TY BOLTED UPRIGHT with wide eyes as he came to with a gasp.

His hands instinctively went to his head, fingers probing, digging through his hair to examine every inch. He let out a loud sigh of relief as they gratefully came away without finding anything resembling an ax protruding from his skull.

You have been restored! Welcome back to the realm of the living!

Once more, strange words appeared in his mind, accompanied by an annoying ding, and Ty went rigid. He remembered the ax-guy, Defiler of some crap, swinging at him, then everything going dark, but there was no way that could be—

Real?

Ty looked down at the hard cot beneath him, running a hand along the scratchy woolen blanket covering it. The movement stirred up a dusky, dry scent with an antiseptic tang undertone that tickled his nose.

Head swiveling, he found himself in a sparse room, a half-dozen cots squeezed into the small space, narrow end-tables the only thing separating the cot he was on from its neighbor. A small, clay bowl sat on the table nearest him, half-filled with water, a slight oily sheen floating on the surface, reflecting the light.

Ty stuck his hands in the bowl and splashed his face with the lukewarm water, hoping to wake himself up.

All he managed to do was wet his shirt as the water ran down his face unchecked.

“Where the heck am I?” he asked.

He started when someone answered.

“You are in my hall,” a woman told him. Her tone was pleasant, soothing. She stepped through the adjoining door and came over to stand before Ty. “I am Savan, the healer of Altunn. You were injured, but you are no longer.”

You have been defeated!

Ty remembered those words echoing in his head right after Defiler hit him with his ax.

“Uh…there’s no way…” he stammered. He didn’t know how to finish the sentence.

Savan simply nodded. “You have questions, I’m sure,” she said. “All of you do.”

“All of us?” he asked.

“Yes, those whose stories begin here in our quiet corner of the world, and there are many.” Savan offered a soft smile, tiny dimples pocking the corners of her mouth. “But you must understand, our quiet village, Altunn, is nothing like the wilds beyond our village walls. Here, the shadow of death is held at bay by the will of the gods, Gorod’s capricious touch tempered so those who begin their adventures here might learn the ways of our world before being scarred by his cruel hand.”

Ty stared at the woman through narrowed eyelids, his mind whirling. Déjà vu warred with reason and made it hard to understand what was going on, but he was certain this wasn’t the first time he’d heard Savan make this statement. In fact, he remembered sitting right where he was now when she leaned over the cot, examining him with those same emerald eyes, speaking those exact words.

When did that happen?

He groaned and leaned back, thumping his head against the wall accidentally, letting out a frustrated grunt.

“Are you well?” Savan asked, absentmindedly running a gentle hand along his brow. Her fingers were cool, calming. “I sense no injury to your flesh. Are you in pain still?”

Ty brushed her hand aside as he sat up. “I-I’m okay,” he managed, the words getting tangled on his tongue.

But he really wasn’t.

How can I still be dreaming all this? Shouldn’t I have woken up by now? This is way too real!

Ty glanced about. Though he recognized everything about the room he was in, knowing it was a part of the starter town in Umbra Online, it seemed all too real to be some vivid hallucination.

He looked into the woman’s eyes, unable to explain how he’d ended up there, none of the answers his brain provided making any sense.

He climbed to his feet unsteadily, and Savan hovered nearby until he stood there a moment without showing signs he might collapse. She smiled and motioned toward the door she’d come through earlier.

“I declare you well, traveler,” she told him. “You may leave when you are ready, and be sure to peruse the contents of my store. There are many tools one might find useful in this dangerous world, and I might be persuaded to depart with them for a fair price should one ask nicely.” Savan let out a quiet chuckle.

Then, just like that, she moved off, not saying another word, going into the room beyond. Ty watched her go, her skirts flowing behind her until she disappeared, a quiet clatter sounding from where she’d gone.

Still thinking he had to be dreaming, Ty pinched his forearm and hissed as the pain radiated.

-1 HP!

“Dang it!” he muttered, seeing the numbers glowing in his mind, clearly reacting to his hurting himself.

+1 HP!

“Be careful back there,” Savan’s cheerful voice rang out from the other room as glittery sparkles engulfed him like a swarm of lightning bugs. They faded a second later, and the pain in his arm subsided. “What kind of healer would I be if you hurt yourself in my shop?” She let out a soft giggle.

“Man, this makes no dang sense at all,” Ty grumbled to himself as he went into the other room. Much like he had the last one, he seemed to remember every detail of what he saw there, right down to the bright yellow and blue flower arrangement set upon the low counter Savan stood behind.

