A gentle rocking and the creak of wood dragged Osmark from the depths of unconsciousness. He didn’t open his eyes as he came awake, instead he let his other senses feed him bits and pieces of information about his surroundings. After the emotional introduction to VGO and the terrifying fall, Osmark felt as wrung out as an old dishtowel. He wasn’t ready to face the world just yet.

Maybe I should’ve made that entry a little less intense, he thought, his fingers slowly tracing over the rough burlap beneath him.

He breathed deeply, filling his lungs with clean, fresh air and his nose with the rich scents of turned earth and recently picked produce. He’d been to more than his fair share of farmers markets—Silicone Valley was bursting with snobs who swore by locally sourced produce—but he’d never smelled anything so fresh or enticing as the aromas tickling his nostrils. What was that?

Osmark reluctantly cracked open one eye. He was lying in a lurching box with low wooden walls and an arched canvas ceiling supported by curved bows. Bulging burlap sacks overflowing with ears of corn, mounds of wheat, lumpy dirt-smeared potatoes, and gleaming red apples surrounded him. Sturdy wooden crates pressed against the soles of his boots, which forced his knees to bend at an awkward angle. He must have been in the same position for too long because his back and calves ached and burned.

It took Osmark a moment to realize where he was, and then he couldn’t suppress a wide grin.

A covered wagon, he thought. Maybe all those years messing around with that ancient Oregon Trail game will pay off after all.

“Finally, awake, are you?” A woman’s voice teased from across the wagon. “I was starting to think you’d sleep through the whole trip.”

Osmark opened both eyes and gave the woman a thorough once over through a narrow gap between a rough sack overflowing with beets and another bulging with its load of apples. She was handsome, though just short of beautiful, with a strong nose, blue eyes, and dark hair so common to Imperial citizens. Unlike Osmark, she wore clothes of finely-woven linen dyed a deep red and edged in silver thread. If that wasn’t enough to mark her as a member of the Empire’s merchant class, the gold hoops dangling from her earlobes and the elaborate silver necklace coiled around her throat certainly made her wealth apparent.

The necklace shifted, and Osmark spied a splash of golden ink glowing at the hollow of the woman’s throat.

Ability: Keen-Sight

A passive ability allowing the observant adventurer to notice items and clues others might not see.

Ability Type/Level: Passive / Level I

Cost: None

Effect: Chance to notice and identify hidden objects increased by 6%.

He dismissed the notification with a wave of one hand and squinted, studying the mark: a tattoo of three gold coins. Interesting. That mark, he knew, identified her as one of the Empire’s favored mercantile interests. She was an important person, and a good first impression could make his life much easier going forward, at least in the short term. On the other hand, a bad first impression could cause him all sorts of problems down the road. The starting scenario was unique to each player, painstakingly crafted by the Overminds to test the person. A hyper-advanced Myers-Briggs Type Indicator used to determine what type of class and quests each player would be best suited for.

The starting scenario ramifications could be sweeping.

“I’m awake,” Osmark said. “I think.” He offered her a charming, lopsided grin.

“Then maybe it’s time to sit up. The rest of us would like a little room to stretch our legs, too.” The woman’s impish grin took the sting out of her words, but the underlying tone of command told Osmark she wasn’t making a request.

Osmark scrambled up to give the woman room. He cracked his head against one of the wagon’s wooden bows and immediately plopped back down with his legs crossed. Sparks of pain danced behind his eyes and a thin splinter drove itself into the palm of his hand as he shifted position to try and give the merchant as much space as possible. The wood beneath his hands was rough, and Osmark felt its grain rasp across the tips of his fingers.

Once more, he was amazed at how real everything felt. He didn’t enjoy pain, of course, but the sensation was astounding. The fact that he could experience pain at all made it almost enjoyable. The algorithms had far exceeded even the lofty goals he’d set for his team. Make the game better than the real world, he’d told his developers. Make the players so happy to be there, they never want to leave.

The woman’s sharp gaze drew Osmark’s attention. He must’ve looked like a complete moron, staring off into space and rubbing his hands over the wagon’s floor.

