1.

A pair of dull, plasticy thuds filled the small volume of the pod, two ruddy brown blocks of generic Nutri-rations clunking onto the hollow plastic fold-out table anchored to a tan-hued wall. Seline stared down at her evening haul, a grand total of six credits spent netting her the pittance of calories contained within the rations. It would not last more than a day, and even that would leave her with a painful level of hunger, but after booking the pod for the next 24 hours she had little left to spare.

Seline collapsed onto the small, single-person bed beside the table. It was more of a futon, lumpy and uncomfortable with only a single sheet on top to keep the cheap, plastic fabric off of one's skin, and only a few inches thick at best. Thankfully, for the purpose of the small pod she was in, how comfortable (or not) the bed managed to be really did not matter. It was nothing more than a cheap way to find a quiet place to practice what amounted to the only way she had to earn money.

Beside Seline lay her only worldly possessions besides the threadbare t-shirt and jeans she wore and thin sneakers that had clearly seen better days: a small pack with a single shoulder strap. Unzipped and folded open, a full-immersion virtual reality headset lay half exposed, the sleek black plastic and thin aluminum framing presenting the profile of a simple biker's helmet, albeit with much thinner protection. It was the only thing she had managed to keep with her after...

Seline clenched her hands as she stared at the helmet, a small shake running through her body. No, she would not think about it. But the helmet was her only attachment to her previous life, her only link to a world that had all but fallen apart and turned to dust, and the only thing that could not be taken from her; each immersion helmet was attuned on the hardware level to a unique user. Re-purposing one was more expensive than just buying a fresh, un-imprinted unit.

It was also her lifeline; soon, after taking some time to calm her thudding heart and shallow breathing, she would sign in and start perusing the forums for job opportunities.

It seemed that the anxiety attacks struck her more often lately. She closed her eyes and focused on her breathing, gradually managing to unclench her fists. Her sweaty palms were cold and clammy even in the temperature-controlled air of the pod. When the pounding of her heart finally began to recede, she opened her eyes and pushed herself into a sitting position, looking around.

Other than the table and the glorified mattress-on-a-plank and the small table, very little else filled the room. There was barely a foot of space between the end of the bed and the far wall, and her ankles hung off the edge of the bed when she laid down fully; the pod was maybe seven feet by five feet, smaller than even a solitary prison cell. Like many other pod-hotels in Greater New Rapids, the owners of the property barely bothered to do the bare minimum required to meet the city's rather lax health codes. The surfaces were clean, vents on the top and bottom of one of the walls allowed ample airflow, and the door, while small, locked securely from the inside.

A simple cluster of sensors in a smooth recess near the head of the bed allowed the operators to monitor the vital signs of any of the hotel's residents. The risk of crashing while in VR was technically non-zero, but it was an old concern from the early days of the technology. Nobody had heard of someone dying while plugged-in in years.

Seline supposed she had spent days in worse pods. This was perfectly passable.

She split the packaging on the first ration, staring down at the yellow-gray color and ruddy texture of the dry bar hidden within. Rations would keep one healthy but certainly not happy- this one claimed to have an orange flavor, but as she nibbled dispassionately on a corner, Seline decided it tasted more like the plastic packaging than any real food item. Her only real assurance that it would keep her alive was the fact that had been eating them for the last three months almost exclusively, never mind the fact that she had lost a fair portion of her bodyweight since then.

Seline pulled a reused bottle of water from her pack and sucked it down with the ration. The second one could wait for when she took a break. It was time to work. Setting her pack beside the bed, she retrieved the headset, plugged the charge and data cable into the outlet hidden against the side of the bed, and slipped the it on. She laid back, flicked the visor down over her face, and fumbled with the power switch to slide it into the non-immersion mode. Despite all the technological advancements that came along with virtual reality, MMO players still resorted to bog-standard forums to communicate outside game, and there was no reason for Seline to immerse herself to see if anyone was looking to pay real credits to have any gear moved or simple tasks completed in any of the three or so games she had accounts on.

A web browser blinked into her vision at a thought, and Seline set to making her daily rounds.

2.

A solitary figure sat at a lacquered wooden desk across, face illuminated by the multi-hued glow of a wall of monitors situated on the wall opposite him. He was a sallow man with a beard as finely-kept as the maroon business suit he wore. Reclining into his executive chair, his keen eyes scanned the data pouring forth from the myriad displays: arrays of graphs changing in real-time, tickers reading out the status and motion of various liquid and investment assets, and a host of other data. Several of the monitors provided views of various landscapes or displayed videos of local news broadcasts, all of which were muted so as not to overwhelm each other or the melody of classical music playing from speakers hidden in the walls of the large office.

In reality, the man was paying very little attention to the mass of data on display. His eyes worked, but his mind was elsewhere, pondering the health of his business and the various arrangements he had needed to make to accomplish his success. His reverie was interrupted when a small chime sounded from his desk accompanied by a small, flashing light near a speaker set into the wood.

"I have a priority call from Mr. G for you, sir," spoke his secretary, terse and quick. Not rude but efficient, she had been hired for her quick work and organization.

This news caused the man to perk and sit up in his seat. "Really, now? Did he say what it was about?"

"No, sir, only that he needed to speak with you."

"Ah. Very well. Put him through." With the flick of a button beneath the desk, all of the monitors went blank, leaving the room without a light source. A moment later a holographic projector at the far end of the desk activated and the visage of a man appeared above it. The man's face was pale but clean, only the slightest hint of wrinkles around the edges of his eyes or lips giving him any semblance of age. Perhaps in his mid 40s, Mr. G wore his short crop of rich brown hair slicked to one side and evenly-groomed. A hook-like nose that balanced a pair of wire frame spectacles, and behind the thin lenses were perhaps the man's most interesting trait: golden eyes. Not amber, not yellow, not auburn, but pure, scintillating gold without the hint of any pupils. The image cut off just below the man's collarbone, but a simple black mantle could be seen covering his shoulders, secured across his left shoulder with a brooch in the style of a sinuous black dragon inlaid with gold and curled in the the shape of an infinity symbol.

Mr. G blinked in a slow, calm fashion as his signal was transfered from the secretary's desk to this darker room. He regarded the man at the desk calmly. "Good afternoon. I hope it finds you well?" His English was immaculate, each word enunciated with almost computer-like accuracy and clip.

"It does, my golden-eyed friend," the man replied in a familiar tone, but his expression was guarded. Mr. G rarely called just to exchange pleasantries, and his eyes were more than a little unsettling, as though they could stare through him even in the form of a holographic projection. Still, if he had to name one man responsible for most of his success, this was it. He could tolerate the oddity. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"I believe I have found an additional candidate to add to our arrangement."

The man raised an eyebrow. This was unusual indeed. Such an addition would normally be merged into a list during the weekly data exchange. At this point in their deal, such minutia was usually handled by one of his many underlings. "Interesting. But you don't usually ring me for this sort of thing," he finished slowly, inviting an answer to the unspoken question.

"Of course," Mr. G nodded once, canting his head to the side as if listening for a moment before continuing, "but in this instance, I would like to move immediately."

"Immediately?" If it were possible, the man's eyebrow would have gone higher. "We're trying to keep the disappearances to a minimum. Once a month, as discussed. We can't afford to deal with anyone noticing the... effects of our arrangement."

"Understood. In this instance, however, I do not believe sufficient time remains to wait until the next exchange. It is possible the subject will not be... in any state to be of use if we delay too long. Payment will be doubled for this subject."

The man leaned forward, resting elbows on the desk and propping his chin up on his hands. "Double payment out of cycle? How important is he?"

"She," Mr. G corrected, "and I do believe that we have discussed this before. I cannot reveal this information. Do we have a deal?"

It was hardly worth a thought. The slight risk incurred by another of his clientèle vanishing attracting unwanted attention at this stage was far outweighed by the added payment. He kept Mr. G waiting only for a few seconds while he pretended to think. "Very well. Done. But we can't make this a regular thing."

The pale man's thin lips curved into a simple smile. "Certainly."

"Always a pleasure doing business with you, Mr. G."

His overture was returned with a curt nod. Mr. G then tilted his head again, listening for a moment before asking, "What is this music?"

"That? Tschaikowsky's Fifth Symphony."

"Ah, fascinating. I would like a copy of it, if possible."

The man smiled. "Absolutely. I'll have a collection merged into the next data exchange. Is that all?"

"For now." Mr. G gave him a broader smile, one more nod, and then flickered out of existence, leaving the room in darkness.

Things were moving according to plan. Alone now, the man tapped his finger across a button, and the monitors glowed to life once more.

3.

Seline eyed the small list she had compiled after an hour spent combing the various game job-boards. Only dozen opportunities this evening, but at the very least the pay on offer would keep her real-life body alive another day or so. Thankfully, the majority of the jobs were courier requests centered on her guild in the game Lords of War Online; she quickly sorted her list by location-- even better, a handful could be picked up in Fort Burnspire, the location of her guild's headquarters and the place she had last logged off from.

Closing the browser window, Seline mentally called up the launcher for LoWO and waited for it to load. When prompted, she brought her hand to the power switch on her headset and snapped it over to "Full Immersion" mode. The display faded to black, and an all-encompassing numbness filled her limbs. In the span of a breath or two, a loading indicator appeared to float in front of her, and her perception of the helmet covering her head, her sense of weight on the bed and of the clothes against her skin faded away. The transition to full immersion was almost seamless these days; she had been around for the early days of the tech when you were just as likely as not to end up losing the last two meals in-game and out, but now Seline found the comfortable tingling that preceded the full load-in to be reassuring.

It was only in these worlds that she felt truly in control of herself and her life. Reality faded away, and for a little while she could all but ignore the real world and its problems.

In the world of Lords of War, she was Amanda Featherfoot, rogue courier for The Seven Heads guild, one of the most powerful factions in the game's central region. As the game world blossomed to life around her, first in sound, then in scent, touch, and finally sight, she settled into one of her most comfortable characters. At 5' 5", Amanda would never tower over anyone other than dwarves or gnomes in-game, but her build packed a double-punch of dexterity and strength that allowed her to deliver ranged death with her favorite weapon, a bow, while mounted horseback in combat, or from a secured, stealthy location in ambush.

She tucked her shoulder-length red hair back over her shoulder as she looked around at her spawn location, the grand antechamber of her guild's first and largest hall. LoWO's graphics were not the best in the business, but they were still near perfect unless one looked close enough to spot flaws on the undersides of model textures or the occasional oddity in geometry. The antechamber looked like a proper medieval meeting area one would see in the old cinemas: rows of long tables lined a central walkway that ran from the 10' tall entry doors to the double staircase that led to the second level of the chamber and the rooms beyond. Thick wooden columns supported the balcony that overlooked the antechamber from the second level, the walkway above providing entrance to various utility rooms, vendors, shopkeeps, and other administrative facilities the guild's members would find most useful.

It was the middle of the afternoon in meatspace, and very few flesh and blood humans were signed into the game currently, so the torches that were placed on sconces on each column provided light for mostly-empty tables. Only the occasional loiterer occupied the space solo or in small groups, deep in their own conversations. Nobody looked up at the sight of her fading into existence at one end of the hall.

Amanda did a quick pat-down of her person to make sure she had all of her equipment, glanced through her stats to re-familiarize herself with her character, than made her way up to the second level quickly. A few of the present guildmembers spared her a curious glance, but none looked twice; she was only a mid-tier member, and none of them knew her by name.

She also brought up her pre-made list in a small window as she stepped into the Logistics Administration office. The posted jobs were identified by number and title, and the NPC secretary behind the desk in the small office was able to easily find the referenced items after just a few moments of cross referencing in the large, worn tome beside her. Writing down the order details, the woman asked Amanda to wait a moment and stepped away from her desk and through a second door on the far wall of the room.

A few minutes later the NPC returned with a wooden crate containing several wrapped packages and a small bundle of letters. Amanda handled the secretary a large collateral sum of thirty gold pieces before taking possession of the items. They each had a small tag identifying them, and they each vanished from the world as she willed them into her inventory. In no time, Amanda was thanking the NPC and stepping out of the office.

One of the most aggravating parts of LoWO was the complete lack of a fast travel system. There were no spells for teleportation that operated over a long distance, no portals in cities or that guilds could construct on their own, and the few players and factions with flying mounts charged an exorbitant amount of gold per stone weight to move anything. It created a niche for players to perform logistics if they enjoyed the simple act of traveling the countryside and the potential risk a courier might encounter on the less-traveled and patrolled roads. It was not the most exciting job, and most players avoided travel for the sake of travel where they could, so a small meta-economy existed outside the game where players could fork over real-world money to have items moved in-game, usually only a few credits per item.

With the right inventory, horse, skills, and magic, Amanda could complete anywhere from a half dozen to nearly twenty orders in only a few hours. It was not enough to rent a room in meatspace, but it bought her food and temporary accommodation in most low-grade pod hotels.

She left the guild hall and stepped out into a small, stone-paved plaza. The sun was just creeping past zenith, and a multitude of passersby wandered through the plaza on foot, trundled past on horse-drawn wagons, or clopped through on horseback. Across the plaza was a small stable the guild monopolized for their own mounts. Amanda smiled to herself as she stepped inside, the stable manager looking up from a small desk in the corner, no doubt to check her stats and validate her guild membership before letting her through. She found her way to the stall that held Stella, her roan quarter horse.

Stella whickered at her enthusiastically as Amanda came into view. She was already saddled up and ready to go; Amanda kept a predictable schedule, and the stable hands had long since adapted to it with the coaxing of a few silver each day. She dropped a few silvers into a divot beside the stall door before unlocking it and tugging on the wood to swing it out and open. Stella bumped her head against Amanda's chest, coaxing a laugh from the woman's lips; this was a predictable routine: every time she entered the stable, she would palm a handful of oats into the horse's waiting mouth, and Stella would not leave her alone until such a time as this was accomplished. Reaching forward to a small bag near the front of the saddle, Amanda scooped a handful of grain free and completed the ritual.

The horse had been with Amanda almost since she started playing this game. She was unerringly loyal and while she may not have the best stats, it was her personality that had convinced Amanda to keep her despite quickly being able to afford an objectively-superior breed. She would not return Stella's loyalty by abandoning her, so she mounted up and guided her out of the stable. Their destination was a nearby city that held a small guild outpost to the west, a common destination for letters of an administrative nature and gifts/trade between players. Amanda angled Stella down a road leading away from the plaza toward one of the squat wooden gates in the town's wall, and before too long they had left the cramped, thin streets and emerged onto a road that meandered through the neighboring countryside, an endless landscape of grassy rolling hills dotted with dark-green copses of trees.

