We were woefully unprepared—and now we were going to die.

I spent most of my afternoon, hell, most of my teens and all of my adult life on Abaddon Online. It was an underground VRPG disavowed by every reputable gaming agency.

It made use of deep neural connections that weren’t approved for what you would call casual use, and not technically legal. They were deemed unsafe, and had catastrophic psychological effects for some users. To avoid the agencies set to shut games like Abaddon down, most were hosted on secret darknet servers to avoid detection. It drew only the most dedicated players who craved an experience that at times felt like it surpassed reality.

I was idling in the Bridgeport clinic, a place in the largest city where low level players could recuperate quickly and rest easy, safe from the player killers. The last thing I expected was Luxon, the highest level paladin in the game, marching in with five other members of his guild.

He shined like alabaster and moved with certainty. He was famous, not just for his status as guild leader, but for his unmatched combat abilities. He had defeated every pretender, demolished every boss monster he faced, and his immaculate white armor, free of any wear or blemish, was proof of it.

They needed one more player to attempt a high level raid. The Drakhold, infamous as among the toughest dungeons in the game. Never completed, no one had ever even reached the raid boss at the end.

They were in need of someone. Someone like me. Although, they could probably do better than Curio the rogue. They needed my skills—my ability to uncover traps and pick locks. I don’t know if it was curiosity, or just the rush of having such powerful players in need of me, but I volunteered immediately—without thinking. I soon realized I was over my head, and outclassed.

Now we were going to die.

“Hazy!” shouted a mage in the back. She carried a staff and wore a purple dress that dipped deeply at the chest. On her head was a black witch’s hat with a wide brim ending in a sharp point.

She had withdrawn a hazy potion from one of her bags, a word-of-recall potion that would give her a fast exit from the dungeon back to Bridgeport. A death could mean a loss of hundreds of hours of work between experience, gold, and gear lost. But The rest of the party wasn’t ready to quit just yet. They were all in The Silver Web—Luxon’s guild. It stretched dozens of people, only letting in the most powerful players. Among us, besides Luxon in the lead, was two of the best fighters around, Wolfram and Cimmarow, along with Athena the purple dressed mage, Darion, a rather pugnacious holy battle cleric, and a bard named Surewinter.

“I can’t. I didn’t have time to prepare!” Screamed Surewinter. Her fragile form was up against the stone wall, pinned between the two fighters. They were struggling to engage the raid boss that had appeared behind us. It was a particularly nasty looking half-demon assassin named Hellfex the Lord of Drakhold. A mass of claws, black sinew, and pulsating veins.

It was the fighters who made the first mistake. Instead of letting me scout for traps as their rogue, they had hurried ahead, excited to reach the raid boss. They had grown fearless after we expertly dismantled the last few guardians with some ease. I attribute most of that to Luxon. When he swung his radiant holy avenger, a powerful sword only he carried, monsters seemed to melt beneath him, carving through them like shoveling snow. I had never seen anything like it.

With the misstep of the fighters, alarms had rung out, alerting the boss. Instead of a large open chamber for a boss fight, like we had come to expect, we were trapped in a cramped dungeon corridor.

My headset didn’t just send the sights, but reached out and touched every sense my brain could receive, translating VR to reality through the Synaptigear headset—the damp walls pressed against my skin and the earthy smelling stone. It felt real. And the overwhelming feeling of claustrophobia was choking in the tight hallway, exacerbated by the bulky fighters shoving their way through our party to engage the raid boss behind us.

Hellfax was an enormous demon, his unfurled wings filling every inch of the space. Smoke poured from him, obscuring our vision, and hiding his movements until he lashed out with a demonic speed I didn’t know monsters were capable of. Appearing at first out of nowhere, smoke trailing from his grip, he landed his first hit against Darion in our rear. He was specced as a frontline battle cleric, and even in a full set of leviathan-scale armor and defensive spells, he fell to the initial backstab and lightning-fast blows that followed, crumpling to the floor as he died. With little effort the demon continued his warpath, dissecting us with a cruel precision. Landing attacks at a furious, unnatural speed.

"Out of the way, goddamnit!" shouted Wolfram the half-orc fighter, muscling his way through as best he could. He was our tank, and with him struggling to engage the demon, there was little standing in its way from causing a total party kill, starting with our squishiest players.

