The beast in black crept across the wooden floor. His talons tapping softly against scattered cookie crumbs and bits of frosting. The gory remains of his latest kill dusted the floor in a collage of sugar and broken confectionery. Suddenly, a flicker of movement caught his eye and he sprang into pursuit. Drums sounded in his head as he crossed the scene of carnage to leap at the exposed neck of his newest prey.

“Oh no! You got me!” His mom’s voice contained mock despair even as her hands deftly snatched the beast from the air. The beast growled at her and swung his mighty talons at her defenseless nose. Tanya let her son’s tiny hand pat softly against her face before twisting her lips into a ferocious grin.

“So the beast won’t go down so easily eh?” She chuckled while mercilessly tickling him. Giggles erupted through the small house, becoming more and more distant as the scene melted away into twisting swirls of mist. The Elder opened his eyes slowly, allowing the light of the quarter moon to gently banish the mist from his eyes. He continued watching, even as the last of the mist became as distant as the memory it allowed him to see, focusing balefully on the moon; willing his eyes to tell him what he saw there was mistaken. Finally, he sighed.

“We are out of time.” His voice ground against his years, weak and gravelly, yet unrelenting. “Call the boy.” Tanya shot a glance of her own at the moon, before nodding and vanishing into the night.

---*---

Tel was throwing a tantrum. Moping might be a more appropriate word, since he was far too old now to be kicking and screaming on the ground like he might have done as the little beast that ate only cookies and let his mom tell him what to do. He kicked the ground grumpily. Well if I don’t, then what am I doing here? Tel turned his grumpy eyes to the hut on the hill above him, candlelight glittering through the window just visible through the trees. Tel had finally gotten his friends together to do one last raid before his coming of age ceremony and it was an absolute nightmare getting a night where all of them were free so late in the year. In just two short weeks Tel would be considered an adult. Two short weeks before Baker Chul wouldn’t laugh off his pilfering some freshly baked scones. Two short weeks before dressing up in masks and spooking the Chief’s daughters would be reprimanded with more than just a slap on the wrist.

Tel growled and kicked a nearby rock, yelping when it turned out to just be the tip of a much larger than expected stone and quite unwilling to move.

“Dammit! Why the hells does she want me to visit the Elder now??” There was no way Tel was going to find another night in time where they were all free, and there was absolutely no way his mother would let her little monster out of her sight in the coming days. She was clingy enough recently he half expected her to be attached to his hip until the day he was older than the Elder. Frowning thoughtfully, Tel tapped his chin.

“Well if she said to be there within the hour...and with this foot injury I’m going to be late anyways...” Tel’s thoughtful frown curved into a mischievous grin and he dashed back towards the village.

---*---

“Ah, young Tel. You’re right on time.” The Elder’s voice rasped in the smoky air, muffled slightly by the thick monster mask resting on Tel’s head, tilted slightly to avoid aggravating the bright red hand print decorating his cheek. “And I see your courting of the Chief’s daughter is going as splendidly as ever.”

“Wha-?” Tel sputtered and began to cough as his sharp gasp drew a decorative feather down his throat. The Elder just laughed and waved him off.

“Ho ho ho! Nevermind nevermind. We have more important things to do tonight anyway and I certainly am not getting any younger waiting.” The Elder settled comfortably into a plush pillow and gestured for Tel to do the same. “Tell me (heh) boy, do you know your history?”

Tel squinted at the Elder, trying to determine if this was some kind of trick. “You mean how Charon grew angry at the living for forgetting him and he started to ferry the dead back to our world so, like, the Earth mother gave us power or something?” The Elder smiled softly and puffed on an old pipe.

“What if I told you that was all rubbish?”

Tel snorted derisively before remembering who he was talking to and attempting to cover the noise with a cough. “ahem, I mean everyone knows that that’s how we got here so I’d say you were chasing the hen around the fence.” It was the Elders turn to snort, an amusingly clumsy action to come out of someone who spends half their day looking dignified and staying indoors.

