Date: 2017-03-29 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy
Description: From Bram Stoker Nominated Author Jake Bible comes an exciting new LitRPG adventure series! In the 23rd century, the world is at an end, and a group of gaming and programming friends decide that their only way to survive is to discard their bodies and send their minds into the quantum matrix of a virtual gaming world. They have created the Domains and there they plan to reside forever. Except, the nightmares of reality have followed them into their new quantum dimension and those nightmares threaten to destroy it all! Now it is up to one of them to help navigate the quantum platform known as E
Publisher: Createspace

EverRealm

A litRPG Novel

Level Dead- Book 1

Jake Bible

www.severedpress.com

Copyright 2017 by Jake Bible

One

The end of the world arrived one night and nobody knew it. They slept, partied, worked overtime, called boyfriends, girlfriends, parents. On the other side of the planet, it was day, yet no one on that hemisphere knew the world was over either.

The human race died due to being completely clueless.

Which is how we all thought we’d go out anyway, right?

But this isn’t a story about the end of the world. Not this world, at least. I could go into detail on how the dead rose and got a little hungry, so they decided they’d hunt down anything living and devour it. And when I say the dead rose, I mean all of the dead. Not just humans.

Nope.

Dogs, cats, birds, potbelly pigs. All of the animal kingdom decided that death wasn’t their thing, so they’d just get up and start gnawing on anything they could catch.

And they weren’t slow.

Nothing special like super speed, no. They moved at the speed of their species. Hence the world ending in one night. No overweight housewife or fat businessman is going to outrun an undead German Shepherd with a sudden hankering for people meat. And the wino on the corner sure isn’t going to outrun the recently shot gangbanger that has just acquired a taste for flesh that has been marinating for years in fortified wine.

Twenty-four hours and it was over.

You would have thought that the civilization of the 23rd century would have had a better clue on how to handle an undead apocalypse. Centuries of film and television and other media laid everything out there. But people are sheep, and when no one stepped up to take charge, not that there was much time for that, the sheep simply fell over and let the undead wolves rip their bellies open and feast on their hot, steaming guts.

I mean that figuratively and literally.

So, how did I survive? That’s a different story. One I have zero interest in going into too much detail about. There was a lot of blood, a good amount of betrayal, and quite possibly the biggest pile of luck any man could step in.

No, this story is about a whole other world. In a way.

It’s complicated.

Two

“Holo,” I called in as loud of a whisper as I thought I could get away with. The area should have been clear of the undead, but I never took anything for granted. Not when I’d survived longer than approximately eighteen billion others. “Holo!”

There was a grating noise from the alleyway to my left and I froze. I waited, listening hard to see if I could tell what was moving in the dark shadows only a few yards away. It could have been my Siberian Husky mix, Holo. Or it could have been a wave of undead rats that smelled my living flesh and were getting ready to charge me. I’d watched more than a few survivors go down that way.

I wanted to call for my dog again, but I couldn’t risk it. I’d already made way too much noise. It was supposed to be one last, simple scavenging mission. That was all. No risks, no detours, no trouble. But Holo always had other ideas. He was a smart dog, like really smart, but he had a mind of his own and was fearless in the face of the hordes upon hordes of undead that stalked the city streets.

I could have used tech to handle the hard parts. I had plenty of drones and more automatons than I could count. But no matter how convenient those things were, they attracted the undead. The undead love tech. They feel or hear or just sense the hum of a motor and here they come. They can lock onto a whirring drone from half a mile away and follow that thing all the way home. Which has happened more times than I care to admit. Same with the automatons. The maintenance bots brought all the undead to the yard. I couldn’t let those mechanical wonders leave the high-rise or we were swarmed in seconds.

That meant any excursions had to be done the hard way. On foot.

More grating from the alleyway and I decided that Holo was smart enough to find his own way back to the high-rise. He’d done it before. I’d been out in the open too long as it was. At any second, a flock of undead pigeons was going to swoop down on me and peck me to death. It would be an agonizing, and embarrassing, way to go, but none of us get to choose our deaths anymore.

Except, that’s not true.

It was the reason I’d risked one last scavenging run. I was out of alcohol in the massive penthouse I’d acquired after the world collapsed into undead apocalypse ruin. I wasn’t much of a drinker, but I needed something to toast with as I joined my friends in our final journey.

A journey to the Center.

God, I hate that damn name. I really hate it. I wanted Hub. Why? Because the place was an actual hub. A virtual locale where we all met and planned our strategies for eternal survival. A hub. Not a center.

But I didn’t design it, so I didn’t get to name it. One of the other Nine did. Ming. He’s not of Asian descent. He just really likes that old Flash Gordon movie. Guy is obsessed.

I’m getting ahead of myself. First things first. I have to tell you about the state of the world before our meeting in the Center. It puts it all in context.

“Holo,” I whispered once more, still backing away from the increasingly louder grating noise coming from the alleyway.

There was a huff and a scrape of nails behind me.

I whipped around, my fire axe raised, ready to strike down whatever undead abomination was coming for me. But, it was Holo, not an undead schnauzer. The Husky wagged his tail and let his tongue lull from between his sharp teeth, his bright blue eyes locked on mine, ready for the order to head home.

Of course, that meant that Holo was for sure not what was making the noise in the alleyway.

That also meant it was time to give said order to head home and do so at a pace that was faster than whatever was slowly making its way to the mouth of the alleyway.

“Go,” I said and nodded to a street corner up ahead. “Home. Now.”

Holo gave me a puzzled look and turned to regard the street corner to my left. He woofed softly, having learned early that a loud woof was a bad, bad idea. Smart dog. I turned and looked down the street to my left and frowned. That way would add at least ten minutes to our trip because of the collapsed buildings we’d have to scramble over to get to our high-rise. Not to mention what was still trapped in those buildings. Holo was on crack if he thought I wanted to spend an extra ten minutes out in the open as the sun was quickly beginning to set. We didn’t have an extra ten minutes to risk.

He woofed again and nudged my thigh with his nose then grabbed my jeans with his teeth and pulled. The grating noise was louder, but there was something else joining it. I tried to figure out what I was hearing, but between Holo’s insistence we go his way, the constant grating of the mystery in the alleyway, and my own perfectly reasonable fear, I was at a loss.

Then what Holo was worried about came around the corner, the corner I had originally wanted to move towards, and things clicked into place. And by click into place, I mean I nearly shit myself then took off running in the direction Holo was already heading.

You run your ass off when an undead silverback gorilla shows up.

Now, here is one good thing about the variability in species amongst the undead. They hate each other as much as they want to eat the living. If the species were incompatible in life, then they were incompatible in death, too. Fighting like cats and dogs took on a whole new meaning. A meaning that involved a lot of rotten flesh being torn and shredded as Fido and Fluffy went claw to claw and tooth to tooth against each other.

That gave Holo and me a brief advantage when the gorilla first saw us running away then was instantly distracted as the mystery grater revealed itself from the alleyway.

Crocodile. A goddamn undead crocodile. Saltwater croc. Nasty fella.

It was missing its right back leg, which was causing that grating noise as the splintered bone scraped against the foul pavement. But the thing still had plenty of teeth. I know because I saw those teeth as that huge mouth was pointed at me until the undead croc caught sight of the undead gorilla charging at it. An undead death match made in heaven.

Someone from PETA (I know it was PETA because they spray painted their name everywhere) thought it would be a good use of time to systematically open all the animal enclosures at the zoo. Set the caged free! Except, the damned animals got out, were killed quickly by folks with firearms, reanimated in seconds, and unleashed undead hell on everyone and everything.

I’m all for activism, but sometimes think things through, okay?

Holo was almost a full block ahead of me before he stopped and turned to see if I was coming. I was and running fast. I didn’t want to use the calories, I was skinny enough as it was, but it was better than being included in the Tarzan horror hell that was about to erupt behind me. And it certainly did erupt as I heard the roars, hisses, snarls and the clash of undead bodies.

All that noise was going to bring more of the undead my way. I needed to pick up speed and get back to the high-rise as fast as possible.

Holo turned and gave me a warning bark, telling me, as he had a thousand times before, that I was slow as shit, and if I got taken down by the impending horde of undead, it was my own damn fault. He spun back around and sprinted towards the pile of rubble that used to be one of the fancier hotels in the downtown area. All it was now was a bunch of concrete and steel that blocked my way.

Holo scrambled up the pile of rubble, careful not to stay in one spot for too long. The reason being that grabbing hands began to pop up through the crevices and holes in the pile, their broken fingers and flesh-torn palms slapping uselessly at the concrete they were trapped under.

I had no choice but to follow the damn dog.

I tucked my fire axe into its sling on my back then grabbed onto a hunk of iron that used to be part of an ornate balcony railing. I hauled my ass up onto the pile, climbing hand over hand, while avoiding all the undead hands, and foot over foot, desperate to keep moving and put as much distance between myself and the undead jungle war going on back in the distance. I clambered across the remains of the hotel until I was at the top and saw the street beyond.

It was my lucky day. There were only a dozen undead walking towards me and Holo, who was waiting at the bottom of the rubble and didn’t seem too worried. It could have been a lot worse.

Of course, that’s when I heard the skittering of tiny little claws. The much worse had decided to make itself known.

“Rats,” I said to Holo. “Go!”

Holo didn’t need to be told twice. He took off at full speed, his body low and sleek as he gauged the best route through the small crowd of undead. They were all human, men and women that had succumbed during the first day or so of the end of the world. It was easy to tell when they went down because of what they were wearing. Still dressed, although in tatters, in business suits and that city-casual look that used to say, “Hey, ignore my lack of income because I dress cool and hang out in coffee shops pretending to write when I’m just stalking my ex on Facebook.”

I hated those guys. The business dressed and the city-casual assholes.

Good thing I could take out my frustrations on them.

When I reached the bottom of the rubble, I pulled my fire axe from out of its sling and choked up on the handle, gripping the chipped red-painted wood about halfway up. That gave me more control and a tighter arc. I needed my swings to be hard and efficient. Anything less meant the possibility of losing my balance or the axe blade getting stuck in a split skull.

The first asshole still had a cell phone in his grip. He must have died with it in his hand, and the blood and bodily fluids that leaked around it simply cemented it to his palm. Rotten flesh and congealed blood was the new super glue in my world.

My axe pulverized his skull. One second it was there, the next second it wasn’t. Just gone.

I kept running, taking out undead as needed, and was quickly past the undead dozen.

That’s when the skittering of tiny claws grew even louder. It echoed from below, coming from a storm grate to my left. The sewers were emptying their undead lords.

It was gonna be close.

Three

There was no way I could outrun a swarm of undead rats. Anyone that had ever tried quickly learned their folly. You have maybe ten, fifteen seconds before you get your ass covered in rotten flesh and fur. So, sprinting my ass back home wasn’t an option.

It was for Holo and I caught a last glimpse of his tail as he ducked around a corner and was lost from sight. Good for him. Nothing he could do. We’d trained for this the past few years.

When we were out in the world, his job was to use his senses to help scavenge and act as an early warning system. He was no good in a fight against the undead. They’d rip him apart in seconds. Yeah, sure, he had one powerful jaw, but he didn’t have hands and couldn’t wield a weapon. The moment he chomped down on any of the undead, he was done for. He would be infected and then game over.

So Holo ran his ass off.

But, like I said, we’d trained for this scenario for years.

I ran as hard and fast as I could, leaving the sound of the gorilla versus crocodile undeath match far behind. I couldn’t leave the sound of the rats coming up from below behind, though. They were everywhere, and it was only a matter of which storm grate they came scurrying out of and when. Could be any second, could be never. Sometimes those little undead shits stopped stalking me and remained below.

Not that time.

I could see movement in a grate about half a block ahead. Too many at once wanted out and they’d gotten wedged together. That was good. Gave me a split second to turn right and take an alley I knew like the back of my hand.

Except normally there wasn’t a pride of mini-lions waiting for me. By mini-lions, I mean stray cats. I call them mini-lions because a cat is a cat is a cat. Claws. Teeth. Muscles. Intense desire to kill, kill, kill. Living cats kept their homicidal tendencies towards humans in check. Undead cats didn’t hold back on that impulse.

Four of them eyed me. With the eyes they had left, at least. Two of them had some nasty hangers drooping from their heads, the eyeballs attached only by tenuous nerve clusters.

I swung my axe and impaled one cat with the pike end. A flick of my wrist and the undead feline went flying against the alley’s brick wall, its body exploding on impact. The undead were so full of rot that they tended to burst like bubbles. All that gas building up. That cat went off like a pus- and blood-filled water balloon.

The other three leapt and I ducked low, letting one fly over my shoulder as I sliced another in half with the axe. The last cat landed on my back and its claws became embedded in the leather of the reinforced motorcycle jacket I wore. It could shred that leather all day and all it would find underneath was metal alloy and Kevlar webbing. My skin was safe for the time being.

I straightened and ran backwards, slamming my back, and the undead cat, against a rusted-out dumpster. The cat popped and guts went flying everywhere. I closed my eyes and my mouth, pinching my nostrils together with my fingers, and prayed none of the gunk got in me.

But I couldn’t stand there and pray for long. The cat that had flown over my shoulder came at me fast. I kicked it in the head, but it shook off the blow and attacked again.

Then the wave of undead rats came around the corner of the alley.

Undead rats saw undead cat, undead cat saw undead rats.

Undead brains have no fear. Cat met rats. Rats destroyed cat.

I tossed my axe into its sling and ran like a mofo, leaping at the fire escape ladder that hung several feet above the ground. My hands almost slipped off the bottom rung, but I held tight and lifted myself up. I climbed faster than I had ever climbed anything in my life. I wasn’t stupid. I knew rats were agile, and I’d seen them scale a building in seconds to get at a fleeing survivor. I had maybe a thirty-second head start.

Up the fire escape I went until I was on the roof. Across the roof to the far corner and a waiting cable. Out came the axe again, but not for the chopping. I reached the corner and jumped, resting the axe across the cable so I could hold the handle on either side and slide down the cable.

Before the world ended, I was deathly afraid of heights. You get over that shit fast when the undead rule the planet.

I was easily two hundred feet off the ground and moving fast. If one of my hands slipped, I was dead. But I didn’t have much of a choice. The key to survival is never stay still. Always keep going. Think two moves ahead and have a backup plan. There were dozens of cables like the one I was speeding along set up across the city. My backup plans.

The building across from me grew closer and closer until it was time to let go or smash into a brick wall. I let go of one side of the axe and fell, my momentum taking me directly towards a fire escape landing that I’d outfitted with boards and moldy mattresses. I landed hard, but it was a softer landing than if I’d fallen to the pavement below.

Keep going and never stay still.

I was up off the mattresses and through the open window just as I heard the tight twang of the cable above me ring out. The rats were coming across.

Into the building, through the empty apartment, and out into the hallway. I sprinted for the stairs and headed up to the roof. Out onto the roof, across the roof, and I was sliding down another cable.

I repeated that process twice more and was able to finally ditch the undead rats. I didn’t kid myself that they had given up. No way. Rats never give up. They had my scent and would keep after me until something else grabbed their attention.

But I’d built enough of a lead that I could slow down to catch my breath. I was still jogging, heading down the middle of the street, but I wasn’t sprinting. Never staying still meant you catch your breath while on the run. It was just a slower run.

Six more blocks and I was home. I barely looked up at the high-rise I’d been living in for close to five years. It had stopped being impressive years ago.

Two dozen maintenance bots greeted me at the entrance as they undid the heavy bolts that held a panel of the armor plating in place. Plating that covered every square inch of the building’s facade. As soon as the panel was loose and open, I dove through and into pitch darkness. The bots got back to work, and the panel was secure before I even had a chance to pick myself up and move towards the escalator that filled the lobby of the building.

The high-rise had been built by the Toki Corporation a decade before the world ended. State of the art, completely self-sufficient and off the grid, the building was meant to house the tech giant’s corporate headquarters as well as the residences of its executives. A bonus feature was the sixteen-story, underground server farm that hummed beneath thirty feet of reinforced concrete. That little nugget was key to why I chose the location I did.

Get to that in a sec.

Up the escalator I went, smiling as I always did when the steps angled themselves into a smooth slide behind me. Brilliant security feature. Even if a horde of undead got into the first floor, they would have a bitch of a time getting up to the second floor.

Lights clicked on ahead of me, and clicked off behind me, as I made my way to the bank of elevators by the security desk. I waved at the flickering hologram of the generic security guard that had manned the desk since I’d arrived. He waved back, but that was the extent of our interaction. He wasn’t real, and I didn’t have time to waste on shit that wasn’t real.

Which was ironic considering the undertaking I’d embarked on five years ago. An undertaking that involved the Nine and was about to finally climax in about five hours.

The elevator took me a hundred stories up to the penthouse. I’d explored every single floor of the building, but the penthouse was where it was at. Total three hundred and sixty-degree views so I could see what hell was happening to the city around me. Bulletproof, impact proof, undead bird proof glass. Separate power and water from the rest of the building. If the main grid went down, my penthouse stayed up and running. So did the server farm far below, but that was a whole other ballgame.

I stepped out of the elevator and was greeted by a harsh bark and a leaping Husky. I caught Holo in my arms and endured the intense face licking that I knew wouldn’t stop until we’d left the foyer and went inside the penthouse proper.

And, yes, Holo knew how to work the elevator. He also had an implant chip like I did so the maintenance bots knew when to start unbolting the armor. Considering the level of automation the penthouse had, Holo could probably survive the rest of his life without me. We had enough food, if rationed properly. He was a dog, so it wasn’t like he was looking at decades of life expectancy anyway.

Not in the real world, at least.

The main door slid open, and I was overpowered by the intense last few rays of the setting sun as it lowered behind the few buildings that were close to the height of the Toki building. For the record, Toki wasn’t Japanese or Korean or even Asian. A Silicon Valley douche liked the sound of it.

Holo leapt out of my arms and scrambled over to his water bowl, lapping it up in one sitting. A bot came out of a tiny alcove and refilled the bowl so Holo could keep drinking. Running from the undead was thirsty work.

Speaking of.

I set my small pack down on the dining table and pulled out a half-full bottle of bourbon. That was all I could find. Bullets and booze were the most scavenged items in the first few months of the end of the world. I was lucky I even found the bourbon at all. Not that it was easy to get. I had to track and kill an undead hipster first then struggle to get it free from the asshole’s grip. Again with the blood and gunk super glue.

I wiped the bottle down, getting rid of that gunk, then carefully poured it into a clean decanter. I held up the decanter and looked through the amber liquid, making sure there were no floaters in there. Flesh floaters. Last thing I wanted was to get infected because I’d insisted on toasting the Nine’s success.

But the bourbon was clear and clean.

I poured a glass and sniffed it. It had been at least a year since I’d had anything other than water to drink. The bourbon tasted like grand plans and dreams come true.

Holo barked and a bot appeared with his food bowl filled with tasty nuggets. I walked over and plucked a couple out of his bowl, ignoring his annoyed growl, and popped them into my mouth.

Fresh food had disappeared a long time ago. It was carefully formulated nutritional nuggets for the both of us. The bots, and the system that ran them, took care of all of that.

I sipped the bourbon again, mainly to wash the taste of nugget out of my mouth, then set the glass down on a side table as I made my way to the bathroom. Time to shower and get ready.

Our new life was almost ready to begin.

Four

I didn’t bother with putting on clothes. No need.

Not just because I was the only person in the penthouse, but because nudity was a prerequisite to connecting with the Center. Clothes interfered with the assimilation process and led to death or worse. And in the world ruled by the undead, there certainly was worse.

I found my glass, lifted it high, smiled at the darkness outside, then downed the bourbon. I wanted to fill the glass and have another belt, but my tolerance was shit and I was already warm and perfectly buzzed from just the first shot.

“Holo,” I called. “Game time.”

The click and clatter of his claws on the tiles was instantaneous. He hurried from where he’d been resting on the massive couch in the center of the penthouse and sat down next to me, his body slightly leaning against my leg. He looked up at me and gave a questioning bark.

“Last chance to back out, man,” I said to him. He gave me an annoyed whine and then a short, crisp bark. “Okay, okay. I know you’re all in, but this time we won’t be coming back. We talked about this, but I need to know you understand. Tests are one thing. This is the real deal. This is the final time we log in.”

He growled and leaned harder against my leg, almost knocking me over.

“Cool. I’m glad you’re still in,” I said. I pointed at a set of double doors at the far end of the penthouse. “Time to call the Nine and get this show on the road. Need to pee before we go?”

He shook his head and ignored me as he trotted over to the double doors. They slid open for him and lights in the room beyond began to flicker on. He was halfway into the room before he stopped and turned to look at me. I hadn’t moved an inch.

“Give me a second,” I said as I looked out the windows at the nightscape beyond.

It was the last time I’d ever look at it. Or look at it with my own flesh and blood eyes. A similar nightscape was reproduced in one of the Domains, sure, but you just couldn’t beat the real thing. I sighed and closed my eyes.

“Time is relative, thought is eternal,” I said to myself. It was my mantra. Those six words had kept me going for years when in my darkest moments I never thought I’d see the completion of all the Nine’s dreams and ambitions.

Holo barked then walked over to his tank and slapped a paw against a big red button on the side. The lid opened and he climbed the five stairs to the small platform that surrounded his tank. He sat, his tail wagging, and waited for me to join him.

“I’m good,” I said, feeling the need to justify my last few moments. “Hard to imagine that this is happening.”

He huffed and leaned over his tank’s edge, sniffing the swirling, bright blue liquid that filled the tank. He sneezed several times, like he always did, then shook his whole body and readied himself for the plunge.

“Hold up,” I said.

He relaxed and gave me a quizzical look.

“Final protocol,” I called out.

“Final protocol initiated,” a generic voice responded from the speakers hidden in the room’s ceiling. “Please give password for authentication.”

“Darla. Pam. Luke. Heather,” I said. Those names had been significant to me before the end of the world. I felt like I was honoring them one last time by making them a part of the process. “Engage building lockdown and full automation. The place is yours from here on out, Jack.”

“Lockdown engaged. Full automation initiated,” the voice, Jack, said. “I will do my best to keep all systems running until the end of time.”

“We appreciate that, Jack,” I said as I turned and approached my own tank. I hit my big red button and the tank opened as I climbed my five steps to the platform. “How did the last diagnostics run go?”

“It is not the last diagnostics run, Steve,” Jack replied.

“It is for me,” I said.

“That is true,” Jack said. “And everything is working perfectly. You have nothing to worry about.”

“I have everything to worry about,” I said. “If it goes wrong here, then it will destroy the Center and all of the Domains. Ming never lets me forget that.”

“Ming worries too much,” Jack said. “That level of anxiety is not healthy for humans.”

Holo barked.

“Not healthy for anyone,” I said. I stared down at the swirling blue liquid. “How long does it take?”

“Full dissolution will take about five days,” Jack said. “You have twenty-four hours before the point of no return is passed.”

“This is the final protocol, Jack,” I said. “The point of no return is when that tank lid closes and I suck up a lungful of blue. No backing out.”

“I could stay with you,” Jack said. “That way if you change your—”

“Nope,” I said, cutting him off. “I need you running the building and the farm. That’s your job from here on out.”

“That’s always been my job,” Jack said.

“You know what I mean.”

“I do.”

Holo barked. It was loud and impatient. Then he did a Husky mumble in that high voice of his and I laughed.

“Okay. Chill,” I said. I clapped my hands then held a foot over the edge of the tank. “Time to go.”

Holo jumped into his tank at the same time I jumped into mine.

The blue was warm and felt soothing against my tired muscles. It had been a long day.

I took a last breath and ducked my head under the surface as the tank lid began to close over me. I glanced to my right and could see Holo in his tank, swimming in circles, already submerged completely. In some ways, he was more suited for our future than I was. He knew the reality of what living in a world of the undead meant and he was over it.

The lid clicked closed and all air was sucked from the tank. Even if I wanted to surface, there was nothing to breathe. It was always best to get it over with fast.

I emptied my lungs of air and let them fill with the blue. No matter how many times I’d done it, it was still distressing. Forced drowning was no fun.

At least the blue was as soothing on the inside as it was on the outside. After I gagged and struggled for a minute, I relaxed into the process and let the blue do its job.

I felt the tell-tale electric pulse rush through the liquid and my entire body went limp. It would take a few minutes for my mind to follow, but as far as my body was concerned, it was done. I couldn’t wiggle a toe or blink an eye if I’d wanted to. So I just let myself float in the blue and I stared out of the tank during those last few minutes.

I could barely make out Holo in the tank next to mine. He was as limp as me, but his eyes were closed. He always let go so much easier than I did. Once that dog committed to an action, he stayed committed. His body floated, suspended by the gel that allowed us to interface with the quantum matrix and be transported, permanently this time, to the Center.

The seconds ticked by, and my eyelids slowly drooped closed. There was a brief flash of light behind my lids then everything went black.

It felt like an eternity before I heard, “Steve! Steve! Wake up! We did it!”

Five

Everyone was happy and congratulating each other as I opened my eyes to find myself seated in my usual chair against the wall of the Center. The place was a blank room with dark walls and horrible lighting. Shadows fell everywhere. It was Ming’s idea of mood. But despite the dreary setting, the Center had always been a good place to go.

I stood up and stretched as Trish, a burly woman a few years older than me, maybe thirty or so, rushed at me and picked me up in a huge bear hug.

“We did it!” Trish cried. “The final frontier! Immortality!”

“It’s hardly immortality,” Coz said as he walked over to us.

His face was always a frozen sneer, and his voice reflected it, but we were used to it. He couldn’t help it if he had half his face paralyzed when he was attacked by cannibals in his city. He was my age and built like a beanstalk, but he looked healthy and he was obviously trying to smile around his perma-sneer.

“Close enough!” Trish shouted as she let me down. “Close e-fucking-nough!”

I glanced across the large, shadowy space and could see Sandra wince at the curse. The woman was barely in her twenties and mousy as all hell. Not that she was small. She wasn’t. She was close to six feet tall and probably would have been one of those severe-looking models you used to see on Vanity Fair or Cosmo vidcasts. Except she came from a brutally strict fundamentalist family and never quite came out of her shell. Her idea of breaking out is leaving the top button of her cardigan sweater undone.

Holo was busy making the rounds, getting pats and pets and loving all the attention. He didn’t even look over at me.

I pretended that my best friend ignoring me was a-okay and studied the others. Then I realized something. Not everyone was there.

Me, Trish, Coz, and Sandra made four. Holo was sitting with his back against a woman that had mom jeans on and a haircut to match. Laura. She was seriously scratching behind Holo’s ears. I smiled at her, but she was lost in the dog love.

Kip was sitting upside down on the tattered leather couch that had been the first piece of furniture we’d placed in the Center. We could have made it brand new, shaped it however we wanted just like our clothing, but everyone liked the lived-in look and feel the couch had. Kip, who was in his mid-forties, bald, with a gut built from drinking soda non-stop, and that never stayed covered under his double extra-large T-shirt, caught me watching him and gave me a thumbs down.

That meant that Henry, Jeremy, and Ming were missing.

“Guys,” I said, interrupting Trish and Coz jabbering about something related to something I could care less about. “Where’re the others?”

“Ming said he’d be late,” Coz replied. “No clue where Henry or Jeremy are.”

“Hey!” I called out. Kip and Laura perked up. “You guys hear from Henry or Jeremy?”

“Nope,” Kip said.

“No. Sorry,” Laure replied. She always apologized, no matter what the question. Even if she had the answer.

“That’s not good,” I said.

“Relax, bro,” Holo said. “Life doesn’t flow to your schedule. It’s the apocalypse, bro. People are late. Shit happens.”

Yes. My dog can talk.

I should probably explain.

In the late 22nd century, virtual reality had been surpassed and replaced by immersion tech. Full integration between the invented world and your mind/body existence. That’s what the tanks filled with blue were for. Every single molecule of your body could be tuned into whatever cybernetic landscape you wanted.

Of course, porn and gaming took over instantly, pushing the tech to newer and greater heights. Gaming eventually won when it was discovered that exertion within the virtual world was as strenuous as it was in the real world. In other words, some rich, fat guys died of heart attacks while banging their virtual mistresses. And a couple of gamers died in beta when they had their heads blown off in a first-person shooter.

It was easy to install and regulate governors in the gaming world. No one really wanted to die. In the porn world, people hated rules more than the threat of death, so the governors forced on the industry by the government meant the immersion tanks were only used by the less adventurous sexually. Gaming became the dominant format for immersion.

Fast forward seventy years and the tanks were so dialed in that people fell asleep while in the quantum matrix and would wake up and forget they weren’t in reality. People even dreamt while immersed. It was almost as real as real could be.

Then the world ended. Things got bad. Very bad.

I tooled around with a group of survivors for a year or so, but like everything in the apocalypse, that arrangement fell apart. There was a lot of blood and screaming and I barely got out of there, a whimpering Holo puppy held in one hand and my axe in the other.

It was another year before I found the Toki building. The bots had it locked down, and I scouted that high-rise for two months before I found my way in.

No one was left alive. Suicide pact or something. Corpses everywhere. The stink was overwhelming. Good thing I knew everything there was to know about maintaining bots.

I had the high-rise cleaned up and put back together in less than three weeks. I even got Jack online. He was the central AI interface with the high-rise, but his programming was barely beta. He’d been the pet project of Jurgen Nemm, President and CEO of Toki Corp, but the world collapsed before Jack was finished.

I’m not a programmer, far from it, but I could see his basic framework, so I started him up and began to teach him things. After a while, he became self-taught. He kept Toki Plaza running, and I kept the maintenance bots running when they couldn’t fix themselves.

Then one night, Jack told me about the immersion tank room in the penthouse. I have no idea why I didn’t guess there would be one there already. Of course, Jurgen Nemm would have an immersion tank. And it was beyond next gen. It was about ten gens past that.

A couple days of testing and I was confident, as was Jack, that the tanks were safe. So, I hopped in and found myself in the Center. Jurgen Nemm had his tanks dialed in to that spot by default.

Ming, Trish, Coz, and Kip were there, sitting on the floor playing poker. At first, I thought it was strip poker, but it turned out that clothes were optional in the Center. I would later push for the not so optional part, especially when Sandra arrived.

Ming had created the Center and had reached out to Jurgen, but, of course, Jurgen was dead. Ming didn’t know that, so he kept the connection open. It just happened that I walked through instead. I stumbled upon four of the most brilliant programming minds the world had ever had. They’d survived the apocalypse and holed up in uber-gen setups like the one I had, each in a different part of the country. Eventually, Laura, Henry, Jeremy, and last, Sandra, would join us.

Laura was a hardcore gamer. Despite her mom jeans, she didn’t have kids because kids took time away from gaming. Somehow, while looking for new game worlds to explore, she had hacked into the Center and found us. Same with Jeremy. Henry was almost on the level of programming genius as Ming, Kip, Coz, and Trish, but not quite. He was good enough to find us, though.

Last came Sandra. At first, she wouldn’t say how she found the Center or where she was living. But, after some prying, it turned out that someone not very nice was using an immersion tank as a torture chamber on her. When she was “bad,” she would be put in there. Not even Ming knew how she found the Center, but she did.

It would be Sandra that sent us on our path to immortality.

Ming hypothesized, and Trish and Kip backed him up, that we could tweak the immersion tanks to fully integrate us permanently with the quantum matrix that was being housed on a million different servers across the globe. Each of us, except for Sandra, had server farms where we were living in real life, so we strengthened those, but we also connected to farms across the oceans as redundancies. That was hardware work. That I could help with.

Power wasn’t an issue. The solar cells and micro-wind turbines that powered the server farms were designed to last indefinitely. Couple that with my ability to make sure the maintenance bots were running at every location, after giving the others some long distance guidance on how to get theirs running properly, and the infrastructure was sound.

All we had to do was cheat death.

Ming had it all planned out. From what he knew about the blue gel inside the tanks, it integrated itself into our bodies. With extreme long-term exposure, the gel would eventually break down the human body. But, since the mind was being housed inside the quantum matrix, a person could conceivably live forever, just in a quantum world, not a physical one.

That’s where Holo came into the picture. I hated to do it, but there was no way I was going to leave him behind. It stood to reason that a dog could be immersed as much as a human could. So, one night, after a lot of self-loathing, I stuck Holo in his tank and slammed the lid down. I’ll never forget the look in his eyes as he drowned for the first time in the blue.

Then I immersed and found him having a full-on shouting match with Coz in the Center.

Holo can curse more than Trish, although he’s chilled out since, and he had a lot to say that night.

Turned out that since he wasn’t constrained by his canine physique in the Center, he could actually verbalize his thoughts. His quantum being looked exactly like him, as we all look exactly like us when there, but Ming immediately found a way to tweak his vocal cords.

Holo gave me an earful too for half an hour before he chilled out.

After that, it was only a matter of making the proper preparations before we were ready to permanently immerse ourselves and say goodbye to the undead-infested wasteland that the planet had become. We would live on forever inside quantum computers as gods.

Except three of us were missing. And that bothered me more than it should have.

Six

“Hey,” I said as I moved closer to Sandra. “You okay?”

“Yes,” she said in that quiet voice of hers. It wasn’t quite a whisper, but it wasn’t easy to hear either. It was like she was talking as loud as possible in order not to be heard. “You?”

“I’m good.” I smiled. “You sure?”

“No, of course I am not sure,” she replied. “The rest of you have secure places for your bodies. You will be left alone. My body is not mine to control. I had to do…something in order to make sure I’m not disturbed until my physical body dissolves into the blue.”

The way she said the word “something” gave me chills. Sandra was the kindest, most gentle person I had ever met. But there was a darkness inside her that even Ming couldn’t match. I’d seen it hiding just behind her eyes many times over the years. She never let it out, and never spoke of what exactly she had to endure in her reality, but I knew that if she was pushed far enough, things would not go well for the pusher.

“Are you locked in?” I asked. “Did you take all the precautions we’d planned?”

“I did what I had to,” she replied. “It was not…pleasant.”

“Right. Yeah. Sure. Of course it wasn’t,” I said. “But you’re safe? He can’t get to you?”

“No one can get to me,” Sandra said. “Not anymore.”

She tugged at the sleeves of her cardigan, a gesture I’d watched her do a thousand times, and the conversation was over. Sandra looked around at the others and her frown deepened.

“They should be here,” she said.

“I know,” I said. “No one else seems too concerned. Ming said he’d be coming and Jeremy is always late. But Henry? That does have me worried. This isn’t like him at all.”

She kept tugging at her sweater and I reached out and took her hand. She gasped and pulled away.

“Sorry, sorry,” I said. “I know you don’t like to be touched. Not sure why I did that. You just look so… Sorry, again. My bad.”

“No…it’s fine,” Sandra replied. “I didn’t mean to make you feel bad. I…”

Her sentence fell away and I let it. I didn’t know what else to do.

“Okay, bro, I’m worried,” Holo said as he trotted over to us. “Not like Henry to be late. Has anyone tried calling him?”

“I got here the same time as you did,” I said to Holo. “When would I have called him?”

“Sandra?” Holo asked. “Have you taken a break from your emo marathon to check on Henry?”

That stung her and she showed it. Holo didn’t seem to care. He was a good dog, but he didn’t always grasp the subtleties of human communication. Dogs tell it like it is.

“Man,” I said. “Not cool.”

“Didn’t mean anything by it, babe,” Holo said to Sandra. “But, have you?”

“No,” Sandra said and walked off.

“Nice one,” I said to Holo.

“If she could sit on her haunches and lick her own privates, she’d be much happier, bro,” Holo said. “She should work on that.”

“Jesus,” I said and cleared my voice. “Hey! Has anyone called Henry? Anyone?”

Trish and Kip were in a conversation about something to do with the Domains they’d created, and Laura and Coz were talking about cheat codes for Sucker Shot XII, a first-person shooter that was never lucky enough to make it to unlucky number XIII. The world ended first.

“Hey! Assholes!” Holo barked.

Heads turned and eyebrows went up.

“There ya go, bro,” Holo said then walked over to the couch and hopped up next to Kip.

“Has anyone called Henry?” I asked for the umpteenth time.

“No,” Coz said. “We were waiting for Ming to show.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because maybe he knows why Henry and Jeremy aren’t here,” Trish said, the tone in her voice fully in the “Duh” zone. “You know how Ming gets when we try to make too many decisions on our own.”

“Yeah, well, Ming ain’t the boss,” I said.

“Pretty close, dude,” Coz said. “None of this would be this without him.”

“I’m not saying the guy doesn’t have skills,” I said. “There’s no better programmer left alive.”

“Hey,” Trish said.

“Bite me,” Kip grumbled.

“You’re into that sort of thing?” Holo asked, scooting a couple of inches away from Kip.

“Ha ha,” Kip said and swatted at Holo.

“You know what I mean,” I said. “Ming is great with what Ming is great with. But people are not part of his greatness. Odds are he’s going to say screw Henry and Jeremy because he hates it when people are late to his party. Doesn’t matter that he’s late, too.”

There was a quiet chime and Ming appeared in the center of the Center. Dressed in a kimono. Why the hell was he dressed in a kimono?

“Greetings, fellow travelers,” he said and bowed. “It is good of you to join me on our journey into forever.”

He straightened up and smiled at all of us.

Pudgy, but not exactly fat, Ming was in his mid-fifties and had known nothing but programming for the immersion tanks his entire life. His father had been one of the pioneers in the early days of the tech. Ming grew up eating, drinking, breathing immersion architecture. It was arguable that Trish or Kip could be better overall programmers than Ming, but no one knew immersion like Ming did.

And he was the first person to tell you so.

“What’s with the kimono, bro?” Holo asked.

“Yeah,” Kip said.

“I felt ceremonial on this fine day in our lives,” Ming said.

He clapped his hands and a tray appeared on the huge coffee table in front of the couch. It was centered perfectly on the Lazy Susan and filled with various types of sake. Ming loved sake.

“Please. Friends. Enjoy. We should…” He turned in a circle. “I see we are not all here. Is there a reason Henry and Jeremy are late?”

“See,” I said and made a point of pointing at everyone else. “I told you.”

“Yeah, bro, you’re so smart,” Holo said.

“I take it that no one has tried calling either of them?” Ming asked, but didn’t really ask. He waved his hand and shook his head. “I will do so now.”

Ming placed a finger to his left ear, which was a silly affectation he had since our existence in the Center was completely quantum and he could initiate communication without moving a muscle.

“Henry? Please respond,” he said. He also didn’t have to talk out loud. “Henry? Are you there?”

His face grew puzzled.

“Let me try,” Trish said.

“There is no need for two of us trying at the same time,” Ming said. “Henry will respond or he will not respond. Bombarding him with communication requests will not hurry the process.”

“Maybe he doesn’t want to talk to you,” Coz suggested. “You did make fun of his kilt last time we were together.”

“Now he can make fun of your kimono,” Holo said. “Someone IM him that.”

“Yeah,” Kip said.

“I’ll try Jeremy,” Laura said.

“No, no, I’m already doing that,” Ming said. He squinted so hard his eyes nearly closed before shaking his head again. “The connection is dead.”

“What do you mean it’s dead?” Coz asked.

“I mean it is dead,” Ming said. “It has been destroyed, not merely turned off. Come inside and see for yourself.”

Everyone connected to the comms and we could instantly see what he meant. There was a black spot where Jeremy’s connection usually was. If he’d been offline or had simply severed the connection, it would have been a red X. This was a complete lack of anything. Jeremy was gone.

“Should we be worried?” Sandra asked, voicing what we were all feeling.

“Black spot means his system is destroyed,” Coz said.

“His whole fucking building is gone or we’d get a ping from some of the infrastructure,” Trish said. “We aren’t even seeing residual feedback from the wiring. There’s always residual feedback from the wiring even if the servers are fried.”

“Troubling, to say the least,” Ming said and waved his hands.

A map of the country came up, showing all of our physical locations. He pinched in until he found Jeremy’s place. He tapped it and a bright red circle surrounded the building where Jeremy lived. Then he zoomed out and found Henry’s location which happened to only be about two hours away from Jeremy’s. He put a green circle around that.

“What do we have between?” he asked. None of us answered. We all knew when Ming was talking to himself. “What terrain do we have?”

Any one of us could have answered that for him. Henry and Jeremy lived in the middle of the country. The plains. Nothing but flatland and old, dried-up farms. Once the growing vats took over agriculture in the country, those plains states were no longer needed for crops. The land dried up and turned to dust as soon as the forced irrigation ended. Took less than two years.

But, for those that didn’t exactly like what civilization had become, those wide-open states were super cheap and provided the isolation some folks craved. And since all quantum communication was via the air waves, infrastructure wasn’t an issue when it came to being the programmers they were.

“Tasking satellites,” Ming announced.

“Dude,” Coz said.

“Getting a little ahead of yourself, bro,” Holo said.

“Goddammit, Ming. When was the last time you tasked a satellite?” Trish asked.

“You’re going to break it,” Laura warned.

“Yeah,” Kip said.

But Ming was Ming, and he brought the closest surveillance satellite online and aimed it directly at Jeremy’s place. He zoomed in closer. Then closer. Then closer.

The collective breath went out of our collective lungs.

“Holy shit,” Trish said.

“You ain’t kidding about it being gone,” Coz said.

“Even I couldn’t dig a hole like that,” Holo said.

There was a crater instead of a building. A black hole that had to be at least a hundred yards deep.

“He did that,” Ming said. “That’s his fallback. He blew his system up instead of letting it get into the wrong hands.”

“What wrong hands?” Sandra asked quietly. “Who would be out there?”

“Let us find out,” Ming said and the image began to rewind.

Ming took us back three hours until we saw the explosion collapse in on itself and Jeremy’s building reassemble back in one piece. Sort of.

“Oh, Jesus,” I said.

Undead. Thousands and thousands of them had converged on Jeremy’s place. No idea why they found him, but they did. They overran the building and then ten minutes later it exploded, vaporizing anything within five hundred yards.

“Henry,” I said.

Ming nodded and moved the satellite. They were two hours apart by road and visited each other when they could. Henry liked to go for long drives despite the danger. Not that I’m one to talk since I nearly got eaten by undead rats in order to find bourbon.

Henry’s place was still intact.

Ming rewound until he saw Henry’s Jeep racing backwards away from the compound that Henry had built. He stopped and went forward then froze the image and zoomed all the way in. Henry was driving and Jeremy was slumped in the passenger’s seat.

“Keep zooming,” I said and stared hard at the image.

“No,” Sandra whispered. “Don’t.”

She and Jeremy had been close. An almost brother/sister bond. She didn’t want to see what we all expected to see.

Ming zoomed in until we had perfect detail of what had happened to Jeremy.

There was a deep, dark stain on his left shoulder and flesh hung from his neck in gooey flaps. He’d been attacked by the undead and wasn’t doing well.

“Why the fuck would Henry take him back to his compound?” Trish asked, her voice filled with frustrated anger. “That idiot.”

“Maybe Jeremy wasn’t infected?” Laura said. “Maybe that happened some other way.”

No one responded to her. No need. She knew what she was saying was bullshit.

“Jesus,” I said again.

“He ain’t gonna be able to help, bro,” Holo said.

Sandra flashed him a quick look of anger then looked at me. I saw the truth in her eyes just as everyone else caught on to what might have happened to Henry.

“We write them off,” Coz said. “It’s cold, sure, but no way Jeremy is surviving that. And if Henry was dumb enough to take an infected person into his compound, then the odds of him still being alive are zero.”

Then a chime rang out and Henry connected to the Center.

Seven

“I’m sorry,” Henry said. He coughed for a good thirty seconds, cleared his throat, failed, coughed some more, then looked at all of us. “I screwed up. I screwed up bad.”

“Henry, what happened?” Trish asked.

“We know what happened,” Coz said.

“Yeah,” Kip agreed.

“Shut up,” Laura said.

“They got Jeremy,” Henry said.

“We know,” I said. “We checked out the satellite surveillance.”

Henry nodded. He was in his late thirties and skinnier than Coz. His head was shaved bald and he wore a tank top and cargo shorts. A spot on his right forearm kept flickering in and out of focus. I turned to Ming and saw the guy was staring at the flickering spot with great interest.

“I…” Henry coughed some more. “I tried to save him. I figured maybe if I got him here early, you know…before.”

“Henry? What did you fucking do?” Trish asked.

“I used my spare immersion tank,” Henry continued. “I put Jeremy in it.”

“While he was infected?” Coz shouted. “Have you lost your mind?”

“I’ve been working on a program that I thought could filter out the infection,” Henry said. “There’s no reason that the quantum transference has to transfer the infection when it transfers the consciousness.”

“That’s not how it works, Henry,” Trish said. “Goddammit, you know better.”

“I thought I had it beat,” Henry said. “I was going to tell you guys, but there was no reason to since we were going to do this.”

He spread his arms wide then coughed even harder. He doubled over and rested his arms on his knees.

“Where did you put Jeremy?” Ming asked.

“He said he put him in a spare immersion tank, dude,” Coz snapped. “Listen up!”

“He knows what I mean,” Ming said, his eyes locked onto Henry. “Henry? Where did you put Jeremy?”

Henry began to reply, but his coughing got worse and he fell to one knee. Then he collapsed completely onto the floor. Holo began to growl low in his throat. Everyone whipped around to stare at my dog. He’d never done that before in the Center. They didn’t know what it meant.

I knew exactly what it meant.

“Ming!” I shouted.

“I am trying!” Ming shouted back, his voice filled with panic. “Henry has his portal locked open! He encrypted it so I cannot close it!”

“What the hell is happening here?” Trish yelled.

“Is he dead?” Laura asked, moving closer to Henry’s unconscious body.

Sandra put a hand on Laura’s shoulder and stopped her from getting any closer.

“He stinks,” Holo growled. “Bad. Make him go away, bro. Get him gone. Now!”

That last word came out as a harsh bark. A warning bark. A bark that something undead this way comes.

Henry’s eyes shot open just as that flickering black spot on his arm stopped flickering. There was a mouth-sized hunk of flesh missing from Henry’s forearm. He sat up and hissed at us.

“Oh, shit!” Trish yelled.

Holo was up on all fours, barking and snarling, but he didn’t dare get any closer to Henry. I shook my right hand twice and my axe appeared in my grip. Everyone else did the same thing and various weapons appeared in shaking hands.

“Hold,” Ming ordered. “Let me try something.”

A purple light flashed from above us and an iron cage dropped from the ceiling, trapping Henry.

“There,” Ming said. “Now it is contained.”

“Not an it,” Sandra whispered.

“It is now,” Ming said. “Henry is no longer there. He’s not back home, either. What is in that tank is not Henry. Our friend is gone.”

“That son of a bitch,” Coz said.

“Yeah,” Kip said.

The undead quantum Henry slammed himself against the bars of the iron cage. He tried to reach through the gaps, but they were only illusions. Ming had built an impenetrable cell and only made it look like a cage.

“I have to wonder if there was any lag from when his physical body changed and when his quantum representation changed,” Ming said, more to himself than to any of us.

“Ming? What the hell are we going to do with him?” Trish asked. “Kill him? Is that even possible?”

“A very good question,” Ming said. “Henry is already dead.”

He drew a katana from beneath his robes. I caught a quick glimpse and I could swear the man wasn’t wearing underwear. You know what? I’d been through a lot, all of us had, and there was no reason he needed to be subjecting anyone to that kind of horror. Asshole.

“Ming? What are you doing?” Coz asked.

“Ending his time here,” Ming said.

“But we don’t know what it will do,” Coz said.

“Kill it,” Holo snarled.

