They carried Maya out of the city and into the wilderness. Maya tried screaming for help, but that only provoked the man holding her chest and arms into clamping her beak shut and holding it firmly.

They were fast. Not as fast as Rominian, but far faster than Maya.

She couldn’t do anything.

She couldn’t do anything.

This was her Seer save, meaning she was lower-level, without any of her equipment. She hadn’t even gotten around to buying armor yet, so all she had was a stupid bow and useless arrows.

She cast Spark. Once. Then her captors stopped, forced her hands behind her back, forcing her fingers into an intertwined pose, then held them that way. Very tightly. She took advantage of their distraction to scream for help again, but they were away from the city and no one heard.

“Sevard! Sevard! Are you there? I’m bein—mghp—” Her captor stifled her beak with the hand wrapped around her chest, still gripping her clasped hands tightly with the other. It made for a much less comfortable trip, putting strain on her shoulder due to the awkward pose, but at least this was a game world. The discomfort was mild, noticeable but not actually painful.

Sevard didn’t answer. Either he was still on a different server, or he was in on the scheme, or she was doing it wrong.

She mentally flicked through her inventory, looking for anything she could use. Dust of recall? But her hands were tied, and even if she could throw it into the air, she wouldn’t be able to step through it.

Dying her feathers wouldn’t help.

Diviner’s orb? If she could get her hands free, if she could get her beak free, maybe? She still had one consultation left.

Trickster’s orb, probably not. He wouldn’t very well save her from his own minions. And right now there was the possibility that he wasn’t aware of her status. She’d reloaded an earlier save. Player quests still existed, but she hadn’t had her conversation with him in this version of reality yet.

Last time, he’d only noticed his curse after she finished his quest with Sevard’s help. As long as she didn’t do anything to attract his attention, at least he wouldn’t be actively making things worse.

She continued to twist and struggle, but the few times she slipped free of one or the other, they were too fast.

They carried her west of Kalyx City, behind the player homes and mansions and into the wild hills beyond.

Congratulations! You’ve discovered Zone Two: Western Wilds. Visit the local leypillar to unlock this zone as a teleport destination.

By then the bay had long since disappeared behind them and the territory grew wilder and less uniform. The hills turned from lush and green to pale and scrubby, then harsh and rocky. She thought she glimpsed white mountains away to the north, and guessed that that must be the Frozen Clefts. So they were currently in the wild area between Nirsym and zone six.

They continued carrying her for hours, heading roughly west and south. They didn’t come to Nirsym. Instead, the hills eventually leveled out into scrubland, then semi-desert.

Congratulations! You’ve discovered Zone Four: Nirsym City. Visit the local leypillar to unlock this zone as a teleport destination.

They didn’t talk, and she couldn’t. She eventually tired of her futile attempts to escape and lay limp, desperately trying to think of any way out of this. Right now, the Oracle seemed like her only chance.

But how much of that thought was her misfortune trying to urge her into doing something utterly idiotic in front of a pair of trickster minions?

Then they reached a rocky outcropping, and beneath it a crack in the stone, a narrow rift, and darkness beyond.

Maya didn’t know how they knew where they were going. Once they descended more than a minute it was absolutely black.

She resumed her struggling, jerking about in hopes of catching them off-guard, but only managed to free one leg. She kicked at her captor twice before he recaptured her limb and gripped her tighter than before.

She growled in helpless frustration. They couldn’t truly hurt her, but they could certainly make things extremely aggravating.

And to what end? Dragging her halfway across the map, for what purpose?

Then she saw a faint rippling of light, and instinctive panic tightened her chest.

Darkness. Water. No.

She twisted, trying to bite at the hand holding her beak closed, and jerked wildly, but Zarene wasn’t lying. They knew what they were doing.

Tears leaked from her eyes, dripping down her beak. This was so stupid! Who cared this much about the favor of a deity in a game?

Then they dropped her, and she barely had time to register she was falling before she hit something firm and yielding. Her fall slowed and she sank slowly through the faintly gleaming substance.

She’d held her breath instinctively, but whatever she was immersed in didn’t feel like water, didn’t feel like drowning.

Her panic calmed, at least a little. She couldn’t see much, apart from random glimmers of rippling light, everything was black.

“Hello?” she tried to say, but the action let the whatever in and she found herself coughing instead.

It felt oddly familiar.

She took a hesitant breath. It wasn’t water, but it wasn’t entirely air either. Something thick and light at once, like snow or dust.

And then she realized.

Magic.

They’d thrown her into a pit full of magic.

And she still hadn’t reached the bottom.

She had to be wrong. There was no way a fortune like this was just lying around for thugs to throw people in.

She breathed in more deeply, and though it still felt strange and thick she wasn’t choked or suffocating.

