I was the first one to arrive back ingame. I sat in the protective bubble of the campfire and watched the stars rotate overhead through the canopy of the trees. It was extremely calming to just watch the world roll from on its surface. I felt myself fall into a strange trance as I gazed up. I needed to do so much right now. My life had gone from being average and unassuming to extremely complicated in a very short space of time, so having a moment to myself did my mind some good.

It wasn’t for another two hours that one of the group turned up. Liam appeared before me in a shower of multihued light. He nodded to me and said nothing, sitting down to wait with me. He threw me a glance every now and then, as though something was bothering him.

“What’s up?” I asked him quietly.

“Nothing really. I was just trying to figure out how to get some conversation out of you. Karen said she was still dealing with stuff in the real world for a bit longer, and I don’t know Col so I figure we might be here a while,” his voice had a kind of world weary quality to it.

I snorted softly, “Conversation away. You seem tired, what’s wrong?”

He shrugged and looked away, “Nothing, just family stuff.”

I hummed in reply.

Neither of us spoke again until Colourless appeared. Looking down at our melancholic visages, a smile spread over his face like he’d just gotten everything he wanted in this world and ours.

“Oh no he’s happy. We’re in trouble now,” said Liam wryly.

The unexpected sarcastic humour from him cracked my strange state of mind and I began giggling.

“I’ll have you know I have great reason to be in good spirits my dear Liam,” Col said with a pompous affectation to his voice.

That tipped me over the edge, suddenly I was really going now. My high pitched encouragement to his buffoonery echoing through the trees.

He gave a mock disdainful look and flicked his nose in the air, “I’ll have you know you strange lady, that I am now the proud owner of several blocks of the highest quality chocolate. Please curb your amusement for long enough to show the proper awe.”

“What are you on about you utter head case?” asked Liam with a bemused expression on his face.

I fell onto my side and tried to get over my hysterical giggling fit as Col continued to act like a fool and Liam threw sarcastic insults in his direction. The strange mood of the camp had been thoroughly bulldozed by Col’s silliness, and I had a little suspicion that maybe that was the point.

It was halfway through this fiasco that Karen fizzled into existence in the camp. She was greeted by two guys with complimentary senses of humour throwing pretend insults at each other for the hysterical audience of me. The look on her face was so confused you could see stars dancing around her head. I started choking it was all too much.

“I don’t even - know why I'm - laughing. You guys - are so lame,” I told them between wheezing gasps as I tried to regain control of my diaphragm.

“Oh you’re laughing because of my brilliant wit!” Col exclaimed with a grin.

I didn’t really have an answer for that.

Karen was staring at me with a funny express on her face.

“You look exactly the same,” she said while her eyes roved over me. That caused me to feel really weird, watching her eyes go up and down my semi-prone form.

“She what?” asked Col, you could practically see his ears perk up.

“In real life and in the game. She looks exactly the same. I bumped into her after football yesterday,” she told them. They seemed to miss the full implications of that fact, and she didn’t elaborate.

“Huh. Did you make your character like yourself on purpose?” asked Liam.

I started to shake my head, then nodded instead, “It really helps with control,” I didn't tell them that originally I’d looked different..

“Damn, I should have done that. I’m a bit shorter in real life and it’s messing me up,” added Col.

“What about you Karen? What’s it like having a tail?” I asked her, diverting everyone away from my own looks.

“It’s weird… I guess? Uh. Yup, feels funny,” she mumbled, reaching out to grab it and bring it into view.

“You’re shorter in reality too,” I said, staring at her tail. I wanted to touch it. It was the same pink-red as her avatar’s skin, and smooth with only very faint hair along it.

“Yeah. I wonder if we can do appearance changes. I’d like to more naturally fit this body,” She said, raising her eyes to meet mine.

I nodded, but after that we continued staring at each other. We’d just had a small, normal conversation. Realising this I felt my face heat, and my throat locked up.

Liam coughed and interjected, changing the topic, “So how was your game K? You were facing Rangitumau College right?”

As we packed up the camping shield, I listened to them speak. They had obviously been friends for a while. It wasn’t long before we were on the road again, Liam and Karen walking ahead of myself and Col. I still didn’t feel like speaking and he respected that, like he always did when I was like this.

We’d walked for several hours before we encountered something. And something it was. We had just crested a small rise in a kind of small plain that dotted the enormous forest like large clearings. Trees still dotted the wide expanse of grass and wildflowers, and a stream meandered lazily through the place. The scene was beautiful and idyllic, apart from one small thing.

Near the center of the clearing, close to us as we stood on the top of the small hill, was something that defied conscious thought. It was something that the dreaming mind cooked up right before it died of a drug overdose. The disturbance was an area of about five meters in radius. Inside this area was a faintly undulating mass of geometric and fractal patterns. It was like the ground, leaves, bushes and what might have been a tree, had all bubbled up in some sort of violent MC Escher explosion.

