They would be thinking she was crazy, standing there at one end of the bridge with vacant eyes as energy beams flew all around, sparkles flying, guards falling, while a fiery but silent scene could be seen through the enormous window facing the void of space.

But Sarah was not crazy.

If anything, she was dumbstruck with her realization.

She had jumped to this realm barely half an hour earlier, and she landed right in the middle of the action, as the mothership was being assaulted by unknown forces. The invaders looked like pirates, but judging for the size and general quality of their ships, they either were members of an official army or had some big funding beyond the product of mere pillage.

Looking out the window she could see the ships blasting at one another, firing their lasers or using their shields as battering rams. Or, could have seen. Because her eyes were open but she wasn’t looking. Her gaze was on the legends and figures appearing before her, making up her Inventory. The Worldjumper was still wrapper around a finger in her left hand; she was holding it with her right thumb and index finger, delicately, precisely, like one holds a dial.

It was a dial.

It had always been a dial.

“Run! Fucking run!!!”

Sarah didn’t hear the warning at first. The hood in her robe shielded her vision from what was happening at her sides; it also muffled the sounds just a tiny bit, helping her concentrate on her discovery.

When a laser beam flashed right before her eyes, though, she jumped back, startled, and forgot about the Ring and everything having to do with it. But she remembered the magician.

Stealth, she thought, perhaps vocalized. And disappeared.

It was a lucky thing that the Stealth skill involved her clothes and weapons also. It would have been very inconvenient if she’d had to get naked just to stay unnoticed. It would be ironic, when this fucking game gives me some clothes appropriately covering my whole body for fucking once. But then she remembered that she had used the Stealth skill in the dead city, and that she was fully covered there, too.

Being invisible wouldn’t protect her from the blasts, though, so Sarah took a few steps back and pressed her back against the wall opposite the window. The bridge was long, but pretty narrow. She took cover behind a column protruding fromt he wall, partially covered in information panels.

In the menu of realms, this one was called Space Battle. As uninspired as the name was, its accuracy couldn’t be disputed. Sarah stood there for a while doing nothing, just contemplating the show of lights and explosions out there, as the invading ships tried to wipe out the mothership’s defenses. A scene that could have been taken from Starcrash with its deliciously naïf aesthetics.

“Where did she go?”

“I don’t know. Go back! Go back!”

She identified one of the voices as Myra’s. Myra was a player; they had met as soon as Sarah landed inside the mothership. They couldn’t talk much, though, since the ship was already under attack. Taking cover was more urgent then than Scrutinizing each other or telling the story of their lives.

Valiant was not a horse here. It was now an individual attack ship, just like the ones that were shooting rays and being shot out there at the other side of the glass. She had tried to reach it to go and joing the battle, but the pirates, or whetever they were, had blocked her attempt. Valiant was at the other side of the bridge, and when she tried to run across it, she found out that they were already gathered at the opposite end, between her and the ships.

There was no way to reach Valiant, and no way for Valiant to reach her, since he was not a horse anymore, but an inanimated object.

But she had just discovered something.

She had discovered the dial.

* * *

Twenty minutes earlier

“Who the fuck are you?”

The woman was armored to her teeth. She was shooting lasers across the large hall when Sarah fell down beside her. She had good aim, and a fierce expression that would have been scary if Sarah had landed on the opposite side.

“Hello. I’m Sajya,” she said, mentally sighing at the way people tend to greet her after a jump. “How many are there?”

She retrieved her hand weapon, which was an energy pistol in this realm, instead of a switchblade or a sword. It had several fluorescent markings and a long line that was completely lit up. Sarah figured that it would be the charge indicator, and the markings were the individual charges. She hoped that the pistol would be able to charge itself with her accumulated fuel/mana, as opposed to turning into a paperweight after the sixth shot.

“I don’t know. I’m Myra,” the woman said. She would be about thirty years old, Sarah thought. She was pretty, with a wild beauty, and looked Latina.

“How many of us are there?”

“I don’t know,” Myra replied, then continued: “We are on the wrong side of the ship. The others have already gotten onto their ships to repeal them, but the ships are on the other side of the bridge. There were a few here, but all of them took off already.”

“Got it.”

Myra looked around and pointed at the others. There were several soldiers scattered around the hall, barricading themselves against whatever they could find, shooting at the invaders whenever they could. Players? NPCs? Sarah wasn’t sure.

“We’ll try to make it through the bridge, but we need to clear the hall first,” Myra explained.

Sarah pointed her energy gun at one of the bad guys and opened fire. She missed, but she learned that the gun could indeed charge itself; a quick glance at her Inventory determined that small amounts of mana (here, Energy) were deducted with each shot. Evidently, the six markings meant that she would be able to fire up to six blasts in quick succession, after which she would have for the gun to reload. A revolver, then, she thought to herself. A space Colt.