Maya tried to swim upwards, but the darkness and glinting light remained unchanged. She couldn’t tell if she was sinking or rising. She continued her swimming motions for several minutes without ever reaching the surface, and finally admitted defeat.

“Hello?” she called again, now that she’d become accustomed to the strange thickness of the magic in which she drifted. Her voice gurgled and echoed, words distorted and unclear.

“Zarene, Zarene,” she tried to say, but nothing happened. “Viros, Viros?” Either she’d gotten the name wrong, or the distortion of magic was strong enough to make the trickster communication link fail.

She snapped her fingers to ignite a Spark. It didn’t work. She took a breath, tried to push the magic out into a Wind Whisper. Nothing happened.

If they wouldn’t work with pure magic, what about her abilities?

She glanced at her stat sheet, then her breath caught. Her energy was dropping. Fast.

In a rush, she cast a Spark. It flared to life briefly, then died almost in the same instant. Wind Whisper felt like it worked, but she coludn’t see or feel any change. She poured all the rest of her energy into an overcharge, pushing it downward in hopes of propelling herself up.

If anything changed, she couldn’t discern it.

“Well, this is ridiculous,” she said, words coming out completely incomprehensible. “What kind of interrogation is this?”

She waited, but no one answered. Her energy didn’t regenerate.

She toggled PVP off. The usual notice about it taking half a minute to go into effect appeared. She waited thirty seconds. The toggle completed. Now she was safe from player attacks. Yay?

Her energy still didn’t regenerate. She drifted helplessly in a sea of priceless, useless power she could never use.

Maybe they expected her to crack in isolation?

It could work. She was already beyond frustrated, bored and helpless.

She curled herself up into a ball, then brought out her Diviner’s Orb, careful to keep it hidden in case anyone was able to see through the darkness and magic around her.

“Can you save me?” she whispered. Her voice came out garbled, and the orb didn’t activate. She hissed angrily and returned it to her inventory, then tried again with the Trickster’s Orb. Nothing.

Dust of Recall?

She pulled the item out and tried to toss the dust into the air, but instead of scattering into a portal back to town, it hung in a dark clump in front of her, blocking the occasional flickers of rainbow magiclight, until she grumbled and shoved it back into its pouch.

Well. It seemed that the player population was quite ingenious when it came to imprisoning each other. Every possible failsafe bypassed, just by chucking her into a massive pool of magic.

Except one.

Heart racing, Maya brought up the main menu.

Log out, she thought.

Are you sure you want to exit World 9352? Your active player slot will be reserved for 12 hours.

Yes, Maya verified, just to see if it worked.

A minute-long countdown appeared, then the darkness of the magic pool was replaced with the blackness of deep space. She drifted amid countless planets and stars and galaxies, worlds flickering on and off in a constant shifting tableau.

World 9352 was highlighted in gold, along with an ‘active player’ tag. So she wasn’t trapped. She could always quit, if she was willing to give up on her plans entirely. Go somewhere else if it became unbearable.

That was good enough. She had an out, if she needed it. But for now, she’d play along.

With a quick mental tap, she logged back in.

Her character drifted where she’d left her, and for a moment Maya wondered if this was really worth it.

Surely they wouldn’t leave her here indefinitely. For an interrogation to work, they had to ask questions at some point, and allow her to answer. At that point, she could call for Sevard, or try to use the Dust of Recall, or her Diviner’s Orb if she could do so safely.

Besides, it was rather peaceful here. Surrounded by magic, insulated from everything and everyone.

It wasn’t the way she’d have chosen to wait out her negative luck penalties, but there were worse ways to pass the time. It was certainly more comfortable than the hours-long trip across the world.

Maya closed her eyes and focused on her slow breaths. She relaxed her body one piece at a time, pushing away tension until she drifted freely and unimpeded.

Her energy never did start to regenerate, but it wasn’t like she could cast spells down here anyway.

She slept.

She wrote in her journal.

“Maya Starborn, where are you?” Sevard’s voice.

She tried to call out to him, tried to explain.

“What? Are you there? Can you hear me? I don’t understand. Where are you?”

She tried to speak, garbled nonsense spilling from her beak as tears of frustration drifted off into the endless field of magic.

“I’m sorry, I can’t understand you. If you can hear me, meet me at the Kalyx leypillar whenever you can. Alright? See you soon.”

She screamed helplessly.

She meditated.

She wrote in her journal.

She read through all the status windows that she’d never bothered to figure out. She found the friends list, which had a single entry. Nudru02. Whoever it was, they were currently not logged into any world, so she couldn’t even go visit them.

“Maya Starborn, how are you doing? Are my boys taking good care of you? Decided to talk yet?”

Maya snarled something incoherent.

"Oh, sounds like you're as stubborn as ever."

Maya screeched wordlessly in fury, overriding her nemesis's voice. And did the same every time Zarene tried to talk.

