《Rise of the Paladin (Dungeon Hero Book 1)》


 Chapter 1

    I could tell Brianna wasn¡¯t home as soon as I stepped through my front door.


    It¡¯s not like I¡¯m psychic or anything¡ªempty homes just have a certain feeling to them; a hollowness. When people are around, there¡¯s always some indication. You¡¯ll hear the muted hum of a television or the distant clattering of a keyboard. The air isn¡¯t quite so still, and it¡¯s mixed with the smells of an opened refrigerator or an afternoon snack. Shoes and coats will lie discarded on furniture near the door, and the plumbing in the walls will hiss restlessly from turned faucets. It might seem weird to notice such small things, but I¡¯m unusually sensitive to them.


    Or rather, the lack of them, which is what I immediately noticed.


    My hands tightened on my keys, and I felt my pulse and breathing quicken. All these years later and it still happens. I don¡¯t like empty houses. Brianna knows that.


    And yet.


    I whipped my phone out and slid past the lock screen, searching for messages as I ditched my tie and loosened the collar of my button-down shirt. No notifications, no texts. It was 6:48pm. She should have been home hours ago¡ªI should have been home already too, but I can¡¯t always control when work needs me to stay late. I¡¯d sent her a text at 4:30 to let her know I¡¯d be home a little later than usual and asked her to get dinner started, but of course she hadn¡¯t responded.


    Why does she do this? I wondered. She knows how mad I get when she goes quiet on me.


    My mind spun with possibilities as a mix of frustration, anger, and fear stirred in my chest, and a series of unpleasant images flashed through my mind: Brianna kidnapped, bound and gagged in the back of a van. Brianna in the hospital, comatose and hooked up to a heart monitor. Brianna in a car accident, mangled on the side of the highway.


    Then I forced myself to calm down and take a few deep breaths. I was being ridiculous, and there was no point in getting myself all worked up. If something really serious had happened, the police would have called me.


    [Where are you? Not cool, Bri] I texted her, but then I realized that was dumb. She always texted me if she was visiting with a friend or going to the library. Since she hadn¡¯t, it meant she was avoiding me, and that it was no accident that she wasn¡¯t here right now. I wouldn¡¯t get a reply.


    That made me almost as angry as stepping into a silent, empty home.


    I¡¯d worked through lunch today and was starving for some dinner, but I knew that the tight, constricted feeling in my chest wouldn¡¯t go away until I found her. Fortunately, I had a pretty good idea of where she might be.


    I turned on my heel and left, slamming the front door of our small house behind me and heading back to the car I¡¯d left in the driveway only moments before. My 2006 Ford Taurus¡ªforest green and badly in need of a wash¡ªwouldn¡¯t have ever been my first choice of vehicle (or even in my top ten), but it did a fine job of ferrying me from point A to point B. Choosing it had been a matter of necessity rather than preference: it was reliable, cheap to maintain, and most importantly, available with an affordable payment schedule. At 131,000 miles it still ran fine thanks to my routine good care of it, but right now I wasn¡¯t thinking about maintaining the condition of my car.


    The tires squealed as I reversed out of my driveway and practically floored it, blowing through two red lights along the way to my destination. It¡¯s not like me to be that reckless unless I¡¯m extraordinarily angry, and I felt more than a little guilty about that, but when it comes to my little sister, I have trouble hanging onto my usual, cool-headed stoicism. That goes double when I¡¯m worried about her.


    If Brianna wasn¡¯t at home, the library, or a friend¡¯s house, she¡¯d almost certainly be at the only other place she liked to go: our town shopping mall. I knew just what part of it, too.


    I screeched to a halt in an enormous lot that looked way too big for the small collection of cars parked there. The red brick exterior of Northfield Way loomed over me, a sad, faded shadow of the mall it was a decade or two ago. I couldn¡¯t help pausing to stare at it for a moment with a slight lump in my throat as I stepped out of my car. I remember how busy it used to be in the 90s, with its throngs of milling teenagers and adults with their arms bowing low under the weight of their plastic bags. My parents would take me shopping sometimes at the GameStop or the bookstore, and other times we¡¯d go to the movie theater to see whatever blockbuster science fiction hit was playing at the time. The mall¡¯s theater is especially nostalgic for me: sticky floors, faded, threadbare seats, and the stale popcorn odor that permeated the whole place make a fondly recalled jumble in my mind. I saw so many of my favorite films for the first time at that place: the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Star Wars episodes 1-3¡ªpan them all you want, but they were my childhood Star Wars movies¡ª, The Fifth Element, The Matrix.


    One of my favorite memories is from the summer Jurassic Park came out. I was only four, which was obviously way too young to see it at the time, and I remember that my mom told my dad ¡°absolutely not¡± even though I begged and begged to go. He took me to the mall to see Dennis the Menace instead, and I sulked the whole time while he bought us tickets and popcorn, keenly resentful of being kept away from the awesome dinosaur movie. At the last minute, he crouched down so he was eye level to me and asked if I could keep a secret. When I nodded, he winked and steered me into another theater.


    I loved every terrifying moment of Jurassic Park, even though it turned out I couldn¡¯t keep it a secret to save my life. I had nightmares about raptors stalking me through my dreams and would wake up crying and screaming for months afterward. My dad got in so much trouble for that outing, but it made him a hero in my book, and he always said it was worth it for the look on my face.If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.


    But I wasn¡¯t at the mall to reminisce. I was here to retrieve my little sister, and I didn¡¯t think I¡¯d find her at the movie theater. I shook my head and stormed through the tinted glass entrance doors, making a beeline for Brianna¡¯s likely location.


    These days, Northfield Way felt like a ghost town. The movie theater went out of business along with the GameStop and half a dozen other stores around the time of my high school graduation, and no one ever moved in to take their places. Almost a third of the retail spaces I walked past stood dark and empty, like grim heralds of the fate awaiting the handful of businesses that still managed to limp along on a tenth of the foot traffic this place saw in better times. Seeing the faded, brown-stained outlines of the lettering once belonging to the B. Dalton Bookseller where I¡¯d bought Magic: The Gathering cards and fantasy novels as a child didn¡¯t help lighten my mood, either. I hated coming here now, because it all just reminded me of how things used to be.


    Brianna hadn¡¯t bothered to return my text by the time I arrived at the dingy arcade in the back corner of the mall, and I was furious. If I had been a cartoon character, little stormclouds would have been circling my head. If I was a Final Fantasy character, my status would have been ¡°Berserk.¡± I was ready to unleash hell on that girl.


    I made a quick circuit of the dim, noisy interior and spotted my sister before she saw me. Sure enough, she was right where I¡¯d expected her to be, but it was who she was with that caught me by surprise. Brianna stood with her back to me in front of an oversized fighting game in a black tank top and dark jeans that were way tighter than I was comfortable with. The game was Soul Calibur II, a favorite of ours, and her pink-streaked long pigtails bobbled in the air as she slammed the analog stick through a complicated series of movements that kept Cassandra¡ªher favorite character¡ªdancing and feinting out of the reach of Astaroth¡¯s wide, clumsy swings. Even from a distance I could see that she was way better than her opponent.


    Normally I¡¯d have felt a small surge of pride at that. I was the one who taught her to play, after all. But I recognized the guy she was playing against as Bradley Harris, a Junior who was two grades ahead of her. I¡¯d gone to school with his older brother Jason, who was best known in my graduating class for his extensive list of sexual conquests among the 2005 Freshman and Sophomore girls. It might have been impressive if he hadn¡¯t been such a colossal douche about it¡ªhis Senior quote in our yearbook had literally been ¡°Tapped that!¡±, which made it into print only because our entire faculty had been too old and clueless to understand what it meant. Of course, what should we expect from the same teachers who had given their unanimous and enthusiastic endorsement to ¡°Here¡¯s to the Night¡± as our prom theme song?


    Despite all of her dancing around the SCII arena, Bri brought her character a little too close to a ledge, and Brad suddenly rushed forward, sweeping Astaroth¡¯s axe in a vicious cross-slice. Brianna hit the guard button a fraction of a second too slowly, and Cassandra went flying out of the ring, winning Brad the match.


    Bri broke out into giggling laughter and slipped her hand through Bradley¡¯s arm, bumping her body against him playfully as she congratulated him on the win. But as soon as he saw me, he pulled his arm away and took a quick step back, eyes widening. He cleared his throat and nodded in my direction.


    ¡°Bri¡­ your, uh, older brother is here.¡±


    Brianna spun around, breathing a very unladylike curse word, and her smile dropped away.


    ¡°We¡¯re leaving,¡± I said gruffly. ¡°Now.¡±


    I seized her by the wrist and started to yank her out of the arcade.


    ¡°Ow, Michael, ow! Stop it! You¡¯re hurting me,¡± she whined, dragging her feet against the stained patterned carpeting and tugging against my grip.


    ¡°You¡¯re supposed to be at home right now,¡± I growled.


    Bri¡¯s complaints seemed to help Bradley find his courage, because he suddenly piped up: ¡°Hey, man. Knock it off. She¡¯s almost an adult. She can go where she wants, okay?¡±


    I froze in mid-step. Then I let go of Brianna¡¯s hand and turned to face Bradley. He was like a miniature version of Jason, seventeen and a little scrawnier than his brother had been at that age, but with the same blue eyes, strong chin, and lightly curling dark hair that had inexplicably made up for Jason¡¯s garbage personality to dozens of the girls whose panties he¡¯d collected like trophies. What was Bri doing with a guy like this? I had the sudden urge to punch mini-Jason right in his stupid face. I glared at him harshly enough that he visibly flinched, but he didn¡¯t take another step back.


    ¡°Michael,¡± Bri hissed, rubbing her wrist. ¡°Stop. Don¡¯t. You¡¯re embarrassing me!¡±


    Instead I jammed my finger into Bradley¡¯s chest and bit my words off one sharp syllable at a time. ¡°She¡¯s not an adult. She¡¯s fifteen years old, which in case you weren¡¯t aware, means that she¡¯s a minor. A minor that I¡¯m in charge of. So if I say she¡¯s supposed to be home, then that¡¯s where I expect her to be. And if I ever see you with her again, I¡¯m going to pound your face in. Do you understand me?¡±


    Now, I¡¯m not a huge guy. Maybe 5¡¯11¡± on a good day and 175 pounds of what I like to tell myself is mostly muscle, although if I¡¯m being honest the weight isn¡¯t as much muscle as it used to be. I ran varsity track back in high school, and while I won¡¯t break any records these days, I do sometimes still lift weights and run on an old treadmill in my garage to stay fit.


    Brad was at least my height, maybe even a little taller, and I could see the primal calculations running behind his eyes. At 28 years old, I had over a decade of experience and twenty pounds on the kid. I didn¡¯t think of myself as an alpha male, exactly, but I could get rough when I had to¡ªand I certainly wasn¡¯t about to take guff from a tough-talking teenager. Brad didn¡¯t seem like a dummy, and I could see that he recognized all that. But now that he¡¯d called me out in front of Brianna, he couldn¡¯t just back down without looking like a coward in front of a girl.


    That was right where I wanted him. Most guys will avoid girls they¡¯ve been embarrassed in front of. If he walked away now, I doubted Bri would see him again whether she wanted to or not.


    Or I could just kick his ass, if he pushed his luck. Whatever. Especially given the unique circumstances of our household, the worst I¡¯d get in our small town would be a slap on the wrist.


    Brad stared me down for a solid beat, trying to decide how he wanted this to play out, but then common sense won. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets, grumbled something under his breath, and stalked away from us with a darkened expression.


    ¡°Good choice,¡± I muttered.


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, Brad!¡± Brianna said. ¡°I¡¯ll see you tomorrow!¡±


    ¡°She¡¯d better not,¡± I called after him. ¡°Remember what I told you.¡±


    Bradley Harris slinked off and disappeared into the depths of the arcade without looking over his shoulder.

 Chapter 2

    Brianna fixed me with the most withering glare a fifteen year-old girl can muster and crossed her arms beneath her breasts.


    "You''re a bully," she spat. "That was humiliating. What the hell is your problem?"


    "You''re grounded," I replied. "And I''m hungry. Are you going to come quietly or am I dragging you out of the mall? It''s going to be one hell of a scene if I have to do that."


    She came along willingly, but took my "quietly" more literally than I''d expected. A thick, charged silence hung in the air between us as we left the mall, climbed into my car, and began to head for home. The tightness in my chest had finally relaxed now that Brianna was safely back in my custody and her skeevy pal had been run off, but I was still hopping mad. I had a dozen questions to ask her and a dozen more lectures on the tip of my tongue, but I didn''t trust myself to speak just yet. Bri didn''t look any happier than I was, and I got even angrier that she seemed to be mad at me.


    The only thing fighting with my anger at my bratty sister was my immediate need for food. It occurred to me that I might not be raging so much if I wasn''t hungry, since I knew I wasn''t the clearest thinker on low blood sugar. I knew I shouldn''t spend the money on eating out when I had a can of cold soup waiting for me at home, but when we passed a Burger King, the idea of shoving a BK Broiler into my mouth immediately was too much for me. I pulled a U-turn at the next intersection and rolled slowly up to the drive-through menu. Setting aside my anger for a moment, I glanced at my sister.


    "What do you want to eat, Bri?"


    Silence. I sighed.


    "Come on. You have to have some food."


    More silence.


    The speaker crackled. "Welcome to Burger King! What can I get for you?"


    "Just a second!" I replied. "Bri... I''m not leaving here until you order something. Don''t be rude. This is dinner."


    We sat for a long moment until the speaker crackled again. "Sir? Are you still there?"


    "Fries," Bri spat. "Small."


    I rolled my eyes and ordered my BK Broiler meal, a small fry, and a ten-piece chicken finger basket with a medium Dr. Pepper, which was Bri''s favorite BK order and exactly what she would have asked for if she wasn''t being so petulant.


    We rolled forward to the window, and I traded my credit card for a hot bag of food that smelled so delicious I wanted to rip into it then and there. I took my card back and fished a fry out, munching happily as I rolled the car toward an empty space, facing the road, and dropped it into park. The fry was almost too hot to eat, but I didn''t care¡ªI was dying!


    Brianna remained silent, but she accepted the food I passed her and began to pick at the chicken fingers. I had to smile a little. The day Brianna passed up chicken fingers would be the day I knew something was seriously wrong with her.


    I wolfed down my meal in less than two minutes and washed it back with a sip of Bri''s Dr. Pepper.


    "Hey!" she protested. "That''s mine!"


    I raised an eyebrow and smirked at her. "So you''re talking to me now? I don''t remember you ordering a Dr. Pepper."


    She glared at me again. "Whatever. You ordered it for me. And we''re still not talking. I''m mad at you for being such an asshole back at the arcade."


    I felt a fresh spike of anger, but now that I''d been fed and I knew that Brianna was safe, it was tempered by a healthy dose of guilt. Maybe I had been a little over the top back there. I tossed my burger wrapped back into the bag, shoved it onto the floor, laced my fingers behind my head, and stretched my back out.


    It was almost 8:00pm, and the headlights of cars on the dark road in front of us passed back and forth like pale ghosts streaking through the evening gloom. It reminded me of when Bri and I were younger, before the money got really tight, and I''d take her here all the time for midnight food runs. It had been almost a weekly ritual for us back then¡ªsitting in the car, laughing and joking, shoveling fast food into our faces and talking about videogames while the radio blared in the background. It had been a necessary distraction at the time. Now I couldn''t even remember the last time we''d done this. It seemed like we''d spent a lot more time fighting than laughing together lately.


    While we sat in uncomfortable silence, Brianna finished her food, sipped her drink, and added her trash to the bag. Then she dropped her hands into her lap and stared out the passenger side window. I sighed and tapped lightly on the steering wheel as the guilt continued to build, trying to figure out what I could say to salvage the situation.


    "I''m sorry if I hurt you back there," I finally mumbled. "I was just worried about you. You know how I get."


    "You didn''t really hurt me," she replied quietly, kicking at the bag on the floor. "And I know."


    "Did you get my texts?"


    She shrugged.


    "If you got them, why didn''t you respond? Why weren''t you home when you were supposed to be?"


    She shrugged again.


    "I need to be able to trust you, Bri. I can''t be around to watch you every minute of every day, and you still have to do what you''re supposed to do."


    Now she did glance at me, and there was a spark of fire in her eyes this time. "You don''t need to watch me, Michael. I might not be an adult yet, but I''m not a child either. I''m fifteen. I shouldn''t have to stick around the house like a latch-key kid just because you''re working late."


    "You''re not stuck at home, but you''re supposed to text me if you''re leaving so I know who you''re with and what you''re doing."Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.


    "So if I told you I was going to the mall with Bradley you would have been okay with it?"


    "That''s not the point. You shouldn''t be running around with some boy, anyway."


    "He''s not some boy. He''s my boyfriend."


    I shook my head in disbelief. "Bradley Harris? Bradley Harris is your boyfriend. Unbelievable."


    Her lips thinned into a tightly compressed line and she folded her arms again.


    "Do you know what my friends say about his brother? Do you know the shit Jason used to say about girls in the locker room?"


    "Bradley isn''t like his brother. He''s sweet. And he likes me."


    I snorted. "I''m sure he tells you that. You don''t know the first thing about teenage boys, Bri."


    "I might know more than you think," she replied, her eyes flashing.


    My hands tightened on the steering wheel, and I glanced again at her too-tight jeans. Her tank-top was cut low, and now that I was looking more closely, she was definitely wearing make-up. A light sweat broke out across my skin as my mind started spinning on everything Bri might be doing with Bradley after school while I was stuck at the office. Brianna would always, always be a wide-eyed, innocent little five year-old girl in my mind, and she''d never shown any interest in boys before this year. But I couldn''t deny that my little sister was starting grow up, and I didn''t like it one bit.


    I controlled my voice very carefully despite the strong surge of emotion behind my question. "What exactly do you mean by that?"


    Sullen silence.


    "You''re grounded forever."


    "Michael!"


    "Forever."


    "You''re being ridiculous."


    "Am I? You''re not on birth control."


    More silence.


    "Wait. Are you on birth control?"


    She turned bright red and stared out the window again. "We are so not talking about this."


    "Uh, I''m pretty sure we are. What the fuck, Bri? Why the hell would you be on birth control? Where did you even get it?"


    I was fuming. I had half a mind to turn the car around right now, drive back to the mall, and make damn sure Brad never talked to my little sister ever again. But before I could say anything else, Bri exploded at me.


    "Jesus, Michael! It''s a normal thing. Most of the girls in my class are on the pill. They go on dates, and they have boyfriends. And not that it''s any of your business, but since I can see you''re so freaking curious, no, I''m not having sex. I got the pill from my doctor for acne. I also get straight As, I don''t drink or smoke, I don''t stay out all night, and the reason I ignored your texts and had to sneak off to hang out with my boyfriend in the first place is because you''re so freaking controlling that I knew you''d flip out and lose your shit if you knew I was with a guy. Turns out I was right! I just didn''t think you''d come raging into the mall like a lunatic and embarrass me like you did anyway, but I guess I''m the dumb one for thinking I could have anything resembling a normal life."


    She finished her tirade breathing hard, and I stared at her in stunned silence. The ''normal life'' comment cut deep.


    "I''m not controlling. It''s called parenting."


    "Yeah, well, you''re not my dad."


    That cut deeper.


    I cleared my throat and stared straight ahead. "I know that, but I''m what you have. I''m doing the best I can, okay?"


    "At least you got to have a normal childhood," she shot back. "It''s not fair."


    I swallowed the lump in my throat. "No, it''s not."


    I couldn''t even be mad at her anymore, because I knew she was right. I hadn''t been a wild teen by any measure¡ªthere was a lot more nerdy gaming in my teens than sex, drugs, and rock ''n roll¡ªbut it was true that I''d been more or less free to do what I wanted, hang out with my friends, and go to the occasional party at someone''s house to get blasted. I''d even gotten high once or twice with Tommy McKinney behind the school. As long as I kept my own A-average rolling, my parents had been way too busy with Brianna to pay attention to a teenager who was only too happy to do his own thing. Those were pretty good years, and now I looked back on them as one of the best times of my life. My only regret was not spending more of that time with my parents while I had the chance.


    Compared to the teenager I''d been, Brianna was a saint. She helped keep the house clean, did her share of the chores, got all her homework done without nagging, and I couldn''t remember a time that she''d gotten into trouble at school. Part of the reason I''d freaked out so much tonight was because it was totally unlike her to vanish like she had, although lately she''d been pushing my buttons and being cagey with the texts a lot. Having a rebellious teenager on my hands was an adjustment for me, but I reminded myself that it was hardly unusual. Rebelling was what teens did. I probably should have been surprised that it took her so long.


    If the only reason she hadn''t texted was that she''d been afraid of how I would react... I sighed. Now I really felt like a jerk. This was all my own damn fault. It was true that I hated the idea of her hanging out with boys, especially a Harris brother, but I also wanted Bri to have as much normalcy in her fucked-up life as I could give her. My parents had always started by trusting me to do the right thing, and nine times out of ten I''d repayed that trust by making good decisions. I did trust my sister, even if I didn''t trust Bradley, and it was probably time I eased up and paid back her good behavior with a longer leash. Anyway, a guy who played Soul Calibur II and hung out in arcades decades after they were cool couldn''t be all bad, could he?


    "You let him win," I said.


    "Huh? What are you talking about?" Brianna blinked at me in confusion.


    "Bradley. Soul Calibur II. Backing up to the edge of the ring like that? Missing your guard timing on a lazy cross-slice? That was too sloppy not to have been intentional."


    She blushed again and dropped her gaze. "My friends say boys don''t like it when you beat them at things."


    "Well, if he''s as good of a guy as you say he is, he ought to be secure enough to handle a loss to a better opponent, even if she''s a girl. Next time, don''t go so easy on him."


    "Next time?" She peeked up at me, her sullen slouch suddenly straightening into taut, cautious excitement.


    "I trust you to make good decisions, Brianna." My father had said almost the exact same words to me once, and now his voice echoed in my ears as I repeated them to my sister. "But you need to tell me where you''re going and respond when I text you. Is that clear?"


    Her whole demeanor had transformed as I spoke. Now she sat straight-backed and smiling at me, hands in her lap, nodding eagerly. "And I''m not grounded? Does that mean you''ll let me see Bradley?"


    "You''re not grounded." My mouth twisted into a grimace. "And I''ll let you see Bradley, yes. As long as you promise me that you''ll stick to the library and the mall with him and you''re home by 8:00pm."


    "9:00?" she asked in a hopeful tone.


    "8:00pm on school nights," I replied firmly. "And your homework needs to be done first." Then I relented. "But you can stay out until 10:30 on Fridays and Saturdays."


    Bri lurched across the car and hugged me tightly. "Thank you thank you thank you, Michael! You don''t know how much this means to me."


    I smiled awkwardly and patted her on the head before gently disentangling myself. "But if that twerp does anything, and I mean anything, to upset you or hurt you, you need to tell me right away."


    She shook her head. "I''m telling you, he''s nothing like his brother. We''re in the same coding classes at school, and he''s always been a perfect gentleman to me. We just like to play videogames and talk about movies together."


    "Hmph," I grunted. That actually made me feel a little worse for some reason. I had always been the one who Bri played videogames and talked about movies with before now.


    "Hey, Michael..."


    "What?"


    "I''m sorry for what I said before. About you not being my dad. It was mean."


    Just like that, the lump in my throat was back. "It''s okay. We were both mad. And I''m not your dad."


    She reached out and squeezed my hand. Her grip was warm and reassuring.


    "But I want you to know that I appreciate everything you''ve done for me. Really. I do. I love you, Michael."


    I nodded, momentarily unable to respond. It wasn''t something we said out loud very often. I released her hand and slipped the key into the ignition.


    "I love you too, Bri," I choked out, and then I quickly looked at my phone to have an excuse to change the subject. "It''s getting late. We should go."


    Bri nodded, I started the car, and we slowly rolled out of the parking lot and headed for home.

 Chapter 3

    March 23rd, 2005, was the worst day of my entire life.


    Most people my age probably have other worst days that stick out for them. I''m sure September 11th, 2001 is a pretty strong contender. I was 14 when I watched the twin towers of the World Trade Center collapse on the small, fuzzy, wall-mounted television alongside my classmates in third period Algebra, permanently changing life in America in ways that seemed scary and foreign to children like me who had grown up in the comparatively carefree decade of the 90s. August 29th, 2005 is another good choice, when Hurricane Katrina slammed into the southeastern coastal states and devastated New Orleans. There''s Columbine in ''99, Virginia Tech in ''07, and a whole host of other atrocities and natural disasters throughout that period to choose from.


    But for me, like many of my peers, all of those events were tragic in a distant, sad kind of way that made you stop and appreciate how lucky you were to have been sheltered from them¡ªto not know someone who was crushed to death by the smoking rubble of the collapsing towers or who drowned in the rushing, black murk of the hurricane floodwaters as the levees failed. I''m grateful I never had to live through a school shooting and know what it''s like to see kids I grew up with bleeding out in the halls of my high school, or worse still, to be one of them, gasping out your final breaths with a ragged hole in your chest as your mind stubbornly fixates on the ridiculous idea that you never told that cute girl in your English class that you liked her, and now, you''ll never get to.


    However sad those events might have been, they were all things that happened to other people for me. Numbers on a screen.


    It''s funny how you can think of yourself as a cold, rational utilitarian until something slams into you from out of nowhere and affects you, personally. If you had asked me on March 22nd whether the greater tragedy was a tsunami killing hundreds of thousands of people or a car accident killing two, I would have blinked at you and told you that your question was ridiculous. How could you ever measure just two lives against hundreds of thousands?


    If you''d asked me on March 23rd, my answer would have changed. You can measure two lives against millions when they''re lives that are important to you. It turns out that subjective perspective matters quite a lot when evaluating the relative magnitude of tragedy.


    I remember that day with uncanny clarity. It was a Wednesday. It was cloudy and cold. I had turned 18 two months before and was riding out the end of my Senior year with a healthy dose of senioritis. My mother insisted on cooking for me even though I was already late and likely to miss my bus, but she guilted me into sitting with her by reminding me that she only got to have so many more breakfasts with her little boy. Dad had gone to work before I came downstairs, taking Brianna with him to drop her off at kindergarten, and I sat in the kitchen fidgeting and staring dramatically at my digital watch while mom cooked eggs and poured orange juice. After we ate, she dropped me off at school and tried to kiss me goodbye, but I wasn''t having any of it. I muttered a quick "see ya" and slipped out the passenger side door, hoping that none of my peers had spotted the Senior getting out of his mother''s car.


    You might think it''s a little strange that my parents had one kid leaving for college at the same time that they had another one in kindergarten¡ªwhy have just twenty years of responsibility for another human when you can double your fun, right? It''s not that they were bad planners or so crazy about parenting that they wanted to continue forever. They''d originally planned on having exactly one child, so after I was born my father got a vasectomy. Both of my parents had been only children and perfectly happy with the experience, and for 13 years I was too. There were no annoying fights with siblings, no need to share any of my toys, and I got more Christmas presents than any of my friends with a larger family did.


    When my mom got pregnant with Brianna in the summer of ''99, everybody was shocked, and my father most of all. As the doctor explained to them later, there are very rare cases where the vas deferens (which is the tube severed during the procedure) will regrow on its own, and if it does, the sperm can escape from their surgically-imposed captivity to seek the sweet, sweet freedom they were destined for. Brianna had originated as one of those tiny, jail-breaking sperm cells, and on February 14th, in the year 2000, my parents suddenly had a brand new baby girl to start raising all over again less than five years before their own sweet, childless freedom should have begun. My dad called Bri his "oopsie baby" until she was three years old and joked that she was the most painful Valentine''s Day gift he''d ever given mom, who didn''t seem especially amused about any of it.


    Still, they both loved Brianna to death. Mom was secretly thrilled that she could now have the girl she''d always wanted, and dad had a new pupil to put through his curriculum of epic nerdery just as his prior one¡ªyours truly¡ªwas starting to go through his "I''m too cool for my parents" phase. The timing couldn''t have been better, as far as I was concerned. They were suddenly way too busy with the baby to pay much attention to me, and I had all the time I wanted to work on my EverQuest raid gear sets, hang out at the local hobby shop, and master the finer points of beating Diablo II on the "Hell" difficulty setting, which was what absorbed the majority of my time that summer.


