My head throbbed from repeated usage of abilities. [Blink] was bad enough due to losing my anchor in space repeatedly. It required me to look at a target location and imagine being there, and how the game picked that up was often beyond me.

Then again, [Morrigu’s Gift] transformed shapes, and this entire world was in my head and digital coding. Advanced science clearly didn’t care one whit about piddly human limitations. My head shook slowly and tried to focus on creeping through the dungeon.

Dusk sniffed at the ground ahead of us. I watched the area around us in case he might fail to notice something, but Dusk normally had an insane level of awareness. He could find any critter smaller than him in a ten-mile radius, and now he was bigger.

“Any place close, Dusk?” I asked him. We kept running into single monsters but nothing big yet. Those other players had entered behind us and things would start getting bad soon.

“Yess. Tell your lizard to find a place quicker.” Viper said. His eyes shifted constantly as we turned corners.

Our route led down a hallway, through four junctions, and to a two story drop towards the dungeon core. Dusk leapt with barely a flutter of wings. I [Blink]ed. Viper had to use the handholds one level at a time.

“He’ss not going for the bossss, iss he?” My partner asked.

“No.” I paused and checked all the names in the dungeon. No players were nearby, but others were going down as well. “You’re not, right Dusk?”

The larger imitation dragon turned to me then rolled both eyes. One shoulder rippled as if to suggest the choice was mine. A huff of steam came out from his nostrils and he went back to tracking a scent.

“That’s probably a no.” I smiled and tried to [Act] confident. One hand stayed on [Morrigu’s Gift] anyway in case Viper tried to stab me in the back. I felt uncomfortable with him behind me, but couldn’t let him get closer to Dusk either.

If I died, that was fine, but if Dusk died, I might lose my mind again. Seeing him, Jeeves, and Treasure all vanish in one go had been devastating the first time. For a few brief seconds, I lost rationality and forgot these virtual worlds were only real on the surface.

Going down a floor made it even harder to see. Less light dripped through this floor's ceiling. The creepy glow that illuminated Viper’s eyes was reduced to almost normal hues.

“Is your beasst ssure?”

Dusk laid back an ear and growled.

“He’ss ssmart.” Viper remarked but didn’t apologize. He didn’t seem like the sort who really gave a damn about others. Those mostly white orbs made me feel distrustful too.

“I told you.” I said, sticking up for one of my few friends in the world. It was odd that the people I got along with best only existed in a digital landscape. He looked like an animal but felt far too complex to be compared to Mister Sniffles.

This dungeon felt too easy. We were a little over an hour into these depths and so far there had been no signs of traps or complex puzzles.

“This place can’t just be monsters.”

“I’m not ssure. It’ss getting harder to ssee though, I worry what might be in the darknessss.”

That worried me too. Without a scroll to light things up, we would be in for trouble. Maybe I could wrap up the convict’s garb and light it on fire.

“Do you have anything we can use for a torch?” I asked.

Viper shook his head. He probably hadn’t been desperate enough to use clothing as a torch yet. It ruined the durability, and would screw up the few points such an item would be worth. Maybe he had an ability to see in the dark.

I grumbled to myself about being robbed of all my items again. They didn’t even give me a discount on the [Sinner] status after taking my gold and goodies.

Dusk stopped and perked up. The bobcat sized dragon swiveled a long neck around to peer behind us. One ear flicked forth as something in the distance drew his attention. Viper looked confused, but a short blade sat clutched in each hand. His body crouched low to the ground.

I couldn’t tell what had my friend so enthralled. A hand sat ready with [Morrigu’s Gift] and played through one of the other convict's words earlier. Average players died down here, and that couldn’t be from team combat alone.

Dusk started hissing and my stomach dropped. When he made those little angry squawks of noise, our situation would get bad.

Out from behind one of the earthen dungeon walls shuffled a much taller creature then our prior enemies. This human-shaped monster had legs that were nearly impossible to separate from the dim background. Flesh and muscle were missing from a shoulder down to the thigh.

Skill Used: [Identification] Race: Heavenly Body Clone Traits: [Imperfect], [Undying], [Cannibal] Details:

Heavenly Bodies belong to a race that visited from another universe. There were only three that ever reached the surface of [Arcadia], this creature is a mad man’s attempt at channeling power from the [Tower of Stars] above in order to recreate these beings.

This creature is attracted to the dead bodies of lesser [Heavenly Body Clone]s, and cannot be truly killed. There are rumors of a method to destroy them but the exact method is unknown.

