Jackson disconnected from the helmet to see his father and mother enjoying a cup of mint tea together.  They were quietly talking.  His mother got up with a smile, and got him some tea as well, along with a couple cookies. His dad pretended to pout.
"Jackson's a growing boy. He needs the calories."
"I'm growing too."
"Yeah, around the waist." Both of them replied together with a joined laugh at the wellworn joke.  His father grimaced, and nodded, and sipped more tea.
"The struggle is real, haters." He replied after a moment, affecting a portentous air which set his mother giggling.  Giving Jackson a dark look, he added.  "Just you wait, son of mine, eventually you're going to have to fight the power."
"The power?" Jackson asked, perplexed a bit.
"The Power. Big Cookie. Its tendrils wind through our public life, controlling politicians on both sides, and captains of industry."
"All led by the Cookie Monster." Jackson rejoined.
"Diabolical beast." His father replied with a snort and a twitch of the lips. He then turned to his wife. "Bedtime for me. G'night, son."
His mother rose as her husband left the living room. "Don't stay up too late, my dear little boy." She said and kissed his forehead before following her husband.  Jackson smiled to himself. He'd always be her little one to Mom in her heart of hearts.
He finished the tea, set the mug down on the endtable, and after a long moment decided sleep was the thing, and closed his eyes. A few minutes later whistling breaths echoed about the room as Jackson dreamed.
He woke a few times to adjust his posture, but otherwise had a peaceful night. A shower after his brother left, and a bit of deliberate and careful cleaning of the helmet with a handwipe left him and it not smelling too bad.  Breakfast was oatmeal with raisins and milk that he spooned up along with a slice of fried ham he ate with one hand. Refreshed, he put the helmet on, and connected to Astrinca.

Upon arriving, several messages waited for him.
You are on Day BBBB, and as such receive a fifty percent bonus to experience this day. Game Dev 4.
Having defeated without error the Simple and Intermediate levels of Demolition, you receive +1 to Intelligence, +2 to Perception Broad Skill, and +30% to Detect Water Traps.  Congratulations.

A white bird with a rolled up paper scroll attached to its left foot also stood before him.

Analyze.

Passenger Pigeon. Interworld Messenger Service. Has Message for you.

He reached for it, and the bird hopped onto its hand.  Taking it off, and unrolling the small paper revealed.

I'm now High Chief! Your friend, Billy the Barrel of the Orc Wastes.  P.S. What are you up to?

Jackson quickly sketched out his misadventures in the putworld port city run by the Serpent Cartel, and his Zombie Run, and giving the bird a gold coin saw it take off.  In a flash of rainbow light, the bird dissappeared.

Looking about, he saw dozens of zombies at various distances spread across the puddled black rock, and walking out from behind the black rock towers.  He turned about and looked down the ridgeline behind him, but there were already twelve zombies on it.  Running into an ambush seemed foolhardy, so he scanned about again, even as the zombies began walking his way.

The nearest would arrive in two minutes he estimated.

The Needling had once stood eighty feet tall, with wings of electrum wider than a football field's length, and a face that glowed like Luna.  Now it crept in the shadow of a decrepit newsbox, its long pointed nose occasionally brushing the ceracrete of New Atlanta.

Old Atlanta still glowed when the Yankees in a last ditch effort to retain the Southron Free Factories burnt it a second time.  This time with an old Minuteman.  New Atlanta was a thirty minute drive away, and safe as houses from nukes.  The Needling however had free passage through most of the city.

A Buddhist walked by in an orange suit jacket and pants, and the Needling hissed in displeasure. Traipsing down the road, it climbed on a public trolley with the Human prey.  Once it could have simply wished itself anywhere in the Solar System but now, decayed from thousands of years of Rebellion, it had the walking speed of a slow-footed man, or a lady in shoe stilts.

It stabbed its nose into the heart of a man, and found a raging desire to be the first astronaut to set foot on Europa. Nice.  It left behind some dissastisfaction as a poison, and made a note to remember the man for later imbibing.

I'm going to try and see if I can write a short Litrpg story using some stuff I've already used.

===================================================

With seven hundred miles in his rearview mirror, Mark Carson jerkily let himself down from the semi-truck cab to the darkened parking lot.  The .45 1911A pistol holstered under his left arm, and the seven inch blade strapped to his right forearm, plus his rangy, six foot two in height contributed to his ease at being a couple yards out in the dark behind his stop, a truck stop on 40 going west toward Texas.

"Oscar. Game." A floppy eared, short-legged half Golden Retriever, half something woofed from inside the cab in his response to his low, baritone command. Oscar had arrived in his life a year ago, in Oregon, starving alongside a road.  Mark had meant to take him to the pound, despite knowing what that usually meant, but the little fellow was so even-tempered, and well-mannered that he must have been owned.  Efforts to find his owner had failed due to a lack of tag, despite postings on the Net, and Mark found himself with a travelling companion that did not poop in the cab, and only barked when Mark started to blink his eyes from lack of sleep.

The clumsy looking dog came up over the bead woven seat with a small box in his mouth.  Mark took plastic box, and without ordering, Oscar went back for his food bag.  Once that was done, Mark lifted the slightly pudgy goof to the ground.

"Oscar. Aware."  Oscar perked up, sniffed the air, and did not growl, so no one was near, hiding behind one of the other dozen semi-trucks and rigs out on the back two acre parking lot.  The two walked in, one tall, slim, with curly black hair, and a strong chin, and the other lolling along, a bit fat, golden and kind of silly.

Inside the bright lit truck stop were showers for truckers, and a buffet which tested Oscar's manners, but he passed the test knowing that his master would bring him something scrumptious later.  This explained Oscar's girth despite Mark feeding him good food in the bag, it was the extra snack, and the sedentary life for a dog that put on pounds.  Still, Oscar liked his life.  Best was when master cranked up the tunes, and rolled down the window on Oscar's side so that he could stick his nose out.

Inside, a tiny room at the truck stop, Mark laid down to pray.  At times, the job of cross-country truck driver, a thing that mostly older men did now, ground at him.  He was not married, nor had a girl, but the long hours told on him.  And so he prayed, for nearly twenty minutes, seeking and finding relief from the exhaustion, the monotony, and the continual wariness for Mark was not a natural born driver.  He could not zone out and arrive safely at an exit two hundred miles away while his thoughts drifted free.  No, he was stuck, focusing, overly so, monitoring himself.

But three years of university, and the realization that his business degree was functionally worthless if he had stayed to get it, along with forty thousand more dollars in debt, made him realize his do whatever whenever lifestyle was over.  As every night, he forgave again the university that had deliberately lied to him about job prospects, and fees, and led him down the primrose path into debt up to his eyeballs.  It was hard.  He wanted to track down Dean Mayerz, and beat the man's head into a wall, with his blithe reassurances that grants would surely come their way. His arms trembling, Mark again forgave the man as much as he could.

Letting a sigh out, he took up the metal box.  Inside were earbuds, which he slipped in, and the room got totally silent. Whoah, Mark mouthed.  Putting in the contact lenses that were black, and had fiber optic cables running from them to the box was more challenging.  The YouTube video had not lied.  It was tricky as all get out first time.  But after fumbling about for a few minutes, he was completely blind.

Then he lay back, while putting the metal box behind his head, which made his contact lenses squirm oddly in his eyes.  The box hummed to itself, checking procedures and checksums, noting that it was placed behind an object of sufficient hardness and curvature to be the back of a human skull, and then it asked a question.

"Activate Dream Trip?"
The words came through the earbuds.
"Yes." Mark said.
It was asked again, and answered, but somewhere in their, Mark felt as if he had not spoken.

And a third time, and this time, he was sure, he did not speak, with his mouth, even as he heard his voice how he liked to think of his voice, instead of what the tape recorder betrayed as reality.  To, all of us, our voices sound more resonant since we're listening to ourselves from inside our skulls, instead of a neutral observer's point of view.

A wireframe design, deliberately retro drew a room, a door that was closed, and then began to be more real, until it was almost perfectly real.  Until, he could feel the tongue and groove wood beneath his bare feet, and smell the faintness of woodsmoke.  Shuffling his feet, he looked about seeing a simple wooden shelf, white-washed walls with Tudor style timbering, and a wooden plank door with a black, wrought iron latch.

On his body were rough, a little torn pants, down to his calves, and a pull-over tunic belted by a rope at his waist.

Flexing his fingers, he felt a bit of oddness, and then it went away.

"98.4% Sensory Integration. Very good."  The mellow tenor voice came from thin air.
"System?"
"Yes, you may call me that. 11.42% of Visitors to UnEarth do."  That left the question of what did everyone else call the control program for this full immersion Virtual Reality game.  Mark shoved that aside.

"What next?" Mark asked.

"Chargen, or character generation." The voice was firmer, crisper, modelling itself off the customer's manner.  The experience a teenage girl received would be considerably different than Mark's more brusque and direct presentation.

"You can start with your race.  Human, Dwarf, Elf.  There are more advanced options."

Which Mark knew, but they cost more, and you could somehow unlock them in one of the genealogical quests anyways.  It was. or had been possible for a Human to find out that he was the magically hidden descendant of High King Averyas of the Elf Council Woods, as had happened to one researcher already.  Pay to play was not his way.  What he needed was relaxation, and a bout of nightly monster bashing that took him away from his tiny cubicle room seemed the thing.

He chose the Dwarf.  It took him, six foot one, rangy, and squashed him.  His dark hair became a dark beard and two woven ponytails that hung to either side of a long train of hair halfway down his back.

Feeling his beard, he was first astonished to just feel.  Just like being in another world, he thought.  So real.  But then he felt the wiry coarseness of the beard. Questioning, he looked about.

A bright dot became visible in the room.

"Call me Dot, I think that will suit you better than System. Dwarves like their beards not just for status but as armor.  Those neckbraids are meant to be worn tied about the neck as it makes it far tougher to cut your throat by a thief using Sneak and Throatcutter.  Dwarven hair at first level is equivalent to light leather armor."

"So a good beard makes an arrow shot to the heart quite difficult."  And indeed 'Dot' felt more 'fun'.

"Especially so due to the defracting quality of the hair, which shoves arrows off to the sides of main targets."

Excellent, Mark thought.

"I'll be a Dwarf."

Welcome Dwarf The voice sounded as if the Earth itself had spoken.  A deep, faintly thunderous, masculine voice with a welcoming tone.  Mark smiled, feeling from hearing that as if he had made the right choice.  The game took note, and altered Dot's parameters slightly.

"As a Level One Dwarf you have the following:
Strength 2, Toughness 3, Agility 1, Intellect 2, Charm 2, and Wisdom 1.  You have five points to expend on them, and get one more point for each level."  Dot spoke, and the attribute stats flowed from the bright dot in a large, plain font to stand glowing in the air with a faint blue shine.

"One on one, two on two, one on four, and one on six." Mark said after organizing his thoughts.

A purple message popped up.

Planner. Calculate before you leap is better than calculating in the air.  +1% to Planning.

Mark grinned.  Bonuses even in chargen.  That was cool.

He checked his new stats.  Strength 3, Toughness 5, Agility 1, Intellect 3, Charm 2, and Wisdom 2.  He really wanted to raise his agility as he felt large, and clumsy, but he wanted to focus on surviving first.

The list of Special Qualities caught his attention.  Avalanche Sense, Smell Goblins, Soft Step, Heavy Hand, Can Drink the Table Under the Table, Fine Singing Voice, Elffriend, Neverlost, Stonebones, Mountainborn, Royalty, Heir of the Feared One, and the list went on and on.

Checking on a wordlink, he found that Stonebones made one extra durable as the bones were at first sandstone, and gradually climbed up to primeval granite, and then on up into the magical stones.

Mountainborn was grayed out.  Checking the Wiki he found that certain abilities or advantages were held in secret.  They were generally considered to be a waste of time.

Royalty could be either a low level lordling, or a higher up, who had his kingdom usurped or such like.  Interesting, but despite the Wiki's view that Heir of the Feared One and Royalty worked very well together, he was not interested in creating a politician.

Further down the list, he spotted Slow Heal, and the very oddness of the name drew him.  It turned out to be great for the solo adventuring he had in mind.  It increased Severe damage healing from days to hours.  So if you got your side ripped open, and earned a Gutted debuff instead of continually losing health points, you could lay down for four hours, and be healed.  It allowed the healing of all the  Severe Wound debuffs in hours instead of days, and without a Greater Healing blessing.

Wanting all four, and Rockdancer and others which made it nearly impossible to fall on rock, he had to be satisfied with only three.  Slow Heal was obvious.  So was Heavy Hand since unlike most of the other damage bonuses, it scaled up.

He waved aside the question of 'did he really want that?' with irritation.

That left only one, and there were so many.  But in the end, he chose for mystery.  He would be Mountainborn, whatever that meant.

"Are you done?"  Dot asked.

"What about special abilities, like seeing in the dark?"
"Dwarves cannot."
"What, that seems stupid."
"Dwarves have Catvision so that they see at night with little impairment.  However, that does little good in the deep darks.  They also have passive echolocation.  Your ears should feel a bit different.  Its because you have an extra outer layer of ear hair.  This hair can bring in better small noises, while blocking loud noises, once you get trained.  Also, Dwarves have complete memory of every step they take upon rock."

"So, once I've ran down a passage, I could do it again."
"You could."
"Ok." Mark shrugged. It was odd, but it seemed to do the job of allowing Dwarves to work in the roots of the mountains in mines, so that was all he needed.
"I'm done." And Mark suddenly felt the full weight of his new form, not just the hints of it.  His muscles were massive, his frame closer to a small cars than a Man's, and his beard felt like wire while his fingers could not seem to get out of each other's way.

Looking down at his clothes, he saw a rough pair of Dwarven Knickerbockers, a form of knee length short pants, very used, passed down form Cousin Jerome who got them from Cousin Rockit.  Durability 14/20 Protection +1.  The shirt wasRepurposed Dwarven Pillowcase, now Shirt.  Durability 7/10 No Protection.

"Good luck, ah, what's your name, good dwarf?" Dot asked.
Mark liked his name, but, and then he smiled as he remembered a frequent typo.
"Makr."
And with that, a door opened, and Makr the Dwarf walked out into a high mountain meadow.  The sound! It screamed at him, pierced him, screaming winds, and glass breakingly loud hawk cries, and the rustle of grass.  It was so real, so close, so overwhelming that he fell to his knees, and began to pray.

The game took note, and changed his scheduled host.

"Friend, its okay." The voice was calm, strong, and the sounds dimmed until he could look up with tear-stained eyes.  A Human Knight held out an arm to help him up.  Now, standing, Makr looked about, and his eyes took in the glaring green of the grass, the shouting beauty of the flaming yellow daffodils, the piercing white of the snow-capped mountains to the right and left of him.  He was in a meadow in a pasture, and his eyes were touched.

"Friend." The Knight said gently, removing his hand.  The pain had ceased.

"What, is it a glitch?"
"No, its partly your mind getting used to the new stimuli at full level, and your mind having to throw away old concepts of how realisitic computer games are.  See, in your head, deep in it, you know Pacman, and Mortal Kombat, and all that, and you know that this is not going to be as realistic as we promised it would be."  A gentle quirk of the Knight's lips, and he waved a hand about.

In the sky, a falcon fell, or stooped, and came down the wings ruffling, to land on the knight's wrist.  The wind  of the wings, the scent of the large hunting bird was not strong, but still, it was there.
"Are you ready?  I'm going to let the shields down so you can experience nearly full immersion."
Gulping nervously, Makr nodded.  The falcon peered at him, and then stuck its beak under a wing.  And with that the overwhelming clarity came again, and surged to madness, and then faded.  It came again, and Makr screamed.
A simple touch of the hand, and the pain was gone.
"Again."
"You sure?" Said the Knight.
 Not trusting himself to speak, Makr nodded.
The sensation overload came again, and this time Makr held out for several more seconds before he screamed.  Angrily, he rejected the Knight's suggestions of a rest, and pushed on.  And as the minutes passed, so did the length of time, he could stand full sensitivity until he had it.

The Knight paused, and then took from his waist a wineskin.
"You deserve this friend."  Makr took the skin, and popped the cork, and drank.  A rich fruity flavor, full of sparkles, and light, and sudden changes filled him, took away his weariness and his headache, and left him smiling.  Looking at it, he saw Thrice Blessed Juice of Four Fruits.  Heals 40 HP, removes Pain, and Weariness debuffs.  2/3 Uses left.

He tried to hand it back, but the Knight refused.

"Few can go from Level 9 Sense Overload to stable within forty minutes.  Its not a record, but you're on the leaderboard."

Fame +8
This message was last edited by the player at 04:04, Sun 19 Mar 2017.

 James Houston hefted the M134 into the back of the gutted white pick-up truck.  The rubber foot pads stolen from a dozen abandoned cars lined the truck bed, and limited noise.  The others stood nearby, even as he turned to lift another forty thousand rounds of 7.62 belt fed ammo into the truck with the same precise effort enabled by his huge frame, and bulging muscles.

Harry, twitched, wanting to help, but the scrawny kid would make sound.  Luellen smiled sadly he knew, clutching the shawl about her, a shape in the moonlight.  Around them, the woods, and a small shed which led to a tunnel into the ground, and the everpresent fear of the undead.

