At the end of a particularly grueling stretch of combat—an unforgiving gauntlet involving at least two trolls and a crow-horse monster hybrid—to say nothing of the countless mobs of pitchfork-wielding peasants and squads of crazed armoured knights out for her blood—the main boss of the Greater Ambrosial Valley awaited her.

  Setting foot in the royal chamber she downed one of her two remaining healing potions and gestured vulgarly to the heir to the Abrogated Kingdom, the Dark Prince, who rose from his throne and descended the steps to meet her.

  She slung her shield over her back, gripped her axe with both hands. He unsheathed his sword, imbued it with flame. And then the two opponents circled each other—she studying warily his every movement, he slashing swaggeringly at the air in front of him—long enough for her to see that he would not strike first, that she would have to go to him, at which point she moved to close the distance, with a quickstep to the left, a juke to the right, and once she was within attacking range she wound up for a heavy strike—

  —only to feel the full magic energy of Firmament’s Edge, the sword of legend, pierce through her chest as she was violently impaled upon the length of its glowing blue fire.

  With one foot against her chest the Dark Prince retrieved his blade from out of her chest, drawing it out with a sickening squelch, and then kicked her limp body away in disgust.

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  But she wasn’t dead yet. She rose. She pulled out her last potion (mashing Y: “Heal. Heal! HEAL!”) and began to drink, just in time for her opponent to finish off what remained of her life with a devastating grab attack.

YOU DIED

  And just as how her defiled corpse had been flung across the opulent throne room of the Ambrosial royal family, Melody likewise flung the controller across her brother’s room, and then stomped up and down in place, her fists balled and swinging, waking up most of the tenants in Unit C (to say nothing of the poor soul directly below her), screaming obscenities to curse not only the Dark Prince but the creative team who designed him, the graphic artists and computer programmers, as well as the sadistic director who’d decided that in order to give the boss another shot the player had to start over from the very beginning of the entire stage, with no intermediate checkpoints and all enemies respawned; and berating her own self, who couldn’t so much as complete the first (the first!) level, having been stuck on it for—

  “—twelve hours. TWELVE HOURS! If I—if I can’t even beat this fucking shit-tutorial boss, how could I”—deranged laugh—“how could I possibly save my brother!” (Having somehow, in her frustration, entangled the two ideas in her head, as if either had—could possibly have—anything to do with the other.)

  Out of breath and trembling, she collapsed on top of her brother’s bed, into whose sheets she croaked, her voice tantrum-shot, “I refuse to play this piece of shit anymore,” before rising back up and heading to the bathroom to use the toilet.

  By the time she returned the sun was beginning to rise. She unlodged the controller from the plaster of the wall in which it was stuck and continued once more, freshly reincarnated, from the start of the Valley.