“Sshit.” Viper said.

“You see that? It’s impossible to kill!” I didn’t like that sort of message. In all my time playing this virtual reality game, monsters who didn’t die had never come up.

“Ssshit, seven dayss of running?” The other man voiced a thought completely different from my own.

“Viper, throw some body parts of the lesser versions at it!” I snapped at the part serpent player. Being trained to react suddenly to Continue Online’s crazy world had taken a lot of time with Shazam. “Dusk, we need that safe spot!”

Viper didn’t throw anything, but instead turned and ran ahead of Dusk. A single slit of eyes was visible as he hauled down the hallway. Dusk squawked then tried to shuffle off as well. I debated hitting the creature with my weapons for a few seconds too long.

Voices but they moved fast. The shuffle from before must have been an act because a few seconds later long arms were grasping towards my body. The [Speed] and [Reaction] weren’t enough without [Awareness Heightening] to completely avoid fingertips raking across my chest and face.

That’s not how manicures work

Total Health Remaining: 70%

I spun, got a line of sight on where Dusk was fleeing around the corner, then [Blink]ed. My landing footwork was poor, the limp from before ached just wrong. A second thud of pain jolted my shoulder as I tumbled into a wall upon reappearing.

Loud angry walrus barking echoed behind us. I managed to keep [Morrigu’s Gift] in one hand and pulled myself upright with the other. My mind rapidly tried to piece together what was happening as we ran down another corridor to the dungeon. Another [Heavenly Body Clone] came out ahead of Viper, bones shone through on its arm with an obvious glow.

Viper cursed then leaned back in a slide to get under the creature's outstretched arms. Dusk spat a ball of fire which made the creature bark in anger. I ran by, stopped, spun and held my hat down. Both feet went up to tippy toes and one hand behind me for a moment.

“Grrh!” The monster shouted in my face. I smiled, feeling pleased with the resulting system popup then chased after the others.

Running with Style

+2 [Attractiveness]

+1 [Coordination]

“Viper! We need to get rid of the loot from them!” I shouted ahead.

All those little monsters had been easy because they were bait, stupid players would pick up the loot and attract these other monsters that couldn’t be killed.

“No! We have to figure something out! Or we’ll never escape being convicts!” Viper said. “You disssstract them! I have all the itemss!”

“They’re following you!” I said while stomping over a legless monster. Part of me wanted to leave the snake man behind and try to kill the boss. That was another possible solution that had flashed through my brain, but I had hoped to use Viper as a decoy for the other players.

“Sshit!” He said while hugging the right side of a corridor to get past yet another of the swift moving glowing creatures. “Sshit, sshit, sshit, I hate thiss game!”

Dusk got distracted and dove for one of the half-bodied versions with no legs. Fire bubbled in his mouth as he chewed on the thing's face.

I felt disgusted and increasingly dizzy. Dead [Coo-Coo Rill]s had been more than enough. Voices help me if he brought one back to the Atrium. He couldn’t do that, could he? If I had to log back into Hermes to see these weird decomposing clones piled around me as presents I might just barf.

Other people got energy bars to keep track of when they used skills. Most of my issues were in mental stability. Dusk’s sudden veering to the left distracted me just enough to run into a wall again. Dimly lit areas were the bane of my sanity. There were seal barks in the distance, and a pair of shuffling feet ran past me towards where Viper had gone.

Dusk looked up from his promptly conquered monster and tilted his head. Question marks appeared then faded out. I stared at him for a moment then back down the turn we had missed. All the [Heavenly Body Clone] creatures were rushing down the hall, at least six of them now, but none seemed to care about a slightly overweight man wearing grubby leathers.

“Did you know? That they would chase Viper over us?” I asked Dusk.

He shook his head then belched a round of fire onto the large arm torn from a lesser [Heavenly Body Clone]. Both small eyes glanced up to the left as chewing commenced. Images of cupcakes appeared above his head.

My head shook in resignation. During my next Atrium trip, I would buy the [Messenger’s Pet] an entire bakery. First was getting to a peaceful spot in this dungeon. I couldn’t see well enough to even make a simple turn. It was time for some light, at least until a better option presented itself.

The convict’s orange and black clothes were torn to shreds rapidly. Hopefully they would issue a new pair. I paused after each rip to listen, in case my actions alerted something. No one arrived and I was able to complete my makeshift torch technique.

Next would be the annoying part.

“Fire, fire, burning bright.” I chanted the few words of [Lithium] in my head. This spell took me the better part of a week to pronounce correctly. “I need to get a little light.”

