Ready Player Two

Like Shermer and the Afterworld, Arda I had a limited number of designated teleportation arrival and departure points scattered across its surface. Unfortunately, all but one of them was grayed out for me, because I hadn’t completed any of the quests required to gain access to them. So I selected the only arrival point I could, which was located in the middle of a frozen wasteland called the Helcaraxë. On the map, the same region was also labeled as “The Grinding Ice.”

But when the teleportation process completed, and our avatars rematerialized on the surface of Arda I, we didn’t find ourselves in the environment we were expecting. There wasn’t any ice or snow in sight. Aech and I were standing beside a small lake located somewhere high in the mountains. The star-filled sky over our heads was reflected in the water’s still, smooth surface, creating the illusion that there was a blanket of stars both above and below us. It was quiet, save for the singing of crickets, and the distant howl of wind whipping over the dark hills that loomed all around us.

It was a beautiful scene. But I had absolutely no idea where the hell we were.

When I pulled up my map of Arda to check our location, I discovered that we were nowhere near the Helcaraxë. We were over four hundred miles east, up in the Dorthonion highlands, standing on the shores of a lake called Tarn Aeluin.

This wasn’t one of Arda’s designated arrival points, so it shouldn’t even have been possible for us to teleport to this location. It had to be the shards that’d brought us here—but I didn’t have the first clue as to why.

I continued to scan my map of Arda, looking for the name Udûn. I knew that was once the name of Morgoth’s fortress, because in The Fellowship of the Ring, when Gandalf faces off against the Balrog of Morgoth at the Bridge of Khazad-dûm, he calls it the “flame of Udûn.” But I couldn’t find any sign of it on my map—nor was there a label for its Sindarin equivalent, Utumno. And when I searched the index, it confirmed that there was no location known by either of those names anywhere on the planet.

I cursed myself once again for never bothering to study the First Age. Then I bit the bullet and opened Gunterpedia in a browser window in front of me and pulled up the entry on Utumno. I immediately saw my mistake. Utumno was the name of Melkor’s original dungeon stronghold. But it was completely destroyed just before the First Age began. So it wasn’t located on Arda I at all, but on the Springtime of Arda, another, much smaller, disk-shaped planet, located directly beneath Arda I, II, and III. Most gunters referred to it as Arda Zero. It was a simulation of Arda during the Years of the Trees, which took place before the First Age. I’d never even bothered to visit Arda Zero, because it was impossible to complete any of the quests there unless you had already completed every single quest on Arda I, Arda II, and Arda III.

I let out a heavy sigh, thinking I was going to have to suffer the embarrassment of telling Aech that I’d teleported both of us to the wrong planet. But after searching my memory, I recalled something Aragorn said in The Fellowship of the Ring, when he was telling the story of Beren and Lúthien to the Hobbits.

In those days, the Great Enemy, of whom Sauron of Mordor was but a servant, dwelt in Angband in the North….

I checked my map again, looked to the north, and located Angband right away. It was in the middle of the Ered Engrin, a vast mountain range that stretched across the northern reaches of the continent. In the common tongue, they were called the Iron Mountains. And Angband was also known as the Iron Prison.

That was one of the many things that made navigating Middle-earth difficult—everything and everyone had at least two or three different names, each in a different made-up language. It got confusing, even for a massive geek like me.

I pulled up my digital copy of The Fellowship of the Ring and located the sentence where Aragorn first mentions Angband. A few paragraphs beneath it, I found the passage I was looking for….

Tinúviel rescued Beren from the dungeons of Sauron, and together they passed through great dangers, and cast down even the Great Enemy from his throne, and took from his iron crown one of the three Silmarils, brightest of all jewels, to be the bride-price of Lúthien to Thingol her father.

That seemed to confirm my theory—here on this iteration of Arda, Morgoth’s throne was located in his dungeon fortress of Angband. And it was just eighty miles to the north of our current location. Bingo! That had to be why the shards had brought us here….

I turned toward Aech.

“We’re headed to Angband, Morgoth’s dungeon fortress, about eighty miles north of here.”

I pointed out over the lake and the dark hills beyond it, to the growing mass of dark clouds roiling above the distant northern horizon. They were lit by eruptions of red lightning from within, and by the enormous silver globe of the moon, shining high in the eastern sky, which cast a pale glow over everything beneath it.

