When I woke next morning it was to the feeling of being watched. By many, many sets of eyes.

Remembering my previous experience of waking in the midst of many-eyed voyeurs, I kept very still, opening my own eyes in as slow and careful manner as I could manage.

Watchers: check. Multitude: check. Insects: X.

Surrounding our ‘camp’ (if a cleared patch of ground the size of an elephant bird could rightly be called such) were a diverse and extremely numerous party of lemurs. They were standing amongst the branches of surrounding trees in what I would call a sentinel position, arms and feet braced, their attention, fixed and unblinking, directed toward me.

If gargoyles hung out in forests to scare hikers this is what they’d look like.

I eased my way to my feet, followed by a groggy Gunga-Din. She warbled worriedly. Even she would have a tough time overcoming well over a thousand primates.

And some of them were big. One in particular was so large that it couldn’t fit on top of any of the available branches and instead chose to hang underneath, like an industrial-sized peg basket. It had the heft and musculature of a brown bear, with white flashings on its cheeks and the edges of its forelegs.

Others were smaller, but no less striking. Black and white varieties with long fur on their chins, looking like monochromatic versions of Father Christmas; white lemurs with brown overcoats; endearing ear tufted specimens that reminded me of the teddy bear I used to carry around before half of its limbs and eyes fell off; stripes, blazes, pattern baldness, buck teeth—all in variations of colour, shapes, sizes and levels.

But the medium-sized brown level 10 lemurs provided the primary recruits of this prosimian army, the weight of their bodies bending branches to their limits, threatening to—

Creeeaack!

A branch snapped, then another, forcing what looked like fifty lemurs to find alternate lodgings.

“Bert?”

The entity you are attempting to contact is not available at this time. Please call again later.

“What the hell? Are you kidding me?”

This is part of a set-piece challenge. I am unable to break past my operational constraints.

“That limitation of yours is really starting to piss me off. Isn’t there anything you can do about it?”

I’m working on it. Unfortunately, I am currently operating at reduced capacity. This area has begun to undergo…changes…that have the potential to be catastrophic. I am attempting to fix the anomalies, but for now—

“I’m on my own. Fabulous.” How the hell was I going to Dr. Doolittle myself out of this one?

I picked up my cap and assured myself that there were at least—5-6-7-8 (eight?)—lemurs not fixing to recast and reenact Hitchcock’s infamous Birds scene. The mouse lemurs were alert, but huddled together, with Timmy leaning casually against the foam of a side wall, making use of a thin stick to pick food out of his teeth.

I still had no clue how to get past the primate blockade. I supposed I could use one of my Skills, but with Kalanoro in the vicinity I was reluctant to reduce my offensive capacity. Not when I was facing one of the most dangerous opponents I had encountered so far. Just the thought of pitting myself against him in open combat triggered an uneasy roil in my stomach that had nothing to do with hunger.

So I did what I could to prepare myself, connecting the mouse lemur cap to my harness, retying hair that had gotten detached from my clip during sleep, and putting my left hand through the leather strap secured to my lyre. I rarely used the safety; if the instrument fell it wrenched my wrist and flopped around, banging against my knees and shins. Easier just to pick it up. Though the strap could have been of use when I was scaling the cavern wall in the Amrut dungeon. It was only sheer dumb luck that the lack had proven a boon rather than a disaster of the game-over variety.

In this particular instance however, I was afraid that if I dropped the lyre, it wouldn’t be my hands that picked it up again. I was not the only animal around with opposable thumbs.

A movement out of the corner of my eye had my head swivelling like an owl and my heart pitter-patting in my RL chest. I was half-expecting to see Kal, but instead, three animals that looked to be a cross between a hyena and a cat sauntered forward, pressing against one side of the encirclement. The foster-fossa thingies of Attenborough fame.

I’d been wondering when they’d show up. The programmers were never going to leave Madagascar’s apex predators off anyone’s dance card.

Worried aa-aa’s came from the trees—the only sound I’d heard from the lemurs since I woke. If I remembered correctly, they were the main prey of the foster-fossas, so their concern was justifiable.

They still didn’t move, however; they stayed tense and watchful, their eyes only straying occasionally to include the fossas in their sightline.

