“What the? How am I?” Tony grumbled. His head was pounding and his skin prickled like he had been out in the cold for too long and jumped into a scalding shower. Minutes passed before he managed to slump himself against the wall. His eyes shot open when the nape of his neck made contact with the cold steel of the starship's wall.

No way.

His head whirled around taking in the lounge. He had landed on the floor ten feet from where he was standing when D "flashed" him. Tony's vision spun and blurred. He snapped his eyes shut and breathed deeply through his nose before bile threatened to choke him. Tony broke out in a cold sweat, the cool spots adding a "static" sensation to the burning of his skin.

He was still in the game.

This doesn't make any sense! The game should have logged me out when I went under, that's how VRMMOs work! Why am I still here? His mouth cleared of the breaching vomit, Tony regulated his breathing, taking in cold soothing air through his nose and blowing out a hot acrid breath through his mouth. He was going to need a minute.

"I know that's how your menus were activated, Demnas, but that's not how we do things in the program anymore! There are too many risks!" Auren said in a harsh whisper.

"I'd say the risk was well worth it," D's voice hissed back, "we both agreed that the kid was a natural, and if we're going to take this seriously he needs to be up to speed as soon as possible. Isn't that why you wanted me to train him?" The dull thump of metal punching into leather echoed in Tony's aching head. "I didn't manually open his menus to make him suffer."

"Why then?" Auren demanded, the sound of a hand slapping against metal punctuating the question.

"Because it happened again, Auren. I had the vision again." For a second, Tony thought he heard a pang of fear in D's voice. The tinnitus ringing in his ears corrected that assumption. "If the program is going to have a chance it needs a forerunner. No level 1 Squire just walks into the pit and takes on a specialized opponent. I think Tony's the best shot for that."

Tony cracked the sobering silence that followed, struggling and failing to get to his feet as he and the table he'd braced against crashed to the floor. Spots exploded in his vision and air rushed out of his lungs.

"Little help?" he groaned. Something impacted his chest and a warm sensation spread over him, easing the fraying static on his skin and clearing away the fog in his head. As his vision cleared, Tony noted that he was on fire.

"Shit!" he yelled, rolling across the ground, trying to put himself out before he burned to death.

Auren made him pause. "You're... you're not really on fire... it's a... it's a healing spell," he managed to get out between booming laughs. Tony pushed himself up and brushed off his tunic as the "flames" guttered out. His HP, Mana, and Stamina bars were all topped off.

"So what was all that about?" Tony demanded, menacing toward the two gods.

"What are you talking about? The healing..." Auren said, the remnants of laughter still exiting his tone.

"Manually opening my menus? The cryptic bullshit about bad dreams?" Tony practically screamed at them. He threw his arms open, waiting for an answer.

“Tony-” Auren started.

"Impact!” D shouted, cutting off the rest of his words as the starfighter rocked with a booming explosion, throwing Tony back to the floor.

“Strap in now!” D yelled, picking Tony up and flinging him toward the deployment seats. D blurred from the spot and seemed to reappear in the cockpit at the main controls; Auren slipped into the co-pilot's seat a nanosecond later.

Tony’s vision snapped into laser focus and a flashing box pulled his attention to the status bar; there was a bloodshot eye flashing underneath his stamina bar, which was emptying fast.

Buff Activated: Alarming Reflexes

Consume Stamina to Heighten Reflexes, Movement Speed, and Coordination for a limited time. Will use HP when Stamina is unavailable.

Tony burned the waning Stamina Points and five percent of his HP to slam himself into a seat, fasten the safety harness over his chest, and put on the full helmet that dropped into his lap.

Crash Helmet: This one-time armor piece will prevent death via cranial trauma one time

Note: Will not prevent death from blood loss or internal hemorrhaging

D and Auren worked in near silence; the only sounds Tony heard were coming from the now-whining engines of the craft, the furious depression of triggers, the resulting blasts, and the rapid-fire tapping of fingers on the glass.

Tony could see blossoms of flame through a small viewport against a sickly orange starscape. Viridian stars and neon planets flashed by as the fighter weaved through the chaos of the dogfight. The pair of deities shot ship after ship out of the stars; they were going to make it.

"Brace!" D shouted.

The ship rocked again as a hole ripped open in the hull. The vacuum of space tore at the inside of the fighter, dumping tables, boxes, and weapons into the viridian expanse.

I'm out of here, Tony thought. This was all too much.

Tony pulled up his menu and focused on the settings tab, then the “Game” sub-tab.

His heart stopped.

