How did the game appear in our world?

 

Even Tony can't explain it. Does the world come into being only while a game is in session, or does it exist independently of players? Tony thinks the game only exists while someone is playing, and the NPCs are not real.

 

I am not so sure.

 

The experiences we had were so real, so bizarre, so unlike anything in our world, that it is hard for me to believe that world – their world – relies on ours for its perpetuation, except to consume fresh bodies from the outside to subject to its cycle of torments…

 

We are safe. We got out. I wonder how many other players are not so lucky...

 

--But I get ahead of myself. It all began last summer...

 

* * *

 

“What do you think of this?” my best friend Tony said, smacking the side of the humungous wooden box – the size of a crate. I pushed through the crowd of chatting, nervous, high-energy university students to see it better. Friday evening, getting close to sundown and we had come out onto the recently mowed sports field, with its big strobe lights shining down on us all. The choice of location was Tony’s – I thought it was over-dramatic considering what we were here for.

 

We were surrounded by a gang of 20 students like us who had all seen Tony’s fliers advertising some weird fantasy game that we on-campus students were invited to play on the weekend.

 

‘Charades’ Tony had called it. With elf cosplay.

 

He’d hoped to drum up even a little interest but probably wasn’t prepared when nearly half the Westside campus dorm rooms rocked up looking for cheap entertainment. More bizarrely, there were hot girls aplenty in the crowd who formerly probably hadn’t known either of us existed (and neither of us had a girlfriend) who had magically appeared out of nowhere to see what we were up to. It was kind of intimidating. I hoped what Tony had planned was good.

 

For a second I thought what he was holding was a Ouija board. It was actually some old, vintage board game. The box said: ‘GOOM’ in ominous plastic bubble lettering that glowed green when titled at a certain angle. The art style reminded me of one of those old Goosebumps ‘Choose your own adventure’ books. Underneath the title, in spidery black writing, there was a subheading that said ‘THE RL LARP’. The border of the game box was ringed with flames surrounding stony black runes. Purple smoke built up along the bottom.

 

A tall fair-haired boy called Chase (one of Tony’s friends) stepped back, laughing. Not a good start.

 

“I’ve never heard of that before,” he said. “What kind of game is that?”

 

“More like, what kind of name is that?” said an attractive goth girl called JJ, waving a hand dismissively. “I can’t go around telling anyone that I played ‘GOOM: THE LARP.’”

 

“I don’t even think it’s a real name,” said Mike. “I think they just took the word ‘game’ and switched some letters.”

 

“More like, GOOM: THE LAME,” muttered Chase, who I wasn’t overly close to.

 

“GAY: THE LAME,” said tall broad-shouldered Trent, loudly.

 

“LAME: THE GAME,” offered surfer dude Shane, his best friend. They laughed and high fived. I rolled my eyes, glad not to have much to do with them.

 

“Boy,” deadpanned a quiet voice I recognized, somewhere unseen in the back, “I’m sure looking forward to playing this LAME: THE GAME.” It was a metrosexual guy called Robby.

 

“It’s gotta beat Go Fish,” his best friend Andria said with mock hopefulness (a hottie in her own right, I had to admit, though I couldn’t see her amidst the crowd at the moment). But she was probably dating Robby or someone, therefore unavailable. No matter, I secretly had a different girl in mind…

 

“Hey,” spoke up Mike suddenly, looking at the game pamphlet over Tony’s shoulder. “Those idiots who titled it made a mistake.”

 

“What do you mean?” said someone.

 

“Well, ’RL’ and ‘LARP’ – they obviously don’t know what any of those acronyms mean.”

 

“’RL’ means ‘real life’,” said Jordyn drawled. She was a not unattractive, somewhat tomboyish girl who wore a backwards baseball cap covering her honey coloured hair. 

 

My heart began hammering. Jordyn’s sardonic voice was like a trumpeting herald from an angel, forewarning that there was Goddess in our midst. But it wasn’t Jordyn I was attracted to, rather it was her best friend, who was almost always in her company. My stomach swooped with dread and hopefulness – could she have showed up, too? I scarcely dared look around, in case I accidentally found her and made eye contact.

 

“‘LARP’ stands for ‘live action roleplay,’” Mike continued, “so saying ‘real life LARP’ is redundant because LARPs are real life.”

 

“Also,” I said, trying to distract myself, or impress...‘someone’, or give them a signal I was here, or something, “is this is obviously an old, antique game. But LARP and RL are pretty recent terms, imported in with the rise of video game cultures mostly. I mean, ‘RL’ pretty much means ‘not a video game.’”

 

“That’s enough nerdgasming from you, nerdlinger,” said Chase – not my friend personally, but friend of my friend, Tony. So kind of my friend by some abstract operation of logic. Props to him; I’d never heard anyone say ‘nerdgasming’ and ‘nerdlinger’ in RL, but I had to subtract points for not making any sense.

 

“Yeah, no need to split hairs,” said Mike, shrugging dismissively. “Besides South Park: TSoT was a virtual LARP. So it’s not redundant.”

 

Tony flipped the box over to find nothing but a single sentence, in that black spidery text, surrounded by foreboding shadowy green swirling clouds, out of which you might expect to see some Lovecraftian form emerging from another dimension.

 

“A Game For Those Who Dare Embrace,” he started reading dramatically, “A Bigger, Weirder Kind of Place.”

 

“Hey!” Zandra piped up, “That sounds like Jumanji!” Zandra was cute, but probably crazy so I kept my distance. She was known as ‘radioactive’ by some guys. She was the twin sister of Zaidan, who didn’t himself speak a lot and probably had mental issues of his own.

 

“Yeah, where did you find this?” asked Jordyn. “A Chinese black market?”

 

 “Looks like the game is so old it predates copyright claims,” said Mike.

 

“That makes no sense,” I cut in, not one to let a poorly structured joke pass without notice (and particularly looking to impress ‘someone’), “you should have said, ‘the game is so old that Jumanji is being sued by them.”

 

“Oh, shut up.”

 

Tony was now lifting the lid off and pulled out a brochure, which, when unfolded, became the instruction manual. We clustered around him, all staring at it.

 

“WHOA,” we all said.

 

The poster was chock full of horrifying detail. There were a bunch of assorted fantasy characters; sorcerers, orcs, dwarves, dragons, etc, all fighting each other around the corners of the poster, clashing swords detailed with sparks, and multi-coloured spells flashing through the air. Injuries were serious, cruel and gruesome; characters being vivisected, having their heads pulled off and eaten, their skeletons ripped out through their mouths, bodies set ablaze by dragon flame.

 

Sure as hell not what I imagined from a game whimsically called ‘GOOM.’  

 

The centerpiece of the image showed some elven giants herding little armies of goblin minions around, some of them accidentally getting underfoot, leaving tiny flattened bodies behind, while some of the elves had appropriated little goblins on their person, tucked into their belts, pouches, and riding on their shoulders, and some had tiny goblin skulls hanging from their jewellery.

 

The elves looked like normal people except for their long pointed ears – the points longer than Lord of the Rings, but shorter than Warcraft, somewhere around Magic: the Gathering length; around the length of an index finger. Somewhat lazily, the goblins just looked like the elves, except with upturned fangs protruding from their mouths and pointed fingernails. But the humanity of the goblin designs only made it more unnerving; the expressions on the little goblin faces were drawn up in excruciating detail, with little terrified, pained faces like sinners out of Dante’s Inferno. The faces of the elven giants were dark, and detached, like they had next to no empathy for the little goblin minions they were terrorizing and squashing underfoot; they were just nuisances or objects. In true Fanservicey soft-fantasy artwork fashion, a couple of those elven giants were actually scantily glad, hot giantess elf babes.

 

I couldn’t look away. There was something else real dark and uncanny about it: it looked less like a painting from the artist’s imagination and more like something painted from a photograph, or seen play out right in front of you. There were crazy little lifelike details you just couldn’t make up; like the way some glowing magic missile faintly illuminated the bluish vein under an elf’s temple, and lit up the corners of their dark eyes. The artist must have been tripping bad when they designed this wicked thing, I thought. It was like the cover of some ‘80s Heavy Metal album.

 

I wasn’t the only one to feel a chill, either.

 

“Oh my God, that’s kind of fucked up,” said JJ with a broad ironic smile. “Is this a kids game?” JJ was actually Jennifer Jaggard, a goth or emo, and definitely hot but too confident and audacious not to currently be in a relationship.

 

“I don’t know about you, but I kinda really want to play it now,” muttered Jordyn.

 

“Well, obviously you do, you little freak,” laughed JJ, “but maybe I’ll just watch.”

 

“Awww, come on!” said Zandra (JJ’s best friend) with disappointment. “What does everyone else think?”

 

“Yeah!” said Chase.

 

“You still in, Adam?” said Tony.

 

“I dunno. It looks complicated – there’s gotta be at least a hundred different characters on that picture -- it probably takes ages just to learn the rules, let alone complete a game. Maybe I’ll just watch to see how it’s played. There’s a book I wanted to finish...”

 

“Don’t be a party pooper,” broke in Chase. Only thing more LAME than GOOM is curling up in the armchair like a Granny.”

 

“Screw you,” I said, laughing, “I’ll fucking whip your ass at this. You’re gonna get crushed. And then I’m going to read my book.”

 

Tony laughed in surprise, and some other people in the crowd who heard me tittered. I didn’t usually talk like this – and around so many people – but I felt the adrenaline kick of possibly being in her presence. Still no visual confirmation but if Jordyn was here, then she had to be, too. I almost always saw them together at university game nights.

 

Tony began pulling out the game board and pieces and we all crowded around with interest trying to get a peek of what we were in for. I hoped at least there would be more errors with the game, at least enough for it to be unintentionally funny, in the ‘that’s-so-out-of-date’ sense. I could use a laugh to keep my confidence and nerves stable.

 

I could not have known that, in under an hour, there would be no laughter. Only screaming.

 

 

 

We all stood around in a messy circular shape on the soccer field, with Tony (unofficial GOOM expert) sitting on the ground in the centre, cradling the game in his lap. The sky was going gold, just beginning to shade into twilight. I heard one of the giant sports stadium lights come on with an electric snap and insects were beginning to flap around it. Crickets could be heard chirping – with the twenty of us virtually silent with anticipation.

 

Tony had unfolded the game board, and laid out the dice, a pile of game cards, and the players pieces out for our selection. This was when I began to wonder how we’d all manage to crowd around a tiny game board – surely we hadn’t given a lot of thought to this.

 

“I thought this was a LARP?” said a soft-spoken and kind of goofy boy called Luke. “This is just a regular old board game! – false advertising.” He was here with his dark-eyed blue-haired girl friend – and questionably girlfriend – Scarlet. I hadn’t realized because they were both fairly quiet people.

 

“I said they didn’t know the meaning of the acronyms,” Mike intoned.

 

“Hey, wait – ” said Tony, reading from the game guide. “It says ‘WARNING: Choose the most resembling token, there’s no changing once you’ve spoken’ – Oh, it rhymes.” He grinned. “Cute.”

 

“Jumanji’s on the phone again,” Zandra jumped in, rolling her eyes, “they want their copyrights back.”

 

“They’re not going to resemble anyone when they’re made-up fantasy characters,” Jordyn said blandly, looking over the little metal pieces, at least twenty different characters, making up the generic fantasy classes, and some novel ones.

 

“What does it mean ‘the most resembling token?” said Luke in a quiet voice.

 

“I guess, which one resembles you the most,” Chase blurted out. “So that’s the Orc, I guess.”

 

“Dude!”

 

Some kids jumped forward, not taking the ‘warning’ very seriously and were quick to choose pieces. I was still looking over them deciding, but there wasn’t really a choice for me; I was a melee fighter all the way – even in a board game.

 

“Is there a knight?” I asked Tony, picking up any stray piece that looked like it was wearing armor.

 

“Hey!” pouted Jordyn, overhearing me, “I wanted to be the knight!”

 

“Taken,” said Mike proudly, bouncing a little knightly figure on his palm.

 

“That’s not a knight,” said Tony, “that’s a Cleric.” He pointed at the piece Luke had selected. “That’s the knight.”

 

Mike grabbed the instruction manual from Tony and read: “Knight’s strengths: armour and strength.”

 

“Ha!” chimed in Chase, “Your strength is strength! This game is so grammar fucked!”

 

“Ungrammatical,” I said.

 

“’Grammar fucked’ is not ungrammatical.”

 

“Yes it is, and it doesn’t sound as good.”

 

“Shut up you guys,” Jordyn said. “What else does it say?”

 

“The Cleric has a healing ability,” Mike exclaimed. “Nice.” Then he looked over at his friend Chase, who had just claimed a player for himself. “What are you?”

 

“The dude with the daggers.” It was a rugged looking character wearing black, with an eye patch and wielding a dagger in each hand.

 

“It’s called the Rogue,” Tony said, taking the instruction guide back from Mike.

 

“Cool!” said Chase.

 

“It’s just a fancy name for a petty thief,” Mike shrugged, reading the guide over Tony’s shoulder. “You’ve actually got kind of a weak deal. Stealth, dark and ranged bonuses, but weak in strength and magic. Special ability: charm.”

 

“Don’t need more of that,” Chase joked. “I’m charming enough.”

 

“Alright, Tony,” I said finally. “Lock me in as this guy.” I picked up a piece that looked like a black knight, with a big horned helmet covering a white ponytail, spiked pauldrons and a torn, blood red cape.