“Yes I imagine many would like to think I had finally gone mad. But I am serious.” He wrinkled his brows and leaned in toward Tel. “The history you know is a fragmented mockery of our true history, and it is our duty to remember it. Many of those who go through the naming ceremony think what I tell them is fantasy, but I can allow those delusions no longer.” Tel shifted uncomfortably and suddenly wondered what he should do with his hands. The intensity with which the Elder was beginning to speak was unlike anyone but his father on the day he told him not to enter the woods alone. It was unsettling to face directly.

“Look at me, Tel.” Tel started at the use of his name, and turned his gaze back to the elder. The last glimmer of light from the dying candle lit eyes that glowed unnaturally brightly in the dim cabin. Smoke swirled from the remains of the small fire between the two and, between one blink and the next, seemed to sweep forward and fill Tel’s eyes. He gasped, struggling to quell his rising panic, but before he could move he found himself floating in water darker than even the bottom of the Crystal Lake outside their village, and below him floated a huge blue-green stone that looked almost close enough to touch.

“That, my boy, is where our race was born; Earth.” The Elder’s voice echoed in his mind but, simultaneously, he could hear it from right in front of him, across a smoking fire. “We were a civilization that started much as you are familiar, with simple tools and houses of rough wood and stone.” Tel roughly began hurtling towards this ‘Earth’ with alarming speed and closed his eyes to prepare for the worst, but found himself standing in a village much like his own when he opened them. “But we were also much, much more.” Time seemed to accelerate around Tel and he witnessed stone slowly giving way to metal and a hard, black material in the place of cobblestone and brick. The sun blurred across the sky in a searing band until the village around Tel had been transformed into a house of square, white stone and blindingly white torches attached to the ceiling. A woman in a white jacket stood over strangely shaped cups full of some clear liquid while a younger man wrote some nonsense on a large board.

“We became so bold as to forget the lessons our gods taught us, and we attempted to conquer death.”

Tel heard the Elder laugh in a quiet, almost mocking way. “It was the second greatest irony that our attempts to remove the limiters on human lifespan worked well enough to cause the zombie apocalypse that we had been so afraid of for so long. We never could figure out why they seemed so bent on attacking the living.” Tel watched, confused, as the Elder said words he couldn’t quite catch and the scene around him transitioned to an old naked woman throwing a white blanket off of herself and attacking a nearby individual in a white coat. Tel couldn’t be certain what was going on exactly, but he was familiar with one thing. That naked person was a ghoul. It looked weaker than the ones he had seen, but it was definitely a ghoul. Did that mean that the Elder knew how they were made? Did he know how to cleanse them??

“Elder-” He started, but the Elder’s voice rode right over his words as if he couldn’t even hear him.

“And the single greatest irony, is that the apocalypse was so disappointing. Yes it was highly contagious, almost impossibly so; the entire human population was probably infected within a year or two. But while the cure defeated age, it couldn’t make us invincible.” Again the scene changed, though this time it showed a ghoul with impossibly huge muscles stop mid-run and simply collapse. A nearby man with a strangely shaped stick poked the immobile giant before looking confused and talking to another nearby survivor. “A stopped heart meant a stopped zombie. A stroke or aneurysm would bring down the toughest monsters out there, and bodies that expired from violence or car accidents wouldn’t even be able to come back. Collectively, the entire world asked, ‘was that it?’”

In a flash of light, Tel was once again in the white room with the elderly woman who had first come back from the dead. Though, now she was tied with thick cloth and had a gag in her mouth while many men and women in white coats and some with clothes that looked like they were woven out straight out of the lights of the forest in the summer stood around and chatted animatedly.

“That was not ‘it’. We had been so focused on the apparent end of the world, we hadn’t noticed that, for the first time, we had visitors.” In another flash of light, though this one localized to the side of the room next to the first ghoul, two figures appeared. They were about the size of humans but they had pure white feathers, bird-shaped heads, and the purest white wings. Their robes of white and gold fluttered as they waved grandly and spread their wings.

Humans. We are the Celestials. We have watched you from on high since the time you have been yet children.

The bird people continued talking but no words came from their beaks as the Elder’s voice once again reverberated inside the space.

