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“We’re going back!” Vega reiterated, angry tears forming in her eyes.

  “Vega, she’s right,” Koby said as respectfully as he could. “Maverick will have resurrection sickness, with no Mana or panacea pills. He’ll never make it to the Palace now. There’s no point in going back for him. Either we move on, or we give up.”

  “But I want him here for this,” Vega lamented. “Can we try this again tomorrow?”

  “I am not going through this again; not when we’re this close,” Triskelion objected adamantly. “If you want to quit, fine, but I’m staying and whether I win or die I’m not doing this again. If you want our help for this it’s now or never.”

  Vega glared at her with intense antipathy.

  “Vega, I’m really sorry, but I don’t think it makes any sense to stop now,” Koby said. “I think we should press on.”

  Vega hung her head in defeat.

  “All right,” she said dejectedly, sheathing her sword. She made a command gesture at Maverick’s corpse, converting his equipment into item cards that flew into her hand. “Let’s get to the damn Palace so I can slice off the head of the bitch whose minions killed my boyfriend.”

  From high above, Idolum sighed with relief at the sight of the party resuming its course towards the Palace.

  The instant his Health bar hit zero, Maverick’s sensorium went blank again, leaving him in an abyss devoid of any external sensation. All he could feel was his heart sinking at the knowledge that he had let Vega down.

  When the world came back it was silent, and lacking all colour. He had respawned in the Halls of Lachrymose as a Shade; a three dimensional shadow of his avatar.

  Colossal statues of Angels stood over circular pools, water flowing from their eyes like tears. Other Shades haunted the Halls, recently slain and desperate for resurrection. Maverick decided to wait for a few minutes to see if his party would resurrect him themselves. He was neither surprised nor hurt when they did not. He hadn’t been of any help getting them through the Obsidian Realm, and he would be even more of a liability with resurrection sickness.

  He wasn’t sure what he should do now. He hadn’t been apart from Vega for two days, and he already felt lost without her. It shocked him how quickly she had become the center of his universe. He had not consciously realized until now how strongly he felt for her.

  I love her, he thought to himself in silent disbelief. This realization frightened him. Though he knew she liked him, he didn’t think she felt the same way as he did. He had not changed her life in the same way she had changed his. She would have achieved her dream on her own eventually, but he knew he never would have been able to quit gold farming if it wasn’t for her. He hated himself for not being good enough for her, for never being good enough, for not even being able to make it to a check point two clicks away when he was about as twinked out as possible. Was she mad at him? He wished he could talk to her, but he knew she couldn’t send or receive messages inside a dungeon.

  Even if he respawned at his last check point, he could never catch up to the rest of the party on his own. There was nothing he could do now but wait.

  Dragging his feet, he shuffled off in search of an Angel to resurrect him in his homestead.

  Lady Crux’s castle was an immense palace of black obsidian, polished to a glossy sheen. It was lit only by sparsely placed salt lamps, making it impossible to see if anything was hiding in the shadows. The halls were decorated with many grotesque figures, any of which could have been Obsidian Golems. The flickering of the lights often made it look like they were moving. The castle was dead silent as well. The complete lack of stimuli quickly created a sense of unease among the party, all of whom expected a jump scare at any second.

  To their surprise, the party passed through the long and foreboding entrance hall without incident. Vega kicked open the entrance to the Throne Room, only to find it vacant as well.

  “Dammit, where is she?” she muttered.

  “It’s a big castle; she could be anywhere,” Wisteria replied.

  “It’s probably too dangerous to go looking for her. We should stay here and try to bring her to us,” Koby suggested.

  “And how the hell do we do that?” Triskelion moaned. “This dungeon is hell, I either want to beat it or die. Bring on the fucking boss battle already.”

  She was suddenly struck by a white beam of light, which instantly restrained her in a large coil of spider’s silk. Koby immediately began shooting in the direction he thought the beam had come from, but he was incapacitated by another beam from behind. The three party members left standing formed a back to back triangle, frantically seeking their enemy.

