“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.” I forced a nod. “It’s only a game, right?”
“So you keep telling me.”
I watched as she grabbed the lantern off the table and headed to the trapdoor, pulling it open again. She swung her legs around, then dropped down into the pit, disappearing into the darkness. A moment later, I heard her voice again. “You can come down,” she called. “It’s safe.”
Grudgingly, I trudged over to the trapdoor, carefully lowered myself down onto the ladder, and began to work my way down. The rungs felt rickety and unstable under my feet, as if they could give way at any moment. Which would be a real-life problem, my brain helpfully decided to point out. If the ladder broke, we’d be trapped down in the basement without a way back up. And at the moment, no one really knew where we were, except Derek. But who knew when or if he’d be back?
Thankfully, the ladder held my weight and finally I was able to plant my feet onto solid ground. Relieved, I joined Lilli, who had turned on the lantern.
“Do you hear it?” she asked with a frown.
I shook my head, looking around the basement, which was mostly empty. Just a pile of farm equipment leaning against a wall and a bale of moldy-looking hay. “No,” I said. “Maybe in that corner over there?” I pointed to the one dark corner at the back of the room, where the lantern light didn’t penetrate.
“Yeah,” Lilli agreed, turning in that direction. But she stopped short as a strange sound suddenly emitted from the darkness.
Not the squeak of a rat. But a deep, dark growl.
“Um… what was that?” I stammered. “Was that a rat?”
Before Lilli could answer, the sound came again, low and rumbling and fierce. With trembling hands, she raised her lantern. At first we saw nothing. Then, something in the corner flashed in the light.
Something huge. Something definitely not a rat.
“Run!” I cried, dashing for the exit. My sister dove after me, and together we scurried back up the ladder. Once above, we slammed the trapdoor shut and looked at one another, wide-eyed.
“What was that?” Lilli whispered. “That did not look like a rat.”
I winced, my mind flashing back to the nightmarish creature we’d just seen down below. A grotesque mash-up of a monster sporting the bloated body of a rat and the reptilian snout of a dragon. It had stubby wings, greasy gray scales, and a long, bald tail swishing behind it.
A rat dragon? A dragon rat?
The growl came again from beneath the trapdoor. “Maybe it was a king rat?” I asked. “Some kind of rare spawn?”
Lilli shuddered. “Did you see its eye?”
I nodded. That had been the worst part by far. A blackened socket where his left eye should have been, with a hole so deep I was sure I had caught a glimpse of skull underneath.
“You know what? This is ridiculous,” Lilli declared. “We have no idea what we’re doing. We don’t have a complete party, and we don’t even know how to fight.” She headed toward the door. “Let’s go grab Derek, come back, and start over tomorrow, like you said.”
I sighed, but I knew she was right. We weren’t prepared for this. And we were stumbling around, not getting anywhere. We’d been out here for what felt like an hour and hadn’t even finished one quest. Better to go back for now and play the right way tomorrow with Lady Farah or another guide.
I joined Lilli at the door. She wrapped her hand around the handle and pulled.
It wouldn’t budge.
Lilli tried again. “Help me with this. I think it’s stuck.”
Together, we tugged with all our might. But the door would not open. It was as if it had been locked from the outside.
Lilli glanced at me. “Do you think Derek…?”
I made a face, pounding my fist against the door. “This isn’t funny, Derek!” I cried. “Let us out. Now!”
But there was no answer. And the door remained stuck. Lilli wriggled the knob again. “I don’t even think this has a lock,” she said at last, stepping away. “Which means…” Her eyes traveled to the trapdoor, then back to me. She didn’t have to speak for me to know what she was thinking. My heart sunk.
“It’s a game thing,” I concluded miserably. I should have known. After all, this was typical in some games—locking you in until you finished your quest.
We were going to have to kill the giant rat dragon.
Awesome.
