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.