled as though she was talking without her earphones, “What on earth happened out there, Luc?”

“In simple summary… that thing we fought was definitely not part of the quest, it’s called an ‘Ancient’, I’ll explain more when you all are back here.” Luca rubbed his face, waving his hand nonchalantly at Book-keeper, forgetting that the others couldn’t see him, “I made it to a bookstore after I practically ran from it, Keeper pretty much gave me all the information I do have on it.”

“What happened with the quest?” Armando questioned hesitantly, “I mean we did sign up for it, but there’s no notification it was completed or even forfeited.”

“No clue actually, my map glitched out the moment I left the caves.” Luca then grinned, remembering the prize in his possession, “But I can tell you ‘Shade’ was the name of the quest that was in those caves.”

“You got a card? You got a card!” Rena cheered, her excitement washing away some of his exhaustion as he finally realized that he was successful in the original mission.

“Yep, that’s three for us, and three steps closer to whatever we’re trying to achieve.”

“Speaking of caves, did you find out about what we saw on the walls, if anyone’d been there?”

“Yea, far as he knows, no one’s been there ever and from what I saw in the book, that quest didn’t even exist until a few weeks ago.”

“Would you be able to reference it to anything while you’re still in the game?” Luca pulled up another screen, watching the pictures that Rena took of the graffiti they saw when they initially entered the caves. The Book Keeper walked towards him, pulling the screen closer and adjusting his glasses like a real person would.

“Looks like you found yourselves some reference art, my dear.”    

“Who’s that?”

“An NPC I came across, meet Book-keeper.”

“An NPC, why does he sound human, Luca, why does he sound so human, are you sure he’s not a human?” Armando fired off a few more questions, his interest skyrocketed, “I thought you said you were with an NPC?”

“Another long story, that I again promise to explain at a better point in time.” Luca chuckled, “Keeper, think we’d be able to get any more information on it?”

“Indeed, but not here I’m afraid.” He passed the screen back to Luca, shaking his head, “But there is another place, we call it ‘The Sleeping Library.’”

“Never heard of it.”

“Not many have.”

“I heard it in an article on the news feed once, when I was looking for quests.” Jay spoke up, “From what I heard, that place is supposed to have everything on anything in the game.”

“Okay, sounds like we have a plan, we definitely need to check there out before we do anything else, it might have more on these ‘ancients’ too.”

“Oh yes, now that you mention it, there was something else that I found on the Ancients for you. Legend has it, they are the guardians of the great power.”

“This is new, you didn’t mention this before.”

“Yes, unfortunately, it’d been so long since I’ve heard of their mention that my servers finally pulled the last of the information I have,” The Book-keeper raised his hand to his face thoughtfully, “They fight against players who seek power they cannot control.”

“That’s not much to work on.” Armando piped up, his words slightly distracted, most likely already searching for any information he could get his hands on in the real world.

“I’m quoting directly from a book of the library, this is all I have though, you can definitely get more information there.” He fiddled with his glasses, pushing them closer to his eyes, “If you’d like, I can give you a map on its specific location?”

“Yea, that’d be nice.” Luca pulled up his stats screen, “How much for it?”

“No, my boy.” The Book Keeper chuckled, walking over to the scrolls and selecting one, “Knowledge is always free, it’s your choice what you do with it.”

“Again with the insights, your killing me Keeper.” Luca groaned and took the scroll, taking a picture for the others and uploading a copy to his main map.

“Oh my, it was not my intention, should I get another cup of tea for you?” The Book Keeper genuinely looked worried, his hands fretful at his chest.

“I guess… sarcasm was not one of the updates, was it?” Luca looked at him from the corner of his eye, ignoring Armando’s loud screeching demand of meeting the Book Keeper when he logs in again.

“My apologies, that seems to be one of the hardest updates to understand, not many use it.”

“That’s cool.” Luca stood up from his chair, placing it back in its rightful position and raising his hands to stretch. “Unfortunately, I have to go now, I’ve been here for almost three hours.”

“Ah, yes, it will be mightily uncomfortable to stay much longer, one must always get their proper rest, especially after such a taxing quest. Even a skilled gamer like yourself must recuperate after such injuries.” The Book Keeper smiled reassuringly, Luca winced as he remembered his journey from the forest and the fact that he’d purposely left that part out from his friends.

“Injured, you were injured, and you didn’t tell me?” Jay hissed, Luca always wondered why Armando and Rena labelled Olivia ‘mother-hen’, he was tired trying to explain to them how Jay got flustered at the slightest down-ward shift of their health-bar.

“I’m fine, I got healed, I’ll explain more when my head is not stuck in a thing that looks like half an egg, Mom.” Luca hissed back, ignoring the stifled laughing of his other teammates.

“ I must say I’m sad to see you go, it’s been a genuine joy to have you in my shop today.” The Book Keeper held out his hand, accepting Luca’s handshake. “Come by sometime soon, I’m always open.”

“Will do, Keeper.” Luca ended the call to his friends with a simple assurance that they would continue the conversation on the chat and logged out.