1

The first thing Damon noticed was the sun. It was positioned too low. How much time did we waste in those two rooms? he thought. Someone bumped him from behind.

“Hey, you’re not so good at following your own orders,” Zack quipped.

Damon walked forward, and his fellow orc followed him.

“That’s not good,” Zack muttered, peering at the sky.

“Yeah, we have maybe two hours before sunset.”

The two orcs stood looking at the landscape. Behind them, they could hear repeated ppfffttt sounds as the other members came through the portal.

The land was lush and green, and the sky gleamed a deep blue with tinges of purple. All the colors in the realm were more brilliant and saturated. A field of tall grass stretched for a mile ahead of them. It sloped down toward wetlands, then ascended back up toward an enormous forest. Old redwoods and Douglas firs, with wide trunks, grew up to five hundred feet.

“We won’t need to worry about the local wildlife,” Zack said, pointing with his mangled left arm. The decomposing body of a goblin with wounds slashed across its midsection and neck lay in the grass. Blood had flowed from both injuries and turned into a black sludge on the ground. Flies buzzed around its pale, opaque eyes.

Damon knelt to inspect it. Other than the fact that a sharp weapon had killed it, there were no other traces of human contact.

“Looks like Dad laid a few tracks here,” Ethan said as he shuffled alongside Zack. Damon grunted his agreement and stood back up. He surveyed the field and saw flattened patches of grass where he expected they would encounter more dead bodies. This is going to make him easier to track, he thought.

No shit, Sherlock.

He turned and smiled at Angie. I’d like to keep my thoughts to myself if you don’t mind. Damon studied the eastern horizon. It extended for a mile, then abruptly stopped. At that edge was what appeared to be an inverted mirror image, where the reflection of the field stretched upward until it reached the sky. It was the strangest reflection he had ever seen. Its surface was bending, shifting closer and then further, like a sheet of cellophane blowing in a gust of wind. It swirled in that seemingly organic pattern, distorting the mirror image.

Ahead of them, two reptilian birds took off from the grass and flew toward the edge. He saw the birds reflected in that undulating border, elongating like something from a funhouse mirror. The border suddenly shifted forward, and he saw the scaled-up reflection of the bird which had flown closest to the edge. As the image of that reptilian bird covered the entire border, Damon saw black veins running along its leathery gray skin and moisture collected around its yellow eyes. The bird flew into the border and disappeared. Its massive reflection vanished along with it. The bird’s companion uttered a frightened squawk and turned back toward the field.

Instinctively, Damon looked to the west, half-expecting the swallowed bird would come flying out. But the reflection on the left side only shimmered and warped like a Salvador Dali illustration. His eyes followed the edge of that border as it fanned out and stretched north toward the forest. The realms are triangularly shaped, Walker had told him. As he watched the border swirl, it suddenly pixelated, and in that brief moment, Damon saw the face of the RayStrike CEO in the reflection.

2

“Did you see that?” Damon shouted.

Zack chuckled, staring at the field. “Yeah, this place is bad-ass. I think I like it already.”

“No, no. Did you see a face in the western horizon?” He pointed at the border.

“No,” Zack said hesitantly. “Who did you see?”

Damon turned to the rest of the team milling around the portal. They had equipped their weapons. Angie and Emma held their bows, Jordan had his sword ready, and Brett and Janna were gripping their lances.

“Did any of you see that face?” They looked at the shimmering border, fascinated. But as they turned back to him, they looked puzzled.

“What face, Damo?” Angie asked.

Damon sighed and told them he saw the face of the CEO in the border wall, disappointed he was the only one to notice it. Harper called out for Will Harris by name, both audibly and by using her telepathy. But there were no responses.

3

They got moving, eager to find a place to camp before sundown. Before leaving the area, they turned and had one last look at the portal that transported them to Epiphany. Like the one inside the portal room, its colors changed in an organic pattern, but it didn’t have an established border. The oval-shaped portal floated above the patch of grass while white lines circled the object continuously. Behind the portal, the meadow extended for another eighty feet before stopping at the southern border.

“So long, home sweet home,” Jordan muttered. The team turned and fanned out into a V formation. Damon, Zack, and Ethan formed the front line. They kept a wide berth from each other as they advanced, hoping to cover more ground in their search for the Harris’ tracks.

