“Wow, way to hurt a guy’s feelings right before he dies. But by the way, I’m not into you at all either!” Van said. “I was going to confess to you that you were my best friend and that I’m thankful to have known you, but you kind of cheapened the moment.”
“Well, you ruined the moment by leading me on like that!” Sang said in return. She could see that Van was trying to move his hand somewhere, though, and knew she had to help him stall. Maybe fighting with him would amuse Trefor.
“Leading you on? I just said I had to confess something, that’s all! How is that leading you on?” Van asked.
“Enough, the both of you. Die with some dignity,” Trefor said.
“Hey, I didn’t get to confess anything yet!” Van said.
“You just—” Trefor’s words were cut short as a bright flash of light emitted from Van’s vest. The flash hit Sang right in the eyes, causing everything to go overwhelmingly bright.
“Ahhhh! I can’t see!” Sang cried.
“Gah, my eyes!” Trefor yelled.
Sang felt someone grab her hand and drag her forward. She followed along, completely blind for a few minutes. Eventually, though, her vision returned to her, and she could see that Van was pulling her toward the exit.
“Oh, you genius! How did you get out of the kinetic energy field?” Sang asked.
“Bardic Will! Grants me an extra resistance to mind control magic! Even though it was some kind of weird alien, apparently, it still uses these game rules as a law. I think it was running low on energy, which is why it told Trefor to kill me and take you to its ship,” Van explained.
“And the flash of light?”
“Oh, haha, a Flash Stick—super cheap and incredibly useful. It’s exploitable because it just overloads the haptic systems; the blindness isn’t even a game status. It actually blinds the player in real life due to a serious hardware error. It’s literally a bug they didn’t bother fixing!” Van said as they rushed out the door of the building.
“There, we’re here!” Van said. “We just gotta jump and we’ll be logged out!”
“No hesitation here!” Sang said as she ran toward the platform and prepared to dive off. “I can’t believe we’re getting out of this so easily!”
“Hey, that wasn’t easy at all!” Van said as he rushed to the edge with her, preparing himself for the leap. “I had to plan a lot, and there was some luck to this.”
“Well, I’m happy to get out of here and never look back!” Sang called out as she jumped. As she felt the wind whipping around her, she felt a burst of exhilaration of freedom. She was going to finally escape from this wretched game, and the best part was that she was still alive!
“Whhhooooaaa!” Van shouted as a massive Dragon came flying in behind them. Trefor was riding atop it.
“You really think you can run from us?” Trefor screamed as the Dragon came flying down at full speed. Its huge jaws struck out and grabbed hold of Sang. She screamed as she felt the jaws sink into her body, but her Health only went down by a few points. The Dragon wasn’t trying to kill her—it was just trying to hold onto her.
“Crap!” Van shouted as he continued to fall out of Sang’s line of sight.
“Argh, after him!” Trefor shouted. “Kill him immediately!”
The Dragon grunted as it flew after Van, who’d continued to plummet to the ground. He was fiddling with a potion, however, and after drinking it, he stopped falling and instead began to glide down.
“Blast him with fire!” Trefor ordered.
Sang heard a snorting noise from the Dragon. “Oh right, sorry!” Trefor said. “Just take us down! Snap her legs so she can’t run.”
The Dragon swooped down to the Earth; they’d managed to land in the forest that they’d been hiding in earlier. As it touched the ground, it spat Sang onto the forest floor. She tried to scramble away, but felt the beast’s sharp, piercing jaws latch around her leg and then heard the horrific crunching of her right leg’s bones.
“Gahhh!” Sang screamed as she felt the pain shoot through her entire system. This pain felt way more realistic than it had before.
“Don’t bother running!” Trefor screamed. “You’re done for!”
Sang glanced at her ability to log out, finding that her entire UI simply read ERROR SERVER ERROR.
The Dragon hissed at Sang before it turned its attention to Van, who was still gently gliding down toward the Earth.
“Van! Look out!” Sang cried out as the Dragon took to the skies and darted towards the bard.
“Ahhhhh!” Van shouted as the Dragon unleashed a torrent of flames on him in midair.
It was hard for her to see, but Van appeared to be unharmed.
“Are you kidding me?” Trefor yelled. He hadn’t mounted his Dragon, but was rather standing next to the wounded Sang. “How are you still alive?”
“Potion of Elemental Immunity! Haha!” Van shouted as he landed on the ground and immediately darted into the woods.
“That moron!” Trefor shouted. “Exploiting every stupid loophole in this game.”
“Yeah, he’s pretty good at this kind of stuff,” Sang said, grunting in pain as she looked at her bloody and broken leg. There was no way she’d be able to escape with this kind of injury.
“Well... we’ve shut down his ability to log out again,” Trefor said. “Maybe we can rig the pod to suffocate him.”
“Come on, why are you doing this? Trefor, you’re better than this,” Sang said. “I saw what happened back there. With that alien thing. Do you really believe they want to make this world a better place? Do you honestly think that these horrible things want to be our friends?”
“You don’t understand Draco at all,” Trefor said, turning his attention back to Sang. He paused for a moment to give a long, weary sigh. “There is nothing we can do to stop them.”
“What if you were wrong? What if we could stop them?” Sang asked.
“How? Have you seen these things? These are aliens, Sang,” Trefor said. “You know, I used to think that things were so simple, but then, Bam, I learned all of this. You think we can overcome advanced beings from another planet? Humans can barely agree on borders between nations, let alone uniting against something like this.”
“The Others. They gave me a plan. Beamed it right into my head. I know how to defeat Draco once and for all,” Sang lied.
“And that’s why Draco wants you,” Trefor murmured. “Look, I’m in this too deep.” He shifted uncomfortably. His demeanor was beginning to grow less confident with each passing moment. She could tell that he was beginning to grow worried.
“There’s a chance for you to change it, turn it all around. I wasn’t joking about the CIA stuff. They’re going to be in your house soon. Do the right thing, man. Turn off our log-out locks and let us go! If we walk out of this thing alive, you get to walk out, too.”
Trefor shook his head. “You’re trying to control me!”
“No—no, I’m not. Yvgo? That horrible alien creature? That’s what’s trying to control you,” Sang hissed. “You’re way too deep in this. Are you ready to face the consequences of your actions? Are you ready to be brought up on charges of treason? Hell, you’d probably be lucky if you even got to see a jury.”
“Shut up!” Trefor snapped, abruptly turning away from her. She could see that he was growing visibly more nervous with each passing second.
“You have a choice: you can betray your freaking race, ally with aliens, and then end up hooked up to a car battery in a windowless room in real life, or you can help us. You get to play the hero and we never mention this again.”
“I… I never wanted any of this… I just wanted to play a stupid game,” Trefor hoarsely whispered. “I just wanted to play a stupid game and get paid.”
Sang could see that he was beginning to break down. “I know you did. Look, you haven’t broken any laws—you aren’t in trouble... yet. Just get us out of here and we’ll fix it. You can save us here. You can stop them,” Sang said. She was surprised that it was working, but he seemed to be responding to her words.