Rora leaned down towards me with her body held above mine by her soft, strong arms, and I felt my heart do a little backflip in anticipation. Her breath was warm on my neck as she leaned down to kiss it in a gentle way that was at odds with the laughing eager look that danced in her eyes.

When her warm lips made contact I let out a breathless little half-gasp, leaning my head back and to the side so I could feel her hair brush my cheek. The way it slid over my skin, tickling and sparking as it went, made the kiss that much more potent. I felt wonder overwhelm me for a moment as I realised that there was a real damn person right here kissing me. Sure she was inside a virtual body right now, but this was still a thinking, living human that liked me enough to be here with me.

Once again her hands worked at my buttons, even more nimble than the first time she had undone my shirt.

“You’re getting better at that,” I chuckled breathlessly.

“Hmmm?” she hummed from my neck, still licking and nipping at the soft skin there with her lips.

“Undoing my buttons,” I clarified as she got the last one undone.

“I do indeed know how buttons work,” she murmured mildly into my neck.

“Right,” I whispered, running my hands over her shoulders just to touch any part of her I could. If she could be described as any singular word, it would be competent.

Punctuating each word with a kiss to my neck, she said, “You’re. Really. Damn. Cute.”

Cute? I’d been called that before, but never in a feminine context. I was cute? Like, the girl version of cute? I felt the happy panic that I was coming to associate with being perceived as feminine by others return with a vengeance. Rora didn’t notice, she was too busy running her hands across my stomach was an almost reverent awe that culminated in an almost vulnerable smile when they came to rest on my waist. It felt good, having someone hold my waist like that.

She’d stopped kissing my neck, instead shifting to lean on one elbow as the other hand continued its journey south. I watched her hand go, just as she was watching the breathless anticipation that was no doubt all over my expression. Her fingers made it to the hairless place where I should have had a bush, and she stopped to draw teasing little circles with her fingers eliciting a surprised giggle out of me.

When her fingers kept moving, passing beyond where I could see, she paused to place a featherlight touch on my clit. That alone stopped my breathing for a moment, but when she parted me gently with two fingers while running a third down the center, I took in a squealing gasp and looked up into her eyes. She smiled, leaning down to nudge my nose with hers for a moment.

“You okay?” she asked, softly.

“Yeah,” I said in a voice that was the hottest, sexiest noise I had ever made. How could such a hot, sexual and damn feminine sound come out of me?

She wasn’t immune to the voice I had just used either. I could see her gulp and bite her lip for a moment, and she leaned down to press a hot urgent kiss onto my parted lips. It was during this kiss that her fingers reached my entrance, skirting and dancing the tips across the rough silky skin she found there. I held my breath, looking into her eyes with apprehension and a begging need in equal measure. What did it feel like to have someone inside me?

When she slowly pressed a single slim finger inside, it was possibly the most intense experience of my life. I felt little rippling shudders run through my body as two things happened simultaneously. It was as though something had crashed through a sheet of glass in my mind, then slipped perfectly into a slot I hadn’t realised was missing a component until this moment. The second thing, was that the first feeling was so intense I completely lost my horny mood as it rocked my spinning consciousness.

I felt feminine. I could feel a girl's finger inside me! Rora’s finger! She shifted it, moving further inside and causing the muscles I had in there to clench involuntarily. Feeling something moving around at all inside me was pretty wild, but knowing it was my vagina that she was inside… I realised with a terrifying clarity that I would be losing that when I logged out. I... didn’t want that? It was ridiculous of course, wanting to keep a body I had never really owned.

I felt the suspension of disbelief I had somehow constructed around myself during my time in Cora fracture. I wasn’t Tami! I was Tami! No, wait, I was Terry! Oh god why did that feel so hollow? Why did my own fucking name feel so fucking hollow? Almost as an afterthought I felt Rora quickly pull her finger out of me.

Her panicked voice came to me as though through a tunnel when she asked, “What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?”

She cradled my head in her hands, and I realised then that I was crying. When had I started crying?

