“They’re close,” Dargan panted and huffed from behind Connor as the unlikely pair scrambled over boulders and smashed through thickets. They had charged into the Black Birch Forest and were following a trail—sort of—but it was a trail that didn’t look big enough for a goat, let alone a fully grown half-elf or dwarf. It was still sometime before dawn, and the sounds of the Goblin horde whooping and cheering was too close to slow down.

“We can make it . . .” Connor winced as pain once again surged through his chest—the now familiar feeling of the Night Oil poison stealing more health points.

Name: Connor Halfelven

Profession: None

Race: Half-elf

Level: 3 (1000/2500)

Size: Medium

Health: 24 / 60

He’d already lost over half of his new Health points due to the Night Oil poison, and, in keeping with his fast-diminishing stats, he felt a tightness creeping across his chest. He was out of breath, and his limbs burned.

And the Goblin horde wasn’t very far away at all. Connor spared a look over his shoulder and saw that, despite how far they had come, there were still glimmering, moving shapes behind and below them. They were coming through the trees, climbing the wooded slope to get at them.

“You sure that this is right?” Connor wheezed, catching the trunk of one of the silver birches for support as the dwarf caught up.

“Don’t stop!” Dargan said, his thick hand catching at his elbow as the stocky figure ran past, half pulling, half dragging the half-elf forward.

“Believe me,” Connor groaned. “I have no intention of stopping.”

There was another shriek of callous joy from behind them, and this time, it was accompanied by a thunk as a small, barbed arrow struck one of the trees nearest Connor.

“They’re not close, they’re here!” Connor snarled, pulling his small ax from his belt.

“It’s right up ahead! It’s not far!” Dargan insisted. There was another savage cry, and another bolt struck the ground at their feet. Connor looked up and thought he could see a lighter shade through the trees ahead. Was that the Healer’s hut? What if it wasn’t? Would they even be safe, if it was or would they all—half-elf, dwarf, and Healer too—get slaughtered by the Goblins?

“Scum!”

There was a sudden shriek from behind followed by the sound of breaking branches—

Connor cried out as pain exploded in his side like a bolt of lightning.

Goblin Warrior attacks Connor with Spear for 9 Health points damage Surprise attack increases damage by 100%. Total damage: 18 Health points.

The half-elf was flung forward, landing hard on the leaf covered ground, his health nearly gone.

Name: Connor Halfelven

Health: 6 / 60

“Half-elven scum!” The Goblin Warrior skittered to a stop, turning around with a hiss to level their cruelly barbed spear at Connor once more. As the half-elf pushed himself to his hands and knees, he could see blood dripping from the point of the Goblin’s spear—his blood.

“Connor!” he heard Dargan roar, unable to help as he was attacked by another Goblin.

“Meat tonight!” the Goblin snarled joyously, diving forward to spear Connor once more.

Goblin Warrior attacks Connor with spear. Attack dodged; no damage done.

The Goblin had made no attempt to conceal his attack, and even in his depleted state, Connor was able to spin on his knees. The spear shot past his chest and into the ground.

Rage and desperation surged through Connor as he swung the hand ax with as much force as he could, up at the body of the Goblin Warrior standing over him.

Connor attacks Goblin Warrior with Hand Ax for 7 Health points damage.

The Goblin gasped at the solid strike and stumbled back, but Connor reached out with adrenaline fueled quickness. He grabbed the shaft of the Goblin’s spear.

“Le’go!” The Goblin tried to seize its weapon to run him through again, but Connor, his face caught in a rictus grin of fear and fury, refused to let go. He was fighting for his life, both in this world and the real world. With one violent heave, he pulled the spear and the attached Goblin toward him as he brought down his hand ax once more.

Connor attacks Goblin Warrior with Hand Ax for 8 Health points damage. Hand Ax scores critical hit on head increasing damage by 200%. Total damage: 24 Health points.

Connor’s ax sunk into the Goblin’s head, and both fighters fell backward onto the leaf covered ground with a thump.

Goblin Warrior has been killed.

You have been awarded 200 Experience Points for slaying Goblin Warrior.

But the fight was far from over, the sounds of the monster horde all around them. Connor pushed himself up to his feet, swaying unsteadily as he saw forms leaping between the trees, blades and points bared.

“Don’t just stand there, you lanky elvish idiot!” Dargan’s voice roared. His hands seized Connor around the waist and quite literally dragged him off his feet, stumbling and flailing backward into a sudden clearing. Connor saw a patch of green grass, a low stone wall, and a wooden hut with a steeply peaked roof, the predawn glimmer catching the sparkles of hanging pendants and bits of crystal.

But the Goblins were upon them as Dargan and Connor stumbled onto the grass. The half-elf turned to see first one green body and then the next and the next leaping from between the trees. Their faces were snarling, cruel, and full of pointed teeth as they raised bows and drew back wiry limbs, ready to throw spears.

