Al felt himself tip over and fall. He tried to protect himself with his arms, but they were stuck straight out to his sides. His face hit the dirt — sand specifically.

“Introduction,” Beyul announced. “Abyss First Leaf: The Shattered Gates of Hell.”

What the … Al shook the thought away. “No. Stop. Exit. Log Off. Logout.” Al tired every command he could think of, and only got sand in his mouth as a result.

Then a ringing sound — a fading gong — filled his ears. Feet stomped. The gong rang again. Pounding music filled with trumpets forced its way through the ground. Feet marched.

Al imagined blood-red banners on poles moving up and down as the feet marched away.

But, the sounds of marching faded far too fast.

Was the sharp fade a programming mistake? Or was that fade caused by something else?

In the silence and darkness, Al felt the return of pain — not the sharp burning “breakthrough” pain he had suffered through since the accident and not the hot iron drilling into his hips and not the slamming, smashing sledgehammer symphony physical therapy brought. This was worse. It wasn’t as bad as what had caused his screams during the accident. But the difference in the pain was a matter of degree.

The ground about him shook. Sounds from the ground indicated something with a lot of weight moved. A tiny streams of rock slide around and onto him.

As he had upon awakening for many months, he tried wiggling his toes. Nothing happened.

Gus was right. And that brought tears. Beyul Two-point-Zero has left me a cripple. What fun is that? Tears came and made rivulets through his eyebrows and soaked into the sand. At least he knew which way was up. How bad did Beyul mess me up?

He wiggled his fingers — those worked, but they ran into more sand. And above him — pressing against his back — something like stone. He couldn’t move his arms more than a few fractions of an inch. He could drag his torso just a bit to either side. Beyul buried me alive.

Beyul finally responded. “Upon entering the Beyul 2.0 ‘Shattered Realms’ Challenge, you initiated a twenty-eight-day timer. During that duration, you need to complete the various quests within the challenge and solve the mystery of the ‘Shattered Realms’. For the entire challenge — either to quest completion or to timer expiration, you will be locked in Zombie Mode. The normal menu, HUD, character screens, search, communication, account access, and logout functions are deactivated. Recordings of your play will be used to determine the suitability of the challenge being made available to wider segments of the public.”

What the Hell is Zombie Mode? He shook his head. That part didn’t matter. He was stuck in the game for a month, and, in order to leave, he needed to complete a ‘solve the mystery’ quest. He had several hours before anyone returned home. His siblings would be first, although, if the snipe hunt was successful, Gus might be stuck hiking home, which might take most of the night, and that would make him the last to return. Next would be his father, sailing back from Lake City after closing the dojang. Usually, his mother would be the last one home after closing the bar.

Of course, if his family found that he got himself stuck in a Beyul suit they might well punish him with a babysitter. He had been the only high school junior with a babysitter — another issue with ageism. Last year he had been eleven, and, according to his parents, too young to spend much time alone — especially since he was stuck in a wheelchair. He glared at his flawless memories of the nights waiting until his inflected bedtime arrived. The only thing he could do was stuff his memory full of pointless facts from the dozen books he checked out of the library each day. Thus, he was able to pass about an hour of the torture.

He had finally talked his parents out of making him the only senior with a babysitter. But he still had his bedtime, which tonight might work in his favor. No one would expect the lights on when they got home — well, the lights that didn’t have timers.

But he wasn't going to solve the mystery being trapped in a building collapse or whatever Beyul thought would be a ‘fun’ way to start this mystery hunt.

Careful to lift his head from the depression in the sand, he asked, “Beyul, what are the respawn rules?” He pressed against the materials pinning him down — nothing budged.

“The respawn routines were disabled until bug fixes could be implemented. Milestones have been missed. No respawn is available.”

“So, if I die, I am stuck in sensory deprivation until the time expires? That is torture!”

“Unknown result. Conditional tests fail. Recommendation: Avoid Death.”

“Got that. What’s the plan here?”

“Rescue.”

