Chapter One

Anne stared at the options hovering before her. There were just three options, but somehow that was enough to give her pause. She reached out towards the menu, hand hovering over the Easy option. Easy was good, wasn’t it?

Anne glanced at the chat interface. It said that she had seven viewers. That felt like a lot.

One of the people in the chat said to press hard, and they did seem to know more about games and such than she did. She hadn’t played anything more complicated than FarmRural in a long time.

Biting her lower lip, Anne reached down and tapped the Hard option.

The world shivered.

The hazy cocoon she was in twisted and warped. Then, with a soap-bubble pop, she was no longer in an endless void, but in a forest.

Not a nice, idyllic green place, with nice trees and nice, harmless critters like squirrels and maybe a bird or two, but an ancient forest. Trees towered above her, grand and stately, their branches clawing at the sky. Dead leaves covered the ground and muffled every noise. The few bushes tough enough to survive were cruel, thorn-covered specimens, with pretty red fruit that looked tantalizingly sweet.

The only critters were the few dead ones near those bushes, often with rotting berries still clamped in their innocent jaws.

“Unholy Goosifer, that worked?”

Anne jumped, a hand snapping to her chest as she turned. She wasn’t alone.

There was... a child. A young woman, maybe in her very early teens. She was fairly short, but that might have been her frilly dress fooling the eyes. Anne eyed her up and down. Her skin was too pale, as if she hadn’t gone outside in far too long. She had strange, sharp teeth, and her eyes were reddened on the edges, with dark bags under them.

She reminded Anne of her son after one of his ‘all night gaming streams’ or whatever.

“Hi there,” Anne said. “I’m, ah, very lost. Do you know the way back to... Canada?” Anne glanced around the foreboding forest and felt a chill run down her spine.

The young lady stood up to her full height, then curtsied, one leg crossing before the other while she pinched the sides of her skirts. “Greetings, O hero. I am Elain’e M’ango. Last daughter of the M’ango clan. You honour me by accepting my summons.”

“Ah, what’s going on?” Anne asked. She still had one of the boxes open in her vision, the one with the chat on it.

“What’s a pog?” Anne muttered. She shook her head and refocused. “Sorry, Miss M’ango? Ah, can you please tell me what’s going on?”

The young miss rose from her curtsy, then gestured to the ground. Anne followed the gesture and noticed the circle on the forest floor around her for the first time. Ancient stones, with deep carvings inlaid within them. There were bowls dug into the rock, blasted black as if something had been burning in them just recently. “I had need for a hero. My nation needs a hero. And my clan... we are not as strong as we once were. So I petitioned to summon a hero. And here you are.”

“Oh,” Anne said. She shifted from foot to foot. “Is there a way for me to get back home? I had a roast in the oven. My little Jake-i-poo’s favourite. With potatoes.”

The young lady blinked. “No?” she asked. “Lady Hero, I think that only on the completion of your quest will you be able to return home.”

“That doesn’t sound very nice,” Anne said. Her hands worried themselves together. She closed her eyes, then took a deep breath. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Elain’e repeated.

Anne nodded and stood taller.

She had faced worse than this!

She was a single mom. And if Oprah had taught her one thing, it was that she was the toughest, meanest, most terrifying thing on Earth... or whatever planet this was. She’d do what needed doing, then be back home in time for dinner.

“What do I need to do?”

Miss M’ango brightened. Or she seemed to mostly brighten. Anne suspected that the young lady was in dire need of sleep. “Well, you’re a hero, so you must have some sort of special ability. That will certainly help. Ah, in the meantime... what’s your Seal cap and what’s your Mana like?”

Anne blinked. “My what?”

“Oh,” Elain’e said. “Well, the tomes do say that heroes often need to relearn that kind of thing. Maybe a trial by fire? We really don’t have a lot of time.”

“Time for?” Anne asked.

Elain’e worried on her lower lip with her long canines. “Well, you see, Lady Hero...”

“Anne, my name is Anne,” Anne said.

“Lady Anne,” Elain’e corrected. “You’re in the nation of Not Evilia, a minor nation, far to the north and east. We are the refuge for the unwanted here. The monstrous yet still cultured. We have promised to send out our greatest warrior to the far western lands of Doormor, to slay the dark lord rising there. But that means that every clan must present a warrior, and while my clan is old, and talented in magics, we have no such combatant.”

“Wait,” Anne said. She had grown used to jumping to conclusions when talking to her son. “You want me to be that warrior?”

“Yes!

“Elain’e, I don’t know how to fight,” Anne said.

“But... but Lady Hero, Lady Anne, the grand tournament is in three days.”

Anne and Elain’e stared at each other.

“This is a fighty tournament, right? Like in that one movie with Russel Crowe?” Anne asked. “It’s not a... baking tournament or anything?”

Elain’e shook her head. “I’m afraid not,” she said. “Right, your status, please. It should be easy to know, if you just focus on it.”

Anne glanced around herself. They were still in some great woods, far from anything. “Right, my status... um.” She scrunched her nose, and a new box appeared before her.

“Um, it says that I have one hundred of both seal and mana?” Anne read. “Is this like one of those video games?”

“Pardon me, but a what?”

“Oh, nevermind,” Anne said.

Elain’e nodded along. “Well, that’s not terrible. I took out a quest from the guild that’s in this region, as a way to test the hero if... if it actually worked.” She gestured to the side, and a card appeared in her hand. It flickered, and in a blink turned into a page covered in writing and stamped with waxy seals. “It’s nothing too complex. A small tribe of moblins that need exterminating.”

“You want me to what?” Anna asked.

“I’ll assist you,” Elain’e said with all the earnestness she could muster. Seeing as how she looked like she was only on the cusp of puberty, that wasn’t much.

“That sounds dangerous,” Anne said.

“As I said, I’ll help you. I have a full deck of magical cards. That’s my clan’s speciality! Here, I can give you a few. Maybe your heroic gift is related to these?” Elain’e flicked her hand again, and handed Anne a small stack of card.

There were three of them. Two were labelled Fireball, with a large five on the left and a ten on the right. The third was labelled Cloak of Warmth. Unlike the Fireball cards, it had a silvery border.

“That’s to keep you warm,” Elain’e said.

“Are these pokemans?”

Elain’e tilted her head to the side, a curious gesture. “No? Those are normal cards. Oh, of course. The seal cost is the number on the left, the casting cost is the one on the right. You need to spend that much to cast them. Cast the clothing first. It’s less likely to end in disaster.”

Anne hesitated, then focused on the robes.

The card faded out of her hands in the same instant as a long cloak appeared and immediately fell to the floor. “Oh,” she said.

Elain’e knelt and picked the cloak up. “Now try sealing it. It shouldn’t be difficult for a Hero like yourself.”

“What’s a sealing?” Anne asked.

“It’s when you turn something into a card. Anyone can do it, and with nearly anything.”

“Impressive,” Anne said. She touched the cloak, focused very very hard, and between one blink and the next, the cloak disappeared and a card appeared in Anne’s hands. “Oh, that is nifty!”

“I’ll show you more about it later,” Elian’e said. “But for now, we absolutely need to get on with the training. We have very little time to prepare!”

***

The audience has: 103 Points!