Aech looked out over the lake, toward those dark clouds on the northern horizon.

“Eighty miles?” Aech repeated.

“Yeah,” I said. “And magic items or spells that give you the ability to fly won’t function here. Since we can’t teleport there either, we’ll have to travel by land.”

Aech reached down and tapped the stripes on the sides of the white Adidas she was wearing. When she did, the stripes changed color, from blue and black to yellow and green, and the shoes themselves began to glow and crackle with bolts of energy that were the same combination of colors.

“Got blue and black ’cause I like to chill,” Aech recited. “And yellow and green when it’s time to get ill.” She pointed down at her glowing, crackling sneakers. “My Adidas give me the ability to run at three times the normal speed. Do you want me to cast Mordenkainen’s Mojo on you, so you can keep up with me?”

I shook my head. “I’ve got a better idea.”

From my own inventory, I removed two small glass figurines shaped like horses. Both were silver-gray in color. I set them gently on the ground in front of us and backed away several steps.

“Figurines of Wondrous Power?” Aech asked.

I nodded and she immediately took several steps backward too. Once she was clear, I spoke the activation words.

“Felaróf!” I shouted. “Shadowfax!”

Both figurines instantly grew and morphed into a pair of full-size horses, which abruptly came to life, snorting and whinnying as they reared back on their mighty hind legs. They were stunningly beautiful creatures, with nearly identical silver-gray coats. They were both decked out in Mithril plate armor that I’d purchased for them, along with custom-made saddles carved from dark-green Elven wood, inlaid with bands of gold that were engraved with their names in Fëanorian script.

“These are the two fastest land animals ever to roam Middle-earth,” I said. “I obtained them by completing quests on Arda III, but they should have the same speed and abilities here. Just make sure to hold on tight. They can really move, OK?”

Aech nodded and powered down her Adidas. Then she put one of them in Felaróf’s stirrups and swung herself up into the saddle on his back. I walked over to Shadowfax and patted him gently on the neck and told him it was good to see him again in Sindarin. Then I pulled myself up into his saddle and moved him alongside Aech and Felaróf.

I removed two magic swords that I’d acquired on Arda III from my inventory. One was the ithilnaur broadsword named Glamdring wielded by Gandalf during the War of the Ring, and I equipped it in the scabbard on my avatar’s back. The other was a two-handed sword, and I took hold of it by its blade and held it out to Aech, hilt-first.

“Here,” I said. “You’re gonna need this. Andúril, the Flame of the West. Reforged from the shards of Narsil by—”

Aech waved the sword away.

“No thanks, Z,” Aech said. “I’ve already got plenty of swords of my own.”

I continued to hold the sword out to her.

“Take it,” I said. “Only magical weapons forged by the Elves of Middle-earth can affect the servants of Morgoth, OK? I do know one or two things about this place.”

Aech relented and took the sword, then she equipped it in its scabbard at her side.

“Happy now?” she asked.

“I’ll be happy once we’ve got the last two shards,” I said. “We’re almost to the end. You ready, Aech?”

She flashed her Cheshire grin at me. Then, doing her best Jack Burton impression, she said, “Z, I was born ready.”

I laughed, and together, we both spurred our horses forward.

Shadowfax and Felaróf launched us north with the speed of loosed arrows. Their hooves thundered against the ground beneath us, like the steady beat of war drums, as they carried us away from Tarn Aeluin, across the moonlit highlands, toward the increasingly dark clouds looming on the horizon.

We raced our magical steeds at top speed across the heather-covered hills and plains of Dorthonion. When we reached a dense forest of pines along its northern border called Taur-nu-Fuin, our mounts were forced to slow their pace slightly as they weaved their way through it. But they still raced through, around, and under the trees at such blinding speed that I kept imagining myself as a doomed Stormtrooper on a speeder bike. But our steeds were magical creatures known as Mearas, who had the ability to glide across the landscape at incredible speed, regardless of the terrain beneath their hooves.

I heard Aech ride up behind me. When I glanced over at her, she was staring at me aghast. I didn’t understand why, until her eyes shifted to the browser window I still had open in front of me, displaying the Gunterpedia entry about Angband. I’d forgotten to change my privacy settings, so any browser windows I opened were still automatically visible to my fellow clan members.

