Freya stood motionless, trying to assess her situation. 

Why was her full name displayed in the corner of her vision? And what did all these other words and numbers mean? What kind of enchantment was this? What malicious purpose did it serve?

Taking a deep breath, she performed a mental check of her body. The only sources of discomfort were her strained arm muscles and minor palm scrapes from having her staff knocked out of her hands. Her neck and shoulder muscles were tense, but she slowly eased them loose. 

Closing her eyelids and then covering her face with her hands, she took a few more long deep breaths. Mentally moving from one body part to another, nothing felt out of the ordinary. The soles of her feet comfortably molded to her old leather boots, her lungs expanded and relaxed without effort, and her pulse settled the more she relaxed.

After one last deep breath, she opened her eyes.

The text that listed her name and other odd words and numbers was still there. She also noticed there were some tiny images in the top left corner of her vision.

“Great, now I’m seeing even more shit.”

Retracing her steps, Freya reviewed the day’s events. Her most acute symptoms appeared after touching the playing card. Attempting to remember what the playing card looked like, Freya found her memory unusually fuzzy. What color was it? What was on it? She remembered thinking it was a playing card, but what made her think that?

Freya rubbed her temples. Setting that aside, there were a lot of odd occurrences today. But the strangeness really began when the man in black walked into her shop.

Now that Freya thought about it, he dressed rather oddly. He wore all black form-fitting clothing with tall boots and…. did he have a black scarf around his head? No one in the country of Oyosi wore headscarves. And he carried an odd sword more like a long knife of a style she’d never seen before. In battle, he seemed very proficient with it.

Which brought her to a thought that had been brewing in the back of her mind since the fight with the demon. The man said he needed a lesser demon he found in his tea kettle exorcised. But clearly, he could have defeated something that small himself. Did he lie about the size of the demon he needed exorcising? Perhaps he wanted her help but didn’t want to scare her off? But that other thing he said, “Shit, how did it get so big?”

Freya tapped her finger against her cheek.

She took out a piece of hard bread from her bag and chewed on it, debating.

“Well, the best thing to do would be to ask the man himself!”

The man in black seemed to be the root of her problems, so who better to clear things up? Her summoning materials were still in her messenger bag from a case last week, so she set about preparing for the ritual.

Digging through her messenger bag, Freya took out three corked glass vials, an empty wide-lipped bottle, and a small metal tin. 

Into the empty bottle, she poured equal parts of the vials labeled haysig and kangrah. From the tin, she picked a few dried sprigs of rosemary and ran her fingers down the stem to release the leaves into the concoction. Finally, she carefully added a drop of the last vial. Too much essence of tamir could ruin the other ingredients; not enough would fail to summon the dead.

While mixing the potion to reach its full potency, she thought about what questions to ask. The dead could only be summoned so long and for so many times. With a freshly dead man, she could probably get five minutes out of him before he would be sent back.

On a flat patch of ground, Freya lit three candles and set them in a circle. She hastily poured her summoning potion at the center. Before it absorbed into the ground, she lit a special incense stick and dipped it into the potion. A plume of smoke began to waft up. From the outside pocket of her bag, she took out her pocket watch to keep track of time. Lastly, she poured energy into her staff and lowered the head into the smoke.

As both the summoner and mediator, she brought to mind the man’s image and sifted through other souls until she found him.

“Come forth!”

Slowly the image of the man materialized in the smoke.

“Who are you? Name yourself!” Freya demanded.

“Huh, I knew I wasn’t dead. What a stupid game.”

Freya paused, then poured more energy into her staff, “Answer the question!”

The man looked at her and then answered, “Here, I’m known as Azer.”

“You’re known here as Azer? Where are you from?”

Azer laughed, “This is a game. I’m from Ohio. My name’s Dylan Adams.”

“Ohio? Game?”

“Yeah, I started playing this game a week ago. It’s very realistic. People say if you run out of lives here, you can die in real life, but it looks like I’m not dead.”

“Does this game you play involve demons?”

“Well, yeah. The point of the game is supposed to be finding these pieces of summer-no, sonder around the world, but that’s not really fun. Killing monsters is more fun. Plus, in order to level up, you gotta kill monsters.”

“So you need to kill demons. Did you purposely summon that demon in your house and then ask me for help to kill it?”

“Pretty much. I lured a low level out here so that I could watch a shaman use Meridian Manipulation. I read on a forum that if you watch how it works and then kill the shaman, you can pick up a skill book.”

“Meridian Manip–wait, you were going to kill me?”

“You’re just an NPC. I’m sure you would respawn or something.”

“What’s a-, never mind. Explain these things that appeared after you vanished.”

Azer looked over at the clothes and books, “Oh, those are all the things in my inventory. Ah man, why did I lose all my inventory?”

“So those are your things?”

“Yeah”

“Do they contain an enchantment?”

“Hm, I don’t think I picked up anything enchanted.”

“After I picked up a playing card, all this strange text and images appeared in my field of view. I can see some of it even now. It lists my name and 200 slash 200 HP, and things like that.”

“Interesting,” Azer said, rubbing his chin. “Sounds like stuff that I see when I’m playing in-game. I never thought NPCs could see their own HP.”

“When you’re playing your game you see these kinds of things?”

“Yeah, my player name is listed along with my level, class, HP, and MP.”

“The last line says, ‘Choose a class.’”

“Hm, I thought your class was shaman. It’s an NPC class. Actually, I can’t see your stats right now. That’s strange.”

A million more questions floated around Freya’s mind. She looked at her pocket watch.

“Is there anyone else playing this game?” Freya asked.

“Oh yeah, lots. Last I heard there was like 5 million players online.”

Freya blinked.

“How do I find other players? I want to speak to one.”

“Hm, you can tell if you run into other players by their screencaps. You could also DM them to talk. Can NPCs DM?”

“What’s DM?”

“Direct message.”

Freya sighed, “What's direct message?”

Azer seemed equally annoyed, “Do you see that envelope looking icon at the top left.”

Freya nodded.

“Click on that.”

“Click?”

“Touch it!”

Freya hesitantly touched the image.

“I’m seeing those illusions again, but the text is different this time.”

“What’s on the screen?”

“It says ‘add friends or search player ID to start chat’”

“Hm okay, I’ll tell you the player ID of the guy I was going to trade my watermelon bombs skill book. He can explain all this to you. I want to respawn already. Both his username and player ID is ‘Infamous Biscuit.’”

After explaining how to send a direct message and reassuring her that his name really was Infamous Biscuit, Azer’s opaque figure flickered in the thin plume of smoke.

“Did you really intend to kill me?” Freya asked, circling back to an earlier point in the conversation.

“Yeah,” Azer said, easily compelled by Freya’s summoning power, “Meridian Manipulation is a great skill for close combat classes. Few players have learned it so far.”

“Do players often kill people?”

“Hm, some people like to play straight-laced and won’t PK or kill NPCs.”

“Is this Infamous Biscuit player straight-laced?”

Azer’s image was rapidly fading, “I don’t know him that well. But he’s a druid, so maybe he has higher morals? I don’t know.”

At his last words, the smoke disappeared along with the soul of Dylan Adams.