“I don’t… I don’t know what’s wrong,” I sobbed, almost truthfully.

She didn’t look convinced, but she didn’t protest, instead starting to pull back.

“No!” I cried urgently, wrapping my arms around her waist and pulling her back.

“You want me to hold you?” she asked uncertainly.

“Please!” I begged, pushing my head up under her chin, feeling the tears pour forth in earnest.

She was the only thing grounding me to.. Me. Whatever “me” meant at the moment. My whole life up until this game had been shattered by whatever had fallen into place just now. I had no idea what this tumult of emotion meant, or why I was disassociating with my sense of self, but the warmth of her body right here and now…? It anchored me against the storm, keeping me from drifting away into the black.

“Tami… please tell me what’s wrong?” she whispered, her voice raw with worry.

Tami.

Tami?

I was Tami? I was Terry too, or I had been, but… that felt strange? The name rang hollow through the history of my life, and every time that name was used to address me, a girl’s voice came back shouting, “No!” It sounded like the voice I had in the game, but younger?

At age three, my first memory, I saw an image of my mother cooing at me, asking, “How’s my little Terry?” Three year old me shouts, “No! Not Terry!”

I saw my first day at elementary school, when my name was called on the roll. “Terry?” the teacher asked, but I replied, “No, my name is Tami.”

Gymnastics, age nine. The only tournament I ever tried to go to, I heard my name spoken by the announcer, and I frown at their error. That’s not my name.

Age fifteen, after losing my virginity to a girl two years older than me, she said, “That was your first time Terry? Damn…” and I turn to the girl, my eyes showing confusion. “My name is Tami.”

I’m talking to a cute girl named Kristina at age eighteen, and I hear her say with excited expectation, “Terry… I think I’m falling… like, I think I have feelings for you.” I shake my head, “No you’re mistaken, you can’t be falling in love with Terry, he doesn’t exist. He is nothing but a stained glass window to be broken so that the truth may pass through filtered. My name is Tami.”

My name is Tami. How could something that was objectively false be so fundamentally true at the same time?

“Tami!” Rora said urgently, shaking me slightly to get my attention.

“What?” I asked, my voice coming out choked and in pain.

“What’s going on with you? You’re acting like… like something bad happened to you and I just set you off,” she said, crying her own tears now as she brushed stray hairs out of my face.

“I think it did, in a way… maybe. I don’t know, I don’t understand half of what is happening in my heart right now,” I told her, closing my eyes and trying to still my shaking body.

“I’m so sorry… I didn’t think… I mean we were having fun and then… I’m so sorry if I hurt you or…” she said, losing her words through her worry.

Through an effort of will I pulled the broken, shattered pieces of my mind together and wrapped them in tape. It was precarious, I didn’t relish my future self for having to work through that crap, but I didn’t want Rora to think she had hurt me either. My crisis could wait until we were safe.

“No, you’re great Rora! It wasn’t your fault. I think we should… pause though. Stop for the night,” I told her through a shuddering breath.

She seemed to consider me for a moment, her moisture filled eyes searching for answers to what had just happened inside my head. I hoped she found some, because I was struggling to understand that myself.

“Alright. That’s a good idea,” she nodded, her hands shaking as they buttoned my shirt back up.

Once she was done with my shirt, I awkwardly wobbled my way to my feet and took a step towards my own bedroll, then turned back to her. She looked upset, worried, but still so beautiful.

“You’re amazing Rora. You’re really someone incredible, please don’t let this make you think otherwise, because I definitely don’t,” I said earnestly and passionately, searching her expression for some sort of confirmation that she understood.

She nodded slowly, a smiled fluttering briefly across her lips, and I decided that would need to be enough, because I needed to be unconscious. If my conscious mind couldn’t figure things out, then maybe my subconscious mind could.