“I’m going to listen to the dog,” Ming said before any of us could stop him.

“Can’t we just banish him?” Sandra asked. She was as far away from Henry as she could get, her back against the wall, her arms cradled around her chest. “Send him into exile?”

“Of course,” Ming said. “What a splendid idea. We send him into exile in one of the Domains. Perhaps his own? Which Domain did Henry create?”

The Domains.

Part of being one of the Nine was that we each got to create our own Domain—a quantum world that was as alive as the real world. More so since the real world was overrun by the dead.

Each Domain had a specific theme. That was the one concession we had to make. No two Domains could be the same. Mine is Technopolis, a cyberpunk mega-city that covered an entire planet. I was a high-tech gumshoe with a talking dog as a partner. Animals can talk in my Domain due to enhanced intelligence implants. It made things easier for Holo.

Coz had Grimm City. That was an urban fantasy setting where he was a homicide detective that dealt with supernatural and magical killings.

Sandra had Star Fortress which was a far, far future space station that she ruled like a space queen.

Trish had Elder Mansion which was a Lovecraftian horror Domain that none of us ever wanted to visit again. Scared the living shit out of me and Holo refuses to even listen to her if she starts talking about the place.

Kip has Dodge County. A wild-west-themed Domain where he’s the silent gunslinger that wanders the land, handing out justice to the robber barons and heartless outlaws that plague the settlers and townsfolk that are only looking for a simple life of peace.

Jeremy’s Domain was a League of Heroes. All superheroes, all the time.

The weird one was Laura’s. She was a hardcore gamer, but she chose to make a Domain called Wuthering Moors. Total gothic romance scenario where the hero is constantly bemoaning the love he lost while burying his grief in the bosom of the closest lass he can get ahold of. Laura prefers we don’t visit. Not a problem.

Ming’s Domain, the first Domain, is EverRealm. A total Tolkien rip-off, like all of the fantasy RPGs ever created, the Domain is filled with orcs and goblins and dragons and elves and all of that shit. The funny part is that Ming’s great-great-great grandfather invented the world as a cheap knockoff of Dungeons & Dragons. It died like all the cheap knockoffs did back in the 20th century.

Except, someone in his family later revived it once the world had become Internet savvy. It turned into the most played game on the web. A MMORPG of epic proportions, dwarfing its closest rival by a factor of ten to one in players.

A few generations later and you’ve got Ming, one of the smartest people on the planet that happened to be part of one of the wealthiest families on the planet. Not that money could stop the undead. A massive bank account and trust fund didn’t stop the infection.

For the record? Not a fan of EverRealm. Some of the others would play with Ming in his Domain all the time, including Holo. They had badass characters that could slay dragons and take on troll clans by themselves. My character was a human Ranger that always ended up getting nearly killed. I stopped playing with them all after a while and hung out in Technopolis by myself instead.

That left Henry’s Domain. Slasher Lake. He was a huge fan of the slasher horror genre and decided he wanted to create a world where every trope of that genre could be explored. Personally, I think he just wanted an excuse to save half-naked (sometimes fully naked) chicks from machete-wielding psychos. It made him feel good.

“Slasher Lake,” I said. “That’s Henry’s Domain.”

“Ah, yes, right,” Ming said, a look of distaste filling his features. “That place. What a waste of bandwidth.”

“No judgement,” Laura said.

“Yes, of course, my apologies,” Ming said. “So, are we in agreement that we will banish this version of Henry to his Domain?”

“Will we sever the link?” Sandra asked. “Cut it off from the Center?”

“I would say yes, except that would present a few problems,” Ming said.

“Infrastructure deterioration,” Coz said.

“The wheel needs all its spokes,” Trish added.

“Yes, quite,” Ming said. “If we sever Slasher Lake’s connection to the Center, then the entire infrastructure becomes imbalanced. We are only as strong as we are because we are together. That counts in the quantum setting as much as it counts in life.”

“But when we send him there he can’t get back here, right?” Sandra asked.

She was almost shaking with fear.

“I believe that our combined skills can create a firewall strong enough to keep his consciousness from returning to the Center,” Ming said.

“We could also create a scenario in the Domain that will keep his undead persona occupied,” Coz said.

“Yeah,” Kip said.

“Good idea,” Trish said. “Populate the place with re-spawning co-eds that are too delicious looking for him to do anything else except chase them, catch them, eat them, and repeat.”

“You all are forgetting something,” Holo said, his voice still a low growl, his eyes locked onto undead Henry. “Where the hell is Jeremy?”

“He is in Henry’s spare immersion tank,” Ming said.

“No, the dog is right, dude,” Coz said. “Henry said he brought Jeremy here early in order to see if he could help him. Where is he?”

Everyone froze. Then we started looking around the Center for signs of undead Jeremy. The place wasn’t big enough for him to hide, but maybe there was something that could tell us where he ended up.

“Henry would have taken him to his Domain,” Sandra said.

“Whose Domain? Henry’s or Jeremy’s?” Laura asked.

“Jeremy’s,” Sandra said. “He has to be in League of Heroes right now.”

“Perhaps,” Ming said. “Let me check to see if there are any remnants of a trace path.”

His eyes glazed over as all of ours do when we’re accessing the backend of the Domains to work some maintenance or institute upgrades. It took him two seconds flat.

“His taint is all over everything,” Ming said, sounding deeply offended. “Our Henry panicked and made a mess of it all.”

“Okay, so what the fuck does that mean?” Trish asked.

“It means it will be faster visiting each Domain than it will be to clean up the quantum mess and find out where Jeremy was placed,” Ming said.

“Dammit,” Coz said.

“Yeah,” Kip said.

“Shall we get to work?” Ming asked and clapped his hands together.

“Sounds good,” I said. “How about we—?”

I was cut off by a string of chimes that echoed through the Center. My shock at the noise was echoed on the others’ faces. If it was Jeremy trying to get back to the Center, although how he could do that in his state was a very good question, then there should have only been one chime. We were hearing dozens going off at once.

Then they began to appear and all hell broke loose.

Eight

We didn’t get a chance to get to work. Hell, we didn’t get a chance to even think about checking any of the Domains.

Something went very wrong on Henry’s side of the world. The real world. The world that had undead in the billions walking around looking for food. If the undead made it inside Henry’s compound, and saw him floating in his tank, then they’d be awfully tempted to break in and grab a hunk of Hank for a snack.

Technically, Henry was undead also inside the immersion gel. He wasn’t living flesh anymore and wouldn’t make a very good meal. The thing was that the undead weren’t exactly quantum scientists. To their eyes, there was a living human being suspended inside that tank, ripe for the plucking. And the eating.

We all had our theories afterwards, but what it came down to was that the undead broke his tank open then climbed inside to get a taste. Once they were inside the immersion gel, they became incorporated into the quantum matrix. They became players in the game.

Within seconds, the Center was filled with undead. Hungry, confused, enraged undead. There was no time for us to plot, plan, come up with any type of strategy. The one place in all of existence where we should have been perfectly safe had become a crypt. Our crypt.

“Go!” I yelled as I brought my fire axe down on the skull of a woman that was more of a husk than a body. Her head cracked like a dried-out walnut and desiccated brains sprayed everywhere. “Move!”

No one needed me to tell them what to do. We were all veterans of the apocalypse; we were all experienced in what had to be done to survive.

But we were also only people. Except for Holo, of course.

Laura panicked. I think the fact that the Center had been breached, which no one suspected could be done, totally fried her brain. She froze up and stood there, screaming her head off, as six undead tackled her then proceeded to tear off that screaming head.

I don’t think anyone will forget when her screams were cut off. I know I won’t.

Three undead went for Coz and I took out two at the legs with my axe, chopping them off at the knees. The third grabbed him around the throat with its putrid hand, but Coz was able to snap the thing’s arm off at the elbow then beat its head in with its own arm. It was impressive.

Coz got his shit together and held his hands out. A machete appeared in each hand, and he began hacking and slashing at anything that moved and obviously wasn’t living.

Trish had an aluminum baseball bat in each hand and was smashing two of the undead into juicy pulp. Holo gave a warning bark in time for her to duck her shoulder and let one of the undead tumble across her back. She stood up at the last instant, knocking its legs up into the air, causing the thing to flip over onto its back. Down came the bats and more pulp covered the floor.

“Follow me!” Ming yelled as he held his hands out, palms up and summoned the doorway to his Domain. A circular portal of bright light appeared before him. “Hurry! We can’t let them follow us in!”

Despite her delicate persona, Sandra was no wimp when it came to combat. Wimps didn’t survive in the apocalypse. She had a military-grade combat knife in each hand, both with blades easily over ten inches long, and was spinning through the quickly massing undead, stabbing, shoving, stabbing, shoving, stabbing, and shoving. It was a technique we all knew, but she’d mastered perfectly. Stab an undead through the skull, shove it away, turn and stab another, shove that one away, and keep on repeating until they’re all dead or you are.

“Holo! Go!” I shouted and pointed the head of my axe at Ming’s portal. “Make sure that side is secure!”

He didn’t have to be told twice. There was nothing he could do against the undead. He bolted towards the portal and was the first one through as Ming continued to stand there, holding it open for all of us.

I swung my axe and chopped an undead teenager in half. Right down the middle. She split open and her insides became outsides. The smell made me want to gag, but I didn’t have time for that. Four undead were headed right for me.

Kip let out a battle cry that was so loud I could feel it in my bones and charged the undead that were charging me. He didn’t carry weapons. Kip was the weapon. He wore top-grade riot gear body armor and had thick, reinforced gloves. He slammed his body into the undead and knocked them right off their feet. Then he set to work stomping skulls with his steel-toed combat boots. The one undead that managed to sit up had his head knocked off by a wicked right hook that Kip threw his entire body weight into.

“Thanks!” I shouted over the chaos.

“Come on!” Coz yelled as he raced by me towards Ming’s portal. He was gone before I could say anything.

“We should split up!” I yelled at the others.

“No time!” Trish said as she was next after Coz.

I was right. We should have split up and gone to each of our own Domains. All of us stuck in one Domain was not a good idea. It’s why we had all of the others. To minimize risk.

“You going, too?” I called to Kip who was smashing two undead heads together and trying to create one. He simply created a huge mess that squirted up high into the air.

“Yeah!” Kip said as he let the headless bodies drop and kicked out at an undead man that was reaching for the back of Sandra’s neck.

The undead bastard fell against Sandra and she whipped about, stabbing it through the eye before shoving it backwards. Kip tossed it aside and gave Sandra a huge smile. She didn’t waste time smiling back. She was all work and no smiles.

Kip turned his smile on me then sprinted at the portal.

“Steve!” Ming shouted. “I can’t hold it forever!”

He was right. It took a lot of energy to maintain a portal. Do it for too long and you risked having your consciousness dissipate within the quantum matrix. You’d lose yourself forever. I guess that was our new death, in a way.

“Sandra!” I yelled.

“You go!” she said as she stabbed two more undead then dropped to a knee and severed the leg tendons of two more before standing back up and shoving the crippled undead at a group of six coming at her. “I have this!”

I wanted to argue, but she was right. I needed to go next. Sandra was much faster than me and could dodge the horde that was filling the Center better than I could.

“Don’t wait!” I shouted then turned and ran straight for the portal.

I gave Ming a glance as I passed him, and the last thing I saw was the sweat pouring down his face. He was struggling to keep the portal open. But there was nothing I could do to help him.

I was through the portal and into EverRealm without feeling a thing. One moment I’m in the Center, the next I’m not. It’s how quantum transportation worked.

Not that it was all peaches and cream when I got to the other side.

Usually, we have a specific place we open portals onto in our Domains. A safe spot that is free of ambush possibilities or any other dangers. No point in appearing in our Domain only to be run over by a truck or eaten by some otherworldly demon.

Ming must have been rattled because instead of appearing in the meadow of wildflowers that he preferred, I was falling in open space, my arms pinwheeling as I stared up at a bright blue sky. Then I hit the water and was under and being tumbled by the power of a massive waterfall. I barely had the presence of mind to go limp and let the current pop me out and away from the down force of the waterfall.

When I finally came up for air, I was a quarter-mile downriver and exhausted. It took all of my strength to paddle my tired ass over to shore. I dragged myself up onto a small beach of coarse sand and pebbles. After about fifteen minutes of just breathing, I managed to sit up and look around.

There were about six river trolls standing in the tree line staring at me, heavy clubs in their hands. One of them started to smile and showed me those huge troll teeth that could grind bones into powder.

“Tasty,” he said.

Man, I hate EverRealm.

Nine

“Hold on now,” I said as I struggled up onto my feet. They watched me with great interest. “Let’s not be hasty or anything, okay?”

“You one of them,” the smiling troll said. He had to be eight feet tall and was nothing but thick, gray hide and massive muscles on top of massive muscles. “You Othersider.”

That’s what the natives of EverRealm called us. The Othersiders. It was an EverRealm thing. In the other Domains, we weren’t singled out at all. Just one more reason I disliked EverRealm.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m an Othersider,” I said. “Which is why you lot should think about taking those clubs and walking away. You know we Othersiders are more powerful than any of you.”

They laughed. Deep, throaty laughs that rumbled like thunder.

“You Ranger pussy,” the troll said. “Snack.”

I looked down and saw I’d automatically been switched into my EverRealm outfit. It was all green leather and rough deerskin. And completely waterlogged. I tried to casually pat myself down to see what weapons I had on me, but the slightest movement caused half the trolls to growl in a way that sent my nuts up to visit my tonsils. I froze.

The smiling troll, who was obviously in charge, turned and looked to his left then his right then back at me. The smile widened even more.

“No more Othersiders,” he said. “You alone, Ranger pussy. You no luck.”

“Me no luck,” I said. “No shit.”

“No shit!” the troll echoed then laughed hard. “You no shit!”

I had one option which was to get back in the water. These were river trolls, but the name was a bit of a misnomer. While trolls were great swimmers, they had to paddle like crazy or they sunk like boulders to the bottom because their muscles were so dense. Dense due to their immense strength. One punch and I was dead.

So, back in the water it was.

I turned and sprinted the three feet to the water and dove. It wasn’t deep enough for a real dive, and my belly scraped against the rocks, but I managed to keep below the surface long enough to get myself out into the current.

When I popped my head back up, all I saw was the smiling troll standing far off, waving his club at me. He was either saying goodbye or saying for me to have a long look at the club since we’d be meeting again. Trolls weren’t the brightest, but holy shit could they hold a grudge. I just made that troll’s shit list.

I let the current take me down the river, staying on my back, my eyes watching for the attack that I knew was going to come. But after a very cold hour or so, there was no sign of the trolls. I risked swimming my way to the opposite bank and climbed my frozen ass out of there.

Even without a sign of the river trolls, I was still in a lot of trouble. I had my EverRealm clothes, but unless I made it to a save point in the Domain then I was going to be unarmed and without any of the inventory I’d built up on the few times I’d played in EverRealm with the others.

“West,” I mumbled through chattering teeth as I painfully watched the three red suns begin to descend towards the mountains on the horizon. “Head west until I find the village at the crossroads.”

I blinked a few times and tried to bring my heads-up display online, but since I’d entered the game Domain incorrectly, I didn’t even have access to that. I was walking blind in a land that wasn’t mine, that I didn’t like, and could kill me at any second. If I didn’t make it to the closest save point, then no matter what I ate or drank or however much I slept, my health wasn’t going to increase.

I was no better than a non-player character. And no one wants to be an NPC. No one.

Without a heads-up display, I had zero idea which way was west. This was EverRealm, not Earth. Do the suns set in the west? Or do they set in the east? Shit, they could set in the south. EverRealm was a fantasy Domain dominated by magic, not by science. As far as I knew, the place was flat and I could walk off the edge if I travelled far enough.

But, it was overseen by Ming. Ming was Ming. I had serious doubts he would mess with too many things that we take for granted back in the real world. I was going to have to trust that setting suns meant west.

I started walking, following the river until it took a turn and I was heading away from the far-off mountains. I headed into the woods that fronted the riverbank, careful to make sure I was lined up with the mountains and the suns that were dropping fast.

The trees were thin and tall, like southern pines back home, but instead of needles, they had thick, broad leaves like maples. I knew I should recognize the trees and I knew there was a reason for that, but I couldn’t remember why. If I’d had my heads-up display, then my Ranger character would have known what kind of trees they were. His knowledge would have popped up in the discover pane and instantly identified the trees and what they meant. Maybe. I didn’t really maintain the character enough for him to be very effective at anything, really.

Nothing I could do about that, though, so I kept walking, heading deeper into the woods.

Deeper into the dark, dark woods.

Plus side was the trees were skinny and spaced out, so lots of room to walk. Not so plus side was that the branches and leaves above me blocked out what was left of the daylight and I quickly found myself squinting into the gloom.

Everywhere I looked was nothing but shadows. Shadows that appeared to have moving things in them. I’d stop and wait, my ears straining to hear the hidden monster that was coming for me. But nothing ever came. I made it through the woods and stood at the edge of a long, wide meadow filled with bright blue flowers that were nearly as tall as me.

The flowers I knew.

“Great,” I muttered. “Just great.”

Pollywill flowers.

“Great. Just great,” the flowers echoed, matching my voice and tone perfectly.

The sons of bitches loved to mock travelers. They’d echo and echo and echo until you thought you’d go crazy. Then the real fun would begin.

“Listen,” I announced before I set one foot in that meadow. “I know your damn games. Do you hear me? I know how you think and it won’t work on me.”

“It won’t work on me,” they mocked.

“I’m not kidding,” I said. “You can try to get into my head, but it’s not going to do a damn bit of difference.”

They were silent. Pollywill flowers weren’t exactly sentient as much as they were a practical joke gone rogue. But they did know when to quit while behind. I looked like a Ranger to them, so they must have assumed I knew the secret to their downfall.

I didn’t. Kip knew it and so did Ming, but I didn’t have a clue. All I knew was that I had to block out what they said in order to get to the other side of the meadow. Otherwise, I’d risk madness about halfway through.

“Are we good?” I asked.

“Good,” they said.

I took one step into the meadow and waited. No mocking. I took another step and another and waited again. Still no mocking. Good, good.

I was maybe fifteen yards in when I heard whispering. Dammit.

“Knock it off,” I snarled. “I’ll start ripping flowers out of the damn ground if I hear another word.”

They went silent again.

Fifteen more yards and there was a bark. A loud bark. A loud bark I knew.

“Holo!” I called. “Holo, is that you?”

An answering bark then a pained yelp that was cut off.

“Holo!” I shouted and began to sprint through the meadow.

I shoved the flower stalks out of my way as I ran blindly towards where I thought I’d heard the yelp. On I ran. And ran. And ran.

“Dammit,” I said as I skidded to a stop and nearly collapsed as my lungs felt like they were on fire. No cramps or anything. In the undead apocalypse, you stay in shape. Can’t have a stitch in your side when you’re running from an undead horde. “Dammit.”

I straightened up and stretched. There was no Holo in the meadow. Not anymore. Maybe at one point, which made my blood run cold. The flowers couldn’t make up a sound; they could only parrot it. Which meant a dog, maybe not Holo, but some dog was hurt close enough that they could copy the sound of its pained yelp.

“Okay, okay, good one,” I said. “You got me.”

I grabbed a stalk and pulled hard.

All of the flowers swiveled so they could face me. Several bent over to get a better look at me. I flipped them off with my free hand.

“Here’s how this will go,” I said. “You are going to stop messing with me and let me through this meadow or I start ripping you assholes out of the ground. Are we understood?”

A hiss and a snarl came from my right.

“What does that mean?” I asked. “Is that a no? Are you telling me we aren’t understood?”

The snarl grew louder.

“So, you want me to start tearing all of you out of the ground, is that it?”

I pulled on the stalk and there was a cry from the flowers that was almost ear splitting.

“I’ll do it,” I said. “I will pull this piece of…shit…right…”

The snarl was not from one of the flowers.

A large snout appeared between stalks, pushing them aside so I could see the five-inch fangs and massive head that went with it. A brackle. Sort of like a fox and a razorback pig, but so, so much bigger.

“Hey there, Wilbur,” I said and slowly began backing away. “No need to get angry. I wasn’t really going to hurt the nice flower. I was teasing.”

Brackles didn’t exclusively live in pollywill flower meadows. They were native to most of EverRealm and made some great barbecue. If you survived the hunt. The things were smart, fast, deadly, and mean as hell. That meanness went up a notch when anyone stumbled into their territory. The damn pollywill flowers had somehow gotten the brackle to take up residence close to them.

Those sons of bitches. I hate pollywill flowers almost as much as I hate EverRealm as a whole.

The brackle snarled louder then let out a whistling hiss that sent shivers down my spine.

So, I did what any unarmed, unsaved character would do. I ran my ass off.

Ten

I don’t think I’d ever run so fast in my life. Not kidding. Even considering all of the undead I’d had to escape since the apocalypse had started, I honestly could say that running from that brackle may have set some land speed records.

The pollywill flowers laughed. I screamed. The flowers were having a better time than I was.

I could hear the brackle gaining on me, its breathing ragged and harsh as my sprint quickly turned into a marathon. A winding, belabored marathon. Pollywill flowers clumped together, so I was able to use some of those clumps as blockers, dodging around them when the brackle started getting too close. The nasty thing just didn’t have the agility to make the turns without slamming into the pollywill stalks.

Flowers cried out as the beast tore through them, snapping stalks left and right. I couldn’t help but smile at the flowers’ pain. Screw them.

Then I was out of the meadow and in an orchard of apple trees (actual apple trees). The brackle was still on my tail, but it had slowed considerably. The thing was breathing so hard I thought it’d have a heart attack right there. After a few jukes, it grew tired of chasing me and slid to a halt with a disgusted snort and a kick up of dirt and leaves.

I could just make out the pollywill flowers calling to me.

“It won’t work on me! It won’t work on me!” they shouted.

I ignored them and kept running until I was on the far side of the orchard. When I reached the end, I nearly collapsed, barely able to stay on my feet long enough to shamble over to a good-sized apple tree. My arms weren’t jelly, unlike my legs, so I hoisted myself into the crook of two huge branches and settled in for a little rest.

When I woke up, it was the middle of the night and the five Moons of Galac were high in the sky, their light illuminating the orchard in blue and pale green light.

I have no idea why the moons got a name, but the three suns didn’t. I’m sure Ming had an answer since he had an answer to everything in EverRealm, but I could never remember to ask him.

As I stared up at the Galac moons, a slight rustling in some scrub brush a few yards off from the orchard caught my attention. Instantly wide awake, I straightened up, careful not to scrape against the tree’s bark and alert whatever was close by.

More rustling and a shape appeared from out a thicket of brambles. The shape swatted at itself, turning in a slow circle as it obviously tried to get the thorns and spurs off of its cloak. It wasn’t making much headway, so it took off its cloak and stood there in only a pair of leather breeches and a T-shirt.

T-shirt?

The moonlight was plenty strong enough for me to make out the logo of Jamz Cola. I knew that too-tight T-shirt. It was a T-shirt that pissed Ming off to no end. He hated the fact that T-shirt was even in EverRealm. But the T-shirt, and the gut it did a horrible job of covering, could never be parted. Never.

“Kip,” I whispered.

The shape was shaking the cloak out and froze in mid-shake.

“Kip,” I whispered a little louder. “Up here.”

Kip turned in a circle then his shoulders slumped.

“Here, man,” I said in a normal voice.

He jumped and spun around to face me. It wasn’t a happy face. I could easily make out several gashes and more than a few dark bruises across his chin and cheeks. One eye looked like it would swell shut at any second.

Kip stared at my tree for a minute then nodded and limped over to me.

“Can you get up here?” I asked. “There’s a brackle around.”

“Yeah,” he said and tried to climb up. He didn’t get close. “No.”

“Move,” I said. “I’ll come down to you.”

He stepped back and I jumped down. My legs threatened to give out, but the nap in the tree had restored some energy. It wasn’t EverRealm energy, just good old-fashioned Steve energy, but I’d take it.

“You see any of the others?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“What happened to your face? You meet with a brackle, too?”

He shook his head then hooked a thumb over his shoulder towards the thicket of brambles.

“Bunyip,” Kip said.

“Bunyip? That water thing from Australia?” I asked. “They have those in EverRealm?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit, man, sorry,” I said. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” he said and pointed at his face. “Looks bad.”

Kip, as you have guessed, was not a man of many words. Saying anything other than “yeah” was a rare thing. I patted him on his shoulder and he gave me a weak smile.

“You want to rest for a while?” I asked. “I can help you up into a tree.”

“No,” Kip said. “Save point.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” I said. “I think it’s to the west. Let’s go.”

I started off in the direction of the Galac moons, but Kip grabbed my forearm and shook his head.

“Not west,” he said.

“Yes, the village is to the west,” I said.

“That’s not west,” he said and nodded ninety degrees to my left.

I’d been going the wrong way.

“Shit,” I said. “Good thing you found me.”

“Yeah,” he said and let my arm go. “Walk.”

So we walked.

We skirted the apple orchard, Kip picking a few up and putting them in his cloak that he twisted up like a sack and threw over his shoulder. The orchard was long and narrow. It took us an hour to reach its end. Once we did, we were faced with a long row of rolling hills. The grass was tall and swaying in the night breeze.

Kip didn’t pause. He walked into the grass and started trudging up the closest hill with purpose. He knew EverRealm a hell of a lot better than I did, so I followed close behind, my senses alert for the next attack.

I wracked my brain for what could be lurking in the tall grass, what little shit trap EverRealm had in store for us, but I couldn’t think of anything other than snakes and rats and the usual garden-variety vermin. I was sure there had to be something stupid and deadly in the grass, but my lack of EverRealm knowledge put me at a great disadvantage.

I was about to ask what Kip thought when he stopped and put a hand on my chest. We’d almost crested the hill and I could see some light coming from the other side. Kip cocked his head, listening hard, and I did the same.

Someone was humming a tune.

Kip looked to me and I shrugged. He shrugged as well and we kept walking.

Once at the top of the hill, we could easily see the source of the humming as well as the light. Built on the other side was a small cottage. It couldn’t have been more than a single room, it was that small. An old woman was out front, stirring something in a huge black kettle that was suspended over a good-sized fire.

The tune she hummed was familiar. It sounded like a version of the EverRealm theme that greeted players when they went to login. The tune had been mostly forgotten over the years since immersion tanks dropped players directly into the action, removing the need for login screens. But for decades before the immersion tanks, it had been one of the most recognizable themes ever written.

She paused in mid-stir and slowly turned her head to look over her shoulder up at us.

“Well, don’t just stand there like a couple of gorgon victims,” she said in a reedy voice that gave me a shiver up my spine. “Come down here and help an old woman.”

I hesitated, but Kip immediately set off down the hill in a hurry. I had no idea what he expected, but I sure as hell knew that old woman with reedy voices that were stirring the unknown contents of a huge black cauldron by the light of the Galac moons could not be a good thing. That’s basic gaming common sense.

But Kip wasn’t bothered by the sight and quickly outpaced me on his way to the cottage.

“Hello there,” the old woman said. “I am Neiva. And what would your names be?”

When I got close enough, I realized the cauldron was suspended above the fire by nothing. It hung in the air without any frame or structure to keep it aloft. Dammit. A witch.

“I am not a witch, young man,” Neiva said.

Shit, she could read minds.

“And I cannot read minds,” she said with a sigh. “Your face does not hide your thoughts very well.”

Kip chuckled.

“Kip,” he said and extended a hand.

Neiva smiled at the offered hand and took it, giving it a firm shake. Then her eyes returned to me.

“Uh, Steve,” said.

“Kip,” she said. “Uh Steve. A pleasure to meet you on such a fine night as this.” She waved a hand at the cauldron. “Simply a gift from a friend.”

“Okay, if you say so,” I replied.

She gave me a weak smile. “It’s my laundry. It is too hot in the day to slave over this fire for hours, so I do my laundry at night. I don’t sleep much at my age, anyway.”

“Yeah,” Kip nodded and gave me a look that distinctly said to shut up.

“You are Othersiders,” she stated. “And not in great health. We do not see your kind often anymore.”

“We should have been sent to our save point, but things are a mess on our side of reality,” I said.

“Save point?” she asked and furrowed her brow. “Oh, yes, the village where your kind appear. I recall Othersiders referring to it as such before becoming their EverRealm selves.”

This was completely out of character for am NPC to talk to us like she understood the difference between real people and the people of EverRealm. I wasn’t exactly convinced she wasn’t a witch.

“Hungry?” she asked.

“Thirsty,” Kip said.

“Of course, of course,” she said and held out the handle of her laundry paddle. “If you would be so kind as to continue stirring for me, I shall fetch us all some tea. Tea by moonlight is one of the last great pleasures in life, don’t you think?”

“Yeah,” Kip said as he took the paddle.

I waited until she’d gone inside the cottage before turning to Kip and saying, “We should keep going. This lady is creeping me out.”

“No,” Kip said as he stirred. “She’s good.”

“You don’t know that,” I said.

“Yeah,” he replied.

“Have you met her before?”

“No.”

“Then don’t say yeah.”

He shrugged and kept stirring. Neiva was taking a while with the tea and I grew restless, so I walked a few yards down the hill to a pile of stones. It wasn’t a random pile, I could see that, but it didn’t look like anything specific. A grave? A filled in old well? An old trash pit?

Kip whistled and I walked back up to the fire where Neiva was waiting, a tray of mugs and a pot of tea in her hands.

“I don’t have cakes,” she said and winked at me. “Not that Uh Steve would eat anything I offer. Still think me to be a witch?”

“It’s Steve,” I said. “No uh before it.”

“Steve,” she said and bowed her head. “Take a mug. Relax.”

I took a mug, but didn’t relax. I also didn’t sip from the mug although the tea did smell delicious. Strong and fruity.

Kip took a mug with one hand while he continued stirring the laundry with the other.

“Oh, my, let me take that,” Neiva said as she set the tray down on a small stump off to the side of the fire. “You enjoy your tea.”

Kip did. He downed it quickly, causing Neiva to break out in a pleased cackle.

“Pour yourself some more,” she said as she took over the laundry duty once again. “Drink up. You have a long walk ahead of you before you reach your destination.”

“Friends,” Kip said after filling his mug and sipping from it.

I stared at him as the bruises on his face lightened. Maybe it was a trick of the firelight, but I could swear a couple of his gashes healed over to thin lines in seconds.

“I have not seen more of you,” Neiva said.

She snapped her fingers and the fire died down to nothing but coals. The cauldron moved away from the heat and settled onto the ground.

“Oh, come on,” I muttered.

Neiva only grinned at me. Her teeth were surprisingly straight and white. I expected them to be yellow and pointing all kinds of directions.

“I will say that there is an energy about tonight that tells me all is not well with the village,” she said. “I can smell the death in the air.”

She raised her nose and took a deep breath.

“Do you smell it, Kip?”

Kip sniffed, and after a second, he nodded.

“Steve?”

I sniffed, but only smelled woodsmoke and the tea in my hands.

“You will,” she said even though I never gave her an answer.

Kip drank the rest of his tea then eyed me. It was a look that Holo gave me all the time. I was acting like an idiot and being rude. I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then raised the mug to him and downed it in two gulps.

It was as delicious as it smelled.

Every part of my body tingled instantly, and I felt years younger like I’d had the best night’s sleep ever in my life.

“Not everyone is an enemy, Steve,” Neiva said and held out a hand.

I gave her the mug and she took Kip’s as well, setting them both on the tray.

“Now, if you will excuse me,” she said with a sigh, “I must wring out my wash and set it to dry. I wish you both well on your journey.”

“Yeah,” Kip said and clapped me on the shoulder. “Bye.”

He started walking before I could say anything. Neiva watched me then glanced at her cauldron of laundry.

“Right, sure,” I said. “I’ll leave you to it then. Thanks for the tea.”

“May I give you a word of advice, Steve?” she asked as I began to leave.

I paused. “Sure. What?”

“There are many planes of existence,” she said. “More than any of us will ever know. Open your mind and accept where you are. If you can accept that, and stop fighting it, then all those planes will open up to you.”

I had no clue what she was talking about, but I nodded politely.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, Steve,” she said. “And good luck to you.”

Eleven

I caught up to Kip and we walked for hours. We hiked through the tall grass, up and down the rolling hills until the three suns began to rise. In front of us.

“Wait,” I said and pointed at the suns. “Shouldn’t they be back that way?”

“No,” Kip said.

“Are you sure? Because I swear they should—”

“No,” he said again, cutting me off.

“Fine, fine,” I said and shut up.

We kept on hiking.

A little before midday, I was ready to fall on the ground and take a nap right there in the grass. But Kip was having none of that and glared at me when I suggested we take a break.

“How much farther is it?” I asked when we crested yet another hill.

“There,” he said and pointed down into a wide valley that was split down the middle by a lazy, muddy river.

In the center of the valley, sitting on the river’s bank, was a village. The village.

Kip gasped.

I gasped.

We stared at the village for a long while.

“Well, that sucks shit,” I said.

“Yeah,” Kip agreed.

“I think we know where Jeremy ended up,” I said.

“Yeah,” Kip agreed.

The village was half-destroyed. Many of the huts and buildings were smoking ruins and the place was overrun.

Overrun by the undead.

Kip sat down in the grass and shoved enough aside so he could see the village from our spot on the hill. I did the same and we studied the scene for a good twenty minutes.

“They’re staying close,” I said.

“Yeah,” he replied.

“Why?” I asked. Kip didn’t respond. I didn’t expect him to. He knew a good rhetorical question when he heard it.

We studied the village a couple minutes more before Kip stood up, shook out his cloak, letting the apples drop to the ground, and put it on. I raised my eyebrows as I looked up at him and he held out a hand. I took it and he helped me to my feet then pointed at the village.

“Save point,” he said. “No choice.”

“I think we still have a choice,” I said. “It’s not the only save point in this world.”

Technically, I was right. Also, technically, the next closest save point was probably a week’s journey from where we stood. There was no way we’d survive in EverRealm for a week without our characters intact and all the advantages they held for us.

The thing with the Domains was that we’d taken all safety governors off. All protocols and regulations had been stripped so that when we fully integrated with our worlds, they’d be as real as real could get. Ming, Coz, and surprisingly, Sandra, had insisted that if we were going to live forever in the Domains, then we had to have true stakes to risk. Death had to be on the table or there was no point in embracing our new lives.

I was of a mindset that I could handle some restrictions if it meant not dying horribly at the hands of a hungry dragon (or techno assassin, in my Domain), but I was overruled. Even Holo insisted that the Domains contain real danger.

That meant that the undead down in the valley, the ones wandering aimlessly in the destroyed village, could rip us apart and that would be that. I did not want to be ripped apart. I really didn’t. But the best way to prevent that was to get to the save point and become my EverRealm character.

Except that my survival wasn’t the first thing that came to mind at that second. Yes, it was always there in the back of my head, but what really struck me was the fact that after all of our planning, after everything we’d put in place, after years of hard work, I was standing on a hill, inside a Domain, and looking at a small horde of goddamn undead.

The apocalypse had followed us.

Or preceded us, as the case was.

“How do we play this?” I asked Kip. “We have no weapons, and we aren’t protected by the game in any way. They bite us and we’re dead men.”

Kip nodded and picked up a couple of the apples he’d dropped from his cloak. He stuffed them in his pockets than picked up some more and handed them to me.

“Really?” I asked.

He shrugged.

I took the apples, filled my pockets, then bent down and filled my hands. He did the same and we started down the hill.

Halfway down, he pointed to the left. I knew what he was doing and nodded as I moved towards the right. We needed to flank the village. Coming at it head on would only concentrate the undead. We wanted them spread out. Divide and conquer.

I watched the undead move about the village and something didn’t seem right. After a few seconds, I realized that they were too structured.

The undead back on earth walked in random patterns. They went where their senses told them to go. Water dripping would bring a dozen of them to a broken rain gutter. Branches scraping against brick would lead them for blocks. A piece of stonework falling from a brownstone would create a curious horde almost right away. The undead were led by the sounds of chaos.

But there, in the smoking village, the undead were following paths. They were walking in obvious circuits around and through the dirt roads. Some would stop and almost look like they were talking to each other, but all they did was groan and moan for a few seconds then move along, each one returning to their prescribed path.

Their prescribed path.

Holy shit. The undead were fulfilling their programmed movements and actions just like the NPCs they’d been.

If they were supposed to fetch eggs from the farmer girl that stood by her simple cart, then they shambled over, stood there before the cart, waited the allotted time, then shambled off to the next location that was written into their storylines. The undead farmer girl stayed by her simple cart, several dozen eggs smashed and broken at her feet, and waited for the next undead villager to approach and repeat the useless interaction.

This was good. That meant they were predictable. Something the undead back on earth weren’t.

I crept closer, careful to go still when an undead head turned to look my way, careful not to step on a stray stick and attract attention, careful to move in a fluid motion that blended with the landscape. Being one with your surroundings was Undead Survival 101.

It did suck that I had to use those skills in EverRealm, but it was what it was.

When I was close enough, I threw an apple as far as I could and watched about six of the undead whip their heads around at the noise. They moved towards it and I took my chance, rushing quickly into the gap they left and straight into the village.

I knew where I was going and, due to the predictable movements of the undead, I knew what would be in my way.

Eight undead villagers shuffled across the main dirt road, fulfilling their looped destiny like they did every single day. I waited for them to pass then sprinted down the road towards the burned-out shell of what had been a church. Well, not really a church since that wasn’t how religion worked in EverRealm, but close enough.

A stone altar stood in the middle of the smoking ruins and I picked my way carefully over to it. There was still plenty of heat coming up from the ash and coals that filled the space. I had to cover my mouth with the crook of my elbow to keep from coughing and bringing the undead down on me.

When I made it to the altar, I placed both hands on the smooth, stone surface. Then yanked them back fast! Hot! Hot, hot, hot!

The palms of my hands were instantly blistered. I blew on them, although that didn’t really do shit to ease the pain. Not that I had time to stand around blowing on my hands anyway. Prescribed routes or not, the undead NPCs would eventually notice me and then the chaos randomizer of their programming would kick in and I’d have myself an undead problem right quick.

Steeling myself for more pain, I set my hands on the altar again and gritted my teeth.

It hurt like hell, but I endured it as my heads-up display came online and the bottom right-hand corner of my vision began to fill with information.

Welcome back, Torgo. Are you ready to play?

Torgo? Goddammit, Ming! The son of a bitch was supposed to have changed our character names to our real names now that we were going to be living in the Domains permanently. I’d changed everyone’s name in Technopolis.

Torgo…

“Yes,” I replied. “Please change name to Steve.”

That command cannot be completed.

“Fine,” I said. I didn’t expect it to work. Ming was the Domain’s admin, not me. “Show stats.”

Of course.

Character class: Ranger

Character alignment: Chaotic Good

Character level: 8

Health: 75%

Strength: 85%

Agility: 90%

Magic: 15%

Armor: leather, no bonus

Coin: 200 gold pieces, 155 silver pieces, 0 copper pieces

Inventory: Long bow with 18 regular arrows, 6 magical. 1 regular short sword. 1 long sword of Breaking (Level 16). 2 tunics. 1 pair of breeches. 1 hooded cloak. 1 satchel with 1 wine skin, full. 8 pieces of jerky and 1 muffin, moldy.

Well, that was better than nothing.

My Health was decent, as were my Strength and Agility. But I was only a Level 8 Ranger which meant anything above my level, which was pretty much everything, could do a good job kicking my ass if I wasn’t careful.

I glanced down at myself and was glad to see my short sword on my right hip, my long sword on my left hip, and the string of my bow across my chest, the weapon hanging from my back along with the quiver of arrows.

My satchel was hanging over my shoulder, my food and drink inside. Coin was wherever coin was stored. If I’d had any treasure or magic items, they’d have been with the coins, off in that inventory limbo that games held for their characters. I could access them when needed, but otherwise, out of sight, out of mind.

There was a crunch behind me and I whipped around, pulling my long sword from its sheath. It was a nice sword, a sword of Breaking at Level 16. That meant if I clashed with any other sword that was under Level 16, the opposing sword would shatter. Unfortunately, many of the swords that I would come in contact with were at levels way higher than 16. Still, it was better than a regular sword.

“Kip,” I said as he hurried to me and the altar. “You good?”

“No,” Kip said and pushed past me to set his hands on the stone. He hissed at the pain, but didn’t pull back.

Welcome, Kip, appeared in the corner of my vision.

What the hell? His name was changed? Dammit, Ming.

I swiped the heads-up display away, so I could focus on Kip.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

Kip’s outfit became more vibrant, his cloak a shimmering black instead of the dull brown it had been on our journey. The T-shirt was still there, but it appeared as clean as if it had been freshly washed, the Jamz Cola logo sparkling in the sunlight. Kip closed the cloak tight and pushed up the billowing sleeves. His hands began to glow orange.

“Oh, shit,” I said and turned to face the village. Kip didn’t go orange unless he was about to throw down some serious battle magic. “What are we looking at?”

“Jeremy,” Kip said.

Several dozen of the undead villagers had followed Kip, but at the front of them was someone that obviously wasn’t from the village.

Jeremy.

He hissed at us and started to move from an angry shamble into a hunger-filled run. Jeremy had always been in great shape when he was alive, so his undead corpse was in just as great of shape and heading right for us.

I sheathed my sword and pulled my bow, knocking an arrow immediately.

“Fight or run?” I asked Kip.

He took a second to turn and glare at me.

“Don’t give me that look,” I said. “We still have the others to find.”

“We stop Jeremy,” Kip said. “Or it spreads.”

Crap. He was right. If we didn’t put down the undead, then EverRealm could be overrun and fast. There were creatures in the Domain that weren’t exactly alive, but they were different than the undead from our world. If the infection Jeremy brought to the game spread too far, then the entire Domain could collapse.

“Then let’s get to work,” I said and released my arrow.

It stuck in the right eye of an undead woman. She dropped to the ground, but her place in the quickly growing horde was taken by a shirtless man that must have been on steroids. He hissed at me and started to run, matching Jeremy’s pace.

Kip let fiery missiles fly from each of his palms and they collided with Jeremy’s chest, knocking our former friend back into the horde, taking down a dozen of the undead with him. Those undead quickly caught fire and started bumbling about as their bodies burned, baby burned.

Kip was a Level 235 Magic User. It was kind of like a Wizard, but more general. Think of it as a highly skilled cook compared to a formally trained French chef. There were plenty of Wizards in EverRealm, and that formal training and specialization had its advantages, but Kip didn’t want to be held to guild rules and etiquette. He didn’t want to rely on staves and wands or spell books. He liked the freedom of being an all-around Magic User.

I fired off three more arrows, taking out three more of the undead. I was about to knock another arrow when my hands froze. My mind couldn’t quite grasp what I was seeing.

“How?” I asked.

“Don’t know,” Kip replied as we both watched Jeremy struggle up onto his feet.

He should have been down and out for good. Those missiles did a ton of damage to his body. Undead or not, there was no reason he should have been capable of getting up. The other undead that were on fire had dropped and were lying there moaning as they burned. So why wasn’t Jeremy?

Kip glanced over his shoulder at the save point altar.

“Shoot him,” Kip ordered. “Magic arrow. Head shot.”

“What are you going to do?” I asked as I looked back at the save point altar as well. “No, wait, hold on.”

“He can’t get to it,” Kip said and faced the altar full on, his hands pressed together like he was praying. A bright, white light began to emanate from between his palms.

“Kip, no!” I said. “The others!”

“No choice,” Kip said as the light grew so bright I had to turn away.

Good thing, too, because Jeremy was sprinting right for us, his body unbelievably agile as he clambered over the blackened ruins.

As I watched him move, and knocked a magic arrow, I realized Kip was right. Jeremy had been good at EverRealm. His character was an Elven Warrior, Level 152. If he was agile and dangerous now, he would be ten times worse once he touched the save point altar. If the game allowed him to become his character, all bets were off on how things worked.

The arrow flew from my bow and he dodged it. A sickening smile crept across his gray-skinned face.

Well, shit, that wasn’t good.

“Kip!” I cried as I knocked another arrow and fired. “He dodged a magic arrow!”

Jeremy dodged that arrow as well and kept on coming.

I didn’t dare turn around to see what Kip was doing. Jeremy was going to be on me in seconds. I slung my bow and pulled out my long sword again. Bracing my feet in the rubble, I got ready to swing for Jeremy’s neck.

Then he stopped as a high-pitched whine began to build. The undead villagers behind him fell to their knees, their mouths open in silent moans. Jeremy hissed at us, his hands going to his ears. He tried to take a couple more steps, but collapsed along with the villagers, his knees sending up huge puffs of ash.

“Run,” Kip said and grabbed my shoulder.

I did not question that bit of wisdom. I didn’t even take the time to sheath my sword. We were running around the altar, which was glowing a color red that was hard to define, and climbing over the collapsed back wall of the church as the whine grew and grew. My head felt like it would split open, but I didn’t dare slow down as we sprinted from the village and back into the rolling hills.

Then everything went silent. I mean absolutely silent. Not quiet, but silent. The total absence of sound.

Kip tackled me about the waist and we fell into the tall grass as a wave of energy washed over us. It was like my skin had been burned off then grew back all in the space of nothing. We lay there and gasped as sound slowly came back into the world.

Kip sat up, checked himself, checked me, nodded, and stood. He shook his head.

I got up and swore. I made up a few words when I saw what was coming.

“How?” I asked after I’d exhausted my vocabulary.

The village was toast. Not even the burned-out husks of the buildings were left. You could kind of make out a foundation here and there, but other than that, it was completely gone.

But Jeremy wasn’t.

There was no sign of the undead villagers, or the save point altar, but Jeremy was clear as day. He stood there in the middle of what had been the village, his eyes glowing red and staring right at us.

“He already touched the save point,” Kip said then turned and ran.

“Ya think?” I called after him.

I watched Jeremy for a second. He didn’t move from his spot even though I knew he was staring right at me.

Things in EverRealm just got really, really bad.

Twelve

Kip’s character had some legs on him and it took me a while to catch up.

“Slow down,” I said as I caught my breath. “Kip! Slow the hell down!”

He didn’t slow down. He didn’t have to. It wasn’t like he was a middle-aged fat guy that had been living off cola and anything coated in salt he could get his hands on. I mean, yeah, he was still that guy to my eyes, but in EverRealm, he was a badass Magic User. He’d probably cast a spell that gave him extra endurance. Endurance that was beating my Ranger legs, which wasn’t easy to do despite the difference in our levels.

“Kip!” I shouted.

He stopped and shushed me. It was a natural reaction, one that we all instinctually did because of the undead, but the look in his eye said it was way more than that.

“You made the right choice,” I said. “Destroying the save point was a good idea.”

“No,” Kip said and started to move again. I grabbed him hard and shook his arm. “Let go.”

“No,” I said. “I’m not letting go until you listen to me. Rules have changed. Jeremy is an Othersider like us. He’s also an undead Othersider, which has never happened in the Domains. None of us can know what that means here. This is uncharted territory, man. It’s not your fault.”

He glared at me then glared at my hand on his arm. I let go and took a step back.

“We need to think this through,” I said. “Okay? Take a second and think with me. Can you do that?”

He hesitated then nodded. “Yeah.”

“Good,” I said.

I brought up my heads-up display.

