My face burned as my limbs began to shiver. This wasn't real. The sight before me—the cluster of bodies hanging from a tree that all had my face—none of it was real. Something had gone wrong with the game and when I'd died, my brain had vomited up a bizarre nightmare to torment me with.

"What the hell?" The words came unbidden to my lips. A thoroughly standard response to the madness in front of me.

Several of the three-eyed crows had taken note of me. They stopped their feasting on the plump corpses to squawk out harsh laughter. I stepped forward, intent on shaking the nearest body and dislodging the carrion. But one look in its face—the swollen, blue lips, the flies dancing around rotting eyes—and I stumbled back again.

"This isn't real," I reminded myself. I was ill. Even before plugging into Penumbra Online, I suffered from mild audio and visual hallucinations. I am Christine Valcruz and I am unconscious, floating in a pod. That is reality and everything else is a dream.

One of the crows flew over to me. "What are you doing here?" she asked, her voice heavy with worry.

Though they all looked the same, I recognized her. This was my Corvus. This was the crow who'd been friendly to me and helped me create my character. Her tone was caring and concerned. Despite the grizzly spectacle before me, her presence helped me remain centered.

"I think there's something very wrong," I said. This had to be an error with the system or with me.

Corvis hopped closer on her black legs. Her three eyes bored into me with startling intensity.

"Tell me how you got here," she said, soothingly.

"I died. I was in the tutorial levels fighting mole rats with this girl I met. Then I woke up here in some giant egg." I wiped my face and found tears trickling from my eyes. I didn't understand this. No matter how much I told myself this wasn't reality, fear gathered deep within me. This was awful.

Corvis took my words in, nodding her head as she considered them. "Players rarely slip into this section," she explained. "This is for my kind, not yours. I know it's scary but nothing here will harm you."

I cast a doubtful look at the array of bodies. She glanced behind her and sighed.

"Those aren't you, Christine. Those are your cast-offs. Janus is the character you picked; Janus is who I brought to life. These are shadows—psychic remains that we're disposing of."

"You're eating me!" I snapped. "This isn't a fucking recycling plant; you're devouring versions of me."

"Fair enough." She sighed. "Everyone has to eat and I think this is an equitable payment for my services, but I can see how you'd dislike it."

There was a wiggling among the bodies. The motion caught my eyes. One of the corpses yet had life in her. The gnoll, of course it was her. Her furry legs kicked weakly. Those glittering yellow eyes had turned soft and watery. I moved without thinking, rushing towards her. I gathered her legs in my arms and tried to support her weight with my small body. Corvus alighted on the branch upon which she hung.

"Let her down," I demanded.

The three-eyed crow tilted her head. "It might be better to let this one go."

"I said put her down!" My voice broke into a sob. I wasn't tall or strong enough to lift her all the way. She was dying, dying and I could only delay it.

I heard a tiny sigh above me and Corvis picked at the rope knot. The other crows had finally stopped their eating and watched the spectacle. They murmured among themselves but I couldn't make out words above the throbbing of blood in my ears. The gnoll's kicking picked up in strength as she realized what was happening. Covis' sharp beak rapidly plucked at strand after strand until the rope gave way. I was pushed to the ground and suddenly I found myself pinned under a hot, gasping body.

I squirmed out from under her, getting wet muck all over my front, and then loosened the noose around her neck. She laid there, mouth open, long tongue lolling out. Her eyes looked skyward in a daze but her chest softly rose and lowered. Corvus landed on her chest and poked at the gnoll's black nose once or twice—no reaction.

"This is not how I imagined spending my day," Corvis commented. "Now what am I going to do with her?"

"You're not going to kill her, are you?"

"After I went to the trouble of getting her down? I think not. I’ll find a nice place to tuck her while she recovers."

Above me, the morbid fruits of my other cast-offs swayed in the breeze. The crows had returned to their meal as though nothing had happened.

"I need to get out of here." I felt sick and unwell as though a hundred pieces of me had died.

Corvis landed on my shoulder. "On that, we agree. But there's something I'll be needing first."

Her sharp beak stabbed into my temple, piercing the thin bone there. I screamed, lashing wildly as she flapped her wings, pulling out a long, bloody worm...

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Path of the Moth 2/7

The Moth Says: To die will be an awfully big adventure.

"Hey, Janus."

A hand shook me and I found myself waking with a start beside a campfire. Aria's concerned face hovered before my vision, the cave roof behind her. I shook my head, faint fragments of dream clinging behind my eyes.

"What..?" I said, disoriented.

Aria touched my damp forehead and I flinched. "Whoa there, you're okay. You respawned at camp. Not a scratch on you."

I looked down and saw the blue hands of my elf form. My fine novice clothing was pristine and intact. There was no sign of the attack I'd suffered. Not a single rip or tear in the fabric. I reached out to my belly, the memory of it being torn open fresh in my mind, and found it whole. It quivered under my fingers.

"I died?" I asked.

"Yeah. I've been waiting here for you to respawn. We won, by the way." She indicated a large, bloody bag beside the fire, which I assumed held the queen's head. "Were you having trouble?"