Amanda drew in a breath of summer-sweet air, so different from the city it had taken her ages to realize this was what the real-world had once smelled like, then coaxed Stella into a slow trot down the road and settled in to the familiar rhythm, her high riding skill kicking in and guiding her body to flow with the motions of her horse.

Everything went like the hundreds of other times she had traveled this road; as she moved further from the town behind her and passed a number of crossroads, the passersby dwindled until she only encountered the occasional traveler on foot or horseback. She came to a copse of trees that hid a bend in the road, a turn she had taken so many times she could not be asked to count, and that was when it happened.

The world shimmered around her. It was hard for her eyes to track, a flickering of the trees and a cascade of light in horizontal lines around her. She also did not have the time to focus; she was flung from the saddle and over Stella's head with a surprised cry. The horse had stopped moving all at once, but inertia dictated Amanda kept going.

She hit the ground with a clatter of studded-leather armor, the metal of knives on her belt, and the thunk of her bow, crossed over her back, striking the stones. Instinctively she looked at her HUD and determined she had taken no damage from the impact, but it hurt like hell anyway. It took her a few moments to overcome the disorientation and begin to wonder what had happened.

Rolling onto her hands and knees and deftly pushing herself to her feet, she stared around the scene. The trunks of trees closed in on every side, the road only wide enough here for the passage of a single wagon. The canopy of leaves above blocked out most of the direct sunlight, giving the area a cool, shady atmosphere. On the surface everything looked fine, but as the seconds passed the alarm bells going off in the back of Amanda's mind began to grow in volume.

She looked back to Stella. The horse was unmoving. Not just playing an idle animation, Stella's front hoof was lifted in the middle of a stride and her long tail was stretched out behind her, hairs motionless. She was not breathing, not blinking, almost as though she were frozen in time.

Amanda became aware of the silence around her. Usually, LoWO animated and voiced any number of audio sources: the rustling of the leaves in a delicate breeze, the chirp of birds, and the chatter of squirrels as they hopped through the trees, but all of that was absent. Looking closer, the trees themselves were as still as stone. Sunbeams cast through the dust their passage had kicked up were also without motion, small particles hanging just as still as her horse's tail.

She had never encountered anything like this in-game. Was it some sort of time-stopping spell? Was she about to get owned by a high level monster, or worse, a player looking to go on a casual ganking spree? All senses alert, she pulled her strung bow from her back, nocked an arrow, and gazed around warily.

"There really is no need for that," spoke a calm masculine voice behind her.

Amanda jumped and swung around, yanking the arrow back on its string and leveling it at the robed man who was stepping out from behind a tree. He had not been there a moment ago, and the tree was far too thin to have concealed him in the least. Like some cartoon character, he simply slid out from behind it and stepped toward her, stopping once he was in full view. "Who the hell are you?" she hissed.

The man spread his hands wide and regarded her calmly. He looked human, save for the golden glint of his eyes and... did he lack pupils? That phenomena was so unnerving that Amanda's gaze quickly struggled to look at something else. He had brown hair that was not long enough to cover even the tips of his ears and wore a teal tunic that draped down below his knees, tied off with a simple black belt around his middle as well as shin-height black boots and some sort of cloak over his back that was as black as the shadows of the forest. Securing the mantle was a small, black-and-golden brooch she could not clearly make out from this distance. A pair of glasses perched on the man's beakish nose.

He did not respond immediately, and Amanda quickly lost her patience. She loosed her arrow, the missile flying true to strike him right in the throat. The moment it contacted his skin, however, it shattered, burst into a thousand pieces, and then those pieces rapidly ground to a halt, leaving a nimbus of shattered wood and metal hanging in the air.

"That," the man, having not so much as blinked during the preceding half-second, raised a hand and brushed the debris aside, stepping past it and one pace closer to Amanda, "is also not necessary. Nor is it effective. Please do not do it again."

Dumbstruck, Amanda fumbled reaching for another arrow from her quiver. She checked her HUD. None of the numbers had changed. Her battle log was as frozen as the world around her. That was just not right; nothing should be able to affect the game like this. It had to be some sort of glitch. She quickly tried to summon the game's menu with a thought, but nothing happened. No error message, no window, nothing. The hand holding her bow dropped to the side, her eyes locked on the individual who had still not identified himself.

"... who?" was all Amanda could manage. Her hands began to shake. Without the menu, she could not exit the game, and this was starting to get far too creepy for her liking. Control had been taken out of her hands, and it filled her with a fear bordering on panic.

"Please, do not be alarmed," the man spread his arms wider, empty palms up in a show innocent intentions. "You may call me the Gatekeeper. I am here to make you an offer."

Amanda stared blankly for a few seconds, her heart thudding in her ears while her brained processed his words. "An offer? W-what kind of offer?" she stammered.

A hint of a smile touched the Gatekeeper's placid face. "Simple. I offer you the chance to play in a world where your actions matter, Seline." Amanda's blood went cold as he addressed her by her real-world name. How could he know that? "A world where your choices have real consequence. A world where there are real stakes, and one where you are not relegated to a meager life of subsistence performing menial tasks for those more powerful than you." A sort of deep passion filled the Gatekeeper's voice as he spoke, a lilting elegance that mesmerized Amanda, fighting with the alarm ringing through her mind. "A world where you may gain true power, drive your enemies before you, and work to bring yourself and those you call friend to the forefront of fate, where you may become your true self and determine your own path."

It was a nice speech, truly. With the fading of her anxiety she was able to analyze the situation more clearly. "So is this like, some sort of advertisement?" she asked.

The Gatekeeper inclined his head. "If it helps you to understand it as such, yes."

"So what's its name?"

At this, the man simply returned her gaze with his calm, golden regard. It was frustrating. Was he some sort of advertisement bot? Had Lords of War been hacked (again) and some other company was trying to poach users? She could not think of any better way to get someone's attention than a stunt like this. Trying a different approach, Amanda asked, "What's the price?"

This earned her a response. The Gatekeeper's smile did not fade. "I assure you, it is one you can afford."

A mealy-mouthed non-answer if she had ever heard one, probably designed to prey upon players' curiosity by adding a bit of mystery to the event. "Okay, fine. It's cheap or you're running it for free." The Gatekeeper simply remained in place, so she assumed she was correct. "What's in it for me? What do I get?"

"The power to choose your own fate, unrestrained by the chains that bind you in your current life."

He had already said as much in that speech of his. Again, he responded, but it was hardly a real answer. Amanda ground her teeth.

This time, the Gatekeeper took the initiative. "Perhaps you enjoy the life of a glorified mule? Existing on thin rations that destroy your body while you work for the benefit of others?" He swept one hand toward Stella. "You are more than this, Seline."

"Okay, how the hell do you know my name?" Amanda demanded. Once more, he simple smiled and waited for her to continue. He was obviously looking for an answer. Half of Amanda wanted to tell him to eat dirt and get the hell out of her way, but the other half... his words struck chords within her that she had not known she had, or had long since silenced. She hated her current life. She had nothing left in meatspace, and these video games, great as they were, provided only the barest of interaction and little more than escape. She knew it was not rational, she knew at best this man was just advertising some other game, but for some unknown reason she could not dismiss him out of hand.

"I know a great many things. Few may I share. Please, I must have your answer swiftly."

Amanda laughed. "Time's paused, dude," she swung her arm around to mimic him. "Fine. Let's say I'm interested. I'll humor you. Where do we go from there?" At the very least, she might be able to try out a new game before it got shut down for whatever sort of hack this was.

"I will take you there. Is that a yes? Please speak it."

Her thoughts turned inward. Did she trust this man? Absolutely not. Trust was something she was dangerously short on, and she had none to spare for some random guy in a game. Did she want some sort of change, even if it came in the form of whichever game she played every night? She could go for that. Maybe she could earn more money off of it, too.

Thus, she spoke, "Yes. I'll 'enter' whatever world it is you're talking about." She emphasized herself with airquotes and a sarcastic twist of her words.

"It is known." The Gatekeeper spoke gravely, his smile vanishing and his head dipping in a single bob. He drew his hands together and clasped them in front of his chest.

The moment his palms made contact, the world around Amanda shifted once more. There was a brief moment where reality seemed to shatter like a broken signal on a television or a monitor that was half a second away from failing... and then her world, and her mind, went blank.

4.

Aaron drew his warhammer away from the body of the corrupt plains wolf he had just slain, panting for breath and looking around the scene of destruction he had created. The corpses of six unnaturally-large wolves lay scattered around him in various states of death, most with limbs hanging at odd angles or crushed entirely, caved in skulls, all motionless. He scanned his HUD for more targets, looking around the small clearing where he had cornered his prey. There were no more in this area, or they would already have aggro'd him.

It was not a quiet fight.

He eyed the vital counters in his HUD next:

> HP: 118/320, MP: 20/150, Stamina: 45/240

No negative status effect icons sat beside any of his vitals, though his bloodied armor was dented in more than a few places. He would have to check its durability before picking another fight. This battle had taken its toll on him; the animals he was after were definitely getting more difficult the further south he went.

Above, the first stars were just starting to wink into existence and the massive orb of the planet Gaterre was just beginning to sink below the horizon in the southwest, its swirling stripes of red, gold, and yellow illuminating the sky from that direction. Not a cloud marred a skyscape that was slowly fading from blue to deep reds, purples, and black. A cool breeze crept its way through Aaron's armor, providing some reprieve from the overheating interior; he had long since stopped worrying about heatstroke so long as his stamina did not reach critical levels, but it was still hot as hell inside all the hardened plates of ironwood, especially after a session of monster-bashing.

A small journal icon flashed in the side of his vision. He drew his attention to it and a window popped up displaying his quest progress.

> Quest: Dirty work - The Guard of Nohn have their hands full as it is without dealing with the trifles pestering the peasants in her outlying towns and village. Accumulate 1000 encounter points slaying troublesome monsters in the Plains of Mey'Tar. Progress: 795/1000 encounter points.

Aaron growled. The experience had better be damn good for this quest. He had been at it for a day already, but the Captain of the Guard had asked him to handle this personally. Either his standing of Trusted with the Guard was about to go up, or he might be getting a weapon or armor upgrade. Perhaps a true-metal warhammer would do fine. He could dream.

He was just beginning to catch his breath and turning to check the corpses of his slain enemies for any interesting loot when a flash in the sky caught his attention. Aaron looked up. Streaking through the sky was the bright slash of a falling star and its glowing red trail from north to south. He was about to dismiss the phenomena as something he had seen a thousand times: shooting stars were common twice during Keyavon's month as the moon's orbit swung her through the dusty clouds of Gaterre's outer rings. Two things were off about this one, though: almost without failure, those trails ran from east to west, and Keyavon was nearly midway between the two monthly showers. Not only that, but this one was moving far slower... and growing noticeably larger.

As Aaron stared, the shooting star flared brightly then passed behind the tops of the trees surrounding the clearing. His heart pounded in his ears. The world was silent around him, not even the chirp of crickets or the calls of owls meeting his finely-tuned ears. Less than a minute later, the ground rumbled and a thunderous crack nearly deafened him. The forest came alive as birds and animals of all descriptions were torn from their sleep in a panic, fleeing through the clearing or into the air. Aaron dropped into a crouch, hefting his warhammer in both hands and staring in the direction of the event.

"What the hell?" he muttered to himself. Was this some sort of event he had not been expecting? Some sort of escalation encounter to make up for how damn long this quest had been going on? He set his jaw grimly, then grinned inside his helmet. "Well, let's get on with it then."

The Badlands were further south, and that was the direction the shooting star, or whatever it had been, had landed. Impacted. Whatever. There were sure to be higher level monsters there, but the rewards might be worth the risk. He would just have to play his cards right. Pulling a health potion from his pack, he notched his warhammer into his belt and set off through the trees, intent on his quarry.

5.

She woke to the sound of crackling fire and the pleasant sensation of warmth against her body. Her mind felt sluggish and weak, in a state without context but lacking the awareness to be concerned with this fact. Her mind lagged behind reality, and her body lagged behind her mind; beyond the steady pop and snicker of live flame and the heat of it nearby, her body felt numb. Her limbs refused to respond, her eyelids denied some subtle need to open tickling in the dark recesses of her head, and even her chest failed to draw breath inward.

Seline hung in this state for what seemed like eternity, a limbo of darkness deeper than her stunned mind could comprehend.

She could not remain in this state forever and still live; instinct asserted itself and she drew in a deep, rattling breath. With the inrush of air came a tide of sensations and the blossoming of full awareness.

Seline's eyes shot open and her body shook, a spray of dirt and mud filling the air with the sudden convulsion of limbs. She looked around, trying to gather her surroundings. Walls of dirt surrounded her, a large crater in the ground in which she lay centered as though she were somehow the cause. The sky above was dark and pockmarked with stars and thick, billowing columns of smoke lit from within by an angry, flickering orange glow. Tongues of fire peeked over the walls of the crater, accenting and highlighting the burning limbs of trees; a wall of heat and light covered three-quarters of the crater, and the only quadrant that lacked live flames was instead giving way to an ever-growing rush of water.

Her body failed her again when she tried to climb to her feet. It was not a matter of her limbs responding; that worked just fine. The problem was they felt out of place... and it seemed as though she had too many. Force of habit made her check her stats: a few blurred shapes on the edges of her vision resolved themselves to something coherent.

Health: 500/500. Mana: 300/300. Stamina: 300/300.

That was it. There was no further information in her HUD that she could see, but it at least confirmed she was still in a game. Why, then, did she feel so weird? It took several long minutes for her to figure out what the problem was, in part due to having a head that seemed weirdly separated from her body, or at least further away than it should be. What she saw made her freeze: she stared down at a long, sinuous body composed of sparkling points of light, an unclear, angular blob attached to the one side of herself she was looking at, and legs. Four of them. Two where she mostly expected them to be, but two also in the place where her arms should be. Behind, what appeared to be a long tail stretched to the far wall of the crater.

