The next hour passed in a haze of activity. The prisoners were herded like cattle into squat-roofed buildings and forced to wash themselves in huge basins filled with dirty water. They were each given a simple pair of ill-fitting undergarments and dressed in tattered rags, then marched back out and into the cage cart within a few minutes.

More than once while they washed and prepared, the unnamed considered running. But the memory of the prisoner’s head popping off and the heavy collar around his own neck dissuaded him. Courage was great but removing a man’s head and then reattaching it through either magic or some trick of advanced technology served as a harrowing warning and the unnamed wasn’t prepared to chance it.

As he climbed back into the prison cart, he saw the man who had been killed and resurrected rocking back and forth in the far corner of the cage and staring wide-eyed out into the distance. His hands were shaking and he mumbled to himself thought the unnamed couldn’t hear what he was saying.

The horned giant was sitting in the opposite corner of the cart, wedged tightly in place as before. He shook his head as he considered the poor soul.

“Remembering,” the big brute said, nodding in the other man’s direction. “When die and come back. Remembering what happens. Pain and death and come back.”

The unnamed shuffled toward the huge figure, glad to be talking to someone even if he looked like he should be living under a bridge.

“Have you seen this sort of thing happen before?” he asked.

The big brute nodded solemnly.

“In mines. Mines have same kind of thing. Dig down deep in dangerous places. People dying because of explosion. Collapse. Dig down and find fire imp, or demon.”

He shook his head, wiggling his fingers as though he’d just pulled a hot pan out of an oven and had his fingertips scorched.

“Nasty business. No good.”

The cart rattled along the road and once again those poor souls who had been captured and shoved into the cage clung to the rusty bars and steadied themselves against the movement.

“This Blood Pit,” the unnamed asked, “what is it exactly? What should we expect when we get there?”

The big brute shrugged, huge shoulders rising up and down and causing the metal framework behind him to groan in protest at the movement.

“Pain. Much pain. Then death. Then back to cart and home again if die good. If not… then something else.”

“So, they’re taking us to some kind of arena to die, then they’ll pull that resurrection trick they did with Harry Head’s Off over there and take us do it all over again tomorrow?”

The troll nodded solemnly. “Going to pit to fight, not just die. Fight and win, then stay alive and come back to this place.” He grimaced, rubbing at the errant hairs on his huge chin. “Winning very hard. Got no rank. No skill. No weapon. Winning very hard. Strong enemy with sharp weapons.”

He considered the unnamed once more, shaking his head with a look of sorrow.

“Friend die quickly I think.”

The brute waved a hand toward the others trapped in the cage. “Everybody die quickly. But, if die good, lots of blood and screaming and running, then come back again.” He grinned, showing twin rows of thick, blocky teeth that looked like stone blocks that had been roughly hewn. “Pit boss and fans like to watch, like to make credits. Put on good show and making money, then everybody happy.”

“Well,” the unnamed said, leaning back against the cage, “that’s not what I was hoping to hear.”

He ran a hand through his dark, matted hair and considered his predicament. That had been a surprise when he’d bathed with the others, ashamed and racked with pain. This new, uploaded incarnation of REDACTED had long, dark hair and dark eyes. Based on the dirty reflection of the water they’d been forced to bathe in, he looked like a battered copy of Keanu Reeves, or maybe that was just his imagination trying to cast his new face in the most pleasant light it could.

It’d been some time since he’d had hair, let alone anything of this length. Pity that he wouldn’t live long enough to enjoy it. Or rather, he would live, and then die, and then live again over and over until the slavers tossed him to the curb.

REDACTED? That was all he could muster up when the unnamed tried to remember his own name, evidence that the simulation—this Didact perhaps—was inside his head, or whatever passed for a head in this simulated existence. The censorship didn’t just apply when he tried to speak a forbidden name. It actually blocked the name in his mind, his imagination.

He let out a heavy sigh. “So that’s it then. We’re being sent to die for entertainment and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“Yes, yes,” the giant agreed.

The unnamed looked up at the other figure, noting the thick cords of muscle on his arms and legs. “What about you? You look like you can handle yourself.”

The big brute nodded, tapping on his chest with a smile. “Naleth Who Tends fights good, yes. But Naleth not fight ones you fight. Naleth fight Sharek. Very hard fight. Deadly beast with many claws and big strength. Naleth die too, maybe.”

“It doesn’t make sense. Why are they doing this?”

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Naleth smiled his toothy smile. “Credits. Money, always money. Shiny. Everybody wants credits.”

The unnamed nodded. The afterlife simulator was less of a blissful version of reality than the exacerbation of the worst elements of the real world. Brutality, greed, and the misuse of power seemed to be the order of the day in Havenspire, if his first hour was anything to go off.

“This is just barbaric. What kind of sickos want to watch people kill each other for sport?! This isn’t Ancient Rome for God’s sakes.”

A thought followed on the back of that point. Boxing. Mixed marshal arts fighting. The plethora of films and TV shows that glorified violence. The immersive games that pre-dated the afterlife simulators and allowed players to decimate hordes of enemies for sport.

Why would it be surprising that Havenspire would echo this same human fascination with violence, the same tendency to pit humans against one another and bet on the outcome? Technically, if all the fighters could be brought back from the dead. This was no different to any number of fighting sports in the real world. The simulation just lent the situation a bit more brutality.

A second thought followed on the heels of the first.

“Wait,” he said. “You’ve got a name?”

“Naleth who Tends,” the giant confirmed.

“How the do you have a name when the rest of us just get a big REDACTED in our heads when we try to remember ours? Is it because you were an NPC?”

