Rise of Tempest Merlin

Chapter 4

Truth is treason in an empire of lies.

I had never realized the essence of this statement until now…after everything I could not even begin to deal with this at the moment. I looked at the character which had told me this and then looked at all others. There was something wrong and they were not telling me this. The beautiful man who had taken my breath away a moment ago was looking at me with an unscrutinable expression and I figured, whatever he was thinking about me, it could not be good.

“If you cannot escape the game if you have not started playing it then why are you waiting?” I asked. It felt like a legitimate question. Volga looked at Lilith and then replied me.

“Because every single team has a leader. There are about millions of gamers who are trapped in this game all over the world and we have no clue why we cannot start this game without a leader but that is the problem. The groups are randomly assigned so we got here and are stuck here without any action and we have been trying to learn all about our basic powers from here itself,” she said. It did not make a lot of sense.

“Anyone can be the leader if he proclaims to be or she in this case,” I shrugged.

“No it cannot be. The game is designed that way that a lot of choices are made for you in the beginning and when you are in the game then you can make your own choices. We have seen all the other teams play with the broadcast that happens in the pods when we connect to them,” said Lilith and I nodded. This made a slightly better sense and then I tried to move towards one of the pods and found that my entire legs was covered in some cloth.

“What the heck? Why am I wearing the garb of a common main from the Dark Ages?” I exclaimed. This was ridiculous. I did not like my Avatar at all. The boy who was named Creonitidaes sniggered and pointed me to a mirror on the other end of the room. I looked at myself and found that there was nothing of myself in this Avatar.

My hair was brown and long and I had freckles all over my nose and my cheek, splattering which made it look a bit cute. I had a nose like a button and the most important part were my eyes which should have been bright but no…they were dull like a dead fish. Whoever put me in this character, I wanted to gut them like fish.

“You guys chose your characters right?” I asked them looking at the mirror and they all nodded. But I had not. That would mean that this was the only Avatar left in the game in order to let them start playing and I was sucked in this one when I pressed the Play button.

This was not going to do. I needed a wardrobe change and definitely upgrade from this one. I might be looking like a maid servant but in this game I was never going to be one. Who was I kidding? I was a freak in my real life who had no way of escaping her own fate and from the hands of the ones who had taken my responsibility and now were going to take my life.

“How do you check your powers?” I asked as I slapped my chest hoping that it would show like that of Jumanji movie. But nothing happened and only I felt the sting of the slap.

“Ummm…it doesn’t work that way,” said Creon and he pointed at the mirror,” A lot of things here are absolutely old, which figures you know because this is a game of Quests where you need to win the quests in order to win the game.”

“So I place my palm on it or what do I do?” I asked looking at the mirror. For all I knew it could be a portal and I did not want to fall down through it before I even knew anything about the game.

“NO it does not work like that. You need to ask it a question,” said the person whose name I was still not aware of with disdain in his voice.

“How am I supposed to know that the magic mirror from Snow White is going to be here and I need to ask it questions and act like if it is a living being?” I rounded back upon him and glared at full force.

“Hey man! Quit it. She is a newbie and she is only awake for about fifteen minutes. Why are you suddenly acting like a douchebag?” asked Creon and Volga came forward and placed a hand on my arm. I whirled around again and spoke out.

The mocking was tough to keep out of my voice,” Mirror, mirror on the Wall, what is my name?”

I could hear that Lilith was snickering behind but none of them spoke and we all waited for something to happen.

And slowly words came alive on the mirror.

“We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”

And suddenly as if the room came alive and the walls started shimmering all of a sudden and a voice spoke. It was slightly raspy and mechanical but all in all the British accent made it a lot more interesting to hear,” Thy name is not the one given freely, it is to be earned for it was bestowed by a man greatly revered in the world of literature. Ascertain this or you shall surely perish, fair maiden!!”

“That was extremely creepy,” commented Creon while I looked at the mirror again. I had no clue what those words meant and why on asking a name did such a thing happen but one thing was happening for sure. We needed to find the answer or something really bad was going to happen.

The words were gradually disappearing.

“The game has started, girl. Percy was correct. You are the key, and you were the one that the game was waiting for before the first challenge begun,” said Lilith. She was excited at this. Of course, why wouldn’t she be? Unlike me they were all waiting for this to happen for quite some time and here I was the one who was cowering if I was going to lose all my sense in my limbs again.

The walls of the room were steadily moving closer to us and I looked at all of them.

“We need to find out the meaning of these words or else we are never going to understand how to get out of this place,” yelled Volga as the walls were closing in.

The grey of the wall was diffuse and mottled, like sun on a storm cloud. Creon ran his hands over the surface, silent, face unreadable. He knocked the lighter parts with his knuckles, then the darker regions. Weakness. He was looking for the weakest point to focus the strike...

“Do something, mi Hermana,” screamed Lilith as suddenly my brain went to overdrive and I closed my eyes and tried visualising the words once again. I knew them from somewhere and now all I needed to know was where and when and who was the one who had written it. And suddenly I was standing before a wooden stage and looking at a person who was wearing a white sheet with holes in it as eyes and mouth. The stage was small and the lights were all oil lamps casting a strange glow all over the stage while he spoke the words. I turned back and found that there were thongs of crowd looking at the stage and they were hanging on all his words, each and every word of his. And the man who was actually speaking these words was talking to a group of people on stage. He was wearing a dress which would be fit for only royalty.

“Our revels now are ended. These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits and

Are melted into air, into thin air:

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

As dreams are made on, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.”

This was a play. It was the dramatization of a work…

All of a sudden, I saw the glimpse of the face of a man in the wings beside the stage whose picture we all must have seen a countless number of times. Only he had more hair in on his head but the face was the same as the one which I had seen plastered on the front pages of the text books which I read on my screen.

The pressure on my limbs was increasing and I was increasingly getting inside panic. How was I here? Did I just see a glimpse of history floating right before my eyes. But how was I supposed to get back??? I wanted to scream. But then I knew what I had to say.

It was William Shakespeare, the man who was greatly revered in the world of literature. And the name of the play was the word which was going to take me out of this fix.

I could not breathe, all others were screaming as the wall was hell bent on crushing us and I whispered with the one breath I took.

“Tempest.”