Sarah’s heart raced as she plummeted faster and faster. The cliff face she now raced down, passing in a blur, seemed to be calling out to her. Not in a sense of sound, but the colors of it, something told her she could turn her body towards it, and run. Small patches looked more and more like footprints to her.

So much so that she tried it. What the hell right, a game was meant to be something to push the limits of physics in. Stride after stride, gaining so much speed, Sarah had never felt such a freedom of self. What was the terminal velocity of a human body? Two hundred or so kilometers per hour, she had to be going at least that or more. The ground below was suddenly rushing forward, the clouds giving way to a bright green expanse of land.

Pushing hard and leaping away, letting her momentum carry her away from the rock face as she continued to hurtle downwards, Sarah saw what she was hoping to see since before she started the game. A massive field, filled to overflowing with wild growing vines that had to be larger than most trees on her own planet. It was breathtaking how real it all looked. Even as she plummeted, Sarah swore she could see waves in the vines from the wind blowing on the ground level.

A red flashing to her left brought her mind back to her current situation's imminent shortcoming, how would she land? The red flashing indicator showed her velocity at one hundred and eighty-five kilometers per hour, and a dense object that was closing at the same rate.

She would splat, that would be how she would land. If Sarah wanted to have the quickest and dumbest death of the game, she was on the right track. This was by far the worst moment to be regretting her decision to jump.

“Dammit Sarah, you should've spent more time figuring things out before just rushing headfirst into it, again.” Her admonishment to herself did little to help with her distress. The ground coming closer and closer was starting to look more like a landing zone that she had no parachute for.

“Come on, think. Aren’t you supposed to be SarthDarah the badass here?”

She was thinking that it was SarthDarah’s wannabe badassery that leapt off that mountaintop in the first place. What would the badass superhero do in this situation? Superhero landing? Smash her fist into the ground to soften the ground, maybe roll with the impact. It might work, she might still end up splattered on the ground.

With impact imminent plastered in front of her vision, and the rushing ground coming up to meet her getting ever denser with thick vines, Sarah hurled her right fist with all her might at the ground. Tucking her legs up and behind her, ready to roll out of the crater she was sure to leave behind. Just as she was about to impact, her hand glowed brightly.

The sudden flare of light as she smashed through vegetation blinded her. Sarah felt the sudden stop less than a heartbeat later, and as she rolled back over front forward she felt the squishy mess of everything around her. Before she could figure out if the wet mess was her body splattered on the ground or not, a deafening squeal of pain shot up around her.

Had she squashed some creature that was hiding or living under the plant life? Was that what this squishy mess around her was? Sarah tried to open her eyes and look around, the blue light finally fading some from her vision, but she could only see black. Reaching up to feel her face, she found it covered in sticky and slimy drippings.

The ooze substance was like a mix between glue and corn syrup, and something that made sure it never dried out completely. Long thick strands of it peeled away from her face as she pulled her hand away. Sarah almost tried to say something, but the slimy feeling on her lips made her refuse to open her mouth.

Why, why did she have to do a stupid hero landing? She had succeeded in stopping her momentum enough to land without killing herself at least, but the mess. Sarah had never before wanted a shower in a virtual world, she did now. The feeling of being slimed, the now overpowering smell of some kind of rotting or burning acid smell, weighed on her.

Sarah had wanted to hurry into getting the campaign underway, she could only blame herself for the state she was in. Standing up out of the plant matter she had been wallowing in, Sarah began pulling as much of the slime from her face and arms as she could. The thick gel splattered on the ground beneath her. It wouldn’t all come off, and her hands were stained yellow and green, but Sarah could see.

Her eyes went wide at the surrounding fields of wildflowers. She couldn’t see any of the dense vine vegetation from here. Acres of land covered in wild growth, from towering grain stalks to brightly colored flowers fighting to reach higher than the others.

Then she noticed the five percent of health she had lost, the green bar in her lower right vision was missing a small fraction. Cursing inwardly at herself, Sarah began to walk out of the small mass of plant life she had mutilated. A slithering sound behind her made Sarah jump, leaping for the fields to get away from whatever was about to attack her.

Just as she got her footing and was able to spin to meet her foe, all was quiet. Sarah saw just how much of an impact she had had now. The massive flower bell was at least thirty feet up and twice as wide around. It was missing a huge chunk from where she had just walked out of, making it looked like a poorly carved pumpkin.

At her feet, Sarah saw green leaves, almost like she was standing on the leaves supporting the structure of the flower. The fields now behind her were thick, and now Sarah felt like she was surrounded by invisible enemies. The unnerving quiet was giving her the chills, she had to get out of here.

Turning to continue out into the fields, hopefully in the direction she had seen the city in, Sarah felt something off about the fields as she looked out upon them. Nothing had seemed wrong when she first glazed out in it, but there was no other sign of life around. The quiet was unsettling. Sarah was slowly turning from left to right, trying to find the source of the unease. A few sunflowers, and a crop of daisy’s were the only things that gave pop up windows though.