    Fast forward to 2005, and things had been going really well for the family as we''d settled into our new rhythm of a four-person household. My relationship with Brianna had gone through the stages of "baby I ignore" and "toddler I ignore and sometimes watch for mom" to finally arrive at "cute small child I tolerate watching while I play videogames." In five short years she''d managed to usurp me as the new family favorite, with both of our parents wrapped around her sticky little fingers, and she used her powers of persuasion to force me to hang out with her as often as possible. While I pretended that her constant admiration annoyed me, secretly I was flattered that this adorable little girl seemed to like me so much. She wanted to do everything her older brother did, go everywhere he went, and more often than not my mom just smiled and told me to let her.


    I didn''t know quite what to make of her back then. My friends were all close in age to their siblings, with very different interactions than Bri and I had, and I sometimes felt like I was more of a goofy uncle to her than an older brother. I loved her, I played with her, but I also kept a small distance between us, since I knew that I''d be going away to college that fall, and I didn''t want either of us to be too sad about it when it happened. She''d grown a little less interested in me as she started making new friends in her kindergarten class anyway, and by her fifth birthday party, as I watched her squealing happily alongside a dozen other children in rainbow-colored party hats, I was confident that I''d be able to slip away in September with a minimal amount of sobbing (from either of us).


    Just five weeks after that birthday party, as I gave my mom my hasty final farewell and strolled into my high school on that cold March bitch of a day, I remember thinking about how I''d probably miss Bri even more than I''d miss my parents. Looking back years later, the utter irony of that sentiment was in no way lost on me.


    School that day was remarkable only in how unremarkable it was. I floated through my classes with the dismissive indifference common to second-semester Seniors whose grades were bulletproof and whose college acceptance had already been locked in. My letter from Caltech''s Computer Science program had come in January, just days after my own birthday, and I was psyched that I''d be spending the next four years in the sunny climate of Pasadena, California. MIT had been my first choice, but apparently I didn''t quite make their cut. Whatever. Cambridge would have been full of stuffy East Coast types anyway, and who knew if I could have afforded the tuition there even if I''d gotten in? My dad was a software engineer and my mom was a homemaker. We were comfortable but not loaded, especially now that they had my sister to think about, and Caltech was offering me a full ride. I''d crushed my SATs and ACTs and wasn''t too shabby on the track team, either.


    As someone who grew up solidly in the age of the internet with a tech-savvy, forward-thinking father, I had big dreams of making an impact in the still-fledgling technology industry of the Web 2.0, and even rarer, the opportunity to make those dreams come true. Microsoft, Apple, and Dell were the computer companies everyone talked about back then, the monolithic behemoths who had successfully weathered the dot-com crash of 2001, but Dad was pushing me to keep my eyes on some of the smaller, more interesting firms that had also survived and seemed to be on the cutting edge of modern software development. Google was just beginning to wake up and stretch its many-tentacled reach, Facebook was a kooky novelty product still in its infancy, and Amazon was only known as a bookseller back then.The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    I didn''t know where I wanted to work, exactly, but I knew what kind of work I wanted to do¡ªmy friends and I had been obsessed with books like Snow Crash and Otherland, and we spent a good chunk of our free time playing massively multiplayer online games where you could take on the guise of a fantasy character and explore a vast, virtual world alongside other people from all over the globe. I wanted to be a part of taking that technology to the next level. Haptic bodysuits, neural jacks, whatever actually turned out to be feasible. I wasn''t picky about what I got to work on. I just wanted to make it happen and then hang out with my friends in cyberspace, preferably while wielding laser swords.


    Some people see a movie like The Matrix and go, "What an awful dystopian future." I see a movie like The Matrix and go, "The robots can have my body. Just sign me up for downloadable karate moves, please."


    My final school period finished at 3:45pm, and by 4:00pm on the worst day of my life I was outside waiting for the bus as usual. I spent the long ride home arguing with three of my geekiest friends about what we should all play together that night. Track practice was Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I was supposed to leave Friday morning to go to an out-of-town all-weekend meet. Wednesday was going to be my only solid gaming night for what felt like an eternity, and I was adamant that I wanted to use it playing World of Wacraft, my latest online obsession, no matter how hard my best friend Mark pushed for City of Heroes or Kyle whined that we never played D&D anymore. By the time we arrived at my stop, my cajoling had worn them down and they''d agreed to join me on my quest to eradicate Lordaeron''s entire murloc population. I ran all the way home, excited to spend the next eight hours wrapped in a warm cocoon of virtual fantasy violence with my pals.


    Our front door was locked when I got there, which was so unusual that I had to take a step back and make sure I had the right house. Brianna''s kindergarten let out at 2:30, and my mom always ran her errands in the morning. Sometimes they went to the library together to pick out new books, but they''d always be back by 4:00 at the latest. Usually mom would be getting ready to make dinner and playing with my sister about now. I had my own key, of course, but I couldn''t remember the last time I''d had to use it. I dug it out of my pocket and let myself in, ditched my shoes, and dumped my backpack on the floor in the foyer as I advanced cautiously into my house.


    "Mom? Dad? Brianna?" I called out.


    The house was dead silent. Hollow feeling. No rush of water in the pipes, no muted hum of televisions or computers, no dinner smells or laughter from the kitchen. I remember shivering and feeling vaguely uneasy even before I noticed the blinking light on our answering machine with five unheard messages. In order, they were from the police, the hospital, the police, Bri''s kindergarten teacher, and the police.


    I sank to the floor as I listened to each of them play, immediately fearing the worst and having those fears confirmed with each successive message. Words assailed me and spun through my head, each short phrase landing like a fresh punch to the gut.


    "...accident on Miller''s Road..."


    "...in critical condition..."


    "...two fatalities confirmed..."


    "...no one came to get Bri today..."


    "...waiting for you down at St. Mary''s..."


    I didn''t have a car, so instead I called Mark''s parents and managed to stammer a request for help through panicked tears. Mrs. Johnson drove over immediately with Mark, both of them ashen-faced at the news, and we went together to pick up Bri and go to the hospital. We didn''t arrive in time to say goodbye.


    Later, as I sat with my head in my hands in a hospital waiting room and Mrs. Johnson tended to Brianna, a police officer gave me the details of what had happened. Mom was running her usual errands that morning when she''d decided to meet dad for a surprise lunch. They took dad''s car, had a nice meal together, and were headed back along Miller''s Road when a distracted driver coming from the other direction accidentally veered out of his lane to hit them head-on at 60mph.


    I''d taken a full year of physics, so I understood exactly what that meant. With a head-on collision between two cars both traveling at that speed, deceleration from 60mph to 0mph occurs in about 200 milliseconds. It''s not exactly like slamming into a brick wall, because the cars will have different masses and won''t be perfectly aligned, but neither is it unlike slamming into a brick wall. Most cars are designed so that the front of the vehicle deforms in a controlled manner during a crash like this, absorbing as much of the energy into the frame as possible while the airbags inflate with a burst of nitrogen. As the passenger bodies collide with the airbags, the nitrogen is pushed out through small holes in the back of the bag which further dissipates energy. At lower speeds, this is often enough to save lives. At higher speeds, well... there''s only so much engineering we can do to fight physics. Don''t text and drive, people.


    Dad and the other driver were both killed on impact. Mom went to the hospital in critical condition and died three and half hours later, right around the same time I was walking into my silent, empty house.


    Bri and I stayed with the Johnsons that night. I was barely responsive, basically in shock, and Brianna wouldn''t stop asking me when mom and dad were going to come and take us home. She hadn''t been allowed to see the bodies, and I didn''t know how to tell her what had happened.


    Instead of going to my track meet or playing videogames, I spent all weekend in a dazed fog of talking to life insurance agents and wading through paperwork with a huge dose of assistance from Mark''s dad, while Mrs. Johnson took care of Bri. They really helped us a lot in those early weeks, and I''ll always be grateful to them for that. I don''t know how I would have managed things without their support.


    My parents didn''t have a massive amount of savings, but between that and the life insurance payout, there was enough to pay off the mortgage and provide Brianna and me with a few years of living expenses. It soon became clear that nothing about my immediate plans had to change. I had my golden ticket to Caltech. Four years of room and board, tuition, and supplies would all be paid for. My high school would have excused my absence for the rest of the year and still granted me a diploma. I could move on with exactly the life my parents had wanted for me, and that I had wanted for myself.


    The only question was what to do with my sister. My grandparents had all passed away when I was Bri''s age, and as only children, my parents had left us with no aunts, uncles, or cousins that could have taken custody. Bringing her along with me to Pasadena was out of the question¡ªfull time attendance in a Computer Science program at one of the top schools in the nation doesn''t leave much time for child care. If I had asked, I have no doubt that the Johnsons would have adopted her. But as close as I was with Mark, they were strangers to Brianna.


    At first I told myself that I could just leave for four years, graduate, and then come back and get her, but the more I thought about it, the more it became obvious that it wouldn''t work out. After graduation there would be internships to attend, a career to build, and the long working hours that young programmers are famously expected to keep to prove their dedication to their craft at the cutting edge firms that hire them. Then there would be girlfriends, travel opportunities, and a life of my own I''d be building, without Brianna, whether I''d intended to or not.


    Even if I did come back after all that, even if we did our best to keep in touch, I knew that the cheerful little sticky-fingered shadow who tried to follow me everywhere would have become a stranger to me. And then what? Would I throw it all away and put the brakes on the career I''d worked so hard for to live with her in our small hometown as she finished high school? Would I take her back with me to wherever I ended up, forcing her to leave behind the friends she''d made and her new family to live in a big, unfamiliar city with a distant brother who worked all the time? Neither option made sense.


    The price of following my dreams would have been sacrificing any chance of a real relationship with my sister, and robbing that little girl of the only shred of her previous life that was left to her.


    We''d already lost two of our family members. I wasn''t prepared for both of us to have to lose the only remaining one, too. Bri was all I had, and I was all she had, now. What was I supposed to do?


    I signed formal papers of guardianship a month later, and that was that. I was effectively an eighteen year-old single father with a high-school diploma and a five year-old girl to take care of. Instead of learning how to program, I learned how to braid hair. Instead of cutting-edge software, I made sandwiches with the edges cut off. I did it all for Bri, and even today I wouldn''t change a damn thing about my decision.


    Anyway, fuck March 23rd.

 Chapter 4

    It was on the Tuesday after I''d granted Bri her new, extended curfew and permission to hang out with Bradley¡ªno matter how unhappy I was about that whole "boyfriend" business¡ªthat she decided to test her limits.


    I was sitting at work, poring through the prior quarter''s numbers for the upcoming financial review my boss had with the board, when I got her text.


    [Hanging out w Brad after school!! Headed to the arcade again. On your own for dinner. Cool? <3 ]


    I frowned at the text. Not cool. Not with me, anyway. But I''d promised her she could hang out with him, and she was following all the rules I''d set, so it''s not like I could really complain.


    [Be home by 8 SHARP] I texted back.


    [Duh. See you @ 8! xoxo  ]


    I set my phone aside, feeling grumpy, and returned to my analysis, but after a while I found that I was having trouble concentrating on the work. It was a pointless exercise anyway. I knew that the numbers were solid. I''d pulled them from the database myself, and I was the one who''d crunched them. Going over them yet again was just a way to kill some time and avoid heading home to a house I now had confirmation would be empty.


    Maybe it''s time I started thinking about dating again, I mused. Women hadn''t even been on the table for me over the last decade. Oh, the mothers in Bri''s school fawned over me, absolutely¡ªare you kidding? A caring, single older sibling with a tragic backstory and an adorable little sister? That shit is like catnip for women, and I had plenty of interesting invitations. Bri was an even better chick magnet than a cute puppy would have been. But relationships in your early twenties with girls your same age aren''t known for their stability, and that was what Brianna needed after everything she''d gone through. I wasn''t about to put her through a revolving door of women as I tried to manage building a romantic relationship at the same time I was trying to learn how to parent.


    But even now the timing was all wrong. When Bri''s teen romance went the way those things go and Bradley broke up with her, or better still, when she wised up and dumped him, she was going to need me to be around for her again. I''d waited for ten years to have a steady girlfriend. What was three more? Then Brianna would head off to college, and I could figure out what the hell I was supposed to do next and date whoever I wanted to. Anyway, I was in no hurry to experiment with online dating, which seemed to be the primary way to meet people now. The horror stories I''d heard made it sound absolutely awful.


    I rubbed my eyes and pushed my chair back from my desk. It was almost 5:00pm, which meant I''d already put in a nine hour day. This was dumb. I was making busywork for myself when I could be gaming at home. The house wouldn''t really be empty, because I''d be there, right?


    I grabbed my coat and nodded a curt goodbye to officemates as I headed out to my car. They politely nodded back, barely even registering me. Everyone at my office was nice enough, but they were all about fifteen years older than me and thoroughly uninterested in my hobbies. I worked in the finance department for a mid-sized, family-owned company that offered a variety of business and professional services to real estate developers. Scintillating stuff, I know, but beggars can''t be choosers. Before they''d moved away to be closer to Mark, Mr. Johnson had helped me land a position there as a junior data analyst through his work contacts right around the same time Bri and I were running out of money from our insurance settlement.


    I was lucky to be getting a white-collar job at all without a college education, no matter how good my SAT scores had been, and I knew it. I thanked them for the opportunity, kept my head down, and worked hard while Bri made her way through grade school. Fortunately, the work itself turned out to be a cakewalk for me. Numbers come easy to someone who''s spent their whole life playing games that revolved around min-maxing statistics. When I got frustrated waiting for our office admin to pull the monthly financials for me¡ªwhich he fucked up more often than not¡ªI taught myself SQL and started getting them without his help. Within a few years, I''d been promoted to analyst and then senior analyst. I was great at my job, and I still got to spend half my day browsing Reddit. It might not be sexy, but it paid our bills.


    When I arrived home from work, I immediately tried to make the house feel as lively as possible while fighting my constant urge to check my phone just one more time. I turned on the television, flushed the toilet, and made myself a double-decker club sandwich with all my favorite ingredients. Bri is going to be fine, I told myself as I scraped a thick layer of mayo over the bread with more force than was probably necessary. Bri is going to follow the rules and be home at eight sharp, just like she promised.


    I carried my food upstairs to my bedroom, set my phone on the desk, and sat down at my dual-monitor battle station to fire up Steam while I ate. I have many hundreds of games in my library¡ªthank you, Humble Bundle!¡ªbut I''ve played less than a quarter of them. Bri actually goes and tries out all the goofy indie titles we end up with, and she really seems to like some of these weird new genres I hardly keep up with. I have a list of games a mile long I''m intending to try, but for some reason I always find myself reaching for old favorites instead: I have over five hundred hours logged on Skyrim, my Morrowind discs are so worn out that I had to convert to using digital backups, and I''m frankly embarrassed to say what my total /played time is across all my World of Warcraft characters.


    Now I found myself listlessly scrolling through my games, feeling as vaguely distracted as I had at work. I realized after a moment that I wasn''t even looking at the titles. Instead, my mind kept fixating on what Brianna might be doing with Bradley... or more precisely, what he might be doing to her. I remembered exactly how shitty teenage guys could be about the girls they were dating sometimes. When my phone buzzed, I nearly dove to pick it up, certain that something horrible had happened.


    Bri had texted, but it was completely innocent: [dude have you ever seen this game before? wtf]


    I let out a relieved sigh and studied the picture she''d sent. It was a blue and purple arcade console titled "Ataraxia," and it had pictures of generic-looking fantasy characters all along the sides and top locked in some kind of epic struggle. I was as baffled as Bri was. A quick Google search revealed nothing, but that wasn''t too surprising. Despite it''s multi-decade decline in the U.S., the arcade scene in Japan was still going strong, and it was possible she''d stumbled on some new import that wasn''t yet documented in English, although I was impressed that the arcade in our small, boring town would take a chance on something like that.The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.


    [nope. Home by 8!??</a>] I texted back.


    [yea yea. I''ll let u know how it is -_- ]


    I set my phone down with a grimace and launched Skyrim for the millionth time. Doing anything was better than sitting here and fretting about my sister like a chump, and I wasn''t going to be that parent who texted just to ''check in'' every half hour. I rolled a brand new character, feeling proud of myself for being mature enough to let my sister have her evening with her boyfriend despite my misgivings.


    The next two hours were spent murdering Bradley the Breton in as many hilariously creative ways as I could come up with. Petty? No question. Juvenile? Sure. But it also ended up being surprisingly entertaining.


    By 7:50pm, I was getting itchy for an update, and no amount of sacrificing Skyrim-Bradley to slaughterfish in ice-cold northern waters was soothing me anymore.


    "She sure likes to cut things close..." I muttered. I left my character to drown one more time in a puddle and went downstairs to pace back and forth in front of our front door, peering anxiously toward our driveway through the living room window on each circuit. Bradley drove a red, 2010 Honda Civic, and I looked for it every time I saw headlights flash down our street. I promised myself I wouldn''t text her until she was actually late.


    Bri is responsible. You told her you trusted her, I reminded myself. She promised to be home on time. Give her a chance to keep her word before you freak out.


    Ten minutes later, when no car had appeared in the driveway, I was mad. I whipped my phone out.


    [It''s 8:01pm and YOU ARE NOT HERE young lady]


    By 8:15 I was livid.


    [what the HELL bri? WHERE ARE YOU?]


    By 8:30 I was worried. I''d settled down into our recliner to stare at the driveway, actively willing a red Civic to appear. I''d sent several more texts with varying levels of heat and none of them had been answered. Bri either hadn''t seen them or she was ignoring me, and I simply didn''t believe she''d ignore me for this long, knowing what it would put me through. I was beating myself up for not thinking to get Bradley''s number so I could text him too.


    [bri, please just reply to tell me you''re not dead. I won''t be mad. please] I typed out to her.


    Then I stood up and grabbed my coat. Doing nothing was driving me crazy. If she was on her way home already, then she''d be safe when she arrived, and I could yell at her later. If she was in some kind of trouble, I wasn''t going to sit around waiting for a police report to come in.


    The mall was only fifteen minutes away, and the stores all closed at 9:00pm. I rolled in at ten ''til, and only a tiny smattering of cars remained in the lot. When I saw that Bradley''s Civic was one of those, relief flooded my body. I felt even better after I confirmed that no teens were fucking in the backseat.


    My momentary relief rapidly converted into white-hot rage, of course. If they were still here, that meant Bri had either purposely been ignoring me or something had happened to her phone and she''d lost track of time when she''d promised me that she wouldn''t. Either way, she was never seeing a boy ever again... or the outside of our house, for that matter.


    I stormed into the arcade for the second time in a week and made the same circuit I''d made last time, nostrils flaring.


    No one was there. Not a single player. The arcade was one of those unattended types, so there wasn''t even an employee to tell me when the kids had left. I stood fuming in the middle of the flashing game machines, arms crossed, glaring bloody murder at nothing in particular. This was bad. Cars weren''t the only place that teenagers could sneak off for a private moment, but Brianna didn''t seem like the type to want to make out in a mall stairwell. We hadn''t had a bookstore here in ages, and I knew how lame my sister thought most of the other remaining shops were. Was it possible they''d decided to catch a movie? The movie theater was open until midnight, but that didn''t feel right to me. Missing your curfew is one thing¡ªsettling into a two-hour film knowing it''s going to carry you well past it requires a level of willful, premeditated rebellion that would be excessive even for Bri.


    My next immediate idea was to run off half-cocked in a random direction while shouting their names into an empty mall, so I could tell I was grasping at straws.


    I took a deep breath through my nose and then released it. What I needed to do was calm down and try to think logically about where they might have gone, and more importantly, why Bri might be unable or unwilling to text me back. When you search for lost people, the first thing you''re always instructed to do is to search their last known location for clues. I was already at the arcade and hadn''t seen any sign of her or Brad. But they''d been here at some point, because Bri had texted me a picture of that weird arcade game she found. That was the very last place I knew she''d been, roughly three hours ago. Searching that exact spot for clues ought to be my first step.


    I passed through the arcade again, more deliberately this time, looking for the unfamiliar blue and purple machine my sister had sent a picture of. Our arcade was surprisingly large and well-stocked with games both new and old, but it didn''t take me very long to find the one I was looking for, tucked away in the furthest back corner. There was no mistaking it¡ªAtaraxia, a fantasy arcade game neither of us had ever heard of before. It looked strangely out of place in the dim corner, standing slightly apart from the other machines while it looped through a demo reel of fantasy heroes blasting and carving their way through legions of fantastic monsters. Under other circumstances, this was the type of game that would have immediately intrigued me, but right now I was only concerned with looking for signs of Bri.


    I''m not sure what I was expecting to find, exactly. It''s not like teenage girls drop breadcrumbs wherever they go, and a stray hairband wouldn''t tell me anything I didn''t already know. I was half afraid and half hoping to find her phone on the floor, just because I was desperate for any shred of information, but there was nothing at all on the faded carpeting around the machine.


    Then a small glint of silver metal caught my eye. Just below the bottom right corner of Ataraxia''s screen, above player 2''s controls, someone had left a single quarter sitting on the arcade dash. Coin lines on games were hardly unusual for arcades, but they were unusual for our arcade, where there were never enough interested players to bother lining up quarters on the machine. It was something my dad had always done with his change as a matter of habit, a leftover from the golden age of arcade games in the 80s. I''d picked up the habit from him, and Bri had picked it up from me¡ªit was a functional convenience for her, since her clothes didn''t always have decent pockets, and otherwise she''d need to go diving for her messy purse and frantically search for a new coin during the time pressure of a continue countdown.


    That had to be my sister''s quarter. Seeing the abandoned coin made me feel even more uncomfortable than finding her phone on the floor would have, for some reason. This was the same girl who would go out of her way to pick up discarded pennies on the sidewalk. Bri might accidentally drop her phone, but she would never willingly walk away from a quarter she''d placed on an arcade dash. I stepped closer and picked it up, inspecting the worn ridges on the outside of the coin. It was a 2001 commemorative New York state quarter which had somehow managed to travel quite far away from its home, with the standard Washington head on one side and a picture of the Statue of Liberty on the other. The words "Gateway to Freedom" were embossed in small, raised letters beside the iconic statue. I rubbed my thumb across them nervously.


    It''s hard to say exactly why I did what I did next. With my sister missing, with her quarter abandoned, and with the night growing ever later and the mall about to close, playing some random arcade game I''d never seen before should have been the last thing on my mind. But there was something surreal about the whole situation that gave it an almost dreamlike quality. You know how sometimes in dreams, things get weird, even really weird, and you still just go along with them like it''s totally normal? I definitely wasn''t dreaming, but that''s still kind of what this felt like. It just made sense¡ªlike I was inexplicably compelled, and couldn''t possibly have done anything else.


    I slipped Brianna''s quarter into the game slot, took the controls, and hit the start button.

 Chapter 5

    In November of 1963, as he lay dying in bed of laryngeal cancer, the famous author Aldous Huxley indicated to his wife Laura that he wished to be administered an intramuscular injection of 100 micrograms of lysergic acid diethylamide, which you probably better know as the hallucinogen LSD (or sometimes just "acid"). LSD was first synthesized in 1938 by the Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman as part of his research into medically useful applications of derivatives from ergot fungus, which grows on rye and causes ergotism¡ªalso known as ergot poisoning¡ªwhen ingested via contaminated rye bread. The poisoning often produces visual and auditory hallucinations, among other unpleasant side effects, in unsuspecting victims who are commonly not aware that they are under the influence of a hallucinogenic substance, and has been suggested as a possible cause of numerous bizarre historical events, including the dancing plague of 1518 and the Salem witch trial accusations in 1692.


    I know all of this because when I was 15 years old, I followed up an AP-English mandated reading of Huxley''s Brave New World with a voluntary reading of his lesser-known book The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell, which goes into great detail describing his experiences and thoughts while taking mescaline, a psychedelic chemical similar to LSD which occurs naturally in the peyote cactus and which has been used in Native American religious ceremonies for nearly 6,000 years. The book was extremely influential in the psychonaut circles of the 1960s and was arguably still one of the most accessible, trustworthy information sources about the subjective effects of hallucinogenic drugs available to a teenager in the early 2000s¡ªother than buddying up to your resident high school druggie and popping an acid tab for some primary research, of course.


    As a nerdy kid who became a nerdy adult with a boatload of responsibility on his shoulders, I never have taken and never intend to take any kind of hallucinogen. No matter how many times drug enthusiasts might point out that Steve Jobs and Bill Gates microdosed LSD or whatever, I''ve always believed that I''m going to be the best version of myself that I can be when I have a perfectly clear head. Other than my few small indiscretions with pot in high school, I''ve just never been interested¡ªhell, I barely drink. But I was fascinated by the idea that there were chemical substances in the world which could so radically alter one''s perception as to make them see, hear, and even feel things that weren''t really happening, and I ended up doing a bunch of follow-up research on Huxley, LSD, ergot, and hallucinations.


    My takeaway from all of this reading and research was twofold: First, despite being kind of brilliant, Aldous Huxley was also pretty fucking crazy. Who the hell decides that the best time to trip balls is hours before your own imminent death? It sounds terrifying. And the craziest part of all is that he doubled down on it, asking for another dose just one hour later! Morphine, other painkillers, maybe a sedative¡ªany of that I could understand. But LSD? Wow, Aldous. Just, wow. I guess it worked out okay for him in the end, but jeez... what if it hadn''t?


    My second takeaway was that if I should ever find myself in a situation where I had absolutely no explanation for the events occurring around me, and I didn''t believe myself to be dreaming, the most rational assumption to make was that I had been dosed with one of these drugs without my knowledge or consent¡ªalthough probably not ergot poisoning, since that shit is highly unlikely in modern day America. I''ve spent my whole life avoiding rye bread, just in case.


    As I slammed my hand down on the start button of the Ataraxis arcade console and watched reality melt away around me, Someone drugged me, was exactly the thought that ran through my head.


    Actually, that was my second thought. My first thought was, Holy shit what the fuck is happening shit shit shit did the arcade seriously just melt into black nothingness around me?


    Then I thought, Someone drugged me, followed by, This is going to seriously interfere with my search for Brianna, and I wonder how you prematurely end an acid trip.


    I was standing in utter blackness on some kind of hard, featureless surface which was visually indistinct from the air around me. My natural curiosity quickly overwhelmed the initial shock of confusion. Looking down, I could see my body¡ªarms, chest, legs, and clothes¡ªperfectly clearly, although there was no obvious light source in the matte, inky blackness surrounding me. I stretched my arms out as far as I could in front of me and then to either side and encountered no resistance, even though I was certain I hadn''t moved and my hands should have made contact with the screen of the arcade machine. At least I still appeared to have a solid, resistant floor beneath my feet. I bounced once or twice to verify that there was gravity and then dropped to my knees to put my hands down on the ground. Rather than the yielding, threadbare carpet of the arcade, my fingertips encountered something like cool, perfectly smooth stone that had the texture of polished marble but none of the sheen. It was just black, like everything else.


    This was already the weirdest experience of my life, and nothing like any drug trip I''d ever read about before. As an experiment, I pulled out my phone and snapped a picture of my hand against the blackness. It worked fine, although there was no glare from the flash on anything but my hand, and I was able to flip back and forth between the other pictures saved on my phone and the mysterious picture of my current surroundings without an issue. I did notice that my phone had lost all cellular and wifi signals, though. If this was some kind of drug experience, it was incredibly precise and finicky with it''s electronic details.


    Unsure of what to do next, I turned around, looking for some sign of... well, anything other than me. Then I immediately felt foolish.


    Next time, check behind you before you start poking the floor, dummy, I chided myself.


    Twelve-foot tall, all-capitalized, bright purple block lettering spelling out the word "ATARAXIA" hung unsupported in midair about ten paces away from me, like a giant billboard advertisement for the arcade console I had just pressed start on. Within arms'' reach in front of me, between the lettering and my body, hovered a small, teal, two-dimensional, translucent rectangle with the words "Create New Character" floating in the middle of it in a slightly brighter shade of blue. It was at this point that I genuinely began to doubt my sanity.


    I know what you''re thinking. I''ve seen plenty of fantasy and sci-fi movies from the 80s and 90s, and I too grew up reading books where the contemporary child protagonists are whisked away to magical fantasy realms where they get to meet magic talking lions and shit. Despite the fact that I was not a child protagonist by any stretch of the imagination, I couldn''t just rule out the mounting evidence that I had been sucked into some kind of magical fantasy game. The only problem with that was that I didn''t believe in magic.