“Greetings, traveler,” she told him as he entered, speaking as though seeing him for the first time despite having just spoken with him. “Might you need a poultice to heal a wound or cure a deadly poison? Perhaps you have use of a regeneration potion, a healing, or maybe some bandages to ease bleeding?” She waved at the counter, motioning to her wares, and Ty’s gaze followed her hand.

What appeared to be jars of gooey liquids were stacked there alongside plain brown packages, where no effort had been made to distinguish them from the others outside of the occasional change in size or placement.

“Uh…” Ty patted his pockets subconsciously, knowing dang well he didn’t have any cash on him, not that he expected the woman would accept it anyway. He couldn’t see her accepting dollar bills for some reason given the medieval nature of his surroundings.

Still not quite able to form a complete, coherent sentence, he spun in slow circle and examined the room while he tried to get his mind in order. A large mirror hung beside the door, reflecting the room and making it appear as though it were twice the size it actually was.

Shelves lined the entirety of the shop, from floor to ceiling, and every inch of available space was covered in an array of strange glass containers filled with more strange liquids, as well as boxes and small chests that displayed all sorts of unidentifiable objects within.

Yet, they weren’t exactly unidentifiable.

Ty knew what each and every one of them was, weird sense of déjà vu washing over him.

There’s no way any of this is real.

His thoughts running amok, he waved a lazy goodbye to Savan and staggered for the door, yanking it open and stumbling outside.

“Farewell, traveler,” she called to his back. “Be well.”

He sucked in a deep breath to clear his head as the door shut behind him, clutching to his chest as clouds of dust wafted in the air, kicked up by his Converse dragging on the sandy earth.

A whole different world appeared before him than the one outside his front door.

In place of his urban surroundings in Chicago, wrought iron fences and brick homes, a sleepy little village sat clustered. A packed dirt road ran through the middle of town, tiny buildings lining the wooden walks. The place looked like the Old West. Shuttered windows hung open to the street, and Ty recognized the symbols on the metal signs, swinging above the shops. He noted a blacksmith’s forge and a general store and even a clothier.

He craned his neck and spied what he thought was a tavern a bit down the road, The Shady Orchid—probably the one I got my butt kicked in—as well as an inn, and another shop he couldn’t identify from where he stood, its windows dark and the porch draped in shadows.

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This sure ain’t Kansas.

Not that he’d ever been to Kansas.

He rubbed at his eyes as if that would make this strange insanity go away.

“There you are,” a sharp voice announced.

Ty stiffened, peeling his hand from his eyes, blinking away the flashing spots so he could see who had spoken. Three people stood before him, a woman and two men. It’d been the woman who’d spoken. She stood slightly in front of the others.

He thought he recognized them from the tavern, sitting at a table and watching him right before he’d been…

Ty shook that thought aside, preferring not to think about that, his mind morbidly wanting to replay the instant Defiler’s ax hit his skull in graphic detail, over and over again like some B-rate horror flick.

“You know, if you had joined our party when you were invited, we might have been able to help you,” the woman complained, placing her hands on her hips. Her voice carried a soft lilt, but there was no mistaking the annoyance in it. She bared the tips of her teeth in a low-key snarl.

Struck by her ferocity, Ty took a good look at her.

In her mid to late twenties as a quick guess, she appeared to have spent her digital life working hard. Crow’s feet had started to settle in at the corner of her bright, brown eyes, and her features were on the verge of being severe, stress or hard times having carved her from obsidian stone. She wore no makeup to soften her features, but that didn’t stop her natural attractiveness from shining through, though she could hardly be called a classic beauty. She might not turn heads in Hollywood in competition with the slew of plastic-assisted models and actresses there, but she wouldn’t be able to walk down the streets of Chicago without getting hollered at.

Taller than Ty was, the way she loomed made it feel as though she were trying to intimidate him.

And while it was petty of him, Ty didn’t want to appear weak in front of her or the others, so he returned a bit of her attitude. “Sorry,” he answered with a casual shrug, one he’d perfected on the South Side streets. “I was a little distracted by that ax flying at my head, you know?” Not that he had any idea how to do what she’d asked him, and he only barely remembered seeing the weird prompt in his head earlier. Which, of course, only cemented the idea that he was still dreaming.

The woman scoffed, shaking her head as if that was unimportant. She clearly had something else on her mind. “Who are you?” she pressed oddly, despite having clearly sought him out.

“Uh…Tyler…well, just Ty,” he stammered.

“He is not the one we sought,” one of the men said with a growl. A literal growl. “This is not him, damn it.”

