4

  The beam - an, I’m not shitting you, god-damned laser beam - was shooting straight upward, piercing the clouds and disappearing out of sight. I gaped at it, watching wordlessly as it suddenly swelled and spread into an expanding, translucent dome centred on the surging beam of golden light. The dome was growing exponentially, sweeping outward, the effect just like a water fountain, if the water was fucking energy. The edges of the curtain of light crept steadily over the land, picking up speed as it went. I stood there staring stupidly before I realised it was going everywhere and that meant that no matter where I was, I was right in its path. This time, I did run. Who knew what this fucking light was for and I had zero desire to get obliterated, so I dashed between the trees, running for my life beneath the canopy as fast as I could go. I was reasonably quick for a dude in his early 30’s, but it became painfully clear I was not in great shape.

  As it turned out, it wouldn’t have mattered if I was an olympic sprinter. I dared a backward glance in time to see the wall of transparent light surging towards me, and then, straight through me. I felt a wild, vibratory energy pulse from the top of my head down to the soles of my feet, sending pins and needles all through me. The shock cost me my balance as my foot snagged on an enormous root jutting out from one of the huge trees. I toppled and rolled ass-over-eyebrows in the dirt, scattering fallen leaves. It hurt like hell, and I groaned, feeling the new scrapes and soon-to-be bruises in addition to the slashes I’d received from the goblin. God-damn, this is off to a bad start, I thought helplessly as I stared straight up through the trees at the sky, aching and breathing heavily. And then came the voice.

  “The veil of Vedict A’Tohl has been pierced,” it began, and it was not some booming announcement, but an uncomfortably intimate invocation that brushed across my ears in a soft wave. It was masculine and deep, with an accent that was absolutely English - the posh kind - but silken and smooth and so very, very close that I shuddered. It was weird, like stalker-on-the-phone weird, and the effect was like receiving a late night call from a stoned officer aboard the Death Star.

  “Mortals, harken to my whisper. My three fickle sisters have shot bolts of fate through the curtain of worlds, and their wayward children slip through the breach,” the voice intoned, slow and deliberate, with over-the-top, godly gravity. “The Unproven have once again come among you. For ten cycles you have known the peace of fair Illuma, but now the earth trembles beneath the gaze of more hungry gods. Each of three Goddesses, cruel mothers all, have spun out threads of discord as sharp as scythes, to sweep heads from the bodies of nations; blades to cut through the fabric of mortal impudence. The Unproven are their children. Their children are their instruments. Change comes. The World Spell has been cast. Cling to the Unproven or cast them out. They are, at once, salvation and doom. Come Chaos, come Fortune, come Order. The field of battle is prepared,” the voice said, dripping dark, slow honey in my ears. “The whole of Jericho, our City of the Gods, watches from her seat in the sky. Fell beasts now walk the land unhindered. Sleeping places have come awake, and the eyes of the three sisters are fixed on the Unproven. They await the sprouting of seeds watered in blood and tears. Come what may, the Great Game is now joined.”

  There was silence then, and I lay on my back still, trying to process the bizarre proclamation when more of the gently luminescent text unfolded slowly across the centre of my “screen.” It read:

  Welcome, Unproven, to The Fell and the Fey.

  The words faded, and multiple lines of descending text,plain and utilitarian, began to dance at the top left of my field of vision, scrolling like a DOS prompt firing off. “Woah, holy shit” I exclaimed when I saw it, sitting up and stupidly swatting at it like it was an insect before I froze and tried to read the text as it flew along like an overloaded Twitch chat. The other text had been obviously meant to be game or movie credits, but this was like something was installing into my brain.

  Connecting to Coliseum Global Network… connected.

  Loading Installation package FF26-b… 100%

  Installing cerebral-occular user interface… complete.

  Installing terrestrial language pack A… complete.

  Installing localized map data… complete

  Installing biorganic monitoring software…complete

  Searching for Flow Receptive Neurology…

  Searching…

  Searching…

  Flow Receptive Neurology found. Activating.