“I can’t find my hazy. I don’t have a hazy!” cried Surewinter. In her arms was a bundle of single-use damage scrolls she was clenching to desperately, unable to find the room to cast them. She was small, thin, with auburn hair that fell in ringlets down her shoulders.

Trapped between the fighters and the casters, I did my best to press myself flat against the wet stone and creep along the wall. I managed to slip into the black smoke billowing out from Hellfex, allowing the paladin to pass by and face the demon assassin. Hellfex lashed out with an array of vicious thrusts that tore through our poor mage, and she stumbled, only a sliver of health left. She looked out to Luxon for help, but he was standing between the demon and Surewinter, doing his best to defend the bard. The mage's healthbar pulsing as she teetered near death.

“Die if you want to, then,” spat Athena bitterly. The mage quaffed her hazy. And with that, her form, wreathed in a wash of spiraling blue light, evaporated.

The other fighter, Cimmarow, an offensive hybrid with a brutal two-handed sword, began to stagger. The demon started stabbing him, impaling him all the way through, the demon’s entire blade up to the hilt visible through a hole that had been punched through the back of his armor. His knees splashed down into a pool of his own blood, and he dropped his sword to his side and used his free arm to retrieve a potion from his bag. Another hazy. As he held it to his lips the demon slashed out again, taking off his head. He hadn’t made it.

“That’s it. It’s hopeless,” said Wolfram. He was a formidable defensive tank, but against this threat, he was outmatched. Even with his damage reduction, I had little hope he could weather the bombardment of attacks. Especially without his cleric to heal him.

“No,” cried out Luxon. “We can take it. We can do it.”

Coming into position behind the creature, I let loose an ambush, striking the unarmored side of the monster with my rapier and parrying dagger.

CRITICAL HIT!

One of my weapons had landed a crit, and the demon shivered in pain. His health bar draining from green to orange.

Another round of vicious attacks from Hellfex left Wolfram bloody. Luxon turned to heal him, but before he could lay on hands, the demon unleashed a torrent of black lightning from its mouth, setting them both awash in dark light that burned not just their skin, but their souls. Wolfram was gone, a smoldering pile of empty armor. Luxon was left in dire shape.

“I’m sorry you have to die,” said Luxon towards the bard through a half-cocked smirk. He uncorked his hazy potion and quickly guzzled it down.

Surewinter was frantically reading spells and sending all manner of magical missiles, frozen spears, and crackling fireballs towards the monster. After she read each spell, the parchment burned up and dissolved into ash. But she was running low. Her magical well having already been spent on healing spells for herself as she absorbed its attacks as best she could.

“You need to hazy,” yelled Surewinter towards me through the demon smoke. “We’re not going to make it, save yourself!”

I didn’t respond. I just continued my attack. I needed to draw aggro from the bard, so that the demon would attack me instead.

I was a rarity, a constitution specced rogue. I didn’t have a whole lot of strength, or intelligence, or mana, or even the best gear, but I had hitpoints. For my level, I had a whole shitload of hitpoints.

Surewinter finally exhausted her spell sheets and was down to swinging with her dagger. With her reduced damage, I was finally drawing aggro, and the demon turned to face me, stopping his assault on the fragile bard. It swung, and I dodged.

It immediately swung again, and this time I riposted, batting its weapon away, and landing a free blow between its eyes.

Another swing, and I riposted again, parrying its attack and landing my own. Then it dawned on me—this monster was hasted, that’s how it was putting out the attacks so quickly. And, because it was hasted, each attack would proc my parry chance at hasted speed. I was beating this creature down, using its own speed against it. Absorbing the hits that landed as best I could. My hit points were shedding fast. I wasn’t going to last much longer.

Then I began to feel my myself recover.

Surewinter was healing me, not with spells, but with a song. A bard, of course, I remembered. I managed to dodge some of its attacks, parry others, increasing my damage, but every third hit from the monster landed and sent me reeling. But Surewinter was there to help me regain my hitpoints. Abandoning swinging her own dagger, she was focused on keeping me going—singing the song of vigor.

The breath attack! I had to time it right, we had to burst down Hellfex quickly before he vomited another fiery storm of black death upon us—we wouldn’t survive it. I watched with bated breath as his health changed from orange to red. We were nearly there. But we weren’t going to kill him fast enough. Not before he killed us.