“I was asleep,” Osmark explained. “I mean, I was alone when I went to sleep. If I’d known…”

She sat up straighter and grinned at him over the top of a crate. “That’s better,” she said and slithered her slim legs through the gap between two burlap sacks. “I’m not usually this cranky, but my calves have been curled up under me for the past hour, and they’re killing me.”

“Where are you coming from?” Osmark asked, trying to change the topic.

She gave him another grin, glancing down and absently picking imaginary lint from her dress. “From the south,” she finally offered.

“And you’re headed to?”

Her grin widened as she glanced up. “Same as you. North.”

That was surprisingly vague and unhelpful. He took a moment to pull up his user interface, scrolling over to the In-Game map, the same map he’d stared at a thousand times during the design phase. He sighed in relief. He was on the West Viridia side of the continent, trundling north, apparently headed toward the sleepy town of Tomestide. Perfect. Everything was going according to the plan Osmark had settled on before beginning his transition to VGO.

While most of the other players were scampering around chasing after the familiar and predictable base classes like rogue or warrior, Osmark intended to beeline for one of the most advanced classes offered to players of Viridian Gate Online. He had his sights set on the Mechanical Artificer profession, which would grant him a host of unique skills and powers. A tricky class to play; weak initially, but profoundly powerful if managed correctly due to the combinatoric marginal mechanics of the kit.

Osmark couldn’t cheat the game’s systems without endangering the whole virtual world, but with his knowledge of VGO’s designs and its many secret classes and quests, he wouldn’t need to break the rules to gain a significant advantage.

And if he was near Tomestide, he was ahead of schedule. Even better. The caravan he’d been lucky enough to join would deliver him right to the doorstep of his allies and the training he needed to put his plans into motion. He closed out of the map, his smile widening.

“You seem pleased with yourself,” the woman said with a wink. “Copper for your thoughts?”

Osmark chuckled and licked his lips.

He didn’t know this merchant, and he wasn’t going to tell her even a fraction of the truth about his thoughts. She might be nothing more than an NPC, but tipping his hand to anyone this early in the game could be a fatal error. And VGOs NPCs were far from the standard MMO fare. Though the NPCs were procedurally generated by drawing on a host of information from all over the internet—history books, Facebook profiles, novels, movies, games—each one could pass the Turing Test with ease. They could be just as cunning and just as dangerous as any of the player characters.

“I’m just glad I woke up in the same place I fell asleep,” he replied with a shrug. “How far to Tomestide?”

She grinned. “So you do know more than you’re letting on. For that, I’ll tell you what the driver told me this morning. We’ll likely reach Tomestide by nightfall.”

Osmark grunted and glanced at the sun, dipping below the horizon, painting the land with streaks of gold, red, and dark purple. Another hour until full dark, at least. That was an awful lot of precious time to waste in the back of a wagon. “I’ll just check with the driver. Maybe we’re running ahead of schedule,” Osmark said, gaining his feet and squeezing past the woman.

The wagon wasn’t more than 15 feet long, but walking through it took Osmark most of a minute. Between the uncertain footing caused by the wheels bouncing through ruts and the jumbled cargo occupying almost every free inch of floor space, it was far more of a challenge than Osmark would’ve liked. He’d almost reached the driver’s bench when the wagon suddenly veered hard to the left, the horses shrieking in protest up ahead.

Osmark lunged, grabbing at the back of the bench before he crashed to the wagon’s floor. The pain filter was amazing, but he wasn’t too keen to experience any more pain than strictly necessary. His fingers closed over the rough wood, earning him a few more splinters. “What the hell?” he shouted, a flash of anger swelling in his chest.

The driver turned to Osmark and shouted right back at him. “Get down! There’s—”

Blood jetted from the man’s mouth and splattered across the Osmark’s chest. The driver slumped to the side with a thick arrow jutting from the side of his throat, dead. The smell of fresh-spilled blood panicked the horses, and they reared back, legs flashing in the air, as they crashed into one another. Osmark tried to grab the reins from the dead driver’s nerveless fingers—to restore order to this mess—but the leather was slick with blood. It slithered through the guard’s hands and vanished over the lip of the driver’s bench. Gone.