“Oh, something obvious. After all, why wouldn't any player want to miss the opportunity of being buried alive just so they can emerge into a brand-new world? Because it is not interesting!”

“But —”

“I know. Almost every long-running show has its characters buried in a building collapse at some point. But consider what else they have with them or more specifically who else.”

a frightened voice asked.

Al rolled his eyes behind his closed eyelids and lifted his head against the solid object behind him. “Yes. I’m here. There is someone else in this mess with you.”

“We have to wait for rescue.” Al frowned — that didn’t sound like an NPC talking. “What’s your name?”

said the voice stumbling over the name.

Al chuckle. “That name just rolls off the tongue.”

“Asazsuzuh,” Beyul provided.

“The random name generator says: Asazsuzuh.”

Nabmohze chuckled. “What do you think is up with random name generators?”

“Probably, at some point, the companies got tired of making filters to keep players from naming themselves ‘9-inch-dick’ and ‘killerz-69’.”

That got a bark of laughter.

Al considered lying. He really did want to be seen as an expert and not someone’s five-year-younger brother. But in the end, “No. This is my first one.”

Before Al could utter anything reassuring or otherwise, he heard footsteps echoing through the sand and a voice from somewhere beyond his feet. “I heard something over here”

Al glared at the last messages from Beyul which had yet to fade from his vision. “Really?” With one last glare for good measure, he turned to play the damsel. “Help. Oh, do help. I do seem to be stuck.”

“You understand that no one talks like that anymore,” Beyul added.

“More’s the pity,” Al grumbled. “How else is one supposed to be the proper fainting damsel?”

The voice above him hushed others. “Listen, lads.”

Al obliged. “Help. Oh, do help. I do seem to be stuck.”

“There.”

He tried to wiggle a shoulder to give an indication of his presence, but he couldn’t that much. “I be here. Oh, please do help.”

“Easy now,” a deep baritone said softly. “We’ll get thee out in just a bit. Dost thou thinks anything’s broken.”

“I can't move my legs.”

Another voice from above said, “Great. There go more medical supplies.”

“Lad, we’ll make due,” the baritone rumbled. “There thou come, lass. Up the stone incline. Easy.”

“Easy, lass. No screaming. There are monsters who roam the night. Mutated beasts who will kill anything they can sense. Thou art safe with us. We will let nothing happen to thee. Okay?”

The ground about Al shifted, and he felt himself lifted — pulled up with the stone against his back. As his head broke the surface, he saw he was strapped to a cross — someone had crucified him.

The cross began to move giving him a good look at the sandy ground.

“I’m underneath —”

“I know, lad,” the baritone voice said. “We’ll cut thee free in a few moments. What dost thou think, lad?”

The other voice said. “I don’t know. Someone made a right mess of his legs. Primitive repairs. Lots of nerve damage.”

Al tried to look in that direction to see who was talking, but couldn’t see far enough.

“Look, lad, can thou do anything for him?” The baritone asked.

A large red creature with horns coming out the sides of its head. But the eyes — black conjunctiva, golden irises, triangular pupils — winked at him. After that the bat wings, which came into view wiggling underneath him, were tame. “Of course, I can.” The demon smiled at Al. Gentle hands touched his face and fingers held open his eyes, and the demon peered into his eyes. “Although, thou likes making everything a challenge.” It winked at him. “I got him.”

“I think I have spinal damage,” Al said.

The demon smiled. “I know thee does, just as I know the damage didn’t come from this.” A wry, conspiratorial grin tweaked the smile. “I bet you are the kind of patient who gives all the new healers a hard time. The sudden scream and then, ‘I can’t feel my legs,’ kind of patient.” The demon pressed his hands against Al’s shoulders. “Got him.”

The stone lifted from Al’s back. A minor breeze chilled the sweat which had been oozing along his back, along his neck, and into his hair.

Al felt his cheeks burn. His eyes went wide and then narrowed. “You are teasing me.”

The demon turned serious. “Thou misses them, don’t thee.” And, it lowered Al to rest against its chest and body.

