Her body hit the floor loudly with a wet and boneless thump. We all stood there, spoons raised in shock, and watched as her body melted into dust which then reformed into a simple wooden cross with a stone base, which also landed with a thump. The guard kicked the cross and hung his club back on his belt. He then picked up the pot of food and walked out, muttering to himself about the inconvenience. The moment was broken by a slurp as Beldroth resumed eating.

“What just happened?” JT asked.

“Don’t worry about it,” the elf said, “she’ll be back in a few minutes to collect her things from her grave, and then she’ll go back to work. Remember, this is a game, death is unpleasant, but it’s not fatal.”

“Her stuff,” Allyse said, going over to the grave. “Can we take any of her stuff?”

“Why would you want to?” the old man asked.

“You never know what will be useful,” she replied. “Ah ha, an empty wine skin, I don’t know what we will use it for but now we have one.”

“We could fill it with water from the cauldron. That way if we ever miss quota we will at least have that,” I supplied.

“It won’t work,” said Beldroth, “take a close look at the water in your hand…” I did as he said and a description appeared:

Cup of Water

-10 to thirst

“...now take a look at the cup she left on the floor.”

Cup of Stagnant Water

-8 to thirst, may cause disease

“The same thing happens if you leave it in your inventory. I’ve tried and eventually it turn to rancid water and becomes poisonous.” He finished with a sigh. “It's part of how they keep us from escaping, they have the only source of water for days. And if your thirst gets too high you start losing health and die.”

“Why didn't you tell me this before walked away from my water?” Allyse said with a glare.

“Far be it from me to tell you what to do.”

“Wait,” I interrupted, “let me see that.”

She handed me the empty wine skin and quickly filled it with water from the cauldron.

You have acquired a skin of Water. Uses 10/10 -10 to thirst

I put it in my inventory and finished eating. We all took a second cup of water while we could, though even the stuff in the cauldron had gone stagnant. As we finished our meals, our friend the orcish squire reappeared and ran over to her grave. In moments she was back in her clothes and the grave dissolved into dust.

“Seems like you're an old hand at that,” I said.

She looked up with the ghost of a grin, “yeah, I used to play these games all the time. Never thought I'd be living the fetch quest that never ends.”

“That is the second time I've heard that. What is a fetch quest anyway.”

“Oh my gods, you're not just a fish, you're a noob. A fetch quest is when you have to deliver something or go get something to finish the quest. Like I have to bring food to you guys, accept it never ends and there is no reward at the end.” She raised an eyebrow at the half empty cauldron before she lifted it and turned to leave. “I'm Sarah, wish we were meeting under better circumstances.”

Once she left we all got back to work. The only major difference was that this time the odd man out was trying to sleep on the lone pallet by the entrance. After my turn in bed I found myself paired with Allyse. We worked in silence for a time before I asked, “how long did you work on your avatar to make it look so pretty.”

“I didn't,” she said to my raised eyebrows. “I've never used a full dive system before and couldn't figure out how the controls worked. The race part timed out and when I was trying to figure out how to give myself hair I found a button that said 'match me’. This is what I really look like under all the padding I have back in real life.”

“Well,” I said, “your parents did a beautiful job.”

She smiled shyly and then her face fell. We labored on in silence for a while and when she spoke again it was of inconsequential things. Even that conversation died down as the hunger returned and thought of anything but food became hard to manage. We pressed on through the night, our rhythm broken only by an occasional wave to clear a status screen as we gained a point of some stat or our mining skill improved.

Soon enough, Drune came to collect our nights take, alone this time. It made quite a pile, and he struggled get it rolling until the old man suggested he put as much as he could into his own inventory. Sarah soon followed, with our rations, and accompanied by a guard. Everything was dished out without incident and they both left as we all sat down to eat. That was when the obligatory question came up.

It was Dill who asked it of Allyse, “what are you in for?”

The old man and I both looked at him and said in unison, “you first.”

He held up his hands like we.had guns trained on him. “OK, OK, no need for that. It's no biggie, I already told you how I was a major distributor of recreational enhancement. Well, I had a deal go bad. Some yuppie tried to jack my merch and run off before paying what he owed. One thing led to another and he ended up dead. Turn out yuppie prick is the son of some out of state Senator, so to save daddys good name they made it look like I was some terrorists, like it was a political thing. Then it was wham bam thank you mam, and the judge is saying I'm too dangerous for regular prison.”

He then looked back at the Rogue inquiringly. She just looked down, shaking her tangle of red curls. The goblin looked ready to press when J.T. cleared his throat.

