Drops of rain pelted against the stone roof of Milly’s shelter as the storm settled over the island. The howl of the wind met the roar of the waves as they crashed upon the shore, creating a symphony of sounds that filtered in through the thin slits in the walls that she had left to promote air flow in the tiny room. Storm clouds blocked the stars above, and her only light was that of the single ball of flame half-buried in the sandy floor of her shelter.

Milly sat on a bed fashioned from the earth, her back pressed against the stone wall. She absentmindedly picked at the octopus she had caught and roasted. She’d overcooked it, so it was tough and chewy.

I never thought I’d miss my routine of potatoes, peas, and ramen, but here we are. God, what I wouldn’t give for a potato.

She pressed her hand against the stone, creating a fist-sized hole, and used her water magic to draw in rainwater for a drink. It was crisp and clean, and helped the octopus slide down her throat. She gagged and returned the remainder of her meal to her inventory.

“That was a bad idea,” she said to the empty shelter, her words half-lost in the roar of the storm. “Tomorrow, I go back to boar. Gods, after a month I’m so sick of boar, but it’s better than rubbery octopus. Yuck!”

Six days ago, Milly had fallen through the rift in the sky and found herself washed up on the island’s shore. She knew she was in the eastern archipelago and far beyond the range of Calista’s telepathy, which meant she was more than three hundred miles from home.

And probably much further than that, given how strong the monsters are on this island.

For the first four days, she had tried to reach the shimmering metal ruins – the only artificial construction she’d seen since she’d arrived – atop the island’s solitary mountain. Yet she’d been stymied, time and time again, by the strength and speed of the monstrosities that roamed the island.

She’d tried to sneak through packs of hunting lizardmen, herds of vicious chimeras, and the massive birds of prey that soared through the island’s skies, but, inevitably, she would be forced to flee before she made it to the base of the mountain. Close calls were frequent, and she found herself spending as much time nursing her injuries as she did trying to traverse the jungle.

Her initial optimism faded with each failure, and with every sunset she grew more desperate and lonelier.

She stayed in a different location each night to avoid detection. In a tiny hovel of earth and stone fashioned on the beach, her mind would drift to her failures, and each morning she struggled more to throw off the blanket of hopelessness that settled over her as she slept.

It was in the afternoon of her fifth day on the island, as she weaved her way towards the mountain from a westerly path, that the island threw her a bone.

There, in the midst of a tiny clearing five miles from the mountain, was a Waypoint Pillar.

The pillar was significantly smaller than those she had encountered around the Castle of Glass. The obelisk was only six feet off the ground, and its black surface was carved with brilliant blue symbols that she couldn’t read, yet she was sure it was a Waypoint Pillar.

It has to be. It must be!

Milly’s heart soared, until she saw the three lizardman guarding it. The green scaled beasts skittered on all fours when they moved yet stood upright while on watch. They towered over the pillar, twice its size, their forked tongues tasting the air to detect the scent of intruders. Although they carried tridents as weapons, it was their six-foot tail that was the real threat. Its muscular mass was lightning fast, and strong enough to crack through thick jungle trees.

I can do this. They are strong, but so am I, and I have the element of surprise. If I take them out, I can go home. I can see my family again.

She struck hard and fast. Encasing the area in her fog, she’d pelted the beasts with lightning and fire before dashing in for a finishing blow with her Obsidian Fists.

It was only by virtue of her crystal fog that she sensed the strike of the largest beast’s tail and was able to twist her body at the last moment to take only a glancing blow. Four of her ribs cracked on impact, and she was hurled through the forest. Another two ribs shattered as she slammed into a massive palm tree, and her vision blurred as her head was whipped backwards.

If that had hit me full, I’d be dead. Fuck, I need to run. I need to… No!

They came at her, covering the distance in a second. Milly acted on instinct and channeled a blast of air at her feet. She flew into the air and crashed through the jungle canopy. She grasped hold of a narrow branch and swung herself to the neighboring tree, moving through the jungle as if she were a fleeing monkey, her chest burning from the pain.

She was a mile away from the Waypoint Pillar before she realized the lizardmen had stopped pursuing her.

She’d spend her sixth day on the island healing her injuries.

They… they were too strong. I hit them with everything I had, and it didn’t even phase them. What else can I do? How am I going to get home? I can barely survive.

Hopelessness returned. The island had showed her a way out but placed it beyond her reach. Sapped of energy and unable to focus, she just stared out at the ocean waves, lost in a sea of emotions.