Putting his open hand on Harry's head, James pointed his pale arm toward the cab of the truck.  Harry nodded, and barefooted walked over to the open doorway, and slid in.  The chair creaked, and James cursed himself in his head.  A low questing moan was heard from the darkened woods, and they all froze as still as they may.  It was not repeated, nor joined in, as the undead, the zombies fell into a state much like sleep, when not agitated.  Other times they wandered some with a pattern, and some without.  Always noise, especially human noise attracted them.

A single loud yell would bring in dozens of them from thereabouts.  But men had dug tunnels out of prison camps, and under bank vaults, and gotten away with it.  This was the closest roadhead to the Small Island, in the midst of the Ohio.  A wire bridge from trees across the river eighty feet high, and a trip down a hollow trunk from back in the day when the area was a state forest, and a passage underground dug by plastic shovels for fear of metal striking rock with that ringing noise , and up into what had been a ranger supply cabin.

Relieved, wanting to share a thumbs up, but it was too dark, James stepped forward, and took Luellen into his arms.  She was warm in the cool night, and yielding, and he desperately wanted to give up this madness, and go back to the Small Island.  Stepping back, he slowly crawled under the truck to get to the hook which attached the truck to the pull line.

Climbing out, he climbed into the truck, but its well oiled springs did not squeak, and he moved slow with great control.  Seeing his shadow up there, Luellen turned, and went back.  Down the tunnel on hands and knees, and then up the rope ladder made of bits and pieces of river flotsam.  There was plenty of space for her since she was far smaller than her man.  Once up, she looked out carefully with the periscope.

Treeclimbing zombies were rare, but as James would say 'all it takes is one mistake to spoil your whole day.  Opening the top hatch, she paused to pray, and then went up, and got on the  foot wire.  It was not for nothing that she had won state in the balance beam, and this helped, but still eighty feet high, above a river, with the stench of dead zombies moving in the dark wafting up to her, and she had her hands full.

Crossing over the bridge, she came to the easier stairs down.  Here she retrieved the trench shotgun from its weather proof box, and following the fenced in trail back to her house on the quarter acre small island, she checked with Hugo and Bogo, her watchdogs.  Both were glad to see her, and eager for a snack, and showed no hackles up.

Laughing, she let them in, and barred the door behind her.  They searched the house with quick enthusiasm, and came bouncing back to her with goofy smiles.  Both were part Irish Retriever, Bogo being the one she had from before the Outbreak, and Hugo being the dying gift of another student who wanted to be sure her body did not come back.  Luellen had granted her that grace, and looked forward to seeing the girl in Heaven one day. But for now, she tossed down a dried trout for each of her guards.  They squabbled a bit about which one was bigger, and she went to the second vented generator, and turned it on.

Now was the hard part.

She waited.

In reply to Tadeusz (msg # 253):

Makr the Dwarf looked about, breathing in the clean, crisp air, shivering slightly, and grinning madly.  It was all so very real!

The human Knight in front of him had chain armor, reinforced with plate at the vulnerable joints.  He smelled slightly of old socks, and sweat.  The chain had faint lines of rust in it, and the man with the open helm had a small scar at the right corner of his lip, and a nose that had obviously been broken at least once.

But his blue eyes were steady and keen, and his wrinkled, rough face held no sign of weakness.  In his leather and plate covered boots, he stood well-balanced, and ready for a fight.  Before him, Makr felt weak, short, and slow.

"Where am I, Sir Knight?"

"Makr the Dwarf, you are in the Vale of Rebirth.  If you die, you will return here, otherwise, once you leave, you may not return.  Here, on the Gateway Mountain, you will descend, and as you go, things will get tougher."

Mark nodded, slotting this into what he understood.  He was at a starter location, a bind point, and as he gathered skill levels, he'd be able to face stronger opponents until he got to the bottom of the mountain, and started the game for real.

He looked at the screen visible to him, and saw a red scale in the right hand top corner, and a blue scale in the bottom left hand corner.  Focusing on each revealed that the red was Health, and the blue was Mana, or magic power.

"Any questions, hero?" The Knight asked with a soft smile.

"Wouldn't happen to have a weapon would you, or healing?"  Mark said, trying to be charming.

Charm. 1%.   You can convince a friendly dog to lick your hand.  Reading that, Mark snorted to himself.  Too bad, Oscar wasn't able to join the game.


The Knight handed him a pair of black leather gloves.

"What is this?" Makr said, not returning them.

"When you chose Heavy Hand, you chose this." The Knight replied with a small smile.  "And you already have what you need for healing."  With that, he bowed, and began to walk off.  Makr chased him a bit, shouting futile questions until he stopped, and bit the Knight fare well.

The Knight turned, and from twenty feet away raised his right gauntlet.

"A Blessing of Soundfootedness for your dignity, Sir Dwarf."  He said as his gauntlet glowed a robin's egg blue, just like the startlingly clear sky.  And the Knight turned, and walked away, leaving Makr all alone in the chill saddle valley high on the mountainside.  That is, except for the hawk which cried out as it circled above him, hunting no doubt.

Scrunching up his black eyebrows, the man in the diner tried to remember the square root of pi...sined...and...  Flustered, he scrabbled through the looseleaf notes on the formica table, missing knocking the coffee pot airborne by ingrained reflex.

"Doctor Edmund Granite."

"Yes." He did not look up, instead examining the margins of the latest diktat on being sensitive to students for some worthwhile scribble that held the information he sought.

"May I sit down?" The unknown male voice spoke again wanting apparently to bug Ed from across the booth table at Marty's Diner.  Ed had chosen the place for the name, and the pie, and the well-tipped, and understanding Helen.

"No." That made many students go away.  Others it made mad, which was then an excuse to dock grades, and make it clear to them that office hours were posted, and his refuge from Seldonia College was his.  Others had mancaves, but he had an apartment with thin walls.

"Perhaps I should quote some poetry.  I rather liked Homer." A short clearing cough, and the man began in a clear baritone, unlike Ed's abrasive bass.

"I sing of the wrath of Achilles..."

"Good," Ed began to swear, but he had become a believer three years past, and tried to put away his tendency to spit out vulgarities and profanities when he was angered, which was often. "Night!" He finished after a small pause.

In reply to Tadeusz (msg # 256):

As the asteroid turned under him, The Walking Man negotiated with Trafcon for permission to dock.  The pettifogging requests, security countersigns, and 'waits' as he hung a hundred miles above Dover 2B let him admire what remained of the famed White Cliffs of Dover, other than the other four Doveroids.

His reused spacesuit stunk, but otherwise, he was comfortable, so he drifted off to sleep with the specks of a thousand asteroids that used to be Earth hanging about him.  CERN had finally tested one thing they should not have.  The discoverer of the graviton had won both a Nobel Prize, and a bullet in the head from the survivors of Stockholm A.  Creating a thousand gravitic bubbles out of Earth let many survive, but did not imbue those survivors with love and acceptance.

"Mr. Man." His whisker lasercom repeated.  Shaking himself awake, checking for danger with the same wariness that had let him survive a pre-Flood dinosaur haven, Man settled.

"Yes?"

"We've been calling you for three times." Said a peevish voice that might be male from Dover 2B.

The Walking Man blinked, wondering why this was a problem, when he remembered how normal people act.  And he remembered the runaround he was getting.

"So, I take it we're done?"

"Ah," An embarrassed pause. "No."

"OK, what do I need to do?" He had given them verification, answered ten questions about Blue Mountains 17C, which was the local governing center of this cluster of asteroids, thirty-nine of them.  Repeated his command orders from the governor of Blue three times, and gone over his health check twice, and his computer virus clearance check thrice.

"Testing 1, 2, 3..." He said very calmly.  The last time he had gotten excited was when he was running full out from a pyroclastic flow in another universe, and only because he was trying to save a bunny.

"Ah...we need...."

"Yes?" He said blandly, waiting.  He knew they wanted a bribe.  But he had no desire to get back to Blue, and supervising the waste plant clean-out.  Relaying the waste pipes that had worked fine on Earth, but now needed to cope with being part of a fifty mile roughly spherical chunk of rock was important work.  Just not work he really wanted to do, and if he had a decent excuse, then avoiding it was all to the good.

 And teaching the Doverites that they could not play corrupt games with the Blue Mountain Lords was all to the good.  Restarting society was a vulnerable moment, a moment when customs were fluid, and a bad decision could echo down centuries with ease.

"You're cleared." The defeated voice said with a plaintive note blaming the Walking Man for not submitting to corruption.  Shaking his head, he shot a fluid gun toward the bubble that hung over their small village, the only bit that had survived the Transition.  In accordance with Newton, he shot another line of fluid out toward Betelgeuse.  Reaction balanced, the important line of fluid flash froze into a two hundred mile long icicle of microscopic diameter.

As he orbited, they instantly broke. But even before the fluid gun zipped him down the line, it sent out more bits of water which leapt the gap to the break point down near the asteroid's town bubble top point, the anchor point, and it broke again. And the arc of water leapt, and froze again.

Each time, he minisculely slowed down, and the asteroid only turned twenty miles under him until he was not falling in an orbital curve, but going straight down.  The fluid gun, a boxy plastic shape in his hand, space plastic, of course, began to eat the microthin line of water, and drew back the extra bend of twenty miles, and down he went.

As he fell, the line slowed him.  Thus it heated, and thus it was easily reabsorbed by the fluid gun.  And so he came to a disc of metal five hundred yards across that hung on the top of the billowing translucent white of the collapsed antigravity fields that held in the air for the Doverites.

Now he was supposed to wait up here until the Doverites sent up a shuttle to pick him up.  Instead, he went to the emergency box on top of the disc, and ejected the drop ladder.  It slithered over the side, super thin materials, fluttering down.  It went down nearly two miles.  Before it had even hit ground, the Walking Man began climbing down.

After an hour, he calculated he had eight thousand rungs to go.  Another hour, and three thousand.  At one thousand to go, he was getting a bit tired, but he continued on until he got to the bottom to be met by an appalled looking fat man in a robe, with two less florid men behind him.

"You...you..." Were supposed to wait two days until we got around to getting to you? Not likely.

"Show me your accounting books. Um, what did you say your name is?" The Walking Man asked, striding past the shorter man, ignoring the startled looks from the two attendants.

In reply to Tadeusz (msg # 257):

Ed craned his neck up, the joints in his neck grating against each other.  The stranger was blonde, handsome, a surfer dude dressed up in tie and suit too nattily attired to be one of his students who only wore ties to funerals and occasionally to weddings.

"Ah." And the stranger sat down across from the table.
"I didn't give you leave." Ed spoke, knowing he was being old-fashioned, but he could hardly care.
"My apologies, Professor. I thought you were one of this passive aggressive age, but you choose another time as your home. Explains much."  And the two of  them held each other's gaze for far longer than the innocent comment merited.  In the end, both broke so close to one another that none could say who won.

"What do you want? Christians in Action, are you?"
"No, I'm afraid I have no faith to become a Christian." The stranger replied pleasantly with a puzzled look.
"That's not true, even the desire for faith is enough, ask, just ask."
"Oh, no, its impossible. Besides, I did not come to be witnessed too, although I find it joyful that you are so willing to share the gospel with a man you clearly detest."
"Why...joyful?"
"Oh, the glory of the Christ is wonderful." And the stranger's face lifted as it were, and a deep happiness seemed to come from him.
Professor Edmund Granite stared at him wondering how this conversation got off track.
"Is English your first language?"
"No." The stranger replied.  "Can we discuss..."
"You're very fluent, but maybe its  your second language?"
"No, Professor, its my thirty-seventh language."
The sheer simplicity of the other's manner led the professor to realize this was not a lie, which meant he was dealing with a madman.
"Ah, well, thank you for your time." And the Professor began to gather up his stuff.  The other began to help him, and the Professor restrained himself from batting the other's arms.
"This math is wrong."
"Hunh." Ed had nearly escaped, and  he looked over to see the madman holding a sheet of paper upside down in front of his too pretty face.  Sighing, he reached out a suited arm, and muttered a denial.
"A one decimal place error."
By turns infuriated, and insulted, he glared at the madman who looked back with equanimity.  Fine, Ed thought to himself, I'll show this crazy guy.

He began to work thru the problem standing up, and bending over the table as the sun went down outside.  Getting to the end, he saw that he had it right.  Even as part of his mind pointed out that it was pitch dark outside.
"See, I..."
"Professor, I added that zero with my pen." And the stranger showed his blue pen which the added zero was in, and nodded to the Professor's black pen.
"But...you'd have to be..."
All the Professor could think of was an idiot savant, like Rainman, which might explain how the stranger had done a calculation with seventeen digits in less than a second.
And then the Professor looked out the window, and really saw it.  It was late night dark outside.  Which was impossible.  And then with creeping horror, he looked over at Helena, the waitress, who stood very, very still.
"It took me seven hours to do it.  I'm not good at math.  Few of us are.  Your kind has created tools whereas we tend to just be able to do things."
The Professor wheeled back to look at the stranger with a flutter of terror running down his arm, even as he raised a fist.
"Your time machine, professor. We need to talk."
"Temporal Relocation Mechanism." The professor uttered feeling his knees go slightly weak, and then furiously turned back to the stranger.  "So you're the Time Police, and not the CIA.  Well, let me and the waitress go, and leave us be, now."  The tone of command was heightened by Professor Granite putting the papers down, and shoving his coat aside to reveal a Colt. 45.

In reply to Tadeusz (msg # 258):

"Do you wish to activate the special Promo Award offered by Medusa29 for entry into UnEarth?"

Grinning to myself, feeling my face muscles stretch under the virtual reality sensor mask, I spoke a clear affirmative.

"Time compression is 1000%." And this is what I wanted.  I had four days until class started again, and I really needed a break to get my mind right.  Some wandering around looking at cool sights, maybe a bit of light monster killing, climb a mountain, speak to a noble, have high tea on a steamrunner was my agenda.  And all I had to do was write a positive review of three hundred words or more for the MMORPG UnEarth.

So, my free hour, with the rental chair in the game lounge, would cost me zilch.  And it would feel like a thousand hours, or a bit more than forty days.  And if I got bored, I could log out early.  The idea behind this was that the hugely expensive full immersion VR games would start to come down in price, and then not just the rich could play.  Of course, I was not naive, the companies behind such games, like ShadowSoft which ran UnEarth would then make billions of dollars more.  But frankly, if what the hype said was half-true, I'd say they deserved it.

"Yes." I said, and then realized that I had not said it.  I had thought it, and then I heard it echo back from the stone walled cell.  I was a bodiless disc of glittery wisps, and before me, a simple chestnut desk sat.  On its clean surface rested a closed book.

"The Life of Jack Stafford in UnEarth."

Curious, I went to reach to open it

In reply to Tadeusz (msg # 259):

Player Jack Stafford used Promo Code for Free Game Hour supplied by Medusa29.
Player Jack Stafford entered UnEarth.Player Jack Stafford surveyed his chargen area.Player Jack Stafford read from the Book of His UnEarth life demonstrating both reading ability +1%, and narcissistic tendencies.

Snorting, Jack wished the Book closed, and it did.

He waited.

Nothing happened.

Ruefully, he wished the Book reopen.

Chargen? Yes or No.

He thought "Yes" clearly, and the first page flipped to the next.

Races Available: Aelf, Bobbler, Catman, Dead, Eaglefolk, Firekin, Giant, Human, Iguanic, Jelly, Kartling, Llama, Mechan, Nightson, Orbic, Partic, Questing Beast, Random, Salty, Tyrror, Underling, Vengen, Waxman, Xerion, Youth*, Zebraman.

Looking at the list, Jack giggled.  Curious he chose 'Youth', and the Book spun a paragraph up out of the dust of the air to print down on the empty page.

Youth is a modifier choice.  You start as a younger, less skilled and weaker version of your character.  Certain monsters and Player Character classes will not attack you.  However.  For the first four thousand hours in game, you will grow up, and receive an experience bonus commensurate to your lower stats. Only reccommended for experienced players.  You will need to pick another character type with this one.

Quickly, Jack wished the page flipped.  He did not want to start monster killing as a ten year old sprout.  With that, he set to his choices, start to end.

Aelf were elves, taller, more scrawny than many, but archery and nature and light magic bonuses, but a significant experience point cost so much so that he would gain one Aelf level for every two levels someone else got.  It meant he would start out strong, and then stagnate, and then top out really powerful.

Bobbler were halflings with a tendency to a pretense at clumsiness.  Interestingly, they could learn Drunken Style Martial Arts.  So, a fat Jackie Chan, he decided.

Catman were as expected except they were strongly antipathetic to paladins and necromancers as barred classes.  Cats had a distaste for dark spirits, and too much arrogance to make a good direct servant of the Bright Powers.  Although they could be priests of those Powers.

Dead were sentient zombies who had to eat...brains, of course.  They were slow, but could really tank.

The Eaglefolk were barred as 'This type has met its monthly quota already'.  Interesting.  The game kept some sort of balance between the varied types.  He had heard of some games being flooded with a popular type when someone of that type did something really notable.

Firekin were not allowed in most cities, but started with Fire Aura, and Fire Whip.

With Giant, he giggled again.  They were ten feet tall ants with pincers that could shred leather.  However, they had no ability to speak Bipedal Languages, nor any magic.  But as open field tanks, being too small to fit into dungeons, they were reportedly without equal having both weapon, strength, and natural armor.

With Human he got the posting of...

Really? You don't know what this is?

Irritated, he moved on.  The Iguanic was a low slung lizard man, capable of moving on two legs or four, and having a tail, and a decided preference for insects.

The Jelly was a wobbling mass of slime, capable of slipping through many things, including under doors, or through large keyholes, with enough time.