  Installing Flow Activity Monitoring Software… complete

  Searching for updates…

  Updates found, 1 of 1. Downloading… 100%

  Installing update 1 of 1…

  Warning: this software update appears to originate from an unsanctioned third-party developer. Cannot determine file integrity. Proceed with installation?

  Y/N

  The cursor blinked, awaiting an input. I frowned, unsure what to do. That sounds suspicious as hell, I thought, can you get malware in your brain? But before I could even consider an answer, my vision glitched, like I was a PC monitor with a loose connection. It cleared as quickly as it came, and the input “Y” appeared, entirely unprompted. The scrolling text continued for a few more lines: .

  Installing anex256.ext…100%

  Installation complete.

  Setup complete. Initializing User Interface…

  It stopped for a moment before it disappeared. “Christ” I said. “Here’s hoping I didn’t just sign up for some MK Ultra-style mind control bullshit.” I was saying this when I suddenly inherited a god-damned HUD. “Woah! Okay,” I said in surprise, instinctively drawing my head back like I could get away from the icons that began popping into existence, one by one. At first it was very, very disorienting, like images were being plastered onto my eyes, and I kind of started to freak out. Nausea and even panic was welling up before the icons quickly adjusted to appear as though they hovered in space a comfortable distance away, turning and shifting with me to accommodate the direction of my gaze. I let out a sigh of relief.

  The top right of my “screen” had a classic green health bar and a little picture of my face. The picture had a little “+” sign in the bottom corner, glowing gently. The health bar was about sixty percent full. Apparently the wounds I’d taken from the goblin fight were enough to drain 40% of my health, which was a little foreboding. Below the health bar was a little blue bar that would normally indicate mana. It was currently full. Magic, I thought. Awesome. At least this was shaping up to be the type of game I could recognize. I filed that away and squinted at the picture of me and groaned. It was the social media profile picture I used across the various platforms of Earth. It was a goofy selfie, and I was wearing a cocky smirk that I realised probably made me look like an ass. I remember taking the picture, and it had felt ironic, like I was smirking right in the face of the internet itself. Douchey I know, but it tracked with my distaste for keeping an online presence.

  To say that I was not enthusiastic about social media was a profound understatement. I really, really could not be bothered to curate a god-damned online museum dedicated to my ego. The only thing on any of my accounts was a range of pictures of Abi and myself as she grew up, mainly to placate demanding relatives. Though, she was pretty damned adorable.

  It occurred to me that whoever was watching this fucked up neofascist death game was probably seeing the profile picture too. I sighed. At least it’s not a screen cap of me nearly shitting myself when that goblin flew at me like a fucking cannon ball, I thought. Above my picture was the name Luck, Level 0. There was no class listed that I could see. More icons were popping up now; a small circular mini map appeared top-left and populated with simplified top-down images of the trees around me, centred on a blue dot that I figured was me. A white circle pulsed outward intermittently from the blue dot like a scanner. A series of transparent boxes appeared arranged neatly along the bottom of my screen, usually where you’d see abilities or attacks in an MMORPG. I had only 1 active icon here; a simple hand that held a dagger, which I guessed was my basic attack. Beside these larger slots was a smaller horizontal line of boxes that I thought might be a hotbar.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  I absently thought about how surreal this all was, and how any gamer like me would normally kill to play a hyper-realistic full-dive VR game just like this one. If Earth ever reached this level of technology, It would make ludicrous amounts of money for whoever developed it. But VR, I thought, is not real-world Roman coliseum level blood-on-the-sand combat against genetically designed fantasy monsters with very real weapons, and very real bloodlust. Generally, game developers don’t rob you of your freedom, your family, and exploit your likely violent and gruesome death for advertising revenue

  “This horrific, panic-stricken death brought to you by Potentia,” I said with a sigh, looking at the sky. “Of course you bastards would be raking in cash on advertisements and multi-platform social media engagement. How many “programs” do you have? I bet you have Live streams, POV first-handers, Premium privileges. That’s exactly what a psychopathic dystopian space society armed with impossible technology and consumed by excess would do, isn’t it?” I asked the sky. “This shit is probably an entire industry, rolling along like a fucking freight train.”

