Frozen Stars Over Wonderland - Chapter 2 (Patreon)

She awoke sometime later; she had no idea how long she slept, only that it was light out, to a rapping on the door. She inhaled sharply, sitting up far too quickly and making herself dizzy in the process. Once the world stopped spinning, she turned her gaze to the door, staring, waiting for the knocking to begin again.

Sure enough, it did. Three short, precise taps in succession. “Hello?” a clear, melodic voice called. “I know you’re in there! I saw you through the window. Are you alright?” 

She stood slowly, slipping her feet back into her boots as she reached for her rapier. She drew it, leaving the scabbard behind as she approached the door, slowly, cautiously. The voice sounded friendly, but she couldn’t trust anything right now. Her hand wrapped around the sliding bolt.

“Who are you?” she shouted through the thick, dark wood. “I warn you, I’m armed!”

“No worries,” the voice called back, and Alfre could tell it was a man’s voice. “I’m a friend.”

Alfre felt her stomach flutter as hope filled her. A friend? It almost sounded too good to be true. It still could be.

“If you’re lying to me, I’ll gut you,” she warned.

The voice laughed. “Well, it’s a good thing I’m not lying then.”

Alfre steeled herself, hand tightening its grip on her sword. She slid the bolt open and let the door creak open. Sunlight hit her eyes and she was forced to squint against it. If whoever had knocked on the door meant her any harm, that was the perfect time to do said harm. But nothing happened, and eventually her sight cleared.

It was indeed a young man at her borrowed door. A young man in a finely tailored three piece suit that looked very out of place in the forest around them. A young man with brilliant red eyes. A man with snowy white hair just like her own. A man…with very large rabbit ears sticking out of his head.

“Umm…” Alfre said intelligently. 

“Oh! You’re an Element Blade!” the man gasped, his ears twitching excitedly. “Then you must be a new player. Oh, you poor thing, it must have been terribly frightening out here in the Wilds all by yourself, especially given the circumstances.”

“Y-yeah.” Alfre managed. “Started yesterday…won an early access from a contest so I got to make my character before the expansion pack…launched.”

Yes, that was how it started. This…this world was supposed to be a game. A fairly popular game. A game whose first major expansion pack had launched yesterday…and then this happened.

“Well,” the rabbit man said sheepishly. “Welcome to Wonderland, I suppose.”

“Thanks,” Alfre muttered, turning back inside the cottage to retrieve her belt and scabbard.

“I’m Elias, by the way,” he called after her. “Magician and butler extraordinaire!” 

“Alfre,” she replied curtly, sheathing her rapier and returning the belt to her waist. 

“Pleasure to meet you, Alfre,” Elias chirped. How someone could be so perky in this circumstance, Alfre couldn’t quite comprehend. “It’s a shame you had to start the game this way. The first few hours where everything is fresh and new are honestly the best parts.” 

“I’m sure.”

She didn’t mean to be rude, really. But she was tired and sore from running for her goddamn life and she was starting to feel the hunger pains coming on. He’d caught her at a bad time. A very bad time. And trying to convince her that the first few hours in this world were supposed to be the best was NOT welcomed at this point.

“You must be hungry,” Elias said suddenly, reaching into some small bag that Alfre hadn’t noticed before and pulling out a somehow steaming bread roll. “Here, it’s not much, but it might tide you over until we reach the city. Or until we find something else to eat, which ever comes first.” 

She reached out hesitantly to take the offered food. True enough, it was warm to the touch. Any attempt to hold herself back went out the window as she stuffed the bread into her mouth, taking as much as she could in that first bite. It was airy and buttery and absolutely perfect. She devoured it like a wild woman, nearly choking on the final bite she attempted the swallow without fully chewing. 

She met Elias’ eyes and blushed a little. Despite finding no judgment on his face, she felt embarrassment welling up in her gut. She looked away, the pretty, powder blue of a patch of wildflowers catching her attention.

“Thanks,” she mumbled.

Elias chuckled a little. “You’re welcome. Come on, we won’t make it back to Spade by standing here. Oh, did you want to mark this place on your map? Who knows, it might make a nice little house once you have the coin.”

“My map…how do I…?”

“It’s pretty fascinating, actually,” he explained. “You just kind of think ‘bag’ and a bag appears with all your game inventory in it. Call it magic, I suppose.”

Alfre remembered the bag that suddenly appeared on Elias’ shoulder just before he handed her the roll. It was gone now. She looked down at her side, where she’d assume a simple messenger back or satchel might hang and imagined one being there. She felt something of a rush and one blink of the eye later, surely enough a bag appeared. She opened it to find it seemingly empty. Well, she reasoned, surely the thing she wanted would appear much like the bag itself did if she wanted it badly enough. She thought of her map, the map given to her when she created her character. A small, pale roll of parchment shimmered into existence at the bottom of her pouch. She pulled it out. All that appeared on the map was the forest itself, in a strange, almost holographic manner. In the center, where she assumed she and Elias stood, was the tiny meadow with its tiny cabin. 

“How do I…?” 

“Just about the same way you’ve done everything else,” Elias offered. “Just think about how you’d open the drop down menu to mark the spot in the game.”

She hadn’t really gotten the chance to really try out the game before ‘falling down the rabbit hole’ as it were. But she assumed it worked just like any other game menu. She imagined placing a small, powder blue dot on the map, just like the powder blue flowers in the meadow. The tiny mark blinked into existence on her map. A small smile graced her features, the first smile she’d afforded herself since arriving in Wonderland.