Worryingly, the fossas weren’t diverted by the smorgasbord that surrounded them, remaining focused on the human. Was I simply the more convenient meal? As the only viable meat source that remained earthbound I could be considered relatively easy to catch.

I slowly backed away from the big…cats?, heading in a direction that seemed to contain the least amount of lemurs, the only area where the trees were spread far enough apart that it created an opening fit for a human and a large bird to pass through.

Gunga provided a defensive backline between me and the fossas, rattling menacingly as she followed my lead. The threat was ruined a bit when she stumbled over a root, the rattle turning into a startled awk as she lurched a few steps in an attempt to remain upright. Birds aren’t designed to walk backwards.

At least the lemurs weren’t moving toward us. They bared their teeth if I got too close, but otherwise seemed content to watch and wait. More lined the path beyond, and another giant lemur hovered in a gap between two trees that I could otherwise have used. Only one way remained open.

It was almost like I was being herded.

Snick! Whiiish!

I heard the sound of a twig snapping and leaves swishing before I felt the sharp pain in my arm. Looking down, I saw that a thorn the size of a tiger’s claw had been propelled into my skin, the tip sinking so deep that it felt like it had hit bone.

You have been poisoned!

You receive a poison debuff of 1 hit pt/minute!

All Skills, Abilities, Affects, and Attributes -70%!

A feeling of dizziness left me reaching for the nearest tree, lyre dangling forgotten as I clutched a branch for support. Luckily there were no lemurs on it. In fact, the lemurs and fosters seemed to have amscrayed, only one familiar-looking ring-tail remaining. He stayed long enough to give me a look of…regret?…before bouncing his way up a nearby tree and disappearing into the foliage.

My proximity to the tree afforded me a close-up, albeit slightly wavering view of the trap that had sent me down a drug-induced rabbit-hole.

Heh. Bunnies, I thought, as one suddenly appeared at my side. I reached down to pet it, but instead of fuzzy fur I felt the scaly expanse of a massive bird foot.

Gunga. Though why she was masquerading as a rabbit, I had no idea. Maybe Bert had gotten weirdly ambitious in his defensive camouflage program?

Nevertheless. The trap. My eyes slowly focused on the sprung trap made out of green twigs, twisted into a catapult-like design. Or was it? I watched in amazement as the twigs turned into an enormous prey mantis, watching me back with head cocked and front legs bent.

“Sorry,” I apologised to the insect, before it transformed back again into a twig-trap.

Weird.

I felt myself falling sideways before being enveloped in a cloud. My feet felt oddly distant from the rest of me so I hauled myself higher until the cloud flattened slightly and my boots could join the rest of my body.

But I discovered that they, too, had been altered. Instead of worn leather, they had been replaced by the bulldog slippers I schlepped around in at home, padded and overstuffed in jowl and forehead.

They barked at me; one happily, the jam-stained other with menace.

I frowned. “Bad dog! Settle down or I’ll feed you more jam!”

What was I saying? The boundaries between what was real and what was not were becoming fuzzy. Like the borders of the virtual and real world.

Hmm. If the virtual is capable of creating any scenario then how can we differentiate between a hallucination and a digital construct? Mere logic? But then, with their tiny feet, the slippers could have walked—

My mind whirred, an endless loop of thought, vision, and sensation, as the cloud beneath me carried me farther into the trippy delights of Wonderland.

——

“Oh, no,” Todd moaned.

“What just happened?”

“She’s been poisoned. Kalanoro is expert at traps and poisons.”

“So how does she get out of it?”

“I don’t know. When it happened to me I died. Logged out with the biggest headache I’ve ever had. After I respawned I left Madagascar before the little shit could come for me again.”

“Oh.”

“Although she does have one advantage. Or two, maybe.”

“Hm?”

“Bert and Gunga. She may not be in her right mind, but they are. I think. Not sure what the core says to her privately, but it does seem able to communicate at a complex level. God knows what will happen if they don’t come up with something.”

A ding came from Todd’s laptop. A video chat request from Cherry-Lee of Last Vampire Standing. Todd split the screen and accepted the call.

“Good news, peeps. Just got a message from News Online. They want to do an exposé on SharkBytes. That should get those fuckers to sit up and take notice.”

“If she survives that long,” Todd murmured.

“Why? She in trouble?”