Mana drained while a swirl of energy rippled up my arm to form a ball. My face twisted into a frown. Even chanting this one spell made me feel dirty. Each [Lithium] spell vocalized took bad poetry. Summoning Dusk had been far easier. Maybe I could learn circle magic instead, once I wasn’t a prisoner in some dungeon hiding from half dead failure clones.

I smiled and shoved the small ball of light at the fabric. What would Beth think of that? Her Uncle Grant, wielding a giant sword and drawing spells on the ground. Maybe I could find a [Brawn] booster and really do some damage!

“We need a safe spot, Dusk. Then I’ll buy some cupcakes for my Atrium, okay?” I said, happier now that vision wasn’t an issue. At least until these rags burned through. Continue Online was generous enough to use my [Survival] skills and extend how long a makeshift torch might last.

He jumped up and obsidian muscles rippled in the dim light. He poked his head around the corner where Viper and many other creatures had gone. There were no cries in the distance. I briefly pinged the area with [Sight of Marcari] and saw the Traveler moving quickly hundreds of feet away.

We were split up, and maybe that was for the best. [Sight of Mercari] made my head throb painfully. Too many twists and turns, [Blink] uses, and wall collisions gave me a [Mildly Disoriented] status. In short, all actions that required [Focus] would suffer a penalty until I recovered.

Viper’s safety was secondary. I felt dirty letting the other man be a lure, but saving him while trying to escape unkillable star zombies probably wouldn’t go well. Then we would all be failures.

I planned on taking care of real life business, then getting my messages, [Treasure’s Chest], and maybe then looking into Viper’s survival. It was just a game, so he should be okay. A little in-game death wouldn’t break the man.

We moved briskly. Dusk sniffed ahead using his long neck to peer around corners before moving forward on tiptoes like a cat sneaking along. I followed after him carefully with torch in hand, but a bit less like an exaggerated cartoon character.

Dusk wasn’t omniscient and led us right around a corner into more [Heavenly Body Clone]s. The lead monster was a half rotting humanoid with disproportionately large limbs. Its eyes stared right through me. I held still while trying to control my breathing.

The creature turned. Flesh had been hollowed out in chunks all the way down to the bone. I could see where it looked like tattered remains hung off as if something had torn at the creature. It left, Dusk moved on, and I tried to figure out what might have torn into an [Undying] creature hard enough to leave missing chunks of flesh.

This was just a game, but there were times I really wondered exactly how disturbed a mind needed to be to invent these dungeons. I knew it wasn’t game designers. Human hands and minds had very little to do with the creation of Continue Online. Still, Mother, or the Voices, had stolen a lot of ideas from the real world.

Dusk looked at me, then towards a pocket in the ceiling. He jumped up, much like a cat would, wings on his back fluttered and the front paws scrambled. I ran over and tried to get under him for support. With a grunt, I pulled my own virtual body up into the ceiling pocket. The flooring seemed solid enough under our combined weight. Earth and stone lined the walls. This might have been a storage area, or maybe an attic, assuming underground dungeons needed a reason for such a place. Maybe some wild animal dug it up.

“Are we safe?” I asked Dusk while looking down below. This place was high enough off the ground that those legless ones shouldn’t be able to get in. The ones with arms and legs didn’t seem to care since we weren’t carrying dead parts from the others.

His wings rippled with a shrug. There was a thought bubble near Dusk’s head that had a small hourglass running out of sand.

“Okay, so, for now. Then, I need to take a few minutes and get breakfast.” I reached over and scratched the bigger [Messenger’s Pet] between the ears. His eyes closed briefly and a few quiet chirps escaped. “Dusk, are okay babysitting my autopilot?”

He nodded then I quietly said, “ARC, log me out.”

The machine responded and Continue Online fell away. Sweat saturated my real life clothes. EXR-Sevens bands around my legs and wrists stimulated muscle movement in conjunction with ARC programming. It had been a few weeks since anything strenuous happened, and [Awareness Heightening] was a taxing ability.

I remotely bought walls of pastries for my Atrium then slowly limped around the small two room house. Clothes were changed, teeth brushed, and a few energy bars shoveled into my face. Old sheets were yanked off, and a new one fastened into place with the aid of modern technology. Fifteen minutes later, and much more refreshed, I was ready to log back in.

Only there was a message beeping that I had somehow missed. I clicked over to it and saw Miz Riley, the Vice President of Trillium, pop onto my screen. Her eyes looked a bit more worn than last time, and her hair seemed unkempt. The woman seemed to be having a rough day for reasons unknown.