“You don’t have any idea what we’re supposed to do when we get there, do you?” she said. “You were looking it up! I just saw you looking it up!”

“I was just refreshing my memory, Aech. That’s all.”

“OK,” Aech replied. “Then tell me, what do we do when we get there? How do we get inside his fortress? And how the fuck are we supposed to get the shards out of Morgoth’s Crown? You said the dude was invincible.”

She continued to stare over at me as we both bounced up and down in our saddles, awaiting my answer.

“I’m not sure yet,” I admitted. “I know that Beren and Lúthien were able to ‘cast down’ Morgoth and steal one of the jewels from his crown, but I don’t know how they did it. I think that story is in The Silmarillion, and I never finished reading that. But I’ll skim the CliffsNotes on our way to Angband, OK? I’ll figure out what we need to do, I promise!”

Aech looked as if I’d just slapped her across the face.

“What the frak, Z!” she shouted. “I thought you had this Hobbit shit handled. You told me you were an expert on Tolkien, man!”

I shook my head.

“I never said ‘expert’!” I replied. “Art3mis is the expert. I’m really only familiar with the Third Age of Middle-earth—that’s when The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings take place. I’m sort of an expert on Arda III. I mean, I’ve completed every single quest there….”

I didn’t mention that I’d completed them all years ago, during Halliday’s contest, back when I was still leveling up my avatar. Or that the quests on Arda III were a lot more up my alley. That planet was covered with OASIS ports of a bunch of different early video- and role-playing games set in Middle-earth, created by companies like Beam Software, Interplay, Vivendi, Stormfront, and Iron Crown Enterprises. In fact, one of the very first quests I’d ever completed in the OASIS was a port of the original Hobbit text adventure located on Arda III, which Kira Morrow was rumored to have helped create. (Just thinking of it made me recall a line of text from the game—one that it spat out over and over again, anytime I lingered too long in one location: Time passes. Thorin sits down and starts singing about gold.)

I’d even completed the incredibly hard-to-reach quests in the extreme eastern and southern regions of Middle-earth, in which you had to face off against the evil cults founded by Alatar and Pallando.

“I don’t give a shit about Arda III, Z!” Aech asked. “What about this planet? How many quests have you completed here, on Arda I?”

Aech could always tell when I was lying to her, so I didn’t even bother trying.

“Zero, OK?” I replied. “Not a single one. But there’s a good reason for that, Aech! Don’t make that face at me! All the quests here are trivia traps—you can’t complete them unless you possess an encyclopedic knowledge of Tolkien’s entire Legendarium! And I’m not just talking about the published version of The Silmarillion. You need to memorize details of a bunch of different, conflicting, unpublished early drafts! And all thirteen volumes of The History of Middle-earth! Sorry—I had research priorities….”

“Like what?” Aech asked, rolling her eyes. “Watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail for the two hundredth time?”

“That was one of Halliday’s favorite films, Aech!” I shouted. “Knowing it by heart helped us reach the egg, you may recall? And it also happens to be a comedic masterpiece, so—”

“You told me you’d ‘read every novel by every single one of Halliday’s favorite authors’! And Tolkien was on his list of favorites, man!”

I sighed. “The Silmarillion isn’t a novel, Aech. It’s more like a campaign setting sourcebook for the Middle-earth role-playing game. It’s full of stories and poems about the creation of Middle-earth, its deities, history, and mythology. Alphabets and pronunciation keys for made-up Elven languages. I just never had time to finish it….”

Aech studied my face for a few seconds in silence. Then she pretended to sniff the air.

“I smell bullshit, Watts,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “You have never been one to half-ass your research. And you knew that Kira Morrow was a Tolkien fanatic! She lived in a replica of Rivendell, for God’s sake. Why wouldn’t you study every single—”

She paused for a moment, then her eyes suddenly widened in understanding.

“Aha!” she exclaimed. “Now I get it. You’ve been sleeping on this Elder Days shit because of Samantha, right? Because she’s a huge Tolkien fan too.” She shook her head. “You’re still hung up on her. Aren’t you, Watts?” She motioned to our surroundings. “What, does this place remind you of her or something?”