Harper asked Brett, Janna, and Miguel to cast Defense Buff onto the three orcs at the front. The spells cost 45 mana points per minute, but with regen rates of 1.14 per second, they ran the buffs nonstop. They discovered more dead bodies in the field: seven goblins, three reptilian birds, and one creature that appeared to be a cross between the two. Harper was disappointed her Creature Description ability wouldn’t bring up the corpses’ details.

The team plodded forward quickly, eager to make camp in the forest. Jordan pulled up his spell list to examine it.

Basic Heal

MP: 10

HP: 17

RANGE: 10m

RANK: Novice

COOLDOWN: 1 sec

DESCRIPTION: Heals 33% in Intelligence stat

Defense Buff

MP: .75/sec

HP: --

RANGE: 30m

RANK: Progressive

COOLDOWN: 5 sec

DESCRIPTION: Boosts Constitution and Endurance stat 25%

Offense Buff

MP: .75/sec

HP: --

RANGE: 30m

RANK: Progressive

COOLDOWN: 5 sec

DESCRIPTION: Boosts Strength and Dexterity stat 25%

Firefly

MP: .1/sec

HP: --

RANGE: 10m

RANK: Progressive

COOLDOWN: 5 sec

DESCRIPTION: A luminous firefly

Weapon Refresh

MP: 4

HP: --

RANGE: 5m

RANK: Novice

COOLDOWN: 10 sec

DESCRIPTION: Ammo regeneration

He turned to Harper and Janna. “Hey, why does my Basic Heal only recover 10 hit points when yours do 17?”

Harper answered as she trudged through the wet terrain. “It’s a percentage of your intelligence stat. We have 52 versus your 31.”

“Grrr, I feel dumb,” Jordan huffed. He gestured to the other hunters on the team. “Angie, Emma, do you have any idea what Weapon Refresh does?”

They checked their lists. After a moment, Emma said, “Maybe it’s this.” She removed two throwing knives from the pouch attached to her chain mail and handed them to Jordan, leaving her with eight knives remaining. “Weapon Refresh,” she whispered. Two more knives materialized in her pouch.

Angie gasped. “Oh, Emma, that is very cool.”

Emma shrugged. “It’s a feature I’ve seen in a few games.”

“Do you think it does the same for our arrows?” Jordan asked

“Yup, I’m certain of it.”

“What about the sword?” Jordan asked.

Emma gave her nagamati sword to Jordan and tried the spell again. Nothing happened. “I didn’t think that would work. The swords are not ranged weapons,” she said. Jordan and Angie grunted.

The land started its incline toward the marsh and the ground became muddier. As the team advanced, their footfalls made swishing and sucking sounds. The orcs at the front of the group could see deep pools of swamp water ahead at the low point of the field. Huge oversized dandelions jutted out of those pools while the tall grass lilted lazily into the water. “Oh, great,” Zack muttered.

As they pushed on through deeper mud, the group’s pace slowed and the sky became darker, changing to deep orange. Damon kept checking the eastern and western boundaries. He felt uneasy about them. They kept distorting, trembling and extruding. Later, he thought he saw another human face embedded in its surface but wasn’t certain and began second-guessing the first image he saw. “Maybe this whole experience is messing with my head,” he muttered to himself. He glanced to his right and saw a pool of what should have been water surrounded by witchgrass and weeds.

But what he saw on the surface of the pool wasn’t water. It looked like a hole ripped through the quantum world’s fabric. Within the hole, a series of bright pinpricks swirled inside a vacuum of pure black. He raised his forearm and stopped the team, then pointed at the oddity. “What the heck is that?” he asked.

The group formed a semicircle around the pool. Emma and Harper stepped closer. “It’s some sort of glitch,” Harper commented. Small silvery points moved rapidly through the black mass, looking almost like stars. The team gaped at the vertical lines of intense light as they projected up from the pool. The boundaries of the aberration spilled away from the body of the pool in stringy patterns, carrying with them the black-and-white void. A high-pitched buzzing noise emanated from within. Harper pulled the sleeve of her armor up to the elbow. The fine hairs of her forearm were standing on end.

