Binary Systems [Complete, Slice-of-Life Sci-Fi Romance]

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Mau_dev: Faced with the challenge of balancing lava spells, we decided not to try. If you don't want loot who are we to argue?

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Saturday, November 9th, 2091, about 4:10 pm MST, Ghostlands, Kingdoms Server, Mournhollow

Karen called her twin swords "sabers." Gordon didn't know why. They only barely resembled their namesakes—single-edged slashing weapons, true, but with triangular spikes on the pommel, a half-sphere cap for each guard rather than the smaller bar-style hilt of a cavalry saber.

But watching her climb, the ice picks attached to the pommels really shone.

They weren't for stabbing—not really. A pick is for gripping. You don't skewer ice. You hook into it.

She wanted grip. And possibly to give vicious pommel-strikes.

It made sense, given how she fought. Whether she was grappling a fully armored opponent, climbing a frozen cliff, or locking blades with someone else's sword, Karen wanted control.

Her saber design? Slender-bladed, capable of working into armored joints.

Of course, in a moment of oversight, she had forgotten to specify something important.

She liked blade binding.

And unfortunately, her sabers… weren't built for it.

Rapiers? Those had intricate cages around the hilt, designed to protect the hand and lock down an opponent's blade both. A good rapier guard let you twist your wrist and control your enemy's weapon.

But Karen's sabers?

No hilt cage. No flat, angled guard for catching a blade. Nothing to bind with.

Great for deflecting. Terrible for holding.

Of course, Karen could cope.

She claimed she liked friction binding better anyway. And, like anything else, she could fight with them like it was second nature.

Harry—the hairy one, as Gordon liked to call him—was struggling.

His full armor and bulk easily pushed his weight into the 200s, and the switchback paths they'd navigated on the way down were significantly worse on the way back up. Ravines yawned open where solid ground had once been, and the lava spell's lingering heat had turned compact ice into treacherous slush.

Even now, the wild heat from molten rock fought against the faerie-summoned gale, sending steam curling through the storm-wracked air. The snow and ice melted in uneven patches, water slicking over the rock and muddying Harry's grip faster than he could adjust.

Meanwhile, the faerie bombardment hadn't stopped.

Rocks, broken ice, and bloodied snow piled around them, new obstacles forming mid-battle. Even when there was no clear way up, they still had to keep moving.

For Harry, waiting for Karen to lower a rope might have been the best option. Gordon suspected as much. But for himself and Claire?

They were sitting ducks.

Claire's armor didn't even cover her midriff or legs. And as for Gordon?

Buckskins weren't armor.

That was just one of the downsides of the gunslinger class.

Claire cast a spell on him.

Gordon intentionally lowered his barriers, letting her magic take hold—not that it really mattered whether he allowed it.

With their respective stats?

She could have forced it through anyway.

That was the downside of being so heavily invested in so few stats.

Immediately, his vision sharpened. He could see through the swirling sleet and rain, tracking the sylphs darting through the storm.

They moved like feathers in a windstorm, twisting and shifting midair, their tiny hands snapping off deadly little shots—

Bows. Crossbows. Flinging darts.
Skewering with spears and tridents.

That wouldn't do.

Gordon holstered his left pistol, shifting his stance for better aim—two hands, steadier shots.

"Go ahead of me!" he yelled to Claire. "I'll follow, but I need to pick off some of these bastards first!"

She nodded, braying like an angered burro, ears flicking in irritation—then turned and climbed, sandals clapping against the rocky slope as she charged up the unstable mountain path.

–––❖–––

Karen didn't really like the fae.

She was a close-quarters duelist and tank-breaker, built for player-versus-player and high-difficulty NPC combat.

That was what she liked.
That was what she was good at.

At least, she was better than most. And she'd put in the work to prove it.

A lifetime of training.
Martial arts. Historical European swordplay.
She'd started at twelve. Loved it. Lived for it.

But fighting fae?

Fighting fae was like fighting the weather.

It was like fighting the ground beneath your feet, like fighting your own damn shoes as they slipped out from under you.

