The grove was still and silent, the faint rustle of leaves sounding in complaint of a passing breeze. The dirt floor was hard, largely untouched by grass, the trees doing their stolid best to take in all the meager light offered in the valley. And among the knobby roots and what hardy creepers which could survive on what the trees didn’t monopolize, lay a human figure.

It was of the male persuasion, as would be obvious to other humans, it being only lightly clothed. The human male was unconscious, which was a momentary respite due to the knotted root which pressed into his back. Any conscious human laying as this one did, and in the way he was laying, would not be doing so of their own free will. He would be feeling it when he came to.

And he was not asleep. What he was doing, while similar to sleep in the same way candlelight was similar to daylight, was something much less restful. Coming to would be a difficult prospect, fraught with a laundry list of complaints from throughout his body, the root in his back being only one item in a ribbon of troubles.

His clothes, as previously mentioned, were spare. He had thin leather sandals on his feet, and was wrapped in a continuous white cloth which wound around him in various ways, covering all the important bits that humans cover for decency’s sake. There was a rope wrapped once around his middle and tied in the front, as a sash, or belt. The most complicated bits of raiment on him were on his arms. Two broad leather arm bands, each with rectangular compartments on the outside, graced his arms. The left one had three small gems, circum-broidered with a simple but elegant pattern of stitches. And that was it for his clothes, really.

Despite his meager appearance, the very existence of this unconscious boy in the middle of a grove in a shady valley was quite miraculous. He hadn’t existed until a few minutes ago.

The first stirrings of his mind were those boring proto-thoughts of a waking sleeper, which boil down to the concepts, if not the actual words, “I am a thinking being”, “I am currently existing,” “Wait, there seems to be a body here, let me check on that.”

He opened his eyes and thought, Hey, these graphics are pretty good.

The serenity of his surroundings, so described earlier, subjected this waking human to a kind of calming sensation which was at odds with a growing turmoil within him, as his next thought was, My boss is going to find me playing this game, and he is going to kill me.

The urgency of the thought caused him to sit bolt upright, startling what little creatures were resting about him which had hitherto gone unnoticed.

They watched from a safe distance what followed as the human came to terms with its situation, which was known colloquially as an existential crisis. It was loud, it was startling, and – especially for the human – it was incredibly emotional. But through the cascading discoveries at odds with where he thought he should be, the scared, angry, and panicking human noted several things.

One, he was not working at his company issued computer.

Two, he was not wearing his company mandated uniform.

Three, it really really hurts to kick a tree trunk if you’re wearing sandals.

He hopped on his good foot, holding his other sharply aching foot, before sitting down to wait for the pain to go away.

Several expletives graced the peace of the grove, but did nothing to return him whence he had come.

“I just wanted to peek at the gameplay,” he said plaintively to the trees. “I work sun-up to sundown, and it came out today, and I thought, what’s the harm if I install it and get through the opening scenes?” They judged him silently, as trees are wont to do. “The adventure of a lifetime,” he said dreamily, his words tinged with the faintest sarcasm. “That’s what the ads had said. A deck-building roleplay adventure. Open-world sandbox exploration, a cast of colorful characters, and unique card-based combat system.”

A couple of birds alighted on a branch above him, now that the screaming was over. They had no interest in the sales pitch he was parroting, though.

“These wrist things I recognize from the trailer,” he said, turning his arms over to look at said wrist things. He tried to open the flap to one of the boxy containers built into the bracer. The clasp wouldn’t come free, and the leather wouldn’t give. He tried the other one only to find it was as stubborn as its brother.

Laying on his back and dropping his arms in a huff, his body took the time to approach him with the complaints, probably finding it rude to disturb him in such a difficult time.

“Oooowwww,” he groaned lightly as every joint, muscle, and tree-root-originated bruise began to ache. Being written into a new world was not as pleasurable as one would think.

But he was sitting up again when a nearby bush started to rustle. Our mysterious man in the grove realized all at once that he was alone in the wilderness, and all the implications that came with it. He’d never even seen wilderness before this. Nor had he ever really been alone. Apartments, like the ones he rented from; subway stations, like the ones he frequented; and workplaces, like the ones he’d slept at, found it economical to reduce the partitions between individuals as much as the people would allow. And even then, complaints were easy enough to ignore.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

He got to his feet, sighting on the noise, preparing to run if something scary appeared, or preparing to kick himself if it was just a squirrel or bunny.

Wouldn’t that be the way of it, he thought to himself wryly. A little bunny shakes a bush, and my fight-or-flight pushes all its buttons and pulls all its levers.

But instead of something hopping out, something rose up. It rose up and up above the bush. A white column which seemed to glisten in the dappled light. A thing like a marble rosebush rested on top of a white deer’s head, its front legs in the bush, and it was chewing some leaves.

Our mystery human realized he had assumed some ridiculous stance, half crouching, his muscles tensed and nearly twanging. He breathed and stood upright.