 

“Necromancer,” said Tony. “Strengths: stealth, will, and dark. Weak to strength and charm. Cool – high fire and ice resistances.”

 

“Weak to strength?” I groaned. “That’s the opposite of what I want.” I scanned the character pieces again. “No!” I said suddenly. “There was a werewolf player. Oh man, I’m changing!”

 

Chase grinned. “No changing once you’ve spoken, Adam – you know, the rhyme. It’s the rules.”

 

I sighed. “Fine. What’s ‘charm’, anyway? – magic?”

 

“Whatever it is, I’m strong in it so I could probably kick your ass!” Chase teased.

 

“It’s just symbolized by a love heart,” Tony interrupted. “Love? I mean, the necromancer is a fearmonger, so what’s the opposite of fear?”

 

“Dumb weakness,” I grumbled. ”But fire and ice immunity might be okay – Oh, I get it, probably a reference to Dante’s hell, fire at the top, ice at the bottom.”

 

“Stop nerding out,” Chase groaned. “It’s embarrassing. You sound like you LARP every Tuesday or something.”

 

“I’ve never LARPED in my life!” I protested, looking around self-consciously. “And that’s not ‘nerding out’, it’s general trivia.”

 

Then a female voice cut through the chatter that seemed to turn me to an ice sculpture drawn up from the ninth circle of hell.

 

“Ooh, special abilities,” said Madison, taking the game guide from Tony for a second. “Adam, you’ve got revival and phantom summon. Nice. Uh, I think?”

 

“Nice,” Jordyn confirmed.

 

“What? I should’ve been the necro!” complained Zandra.

 

I stood in place like a hunk of rock, not daring to turn or acknowledge Madison, and internally begging myself to. The indecision made a cold sweat start to break out on my forehead. Luckily this was not noticed in the clamor for game pieces, and buzz of idle chatter.

 

The girls were the last to choose their players, maybe as to not get into fights with the boys’ covetous choices.

 

“Any female characters?” said Jordyn. Her voice gave me extra anxiety; now, knowing where Jordyn was, I automatically knew where Madison (her best friend) was.

 

Chase handed Jordyn a female dwarf – with braids and a full beard.

 

She rolled her eyes. “Very funny.”

 

“It’s female!”

 

“You know what I mean,” she said, putting it back. “Actually, never mind,” she said, snatching up a silver dragon piece which I hadn’t spied earlier.

 

A dragon? Damn, I thought, it looked like I had settled on the necromancer far too early.

 

“I’ll be this one,” she decided. “Looks powerful.”

 

“That’s female?” said Madison dubiously.

 

“It might be – there’s a 50% chance.”

 

“You don’t know the way the game makers’ minds work,” drawled Chase, “it’s more like 10% chance. If something doesn’t have a huge pair of old Tom Bombadillos, it’s a dude. Except, if it’s a dwarf, then it’s a dudette.”

 

Huffing with frustration, she put the dragon back.

 

Without realizing it, my gaze found Madison and I was staring intently as she found a piece that looked like some kind of dark haired elf babe or genie sorceress…thing. It had glowing blue runic tattoos on her wrists. God, the detail on these painted little statues was insane.

 

“This one’s a girl,” she said to Jordyn. “I mean, clearly.” She was probably referring to the piece’s exposed midriff and ample breast armor.

 

Jordyn looked across at the piece and scoffed. “Oh, come on. That’s a feminist’s nightmare right there.”

 

“Just pick one!” said Mike, impatiently. “What difference does it make whether your piece is male or female? It’s a token. It’s not real.”

 

“Fine!” she groaned, taking a piece. “I’m this guy. You boys get all the best players. You give us girls the weak ones. Besides, he’s cute! Who is this – Jack Sparrow or something?”

 

“The Swashbuckling Bard,” Tony corrected. “He’s strong in charm, light, and light weapons. But heavy weak and weak to dark. And a special ability called ‘quick tongue.’”

 

Jordyn raised her eyebrows doubtfully. “Sounds legit,” while Zandra burst into laughter (always one to catch a double entendre faster than anyone else).

 

“It’s a charisma booster,” Tony said “probably influential, like, you can convince NPCs to tell you stuff, or sell things to you cheaper.”

 

“Are you going with that one, Madison?” Jordyn said.

 

“Can I use magic?” Madison said.

 

Tony read off the instructions. “That’s a ‘gelf enchantress.’”

 

“What’s that?”

 

“I guess the game calls elves ‘gelfs’…? ‘Gelves’...?”

 

“Dumb,” said Mike.

 

“At least it’s not a rip off of something,” said Zandra.

 

“It’s getting kind of close to ‘Gelflings’ from the Dark Crystal though,” I heard a guy called Robby mutter somewhere in back.

 

“Ah, but Gelflings are more like Hobbits than elves,” Robby’s best friend Andria mock lectured him.

 

“Sorry – ” interrupted Tony. “ – I mean, it actually is an ‘elf enchantress.’”

 

“Well, then what’s a ‘gelf?’ What’s the difference?” said Jordyn.

 

Tony frowned, flipping through the instruction guide. “It doesn’t say.”

 

“Whatever it is,” said Madison shook her head, “can I use magic?”

 

“Strengths: will and charm. Weaknesses: fire. I think so,” he decided thoughtfully. “in this context, I’d say ‘will’ means ‘magic’ – like in Fable, you know, the game?”

 

“Pfft! They’re ripping everything off, aren’t they?” said Zandra.

 

“Well, when your game’s called ‘GOOM,’” I muttered, “and looks like the demented right side of a Bosch triptych, you need all the help you can get.”

 

“It’s not just Elves and Gelves,” Tony said suddenly, continuing to read the game guide. “There are Orcs and Gorcs. Goblins and Gelflins, (“okay,” I heard Robby’s voice again, “that’s too close to Gelfling.”). Wizards and Gwizards. Morks and Gmorks. There’s even Man and Gan!”

 

Chase burst into laughter.

 

“It’s like there’s a ‘G’ version of everything,” Tony mused. “I wonder what the ‘G’ stands for.” Then he said suddenly, a funny look on his face, “Hey! If the same rule applies to the game title, then maybe it’s really called – ”

 

“Big fat fricken’ deal!”  Trent’s rough burr growled, “Let’s just play this thing already, before it gets late.”

 

“Everyone put your pieces on the starting point,” Tony instructed.

 

We all crowded in, one at a time placing our pieces on the game board, like the initiation of some strange ritual. A chill breeze seemed to sweep over the field then, rustling the trees subtly. Some people shivered and the crowd drew closer, as if to huddle.

 

“Who goes first?” said Mike.

 

“Let’s go by the alphabet,” said Tony, and looked at me. “That means you’re first, Adam.”

 

“Then me!” Andria interjected.

 

“Oh, that’s just great,” piped up Zandra. “I’m last.”

 

“Wait just a sec guys,” said Tony, pulling out some fluorescent green plastic bags from the game box and giving them out to people to hand around. I opened mine. It contained a wrist band with a little plastic screen on it.

 

Jordyn and Madison looked down at the wristbands, both frowned, and then looked up again, looking like they were being asked to participate in some crime of fashion.

 

“Do we really have to wear these?” groaned Jordyn.

 

“At least they match,” Madison said with a little desperation.

 

“That makes them even lamer.”

 

Tony shrugged and grinned (evidently amused at their over-the-top reactions). “It’s the rules. It says a penalty applies if you take it off during the game.”

 

Everyone put on their wristbands and weakly admired them. Or tried to.

 

“Wow,” drawled Jordyn, a little sadly. “Retro.”

 

“It’s like a rejected fashion accessory from Back to the Future Part II,” Robby’s smirking voice came from the back.

 

“Star Command, this is Buzz Lightyear,” Chase said sarcastically, holding his wristband up to his face, “come in Star Command.” Everyone groaned at the reference.

 

“Do you have to make this more cringe than it already is?” said Jordyn.

 

“Hey,” said Luke earnestly, raising his hand. “Dumb question, but…how do you win?"

 

“Fight to the death,” Trent rattled off. “Last person left alive.”

 

Tony flipped through the instruction book. "It says: ‘Reach the end and state the name, that is how you win the game.’”

 

After everyone had finished rolling their eyes at the derpy rhyme, Luke asked:

 

"And what's the name?"

 

"The name of the game, I'm guessing," Tony shrugged. "You know, like you say, 'Uno,' or 'Yahtzee.'"

 

Jordyn pulled at her blonde ponytail self-consciously. “GOOM hardly has the memorable ring of either of those games…”

 

"No negotiating the rules!" said Mike, making a couple of people jump. "We haven't even started playing yet.” He snatched up the dice. “So let’s do this! Screw the alphabet – too bad everyone – my go first.”

 

The dice came up five and two. He slid his knight piece seven spaces and landed on a green lightning bolt symbol – there were plenty of these kinds of spaces littered all over the board, I noticed.

 

There was an uncertain pause, then:

 

“You get to pick up a Conjuration Card,” said Tony. It seemed he had long become accepted as the unofficial rule explainer. Or at least, no one had any interest in disabusing him of that position. It was his game after all…or was it? I couldn’t remember him telling me where he’d got it. Or when he’d got it. I reminded myself to ask him sometime, maybe afterwards. I think he said someone had given it to him.

 

Meanwhile, Mike flipped up the top card from the pile and his eyes darted over it.

 

“Read it aloud,” Tony instructed.

 

Mike rolled his eyes and did so in a labored voice:

 

“Pull up your boots, pull down your hoods, your quest begins within the woods.”

 

He looked up, annoyed. “Not sure what it’s asking me to do. Do I even get anything – a bonus?”

 

“That’s got to be the most pointless thing to happen,” laughed Chase.

 

“Yeah, I don’t know,” said Tony, flipped through the instruction manual. “It’s really weird, I can’t find anything explaining what the cards are supposed to do.”

 

“Maybe it’s just a big non-event,” Jordyn shrugged.

 

Then all the light in the sky blacked out. Like the stadium strobes had shorted.

 

Wow, I thought. That was unexpected.

 

We were all silent – even the crickets had gone silent – sitting and standing around in complete darkness on the grass, except for our wristbands, whose screens had all synchronously switched on of their own accord, and now each displayed the game’s flashing title:

 

GOOM

Start Game…
[Y]/[N]

 

WELCOME

 

Your quest is about to begin…!

 

The screens were flickering slightly, like old 80s video software.

 

“Hey, yours says something different,” Tony leaned over to Mike, his ghostly face lit up by the flickering light. “It says the rhyme. It must show your turn when you take it.”

 

I wrenched my eyes from my own wristband’s screen, and blinked. My eyes were slowly adjusting, due to the full moon hanging in the inky black sky above us.

 

– Wait, what?

 

Okay, that shouldn’t be there, I thought anxiously. A second ago it was twilight. And there wasn’t supposed to be a full moon. Now I could hear the crickets again, but too loud. Frogs, too. And now bird calls. And the low, throaty bugle of some far off animal, like a cow, or a moose, or something much bigger. A chill in the air seemed to make us all freeze and nervously search around for each other’s faces in the dark. There was gasping and muttering.

 

“Guys…” hissed Luke.

 

“I’m not the only one seeing this, right?” said Jordyn, loudly.

 

“What the fuck?!” I heard Chase yell, causing the frogs’ song to halt briefly. “Where the fuck did the rooms go?!”

 

The realization struck me like a hammer blow. We were covered in long shadows cast by tall trees that nearly blocked out the starless night sky. We were all sitting in the clearing of some great forest. There were no lights through the trees suggesting the dorm rooms or any buildings nearby. Ancient oak trees groaned and swayed over us. Somewhere a little way off, a big twig snapped, more like a gunshot than a crackle. A feathery leaf brushed down into my hair. I flicked it out with growing dread. My breath misted out in front of my face, faintly illuminated by the light of my wristband’s screen, and quickly evaporating again. When had it got so cold?

 

Little gasps and sounds of alarm rippled throughout the group. People began to shift around, stand, wander and look about.

 

“Everyone just stay where you are,” Tony’s voice rang out. “Let’s just take the time to figure out what’s going on.”

 

A chill breeze combed between the trees, bringing with it a cloud of tiny neon green orbs – fireflies? There was no forest like this anywhere near the campus, I thought. There were barely even trees, on campus.

 

Where were we?

 

“You can’t figure it out,” Zandra smirked oddly. “This obviously defies explanation.”

 

“We need to find someone,” said Jordyn firmly.

 

There was a riot of noise as everyone started talking over the top of each other, raising different suggestions as to what to do.

 

“I call for splitting up,” said Trent.

 

“Vote one, splitting up,” said Shane (Trent’s best friend, or in my opinion ‘unpaid goon’).

 

There were cries of ‘What?” and “Are you serious?” and “No way!”

 

“There’s enough of us to split into at least, two or three groups” Trent shrugged. “And we’ve all got different ideas about what to do.”

 

“Some of us are staying right where we are, thank you!” Scarlet muttered.

 

“So some of us stay, some of us go,” Chase said blithely, appearing to agree with Trent and Shane.

 

“If we get lost,” Shane said, taking Trent’s lead, “the wristbands give us enough light to wave around and see through the trees. And as long as each group has at least one person with a phone…”

 

But people had started pulling out their phones, trying to make calls, and everyone invariably receiving ‘no signal’ notifications.