“Now!” I called out, “it’s all or nothing, Surewinter!”

Surewinter turned from me, and taking a deep breath, sang the song of destruction. It was her daily, and she only had one chance to use it. It shook the stone hallway, raining down bits of rock and dust. The demon reeled back and began to unleash its unholy lightning breath.

I jumped in the way, landing one last desperate attack.

CRITICAL HIT!

CRITICAL HIT!

It was the impossible. Both weapons landed, wounding critically. The demon convulsed, doubling over and wrenching black ichor from its mouth. Then it fell dead.

Surewinter jumped into the air and turned to hug me. “You stayed,” she said. “I can’t believe you stayed.” As she did I could see the exp display count up, and it kept going. Incredible, I thought. This was the strongest monster I’ve ever defeated, and split just two ways, it put me within arms reach of my next level.

“I couldn’t leave you,” I said, separating from her grasp.

“That might be the first time someone’s said that to me." She beamed. "Here,” she said, handing me a key from off the slain demon lord. It was the treasure key that would unlock the raid’s treasure room. “This is yours. You’ve earned it.”

“No,” I said. “We’ll split it.”

She smirked. “Well then, you should at least get his weapon. I’m sure it’s better than that old parrying dagger.”

She reached down and picked up the weapon Hellfex had been using against us and handed it to me. “I don’t know what this is, or what it does. I don't think anyone does. You’ll have to let me know next time.”

“Next time?” I asked. The short sword cradled in my open palm. It was light, incredibly light. It weighed less than even my old wooden starting dagger.

“Yeah,” she said. “Next time we go on a raid. Don’t you dare think I’m ever going on a raid without you. You’re my good luck charm, Curio.” Surewinter let out a wink.

I looked down, a bit embarrassed. Placing the short blade from the slain boss into my bag, I walked up to the treasure room door. It was enormous, fit for a demon lord, and cloaked in the same shadows as he was. Looking back to Surewinter, she gave me an approving nod, and I put the key into the door and heard a click.

I could hear her gasp from behind me, and choked down my own. It was more gold than I had ever seen, stacked up in towering piles. Along with it were an array of glittering black dragon scales, the rarest craftable item in the game.

I looked back to Surewinter. “I guess I’ll split this into six, and take my share. You can give the rest to your guild.”

“No,” replied Surewinter, smiling. “They abandoned us. Take all of the items and split half the gold, that’s your fair share. I’ll share my half with Luxon's guild.”

I added the gold to my inventory and kept the dragon scales, it was as much as I had earned my entire career. This was by far my most successful raid, the gold, the scales, a new weapon, and Surewinter… It was nice to have a new friend.

“So, uh…” I started. “I have black dragon scales now."

"What's your main weapon?" she asked.

"Just an iron rapier," I said.

"Oh, that just won't do!" She winked again. "I know where we can forge that into something amazing! But it's a secret."

She took my hand and we exited the dungeon. Amazingly, she lead me through the overland map, all the way back to Bridgeport. "It's not much further. Luxon has a rule for our guild never to tell other players, but he did invite you to raid with us, and I think you’ve earned it."

Reaching the gate of Bridgeport, she lead me to an area I had never seen, hidden deep within the Wizard's tower. She cast detect-invisible on me and lead me through multiple doors, and I watched her use up strange keys I had never seen before.

"This is the Nexus, it's a portal few players know about. It allows you to fast travel to other cities. One of them," she said, "is Underheim, the home of the Svirfneblin. There’s a secret smith in the Underdark. He can craft you the best weapons in the game with those black dragon scales."

"Okay," I said cooly, trying my best to hide my excitement.

As she lead me through the widening portal, I watched her move—there was a fluidity to it, like she was born in this virtual place. I had never seen anyone like her.

There weren't many bards in the game. They were a solid class, but as a jack of all trades like my own, few played them. Bards were a class that didn't heal as well as a cleric, or do damage like a fighter, but they lent abilities to their party that no other class could. They weren't much good by themselves and leveled slowly. But she earned a lot of players' respect, and was a welcome raiding companion. It made sense that Luxon's guild invited her, she was the highest bard on the server.

