by Natalie Grey
She couldn’t help but feel a stab of worry, however. She had thought this group was a place she could just hang out without worrying about everything she said, trying to make sure she wasn’t going to come off as if she were flirting—or get told off for being cold. It had been a breath of fresh air to log in and play with guys and girls.
It was all guys, though, and what if they treated her differently now that they knew she was a girl? She’d had whole D&D groups arguing about her tanking strategy before, even when she had a flawless record. So many times, people had picked apart her decisions and play style even though they never did with the male players, no matter how many bad decisions they had made.
“Gracie?” Jay asked.
“Huh?” She realized she’d missed something.
“I said, you need to repair your gear or anything? We thought we could finish up the quest. Fys wanted your take on the final boss.” They had all shared blog posts and official game pages the night before, telling the lore of this dungeon and sharing the game mechanics of the minor enemies along the way, and the final big boss at the end.
“Oh, right. Sorry, I was thinking...” Gracie shook her head to clear it. “So, the ghosts have ice power, right? And we were thinking of using an ifrit instead of the amarok? But then I thought, what if we have Anders and Mirra—sorry, Jay and Alan—use some fire powers there and keep the amarok, just have it use its non-ice powers. That way, it’s still doing damage, and it’s not vulnerable to the boss.”
“Sounds good to me,” Jay said.
“Me, too. Doesn’t really change what I do.” Alan had his character shrug. “Well, actually, it’s probably easier to heal.
“I like it,” Kevin said. “Otherwise, I’m trying to keep it moving so it doesn’t get in any ice patches. I’m surprised none of the guides suggested that.”
“The game is pretty new,” Gracie pointed out. “And it’s only a starter dungeon.”
“Gracie’s some sort of weird tactical mastermind,” Jay told the other two. “Run a fight with her a couple of times, and she’ll start to use these weird combos. They always work, too. It’s maddening. Work on a game for years and—” He broke off in a sudden coughing fit.
“You okay, man?” Gracie asked.
“Yeah, I’m good. Should we go?”
The walk to the tomb was quick, interrupted by quick jaunts to grab herbs or ores nearby and punctuated by jokes about everyone’s shitty bosses. Kevin seemed to like his boss but had plenty of stories about people up the chain at his company, and Alan, who worked in IT for a university, promised to tell them about the crazy demands his bosses made.
“Seriously,” he was saying as they approached the stairs. “One day to build an entire email system. They didn’t want to pay a few hundred thousand for a software license.”
“What did you tell them?” Jay asked incredulously.
“Oh, I told them they were in luck,” Alan said wickedly, “because I could do it for half that.”
Jay was howling with laughter and had managed to stop moving, his character bent over as he clutched at his sides. “Oh, my God. What if they’d said yes?”
“For over a hundred grand, I’d pour coffee in my eyeballs and give it a go.” Alan spread his hands as if it were self-explanatory. With the voice filters and the tiny female avatar, it was hard to think of him as a man, but to Gracie, that only made the whole comedic routine funnier.
Jay stopped laughing and wiped his eyes.
“Quick,” Kevin said to Gracie in an undertone. “Pull some mobs before they tell any more stories. We might not get another chance. He’s got a lot of those.”
“His bosses are really crazy, huh?” Gracie smiled at him and padded off, loping up the hill to catch one of the patrolling ghosts. While most ghosts she’d seen tended to look quite old, with wispy hair and trailing robes. This one looked quite muscular, and very angry.
She supposed she would be angry too if she’d died in the nude at a temple.
She stepped out into the pathway when it reached a safe distance from its friends and did a little dance, then hightailed it back to the group. It gave a ghostly shriek and followed her.
“I’ve been thinking,” Jay said as the others watched her lay a few kicks and punches on the ghost. “We should get a flame-sender.”
“If you mean a fire mage, man—” Gracie walloped the ghost in the face “—just say fire mage.”