In reply to Tadeusz (msg # 260):

Alan Saxon, Warden of the West and Magus, huffed as he maneuvered the dolly down the hall past chattering coeds who ignored him, and his four hundred pound square pointed metal load.  If only being a wizard did not involve so much backbreaking manual labor, or climbing into spider web infested flooring spaces.  When his Master, Lewis Manchester, had told him of the glory of magic, and the need to save the world, he had not mentioned the drudgery.

A Not All That girl was loudly spouting to her less pretty side pals about how their were no cute boys in her class while four guys with hidden winces trailed behind her.  She almost walked into the metal box, earning her several cuts on her shapely legs below the miniskirt, and turned a wrathful glance on Alan, who knew he was reasonably good looking.  But in her uninjured wrath, she demoted him.

"Get out of my way, you fool." She hissed.  Sympathy to her prey in her wake, and an aching back moved Alan, and with a snap of his fingers, he donned an invisible and intangible cloak, the Cloak of the Omega.

His social status changed from perceived Delta down to Omega.  The Outsider who saw all, never invited to parties, full of justified wrath at mistreatment, unflinching in his condemnation of all including himself even though the twit in front of him could not even begin to understand such a concept as universal justice.  Alan stared with suddenly dark eyes, and Clio Taylor jumped back in fright, tripping, and giving the guys behind her a thrill as they caught her.

"One side." He said softly, and suddenly a path was made to the door at the end of the hallway through a dozen plus students.  He wheeled his load straight down, and past them, relieved not to have to dodge the self-absorbed.

Waiting at the door until he heard them move on, he tapped the door thrice.  Knock and it shall be opened. A bit of the Good Book ran through his mind, and the door swung open at his silent entreaty despite the lock and the deadbolt.

Inside the English Department of Torlyn College, he breathed shallowly, looking about for an isolated space even as the softening and microabrasions in Reality gave him a headache.  The World is, he muttered to himself, repeating the refrain of the Wardens, blocking out the damage done by unwitting magic.

Even the ordinary man did magic.  Beliefs and actions had magic of their own.  And that was without calling on Entities, which was often done, or the force multiplier of an Authority.  Some magic protected Reality, and some such as created by the priests, or professors of postmodernism, tore at Reality.

 Which is why he was placing a Definite Cube in this place.  The Cube, by its shape, and sharp edges, and precise measurements spoke of a Reality that was solid, measurable, definable.  It would serve as a Goa stone for the poison the pomo priests created here.

Slipping between cubicles, he found an out of the way spot, and dumped it down with a relieved sigh.  Now, to align it precisely.  Thank the Constant Stars for GPS.  Before that, this would have taken a good couple hours of persnickety math, now he just pushed a button...

And a wind, not cold, not warm, not even a wind, but something touched his neck.  Alan spun about.  In the dimly lit office space he saw nothing.  Peeking over cubicle walls and under cheap computer desks, he searched until he came to a pile of printed papers.

Just looking at them on the desk of ...a quick search...Professor Alberto Sanchez, Department Head made his stomach turn.  Worse, they were backed by Authority.  The High Priest had created a Writ, and by doing so, had begun an Act of Magic, and quite significant too.

The nature of Reality was not totally democratic.  Leaders had outsized power and responsibility.  This was in part because people gave it to them because of their beliefs, but also because Reality did so.  A seed was provided, and then built up greatly.  The Patriarch, the Clan Chief, the President, the Dean, even a Warden of the West, all had Authority of differing power and differing scopes.

Not liking it, but Alan let slip his Cloak of the Omega, and the Refrain Shield letting unfiltered local reality state hit him.  He jumped, feeling as if he were surrounded by a nasty miasma full of watching eyes.

"Meow."

Alan looked up, and saw walking along the window a cat that was step by step, dead, and then alive, zombie, and fully healthy.  He wanted to curse, but that was one of the first things wizards were taught not to do.  If words had power, and a wizards words much more, a curse of anger was a dangerously silly thing to do.

"Schrodinger's Cat." He acknowledged with a slight bow.  It licked a decaying paw with a healthy mouth, and disappeared, with warning given.  The Cyanide Cat was not evil, but it often appeared at sites of dangerous reality decay.

Sucking in his breath, he looked down at the manuscript, an inch thick spellwork of thousands of words.  A dozen and more ghost images of it, in lower and higher dimensions phased in and out of view as the spell gained in power.  He reached for it, not sure how to defuse it, since simply burning it would likely just make it worse.  But he found he could not touch it.

Authority.

"I am a Warden of the West, a Magi, and Wizard." He spoke softly, and in the air about him, he felt a hatred.  And then he reached out, and took up the manuscript.  Flipping through it, he felt many fishhooks try to snag his mind, catch him with twisted logic, and phrases that almost made sense.  Shrugging them off hurt a bit.

The essence of the spell was that since all meaning of books is but a prop to power which was used by Black Studies, Womyn's Studies, Lesbian Studies, and Transgender Transracial Men in a Woman's Bodies Studies as their spell against Reality; and that since Self is an Illusion created by St. Darwin thus nothing meant nothing but power was good.  It was a step further into the Madlands, a keystone of a gate to let Things Man Really, Really Should Not Have Over For Supper into this Reality.

Its mere presence had turned this Toxic Site into a Class Three from a Class Five.

Taking a magic (thanks company for using that term, it helps) marker from his  pocket, Alan wrote "A does not equal Not-A" which was the basic principle of logic created by Aristotle with his Principle of Identity, and a potent block to madness on the front sheet.  Or he tried to, but the marker would not move.

"The First Amendment." He muttered, and those words released his arm to speak his condemnation.  Shaking and worried, Alan went back to his Definite Cube to find it shoved a few inches.  Even touching it should have burned a creature from the Madlands, he knew so there was either great power or great fury here.

Straining, he swiftly set it into place, and felt the underlying Reality begin to reassert itself.  Confident that Reality would heal, he put the manuscript into a resealable folder labelled 'Pandora', and walked out the door past the unwitting college students who had been saved from drug abuse, suicide, and becoming terrorist mad bombers by the deliveryman in their midst.

"Glamor. Far Realms. Heroically Saving the World." Alan muttered sardonically as he left the college safe behind him in the rearview mirror.  Now all he had to do was figure out a way to break the power of the manuscript tonight, and get it back before the High Priest/Professor got back in the morning.

"Need more coffee." Alan groaned as he pulled up to the McDonald's drive-thru in preparation for an all night session.
This message was last edited by the player at 18:21, Tue 11 Apr 2017.

My next door neighbor, Alvin Cook, was talking to my father over the wooden fence in their backyards.  My father tilted his head to the side in thought, and ten minutes later I was being shown how to mow Mr. Cook's backyard at the age of twelve.  He was an old widower with no empathy, and I was a scrawny boy who could barely shove his heavy mower up the backyard's gentle slope, let alone the front yard, or the ditch out front.
"Quit whining." He snapped when I asked if I had to do the ditch as well.  It took an hour, and I had to listen to him complain about my slow pace, but it got done.  That summer, I remember for blisters, and Ellen DeGracy who was homeschooled, and lived next door on the other side.  She let me kiss her, once a week.

Being homeschooled she knew a lot more than I did, and when next summer, I complained to Mr. Cook about this as I was being given my money (which he always counted thrice), he nodded, and gave me a book to read.  I would not have read it, but it turned out Mr. was Doctor, and he had wrote it.  It was pleasant to see Ellen's dumbfounded face as I showed off my new knowledge.

The next summer I began to put wrench and screwdriver to metal for Mr. Cook.  He talked to my father again over the back fence, and I was freed from the grinding bore of school.  This let me spend more time with Ellen, although now her mother kept a close eye on us, and we were usually at a kitchen table studying together.  Still, she was my girl, and I was happy.

I learned to weld the next summer from Dr. Cook, and I learned to shoot revolver, rifle, and shotgun from my father.  The latter came in handy next summer when some of the newbies to the neighbourhood who had been moved to our peaceful suburb tried to rob Dr. Cook as I was working in his open to the air garage.  But a sixteen year old man-boy with a welding torch in one hand, and a shotgun in the other convinced the gangstas to move on.

They promised to come back for me, and for Ellen, which they knew because we lived near them.  That night, I was in a wrath as I told my father and mother.  Mother shook her head 'no', and father shook his head back at her.  That night, he went out 'for a little walk' which my cell phone's zoom IR function revealed was up the side of the gangsters'  house to the second floor window.  He left by the front door fifteen minutes later, and they never even looked our way again.

Next summer, I learned four different ways to kill a man with a knife, how to track neutrinos, and that Ellen looked awesome in a bikini.  I also secretly proposed to her.  Two weeks later, another different group of gangbangers ran over her by accident it seems.  After all, they had not meant to hit her, but being stoned and drunk and driving way fast in a stolen car as they raced from a convenience store robbery meant they did not care very much either.

My parents had been looking steadily more grim as I grew up, adding locks and bars to their windows and doors.  Now, I screamed, and cried, and raged, and they took turns holding me as my health faded.  She was not my life.  I had a life, a dream, but we had been wound together, two trees planted right next to each other.

I went to Dr. Cook, and saw him drinking.  He was thinking of his wife, gone twenty years to a blood clot.  I joined him in drinking, which was my first time, and we got soused.  And late, as we were both about to pass out on the garage floor, I heard him say two words.

"Time travel."

He fell asleep, and I lurched awake.  His book, all of it had been pointing at something, and now I knew what it was.  Electrified, and quite insane, I began to tear his house apart.  Soon, I found the hidden door to the attic.  And in it, I found an old backpack.

It was dark blue, a color suited to blend in, he had once told me.  Inside was a mylar, almost space suit.  And batteries of incredible weight, and wires as thick around as my wrists.  And there was an analog control box because he would not want a delicate digital box for something as serious as this.

Knowing his design, I put it together.  Donned the suit, and listened to it hum.  And through the switch.

And I was here and there, and just here, and then there, and then here-here and there-there like I echoed myself, and then I was all the way there.  And I fell, twenty feet straight down, hit something soft, and then something hard.

I woke, my head hurting, sweat dripping down my face.  Bright day assaulted my eyes, and I sat up, in a forty by thirty foot shallow pit.  I had of course, heard of hangovers, but now I knew that they had lied in that they had not described the utter horror.  I curled up, and just barely got my facemask open before puking out good beer and oatmeal and stomach acids that cut the back of my throat, and left me coughing.

Aching to my toes, I rolled about until I hit a rock.  Then my head informed me that it was tender, and I realized that this must be the rock I had  hit when I...

"Time travel." I said with a pained voice.

Squinting my eyes, I looked about.

In reply to Tadeusz (msg # 262):

I can control electrons at the quantum level for a space measurable by a microscope from the tips of my fingers.  In other words, I could not even raise a skin rash with a power attack.  In a world with powerbolts generates in the terrawatt range, why am I the King of Macon City?

My name is Overlord, but my mom calls me Terry, and my teachers at West Macon High call me 'Mr. Houston' when I attract their attention which only happens when I mess up, and Super Duper Magazine calls me 'the most underrated Five Star in America', but really, I am the King.

Seeing several flashing lights in my 'too cool' shades, I snagged a cookie on my way out the back door, just to calm Mom.  Giving it to the ants who live in a colony ringing the backyard shed let me stay on top of my game.  I feel smarter, sharper, more predatory when I stick to meat and veggies, and I need every edge I have.

The ants accept my gift, and quickly break it apart and take it down.  I watch them on my shadescreen in my right eye, courtesy of the tiny antbots that have infiltrated their ring nest.  I'm not sure why its one nest that big; perhaps they are alien ants.

Nearing the shed, it opens of its own accord with a smooth swing, unlike when Dad gets to it, and it takes a mighty heave to open.  Inside, the riding lawn mower rolls back, and the sliding door in the concrete slips back.  I drop in, and it closes behind me.

A thrill escapes me, and after a forty foot drop, I land in a pool of electrically conductive gel.  A face mask is pushed into the goldfish bowl, my command point, and molds to my face.  The gel is drained out of the mask, and I take a breath even as I slide off the sunglasses for the gel interface.

In this, I can manipulate and sense with my whole body.

My drones are lined up, one with a flashing star.  Overwatch Four shows the real-time Boskan Neighbourhood, which used to be so whitebread that comic books shops were frowned on in my Dad's childhood.  Kept part of my awareness on O4, which I can multitask because much of the brain is a quantum computer, and I do quantum, right?  Right. Another point of view showed me the area data in a dozen historical analysis charts, much more accurate, and more importantly honest than what was shown to my servant, the Mayor.  And a third viewpoint opened as well, which showed the alley behind Tim's Bar, which was owned by Yahman Olgibouvi.

That wasn't his name, I just knew, and sent a message to John Worthington, my FBI contact to run a search on him.  Even with my brain, I need help.  I'm not a god, and I'm only slightly above average intelligence.  Tracking down the real identity of a probable scumbag behind a shield of lies was not my forte.

Looking back, I saw too heavy boxes being carried in.  Tim's Bar was not just selling drinks.  Especially when half its customers were the new Somalis who were not supposed to drink beer, but were happy as the fifth viewpoint shared to chase a young woman down the alley.

Two of them.  I sent a message to Reserve One, very high over the city, and two darts fell from it, and injected enough drugs to make the targets very compliant. One had his arm broken by the weight of the falling dart, but my sympathy for would-be rapists was limited.

The girl spun at the noise, and saw two Lifters drift down to take the men away.  She stared open mouthed.

"For walking in an area without protection in the form of a weapon or a big boyfriend, you are fined five hundred dollars."
"What? You...its not my fault."
"Appeal noted.  Effort was spent to rescue you.  Effort requires recompense. Cost of appeal, double fine. $1000."

I did not say this to her.  It was pre-scripted.  So many of these eighteen to twenty-two year old females were happy to walk about in mini-skirts, and tempt fate.  Like my mom said 'evil is, stupid shouldn't be'.  It was so predictable.

I left her cursing me, but I knew she would not leave the city.  After all, she was my older sister, or she could have been.  She knew Macon City was the most orderly city in the Union.

Meanwhile, dozens of other viewpoints closed up.  The Mayor had tried again to cheat the public, and I was left with the decision to expose him, or beat him again.  I'd leave it up to him.
A pair of burglars from North City thought to try their luck in my city, imagining that IR screens would save them.  Hah.  I'm afraid I let that go on too long because it was so funny.
Down on Carson Street, Megawhomper had taken down four drones, and receieved ten darts before he fell asleep.  Making a decision, I decided not to turn him over to the police so he could break out again.  The man was so strong he treated inch thick titanium bar as paper.  So I loaded him into High Rise, my drone rocket, and carried him up to the old Russian space station.  Sure, he could easily break out.  If he wanted to breathe vacuum.
The other random bits of minor situations that my subconscious brain ran all the time were reviewed, and I was lifted out of the goop.  Cleaned, and dried.
I received my monthly report from the Yakuza as I walked back into the house.  I disliked dealing with criminals, but the Yak, with proper encouragement, could be respectful and lawful, if not law-abiding.  My efforts to run a crime free city had failed earlier, so now the Yakuza ran the crime in the city, so long as they did not step over my rules.

There were many, designed to ameliorate their damage.  My favorite was that they could not kill superheroes.  So, I got to watch on the news as Cape Knight beat up a dozen Yakuza with the rest of my family.  He did not realize it, but the 'informants' he relied on, worked for me.  So I sat there, and ate my hamburgers with my family, Mom, Dad, and my older sister even as my computer program removed a thousand dollars from the account of one Tanya Morgan.

It was good to be the King.

The Isolate stood in the bright sun of the courtyard sunk in his own shadowed thoughts, ignoring the thwack of staves crossing, and the huffs of tired trainees.  Training Master Laton snarled as one pair of trainees faked its attacks, and screamed at them that edgelings did not ever get tired, which caused the Isolate to smile.

"They get tired quite often." He murmured to himself.
"Sir." The young apprentice in the white robe with red stripes asked the man, looking up at him puzzled.
"Never mind...no, son, know this. Old Laton is right to train, but in reality, edgelings are undisciplined. They frequently give up just as they could win."
The boy's eyes widened as the Isolate spoke casually of fighting edgelings, and contradicted the terrifying Laton whose shouts followed most of the trainees into their nightmares.  The Isolate opened the letter from the High Master, and studied it, and without a word ran two fingers down the page.
Tracks of fairy dust appeared in front of him, tracks that only he, and maybe Laton could see.  A step forward, and he was gone from the courtyard, and outside the normal limits of space.  Here he moved quickly, keeping a hand up, and another hand on the dagger at his waist.

A pearly tingla, ball shaped, shiny, fell toward him, and he sped up, knowing that he was stepping into a trap on the track between Places.  An Elderbracchi unveiled in front of him, and began to howl.  The corpulent beast relied on stunning its targets, and then slurping them in with an octopoid arm tongue.

Jabbing his right hand down brought the tongue out early, interrupting the stunning scream.  But it was a feint, and he stopped well out of easy range even as his other hand came out carrying seven inches of pure crystalline order, shaped into a blade that even the sight of it would cause a creature of the Dreams to wince back from.

Cutting off its tongue with a slash, and a cry killed the elderbracchi, and terrified the looming dosmiktatu which hung above him in a alternate potential space, and had tossed down the original tingla.

"The Lords of Order have free passage of the Tracks." He reminded all that listened in the hanging clouds of dreamdust, of whateverism, and potentiality that blocked his keen sight.  The hawk nose, the cold, clear eyes were not the message, but the message was the chill in the voice.  The Isolate was dangerous, and so attacking him, or those protected by him would be a mistake.

