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M elissa

I’m running away again.

This time, I don’t steal a horse or fuck around wearing clothes that don’t fit or make sense. This time, I have the royal tailors create armor for me. It’s cloth, because I intend to run a magic/enchanted build. It will make me squishy to damage, but I don’t intend to be in melee range anyway.

“Ornix wanted this to be enchanted with mage armor?”

“Do you want me to get him and have him explain it to you himself?”

I am taking a gamble here, hoping that acting regal will make these people not ask questions.

I have everything ready in under a day. It’s hard to be this patient, because I know how fast you can level when there’s nothing else to do. Every hour I spend here is an hour they’re making their way up the gulch.

He’s slightly concerned, but Ornix still isn’t taking the threat seriously. He doesn’t understand how dangerous a group of humans with endless spare time and nothing to do but destroy things really are.

I can’t keep trying to tell him and having him not listen to me.

He thinks it’s all over because Nox is stuck in the human world, but I don’t trust that either.

I think this is all part of Nox’s plan. I think Ornix is being cornered and he doesn’t even know it.

The keep he considers to be a bastion of safety will turn into a trap before he knows it.

I’ve got to save him. And I want to save the people, too. I don’t want to see any more death. Ever. I’ve seen more than enough to last a lifetime.

I choose to sneak out just before dawn, when they day is the coldest and the darkest. There’s not much happening in the keep around that time. Dragons are stimulated by light and do not like to be cold. So it is under dark that I take off from the highest point on the keep.

A moment after I have done this, I realize I might have made a mistake. Should have taken off from the ground, but I wanted the momentum, I wanted to sweep and soar and be far away in moments, not bumbling around near the ground for ages.

I am, however, falling.

I try to extend my wings, but the wind is pushing them back rather than letting them open. I’m in a nosedive. Directly to the moat, which will not be deep enough to make a comfortable landing in.

So this is how it ends. Huh.

I thought I’d feel more.

The tips of my wings twitch. The span opens up, and suddenly I am skyward bound, grazing the moat enough to get my toes wet, but flapping and rising and heading into the distance while still very much alive.

For the first time in my life, I use my wings. I fly. It’s harder than it looks, moving the front edge so I can keep elevation is effort. I bet birds do it without thinking, but I am doing this on manual, and it’s as hard as trying to think your way through walking would be.

I’m fucking scared that I’ll be spotted by someone and Ornix will come for me before I have the chance to save him.

Fortunately, that doesn’t happen. I turn toward the gulch, the narrow mountain pass that sits where the forest ends and leads through to the mouth of Ireforge.

The gulch is full of vicious beasts, and they should slow the party down somewhat, though I’m not sure about that because the fact that they wiped out every living thing in the forest means they’re probably strong enough to deal with them.

As I fly over the gray rocky gulch, I smell the stench first. Bodies left on the ground, not despawning like they would in a game world, but rotting and being fed on by the few aerial scavengers that were not also killed on the way through.

I see rock hounds, lava brethren, some mountain cows, a lot of goats, all killed like so many digitally unimportant beasts. These people don’t care about what they’re doing, what horrors they leave behind. They are single-mindedly focused on leveling. Nothing else matters.

I keep flying up the gulch. We really don’t want them getting past Ireforge. The next zone will give them flying mounts, and the idea of a human horde who can take to the skies with magical weaponry is absolutely terrifying.

Should have stopped them here. Should have mounted a massive defense in one of the narrow spots and wiped them out.

Not that I want anyone to die, but I’d rather they died than exterminated an entire realm of existence because they don’t get that consequences have actions.

Or is it actions have consequences? The air is too thin up here. Thinking is challenging.

The gulch opens up into a red sand biome, where dust storms rage across distant deserts. This is truly a beautiful realm, and I wish that I was not disobeying the orders of my mate in order to see it. I wonder if he’s noticed me missing by now. Probably.

Ornix

The sun has risen, the day is reaching its zenith, and my mate is missing. Again. This human is going to live the rest of her life in the damn dungeon when I find her. Nobody seems to have seen her. I wonder if Nox somehow opened a portal and dragged her through.

I do not know what the world is anymore.