“Such a fun game,” Lilli muttered sarcastically as she walked over to the trapdoor again, yanking it open. She turned to me. “After you, Lord Wildhammer.”
“Uh, I don’t know about this.” I hovered by the front door, my pulse pounding under my wrists. “I mean, do you really think the two of us can beat that thing?”
“Well, if we can’t, we’ll die,” Lilli said simply. At my look of dread, she added, “Game-die, that is. If at first you don’t succeed, fight, fight again, am I right?”
That had been our motto back when Lilli was still into gaming. Especially with some of the more ferocious creatures we’d taken on. There was this one time with a particularly hard sea dragon that I swear I died a hundred times on before I finally gave up and watched a bunch of YouTube videos on how to beat him.
This wasn’t any different—aside from the fact that we couldn’t YouTube it. That thing down there? It might look scary, but there was nothing it could do to us in real life. I thought back to the troll’s sword slamming down on my head. It hadn’t hurt. It just felt weird. And then I was fine. I would be fine now, too. Nothing to be scared of…
“Fight, fight again,” I repeated under my breath. And together, we headed back down the ladder.
As we dropped to the floor, the rat dragon stepped out from the shadows, a low, guttural growl rippling from his throat as his good eye locked on us. I held up my shield with a shaky hand, not sure it would do any good. Hopefully it wasn’t a fire breather. Or an acid spewer. Or…
Okay, fine. Whatever it was? It was going to be bad.
“Do you have any spells?” I whispered to Lilli. “Maybe one to slow it down?”
“Um, maybe? Let me look in my spell book…”
I groaned. “You couldn’t have done that upstairs?”
“Just distract him, okay?” she snapped. “You’re the tank, remember? That’s kind of your job.”
She wasn’t wrong. A warrior’s main job was to “tank” the bad guys—which meant getting right in there and letting them beat on you while others stood back and did damage from afar. But while that was easy to do from the safety of a computer monitor and mouse, the idea of facing off against an actual snarling, drooling giant beast? That was something else entirely.
Come on, Ian, I scolded myself. You’re a gamer. You got this.
Sucking in a breath, I unsheathed my blade and held it out in front of me before taking a hesitant step toward the rat dragon. The creature watched me warily with its one eye, still spitting and growling, but keeping its distance.
“That’s right,” I said. “Stay back, you coward.” I waved the sword in its direction, starting to feel pretty good about myself. It was scared of me! The big, bad rat dragon was actually scared!
It was then that I noticed its belly. Or, more precisely, its glowing-red belly. Which was getting bigger and bigger…
Uh-oh.
“Lilli!” I screamed. “Duck! Now!” And I hit the deck.
The rat dragon let loose its flame. It shot across the room, above my head, barreling directly at my sister behind me. Lilli leapt to the side, narrowly missing getting blasted dead-on. The flames hit the far brick wall instead, charring it black before sputtering out. Heat rose in the air, prickling my skin.
Whoa. That was way too close.
With trembling legs, I rose to my feet, holding my sword out in front of me again. My palms were so sweaty at this point, I could barely hold on. And I had no idea if I’d be able to swing it if necessary. The rat dragon took a menacing step forward. I held up my shield, heart
slamming against my rib cage.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, the entire room filled with light. I whirled around, my eyes widening as they fell upon Lilli, her staff now crackling with electricity. Excitement burst from my chest. She’d done it!
“Get it!” I cried.
Lilli hurled the electric bolt at the rat dragon, striking him square in the chest. It bellowed in rage, then charged at my sister, the electricity still dancing wildly across its scales. She screamed and tried to back away, but the basement wasn’t big enough and she smacked into the brick wall instead. Farm equipment rained down on her, knocking the staff from her hands.
“Lilli!” I leapt into the rat dragon’s path, slashing madly with my sword. It dodged me easily, as if I were some pesky fly. But at least I had its attention, giving Lilli time to dig her way out and find her staff.