“They called themselves Celestials. Probably as a bid to familiarize themselves to us, they tried to pretend they were angels so our religious selves would unwittingly serve them. We didn’t, of course. Well, some tried, but they were the foolish. Most people called them Avians and the governments largely dubbed them as Aarakora. They originally demanded, then eventually asked to be allowed to study the zombies, and since they were a legal loophole, the opportunity to trade with an advanced other-worldly race wasn’t passed up.”

The bird-people, the Aarakora, extended wing to hand with one of the people in white clothes and then vanished in another flash of light along with the first ghoul.

“That was our mistake. Our blind greed. We didn’t stop to think that maybe the advanced bird civilization wasn’t immune to our virus. We didn’t know that they acted as intergalactic merchants and their rendezvous with our planet was universally forbidden.”

Tel’s body followed the Aarakora back up to that inky blackness where a huge metal bird was waiting for them. Time once again flowed past as the bird sailed off to another huge stone covered in blues and yellows.

That’s a planet, isn’t it? I’m looking at the Aarakora planet. Tel’s thoughts preceded the Elder telling him what he had already guessed.

“The Aarakora home world, we called the Eyrie. The Aarakoran ambassadors brought the first ever zombie back home so they could unlock the secrets of immortality. It turns out Aarakorans were an incredibly short-lived race, and the temptation of eternity was great enough to ignore the universal embargo on Earth. And so they brought the first zombie, one human researcher, and the most dangerous virus ever created to the single largest trading hub in existence.”

The world began to spin with a terrifying speed, all the stars and sun around them streaking though the sky.

“100 years passed. A blink of the eye for the longer-lived races, but long enough for humans to leap from Earth-bound primates to star-faring explorers.” Back above the earth, Tel could see a thousand tiny fires quickly become human versions of the metal bird the Aarakorans used to fly though the black sky.

“And long enough for the rest of the universe to learn of the Aarakoran treachery, and to band together to smite humans back down to their planet.” As suddenly as they reached the vast depths of the sky, massive, distorted structures appeared out of nowhere and fired beams of light into the human ships, which sank back to the Earth amid silent flames.

“The alien races didn’t need to be so heavy-handed.” Tel heard a heavy sigh billow out, the faint scent of ash and smoke pulled him slightly out of his immersion. “But they were afraid. They were afraid, for while humans were fragile beings that threatened no one when dead, the other races were not so brittle. The story most often repeated through the galaxies was that of a race humans called the Titans.”

The scene became slightly blurry and Tel saw nothing but a sea of fog with the dark shapes of mountains standing off in the distance.

“I have no Memory of Titans to show you, but they were a peaceful race that had helped guide young races through the abyss of space for more millennia than days our sun had burned. They also were a horrifically powerful race that couldn’t be harmed by any mortal means and could only die due to age. A complication that was fixed in the single most brutal way possible only thirty-four years after the Aarakorans visited Earth, when the first Titan rose again.” The image of fog drifted away and Tel saw in front of him a planet so large that each shattered half dwarfed even the sun he had seen next to Earth. Like a massive egg with molten yolk, the planet had been cracked in two and floated as a dark, desolate thing.

“But...” The sky started turning once more. Slowly spinning faster and faster. “All races are adaptable. Funeral ceremonies and special practices were put in place, humans largely went back to life on Earth, and life went on. Time passed and all seemed well with the universe...” The spinning reached a fever pitch than suddenly froze directly in front of a dark, and twisted version of the Aarakoran home world. “...until the Eyrie went dark.”

---*---

“The second greatest sin life in our universe committed was believing that the Aarakorans had given up on their quest for immortality. Deep, deep within their world...” Tel’s body shot towards and then through the Eyrie until he stopped in a massive underground space with startlingly similar aesthetics to the white room the first zombie was made in. And there, in the center of that space, was the old woman-turned ghoul and a single human both surrounded by hundreds of Aarakorans. “...they had found success. By working together, they had discovered ways to extend lifespans for decades, tens of decades.” The Elder continued with a grim voice. Tel blinked in confusion.

Isn’t finding out how to keep everyone alive a really good thing?

