An ache deep in her lower back told Sara she was still alive. "Fuck. Ow."
She pushed up from the hard rock and looked around. Her immediate area was just damp stone and winding paths branching off the small hub room she had fallen into. In the distance, she could hear water. Lots of it. Maybe a waterfall.
"Hello?" she called out, her voice echoing in the dark. "Raven? Mark?"
Nothing.
She followed the sound of the rushing water down a rocky corridor a short way until the path opened abruptly into a verdant, glowing green oasis. A pristine waterfall cascaded through a hole high up in the cavern ceiling into a small, crystal-clear pool. Strangely, the water did not break the plane of the pool; it simply, cleanly disappeared just before hitting the surface.
Wildflowers filled the subterranean room, and small woodland critters danced around trees heavy with abundant fruit. The entire lawn was carpeted with what looked like ice-blue Sakura petals, glowing with twinkling magical lights. It was like a scene out of a dream she had when she was just a girl.
The grass was velvety to the touch as she entered, staring in awe and disbelief. The room was almost perfectly round and domed, and she couldn't see an exit anywhere. She approached the water, her mind racing. She couldn't find an entry for this in the mental index of Mark's lore she had built up. What the fuck was this place?
"Hello?" she tested the air again. "Simone? Cody?"
She stared deep into the pool. Something was down there, pulling at her mind. Calling her.
She wanted to go to it. She stopped. She sat down hard on the ground.
The hyperventilating started. The familiar, crushing weight of her trauma surged forward. Her chest swelled with immense pressure, her lungs screaming that she couldn't breathe.
No. Not now. She forced herself to focus on the physical feeling of the grass under her hands. It was soft. It was real. It was there. She sucked a ragged breath of air in through a rusted diaphragm and coughed. She took a shaky breath. Then another deeper one. And another, until she was finally breathing again. She opened her eyes, cast her gaze safely at the dirt under her knees, and collapsed forward, still breathless.
Why did this keep happening?
She shook her head violently and pushed to her feet. This wasn’t where she needed to be. She had a party to find, and there were no bodies floating in that water. Steadily, she turned back to the corridor and—stopped.
The door was gone. She spun around, checking every side of the perfectly domed room, but there was no sign of the path she had just come from. What the hell was happening?
“If there’s someone… or something here,” Sara called out into the glowing ether, her retail-manager voice cutting through the magic. “Stop wasting my fucking time. There is a Wizard with four Strength out there who might accidentally destroy the world, and a Catfolk that Sarah McLachlan is currently singing for that I have to get to. I think I have a new best friend, and… there’s a girl out there who I really want to see where things go with. If you’re going to kill me, get it the fuck over with. If not, show yourself.”
For a long moment, there was nothing.
Then, the water in the pool started rippling.
Sara took a few steps back, her heart pounding against her ribs as a head full of long, soaking black hair rose slowly from the center of the water. Her Ringu horror instincts flared wildly, but as the figure rose, she saw it was just a woman. A fairy. She had black, leathery wings and wore a long, flowing black dress over a tight corset highlighted in bright green.
The fairy took one final step, standing impossibly on the surface of the water. She walked to the edge, stepped off onto the velvety grass, and came to a stop just in front of Sara. Her piercing emerald eyes were soft around the edges, but they held something artificially dark and rehearsed. Sara took another step back, steadying her trembling hands.
“Who…” Sara stammered. “Who are you?”
“You have much pain,” the fairy said, cocking her head cryptically and reaching a delicate hand toward Sara’s face.
Without thought, Sara stepped back, slapping the woman’s reach away. “My pain is none of your business. I said if you’re going to kill me, fucking do it. Otherwise, get to the point. I have things to do.”
The woman’s arm slowly lowered halfway. She narrowed her eyes, trying to maintain the mysterious facade, and snapped her fingers.
A whirlwind of glowing petals and wildflowers swirled up from the grass, enveloping her completely. A moment later, the air went still, and all the flowers fell away, revealing her standing in tight, tactical leathers made entirely of woven plants. The armor constricted over her body, seeming to breathe with her. Her delicate fingers sprouted wicked claws, and her green eyes flooded with swirling red magic.
“What the fuck are you?” Sara felt the undeniable urge to run, but knew there was no escape from the dome.
“I sense it in you,” the fairy said, stalking slowly toward Sara with stilted, unnatural movements. “You’re the one who can purge the darkness.”
She swiped lazily at Sara. Adrenaline shot through the Tiefling as she jumped back just in time. The claws caught the edge of her leather armor, scratching painfully across her stomach.
Fuck. “Are you fucking crazy?” Sara yelled.
“You’re slow. You’re damaged. This won’t do,” the fairy recited woodenly, raising her claws again.