Ty glanced above the man’s head to see his name, then quickly scanned those of the others, before answering. “Who were you expecting…Amon?” he asked.

While the woman was feral in attitude, this guy was feral in appearance.

About six foot, he was lean but in a wiry, strong way. His features were a cross between a human’s and a wolf’s, his nose and mouth extended into a short snout. He was covered in a silky, gray fur that covered his entire body—not that Ty could see all of it, clothed as he was, but he assumed as even his arms were furry—and his hair hung luxuriously over his shoulders. He had a long, thin goatee, which jutted from his chin, making Ty picture the guy more as a goat rather than a wolf.

Betraying that illusion, though, were his eyes. Red and piercing, they stared at Ty with what appeared to be disappointment lurking behind his obvious frustration.

“We expected a great warrior to answer our summons,” Amon replied, shaking his head, “not some scrawny child or halfwit thief.”

“Hey! I’m no thief…” Ty fired back, only then realizing he hadn’t defended the halfwit part. He sighed.

“Whatever you might be, you are most assuredly not the powerful AzzKickerofTheGodz420,” Deven replied, the second of the men, dressed in a bloodstained apron, his clean-shaven face scarred and pocked. He glared at Ty, deep circles around them appearing to draw his eyes into pits of blackness.

“Wait! What?” Ty muttered. “No, that’s me. Well, my character tag. My real name is Tyler…Ty, like I said.”

The woman, Charice, chuckled harshly, a nasty grin stretching her lips. “The only thing you are is a liar if you expect us to believe such a foolish tale,” she spat out. “The whole of you doesn’t even compare to even one of AzzKicker’s legs. You are no hero. You’re not even a man.”

Ouch!

“Damn this fool,” Deven growled. “We have wasted all of our ingredients summoning a weakling rogue. We must have fouled the spell somehow.”

The other two nodded their agreement. There was no mistaking the disappointment distorting their features.

“We should speak with Varus,” Charice said. “Perhaps he will know where we went wrong.”

“If he’s not chin-deep in his cups already,” Amon groaned. “That wizard drinks more than any dwarf I’ve ever known, and he smells nearly as bad.” He snorted as if expelling the wizard’s scent from his nose.

“What choice to we have?” Deven asked.

“Wait! You said you summoned me?” Ty asked, everything the people having said finally sinking in. “Why…how? I don’t— How is that even possible?”

Amon snarled at Ty, silencing him. “The only thing that matters is that you have ruined our only hope of saving our home from destruction by the horde,” he answered. “Now, with all our ingredients spent, we’ve no choice but to wait for the great moon to rise overhead and bring ruin down upon us. The summoning was our only chance at our people’s survival, and we wasted its energy upon you.”

The man let out a long, pained sigh and spun about, turning his broad back to Ty. He marched off without another word. The others followed, heavy footsteps thumping their disappointment. Char cast a quick glance back, but there was no compassion in her eyes, and she went on her way.

“I’m really AzzKickerofTheGodz420,” Ty called after them. “I swear! I’m him!”

If the trio heard him, they didn’t bother to respond. They were around the corner and gone from sight a moment later, leaving Ty alone in the silent street outside the healer’s hut.

“I’m so very confused,” he mumbled, running his hands over his head, smoothing his wild hair down.

They’d called him by his gamer tag, the name of his character in Umbra Online.

How could they know that?

The idea that he was dreaming was the only thing that made sense, but no matter how many times he thought it and tried to convince himself that was the case, a sour feeling deep in his gut warned that wasn’t true. He’d never experienced such a lucid dream before and couldn’t imagine doing it now. Ty had been awake, he was certain of that.

Wasn’t I?

Now, thinking back on it, he wasn’t so sure. It was all so crazy.

“They said they summoned me,” he went on, discussing his dilemma out loud as he often did, the familiar sound of his voice some piece of reality he could latch onto, sound off against.

He remembered his monitor exploding, the purple goo and being sucked into the screen, then appearing above the table in the tavern not more than a few seconds later. The glowing symbols flashed in his mind right before that, too, the same ones he’d remembered seeing on the crypt of Althor Rahn, the demigod son of Katar, goddess of the moon, and the hero of legend, Remus Rahn.

What does that have to do with anything? he wondered.

Althor Rahn was one of the greatest monster challenges in Umbra Online, the most powerful of all the engageable bosses in the current version—until the next content patch, of course—an accomplice of Gorr Kura, the ultimate bad guy in the world.