Reaching Underheim, she directed me towards the smith. I was used to the dwarven smiths in Ironguad, who were the best in the game. But once I saw the menu appear for the Svirfneblin smith, my jaw dropped. His names was Quirlef, the Smith, and I doubt many players had made their way here. The list seemed unending, requiring material components I had never heard of like hippogriff crowns and behemoth souls.

"It's amazing, right?" She said.

"I can't believe it," I replied. “This guy can craft anything.”

"Go ahead," she said. "He has a rapier of black dragon scale you can make. No one in our guild has ever forged one. I don't know if any player has actually made one."

I dropped the scales into the interface for the smith. Then the small grey gnome began hammering away. As I watched him work, I looked back at Surewinter. I had never seen a player like her. So willing to help a regular player like me. She seemed so much more authentic than the other players I’d encountered. She was beautiful, inside and out, even in this digital world. She was real.

When the deep gnome finished, the weapon shimmered with a golden glow and disappeared from his forge, and along with it half the gold I had made from the dungeon. A heavy fee from a master smith. I never thought I would have the gold, let alone the materials, to craft something this powerful. I was elated. I doubt any other player in the game would have been capable of it.

BLACK DRAGON RAPIER HAS BEEN ADDED TO YOUR INVENTORY.

I couldn't believe it. A weapon no one had ever seen was now mine. Surewinter had gotten me not one, but two new weapons. I couldn’t wait to see what my damage might be.

"This is amazing," I exclaimed, "thank you!"

I looked to Surewinter. She seemed so proud of herself. She had shared guild secrets with me. In game knowledge was power, and access to secret areas and rare items could make players very wealthy—in this world and the real one. I felt privileged, honored, and amazed that I was allowed in on something shared among best players in the game. "So, what's next?" I said. I wasn't ready to end our night.

"I've got to get going," she said.

"Oh," I responded. I had never had such an exciting night. I had battled demons before, and had some close friends in the game. But nothing was like this. I wasn't ready to leave yet. I didn't want to leave her.

"Well..." I struggled to get the next few words out, "can I add you as a friend?"

Surewinter beamed again. “Absolutely. You can count on it. I'll be on first thing in the morning. I play every day.”

I opened up my friends list. It was in a pretty sorry state. I had spent so much of my time in the game alone, soloing and grinding through the mobs I could handle. I had friends, but we all struggled together, progressing as best we could. None of us had a powerful friend in a major guild like Surewinter. At the top of my friends list, in bright letters, was the name Surewinter. I clicked it.

FRIENDSHIP ACCEPTED.

I looked over to Surewinter. “I guess we’re friends now.”

Surewinter walked up to me, laying her hand on my arm. “You said it’s all or nothing. I’m glad we chose all." She smiled again, and it struck me as more than virtual. I felt like a real connection. “It's good to have a friend." She winked again. "I’ll catch you later, Curio.”

“Tomorrow, then,” I said.

“Tomorrow,” said Surewinter. She pressed her fingers to her lips and then waved at me, and then logged off.

Removing my Synapticgear I walked across the small single bedroom of my apartment. It had been raining, and the lights of liquor stores outside scattered a wash of neon onto the wet city street below me. I laid down on my bed and went to sleep. I had never gone to bed so fulfilled from a day of gaming, so happy with myself, so proud of my skill, and so excited to play with someone new.

I awoke much differently.

There was a pounding at the apartment door. Forceful, rapid thuds that woke me from a deep sleep. I had played long into the night, and the midday sun was breaking through the window.

I threw on a shirt and some dirty pants that still had a belt through the loops, and rushed to the door. What could they possibly want, was the building on fire?

Opening the door I saw two police officers. They looked somber, but stern. One was tall, with a shaved head and a square jaw. The other older and squat, sporting a mustache and a few days stubble on his chin.

“Are you Charlie Baker?” asked the squat officer.

“Yes,” I replied, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.

“Do you know a Stephanie Watkins?” he asked.

“No, I don’t.” The name was unfamiliar.

“Then, do you maybe know a…” he looked down to some pages in a folder he held in his hands. “A Surewinter?”

My eyes lit up. “Yes,” I said.

“We have chat logs between you two that we recovered from her computer. You were the last person we know she spoke with.” It was said in a worried tone, his face twisted into a grimace.

“What’s happened?” I asked.

“She was found dead this morning. We need to ask you some questions.”