Josh opened his eyes. He was lying on his back, with grass tickling his neck, looking up at a dark sky threaded with skeletal branches. He sat up cautiously.

He was wearing the fantasy game equivalent of medieval peasant garb, the sort of ragged clothing you normally spawned in when you first created a new character. His outfit consisted of a tunic, a separate hood with a fringe, hose, and thin leather shoes. Around his waist was a narrow, worn leather belt with a rusty knife stuck through it. There was also a pouch hanging from it which contained a couple of rounds of dry bread.

The air smelled of damp earth and woodsmoke, and there was a baleful, fiery red glow on the horizon. At first Josh thought it was sunset, but when he looked in the opposite direction he could see distant shafts of sunlight piercing black clouds.

He wasn’t anywhere he recognised from Spiralia Online. Why was it so dark? A storm? There was no breeze, though, only a sullen humidity that made his skin feel instantly sticky.

A sudden nearby crunch made him flinch. A large animal was moving through the undergrowth. He heard a snort of heavy breath, so he stood absolutely still until he heard it crashing away in the opposite direction. He stayed frozen for several eternal minutes, but it didn’t come back.

When he crept out of the thicket he had appeared in, he found himself on the edge of an overgrown field, with tumble-down farm buildings nearby. They looked like they might provide shelter, but Josh knew better than to go poking around them. Ruins invariably hosted monsters, and there were no guarantees that they would be the kind of monsters easily felled by a single rusty knife. He didn’t see any sign of anyone else. It didn’t look like the people who had taken the assassin and demon class had been sent here. Maybe there were different starting zones, but this looked way too dark to be a starting zone.

Was this some kind of alien simulation, or a real world? Would Josh have a character sheet?

Before he could investigate this possibility, he heard a mournful howl, and saw several sleek grey shapes loping towards the ruined farm buildings. Wolves. He knew that wolves in the wild wouldn’t normally hunt humans, but these were fantasy wolves, so who knew what they might decide to do. He backed away slowly, and headed further into the woods.

The ground beneath him became steeper, so he headed up slope, trying to walk as quietly as possible, although leaves and twigs kept inserting themselves under his feet so they could crunch and snap loudly. He mourned his lack of ranger skills—what good would decorative feathers be in this situation? If he could get higher maybe he would be able to see more of the surrounding countryside, and work out where he was. Despite the noise he had made, there was no sign of wolves following him.

When he came to just below the crown of the hill, he saw several large slabs thrusting up into the sky. It was one of the many abandoned stone circles you found in the territory surrounding Celespire. But he was nowhere near Celespire. Was he?

He turned, his head drawn as if by a magnet to the eerie red glow on the horizon. Sure enough, now that he was high enough, he could see the distant but distinctive silhouette of Celespire’s pointy towers and arches, rendered in a sooty black. The red glow was coming from there. Thick clouds gathered above the city, with occasional flashes of lightning stabbing into the ground around it.

That was Celespire? What had happened to it?

Maybe nine-hundred and ninety-one heroes had proved unequal to the perils besetting it.

Josh stayed on the hill for several minutes, his mind blank as he tried to orientate himself in this strange new version of Six Spires. At length he shivered and looked around him. There was a gentle silver light bobbing in between the standing stones, and he hastily looked away. Will o’ the wisps, dangerous only if you stared at them for too long.

In the game, the lands around Celespire had been comparatively safe, but it didn’t look that way anymore. It probably wasn’t safe to stay out in the open.

Josh skirted cautiously around the standing stones. His plan was start walking in the opposite direction from Celespire, and see if he could find out what had happened here. If he found somewhere safe to hide, he would see what his stupid class was capable of. Speaking of which, were there any feathers here?

He did, in fact, see a bedraggled grey feather caught up in a tussock of grass, visible only because the moon chose that moment to sail from beneath the clouds. He picked the feather up, and immediately he found himself strangely aware of it, of the hollow structure of the quill, of the fluff near the point, and of the neat arrangement of barbs that made up the vane.

He held it up to the moonlight to see it better, and it was only then that he remembered that one, it was daytime, and two, Six Spires had several tiny little moons, not a single large one like Earth. Where was the moonlight coming from?

He whipped round. There, in the centre of the standing stones, a silvery blue light was growing, elongating and stretching until it resembled a door, flickering briefly when dark figures passed on the other side of it.

Josh didn’t wait to see more. He bolted for the treeline, tripping and sliding in his haste, and managed to reach it just as the fey from the other side of the doorway came pouring through. He crouched down in the bushes, holding his breath.

In Spiralia Online the fey were more like elves than fairies, tall and fair and graceful. They were dressed in ornate, gleaming armour, with half cloaks of coloured silk flung over one shoulder, and they rode stags, or slender unicorns with curved horns. He recognised them as Trooping Fey, which was a relief. If it had been the Wild Hunt, Josh would have been in a lot more trouble.