Bestial howls filled the air.

The terrified horses screamed and bolted from the road, but in their blind panic, they tangled in their traces and lost their footing. The horse on the left, its hair black as midnight, crashed onto its side and dragged its partner, a chestnut brown, down on top of it. The screaming beasts slid down the grassy embankment next to the road in a jumble of kicking legs, gnashing teeth, and thrashing heads.

Osmark saw the disaster coming but was helpless to stop it. The falling horses dragged the wagon hard to the left, pulling it down the hill behind them. The wheels dug into the dirt like plows and broken earth mounded up before them. The wheels on the wagon’s downhill side burst under pressure, splinters of wood and bits of iron flying free like shrapnel. The front axle lurched and dropped, burying itself in the dirt as a thick wooden pole bucked up against the bottom of the wagon and momentum did its work.

In seconds they were airborne, the wagon flipping onto one side with a groan.

Osmark sailed away from the driver’s bench and toward the field beside the road, tumbling head over heels before crashing into the dirt with bone-jarring force. The impact knocked the wind out of his lungs in a muffled bark. Everything went black, and then a new game message floated into view:

Debuffs Added

Stunned: Movement reduced by 75%; duration 1 minute

Concussed: You have sustained a severe head injury! Confusion and disorientation; duration, 1 minute.

Blunt Trauma: You have sustained severe Blunt Trauma damage! Stamina Regeneration reduced by 30%; duration, 2 minutes.

Osmark lay on his belly and struggled to fill his lungs with air. A high-pitched ringing filled his ears. His vision drifted out of focus, snapped back, and then drifted away again. His body felt like someone had dumped him into a burlap sack and then kicked him for a few hours. Lying in the grass seemed like the best idea he’d had in a long time. His eyes slipped closed, and he took a deep breath of the cold air. But the smell of burning hair curled in Osmark’s nostrils like a barbed wire noose and immediately brought him back into the moment. The stench ignited a primal fear that screamed for him to move.

To run, before he, too, was burning.

Osmark fought to gain his feet, but his current debuffs made it almost impossible. Crawling was all he could manage, so that’s what he did. He wormed away from the wagons and the screams and the fire. Pulling himself along an inch at a time, his fingers and knees scrambling for purchase, while his head throbbed and his thoughts bounced around inside his ringing skull like rubber balls thrown against a brick wall. What the Hell had happened back there?

When Osmark reached the tall grass a few yards from the road, he turned back scanning the road and the chaos. Most of the wagons had crashed and spilled over in the road or beside it, their dead horses still tangled in their rigging. A frightening number of arrows had punched through the faithful beasts’ hides, and the pooling blood had turned the dirt into a muddy mire.

Figures moved through the bloody wreckage in the red light of the sinking sun, their faces lit by the dancing flames of the torches they clutched in their meaty fists. Some were human, their golden hair and pale skin marking them as Wodes. Their allies, however, were much too large to be men. Standing a good foot taller than their human companions, these creatures’ bodies bulged with misshapen muscles. Their faces were distorted by tusks that jutted from the sides of their mouths beneath their wide, upturned noses and piggish nostrils.

Risi.

Osmark inched forward another inch, then two, watching the unfolding carnage with wide eyes.

The Wodes and their Risi allies stalked through the wreckage, kicking at burlap bags, smashing open wooden crates, and butchering any survivors they came across. Wicked axes and pitted-steel swords scythed through the merchants and guards who tried to stand their ground and fight. It was a hopeless battle; the guards and merchants were outnumbered five to one, and most were injured from the wreck to boot. Quickly, Osmark surveyed the battlefield for any signs of the female merchant from the wagon. He saw dead guards and slaughtered horses, but there was no sign of the woman.

Had she run? Maybe.

That hopeful notion died when he saw one of the few remaining drivers break and flee into the night. Shaggy maned wolves, larger than any Osmark had ever imagined, exploded from the shadows to pursue the fleeing man. They were massive creatures with gray hair, oversized jaws filled with far too many teeth, and beady yellow eyes. They were almost hyena-like.