“What a terrifying feeling though.” Sarah thought out loud. “It’s almost as if there’s something lying in wait for me. Would the developers really set an ambush so soon though?”

As she was having the thought, another occurred to her. Yes, most games had a curve that would slap the face of any player that jumped out too far too soon.

Being completely on edge, Sarah walked slowly through the daisy field. The flowers were growing wild, undergrowth tangled tightly throughout it. Walking was tough, so she moved slowly. As she moved, something slithered past her leg, then suddenly, she had been tripped up and something had tightly wrapped around her right ankle.

“Gwhaaa!” She screamed, as the feeling of falling was concluded with the sudden whack of her head hitting the ground.

The feeling of pulling drug across the ground was so real. Sharp thorns had embedded into her ankle where the vine grabbed her. The pull was digging them into her calf harder. She watched her health bar drop even farther.

“Perfect! Just what I needed. A target!” Sarah was in pain, the game wasn’t dulling it much if it was at all.

Before she could be led any farther three more vines shot out from her left. One gripped into her arm, catching its thorns deep into her skin around her forearm. Sarah resisted screaming for that one, but when the second latched onto her left thigh and pulled back hard she couldn’t hold back.

“Fwaahh!”

Sarah’s legs were being pulled in opposing directions and her left hand was being forced to bend backwards. The third vine wrapped tightly around her torso, squeezing her stomach. Sarah couldn’t feel any thorns on this one thankfully, but it squeezed hard enough to make breathing hard.

With only her right hand available, she aimed a heavy blow against the vine around her stomach. The bright flash of light that glowed an instant before impact told her that her chi skill worked. The scorch mark it left behind was promising, but instead of letting go it squeezed harder.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Sarah coughed, but remained focused and swung down again, this time throwing her rage behind the attack. How dare this vegetable think it could stop SarthDarah. The sudden explosion of light was expected this time, and Sarah closed her eyes just long enough to not be blinded. The vine released her and slunk away quickly.

The two holding her legs began to twist and yank harder, tearing into her with their thorns. Sarah sparred a quick glance down at her health bar, nearly fifty percent gone already. She wouldn’t survive a fight with whatever was controlling the vines. If she didn’t get out of this now she would be dead and sent for re-spawn. If she could break one vine, she could break another.

Taking a full breath in, Sarah focused chi into her left arm and pulled sharply. With a tear, her arm came free of the vine. Her health bar dropped to less than twenty-five percent, turning a yellow color as it did. She bit her tongue, refusing to scream out in pain.

This game really didn’t mute the pain levels of being injured, that could be an issue if she got something chopped off. Sarah resolved to write it into the first paragraph of her report to the developers. It wasn’t so bad that she wanted to turn the game off, but she was definitely considering new ways to play that could keep her from getting hit.

Sarah readied herself to try and break free from the vines holding her legs. With them split so far apart it was hard to bend in a way that let her hit the vines. Just as she thought to try and twist her entire body to tear them away, the vines cinched her legs together and twisted her entire body for her. The sudden motion almost made Sarah lose her stomach contents.

“Hiyaaa!” Came a loud rumbling yell, followed shortly by a large thud and impact shutter.

Sarah looked down at the massive ax inches from her feet. The metal gleamed where there wasn’t smearings of vegetation. The long handle was being held by two massive hands that could probably wrap around her entire body with ease.

“Are you ok?” The man’s deep rumbling voice made her bones vibrate.

“Yeah, for the most part, thanks.”

“We better get up and out of this field. Something made the vines activate and become insanely aggressive.”

Sarah felt her heart skip a beat as she realized her dive bombing that giant flower bulb had probably been the activation event. While it was suddenly extremely dangerous to be here for everyone, she had a slight sense of accomplishment at driving such a widespread world event with her first action in the game. Even if it had been a boneheaded move, it had paid off in a small way.

“What’s your name?” Sarah asked.

“Jorn, you?”

“SarthDarah. Which way do we need to go?”

Jorn pointed to the west, through the dense fields.

“What are the vines? Some bait trap?”

“They seemed to be dormant protectors of the flower fields. We had seen a few attacks, but only after players had tried to start harvesting the flowers beyond what the quests were asking for. If you stayed within their bounds, they just loomed overhead.” Jorn started walking, Sarah following close behind. “We saw a huge creature get woken up from a cave, and after it rampaged in the fields for a minute, three vines wrapped around its neck and snapped its head off.”

Sarah gulped, it had had her wrapped with four vines, how lucky she had gotten to be free of it all. Why didn’t it just snap her into pieces?

“Well thanks for the help, I wasn’t sure what else i could really do there.”

“No problem. After my entire starting party got wiped coming through the mountain tunnels, I spent a good bit of time wandering back and forth between town and the fields here. This was the furthest I had gotten, then the vine ambush started and took out twelve more players I had grouped with.”