 

No one had any better suggestions so we began to rearrange ourselves into groups. Because I knew so few other people, I didn’t make any active decisions, and ended up being pulled by Chase into an improvised group with him, Jordyn and Madison, who were the closest to me. Certainly not complaining in the latter case – actually, couldn’t believe my luck – though I hadn’t realized Madison was standing right by me. She must have moved closer in the dark.

 

“Tony…” a shy kid called Zaidan piped up, “My screen is saying it’s my turn, now. Should I take it?”

 

“You aren’t serious…” Scarlet drawled. “Surely this isn’t a game anymore. Something really effed up is going on!”

 

“Understood. But it’s showing a minute countdown – what happens to me if the time runs out?”

 

“We have to, like, find someone,” Jordyn repeated.

 

“But if he takes his turn,” reasoned a pretty girl called Blake, sounding a little too upbeat for the circumstances, “maybe it’ll make the houses come back.”

 

Jordyn shook her head. “Look, forget the game.”

 

“Guys,” Mike said over the din. “This is the game.” He illuminated the instruction manual with the light cast from his wristband. It showed a picture of a big, dark forest – the forest we were currently in.

 

“This is level one,” he said. “Winterwood. Look at the top of your screen.”

 

I checked the top of my band’s screen. It had a little banner that said: Level 1: Winterwood.

 

“Hey,” said Tony. “You can use your wristband to take your turn. Press the dice symbol on the side of the screen.”

 

A second later, Zaidan spoke up again. “It’s saying I landed on a card square.”

 

“What card did you get?” someone asked.

 

His eyes narrowed as he scrutinized the screen. “Not sure…what it means…”

 

His twin sister, Zandra, hopped over, and, grabbing his arm so she could read his screen. “It says,” she proclaimed in an over the top Shakespearian accent complete with pretentious rolling ‘R’s, “Heavier than a pile of bricks, until the dice show double six.”

 

“Then, that’s it!” Luke gasped. “Someone roll two sixes and we’re home again!”

 

There were some relieved sighs.

 

Then Zaidan began to scream.

 

There were cries of “What?!” and, “What’s going on?!”

 

But apart from his twin sister, Zandra, no one knew Zaidan well enough to be comfortable getting too close to him. It seemed everyone found the twins a little strange – was this Zaidan’s idea of a joke? But Zandra’s eyes were wide, staring at her twin brother, totally dumbfounded.

 

And now alongside his screams we could all hear a horrible creaking, grinding sound, like bones were grinding against each other. But we couldn’t see anything in the dim light. I could hear people gasping and breathing faster in the dark. The crowd shuffled, confusedly pulling in, then drawing back. No one seemed to have any clue what was going on.

 

“Oh my God! – No!” someone yelled, and “What the fuck!”

 

Zaidan’s scream didn’t end, or die away. It stopped suddenly, like it was cut off. In the ensuing quiet, I could hear heavy panicked breathing now, a couple of girls were sobbing in fear. In the distance, some kind of animal made a gibbering howl, like a coyote, or some kind of monkey.

 

Finally, the crowd shifted and some people shined their wristbands’ weak light on Zaidan. Where he had previously just stood, there was now a smoothed marble rock statue of a person. The body was tensed, and the face carved into the stone was eerily familiar.

 

Zaidan’s face.

 

His mouth and eyes were frozen open in the agonized scream we had heard only a moment ago.

 

“No…” whimpered Scarlet. “It’s not possible.”

 

"He's a statue,” yelled Chase, “oh my God, it killed him, he's dead --!"

 

"He's not dead," said Jordyn in a dark monotone.

 

“How do you know?” Madison muttered, nudging against her with apprehension.

 

“I…don’t know.”

 

There was instant panic. People were on their feet, running, yelling. I could hear footsteps tramping through the undergrowth, bodies charging clumsily like startled deer. People pushing, shoving, tripping, falling, kicking up dirt, in their desperate attempts to get away from the Zaidan-statue, or whatever it was.

 

“No way!”

 

“I’m outta here, man!”

 

“What the fuck just happened?”

 

“I’m not staying here another second!”

 

Chase grabbed my shoulder and began steering me away through the trees.

 

“Hey!” I gasped. “Where are we going?” My brain was whizzing incoherently at what I had just seen. Plus, I had no sense of direction in the dark.

 

“Anywhere but here,” Chase said conclusively. “You want to end up like him, too?”

 

Jordyn and Madison were jogging on his other side. “Hey, where are you guys going? Don’t ditch us!”

 

“Well, keep up or get trodden on,” Chase said brusquely. “’Cause we’re getting out of here somehow!”

 

We finally reached an area where the trees grew sparser, and the bush and undergrowth wasn’t so long and tangled. We were getting close to the edge of the forest, I guessed. But it looked like the ground rose up into towering mountains in the distance. We couldn’t keep going that way. But it was still dark and we had no more idea where we were.

 

I glanced down at my wristband. The screen was blank but the small text at the top still said: Level 1: Winterwood.

 

It seemed like we’d been moving for hours. But, I realized, if that was true, the game should have moved through everyone’s turns multiple times. Maybe time didn’t work the same way here. But what did I know? Maybe this was a Wonderland world and rules kept changing. Still, I kept my suspicions to myself, not wanting to freak out the other three any more than they already were.

 

We stopped and rested for a moment, to each catch our breath.

 

Madison looked around and her eyes suddenly widened.

 

“Oh no…” she said. “Where’s Jordyn? I thought she was right behind me?”

 

We all whipped our heads around. It was true; there was just Chase, Madison and myself now. No Jordyn. Or anyone else, for that matter. No one had gone our way, and we couldn’t see or hear anyone else through the trees. It was quiet and a chill wind blew through the trees, making the leaves rattle. My stomach swirled with worry as I suddenly intuited how stupid it was to have split up. Especially in a panic. None of us had even remembered which way we’d come from. But no one was thinking straight. We were all just acting on pure fear. Anyway, couldn’t do anything about that now. We were lost. We all knew it, but no one wanted to say it.

 

“So,” I started hesitantly, “what do we do?” The others just looked at me wordlessly. Then –

 

“Adam – ” Madison gasped, looking at me with wide eyes. “Your wristband…”

 

I looked down at my arm to see my wristband screen said: NECROMANCER’S TURN, and below that, a flashing a countdown: 00:54…00:53…00:52…

 

My pulse hammered. I didn’t want to take my turn. All of the dice rolls so far had been twisted and frightening. But I didn’t know what would happen if the numbers got to zero, either. And I didn’t want to know. I remembered what Tony had said; if you skipped your turn, you got penalized. Same if you took off your wristband. ‘Penalty’ hadn’t meant anything serious back when we were in the relative safety and security of the university soccer field. But now, the word took on a very real, sinister bent. The game seemingly compelled you to play, or else it would punish you.  

 

Without thinking I went to push the dice symbol on my band.

 

“Adam, no!” Madison wailed, grabbing my hand reflexively. “What are you doing?!”

 

Squeezing onto my hand for dear life, she gave me such a vulnerable, apprehensive look (as if I was about to die) that it made my chest freeze a second.

 

“I’ve got to take my turn,” I said resolutely.

 

“Hey…” Chase said slowly, shrugging, “…Good luck, man. Maybe it’ll be something good this time. They can’t all be bad. That’d be unfair.” The bastard was even kind of smirking with anticipation, I realized.

 

Not really sure if I believed him, I didn’t say anything. The game had already proved itself more than capable of gross unfairness.

 

Madison gasped with regret as I pushed the dice symbol and the screen of my wristband changed. The two of them leaned in on either side of me, seeing what would happen.

 

A pixelated dice roll animation played on the screen, the graphics like what you might see on a slot machine. Remembering Zaidan’s turn, I shuddered involuntarily, and prayed for two sixes. But the screen instead showed: a two and a six. Then it said: Congratulations: you landed on a Conjuration Card!

 

My stomach flipped. A lightning bolt image showed on-screen.

 

Now, the screen said:

 

We are coming, don’t be nervous, we only want you in our service!

 

I stared at the screen, my mind working like crazy to figure out what the rhyme meant. Beside me, Chase was doing the same:

 

"Who's 'we'?" he said, looking up.

 

"Maybe it's a legion of knights?" with mounting excitement. "Like they're going to make me a vassal, or something?"

 

Chase and Madison just stared at me blankly.

 

"Feudalism," I added. "You know?"

 

Whatever it meant, it sounded pretty good, I thought. I had originally wanted to be the knight, anyway.

 

Then the ground started to tremble under us. We all looked at each other in the darkness. I couldn’t see the others’ faces very well, but imagined they must have looked like mine; wide-eyed and stunned.

 

“Guys! – run!” screamed Chase.

 

I saw the two of them start into a mad dash through the trees, visible as a pair of shadows darting between the trees.

 

I stayed where I was. Incredibly stupid of me, but I had no choice – one of my ankles was stuck to the ground. It felt like it was trapped under a coiling root. The trembling was getting deeper, more of a sudden jolting or quaking under the soles of my shoes now.

 

“Hey!” I yelled after them helplessly. “Hey…!”

 

Then I heard Madison shout from somewhere.

 

“Wait…! – Chase! Stop! Adam’s still back there!”

 

“Dude, hurry up!” I heard Chase through the trees, though I couldn’t seem him anymore. “We’re not hanging around.”

 

Before I could say anything, a huge mass of grass and soil flipped over like a trap door, revealing a black gaping hole in the ground. Tiny grey-skinned figures – no bigger than toys – burst out like disciplined soldiers emerging up out the top of a submarine and assembling for battle.

 

“HELP!” I screamed as the figures lost no time in climbing onto me and arranging themselves around me in a circle. Pairs of tiny strong knobbly clawed hands gripped my shoulders, arms and my legs. There were flashes of miniature scimitars the size of hypodermic needles and the root encircling my ankle snapped off. I had no time to escape before I was lofted into the air like a rolled up rug by hundreds of tiny hands and moved quickly, sideways – like a giant piece of food being hefted along by a stream of ants – towards the gaping hole in the ground. It was the paradox of woven rope; one strand was weak but looped altogether could tug steel. They held me so firmly by so many little people I couldn’t escape from my doll-size captors; I was being pulled tight in every direction.

 

“NO!” I yelled one last time before the tiny hands released me and I went flying head first down into the darkness.

 

 

Madison heard Adam’s yell from behind them, from the depths of the vast, dark woods, and realized he hadn’t moved. She skidded to a stop.

 

What the hell? She thought.

 

But Chase was still running ahead of her; he mustn’t have heard Adam.

 

“Wait…!” she shouted at him. “Chase! Stop!”

 

But Chase didn’t stop; she couldn’t see him, but she could hear the scuffling of his shoes on the ground as he ran.

 

“Dude, hurry up!” he yelled over his shoulder. “We’re not hanging around!”

 

Then there was the loud sound of a bunch of earth being dumped, and she turned and saw what looked pretty much just like that. A load of soil had flown up into the air – impossibly – and flipped over backwards. The ground was fake. It was a door in the ground. No way, she thought, dazed.

 

 – and it was where Adam was!

 

She began running back to him. Before she could reach him, a black mass started flowing up out of where the door was, and once on the ground, separating into distinguishable figures – but tiny-sized figures who swarmed like insects, making up for their diminutive size by sheer multitude. Her breath stopped short and, without even thinking, she dived behind a bush.

 

She heard the figures surging around, they were doing something to Adam. But her legs had gone weak and she barely had the fortitude to stand or run back to him. With everything that had happened thus far, she had no courage left to confront them. Not even for Adam’s sake. She paid for that by hearing his terrified scream echo around the forest:

 

“HELP!”

 

She willed her legs to move, but they would no longer obey her commands.

 

“NO!”

 

His yell faded away with the last of the thunderous noise and motion. The sounds echoed and died on the wind.

 

Feeling sick, she finally got to her feet and went over to where she’d last seen Adam. There was no one there. The dust had settled and the place was as bare as if there hadn’t been anyone at all. No signs of the recent activity; no footprints, trampled grass, dirt tracks. Worse still, she couldn’t even see the seamline where the trap door in the ground began and ended, even if she’d wanted to go after them.

 

First Jordyn…now Adam… she thought despairingly.

 

At least she didn’t find Adam’s dead body, she told herself, but that didn’t do much to allay her fear.

 

A moment later, Chase had wandered over behind her.

 

“Where did he go?” he said with incongruous calmness.

 

“They took him,” she whimpered, pushing a hand through her hair and glancing around.

 

“Who’s ‘they’?”

 

“Like, some tiny people with swords and spears. They came out of the ground.”

 

Chase got a mental image of Adam strung up over a big, bubbling cauldron with tiny munchkin people dancing around it. He giggled in spite of himself.

 

Meanwhile, Madison had her eyes closed and was close to tears now. Saying it out loud seemed to make the situation seemed hit Madison with a delayed crash.

 

“No!” she shrieked. “I can’t take this anymore.”

 

Chase spun around, trying to work out where the little people might have come from. He hadn’t even really gotten a good look at who – or what – they were. It had sounded like a big clamorous army to him. What did they want with Adam? Was ‘service’ a euphemism for death? Possibly even Madison had been seeing things that weren’t there. Maybe Adam had just chucked it all in and run away. That sounded the most likely explanation.

 

“He’s gone, Madison.” He swayed on his feet a little. He was exhausted. Either way, the game was picking them off, one by one. It wasn’t a game, he thought bitterly. It was a gauntlet. If you got a bad card, you weren’t even given a chance to fight back.