 

****

 

My subconscious mind had just as few answers for me when I woke up as I had last night. I had at least slept as well as one could when you were sleeping on the ground with just a thick layer of furs for padding. I knew one fundamental truth, and the rest of what I knew was in flux. My time as Tami had caused some subconscious realisation in my mind. I didn’t want to be Terry anymore. It felt wrong, it had probably always felt wrong and I had just never realised what right felt like until I had finally experienced it.

What that meant for my future, I had no idea. Would I become one of those people who got their body stored long term at a facility while they spent their life in VR? I didn’t think so. VR was a fun escape from the strict lines and regulations of society, but it was not reality. I had a family, friends and a twin sister I cared deeply about who existed primarily in the real world.

I knew that the idea of changing myself in real life was a long shot at best, even if I wanted to do that. It seemed like such a big thing to do first off. Just… change myself? Again, the real world was not virtual reality. You couldn’t just change your body to suit your mood on a whim. I’d heard about people who did, and I had always felt a little strange about it.

I knew vaguely that you could take pills. Those were available, but I didn’t really know how they worked or what they did. Then there was the option that awful conservative nutters kept hating on. They raged at it like it was the end of all life on earth or something. It was very new compared to the pills. You’d go to an expensive body shaping clinic and pay to get your whole body changed. Most rich people went there to get their legs lengthened or their hips widened so they could look better in a swimsuit.

I’d never be able to afford that option, and it left my future feeling hollow and empty. How could I keep putting one foot in front of the other when there was no destination I was interested in pursuing? What the fuck did my degree in Creative Marketing Idea Generation mean when I’d be doing it as Terry?

Finally I decided that I’d open my eyes, letting them adjust to the thin sliver of light that filtered through between a small gap in the trap door. Things were quiet in the cellar, and with a flash of panic I realised that I couldn’t hear anything from Rora. Had she left in the night? I jerked my head to the side to look at her, and sighed with relief when I saw her lying on her side and staring back at me.

“Morning,” she said quietly.

“Um, morning,” I replied, my voice coming out hollow and dead.

“You don’t seem much better than last night,” she observed sadly.

“I’ll… live,” I sighed, unable to meet her gaze.

“You sure? I won’t blame you if you log out now. You seemed pretty upset last night,” she said.

“No!” I blurted, a spike of panic hitting me like a truck. “No… I’m staying in. At least until tomorrow evening when we need to log out.”

Relief washed over her face and she seemed to deflate, closing her eyes and leaning back into her bedroll, “Oh thank fuck. Sorry, you’re kinda cool to be around, and I want to get out of here alive. Our cred is going to be ruined in the public group community because of that asshole Florence. He didn’t like us much, so he’s going to blame the failure of our party on us, even if it was really Grerum’s fault for splitting the party.”

“Oh… I didn’t even think about that,” I groaned, almost welcoming the petty ingame drama as a distraction. “We’ll just have to prove them wrong! Come out of here with some badass trophy or something.”

Something about having a goal that was both inconsequential in the grand scheme of things but still relevant to my current situation was like a lifeline being thrown from a ship after I’d gone overboard. That was my future. My future was beating up some flying cunt and taking its shit, then shoving it in Florence’s face. I could do that.

I saw Rora look over and smile tenderly at me, “Yeah! Fuck everything else, let’s kill us a bad guy and show that pompous ass who’s real hot shit around here.”

“That would be you,” I winked. “You’re hot.”

She snorted. “Yeah same to you too Tami. Ready to get up and have breakfast?”

“Yeah. I can do all this so long as I don’t think about what’s… going to happen after we log out,” I said, whispering the last part as my mood wavered for a moment, my mind threatening to stray briefly back into the darkness.

As Rora looked through her inventory for the cooking stuff, seeming not to have heard me, she looked up. “Oh hey, you might have leveled up after everything yesterday, take a look.”

I nodded and brought the menu up, finding that she was right. Looking at what I had gained this level I saw that in addition to the stat points and ability points, I’d also had my Ability constructor improved. Previously it had been just three nodes connected in a triangle, but now a fourth point had been added, making it a diamond shape with the two middle nodes connected to each other, along with connections running to the top and bottom nodes.