We stood there rooted to the spot as the mass suddenly expanded. A nice normal run of the mill rock the size of my torso was suddenly consumed, its form expanding and twisting into a quadruple helix. Then it fell over and out of the area facing the sky crystalline structures lurched upwards before fracturing. Instead of falling apart like a normal crystal would when it lost structural integrity, the pieces floated in mid air, rotating and spinning at random speeds and angles that changed every time you blinked.

“GET OUT. LEAVE. RUN SYLANNA. DO NOT DAWDLE WHILE PERIL DRAWS YOU IN,” a voice shattered my thoughts, tearing through my mind but not my ears. I gasped and sank to the ground.

“Are you okay Syl? asked Col as he quickly knelt to check on me.

The voice was was Feslia, my goddess. Her voice had not had the usual calm and confident tone it usually possessed. She’d sounded urgent and fearful.

“Guys, we should get away. Right now. My goddess just blasted my head telling me to get away from that thing,” I told me friends as I recovered myself.

“Sounds like a good idea, that thing is making me feel sick,” Liam said with his hand on his stomach.

Before anyone could reply, there was a gut wrenching sound from the creepy geometry project. It was a chittering screaming sound, and when we looked over there was a creature forming inside the zone. It was horrific, it had the head of a beetle, beady black eyes staring into space. It’s body was that of an earthworm, but parts of it had extruded outwards at random angles to form limbs. Along it’s back was a layer of beetle wings that appeared to have been copy-pasted all the way down the length of it’s worm body, protective carapace and all.

The thing did not look right at all. Not in the way that most media will portray some flesh abomination, all bubbling fat at weird faces in the skin. No this was far more disturbing. The whole beast had a geometric wrongness to it. Too many flat planes and hard angles, all made of organic material, but looking inorganic in nature. Then it saw us and screamed again.

I ran, and I dragged Col’s arm with me. My eyes sought out Karen and Liam, hoping they would come too. They did. Karen’s eyes were wide with horror and Liam was scowling, his face white even beneath his dark complexion. I probably looked the same. We heard the creature give chase, and I looked back. It’s gait was wrong too as it struggled with it’s inefficient anatomy and body structure. It was also slower than us thank god, or Goddess I should say in this case. Col turned at that moment too and let out a yell as raised his hand and hit it with an arcing pulse of electricity. The thing reared and screamed, falling over onto the dewy grass. It struggled, trying to right itself and having a difficult time.

“Keep running!” I told the others with panic in my voice.

It wasn’t until we reached the edge of the enormous clearing that we checked on our pursuer. It had stopped about a kilometer behind us and was wildly thrashing in the distance, mauling a tree.

“Holy shit,” breathed Liam, “What the fuck was that?”

Karen stared at him, then looked to me. Her face was still drawn in fear. Everyone looked to me then, I was the one with the goddess who apparently knew enough to run away.

I looked up at the sky and asked, “Felsia please, what the hell was that just now?”

I got no answer, inside my head or out. We all waited, me staring at the sky while the others kept their eyes on my face. After a minute I turned to them again and shook my head.

“She didn’t reply. I don’t know anything either, she just yelled at me to get away,” I explained.

“That wasn’t normal was it? Just some random event thing from the game?” asked Col.

“I have no idea. We should look it up when we log out tonight I guess,” Liam sighed.

Karen still hadn’t said anything, and I watched her, wondering if she was okay.

She was watching the monster with a fearful gaze, and I just barely heard her whisper, “Just from the game… Just from the game...”

“What?” I asked.

She blinked and turned to look at me, shook her head and then gave me a small fragile smile, “Nothing.”

“Um, we should keep moving,” Liam said.

Everyone agreed and pretty soon we were on our way once more.

We spent almost sixteen hours playing Pellan that day, travelling together, fighting and generally enjoying each other’s company. The time we were to play in the real world translated to two days in the game, and that meant I spent my first full night there curled up in a bedroll that Col had thoughtfully gotten me.

The camp shield kept us safe from roaming enemies and it was nice to sleep under the stars. The ground was lumpy though and sleep was difficult to get a hold of. I knew that Liam and Col were asleep because both of them were snoring quietly, but a few feet from me I could see Karen shifting around in her own bedroll. She seemed to be uncomfortable.

“Are you okay?” I whispered to her.

She startled and flipped around to face me, emerging from the cocoon of furs with blinking owlish eyes.

“What?” she whispered back.

“Are you okay?” I repeated.

“Yeah, it’s just hard trying to sleep. I usually sleep on my back but I can’t because of this stupid tail. When I try to sleep on my back it doesn’t feel comfortable. It’s been bothering me since the first day.”

