Desd to asd

  Dark rain flowed off the cliff face down the arch, washing the dirt off the stone and revealing designs and ribbons of murals. Lightning fshed, showing them briefly before they faded bato subtle shadows. She got her nightsight monocle on and the etgs glowed with a subtle infrared. A ouch.

  The designs were mostly of the expected kind, pseudo a cave painting styles, pre perspective 2d orientatioing the false history of Arthel. Figures casting spells; fireball and teleport other, wielding ons well known from the Gameworlds on; The Double Dragon Zweihander, Juriah’s Halberd of Mercy, ead’s Hammer. She had seen murals like these on other “ruins”, like the cracked throne room of Gloria. Most were well known, made by the inal designers and makers over 20 years ago. Like every pyer, she had heard rumors of lost ones, hidden ruins that held secret powerful items ave access to locked spells. Her heartbeat quied and she tasted adrenaline.

  This was by far the most eventful day she had ever had in Arthel.

  Her eyes wove their way to the edge of the murals, winding like a spiraled banner around the arch, to what she had thought was the edge, a thick border of lines and runes, and started to e back towards the ter for another look over, when a big k of mud clogged vines dropped down in the flow and revealed more mural beyond the border.

  It took her a few seds to realize what she was looking at, and when she did, she almost screamed.

  Beyond the thick band, (which was shaped like a half circle with the dark ar the middle like a slim dragons pupil) the murals depicted spad stars. But not the steltions projected on the high firmament that let the pyers navigate across the orb ahe seasons, but other celestial bodies she was far more familiar with.

  The Allworld, obvious from the towers and fake sun. Gunmaze, depicted with oversized figures holding assault rifles and ser ons ihe orb. Jericho, a cluster of cartoonish doors around a masked Savior holding a staff.

  She looked around to see if anyone was watg, but there was only the storm.

  Holy shit.

  Mentions of anything outside Arthel were against the rules, and the mods were known to be very strict about it. Anyone caught toeing the line, making characters or plot lines or even emblem designs that strayed too close to anything from pop culture, religions, or even the rest of the Otherworld, could expect a suspension and possibly even a total ban. Breaking the fourth wall was something everyone did in one way or another, besides the hardcore role pyers, but talking about the Allworld or yelling movie lines in battle was ohing, carving those infris directly into the fabric of Arthel was another.

  And here was a ruin, clearly made by the same hands as all the others she had seen in every major hub or capital on the p, which directly referehe wider world.

  And the door was wide open.

  As if ohe archway lightened, and a blue glow desded down revealing a stairway.

  She knew she could turn around, activate a report bea, and tihe rest of the way to the rendezvous point, where she would be greeted not only as one of the masterminds of a successful ambush and a daring mage killer, but also as the survivor of twon attacks, one of which had been flown by her own personal pay to sy simp. J-Ssh would definitely be able to make her a new of that ohey would all have a good ugh, and the mods would probably send her a hefty reward for rep something that definitely should not be there.

  But every sed passed and she stayed where she was. Her feet didn’t move, and she just kept staring at the dark bottom of the staircase where the glow died. Moment by moment the obvious became inescapable. It felt, in a way, like realizing she had been trapped.

  There was not a snowballs hell that she was going to do any of that. She was going to go down this staircase and the only question now was how long she was going to waste sittirying to talk herself out of it before she did.

  All right then.

  She stepped down slowly at first, then as thunder cracked behind her pace quied. The passage hummed gently around her, and the stormsounds melded into white noise.

  The bottom of the stairwell was a square of darkhat ran from her, immuo even her nightsight monacle. After a minute or ten, it was hard to tell, the staircase turned slightly, theurn tightened and she was stepping doiral staircase, the darkness almost close enough to touch.

  For a moment, she thought it would tinue like that forever, that it was some kind of trap, until she stepped onto a nding glowing uhe blueish light and found herself at the end of a long hallway extending into a tall regle of darkness.

  She looked behind her, and of course the staircase disappeared in darkness. Instantly, it reminded her of somethiing the dreamworlds. What her old boss had called the chutes and Michael called the hallways. It had the same feeling, of being separated from where you were before, from anywhere you’ve ever been. This pce, whatever it was, felt unlike any other part of Arthel, and something about it felt unlike anything else iher, but she couldn’t put her finger on what.

  The only way to find out was to go deeper.

  A tor the wall rolled with blue fme. She took it out of its holder and stepped down the hall. The walls rolled past her and darkness stood before her like an unmoving monolith. She rested her non torched hand on her dagger, but the gesture felt useless. Somehow, she khere would be no monsters here, at least nothing that could be fought with ons ic. Dream knowledge. The pce eaking to her, and not in the “here’s my stats” way that ons or armor spoke to you in Arthel, but subtly, smoother than the most well-crafted sims she had ever experiehis realization, coupled with the idea that dangers beyond bat waited somewhere in the dark, sparked a real fear in her. Not the worry of losing items or costieam the battle that she was aced to in this world, but a real primal fear usually reserved for the Hardworlds.