It was a sea she was intimately familiar with, but it wasn’t until the early evening, after her final rib clicked into place, that she summoned up the courage to take out the medication Rain had brewed for her depression. She held the bottle in her hand and stared at it blankly.

I only have five doses left. What happens when it runs out?

Anxiety added itself to her emotional storm as she popped the cork and drank.

The storm rolled off the sea, and against the pelting of the rain against her shelter her mind drifted to her family.

Calista. Passi. Rain. I miss you so much. I’ve spent my whole life alone, and now that I’ve found my family – my true family – I can’t imagine spending the rest of my life alone.

“I’m not going to give up,” she declared with determination. “I will get back to them. I won’t let myself die on this island.”

That evening, she cooked the octopus, regretted it, and curled into her bed of earth, a blanket from her inventory pulled up to her shoulders to stave off the chill of the rain. She cried until exhaustion claimed her, but the tears felt cathartic as the emotions she’d held back for a week dripped into the soil and disappeared beneath the sand.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

I will see you again, my love. I promise.

* * *

It was at sunrise on her seventh day on the island, and as Milly watched the herd of capybara play in the ocean waves, she found in a months-old conversation with Xavier an idea. A crazy idea that would make even her former friend proud.

Xavier was talking at her about a new MMORPG, though Milly had no idea what that was. It was the latest in a long line of obsessions for the gamer.

As usual, Milly had only been half listening.

“See, Milly, the further you get away from the starting point, the more difficult the enemies become,” Xavier instructed her as Milly filled out Xavier’s paperwork from his afternoon customer calls.

Milly hadn’t cared, but she’d been happy enough letting Xavier fill the silence.

“This is, of course, standard design for every RPG. But in an open world MMORPG like The Fall of the Queen, you can quickly find yourself somewhere you aren’t supposed to be, especially if you stray far from home. And if you find yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time…”

Xavier snapped his fingers dramatically.

“You’re fucked. Unless, of course, you’re as clever as I am.”

“Of course, Xavier,” Milly said absentmindedly, trying to recall whether the customer’s claim needed to be filed as an A-32 or A-33.

“So it’s day one – only five hours after The Fall of the Queen’s release – and I come across this tiny corner with a river of lava flowing from a volcano. Everything on the map is level fifty or higher, and I’m there at level five. And I figure out how to kite one of these high-level beasties straight into the lava river. Boom! I’m level twenty. Two more and I’m level thirty. In five hours, Milly!”

He looked towards her for her approval, and she gave him a polite smile.

“I’m the only one who knows about it,” Xavier bragged. “I’m the highest-level player in the game. No one can touch me.”

“Isn’t that cheating?” Milly dared to ask, and instantly regretted it.

“No. Milly. It’s not cheating,” he spat with irritation. “It’s not my fault those idiot game designers used that mechanic. If you don’t use what you’re given to win, you’re a fool.”

“So… what level did you get up to?” Milly asked, anything but curious, but they still had fifteen minutes to kill before the end of the day.

“Those fuckers,” Xavier growled. “I was level sixty – six times higher than the next strongest player – when they dropped a patch. Next thing I knew, I was rolled back to level five and my strategy had been eliminated. Fucking bullshit is what it is.”

Milly had quickly forgotten about the conversation – filing it away with the rest of Xavier’s rants – but as she watched the sunrise and thought on the Waypoint Pillar and its three lizardmen guards, the conversation was suddenly very relevant.

“I don’t have a river of lava, but there is a cliff nearby the pillar,” Milly said as a plan came together in her head. “I can do this. If I’ve learned anything this past month, it’s that I’m at least as clever as Xavier fucking Holloway.”

* * *

The sun had started to crest below the ocean’s western horizon when Milly returned to the Waypoint Pillar. The three lizardmen milled around it, toying with a small capybara that had wandered too close, oblivious to the eyes of the anxious player. The squeals of the capybara were desperate as they slowly skinned it alive with their tridents.

The trap was set. It was simple, but it had taken her all day to find the perfect spot and carefully carve the stone to suit her needs. All it needed now was the bait.

Me.

“I’ve been nothing more than prey to the monsters on this island. It’s time to change that,” Milly said, as she stepped out of her hiding spot, the lizardmen just inside the range of her magic. “It’s time this island learned the power of The Witch of the Castle of Glass!”

The lizardmen turned their heads towards Milly, the capybara suddenly forgotten.