I started to deny it, but Aech was right and she knew it.

“Yes, OK!” I said. “This whole fucking place reminds me of her!” I motioned to our surroundings. “That music you hear right now? The Howard Shore film scores that play on a continuous loop everywhere you go on this godforsaken planet? They remind me of Samantha too! She likes to listen to this music while she falls asleep. At least, she used to….”

The memory of the moment I learned this about her began to surface, and I could feel it twisting my insides into knots as it did so, so I shook my head vigorously until it was banished from my thoughts. Then I locked eyes with Aech again.

“My entire real-world relationship with Samantha only lasted for one week, Aech,” I said. “That week we all spent together at the Morrows’ replica of Rivendell. She loved being there, and she loved geeking out about Middle-earth. I think Samantha loves Tolkien just as much as Kira did—maybe even more.”

I gave Aech a guilty look.

“Samantha found out I’d never finished reading The Silmarillion that week,” I said. “And she gave me an enormous amount of shit about it. I was planning to give it another go, but then—we broke up. And I’ve avoided Tolkien since. It was just too painful.”

Aech gave me a sympathetic smile. Then she leaned over in her saddle to punch me softly in the shoulder.

“Z,” she said, “maybe there’s a reason why the last two shards are hidden here, on a planet Arty knows better than you. Fate wants her to be here.”

“Arty isn’t available to help us at the moment, remember?” I replied. “And we agreed to maintain radio silence until we have the last two shards. We have to stick to the plan.”

Aech nodded and was silent for a moment.

“At least send her a text message,” Aech said. “And let her know where we are and what we’re up against.”

I nodded and tapped the messaging icon on my HUD. I kept the note short and sweet:

Dear Arty

The clue on the Fifth Shard says “the last two shards are set in Morgoth’s Crown.” We’re on Arda and are headed to Angband right now, but we could really use your help. Shoto is gone. It’s just me and Aech now. If you can’t do anything to help us from where you are, we understand. We’ll do our best without you.

MTFBWYA,

Z & Aech

I showed the message to Aech. She nodded her approval and I hit Send.

“Why do you think Kira was so nuts about Middle-earth?” Aech asked me as we continued to gallop through the dark forest.

“Pure, uncut escapism,” I said. “Tolkien’s work directly inspired the creation of Dungeons & Dragons. And then D&D, in turn, inspired the first generation of videogame designers, who tried to re-create the experience of playing D&D on a computer. Kira, Og, and Halliday—they all grew up playing D&D and the videogames inspired by it. And that inspired all of them to make computer role-playing games. That’s how we got the Anorak’s Quest series, and eventually, the OASIS. If it weren’t for Tolkien, all of us nerds would’ve had a lot less fun during the last ninety years.”

“Ah,” Aech said. “So he’s partly to blame for all this?” She flashed her Cheshire grin at me again, to let me know that she was kidding.

As we sped onward, I found myself gazing in wonderment at my surroundings. Even now, I couldn’t help but be awed by the scope and detail of Tolkien’s imagination. After almost a century, artists and storytellers and programmers were still drawing inspiration from his creation.

When we emerged from the forest’s northern border, our horses came to an abrupt halt, and Aech and I found ourselves staring out across a charred and desolate wasteland, which stretched out ahead of us as far as the eye could see. It looked like several hundred atomic bombs had been detonated here, all within the past few months. In the distance, the Iron Mountains stretched across the entire northern horizon. And near their very center, straight ahead of us, three enormous, impossibly tall black volcanoes rose up from the mountain range, looming over its peaks and stretching up into the thick black clouds that were roiling in the sky above.

I was tired of checking my map every few minutes to find out what I was looking at, so I did something that most self-respecting gunters would never do—I turned on my OASIS Tour Guide captions and activated my image-recognition software. When I took another look at the wasteland stretching out ahead of us, a caption appeared on my HUD, informing me that I was staring at the barren dunes of Anfauglith, a desolate hellscape created by Morgoth when he scorched the once-green plains of Ard-galen black with the fires of Thangorodrim, which was the name of the three volcanic peaks looming high above the horizon ahead.

