Squawks of seagulls filled the saline air. Malkav was facedown in the sand, the gentle fingers of the ocean caressing his bare feet. He gradually pried himself up onto his elbows and knees, rubbing the sand from his eyes.

“What happened?” he muttered to himself, shielding his eyes from the blaring sun. He looked towards the water, staring out at a distant boat and seagulls swooping under the pillowed clouds. “How did I get to the beach…?”

Though Malkav had grown up on the east coast of the United States, he hadn’t visited the beach very often. This was all new. Picking up a handful of quartz sand, he let it trickle through his fingers and noted that it was white and warm to the touch. Where was the pollution? The lack of color? The ugly, half-naked people rubbing sun tan lotion over their body? There was none of that. There was only beauty and color, glitters of crystal in the ocean and an endless sea of blue reaching out to the horizon and over the sky.

“Oh, no,” he said, “I don’t think we’re in America anymore.”

Then he remembered the game. He patted his head, feeling around for the helmet, but it wasn’t there anymore. He looked down at his clothes and saw only tattered rags, barely enough to keep him covered. A small, rusty dagger lay in the sand at his feet. He reached down slowly, picking it up and pressing its blade against his palm. It wasn’t even sharp enough to cut through his pale skin.

“So this is Neverquest,” he said in awe as he rose. “I wonder where Siarra is…”

As if on cue, he turned around and ran into something hard and yet soft at the same time. He stumbled back. It was a wall made out of some kind of plushy fabric. He touched it, feeling it squish lightly under his touch. He started to walk around it and then stared in marvel as the wall suddenly rose and, casting a dark shadow over him. Screaming, he dove to the side, dodging the enormous wall as it slammed down into the ground, blinding him for a moment as it kicked up sand.

He quickly rubbed his eyes, fumbling for his dagger. He managed to get a hold on it and tried to stab it into the wall, but it wouldn’t cut through the thick fabric.

“Hey, don’t do that!” a voice thundered from above. “I just got these slippers.”

Malkav froze. Was the wall talking to him? His eyes drifted upward. He saw the wall of fabric eventually turn into a wall of human flesh that continued up for some way before it disappeared behind a gigantic robe, big enough to cover a jet plane. The robe was all he could see until he staggered backwards, his neck craning all the way up, and then he saw Siarra’s familiar face looking down at him. She had the same unforgettable hair that she always had—short, scooped around her head in a half-circle, dyed an amethyst purple—with a fiery tiara tucked over her brow with only one strand of hair dangling over her left eye. She waved down at him.

The dagger fell from Malkav’s grip.

He collapsed in the sand next to it.

“I know you’re a newbie, but you can’t die just by looking at me,” Siarra said, bending down and poking Malkav with her crystal wand. “I’m not that powerful.” She pricked him again. He flinched. “Wakey, wakey!”

He blinked. He was still staring up at her, now on his back. “…You could’ve told me your character was a giant.”

“I’m not,” she giggled.

“Oh, I’m sorry, what would you call a 100 foot tall person?”

“I’m not 100 feet tall! You’re about six inches.” She shrugged her shoulders, which were as round as her face. “Comes with being a newbie.”

“As if this wasn’t bad enough already,” Malkav muttered, picking up his dagger and tucking it into his frayed leather belt. “I’m almost naked.”

“Serves you right! Every other MMORPG I’ve played has girls running around in armor that couldn’t protect an insect.” She smiled down at Malkav. He wasn’t smiling back. “Aw, come on… Give the game a try. You might like it.”

“Siarra, look at me! What am I going to do—nip the bad guys in the ankles?”

“They’re called ‘mobs’…”

“What?”

“The things you fight, they’re called ‘mobs’ or ‘monsters’. Nobody says ‘bad guys’. That’s so…newbish.”

“Fine, whatever they’re called… How am I supposed to fight them?”

“You got a weapon there, don’t you? …Little as it is, haha!”

Malkav looked down at his useless dagger.

“Don’t worry,” she promised him, “I’ll teach you everything! I’m a level 53 sorceress. Nothing’s going to hurt you with me around.” Then she grinned playfully. “Unless I let it.”

“Okay, fine… But only for a couple hours. I have homework to do.”

“That’s plenty of time! See, here’s the storyline… You’re a sailor returning home from war. Unfortunately, your ship got caught in a nasty storm. It swayed back and forth, dodging lightning, until water flooded the decks and you were cast overboard. The rest of your crew was killed at sea. You floated amongst the wreckage, barely conscious, and washed on shore here—some distant, uncharted island—with nothing but ragged clothes and an old rusted dagger on your person. You’re starving, injured, and weak. In the distance, you can see a town. Do you see it?”

