Author's note: The prologue contains no LitRPG elements, and is meant to introduce the protagonist in her home environment.
At precisely 3:00 in the afternoon on a sweaty June Friday, the school bell rung, and almost immediately a chaotic melody of happy, excited voices rang through the air. Freedom had just arrived for the hundreds of students at Lonwick High School, in the form of summer break. As Miriam Ward finished stuffing her belongings into her bag, she felt exactly the same. No more grading papers or designing curriculums for her - the middle-aged history teacher with greying, curly hair would spend the summer in her comfy armchair, immersed in the latest fantasy and sci-fi novels.
“Mrs. Ward!” a voice called. She turned to see Keith, one of her students in U.S. History II walking towards her. “Have a good summer break!”
“You too, Keith!” Miriam said. She sighed. Keith was one of the only students who actually paid attention in U.S. History. She much preferred teaching History of Religion, which was an elective course she had specifically designed.
“Say, Keith,” Miriam asked, “Did you, by any chance, sign up to take History of Religion for next year?”
Keith stopped in his tracks. “Uh, no, I didn’t,” he said sheepishly. “Sorry, I forgot.”
“Well, maybe next year,” said Miriam. “Uh, anyway, I have to get going.”
“Goodbye,” Keith said, walking out of the classroom. Miriam did the same, going down the hallway to the school’s exit. She passed through a horde of students and teachers who moving towards the doors as fast as their legs could carry them. Excited babble suffused the air.
“Hey, Miriam!” a familiar voice called. It was Mr. Reptor, another history teacher. He had been teaching almost as long as Miriam had, and his salt-and-pepper hair seemed to be getting more saltier in recent times.
“Oh hey, Jake,” Miriam said. “Heading home?”
“Nah,” Jake Reptor sighed. He ran his wrinkled hand across his forehead. “Still gotta grade a few final papers. Man, I wish I was as efficient and organized as you.”
“It’s a skill anyone can acquire,” Miriam said. “Say, have you been reading anything good lately?”
“Well, I’ve been reading the Powder Ma-”
“Oh god, not again with the Powder Mage series!” Miriam exclaimed lightheartedly. “You’ve been recommending that series to me for years!”
“So is it still in your backlog?” Jake asked.
“Of course,” Miriam said. “There’s just so much stuff to read, and so little time to do so.”
They exchanged further pleasantries and parted ways after another minute. Miriam left the building and walked across the parking lot to her car. The old grey Toyota Camry had been a constant companion in her life, second only to her loving husband Tom. She got in her car and drove out of the parking lot.
My life is such a good one, she reflected to herself as she drove through the suburban streets of Lonwick. I have it all - an enjoyable, albeit stressful-at-times job, a wonderful husband, great friends… And the summers off. She snickered to herself. She didn’t want to admit it, but one of the reasons as to why she had decided to become a teacher was because they got summers off like their students.
She pulled into the driveway of her and Tom’s small, yellow-painted house. Their lawn was covered with verdant bushes, colorful flowers and lush shrubs, a sprinkler gently spraying water around them. Miriam had always loved wild plants, and Tom didn’t mind letting the yard get overgrown. It wasn’t like the neighbors minded, anyway - no matter how much they manicured their lawns, some part of them envied the freedom and simplicity of a nature-focused space.
Tom hadn’t arrived home yet - he was an English teacher at Lonwick Middle School, which got out around half an hour after the high school. Miriam entered the house, went to the kitchen, and opened up a can of garbanzo beans. She snacked on them as she stared out the window at her backyard, which looked much the same as her front yard. Man, I’m living the life here.
When her snack was done, she walked to the living room and plunked down in her favorite comfy, green armchair. She reached onto the pile of novels on the coffee table beside her and procured The Martian by Andy Weir - one of her alltime favorites. It wasn’t the normal epic fantasy she read frequently, but she found herself drawn to the protagonist’s wit, skill, resourcefulness and unbreakable will - traits she, as most people probably did, admired.
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She tried reading the first few pages, but this had been the hundredth time she had read the book and she quickly got bored. She put it down and looked through the pile. None of the books there interested her, so she stood up and paced to the bookshelf on the far wall.