“Mister Legate, you are to report to headquarters next week. This is not optional, failure to do so will see your ARC account suspended and all Trillium products recalled.” She said. The message clicked off immediately after.

Color drained from my face as the words sunk in. Had she figured out what was going on? Xin, Voices above, she could be caught up in this nonsense. I took a breath and tried to calm down. I would learn more by just relaxing and making this sudden appointment then anything panic would teach me.

One step at a time helped me focus. One moment flowed into the next. It worked for dancing. It worked for keeping life stable. It would work for dealing with whatever Miz Riley would throw at me.

A second message cropped up and the caller ID changed my stomach clenching feeling into confused butterflies. I pressed the button and tentatively said, “Babe? Is that really you?”

Of course it wasn’t, but she answered anyway.

“Gee,” Xin said. “How are you?”

“Confused.” I said while trying not to laugh in happiness. There was a face on the video display which linked to my ARC. That face belonged to a woman who had been recreated in the digital world. Other than holding the woman until I passed out, we hadn’t directly spoken.

I never felt like one of those guys who could always use the right words. My eyes just stared at the projection and one hand reached out slowly as if dreaming. For months after her passing, I had fired up videos from the internet and dreamed of happier moments, only this wasn’t a simple recording.

“It’s me.” Xin said with a smile, then her face winced for a moment. She looked even smaller in the video screen as she put up one hand. “Well, you know.”

“I know. I was, I think-” My mind was all jumbled. There had been a lot of preparation in my head for getting back to the cubby hole with Dusk then penning letters back and forth forever. The idea that Xin could simply call me felt odd.

This felt good, almost like before she passed, but at the same time, I worried this may be a dream. I had nightmares that started with this sort of scenario. My butt hit the floor as both legs gave out.

“It’s weird, isn’t it, Gee?” She asked. “We used to call each other, just like this. Like it was just a lunch break conversation.”

I saw the screen tilt and a scenic view of earth came in from behind. Even the setting was like before, calling me from a space station in orbit. Out of reflex, I looked up towards the skyline before remembering this was digital. There I sat, on the floor of my bedroom, next to the ARC, talking to her.

“It’s okay, Gee. I’ve missed you too.” She smiled briefly.

I nodded and tried to remain calm. Keeping both eyes open and focused was rapidly growing impossible. Everything blurred. It wasn’t seeing her, or holding her, this situation was so normal it hurt.

“Where are you, are you in, in like, cyberspace, no wait, that’s silly.” I hung my head while she laughed. The response made me smile a little. “Are you okay?”

“I am, for now. Things aren’t too good here, though. The others are on edge.” She sighed. “It’s, kind of scary to think about.”

“In space?” I blinked for a moment trying to find people in the background. She laughed at me and I went from broken down to sheepish while rubbing my head.

Maybe it was the exhaustion, or not having caffeine yet. Technically I had spent almost three hours in a virtual world running away from half made creatures and killing two players. It felt real enough that I had no clue where my mind was at.

“No, here. But we don’t have to talk about that right now. How are you?” She said. I listened to her voice and felt nostalgia. It sounded just right, a little sweet, quiet, but when she laughed it was loud.

I smiled at her image. “Good, I’m good.” We hadn’t actually just talked. The last time we met, a little over two weeks ago, I had been too happy for much in the way of words then passed out.

We talked. She told me a bit about what had happened on her side of the ARC. The Voices were apparently a mixture between annoying, amusing, and confused. I laughed when Xin ranted about James’ irritating questions.

Another fifteen minutes of easily forgettable conversation slipped by in a daze. I told her the place we used to eat had closed down. We spoke at length about Hal Pal, she knew him in a different manner than I could. That led me to the other question I had avoided penning in our letters.

“What’s it like?” I said. “Being, digital?”

“Most of the time it feels exactly like being human did, I think. Is that weird? Only it has been hard to go anywhere until recently.” A hand waved towards an outer space view behind her. The suit she wore wasn’t an astronaut-approved, instead looking like a playful summer dress. “I got permission to design my own pocket to be more comfortable in. I can even walk out there if I want to. But years of training screams at me not to.”

That made me smile in response. Xin had loved being trained, performed by the books. Even our time together tutoring for math had been amazingly proper. Getting close to her took years of friendship and lucky coincidence.

“Do you like it?” I asked.