“One does not simply walk into Dor Daedeloth,” I said, assuming that Aech wouldn’t get the joke. She didn’t.

“Dor what?” she replied.

“Dor Daedeloth,” I said, motioning to the scorched landscape around us. “The land of Morgoth. The Dark Lord himself.”

“Yeah, I meant to ask you about that,” Aech said. “In all three of those extremely long Hobbit movies you made me watch, wasn’t some dude named Sauron the ‘Dark Lord of Middle-earth’?”

“Yes,” I replied. “But he didn’t get promoted to that position until late in the Second Age, after Morgoth was banished to the Void. Then Sauron rose to power. But here, during the First Age, Sauron was just one of Morgoth’s demonic generals. And he was also a shapeshifter, who could transform into a wolf or a bat.”

“Sauron isn’t around here right now, is he?” she asked uneasily, eyeing the dark skies overhead.

Once again, I wasn’t sure. I had to check the entry on Sauron in Gunterpedia.

“Sauron is in command of Tol Sirion,” I said, reading off my HUD. “An island fortress located over a hundred miles west of here. I don’t think we’ll run into him.”

“That’s a relief,” she replied, relaxing her posture a bit.

“No, Aech,” I replied. “It isn’t. Sauron is a pushover compared to this Morgoth dude. He’s one of the toughest—if not the toughest—NPCs in the entire simulation. According to what I’ve read about him, he’s all-powerful and invulnerable.”

“What do you mean, invulnerable?”

“I mean he can’t be killed,” I said. “From what I’ve read on the gunter message boards, it’s supposed to be possible to banish Morgoth to the Void indefinitely, but to do that, first you have to complete a whole series of epic-level quests to enlist the help of the Valar, and those would probably take weeks to complete. That is, if I knew enough about the Elder Days to complete all of them, which I don’t.”

“OK,” Aech said, taking this in. “Then if we can’t kill Morgoth, how are we supposed to get the last two shards out of his crown?”

“I’m still working on that,” I said, motioning to the array of browser windows I had open in the air around me, each displaying a different Gunterpedia entry. “Just give me a few more minutes.”

“Come on, Z,” she said. “Let’s keep moving!”

She was about to spur her horse forward once again, but I grabbed the reins to stop her.

“Hold on,” I said. “Before we go any further, we should probably try and conceal ourselves, so we don’t get attacked by any roving bands of Orcs. You got any invisibility spells memorized?”

Aech nodded. “Of course,” she said. “How about Osuvox’s Improved Obfuscation. It’s ninety-ninth-level. It’ll conceal us from everything, including infravision, ultravision, and true sight.”

“Perfect,” I said. “Can you cast it on both of us? And on the horses too?”

She nodded and muttered a few incantations. When she completed them, we and our horses all became invisible. But we could still see a semi-transparent version of each other’s avatars and our steeds on our HUDs, allowing us to avoid bumping into each other. Then we continued to speed northward, across the barren landscape, toward the three towers of black glass and volcanic rock rising from the bleak mountain range in the distance.

We spotted a large hill up ahead of us, rising from the flat and desolate landscape around it. But once we drew a bit closer to this “hill,” it revealed itself to be an enormous mound of dead bodies—the slain and dismembered corpses of thousands of Elves and Men. My Tour Guide subtitles helpfully informed me that this was Haudh-en-Ndengin. The Mound of the Slain.

I covered my mouth and nose with my cloak, in an attempt to fend off the foul stench that filled the air. I glanced over at Aech and saw that she was doing the same.

Aech stared at the giant pile of corpses as we rode past it. Then she turned in her saddle to face me, and raised her voice to be heard over the drum of our horses’ hoofbeats.

“Are you sure you don’t want to call for some backup, Z?” Aech said. “You could try your Saint Crispin’s Day shtick again. Send out a message to every user in the OASIS, asking for them to come here and help us?”

“It won’t work this time,” I replied. “No one would come.”

“Sure they would,” Aech said. “If you told them the truth, and let them know that every single ONI user’s life depends on our success, I bet at least a few thousand of them would come to our aid.”

“An army won’t help us this time,” I said. “The Noldor laid siege to Angband for over four hundred years, and they never even got close to the Silmarils.” I shook my head. “I think we’re gonna have to sneak inside, like Beren and Lúthien.”

