When you’re playing video games, you don’t typically expect anything wild to happen. I mean, sure, there’s always the times when you finally get graced by the hands of the RNG gods, or when the speedrun leaderboard gains a new number one. Or, when a new update drops and it’s every bit as cool as you hoped it would be. You know, those are pretty wild, I guess, but not “wild” wild, you know?

I don’t know about you, but I don’t expect the wild things to happen when playing video games. I don’t expect a bloody gang fight to break out below my window while grinding for a rare drop. I don’t expect to grow a third eye in the middle of a boss fight. I don’t expect the apocalypse to happen or flies to come raining down from the sky, along with all the cats and dogs and who knows what idioms people come up with. Who knows, you might expect that to happen, and I’d say you’d probably be very disappointed after all the times it doesn’t.

Okay, maybe my examples were a bit too exaggerated. There were no third eyes or gang fights, and probably no apocalypse. All that happened, was that I played my favourite video game, beat a boss and then went to sleep.

Seems pretty normal, doesn’t it? Allow me illustrate exactly what happened:

It all started about a year ago, when I was still just your average 32-year-old office worker, lover of video games, 17 year avid fan of one called Briarwood Rebirth.

Admittedly, although I say I played BR for 17 years, I doubt that what I’d been doing for the few years up to that fateful day could really be considered “playing”. It’s more of logging in every day, doing my dailies, admiring my collection of equipment in the game.

Then logging back out, less than five minutes later.

If I had extra time, I’d sometimes fight a miniboss or two, maybe clear a dungeon. Nothing really beyond that.

If we were talking about past me, I was a bit more invested than that. Got as far as speed running bosses in my leisure time, trying to find new ways to break the game in favour of a new time.

But— we can go over that another time. All you have to know now, is that no matter how many bugs I tripped on my seventeen year journey through Briarwood Rebirth, I never expected anything more disastrous than the usual game crashes and trips through the floor. That is, until that fateful day.

On said fateful day, I was pulling an all nighter struggling to clear the final level of the main campaign.

17 years is a long time. You might wonder why I’d gotten as far as speedrunning but hadn’t even cleared the final boss yet.

To answer those questions, I’m going to have to give you a bit of background on the whole deal.

So the thing about Briarwood Rebirth, or BR, is that there are two endings to the main campaign. After saving the princess and the kingdom several times, the main protagonist now has to chase the big bad all the way out to his hideout in the wastelands. Then you scale this big fancy demon tower filled with high level cronies until you reach the top.

Then, the elf princess, Rosa, gives you a choice. You could enter the final boss room and fight the big man himself, seal him away, and lose your account. Or you could run away, get married and live happily ever after.

Yes, you didn’t read wrong. Lose your account. Fight the big man and you get reset to level one with all your stuff gone. Get married and your account is safe, or at least until you decide you don’t mind resetting and go for the true ending.

When something like this happens, it’s needless to say that it’ll cause some waves in your fandom. Some fans left. Some started speculating. Some forerunners tried beating the boss, posting regular updates about how hard it was on the forums, then one day disappearing from the forums altogether.

Well, I’d preferred my account intact, at first. There were all the memories there.

But then, I realised I had no reason not to.

After all, there’s no point in hanging on to a game you barely really play anymore. Might as well give it the proper send off it deserved.

“Champion, yo-“

“A dangerous endea-“

“Once, sealed, yo-“

“Never come ba-“

“Return to the Cap-“

“The Decay-“

“Together, we ca-“

I smashed the spacebar fervently in an attempt to skip through the dialogue preceding the boss fight.

By now, I’d replayed this section so many times that I essentially knew Rosa’s lines by heart. Most of it was Rosa once again emphasising the danger of trying to confront the Decay alone, and how I would probably lose my life in the act of sealing him away for good. The last bit of it was the proposition that we go home without finishing the job.

While it might have been captivating to hear the first few times, at this point, I just wanted to cut straight to the chase.

“Champion, are you sure you wish to seal the Decay?”

Rosa stared at me from behind the text box, her golden locks falling in front of her face, her hands clasped in front of her chest. Despite having supposedly been through a hellish round of fighting alongside me, there wasn’t a single scratch on her pale skin. Her eyes stared out at me, all watery and tragic as she awaited my answer.

I sighed and cracked my knuckles. The small flurry of pops sounded unusually loud amidst the heated whirring of my computer.

“Yes.”

Rosa smiled sadly in response to the choice, her furrowed brows portraying an expression of tragic farewell.

“I see… In that case, Chosen One, I pray we meet again in another world.”