Character class: Ranger

Character alignment: Chaotic Good

Character level: 8

Health: 53%

Strength: 80%

Agility: 87%

Magic: 15%

Armor: leather, no bonus

Coin: 200 gold pieces, 155 silver pieces, 0 copper pieces

Inventory: Long bow with 14 regular arrows, 4 magical. 1 regular short sword. 1 long sword of Breaking (Level 16). 2 tunics. 1 pair of breeches. 1 hooded cloak. 1 satchel with 1 wine skin, full, 1 8 pieces of jerky and 1 muffin, moldy.

I took the wine skin out of my satchel and handed it to him.

“Have a drink,” I said. “It’ll help.”

He did and I watched him relax a little. Just a little. I took the wine back and drank more than I should have, but shit, I needed it.

“Ahhh,” I said and tucked the skin back into my satchel. “Hungry?”

“No,” he said.

“Me neither,” I said. “Come on. Let’s walk. Not run, walk.”

He nodded, and we walked our way up the hill and down the other side.

“Let’s ignore Jeremy for now,” I said. “We have to focus on the others.”

“Yeah,” Kip replied.

“Please tell me you have a spell or something that can locate them,” I said.

“A locator spell?” he asked.

“Yes! Exactly!”

“No.”

“Dammit, Kip,” I said. “Why’d you get my hopes up?”

“I can make one,” he said. “Have to find ingredients.”

Then he started walking again and all I could do was follow. We walked up and down hills for most of the day before he stopped and pointed to a dark spot in the next hill.

“What’s that?” I asked, squinting against the sun. It didn’t help.

“Hollow,” he said.

“What’s in the hollow?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know the answer.

“Gnomes,” he said. “We’ll trade.”

“Trade what?” I asked.

He shrugged and changed directions, heading straight for the hollow.

It turned out a hollow was simply a small cave. Too small for us to get inside, but large enough for creatures, such as gnomes, that were only a foot tall.

Kip held out a hand and I stopped while he kept going, moving slowly towards the entrance of the hollow. He stood there for a long time before a small, white-bearded face appeared from the hollow, its eyes blinking up at him.

They started conversing, but I was too far away to hear what they were saying. After a few minutes, the gnome disappeared back into the hollow and Kip joined me.

“Well?” I asked.

“They’ll trade,” Kip said.

“What exactly are we trading?” I asked.

He grimaced and held out his hand. A single jewel appeared in his palm. It seemed to shimmer way brighter than they should have in the daylight.

“Hold the hell on,” I said, recognizing the jewel. “That’s a power jewel. You need that to power your spells and other magicky things.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Empty now. Used it to destroy altar.”

“Wait a damn minute,” I said. “Are you saying you’re out of spells?”

“Out of power,” Kip said. “I can get more.”

“How will you work the locator spell when you have the ingredients?”

“Need the ingredients because I’m out of power,” Kip said.

“Oh, sure, okay,” I said, finally catching on.

Before we could continue, a gnome came rushing out of the hollow, tossed a small bag at Kip’s feet and waited. Kip tossed him the jewel and the little bugger was gone in a blink. Kip bent over and picked up the bag, which was small enough it could fit in the palm of his hand.

“Gnomes always have ingredients,” Kip said. “They hoard.”

He opened the bag, sniffed it, stared in at the contents, then closed the bag and tucked it inside his robes.

“One more stop,” he said.

“Where to?” I asked.

“Neiva,” he said. “Need ash.”

“That freaky witch?” I said, but he didn’t reply.

We were walking again.

Up and down the hills, up and down the hills. The suns were setting by the time we reached the cottage.

Except there was no cottage. The remnants of last night’s fire, along with the stump where Neiva had set the tray on, were there, but no sign of there having ever been a cottage or the woman.

I was going to mention how messed up that was, but Kip didn’t seem to be surprised at all, so I let it drop.

He walked over to the remains of the fire and scooped as much ash as he could into the small bag, filling it to the top. He cinched it closed then sneezed as ash puffed out into his face.

“Now where?” I asked as Kip turned his face up to the sky and closed his eyes. “Kip? You have your ash, so now where do we go?”

He didn’t respond.

We stood there until the sun had set and the landscape became awash in the deep blue of twilight. Then Kip nodded, opened the small bag, and a pink cloud came out. It hung there before us, waiting.

“Friends,” Kip said.

The cloud pulsated then began to float off in a direction I didn’t know. Maybe it was south, maybe it was north. No clue. But it wasn’t back towards the orchard or back towards the destroyed village. New ground.

“This is going to help us find the others?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Kip said.

We followed the pink cloud.

Thirteen

The hills diminished after about an hour of following the pink cloud. But the grass remained. We were soon on open plains that stretched for as far as I could see by the Galac moons.

My stomach growled, and I took out some jerky for me and Kip to gnaw on while we walked. In that EverRealm way, my tired legs became less tired and I perked up with each bite of jerky. Part of the game mechanics of replenishing energy. Not that the jerky filled me up; I was still hungry as hell when we’d finished it all off, but at least I wasn’t sleeping on my feet.

Across the grassy plains we walked, our senses alert for threats, but the place was pretty innocuous. It was going to be hard for anything major to sneak up on us.

“Who goes there?” a voice boomed.

I stopped and drew my sword, but Kip kept on walking, following the pink cloud as it continued floating over the tall grass.

“I say, who goes there?” the voice boomed again, coming from the opposite direction the cloud was headed.

The cloud hesitated then dropped into the grass.

“What the hell? Get this shit off me!”

Coz.

He popped up out of the grass, twisting and swatting at the pink cloud that had wrapped itself around his body like translucent cotton candy.

“Kip! Get it off, goddammit!” Coz shouted.

“Shhh,” Kip said as he waved a hand and the cloud disengaged from Coz.

“Man, it’s good to see you,” I said as I jogged over to him, my sword sheathed and hand out. “Nice misdirection with your voice.”

He shrugged and took my hand, giving it a firm shake. Then he stared at me.

“Hold on. You guys went to the save point already?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Kip said.

“Why are you heading this way then?” he asked. “Why didn’t you wait there for us to arrive?”

“That wouldn’t have been a good idea,” I said and filled him in on our little disaster.

“Are you kidding me?” he nearly shouted. “Gone? Like totally gone?”

“Totally gone,” I said. “All except for eternally undead Jeremy.”

Kip cocked his head and looked at me then nodded.

“Yeah,” he said.

He must have agreed with my eternally undead assessment.

“Shit,” Coz said and plopped back down into the grass.

He was dressed in tight-fitting, black leather. Being a Master Thief, the outfit helped him blend into the dark. If he’d been able to get to the save point, then we’d have walked right by him without even noticing. The leather was enchanted and kept him hidden from all eyes. Not sure if the cloud would have missed him or not. The voice misdirection was just something Coz could do. It saved his ass more than a few times back in our world.

He shifted on the ground and his leather creaked.

“This shit chafes,” he said. “I need to get to another save point or my thighs are going to be rubbed raw.”

“You haven’t found any of the others?” I asked. He gave me a blank stare. “Right. No. Obviously.”

“The closest save point is what?” Coz asked, turning to look at Kip. “Ten leagues from here? Twenty?”

“Yeah,” Kip said.

“Great,” Coz replied and stood back up. “We better get walking. You got anything to eat?”

I pulled out the moldy muffin. He stared at it, shrugged, took it, and popped it into his mouth.

“Oh, God, this is awful,” he said as he struggled to swallow it.

It wouldn’t give him any EverRealm energy, but it would help with his empty belly as we hiked our way across the plains to find the others. Which is what we did, the pink cloud again leading the way.

Once we were out of the tall grass, the cloud hung a left and took us through a loose thicket of berry bushes. Kip shook his head as I started to pluck one of the bright blue berries from a bush.

“You don’t want to do that, dude,” Coz said.

I didn’t recognize the bushes, so I asked, “Why not?”

“Those aren’t bushes,” Coz said. “They’re koda. Spirits that burrow into the ground. That’s their back hair. You don’t want to know what the berries are.”

“Jesus Christ,” I said, yanking my hand back. “And we’re just walking right through them?”

“They won’t bug us if we don’t bug them,” Coz said. “Right, Kip?”

“Yeah,” Kip agreed.

“I hate EverRealm,” I muttered.

“No,” Coz said and stopped.

I looked around at the back hair bushes and grimaced.

“No what?” I asked. “And can we keep moving while you explain?”

“Do not badmouth EverRealm,” Coz said.

“Yeah,” Kip agreed.

“I wasn’t badmouthing it, I was only expressing my feelings,” I said.

“Dude, EverRealm doesn’t give a shit if you are expressing anything,” Coz said. “The place takes offense to any criticism.”

“Seriously?” I asked. “How is that even possible?”

“It’s in the original framework,” Coz said. “Ming’s great grandwhatever that built this game had very thin skin when it came to bad reviews. And this place got a lot of bad reviews way back then until his son or daughter, can’t remember which, fixed the glitches and turned EverRealm into the powerhouse it would become. But, the framework to harass critics is still in here.”

“Yeah,” Kip said.

Now that Coz was here to do the talking, Kip was back to his monosyllabic self.

“So, what happens if I badmouth this place?” I asked.

“All kinds of shit, dude,” Coz said. “It really is best you don’t find out.”

“Fine. I’ll keep my opinions to myself,” I said.

“Opinions are like rectums!” a voice cried from somewhere. “Everyone has one!” There was a clearing of a throat. “Except poltergeists and other non-corporeal beings. They no longer have rectums, of course.”

We turned in a circle, but couldn’t see the source of the voice.

“Did you do that?” I asked Coz. “Are you messing with us?”

“No, dude, not me,” Coz said.

“For your impertinence, I shall take a limb!” the voice announced.

“Right,” I said. “And you are?”

There was a shimmering in the middle of the back-hair thicket. A knight appeared, all decked out in matte-black armor with a flaming sword in one hand and a shield of pure obsidian in the other.

“Dammit, Steve,” Coz snarled. “You brought the Dark Enforcer down on us. And I haven’t gotten to a save point yet, so I’m gonna be zero help.”

“None shall assist!” the Dark Enforcer said, pointing his flaming sword at me. “For this is between the offender and I!”

“Hey, man, I’m sorry,” I said, holding up my hands. “Seriously. I’m just not a big fan of this game, so I mouth off sometimes. I promise I’ll be more respectful and keep my opinions to myself.”

“Opinions are like rectums!” he announced again.

“Everyone has one,” I said. “Yeah, yeah, we know.”

“Dude,” Coz said, shaking his head. “Just shut up.”

“Your impertinence will cost you a limb!” the Dark Enforcer said. “You may choose the limb!”

“Seriously? I get to choose?” I asked.

“You may choose the limb!” he said again.

“Any limb?” I asked.

“Steve, knock it off,” Coz said out of the corner of his mouth. “If you push it, he’ll take more than a limb.”

“You may choose any limb!” the Dark Enforcer said.

“Cool,” I replied. “I choose your left arm. The one holding the shield.”

Coz and Kip turned to me, their mouths hanging open. I played it cool and kept my eyes on the huge knight. His shoulders seemed to sag a little.

“Yes, well, I may have misspoke,” the Dark Enforcer said. “By any limb, I meant one of yours. Choose one of your limbs!”

“No, you said any limb,” I responded. “I clarified, man. I asked you at least three times if it could be any limb and you said it could. That’s not you misspoking—”

“Not a word,” Coz said.

“That’s you making a mistake,” I said. “Just like I made a mistake by saying something rude about EverRealm. Mistakes happen.”

“I did not make a mistake,” the Dark Enforcer said. “You misinterpreted my statement.”

“Okay, now we’re arguing semantics,” I said and pulled my long sword. “If you want to fight, then we fight. I’m good with that because you are pissing me off. But do not even try to justify this fight as some challenge over EverRealm’s honor. You’re just being a dick, is what this is.”

Coz and Kip took several steps away from me.

“On your own with this one, dude,” Coz said.

“Whatever,” I said.

I wasn’t kidding about being pissed. I didn’t want to be in this damn Domain. I didn’t know where my best friend was. I mean, Holo could be dead for all I knew. We were supposed to live forever in the Domains, free of the goddamn undead, but that wasn’t happening. And now this asshole was coming at me because I said one stupid comment.

I was done.

Gripping my long sword with both hands, I spread my stance and braced myself.

“We doing this or what, dickhead?” I snapped.

The Dark Enforcer faced me, but I had no idea if he was looking at me or what. His helmet’s visor was completely opaque. I couldn’t see his eyes at all. If he had eyes. As far as I knew, since it was EverRealm, the guy could have been only made of enchanted armor.

“I propose a compromise,” the Dark Enforcer said at last. “We shall fight, but neither of us will lose a limb. Instead, it will be to the first hit. Once the hit is made, we shall withdraw and be on our separate journeys. Are these terms agreeable to you?”

“Totally,” I said just as Coz began to say, “Dude, no!”

I looked over at him and his eyes were wide with fear. Kip was shaking his head and looked really, really sad.

Shit.

“What’d I do?” I asked.

“You get hit with that blade and it’ll burn straight through you,” Coz said. “A hit is as bad as losing a limb.”

“Oh,” I said.

The Dark Enforcer chuckled.

“You have agreed to the terms, offender,” he said. “You may not back out now without paying the penalty.”

“That penalty would be my life, right?” I asked. He nodded. “I thought so.”

I gripped my sword tighter and let out a long breath.

“Alright then,” I said. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

Fourteen

He came at me fast. The guy was huge, but he moved like a little ninja. I was barely able to dive out of the way as he swung his flaming sword at my head.

Yeah, I could see why fighting to the first hit was a bad idea. Especially if that first hit was my head or neck area.

I came up out of the roll and into a crouch, my sword still gripped two-handed. The Dark Enforcer turned fast and swiped at where he thought my head would be, but it only whooshed over me. Without hesitation, I lunged up and stabbed at his chest. His shield blocked the attack and with a hard push knocked me back on my ass.

The flaming sword came down and I rolled out of the way. The ground where the blade struck became an inferno. That inferno spread to the closest koda, turning that weird bushy back hair into a bonfire instantly.

The scream the thing made was excruciatingly loud.

It pulled itself out of the ground and whirled about to face the Dark Enforcer. It looked like a messed-up chimpanzee with a warthog’s head and that freaky bush growing out of its back. Which was on fire. Its limbs were covered in thick roots that twined about its arms and legs, creating a veiny armor that was pretty impressive.

“Stand aside, creature!” the Dark Enforcer ordered. “You shall not impede a battle for the honor of EverRealm!”

The thing just kept screaming as it charged the Dark Enforcer. If the knight had eyes, they had to have widened in surprise as the koda flung itself into the air, talon-like roots extending from its fingertips. The two beings collided, and the Dark Enforcer’s sword went flying from his grip.

I did what any self-respecting RPG player would do and ran to snag that sword as fast as I could.

One problem: the rest of the kodas were coming up out of the ground, too. Apparently, if you picked a fight with one koda, you picked a fight with the whole lot.

Lightning streaked past me, and I spun around to see Kip tossing bolts here and there. I don’t think he was aiming, only trying to draw the kodas’ attention to him and away from me.

I kept running, dodging the creatures that were unearthing themselves in every direction. The flaming sword was only a couple yards away and I dove for it. My aim was almost right. I landed by the sword, but my hand grabbed the flaming blade and not the non-flaming hilt. Pain shot up through my arm and I screamed almost as loud as the kodas were.

“You dare defile my weapon!” the Dark Enforcer yelled as he threw the first koda off of himself then punched two more with his shield as they leapt for him. “I shall place a curse upon—!”

He didn’t get to finish. Coz had snuck up on him and buried a short sword in his back. That would probably be a no-no for most classes, but for a Master Thief? Totally acceptable. Hopefully. Technically, he hadn’t checked into the game since he hadn’t gotten to a save point yet. But we’d deal with that later.

Hold on, where did he get the short sword?

I glanced at my belt and realized he’d snagged it from me. When, I had no clue. The guy was good at his job, save point or not.

I reached for the flaming sword again and managed to grab the hilt instead of the blade that time. The fire instantly went out, and the Dark Enforcer let out a mournful wail. The pain in my scorched hand ceased almost as soon as the flames died. I got to my feet and looked the sword over. It was a sweet piece of weaponry. Turned out the blade was obsidian, just like the Dark Enforcer’s shield.

“We need to go,” Coz said, suddenly by my side.

Enraged kodas were everywhere. But the Dark Enforcer was gone. Just disappeared. Without the huge knight to battle, the kodas were turning their angry faces in our direction.

Something exploded and the area was covered in thick, gray smoke. I felt Coz grab my arm and lead me away. I trusted he knew where he was going since that Master Thief training should have been able to navigate some gray smoke without a problem.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t stumble a few times, once completely face-planting and eating a mouthful of dirt. But overall, I was able to follow Coz’s lead and get as far away from that place as fast as possible.

By the time we stopped, we were both gasping for breath, our bodies drenched in sweat. We collapsed onto the ground, which gratefully was a soft bed of bright green clover. When I could breathe normally, I sat up and smiled at the clover meadow we’d stumbled into.

“Where’s Kip?” I asked.

“Here,” Kip said from the side of the meadow, his back to us. “Gotta pee.”

“You do that,” I said. “And thanks for the smoke cloud.”

“Yeah,” he said as he finished up and joined us. His hands flashed white for a second and he gave me a smile. “Sanitized.”

“Convenient spell,” I said.

He shrugged and sat down next to Coz.

“Okay,” Coz said without sitting up. He was still breathing heavy. The escape had taken more out of him than us because he wasn’t fully logged into the game yet. “Let’s not do that again.”

“I don’t know,” I said as I held up the obsidian sword. “I got a sweet blade out of it.”

I stood and walked a few paces away then swung the sword. Nothing happened. It didn’t become flame or anything. I swung it a few more times, stared at it, then shook it like it was a flashlight with low batteries.

“What gives?” I asked, looking at Kip and Coz.

Kip shrugged and Coz casually rolled his head my direction and gave me a bored look.

“What did you think would happen?” he asked. “It would give up its secrets to you and you’d be able to flame on whenever you wanted? Not how it works, dude.”

“Then how does it work?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Coz said. “I’ve never known anyone that’s taken the Dark Blade from the Dark Enforcer before. New territory, dude.”

“Dark Blade? Is that what it’s called?” I asked. “What a stu—”

“No!” Coz and Kip yelled.

“Did you learn nothing?” Coz snapped as he jumped to his feet. “Don’t insult EverRealm!”

“I wasn’t,” I said. “I was insulting this sword. Not EverRealm as a whole.”

“Same thing,” Coz said.

“Yeah,” Kip agreed.

“Dude, the Dark Enforcer isn’t some NPC like a village blacksmith,” Coz said. “He’s not even a level boss or anything. He’s a protector. He’s ingrained in the game mechanics. When you mess with him, or his blade, you are messing with EverRealm. As a whole. Got it?”

“He was pretty easy to take down,” I said.

“You’re not listening,” Coz said. “He’s not a level boss. He’s not a quest opponent. He’s not anything like what you are used to. The Dark Enforcer works for the game. That’s all he does. And he takes his job very seriously. Did we defeat his ass and steal his sword? Yes. Does that mean he’s no longer dangerous? No. He is very dangerous.”

“Yeah,” Kip said, nodding vigorously.

“So, he could still be after us?” I asked.

“Yes,” Coz said. “Technically, neither of you scored the first hit. As far as he is concerned, the challenge is open. Hell, as far as the entire game is concerned, the challenge is still open.”

“What do we do?” I asked, a sick feeling in my gut.

“What we don’t do is make things worse by continuing to insult EverRealm,” he said. “You got it?”

“Yes, I got it,” I said. I shook the sword again. No flames. “I wish it would work.”

“Yeah,” Kip said.

Coz sighed.

“Listen, Steve, you have got to take our lead from now on, you hear me?” Coz said. “This Domain isn’t your cup of tea, we all know that. So do us all a favor and hang back. Don’t talk unless you absolutely have to. And do not, under any circumstances, accept any more challenges. Let me or Kip handle things from now on. It’s the only way we’re getting out of this alive.”

I wanted to tell him to go to Hell, but as far as I was concerned, we were already there. He watched me closely until I nodded in agreement.

“You lead,” I said.

“Thank you,” he replied and relaxed.

At least until a huge cloud of black smoke exploded in the middle of the field.

I held out the sword, still no flame, while Kip’s hands glowed red and Coz held up my long sword of Breaking. No clue when he took that from me.

Someone coughed from the middle of the smoke then a strong breeze cleared it away and Trish was suddenly standing before us. She was dressed in a tight black dress that went from the ground all the way to her chin. It shimmered in the light like snakeskin.

“There you assholes are,” she said. “I’ve been fucking looking for you everywhere. If you’d fucking stand still for one goddamn second, then I could have found you hours ago.”

Trish was a Level 113 Sorceress. Neutral Evil all the way.

“Y’all ready to go?” she asked.

“Go where?” I replied.

“To meet the others,” she said like I was the dumbest person she’d ever seen. “Back at Castle Lormillion.”

“Finally!” Coz cried. “A save point!”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Trish said and snapped her fingers.

Bye bye, clover meadow.

Fifteen

Castle Lormillion was the center of Ming’s kingdom. He was a scion of the creators of EverRealm so, of course, he got to have his own kingdom. It was one hell of a castle.

Stupid name, though.

Trish materialized us in the middle of the throne room where Ming was seated on said throne, a huge goblet of wine in his hand. Holo, decked out in his specially made armor, was lying at the foot of the twenty steps that led up to the throne. He perked up the second he saw me.

“Bro!” Holo shouted as he raced across the throne room and nearly tackled me. “Ming and I had a bet that you were so dead!”

“Thanks for trusting in me, buddy,” I said.

“What? Oh, no, Ming and I both bet you were dead,” Holo said. “Sandra was the only one that bet you were alive. I guess we owe her like a bazillion gold pieces.”

Holo spun around and stared up at Ming.

“Can you cover me? I don’t have a bazillion gold pieces.”

“I’ll instruct the treasury to deposit the winnings into Sandra’s vault,” Ming said with a dismissive wave of his hand.

Holy shit. He was totally drunk.

“Ming? You good, man?” I asked.

“What is this you ask of me, Steve? Am I good?” He laughed. It was a sad, pained laugh. “No, Steve, I am not good. My family Domain has been infected with the undead. There is no good in that. My soul is tormented. I am lost.”

“Save point!” Coz shouted, oblivious to Ming’s drunken despair.

“You fucking know where it is,” Trish replied. “Do you need me to walk you over there, you big baby?”

“Hold up,” I said and held out my hand. “Sword.”

“Huh?” Coz asked, giving me that thief smile of his. He pulled my long sword of Breaking from his belt and handed it over. “Wouldn’t be much of a thief if I didn’t try.”

“You should all save yourselves,” Ming mumbled drunkenly.

I wasn’t sure if he was talking game or if he was talking about life. Either way, he was a bummer of a drunk.

“Where’s Sandra?” I asked.

“She is stocking up on potions and practicing her healing arts,” Ming said. “Or she’s on the toilet. I do not know.”

“Dude,” Coz said as he walked over to the save point in the corner of the throne room. He gestured for me to follow and I did. “He must be losing it. The guy hates potty humor.”

“We’ll get him sobered up then formulate a plan,” I said. “We can’t let the undead run rampant over EverRealm. I may not like it here, but we have to keep the Domains safe. Otherwise, what’s the point of everything we did to get here?”

“Yeah,” Kip said, right behind us.

“Hey, what’s that?” Holo asked, following close on my heels. “Steve? What sword is that?”

“What was it called?” I asked Coz.

“The Dark Blade,” Coz replied.

“The Dark Blade?” Holo barked. “How in the hell did you get the Dark Blade, bro?”

“Steve!” Ming cried. “Approach the throne with that sword!”

“Hold on, man,” I said. “Gonna do a quick save first.”

“No, you will not!” Ming said. “That sword is not yours to save!”

“Finders keepers, Ming,” I said and ran to the save point which happened to be a statue of a goddess. A naked statue, of course.

I put my hands on the pedestal and my heads-up display activated.

Character class: Ranger

Character alignment: Chaotic Good

Character level: 10

Health: 46%

Strength: 72%

Agility: 85%

Magic: 15%

Armor: leather, no bonus

Coin: 200 gold pieces, 155 silver pieces, 0 copper pieces

Inventory: Long bow with 14 regular arrows, 4 magical. 1 long sword of Breaking (Level 16). The Dark Blade, inactive (level unknown). 2 tunics. 1 pair of breeches. 1 hooded cloak. 1 satchel with 1 wine skin, empty.

Hey! I leveled up by two levels! Nice!

A good night’s sleep and some food, lots of food, would bring the stats back to 100%. Except for magic. That never went above 15% for me. Some Rangers could up their magic percentage, since apparently Rangers can be good with certain types of magic, but I just didn’t care enough to do it.

“I could have you thrown in the dungeon, you know,” Ming said when I finally approached the throne while the others did their saves.

“Yep,” I said. “But you won’t. That’d be a dick move.”

“Let me see the Dark Blade,” Ming said.

“Only if you promise not to take it from me,” I said. “It wasn’t easy to get.”

“That ain’t true at all,” Coz said as he finished saving and joined me at the foot of the steps. “Considering who you took it from, it was pretty easy. You kind of just picked it up off the ground.”

“After getting the shit burned out of my hand,” I said and held up my gloved hand. Not a mark. “Well, it was a magical burn and hurt. A lot.”

“I am well versed in the mechanics of the Dark Blade,” Ming said. He held out his hand.

“You promise to give it back?” I said.

“Yes, Steve, I promise to give it back,” Ming said, sounding as offended as he could.

I hesitated then ascended the stone steps and placed the sword in his hands. He hefted it, feeling the weight, then nodded and looked at me.

“And the Dark Enforcer?” Ming asked. “Was his death an honorable one?”

Coz cleared his throat and walked away from the throne steps, whistling some tune.

“Okay, so here’s the thing,” I said and told him what had happened with the Dark Enforcer.

To his credit, and despite being seriously drunk, Ming tried to keep his composure. But too much wine always wins in the end, and about halfway through the story, he was so red in the face I thought he was gonna have a heart attack or something.

“Your instincts to avoid this Domain have always been correct,” Ming said as he gave me back the sword. “You are no more good for this land than this land is for you. The havoc you have brought down upon us…”

He sighed and put his head in his hands.

I waited for a long while then moved closer. He was snoring.

“Jesus, he’s passed out,” I said. “Should we call his servants and have him put to bed?”

“Nah,” Trish said. “He does it all the time.”

“You aren’t afraid he’s going to piss himself or throw up?” I asked.

“That’s when we do call the servants, bro,” Holo said. “They handle all of that.”

“Is he always like this or is this only because of the undead problem?” I asked.

“He isn’t usually this bad,” Trish said. “But he has been known to get his drink on. I wouldn’t call him a lush or anything…” She laughed. “Yeah, I would. He’s a fucking lush in this Domain.”

“Can you blame him?” Coz asked, holding out an empty goblet for a servant to fill. He smiled and waited, took a sip when full, then continued. “The guy is so wound up back in the real world. He lives alone on some massive estate with nothing but reminders of his family and the wealth he had that means jack shit now. He’s bound to be a bit depressed, right?”

“Yeah,” Kip said.

“Come on, we’ve all lost family,” I snapped. I was having a hard time feeling too sorry for Ming. Must have been hard to get to stay at his home all safe and secure while the world burned around him. Yeah, real hard.

“And we all get drunk when we can,” Coz said, raising his goblet to me. “Come on, dude. Sit your ass down and eat. We’re gonna need the energy.”

While I’d been shocking Ming with my story, servants had set up a long dining table and loaded it with so much food and drink it looked like it was bowing in the middle. Everyone was seated and filling themselves to capacity. Trish waved a massive smoked turkey leg at me.

“It really isn’t fucking fair that you get the Dark Blade,” she said around a mouthful of meat.

“I know, right?” Coz said just before downing his entire goblet of wine. He belched. “I’d rather Holo had it than Steve.”

“Yeah,” Kip said.

“You guys suck,” I said.

I took a seat and loaded a plate with whatever was at hand. I wasn’t even paying attention and I didn’t really care. As long as I could pour a ton of gravy on it then I was good and happy.

“No, I mean it,” Trish said. “It isn’t fair. Do you know what a sorceress of my caliber could do with that blade? I could probably take down Jeremy and his entire undead army by myself.”

I had just taken a bite of turkey with oh-so-much gravy. The turkey lodged in my throat, the gravy refusing to do its job and lubricate the meat. Kip smacked me on the back so I didn’t die.

When I caught my breath, I asked, “I’m sorry, but did you say undead army?”

“Yeah?” Kip asked.

Coz turned and regarded Trish with great interest, his eyes locked onto her while he sipped his wine.

“Do tell, Trish dear,” Coz said in a horrible British accent. “I am most interested in this undead army you speak of.”

“You guys didn’t know?” Trish asked us, knowing full well we were totally in the dark about any undead army. “Damn.”

We waited. Trish took her sweet ass time getting to the details, eating a few mouthfuls of food before setting her fork down and smiling at all of us like we were nice little kids waiting for mommy to speak. I was close to punching her and I wasn’t the only one. Holo started to growl low in his throat. I placed a hand on the back of his neck to calm him down.

“Goddamn, I expected one of you to snap,” Trish said and laughed.

“Trish, love,” Coz said in a very sweet voice. “Tell us what the hell is going on, or I swear to God, I’ll beat you to death with this here scrumptious turkey leg.”

He brandished one at her and Kip joined in, shaking his own.

“Yeah,” Kip said.

“Wouldn’t want you to waste that good meat,” Trish said. She drank some wine and settled back in her chair. “Jeremy has been busy.”

With a wave of her hand, she brought up a silver cloud of mist. The mist began to shimmer and form into an image. I was sure that on her heads-up display she was choosing a couple of different spells, combining them together to bring us the vision in the mist.

“That there is the Valley of Regrets,” Trish said. “Jeremy has been crossing the land, turning everyone he comes in contact with into undead, and sending them to that valley.”

I started to speak, so did Coz, but she held up a hand to stop us.

“Hold on,” she said. “There’s more.”

She flicked two fingers and the view in the mist changed. It zoomed in on a village to show a laughing Jeremy. Glowing eyes, and very undead, but laughing. Men and women screamed and ran, dodging this way and that as undead chased them down. Many of the villagers were ripped apart, their bodies nothing but food for the always hungry undead. But quite a few were left intact. After several seconds of convulsions, and a too-short amount of stillness, the villagers came back, ready to start their new, undead lack of life.

“This is only a fraction of what he’s accomplished,” Trish said. “He’s using his elven speed, and a few magic items he has in his inventory, to transport himself all over EverRealm so he can build his ranks.”

“He’s using?” Coz asked. “You mean he’s thinking this through?”

“It takes thought and planning to build an army, Coz,” Trish said. “Fucking duh.”

“Except he’s dead,” Coz said. “Or undead. Whatever. The undead don’t think. They chase, they eat, they repeat. No thinking.”

“The undead in our world, sure,” Trish said. “But we ain’t in our fucking world, are we?”

“But he’s not an NPC,” Coz said. “He’s like us. He should follow the rules of our world. His brain should be mush.”

“What rules, bro?” Holo barked. “All bets are off. We’ve stepped off the cliff and into the ocean of holy shit.”

“Trish is right,” I said. “Back me up, Kip.”

“Yeah,” Kip said mournfully.

“When we found Jeremy, he was different,” I said. ‘“Not undead different, but completely different. The quantum matrix did something to his brain. It must have reworked it to fit some scenario.”

“The Saga of the Lich King,” Ming said from the throne, surprising all of us.

“Oh, snap,” Coz said and slumped into his chair.

“Yeah,” Kip responded, looking even worse than before.

“Come on, Ming,” Trish said. “I know I’ve been playing it up here, but even you can’t fucking believe that to be true.”

“It is true,” Ming said. The front of his robes was soaked wet with drool and his skin was a sickly green pallor, but he managed to stand up without falling down the steps, so good on him. “I knew it the second you first showed me what he’d become, Trish. It is the Saga of the Lich King.”

Holo gave a disgusted grunt and grabbed a steak bone off the table. He walked over to a corner and started gnawing away, his back to us all. That wasn’t good.

“Would someone please tell me what the Saga of the Lich King is?” I asked.

“Dude,” Coz said. “Really?”

“I can’t even,” Trish said.

“The Saga of the Lich King is the first module that EverRealm had,” Ming said. “Back when this game was pencil and paper and funny-looking dice.”

“Module?” I asked.

“Module,” Ming said. “Booklets. Printed booklets that let the Game Master run preplanned adventures for the players. These were players sitting at the table with him.”

“Or her,” Trish said.

“Or her, but most likely a him,” Ming continued. “The Saga of the Lich King was the first and only module to sell well at all. After that, the game died away, overshadowed by Dungeons & Dragons. I have a copy of the module in my estate. It is framed and sits front and center in my living room. A family heirloom.”

“Except it was never incorporated into the quantum version of EverRealm,” Coz said, his voice hopeful. “Right, Ming? It’s a legend amongst players, but no one has ever been able to activate the module within EverRealm. Thousands of adventures and quests, but not one time did the Saga of the Lich King come up.”

“Until now,” Trish said.

“Yeah,” Kip agreed.

“Why would the system wait?” I asked. “Why would it hold back this module and only let it happen when an undead Jeremy came on the scene?”

“Ah, yes, that is the question, is it not?” Ming said. “Let us consult the Oracle for the answer.”

Everyone except me groaned.

“The Oracle?” I asked.

Sixteen

Turned out that the Oracle was Ming’s bubby.

Ming wasn’t Jewish or anything, but apparently in his family, the grandmas were called bubby. And that was the Oracle we went to see.

But, before we could see her, we had to go on this mini quest of our own. We never left the castle, but I swear we walked about thirty damn miles before we got to the tower where the Oracle was held.

I always thought an oracle was like a talking stone or plant or some pond you went to where you made a wish and you were given an answer to whatever question you had. I voiced this to the others and was chastised thoroughly. I mean, they were brutal. Even Holo. Turns out I was thinking of a “temple” and the oracle is housed in the “temple.” They let me have it and didn’t stop until we’d ascended the tower (temple?) where the Oracle was kept.

It was a long flight of stairs, let me tell you.

We stood outside a simple wooden door and Ming knocked three times. He smiled at us, the mini quest having sobered him up a good deal, and tapped his foot as we waited. When there was no answer, he knocked again.

“Bubby? It’s, uh…Paulie boy,” Ming said, the last words almost a whisper.

“Eh? Who’s that?” an old woman’s voice called from the other side of the door.

“Did he just say Paulie Boy?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Kip said.

“Hush,” Trish said, taking things way too serious.

I mean, come on, Ming just said his name was Paulie Boy.

“Bubby, it’s me,” Ming said.

“You? You who?” She cackled. “You who. Yoohoo!”

“Dude,” Coz said. “We don’t have time to deal with your bubby.”

“Technically, she is not my bubby,” Ming said. “My bubby died when I was twenty-three. But, Grandfather had her personality immortalized within EverRealm so that we could visit her when we so chose. The game, refusing to allow frivolous sentimentality like that, gave her the role of Oracle. It was fitting since she filled that role in real life, as well. Perhaps with not so much omniscience, but she was a very perceptive woman.”

The door was flung open and a hunched-over old woman was standing there, her face upturned and beaming.

“Paulie Boy!” she cried and grabbed Ming’s arm, yanking him down so she could pinch his cheek with her other hand. “I thought I heard you! Why didn’t you knock?”

“I did knock, Bubby,” Ming said, gently pushing her hands away. “You even answered when I called to you.”

“I did?” she said and her eyes glazed over for a second. They returned to a happy brightness almost instantly. “Oh, dear me, I thought you were the rats. You know, Paulie Boy, this tower has rats. Fierce little buggers. I told you that last time and you still haven’t called the exterminator.”

“Rats?” Holo asked, shaking slightly at the thought.

“There are no rats, Bubby,” Ming said. “I banished them a few decades ago, remember?”

Again with the glazed look returning to bright happiness.

“Oh, yes, how silly of me,” Bubby said. She glanced past Ming at us and frowned. “Paulie Boy? Who are these strangers? You know I don’t like it when you bring people around before telling me.”

“They’re not strangers, Bubby,” Ming said. “You remember Trish, Coz, Kip, and Holo.”

“Oh, yes, of course!” Bubby said, nodding vigorously. “But who is this one? Never seen him before.”

“No, you have not,” Ming agreed. “This is Steve. He’s Holo’s friend.”

“I’m his owner,” I said.

“Racist bastard,” Holo said.

“Jesus, calm down,” I said. “I was kidding.”

“Torgo,” Bubby said. “The racist’s name is Torgo.”

“Dammit, Ming,” I snapped and whirled on him. “You promised.”

“Yes, well, we all must find our fun where we can,” he said.

He wiggled his fingers and my display came up.

Character name has been changed to Steve. Do you agree with change?

“Yes,” I said.

Change is made. Welcome, Steve!

Bubby eyed me. “Gonna be watching you, Steve.”

She began to pat her hair, which was silver gray and put up in a severe bun. It reminded me of Sandra.

“Uh, we forgot to get Sandra,” I said, hoping to switch attention off me.

“No, you didn’t,” Sandra called from inside the tower room. “I’m right here.”

“I gave her a heads up,” Trish said. She wiggled her fingers at me. “Magic.”

“Ha ha,” I said.

“Are you a friend of Sandy, Steve?” Bubby asked. “Well, that’s different. Come in, come in. We’re having tea and cookies. I made the cookies fresh this morning.”

“Bubby, you don’t have a kitchen up here,” Ming said.

The glazed-to-brightness look.

“Well, someone made cookies this morning,” Bubby said. “Because I have a lot of cookies. Come in now. Stop standing on my doorstep like vagabonds.”

She turned and shuffled her way over to a small table where a chair was pushed back. We followed her in and I saw Sandra sitting at the table, a cup of tea and a saucer in her hands. She smiled at us and I couldn’t help but smile back. She was the first good thing I’d seen since showing up in EverRealm. Sandra’s character was a Level 275 Priestess. A holy warrior that could heal and kill with equal skill.

Goddam she was beautiful. I almost stopped breathing. EverRealm seemed to relax that fearful look she always had.

She wore a dress of simple cloth, dyed a dark green. It fitted her nicely. Around her waist was a leather belt that held a bunch of small pouches and one good-sized dagger. I knew that in the pouches were all kinds of herbs and potions. The dagger was charmed so that it killed only enemies and healed all friends. If she stabbed you with it. That part wasn’t much fun.

Sandra caught me looking and my face burned red, so I turned to look out the one window in the tower room, pretending to be interested in the view. It was a nice view, so it wasn’t total bullshit. You could see a quarter of EverRealm from the window, or someone said as we’d climbed the tower stairs. They may have been making it up to pass the time.

“Who wants tea?” Bubby asked.

“We are good, Bubby,” Ming said. “And we are in a bit of a hurry.”

“Are you now?” Bubby replied and looked at Sandra. “Is this true, Sandy?”

“I am afraid so, Bubby,” Sandra said. “There is a bad man that has invaded EverRealm and we must find him.”

“A bad man, hmmmm?” Bubby mused. “While I cannot choose sides, being an Oracle is a neutral job, I am not fond of bad men roaming the land. They destroy things that are not meant to be destroyed and it takes so long to repair the damage.”

“That is exactly why we are here, Bubby,” Ming said. “We need to speak to you of the Saga of the Lich King.”

Bubby gasped and made a warding gesture.

“Oh, then this man is bad indeed,” she exclaimed.

“Yes,” Ming agreed and nodded sagely.

“Are you sure he is the Lich King?” Bubby asked.

“No, Bubby, the man isn’t the Lich King, but he will bring about the awakening of the Lich King if he achieves his goal,” Ming said. “Just as it is told in the Saga of the Lich King.”

“I know the Saga, Paulie Boy,” Bubby said, her voice terse. “I am the Oracle.”

She wagged a finger at Ming while her eyes glazed over. They stayed that way for about ten seconds then the brightness returned, and she regarded all of us with a sadness that made my knees weak.

“I am sorry to say that your friend will become the Lich King,” Bubby stated. “He does not have his power as of yet, but he will when he reaches Jackal Mountain.”

“You have got to be kidding me,” Coz muttered. Bubby tutted. “Sorry, Bubby.”

“Are you all aware of Jackal Mountain?” Bubby asked.

All eyes fell on me.

“No, I’m not aware of Jackal Mountain,” I said.

“Excellent!” Bubby replied and clapped her withered hands together. “A story then!”

I could feel everyone except for Sandra and Ming suppress a groan.

“Jackal Mountain is a holy mountain,” Bubby said. “A place of great magic and power. Unfortunately, it was corrupted by Evil. The worst villains in the land began to use it as their lair. They warped its magic and twisted its power to suit their vile ambitions. Until one day, a man hiked up the mountain and took it for himself.”

“The Lich King,” I said.

“No, not the Lich King,” Bubby snapped. “Quiet, Steve. Listen and let an old woman tell her tale.”

“Yeah, Steve,” Coz said.

“Yeah,” Kip echoed.

“My bad,” I said and held up my hands in surrender.

“The man that hiked to the summit of Jackal Mountain was the Creator of this land,” Bubby said.

“No, Bubby, he was not the Creator,” Ming said.

“Paulie Boy? Who is telling this tale?” Bubby asked. “Is it you or is it I?”

“You are, Bubby, but you need to tell it correctly,” Ming said.

“I am, Paulie Boy,” Bubby insisted. “Your ignorance does not make my tale untrue.”

“Yes, but Bubby, there is no way the Creator could—”

“SILENCE!” Bubby said.

Her voice did not raise in the slightest; it was as if she had roared the word directly into our souls. Which was entirely possible since our souls were a part of the quantum mechanics of the game. We went silent.

She cleared her throat and took a sip of tea.

“The Creator displaced the villains,” she continued. “He was tired of how they were using Jackal Mountain to wreak havoc across the land. It is a holy mountain, after all, and for it to be corrupted was an affront to the game itself. So the Creator cleared those nasty buggers out and took back Jackal Mountain.”

She smiled at us like this was the greatest thing ever. Then she sat down and drank more tea. We looked at each other, confused.

“Uh, is that it?” Coz asked. “No disrespect, Bubby, but we knew that already.”

“Knew what?” Bubby asked.

More looking around at each other.

“About Jackal Mountain,” Coz said.

“Jackal Mountain?” Bubby asked. “Oh, dear, you must be talking about the Creator and how he took back Jackal Mountain then hid it from all eyes.”

Ming groaned.

“Bubby, we need to know about the Saga of the Lich King and how it can be playing out now,” he said. “Our friend, Jeremy, may become the Lich King.”

“Well, that isn’t good,” Bubby said. “Is he dead?”

“Undead,” Trish said.

“Same thing,” Bubby replied, waving her off.

Bubby’s eyes glazed over then her entire body shook and she collapsed onto the floor. Kip and Trish hurried to help her, but Sandra held out a warning hand.

“Let her be,” Sandra said. “Do not forget that she is not Ming’s Bubby. She is the Oracle. This is part of the process.”

“I…I’ve never seen this,” Ming said, looking from the convulsing Bubby to Sandra and back.

“I see it all the time,” Sandra said. “She does it at least once a month.”

“Once a month?” Ming asked. “How often do you visit her?”

“We have tea weekly,” Sandra said. “Every Wednesday at four-thirty. I found Bubby before the dead began walking the Earth. It’s a long-standing appointment.”

Everyone watched Sandra carefully. I wasn’t sure why, but I could see their assessments of her change one by one. Except for Holo. He kind of shrugged in that dog way of his then lied down and curled up into a ball.

Bubby stopped shaking and sat straight up from the waist. It was like the exorcist or something.

“The Foe has arrived and the Creator is most pleased,” Bubby said, her voice monotone and flat. “The Saga of the Lich King may begin and all shall be right with the land of EverRealm. But beware, adventurers, there is much peril ahead of you. Most will live, one will die, and one will become what they were always meant to become. There is no deviation from this campaign. Once you start your quest, it must be finished or all will die.”

She stood up so fast that we all jumped. Kip let out a little squeak and Holo barked.

“Do you accept your quest?” Bubby asked. “Answer now, and know that once you answer, there is no changing your mind.”

“I accept,” Sandra said and stood up to bow to Bubby. The old woman placed a palm on top of Sandra’s head. I expected her to shy away from the touch, but Sandra held still.

“Well met, adventurer,” Bubby said.

Sandra backed up a couple paces then straightened.

“Thank you, Oracle,” she said.

“I’m in,” Trish said and repeated the same motions.

“Well met, adventurer.”

“Thank you, Oracle.”

“I will, of course, be a part of this quest,” Ming said.

“Well met, adventurer,” Bubby said.

“Thank you, Oracle.”

“Why the hell not?” Coz said.

“Yeah,” Kip agreed.

“Well met, adventurers.”

“Thank you, Oracle.”

“Yeah.”

“You in?” Holo asked me.

“What? Oh, yeah, of course,” I said. “I will join the quest.”

“Are you sure, Steve?” Bubby asked me.

I wasn’t quite sure how to take that. Everyone else got a well met.

“I, uh, am sure?” I said.

“This will not be easy for you, Steve,” Bubby said. “You are not of EverRealm. Your entire being says that. You will be tested in ways I am afraid you are not prepared for. There will be great temptation and pain. You will be wounded greatly by this quest.”

“Damn, try not to sugarcoat it,” I said and laughed.

No one laughed with me. In fact, they all looked a little scared. Even Ming’s usual haughty exterior was cracked by a wideness of his eyes.

“Uh, I’m in,” I said. “I accept the quest.”

“Very well, Steve,” Bubby said and sounded so sad. “Well met, adventurer.”

“Thank you, Oracle,” I said.

“I accept this—” Holo began.

“No, you do not,” Bubby said. “You are to remain here at Castle Lormillion with me.”

“Hey now,” Holo barked. “I’m an adventurer, too!”

“Yes, but this is not your quest,” Bubby said. “You are destined for a different path than these men and women. A path they cannot walk.”

“Huh,” Holo said. “If you say so.”

“I do,” Bubby said then faced us. “You have accepted your quest. Let it begin now.”

She clapped her hands and it all went dark.

Seventeen

We found ourselves standing in a meadow filled with wildflowers. Regular wildflowers, nothing sinister about them. The meadow was on the edge of a dark forest with a narrow path leading into it.

“That was abrupt,” Coz said.

It was as good a time as any to check my display.

Character class: Ranger

Character alignment: Chaotic Good

Character level: 10

Health: 94%

Strength: 92%

Agility: 99%

Magic: 15%

Armor: leather, no bonus

Coin: 200 gold pieces, 155 silver pieces, 0 copper pieces

Inventory: Long bow with 14 regular arrows, 4 magical. 1 long sword of Breaking (Level 16). The Dark Blade, inactive (level unknown). 2 tunics. 1 pair of breeches. 1 hooded cloak. 1 satchel with 1 wine skin, empty.

“Into the forest you go, adventurers!” Bubby’s voice called out around us. “Complete the task and your true quest will be revealed!”

When her voice stopped echoing around us, Trish said, “Our true quest?”

“Yes,” Ming said. “The Saga of the Lich King isn’t only about defeating him. It is a race to stop him from achieving his goal.”

“Which is?” I asked.

“I am not sure,” Ming said.

“Dude, you have the module in your estate,” Coz said.

“I said I had it framed,” Ming said. “I never removed it from its frame and read it. I only know what you guys know.”

“We go in the forest,” Sandra said. “That much is obvious. We complete the task and more will be revealed.”

“What task?” I asked.

“That is what we will find out,” Sandra said.