“When is she not? But this time she may have come up against someone she shouldn’t. Someone too tough to beat. Have you heard of the Kalanoro?”

“Pfft. Not my kind of game. I’m only in this to help a sister out. Don’t ask me about any fantasy-based RPGs.”

“Have you been watching the latest streams?”

“Up to when she popped into Madagascar. Got side-tracked while I was drumming up support.”

“Well, Kalanoro is the baddest of the bad. Evil little prick with some kind of boss control over his environment. He’s managed to poison Aline.”

“Is it lethal?”

“It was when I played.”

——

Wheeee! I felt myself slipping down the water slide, the sides churning with soft froth as I spun and tumbled into freefall.

Ouch! The splashpool wasn’t as soft as I expected. The impact sucked the air from my lungs and made my ribs ache.

Level Up! Elephant Bird Rider Skill now at Level 2!

Huh?

Then I looked up into the face of a panda bear.

——

“Who’s that?” Terrin asked, watching over Todd’s shoulder.

“Don’t know. Some kind of tribal elder, maybe?”

——

The panda wore bells, bells that jingled and jangled and jingle-jangled—like a reindeer—ooh, is it Christmas? Is Santa on his way?

I felt a breeze on my stomach. Oh. Can’t have that. The instinctive modesty of a woman of a certain age made me yank the shift down, dislodging the object that had been resting on my 2-pack.

It was pulled back up again, and I smacked at the hands that held it in place. The panda was no gentleman! I rammed the palm of my hand abruptly into his nose, inducing what sounded like an oath and the abrupt removal of His Handsiness.

ARLINE THE…the…the…Absorbent?…the Absolved?…the ACTIVATOR STRIKES AGAIN!

——

“What’s that NPC doing?”

“Making some kind of potion by the looks of it. Though how he’s going to make her drink it I don’t know.”

“She looks completely off her face,” Cherry offered,“though I do applaud her defensive skills.”

——

A solid weight stomped on my stomach, making the top of my body jackknife into a sitting position, mouth wide open in startled breathlessness. A wooden spoon was instantly shoved inside, the nasty-tasting contents trickling down my throat before finding a home in my lungs. I slapped away the…styrofoam pony?…, bending over in an effort to regain enough air to hack it up again.

What the fuck was that? I looked around for the panda but was confronted instead with a wolf, growling and snarling at my side.

Shouldn’t I have a red cape? I attempted to fling the hard thing connected to my wrist at its head, but it spun and hit me instead. Why does that make me feel…validated? Nevertheless, I couldn’t let the wolf get my basket of goodies. Grandma would starve…

A niggle of doubt assailed me as a small clearing began to appear in the fog that occupied my mindspace. I hadn’t had a living grandparent in years. Why…?

And I remembered. Everything. Except how I got here, wherever here was.

Whoever he was. A man squatted just out of reach, giving me the hairy eyeball as I checked out my new-to-me environment. He was elaborately dressed from chest to head, with medallions and beads creating a hanging crop top that tinkled merrily when he moved. By comparison, the cloth bound around his hips looked like an afterthought; though it did represent a lot more coverage than his contemporaries had been sporting.

“You are better?” he asked warily. A trickle of blood dribbled from his nose and he licked it up.

Ew.

“I…am,” I answered in surprise. In fact I felt better than I had in days.

“Don’t congratulate yourself yet. This effect is only temporary—a palliative created from ingredients that I had on hand. Kalanoro’s venom is more powerful than any jamu a dukun can brew.”

“So what can I do?” If in doubt, always ask an NPC. They may not tell you, but more often than not they had the answer.

“There is an elixir that is effective against the venom, but the ingredients are difficult to obtain. Fetch them to me and I will order this dukun to create a cure.”

——

“That sounds promising.”

“As long as it’s not one of those Kobayashi Maru scenarios, like finding a feather of a phoenix that’s just about to combust or bathing in the red waters of Mount Doom or some such.”

“I’m guessing that you’re speaking from personal experience, hmm?” Cherry raised her brows in the sidescreen, before she spotted something off-camera. “Oh, shit. Is that the time? I was supposed to gather up you guys and head to a chit-chat room. That reporter will be wondering where we are.”

——

Why is he referring to himself in the third person? I wondered, before the inevitable message appeared.