    Don''t get me wrong¡ªI''m not such an idiot that I would stand here denying the existence of something that was right in front of me. What I mean is that I''m very much a proponent of the Arthur C Clark school of thought which holds that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." The first time I ever held an iPod in my hands and marveled at the fact that this tiny brick of plastic and metal could hold thousands of songs all at the same time felt like magic to me. When Mark sent me a Kindle for Christmas one year and I was blown away by the ability to carry an entire library''s worth of books in my backpack, that felt like magic. When I bought a new stereo for my car with bluetooth capability and experienced it automatically pairing with my phone as I climbed into my vehicle, that felt like magic too.Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    There''s no such thing as "magic" in the real world. It''s just technology you don''t understand yet. That was how this experience felt. I certainly didn''t understand what was going on or how I could be physically moved from the arcade to another location at the press of a button, but since it seemed to have happened, I had to grudgingly acknowledge that there might be technology that was capable of doing that in play.


    But what kind of technology? Lots of books and films had teased futuristic virtual reality simulations with the level of immersion I was witnessing, but that didn''t seem remotely plausible here. I''d watched the news and buzz around the in-development VR technology for the last few years with bated breath¡ªI still dreamed of the day when I could hang with friends in VR, after all, even if I wasn''t going to get to contribute to it. But as far as I knew, the headset rigs that were set to come out in the next year or two paled in comparison to what I was experiencing right now. It would probably be decades before modern technology even perfected physical haptic feedback, and a full-body suit would still be required. This seemed like... something else.


    In fact, if I really distilled things down to their essence, there were only two real possibilities here: either I was hallucinating, whether due to drugs, psychosis, or some kind of unexplained mystical experience, or this was real, in the sense that a completely unfamiliar technology centuries ahead of any VR-tech I knew about had transported either my mind or my body to wherever here was.


    If I was hallucinating, I''d so completely lost touch with the physical world that I may as well just go along with it. If this was actually happening to me, it had probably happened to Brianna too, which meant I''d need to continue in order to find her. Either way, it was obvious what I should do.


    Plus, let''s be real: I''m a lifelong gamer at heart, and no matter how worried I was about my sister, I was dying to see this character creation menu. Did I really need any more justification?


    I reached out to swipe at the floating, translucent "Create New Character" rectangle, and was surprised to discover that the two-dimensional object was a physical entity which depressed slightly at my touch with a small amount of resistance, just like a mechanical button would. This, of course, made no fucking sense, but whatever.


    The billboard-sized ATARAXIA text faded away along with the button I''d just pressed to be replaced with a series of graphical elements which looked, if not familiar, then at least conceptually similar to the types of menus I''d been staring at since I was old enough for dad to shove a controller into my hands. A slightly shimmering rectangular barrier about seven feet tall and three feet wide now separated me from your average fantasy hero dude, by which I mean that he was a perfect human specimen. He had brown eyes, short brown hair, and was dressed only in a pair of tight, grey boxer shorts. He stood an inch or two taller than me, his body muscular without being bulky, and obviously anatomically correct. If this was a computer model, it was so lifelike that I sure couldn''t tell the difference, and I noticed very quickly that he mimicked my movements and facial expressions precisely, as though I were looking into a mirror.


    To the left and right of my unsettling mimic were a dizzying array of sliders and selections that also looked like a very detailed version of the controls in hundreds of games I''d played before. Above him floated white, serif text that read "Customize your Avatar." The very first buttons that I''d noticed were a pair of prominent symbols at the top of the left side controls: the shield and spear of Mars, and the handled bronze mirror of Venus.


    Purely out of curiosity, I pressed the Venus symbol for a moment, and watched as the stereotypical fantasy man in front of me melted into the stereotypical fantasy woman with a stereotypically well-endowed chest. She was also incredibly lifelike, anatomically correct, and dressed in only her tight grey underwear. I averted my eyes and blushed furiously while rapidly switching back to the male figure. If I wanted to look at porn, there''d be plenty of time for that after Brianna was safely back at home and I was done having this bizarre game hallucination.


    Despite how surreal this all was, I hadn''t forgotten about Brianna, so I rolled with my situation and started making some quick adjustments. The faster I had a character, the faster I could start trying to figure out what was going on and get my sister to safety. I made my avatar the same height as me, 5''11", and left him with his muscular-but-not-bulky build. I also gave him the same shaggy, sandy-blond hair and blueish-gray eyes I''d inherited from my dad. I adjusted his physical age up to 28, added a light dusting of stubble, and then decided I was done. I stepped back to admire my work.


    Now the man mimicking my every motion in the panel in front of me was a little less unsettling. He didn''t look exactly like me, but he could have easily been the alternate reality fantasy version of me, or an older brother who had grown up on a savage jungle planet. The last thing to do was enter a name for him, using a floating translucent QWERTY style keyboard. Because I''m incredibly original when it comes to dreaming up heroic fantasy names, I typed in "Michael Peters." I''ve never liked stupid fantasy pseudonyms with oddly-placed apostrophes or cribbing character names from popular fantasy novels anyway, and using my real name just seemed like the most straightforward thing to do.


    As soon as I pressed the button marked "Next", my avatar froze in place and the menus faded, and he suddenly began to rotate in place like he was turning on a pedestal. Then two floating buttons appeared where the creation controls had been: "Confirm" and "Back." I didn''t need to check my avatar''s ass out to know I was happy with the character I''d just made. I wanted to get going, so I impatiently jammed "Confirm."


    Then I had the incredibly disorienting experience of rushing toward my avatar at high speed, even though I wasn''t moving. In the space of a second, he was gone. Then I looked down at my body and amended that thought: he wasn''t gone. I was gone. Or rather, I now appeared to be piloting the body I''d just created, and it felt completely real.


    "Whoa," I murmured, raising my hands in front of my face to inspect my newly muscled and callused limbs.


    But there wasn''t much time for reflection. Even as I stared at my new hands in shock, an extremely lifelike scene was melting into view all around me just like the arcade had melted away a short while before. I was standing on a narrow, stone platform that stretched in front of me and behind me as far as the eye could see with a twelve-foot span of dark, apparently bottomless pit on either side of me. Beyond the pit on both sides was a pock-marked stone wall colored in yellowish hues by the flickering torches that lined it at regular intervals. The walls curved into an arch about twenty feet above me.


    I was standing mostly-naked in some kind of dungeon tunnel, and my only choices were to walk forward or backward. Before I could even think about that, a small, translucent teal-colored rectangle like all of the message boxes I''d seen flickered into position over my left eye, less than a centimeter away from it. I flinched back in surprise, but the box moved with me. It was roughly one inch tall and two inches wide, and when I raised a hand to touch it I found that this box was not solid. It was more like a floating hologram with a fixed position relative to my face.


    Bright blue text began to stream across the surface of it, positioned at the perfect location and resolution for my eye to comfortably read without obscuring my vision of the area in front of me, as though this box were some kind of heads-up display.


    "Welcome to the Tutorial, Michael Peters!" the text read. "Instruction: Run or die."


    I blinked.


    "What the hell?" I murmured.


    And then the floor began to crumble and fall out from behind me.

 Chapter 6

    When the stones beneath your heels start to give way and cascade one by one into a black abyss of nothingness with no apparent bottom, your limbic system kicks into high gear and hints hard that maybe you ought to move your feet away from certain doom. I don¡¯t make a point of arguing with my lizard brain in life or death situations.


    I launched myself into motion by pure reflex and took off sprinting down the corridor at full speed, hoping desperately that I could run faster than the path would crumble. Torches whipped past my head on the left and right as I whizzed down the ancient stone passageway, and my eyes straining against the gloom ahead. The passageway appeared to have no end.


    As I fell into a rhythm of movement familiar to me from my years of track practice, old habits kicked in¡ªmy muscles flexed and my arms pumped, bare feet slapping against the dusty stone, and I forced my breathing to come as evenly as it could despite my sprint. I was impressed at how fast I was going. In high school, at the height of my varsity career, I had averaged just under a 5-minute mile, with my best time ever being a 4:34-mile at section finals. I was pretty proud of that! It was hard to judge without a stopwatch, but this body I was inhabiting was moving at least that fast, and maybe a little faster. Considering that I was lucky to run a 7-minute mile these days, at the ripe old age of 28 with a desk job, this was damn impressive. It felt good to be suddenly, inexplicably back to my high school level of fitness.


    But I knew better than anyone that I couldn¡¯t keep a full sprint up forever no matter how in shape this avatar was. Already my breathing was growing more ragged than I¡¯d like, and a quick glance behind me confirmed that the collapsing walkway sure wasn¡¯t slowing. Just as I started to panic, the gloomy darkness ahead of me receded and finally coalesced into something other than an infinite path forward and relief flooded through me. But the panic quickly spiked back as I approached.


    It was just a wall. The path ended with about fifteen feet of dark abyss and then a stone wall, just like the gaps on either side of me. It looked like I was going to figure out what a fall into darkness meant sooner than I had expected, and I was more than a little frustrated at my stupid HUD instruction. If ¡°run or die¡± really meant ¡°run and die¡± why hadn¡¯t I just tumbled down in the first place?


    The bright blue text flickered and suddenly I had a new instruction: ¡°Leap and climb.¡±


    What? I thought. But again, I had little time to do anything but obey. I reached the end of my path and flung myself forward over the empty air just as the final stones behind me fell away into nothingness. I sailed through the air in a long, high-arcing leap that would have made any of my long-jumping friends proud, and noticed a few thin, gray vines hanging in the air around me just in time to seize them. My hands closed against dry fiber, catching and holding tight, and for a disorienting moment I hung and spun, swaying back and forth amid the barely-visible vines over a yawning eternity of blackness. Above me, I now saw that the passage continued vertically, the creaking vines snaking their way past still more torches.


    I¡¯d never had to do a rope climb before, not a real one, but the principles are obvious. I knew I¡¯d tire quickly if I just hauled myself up arm over arm, although I suspected that my new, svelte biceps might be strong enough to do that, but I didn¡¯t know how long I¡¯d have to climb, so I used a combination of clinging with my knees and hauling myself up bit by bit with a two-handed pull that slid me up the vine a few feet at a time. Fortunately, I¡¯d gone less than thirty feet up the vines when a new passage opened. I swung my body back and forth, gaining momentum like a pendulum, and finally released my vine and leapt when I thought I was close enough to the edge to grab it. I made the jump¡ªbarely¡ªand stood panting in a large room with a small, two foot square pedestal in the middle.


    A broad-bladed short sword had been driven into the middle of the raised stone blade-first to about half the length of the sword, and again the bright blue text in front of my eye flickered. ¡°Instruction: Draw the blade.¡±


    I approached cautiously, keeping an eye out for traps. As weird as this was, and as much as I was still worried about Brianna, I was actually starting to relax and get into this. Whatever was happening to me, it was undeniably cool, and I could stop and work things out once I was presented with a different option than moving forward. For now I just wanted to roll with things and try to beat whatever this strange tutorial wanted to throw at me.


    If my dad had been responsible for the love of all things nerdy in my heart, my mom had her own nerdiness to her that manifested in other ways, like an obsession with all things Disney that rubbed off more on Brianna than on me. But even if I could never really get into watching Beauty and the Beast or The Little Mermaid with her, she compromised with me on the movies that were more aimed at boys, and I ended up seeing Robin Hood, Aladdin, and The Sword in the Stone hundreds of times over the years. When I was eight years old, my parents had surprised me with a birthday trip to Disney Land in California so that we could escape the cold January weather with a family vacation somewhere fun, and I¡¯d been excited beyond words to discover that there was an actual sword in an actual stone in the middle of the theme park. Or in a golden anvil, anyway. It had an impressive, shining gold hilt and a polished steel blade, and it even bore the famous inscription that I knew so well from the movie: ¡°Who so pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil is rightwise ruler born of England.¡±


    Like thousands of children before me, I tugged and tugged on that sword until my arms gave out. What small boy doesn¡¯t want a free, magical sword that grants him kingship powers? Imagine my disappointment not only because I couldn¡¯t free the sword from the golden anvil, but because I came back hours later with my parents to see the iconic show with Merlin and discovered that the kid they do let draw the sword only gets it 70% of the way. I was not at all impressed with my new, 70% Disney Land ruler. What good is a magical sword if you can¡¯t even wave it around menacingly?


    That was the memory that came to me as my fingers wrapped around the hilt of the arming sword in the pedestal before me, and I drew it fully free from the stone with a shrill, grating scrape in a single yank. I¡¯m not going to lie: It was an absolutely satisfying culmination of all my childhood Arthur-related fantasies.


    I¡¯d held swords before, but those had mostly been crude, heavy implements made more for show at medieval fairs than for actual use, and this seemed more like a real implement designed for killing. It was light and well-balanced, maybe two and a half pounds and just under three feet long, with a cruciform hilt wrapped in rough brown leather. The blade was straight, double-edged, and quite sharp, which I verified by running it lightly across my arm and noticing that it sheared right through the hairs. As I studied it, a small pinpoint of blue light appeared on the HUD over my left eye, centered on the sword, and a thin line ran off of it to display text which appeared to hover beside the blade.


    Crude Iron Short Sword


    1H Slashing


    5-10 Dmg


    - No modifiers.


    Now that was interesting. My mind spun like crazy processing all of the new information I¡¯d just been given. Just from the fact that I had a sword and it had stats, I had confirmation that I was in some kind of game, although more advanced than anything I¡¯d ever encountered before. Definitely fantasy, judging by the sword, the dungeon, and the designs that had been on the Ataraxia machine. It had to have some basis in physics, just because I was free to move around, and weapons appeared to have statistics like the ones I was familiar with from any number of fantasy RPGs I¡¯d played. It was a pretty safe assumption that I had statistics too, even if I didn¡¯t know how to see them, and that I¡¯d need to engage in combat at some point.


    ¡°Some point¡± turned out to be very soon indeed, as a rumbling, grinding noise emanated from the wall before me. It began to lift upward, stirring the dust beneath it. The text on my HUD updated once more to ¡°Instruction: Fight!¡±, and then three small green-skinned humanoids were charging me. They had spindly limbs and big heads, with wide mouths full of pointy teeth, and they leered at me as they spread out in a semi-circle, loosely clutching splintered wooden clubs. I put my back to the wall and held my sword out in front of me, dropping into a natural fighting crouch. A pinprick of blue light appeared on whichever goblin I focused on in my HUD displaying printed text in a floating, translucent teal box beside him. Each of them looked the same:


    Goblin


    LVL: 1


    ???


    So things were starting to come together. I grinned and rotated the blade in my hand, feeling my gamer instincts kick in. I had to be able to take a few goblins, right? This was a tutorial. Some people might have been frightened or too freaked out to do anything but cower in the face of real, actual violence¡ªor what seemed likely to feel like it anyway¡ªbut I had a few things going for me: first, I¡¯d been in some actual fights in my life. My dad had taught me some self defense basics along with a philosophy to never start fights but to end them once started, and it had served me well with schoolyard bullies on more than one occasion. Second, I¡¯d had stick fights with Mark using PVC swords we¡¯d built one summer, so I knew enough not to chop my own arm off.The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    I charged the nearest Goblin swinging wildly, and his hasty leap backwards wasn¡¯t good enough to save his life. I lopped off his club arm with a single slice and caught him across the face with my next, and I grimaced in disgust as he dropped to the ground spurting black blood.


    But the other two goblins hadn¡¯t stood idly by while I¡¯d acted. They moved together, and I spun just in time to catch one of their clubs on the edge of my blade while the other club came crashing into my knee.


    That hurt! My knee collapsed under the club blow with a sickening snap, just as it would in real life if someone slammed a solid chunk of wood into your knee, and a nauseous feeling suddenly rocked through me as my previous confidence wavered and I shifted my whole body¡¯s weight to my good knee. I slammed my left fist into the face of the goblin struggling to pull his club away from my sword and was pleased as he staggered back, stunned. I yanked his club out of his hand and finished him with a quick cut that opened him from neck to navel. He too went down in a shower of black ichor.


    The last goblin hung back warily, dancing just out of my reach, while I winced at the pain of my broken knee and held my stolen club in my offhand in lieu of a proper shield. I hadn¡¯t noticed it until now, but my HUD had also updated with two new pieces of information: a blue dot on my club lead to a small window which listed the stats of my new offhand weapon, and a read-out at the far upper left of my vision reported my status.


    Splintered Wooden Club


    1H Blunt


    2-8 Dmg


    - No modifiers


    Michael Peters


    HP: 92/100


    - Crippled: Left Leg


    Well, that was just great. Five minutes into the game, and I¡¯d already managed to get my leg crippled. It wasn¡¯t the auspicious start that I might have hoped for. Before I could figure out what to do about that, though, I needed to finish this goblin off to make sure I didn¡¯t wind up with any other crippled limbs. I lowered both my weapons and gasped for air, pretending I was winded, and sure enough the dummy took my bait. He darted in with a savage overhead swing that I knocked away with the club in my offhand while skewering him in the gut with a thrust from my arming sword. He collapsed onto the blade, gurgling and twitching, and after the light went out of his eyes, I used the tip of the club to slide his body off my sword and dumped him on the ground.


    Now that all three goblins had been dispatched, a few more messages scrolled across the bottom of my left-eye HUD:


    Killed: Goblins (3). XP +75, Gold +60.


    The bodies faded away a moment later, along with the club I¡¯d held in my offhand. Apparently I couldn¡¯t keep their weapons unless my foes officially ¡°dropped¡± them. The XP award and levels on the goblins confirmed more of my theories about standard RPG rules applying to my new environment, at least partially, and it was nice that I didn¡¯t seem to have to actually deal with picking up and carrying currency. However, the fact that one of the goblins had shattered my knee¡ªand so easily!¡ªwas extremely concerning. My lack of clothing or armor seemed a lot more troubling than it had a moment before. With the fight over, I turned my attention back to my injured knee, wondering what I was supposed to do about it.


    I was surprised at how little pain I felt from it, actually, and now that I had a moment to think about it, it hadn¡¯t hurt nearly as much as it should have when the goblin first smashed it. During my freshman year of track, I¡¯d tripped and taken a bad tumble that left me with a nasty twisted ankle, and the pain had been pretty debilitating. Adrenaline helped, but it faded fast. Getting my knee broken should have left me gasping in pain and completely unable to fight, instead of just being a minor inconvenience while I killed two more goblins and executed a clear-headed strategic feint.


    While the pain of my injured leg was present, it wasn¡¯t as sharp or immediate as it would normally be. When I¡¯d gone in to the hospital with an inflamed appendix, they¡¯d put me on a strong dose of morphine that made the pain seem distant and unimportant without removing it completely, and that was kind of what this felt like now¡ªunpleasant, possibly even life-threatening if the bleeding wasn¡¯t staunched, but not immediately debilitating. I quickly realized that in a game revolving around fighting and combat using real physics, it would have to work that way to avoid players being rendered useless at the first blow. It was good to know that, but I¡¯d still need to be more careful in a game where I could really get hurt. I¡¯d have to work harder to avoid taking stupid hits in the future. What if it had been my skull instead of my knee?


    I tested the broken leg gingerly and winced again when I put pressure on it, but after a few tries I managed to very slowly shuffle forward via a sort of hop-drag movement that kept my weight on my good leg. At least I could move around without crawling. But where would I move to? Beyond the false wall where the goblins had been waiting for me stretched a new, darkened corridor, but I didn¡¯t think hop-dragging my way into darkness with a crippled leg was a great plan.


    There had to be some way to fix my leg. In a world with goblins and swords and experience points, that shouldn¡¯t be too difficult, right? Shouldn¡¯t there be a potion or something I¡¯d need to quaff after my first tutorial fight?


    My eyes fell on the pedestal where I¡¯d claimed my sword, and I saw that it was empty no longer. Now three, tiny globes of light sat atop it in a triangle pattern: two purple and one green. My HUD did its handy identification trick as soon as I focused on them.


    Skill Orb: Basic Weapon Skill (Blue)


    Skill Orb: Martial Weapon Skill (Blue)


    Skill Orb: Mend (Green)


    Skill orbs, huh? I wasn¡¯t sure what the colors meant¡ªmaybe passive and active?¡ªbut I shuffled over and picked up the green one. As I held it, the text in the center of my HUD updated once more: ¡°Instruction: Consume skill orbs and recover.¡±


    In the time I¡¯d been poking at my wound and gawking at the orbs, I¡¯d noticed my health slowly ticking back up every few seconds, and I was now back at 100% health points (although no less crippled). It was reassuring that my wounds could heal themselves even if my limb damage couldn¡¯t. I made a mental note to do some testing with health regeneration speed later and tried to figure out how I was supposed to ¡°consume¡± the skill orb. After a few seconds of experiments that would have looked ridiculous to anyone standing nearby¡ªbonking myself on the head with it, trying unsuccessfully to crush it between my hands, shoving it into my chest¡ªI decided to take the instruction literally and popped the little orb into my mouth. It dissolved with a cool, minty taste, and text once again flowed across the bottom of my HUD like a marquee:


    Learned new skill: Mend (5MP | Heal up to 5HP and limb damage outside of combat.)


    Well, that was convenient. How to use it, though? I tried focusing on my free hand, thinking ¡°Mend¡± and was pleased when a bright yellow light sputtered into place around my fingers like a golden nimbus. I held it over my leg and willed it to cast. The golden light immediately flowed off my hand and surrounded my splintered, bleeding leg, knitting flesh and bone back together in a display that was both amazing and painless. Within moments my knee was as good as new, and my HUD had blinked to an updated status reading.


    Michael Peters


    HP: 100/100


    MP: 15/20


    ¡°Cooool,¡± I whispered. My crippled status had faded as soon as the Mend spell hit my leg. I hopped up and down, confirming that it really was restored, and then noticed my mana points regenerating too, although it seemed to be much slower than my health regeneration had been. After my mana ticked up from 16 to 17, I immediately started counting the seconds. At six-one-thousand, it advanced to 18. So some kind of regeneration was happening every six seconds, although I wasn¡¯t sure if that was also true in combat. Either way, it was more information to file away for later, and I knew that it would take about two minutes of rest to restore my whole mana pool from zero.


    I now picked up the other two orbs and ingested them in quick succession. Each had a fresh, minty taste like the first one had, but this time the results were a little more dramatic. My HUD informed me that I had two new passive skills, proficiency with basic and martial weapons, but it wasn¡¯t just an entry on a character sheet! My brain suddenly flooded with knowledge that hadn¡¯t been present a moment before about the proper stances, physical movements, and fighting styles for everything from knives to two-handed war mauls. It was like getting a decade of training with medieval weapons in the space of a second.


    ¡°Whoa,¡± I breathed. ¡°Trippy.¡±


    Even weirder was the knowledge that my newfound training was wrong. Along with her Disney indoctrination, my mom had left me with a thorough appreciation for history, and I¡¯d hung out on /r/AskHistorians enough to know that sword fights as they were depicted in movies and videogames¡ªwith an artful trading of carefully choreographed blows¡ªwas utter nonsense. Yet that was what my brain now told me I should do against opponents, and strangely, I knew it would be effective here. The dissonance grated on me until I shrugged and accepted the bizarre pseudo-realism of my game world. If we could have XP and goblins, we could have neat, stylized combat techniques of block, parry, and riposte at reasonable speeds. Especially now that I knew how to execute them for basically any weapon!


    Eat your heart out, Neo. I thought. I see your instant kung-fu training and raise you martial mastery of medieval weapons.


    Whatever was going on, this was hands down the most fascinating experience I¡¯d ever had in my 28 years of life. I still had no explanation for what this place was except that it seemed to be a real-life amalgam of some of my favorite types of videogames with some very real dangers included, but fucking hell this was cool. Real fighting? Real consequences? Loot, XP, and magic at a touch? It was everything I¡¯d ever wanted in a game, and everything I¡¯d daydreamed about as a teenager who wanted to make virtual reality his actual reality one day. I was almost giddy with excitement.


    But then I paused¡ªthose real dangers worried me as much as they excited me. Not for myself, but for my sister. Had she faced three goblins with only a sword to protect her, too? Had she run from the collapsing floor and climbed the vines? A chill ran through me as it occurred to me that any of these things might have killed her, and I still had no idea what happened when you died.


    All I could do was press on and search for some sign of Brianna. Whether this strange game was a vision, an acid trip, or a secret government VR experiment didn¡¯t matter much to me at that moment. I was still going to track my sister down and get her home safely, and in the meantime, I was going to do my damnedest to play this game well and try to have fun with it.


    I clutched my Crude Iron Short Sword tightly in my hand and padded off into the darkness.

 Chapter 7

    I emerged from the end of the dark tunnel spattered with blood and with five more goblins added to my kill tracker. It had been smart not to go down the tunnel wounded¡ªthe little buggers popped out from the shadows unexpectedly and had ganged up on me twice. It was only thanks to my quick reflexes and an excess of caution that I¡¯d avoided further injuries, but despite the danger I was really starting to enjoy the combat of this crazy game. I¡¯d thought action fantasy games like Dark Souls or Skyrim were the pinnacle of fun in-game battling, but those games had nothing on getting to use your real, actual muscles to chop through bad guys.


    Now I stood in another wide, dusty room just like the previous one, only this time I was surrounded by suits of stylized armor on mannequins that lined the walls to my left and right. Polished steel platemail gleamed on some stands, while colorful feather-adorned leather or gold-embroidered purple robes draped across others. Across from me was a portcullis lowered over the entrance to another dark tunnel, and my HUD blinked to a new instruction: ¡°Choose your class.¡±


    Finally, I was going to get some armor! But class choice could be really important for more than just armor, since I had no idea how permanent it would be. Some games were more skill-based and allowed you to mix and match abilities freely, creating a custom build that suited your playstyle. Other games locked you the initial path choice and gave you thematic skills and abilities only for that class. I wasn¡¯t sure which type of game this was yet, and I also didn¡¯t know if respecialization would be possible later.


    I scanned carefully through my options, not even surprised any longer as my HUD gave me details about each choice as I studied the equipment sets. There were eight classes to choose from, four on each side: Two tanks in plate (Paladin and Warrior), two DPS classes in leather (Rogue and Monk), two support classes in cloth (Priest and Wilder), and then one cloth DPS and one leather support class (Mage and Druid, respectively). Interestingly, each one also had an initial stat layout listed above them, giving me a new lens into how the game worked. There four stats listed were pretty standard: strength, agility, spirit, and vitality, and it was obvious what each one meant even if I couldn¡¯t be certain how they impacted the game world yet.


    Historically I tend to enjoy playing tanks and DPS classes the most. I like the versatility and fun offered by casting classes in lots of games, and it was even more tempting to play a wizard-type class in a game where I could literally shoot magic out of my hands. I imagined laughing gleefully while torching enemy goblins with streams of molten flame, and that was almost enough to sell me on ¡°Mage¡± from that mental image alone. I walked over for a closer inspection of the gold-embroidered robes worn by the Mage mannequin. My HUD spouted more details as I approached:


    Mage


    Cloth | Spellcaster/DPS


    Mages are arcane casters which can specialize in various spell schools over time and branch out into more specialized classes like Evoker, Illusionist, Necromancer, and others.


    Starting Statistics:


    Str: 10


    Agi: 10


    Spi: 30


    Vit: 10


    I liked the sound of specialization, and it was good to know that more classes were available in the game than the eight I saw here. There was one wrinkle here, though, and that was that combat was a lot more dangerous in this world than I was used to in other games. It¡¯s fine to play a glass cannon clothie when getting ganked just sends you on a quick corpse run, but I remembered how much it had sucked when the goblin shattered my knee. For all I knew, dying might be real here¡ªwhy not?¡ªand using any class without good defenses would mean I¡¯d have to play an avoidance and cover game. And what if I ran out of mana? Mages were ultra-vulnerable a lot of the time, especially early on. Until I had evidence to the contrary, I should assume that I was putting myself in real, life-threatening danger with every combat.


    But since it was clear I couldn¡¯t avoid combat in this world, I should probably pick a class that offered either more durability or some healing powers. I¡¯d already seen the power of healing magic with my Mend spell, which had been pretty amazing. So maybe I should be looking at the priest classes instead? I turned to examine the Druid leathers, which were colored in rich shades of green, red, blue, and purple, and had beads and feathers attached to them.


    Druid


    Leather | Melee/Spellcaster/Support


    Druids are diverse spellcasters which are equally comfortable in the thick of combat or on the back lines. They can heal, call down damaging nature spells, or transform into animals to fight alongside their allies.


    Starting Statistics:


    Str: 15


    Agi: 15


    Spi: 15


    Vit: 15


    Jack of all trades and master of none, huh? That appealed to me, too. Versatility was always a good option when you didn¡¯t know what you¡¯d be dealing with, and the even stat spread on the starting statistics suggested that I could develop this class however I liked. But there were two problems: first, if Brianna had come before me, she had almost certainly chosen to play Druid. I knew my sister better than anyone else in the world, and if Brianna had the slightest chance to run around in an actual panther form, she was going to jump at the chance. She also liked playing support classes. If I caught up to her¡ªwhen I caught up to her, I forcibly reminded myself¡ªdoubling up on a single class might be a mistake, assuming we¡¯d have to find or fight our way out of here.