This opened up some options with my abilities, and I rushed to mess around with it, grasping for anything to distract myself at the moment. I went to my fire ability first and had a look at it. It was made of a fire node, a self activation node and a mental specification node. The fire node’s functionality was obvious, but the other two were a little more obtuse. The first one allowed me to create the fire with a thought around me, while the second one allowed me to specify what part of my body I set on fire. I think? I wasn’t sure, some of the components we could slot into the nodes had some crazy names, and even more obtuse descriptions.

I added another fire component into the node that had just opened up, connecting it to the self activation node and the other fire node. This effectively just increased the damage the ability could do.

Next I moved on to my charge ability, taking the time to try and understand this one. It seemed like this one worked by just increasing my speed a shitload for half a second. A speed node was slotted next to a self activation node and that was it. I decided to add another speed node next to the first, but I was at a loss for what to do next.

I was about to leave it at that when I remembered something. Taylor had been watching some old anime, and there had been a guy who would charge up his movements and stuff. It had looked impressive, and I realised with a smile that defied my current mood, that I knew what I was going to do. I was willing to bet that building myself to be anime as fuck would translate into some satisfying gameplay.

I looked to the side of the ability creator and changed the ability from an active ability to a channelled ability. This gave me access to a few standard channelled ability nodes, one of which was called variable activation. It meant that the longer I channelled the ability, the greater the effect and stamina cost would be. I added it to the bottom node, and another speed node went into the top slot.

I now had an ability that would allow me to either activate it immediately for a small speed boost, or one where I could charge it up, causing it to increase my speed a shitload at the cost of a large portion of my stamina.

“Hey Tami, here’s breakfast,” Rora said, pulling me out of my menus as she handed me a bowl.

“Oh,” I said. “Thanks.”

Let’s see if food would help?

 

****

 

Creaking the trap door open, I carefully took a peek out into the light to see if we still had our friend waiting out there. When I saw that the immediate coast seemed clear, I pushed the trap door open very carefully and hopped up, watching for more threats. Nothing seemed to be moving still, so I looked back down the hole and motioned for Rora to follow me up.

She levered herself out while I watched the doorway and many new holes in the walls. The tower looked considerably less structurally sound now, and that was from the inside. I could only imagine what the outside looked like. When Rora indicated she was ready, we moved to the entrance and peeked out.

The mist was just as silent and eerie as ever, seeming to shift and morph into unseen shapes and ethereal enemies. It was hard to tell if there was anything out there, or if we were alone. All one of those things had to do was hide outside the range of our vision and stay still. We’d never see it.

Watching the odd mist, I couldn’t help but be reminded of my own opaque future. It was already proving harder than I’d thought to block out the tumultuous emotions from before, but looking into that mist I couldn’t help but see it as a metaphor for my empty future. I wanted to fight something. I needed the distraction.

“I’m going to go out,” I told Rora. “I want to get this shit finished.”

“Alright, I’ll jump in the moment I see it,” she reassured me.

I stepped out into the daylight, ready to dash out of the way of any spiked flail rain that might be falling today. Apprehensive step after apprehensive step took me further from safety, but nothing came charging out of the mist with the intent to end me.

I looked around awkwardly out in the open like I’d just been stood up by a date for almost a minute and a half before I turned and gave a bemused shrug to my friend inside the tower. I couldn’t even hear it flying around above us like it had done on and off all of yesterday.

“Uhhh, I don’t think it’s here?” I called.

Rora stepped cautiously out of the doorway and walked over to me, her bright eyes scanning our surroundings with suspicion. When she reached me she continued her to watch for threats until she was also satisfied.

“Interesting. Maybe it found our party last night?” she wondered aloud.

“I think so. It looks like Grerum disbanded the party too, so I guess that’s that as well,” I winced.

Rora looked pensive for a moment, then turned to study me. “I think we might have better luck getting out of here if we go through the city. I’m thinking that since we’re on a peninsula of sorts, and civilisations like to build on coasts and other bodies of water, we might be able to find that and use it as a guide.”