It wasn't about reading your opponent.
It wasn't about predicting their moves.

It was about surviving their bullshit.

Could she do it? Obviously.
Could she navigate it? Yeah.

Did that make it fun?

Absolutely not.

She hauled herself up the final cliff face, forty feet of hand-over-hand climbing. Her ice spur dug deep into the frozen wall, anchoring her saber like a mountaineering pick. With her other sword, she lunged upward, leveraging herself higher with every motion.

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Then she saw it.

Harry's sword—exactly where he'd left it.

The blade, sunk into the ground, the rope tied to its hilt lying coiled neatly beside it.

Except—

The rope was frozen in a solid bucket of ice.

Karen stared at it.

Fae. Were. Such. Jerks.

–––❖–––

"You're gonna have to shoot it!" Karen yelled.

Claire barely heard her over the wind. She looked up—saw a short length of rope protruding from a bucket, presumably dangling from Harry's sword.

Shoot it? she wondered.

She regretted that the only fire spell she had left was Meteor Strike.

Well, she thought, taking aim. Bit wasteful, but okay.

She fired.

A thunderous boom shook the cliffside. The spell missed the bucket by inches—but scoured a dumpster-sized chunk of the overhang into glowing gravel.

Shards of molten rock rebounded everywhere.

For a few blinding seconds, everything was light and chaos.

Then, in the fading glow, Claire saw Karen's lips move.

She couldn't hear a thing—not over the ringing in her ears—but she could still read lips.

Karen was mouthing: "No. Not you. Gordon."

Oh.

Well. That was useful.

A sudden sound made Claire snap around—

Gordon hauled himself up onto her narrow ledge, pistol ready.

She gestured at the bucket. He nodded but hesitated—she was in his way.

She gestured again: Trade places.

He flashed an A-OK.

They'd almost managed it too—almost—

Then a fist of wind slammed into her.

Claire's balance vanished.

Gordon reacted instantly, his hand shooting out on reflex.

Trustworthy bastard.

She **grabbed for it without thinking—**not stopping to wonder if he could actually hold her weight.

It didn't matter.

Both of his hands were on his gun.

He was already aiming. Already firing.

And as she fell, she saw the hand she'd grabbed begin to dissolve—

—back into snowflakes.

–––❖–––

Karen watched as Claire tipped comically backward over the edge of the cliff in a puff of snowflakes.

Gordon turned from firing, reflexes on point as expected, hand lashing out like a snake to almost catch hold of his step-sister in a deeply inappropriate manner. Fortunately missing, he stared after her in puzzlement as she tumbled headlong, donkey-head-first, into the swirling cold.

Karen wondered what his AC-disabled perception had been, to justify that grab.

In studio, Claire's face was burning with embarrassment. It was just as well that the donkey-head enchantment had muted her, or she'd have said something and broken Karen's straight-faced composure.

Her graceless, extended backbend had just enough hangtime to be spectacularly undignified.

The headdress stayed on.

The loincloth-clad figure vanished into the storm, spiraling down through the **driven rain and snow—**far too cold for her current state of undress.

Karen could not let herself laugh.

That would be wrong. Claire was her dearest friend.

That would be deeply wrong.

She muted herself, just in case.

–––❖–––

Gordon saw Claire's fall out of the corner of his eye and turned, reaching to catch her—

His fingers, visually, contacted the center strap of her cuirass, but he felt nothing beneath his fingers, which passed right through.

Well.

Bad time for a glitch, Gordon commiserated subvocally into the team channel. Good luck, Claire!

Her stream had gone blank. So had Karen's. Maybe it was a network issue, he shrugged.

It was just as well he couldn't see their faces at that moment.

–––❖–––

The rope was sure taking a while, Harry thought.

Bodies fell around him—gravel, snow, a shoe, more faerie corpses. The gang sure wasn't holding back.

But his slog up the slope had hit an impasse.

At the switchback, there simply wasn't a boulder where there used to be one.

Probably dislodged during all the rapid heating.

He glanced up at the sky, hopeful.

Maybe he could make the jump.