Everything I thought I understood about my power seems to be shifting of late.

My nephew has gone from a disappointment to a danger.

My ability to walk between worlds has been destroyed.

And my mate, who should be quietly gestating my firstborn, is yet again on some adventure of her own making.

One of my generals, Azure, waylays me as I storm through the castle looking for Melissa.

“Sire, the humans are massing outside Ireforge. Alarin Forgefist has requested our aid.”

“Of course, send a contingent. Erase the little bugs from the face of the earth,” I respond immediately, but in a somewhat distracted way.

I am aware that the human infestation is being regarded with a more or less universal horror, but I am more worried about where my mate is than where all the other little beasts are.

“Yes, sire. Would you like to accompany us?”

“I need to find my mate.”

I am becoming tired of saying those words. I sound like an elderly, forgetful human who cannot find their keys.

“Is it not possible that she is at the battle already, sire?”

I look at Azure, my jaw dropping for a brief moment, as I realize that yes, yes, it is possible she is already at the battle.

“I would suggest, sire, it may be worth accompanying us. If she is not there, your aid would certainly ensure total victory. The humans cannot be allowed to spread. What if they were to start to breed? There could already be small pockets in hidden areas. We need to rout them from the realm.”

“With the exception of my mate, of course.”

“Yes, sire, naturally. With the exception of the royal mate.”

Melissa

As I fly out of the gulch, I spot the party immediately. There’s at least thirty of them, and I bet there’s more because I bet some of them are out farming for materials or just fucking around.

They’re preparing to push on Ireforge. Just as I suspected. They’re so fucking predictable. Not an original thought in their heads.

Thwip! An arrow sails past me.

Fuck. They’re going to kill me before I have the chance to talk to them at this rate.

These fucking arrows are dangerous. There’s something about the way human hunters act that indicates they have no fucking brains whatsoever.

I land behind a very large rock and start shouting. If they kill me for trying to help them, that’s going to suck a lot, but what can you do?

“Stop it! I’m human!”

“You’ve got wings!” someone yells back.

“It’s not my fault!”

They start arguing with each other now. “A human with wings? A harpy! She’s probably rare. We need an elite!”

“I’m not an elite, I’m a business graduate,” I shout out.

“What? Where from?”

“UCLA.”

“UCLA?”

“Yeah.”

“Not Berkeley?”

“No. Does it matter? If I come out, are you going to kill me?”

“Come out anyway. We have more than enough people to flank and surround you. Better to let us have a clear shot than risk getting winged. Get it?”

“Stop being a psycho, Tony,” someone says. “Come out. We won’t hurt you.”

I come out to face a group of people of all ages, genders, hair color, and attire. They haven’t been able to do any dungeons like they would in the game, because there are none here, which is good because they’d be even more leveled than they already are.

“I’m Melissa,” I say. “I got brought through a portal a while ago.”

“You must be one of the testers,” someone says. The crowd speaks with dozens of voices all at the same time.

It’s hard to differentiate everybody. The leader of the group is a middle-aged man who is balding and looking absolutely at home in Gulch Plat armor.

“You should group up with us, we’re about to run Ireforge. None of them seem to see us coming, which is weird and useful.”

“They don’t see you coming because they’ve never met humans before, and most of the realms are settled and peaceful. Nobody expects anybody to show up with a quiver full of arrows and a heart full of malice.”

Everybody looks faintly insulted by that, which makes me realize I am on the verge of losing the crowd. That could be very dangerous if I don’t keep everybody on my side.

“What do you guys think is happening?” I ask the question curiously. I still don’t know how Nox got them here really. The guys at the party didn’t really know what was happening, or at least, we didn’t ask them about it. We fixated on the how and not the why.

“We’re here in the World Championships. The best players in the world all got sent here to this simulation, like VR, but better. You know. Nobody got here without being selected in the tournament.”

“Maybe she’s got the Holographic sickness?”

“Maybe she’s part of the simulation.”

“So you all came through the same door?”

“Yeah, we went to the Equinox HQ and got put into the simulation,” a cheerful-looking young guy says. He’s fresh-faced, with a neck tattoo, and I am starting to realize I actually don’t want any of these people to end up hurt.