Angie whispered, “There’s electricity coming from it.”

Harper nodded. She pulled a giant dandelion weed from the muddy ground and waved it toward the glitch. Seeds lifted off the dandelion and drifted toward the aberration. They landed on its surface and disappeared with a slight burning sound.

“It’s one of the glitches they talked about,” Emma said. “There are supposedly patches like this throughout Epiphany. Those small lights you see moving are quantum qubits. It’s part of what made the game so unstable.”

“What do we do with them?” Jordan asked.

“Steer clear,” she replied.

Miguel grabbed a clump of earth and tossed it toward the glitch. It landed across one of its bleeding seams. The grass and dirt on the glitch side disappeared with the same burning sound. The grass outside of the glitch landed with a wet thump.

“Okay, time’s wasting,” Damon said impatiently. “Let’s get going.” The team members murmured agreement. Before they turned away from the glitch, it produced a crackling sound and vanished, leaving the regular pool of water in its wake. The clump of grass Miguel had thrown was still lying there, but the part that disappeared into the glitch was gone forever.

4

Damon heard thunder rumble overhead and a moment later it started pouring rain. In the deepest point of the swamp now, their legs were buried in thick mud up to their knees while the murky water was at their waist. Damon could feel organisms moving under his boots in the mud. Even as a seasoned Marine, it gave him the shivers. He hated not seeing what was under that mud. He turned to the other orcs. “Are any of you feeling movement under th—”

Something wrapped around his left calf.

He peered down to see what was attacking him, but before he could get a good look, his lower field of vision was covered by the translucent Creature Description details:

SILICATE (Level 1)

HP: 33

MP: 0

STRENGTH: 7

CONSTITUTION: 3

DEXTERITY: 1

INTELLIGENCE: 1

WISDOM: 3

XP: 9

DESCRIPTION: C9 Failed research experiment.

“Go away!” he yelled, frustrated. The Creature Description box wiped out of his field of vision. Wow, I can’t believe that worked, he thought distantly.

The silicate was submerged under the muddy water and encased with a large transparent outer shell. Under that shell, Damon could see its pink entrails squirming. The monster didn’t appear to have any eyes, but one tentacle extended from the top of its shell. It was that black appendage that had coiled around his leg. He suddenly felt excruciating pain as the tentacle penetrated his skin. Sensing a heavy pressure below his knee, he realized the monster was leeching tissue from his leg. The other team members were trudging over as quickly as they could through the thick mud.

Harper wielded Fire Scorch at the creature, but the spell just skipped off the surface of the water. She swore in disgust.

“Ugh, help me,” Damon cried as his left leg buckled and his body swayed, half-kneeling into the water.

Zack pushed through the thick mud and raised his battle axe into the darkening sky. He swung the blade down fiercely, but its momentum slowed as it plunged through the water above the creature. The axe struck the silicate, but the blow only chipped off a fragment of its shell. “Fuck!” he shouted. He lifted his axe again. Before he could strike, Jordan bounded in and sliced the silicate’s appendage off with his sword.

The creature emitted a bubbly snarl and retreated. The tentacle was still wrapped tightly around his leg, but the pain stopped.

“Damon, check your status,” Miguel shouted. “What are your HP totals?”

Damon checked. “49 out of 102. I can’t put any weight on my leg! I feel like it could snap.”

“Boys,” Angie said, glancing at Ethan and Zack. “Get him out of that mud and carry him to the clearing. Cradle his leg.” She pointed at the clearing just before the forest.

Zack reached for the tentacle still clinging to Damon’s leg, but Janna stopped him. “No. Leave it. We don’t know what it’s done to him. Better to get him on dry land first.” Zack stared at Janna with an expression of frustration but followed the nurse’s direction. The two orcs put their shoulders under Damon’s armpits and hoisted him up from the mud. Damon cried out in pain as the suction of the mud pulled back on his injured left calf.

It took ten minutes for the orcs to slog through the mud to the clearing. Heavy rain pelted off their armor, producing metal tapping sounds. The rest of the group followed behind, casting healing spells. They kept their eyes on the water, looking out for more creatures, but they saw just one and were able to avoid it.