With this new knowledge in mind, she was able to develop something resembling coordination and push herself to all four feet. That was going to take some getting used to; she had read about players in other games having the ability to shapeshift into four-legged creatures, but none of them had described the complete lack of orientation associated with it. Where the hell was she? Seline considered her options, then stumbled toward the darker, muddier crater wall, her limbs shaky with uncertainty but providing no complaints as she hauled what she was starting to sense was considerable bulk ten feet up the wall.

Mud clung to her hands-- no, her paws as she crested the crater and found herself on the shore of a lively creek. Fire wreathed a multitude of trees around the crater behind her, but ahead of her was clear and calm. Walls of inky darkness rose into the sky a few hundred feet ahead and behind, blocking out significant portions of the sky; the other two directions were clear down to a horizon she struggled to see past the fire, but she had the distinct impression she was in some sort of canyon or gully.

With the light provided by the fire, she glanced back at her form and realized the sparkling points of light that had defined her form were in fact scales of some sort. She could make out swatches of color covering those scales, but in the red glow they were nothing more than dark, darker, and black, save for a few bright red stripes along her back. Thoughts and ideas began to collect in her head, connections forming sluggishly. Seline stood up taller and went still, her eyes falling to the water, waiting for its surface to still enough for her to make out her own face.

A sharp, wedge-shaped muzzle stared back at her, firelight accentuating the silhouette of her head and what must have been horns atop it. Save for the edges of its form, the rest of her face was in darkness... no, two orbs of dimly-glowing crystalline blue regarded her stoically, two rings around depthless pupils. For the briefest of moments her head swam as her mind resisted being placed in a body it did not recognize but could not deny; she seemed to float away from herself for a few seconds before she drew in another breath to steady herself.

Heart pounding, she asked to nobody in particular, "What the hell am I?"

A window appeared in her vision:

Name: Seline. Race: Dragon. Level: 1 (0/3000).

Health: 500/500. Mana: 300/300. Stamina: 300/300.

Strength: 15. Dexterity: 11. Constitution: 18. Agility: 17. Intelligence: 18. Wisdom: 10. Charisma: 10.

Intrinsic traits: Dragonkin

Her character sheet! Seline started at the line for 'Race'. Dragon. She was a dragon.

How had this happened? She wracked her mind, but the memories she had simply did not make sense: playing Lords of War Online, grabbing a load of parcels to transport to the next city, getting on her horse, and leaving the guild town. After that, everything became blurry. She knew something had happened. She knew someone had stopped her, but she could not force the vision of whoever it had been into her mind's eye. After that, she felt what could only be described as having her consciousness sucked through a hose... and then darkness.

She was a dragon. Seline sat back, the scales of her rump squishing unceremoniously in the mud, and she tried to process that one simple fact.

***

Aaron pushed past the charred remains of a small tree, stepping as quietly as he could in heavy armor along a nameless creek to sneak in closer to the impact site. What he saw made him hiss with surprise and drop into a low crouch. Climbing out of a crater, lit by the fires of its own creation, was a dragon. Aaron had never personally seen a dragon, and it was not particularly large like most of the lore of Keyavon portrayed them, but there was no doubt what it was. He focused in on it and called on the skill "Analyze" to gather more info.

A small, green tag of text appeared above the dragon's head: <Dragon Lv. 1>. A window appeared beside the tag that read: "Status: Uninjured. 500/500hp"

The damn thing was only level one and had more HP than him! This had to be related to his quest. If a creature like this were allowed to gain experience in this area, it could quickly overwhelm the already present monsters and natural predators alike. He was quite sure why it had arrived in such a spectacular manner, or why it spawned as level 1 in an area full of level 20-plus monsters, but it did not matter. He pulled his warhammer from his belt and began to slowly creep forward.

The environment took that moment to betray him. His leather bound foot cracked through a stick that had been hidden in the shadows. The dragon's head lifted from staring at itself in the water to level its eyes directly on him. The green text above its head shifted to yellow as it tensed.

Out of options and sensing he might be outmatched, Aaron did the only thing he could: went all in. He triggered the skills Bulwark and Might, providing him nearly doubled defense and damage respectively, raised his warhammer, and charged the dragon, a shouted challenge leaving his lips.

***

The snap of a stick, so unlike the relaxing crackle of flames drew Seline out of her reverie. Her status window vanished as her focus shifted to a shadow approaching from further down the creek, eyes locking on the two-legged shape. With little other light, she could only see its form from the gleam of firelight reflecting from the body-covering armor it wore. Yellow text appeared above the figure's name, wreathed in hazy red: <Unknown>.

Seline froze, her body instinctively growing tense at the unspoken threat posed by whoever or whatever was approaching her. She felt her wings, previously ignored, spread a few feet from her flanks as she turned to partially face the newcomer. Unsure if she could speak, she still tried, opening her mouth and... and she got no further than that before the yellow text flickered to red, the figure standing from the crouch it had been keeping and lifting a weapon she could not clearly identify by shadow and contrast alone.

It unleashed an inhuman roar and charged at her, boots squishing in the shallow mud along the creek. She only had a few seconds to react.

She had no clue how to react. She had not even had the time to dig into her stats sheet to see what she was capable of. A cry of surprise left her maw, she tried to step back, and her unfamiliarity with her new body caused her hindlegs to interfere with each other. Seline went down on her flank, splashing into the shallows of the creek and trying to situate her paws beneath her to formulate some sort of response.

The figure did not give her the time. It was on her while she was in the midst of trying to sort out how to tuck her wing back against her flank. The heavy head of a warhammer came down hard on the outer bone of her wing.

Something Seline had learned early on in her experience with full-immersion games was that most made an effort to regulate the pain players felt when the inevitable dirty business of fighting got underway. Most had options to reduce the sensory input by a percentage or to filter it based on the player's reactions.

The pain Seline felt as the hammer impacted her body was exquisite. The sickening sound and sensation of bone and tendon snapping accentuated the severity of the injury. She screamed and toppled back into the water, half submerged. Her wing, half broke, flopped awkwardly against her flank, the force of her impact jarring it and amplifying her agony. She was only half aware of the HP display in her HUD dropping more than twenty percent with that single blow, and of the small broken bone icon flickering beside the red bar.

Scrambling to turn into the water, her tail lashed and struck her attacker, a wet exhalation of air and a dull thud of scales on armor coming from the successful if accidental attack. Finally righting herself, she lunged into the water, hoping to escape the demon trying to kill her. Her left wing hung limp and dragged in the current, and before she had even moved a half dozen feet he struck her again, this time connecting with her left hip. The damage was not as severe. Nothing broke.

Another chunk of red slid away from her health bar.

The pain was just as intense. More instinct driven than conscious of her actions at this point, Seline's head whipped around, jaws parting. A gout of flame left her maw unbidden, spattering into hissing steam in the water. Her hips collapsed from the impact, throwing off her aim and putting her at severe disadvantage.

Whatever was attacking her leaped from the edge of the water and onto her back. It was only now that she comprehended the difference in size between her and her attacker. If she were standing up, she would surely tower over its head, if only by a few feet. The downside was her own body became her enemy, more than enough to support him as it strode up her back toward her head.

The warhammer came down on the base of her other wing. She felt tendons tear, the force of the impact sending her chest into the water and drowning the ensuing scream. Her health sunk well below forty percent, and a second status icon appeared by the bar now more full of black emptiness than red. Seline yanked her head out of the water and dragged herself forward, foreclaws digging into the silty bottom of the creek beneath her.

This was far too much. "P-- please...! Don't!" Seline managed to sputter while she struggled, her voice broken, sibilant, and clouded with pain. The shadow paused for half a second before hefting its warhammer higher and stomping up her spine. In a panic, she shouted her desires more than thought them, trying to do anything she could to escape. "Menu! Logout! Please!"

Not a damn thing happened.

***

Aaron watched the duration tick down on Might. He generally tried to finish fights before its 20 second effect time elapsed, but the dragon was surprisingly not a challenging foe. It tried to run from him rather than fight, and he gave chase, knocking it down into the water and leaping onto its back and immobilizing it with another full-bodied strike to its uninjured wing. With the dragon sitting at less than half its HP and Aaron having only taken a little less than 30 damage from its tail strike, he was certain he had this fight in the bag.

It was not until it spoke that he began to hesitate. A split second of pause was all it took for him to allow it-- no, her, judging by the voice, to speak again, and those words made his blood turn cold.

"Menu! Logout! Please!"

No one from Keyavon spoke that way. While its denizens all experienced menus and displays, they had no concept of "log out". No concept of "leaving", because for them, this was not a game. It wasn't for him anymore, either, but that was beside the point. Aaron had only encountered less than a handful of individuals in Keyavon who would speak of such things, and all of them were from...

"Earth?" The last few seconds of Might ticked away and the effect faded as he stood on the dragon's shoulders, hammer still raised, while the creature's eyes stared up at him, full of fear, confusion, and pain. It gasped and heaved for breath, blinking several times. Dark liquid marred her lips, pitch black rivulets of life tracing down her neck that were apparent even in the poorly-lit darkness. "Are you from Earth?" he asked again, lowering his warhammer. He had no desire to continue this battle either way.

No beast he had fought had pleaded for its life. It was a sickening sensation he had not experienced before.

***

Seline stared unblinkingly up at her attacker, feeling her body sinking a few inches into the silt of the river. Every part of her body was either in a state of pain or shock. She was aware of the red bar of her healthy steadily dropping lower, three small icons floating ominously beneath her status bars: a red teardrop-shaped insignia, a pale bone snapped in half, and what appeared to be a flat icon of a white pair of lungs the bottom half of which was shaded in deep red. Her hazy mind could process none of these things, body shaking as seconds ticked by.

"Earth." Seline's mind held onto that word. Why would this be important to her? She panted, the exhale quickly turning into a wet cough that sent warm liquid dripping from her lips and into the water below. The figure standing on her was entirely covered in armor; she could not even see eyes within the oddly-elongated full-head helmet.

It was such an absurd question. Of course she was from Earth. Where else could she be from? "Y... yes," Seline managed after another coughing fit.

The figure's demeanor changed as she spoke. The red tagged text above its head faded to yellow, then to a light green as it lowered its weapon. "Christ. Holy shit... how are you...?" the figured cursed, then cursed some more. Even muffled within the armor, Seline could tell he was male. "Sorry. I'm sorry, fuck. We, I need to... can you make it back to dry land?"

The abrupt change in disposition confused Seline more than his equally-abrupt attack. Her vision swam as she eyed the shore; she had only managed to make it maybe ten feet into the water. She coughed up more blood before answering, "I think... I think I'm going to die." Whatever the status icons indicated, they must have been a constant stat drain; her HP was sliding below 20 percent and her stamina was dropping somewhere in the range of 10.

"You're not going to die," the man spoke. He attached his warhammer to a loop on his hip, reaching down toward her with a gauntleted hand. Seline flinched, slipping deeper into the water. "Hey. Hey hey, it's alright," he shifted his hand palm-up to show it was empty, but Seline could not help but draw away. He was, after all, just fifteen seconds or so from having been about to murder her. A second later a golden light began to glow in his palm, and he dropped down to one knee to place the palm on one of her shoulders.

Warmth like downing a hot cup of coffee or cocoa flowed through her body from the contact point. Where the warmth touched the pain abated somewhat, and the steady decline of her HP became a sluggish trickle upward. A healing spell of some sort. The status icons did not clear, and the pain was still somewhere in the range of "excruciating" as compared to "almost-unbearable", but it freed up some resources in her head.

She growled. "Get off of me," and shifted bodily. Out of spite, she moved quicker than she should have, a shout leaving the armored figure as he was thrown into the water. Seline paid for it equally, though: both of her wings screamed in protest, pain like lightning from the breaking point midway down the arm of her left wing and from less intensely from the base of her right. Her left hindleg spasmed as she tried to put weight on it, causing her to stumble and fight the water for a moment as she found her feet.

To his credit, Mr. Armor didn't voice any protest. He was waist-deep in the water, a stalwart stride taking him close to shore as he looked over his shoulder. Seline's vision swam; her HP began to drop again, the healing having barely taken her above 30 percent. Turning around and trudging through the water was a slow process, every step of her wobbly legs made shakier by the steady, sharp jab of pain every time her left wing so much as twitched.

Eventually, Seline stumbled to first to the muddy shore and then to a patch of dry, fire-scorched dirt. Her legs gave way as her mind realized it had accomplished her limited goal. She would, at the very least, not drown, and that was good enough. Her HP had sunk below 15 percent and the yellow bar of her stamina was barely more than a sliver.

In short, she was done.

The armored figure stood beside her, staring for a few seconds before letting out an animalistic grown. "Damn, health's still dropping. Some sort of status effect?" he eyed Seline's collapsed form, a hint of trepidation in his voice. "What've you got?"

Seline's vision had begun to fade again, narrowing to a gray tunnel. Her head swam as it sunk to the ground beneath her forepaws, her eyelids drifted down, and she knew no more.

***

The sound of crackling fire once more greeted Seline's ears as she woke. This time there was no fog, no malaise in her reactions. Her eyes shot open wide and her body jerked to awareness. Her body fed her an overwhelming wave of sensation: the scent of burning wood, damp dirt, mud, the crisp sharpness of moving water, and a musty, pungent smell she could not place, the sounds of water in motion, of a breeze through leaves, the pop and crackle of fire. Pain emanated from every corner of her body, extra limbs especially: she was immediately aware of her wings aching especially, and her tail emitted a dull thud of rhythmic pain. It was nothing like the splitting agony when she had received the injuries, but it was enough to sharpen her awareness.

Her head shot up as she looked around. She lay where she had collapsed, but now it was day, the sky above a light blue striated with wispy, thin clouds. The sun, or at least some star, shone brightly; even a moment of looking at it let her know it wasn't the Sun proper: it was smaller in the sky and shone a bluish-white. Behind her was the crater she had emerged from; the trees were short and scraggly affairs and the ground was covered in short tan grass, a 40 foot radius of which was charred black. She lay at the edge of the burnt area, and the only flame that occupied the area now was concentrated in a small, rocky firepit a few yards away.

An armored figure tended the fire. Her heart leaped as she recognized it from the night before. The one that had attacked her. The one that had... healed her? She took a quick glance at her stats. The icons indicating her injuries had vanished, but her health bar was only about eighty-five percent full, the last fifteen a dull gray-red that she could not immediately explain.

Her eyes settled on the head of the armored figure. The elongated shape of its helmet now made sense: while the rest of its form was humanoid, at least as far as she could tell beneath the armor, the head was that of a wolf, covered in black and gray fur and complete with a pair of tall, pointed ears, a long muzzle capped with a soft-looking nose, and gleaming amber eyes that Seline could see even though he was not facing her.