 

I’m not having my turn,he thought suddenly, with iron determination. I’ll tap out. I’ll let the countdown timer reach zero. Whatever happens, it can’t be worse than picking up a card. I’ll get through this whole experience not picking up a single card. That was the only way to win, he decided – by not playing.

 

It was difficult to coax Madison away from the area again. She seemed to want to linger there like she was meditating over a memorial marker. But finally she came, if slowly and unfocusedly.

 

The two of them moved through the forest aimlessly. Chase tried to take note of which direction they were heading in, which was almost impossible because of the lack of light and direction markers – the entire forest just seemed to repeat itself, stretching on and on indistinguishably. You could be moving in circles and not know it.

 

Neither of them talked for a while. There was nothing to say. Chase blundered on, staring ahead through the endless trees, wishing for some break in the dark, oppressive scenery, almost wishing for something to happen.

 

He got his wish.

 

Suddenly, Madison cried out weakly, “No…” her wristband was flashing the countdown timer: 00:59…00:58…00:57…

 

“No…Please, no…”

 

A vile thought took root in a dark recess of Chase’s mind. Madison didn’t want to take her turn either, he realised. Neither of them did. But if she didn’t, nothing would change. But if he could convince her to take her turn, he was convinced that there was still a chance – even a small chance –  her turn might result in something good, might get them back home, even. Or, at least get them into a better position than they were now. A small chance was better than nothing. And if it turned out to be bad for her, then…well…it wasn’t going to make him any worse off. He still had no interest in the risk associated with taking his turn.

 

There had to be good cards, he thought desperately. There had to be. It just wasn’t worth risking his own skin trying to get one.

 

00:31…00:30…00:29…

 

“Madison, take your turn,” he urged. “We have to keep playing to make the game end.”

 

“I don’t want to,” she wailed. “I’m going to land on a – what are they called? – a Conjuration Card, I know it. And every one of them has been bad so far – look at what happened to Zaidan, and to Adam. It’s going to hurt me, or – ” her voice choked off with a small sob. “—or worse!”

 

“Some cards are good,” he said in a low, measured voice, trying to sound persuasive. “They’ve got to be. They might be able to reverse what’s happened – you want to help Adam? Take your turn. Maybe you’ll get a card that’ll take you to him.”

 

Tears were leaking out of the corners of Madison’s eyes now. Her lips were trembling.

 

“Chase…” she sobbed. “Please, don’t…I can’t do it…What if I – ”

 

Chase hovered over Madison threateningly, his eyes flicking between her face and the timer on her screen. The counter was continuing to drop: 00:13…00:12…00:11… 

 

“What’s wrong with you?!” he growled. “Take your damn turn!”

 

“No…” her voice came out in a shaky wail.

 

Without warning, Chase leapt forward and jabbed the dice symbol on her screen. Madison cried out and pulled her arm away, but it was too late. Her screen was showing the dice roll animation now. Her face collapsed with shock. She stepped back, away from Chase, put her hand up to her mouth, shaking her head.

 

“What does it say?” Chase insisted. “Did you land on a card?”

 

She nodded weakly, her eyes glued to the screen.

 

“Well?” he waved his arms impatiently. “Can’t you read? Tell me what it says!”

 

“I don’t know what it…” her quaking voice broke off for a second, “…I don’t want to say it out loud, it sounds…”

 

Chase groaned and raced around to see the screen over her shoulder. It said:

 

All other players move with haste, before you all get turned to paste!

 

“But that’s good!” Chase exclaimed, stepping back and eyeing her triumphantly. “What did I tell you? You got a good card. It’s giving you something powerful!” he punched the air. “Yes! YES!”

 

“But what does it mean?” she said in a trembling voice.

 

“I don’t know, but it’s got to be a weapon.”

 

Madison’s face had blanched. Then it scrunched up. Chase’s eyes flicked at her nervously.

 

“Madison – what – what is it?”

 

“I don’t feel so good…Ohhh…” she bent forward, groaning. “It’s like…it’s my bones…they hurt...”

 

Chase’s stomach dropped. Oh shit, he thought. Don’t you turn into a tree, too. He just stared at her helplessly, deep down convinced her game was over in just about, oh, eight seconds.

 

“Oh, Jesus…don’t say that,” he said, running his hand through his hair and trying to force his voice to sound much more optimistic than he felt. “It’s was a good card! – what the hell is wrong with this game – how is that not a good card?!”

 

Her face was screwed up in pain, now. Drips of perspiration were running down her brow and her arms in long trails, like it was sweltering hot. Her hands were fisted and her jaw was clenched. He could see veins flickering under her skin. A noise erupted from her throat, a timbre way lower than she should have been capable of producing.

 

Chase began to take slow, uncertain steps back away from Madison, not even realizing he was doing it. With a slow, plunging horror, the words on the card were starting to make sense.  At least partly. And he had no intention to stand around and wait out for the whole prediction to become reality.

 

Before he knew it, he’d spun around and fled into the trees, howling in terror the whole way:

 

“I’m sorry, Madison! I’m sorry…! I’M SORRY….!”

 

Behind him, there was a momentary silence. Ahead of him, dark twisted trees flashed past. He was running for his life, his breath loud in his ears, but he could still hear that even the crickets and the frogs had gone silent. That frightened him the most. That dead stillness. Like even the animals didn’t know what was happening.

 

Then he heard an odd raking sound, like someone plowing deep furrows into the stony earth. It brought to mind fingernails on a chalkboard…but they’d have to be really big fingernails to make that sound.

 

Then the horrible earthy cracking of trees snapping.

 

For one brief moment, another silence, in which he could maybe imagine everything was fine again…

 

– And then the earth was quaking under his feet with metronomic regularity:

 

Boom…boom…boom…

 

Each ‘boom’ jolted through his skeleton. His heart was pumping faster than his legs. And then, a sound far more terrifying:

 

“Chase!” came Madison’s voice, but louder and deeper than any voice he’d ever heard. “Come back! Don’t leave me here!” Her voice rumbled his ear drums.

 

He was mad with horror, now. He wasn’t looking where he was going, only making for a denser part of the woods where the ferns grew thick, as a means to conceal him. But it was darker in here. He was crashing into trees, tripping over bushes and roots. The chorus of frogs and crickets had gone silent. Flocks of birds were disturbed from trees and took to the air cawing. He prayed he could, too, just fly away. This wasn’t really happening…it wasn’t real…it was just a game…there was nothing to be afraid of…

 

Madison’s voice thundered out again:

 

“Chase, where are you? I’m not going to hurt you!”

 

It was so much closer now, almost on top of him.

 

And then one boom sounded right behind him, making his body seize up with fear, and then seem to turn to jelly. His thighs were warm – he’d wet himself. He couldn’t take one more step. His legs convulsed uncontrollably and he slid forward until the soil grass pressed against his cheek.

 

…

 

…

 

…

 

BOOM

 

An enormous truck of an object thumped down onto his body with earthshattering force, driving him into the damp soil – in fact, he actually felt the ground give way underneath him, push downwards like the object had made an indentation. The tension jerked his arms and legs out into a spread eagled position. When the earth’s give stopped, his body had to take up the slack. He couldn’t even scream as his body was pulled and lengthened like taffy under the massive weight of the object. His muscles went rigid, his nerves tense like steel wire. His facial features seemed to collapse, disturbingly, back into his skull. The placement of his internal organs was rearranged, spaced out, his stomach jumping up between his lungs – or at least, that’s what it felt like. His groin was demolished to mulch so fast it didn’t even register pain. Finally, just when he thought his body could give no more, he felt his back and front come together in a nauseous way, until he was flat – flat like paper, sandwiched between the gritty soil and the colossal, unyielding, semi-trailer cargo weight of the object.

 

Now, the world was pitch black; his whole body was covered, smeared amongst the moist dirt. If someone were to look down, they wouldn’t see him at all. That made his stomach sink with hopelessness – as if it could not literally sink any further. For some cruel reason, this did not kill him immediately – fantasy game logic? – in fact he was conscious for a startlingly long amount of time; at least long enough to realise what was happening: This was the end. Did that bring a sense of torment or relief? He couldn’t decide. He was in excruciating pain. He just wanted it to end.

 

But it went on for a moment longer. Torturously, the enormous weight shifted on him, moving from his legs towards his head. Then the object began to lift, rolling all its weight onto his head and chest. This was just as painful, in reverse. He was partially stuck to the object, and when it lifted, his body was stretched, somewhat like a piece of gum, as if wanting to go too, before deciding to snap off and fall back into the soil again, utterly destroyed.

 

He caught a glimpse of a gigantic, bare, feminine foot stepping down in front of him, and then another, and each step getting further away, shaking the ground a little less each time. The faint blue glow illuminating from her body allowed him to see her better: it was Madison’s character token, but now rendered in flesh and reaching about sixty feet tall, mostly bare skin and her slim fitting elven breast armor and underwear, kind of harem-esque with a transparent half-wrap trailing from her waist. This sight was too much for Chase to process. His head fell back and his eyes shut.

 

The only thing that had survived in the wreckage of human form was the wristband, perfectly intact on his screwed up, flattened wrist, if partly embedded in the soil. The grimy screen flashed:

 

ROGUE HAS DIED
SCORE: 21687
NO CONTINUES
GAME OVER

 

The unwitting killer was still desperately calling his name even as his world went dark, and – so many miles away – the green glow in the eyes of his token piece dimmed.

 

 

From her soaring height, she could see the forest rolled on endlessly to the horizon. It was almost too overwhelming too look at, so she dropped her eyes back onto the path straight ahead, trying to focus on where she’d last seen Chase. The ground shuddered under her immense weight, and trees tore out of her path, but she moved briskly on, feeling a little guilty at commotion she was causing, but there was nothing she could do about it right now.

 

Every so often she thought she saw Chase flit between the trees; a fleeing shadow. Sometimes he would pause, and then dart off in some other direction. He was fast like wildfire, though. She had no idea how he was keeping ahead of her.

 

Finally she spotted him waiting, half-hidden in the branches of an oak tree. She realized why he’d stopped. The land climbed abruptly ahead, and where there were hills or mountains, she had the clear advantage. An effortful uphill hike for him was a couple of light skips for her. She would have overtaken him in a second.

 

She was approaching the oak when a needle poked out from between the leaves. She stopped and stared. It was a tiny arrow.

 

“Move a single muscle, Gelf,” an unfamiliar male voice said firmly, “and this arrow will pierce your jugular vein, injecting you with enough basilisk venom to take down ten of your beastly kind.”

 

“No!” she gasped, taking a step back. “I wasn’t chasing you; I-I thought you were someone else.” In the back of her mind she thought: if she wasn’t chasing Chase, then where the heck was he? She must have lost him miles back – but she’d worry about that later. This dude with the arrow didn’t sound like he was messing around.

 

“State your name,” the voice said.

 

“Madison,” she said, swallowing hard. “Don’t worry, I’m not evil or anything.”

 

The little figure crouched in the trees seemed to scrutinize her a moment longer, and then leapt nimbly down, landing silently on the ground in a way that made her thing of a cat, and coming into the moonlight where she saw his face.

 

He was definitely not one of them. He had elf features, dark piercing eyes, and pointed ears, very long silvery hair and was wearing light elven armour. He was a game character, she realised. Was this really an actual land? She wondered in awe – with actual people living in it, just like in the game box art?

 

But what struck her the most, and causing a warm blush to rise in her cheeks: the little elf man was hot. Like, really hot. Like, you could destroy the One Ring in the fires of his hotness. But, not just hot, even better; downright beautiful, angelic, like a perfect little sculpture come to life.

 

Her heart felt like it had tightened. Feeling a little dizzy, she sunk to her knees slowly, and then glanced over to see something padding through the trees towards the elf. Oh, just when it could not get any better.

 

It was a kitten-sized silver horse. The elf stepped back; not turning his back on her, and pulled the horse’s reigns close. Compared to her, the elf was a little doll standing alongside a horse that was just a toy.

 

“Oh my God!” she squealed, and a flock of crows burst into the air from the treetops. The horse’s eyes dilated at her in alarm. “Is that a pony? It’s so tiny and adorable!”

 

“Deiros is not a ‘pony’,” the elf said stiffly, “He is a noble stallion. Nor is he ‘tiny’ and ‘adorable’ – it is you who is big and ungainly, Gelf.”

 

“But you’re a Gelf, too!”

 

He laughed arrogantly.

 

“No, praise the Gods, I am not. I am an Elf, blessed with agility and stealth.”

 

“Oh no, do you rhyme too?”

 

“That lyrical flourish was quite accidental.”

 

“Thank God. So what is a ‘Gelf’ – giant elf? Is that it?”

 

“Some say that. But it’s godforsaken elf, at least according to me.”

 

“Why are you so pissed off?” she mock pouted. “Can I just point out,” she added, “how cute you are? You are so cute,” she cooed. “Can I pick you up?”

 

“I demand you stop infantilizing my noble mount,” he said.

 

“I wasn’t talking about your horse. But he’s really cute, too.”

 

The elf sighed.

 

“You certainly don’t hide from anyone your outsider background when it’s nothing to be proud of.”

 

“Outsider?” she clarified. “If you mean I wasn’t born here, then you’re right. This place just kind of appeared.”

 

The elf nodded.

 

“You are no native. Your odd, crude speech makes that very plain. I met another outsider a long time ago. You are lucky I am familiar with your kind, otherwise I would have killed you without hesitation.”