In her Inventory listing she also saw that Valiant had become an attack ship in this world, and that the rest of her weapons were now “space” versions of what they were before: a laser rifle, a differential bow (whatever the hell that was), and a Z-blaster (same; a flamethrower originally). She took a few more shots with the laser gun and then stored it to retrieve the rifle. A few shots later she decided that the gun was more manageable in this situation, so she stored the laser rifle and retrieved the energy gun again.

“OK, let’s do it. I’ll go first,” she said after a while.

She didn’t even said it because of her unlimited Stealth; she had forgotten that skill completely.

“What— are you sure?” Myra asked.

“Very,” Sarah replied. “It’s now or never.”

Time was running out indeed; every second that passed limited their chances to cross the bridge. Sarah rolled to her right, firing her gun as she did so: one, two, three. She jumped up and sprinted towards the bridge’s opening. Four, five. She crouched to avoid a laser blast, and kept running. Six.

A beam made the wall shatter as she entered the bridge. She rolled again, then waited for Myra and the others to come and join her. But now the hall had become a fiery hell. Rays of energy from both sides crossed the air, their whooshing sounds bouncing around, amplified by the acoustics of the place.

She took a few steps, saw movements at the other end of the bridge, and froze in place. Out there, attack ships from both sides were bursting up in silent flames as they were hit by powerful beams of energy.

Her ring, the Ring, was shining.

But Sarah was not going to jump to another world.

Not now.

There was something in the way the Ring of Realms glistened. Something in the motion of those flashes of color. A certain outline. A current. A method.

She let her index finger and thumb embrace the ring, delicately, as she invoked her Inventory and examined it carefully.

She needed a horse now.

She didn’t have a horse.

But she had a dial.

* * *

She was invisible. But not invulnerable.

“Run!” Myra had shouted, and Sarah knew that on that side of the bridge, the battle was being lost, while at the other side, the pirates were closing in.

She was trapped in the middle, and there was no way to escape.

But she didn’t want to escape.

Her index and thumb grazed the Worldjumper. It was invisible too, but she could perceive the undercurrent in it, the code of its energy flowing everywhere.

It needed to be nudged in the right direction. That’s all there was to crossphasing. A slight nudge, and then another.

Sarah invoked her Inventory once again. Her fingers moved over the ring from edge to edge. The weapons section in the Inventory became highlighted. Her fingers moved a bit more. Now the highlight was on Valiant, her portable ship.

Now her motion was different. Her fingers moved along the ring, grazing the surface, as if turning a dial. Which is what it was. In place of the ship there was now a motorbike. She kept dialing. A different motorbike, just like Tristan had been. She kept dialing. Now it was a horse.

Shadow skill acquired: Crossphasing

She heard him neighing in the distance.

The pirates were already entering the bridge from the far side. They couldn’t see her, but they started firing their lasers anyway, trying to clear the space.

Sarah whistled.

Valiant came to her. He galloped into the bridge, running over two invaders. He couldn’t see Sarah, either, but he knew where the whistle had come from. He galloped along the corridor while the pirates, confused, hesitated for a moment. Then they pointed their lasers at the horse.

Sarah dialed back.

Valiant was an attack ship.

The laser beams hit its back but barely had an effect. Sarah sprinted toward the ship, climbed into it, and turned on the engine. Long, powerful flames shot from its back, roasting the men who had just been shooting at Valiant.

They were fortunate: their death was immediate, and they didn’t even have time to understand what was coming for them.

Sarah was now advancing, approaching the bridge’s entrance. She exited the corridor and entered the hall where Myra and the others were still trying to repeal the invaders. Sarah maneuvered Valiant and started shooting the cannons in their general direction. She couldn’t hope for accuracy but the splash damage was effective: she started receiving prompts about dead pirates even though she couldn’t see them.

Myra had stopped shooting her gun and was now just standing idle, staring at the ship in utter shock. After a few seconds, she and the others started picking the surviving invaders and shooting them. The hall was clear in a matter of minutes.

“Hey!” Myra shouted, or something of the sort. Sarah couldn’t hear her from inside the cabin. She pointed the ship at one of the exit bays, drove Valiant towards it, and waited for it to open. Then she shot into space.

A prompt appeared before her sight as soon as she was outside the mothership:

TASK: Destroy the pirate mothership

Your mothership is under attack. The invaders are pirates from space who are supported by the enemy power of Raxia. Defend the mothership by joining the rest of the fleet and destroying theirs instead. You’ll need to find its weak spot first.

Reward on success:

- 1000 XP

- 1000 Mana

- increase in Dexterity

No, Sarah thought, and then she said it out loud: “No.” It felt good, saying the word. “No,” she repeated. “Fuck you. Hear that, Game Master? FUCK YOU. I’m done with tasks and missions and all that shit. I’ve learned to play your game, I have my flying machine, and I’m coming for you.”