The memories of the previous night came back to her in a flood, intense as the moment she had first spotted the fire-gleaming armor the wolf-man wore. He was distracted with the fire and did not seem to have noticed she was awake. The words he had spoken to her before she had lost consciousness paled in comparison to the intensity of pain he had caused... without really thinking, Seline rose to her feet as quietly as she could manage. All four. It was still disorienting, and the soreness in her limbs made her stumble, paws sliding against a dusty pile of charcoal.

Her former assailant's ears perked, focusing in her direction as his muzzle rose to look her way. That was Seline's cue to flee. Her feet slid on the thin layer of char covering the ground, claws scrabbling against the rocky dirt beneath as she spun about and sprinted away from him.

At least, she tried to sprint. Pain shot through her left wing and one of her hindlegs protested the motion, forcing her into a three-legged limp. She barreled into a burnt tree, the charred wood splintering against her scales and the weight of her rush.

Behind her, the wolf-man shouted. "Hey! Wait! I'm sorry about last night!" The clink and clatter of armor met Seline's ears as he leaped to his feet and followed her.

As she fled, Seline glanced around. The canyon she found herself in reminded her of the plains of New Mexico, a state she had spent a few years in as a child. Craggy, tan rock rose a hundred or more feet into the air on either side, the ground in between a good quarter mile wide, shallowly dipping toward the river that meandered through the canyon. Though the trees were craggy and alien, far thicker at the base with thin, scraggly branches and greenish-blue leaves shaped like elongated diamonds, the scenery was almost comfortingly familiar.

Her eyes took in the detail of her surroundings with a momentary intensity that surprised her. She was still focused on trying to arrange her protesting limbs, a task that she was quickly growing accustomed to. The pain did not fade, but she was quickly adapting to the quadrupedal form of motion. Even with her focus split multiple ways, she was aware of her surroundings with a clarity that was markedly different from any game she had played previously... even from her own real life.

Despite her growing skill moving around as a dragon, her limp slowed her, and the pain sapped her strength. It was not much of a race; the wolf-man easily kept up with her, always a safe distance behind. After only a few minutes, Seline realized she was at her limit, her body slowing of its own volition, muscles shaking, and the abject panic she had felt when she woke was beginning to abate. Her breath heaved from her muzzle, and her sides shuddered. She trotted then stumbled to a halt in front of a small, rocky rise in the terrain.

The voice of the wolf-man reached her ears, barely winded. "Look, I know you're probably afraid, but if you were worried about me, you definitely do not want to run into any of the level twenty mobs around here. Will you just stop?"

Seline turned until she was half-facing her pursuer, a position that she felt would allow her to defend herself as easily as flee if needed. He stood beside a scraggly tree a good twenty feet away carrying nothing in his hands, though she could see his warhammer strapped to his back and a small blade in a sheath attached to his belt. The night before, Seline had assumed his armor had been metal, but the sunlight glinted off the material in a fashion that almost resembled wood and was a dusky brown in color.

She stared at him. "You tried to kill me," Seline stated simply. Then she shuddered at the memory. "It hurt, a lot. Why isn't there any pain reduction? What kind of game is this?"

The wolf-man sighed, then drew in a deep breath. He spoke with a slow, liquid accent that reminded Seline of a few men she had met from the rural zones outside the city. "We'll get to that. It's gonna take a lot of explaining, though. I wouldn't have attacked you if I knew you were a... if you were from Earth. From home." He sighed again, looking away. "First things first, I suppose. I'm Aaron." He looked at her, and even on the face of a wolf, Seline could see the imploring expression he wore.

She was still tense, but this was a far better alternative to what had happened the night before. "Seline. Why did you as if I was from Earth? Aren't you?"

"Seline," Aaron spoke slowly. He shook his head at her question. "It's really important, actually. If you're from Earth, I mean. Because where we are now? This place? It's not Earth. And it's not a game."

She stared at him as though he had grown a second head. A second, wolfish head, perhaps with an extra set of eyes. "What do you mean 'not a game'? I can see my own stats and..." the green text floating above Aaron's head had changed when Seline was not paying attention to a simple <Aaron>, "and I can see your name floating above your head."

Aaron brought gauntleted hand to his forehead. "Uh, yeah. Look, it's going to take a lot of explaining. Will you at least come back to the fire so I can sit and get some food? You have to be hungry, too."

Seline growled. Her fear was beginning to fade into some aggravating combination of frustration and impatience. It wasn't that she had not been player-killed before in other VR-games, but her most recent experience had been so real, so visceral, she was having a hard time telling herself it was just a game, and this other player telling her this world was real was not helping. He seemed genuine, however, and she could use someone's brain to pick as she familiarized herself with the new land she found herself in.

Taking a few breaths to steady herself and collect her thoughts, she replied, "Fine. If it'll get me some answers."

Aaron looked relieved, his expression relaxing. At least, Seline had that impression from his body language; reading the facial features of a wolf, even one with subtle humanoid cues, a softness around the eyes and lips, was not a task she was finding simple. He heaved a sigh, then spoke, "Awesome. Promise I'll make it up to you for last night." The wolf-man turned slowly, looking over his shoulder. "Uh, I don't think it'll be too hard to follow your path back."

Seline stared. There was a very clear, dragon-sized trail of scuffed dirt and crushed foliage in a mostly-straight line back the way she had come. She was reminded again of her own size. Clearly, her standard approach toward stealthy gameplay would not be panning out this time around.

Whether through blatant observation of her sore state or through some healer's sense, Aaron appeared aware Seline's injuries were still troubling her, and the pace he set back to the camp left Seline ample time to investigate herself physically. In the light of day, she could finally take in the true magnitude of what she was.

She was covered in scales, that much she had determined the night prior before Aaron had attacked her. What the firelight did not give her the ability to appreciate was how fine her scales were, each no larger than a person's palm, and most far, far smaller. The dominant color was a dark blue that reminded her of the night sky after sunset had passed, and like the night sky, each scale faded to black around the trailing edges. In some areas, such as the pits of her fore- and hind-legs and beneath her wings she was completely black. Her wings were two-hued: the upper surfaces matched the dark patterning of her scales, swatches of blue fading into wisps of black across the broad sails, but to her surprise the undersides of her wings were a pastel blue more reminiscent of a cloudless midday sky.

Blue was not the only color she wore, however. Stripes of red and orange ran down her spine, uneven and asymmetrical in their design. If her form could be described as a piece of art (and in her mind, Seline was beginning to feel it was), the patterns on her back looked as though the artist had loaded up a brush thick with paint and drizzled it across her spine, right down to the tip of her tail, which terminated in a sharp, blood-red spike. Her claws were as dark as some of her scales, sharp with wicked curves. It was difficult to look closely while she was walking, but from what she could see, they were the weapons she'd expect to find on any dragon worth their salt in a video game.

Seline had horns as well. She was only aware of them as unexpected weight when she turned her head, or the couple times she brushed close enough to her own hide to feel them pressing against her. What sort of horns they were, she did not know, but there seemed to be two pairs: a long, shallowly-curved set sweeping back over her neck and a second, shorter pair beneath the first at a broader outward angle. Her ears hovered somewhere behind and in between her horns, long and mobile. Maybe if she could find a still pool of water, she could learn more. Seline added it to her mental to-do list.

Aaron caught her craning her neck around to examine herself and left her to her thoughts, though in the moments between stretching to view different parts of her body she did see him watching her side-long. More than once he had to stop her before she ran herself into a tree or tripped in a small, dried-out gully. The smell of charred flesh drew Seline from her self-inspection: her stomach rumbled and a pang of hunger shot through her. Like the pain she had felt the night before, this sensation was indistinguishable from how it felt in the real world. Whatever technology was powering this game, it was something else. She could feel the evidence stacking up in the back of her mind: what Aaron has said was true, she was not in some sort of game, but Seline pushed back at it. What else could this be? She was a dragon.

The campfire Aaron had constructed was a small affair, a ring of stones about a divot in the dirt over which a skewer bearing some sort of flesh was suspended. That was the source of the delicious smell filling the air. Seline could feel her mouth watering, and she was halfway to snapping the meal out of the fire before she realized, abruptly and with intense bemusement, how tiny a meal it really was compared to her. It was the reach of her paw in her vision that brought it home: she could have put the fire out by stepping on it accidentally. She noted the odd structure of her forepaws, surprised to discover a short opposable thumb attached to each, but this, too, she filed away under "Stare at self more", the same as finding something to double as a mirror.

Seline shot a glare of disappointment at Aaron, who had the grace and perhaps the forethought to be standing out of reach. "Why did you ask if I was hungry if this is all you have? I'm starving." She immediately felt guilty at the demanding tone in her voice. Who was she to expect anything from a complete stranger? Seline looked away.

"I, uh. I managed to catch a whole goat but there's no way I could cook all of it," he responded hesitantly, motioning with a hand toward a nearby tree. "I was hoping that wouldn't matter."

Seline's eyes settled on the limp, dangling form of a furred creature hanging from a split in two branches. It was a grisly sight: the beast had been hung upside down, belly split evenly with the entrails removed. The ground beneath the goat's slit throat was covered in dark, drying blood. She knew she should feel some sort of revulsion or disgust, but looking through the eyes of a dragon, Seline felt almost no emotional response other than hunger. Now that she was aware of the kill, she could pick up the cloyingly-sweet, metallic scent of blood on the air, and she could immediately feel her own internal, almost subconscious response: this was food, plain and simple, and she was hungry. As far as this body was concerned, she had probably never eaten before. Her body tensed, and it took a moment of shock and intense self-control to stop her from leaping at her potential meal and snapping it down in one gulp.

"W- why's it all strung up like that?" Seline asked shakily, trying to distract herself from a flood of instinct so powerful it almost overwhelmed her.

"Like what? It's properly dressed. You have to do that or... you live in the city, don't you? Lived. You lived in the city," Aaron responded.

She was far more focused on what remained of the goat to wonder whether there was a hint of derision in his voice. Her distraction only worked against her: as she had been speaking, her paws carried her toward the tree, her eyes once more settling on her impending meal. "Yeah, doesn't everyone?"

"Yukon kid, myself. One of the last few places you don't just have buildings cramming up the--" Aaron was cut off by the snapping of branches as Seline's maw clamped down around the slain goat.

At this point, Seline felt more like a passenger in her own body, just along for the ride while something deeper, more foundational to her being drove her. She felt her teeth slice through hide like as easily as she could poke a pencil through a piece of paper, felt the weight of the body on her tongue and lower jaw. In one fluid motion, she yanked the goat from its resting place, threw her head back, and let the limp, ragdolled form shift in the air just long enough to angle its head into her gullet.

Then, she swallowed it whole, no chewing, tearing, ripping, or crunching. The rational part of her mind, the one taking the back seat, panicked; there was no way she wasn't about to just choke herself to death! Fortunately, instinct left her no room for hesitation. The muscles in her throat stretched just enough that the relatively-tiny animal could fit, and in only a few moments, the whole ordeal was over.

Seline shook her head hard as she regained control, her stomach feeling comfortably full, but her mind feeling rather distinctly shaken. She had to drag her stupid muzzle away from staring at the pile of offal beneath the tree with similarly-ravenous intent. At that moment, she was far more embarrassed than she would ever have thought possible. Aaron was watching unblinkingly and with wide eyes as she vanished a creature a quarter his size in about three seconds. One hand had reactively grasped at the haft of his warhammer, and the sight of that sent a shudder of remembered fear through her body. She tensed.

The wolf-man saw where her eyes were focused and immediately dropped his hand, palm facing her to show it was empty. "Sorry. I just- That was quick," Aaron laughed nervously. "Are you done? Was that enough?" his eyes darted toward the discarded organs. Clearly, he had seen the hungry look Seline had given it, and she could feel the judgment in his gaze.

Seline felt ashamed. She had completely lost control of herself. "I... I don't know what got into me," she muttered and averted her gaze once more.

Aaron's next laugh was more wry and less forced. "It's the consequence of being a predator, I think. Instinct, you know?" the wolf-man tapped his temple. "Takes you by surprise."

The way he spoke, Seline felt that he knew what she had just gone through. More than knew, he understood. It went a long way toward assuaging her own guilt. She gave the goat tree a mistrustful final look and shuffled away from it. "Yeah. That. Why would that even be part of--"

"--a game?" Aaron cut her off. "This ain't a game. You're not in a game. Keyavon is not a game." He sounded frustrated, shifting to a toppled tree trunk to sit. He held up a hand, forestalling the protest he could see coming on Seline's opening lips. "I know you don't believe me yet, but it bears repeating: this is not a game." Aaron stared her in the eyes. "Or if it is a game, it's so close to a real world that it doesn't matter. You can't log out. You can't quit. You ain't going anywhere that you can't get to inside this world. As best we can tell," he paused as she opened her maw to interrupt him, "and by we I mean the two other people I know from Earth," deftly answering the question, he continued, "this is some sort of weird, I don't know, alternate reality or plane of existence that acts kind of like a game. But it's not."

He paused, wanting his words to set in properly. The certainty with which he spoke was beginning to drive it home in Seline's mind. Still, "That doesn't make any sense. I can pull up my own stats, see?" Pointedly, and uselessly, she summoned the window into her view before she realized Aaron couldn't see it. "I've got a freaking health bar! You can't tell me this isn't a game."

Aaron sighed, resting his forehead in one hand. "And I ain't a philosopher. All I know is this place is as real as it gets, and none of us can figure out how to leave, or quit, or if that's even possible. So it's best to act like it's real."

"Real? So what happens if I die?" Seline challenged.

"You'll come back. Eventually," he looked up at her. His ears went flat back, and Seline realized the look of victory that swept across her face must have been universal across species. "Eventually! And I think you felt how real everything else is. I've died twice since I got here, and I can tell you, it ain't fun. Not like any game I ever played, at least."

She hesitated. She had felt death last night, the sensation of her life force draining away. Like the instinct that had just forced her to devour that goat, it was out of place in anything Seline would consider a "game". The pain felt real. It had felt horrible, but it could not compare to the cold, dreadful creep of death. She had been certain she was going to die. Who would design that to be part of a game? "So what is it, then? You called it... Keyavon?"

"That's what the natives call it, yeah."

