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“Thank you, Uncle Ornix. I knew you would understand. Ow!”

I clip him over the ear.

“This cannot go on as it has. If you want to keep the game running, fine, but you need to adapt it so it is a unique creation and not giving away the secrets of our world. I assume it is limited to the geography.”

“You can assume that, Uncle.”

“Make the changes, Equinox. You will not leave this room until you do.”

“Uncle Ornix!”

I seal him inside his chamber with a ward that will not allow him to pass.

“Uncle! I need to pee!”

“Code fast,” I growl at him through the door.

CHAPTER 4

Melissa

The moment he left me alone, I started trying to think my way out of the situation. Because logic might get me out of a nightmare of my own making—or someone else’s making.

“Okay, seriously,” I tell myself. “Think about it. You’re in the game somehow. Maybe that’s chemical. Or maybe one of those very weird things that happens, that they portray in movies. You know that movie. That old movie. The one Dad likes. Train? No. Tron? That doesn’t sound right.”

Talking out loud doesn’t really help, because it makes the insanity feel even more deep and intense.

“Okay. If I’m in the game, I’m in the fucking game,” I continue. “Even if reality is fake, you have to pretend it’s real. Or you just lie down and die.”

Having given myself an unhinged pep talk, I think about what it means to be in the game. If I am level one, then I’m way out of my starting zone. I have no specialties leveled, I have no EXP,my talent tree is bare. New players normally spawn in the forest, chop wood, craft some weapons, farm some basic herbs and materials, and go from there.

If what Ornix says is true, then he brought me here. He abducted me, and that makes him the bad guy, no matter how much I like fucking him. It’s too easy to let good sex cover red flags, like the fact that my much older new boss has stolen me away from everything I know.

I decide I am going to find my way home, whether that home is getting back to my world, or breaking whatever psychotic episode I must be entrenched in.

He told me not to go out the door, so of course that is what I do. I slip down a big curving staircase made of the same sand gold hue that the rest of the castle is made from. There are tapestries on the walls, but I do not stop to admire them. I pass door after door, slip into a side passage, avoiding guards. I almost expected some to be stationed outside his chamber, but I suppose he likes the privacy, and I imagine he’s not actually expecting to need protection in his own castle.

The Golden Keep is a hell of a dungeon in the game. Once you enter through any of the six main ways in, you get instanced into one of the wings, which are usually full of hostile mobs.

Fortunately, I haven’t run into any of those. The castle seems somewhat empty. It is much more detailed than the game version, though, and I’m half expecting to see those monsters spawn at any time. Any one of them could kill me at my current level, and given the fact I am wearing a weird white spun-gold slip dress that has to have an armor rating of 0, the danger is extreme. Might have some bonus charisma though, who knows.

In some respects, I am not entirely lost. I played DFE for months when it first came out. It was the last year of high school and I was getting bullied like crazy, so I withdrew socially and threw myself into online pursuits.

I was in one of the first raids to bring Ornisius, the apex dragon, down.

It starts to click. Ornisius. Mr. Ornix. How did I not spot that right away? That’s legitimately insane. My boss is quite literally the final boss of the world I am trapped in, the most powerful creature in it, with so much health and so much damage that you have to download special toolbars to see them properly.

This can’t be real.

But Tempest spoke to him. I was at her house. And she’s definitely real, and I’m real, or at least, I was last time I checked.

I’m still sure this is some kind of a fever dream, but I guess I may as well make the most of it. You can’t get hurt in a dream, after all. And maybe if I do die in the dream, I’ll wake up and find myself passed out in the sun on Tempest’s dad’s third favorite vacation house.

I decide to start looking for some gear. Best way to do that is to find some chests. Picking the nearest door, I crack it open, peer inside to make sure nobody is in there, then slide into it, closing the door behind me.

There’s a set of beds all lined up, one next to the other, with chests at the foot of the beds. A guard room. Perfect. Quite literally just what I was looking for. Maybe a coincidence. Maybe a little too convenient.

I start checking the chests. Three of them are locked. I must have missed lock picks somewhere. Probably back in the starting area? Is there even really a starting area in this play-through? Regardless, I should go back up to the bedroom to gather what I can.