“Pretty dark in there,” I said.

Everyone except Coz waved a hand and a small, floating light appeared above them.

“Master thief,” Coz said. “I can see in the dark.”

“I can’t,” I said.

“You are a Ranger, Steve,” Sandra said. “The wood is your domain. You will be fine.”

“I hope so,” I said.

Ming took the lead, followed by Trish, Sandra, me, then Kip taking up the rear. We walked single file since the path was only wide enough for one person at a time. After a couple yards, the forest was close to pitch black as the thick trees crowded in around us. A few more yards and I couldn’t see the meadow anymore behind us. We were deep in the woods.

The air was damp and warm, despite the deep shade. I could smell earth and rotting leaves. A hint of death, like a raccoon or squirrel had died close by, kept wafting across the path. No one else seemed alarmed, so I decided not to make a thing of it. I was already the odd man out with our little party.

Sandra coughed quietly and Trish and Ming stopped. The three of them bowed their heads close to each other and had a quick chat before Sandra looked back at the rest of us and gave us each a frown.

“We have to leave the path,” she whispered. “The way ahead is blocked by a trap of great chaos.”

“A trap of great chaos?” Coz asked. “No need to go traipsing through the woods when you have a Master Thief in the party.”

“No,” Kip said and placed a hand on Coz’s shoulder. He shook his head. “No, Coz.”

“That bad?” Coz asked.

Kip looked at Sandra and she nodded.

“Come on, guys,” Coz said. “Traps are my thing. Let me try.”

“Not this early in the quest,” Sandra said. “We will need your skills later, I am sure of it.”

“She is right, Coz,” Ming said. “Our journey is long and if you are wounded—”

“Or worse,” Trish interrupted.

“—or worse,” Ming continued. “Then we will have to carry you with us the entire way.”

“Not if he’s or worse,” I said. “We can just dig a hole and put him in it then come back and give him a proper burial.”

“Dude,” Coz said.

“What?” I asked.

“That’s fucking cold, Steve,” Trish said.

“I’m not saying I want him to die or anything,” I replied. “I was simply stating that if he did die, then we wouldn’t have to carry him with us.”

“He is not dying because he is not getting near the trap,” Sandra said. “We leave the path here and make our way through the forest. Trish?”

“On it,” Trish said and squatted down. She drew her finger in the dirt, making the shape of a star. Then she stabbed the center of the star with her thumb and a crude map appeared. She tapped a red circle. “We’re here. The path is here. This is the entire forest. We have to go east to exit the forest by the river if we want to take the fastest route.”

“I assume taking the fastest route has its disadvantages?” I asked.

“Good assumption,” Trish said. “If we go west, then we’ll come out of the forest here, close to a nasty little canyon that will totally be in our way.”

“Except that the canyon does not have the risks that the river does,” Ming said.

“And those risks are…?” I asked.

“It’s a river, dude,” Coz said.

“Oh, right, yeah,” I said. “Trolls?”

“Trolls,” Trish said. “And from what scouts were telling us, they are pissed off and ready to kill some adventurers. No one knows why they are so pissed off, but they are. That makes the fast route a bad choice.”

I tried to act casual, but I could feel Sandra watching me. I don’t know if I tensed or what, but she could see I was less than comfortable when the subject of pissed-off river trolls came up. I kind of had a very good idea as to why they were pissed off.

But, lucky for me, Sandra stayed quiet and let the question of what caused their anger drop.

“My choice would be west,” Trish said. “But east does have its advantages if we can avoid the trolls.”

“Not if they’re looking for us,” Coz said. “Those big guys will be ready.”

“Then west?” Sandra asked. “We need to choose now.”

She looked nervous and that made me nervous. I started glancing over my shoulders, my head whipping back and forth until Kip placed a calming hand on top of my skull and stopped me.

“Sorry,” I said.

He grinned at me and patted my shoulder.

A branch snapped in the quiet of the forest and everyone perked up. Sandra pulled her dagger and took a fighting stance while Kip, Trish, and Ming brought up their hands, ready to cast spells if needed. I had no idea where Coz went. He slipped into the shadows and was gone.

I was about to pull the Dark Blade, but Sandra put a hand on mine and guided my hand to the hilt of my long sword instead. I didn’t question her, but I was kind of bummed I wasn’t going to use the big, scary Dark Blade. But, I guess she had a reason.

I pulled out my long sword of Breaking and we all moved closer to each other, standing back to back to back in order to see the attack no matter what direction it came from.

But it never came. After a good couple of minutes, and no more snapping branches, Ming waved a hand at us to relax and get moving.

“West,” Sandra said and started off in a direction I had to assume was west.

Coz was with us instantly as if he’d never left.

We couldn’t really walk single file anymore. The underbrush was so thick that we each had to make our own way in order to avoid thorny bushes and low-hanging branches that some of us could pass while others kept getting whacked in the face or their pants were snagged and torn. I wasn’t a huge fan of hiking as it was, but to have to go off path really made things worse.

About an hour passed before Ming stopped us and nodded to Trish. She squatted again, which couldn’t have been easy in that outfit of hers, and drew another map. Immediately, she started swearing like I had only heard her do once or twice before.

“East,” she said. “We’re going east.”

“That can’t be right,” Sandra protested. “I know my directions and I pointed us west.”

“Yeah,” Kip said.

Everyone looked at me.

“What?” I asked.

“You are the Ranger, Steve,” Ming said. “An innate sense of direction is part of your character class.”

“Guys, I’m level 10,” I said. “I’m lucky if I can put my boots on the correct feet.”

“Level 10?” Coz asked. “Dude, you’re lucky you haven’t choked to death on a piece of bread whenever we eat.”

“Yet, despite your low level,” Ming said. “A Ranger knows the directions.”

“Not this Ranger,” I said and brought up my display.

I turned in a circle and a small icon that looked like a compass appeared. I jolted in surprise and stopped turning.

“Hey, will you look at that,” I said. “I have a compass.”

“You’ve never noticed that before?” Coz asked.

“No,” I admitted. I pointed in the direction that was west. “That way.”

“Excellent, Steve,” Ming said. “You have saved us precious energy. We would have needed to cast spells in order to—”

“Hold up,” I said. Something was wrong with the compass. All I was doing was standing there and it had begun to spin rapidly then slow then stop then start spinning again. “Dammit.”

“I was afraid of this,” Ming said.

“Afraid of what?” Sandra asked.

“Bubby said we must complete the task and our true quest will be revealed,” Ming said. “We are meant to stay in this forest until that task is completed.”

“Great,” Trish said. “That’s just fucking great. So which way do we go?”

“East, obviously,” Ming said. “The forest wants us to go east.”

“Then we go east,” Trish replied. “Steve?”

“East? Yeah, okay, sure,” I said and checked my display again. When I turned to face east, the compass needle stopped spinning and blinked green. “That way, guys.”

“Are you sure?” Sandra asked me.

“It’s blinking green,” I said. “Green is good.”

“Green is good,” she replied and smiled.

“Off we go,” Coz said.

We trudged our way east. In less than five minutes, we were back at the path.

“Now we do things my way,” Coz said and took the lead. “Time to spring a trap.”

Eighteen

We kept back a good few yards and let Coz do his thing. He moved from tree to tree, keeping to the sides of the path as much as he could. Every time he’d get to a new tree, I’d have to refocus to find him. His camouflage skills were pretty damn good.

Five minutes, ten minutes, twenty minutes passed before Coz finally stopped and held up a fist. I knew the universal sign for hold and froze in place along with the others.

Coz opened a small pouch on his belt and dug around inside it with his fingers until he found what he was looking for. He tossed out a sprinkle of dust and a bright gold circle was illuminated in the center of the path. Then the dust dissipated and the circle faded back into nothing.

He didn’t approach the spot where the circle had been. Instead, he knelt in the dirt and starting digging with his hands until he had a decent-sized hole. Then he wet a finger, dipped it in the pile of dirt he’d made, and tasted it. He grimaced, which wasn’t surprising, and stood back up to face us.

“Alright,” Coz said. “This is how we’re going to handle this.”

He rubbed his hands together over and over, his head bobbing up and down.

“Coz?” Trish asked. “You okay?”

“Nope,” Coz said. “Not okay. None of us are.”

“That sucks,” I said.

“Yeah,” Kip agreed.

“You were about to tell us how we are going to handle this?” Sandra said.

“I was,” Coz said. “Here’s the thing, and I apologize for not noticing it before, but we’ve already sprung the trap. We’ve been in it since we stepped foot in the forest. Really, the whole place is a trap.”

“What was that circle?” I asked. “That wasn’t the trap?”

“That? No way,” Coz said. “That is the middle of the trap. We’re standing almost dead center.”

“How will we handle this?” Ming asked. “Coz? Please continue your assessment of our predicament.”

“You bet,” Coz said. “Here’s the thing: I’ve been in a trap like this before. It’s no big deal. Bubby was right and all we have to do is complete our task and we’ll be free to continue on our true quest.”

“What’s the task?” Trish asked. “Coz? What’s the goddamn task?”

Several branches snapped and a low, ominous growl seemed to come from everywhere.

“That,” Coz said. “The Beast.”

“The Beast? No problem,” I said. “We’ve got at least one beauty here to chill him out.”

I laughed. No one else did.

“You are a fool, adventurer,” a deep voice said from all around us. “You walk into my forest and dare to mock my power? You will die a fool’s death.”

“My mom said the same thing about me when I was fifteen,” I said. “What a coincidence, right?”

“Steve, please stop,” Sandra whispered.

“Listen to your better,” the Beast said. “For she has given you wise advice.”

“Uh, hey there, Beast,” Coz said. He slowly withdrew a knife for each hand and held them down close to his thighs. “Remember me? It’s Coz.”

“The name is not familiar, but your smell is,” the Beast said.

There was still no sign of the creature. All I could hear was his voice and the occasional snapping of a branch.

“Dude, my bad,” Coz said. “I went by the name Mal before.”

“Mal?” the Beast asked. “Yes… The Thief that stole my fire.”

“Stole his fire?” I asked.

“Long story, different quest,” Coz said. He cleared his throat. “I kind of needed that fire. Here’s the thing, Beast, I actually have it on me. Give me a second.”

He pointed at a pouch on his belt with one of his knives. Trish sighed and went over to him then dug in the pouch.

“Ow!” she cried as she yanked her hand out, all of her fingers engulfed in flames.

She started to wave her free hand over the flames, but Coz hissed at her. She glared and he glared back then jabbed a knife left. Trish shook her head and pouted, but kept the flames going on her fingers.

“See,” Coz said. “Your fire is right here. I was thinking we could make a trade.”

“I do not barter,” the Beast said. “I take what I want, when I want. You are in my forest, Mal.”

“Coz,” Coz said.

“I care not for your name, mortal creature of small stature,” the Beast said. “You are in my forest. You will give me back my fire or I will kill you and your friends.”

“Small stature?” Coz mumbled. “What’s that about? I’m skinny, but not short.”

“What happens when we give you the fire?” I asked. “Do we get to leave?”

“No, you get to die,” the Beast said.

“Shut up, Steve,” Coz said.

“So, we die no matter what happens, right?” I asked.

“Yes,” the Beast said. “But if you give me back my fire, I will make your deaths quick and painless.”

“I don’t think so,” I said and drew the Dark Blade.

Everyone started shouting at me.

“That blade will be mine!” the Beast roared as he crashed through the trees towards us. “I have sought that blade for eternity!”

Several trees in front of me cracked and snapped in half and suddenly there he was. The Beast. He was goddamn huge.

What, maybe fifteen feet tall and almost as wide? Yeah, close to that. He was all wiry black fur with razor-sharp claws and huge pointy teeth and fire-red eyes and ugly, so much ugly, and he stank like a skunk crapped itself and oh shit I screwed up!

I hate this game so much.

The Beast leapt at me, his massive clawed hands reaching for the Dark Blade. I dove and rolled under him, coming up slashing blindly like I was a maniac trying to kill a mosquito that was buzzing around me at supersonic speeds. I must have looked like a complete freak.

The Beast cried out and hit the ground with a hard thud.

“Dude, did you get him?” Coz asked from behind a tree.

I don’t blame him for hiding; he was a Master Thief and hiding was his thing when combat got crazy nuts. The others weren’t hiding. They were casting spells, hands glowing various colors according to said spells. Except for Sandra who stood there with her dagger out and ready.

Hit. Enemy’s health depleted by 3%.

Oh no…

Oh no, oh no, oh no.

The hit didn’t do jack which meant the Beast was a quest boss. Kind of like a level boss, but more RPGy instead of actiony. It makes sense in my head.

Enemy preparing for another—

A quick check of my Preferences and I shut that shit off.

There was no way I was going through EverRealm with a running recap of everything I did or was done to me. I had an aunt like that. All she did was narrate her movements. “Going to the kitchen,” “Taking the OJ out of the fridge,” “Found a glass.” I’m not kidding. She’d tell you she was turning a page when she read a magazine. Drove me batshit nuts. I disliked EverRealm enough as it was.

“You,” the Beast growled, shaking the ground just with its voice. “You!”

He was up and swinging at me before I could even track movement. Then I was flying through the air. Then, after the flying was done, I was slamming into a tree. After that came the pain and the hurting. With falling. I was falling, too.

See? I could narrate my own demise; I didn’t need the game to do it.

“Shit,” I groaned as I prayed that all of my limbs still worked and my back wasn’t broken.

“I will have that blade!” the Beast roared as he stomped over to me.

He was reaching for me when a yellow streak of light hit him in the side of his ever-so-ugly face. He cried out and spun around, his mouth open and all those nasty teeth dripping with slimy saliva.

“Who dares attack me?” the Beast snarled.

“We do,” Ming announced. He stood his ground, hands glowing yellow, with Kip and Trish standing behind him. “We do not want to fight, mighty Beast. All we ask is that we are allowed to leave the forest unharmed. We meant no offense.”

“Your presence is an offense,” the Beast said and laughed. “Your very birth upon this plane of existence is an offense! You should be wiped from the records of history and—!”

He grunted and fell to a knee. A low groan of pain escaped his disgusting lips and he reached over his shoulder to pull something from his back.

By the light that Ming, Kip, and Trish were giving off from the spells on their hands, I could see a dagger. Sandra’s dagger.

“You…stabbed me,” the Beast said, shocked. “This blade pierced my…hide. How…?”

He fell forward and only managed not to collapse onto his face by putting out a hand. He was struggling to breathe and shook his head over and over.

“What magic…is this?” the Beast asked.

“Love,” Sandra said as she cautiously approached the struggling Beast. “My dagger will always find its target if the attack is righteous and clean. Your desire to kill my friends was your undoing.”

The Beast snarled then coughed up a thick black liquid. It splattered across the ground and splashed up onto Ming, Kip, and Trish.

“Dammit,” Trish complained. “Beast puke is so hard to get out.”

“You mock my demise, mortal bitch?” the Beast growled.

“Hey there! Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Coz shouted and came out from behind his tree. “No need for that, dude! No need for that at all!”

He marched towards the Beast, his knives at the ready, but Sandra held out a hand and he stopped.

“I have this, Coz, thank you,” Sandra said and moved closer to the Beast.

The huge creature snarled at her, but didn’t have the strength to attack. The dagger fell from its grip and Sandra picked it up, moving back only a couple of steps before sitting cross-legged on the ground.

“I can heal you,” Sandra said.

“Ha!” the Beast said with a snort. “Why would you do that when your aim was to kill me?”

“My aim was to stop you,” Sandra said. “I am not a killer. Not unless I am forced to be.”

The Beast turned its massive head and regarded her with its fire-red eyes for a second then nodded.

“I see truth in you,” the Beast said. He sighed deeply. “Why are you here, Priestess? Why have you broken the tranquility of my beautiful forest?”

I glanced around. Not sure what tranquility and beauty he was talking about. More like spooky as hell and more than a little creepy.

“The Oracle instructed us to,” Sandra said. She dug around in a pouch and held out her hand. The Beast shook his head. “Take it. Please.”

“I will not ease your conscience, Priestess,” the Beast said. “My death will be on your soul for all eternity.”

“That is your choice,” Sandra said. “Before you die, though, we need to know our true quest. What are we here to learn from you?”

The Beast laughed. It was weak for him, but still shook the ground.

“I have no reason to help you,” the Beast said.

“Then you will die with dishonor and your soul will be eternally trapped in limbo,” Sandra said. “Is that the fate you want, noble Beast?”

“Your flattery skills are impressive,” the Beast said. “But futile.”

Sandra dug in a different pouch and came out with a handful of glittery powder. She blew it in the Beast’s face, and he howled with pain and rage then collapsed onto his glittered face.

“You…bitch,” the Beast said then sighed out his last breath.

“Damn,” I said and finally risked moving. I got to my feet and sheathed the Dark Blade. “You killed—”

Sandra held up a hand and I shut up.

“Beast,” she said in almost a whisper. “Can you hear me?”

“Yesssss,” the Beast hissed.

“Fuck me,” Trish said then shut up as Kip slapped her shoulder.

“Beast, we must know what our true quest is,” Sandra said. “The Oracle has sent us on this path and we must complete our journey.”

“The Oracle liessssssss,” the Beast hissed.

“That is true,” Sandra replied.

“I would disagree with that statement,” Ming said. “The Oracle is above telling lies.”

Kip punched him in the arm. He shut up.

“Our quest, Beast. What is it?” Sandra continued.

“Are you sssssssssssssssure knowledge is your wishhhhhhhh?” the Beast asked.

“Please,” Sandra said.

“The Great Jewel of Rissssssssssing is your true quesssssssssst,” the Beast hissed. “Find the Jewel and you will control all that have passssssssssed.”

“Does that mean we will control the dead?”

“Yessssss.”

“Including the Lich King?”

“Yessss. And ssssssso many more.”

“Where can we find the Great Jewel of Rising?”

“It will find you when you find it,” the Beast said and then melted into the ground.

He melted. Like the Wicked Witch of the West. A nasty, stinking, puddle of yuck right there on the forest floor.

Sandra stood up and looked at all of us.

“Was that helpful?” Coz asked her.

“I believe it was,” Sandra said.

“Then, uh, what’s the plan?” Trish asked. “Because he didn’t exactly give us a direction.”

“He was not here to give us a direction, but show us our true quest,” Ming said. “We continue on to Jackal Mountain as before and let the Great Jewel of Rising find us as we find it.”

“What is it?” I asked. “This jewel? I haven’t heard of it before.” I waved a hand at them. “I know, I know, not surprising. Steve doesn’t know about the Jewel of Rising. Ha ha ha.”

None of them laughed.

“Wait,” I said. “You guys don’t know what it is either, do you?”

“It is new to me,” Ming admitted.

“Never heard of it, dude,” Coz said.

“Yeah,” Kip said.

Trish and Sandra shook their heads.

“Oh, snap,” I said. “Now you all know how I feel half the time!”

I was going to say more, but that’s when the Ghost of the Beast came roaring up out of the puddle of yuck. My words may have turned into a startled scream.

Nineteen

Battle spells were being fired left and right as we ran. And, man, did we run.

Turned out that the Ghost of the Beast was not only a lot stinkier than the living version of the damned creature, but it was also close to impervious to our attacks. It being a ghost and all.

“That should have turned it into stone!” Trish yelled as she threw a bright green streak of lightning at the ghost. “What the fuck, Ming?”

“Why are you yelling at me?” Ming asked as he sprinted around a clump of bushes that had thorns almost as long as my arm on them. His robes snagged, but he didn’t slow down, and they ripped up one side. “How is yelling at me going to help our situation?”

“This is your goddamn Domain!” Trish shouted. “You can access the back end and find out why our spells aren’t working on it!”

“Yeah!” Kip yelled as he ducked under a low branch, spun about on his heels, and threw a handful of flashing orbs at the ghost.

The ghost swallowed the orbs and belched then gave a thunderous laugh, not slowing one bit.

“I would, but I cannot access the back end of this Domain while being pursued by a non-corporeal threat!” Ming yelled. “I need calm and focus!”

“How about everyone shuts up and we just run our asses off?” I shouted. “We’ll figure it out later! Right now, we need to get out of this forest!”

“Steve is right!” Sandra yelled. “The ghost will be tied to the forest! If we can get out, then it cannot pursue us!”

“This way!” Coz shouted as he turned left and sprinted down a barely visible path. “I think I see light up ahead!”

I tried to make the turn, but my feet gave out from under me and fell right on my ass, sliding across the dead leaves and needles into the trunk of a not very soft tree.

The rest of the group was already about ten yards gone before I felt a sharp and freezing cold pain stab through my chest. I gasped and looked over my shoulder to see the Ghost of the Beast standing over me, one of its ethereal claws jammed into my back. It yanked it out and a golden mist came with it.

Character Health depleted by 23%.

Goddammit. I turned that off! Oh, and goddammit, that hurt like hell!

It struck again, but I rolled out of the way and the claw pierced the tree’s bark. I watched in horror as the tree shriveled, swayed, then began to topple towards me. I scrambled up onto my feet, which I could barely keep under me as my vision swam. I was able to stumble a few feet back as the tree fell, creating enough of a barrier, and distraction, for me to pull the Dark Blade.

The Ghost of the Beast hissed at me and froze where it stood. Or floated. Whatever.

That’s when I noticed that the blade was glowing a bright blue. Like that blue in the brightest part of a flame just before it becomes white hot. The Ghost of the Beast stared at the blade, its eyes locked on the glowing light.

“Yesssss,” it said. “Yesssss. The Dark Blade will be mine.”

Well, shit.

I swiped at it as it moved through the fallen tree and straight for the blade. The ghost howled when the blade struck its ethereal form. Spectral blood splattered the trees and began to eat through them like acid. The part of the Dark Blade that had come in contact with the Ghost of the Beast dimmed to a deep indigo. That wasn’t good.

So, I ran again as the Ghost of the Beast leapt at me. He half-collided, half-melted through another tree, but I didn’t wait around to see what happened to that poor oak or maple or whatever kind it was. I did hear it cracking and falling behind me as I ran my Ranger ass off.

I prayed I was headed in the right direction. Tree after tree behind me was being destroyed at a rate that said the Ghost of the Beast wasn’t even trying to go around them. He was barreling through, right on my butt. Then I saw a light up ahead and dug deep, putting all of my energy into my legs. Rangers can run, so I had that going for me.

But, my Health wasn’t exactly topped off, and just as I reached the edge of the forest, the Ghost of the Beast maybe a few feet behind me, my legs started to give out. I could feel them failing and I wasn’t sure I was going to make it.

Then I was out in the light and saw my friends up ahead, their backs to me as they stared down at something.

“Guys!” I yelled as ran towards them. “Guys!”

They turned and started to wave me off, but that wasn’t happening. I couldn’t stop. My legs weren’t obeying and my momentum took me right at them.

And right into them.

I don’t know who I hit first, maybe Kip or Trish, but the end result was we became a tangle of collapsed bodies. Except that wasn’t all that collapsed. Turns out the group had been standing on the edge of that canyon that Trish had pointed out to us. It was a pretty steep canyon. A pretty steep canyon with unfortunately soft edges.

Before any of us could do a damn thing, we were falling. Arms and legs flailing in open air. A tangled clump of screaming, helpless people. My head struck something and I saw stars then we hit the bottom, hard, and it all went sort of dark.

Except, I didn’t get the luxury of passing completely out. Someone yanked me up onto my feet, and I could barely make out an angry face yelling into my dazed face. Then someone was yelling at the other yelling someone and hands were helping me sit back down.

The yelling continued, but I didn’t care as Sandra’s face came into soft focus in front of me.

“Drink this,” she said and put a cup to my lips.

I took a sip, coughed, and nearly threw up.

“Don’t stop,” Sandra said. “Drink it all down. It tastes bad, I know.”

She tilted the cup and the rank liquid poured into my mouth. The only reason I didn’t vomit right there was because I would have puked all over Sandra and I didn’t want to do that. I’d embarrassed myself enough for the day.

Instant warmth. That’s what happened as the liquid poured down my reluctant throat and hit my belly. Instant warmth through every part of my body, especially through the icy cold wound in my chest.

“Do you feel better?” Sandra asked once I’d downed the last drop of the liquid.

“A lot,” I said. “Thanks.”

“I don’t know how you survived that,” she said, her eyes going to the hole in my tunic. “A strike by one of the Beast’s claws should kill anyone that is below Level 100. A strike by the Ghost of the Beast is supposed to be instantly fatal, no matter the level. You should be dead, Steve.”

“I am very happy I’m not,” I said. “Thanks for the stank drank.”

The rest of the world came back into focus and I turned towards the source of the shouting. Trish was yelling at Ming and he was yelling back, each of them trying to raise their voice over the other. Coz was yelling for them to shut up, and Kip was standing in the middle, turning in a panicked circle, his hands out and trying to calm the whole situation down. Sandra sighed.

“They won’t stop,” she said.

“What are they arguing about?” I asked.

Sandra blushed and glanced away.

“You’d rather not tell me than lie,” I said. “That’s nice of you.”

She nodded, but didn’t look at me.

“Hey!” I shouted. “Can you be quiet please? Some of us nearly died back there.”

And instant quiet. All eyes were on me. Great.

“What?” I asked then shrugged. “Okay, sorry I knocked everyone down here. Is anyone hurt?”

“That’s what you’re sorry about?” Trish asked. “Knocking us into the canyon that we were going to have to descend into anyway? Are you a fucking idiot or just a regular idiot?”

“Regular idiot?” I replied.

“Knock it off, Trish,” Coz said. “He’s Level 8.”

“Level 10,” I said. “I went up a couple levels, remember?”

“Good for you, dude,” he replied, the sarcasm extra thick.

“Steve,” Ming said in his most condescending tone. “We understand that this Domain, that EverRealm, has never been your favorite.”

Trish snorted and looked away from me, her hands angrily planted on her hips.

“However,” Ming continued and cleared his throat. “However, you are here now and as much a part of this quest as any of us. Personally, despite some disagreement from Trish here, I believe you may be integral to our completion of this quest.”

“Bull and shit,” Trish said.

“However,” Ming said.

“Stop saying however and get to it, dude,” Coz said.

“Yes, quite,” Ming responded and walked over to me. He crouched down and stared me straight in the face. “The problem is that we need you to follow our lead. When instructed not to use the Dark Blade, we would prefer that you actually not use the Dark Blade. It has its…issues.”

“You can say that again!” Trish shouted. “Like nearly getting all of us killed!”

“If you can refrain from using the Dark Blade, then we can allow you to keep it,” Ming said. “Otherwise, we will need you to hand it over. I hope you do understand.”

“Oh, I understand,” I said and struggled to get up.

“Steve, stay down,” Sandra said. “You’re still weak.”

“I’m fine,” I said a lot harsher than I would have liked. “Sorry. Just help me up.”

Sandra refused to help me stand up, but Ming took my hand and I was able to slowly get to my feet. I nodded my thanks then pulled the Dark Blade from its sheath. I held it out to Ming and gave him a huge smile.

“Take it,” I said. “If having a blade like this one is going to cause all kinds of hell for us, then I do not want it. Way too much responsibility. Take it, Ming. You’ll be able to use it better than me anyway. I’m Level 10. What good can anything be in my hands at that shitty level?”

“Steve…” Sandra said, worry in her voice.

“No, it’s totally cool,” I said. “I am gifting this blade to Ming.” I said the last part in a loud, authoritative voice just in case the decree needed to be officially announced. “It is his to take and use.”

Ming studied the blade for a minute then reached out and took it from me. Or tried to.

One second he had his hand on the hilt and the next second he was flying fifty yards across the canyon and slamming into the opposite wall. He collapsed into a heap of robes and pained grunts.

“Damn!” Coz cried.

Everyone hurried over to Ming except for me. I just stared at the Dark Blade that was still in my hands, its blade glowing a weird green and the hilt glowing a strange black. Yeah, it glowed black. Hard to explain. Kind of like a fluorescent tube right as it flickers out. Sort of. Like I said, it’s hard to explain.

“Huh,” I said.

“Is he alright?” Trish asked, pushing Coz out of the way to get closer to Ming. “Sandra?”

“Let me check,” Sandra said and placed a finger to Ming’s throat. “He has a pulse, so that’s good.”

“Stab him with your dagger,” Trish said.

“I can’t,” Sandra said. “When I stabbed the Beast, it took the healing component from the blade. I need to replenish it at the Spring of—”

“Don’t care,” Trish said as she stood and whirled on me. “Jesus Christ, Steve! Why’d you do that?”

“I didn’t do shit, Trish,” I said, shoving the blade towards her for her to take it. “I only wanted this thing out of my hands. It’s yours if you want it. I mean that. I’m done. I’ll hang at the back of the group and try to stay out of the way from now on.”

“Dude, don’t be so melodramatic,” Coz said.

“I’m not kidding, man,” I said. “This blade is bad news for me.”

“Kind of bad news for Ming, too,” Coz said.

“Yeah,” Kip agreed.

“You really didn’t do that on purpose?” Trish asked. Ming moaned and she glanced back at him before refocusing on the Dark Blade. “You were giving it to him?”

“Yep,” I said. “Now I’m giving it to you.”

“Kind of seems like a dumb idea to take it, Trish,” Coz said. “Unless you want to go for a flight across the canyon.”

“I don’t know,” Trish said, but she wasn’t talking to me or any of us. All of her concentration was on the Dark Blade. “Perhaps it was his alignment that was the issue.”

“Trish,” Coz warned.

“Yeah,” Kip said.

Sandra was busy trying to revive Ming and wasn’t paying attention to what we were doing.

“Just put it away before anyone else gets hurt, Steve,” Coz said.

“Hold your fucking horses,” Trish snapped. “Let me try something.”

She held her hands over the blade without touching it. After a few seconds, she closed her eyes and began chanting something that I didn’t understand. Being a Ranger, I should have had a good grasp of languages, but I just never bothered incorporating that into my character since I hated EverRealm with most of my being. I’m a really, really bad Ranger.

Trish stopped chanting and smiled at me.

“That should do it,” she said. “You give the Dark Blade freely?”

“I sure as shit do,” I said.

Trish grabbed the hilt then took a flight, collapsing next to Ming and making Sandra jump up and scream.

“Put it away,” Kip ordered.

It was a full-on order. I put the Dark Blade back in its sheath although what I wanted to do was chuck it as far away from me as possible. But, I had a feeling that would be a not so good idea, especially if some bad guy showed up and took it for his, or her, own. If they could pick it up without flying the friendly skies, that is.

“Is she breathing?” Coz asked as Sandra knelt next to both Trisha and Ming.

“She’s breathing and her pulse is strong,” Sandra said.

“Get your fingers off me,” Trish said, “and help me up.”

Sandra helped Trish to her feet. Our eyes locked.

“You’re goddamn bound to it,” Trish said.

“Huh? What does that mean?” I asked. “Bound to it how?”

“This is going to hurt, but it’s worth a demonstration just so we’re all on the same fucking page,” Trish said.

She waved her hands and the Dark Blade disappeared from my belt, sheath and all. Trish screamed and fell to her knees, her hands gripping the sides of her head. Then the Dark Blade, still in its sheath, reappeared on my belt as if nothing had happened. Trish fell onto her side and moaned.

“Any questions?” she grunted as she waved off Coz’s helping hand. “No, let me lie here a second, okay?”

“Oh, my,” Sandra said, her eyes wide with pure terror. “Oh, Steve, I am so sorry.”

“Will someone please tell me what the hell is going on?” I snapped. “This shit is getting old!”

“Who wants to tell him?” Coz asked. No one volunteered. “Great. Thanks, assholes.”

Except, before he could tell me, a very familiar sound echoed down the canyon at us.

The moans of the undead.

Twenty

“Later,” Coz said to me.

“Later what?” I asked. “Later you tell me how screwed I am?”

“Dude, undead,” Coz said, pointing at a bend in the canyon where quite a few undead were shambling into view.

A view that was growing dimmer by the minute. The suns were setting and the Galac moons were about to make an appearance. The problem was that between the suns setting and the Galac moons rising high enough into the sky to be of any use to us, there was going to be some serious twilight and shadow down in the canyon.

Twilight and shadow were the worst conditions when fighting the undead. All it took was for you to lose sight of just one of them and you were done for. I’d watched it happen more than a few times. All of us had, so the tension in the group ratcheted up a few notches, which was saying something considering our lack of calm before the undead came for a visit.

Trish managed to get to her feet, still refusing help from anyone, and faced the approaching undead. She manifested a staff from out of thin air. It was made of black wood with silver lines threading through it.

“A very good idea,” Ming said and manifested his own staff. His was of a dark blond wood with copper threaded through it.

Coz pulled his knives and Sandra drew her dagger while Kip began working some spell that created a ton of bright green spots that floated in the air.

I glanced down at the hilt of the Dark Blade.

“Good idea or bad idea?” I asked Coz.

He glanced at the hilt too then nodded. “It’s yours, dude. You might as well use it.”

“Coz,” Sandra said, her voice sharp. “You know what happens the more he uses it.”

“What happens?” I cried. “Someone tell me!”

“Not now,” Coz snapped, glaring at Sandra. “We kill the undead first then we deal with Steve and his, uh, issues.”

“God, I hate you people so much,” I said. “Almost as much as I hate EverRealm.”

“Shhhh!” Ming said. “Do not disparage the land out loud!”

“Yeah,” Kip said.

“Can we focus, please?” Coz asked.

“I am focusing, dipshit,” Trish said as she walked towards the undead, her staff spinning in both hands like an oversized baton.

“What? Is she going to windmill them to death?” I asked.

Then the spinning stopped and she slammed down one end of the staff into the ground. A streak of lighting roared across the dirt, right at the front wave of undead, and struck five of them at once, setting them all ablaze.

“Oh, yeah, that works too,” I said.

“Pull the stupid blade and come on,” Coz said as he ran to join Trish. “There’s one thing I know you can’t screw up and that’s killing undead!”

He was right about that. EverRealm or not, I did know how to kill me some undead. I was used to a fire axe in the real world, but I was just as good with a machete. The Dark Blade was simply an oversized machete. Probably a cursed machete, but a machete. Sort of. Didn’t matter. If it lopped off undead heads, then it was good with me.

I hurried after Coz with Sandra and Kip by my side. Ming hung back, his lips moving rapidly as he prepared some sort of spell.

The shadows were thick the closer we got to the undead, and I almost missed two of them that were scurrying close to the canyon wall. I say scurrying because they were down on all fours, not up on two feet. I jumped out of their reach, drew the Dark Blade, and hacked a head from its shoulders. The head rolled closer and I realized why the things were down on all fours.

Goblins.

“Goblins!” I yelled and hacked at the second one.

It evaded the attack and scrambled partway up the canyon wall so it was at eye level. That gave me a decent look at its warped face. Goblins were nasty creatures. About the same size as humans, but with thick, leathery skin that was a puke green. Their eyes were yellow and slitted like a cat’s. Pointy ears and long fingernails, with some sharp teeth to go with the rest of the nasty, goblins were fierce fighters and refused to yield even when it was obvious they were going to die horribly.

“Watch the walls!” I shouted as I slashed at the goblin.

It leapt into the air at me and I stepped sideways, slashing once more. The thing howled as I chopped it in two. Its torso fell one way and its legs the other. The legs I didn’t worry about, they were useless, but the torso was still a problem.

I hadn’t pierced the brain.

It scrambled at me, clawing at the dirt with its hands, and gnashed its teeth. Its black tongue kept flicking out like a goddamn lizard. I’d never seen a goblin do that before, but then I’d never seen an undead goblin, so who knew what was possible.

I tried to stab it through the skull, but it rolled away, avoiding the tip of my blade. Its left hand sliced the air and I barely got out of the way of its sharp nails. My blade came down again and I took that left arm right off. The goblin howled again and tried for some leaping attack by pushing off the ground with its right arm.

It totally failed and face-planted. I didn’t waste the opportunity, and instead of stabbing it, I stomped on the back of its skull with my boot, crushing its head like a disgusting grape.

Then I was tackled from behind by another goddamn undead goblin and the Dark Blade went skittering across the ground.

I rolled over and managed to grab a sharp piece of rock from the ground then stabbed, stabbed, stabbed at the thing’s head as fast as I could while I kept its teeth from biting my face off by jamming my forearm up under its chin. It snapped at me over and over as my blade found its neck, its shoulder, and open air. It wouldn’t hold still long enough for me to get a clear stab into its brain.

So I kneed it in the groin.

It shouldn’t have been an attack that mattered, since the undead no longer cared about their genitals and didn’t feel pain, but it shoved the goblin forward and I kept that momentum going. It tumbled over my head and I rolled up onto my knees, holding the rock in both hands, and came down hard on the back of its skull. That did the trick.

The goblin went still and I scrambled up onto my feet and spun in a circle, hunting for the Dark Blade. I thought I saw it under some scrub brush, but I didn’t have time to go for it as two more goblins leapt at me from the canyon wall.

I ducked under the first one, going to a knee and slashing up, spilling its intestines everywhere. It was a pretty sharp rock. The second one collided with my shoulder, but I knew that was going to happen and went with the impact, rolling across the ground, letting the goblin tumble off me, so I could come back up onto one knee.

That time, I pulled my long sword of Breaking and jammed the tip into the head of the disemboweled goblin as it got tangled in its own guts. I yanked the sword free and brought it around in a swiping arc, lopping the head off the second goblin. I was starting to hit my stride.

Not wanting to get tackled for a third damn time, I got up fast and braced my feet. No more goblins were on the canyon wall as far as I could see, but that wasn’t very far.

Kip’s green spots were flying this way and that, piercing undead heads and returning to his open hands. I could see well enough to tell that not all of the undead were goblins. Most of them were human and quite a few of those were already down and dead, the rest of the team having done a kickass job while I tangled with the goblins.

If I was going to retrieve the Dark Blade, then I had better do it fast. I sprinted over to the scrub brush and chopped off half the branches before I found it. Sheathing the long sword of Breaking, I picked the Dark Blade back up and turned to face the fight.

Coz was spinning and tumbling, going from ground to feet to ground to feet as he stabbed everything he could get close to. He didn’t always hit his mark, but he was so agile that none of the undead could get a hand on him.

Sandra was doing basically the same thing except with more flying kicks and every attack of her dagger did find its mark, putting an undead human or goblin to rest. She struck with elbows and knees then stabbed. Jumped up and gave a roundhouse kick to a rather large undead gentleman and took his head off right there. Impressive. She sure as shit wasn’t just about the healing arts. Sandra knew how to fight.

Trish was whirling her staff again and again, sending lightning bolts into the undead horde, cooking as many as she could before retreating to catch her breath. It took a lot of energy to wield that kind of battle magic, and if she wasn’t careful, she’d deplete her Health and collapse. But, then again, it was Trish, so I knew she had to have some backup plan to cover that very contingency.

That left Ming.

I killed two undead women and cut a goblin down the middle before I could look over my shoulder back at him. He was still standing where he’d been before, his lips moving and the tip of his staff firmly planted on the ground. Whatever he was working on, it was big. I hoped he knew what he was doing because big magic shit didn’t always play nice. It played fair which meant more often than not, allies caught some collateral damage.

“You good, Ming?” I called. He nodded, but didn’t stop muttering his spell. “Okay, man.”

I ran forward and took out five undead men before a sixth was able to get in at me and grab me about the waist. I stumbled back and avoided a full-on tackle by letting the heels of my boots slip on the loose dirt. We skated our way back a few yards before I was able to bring the pommel of the Dark Blade down on the base of the guy’s skull, snapping his neck.

One problem with that move was that his entire body went slack while he still had me about the waist. Dead weight pulled at me as his still-moving mouth clamped onto my belt. I fell to my knees and shifted just in time to give the thing another mouthful of leather instead of a mouthful of my belly. Once on my knees, my center of gravity shifted and I stabilized. The pommel found its mark, and the thing’s skull split open all over me.

I was coated in undead brains and blood from midsection down.

That’s when Ming let loose.

There was a tingling at the back of my neck, and I shoved the undead corpse away from me so I could look back and see what the hell he was doing.

Emanating from his staff was what I could only describe as a wave. It looked like energy and water at the same time and was building and building until it towered over Ming by a good six or seven feet. Then, in one motion, it came rushing down the canyon, right for me, the others, and the remaining undead. Which was a lot. The horde had not been a small one. We’d only seen the first couple rows coming from around the bend.

The energy wave washed over me, and I felt the air sucked from my lungs like when you open a really hot oven and make the mistake of breathing at the same time. Except the energy wave wasn’t hot. It was cool. It felt like that first autumn breeze of the season right before the cold rains came. Refreshing yet with a knowing that things were about to change for a while.

I watched the wave hit the others then engulf the undead. My friends stumbled a bit, but it didn’t seem to hurt them anymore than it had me, which was to say not at all. The undead on the other hand did not fare so well.

There was a reason the energy wave reminded me of autumn. The undead stopped where they were, some in mid-attack, and fell to the ground. Their bodies shook for a second, but then went still. At least until the bodies started to rot and decay like a time-lapse nature film.

In a matter of a minute, the entire horde was shriveled up and turning to dust.

“Damn, Ming, way to go,” I said as I got up and turned around to give him a thumbs up.

Ming was on his knees, gasping for breath.

“Sandra!” I cried and ran to Ming.

“I am fine, Steve,” Ming said, trying to wave me off between gasps.

“What did you do, man?” I asked. “You didn’t need to kill yourself to help us.”

“No,” gasp, “not like,” gasp, “that at,” gasp, “all,” Ming said

“Excuse me, Steve,” Sandra said as she pushed past me and handed Ming a wet rag.

Ming put the rag over his mouth and nose and tried to breathe as deep as he could. He only managed short breaths at first then his struggle eased and he was slowly breathing normally once again.

“Asthma,” he said after a minute of breathing through the rag. He held it out to Sandra. “Thank you, my dear.”

“You should keep this in a pouch and on you at all times,” Sandra said. “We knew this was possible.”

“I will lose the pouch, you know that,” Ming said with a pained chuckle. “Just like I always would lose my inhaler around my estate. It was why I kept a dozen backups stashed here and there.”

“You have asthma, dude?” Coz asked as he came up to us. “I didn’t know that.”

“No reason you should,” Ming said. “We have never met in person, so it was never an issue to discuss. Same as your hemorrhoids.”

“Dude, I told you that in confidence,” Coz said, turning and snapping at Kip who had joined us. “Not cool.”

Kip shrugged.

“Did you fucking feel it too?” Trish asked, not seeming to care in the least that Ming was down on the ground. “Did you?”

“I did,” Ming said. “We have a lot to discuss.”

“Not here, though,” Trish said. “We need to get up out of this canyon and make camp somewhere secure.”

“Jesus, is there anywhere secure in EverRealm anymore?” Coz asked.

“We shall find out,” Ming said. “Let us hurry so that we may get a good night’s rest. We will talk in the morning about what is happening.”

Good idea. I brought up my stats.

Character class: Ranger

Character alignment: Chaotic Good

Character level: 12

Health: 34%

Strength: 65%

Agility: 73%

Magic: 15%

Armor: leather, no bonus

Coin: 200 gold pieces, 155 silver pieces, 0 copper pieces

Inventory: Long bow with 14 regular arrows, 4 magical. 1 long sword of Breaking (Level 16). The Dark Blade, inactive (level unknown). 2 tunics. 1 pair of breeches. 1 hooded cloak. 1 satchel with 1 wine skin, empty.

My Health worried me. But there was something else. The Dark Blade was still inactive. It was one hell of a sword, but I’d yet to figure out how to activate its fiery abilities.

Maybe someone would clue me in on how to do that when they clued me in on why they thought I was screwed.

First, we walked.

I went to Preferences and nuked the Notifications command. No more stats or damage interruptions for me, thank you very much.

Twenty-One

We walked a long time before we found a way up and out of the canyon. Then we walked some more before we found a small knoll that had a thicket of oaks on top that we could easily defend. 360-degree views meant nothing was sneaking up on us. Except maybe from above, but Trish covered that possibility by covering us with an energy mesh that would drop anything that decided to drop onto us.

Magic sure had its place. I was kind of wishing that Technopolis had some equivalent, but it was all cyber, all the time. Thinking about my Domain made me think about Holo, and I sighed as I plopped down on the ground to rest my back against the trunk of one of the oaks.

“Eat some of these,” Sandra said.

“How bad is it going to taste?” I asked.

“They’re crackers,” Sandra said. “Like Wheat Thins. I was able to get the kitchen at Castle Lormillion to duplicate them.”

“Any cheese to go with them?” I asked. “Specifically, cheese that comes from a can?”

“No, Steve, I do not have cheese in a can,” Sandra said. “This is EverRealm, not a 7-11.”

“You should get the kitchen to work on spray cheese next,” I said and took a couple of the offered crackers. They tasted pretty damn good. I actually liked them better than Wheat Thins.

“I don’t think so,” Sandra said, munching on a cracker, too.

We shared what she had in her hand in silence. Well, except for the crunching and chewing. When the crackers were gone, Sandra yawned and pointed to a spot between two trees that looked flat and was covered in some sweet, soft looking moss.

“Want to share?” she asked. “It has room for both of us.”

It may have been night, but the Galac moons obviously lit my face up enough for her to see the surprise on it.

“I meant to sleep,” she said quietly and got up.

I watched her walk over to the moss and lie down. She rolled onto her side with her back to me and all I could do was stare.

“Smooth,” Coz said as he sat down next to me. “So smooth, dude.”

“I wasn’t expecting…”

I let the statement fade away because I didn’t have a clue as to what I was expecting. Not at all. Sandra had been so mousy in the Center. She’d barely opened up to anyone, let alone me. I mean, I always thought maybe we had a connection because of the looks she’d shoot me now and again, but I didn’t think she’d want us to cuddle up in the middle of a thicket of oaks while on a quest in EverRealm. That just kind of blew my mind.

“Everything has changed, dude,” Coz said as if he could read my thoughts. “This isn’t the real world. Who we were back home can fall away and we get to become what we’ve always wanted to become.”

“You’re still you, I’m still me,” I said.

“No, dude, I’m not still me,” Coz said. “If you’d ever met me in real life, and I mean real real life, not the Center, then you’d know that. Just like I’m sure you were different where you lived, up in that high-rise with all your bots.”

“Not really,” I said. I thought for a second and shook my head. “No, I’m still me.”

“Huh, okay, maybe so,” Coz said. “Maybe that’s why you don’t dig EverRealm like the rest of us. This was kind of the first place I figured out I could be someone other than myself. Where I had power and status that wasn’t reliant on who I was at home. In a way, this is where I came alive, not back in the old world. And especially not back before the undead showed up.”

“That’s cool,” I said. “I get that. I was different before the undead, but after that, I sort of found who I was. I’m just not any different here than I am back in the real world. Not anymore.”

He nodded like he understood, but didn’t reply. I turned my head to look up at the couple of stars I could see through the branches of the oak.

“You going to tell me why the Dark Blade is more a curse than a gift?” I asked after a while.

“I’d rather not,” Coz said. “Maybe tomorrow?”

“I think Ming has the bad news slot in our schedule already booked tomorrow,” I said. “Tell me my shit now so I can get some sleep.”

“Yeah…not sure how much sleep you’ll get,” Coz said. “It’s not good, dude.”

“I’ve guessed that part, man,” I said. “So just tell me already.”

My voice rose and I heard Kip grunt in disapproval and was shushed by Trish. Ming and Sandra were asleep, or pretending to be.

“Sorry,” I said. “I know you didn’t want to be the guy to tell me.”