Malkav squinted. “I think so.”

“Okay! Your first mission is to get there alive.”

“What are you—the narrator of this story or something?”

“No, but you were lying unconscious while the introduction video clip was playing. I summarized it for you.”

“Oh. …Well, thanks.”

Though Malkav had grown up on the east coast of the United States, he hadn’t visited the beach very often. This was all new. Picking up a handful of quartz sand, he let it trickle through his fingers and noted that it was white and warm to the touch. Where was the pollution? The lack of color? The ugly, half-naked people rubbing sun tan lotion over their body? There was none of that. There was only beauty and color, glitters of crystal in the ocean and an endless sea of blue reaching out to the horizon and over the sky.

“Oh, no,” he said, “I don’t think we’re in America anymore.”

Malkav walked Siarra to her house after school, carrying his bookbag on one shoulder and hers on the other. She skipped ahead freely, swinging around telephone poles and the occasional tree to be found in their fair city. Now that it was autumn, those trees were beginning to wither and their naked branches shivered while the dried-up leaves fluttered in the streets like old newspapers, gathering at the sewer drains in wet clumps. The cold air didn’t seem to stop Siarra one bit, though. She had her jacket thrown over Malkav like a shawl so that she could spread her bare arms to the sky like the trees.

Malkav watched her for awhile, until they at last rounded Holland Street, where she lived. “Why don’t we go to the arcade or something?”

“No thanks,” she said, “video games are for dorks. I want to play Neverquest.” She stopped dancing and walked beside Malkav. “Don’t you like it?”

“I like it.”

“I saw you online at three in the morning.”

“I know… You shot me with a fireball.”

“Yeah!” Siarra grinned.

“I was almost halfway to the city.”

“Sorry.”

Malkav sighed. “Do you have any intention of ever helping me to make it there?”

“To the Abbey? Of course. You have to make it there to reach level 2.”

They were at Siarra’s house now, but she hung back on the porch while Malkav stood at the bottom of the steps.

“Then can we do that tonight?” he asked.

“Sure,” she shrugged, “right after my homework.”

“Oh, what do you have?”

“An essay on some book for English class. Just give it to me by Friday, newb.”

“Okay,” Malkav said, starting to turn away. But he looked back for a minute. “How long are you going to be calling me a ‘newb’ for?”

“Until you become something better.”

“When’s that?”

“Level 10.”

“What happens at level 10?” Malkav started to ask, but Siarra had simply waved him away and disappeared inside.

Sighing, Malkav pretended to walk towards his house, in case Siarra was watching him from her window, but quickly doubled back after he had turned the corner of Holland Street. He wasn’t planning on going home just yet. Instead, he decided to stop by Cain’s house, which was only a mile away.

Cain and Malkav had been best friends since preschool, and though Malkav was more into role-playing as a vampire with his new friends now, they still kept in touch. Cain rarely showed up at East Shore High, though. He wasn’t really a high school dropout, but he wasn’t necessarily passing either; he called it ‘in limbo’. And he had been ‘in limbo’ for about five years running. He was the only senior in ESH to have a full-grown beard and be able to purchase his own alcohol, even if his mom wouldn’t allow it in the house. Not that he would buy it, or could buy it, since he hadn’t had a job since he was fourteen.

But Cain did have something worth coming over to his house for. And Malkav was there in no time, following Cain down the basement steps of his parents’ house into what he called the ‘LAN Room’, which would’ve been more aptly named the ‘Geek Command Center’. There were about twenty-three computers in the room, though only about six of them were functional; the rest were scraps and pieces, fused together like some deformed toys you’d find in the reject aisle. But they must’ve seen something in them because the whole gang was there—Vic, a hippie in almost all respects with his rather long brown hair and scruff that was in desperate need shaving; Eric, the blonde-haired pretty boy who talked like a knight and acted like a fool; Ray ‘Mundo’, the tough guy who was a little too full of himself for anybody to take seriously; Adam, a slightly chubby boy who loved Cheesy Poofs just as much as he loved online games; and Quentin, the extra character.

Malkav waved to the guys, who were too occupied in whatever online game they were playing to do much more than utter “Hey”, but he didn’t care. He stepped over to the 65” plasma-screen television a picked up an X-Box controller, turning it over in his hands. “So, I hear you guys play Neverquest.”

Once again, they grunted a response.