  Somewhere in this process I had risen to my feet, the short sword still clutched in my hand. I was starting to rant and quickly shut up. I had no idea how many people were watching this, and I was already chin deep in politics and social commentary. That was never a good idea, just generally, and probably a really bad idea here. Supervillain space-panties would certainly be bunched, so I clamped down on my anti-authoritarian streak before they dropped a god-damned dragon on me. Jesus Christ, I thought suddenly, recalling the D&D Monstrous Manual and its litany of dragons. They were absolutely going to make us fight dragons. Of course they would. If I knew anything about the Fantasy genre, it was this: if anyone ever asks the question “Should there be dragons?” the answer is always “yes.”

  I cringed at the thought of staring down something so ridiculously powerful, recalling the size of these fictional creatures from every table top RPG and video game I’d played. Those fuckers were supposed to be massive. It would be like trying to fight a god-damned jumbo jet with a baseball bat. It would likely regard my life as about as valuable as an ant’s was to the heel of a passing jogger. Fuck that, I thought, but I knew it didn’t matter. They would do whatever was entertaining.

  There was a part of me that had to admit that it would be entertaining as hell to watch real people with the equivalent of superpowers fight dragons. The part where I checked out was the non-consensual game play, effective enslavement and likely gruesome real death of the players. Games are fun, I thought. This will be a re-textured version of hell. Though, so far this version is much prettier, I thought, looking around at the idyllic forest. I was adjusting to the presence of the HUD and the strangeness of the floating icons and bars. I was grateful for its existence, in fact. It was strangely comforting, maybe because it was all familiar territory from my years of World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy 14. I knew something like this was a huge tactical advantage. Besides, now that I had already been hit with whatever the laser beam mega dome had been, there was nothing to do but use the tools at hand and press on.

  Taking stock of the ridiculous series of events that had just unfolded, I dismissed the idea that this was a dream or in any way unreal. Yes, this is entirely fucked up and the plot would normally be reserved for the pages of a bad LitRPG novel. But I’m here, and not where I should be - with my little girl. If I had to play the god-damned game to get where I belonged, I would play. In any case, I had no choice, and the only path was forward.

  I returned to the clearing to pick up the dagger dropped by the goblin and added it to my small arsenal. I was startled to see a small circle appear hovering just above the dagger. It read: Goblin Dagger, and as I focused on the words, a small description appeared:

  A low-quality, poorly cared for dagger. Crafted by goblins with the intention of carving human flesh. Sharp enough to do the job, but just dull enough to really, really hurt. Damage: Low. Weight classification: Light.

  I looked at the short sword and found it had a similar description, and it was likewise classified as low damage and light in weight. I tried a few slashes and thrusts while wielding both weapons. It felt reasonably comfortable, all things considered. Good enough, I told myself, intending to dual-wield the weapons if it came to combat again. I felt stupid as I stuck the blades through the leather belt holding up my worn jeans, but there weren’t a lot of options. Or were there? I thought. There’s gotta be an inventory. As if my mind had been read, a panel appeared, taking up much of my field of vision. I blinked in surprise, but quickly saw that it was a standard inventory with a multitude of boxes for items. It was currently empty - not even a few gold or a god-damned health potion, I noted. I scanned the panel, looking for a weight measurement entry, but I found none. That was a good sign. I would have to test how much storage and weight individual items could be, and if certain items would stack.

  Encumbrance rules in games generally really sucked since you’re expected to carry around so much crap. I assumed it simply wouldn’t be very entertaining to watch me haul around a refrigerator-sized backpack. I had a filter to help arrange the items. I figured out that I could move items to the inventory just by intending it, and could retrieve them the same way. I tried mentally moving my short sword to my hotbar, and was satisfied to see the icon slide over and copy itself to the smaller panel. I tried activating it and deactivating it and watched in mild amazement as the weapon appeared and disappeared out of thin air, right into the palm of my hand. At first it was really weird, especially the instantaneous feeling of weight appearing from nowhere, but I decided it wasn’t any stranger than anything else that had happened so far.