“Back! Fiends of the UnderWorld!” There was a bang of a door, and a woman’s voice shouting behind them. It was Connor’s turn to gasp.

Connor could feel a wave of power radiating out from behind him like a palpable gale but laced with that same electric feeling that he had felt in the top room of the Aviatrix Tower.

Magic.

With the shout came a dazzling light that flared from behind them, and in that moment, Connor saw fingers of light reaching forward, snaking through the blades of grass toward the Goblin horde.

“By Light you are vanquished, and with Light you shall be cast back!” the woman’s voice behind them shouted. Suddenly the glowing lances of light intensified, surged, and Connor squeezed his eyes shut, unable to stand the overwhelming brightness.

The night was suddenly filled with goblin screams, the air sizzling and burning before the light suddenly went out. Connor heard scampering, and desperate cries for mercy.

When he opened his eyes, he saw the remains of the Goblin horde of Heartbreak Ridge fleeing through the trees.

***

Connor and Dargan turned to see that there appeared to be a single woman standing behind them. Her dark-and-silver hair was stacked and wrapped atop her head and bedecked with many small beads and crystals. The woman’s eyes appeared to be more luminous than a regular human’s, but Connor could put it down to the first rays of the dawn that was rising through the trees.

“What was that magic? Sorcery?” Connor groaned, shaking his head to blink away the still-brilliant shine that her spell had cast.

“A Radiance spell,” the woman said with a small smile, gesturing toward the breaking rays of the dawn. “It helps that I am aided by the sun, of course, but Goblins are creatures of the UnderWorld, and their natural enemy is light.”

“Hmm. Wish I’d known that earlier.” Connor made to stand up, but another wave of pain and exhaustion rolled through him. He gasped, barely clinging to consciousness as he fell to the grass.

“My friend, he’s hurt! Please, can you help him?” Dargan cried out in alarm, his eyes beseeching the woman—the Healer, presumably—to answer him.

Connor heard the dwarf’s words, but as the Night Oil poison raced through his veins, the words barely registered. Everything was going dark, and he was hissing for air between his teeth . . .

“Get him inside! On the table!” the woman said as Connor faded in and out of consciousness. He felt the rough, strong hands of Dargan on him and then smelled the strange scents of incense and herbs as he was taken into a darker place.

“Yes, I can cure him. But hold him still! Open his mouth!”

Connor groaned, unsure what was going on. The half-elf was suddenly looking upward at the wooden eaves of the peaked roof, past the hanging bushels of herbs and crystals. He noted that there were small carved caricatures up there in the eaves, the little figures appearing to look down on him.

“Here. Open wide.” The face of the Healer appeared over the half elf, again with those luminous eyes, a touch of wrinkles in her face, and a peppering of silver to her hair. She lifted a crystal vial to Connor’s lips before tipping the contents into his open mouth.

“Gah!” Connor choked. The liquid tasted utterly foul, but in the aftermath, left a cooling, soothing feeling.

You have consumed Silverweed Potion.

Night Oil Poison has been cured. Health points have been restored to maximum.

Connor coughed and spluttered, before pushing himself up from the table to see that he was inside the Healer’s hut, which was much larger than he had first envisioned it. There was the long table that he was currently sitting on and numerous benches nearby most holding glass vials and wooden bowls filled with an arrangement of liquids, concoctions, and dried herbs. There was another round table, too, next to a large stove made out of iron. The other half of the room was given over to comfortable wickerwork chairs laden with woven blankets.

There were also fleeces and animal skins hung up to dry near an open firepit, as well as bunches of herbs and grasses, a small station for woodworking tools and implements, and a wide variety of bowls. Large rows of shelves seemed to contain every conceivable color and shape of herbs, crushed minerals, and rocks in glass bottles.

Everywhere that Connor looked, he could see the evidence of the healer’s simple life in the wilds.

“I take it you’re the Healer of Black Birch, then,” Connor finally said.

“Very perceptive.” The woman frowned a little, moving to the stove to lift a small black iron pot steaming with something.

“What’s that? What will it do?” Dargan asked, clearly in awe of her powers.

“Tea. It’ll make your mouth taste like you’ve just drunken tea,” the woman said a little acerbically before answering Connor’s question.

“I am the Witch of Black Birch, not any old Healer. A Sister of the Rooted Council, senior for my area,” she said, pouring out three steaming cups in delicate teacups before handing them over to the half-elf, dwarf, and herself.

“You can call me Hebspeth,” she said a little more warmly, taking a sip of her tea before continuing.

“Despite the fact that so many half-wits think we are evil and burn us out of our homes, it is the job of the Rooted Council to keep the wilds clean of the terrors and depravities of the UnderWorld.” She couldn’t keep a touch of bitterness from her voice.

“That is what I did out there.” She nodded to the front door and her small glen beyond it.