Then Tel narrowed his eyes at the first ghoul, his heart speeding up. Suddenly he widened his eyes and gasped.

“It’s helping them?? But how?? Ghouls can’t think!” Tel blurted at seeing the figure of the old woman, clothed in a white coat of her own, helping the researchers to study what appeared to be pieces of her own flesh.

“You’re right. They couldn’t at first. But the Aarakorans research pushed the boundaries between life and death and granted intelligence to the ghouls. It wasn’t perfect, a ghoul had to be dead anywhere between fifty and a hundred years before they could regain their sentience, but they could. With the help of the oldest ghoul in existence they pushed the limits of possibility again and again until they discovered something so powerful and so difficult to understand that many still simply refer to it as magic. You, my boy, know it as the Earth Mother’s blessing.”

Tel only managed a startled grunt before he was once again whisked away. This time he was presented with the scene of normal-seeming Aarakorans walking about, eating, cooking, and enjoying their day.

“The discovery of magic was absolutely groundbreaking and the Aarakoran elite desperately wanted to hoard this power for themselves. But, for all they were powerful, the Aarakora were as careless as they were cunning. Word of magic and its use spread like wildfire through the galaxies and the entire universe entered a golden age of innovation and discovery. It was truly a golden age.”

“But all good things must come to an end.” Tel said. Looking up from the venison stew they had taken a short break to enjoy.

“Just so, lad.” The Elder shook his head sadly then waved his hand. Tel once more was standing in the massive Aarakoran research lab, venison stew still in hand, he was amused to note. He took a quick bite and noticed that the only thing in the lab was the old woman. Tirelessly working on some complicated project. The human researcher was there too, sleeping in a chair with his back to Tel. Tel could make out wispy gray hair adorning his head and realized that it had been hundreds of years since the story had started. His thoughts were drawn away by the Elder continuing his story. “The Aarakorans had found their answer to immortality in the infinite potential of magic and so left Marie to work virtually without supervision.”

“What???” Tel shouted.

“Ease. This may seem foolish to you, but Marie had worked next to the Aarakorans for hundreds of years and helped them to discover one of the greatest natural resources in existence. Besides, what could she do against magic? Why would she want to do anything?”

“Well...I mean...” Tel sputtered.

“The truth is we don’t know why.” The Elder chuckled morosely. “We never found out why the undead attack people like they do, we just know that they hate the living utterly and completely. Marie had managed to subdue those feelings for so long that everyone just forgot that they were there to begin with.”

The scene skipped forward in time. A massive hole stretched from the ceiling of the lab all the way to the surface. Dim light was scattered by the clouds of dust onto piles of rubble and the strewn bodies of hundreds of Aarakora. Even as Tel watched, tens more ran towards the first ghoul, Marie, brandishing flaming wings and talons of light only to cough blood and collapse before ever reaching her. Blue flame flickered from her eyes and her skin slowly began to peel away as she cackled amid the wreckage.

“Marie killed every living person on the Eyrie and re-christened it the Necropolis, a world of the dead that served only her. She spared only one soul. Her son, the researcher that had been with her since the beginning.”

“She still…?”

“No.” The Elder’s gleaming eyes dimmed somewhat. “She did not still love him for being her son. She sent him with a message to the leaders of the Intergalactic Federation to surrender, a message that was meant to hide the magic bomb she had placed inside him, one that was big enough to destroy everything that could stand against her. But we were lucky, for as new as the universe was to using magic, so too was Marie. She had become a Lich the day she had reached the age 500, but all her power lacked finesse, and the bomb was removed from her son, the leaders of the Federation survived and, together, they laid siege to the Necropolis with the combined might of a hundred thousand worlds.”

The inky black of space was slowly eaten away by tendrils of smoke and mist in front of Tel’s eyes and his vision slowly returned to the small room where he was sitting. The Elder sat across from him, hands clasped and eyes boring into his own. His bowl of soup untouched on the floor next to him.

