Page 17

M elissa

Our time alone ends with a dramatic shriek, the cry of a dragon.

A shadow passes overhead, followed by a roar. We are no longer alone. Several dragons are approaching, having apparently been searching for us. Having spotted us, they land.

One looks like a smaller, younger version of Ornix.

He hangs back, looking a little guilty. There is also a bright, red-scaled dragon, who turns into a humanoid with red hair, bright green eyes, and a muscularity that is impressive as hell before he shrugs a conjured black leather jacket over his shoulders.

There is magic in this place. I wonder if I will be able to wield it.

I’d quite like to try. The other one is a steel gray-blue creature who transforms into a humanoid with some obvious age to him.

His hair is swept back over his head in a silver cascade, and his eyes are bright blue.

He makes me nervous, because he’s so imposing in the way quiet, smart men are.

Actually, it might be because he reminds me of the dean at college.

“Sire, it is good to see you,” he says.

“Arkos,” Ornix says. “Good to see you. All is well. I have obtained my mate, the horse, and something else besides. We will speak of it more when we return to the castle.”

“I’m Equinox,” the younger version of Ornix says, sidling up to me. “I’m his nephew.”

“Equinox, why do I know that name… Oh, my god, you’re the developer!”

“Yes,” he grins, flashing white fanged teeth. “I coded and wrote the original game and now there’s a whole company. Ow!”

The last part, the ow, comes from the smack he gets from Ornix.

“This boy is the reason there is so much trouble.”

“What trouble?”

“You, for starters, running off because you think you know the forest.”

“Video games can be a bad influence,” I agree. “But he made something that has brought people from all over the world together. And I love the game. And if he didn’t make the game, and I didn’t run off to the woods, then you wouldn’t have the fifth seal now, would you.”

All eyes go to Ornix.

“You have the fifth seal?” The red dragon speaks.

“Yes, Jak. I have the seal. Someone was trying to send it north using kobolds as couriers. It was not a good choice.”

So there’s Equinox, Jak, and Arkos. Equinox is obviously the scapegoat of the castle.

I can tell already that he gets blamed for everything and has learned to shoulder it without thinking about it too much.

I feel a kind of kinship with him already.

The pair of us look at one another with sidelong glances as the other three enter into a serious conversation about the seal.

I drift away a little and sit on the grass. Equinox follows me and sits down next to me.

“So,” he says. “You’ve been taken as a captive by my uncle.”

“Yeah,” I laugh. I didn’t expect him to be that blunt about it. Ornix acts as though this is all completely understandable and reasonable. Equinox seems to know that nothing that is happening right now is okay by human standards.

“Are you okay?”

“I am okay,” I say. “I’m… okay.”

I don’t want to say too much to him. He’s a stranger, even if he’s a sympathetic one.

“You’ve played the game before, huh.” He grins.

“Dragon Fire Eternity? Oh, my god, so much! I love it. And so much of it seems to be true to the real world.”

“Yes. Uncle is not happy about that part of things. He’s asked me to make some changes, so there’s going to be a big content drop in a few months. What class did you play?”

“I was healer for a while, because my group needed one, but I always liked DPS. I played Dragonkin.”

“And now here you are,” he says. “I knew the second you went to the forest you had played before.”

“I tried to level, but it’s not as easy for real. Killing real things is much worse.”

“I never really intended for the game to be a tutorial for the realm, but it looks like you picked up some gear anyway.” He nods his head at my eclectic outfit.

“Kobold stuff. I need a proper weapon, though. I managed to sharpen a stick. That’s not a good way to do anything.”

“Could be alright for fishing if your dexterity was high enough.”

“I don’t know what my stats are, but they feel like they’re all zeroed out.”

Equinox laughs at my joke. It’s nice to talk to someone who feels like they’re on a similar level to me. He might actually know what it’s like to be human. He’s someone who has built a whole digital world for people to play in.

“Why did you make the game?”

He shrugs. “For something to do. I get bored. We are the dominant faction in the realm. My uncle is a strong and capable leader. There is little call for a young warrior like myself. I can do all the training missions in the world, but at a certain point I needed to do something with my mind. People need me in the way nobody in this realm does. Here, Ornix is in control. In my version of the realm? I’m in control.

