Floating, Lefty grasped desperately to the magical umbrella that was his staff. While the goblins’ arrows still harried him, they were becoming increasingly inaccurate. Behind him, he heard the bear howl in rage. Swinging his legs, he managed to turn around in time to see the bear crash into the horde of goblins as it slashed and mauled its way through the little warriors. Soon, goblins were being pitched, tossed, and thrown off the cliff as they fell screaming into the tree tops below. Shortly after, the arrows stopped altogether.

He looked down. The trees below looked like little miniatures. Falling slowly, he saw he still had quite a long way to go before he landed. Fortunately, his hands seemed to be magically stuck to the staff and his arms magically did not seem to be tiring. He again looked up at his magical umbrella. How fortunate I seemed to have remembered this lucky spell.

He took a moment to appreciate the fact that he was still alive. Beside him, the duck was flying peacefully in the breeze. In the distance, he saw a flock of geese flying in a V. Is it fall already? I don’t remember it turning fall …

He took a deep breath and tried to think of what he should do next. Right, where do we land? We need to find a safe place to land. That is … if I have any say in the matter … He tried leaning left and then right and was pleasantly surprised that this changed his direction. Good, that settles that. He was about half way down now. Searching the tree tops, he spotted a few lines of smoke rising in the distance. Ah, civilization … or a bandit camp … hopefully not a bandit camp. He decided to chance it. Leaning the umbrella to the right, he aimed toward the smoke.

He landed in a glade about a half mile from a pair of chimneys he spotted poking up over the trees. Good, less chance of bandits and monsters, I hope.

The duck landed gracefully beside him and let out a contented quack. As Lefty’s umbrella changed back into a staff, he noticed something floating in the air above the duck.

[Insert Name Here]

“I’m terribly sorry, I didn’t know you needed one of those.”

The duck quacked and gave him an expectant look.

“Well if you had said something, I would gotten around to it sooner, but we were a bit tied up, weren’t we?”

The duck warbled.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

“Does this mean you’re my familiar? Or something else?”

The duck gave a pair of quacks in response.

“Yes. Well, I suppose I should have a good think on this, shouldn’t I?”

The duck quacked again.

“Oh, you have a suggestion? Let’s here it then.”

The duck quacked once.

“Hrm … a bit obvious, isn’t it?”

Three quacks this time.

He does seem to have a point. “Feathers it is, then.” Lefty tapped his staff against the ground and nodded. “Are you ready?”

The duck quacked happily and fluttered his feet. Off they went.

A short while later, they had wandered into another glade whena feminine voice came from above, “I would wait right there if I were you.”

Both duck and wizard froze where they were. Lefty clutched his staff as his eyes searched the treeline for the source of the voice. Then the air before him shimmered as the holographic image of an attractive blonde woman in a stewardess uniform came into view. In her hands was a clipboard and a silver pen that she held to her lips as she read. “Let’s see here …” she flipped a page, “… I have the two of you down as new arrivals.” She looked up at Lefty. “You two are new arrivals, aren’t you?”

“Uhm …” Lefty stammered, “… if you mean that we have no idea what …”

Feathers hissed.

“… I mean I have no idea what I’m doing, but that we just seemed to have survived a series of terrifying encounters with an ogre, a small horde of very short, very angry green men and a dire bear, then … perhaps?”

“Right!” The blonde woman raised her eye brows. “So sorry about that. I’m a bit behind this morning as we’ve been having trouble with our memory uploads. Bit a of a glitch that we’re working on. Don’t worry though, if the two of you are having trouble, I’ll just have Frank manually adjust your files …”

What in the hell is this? Lefty wondered. Beside him, Feathers looked just as confused as he did. Who is this woman and why is she talking to us?

“Ah, there you are. Took me a minute. I was worried your web-footed friend wasn’t supposed to be here, but it seems he is. Good.” She smiled brightly. “First things first, I’d like to formally welcome the two of you to the official launch of Sable Unlimited’s one hundred and eighty-third season.”

Lefty’s jaw fell open, “What?”

The blonde woman rolled her eyes as she looked over her shoulder. “Frank, we have another one.” She shook her head as she turned back to Lefty and Feathers. “I apologize again for any inconvenience your memory loss has caused. We should be uploading both of your files shortly.”

Feathers let out a knowing warble.

“Wait,” Lefty looked down at his companion. “How do you know perfectly well what’s going on … Why didn’t you tell me if knew what’s going on?”

Feathers quacked politely.

“True,” Lefty nodded. “We have been rather busy, but you could have said something on the way down.”

The duck shrugged.

The blonde woman replied, “We will be uploading both regardless. Protocol and whatnot. Please take a moment to brace yourselves. This can be … disorienting.”

“What?” Lefty still didn’t understand what was going on. “What are you …?”

He gasped as a mass of information flooded into his mind. He had been playing this game, Sable Unlimited, with Calista, a woman he had just met. They were stuck. They couldn’t log out for some reason. They had been captured, then escaped, then captured again, then escaped again. Finally, they had faced the final boss who had been a wicked little arch-mage who’s main interests seemed to be inflicting pain and bad monologues. They had killed him and somehow he had ended up here.

More memories. Doors. A silver door, a golden door, a brass door, and then a burning door with a voice from up above. The voice had explained how he was dead. He remembered that now, though he couldn’t remember how or why, but then the voice had explained that they were both being given new bodies and new lives here on an actual physical planet called Wraath where they were going to play Sable Unlimited in real life.

In real life. This was real life.