“No, I really didn’t,” Coz said. “But tough shit, right?”

He took a couple of deep breaths.

“First, let me say that this isn’t definite,” Coz said. “EverRealm is a weird place and there is always a solution, practical or magical, that can get any player out of the bind they find themselves in. I mean, if there wasn’t a way to do that, then no one would play after the first few hours. I can’t remember how many times I thought I was dead for good when I was at your level.”

“Gee, Coz, thanks,” I said.

“Oh, shut the hell up,” Coz said. “You know what I mean.”

I nodded and he continued.

“The thing is, that in order for us Othersiders to be assimilated into the quantum matrix of the Domains, Ming had to do some changing to the code of all the platforms the games are built on,” Coz said. “There had to be certain anchors that were constant, immutable, unable to be changed or reprogrammed no matter who tampered with the back end. Otherwise, if there was a glitch, we’d be wiped out with everything else. We’d be no better than NPCs.”

“Let me guess, the Dark Blade is one of those anchors?” I asked.

“Maybe,” Coz said.

“Maybe?”

“Maybe. It’s tricky. It may be the Dark Blade or it may be the Dark Enforcer. Either way, you are connected to both of them when you took possession of the Dark Blade.”

“Which means what exactly?”

“You’re gonna make this hard on me, aren’t you?”

“Not trying to, man, but the exposition is getting boring.”

“Boring? Oh, shit, Steve, I’m so sorry that my explaining to you how your fate is now tied to EverRealm forever is boring you.”

I gulped. He winced.

“Sorry,” he said. “That wasn’t how I wanted to say that.”

“Am I an anchor now?” I asked.

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“Maybe.”

“How do we find out for sure?” I asked. “Can I give the Dark Blade back to the Dark Enforcer and call it good?”

“That is highly possible,” Coz said. “I don’t know.”

“Would Ming know?” I asked.

“Probably not,” Coz said. “No one knew that the Dark Blade, or Dark Enforcer, even was one of the anchors. Not until you tried to give the Dark Blade away. Then it behaved exactly how an anchor would behave and returned to you. I mean, come on, dude, do you think I would have wanted to steal the Dark Blade and save with it if I knew it was an anchor and I’d never be able to leave EverRealm and go to my Domain?”

“Never leave EverRealm,” I said slowly. “This sucks.”

“Hey, dude, maybe it won’t be like that,” he said. “Maybe you have to perform some side quest that no one knows about and you’ll be free of the Dark Blade. Maybe we’re all wrong and the Dark Blade only acts like an anchor, but really isn’t. There’re all kinds of maybes that could turn out in your favor, Steve.”

“There’re all kinds that could turn out against me,” I said.

“Yeah, but that’s life, dude,” he replied. “That’s always how things were, are, and will be no matter if we’re in the real world, the Center, or one of the Domains. We live the infinite.”

“Live the infinite?” I laughed. “That’s pretty Zen of you there.”

“I have my moments,” Coz said and shrugged. He patted me on the shoulder. “Good talk. Get some sleep.” He paused. “Can you?”

“Maybe,” I said with a smirk.

“Asshole,” he replied and walked off to where he’d set out his bedroll.

“Are you girls done gabbing yet?” Trish grumbled. “Or will it be a fucking sing-along and hair braiding time next?”

“Already done, Mom,” I said. “Go back to sleep.”

“What a great idea,” she said.

It only took her a few minutes before her breathing evened out and I knew she was asleep. So was everyone else. I tried to get more comfortable and closed my eyes, but sleep was not coming.

An anchor? Stuck in EverRealm forever? Jesus Christ, what a nightmare.

I was going to have to make a decision and soon. If there was a side quest I needed to tackle that would rid me of the Dark Blade and it being an anchor, then I needed to find that side quest. I had a sinking feeling it meant I needed to find the Dark Enforcer and that guy was a jerk. I could go the rest of my life without ever seeing him again.

Abandoning the tree, I moved to a thick bed of leaves, took out my cloak from my satchel, made an attempt at a bed, and settled in. Sleep didn’t come right away, but eventually, it did come, and I slowly drifted into an uneasy, dream-filled slumber that did very little for my exhausted body.

Twenty-Two

The next morning was quiet and uncomfortable. Sandra was wary of me and I was wary of her being wary which meant we kept circling each other while the others got ready to move out.

Kip had magicked up some delicious eggs and hash browns. However, being magic, they only restored some of our Health. One real egg would have boosted the percentage almost as much as that full meal had. But, our bellies were full, at least, and we were ready to get to work.

We stood as a group on the edge of the thicket of trees and stared out at the landscape before us. It was nothing but rolling hills to the horizon where a massive range of mountains stood, as if they signaled the edge of the world. Which they just might have. It was EverRealm.

In the middle of the range was a mass of black clouds swirling constantly. Bubby had said the Creator had hidden Jackal Mountain from view.  He did kind of a crappy job, in my opinion. It’s not like people didn’t know there was something nasty behind those clouds. I mean, it couldn’t have looked more evil if someone had drawn an arrow in the sky pointing to it with a sign that said, “Abandon all hope ye who enter here.” Or maybe even, “Y’all gonna die!”

“Anyone have a good transporting spell they want to use?” Coz asked. “This would be a great time to whip that puppy out.”

“No one’s whipping any puppies out, Coz,” Trish said. “Transporting spells are highly unstable even under the best of circumstances. Otherwise, every noob in this damn game would be popping around EverRealm and acting like idiots while messing up quests for real players like us. Anyway, you think I want to try one while I’m still tired as fuck and need a real meal?”

Kip grunted.

“No offense,” Trish said. “That shit was delicious, but you know it ain’t gonna get us through the day.”

“Yeah,” Kip replied and nodded.

“Wait, hold on,” I said to Trish. “You transported us to Castle Lormillion when you found us?”

“Nah, I cheated,” Trish said. “That was a yo-yo spell tied to the castle. It wasn’t a real transportation spell.”

“What we need is a village,” Sandra said. She pointed to a far-off haze of smoke that clung to one of the larger hills. “There. I believe that is called Howerby.”

“Yes, you are correct,” Ming said. His eyes were unfocused, and I could tell he was accessing his display. “Howerby is a village with a population of approximately thirty-eight. They are farmers with a few tradesfolk. If we are lucky, we can find shelter for the day and night there so we may rest and eat and continue on our journey to Jackal Mountain.”

“Who named that mountain?” I asked. “Was it like your great grandfather or someone, Ming?”

“It was part of the original game design,” Ming said. “Names were simple and descriptive back in the late 20th century. Jackals have been associated with death and sorcery since the dawn of man. The Egyptian god, Anubis, was a jackal and considered the lord of the afterlife and mummification.”

“Mummies?” Coz asked. “First we have to deal with the undead and now mummies?”

“Mummies are the undead,” Ming said. “It is why so many of the evil ones chose the mountain as their power base. At least until the Creator drove them off.”

Ming sighed.

“You still don’t believe Bubby, do you?” Sandra asked. “That the Creator might be a part of this?”

“That is impossible,” Ming said. “The Creator died decades before immersion tanks and full mental integration was even close to achieved. If anything, it is the game reproducing what it believes the Creator to be so that Jeremy’s chaos may be countered with omnipotent order.”

“Omnipotent order?” Coz asked. “Dude, way too early in the morning for shit like that. Let’s go find this village and get some lunch and take a long nap in a soft bed then we can talk about Creators and jackals and Jeremy’s chaos. Cool?”

“Cool with me,” I said. “I didn’t sleep worth a crap last night. A nap sounds awesome.”

“Yeah,” Kip said.

Trish waved her hands and the protective energy dome she’d created around the thicket of trees dissipated.

“You punk-ass bitches owe me for that,” Trish said. “I lost ten percent of my Magic to keep that thing up all night.”

“Thank you, Trish,” Sandra said. “Your effort is appreciated.”

Sandra glared at the rest of us.

“What? Oh, sure, totally appreciated,” Coz said.

“Yeah,” Kip said.

“Better than getting eaten by whatever is hanging out in these hills that eats people,” I said. “Kudos to you, Trish.”

“Kudos to…?” Trish shook her head. “There’s a reason we all stopped even asking you to come to EverRealm.”

I should have been offended, but I was too tired to give a shit.

Sandra started off first, her long stride setting a pace that we all had to struggle to keep up with. I wasn’t sure if Sandra was just in a hurry to get to the village or she was making sure that the two of us didn’t have to walk too close together.

Yes, I kind of screwed up by interpreting her invitation to sleep as an invitation to sleep with each other, but it wasn’t like I said anything. I was surprised, and even in the moonlight, there was no other way to interpret the look on my face, I admit that, but come on, it was pretty harmless. Sandra and her tight-ass ways would have to learn to chill soon or our friendship was gonna go down the tubes fast.

I stumbled and fell as my foot caught in a gopher hole, nearly snapping my ankle. Or I think it was a gopher hole. Being EverRealm, it could have been a magic gopher or maybe some pixie creature thing. But it looked like a gopher hole when I was done cursing and rubbing my ankle and got a better look at it.

“Hole in the ground, dude,” Coz said. “It’s not gonna change into anything if you stare harder.”

“Funny,” I said and held out a hand. “Help me up.”

He grabbed my hand and pulled me to my feet. I tested my ankle and it held fine, although it was a little sore. All my plans of being a champion marathon runner would have to be put on hold. Bummer.

“You good?” Coz asked.

“I’m good,” I replied, my eyes instantly going to Sandra’s receding back. “She sure can cover some ground when she wants to.”

“Yes, she can,” Coz said, his voice thick with sarcasm. “I wonder why.”

“It was completely innocent,” I said. “There was no reason she should have gotten offended.”

“Dude, are you that stupid?” Coz asked then waved a hand. “What am I saying? Yes, of course you’re that stupid. You always have been. Steve, pal, brother, friend of mine, Sandra has been into you since she first arrived at the Center. That girl has it bad for your lame ass.”

I stopped in my tracks. My ankle protested the sudden jolt I gave it, but to hell with my ankle.

“What?” I asked, stunned.

“Dude, she has the hots for you bad,” Coz said, keeping his voice down, which I appreciated since sound seemed to travel across those rolling hills fairly easily. “How can you not have noticed? Her eyes are on you all the time.”

“They are?” I asked. “Even back at the Center?”

“Especially back at the Center,” Coz said. “Come on, walk. We’re getting left behind.”

He was right. The others were way ahead of us. I started walking again, and Coz pushed our pace so that we’d get back with the group.

I was going to ask him a couple more questions, but I decided that quiet was the best. Particularly since quiet was all I was hearing. Like I said, sound travelled well across those rolling hills. And villages made a lot of sound. Except I wasn’t hearing any sound. Not even simple bird calls or any of that nature shit.

“Dude?” Coz asked, saying everything that needed to be said in that one word.

“Yeah,” I replied, channeling my inner Kip.

We caught up with the others just as they reached the crest of the next hill. Trish was shaking her head, Sandra had a hand to her mouth, Kip only stared, and Ming seemed to completely deflate.

“Well…shit,” I said as we looked down at the smoking ruins of Howerby. “Jeremy?”

“It does not appear to be overrun with undead,” Ming said. “If it was Jeremy, there would be murdered and risen villagers shambling about. I see bodies within the smoke, but they are still.”

“What did this?” Sandra asked. “Howerby isn’t a threat to anyone.”

“But it is in our path,” I said. “Between us and Jackal Mountain. If someone wanted to make sure we couldn’t rest and eat, then wiping out the village would be a good idea.”

“One problem, genius,” Trish said. “No one knows where we’re going except us.”

“And Bubby,” Coz said.

“What does that mean?” Ming snapped.

“Hey, dude, no offense, but the Oracle is off her rocker,” Coz said. “She ain’t all there. Maybe her programming is glitching and she’s actually trying to stop us from getting to Jackal Mountain.”

“Why would she do that?” Sandra asked.

“I don’t know,” Coz said. “I’m not even saying she is doing that. All I’m saying is she was the only other person to know where we are going.”

“Holo!” I exclaimed.

“What? Dude, you think your dog is behind this?” Coz asked. “That’s some paranoid shit right there.”

“No, I don’t think Holo is behind this, asshole,” I said. “But Holo is with Bubby, which means if she is behind this, then he’s in trouble.”

I looked back over my shoulder in the direction we had come, my mind on my best friend and whether I had left him in the clutches of some psycho Oracle. I was instantly distracted by the sight of a dust cloud rising from several hills back.

“Come on,” Trish said. “Better get this over with.”

“You see that?” I asked Coz, but he’d already started walking down the hill with the others.

I watched the dust cloud for a little longer then shrugged and joined the group as we made our cautious way into Howerby.

The distances in that landscape were deceiving, so it took a little longer than we thought before we reached the edge of the village. Ming held up a hand and turned to us.

“Stat check,” he said. “Know your limits before we proceed.”

I brought up my display and frowned at what I saw.

Character class: Ranger

Character alignment: Chaotic Good

Character level: 12

Health: 38%

Strength: 68%

Agility: 62%

Magic: 15%

Armor: leather, no bonus

Coin: 200 gold pieces, 155 silver pieces, 0 copper pieces

Inventory: Long bow with 14 regular arrows, 4 magical. 1 long sword of Breaking (Level 16). The Dark Blade, inactive (level unknown). 2 tunics. 1 pair of breeches. 1 hooded cloak. 1 satchel with 1 wine skin, empty.

My Health was crap and my ankle had lowered my Agility. Strength was so-so, but if we really got into a bad fight, I was gonna go down fast. Despite the negative issues I had with the sword, I really wished the Dark Blade was active so I could use it if we were about to walk into an ambush. Flaming swords tend to scare off attackers. The best fights are the ones you can avoid.

Sandra caught my eye and I gave her as warm of a smile as I could. She didn’t smile back, but she didn’t look away instantly either. Progress.

“Remain wary and cautious,” Ming said. “Enemies may lurk in every shadow, ready to strike when you least expect it.”

“We’re walking into a smoking village with dead bodies all over the fucking place, Ming,” Trish said. “I’d say we’re expecting it.”

“I had to say something,” Ming muttered to himself as he began moving his fingers in elaborate patterns, preparing some sort of spell.

Trish brought her staff up again, and Kip snapped his fingers so those green spots or orbs or whatever they were appeared over his open palms. Sandra had her dagger out and Coz disappeared into the smoke and shadows at the edges of the village. He was gone from sight before I even had my sword drawn.

The Dark Blade.

Maybe it wasn’t flaming, but it had to be a better weapon than my long sword of Breaking. And there was no way I was going to figure out how to activate its abilities if I didn’t use the damn thing. Also, somewhere in the back of my mind, I hoped I’d become attuned to it or whatever and it would unlock some secret of whether or not I was actually stuck in EverRealm.

No, I didn’t think the sword would speak to me or anything. But, maybe a vision or premonition? Was that too much to ask?

We walked into the village and all thought of anchors and flaming swords left my mind.

It was a nightmare.

Twenty-Three

The bodies were brutalized. It was bad.

I’d seen a lot of dead bodies, in the real world and in the Domains, but I’d rarely seen bodies as mangled as these were. It was like someone had run them over with a combine.

Limbs were severed and strewn about. Torsos were crushed. Heads were turned 180-degrees on necks. Bits and pieces of flesh littered the dirt like confetti. Intestines hung from doorways, blood coated the walls of houses and buildings. Even ears were lying scattered about like some serial killer flower girl had gone to town tossing them this way and that.

Needless to say, I put my hands on my knees and puked. Mostly because of the smell.

That was the worst.

“Is that shit?” Trish asked, pointing her staff at a particularly disgusting pile of body parts. “That’s shit. Something shit on all these bodies.”

“Yeah,” Kip said through tight lips. He was struggling not to throw up too and was doing a much better job than me.

“My Lord,” Sandra whispered as she walked by me, one hand covering her nose, the other patting me absentmindedly on the back as I let loose with another spew of puke. “These poor, poor people.”

I got myself under control and searched in my satchel for water to rinse my mouth out. Nothing in there. A water skin hit me in the side of the head, and I caught it before it landed in my puke.

“Thanks,” I said and drank.

I took two swigs, spitting them both out before drinking long and hard. I gasped for air when I was done, instantly regretting that as the stink of the place filled my mouth which was almost worse than the taste of puke.

“Hey, guys,” Coz called from a couple of houses over. “Can you come here a sec?”

We looked at each other then carefully made our way through the scattered remains to Coz. He was standing by the burnt-out shell of a house, pointing at something inside. As we got closer, I could see a weak light coming from the floor of the house. And there was a smell that was almost stronger than the smoke and putrefying bodies.

“Is that what I think it is?” Coz asked, jabbing his finger towards a pool of light green goo that was the source of the weak light. “It is, right?”

“It sure smells like it,” Trish said. “Why do they have to stink so bad when they travel?”

“What are we talking about?” I asked, ready for the looks of disdain, pity, and outright annoyance. I got all three and more. “Just tell me what I’m looking at, will ya?”

“Ectoplasm,” Sandra said as she moved closer to the pool of goo.

“Hold on,” Coz said, grabbing her arm.

Sandra flinched, but gently removed his hand with hers and kept moving. She got as close as she could get in order to crouch down and dip the tip of her dagger into the goo. Lifting it up, she brought the blade close to her face and sniffed it. Why she did that, I don’t know. You could smell the stuff just fine from a few feet away.

The first sniff brought a puzzled look to her face. The second sniff made her flick the goo off her dagger and stand up fast. She whirled around, her eyes searching the smoke and the ruins of the village.

“Sandra? What is it?” Trish asked.

“He followed us,” Sandra said. “Or got ahead of us. Either way, he knew we’d come to this village.”

“He who?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Kip said.

“The Beast,” Sandra said. “The Ghost of the Beast, to be precise. He came up out of this house and destroyed this village.”

“He came up out of the house?” I asked. “How the hell did he do that?”

“There must have been an item from the underworld in there,” Ming said.

“There’s an underworld to EverRealm?” I asked. “Seriously?”

“Of course,” Ming said. “Otherwise, the Domain would not be able to support the ghosts, haints, poltergeists, and other spectral beings that fill the modules and campaigns.”

“Haints? You from the Ozarks or something now, Ming?” Coz chuckled. Kip gave him a sharp look and the chuckle died away. “Sorry. Ghost of the Beast. Right. Focus on that.”

“The underworld item, whatever it may have been, was most likely part of a minor side quest that players could find,” Ming said. “Within the side quest, it would have been an innocuous item, but because of its underworld nature, the Ghost of the Beast was able to use it to move directly to this village without having to expend the energy that we did to cross the distance.”

“It headed us off at the pass,” I said.

“In a way, yes,” Ming said.

“Is it still here?” I asked.

Ming’s eyes widened and he looked at Sandra.

“Priestess? Can you sense the specter?” Ming asked.

“I don’t need to,” Sandra said as she turned and looked at me. “The Dark Blade does.”

It was glowing that blue again that it did the last time I’d been around the Ghost of the Beast. Still no flames, but glowing was better than nothing.

“This means it’s close, huh?” I asked.

“Yes,” Sandra said.

“Any idea how close?” I asked.

“Does it matter?” Coz asked. “Any kind of close is gonna suck with that bastard.”

“You insult me, Thief,” the Ghost of the Beast said as it appeared from out of the rubble of a large house, its spectral body rising from a collapsed chimney. “I will kill you for that insult.”

Its glowing eyes met mine.

“Then I will kill you, imposter,” it snarled. “And take that blade from your cold, dead hands.”

“I don’t think you should be the one pointing fingers about having cold, dead hands,” I said and gripped the Dark Blade two-handed. “But, I guess if we’re gonna do this, then we should get it over with.”

“Jesus, Steve, why do have to say shit like that?” Trish asked as she sent a wave of magic flying at the Ghost of the Beast. “All you do is make things worse!”

The magic slammed into the Ghost and sent it flying across the rubble. It collided with what was left of the house’s front wall and shattered the still-smoking wood.

“Whoa, nice one,” Coz said. “You made it solid.”

“Corporeal is the correct term,” Ming said. “And while she accomplished that, it will not last long. Come, adventurers, we must attack now!”

Ming raced through the rubble, his hands spitting spells at a furious pace, and set about attacking the Ghost like I’d never seen him attack anything before. Not even the undead. He was like a man possessed.

I really hoped he wasn’t actually possessed.

We joined Ming and gave the Ghost of the Beast everything we had. Trish and Kip were firing spell after spell. Ming was slamming some sort of energy hammer against the thing’s head. Sandra skirted the Ghost and slashed the back of it with her dagger. Coz was nowhere to be seen, but that wasn’t unusual.

I tried to find an opening so I could stab the shit out of it with the Dark Blade, but the others were in the way. That was probably the only reason why I noticed that the ground was vibrating. Not like an earthquake vibration, which I had experienced a few times in the real world, but like a train was going by.

I knew that vibration well, having lived close to a railyard when I was a little kid. At night, as I tried to go to sleep, my bed would vibrate. At first, it would keep me awake, then slowly it would lull me to sleep. I loved that feeling.

I did not love the feeling so much in EverRealm because there were no trains in EverRealm. That meant that if something was large enough and powerful enough to vibrate the ground like a train, then there was no way it was a good thing.

I knelt and put the palm of my left hand to the dirt. The vibration was getting stronger by the second. Whatever was causing it was getting closer.

“Coz!” I yelled. “Coz! Where the hell are you?”

He was suddenly at my side.

“I feel it,” he said, his eyes on the others as they beat the ever-loving shit out of the Ghost of the Beast. “Damn. They’re walloping that son of a bitch.”

“Let’s ignore the Ghost for a second,” I said. “We need to go see what’s coming at us.”

“Good call,” Coz said. “You go to that side of the village and I’ll go to this side.”

The Ghost of the Beast roared in agony, making us both jump, but the others refused to let up. Their attack was relentless. Good for them because that gave Coz and me time to see what was heading our way.

“Go,” I said.

We moved off in our respective directions. I had to keep from puking again as I came across a particularly gruesome scene. The Ghost of the Beast really had a way with entrails.

Keeping my gorge at bay, I made it to the outskirts of the town. I was facing the direction that we’d come into the village by. Not so far off was that dust cloud I’d spied earlier and it was getting closer and closer.

“Riders?” I asked aloud.

“Nah, we’re too far from the plains,” Coz said.

I yelped and almost stabbed him with the Dark Blade.

“You’re supposed to be looking the other way!” I snapped.

“I did,” he said and shrugged. “Nothing that way except the mountains on the horizon.” He pointed his chin at the dust cloud. “We should wrap up here and go.”

“What about the Ghost of the Beast?” I asked.

“Hopefully the others have killed it by now,” Coz said. There was another roar and he frowned. “Or not.”

Then we heard screaming and yelling.

“Shit,” Coz said. “That was Trish screaming.”

He was gone before I could blink. I was close behind, but not before I thought I caught a glimpse of horses cresting a hill about half a mile away. Then the dust was too thick to see anything else. I sprinted as fast as my ankle would let me back to the others.

The Ghost of the Beast was incorporeal again, and the spells that Ming was throwing at it were sailing through its body like bullets through water. That was terrifying enough, but what was worse was that Kip and Sandra weren’t even trying to take down the thing. Instead, they were crouched over by a collapsed house down the dirt street. Coz was running up to them then skidded to a stop.

“Goddammit!” he cried and shoved Kip out of the way. “No!”

I looked from Ming to the others and couldn’t decide which way to go. They’d left Ming to handle the Ghost of the Beast by himself and he wasn’t fairing so well. But, obviously something very bad was going down where Kip, Sandra, and Coz were.

Where was Trish?

Ming cried out as he was flung from out of the ruins of the house where the Ghost of the Beast stood cackling.

“You think you are king of this land!” the Ghost of the Beast roared. “You are nothing but a sad man that cannot decide what he wants to be! You are neither warrior nor master of magic! Your power is weak, old man!”

The Ghost of the Beast closed quickly on Ming, but I was quicker. I stepped between the two, the Dark Blade held up and pointed at the Ghost.

“Back off, asshole!” I yelled.

“The blade will belong to me soon,” the Ghost growled. Then it snarled, looked past my shoulder, and grinned. “But not today, you joke of a human. Today, I let others do the work. I will claim the blade once you are dead and your bones have been picked clean by those that eat the flesh of the living.”

“Which is it, dickhead? Will I be dead or living when my bones are picked clean? Learn the language or get out,” I said.

The Ghost looked confused for a second, which it should have since I wasn’t exactly making sense, but it was the best I could come up with at the time.

“Goodbye, imposter,” the Ghost of the Beast said then it dove into its pool of goo and was gone.

I stared at the goo for a few seconds to make sure it wasn’t going to pop up in some lame surprise attack. But it didn’t, so I sheathed the Dark Blade and spun about to check on Ming.

The guy looked like hell. Half his face was blistered and the other half was swelling with dark bruises. One hand was cramped into a claw and the other was spasming like it was having its very own, private seizure.

“Ming! Ming, can you hear me?” I asked as I crouched next to him.

I checked his pulse, which was stupid since he was obviously alive, the spasming hand was proof of that, but I didn’t know what else to do. I looked up and was ready to call the others when I saw pieces of burnt wood shaking on the ground. Shaking hard. Harder than Ming’s hand was.

“Oh, crap,” I said as what had been causing the ground to vibrate burst into the village, racing full speed right for us.

And we were not prepared for what they were.

Twenty-Four

Centaurs are freaky.

Human torsos with horse bodies.

But the real freaky part is if they have horse bodies, does that mean they have horse dicks or human dicks down there? I guess even thinking that question probably makes me the freaky one, but I can never help but wonder about it whenever I come across their kind in EverRealm.

Not that what thundered into the village was like any kind of centaur I’d ever seen before.

Nope, what came roaring at us was a herd of goddamn, undead centaurs.

You heard that right: Goddamn. Undead. Centaurs.

They galloped through the ruins of the village, their undead mouths wide open, screaming their war cries, but with an undercurrent of that ubiquitous undead groan. We were lucky that the undead were shit at using tools. Centaurs are known as masters of archery and could have wiped us out in seconds, but instead, their bows hung unused across their backs.

“Ming, get up!” I snapped, slapping the guy across the face. “Get up!”

He stirred, but even a hard slap to the blistered cheek didn’t get him motivated. So I grabbed him by the front of his robes and yanked his ass up onto his feet. I put my face right up to his and shouted, “Undead centaurs, Ming! There are undead centaurs coming to kill us!”

“Undead…centaurs?” he asked, dazed and confused. He blinked a few times then focused on my face. “Steve? Did you say undead centaurs?”

“Yes!” I shouted and shook him.

“This is not good,” he said and tried to pry my hands from his robes. “Please let go of me.”

“You gonna stay standing and start fighting?” I asked.

“I will do my best at both,” he said.

I let go and he fell back to the ground.

“Goddammit,” I said and yanked him back up.

I was going in for another slap, but he waved me off.

“No, no, I can stay standing,” he said. “Give me a second.”

“We do not have a second, dumbass! Undead centaurs!”

I spun him about to face the oncoming herd. That sobered his shit up fast.

“There are undead centaurs attacking,” he said like he’d discovered fire. “We must defend ourselves.” He looked back at me and frowned. “Wasn’t I fighting the Ghost of the Beast only a moment ago?”

“I don’t know if I’d call it fighting,” I said. “Losing well, maybe.”

“Yes, thank you, Steve,” he said and brushed himself off.

Then he clapped his hands together. His staff appeared once more and he struck it against the ashy ground. A streak of lightning shot high into the sky and wind began to whip around us.

“Centaurs! As your high ruler, I command you to depart from here!” Ming shouted.

“Seriously?” I cried. “They’re undead! You can’t command them to do shit!”

“It was worth a try,” Ming said then aimed the tip of his staff at the front of the herd and fired another bolt of lightning.

Two centaurs screeched as they were burnt to a crisp. All that was left of them was more ash to add to the already abundant quantity that was flying everywhere amid the piles of scorched bones.

That attack accomplished two things: it gave me new respect for Ming’s fighting ability, because that was a wicked attack, and it gave our position away so that the rest of the herd knew exactly where to attack.

One check mark for the win column, one check mark for the loss column. It was a wash, really.

“We need to leave now,” I said, tugging at his shoulder. “None of us have the Health to take on a herd of undead centaurs.”

“You are correct,” Ming said, winded. Just shooting a couple bolts of lightning really took it out of him. “We must find the others.”

The others…

“Shit,” I said and pulled Ming out of the ruined house and in the opposite direction of the undead centaurs.

It was also the opposite direction of the rest of our party, but there was nothing I could do about that. We’d have to circle around to find them then run our tired asses off. Where, I had no clue, but anywhere other than where the herd was.

Thunder suddenly erupted above us, causing both Ming and myself to cry out. Just a second ago, the only clouds in the sky were the smoke clouds from the village. Now there was one hell of a thunderstorm brewing, growing bigger and darker by the second.

“Did you do that?” I asked.

“It was not I,” Ming said as he stumbled along behind me.

The Ghost of the Beast really rang his bell because even with my messed-up ankle, Ming was barely keeping up. I had to continually look over my shoulder to make sure he was there and hadn’t fallen behind.

The ground beneath us shook and shuddered, and I skidded to a halt as a wall of undead horse and man flesh cut us off. Part of the herd had broken off to come at us from the other direction. I drew the Dark Blade and prepared to fight.

That’s when the flames decided it was time to show up.

The entire blade lit up just as I had seen it do when the Dark Enforcer had wielded it. I had no idea why it was working that way all of a sudden, but I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Nope, I was gonna stab an undead man-horse in the mouth.

A centaur came galloping towards me and I swung high and hard, cutting its belly wide open. It screamed and collapsed as it passed me, its huge body sliding in the ash and dirt, only coming to a stop because it collided with a pile of half-burnt timbers.

The congealed blood from its guts sizzled as the blade burned.

I ran at the oncoming herd and struck with wild abandon. I wasn’t the greatest swordsman. Hell, I wasn’t even a mediocre swordsman. But with the Dark Blade aflame in my hands, I felt like I could take on a God.

Power coursed up my arms and my mind became so clear and focused that I could make out the individual chest hairs of the six undead centaurs that were bearing down on my. All I wanted to do was burn those chest hairs right off their deceased bodies. Those chest hairs pissed me off.

I slashed and struck, spinning between the centaurs as they reached me. I lopped off legs, cut open more bellies, set afire ratty tails, then turned about to do it all over again. The centaurs screamed and groaned as they fell under my onslaught.

Then I was down on my knees, the back of my head engulfed in pain and wetness soaking my tunic. I looked over my shoulder in time to see a second hoof coming at me. I threw myself to the side and rolled and rolled until I was sure I was clear of the attack.

I was wrong.

Hooves stomped down by my head, by my legs, by my chest, and all I could do was keep rolling, keep moving, and pray I didn’t get trampled to death.

I slashed with the Dark Blade and a centaur screeched in pain as I took its legs out at the knees. Then it fell. Right on top of me.

Well, almost. The screeching thing stopped about two inches above me. I could see the body shaking and knew that someone had saved my ass.

“Get up!” Ming yelled. “Move now, Steve!”

I rolled out from under the levitating centaur and Ming let it drop. It tried to grab for me since I’d only chopped off its legs and not its arms, but I was well out of its reach.

“This way!” Ming said as the sky opened up and rain so powerful that it hurt came pouring down upon us. “The others are there!”

He pointed through the deluge, and I could just make out the shapes of the rest of our party. We ran that way as fast as we could, careful of our footing since the ground was quickly turning into ash gray mud.

The Dark Blade continued to burn. The rain didn’t touch it, it was so hot, yet I couldn’t feel any of that heat. Then it brightened to such an intensity that I had to squint my eyes to keep from being blinded.

“Look out!” someone yelled, and I turned in time to see three undead centaurs bearing down on me.

I tried to twist about to slash at them with the Dark Blade, but my feet went out from under me, slipping in the ever-thickening mud, and I landed hard on my ass. I could hear yelling, but couldn’t make out the words over the roaring of the storm. All I could do was scramble backwards on my hands and feet, the Dark Blade cooking the mud into a divot of hard clay as I went.

The centaurs were almost on me when the one in the lead lost its balance and its front legs collapsed under it. Even over the thunder, I could hear the snap of one of those legs. There may have been a centaur scream of rage to go with that snap, but it was hard to tell when the two centaurs behind it bellowed and screeched as they were tripped up and also fell into the mud.

I stopped crawling backwards when my wounded head bumped into something solid. I twisted about and expected to see the solid legs of a centaur, but it was only the stonework of a chimney. I gripped a large stone and used it to pull myself up out of the mud then rested my back against it not only for support, but as a defense as I surveyed the destroyed village.

The storm cast everything into a dark twilight and the rain made visibility even worse. All I could see were large shapes moving this way and that. I couldn’t make out a single detail, and there was no way I could know if something that moved off to my right was friend or foe. It was nothing but chaos everywhere I looked.

Then out of that chaos came a light. A single, small light that cut through the darkness and moved towards me. I held the Dark Blade up, but was sadly disappointed when I saw it was just a normal blade again. Okay, maybe not normal since it was made of obsidian, but the fire had gone out. Still, it was a sword, and whatever that light was it was going to get a cutting and bad.

Except it wasn’t someone I wanted to cut. It was Sandra.

“Steve!” she cried and hurried as fast as she could to me, her boots squelching in the mud.

The light was her dagger, and I almost thought she was going to stab me with it. But she didn’t. She wrapped her arms around me in a huge hug and clung on so tight I thought I’d stop breathing. All I could do was hug her back.

A crash of thunder and lightning so bright that I was blinded by the aftereffects, reminded both of us that were in some seriously messed-up danger and we each pulled away from the embrace.

“Where is everyone else?” she yelled over the thunder.

“What? I thought you were with them?” I yelled back.

“We got separated!”

“Then I don’t know! Ming was with me, but I lost him!”

“We have to leave!”

“I know!”

“Come on!”

She grabbed my hand and pulled me around the chimney, and we stumbled through the remains of someone’s house. Through that and into the two feet of mud the street on the other side had become we went. It was painfully slow going as buckets upon buckets of rain came down on us. But, eventually, we made it to the outskirts of the village that was no more and our feet found the grass of the rolling hills.

Neither Sandra nor I spoke a single word as we fled. All we did was concentrate on keeping our feet moving. We may have been out of the mud of the village, but the rain was still coming down hard and the grass was slick as shit.

We had to have been slipping and sliding for hours before we were able to get free of the storm and finally collapsed next to a stand of beech trees that stood on the side of a hill. I don’t remember anything except that we clung to each other, both shivering so hard we were basically convulsing, until our body heat joined and we were able to drift off into exhausted, long overdue, sleep.

Twenty-Five

The warmth of the suns on my face woke me and I slowly, painfully opened my eyes. Sandra’s face was only an inch from my own and I held my breath, not wanting to waft any morning stink on her. Nothing like holding a beautiful woman in your arms and waking up to the taste of death on your tongue. It humbles even the greatest of us.

Her eyelids flickered and she came awake. She focused, saw me staring at her, gave me the tiniest of smiles, then shoved me away and sat bolt upright.

“We have to go back,” she cried, scrambling to her feet.

She fell back to the ground, her legs not quite ready for the standing up thing.

“Chill, Sandra, chill,” I said, grabbing her shoulder. She tried to pull away, but I clung tighter. “Calm down. We have no idea where we are let alone where they are.”

She had a panicked look on her face then very slowly her taut muscles relaxed under my grip and she nodded. Then she burst into tears and buried her face in her hands.

Uh…I had nothing.

So I pulled her to me and hung on until she stopped crying. It felt like she cried forever and yet it was not long enough, as she clung to me, her tears wetting my tunic that had just begun to dry out from the suns above.

“Sorry, sorry,” she said as she pushed away gently and wiped her eyes then her nose. “I remembered.”

I looked at her, puzzled, and raised an eyebrow. “Remembered? Remembered what?”

“Oh, Lord, you don’t know,” she gasped. “That’s right. You weren’t with us.”

“Sandra? What happened?” I asked, pretty damn sure I did not want to know the answer.

The tears started again, but she told me.

She told me of fighting the Ghost of the Beast. She told me of how the monster just would not yield. It hammered at them again and again and every strategy they tried had almost no effect.

She told me of how the Ghost of the Beast had slashed out at her, trying to grab her arm, the arm that held her dagger, a dagger that was one of the few things that seemed to hurt the Beast. But the Beast’s claw never reached her because Trish had shoved her out of the way, taking the attack herself.

Sandra cried for five minutes straight before she could admit that Trish was dead, her chest ripped wide open to expose her rib cage and a no-longer-beating heart.

“Shit,” was all I could say. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. Sandra nodded at me, understanding what I meant, and wiped her eyes and nose again.

“Then who created the storm?” I asked after a couple of quiet seconds. “Ming was with me and Trish usually handled scary-ass weather magic like that.”

“Kip did it,” Sandra said. “Oh, Steve, I’ve never seen him so upset. He raised his fists and screamed at the sky and the storm appeared. He put all of his energy into it and collapsed almost instantly. The last thing I remember seeing before everything went so very wrong was Coz trying to decide if he should pick up Trish’s body or pick up Kip. He looked so sad, Steve. So sad.”

“I bet,” I said.

Another lame response. You’d think after all the loss I’d endured through the years of dealing with the undead apocalypse in the real world I would have been good at saying something better. But the loss of friends just wasn’t something you could get used to. Not unless you shut your heart off and lived like a cold son of a bitch.

Sandra totally surprised me and took my hand and rubbed it between her two palms. Her hands were warm and soft, her fingers as wrinkled from the intense rain as mine, and all I wanted to do was grab her and hug her some more.

She looked at me and smiled then slowly got to her feet, letting my hand drop into my lap.

“Come on,” she said. “We need to search for them.”

“Where do we start?” I asked as I got up and stood next to her. I stared out at the soggy landscape. “Did you see any of them head anywhere? I didn’t.”

I stretched and winced at the stiffness of my muscles. Getting your ass handed to you then sleeping on cold ground while soaking wet wasn’t exactly great for Health. I sneezed a few times just to prove my point to myself.

Character class: Ranger

Character alignment: Chaotic Good

Character level: 12

Health: 41%

Strength: 71%

Agility: 45%

Magic: 15%

Armor: leather, no bonus

Coin: 200 gold pieces, 155 silver pieces, 0 copper pieces

Inventory: Long bow with 14 regular arrows, 4 magical. 1 long sword of Breaking (Level 16). The Dark Blade, inactive (level unknown). 2 tunics. 1 pair of breeches. 1 hooded cloak. 1 satchel with 1 wine skin, empty.

Strength and Health benefitted from a night’s sleep, but my Agility suffered. The thought of trudging across EverRealm for another couple of days seriously depressed me.

“Here,” Sandra said, taking something from one of her pouches. She held it out and I frowned. “It’ll restore your stats to 100%.”

“What is it?” I asked. It was fuzzy and green. Very fuzzy and green. And possibly wiggling. I leaned in. Yeah, it was wiggling. “Nope. Not eating that. It’s alive.”

“It’s a Corbelon Worm,” she said.

“I don’t eat moving bugs. In fact, and I can say this with all confidence, I don’t eat any bugs, moving or not.”

“What is your Health at?” Sandra asked.

“It’s fine,” I said.

41% wasn’t horrible. Wasn’t good, but wasn’t horrible. Maybe we could catch a nap later and give it a boost. I could tell by the way she was looking at me that she was thinking the exact same thing I was.

“And if we are attacked by another herd of undead centaurs?” Sandra asked. “Or something even worse? It’s just the two of us right now, Steve. I know a spell or two, but nothing good in a fight. You’re Level 10.”

“Level 12, thank you,” I said. She cocked a hip and crossed her arms over her chest. She didn’t have to say a word. “Alright, alright, I’ll admit that if we are attacked, then odds are I’ll probably die.” She didn’t change her position. “Fine! No probably about it.”

“I don’t know how you survived yesterday,” Sandra said.

“This,” I said and pulled the Dark Bade. It was just its usual dark self, no glowing, no flames. “It was more impressive yesterday.”

She uncrossed her arms and opened her hand. The worm was waiting for me.

“Shouldn’t we save it for later?” I asked. “What if we get hurt and really need it?”

“I have other things,” she said. “This is one of my lower-level items.”

That made me raise an eyebrow. “Something that restores my stats to 100% is one of your lower-level items? That seems weird.”

Then I saw it. She was holding something back. Sandra was a shit liar, and while she wasn’t exactly lying, she has a tell for that, she was withholding the truth, which for Sandra is the same thing.

“Sandra? What’s the catch?” I asked. “Tell me.”

She sighed. “It may give you some slight stomach upset.”

“How slight? And what do you mean by upset?” I asked. “I spent a lot of time puking yesterday, so I’d rather not start up again.”

“No, you won’t throw up,” she said. “But there could be other issues.”

“Dammit, what issues?” I snapped then took a deep breath. “Sorry. You’re only helping. I didn’t mean to snap.”

“I know,” she said. She looked down at her feet and kicked a clump of bright green grass. “Uh…you might have diarrhea. Maybe.”

“Maybe? Oh, well isn’t that great,” I replied, the sarcasm so thick that even I winced at it. But, come on, diarrhea?

“Maybe not,” she said. “Everyone reacts differently. You could be fine.”

“Are you going to eat one too?” I asked, copying her previous stance by cocking a hip and crossing my arms over my chest. “Hmmmm?”

“Yes,” she said and shivered.

“Ha!” I nearly shouted and pointed at her. “You don’t want to either! There’s no maybe, is there? We’re gonna totally shit ourselves!”

“I have remedies that can mitigate the worst of the effects,” Sandra said then in a quieter voice. “I also have rags of self-cleaning in my pack. You know, for when we have to…”

“Oh, my God,” I said. I turned and walked a few feet away then spun about. “This. This right here. This is why I hate EverRealm. In Technopolis, there are toilets. There’re antacid patches. I can buy a smoothie from a street vendor and get a Health boost that won’t lead to me squatting in the bushes half the day. One reason is there are no bushes in Technopolis!”

“Sounds cold,” Sandra said. “Impersonal.”

“Your Domain is Star Fortress,” I replied. “Nothing is more cold or impersonal than space.”

“Star Fortress is neither cold nor impersonal,” she said, a little fire in her voice. Uh-oh. “I have built an amazing Domain that is filled with life and romance and wonder! It is as close to a utopia as you can get! All the harmony of Star Trek, but with the adventure and style of Star Wars! And, AND, I threw a good amount of Firefly, Season 18 in there too so there would be humor and a sense of purpose! Do not disparage Star Fortress!”

“Lame name,” I said.

“Oh, and Technopolis is so witty!” she said, using air quotes around the name of my Domain. “Of course it is because Steve is always the wittiest of us all! So smart and so full of great opinions! Well, you know what?”

She stomped over to me and pointed a finger in my face.

“You’re not smart, you’re just damn lucky!” she shouted. “Lucky you have friends that can carry your ass because otherwise, you’d be nothing but a lame gamer living with his dog in a lonely high-rise with nothing but the undead below to listen to your stupid jokes!”

There was a pop and a squish. Green juice oozed from her fist.

“Dammit!” she yelled as she opened her hand to reveal a smashed worm. “And damn you, Steve!”

She licked her palm clean, staring at me the entire time. I could see her want to gag, but she kept it cool and calm. When she was done licking up the bug guts and juice, she pulled a rag from her pack and wiped her hand then her mouth. She snapped the rag in my direction and the worm gunk that had been on it was gone instantly.

Sandra put the rag back in her pack, reached into a pouch, pulled out a second worm, and shoved it in my face.

“You will eat this or so help me God, I swear I will stun you with Habesnap Moss and make you eat it!” she shouted so loud that some far-off flock of birds protested with loud caws. “Eat it!”

“Okay, okay, I’ll eat it,” I replied, my voice small and cowed like a beaten five year old’s.

I took the worm and a deep breath then plopped the wiggling nightmare into my mouth and bit down. It popped open instantly, and my tongue was coated in a thick liquid that tasted like the ass end of a dead squirrel that had been eating licorice all winter long. Chewing faster didn’t help, but it allowed me to swallow the disgusting gunk after only a couple of seconds.

Sandra produced a water bladder and held it out. I drank a ton then gave it back. She finished it off and gave it a smack. It filled back up before she put it in her pack.

“We should go,” she said and pointed to the far-off mountains.

Mountains that looked farther than they were yesterday. We’d run in the wrong direction when escaping the village and the undead centaurs. Dammit.

Sort of. It looked like maybe we’d run diagonal from the mountains, so maybe we weren’t as far off as I thought. However, there did seem to be one thick-ass forest between us and the mountains and thick-ass forests in EverRealm were never a good thing.

Without another word, Sandra started walking and all I could do was follow.

Twenty-Six

“Horses would be great right now,” I said.

Sandra laughed.

“What?” I said. “Horses would be great. We didn’t have time to get some from the castle because Bubby snapped her fingers and we were gone.”

“True,” Sandra said, still laughing.

“Stop it,” I said, starting to get pissed. “What’s wrong with riding horses?”

“Steve,” she said in probably the first condescending tone I’d ever heard her use. Sandra seemed to be changing before my eyes. Or, maybe, I was changing enough to notice who she was in EverRealm. Either way, she continued with, “You can’t ride a horse.”

“Like hell I can’t,” I said. “I’ve ridden horses before in other Domains.”

“In the game. As your character,” Sandra said. “You’re talking about Kip’s Dodge County, right?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m talking about,” I said.

“Steve, every character in that game can ride a horse,” Sandra said. “It’s a default setting. You could be missing both hands and have no legs and you’d still be able to handle the basics of horseback. This isn’t Dodge County.”

“Hey, I was pretty good at riding horses in that Domain,” I said. “I can remember how here, too.”

“Have you ever ridden a horse in the real world?” she asked, stopping to turn and stare at me.

“No,” I said. “I’m a city boy. The only horses in the city pull those lame carriages around the park for tourists.”

“Exactly,” Sandra said. “What’s your skill level here in EverRealm?”

“Uh, so-so,” I said. She narrowed her eyes. “Okay, probably not great.”

I brought up a submenu and scanned through the minor skills my character had. I could fletch my own arrows, which was useful. Whittle wood into small figurines which was useless. There were some basic foraging skills, forest navigation (we know how well that went), strength in languages of all creatures (again with the not-so-great performance), a few other things and something called “Taming,” whatever that was.

No horseback riding.

“I can do it,” I insisted.

“Sure you can,” she said with a wry smile. “If we come across some horses, then you will have your chance to prove that. Until then, we walk.”

Which we did. All day long.

Of course, the walking was punctuated by several stops we both needed to make. Several stops. Sandra had some herbs to ease our intestinal discomfort, but in the end, pun intended, we just had to suffer through it.

I will admit she was right. Despite the unease of our stops, having all of my stats fill to 100% was well worth it. I hadn’t felt as good as I did in years.

There was a side benefit to what should have quite possibly been the most embarrassing day of my life. Sandra and I bonded in a way that I did not see coming. You drop a lot of your pretense and social awkwardness when you’re scrambling to get your breeches down and don’t even have a bush to hide behind. Both of us were reduced to constant laughing fits once the initial horror of the first few incidents had passed. Strangely, it felt so natural, squatting a couple yards from her as we did what neither of us could stop from doing.

I had to wonder if that’s what couples that lived together felt like. The bodies were what they were and you got over it. We just had to get over the awkwardness in a day, not in weeks or months or years.

Not that I’d ever want to repeat that day ever again. No goddamn way.