Elixir of Life Quest offered!

Find the ingredients listed to live another day!

1 x Brittlegills mushroom!

5 x drops of essence from the Madagascar Pitcher Plant!

10 x periwinkle blooms!

1 x tenrec claw!

1 x calornis spine!

2 x tortoise scales!

3 x drops of elephant bird yolk!

The ingredients list flashed once before dropping down onto my UI’s task bar, where it pulsed an alarming red. A two hour timer began to count down next to it.

Are you shitting me?

——

“So this is your mysterious marooned gamer?” the reporter asked dubiously as Todd and Cherry arrived in the chat room. “She looks a bit…”

Crazy. Arline was staring into space, a look of disbelief leaving her lips slack and eyes vacant. Her lyre completed the picture, dangling from her wrist like the world’s biggest teething ring.

“She’s been through a lot. Including her recent poisoning. And I’ve got a feeling she’s just received a description of what she needs make her cure permanent.”

“You’re sure this isn’t some stunt?”

“The time stamp fits. And she’s playing through areas and quests that I’m familiar with. Including the mouse lemurs. Not that I took them with me like she did.”

“SharkBytes will have the answers,” Terrin interrupted. “If we can get them to pay attention.”

“Well, it’s an interesting story. Very…entertaining.” Her eyes remained fixed on the chat room’s vid screen, where Arline had begun to move. “Like watching an exotic version of The Truman Show.”

——

“Only two hours,” I complained as I trudged across the dry scrub, following a glowing directional sprite as it flitted just ahead of me. "That's all they give me." If there was one thing I had always disliked about RPGs, it was Gathering quests. Mindless find and fetch mini-games with low rewards and a whole lot of boring travel.

At least the periwinkle had been simple enough. The hardest part had been preventing Gunga from chowing down on them whenever I turned my back. Fortunately, this time she didn’t exhibit any side-effects.

I wished Bert would finish whatever it was it was doing and start contributing. I could use someone to talk me through my current predicament. Or, even better, stop the clock ticking away in my peripheral vision.

Ninety-nine minutes and forty seconds to go.

The sprite dipped down and hovered over a clump of scrubby bush.

Was this the mushroom? Odd. I would have expected that to grow in a damp area.

A rustle. Then a tiny nose emerged, twitching madly, followed by a plainer variety of one of those strange-looking hedgehogs I’d seen earlier. The tagline of Tailless Tenrec glowed once and turned itself off.

What did I need from the tenrec again? I checked my list. A claw? How the hell was I going to clip this guy’s toenails? I didn’t even have the equipment to trim my own.

The tenrec began to waddle away, the sprite following like the biblical star over Bethlehem.

I followed, but cautiously. I had no desire to be skewered by its quills, fluffy though they appeared to be.

Hm. My mind flashed back to the farm. On one particular barbed-wire fence we’d draped a lined floor mat, so we could cross in relative safety. It wasn’t exactly the same situation, but the general physics should apply.

Taking out the thick, embroidered tabard I’d stashed in my holding bag when heat began to take precedence over defence, I stretched it between my hands, and jogged to catch up with the hog, who’d caught on that it was being stalked and picked up speed.

When I attempted to fling the material over it, the response was immediate—and in my opinion, completely over-the-top. The tenrec screamed the scream of a Hollywood starlet and leapt away, bucking against the air and avoiding the tabard entirely. It then rounded on me, mouth gaping and showing its tiny teeth, whilst grunting threats deep in its throat. The quills on its head had also risen, creating a hairstyle reminiscent of the 1950s. The Rabid-Bouffant look.

I had lost the element of surprise. And, after it darted into a dense patch of thorny brush, I lost the tenrec itself. The little bugger was fast and furious. A regular Vin Diesel in disguise.

When I looked around for another sprite to follow I noticed that one had materialised above the tenrec’s original nest. A technical reset maybe? Or did the little beastie have a family?

Putting one’s hand blindly into a hedgehog burrow that could be inhabited didn’t exactly sound like the best of ideas, so I used the pointy end of my stick to clear the entrance and open it up so I could see inside.

The nest proved to be empty, though the sprite hovered closer, indicating that there was something to be found. And, buried under a dead leaf, I found it. One tiny, translucent claw. Probably shed from a juvenile tenrec.