Laughter was her answer. “All right,” Jay agreed, “we need a fire mage. And that looks like a good level of threat. Let’s do this!” He leapt into action with the amarok.
Alan’s spells proved valuable for pulling enemies, so they proceeded up the path, clearing as they went. Gracie was panting by the end of it.
“You know, you can just use the combo wheel,” Jay suggested.
“I kind of like the workout, you know? I just stand all day, and...” She broke off, bracing her hands on her legs. “Oof. Maybe tomorrow. I just have a lot of stress to work out.”
Like the fact that Kyle had texted back, and apparently wanted to take her out for a nice dinner instead of coffee. She’d managed to find a dress in the back of her closet, the one she’d worn to her graduation, but putting on makeup and tottering around in heels wasn’t her idea of a good time.
It was just nerves, she told herself. She could just picture how happy her mother and father would be. They’d feel like she had made good choices after all, so they didn’t need to be on her case, and—
She shook her head and straightened up, looking around her. “I need to punch more things. Point me in the direction of your boss, good sirs.” She looked at the other three, who were staring at her. “I grew up watching my mother do that thing—you know the one: ‘I would like to speak to your manager.’ It actually kind of works here.” As an afterthought, she added, “I think I’d have approved more if she killed them with a flaming sword when she talked to them.”
They crept into the main boss’s chamber, stifling their laughter. Usually, in game, your in-party chat didn’t alert mobs to your presence, but there was something about this place that inspired awe.
It really looked like the ruins of a temple, Gracie thought. The sun was setting outside, and the shattered columns threw jagged shadows over the floor. The rustle of wind in the trees outside was so realistic that she almost felt like she smelled it on her skin. She could imagine the scent of greenery and stone...
The summer day faded, and ice began to creep across the floor.
“So you return,” the boss whispered. Its voice was not loud, yet it came from all around them. “Defiler. Despoiler. I have been waiting for you.”
He wasn’t a ghost, which was what Gracie had been expecting. Instead, as he came around the corner, the ground shuddered. He was some sort of nightmare construct, not stitched together like Frankenstein’s monster, but instead made with magic. The proportions were all wrong, and there was faint motion under the skin like hands pressing against it or faces turning and twisting. One too-long arm dragged a large mace over the ground.
“Holy crap,” Gracie muttered.
“Guys?” Kevin sounded uncertain. “I don’t think this is the normal boss.”
Gracie glanced at him. “Like, we should get out of here or—” The doors slammed shut, and magical barriers sprang up in front of the windows. “Of course,” Gracie muttered. “All right, guys, huddle up; we can do this. And if we can’t, that’s what graveyard respawn and armor repair was made for, right?”
“Right,” Alan agreed.
Fys hung back for a moment but then nodded. “Right. It’s just weird, okay? Like we triggered something we shouldn’t have.”
There was silence, and the rest of them looked at Jay.
“Any thoughts?” Gracie asked.
“No,” he said slowly. “I’m as lost as you are.” He sounded deeply disturbed. “Must be a glitch.” He readied his weapon. “Let’s do this.”
“Come on, guys.” Gracie looked arou
nd. “This is funny, right? And there’s only so wrong it can go. Remember, we’re not actually stuck in a room with an— Oh crap, it’s coming for me. Apparently we’re doing this! AAAAAAAAAAAH!” She drew her sword, all gleaming greenish and serrated edges, and charged the boss. “Everybody scatter!”
From the silence and the pounding of feet, she guessed they were too busy taking her advice to say anything else.
The boss, running heavily now, swung its mace up and backhanded Gracie’s character across the room. The sky wheeled across her vision and she smashed against the far wall, sliding down it. The dazed debuff made the room look blurry, and her character couldn’t stand up.
She could see that it was coming for her, though, and primal terror gripped her.
“Come on, get up,” she pleaded with her character, watching the timer count down. “Come on, come on, come on.”