Her piercing blue eyes were the last to go as the screen faded to black. As my character was teleported to the boss room, what took their place were a set of similarly piercing eyes. The difference was that these eyes were red like hot coals.

The eyes disappeared behind the jagged edges of an elaborate mask shaped like moth wings as it crystallised out of the darkness, followed swiftly by a spiked obsidian crown sitting atop a mop of bleached hair. The camera panned out to reveal a thin, crooked man dressed in black, hovering in a decrepit hallway paved by stone tiles. The boss title drifted onto the screen, my character loading in along with it, signalling the beginning of the fight.

The Decay

Harbinger of Ruin

And here we go again.

I immediately threw my character into a roll as the Decay unleashed an AOE fire attack right after the title card disappeared, the invincibility frames from the roll just enough to survive the wave of flames that covered the entire boss arena.

Then 10 mana for each of three successive Groundpounds for more invincibility frames to counter the grid of slow moving thorns that followed soon after the flames, the Decay warping to the end of the long corridor.

A few seconds in and it was already a demanding task. This was why nearly nobody wanted to fight the Decay in the final chapter, terrible rewards aside. His attacks were unfair, he attacked often, and he could dodge your attacks much more easily than you could dodge his. Just about every skill in his repertoire was either a massively destructive AOE attack, or a homing lifedrain one.

The first time I attempted the fight, I’d died before I could even react.

Now… if I was remembering correctly, there should be a guaranteed lifedrain attack after two successive insta-kills, so… Acid or Binding?

The ornamental brambles on the Decay’s robe snaked up in a telegraph that didn’t even last a second before shooting forward, homing in on my character.

Binding it is.

I spent 10 mana in teleporting behind a nearby pillar just in time for the attack to smash into it, keeping an eye on my MP as I went.

40 mana used… Okay start, could have been better if he didn’t waste my MP with Thorns. But overall still acceptable, since he had already used the move that teleported him to the opposite end of the boss room right at the start of the fight.

That would make 30 seconds to get him in place for my finisher and a considerable amount of MP left for dodging.

I spammed Short-Range Teleport, traversing the length of the room and appearing in front of the Decay, pausing halfway to dodge through his Acid attack.

Within range, the Decay began to switch to lifedrain melee attacks. Right, left, right, feint, left, I dodged his swinging staff based on the telegraphs. It was especially hard given that I was using a melee build – I couldn’t get in range to attack without getting in range of being hit.

One, two, three, four. On the last part of the attack sequence, I stopped dodging and cast Chill. The spell fanned out in a spray of ice crystals in front of my character, catching the Decay nearing the end of his attack animation and covering him in a thin sheen of blue. My HP bar took on a purplish hue, health points bleeding out for five seconds before returning back to its original green colour.

Did not get stun-locked, and I managed to hit him. Good, I could afford to take 5 more non-lethal hits, apply 5 more stacks of slowness, before my HP got too low. 2 more stacks, if I hoped to get it done before he teleported back to the other end of the room. Hopefully 3 total stacks would slow him down enough.

We continued this song and dance, all the way down until the Decay had had all 3 slowness stacks applied to him. It was a short amount of time, about 20 seconds, but in my fit of concentration it felt like 20 minutes.

Short was good though. The longer the fight went on, the more likely my concentration was to lapse. When my concentration lapsed, I would get hit. The restrictions of my character class also meant that I didn’t exactly have enough HP to make up for that kind of mistake.

Every hit counted. So rather than whittle him down bit by bit, the plan was to finish each phase off quickly, taking healing potions in between. And to do that, some extra leeway was needed.

About 5 seconds left before he teleported.

The Decay began his melee attack sequence again, that total of 5 swipes and maximum 3 feints. His attacks were comparatively much slower than before, with those 3 stacks of slowness applied. Lucky me, this was a good run after all.

I switched my current weapon, a hook that reduced spell cast cooldown, to my major damage dealer. 200 MP left, that made for 20 teleports. Hopefully this was enough.

Left, right, feint, right, right, feint, left.

I slashed away at top speed while teleporting under, over, between his attacks, anything that would allow me to land continuous hits on him without needing to waste precious seconds on the dodge animation. At the top of the screen, the boss’s health bar began dropping at a pretty good speed, down to 10% HP within seconds.

Almost…

The Decay teleported.

Heatwave.

“YOU DIED”

Huh. Maybe all in one go was too much to ask for. Not to mention this was just phase 1.

Rinse and repeat, late into the night.

Thirty attempts, forty, fifty… the number kept going up as it got later.