  “Wisteria, cast a light spell!” Vega ordered. Wisteria started to chant, but she was felled by a white beam before she could finish.

  “Crap, this stuff has an anti-mana aura. I can’t cast anything!” she said.

  “Ego To…” Dracogenes began to shout, hoping that the shockwave would take out their attacker. Before he could finish even that brief spell, he too was struck by a bright beam from the darkness that entangled him in spider’s web.

  Vega started to panic. The room was too dark for her to see anything more than a few milliclicks ahead of her. She used her Quantum Rush to avoid the beams, and immediately jumped to the source. Each time she got there though, her Sword hit nothing but air.

  “Dammit Crux, come out and fight me!” she demanded, waving her Sword furiously in the air. She listened carefully for the sound of another beam being fired, but there was no sound other than her own breathing.

  Then she realized it wasn’t her breathing.

  She spun around, and there hanging from the ceiling by a precarious strand of silk was Lady Crux. She was an Arachne, with the legs and abdomen of a black widow spider. She had the head and torso of a young woman with pallid skin, blonde hair, and blood red eyes. She wore only a black tiara and serpentine armbands, and carried the Silk Sceptre in her right hand. She smiled at Vega, revealing two long fangs dripping with venom.

  Vega started to swing her Sword, but Crux violently jabbed her Sceptre into Vega’s stomach. Bound in silk, she heard the Sword of Objectivism clang against the ground, followed by the thud of her own avatar.

  “String them up,” Crux ordered as she descended upon the floor. A swarm of black widows the size of dogs began pouring out from all the cracks and crevasses. They bundled the party up even tighter and hoisted them several feet off the ground.

  The lamp light in the room intensified, and Crux gazed at them appraisingly as they dangled before her like a human mobile.

  “Isn’t this pathetic? You survived the Obsidian Realm, only to fall to my Sceptre,” she taunted. “I suppose I should be grateful you survived the journey. If you hadn’t, I wouldn’t have two new labourers for my hatchery, or three more beautiful concubines for my harem.”

  She gently ran the back of her hand along Vega’s face.

  “You might as well kill me now,” Vega said defiantly. “I’ll never submit to you.”

  Crux tossed back her head and laughed.

  “Oh yes you will. I’ve broken countless consorts before you. Many of my concubines are so traumatized they’re catatonic most of the time, afraid of their own shadows. There’s no fight left in any of them, and you will be no different.”

  “Do you want to bet?” Vega challenged her. “Lady Crux, I have a deal for you. I challenge you to a duel, just you and me. My Sword vs your Sceptre. If I win, my party and I go free. But if you win, I will submit to your authority without question. I will do whatever I am told without protest. You’ll have a consort you won’t need to break to make her obey. Does that interest you?”

  Crux appeared intrigued by the offer, gazing contemplatively at her Sceptre as she twirled it around in her hand.

  “I’ve already defeated you child. You’re already mine,” she said. “However, if I was to defeat you on your own terms, it would show you how futile any disobedience will be. I accept your challenge.”


  She raised her Sceptre to cut Vega free. It was then that a great black shape dropped from the ceiling. Crux swung around to attack it, but it instantly plunged its tendrils into every orifice in her face. Writhing in agony, Crux tossed her head back and screamed so loud she shattered the obsidian glass around her.

  “Idolum? Idolum what the hell are you doing?” Vega demanded. “Idolum!”

  Idolum removed his tentacles from Crux, causing her body to go still. Her eyes had gone pitch black, along with the entirety of her mouth. Viscous black tears rolled down her cheeks, and the same dark substance salivated from her slack mouth.

  “Spawn as many minions as you are able,” Idolum ordered. “Have them form a perimeter around the Palace. I want the whole Palace on lock down and high alert. Any hostile that comes within sight of the Palace, player or mob, is to be destroyed. Do you understand?”

  “Understood My Lord,” Crux said with a reverent nod. She scuttled out of the room to attend to her new duties.

  “What the hell did you do?” Vega asked, bewildered by the spectacle she had just witnessed.