 

“Well, thank you!” she said earnestly. “My hero! Can I repay you somehow? How about a kiss?” She slid forward further down on her hands, puckering her lips and closing her eyes. The horse snorted in alarm. The elf quirked an eyebrow in distaste.

 

“Don’t prostrate yourself to me,” the elf demanded, making her stop and open her eyes in disappointment. “At your magnificent size, you put yourself to shame. Why the Gods wasted such awesome power on an Elf with all the modesty and manners of a Gorc, remains a great mystery to me.”

 

Feeling a little put out now, Madison scooted back a little and folded her arms.

 

“You still haven’t told me your name.”

 

“You do not have the right to demand it. But I will volunteer it; I am Prince Lorandir, of the house of Arathel, in Falior.”

 

She squeezed her palms together. “Oooh, a prince – I had no idea! That’s so cool! Where’s Falior?”

 

“You’ll soon learn. We are borne there immediately.”

 

“We? Borne?”

 

“I cannot let you rampage around my woodland unsupervised. And in your interest, you would, sooner or later bumble upon one of my kin not so compassionate to Gelves as am I. And that would prove to be a fatal mistake, on your part.”

 

“Can you please protect me, your highness?”

 

“Alas, I cannot protect you from yourself.”

 

“Are there more little elves at your kingdom?” she perked up, “Just like you?”

 

The Prince’s lips turned down in a silent snarl. Then he mounted Deiros.

 

“Follow my lead, Gelfess,” he said, as Madison got to her feet. “I will not slow; I presume you will easily keep pace.”

 

Then he made a rapid fire gesture with his hand, causing the air around them to hum and waver like light seen underwater, containing them in a big transparent dome.

 

“What is that?!” Madison yelped.

 

“Maintain your wits. It’s a ward. No one will harm us while I take us to my kingdom. Leave it’s vicinity at your own peril.”

 

Then he hollered out a command in some foreign language, and the tiny horse charged out through the trees. Madison jumped forward eagerly, but it wasn’t too difficult to keep up. It was a little like chasing a puppy – kind of fun, even. More difficult was it to dodge all the trees. Some of the smaller ones she could take in a leap like hurdles, but most were too tall and she had to avoid them. Sometimes there just wasn’t a clear path for her, and she had to sidewind around a dense thicket. But the Elf Prince graciously slowed his steed whenever this happened, and sped up once satisfied she was close on his tail again. A few times she not only caught up to him, but was able to get in front of him. She began getting more and more bold, running backwards in front of the horse – much to the Elf’s chagrin – or trying to get him to run the horse between her legs, or running up close enough to the horse to bend quickly and tickle the Elf Prince’s ribs, or playfully gesture as if to threaten to pull him clean off the horse’s back.

 

“Almost gotcha, cutie!” she sang, after swooping down on him yet again.

 

The horse tossed its head, while the elf shrieked some foreign curse word up at her. His face was very red now.

 

Straightening again, she gasped with laughter, the dire situation far from her mind, for the time being.

 

They descended into a meandering valley, hidden from above by its shelter under a tall pine forest. The trees were tall – sequoia tall – tall enough to almost completely hide Madison, at least as long as she stood still. She noticed that as they entered this forest, some text at the top of her wristband’s screen changed to say: Level 7: City of Falior.

 

Level 7? She wondered. But wasn’t the previous place only Level 1? – bit of a jump somewhere around there. Maybe some levels had passed by, it wasn’t like she’d really been keeping count. Maybe Lorandir had taken her through a shortcut. Oh well. Who was complaining?

 

Falior was a sprawling city of bronze wooden constructions that were intermeshed with the natural environment. It’s existence was a testament to the elves’ love of nature and their skill with magic. Buildings protruded from and curved around trees in intricate suspended villages that defied gravity. Someone of the huts seemed to float in the air, not apparently supported by anything. That had to be the work of magic. Although Madison was wonderstruck by the scenery, she was also touched by regret that, at her size, she could not enter any of the cute little houses. She was certain they must look as – if not more – wondrously quaint on the inside than they did on the outside.

 

The elves gave her a huge radius of space. At first it made her feel like royalty, and then, like someone shunned.

 

You guys, don’t be afraid of me, she thought sadly, I’m not going to hurt you, as the enormous sole of her bare foot almost came crashing down on a male Elf who was half-hidden amongst the grass, sitting still and cross-legged in pensive meditation – at least until Lorandir turned around and shrieked his head off at the last second, causing her to recant in shock, and the meditating elf to jump up and get out of her way.

 

Well, that was an accident. She’d gotten distracted. Who could blame her? The male Elves were as handsome as Lorandir, she observed. The women were flawlessly beautiful, too. No wonder Lorandir was so dismissive about her, she thought with a stab of jealousy, when he was surrounded by such beauty. She herself was not average by any stretch. She’d had plenty of guys compliment her appearance, random people suggest she model, and her friends loved taking her by the arm around the nightclubs, like she was a hot guy magnet. But this was another level of beauty – supernaturally so; literally otherworldly beauty.

 

By pure irony, she’d neglected to realise that she no longer looked quite like herself now, anyway. Her appearance had shifted when she’d grown. She still resembled herself but also now looked like a real life version of her game token. She noticed it when it happened. But she kept forgetting. And even by Elfin standards, the ‘Enchantress’ model was mesmerizingly beautiful, exactly as the horny, basement-dwelling game designers (who, let’s be fair, had never glimpsed a real, flawed woman, in their entire lives) had intended. And she was not to know, but it contributed greatly to the way Lorandir behaved towards her. The elves were a very closed, clannish, genetically self-reinforcing group, and to see an Elf outsider more beautiful than anyone in Falior was a slap to the face. Every time she called him ‘cute’ it incensed him further, as he mistook it for her patronizing him for an inferior appearance. But since he is only an NPC, there isn’t a lot to be gained by delving further into his psychology.

 

The only hint of the way she was viewed by the other elves was by noticing the little pointed elf faces peering at her from out of oddly shaped windows. Their expressions were fascinated, but also dark and untrusting. She wished Lorandir would defend her, tell them she meant them no harm. But, she knew, in reality, he would be the first to tell them to stay back. No matter how carefully she moved, each of her footsteps shuddered the earth. At least the occupants of those little floating huts would be immune to that, she thought.

 

Now she sat on the ground and stared around the great garden she found herself in, a view of an emerald field enclosed by cliffs, and a glistening waterfall. Little elves sat around a long table under a huge, ornate breezeway crawling with ivy, between towering buildings.

 

There were two elves on either side of her; guards. They didn’t use blunt weapons or chains to keep her apprehended, but apparently were highly able magic users, and had warned her that if she tried to escape, or hurt anyone, they would be forced to contain her with spells, and not kind ones, either.

 

Now all the little elves were participating in a fierce debate, but from her point of view, it was a highly amusing spectacle, and she tried hard to suppress giggles. It was all so adorable. She was overwhelmed by it all.

 

"I believed the wisest course was to apprehend her further movement, to, uh, prevent accidental destruction," Lorandir was saying, shrinking under the steel gaze of his father and mother, the king Vulmar and queen Lusatra of Falior. They were both impassive, white haired elves sitting in the centre of the proceeding.

 

"And what, keep her detained here?” intoned the queen. “Why, she need only pirouette and she'll knock down a tower."

 

"With all due respect, your majesty, I have faith in Prince's judgment," said Triandal, apparently an adviser to the king. "How much damage can she possibly make? Look at her. She's a mere Gelfling, why, I doubt she's any more than double digits in age."

 

"Her immaturity only makes her more dangerous!" said Lusatra. “You said she knocked down some trees chasing you!”

 

"A mere child's game," scoffed Lorandir.

 

"You say she was ‘chasing’ you. Did you genuinely apprehend real danger about her?"

 

"No!" the prince snapped. "Are you insinuating that I fear her? Preposterous! I am embarrassed being in her company!"

 

"Then why bring your embarrassment upon the entire kingdom?" Vulmar said emphatically.

 

"She's as naive as a lamb," said Lorandir. "She'll do anything you say."

 

"Hey!" Madison frowned at him. "Only if you ask nicely!” then she added, hopefully, “Why don’t you just shrink me back to normal size.”

 

All the elves went silent and stared at her.

 

“It’s a rational suggestion,” Triandal finally said.

 

“Let us propose that we shrink her down to a much reduced stature,” said an old-looking elf to one side, another advisor, called Athlaeril. “What we are to she at present, she shall be to us, thereafter. Then we would be able to detain her merely with the lightest manual force. The application of magic would be unnecessary.”

 

“That’s the wisest thing I’ve heard all day,” the Prince sneered. “I have a fitting pouch for her containment.”

 

“No!” Madison burst out, regretting she had said anything. Her current size wasn’t very convenient, but being shrunken to doll size – by the elves’ measurement – would so much worse. Then Lorandir would no longer be handsome, he would be terrifying.

 

“It’s unbecoming for us to diminish our own kind in this way,” king Vulmar frowned, “whether outsider or native, Elf or Gelf; to jealously reduce the size of one who to whom it has been naturally endowed would be a crime against decency. For that reason alone I would normally refuse. But when she is so young and immodest already, it would not dint her decency, so little she possesses. And it would spare ours, for her to be further associated with us. We cannot be made responsible for any future destruction by her hand against other kinds. Therefore, I believe an exception can be made, to preserve the dignity of all.”

 

“No!” Madison shrieked again, but now the guard elves had erected a transparent wavery barrier around her to prevent her from escaping while they performed the transfiguration.

 

Athlaeril performed some kind of spell, she guessed – an incantation of elven words, anyway, embellished with some hand gesture. Or that’s what she thought he did, because nothing happened.

 

“Why does your power fail you?” said Vulmar.

 

“I know not…” Athlaeril said, “…it’s being blocked.”

 

“There is nothing here blocking you – if anyone provides resistance, let his voice be heard, or we will be forced to identify and punish the culprit.”

 

“It’s not being blocked by any of you,” Triandal suggested, “the source is the Gelfess herself.”

 

“How has she the power to defy you?” queen Lusatra exclaimed.

 

“Yeah!” Madison chimed in. “I’m not doing anything.” She was only concentrating really hard on how much she didn’t want to be shrunk.

 

“The previous Gelf who trespassed here had no such power,” Lusatra went on. “Explain this to me!” She turned and looked up at Madison angrily.

 

Madison just stared back, bemused.

 

“There was another Gelf? – where?”

 

One of the elves lifted a tiny, struggling male elf up into the air by the back of his collar. Madison cringed.

 

“Hey, are you a gamer?” the tiny figure squeaked up at her. Factoring in both their size changes, he was about the size of her pinky nail compared to her. She could barely hear him.

 

“Yeah,” she said.

 

“I don’t recognize you. New group?”

 

“Uh…maybe. I don’t know. We haven’t been playing that long.”

 

“Yeah. You must be new. I’ve been playing, like forever.”

 

That was unnerving for her to hear. She was about to ask him if he knew which way to go to beat the game, but then the tiny figure was quickly stuffed away inside a pouch. Madison felt regret that she couldn’t help him. But the reality was he just too small. If she tried to take the bag she’d sooner hurt him than help him.

 

“Our magic fails because of your efforts,” Triandal demanded. “Explain yourself!”

 

“I don’t know magic, I swear,” Madison quavered. But then something clicked; she remembered when she had picked her character, it was called something like, ‘Gelfin Enchantress’ or something. She chose it because it sounded like it could use magic. Maybe the ‘previous Gelf’ was a non-magic player. But she was. Maybe if she thought really hard, she could do magic.

 

“She’s got some kind of reserve will at work,” said Athlaeril.

 

“It’s not possible,” said the king. “She is so young; she cannot have will to rival yours.”

 

Meanwhile, Madison was staring into the distance, watching the glistening waterfall, thinking hard. The waterfall was transparent, and so smooth and elusive; you couldn’t contain it or catch it in your bare hands. If only she could be like the waterfall. She concentrated.

 

Lorandir had a sudden sense that a cloud passing over the sun had cleared. He looked out from under the eaves and saw something unbelievable:

 

The Gelfess had vanished into thin air.

 

Tossing his head back and forth around searching for her, he then screamed:

 

“Ai! Ai! She’s gone!”

 

The elves all went quiet. Everyone stared at the huge patch of emerald grass where she’d just been sitting, now bare. It wasn’t possible. They had been outsmarted by what was – by their reckoning – just a baby elf, giant or not.

 

There was the sound of rushing air, and then something slammed down on top of the breezeway, making it groan under some unseen load. Just as quickly, the strain released, and then a loud thud sounded down on the other side. The proficient magic user he was, Lorandir quickly worked out what had happened. The Gelf must have vaulted over them. She had managed to turn herself invisible. And now, as they heard more thuds, getting further and further away, they realised she was escaping.

 

Lorandir’s eyebrows met in rage. How utterly careless! If the breezeway had collapsed under her weight, she could’ve taken out his entire family in one instant!

 

“Get her!” he shrieked at the elf guards, waving his fists like a petulant toddler. “If you allow her to escape, I will have you all executed!”

 

 

They had lost control of the game right after Zaidan had started screaming and then everyone burst into action, running in every direction through the woods.

 

Mike stared at the chaos unfolding around him warily, but not surprised. He had warned Tony that twenty players were too many. It wasn’t going to be like the garden variety tabletop they played at each other’s’ places every other Sunday afternoon. It’d get out of hand; kids would appropriate it as a BYOB and there’d be mayhem. He’d predicted something like this would happen, though not on this scale.