“Why don’t you sleep on your front?” I asked her.

She looked at me like I’d made a joke, “Because I have boobs Sylly.”

She’d just called me silly but with a Y. Like my name. My heart began to increase it’s marching pace.

“Oh,” I mouthed at her before breaking eye contact.

We lay there for several minutes before she broke the silence with another whisper.

“So, you like, have the ears and stuff in reality too,” she stated.

I made a strangled sound and nodded. This could go very badly.

“You’re a little fae girl. Like, a real one.”

I nodded again.

“How?”

I shrugged.

“Syl?” her voice was tender, soft like she was trying to calm a frightened kitten.

“I don’t know. I wasn’t one before I started playing Pellan. Then I met my goddess and... “ I trailed off, unsure of how to explain everything.

“Me too,” she mumbled.

“Huh?” I asked, unsure I’d heard her correctly.

“Something weird happened to me too when I first arrived in Pellan. I was lost. I found this spooky stone, it was glowing like dark red. When I touched it I felt super crazy and I passed out. I couldn’t feel my tail properly, but when I woke up I could. When I logged out I had horns and a tail. It was still my body but like, things had changed? My race has an ability called “Darkling Blend,” that lets me hide my features, but it’s only an illusion. If someone reached for the top of my head they would feel my horns,” she whispered, her voice tinged with worry.

“Wait really? My race has an ability like that too. Wow so you’re like me? But your whole… This is so crazy,” My mind stumbled over questions and ideas faster than I could fully express them. The revelation that I was not the only one who had changed made my mind whirl.

“Yeah it’s crazy,” she said.

“And like, my goddess can speak to me in my dreams even when I’m not wearing the helmet.”

“Wait… so what does that mean?”

“I don’t know!”

Both of our eyes were wide as we stared at each other. Our minds trying to run through what this all might actually mean. Then I got distracted. Her eyes were gorgeous. I could barely see them, but I could see the moons and stars reflected lightly in them as I got lost. I didn’t realise it, but my hand had reached out towards her from underneath my bedroll. Her eyes tracked it as it made its way towards her. By the time I realised what I was doing, my hand landed on her cheek. She jolted away from the contact with a squeak.

“I... I’m- Syl, I’m straight,” she stammered with wide eyes.

“Fuck. I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was doing I’m sorry. I’m gay. I mean I’m straight. I mean. Shit. I’m not into girls, I’m into guys,” I lied.

I wasn’t into guys anymore. Not Jeremy, nor any of the muscled athletes from the field earlier today. Sometimes I was though? When I thought of myself as a guy and getting with Jeremy I was still interested, but being with him in this body did nothing for me. It was all very confusing.

She gulped, nodded, and rolled over to face the other direction.

“Goodnight,” I heard her mutter faintly.

“Goodnight,” I whispered to her back.

The next day neither of us spoke much, but we made incredible progress across towards town. We were just two days away now and as strange as the conversation with Karen had been, and the interaction at the end, I was super excited to get there and find a solution to my real world problems. When we stopped for the night I almost didn’t want to log out.

“Ugh I want to finish travelling so bad. I just want to beee there!” I complained to the camp at large as we prepared to log out.

“We’re getting some good experience like this though,” said Col as he messed with the camping device.

“Yeah I guess we are,” I said, still pouting as I looked at his hunched form.

“I’m level seven now,” Liam told us.

“Same,” said Karen quietly.

“I’m only level five,” I said continuing my pouting session.

Karen stole a glance at me and then quickly looked away and rubbed her forearm with her hand, “You’ll get there,” she said.

“Yeah, maybe when we get to town and don’t have to rely on each other being online to travel you can catch up,” Col suggested.

“I guess,” I mumbled.

“Right well I’m out, same time tomorrow guys?” Liam asked us.

“Yup,” we all chorused.

Everyone waved and melted into bright multicoloured light.

I took a moment before I followed them out of the game to review the changes I’d made to my character after hitting level five. I still had to do some research before spending the skill points, but I’d caved in and spent two points, increasing my ranged healing spell to rank two as well as purchasing the summoned shield of light that the description told me was called Shield of the Dawn. I left the four skill points for once I knew what i was doing. Whenever that would be.

**Nia**

Nia coughed as the guns continued their shuddering assault on the building. The vibrations they caused when they fired tickled her throat and it always made her cough. She looked around, admiring the view that five Order cruisers presented as they pounded lumps of hard steel into the corrupted building with satisfaction. Finally a win, she thought.

They’d been losing ground recently back home on Andegral, and the exploration teams were being recalled to help deal with the sudden explosion in activity from their enemies. The great tear in reality at the center of the world crater was spewing out more abominations than ever before.

It was almost like it was worried about something.