That was when he saw the donkey head.

Claire hit first.

She impacted headfirst into the crater before him, a sprawling mess of shapely limbs and absent dignity.

A beat later, the rope smacked into his back.

Harry stared.

"Huh," he said.

He put the figurine in his pocket and bent for Claire's unconscious form.

–––❖–––

"And so that's how I found her," he explained.

"Long damn climb, hand over hand," Gordon opined. "I'd say you proved your 'valiant' nature."

"I'll say," Karen agreed.

Karen leaned over. "Claire?"

Claire didn't look up. "I think I'll conduct my after-action report with my man in private," she purred from Harry's lap.

Her head had apparently reverted to normal while she was unconscious.

Gordon suspected Harry wasn't in any danger.

"All's well that ends well," Karen said. "Speaking of—how about it, big man?"

Harry muttered to himself, pulling up his status sheet. Ghostlands wasn't the kind of game that kept it on-screen by default, and Harry wasn't the kind of player who wanted to see it all the time anyway. But…

"Level 201," he said. "I bet that means the delve is over."

"And," he added quickly, "I've already allocated my perk points as requested—Anti-Magic Mind. Yay."

"Set, everyone?" Karen asked.

"Hooray," Claire deadpanned.

"You're a real tank now," Karen teased.

Harry gave them a sideways grin. "Nice to see you all so invested."

"How about that loot?" Gordon asked.

"We might want to open that after we get back," Harry said. "I've been puzzling over her wording this whole time, and I think there's a trap in it."

"You don't say," Gordon mocked. "A faerie gift with a curse in it? Well, that almost never happens."

"Let's see," Gordon said. "She told you not to put it down until you were outside her territory. Have you had it in hand the whole time?"

Harry paled.

"I… put it in my pocket," he said weakly.

Slowly, he pulled it out.

Karen was the first to speak. "Has it always been glowing like that?"

The hound's eyes gleamed—a malevolent, deep pink, pulsing like something alive.

"Don't feel too bad," Karen said. "My level 200 delve artifact was completely useless. I think that's pretty common."

She shrugged. "Even if your creepy faerie dog is totally cursed, it's not the end of the world. We'll stick with you."

"I got a Ring of Mid-Air Teleportation," Karen said. "It lets you teleport 60 feet—but only if you're already mid-air on both sides of the teleport."

She shook her head. "Absolutely terrible."

"So anyway, I gave it to Gordon," Karen said. "He spends half his playtime mid-air anyway, and—shockingly—he got even more overpowered."

"I had to pick up spellcasting to use it," Gordon added. "Snowball.".

"I had wondered," Claire commented.

Harry eyed his artifact with deep suspicion.

"It's a shame–getting something cursed just because I didn't understand a faerie riddle. But…" He eyed the glowing hound warily. "I suspect this may be… use-impaired."

"Take but my favor beyond my realm, and it shall grow to be a dear companion unto your grave. Drop it but once within my dominion, and be surely hunted by mine devoted forevermore," Karen commented.

"'Dear companion unto your grave' isn't exactly thrilling in the context of a cursed item," Harry said mournfully.

"What I'm more worried about," Karen said, "is all the Redcaps I hear coming our way. You know, 'hunted forevermore', and all. You might want to stow that."

"But we're already out of her territory," Harry protested.

The group looked around at the snow-capped mountains and the sprawling glacier biome.

"Oh my gosh," he muttered. "That was sneaky." His expression darkened. "We're still in a frost-type area… and she's still going to hunt us."

"Well," Gordon said, stretching. "I thought that was a lovely stream."

"Hey, wait a moment—" Harry started.

"And you were all lovely people," Gordon continued smoothly.

Harry narrowed his eyes. "Gordon—"

"But," Gordon interrupted, holding up a hand, "I really have to use the restroom, so I guess just tell me later how the faerie hunt went!"

With that, he logged off.

Gordon could hear Karen grousing even through her headset as he headed for the bathroom: "At least you guys aren't gonna be downwind."

He just grinned as he shut the bathroom door behind him.