“Yeah okay. That’s… really smart actually. Let’s do that,” I said, giving her a lopsided little smile. Once again there she was proving how damn competent she was. It was yet another thing that I found attractive, probably because I was… the opposite of competent.

Making our way into the city was an eerie experience to say the least. The architecture was immense and soaring, with a style that looked like it had taken influences from both ancient greece and stereotypical fantasy high elves. The roads were huge, as large as a freeway in some places, with their intricately patterned cobblestone having long since been ruined and overgrown by the gnarled and twisted plants of the Bleaklands.

Everywhere the signs of battle damage could be seen. Huge holes melted through the solid once-white stone walls, or whole city blocks looked like they had been heaved into the air and allowed to crash back down under the weight of gravity. Someone had really fucked this city up back in the virtual day.

It wasn’t an entirely peaceful exploration though. We were attacked by small packs of Khail at almost every turn, and frequently we had to use the surrounding buildings to create choke points that would let us whittle them down in relative safety. I levelled up again after one of these fights, as did Rora, and we stopped to quickly assign points. Mine went into strength and speed again, with the ability points left until I could give everything a proper look over later.

It was about an hour into our careful walk through the city that we came across something truly bizarre, and I realised we were definitely out of our depth now. A man, in the vaguest sense of the term, stood in a square before us. He stood at almost twelve feet tall, and seemed to be made of a flaking limestone. He was dressed in ornate tarnished golden armour, with his face covered by an expressionless ivory mask, the eyes of which cried a sticky black tar.

From its back protruded two huge wings made of interlocking limestone and ceramic plates, which huge feathers had been tied to with filthy twine to replace rotting dead ones. I would have thought it was some sort of disgusting statue but for two important factors. The first was the way it was twitching subtly, moving in little bursts of speed like a curious sparrow scoping out a piece of bread that lay on the pavement. The second factor was the twin flails he held in each hand, both still coated in stone dust from our tower, and what I suspected was the blood of our party members.

“Oh shit,” Rora murmured, quietly drawing her sword.

She was apparently not quiet enough, for the thing’s head jerked around to face us like an eagle sighting prey. Almost immediately one of the flails lashed out towards us, the chain seeming to extend from its wrist infinitely. I grabbed Rora and launched us into the air with as much strength as I could put into my wings. Below us the stone of the street exploded in deadly shrapnel as the massive spiked head of the flail annihilated it.

Rora pointed her sword at the flail even before we reached the ground, hitting it with the arcing orange energy that would wrap it in vines. The vines succeeded in trapping it, their fiery thorns heating the metal even as it was held to the ground.

I turned quickly from her flaming vines to see what our enemy was doing. He was weirder than I had imagined he would be from the fleeting glimpses we had caught through the mist.

Oh shit!

His other flail was already moving, hurtling through the air towards us with vicious speed.

It seemed to move in bursts, reminding me of the bird like before, but now it also reminded me of one of those combat robots that advanced militaries used to use before they were outlawed. I had only a moment to use my new dash ability on minimum activation to get out of the way, but it wasn’t enough. Pain flared across my hip as a piece of the street struck me and I was sent stumbling forward.

“Tami! Are you okay?” Rora asked, keeping her eyes on the strange angel statue thing.

“Yup! Just a bruise!” I called back. “Can you see any weaknesses yet? How to beat it?”

“So far I can only think about getting its flails stuck so we can get rid of them. Something tells me it isn’t helpless without them though,” she said, dodging another attempt by the creature to smash her.

“Okay! I’m going to punch it and see what happens!” I grinned, earning a look of alarm from her. “There’s a combo I want to try out! Hope it doesn’t break my arm!”

“Wait—!” she called, but I was already in motion.