    Second, while versatility is nice, it¡¯s secondary to survivability as the prime choice for dealing with unknown unknowns. With no possible way to anticipate what was coming, the more durable I could get, the better my odds of surviving to become strong and versatile. That meant that Rogue and Monk were right out, and Priest was probably a bad idea for the same reason that the Mage was. Wearing cloth and possessing primarily support spells wouldn¡¯t help me strike out on my own and find Brianna. I was settling into a choice of either Warrior or Paladin, and of the two, Paladin made the most intuitive sense, provided they also had healing magic in this world. But before I went to examine the Paladin armor, I stopped in front of the Wilder gear, curious about the one class that was unfamiliar to me.Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    The armor for this option was still cloth, and it was listed as a support casting class like the Priest, but I noticed that its point spread was split between vitality and spirit, which seemed like a strange choice for a spellcaster. The gear itself was kind of weird too: a deep blue shirt with a V-neckline embroidered in silver thread, with grey cloth pants and black boots¡ªit was almost a generic adventurer look.


    Wilder


    Cloth | Spellcaster/Support


    Wilders are spellcasters who draw their magic and abilities from the world around them and support their allies through a wide range of possible skills. They can specialize in numerous unique disciplines, including Psionics, Rune Magic, Blood Magic, Wyrm Calling, and others.


    Starting Statistics:


    Str: 10


    Agi: 10


    Spi: 20


    Vit: 20


    Under other circumstances, this was the class I would have chosen. I loved games that allowed me to experiment with wacky, off-the-wall skills and put together killer builds that no one expected to work well, but which I usually somehow made work by sheer skill and thoughtful planning¡­ usually. While I was curious to know what I could do with things like Psionics and Wyrm Calling, playing a wacky, off the wall class I had no idea how to use was a straight-up terrible idea when my real life might be on the line. Plus, it was possible that those abilities wouldn¡¯t be closed to me later if I still wanted them.


    No¡ªFor the moment, my best bet was probably to play my other favorite class (when I¡¯m not DPSing): a Paladin.


    Now before you accuse me of being some weak-kneed, bubble-hearthing newbie, hear me out: I was role-playing as paladins long before World of Warcraft players made it cool to bash on them, and not the stereotypical holier-than-thou lawful good moron, either. I loved the concept of the Paladin at its very core: a holy fighter sworn to his sacred path, sacrificing his own life in the name of something more important than himself, and so committed to his cause that his god grants him mystical powers in the pursuit of his quest? If you can¡¯t see why that would appeal to me on a fundamental level, you haven¡¯t been paying attention. Mixing it up in full plate while striking down foes with righteous fire was about as awesome as you could get, not to mention that most of the heroes of my childhood¡ªArthur, Galahad, Lancelot¡ªarguably fit the same archetype of the holy knight.


    As I approached the shining silver plate mail with an emblazoned heraldic shield that signaled the paladin class, a small shiver ran through me. Yeah. This was the one.


    Paladin


    Plate | Melee/Spellcaster/Tank


    Paladins are a holy hybrid of priest and warrior, but more than the sum of those parts: they boast powerful anti-undead abilities, strong defensive magic, and cleansing holy fire. They can further specialize in many different disciplines, as well as renounce the light to follow the path of a Shadowknight.


    Starting Statistics:


    Str: 15


    Agi: 10


    Spi: 15


    Vit: 20


    Now we were talking. This would give me the durability I was looking for, and having ¡°anti-undead capabilities¡± and ¡°strong defensive magic¡± didn¡¯t sound too shabby either. I didn¡¯t want to waste any more time, so I looked for a way to ¡°choose¡± this class. I tried touching the armor, and as soon as my fingers brushed the polished steel, a confirmation box popped up in front of me. It was still so weird to have boxes popping in out of nowhere, apparently unsupported, but I shook my head and jammed the ¡°Confirm¡± button anyway.


    A golden circle and shower of sparks surrounded me, and my HUD congratulated me on my choice. Thanks, I guess, HUD?


    The other seven mannequins vanished, and suddenly I was wearing the steel suit and had a red and black heraldic kite shield strapped to my left arm. It was as abrupt of a transition as the shift into my hero-body had been, and no less cool. The plate was strong but lighter than I would have expected, and it flexed in all the right places to offer me good mobility. I felt way better about getting into fights with branch-wielding, unarmored goblins now that I was protected from head to toe in thick, metal armor. I even had a mailed helm with a crossguard over my nose to protect my face, and I wished there was a mirror handy. I bet I looked bad-ass, even if none of my armor had stats. It all just identified as Tier 1/H, whatever that meant.


    The scrolling marquee on my HUD had some more updates for me, as well.


    Learned new skill: Light Healing (10MP | Heal up to 30HP. Mends one damaged limb outside of combat.) [Replaces Mend]


    Learned new skill: Smite (5MP | Stun an enemy for up to 3 seconds with holy fury and deal magical damage that scales with Spirit. Harms undead for 3x damage.)


    ¡°Nice,¡± I said. Now I could heal myself during combat and stun my enemies. I was finally starting to feel a little more like a super hero, and a little less vulnerable. I even had a belt and sheathe for my sword now!


    Then a spine-chilling roar that reverberated through the tiny space, making my stomach turn flips. I spun cautiously, sword and shield raised, as the barred portcullis across the room began to retract into the ceiling with a grinding scrape. A sound like steel clashing on steel echoed down the dark passage toward me, and from the gloom emerged a huge, mean-looking orc. He held a wicked, curved blade in either hand, which he banged together to make the rhythmic clashing noise I¡¯d heard. A menacing growl rumbled out from the bottom of his throat, and I swallowed nervously and tightened the grip on my blade as my HUD identified him.


    Orc Warrior


    LVL: 3


    ???


    Goblins with sticks were one thing, but that thing had two swords, a mail hauberk, and stood three inches taller than me! Not to mention I was still level 1, as far as I knew. I licked my lips and raised my shield, getting ready to charge him. I had no doubt it would be a tough fight, but between my new armor and spells, I could probably defeat him. Probably.


    His red eyes glinted at me as he roared again in challenge, raising both of his blades. Sweat broke out across my back. I¡¯d have to stunlock him with Smite and hope I could finish him before I ran out of mana.


    You can do this, Michael, I told myself. They wouldn¡¯t throw more at you than you could handle¡­


    I began to circle him warily, arming sword at the ready, mentally preparing to use my spells. I wondered why he hadn¡¯t engaged me yet. What was he waiting for?


    And then I saw something that made my blood run cold.


    A flash of movement in the gloom behind him¡ªthe clink of mail, the scrape of gnarled toe-claws on stone. Two more orcs, with the same strong builds and the same menacing weapons, stepped out of the darkness to flank him.


    I took a deep breath and sighed. Now I was fucked.

 Chapter 8

    Ask any self-defense expert what the best way to fight three people at once is, and they¡¯ll almost universally give you the same answer: Don¡¯t.


    If those people are tall, angry-looking, bloodthirsty orcs and they¡¯re bristling with weapons, that advice probably goes double. Maybe triple. Unlike fantasy movies and games where a lone hero can fight any number of enemies without an issue, simple physics makes fighting three enemies by yourself a losing proposition in real life. It¡¯s way too easy for one of them to get behind you and hit you in a vulnerable spot while his friends keep you busy from the front, or for one of them to rush you from the side and knock you over. Usually going to the ground is game over in a fight, because it¡¯s nearly impossible to properly defend yourself while you¡¯re on your back¡ªespecially against weapons. This was close enough to real life that the same rules would apply.


    I¡¯d learned all this fighting technique while visiting Mark in Seattle one weekend. Brianna was away on a school trip, and he¡¯d taken me to a local park to watch people dressed up like real knights going toe to toe with real blunted weapons. These guys weren¡¯t LARPers with PVC¡ªthat was genuine steel they were slamming into each other and actual chainmail and plate absorbing the blows. They¡¯d fight until someone yielded or struck a ¡°killing¡± blow to a vital spot, and if one person lost their footing while the other was still on his feet, it was almost always a quick end to the match. After the bouts, we¡¯d grabbed a beer at a local pub with the largest of the fighters, who called himself Duane, King of Pain, and gotten a crash course lecture on close quarters fighting.


    It had been an awesome afternoon and was one of my fondest memories with Mark, but the lessons I¡¯d taken away from it unsettled me now.


    My odds here weren¡¯t good. If three puny goblins armed with sticks and no coherent strategy had brutally shattered my knee, how much damage could three orcs with dual carving blades do if they worked together and attacked at once? My only hope was to rely on the advice the knight had given me for dealing with a forced, unfair fight: avoid being flanked at all costs, strike first and quickly, and try to take them out as fast as I could. It was good advice, but I was still afraid I was going to find out what happened when you died in-game far sooner than I wanted to¡­


    A whitish-blue projectile so cold that the air froze and crackled in its wake suddenly shot past me, chilling my arm and leaving the hairs beneath my gauntlets standing up straight, as it lanced into the left-most orc¡¯s chest and exploded in a swirling, frosty burst. He flew backwards from the force of the impact and fell hard, ice crystals spreading across his body in a thin layer as he twitched on the ground. I whirled to see a fierce-looking red-haired girl in an embroidered purple robe standing beside me, her sharp eyes blazing as she fixed on the orcs.


    ¡°Who¡ª¡± I began.


    ¡°Talk later. Orcs first.¡±


    The roar of our charging enemies, pissed about their momentarily frozen friend, drew my attention away from the girl. At least the odds were even now. But they were headed for her, not for me, so I did what any good tank would do and stepped in front of her with my shield raised. As the first orc lumbered into my melee range, I thrust my hand out and willed my Smite spell to unleash. A golden bolt of force rained down from the empty air and walloped him across the shoulders with satisfying thunk sound. As he stumbled, stunned, I lashed out with the broad side of my steel shield and cracked him across the face, bashing him sideways and throwing him out of the way of the second angry orc that was hot on his heels.


    ¡°Nice,¡± the girl said. She stepped up to flank me and raised her hand, releasing three purple rapid-fire blasts that looked like arcane bolts from her fingertips. They whirled through the air in a clockwise twist and slammed into the back of the moaning orc I¡¯d stunned. His back arched, legs jerking, as his body absorbed each bolt of force, and then he went limp and still.


    Then the second orc crashed into me, slashing wildly with both of his curved blades, and I had no more time to think about anything but my own, immediate fight for survival. I deflected his twin slashes with sword and shield, fighting defensively and grimacing at the way each clanging strike rattled into my well-muscled arm and made my limbs itch and tingle. He was strong enough that a single missed blow would sheer clean through flesh and bone if not for the protective plate which encased my body. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that the frosted orc was thawing as the magic faded and had now climbed to his knees, shaking his head.


    ¡°Finish that one!¡± I ordered, gesturing toward the rising orc with my shield.


    ¡°Low mana!¡± the girl replied, shuffling her feet and holding her staff in a defensive position before her.


    ¡°Already?¡±


    ¡°Dude, level one.¡±


    I growled and surprised the orc battling me by stepping into his next blow instead of stepping back this time, and slammed my armored forehead directly against his face. His nose crunched under the applied force of a helmet-turned-battering-ram and he staggered backward, growling curses and leaking blood. Smite was still on cooldown¡ªhow I knew that I couldn¡¯t say; I just seemed to know¡ªbut my sword wasn¡¯t. The crude iron streaked up toward his unprotected face as I followed his backward stagger with quick steps.


    He knocked my swing away at the last minute with a clumsy parry, but I could tell he was panicking. Getting hit in the face is really unpleasant no matter what kind of humanoid you are. I¡¯d been watching him slash, and his fighting style was erratic and loose¡ªhe was untrained and unsophisticated. The orc might have a weapon in each hand, but my surprise attack had dazed him, and it was all he could do to keep me at bay while I pressed him backward, threatening him with nasty shield bashes as much as with brutal cuts of my arming sword.


    I was just starting to get cocky when the girl shouted, ¡°Watch out!¡±, and the frost-burnt orc I hadn¡¯t been watching barreled into me from my left. He carried me off my feet and slammed me onto the ground like a huge lineman brutally taking out an unprotected quarterback. My shield went skittering away, and I groaned as my ribs flexed beneath the combined weight of steel plate and orc bulk. He pinned my shoulders and sat on my torso, keeping one knee on my sword arm while he used his fiendish strength to wrestle me. Meanwhile his friend lurched forward and hacked at my legs. I kicked and flailed my feet, trying to deflect his blows while I fought with the frost-tinged orc, but god he was heavy.


    ¡°Help!¡± I croaked out, watching my health blink down as dark orc steel bruised my legs and rattled bone wherever it connected, plate or no plate.


    Michael Peters


    HP: 133/200


    MP: 15/20


    Where the hell did that girl go? The orc on my chest was fully occupied with keeping me pinned, since I was pretty strong too, and I punched him in the side with the gauntleted fist of my empty shield arm over and over, trying to hit his kidney and pleased at the distinct sound of his ribs snapping instead. I¡¯ll take that too. He winced and held fast, though, leaning back a little to allow the other orc to raise his blade over my head for a killing slice.


    The deafening crack of wood connecting with bone rang out like a shot as the girl¡¯s staff whirled through the air and connected with the side of the standing orc¡¯s head, and again he staggered away, his hand held to his split temple. Then she raised the blunt instrument over the head of the remaining orc for another swing. He twisted off and released me just in time to catch her descending staff with a growl. The wood quivered inches in front of his face as his gnarled green hand gripped the haft, and then the girl cried out as he gave a sharp jerk and yanked her down before she could release it. She tumbled toward him and he seized her by the upper sleeve of her robe, his yellow teeth gnashing toward her windmilling arm. But now my sword hand was free. I sat up and sliced my blade in a blinding arc that separated the orc¡¯s head cleanly from his shoulders, the sharp tip passing only inches in front of the mage¡¯s pretty chin as it blurred through the air.Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    Staff and sleeve slipped together out of the orc¡¯s hands as his neck spouted blood in a gushing red fountain of gore, and his body thunked to the ground beside his still-wobbling head and lay still. I lurched to my feet as the girl scrambled backward, breathing hard, her face pale and her clothes bloody. She looked like she was going to be sick, and I could understand¡ªgetting a face full of rank orc breath was unpleasant even when you were armored head to toe in steel, and the only thing separating her delicate skin from his very sharp teeth had been a thin layer of embroidered cotton.


    ¡°Are you okay?¡± I asked, throwing a worried look in her direction. But the momentary concern had cost me: The remaining orc seized upon my distraction to leap across the meter-long distance which separated us and jam the tip of his weapon into the flexible, lightly-armored joint where my right shoulder met my arm. It pierced mail and flesh both, and I shouted at the pain¡ªwhich was extremely unpleasant even though it was dulled by the game mechanics¡ªas I fell to my knees, involuntarily dropping my sword as my arm spasmed. The orc dropped with me, twisting his blade, and blood poured into my armor. I flailed at my assailant with my uninjured hand, panicking as my vision swam and my health blinked down in the HUD.


    Michael Peters


    HP: 45/200


    MP: 15/20


    He twisted his sword again, prompting a fresh groan and another wave of blood, and another ten health points dropped off. There was too much going on! I was getting overwhelmed. Sitting at home in front of my computer, tanking had been so easy: Identify the targets, keep their attention, pick up adds, and call for heals when my health got low. I could keep an eye on everything at once from a bird¡¯s-eye view over my character¡¯s shoulder. Now there was so much to track, and all of it in first-person while also suffering from the real pain of my injuries, however muted: I had to pay attention to the girl¡ªWhere is she now?¡ª, my health, the orcs, my equipment¡ªWhere the hell did my shield go?¡ª, the condition of my limbs, my skills¡ª


    Of course! My skills. I¡¯d forgotten all about them in the frenzied back and forth of the fight, because I still wasn¡¯t used to being able to summon magic with a thought, but I still had most of my magic left. And better yet, Smite was off cooldown.


    I focused my will and once again brought the golden bolt of smiting force crashing down onto the orc¡¯s head. The glittering, translucent column passed harmlessly through me, but drove my foe down further, stunned, and I staggered away and yanked the sword from my wound as he reeled from my magic. It clattered to the ground beside me as I gasped for breath and searched for the mage. Where had she gone? Had she just been going to let me die?


    When I saw her sitting on the ground with her eyes closed, hands resting lightly on her knees while her staff balanced across her lap, I was furious.


    ¡°What the hell are you doing?¡± I shouted. ¡°Help me out here!¡±


    She didn¡¯t so much as bat an eyelash at me. I couldn¡¯t believe it. Who decides that the right time to take a little break is in the middle of a raging fight? But there¡¯d be time to scold her after the orc was dead and I was safe.


    I placed my left hand over the still-bleeding gash at my armpit and used the last of my mana to cast Light Healing. More golden light flowed out of my hand and surrounded my entire shoulder in a gleaming nimbus of holy energy. As the wound closed and the flow of blood ceased, I began to breathe more easily. It had only been thirty health points, and I was still in rough shape, but at least I wasn¡¯t bleeding anymore. I grabbed my shield while the orc shook off my stun and rose once again, replacing his lost sword with a discarded blade from one of his dead companions,and I checked my status in the HUD.


    Michael Peters


    HP: 65/200


    MP: 0/20


    Not good. Out of mana, out of tricks. Less than half my health points left, facing an enemy two levels higher, and suffering from dozens of small nicks and cuts. Neither health nor mana appeared to regenerate in combat, and the only thing I had going for me was that the orc was wounded too. I wet my lips nervously and advanced with my shield held high and my sword raised overhead like a Roman centurion, prepared for a killing downward thrust. But one slip and I¡¯d be toast. I couldn¡¯t afford to take a cut to the head or to have another blade slip past my armor with my health this low.


    Then the orc did¡­ something. I don¡¯t know what, exactly, but it looked like a skill which involved lowering his swords to his sides and howling toward the sky¡ªor rather, the ceiling, in this cramped dungeon. His body erupted with a brief burst of flame, cauterizing all his open wounds, and when it faded away, the flames remained burning on his blades¡­ and in his eyes. His movement quickened as he brandished his newly burning swords at me, and I suspected he¡¯d healed considerably.


    ¡°Shit,¡± I breathed.


    Then he rushed toward me, moving at nearly twice his prior speed, dark steel blades whirling in a flying blender of fire and death. There was no opening to stab at. Engaging him in melee right now would be moronic. But did I have a choice? I held my ground, gritted my teeth, and braced for the terrifying dervish to slam into me, hoping I could land a lucky blow before he finished me.


    He came so close that I felt the terrible heat of those flames radiating off of his weapons, and then another whitish-blue bolt of frost exploded into his face, hitting him so hard that his head jerked backward with a sickening crack of twisted spine snapping. He dropped to the ground like a string-severed puppet, the fire on his blades dying alongside the fire in his eyes.


    I spun to see the girl standing in a heroic post, right arm thrust out toward the dead orc and staff tucked underneath the crook of her left arm. She held my gaze as she straightened, smirking, and nonchalantly lifted two fingers to her lips to blow across the top of them like she was clearing the gunsmoke from the barrel of a pistol.


    Killed: Orcs (3). XP +75, Gold +45.


    ¡°You¡¯re welcome,¡± she said.


    ¡°You took long enough,¡± I snapped. ¡°What the hell were you doing? He almost got me!¡±


    ¡°But he didn¡¯t get you.¡± She shrugged, still smirking. ¡°You¡¯re fine, aren¡¯t you? I don¡¯t usually worry about taking care of other perfectly functional adults.¡±


    I glared. ¡°You couldn¡¯t toss a few more of those arcane missiles a little earlier and finish the fight?¡±


    Now her smile dropped, and her eyes blazed. ¡°Dude. We can¡¯t see their health points. I only have so much mana. If I had blown my load, and it didn¡¯t finish him, and then you died, since for all I know you¡¯re a fuckwit, then I¡¯d be defenseless and also dead. Instead I let you keep them busy while I meditated, which is a skill you don¡¯t have, probably, and got enough mana back to save your ass and protect myself. Good ¡®nuff? Or do I need to explain basic group tactics to you?¡±


    I opened my mouth to argue, hesitated, and then snapped my jaw shut. I sheathed my sword while I considered her answer. This chick was really abrasive, but her explanation was logical. I guess I preferred to have a competent, strategic player at my back than an airheaded bimbo¡ªeven if she was kind of a bitch.


    ¡°Good thing I¡¯m not a fuckwit,¡± I grumbled. ¡°What¡¯s your name, anyway?¡± But even as I asked the question, my HUD answered it for me, now that I¡¯d been staring at her for more than a brief second. The tiny blue pinprick appeared and expanded out into the standard info box I was becoming accustomed to:


    Haley


    LVL 1 Mage


    HP: 100/100


    MP: 25/60


    She responded anyway, her confident smirk returning. ¡°I¡¯m Haley.¡± She extended her hand. ¡°Nice to meet you, Michael Peters. I¡¯m the best damn mage you¡¯ll ever meet.¡±


    It was a little unsettling that she knew my name already, but she had a holo-lens over her left eye just like I did, apparently feeding her the same kinds of information. I took her hand and shook it. Her purple, cotton glove looked tiny in my huge, steel gauntlet. Now that the battle was over and my adrenaline was cooling, I noticed little things about her which I hadn¡¯t before, like how pretty she was. Everyone would be attractive here, probably¡ªwhy would you make an ugly avatar when you have to wear it?¡ªbut I liked this girl¡¯s style, despite her annoying attitude. She had long, flame-red hair tied back into a tight ponytail, light blue eyes not dissimilar from my own, and a cute dusting of pink freckles across the bridge of her upturned nose. She was slim, with only a small swell at her chest and hips, and her whole manner radiated energy. She held herself with the haughty swagger of someone who likes a good fight¡­ and is willing to make one happen if nothing presents itself.


    ¡°That¡¯s good to know,¡± I replied neutrally. ¡°Do you know anything about this place?¡±


    She shrugged again. ¡°Probably not any more than you. Mysterious game console, right? Ataraxia? Got sucked in? Weird tutorial?¡± When I nodded, she continued. ¡°Yeah. Me too. Dunno. I¡¯m a gamer, I assume you are. It looks like they stuck us together, whoever ¡®they¡¯ are, so let¡¯s watch each other¡¯s backs, okay? I¡¯m playing to win.¡±


    Her short, clipped manner of speech was weird, and she talked really fast, but I wasn¡¯t about to turn down a new partner who¡¯d already proven that she had some skill. ¡°All right,¡± I said. ¡°But I followed my sister here, and I need to find her. You haven¡¯t seen anyone else, have you?¡±


    She shook her head. ¡°You¡¯re the first player. Otherwise it¡¯s just been some goblins.¡± Her eyes darkened. ¡°Those sticks¡­ uh, they really hurt. Thank goodness for Mend, right?¡±


    ¡°Yeah,¡± I said quietly. A chill ran over me as I thought about Brianna facing the goblins alone again, and a pang of sympathy for this Haley girl tugged at my heart. She¡¯d been through everything I had. So she was a little rough. Was that so bad?


    ¡°Anyway,¡± she continued. ¡°There must be other players. Right? It doesn¡¯t make sense that there would only be two of us. Come on! We won¡¯t find them standing here.¡±


    Before I could reply she was striding confidently off toward the orc tunnel.


    ¡°H-hey! Wait a minute!¡± I cried, chasing after her. Man, this girl is as much of a handful as my sister. Maybe more. ¡°I have more questions for you!¡±


    ¡°Keep up,¡± she called over her shoulder. ¡°I don¡¯t wait around for slow people.¡±

 Chapter 9

    Women are complicated for me.


    ¡°Duh,¡± you might say. Or, ¡°Join the club!¡± Or, ¡°Dudes are complicated too!¡± And yeah, I know it¡¯s a cliche to think women are complicated, and I know guys have plenty of our own quirks that women don¡¯t always understand, but when I say women are complicated for me, it¡¯s the ¡°for me¡± part I want to stress. Women aren¡¯t actually that complicated¡ªat least not anymore so than any other human, and of course we¡¯re all ridiculously complicated in our own idiosyncratic ways¡ªbut my experiences with women have left me with some very unique perspectives and complicated feelings about the opposite gender that I have trouble sorting out for myself.


    For the first twelve years of my life, as a bookish, only child, the only woman I ever gave two figs about was my mom. I hadn¡¯t yet developed the keen biological interest in girls that makes those internet pop-up ads so fascinating to your average, heterosexual guy surfing the mid-90s interwebs, and the girls I knew at school didn¡¯t have anything in common with my science-and-fantasy-flavored interests, but I thought my mom was incredible. She¡¯d chosen to be a homemaker when she¡¯d moved with my father back to his tiny hometown to raise a family together, but she was also so much more than that¡ªa lover of stories and games, with a Masters degree in world history and a sharp, witty intellect sufficient to match my father quip for quip. He may have taught me to love the idea of knights and fantasy battles, but it was my mother who could open her mouth and weave a vivid tapestry of snapping pennants, stomping hooves, blades flashing in the heat of the afternoon, and a rich medieval court dressed in brocaded silks, ermine furs, and glittering mail. She saw the world as a beautiful, wonderful place full of potential, and it breaks my heart that Brianna had to grow up robbed of such an amazing woman in her life. On warm spring days, standing in our backyard where she used to sun-dry our sheets on a dancing clothes-line, a memory of her soft, brown curls and her vivacious green eyes will sometimes come to me, and it¡¯s almost like she¡¯s still with us. Not a day goes by that I don¡¯t wish I¡¯d spent more time talking to her and getting to know her.


    But of course, I didn¡¯t. Like most children, as soon as I hit my teens, I became far too self-involved to want anything to do with my mother anymore. Suddenly I had been catapulted by nature into the awkward discomfort of puberty, with all of its attendant embarrassments. My new baby sister was keeping my parents busy, and meanwhile I had discovered that girls could be very interesting to me whether or not they cared about the books I read and the games I played. The internet teased me with impossibly hot pornographic vixens day and night, and I was desperate for some real action. But since I¡¯d never bothered talking to any girl but my mom before, I didn¡¯t quite know what to do with them¡ªI¡¯d try to strike up conversations based on what I¡¯d read in books, and I¡¯d wind up shot down or terribly tongue-tied as they called me ¡°weird¡± or just giggled at me. Women were this foreign, inscrutable and impossibly desirable ¡°other¡± for me, I had no chill and no game. Not gonna lie: it was a tough time for me. Looking back, there are even moments where girls were absolutely into me and I was just too dense to realize.


    It wasn¡¯t until my junior year that I managed to wrangle myself a girlfriend. Her name was Amanda Miller, we had nothing in common except a mutual physical attraction, and the peak of our relationship was a sweaty, groping tangle of fumbled bra clasps and third-base shenanigans in the backseat of her car on a hot summer night. We dated for three weeks before she broke my heart by dumping me for a senior because she thought I was a little too clingy and geeky. I spent the next two months afterward hiding out in Mark¡¯s basement, blubbering about how I was neither clingy nor geeky, writing bad poetry about my undying love for Amanda on LiveJournal, and naming jRPG party characters after her. So yeah, she was pretty right about that. Girls were a foreign country, and I was a stranger in a strange land, navigating without a map.


    Then, my parents¡¯ accident blew up my whole world. For several years afterward, it was just me and Brianna on our own with no room for anyone else. I was devastated, seeing a therapist regularly while I learned to care for my baby sister, and I suddenly found myself in this weird father-figure role, raising a girl-child when I didn¡¯t know the first thing about women. How on Earth was I supposed to raise a girl when I could barely talk to girls, I wondered? But then something magical happened: As Brianna grew into her personality and I got to know all of her goofy, lovable quirks, I started seeing women less as some kind of infinitely desirable sex-object and more as actual, whole people. I grew up a lot in a very short time, and shockingly, I learned to relax around women. My raging teen hormones leveled off, and I somehow developed some chill.


    Despite my new, chill-tastic superpowers, I was celibate. I already mentioned that raising a cute little sister was like catnip for plenty of women who put themselves in my path, but I wasn¡¯t ready to deal with the work of building a relationship with anyone when Bri was my main responsibility. Plus, most of the women I met in our small community were kind of boring to me. I¡¯d come full circle¡ªit was so much effort to make time and energy for dating, that I didn¡¯t want to do it unless it was for someone truly remarkable, who shared or at least understood my passions and interests. Someone as smart and fun and cool as my mom had seemed to my dad. I¡¯d never met anyone like that before. I¡¯d hoped to meet women like that when I went away to college. So it goes.