My heart pounded in my chest as I squared off with the beast. Its one blue eye flashed, cold as ice, as it swiped at me with its claws. I jumped backward to avoid being gored but nearly dropped my sword in the process. Somehow I managed to keep a grip on it, but my arms were starting to ache and I was getting seriously winded. This was so different from the regular game, where I could sit on my couch and button-mash forever. How long would I be able to hold it off? And would Lilli be powerful enough to get its hit points down to zero with her spells?
The rat dragon charged again, and I was barely able to dodge it this time. My lungs were aching from the smoke in the air, and my eyes stung like mad. I blinked quickly, trying to clear my vision. If only the rat dragon was as affected by the smoke as I was. Of course, it only had one eye—
That’s it!
I drew in a breath, excitement coursing through my veins. In every game I had ever played, every monster had some kind of weakness. Some small thing that would give the player an advantage. It might have been an elemental weakness to ice. Or a soft scale on its left side.
Or, in this case, an empty hole in its head. The perfect bull’s-eye.
“Aim for his eye!” I yelled at Lilli.
The rat dragon opened its mouth again, prepared to nail us with another blast of flames. I leapt to the right, then charged it from the side, launching my sword like a javelin—aiming directly at the blackened hole.
If this was a movie, I would have hit it straight on, my blade making its mark and sliding through its dead eye socket like a hot knife through butter. Utter annihilation with one deadly stroke, as I conquered all my earlier fears and became a legit hero.
But this wasn’t a movie. And this was a very different type of game than the kind I was used to playing. Instead of hitting its mark, my sword bounced harmlessly off the rat dragon’s scales, missing the socket completely. I watched in dismay as the blade flew through the air, landing a few feet away with a heavy thunk.
“No!” I cried, horrified.
The rat dragon was enraged now, charging in my direction. I tried to back away, but its claws slashed at my chest plate. Sudden pain erupted in my chest and I fell backward in shock, tripping over a rake and landing on my butt. The dragon stomped toward me, its belly growing red again as it readied a final blast. I tried to scramble up, but it was no use. I was trapped. One more second and it would be game over.
Suddenly, the rat dragon let out a spine-chilling scream. Blood exploded from its head, raining down on my face. I managed to roll over, just in time. The creature collapsed right next to me, its body seizing and shaking violently before finally falling still.
It was then that I noticed it. Lilli’s staff, sticking out from its eye socket.
An indicator light flashed in front of my eyes. Gold writing scrawled across my field of vision.
Quest Complete
2,000 Experience Points
Level Up!
I leapt to my feet. “You did it!” I exclaimed, bursting with joy—and relief. “You killed it!” I turned to my sister. “That was amazing, Lills! Totally—”
I stopped short when I saw her face. She gave me a weak smile, then tumbled to her knees.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, worriedly. “Are you okay?”
“My arm…”
I looked down and caught sight of a nasty cut—the kind that probably needed stitches—snaking down her arm. Blood dripped from the wound, splashing onto the floor and mixing with the rat dragon’s. My stomach turned.
“But you’re okay, right?” I asked her. “I mean, it’s just a game wound, right? It’s not real. It’s totally not real life.”
She looked up at me, then down at her arm. Her jaw wobbled.
“Then why does it real-life hurt?”
I stared down at Lilli’s arm, my mind racing. This didn’t make any sense. Sure, you could get hurt in the game. But Hiro said it would feel like a small tingle—like your foot falling asleep—not real pain. But then the rat dragon’s claw had hurt when it scratched my chest, too. Way more than it probably should have.
“Do you think our SensSuits are malfunctioning?” I asked worriedly.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I hope so?”
I nodded grimly. A malfunctioning SensSuit would be bad news. But much better than a real-life injury.
She started tugging at her robe. “How do I get the SensSuit off?” she asked, her voice rising with panic. “If I could just take it off…”
“I don’t think you can,” I said. “Like we can’t take off our goggles. Only the guides can do it.”