Cain was the only one to give a decent answer. “We have it, but there’s no damn point in playing. The game was meant for bitches, and in saying that I mean girls as well as guys who are treated like dogs by aforementioned girls.”

“Yeah,” Mundo said. “I’m the only one here who can bag a girl and even I don’t stand a chance in that game.”

“Aye,” Eric nodded, “and their size advantage doth make them all the stronger in Neverquest. We stand but no chance against their fury.”

“Well, what level are you guys?” Malkav asked.

They all held up one finger, except for Vic, who held up two. All eyes turned to him.

“I got the game when it first came out,” he said. “You know, before girls took over. Now we don’t stand a chance. Some of the girls just sit in the newbie zone and squash us whenever we try to play since they’re about fifty times our size…which would be a lot hotter if it didn’t hurt so much.”

“At least we get a good view up their skirts,” Mundo laughed, high-fiving Cain.

“…Yeah,” Malkav said. No wonder these guys hadn’t gotten without two feet of a girl aside from the hopeless magazine pictures scattered around the floor.

But at least one of them had. There came a banging from upstairs and Kimberly and Isaac appeared, storming down the steps and arguing like always. Kimberly was one of the few girls who was considered ‘one of the guys’, not because of her tomboyish nature but because she actually enjoyed video games, much the way Siarra and her friends did. The only difference was that Siarra and her friends were the in the ‘cute girl’ clique and Kimberly was in the ‘brainy girl’ clique, thereby putting a huge gap between their worlds. There’s not to say Kim was ugly; in fact, to the geeks she was a goddess, but she did have pale freckles and glasses, which seemed to limit who she could be seen around.

Isaac, on the other hand, was nearly the opposite. Obviously he was a guy, but he also had leathery black skin like a rhino, narrow eyes, biceps to kill, and a bald head—which, next to Kim’s pastel skin, petite stature, and flowing auburn hair was quite the contrast.

“These are my friends,” Kim was saying, “and if you want to hang around me, you’re going to hang around them too.”

“Fine, but tomorrow night we’re at my place,” Isaac sighed, and then turned around. “Hi, losers.”

The usual muttered greeting went around.

“You play Neverquest?” Malkav asked.

“Hell no!” Isaac bellowed. “We don’t play Nerd’s Quest. I’m just here for the pizza.”

“And the girl,” Kim added quietly.

“Well, they’re both so spicy hot!” he laughed, pinching her behind. “Where’s the pizza, losers?”

Somebody muttered something about the fridge and Isaac disappeared upstairs.

“I…wasn’t really talking to him,” Malkav said, apparently to the air. “I was talking to you, Kim.”

“Hm?”

“Do you play Neverquest?”

“Of course. It’s every girl’s fantasy.”

Malkav spread his arms. “Well, couldn’t we get Kim to help us reach the Abbey?”

“She’s the worst of them all!” Quentin cried out. “If I had a pimple for every time she killed me, why I’d have…” He started counting the zits on his face.

“Probably as many as you do right now,” Mundo jeered.

“Shut up and pass the Clearasil.”

“You guys are gross,” Kim said. “Why am I friends with you again?”

“Because we needed more female characters in the story?” Adam guessed, but nobody paid him any mind.

Cain took her arm. “Come on, Kim, Malkav’s our guest. Can you just be damn nice for once and help him get to the Abbey? I hear he wants to impress his little girlfriend.”

“Oh, is that so?” Kim cooed. “I guess I could help you… But Isaac might get upset if I pay more attention to the game than him.”

“Yeah, my ex didn’t like that too much,” Vic said aloud.

“Well, he can play too,” Cain said. “We have an extra game helmet since what’s-his-name dumped us.”

“Narsis,” Adam piped in.

Eric raised a mighty finger. “Silence! That name must not be spokest again in this room!”

“…Well, okay,” Kim said slowly, “but what about Malkav? He’s going to need a helmet if you’re all going to play too.”

Since none of the guys wanted to be left out in a game of Neverquest, especially with the help of a girl finally, Malkav volunteered to run home and get his helmet. He rushed out the door, leaving behind his bookbag and Siarra’s. Little did the fool know he would’ve been better off going home to do homework instead of returning to ESH’s last LAN party to date…

Gena leaned against the side of the school, a lit cigarette tucked between her fingertips. Her light green vest fluttered in the wind, every now and then causing her to reach up and brush back her strands of russet hair. Her torn clothing (jagged sleeve, midriff, and ankle ends as well as ripped holes in the knees of her jeans) did little to help stop the bitter chill of fall creeping its way into the tiny, screwed-up town along the east coast.