By late afternoon, our bellies chilled out and there were no more pit stops. We were able to pick up our pace and make up the time we’d lost. There was only one problem. The thick-ass forest barely got closer. We walked and walked and it was still so far off.

But it did grow in size across the horizon as we left the rolling hills and entered a large valley cut down the middle by a good-sized river. The far side of the valley was where the tall, dark green trees began to gather and beyond that was nothing but more dark green for as far as our eyes could see. The mountains were only snow-capped peaks barely visible above the expanse of the thick-ass forest. But it was a huge valley, and we knew we still had a long way to go.

Dread filled my belly as the suns began to set and Sandra looked about for a good place to make camp. Neither of us liked the wide-open exposure of the valley, but there wasn’t much we could do about it. Sticking to the river seemed like a good idea; otherwise, when we reached the forest, we’d be struggling against underbrush and a serious threat of getting lost.

Sandra made a point of mentioning how it should be impossible for a Ranger to get lost in a forest, but I didn’t take the bait and busied myself with building us a campfire just above a sandy beach along a wide bend in the river.

That was something I could do; make a fire. I’d lived in a brownstone for years where the only heat was from a huge fireplace down in the living room.

Realistically, the fireplace was so old that I, and my roommates, should have died of either asphyxiation from the crappy chimney or from the entire brick fireplace collapsing and setting the house on fire. But, in the end, all that happened was that I knew how to build a damn good fire.

Campfires were slightly different, but I hid my few false starts and mistakes well before getting it right and lighting up our little spot we’d decided to bed down in. Sandra had a bedroll in her pack and laid it out then set about trying to make a meal of the meager supplies we had with us.

“I’m going to go wash up,” I said, holding up the self-cleaning rag that had been my bosom companion all day. “Maybe give Raggy a rinse, too.”

She looked up at me as she wrapped some paste stuff in leaves and set them at the edge of the fire.

“Raggy will appreciate the sentiment,” she said, her smile magical by the firelight. “But you really do not need to, Steve. Self-cleaning means self-cleaning. The magic is solid.”

“Still,” I said and waved my hands over my body. “I could use a rinse even if Raggy doesn’t need one.”

“Okay,” she said and kept smiling.

“No peeking,” I said, wagging a finger jokingly.

The smile vanished and she looked down at the food so fast I thought she was going to topple over into the campfire.

Shit.

“Uh, yeah, so, I’ll be right back,” I said and walked down onto the sandy beach.

Back from where? What the hell did I say that for? There was no back from anything. The beach was six feet from the campfire, and there was only six feet of sand before there was nothing but slow-moving river. Twelve feet between us.

Nice one, Steve. Real smooth.

But, there I was. I’d said I was going to wash up, and I’d obviously made it sound like I was gonna be stripping down when I made that no peeking remark. If I only scrubbed my hands and splashed water on my face, I was going to look like a total loser. I couldn’t let that happen.

So off came the clothes. Boots, breeches, tunic, everything. I was down to my bare skin and I hurried into the oh-so-freaking cold river. I gasped as I rushed up to my chest, the slow current tugging slightly at me, but not enough to put me off balance.

“Are you…alright?” Sandra called.

“Yeah, yeah, fine,” I said through suddenly chattering teeth. “It’s really, uh, refreshing.”

“Okay,” she replied. “Don’t stay in too long. Food will be ready soon.”

“Cool, cool,” I said.

I took a deep breath and dunked myself under the water, Raggy gripped in my hand not so much so it wouldn’t float away, but because my muscles were frozen in place and I didn’t think my fingers would have unclenched if I wanted them to.

But, after a few minutes, a soothing numbness set in and it felt amazing to let the water carry my weight as I relaxed onto my back and just floated there.

“Steve!” Sandra cried. “Steve! Where are you?”

I came awake instantly. Shit. I’d dozed off. I splashed about and stood up, my feet hitting smooth, slippery rocks, so that I went under and instead of replying that I was fine, I only ended up swallowing half the river and coughing like crazy.

“Steve!” Sandra cried and I heard her moving through the bushes that lined the part of the riverbank that was just downstream from our little beach. “Hold on!”

The Galac moons were out by then, and I could see her yanking off her dress up over her head then diving into the river to get to me. She came up sputtering and gasping, only a couple feet from where I stood up to my chest in the cold water. Her eyes were wide and scared and she only stared at me for a few seconds.

Then she splashed me with a huge wave of her arm across the water.

“You ass,” she said, seeing that I was fine. “You scared the crap out of me.”

The familiarity of the day was there, but so was a nervous caution. We were both stark naked, but water covered most of our bodies, so we weren’t totally exposed. Except that Sandra was almost as tall as me and water up to her chest wasn’t exactly as concealing as she maybe thought it was.

Then again, as she closed the distance between us fast and grabbed the back of my head, kissing me harder than anyone had ever kissed me before, maybe she knew just how exposed she was.

Our hands were all over each other. She pressed her body against mine, hooking one leg up around my hip so she crushed herself to me, keeping us from being pulled apart by the slightly stronger current in that part of the river. I went even further and grabbed her other thigh, lifting it so she had to wrap both legs around me.

We were fast, passionate, insistent, and done in seconds after scaring off the night birds with some rather raucous crying out. Then I carried her up to the shore, she grabbed her dress, but didn’t put it on, and we walked shivering to the bedroll by the fire. Dinner was scorched and burning, but we didn’t care as we lay down and embraced again. The second time was slow, kind, considerate, and beyond my wildest dreams. There still might have been some raucous crying out towards the end, but that’s life.

The fire began to die down as we lay there in each other’s arms, so I gently lifted her hand from my chest and crawled over to stoke it and add two logs. I received a smack on my bare ass for my effort and laughed. When I crawled back, Sandra had the bedroll open for me and I eased into her warmth.

The third time was more like a dream and I don’t remember even falling asleep. All I remember was that even if Jeremy and the undead found us, I was fine with that. I could die happy.

Twenty-Seven

The next morning was different.

Not awkward different or anything bad like that. It was different in that as we went about breaking camp, we were both unsure if we should have been kissing whenever we were close enough to do so or if we should play it causal and only focus on the quest.

The kissing eventually won as we kept bumping into each other intentionally. Kissing quickly lead to the fourth time, which was kind of dirty and fast and exhilarating right there on the beach. We needed a quick rinse in the river to get the sand out of places we did not want sand to be when facing the long hike ahead of us.

Time five was in the river.

I think we both stopped counting after that.

Camp was broken down and we were back to the walking. Except it was a lot more fun that day than the day before. A lot more fun.

We laughed and chatted about our lives in the real world before the undead screwed everything up. We talked about what we missed most from our former lives and the way the world had been. There was an instant agreement that the lack of good pizza really made the undead apocalypse a whole lot worse than it could have been.

But, after a while, the easy banter slowed then stopped as the grinding slog of walking started to get to both of us. The end of the valley was still far off, and I think the realization that we may not make it to the trees before dark was creeping into our awareness and taking some of the wind out of our sails.

We stopped for a rest just after midday and I stretched out in the soft, tall grass of the valley floor. The sky was bright blue without a cloud anywhere and the three suns shined down with an intensity that made me wish for a pair of sunglasses. But it was pleasant and I sighed contentedly as I brought up my stats.

Character class: Ranger

Character alignment: Chaotic Good

Character level: 15

Health: 97%

Strength: 100%

Agility: 100%

Magic: 30%

Armor: leather, no bonus

Coin: 200 gold pieces, 155 silver pieces, 0 copper pieces

Inventory: Long bow with 14 regular arrows, 4 magical. 1 long sword of Breaking (Level 16). The Dark Blade, inactive (level unknown). 2 tunics. 1 pair of breeches. 1 hooded cloak. 1 satchel with 1 wine skin, empty.

I sat straight up immediately and reset my display, sure that it was a glitch I was seeing.

“My Magic percentage doubled,” I said, “and I went up three levels.”

“I have that effect on men,” Sandra said and laughed, bumping me with her hip as she lay next to me.

“No, seriously,” I said.

“What does that mean?” Sandra asked, pushing up onto an elbow to look at me. “No, seriously? That’s your response?”

“Sorry,” I said and gave her a fast kiss. “I mean, yes, sure, you do have that effect, but still…”

I trailed off, both feet firmly inserted into my mouth. Sandra laughed again and kissed me.

“I’m joking,” she said. “Your magic doubled because of the worm. It doesn’t happen to everyone, but yours was so low that I’d have been surprised if it didn’t go up a little.”

“And the levels?” I asked. “A worm can’t make me jump three levels.”

“That’s just experience, Steve,” Sandra said, giving me a knowing look.

“Oh, right, experience,” I said.

I felt my face turning hot and bright red. Sandra started laughing and couldn’t stop for a good few minutes.

“You about done?” I asked, getting to my feet.

“Yes,” she said, wiping her eyes.

I helped her up, there were a few more kisses, then we were back to the walking. So much walking.

Even though Sandra and I eased into a comfortable silence, it was nice to have the river next to us, a natural soundtrack to keep any possible awkwardness from happening. It was almost soothing as we followed it towards where it came rushing down the hills that marked the valley’s end, and we were in a steady rhythm of hiking by the time we left the valley floor.

The hills weren’t too steep, but we both worked up a heavy sweat when we stopped for the day, the suns setting against the valley’s edges.

I sat down hard and let my heart rate and breathing slow to a point where I felt that standing up again was a thing I could do. Sandra didn’t sit down. She paced back and forth, her eyes upturned toward the last mile or so of the trail we’d found, her eyes studying the hills’ ridgeline.

“What’s up?” I asked, getting back on my feet to face the same way. “You see something?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I think so, but I can’t be sure.”

She turned her head and tried to study the ridgeline out of her peripheral vision. I knew exactly what she was doing. It was a trick any survivor learned back in the real world as the light began to fade and shadows played havoc with your vision. It was actually easier to see in the darkness by unfocusing and letting your peripheral sight take over. You’d be amazed at how well you see out of the side of your eye at night.

I copied her and we both walked back and forth, back and forth, trying to see what she thought she saw a few minutes earlier.

“I’ve got nothing,” I said as I stopped and sat down. “Was it an animal or what?”

“I don’t know,” she said, still pacing. “I saw movement, I know I did.”

“Well, whatever was up there is gone,” I replied. “We should keep moving and find a more level spot to make camp. We’ll end up back at the bottom of the valley if we sleep here. One roll and it’s all over.”

“Yeah, okay,” she said, but I could tell she didn’t care at all about a level camping spot. She was fixated on the ridgeline.

I trusted Sandra. I trusted her with my life and, gulp, my heart. So, if she said she saw something, then she saw something.

I pulled the Dark Blade. It was glowing blue.

“Shit,” I said. “This thing is like Bilbo’s Sting, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” Sandra said, not bothering to look at the sword. “Probably. Half this Domain is a Tolkien rip-off, as you know.”

“Totally,” I said and waited for her to catch the significance of what I’d said. When she didn’t, I continued. “Which means a glowing blue blade is probably a warning of danger.”

Still no response. She was hyper-focused.

“Which also means that you are right. There’s probably danger up there.”

Jesus Christ, she was not paying attention at all!

“Sandra!” I snapped.

Her head whipped around at me, her eyes wide and angry for my interrupting her. Then she saw the Dark Blade which wasn’t so dark.

“Oh,” she said, looking from the blade to the ridgeline and back to the blade. Then her eyes found mine. “What do you think it means?”

“Well, as I was discussing with myself only a moment ago,” I said. “I’m guessing you are right and there be danger ahead, me lass.”

Her face scrunched up.

“Yeah, sorry, I won’t call you that again,” I said.

“Thank you,” she replied then looked at the trail we were on. “We can’t stay here.”

She definitely didn’t hear my comment about finding level ground.

“Great idea,” I said.

She took the lead and I sheathed the Dark Blade. It didn’t matter if it was glowing out of its sheath or inside it, really. What did matter was that light was making it hard to see in the deepening twilight. We needed our eyes to adjust to the darkness and a glowing blue blade made that kind of hard.

There was no level ground along the trail.

We hiked all the way to the ridgeline before we found a spot that was even close to useable. It was barely level ground, big enough for us to build a fire and sleep next to.

It did have the advantage of being pressed up to a nice rock outcropping, so our backs were protected if whatever Sandra saw decided to come looking for fun in the night. It would have a very healthy campfire to deal with if it wanted to get to us and one thing I knew was that mystery things, no matter what they were, were not fans of fire.

Rocks to our back, fire in front, and just enough room to cozy up together as we lay down for some much-needed rest. We fooled around a little, but both of us were too tired to get serious and we sort of drifted off in each other’s arms after only a few minutes. It was nice.

What wasn’t nice was waking up to the sound of something scratching on rock. Rock that was supposed to have our backs covered. I came awake fast, but didn’t move. I let my hearing relax and waited for that sound again.

The fire had died down to only a few glowing embers, and I was tempted to toss some wood on it and build it back up, but the instinct to not move held me in place. It was maybe five more minutes before I heard the scraping sound again. I was certain there was something on the rocks behind us.

Sandra was spooned up against me, her back resting into my front. I gently placed a hand over her mouth and put my lips to her ear.

“Shhh,” I whispered. “We have company.”

She was a good adventurer and all she did was open her eyes and give a very slight nod. I took my hand away and we both lay there, fully alert. I’ll admit that if the roles had been reversed, I’d have probably screamed against her hand. Pretty sure she was well aware of that.

More scraping and I knew we were dealing with legs. Lots of legs as the scraping increased. Sandra’s hand slowly, barely perceptible, moved to her dagger. My hand went to the hilt of the Dark Blade, and we waited some more as the scraping noises increased.

Then something dropped between us and the campfire. Something hairy with eight legs and a lot of eyes and was about the size of a medium-sized dog.

Yeah, it was a goddamn spider.

Better yet, and you’ll love this, it stank of death so much that there was no doubt in either of our minds that said oversized spider was totally, completely, 100% undead.

One more check mark in the Steve hates EverRealm column.

Sandra was up in a crouch and stabbing before I even had the Dark Blade pulled out an inch from its sheath. The spider gave a high hiss like a muted tea kettle then collapsed onto the ground, its body deflating like a disgusting balloon. Putrid liquids ran into the edge of the campfire, sending up stinking steam that had us both gagging and scrambling to our feet.

That instinct of mine that said not to move earlier kicked back in, and I realized that one medium dog-sized undead spider could not have made all the scraping sounds we’d heard.

I spun to face the rocks and was slashing and hacking before I even fully focused on what was coming at us.

A lot of goddamn undead spiders.

Twenty-Eight

I wanted to yell “Run!” but where would we run to?

We were up on a ridge and hadn’t explored anything beyond our campsite. All I knew was there were a lot of trees on the other side of the ridge and running into a thick-ass forest in the middle of the night was not the brightest thing to do. We would have to stand our ground and fight which was also not the brightest thing to do considering.

And by considering, I mean considering all the goddamn undead spiders.

But, it wasn’t time to complain about the lack of good choices. It was time to keep hacking and slashing with the Dark Blade.

I cut down anything and everything that leapt at me. Although I was not that great at baseball as a kid, I did just spend several years killing zombies with a fire axe, which is just a deadly version of a baseball bat when you think about it. Don’t think about it too hard.

So, realizing that if I knew one way to fight, it was to batter up and swing, I gripped that Dark Blade with both hands and went to work.

I was batting one hundred that night. Fast undead spiders, curve undead spiders, knuckle undead spiders, and even a slider undead spider or two did not get past me. They leapt from the rocks, making these horrible screeching noises which didn’t make sense since as far as I knew, spiders didn’t make noise.

But we are talking about EverRealm, so spiders make noise. Undead spiders, when you chop them in half, make a lot of noise.

They also make a huge mess.

I had undead spider goo dripping from every part of my body. Every part. I could barely blink my eyes without goo clouding my vision. Oh, man, and the smell. Worse than the undead horse people. I thought undead centaurs stank. Oh, hell, no. Undead spider juice is the worst shit you’d ever have to smell in your life.

A life that wasn’t looking too long for the world as something new decided to join the fight.

Not new as in a new creature, but new as in it was the size of a Volkswagen Beetle and ragingly pissed off because we’d been killing its undead babies.

“Steve!” Sandra shouted as she ducked under a dual attack from two undead spiders, slicing both of them wide open at their bellies with her dagger. She stood up, flicking goo from her face, and pointed at the monstrosity coming up over the ridge at us. “We can’t stay here!”

A sticky line of undead spider butt string flew at her, but she managed to dive and roll away to avoid it, coming up with her back against a pile of jagged rocks. I watched in horror as the back of her head slammed into one of the rocks. Her mouth opened in a silent scream and her eyes rolled and swam from the impact.

A baby spider, which I say jokingly, landed on my head before I could go help Sandra. Its eight legs clung to my face, my neck, jabbing into my ears, trying to stab my eyes. Then I caught a glimpse of the dripping wet fangs that were about to puncture my cheeks and I freaked.

I was not graceful. I was not cool. I was not some valiant warrior fighting for his life. I was not Viggo Mortensen bravely stoic in the face of possible death. I was whatever the opposite of that is.

I flailed and screamed and dropped the Dark Blade as I grabbed that undead spider by two of its legs and yanked it so hard from my face that its sticky little feet ripped strips of flesh from my cheeks. But I avoided those fangs and that was all that mattered.

The undead spider slammed against a rock and exploded everywhere, coating a dozen of its brethren in goo.

“Ha!” I yelled. “How do you like that?”

Then some of that nasty undead spider butt string came flying at me, and I found myself with one arm pinned to a boulder and the other arm stuck as I tried to pull the first arm free. Then my legs were pinned and a wad of butt string hit my head, barely leaving space around my mouth for me to breathe and scream.

Mama undead spider totally nailed me, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

I could just make out the little ones moving closer to me through the convenient eye slit in the butt string. I refuse to call it web since nice, normal, pretty garden spiders make webs. Undead, disgusting, about to liquefy my insides and suck my body empty of its juices, spiders do not get the distinction of spinning webs. They shoot gross butt string. Fuck them.

So, I could just make out the little ones converging on me when they stopped in their tracks. Apparently, in the undead spider hierarchy, Big Mama gets to feed first.

On she came, a massive, tiptoeing thing. Eight legs moved in perfect synchronicity. Undeath was good for spiders. They didn’t seem to lose any of their living faculties. Not that I encountered many alive giant spiders to compare to, but I knew the undead, and there was always at least some cognitive disintegration. This Big Mama looked as aware and active as any living thing.

Which wasn’t exactly comforting as I watched the thing come towards me, her twelve-inch fangs extended outward and pointed right for my chest. That was that, folks. I’d fought all those years back in the real world. I’d set up a secure sanctuary in my high-rise, built an army of maintenance bots, had a great dog for a friend, and all of it was for nothing because the one goddamn place that was supposed to be our final saving grace turned out to be an undead death trap worse than anything the real world could offer.

So, death by undead spider it was going to be.

Then, through the gauzy blur of the butt string, a light appeared. Fiery red and glowing bright, the light stopped Big Mama about two feet from me. The huge undead thing turned slowly to face the light then let out a panicked hiss and retreated a few steps. I struggled to turn my head so I could see what was going on, but the butt string held me tight.

“Get away from him,” Sandra snarled. “I swear to God I will cut you down the middle, you undead bitch!”

Big Mama hissed and Sandra must have swung the Dark Blade, all aflame now, at her because the light went all swishy for a second before burning bright again.

I’ll admit I was a little jealous that Sandra had gotten the flames to kick in. I had no idea how I did it before, so maybe it was an accident for her too. I don’t know.

Not that I was complaining. I wasn’t. She was saving my ass and I loved her even more for it.

Sandra came into my limited view, backing Big Mama across the ridge. The little undead spider babies followed their mother and kept as far away from the flaming sword as they could. Most undead things hated fire and it was as true in EverRealm as it was in the real world. Sandra knew that and was using that fact to her advantage.

She had the Dark Blade in both hands, but risked letting go with her right hand as she pulled her dagger from her belt, reached out blindly, and began to slash at the butt string holding me to the boulder. Again, not complaining, but her aim was slightly off and more than once she cut a hair deeper than I would have liked. But, being the chivalrous man I am, I did not cry out as the tip of her dagger cut inch deep gouges in my right thigh and right side.

Somehow, even while keeping her eyes on Big Mama and the undead little ones, Sandra was able to cut my right arm free. I jerked it away from the butt string and took the dagger from her so she could concentrate on keeping our undead attackers back.

Slashing with almost as much careless abandon as Sandra, I cut the butt string from me and stumbled away from the boulder, bleeding, bruised, and sticky as shit.

“Towards the river,” I said out of the side of my mouth.

Big Mama hissed and made a move to block us from the narrow path that I knew led to the head of the river that had cut the valley below. Just great. Giant spiders in EverRealm are sentient. Of course they are. And, apparently, undead giant spiders maintained some of that sentience and could understand what I was saying.

Sandra saw it as well and struck fast. She hacked two baby spiders to death and leapt back as Big Mama took a swipe at her, the hairy spider leg missing her by inches. But it gave Sandra an opening and she stabbed the Dark Blade into one of Big Mama’s other legs.

The leg came off at the second joint closest to the body. Thick, congealed undead spider blood spewed from the wound and coated half a dozen of the little fuckers. They screeched and hissed, running around blindly bumping into each other as their mother screeched even louder above them.

Then Sandra did something that made my own blood feel like it had congealed and gone cold. She put all of her strength into her legs and jumped high into the air, flipping the Dark Blade around so it was aimed in a downward angle. The flaming sword pierced Big Mama’s head right above the six dozen glittering undead eyes.

A hairy leg struck Sandra in the side and sent her flying several feet, the Dark Blade coming free of her grip, and I shouted as I sprinted towards her.

Big Mama collapsed on the ground. No death sigh, nothing. Undead one second then dead dead the next with goo oozing from the gaping wound in her head. The little undead bastards wailed in anguish and turned to face us.

I helped Sandra onto her feet then retrieved the Dark Blade. The flames had gone out, but it still glowed a bright blue. We didn’t need the warning light, but again, not complaining.

It was a standoff for a few moments. The undead babies watched us and we watched them. Then, to our utter surprise, they backed away, each slipping into cracks and crevices in the ridgeline without a sound.

“Am I being ungrateful when I say that this doesn’t feel like a good thing?” I asked.

“No,” Sandra said, taking her dagger back from me. “We need to go. Now.”

We skirted the corpse of Big Mama and headed for where the river began. We needed to get down off the ridge as fast as possible and following the river was going to be the easiest way in the dark. Yes, the Galac moons were overhead, but there were too many rock outcroppings that cast long, dark shadows across the trail. Long, dark shadows were bad when you were escaping a bunch of undead spiders that had just disappeared into the rocks.

We moved as fast as my wounded leg would allow. Sandra slapped some herbal paste on the wound to help me, but I was still limping badly. We’d gotten almost to the river when I had to stop and take a break.

Every click and crack made us jump as we waited for the next attack. We knew it was coming. Years of being under constant siege had honed those instincts. We could sense bad luck and trouble a hundred miles off.

Which was why, when we did finally reach the river, we were not surprised to hear the distinct sound of many, many legs on the gravel and grit behind us.

We turned around and that’s when the surprise did kick in. Standing there, towering above us, was an undead spider of Godzilla proportions. Well, maybe not kaiju size exactly, but the thing had to be fifteen feet tall, at the very least.

“Oh, shit,” I whispered.

I held the Dark Blade out and shook it. No flames.

“This way,” Sandra said, tugging at my sleeve. “Keep going.”

I let her lead me along the side of the river’s head, the Dark Blade held impatiently between us and Big Daddy. I had no idea if the behemoth was male or not, but I was gonna call it Big Daddy.

I stumbled a lot, but kept my footing even as I backed up with only Sandra leading us along the treacherous edge of the river by the light of the Galac moons. The behemoth followed us, but didn’t attack. Its eyes glittered in the moonlight, and I shivered as drop after drop of undead venom dripped from its three-foot-long fangs. Three feet. Three, goddamn feet. I was lucky I didn’t shit my breeches right then and there.

Undead gorillas and undead crocodiles didn’t seem so bad at that moment and I kind of missed home.

“There,” Sandra said, sounding almost triumphant. “I knew it. I knew it!”

Her joy was too inviting, and I made a huge mistake by glancing over my shoulder at what she was so happy about.

The river split in two. The actual head of it was far above us, winding its way up the ridge further. What we’d been following was a branch. The branch that flowed down into the valley we’d left.

Going in the opposite direction was a different branch. That branch flowed into another valley, but a valley filled with nothing but that thick forest we saw. The forest was so huge that it filled the valley and then kept going up the other side for as far as the eye could see.

But, screw the forest, we had a different river to follow.

Except, following the river was not in the cards.

Big Daddy came at us the second my head turned. I heard him coming and whipped back to face him, but all I saw was a huge leg swinging at me and then I was flying off my feet and out over the river. My legs clipped Sandra in the back of the head and she tumbled into the rapids, lost from sight as I seemed to almost float in the air for half a second.

“Sandra!” I shouted as my back hit water and rocks.

The air was forced from my lungs and I went under, my right shoulder slamming into a submerged boulder. I almost lost my grip on the Dark Blade, but somehow managed to hang on. As I came up sputtering and coughing, a heavy strand of butt string hit me in the side of the face. My already shredded cheeks became even more shredded as the force of the undead spider’s butt string met the force of the river’s incredibly powerful rapids.

Then the inevitable happened.

My left cheek tore from my face, half of the flesh coming off as the river won and the butt string lost. I screamed at the top of my lungs then slammed into another submerged rock. That spun me about and my wide-open mouth was filled with water, my head smacked against yet another rock, and the world of undead spiders and Galac moons went bye bye.

Twenty-Nine

I came to coughing and puking up river water as I felt hands shoving so hard on my chest that I was afraid my ribs would crack. Then the pain set in and I realized, whether from the chest compressions or my constant collisions with large river rocks, that I actually did have a few cracked ribs.

“Stop,” I croaked as I vomited the last of the river water. “Please. Stop.”

“Oh, God, Steve,” Sandra cried. She was crying. I could feel the hot tears dropping onto my face that was missing most of its skin as she leaned down and kissed me again and again. “Oh, God, I thought you were dead.”

“Close, but no cigar,” I said and laughed.

Then I whimpered as the left side of my face lost some of that cold numbness from the ride down the river. Life and feeling was coming back into my body and I wished it wouldn’t. I was a wreck. There were layers of pain on top of my layers of pain.

“Fuck,” was all I could say as I slowly opened my eyes to stare into Sandra’s frightened ones that were only an inch from my face. “Hey. You good?”

“I’m good, I’m good,” she said and the kissing started all over again. I endured it, but just barely. I didn’t really have any skin on my lips either.

“Where…? Where are we?” I asked and struggled to sit up. Sandra was having none of that and held me in place with one hand on my shoulder. She didn’t have to use much strength to do that. I was total shit. “Okay. I’ll stay put.”

I brought up my display.

Character class: Ranger

Character alignment: Chaotic Good

Character level: 17

Health: 13%

Strength: 20%

Agility: 29%

Magic: 30%

Armor: leather, no bonus

Coin: 0 gold pieces, 0 silver pieces, 0 copper pieces

Inventory: 1 long sword of Breaking (Level 16). 1 tunic. 1 pair of breeches. 1 hooded cloak.

What the fuck?

I’d lost almost everything. All I had to my name was my long sword of Breaking and the clothes on my body. Ice filled my belly.

“The Dark Blade?” I asked and tried to focus on Sandra’s face. It was too dark to see her features, but I could tell by the way her body stiffened that the news was not good.

“I don’t know,” she said. “We barely made it down here alive, Steve. I have my dagger and one pouch of herbs left. That’s it. I lost my pack and you lost your satchel.”

“Damn,” I said and sighed. “Aren’t we a pair of amazing adventurers.”

She let loose with a short, sad laugh. “We are, actually.”

“How?” I asked.

“You have no idea what we lived through,” Sandra said. “You’d forget all about our stuff and the Dark Blade if you could see it.”

“Then help me sit up,” I said.

“No, you’re too…damaged,” she said, her voice quivering with the start of a serious cry.

“I’m alive and you’re here,” I said. “I’m good. Help me sit up. Please?”

She nodded and gently, slowly, helped me get into a semi-sitting position. The suns were just cresting the horizon and light was beginning to fill the forested valley we were in. It took me a minute to get my eyes to focus past my flayed-open nose. But there it was. The river we’d come down.

River was being kind. It was more like one long, never-ending waterfall. Just looking at the rocks and all the drops off of them made my insides churn.

I slowly turned my head to look at Sandra, and as the suns continued to rise, I saw what toll the journey had wrought on her body. Her dress was a shredded rag hanging off her. All that was keeping it together was the thickly woven collar around her neck and her broad belt which held her dagger and the last of her healing pouches.

Her face. Oh, man, it was black, blue, purple, and colors that I didn’t know existed. Both eyes were raccooned and her nose was a flat pulp against her cheeks. One of her ears looked to be hanging by a thread and blood was trickling down her forehead from a gash on her head that I was only able to see because she was missing a good-sized patch of hair.

I was really glad I’d turned off damage notifications.

“You look worse,” Sandra said and smiled. She was missing two teeth. “Trust me.”

“What?” I replied. “You’re fine. A couple scratches here and there, but nothing a Band-Aid and some Neosporin won’t clear up in a couple of days.”

She laughed, she cried, laughed some more, then rested her head against my one shoulder that didn’t feel like it was going to revolt and secede from my body.

I laughed, I cried, I laughed some more, and I eased my body against hers.

The suns came up and I could see that we’d ended up on a sandbar in the middle of the river. The part we were in was fast moving with several good-sized rapids, but compared to the roller coaster of death decent we’d made, it looked tame as shit.

Now, how the hell we’d get off that sandbar was another thing. If we lived long enough to get off the sandbar at all. 13% Health did not exactly foreshadow a long future, and I had no idea how bad Sandra’s Health was. For all I knew, we were spending our last few moments together right then and there as the suns rose higher and higher in the sky.

I think we fell asleep together, using the other’s body to prop each other up. I don’t know if we did sleep or if consciousness was sort of a theoretical concept or what, but I do remember coming fully alert as someone cleared his throat.

To be more exact, it was more of a something.

“Hello, Ranger pussy,” a deep growl called from behind us. “You back. Too bad you.”

Sandra and I stiffened, which was extremely painful to do as muscles that were severely wounded tensed.

I knew that voice. It was fitting that as I sat dying with the woman I cared for the most pressed against me, the last voice I should hear in EverRealm was the first voice I had heard when I came falling into this goddamn Domain.

“Steve,” Sandra said. “Don’t look. Let’s watch the suns rise and only let this moment be what our souls hang onto when we greet the afterlife.”

That was a romantic, and highly optimistic view of things, and I loved her for saying it, but there was no way I wasn’t going to look.

I turned my head, whimpered at the agony it caused, and stared at the group of river trolls that stood on the bank a few yards away from us. The one in front, the really big guy that had greeted me when I’d escaped the Center and come headlong into EverRealm against my wishes, waved.

The huge son of a bitch actually waved.

“Why did you look?” Sandra asked and that mousy voice of hers from the real world was back.

“I’d rather see it coming,” I said.

And it came.

The river troll pointed at us and two of his clan waded across the river, the water only coming up mid-thigh on their large bodies. They didn’t hurry. No need. We weren’t going anywhere.

Neither of them was armed, not even with the ubiquitous clubs that trolls liked to carry, but then they didn’t need to be armed. Fighting was not in our future. Only dying was.

“Hey there,” I said as the two trolls reached our sandbar. “Can you make it quick, please?”

They made it to us in one large stride then stopped, their heads cocked like puzzled dogs.

“What he say?” the lead troll shouted from the riverbank.

“Make quick!” one of the trolls sent to kill us replied.

“Make what quick?” the lead troll asked.

“Make what quick?” the other killer troll asked me.

“Uh, our deaths,” I said. “We’re screwed here, guys. Just snap our necks and get done with it, okay?”

“What he say?” the lead troll yelled.

“Snap necks!” the first killer troll responded.

“Who necks?” lead troll asked.

“Who necks?” killer troll asked me.

“Our necks,” I said, really, really confused by that point. “You’re going to kill us, but I’m asking you to do it fast.”

“He say they necks!” killer troll yelled back.

“They want die?” lead troll asked.

“You want die?” killer troll asked.

“No, we don’t want to die,” I said.

“No! They no want die!”

“Why ask break necks?”

“Why ask break necks?”

Sandra started to stir from her fatalistic trance and turned to look up at the trolls.

“You aren’t going to kill us?” she asked.

The two killer trolls glanced at each other and shrugged.

“We sent get, not kill,” one said.

“Not kill,” the other said.

“Oh, well, shit,” I said. “But you’re going to kill us later then eat us, right? I just want to be prepared.”

“He want eat them!”

“What? Why eat them?” the lead troll shouted. “Othersider sound dumb!”

“You dumb,” one troll said.

“No eat,” the other said.

They pointed at us at the same time, two massive, muscled versions of Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb.

“You help,” they said.

“You tell them help?” lead troll called.

Our trolls shrugged.

“They no help?” lead troll shouted. “Why no help?”

“Uh, we’ll totally help,” I said then looked down at my almost completely destroyed body. “Not sure how much help we’ll be, but glad to pitch in.”

They smiled, which was not pretty at all, and nodded.

“They help!”

“Phew! Had me worried!” lead troll shouted. “Bring Othersiders here!”

“This hurt,” the two trolls said as they reached down and one picked me up while the other picked Sandra up.

They were not kidding. Holy shit did it hurt.

They threw us over their shoulders like sacks of potatoes. I screamed. Sandra cried. We barely glanced at each other as the trolls forded the river once more and brought us to the lead troll.

“Tug,” the lead troll said as our trolls spun around so we could see him. “You?”

I struggled for breath and finally managed to grunt, “Steve.”

“Othersider Steve!” Tug announced.

“Othersider Steve!” the rest of the troll clan shouted as they raised their clubs and other various weapons.

“She?” Tug asked, pointing at Sandra.

“Sandra,” Sandra replied through gritted teeth.

“Othersider Sandra!” Tug announced with the rest echoing the name.

“You need our help?” I asked Tug.

“Need help,” Tug said and nodded then frowned. “You look shit.”

“I feel shit,” I said. “That’s why I said I don’t know how much help we’ll be. We aren’t in any shape to fight.”

“Fight? Tug no need Othersiders fight,” Tug said and laughed. “Little snack things fight! Ha ha ha ha ha!”

“Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!” the rest laughed.

They kept laughing, tears streaming down their huge cheeks for a long time, all the while the blood was rushing to my head and I was close to passing out. Sandra looked about the same.

“Oh, you funny,” Tug said as he blew his nose, sending a stream of snot flying onto the riverbank. “Othersider Steve funny.”

“Thanks?” I said.

He got himself under control and grinned at me with those massive teeth.

“Tug and clan fight,” Tug said. “Othersiders tell how.”

“Tell how?” I replied. “What are you fighting?”

“What do you think, Steve?” Sandra said. “The undead.”

“Oh, right, yeah,” I said. “What undead are we looking at here?”

“All undead,” Tug said. “We bring home. You see. Come.”

Like we had a choice.

Tug turned and started walking along the river with the rest of the clan right behind. Our trolls let everyone pass then followed. It was not going to be a comfortable trip.

Thirty

Uncomfortable was an understatement.

Each step the trolls took as the clan made its way along the river then up a steep switchback trail along a huge waterfall, was like a small death in of itself. I had to have lost consciousness at least five or six times along the journey. Sandra, to her credit, looked like she endured it while being awake the entire time.

Hours, days, weeks, years, decades went by before we were at the top of the waterfall and walking towards the clan’s village. Okay, it was probably only an hour or so, but Jesus Christ, it felt like painful eternity.

The village was three circles of huge huts, each made from entire trees. Not boards, not logs, but trees, limbs, needles, and all. They were bent and twisted at all kinds of angles, the branches woven together to make the roofs while the trunks made the walls. It actually boggled the mind to see. This was not primitive architecture. My entire thinking on troll intelligence changed a bit.

A bit.

They were still trolls and their behavior wasn’t exactly sophisticated, as was evidenced by the greeting we received from the rest of the clan in the village. There was a lot of laughing, pointing, a good amount of spitting, and I’m pretty sure the troll kids, which were as big as I was, were flicking pee at us.

Basically, like walking the Jersey Shore.

Sorry. Too easy.

We finally reached a huge hut that stood dead center in the village. Tug pushed open a door and walked in while the rest of the clan split up and went their separate ways. Our trolls carried us in, set us down on a pile of animal hides, then walked out without a word, leaving us alone with Tug.

“Hungry?” Tug asked as he shoved some mostly picked-clean bones aside and pulled out a giant thigh bone of some animal that had gray flesh hanging off it. “Seasoned.”

He took a bite and held out the bone. It stank so bad that I started to gag. Tug frowned, shrugged, and ate the rest of the rancid meat before tossing the bone back onto the pile.

“We need medicine,” Sandra said. “Or herbs. I can make medicine from the herbs.”

“No need herbs,” Tug said.

“Yes, we need herbs,” Sandra insisted. “We are badly wounded. I don’t believe we’ll make it through the night.”

“Gonna agree with that,” I groaned. The angle I’d been set down at was excruciating, but I was terrified to try to shift to a different position for fear of half my body falling apart. I risked it and felt something pop inside me, sending white-hot pain up my body. “Oh, shit…”

“Steve?” Sandra asked. “What is it?”

“No need herb,” Tug said as the door to his hut opened and the oldest, ugliest, smelliest troll I’d ever seen came hobbling in.

I’m pretty sure the guy was caked in his own shit.

“This Heg,” Tug said.

“Me Heg,” the old troll said.

“Heg fix,” Tug continued. “Heg has herbs. Heg has medicine. Heg want fix Othersider long time.”

“Yes,” Heg said and nodded up and down so hard I thought his wizened old head was going to come off his wrinkled neck.

“Do you know Othersider anatomy?” Sandra asked.

“Heg know heal,” Heg said and smacked himself in the chest. He stumbled back a couple feet then steadied his legs and grinned at us with a toothless mouth. “Heg best.”

“Heg best,” Tug said.

Heg sat down on a different pile of hides and rummaged through a bag he’d brought in with him. After a few minutes, he pulled out a large clay jar and yanked out the cork.

And the olfactory assault just kept on coming. Even Tug waved his hand in front of his face.

“Who fart?” Tug said and laughed.

Heg laughed with him then dipped two fingers in the jar, coming out with something that looked like rotten hamburger mixed in rancid mayo. “Heal good.”

He left the jar on the ground, struggled to his feet, and crossed the hut to us.

“What is that?” Sandra asked.

“Medicine,” Heg said and shrugged. “No have name.”

“Medicine medicine,” Tug said and began digging through his bone pile again.

Heg reached us and held his fingers close to my face. “Lick.”

“Oh, yeah, no, I’m gonna have to not lick,” I said, my already empty stomach trying to strip its own lining so it could throw something up.

“I’ll lick,” Sandra said.

“Ha!” Tug laughed and pointed at me. “Ranger pussy! Priestess balls!”

“Lick,” Heg said and shoved his fingers in Sandra’s face.

Damn if she didn’t lick.

“Not all,” Heg said as Sandra really threw herself into it. He pulled his fingers back. “Only small lick.”

Sandra began to convulse then went still. Her eyes closed and her breathing evened out. After a second, the grimace of pain that had been perma-frozen on her face eased and she kind of looked peaceful.

“You lick,” Heg said, offering me his fingers again.

“What the hell,” I muttered and licked.

The taste was so bad that it sent me into a different dimension. There was no way intellectually that I could even comprehend a taste like that. But, holy shit, the feeling that raced through my body!

I knew I was convulsing, could sense my limbs and muscles shake and shiver, but I didn’t feel it at all. Once, when I was a teenager, I’d gotten hit by a car while riding my bike. I was in the hospital on morphine for two days. That stanky-ass shit Heg gave me made morphine look like baby aspirin.

When my eyes popped open (I didn’t even remember passing out), all I felt was some soreness and itching. A lot of itching. Pretty much my whole body itched.

“Hey,” Sandra said as she propped herself up on one elbow next to me and gave me a happy smile. A genuinely happy smile.

“Hey,” I said.

She looked great. Her skin was completely wound free and she was almost glowing. She had a vitality that was incredible.

“You look incredible,” I said.

“You don’t look half bad yourself,” she said.

“You two cute,” Tug said from the doorway of his hut. No clue where Heg was. “Get up. Come here.”

“I don’t know about getting up,” I said.

“You can get up,” Sandra said and stood, offering her hand to me.

I hesitated then took it and she pulled me up so fast I got a head rush. What I didn’t get was any pain at all. The itching was still there, but no pain.

“Well, son of a bitch,” I said as I looked myself over.

My clothes were mangled, but my body wasn’t.

“Stop talk, come here,” Tug ordered.

His tone said that fun time with Tug was over. We’d been brought to help and he was going to show us why.

“Follow,” Tug said and left the hut.

I felt like I’d just woken up from a deep, deep sleep, but it was one of those amazing, refreshing sleeps, so other than my legs being a little wobbly, following Tug through the river troll village wasn’t a problem.

Until the troll kids started up with the pee tossing again.

“Go!” Tug yelled. They went. No sign of pee throwing river troll kids for the rest of our walk.

Tug didn’t look back to check on us once as he led us out of the village and up a steep trail to a rock outcropping that overlooked the entire valley below.

“That help need,” Tug said and pointed to the far-off end of the valley where the trees were shaking and being felled like a lawn mower was moving through them. “They come kill us.”

“What are they?” I asked.

“Army,” Tug said. “Dead army. Othersider lead.”

“Othersider lead?” Sandra asked.

We looked at each other.

“Jeremy,” we said at the same time.

“That name?” Tug asked then nodded. “Othersider Jeremy lead dead at us.”

“He’s dead too,” I said.

“Othersider Jeremy dead?” Tug responded and shook head. “Bad shit.”

“Yeah, bad shit,” I said.

“Really bad shit,” Sandra said.

“You Othersiders,” Tug said. “You bring death to EverRealm. You know kill death?”

I shrugged, but nodded. “Well, yes, we know kill death.”

“Tug knew it,” Tug said. “Tug say to elders, Othersiders know kill death. Tug not know dead Othersider lead dead army, but Tug knew Othersiders kill death.”

He smacked himself on his chest and smiled at us.

“What Othersider Sandra and Othersider Steve need kill death?” Tug asked.

“An army of our own would be good,” I replied.

Tug stroked his huge chin.

“Tug get army,” Tug said. “Not easy. Troll clans fight. Troll clans argue. Tug stop fight and argue so troll clans kill death.”

The reality of what he was saying hit me hard. I cautiously asked, “How many troll clans?”

“What?” Tug asked. He tapped my forehead, which hurt, but the pain was gone almost before it began. “You dumb?”

“Nope, just asking,” I said.

“All troll clans,” Tug said, smacking himself in the chest again. “No easy, but Tug do.”

“Wow,” Sandra said.

“Wow,” Tug replied, pleased at her response.

“Hot damn,” I said and stared at the quickly dwindling forest as the undead army within continued its march towards our end of the valley and the foothills we stood on. “All of the troll clans.”

“All troll clans,” Tug said. “Now plan. Come. We drink. Plan. Then kill death.”

I held up a finger. “Not sure drinking is a good idea before battle,” I said.

Tug looked at me like I’d grown a penis from my chin.

“No Ranger pussy again,” he said and clapped me on the shoulder. “Othersider Steve drink. Plan. Fight. Kill death.”

“Drink. Plan. Fight. Kill death,” Sandra said and took my hand. “We can do that.”

“Good!” Tug shouted.

There was a huge roar behind us and I spun about to see that the entire village of river trolls had followed us to the overlook. Followed us without making a single sound.

Damn…

Thirty-One

I don’t know what I ended up drinking, but holy shit was it good. I mean really good.

It was like God blessed a bottle of Booker Noe bourbon by sprinkling Pappy Van Winkle over it while at the same time imbuing it with the Earth goddess goodness of real, still-made, Appalachian moonshine.

I liked it.

Good thing I had Sandra around to cut my ass off before I started singing Neil Diamond and tried to wrestle one of the trolls. Heg had given her a ton of medicinal herbs and ingredients so she could refill some new pouches and she handed me a bit of bark to chew on. Effects of heavy drink went goodbye after a couple chews and that eye-twitching feeling you get with too much coffee came sweeping in.

Sandra sighed and had me take one last sip of the drink to dull the edges of the bark speed then we set about coming up with a plan.

“What are we looking at exactly?” I asked as I stood over a crudely drawn map of the valley.

Not that the map mattered a lot since by the time the army got to us, all of the trees would probably be downed, and it’d be a wide-open space, but the map helped with visualizing what we were up against.

All the trees would be downed…

“We burn it,” I said, pointing at the dark smudge that represented the trees. “We set fire to this end and let what’s left of the forest burn. It’ll take care of a lot of that army before it even gets to us.”

You know that phrase, “Two steps forward and one step back?”

Yeah, well, as the hut went dead quiet, I realized I’d just taken about thirty steps back.

Tug glared at me.

“You burn forest?” he asked after several long, tense minutes of that glaring.

“Yes?” I replied. “They’re going to destroy it anyway.”

“You want burn forest?” Tug asked again, his voice lower, deeper (if that was possible), and filled with more menace than I cared for.

“Steve does not want to burn the forest,” Sandra said and stepped in. “No one wants any damage to come to the forest at all. But he may have a point.”

“Point?” Tug asked. He held out a hand and a very large knife made of some kind of bone was slapped into his palm. “This point. I make this point in Steve belly. He like that point?”

“No, no, Steve not like that point,” I said, trying to back away, but I was stopped in my tracks by a wall of troll flesh behind me. “Tug, man, come on. Jeremy and his undead army are tearing the trees down. They are using them to build war machines.”

Sandra gave me a questioning look.

“Okay, maybe they aren’t using them to build war machines,” I said and shrugged. “I saw that in a movie.”

“Othersiders and they movies,” Tug snarled. “I see movie one day and kill it!”

The hut of trolls cheered loud enough I thought my ears would bleed.

“You do that, big guy,” I said. “Kill that movie. Stupid, bad movie.”

“Steve,” Sandra said under her breath, her eyes wide and insistent.

“Right, yes, okay, listen up,” I said and pointed at Tug. “You want your clan to live, yes?”

“Yes,” Tug said and nodded.

“You want all troll clans to live, yes?” I asked.

“Yes,” Tug said and narrowed his eyes. “Duh.”

Sandra stifled a giggle when Tug said duh. I would have laughed too because it sounded like a two-ton teenager giving attitude. But that wasn’t the time to laugh at Tug.

“Can we stop the undead army from tearing down the trees?” I asked and pointed at the map.

I traced my finger along the route the army had already taken, making sure Tug saw the speed of Jeremy’s progress. I then moved my finger along to the remaining forest, which was dwindling fast as we spoke, and tapped that.

“By the time we’re done chatting here, a quarter of what’s left will already be gone,” I said. “Another quarter will be destroyed before we even engage. If we set the forest on fire here,” I tapped the map a couple miles into the forest, “then we can save this part by digging some fire trenches and cut off Jeremy’s undead army at the same time. If we’re lucky, we’ll burn a good amount of them to cinders before we even have to start fighting. It makes sense.”

“Make sense you,” Tug said. “You human Othersider no care about EverRealm. Tug and clan care about all EverRealm. Care about forest and river most. We no set fire.”