He stood there, as if waiting for an objection, but none came.

Walking on, he came to the end, and stepped back into the World, but much closer to the outer edge where Reality and Dream gave way to Chaos.  The world was flat, and edged, but contrary to the maps given to young children of the Central Kingdoms, the edge was not at all sharp and clean.

In ancient days, bold knights might have stood watch, and in more ancient times, the Times of Legend, the servants of the One might have sat, dangling their legs over the edge, holding back the Chaos by the Power of the One give to them according to their faith in the One.  But now, the Isolate thought bitterly, as he usually thought, now, its up to poor wizards armed with fire, and rays of light.

Gathering his robes about him, he walked over the moving hill under the flaming sky where dragons appeared only to be eaten by cockroaches of ice, and where the gates of Heaven appeared to open, but never did, for the One was not found in Chaos.  And the sky rained blood, which was always annoying, and like so many other things, a bad sign.

A quick Word, and the blood fell to either side of him, leaving a trail of untouched geraniums that a government bueraucrat in the Houses of Numbers could follow after a liquid lunch.  Hopefully, this was not a trap, and someone had not set something to hunt him.

Crossing down the now wiggling hill with loose, wary strides, he saw wagon ruts, and snarled.  The grass near him died, and he pulled his temper back before he attracted something Bad. A flick of his hand, and dozens of snakes that had been grass, and now were poisonous enough to etch rock burst into flame, and then turned into singing seagulls.

Hating Chaos, but with a cold passion, he moved on, following the tracks of the wheel ruts over canyon, up a waterfall of green sludge, and into a cave that was smaller on the inside, and he at last popped his head out of a hole in the ground.

He was on a beach, and before him stood two men, one yelling at the other to shovel, and shovel now, while two more men, in chains stood in place of oxen.  For animals would die rather than come Here.  If 'Here' was a word for a Place that did not exist three-fourths of the time.

There were patterns within patterns here at the very Edge, but they changed without warning.  The greater patterns tended to be more sturdy, but that was always a mad chance that it might not be.

Looking out at the waters of Chaos lapping, innocent, deceptive, sweet on a mist-strewn beachshore with just the breath of a wind of jasmine in the air, and seventeen moons in the sky, he could feel the Lull.  Sometimes Chaos came like Madness and Storm, and sometimes it seduced.

The ground sunk under his feet, and water trickled toward his feet.  A snarled Word drove it back, and it went, but with laughter as if it tried to prove to him that it had not been serious.  It did not want to unmake or remake or unexist him.  No, not at all.  It had been playing with him.  Would the Wizard like to play with the nice, safe, Chaos?

Shuddering, the Isolate ran toward the idiots digging up sand on the beach at the edge of nothing and everything.

"Move." He shouted.  The one in red robes, fine red robes, spun, and pointed a pistol at him.
"No, you stupid moron, we will not." The two 'oxen' looked at him with dull hope, the metal hoop about their neck, and the leather ropes on their arms highlighting the dried blood on the back of their crude tunics that had soaked through when someone had whipped them to get them to move here.
Idiot, the Isolate whispered in a dire fury.  Blood, he said, blood, and he could hear the chuckle of Chaos in reply.  Blood was life, always had been.  Life was power.
"Maybe we have enough, Dom.  I mean, half a wagon of Edge Dust will bring us a fortune to the Mage's Guild..." The second, subordinate man suggested.  His leader, the gun wielding Dom, wheeled on him in a fury.
"Tell the wizard..."
"What I already guessed." The Isolate said. "You would undermine the nature of Reality to allow those charlatans in the capital cities of the Center Kingdoms the pleasure of creating glamours to enchant ugly women and stupid politicians into beauties and statesmen.  Walls of cities would crumble, but you would have your gold."
"Lies, all lies." Both insisted, glaring at him, now unified.
The lesser man justified.
"Besides goblins...we need magic to fight..."
"Goblins are the Children of Chaos, created by a Mind with power and no discipline who played at the Edge.  Someone like you."  The Isolate spoke.  "Now, let your 'oxen' free."
"No..." Dom began as the Isolate had expected. Lines of light, of Pure Order, lashed from his right hand, the hand of power, and cut the leather straps.
"Run for your life boys."
And as he expected, they did, and the waters of Chaos retreated back a full hundred yards in distaste.
"See, you can....we could really be rich. Get some of the gems out of the underwater..." The second man said, his eyes flaming with greed, and indeed, the Isolate felt the tug as well.  He might....and with a gem, he might  survive...and...

The waters came back in a rush, and splashed all over the three of them.  The wagon, unprotected by a Will dissappered into shrimp that sang songs, and bits of purple dirt.  Dom, had confidence, but little endurance.  He flashed out furiously, a yellow star a few yards across, then screaming did not exist.

The waters fell back, and the Isolate was untouched.  It was his powers, and his nature so that even a full dunking in Chaos could not unmake him if he was ready.

Before him, the second man, grew, and lights blazed within, of colors gold, yellow, orange, and amber, peach, sunset, a campfire, and an  exploding star.  Each ball of fury tried to tear him apart, but he held on, and grew so that he stood ninety feet high, with his knees deep in the unfathomable waters of Chaos that for a time gave him a bottom to stand on.

"I am a god!" He announced, and then looked to the Isolate for a denial.
"You are, your deificness." The Isolate replied.
The new god was surprised.
"Your faith in me shall be rewarded. You shall have one request."
"To leave, intact. Now." The Isolate quickly blurted out, hopeful, but not too much so.
"You...!!" The rage of the new god turned the seas to storm, and lightning bolts forked over the sky.  Then it looked at him, and saw clearly.
"You are sworn to the Unnamed. And He does not share."
The god smiled, and drew back his hand.  The Isolate threw up shields and barriers as quickly as he could, spending saved defenses prodigiously, and the god's hand passed through it all as if it were nothing.
"Your request is granted." The god smirked, and the Isolate had one tenth of a second to realize how badly he had messed up.
The door he had into the Central Kingdoms swung open, and he was thrust through, and a god came in that door just behind him.  The great defenses, born of Reality, and Order, and Prayer, and Engineering which kept out things like this, and dragons, and icelings, and all the other madness of the edge had just been bypassed.

A mad god of Chaos now stood in the Heart of the Central Kingdoms.  Even as alarms blared, the god turned to smile once again.
"Thanks." And he vanished as the skies above the Central Kingdoms began to slowly weep blood.

Bill Jennings cracked his knuckles, which his Mom hated, and his neck, which his back doctor warned him against.  Six months ago, he had been All-State in Basketball, and now he could barely get out of bed without whimpering.  A thug player from a downtown school had put an elbow in Bill's back as they both leapt to catch the rebound off the board.  The elbow had not been too insane, but the cartwheeling fall from eight feet had snapped and crushed its way up his spine.

He looked down at his desk at the rented Virtual Reality headset, and the envelope in heavy cardstock that came with it.  Breathing deeply, an old habit, which pained him, and made him catch his breath, he opened it again.

Four codes for character starts were printed on little plastic cards in the gold painted inside of the heavy envelope.  Bifrost Corporation claimed that they gave you four starts because you might want to have your friends join in, but the Net said it was because Realms was terrifyingly hard, and it was easy to go amiss.  And since the Starter Package only came with one headset, Bill leaned toward the second explanation.  It fit his lack of trust in those he had not tested.

Slipping on the headset, finicking the eyecovers into place took several minutes.  Meanwhile, he sweated, but the Player Start had specifically said to put the room temperature just a few degrees warmer than comfortable since with a long sit, your body would cool.  Early beta testers had complained of waking up shivering.

Various lights and sounds flashed in to his inputs, and after a bit he saw words appear hovering in front of him in a black field of nothing.

"Connection Established."

More lights spun, and twirled, and Bill descended into a trance.  The altered mind state used the player's mind to help fill things in.  Just getting permission to use this VR had required a pschyological screen, and a notarized waiver.  Competitive, able to form deep loyalties, skeptical, and creative with a healthy mind was the judgement of the pschyologist.  From her looks at her daughter's picture to the wheelchaired on occasion Bill, he could tell she wanted to introduce him to her daughter, and would have, if Bill had not been an invalid.

Suddenly a gleaming Rainbow Bridge appeared under his feet.  It was solid, and yet elastic.  Sparks of energy leapt from it, and out into the clear, blue skies.  Far, far below him, the white mantle of Midgard held in the cruel claws of Fimbulwinter lay ready for him to explore.

A pale, almost albino man, of commanding presence, and keen, so piercing eyes stared at Bill as if right through him.

"I am Heimdall." And his voice sounded like rocks breaking.  Bill grinned, one of the Norse gods, the Guardian and the one whose eyes could pierce through cloud and storm to see all of Midgard.

"Hail, Heimdall." Bill said, nodding, but not bowing, he told himself.

"Good. Respect, for yourself and another.  Now it is time to choose what role you shall take."  Heimdall raised a hand, and in his palm, a miniaturized Thor with the Red Hair appeared.

"The Warrior."

"Maybe." Bill replied, and Heimdall nodded.

"You were close to such in your previous life, and perhaps a change is wise." Bill was startled at the allusion to his basketball career, especially since his team name had been 'Warriors'.

In his right palm then was shown Odin One-Eye.

"Magician." Bill shook his head uncertainly.

Another figured appeared.  Keen mocking eyes, and a twisted mouth, and yet there was something more to him. It was Loki.

"Rogue."

And the last appeared there were two women.  Both were blonde and beautiful, but one was clearly the leader, and the other the servant.  Bill was feeling a bit lost, and looked over at Heimdall for answers.  The Keen-Eyed One had already noticed, and was just waiting to hear the request.

"Frigga, wife of Odin, and Eir, her handmaiden, who is goddess of health. They serve as the patrons of those who practice the magics of healing.  Healer." Heimdall finished.

It was not quite the stereotypical four which had been found to work so well, but it was close.  But then once you went up five levels, you could begin to specialize.  And eventually, superspecializing waited for the persistent and lucky survivor.

He considered while Heimdall scanned the sky and the ground.  Even as Canada geese soared past him, each feather perfect, their honking making him laugh for joy as they passed nearby.  This world was so real.  The hype had not been hype, but gently understated to make the final impact more smashing.  He had to keep on playing.  Understanding that this was a common reaction, he still grinned to himself.

"Ok. In reverse order. Healers tend to be females."

"Woman, even in dreams, lack the true warrior spirit." Heimdall replied calmly as if saying something everyone knew.

"They get less fighting directly than in other games, but they have more healing power, and more protections such as Solitude spell."

"Also, they can receive training to become Guardians."  Heimdall said, and a vision appeared of a young elfess hugging a polar bear cub.  In fast forward, the elfess became powerful, and the cub became terrifying, and was soon joined by his mate, and then by a cat, and several other animals. 'FiGlyphhin, Level 83' hovered above her head.

"Or, Undead Slayers." And here a man with fiery eyes screamed out in rage, and  the sky opened up as darts of fire fell down around him, obliterating dozens of zombies, and pummelling their vampire lord brutally. 'Hector, Level 71' floated above his head.

"Pass." Bill said.  And Heimdall began showing him what a thief could do.  Quickly, Bill waved the presentation away.  After that, it was Runecasting, and Necromancy, and Battle Magic which dominated the moment.  It interested Bill, and he chose it.

Not wanting Elf, or Dwarf, or something weird, he chose Man.  He was not sure if the Norse version of elves was being used, or not, and this influenced his mind to a safe choice.

His stats were given to him.

Might 10
Cunning 12
Endurance 10
Honor 1

+2 to Cunning, and a -1 to Honor.  Falling below Zero in  Honor meant you were eligible for Player Kills without the PKer getting red-tagged as a player killer, and thus being Dishonored, and more liable to lose items if killed.  It also meant you were eligible to being Outlawed or Enslaved.

"What is your name, Magician of Midgard." Heimdall portentously asked.

Bill thought for a second, and smiled.

"Sureshot."  That had been his sometimes used nickname on the basketball team for his three-point shot.

"Sureshot11 is available." Heimdall replied blandly.  Bill groaned.  Of course, with millions of players, he was going to have to come up with something uncommon.

"Air." He said referring to the case where a ball went into the net without touching the rim.

"Air41 is available."

"Snickersnaxem." He growled, which for him was the vulgarity his father allowed him.  He began to think harder.

"Snickersnaxem is available. Do you confirm this choice?"

A [yes/no] appeared in the air in front of him, glowing in iridescent colors of the rainbow running from red to violet and around again as he gaped at it.  He swimped his hand at the 'yes', and his full character appeared with the stats next to it, in mid-air.

A young man, in tan leggings, and a tunic also tan, but stained stood before him.  His belt was rope, and he had a tattered, dark green cloak.  There were no shoes, nor hat.  The face approximated Bill's face, with blue eyes and high cheekbones, and sandy blonde hair waved off to the side in unruly fashion.

Bill waved his hand, and a menu appeared next to the figure.  Checking over the various options like 'hair color', 'hair length', 'nose type', 'height variable', and so on, he left most the same, except he made the figure ten years older, and with a permanent five o'clock shadow of dark brown.

The stats chart was simple.

Name: Snickersnaxem
Race: Human
Sex: Male
Class: Magician
Health: 32
Mana: 26
Might: 10
Cunning: 12
Endurance: 10
Honor: 1

Tunic, poor: 4/7 Durability; 1 Protection
Leggings, poor: 3/5 Durability; 1 Protection
Belt, rope, poor: 10/14 Durability
Cloak, modest: 9/11 Durability; +2 Protection
Weapons, none
Gold, none

He looked up at Heimdall, and nodded.

"Be brave." The god said, and suddenly, Bill was the figure, and he was stumbling down the Bifrost Bridge which had tilted under his feet.  Arms windmilling, he went pell-mell past Heimdall who smirked at him.  The Bridge's path got steeper, and Bill considered trying to slow down which was all it took for him to stumble, and roll down several hundred times, or more, over and over again.

Each bang and crunch hurt him, and he was surprised that he was not dead.  And it hurt, ow, it hurt.

Coming to a halt in a muddy corral, he groaned.  Far above him, the Bifrost Bridge retreated back into the sky to arch over Midgard. Bill felt sure that Heimdall was laughing at him.

Why wasn't he dead? Bill wondered, and a screen appeared in front of him, showing his recent damages.  It was hundreds of damage points he had just received, but as he got banged up, he was also healed by each touch of the Bridge.

"Thump -1 Health
Bifrost Heal +1
Ka-thump -2 Health
Bifrost Heal +2..." And it went on for pages.

Shivering, laying in mud and crusty snow, he looked about.  A crude wooden corral made of tied together fence branches penned him in, on all sides.  Beyond that, a dimly lit forrest, lined with snow, pointing at the sky with dead finger like branches naked of leaves or comfort.

Slipping and sliding, he got to his feet.  Unsteady on his feet, he heard a crunch of snow behind him, and had just about decided to turn about when he felt something hard slam into his neck.

Knocked down, his neck yanked in a way that his back doctor definitely would not approve of, Bill gasped on the ground.

"And stay down, Human maggot." A crude voice snarled.  Cold, Bill turned his head, and saw a goblinesque figure, green, with yellow eyes that glowed in the gloaming, hooked nose, and taloned feet and fingers three.

"Goblin Slavetaker, Level Four." Appeared above his head.  With worry, Bill looked at the long wooden rod held in the goblin's hand.  It went to his neck, and there he felt a circular contrivance.  Something like one would use to control a vicious dog, he realized.

Bill struggled to rise, and the goblin smiled at him until Bill got halfway up, and then a quick yank, and Bill fell again.

'-3 Health' appeared and dissappered rapidly.

"Now, do we have an under..." The goblin began mockingly.

Bill roared, and threw himself to his feet.  The goblin leapt back off the corral fence, but held on to the slavetaker pole.  A full yank one way Bill resisted, but a quick stutter jerk the other way, and Bill hit the fence with his head as he went down.

"-5 Health; -2 Health; -2 Health."

Perhaps this was supposed to be a test of brains, Bill thought.

"Okay, you have me." He said from the ground. "Can I sit up?"
The goblin looked at him suspiciously, and then eased up a bit on the pole.
Grateful for small favors, and wondering why this hurt so much, Bill sat up in a bit of snow, with his bare feet in mud.

"Ahem." The goblin began. He opened a paper, and began to read it. "Dear Player, the goblin NPC cannot understand what this paper says.  But you can.  I have set goblins with catch corrals at all of the forty Magician entrances to Midgard.  You will swear a binding geas to me, Shonden the Magnificent, Level 85 Magician, or I will leave you to the goblin's mercy."

The goblin put up the letter.  A question appeared in the air between the two of them.

"Do you swear to be Shonden's servant for the space of one year in the form of a binding geas, enforced by the gods? Yes/No?"

It required no thought. Contemptously, Bill swiped 'No'.

The goblin grinned.  "Slave."

"I can't. I have honor 1."

"Man lose to Goblin. Dishonor. Now slave."

Bill thought of rushing the goblin, forcing it to kill him.  He could respawn on the Bridge.  But then he would merely be at another goblin corral, if Shonden was right, and Bill assumed he was.

Sighing, Bill spoke the fatal words.

"Character delete."  He went thru the 'Are you sure?' and the 'Are you REALLY sure?' and laughed at the crestfallen goblin as a Valkyrie came and took him into the sky.  The gloriously beautiful Nordic maiden left him on the Bridge in front of Heimdall.