By the sixtieth try, I could consistently get to phase three. By the eightieth, phase four. By the hundredth, the end of phase 5 was in sight. By the hundred and first—

“I WILL… BE BACK” the Decay rumbled, the seemingly never ending spawn of HP bars exhausted at last. I pumped my fist in the air and cheered as loudly as socially acceptable for 4am on a Sunday before settling back in my chair to enjoy the fruits of my labour.

Shaking with every step, my character approached the Decay framed by a dramatic cinematic border. In his hand was a shining dagger, my beloved Howl of the North Wind, that had accompanied me through my 17 years.

The Decay was on his knees, the hems of his cloak smoking as the tapestries and banners in the hallway burst into flame. He didn’t seem to have the strength to move or make a last stand. Still, his posture was defiant as my character approached.

“This!” my character heaved what little strength he had left in his legs and kicked the Decay in the chin, sending him tumbling backwards. “Is for the lost prince!”

“This!” a stomp down on that metal mask, fracturing it into pieces and revealing the sunken, bloodshot eyes beneath. The Decay shrieked with pain. “Is for for my family!”

“And this!” my character brought up the dagger and plunged it into the Decay’s chest. “IS FOR PRINCESS ROSA!”

A crystalline solid began emerging from my character’s hands and along the hilt of the blade. I recognised them as salt crystals, the type that only the Human character class could make and use safely in game. Just larger, and with little rainbows sparkling inside of them. Soon, both my character and the Decay were engulfed in shining white salt.

“NO! THE ANCIENT SEAL! THIS CANNOT BE!” the Decay screamed louder, before being promptly shut up by the salt crystals covering his mouth.

The shot faded to black, before playing a cutscene of what seemed to be the aftermath of sealing away the Decay. Rosa entered the hallway where the final battle had taken place, much older and with a queen-like air to her. Behind her scurried a minime of my character, looking funny and out of place next to her elegance.

They approached the salt crystal statue of my character heroically stabbing the Decay with Howl of the North Wind, and bowed their heads in reverence.

Then it all faded to black once more, and the credits began to roll.

My joints popped as I stretched in my chair. I hadn’t noticed how stiff I’d gotten, sitting hunched in front of the computer for several hours. Definitely not good for my back, it would probably be sore when I woke up again later today.

I waited until the credits ended, and I was bounced back to the title screen. I was tempted to log back in and see whether my character would actually be reset, but I was tired, and I knew could always do it later.

Shutting off my pc, I shuffled over to my bed. Through the half shut curtains above my head, I could see the first rays of dawn starting to peek through.

Oh well. I did anticipate an all nighter, after all. I placed my glasses on the bedside table, rolled under the sheets and drifted off to sleep….

And— awoke in a somehow familiar yet also unfamiliar place. Though “awoke” might have been the wrong word for this occasion, since it looked like I was still dreaming. Unless I’d somehow been kidnapped and brought to a hallway spookily similar to the Decay’s boss room, that is. I picked myself up off the stone floor and took in my surroundings.

Stone pillars stretched up to meet high arched ceilings, and torches blazing with some sort of blue-green demon fire were attached to the walls. The light from the torches cast a spooky flicker over the hallway, making it look as if the pillars’ shadows were dancing. One of these shadows in particular seemed to be moving around more than the others, growing and shrinking without the same rhythm that the others did. In fact, it wasn’t even a pillar that was making the shadow.

My eyes followed the long band of black stretching all the way to the back of the room, ending in what looked like a shadowy figure rummaging around in a pile of boxes. The line of torches stopped a bit away from where the figure was, so in the dim light all I could make of it was the shape of its crooked back.

I began walking closer (Why not? It was a dream), the floor feeling like ice beneath my feet.

As I got closer, I started to hear a sort of quiet whistling tune coming from the figure. It sounded like Amazing Grace. And it sounded weird. It was definitely whistling, but it wasn’t the sort of whistling that I’d heard before. Pitch perfect, it was, with no gaps in between for any intakes of breath, and a quality to it that sounded sort of like a flute.

Now, despite the, in hindsight, clearly non-human entity that was standing before me, I didn’t really think too much about it at the time. I just started wandering towards the dark figure, hoping to get a better look.

Who knows what exactly sparked this particular spiel of impulsivity. Maybe it was just the curiosity of the little kid in me. Maybe it was the idea that I was dreaming. Maybe it was just that my brain hadn’t caught up to what I was perceiving yet, which happens a lot.

I drew closer and closer to the figure, torchlight flickering all around me. The moment I got close enough to see the powdered, moth-like quality to its cloak, the figure turned around suddenly, and I was greeted with a ghastly scare.

