It doesn’t take long for the zigging and zagging between the bases of hills to get old, crouching among the trees and underbrush. Supposedly, our destination isn’t all that far away, as the crow flies. The problem is that we have now taken it upon ourselves to get there as invisibly(and inconveniently) as possible.

When I imagined one last trip into Rithium, I can’t say this is exactly what I had in mind.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot to see and explore if you go hiking in the simworld, if that’s what you’re about. The vast amount of incredibly lush and impossibly detailed space is part of what makes the world feel real. There’s something both lonely and thrilling about getting lost in it.

But Rithium isn’t just about that. It’s about the stuff between all the space. The towns. The player-built cities. The discovery of ancient ruins or artifacts that lead players to debate finer aspects of the lore, or change the way that you play the game—if said artifacts have any in-game usefulness.

There’s monsters to kill; sometimes tucked away in deadly, dangerous areas that most players avoid. Some of these areas are in the form of cave-like dungeons to explore, with secrets waiting to be uncovered: treasure, rare equipment, or Skill Crystals.

Perhaps most of all, it’s about screwing around with other players, whether it’s an exciting feud between guilds, or showing a bunch of bullying posers just how good at the game you are, by taking them out and grabbing their stuff.

Sorry, losers.

It’s about taking on bosses singlehanded, or with the help of only one or two friends.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

It’s about making memories.

Oh, I’m making memories, all right.

Ahead of me, Tanya throws up a hand, signaling us to freeze, halting our uphill climb through the brush. There’s enough twigs and dry leaves caught in her hair to start a campfire.

Maybe they should have waited until Rithium’s night-cycle to do this, I think.

Not that they really had a choice. The arrival of the SWAT team had been necessary for the plan to work. Now that the process was in motion, we needed to follow it through to the end. All eyes have to be on us. The story can’t just be real and corroborated. It has to be airtight and irresistible.

I’m crouched low, listening.

This isn’t a game, to them. Maybe it never was. It’s not like it was for you. Not to them.

Especially not now.

Tanya is still frozen, hand in the air, like a monument. The Tanya Bedford Memorial.

That’s a bit grim, don’t you think?

Sater crawls past me with painstaking slowness, careful not to make a sound.

“Tanya,” he whispers. “What—“

There’s a threatening jerk from Tanya’s hand, silencing him. The whole stretch of her forearm is taut, unflinching. Her body is still.

Something about that actually kind of scares me. The wordless intensity of it.

I turn, scanning the darkness. Sunlight is muted here, cut off by the twisting, crisscrossing brambles, overlaying, shrouding everything in shadows. My vision blurs as layers of growth come and out of focus. I’m suddenly and keenly aware of all the surrounding pockets of darkness, a many-layered abyss full of unknown things.

Something flashes. An adjustment from light to dark, then light again. Not light itself, but a color. The color white.

Something climbs out of the blackness. Not literally, but figuratively, like a picture with an ominous, creepy thing in the background you don’t notice right away, Or those social media posts with a picture that has Something that doesn’t belong; only geniuses will see it!

At first, as far as your brain is concerned, nothing is there. And then, with horrific suddenness, something is.

Only, it’s not a something. It’s a someone.