I placed it in my system inventory, making my UI light up as the ingredients list appeared and the tenrec claw was crossed off.

Success! You have collected 1 x Tenrec Claw!

Left to collect:

1 x Brittlegills mushroom!

5 x drops of essence of the Madagascar Pitcher Plant!

10 x periwinkle blooms!

1 x tenrec claw!

1 x calornis spine!

2 x tortoise scales!

3 x drops of elephant bird yolk!

Right. Two down, five to go.

——

“I’ll do it,” the reporter said, smiling. Watching Arline try to capture a hedgehog had obviously tickled her sense of the ridiculous. “I have to check a few of the facts through our legal and IT consultants, but I think we can expect to have the article released sometime tonight. It won’t feature, but it should generate some human interest.”

“Excellent,” Cherry said, the canines on her avatar gleaming.

When the reporter had logged out of the chat room, Todd turned on the vampire. “Why are you so happy? A side story in the puppies and kittens section isn’t exactly what we should be aiming for.”

“You don’t think people notice human interest stories? Wise up, old man; they’re total clickbait. You just watch. We’ll get at least ten thousand views from that article alone.”

——

I plucked the bright pink mushroom from the damp leaf litter and crossed another ingredient from the list. Only the yolk and spine to go.

With a pitiful twenty minutes left on the clock, I needed to both find them and travel all the way back to the shaman. I just hoped that the wings I had resorted to using to reduce travel time lasted the distance. Normally they would have disappeared by now. That they hadn’t I put down to whatever effect the Ring of Amrut had had. I wished, not for the first time, that I could consult the Artefact Directory.

There had to be a way to cheat the system, or no-one could beat this challenge in the time available. Especially as the remaining four sprites had split in opposing directions. Unless I could find the ingredients within metres of each other I wouldn’t have time to get back.

I rustled my feathers, still not used the extra weight hanging from my shoulderblades. If I didn’t keep them raised they tended to drag across the ground, generating a sensation was probably not dissimilar to a cat being stroked the wrong way.

Gunga certainly didn’t approve of the sudden appearance of foreign feathers. Each time a wing drew too close she edged away, grumbling. I’d even caught her stepping around me in an attempt to confront the bird that had snuck up behind me, resulting in one very confused Companion.

Which brought to mind an important fact.

“Earth to Bert. You got any yolk left from Gunga’s egg?”

There was no reply, but a glow hovered over her, and when I looked closely, I could see a dribble of yellow oozing from between the scales of her right leg.

A lactating bird. Surely an evolutionary advance (or sidestep?). Hey, did that make Gunga an honorary mammal?

At least the system made no distinction between organic and processed yolk. I caught it inside the lid of an empty water canister and used another to create a capsule. Then I sealed it up with duct tape—the superglue of the science world.

Which left me with the calornis spine. Whatever that was. Some kind of cactus, maybe?

Only two sprites remained; one north-west, the other…directly above my head. I wasn’t sure what that meant. Was it a meaningless digital device indicating a human reference point? Or maybe…

I used my boot to shift leaf litter, but it proved fruitless. No tags floated to the surface. Then I ran forward about twenty metres. The sprite followed and returned to its position above my head.

Fifteen minutes.

Working on the process of elimination, I detached my holding bag and jogged away from it. If I had inadvertently collected the spine the sprite would stay with the bag.

No dice. Faithful as a compass, it remained above my head.

I catalogued what I wore. Shift, bra, pants, lemur hat, socks, dagger, boots…

Wait a minute. There was something I saw earlier…

I peered through the hat’s window and reached inside for the ‘toothpick’ Timmy was clutching to his chest while he napped.

Panicked chitters erupted from the hat and—

-1 Hit pts! You have been bitten by a Mouse Lemur!

-1 Hit pts! You have been bitten by a Mouse Lemur!

—appeared on my UI. But I retrieved the sliver. Except what I had originally thought was a piece of wood was tubular; a hollow spike made of a material that bore more relationship to a fingernail than a plant.

And, now that it was in the sunlight, it sparkled with fairy dust. Familiar fairy dust. The calornis quill was in fact a by-product of Kalanoro himself. Timmy had found the final ingredient to rid myself of his poison.

Now I just had to get it all back to the shaman.

In under nine minutes.