Ty had fallen in combat against Althor more than fifteen times, doing his best to close out the latest expansion with a bang and accomplish a feat only a handful of players had ever managed.

He’d been close, but never close enough.

“Getting my hands on Althor’s warpblade sure wouldn’t hurt, either,” he laughed as he imagined retrieving the greatest weapon in the game, a blade capable of slicing through both time and space, not to mention every PC, NPC, and critter who got in Ty’s way. It was the ultimate drop.

Picturing the weapon and wondering what it might feel like strapped to his hip, he glanced down at himself and realized that, despite all the glitz and glamour of the world around him, UO recreated so perfectly down to the very last detail, he was still wearing the same clothes he’d been lounging around his house in.

He had on a black BTS shirt—shhh, don’t tell anyone—with a spattering of Cheeto dust staining the collar and chest a dusty orange, and a pair of gray shorts badly in need of a belt, as well as his blue, high-top Converse with dirty white laces—untied, of course.

Ty ran his hands over himself and, as much as he wanted to notice something weird, something out of place, something he could point to in order to explain everything, he was just him, plain old Ty.

He pinched himself again.

-1 HP!

“Son of a noodle!” he hissed when the pain shot through his arm, the same as it had inside Savan’s shop. “I’ve gotta stop doing that.”

At this point, there was no more denying it.

“I’m really in the game.” Excitement warred with terror, and Ty slumped to the ground, lightheadedness washing over him. “I’m really here.”

No one argued otherwise.

-1 MP!

The glowing red text flickered at the top of his vision, and Ty stared at it, vaguely remembering something like that in the game.

You feel…blah.

MP? Mind points?

It had been so long since he’d seen his MP take a ding that he wasn’t entirely sure that’s what he was even seeing. As a level 50 warrior, there was nothing in the game that gnawed at his confidence or mental wellbeing outside of a few psionic creatures, such as the Mind Scourge or the Psi-Lich, and those dang pskeeters sucking his brains out. Other than that, he walked through everything, leaving death and destruction in his wake, with only Althor Rahn besting him in any serious way.

But I’m not really level 50 anymore, am I? I’m just…me.

He felt sick as the negative score flashed and winked out, leaving tracers behind on his eyes. It was if a weight pressed down on top of him, making it hard to breathe.

It felt like that one time he’d asked Janie to the school dance.

He’s mustered up the nerve after six months, finally working out exactly what he would say, exactly how he’d act and dress and even smell, his cologne game on point. His mirror was probably tired of seeing him practicing in it, but Ty was bound and determined to get her to go with him to the spring dance.

Then, when he cornered her in the hall after finally catching her alone, the gaggle of her friends nowhere to be found for once, he dug deep, bootstrapped his courage, and approached her, swallowing hard. He forced a smile and spit the words out in a jumbled mess that was nothing like what he’d practiced, but he’d done it, nevertheless.

There was a long, quiet pause that lingered in the air after he’d asked her out, his heart thundering as he awaited her answer, his breath still in his lungs. Silence settled over the hall.

Then, she just sneered and put her hand in front of his face, palm out, and said, “Ewww, I got a man, and you don’t even qualify.” Then she circled around him as if he had cooties and walked off. Her laughter rang out in her wake, echoing off the walls, each little utterance a knife stabbing Ty in the chest.

That’s pretty much how he felt right then.

Crushed.

His stomach churned, bile stinging the back of his throat, as he surveyed the world around him once more. He always imagined being a part of the Umbra Online game world ever since he started playing, he and his friends talking about what they’d do if they were their characters, running amok in the game as though it were real, killing and looting.

He clambered to his feet and looked at himself again. “Not quite how any of us pictured it, I gotta admit,” he muttered, but Ty wasn’t one to wallow in his troubles; that’s not how his mom had raised him. He’d only moped about Janie for another three months before he got over her.

Sorta.

It helped she moved away, and he didn’t have to see her at school, traipsing through the halls with that punk Calvin Maines hanging on her arm, the pair leering at him and chuckling as they walked past.

“Whatever!” Ty grumbled, shaking his head to chase his sour thoughts away. “I’m here now—I think—and there’s nothing I can do but see it through. If this is all a dream, I’ll wake up eventually and have a heck of a story to tell. If it’s not, ain’t no point sitting here moping like some noob who lost his death pile.”

He drew in a deep breath, let it out slow to steel his nerves, then marched off down the street with his head held high.

No matter what this was, Ty wanted to experience it to the fullest, regardless how it ended up.

+1 MP!

Your MPs have recovered!

Ty grinned. “Now, that’s what I’m talking about!”