    Then I met Renee. I was twenty-three and had just started working as a junior analyst. Renee was two years older than me; a buxom, sandy-haired woman with intelligent grey eyes who worked in the marketing department and always seemed to be smiling at me. She had just weathered a nasty divorce and had been assigned to partner with me on a project that required us to work late together several nights per week. Brianna would go to a friend¡¯s house, and I¡¯d stay at work with Renee and fret over marketing slides until seven or eight PM. On our first night of working together, our legs brushed twice beneath the table. The hair on my neck stood up both times, and I couldn¡¯t help but sneak glances down her low-cut shirt and think dirty thoughts about her whenever she¡¯d bend over the table to point at some graph or chart. I told myself I was being inappropriate and forced myself to behave professionally, but on our seventh night together, she stood behind me, laid her fingertips on my shoulder, and whispered that she wanted to fuck me, if I wanted that.


    I didn¡¯t tell her it was my first time. I just took her, there on the office conference table in a locked room with no windows, and the two of us moved together until I experienced a glorious, shuddering release. Then she showed me what to do with my fingers to bring her to the same heights of ecstasy, which I did happily. Afterward, as I gazed at her shyly, she told me that she liked me, but that this was just for fun. Nothing serious. She wasn¡¯t looking for anything serious. It was perfect. We carried on a secret tryst for four heavenly months, and then it ended. She got promoted to a new job, across the country. When we had our tearful goodbye at the airport, I bit my tongue and didn¡¯t ask her if she¡¯d write. I knew she wouldn¡¯t lie to me, and I could already see the answer in her eyes.


    After Renee, there was no one else. No one important, anyway. I¡¯ve never really dated as an adult, nor do I know what you¡¯re supposed to do romantically with a woman when she doesn¡¯t whisper ¡°take me.¡± Talking to girls is easier than it used to be, and I don¡¯t put women on a pedestal like I used to, but I¡¯m still hopelessly awkward when a conversation veers romantic. Given my rough, winding road with members of the opposite sex, you can see why I¡¯d have some complicated feelings about them. I have a simple rule that helps me out, these days: I avoid the issue! As long as I keep things strictly professional with women, everything goes really smoothly.The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    Haley the mage did not seem to appreciate the value of keeping things strictly professional.


    ¡°You¡¯re hot,¡± she told me, two seconds after I caught up to her breakneck speed-walking pace in the orc tunnel.


    ¡°Excuse me?¡± I replied, not quite sure I had heard her correctly.


    ¡°Your avatar.¡± She gestured at me with the two-handed maple staff she was currently using as a walking stick. ¡°It¡¯s attractive. You did a good job with it.¡±


    ¡°Uh, thanks¡­ it¡¯s mostly default settings,¡± I mumbled, totally caught off guard by this turn of conversation. I had tons of questions for this chick, none of which involved talking about how attractive either of our avatars were. ¡°Could we talk ab¡ª¡±


    ¡°Most guys don¡¯t have very good aesthetics for male bodies. They make the arms too bulky or the faces look weird, but you did a good job.¡± Haley narrowed her eyes at me. ¡°You are a guy, right?¡±


    ¡°Uh, yeah. I am. Yes. In real life, I mean. Are you?¡±


    ¡°A guy?¡±


    I blushed. ¡°Er no¡­ I mean, are you a girl? In real life?¡±


    ¡°I believe you. Know why? Only a guy would get this flustered over this conversation. Anyway, yes, yes I am. Haley in here, Haley out there, older sister to three fucking ah-dor-able little brothers who were absolute monsters until they grew up and left home, and younger sister to a golden boy dipshit fuckwit named Troy who can do no wrong in my parents eyes and continues to aggravate me to this very day.¡±


    ¡°You had four brothers growing up?¡±


    ¡°Fucking madhouse, right? Believe me, I know. But I probably wouldn¡¯t be half as awesome as I am today if they hadn¡¯t put me through hell. What about you? Just the one lost sister?¡±


    ¡°Yeah. Brianna. Brianna is my sister, I mean. She was on a date¡ª¡±


    ¡° A date? Why were you looking for her while she was on a date?¡±


    ¡°Well she was past her curfew¡­¡±


    Haley snorted. ¡°Jeez, over-protective much?¡±


    ¡°Look, it¡¯s complicated. Sort of. I¡¯m her guardian.¡± Right about now I was really starting to wish we would bump into an orc or something to put me out of the misery of this conversation that I didn¡¯t want to be having with a stranger, but unlike the goblin-tunnels I¡¯d been in earlier, no convenient battles presented themselves. We just walked and walked past rows of torches down a long, twisting hallway, occasionally ascending steps. ¡°Why are we talking about our families anyway? Shouldn¡¯t we be discussing strategy or something?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m getting to know you, Michael Peters,¡± Haley replied. ¡°That is my strategy. I want to know what kind of dude the game stuck me with here, so I can decide if you¡¯re going to stab me in the back at the first opportunity. So far you seem all right. A guy raising his sister can¡¯t be that bad.¡±


    ¡°Uh¡­ thanks,¡± I said for the second time, completely at a loss for words. This chick really rambled, but her forthright directness was sort of refreshing, in a way.


    ¡°Anyway,¡± she continued, ¡°Sure, we can talk game strategy. You bash them in the face, and I¡¯ll batter them with my Frost Bolt and Arcane Missiles. I can regain mana at twice my regeneration rate either in or out of combat by using Meditate, and I chose a class specialty of Evoker to give my direct damage spells an extra 50% oomph.¡±


    ¡°You got to choose a specialty? I didn¡¯t get that option.¡±


    She shrugged. ¡°It¡¯s probably a mage class thing. You?¡±


    ¡°I can heal. Smite for a 3-second stun.¡± I waved my sword around. ¡°I have this sharp, pointy thing. Nothing fancy, yet, but it gets the job done.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, it seemed to cleave through those orcs pretty well. You have some nice moves.¡±


    I stood up a little straighter at the compliment. ¡°You too.¡±


    She winked. ¡°I told you I¡¯m the best mage you¡¯ll ever meet. I always play mages, and I¡¯ve been breathing MMORPGs since I was a little girl. I know what I¡¯m doing.¡±


    I was about to grill her some more on her gaming history when I noticed a break in the tunnel up ahead. ¡°Hey, what¡¯s that?¡±


    The next flight of stairs up appeared to have a shaft of golden light illuminating it. Haley and I shared an excited glance.


    ¡°The exit?¡±


    ¡°Must be. Let¡¯s check it out.¡±


    We broke into a loping jog and ascended the sunny staircase in a matter of seconds, bursting out of the dank dungeon tunnel and onto the edge of a wide, flat area of dusty dirt with scattered patches of scraggly grass. The space was maybe 150 square meters, with a handful of ramshackle wooden buildings in the center, and it was hemmed in on four sides by enormous, mossy walls that stretched so high into the azure sky I had to crane my neck back to see the top of them. To our left and right were more square holes in the ground like the one we¡¯d emerged from, and four large stone doors stood centered at the base of each massive wall. But most interesting of all was the bustling group of people gathering beside the largest of the wooden buildings, milling in front of a four-foot tall marble platform with an unlit brazier on either side.


    I rested my hand on the pommel of my sword and glanced at Haley. ¡°NPCs, you think?¡±


    She squinted at the group. There were less than twenty people present, and some of the stragglers were still walking to join the others. ¡°Too far for my HUD to tell. I don¡¯t think so, actually. Look at how some of them are sort of awkwardly waving at each other. Those must be players.¡±


    ¡°Hmm.¡± Players were a big unknown. Were these friends or foes? They definitely seemed to be friendly to each other, but that didn¡¯t mean they¡¯d welcome Haley and me.


    A flash of blue at the corner of my eye caught my attention, and I noticed my HUD had updated: ¡°Instruction: Join your cohort.¡±


    I could see that Haley had received the same directive, and she raised her eyebrow at me. ¡°What do you think?¡± she asked, absentmindedly twirling her staff with her right hand.


    I shrugged. ¡°The game obviously could have killed us if it wanted to. I guess we follow instructions until it makes more sense not to. Just stay on your toes, and stick close to me, okay? If this turns into some kind of Hunger Games bullshit, we¡¯re fighting back to back and retreating toward this tunnel.¡±


    She nodded, and then smiled wryly. ¡°If this were the hunger games, does that make you my dashing love interest?¡±


    I blushed. ¡°What? No. Why would you say that? I just met you.¡±


    ¡°Come on. You can tell me. Are you more of a sensitive Peeta type or a manly Gale type?¡±


    ¡°What are you even talking about?¡±


    ¡°Ooh, or you might be more of a bad boy Finnick type. You know he gets pimped out by the president, right?¡±


    ¡°I didn¡¯t read those books,¡± I said flatly.


    ¡°You didn¡¯t see the movies?¡±


    I sighed. I had seen the movies. But I wasn¡¯t playing this weird girl¡¯s stupid game.


    ¡°Come on,¡± I growled, and stalked forward stiffly, toward the assembled group. ¡°We¡¯re wasting time.¡±


    ¡°Oh, relax.¡± Haley kept pace with me easily, laughing into her hand. ¡°I¡¯m just teasing you. Your plan is a good one. Has anyone ever told you you¡¯re fucking cute when you¡¯re flustered?¡±


    ¡°You¡¯re the worst. Has anyone ever told you that?¡±


    ¡°My brothers. All the time.¡±


    ¡°Well, they¡¯re right.¡±


    ¡°Sure, but at least I¡¯m fun. All business when there¡¯s orcs, all party when there¡¯s not.¡±


    ¡°All party?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m having fun. Aren¡¯t you?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯ll have fun when I know my sister isn¡¯t lying in a pool of her own blood somewhere.¡±


    The comment was a little harsh, and I knew it as soon as I said it. Haley stopped in her tracks and dropped her eyes as the conversation died. I paused and turned back to her.


    ¡°Look, Haley¡­ I¡¯m sorry. It¡¯s just¡ª¡±


    ¡°No. That¡¯s fair. I wasn¡¯t thinking.¡± All her teasing playfulness from a moment before was gone, and her voice was tight and quiet. ¡°Come on. They¡¯re waiting for us.¡±


    As she brushed past me, I glanced up and saw that Haley was right. We were the two remaining figures in the clearing who hadn¡¯t joined the assembly at the platform, and most of them had turned to stare our way.


    I tightened my fist on the hilt of my sheathed sword, took a deep breath, and followed Haley across the patchy grass.

 Chapter 10

    Haley had been correct about the group being made up of real players rather than NPCs, and my identifier bead¡ªas I¡¯d come to think of the little blue dot that highlighted whatever I focused on¡ªflicked around, throwing names and classes at me faster than I could possibly hope to remember them at the moment.


    Whereas Haley and I had both stuck to realistic, natural-colored avatars, the other players in the group were quite diverse in their body choices. A rainbow cavalcade of hair colors weaved through the heads of the assembly, splashing greens and blues and pinks against the comparatively muted blacks and browns and blondes, and complexions varied from the expected tan, fair, brown, and olive tones to much more unique choices: there was a druid whose skin had both the color and texture of tree bark, and a priest with milk-white skin shot through with black, snaking veins all over his body. One man loomed over the others as tall, fat, and ugly as an ogre, and a somber-looking girl who stood back from everyone else had eyes that glowed with pure silver light and no irises to speak of. I was surprised at how many women there were in the group, though the men still outnumbered them nearly two to one.


    Including Haley and me, there were sixteen of us milling before the marble platform. As I joined the circle, some of them continued to study me while others lost interest and returned their attention to a tall warrior named Cody who had been speaking during our approach.


    ¡°All right, that¡¯s got to be the last of us,¡± Cody said. ¡°Paladin and mage. Good. You two can be in strike group three. Anyone else see any other stragglers?¡±


    ¡°Whoa, hold your horses!¡± Haley objected. ¡°What¡¯s going on? Who are you people?¡±


    Cody shot her a dirty look. He had a tight, sandy crew cut and a diagonal scar across his face that made him look like a real grizzled veteran. Between that, his large, muscled build, his impressive 6¡¯3¡± height, and the two-handed axe slung over his shoulder, he had clearly chosen an avatar to intimidate. I could already see that it suited his militaristic, intense style.


    ¡°If you hadn¡¯t been lagging back there with your boyfriend, you¡¯d be up to speed already,¡± he growled.


    ¡°We¡¯re all new here,¡± a paladin named Shane said softly. He stood beside Cody with his arms folded over his breastplate. Despite only being 6¡¯0¡±, he had a quiet, easy confidence about him that paired well with the shocks of gray on either side of his combed black hair. ¡°Why don¡¯t we go over it one more time now that we seem to have everyone present?¡±


    Cody turned his glare on Shane, meeting the paladin¡¯s cool green eyes for a long moment before looking away and shrugging. ¡°Sure. But pay attention. I¡¯m not repeating myself again, and if we want to win, we need to take this seriously.¡± He turned to face the group. ¡°So here¡¯s what we¡¯ve figured out so far: All of us seem to have arrived here in Ataraxia via these weird arcade consoles, and we¡¯re predominantly from North America. All of us have gaming experience¡ªand a lot of it. None of us know anything about the game except what we¡¯ve figured out from the tutorial, and as far as anyone knows, this level of immersive VR should be impossible with modern technology.¡±


    A mage named Ian who had long, blue hair tied back by a leather thong spoke up: ¡°The fact that we all speak English, come from North America, and have a decent balance of classes suggests that we were chosen to be together, doesn¡¯t it?¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t speak English,¡± the white-skinned, black-veined priest named Santo said in perfect English. ¡°You¡¯re all speaking flawless Spanish.¡±


    ¡°Nor do I,¡± an olive-skinned rogue named Dancer said. ¡°I was visiting the United States on tour when I spotted the arcade machine that brought me here, but my native language is Italian. I only speak a little English.¡±


    ¡°Interesting,¡± Ian muttered.


    ¡°So there¡¯s language translation, too,¡± Cody continued. ¡°And yeah, we do have a good balance of classes: five tanks, six DPS, four healers, and whatever a wilder does.¡± He gestured at the silver-eyed girl in the back, whose name was Julia, and who was indeed the only person who had picked Wilder as her class. ¡°It¡¯s possible that the paladins can heal or the druids and monk can off-tank in a pinch, but it¡¯s too early to say. We¡¯ll need to test it.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m not a healer,¡± Santo objected.


    ¡°Priests heal,¡± Cody said firmly. ¡°We can talk about off-roles later.¡±


    Santo glared but said nothing in response. In addition to the black veins that snaked over his skin, I now noticed his eyes were deep pools of midnight-black ink, as well.


    My HUD hadn¡¯t updated with new instructions yet, and I felt like this Cody guy was making a lot of assumptions if he was really as new to the game as the rest of us were.


    ¡°How do you know this game is anything like the games you¡¯re familiar with?¡± I asked.


    Cody¡¯s head snapped toward me and his jaw flexed. He clearly didn¡¯t like being questioned, but then, I didn¡¯t have patience for petty would-be tyrants.


    ¡°Look, newbie,¡± Cody replied, his voice sharp. ¡°All I know is this: When I had my orc fight, after my class selection, there was a druid paired with me. She didn¡¯t follow orders, and she got a neck full of orc blade. I didn¡¯t have a healing spell, she didn¡¯t have any mana left, and I watched her bleed out right in front of me before I could finish the orcs. If she respawned somewhere, I didn¡¯t see it. She was crying when she died. We need to play things smart and tight if we want to survive here.¡±


    I swallowed, shaking against the sudden tightness that crushed around my heart like a closing fist. ¡°You don¡¯t know if¡­ what was her name?¡±


    ¡°Huh?¡±


    ¡°Her name. What was her name?¡± I nearly shouted.


    ¡°He¡¯s looking for his lost sister,¡± Haley said quietly.


    A hush fell over the group, and Cody¡¯s intensity settled back down to a quiet simmer. ¡°Ambercast.¡±


    I relaxed and let out a breath, loosening fingers that had tightened into a white-knuckle grip on my hilt. Ambercast wasn¡¯t a name my sister would have chosen. She always named her characters after herself, if that was an option, because she liked to imagine herself as her in-game avatar. Even if she hadn¡¯t, she probably would have chosen something more fantasy-flavored or Harry Potter-inspired. Then I felt guilty for being relieved that it hadn¡¯t been my sister. Someone had still died. Hadn¡¯t they? I¡¯d need to be extremely careful.


    Haley¡¯s hand on my arm stirred me from my thoughts. I straightened and slid away, letting her hand fall. ¡°Not my sister,¡± I said. ¡°Probably.¡±


    Cody stared at me for a moment longer, gave a tight nod, and turned back to the rest of the group. ¡°In any case, we need to organize and protect ourselves so that we don¡¯t meet the same end¡ªat least until we know how dying works. I¡¯ve assigned you to three strike teams that we can use to test¡ª¡±


    He cut off abruptly with a curse and stumbled forward as lightning flashed overhead, and both braziers on the marble platform behind him erupted in roaring bursts of flame amid a peal of thunder. The previously clear sky flooded with dark stormclouds in a matter of seconds. Most of the group took a step back and several people drew their weapons or raised glowing hands with spells prepared. Another crash of thunder sounded and a brilliant blue rent in the clouds appeared. In the blink of an eye, a thick, twisting bolt of lightning struck the center of the dais, prompting a flash that was so bright I had to shield my eyes for a moment. When I looked again, there were three figures standing atop it.


    Beside each brazier was a hooded figure in gray robes, with their long draped sleeves clasped together so that no part of them was visible. The two were identical, average height, and my HUD identified both as simply ¡°Elohim¡± with no other class or level information. The man between them, at the center of the marble platform where the bolt had struck, had a clear designation, though, and it was an impressive one:


    Marutuk, ¡°Lord of Lords¡±


    LVL ** Stormcaller [Ancient]


    (Statistics Concealed)


    The golden-skinned, heavily muscled Marutuk stood with regal bearing, dressed in a shimmering silver-chain vest and mailed kilt that glittered with bright, white light. His eyes crackled with the same blue electric energy that sputtered from the tri-pronged scepter in his left hand, and a two-headed war-axe hung in a loop at his belt. Silver sandals of an unfamiliar material wrapped his corded legs up to his knees in a Roman style, and a thick black beard massed beneath a head of curling, shoulder-length hair, capped by a thin band of gold which encircled it. A deep crimson cape draped about his shoulders and snapped and fluttered behind him in the swirling breeze. He gazed down at us with only mild interest, seeming almost bored to be appearing before our group.


    ¡°Holy shit,¡± Haley breathed, her staff shaking slightly as she held it out toward the stormcaller (whatever a stormcaller was).


    ¡°Welcome to the testing grounds, Chosen Ones,¡± Marutuk intoned, his voice rumbling in the small clearing with all the force and gravitas of a rolling thunderclap. ¡°You have many questions, and in time, you may earn your answers. For the moment, you have but one charge: grow stronger and survive. You have been brought to Ataraxia because of your potential, but it remains to be seen whether you grow into warriors worthy of battle against The Glistening One or meet your end as food for the worms of Khthon.¡±


    My thoughts raced as I tried to pull together all of this new information, but Marutuk continued without waiting for a response from any of us. There was no interrupting this guy. Even Cody seemed stunned into silence.


    ¡°You must have care and caution,¡± he continued. ¡°For there is no return from death here¡ªnot for you.¡± He extended a golden finger to point to the great wall behind us, and then to the walls on either side. ¡°Sharpen your blades and build your spells beyond the doors to the East, West, and South. Your next test awaits you to the North. Do not tarry. Your hand will be forced before long. Obey the three laws of the Elohim, play well, and prosper. May you savor the taste of victory, children of men.¡±The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.


    As the echoing rumble of his final words faded, another crashing bolt of lightning forked down from the sky and struck Marutuk, illuminating him for a brief moment in a blinding, white-hot flash of crackling energy, and then he was gone. In his wake, the two robed Elohim stepped closer together and spoke as one, their words in perfect cadence as though uttering a practiced recitation, and their voices reedy and strange:


    ¡°The law is the whole of the law: First, step naught outside the way. Second, do as you will, lest you do as you must. Third, know all to be mutable. We leave you with a gift.¡±


    They bowed their heads and vanished in a twisting shimmer of light that bent the very air around them in ways that were uncomfortable to look at. As the shimmer subsided, four small pedestals appeared on the marble dais, each holding a weapon suspended in a broken column of light: a hammer, a two-handed sword, a rod, and a dagger. My HUD stubbornly refused to identify any of them.


    Slowly, the flames in braziers died away and the clouds cleared above us. Stunned silence reigned for a long moment, and then everyone began talking at once.


    ¡°What the fuck was that all about?¡± Haley exclaimed.


    ¡°I want that rod,¡± the huge, ogre-like mage named Victor declared as he began to lumber toward the weapons.


    ¡°Why should you get it?¡± Dancer sniffed angrily and tugged on her long, braided hair, right hand toying at the rapier tucked into her belt as she moved smoothly between Victor and the dais and glared up at him, unflinching.


    ¡°I¡¯m confused,¡± Ian said, resting a knuckle under his chin. ¡°Do we have one rule, or four?¡±


    ¡°I thought we had three,¡± Haley replied. ¡°Uh¡­ does anyone remember them?¡±


    ¡°Everyone shut up and let me think!¡± Cody shouted.


    ¡°You¡¯re not the boss of me,¡± Santo shot back, turning to march away from the group.


    Meanwhile, I was ignoring all of them and trying to figure out what I should do. This Marutuk guy had laid down an impressive display with his Elohim pals, but hadn¡¯t given us much in the way of real information about our situation. The most valuable thing he¡¯d told us was his claim that death here meant real death¡ªbut unless I¡¯d been mistaken, he was some kind of player, albeit a very powerful one. That was a bit of a red flag for me, too. How much could we really trust what another player said? He could have all kinds of reasons for lying to us. It was all good reason to be even more cautious than I had been and to hasten my search for my sister, since she was either alive somewhere in the game¡ªpresumably¡ªor already dead. Either way, I had to know. I should start by searching for some sign that I was on the right path.


    As I¡¯d considered the situation, the group¡¯s arguments had grown more tense: Cody had caught Santo¡¯s shoulder and was arguing with him loudly, Dancer and Victor were almost at each other¡¯s throats, being held apart by a small, violet-haired monk named Jenna, Ian was deep in discussion with Haley, and the others chimed in at at random intervals. We weren¡¯t going to get anywhere like this. I eyed the weapons on the marble platform, wondering if it would be worth the trouble to try to claim one of them and try to strike off on my own.


    The grating sound of a sword drawn raggedly over stone cut through the hubbub like a knife. Everyone turned to see Shane the paladin sheathing his blade. Then his cool, authoritative tone spilled over us. ¡°Why don¡¯t we all just take a deep breath, sit down, and have a discussion about what¡¯s going on, here? Is that reasonable?¡±


    He didn¡¯t speak loudly or forcefully. If anything, his voice was even softer and calmer than everyone else¡¯s. But when Shane spoke, you just kind of wanted to listen and do what he suggested¡ªnot because you had to, but because it was so damn reasonable. It was a talent I¡¯d seen other people demonstrate in my life, usually important people like CEOs or politicians, and I hadn¡¯t the slightest idea how to do it myself, but I always admired the type of person who had that natural ease with directing people.


    There was plenty of angry glaring and surreptitious glances at the four weapons, but everyone took a seat. I eased myself down in a cross-legged position on a patch of dry grass with my sword on the ground beside me. We formed a wide circle in front of the platform, with Haley settling down nervously on my right and a priest named Paige on my left.


    ¡°Now,¡± Shane continued. ¡°It¡¯s clear we have an unusual situation on our hands. Seems like the worst thing we could do is start fighting among ourselves. I have a suggestion. Can we start by agreeing that no one has to do anything and build from there?¡±


    ¡°Are you nuts¡­¡± Cody began, but Shane narrowed his eyes and looked at him sharply enough that the words died in Cody¡¯s mouth.


    ¡°Do as you will, lest you do as you must,¡± Shane said, repeating the Elohim¡¯s second law. ¡°I don¡¯t know what it means, but it seems like not forcing each other to do anything is a good start.¡±


    ¡°It could be an admonition to get stronger,¡± suggested Ian thoughtfully, flicking his blue ponytail over his shoulder. He spoke as though quoting: ¡°The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. Thucydides.¡± Then he glanced around the circle, and when no one replied, he blinked. ¡°Book five? History of the Peloponnesian War? No? Oh. Sorry¡­ I forget that my interests are a little¡­¡±


    ¡°Dorky?¡± Haley suggested.


    Ian turned bright red and stared at the ground. ¡°I was going to say obscure,¡± he mumbled.


    A druid named Cupcake with her pink hair drawn into two, high pigtails patted Ian on the shoulder and said, ¡°Don¡¯t mind her, pal. That was helpful.¡±


    Haley stiffened, her cheeks flushing, and she cleared her throat and returned her attention to Shane.


    ¡°In any case,¡± the green-eyed Paladin continued, ¡°I suggest we start by respecting each other¡¯s autonomy. If it makes sense to follow orders or you agree to follow someone¡¯s orders, fine. But we¡¯re not a press gang. No one has to do anything they don¡¯t want to. Agreed?¡±


    All around the circle heads nodded, mine included. Mutual respect was a great place to start in an environment where we could all start unleashing deadly force on each other at a moment¡¯s notice. Even Cody nodded, though his face puckered into a sour grimace, presumably at the prospect of losing control of his little dictatorship.


    ¡°Great,¡± Shane said. ¡°Next proposal: Anything that affects the entire group, we vote on.¡±


    ¡°And if there¡¯s a tie?¡± Victor the ogre-magi demanded.


    Shane shrugged. ¡°We¡¯ll deal with it when it happens.¡±


    Again, the group grudgingly agreed.


    ¡°Now that that¡¯s settled¡ª¡±


    ¡°Hang on,¡± Victor interrupted. ¡°Why do you get to make all the proposals?¡±


    Shane inclined his head toward the mage with a slight smile. ¡°By all means, go ahead.¡±


    Victor snorted. ¡°I propose we decide who gets those weapons. There¡¯s sixteen of us and four of them. How do we pick?¡±


    I¡¯d been wondering the same thing, and I eyed the group nervously, my hand positioned near my blade, to see if another fight was about to break out.


    ¡°Do we even know what they are?¡± the priest beside me asked. Paige was one of the girls who hadn¡¯t spoken yet. A white velvet robe enveloped her, and as she spoke her raised cowl slid back, exposing soft brown hair with a light curl and startlingly green eyes. When I saw her face, I sucked in a breath, my heart skipping a beat¡ªbut it wasn¡¯t Brianna. Brianna would have revealed herself to me already, and lots of girls probably had green eyes and brown hair. The coloring was just a coincidence.


    ¡°Should someone retrieve them for a closer look?¡± Shane suggested.


    ¡°I nominate Cupcake,¡± Dancer said quickly, before either Cody or Victor could speak. The two men settled back down, glaring at each other and then at Dancer.


    After waiting to see if anyone objected, Cupcake nodded and hopped up to retrieve each of the four weapons, gathering them from the beams of light and holding them carefully in her arms as though picking a bouquet of poisonous flowers. Each column winked out as she seized the weapon. Shane helped her down, and she laid them out on the ground in the middle of the circle, one by one. Now that they weren¡¯t shielded by the weird light, my HUD identified each of them in turn.


    Elohim Hammer


    1H Blunt


    10-20 Dmg


    - Class: Paladin


    - 2x damage to undead


    - Skills cost 5mp less (min 1)


    Elohim Rod


    2H Blunt


    4-9 Dmg


    - Class: Mage


    - Skills cost 10mp less (min 1)


    - Spirit +10


    Elohim Broadsword


    2H Slashing


    25-50 Dmg


    - Class: Warrior


    - Regain 25% health per slain foe


    - Strength +10


    Elohim Dagger


    1H Slashing


    3-7 Dmg


    - Class: Wilder


    - Skill: Weirding (5mp | Teleport to a location within 5 meters)


    - Skill: Siphon (10mp | Tap an enemy for a short period of time, draining their health and diverting it to an ally of your choice.)


    ¡°Well that makes things a little easier,¡± Dancer said. ¡°The right class should take the weapons, right? Although it¡¯s dumb that that dagger isn¡¯t for rogues.¡±


    It was dumb, and again I was pleased I hadn¡¯t chosen Wilder as my class. It looked like all the oddball skills would end up there, and it was anyone¡¯s guess how viable it would be.


    After a quick round of noisy discussion and voting, we had three clear winners: Julia silently accepted the dagger that could only go to her and stared at it with her unnerving silvery gaze, Cody claimed the broadsword after the other warrior Daniel chose not to compete for it, and Shane was unanimously voted as the recipient of the Paladin hammer.


