Darkness.

That was all that was left to her now, a familiar velvety, iridescent nothingness that always came when she closed her eyes. It wasn’t black exactly, but a dark red, the color of her skin lit by the light just beyond her eyelids.

She exhaled.

Her heart was still racing from the adrenalin of the fight, but she could breathe.

She’d done it. She’d found a way to functionally log out, and kept herself from being tortured or having to play Prince’s stupid game of survival. Now all she had to do was wait in this void for an hour or so until the log-out counter ticked down, then she would leave, two thousand dollars in hand.

It wasn’t a big victory. It wasn’t as if she’d disabled Prince’s game or made him pay for what he’d taken from her family. She wasn’t going to get back everything she’d lost, she wasn’t even going to earn a tenth of what had been taken from her family.

But that was okay.

The thing she really wanted back wasn’t something she’d ever get anyway.

Dad.

Was this what it was like for him when he died? Had he been staring at a light moving on the other side of his closed eyes? Had the world felt close enough to touch, but so far away?

Penny breathed in.

Weirdly, at this moment she felt as if she turned around, he’d be there. She half expected to hear him say her name.

She always used to call him when she had good news.

Dad, Penny wanted to say, look.

Knowing it was stupid, Penny turned.

All that greeted her was a blue box.

LOG OUT COUNTDOWN

1 hour remaining...

Below the counter was the settings.

Experimentally, Penny moved her hands in front of her face, and with a start she realized she could see them. Her fingers were just blue-tinged silhouettes in the dim glow of the menu, but they were visible, which meant that her visual setting couldn’t be at zero.

In fact, as Penny took in the menu, she realized that all of her settings had been reset to one hundred percent, but she still couldn’t see anything.

What was going on?

Penny went over the memories, feeling like she did when she played those games on the back of cereal boxes where she followed one line with her finger through the tangle of all the other lines.

Okay, so first she’d turned her pain setting to zero and then all of her other senses. As a result she’d unlocked the ability to Astral Project, and her vision had returned, showing her body as it exploded in a self-destructive Super Nova.

After that, the power had caused her HP to drop to zero and brought her here. Which was…

Wait.

RESPAWINING....

Drip.

Penny flinched. In the silence, the sound of the water falling was like a gunshot.

RESPAWINING COMPLETE!

Drip. Drip.

Sensation came next, rough stone pushed up against her cheek, along with the touch of something softer.. Moss?

A wave crashed in the distance, and then there was a disorienting swooping feeling, as Penny realized that she wasn’t standing up anymore, but instead lying down.

She blinked, taste, and smell, that same briney fishy scent filled her mouth. Her muscles ached, but more like she’d had a hard work out than she’d been killed.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Vision blurry, Penny reached to adjust the settings back to zero. She didn’t want to spend a second longer in Prince’s hunger game hell-scape than she had to.

After this she was going to go home, and make herself a big pot of Chai tea the way Eshan taught her, on the stove, with ground pepper and cinnamon. Then she would power through as much work as she could. She was feeling good. Her mojo was back. The clients would love whatever she did next.

Penny frowned as she brought her hand up to change the settings. Another blue box appeared in front of it, and then a few more boxes, these ones colored.

Pop-ups? Seriously.

RESPAWN POINT GENERATED

Coordinates

Latitude – 42.36333. Longitude – 11.421017.

Affiliated Area

The Nyxian Shores

User #

982

Log In Time

13:02 CT

Server

Chicago, IL

**NOTE ALL RESPAWN POINTS WILL BE WITHIN TEN MILES OF SPAWN POINT**

YOU HAVE DIED:

YOU HAVE DIED. THE FOLLOWING DEATH PENALTIES ARE NOW ACTIVE.

-HARD RESET – All Astrean stat bonuses are set to zero.

-SOUL DAMAGE – PERMANENT PENALTY of -1 to all ASTREAN stats.

-YOU HAVE LOST the following items:

Those Bootcut Jeans (Waterlogged)

My Favorite Mercy T-Shirt (Waterlogged)

That Underwear I Got For My Birthday (Waterlogged)

That Blue Bra I Finally Found Behind My Dresser (Waterlogged)

Receipt from Jewel Osco (Waterlogged -- DEGRADING)

House Keys

Three Quarters

Wallet (Waterlogged)

RELATIONSHIP GAINED:

You are now DESPISED by the Nyxian Mermaid Confederacy. Any members of that affiliation will kill you on sight.

REPUTATION GAINED:

Your explosive death was witnessed by a mermaid who has reported the incident back to her people. You are now known as a particularly dangerous Reborn, and the first they have witnessed who has access to magical powers.

You have earned the title: EYES LIKE FIRE, HEART LIKE A BOMB

You are now: HUNTED by the Nyxian Mermaid Confederacy.

One by one Penny swatted at the menus, although props, she had to admit, Eyes Like Fire, Heart Like a Bomb, was a fucking cool name. If she ever got around to finishing on that electronica album she was fiddling with, she would one hundred percent use that as a title.

The rest of it was, whatever.

She wasn’t staying here, and she refused to care about Prince’s number games.

She was done.

Penny turned over, groaning, and blinking as her eyes adjusted. Quickly, she realized she was staring up at the ceiling of some kind of cave on the shore. Stalactites hung down from the ceiling, edged in a golden moss, and dripping with water. Beyond them, through an opening in the cave, she caught a sliver of the ocean.

It wasn’t blue anymore.

The sun had dipped to kiss the horizon, sending gold spilling out over the now calm sea. It looked so still it almost seemed frozen. Until there, far, far in the distance the ridged back of some sea creature broke the surface. It was big, so big, far too big to be a mermaid or even a shark or whale.

Holy shit.

What was that?

No.

Penny shook her head, smiling ruefully at herself.

What that was was probably something that would eat her if given a chance, and since Penny had already been stabbed and drowned so far, she wasn’t big on adding eaten to her list of “Ways I Died Today”.

She raised her hand and summoned the settings box, then she brought down the pain setting, and then the touch setting, but just as she was about to bring down the hearing setting, she heard something.

A scratching on the rock, like a rat or maybe more like a cat.

Penny didn’t wait. She didn’t want to watch herself die again, so she flicked the rest of the settings down to zero. Whatever that thing was she would never know.

Blackness enfolded her once again.

Or, it did for a second, because then, a moment later the same white cracks appeared again, and once again Penny was standing outside of her body.

ASTRAL PROJECTION ACTIVATED.

The setting box hovered in front of her, all of the other settings were set to zero, but sight was, unfortunately, locked at 100%, as was hearing at 100%.

Which meant she had a perfect view of the source of the sound.

It was a girl, no, a toddler really, she couldn’t have been more than one. She had a big mop of seaweed colored hair, and only one, very sharp tooth, like a shark’s. She wasn't entirely human, her feet and hands webbed and with claws, which explained the scratching sound. She approached Penny from behind.

Penny tensed, expecting the girl to take a bite out of her, but the girl didn’t do that.

Instead, she curled up next to Penny’s sleeping body, moving Penny’s arm like it was a blanket, then she started to nestle in. Or rather, she started, about halfway through she stood up again, and then put her faces inches away from Penny’s, so that the girl’s flat nose brushed up against hers.

Then in a voice so quiet it was almost lost in the harsh crashing of waves, she whispered one word.

Not a word really, but a question, a plea.

“Mama?”