“Fuck! That hurt, bitch!” Sara was just fucking done with this game.
She didn't reach for a sword. She threw her bare hands toward the woman’s face. “Glitterdust!”
A blinding spray of shitty, environmentally consuming golden glitter exploded directly into the fairy's face. The woman shrieked, dropping her cryptic act instantly, and reached up to claw at her burning eyes.
Before the fairy could cast a counter-spell, Sara’s six years of real-world Krav Maga training violently took over.
Sara closed the distance instantly. She drove a brutal elbow directly into the side of the fairy's head. The blinded woman swung wildly in defense. Sara ducked inside the arc, hooked the woman's arm, and brought her own elbow crashing across the fairy's temple.
Crack. Once.
Crack. Twice.
The blows dropped the fairy to one knee. Sara wrenched back viciously on the trapped arm, hyperextending the joint. Before the woman could twist free, Sara grabbed a fistful of the long black hair with her free hand, yanked the fairy's head down, and drove her knee straight up into her nose.
Blood sprayed. Sara didn’t let go. Instead, she used her own momentum to fall to the grass, dragging the fairy down with her while maintaining a death grip on the arm. The woman tried to scramble away, but Sara delivered a devastating open-palm strike directly to her solar plexus, knocking the wind completely out of her.
Sara jumped over her, straddling the woman's chest, and pinned both of the fairy's arms tightly under her knees.
Sara panted, shaking her head in sheer disbelief that she still had that kind of violence in her. “I thought I told you, I didn’t have time for your cryptic bullshit.”
The fairy struggled and twisted under the weight, but Sara’s Tiefling tail whipped down, wrapping around her legs to pin them to the grass.
“Stop! Help! Leave me alone!” the fairy suddenly sobbed, her voice losing all its magical resonance.
Sara pushed her shoulders back down easily. “Last chance. I don’t know what you are, but your fucking illusion lets me out of here if you die just as well as if you disburse it.”
Thick tears welled up in the fairy's glitter-covered eyes, washing the red magic away. “Please let me go! I just want to go home! I thought you were a player who could help me!”
“Attacking me isn’t the best way to get my help,” Sara warned, refusing to be tricked by letting her up. “Where is home?”
“Osaka!” she gasped through her tears.
Sara’s eyes flew wide. She leaned down close, sneering at the woman. “How did you hear that name? I know there isn’t an Osaka in Tawagoto.”
“Not here!” she cried hysterically. “Ikuno-ku in Japan!”
Sara narrowed her eyes, testing her. “Ikuno-ku no doko desu ka?”
“Tsuruhashi ni sunde imasu!” the fairy replied desperately.
Sara slowly loosened her grip on the woman's arms. Someone from Tsuruhashi wasn't an NPC. “How did you get here?”
“I was at a vape shop back home a year ago, and then suddenly I was here,” she responded, sniffling loudly.
Sara gasped. She was human. Another victim of the portal. Sara took a page from Mark’s new teachings, reaching out and tapping the sobbing fairy's leather-clad shoulder.
“Sheet!”
Character Name: Kaori Class: Druid 5 Race: Human Stats:Strength: 18 Dexterity: 18 Constitution: 18 Intelligence: 18 Wisdom: 18 Charisma: 18
“Kaori? What the actual fuck?” Sara shook the glowing sheet away, her Dungeon Master brain reeling. “How did you get a statistically perfect roll? And how the fuck did I just beat the absolute shit out of you?”
“I don’t know what I’m doing!” Kaori wailed. “I was just at this vape shop with a friend, and all of a sudden we were here, and I’m… I'm this!”
“You were in Kentucky?” Sara finally got off the girl and stood up, offering a hand. “Why? Where’s your friend?”
Kaori didn’t get up. She pulled her knees to her chest, wrapped her arms around them, and bawled into the grass. “I was visiting her! That creepy guy Craig has her! He tried to get us both, but somehow I got away, and I’ve been hiding down here trying to find someone else who knows how to play this game to get us out of here.”
Sara sighed heavily, crossing her arms and looking around the oasis. The illusion had faded. The room was just as it was before—a damp cavern. The tunnel exit she had come through had reappeared, and a new tunnel sat on the other side where the waterfall used to be.
If innocent people were getting sucked in too, then no one was safe with Craig holding the portal.
“Is this where you’ve been living?” Sara asked gently.
“Hai,” Kaori sniffled, wiping glitter and blood from her nose.
“Help me find a way out of this cave system, and you can stay with us at our base,” Sara said, offering her hand again with her best retail-manager smile. “We have Pocari Sweat.”
[SYSTEM ALERT: Encounter Cleared.]
[XP Awarded: 1,000]
[Level Up Available! Unspent Attribute Points: 10]