Giantess World
“So all I have to do is get to that town?” Malkav asked.
“Alive,” Siarra added.
He looked again at the town, a blotch—a speck almost—in the distance, and then up at Siarra in her black robe. “This is the part where you carry me there, right?”
“Psh, no! This is a PvP server. I’m going to go around killing newbs like you.”
“Yeah, we hate newbs!”
Siarra shook her head. “You’re a newb. It’s short for ‘newbie’.”
“Oh… So, you’re going to kill all the other newbs for me? Clear the path?”
“You’re the only newb logged on.”
Malkav noticed the grin appeared on her face. “…What happened to your whole speech about protecting me?”
“You’ll be fine. Just try to keep one step ahead of me!” With that, she raised her foot over his body. “Do I need to teach you how to move or do you think you can figure that out yourself?”
Malkav didn’t respond. He took off. Siarra’s foot came down behind him, hard in the sand, and she hummed a little melody as she watched her friend stumble his way through the sand. The loss of traction was obviously a problem for him, but not for Siarra, whose slippered feet were light enough to just glide across the surface. Her immense size was also an obvious advantage as a single step from her accomplished the same distance of Malkav in twenty steps.
“Yeah, pump that +2 agility!” Siarra teased, purposely walking as tediously slow as Malkav was sprinting. He fell down a couple times, eating a mouthful of sand, but every time he pushed himself up and pressed on, Siarra’s footfalls always a step behind.
“Watch out, a crab!”
Malkav looked too late. Over a mound of sand, a crab had spotted Malkav and, in MMORPG terms, aggroed him. The crab quickly scuttled over the sand and attacked Malkav with its pinchers.
“Siarra, help!” he cried, ducking under the crab’s one pincher just to run into the other. He jumped back, barely avoiding the snapping jaws.
“Come on, newb,” she sighed. “It’s a level 1 crab. It even has less HP than you.”
“It’s also twice my size!”
“Well, you better do something. You can’t outrun it.”
Malkav pulled out his pointless (literally) dagger. “You know, I have to admit the graphics on this game are amazing. It feels like we’re really here!”
“Just wait,” Siarra grinned.
Malkav managed to parry one of the crab’s giant pinchers. The other pincher swung around, cracking him on the side of the head. His face hit the sand.
“That hurt!” he screamed. “Like…it really hurt!”
“Yup. It really is like we’re here, isn’t it? Welcome to the new dimension of virtual reality! Virtual pain included.”
Staring up at the crab, Malkav realized the dire situation he was in. “Oh, shit.”
He quickly rolled to the side, avoiding the crab’s monster pincher that almost smashed him into the sand. He leapt to his feet, rushing the crab. Holding the dagger in front of him, he drove the blade between the lobster’s eyes and then shoved his foot into the crab’s head, knocking the creature backwards and gouging out one of his eyes with the retracting blade.
“Good job!” Siarra squealed, bouncing on her toes.
The crab staggered back and forth on its wobbly legs. Obviously wounded, it tried to run away, but Malkav came up from behind and finished it with a quick stab through its crusted back. The skin cracked. With a heavy sigh, the crab collapsed into the sand. Its pinchers fell limp at its side.
“Ha!” Malkav cheered, spitting on the crab’s corpse. “Did you see that, Siarra? I slaughtered that thing!”
She didn’t answer, so Malkav turned to look at her. But he saw nothing but the bottom of her slipper coming down on top of him. He tried to run, but he couldn’t even scream; the foot was coming down too fast. It crushed him into the sand, he felt immense pain course through his body, and then there was nothing. The world was black. It slowly returned to color as Siarra lifted her foot and waved at Malkav’s flattened body on the ground.
“Did that hurt?” she asked.
“A little,” he squeaked. “How much HP do I have left?”
“None. You’re dead.”
“…Thanks, Siarra.”
“No problem!” she giggled, imitating Malkav’s victory by lightly spitting down on his body. “You have two choices now. Either you can lay there like a pancake until a cleric comes by and beg her for a resurrection or you can revive at your last bind spot.”
“What are the odds of a cleric showing up here?”
“In a newb zone? Slim to none.”
“And the odds of her resurrecting me?”
“Seeing as how you’re a guy, probably less than that. In this game, girls rule.”
“Well, I guess you can have your fantasy… I’ll just return to my bind spot.”
“Okay, say ‘return’.”
Malkav did so and his body dispersed. For a brief second, he felt himself flying through cyber space, and then he materialized back where he had entered Neverquest, next to the edge of the ocean. Its waters lapped at his feet again. Siarra was a few yards in front of him, still standing by the slain crab and Malkav’s skeletal remains. When his real body appeared again, though, she walked back over to the shoreline.
“I have to make that run all over again?” Malkav whined.
“You only made it about sixteen feet,” Siarra whined too, impersonating his voice.
“It’d be a lot easy if you weren’t trying to squish me!”
Siarra snapped her fingers and sparked a quick flame between her thumb and forefinger. “I could just use magic on you.”
“You touch me again and I’m giving you a swirlee tomorrow. In the boy’s bathroom.”
“Haha!” she laughed, but Malkav didn’t seem too happy.
“Seriously,” he said. “You may be bigger than me in your little make-believe world, but when it comes to reality, I’ll always come out on top.”
“Come on, Malkav… Don’t be like that.”
“I’m going to do my homework. Bye.”
Siarra frowned as Malkav’s body slowly vanished, indicating he had flipped the power switch on the helmet and logged off the game. Suddenly very lonely, she dug her feet into the wet sand, staring out over the fantasy sky before her. The birds, the clouds, the rush of the ocean against the sand—it was hard to keep telling herself that this was only a game. The graphics were so real. The tingle against her skin was so real. It was all so real.
Perhaps too real.
She combed her hair behind her head and turned off her helmet as well.