  The torch fred up suddenly and a ft wall faced her, with two hallways stretg into darkness oher side of her.

  She faced the one on her left and stared into the darkness. It sat there immobile, like a dark er of a ste closet. She turo the path on the right, towards aical block of darkness and almost dropped the torch.

  The darkness seethed. It breathed and whispered and was a thing croug to pouhe light at its edges battled and withered and screamed, dying with every flick of the torch just before another wave of doomed light threw itself against the bck.

  The fear was liquid, beio her, thrown at her. She turned back to the left passage, and the fear abated. There was only the darkness left when light has gone. A drowsy nonthing.

  It ainfully obvious which way was the right one, just as it was now being clear that this pce was built during an alien time of Arthel’s history, for a pletely different css of pyer.

  She marched down the righthand path aorch sputtered and the fear fred up, a primal sehat she could feel on her skin. It reminded her of turning off the lights and running down the hall as a kid, away from that dark room in her grandparents house, but was closer to what it might have felt like to run into the darkness instead.

  She knew many things as she walked through the dark. It screamed them at her.

  The makers and game masters could not hear her here. To even step foot in this pce is punishable by a lifetime ban. Anything that happeo her here would be her own fault, and the army of Arthel makers and iors would make sure that no one would see her as a victim, but as someone who had tried to break the game and had it backfire.

  She wondered, briefly, if there were others out there, Spirits who had found the hard edges and dangerous pces of the Otherworld, and had their story smothered into silence, lest it keep the general popution from spending everything they had to indulge in the gameworlds and the rest of it.

  Another wall jumped in front of her, and she screamed.

  This time there were three paths. Again, the darkness shined like a light. Fear and menace boiled out of the far-right doorway, while the darkness in the door to her left seemed about to break into the soft glow of dawn. Although the correct path was obvious to her mind, it was now a question of ving the rest of her.

  What if I’m wrong? What if the real test is whether or not I subject myself to pain just because I think there’s a reward in it? Wouldn’t it be best to at least try the easy doors first, just to be sure?

  Under a stant stream of doubts, she shuffled towards the door with the ge darkness.

  Immediately, the fear fell away, repced by a peace, like the first breath after a long swim. A banal subtle fort. The darkness was like a bcked out bedroom after a long weekend sleep. All she had to do was wish it, and the lights would turn on, and she would find herself on the precipice of the best day of her life, an ultimate Saturday.

  She took aep and lifted her hand. Her fingers found the dappled surface of a wall. Her feet fell on soft carpet. She khe switch was inches away.

  A sihought, given in dream knowledge, rang out in the back of her mind. Not aion, but a simple dead statement of fact, almost lost beh the electrifyiement for the oning day.

  This was the door she had e from. If she took aep, the pce behind her would be lost to her forever.

  She shifted her weight and pced her raised foot behind her. Immediately, fear jolted up her spine, as if a font of it had ope her back. With a sigh that cracked into a moan, she turned around and faced the room again.

  The doorways shivered. The sb of darkness at the far right felt like an open gateway to a void. Everything screamed that if she went through it, she would be falling forever. The other doors spoke in dream knowledge too, and for a moment, she sidered stepping through the slightly less terrifying door, but pushed herself past it at the st sed and shuffled into the void door.

  “This isn’t real. Nothing here really hurt me.” The words fell ft in her head. This pce was as far from the structured world of Arthel as anything she’d ever seen iher, and she was certain there was every ce of real Spiritual danger.

  She came to another room with five doors. Then another with eight, the doors so close that there seemed more darkhan glowing stohe supreme door of the eight felt like liquid death. Stepping through it felt like suicide. Three times she stepped up to it, heard it ugh and k was going to rip her spirit apart, and stepped back.

  She stood there g for a sed, then got ahold of herself. What was she doing this for? Some reward in a game? Some fake fug swords or imaginary magic scrolls? She didn’t have anything to prove to ahis gameworld and everything in it was beh her, a pything she used to pass the time between Hardworld missions. She was a fug Hardworlder! She didn’t owe this pce shit!

  One of the eight doors lightened, and she k would take her out. Good. She was done being harassed by some nerd’s vision of a fantasy.

  But she didn’t move. Now with the exit there, now that the dark doorway was not the only way out, but only a choice, it felt less hateful. She realized it was the powerlesshat had really gotten to her.

  Whatever this pce was, its makers had no idea how strong a Spirit could be. She had thrown herself into alternate lives aroyed herself in gunfire a huimes over. This goofy byrinth was nothing.

  She stepped through the dark door ahe world colpse.

  Some doors know who knocks. ime, a dest into a remnant of a time when a game wasn't just a game. episode, Spiral.