Turning her head to the side, Gena watched a dark figure riding towards her on an imaginary horse, complete with the sound effects of beating hooves and neighing. When he came within arms-length distance from her, he dismounted from the horse that didn’t exist in the first place and looked her over, eyeing her, scanning her, knowing her inside and out—just in case.

Gena ignored his rather magnified inspection, particularly when it wound up at her chest, and instead lowered the cigarette from her lips. “You…are late.”

“A thousand apologies, O patient one,” the figure bowed sheepishly.

“You have it then?”

With a yellow-toothed smirk, the figure reached into his jacket. “I had to slit a few throats to get it….but yeah, I have it.” He pulled out what appeared to be a normal computer chip with a beetle on the front, crossed out in a deep red ‘x’ as if was used for extermination purposes.

Gena’s eyes widened and she reached for it.

“Ah, ah, ahhh!” the figure said, pulled his head away. “First…my reward.”

Pressing the burning end of the cigarette into the figure’s hand, he yelped and Gena snatched the computer chip before it hit the ground. She smiled. “Trust me, my pungent friend. You’ll get what’s coming to you.”

“That’s good because my mom would be really upset if I was late for dinner.”

“Well, bad news there. You’re coming over to my apartment to help me install this thing.”

“But—” the figure started to say before he had a finger jab him in the back.

“Better start walking,” a voice whispered in his ear. “I wouldn’t want to have to shoot.”

“You don’t have a gun… They don’t allow them on school property!”

“They don’t allow cigarettes either,” Gena said calmly, pulling a pack out from her vest pocket. “Want one, Roxanne?”

“No thanks,” the figure behind the figure said. “I’d rather smoke this chump.”

The ‘chump’ glanced around nervously. “Come on, what are you girls trying to pull? I risked my neck to get you your hacking program! You promised me a reward.”

Roxanne shoved him forward into the brick wall. “You should be glad we don’t waste you right here. This finger is loaded, you know.”

“No, it’s not!”

“Oh, yeah?” Roxanne aimed her finger at the imaginary horse. “Say hello to my little friend.”

“No, don’t!” the chump cried.

“And say good-bye to your little friend,” Gena whispered, pulling her thumb down. With a grin, she mouthed a soft, almost muted, ‘bang’ with her lips and the imaginary horse dropped dead.

The chump fell to his knees, picking up imaginary horse hairs with his imaginary bloody hands. “Nooooooo! It’s like a nightmare I had in bed last night and I woke up and the sheets were all wet! …Or was that a nocturnal emission…?”

“…That’s sick,” Roxanne spat. “I say we waste him now.”

“Not so quick, my trigger-happy friend,” Gena said. “We still need him.”

“Then can we waste him?”

“Sure,” she said, the chump still well in earshot range. But neither of them cared. They each picked him up by one arm and dragged him to Gena’s apartment, where they forced him to install the chip into the computer and then tied him to a rather uncomfortable wooden chair.

Gena tapped her fingers on the mouse, waiting for the game to load. “Damn dial-up connection…” She glared at the chump. “This better work like you said it will, Narsis.”

“…Trust me, I made the program myself and I’m the biggest computer nerd in ESH.”

“Got that right,” Roxanne grumbled, opening a mini-fridge next to the computer and grabbing a can of Coke. “Tell me again about all the unlimited power we’ll have. It makes me hot, even if it’s coming from a dork sprouting pimples from his zits.”

“Well… You won’t ever have ‘unlimited’ power, per se.”

Both Gena and Roxanne glared at him with their cold blue eyes. “…What?”

“I-It would create a paradox in the alternate reality the dimension,” he swallowed hard. “You know, like the paradox of, if God created an unmovable boulder, could he move it? Because if he can’t move it, he’s not omnipotent. And if he can move it, he’s still not omnipotent because he failed to create an unmovable boulder. You see, it’s a…para…dox… You two look really mad…”

“Oh, no,” Roxanne said. “We always have scowls etched across our faces. Just like you always wet yourself.”

“I don’t wet myself…”

Roxanne opened her soda and turned it upside down over Narsis’ lap, causing a torrent of brown fizz to pour over him. “You just did. I’d make you lick it up, but I just got the mental image in my mind of you trying to lick your lap and it’s funny enough to keep it right there.”

Narsis breathed a sigh of relief.

“Nevermind,” Roxanne said. “Go ahead and lick. Now.”

