The balance between Heaven and Hell was her prison. In the decade of her incarceration, she marveled at majestic peaks, glittering lakes, streams and falls, and other screens of jaw dropping natural beauty.

Her home provided her with food and clothing and amenities, though where this all manifested from was a mystery. She’d woken up in her personal purgatory some ten years prior, merely twenty two years of age, but had not grown any older. Scars had been erased and blemishes banished, soft body melted away into the iron frame of an athlete. She ate well and exercised daily. There wasn’t much else to do but explore.

Beasts of the forest were tame to her approach. Birds and deer came at her call, yet insects flew and did not disturb her, bears seemed to wave from the rocky banks of rivers, and snakes would ignore her traversal of their domain. Wolves, mountain lions, and wild boar, roamed free through the land, but never exhibited any sign of aggression. Rains came and went but lightning did not strike close, the suns harsh rays darkened her skin but did not burn, and the snows of winter chilled her but did not freeze her fingers.

She stood barefoot in the open doorway of the mysteriously accommodating cabin. Mist shrouded mountains stood proud in the distance, rising above the forest with the solid enduring majesty of time itself.

In the heaven of earth she was hellishly alone.

So when, for the first time in a decade, she saw another human in her prison, her cup of coffee came to a stop inches before her lips, the aromatic liquid within turbulent as her hand started to tremble. She stared, ice in her spine, eyes locked on the distant figure, adrenaline beginning its fiery deluge from her chest to her extremities.

Before the coffee cup smashed into the cobbles of her doors stoop, she was already in a dead sprint.

—

Jon was a man of efficient movement. As he shucked his shoes and socks, he pulled a camp chair from his inventory. With an impatient kick, one shoe went flying and he fell backward, snapping the metal frame of the chair out and under him to arrest the fall. Before the chair settled, he began setting his lunch spread. From the inventory window came a small table, a plate of steaming food, a decanter of iced tea, and an entire cheesecake topped with strawberries and a rich chocolate sauce. He made a casual wave and the interface vanished, leaving him with an unobstructed view of the mountain valley lake.

The detail and clarity of his environment was startling. Each blade of grass seemed an independent thing, each gentle of wind carrying upon it the sharp smell of pine and damp.

He drank straight from the decanter and relaxed, dumbfounded by the vivid sensory detail.

As he set the container back on the table, a distant sound caused him to squint, tilt and slightly rotate his head to identify the direction of the noise, then turn directly backward in his chair. Irritation at the intrusive noise was small as the precise clarity of the binaural audio of the environment stunned him

He caught flashes of white deep in the forest. Leaves and branches cracked a crackled underfoot of some creature as it sped between trees. It came down an elevated slope but swerved only to avoid the tall pines as it made a direct path to him. He leaned on the arm of the chair and, as the figure and sound drew closer in the shadowed forest, grinning wider and wider.

Some 500 yards of grassy meadow separated him from the tree line, into which a lean female figure rocketed, not slowing as the terrain changed. She charged the distance between them, but stopped well short of Jon’s picnic. She was breathing heavily which he found odd, and perspiration beaded her skin and wet her auburn hair at the temples, which he found even stranger.

This was the most realistic non playable character he’d ever seen. He stood slowly.

The woman was beautiful. Not in the way of Hollywood, with the makeup and clothing as much art as function, but in a natural and organic way. Ye gods, he thought, whoever designed her had better be in line for some kind of award.

Jon waited a moment for an ID tag to show up over her head so he might identify her purpose. He’d specifically chosen an isolated environment, but he wasn’t about to complain about his unexpected fortune. His brow crinkled in confusion as the tag failed to appear.

“Are you real?” The woman asked, her voice husky and textured to play on his soul like a violin string. Her eyes were dark blue and conveyed a worry that was almost manic, emotionally echoed by the tremor in her words.

This isn’t a program, he thought. He slowly raised his hands, palms out, to show he wasn’t a threat. “Yes.” His answer was simple and he kept his voice soft.

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

A moment passed and he watched a well of tears build in her eyes and fall. She smiled slightly and the corner of her mouth quivered, words slurring slightly as she tried to control her facial muscles. Her voice broke and with it, something inside him cracked in sympathy. He heard real pain.

“Don’t leave me.”

Jon shook his head slowly. “I won’t.” Whatever was going on here, this woman was in crisis. He’d been through the training modules at university and knew that some people could experience real trauma in the System. “I’m Jon.” He said. She struggled to contain her emotions and did not respond immediately. “Take deep breaths. Don’t talk until you’re ready, okay?” She bit her lip, nodded in quick jerks and looked down at the ground, breathing deeply.