“It turned out the Aarakora were right. Marie couldn’t stand against the power of magic alone, but she held the cunning of the Aarakora and the tenacity of the humans in one mind. When the armies of her enemies reached her home she challenged them all to a contest. She offered all she knew along with her life if she were to lose, and sanctuary from destruction should she win. It was a nonsensical challenge, but beings of power and authority were proud long before the advent of magic, and could not refuse such a challenge whether or not they intended to acquiesce to the terms.”

Tel yawned and sagged in his chair, the gentle rasping of the Elder’s voice and the playful twining of the smoke threatening to lull him into sleep.

“The details of the contest are lost to time, but the result was a permanent barricade around the Necropolis, and an era of peace that lasted nearly five hundred years. Life was not startled out of its slumber until Marie’s one thousandth birthday. A day on which only two things happened for certain: the Necropolis vanished entirely, and a curtain of un-life settled on every world too weak to repulse its insertion. A curtain that prevented any...too strong to...only classless...tomorrow...”

The Elder continued speaking, oblivious to Tel’s rapidly vanishing consciousness. Tel let the weight of the world bear down on his eyelids and all too soon gave in to the tempting dark, visions of death and eternity flashing behind his eyes.

---*---

“Tel.”

Tel startled awake, kept from leaping to his feet by a strong hand firmly clamped to his shoulder. Tel looked around wildly before settling his gaze on the quietly laughing face of his father.

“Have a good nap? I don’t suppose you told your mother you would be late?” Tel’s father chuckled slightly at his own question; Tel’s mother was famous for her temper when people were late. Struggling with his rising panic, Tel fumbled and tried to leap once again to his feet. “Peace, Tel.” His father removed his hand but held Tel in a steady gaze. “Your mother is waiting for you with the Elder at Farrow’s Peak...” He paused for a moment, squinting at Tel and searching for answers in his face. “...as he told you he would be last night?” Tel felt heat rise to his cheeks as he realized that the Elder very well might have done just that, probably sometime after Tel had already fallen asleep.

“Uh… I might have dozed off for a bit of that?” Tel grinned sheepishly.

Tel’s father groaned dramatically and rubbed the bridge of his nose between his finger and thumb. “Ohhhhhhhhh I knew it. I TOLD Tanya this was a bad idea. I SWEAR...” He huffed before centering himself and turning back to Tel. “We’re late already so let’s walk and talk.” He waved over his shoulder as he turned and briskly strode out the front door. “What’s the last thing you remember?” Gerald asked is quick tones as Tel jogged to catch up.

“I...uh...something about a curtain and...huff...Marie making it to a thousand?”

Gerald gave a sharp nod and looked down at Tel. “Listen carefully, I’ll try to summarize the important bits.” He said even while his feet carried him up the slope towards a large plateau. “Marie cast some form of negative life spell we call the curtain that only allows classless people to pass through it. It only affects low magic worlds like Earth was at the time. You’re the only classless old enough right now.”

“Wha-what?” Tel scrambled over rocks, his breath puffing out in bursts as he tried to keep pace with his father, who strode up the increasing incline as easily as if he were on flat ground.

“The Elder is out of time. He feels he will die soon and we don’t have the strength to give him a proper burial. Whatever experiments the Aarakora did left him basically untouchable. Someone has to go to the portal in Kal Adin and request help before it’s too late.” Gerald carried on, heedless of Tel’s question. As the peak of the plateau came closer and closer, Tel’s father spoke more and more rapidly, trying to cram as much information as he could into the little time he had. “The portal can only be used by a strong classer so you need to grow strong. We’ll try to give you as much time as possible but you must hurry. It’s going to be tough going but remember what I’ve taught you and you’ll be fine.” Before any questions could make their way through Tel’s heaving lungs he and his father crested the edge of the plateau and were rewarded with the sight of his mother, Tanya, the Elder, and at least twenty other adults arrayed in a circle on top of what was easily the largest ritual circle Tel had ever seen. His eyes widened in shock as he approached to see that each line of the thirty span thing was littered with enchantments and carved nearly a foot deep into the mountain.

Did they do all this last night?

Tel was broken from his musings by the scowling form of his mother chastising his father.