“Perfect, you’re catching on already,” her new companion praised. “Right, let’s get going. We’ll want to cover lots of ground today. It’s a fair way from here to the city.”

Alfre rolled up her map and stuffed it back in her bag, feeling first the map and then the bag fade away around her hand in a strange, almost smoky manner. 

“Weird.”

She followed after Elias, finding it nearly impossible to actually walk side by side with him given the difference in their strides. Alfre was a very, very tiny girl, not even five feet tall. Despite her almost adulthood at age nineteen, many people assumed her to be much younger, usually middle school aged. She kicked the last person who assumed she was an elementary school student in the balls her first time in a pub. Her roommate at the time never went back with her.

Elias, by comparison, was a giant. He towered over her by almost two feet, the damn rabbit bastard. At least she didn’t have to duck under most of the branches. No she wasn’t bitter about her unexplained shortness, what are you talking about? 

The stroll was fairly quiet, save the chirping of birds and the crunching of leaves under their feet. Until Elias decided it was time for conversation again.

“So what made you decide to start playing Wonderland?” he asked casually, glancing back over his shoulder at her. She noticed he purposefully lessened his stride to greater match hers. 

“Like I said, I won it in a contest,” she answered. “I hadn’t really the desire to play it before hand. But I had the opportunity, so I figured why not. Had I known this would happen, I wouldn’t have bothered.” 

Elias frowned, which was more of a quick downward twitch of his lips than an actual frown. 

“Yeah, this…this was unexpected.”

“That’s an understatement.”

There was silence again. Elias’ ear twitched. He threw out his arm to stop her, though he nearly smacked her in the face. She glared at him.

“How much experience do you have with combat?” he asked quietly, his voice little more than a hiss.

 “I remind you I joined the game right before this debacle happened,” she hissed back. 

“So none?”

“So none.”

“Get ready to earn some experience points, then.”

Before Alfre could open her mouth and ask what he was talking about, a small band of short, green skinned creatures with large pointed ears and tiny fangs crashed into her line of sight. They carried what seemed to be broken off tree branches in their hands. 

“Goblins,” Elias supplied before she could ask. “In this part of the Wilds they shouldn’t be any stronger than level five.”

“Given that I’m level one, that doesn’t exactly make me feel better,” Alfre snapped, hand going to her rapier.

Elias grinned, a long, slim cane appearing in his hand. “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine as long as I’m here.”

Something warm slid over Alfre, filling her limbs with a tingling sensation. She felt stronger, more solid, but yet lighter. 

“What…”

“I’ve buffed your defense and speed,” Elias explained. “That’s my job as a magician. I’ll tell you more about it later. Given your color scheme, I assume you’re a Winter Blade?”

Alfre nodded, icy blue eyes fixed on the approaching goblins.

“Your sword should do magical ice damage along with its regular physical damage. That’s good. It’ll slow the goblins down and make them easier to hit. I’ll debuff their defense. Have at it!”

Alfre, filled with a sense of confidence at Elias’ words, rushed forward, rapier at the ready. She could feel the cold of her magic, her Winter, just under the warmth of Elias’ spell. She jumped at the last minute, soaring high into the air. She fell upon her first opponent, thrusting her blade forward with a shout. It pierced the goblin’s leathery skin easily, viscous green blood spilling from the wound and onto the goblin’s thin cloth armor. That was, until frost formed around the puncture. Alfre pulled her sword free, slashing at the monster’s face, making a cut across its left eye. The creature gave a gurgling cry of pain before disappearing in a puff of smoke. Alfre briefly heard a jingle of coins before turning to the next goblin. It swung at her with its club, moving faster than she anticipated. The club caught her in the side, knocking her prone. Pain radiated from the bruise forming there, dull but throbbing. 

“Alfre!” Elias shouted her name, a sliver of panic creeping into his voice. He cursed under his breath and sent a small, blue-green fireball at the remaining goblins. 

Alfre slowly struggled to her feet, hand reaching for her rapier. There was one last goblin left after Elias’ spell. It was badly burnt and obviously on its last leg. Gathering the bit of courage she’d lost upon finding out that things in this world hurt just as much as they did back home, she charged once more, swiping at the goblin’s strangely thin neck. Blood sprayed the ground around her feet before this goblin, like its comrades, disappeared in a puff of green-grey smoke. Again, there was the sound of jingling coins in her ear.

She felt a gust of wind billow up from about her feet. Looking down, she found that she herself seemed to be glowing. The phenomena passed quickly, leaving Alfre feeling…stronger, perhaps? Yes, it wasn’t by much but she definitely felt stronger.

“Well, look at that,” Elias laughed. “You got your first level up! Congratulations.”  

Alfre blinked owlishly at that. “I’m surprised that sort of thing still exists.”

Elias shrugged, striding casually over to her. “Why not? The inventory still exits. The loot still exists. Surely you heard the gold being added to your purse. This world still retains the mechanics of the game, it’s just a material world now instead of a digital one.”

Alfre kept quiet, whipping her rapier on the grass before returning it to its sheath. It was strange for a world that looked and sounded and felt this real to have such strange, fantastical rules. Her hand traveled without thought to the bruise forming against her ribs. It didn’t hurt quite as badly as before. Possibly because she’d gained more hit points. She couldn’t be sure without some kind of stats screen. And even with everything she could do in this game like world, she doubted she could conjure a stat screen on command.  

She continued on with Elias, running into all manner of beasts. It was much easier to dispatch of them with Elias with her. It felt good to not have to run. It felt even better to absorb the majority of the experience points because she got the final blow. With each level up she felt a little bit stronger, a little more capable.