“I guess it's my turn,” he said, sparing her for the moment. “I was a broker for one of the mid sized banks out of Boston. I also taught Hapkido at a dojo once a week. Then one Saturday night I'm coming out of private club for...Um… men of a certain preference. I get jumped by six guys and I figure they're bashers so I start fighting for my life. I dropped three of them before they pinned me and one of them flashed a badge. When one of them died they seized my assets in a wrongful death suit before the criminal trial even started. The D.A. gave me a choice: go to trial and get the needle; spend the rest of my life in solitary confinement; or come here.”

“I guess I might as well.” Beldroth said with a glance to the woman beside him. “I was on the tail end of a thirty year hitch for killing a man in a bar fight. I didn't mean to kill him, but I'm not particularly sorry I did either. That's no nevermind, it happened and my stint was coming due. I was even up for a third shot at the parole board at the end of the month. That was when I came around the wrong corner and saw Jack Donnelly with a shiv in a guard's chest.

“He must have decided pretty quick that the only way I wouldn't talk was if I couldn't because before I knew what he was about he pulled that bit of sharpened soup can out of the man's chest and was coming at me. Now I may be old, but in my day I killed a man with my bare hands, and my time inside hadn't dulled me by much. I grabbed his arm in a lock and tried to bring it up to break his wrist. Same time as I was doing that he was trying to push me into the wall and break loose. Next thing I know, I'm going onto the shivs handle and the pointy end it buried in Donnelly's eye. They ran me up for both of them, called me a danger, and through me in here about a month before you showed up.”

His eyes went out of focus for a moment, “huh, seems I gained a rank in perform.” His face lit up, “and I gained a Level… but I'm still a fucking Minstrel. I hope who ever created this game is burning in their own little racist corner of Hell.”

“I'm pretty sure an A.I. made it,” Allyse laughed, “and I'm also pretty sure that computer programs don't get an afterlife.

“Fuck it, I'll just go,“ she continued, “as long as I don't have to go last. The details aren't important. In the end I found out my boyfriend had hurt my daughter and I killed him or it.”

“That can't be all of it,” said Dill, “I think it obvious you don't get sent here for run of the mill murder. Specially not with a justification.”

She went pale, “I may have gone a bit far when I disposed of the body. I don't really want to get into it.” Her voice turned hard at the end.

Dill held up his hand in surrender before turning me. “I feel like the odd man out. I haven't killed anyone. I was pinched for industrial espionage and then for assaulting an officer when they trying to throw me back in.” I said.

“That's weird,” J.T. said staring at me. “Wait, you said 'throw you back in’. I know who you are. You are that Roggvir Hamas guy. You the hacker who escaped prison and they didn't even know you were gone until some hick cop ran your prints. Your famous man.”

Dill stared at me in speculation for a minute be for calmly saying, “I'm in.”

“In what?” I asked.

“Whatever your plan is. I have to say, I was starting to give up hope but here I find I'm next to the only man to ever break out of Supermax undetected. I don't know what your plan is, but I want in.”

“I don't know what your talking about” I said, trying to give a conspiratorial smile. The truth was I had no plan. Don't get me wrong, I got sent in here with a thought that I could escape, but I had no idea how. I had had two days to get the lay of the land and everything I learned was bad.

For starters, we were chained to the floor. We literally could not leave the gallery. JT had tried to break the chain with a pickaxe and after the third swing the tool snapped in half. From talking to Drune, the entrances were all trapped with high level magic which the guards had to turn off for him to pass, so even if we could leave the gallery, we couldn't leave the mine without dying.

Which brings up the next point, because death isn't permanent the guards have no restraint. If you piss one off enough they just kill you. Once you've died you show up back in the sand pit surrounded by a force field and another guard grabs you and brings you back. We were lucky in the mines, the walk was enough of an inconvenience for the pit guards the others generally left us alone unless provoked. It seems the kitchen staff might get killed four or five times a day. And in this world dying hurt, maybe not as much as in the real world, but enough.

The guards themselves were also a problem. Most of them were part time, logging in for their shift and logging out again when it was over. There were some, like Brewer, who were on full time, sleeping and living in world. The problem was that in the real world they weren't even in the same building as us. I got the impression that they didn't even know where we were being housed. That meant even if we could win one over, they couldn't help us.

We were in a secret inescapable prison inside another secret inescapable prison. I mulled it over while we got back to work. I couldn't figure out a way around it. I needed to get more information.