Gena dismissed the idea with a wave of her hand. “No time for that. Narsis, are you trying to tell us we won’t be gods when we log on the game?”

“Not exactly… The hack will make you far more powerful than the average player, that’s for sure, but taking over the game and becoming a god is up to you. I only created the cheat so I wouldn’t have to play video games 24/7…even though that’s all I do anyway.”

“And yet you’re still a newb,” Roxanne sneered.

“Not even I could bypass that system. The moment you put on the helmet, the game instantly makes a model copy of you. Guys get the short end of the stick.” He shook his head. “This game had to be made by girls… God dammit, why can’t I be surrounded by girls smart enough to make a game like this?”

“You’re about to get even better,” Gena said, slapping a game helmet onto Narsis’ head. “You’re going to be surrounded by two goddesses, the queens of Neverquest.”

“Hell yeah!” Roxanne said, putting on her helmet as well.

Gena was the last to strap on her helmet. She clicked the mouse, ignoring the error message on the screen that warned of a possible hacker attempt, and got ready for the ride of her life. Neverquest would never be the same again.

Malkav felt the strange sensation of being materialized in the fantasy world again and fell to his knees in the familiar sand. But this time he wasn’t alone. Cain was with him, along with Adam, Vic, Mundo, Eric, the ever useless Quentin, and even Isaac—all wearing newbie rags like him. He was sure Kim was around here too. All he would have to do was look up.

“Ah, Neverquest,” Eric said, rising to his feet. “I hath missed thee! Your skies so blue, your sand so sandy, your girls so big and hot like jumbo chicken wings! This is where I belong.”

“It does feel good to be back,” Quentin admitted. “I forgot how good it feels to be…normal. No pimples, no four eyes… Here, we’re all the same.”

He was right. Malkav hadn’t realized it his first time playing Neverquest, but he no longer needed his glasses. They were removed from his face and yet he had perfect vision all the way to the horizon—something that even the best eyes in the world didn’t possess.

Suddenly, Kim materialized, apparently slowing than the guys. She no longer had glasses either, and though light freckles still sprinkled her face like stars at night, her once frizzled red hair flowed wonderfully down her shoulders in a long ponytail in a fiery tail, somewhat like a lassoed comet. She wore a tan leather tunic and frayed shorts with a quiver over her shoulder and furry rawhide boots. The top of her boots, though, which ended about a quarter of the way up her calves, were still taller than all of the guys, who were each only about six or seven inches tall.

Isaac stared up at her. “…What the hell!? I was promised food if I played this stupid game, not a giant replica of my girlfriend!”

“We had to get you to play somehow,” Vic shrugged. “Welcome to the land where girls rule. First rule of thumb: watch where the girls step.”

Isaac’s eyes fell to Vic. “You say this is virtual reality?”

“Yeah.”

“And you feel whatever happens to you?”

“Simulated, but yeah, everything connects back to the neurons in the—”

Isaac punched him in the face. Vic collapsed.

“Tell me if you felt that,” Isaac said.

Cain came between them. “Okay, that’ll be enough from the idiot. Kim, you okay?”

Kim shook her head, still a bit dazed from the materialization. “Yeah… I’m fine. Feels weird having your atoms transported through cyberspace.”

“Hey, look what I found!” Quentin exclaimed, picking up a series of daggers in the sand. “Quentin has knives! Quentin has knives! Everybody, everywhere, Quentin has knives!” He laughed insanely.

“Why did we bring the psycho?” Mundo asked. Quentin stabbed Mundo with one of the rusty daggers, wearing his already torn shirt. “Stop that!”

Malkav snatched one of the daggers away from Quentin. “That’s mine. Now come on, people, let’s get to that Abbey before Siarra shows up.”

But as if on cue, Siarra began to materialize in front of them along with a little boy and an old man with a beard and a cane. Both of the males were about as small as the rest of the guys (the little boy, of course, being quite a deal smaller, and the old man being a little bit taller due to his elder age). Siarra was even bigger than Kim, even if it was only by a couple of inches. In truth, all the girls were the same size they were in real life and the guys, though significantly smaller, were still the same proportionally when compared to their own gender.

“Aw, shit,” Malkav snapped his fingers.

The old man blinked. “W-what happened!? Are we back in Cambodia!? Men, to your stations!”

“You brought your grandpa to play Neverquest!?” Malkav gawked up at Siarra.