"Short life. But a glorious one. +1 Honor to next character."

"Yeah, let's do it."  Bill remembered the code from the second card, and gave it, and went through character generation again.  He stayed with the same name, and race, but shifted to Warrior.

This time his Might was 12, and his Health was the same, while his Mana was 22.  And he had a wooden club, durability 5/5.  His Honor was four as Warriors got a bonus Honor point.

Not surprised at the Bridge tilting down to earth, or Midgard, he ran with all his might, in the end, taking twenty foot long leaping strides to keep going.  But the earth rushing up at him filled him with fright.  He kept his eyes open by sheer will, but could not concentrate enough to keep his legs moving smoothly.

'Bonus +1 Might for Good Rundown.'
'Bonus +2 Honor for Staring Impact Down'

Still, he crash-landed, and it hurt.  Why did it hurt so much?

'-4 Health'

An FAQ message popped up.

"A small percentage of players report phantom pains.  This is not a great problem.  We are looking into the causes.  Some speculate that it allows faster reactions in the game."  Bleh, Bill spat out water.  He had landed amidst water and wood.  Looking about, he saw a former water trough that he had fallen crosswise on.

Still better than a goblin slaver in the midst of the cold woods.  Speaking of which, he needed to get inside, and dried off, as his skin was goose-bumping.  A sudden gasp of wind brought with it even worse cold, and then to his shock, he saw the water turn to ice.  It encased his feet, and right hand, which were in the puddle.

"Another one." He looked up, and saw a man with a club heading toward him.

"Angry Villager, Level 2" appeared above his head.  Behind him, an older man, with white hair held out a hand that was covered with icicles.

"You Outsiders keep coming to our village, and stealing our..."

"No, I'm not..." Bill saw the Angry Villager rare back to brain him, and realized that conversation was not on the menu.  He yanked his right hand free.  With a huge effort, he caught the club descending toward his skull.

His wrist snapped, and he groaned.

"Broken right wrist. -8 Health."

The Angry Villager yanked the club out of Bill's now feeble grip, and came back for another strike.  Bill punched out, hitting the solar plexus with a left jab.  The Angry Villager folded like a birthday card and gagged up some of his lunch.

Grabbing the now fallen club, Bill turned to bash in the ice holding his feet.  And he saw a flicker out of the corner of his left eye.  Spinning, just in time to see a dagger laying flat on the wizard's hand suddenly leap, and impale Bill in his chest.  It felt like being hit with a sledgehammer.

Bill fell to the road, snapping his right ankle in the process, but not feeling it.  A cluster of messages flew before his eyes.

The wizard stood over him.

"We don't want your kind here, Outsider.  We live here, you don't."  And the Valkyrie came and took the sobbing Bill back to the Bridge again.  As soon as they lifted off, the pain was gone, and Bill was back to normal in seconds, except he felt very angry.

On the Bridge, he turned and faced Heimdall.

"What is this insanity? What is going on, I want to talk to the Game Developers!  This is not..." Suddenly, a glow of gold appeared next to the placid Heimdall.  And out of it stepped Odin One-Eye.  He patted Heimdall on the shoulder, and sent him further along the Bridge.  Then he turned back to Bill.

"Snickersnaxem, or should I say Bill? You can call me Henry."

Bill blinked, and then laughed.  Of course, the GameDevs gave themselves the most powerful character in the game.

"Heimdall is...?"
"An AI, limited.  Unlike the NPCs down below, he understands game concepts.  But, he's still not human." Henry said patiently, leaning on his spear.

"What's going on?"
"Its not as bad as it looks. But it is pretty bad.  Shonden has managed to acquire 1018 player character servants.  We're opening new destinations as fast as we can, but he keeps sending out new Rangers, a Warrior superspecialize, to find them.  Meets a new character, coerces the player for info, or just follows the characters trail back to the opening."

"So, this one guy has a solid lock on most new Magicians?"
"Enough so that the Magicians' Guild refuses to take him on.  Sure, there are other powerful Mages, but our Magic system is such that it bonuses cooperation.  So a dozen first levels can take down a tenth level mage."

"And a thousand, led by Shonden...?"
"Could kill Thor."

"Well, why don't you just do some Stoopid Power-Up and go whomp him?"
"We thought about that.  Have a dumb quest so simple, let a Chosen One get his hands on a Sword that channels all the power of the gods, and unleash him at Shonden.  Problem is, Shonden is working for Ithari Tech, our main competitors, we're pretty sure.  And if we pull any fast ones, he let us know that he would expose us."

"And your game is based on honor and toughness, not ubercheating."

"Conservative estimates are that we'd lose thirty percent of our stock price in a day."  Henry shrugged.  "We might have too."

"But the Village....."
"Not Shonden.  Not all Village entrances are like that.  But we have a lot of maniac players.  Arrive, go crazy, kill the first person they meet.  Well, the game is designed to learn.  We didn't realize it, but the game learned to treat Outsiders as dangerous brigands to be killed on sight, at least in the Villages."

"Wow." Bill said, shaking his head. "OK, why are you telling me this?  I mean, I'm just a player, a noob."

"No Bill, you're not.  You're very competitive.  You're willing to fight thru pain, and believe me, we severely understated how useful that can be.  And  you're an All-Star athlete.  The Game helps you be better than  you are, but its based on how good you are now.  So, you start with major advantages."

"You're saying I'm a ringer.  I look like a noob, but I have greater skill than most noobs."

"Yes. And not to be too blunt, but we're aware of your financial situation.  We can help."

Bill turned and his eyes flared.

"Listen you spying..."

"I don't know the exact figures, but I know your father's job title.  I know how much major back surgery and rehab costs after the insurance company pretends to do their job.  I know you're proud.  I saw the clip where you went down, and still tried to get up, even though obviously you needed major emergency care, right then."

"You didn't spy?"

"Just public information." Henry assured him.  Bill thought, and nodded.  Public information could be pretty complete nowadays, but it was hard to be mad at someone for using it when everyone from his favorite cereal company to his web brower did so.

"We pay your bills, we give you free access for three months as an apology, and you try to take down Shonden the Magnificent."

"Only three months?"

"Well, its the typical rough start apology. We want you to look normal."

"OK." Henry, or Odin nodded.  "I'd bless you, but that would not be normal." He stepped back into the glowing golden fog that appeared, and both fog and GameDev disappeared again.  Heimdall came striding up.

"Snickersnaxem. For defeating one foe, you receive an extra Honor. What class do you want to be?"

"Wait. Exit."

The world faded, and Bill came to himself.  He was a bit stiff, and parched so he solved the first by isometric exercises, and the second with a bottle of water from under his desk.  Leaning back into his chair, he paused, and did not crack his neck.  The headset went back on, and soon he was again standing before the Keen-Eyed God.

"Again, what class?"

Bill had been pondering this.  He could try Magician again.  If he moved real quick, he might escape the goblin, and dive over the corral fence and run for the woods.

As a Warrior, that would be good, but chancy.  He might land in a still open village or one where the natives had an entirely justified kill on sight policy.
A Healer could get great strength, and find themselves ushered into the rooms of the powerful which might give him a crack at Shonden.  But like most guys, he did not want to be a Healer, and he doubted if an Undead Slayer would be invited to visit with Shonden over tea.

"Rogue." He said glumly.

"Many of the cities where Rogues ply their trades are unfriendly to such, and have Thieves' Guilds who control the entrances." Heimdall said.

"Like Shonden?"

"Smaller scale, but  yes."

"Great, great, great." Bill muttered, stamping about, and came to the side where he looked down over the great pine woods, and the beautiful lake below.  If only it was lower, that is, the Bridge.

He turned and looked at Heimdall wondering what to do.  The likelihood of becoming some sort of slave to a Guild of Thieves made him want to despair.  And then he saw the Canada geese coming in, again.  Perhaps it was a recurrent event in the Game.
This message was last edited by the player at 03:59, Tue 02 May 2017.

The geese were coming over, above his head.  Bill saw it, and could not believe it.  it was there.

"Thief. I choose Rogue." He shouted as he ran at Heimdall.  The god had a hand at a good bend, and Snickersnaxem's right foot landed on it.  And his left foot landed on Heimdall's nose, and lunging off he soared backward until the geese came above him.  Squawking in panic, they fumbled their flights, and Snickersnaxem grabbed two by the legs.

Hanging on, he plunged, and bashed into the Bifrost Bridge.

"Thumpety -4
Bridge Heal +4"

And then the madly panicked geese dragged him over the edge, and all three of them, with the other geese mournfully calling from far above, fell toward the ground.  A quick jab of a beak, and he screamed in pain, but refused to let go because it was all he had.  The geese realized they were falling, and began to pump their wings for all they were worth.

This yanked Bill's arms almost out of his sockets.  He endeavoured to hold himself flat to present the maximum wind resistance, knowing that a vertical fall can reach a hundred seventy miles per hour, and a horizontal fall can reach one twenty miles per hour.  That fifty mile per hour difference might be what saved him.

Plunging, falling, the trio screamed and hollered as they went.  But soon, the effort of hanging on, and holding himself flat, and the efforts of the embattled geese resulted in dead flat silence.

He fell past a startled robin, and dared a look over his shoulder.  They were coming down in pine trees.  Or as one might put it, giant Needles of Doom.  Gulping, he angled his body up, which increased his speed, provoked a complaint from his engines, and angled him toward the lake.

Coming down, he saw the lake to his right and left, and at the last second let the geese go.  Supposedly at full speed impact, hitting the water is just like hitting concrete.  The water doesn't have enough time to get out of the way of the unlucky parachutist.

Doing a reverse flip, with his cloak under him for maximum protection, Bill hit the water.  Perhaps the physics design was off, or perhaps he really was going slow enough.

He woke in pain, on the bottom of the lake, with his feet in the mud.  Both ankles felt like they were broken.  A just noticed health bar in the corner of his eye was already down deep in the yellow, with translucent yellow and green parts of the bar showing where it should be.

Desperately needing air, for his impact had driven all oxygen from his lungs, he pulled up his legs.  Setting out for the surface was the hardest, okay, not the hardest, his weekly rehab was harder, near hardest thing he had ever done.  Each stroke yanked his legs, and he realized with dismay that his arms were not doing the job.

Wanting to weep, he began to kick his legs as well.  It began in agony, and then in a frenzy that was fueled by pain that drove him to berserk fury so that he came to the top, screaming in rage.

He fell back in the water on his back, and for the second time in a minute, passed out.  A while later, the nibbling of something on his right hand woke him.  It was a translucent, gold-banded fish checking out his index finger to see if it was a worm.

Aching, and so desperately tired, he began to paddle on his back until he reached shore.  There he rolled out onto the ground, and rested.

"Establish Spawn Point." He murmured with the last of his Endurance.
"Processing." A neutral voice spoke from the air, a voice that nothing but Bill and Heimdall heard. "Spawn point established."
"Game exit." Bill said and left the Game. For now...
This message was last updated by the player at 03:51, Tue 02 May 2017.

In reply to Tadeusz (msg # 266):

Bill woke back to reality, feeling off, weird.  According to the gamewiki, this was a side-effect of the trance state the game used.  For a moment he wondered if this was like asbestos, and decades from now, doctors would be sadly explaining a rash of maniacal behavior due to the virtual reality games.

Shivering a bit, and stiff, he got up, drank a cup of hot chocolate, and fell asleep.

The next day, he jumped back in the game, eager to earn his money which gave him the excuse to play.  He had died in the night, from cold exposure.

"Respawn."
"Level Two."

This was swiped aside.  Until he hit fourth level, he did not lose any experience from dying.  And the 'wait two hours' had been already done while he slept.

"Honor +8 Mad, Bad, and Successful." That was for his death-defying leap.
"Skill: Damage Reduction: Fall?"
He tabbed 'Yes', and that spent his first level skill.  He had another open slot for second level, but he had nothing to fill it in yet.

"Geese hate you."  Suddenly he broke down laughing, laying on the thin line of wet sand between the cold lake and the snow-bedraggled wet woods.  Rolling about, he giggled. Refreshed he got up, brushed off the sand and looked out to the seven small icebergs, the largest rowboat sized in the lake.  Without more ado, he sank his free point that he gained as he leveled into Endurance.

The brutal chilling wind still had an edge as he turned, and slipped under snow-laden branches into the woods.  Wrapping his cloak about him did not help as it tangled up his arms, which he needed as he stepped over brambles and through stalky undergrowth.  Wobbling on wet mud, stepping high to go over foot trapping snow-lined vines, bending under black branches, and pushing aside wet sky pointing branches with his bone-chilled hands, he soon began gasping.  Wondering what was wrong, he looked about for an attacker, but none came to him.

Then looking, he saw an orange bar just in the corner of his vision which was flashing slowly, and completely translucent.  He had run out of Stamina, which was based on his Endurance.  Sighing, he bent his head over, and waited.

Great gasps for air had eased to heavy breathing when a spark of pain jabbed in his neck.  Lurching up, he looked about.  Nothing.  A flurry, and another jab.

"Health -6."

A small, black bird about the size of his fist swirled back, dove between branches, and came at him again.  A quick duck, and it missed.  It came again, even faster, and this time, laid open his right forearm.

"Health -3."

This thing was going to kill him, Bill realized.  Annihilated by five ounces of assaulting avian would be a humiliating experience, and one inclined to get the GameDev to boot him from his job.  Snarling. Bill leapt at the bird, swinging his fist, and both missed.  Coming down hard, he went to his knees which were instantly cold and wet.  Throwing his cloak up around his body, he shielded himself from another attack.

That success made a bell go off in his head.  Grinning savagely, he stumbled skyward, and as the pestilent poultry came in for another dive, he swung out his cloak which caught on a nearby branch.  This time, he earned a beak in the nose, two more lost hit points, and a 'Bleeding' debuff.

His breath steaming, his heart galloping in his chest, and his Stamina falling back near zero, he waited, this time panting, and hoping he was clear.  The baneful bird came back in again, and Bill just thrust the cloak out in front of him.  A quick flutter inside, and he wrapped it, and then bashed it on the wet branches on the ground.

Unable to stand up, he fell to the ground as another hit point was lost to bleeding.

"Beat Common Robin. First Kill and First Aviacide Achievements."
"Level 3."

Suddenly, he was fully healed, and dry again, and his Stamina bar was refilled.  Such a relief, he noted.  Opening his cloak, he touched his small, but fierce opponent, and it vanished leaving behind a Brass Ring, Common.

Slipping it on, he admired it.  It was his first bit of bling, and like a business owner, he was tempted to treasure it.  But he knew that come any sort of good deal, and he'd dump it.  Rising back to his feet, he dismissed the 'Cloak-fighting Skill?' prompt.  And then he paused.  It came back up again, with a countdown timer running down from thirty.  At eight, still uncertain, he chose 'Yes'.

Another point went into Endurance, and the bite went out of the skill air.  As he pressed on, into the wood, he found many pockets of still air, and more zones of bone-chilling breezes, and the occasional nasty gust.  He kept on, fighting his way through the resisting forrest.

"Woodwalker?" He assented, and the forest became less unbearable.  Now, he had his three skills appropriate for his Level Three character.

He made the hand sign of opening a manilla folder that was not there, and instantly, his character sheet appeared in front of him.  Meanwhile, the cold continued, biting at his naked toes.

Name: Snickersnaxem
Race: Human
Sex: Male
Class: Rogue
Health: 50
Mana: 32
Might: 10
Cunning: 12
Endurance: 12
Honor: 13

Tunic, poor: 1/7 Durability; 1 Protection
Leggings, poor: 1/5 Durability; 1 Protection
Belt, rope, poor: 6/14 Durability
Cloak, modest: 3/11 Durability; +2 Protection
Weapons, none
Gold, none
Jewelry, brass ring (common)

Damage Reduction: Fall 10% (may reroll if less than half for multiple damage reductions).
Woodwalking: 20%
Cloakfighting: 5%

Berserker: 1%

Looking over his character, he tabbed numbers seeking to understand.  Health was based on his Cunning, as a Rogue, after the First Level Bonus of Cunning, Endurance, and Might that everyone got.  So, if he kept his Cunning as it was, next level, he would have 62 Health.  But if he raised his Cunning, he would have more.  That really hurt as he had been dumping points into Endurance thinking that would protect him against the cold, and grow his hit points, as well.  It only did the first.

Scratching his face, he went on to check Mana.  It had Double Cunning as a Base, but since he wasn't a Magician, he only got 1/3 Cunning for every level up.

Checking his Honor revealed that it improved his Social Standing, his Dominance, and his Chance of Better Quests.  He had a feeling he was doing pretty good on that stat.

There were deeper analysis charts available, but he was cold, and started to shiver, and his toes were covered by snowflakes.  Looking up, he saw an advancing horde of winter wonderland's ambassadors heading down from the heavy clouds overhead.  A quick look at his durabilities on his clothes made him wince.

The woods had begun to open up.

"Incipient Frostbite." A flashing light near his feet had him look down, and his feet glowed again, but then stopped.  So unless he wanted to lose toes, he needed to do something.  Looking about, he saw deeper snow, since the more open wood let more in, and short trees.  No lights, no fire, no ice beast to cut open with a light sword, and for a long second, he just fell to the ground.

"Despair. -20% Effectiveness."
"Sleepiness. -10% Effectiveness."

Panic rose screaming in him, and for a long second, he forgot he was in a game.  It felt so real, the snow on his hands, the powdery stuff, and the flakes touching his face, and he felt Sleep rise up to caress him with seeming gentle arms, luring him to a snowy bed.