    Had I wanted it? Of course I had. That was a fucking cool hammer, and the base damage alone was twice what my crude sword sported, but there were three paladins and I wasn¡¯t going to make waves against the one real voice of reason in our group. It made sense for Shane to take it, which was why both Jenkins¡ªthe other paladin¡ªand I yielded to him. Besides, there would be other weapons.


    As for the mage rod, we had a problem: Ian quietly declined, but neither Haley nor Victor was backing down. Things escalated quickly, and soon the two of them stood shouting at each other in the middle of the ring, the massive ugly hulk of a man towering over her and bellowing while the tiny red-faced girl screamed back at him. Shane finally calmed them down enough to take a vote, and when the group made their decisions, it was eight to seven in favor of Victor, with Ian abstaining. All of the women except Cupcake had voted for Haley. All of the men except for me and the bark-skinned druid named Trees had voted for Victor.


    ¡°Are you fucking kidding me?¡± Haley asked loudly. ¡°Why would you guys vote to give this pushy, arrogant jerk the staff over me?¡±


    ¡°The vote¡¯s done,¡± Shane said gently. ¡°We should move on.¡±


    Santo shrugged at Haley. ¡°Sorry chica. No offense, but Victor¡¯s probably a better player than you are. Statistically speaking.¡± I winced.


    ¡°Well, fuck you, asshole,¡± Haley replied. ¡°Is that what all you guys think? That Victor should get the rod just because I¡¯m a girl?¡±


    All of the other men who had voted for Victor quickly found something else to look at. Santo stared at her without expression. Shane coughed. Cody grinned. The warrior Daniel hedged: ¡°No¡­ not exactly¡­¡±


    ¡°I voted against you because you¡¯re bossy,¡± Cupcake declared. ¡°And you were mean to Ian.¡±


    ¡°Ian, come on,¡± Haley demanded, ignoring Cupcake. ¡°Tie this up.¡±


    Ian stared at his feet. ¡°I probably wouldn¡¯t vote for you¡­¡± he mumbled. I winced again.


    ¡°Guys.¡± Shane crossed his arms and took a more authoritative tone once again. ¡°It doesn¡¯t matter why anyone voted how they did. It¡¯s done. We all agreed to abide by the group¡¯s vote. Victor, take your rod.¡±


    Victor grinned and reached to claim his prize while Haley¡¯s face turned a stormy shade of purple I wasn¡¯t sure I¡¯d ever seen on a person before.


    Before the bulky mage could bend far enough down to touch the weapon, the much shorter girl had dropped to the ground, snatched the rod, and taken off running. She flashed out of the circle and sprinted south, arms pumping hard and her red ponytail bobbing behind her as Victor stared after her with his mouth hanging open. I started laughing. Haley had some real brass balls¡­ or whatever the female equivalent was.


    ¡°What is she doing?¡± Cody asked, vaulting up from his seated position.


    ¡°Whoa! Are we just going to let her go like that?¡± Victor demanded. He took a few lumbering steps after her, realized he¡¯d never catch her, and looked around wildly at the other group members. Shane sighed.


    ¡°Go get her, tubby,¡± Dancer said with a sniff. She crossed her arms and turned to Trees with a bored expression. ¡°You think there¡¯s any food around here? I¡¯m starving.¡±


    Haley¡¯s sprint carried her to the southern door, and as she approached, the wide stone slabs parted smoothly. Suddenly my amusement shifted to worry. I rose to my feet. She wouldn¡¯t really go in there by herself, would she?


    ¡°Haley!¡± I shouted. ¡°Haley, come back! We can work this out.¡±


    She paused at the threshold, breathing hard, and glanced back toward the circle. No one had pursued her. Victor was still gaping at each of us in turn like he expected someone to rescue his ass from the little mage-thief.


    ¡°Get back here, you thieving cunt!¡± Victor screamed. I cursed under my breath.


    Haley darted inside the south doors and vanished from sight.


    ¡°Well¡­¡± Victor said, dropping his hands to his sides and heaving a loud, dejected sigh. ¡°Shit.¡±

 Chapter 11

    ¡°I¡¯m going after her,¡± Victor declared. ¡°The rod belongs to the group¡ªnot to that thief.¡±


    ¡°You mean the rod belongs to you,¡± Santo said flatly. ¡°Say what you mean, bro.¡±


    ¡°Fine. The rod belongs to me. But it should go to help all of us. Right now it isn¡¯t. Come on.¡±


    ¡°There will be other weapons,¡± Shane remarked calmly. ¡°I¡¯m planning to scout our surroundings and take stock of our resources. Anyone who¡¯d like to help is welcome to join me.¡±


    ¡°We¡¯re not going to try to go rescue her?¡± Daniel the warrior asked, rubbing the back of his black and red striped hair uncomfortably. ¡°It could be dangerous in there.¡±


    ¡°Why should we try to help her?¡± Jenna the monk replied, speaking up for the first time. ¡°I voted for her, but that was stupid. She should have respected the vote. I¡¯m with Shane. We have more important things to worry about right now than a runaway mage.¡±


    ¡°We can do both,¡± Victor insisted. ¡°Someone needs to scout beyond the doors, don¡¯t they? Let¡¯s take a party in, reclaim my rod, and see what¡¯s in there. I doubt she¡¯ll get far on her own.¡±


    Shane shrugged. ¡°It¡¯s not a press gang,¡± he said again. ¡°If you think it¡¯s valuable right now, I trust your judgment. Go ahead.¡± He walked into the main building, rocking his Elohim Hammer back and forth in his hand as though testing the weight of his new weapon.


    The group was silent for a beat, and about a third of the players peeled off to follow Shane. Cody shook his head. ¡°If you¡¯re scouting south, I¡¯m scouting west. We need intel on more than one direction, and I don¡¯t care either way about the chick and the rod. Who¡¯s with me?¡±


    Cupcake in her druid leathers and a tall, thin shadow of a man named Logan moved to stand beside Cody. Logan was so quiet I¡¯d hardly noticed him before. He wore a dark hooded cape and had a crossbow and dagger at his waist, and his ability to fade into the background was perfect for a rogue, at least in contrast to Dancer¡¯s fiery brashness¡ªI hoped she could shut up and focus when it came time to fight. Cody nodded, satisfied with his healer and DPS, and the three of them began to move toward the western doors.


    ¡°Wait,¡± Victor said. ¡°Who¡¯s coming with me?¡±


    No one spoke. I remained standing with the others and obstinately remained silent as I had a small internal struggle. I agreed with Shane that we had more important things to deal with than Haley¡¯s immaturity¡ªher theft had been a stupid, knee-jerk act that had been funny to me only for it¡¯s brashness. I¡¯d seen it happen lots of times with Bri: she¡¯d get defensive about something, overreact, and then feel guilty. Victor had done the worst possible thing to calm down a person like Haley by hurling insults at her instead of coaxing her back to talk about it. But now Haley¡¯s overreaction had veered into recklessness. I was worried about her being in there¡ªwhatever was past those doors¡ªby herself, and if she got herself stupidly killed, we might be down a mage and a rod¡­ especially now that we knew death might be real and final here.


    Then again, Haley was the one who¡¯d proudly insisted less than an hour ago that she ¡°didn¡¯t usually worry about taking care of other perfectly functional adults.¡± So why should I worry about her when she was voluntarily rushing headlong into danger? I already had one errant girl to rescue. I didn¡¯t need a second.


    ¡°I¡¯ll go with you,¡± Daniel said, rising from the ground and drawing his weapons. Like Dancer, he dual wielded a sword and a parrying dagger, though his sword was more of a heavier saber than her piercing rapier.


    ¡°I¡¯m out,¡± Santo said. He flicked his white-hooded priest robe up, concealing his weird black eyes and veins. ¡°Chica isn¡¯t my responsibility. I¡¯m going to do my own exploring to the east, and I don¡¯t need any backup.¡± Then he strode purposefully toward the eastern door.


    ¡°Should we let Santo go alone?¡± Paige asked, casting a worried look around the small circle remaining.


    ¡°I¡¯ll go watch his back,¡± Jenna offered. She quietly trotted after the white-skinned priest.


    Trees shuddered, which looked quite strange on his bark-textured umber-colored skin. ¡°That guy gives me the creeps. I¡¯ll come help with Haley.¡±


    I let loose a long sigh. I shouldn¡¯t be worrying about Haley, but I was worried about her. I was also concerned that if I let Victor lead a group in there alone, we¡¯d end up with a reclaimed rod and a toasted Haley.


    ¡°Me too,¡± I muttered.


    ¡°No way,¡± Victor protested. ¡°Not you.¡± He folded his arms across his voluminous purple robe and glared at me. ¡°You voted against me and you walked in with her. How do we know you won¡¯t just turn on us too?¡±


    That irritated me. ¡°Trees voted for her too. I¡¯m not in league with her or anything, dude. I¡¯m just worried about her. We fought some orcs together, and I agreed to watch her back. Besides, she¡¯s a lot more likely to listen to me than to you right now.¡±


    ¡°There¡¯s an easy solution if she won¡¯t hand my rod over,¡± Victor said. ¡°It doesn¡¯t really matter if she listens.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sure she¡¯ll give it back when she calms down,¡± Trees said hesitantly, running a nervous hand through his wild, green hair.


    I wasn¡¯t so sure of that, but I wasn¡¯t about to say so right now.


    ¡°Why don¡¯t we give her a chance?¡± Paige suggested. ¡°But we should go soon, before she gets too far.¡±


    ¡°So you¡¯re in now too?¡± Daniel asked.


    ¡°Sure,¡± Paige said. ¡°I can heal if Trees wants to DPS.¡±


    ¡°Fine,¡± Victor said. ¡°But no funny business, okay Paladin?¡±


    ¡°Yeah, yeah. The rod is yours. I know.¡±


    I cracked my neck. I¡¯d just have to hope I could smooth things over between the two of them when we got to Haley, because the truth was that with only sixteen of us, we really did need every person we could get. I hadn¡¯t liked Marutuk¡¯s warnings that ¡°our hand would be forced¡± to go north eventually, and it seemed like more players working together was better for all of us¡­ especially since we¡¯d probably started with more. It occurred to me after Cody had mentioned his druid companion¡¯s death that the players in our group were only the ones who¡¯d made it through the tutorial. Who knew how many had started there?


    ¡°I don¡¯t have many abilities yet¡ªjust a stun and a heal¡ªbut I¡¯m happy to lead the way and do whatever tanking I can,¡± I said. ¡°I think I have the heaviest armor besides Daniel here and I¡¯m the only one with a shield. You guys know to focus fire and go after called targets?¡±


    Everyone nodded. It was nice to be working with a group who seemed to know what they were doing. We walked toward the southern door, following Haley¡¯s footsteps in the compact dirt. Victor and I led the way, with Daniel flanking me and Trees and Paige bringing up the rear. As we crossed the short distance to the huge, mossy wall, I noticed that Victor¡¯s gait was a little strange and unsteady.


    ¡°Everything all right?¡± I asked him.


    He grimaced. ¡°Yeah, it¡¯s nothing. I¡¯m just not used to this body yet.¡±


    ¡°Why¡¯d you make it so¡­ large? And¡­ unique looking?¡± Daniel asked.


    Victor¡¯s grimace deepened, and he drew his purple cowl around his misshapen head. ¡°I always make big, fat, ugly characters,¡± he muttered. ¡°Usually it¡¯s just meant to be funny. I¡¯m actually pretty fit and reasonably attractive in real life. I didn¡¯t know I¡¯d have to physically inhabit him.¡±


    ¡°Sorry dude,¡± Daniel said, fidgeting with the hilt of his saber.


    ¡°It¡¯s fine,¡± Victor growled. ¡°More weight to throw around.¡±


    ¡°I empathize,¡± Trees muttered, glancing at the front and back of his hands.


    ¡°You didn¡¯t expect to be wearing bark-textured skin?¡± Paige asked.


    ¡°I didn¡¯t expect to be a boy,¡± Trees replied.


    Victor¡¯s eyes widened and we both glanced back at the druid, while Daniel coughed into his hand.


    ¡°Oh,¡± Paige murmured, apparently at a loss for words.


    Trees shrugged. ¡°I always make my druids men. It didn¡¯t even occur to me that the game might be this¡­ realistic. Anyway, Victor is right. It¡¯s fine. I¡¯ll get used to it. I guess.¡± But he sounded pretty glum about the whole thing, which I could understand. Talk about an adjustment!


    ¡°Yeesh,¡± Victor remarked. ¡°I guess it could have been worse. At least I still have a dick.¡±


    Pink bloomed across both Paige and Daniel¡¯s faces while Trees ran a hand through his vivid green hair again, and I turned back toward the wall, rolling my shoulders. I was going to keep thinking of Trees as a guy for now, since that¡¯s what he was here¡­ physically, anyway.


    ¡°Let¡¯s focus on the mission,¡± I said. ¡°Come on.¡±


    As we approached the mossy, weathered slabs that formed the 10¡¯x10¡¯ door in the base of the giant wall, they began to rumble and slide smoothly apart, retracting into the granite just like they had for Haley.


    ¡°Nice,¡± Daniel remarked with a grin. ¡°Like a grocery store. That¡¯s friendly. We¡¯ll have to be sure to grab a lot of loot pinatas.¡±


    Just beyond the doors was a dungeon corridor with a low ceiling, maybe twelve feet high, and tight passages lined with torches like the ones we¡¯d emerged from originally. Rather than opening to a straight hallway, there was a wall just beyond the doors, and the passage curved away both to the left and to the right. Huge, block letters were inscribed into the wall which would be impossible to miss for anyone entering the dungeon, spelling out an unfamiliar word: ¡°VlIix.¡± The font was the same as the ¡®ATARAXIA¡¯ text that had hung in the air prior to character creation.


    ¡°Veel-ix. Or is it vuhl-ix?¡± Victor said, pronouncing it two different ways. ¡°What do you guys think it means?¡±


    ¡°No idea. The dungeon name maybe?¡± I suggested. ¡°Or designation? Anyway, look.¡± I pointed at the ground going left, where the dust on the floor laid in more of a swishing pattern than the dust on the right. ¡°She went this way. The other passage hasn¡¯t been disturbed in some time.¡±


    The five us advanced cautiously down the passage, listening for sounds of battle. But it was creepy and silent. A sudden breeze whipped across the torches, flickering the shadows of the group, and Paige jumped. We all snickered as she laid a hand to her heart and exhaled deeply, giggling along with us after a moment.


    ¡°Just a little breeze,¡± she said sheepishly.


    That was when Daniel began to scream. He fell his knees, eyes wild, stabbing wildly with his parrying dagger just above his shoulder where gaping, ragged tears materialized at the base of his neck, bloody flesh vanishing as it peeled away from his skin.


    ¡°Get it off! Get it off!¡± he shouted, flailing at his side and neck.


    ¡°Get what off?¡± My pulse spiked as I lurched over to him, extending a glowing hand toward his neck with my heal spell at the ready, but some invisible maw gnashed at my gauntlet before I cast it, silently bloodying my fingers inside and knocking a tiny bit of health off my HUD display. I yanked my fist back with a hiss, raising my shield against a foe we could neither see nor hear.


    To my three other companions credit, each of them reacted as quickly as I had, though their actions differed: Victor closed his eyes and raised two fingers amid a swirling vortex of wind and then pointed to the ground in front of him, where a small, whirling water elemental condensed out of thin air, while Trees uttered a word that darkened all of our skin and hardened it into a rippling, bark-colored surface while raising his cudgel warily. The bark-skin was weird, but not uncomfortable or inconvenient, and it didn¡¯t appear to limit my movement. Meanwhile, Paige raised her hand over her head and released a flash that left a glowing orb of bright, white light hanging in midair and cast our battle into starkly illuminated relief.


    With Paige¡¯s spell active, all of us could now see the matte-black shadow-thing that had its claws sunk deep into Daniel¡¯s flank and its fangs in his neck, seemingly ignoring his armor¡ªat least partially. It ripped another mouthful of flesh off while he screamed louder, ducking his clumsy stabs, and hissed at the shimmering light orb, although no sound came from its mouth. I spotted another of the creeping creatures, which looked like something between a wolf and a lizard but so black that it seemed to absorb the light around us, sneaking up behind Victor, who sent his elemental rushing into battle with the thing on Daniel¡¯s shoulder while Trees circled, trying to find an opening to club it that wouldn¡¯t hurt the warrior too. I lashed out with a quick smite, knocking the shadow-beast behind Victor flat, and cleaved deeply into its neck while it was stunned. My blade sank in halfway, though the neck felt less solid than I thought it should. Then the beast yanked free of my blade and rolled away, hissing silently at me and leaking weird purple energy while my HUD finally identified it:


    Shadewolf


    LVL: 3


    ???


    I slid between the shadewolf and Victor, raising my shield, and glanced back to make sure Daniel wasn¡¯t dead. He was rapidly healing, thanks to a focused golden beam that Paige had aimed at him, and he¡¯d risen to one knee and wedged his dagger under the chin of the shadewolf on his shoulder, keeping it¡¯s teeth at bay and skewering it through the jaw while it¡¯s feet frantically raked his side. He was breathing hard through his nose, but determination had replaced panic in his eyes. The sheer silence of these shadewolves was eerie. Now that Daniel had stopped screaming, no noise came from our battle except the creak of our mail and leather and the panting and groans that emerged from the mouths of my comrades. Striking the wolves caused neither howls of pain nor thuds of contact.


    When my wolf lunged, I bashed it with my shield and kicked it, finishing it off with a quick downward thrust, while Victor¡¯s little elemental smashed the head of the remaining wolf further down onto Daniel¡¯s dagger and finished the battle. The two wolves dissolved into purple energy traces, leaving behind a few small beads of something that identified as Shadowplasm, and I breathed a loud sigh of relief as I tucked them into my belt pouch. It was good to know that these things could be killed with our weapons. The post battle info scrolled across my HUD:


    Killed: Shade Wolves (2). XP +24.


    Dropped: Shadowplasm (2).


    As Paige topped the group off and Victor dismissed his elemental, our wood-skin faded away, and Daniel barked a shuddering peal of laughter that rang throughout the tunnel.


    Trees cocked his head. ¡°How can you laugh when you just had your neck torn apart?¡±If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.


    ¡°It didn¡¯t stick,¡± Daniel replied. ¡°Man, this game is intense. That was some real shit.¡±


    ¡°Can you keep that light spell active?¡± I asked Paige. ¡°It seems to reveal the creatures here.¡±


    She nodded. ¡°It¡¯s a duration-based spell that follows me. I just didn¡¯t think we¡¯d need it because of the torches.¡±


    ¡°Did you guys notice we got less XP for those than we got for killing goblins or orcs?¡± Daniel asked. ¡°I wonder why¡­¡±


    ¡°There¡¯s five of us fighting together,¡± Victor said. ¡°Looks like we split the XP. Dumb. No group bonus?¡±


    ¡°Just survival,¡± Paige said.


    Victor opened his mouth, looked thoughtful, and then closed it.


    I didn¡¯t like the idea of Haley, all alone, fighting monsters she couldn¡¯t see, and I hastened my steps and led the group deeper. The next time the torches flickered, we saw the shadewolves approaching and made short work of them, with Victor hurling firebolts over the head of his elemental and Trees tossing out lightning from his fingertips while Daniel and I held them back.


    ¡°Why are your spells different from the ones Haley had?¡± I asked Victor. ¡°I didn¡¯t get a choice of skills.¡±


    ¡°Are you sure?¡± He scratched his bulbous nose. ¡°When you confirmed your class selection you didn¡¯t have focus choices? I chose Conjurer.¡±


    I was stunned. I remembered the confirmation screen, but had I been too hasty to notice a specialty selection there? Had I accidentally picked the default? The others nodded along with Victor.


    ¡°Elemental,¡± Trees said.


    ¡°Dervish,¡± Daniel added.


    ¡°Mender.¡± Paige cocked her head at me. ¡°If you didn¡¯t choose your specialty, what did you end up with?¡±


    ¡°Uh¡­ I have no idea. How do I know?¡±


    Paige tapped the side of her head a few times, her HUD flickering. ¡°Just check your character screen. Like this.¡±


    ¡°What?¡± I raised my hand to the left side of my head and tentatively tapped my temple just like Paige had done. My HUD flickered, and suddenly I was looking at my own, full character readout.


    Name:            Michael Peters


    Class:            Paladin [Templar]


    Level: 1


    XP:      299


    Str:      15


    Agil:    10


    Spi:     15


    Vit:      20


    Damage   8.1


    Armor   T1 / 70%


    LIFE:   200


    MANA:           30


    (%) Physical Bonus: 7.5


    (%) Ranged Bonus: 3


    (%) Magic Bonus:    3


    HP Regen (tick):       10


    Mana Regen (tick):   1.5


    SKILLS


    Light Healing (10mp): Heal up to 30HP. Mends one damaged limb outside of combat.


    Smite (5mp): Stun an enemy for up to 3 seconds with holy fury and deal magical damage that scales with Spirit. Harms undead for 3x damage.


    SKILLS (PASSIVE)


    Basic Weapon Skill: Clubs, daggers, staffs


    Martial Weapon Skill: Swords, axes, polearms, spears, maces


    So I was a Templar specialty, whatever that meant. It sounded more defensive than offensive, which I guess was fine for my purposes, but it annoyed me that I¡¯d stumbled into it instead of choosing it. I tapped experimentally at my HUD again and saw a full summary of my carried possessions and kill tracker.


    INVENTORY


    Crude Iron Short Sword


    Steel Shield


    Steel Helmet


    Steel Gauntlets


    Steel Breastplate


    Steel Greaves


    Steel Boots


    Shadowplasm (2)


    KILL TRACKER


    Goblin            8


    Orc                  3


    Shade Wolf   2


    After my eyes unfocused from browsing the lists, the HUD returned to its original health readout and identifier bead.


    ¡°You can also tap twice to turn it off and twice more to turn it back on,¡± Paige added. ¡°This was all etched into the wall in the first tutorial room, above the vines. How did you miss it?¡±


    I blinked. How had I missed all this? I must have been so wrapped up in my search for my sister that I hadn¡¯t inspected my environment enough. I was disappointed in myself. Letting my emotions get away from me over Brianna was costing me valuable information. I always did that¡ªit needed to stop if I was going to survive long enough to find her.


    ¡°Don¡¯t sweat it, man,¡± Daniel said. ¡°I missed the small print too, I guess.¡±


    I shook my head. ¡°It¡¯s okay. Thanks, Paige. But we still need to focus and find Haley.¡±


    ¡°And my rod,¡± Victor added grumpily.


    ¡°Just let me do the talking when we get there.¡±


    He harrumphed but didn¡¯t reply, which I took as assent, and we continued until the passage opened up into an enormous, two level room with ramps veering down to the second floor. I spotted movement beneath us in the gloom, but no monsters were in our immediate vicinity, and they did seem to have some kind of aggro radius if they weren¡¯t looking directly at us.


    ¡°Could she really have gone this far on her own?¡± Trees wondered. ¡°Those shade wolves would be nasty solo, and invisible to Haley¡­¡±


    No one replied. I¡¯d wondered the same thing, but we hadn¡¯t seen a body. I didn¡¯t think a player¡¯s corpse would really fade so quickly without a trace, and more than that, I did believe in Haley¡¯s fighting prowess, having seen her strategically battle first-hand. We hadn¡¯t heard the sound of battle, but then again, the wolves were completely silent¡­


    A flash of light came from below, and I watched as nine arcane missiles pulverized a lone shadewolf into sickly purple energy on the bottom floor.


    ¡°Haley!¡± I called.


    A familiar, freckled face emerged as Haley stepped out from beneath the ledge and peered up at us, Elohim Rod pointed in our direction. Her expression was sullen, and her eyes glowed with blue light. ¡°Get lost,¡± she said. ¡°I¡¯m doing fine on my own.¡±


    ¡°I bet you are, with that rod you stole,¡± Victor grumbled from behind me.


    ¡°Is that jerky douchebag up there with you?¡± Haley demanded. ¡°Then you can extra get lost.¡±


    I elbowed Victor in the ribs before he could respond. He coughed and glared at me but kept his mouth shut.


    ¡°Haley, you aren¡¯t being fair,¡± I told her. ¡°Can we just talk about this? You don¡¯t need to run off by yourself.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t have anything talk about. Why would I ally with people who don¡¯t believe in me?¡± She glanced over her shoulder while another shadewolf wandered close enough to notice her, and casually destroyed it with another arcane missile triple-cast.


    ¡°Why are you making this all about you?¡± Paige¡¯s question had such a bite to it that I blinked at her in surprise. ¡°Why are you overreacting? It¡¯s just a weapon, Haley. Why wouldn¡¯t you want a healer or a tank backing you up? You¡¯re risking real death here for the sake of¡­ what? Pride? Don¡¯t do that. Everyone needs help sometimes. Everyone. I don¡¯t know you, but I sure don¡¯t want you to die for something stupid.¡±


    I stared at Paige for a long moment¡ªthe pretty, soft-spoken girl¡¯s words had been filled with such sudden passion and conviction that they¡¯d startled me. I wondered what had happened to her to make her react like that.


    Haley¡¯s face twitched, and she sniffed and looked away, rattling the rod in her hand. ¡°You know¡­ My whole life. My whole fucking life, it¡¯s been a stupid fucking uphill battle to prove myself. To my parents. To my teachers. And somehow I¡¯m still never quite good enough. Troy got all the praise. Troy got all the accomplishments. Troy always did everything better than me.¡±


    ¡°Troy?¡± Paige asked.


    ¡°My fucking older brother,¡± Paige muttered, blasting away another shadewolf almost casually. ¡°Always smarter. Always more successful at everything. Always better. My parents never think I¡¯ll be as good as Troy, and they¡¯re always right. But guess what? Mom and dad both wanted boys, and they always expected him to be better. They always supported him more.¡± Another shadewolf bit the dust. ¡°Maybe if people believed in me, I¡¯d be better. Maybe it just sucked to walk into a brand new group and have the same exact experience thrown in my face all over again. So, yeah, it¡¯s an overreaction. And yeah, maybe this is an over-share. But fuck you all. This is a sore point for me. It needed to be said, and I¡¯m not playing with people who don¡¯t think I¡¯m good enough.¡±


    ¡°Whoa, dude¡­¡± Daniel murmured. ¡°Heavy.¡±


    ¡°We don¡¯t doubt your abilities,¡± Trees said. ¡°Not all of us.¡±


    ¡°You are good enough, Haley,¡± Paige said.


    ¡°I believe in you,¡± I told her. ¡°I¡¯ve seen you fight.¡±


    ¡°Prove it,¡± Victor said.


    We all turned to stare at him. My head moved so fast it felt like my neck had whiplash.


    ¡°Wait, what?¡± I asked.


    ¡°Prove it,¡± he repeated. ¡°Duel me here and now. Neither of us gets the rod during the duel. Personally, I expect you to be all talk and no game, but I think that about most people. So come at me and prove it. If you can take me to 50% before I take you to 50%, I¡¯ll give you my rod. I want the better player to have it.¡±


    ¡°This is a terrible idea,¡± Paige said.


    ¡°In the middle of the dungeon?¡± Trees asked.


    ¡°Sure,¡± Victor said. ¡°These wolves are pansies. We¡¯ve been killing them with ease now that we can see ¡®em. You guys can watch our backs. And I just care about being efficient. So yeah, maybe I can be an asshole. But if she thinks she¡¯s so fucking great, let¡¯s see her put her money where her mouth is. I¡¯m willing to put my rod on the line. I¡¯m confident in my skills.¡±


    ¡°This is dumb,¡± I protested. ¡°We don¡¯t have to do this¡­ we definitely don¡¯t have to do this here.¡±


    ¡°I accept,¡± Haley said. She obliterated another shadewolf and walked up the ramp to the ledge where we were all standing. Her blue-glowing eyes dimmed back to regular blue as whatever spell she had active faded. Then she held the Elohim Rod out to Paige and unslung her maple staff from her back. ¡°Here. Give it to the winner.¡±


    But then I noticed something new in my HUD¡ªHaley was level 2! ¡°Uh, you leveled up, Haley,¡± I said. ¡°How can this be a fair duel? Victor is still level 1.¡±


    She shrugged. ¡°Haven¡¯t spent any points yet. None of my stats changed.¡±


    ¡°We get points to spend on level up?¡± Daniel asked. ¡°Cool.¡±


    Paige accepted the rod with a frown. ¡°I still think this is an awful idea.¡±


    I scanned both her and Victor and saw that Haley was right. Now that Paige held the spirit-enhancing rod, Haley¡¯s HP and mana matched Victor¡¯s exactly.