“Mother! What is all this? I--”

“Shhh darling.” His mother smiled and Tel noticed for the first time the veins bulging in her neck and temple as if she was supporting a great weight. “I’m sorry but there just isn’t time. Know that I will always love you and when you’re coming back by all the gods, Teller Joseph Hans, don’t you dare be late.”

The next few moments were a whirlwind strained smiles and hurried instruction as the circle below them glowed with increasing intensity before, with almost no warning, the circle flashed and Tel found himself rocketing skyward through fluffy clouds and towards the green and purple shimmer above that he now knew was the curtain. For a brief instant he thought he would be dashed upon its surface, instantly failing a quest he never knew he was destined to take on, but the moment passed with the curtain and Tel was greeted by the endless expanse of black he’d seen in his visions.

A glance behind showed the rapidly shrinking blue and green stone, shrouded in highlights of purple, become all but a dot before something in his peripherals caught his eye. Tel snapped his head around to focus on it, suddenly aware of how vulnerable he felt all alone up here. He twisted to try and shift his body into a ready stance only to find he had little to no control over the trajectory of his flight. He watched, helplessly, as an eerie green ball of light composed of thousands of hieroglyphs streaked toward him and collided with his chest. Tears sprung to his eyes and Tel choked back a gasping sob as a violent wave of fear, pain, and despair rolled over him. And, before he had a chance to wonder what was happening, Tel fell through the clouds of a different world. The last thing he saw before blacking out was the sight of trees rushing toward him, and walls of stone and wood appearing and wrapping themselves in a box around him.

----------

“Thank you all for coming.” Gerald Stone swept his gaze across the thirty-three chairs arranged in a gentle arc in front of him. The microphone crackled a little, again, as it sent his words to the speakers on either side of the stage. Biggest damn tech company in the world and we can’t get rid of the little noises these microphones make. Gerald blew out a sigh. No sense getting distracted now. All these years of tests and debugging and fucking debugging and we’re finally here.

“As you know, you thirty-three are the candidates who have passed our selection to test the next best thing in gaming: The Rise of the Demon King.” The audience broke into cheering and applause. With only thirty-some it was a bit quieter than usual, but Gerald allowed it a few moments to die down. It still felt uncomfortable, the standing, the speaking, and how prim and proper everything had to be to avoid the goddamn press making a mess of everything. Thirty years of experience couldn’t quite lighten that weight, but today was the last step in a recipe Gerald had been working on since he could take the stairs two at a time and not feel winded: the last thing before everything else finally fell into place.

“Our machines have been extensively tested for safety and quality to allow us to enter the home stretch. We’ve had beta testers in and out of this game for nearly two years and now, finally, you all are being given the chance to play-test The Rise of the Demon King not as guinea pigs as some of you no-doubt suspected, but to become the face of our player base.” Gerald rested his hands on the edges of the podium and once again swept his eyes across his audience, forcing the murmurs into silence.

“We need to show the world that our machine is safe. This is where you come in. We’ve proved it to ourselves, but we need famous faces and home-town gamers to go in, come out, and say to the world ‘this is fun.’ But I’m not paying you to claim my game is fun, I’m paying you to play it.” Gerald’s mouth split into a feral grin. “The fun will find you.” Gerald let the corners of his lips fall back into a sterner expression.

“You will be given all the details at a later time, but I’m here to cover the basics and field any generic questions before we kick things off. You will be spending one year inside the game. You all already know this but it is enough time that I feel it should be repeated. You will be spending one year inside the game. You may play any way you like, and do anything you want inside, but you must spend the entire time inside the game to be paid. Only in the event of an emergency can you leave early and be compensated for the time spent, even if it’s not the total amount. Are there any questions about this?”

A girl near the back of the audience stood up and raised her hand.

“Yes.”

“Um…hi, yeah. Can we go back in if we have to leave for an emergency?”

“No.” The girl seemed to wither slightly at the brusque answer and sat back down. Immediately, another hand shot up. Gerald nodded at the chubby blonde man.

“Can we contact anybody? Like, will we have a phone setting in our status screen or something?”

