The Underground City

"Well," Lex started, "it involves something called a video game."

There were a couple of blank looks at the comment, so the trio - Telós, Lex and Aleks - took it as a sign that they had some extra explaining to do. Though no one spoke, an unanimous decision was made to let Lex do the bulk of the explaining. After all, he was the one who had actually used video games before.

"Video games are what they sound like: games. They use a special technology to create fake worlds. It's similar to when you tell a story," Lex elaborated. "There was one game that I played called Minecraft, and it turns out that the game wasn't creating a world - it was somehow accessing an already existing one. The players of the game had an ability that a lot of games have. You can restart if your character dies. But what we didn't know was that the characters sometimes have the ability to leave behind shells."

This was something that Telós and Aleks understood, so they decided to join in with the conversation as well.

"Shells are either zombies or skeletons," Telós added. "At least, that's how it works in Hero's place. If you're in the Nether, your character can only leave behind a wither skeleton. That's what Aleks is. So when Lex's body stopped working, his soul went to the closest one it could find - Aleks'."

"Wait, so in these games, you're not yourself? You're like... a storybook character? And the shell is the character without you like... in them?" Bo muttered to himself, trying to understand. For him, everything they were describing was a foreign subject to him, and he was just getting more and more confused. He didn't even know where he was. What was he doing here? Who were these people?

"It's hard to understand unless you've played one," Lex said, giving a sheepish smile. "It took me awhile to explain how it worked to both Aleks and Telós, so you're actually doing pretty good."

Spoiler

Its time for some new character stuff XD. This is Sevy- he has wings. Yep. More on that later. Black hair, black wings, gold eyes. Some sort of gamer shirt.

Sevy woke up on top of a building. For a groggy moment, it looked to him like the sky was a dark, murky color. Then he realized that the ceiling far above was compacted dirt. He stretched his aching limbs and blinked. There was something wrong with his eye- it seemed like he should know something about it, considering the fact that when he reached up to touch it, it was bandaged.

He stood shakily and took inventory of himself: wearing clothes? Check. Wings in good shape? He flapped them. Check. Hungover? Nope.

He sighed and peered off the edge of the building- it was a long way down. There were lights glowing, and a bridge somewhere below. He still hadn't figured out whether he was actually underground, or whether it was merely an illusion. He had his fair share of convincing illusions, and didn't want to get stuck with an assumption.

Oh- there were people down in the distance. He figured his best bet would be to go talk to them. He spread his wings and dove off the ledge. Fairly quickly he learned that flying with one eye was a lot harder than flying with two. He kept several feet away from the other buildings, just in case one snuck up in his blind spot.

Not wanting to alarm these people, he tried to land a few feet away. However, one of his wings clipped on a light post, and he did a tailspin straight into the middle of the group. He picked himself off the ground and shook dirt out of his hair.

"Sorry," he grinned sheepishly and pointed to his bandage, "depth perception."

Bo jumped back a little as the winged harpy guy dropped out of the air. He noted the guy's comment and his bandaged eye, and pointed to his scar, where an eye used to be.

"I know the feel, dude. It's alright."

Enide tried to wrap her head around what they were saying. "Video games" weren't the strangest thing she had ever heard of; worlds accessible by them were high up on the list. Not to mention living skeletons.

She frowned. "Correct me if I am wrong, but Aleks is a shell, yes? Which is to say, he is the remnant of some 'player.' Who was that player? How did Lex's body fail? Was Lex himself a shell?"

She chose to ignore the man with wings that had just landed in their midst. Or, at least, not comment on his bandaged eye and his golden eye. She bowed in his direction before focusing on Lexal again.

Sevy nodded with in incline of his chin at the man missing an eye and silently appraised him. He studied the rest of the members of the group in turn. Some of the people seemed almost normal, but others- like the fox lady- he had never seen anyone like.

"Do y'all know if this is an illusion- or who sent us here?"

If there was anything he was familliar with, it was people sending him strange places.

Telós wasn't sure what was more startling - the strange winged man suddenly appearing out of nowhere, or the fact that the woman was completely ignoring his arrival, save for the brief bow she had done in his direction. The god of gold briefly looked at the man before turning his attention back to the woman. He could talk to him after he explained things to her.

"Lex was the player, he died in an auto-auto-"

"Car crash," Lex helpfully interjected.

"-car crash, and, no, he wasn't a shell."

Now that her questions had been answers, Telós spun around to look at the winged man. "This isn't an illusion, and I have absolutely no idea how brought us here. I'm guessing that no one else knows either."

Sevy peered at the grey-haired man who had spoken. He seemed to switch voices while he had talked with the fox-lady.
"Are you a solister by any chance? Not that I'm discriminating."

"Apologies," Enide said, responding to the hesitation in Lex and Aleks's voices. "Death is no subject to take lightly, regardless of the cause." There were still a few questions she had in mind, but she figured she had a decent enough understanding of Lexal. And there were more important things to focus on, like the arrival of the bird man.

To him, Enide said, "We should not deny the possibility that this is some kind of illusion, but it behaves more realistically than any I am familiar with, so I doubt the prospect. Also, I do not have any idea how I arrived here either. Which is, naturally, suspicious."

"So, everyone he just kinda showed up here but doesn't remember how?" Bo asked, just to be sure.

"Seems like it," Telós said, shrugging. He had been so many odd things in the past week alone that he honestly wasn't too shocked by this turn of events, though he could have never predicted something like this happening.

Lex gave a nod in agreement. It appeared that Aleks was sulking yet again, this time probably over the failed plan to keep their true nature secret.

Sevy carefully folded his wings to his back, slipping them through the large holes in his T-shirt. A few months ago, he would have been highly uncomfortable among a group of strangers, but recent events had helped him adjust.

"So, does anyone have a game plan?" He looked between the different people, wondering if there was some sort of leader figure, "to find answers and such?"

Casey was quietly focused on the upper window of the building in front of him. He was pretty sure that this god and the tall man had been the ones moving around, but he just wanted to be sure.

Telós thought for a moment. Unable to come up with an answers himself, he shrugged and turned to his chosen.

Aleks, thankfully done with his sulking, suggested, "I'm-"

"We're," Lex interrupted.

Aleks rolled their eyes and swore under their breath. "We're going to investigate this building. It's the largest one in the cave. It has to mean something."

Bo looked back at the building with a shrug. "Well, I suppose that's a good place to start. Since the only people here are us, and we're all in the same boat, I think the only real thing we can do is look around."