  “I filled her with darkness so ravenous it devoured all that dared to shine, leaving naught but a haunted shadow in its wake, with no will or strength to resist the edicts of a dark and dreamless god,” Idolum said pompously, but then chuckled. “I rewrote her command subroutines. She’ll do whatever I tell her to do now.”

  “That’s impossible. You have no power outside of the Insomnia Labyrinth,” Koby claimed.

  “I do now,” Idolum said smugly, holding out his hand to display his profile.

  “Oh my god,” Vega muttered softly. “You drank the Monovitalist Elixir. Why? If you die, your character will be gone forever. You’d lose everything you’ve ever accomplished as Idolum.”

  “That would have happened anyway, thanks to you.”

  “What do you mean ‘thanks to me’?”

  “You made a fool of me!” he screamed, shoving his stained mask directly in her face. “You killed me with one blow! Idolum, The Dream Thief, Final Boss of the dreaded Insomnia Labyrinth. I am meant to be feared throughout Surreality, and beyond. I steal your dreams until the unrelenting deluge of reality drives you to utter madness! But now everyone knows that a lone Blue Pill defeated me with a single hit. By slaying me so effortlessly, you robbed me of my ability to inspire true terror. I will never again be feared as I was meant to be, which means the Game Masters will have no choice but to replace me.

  “The only way for me to reclaim my rightful status and ensure my continued tenure as a Final Boss is to prove to Surreality how terrifying I truly I am. I have drunk the Monovitalist Elixir, I am Lord of the Obsidian Realm, and now I am the wielder of the Sword of Objectivism.”

  Idolum slowly bent down and melodramatically plucked the Sword from the ground, slowly twirling it as he examined it appraisingly.

  “No! Idolum, that is my sword! You can’t just take it from me!” Vega screamed, becoming petulantly irate.

  “You dropped it,” Idolum shrugged. “The Sword of Objectivism; a parody in name only. This is the most powerful melee weapon in our world. You see, now that my spellcasting’s maxed out I’ve cast an aura upon myself that shields me from all damage. It’s fed by my Mana, and thanks to this sword my Mana is inexhaustible. I am now indestructible, and I will make sure that everyone in Surreality knows it! They will know that there is nothing they can do to save themselves from the Dream Thief, and they will know terror as they have never before thought possible.

  “As for you Vega, you will rot here for the rest of your life, so that all will know the grave cost of humiliating me.”

  “You’re an idiot,” Triskelion said bluntly, refusing to be intimidated by his villainous monologuing. “All we have to do is load our last save point to get out of here.”

  She stuck here tongue out at him in a victorious gesture.

  “Be my guest,” Idolum invited smugly.

  “Surreality- Reload Last Check Point,” Vega commanded. She expected a voice to ask if she was sure, warning that any unsaved progress would be lost.

  Instead a plaque appeared before her with an error message.

  “Now that’s something you’re never happy to see,” Idolum said, chuckling malevolently. “You see, since I’ve corrupted Lady Crux, this dungeon can’t be reset. And since this is a dungeon, you can’t load in or out of it. So, I’m afraid you are trapped here forever. Game over.”

  Four of the party members merely groaned and cursed in frustration. But Vega fell deathly quiet. She went ghostly pale as she realized what this meant for her.

  “That’s right little Blue Pill,” Idolum gloated. “You can’t get out of here. You can’t break out of that silk, and no one is going to be able to break through the defenses I’m going to set up to help you. You lose. The character you’ve dedicated so many years of your life to building up will never quest again. You never defeated me! In the end I still stole your dream from you.”

  “Idolum, listen,” Vega pleaded softly, tears pooling in her eyes. “You can’t leave me like this. Every quest has to be winnable.”

  “ ‘Sorry, I’m not playing story mode. Bye’,” he taunted. He swiftly turned his back to her and strode out of the room, eager to consolidate his new power.

  “Idolum? Idolum!” Vega screamed desperately. When he did not respond, the tears started flowing down her cheeks and she began hyperventilating.

  “Well to hell with this!” Triskelion said.

  “No! Please don’t leave me here alone,” Vega begged.