Admittedly, it’s rude to call someone a ghastly scare, but that was how it felt at the time. This someone was a boy of about 16, 17 years old, with tangled hair like seaweed that fell over his gaunt, withered face. His bleached skin clung so tightly to his skull that, at first glance, he looked like a skeleton. A very scrawny and knobbly skeleton, whose joints bent at all the wrong angles whenever he moved.

It didn’t help that the room was still dimly lit despite all the spooky lighting, making his sunken, red eyes easily mistaken as hot coals in empty sockets.

Said sunken, red eyes were now surveying me somewhat sleepily through half closed eyelids.

“Oh, you’ve finally arrived,” said the boy. “I’ve been waiting for you for two whole moons.”

“Waiting?” I asked, more than a bit disoriented and probably sounding a tad drunk. “Two… moons? Days? Are you that client from Friday?”

“Client? Oh… No, no,” the boy’s eyes widened, and he shook his head. “I’ve just… been awaiting the arrival of a Chosen One such as you ever since the Decay was sealed. In… accordance with the agreement, of course.”

I didn’t really know how to respond to that. Partially because most of it sounded like nonsense and partially because I was still half asleep. Or fully asleep, if we’re still following the assumption that I was dreaming.

So, I went with the most appropriate response in this situation.

“What.”

The boy opened his mouth to speak, but our conversation was cut short by what was possibly the loudest mob I’d heard in my life coming from beyond the hall.

The ruckus from what sounded like a hundred elephants stampeding to the sound of trombones and cymbals was so loud that the walls visibly wobbled from the force of it. Miraculously, despite how shaken the walls were, the ceiling didn’t come crumbling down on us.

The boy blinked, then hastily turned back to his stack of boxes and began hefting piles of things at me. A misted over mirror went into my arms, along with a sword, a heap of what looked like medieval clothes, and a handful of tiny metal pieces.

“Show these to her Highness. She’ll tell you what to do.”

“Who?” I had to raise my voice to shout over the ever growing din. “And what is going on outside?”

“Her Highness!” he shouted back, before poofing dramatically into a cloud of black smoke and vanishing through the cracks in the wall. “Princess Rosa!”

My second question answered itself soon after as a pair of double doors at the end of the hall slammed open. Sauntering in came the strangest looking army I’d seen.

It was a very… diverse army, with soldiers of all shapes and sizes carrying weapons made from crude bits of metal. There were some short, ugly ones that only came up to my knees, with long, warty noses and tiny, squinted eyes; and also big, round ones, that were bloated up like water balloons with small arms and legs. There were also some half man half animal ones, like the horse legged, centaur looking things that were making the stampeding noises, or the ones with insect bits, or a variety of cat or fox headed things that were smashing their weapons against their chest plates.

The army rushed into the room in a screaming, banging tidal wave, and swept past me into the wall where the ghastly scare had gone. Yes, into the wall, just phasing through it like it didn’t exist. I watched as their flag bearer, a dog sized gnat with two hairy human legs, ran past me shrieking, towing a ragged looking flag three times its size behind it.

In the middle of the horde, seemingly the epicentre of the whole operation, was a tall, elegant lady with the complexion of ice. She was white as a sheet, from her hair to her skin to the entirety of her eyes, and not even the flickering shadows of the hall seemed to be able to touch her. Despite her intimidating aura, her face was the vaguest looking face I had ever seen. There didn’t seem to be any defining features, nothing that would put her apart from any other person aside from her unnatural whiteness.

Even her expression said nothing, it seemed to be permanently stuck in this completely apathetic look. I would probably forget what she looked like the moment I looked away, other than the fact that she looked like she had her colours sucked out of her.

While the screaming, stampeding army ran headfirst through the wall, the lady strode over to me with the poise of rolling fog.

“Hmm,” she said, looking at me with that sort of look you reserved for staring into space. “You certainly don’t look like much.”

Sadly, all I managed was a slurred “don’t judge a book by its-“ before I suddenly, and mysteriously, passed out.

***

On a beach of silver sand, a child with hair the colour of wheat sat building a sandcastle. It was an imperfect thing, knobbly and unfinished, but the child had all the time in the world. Occasionally, the silver tide would drift in and out, taking bits of the castle away with it, the bits of sand shining like stardust before being swallowed up by the sea.

By their side, a bucket to be used as a mould, to help them shape their creation. Peering into the bucket, they saw a world full of people, people who glowed like stars.

Upturning the bucket, they placed the mould over the sandcastle, hoping once more that it would help fortify the towers against the sea. Upon removing it, however, one of the little stars fell from the bucket and onto the peak of a tower, where it lay shining, bright as a lighthouse.

The child beamed.

“Hi there, Chosen One.”