I was maybe feeling a little bit reckless after my breakdown this morning, but this was still going to be hella fun, and I could already feel the excitement of battle drumming a beat in my chest. I pulled my fist back, flared my wings in challenge, and took aim. With my whole body coiled and ready to strike, I began to pour stamina into my speed boost ability, feeding it almost a quarter of my total pool.

Like a lump of metal fired from a naval railgun, kicked off the ground and I flashed forward, my outstretched fist smashing into its leg with explosive force. Chunks of lime and pieces of armour flew in all directions under the impact and I laughed with glee as I slid to a stop several meters on the other side. Behind me I had succeeded in sending it into a flip that had ended with its face being planted into the stone slabs that paved the square.

Rora blinked at me from the other side of the dude with a bemused smile, and we both rushed the boss thing before it could regain its footing. I hadn’t totally exploded its leg, but underneath the lime we could now see real bones. The lime had once been flesh, and this thing used to be alive. That was kinda creepy.

My fist was aching from the blow, and I could already see the beginnings of a bruise forming across my knuckles, but oh how it had been worth it. That was satisfying on an animalistic level. The undead angel statue dude tried to get his hand under himself to lift himself back upright, but I denied him that luxury with an explosive fist driven into his back.

Rora went for his wrists, bringing her sword down with both hands. She started hacking away while I pounded my fists into its back over and over. She succeeded in chipping down to the bone before the boss savagely beat down with his wings in retaliation, sending us both flying with the force of the wingbeat. I was thrown significantly further, my wings catching the gust and throwing me into a wall.

I slid down it, coughing and gasping as I tried to get air back into my lungs. I’d managed to fold my wings to protect them, but my back was on fire with pain, and I could feel my berserker form taking over. My blood was pumping, and a little of that arrogance that came along with my demon form started to flare up.

The undead boss dude stood back up with jittery awkward movements, its leg seemed to be responding sluggishly, much to my satisfaction. The wrist that Rora had been hacking at seemed to be okay however, and it gripped both its flails with no problem. Damn! There was no way my anime punch would work more than once more before I was starting to get dangerously low on stamina.

“Tami! Get it to try swinging at you!” Rora called from the opposite side of the creature.

I gave her a thumbs up and picked up a rock, using a little of my speed boost to throw it with enough force to be annoying. The stone glanced harmlessly off his armour, but it was enough to piss him off, and in a moment there was a flail coming at me. I leapt into the air, dodging the huge chunk of steel and letting it imbed itself in the stone wall I had recently collided with.

As the flail stuck in the wall, the chain followed its momentum, rushing forward, and the boss casually jerked the chain to compensate and try to dislodge his weapon. The action proved to be all that was needed to break the hand and chain clean off, Rora’s work having been fruitful after all.

“Nice!” I said, pumping my fist even as I rushed out of the way of an enraged second flail. “What next?”

“I don’t know, try punching it really hard again!” she grinned back at me.

I gave her my best flirty wink and prepared myself for the last big punch I would be able to manage. I poured stamina into the speed ability, draining myself down to one fifth of my total stamina, took a deep breath, and activated it.

I blurred across the intervening distance between us, my fist thrust forward like some kind of superhero, but my confidence turned to dismay when I sailed past without hitting it. The fucking thing had dodged me! It had leapt back out of my path, and it now hovered in the air above us on massive powerful beats of its wings.

My punching dash turned into a tumble as I lost my balance, having expected an impact and gotten none. Something went crack in one of the thin bones at the end of my wing and I cried out in pain. I wasn’t used to pain coming from my wing, and I twitched and gasped as it flared down the nerves there. Wow, I guess this body was built to protect my wings because my goddess did this hurt.

Fighting back tears of pain, I felt my body grow even more demonic, and I stumbled to my feet. I was ready to dodge more blows, but he wasn’t striking, instead he whirled the remaining huge flail around above his head, producing a terrifying singing as the chain cut through the air.

“He’s charging up for an attack!” Rora cried out in sudden realisation, making a break for me across the square.

