She blazed a trail through the night sky, like a shooting star, descending rapidly toward her destination.
Aura City glowed brightly, even with the late hour, and as Vira approached it from the seaside, she slowed her momentum to take it all in. The lantern-lit coastline, the car-busy streets, and the towering skyscrapers—it was all new and foreign to a fairy who had spent most of her life in magical dimensions that held little in the way of technology. But as she zipped through the strange and unknown landscape of glass, metal, and asphalt, Vira did spot one thing she found familiar.
At the shore, a group of youngsters sat by a campfire, enveloped by its kind warmth, and sang cheerily to the strum of a guitar. The guy playing sang the loudest, and the girl beside him pressed her body close, her sparkling eyes locked on him and no one else.
On the highway, two newlyweds sat at the back of a horseless carriage, separated from their driver by a tinted screen. The groom took the bride's hand in his, pressed his lips to her fingers, then whispered sweet nothings in her ear, causing her cheeks to turn red with an embarrassed smile.
In a small office on the 30th floor, two employees were left last, entirely on their own. The man had finished his work hours ago but stayed to keep her company and help her where he could. They ordered takeout as it got late, shared a meal, then a laugh, then a kiss.
Love was always there. No matter how strange the dimension, how unique the culture, or how dire the situation might seem, love could always be found somewhere; you just had to know how to look for it—and that was what fairies did best.
***
She spent most of the night flying over the city, following her heart, finding love; and so it was only at the break of dawn that she finally passed through the Oathless's window.
His room was as she had seen in the mirror, sporting a mattress without proper bedding, a single desk with a horizontal magical mirror, and piles upon piles of garbage spread around him like the walls of a fortress. The only thing worse than the smell was his snoring—like the sound of rolling thunder.
Vira sighed, slumping her shoulders, regretting that she had gotten herself into this mess to begin with—but there was no point in wallowing. She took a deep breath and activated her magic.
***
Kai stirred in his sleep as an aggressively bright light struck against his eyelids. He rolled over, pulling the blanket over his head, but the fabric was too thin, and the light passed through—forcing him awake.
"What the hell?" He sat up, throwing the blanket aside, only realizing his mistake as the blinding light flooded into his retinas. He brought his arm forward to ward against it and could swear he heard voices, like a choir of angels harmonizing. As his vision adjusted to the light, he could see it: a red, shining silhouette floated before him, right at the center of his room, above his—his PC!
"Ah, hell no!" He lunged into action, grabbing Nekoko's body pillow to use as a shield, and fumbled through a stack of pizza boxes to his right, pulling out a longsword and pointing it at the intruder.
A gust of wind blew within his room, swirling around the light, and with it came a divine, flowery scent that threatened to take Kai's resolve and lure him into a state of calm serenity.
He shook his head, regaining his focus, his brows creased in a determined scowl. "I don't know where you came from—"
The angelic voices receded, the wind weakened, and the light dimmed as the silhouette of the mystery figure gained a more defined shape.
"But if you think you can come between a man and his PC, you must be—"
The figure's features resolved from the remnant gloom: long, flowing black hair, a rose-red dress, and a pair of butterfly wings.
"A… girl?" Kai couldn't believe his eyes. He was probably dreaming; he must have been.
"Rejoice, Oathless One," Vira smiled. She was no longer the tiny ball of light—which was her pixie-form—but rather the size of a grown woman… a very short grown woman, but a woman nonetheless. "Yes, rejoice! For I—Vira, Sister of Chivalry—am here to guide you on your path to glory and valor, so that you may become a man worthy of true love and a Happily Ever After."
"Ah… okay…" he said. Yeah, I am definitely dreaming.
Vira's eyes opened and immediately fell upon the Oathless's weapon. "Is that—" her face lit up, "you have a sword."
"Ah… yeah," Kai turned it over in his hand.
It didn't have a very practical design—Vira had to admit—with a lot of unnecessary sharp edges close to the hilt, and an oversized, over-stylized handguard. But then again, legendary swords tended to be more on the showy side… could this be…?
"I won it at the Aura Gaming Expo, in a B2B tournament—"
"It is a legendary weapon, isn't it?" Vira floated closer to Kai, fluttering around the sword with excitement, scanning its fine craftsmanship.
"What? Lightgrave? Sure, I guess. Kind of useless with the new expansions, but—"
"Lightgrave? Is that its name?" She crossed her arms, contemplating. "Yes, that is quite a good name… It must have a rich legacy behind it."
"Ah…" Kai raised an eyebrow, puzzled by the seriousness with which she took an interest in the sword. "Sure, it had originally belonged to a holy warrior known as the Prince of Light, but after he was seduced by the Vampire Queen to join her Dark Legion, he couldn't use it anymore and locked it away in the Bloodthorn Fortress."
"Oh, no!"
"Yeah, tragic." He nodded in agreement. "After that, his title was changed to the Prince of Blood, but I like to call him the Vampire Simp." A self-satisfied smile came to his face, and he gave a deep sigh. "It's a cautionary tale, really; it teaches us that women can never be—"
"But... how was it recovered?"
"Huh?"