"The natives? Is everyone like you?" Seline blurted out before catching herself. Foot, meet mouth.

Aaron was fortunately not self-conscious about his own species. He barked out a laugh. "Hah! What, a scraggly wolf? Nah. You got your humans, dwarves, and your elves, and I'm pretty sure I've seen a few halflings. 'Bout a third of the population are beastkin, though." At Seline's look of confusion, he explained, "Animal people. All different kinds, though. Birds, cats, you name it."

"Oh," she nodded. "Did you choose to be?"

Aaron arched an eyebrow. "You choose to be a dragon?" he countered.

Seline thought about it. The memories from immediately before she woke in Keyavon were a blur, but she did not think they involved any sort of character selection mechanism. She shook her head. "I don't think so."

"Yeah, same for the rest of us. It's weird, you know?" the wolf-man mused. "Like, why this," he motioned to his armored self. "Why a wolf? But it's not like it's been a problem. I woke up near a city that's a pretty big mix, and hell, with how cold it is in this place, being a wolf has been kind of nice!" Aaron chuckled. "You should seem some of the humans and other skinned folk. If you can catch them outdoors without being completely covered. Apparently, the climate's pretty cold in Keyavon. I don't feel it, and everything else seems adapted, too. 'Cept the humans and such."

Seline could relax to calming cadence of his drawl. The more he spoke, and the more impassioned he became, the more the twang of his accent became clear. She had always, like most city dwellers, associated this sort of accents with rough country Luddites, but Aaron was anything but stupid. She was having a difficult time imagining him as the violate beast that bore down on her the night before. Her thoughts grew guarded as they returned to what had happened, intruding as they always did on any hope of relaxation. "So." Seline spoke, terse and almost-professional. "What do I need to know? Mechanics, magic, stats, inventory. That sort of stuff."

Aaron blinked at her. She was slowly beginning to learn the facial language of a wolf, and she could clearly see he looked borderline offended at her tone. "Well, you won't have anything like an inventory until you get some bags or equipment. The... UI is pretty adaptive. And stuff doesn't poof in and out of it like in a game. You gotta do it the hard way. Same with grabbin' loot. Hard way."

Seline nodded for him to continue. "Ah, there are no classes. Not as such, at least. You level up skills, which grant you character experience, which gives you character levels, which gives you attribute points to assign to your stats. You can also get character XP through quests. Skills get better or more reliable as you level them, and sometimes they can change or unlock subskills once you are experienced enough. Uh," Aaron swiped his hand through the fur on the back of his head. "You got intrinsic traits, or you might, which are like permanent properties you have, and character traits, which you start to unlock once you reach level five. Those are where you can start to specialize in things."

She had a thought, pulling up her stat window as he spoke and reading silently over those aspects of the window.

> Name: Seline. Race: Dragon. Level: 1 (0/3000).

> Health: 500/500. Mana: 300/300. Stamina: 300/300.

> Strength: 15. Dexterity: 11. Constitution: 18. Agility: 17. Intelligence: 18. Wisdom: 10. Charisma: 10.

> Intrinsic traits: Dragonkin

She did not have a section in the window for character traits, so she had to assume Aaron was telling her the truth. She would find out eventually. Her eyes hovered on the word "Dragonkin" for a few moments.

> Dragonkin: You possess the blood and heritage of dragonkind. Other dragonkin will recognize you for what you are through most guises, for a particular magical aura pervades your very presence.

Seline considered this. There were no hard stats associated with the item, just a simple description. While she read, Aaron went on. "All the attributes do what you'd expect of them. Strength for smacking things, dexterity for getting good hits. Constitution for taking good hits and agility for avoiding them. Intelligence and wisdom affect a lot of stuff, but INT gives you more mana and WIS makes it come back faster. Agility for going faster, and charisma for looking pretty. They also affect your skills, depending on what kind of skill is involved. Warhammers are improved by STR, but AGI is obviously more important for something like dodge. That sorta stuff. You can see which in the skill description."

The dragoness bobbed her head absently, searching for a list of her skills. A small tab appeared at the top of the window with just such a label. She was presented with two columns, one bearing the name of each skill, and the other what she assumed was an associated level bar, all of which had a big, fat one in the middle. Some were indented beneath higher skills in what had to be a simple hierarchy.

> Skills:

>> Run (1) 10%

>> Jump (1) 0%

>> Dodge (1) 8%

>> Flight (1) 0%

>> Natural Weaponry (1) 15%

>-> Bite (1) 1%

>-> Wing Strike (1) 5%

>-> Tail Strike (1) 2%

>> Breath Weapon (1) 1%

"At least it rewarded me a little for what I did last night," Seline thought to herself dryly. It was a disappointingly small list, but she had been in several games that did not display skills that you did not know or did not have progress in. Usually, one had to try to do a thing and see if an associated skill was unlocked. She did not focus too intensely on the skills she had; they all seemed pretty self-explanatory.

Aaron was still speaking. "Your health, mana, and stamina come back over time like you'd expect. 'Cept if you have some sort of permanent or slowly-healing injury. Then you lose part of your health bar, or whatever bar is affected, until you're fully healed."

Seline's eyes flicked to the gray chunk missing out of her HP indicator. A small number appeared inside it: 12%. Was that smaller than it had been when she woke? She had almost forgotten about her pain, and now it seemed noticeably less intense. "I'm still missing a chunk."

It was Aaron's turn to look away. "Ah, yeah. I was able to heal most of the injuries. Broken bones and such. Internal bleeding. You might want to check your combat log, but it's probably just a standard result of severe injury. That can happen when you almost die."

There was a pregnant, awkward silence during which Aaron realized he probably did not need to remind her and which Seline had no inclination to respond. Eventually, though, Aaron broke the silence. "You know, finding equipment and a place to rest is going to be pretty difficult given the whole dragon thing. You probably won't be able to just walk into any town to buy or sell stuff." The way he spoke provided the distinct impression that he had a solution for her.

Seline stared at him. "That's inconvenient," she said dryly.

The wolf-man winked at her. "But, if you help me finish up the quest that I've been working on out here, I can introduce you to a faction that would be more than happy to have you."

And there it was. He wanted something from her. That was probably why he was being so nice. She weighed her options. "What kind of quest? And what kind of faction?" she asked slowly.

Aaron shrugged. "Quest is pretty easy. It's just taking a long time. There have been a lot of wild animals attacking farmers and townsfolk living out in the Plains of Mey'Tar," he nodded over his shoulder and down the canyon. "I just have to do some cleaning. A lot of it, apparently. As for the faction," he shrugged again, "they're open-minded and pretty clever, and they have a lot of resources. Sound good?"

If he was telling the truth, it would be a pretty good deal for her. All she had to do was help with one quest, and she had a potential base of operations. If she wanted to, she could probably even avoid him after that. Feeling like she was being weaseled into a corner did not put her at ease, but if it netted her an opportunity to go somewhere in this world, it was likely worth it.

"Fine. Deal," Seline spoke in a terse manner, her tail flicking behind her dismissively. "What do we have to do?"

Aaron gave her a fang-toothed grin. "After I get my own breakfast, we'll head east out of this canyon and into the Plains. It's two days on foot back to Nor, the city where I got the quest. I figure if we head that way, by the time we get back we'll have had enough encounters to finish it off." He paused for a moment. "Uh, we may want to avoid having you walk into any of the towns in between here and there, though. A lot of the folk in the smaller places are the stab first, ask questions later variety."

"You mean they'll attack me because I'm a dragon."

"A very real possibility."

"Just wonderful," Seline sighed. People would attack her on sight just because of what she was. As if she needed something to make being a dragon more difficult. She sat down near the fire and sighed again.

Watching her, Aaron said, "Look, it'll be fine. We'll get you some levels and a few good quests, and you'll get at least some starter equipment from the faction I'll introduce you do. I'm sure they'll be willing to custom fashion it, especially for the chance to have a dragon as an ally." With that, he stood and stepped up to the fire, pulling the skewer from it and inspecting the results. "Tsk. Little overdone. You kept me out there any longer and this'd be fried," he said, holding up the blackened bit of flesh. "Take a look at your log and get familiar with it. Should get you rounded out nicely."

While the wolf-man tore into his mean, Seline turned her focus to her UI as suggested. She did not see any log immediately available, but as she thought about it, a small window popped up, a dozen or so lines of text:

> Unknown Assailant has activated Unknown Ability.

> Unknown Assailant has activated Unknown Ability.

> Unknown Assailant has advantage.

> Unknown Assailant has struck your wing. Critical hit! Bludgeoning damage: 114

> You are Maimed: Broken Bone, Outer Wing Strut.

> You strike Unknown Assailant for 25 bludgeoning damage.

> "Tail Strikes" (skill) discovered!

> Unknown Assailant has struck your hip. Bludgeoning damage: 43

> Your Breath Weapon - Fire misses Unknown Assailant. No charges remain.

> "Breath Weapon" (skill) discovered!

> "Breath Weapon - Fire" (spell) discovered!

> Unknown Assailant has advantage.

> Unknown Assailant has struck your shoulder. Critical hit! Bludgeoning damage: 134.

> You are maimed: Internal Bleeding, left lung, moderate.

> You are maimed: Broken Rib.

> You are maimed: Bleeding, moderate.

> Unknown Assailant is no longer hostile.

> Unknown Party casts Unknown Healing on you. Restored: 50hp.

> You have lost consciousness.

Seline stared at the log. It was surprisingly detailed, but she noticed it ended after she passed out. Did she have to be aware of something in order for it to show in the log? There were certainly many unknowns present, but the rest was pretty detailed. Impressively so, up to and including the areas of her body that became injured. She wondered if there was some sort of overall display for her status that provided a better summary.

No sooner had she thought it than the log vanished and a window appeared with a three-dimensional model of her body, simplified to a creamy white color, wings, head, and tail extended. There were several areas on the model that were shaded in orange: the outside of her left wing where Aaron had broken her bone, her right shoulder and down through to a single spot on her chest. Seline tried to focus on the area on her wing and the model rotated. A small label appeared near the area.

> Broken Wing Strut: Mended. Stable. Healing. Deficit: 12hp.

She drank in the information. Was the deficit what was contributing to the grayed-out section of her health? She eyed the other injured area, which displayed two labels.

> Torn Ligament: Stable. Healing. Deficit: 8hp.

> Shattered Rib: Mended. Healing. Deficit: 32hp.

In total, it added up to the 52hp she was missing. Seline wondered how long it would take to fully recover, but to her disappointment, no further information was presented. She sighed and dismissed the window, checked her stats one last time, then refocused on Aaron. The UI faded away until it was just barely visible, waiting until she needed it again.

"So, about how long does it take to get 3000 XP?" she asked.

Aaron paused in the middle of a bite, his mouth full of half-chewed goat. "3000? Why?"

"That's how much I have until level 2."

Aaron coughed, choked, and dropped what little remained of the skewered meat. Taken aback, Seline sidled a few feet away, looking on in concern as he slapped his chest plate and coughed up a mouthful of food. "Three... three thousand? Are you serious?" the wolf-man's tone was incredulous.

"What's wrong with 3000?" Seline demanded, worried for her own sake.

"What's wrong with it?" Aaron peered at her, wiping his muzzle clean. "You're sure it's 3k? Seline, it only took me 650 for my level one, and the other folk I know are about similar. 3k is like, five times the average." His eyes were wide.

"Fuck," Seline cursed. So not only was she not able to buy normal equipment and could not enter normal towns without being attacked, but it was going to take her something like five times as long to level up! "This is ridiculous. I don't understand."

Aaron was quiet for a few minutes during which Seline read back over her stats, making sure she was not going crazy. Nope, there at the top of her core stats window was a big fat zero next to a nice, long 3000. Eventually, Aaron spoke. "No, I have an idea. What're your main stats? Health, mana, strength and such?"

Seline read them off for him, and his eyes only grew wider as she proceeded. Halfway through, she stopped to give him a quizzical look, but he only motioned for her to finish. When she did, he breathed out heavily, shaking his head. "Well that explains it, then. Uh, some quick math, you've got like, almost thirty extra attribute points at level one. Above the base of ten. Most people start out with something closer to twenty, and I bet you that once you do level up, you'll get quite a few more attribute points to assign than the rest of us mortals." He grinned wolfishly. "Your health, mana, and stamina are also way above the normal baseline. I guess it makes sense. You're a damn dragon."

She thought this through. If what he was saying was true, she would level up slowly, but each level would represent a significantly larger boost in power than someone with a lower XP requirement. Time would tell how balanced such an arrangement would be. "I hope you're right."

Aaron shrugged his shoulders, picked up the dropped skewer, and tossed it into the fire. "We should get a move on. I didn't see anything particularly threatening when I was hunting, but that doesn't mean it'll stay that way." As he spoke, he kicked dirt and rocks over the fire, the flames sputtering out with a gout of smoke.

Seline nodded and stood. Curiously and cautious of the nearby trees, she tried to stretch her wings. She managed to get them halfway open before a lance of pain shot through her chest and up through the shoulder of her right wing. She hissed in pain and quickly yanked her wings back to her sides. Aaron looked up with concern. "Still hurts," she said by way of explanation.

The wolf-man gave her a sheepish look. "I healed what I could but some injuries are like that. I don't have some of the more powerful healing spells yet. Sorry, again."

She nodded curtly at him. In truth, she was uncertain she wanted to try flying so soon; if it had taken her some time to re-learn how to walk on four legs, she had no doubt flying would be more difficult, and she was afraid she would end up hurting herself more. Seline sighed wistfully; she had always dreamed of flying. As a little girl, she had watched space plane and rocket launches with an eager fascination, and as she grew older, the harsh realities of her station in life had not tempered her desire to get in the air... and into space. It was her dream to one day move to one of the Mars colonies, but the options for someone without an exorbitant amount of money amounted to indentured servitude for half her natural life, and that was only if she possessed a valuable skillset for the burgeoning colonies.

Seline had neither the money nor the skills that were in demand. She did not even have a college education. Now, as she looked up at the unfamiliar sky, her dreams of space flight felt all the more distant, even with the pair of wings in her back.

Something peculiar caught her eye. She had not noticed it earlier, but the hazy disc of a moon hung in the clear blue sky. At least, she thought it was a moon; it was at least three times the size of the Moon proper, as she was used to in rea-- back on Earth, and though the color of the sky and the intensity of the sun muted it, a multitude of colors swept longitudinally across the the moon's surface. It reminded her of Jupiter, actually, with thicker bands near what must be the equator and, if she looked closely, whorls of storms upset the banding colors in places.