5

When the group arrived at the clearing, the thunderstorm dissipated. As Janna slowly unwrapped the tentacle from Damon’s leg, it made a tsssssss velcro sound. The flesh on the underside of the tentacle was pink with fine, hair-thin needles that had penetrated Damon’s skin. As these long needles withdrew from his swollen calf, a milky ooze dribbled from their tips. Janna reached forward and caught some of the expulsion in her hand. She rubbed the liquid between her fingers. It was granular, like fine sand. She looked up at Damon, her eyes wide with astonishment. “It was sucking your bone collagen.”

The group reacted with horror while Damon moaned. Janna tossed the limp, dead tentacle away. Brett, who was at the back of the formation casting healing spells, heard a wet shuffling noise coming from the water and turned to look. “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” he said.

The team turned to see five silicates ambling slowly out of the swamp, their tentacles waving forward in the air. The creatures were three feet square and mound-shaped. “Well, at least they’re not moving too quickly,” Miguel commented. “I think we should test out our spells on them.”

“Fuck that,” Zack grunted defiantly. He stomped to the silicate on the far right, raising his axe. He brought the weapon down hard and struck the middle of the creature’s shell. This time, without the buffer of the water to cushion the blow, the monster’s shell broke into two halves. The silicate squealed and a noxious spaghetti-like ooze began spilling from its wound. The scent of rancid meat floated in the surrounding air.

“Oh, man! That is disgusting!” Zack cried. He retreated back to the group. Miguel laughed.

“Spells it is, then,” Harper said, winking at Miguel. She raised her arm and blasted Fire Scorch at the closest silicate. The torrent of fire shone bright red in the gloom. The monster’s shell blackened and cracked before splitting open. Its red and white guts streamed down the slope and toward the swamp.

Miguel used the same spell on the two other silicates while Harper decided to try Firefly on the last silicate. The spell produced a shining firefly that illuminated the darkening sky. She directed the firefly through the air, like a witch’s familiar, and steered it down the creature’s tentacle hole. The silicate squealed in pain and surprised the group by darting toward the swamp. Miguel blasted it with Fire Scorch before the monster reached the water. A blue text screen emerged in his lower field of vision and was accompanied by a British female voice.

Congratulations, Miguel! You have gained 27 experience points, raising your XP to 27, and reaching level 2 of Mage class. You have graduated in rank from level one Pussy-Willow to level two Annoying Insect. Keep on buzzing, Miguel! All of your base stats have been increased by 2. Your wisdom and intelligence have increased by an additional 2 points each. You have 4 attribute stat points to spend now or within 24 hours. What would you like to do?

Miguel pumped his arms and yelled triumphantly. “Yes! I have reached level 2!”

Harper smiled at him and muttered, “You bum. I should’ve taken that last one.”

A new text and the same friendly voice alerted him again.

I’m sorry, Miguel. I don’t understand your response. You have 4 attribute stat points to spend now or within 24 hours. What would you like to do?

Miguel fell to his knees, laughing. The team members, including Harper, stared at him like he was going nuts. He turned to his fellow mage with tears flowing down his cheeks. “Oh boy, Harper. Wait until you hear the voice!”

The prompt alerted him again.

I’m sorry, Miguel. I don’t know what that means. I will hold your 4 attribute stat points until you make a selection.

Miguel fell over onto the wet grass, laughing uncontrollably. Zack leaned over and whispered to Damon, “I would say the pressure has finally gotten to him, but what pressure?” Damon laughed.

6

Miguel finally stopped laughing with a little help from Harper. They discussed where to assign his four attribute stat points. Miguel’s initial idea was to drop them into his constitution stat to bump up his hit points. Harper talked him out of that, arguing he should add them to the extra points he received in his wisdom and intelligence stats. He dropped them equally and had a look at his status.

Miguel

RACE: Human

CLASS: Mage (Level 2)

STATUS: Normal

HP: 34

HPR: .46/s

MP: 46

MPR: 1.26/s

STRENGTH: 17

CONSTITUTION: 23

DEXTERITY: 21

INTELLIGENCE: 58

WISDOM: 63

ENDURANCE: 25

XP: 27

ATTRIBUTE POINTS: 0

Miguel found it peculiar that the rank name didn’t appear on his status screen, but he wasn’t a big fan of the Annoying Insect moniker, anyway. He was happy about the MP increase, which resulted from the extra points going to wisdom and intelligence.