"No." He bellowed, and threw himself up right, doing one more damage to his tunic so that it ripped, and fell from his shoulders.  Now, even colder, he stared at the bits of tunic on the ground, bits relabelled as 'Rags. Durability 1/1'.

"Fine." Feeling certain he was doomed, and praying all the while, but not to Odin, he began to reach for branches with no great thought in his mind.  He needed branches. Branches were on trees.  He would get them.

Yanking, pulling, having them slip out of his hands, and make his palms scraped, he gathered branches.  Part of his brain already knew what he was doing.  He took the largest of the branches.  These he wedged into an off-center, waist-high tepee.  One could call it a drunken pup tent.

Not letting himself think about it, he took off his cloak.  This protection he draped over the branches.  And then with hands which burned, and feet which did not feel anything, he scooped up the largest handfuls he could in his clumsiness until he buried the drunken pup tent.  Then he put a pile in front of the tent with the other smaller branches.

Climbing in over the mound of snow at his front door, he noticed he had at least a dozen  messages brushed off to the side.  Not thinking about it, he went in, turned about, and using the small branches drew up the snow, and built a wickerwork wall to hold the snow as his front wall.  Hating to do it, he poked a hole in the door to let in air.

Falling down, almost unconscious from debuffs, Stamina drop, and Health drop, he saw one more message appear.

"You have made a Survival Tent, Crude. Do you wish this as a Base? Base heals 10% more, and is...."

His eyes blurring from the debuffs, he swiped at 'Yes' he thought, and passed out, not noticing his efforts kept out the wind, and heated the small area, and that the room became nicer after it became Home.  Meanwhile, the snow fell, and his insulation grew.

Later, he woke in water, and drank it, and passed out again.  This happened twice more, and then finally he woke, and his currently limiting debuffs were gone, except for 'Hungry' which his stomach was telling him about.  And he was warm.  Looking at his toes, he saw they were blackened.  He needed Healing he figured before this debuff went critical.

He began to go thru the messages, and most were just warnings of further limits on his health, but they provided light in the dark Home.  And happily, the ground under him was dry.  It was just so nice to be warm, and dry that he left his new messages off for a bit.

Feeling sluggish, he checked the new ones after a few minutes.

"Level Four."
"Building?"
He took the skill.  He now had Building 10% as a skill.
"Honor +1 for First Building."
"Honor +2 for Refusal to Quit."
"Berserker 2%."

Fearful, he poked a hole in the front door.  It did not go all the way through, and he was still warm.  Hating it, wincing, he shoved again, and took out a handwidth.  Artic air came in like a spear, and he gasped.  Not liking it, but he knew he needed to get on, but then outside on the clear field of snow, which was at least six inches higher than it had been, he saw a varied path of four-footed spike legged creatures.

Suddenly, he paused.  In the night, while he slept at least a dozen beasts had walked but feet away from him.  He was practically invisible!  Carefully, he worked to put back most of the snow.  This was done, and he tried to do more, which made it worse.  So he tried to do more, and almost got it back to what it had been.  And here he stopped.

"Stop. Stop." A thin knife of cold air came in, and stabbed him in the middle of his chest, but otherwise the small space was warming back up to unpleasantly chill.  Sitting there, with his legs crossed, he evaluated.

After a bit, an Artic Rabbit hopped by.  Looking at it, he could see 'Level 2.' in green hovering above its head.  Too fast, too small, he thought, and waited.  As he sat, he wondered how he might improve his chances.  He plotted what moves he might make.  If it was a creature of this size, or that, and depending on where it moved.

It would be nice to have a weapon.

And he looked down, and began to dig.  He was sitting on dry ground.  Within a few minutes, he found a fist-sized rock.  Digging it out silently, without brushing the enclosing and tight walls of his drunken pup tent took ten more minutes, but that was fine.

"Fist sized rock. Damage 2-7. Durability 99/100."
"Honor +1. You have your First Weapon."

And then the stilt legged beasts came back.  Not deer as he had supposed, but a herd of a dozen goats.

Above them floated the words 'Curly haired goats." and for most, it was Level Five, but the ram had Level Eight.  He was going to take this.  But while he probably or maybe could take one of the lesser goats, the Ram was too much for him.  But from what he remembered, the Ram would protect the Herd.  Which meant, take on the Ram, and hope the rest scatter.

His mind racing, Bill did a shot put like motion once, twice, and on the third time let it go with all he had.  It blasted through the covering of snow, and shot ten feet straight out to collide with the Ram's left curving horn.  Knocking the beast down even as Bill exploded up to his feet, and forward.  He was six feet away, and the Ram was rising shakily to its feet when Bill dove in a low, flying tackle, taking the Ram right around the neck.

Again he failed.  He had hoped for a skull shot, and now he had missed landing on its back.  An indignant bleep, and the Ram charged across the clearing, trying to get away from whatever was on it.  Bill held on, even as the rest scattered.

Plowing through the snow, his eyes closed since he could not see anything anyways with the flying snow cast up by his left arm, and the Ram, the two circled the clearing going right over the former tent.  A scratch on his side from one of his traitor branches was his first health loss.

But the Ram stopped, as it realized it was being choked.  And it looked over to see what was the matter.  A quick head bob, and Bill saw stars as the horn smacked his forehead.  But using the opportunity, he leapt for the back of the beast.  There on, it tried to horn him again, but it could not.

Then it dove head-first into the ground, but Bill had been expecting that.  His legs clasped in tight, and he hung on, through one smash, and then another, and another. The Ram took a second to regroup, and Bill tightened his arms, and his legs, cutting off more wind to the already winded beast.  But he was starting to breath heavy as well.

"Go big or go home." He murmured, and slammed his heel as hard as he could into the Ram's side while screaming in its ear.  It bolted in pure terror, and without any further wind, with his Stamina bar hitting red, he hoped the beast would run away rather than seek vengeance as he slid free.  Laying on his back, he heard a thump.  This was going to hurt he knew as he lay in eight inches of snow.

But nothing happened.  Forcing himself up, he turned on his side, and saw the Ram was out as well, just four feet from him.  Crawling, Bill went over to the beast, and upon touching it, he saw that its health bar was still in the low green, but its stamina bar was in the black.  Knowing that it would be quickly recovering, he tried to strangle it, but his arms were cooked spaghetti noodles.  So he took off his belt, and used it as a strangling cord while he lay back with his feet on the back of the Ram to hold it tight as it twitched, and then died.

He did not level up, which deeply disapointed him.  So he sat up, and sat atop the Ram, to  keep his feet warm.  Once he was back up to normal, he got up, and tapped the Ram.  It dissappeared leaving him a Goat Meat wrapped in plastic wrap, a Piece of Horn, and a Curly Hair Rug.

"Honor +2. You have defeated an enemy with twice your levels."
"Honor +1. You have defeated your first Elite."
"Honor +1. You have defeated your first Mammal."

Wrapping the Rug around him increased his comfort level from Dire two levels up to Pitiful.  Looking at it, he saw 'Protection +4, Durability 20/20'.  And then he noted that he was in his indestructible underwear.  Evidently that fight had done for the last point of his leggings somewhere along the way.  Sighing, he tied the rug around his waist.  Now he had a kilt of creamy white.

Getting out the Cloak raised him from Pitiful to Sad, and he noted that it had lost more durability as well.  Grinding his teeth together, he was about to set out when a message popped up.

"You may exchange Honor at a 10 to 1 ratio for skills."

On the screen was a set of possible skills for him to have or improve.  It had his current skills as well as 'Strangulation, Ambush Strike, Ambush, Toughness, and Clothesmaking.'  Studying each, he finally chose Toughness.

"Your feet are now eligible for Callouses.  This will enable you to resist and recover from Cold or Snow Damage." The other choice was general cold resistance, and although he badly wanted that, he could not.  He diverted the maximum ten percent allowable of his experience points to Callouses.  Hopefully his feet would get tougher faster than his toes would get gangrene and fall off.

Currently his Honor was at 12, which was too low to do the exchange, or he would.  Not too enthused, he opened up the plastic wrap, which dissaappeared, and began to gnaw at the Raw Goat Meat.  It was not that bad, and in a few minutes he felt stronger, and more clear-headed.

"Weapon." He looked about, and spotted a branch running up from a tree.  He pulled, strained, and finally climbed up to hang his weight from the tree, and push back with his feet into the trunk.  It started to come loose, and he leapt back, sticking a ten, before coming forward to peel it the rest of the way down.

At twelve feet long and spindly toward the top, and two inches thick at the bottom, it needed trimming.  Bending, twisting, and finally it got shorter, down to seven feet.  Stripping the twigs took about the same time although there were a dozen small twigs.  It was not thick enough to be a quarterstaff, perhaps a bo staff.

He looked at it, and read, 'Bo Staff, Crude. Damage 1-5. Durability 9/9'.  He spun it in his hands, and then set out again.  The ground rose, and the space between the trees widened until he came to a clear spot.  It was the low shoulder of a mountain that loomed up, craggy, and sharp, and haunted by thin clouds, in the great distance.

In the meadow, covered by snow sat a pair of white furred Artic Foxes, looking longingly at some skeptical white furred prairie dogs, a line of four of them who kept watch, each from its own hole, while behind them a couple dozen of the little creatures were digging through the snow for this and that to eat.  The foxes were doing a most unimpressive job of acting as if they were just hanging out, for no reason at all.  Bill laughed.  The little rodents were not buying the act for one second.  Any move by the foxes, and a sudden alarm, and everyone would be underground in a trice.

But he could use some food himself.

A step out, and one of the prairie dogs snapped its head his way.  It stood watching, and then a burring sound, and two of the nearest beasts stopped their food searching, and just started watching him.  There was no way he was getting close enough to the tasty little snacks to smack them.

But, he stepped back, and back again, until the two new guards went back to their chores.  He was not a fox, but a Man.  He had tools.  Balancing the Bo Staff in hand, he considered it.  A little toss up in his hand.  Just like a three-point shot he told himself.

So he took up the now spear, and chose a likely beast, that was sideways to him to maximize the target zone.  With no more ado, he flung the spear in a great arc.  It flopped about in the air, and too late, he realized deeply that a staff was not an aerodynamic ball.  As it fell to earth, he paused in his gloom.  It pierced the target, taking it down.

Dead.  The other creatures sounded alarm, and he began to jog out their to get his meal.  Unless these creatures were way more aggressive in the game than in life, he should be fine, he told himself.  Still he was ready to run if the artic dogs decided to do a dog wave attack on him.  What he was not ready for was the fleet-footed foxes running on the surface of the snow.  They raced ahead of him, and got to the prairie dog even as he started to pelt toward them through the calf-high snow.

"Hey!" He yelled as they got the meat free of the spear, and began to leave.  One turned back to  him with a laughing expression, and then ran off to join its mate.  Bitterly, he came and took up his spear, ranting all the while.  Wisely, the prairie dogs waited until he was gone.
This message was last edited by the player at 06:00, Tue 02 May 2017.

Early November, 2035 A.D.

Jensen Halloran whizzed through the narrow hallways on his SegX.  Blasting around the corner at illegal high speeds, he drove Kim back into her office with her hands full of suddenly flying coffee and tablets.  Ahead of him, Tim and Carrie were standing about, uselessly, blocking the hallway and flirting.

"Follow." Jensen murmured, and leapt to land one foot on a Tim's Seg, and the other on Carrie's to hear Tim bellow at him, and he came down hard on the far side.  His shoes were more stylish than comfortable, which was a necessity of the job.  And his ankle hurt, and that idiot, who would have held him up was yelling behind him.

A few more steps, a retina scan, and he was inside the perimeter of Presidential Nominee Allan Reilly.  Heart swelling, he tapped the glass, and caught the quick glance of the Man inside the glass-walled enclosure.  Looking at him, tall, ready-smile, a weightlifter's physique just like Halloran, and half the men in the country with a neat goatee and 'stache in silver made Jensen happy.  This was the Man, the future President of the United States, if Jensen had anything to say about it.

=====The idea is to make a story with the ACW retold, but with Massachusetts seceeding, as a Sanctuary State, and Abortion in place of slavery

The crack of snow, the thud of ground let him know that he should have kept quiet in the wood.  Spinning toward the sound, he gaped for a second at the two headed Bison charging him.  Behind it, bushes at the edge of the white clearing shook, and Bill understood suddenly it must have been stalking the foxes.  But when loud-mouthed and stupid him showed up, it changed to the Extra Meat Option.  He knew this because of the red sign above the head of the massive beast.

"Carnivorous, Two-Headed Bison".  The red meant that he did not have enough levels to even know how scary it was.  He was dead, he knew, but even as he did, he refused to give up.  After all, he had always wanted to try this.

Moving three steps forward he planted the end of the stick in the ground, prayed it would not break all the while, and pole vaulted as high as he could on a bo staff.  His feet went straight up, and the thunder of approaching hooves altered its tempo.  The staff broke, and he fell, hoping this would not hurt too much.

Curling into a ball, he saw the horns bending back, horns for both heads, reaching for him.  And then he hit the dark brown back, and bounced off.  Coming to a halt in the snow, even as the beast slowed behind him, he began to run without hope for the trees.  Bill kept an eye on the holes in the ground.  And then he heard the distinctive crack of a bone being broken behind him.

A bellow of agony, and it came on.  Getting to the first tree, Bill took his best tip-off leap, and went high to one handed grab a wrist thick branch of a slim, naked tree.  The beast came at him, and again, hoping, Bill yanked up his legs at what he thought was the right moment.  It was.  The strange bison passed underneath with an awkward stride, and slid into a tree.

But Bill felt his hand slide loose, and turned a straight fall into a mid-air somersault.  Getting a view of hindquarters that were broader than his shoulder, and as tall as he was, Bill was not ready when a back hoof flicked out.  The wicked foot hit him right in the stomach, lifting him up, and tossing him down.

"Health -18."  Deprived of air, he nevertheless forced himself to his feet even with his Stamina bar at halfway.  He ran back into the clearing even as the bison spun about.  Spotting a hole, and hearing the bison coming, he took his stance.  One foot in the top of the hole, and he waited.

It came at his with Hatred, which did a lot to cancel out its Broken Leg.  And later than he wanted, he leapt to the right, using his foot in the hole edge as a solid point, on the snowfield to give him a good jump.  It almost worked, with his left leg getting sliced by a horn.

"Health -8."

Spinning, and sliding away, he caught a glimpse of the Health bar on the Bison.  It was barely halfway in the green.  And then he watched his blood on the horn get soaked in, and the bison healed some of that damage.  Bill groaned, getting to his feet, and began limping away.  It was all over but the screaming, but he would not give in.  Pulling his cloak in for more warmth, as the bison came behind him, he remembered.

Spain. Matadors.

Without more ado, he spun about, unleashing his cloak which was not red.  The bison did not seem to care as it charged him, and Bill barely had time to ripple it in a taunt before the bison was there.

A hopping leap, and a scream suppressed between his teeth, and the beast was past.  It came about again.

"Skill: Taunt +5%. Requires Item."  Pushing that away, he waited.  The bison came on at another ripple, and this time he had time for two before another hop.

"Health -2".
"Pain. I love pain." Bill lied to himself, trying to keep up his spirits with a perverse defiance.  The bison turned about again, and gave him a look.  It knew this was not working right.

Bill taunted it again, earning another 5%,  and driven by fury, it came on.  Bill rippled the fabric of his increasingly less durable cloak, and began to gasp for breath.  Jumping aside this time had his leg land in a prairie dog hole, and he bleated out a thin scream.

"Leg bone strained."
"Health -7."

Getting back up, his arms trembling, Bill looked at the bison who seemed to be puffing as well.  It gave him a cold stare from all four eyes.  Soon, it would be all over that stare promised.  Bill would be some tasty snackfood.

But Bill arranged himself near the hole, and taunted again.  The bison came on, not walking, but not able to manage its full if awkward stride as before. And Bill held the cloak in front of the hole, aiming to have the beast break another leg.  But then to his horror, he saw the pattern of the stride.  The bison would go over the hole, but not in it.

Without thinking, Bill went forward, and leapt up.  Even as the astonished and tired beast tried to raise its two mailbox sized heads, Bill landed with both feet.  One on the right head, and one on the left head, he stood, and his weight drove the heads down.

"Strained muscle: Leg."
"Strained muscle: Back."
"Sprained ankle: Left."

Catching a horn in one hand was his new plan, but with the cloak in the way, it did not work.  Suddenly, he was reliving the nightmare as he cartwheeled off to the left.  Crashing into the snow, he heard a crack.  It was his back he knew.  And trembling with exhaustion and fear he lay for a moment until he heard the mooing of distress.

Getting up, sliding up, he found he was not crippled.  Well, except that his back and both his legs, and his left ankle were all strongly suggesting he sit and stay sitting.  He came up, and saw that the bison was down.  Both its front legs were broken.  The original one, even worse, and the second badly enough that no one was going anywhere.

But its heads were still mobile, and its teeth were still sharp.  It glared hatred at him, but it could not rise.  Going toward the back of the beast, he just barely skipped out of the way, and tumbled back to the snow, after dodging a possibly fatal hoofstrike.  His Health bar was looking precarious.

Realizing he could not get near, he limped and straggled over to another tree.  This one had a long branch that he yanked on to make a spear.  But in his weakened state due to his Strained Muscle Debuffs, he could not rip it free.  It did have a much littler brother, but that was not even as sturdy as the bo staff.  Perhaps he could do something with the bo staff, he wondered.