And I have subjects who get to do things they could never do in their own world. I love what I’ve made.”

I smile at his passion for the game. “You should. It’s really incredible.

I didn’t get to play it as much once I made friends in college, then I had to go out all the time and stuff, but your game filled in so much of my time when I didn’t have friends, and I even met some really cool people in it. ”

Equinox grins. “It’s amazing to have a player here. I wish I could have more people see this place and realize that there’s more here than they could imagine. Could you see it? Hordes of specially handpicked human players running the forest dungeons for themselves, then moving on?”

“That would be crazy,” I say. “And I’d get to see some other people. I don’t think I’m going to get to see anyone like me for a very long time.”

Equinox looks at me solemnly, and for a moment, I wonder if I have said too much.

“Do you want to get back to the human world?” He mumbles the question to me.

“Oh, my god, yes. Can you help me?”

“I have a portal I use for work. I can sneak you into it once we all get back to the Golden Keep. I don’t want you feeling trapped here. I’m not saying Uncle Ornix won’t come for you anyway, but it’s there.”

I feel a bit guilty, plotting to run away while Ornix discusses the seal with his advisors, or whoever they are.

But I do want to get back to the human world.

I want to get back to sanity. I want to find myself among people.

I barely know the creature who has taken me as his mate, and the fact that we have spent almost the entire time we’ve known each other having sex doesn’t change that.

“That’s very nice of you,” I say. “Won’t it get you in trouble?”

“Everything gets me in trouble. I’m trying to bring this realm into the modern age. We can’t keep acting as if the human world is still stuck in medieval times. Taking some human female and ravaging her over and over until she spits out a baby isn’t right.”

“It’s pretty wild.”

“Wild isn’t the half of it. I couldn’t put that in the game.

It would get the whole thing taken down.

People don’t realize that the hunger of a dragon and the greed of a dragon extends to more than jewels.

If too many of our kind were to enter the human realm it would be a disaster.

It is better our numbers stay low, even though Ornix and the others insist on trying to make me take a mate. ”

“You could find someone who likes you, who wants to be ravaged?”

He snorts. “Who would do that?”

“A lot of people, I think, of all genders.”

He smiles. “You’re sweet. I’d like to help you escape before you get pregnant. Nobody deserves to be stuck in this realm. It’s fun for a game setting, but year after year for eternity? It’s basically hell.”

Escaping is appealing for many reasons. When Ornix fucks me and breeds me, it is hot as hell, but the notion of actually giving birth, of mothering? That feels like a lot right now. I planned to have a family one day, but I always assumed it would be in my late twenties, with a human man.

“Come and find me when you’re back at the keep. My rooms are on the floor below his. Go downstairs and open the door with the three-horned dog on it.”

That’s the symbol his game company uses. I would have recognized it anywhere.

I nod, daring to feel a little excited.

I miss the world I came from. Already. It is a hollowness inside me, a certain amount of being completely unsettled all the time because this is not where I belong. I was not made in this world and to some extent, I think I feel it trying to eject me, like a splinter from skin.

A shadow falls over us, depriving us of moonlight in the shape of Ornix.

“What are you two talking about?”

I feel an instant surge of anxiety. What if he heard us? What if he already knows about the plot we were just hatching?

“The game,” I say.

“Nothing,” Equinox says.

Ornix’s golden gaze roams over the pair of us. “I do not know that I like the two of you talking,” he says. “The combined energy is far too chaotic. Equinox, get away from my mate.”

We both get up, probably looking as guilty as he has made us feel. Equinox drifts to the back of the other two again, and I am drawn to Ornix’s side.

“This is Melissa. She is my mate,” he declares. “She has taken my seed three times here in our realm, and is sealed to the bloodline. Let the others know the Golden Keep has a new mistress.”

“Of course, sire,” Arkos says. “It is an honor to meet you, Melissa.”

He makes me shy. Not just shy, but a little nervous.

There is something in the energy of the older dragon that makes me feel assessed and weighed and perhaps even found wanting.

I try to tell myself that’s just because of my issues with authority, but I do not really know if that is the truth.

These dragons must be used to humans being abducted every few hundred years or so.

I wonder what happened to the other ones that had been made immortal before me. I should ask, if I remember.