  Satisfied my inventory worked as intended, I looked around and reviewed the situation so far. If I could believe what I was told, I was on a “Derivative” planet - whatever that was - called Feyhold. The planet had been “seeded” with the races, cultures and creatures that populated it for the express purpose of hosting a multi-decade spanning action-fantasy drama-game-thing, created by some asshole named Reidwich Henning.

  I had been fucking licensed and presumably sold off and selected for an interplanetary cross-dimensional death game where the prize was a chance to...redeem myself? From what, I had no idea. From where I was standing, the reasoning behind anyone choosing me as a player for a weird delusional death game was baffling, nevermind the logistics of gathering the intelligence necessary to determine who I was and what I’d done, then transport me to another god-damned planet.

  If I was playing for the sake of “redemption,” which was kind of an abstract notion to begin with, then how could I claim my redemption? What if all I ended up with at the end of this was fucking trauma? I suspect no one cared. Redemption was just a convenient theme to facilitate feeding the bloody appetites of whoever the hell populated this space society. I recalled the supposed release of what Atricia and Blurry-prick had called my ‘memory edit,’ in “Act 2.” I had no idea what that entailed, but at the moment I had bigger problems. Ultimately, the explanations, the logical feasibility of it all really didn’t matter. I was here, and dying here would lead to nothing. Even if the prize was a poisoned carrot on a stick, or a lie altogether, I had to reach for it.

  I asked myself what I had possibly done to be selected for this madness. I tried not to imagine what awful thing I was capable of that would draw the attention of a bored, intergalactic corporate space cult, but my mind went there anyway. What could it be? It’s not like I was positioned to be a war criminal or anything. I was 32, and a failed musician from an indie rock band turned janitor at an automotive manufacturing plant. I had a university degree in Sociology, but I could never seem to make it work for me. I struggled with more than one mental health challenge, and I was living paycheque to paycheque. My most valuable possession was my electric guitar. My love life was non-existent, and had been for years. I didn’t make waves. I didn’t cause drama. I really didn’t make any impression on the world at all anymore. By any reasonable measurement, I was harmless, and a failure. And I knew it. Maybe I’m supposed to redeem myself from being a broke-ass loser, I thought bitterly. I hadn’t been able to pull that off on Earth.

  Except as Abi’s dad. That was the only thing I did right. I was a good father, god-damnit. If you discount the general exhaustion and perma-guilt for bringing a new life into this crazy-ass world, ninety percent of parenting is just being a loving, decent human being. That I could do. Easily. Love has always been easy for me, and I don’t have a tragic backstory. I may be poorly adjusted and broke, but I can’t blame that on my youth. I had good parents and good friends, and I loved them all dearly. I already missed them. With Abi, love was so, so easy. Effortless. She was a great kid; easy going, and smart as hell. She was scrawny and gangly and very blonde, with a light smattering of freckles across her nose. She was going to be just as pretty as her mother. After she’d been born, I turned into a sentimental softy. Full stop. And, that was okay. I didn’t mind one bit. But, as I reflected, I realised I couldn’t afford to be a softy now, or sentimental.

  I confronted the very real antipathy I was feeling towards my captors, who were likewise my potential saviours. I figured a little bitterness was pretty understandable given the circumstances. A few hours in and I already wanted to tear down everything these assholes stood for, but they obviously held the power to either deny me my family entirely, or possibly hurt or kill Abi. I had something more than my life to lose - only one thing left to lose, if I was being honest. That was all the leverage anyone would ever need. I really would do anything to get back to her.

  I suspected there would be some leeway with players expressing dejection and bitterness, at least at first, but Atricia had made a point of warning me about “rebellious bullshit.” Like any authoritarian nutjobs, they would likely be paranoid and brutal if it came to anything resembling rebellion or civil unrest. I wonder what they call their Secret Police, I thought with a sigh.

  No, what they wanted was not defiance, but a spectacle and a story, and I was supposed to be a character. I was to play my part in some weird redemption fantasy, but what they really wanted was to see just how bad I wanted to get home. You want to watch me try and climb up from hell? Fine, I thought. Just be careful I don’t bring it with me. You have the control, and I’ll play, but there’s one thing I can control, and that’s my fucking narrative.