Harper and Miguel reminded the team that they could turn off their notifications, but the members said they wanted to experience the pop-ups first before deciding.

7

They stood in a tight group at the edge of the forest when they spotted a green light shining up from the ground thirty yards away. The team approached the object cautiously and discovered it was a circular pad that was embedded into the earth.

“What is it?” Damon asked.

“I think it might be a respawn marker… for players who got killed in the game,” Harper mused.

“But the respawning doesn’t work?” Harper smiled knowingly at Damon, her blue eyes glittering in the twilight. “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean these things are just going to disappear.”

They spoke briefly about eating what was left of the silicates, but the team couldn’t stomach the idea. “It’s a good thing we loaded up on the buffet before leaving,” Damon grunted, “but we have to find something to eat before morning.”

“Did Walker mention if there were any regular animals out here?” Ethan asked.

“Yeah, he mentioned it,” Damon replied. “Rabbits, squirrels, that kind of stuff, but I don’t know whether to believe him.”

The sky was a dark pink now. The group peered ahead into the vast forest. It was darker inside the forest, under the canopy of century-old trees. The forest floor was a blend of grass, needles, and pinecones. It seemed endless. They lined up in the same V formation and began pushing forward.

It was cooler inside the forest, and the spicy scent of the trees surrounded them. It was easier to walk through than the swamp had been, but they were wet and tired now. Ten minutes later, Harper glanced back, wondering if she would still see the clearing, but it was gone.

“Hey, look at that,” Jordan shouted. He pointed to the top of a massive tree. Their gaze followed the tree trunk as it ascended toward the sky. One hundred feet above them, the trunk twisted like the vines of a rosebush. The tree’s gnarled wood and bark had changed to the swirling bright pin-lights over the black void. The qubits’ spears of light were much brighter on this glitch, shining down on them and casting a glow on the tree limbs around it.

Faintly, they could hear the same high-pitched whine from where they stood. Angie saw something dangling from the center of the glitch and she groaned. Suspended high in the air and barely visible through the shafts of light was a lifeless human foot.

8

“That was not Dad,” Ethan insisted.

“How can you be sure?” Angie asked.

He stopped walking. “I just know, goddammit,” he barked. “We should go back, climb up there, and see if we can grab it.”

“Are you nuts?” Zack asked incredulously. “I’m not getting near those things.”

“Yeah, well, he isn’t your Dad,” Ethan grumbled, but he realized Zack was right. The glitches scared them more than anything. The team advanced another six hundred feet into the forest before arriving at a clearing. Shafts of the day’s remaining light glowed in diagonal lines across the opening. Old wood littered the scant patches of grass which had sprouted in the ground. Sixty feet away, amidst a gigantic rock face that protruded from the land on the clearing’s west side, was the large opening to a cave.

“This looks promising,” Ethan remarked.

Damon agreed. “You stay here with the group. Zack and I will have a closer look.” While Ethan stayed back, the other two orcs approached the cavern. Damon touched the rock face. It was wet, and he saw moisture beading out from its cracks. The cave opening was about fifteen feet square. As they peered inside the cave, they observed it sloped downward. At the very bottom, they could see a luminescent blue glow shining up through the darkness. Damon smelled algae and heard water trickling below. Zack glanced at Damon. “This is a perfect place.”

Damon nodded. “Yeah, but there’s got to be something living down there and it won’t like us moving in.”

“Come on, Damon. The light is fading.” He agreed. They wandered back to the group and announced they would camp in the cave for the night. The team moved forward carefully and began their descent into the cavern.

From within the depths of the forest, far away from the cave, nine pairs of eyes watched their progress in silent observation. The creatures had not seen anything come through the portals for years. Then, days ago, the human arrived. He’d proved more formidable than they expected. Now, it was a group of ten humans. Their eyes, gray with white pupils, turned slowly, tracking the team’s movement. In the darkness, a primitive voice whispered, “Tock,” and the creatures moved.