She made it just in time, sliding in next to me and raising her hand above her head, producing a shield of flame in a dome around. The flail began to rain down around us in an almost indistinct blur. It was like the flail had multiplied into the hundreds and with each strike the stone of the square became deadly projectiles that whirred through the air like angry hornets. Rora’s shield held, but each impact of spiked metal and fragmented stone seemed to be draining her face of colour.

“I’m going to run out of mana,” she ground out through clenched teeth.

“Hold on,” I urged, scanning the sky for an end to the hellish rain of death.

When it finally ended, Rora stumbled for a moment, gasping in relief, and I had to steady her with a hand around her waist.

“Damn, that was a cool ability though,” I said, trying to move us both before the boss made one of his regular attacks.

“Figured it might come in handy when I made it,” she chuckled tiredly, gently pushing my hand away and standing again under her own power. She blinked rapidly was if trying to clear her mind, then complained, “Damn. When you lose stamina you get physically tired, but when you lose too much mana you get mentally tired. I feel like I’ve been awake for a week straight.”

“Do you have a potion you can drink?” I asked, watching the boss as he went through his post-big-attack cooldown animation thingy.

“Oh crap, I do! Hold on,” she said, reaching into her robes and pulling out a little vial in the iconic blue colour that every gamer knew well. She drank it down quickly, then said, “I don’t have many and they don’t give me much back, but I’m thinking straight again.”

“Yeah, I really doubt you’re thinking straight,” I remarked.

Blinking at me in confusion for a moment, she asked, “What?”

My deadpan face broke into a grin and I gave a little giggle, “I mean… last night?”

“Oh!” she laughed, her cheeks colouring prettily. “Alright you cheeky little shit, lets go die horribly.”

As if summoned, the undead angel swung at us with a deadly flail and we were forced to leap out of the way or die sooner than we had expected. It was now that I noticed something odd. At the base of the head of the flail, where it attached to the chains, was a series of three black gems in a triangle. They were close to the chain, forming a triangle around it. The setup screamed weak spot.

Before he could pull the flail back, I rushed in and punched one with as much force as I could muster, shattering it instantly. It even broke apart almost like it wanted to shatter.

“Rora! Weak spot near the base of the flail head! Black gems!” I exclaimed, dodging out of the way as the undead boss yanked the weapon out of my reach.

“Okay! Next time he swings I’ll grab it with my vines, then you— does he seem smaller to you?” she asked, frowning over at our enemy.

I looked over and noticed she was right. He looked about a foot shorter than he had before, and there was something slightly odd about the limestone that used to be his flesh. He didn’t seem to care too much though, opting to try and crush us again.

True to her word, when the flail landed in a cloud of dust and chunks of stone, her flaming vines wrapped their thorny selves around the head of the flail, trapping it in place while we ran in. Rora got there first, breaking one gem with an expert tap of her sword, while I spun and kicked the other one.

The effect was almost immediate, and for the first time our enemy made a noise, and it was not a pleasant one. He was screaming, his throat raw and hoarse as though he had always been screaming. Fuck me, this game was creepy, no wonder it was eighteen plus, even after the ability to have sex and stuff. The boss looked another two feet shorter, and the limestone now had a distinct fleshy colour.

“The other flail!” Rora called, already rushing towards it.

Right, it was disconnected from the boss due to our attack earlier, but we hadn’t broken the gems.

The boss saw her going for it and lashed out again with his flail, and I saw with worry that it was going to hit her. I charged my dash just enough, and flashed through the space between us. I wasn’t fast enough to intercept the flail, but that hadn’t been my objective. My hand closed around the chain, pulling it with me as my speed boost continued. The chain yanked short with a clatter, I had succeeded in keeping it from hitting her!

This was all the time she needed, quickly stabbing each of the three gems one after another,  and shattering them into a million tiny fragments.

The boss went silent, his screaming stopped as the pieces of the last gem fell to the cobblestones. Both Rora and I watched in fascination as the huge undead angel shrank, becoming flesh and blood for a moment. I couldn’t see his expression behind his mask, but it turned out to be irrelevant as the newly restored flesh began to age and shrivel. In seconds the angel man turned into a withered husk, as though instead of roaming the mists for thousands of years he had been decaying the whole time.