Maybe I’ll read the Powder Mage trilogy, she thought to herself. But I said that I was gonna read Dune… As she leafed through her impressive collection of books, one in particular caught her eye. She pulled it out and looked over it. It was a thin hardcover novel - a novella, really, with no dust jacket. It had a striking crimson cover with no writing on it or the spine. Miriam didn’t recall it being in her collection, but she bought books so often she might have missed this one in particular. Recently, she’d received a small collection of used hardcover novels from a friend who had moved away. It had probably come from that, but the book just felt… unfamiliar.
She searched around for the mysterious tome’s dust jacket, but found no matches in her pile of dust jackets on the shelf. Strange, she thought to herself. I usually keep the dust jackets of my novels around. She opened the book and found that there was no writing on its thick paper. Instead, a symbol looking like a pentagram was drawn in black ink near the center of the page.
Weird, she thought. I’ve never seen a page like this. She flipped to the next page. The exact same symbol was inscribed on the next page. Curiously, she turned to the third page. The same symbol again. She began frantically flipping through the pages. The pentagram was drawn on every last one of the 100 pages.
Her mind began working. She wasn’t religious, but her mom had been Jewish and her dad Catholic, so she had been raised with a modicum of religion in her life. For her, this primarily entailed going to synagogue for Passover and church for Christmas every year and pretty much nothing else, but her parents, who were both anthropologists, had always been interested in religious iconography. All manner of symbols had been strewn around her childhood house, including pieces of paper with similar to this one which had been kept in a drawer labeled “Pagan, Satanic Icons”. An involuntary chill coursed through her bones, a primal fear of the unknown. Although her parents had been relatively progressive for religious people, they had warned her to stay away from sin and evil. And everyone knew that followers of the Abrahamist faiths often viewed the pentagram as a symbol of darkness and the devil.
Was this book made by a devil worshipper? Miriam thought. She scoffed. Don’t be silly, Miriam. The devil doesn’t exist. God doesn’t exist either. This book was probably just someone’s notebook, and they liked drawing pentagrams that much. But the book seemed to be beckoning to her, in some weird sort of way. It was as if the book wanted her to look at it. Before the feeling got too overpowering, she closed the book and put it back on her shelf. She then procured A Wizard of Earthsea, and got to reading on her chair.
When Tom’s car pulled in several minutes later, Miriam got up to greet her husband. Tom was a short, balding African-American man in his middle years with grey hair, thick glasses, and passionate, wise eyes, and his grey suit ruffled in the wind slightly as he strode up the walkway.
“Hey, honey!” he exclaimed as he opened the door and caught sight of Miriam. “School’s out!”
“Indeed it is!” Miriam laughed, rushing to hug Tom. “It’s summertime!”
The pair engaged in their daily ritual of cooking dinner together, listening to songs from their playlist as they chopped vegetables and opened cans. When they sat down to a dinner of tuna fish salad twenty minutes later, they talked about their day. When their bellies were full and dishes were washed, they sat down on the couch together to read.
All throughout the thoroughly normal process, she couldn’t keep her mind off the book. It was probably just an ordinary sketchbook, but something about it engrossed her, in an uneasy way. While she showered and brushed her teeth, the book still remained in her mind. When she finally climbed into bed alongside Tom, she was still thinking about the book.
“Tom?” she asked.
Tom reached down to hold her. “What is it, my love?”
Miriam sighed. It’s not worth talking about. “It’s… It’s nothing.”
“Well, I’ll always be there for you if you wish to speak of it,” Tom said, love and comfort lacing his voice. “I’m here for you.”
“It’s just something I read,” Miriam said.
“Read?” Tom asked. “Like, in the news?”
“No, a novel,” Miriam said.
“Which one?” Tom asked.
“I don’t know,” Miriam said. “It’s kind of… hard to explain.”
She couldn’t see Tom’s expression in the dark bedroom, but she knew well enough that his face was one of resigned consternation. “Okay then,” he said in a serious tone. “It’s just a book. Ink and paper. Its words are not real. You and I are flesh and bone and blood, and we are together now, and nothing can hurt us.”
Miriam instantly felt calmer at Tom’s words. He always knew what to say to make people feel a certain way, and Miriam often joked that he should have become a therapist instead of an English teacher. “Thanks,” she said. She snuggled up closer to him, embracing him. “That made me feel better.” As she drifted off, she slowly forgot about the book and her mind started to fill with excitement about the upcoming summer.