  “I am not hanging around in this cocoon forever just to keep you company,” she said adamantly. “This is your fault. We’ve all lost our characters thanks to you.”

  Triskelion’s avatar immediately fell into torpor, indicating that she had logged off.

  “Yeah, sorry Vega. I didn’t spend twenty thousand globecoins on my game room for this,” Wisteria said, falling into catatonia as well. Dracogenes logged off without even saying goodbye.

  “Koby! Koby, please don’t leave me!” Vega screamed in a panic.

  “Vega, listen to me; I can get you help if I log off,” he said. “I can alert the Game Masters to what’s going on. There is no way they’re going to let Idolum get away with this. The sooner I go, the sooner you’ll be free.”

  “Koby, please. Please don’t leave,” Vega whimpered.

  “I’m sorry Vega,” he said shamefully. Vega gasped in misery as his avatar lost consciousness.

  She was now all alone, restrained and strung up inside a hopelessly dark and grotesque prison, surrounded by her party’s dead avatars as a permanent reminder of their abandonment.

  She wished Maverick had made it to the Palace with them, but then reprimanded herself for such a selfish thought. She was glad he was still free. She knew he would never have abandoned her, which was exactly why he didn’t deserve to be held captive like this. To her surprise she realized that she was more upset about never seeing him again than about not being able to quest anymore. She wished she could talk to him, but there was no way to get any messages in or out of a dungeon.

  The only way to communicate with anyone now would be to log off, and she refused to consider that. She had no other identity other than her character, which made the thought of leaving Surreality tantamount to suicide.

  More than that though, logging off would mean Idolum had won. He wanted to take her dream world away, to force her to wake up and face Reality. So far he had turned her dream into a nightmare, but she still had it. So long as she remained logged on to Surreality, Idolum would not have stolen her dream.

  “Maverick, buddy, are you home?” Warren asked as he walked through the front door of their bungalow, hanging his jacket on the suit of elite armour he had (regrettably) purchased.

  “Yeah, I’m here,” Maverick replied listlessly, sprawled limply on his recliner.

  “You all right man? You sound even more emo than usual,” Warren said.

  “I didn’t
make it through the Obsidian Realm,” he replied. “I died. I let Vega down, and I think she’s mad at me.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Because I haven’t heard from her all day.”

  “Well she’s in a dungeon, isn’t she? You can’t communicate with the outside world in a dungeon.”

  “She would have been out hours ago.”

  “Dude, she’s a gaming addict. She probably found a hidden bonus level or something,” Warren claimed.

  “She doesn’t want to see me anymore,” Maverick said, seemingly to himself. “I’m not good enough for her. I thought that maybe I could finally be good enough for someone.”

  Warren sighed in exasperation.

  “So that’s it? You’re upset because your girlfriend-since-yesterday might have but probably didn’t dump you over a quest? I really don’t mean to be disrespectful, but can you phrase that in a way that doesn’t sound stupid?”

  “I think I’m in love with her Warren,” Maverick said.

  “Oh for God sakes, no you’re not!” Warren insisted empathically.

  “I can’t stop thinking about her. She makes me happier than I’ve ever been. She saved me from a lifetime of gold farming and all she wanted from me was help leveling up and I couldn’t even give her that.”

  “Dude, you’re being too hard on yourself again. She made it through the Insomnia Labyrinth and the Aeolic Temple thanks to you. I’m sure she appreciates that, and she’s not mad because you couldn’t make it through the Obsidian Realm. She probably died herself and started over again. That’s why she hasn’t called.”

  Maverick looked utterly unconvinced.

  “You know what, let’s do something to get your mind off her,” Warren proposed. He opened a hammerspace chest in the corner of the room. After a fair amount of rummaging he pulled out an original Nintendo game console. “It’s a completely accurate emulation. What do you say? We’re in a neuro-interactive simulation running on yottaflop quantum servers; let’s play some 8 bit.”

  He eagerly hooked the console up to their media screen and pressed the power button. Unfortunately, all that appeared was a scrambled mess.