There was no “Log Out” option, no “Exit Game,” no “Safe to Remove Headset” no way out. Gambit Games would not have shipped a headset, even a beta unit, that could not be removed safely from the options screens. He had to be missing something. Right?

Tony searched frantically as the temperature in the ship rose sharply. Flames licked against the ship's hull as it entered the atmosphere. There had to be something in the options that would get him out of here. His eyes hovered over the "Respawn" option, but it wasn't available.

Respawn: Returns you to your chambers aboard the Haght'anak*

*The destination is contested

Tony’s heart plummeted into his gut. He had no idea what day it was, and he was effectively stuck in the game until he could reach someone in support at Gambit Games. Worse than that, he was going to miss work. He caught a flash of red out of the newly formed and still-smoldering hole in the hull and then green as the ship leveled off, upside-down.

“Is that grass?” he wondered aloud as the fighter slammed into the ground beneath it. His health bar dropped by twenty percent at the first impact, the safety harness cut into his collarbone, and Tony clenched his jaw. Another ten percent of his HP sloughed off as Tony was slammed around viciously in his seat.

The ship ground to a halt on a field of blue-green grass, a fifty-foot furrow dug in the earth from the point of impact. A blaze of gold flame filled the cabin as Auren activated his Battle Aura, burning away the mangled safety harness and, coincidentally, restoring five percent of Tony’s missing health. “What happened?” Tony asked as he grappled with the clasp of his harness.

D strode into the cabin, neon-blue fluid streaming off of his armor. “Deep space scan found the ship. It’s cloaked from local scans due to the metal it... Well, it was made out of. Someone must have tampered with the long-range cloaking systems before we left.”

“I mean, how did we get here? Who shot us down?” Tony stated. With a click, the clasp over his chest released and he fell from the “ceiling” of the craft to the deck.

“Scout ships of the Cadre of Judgement. They were waiting for us,” D answered. Tony opened his mouth to ask more questions, but Auren beat him to it.

“Waiting for us? How-”

“Someone must have told them we were coming here. Since Sparky here is in the program, he would have respawned back on the flagship, but that wouldn't have kept us away. There's something else going on here.”

Tony piped up, interrupting the two gods. “Okay, first off ‘Sparky?’ I’m putting the kibosh on that right now. Second, all of that means that you have a mole on the ship that fed Ignacious, or at least their handler, our flight path which is how they got the drop on us from where we jumped into the system, that is, if I’m guessing all of this right.” He looked back and forth between the two. "I also had the option to respawn to the ship but it's contested right now."

D's head snapped up. “We need to do something now. The ship isn't going to make it back any time soon and the kid isn't going to make it out here by himself," he spat at Auren.

Auren cupped his chin in his fist. The two of them continued to exchange words talking mostly as though Tony weren't even there, and if he was, it was about how much of an inconvenience he was at present. Tony ignored the two gods and acknowledged his notifications. His Endurance, Wisdom, and Wits had all increased by one point and the skill menu had been unlocked.

Tony had a little time and ten Skill Points to spend; it would probably be better to spend them now rather than later. Stranded on a foreign planet with who knows what on the surface, Melee, Athletics, and Survival were straightforward and obvious choices.

Fortitude: This skill represents training in physical resistance. Put points in this skill to passively increase resistance to: Damage, Poison, Disease, Exertion, and Extreme Climate by 1% per Skill Point. Occult: This skill represents training in the mystical and paranormal. Put points in this skill to increase understanding of Gods, Spirits, Demons, Ghosts, and Essence.

Tony allocated three points into his Melee and Awareness skills, and one point each into his Occult, Survival, Fortitude, and Athletics Skills.

A metallic skittering brought Tony's attention out of his menus. He strained his hearing and heard it again, on the outside of the wreckage, and moving toward the gash in the hull. D groaned and thrust his hand toward Tony. When a pair of notifications popped up, he double-checked his traits and was delighted at an extra two points in Melee from his Ancestor Heritage Bonus.

You have inherited a Squire Talent!

Summon Blade: Create an Essence-Constructed Weapon

Cost: 50 Mana Duration: Until Released

You have unlocked an Achievement: Initiate (Melee)

Achieve a total Skill Rank of (5) in Melee)

“You’re gonna need that,” D growled.

“Huh? Why?” he answered, looking around.

D jerked an armored thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the tear in the hull at the biggest spider Tony had ever seen in his life. Its body was the size of an inner tube and each of its legs was easily eight feet long.

“Spiders. It had to be a fucking spider planet.”