My siblings, Al realized to whom the demon was referring. The weight of the siblings always running away from him crushed down on him. He shook his head in denial. “It’s not like they’re …”

“Dead?” the demon asked.

Al nodded.

“But that makes them ignoring thee, leaving thee, hurt more, right?”

Al nodded again — distrusting his voice, distrusting that he could avoid tears. Since he entered school, it had been important that he didn’t cry or act his age — he had to be older than he was.

The other kids would never accept him if he cried or acted younger than they were. Nine-year-olds don’t cry, but he had only been five. Eleven-year-olds behave, but he had only been six. It had never gotten better. He became the annoying five-year-younger brother to his entire class. There had never been any real acceptance, but he kept trying. And now at twelve, he was about to graduate high school — standing next to his siblings.

He did his breathing exercises to put all the ugly emotions back into their little glass display cases — not forgotten, not out of sight, just not in control — no more tears, no more emotions.

High school was Hell. This place just had demons. How bad were demons going to make his life? “Since I can’t walk, are you going to carry me? Or do I need to crawl?”

Al ended up being passed between three demons. Each ran with him on their backs. They ran beneath three red moons. They ran across the red sands. They ran through the long shadows of night. One demon carried him while the other two demons carried tridents at the ready.

The other human, Nabmohze, who had been tied to the top side of the cross to which he had been tied, struggled atop snowshoes. She seemed to be his age, about twelve — short and with no signs of puberty. But she cringed each time a demon so much as twitched a hand.

There was nothing he could do for her, so he turned back to his demon observations.

Each demon had its own scent.

And that bothered Al — for there was no smell cortex, like there was a visual cortex. There were smell centers like there were a pair of auditory centers, but smell was more distributed than those. Smell was the only sense that avoided being connected to the fight, flight, fright reflex. How did a game give anything distinct smells?

There was a fourth demon in the night. A demon who had with a gold horn, who had five scars sliding from his missing horn, through a gold cybernetic eye, across his face, and down his neck to disappear beneath the neck hole in his poncho; who had a gold, cybernetic hand.

While the rest of the demons wore ponchos, they were practically indistinguishable. Even their spiked mohawks were dyed to be the same shade of red.

Being carried piggyback, Al felt their leathery, bat wings tucked beneath the ponchos.

The demons’ ponchos rose to the height of their heads due because of their leathery bat wings tucked beneath, which might have been mistaken for weapons instead of wings.

Al wasn't sure that appearance was a good trade for not having their wings easily available.

The demons circled around a moving center — a center which held the one who carried him and the human woman who was rescued from another cross. The demons kept scanning to the horizon, never pulling their eyes away for more than a moment. Only the leader, the gold-horned demon, didn't seem immediately paranoid. He made his scans without looking like a rabbit about to jump out of its skin.

No one spoke, just jogged and walked on thick woven strap snowshoes. The other human, Nabmohze, tired quickly — unused to the demands of snowshoes on loose sand.

“When,” the gold-horned demon said in a conversational tone, “we are jumped, I need you to hit the ground and lie as still and silent as possible. The hounds attack both movement and sound.”

Hounds? Al thought. Like what, real hounds of Hell?

The leader demon drew a hilt — without a blade. Blood gushed out of the hilt, but the blood didn’t fall to the ground. Instead, the blood began filling up a transparent or ethereal container. A container shaped like a Japanese samurai blade — long thin, slightly curved — a slicing weapon. The blood blade solidified into ruby — glittering, sparkling, glowing in the moonlight.

Al heard sounds which were not howling or braying at the moon. Instead, the sounds were like a thousand cries-of-pain and screams-of-fear. The sounds echoed between the dunes. All that sound coalesced into something approaching a single word, “Roar.”

The lead demon smirked. “Change of plan. Run.”

Al looked about — everyone sprinted.

The other player, Nabmohze, stumbled and fell. One of the demons reached down, grabbed one of Nabmohze’s arms with his free hand, and hauled her up, and dragged her along.