“Who and who?”

“A mortal Man and an immortal Elf maiden who fell in love,” I said, motioning to the copy of The Silmarillion I had open in a window beside me. “They were able to sneak into Angband and steal one of the Silmarils from the Iron Crown by putting Morgoth and his minions to sleep.” I turned to look at Aech. “What’s the most powerful sleep spell you have in your spellbook?”

She pulled up her spell list and scanned it for a few seconds.

“Mordenkainen’s Everlasting Slumber,” she said. “And I’m ninety-ninth-level, so it should be powerful enough to put any NPC within its area of effect down for the count, even if they do make their saving throws.”

“Good,” I replied. “You’ll need to cast it at least twice. The entrance into Angband is supposed to be guarded by a giant black wolf named Carcharoth. We’ll have to put him to sleep to make it past him and get inside. Then, once we find our way to Morgoth’s throne room, we need to put everyone there to sleep too. Then I think we should be able to steal the shards out of his crown.”

Aech nodded and silently made a few quick changes to her list of memorized spells. Then she gave me two thumbs up.

“OK,” I said. “That should do the trick. I think we’re ready.”

“Let’s hope so,” she said as we both spurred our anxious horses forward, carrying us away from the Mound of the Slain, and onward, toward the Gates of Angband, which lay at the base of Thangorodrim, whose three enormous peaks continued to loom up ahead of us, rising high above the Iron Mountains beneath them.

I used the magnification feature on my HUD to zoom in on the peaks of the three massive volcanic mountains, and could just make out the spot on the western peak where the Elven prince Maedhros was chained to a rocky cliff, waiting to be rescued. On the eastern peak, I spotted another prisoner of Morgoth—a man named Húrin, bound to a chair high atop Thangorodrim. Apparently, these NPCs were always there, as part of some other high-level Elder Days quests that took place in these mountains.

A few minutes later, Aech and I found ourselves riding on a long, narrow road that led up to the massive Gates of Angband, which were set deep into the base of Thangorodrim’s central peak. On either side of the road lay large open chasms, filled with thousands of giant, writhing black serpents, all squirming together in one twisted mass.

Up above, demonic-looking vultures perched on the rocky cliffs, glaring and squawking down at us. I realized that Aech’s invisibity spell didn’t appear to have any effect on the creatures that resided here, so I asked her to deactivate it. She complied, and we continued our way up to the two massive iron doors set into the sheer cliff wall ahead.

When we came within a few hundred yards of the gates, our horses refused to proceed any farther. Aech and I dismounted, then I spoke the name of each horse once again, and they shrank and morphed back into tiny glass figurines, which I scooped up and placed back inside my inventory.

On foot now, we reached the gates—to see that they were standing wide open. But a giant black wolf lay guarding the rocky plateau in front of them, glaring down at us with a pair of unblinking eyes that glowed bright red in the shadow of Angband.

This was Carcharoth—one of the most fearsome creatures of the Elder Days.

When Aech got a look at the size of the wolf, she reached down with both hands and tapped the stripes on the sides of her Adidas once again, and their color scheme changed from blue and black to silver and gold.

“Got a pair that I wear when I’m playin’ ball,” Aech recited. “With the heel inside, make me ten feet tall.”

When she finished speaking the command phrase, she suddenly grew in size, until her avatar stood exactly ten feet tall. Thanks to the change in proportions, Carcharoth would no longer tower over her. Now she would be able to stare him directly in his demonic red eyes.

Carcharoth continued to glower down at us until we reached the end of the road and arrived at the base of the steps leading up to the entrance. As Aech and I started to ascend the steps, she began to cast her sleep spell on the giant wolf, making intricate patterns in the air with her hands as she whispered the words of the incantation.

But when the spell was complete, Carcharoth didn’t close his glowing red eyes. And he did not drift off to sleep. Instead, he bared his teeth and lunged down to attack us.

He ignored Aech and came directly at me, probably because I was the one with the shards in my inventory. I raised my sword and took several steps backward as Carcharoth snapped with a black maw full of razor-sharp fangs.

I continued to retreat back down the steps as the giant wolf advanced upon me, snapping his jaws again and again, just inches from my face.