Fifteen yards from the road, the wolves caught up to the runner, circling him like sharks smelling blood in the water, their lips pulling back in silent snarls. The obvious leader—a great white beast with a black blaze marking his forehead—howled. Then he lunged, and his pack joined in the slaughter. The man’s screams went on far longer than Osmark would have believed possible.

He was torn to shreds before his cries faded away.

Despite the horror of the situation, Osmark had to admire the artistry of the scene. He’d created this, even if only indirectly. His tools, his machines, his programming, had fashioned this barbaric scene from the nothingness of electronic space. It was incredible, in a cold, pragmatic way.

And it would’ve been even more amazing if those impressive beasts his programming had spawned didn’t turn and head in his direction.

The bulk of the bandits were busy divvying up the spoils of their attack, but a lone Wode had split off from the rest of the group to search for survivors. He followed a trio of wolves, their black noses pressed to the ground. Sniffing. Searching.

They have my scent, Osmark thought. Fear, real and primal, took root in his guts. He froze, unable to run, unable to even think. The wolves were less than thirty feet away, now. If he moved, they’d see him and run him down in seconds. If he stayed put for much longer, they’d stumble right over him, then shred him into dog chow. He needed to do something. Anything was better than lying there like a terrified rabbit waiting to die.

But what to do? He didn’t have a weapon. He didn’t have any skills.

The search party drew nearer to Osmark.

Osmark eyed the towering Wode leading the little party. The blond thug had a massive battle axe resting on his shoulder and a blazing torch in his offhand. Sapphire blue tattoos curled from under his mane to frame his face in intricate and fearsome designs, which made him look almost as monstrous as the Risi. The Wode’s blonde hair was plaited into elaborate braids that dangled down his back like a golden rope, swaying past his belt as he turned his head from side to side in search of prey. His armor was nothing more than crude hides that revealed almost as much of his skin it covered.

The lead wolf threw back her head and howled. She lowered her muzzle, and her eyes blazed like swamp fire in the last rays of the dying sun. The wolf charged.

Straight at Osmark.

His paralyzing fear shattered.

He hadn’t come this far, accomplished this much, to be gutted on his first day in VGO. He leaped to his feet and ran, only realizing his host of debuffs were gone when he didn’t immediately fall to his knees again. His head still ached from the wreck, but he wasn’t injured. Now, he just needed to stay that way. Before he’d taken three steps, however, a jolt of savage pain tore through his calf as jagged fangs clamped down, puncturing skin and digging deep in the muscle below. With a guttural snarl, she jerked him off his feet and tossed him away with a twist of her head. Stars flashed across his vision as his head bounced off the dirt road.

The wolf snarled again and curled back onto her haunches, muscles tensed to lunge.

Osmark stared into her wild eyes. Blood stained her muzzle and slicked her dagger-like teeth.

His blood.

So, this is how it ends, he thought. He wasn’t even scared anymore. He was disappointed and disgusted by his failure. He’d had it all planned out, and now his new life was going to be ended by some low-level forest bandits and their mangy dogs.

The wolf leaped for his throat, its slathering jaws spread wide.

And then it yelped, as blood splattered across Osmark’s face. The hot and sticky spray blinded him, but temporarily blinded was better than permanently dead. Osmark cleared his eyes with the palms of his hands and stared in disbelief at the dead wolf sprawled in the dirt, its yellow eyes already glassy.

A lean man wearing burnished leather armor loomed over the fallen wolf, his feet spread wide, his gaunt face tense, a gleaming silver sword raised and at the ready. In an instant, he lashed out at the next animal, splitting it almost in half with a two-handed chop that caught it mid-leap. The third wolf, surprised and off balance, didn’t have a chance. The man feinted left, shot right, then lunged, driving the bloodied tip of his blade through the wolf’s gray hide and into its heart.

“Don’t just lay there gawking, lad,” the man said, jerking his weapon from the dead wolf’s twitching corpse. “My name’s Horan and I’m here to help. But if you want to live, you best get ready to fight.”