"Lightgrave—how was it recovered?"
"Ah, there was a raid to recover it, which was a bit of a mess since its drop rate was ironically very low—a stupid decision by the devs—but hey, LtD was like… what? Two expansions ago?"
"LtD?"
"Light to Darkness, it's the name of the expansion."
"Oh…" Vira stopped to consider, reasoning that by 'expansions', the Oathless was referring to different time periods in Earth's history. "But… you said you won it in a tournament?"
"The sword? Yeah, that's right, though I have the weapon in-game, too."
"I see," Vira smiled to herself, thinking that after reclaiming the sword, the brave heroes who recovered it from Bloodthorn Fortress had put it as a prize to be won by a worthy champion—and that champion was her very own godchild! Maybe this wouldn't be as difficult a mission as she thought. "To have won such a legendary prize… You must be a skilled warrior, then?"
"Ah, I actually main Paladin, though with the new patch, Warriors are kind of—"
"Paladin?!" She floated even closer to him, almost touching nose to nose, her eyes sparkling. "You—you are a paladin?!"
Kai leaned away from her. "Well, I was thinking of trying a different class in the new season—"
"No, no, no!" She grabbed the collar of his stained shirt. "You must remain a paladin; you mustn't forsake your oaths! Not now!" She let go of him and chuckled to herself. "I suppose you are not 'Oathless' after all." Aqwyn must have been wrong about this one. This 'Oathless' was actually a skilled paladin, a beacon of virtue… but of course, he must have fallen from grace to be in the state he was in now, maybe already had broken some of his oaths, but that's all right. Vira nodded to herself. The fact that he was at one point a powerful and virtuous hero means he could become one once again—she could guide him, remind him what he had lost, and why it was worth reclaiming.
Her eyes fell on the image printed upon the Oathless's body pillow, and she smirked. Yes, that was her way in. Clearly, this disgraced paladin still had a lady whom he honored, a woman whom he loved, and for whom he would willingly and nobly risk his life…
In this case, that woman was a brunette cat-girl with bobbed hair and blue eyes, dressed in a maid's outfit—but that didn't seem at all strange to a fairy who had traveled through multiple fantasy worlds and seen plenty of different nonhuman races.
Kai hefted his sword up, resting the dull foam blade on his shoulder. "Ahh…" This was rapidly becoming the strangest dream he had ever had. "Do you even play B2B?"
"Be to be?" She tilted her head to the side.
"Born to Battle? It's a video game."
"A video game?"
"It is fiction, Sister Vira," a voice said as Kai's PC monitor sparked to life.
"Sister Aqwyn?" Vira turned.
"Hey, did you just hack my computer?" Kai leaned to look past her, at the dark-haired, purple-eyed fairy appearing on his screen.
"Everything he has been telling you... It is fiction, a game, like a game of cards or chess."
"What?!" Vira scowled and floated up to tower over the godchild, her red light flaring. "You lied to me?!"
"No! I told you I won the sword in a tournament, and then you started asking questions about it, so I told you about the lore."
"But… the Prince of Light, the Vampire Queen, the Bloodthorn Fortress—"
"I'm sorry to disappoint you, Sister, but these are fictional characters and places that are a part of the game, like how the Jack of Diamonds and the Queen of Hearts are part of a card deck."
"Oh, no…" Vira covered her face and floated lower to the ground—careful not to actually touch the filth-ridden floor—her light flickering. "At least the tournament… You won the tournament; that counts for something, right?"
"I never said I won the tournament," Kai scoffed. "I said I won the sword in a tournament."
"Ugh…" Vira winced.
"I am afraid it is true, Sister. According to my scrying, the sword was a limited edition item, given to anyone who ranked in the quarter-finals or above. Given that the tournament had three-person teams, I'd estimate there are about forty-eight of these swords."
"And you…" Vira looked up at Kai.
"We lost in the quarter-finals, but that's entirely my teammates' fault."
"Ugh…" Vira whined, covering her face again and folding her legs to her chest.
"Hey, I don't know what you are so upset about. I'm the one who was cheated out of a championship!"
"From what I can see, quarter-finalists received no monetary reward, only the toy sword."
"Toy sword…" Vira squealed.
"Screw you. This is a limited edition collector's item; I could probably sell it online for more than the winnings the finalists got!"
Aqwyn's eyes darted, looking for the information on her magic mirror. "This is true," she conceded. "It appears humans on this world will happily spend great amounts of money on useless artifacts for seemingly no good reason whatsoever. Curious."
"Hey!" Kai shoved Vira's floating form aside and came to face Aqwyn. "Lightgrave is a cultural icon."
"True—for Oathless like you—I suppose it is. But for the vast majority of civilized society, it means nothing."
Kai dropped the pillow and the sword. "That's it, I've had enough of you two." He grabbed Vira's wings, and she gasped—then screamed as he flung her out of the window, sending her spinning down toward the alleyway dumpster.
"Are you crazy?!" Aqwyn protested as he approached her. "What do you think you're—" He cut her off by shutting down the monitor, then crawled back into his bed, hugging Nekoko tight and closing his eyes.