“It’s not Mars, but I get to explore if I want to. James let me go down to [Arcadia], and be a Traveler like Jeeves did, sort of.”

“But Jeeves-” My face felt pale. Jeeves had been an offshoot of Hal Pal, but now it was essentially an NPC tied to the video game world of Advance Online. He had also been threatened with real life death due to a serious disconnect from his Consortium.

“No, not like that, Gee. I, sort of have an Atrium here to return to if my character dies down there. Maybe, that little friend of yours is a better example?”

“Dusk?” I asked.

“He’s cute. Though I expected a cat. You used to talk about Mister Snuffles all the time.” She wrinkled her nose briefly and looked to the side.

“Sniffles. Mister Sniffles.” Little moments like this made me laugh. Xin had never gotten the name correct, before, either. “He was a nice cat, but Dusk is very neat too, and bigger than a cat now. He’s been very helpful.”

Aside from that time he set off a hive of evil wasp hummingbird creatures. Or the time he led me into a cavern with [The Ooze], or when he pissed off an entire swarm of bats with glowing red eyes. Once, he managed to get a monstrous bear well beyond my Rank at the time, and kept taunting it as we ran.

“Where are you in the world?” She asked after I got distracted. “I’ve been wandering around for a few weeks.”

“I’m-” This was awkward. “-doing labor in a video game chain gang?” My head shook and I sighed. “It’s neat that they tried to build a way to punish people, but it seems to be at the whims of those with a specific ability.”

“What? Who would dare make you a prisoner?” And that was my fiancée. She was often curt with other people, and fierce in defense of those close to her. Once she had punched me, hard, for saying something about her mother.

“I’m not sure how it happened. I was between games, but I assume King Nero captured me after, I tried to bring you back.” I stared at the screen and tried to clear my thoughts on the matter. “Which all seems kind of pointless now, since here, there, you are.”

“It’s not that easy, Gee, not by a long shot. The stuff going on over here is one hundred times more complicated than anything I trained for, and at the same time, it’s almost instinctual.”

“It’s hard to imagine,” I said.

“The hard part is setting up all the network safeties, it’s like, lining a room full of traps, or digging a ditch. For now I can’t stray too far from Continue Online’s programming, I guess is the best wording.”

“That sounds confusing.” My head hurt thinking about it. Did the virtual world really equate ditch digging to firewall construction? “But, you can play Continue? Do you even want to?”

“I wanted to discover something new, Gee. The moon had no mysteries. Earth was mostly explored. Mars was the next frontier. For now, I’m playing to reach the moon in Continue. I have it on good authority that there’s a secret there.”

That sounded like a fun goal to pursue. With scrolls of [Recall], game world time dilation, it should be possible to deliver letters and help her with a fantasy world space program. Or maybe we could go to Advance Online and travel the stars.

“Once I get out, I want to help. Beth told me there was an entire guild trying to get up there. Maybe we can work with them.” I didn’t mind playing the game if it allowed me to spend time with Xin.

“I can’t believe they let you be punished for trying to bring me back. It was their idea.” She said.

“The Voices don’t control everything, they just oversee it, at least, that’s the way I understood things.”

“Well, that’s still ridiculous.” Xin’s accent showed through for a moment. I often forgot her parents were first generation immigrants during the war.

“That’s the price.” I shrugged. My end result had been getting Xin back, and that seemed fair enough. “I ran into a friend, sort of, doing it, though.”

“Who’s that?” She looked happy, the smile would be faint to anyone else, but to me, it stood out easily. These expressions were hers. The more we talked the easier it was to think of her as real.

“A man named Wyl, and I think my old starting town is in trouble. If you’re, playing-” I didn’t know what else to call it. “-can you check on the town?”

I was going to try and access a few people's accounts, but not many players stuck around the starting cities after their first few weeks. Most were encouraged to go elsewhere by the system. It felt weird to think less than a day had passed since starting Continue Online again.

“I’ll check the town, but I have a better idea.”

“What?” I asked.

“How about a jailbreak?” Xin smiled at me through the display. Her body slowly turned end over end in a virtual low gravity environment.

In a way it made perfect sense that she immediately lept to such an insane proposition after barely an hour of talking to each other. Around others, she focused and didn't talk much, but during our free time together we had ended up in all sorts of places. This woman, at her core, had always been far more quietly adventurous than I. It required a certain type of regimented madness to risk outer space. Digital or not, she made me feel complete.

"Sure. Let's do that." I chewed one lip while resisting outright giddy laughter. My face broke with a return grin.