"Aaron, is that a moon?" she asked, her eyes not leaving the sight.

"Huh?" he asked, first looking up at her, then looking in the direction of her muzzle. "Oh. Hah. No, that's a planet. Keyavon is the moon. That's Gaterre."

Her mind took a few long seconds to process this. "So we're... on a moon?" Her eyes widened as the realization set in.

"Yep! As best as anyone here can gather," Aaron confirmed. "Apparently it's a real big planet, and Keyavon goes around it pretty odd like. Eventually Gaterre gets in the way of the sun for a week every month, and it stays that way for a good few months. Closest thing they have to winter here." As he spoke, he picked up a pack from behind a nearby tree and shouldered it, shifting his warhammer off to one side. His helmet was strapped to the side of the pack. "Alright, let's go. If we head off now, we can probably make it to a safe place to camp by sundown."

Sparing the planet in the sky one final glance, Seline looked around and then followed Aaron away from their small camp and down the canyon toward the rising sun.

***

Aaron was quiet as he picked their path through the canyon, following close enough to the river that the sound of running water filled the air, broken by the occasional call of a bird of prey in the sky far above. The terrain was rocky and dry, but despite it all, Seline found the activity and relative silence relaxing. She had never been a very talkative person and was completely comfortable with long periods of silence.

It granted her the opportunity to explore the information she had available in more detail. Something from the combat log had left a curious niggling in the back of her mind, so she summoned her skill menu and focused on "Breath Weapon".

> Breath Weapon - A specialized skill possessed only by creatures with the ability to utilize their breath in combat. Each level increases proficiency and efficiency of breath weapon usage. ~~Let them come. They will all burn.~~

Seline frowned. Whereas the combat log had been rather descriptive, she could not help but feel this skill looked a little sparse. She had been expecting stats, something like damage numbers, cost in mana. A window appeared above the skills list, entitled "Spells". This window had only a single entry:

> Breath Weapon - Fire

>> Skill: Breath Weapon

>> Combine raw elemental Fire with potent natural reagents and expel it from your maw, searing your target.

>> Base Mana cost: 75

>> Base Damage: 100 fire

>> Base charge cost: 1

Now she was getting somewhere. It was considered a spell tied to the Breath Weapon skill. She knew its mana cost and how much damage it could do. What was the charge cost based on, though? The combat log had indicated she had expended whatever charges she had after just one usage.

A small change in the UI caught her eye. It was so insignificant she had almost missed it, but beneath the bars for her health, mana, and stamina, a fourth bar appeared. This bar shimmed orange, yellow, and red. Focusing on it brought up a simple label:

> Draconic Potentia (fire) - 1/1

This, Seline assumed, corresponded to the number of "charges" expended during usage of her fire breath, but how quickly it recovered, or how it recovered, was not immediately apparent, and no additional information appeared when she questioned it in her mind.

A few hours passed quickly enough, and soon the walls of the canyon gave way to rocky bluffs and slopes of shattered scree. Soon, the pair left even those features behind. Ahead stretched rolling plains of tan interspersed with splotches green and gray, scattered copses of trees and short cliffs littering the landscape. The river beside them meandered eastward and vanished between a line of hills in the distance. Somehow, the Plains of Mey'Tar looked more desolate than the canyon behind them.

After a short distance, Aaron broke away from the bank of the river and began to head north. Seline asked him about the change in direction.

"If we keep following the river, we'll eventually run into some sort of village or town. This far south, I can't guarantee they'd be friendly, even to me. This," he motioned with a gauntleted hand, "is the most direct route. We made pretty good time through the Badlands. I was expecting we'd encounter at least, I don't know, some sort of monster. At least once." Aaron shrugged.

"How far do we have to go?" Seline asked.

Aaron's eyes went unfocused for a few seconds before he answered. "About fifty miles. I can make about 30 a day without feeling it," he smiled toothily. "I doubt that'll come anywhere close to pushing it for you, but past that it'll start hurting for me."

Seline was about to ask, "Do you have some sort of map?" when his ears perked up sharp and swiveled up the hill they had been cresting. He held his hand up and sunk into a crouch, listening.

The change in position instantly put Seline on guard. She turned her head in the same direction, feeling her own ears mimic his. After stilling her breath, she could just barely make out the sound of footfalls crunching through the dried field grass somewhere beyond the top of the hill. There were far too many feet for her to count, a fact that made her uneasy.

In a whisper, Aaron said, "Keep your head down and stay quiet if you can." He pulled his helmet from his pack and slid it on. It split in two from a series of small hinges, a section near the throat sliding away to admit his wolfish muzzle. He gingerly snapped the buckles on the other side into place, pulled his warhammer from his side, and stalked up the hill.

Seline watched, then followed behind him, picking her steps as gingerly as she could. Now that she was on alert, the sound of the grass crunching beneath her paws was akin to the staccato of gunfire to her. Even the tactile feel of the stalks bending and crushing, though without pain, seemed to echo through her body. She ducked her head low, but there was no avoiding the fact that she stood a good eight feet tall, so she hung back a good distance. They both reached the top of the hill and peeked downward.

A pack of wolves meandered through the small, dry gully between the hill they occupied and the next. Seline counted six of the creatures. Unlike Aaron, these stalked about on all fours, each about the size of a great dane. Unlike that particular breed of dog, these wolves were covered in fur that was missing in great patches, their ears were all in various states of torn or punctured, and their muzzles each looked scarred from past battles. As yet, they did not appear to have noticed Seline and Aaron.

"What are those?" Seline whispered the question.

"Corrupted plains wolves. Something funky has been going on lately. They aren't normally so common, or so aggressive," Aaron muttered a reply, his voice muted from within his helmet. "The city guard couldn't handle the number of them, so they started handing out quests to take care of it. We've gotta kill them."

Seline peered closer at the creatures, trying to see if she could glean any information. A small notification appeared in the side of her vision.

> You have discovered the skill Observe.

> Observe - Obtain only the most clear of information about a target. Only properties that are blatantly obvious are learned through Observation. ~~You must first open your eyes before the world may become clear.~~

Above each wolf she Observed a small label appeared: <Corrupt Plains Wolf, lvl ??>

"What level are they?" she asked.

Aaron squinted. "Looks like twelve and thirteen."

Seline balked. "But I'm level one," she protested, voice harsh but quiet.

"Nah, doesn't matter," his helmet shook. "You're a dragon. You'll do fine. Barely a challenge." He hefted his warhammer and stood.

"Wait," she whispered. He paused and turned to her. "Those are wolves. You're a wolf. Isn't that, I don't know, murder or something?"

The wolf-man's shoulders shrugged. He lifted his free hand, banged twice on the top of his helmet, then spun and leaped over the crest of the hill. Uncertain, Seline remembered she had agreed to help him with his quest. She rose and plunged over the hill a short distance behind.

While their hushed conversation had not been detected, the heavy, booted footfalls as Aaron plodded down the fifty or so yards toward their quarry instantly drew the wolves' attention. Hackles up and ears pinned to their skulls, they turned as a unit to face their oncoming attackers.

Seline should have given Aaron more lead time. Her larger footsteps and the slope of the hill pushed her a fair distance ahead of him after only a dozen paces, her clawed paws digging furrows in the dirt. Her wings spread partially to maintain her balance, catching some air and slowing her descent while her tail lashed behind, kicking up loose rocks.

She barreled through the group of wolves a good twenty yards ahead of Aaron, a surprised shout escaping her maw as a short roar. The wolves, too clever to stand in the way of a multi-ton dragon bearing down on them, scrambled in an even split to either side, snarls and barks issuing from behind Seline as she skidded to a halt and spun to face them.

The wolves were on her before she completed her turn. Two of the beasts leaped at her, flying an impossible distance through the air, drool flying from their open maws. Seline struck out at them with her left wing, a pair of resounding cracks filling the air as she slapped them aside before they could land a bite. Pain shot through her wing, Seline remembering too late that it was her left wing that had so recently been broken. A snarl of her own filled the air. The strike did not seem to have broken anything, but she was too busy to make an accurate assessment.

Their enemies had no sense of fear or apparently self-preservation. While the initial two toppled to the ground with pained yips, another pair bared their fangs her way, snarled, and shot toward her, claws scrabbling through the loose dirt. Seline vaguely noticed the third pair breaking off to face Aaron, who was just now making his way into the fight. As one, the pair charging her leaped for her throat. Unsure of the angle, Seline lashed out with her right foreleg, catching one of them in the neck.

She felt her claws dig into the wolf's pelt and the hide beneath.

The second wolf clamped down on her foreleg just behind the wrist, holding on tight. Its weight brought her forelimb down, its brother flung to the side with a spatter of red blood. She braced herself for more pain, but the wolf's teeth deflected against her scales, the pressure of its maw barely uncomfortable.

Seline's nostrils flared as she scented blood in the air. Instinct crept up on her like it had before at the camp, only this time it drove her to defend herself. It was not as overwhelming, but she recognized the wisdom in heeding it and gave it the reins.

Her head shot forward, maw parted. Fully open, the wolf's head fit easily between her teeth. Her jaws snapped shut around its neck, her fangs dug into the creature's hide, and she felt the coppery, sweet taste of blood flood her maw. Seline bit harder, and harder still, until the yelping echoing down her maw sputtered to a strained whine. Soon, there was silence from her attacker, its jaws falling limply from her foreleg.

She flung the corpse from her teeth, the limp body rolling across the ground to rest near its compatriot, both unmoving. A growing pool of blood soaked the dirt from the neck of the wolf she had caught with her claws.

Only a handful of seconds had passed since the beginning of combat and already a third of their enemies were slain. Aaron spared her a glance as he squared off with the two wolves intent on ending him. She watched as one leaped at him, his warhammer coming in from a broad side sweep to catch it midair.

That was all the time Seline had. The pair that had initially attacked her had recovered and circled around behind her. She heard their heavy footfalls and the whoosh of air through fur only a second before they landed on her back, one right after the other. Before she could react, they clambered up her spine. Jaws clamped down around the base of her right wing's arm.

Unlike her legs, her wings were not protected by scales, but by a thick, flexible hide. The wolf's teeth easily bit into her flesh, her wing spasming. Pain lanced through the limb. She swung her head just in time to see the second wolf jumping for her. Its jaws clamped down around her right ear.

Seline screamed, the edges of her vision fading as she felt the wolf's teeth pierce a line of holes down the length of her ear. On instinct, she snapped her head back, pushing into the bite. She heard a yelp and felt the sickening, satisfying squelch as one of her horns sunk into the wolf bearing down on her head. Its grip on her ear loosened.

Ignoring the attacker on her wing, she ducked her head, yanking the wolf down with it. Her forepaw rose, then sliced into the flank of her attacker, digging a row of furrows between its ribs. It was the wolf's turn to yelp. Its jaws left her ear as it scrabbled to escape her head, but its weight impaled it further on her horn. She felt it sink a few more inches closer to her head.

Its yelping abruptly ceased. Seline felt a river of heat flood down the right side of her head. The wolf's dead weight made it difficult to turn toward the final attacker.

Seeing its partner slain, the one on her wing loosened its grip and leaped from her back, angling to escape her. Seline grit her teeth, her tail whipping around. The tip whistled through the air, cracking against the wolf's skull just as it landed. It collapsed in the dirt, lifeless.

With a great deal of effort she lifted her head, tilting her nose into the air. A second squelch met her ears as the corpse stuck to her horn slid away down her neck and thudded to the ground. A quick glance revealed a gaping hole in its throat. Blood pattered the ground beneath Seline's head and neck, and not a small amount of it, she sensed, was her own.

Her injuries stung, but a quick glance at her HUD showed she had barely lost any real HP in the fight, perhaps 30 or 40. Her stamina was missing a good fifth of its measure, but was already beginning to recover. She looked over at Aaron.

The wolf-man stood between two limp corpses of his own, his free hand flying to his helmet. He undid the buckles and ripped it off. His grin almost literally went from ear to ear.

"God Damn, girl, that was amazing!" he shouted exuberantly, strapping his warhammer to his belt and plodding over to her. "Are you alright? One of them got your ear, right? Here, lean down." He pulled off a gauntlet, revealing a hand almost like a human's, save for the claws capping his fingers and the fur covering all but his palm.

Panting to catch her breath, it took several seconds for the rush of combat to die down. Her heart pounded, and each beat caused her injuries to flare to life. As the adrenaline wore off, the pain became more apparent. "Wh... why did they die so easily?" she asked, dipping her head.

Aaron's hand settled beneath her horns. She saw a golden glow from the corner of her eye, and immediately a soothing warmth swept through her from the point of contact, sweeping away the pain in her ear. It seeped down her neck and into her wing, and after only a few seconds, she felt whole again. Aaron's hand came away sticky with blood.

"Whew," he panted, stepping back and looking her up and down like he was surveying the scene of a disaster. Seline imagined she looked either horrendous or intimidating, blood dripping from her teeth and flowing down her neck and now her chest. "To answer your question: levels are relative." Aaron swiped his hand over a spatter of blood down his chest plate. "14 levels to a wolf might be nothing to a human. Or a dragon," he added with a pointed look at her. "Who do you think would win? A level 99 rabbit or a level 10 giant with a two ton club?"

Seline caught his point. If that were the case, she imagined it could get very tricky to judge the danger an encounter truly posed. Regardless, what she did know was that those wolves had stood no chance against her. If she had been less of an idiot and more in control of herself, the two that climbed her back would not have even made it that far. She was unfamiliar with this body, however, and had let her nature drive her. It was a strategy that was not likely to pay off in the long term, but she could learn from it in the short. While she caught her breath, she reviewed her combat log, her eyes picking out a few significant items.

> Your wing strike hits Corrupted Plains Wolf for 12 bludgeoning damage

> Your wing strike hits Corrupted Plains Wolf for 12 bludgeoning damage

> Your claw strike hits Corrupted Plains Wolf. Critical hit! 55 slicing damage. Target is bleeding.

> Corrupted Plains Wolf bites you for 0 crushing damage. Grappling bite triggered.

> Corrupted Plains Wolf's grappling bite deals 0 crushing damage.

> You have advantage.

> You bite Corrupted Plains Wolf. Critical hit! 41 piercing damage. Target is pinned. Grappling bite triggered.