Her view cleared, and she managed to throw herself sideways just in time as the mace slammed down. Pivoting, Gracie saw her opportunity and slashed the back of the thing’s legs before stomping hard for a shock blast.
The monster bellowed, but there was a new scream in the mix, too, and as she watched, a slimy monster with no eyes pulled itself out of the wound and flopped, dripping, onto the floor.
Gracie shrieked. Jay shrieked. Kevin was making gagging sounds. Alan sounded like he was having a panic attack.
“Oh, Jesus fuck,” Gracie managed. She was backing away, holding the sword in front of her like a talisman. “Oh, I hate this thing. This thing is the worst.” She pointed her sword at it. “Is it filled with those?”
“Gracie!” Jay called. “It’s holding its leg, and it’s not attacking. Kill the thing while you have the chance!”
Gracie dove forward, slashing at the monster. It ducked away, surprisingly fast for being blind, and hissed at her, but she kept her momentum going and whipped her sword around in a circle to cut it down from the same side it had ducked to. It screamed as it collapsed into crystals of ice.
She wasn’t a moment too soon since the boss bellowed and turned. Its hit points, which hadn’t gone down at all with her slash, now showed a loss.
“That’s how we kill it!” Gracie called. “Take out each monster. Jay, you and I will try our luck getting in shots to pry each little monster out, okay?”
“Okay,” Jay called back.
They bounced it back and forth between them, Gracie often drawing its fury and then fleeing while Jay slashed at it. Each time, it howled in pain and stopped moving while its smaller counterpart climbed from the wound and attacked.
“This is not getting any easier to watch,” Alan yelled.
“Don’t watch,” Kevin called back.
“I can’t…not watch. It’s like a train wreck. A gooey one,” he clarified.
“Ew,” the whole group chorused.
Then the boss turned to them, laughing, and began to shrink. Where there had been a monster, now there was a cleric in long, flowing robes. He was bald but had a long beard, and he stared directly at Gracie.
“You think that was all there was?” he asked contemptuously.
He snapped his fingers, and the twenty monsters on the floor came to life once again.
“Now,” he said with a terrible smile on his face, “you will die.”
Chapter Nine
There was a pause. The skeletons stared at them, and they stared at the skeletons.
“Shitsticks,” Kevin said succinctly.
“Agreed,” Gracie said. “Alan—”
“On it.” Their healer laid down an AOE for their team, a glowing circle that would provide healing for every team member standing inside it.
“All right, here’s the deal,” she told them. “I’m going to pinball around, pick them all up, and Mirra—Alan, sorry—is going to keep me alive while the amarok and Jay pick off anyone they can. Got that?”
“Got it,” everyone chorused.
“Okay, but why aren’t they moving?” Gracie asked. Two of the bodies morphed into one another with a wet shlorp sound. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me. Everyone, kill these eyeless bastards!”
With a yell, Jay charged into action, and Gracie did the same. The amarok shrieked and snapped its teeth as they cut their way through the group, slashing down each of the monsters before they could merge once more into the shambling mess they had first seen.
But with each death, there was a ding and the cleric seemed to pulse brighter, until, as the last monster fell, he was shining as brightly as a sun. In the light, Gracie could dimly see his head thrown back and his arms spread wide.
“Karenar!” His voice was as desperate as it was fervent. “Guide my power! Strike down our enemy!”
The light rushed into him and exploded outwards, so visceral that Gracie threw her arms up and braced, sure she was going to be knocked from her feet. Her field of vision shook as if the entire place had rocked in some unseen explosion.
When the light cleared, the temple was whole. Its walls gleamed with frescoes picked out in fresh paint. Curls of smoke rose lazily from braziers, and the statues stood whole at the corners of the room. The vaulted ceiling was held up by tall carved columns.
And in the center of the room was a warrior. He seemed more than human, slightly out of scale with the rest of them, and although the tip of his sword lay on the ground and his head was bowed wearily, there was no mistaking his power. It seemed to ripple under his skin like fire. When he raised his eyes, there was triumph in them.