Seeing that the fight was over, I groaned and collapsed onto the ground in a heap. I was in so much damn pain. My hit points were actually still relatively intact, but my word were the injuries I had taken causing me a shitload of pain.

“I hurt, like everywhere,” I grumbled, pushing myself into a sitting position and watching Rora walk tiredly over to me.

“Here,” she said, throwing me a pink regeneration potion.

“Thanks,” I said, catching it and downing the liquid with a sigh of relief.

“That’s my last one by the way,” she said with a little smirk. “So don’t get broken anymore.”

“Yes ma’am,” I smiled, watching her walk over and inspect the husk that used to be a very angry undead boss.

When I felt able to move, pulled myself up off the ground and walked over to her side. The corpse was gross, but at least it didn’t smell bad. Really old corpses don’t smell as bad as more recent ones after all.

“So I’ve never actually killed a boss monster before, but apparently there’s loot here. Do you see the screen?” Rora asked.

As she said it, I noticed the little indicator floating above the corpse, and it flashed into a window showing the loot that had dropped. I wonder why we weren’t allowed to just take the armour off its body? Balancing maybe?

Enslaved Aurelling Royal Guard [Epic Creature]:
10 - 1g Gold Bars.
4 - 20g Silver bars.
1 - Vassadian Royal Guard Sword.
1 - Vassadian Royal Guard Wing Bracers.
40g - Necromantic Enslavement Powder.

“That loot seems weirdly specific to us. Do you think the game drops like, loot that might be useful for those that contributed to the kill? I was going to say class-based loot but there aren’t any classes in this game sooo…” Rora said, looking over to get my opinion.

“I have no idea, but those wing bracer thingies might be fun, can I take them?” I asked eagerly.

“Yeah and half of the other stuff too. I’ll take the sword,” she said, giving me a smile that made me seem like I was the only person in the virtual world. I really hoped we stuck together in this game. She made it far more enjoyable, even on top of how much I already liked it.

I transferred my portion of the loot to my own inventory and had a look at the Bracers. They seemed to be your basic enchanted item. These ones gave bonuses to my Strength and Endurance, which seemed ideal for punching things harder and longer.

When I mentioned the stats to Rora, she replied, “They are probably made to increase your flight ability. Punching things too I guess, but I’d say buffing your wings is what they are meant to do. The sword though, it seems almost like a fencing saber, even has the fancy guard. Look!”

She produced the sword from her inventory, showing off its tarnished golden length. The guard was indeed all fancy, with an intricate wire pattern guarding her hand.

“What stats does it have?” I asked, admiring her new gleaming blade.

“It gives a bonus to Light affinity spells you channel down it, which is kinda useless to me, but it gives a small buff to my Power and a huge buff to my Urgency, so that’s cool,” she replied smiling happily at her sword.

“Nice,” I said, enjoying how her smile lit up her face. “So um, should we get out of here before something else turns up?”

“Yup! Let’s keep going, we both really need to find a safe place to log out before our week ends,” she nodded in agreement, sheathing her new sword and heading out across the square in the direction we had been travelling before we fought the boss. She seemed to remember something else and looked over at me. “By the way, I turned on the ingame recorder to film that fight. I wanted evidence that we had beaten the creature that killed the others. Is it okay if I upload it once we’re out?”

I thought for a moment, but ultimately shrugged and nodded. I’d been on Millie’s stream after all, what was one more video, even if it did show Rora and I fighting and flirting side by side.

We had just a day and a half to get out of here before we’d be finding the nearest random nook and logging out. Even without logging out in a sketchy place though, I felt the dread of what was to come seep back into my mind. The fight through the city had been keeping me busy, but I had still felt that little seed of anxiety that had attempted to sprout every time there was a quiet moment. I just hoped things wouldn’t hurt too much on the outside.