Gerald resisted an urge to smile. This was a question he had argued with his tech guys at length over. Mainly whether or not such a system would destroy the immersion of their world, but one of the secretaries had surprisingly popped in and offered a rather fitting solution.

“There is a mail system.” Gerald answered the man before addressing the rest of the crowd. “There are post offices in every town. If you mail a letter at one of these post offices with a pound sign in front of the address, we will know that the address is referring to one outside the game. Additionally, in the event of an emergency, you will be notified and given the option to continue or exit the game after receiving the details of whatever emergency has come up.”

“You’ll give us an option? What?”

“Yes.” Gerald turned toward the speaker, a small boy with dark hair and thin eyes. “Say your great second cousin twice-removed dies tomorrow, whether or not you sacrifice 364 days of pay in order to attend her funeral is something we let you decide.”

Gerald paused and looked around once more. “Any other questions?” A few hands went up. Gerald pointed at one. The speaker was too far back make out any distinguishing details but a helper walked over with a mic so their question could be heard.

“Can we die?” A strong voice echoed through the speakers, oddly confident despite the contents of the question. Gerald blew out another sigh. Finally. Half of the controversy this game had to face was that it was too realistic. A world where there’re demons and swords and you can die?? Well save my sheltered little suburban brat from that madness, I do declare. In fact, let’s ban the whole world from enjoying that pleasure ‘cause yee haw if I even have to hear about it, I’ll get all the moms in my knitting club to stand outside ya door with picket signs about how you’re probably the devil, you and cake: that demon-whispering temptress.

“By ‘can we die’ you’re either asking whether you can die, or can your character in the game. The answer is no to the first, at least not while we’re monitoring your vital signs over the next year with some of the most reliable systems and dedicated staff that money can buy, and certainly not due to any complications from the game. And, the answer to your second question, is yes.” Along with a few gasps which undoubtedly believed that the southern knitting coalition would have their way, chattering broke out with wild abandon. Gerald raised a hand to silence the noise.

“You can die, but it won’t be easy. We are putting the game into while you play, which will make the monsters slightly weaker and you slightly stronger over the course of the next year. While it is still possible to have a , you are the cream of the crop here so I don’t expect any of you actually will. Following that, there are no consequences if you do. If you die in the game, you will simply be resurrected using the simplest method available to your specific situation. Now, that’s all for me, so head through this door on my right and you’ll be walked through any essential information you need to know to get started. Good luck, and have fun. Oh, and you may find immersing yourself in the game can be quite…rewarding.” Gerald threw the crowd a wink.

The assorted rabble hung around for a moment before filing out of the room. Suddenly Gerald felt a tap on his shoulder; he turned to find a small woman in her mid-twenties with dark brown hair and an incredibly inflamed expression.

“Kel. How was work?”

“I quit.” The woman growled. “After all, you promised me you’d let me be the first one to play RDK after it was proved safe. You know…with the beta testers?” She gestured at the retreating forms quickly disappearing through the door.

“You’d be inside the game for an entire year.” A line appeared between Gerald’s eyebrows as he frowned at Kel.

“You’re right.” Kel nodded. “Almost as long as you skipped out on mom and I while you were making RDK.” Kel clasped her hands and smiled brilliantly. Shit.

“Well we don’t have any spaces…there’s only 33 pods availa-”

“Mr. Stone! I’m sorry but I’m quitting.” Gerald’s already trembling smile froze in place. Reluctantly, he craned his head to the left to see Emilia Powers, one of the higher scoring ‘beta testers’ that passed Gerald’s participation test. She was actually one of the favorites in the company betting pool to miraculously beat the game in the year given: either due to her game skills or the fact that she was somehow a part-time model. She was all jewelry, high heels and sunshine and a very confusing existence for basically everyone who met her.

“It’s just that I have a new niece and I thought we’d get weekends off or something so I’m gonna have to back out! Good luck and I’m excited for when RDK comes out! Ciao!” She strode out the door like some kind of sparkly whirlwind. Gerald could almost feel Kel’s smile glowing next to him.