 

Kids were dashing around, and then, just as quickly, the area was relatively quiet again, the dust settling, leaving just Mike alone with Tony. Mike and Tony were best friends, but they could not be more different.

 

Mike was short for his age, fair-haired, but broad and had a deep, flat, somewhat monotonous voice. Tony, on the other hand was taller, skinnier, with brown hair, glasses, and his voice had a tendency to whine at an upper register when he shouted. Tony was a classic nerd. Mike was also, but he loathed the stereotype and went out of his way to distance himself from it. Apart from his short stature, he looked more like a jock but had no affection for that stereotype, either. His flat electric black-eyed stare and low, level voice gave him a slightly autistic air, but he was quick to anger if anyone messed with him. If you could pick Tony out of a crowd for his height and cheerful grin, you could pick out Mike from a crowd by his loud, discordant sarcasm. Some people avoided him, suspecting he was bitter or even misanthropic. It wasn't that he didn't like people, but was bored easily by them.

 

From way off, some kids’ voices echoed about vaguely, like a sound effect in a haunted forest. There was a whistling call from another direction, possibly beckoning, but it could just as easily been a bird of some kind.

 

“Chase!” Tony yelled out, looking around. “Adam!”

 

He looked back at Mike, disappointed.

 

“That wasn’t supposed to happen.”

 

Chase was Mike’s other friend, but they weren’t ‘close’ close. Mike thought Chase could be a real blundering idiot sometimes. So his absence – his getting caught up with the rest of the rushing crowd – didn’t bother Mike as much as it should have.

 

And as for Adam, well, they technically weren’t that close, either; he was more Tony’s friend. It was clear to Mike that Adam had a pretty thinly disguised hard-on for a girl called Madison – his head spun around any time she passed – and Mike (not one for heightened emotions) found that level of infatuation for a girl embarrassing. She was stunning, but came off like a high maintenance princess and there was a joke that followed her around campus: How is Madison like the sun? Typical answer: She’s hot. Correct answer: She goes down.

 

Not that he’d had much to do with her but in his opinion she came off like a high maintenance princess. He liked quiet girls who didn't get in his way or talk back, and gave him space. He didn't think it was sexist to believe a girl had to know her place; and in his opinion that entailed happily volunteering the driver seat to the man in every conceivable decision. In return, the man opened the door for her, pulled her chair out, and so on. If he felt like it. If that was old fashioned, well, then call him grandpa.

 

But who cared about the other boys now– they’d all run off. So much for loyalty and solidarity. Just for staying put, Tony had gained a bump up in Mike’s respect. Then again, it was Tony’s game; so it would’ve been truly sad if he’d run off too.

 

“Did you know this would happen?” Mike asked.

 

Tony had moved over to Zaidan, who had now been transformed into a human size stone statue, screaming in soundless terror. He was inspecting him warily, but his eyes gleamed with delight, like a child seeing their first magic trick.

 

For the time being, Mike had no interest in the statue, or where the others had gone. He just wanted to know what was going on. Winning this thing would be cool, too. It would shove it in everyone’s face. The collective insanity only a second ago was even kind of funny, to him.

 

“No,” Tony said, now moving away from the Zaidan-statue and looking down at the game board. The both watched in silent fascination as the pieces started to move on their own, one after another, like they were taking turns.

 

“You see that?” Tony said, pointing at a glass bubble in the center of the gameboard. “The pieces move as you walk around. And you see the green words? It does that when someone gets a Conjuration Card.”

 

Mike craned his head but the words had vanished. Whose turn had that been, just then?

 

“I hope Casper and friends are having a blast,” Mike said, referring to the supernatural movements of the game pieces across the board. His eyes continually jumped back to his own piece, the Knight, which hadn’t yet moved again since his original turn – the turn which, he now realized had transported them all here. He felt not a trace of guilt for it. And why should he? If anyone should’ve felt guilty, it should be—

 

“Tony,” Mike said, his eyes locked on him. “You said you’d played this before.”

 

Tony started back, his eyes wide and sincere. “I have! This has never happened. I mean, come on -- !” He laughed nervously. “Don’t you think I would’ve told you? But…” he paused in thought, “…I told you my uncle gave me this game when he died, right?”

 

Mike nodded. He remembered scrolling through eBay to see what the vintage-looking game was worth second-hand, but gave up after failing to find any such mention of a game called ‘GOOM’ on the internet – on eBay or anywhere at all. He assumed that meant it was worth peanuts, and forgot about it. Until now.

 

“Well,” Tony continued slowly, “before he died he said strange things happened if you played the game with a lot of people. That’s why I arranged this whole thing. I mean, I didn’t actually believe him because the medication he was on made him kinda, well, up in the clouds, but…”

 

“Did he tell you how to beat it?” Mike cut in unsentimentally.

 

“No,” Tony said quietly.

 

Mike took a long draught of the night air, which chilled his lungs. It had to be midnight (in this land, at least), or later.

 

“Well,” he said, “game’s not gonna beat itself. So let’s go.” He nodded down at the gameboard, where the pieces were sequentially coming to life, taking their turns. His own player, the knight, had jumped forward a couple of spaces since his first turn, but compared to the other pieces, a gap was starting to open up, putting him behind. He shared his space with Zaidan’s player, the ‘Beastmaster.’ There was only one other player piece behind his; which he assumed was Tony’s, which hadn’t even moved from starting position.

 

“Everyone else has started. We’re behind.”

 

Tony gave a cursory glance down at the game board.

 

“What player did you pick, anyway?” said Mike.

 

“The Wizard’s Apprentice. You think the game will just stay here and keep playing on its own?”

 

“I’m more concerned for us,” said Mike, not looking back.

 

They began to walk, briskly but silently, through the forest, which was mostly silent back at them. At one point, thunder rumbled in the distance, unseating a flock of birds from their treetop perches. Mike scanned the sky for a moment, but there was no accompanying lightning – anywhere. The thunder quickly faded as if it suddenly had a change of mind. Odd.

 

“Ah, the old ‘boomerang’ storm,” Mike offered dryly. “Seems to be racing right to you, then suddenly turns tail and disappears.”

 

It felt like they walked for hours. The scenery had changed little but the temperature was dropping gradually, and the ground began to crunch and squeak underfoot with the beginnings of snow. More snow could be seen up ahead, through the trees.

 

One their left, a green firework flashed way off in the distance. It whizzed up into the air, over the treetops, before curving gracefully back down towards the ground and out of sight. Could one of the other kids have done that? Mike wondered.

 

“What was that?” said Tony. “A signal?”

 

“Well, flares are red, so…no.”

 

In truth, Mike had no interest in investigating. He couldn’t get over how the firework had been totally silent; it bothered him. They wouldn’t have even noticed it if it hadn’t happened in their field of view. Not only that, but they didn’t know where they were, all they knew was that they had been heading in a straight line from their starting point. He was constantly trying to map their path in his mind. If they turned or diverted, that one certainty would be lost. It might’ve helped to leave a trail, or tie things around trees passed, but they had no rope or anything.

 

They kept going, but their pace had to slow as the snow built up on the ground, causing their shoes to sink a little with every step – shoes that were not appropriate for the environment. Mike could feel the sting of frigid moisture dampening his socks now.

 

The ground began to climb up. They dug their feet in, taking the hill straight up, and then beginning to zig-zag diagonally once the ascent became too steep.  Their faces were red and puffing big icy clouds with every labored breath. Every inhalation stung their lungs. Mike felt the sweat running down his sides prickling painfully as it began to chill.

 

Tony stopped suddenly, panting loudly.

 

“Hate to be ‘that guy’, but this was kinda sorta pretty dumb,” Tony said. “We’ve got to turn back. We’re going to freeze to death.”

 

Mike turned and looked back out at the path they’d made up the mountainside. Behind and below them, the forest reached out to the borders of the horizon. The sheer height of their current position startled him; he hadn’t realized they’d climbed so high.

 

“Hang on,” said Mike. “If we turn back we’re defeating all our progress. There’s got to be some way of going ahead.” He wasn’t yet ready to accept that a board game (realistic or not) could offer up lethal challenges. It was just a game, even if it looked convincing. Just a hologram with incredible verisimilitude.

 

In compromise, they found a small level outcropping of snow covered rock, where they sat down to think.

 

Within a few minutes, Tony’s wristband started flashing.

 

“It’s my turn,” he said uncertainly. His finger hovered over the screen indecisively. “One, two, three,” he chanted, “don’t turn me into a tree!” And he pressed the symbol on his screen.

 

Mike stared at him blandly, and Tony responded with a crooked grin. “Hey, the game likes rhymes, okay? Thought I’d try one of my own.”

 

“What did you get?”

 

“A Conjuration Card, of course. You get them every turn. Sometimes good, sometimes bad.”

 

Now there was a message on his wristband. It said:

 

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble, now become your in-game double!

 

A cloud of green sparks suddenly consumed the air around Tony. Taking a step back, Mike blinked screened his face with a raised hand. When he looked again, it was no longer Tony standing in front of him, but some strange older man wearing some medieval shit: brown hooded robes, pointy shoes and fingerless leather gloves. He was also holding an ornate wooden staff.

 

“Whoa,” said the man, in Tony’s voice. “That was unexpected.”

 

“Tony…” Mike said. “What?”

 

Tony flipped his pointed hood back to reveal a bald head. “Hey!” he cried, running a hand anxiously over his scalp. “Not cool, game!”

 

Mike could now see it was Tony under all the authentic nerdy cosplay. Or, it resembled Tony, a slightly older, bearded Tony, looking less dorky and more authoritative. If it impressed Mike, he decided to not let it show.

 

Tony’s eyes widened with childlike excitement as he stared back at Mike.

 

“I’m my player!” he grinned, spinning his staff almost like it was some vaudevillian cane. Then he suddenly stopped. “Maybe I shouldn’t wave this thing around,” he said a little apprehensively, “in case it’s real.”

 

“Well, try a spell then.” Mike gestured up the mountainface. “Make a ski lift.”

 

Tony pointed the end of his staff at the incline. “Shazam!”

 

Nothing happened.

 

“Yup,” Mike said flatly. “It’s fake. Wouldn’t sell on eBay for $2.”

 

Tony brought the staff back upright, planting it against the ground. “No, I felt something. It vibrated. Like it was trying.”

 

“Yeah. Vibrated like a toy wand. I think I heard a cheap prerecorded sound effect, too.”

 

Tony wasn’t listening. He was concentrating on the staff head.

 

Then a finger of green flame appeared there, and, wavering a little, grew until it was as big as large adult hand.

 

Both boys goggled. Tony grinned.

 

“It worked! Yes!”

 

Mike’s jaw hung open. “What did you do?”

 

“I just thought of a flame, and it appeared!”

 

Flipping the staff around, he began to sweep it around over the snow like a metal detector, trying to melt the path ahead of them. The snow sizzled and steamed, evaporating as if the green flame was not fire, but lava.

 

“It’s powerful,” Mike said, feeling his breath short in his chest. Part of this was apprehension, but another part might have been envy.

 

Tony looked over his shoulder at Mike briefly.

 

“Come on!”

 

They carried up the mountain, following Tony’s trail of newly exposed brown grass and rock. As much as Mike secretly resented Tony’s fortune at being the magic wielder, he was grateful that at least one of them had it, as it made the trek undeniably easier. The rock was still slippery, but firmer under their feet than the snow.

 

“Hey,” Mike called out. “Give me a turn of that thing!”

 

“Just be patient,” Tony said, not looking back. “Wait until we reach solid ground again.”

 

But after only several minutes of journeying the flame suddenly extinguished, leaving the staff head bare again, and the boys stranded in the snow.

 

“Oh, no,” said Tony. “What happened?”

 

“Okay, it’s real,” Mike scoffed, “but it’s still cheap.” He sighed. “Guess it’s like one of those lame one-use-only weapons. Use and lose. Apply and bye-bye.”

 

“There’s nothing wrong with the staff,” Tony protested, running his hand over the staff end where the flame was moments ago. “The magic’s still there, I can feel it, it’s just – ”

 

“Tony, no,” Mike said impatiently. “It’s done. We wasted it making grass slushies.”

 

“No, it’s coming from me. The staff is just a conduit. Or a focusing lens. But I’m the power.”

 

Mike ran a hand over his forehead, feeling tired, rattled by what he was hearing.

 

“Is that your catchphrase now?” Mike said gruffly. “‘I’m the power’?”

 

“No, too ‘He-Man’. But seriously, I feed the staff energy, it’s just I’ve run out of magic energy.”

 

Mike turned his back to Tony for a moment, trying to survey the world below them through the screen of near opaque misty air. It was becoming increasingly difficult to determine how high up they were. And getting near cold enough to freeze the balls off a polar bear. He started to wonder what he’d do if he and Tony got separated somehow. The thought made a panicky chill ripple over him.

 

Tony was in a good position. He wasn’t. Bad enough that Tony got the staff. But that just meant he had to wait his turn to get to do Harry Potter stuff. But now it turned out the staff was useless after all – ironically, as he’d suspected – it was Tony doing the magic. That meant no Harry Potter stuff, period. Tony was the exclusive gatekeeper of the magic.

 

What luck. What a shitty game. Were there any cheat codes? Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right…etc. Yes, he was a sore loser, he knew it and made no apology for it.

 

“No hard feelings, Tony,” Mike patted his shoulder, “but I’ve always said your endurance needs work. Now, let’s move.”