Eventually, the evil trickster’s voice disappeared, and Maya was grateful for the soothing magic against her worn out throat.

She learned that there were three players and zero NPCs nearby. She activated Truth Sight, but it could only show stats on those she could physically see. Even if she did share her magical prison with others it was impossible to tell who.

She swam about, trying to reach them physically.

If her movements changed anything, she couldn’t tell, and eventually stopped.

She logged out for a while, looking through worlds to see if she could find one that would appeal to her. But she wasn’t willing to give up on 9352 just yet. She’d claimed it as her challenge to beat, her world to dominate, and she wasn’t going to run off at the first speed bump. She logged back in.

She slept.

She wrote in her journal.

She saw that the number of players had increased to four, then decreased to two. She wondered what that indicated.

Sevard called again, to tell her he was logging out for the night. “See you tomorrow?”

She meditated. She drifted in peaceful nothingness, glints of magiclight the only proof that she existed at all.

She carefully combed through her headfeathers, ensuring they were completely detangled. They didn’t tangle, but the physical sensation helped to anchor her. To remind her that she was real, at least as real as she could get.

The players increased to four again, then down to three.

Time passed. The next day ticked down on her penalties. She was one day closer to the time limit on her Standalone quest.

She wondered how the mage academy would feel about her imprisonment, if they knew about it. Would they try to rescue her? Shardlord definitely would, if he knew her prison was the biggest repository of magic in the world.

She tried modulating her voice so the distortion resulted in clear words instead of nonsense. It didn’t seem to be working, but she had nothing better to do, so she continued to try.

Her energy never regenerated.

Sevard called again, clearly worried. He listened to her garbled attempt at a reply for several minutes, throwing out random guesses at what she was trying to say. Finally she gave up speaking, and after several minutes of her silence he stopped talking.

She managed to say ‘Several’ while trying to say Sevard.

She slept.

She watched the number of players increase; decrease.

She managed to say ‘Sevard’ once, but not a second time. She screamed in frustration, the sound coming out faint and unclear.

She logged out and angrily scrolled through available worlds, then logged back in once she was calmer.

She meditated.

Something slapped into her, startling her awake.

Maya groped around for the object, sure she’d been dreaming. But there it was. A lumpy spear? She grabbed it and pulled, sliding herself slowly upward along its length. She climbed faster, pulling herself up hand over hand, scrabbling with her feet to increase her speed.

Still, movement was slow, painfully slow. She finally reached the surface after nearly a half hour, then fought to escape the magic. It tugged at her, held her close, didn’t want to release her.

Then she broke the surface, and took a gasp of fresh non-magic air for the first time in days.

She’d forgotten how light it was, how clear and easy to breathe. She felt light, buoyant as she climbed the last few meters of the knobbly climbing stick.

Then she reached up, and instead of more climbing spear, she grabbed someone’s hand. She recoiled at once, but whoever it was grabbed her arm before she could fall. She wasn’t sure if she should be grateful.

“Come on, up you come,” said a surprisingly gentle voice. She couldn’t quite tell if it was male or female. “Let’s get you washed up.”

Right. She was covered in magic.

She clicked her fingers to ignite a Spark. It ignited, flaring up in a sudden rush, then before she knew what was happening her whole body was on fire, sparkling and hissing and she screamed in surprise, though it didn’t hurt, and took an instinctive step back.

“Woah, careful there,” said the voice, and someone grabbed her arm. She couldn't see who past the blaze of fire surrounding her, just their vague outline past the flickering flames. “Ouch, you’re a bit fiery, aren’t you.”

She was pulled back from the edge, then released. She stumbled and collapsed to the ground, dazzled by the unbearable glow emanating from her entire body.

Then the insanely overpowered Spark burned out, and she was left blinking in darkness, dazzling shapes burned into her mind.

“Well, that was different,” said the voice mildly. “Efficient though. I’m assuming it doesn’t burn you like it does everyone else?”

“You’re right,” Maya said, and the words came out clear and sounded like language. She laughed aloud with relief, then hastily brought her Dust of Recall from her inventory.

Before she could throw it into the air hands gripped her wrists.

“None of that, sorry. Drop it.”

"Load game 5 new specialization," she said, just in case. Nothing happened, as she'd expected.

"Heh, you really think we'd build an otherwise perfect prison in a safe area?"

Maya shrugged. "Doesn't hurt to try." She put the Dust of Recall back into her inventory.

“No, drop it.”

“It’s mine.”

“Do you want to go back down there?”

Maya shrugged. “I don’t care. It’s nicer down there anyway.”

The voice chuckled. “If that’s the way you feel. Next time, maybe you’ll be more cooperative.”

Then she was shoved backwards, and landed with a slurp and barely a ripple, sucked back down by the eager magic that rushed in to surround her.