She beamed down at him. “Malkav! And all of Malkav’s little buddies! How are you all?” Then, remembering her manners, she pointed down at the little boy and the old man, who was running behind a sand dune and throwing imaginary grenades into the air. “Everybody, this is my little brother, Frankie, and my grandpa, Grandpa.”

“Damn it, girl!” Cain said. “We’re not running a daycare here! We’re on our way to the Abbey to level and get our classes.”

“Well, they wanted to come too!” Siarra pouted. “And if you don’t like it, I’ll squash you like a fruitcake!”

“Ha! Stupid girl. We have Kim here to protect us.”

It was the first time Siarra noticed Kim. They hadn’t really talked a lot before, even at school, but they could at least tolerate each other. They both did love video games, after all.

“Actually,” Kim said, “I’m all up for the whole squishing-the-big-mouth idea.”

“Methinks you talk too much and say nothing at all,” Eric whispered into Cain’s ear. Cain shoved him away.

Grandpa poked his head out from the sand dune. “Eh? No enemy fire?”

Clearing her throat, Siarra bent down on one knee next to her grandfather. “Grandfather, um…”

He nearly had a heart attack. “M-my God, munchkin! Look what those confounded vegetables have done to you! I told your good-for-nothing father that you needed more meat in your diet.”

“It’s part of the game,” she tried to explain. “I’m not big… You’re just really small. But…look how freely you move!”

His weary eyes widened. She was right. His skin was still wrinkled, his beard still long and woven into his face, but his bones no longer ached the way they used to. “I…I feel seventy years younger… This is amazing!” He laughed and then jumped around like a hardy youth, shadow-boxing with little Frankie, who just laughed and played along. “I’m a new man, munchkin! What’s this game called again?”

“Neverquest.”

“Lord above, we need pills like this.”

“I’m glad Gramps is happy,” Isaac grumbled, “but I’m starving. Let’s hurry up and get to this ‘Abbey’ so we can eat.”

Malkav watched the old man and little boy dance around and then looked up at Siarra, who was smiling. Her eyes weren’t on him, but he smiled as well, knowing what she was thinking. Maybe this virtual reality thing wasn’t so bad. Just looking at the fun those two were having, Malkav knew deep down that Neverquest was the best thing to ever come to this crazy town. He wondered why Siarra told him that it was only a local game.

“Quentin give everybody a knife!” Quentin cheered, jumping around and throwing daggers out behind him as if he were a flower maiden of death. There was a lot of screaming, followed by a number of colorful cuss words before he was finally tackled by Isaac and Mundo. They stripped him of all weaponry.

“I’m just glad this game isn’t reality,” Vic said, pulling one of Quentin’s stray daggers out of his bloody arm. “We could really get hurt.”

“Yeah,” Kim laughed. “Well, I guess since we’re all here, we might as well group up and visit the Abbey together.”

“Good idea!” Siarra agreed. “Okay, you guys can all walk in front of us.”

The guys didn’t seem to like that idea too much.

Siarra sighed through a smirk. “You’re all such babies… So afraid of getting stepped on.”

“…I’m sticking near your girlfriend,” Mundo said to Isaac as they picked up Quentin.

“You know,” Siarra said, spreading her arms, “I’m maxed out in Hearing.”

“Damn it.”

Eric nodded to himself as he watched his fellow companions. “If ever there were a team of misfits, this would be it. We will need to work together if we hope to come out of this adventure alive.”

“Dude,” Cain said. “Stop talking to yourself. It’s just a game.”

“Is it, Cain? Is it? How can you perceive what is fantasy and what is reality? Look around you and tell me how convinced you are that this isn’t our new reality, that these aren’t our real hands. Do our own eyes deceive us? Or do our minds? Perchance someday you, too, will understand.”

Malkav distanced himself from the rest of them as they began their trek towards the Abbey, the two giant girls leading the way. He needed time to think. Shoving his hands into his pockets (holes in his ragged clothing), he trailed behind, dragging his feet through the sand. He looked up at Siarra once or twice, trying to read her face, but it wasn’t easy with her back to him. So instead he sighed and kicked along a stone that was probably a pebble to the girls.

Something wasn’t right. Cain and Isaac seemed to realize Neverquest was only a game, but the rest of them seemed to forget that. What would happen if they all forgot it was a game? Who would pull them out of this fantasy? Would they all be destined to stay here, trapped in their own imaginations, in a world that only existed in their minds?

Malkav looked to the horizon. He could see it clearly, and without his glasses. That couldn’t be a good sign. If a game could be so perfect, so wonderful, what was to stop somebody—or everybody—from becoming lost within?