That didn’t mean he was safe. The fey were known to be capricious, and not fond of humans. Trotting in amongst the hooves of the mounts were hounds, their coats gleaming white with tails waving like flags. Josh crouched further down in the bushes, and waited for the cavalcade to leave.

Instead the fey milled around the stones. He caught only glimpses of them, but their faces seemed stern and serious.

It was one of the dogs that found him, following his scent down the hill into the tree line with its nose to the ground until it reached him, whereupon it immediately started baying excitedly. The next moment, Josh was surrounded by fey mounts, their hooves trampling the foliage all about, while the fey riders called out in clear, high, bell-like voices.

He crouched there, his mouth dry and his heart beating uncomfortably as the leader of the cavalcade approached.

She rode a stag, a great white heavy-chested beast with antlers nearly four feet across, and she wore silvery scale armour. A silver circlet fashioned into thorns crowned her brow, and a light veil covered the lower part of her face, leaving only a pair of large, dark eyes, which regarded him coolly.

Josh knew who she was. He’d completed the entire Fey Questline in Spiralia. This had started out with the player bearing a message from Queen Halina, the ruler of Celespire, to the Queen of the Fey. However, the latter wouldn’t even speak to you until you had completed another series of side quests to save the fey realm, all the while accompanied by the Fey Queen’s warrior handmaiden, who had later turned out to be the Fey Queen herself in disguise.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Now what have you found, Belenus?” the Queen asked. She must have been addressing the hound because it wagged its tail so hard its whole backside wiggled to and fro, and it let out a series of happy yips. “Yes, my dear, I heard you the first time.”

One of the fey, a male with red hair in braids and a whip folded in one hand, dismounted and approached. He grabbed Josh’s hair and pulled his head back. Josh didn’t resist–he felt frozen in place.

“It’s a spy,” the fey male said.

“I swear I’m not a spy,” Josh gabbled. “I climbed the hill to get my bearings, that’s all. I didn’t mean to intrude.” A memory from the Fey Queen’s questline surfaced, of the appropriate etiquette to use when addressing a queen, and he added, “Your Majesty.”

She raised slender eyebrow.

“Are you lost, human?”

Josh felt a shiver run up his spine at the sound of her voice, not from fear, but from the sheer, smooth beauty of it.

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“And what is your purpose here?”

Josh had never been into the playacting part of roleplaying, where you walked around in games pretending to speak like your character. He admired it when it was done well, but it wasn’t something he had ever got into. Now he wished he had. He could have used the practice.

It would be simplest if he stuck to the truth.

“I’m searching for people who were taken from my … village,” he said.

Was the Queen even a real person, or just a construct? The cool intelligence behind the eyes that studied him seemed real enough. Her gaze flicked up to the fey with the red braids and the whip, as if asking a question. Out of the corner of his eye, Josh saw him nod, once. Could he tell if Josh lied?

“Who took them?” the Queen asked. “The scourge?”

Josh hesitated.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so? Ow!”

The fey jerked painfully at Josh’s hair.

“Speak with respect,” he growled.

“I don’t think so, Your Majesty,” Josh amended.

The Queen considered. She lifted a hand, and in answer to her summons another rider came forward, this one in armour coloured blood red, with a closed helm and a curved knife at their waist. There was a reddish glow about them, a visible nimbus.

“Well, Charral?” the Queen asked. “What say you?”

In answer Charral started drawing the knife with an ugly scrape, but at the last minute the Queen flicked her hand up again, palm out.

“Hold!” she commanded, and Charral immediately stopped, the blade half drawn. The Queen dismounted by throwing one leg across the withers of her stag and falling lightly to the ground. She knelt in front of Josh and studied his eyes carefully.

“Tell me, human,” she said. “Do you know who I am?”

That, at least, Josh could answer. Thank god he’d paid so much attention to the quest dialogue.

“The Queen of the Fey, Your Majesty,” Josh answered, “The Duchess of Thorns, and… and…” What were her other titles again? “… and the Countess of the Veiled Realms.”

Thanks to the Fey Questline, he also knew her given name, Elarieth. Players didn’t get to know that automatically—you had to choose the right dialogue options with her at the right moment, and she only revealed it once. Josh decided to keep that knowledge to himself right now.

The recitation of the Queen’s titles had awarded Josh a slow blink.

“Answer me this, then—have you ever laid eyes upon me before?” she asked.

What was this about? Did the Queen know about players from Earth? About the game? She didn’t seem like the kind of person who would appreciate humans claiming close friendship with her on the basis of an online flirtation with her virtual double. It had been a romance-heavy quest, which made Josh internally cringe in retrospect. The weight of her presence was too great and too overwhelming to make dalliance with her seem even the ghost of a possibility.

“Only by reputation, Your Majesty,” he said, playing it safe.

There was a pause, while she considered him again.

“And what is your profession?” she asked at last, her voice light and languid. “Are you a hunter? A tracker? What skill makes you suited for your role as saviour to your …” she paused, “… your village?”