“Jesus Christ!” I shouted and slammed my palm down on the map. “Jeremy is going to wipe it all out anyway! Why won’t you listen?”

Sandra grabbed my arm and pulled me away from the encroaching trolls and over to the wall of the hut. She held up a finger, waited for Tug to nod and stop his clan from ripping me apart, then yanked me out of the hut and into the night air.

“What is wrong with you?” she snapped. “You’re the one not listening. They won’t burn the forest. Do you know why?”

“Because they’re brainless trolls?” I replied.

“Hey…” some troll said from a few huts over. “Mean.”

Sandra jammed a finger under my nose. “Do not reply.”

“I wasn’t going to,” I lied.

“Steve, you don’t understand the way EverRealm works,” Sandra said. “You don’t like this Domain so you’ve never taken the time to study its mechanics.” She spread her arms wide. “Everything is connected. Everything. To ask Tug and his clan to burn down that forest is like me asking you to chop off your arm right here and now.”

“Which arm?” I replied, smiling. She didn’t smile back. “Sorry.”

“I think it’s the best idea we have, but it isn’t happening, so let it go,” Sandra said. “Let it go.”

“Let it go?” I snorted. “Sandra, I’m stuck in EverRealm because of the damn Dark Blade. I can’t let anything go because this stupid Domain won’t let me go!”

She was about to argue with me then stopped. It hit me at the same time and we looked down at my belt where only my long sword of Breaking hung. I’d really lost the Dark Blade in the river.

I’d lost the Dark Blade in the river and neither of us had realized that it hadn’t come back to me yet.

“Uh,” was all I could say.

“Did it let you go?” Sandra asked. “Are you free of it being an anchor?”

“Oh, please, please, please, let that be true,” I said. “That means I can leave this goddamn Domain as soon as we survive this idiotic quest and stop Jeremy from becoming the Lich King.”

Sandra frowned.

“Huh,” I said. “Having the Dark Blade would kind of be helpful for all of that.”

“Yeah,” Sandra said, doing her best Kip.

Which made me think of the others and where the hell they could be.

Tug came out of the hut about that time and crossed his massive arms over his massive chest then tapped his massive foot impatiently.

“You done be Ranger pussy?” he asked me. “Or you need more time think of burn forest?” He shook his massive head. “What Ranger want burn forest? You idiot.”

“That has been pointed out to me a few times,” I said, giving Sandra a smile. “Okay, we don’t burn down the forest. But that means we need to get down in that valley now and stop the undead army before they get to the foothills and up here to the village.”

“We do that,” Tug said. “Leave at dawn.”

“No,” I said. “And this isn’t negotiable. If we aren’t going to do the strategic thing, then we need to do the surprising thing. We leave now and strike in the dark. They will be expecting us at dawn. That’s when all the huge battles start. Always at dawn. We get down there now and we kick their assess before dawn.”

Tug studied me, his foot still tapping, then finally nodded.

“Leave now. Fight now,” Tug said. He cupped his hands to his mouth. “Leave now! Fight now!”

The huts emptied of their occupants. Males, females, children, the whole village of river trolls came out to hear Tug.

“Night fight,” Tug said and pumped a fist into the air.

“NIGHT FIGHT!” the village roared.

“I think they like the idea,” I said to Sandra.

“Not sure I do,” Sandra said. “The undead can see in the dark.”

“Oh, right,” I said. “Well, so can trolls.”

“Let’s hope so,” Sandra said.

“You guys can see in the dark, right?” I asked.

They laughed. That didn’t answer my question at all.

Thirty-Two

The river trolls had no problem navigating the treacherous trail that led out of their village and down to the valley floor. Their feet were huge, and they could grip onto the constantly slipping and sliding dirt and shale the trail was comprised of.

I, however, fell on my ass more than a few times as I stumbled my way in the dark. The trolls thought it was hilarious that a Ranger pussy was constantly falling and tripping. I was the river troll clan’s endless source of amusement. I may have found my calling in EverRealm.

When we reached the valley floor and stood in the deep, dark shadows of the forest’s tall trees, I checked my stats.

Character class: Ranger

Character alignment: Chaotic Good

Character level: 25

Health: 100%

Strength: 100%

Agility: 100%

Magic: 34%

Armor: leather, no bonus

Coin: 0 gold pieces, 0 silver pieces, 0 copper pieces

Inventory: 1 long sword of Breaking (Level 16). 1 tunic. 1 pair of breeches. 1 hooded cloak.

“My Magic went up again,” I whispered to Sandra. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” she said and shrugged. “Maybe Heg’s medicine did that.”

“Doesn’t sound right,” I said and shrugged too. “But what the fuck do I know.”

That made me miss Trish. It hadn’t hit me yet that Trish was dead and I’d never see her again. Unless Ming turned her into an NPC, but that seemed a little perverted. Not sexy perverted, but a perversion of her memory.

“You okay?” Sandra asked, looking at me. We’d each eaten a few berries Heg had given her that helped us see better in the dark, so I could just make out the expression on her face. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m good,” I said. “When we’re all done with this crap, we can talk.”

The clan of river trolls halted as we reached a large clearing in the forest. It wasn’t a meadow or anything, and we were still standing under the shadows of towering trees like the giant redwoods of California, but we had enough room to group together instead of walking two by two along the forest trail.

Tug knelt and grabbed up a handful of the soft, almost pitch black, forest soil. He shoved the handful in his mouth and chewed for several minutes then spat it back out. As he stood, the rest of the clan did the same thing until all eyes were on us.

“You want us to eat dirt?” I asked.

“Just do it,” Sandra said.

We knelt and scooped up some soil then each shoved it into our mouths.

Images, sounds, smells, all kinds of shit exploded inside my head. I could see the undead army marching towards us, their axes felling everything in their way. Halfway back, in the middle of the very big, very scary undead forces, walked Jeremy, his eyes glowing red, his mouth set in a sneer.

I gasped and he turned to stare right at me. The sneer widened and he held up a finger. The entire army stopped in their tracks.

“Oh, shit,” I said as my new vision collapsed and I was back in the forest clearing. “Shit, shit, shit.”

Sandra was gripping my upper arm so hard it hurt like hell, but I didn’t really care. We looked at each other and she nodded, telling me she’d seen the same thing.

“That was a mistake,” I said to Tug. “We shouldn’t have done that.”

He was honestly puzzled.

“We join with forest,” Tug said. “Forest tell us secrets. Show us way to defeat army.”

“It did?” I asked, a little less panicked at that thought. “What did it say?”

He held a battle axe that was almost as big as me. He raised it in the air and shouted, “We fight!”

“Goddammit,” I muttered.

“Tug, please listen,” Sandra said. “When we ate the soil, it showed us the undead army.”

“Yes. Soil do that,” Tug said and nodded.

“But it also allowed Jeremy to see us,” Sandra continued. “The undead army knows we’re in the forest and coming for them.”

“That no good,” Tug said. “Surprise gone.”

“Surprise gone,” I said. I glanced back the way we’d come. “How soon will the other troll clans arrive?”

“They arrive soon,” Tug said.

“Yes, but how soon?” I asked.

“No know,” Tug said. “Not magic man. Just Tug. They arrive soon.”

“Let’s hope soon is like within the hour,” I said.

“What’s the new plan?” Sandra asked.

“New plan?” Tug replied, confused. “No new plan. We here. We now. We have axes. Have clubs. Have spears. Trolls fight now.”

“Would this be a bad time to revisit the setting fire to the forest idea?” I asked. The look on Tug’s face said it would be a very bad idea. “Never mind. I have sword.”

I pulled the long sword of Breaking out of its sheath and held it up.

“No time like the present to go to war with an undead army that knows we’re coming, am I right?”

The river trolls liked that and held up their weapons, cheering madly just before breaking into a run and heading through the forest towards Jeremy and his waiting undead forces.

“Shit,” I said as Sandra and I were quickly left behind.

“There was nothing we could do,” Sandra said. “I don’t like to classify the races of EverRealm, but trolls aren’t the brightest.”

“No shit,” I said. I sighed and pointed my sword at the backs of the few trolls we could still see. “Time to get our war on.”

“Hold up,” Sandra said and grabbed me in an embrace. She kissed me hard and we stayed that way longer than we should have before she let me go. “Just in case.”

“Oh, Jesus, don’t say that,” I replied. “We’re gonna have plenty more kisses, and other stuff, wink wink, when we win this shit.”

“I know,” she said.

It wasn’t a very convincing answer.

“Time to get our war on,” she said and started jogging after the trolls.

I was right behind her and we jogged for a good fifteen minutes (yay for full Health!) until we started to hear the distinct sounds of trolls getting ready to go to battle. It sounded a lot like the locker room in Friday Night Lights minus the eyes and hearts and minds full and open speech. So it was mostly loud grunting in a weird, tribal sort of chant.

Then shit got very real as the trolls raced and roared into war.

Thirty-Three

Being in the back of the attack was not exactly great for my confidence. By the time the fighting reached us, I’d already heard the collective groan of the undead rise into a fever pitch, which I had no idea could happen, and the trolls’ war cries start to lessen and become more concentrated shouts and yells of pure violence.

It was sort of how I imagined a viking battle would sound. All bluster and cheering then nothing but shouts, screams, and weapons on weapons.

Don’t know if that was how the vikings did it, but it was how the trolls and the undead did it when they clashed and collided into bloody anarchy.

Sandra had her dagger out, which was really the only weapon she liked to use, and sprinted to the right flank of the troll clan. I followed and we tried to skirt the battle, hoping to come around the side so we could catch a glimpse of Jeremy. As much as we wanted to help the trolls fight the undead, Jeremy was really our target. If we could take him out now, then we’d save a lot of headaches later.

Not that we expected to take him out considering his whole special undead resurrection shtick he had going here in EverRealm. But maybe, massive maybe, we could contain or capture him. The biggest maybe would be to sever his control over the undead army.

Yes, I know, we were reaching, but reaching was about all we had at the moment.

Shapes came out of the dark at us and Sandra spun to meet them, her dagger slicing and slashing before she’d even finished turning.

I swiped with my sword, more out of surprise than out of aggression, and lopped off the right arm of whatever was coming for me.

Son of a bitch. It was an orc.

Orcs in EverRealm were not the orcs of Tolkien. That would be a blatant copyright violation and fantasy games over the years had figured out how to get around that. No, the orcs of EverRealm were tall, scraggly looking things that would have given any dentist the fits with one look at the snaggled mess of teeth and fangs protruding from their lips. Yes, I said from their lips. Those teeth just poked right through flesh and the orcs didn’t seem to give a shit. I think they liked the constant taste of blood whenever they talked (grunted?) or ate.

So, orcs were bad enough. Undead orcs? Forget about it.

The rest of the orc came at me fast. It slashed down at my head with one of the curved swords that race used, nearly taking half my face off. I managed to side step the attack and thrust with my sword, stabbing the orc through the ribs. The thing screeched and screamed at me, but my sword kept it far enough away that I could keep dodging its continued attacks.

There was one problem. My blade was wedged between the damn thing’s ribs and wouldn’t come loose.

So we did this violent dance where I yanked, the orc swiped with its sword, I dodged and yanked again, both of us screaming and yelling and shouting at each other until our throats were raw.

Good thing Sandra appeared. She did this flying spin thing, decapitating the orc at the same time as she kicked a different orc in the face, sending that one flying back against a tree.

I fell on my ass as the headless orc connected to my sword hit the ground. Sandra stabbed the orc she’d kicked against the tree in the head and it dropped fast then she spun and threw her dagger into the eye socket of an orc that was standing behind me, its sword raised and ready to chop me in half. That orc fell over my back and I stood up, flipping it over my shoulder while also managing to wrench my blade free of the headless orc’s rib cage.

Sandra pulled something from her pouch and threw it against one of the shorter trees as four more undead orcs came for us. The tree came to life and branches wrapped the four undead orcs up then began to squeeze and squeeze until they were pulped right there, undead guts and congealed blood splattering the other trees and coating the forest floor.

I got to my feet and shoved Sandra out of the way as a curved sword slashed through the air right where she’d been standing. I lopped the owner of that sword’s head right off and kicked the body away from us as five more undead orcs appeared out of the gloom and came for us.

“There are too many!” I shouted, parrying a swipe from one of the orcs while I jumped out of the way of another. “We have to regroup!”

“That would be great!” Sandra yelled as she stabbed an orc through the eye, used the body as a shield to fend off the attack from another, pulled out her dagger, and stabbed the new attacker through its eye, then pushed both bodies to the ground and spun to face me. “Regroup where?”

That was a good question. One I didn’t have an answer for.

Although, in the back of my mind, I sort of did.

“We leave,” I said as we both dispatched the last orcs then turned to face a new wave coming for us. “We let this battle distract Jeremy and we hike our asses to Jackal Mountain like we are supposed to be doing anyway.”

The disappointment in Sandra’s face was heartbreaking.

“They aren’t real,” I said, finally expressing what I really felt inside. “None of this shit is real! But, you are! I am! The others are! We need to finish our quest so we can get out of this Domain!”

“They’re real,” Sandra said, hurt by my words.

We didn’t have time to get into a huge argument, and I could see it was going to be huge, because the undead orcs reached us and it was back to fighting.

I shattered an orc’s sword as I hit it with mine and remembered that my blade was a long sword of Breaking (Level 16), so maybe using that to my advantage was a good idea. I went about aiming for orc swords first then lopping off heads, or limbs if the heads weren’t naturally presenting themselves for the lopping, and worked my way through as many undead orcs as I could.

It felt like we’d been fighting for hours before the attack slacked off. With my back against a tree, because that was the only way I was going to remain standing, I checked my stats as Sandra began putting together herbs, combining them with the forest soil, to make a healing paste.

Character class: Ranger

Character alignment: Chaotic Good

Character level: 25

Health: 73%

Strength: 81%

Agility: 82%

Magic: 34%

Armor: leather, no bonus

Coin: 0 gold pieces, 0 silver pieces, 0 copper pieces

Inventory: 1 long sword of Breaking (Level 16). 1 tunic. 1 pair of breeches. 1 hooded cloak.

Not bad. I’d taken a few hits, and had the gashes and cuts to prove it, but none of the undead orcs had managed to get in a lethal blow. Sandra looked in even better shape as she handed me a ball of gunk. I didn’t even ask or complain, simply popped it into my mouth, chewed and swallowed.

“That was topical,” she said.

“Shit,” I replied. Then I shrugged as my belly felt warm and nice and I watched an ugly cut across my forearm heal up right before my eyes. “Does the trick, though.”

Sandra looked surprised, glanced at her own ball of gunk, then shrugged and ate it. She grimaced at the taste then smiled and I knew she was feeling that warm belly too.

“I’ll work on the flavor,” she said as she gathered up some soil and stuffed it into an empty pouch.

One more quick check:

Character class: Ranger

Character alignment: Chaotic Good

Character level: 25

Health: 89%

Strength: 92%

Agility: 92%

Magic: 34%

Armor: leather, no bonus

Coin: 0 gold pieces, 0 silver pieces, 0 copper pieces

Inventory: 1 long sword of Breaking (Level 16). 1 tunic. 1 pair of breeches. 1 hooded cloak.

Nice. Good gunk.

The battle was still raging around us, but we seemed to be in a hidden section of the forest. The trees were smaller, and stood thicker around us, so I pulled Sandra deeper into the shadows. Shadows that were lengthening as the suns began to rise over the valley.

“I don’t want to fight you, but you need to think about what I said,” I said to her, holding up a finger before she could argue. “Listen. I’m hearing more undead groans than troll roars. If the other clans don’t get here soon, then we’re screwed. We have a quest to complete.”

Sandra glared at me then her shoulders fell and she nodded.

“We find Tug first,” she said in that tone she gets when what she really means is that if I fight her on that, then I can kiss my nuts goodbye. “We tell him what we’re doing so he knows it’s for the greater good of EverRealm.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I have a heart and I care,” Sandra said.

Ouch. That stung.

So I sucked it up and nodded. “We find Tug and tell him. Come on.”

We didn’t have to go far. Only a few yards from our spot was the massive river troll, his battle axe in his hand, the blades dragging along the forest floor as he clomped towards us. He was covered in cuts and bruises, but seemed to be steady on his feet.

Sort of.

“Oh, God, Steve,” Sandra gasped when we realized at the same time what had happened. “Oh, no…”

Tug opened his mouth wide and groaned. A groan we knew all too well.

Then the undead river troll charged us.

Thirty-Four

It’s funny how life’s little coincidences get warped and messed up into a hellish nightmare that makes you want to piss your breeches as you run blindly through an unfamiliar forest while trying to escape an undead river troll hell bent on killing and eating you.

Or is that just me?

We’d decided that we needed to head back to our quest to find the Jewel of Rising and Jackal Mountain, but first we had to do the honorable thing and find Tug to tell him we were leaving. Instead, Tug, now an undead monster, found us and switched things up a little. Yes, we were headed back on our quest, but the motivation was fueled by the fact that we had not only undead Tug, but about two dozen other undead river trolls on our ass.

Silly life…

“This way!” Sandra screamed as she darted to the right, heading for the center of the forest valley and the river where Tug and his clan had first found us. “We’ll follow it up into the foothills!”

“You sure you want to be close to a river when we have trolls that thrive by rivers on our ass!” I shouted back.

“They’re undead!” she responded. “Being close to a river no longer matters!”

“You want to bet our lives on that?” I yelled.

She didn’t answer, only kept running. I followed on her heels while the undead river trolls followed on my heels. I didn’t dare risk a glance backwards. With my luck, I’d smack right into a tree. I had to focus on my footing and keeping up with Sandra.

Jesus, she could run fast. I was the Ranger and should have had the legs, but her speed was incredible. She probably ate some herb to help with it. That’s what I told myself.

Trees crashed behind us as the massive trolls barreled their way through the forest they had once loved. My ego echoed in my head and kept saying that I should have simply set fire to the trees myself and maybe none of us, trolls included, would be in the mess we were currently in, but that was my ego talking and, I had to admit, my ego didn’t always make the best decisions.

A gigantic tree fell right across our path and Sandra didn’t break stride; she clambered up over it and was lost from sight. I leapt at the trunk, grabbed onto the thick bark, and managed to get to the top before my feet came out from under me and I tumbled over to the other side, landing in a good amount of mud.

Instinct, and almost crippling fear, took over and I coated myself in mud then squeezed my body into the angled space between the fallen tree trunk and the ground, desperate to become one with the forest earth. The undead river trolls were up and over the tree and chasing after Sandra then gone before I could take two breaths.

I waited a couple minutes then eased out of my hiding spot, my ears on full alert for another wave of undead trolls. But all I heard were the dwindling sounds of the far off battle that the river trolls were obviously losing.

Okay, okay, now I needed to find Sandra. She’d gone towards the river, but so had the horde of undead trolls. If I went that way, then I’d just run into the backs of the beasts. That was not an option I wished to explore.

So, I did my best to orient myself, and took off jogging in the direction I hoped the river led from and the foothills stood. Sandra was going that way too. We both had the same destination and, with some good luck, we would meet up again soon.

I continued to jog, and jog, and jog, and jog. My lungs began to burn and my legs started to cramp. So much for Ranger endurance. A stitch in my side almost took me down, but I summoned my inner sixth grader, the version of me that detested PE, but absolutely refused to let Coach Goggins beat me, and I pushed through all of the pain, burning lungs, cramping legs, stitch in the side and all.

Maybe a half an hour went by before I caught sight of the river off to my right. No sign of movement other than the flowing water, but that didn’t mean Sandra wasn’t close by. Or the undead trolls, for that matter. Didn’t want to forget about those assholes.

Forgetting about them wasn’t a problem as my path drew me closer to the water. In seconds, I could hear their groans and their huge feet clomping across the rocks that lined the river. I skidded to a halt and set a giant of a tree between me and the undead trolls.

I knew I couldn’t stay too long, the sounds of the undead army which had finally defeated the rest of the river troll clan, was ever present behind me. They had resumed chopping down the forest in their unceasing march towards Jackal Mountain. I had only a few minutes head start, and that was dwindling fast.

Time to suck it up.

I sprinted from out of the cover of the giant tree and moved quickly to a stand of berry bushes in full bloom that ringed a small shallow part of the river. Through the bushes, I could make out the undead troll party chasing a tiny figure that was climbing her way up the rocks that lined the river as it wound down from the foothills.

Sandra was still alive and my heart soared. Then my belly fell out as she slipped and tumbled a few feet before slowly getting back up to continue her panicked ascent. And I could tell she was panicked. That grace of hers was gone. She was moving more like real world Sandra and less like EverRealm Priestess Sandra.

She was growing more and more tired with each boulder she climbed over and each descending rapid she forded to get to the opposite side of the water in order to put some distance between her and her undead pursuers. I really only had one choice.

“Hey!” I yelled as I came out from behind the berry bushes, my long sword held high. “Hey! Assholes! You want some of this!”

They didn’t even pause, the undead horde’s focus entirely on Sandra. Shit.

“HEY!” I shouted as loud as I possibly could. “HEY!”

Then I brought my long sword down onto a medium-sized boulder next to me and the rock shattered. Turned to rubble and large gravel right before my eyes. I was stunned. I’d never seen it do that before.

A couple of the undead trolls slowed then turned their massive heads to look back my way. I had them.

I began breaking every boulder I could get to, just smashing the shit out of them as I swung my long sword this way and that, not even really aiming. More and more of the undead trolls began to take notice of me until the entire horde, except for one which had to be Tug, had stopped chasing Sandra and were turning to come back at me.

Awesome! I did it!

Oh, shit. I did it.

The horde groaned and raced along the river at me and my dinky little long sword. Yes, long sword of Breaking (Level 16), but so what? I was facing about twenty undead river trolls. Me and my sword weren’t going to be much against those assholes.

“Oh, Gods of EverRealm, if you exist at all, and I don’t know that you do since I didn’t do the reading I probably should have, please hear my prayer,” I said as I gripped my long sword with both hands and prepared to die. “Any chance you could give a guy a break?”

The air shimmered before me and a figure appeared.

“There you are,” the Dark Enforcer said, the Dark Blade in his hand. “You dropped this.”

He held the blade out to me. All I could do was gape at him like a jackass, my own sword still clutched in both hands.

“What’s the catch?” I finally asked.

“Catch?” he replied. “No catch, Steve. You prayed to the Gods of EverRealm and they heard you. I don’t usually make deliveries like this, but…”

He shrugged.

“Do you want the sword or not?” he asked, his voice more inside my head than coming through my ears.

“Yeah, sure, that would be great,” I said and sheathed my long sword of Breaking. I held out my hand and cocked my head. “You sure there’s no trick or catch or some curse that’s gonna happen the second I touch it?”

“Nope,” the Dark Enforcer said. “Technically, this is yours, being that you and it are anchored together here in EverRealm. I was going to hang onto it, since you obviously couldn’t take care of it, but the game is the game, so…”

Another shrug.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“The Dark Enforcer,” the Dark Enforcer said.

“Nah, I’m not buying it,” I said. “You sounded different than the last time we met.”

“Listen, Steve, there is a lot you don’t know about this place,” he said as he stretched his arms wide. “And I’m not just talking about EverRealm. If you are going to find the answers that you seek, then you have gotta start trusting that shit happens and sometimes you catch breaks, okay? Stop fighting every goddamn gift that’s given to you. Start fighting for them.”

He looked over his shoulder at the oncoming horde, but I could tell his focus was beyond the undead trolls. He was looking at Sandra and how she was still struggling to flee the pursuing Tug. Then he looked back at me and nodded.

“You get what I’m saying here?” he asked, offering the Dark Blade again.

“You’re not exactly being subtle,” I said and took the blade.

“Neither is life,” the Dark Enforcer said then was gone in a huge explosion of river sand and black smoke.

The smoke dissipated in the strong breeze that dawn was bringing and I saw the undead that were gonna try to rip me limb from limb only a few yards away.

Planting my feet in the sand, I braced my legs, gripped the Dark Blade with both hands, and prepared for a glorious and honorable, although not exactly welcome, death.

Then the blade set itself on fire, a fire that burned ten times stronger than I’d ever seen it do, and the undead trolls slid to a stop, their gray eyes wide with fear.

Well, I’ll be.

I took a step towards them and they took a step back.

“Ha!” I yelled. “You want a piece of this?”

I swung the blade at them, even though I was a good ten feet away, and they nearly trampled each other to get away from me. I told you, the undead hate fire.

Which was what erupted over my head in a long, targeted stream. It caught the retreating undead river trolls in their backs, setting them all aflame right there as I watched, totally stunned. I looked at the Dark Blade, looked at the burning undead river trolls, looked at the Dark Blade, and something clicked.

I didn’t do that.

Slowly, not really sure I wanted to, I turned completely around to see if maybe, just maybe, there was something behind me. There was.

“Sup, bro,” Holo said, sitting astride one badass-looking dragon. “You need a ride?”

He pointed his chin at the foothills just as Sandra let out a bloodcurdling scream.

“Methinks the lady could use some help,” he said.

“Totally,” the dragon said as he nodded his head up and down. “Hop on, bro.”

Oh, Jesus, the dragon spoke Holo.

Thirty-Five

Before I could even respond, the dragon snatched me up in a claw, tossed me onto his back with Holo, and was pumping his massive wings. We were airborne and flying towards the spot where I could see Sandra barely able to fend off the attacking undead Tug.

“I’d totally barbecue the brute, but then I’d hibachi your lady too,” the dragon said.

“Yeah, thanks for not hibachi-ing Sandra,” I said. “Uh…?”

“Oh, my bad,” Holo said. “Steve, this is Nardo. Nardo, this is the Steve I’ve been talking about.”

“Uh, good to meet you, Nardo,” I said.

“It’s short for Bernardo,” Nardo said. “My parents were big West Side Story fans.”

“I don’t know what to do with that bit of info,” I replied.

“Yeah, you see, Steve, dragons transcend the game environs they are created in,” Holo said. “Seriously, we’re talking some major mojo that is at work here. Bubby has totally blown my canine mind, bro.”

“She’ll do that,” Nardo said as he took us up high into the air then dove down straight at the undead Tug just as the river troll was about to put his battle axe through Sandra’s skull.

I screamed.

Holo screamed.

Nardo screamed.

Undead Tug was groaning, but he stopped and turned to look over his shoulder. He saw Nardo and screamed.

Sandra was the only one not screaming. She was busy getting her ass up and moving out of the way.

“Smart lady!” Nardo yelled just before belching a stream of flame at Tug.

The undead river troll went up like a dried-out Christmas tree on a New Year’s Eve bonfire. Poof, he was crispy as all hell.

Nardo pulled up, grabbing the burning troll in one claw then banked and headed for what remained of the forest. We reached the tree line and Nardo tossed Tug’s toasted remains into the trees then let loose with stream after stream after stream of fire, setting the rest of the forest ablaze.

“Why didn’t you burn the trees instead of trying to fight the undead army?” Holo asked as Nardo banked again and began to take us up towards the river troll village. “That would have been the smart thing to do.”

“Totally,” Nardo said. “Fire fixes everything.”

“That’s what I said!” I exclaimed. “But the trolls weren’t having it and Sandra didn’t want to piss off the trolls.”

“Yeah, you don’t want to piss off the trolls,” Holo said. “That would have been bad for you two.”

“Oh, totally with ya there, bro,” Nardo said, banking a third time so that we swept over the river troll village and came racing down the foothills towards the fleeing Sandra.

I don’t think she even knew Tug was toast.

Nardo landed a few yards above her and she cried out as puffs of smoke escaped his nostrils.

“Hey there, pretty lady,” Nardo said in a smooth voice. “You’re looking fine in that sweaty dress there. Care to hop aboard so we can blow this popsicle stand and get y’all back on track?”

Her eyes were wide, but her mouth hung wider.

“Hey, Sandra!” Holo said and jumped down from Nardo’s back. “Who’s got no thumbs and totally made best friends with a dragon? This guy!”

She managed to blink, so that was good.

“Get on,” I called to her. “Nardo is taking us to find the others. That’s what you’re gonna do, right Nardo?”

“Totally, bro,” Nardo said. “Here, let me help. Sandra, is it?” He held out a huge claw, palm up and wiggled a finger, beckoning her to come closer. “It’s cool, yo. I totally don’t bite.”

“Come on,” Holo said and hurried to give Sandra a nudge in the butt. “Time’s a tickin’, sugar!”

“Sugar?” Sandra snapped. “Don’t call me sugar!”

“Yikes,” Holo said and backed off. “No offense meant.”

She stomped over to Nardo’s claw and climbed on. He swiftly plopped her next to me and I almost cried with happiness. Sandra was completely stunned by what was happening, so I kissed her. When I pulled away, she was still stunned, but smiling.

“Hey there,” I said. “Are you hurt?”

“No more than you,” she said and dug into one of her pouches. “Eat this.”

“Only if you do,” I said.

We both ate the little yellow flowers she’d produced. Some of the fatigue that had started to creep into my consciousness disappeared.

“Hey, you got anything a little more potent in those pouches?” Nardo asked as he looked back over his shoulder at us. “You catch what I’m throwing?” He winked.

“Bro! Let me up!” Holo called before either Sandra or I could quite grasp what the dragon meant.

Holo was deposited next to us and up went the dragon, soaring into the sky with only a couple of wing beats. The guy was big. Like city bus big. If we did find the others, then there wouldn’t be a problem with all of us fitting on Nardo’s back

A collective groan rose up from the valley, and I shielded my eyes from the suns to see what hellish progress the undead army had made. They’d made exactly zip. The forest was nothing but fire. There wasn’t a single tree that wasn’t ablaze. Somewhere inside that valley inferno was an undead army quickly turning to coals. Nice.

“You think Jeremy is in that?” I asked.

“The undead Othersider that refuses to die, bro?” Nardo responded. “You seriously asking that question, yo?”

“I was just wondering,” I said.

“Yeah, no, he’s not down there,” Nardo said. “That guy has some really dark juju in him and he probably went blip and gone.”

“Blip and gone?” Sandra asked.

“Oh, yeah, blip and gone,” Holo said. “It’s how things work now. Bros, do I have some tales to tell. You have no idea what kind of a shitstorm we created when making the Domains. Bubby’s got the 411, so I’ll let her explain. But, believe me, it ain’t pretty.”

“Messing with things you shouldn’t be messing with,” Nardo said.

“True dat, bro,” Holo replied.

Sandra and I could only look at each other in shared confusion. EverRealm was getting weirder by the second.

Nardo climbed and banked to our right, taking us away from the burning valley and up over the foothills. He aimed us almost directly for the mountain range and the occluded peak of Jackal Mountain. We flew for close to an hour, Holo asking us all kinds of questions about what we’d been up to on our quest, while at the same time slyly avoiding answering any of our questions about his time with Bubby.

Then, as the suns hit noon, Nardo glided for a couple of miles and began to descend to a high mountain valley that lay at the base of the poorly hidden Jackal Mountain. He circled the valley a few times then came in for a landing next to a large tent and campfire.

The rest of our long lost party came rushing out, cheering and clapping.

“Alive!” Ming cried.

“Dudes! You made it!” Coz shouted.

“Yeah!” Kip bellowed then pumped his fist in the air and whooped.

Nardo crouched low so we could easily slide off his back then said, “Gonna go find some unlucky deer or elk to murder and eat. Be right back.”

“Bro loves his elk,” Holo said as the dragon lifted off and was quickly lost from sight, moving at a speed he hadn’t even come close to while transporting us to our friends.

Hugs all around and we started in on our respective stories.

I told most of Sandra’s and mine while she set about taking an inventory of what remained in her pouches. Every once in a while, she’d hurry off to go pick a mountain flower or pluck a leaf from a bush. When she’d come back, she’d give me a bright smile. It was the happiest I’d seen her in a while, so I returned the smile without a thought.

Then I noticed the others staring at us, knowing looks on their faces.

“What?” I asked.

“You guys are so a thing, dude,” Coz said.

“Yeah,” Kip agreed.

“It is nice to see romance bud in such arduous times,” Ming said.

I was about to do that guy thing and dispute what they were saying, and seeing, but it hit me that there was absolutely zero reason to be that guy. Having someone like Sandra had been all I’d dreamed about back in the real world while I sat staring out my high-rise windows, my fifth glass of whiskey in my hand.

“Yep,” I said and left it at that.

“Cool,” Coz said.

“Yeah,” Kip said.

“My bro’s getting him some,” Holo said.

“Oh, sweet Jesus,” I said.

“Yes, he is getting him some,” Sandra said. “And I’m getting me some, but both our somes are none of your business so stop being crude little adolescents about it and move on.”

“I like this Sandra,” Coz said.

“She is right, though,” Ming said. “We should move on from the amorous affections of two of our party and discuss the remainder of our quest.”

“You didn’t tell us where you guys ended up,” I said.

“There is nothing of significance to tell, Steve,” Ming replied. “We ran and kept running. Eventually, we found ourselves climbing up to this valley. We have been waiting here, hoping you would discover us so we could continue.”

“That’s it?” I asked and looked to Coz for confirmation.

“Pretty much, dude,” Coz said. “We fought a banshee at one point and hid from some pretentious elves, but other than that, we’ve been camping it up in this place.”

“Yeah,” Kip said.

“Any sign of Trish?” I asked.

“What?” Coz snapped. “Why would there be any sign of Trish?” He turned on Sandra. “Didn’t you tell him what happened?”

“Hey, back off,” I said. “She told me. She also told me that you had to pick up Kip and get him out of that village before the undead centaurs killed you. While you were doing that, did you put a blade through Trish’s head to keep her from coming back?”

That killed the mood. The happy reunion was over.

“Jesus Christ,” I said. “Have none of you thought about that?”

“No,” Coz admitted. “I’ve been avoiding thinking about Trish, to be honest.”

He sat on the ground and shook his head.

“Shit,” he said. “We messed up. The least we could have done was make sure she didn’t rise again.”

“That’s not what I was saying at all,” I said. “It was all a mess. I was only asking if you encountered her again. She’s an Othersider like us. That could mean she’s as powerful as Jeremy and just as much of a problem.”

Again with the mood shift.

“Oh, my,” Ming said. “That would not be a great scenario.”

“You never said anything about that to me?” Sandra said. “If you thought that was possible, then we should have talked about it.”

“I just thought of it right now,” I admitted. “Seeing everyone here, dealing with Jeremy and his undead army back there, and the thought of finishing the quest shook the idea loose.”

“But you felt the need to bum us out like we’d dropped the ball?” Coz said. “Not cool, dude.”

“Bros, chill,” Holo said. “All this shit is so much bigger than us.” He looked at Ming. “Your granddad bro, the guy that created Bubby, was some sort of magical adept. Shit you not, bro. You have no clue what is going down.”

Everyone stared at Holo.

“You gonna let us in on it, dude?” Coz asked.

“Huh? Oh, shit no,” Holo said. “Bubby is the one that has to let that cat out of the bag.”

“Then stop teasing us,” Coz said. “Really, dude, knock it the hell off or I’m gonna beat your canine ass.”

“The quest,” Ming interrupted. “Can we please get back to the quest?”

“Okay, okay, I can tell you one thing,” Holo said, basically hopping from foot to foot with excitement to spill some partial beans. “Bubby, and this is gonna blow your minds, but Bubby is going to take the Creator on. Totally head-to-head fight. Is that not the coolest thing you’ve ever heard, bros?”

“No, dude,” Coz said. “That is downright terrifying. Do you know what would happen if an NPC tried to fight the basic framework of programming this Domain is built on? Catastrophic!”

“Yeah,” Kip said, sounding genuinely scared.

Not being a programmer, I raised my hand. “Catastrophic how?”

Ming cleared his throat. “There is no Creator,” he said. “Bubby is only playing up her role in this quest. While I do not believe it is part of the Saga of the Lich King module, it does add some drama and urgency to what we must do. Nothing more.”

“Believe me or not, bros,” Holo said and shrugged his shoulders then gave his tail a wag. “You’ll see soon enough.”

“I am going to ignore the hyperbole,” Ming said. “Let us focus on the—”

He didn’t get to finish.

There was a ground-shaking roar then Nardo was calling out, “Bros! We have got to go! Like now!”

He landed only a few feet from us, the wind from his wings knocking over the tent and instantly putting out the campfire.

“You got your weapons on ya?” he asked. “I hope so because you need to climb onto my back so we can take off, pronto!”

“What’s up, bro?” Holo asked, not even hesitating as he clambered up Nardo’s scales and perched himself at the base of the dragon’s neck.

“Trolls, bro,” Nardo said.

“Trolls? How many?” Ming asked.

“All of them,” Nardo said, his dragon eyes wide. “I am talking every single troll clan in EverRealm is heading this way and fast.”

“Why?” Coz asked.

Nardo shrugged.

“Because we called them,” Sandra said. “They were going to help us and the river troll clan fight the undead army, but they were too late.”

“Shit,” I said as I realized what had happened. “They must have gotten there just as Nardo torched the forest. They think we killed the river clan!”

Then the sound of war drums met our ears and none of us hesitated. We were up and on Nardo’s back faster than teenagers racing to call shotgun.

Thirty-Six

As we flew off, I looked back to see a wave of troll clans marching over the ridge that led into the mountain valley we’d just retreated from. Quite a few of the trolls saw us and began throwing spears. Although we were well out of range, some of those spears travelled at least a quarter mile before dropping back to earth.

“We’re gonna have a reckoning with that crowd when we’re all done with this quest,” Coz said, seeming to voice what everyone was thinking. “Any suggestions?”

“Oh, they won’t be the problem we’ll be worrying about,” Holo said.

“Holo! Shut up!” I shouted and my best friend during the entire undead apocalypse actually cringed at the sound of my voice. Shit. I’m an ass. “I’m sorry, man. I’m not mad at you.”

“No, it’s cool, bro,” he said. “I am playing it up a bit. I’ll chill.”

“Alright, so here’s the thing, bros,” Nardo called back over his shoulder at us, oblivious to what was happening on his back. “I can get you close, but I can’t drop you at the summit or anything. See that swirling mass of clouds? No good for my kind. That shit’s like acid rain.”

“Whoa, then what is it going to do to us?” Coz asked.

“Oh, you bros will be fine,” Nardo said. “You’re Othersiders. It won’t hurt you. May make you trip out and hallucinate a little, if your minds are predisposed to that kind of psychedelic shit, but otherwise, you’ll be good.”

“How close can you deliver us, noble dragon?” Ming asked.

“Noble dragon,” Nardo echoed and snorted hard enough that he sent fire shooting out of his nostrils. “That’s funny.”

“I am glad I amuse you,” Ming said. “But, again, I must ask how close will we be delivered?”

“Close enough, bros,” Nardo said then put on some speed and raced us towards the black cloud-shrouded mountain peak.

He took us just under where the clouds obscured the top of Jackal Mountain and set us down on a large outcropping. My knees were shaking as I got down off his back, the edge of the outcropping sickeningly close. I’d gotten over my thing with heights back in the real world, but we were talking some Mt. Everest shit. That would make anyone a little woogity in the legs.

With everyone off Nardo’s back, the dragon gave us a smile and a wink then was gone, flying back the way we came.

“He’s not going to wait for us?” Coz asked.

“Nah, bro,” Holo said. “He’s gonna go square things with the troll clans. He was the bro that set fire to the forest, so maybe he can convince them to let bygones be bygones and not come after Sandra and Steve.”

Sandra was about to say something, but she shook her head, took a deep breath, and turned to the single, winding trail that led from the outcropping and up into the black clouds above us.

“We should go,” she said. “If we are lucky, we can get the Jewel of Rising and destroy it before Jeremy arrives.”

She started hiking and there was nothing we could do but follow her.

Thirty minutes into our trudging up the trail, Coz held up a hand and sat down on a greasy-looking rock.

“Gotta take a break,” he said, mopping the sweat from his face with a rag. “This air is killing me.”

He was right. Once we’d started hiking into the black cloud, breathing was no longer the fun pastime it had been for all of our lives. I had to fight not to hold my breath, so I could keep the dank nasty stuff out of my lungs.

“Is anyone experiencing hallucinations?” Ming asked, sucking on his asthma rag. “I for one am not seeing anything out of the ordinary.”

“I’m fine,” Sandra said.

“All good, bro,” Holo said.

“No trippy visions here,” I said.

Kip didn’t answer. He was trying to snatch something invisible to us from the air.

“Kip? Dude? What are you seeing?” Coz asked.

“Butterflies,” Kip said. “Need to catch the butterflies so I can talk to the Universe.”

“We have a winner,” I said.

“Hold on,” Sandra said and dug around in a pouch. She came out with a bright yellow mushroom cap. “Kip, eat this.”

“I’m no expert, but won’t taking shrooms add to the problem?” Coz asked.

“No,” Sandra said. “And this species is not psychotropic. It counters the effects of those type of fungi.”

“Who doesn’t have two thumbs and likes to party?” Holo said. “This fun guy! Get it? Fungi, fun guy?”

We didn’t even give him the satisfaction of a pained groan.

“Eat this, Kip,” Sandra said and held out the mushroom cap. Kip eyed it warily. “It’s a butterfly.”

He snatched it up and devoured it in one bite. Then his eyes closed, he coughed a few times, and fell on his knees.

“Kip?” Coz asked.

“He’ll be fine,” Sandra said.

He was. He opened his eyes, shook his head, and stood back up.

“You good, dude?” Coz asked.

“Yeah,” Kip replied.

“Let us continue,” Ming said and led the way up the trail, taking Sandra’s place.

We walked another twenty minutes, gasping most of the way, then the ground began to level out and we found ourselves standing at the mouth of a great cave. It was dark as shit in there, and I could hear a long, low whistling-like wind blowing from somewhere inside.

Then a gust hit us, like a stinky breath, and we each took a couple steps back.

“Oh, hell no,” Holo said and started to turn around.

I grabbed his tail and yanked him back. “What happened to your inside knowledge?”

“Bro, you can’t smell what I can smell,” he replied. “Be glad you have those weak-ass human noses and not my superior canine sniffer.”

“It smells like death,” Sandra said. “Like the rot of a hundred bodies.”

“I was gonna say it smells like pork gone off, but that covers it too,” Coz said.

“We do not have a choice in the matter,” Ming said. “We enter the cave and retrieve the Jewel of Rising before Jeremy does or all is lost.”

“Dammit,” Holo muttered.

“Best not to hesitate,” Ming said and walked into the cave.

We followed reluctantly behind him.

His staff appeared and he held it up so that the tip glowed and lit our way.

Inside, it was damp and stank even worse. The way was wide and open, a huge cavern of a space, but the floor of the cavern was littered with bones from probably every creature that existed in EverRealm. We had to pick our footing carefully or we’d slip on a bone and fall flat on our faces.

Coz took out his knives and Sandra pulled her dagger. Kip’s hands started up with his battle spots or orbs or whatever they were. Holo kept his body low to the ground and his teeth bared. That left me.

I drew the Dark Blade and the entire cavern was lit up ten times what Ming’s staff was able to do. The flames on the blade were bigger and brighter than they had been back down in the river valley.

“Damn, dude,” Coz said. “You’ve gotten the hang of that thing.”

Sandra looked at me, puzzled. I shrugged and said, “Tell ya later.”

Last she knew, I’d lost the sword.

The great cavern began to slowly narrow until we were walking side by side, the cave becoming a tunnel which became a narrow passageway.

“Good place for an ambush,” Coz whispered.

“Yes, quite,” Ming said and glanced back at me. “Steve? Would you care to lead us with your flaming sword?”

“I’d rather not,” I said. “You’re doing a great job, Ming.”

“Steve,” Sandra snapped.

“Fine, fine, I’ll take point,” I said and pushed past the others to the front of the line. “Everyone happy now?”

“Yep,” Coz said.

“Yeah,” Kip said.

“Totally, bro,” Holo said.

“Screw you guys,” I replied and kept moving.

The passageway twisted and turned until we came upon a chamber made completely of obsidian. Either that or it hadn’t been dusted in a really, really long time.

In the center of the room was a pedestal. On that pedestal was a jewel the size of a grapefruit. Behind that jewel stood a man in purple robes with gold stars on them. He looked like Mickey Mouse’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice hat had been created into a full body ensemble.

“Welcome, adventurers!” the man in the purple robes called to us. “I am the Creator! I congratulate you on completing your journey! It is unfortunate you now must die in order to maintain the stability of this game!”

Then he shot some lightning bolts from his fingers and all hell broke loose.

Thirty-Seven

I dove to the ground with Sandra landing on top of me. Coz went one way, Kip the other, and Holo flopped down onto his belly, his front paws covering his head.

Only Ming stayed standing.

“You do not frighten us, fraud!” Ming yelled as he held his staff in front of him and let the magical stick absorb the magical lightning. It did a pretty damn good job of it. “How dare you insult my family honor by declaring yourself the Creator!”

“But I am the Creator!” the Creator bellowed. “And if you do not know me, then you are not of my lineage! You are the fraud here!”

“Oh, shut up, Harold!” a voice cried from a dark corner.

I looked up, barely able to see through Sandra’s fingers which were wrapped around my face.

“Dark Enforcer!” the Creator shouted. “Of course, only you would have the foolhardiness to… did you call me Harold?”

“That’s your name,” the Dark Enforcer said and my ears perked up.

The Dark Enforcer didn’t sound like the Dark Enforcer anymore. I noticed the voice change back at the river, but it wasn’t as pronounced as it was in that chamber. It sounded like…

“Bubby?” Ming asked as the Dark Enforcer morphed into the form of Ming’s bubby. “What are you doing here? You shouldn’t be able to leave the tower.”

“Oh, Paulie Boy,” Bubby said. “I love you, child, but get a clue, will ya? You don’t know the first thing about this place and how things work.”

“Told ya,” Holo said, coming up out of his crouch, his tail wagging. “Hey, Bubs.”

“Holo, dear,” Bubby said. “Sorry, but I did not bring any treats with me.”

“S’all good,” Holo said. “Just glad you’re here now to take care of this purple turkey.”

“Margaret, what are you doing?” the Creator snapped. “You are not allowed to take sides. This is a game that is to be played out only by the last living member of the family.”

“Is that so, Harold?” Bubby asked. “Show me in the rules where it says that?”

“You know it was more of an informal agreement than an official rule,” the Creator said. “That was the only way we could all agree that the following generations would be allowed to live on forever into eternity within the game’s framework.”

“Forever and eternity mean the same thing,” I said.

“Steve!” Sandra hissed in my ear. “Not now!”

“The fool is right,” Bubby said.

“Fool?” I replied.

“Hush!” everyone said.

“All you’ve ever been is words, words, words,” Bubby said. “Even after this game stopped being about the modules and became an open platform for players to have grand adventures and quests. Rules and words, rules and words. Harold loves his rules and words.”

“The rules are what bind the game together and keep it from busting apart,” the Creator said.

“Do you have even the foggiest what is happening in the real world, Harold?” Bubby said. “I do. I use the portals to check all the time. It’s a zombie nightmare out there! That is why these fine youngins decided it would be better to live inside here. And, I for one, vote that we let them do just that.”

The Creator started to respond, but Bubby got up close to him and snapped her fingers in his face.

“Shut up, Harold, I’m still talking,” she said. “As well-intentioned as these folks were, including my lovely grandson, do you think they were the only survivors of the real world that had this idea? No.”

“Told ya,” Holo said. “Boom. Minds blown.”

“There are others,” Bubby continued. “Plenty of others. Some of them got to one of this party’s friends and corrupted him, forced him to come to EverRealm and taint it with the undead menace.”