Shadows raced down the dunes toward them. Black creatures over inky shadows bounded with wide, splayed feet. One creature with black wings soared over the top of the dune, blotting out the stars, the aurora, and the ribbon of galaxies slicing across the sky.

Al realized they were going to lose the race. Maybe if the demons could run or fly to their maximum potential, they might have had a chance. By staying with the woman and carrying the gimp, they would be caught and quickly. He needed a plan.

Once, back in the real world, he had seen older kids at night in a hotel swimming pool chicken fighting — one kid hoisted piggybacked the other — the rider and the mount. The rider could attack, but the mount could only maneuver. The point of the competition had been to dismount the opposing rider or tip the opposing pair into the water.

He had a mount who was running. But against claws and fangs, Al needed a weapon.

The trident, his demon or chicken mount carried, was slung between him and the demon’s back.

A quick check provided no clear or easy way to draw the trident while Al rode piggyback. Besides, he doubted that a military trident was useful to a rider, such as him, defending their rears.

He looked about the demon’s waist for something sharp, pointy, and small enough that he wouldn’t be a hazard to their joint survival. Or, perhaps even better, he looked for a ranged weapon which he could shoot.

He saw a hilt like the one the leader demon was now wielding. Reaching down, he squeezed the pommel between his fingertips.

The demon leaped to the side.

Al clung tighter to the running demon, but his fingers slipped away from the hilt.

Black feathers brushed his cheek. Thousands of tiny stiffened barbs making up the feathers’ vanes scraped off layers of his skin. The winged black creature pulled up and flapped to regain altitude. It let out a “Roar!”

Is that a battle cry like ‘Geronimo!’ before jumping out of airplanes? Al wondered. He snatched at the pommel and pulled it up into his palm. He righted himself on the demon’s back.

Across the group, he saw the leader stabbing his blade into a hound — a part wolf, part monkey, and part way-too-many-tentacles monster.

Nabmohze had fallen and was working on striking a lighter, or, at least, that is what Al assumed by the hand movement at this distance.

Her escorting demon had been bowled over and was scrambling to his trident.

One hound was circling Nabmohze and another her escort.

Al pressed the hilt against his useless leg until the hilt was secure in his hand. He pointed it at the circling flying creature.

His demon, chicken mount hissed, “You need to be an Initiate of the Blade before —”

“Developer Override Accepted,” Beyul announced.

The black, flying creature swooped in for a charge at Al.

Al felt woozy as if his blood poured out of his hand and through the hilt. Blood gushed into the unseen blade-shaped container. Streaks of blood turned orange and yellow and glowed. The mass crystalized into an orange and yellow and red gemstone — looking like frozen flame.

Al gaped at the scimitar blade until he realized the flying creature had impaled itself on the blade. How? He wondered for a brief moment.

The black of the creature’s skin had cracked around the blade. Pale silver-white skin glowed through the cracks and chips.

He felt the creature’s heart beating against his blade.

But, there was something else, too — a grating sensation like the scimitar’s tip rested against a gear, a spinning gear. Still more, there was a hole like a keyhole amongst the hidden gears.

“— you can —”

Al twisted the blade a tiny bit, and the blade slid another millimeter into the chest of the black creature. Pins, he thought, lock pins. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the sensations. He twisted and wiggled the blade, and it slipped tiny distances deeper and deeper into the creature. When the hilt rested against the creature’s sternum, Al turned the sword like it was key and like he was unlocking a lock.

Click!

Nabmohze had gotten a flame out of her lighter.

Her demon escort placed a hand on his trident.

The hound circling Nabmohze leaped for her.

A trident was in the air as if it was flying across the battle.

The shocked black, flying creature fell backward. It’s black coating cracking, shattering, falling away. Silver-white skin glowing underneath. Freshly exposed gold armor glinted in the light of the moons. But, the silver-white skin, paper thin, glowed with orange embers. The edges of the sword’s cut turned black curling and falling away like slowly burning paper. The burning grew, spreading outward over the creature, under the gold gorget, across the arms and up the neck under the bevor, up the face and under the winged sallet. The collapsing outer black shell revealed a gold halo surrounding the creature’s head, then the halo exploded. Wings had turned white and then the feathers burned away to leave leathery wings. The burnt skin left behind was red.