“I’ll just join the others~ See you in a year Dad~” Kel cackled and literally skipped through the door to join the other beta testers. Gerald blew out what he guessed wouldn’t be the last sigh today and pulled his phone from his pocket.

“Chris. Yeah. Yeah I know you were right. Just do me a favor, give her Mana Welling. …what do you mean overpowered?? I MADE THE DAMN GAME. Haaa fine. Give her basic amplification then. I don’t care, just do it. Thanks Chris.” Gerald closed the phone and turned back to the door. One year left. One year and it’ll all be over.

One room over, Kel jogged into a room filled from end to end in rapidly filling game pods. Thick bundles of cables ran from the back of every pod into the floor while another set hung from stacks of monitoring equipment next to each pod. Kel spared only a moment to admire the sight before jogging over to an empty pod.

“Hello Miss, please remove all jewelry and personal items before--” A uniformed lady politely began rattling off what was definitely not the first delivery of her assigned speech before Kel cut her off.

“No need for that, thanks. I’m already ready.” The young, newly unemployed, woman hopped onto the edge of the pod, slipped out of her shoes, and dropped into the comfortable foam chair inside the pod.

WELCOME USER…. PLEASE ENTER NAME

A holographic keyboard appeared in front of Kel’s eyes and she quickly tapped three letters.

K.E.L.

WELCOME USER: KEL

PLEASE SELECT GENDER. THIS WILL HAVE NO BEARING ON PHYSICAL ABILITY OR SKILL. NOR WILL THIS AFFECT CHARACTER GROWTH. ALL FURTHER CHARACTER CREATION IS HANDLED AUTOMATICALLY. (M/F)?

Kel tapped the ‘F’

RANDOMIZING…

USER: KEL. PLEASE SELECT PREFERRED CHARACTER INJECTION METHOD:

1. ROYAL SUMMONING

2. STANDARD SUMMONING

3. WORLD PORTAL

4. TRUCK-SAN

5. INTERVENTION BY GOD(S)

6. RANDOM

Kel humped impatiently and tapped ‘6’

RANDOMIZING…

BEGINNING STANDARD SUMMONING…

SELECTING BACKGROUND…

FOUND (PLAYING GAMES WHEN A PORTAL OPENS BENEATH PLAYER)

SELECTING SUMMONER…

FOUND (TARON ARMY PRIEST)

SELECTING RANDOM STARTER ITEM…

FOUND (McDONALDS McCHICKEN BAG PLUS SOFT DRINK)

“What the...” Kel raised an eyebrow before shooting through the bottom of the pod. She barely stifled a shriek before she impacted butt first into cold tile. She froze for a moment in stunned silence, the only sound the faint patter of fries dropping on the tile around her. A wet feeling accompanied by a hissing noise broke Kel from her reverie and she quickly jumped up, the opened can of root beer dropping from her lap with a dull clang.

“Fuck! What the hell kind of bullshit starter story drops fucking opened pop on my GODDAMN--”

“Miss?”

For the second time Kel froze, suddenly realizing that the TARON ARMY PRIEST was probably going to be in the room with her if he was the summoner. She felt heat rising to her cheeks as she furiously raised her eyes and tried to look confident. He eyes met the gaze of a white haired old man in flowing yellow robes and an embarrassed smile on his face.

“W-well I must admit this hasn’t been my smoothest summoning but...welcome to Taron.”

>------------

Patrick Michelson was having a strange day. It had started out alright: waking up relatively early, getting some work done, even agreeing to grab some drinks with some friends. Hell, he HAD grabbed those drinks. What was strange was that no matter how drunk he might have been, and how spotty his subsequent memories, there were a few things that happened that he absolutely couldn’t forget. For one, he died. He had grabbed those drinks, had one too many, and decided he would be fine to get home himself. The truck driver probably disagreed. Honestly all that still adds up to a normal, if tragic, day. No, what was strange was that his day didn’t end there. Patrick came to to the sight of trees rushing up at him and his bloody ROOM assembling itself in mid air around him. With a distinct WHOOMP Patrick crashed into the futon in the corner and froze, shocked to not be dead – well, again.