P r o m i s e s will be kept,

fair maiden.

The Realm remembers.

Deeds done, words said.

There will be a reckoning,

and the price will be paid for all.

The Daughter Will Abide.

Alkataia opened her eyes, and realized her daughter was not beside her.

She also realized the bed was not her own, and leapt from it.

She spun around wildly, trying to discover where she was, who had kidnapped, what was going on. Within moments, she recognized the room, and gasped.

She had been playing Dawn of the Realms with her daughter since the earliest days of the beta, and for that entire time they had used but a single inn. She was familiar with the vivid yellow drapes, and the canopy bed, and the thick sun-drenched rug which was set in the center of the room.

What she hadn’t previously understood was the smooth sensation of the silk sheets, or even the supreme softness of the feather stuffed bed. She hadn’t smelled the fresh bread from the bakery next door, or the subtle scents of the ever-present flowers of the town. She hadn’t heard the distant calls of the markets, of the gentle noises of the neighbors leaving their rooms. She’d seen the drapes and the rug, but she hadn’t realized how much depth there were to those objects, hadn’t noticed the amount of detail given to them.

In short, while she had seen the room through her monitor at home, she had never before stood within it, on her own two feet, seen it with her eyes, heard it with her ears, touched it with her hands.

Only it wasn’t her eyes, or hands, or body at all.

She stared at her hands, unblinking, uncertain. It moved as she willed it, turning it back and forth. But it was not her hand. Her skin was darker than that, her nails less perfectly manicured, her skin more rough. These were the hands of a doll, untouched and unblemished by the world.

She strode forward to the window, and with a bit of work, was able to catch a glimpse of herself by reflection.

It was not the body she had spent thirty two years living in. It was the body she had spent seven months playing as, day after day. It was the body of the warrior-bard Alkataia, fully realized, eyes widening in shock.

She reached one hand over to the other, and pinched herself as hard as she could. She winced with the pain, and at the top of her vision, a message appeared.

1 damage.

And she realized that, though she couldn’t explain how it had happened, she had awoken within the game.

In the same way she had for the past six years, her first thought was of her daughter. If she was in the game, was she as well?

No sooner had the thought occurred than her hands moved to obey. Quickly and easily, as if she’d performed the motion a thousand times, they gestured and a menu appeared. Just as quickly, she tapped the Friend List, and there it was.

Fire Lily             Online

Her blood was a river of frozen flame. With trembling hands, she reached out to tap the message icon.

~E R R O R~

The Princess awoke from a terrible Nightmare,

From which she had been unable to escape.

The King was gone,

And the Queen was withdrawn,

And all the Lands did quake.

She shook her head, eyes swimming, uncertain what she’d heard. It was as if she’d heard something, entirely without her ears being involved at all, except it was more like half remembering something she’d heard long ago, and was uncertain if she was recalling it properly.

It didn’t matter now.

She had to find her daughter.

So she set out.

She stepped from her room, closing the door behind her only out of a lifetime of ingrained habit. Everything around her was as she remembered from the game. The small stone walkway, leading to her cabin, one twelve set in a semicircle around the home of the one who owned them all. The NPC was named Gavant, and he always handed her daughter a flower from the garden when they passed by. That, and called her “the sweetest lily”.

The first time she’d heard that line of dialogue she’d shivered, and hadn’t been able to sleep that night.

He wasn’t ambling about at the moment, so there was no one to notice her as she stepped onto the main thoroughfare of the town of Yndril, such as it was. Yndril was one of the least populated Shards in the Realms, as there were no particularly strong monsters nearby, or adventurous quests, or indeed anything that most players came to an MMO. Instead, it seemed to be something of a tech demo.

Dawn of the Realms had been heavily marketed based upon an animation engine built for perfect verisimilitude, and Yndril featured in much of the marketing. The eternally-blooming trees swayed in an equally eternal calm wind, which also ruffled the endless fields of flowers which swallowed the town whole. Birds flew overhead, and a dizzying variety of butterflies flittered from flower to flower. Even the NPCs in the town did nothing to betray their digital nature. Extensive routines and dialogue options seem to have been programmed into them, such that they were always moving, and had something new to say.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

She’d been in town long enough to glimpse the edges of the realism, the limited nature of the dialogue trees themselves such that eventually there was nothing else left to say to the ones around you other than a quick “good day”, but it was still the most fully realized digital environment she’d ever played in. When she’d played at her desktop, watching the game through her monitor was more like watching another world through a convenient camera that just so happened to be following someone through the world.

Now that she was within the world, the sensation was even more overwhelming. Even as she wandered the single brick road that cut through the town, even as she thought and thought, she couldn’t help but to feel she was seeing the world that had been hidden within sight all along.

The bouquet of colors and smells, the sensation of the breeze, every minor miracle around her was nothing more than a distraction.

She had to find her daughter, her sweet Lily. She was all she had left.