Milly fought the panic inside her and launched a shard of ice the length of her forearm towards the creatures. It skewered the capybara through the head, killing it instantly and ending it suffering.

Milly didn’t wait to see if they took the bait. She turned and ran as fast as she could, weaving her way through the trees as gusts of air from her palms propelled her forward, headed straight for the cliff only a minute away.

I just hope I lured all three.

Snap snap snap snap!

Milly risked a look behind her. The three lizards crashed through the jungle, their massive bodies and muscular tails devastating everything in their path. Milly could feel the rumble of the earth beneath her feet as they approached, quickly closing the distance between them despite Milly’s head start.

Shit. They’re too fast. Come on Milly, you can do this. Go faster!

She pushed as much magic into her palms as she could handle as her wind propelled her forward. A single misstep – a stumble on a stone or an errant low-hanging branch – would spell her end. She ducked and weaved, trusting her instincts and enhanced agility, as every step took her closer to the edge.

It came upon her quickly – the first marker. A carefully stacked tower of stones three hundred feet away from the forty-foot-high seaside cliff. She could feel it now – the slight uphill slope of the earth that would become the sheer drop-off to the beach below.

Milly cast her crystal fog ahead of her, careful not to obscure the lizardmen’s view of their fleeing prey until the moment was right. The thick mist flowed through the trees and gathered around the cliff, a narrow path of kept clear by the will of the witch until it was time.

As she passed her second marker, her mind danced with everything that could go wrong over the next few seconds.

I miss the gap. They don’t slip. They can fly. They… no, Milly. Stop it. You’re committed. Just do this. Do it!

Milly passed her final marker – fifty feet from the edge – and braced herself. Beneath her, the cliff’s foundations had been hollowed out by the relentless march of the tide, leaving a twenty-foot lip that Milly had spent the morning painstakingly manipulating to her purpose.

The lizardmen were right behind her, a moment away from striking her down, when Milly foot touched the rink of ice that stretched the final twenty feet to the cliff’s edge. The afternoon sun had melted its surface just enough to make it incredibly slick, and it took every bit of Milly’s agility to pull off what needed to happen next.

Now!

Milly snapped her fingers, and the gathered mist held at bay rolled into the narrow path like a bursting dam, obscuring everything from view. She slid along the ice, her crystal fog guiding the way, until she reached the foot-and-a-half wide, six-foot-deep gap in the ice – a person-sized hole filled with water chilled to the edge of freezing. She plummeted into its depths, and as the cold sucked the breath from her lungs, she reached her hands towards the sky and froze the water above her, finishing the sheet of ice.

The lizards, blinded by the mist, struck the ice, and the sudden and unexpected slipperiness caused their legs to fly out from under them. The three predators landed on their bellies and slid along the ice and over the cliff, straight into the pit of sharp spikes that Milly had carved in the beach far below.

Even through the ice, she could hear the shrieks of pain and fury as the three lizardmen found themselves skewered on the spikes below.

It won’t be enough. They’re too strong for that to kill them. Come on, Milly! Final step!

Milly pressed her hands against the stone at her feet and channeled everything she had into her earth magic.

Crack!

A fissure ran straight through the overhanging edge of the cliff.

Milly braced herself – she was in gravity’s hands now – as she felt herself begin to fall.

The entire overhang – hundreds upon hundreds of tons of plummeting stone – fell onto the pit of spikes and crushed the three lizardmen skewered within.

As rocky cliff struck beach, Milly’s back slammed against the stone, stealing the last of the breath. The ice above her shattered from the impact, and Milly launched herself out of her hole with a final, intense blast of air before the tiny shelter collapsed in on itself. She rocketed through the air and splashed down into the ocean as the cliff crumbled.

She breached the water, gasping for breath, and erupted with a whoop of joy as she saw the victory screen appear before her.

Congratulations! You have defeated Waypoint Guard x 3.

You have been awarded 300,000 experience points.

You have leveled up ten times and received twenty attribute points, five class talent points, and two general talent points.

Item Received: Lizardman eyes x 5, Lizardman tail x 1, Talent Book: Detect Life

Gold: 56,060

“Holy… holy shit!” Milly swore, her heart soaring as she swam back to shore. “Xavier might be a prat, but the man knows his exploits.”

She hauled herself onto shore, dried her clothes with her fire, and leaped into the air with excitement.

She’d taken the Waypoint.

She was going home.