“I am made whole,” he said, “as I once was. And you will return to nothing, as you once were.”
Gracie didn’t have time to think when he rushed at her. She raised her weapon and fought for her life. No one could have told her at that moment that it wasn’t real. The haptics shook and her muscles were on fire, already tired from fighting her way in and defeating every monster in this place, some of them twice. The breath was harsh in her lungs, and she almost thought she could taste blood as she thrust and parried desperately.
She was trying to survive, nothing more. This man hated her, and his hatred seemed personal. Why, she did not know, but she didn’t question it. It didn’t occur to her, as it would have in a normal video game, that this was something happening in the world of the game. No, she was here. It was happening to her.
When her opponent broke away, only to shudder and have his health bar dip sharply, she realized that Jay and the amarok had taken up for her—and had to stop herself from screaming that this man was hers to finish. She was dangerously low on health, despite Mirra’s best efforts. She needed to stay away for a moment.
Burning muscles notwithstanding, she was back in the fight the moment her health bar was full again. This time she pulled no punches as she fought. She was beginning to learn the boss’s rhythms—his attack chains and his preferences—and she fought him with the same hatred he felt for her.
Or…maybe she did. Without understanding why he wanted vengeance, it was hard to say for sure. With a flash of humor, she wondered if he was simply a ghost who had forgotten who he was really angry at.
There had better be a good cutscene at the end of this.
Once more, she was forced to break away, and once more, she danced anxiously on the balls of her feet, waiting to go back into the fight.
The third time was the charm. He was growing weaker, and the game developers had thought to put desperation into his movements. There were cuts on his fiery skin now, and he was crying out to his goddess to help him.
At last, he fell to his knees, swaying.
“You locked yourself in here with me,” Gracie told him as she advanced. “For revenge. You wanted me to be nothing. Why?”
“Karenar curse you,” he spat, and dissolved. The cleric’s body thudded to the ground, small, wizened, and clearly dead.
Around them, the temple walls dissolved again until only the ruins remained. In the distance, a bird trilled.
Silence.
Gracie looked around. “Did we… Wha
t the hell just happened?”
“I just got an achievement for Stage 1 of something called ‘First Among her Followers,’” Kevin reported. “Does anyone know what that is? And the other quest is marked as complete, even though I swear that’s not the one we did.”
There was a scuffling noise from Jay’s mic, and a moment later, he said curtly, “I gotta go, guys.” His character blinked out of existence without another word.
“That was weird,” Kevin said. “But damn, Gracie…that was some fighting. You keep cranking out DPS like that, we won’t need a whole party, huh?”
Gracie grinned. She was panting and could feel herself coated in sweat, but she couldn’t stop smiling. This was lore, heroism, and mystery, all wrapped up in an experience that felt more real than her real life. Going through the motions every day at her job, dealing hands, smiling at the people as they came and went…this was better. None of them saw her, and none of them cared.
But here there was a whole world to explore, a world like the one she had always wanted.
She was grinning as she swiped a hand over her brow. “Okay, I need a rest after that. Don’t know about you guys.”
“I need a drink,” Alan said succinctly. “I haven’t been that stressed since I presented my Master’s thesis.”
Gracie chortled and teleported back to the tavern to log out. She pulled her VR headset off her head and barely made it to the couch before her legs gave out. She felt amazing…and totally drained.
Her phone buzzed nearby, and it took two tries to pick it up.
CONGRATULATIONS! read the subject line; the sender was identified as Metamorphosis Online.
Inside, a banner of confetti hung over the excited proclamation that Gracie’s account now sat at $150 for the month.
“Son of a bitch, they charged me for… They’re sending me congratulations for—” She broke off, confused, and read the email again. She had made money. She had made more than her first month’s membership fee, by a lot. “Why?” she asked her phone. “How?”
Her phone, fully occupied with making the confetti banner work, had no answer for that.