    ¡°It¡¯s fine,¡± Victor said, dusting off his shoulder and hefting his own maple staff. ¡°You ready?¡±


    The rest of us drew back while the two combatants squared off. Victor¡¯s face was neutral, while Haley¡¯s brows were drawn down in anger, but both of them looked determined to win. I kept glancing over my shoulder, looking for danger, but fortunately most of the room¡¯s shadow monsters seemed to be patrolling down in the pit area where Haley had been. I didn¡¯t like this stupid duel any more than Paige did, but I could tell I wouldn¡¯t be able to stop them, either.


    ¡°Ready,¡± Haley said sharply.


    Both mages spun into action: Haley hurled a crackling frost bolt at Victor and he whipped out his hand and tossed a hissing bolt of fire back at her. The two projectiles crashed together in a startling flash that made me briefly shield my eyes, but neither one of the players had waited for their bolt to land. Haley charged through the steam of the evaporating missiles, her staff spinning toward Victor¡¯s head, while he coaxed his water elemental pet out of the ground with a quick gesture, never taking his eyes off his opponent. Victor ducked her swing at the last minute with more agility than I would have expected and swiped her feet out from under her with his own staff.


    Daniel audibly sucked in a breath as the red-haired girl crashed down hard, taking the brunt of the fall on her elbow, and she winced in pain and scrambled back while kicking at the little water elemental that charged her with its tiny, hammer-like fists windmilling. Despite her retreat, three purple bursts fired off rat-tat-tat from her hand and slammed into Victor¡¯s bulk. She¡¯d been too close for him to have a chance to dodge them, and each one thudded into him with audible force, battering him and knocking him off his feet as well. He landed with a groaning crash but managed to hang onto his staff and roll to his side. They¡¯d both lost only a few health points, but neither of them had much mana left.


    Now the water elemental reached Haley, though, dodging around her kicks, and he began to batter the girl in the face just like he¡¯d been doing to the shade wolves. The small humanoid¡¯s fists were only about the size of a toddler¡¯s, but the magic that formed him made them as hard as ice and heavy as stone. Each blow that landed snapped her face to the side, rattled her jaw, and knocked 5-10 HP off.


    ¡°I don¡¯t like this¡­¡± Paige murmured, her eyes downcast. Trees grumbled something under his breath that sounded like agreement.


    Haley rolled away from the elemental, onto her knees at the edge of the ledge, and pulverized him with another three arcane pulses. Under the sustained damage of a triple arcane bolt, the elemental lost cohesion (along with all of his HP) and shuddered into a formless puddle. She touched her split, bleeding lip, and I saw the golden flash of Mend spark and heal her for a small amount. Victor, however, had not remained idle while Haley fought his pet. As Haley healed her lip, he released a second fire bolt at her. She desperately threw herself backwards, tumbling off the ledge and landing with the unmistakable snap of a broken bone in the pit below. Victor leapt down after her without hesitation, his staff raised over his head to strike, and the rest of us rushed to the precipice as Haley choked back a pained scream.


    The ten-foot fall had left Haley with two inches of white bone jutting out of a ragged gash above her right ankle, and my HUD read her at 53/100 HP. Despite the wound, she gritted her teeth and raised her staff in time to connect with Victor¡¯s brutal downward swing, and wood met wood in a loud, shuddering crack.


    ¡°Victor, enough!¡± I shouted. The bulky man was at 72/100 HP and breathing hard, but he didn¡¯t stop his assault. He swung again and again, and Haley blocked each blow with grim determination, twisting her staff to the left and right to meet Victor¡¯s at every angle. Two shade wolves, attracted by the players that were now inside of their aggro radius, began to circle closer to the duelists, and Daniel and I both leapt into the pit to intercept them while Paige charged down the ramp. Trees stayed on the precipice and channeled streams of lightning at each wolf. The lightning flashes illuminated the savage staff battle in eerie shades of blue, casting strange shadows over their faces.


    Haley managed to deflect one of Victor¡¯s blows and wallop him in the side of his head in a single motion, smacking a few more HP off his total, and then he got really angry. As Daniel and I put down our wolves and Paige raised and dropped glowing hands toward Haley half a dozen times with a sick expression on her face, Victor stomped hard on Haley¡¯s broken ankle and ground his heel down. Haley cried out in pain and dropped her guard for a moment, and Victor brutally struck her across the face with the gnarled end of his rod, knocking a tooth out of her mouth and throwing her sideways. Her health dropped to 38/100 and he stepped back as she crumpled onto the ground, choking sobs through gritted teeth.


    I walked up to Victor and knocked him off his feet with a shield bash that cracked his temple and dropped him another 10 HP. ¡°What the fuck, Victor?¡±


    He glared up at me as blood seeped down his face. ¡°I win.¡±


    ¡°Yeah, good fucking job, asshole. Did you have to beat the shit out of her?¡± I was livid. Dueling was stupid enough, but the savagery I¡¯d watched him beat Haley with made me want to drive the sharp point of my blade right through his fat, ugly face. It took every ounce of will not to do it. I stood over him shaking, blade bared, and I didn¡¯t trust myself to move. Dueling was one thing, but this¡­ this made my blood boil.


    ¡°Can I heal them now?¡± Paige pleaded.


    ¡°Give him the rod,¡± Haley croaked. She spit blood onto the ground and rolled to a seated position, tonguing her missing tooth while she touched her mouth. Her fingers came away red, and she stared at the blood dispassionately.


    ¡°What?¡± Paige asked.


    ¡°Give him the fucking rod,¡± she said again. ¡°I lost.¡±


    ¡°Haley¡­¡± I began. Then I shook my head. ¡°Are you fucking kidding me? This guy just beat you within an inch of your life.¡±


    ¡°I agreed to fight him.¡± She met my eyes, sniffed hard, and shook her head, rubbing the bloodied fingertips off on her robe. ¡°You think I never rough-housed with my brothers? You think I¡¯ve never broken a bone before? Don¡¯t patronize me, Michael.¡±


    Daniel and Trees were silent. Paige quietly walked over to Victor and handed him the Elohim Rod. He accepted it and climbed to his feet while grinning at me through twin streams of drying blood that forked over his brow and leaked down both sides of his misshapen head.


    I turned away from him, trying to get a handle on my rage. Deep breaths, Michael. Deep breaths.


    ¡°Are you going to fix me up or just stand there, Paige?¡± Haley asked sharply.


    Paige blushed and immediately directed her healing beam at Haley. Haley¡¯s wounds faded away, her ankle mended, and her HP climbed back up to full. Even her missing tooth reappeared. She gathered herself off the ground and stood cradling her staff and testing her mended ankle, refusing to look at any of us. Trees climbed down to stand beside Paige.


    ¡°This was so fucked up,¡± I muttered. ¡°You suck, Victor.¡±


    ¡°I play to win,¡± he said defiantly. ¡°You think this is the last time you¡¯re gonna watch your girlfriend get the shit kicked out of her in this game? You think the mobs are going to go easy on your bitch of a sister, if she¡¯s even still alive? I have news for you, you weak-kneed, white knight cocksucker: this place isn¡¯t playing around. We¡¯re getting hurt. For real. These are real combat situations.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s still just a game,¡± I replied, my voice and fist shaking. I quivered with every bit of restraint I could muster to avoid laying into him with my sword. ¡°A real one, yeah, but¡­ Jesus, dude, do you have to be such a cutthroat shitbag?¡±


    The torches all around us began to flicker as Victor barked a sarcastic laugh. ¡°Yeah. You know why? This isn¡¯t just a game. Whatever this place really is, we¡¯re at war. You heard the golden-skinned dude. And these girls?¡± He pointed at Paige and Haley, and after a moment¡¯s hesitation indicated Trees too. ¡°They¡¯re soldiers, right along with the rest of us. Soldiers die. Soldiers get hurt. Soldiers need to fall in line, and sometimes they need the shit kicked out of them to save their lives. Your little girlfriend gets it. Why don¡¯t you?¡±


    ¡°You talk a whole fucking lot,¡± Haley spat, her eyes suddenly blazing. ¡°Can we just go back, now? He beat me. Whatever. But that doesn¡¯t mean I need to listen to him ramble.¡±


    ¡°Guys?¡± Daniel asked.


    ¡°Yeah, we can go back,¡± I muttered, forcing my rage down. He¡¯s a troll. I¡¯m not going to pound this creep into the ground. I¡¯m not. I¡¯m not. I could, but it wouldn¡¯t be helpful. ¡°I hope your rod was worth it, Victor.¡±


    Paige reluctantly healed Victor too, and he wiped the blood off his face with his sleeve and grinned at Haley.


    The torches flickered harder, and the breeze coming from the tunnels picked up enough speed to make a rushing, whistling noise all around us.


    ¡°Hey, guys¡­¡± Daniel repeated. He pointed to the center of the pit, eyes wide.


    I turned around and sucked in a sharp breath, my rage at Victor momentarily forgotten. A quickly growing mass of darkness simmered and bubbled in the middle of the wide, open space, illuminated by Paige¡¯s light spell in the same matte black coloring as the shade wolves. All of the silent shade wolves were running toward it and leaping into the mass, and it absorbed each of them as they came, growing larger and gnarlier each time. Thick, writhing tentacles began to extend from the creature, and they strained eagerly to reach us. Everyone took two steps back.


    ¡°Time to go,¡± I muttered.


    ¡°Problem!¡± Trees called. He pointed to a dark, solid wall of semi-opaque film that had just formed to block off the ramp, blending seamlessly with the ten foot wall around us. He poked it to illustrate that it was solid and frowned unhappily.


    With the exit walled off, I realized we must have triggered some kind of boss fight. We all turned back to face the blob that had grown to be almost six feet in diameter and four feet high. Paige raised her staff and looked at me nervously while Victor cursed. Haley¡¯s jaw tightened. Daniel drew his weapons again, and Trees hastily cast bark-skin on the group.


    Two huge, glowing eyes opened at the center of the black, squirming mass, and a ragged gash suddenly split it at the base and revealed two sets of sharp, matte-black teeth. It released a bone-chilling roar that made my heart leap into my throat as it snapped and waggled the thickening tentacles that were still sprouting all over its body. Apparently this horrifying creature wasn¡¯t as silent as the wolves that fed it.


    ¡°What do we do now?¡± Paige whispered hoarsely.


    I raised my shield and stepped forward. ¡°We fight it.¡±

 Chapter 12

    I¡¯ve had some genuinely exhilarating gaming moments before, like the time my WoW guild took down Illidan Stormrage on our first attempt with just a sliver of us left standing, fighting to the bitter end, or the first time I bumped into a Deathclaw in Fallout 3. The opening of Skyrim, despite how agonizingly long and boring it¡¯s gotten over the years as I re-rolled characters again and again, had my heart pounding the first time as Alduin roared his flaming screams into my headset, and I¡¯m not sure anything has ever made me as twitchy as trying to run through the spider-centaur infested caverns of the Ruins of Kunark to get to the level 20 leveling zone while trying desperately not to get pinned, killed, and corpse-camped by level 40 nasties with several months worth of gear on the line.


    That was all kid stuff compared to the situation I now found myself in.


    The oppressive gloom of the dungeon crowded in on the edges of my vision while my heart pounded at the knowledge that I was actually, physically trapped in a stone pit with a shrieking, nightmare hell-beast. I could feel the dank air currents twist around me in response to the waving motions of the boss¡¯s oily, shuddering tentacles, carrying rank scents of tar and sulfur that sent my nose twitching in disgust. All of the other smells of the dungeon, dust and stone and dry old bones and cracked leather and cold, ancient slime were so thick that I could nearly taste them, and I licked my cracked lips and blinked against the ill wind that even still howled around us while the last of the shade wolves dove into their pit-boss master. My HUD finally identified the creature as it completed it¡¯s grotesque accumulation:


    Shadow Horror


    LVL: 6* | Boss


    ???


    The weight of my shield hung heavy on my muscled forearm. The soft padding of my plate armor¡¯s interior rested against my sweat-soaked bark-textured skin, and the leather of my crude sword¡¯s pommel twisted easily in my hand as I confirmed my grip. I¡¯d told Victor it was just a game, and it was a game¡ªobviously¡ªbut there was a lot of truth in his words. This was the realest game I¡¯d ever played, real beyond my wildest imagining of the possible. However we¡¯d arrived, wherever this was, I needed to take this seriously and become better¡ªor else I¡¯d wind up as food for the slavering, shrieking horror in front of me, and if not this one, then the next. My sister needed me, but this group needed me too.


    ¡°Save your mana!¡± I called out as I began to stalk forward. ¡°Victor, Haley, rotate cast and meditate while we figure out how to fight this thing once I get its attention! Paige, you¡¯re on heals. Trees, off-heal. Don¡¯t dump mana on lightning yet. Daniel, with me, but for god¡¯s sake be careful!¡±


    Gamer instincts kicked in, and everyone obeyed their tank. Daniel stepped in to flank me as we advanced slowly, and Victor summoned his water elemental and immediately sat to meditate while Haley held her arcane missiles at the ready. Paige and Trees stood by, weapons ready. We needed to probe the Shadow Horror a bit before unleashing, especially with how little mana everyone had at this level, since we¡¯d already seen these shadow things behave in unpredictable ways.


    The horror now began to move, oozing eagerly toward us in a slow roll while Daniel and I picked up speed, and I crashed into it with my shield and lopped off a tentacle as I summoned my golden smite bolt into the middle of it. The matte darkness cut easily, like soft flesh, and the tentacle writhed by itself, flopping around on the ground despite the separation. The glowing eyes winced and the mouth contorted into a grimace as my bolt crashed into the middle of its¡ªbody? Head?¡ªbut if it was stunned, I saw no sign of it. My shield bash had done little, only moving its body around, and several tentacles snapped toward me while Daniel struck again and again with his saber, severing more of them. The movements of his arms almost seemed to blur, and I realized he had to be using a skill of some kind.


    As several of the tentacles latched onto my armor, sinking slightly beneath the surface of it just like the jaws of the shade wolves and burning despite my bark-protected skin, I called out: ¡°Mages, attack! See if it¡¯s vulnerable to anything.¡±


    Victor¡¯s little elemental was already charging in to hammer at the tentacles, and Haley¡¯s arcane missiles thumped into the roiling surface one after another, prompting hisses from the creature that sort of sounded painful, though it was hard to tell. When Victor lobbed a firebolt, though, it provoked an immediate reaction: at the point of impact, the beast¡¯s skin caught flame, and it released my limbs and twisted away while it beat at the fire, though it also snapped at Daniel and he narrowly avoided losing a limb to the wicked fangs.


    ¡°Try ice too, Haley!¡± I shouted.


    ¡°Got it!¡±


    Haley¡¯s ice bolt slammed into it, chilling its side¡ªit didn¡¯t appear to like being frozen much, but Victor¡¯s spell had had a much more dramatic effect.


    ¡°More fire, whoever has it!¡± I ordered, bashing away a tentacle from my face while slashing at the thing¡¯s body. My sword sank in and came out again, and I wasn¡¯t actually sure if I had hurt it.


    ¡°Good thing I¡¯ve got this rod,¡± Victor remarked, lobbing another fiery missile at the shrieking horror. Trees gestured over his wooden club and the shillelagh erupted into flame, like a torch but fiercer, and he held it at the ready.


    Meanwhile Daniel and I had continued striking at the acidic, burning tentacles instead of cutting the body uselessly, lopping them off one after the other and paring the horror down like an oversized bush. The ground was littered with burning, writhing masses of darkness, and the thrashing creature¡¯s toothy snaps were always a moment too slow for our reflexes. I¡¯d lost less than 10% of my health and Daniel was in similar condition¡ªPaige hadn¡¯t broken a sweat, and the boss was shrieking and burning and dying. This was all very encouraging, but it also didn¡¯t feel right.


    ¡°Why is this so easy?¡± I muttered. ¡°Isn¡¯t this supposed to be a boss?¡±


    As if on cue¡ªor maybe because the thing was looking really ragged¡ªthe horror suddenly screamed, drew into itself, and barrel rolled backward half a dozen steps. Daniel and I drew up in surprise, and Haley and Victor both did the sensible thing and immediately dropped to meditate. Then the Shadow Horror flexed and separated¡­ into four smaller shadow horrors, each with a horrifying set of teeth. Each of them broke off toward a different player, skittering quickly in different directions.


    As Daniel groaned and leapt, rolling to confront the one beelining for the mages, Haley quipped: ¡°You just had to say something, didn¡¯t you?¡±


    ¡°Shut up and fight!¡± Victor growled, lurching back up and focusing his magic on the one that had slid past us. I managed to intercept another and suddenly I was facing two of the growling little creatures that I had no real idea how I was supposed to fight. The tentacles were smaller and finer on the mini-horrors, as I thought of them, and while I struck them again and again with my blade, they just kept savagely attacking. At least now my hacks seemed to do something, judging by the purple energy flowing off of them with each strike, just like the wolves had done. One bounced off the ground and clamped his razor-sharp fangs around my sword arm, and I roared in pain and shook my hand while I kicked the other one hard and sent it rolling back. There was no time to watch the others as I whacked my little arm attachment again and again with my shield, trying to shake him off, and finally spent another smite to knock him back down to the ground. The other one leapt onto my back now, acid tentacles snaking and burning around my neck while he chewed painfully at my back, but I didn¡¯t turn away from the one I¡¯d already stunned. Instead I followed him down, cutting savagely, and felt a burst of satisfaction when the little asshole finally shuddered and dissipated.


    Then I stabbed back at the one behind me, choking me and sliding burning tendrils around my neck, and used my sword to pry him off and fling him into the nearby wall. As he smacked into the weathered stone, dust shook off the cracks, and he split yet again into two smaller horrors, the size of tiny dogs. ¡°Fucking christ,¡± I growled, taking a quick glance around. Sure enough, the rest had all split as well, and the group now faced six more little horrors, smaller than the last. They were about the size of Victor¡¯s elemental now, which had been wrestling with one of them until it finally succumbed to the gnashing teeth.


    ¡°You need to focus fire! Assist Victor!¡± I yelled, but everyone was so busy staying alive I wasn¡¯t sure they heard me.


    My group hadn¡¯t been doing as well as I had¡ªthe acid was painful and the teeth cut deep even with plate armor. I was at 50% health and Daniel was as well, only because Paige had focused healing beams on him, but Victor and Haley were standing back to back trying to keep their horrors at bay with fire and ice, both marred by acid burns, and Trees struggled at Paige¡¯s side to keep a nasty, snapping beast that had rolled off Daniel away from her with his flaming cudgel, his left arm busily bathing himself in a green nimbus of healing energy to counteract the savage bites on his legs.


    Desperately wishing I had some kind of AoE taunt, I ignored the two horrors rolling toward me and rushed to help my mages.


    ¡°Low on mana!¡± Paige screamed, splitting her healing beam across both hands to help Victor and Daniel recover from staggering bites that sank into them as the agile little horrors flopped about. ¡°Out of mana!¡± cried Trees.


    I yanked a flaming, tentacled baby horror off Victor and cut it in half while it tried to eat my hand, and Daniel slew another, whirling in a haze of purple energy while the creatures snapped and growled at him, tentacles lashing. I glanced around the battlefield in a panic, trying to decide what to do next. I should have known better than to think that a level 6 boss monster would be easy for a party of level 1 characters. Things were getting dire: Daniel was now down to 40% and so was Victor, both bleeding and smoking from their wounds, and Hailey wasn¡¯t much better. Paige was the only one without any damage, and Trees, despite his valiant battle with the flaming cudgel, had taken some bad wounds and was sitting uneasily at 30% health¡ªleather was not very effective against those shadow teeth, and acid burned bark almost as easily as flesh.If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    ¡°Heal Trees!¡± I ordered Paige, laid a quick healing hand on Victor, and then lunged toward the one fighting the healers. But Paige¡¯s golden beam cut off suddenly, and her face turned grey as she yelled, ¡°Out of mana!¡± She raised her staff and tried to wail on the little black blob assaulting Trees, which had tentacles latched onto both his legs and teeth hungrily ripping at his bark. He was having trouble hitting it properly from that angle, and as it tore another bloody chunk out of his thigh, he screamed in pain and dropped to 23%. Suddenly, each of the little black blobs shrieked in delight and sped toward Trees.


    ¡°No!¡± I cried, chasing after the three that peeled away from me and the mages. Daniel lurched into action and managed to pin his to the ground with a saber through the middle. He repeatedly stabbed at it with his parrying dagger, growling at the burning tentacles whipping his face. But the other three slammed into Trees from behind while Paige hopped back, horrified. Trees hadn¡¯t seen them coming and fell to the ground beneath this new assault, and the four horrors ripped his bark-covered body to shreds like a pack of hungry piranhas gobbling down hunks of bloody flesh, while covering him from head to toe in their greedy, sucking tendrils.


    I reached Trees just as Paige collected herself enough to step in and start swinging her staff, and I dropped to my knees and lashed out with my sword while sticking my hand into the churning center to use my last 10 mana trying to keep Trees alive, despite the burning and gnashing I suffered. My heal landed, popping Trees back up to 30%, but it wasn¡¯t enough to stop their frenzy now that they were close to dropping him. Haley and Victor dumped their mana, blasting one of the creatures to smithereens in a single moment, and Paige and I beat another one into purple remnants with our weapons, but not before the remaining two feeding creatures flayed the screaming druid to 20%, 12%, 3%, and finally -7% before bursting away from him in different directions, seemingly energized by their meal.


    Paige collapsed onto the shredded, dying body of Trees, ashen-faced, trying to staunch wounds over vital organs with her robe and succeeding only in staining it with a deep, spreading crimson. Her eyes were very wide as she muttered, ¡°Stay with us, stay with us, please Trees¡­¡±, but I knew even as Trees ticked down another 1% from blood loss that the only possible way to save him was to finish the battle and get some mana back for either me or Paige. Daniel¡¯s horror had escaped his saber, finally, and danced with him now on the ground while he tried to defend himself with the dagger.


    ¡°For fuck¡¯s sake, assist me!¡± I shouted, racing to help Daniel. Haley pumped another three missiles into the little creature beside him and between that and my sword blow we finished it. The other two horrors split targets, one leaping at Victor and one at me. Victor lit his on fire and whacked at it while it tried to eat his leg, and I skewered mine mid-leap, bashed it against my shield, and flung it onto the ground where Daniel sliced through it with his saber and dissipated it into purple energy. All four of us attacked Victor¡¯s horror with whatever abilities remained to us, and we pounded it into submission, slaying it with Victor at only 4% health remaining and leaning heavily on his staff to keep himself standing. Scrolling across my HUD came a congratulatory message, as the swirling purple energy coalesced into a scattering of shadowplasm beads:


    Killed: Shadow Horror. XP +200.


    Dropped: Shadowplasm (20).


    Congratulations on reaching Level 2, Michael Peters! You have 5 new points to assign to your statistics.


    Daniel was at 25%, I was at 20%, and Haley was at 35%. We¡¯d all barely survived, and now that the battle was over, our health and mana began to tick up agonizingly slowly. Paige was hunched over Trees¡¯ smoking body, rocking him gently, and a whining, desperate sound came from his savaged throat while the fingers of his left hand twitched weakly. I too fell to my knees beside him, trying to assess the damage. It looked hopeless. If I hadn¡¯t seen what magic could do in this game, I would have thought him beyond recovery, but my mana was regenerating too slowly. His fingers stopped twitching as he sank further, dropping to -9%.


    ¡°Someone heal him!¡± Haley cried helplessly.


    ¡°Don¡¯t you think I would if I could?¡± Paige snapped. She scrunched her eyes closed and held her hands tightly wrapped around his dying body, gathering him up in the hem of her robes. ¡°Heal, heal, fucking heal beam, god damn it! I have 6 mana and need 10 to cast it.¡± I had the same problem¡ªonly 3 mana, and ticking up at a measly 1.5 every six seconds. I kneeled and held Trees¡¯ cold right hand, listening as his gasps came slower and slower. The others gathered silently around us. Paige began to cry.


    Then he took one final gasping, rattling wheeze in, exhaled it as blood flowed down the grooves in his rough, bark-textured chin, and did not take another. My identifier bead updated:


    Trees


    LVL 1 Druid


    [Dead]


    We all bowed our heads while Paige continued to cry. Approximately 12 seconds after Trees died, Paige¡¯s hands erupted into golden light and she bathed his body in it from head to toe, still sobbing, but nothing changed. His mangled form remained just as it was. When her mana ran out again, she sobbed harder and slammed her fists on his chest.


    I touched her gently on the shoulder. ¡°We have to go,¡± I murmured. The room had cleared of shade wolves and seemed lighter than it had upon our entry, but I didn¡¯t know how long it might be before they returned. We needed to retreat, regroup, and think about everything we¡¯d learned. It was clear that it was too dangerous for us here in our current state, level 2 or not.


    ¡°And not even any loot,¡± Victor grumbled, though his heart wasn¡¯t in it.


    Haley just stared at Trees, unblinking.


    Daniel pointed and spoke quietly, sounding exhausted and dejected. ¡°There¡¯s loot.¡±


    A hidden room had been revealed in the middle of the pit wall, exposing a large, ornate chest amid three statues. Haley, Victor, and Daniel shared a look, while I drew Paige to her feet. She came willingly, her tears drying, though she couldn¡¯t take her eyes off the body at her feet.


    ¡°Let¡¯s get it and go,¡± I said.


    ¡°It seems kind of¡­¡± Daniel said hesitantly.


    ¡°Ghoulish?¡± Paige offered quietly.


    ¡°We need every advantage we can get,¡± Victor said. ¡°Don¡¯t be stupid just because someone died. This is all on her.¡± He pointed at Haley, whose shoulders slumped.


    ¡°Not just her,¡± Paige snapped, with a pointed look at Victor. ¡°We should have left as soon as we found her instead of playing childish dueling games.¡±


    ¡°Victor is right,¡± Haley said quietly, her eyes downcast. ¡°It is my fault.¡±


    ¡°Shut up, all of you!¡± I snapped. ¡°Let¡¯s get the fucking treasure and go! Jesus. We¡¯ll deal with this later.¡±


    ¡°What do we do with his body?¡± asked Daniel. It started fading as he asked the question, leaving behind the druid leathers and the oak cudgel he¡¯d carried. At the center of his loot pile was a small, silver token with his name imprinted on it.


    Paige left the starting gear but slipped the token into her pouch and then set her jaw, forcing the last of her sobs to subside with some effort.


    Victor turned quietly to make for the loot chest, but I stopped him with a sharp word. ¡°No. Let me. It could be trapped, and you¡¯re still injured.¡±


    He nodded and I strode up to it, inspecting it carefully. It was more of a box than a chest, with no visible lock and worked in a dark, brassy metal. It sat on a small, raised platform, coming up to about waist height, and the deep grey stone statues that flanked it on three sides were each quite sinister looking: one was a dragon coiled around a carved pillar with blood-red ruby eyes, one a grim knight with his visor down and a two handed sword lifted over his head with the pommel of his sword jet-black onyx, and a final third an indistinct swirl of shadow and rough detail that made my stomach twist when I looked at it, and it gleamed in places with every hue of the rainbow, though filtered through an oily black sheen.


    If there was a way I could detect traps, I didn¡¯t see it¡ªor any traps. I poked at each of statues and the chest with my sword, and then carefully slid the blade into the crack to pry it open from a few feet away. I lifted the lid and then hopped back. Nothing happened. Not wanting to waste any more time, I walked up and flung it open. There were three pieces of gear inside.


    Steel Longsword [Magic]


    1H Slashing


    8-16 Dmg


    - Strength +5


    Oak Staff [Magic]


    2H Blunt


    4-9 Dmg


    - Spirit +3


    Steel Shield [Magic]


    T1/H


    - Vitality +3


    For a moment I was confused as to how to carry so many weapons without a backpack, but as soon as I touched the sword it shrank to a manageable size in my hand and vanished, materializing on my list of items that suddenly came up once more on my HUD, and different from the others in that it had a small picture of itself there too. Curious, I tried to will my crude iron sword into there, and it vanished also, gaining a small picture of itself beside the listing in my HUD. I pulled them back out by just reaching for them, plucking them out of the air in front of me, and noted that they didn¡¯t return to full size until I willed it.


    I returned to my group to distribute the tiny treasures, taking the shield for myself while handing the sword to Daniel and the staff to Paige. Both accepted. No one objected.


    ¡°Doesn¡¯t seem like much for someone¡¯s life, does it?¡± Daniel remarked sadly. No one replied.