She had briefly considered that she was still only dreaming, but she had never been any good at lying to herself. Her husband had called it her greatest strength. She’d called it her curse.

No, if she had truly lost her mind, then there was no point on dwelling on it. Instead, she would focus on her anchor, who sacred trust. If she was in the game, and the game somehow insisted her daughter was online, then she was online.

Then she wondered if she had to be online.

Instinctively her hand reached out, and the menu appeared once more in a burst of starlight. The Logout button blazed in her vision, and a moment later she was awake in her own bed.

The clock told her it was just after three.

Lily was there beside her.

She knew she should have moved her back to her own bed by now, and she told herself she was doing it because Lily wanted it, but she knew the truth was it was still what she wanted. It comforted her, to wake up and have her near, to know she was still there. To find someone was.

She had the nightmare at least twice a week. She’d wake up uneasily, sensing something was wrong, even as the bedroom was bathed in the red and blue lights from outside. She’d realize she was alone in bed, and her heart would freeze as she heard the knock on the door. She rise up, throwing on her robe, racing to the door. She was already crying, because she wasn’t the sort to lie to herself.

She couldn’t say, maybe it was one of his friends, and they’re here to get someone for him.

She couldn’t say, maybe he’s just hurt.

She couldn’t say, maybe it’s the wrong house.

She was already sobbing when she opened the door, and in the dream the police officers just stood there and stared as the tears fought their way out.

It helped, when she woke up, and Lily was there.

And sometimes it helped Lily, through whatever nightmares woke her.

Susanne woke from the game, and Lily was there. She breathed deep, and shook her daughter. For a few awful seconds nothing happened, and she thought there was something wrong, then her daughter stirred.

Her voice was groggy, and muffled. “Mom?”

She breathed out. “Nevermind. Go back to sleep.”

She wasn’t even sure if Lily heard her. She was already out again.

Awake in her bedroom, it was much harder to believe it had been real. What was undeniable in the moment was unbelievable here in the next, and she was unable to reconcile the two.

Of course, she could turn on the computer and check. See if Lily’s icon was there, see if her character was still there in the middle of the road where she’d left her.

She didn’t do that, though. She was caught between what her senses knew and what her head told her. So she sat there in bed the rest of the night, not sleeping, just staring at her daughter.

It was a long night.

In the morning, she decided that if she was already up, she may as well make something of it. She left the bed slowly, careful not to wake her daughter, and moved to the kitchen. She made pancakes, and bacon, and toast. She cooked eggs, and oatmeal, cut up bananas. She cooked it all, and only realized when she heard her daughter beginning to move that she had cooked too much. Even too much for three.

She hid most of it in the oven before she set Lily to getting ready for school.

Her daughter smiled when she kissed her forehead, and rolled around giggling.

“Good morning, Lily,” she said, as if nothing was different.

“Shalom,” answered her daughter.

Susanne froze. They weren’t Jewish, nor did her daughter have any Jewish friends to her knowledge. She didn’t freeze because she used that word. She froze because, to her knowledge, her daughter had never heard it before. Certainly, before this morning, she’d never used it.

Her daughter didn’t seem to realize her mother’s confusion. She was already up and bounding to the bathroom, eager to get ready before breakfast.

Susanne tried to dismiss her worries. She must have heard it at school, that’s all.

She was sitting at the table, drinking her second cup of coffee as she stared in the distance past her untouched food, when Lily arrived, backpack in tow. She immediately dug into the pancakes, after drowning them in the syrup.

“Anything big today?” asked Suzanne, mind racing.

“I think we’re starting a new unit in history,” allowed her daughter, in between mouthfuls of pancakes.

Suzanne smiled, answer in sight. “Jewish history, maybe?”

Her daughter just looked puzzled. “That’s religious stuff, right? No, we’re doing Egypt! Pyramids, mummies, everything!”

She didn’t say anything else until her daughter had put down her fork, and grabbed her bookbag.

Lily grabbed her tightly. “Bye mom!”

“Bye, little one.” Then, “Before you go, where’d you learn that word you used this morning?”

Lily was already half out the door, but paused. “Which one?”

Suzanne swallowed. “Shalom.”

Then Lily laughed. “Just a word I learned in my dream, is all. It was…”

Then the bus horn announced its arrival.

“Sorry, gotta go! Bye mom!”

Then Lily was out the door, and gone.

Suzanne watched her go, heart pounding, though she didn’t know why.

She was restless all day, and knew she’d have to ask her daughter about it when she got home.

She tried to nap, exhausted from her restless night, but she could only toss and turn on her bed.

At some point, she quietly slipped into a nightmare. She knew then she must have fallen asleep, for the familiar patterns of red and blue light were coming in through the window.

But this time, it was still light out. This time, she didn’t need to put on her robe because she was still dressed.

This time, she was having the nightmare while still awake.

This time, she didn’t sob.

She screamed.