 

Tony just stared. “What do you mean? We can’t go any further.”

 

Mike plodded on past him, crunching into the unmelted snow.

 

“There’s no other way.”

 

“There is another way. It’s called ‘back’.”

 

Mike shook his head emphatically, keeping his eyes on the ground. They had to keep going. He just felt it. If they kept going, the game would reward them with aid, like the magic. If the game made any sense at all, rewards would be proportionate to their progress – that was how the games he was familiar with worked. You did not get upgrades and gear from doubling back. You only wasted time and effort. Not to mention, it looked weak.

 

“Come on, Mike,” Tony whined behind him. “Don’t be a dumbass…”

 

Mike kept his feet planted in the ground, staring at Tony levelly. His cheeks were growing pink from the cold. “We’ll see who the dumbass is when I get my turn.”

 

“We shouldn’t go blindly blundering on. We don’t know what the penalty is if we lose.”

 

“I would rather lose than give up.” He turned and continued heading up the slope.

 

“Why don’t you work on some more magic? If you hadn’t shot your load so early, maybe we’d be up the mountain already.”

 

Tony watched as Mike took another several steps through the snow. Then he stopped abruptly, and Tony sighed in relief. But Mike did not turn around. He leaned back and said up at the sky:

 

“Oh, finally!”

 

His wristband was flashing. It was saying it was his turn. He turned around to see Tony standing there, giving him a questioning look.

 

Without a moment’s hesitation Mike punched the dice symbol on his flashing screen. It was kind of fun, he considered. Like some bizarre wheel of fortune.

 

Wiping the condensed mist from the screen with his hand, Mike raised thw wristband up to his face to read the message that had now appeared:

 

Grab your skis and hurry up, before the mountain catches up!

 

“What does it say?” said Tony. Mike read it out to him. Then, looking up, said:

 

“It rhymed ‘up’ with ‘up’. Lazy.”

 

However, Tony’s face had drawn tight with anxiousness. “That doesn’t sound good.”

 

Mike scowled. “Always the pessimist, Tony? How would you know? It sounds like it’s going to give us skis!”

 

Tony began to look around fearfully. “I think we need to start going back down the mountain…”

 

Mike pointed emphatically at the ground. “If we go down, then everyone will– ”

 

There was a muted rumble from further up the mountain.

 

They both stared at each other, stricken. They knew exactly what it was. From up higher, the snow was spilling over, beginning to reach down at great speed, tumbling, picking up volume as it went.

 

“—NOW!” screamed Tony.

 

Jumping to their feet, they began to run back down, but the hazardous incline and slippery terrain prevented them from sprinting. Tony staggered on the slippery ice, almost falling over.

 

“Quick!” said Mike. “Do something to get us out of here!” The next second, a pair of skis appeared strapped onto his feet. Tony’s too. Now they were both sliding down the mountain. Mike’s pulse jumped ahead at the shock of the abrupt sliding motion. Then it began to stabilize in relief.

 

“Why not take my cue from the card, right?” Tony yelled out, laughing, his brown robe flapping behind him.

 

Mike bent his body aerodynamically to pick up some more speed. Yet he was aware the noise was getting louder. It wasn’t enough, and he was going as fast as he was able, even recklessly so. If he took a tumble it was all over.

 

He looked over his shoulder briefly to find the churning body of snow behind them, much closer now – nearly on them. He looked sideways. Tony was aware of it too, he looked anxiety-stricken again. They met eyes briefly.

 

“I’m going to teleport us out of here,” he said, struggling to be heard over the fast encroaching din. “Ya ready? – three, two, one…”

 

What, no rhyme this time? Mike thought dryly. Then he felt a stab of terror. Tony had vanished. Mike had not.

 

“Tony!” he screamed. “You bastard!” Deep down he wondered if the spell had gone wrong – in fact, it must have, he was sure. Tony was a good guy, he wouldn’t ditch him deliberately. Or, maybe not, after all. The possibility of being ditched by his best friend incensed him. The next second the great wall of snow rolled over him like a stampede of rhinoceroses, and he wondered no more.

 

But, back at the game board, miles away, the green eyes of his game piece continued to glow…

 

 

I was about to die.

 

The air was rushing past. It was pitch black and I couldn’t see where the ground was – if it was anywhere. But I’d been falling long enough that the impact had to be fatal.

 

Then I hit something soft and springy. I was bounced into the air again. Then I was falling again. I landed on a curved plane and slid down it, fell another few metres, before my fall was broken by another springy patch.

 

Finally, I stopped moving, and lay on the ground a moment to work out if I was injured. Thankfully there were nothing too significant; some scrapes and maybe bruises, but that was all. In the dim light, the screen of my wristband caught my eye. The banner at the top of the screen now read: Level 2: Zangoti’Toma.

 

Amazingly, by this point, I still wasn’t dead.

 

When I stopped moving I found myself inside a very strange place.

 

It was the base of a huge hollowed out chamber, containing an eclectic fusion of medieval and futuristic. It looked like some underground research facility, if it had been hit by a bomb and left abandoned. Little rickety scaffolds built up against the stone walls, which flowered with ivy and vines. There were tiny lanterns flickering out from recesses cut into the stone, and screened by glass plates. The flames were cyan blue and wavered like the flames were made of lasers.

 

As my eyes searched around in awe, I made out details of stone carvings on the walls, as if written in an alien language. At one side, there was a circular pipe entrance.

 

I began to approach cautiously. It was possibly big enough for me to enter if I got down on my hands and knees and crawled. The dark tunnel inside jittered with the weird blue light, like an underground metro.

 

Stopping right outside the ringed tunnel, my eye was caught by a dark shape hanging from the underside of the inner top. It looked like a little gargoyle or something.

 

I did a double take.

 

And at the top inside of the ringed opening, there was a figure standing up there, upside down. A tiny figure, like a living doll.

 

“Who’s there?” I called out, my voice bouncing through the chamber.

 

The figure suddenly dropped from the ringed ceiling, nimbly somersaulted through the air like a cat, before landing nimbly on two legs next to my leg. I jumped back.

 

“Do not be afraid, visitor,” he said, looking up at me with a grave expression. It looked a bald man except for the grey skin, pointed ears and little upturned fangs pointing out of his bottom lip. He was wearing a light blue jumpsuit like he was from outer space, and had some kind of silver baton strapped to his belt.

 

“Who are you?” I said.

 

“I’m Cygon.”

 

“And, uh…what are you?”

 

“A goblin.” He peered up at me closely in the lantern light. “Excuse me,” he said finally. “We expected the visitation of our almighty Varathayer in a different form, reincarnated as he was. We didn’t expect that form would not be like one of us.”

 

“I’m a human,” I said.

 

“Very well,” Cygon said, unconcerned.

 

“How come you can stand on the ceiling?”

 

The goblin gestured to his feet, where I saw he was wearing a thick pair of silver boots.

 

“Anti-gravity,” he said. “A gift from the Airwalkers of the Cloud City. Their technologies are more advanced than ours.” He grinned toothily. “But we are more intelligent.”

 

He then strode fearlessly up to my ankle. “Come,” he said, gesturing into the tunnel. “I must take you to our high Arbiter. He will decide if you truly are the Varathayer.”

 

“Do I have to? I could just tell you right now: I’m not the Varathayer or whatever that is.”

 

Cygon’s little face looked up at me impassively.

 

“You are in our service now. We have been waiting a long time for your arrival, Varathayer, and now that you have finally come, we cannot let you leave. If you give me the slightest inference of an intention to shirk your honorable duties, I need only give the signal and my comrades will send you a hail of darts containing tranquilizing agents. If we must contain you, we will.”

 

I grimaced, in my mind’s eye seeing Gulliver lying on his back, strapped down by ropes, little people treading all over him.

 

“I’m coming,” I said hastily.

 

Getting down on my hands and knees, I began to crawl after the little figure. The stone was hard and powdery, within a short time my hands became stained with dust.

 

“What’s that blue light?” I asked.

 

“The blue fire.”

 

“Let me guess, another gift from the Cloud City people?”

 

“No. We stole that from them after they tried to pollute these tunnels with radioactive waste.”

 

My brow creased. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think radioactive waste belongs in a game with a medieval fantasy setting.”

 

“Excuse me?”

 

“Nothing.”

 

We continued in silence for what seemed like a long time. I was about to ask Cygon how far our destination was, when something stopped me.

 

THUMP THUMP THUMP thump thump …

 

The tunnel jolted like something big had slammed into it – from above. The dark walls trembled against me and dust rained down overhead, backlit by the lights like blue mist. It sounded like a huge hammer pounding the ground repeatedly, I thought. Maybe a construction tool? – like something that might have carved out these tunnels, initially?

 

The thing moved fast, about a running pace, and the sounds gradually faded until it was silent again. My mouth was dry from hanging agape.

 

“Holy hell,” I gulped. “What was that?”

 

“A giant,” said Cygon, sounding unconcerned.

 

“There are giants out there?!” I yelped, my near shriek hurting even my own ears, from the sheer echo.

 

“All powerful,” Cygon addressed me, “you are modest beyond words but it is not becoming for you to feign this degree of ignorance. Was it not you who slayed the four giant kings in the twenty-first verse of the ballad of the Fire Tree?”

 

I looked on, nonplussed. “Yeah, something like that. Look, the giants don’t come down here, right?”

 

“Your humble show of ignorance grows most jejune. I am to present you before the tribunal, making a case that you are a true incarnation of our savior. Please do not embarrass me.”

 

I went silent. We carried on, slowly but steadily making progress down its dark abyssal pipe. The eerie lights illuminated little hollows, smaller tunnels, connecting to bigger one we were following. Glass tubes were connected to the walls, sometimes angling out of or curving into these little tunnels, via u-bends.

 

The airspace seemed to suddenly expand right out as I entered a much larger chamber, which allowed me to stand up again and look around.

 

There was more scrap scaffolding piled up around the walls, ropes and cables were suspended from broken pillars, holding up planks to create makeshift bridges and walkways. I saw little goblin faces peering out at me from improvised structures, crossing the planks – at eye level with me – and scampering around on ruined paved roads.

 

The crumbling stonework was also overgrown with plant life. Furry vines dangled from the ceiling, brushing through my hair as I went. The miniature denizens of this underground world didn’t seem to care; in fact I could spy a few clambering around up and down the vines and ivy.

 

The little goblin figures darted out of my path as I went further through the chamber. I tried to keep  my eye on Cygon, as there were many very similar looking goblins in here. They looked up at me, startled as my footsteps bounced around like the slam of a basketball in an indoor court. By comparison, their footfalls sounded to me like the pattering of rats or pigeons.

 

Past this chamber, we moved up some cracked stone steps which led up to an empty basin, cut into the stone floor in an octagon shape, with a ray of light shining down, entering through a crack in the rocky ceiling. Leaning over to glance down, I let out a gasp.

 

A gaping chasm lay beyond, dropping down into pitch black nothingness. Passageways ran around the edges of the chasm, stacked in a series of storeys. Some of these storeys were connected by ropes, or little ladders. Shaky blue light glittered out from balcony outcroppings, but not enough to illuminate how far the drop went, or what was at the bottom.

 

Passing the abyss, we turned a corner into a narrow pass which led up a seemingly endless stone staircase. The little goblin leading me seemed to have no trouble climbing this, his anti-gravity boots allowed him to spring up the steps like a jackrabbit. By contrast, I was panting and sweating coldly by the time we came to the top.

 

Ahead of us there was a circular stone platform directly over another yawning abyss. It didn’t appear to be suspended by anything. A beam of white light spilled from a hole in the stone above, while cyan light danced from below.

 

The platform was too small to carry me, but not too small to carry the three figures arranged on it. One of them, in the centre was a goblin with very pale, almost white skin. His eyes, too were milky white. He wore a white jumpsuit with a trailing yellow sash with black rune symbols on it, and a pointed mitre hat atop his head, like the pope wore, but it also was decorated in those weird alien runes.

 

The other two goblins flanking his sides looked like guards, wearing black jumpsuits and carrying long silver bidents whose tips glowed light blue.

 

Cygon stepped up a ledge facing the platform, where there was a stone block, like a lectern. Atop this was a little silver horn. I stepped forward after Cygon and a couple of goblins made out from the dark, closing in at my ankles. More guards, carrying bidents.

 

At their small size, their attempts to hem me looked ridiculous and I had to suppress a laugh.

 

Cygon spoke into the silver horn, which amplified his voice around the cavern.

 

“I come bearing a most imperative announcement. This stranger standing behind me is none other than the mighty Varathayer, who has unveiled himself to me. This is the coming of the first sign. We must make preparations for the prophesized journey.”

 

“This is not the first such claim I or any of my predecessors have heard,” said the pope-like goblin. “May the stranger approach.”

 

Cygon looked back at me, making a shy beckoning motion. His eyes fixed me a hard look that said ‘Don’t embarrass me.’

 

Stepping carefully so as not to trample either of the guards at my feet, I stopped beside Cygon, not bothering to bend to use the horn on the lectern, seeing as my voice was loud enough.

 

“Hello,” I said, clearing my throat a little. “Uh, your highness?”

 

"Greetings stranger. I am the sixty second Arbiter of Celesteor House. If you are the true Varathayer, as you claim, your arrival would presage an occasion more joyous than any in our history. However, forgive us if we seem reticent, as there is much riding on this outstanding declaration. It is incumbent upon me to verify your identity before we may proceed. If you are the Varathayer, you retain the mother tongue and possess the answer to the ancient unsolved riddle: facigaciph'gorthq'pacircept'fifter'borightfuluste'traran'flamidnes'achash?”

