The Lake Beast’s tentacle tightened and contracted around my ankle, pulling me towards its massive mouth. The more I struggled, the more my breath meter plummeted. Either the Lake Beast was going to kill me or I was going to drown. Either way, I was dead.

But then, something struck the water above me. I looked to see another player diving towards me. He was clad in all black, with a hooded cloth covering his face like some sort of medieval ninja. He swam towards me with blinding, almost impossible speed.

The Lake Beast roared beneath me and tugged hard on my ankle, as if it was aware of my potential savior. I looked down as its hideous body emerged from the mud and opened its mouth even wider for a bite that would cut me in half or swallow me whole.

As it brought its jaws together, I aimed my foot and and managed to kick off one of its teeth. Its jaws clamped shut, barely missing me. I tried to kick away, but its tentacle was like a vice around my leg. The enormous beast opened its mouth for another bite, and that’s when I felt a hand grip mine.

I looked up to see the mysterious player gripping me tightly. I couldn’t see his face, but his eyes were fierce and filled with kindness. He drew a blue crystalline dagger and drove it hard into the Lake Beast’s tentacle. A shriek that seemed to shake the very waters of the lake itself poured out of its grotesque mouth, but the tentacle held firm.

He struck out again and again, spilling black blood from the beast into the water, creating an inky cloud around both of us. I kicked hard as he rammed the knife home again, and finally felt the tentacle release its unbreakable grip around my ankle.

I kicked for the surface, swimming as hard as I could, but my breath meter was already too far gone. My body spasmed again, trying to force me to take a breath. There was no way I was going to make it in time. I’d been saved only to die moments later.

My rescuer tugged at my arm, turning my face to his. I saw something in his eyes, and then, I felt something tugging at me.

No! Impossible!

He began dissolving in front of my eyes, his body breaking into countless tiny purple dots. The sound of rushing water filled my ears.

Portal space!? How?

And then, I was whisked away, back into a purple-blue portal that twisted around me, pulling me away to somewhere unknown.

***

Static. The sounds of portal space distorted like the volume had been cranked up past any reasonable level. A thick, constant bass hummed beneath it all, rising up and down like a wave.

Again, pieces of the portal walls tore and snapped away into blackness. A void. A space beyond. The Ripper’s chilling words filled my mind.

Lost forever in the electronic void…

Was that what I was looking at? The space between our worlds? The space our souls would go when we died? The thought was chilling, and as the portal twisted around me, I felt myself starting to panic.

Calm down, D! I screamed on the inside.

Something flickered in the edge of my vision, and I flicked my eyes to it and saw my rescuer tumbling through the portal beside me.

Impossible...I thought again as we sped through portal space together. Nothing made any sense. Every rule of Carrethen was being broken right before my eyes. Again, I felt as though a thousand different forces were tearing for control of my body, like I could have been spit out of the swirling portal at any moment to some unknown destination, or even worse, a place between worlds where I’d be lost forever.

But the world began to form beneath me, warped and compressed like it had been stuffed into a sphere of glass. It expanded as the portal walls peeled away. I expected to feel hard ground beneath my feet, but as portal space vanished, I found myself plummeting towards the ground.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

I slammed down face first. It wasn’t a far fall, and thankfully my health didn’t move. I had precious left as it was.

Why did that happen? My mind was spinning. I hadn’t even had a chance to catch my breath, and absolutely nothing was making sense.

What were those high level monsters doing back there? Why was my inventory blank? What had happened to the world?!

Too many questions—no answers.

“Here,” a voice spoke above me. A trade window opened in front of me, with two Peerless Health Kits inside. I hit the confirm button and heard the satisfying “ding” of the items entering my inventory. “It’s all I can spare right now.”

Quickly, I used a charge from one, restoring my health to just below full. Then, I spun around to face whoever it was that had just saved my ass.

“I felt it!” I gasped, on the verge of panic. “Pain! How did I feel pain!?”

The man who’d rescued me just looked down at me like I’d lost my mind. “And how did you do that? Pull me through Portal Space with you!?”

“Are you…all right?” He asked slowly.

“No!” I cried out. “No, I’m not all right. What the Hell is going on!?”

Nothing made any sense. The sky roared with thunder as I struggled to catch my breath. Real physical effects in Call of Carrethen?

I looked up to see the man standing over me, his eyes perplexed. I was probably acting like a complete crazy person to him.

“Thank you!” I blurted out, doing my best to maintain my composure.

“Not a problem,” he replied with a slight bow of his head. He was wearing some kind of cloth armor, but by the looks of it, it was stronger than anything a mage would wear. It almost resembled leather, but hung differently and had a texture similar to chainmail, like it had been woven from some sort of strong fibers. He extended a hand. I took it.

“Kodiak,” he said. His voice was strong and unafraid.

“Ja—D,” I replied as he helped me to my feet.

Wait a minute, I thought. What was that?

My voice—it sounded different. Wrong. Not like my character at all—not even a guy’s voice. In fact, it sounded just like my real voice!

“D, huh?” He asked, looking me up and down. “Short for Daphne? Denise? Dianne?”

“Oh, no…” I groaned, looking down at my hands for the first time. They weren’t D’s hands. They were a girl’s hands. They were my hands.

Slowly, I reached up and ran my fingers through my hair. It was long, hanging down just above my shoulders. It was girls’ hair. It was my hair.

“Do I—do I look like a…girl to you?” I asked hesitantly. I already knew the answer. I don’t even know why I asked.

“Is this a trick question?” He asked.

“Gah,” I groaned, hanging my head. Obviously, something had gone wrong with my Wellspring device, or with Wintermute’s root program, or with the Call of Carrethen engine itself, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that I was no longer D—I was Jane.

“You all right?” The man asked.

Not really, I wanted to say. I felt lost. I felt naked, as though my armor had been stripped away from me and I was lying vulnerable beneath the tumultuous sky of a new, unknown world. But the last thing I could do at that moment was show weakness, so I took a deep breath and looked up at him.

“Yes. I’m sorry, my name is…Jane. What’s yours?”

“Kodiak…” he repeated slowly, looking at me with concern. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Well, I’m alive,” I shrugged, slumping down on a fallen tree to my left.

“That was reckless,” he remarked. “Diving off that cliff like that. What were you doing messing with those Arugians anyway?”

“Arugians?”

Again, a questioning look from Kodiak. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Okay, no!” I snapped back. “No, I’m not okay! I have absolutely no idea what’s going on or where I am or what the Hell an Arugian is!”

It took Kodiak a minute to speak, but when he did, I felt as though I was a child and he was my father trying to explain to me how the world worked.

“Arugians are those big blue guys with the bows that were chasing you,” he told me. “And this is The Dark World. How—how could you not know this?”

“The Dark World,” I said slowly, more to myself than to him. I looked around, trying to get my bearings. The terrain looked like we were somewhere North of Stoneburg, but I couldn’t say exactly where. The sky still swam with monstrous black clouds. Lightning cracked and spread like glowing fingers above us. Even the grass seemed to be less green than I remembered, as though the very ground beneath it had turned crimson and dark.

“Some people say it’s The Electronic Void,” he continued, his eyes fixed on me. “But I don’t believe that.”

“The Electronic Void…” I muttered. I forced myself to look at him. He’d saved me, but something about him still scared me. “Why—why don’t you think that?”

“Well, for one, it doesn’t make any sense. Why would The Ripper scare us by telling us we’d be brain dead and lost forever, when really we were just going to another version of Carrethen?”

“Yeah…”

“And what would be the point of that anyway? Wasting resources to run an entire other world for the dead?” He continued. “I just don’t buy it. If you ask me, The Ripper is just toying with us. The whole thing’s one big game, and eventually he’ll show up and send us all home.”

“No,” I replied instantly. “No, The Ripper is dead.”

My words hung in the air for an uncomfortably long time before Kodiak replied.

“How could you possibly know that?”

“Because…I killed him.”