    We all turned to go, and then something stopped me. A cold whisper rolling across my neck that prickled my shoulder blades, like something just out of earshot.


    ¡­Michael¡­Chosen¡­


    I stopped as my group climbed the ramp. Haley glanced back at me. ¡°Michael?¡±


    I stood staring back at the looted chest. Something was wrong. Something just felt wrong.


    ¡°Hang on,¡± I said, crossing back to the exposed room.


    ¡°What are you doing?¡± Victor demanded.


    ¡°Michael!¡± Paige called. ¡°We need to go.¡±


    ¡°Just a second.¡± I knew they were right. There was no reason for me to investigate¡ªwe had our treasure and the body of our friend, and we needed to leave now. But I couldn¡¯t seem to help it as I returned to the room with three statues and inspected each of them again.


    ¡°What is it?¡± Haley asked the others.


    ¡°I don¡¯t like this,¡± Paige said quietly.


    All three statues were mesmerizing and fascinating in their own way. At another time, in another place, I might have spent a while inspecting each of them just out of curiosity at the amazing craftsmanship and lifelike detail of the stone carvings. But now, it was the dark red ruby eyes of the dragon carving that called to me. They seemed to flicker with an inner light, taunting me and daring me to stare into them. I knew this was all wrong, and I just couldn¡¯t stop.


    ¡­yes¡­come¡­


    ¡°I¡¯m getting him,¡± Daniel said.


    All the others were waiting for me at the top of the ramp, but I couldn¡¯t break away. All I could see was the ruby eyes. Red, red, and more red. A thousand miles of crimson light. A shimmering sea of blood on the shores of a strange, dark-hued planet. They filled my eyes and my mind and the whole of my spirit, crowding out conscious thought.


    ¡°What¡¯s wrong with him?¡± I heard someone distantly cry. Pounding footfalls echoed in my ears, as though muffled through layers of cotton.


    My entire being danced to the sweet melody of the red light that suffused my soul. My sword and shield clattered to the ground. I hardly felt them go.


    And then there was nothing.

 Chapter 13

    I floated for an eternity in a sea of crimson light. Formless, shapeless, without care or concern. In time, the edges of conscious thought flickered back to me, nibbling at the perimeter of my deep, endless calm. Distant chanting, soothing in its repetition of words only a little too soft to hear, reverberated through my spirit. The chant pulled at me, irritating me, reminding me of something important half remembered; something I was, somewhere I was needed.


    ¡­this isn¡¯t right¡­


    ¡­Brianna¡­


    ¡­where am I?


    I blinked, and once more had a body, though I still floated amid the yawning void. I gasped for breath and found that I could breathe. I looked down and saw that it was me¡ªthe real me, Michael Peters the regular human and not the paladin¡ªfloating in this void wearing only my favorite pair of blue checkered boxer shorts. For some reason, this observation made me feel even stranger and more vulnerable than everything else occurring.


    This was definitely not cool. The dragon statue had obviously brought me here. But how had it lured me in, and why? Where was here? And what was going on? Was this a step back toward the real world, or another step deeper into my bizarre fantasy?


    For a moment I was furious at myself. I should have been vigilant for traps, physical or magical, and instead I¡¯d done the moronic thing and walked right into one! And now I was¡­ well, I didn¡¯t know. Hopefully not dead. I couldn¡¯t be dead. I wouldn¡¯t accept that. Not with my sister still in danger. Besides, I believed that death was nothingness¡ªunawareness. So as long as I was aware, no matter how strange my surroundings, I needed to think and fight my way out of here.


    I tried moving my limbs and flailing through the void, but without a reference point, couldn¡¯t be sure I was going anywhere. I would have tried to propel myself further through the air if there was anywhere to go, but emptiness loomed in every direction I turned. Not even ground was below me. I found my voice and shouted.


    ¡°Hello? Is anyone there?¡±


    No one replied. I cupped my hands and tried again.


    ¡°Haley! Daniel! ¡­Brianna?¡±


    Still no response. The sound of my voice was muted to my ears, no matter how loudly I shouted, like I was screaming into cotton. I shivered in the void, though I was neither hot nor cold. This was all very strange and dreamlike, and I had no idea what to make of it. There had to be some way to free myself. The distant chanting still teased at me, coming from everywhere and nowhere, and I held my breath and strained to hear it. If I tried very hard, I almost thought I could make out snatches of it, murmured over and over in a voice that was both one and many:


    ¡°¡­of dreams, of kin¡­¡±


    ¡°¡­three tortures forge¡­¡±


    ¡°¡­endured to temper¡­¡±


    But it was no use. No matter how much I focused I could only hear fragments. I sighed and tried to figure out what to do next. But then my attention was diverted by something strange.


    A distant, moving pinprick of black color against the rolling void of dimly glowing red caught my eye, like an errant fly. The fly began to grow, becoming first a blotch and then a rapidly shifting shape. I quickly realized that whatever it was, it must be traveling toward me at a high speed through the void, and it seemed to be going faster as I stared, almost like it was encouraged by my attention.


    Moments later it arrived to stand before me¡ªor rather, she arrived before me. The pinprick had expanded into a fuzzy, indistinct human form of what I took to be a woman¡ªsomething about the height, shape, and posture suggested femininity¡ªand it now waited just a short distance from me, observing me. While I was floating, she appeared to be standing on a flat surface, and as I stared at her, her obscured form flickered through a series of more defined shapes: a dark-haired sorceress with skin as white as milk, a brown-skinned ruler with jealous, haughty eyes, a warrior clad in shimmering scale with all the colors of the rainbow, a woman swollen with child, hair caked in salt and sea, and finally settled on a form with elements of all of these.


    A dark complexioned, long-haired woman with high cheekbones and sharp, hungry eyes regarded me, wrapped in a dress that shimmered in the red light like a living flame. It seemed now green, now purple, now orange and blue. Her lips twisted into a possessive smile, and she inclined her head to greet me as she placed her hands on her hips. They sparkled with dozens of rings in silver and gold which gleamed and glimmered as she shifted.


    ¡°Hello, Chosen One.¡± The woman emphasized the words like proper nouns, just as Marutuk had, and her nostrils twitched as she closed her eyes to inhale deeply. ¡°You have the smell of destiny about you.¡±


    ¡°Uh, hi¡­¡± I replied, not knowing how to respond to this crazy lady and wishing I had my HUD handy to tell me who the hell she was. I decided to tread carefully and get as much information as I could out of her. ¡°Is it possible for me to stand like you are? This weird floating is really getting to me.¡±


    Her eyes flicked open wide and she roared with laughter. ¡°Is it possible? Do as you will, Chosen. You stand in the domain of raw potential. The realm of the gods themselves.¡±


    I didn¡¯t believe in any gods, so I didn¡¯t know what to make of that at all. Which is to say, I didn¡¯t believe her. Someone with a real belief system, someone like my parents who¡¯d been raised as Protestants, might have latched onto that claim¡­ they¡¯d raised me that way too, albeit in the lazy, 21st-century way that meant we were culturally Christian but only went to church on Christmas and Easter to make mom happy. But it¡¯s funny how all the faith gets sucked right out of you when something horrible and random like your family getting cut in half by a freak accident happens. Where¡¯s the bigger plan in all that, huh? Why would a deity who was all about goodness and love rip apart the only source of goodness and love I¡¯d ever known?


    If there is a god, and he lets things like that happen, then he¡¯s an asshole, and I¡¯d decided a long time ago that I don¡¯t want anything to do with him.


    I certainly wasn¡¯t impressed by any claims this random lady was gonna make about this being the ¡°realms of the gods¡± or whatever. When it came to matters of faith, I put mine in what I could see, feel, and test for myself: facts, experimentation, logic, and the scientific method. Sure, a lot of crazy shit had happened to me lately, but whatever this place was, I still had no reason to believe it was anything but a hyper-realistic game. There didn¡¯t have to be anything supernatural about that at all.


    ¡°What did you say your name was?¡± I asked the crazy lady. I wanted to know what to call her so I could warn the others about her once I figured out how to get back to them.


    Her lips quirked again into an amused smile. ¡°You may call me Marina, Chosen.¡±


    ¡°All right, Marina. I¡¯m Michael. Michael Peters. Nice to meet you. So how do I ¡®do as I will¡¯ like you say?¡±


    ¡°You truly are a child in the ways of this world¡­ how to explain something as natural as breathing? Focus yourself. Impose your desire on the world around you. Visualize your intent. Make your will known.¡±


    It was a strange directive to give someone, and it reminded me of the same cryptic language the Elohim had used: ¡°do as you will, lest you do as you must.¡± But rather than question her further, I tried an experiment and concentrated on visualizing my feet resting on solid ground.


    To my immense surprise, I was no longer floating! There wasn¡¯t even any transition¡­ I was simply resting on solid nothingness, standing before Marina and staring at her in surprise as her smile widened. I now stood several inches taller than her, but felt smaller and shorter because of how exposed I was in my boxers. I wished I had something to wear other than my underwear. But maybe that was something I could will up here, too?


    Again I concentrated, picturing myself in the clothes that had always made me feel the most confident at work¡ªa suit jacket, slacks, black tie and crisp button down. I imagined the clothes draping over me, my blond hair carefully combed and parted, and wasn¡¯t incredibly surprised when I stood wearing them a moment later. Nice job, Michael. You¡¯re getting the hang of things. I straightened my sleeves with a few gentle tugs, shrugged my shoulders beneath the heavy wool jacket, and stared Marina in the eye, newly confident now that I was decent.


    ¡°Got it. Thank you. I see now. It¡¯s like a dream. Or a lucid dream, I suppose.¡± I¡¯d had lucid dreams a handful of times in my life, and when I became aware I was dreaming, I¡¯d always been far more fascinated in testing my environment than in doing stereotypical things like flying or having sex with everyone in sight. Dreams had always seemed excessively weird to me¡ªwhat¡¯s up with humans vividly hallucinating for like four hours every night? It¡¯s bizarre¡ªand it was even weirder when you were aware of them, able to interact with your environment, and capable of shaping the objects and people around you.


    Marina cocked her head at me. ¡°A lucid dream? I am not familiar with this concept. But the realm of the gods exists to both honor them and claim their honor for yourself. You must be very lost indeed to have entered so unprepared.¡±


    ¡°I didn¡¯t mean to. There was a dragon statue and it seemed to be calling to me¡­ and then I was here. But I need to get back. My friends need me and my sister needs me.¡±


    Her gaze became sharp. ¡°You were called to this realm? The smell of destiny indeed¡­ Only those who are truly important to the weave of fate are called here.¡±


    ¡°Uhhh¡­ sure. Look, I think it¡¯s cool that the game is feeding me some Harry Potter ¡®chosen one¡¯ nonsense and all that, but how do I get out of here?¡±


    I didn¡¯t have time or patience for this bullshit. Clearly I¡¯d triggered some kind of mechanic, either randomly or as the group tank and leader, that brought me to this weird place and started me on some kind of chosen one epic questline. Even if we were all ¡°chosen ones¡± like Marutuk had suggested, it made sense that the game would offer group leaders a chance to differentiate themselves somehow and become stronger. But I wasn¡¯t interested in playing the ¡®savior of mankind¡¯ quest or whatever this Marina questgiver lady was offering me. I just wanted to get back to the rest of the group, look for clues that might lead me to Brianna, and level up in the meantime since it looked like I was going to have to do that to survive long enough to find her and rescue her.


    ¡°Nonsense?¡± Marina arched an eyebrow at me. ¡°Guard your tongue, Michael Peters, as you prefer to be called. I do not speak lightly of destiny¡ª¡±


    ¡°Yeah, yeah. And I don¡¯t speak lightly of getting out of here.¡± Normally I¡¯d jump on the chance to grill someone with questions, but I could tell just by the way she was talking I wouldn¡¯t get any real information out of her, and anything I did get I wasn¡¯t sure I could trust. I guessed I¡¯d be better off just getting away from her, whether she was a quest giver, part of the trap, or something else entirely. ¡°Look, you seem great. But what would speed this along? Would it help if I just said yes to your quest or whatever?¡±


    The woman folded her arms and regarded me cooly, her mirth fading. She stared at me for a long moment with a neutral expression, and I just stared back at her and waited for her to answer my questions. Finally, she spoke again.


    ¡°I have no quest for you. And I could lead you back if you choose, but why would¡ª¡±


    ¡°Enough,¡± I cut her off with an annoyed gesture as her response confirmed that she wouldn¡¯t be able to help me. She was probably an NPC and part of this trap, whatever it was. When Marina opened her mouth again I willed her to be silent using the same technique I¡¯d used to summon my clothes, imposing my will upon her like a person in a dream. Her mouth snapped shut and she stiffened, eyes bulging. I¡¯d partially done it out of curiosity, but what was interesting was that when it happened, it felt like I was pushing against something, somehow; like I¡¯d shoved an amorphous thing with my spirit.


    I was about to order her to tell me how to leave when I felt the amorphous thing push back on me, and cold shot through my stomach as Marina¡¯s eyes blazed with fury, her face now stormy, and her hands curled into fists at her sides.


    ¡°How dare you,¡± she hissed. ¡°You choose to challenge me here, in the ancient realm of the gods?¡±


    I drew a startled breath, taking a half step back and trying desperately to silence her again. But this time it felt like my will was meeting something much larger than itself, and without quite knowing how to describe the things I was feeling, I sensed my frantic efforts being batted away again and again.A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    ¡°You mock my wisdom and attempt to silence me in a world you know nothing about, and assault me in the realm of heroes where my will is infinite?¡± As she spoke, her voice grew in depth and power, and the edges of her eyes began to swarm with snaking tendrils of blackish-purple color.


    It occurred to me that I might have made a serious error by dismissing this lady. I raised my hands defensively and tried to soothe her. ¡°Whoa, whoa! I¡¯m sorry, I¡¯m sorry. It¡¯s just that this is all very new to me, and I¡¯m a little preoccupied looking for someone¡­ I just want to leave.¡±


    For three long beats I wasn¡¯t sure if she was about to smite me or not, but then Marina¡¯s fists uncurled and the weird, terrifying eye-tendrils receded. I couldn¡¯t help but think about the hideous chaos beast we¡¯d just defeated, even though the color in her eyes had looked subtly different.


    ¡°I understand your confusion, Michael Peters. And I will forgive your transgression this once. But know that I am not to be trifled with.¡±


    I nodded and then asked a quiet, hesitant question: ¡°What are you exactly?¡±


    ¡°I am what you see before you at this moment. No more and no less.¡±


    And just like that we were back to being weird and cryptic. I decided to humor her a bit, now that she¡¯d shown that she had a little more power than your average NPC¡­ or so I hoped, anyway! If every NPC was this badass, I was in for a real rough time here in this world.


    ¡°Okay, so¡­ you said that those truly important to the weave of fate are called here?¡±


    She nodded. ¡°Indeed. It marks you as important. Special. And you do smell of destiny.¡±


    ¡°And what¡¯s with the chanting?¡±


    Another flicker of surprise flashed across her face. ¡°You can hear them?¡±


    ¡°Hear who?¡±


    ¡°The Elohim,¡± she murmured, looking thoughtful.


    ¡°Is that who¡¯s chanting? I wish I could hear it better. It¡¯s just out of earshot.¡±


    Marina glanced upward, and then extended her hand. ¡°Come with me, Michael Peters.¡±


    On the one hand, I wasn¡¯t super excited about the prospect of accepting an invitation to go with a random, terrifying crazy lady who spoke in riddles. On the other hand, I was both curious and eager to leave this weird red void, and going with her appeared to be my best bet.


    ¡°Where do you want to take me exactly?¡± I asked.


    ¡°To the Elohim, of course.¡±


    Well, they were the ones who had provided us with our awesome weapons, and even if Marina seemed kind of crazy, they¡¯d shown their goodwill already. It didn¡¯t seem any more dangerous than anything I¡¯d done so far, so I grabbed Marina¡¯s hand and gave jerked a quick nod. She smiled, and suddenly we were somewhere else.


    We were still in a strange, barren void, but the endless red previously surrounding me had taken on more of a golden hue, and we were no longer alone: High above us insubstantial robed beings like the two which had accompanied Marutuk flitted back and forth in dizzying movements, and their roaring chant was now so loud that I had to cover my ears. Again and again they repeated the same four haunting verses, chanting them over and over and rattling me to my core.


    ¡°When the days of punishment are done,


    and the children of Nammu are ready once more


    to rejoin the great game,


    one shall be called to cleanse the sin of the slain betrayer


    and carve open the gates of heaven.


    Three tortures forge the holy blade,


    three more endured to temper:


    of dreams, of kin, of love long lost,


    of body, mind, and spirit.


    Amid fire, ash, and blood will the children of Nammu be freed,


    bathed in the fading darkness,


    washed in the blood of the dragon,


    with the elders bound and broken


    for their arrogance.


    Rejoice in your suffering,


    and delight in your punishment,


    chosen ones.


    You may yet claim


    the birthright of your fathers.¡±


    After the third repetition nearly drove me to my knees with the force of their voices, I shook my head and tried to scream over the din: ¡°Marina, take me away from here! This is too much!¡±


    She¡¯d stared at me impassively, apparently unaffected by the booming recitation but watching me carefully, and nodded in response to my words. She crouched down and touched my shoulder, and suddenly we were back in the endless void of red, with the chant once more sounding far away and barely audible. Marina continued to stare at me and ran her tongue along her perfect white teeth, as though considering something.


    ¡°You could hear them. Fascinating.¡±


    ¡°Damn right I could hear them! You¡¯d have to be deaf not to. What are they?¡± I demanded. I was tired of her weird riddles.


    ¡°They are the keepers of this realm and the stewards of the game,¡± she said matter of factly, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. ¡°But players as low in level as you cannot usually hear them. Their chant is eternal and has not changed as long as Ataraxia has existed. You intrigue me more and more, Michael Peters. You hear the words of the keepers, you were drawn to the realm of the gods, and you had sufficient will to silence me, if only for a moment. Quite interesting, indeed. I would like to make you an offer of aid to help you on your way.¡±


    ¡°An offer?¡± Her words set off alarm bells in my head. Every story I¡¯d ever heard about making deals with the devil came back to me. ¡°Thanks, but I¡¯m not interested in your offer.¡±


    ¡°You don¡¯t even want to hear what I have to say? You disappoint me, Michael Peters.¡±


    I sighed. ¡°Could you please just tell me how to leave this realm? I don¡¯t want any offers from strangers. I¡¯m sorry, but no.¡± I wasn¡¯t sure anymore if she was an NPC or a player, but she didn¡¯t seem like someone I wanted to be making deals with. My head was still reeling with the Elohim¡¯s chant, and I couldn¡¯t begin to wonder what any of it meant. It was pseudo-mystical mythological gibberish. I wasn¡¯t about to get sucked into some kind of prophecy-fulfillment mythic quest.


    ¡°This is part of what I wish to offer you,¡± Marina continued, tugging at the shoulder of her multi-hued dress. ¡°This realm is deep and confusing for the uninitiated, who know not what they seek. It is possible you will find your way back to your friends on your own¡­ it is also possible that you will wander here for millennia, or die, or go mad.¡±


    I shivered, glancing again at the endless red void, and again it had nothing to do with the temperature. I hesitated, trying to decide what to say next. I didn¡¯t know if she was telling the truth, but could I take that chance right now? She¡¯d shown me how to use my will at least, so as Faustian as she might appear, she hadn¡¯t yet harmed me or given me anything but guidance¡­ maybe I ought to hear her out instead of spitting in the face of the only being who had appeared in the void to help me.


    ¡°Okay, fair enough. What is your offer?¡±


    ¡°An offer of aid. I too am a player, far advanced from where you are. I will lead you out of this realm and back to the safety of your friends, bless you with my powerful magic to dramatically increase your abilities, and offer you my amulet to aid you on your journey here in Ataraxia.¡±


    That was interesting, but accepting gifts from strangers made me nervous. ¡°Can you just lead me out?¡±


    She cocked her head at me. ¡°Why would you not want my boon, as well? Don¡¯t you wish to be as powerful as you can be in this new realm? I have never met a player so quick to reject an offer of help from the more experienced.¡±


    Marina did have a point. I thought of all the times in the online games I¡¯d played where I¡¯d found a confused newbie, helped them out, and given them items, buffs, and gold. Was that was happening here? It would be pretty dumb of me to fall into a trap and then reject gifts that could speed up my leveling just because I was being overly cautious. If I thought about it carefully, she was just talking about things I didn¡¯t understand and being kind of weird, but who was to say what normal was anyway when you¡¯d been sucked into a game with seemingly real consequences?


    Then Marina sighed, disappointment rippling across her face. ¡°I see you do not want my aid. Your irreverence pleased me, Michael Peters, and I don¡¯t often meet a new player who has such potential as you. So many players arrive and meet a grim end because they are unprepared for the trials ahead of them, and I did not wish to see you meet the same fate. Interesting players are worth helping. But if you do not wish to accept my gifts, I will not force them on you. Come. I will lead you out.¡± She held an upturned hand out to me, rings glinting.


    But now I just stared at her, feeling stupid. Here was a high-level player in this weird game who seemed to know an awful lot about everything, who gave every indication of wanting to help me, and I was being kind of an asshole just because I didn¡¯t know what was going on. I¡¯d already seen how terrifying and rough the game could be when Trees had been shredded before my very eyes by the horrifying shadow beasts, so I knew the danger was real enough. Was I making a dumb decision? What if her offer really could help me survive and find my sister?


    I took a deep breath. ¡°I¡¯m sorry I¡¯m being so rude. I¡¯m just nervous in a new environment. Can you tell me a little bit more about your¡­ uh, your ¡®boon¡¯?¡±


    Marina withdrew her hand and nodded solemnly. ¡°Of course. As an experienced player of Ataraxia, I can extend a portion of my power to you at no cost to myself. Become your patron, as it were. You will become stronger and hardier, and receive other benefits, such as a power emblematic of my own powers, though they will develop with time and I cannot say precisely what form they will take for you. I also have an amulet that will protect you and allow you to call upon me in moments of great need, if you hold it and choose to call for me.¡±


    ¡°And this patronage¡­ can I renounce it at any time?¡± I asked. But then, fearing she might take that the wrong way, I quickly added: ¡°Just trying to understand, sorry.¡±


    Marina nodded. ¡°You may renounce your boon or discard the amulet as you like, of course.¡±


    ¡°And you don¡¯t want anything from me in return?¡±


    She shrugged. ¡°Not for such a small token, no. Only that you remember my assistance in the future. When you become more powerful, you will need to choose allies. Players who smell as strongly of destiny as you¡­ well, I would rather fight with you than against you.¡±


    I saw now that what she was doing was almost like building goodwill to recruit me into her guild one day. It changed my whole impression of what was happening. Clearly there was some kind of war going on. But I needed to tread carefully. It wouldn¡¯t do me any good to make both an ally and enemies before I understood the battle lines.


    ¡°Are you allied with Marutuk?¡± I asked carefully. ¡°He came to us in the starting area and introduced himself.¡±


    ¡°All human players face the darkness together,¡± Marina replied with a slight edge to her voice.


    ¡°The darkness?¡±


    ¡°Khthon. Chaos. Spawn of sin. He must be destroyed if we are to ever win this accursed game. But I now have other matters which require my attention, Michael Peters, as intrigued as I am by you. You must choose quickly. I will help you leave this realm either way, but do you wish to accept my boon or not?¡±


    It was a risk. A definite risk. I had no reason to believe her¡­ but she was clearly powerful, hadn¡¯t hurt me, and hadn¡¯t done anything except help me so far. The gamer in me wanted to say yes, even as my conscience urged caution. But if it would help me find Brianna¡­


    ¡°I accept your boon, then,¡± I said decisively.


    ¡°A wise choice,¡± she replied. She stepped closer¡ªclose enough that I could smell the strange, intoxicating scent of her hair and skin, like exotic flowers and foreign spices. She laid a hand on my breast, crushing the soft wool of my jacket to my skin, and murmured, ¡°Yield your will to me, Michael Peters.¡±


    Again I felt the immense, amorphous force I had felt when applying my will to Marina push on me, but differently this time. It was less of a forced push and more of a request. Not knowing quite what I was doing and not completely sure it was wise, I did as she had asked and yielded to it. I suddenly felt an immense rush of what I could only describe as raw power flow into my body, and my jaw dropped at how invigorated I suddenly felt. It was amazing! It was like I now wore an aura of strength all over my body.


    After she withdrew her hand, an amulet suddenly appeared in her grasp, and she reached up to drop it over my head. It was small and golden, a simple disk engraved with a small dragon head, and it slipped easily beneath my shirt. As it fell onto me, I immediately felt as though a second aura descended upon me, only this was one of protection. She stepped back and smiled as I flexed my arms, curious at all of these sensations and wishing I had my HUD back to identify them.


    But then Marina spoke: ¡°I must go now, Michael Peters. Shall we leave this realm?¡± She extended her hand yet again.


    I nodded, taking it, and before I could even ask how she was going to lead me out, everything around me faded to darkness. I felt wobbly, weird, and disoriented. My vision blurred, and then I realized that I was lying on my back with my eyes closed.


    ¡°Unnnh¡­¡± I groaned at the strange transition. My eyes fluttered open and a wooden ceiling swam into view. My body felt strange once again¡ªlarge and bulky, and I realized that I was back to my paladin avatar, lying in a bed somewhere.


    ¡°Michael?¡± an excited voice asked. Haley¡¯s cheerful face popped into view, and then she squealed and hugged me. ¡°Michael, you¡¯re okay! I was so worried, and I felt so guilty, and I¡¯m so sorry¡­ and my god, after what happened to Trees, and then you were unconscious and we carried you back because you weren¡¯t dead even though Paige couldn¡¯t heal you back to consciousness and¡­¡± Haley¡¯s babbling trailed off into choked sniffles, and I felt warm wetness on the side of my neck. When she pulled back, her cheeks shined, and she scrubbed furiously at her face with the sleeve of her robe.


    ¡°Wow,¡± I muttered, my cheeks getting hot. ¡°You really missed me, huh? Thanks for dragging me back. I assume this is one of the wooden houses we saw in the starting area?¡±


    ¡°Yeah, it is. Daniel and Victor helped bring you back. I¡¯ve been waiting here for you to wake up for several hours.¡±


    ¡°Several hours?¡± That was a surprise! My whole trip to the weird void realm had only taken minutes, as far as I could tell. I wondered what had happened to Marina. It hadn¡¯t just been a wacky dream, right? I didn¡¯t feel quite as powerfully charged as I had when she¡¯d blessed me. I just felt like I¡¯d felt last time I was in my paladin avatar, which was a bit of a disappointment.


    Haley sniffed and nodded, looking alternately embarrassed and relieved. ¡°I should¡­ I should go let everyone know you¡¯re okay. I¡¯m so glad, Michael. I¡¯m so sorry I dragged you into that mess, but now you¡¯re okay and we can get back to figuring out what¡¯s going on.¡± She vanished through the door before I could protest, leaving me alone in my simple shirt and breeches in the rumpled bed. That girl is so weird sometimes¡­ but at least I¡¯m back!


    It was great to know that Marina hadn¡¯t been trying to trick me or screw me over, and also comforting to know I wasn¡¯t dead! I¡¯d been a little worried for a while there. Now that I was awake again, I could get back to looking for Brianna and leveling my avatar up. The first thing I¡¯d need to do is come up with a leveling plan and see if I could figure out whether Marina had actually given me anything useful or not. But then I noticed a cool metal feeling pressing against my chest.


    I reached into my shirt and drew out the same golden pendant the strange woman had placed over my head in the void realm: the small, golden dragon-engraved disk. As I stared at it, my HUD bead appeared, identifying it for me in a welcome and familiar display of floating, light blue information:


    Minor Token of Patronage [Unique] [Marina]


    Amulet


    - Strength +50


    - Vitality +50


    - Life +100


    - Use: Call upon your patron for assistance in times of great need.


    ¡°Damn,¡± I murmured, boggling at the stats and rubbing the cool disk thoughtfully between my fingers. ¡°I guess it was the right call to let that chick hook me up, after all.¡±


    Then the murmur of excited voices from beyond the door distracted me. ¡°Michael?¡± Haley called from the hallway. ¡°Come on out! I¡¯m telling you guys, he just woke up.¡±


    I looked at the token a moment longer, and then shook my head. Talk about a serious advantage! But for now, I wanted to keep this my little secret. I didn¡¯t know how the other might react to news that I¡¯d been given a special perk like this, and we didn¡¯t need a repeat of Victor¡¯s power struggle with Haley.


    I slipped the amulet back inside my shirt, climbed out of bed, and went to meet the others.