Listening to it mooing, he knew he had to be quick.  Perhaps he should just run because no doubt something that liked the taste of bison was coming.  And then he smiled, just a bit through the pain.  And he pulled the thin, but long and straight branch loose from its tree.

A bit of work, and he had a point.  He held out the long, fairly flexible spear, and smiled again, grimly.  Picador, he knew.  The matador was aided by the picadors who bled the bull to make it weak.

So he walked over to the beast, his eyes focused.  Looking at it, he saw a pulse in its throat.  Holding the stick near its end, he jabbed out, and nicked the jugular.  From it a rich spray of blood, and then the beast died.

"Cloakfighting: 20%."
"Spear: 10%."
"FallL: 25%"
"Honor: +3. You have defeated an enemy more than three times your level."
No signage saying it was Elite came up, and that worried him.  But it made sense too.  He was not in a starting location.  This meant he had to be cautious.
"Level 5." His pain, his wounds, and his gasping were gone.  Wanting to laugh, but keeping silent, he quickly moved forward, and tabbed the beast.

"Cloak of Bison Fur. +5.  Protection against Cold +10."

He started to reach again, because evidently a large beast required multiple tabs when a shadow fell over him.  Jumping back, he looked up as a Snow Eagle, title in dark red, landed on the Bison.  Its wings were a mix of soft white, and grey, and just hints of black.  And they were at least thirty feet long.  Half-folded as they were, he could not be sure.

And then the creature with a head the size of a refridgerator, and a beak the length of a sword turned and looked at him.  It was a clear message.

Mine.

Not feeling suicidal, even if he really wanted to see what else the two-headed bison had, Bill nodded, and backed away.  Satisfied, the Snow Eagle flared its wings, dug in its talons, and with two flexes of those wings, which drove snow up into Bill's face, leapt skyward.  Dinner was in tow even as it struggled upward.

Feeling no desire to explain to the wolfpack, or the snow leopard, or the rotter of an otter why he had not left them snackies, Bill faded into
 the encircling woods.

He had points to spend, but for now, he needed a place to hide so he could log out.  Finding a snowbank, he checked it with his picador spear.  Being unoccupied, he took a few minutes to turn it into a snowcave, and once inside luxuriated in his Kilt of Ram's Fur, and his Cloak of Bison.  One was white, and the other dark brown.  Satisfied that he was probably safe, Bill logged out.
This message was last edited by the player at 23:04, Sat 06 May 2017.

Bill got up, and dealt with food and sleep.  Next morning, over breakfast, he got some inquiries as to what he was doing.  He answered, but vaguely, knowing that it would come up again.  Hopefully by that time, he would have information that was solid about bills being paid for.  Well aware that scammers, over-promisers, and the well-intentioned but incapable were rampant on the Net, he hoped that he could see some actual cash for all his efforts.

After breakfast, he sent an email inquiring about that very thing.  He couched it between hopes that his performance, and duration had been acceptable.  Then with compliments about the game's reality, and play, he signed off.  That should do, he thought.  It was tactful, but direct.

With little else to do, he jumped back into the game.

"Welcome back.  Honor +1 for playing consecutive days."

The snow cave faded into view, and he smiled.  Here, he was a fast-moving clever Rogue, not a back-broken washout.  With a twinge of bitterness, he accessed waiting messages from the System.

"Title: Matador.
5% bonus to anything involving bovines.
Free entry into the Running of the Fire-Breathing Bulls on Capriono Island."

He snickered, and then burst out laughing.  He had no idea where this island was, but the game had a definite streak of humor.

"First Title: Honor +2."

A bit of checking revealed that he could change his name from 'Snickersnaxe' to 'Snickersnaxe the Matador' to 'Matador9'.  It seemed he was the ninth player in the world to earn 'Matador'.  What that probably meant was that it was one of the less popular titles earnable.  He kept the original.

Endurance got another bump.  At some point, he reasoned he would not be freezing his toes off anymore.  So checking, he looked down, and found his toes fine.  Perhaps they had healed, or when he leveled up.  Not sure, he decided to check on persistent injuries when he was offline.

Looking back over the choosable skills, he took 'Ambush'.  With that, he poked out a hole, and looked about for tracks.  There were some, but they were half-filled in which meant they had been much earlier in the night.

So, pushing out into the freezing weather, shuddering, under the gray sky, he stretched.  Straightening his kilt, and cloak, bare-chested he went out into the morning.

"Calouses 1. Your feet have some resistance to damage, especially cold."  Bill grinned, and looked at his red, rough-skinned feet.

"Keep it up, boys." He instructed his toes.  They wiggled back in reply.

Following one of the tracks through the snow, it led to the clearing where he had fought the two-headed carnivorous bison.  Not wanting to be out in the open, he trekked back several hundred yards to his snow cave.  There he took another track, and it led him to a patch of red, bloodied snow that was thrashed about.  Something else, with rather large feet had taken his prey.

Increasingly wary, Bill made his way back.  He needed a weapon.  Noting that, he kept an eye out for a suitable branch.  Too his surprise, he saw one on the ground.  Once the snow line was brushed off, it was a sound quarterstaff with a bit of rot at one end.  Breaking that off, and he was armed.

"Quarterstaff, crude. Durability 16/17. Damage 4-10." Floated above the weapon in clear print, and then vanished like drifting smoke.

"Weaponmaker. +10%." Good, he thought, wondering when he had been going to receive something for his building of implements of destruction.  He had used a rock, a bo staff slash spear, and now a quarterstaff, and also his cloak, sort of.

Now, he looked about to make sure he was not being spied on.  A robin darted through the wooden branches a few feet above his head, and off to the right some yards, but it did not attack.  Nodding, he pushed on.  Looking for a space to hide, and to wait, he came to a much-tracked animal trail

"Tracking. +3%."  He had never received so little.  Perhaps it was because it was in snow, and so extraordinarily easy to do that it was so little a bump.  Following the trail, he spotted an overlooking rock, and began to make for it.  But then out of the woods, a smoky shadow of white fog slipped up there, and settled in.  Above it the words, in red, 'Cold Fog Cat' appeared.  Gulping, he eased back.  No way did he want to take on this game's version of a panther.  Especially one he could not actually clearly see.

"Cunning. +1. The Path of Wisdom begins with the fear of the Lord, and then His larger hunters, little snack."  The System definitely had a sense of humor, at his expense, Bill decided.  Still, it was very cool to get an Attribute boost.  That would make all his Cunning based skills more effective, and boost others of his base stats as well.

Walking well around, he stumbled through briars, startled a small bunny that hopped away slowly.  Probably because it saw him all tangled in the hanging vines.  And then  as he took another step, he felt a sudden rise in altitude.

Shooting up, his feet dangling he spoke what was on his mind.

"Ulp!?!"

Thirty feet below him, the bunny hopped on, and the other trees were just below his feet.  The bent over tree, with the tangled vines was revealed to be a much taller tree, with limbs that turned to vines, and it had a spring-loaded trunk.  The vines  began to move him toward the trunk, even as the trunk split from top to halfway down its height.  Inside, he saw a bubbling mass of green liquid.

Struggling frantically to get loose only tightened the grasp of the vines as they found smaller paths around his chest.  Thankfully, his right arm had been up, and the vine had not gone across his throat.  Instead, it slid down past his elbow and applied more pressure with the other two to his chest.

"Hangman's Vine Tree."  It was in yellow which meant a serious, but not undoable threat from the Game's point of view.  As it brought him closer, he bashed at it with his quarterstaff causing its green health bar to flicker.  But before he could get another shot in, the thing had him over the maw of the trunk.

Shooting his legs out, he tried to brace himself on both sides of the mouth.  Instead, his feet slipped on some wet mucus covering the interior of the mouth.  It dropped him, suddenly unravelling the vines, and he plunged.  Just in time, he caught both sides of the mouth with his quarterstaff.  Jolting down, he caught some bubble of green liquid popping.  A speck landed on his face, burning him.

"Health -1."

Hanging there, between one side and the other, on a staff made bridge above dissolvement, he gasped for air.  This mistake gave him a full lungs worth of acrid stink.  He threw himself out of the maw, leaving the staff behind, and landed hard on the snow at the base of the trunk.

"Health -2." His cloak must be protecting him, he noted because that was a worse fall than when the geese had dumped him on the edge of the Bifrost Bridge before he went down further.

A vine touched his wrist, and instinctively he yanked it back under him.  There he used it to push him up to his feet, only to find his feet entangled.  Even as he was yanked skyward again, but slower since the Springload effect was used, he grabbed the vine up high.  The vine took him up, even as he pulled himself up the vine to the solid branch part of it.

Clinging to the branch upside down now as the vine tried to rip him free, he bit into the tree limb.  The tree's health bar did not even flicker.  Its bark was too tough armor for the modest damage he could muster.

Then the other vines came in at him.  They jerked, and pulled at him, trying to take him free so they could drop him in the maw.  But now that he had leverage, he was stronger than the vines.  Pulling himself down the branch, getting close to the maw, he wondered why the tree did not try to crush him.  Maybe it was not smart enough?  Maybe it only thought in terms of grabbing someone, and dropping them in the maw of acid doom?

Whatever the case was, breathing heavily, he got to the base of the branch.  Taking a pause, he flipped himself around and hugged the trunk below the maw for dear life.  His over-exertions were really cutting into his Stamina.  He was not just working, but working as hard as he could over a continuous stretch.

The vines yanked at him, and then grew still.  He breathed, and the vines diffidently swayed.  And then he smiled.  The tree had run out of energy.  It made sense. The tree was likely less intelligent, and being used to sitting for long times, it had only a limited supply of energy.

Letting go slightly, he watched the vines twitch.  They did no more.  He fully let go, standing on his feet next to the trunk in the cold forrest.  They did nothing.  Whooping with laughter that turned into a cough, he ran back.  Once out of the range of the tree, he looked back.

"Determination. Through painful and diligent effort you've learned to force your body to your will. Stamina costs are reduced by 5% for extreme efforts.  This also changes your avatar."  Pleased at the bonus, which he felt was well-earned, but worried, he quickly brought up his Selfie View.

He was the same, but somehow harder.

That done, he bent to find two branches. The first were wet, and others too, but looking about, he found some brush overcovered with snow.  Down under the brush, not touching the ground was a dry, barked Y-shaped stick.  Carefully getting it out to avoid any snow, he broke it in a long and short stick.  A few dry brown leaves, and he began to rub the sticks together.

Nothing.  Then he realized he needed to focus on one point.  Don't let the sticks bounce around, he told himself.  As he worked, he kept glancing up at the tree.  Its vines were twitching now. A trace of smoke, and then, nothing.  Gloom touched him.  He needed this skill, and not just for this fight, but to survive in the Fimbulwinter of the Norse gods.

A groan from the tree, and the maw tried to close, but the quarterstaff forbad it.  Rolling his shoulders, Bill reached for that concentration that had served him well for his three-point shots.  Fire!  It licked up the stick, and for a heart-stopping moment refused to catch a leaf.  And then it did.

Without another moment, even as the handful of leaves blazed up in quick glory, he ran toward the tree.  Then he saw the staff was no longer there.  The maw had been closing, and that meant the tree had been playing possum.  A turn back, and a vine grabbed him, and lofted him.

The other vines came in, one for each leg as he flailed.  Looking down, he saw the maw open again with a creak, and wishing he had a better chance, he launched the leaves.  Flame trailing them, he threw up an arm over his face, and tried to turn into his cloak.

Nothing, and the vines lifted him higher in preparation for a grand drop.

BWAWHOOOMMPH.

The dull thunderous boom ripped skyward hitting him on his feet, and casting him up, into the sky.  The acrid acid had exploded.  It smashed the tree apart in flaming chunks that flew all over the forest like demented fireworks created by a mad gnome.  A dozen fires were set.

"Honor +1.  You've killed your first Vegetable Menace."
"Honor +1.  Total Overkill.  You don't just defeat your enemies, you destroy them, and scatter the ashes, or fiery bits. To gain the Skill: No such thing as too much damage, engage in Total Overkill with nine more enemies."

Knowing this was going to hurt, Bill prayed, rolled himself into a ball, and covered himself with his cloak.  He hit on a shoulder with a crack that was not him.  Plunged on, hit another, more solid thing with an oomph that drove the wind out of him.  Ripped through something, and hit the ground rolling.

"Health -7 Explosion."
"Health -18 Broken Branch."
"Health -30 Tree Trunk."
"Health -1 Small Branches."
"Health -32 Ground."

Groaning in pain, he sat up.  His health was high in the red, and his cloak had lost three durability points.  It was now 37/40.  Just sitting there, seeing the tree burning fifty feet away, and spotting two other fires in the woods, he waited as the pain eased, and his health bar went back up.

Dissapointed at his not levelling up, he checked for any messages.

"Fall Damage Reduction: 30%."
"New Title: Firestarter. Honor +2."
"You may apply for membership in the Temple of Fire, or the Insurance Scammers Guild (a player-generated offer), or apply for citizenship and racial change to the Nation of Incendarios, or you may join the Cult of Fiery Doom."
"You do not need matches to get in trouble.  You can get in trouble with just a pair of sticks, which you did."

The title was nice, and he planned to soon change out more Honor for more Endurance as the cold did seem to be bothering him less now.  As to the various offers, he thought he would pass, for now, at least.  And he did feel warm.

Getting up, and looking around, he saw that behind him there were three areas of flame merging into one bent wall of flame two hundred feet long, or more since he could not see that far.  It was advancing toward him, and gathering strength.

With that he took his bare feet, and fled away from the wall which led him toward the destroyed tree.  Curving to the left, he saw two more areas of fire, each thirty feet across, beginning to merge.  Turning to his left, he saw a dozen 'War Pigs' title in red burst from the brush, and charge him.  Perhaps they knew he was guilty, or they simply were maddened by fear.  He ran forward, trying to dart between the two flame walls.

Making it with a few feet to spare, his feet bleeding from branch jabs he had ran over, ignoring the damage messages, he went on.  Over piles of logs, and through brush he forced his way, stumbling and falling.  And coming up, he saw fire in front of him, and to his left.  Forced back to his right, he saw more fire ahead.  But perhaps it had not joined with  the wall to his new left.  Coughing from smoke, he ran forward.  His eyes watering, he could not see clearly.  The branch smashed into his face, or his face smashed into the innocent and soon to be doomed branch.  Perhaps it was seeking vengeance he wondered, Dazed.

"Health -3."
Shaking his head to clear it, he wobbled back to his feet.  And in the intervening moments, the flame had come up to him, now ten feet thick, and twenty feet high.  Its scorching breath bit at him, melted snow, and made him wonder if the acid might have been the better choice.  Stepping back, he hit the branch on the back of his head like a coach slapping the head of a slow to comprehend basketball player.

Spinning about, he ran, leapt, scrambled up the tree.  The flame baked him, made the tree easier to climb, and hurt, oh, it hurt.

"Health -3. Cloak and kilt does not protect."
"Health -7. Cloak and kilt does not protect."
"Health -11. Cloak and kilt do not protect. Both lose one Durability point."  Already his cloak smoked a bit.  Sweat poured down him.  And he arrived at the top of the tree to see that the flame reached twenty-five feet which was the tree's height.  Branches below him were on fire in spots.  Without thinking whether this was a good idea or not, he flung himself off the upper branch he clung to, and somersaulted through the top edge of the flames.

"Health -20. Cloak and Kilt does not protect. Cloak loses two Durability points."
"Burned."

Coming down, he kept up the roll, and hit hard.

"-18 Health."

"Ow." He yelled. The ground was still hot.  Leaping back to his feet, he ran, kicking up sparks, whimpering, ignoring damage messages until he got the third debuff.

He had Coughing, Burned, and now Major Burns to Feet.  He fell, as the last one reduced his foot agility and speed by seventy-five percent.  Still, he had covered two hundred yards of burnt over ground, and it was cooler, he thought.  At least he had not kicked up sparks in the last forty feet.

But, his health bar was dropping with the two pain debuffs, and the smoke inhalation one had cut his recovery in half.  Hating it, he took off his kilt, and put it on the scorched and blackened ground.  He sat on his cloak, and held his feet up, off the ground.  And there, his bottom extremely toasty, he waited as his health went down.

It entered  deep yellow, and he sighed.  This would be terrible if he lost now.  Red was breached, and it went down further.  Oh, well, he would respawn, he tried to console himself.  And then he saw that the damage was reducing.

He checked his debuffs.




Coughing was gone.  Now he recovered at the rate he was damaged.  He waited more, keeping an eye out.  It would be really terrible for some Level One fire lizard to come up to him now, and take him out.  After checking a half-dozen times with a spit covered finger, he no longer got 'Hot' messages from the System.

Carefully, he eased himself up, his back groaning.  Rising to his feet, he toppled over to his left.  Trying again, he made it to his feet.  And then a long, slow walk to the snowy forest.  Once there, he found himself an unused and thick snow drift, made a snow cave, and logged out with a sigh of relief.

Back in the real world, as most called it, Bill did the necessaries.  He checked his email, and found a message from the hospital.

"Thank you for your payment.  Your bill has been reduced by eight hundred dollars.  While we appreciate your situation, and this payment, we must insist on full payment.

Cordially,
Hospital Administrator Rod Jones."

Bill blinked, trying to understand, and then he checked another email.  In it, his patron told him of this partial payment.  Now that it was confirmed, Bill whooped with joy.  Sure some hundreds of dollars was barely a peck in the huge pile of debt, but it was still a solid start.  His worries about being run by scammers or frauds or idiots faded.  Eight hundred bucks bought a good deal of faith.