I struck him repeatedly with Glamdring, but the sword’s glowing blue blade didn’t even appear to break the wolf’s skin, not even when I managed to stab him directly in his black, slime-covered gums.

Carcharoth turned to lunge at Aech, snapping his jaws shut on her leg. Then the beast shook her fiercely and hurled her aside. But Aech landed on her feet and counterattacked, hurling balls of fire and lightning from each of her hands, firing off one spell after another.

I tried to attack the giant wolf while he was distracted by Aech’s fusillade, but he somehow sensed my approach, and before I could land a hit with my sword, he craned his neck around and bit me in the shoulder. My avatar took over a hundred points of damage, and then a message popped up on my HUD, informing me that the wolf’s teeth were covered with some sort of venom, and that I would keep on losing more hit points every few seconds from poison damage. Carcharoth’s venom had also temporarily immobilized my avatar, leaving me wide open for another attack….

Aech and I had faced a lot of formidable enemies over the years, on a lot of different planets. The two of us once took down a Tarrasque on Faerun in less than five minutes. We livestreamed it. It was a cakewalk. But after less than thirty seconds, Carcharoth already had both of us on the run and hemorrhaging hit points.

I took a Potion of Cure Poison out of my inventory and swallowed it in one gulp. But to my horror, I saw my hit-point counter continue to fall. I was still taking poison damage. The potion was supposed to cure it, but it wasn’t working. Just like Aech’s sleep spell hadn’t worked on the wolf. Clearly, I had missed something….

Just as Carcharoth began to slink toward me to make another attack, I saw Aech’s enlarged avatar leap off the stairs behind him and onto his back. As he began to whirl and thrash around, Aech somehow managed to flip up and over the beast, land with both feet on the bridge of its nose, and stab it directly between its fiery red eyes.

Then, as the beast howled and reared back in agony, Aech did another somersault and landed on the ground directly in front of him. While he was temporarily blinded, she put everything she had into another volley of attacks with her sword.

Aech had saved me for the moment, but I could see that the bite to her leg had seriously weakened her. She appeared to have been poisoned by its venom, too, because her movements had slowed considerably.

She dodged desperately as Carcharoth continued to swipe at her with his massive black claws—but after just a few seconds, the giant wolf knocked her off balance and clamped his jaws shut on her avatar’s midsection. I cried out Aech’s name in anguish, because I knew the beast had struck a killing blow.

Aech turned to lock eyes with me just before she went limp and fell to the ground. Then her avatar slowly disappeared, leaving behind a pile of spinning items—all of the weapons and armor in her inventory.

I stood there in shock for a second, wondering if I’d just lost my best friend forever. But I couldn’t let myself believe that, so I lunged forward and scooped up all of the items Aech had dropped, adding them to my own inventory, with the hope that I would be able to return them to her later.

Then I took up the sword I had given her, Andúril, and equipped it in my left hand, so that I could wield it along with Glamdring in my right. Both of the Elven blades continued to glow bright blue as I turned to face Carcharoth. (I may have looked a bit silly wielding two such large swords at the same time, but my avatar’s combat stats made it effortless, and I had double-weapon proficiency and ambidextrous attacks, so I got three attacks per round with each sword, with each hand.)

Carcharoth glared at me with his glowing red eyes, and as he did I noticed that they matched the hit-point counter on my HUD, which was flashing to remind me that my avatar was just a few seconds away from being dead. And when my avatar died, I wasn’t going to respawn and wake up in a brand-new virtual body. I was going to end up just like Aech and Shoto and all the others. Trapped in an ONI-induced coma, with little hope of ever regaining consciousness.

Carcharoth kept advancing and I kept retreating, until he had me cornered at the edge of the plateau. He moved in closer and prepared to make his second kill, spreading his massive jaws in a rictus grin as he approached me. I raised both of my ancient Elven swords in an attempt to defend myself, but I knew it was hopeless.

This was it. I was about to die a very real death, and my quest was about to end in total failure—a failure that would likely result in the deaths of millions of other people, including my two best friends. And I would never have the chance to make things right with Arty. To tell her that I loved her more than any other person who had ever come into my life….

This was not how I wanted to die. Not even close.

And then my ex-girlfriend fell out of the sky.