“Are you serious?” Her face paled. Her hands reached up to her face, realizing for the first time her goggles weren’t there. Her eyes bulged. “I did not agree to this!” she cried. “This is not cool!” Then she winced, clutching her bleeding arm.
“Come on!” I took her good arm and gently pulled her up to stand. “We need to get you back to town. Find Uncle Jack or someone else who can help us.”
Lilli agreed and I helped her climb the ladder. The front door of the cottage, thankfully, had swung open. Quest completed. We quickly headed outside, where we found the farmer, now with a green spinning star above his head. For a split second I considered poking him as we passed, to finalize the quest. But the pained look on my sister’s face made me reconsider and instead we ran past him, heading straight to the starting area.
We stopped in the clearing at the bottom of the hill, where we’d entered the game. I frowned as I looked around. I saw the same purple trees. The same paths leading in all directions. The same stream and the same baby dragonbites toasting their dandelions.
What I didn’t see was the exit.
My heart thudded in my chest, panic seizing me with icy fingers. Where was the exit? It had to be somewhere!
“What’s wrong?” Lilli asked, stepping up beside me.
I frowned, turning around in a circle. “This is where we entered, right?”
“Yeah. There’s the stream,” she said, pointing. “And there’s the tree with the Edelweiss Forest sign.”
“So then where are the front gates?”
Lilli froze, a look of shock crossing her face. Her eyes darted around the clearing, growing wider at every glance. “They have to be here somewhere,” she said, putting up her hands and feeling in front of her as she walked in a few directions. “Maybe we just can’t see them, like we can’t see our goggles?”
“Maybe…” I agreed, stretching out my own arms, searching for something, anything, that resembled an exit.
But there was nothing there.
Except…
My fingers connected with something soft in front of me—something a little bit squishy. I pressed against it. It didn’t budge.
“Lilli, check this out!” I called over to her. She joined me at the spot and pushed with her good hand. Then she tried to walk through it. But her body bounced back, as if she’d jumped on a trampoline.
“Ow!” she cried, rubbing her head, which had hit first. “Is there, like, some kind of invisible wall there or something?”
“Or something,” I muttered,
realization washing over me. This was not good.
“What?” Lilli demanded, a frightened look on her face. “What is it, Ian?”
“Don’t panic,” I said. “But I think this is the end of the world.”
“What?”
“You know,” I said. “Just like in regular Fields of Fantasy. They only let you go so far—to the end of the map. And then you can’t go farther.”
“But where’s the gate? The gate’s part of the game! And so’s the town! We’re supposed to be able to go down to the town!” She threw her hands up in frustration. “I can’t even see the town anymore!”
She was right. Something was wrong here. First, malfunctioning SensSuits. Now, disappearing gates. Suddenly, this didn’t feel like a game anymore. At least not the one we were supposed to be playing.…
“What about in-game menus?” Lilli asked. “There’s got to be an emergency call button or something, right? Like, in case a player gets separated from their guide?”
“Good idea,” I said, blinking to access my menu. Options scrawled across my field of vision and I started going through them one by one, until I found one that simply read HELP.
But when I went to select it, I realized it, too, was blurred out. And try as I might, I couldn’t get it to work.
“What is going on here?” Lilli demanded, her voice tinged with hysteria. “Why is this happening to us?”
“I don’t know,” I moaned, looking down at her arm. It was still bleeding pretty badly, and I wondered how much it hurt. I turned back to the blurry spot where the gate should have been. “Hello?” I yelled. “Is anyone out there?”
Lilli joined me. “We’re stuck in the game!” she yelled. “Please! We need help!”
But there was no answer.
I slumped onto a nearby toadstool. “They’re probably all underground working in the server rooms. They think we’re safe with Eugene.”
“Eugene!” Lilli spit out. “This is probably all his fault. He went off to fix Atreus. What if he messed everything else up instead?!” She glanced down at her arm again. “What are we supposed to do?”
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