Skylair Online

Episode 1

The morning sunlight streamed into Leo’s room, largely ignoring his thin curtains and irritating his bleary eyes. The sound of birds beginning their morning chorus broke his concentration and he frowned in irritation at the dawn.

“Oh,” he said, coming to the realisation that he had burned through the whole night without a wink of sleep.

He turned back to his laptop, the fan whirring in protest at the extended use, its age manifesting in a base that was now scorching to the touch.

Sighing, he forfeited the game of chess he was playing and flopped onto his bed. The computer taking one last, relieved breath and shutting off.

His eyes closed groggily and he was in the process of falling asleep when his alarm went off.

He groaned and rolled out of bed, falling to the floor with a thump, then pushed himself up. He crossed his tiny room in a single stride, pulled his uniform out of his wardrobe and dressed.

The kitchen was almost as small as his bedroom, with aging appliances and paint peeling off the cupboards, it looked pretty bleak. He pulled out two bowls from one of the cupboards and set them on the table, along with spoons and a box of cereal and milk.

Another alarm went off upstairs.

When it didn’t result in his little sister coming down for breakfast, Leo trudged back up the stairs and knocked on the door.

“Diana, it’s time to get up!” he shouted.

He heard some choice language from the other side but it was followed up by the sound of rustling sheets and feet on floor so he went back down stairs.

Diana came down a few moments later, her school uniform crooked and still looking half asleep.

She slumped into a seat at the table and grabbed breakfast.

“Morning,” she managed.

“Morning,” Leo replied.

As they ate they heard the lock turning in the front door and their mother came in.

“Morning,” she said sleepily as she passed them.

“Morning Mum,” replied Leo.

“Orning Um,” said Diana between mouthfuls.

 As she passed them she kissed each of the on the top of their heads.

“Look at the two of you, what time did you go to sleep last night?” she said, examining their red eyes.

“Ten,” they both lied immediately.

She shook her head, “If I get woken up by a call from school saying one of you fell asleep in class I’m selling your computer and your phone.”

“We’re fine, I promise,” Leo said, smiling.

Their mother looked at the clock on the wall, “Well get going then.”

Diana gulped down the last of her breakfast and, grabbing their bags on the way out, headed off for school.

Leo dropped Diana off at her junior school and then headed off for his.

Leo’s high school was a sprawling complex of concrete buildings and cream coloured walls that all looked so similar that the new students each year took weeks to even tell them apart.

He pushed through a set of double doors and went up a flight of stairs to his classroom.

He sat down at his desk and buried his head in his arms, the effects of sleep deprivation making him feel like the whole world was spinning.

“Leo!” came a voice above his head.

He groaned and looked up to see Ben sitting down in the chair in front of him backwards so that his face was bare centimetres away from his own. Leo met his eyes to see almost maniacal levels of glee in his eyes.

“What?” asked Leo.

“I’ve got a surprise for you,” Ben said, somehow smiling even wider and pulled out a box from his bag, “My sister just upgraded her headset to the new model X3 and so this was just going to get thrown out. It’s all yours.”

Leo blinked in surprise and looked in the box. Inside was a VR headset, the markings on the outside faded away from use but it looked in pretty good condition.

“I can just have this? Are you sure?” Leo asked uncertainly.

“Yeah, on the condition that you play Skylair with me.”

“I couldn’t, this gear is still good, there’s like, a lot of money sat here.”

“Oh, please Leo, it’s so difficult to find people that play Skylair. Please. You’re like a chess grandmaster too, if you play we’ll win every game for sure. If we find other people as well we can enter tournaments and stuff and it’ll be fun. If the money is bothering you, you can pay me back when we win our first tournament.”

“But I’ve never played a game like Skylair before. I’ll be awful at it. And I’m 1900 elo, I’m not a master.”

Ben just looked at him pleadingly, making his eyes as big as they would go.

Leo sighed, “Alright, I’ll try it. Thanks.”

“Yes!” Ben exclaimed excitedly, “Now, it’s free to play so you’ve just got to make an account, you can do it on your… my phone, here.”

Ben handed over his phone, the Skylair ‘create an account’ page already loaded.

“Just come up with a username and password, and give it back to me so I can send myself a friend request from your account. So in Skylair there are 5 roles in a game, there is the Assassin, Scout, Mage, Artillery and Guardian. The roles aren’t actually defined in the game they are just want the players call the roles, you could play with five random characters but this is the best setup anyone’s found so all the professionals do it this way. I play as a mage so chose anything but that.

Leo raised an eyebrow but continued to type on the phone.

Username: Kings Gambit

He handed the phone back to Ben who pressed a few keys and then put the phone back in his pocket.

“My username is Cryoarts. Generally in game we call each other by usernames rather than actual names because the other three people on the team are going to be random people from the internet.”

“Uh huh…”

“Oh, and make sure you calibrate the headset before playing. Your brain probably works a bit different than a 23 year old girl.”

Leo nodded.

“It works by reading your brain activity so when you think about taking an action the headset does it, but it takes a bit of getting used to, I won’t tell you the amount of times I’ve tried to do something really quickly in a game and unintentionally done it in real life.”

The school bell rang to signal the beginning of the day and Ben stood up.

“I’ll be on the game tonight, so make sure you are too, okay?”

And with that Ben left the room, hurrying to his own classroom.