“Oh, snap,” I said. “Jeremy turned on us.”

“Not such a fool after all,” Bubby said, turning to give me a wink. “The one called Jeremy will be here soon and his mission is to take this Jewel of Rising so he may conquer EverRealm for the ones he works for. If we allow that to happen, then all will be lost. For this Domain as well as for the others.”

“You know of the other Domains, Bubby?” Ming asked.

“Paulie Boy, who do you think gave you the idea for the Center and the creation of other Domains?” Bubby replied. “A suggestion here, a clue there, a stray bit of code in an old file, and off you went. If I didn’t nudge you to build the other Domains, then all would ride on the survival of this game and this game alone. That would just be stupid.”

She pointed at the Jewel of Rising.

“Do you know what this truly represents?” she asked.

No one answered until Sandra picked herself up off my back, smoothed out her ragged dress, and said, “That’s the game’s CPU, isn’t it?”

“Yes, lovely dear,” Bubby said. “This is the game’s CPU. It runs it all. You always have been my favorite.”

“But, Bubby, if that represents the game’s CPU, then the other Domains are in great peril because I based their code on EverRealm’s central processing,” Ming said. “The Domains are as tied to that CPU as this one is.”

“Yes, Paulie Boy, I am fearfully aware of that blunder,” Bubby said. “I gave you some hints on how to create the Domains without doing that, but you have always been a lazy boy and constantly looking for the shortcut. How did that work out for you, child?”

“Not so well,” Ming said under his breath.

“Not so well,” Bubby echoed. “In the end, it has created more work than it has saved. And speaking of saving.” She picked up the Jewel of Rising and held it out to Sandra. “I now trust you with this, sweet dear. You must take it to each of your Domains and make a copy. Once all of the Domains have their own CPUs, then the entire quantum matrix will stabilize and no matter what evil ideas other survivors of the real world have, the framework cannot be destroyed.”

“Me?” Sandra asked. The mousy voice was back. “I can’t…Bubby…I can’t do it.”

“You can, but I understand your fear,” Bubby said. “That is why you have friends to help.” She winked at me again. “Perhaps more than a friend, eh? Hubba hubba.”

I may have blushed. Hard not to when you realize maybe some old lady has been watching you get it on with your woman.

Footsteps came from the passageway and Bubby’s eyes focused beyond us.

“And here they are,” Bubby said. “Hello, Jeremy. Hello, Trish.”

She tossed the Jewel at Sandra who bobbled it slightly, but managed to hang on, then grabbed onto the Creator’s robes and the two of them blinked out of sight, leaving us standing there with an undead Jeremy and undead Trish glaring at Sandra and the Jewel of Rising.

“Let’s do this!” Holo yelled and launched himself at Trish.

Thirty-Eight

Trish was in full Sorceress mode, undead granted, but still powerful as ever. She fired a wall of energy at Holo and sent the dog flying against the chamber wall. Kip and Sandra went for her, Kip throwing his orbs while Sandra leapt and spun a roundhouse kick at Trish’s head. Coz did Coz and snuck into the shadows.

That left me to face Jeremy on my own. Seemed fitting since that’s how the whole damn game started.

My Dark Blade was flaming like Hell itself as I charged Jeremy. He barely got a spell up in time to block my attack. I actually forced the guy to stumble back a couple steps before he regrouped and came for me.

A sword of his own, one made of pure ice, appeared in his hand and he swung for my head. How original. Ice to fight fire.

I countered the swing and the two blades hissed and sizzled upon contact. I stepped forward and drove his sword down, but he managed to slide it up and out of my defense so he could launch another attack at my head. He was very big on attacking my head. All about it.

I ducked and stabbed the end of the Dark Blade into his gut. It slid through and he cackled with laughter. Then he cried out as his midsection caught fire. He pulled himself back, letting the flaming sword withdraw naturally, and placed his blade against the wound to seal it.

“Nice trick,” I said. “Someone teach you that in undead traitor school?”

He didn’t reply, only held his blade down to his side as he began to circle me. I turned to match him, the Dark Blade held firmly between us. Level ups or not, I wasn’t even close to matched against his skill as a player. Add in that he couldn’t die and there wasn’t much for him to fear.

Wait a second. If he couldn’t die, then why was I fighting him? What the hell good was I going to do? Odds are I’d just get myself killed. The son of an undead bitch had figured out a cheat and was using it to its full advantage.

The only way Jeremy could be killed was if I…

“Sandra!” I yelled, dodging a casual swipe of Jeremy’s blade. He knew I knew I couldn’t kill him here and was only toying with me. “We have to go!”

“What?” Sandra yelled back as she ducked under a bolt of energy that Trish shot at her head. “We can’t!”

“Yes, we can!” I yelled and spun about to double check that I was right. I was. “This way!”

She hesitated and Trish used that opportunity to get in a good hit. Sandra went flying against the wall and slid down to the floor in a heap. She struggled to get up and I risked turning my back on Jeremy so I could rush over to her.

“No!” Holo shouted then yelped as he blocked a swipe from Jeremy’s sword.

“Holo!” I cried, but I couldn’t get to my friend. I had to get Sandra up and moving to the pedestal. She held the Jewel of Rising. She held the CPU. I needed to get her out of this Domain.

And back to the Center.

I lifted her onto her feet and helped her hobble to the pedestal where the Jewel had sat before Bubby had tossed it to Sandra.

“You have it?” I asked.

“In this pouch,” Sandra said.

“Good,” I said. “Kip!”

“Yeah!”

“You got Trish?”

“Yeah!”

“Good!” I said and took Sandra’s hand in mine.

I pressed both of our hands to the pedestal and we were gone just as Ming yelled, “Where are you going?”

Then we were back in the Center.

Not that the Center was any safer. I knew we were going to be in for a fight as soon as we appeared. When we’d left, the place had been overrun with undead and they were still there. Lucky for us, with no prey to chase, they were only shambling around the room aimlessly, completely unprepared for two people to pop back into existence in front of them.

I let go of Sandra’s hand and our survivor instincts kicked in. Technically, it wasn’t the real world, but it wasn’t EverRealm either. We were back in the clothes we’d left in, and instead of a flaming sword in my hand, I had a fire axe again.

Oh, but holy shit, it wasn’t the same fire axe. This one was actually fire. Or the head of it was. Just like the Dark Blade. Hey, I had a Dark Axe!

I started swinging and taking off undead heads.

Sandra was by my side, her combat knives in both hands, and was doing that beautiful stab, shove, stab, shove, stab thing she did. Seeing her go to work in her simple clothes again was probably ten times more sexy than she’d been back in EverRealm. It was so real and it turned me on.

“Focus!” Sandra shouted as I watched her a second too long.

One of the undead leapt for me, fingers gnawed to the bone outstretched and going for my eyes. I brought the fire axe up underhanded and caught it in the chest, but its momentum took it right into me and we went down in a pile of flailing limbs. I managed to get the handle of the axe up under its chin to keep it from biting my face off, but the thing was a wild animal and was thrashing so hard that I couldn’t get leverage to kick it off me.

Then a knife point came out of its forehead and it went still.

“Thanks!” I shouted as I shoved it away, and Sandra returned to fighting for herself instead of saving me.

I made it to one knee before I had to swing the fire axe in almost every direction at once to keep the undead back. There were a lot of the bastards. They had just kept coming through until Henry’s immersion tank fried out. I was looking at close to twenty.

Then from the shadows came a dual-machete-wielding mad man. He hacked and slashed and stabbed his way through the horde, taking out half of them before reaching me and giving me a smirk.

“You think I’d let you have all the fun back here?” Coz asked as he stabbed another undead asshole through the face. “No way, dude.”

“Good,” I said. “Because we’ll need the help.”

“What for?” Coz asked, killing two more of the undead. “We’ll have the Center cleared in no time at this rate.”

“It’s not these I’m worried about,” I said. There was a shimmer in the air, and Jeremy arrived through the Domain portal to EverRealm. “It’s him.”

The thing was, Jeremy’s clothes hadn’t turned back to his normal clothes. He was still dressed EverRealm style all the way. That was troubling. I had hoped I could lure him back to the Center because it was as close to the real world as it got. Then maybe different rules would apply and he wouldn’t be immortal.

“Shit,” Coz said. “He’s still messed up.”

“Not for long!” Sandra cried as she took a running leap and launched herself off the back of the gore-covered couch.

She must have flown five feet into the air, both of her knives aimed down at Jeremy’s head, before she collided with him, sending both of them skidding across the Center’s floor and into a tidy pile of undead bodies.

Jeremy twisted under her and hissed in her face, ready to bite her nose off, but she buried a knife into each side of his head and he froze in mid-chomp. His body shuddered under hers a couple times then went still in that way we all knew by heart.

“You okay?” I asked her.

“Ugh,” Sandra said as she stood up and wiped her blades off on her shirt. “What? Yeah. I’m fine. That wasn’t the Jeremy I knew. I’m good. Really.”

That’s when she seemed to notice what she was wearing. It’s what we always saw her in every time she’d appear in the Center, but she looked at herself like she was seeing the clothes for the first time.

“Goddamn, I need a new wardrobe,” she said and looked up, giving me the best smile ever. “We should go shopping. I bet Technopolis has all kinds of cool clothes.”

I could only smile back and nod. The thought of her wearing some cyberpunk outfit had me tongue-tied.

“This got awkward fast for me,” Coz said. “Maybe we should go back and check on the others now that we have this sorted out?”

“Good idea,” I said. “You know how to activate the portal back to EverRealm?”

Coz opened his mouth then closed it. He shook his head.

“Sandra? You have to know how, right?” I asked.

“No, Steve, I don’t,” Sandra said. “Trish and Kip do. Or did.”

“Well…shit,” I said. “That sucks.”

We looked at the gory couch, shrugged, and walked over to plop down and wait. That’s all we could do.

Thirty-Nine

We waited for hours before the portal opened and Kip, Holo, and a still-fighting Trish, came tumbling into the Center.

“Took you long enough!” Coz said and jumped off the couch to help.

Trish kicked Kip in the nuts and scrambled to get free. She stood up and thrust her hands out, hissing and groaning at us. Nothing happened, of course, because she didn’t have Sorceress powers in the Center.

Holo started to laugh, but it was a pained sound. He had a nasty-looking gash on his right flank and I hoped it wasn’t from Trish’s teeth.

“Can we do anything for her?” Coz asked, circling around Trish, forcing her to focus on him and not on us. “Guys? Maybe since she was turned in EverRealm it will wear off here?”

“Doesn’t work like that, Coz,” Sandra said sadly. “Her being has turned. No matter what Domain she goes to, she’ll be undead. We have to end her suffering here.”

“Fuck,” Coz snapped. “Fuckety fuck.”

Trish lunged at him, swiping at his face with her nails, but Coz only swatted her hand away with the flat of one of his machetes. She hissed and groaned then went into a crouch like some undead do when cornered. Her head whipped back and forth for a minute, trying to watch all of us at the same time, then she decided on her attack and sprinted at Holo.

Kip caught her around the knees in a double-armed hug and she fell flat on her face. Sandra was right behind, stabbing her in the base of the skull with a combat knife. Trish instantly went still.

I dragged her body next to Jeremy’s and we stood there and looked down at our former friends.

“Henry and Laura,” I said, and started digging through the piles of undead until I found their bodies. I dragged each of them over and laid them out next to Trish and Jeremy. “There we go.”

“We should say something,” Sandra said.

“Shouldn’t we wait for Ming?” I said.

“Probably right,” Coz said.

Back to the couch we went. Hours went by and I dozed for some of it. When I came fully awake, Ming still wasn’t there.

“Was he hurt when you left?” I asked Holo.

“No,” Holo said, licking his wound.

He hadn’t become undead so, it wasn’t a mortal wound. That was nice. It did still look like it hurt, though.

“What is taking so long?” Coz snapped and started pacing the room.

Maybe two more hours went by before the portal to EverRealm opened back up.

“Ming!” we all called.

But Ming didn’t appear. The portal was open, but no Ming.

“Hey,” Ming’s voice echoed from the portal. “Can you hear me alright?”

“Yes,” Sandra replied. “Ming? Why aren’t you coming through?”

“Yes, well, it appears there is an issue with that,” Ming said. “I have been talking with Bubby, and because we started the module of Saga of the Lich King, someone needed to finish the module. I am that someone.”

“What does that mean?” I asked. “So you finish the game and come back here, what’s the big deal?”

“The big deal, as you say, is that I am now officially the Lich King,” Ming said.

“Still not seeing the problem,” I said.

Kip put a hand to his face and shook his head.

“Oh, snap,” Holo said.

“Oh, snap, indeed,” Ming said. “I cannot return right away. Being the Lich King means I now have power over all that are undead in EverRealm. And, as it would so happen, there are quite a few undead left, not to mention a rogue Ghost of the Beast. If I do not use my powers and either force them to my will or outright destroy them, then they will overrun EverRealm and all will be lost in this Domain no matter what Sandra is able to do with the CPU.”

“That’d suck,” Coz said.

“Yes, quite,” Ming replied.

“How long will it take?” Sandra asked.

“It could be as simple as a few weeks or possibly, depending on how far the issue has spread, it might take years,” Ming said. “But, that gives all of you time to secure the other Domains. I have been assured by Bubby that she is doing everything she can on her end to strengthen the quantum matrix that binds all together. Isn’t that nice of her?”

“Very nice, Ming,” Sandra said. “She’s a lovely woman.”

“Yes, she is,” Ming said. “So, with that all said, I am afraid I will have to bid you a fond farewell. If you need me, or need to come to EverRealm, either Kip or Holo can accompany you. I would ask them to teach you how to open the portal, but perhaps it would be best if we limited accessibility, don’t you think?”

“Good idea, Ming,” Sandra said. “Better safe than sorry.”

“So very true,” Ming said. “So very true…” He cleared his throat. “Farewell, then, fellow adventurers!”

The portal closed and that was that.

“What do we do now?” I asked.

“We say a few words,” Sandra said.

That’s what we did. We each said a few words over Trish, Jeremy, Laura, and Henry. When we were done, we stood there, all thinking the same thing.

Coz finally voiced it.

“Where are we going to stash these bodies? Not technically real, but in the quantum sense they are. The Center is already starting to stink bad.”

“You’re telling me,” Holo said.

“Laura’s Domain,” Sandra said. “Wuthering Moors. We can dump the bodies in the swamp and make a copy of the CPU there at the same time. Nothing happens in that Domain, so it will be the easiest to get in and out of.”

“Do you know how to get in?” I asked.

Sandra blushed. “Yes.”

“And why is that making your face light up like a bright red sign of shame?” Coz asked, laughing.

“I’m not ashamed,” Sandra said. “It’s just that the Domain is more romance based than fighting based.”

“That’s why you’re such a good kisser!” I shouted. “You’ve been going there and doing it with some tortured Englishman that tears his shirt at every emotional upheaval he faces!”

I laughed for a second then stopped.

“Wait,” I said. “Were you like…? Did you do…? When you were there…?’

“She totally boned some muscle-bound guys when she went there, bro,” Holo said. “Get over it.”

There was a very long, awkward silence in the Center.

“So…? Move some dead bodies and dump them in the moors?” Coz finally said.

“Yes!” we all cried.

Forty

In the end, it took us about six hours to make the journey back and forth and dispose of all the undead bodies. Turned out that crossing the moors was as treacherous as all the old novels and movies made it out to be. We almost lost Kip twice and Coz once when they took a wrong step and ended up to their waists in sucking mud.

By the time we were done, we each were stinking more than ever before and our clothes were damp, muddy, and needed to be thrown away immediately. To my surprise, Sandra stripped down and tossed her clothes through the Wuthering Moor portal before glaring at all of us to do the same.

With Sandra standing there naked, it was Coz’s turn to blush bright red. He couldn’t even come close to looking at her.

I, on the other hand, couldn’t keep my eyes off her. Which presented its own problem.

“You might want to stand behind the couch,” Sandra whispered to me. “At least until things…calm down.”

“Right,” I said and took her advice.

“Okay, so here is what we are going to do,” Sandra said. “We are going to each do a quick check of our Domains to make sure things haven’t gone wrong. Only a quick check. You should know within the first step you take into your world whether or not everything is alright or not. If it is not alright, then come back her as fast as possible, understood?”

“Yes, Mom,” Coz said. Still not looking at her.

“At least when we do go through our portals, we’ll get a new change of clothes we can bring back here,” I said from my spot behind the couch. “Sandra? You want to go to Star Fortress first, or come with me to Technopolis and do a little outfit shopping?”

I wriggled my eyebrows at her and she laughed.

“I think shopping sounds great,” she said.

“I’m staying here,” Holo announced. “You have fun, bro.”

“Totally cool,” I said.

“Off to get clothes,” Coz said and opened his portal then was gone to his Domain, Grimm City, an urban fantasy setting where the men are men, the dames are dames, and every supernatural creature has to hire a private dick to get things done. He was gone without a wave.

Kip left for his western Domain, Dodge County.

That left me and Sandra. If it wasn’t for Holo still there, and licking is wound so loud I wanted to smack him, we may have had a little private time. But Holo was there, so…

“Shall we?” I said as I opened the portal to Technopolis,

“We shall,” Sandra replied and took my hand.

We stepped through into my Domain and I smiled at the black leather outfit I wore. Instead of a Dark Blade or Dark Axe, I held a Dark Rifle. I inspected it and was very happy at what I found. With a quick trigger pull, it would shoot a thousand rounds of pure energy a second. Nice.

Even more nice was Sandra standing there in latex and leather. She cocked a hip at me and glowered, “Really?”

“If you don’t like the outfit, then we can find you something else,” I said, “It’s my Domain, so I have infinite credit here.”

We’d appeared in a shadowy alley on the outskirts of the city. And by outskirts, I mean the less densely built area of the planet. Really, the whole place was one big city, so I couldn’t truthfully say there was an outskirts.

I slung the Dark Rifle across my back and took her hand.

We walked from the alley and froze. We’d been so engrossed in each other that neither of us had noticed the obvious signs of trouble.

Like all the screaming and running and latex-clad undead everywhere.

“Son of a bitch!” I shouted and pulled the Dark Rifle from my back. “This is my house, bitches!”

I didn’t even bother checking my stats. In Technopolis, my abilities were quite nice. So, I powered up the rifle and walked towards the fight.

“Steve!” Sandra shouted at me. “We have to go back to tell the others!”

“My house!” I yelled back. “Gonna do some house cleaning first!”

She began to argue again then saw the look on my face and sighed.

Sandra pulled a pistol from each hip, gave me a sly, sexy smile, and we walked into the fight together.

The End

Read on for a free sample of Titan Wars

Millions of microscopic alien life forms escape a sample canister of water from the frigid depths of outer space. Invisible to the naked eye, a menacing menagerie of more than 70 deadly species react to Earth's warm and fertile seas by launching into metabolic overdrive. Waves of gargantuan abominations begin to rise from the sea, transforming our world into a zoo without cages, where humans plunge to the bottom of the food chain.

In dire need of a zookeeper, the Allied Navy turns to "Psyjack", a bickering geek squad with an outrageous plan to hack into the minds of the megafauna with some reengineered neurosurgical technology. The young gamers hope to level the uneven playing field by fighting monsters with monsters, but they couldn't have anticipated how deadly their technology could be, if it ever fell into the wrong hands...

Chapter One

Skyler dragged her ruined legs through a lake of blood and champagne. Didn’t know where she was going, and didn’t matter. Just obeying basic instincts. Instincts that kept her crawling away from what had so briefly been the greatest moment of her life. That moment had passed. So had the lives of all of those people who’d shared in her celebration. All of them were dead. All that remained of Skyler’s research team and their project was one bloodstained sack of canisters. She just kept crawling. Kept dragging that burden into the boat’s darkest recesses where, she supposed, she would die.

The mutilated thing in front of her was Paul, the project’s technical director. It was he who’d first welcomed her aboard the team. Lover of Kansas City jazz music, Italian food, and his dachshund, Peanut, he was now recognizable by his watch, and by the smell of his aftershave. Just another obstacle in her path. Skyler clawed her way over his corpse, and through the shards of a dropped champagne flute.

An empty bottle of the most expensive stuff that a team of government scientists could afford rolled side to side with the boat’s rhythmic pitch, clunking dully against the cabin baseboards to the sluice of China’s Yellow Sea. Lancet beams of sunlight pierced the scads of bullet holes ripped through the cabin walls. The collective whine of drones was growing louder, as greater numbers of the floating cameras converged on the scene like a swarm of agitated hornets. Every second of the carnage was being recorded, and piped live to the Internet. Their multitudes were grim assurance that Skyler’s life was still hanging in jeopardy, and that millions of viewers worldwide were gawping at their screens, straws to their lips, drinking deeply of the last moments of her life with morbid fascination shimmering in their eyes. Cruel memes were probably already popping up all over social media, mocking her fate, her attackers, and prompting endless threads of inane commentary.

Skyler screeched when something slammed against the steel door that she’d bolted shut behind her. They were coming for her. Another impact struck with such force to brighten the room with a flash of sunlight around the seam. Again and again, the cabin strobed with light as the steel door bent around its deadbolt from the blows of what sounded like a swinging axe. They were smashing their way in.

Hitching her way across the cabin floor like a crushed insect, she painted a bright trail of blood wherever she crawled. There was no place to hide where they couldn’t track her. Scooting behind a console of scientific instruments, she pulled the sack of freezing cylinders onto her lap, wrapped her arms around the bundle, hugged it tight, and stared at the buckling door. Beyond the crash of steel and humming drones, there was yet another sound that added to the chaos. It was a noise that Skyler couldn’t identify, and she hated it. Every deafening roar-grunt was punctuated with the rasp of claws against steel, and what sounded like clattering chains.

“Open the door, little girl. You will live.”

Not likely. Not after what she’d just seen happen to an entire crew of unarmed scientists. Popping corks and jubilation were snuffed by the massive shadow that had spilled across their deck, until a rising wall of blackness eclipsed the sun. As though their scientific triumph had disturbed some oceanic horror from its slumbers, the thing emerged from the briny depths until it loomed against the sky. Awestruck, her team stood paralyzed as their boat was dwarfed by the shimmering tonnage that soaked their decks with cascading water that streamed from its back. Once the massive thing became identifiable as a hull of steel, the submarine’s portholes swung ajar. Men clambered out, and began dropping like a hatch of spiders from their ratlines. Others racked the bolts of mounted chain guns, and swiveled the huge weapons onto Skyler and her paralyzed crew. Without demands, explanation, or a hint of warning, a thunderous fusillade began hammering the flesh of talented scientists into red mist before spewed jettisons of flame and jingling brass.

A hovering drone eyed Skyler through a bullet hole. The little spy studied her through the punctured steel wall with benign curiosity, before whizzing away. Skyler plunged her hand into the wet sack, and encircled her fingers around one of the twelve frosty cylinders. She could feel the precious liquid sloshing against the container’s insulated walls, and her emotions threatened to overwhelm her. This wasn’t fair. She didn’t deserve to die like this. None of them had. They’d worked so damned hard for so many years, and it was right there in the palm of her hand, the answer to the ultimate scientific question: are we alone in the universe?

Another roar-grunt, raking claws against metal. Skyler jammed the canister amidst a rabble of cleaning products, and slid the cabinet door closed. There, her most precious thing of all would hide. Its cooling system contained enough fuel to keep the water sample as cold as the depths of space for another decade, if that’s how long it took for it to be discovered. Skyler’s last and only hope was that her orphaned canister would one day be recovered by someone honorable, and that she and the others wouldn’t have died in vain.

“Oh, God.”

A tremendous blow folded the top corner of the cabin door inward, bathing the room in sunlight. A shaved head filled the triangular aperture. Crazed eyes leered from a face that Skyler didn’t understand. The lower-half of the man’s face was peeled away, showcasing a skeletal grin. The pirate extended his tattooed arm through the opening, fumbled the deadbolt, and flipped it aside. The door exploded inward before a rush of fur and straightening chains, and those roar-grunts escalated to primal screams. Twin beasts, favoring their handler in the skinless aspects of their protruding muzzles, gnashed their bared fangs, and reached for her with splayed claws.

Drones floated into the cabin. The expensive toys of faraway voyeurs jostled one another in their haste to secure positions that would afford the best cinematic angles from which to capture whatever was about to happen to her. Skyler clutched the frigid bundle to her breast, backing into the corner. Nowhere else to go, she could only glower up at the nightmarish face leering over the tussock heads of his leashed baboons.

At this proximity, she could see that the pirate wasn’t exactly disfigured. The skinned aspect of his face was in fact owed to a masochistic system of steel wires that radiated from lip piercings to a common anchor point on the backside of his head. It was like a mask—or rather, it was a mechanism by which his face itself was stretched and twisted into a mask.

“What do you want?” she asked, knotting the bag’s fabric between her fingers. “I have nothing at all.”

It was true. She had no money, and she never wore jewelry. No one aboard this vessel ever carried anything more valuable than a phone or a calculator. Scientists were not wealthy people, and they gave no illusions to the contrary. It seemed a senseless risk and a waste of life for pirates to attack such a boat when the only cargo to be plundered was the treasure of knowledge.

Unable to speak through his facial contraption, the pirate glared down at the bundle in her arms. He hitched his chin, and emitted a throaty bark. The demand was simple enough. He wanted the sack. Whether or not he had any practical use for its contents, it was pretty evident that if she dared to resist him, she would die.

“No,” Skyler replied.

This was supposed to be the day of the big payoff. She’d dreamt of this day, and the validation it would bring to her four years of crushing calculations and code to ensure the safe return of an unmanned probe from the depths of outer space. Today, with the whole world watching, Skyler’s team had managed to recover the cargo pod containing twelve canisters of water drawn from beneath the icy crust of Europa, Jupiter’s frozen ocean moon.

The madman’s jaws sprung wide, and he roared at her face. Loosening his grip on the baboons’ chains, he allowed the vicious animals another foot of slack. This was her last chance, and she knew it. Violent impulses electrified the demon’s eyes.

“I said, no!”

Skyler gritted her teeth, as the thing in the web of wires let chain more links slide through his fingers. Apes lunged at her throat, fangs red and slick with the gore of her fallen teammates, but Skyler refused to relinquish her water samples. She only tightened her embrace. Those canisters were as close to being her children as anyone married to science could ever hope to hold, and if anyone intended to steal them away from her, they would have to pry them from her cold and lifeless hands.

****

Turbines winding down, the Devil Ray settled upon the sea, until the supersonic hovercraft’s underbelly was lapped by the waves. Her stealthy profile was reduced to a razor’s edge on the horizon. In the distance loomed the black mass of the target. The piratical submarine dwarfed the little patrol boat whose crew of scientists had just been slaughtered. A billowing column of smoke spewed from the crippled vessel. It was an ominous beacon that could be seen as far away as Shanghai.

Collin sucked a deep breath through his nostrils, and exhaled through gritted teeth. This was it. The big day had finally arrived. The Nautical Experimental Weapons Team was going to prove to the Allied Navy, and to the world, that the NEWT program was no laughing matter. If everything went off without a hitch, the military would be forced to recognize their little geek squad as a formidable assault force deserving of some respect, in addition to some continued funding. This test would be pass or fail. Botch the first mission, and they’d be handed one-way tickets right back to their civilian lives.

“Nailed that landing, buddy,” Takashi said, as J.J. emerged from the cockpit, and joined the rest of his team in the hovercraft’s control room.

“What do you got, Takashi?” J.J. asked. “Any swimmers out there?”

Although their team leader’s voice remained steady, the sheen of perspiration on J.J.’s brow betrayed the anxiety gripping his emotions. Collin could relate. He suspected that they were all feeling the same squeeze. Up until now, their program had always seemed like little more than a realistic video game. Not anymore. Things were about to get very real.

“I’ve got two,” Takashi replied, anticipating J.J.’s next question by opening a pair of hologram windows with his fingertips. The pale glow of his ocular implants often widened and narrowed, but those artificial eyes never blinked.

“Which ones you seeing?”

“Disco and Rowdy.”

“Alright,” J.J. said, clapping twice. He smeared the sweat from his face, and dropped his hands onto his hips. “That’s not a bad start. Let’s go, Rowdy.”

In an instant, tensions throughout the team relaxed by some palpable measure. The first bud of collective confidence began to swell with the assurance that Rowdy was down there somewhere, rocketing toward the scene. Rowdy was the most dominant of their animals, so wherever he went, the others usually followed. Getting them all to a specific location in a short amount of time was the only aspect of a mission that was out of the NEWT’s control. Just like human beings, they could be distracted. Something more interesting than the mission could capture their attention, and there were occasionally those days when they’d rather just fool around than go to work. That didn’t seem to be the case today. Rowdy’s speedy response to the coordinates made it feel as though half the battle had already been won.

“Wait a sec. Here come a couple more.” Takashi’s fingertips manipulated thin air, conjuring brilliant imagery out of nowhere like some sort of a technical sorcerer. Those bionic eyes of his only added to his wizardly visage. “Looks like we’ve got Pepper and Moxie.”

“Four will work. Let’s do this thing. Piece of cake.”

“Initiating sync.” Jill switched on her laptop controls. “Stand by for the feed.”

“Roger.” Collin squinted behind the visor of his Mindbender Rift headset, as the choppy video stream began to flicker before his mind’s eye. He fought to control his heartrate and breathing before Takashi had a chance to point it out. Nausea passed within a minute or so, but the psychosomatic effects of a deep dive into a host’s stream of consciousness could be more serious than a case of vertigo. In Collin’s opinion, it was worth enduring a little neurological turbulence for a chance to rocket beneath the waves at fifty kilometers per hour inside the hijacked mind and body of a dolphin.

“Testing streams, one through four,” Jill said, as she prepared to switch feeds from one armed dolphin to the next.

Collin relaxed his mind, allowing Jill to hack the implanted network inside his head. It always felt strange being out of control, but he trusted her. Jill knew her way through the whorls of his brain perhaps better than he did. Collin grimaced as she shut down one relay and activated the next, derailing him from one dolphin’s sensory stream to another. There was no transition between subjects, just a jarring drop between different bodies. “Check two, Disco. Check three, Moxie …”

“Weapons check, one through four.”

Each of the team members had received the same cerebral nanobot implants, the same headset, and the roughly same amount of initial training, as dolphin pilots, but none had taken to the water half as naturally as Collin. As a result, Collin was nominated to be the sheepish star of their show. There didn’t appear to be any love lost amongst the others, since each of his teammates had openly expressed their own reasons for relinquishing him the spotlight. J.J. was a physical person, who was more comfortable with the controls of an aircraft in his hands. Jill didn’t have the stomach for deep streaming, and Takashi’s ocular implants inhibited the visual stream, so he was flying blind.

“You ready to take some pirates to school, Aquaman?”

Collin clicked his tongue, and gave Takashi a thumbs-up. He always maintained a professional level of modesty, but the truth was that whenever Collin was dropped inside the head of a dolphin, the whole experience felt wonderfully natural. He believed that the source of his strength in the streaming seat was his emotional connection to the dolphins. They were more than test subjects to Collin, who enjoyed playing amongst their pod until his hands and feet shriveled into prunes. Being a lifelong introvert, some of the best friends he’d ever made were those dolphins. When a training exercise was over, shutting down the cerebral sync was just the worst. From the point that Jill killed those relays, and yanked the plug on his ocean world, his inglorious return to an awkward human body felt like a small death. There were times when he thought—and he never thought it too loudly—that he might’ve even been born the wrong species.

“Looks like we’ve got a couple of inflatable boarding crafts grappled to the bulwarks of the damaged vessel,” J.J. said. “We need to take out those chain gunners first, and then focus all our firepower on the inflatables.”

“What about the sub?” Takashi asked.

“Looks like a millennial-era model. Double-hulled Russian, if I don’t miss my guess.”

J.J. never missed his guesses when it came to being a military geek. For having never enlisted in the armed forces, it sometimes seemed incredulous that J.J. should know so much about the military. His expertise occasionally invited teasing from uniformed soldiers and sailors, until they heard the story of his father’s sacrifice during the End War, and learned—oftentimes, the hard way—how that particular subject was a can of worms best left unopened.

“I’m saying—can we blow it up?”

“No. No torpedoes. We’re authorized to kill pirates, not sink subs.”

“Major bummer.” Takashi narrowed his bionic eyes to burning slits.

Takashi was just eager. Like the rest of them, he was dying to show the Allied Navy the full power of the NEWT’s destructive capability. Their pod of killer dolphins could sink that Russian sub with no more difficulty than if it had been a child’s bathtub toy. However, today’s mission was a bit of a balancing act. Drones were everywhere, recording everything, and the last thing that any of them wanted was to wind up in some viral video compilation of military fails, right before losing their jobs.

“First target in sight,” Collin said.

The NEWTs quieted. All heads swiveled to the monitor that displayed Collin’s perspective. Green abysms were rushing by, as Collin maneuvered Rowdy’s sleek form alongside the massive submarine. Everyone was surely tingling with the same temptation. Sending that hulking machine to the ocean bottom with one well-placed torpedo would’ve been just as easy as jabbing a sleeping hog in the butt.

“Oxygen levels?”

“Seventy percent,” Jill replied.

The well-being of his dolphin was a top priority, because Collin didn’t need to wonder what it felt like to be cerebrally hijacked. Through training simulations, he’d found himself on the receiving end of that transaction more times than he cared to remember. Having your mind commandeered by an outside presence could be a pretty terrifying experience. You had to learn to trust your phantom puppeteer to bring you up whenever you needed a breath, and to release their control whenever the stress levels in your bloodstream indicated that you were having a panic attack. The big difference between dolphin and human hosts was that the dolphins never understood what was happening, or grasped the danger into which they were being thrust.

“Alright,” Collin said, “I’m bringing Rowdy up into firing position.”

“Permission to fire, when ready,” J.J. replied.

Trained dolphin programs in the military were nothing new. Naval forces worldwide had dabbled for more than a century with the notion of transforming the so-called clowns of the sea into living torpedoes. In the end, these earlier programs all fell to the wayside when trained dolphins proved inferior to war machines. Dolphins didn’t always follow orders to the letter, and they liked to play around. That was the root of the prejudice that the NEWT program struggled to overcome, despite the fact that their fantastic spin on an old idea was unlike anything that had ever been imagined before.

“Engaging weapon.” Collin flipped the left switch on the handgrip. A red circle in the top-left corner of the viewfinder indicated that the dorsal cannons were armed.

“Stand by for shooter mode,” Jill said.

The view in his mind’s eye was constricted to bobbing crosshairs. Paralyzed beneath the surface, the dolphin’s body was being tossed by the waves. That was a situation that could make a pilot become seasick in a hurry.

“Activating stabilizers.” Collin closed his eyes, as he flipped a toggle on the handset that closed eight circuits to mercury switches in the lining of the dolphin’s vest. Pneumatic valves came to life, and leveled the animal’s body with precisely timed jets of seawater. Collin opened his eyes and blinked. Up through the green curtain, atop the black wall of steel, perched a pirate high in a machine gunner’s nest. “Locking onto target.”

The big difference between the NEWT program and anything preceding it was that the NEWT dolphins weren’t trained for combat. Hardly the living torpedoes of the old days, these guys enjoyed the better part of their lives swimming around in the wild, just being dolphins. Their training was limited to responding to coordinates beamed to receptors in the prefrontal lobes of their brains. If they obeyed, and followed a beacon to its destination, they earned some playtime with Collin, and a fish snack. They seemed to genuinely enjoy the human interaction. Highly intelligent creatures, they often towed Collin back to the boat by the little handles on the sides of their vests, as though they understood that boats were where human beings belonged, and not paddling around in the open sea.

Collin twitched when a wet and velvety tongue began lapping at the knuckles of his left hand. Just a little bit distracting because, at the moment, Collin was pretending to be a dolphin. Dolphins didn’t have hands, nor did they have pet golden retrievers, beneath the sea. Collin released his controls for a moment to tousle his best buddy’s hair. Good dog, but very bad timing. “Could somebody please call the dog?”

“You kidding me?” J.J. was not a fan of their furry mascot. “Hotspot, kennel! Now!”

“Easy, J-man. He’s our good luck charm.” Collin couldn’t see the dog loping away, but he felt the swish of a tail against his arm, and he heard the chuffing breaths and jingling tags fading into the back of the hovercraft, where his kennel and a few favorite toys were stashed. Hotspot didn’t have much choice but to obey, because the dog knew that if he ignored an order, his phantom puppeteer would snatch hold of his strings, and override his doggy will. Hotspot was the team’s first test subject. The dog was equipped with the same cache of cerebral nanobots as the dolphins, not to mention a few bonus items.

“One day, I’m going to hack into that dog’s head and walk him right off a pier,” J.J. said.

“Don’t do it,” Collin replied. “Nobody hacks into Hotspot but me. You’ll be very sorry if you try. Trust and believe.”

“Fine,” J.J. said. “I don’t even want to know.”

“We’ve got a problem,” Takashi said, swiveling over to the main radar screen.

“What is it?”

“Got a blip coming in hard and fast, six o’clock.”

J.J. seized the periscope controls, and swung the topside camera one-hundred-eighty degrees. “Looks like a Mark VII special ops craft,” J.J. said. “We’ve got SEALs on the scene.”

“You’ve got to be joking,” Collin said.

“Wish I was.”

“What the heck are they doing out here?” Jill slammed her fists against her armrests. “This is our mission!”

“Probably deployed from field command in Shanghai. Someone in the SWCC is losing confidence in us.”

“Like they ever had any to begin with.”

“We’ve got no order to abort,” J.J. said. “Carry on.”

“We must be working cooperatively with the big dogs,” Takashi said.

“Not cooperating,” J.J. replied, lowering his voice to a growl. “Competing.”

“Then what the heck are we waiting around for?” Jill shouted. “Collin? Take your shot, dude.”

Collin thumbed the zoom control until the face of the chain gunner filled his sights. He felt his breath catch in his throat, as though he’d just swallowed a bug. Pneumatic stabilizers kept adjusting until the deadly crosshairs were locked and floating on the target as a bright red dot, right between the girl’s eyes. Collin could see the sunlight in her eyelashes, the freckles on the bridge of her nose. She was maybe sixteen.

“Collin? You good?”

He heard J.J.’s question, but he wasn’t quite ready to answer. He needed a moment. Pirates were supposed to be grizzled men with missing limbs, scarred faces, and tangled beards. Not young girls with expressive eyes that stared right back into his soul.

No matter how many hundreds of exercises he’d completed against inanimate targets, no amount of training could have prepared him for the moment when he’d have to pull the trigger on a living human being. Collin wasn’t a hardened soldier, after all. None of them were. They were a bunch of civilians—nerds, to be exact—with a government contract and a gamer’s enthusiasm for engaging one another in geeky battles. However, there was nothing the least bit redeeming about shooting a young girl right in the face.

“Collin? Hello?”

“I c—” Collin said, choking on what felt like the worst word in his vocabulary. He was in way over his head, and he realized that now. The NEWT program was better off in the hands of trained soldiers than privateering civilians, just as their opposition in the SWCC had been arguing, all along.

“Alright, dolphin time’s over, buddy. Move over.”

Collin felt J.J.’s hands snatch hold of his headset, as Jill yanked the plug on his out-of-body experience. His arms felt too weak to resist. The strong cocktail of blood and adrenaline that once filled his head had gushed down into the pit of his stomach, and he felt like he was going to be sick. When he opened his eyes, Collin found himself surrounded by a very disappointed team.

J.J. hauled him out of the pilot’s seat. He pulled the Mindbender Rift over his own head, and adjusted the visor. “Jill, patch me in.”

“It’s too late,” Takashi said. “SEALs beat us to the punch.”

Collin staggered over to the periscope, and grabbed hold of the sweaty controls. He did so more for physical support than to be of any further assistance to the mission. However, what he saw in the viewfinder snapped him back into character. Through the spraying wake off the bow of the SEAL gunboat, there was a sneering face that he knew all too well. It was none other than the spearhead of their military opposition, a warrant officer and deep-sea specialist who harbored a special kind of hatred toward the NEWTs. He’d managed to block them from training anywhere near his jurisdiction, which was here, in the heart of the Yellow Sea. A bad situation had just gotten a whole lot worse.

“Mad Hatter’s on board,” Collin said.

“You serious?” Takashi gaped up from his radar screen.

The foreboding presence of Miles Bent in Shanghai’s field command base was akin to a rolling thunderhead through that labyrinth of corridors. While Bent disliked civilians working for the military, he particularly despised the NEWTs, because their techy approach danced smartly around those primal confrontations that epitomized his more glorified and straightforward style of combat. Over the years, the so-called “Mad Hatter” had leveraged every ounce of his clout in the SWCC in an effort to crush the NEWT program out of existence. Rumor had it he’d earned his nickname by decorating his barracks walls with the hats of vanquished enemies, and rumor further had it that he’d cleared a spot on his trophy wall once he decided to make dismantling their program his pet project.

“Topside, give me a visual,” J.J. said. “Dolphin’s moved out of position.”

“I can’t see anything,” Collin replied. The Mark VII had swerved right into his line of sight. The gunboat fishtailed back and forth, as if the pilot’s intention was to block his view of the situation.

“Jill, switch my feed. Rowdy’s gone too deep.”

“Pepper’s in a good position,” Takashi said.

“Switching feeds.”

“Bingo. Pepper’s on. Got a visual on multiple targets. We’ve got pirates in the water, boys and girls. Arming cannons.”

“They’ve spotted the SEAL gunboat.” Collin zoomed past the oscillating bow of the Mark VII to steal a glimpse of his teenaged girl, who was swiveling her roaring chain gun right onto the SEALs. No hesitation. Looked as though she’d been shredding people with flying lead for the better part of her young life. Collin began to feel a bit like a schmuck. It occurred to him that if any SEALs were wounded or killed in action on account of his failure to take her out, then that was going to be something rather sour to chew on for the rest of his life. The SEALs returned fire. Flames spewed from the Mark VII’s deadly armaments, chopping the corridor of seawater between the vessels into foam.

“Something’s wrong,” J.J. shouted. “I can’t see!”

Collin pulled away from the scope, and gawped at the view on the overhead monitor. Torrents of bubbles spiraled up through a swirling crimson cloud. Round and round, the camera spun. Round and round. The glowing orb of the sun waned faintly with every pass until the monitor faded into blackness.

“Switch feeds!” J.J. gripped the sides of his pilot’s chair as though he’d actually felt the spray of bullets that had ripped through his dolphin’s body. His stricken reaction was shared by every member of the team. This situation had somehow been overlooked in all of their training exercises. They’d failed to ask themselves what would happen to a pilot, if a dolphin was killed while the two were cerebrally synched. “Hurry! God, I’m going down!”

“You’re right here, buddy. Don’t believe it.”

“Takashi? Which dolphins are still with us?” Jill’s voice was cracking.

“I can’t tell. They’re all in there, but …”

“Switch my feed!”

“Switching to Moxie.”

J.J. arched his back and screamed. He clawed at the visor of the Mindbender Rift headset, as though whatever sight was being streamed into his brain was actually burning his eyes. The overhead monitor was a cauldron of fire and foam. At the red heart of the inferno leered a hellish face, with lips peeled back in a joker’s grin. All the dolphins were smiling, too, even as they burned. That was the irony of dolphins. Like sad clowns, they always appeared to be smiling, and they were wearing those false smiles to the grave.

“They thought those pirates in the water were us,” Collin said. He felt like he was going to be sick. “They thought it was time to play.”

“They’re burning alive!” Jill began to cry. “Do something!”

“There’s nothing we can do!” Ripping the headset away from his eyes, J.J. slammed the technology against the floor. He leapt up from the pilot’s seat, palms pressed to his forehead, and stormed off in the direction of the cabin. As big and intimidating as he was, the former boxer had one of the softest hearts on the team.

Collin left the periscope. He strode up to the window, and stared in horror at the raging horizon. Swarms of drones spiraled like motes of ash over a flaming sea, where the submarine was slipping beneath the waves. Everything on the surface was left to burn. The bad guys had escaped. The dolphins were gone. The Mad Hatter had won.

“It’s over. We blew it,” Takashi said, shutting down his hologram displays with a single wave of his hand. “The NEWTs are finished.”

“They never saw us. No one did.” Jill thumbed tears from her eyes. “The world never even knew that we were here.”

****

With the bag of precious canisters clenched in his teeth, he seized the baboons by their scruffs. The beasts screeched with indignation as they plunged together over the bulwarks, and down into the elemental fury. They didn’t linger long at the surface. He dove, dragging the hysterical apes with him, down into the deep. Bullets hacked at the water all around them, lancing past their swimming forms like pale spears. He took both of their chains in one hand, and used his free arm to thresh the water. Glancing back over his shoulder, he was amused to see how out of place baboons looked beneath the sea.

He first encountered the hideous apes on the Burmese coast, just six days ago. They were tethered to the pole of a palm wine merchant’s tent, where they grubbed about in the dirt, grunting like hogs, and flashing their fangs at anyone who so much as glanced in their direction. He could hardly stop laughing at them. From the moment he’d first gazed upon those awful faces, he knew that those baboons were coming back to the submarine. They were special gifts for his employer, a man with an insatiable interest in deadly exotics, and in the terror that such monsters inspired in weaker men.

One of the baboons pulled its way up the chain, and sank its fangs into his forearm. He gave both animals a smart shaking for their trouble. They would suffer this small inconvenience before beginning their pampered lives in their new owner’s compound, deep in the heart of Mongolia. Wrenching the pair of knuckleheads along by their chains, he scissor-kicked in the direction of the submarine.

A staccato of dull impacts filled his ears. Another phalanx of white spears stabbed downward from the heavens. One struck him dead in the chest. The impact slammed the breath from his lungs in an eruption of silvery blobs that wobbled toward the burning surface. A frigid jettison of water blasting wildly against throbbing chest brought him back to his senses, and he realized that a can of moon juice had saved his life. One canister had taken the brunt of the bullet, and its steel skin had been punctured. He could feel it knocking around inside the sack, spinning and tumbling, as it released its pressurized contents into the sea.

The sub looked so far away, and there was no chance for another breath of air. The surface world was a ceiling of moiling flames. When he’d first hatched the idea of raiding the patrol boat with a couple of chained monsters at his sides, it had seemed like a pretty wild gimmick. However, bringing them along had perhaps been a poor decision. They were only slowing him down. One of the baboons began to spasm in unnatural ways. Its eyes rolled skyward, and its fangs snapped at the salty torrent of fluid rushing into its lungs. A burst of bubbles escaped his nostrils. It was kind of funny to watch a baboon drown.

Then, it came to him. Like the spirit of some fallen friend, it slid out of the gloom to quell even the baboons with a portentous moment of wonderment beneath the waves. Here, met different creatures who never in the whole of their lives should’ve chanced to look upon the other. Its laughing eyes, its toothy smile, it appeared barely able to contain its amusement over some darkly private joke.

With his free hand, he snatched hold of the little handle on the side of the creature’s vest, because at once, he’d fallen in love with it. He would have this creature as well, or he’d drown with baboons clenched in one hand, and this thing in the other. There was some remarkable intelligence behind that dark eye that peered askew into his own, almost as though this creature knew of deeper shared connections than his human mind was able to grasp. Oh, but it was true, because as though his new friend had performed the same trick a hundred times, it knew just where to take him. With a powerful thrust of its flukes, they were off, rocketing toward the submarine.

Titan Wars: Rise Of The Kaiju is available from Amazon here.

Table of Contents

- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty