Chapter One:

One Hour, Forty-Seven Minutes

The universe was silent. A microsecond earlier, the constant hum of existence had swelled to a monstrous, ear shattering crescendo. And then, there was nothing. Everything was gone. I faced an endless blackness stretching in every direction. Or, I think it was me in the middle of it. The concept of “me” felt slippery, fading in and out. I reached back, searching for a sense of who I was, but there was nothing, just emptiness, like the world around me. A blank space where something used to be. The idea of “before” felt just as unreachable, like the vague blur of a dream where time doesn’t really exist.

NEW QUEST:

WHAT THE F?

White words appeared in the black universe. Helvetica, I thought. Or maybe Arial? Yeah, definitely Arial. Why would anyone, especially me, know the difference? And, really, why would I care? But it seemed like the important thoughts weren’t setting in yet. Unimportant shit was all I could lock onto. My mind wasn’t fully functional; I didn’t know who I was, let alone where or when or anything actually useful. The words floated to the top of my vision, like I was watching some VR simulation I couldn’t escape. More text scrolled below at a careful, almost considerate pace:

You don’t know who you are. You don’t know where you are. Your very existence is now a mystery.

THIS QUEST CANNOT BE DECLINED.

To complete the quest, you must:

Open your eyes.

Look around.

Rewards:

You will know where you are, but you most likely will not know your location.

You will receive further quests.

You will receive 5GP.

I opened my eyes, no easy task, by the way. My eyelids felt glued shut. The moment I pried them open; light blasted me like a supernova at point-blank range. I slammed them shut, trying to block it out, but it still seeped through my eyelids. After a moment, or maybe a year, who knows, the intensity seemed to dial down. Carefully, I tried again, opening them just a sliver. Blurry shapes of warm light and shadow emerged. I opened them open a bit more, letting the world seep in. It wasn’t even that bright, really, but it felt like my eyes had never seen light before.

QUEST UPDATE:

WHAT THE F?

You have opened your eyes.

The words blinked into my vision over the fading light as my eyes adjusted. The blinding light thing had subsided, and the room I was sitting in started to come into focus. The smell of hay and barn animals came online, which was weird. And I was in a barn. A fucking barn. A mother fucking barn.

It was rustic with bulky wood beams hammered together with square nails, no lights, fans, or heaters around. The metal items looked rusty and handmade with nothing that looked machine tooled. Except for my chair, of course. Because that would be just crazy.

I was strapped into a middle airplane seat.

QUEST COMPLETED:

WHAT IN THE…

REWARDS:

YOU KNOW WHERE YOU ARE. BUT NOT THE LOCATION.

YOU CAN NOW ACCEPT QUESTS

5GP.

A small, brown fabric sack fell into my lap with a soft clink, it was tied at the top with a bit of twine. I just stared at it, not sure of what to do exactly.

“Hello.” I said quietly looking at the little sack. I was talking to a sack. Go figure. Worse yet, the voice that came out was raspy, my vocal cords seeming to have trouble lining up right. I coughed quietly, trying to sort out my throat.

Around this time, the reboot of my brain finally finished, and information started filling my brain. Regan. My name: Regan...Regan Summer. And I was still sitting, evidently, in the middle seat on a flight from Denver to Phoenix. Looking down, I could see I was wearing my black Target jeans, a pair of black Chuck Taylors, a Flock of Seagulls T-shirt, and had my Colorado beanie on my head. My phone was wedged between my thighs on the seat, and, sitting right in my lap, was my new sack of gold coins. My fingers were gripping the armrests so tightly they ached.

The next step in the boot up sequence were the sounds of the world around me. Basic barnyard noises, being as how I was seemingly in a barn. There was a sheep, a goat, and several chickens making their usual barn animal noises. Outside, through the gaps in the wood beams, I could hear the breeze rustling and pigs snorting at each other. Dust swirled in the sunbeams stretching down through the holes in the roof. I was facing a large, closed barn door.

NEW QUEST:

SURVIVE.

Your name is Regan Summer. You come from the city of Denver, Colorado. You were on an airplane heading to Phoenix, Arizona, when something happened. You are now sitting in a barn, in an airplane seat. You are not safe here. You have to leave this place in order to survive. The immediate area is controlled by a band of hostile orcs that will kill you on sight. Your current level is too low to fight them successfully. You must clear the area and find a safe place without being captured or face a most gruesome death.

THIS QUEST CANNOT BE DECLINED.

TIME TO COMPLETE QUEST:

ONE HOUR, FORTY-SEVEN MINUTES.

REWARDS:

SURVIVAL

UNLOCK THE WHISPERER

FINE LEATHER GLOVES

6GP

“One hour, forty-seven minutes.” I whispered out loud. My soft brain was still trying to grasp the concept of me just being me at the moment. The idea of time was still a bit in the theoretical side.

A timer appeared in the lower right corner of my vision, counting down in hours, minutes, and seconds. I instinctively reached toward the ticking numbers, it was like a 3d movie with subtitles, my fingers just pushed behind the digits, like they were an overlay in my vision. Orcs? What the fuck? Like, actual orcs, Lord of the Rings-style? The whole idea seemed ridiculous. Orcs and quests and whatever. But here I was, in seat 25B, in the middle of a creepy-ass, Friday the 13th: Part 3 barn. Same airline chair I’d boarded at DIA, now sitting in a barn. Orcs or no orcs, what in the ever-mother-fucking hell?

And quests? Like in a video game? Sure, I’d played Witcher and Skyrim, so I got the concept, but this wasn’t it. This was not a game. Or was I some test subject in a government experiment? One where they pluck some random chick off a flight, drug her up, and drop her into VR hell? I reached up and touched my face. Nothing. Just me with no helmet, no goggles. Fuck, I didn’t even like Skyrim all that much, it looked too damn cold.

And orcs. Now that I thought about it, orcs would be terrifying in real life.

I closed my eyes, giving myself a couple of breaths. I could feel my body in the seat, cramped between two metal armrests, minus the middle-aged woman on my left by the window and the cute guy on the aisle to my right. It felt the same. Tense, but the same. Only now there was a barn, orcs, and presumably, certain death.

Naturally, I picked up my phone to check it. According to the screen, it was 10:22 p.m. on March twenty-fourth, about 45 minutes after takeoff. I swiped, and there was my Home Screen: a photo of me and my sister smiling up at me from last Christmas. Megan was the pretty one, with big blue eyes, a bright smile, and wavy blonde hair, a perfect this and that. I was the one with the trouble spots: breasts too small, butt too big, tummy too soft, mousey hair. Mom used to call us her Sun and Moon. Megan played volleyball; I played chess. Megan loved boys and couldn’t keep her hands off them. I liked both girls and boys, but I was still a virgin. Yes, a twenty-six-year-old virgin, fuck you very much.

Megan and I are twins, practically polar opposites, but we love each other fiercely. I flipped to contacts and hit the call icon for Megan. No signal bars, of course.

“Well fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuckity McFuckFace, Fuck!”

Pressure started building behind my eyes, and my heart began to race. Memories flooded in. I’d landed a new job with an airline and was flying to Phoenix for training. I wanted to travel but couldn’t really afford it. Dad thought it was a great idea; Mom thought it was a waste of my college education. Buried in student loans, I’d had to move back home. Mom didn’t mind, as long as I was working. I drove Dad’s old CRV. I remembered... masturbating while watching something on Netflix last night? Couldn’t recall what.

Pretty sure my car keys were in my carry-on, but where the hell was the overhead bin? How am I supposed to drive home if the bin is gone? My phone had no service. Could I even listen to music?

My breathing grew shallow, my vision darkening at the edges as I struggled to catch my breath. I fumbled with the seatbelt. My phone slipped out of my hand, bounced off my shoes, and landed in the straw at my feet. I couldn’t reach it—this stupid seatbelt had me pinned.

NEW QUEST:

SURVIVE.

The words appeared again. Like a little reminder to me that I needed to take this shit seriously. So, I read them. And then I read them again. I reached down and pulled up on the buckle and the belt swung off my lap and clanked against the side of the seat. Just let it happen. I stood, the dirt and straw crinkling under my shoes. I picked up my phone and the bag of gold and stuffed them into my pockets.

“So,” I whispered to the fading words. “Where am I?”

You are in a barn. You do not know your location. You have to leave this area in the next one hour and forty-four minutes in order to survive.

“Not helpful, is that all I get?”

No response came from the floating words. I presumed that was a yes. I walked to the large door of the barn and gave it a gentle push. It gave a little, before bouncing back against my hand. It must have been braced from the outside.

“It’s like chatting with a tech support bot. What are orcs?” I whispered.

They are hostile towards you and will attack on site. Your level is too low to fight them.

“Can you tell me anything?”

Information is rewarded upon completion of Quests and or gained from your own firsthand experience or collection.

“You know what? Fuck you.”

Yes I say fuck a lot. Fuck you if you have a problem with that.

I moved to the sunny side of the barn. Luckily, the animals seemed tame enough and didn’t make a fuss with me around. Pressing my hand to the wall, I peeked through a crack. Outside, I could see a semi-circle of small wood huts with thatched roofs around a fire pit. Next to it, carcasses hung on a wooden rack, presumably to dry out or smoke. Guess I’d slept through the medieval meat-smoking segment in history class. I had no idea how people used to prep meat.

About half a dozen orcs milled around. I mean, of course they were fucking orcs. Orcs are orcs. They are what you would expect to find: big, green-skinned, hulking brutes, just as advertised. They had to be at least three hundred pounds, with dark green skin, massive muscles, arms dangling to their knees, and tiny bald heads. Their faces looked pig-like, with upturned noses and tusks poking from their lower jaws. Their eyes were tiny and spaced wide, and they had this dim, detached way of looking around, like they didn’t process the world so much as… just kind of noticed it was there. Was that judgy? Am I a fantasy-world racist?

Most of them were covered in black tattoos or ritual scars. Some wore just loincloths, others wrapped themselves in single pieces of fabric or fur. Mostly, they were just lazing around. One leaned against a hut, while others grunted at each other in a language, or what sounded like one. It had rhythm, but their vocal cords didn’t seem designed for human words. I hated to say it, but it was like hearing pigs trying to talk. Their laughter came out in high-pitched squeals. I realized it wasn’t actual pigs I’d been hearing. One was squatting by the fire pit, poking it with a stick.

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

“Oh shit.” I whispered. “They’re not just gonna kill me, are they?”

If you do not escape, you will face a most gruesome death.

Panic reared its ugly head again. This wasn’t reality. I struggled having to live with my parents and never being able to find a decent razor to shave my legs. My mom’s friends were always trying to rope me into MLM scams, and my TikTok algorithm was only sending me cats and girls jumping on trampoline. Okay, I liked my For You Feed, actually. Why add fucking orcs to the mix? Yeah, no. And you know what? That goat staring at me was freaking my shit out too.

I moved over to the shady side of the barn and had a peek. There were a couple of buildings, but no sign of any of the village occupants. In the distance, between the two buildings, I could see the tree line of a forest, and what I presumed, safety.

Okay, Murder World, I’ll play your game. The course of action seemed obvious, escape on the side with no orcs and make a run for the trees, lay low long enough to survive.

The barn walls were made of wooden planks, standing about five feet tall from floor to the first crossbeam. Each plank was a foot wide, maybe three-quarters of an inch thick, nailed from the outside at the top and bottom. I sat down and gave the bottom of one a few gentle kicks, hoping I could wiggle through. But then again, I wasn’t exactly high school skinny anymore. Let’s just say the COVID fifteen, and my freshman fifteen, come to think of it, had stuck around, and even found a way to flourish. Screw society’s beauty standards.

The plank pushed outward but was bucked up against dirt and leaves piled up on the ground outside. But I was consistent and steady. I had to kick just hard enough to push the plank out, but not so hard to alert the locals. After about fifteen minutes, according to the timer in my vision, I managed to get the beam pushed back enough to lift it off the ground. The upper nails groaned as I leveraged them out with the plank. I let out a little hiss as I got splinters in my right palm. Worst day ever.

I wedged myself into the opening, quickly realizing how grossly optimistic I’d been about fitting through a twelve-inch gap. With a huff, I started tapping gently on the upper part of the next plank, working it free from the top down. It was slow going, but with over an hour and a half left on the timer, I could take my time. After fifteen more minutes of tap-tap-tapping, I finally managed to ease the top of the plank down and slip out of the barn.

A high-pitched voice squeaked out. “Huh?” It seemed orcish to me.

I was only one step out when I heard the orc on the left, next to the front of the barn. I looked over at him. He looked at me. He was standing with an armful of firewood. There was a moment when neither of us did anything. For me it was sheer panic. For him, I think it was his general disbelief that he was seeing what he was seeing. I smiled weakly and waved at him, you know, just trying to be all non-confrontational. Did I just fucking wave at him?

My mind erupted visions of angry green monsters jumping around. I could feel the rush of adrenaline fill my body as the lizard brain kicked the panicking captain out of the chair and took over the controls. I followed the plan and made a dash for the space between the huts.

I was fully embracing the concept of fight or flight. Emphasis on the latter. As fast as I could pump my legs, I ran and closed up the distance to the huts pretty quickly. There also didn’t seem to be any more orcs on this side.

“HUMAN!” The creature bellowed behind me. I cleared the tiny village and made my way to the open field that led to the forest.

The horror of my reality was starting to sink in. From my vantage point in the barn, there were two huts, a field of grass, and then the edge of the forest. However, this was not the case when I found myself in the middle of things. The grass was actually a waist high field of grain, and the woods were more like a half mile away. Instead of jumping into cover, I would be exposed all the way. And full discloser, I wasn’t exactly a track star. In fact, I actually found watching the Olympics exhausting. But the plan was all I had to work with.

I hit the brakes. I wasn’t looking at the world through a quarter inch slit in the wall anymore, I was now dealing with full blown reality. I paused long enough to take in the current environment. The village was nothing more than I had seen. The other side was up against a steep hill that would have been just as brutal to try to climb as the miserable field was to cross. The sound of squeals from the orcs echoed as the alarm was sounded. It wouldn’t be long before they would be on me.

So, I ran. But in a flash of either stupid or brilliant, I belted toward the right-hand hut I had just passed. The plan of dash for cover was still on, but the forest was just not a viable option. I banked on a little misdirection and while the orcs made for the field, there was a chance that this might buy me enough time to take off in another direction with a strong enough lead to get away.

I dove to the ground at the foot of the hut and pressed my body as close to the ground as I could. Grass was high on this side of the building and I was hopeful none of those things would be looking back as they raced forward. I tried to steady my breathing. My body ached, with arms and hands scraped up from rolling on the ground. The orcs ran by on either side of the hut, grunting with effort and squealing at each other. I cautiously rolled to my side to see. I counted six of them, all running into the field.

I crawled around the outer side of the hut, not wanting to get between the two small buildings. The noise of my pursuers was definitely getting further away. On the side I saw the small wood pile the orc was pulling logs from. Next to it was an axe.

It wasn’t a woodcutter’s axe; this was a combat axe, with a single, curved blade on one side. The handle was crafted from pale wood, almost white, and runes adorned the blade’s edge, etched in an elegant style the meaning of which made absolutely no sense to me. It reminded me of a badass metal guitar. My guess: orcs didn’t worry much about tool specificity. The axe was nearly as long as I was tall, but I picked it up, because why not? Despite its size, it felt surprisingly light in my hands. For a moment, it gave a faint, buzzing vibration, and then floating words appeared in my vision.

NEW ITEM:

RAZOR MANDOLIN ENCHANTED AXE OF LEGENDARY QUALITY

This axe has been in the possession of a prominent family of dwarves for many generations, and then one day, poof! It’s gone. The circumstances of why it’s gone are not really important right now. But just keep in mind, it’s extremely valuable. More valuable than you. The axe applies the following benefits: Plus, ten to strength, plus ten to dexterity, plus fifteen to attack, and plus seventy-five to damage. Like I said. This is worth more than you, and while it is a great item to have, chances are it will lead to more trouble than it’s worth. Careful with it.

I gasped, almost losing my breath as a wave of strength rippled through my body. I guess I was experiencing plus ten to Strength and Dexterity, whatever that meant.

“Magic Axe,” I whispered. “Okay Then.”

I crept around the corner and slinked past the back of the barn to where I saw the orcs before. I really wasn’t sure where I could go, but heading up the hill on the other side seemed the only sensible escape route now. At least the knuckle head creatures weren’t coming back yet.

“Human.”

The beast was mostly facing away from me. I was the one staring; he was just gazing off into space, muttering to himself with little grunts and snorts, as merry as could be. Beside the log he was sitting on lay a ceramic jug tipped on its side. That explained his lack of enthusiasm for getting up and moving.

“Human. Human. Stinky, squishy human,” he muttered. A drunk orc didn’t seem much dimmer than a sober one, not that I had much experience. Holding my axe across my chest, I sidestepped behind him, moving toward the cover of the row of huts. I hoped my pounding heart wasn’t loud enough for him to hear because in my head it was all King Diamond in my chest. Blood rushed through my ears and face, my entire body pulsing with adrenaline. I steadied my breath, taking one step at a time. That is, until I tripped over an exposed root, hitting the ground with a thud and a grunt.

With surprising agility, the drunk orc spun around to his feet.

“Human girl.” He grunted, staggering toward me. Standing and spinning seemed to take most of it out of him, and he swayed back and forth there for a second. From the waist of his loincloth, he produced a dagger with a wavy blade on it. It was old and rusty, but still, with his muscle mass, he could probably kill me with a corncob.

I tried to get up, but panic turned my legs into goddamn jelly, but my hands refused to drop the axe.

“No,” I gasped holding the axe in front of me defensively. “Please don’t.”

“Gonna poke human girl.” He grunted as he closed the space between us with a few unsteady steps. “Lots of pokes. Lots of holes.”

He came up to me, his dagger raised. I swung the axe at him with everything I had. And I missed as he leaned back. The weapon chopped down on the ground with an unsatisfactory thump. And that would be it, my first and last day in Murder World.

The orc squealed. It was ear piercing. Not anger or rage, but pain. The axe was embedded in the dirt a couple of inches, but it had also passed through and chopped off half of the toes like they were made out of butter. Emerald green blood sprayed from the severed ends and filled my nostrils with the smell of copper. I wrenched the axe out of the dirt and tried to get to my feet, but his hulking form was bearing down right on top of me.

I lifted the axe to swing again, and the orc batted at it with his dagger, knocking it aside. His fist came crashing down at me, I leaned back, and it bounced off my forehead with a painful Thump! I was thrown back, my vision blinded by flashing lights and my ears ringed. All the muscles in my hands and body clenched and I rolled over and over on the ground.

DEBUFF:

MINOR CONCUSSION.

YOUR MOVEMENT WILL BE 25% SLOWER FOR THE NEXT THREE MINUTES.

-25VP

The lights faded as I lifted my throbbing head off the ground. I was on my stomach with the axe beneath me, still gripped in my aching fingers. As I pushed off the ground, my head pounded, and the spots kept coming. Everything was moving more slowly. I managed to roll onto my side and got up to one knee.

The death blow from the orc never came. Despite my disadvantage, the orc didn’t make a move toward me. He stood, panting, swaying on his feet. He was so shit faced he could barely stand. The missing toes probably didn’t help. For a brief moment, we both kind of just looked at each other.

He suddenly lunged at me. I lifted the axe again and took another swing, reaching as high as I could from my kneeled position. This time it connected right below his chin, neatly slicing halfway through his neck.

His squeals were silenced before they came out and were replaced with burbling as he struggled to breathe. His free hand tried to cover his gaping throat as he came down on top of me, his dagger scraping painfully across the side of my neck before slipping out of his hand. It was close. Too fucking close.

The green crap poured all over me. I coughed and choked as it sprayed into my mouth, nose, eyes, everything. It was horrifying. The world spun. An overwhelming wave of nausea rose up in in me and the vomit quickly starting shooting. Accompanied with coughing up of the nasty green blood, both pipes were spraying out of me.

DEBUFF:

TILT A HURL

TIME REMAINING: 5 SECONDS.

-3VP

The vomit just wouldn’t stop. I had some food in my stomach from the airport, but that was it. As the orc collapsed next to me, I rolled onto my side and puked, again and again and again as a timer ticked down in my vision, all the time, the world spun like a, well, a tilt a whirl.

At the end of five seconds, after I had spewed the last of my bile, which blended in nicely with the orc blood, everything stopped. All was quiet and still. The orc lay next to me, no longer moving or breathing. I was drenched from head to toe in stuff that I didn’t even knew existed up to that point.

“F…F…Fuck.” I was just sitting there. Orc blood and the remnants of a twelve-dollar sandwich all over the face of Mike Score, and a dead motherfucking Lord of the Fucking Rings, ugly, green monster was right next to me. My throat burned, and my abs were sore from vomiting.

I used the axe handle to get to my feet, my entire body quaked, but I wasn’t dead. There was still no sign of the orcs. I could hear them yelling at each other, but the sounds were still very far off. The dead one was, well, dead. So, Yay. I looked down at his prone form.

The familiar words of whatever it was, appeared above the body.

CORPSE:

PRAIRIE ORC

LOOTABLE ITEMS:

SICK STICK ENCHANTED DAGGER

CRUDE, HAND DRAWN MAP

ORC LOIN CLOTH, SOILED.

The dagger, the loincloth, and a small, folded piece of parchment paper glowed on and next to the body. I snatched up the dagger, which glowed and vibrated in my hand.

NEW ITEM:

SICK STICK ENCHANTED DAGGER OF SUPERIOR QUALITY

A favorite of among sadists masochists alike, the sick stick applies the Tilt a Hurl debuff for five seconds upon any successful attack. In addition, the Sick Stick also adds three points to dexterity and one point to strength when wielded.

I tucked the dagger into my back pocket and carefully slipped the folded parchment out of the orc’s waistband. The map was crude, for sure, complete with not one but three sketches of penises doodled along the edge, clearly the guy’s personal obsession. The layout showed the huts, the barn, the field, and the hill. About one hundred and fifty yards to the left and around the hill, there was a road I could use to make my escape.

I started jogging. Fifty feet in, I was pretty sure I’d broken my personal record since high school. I held the axe over my shoulder with my left hand and the Sick Stick in my right. The “boosts” from the two weapons made me feel light on my feet, and the jogging felt almost effortless. I wove between the huts, then veered left along the base of the hill, following a worn footpath in the grass. I kept an eye on the field, but it looked like the morons had charged straight into the trees on the far side. Not the brightest, but I had to admire their tenacity.

Once I rounded the hill, I spotted the road, barely wider than the worn path that led to it. But it stretched away from here, and away from here was infinitely better. Instinctively, I went right, keeping the hill between me and the orc village. The quest timer was still ticking down. I had one hour and three minutes left. All I could do was keep moving, hoping to find a place considered “safe” by whoever had assigned me this quest.

The landscape was rugged and hilly, with patches of green grass, wildflowers, and dusty red earth. Large, smooth red rocks cropped up along the road as it wove through jagged hills. I couldn’t see far enough to get a sense of where I was. Finally, I noticed the overcast sky and the long, fuzzy shadows. It was late afternoon, wherever this place was, which meant darkness in two or three hours. The valley was already starting to cool.

My mind was starting to light up after operating in instinct mode for too long. I killed somebody. That big gross thing was dead because of me.

“Fuck!”

I stopped, dropping the axe on the ground. As I did, all strength left my body, and I just collapsed onto my knees in the middle of the dusty road. The blood, the spray. It was real. It was fucking real. I was covered in it and could smell and feel it. I was on a flight to Phoenix less than an hour ago. There was a fucking airplane seat in that barn back there. Where was the plane? Where the Hell was I? Was I even who I thought I was?

I thought about Megan, Mom, and Dad, you know, the only people in my life who were probably wondering where I was. My stomach twisted as I pulled out my phone, hoping for some miracle. But of course, nothing. Then I realized the damn thing was still in airplane mode. I switched it off quickly, holding my breath for a split second. Still nothing. No service. I scrolled through my last texts with Megan, just the usual “Good luck” stuff. She’d mentioned maybe flying out to join me for the weekend if she could squeeze it in. Typical Megan, always busy, but always trying. Nothing from Mom, unsurprisingly, but Dad had sent a quick, supportive note before I left. I’d already read it a hundred times. Now, though, it felt like a relic from another life. Did they think I was dead? What the hell happened to the plane?

It was time for the breakdown. Just let it happen.