A night's rest, and he considered telling his father the next morning of the good news, but the man had left early.  So Bill went back up to his room finding his mom cleaning his table.

"I worry about your gaming so much, Bill."  She said with a frown, and a sagging of her spine to the left, almost as if it were her back that was broken.

"Mom, schedule a morning breakfast for this Saturday with Dad.  I'll talk to you guys then, okay?"  His mother looked a bit skeptical, but nodded acceptance.  It was a tradition his father had instituted, the occasional Bacon, Eggs, Strawberries and Pancakes Breakfast reserved for Big Decisions.  Good food, and then over coffee, everyone hashed out a major worry, or a plan for however long it took.  If he had not broken his back, he would have had one of these in his future to choose which college scholarship he should take.

Bill waited until she left, and thought he might have enough time to earn another bit of money off the payments to the hospital.  That would impress his folks, and cheer them up.  He had been hardest hit, he thought, but it had been rough on Mom and Dad as well.  Three months ago, his father had held him all night as he wept, wishing himself dead.  And he could see the dread in their faces when they saw requests for payment from the hospital or one of a near dozen doctors.  But, Bill smiled to himself, I can game, do good, and help out my parents at the same time.  Not as good as a free ride to a good college, but still it was something, and a lot more than he had had.

With that, he turned up the heat, made himself comfortable, and put on the headset.  Arriving in Fimbulwinter, he felt warm.  This was a first.  Remembering his last snow cave, he made a small hole, and peered out.  Nothing seemed to come by, or had in the recent past, but he was still reluctant to emerge from his cozy cave.

His eyes fell upon blinking messages at the corner of his vision, and he tabbed them.

"Mass kill scenarios only give 1% of experience."

He was not sure what that meant so he checked by tabbing on it.

"Mass kill scenarios include, but are not limited too spreading plague, unleashing a Ragnarok Device, causing a flood, causing a fire, or creating starvation."  That clarified things.  He had started a fire that had spread quite a bit.  Bill was not sure how far, but likely some animals had been killed in it.

"Level 6." Checking revealed that he was halfway to seven, and that indeed, it got harder and harder to rise in levels.  His health and mana had gone up.  He had one Attribute Point, and one Skill Point.

Shrugging, he put another point in Endurance.  It had served him well so far.

With Skills, he looked at the various Skill Trees which rose from his skills.  Under 'Ambush' he found what he wanted.  'Sneak Attack" multiplied damage if the target was unaware of the attack until it happened.  This gave him SA +15% which was higher than normal because he had done things like this already he found out after a short query.

But there were still more things tabbing so he went on to the next.

"WMD.  You are a Weapon of Mass Destruction. Area attacks do 10% more damage. Honor +3."
"Total Overkill skill gained. Critical Hits do 5% more damage.  Massive Overkill skill is available if you overkill 39 more targets for a total of 100."
"Fame +1."

Poking a hole in the front door of the snow cave again, as more snow had drifted down, he saw nothing.  But, patience paid, as his coach had taught him.  Sometimes you had to wait for the other guy to make a move, and then you could steal the ball from him.  So he crossed his legs, and waited.

While doing that, he considered his situation.  He had avoided the traps of being forced to serve Shondam, or be enslaved to a goblin, or bound to a thieve's guild.  Perhaps a Ranger would be a better choice for what he was doing now, but he was not sure a Ranger got a sneak bonus.  And it had not been one of the first choices, which meant it was available at the specialize or superspecialize level.

Thinking about that, he wondered why or when he was going to specialize.  Checking on that brought up the interesting fact that such required a mentor.  So even if he had wanted to be a Ranger, he would have been stuck as a Warrior until he found a mentor, who was likely in a city, knowing how these games worked.  And the cities were the center of a web of control taking what was supposed to be a freeing second life, and making it more enslavement.

So, for now, he was stuck as a Rogue.

And then a herd of elk thundered up past him, making the ground shake.  Even the smallest fawns were red-titled.  "Greater King Elk" was their name, and over forty of them thudded by.  Some rapid guess work told him that having the herd leader be twice the level of a fawn was probably as best as it got, and with a fawn being supposedly out of reach according to the Game, well that was trouble.

Deciding on discretion, he stayed, and waited.  A small pack of wolves went by, tailing the elk.  They were red, except the alpha male, was black.  That meant something, probably bad, Bill knew.

Logging out, he checked the message boards.  Green meant that the game thought you could probably take the monster.  Yellow meant that the Game thought it would be a tough fight.  Red meant to proceed with great caution.  Dark Red meant to go with extreme caution, preferably run away.  Black meant to the game that you were doomed.  Supposedly only four characters had ever defeated a Black titled monster.  It was a title, a big honor bonus, a fame bonus, and practically suicidal.

Bill then checked his area.  There were four small, cold lakes in a line.  He was on the first, the easiest.  And it was a red zone for him, with large splotches of black.  Evidently, in fighting a couple red, and one yellow monster, and one crazy green Robin, he had gotten lucky.  Which made sense as his location was supposed to be for Level Twenty and above.  He was Level Six, and not with a party either.  A fair number of the dungeons in his area he could not even get in as they required a minimum of twenty-five levels to pass the dungeon portal.

He had dodged the traps of the early players into abuse by jumping into a storm.  Sighing, he realized he needed to be more careful.  With that, he poked a longer hole in the back of the cave.  Once that was clear, he alternated between looking out the front door, or out the back window as he called it.

Knowing that sitting here was not getting himself closer to another payment for the hospital, he fretted.  It would be nice if this game had a game within it, say solitaire, so you could wile away the time while you waited, he groused.  Waiting more, he shifted his legs to keep them loose.

And then a juicy rabbit came by.  Groaning to himself because the green titled thing would hardly be worth much experience, but knowing he need any exp and food he could get, he dove at it with his second rock that he had dug up from a snow cave floor.

"Hit, critical. -16 Health to Juicy Rabbit."
Then the rabbit began to transform.
"Juicy Rabbit transforms into Luring Ice Demon."

And rising above him, as he lay on the snow was a creature of pure icicles welded together by more ice.  It was bipedal, but not bilaterally symetrical.  Its head was taller to the left, and on the right it had two arms, and one big one on the left.  Its mouth was the size of a melon, and filled with ice spikes all the way down its throat he noted as it roared at him.

"You are Stunned." Hardly able to move, Bill was lifted, and his head stuffed into the demon's mouth.

"Health -14."

His eyes in peril from the inside the mouth spikes, Bill tried to move, but his body was not listening.

Bill, aka Snickersnaxem, a sixth level rogue, with his head inside the spike filled mouth of a red-titled Angler Ice Demon felt despair and fear struggle for dominance.  He flailed, or tried to, to get a grip to yank himself out of the mouth, but the hard, slick ice of the demon, even with its ridges offered no handgrip.

Stunned no longer, the movement brought the ice spikes running down into its throat into savage contact with his face.  They sliced and ripped, and the demon gulped the blood, seeming to grow stronger.

"Health -8. Bleeding, Minor debuff."

Putting his feet down, Bill tried to do as Hercules did to Antaeus.  But the monster would move at just the wrong moment, and Bill could not get his feet solidly planted under himself.  Plans of lifting it to the sky were of no avail.

"Health -3; continued debuff -1."

Gasping for breath, and worried for his eyes, Bill closed them, and rested a bit.  The demon gulped more of his dripping blood.  By now, Bill knew that his face must be a shocking sight fit to send maidens into hysterics.

"Health -1; continued debuff -1."

He could sit here as his health slowly wicked away, Bill thought, already having a crick in his back from being bent without release.  Another damage assessment, and he felt the demon start to chew on him again, eager for more blood.  The debuff went up to two per second.  And as the demon grew stronger, Bill felt it trying to work its mouth past the human's chin to reach the neck.  And from there, it could simply crunch in, spike in, and take air and blood in a contest to see which killed him first.

And he cast his mind back to what Coach would say.  Back in the Louiston game, Coach had told them that the speed of the other team was their strength, but also their weakness.  "That reaction time, it makes them impatient.  Play with them.  Take what they have, and use it against them."

Bill shoved his head deeper into the mouth of the demon.  A new wound opened on his scalp, bringing his damage up to three per turn.  The demon gulped greedily, again, and again.  And then it did it again, and Bill knew his health was getting into the yellow.  And it drank some more, but this time it tried to push back.  Bill wrapped his arms around the back of the demon's head.

It pushed back, and gulped greedily.  But Bill was leaning forward with all his weight on his shoulders, and at the gulp, he pushed his neck in, and his shoulders.  The spikes caught in his cloak.

More gulps, and it began to push back with more strength.  But spikes entangled in the bison cloak,  and the escape was not yet working.  A desperate shove, and the demon almost lifted Bill out, long enough to take a gasping breath.

Bill drove forward in a move that a football player would admire as he went into a tackling dummy.  And this time, he locked his fingers on the far side of the demon's skull.  Too late, the demon tried to retreat back, but only dragged Bill with it.

It tried to gulp blood, but Bill's crown of his head was now squarely across its airhole in the back of its capacious throat.  Blood still poured from Bill's face, even as the game informed him that pressure on his scalp had caused that bleed to cease.  That blood began to fill the bottom of the mouth, and Bill hoped he would not drown in his own red tide.

The demon began to struggle back, to break free, and hanging on, Bill watched his health slide down as message after message appeared.

Blind.  There was nothing worthwhile to see, but the debuff meant his blood was rising.  The demon pummelled him.

"Health -7. Rib punch."

He had no spare hands.

"Warning: Your health is in the red.  Stamina is in the yellow."

Evidently when you could not check your health, the Game saw fit to warn you how rough things were.  And another rib punch took away health and air.

"Health -6."
"Health -8."
"Health -4."
"Health -2."

The demon fell to its knees, and Bill went with it.

His handgrip broke, and he fell apart, rolling half a turn away to the left of the prone monster.  It was gasping, and without pity, or fear, or almost any thought, Bill reached over, and stuffed a fist down its throat.  It thrashed, and terribly weary, Bill watched his own health slide down to deep red, and his stamina reach red.  And then the demon evaporated as its own health went to black.

A chilling wind that made the weather of the snowy woods seem mild and summer like swept up around him, but did no harm.  It took up the black ice of the ice demon, and swept it into a  space that seemed sideways to Bill.  For a second, he saw a branch of a tree, and a place of eternal ice.

"You have banished an Angler or Luring Ice Demon, a treacherous fisher demon, to Niffleheim,
 called by some dwarves, Sniffleheim."
"You have banished your first Demon.  Honor +1."
"You have glimpsed Other Worlds.  The Paths of Yggdrasil, the World Tree, may now open to you."
"Cloakfighting +2% to 22%."
"You are one of the Friends of Beowulf.  That hero, who finding a young male T-rex, invulnerable to blade and spear, killed it be wrenching out its arm, and letting it bleed from the inside.  You have killed with strange techniques which cause other men to view you as Heroic or Insane.  Continue on this path of Heroic Madness, who knows what rewards it may yield?"

Bill did not see any level up, and frustrated, he checked.  He was spitting distance from levelling up, he noted with disgust.  So, he sat there, and waited for body and wind to improve while noting that his cloak had lost another Durability point.

As he neared full health, he heard a thumping of feet, and saw a rabbit enter the area from behind him.  A sudden flinching scared the rabbit, and it ran off.  Bill chastised himself.

"It was probably just a bunny.  Easy XP."  But his blood was thundering in his arms, and his fingers were tensed up.  "I'm going to be as bad as Jimmy Carter." He muttered, knowing his dad would laugh at the story and comparison.  Getting up from the snowy ground, he dusted himself off, rearranged his cloak and kilt, and began to walk in the snow.  Looking down after a bit, he saw his feet had Level 2 Callouses now, and while they still were cold, overall, he felt the weather as bracing until a cold breeze hit him.

Taking the animal trail that had led past his hideaway, he went left, away from the burning he had made.  Going on, he noted many tracks in the snow.  And after a bit, he received a 2% bump in his Tracking up to 5%.  The snow grew heavier, and began to caress his mid-calves with icy fingers.  Spots in the woods that had been mostly snow, but some dark wood or earth were now almost all snow.

His breath came out once again in chill plumes, and he slowed his pace.  Cresting a low ridge, he began a long, gentle descent along the animal trail.  Passing a division of the path, with one to his left, and the other mostly ahead, he saw a small sign.

"Two Penny. 20 miles.  ==> "

Knowing he needed weapons, and armor, and healing potions, and with his stomach grumbling, he turned to the left toward Two Penny.  Taking a long descent that wound above a slope, he came to a steep slide.  And a little off to his right, and he saw otters going downhill on an ice slide.  They stared at him in fright, and still, but he hailed them, and slowly plodded to the top of their slide.

It was a curved bit of ice, a half-tube going down straight to an ice covered river two hundred yards distance.  The otters looked back at him when he looked back up, and they did not move.  So he asked them if they minded he use their slide, and no one spoke denying him.  Not that he expected such, but a certain politeness seemed called for, especially since half the otters were yellow, and the leader was red titled.

Sitting his butt down, he breathed in, and then pushed forward.

Slipping down, going faster, as the snowy walls snapped by him, he found himself airborne.  Coming down, a big smile creased his face.  Airborne again at a little rise in the slide, and by the time he skidded out on the icy rivertop, he was giggling helplessly.

Rising to his feet, he spotted a handful of otters on the ice looking at him, and two more coming down behind him.  Getting out of the oncoming traffic, he bowed to the small figures.

"Thank you, kind gents and ladies.  I appreciate the ride."  Then he heel-turned, stepped around another and felt a touch on his arm.  Spinning, and going low to keep his balance, he had his hands out, ready to rend.

A gray-haired otter stood on its hind legs, and waited.  Bill looked about, and no one moved.  Realizing that this was not an attack, he stood slowly.

"What is it?"

A hand reached out to his without haste, and seeing that, Bill reached his hand out as well.  The elder otter took hold of his pinkie, and began to lead him across the ice.  Figuring he might have stumbled into a quest, and genuinely curious, Bill went with him down the icy river to a frozen waterfall.

In the bank above it was a hole.  "Gray" as Bill now called him in his own thoughts, slid into the hole and then made a come-along gesture to the human.  Not sure he could get in, Bill nevertheless got down on his hands and knees.  Poking his head into the frozen clay mouth of the hole, he felt his shoulders hit both sides through the bison cloak.  Sighing, he went down to his belly, and scootched in.

Once inside, it was far warmer.  The space was enough for him to sit up, if he bent over his neck.  The upside-down bowl hole held a dozen other otters, mostly younglings which were shooed out by the elder with many reproachful looks from their attending females.

"Peace and quiet at last, human adventurer."  Bill snapped his head about causing a point of health damage to stare amazed at the older otter.

"Gray, you can talk?"

"Gray, a good name.  In the Cave of the Home, and its inner recesses, we can speak the Human tongue.  It is the gift of the Aesir."

"MMM, okay.  Well, I'm B---Snickersnaxem." Bill said, recovering, while still holding his shock at his core, and meanwhile a bubbling delight ran up into him.  The otters were so cute, and now they could talk.  It was all a five year old little boy would have loved.

"Great Snickersnaxem, we have a dire problem."  And here it comes, Bill thought with a hidden smile.  Still, he did not mind.

"And you must think I can help? I am hopeful, I can for I find the Otter People to be a great thing."

The elder nodded acceptance.

'Gray' now considers you a Grace-touched Human.

"My people are being hunted to extinction by a dangerous wolf, one of the speaking kind."

Bill blinked.  He had not heard of talking wolves in this game.  In all likelihood, such a monster would be smarter, and probably somewhat stronger than a regular wolf.  Hopefully, it would only be red titled instead of deep red, or black.

"And you'd like me to destroy it."

The elder nodded.

"I don't have much in the way of weapons."  Bill said.

"This is true, and when my people saw you walking through the Dangerous Lands without shoes, or much fur, or a sword, or a wand, we concluded you must indeed be a great warrior to be able to kill monsters with your bare hands.  No doubt one of your fists could smash the skull of a bear."

Bill gave the elder a wry smile, letting him know he saw through the flattery.  But still, it was pleasant, and not totally wrong.

Will you accept the quest to rid the Otter People of their enemy?

Bill thought, and while he knew it was probably way too dangerous for him, still he liked this People.  And it would not hurt to add a wolfskin to his kilt and cloak.

"I will need some things."

The elder held out a hand.

"Yes, reward..." In his hand was a small stone, and Bill  shook his head.

"No, Gray. I need to spy out my enemy.  Measure his strength, plan, and perhaps I may need the aid of the Otter People..."

"We are brave, but our claws are small."

"Do you not take rocks and crack the shells of oysters and such?"  The elder blinked, and then slowly nodded.  "Well, so do Humans.  Here's what I need you to do...."

The elder listened, and they spoke for another thirty minutes, and then the others were let in, and assignments were given to the stronger adults while the children were bedded down.  By the end of several hours, Bill had risen to "Noble and Wise Friend of the Otters." and he had two otter babes sleeping, draped on his left leg.

He was fed sushi and raw oyster, and given water from a cup the Otter People had scavenged from an adventurer long ago they said.  Bill wondered if it was backstory, or there had been an adventurer coming through his area.  He snorted in laughter to himself at his presumption, 'his' area, but still he felt that way.

And so he eased off to sleep as the otters prepared, and others kept watch, now filled with new hope that their persistent siege was almost over.