“Those Goblins will likely scamper back to Heartbreak Ridge at nightfall and hopefully think twice before they come this way again!”

“They attacked Woodville,” Dargan whispered. “It was overrun. There were many casualties . . .”

Casualties who couldn’t log out, Connor thought as the Witch nodded, her tone terse.

“I will call my sisters, and we will go to the village. I know the Ranger Marshal. If he survived, he will welcome our aid,” Hebspeth said.

“What about Annwn?” Connor said, his thoughts turning to larger problems. Like the mysterious proclamation left on the tavern board and the change to the manual.

We’re all trapped in here now. There’s no way out. Not without dying . . .

Unless we get to the to the Sixth Realm, the proclamation had said.

“Hst!” The Witch Hebspeth suddenly reacted like a cat, hissing with sudden alarm. The dawn light in the window outside suddenly flickered.

“Don’t speak that name. How could people like you, who haven’t delved the mysteries, even know of it?” the Witch was suddenly transformed, her voice grim and her face so pale that Connor and Dargan quailed, feeling once again that surge of power hidden in the slight woman.

“You know of it?” Connor heard himself say. “It seems to be the reason that many have died.”

There was a moment of silence in which the woman appeared to wrestle with some internal dilemma, but with a resigned sigh, her inner debate seemed settled.

“We never even knew of its existence until recently,” the Witch said severely.

“Rumors have been shared among those of my kind that there is another world, one that is even far older than our own, and that its name is Annwn.”

As the Sister of the Rooted Council spoke, the light outside the window once again appeared to dim, as if shadows grew near at the very sound.

“It is rumored to be the realm of the Fey,” Hebspeth said.

“Elves?” Dargan murmured.

“Related perhaps, but no.” The Witch shook her head once. “The Fey have long had designs on any other world their realm can attach itself to, inspiring madness, illusions. The old myths tell of them stealing babes and youngsters and locking them away to be their servants, completing bizarre tasks for the amusement of the Fey alone.”

Locked away? Connor thought. Like the way that the players are trapped in the game?

“Let me tell you a little of the Six Realms. Then you may understand . . .” Hebspeth continued.

Back in the depths of time, all of the worlds were one.

There was no division between the realms of fantasy and dreams, magic and matter.

All of the worlds mingled and nourished each other.

That was until the Rose War, when the elves in their realm or trees and plants waged a war against the mortals, and in so doing, enslaved and killed many thousands.

But every war is a crucible and a mother, and in its fires, it gives birth to children capable of changing and surviving. One such was the Aviatrix, the most powerful human Sorcerer to ever live. In a great act of magic, he cast a protective circle around what he loved and banished that which he did not—but the effects were far larger than any could have foreseen.

The worlds were riven, split from each other, and cast apart.

There is still evidence of this tear in the form of the Lack, the great gulf that runs through the First—and other—worlds.

The Elves of the Rose Empire were cast back into the Third Realm, and every foul thing that walked and scuttled was cast back into the Second Realm—that which is called the UnderWorld, a realm of underground tunnels and caverns and the nightmares of foul monsters.

There are three other worlds on top of these too—but much has been forgotten about them. All that is known for certain is that this great act of magic created a Gate between each world, First to Second, Second to Third, and so on . . .

Every Gate has a lock and thus needs a key. So, in every world, there is a powerful magical item that unlocks each Gate. It is said that if anyone should ever get to the Sixth, they will be given the opportunity to unify all of the worlds once more and bring wholeness to the lands.

“Why on Earth would you want to unify the UnderWorld with everyone else?” Dargan blurted out.

“Because the UnderWorld is also the home of your kind, young dwarf,” Hebspeth said candidly, earning a shamed “oh” from Dargan.

“And Annwn . . . ?” Connor prompted, “this other realm?”

“A predator realm,” the Witch said darkly. “From what my sisters believe in the Rooted Council, it has been reaching out to steal every realm and world that it can get its hands on. And now, it appears it has claimed the First . . .”

“But not without a fight,” Dargan said, thumping the haft of his hammer on the floor of the simple cottage.

“Either way,” Connor said, his head full of foreboding and questions, memories of the Elvish Cleric in SkyBridge claiming “They’re here! They are here!” Or even Dar’Thuk the Demon Lord in BattleWorlds! as he had glitched and started claiming, “We’re coming. We’re here!”

Could it possibly be real? Could it somehow be possible that this Fey realm was out there and had found a way to reach through the game world of Legends to claim them?

“Either way,” he repeated, “the proclamation said that the Sixth Realm is our route to freedom. If we get to it, we can go back home . . .”

“Hmm,” Dargan grumbled. “In that case, if you’re suggesting that we have to make it all the way to the end of the Sixth Realm, then we’re going to need to level up. A lot.”

The pair looked at each other dismally.

“Luckily,” Hebspeth said, “I may be able to help you with that.”