 

“Uh…” My lips moved with silent words, wondering if I was capable of bluffing. I was almost tempted to drop the old ‘me no speakee’ line, before I realized I had no idea what that language was called – Goblinese?

 

I could almost feel the daggers shooting out of Cygon’s eyes.

 

“It disturbs me greatly that he does not seem to recall who he is,” said the Arbiter.

 

“Every incarnation takes some years for the ancestral memories to reemerge,” Cygon jumped in. “Please, high one, grant him the chance to perform the divine call. If it is truly him, we will be blessed beyond measure. If it is not him, he will be ground to dust, or absorbed into her magnificent abundance. We risk nothing.”

 

My eyes dropped upon Cygon, silently seeking some clarification as to that ominous last part. But his gaze remained stiffly on the Arbiter.

 

“Very well.” Then the Arbiter addressed me again.

 

“Stranger, to complete this test you seek an audience with bountiful Juna, most high. You must persuade her to bequeath us her special blessing. Once our souls are duly blessed, we may ascend to the higher planes of this world, higher than the Airwalkers, and even higher than those that walk above the Airwalkers!”

 

“Where can I find her?” I said.

 

“Juna may not be ‘found’. You are summoned to her. When you are ready, we will perform the summoning ritual that will instate your passage to her realm.”

 

“Alrighty,” I said, clapping my hands together. “Let’s do it.” Persuade a lady to give a blessing – how hard could that be?

 

Cygon and the guards hurried back, giving me a wide berth as the arbiter began talking in that gobbledygook language again, this time intoning a long, humming monastery chant. The cavern gave the sound a creepy echo, like multiple voices were talking at the same time.

 

Sparks of light flashed in the air, brightening the cavern, and then the air space positively filled with white light, which blinded me for several seconds. I threw my hands up over my eyes, but the light seemed to enter my skull, get inside my head, light up my brain.

 

For a moment all I was aware of was the buzzing vibrations, and the dazzling light. I could no longer tell whether I was standing or sitting, up or down, under the earth or on its surface. It was neither hot or cold. I seemed to be a loose, insubstantial filament, floating in a vague, boundless ether.

 

Then a solid surface slid up under my feet again.

 

 

It was so bizarre, Mike thought.

 

The last he’d been aware, he was being buried in the cold snow by an avalanche. He must have been knocked out by the cold wave, with the even colder certainty that he was facing certain death (assuming you could actually die in this game world). So, now, becoming increasingly aware of his surroundings, he found himself buried not in jagged shards of ice but in a moist, warm cavern – a cave?

 

He could see a big row of smooth white, jagged and vaguely squarish rocks – ice shards? He didn’t think so. Sticky moisture slicked everything. Hot air pounded him from a black tunnel somewhere past his head. It came in repeated blasts. Had he found his way down into a volcanic shaft? He wondered. But there was something else; in wake of each hot blast, there was a residual vacuum that squeezed his body and made his lungs feel tight. He didn’t have explanation for that.

 

Another thing; why was the ground shifting around under him, as if he was lying on a pile of moving bodies? His heart thumped – I’m on the back of some great serpent, he thought. There was nothing he could do. He was conscious, but still mostly paralyzed. He could blink and look around, and the feeling of numbness was residing, but he couldn’t move, apart from small involuntary twitching in his fingers and toes.

 

The serpentine thing thrashed suddenly, effectively flipping him onto his front, and his well lubricated body offered no resistance. Its movement was incredibly controlled and precise, like it had total possession over him. That was worrying – it suggested the thing was sentient. Maybe even intelligent. He could feel its bumpy skin texture – maybe not scales but somewhat rough and snakelike – against his face. There was a slightly soured, fleshy, meaty scent about it, but only because his nose was pressed so closely.

 

Then he felt something warm, wet and firm blunder into his legs and immediately make for his bulge, which it began to stroke up and down. He tried to cry out, but his throat felt locked up with cold. The thing was probing keenly and intelligently, as if for signs of life. So he was trapped here in a volcanic shaft, immobilized by cold, had now to contend with a pervy serpent – great.

 

Then it shifted him a little, moving him along to give it access to his stomach, where it again poked around. This was horribly ticklish, and worst of all, he still couldn’t move or speak, so he was forced to silently endure that torture for a few minutes, before he was finally rotated onto his back again. Now the big wet thing traced his spine down to his buttocks, and slid along his crack line and poked between his legs to meet with his ballsack.

 

This was getting really out of hand. Not only the serpentine groping but his sinuses were beginning to ache from the constant, throbbing hot vacuum, like he had been punched in the nose. He began to focus all his willpower of moving. He could bend his fingers and toes a little, and open his jaw now (not a wise move, as he got a mouthful of the sticky moist fluid dribbling over everything, which surged down his throat and momentarily threatened to choke him). He was starting to feel like he preferred being frozen alive to…whatever this was. Being trapped in a damp volcanic cavern with this big red sluglike inhabitant, or something like it.

 

He was able to emit a tiny vibration in his throat. He worked on this determinedly until he was able to get it louder, and form words.

 

“Help…!” he grunted. But nothing happened. The snake was deaf and his voice was stolen away down the tunnel with another huge sucking vacuum.

 

Was there anyone around out there? Even if not, maybe if the snake realized he was alive it would be frightened off. He was then rotated again, this time being turned head to toe. It took a lot of force as the space was so enclosed; the serpent whacked him and pushed him roughly like it was trying to break down a door. The force hurt his stiff joints and he grimaced. His face was slapped wetly against the snake’s bumpy skin. Surely there wasn’t anything worse than this.

 

Desperately, he tried again.

 

“Help!”

 

It didn’t work. Now he was in a position which enabled one end of the red snake thing access to his head. It spread heavily over his face like a warm wet blanket, coating him in its bubbly slime, and settled there for a moment, threatening to suffocate him. When his lungs felt like they were about to burst, it slid off, giving him a quick breath of hot, bitter air, before it began to tap and knead all around his head, without a lot of regard to his delicate facial features, which were far less numb, and were beginning to throb at the shock of regained sensation.

 

He groaned in discomfort; feeling like his head was a piece of dough being pounded by a pizza-maker. He blinked rapidly as sticky fluid stung his eyes, and coughed as it forced its way inside his mouth. Oddly, it reminded him of getting a lick attack by a big dog, except this was so much worse.

 

He tried to call out again:

 

“Hmmpphf!”

 

But the big wet thing was squashing his face, smearing over his lips, dampening his voice.

 

A light opened up across the cavern. His heart leaped – was he being rescued? But the only thing that emerged was a great churning slush of water, spilling in and quickly swirling up to the cavern ceiling. He took a big breath as it passed up over his head – surprisingly, it was warm, probably from the volcanic heat. He was tumbled around, banging into the white rocks and the mushy cavern walls. The bumpy snake thrashed at him, rolling him like a log. A sharp jab in the gut winded him and causing him to lose his breath. Now his lungs felt like they were scrunching up. His mind screamed for air.

 

Then the water was sucked down the tunnel at the end of the cavern. The pull nearly sent him along with it, but the bumpy snake pressed its weight down on top of him firmly, keeping him still. When the snake slithered off him again, and he was given a nanosecond to breathe, he stole the opportunity to scream for help before it slipped away again:

 

“ANYONE OUT THERE?! HELP!”

 

The snake froze. Even the hot blasts of air stopped. Then the light opened up again, and something wrapped around him and yanked.

 

He was retracted into the light of day. Blinking rapidly, his eyes worked to get accustomed to the brightness. When they finally did, he found himself gazing up at one of the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in his life, with smooth pale skin, long glossy hair the color of the night sky, and penetrating blue eyes. But she was not a woman, he realized from her pointy ears, but an elf – a giant elf. An elf giantess. And he was sitting in her hand.

 

She was looking down at him, bemused.

 

“You’re alive,” she said, sounding surprised and relieved.

 

“Yeah,” he said breathlessly. Then he shot her an accusatory stare. “You’re trying to eat me!”

 

“No!” she said. “I was trying to save you.”

 

“But you had me in your…your mouth!” Looking at her, he now struggled to equate her puffy pink lips – now curved in a faint smile – as being the very same entrance to what had only moments ago been his torturous prison. And that meant…the red snake had been her tongue. God, it was so bizarre. His head spun. That damn snake – er, tongue – had been all over him!

 

“It worked, didn’t it?” she suggested.

 

“B-but…” his mouth worked but no sound came out for a moment, “…it’s – it’s – uh…Gross! Why would you put me in your mouth?! I’m a living person!”

 

Mike could not have known, but the elf woman had previously considered peeing on him, as one last ditch effort to warm him back to life. This most unladylike, unelflike deed she thought prudent not to mention.

 

“Not when I found you. You were a dying person,” she said simply. “You were frozen solid, as stiff as…” her sentence stopped short and her eyes trailed downwards.

 

Mike stared at her, not comprehending. Then he realized his prick was erect – from the constant stimulation he’d just been subject to. Cheeks flushing, he went to cover himself but the giantess beat him; her enormous fingers rushed forward and nipped his member, and carelessly, as if she’d never seen one before and didn’t realize its significance. Or she was just reckless.

 

“You’re lucky this hasn’t dropped off,” she said.

 

“Hey!” he barked, flinching. This chick was really bold. It scared him.

 

“Sorry,” she said, inconsequently. “Couldn’t help myself. A few moments ago I’d kind of forgotten you were even a person.”

 

“Yeah, obviously,” he said sorely. Then he shivered. Now that he was in the open air, he was getting cold again.

 

She noticed.

 

“Hey, where are my clothes?” he exclaimed.

 

The giant woman said nothing but the ghost of a smile played across her lips. He was seriously getting bugged by her now. Before he could say anything else, she went on (as if to change the subject):

 

“So, you can come with me, or you can, you know, go do your own thing, I guess.”

 

He sighed. He didn’t think the giantess wanted to harm him but he got a domineering vibe her that made him uncomfortable. Oh sure, she was attractive as hell, but her sheer power over him made her scary. She had just put him in her mouth and played tongue-rodeo with him without any sense of discomposure or regret showing on her face. She had forwardly tongue-groped his manhood. She seemed like one of those biblical angels with a flaming sword; she could save you, but it wasn’t going to be pretty.

 

“You know I can’t let you go,” she went on shrewdly. “You’ll die out here.” Her smile became mischievous. “I didn’t go to all that tasty effort just for you to die again.”

 

“I guess I’ll come with you for a little while,” he said feebly.

 

“Okay,” she shrugged. “Let me find you somewhere warm – ”

 

Before he could react, he was lifted up before her ample chest, where she pulled back one of her bra cups and lowered him into it.

 

“Oh, wait, hang on --!” he stammered, confronted by the size of her massive breast pushing up against the soles of his feet as they were slid along its curve.

 

“Look at my costume,” she said, raising an eyebrow, “you don’t have a lot of choice here. It’s either here, or…further below.”

 

Getting her meaning he gulped and shut his mouth.

 

On the way down, one of his feet struck a big nub that he awkwardly guessed was her nipple. The giantess bit her lip but kept feeding him in. His body slid down over the curve of her mammary, and fell down underneath, into the space at the bottom of the cup. The giantess then released her breast, causing the great mass to collapse down on top of him, pressing him in place. He could feel it beating against him in time with her pulse.

 

To Mike – who admired traditional patriarchal hierarchical structures– this was just about as humiliating as it got. Only a step above being tongue probed. He vowed to never let anyone find out this had happened.

 

At least it was warm. In spite of himself, he crawled closer and curled up against her flesh. Suddenly her chest shuddered around him, and he heard her emit a chuckle.

 

“You’re still a little cold and it tickles,” she explained. “Don’t get too frisky, or I’ll have to find a new place for you – and you’ve only got one other option.”

 

Still, she couldn’t trust he might not try and shift around. It would be very compromising to be tickled in the middle of a fight. Plus, she didn’t want to be responsible if he slipped out and she accidentally stood on him, so she magicked up a little collar for him, attached to a chain that ended in a nipple piercing. She hadn’t been pierced before, but she was now. A little flamboyant, maybe, but her abilities made her more adventurous. 

 

When Mike realized he had basically been turned into a human nipple piercing, he climbed up and poked his head out of the top of the bra cup to fix her with a look of indignation.

 

“Get me out of this thing!” he yelled.

 

“If there’s going to be a problem,” she said calmly, “I can always stick you back where I found you. In the ground.”

 

He muttered something but slipped back down into the bra. Soon he was motionless and huddled up against her ribs. She could feel the tiny bulk of his body wedged up under her right breast. He warmed quickly. It was kind of comforting, actually. She felt like a protector, in a maternal kind of way. She continued around the mountaintop, coming to the other side and beginning the descent. Every so often her fingers would absent-mindedly locate the miniature man, and fondle him affectionately. She liked to try to work out where his head was to make sure he wasn’t accidentally getting suffocated. If he’d been a little too sedentary for an extended while, she would give his head a gentle squeeze, just enough to provoke him into shifting around, to remind her that he was still alive and well. She sometimes thought she felt his tiny fists beating against her hand through the bra, which was amusing.

 

But even more amusing was the fact that he didn’t know she could have effortlessly conjured him up a fur coat and sent him on his way, or something like that.

 

She just didn’t feel like it.