"I..." I tried to think back. There was a place, strange and frightening. Birds? There were black birds talking to me. The memory faded as I grasped for it. "I had a trippy dream."

"I thought you'd be here by the time I walked back. When you weren't, I worried you'd split. They must have changed the encounter to be hard. I saw you die. That—that was brutal. Not going to lie, I've never seen disemboweling in a tutorial quest before."

"There was something..." I wracked my brain, trying to recall the dream. It felt important that I do so but only shreds of it remained. "That dream was so weird. I thought you respawned instantaneously."

"It always takes a bit," Ara replied, settling beside me. She pulled a warm bowl of soup from the air and pushed it my way. "You lose synchronization when you die. There isn't a respawn timer; your mind decides when to put your body back in the game. It gets faster the longer you play."

I sat up and took the bowl from her, ignoring the offered spoon, and sipped from it directly. It was a salty broth with bits of meat in it that gave it a smoky bacon flavor. This was probably the remains of some of the mole rats we'd killed earlier. I didn't want to know so I didn't ask.

Warmth suffused through my limbs as I slurped the soup down, and a Spirit buff icon appeared in my upper right vision. It would last for one hour.

"Thanks." I handed the empty bowl back to her and closed my eyes. I had a headache, a sharp pain behind my left temple, and felt tired, but was otherwise fine. "This is my first time in a full dive VR and I'm actually sick in the real world. I didn't think it would chase me here."

"As in body, so in mind. And this place is nothing but mind." She gathered herself up and stood. I popped one eye open to see her waiting hand before my face. I'd have liked to wait a little longer but understood she was eager to get back to the surface and hand in our quests.

With a grunt, I grabbed the hand and stood.

"Thank you for all this. For one thing, I'm now sure that I don't want to play a tank or a front line fighter." I could vividly recall the sensation of my belly being ripped apart by those buck teeth and having my intestines gnawed on. The thought of a monster eating me filled me with cold dread and I immediately stomped on the emotion, forcing it and the memory from my mind.

Our return to the surface was uneventful. I blinked rapidly in the bright sunlight. Colorful flags waved atop tents and the bubblegum blobs rolled through the grass of the training field. It felt unreal compared to what I'd just encountered. I wondered how many players experience Penumbra Online this way: A sprawling carnival of fun games and harmless time wasters.

"Hello again, Mor-TOOOOOW-mer," I said as we approached the reward stall. He grimaced at my mocking his name and I favored him with an impudent grin. He was a computer-controlled personality, so I didn't care about his feelings.

Aria and I sipped down the small vial of our yellow experience potion. It tasted like pineapple. Another buff icon appeared in my overlay and we turned in all the quests at once.

This time I kept an I on my log and watched as I gained three more levels. Not bad. Mortimer dumped a handful of coins on the table along with five new skill cards, then crossed his arms and looked away as though he were finished with us. A gold coin rolled off the table and onto the grass and I fetched it. It looked freshly minted. I bit down on it with my molars like I'd seen people do in films. It was cool against my lips and had no metallic flavor.

Aria shoveled the rest of the coins into her pack. I realized that since rewards were simply handed out by NPCs, it was up to players to fairly distribute the loot. I wasn't worried about Aria ripping me off—this was her alt, so the reward was a pittance to her—but would remember that for later. I'd have to keep my eye on anyone else I partied with.

She handed me four of the five cards. As she was already level 8, she didn't need them.

There was 'Play Dead,' 'Analyze,' 'Sneak,' and 'Trade Window.'

"I have to slot these with my Abilities?" I asked. I only had five ability slots available and this would take them all.

"You only have to slot active abilities. Passive ones function as long as they're in your inventory and you meet their criteria."

'Play Dead' and 'Sneak' were the active ones. They went into the slot beside 'First Aid' while I dropped the rest into my backpack. The only prerequisite was being a level 1 Novice.

A trade window popped up in my vision from Aria and she tossed in ten more gold. That was higher than the actual reward. I accepted and they automatically filled my inventory. Nice. Next came a friend request. I didn't hesitate. Not only was she an experienced player but she was willing to draw aggro in a game with some nasty injuries.

Path of the Moth 3/7

The Moth Says: Many things are best experienced together.

“I don't know how you handle it. Tanking, I mean," I said as I mentally dismissed the window.

"Like I said, front line fighters get pain resistance at higher levels. Psychologically speaking, this game helps you adapt. Pain doesn't bother me and I find dying relaxing."

I raised an eyebrow. "Masochist detected."

Aria laughed, brushing back a strand of blonde hair. "Nothing like that. Death is a nice break from the intensity. I once went three days without sleep during a world event. By the time I died, I could barely hold onto my sword."

"That's insane."

"You'll come to love it," she gave me an embarrassed grin. "At least, I love it. When new people join, they can't believe that anyone would spend years of their time in Penumbra. It can be grueling, especially high-level content, but the truth is that in comparison, real life is boring. Nothing I've experienced is as satisfying as bringing down a dragon with my friends."

I only nodded; everything she said just convinced me more that she was a masochist. If I was going to find a road to fame or glory in Penumbra, it wouldn’t involve spending days without sleep or becoming a dragon chew-toy.