“You’re just a deer,” he said in the way humans usually do, describing the obvious.

And indeed it was a deer. A sparkling white deer.

“A deer made of salt, or snow perhaps,” he said to it.

The clasp on his left bracer opened and closed suddenly, and five cards flew out of it. Each wreathed in a faint light trail, they hovered in front of him. Another expletive came out of his mouth in much the same way as the cards.

He looked at his wrist, the one he felt had opened and closed. The three gems were lit by an inner light now.

“No, wait,” he whispered. The deer seemed oblivious to this. “I remember now. Combat. Each turn, draw five cards, play three cards. The rest get discarded.”

He looked at the deer.

“It must be an enemy,” he mused. It consumed more of the innocent bush under his gaze.

His attention turned to the hovering cards. They seemed to move according to his needs. When he didn’t want to look at them, they avoided his line of sight. When he wanted them to, they lined up in front of him.

“Ok, then. What are my options?” He added, “What class am I?”

The cards appeared in front of him read on their titles, from left to right:

Punch, Kick, Punch, Precise Shot, Block

Each had an image to assist the mind in visualizing the effects, if the titles hadn’t done the job in advance. The Punches featured the same image of a fist in flight. The Kick was similar, featuring a foot instead. The Block image consisted of a battered bronze shield, and the Precise Shot had a helpful image of the business end of an arrow.

The deer drew his attention again, a curious absence of noise caused by the deer freezing, and the cards clustered to one side. It was no longer chewing, and its bovine eyes were wide. It was about to bolt.

Hastily, he selected the Precise Shot, and as an afterthought, the Punch and Kick. The remaining two cards were quickly absorbed by his right bracer. But the deer had fled. The human chased.

The white hart fled bounding through the trees and over scrub and exposed roots. The human moved as fast as a biped could in these circumstances, but which was all the more slowly. In one of those moments where he could get two strides in sequentially without having to duck a branch, jump a root, or detour around an obstacle, he thought to himself, I’m pretty good at this athletics thing, aren’t I? And, in this new place, there was a grain of truth to this.  Normally, merely running to catch the tube on a day when he left the apartment late would leave him breathless for the ride to work. It was the closest thing to exercise he got, and all it earned him was a demerit when he had forgotten his company badge in his haste. A far cry from the chase he was giving the pure white deer.

Despite this unexpected prowess, he was losing the deer. The trees were blocking line of sight, and every third, fourth, fifth hop, the white flank would pass out of view. Eventually, he stopped to catch his breath.

Doubled over on his knees, he saw three cards floating just outside his vision. He checked his left wrist. The three gemstones were still glowing.

And then he heard a sound distinct to peaceful groves, particularly those which contained pure white hind. The sound of running water.

That’d be where it’s headed, he thought, I can take my time now. And he glanced at the Precise Shot card.

Then several things happened at once.

The card retreated to the recesses of his right bracer, a gemstone went out on his left bracer, and a bow and arrow appeared in his hands, formed entirely of light. He shrugged at the surprise, which goes to show the comparative difference between a human’s response to the positive unexpected as opposed to the negative unexpected.

Here goes, he thought and held up the bow how he had seen one wielded before. He had never shot a bow and arrow before, and therefore had little hope of doing so successfully now. “If nothing else,” he reasoned quietly with one end of the weapon laying along his cheek, “no time like the present to learn how.” He crept - albeit rather noisily for it to be a creep - through the woods, following the sound of water.

It wasn’t far out, though his progress had been hindered by him slipping on a piece of ripe fruit. He had hoped fervently that no one had seen that, and also that the act hadn’t been close enough to scare the deer away again. But he pressed on and came to a natural pool.

Spread in a shape that was vaguely circular was an expanse of water ringed by the grove of trees. The canopy, though no trees grew in the water, stretched to cover even this patch of sunlight, extending the dappling of sunspots across the clearing and the water itself. The water was calm, save for minute sparkling ripples, and clear as window glass. And there by the pool, drinking, knelt the white hart.

The human froze catlike. Not catlike like a big, wild cat. More like a domesticated feline raised on too much kibble, sun, and treats. But still catlike in his own way. It was time to take the shot. He’d seen this part done, though more romantically exaggerated than he realized, in movies, games, and serials. He put the arrow to the string – “knocked” it, he remembered the term being – and pulled back. He listened to the bubbling of the water and the wind in the trees.

The draw on the bow was light, and he played with it a bit, drawing and letting out a centimeter or so, feeling the lack of resistance to the bow. The curve didn’t creak, and the string didn’t twang. There was tension, but greatly magnified from what he was exerting.

Where do I need to hit on a deer? he thought, trying to sight down the arrow. Further thoughts ran through his mind, increasingly quickly, and decreasingly coherently, regarding ballistics mathematics, wind speed, wind direction, drop off…

And then he loosed the shot.