She hadn’t said anything overt, but it almost sounded as if she was aware of game mechanics. Josh no longer thought she was merely a construct. Or if she was, she was such a sophisticated one that she was indistinguishable from a real person.

Tell the truth, he thought.

“I was the bait,” he blurted out. “I was meant to draw out the … whatever was taking our people.”

There was another silence, during which the Queen stared into his eyes. He could feel his ears and neck heating under the force of her gaze.

“My lady, let my blade taste his heart,” Charral said, at last. Her voice was low and rough.

“You didn’t answer my question, human,” the Queen said finally. “What is your profession?”

This was beyond humiliating.

“I’m a plumassier, Your Majesty,” he muttered.

She looked almost amused. She snapped her fingers, and a slight puff of air blew something upwards into her hand. He realised it was the feather he had found on the hill top. He must have dropped it when the fey found him.

“Make me something with this feather,” the Queen said. “And I will let you go free.”

Make her something? Even as a flood of relief rushed through him, Josh realised he didn’t have the first idea how to go about that.

The fey with the red braids let go of Josh's hair and he reached out hesitantly. The moment his fingers touched the feather, however, he felt possibilities curving away in his mind. He knew how to strip it, how to dye it pleasing colours, how to fluff up the barbs, and how to curl it like a ribbon.

What could he make with a feather? What did women like? Jewellery? The version of Queen Elarieth in the game had been a martial sort of character, not the kind of person who cared about anything as frivolous as jewellery, and this version of her looked no different. But Josh had no idea how you made anything war-like out of such a light, flimsy object, and whatever it was the plumassiers did to feathers didn’t include fletching them onto arrows.

Could he make a ring? A necklace? A bracelet?

The feather was about ten inches long, so it was too big to make a ring with, and too small for a necklace, but maybe he could manage a bracelet. Even as he had the thought, he found his hands were stripping some of the barbs, fluffing the rest into curls, and then gradually curling the quill so that it bent in a circle.

When it was finished it looked … bracelet-like, which surprised no-one more than Josh.

He hesitated before giving it to the Queen, however. There was something missing from it. He turned it in his hands, frowning, and felt something rise up from within him, a tiny rush of harmony in the form of a golden wave of sparks that flowed from his fingers and sank into the feathers. For a moment, the whole feather glowed, and then the light faded away.

That was magic. Josh had just done magic, and for one moment he didn’t regret anything—not agreeing to help Ben, not the two hundred and fifty hours in Spiralia online, not being torn from his friends and family and thrust into a dark and dangerous world, and not even his class choice. The feeling was so right and so beautiful and so poignant he wanted to cry. And then suddenly he snapped back to himself, hot and sweaty and uncomfortable, with damp patches on his knees where he’d been kneeling in the grass.

When he looked at the bracelet it was different, somehow—more real, more vibrant, the white quill a creamy band threading through velvety grey feathers that were as soft as a cloud. Hesitantly, he held it out to the Queen. He couldn’t see her mouth because of the veil, but her eyes were slanted in an amused way, as if he was a puppy who had performed a cute and slightly unexpected trick.

Instead of taking the bracelet, she held out her wrist, which made some of her retinue shift uneasily. Very slowly and carefully Josh slid the bracelet on. Her wrist was narrow but strong, and though he was trying not to impose, at one point his fingers brushed her skin, which was cool to the touch, and satin-soft. He felt himself flushing again.

Even when he pulled back, he could still feel the feather, a tiny circle of golden motes that pulsed quietly. A bracelet for his life.

To the fey in the game, balance was important. If you did one a favour, they would be obligated to perform and equal and opposite favour. They were masters of twisting their own rules to their advantage, but they held to them without fail.

The Queen–this version of her–had agreed to exchange his life for a feather bracelet. Leaving aside the matter of whether she had the right to take his life or not in the first place, the bargain was vastly unequal in Josh's favour. If these fey were anything like the ones in the game, the bracelet he had given her was more of a promise, a recognition of a favour owed, a down payment towards a future service he might be called upon to provide. Was there anything Josh could offer now to even the trade?

He knew her name, but she didn’t know his. If he gave that, would that help? It might give her power over him, but she held his life in her hands already. He really needed to stop overthinking things. He came to a decision.

“My name is Josh,” he said. “Josh Armstrong.”

All the fey froze, and the Queen’s eyebrows flew up. The silence hung on the moment, stretching out until the sound of a knife blade slamming back into its hilt made Josh jump. Charral was staring at him, and while he couldn’t see her face, the aura of hatred emanating from her was palpable.

The Queen rose smoothly to her feet and swung herself onto the back of the great white stag. She looked down at Josh.

“May you find what you seek,” she said. Her tone was ambiguous enough that he couldn’t tell whether it was a blessing or a curse. Maybe it was both.

There was a blurred sensation of movement, as a horn sounded sharply, and the forest of hooves surrounding Josh pranced this way and that in a confusing melee, and then suddenly the cavalcade of Trooping Fey was gone, and he was kneeling, alone and breathless in an empty patch of trampled grass.