> Your grappling bite deals 35 piercing damage.

> Your grappling bite deals 37 piercing damage.

> Corrupted Plains Wolf is slain.

Her eyes skimmed past the rest of the combat log until the end.

> Combat ended. Experience gained: 450XP (150 * 6 / 2).

> Natural Weaponry: Attained level 4!

> Bite: Attained level 3!

> Claw Strikes: Attained level 2!

> Tail Strikes: Attained level 2!

> Wing Strikes: Attained level 2!

> Cumulative experience from skill levels: 390XP ((30 * 5) + (60 * 2) + 120)

> Total experience gain: 840XP. 2160XP to next level.

Her eyes widened. Killing the wolves had netted her only a little more experience than she had gained as her skills progressed!

A furred hand waved in her vision. "Hello? Wolf to dragoness. You there?" Aaron said.

Seline blinked. "What? Oh, sorry. I was looking through the combat log. I got almost as much XP from leveling skills as killing the wolves." She paused. "What does advantage mean? I've seen it several times now."

"Ah, yeah," Aaron said slowly, "at lower levels, most of your experience comes from skills leveling up. Usually it's a pretty low amount, but you have so many. Your levels must be granting you a lot more experience, though." He seemed to think for a few seconds. "Advantage is a special condition. It means you have superior tactical positioning or something like that. It pretty much guarantees a critical hit, because your enemy is vulnerable in a way that may get around whatever defenses they normally have. Say, how much XP did you get from your skills?"

She nodded, then looked through the log again. "It looks like I got 30 for each level from one to two, double that from two to three, and double that for the next."

Aaron shook his head in disbelief. "Damn. So it scales to how much XP it takes to level. Good news for you."

"If it doubles every time," Seline began, her voice trailing off.

"It won't. It'll taper off to about 30 percent more or so after level five. Gaining skill levels after that is a little more difficult as well. They don't level up by XP." He shook his head again. "You have to push the skill. Means you can't just keep, say, smacking everything with your paw the same way and expect to keep gaining levels at the same rate."

Seline stared at him. Math had never been her strong suit. Aaron seemed very experienced with the system, however. "How long have you been here?"

"In Keyavon?" he waited for her nod. "Well, seasons and months are a little different here, and they don't have years in the same way Earth does, but I'd estimate a little more than a year, Earth time."

Her eyes widened. "A year? What level are you?"

"Hey now, that's a bit of a personal question!" the wolf-man joked. When Seline did not laugh, he continued awkwardly, "I'm level 14. There's more to this place than just grinding for levels, though. I'm sure I could be a lot higher if that was all I was doing." He seemed almost self-conscious about that fact. "Come on, you're a mess. We can head back to the river."

It was Seline's turn to feel self-conscious. She could still taste the coppery twang of blood on her tongue, and her lips felt sticky and dirty. She imagined the rest of her did not look too great, either, and she felt a deep compulsion to immerse herself and clean her scales. They plodded back up the hill and down toward the river.

"You're a whirlwind of destruction, you know that?" Aaron said as they neared the water's edge. "For real. I cannot wait to see what you're like with some experience and levels added on top. You ever played some sort of quadruped before?"

Seline shook her head. "No. I usually favored a rogue," she answered as she stepped into the water. Her paws sank into the silt, and she almost plowed deeper into the river before she noticed how still the water was. The river widened here, and the lack of breeze gave the surface an almost mirror-like appearance. She grew still and looked down at her own reflection.

A sharp, angular muzzle stared back at her. One pair of curved horns capped her head, gracefully swept back over her neck. A second, shorter pair were set below and slightly behind the first, straight, sharp to a point, and angled back and outward from her skull. Between were a pair of ears that Seline could only characterize as "long". They reminded her of a horse's yet longer still; she focused and waggled them about, drawing a small smile to her maw. She had two sets of fangs where she would expect one, both top and bottom; the feral glint of ivory contrasted sharply with the deep blue of face, a color that grew lighter toward the back of her head and her neck. Her eyes looked as though someone had taken a cloudless sky and compressed it into twin crystals, sparkling and so clear they seemed to glow.

The blood coating her muzzle, neck, and throat did not add positively to her appearance. While her horns were a smoky gray in color, the shorter one on her right side was painted red, and a river of blood ran down that entire side of her neck right down to her chest. Splashes of it coated her right wing and right forepaw.

She was a mess.

"A rogue, huh?" Aaron repeated. "I guess I don't really see a dragon managing to pull that off," he said with a light tone.

Seline stepped forward into the water, slipping in until it covered her chest. She looked over her shoulder, where the wolf-man was unstrapping his plated armor. He wore a simple tan tunic beneath, but it did not cover his arms. He was just as covered in fur there as she had anticipated, but it was still an odd sight to her. "I'll have to figure out something else," she replied, wading to the middle of the river. The current tugged lazily at her body, but she was able to keep her footing, sinking until the water lapped at the undersides of her wings.

"Personally, I think you'd do just fine as a tank," Aaron called from the shore.

"Not a chance." Seline dismissed that idea immediately. Without any way to reduce the pain she felt, there was no way she would consider putting herself directly in harm's way as a style of combat. Any reply Aaron had drowned as she ducked her head beneath the water, closing her eyes and using one of her forepaws to rinse the blood from her scales.

She took her time, finding herself inclined to ensure she was as clean as possible given the situation. The water was crisp and cool on her scales and the membranes of her wings, the world was muted and calm beneath the water, and some deep compulsion to fastidiousness drove her to stay submerged until she was certain nothing remained of the blood of her slain foes. Seline wondered if she could attribute it to the same draconic instincts that had affected her so intensely already; was she going to pick up the stereotypical vanity of a dragon as well?

When she emerged, she snorted water from her nose, shook her head, and looked around. Aaron was on his knees a short distance down the shore where a rocky outcropping granted mud-free access to the river, splashing water over his head and matting down his fur in swathes. His gauntlets, helmet, and plate armor lay off to one side, glistening in the sunlight as they dried.

Seline turned her head upstream, and suddenly an idea appeared in her head. She looked at her HP bar: the grayed-out section of it had shrunk to a mere sliver, encompassing only 8HP out of her total of 500. Did that mean she was almost fully healed? She slipped a little deeper into the water and turned to angle her body upstream, then slowly, carefully spread her wings. She felt a slight twinge in her chest as the muscles that supported the broad sails stretched, but there was no pain. Perhaps she was healed enough to try flying sometime soon?

Pushing them to the limit, splaying each of the four interstitial wing-struts, she discovered she had a wingspan nearly twice her body's length from nose to tailtip. What surprised her more was how right it felt to have her wings spread like this, floating on the surface of the water and soaking in warmth from the sun. She felt full of energy and content to relax all at once; the water buoyed her and she lifted her paws from the bottom of the river, slowly drifting downstream.

Aaron looked up as she passed beside him, furred face dripping. "Having fun, there?" he called.

Fun was something Seline had not felt in a long time. VR MMOs had been fun for her, once, but after... after her life had been torn out from under her, they became work. They became what brought home the rations.

They stopped being fun.

Right now, what Seline felt in her chest was an almost unfamiliar sensation, a tickle of happiness soaking its way into the dry soil of a melancholic soul.

Like a flicker out of the corner of her eye, the moment she turned her awareness toward it, the feeling fled. Her body tensed, tail lashing in the water, the lightness in her heart turned to guilt: what was she doing enjoying herself? The habits of the mind died hard, and her own thoughts chastised her.

She did not have time for fun.

Wordlessly, she looked away from Aaron and tried to apply herself to something useful. Seline focused instead on coordinating her legs in the water, a simple doggy paddle that soon kept her nearly stationary against the current. Try as she might, though, she could not manage any faster, little waves deflecting from her body as she fought the water.

"Tuck in your wings and use your tail!" Aaron suggested.

Seline thought about this, and suddenly, it clicked. Her wings snapped back against her sides and she devoted her efforts to sweeping her tail side to side. It took a few tries to get the rhythm down; she could not simply lash it fully one direction or the other. The trick was an undulating, snake-like rhythm with her longest of limbs. She immediately shot forward, a satisfied "Hah!" leaving her lips.

A notification popped up in her vision:

> "Swim" (skill) discovered!

She dismissed it and angled herself toward the shore, her paws quickly finding purchase. She strode out of the water about as fast as it could pour from her massive body and stalked to dry land. Fanning her wings and lashing her tail, she put effort into stretching out, wings snapping wide and sending a cloud of mist into the air, scattering the area with rainbows. If the sun had felt nice in the water, it felt doubly so as she dried herself, water dripping from the sensitive membranes and her scales, soaking the grass around her feet.

A quick look to the side showed her that Aaron was, for lack of a better word, gawking at her with his maw slightly agape, his ears perked to attention, and his eyes wide. He caught her looking and immediately snapped his mouth shut and jerked back to inspecting his gear very thoroughly, but the damage had been done. Self-conscious and mistrustful of the kind of look he had given her, she tucked her wings to her flanks, flicked her tail, and walked a short distance toward the hill they had come down.

Within a few minutes, Aaron joined her quietly. His was back in his armor, pack, helmet, and warhammer variously strapped to his back and sides. Seline looked him over. His armor was noticeably damaged, dented in places with a few rents in the material.

"Won't that rust?" she asked, selecting a neutral topic.

"What? This? Nah. It's wood," the wolf-man dismissed.

Seline blinked. "Wood?"

"Yeah, yeah, I know. Wood armor. But this stuff is magically hardened ironwood. See, real metal is pretty rare here. I've only seen the richer adventurers and higher-ranked guards carrying anything made out of real metal, and even then they only have metal weapons," he explained, then rapped on his helmet with an armored knuckle, producing a metallic ring. "This stuff is good enough, once the mage-blacksmiths get done with it. You can get more expensive sets as well."

Seline asked a few more questions as they set off down their original heading, refreshed and ready for the trail once again. According to Aaron, metal deposits just seemed to be incredibly rare on Keyavon. Most complex or high-quality materials were instead made from parts harvested from creatures or plants that were subsequently enhanced by magic, a resource the world was definitely not lacking in.

Soon, however, they fell into silence, their pace eating away the miles counted off one hill, one gully, one scraggly copse of trees at a time while the sun sank toward the western horizon. The rhythm of one foot in front of the other lulled both Seline and Aaron into a daze where thought slowed to a crawl and time sped up.

The had just reached the top of a large bluff when Seline nearly stumbled over herself avoiding trampling Aaron, who had stopped as still as a statue, one hand on his warhammer. She tossed her eyes about to truly take in their surroundings.

The rise upon which they stood evened out to a large, flat elevated area with a few clusters of trees and patches of ground-hugging bushes. The sun was just beginning to set, casting the tan grass in a golden hue.

Across the top of the bluff opposite from them, guarding the smooth downslope northward stood arrayed seventeen wolves looking larger and more fierce than the last group they faced. One in particular stood out at nearly twice the size of its brethren, a pair vicious fangs nearly as long as Aaron's forearm defining its scarred, twisted muzzle. Predatory eyes glared at them from beneath a ruff of fur that looked as though it had been fused together into sharp, needle-like pins that reminded Seline of a porcupine. Everything about the larger wolf spoke of something wrong, something twisted and perverted, but it was the intelligence behind the glare the creature leveled on them that disturbed Seline the most.

It sized them up just as shrewdly, eyes resting on Seline longer. Its lips curled to bare pointed teeth, foreclaws curling into the dirt. The wolves to either side of it crouched, showing their own teeth and snarling in Seline's direction, but a sharp pair of barks from the larger wolf, clearly the ringleader, kept them in their place.

Without taking her eyes off the sight, Seline asked quietly, "What is that?"

Aaron did not divert his attention either. "I don't know. I've never seen anything like it, but if I had to guess, that critter might be related to why all these other wolves are roaming around raising hell."

She nodded curtly. "Boss fight?" she asked, feeling the tingle of adrenaline and anticipation spreading through her body. By sheer numbers this group was more of a threat, and the larger one stood nearly half as tall as her. It was certainly dangerous enough to warrant care.

At this, Aaron turned toward her, a lopsided grin spreading showing on his muzzle. "That's the spirit," he said, grabbing his helmet and strapping it on. "I got the big one. Just keep the little ones off of my ass."

Seline stared at the larger creature, willing herself to gather more information about it. Unlike the smaller wolves with the "Corrupted Plains Wolf" tag hovering over their heads, all that she got for the leader was "<Unknown>". She really needed to find a skill that could give her more information on her targets. This was becoming uncomfortable.

"Are you sure? It's as tall as you," she asked.

"You're just a bigger target. I've fought worse," he said from within his helmet.

For the duration of their short conversation, the wolves along the outside of the group were slowly stepping to either side, forming a semicircle facing Aaron and Seline. It was a form of strategy that added to the sense that they were not fighting mere beasts this time around. That large one was smart. It was dangerous. She did not need a labeling system to tell her that.

"Fine. I'll handle the little ones," Seline agreed.

Aaron nodded curtly. He unstrapped his warhammer and hefted it into both hands, taking a step forward.

All the wolves snarled at once. As one, the yellow text above their heads changed to a deep, angry red. The boss barked a few short, unintelligible orders, stepping toward Aaron. The rest of the wolves broke into two units, fanning out in a broad circle around the pair. The large one leaped toward them directly, a howling snarl ripping from its maw.

Aaron returned the snarl with a cry of his own, crouching forward and leaning into a sprint, lifting his warhammer over a shoulder.

Seline had to rely on his insistence that he could handle himself. She kept her eyes on the two groups of wolves circling around them, but as quickly as the boss wolf moved, the smaller ones were somehow faster. She could not keep her eyes on one set without blinding herself to the other. They were being flanked.

Oddly, the paths of both groups did not take them close to Aaron. She had worried about finding some way to maintain aggro over almost a dozen targets at once. Their leader had saved her the trouble: the smaller wolves zeroed in on her location.

Seline bared her teeth back at them, turning to face one group and lowering herself to a crouch. She felt some of the battle-instinct that had driven her before seeping into her thoughts, a haze forming over her vision and consciousness.

These creatures meant her harm.

It would be the last thing they ever pushed through their mangy heads.

In only a few breath's time they were on her. The group behind her closed in first, but she caught them with one eye over her shoulder, lashing her tail at the first trio that tried to leap on her back. She struck two, yelps filling the air as she knocked them into the third. It was all the attention she could spare to her rear; several of the beasts rushed her from the front, splitting to either side.