The big brute nodded. “Name given by program. Naleth wakes up from the dream. Naleth has name. Some NPCs don’t like name, so choose another. Naleth likes name, so Naleth keeps it.” He looked out into the streets beyond the confines of the prison cart, nodding to himself as though he’d just made a profoudn point. “Naleth who Tends. Good name, yes?”

“Yeah,” the unnamed agreed, still struggling to come to terms with everything he was learning about this bizarre virtual world. “It’s a great name.”

The unnamed stood next to Naleth, staring out at the Undercity as the cart passed through dirty streets cluttered with people and buildings of all shapes and sizes. While most of those he saw were human, there were other races represented in the Undercity. Goblins, orcs, dwarves, elves. Some he recognized, but others were completely unknown to him. There were animals too, being sold or led about in the streets. Chickens, miniature horses, goats, dogs, cats, and other creatures that looked like they’d been ripped out of a fantasy bestiary.

What little uniformity there was to the architecture of the city derived from the dull gray rock which featured heavily in its buildings. That and the prolific amber lights swinging from wires and hanging above doors and windows gave the city a distinctly dwarven quality, though there were very few dwarfs in evidence.

The pervasive stone, however, was where all uniformity ended. There were no sharp-cornered geometrical shapes, gilded symbols, or precisely crafted, oversized buildings with Nordic emblems carved into their stone facades. Instead, the buildings were meanly crafted, hewn out of the rock by brute force and with minimal interest in aesthetic appeal. Functionality was the order of the day rather than beauty.

Everything looked old, but there was a certain weight and veracity to that age. The cracked stone, weathered wood, and mossy walls didn’t look like fabricated, simulated objects designed to appear ancient. They genuinely seemed to have existed for centuries down here. The pitted metal bars of the prison cart were similarly realistic, flecks of rusted metal peeling away here and there where the iron had degraded due to a combination of age and neglect.

It all served to drive home a simple, harsh truth. He really was here, uploaded into a new reality, traveling by slave cart to die for the entertainment of others. Not just that, he was presumably going to die for the amusement of people just like him, those who had uploaded their consciousness to Havenspire to escape the specter of real-world death.

It was beyond unfair, beyond monstrous, and beyond his ability to change.

“Spire is not good,” Naleth mused, as if reading his thoughts. “Rotten. Sick.”

He turned to the unnamed, his lips tilted into a slight smile as he went on. “Not what friend expects?”

The unnamed shook his head. “Not at all. I mean, I knew it would be different, but not like this. I imagined I’d spend my first day learning where they keep the mops and that kind of thing. Someone would show me around and I’d start cleaning right away, clearing my dept. I figured there’d be a bunch of fantasy stuff here, considering that this is Havenspire, but this is all…different than I imagined. It’s more real, but…I dunno. It’s hard to explain. I certainly didn’t expect to be dragged off to die in an arena on my first day. I mean, I’m a custodian for God’s sake.”

He grimaced, enduring another wave of pain as the strange affliction burned through his body like a fever.

“And what’s the deal with this sickness. I came here to get away from all this stuff, but this is…terrible.”

Naleth pointed a meaty finger at young man. “Some people come to mines get shakes and pains. First day in Havenspire. Much pain. But pain leaves soon. Not too long.”

The unnamed nodded. “Well, that’s something, I guess. Maybe if I can die in an entertaining enough way, I’ll stick around long enough for the fever to end.”

The huge brute nodded in agreement, entirely missing the sarcasm in the unnamed’s words.

“Yes, yes.”

As the cart clattered along, a dull haze of noise began to rise up ahead, growing steadily louder with each passing moment. It took a while to decipher what he was hearing, but slowly the unnamed began to understand, making out the roaring of a bloodthirsty crowd echoing throughout the street. The rise and fall of cheering and shouting greeted him like the hungry roar of a ravenous beast.

Nothing about this entire experience felt like a simulated environment. It all felt vividly, terribly real. His heartbeat quickened as the cart clattered along the street. He could see people walking toward a large wooden building up ahead which he presumed was the arena they were heading towards.

Unlike the bedraggled people he’d seen elsewhere in the Undercity, most of these folks were dressed in expensive-looking cloths. Some had weapons, armor, fancy hats with symbols floating above them. One or two were even riding strange mounts. He saw a little gnome in a bright blue suit riding on the back of an ostrich, and a group of half-orcs in leather jackets riding overly noisy bikes that spewed smokey exhaust and shook the road as they rumbled past.

Some of the figures making their way towards the Blood Pits were staring at holographic screens that hovered above their wrists, somewhat undercutting the Medieval, fantasy vibe of the simulated world. Others had gold and silver icons floating above their shoulders and faces like emojis that blinked and swelled with light and color. It all looked somewhat out of character for a fantasy world, but it did remind him of many of the MMORPG style games his brother and he had played when they were younger.

As he watched the crowd, the unnamed realized that this was simply entertainment to these people. They’d probably been in the afterlife simulator for so long and done so much that they were looking for something to divert their attention. That’s all the Blood Pits were to these people, a chance to be entertained and wager some coin.

This was the equivalent of a mini game for players who had exhausted the main quest line, or who simply wanted to try something different. Only they weren’t strictly players, they were uploaded people. And this wasn’t some harmless mini game. This was where he was about to die, possibly many times over.

Still racked with pain and feeling utterly out of place in this simulated world, the unnamed took a few deep breaths and calmed himself. There would be a way out of this, he just had to find it.

“Eyes and ears open, REDACTED,” he said to himself, resolved to dig his way out of this hole by any means possible.