Sarah let out a low whistle. They were making good time across the field, nothing else had seemed to be ready to attack them. In fact, it seemed extremely calm around them again.

“Your entire starting party?”

“Yeah, we spent a good few hours in the tutorial training session, then another two hours getting out of the caves. The last day or so I’ve been out here carving up low level creatures for quests. There’s a couple groups out here right now that I know of besides myself. I figure our best bet is to retreat towards town and try to regroup with some others on the way.”

“Did you say you’ve been in the game for days already?”

“Uhh, yeah… the time frame here isn’t the same as real world time. I’ve been logged in for maybe four hours in real time.”

“Dammit!” Sarah was thoroughly upset at being delayed in her start.

“What happened to your starting party?”

The glare Sarah gave the enormous Jorn made him put his hands up in defense.

“I didn’t get one. I left the starting zone on my own.” Her voice was full of contempt, mostly at her own actions causing her to miss out on something so important.

He simply shook his head and kept walking, letting silence fall between them. With what seemed like miles of walking to do, Sarah thought more about what Jorn had said.

His starting party had been wiped, all but him. There were more than a few reasonable explanations for that. One, he could have run from an unwinnable battle and left his comrades behind. Two, there might have been a trap that Jorn successfully evaded, but the rest of his party did not. Three, he could have turned on them and slaughtered each one of them as soon as the tutorial part was over and he could successfully claim their loot.

Sarah didn’t get the killer impression from him. Jorn had saved her without being asked, and he didn’t ask for anything in return. Sarah was sure he had to have some reasonable excuse for being the only survivor. She was more worried about the fact that she had lost more than a couple days to the first players in the game.

Jorn had spent maybe a day and a half of game time in four hours of real time. That meant the first servers online would have been a little over four days ago in game. She had lost a serious amount of time in terms of controlling the flow of world events.

“Your eyes are burning.” Jorn said suddenly, breaking Sarah from her mental meltdown.

“What the hell?” Rubbing her eyes, a prompt appeared in front of her.

Enraged: Your Enlightenment adds fear into others you focus your energy towards. The stronger your emotions, the more dramatic the effect. This bonus adds eighty percent strength, activates a random known magic, and will blur your vision after you lose focus.

“What class are you?” Jorn had stopped walking to watch her put the small flames out.

“Enlightened Monk, you?” Sarah was still rubbing at her eyes. It didn’t burn, but the foggy vision it left her with after the flames died out was bugging the crap out of her.

“I’m a straight up Warrior. I’m building my character to be a tank mostly, the greataxe does wonders for blocking attacks as well as chopping most things in half with one good swing.”

“I’ll have to remember to duck when you swing it at me then.” Sarah was trying to joke with him, but it was still good to know. That idea of him wiping his own party members still lingered a little.

“Hmph, you’ll have to do more than just duck little one. Someone as small as you, I’d just swing downwards like I was playing whack a mole until I hit you.”

“You really think you could just barbarian smash until you hit me? I’m a little quicker than that, and smart enough to know not to stand under the ax as it comes down.”

“Ha! You’re feisty, Miss Enlightened Monk. And still new to this game if you still don’t know how the skills can be adjusted to compensate for things yet.”

“I’m not a noob.” Sarah’s voice had gone dark, losing all the joking attitude. “I just started this game. I was sent the link for the beta test less than three hours ago.”

Her character, SarthDarah, started to rise up off the ground slightly. The air around her began to swirl slightly, rushing down and away from her feet. Jorn stepped back from her, raising his ax. Sarah had raised herself up to eye level with Jorn. The two locked gazes, both ready for battle.

“Well then newbie, what was your trainer's quest? Or did you leave before any of it had a chance to start?”

Sarah couldn’t answer, she just looked away from Jorn. Jorn smirked, knowing that he had found the spot to press for information. This crazy girl really did skip the tutorial and run headfirst into the second most dangerous area here.

“Help!”

The loud and desperate cry came from somewhere to their south. Sarah instantly forgot her dispute with Jorn and pushed herself farther up. Surprised to find the act of levitating on the air relatively easy so long as she stayed perfectly still.

If she had tried to hit Jorn while levitating, she was more likely to knock herself backwards than make any impressionable impact on the beefy man. Rising above the fields enough to see where the cry came from made her wobble, but she managed to get up high enough to see a battle going on only about fifty feet away. That spoke volumes for how dense the growth was, she hadn’t noticed people fighting so close until someone screamed.

Sarah didn’t waste any more time, she looked back down at Jorn, who was already starting to run towards the battle. His ax chopped side to side in front of him, blazing a clean trail fast enough for him to sprint. Ok, the whole whack a mole idea just got a new meaning in Sarah’s mind. If he was gonna whack his ax that fast up and down at her, she wasn’t so sure she could dodge all the blows.

Quest; Survive the Mandragola attack. Bonus, save the two wounded warriors in the meadow.