Seline missed a pair that peeled off to her right with a sidelong sweep of her forepaw. She did not see the one flying through the air toward her lowered head until it was too late. A furry mass of teeth and claws collided with her head, scrabbling across her scales. She roared, snapping her eyes shut as wolf spit spattered her muzzle, the animal trying and failing to bite down on her. The teeth deflected on the angled plated scales that defined her muzzle, but it was enough to blind her temporarily.

She flared her wings, tossing her head and throwing the wolf off of her face. It described a thirty foot arc in the air before hitting the ground like a sac of potatoes, limp and motionless. It was enough of a distraction that several more wolves leaped for her back, landing near her haunches and scrabbling up toward her neck and wing arms.

Seline lashed her tail end, trying to shake them off. A pair kept their balance, but one slipped off to the side. Flailing and snapping for purchase, its jaws clamped down on the back of her wing sail near where it met her flank, sinking in deep.

A feral roar left her lips at the first shock of pain in the battle. She shook that wing, trying to dislodge the animal, but its canines held tight, every motion tearing the soft membrane further. The rest of the wolves ringed her, scampering back out of claw and tail reach.

The pair on her back leaped toward her shoulders, but Seline had already seen that strategy before. To the one going for one of her ears, she bucked her head back with a vicious snarl, catching it in the chest with one of her horns. The victim coughed out a bloody, wet yelp before she shook, tossing it off her back.

The second wolf went after the base of her uninjured wing, sinking its teeth around the broad muscle where the limb joined her back. Seline curled her head around and snapped at it, her first tearing through one of the wolf's ears in her haste to deal with the assailant. Her next bite did not miss. Her fangs bit deep and she tasted blood, brutally scruffing the beast and yanking it from her back. She sent that one flying as well, right into the cluster of wolves waiting just out of melee range.

Her struggling caused the wolf attached to the back of her wing to tear free, ripping a strip of the membrane the size of its maw free with it. Seline screamed. It felt as though someone had driven a knife into the soft flesh between one of her fingers. Her tail lashed spasmodically, batting back a pair of wolves that had been aiming to leap atop her again.

This was too much. Two or three were well within her capabilities, but sixteen? Well, thirteen, now. Ten too many.

A realization came to her through the battle-haze. She was not using all of her available resources.

Seline spun, parting her maw and drawing in a deep breath. Hoping it was as simple as willing it to happen, she called on her breath weapon. She felt unfamiliar muscles tensing in her chest, a peculiar tingling, crawling sensation rising in her throat, and then...

Unlike when she had used it on Aaron, this deployment of her ability came with deadly, conscious intent. Where her first firebreathing attempt had been little more than a pathetic flash in the pan, what came out of her maw this time was pure terror.

A gout of roiling flame poured from her lips, painting a fan of searing destruction in a wedge-shaped field before her. A secondary, translucent pair of eyelids snicked down over her eyes on instinct, shielding her from the heat and glare. So shocked was she that she nearly snapped her teeth shut, but the sight of two wolves caught up in the forty foot inferno filled her with a grim, fierce satisfaction. Where the flames touched they stuck; unlike normal fire, these clung to their targets like napalm and spread as quickly through fur and flesh as mundane flame through paper.

As quickly as it came, her flame went silent, the whoosh of air rushing back into the oxygen-starved region before her quickly replaced with howls of pain and fear. Three of their enemies had been in the direct path of the fire, their howls dying moments later. Two more ran away from the battle with their tails tucked between their legs, fire consuming their flanks and haunches, spreading toward their heads.

They would not last long.

The flames did not spread through the grass like they did flesh, guttering and dying after a few moments as their fuel expended. Out of the corner of her eye, Selene noted that the meter tracking her "Draconic Potentia" had slid empty. For lack of a better term, she was out of ammo. She felt it as an emptiness in the same channels in her chest and throat that had made themselves known when she initiated the skill.

Seline's pleasure at the destruction she had wrought was short-lived. The wolves were already regrouping, fanning out around her. Several in front of her crouched low out of immediate range, snarling, barking, and baring their fangs. More circled around behind her.

This was their game. Distract her and attack her from behind. It would work, too, with the numbers she was fighting. Unless...

She looked toward Aaron just as a heavy swipe from the boss wolf's forepaw bore down on him. He deflected it with the haft of his hammer, a flash of light filling the air. The wolf's paw flew backward, sending the animal stumbling. Blood poured from its maw, painting the grass, but it was not the only one sporting injuries. Aaron's chest armor hung free, split along the front in several places. Blood soaked the tunic and fur beneath.

The balance of the fight was not apparent with just a short glance, but she knew it was a losing prospect if any of the wolves attacking her broke free. That seemed like less of a possibility now, though; the red identifying text above the smaller wolves had deepened in color, a glowing orange halo surrounding the letters.

Seline assumed this meant they were pissed.

She could not hold her ground against these ones all at once, but she did not have to. If she was holding aggro on the smaller wolves, how far would they go to spend their anger on her? She decided she would test.

Snarling a challenge at her foes, she dug her claws into the dirt and leaped to the side, heading back the way she and Aaron had come. Hoping, praying that what she was about to attempt was as intuitive as everything else about being a dragon so far had been, Seline spread her wings... and leaped off the edge of the bluff.

For a few milliseconds she simply fell, her heart rising in her throat.

Then, the air caught beneath her wings, and she shot forward, angling just above the dip of the ground.

The tear in her wing pained her, but the head-spinning sensation of taking flight overwhelmed it. Any fear, any pain, any anger she had been feeling washed away in the wind that swept over her body.

She was flying!

She could feel her weight hanging from her wings, the way the wind swept over the sensitive membranes, and how her tail cut through the air behind her. Her body and mind knew the motions on instinct at least well enough to keep her in the air and let her marvel at her accomplishment.

Her speed increased as she approached the the foot of the bluff. Seline looked behind her to see the wolves, to a number, scrambling down the sharp decline in terrain, trying to keep up with her. She was moving far too quickly for them to catch her, but that did not appear to factor in to their chase. Satisfied her plan was working, she turned her attention back to her flight.

The tendons of her wings curled and as she willed herself to angle upward, sweeping a dozen feet above the ground and back into the sky. She pumped her wings, putting on a burst of speed; she could feel the flood of sensory information aiding her flight coursing just beneath the level of direct awareness, occupying the same channel in her mind that seemed to be handling the complex calculations and motions of her body to keep her in the air. For a moment she tried to focus on what was being processed, but the effort immediately made her dizzy, a sharp rebuke from somewhere beneath her conscious mind telling her "Not Yet".

Seline dismissed it for now, but like everything else she had experienced thus far as a dragon, she knew it would require further thought later. She turned her attention back to the outside world.

By now, the wolves had been lured a fair distance from the foot of the bluff, sprinting in a straight line toward her. They were not so clever, she thought, away from their leader; she had a lead on them that grew faster with every beat of her wings. She banked to the right, still marveling at the simple act of flying under her own power. Her wings and tail sliced through the air, wind rushing in her ears as she turned back toward the bluff.

Seline was only a dozen or so feet above the height of the top of the bluff. Her keen eyesight picked out Aaron and the large wolf easily. At such a distance, she thought she should have a harder time making out the finer details of the battle, but her body fed her yet another surprise: her vision narrowed as she focused, zooming in and bringing the target of her gaze into view as though she were only a few yards away.

What she saw was not reassuring. Aaron was being forced backward toward the edge of the bluff, deflecting or dodging blow after blow from the wolf, unable to find an opening to deal damage of his own. He was favoring his left leg, a gash cut clean through his armor on the outside of his thigh dripping with fresh blood. Seline grit her teeth and growled. She had to do something, or he was going to go over the edge.

Or end up as wolf food.

Neither option was ideal. With only a few seconds of thought to whether it was smart or idiotic, she angled herself toward the boss wolf, planning to land right on top of it. So distracted was the beast that it did not see her darting in from its side.

Seline's landing was more of a crash. Her wings flared as she came in, but her speed was so great by the time her outreached paws connected with the wolf that she crushed it into the ground, grinding the bulk of her weight into it as it slid, dragon attached, a good dozen feet or so to a stop. Her claws bit into the creature's hide and Seline clamped down hard on it, panic filling her as, for a moment, she almost lost her footing and rammed face-first into the dirt.

At a quarter her size, she had fully expected the impact to kill the wolf outright. Instead, heaving and panting beneath her, it began to thrash and snarl, its furred body bucking the moment her hindpaws left it so she could secure her landing. It was strong! It was all Seline could do to bear her weight down on the beast and keep it on its side. Every thrash forced her claws deeper, blood welling up from its flank, but still it fought her.

Aaron dashed the short distance to her, a vicious snarl echoing from his helmet as he brought his raised warhammer down on the wolf's head. A sickening crunch and crack filled the air. Seline could feel its skull cracking through her paws. It went still, heaving out one final breath before the life fled its body.

Silence reigned, save for the heavy panting issue from Seline's parted maw and Aaron's helmet. The wolf-man dropped his warhammer and tore off his helmet, tossing it to the ground beside his weapon. He and Seline stared wide-eyed at each other for a few brief seconds, adrenaline fading.

Aaron was the first to crack. His face broke out into a toothy grin, a soft chuckle leaving his lips. Bloodied and battered, they had survived the encounter, and the absurdity of defeating a boss by flopping bodily on it was just too much.

Seline felt herself grin. In spite of her injuries, the memory of her time in the air, so fresh, left her with a giddy feeling, a joy so pure and intense she could not resist it. After a few seconds, the pair broke down laughing, Seline toppling back on her rump. Laughter for her came in the form of chuffing, rattling growls, perhaps intimidating to the uninitiated... but she shared the moment with Aaron, and for the longest time, they accomplished little more than immature giggling.

Aaron managed to cast a few healing spells on himself to stabilize his bleeding, then moved on to healing her wings. It took several minutes before they managed to catch their breath.

What remained of the pack of wolves crested the bluff moments later, but a snarl from Seline and the sight of their leader laying motionless on the ground sent them scampering aware with their tails between their legs. Neither of them had any desire to give chase.

Aaron turned toward Seline, a big smile on his toothy muzzle.

"Did you just end that battle... by flopping on it?"

***

After they caught their breath and collected their thoughts, Seline took the time to review her combat log. She was particularly interested in the outcome of her fire breathing and if her first flight had granted her any new abilities.

She was greeted with a new interface item: beside her combat log a small tab had appeared with a bold exclamation mark centered in it, its pulsing with golden light. Her eyes were drawn toward it, and a new log appeared; it lacked a recounting of individual attacks and instead appeared to highlight more significant messages:

> Corrupt Plains Wolf is slain. +75XP (150/2) [Message repeats: x3]

> Natural Weaponry: Attained level 5!

> Corrupt Plains Wolf is slain. +75XP (150/2) [Message repeats: x4]

> Breath Weapon: Attained level 1!

> Flight: Attained level 2!

> "Landing" (skill) discovered!

> "Grapple" (skill) discovered!

> Combat ended. Experienced gained: 775XP ((150 * 7 / 2) + (500 / 2))

> Cumulative experience gained from skill levels: 360XP ((30 * 2) + 60 + 240)

> Total experience gain: 1135XP. 1025XP to next level.

Seline smiled to herself. Getting to level 2 may require a lot of XP for her, but she was already two-thirds of the way there.

Aaron was muttering under his breath to himself as he picked through the remains of his armor. Both his chest and leg armor items were in pieces. He had stripped those off, wearing a new tunic and pair of rugged leather pants pulled from his pack and was sitting cross-legged, staring dejectedly at the pile of sundered protection in front of him.

Seline turned to console him, but at that very moment she became aware of a subtle itch in her mind. It was as though a light pressure bore down on her mind, a tingle of energy that drew her attention. Curious, she stood and stepped over to the corpse, inspecting it closer.

Upon the wolf's neck was a simple collar she had not noticed before, buried as it was in the creature's thick mane of fur. Finding such a thing on what she had assumed was a wild creature alone was strange enough, but a small bauble affixed to the collar drew her eyes. The moment she caught sight of it, she knew this was the source of the strange sensation bothering her. It was a small, teardrop-shaped stone of translucent auburn material. Within the stone she saw the faint flicker of light; she leaned in closer and the pressure grew greater, centering between her eyes and seeming to beckon her inward. She stared, transfixed, until Aaron called her name.

"Seline? Something wrong?"

The spell, whatever it was, was broken. She shook herself, troubled, and tore her eyes away from the bauble. "I... uh... this thing has a collar."

"Wait, what?" Aaron was on his feet and striding over. "Damn. You're right. I've never seen anything like this," he said as he crouched down beside her, reaching a hand toward it.

Seline lifted a paw, trying to stop him. "Wait! It's got some sort of magic. Can't you see the glow?"

His hand froze an inch from the collar. He leaned on, squinting at the stone tucked against the wolf's throat. After several seconds, he said, "I don't see anything. Just looks like jewelry to me." Aaron shrugged and fingered around the collar, searching for something. With a pleased grunt, his fingers worked a hidden buckle, sliding the collar off the slain wolf's neck. He held it up, staring. "I have a few people who might be interested in this. Don't know what it could mean, but I think it's important. Maybe all these wolves aren't just a coincidence."

Seline watched him to see if whatever magic was hidden in the stone affected him, but the light within did not change, and nothing out of the ordinary happened to the wolf-man. Even when she looked away from the collar and toward the north, responding with a simple, "Maybe it was somebody's pet," she was still aware of the stone's location. She could sense her distance and direction to it regardless of where she looked. If she focused on the sensation more, she felt an underpinning... longing? hunger? associated with the pressure, as though it possessed something she needed on some subtle, unconscious level.

She added the phenomenon to her stack of "Worry about later". After two battles and hours spent walking, not to mention the excitement of first taking to the air, Seline was exhausted. Fortunately, the sun was beginning to sink beneath the horizon, and Aaron guided them a short way down the bluff toward a small copse of trees. There, he set up a simple tent from a broad panel of rolled-up leather, a pair of ropes, and a small bedroll.

They sat in silence beside the fire he prepared, listening to the wood crack and pop while Aaron munched on a ration of hard tack and jerky. Seline felt hungry, but it was only a distant sensation, far from the sharp pang she had felt that morning.

Eventually, sleep drew her into its comforting embrace, and she drifted off, thoughts of flying filling her mind.