He gave her that moment and produced another chair from his inventory, setting it on the opposite side of the table from him. She might feel safer with a barrier between them, even if it was only a small table. He doubted the issue was with a man or she probably wouldn’t have just run right up to him.

She took several moments before looking up at him again and he did not rush her.

“Elise.” She said, pointing at her chest. Her voice broke again just saying her name.

Jon nodded and smiled. “It’s good to meet you, Elise.” He said this in the gentlest voice he could produce. “Are you in danger?” This was the question that needed an immediate answer. If the woman was running from a hacker or avatar locker, that needed to be established straight away.

Her eyes darted around the scene briefly before she said quietly. “Not from anything in this world.” Her words were cryptic, but Jon asked no questions. Her real body couldn’t be in danger as the System would report injury or violence automatically to local authorities wherever she was.

Jon gestured behind him. “I was about to have lunch, Elise.” She leaned slightly to peer around him. “Would you like to join me?”

She nodded and Jon returned to his chair, moving with deliberate slowness. As she settled herself, he plucked a glass and pitcher from his inventory and set them down on her side of the table. When he looked up, her eyes were wide and she stared from the drink to him and back.

“Sweet tea?” He asked.

“That you pulled out of thin air?” She asked quietly. “They just popped into your hand out of nowhere. How did you do it?”

His mental brakes locked up. Role play? He released the brakes and shifted gears.

“I’m a wizard.” He declared, “come to your valley seeking the beast that stole my family’s, uh,” he looked around, searchingly. “Golden flatware.” He concluded lamely.

The look she gave him was both fascinated and horrified and she leaned slightly backward as if to view him better.

Jon held up his hands again. “Sorry, might have misjudged that one.” He smiled. “I just took them from my inventory.” Perhaps she had a different inventory management system? Whatever the environment was, it was something he’d never seen before. She might have some radically different interface. He gestured around him vaguely. “Are you building some new type of mapping system?”

After a long silence, she answered. “Mapping system?”

“Yes? I’ve never seen such a detailed world render. Is this your place?”

Elise looked around. “I don’t know what this place is. I’ve been here for ten years and you’re the first person I’ve seen.”

Jon’s disarming smile melted away. “Ten years?”

She nodded, face contorting momentarily in anguish before settling. She pointed up the forested slope she’d come from. “A little house up there.” Jon could see her finger shaking slightly. “I just woke up there. Is this the afterlife? Where is everyone? Why did you leave me alone all this time?” She fired the questions as her eyes welled again then asked a question that would haunt him for days afterward. She looked up at him, eyes reddened, lashes moist with tears. “Why can’t I die?”

He leaned back, mind churning. He’d heard of people like this in the System but had never seen one. “Elise.” He took a deep breath. “Im not the person to explain these things. Let me go and,” he flinched backward as her fist slammed down on the table, shattering the jar of tea as her hand passed through it.

“Don’t leave me!” Her words were strangled and he knew that this woman was on the precipice of mental collapse.

“I won’t.” He whispered. Whatever mental structure had supported her emotional state collapsed. Elise’s face twisted into an agony of pain and, unashamed, she began to softly weep. Jon reached out for her hand amidst the shattered glass on the table. The moment his fingers made contact her posture broke and she clamped his fingers in a vice like grip. Something primal and raw sounded from her. Jon heard in that pitiful mewl the audible anguish of a soul crying up from the pits of hell. He looked at her trembling hand and knew it was not enough. Whatever this creature had endured had left her in ribbons from the inside out. He knocked the table aside, dropping to his knees before her and pulled her into his arms. “It’s okay.” He whispered, stroking her hair as he would a child mourning a lost puppy. “I’ve got you.”

The dam inside the woman broke. Great racking sobs took her. The violence of emotion swept out from where they embraced. Grass withered on the ground. Great storm clouds materialized. The lake, seen over her shoulder became red and began to boil. He took this in amazed silence, knowing now what Elise was. As the perfect world echoed her pain, he watched the apocalypse inside her manifest.

Ten years inside a computer simulation, completely unaware of her situation and alone. No answers to her questions, no companion to share the endless days, no comfort for the madness that must have surely come to her in the night. Did she think she was dead? Had she tried to escape this place by ending her life, only to find out that even the freedom of eternal darkness was denied her?

The winds picked up and howled in unison with her cries. Her body convulsed. Jon placed his hand on her auburn hair and locked her to his chest. Neither of them could be physically injured in that place, but his need to give what comfort he could, to offer humanity and compassion in a world generated by code was instinctive.

The distant mountains crumbled. Forests withered and died. Lightning ignited their remains. He felt deep tremors under his knees and heard a symphony of grinding rock as the earth itself heaved. Ash and dust whirled around and enveloped the pair in a tomb of chaos.

The world tore itself apart.