“— summon —”

I killed an angel, Al thought.

The blade of the scimitar was gone, but he felt the gemstone of the blade remained within the creature holding the creature’s heart together — allowing it to live.

No, he amended. I transformed an angel into a demon.

Nabmohze punched the leaping hound, her fist penetrating its flesh. Flames illuminated the hound’s insides.

A demon ran after the flying trident.

The flying trident buried its prongs into the hound which was leaping at Nabmohez’s downed escort. Lightning arced within the hound.

“— a blade,” his demon, chicken mount completed his previous statement.

Al scanned the battle. “I think we won.”

His runner stopped and turned.

Al gazed over the demon’s shoulder and between the wing and neck. He was feeling a bit woozy. His heartbeat was out of kilter — too few beats for the length of time of the battle. But … He remembered each action and the beat of his heart. Lots of stuff happened between each beat.

The leader demon assisted the transformed-angel-now-demon to his feet.

The remains of the hounds smoldered — smoke rising out of their mouths.

“That’s … that’s —” the demon carrying him shook his head “— we do not speak names or titles while in the open. Our enemy has many ears with which to hear careless words. Come, we must return to our refugee camp before sunrise.” He turned and resumed walking.

“Someone important?” Al whispered.

“Someone thought lost.”

Al puzzled over that and came to several possible answers. “Here is your hilt back.”

“Not as useful as you hoped?”

Al turned back to watch the others gather themselves.

The demons bowed, similar to the Japanese, to the new demon — the found demon. They then jogged to catch up.

“I’d have to say it was just enough.” He managed to pat the demon’s shoulder. “Down.” The world was going strange around the edges of his vision.

Al slid off the demon to sit on the red sand beneath the three red moons. He flopped onto the sand and looked up at the strange star patterns, and distracted himself. How, he wondered, was dumping players into the midst of a demon/angel war a good thing for sales? He considered the research.

As economic conditions got worse, fewer people put up with religion. Right now, in the real world, only the most devoted were going to churches. In Lake City, all of the major denominations had downsized — there was still the chapel in the Catholic private school, the Baptists were down to their oldest church near the lakeshore, even the Mormons had dropped to adding a church and stake house on the temple grounds. Even the remaining evangelical church open its hardwood floors to charter schools’ athletic competitions. He remembered overhearing a conversation about the Lutherans renting a meeting room in the civic plaza for Sundays and an office space in one of the temporary office sites. And that was even with two million refugees from the Bay Cities.

He shook his head — developer goals were probably separate from the mystery.

Everyone else seemed a little worse for wear. The demons were injured, except the one he had ridden. Even the former-angel had a blade-width hole in the gold gorget — which normally protected the neck, collarbones, and sternum — it wore. Even Nabmohez, the other human here, had cuts and bruises.

Al touched his cheek. The abrasion left by the angel’s wings was crusted with dried blood.

Beyul had said to avoid death because no respawn was available.

He looked up at the winded demon. “Thank you. If you hadn’t jumped when you did …”

The demon knelt and looked at Al’s cheek. “We’ll get you patched up soon.”

“It’s just a scratch.” The words weren’t quite right.

The demon shook his head. “No. They use all sorts of toxins and poisons on their wings.” He looked at their leader demon with the one gold horn. “We need evac, stat.”

The leader nodded.

Al heard the leader’s voice echoing on the wind.

Another voice answered.

The other voice hesitated.

About Al and the others, ribbons of white light spiraled around them. Upon the red ribbons, green symbols drifted downward and locked into place — like a bad decryption sequence from one of his dad’s turn-of-the-century-oldies shows.

He turned his head to see all of the symbols and immediately memorized them.

The symbols pulsed and the red sands vanished.