I found myself being shaken awake, sometime later, my entire body seemed to be yanked out of a drowning pit of weariness into the waking morning. Opening my eyes, the light seemed painful for a moment until my vision slowly swam into focus. Around me the sounds of a wakening forest sounded. Birds, and beasts alike all adding to the music of the morning song.

In the background, I could still hear the rushing thunder of the rapids in the river. The girl’s eyes were red from lack of sleep, but she was looking around after wakening me up. Standing up and then trying to climb up over the fallen trees, we had taken cover under, I watched her blink out sleep and focus on what she was seeing.

I joined her, both of us peering down across the river below us. I couldn’t make out any sign of battle, other than a few scorch marks on the opposite bank when the unfortunate Gloria had made her last stand. My heart pounded when I considered how unlikely it was that we were out of danger.

Both of us were trapped deep in a forest that I knew nothing about. A chill wind blew through the forest from the nearby mountains and Kai explained that snowfall was a frequent occurrence, and the long winter was about to set in. In fact, it had been unseasonably warm this year and snow normally covered the land by now. I didn’t like that notion, and realize that the dropping temperature was only going to get worse.

“So what do we do? I thought the attackers came from the direction of that port city, in the southwest.” I said pointing toward the direction the water flowed and she shrugged.

“Don’t mean anything miss, you saw them airship things. Cleon always said that those airships carried monsters around, who knows.” She said and I nodded.

“Which way is the capital of Fenwick?” I asked and she pointed back upriver, then thought for a moment and turned where she explained was east.

Drawing in the dirt she showed me the path of the river from the mountains north of us and how it snaked southwest towards the coast. East of us was the foothills and a stretch of grasslands, before larger deeper forests called the Darkwood started.

“What is this?” I pointed around us and she explained. “This is the Westwood miss, or that’s what everyone in Fenwick calls it.” She said and gave a sigh.

It wouldn’t be a good idea to go upstream, and it was unlikely that going downstream would be a good idea. Right now, we had the river to orient ourselves, but I had played games before, where I had gotten lost shortly after disappearing into wilderness with no landmarks to guide me.

So, where had those canoes been going? What was their destination on the river? That had to be part of a solution, if there was any. “How long is this river, I mean how far are we from the coast?” I asked and the girl wrinkled her nose as she tried to ponder the question. She just shrugged.

“Really far miss, not sure how far but it’s really, really, far.” She said and I sighed. Probably anything beyond a day’s ride on horseback was far to this kid.

“Any ideas how many days it would take to reach the coast going downriver?” I clarified. She perked up at that.

“I heard people talking, they said it was four days down river to the port!” I frowned, and studied the speed of the rushing water, then I looked up at what I could see of the mountains through the gloom of the canopy and tried to estimate how long it would take for the mountains to give way to foothills and then floodplains along the coast. The river would likely slow down once out of the mountains, but I had no idea of the local geography.

Ideally, I would want to stay out of the slow moving sections of the river, where it would be more difficult to lose pursuit, but I knew that it was more likely the enemy would be waiting farther downriver, blocking off places where there were lakes, ponds or natural dams like I had earlier encountered.

The river was dangerous, either way. Even with a good canoe we hadn’t lasted long against the rapids. Granted it was night, and we couldn’t see well, but my own experience with this treacherous river had led me to discover several waterfalls as well, and I couldn’t discount another encounter with one. I just didn’t know the river well enough and that would likely get me killed even if I wasn’t spotted and then killed by those flying creatures.

The tree cover was our best bet, but it would be very slow going. Peering into the forest I could see a fair distance into the gloom, but I had the feeling that there were just as dangerous creatures in the forest as were chasing me.

My father had been a hard man who had built his company from the ground up during the reconstruction after the short but brutal nuclear war that had broken apart the United States. It was this event that caused my own country, the Texas Union to form. He had once told me something when I had asked him about a decision he was mulling over.

“When you are faced with two bad choices, chose the one that both plays to your strengths and gives you the most options.” He had told me.

I sighed as I looked at the river. Like it or not, bad choice or not I was a champion of a god that used water and storms as it’s element. It may be a bad choice, it was likely a really bad choice, but it was better than bumbling around in a forest that I knew next to nothing about, and probably getting lost.

Remembering that trail of death and destruction caused by the “forest slime” I had seen only yesterday it was better to have options.

“We will follow the riverbank, and go downriver.” I finally decided and Kai just mutely nodded as she trudged sullenly behind me. “Any idea how to find food around here?” I asked as my stomach rumbled and the girl perked up.

“Ah yes miss! I was apprenticed to Gloria, and she taught me how to forage, and some herb lore.” She said and then her face fell as tears streamed down it.

“Don’t be sad Kai, Gloria is… going to be fine.” I said, wondering if NPCs understood the game mechanics behind player respawn.

“I know… but they don’t always come back.” She said and I froze, and wondered what she meant.

“You mean they don’t always log in, or they don’t always respawn?” I asked and it only produced a look of consternation on her face, before she shrugged after her eyes went glassy for a second and she seemed to snap out of a fugue.

“Don’t really know how it works, its hard to find out with the great seal and all but I’ve only seen them come back at special places, and their special place…” She pointed back up river and I shuddered.

She was right. The respawn point for the other players was likely either destroyed or being camped. The other players could be captured or being killed over and over again. I wasn’t sure how it worked and the interface wasn’t too helpful in explaining things.

I frowned and growled in frustration. This game needed a tutorial or something, it was ridiculous! What sort of game just threw new players into the jaws of death and expected them to stick around? I sighed and smiled. Crouching down I took a pinch of mud from the riverbank and studied it in my fingers.

Everything here was so much more real than any other game I had ever played. It was completely indistinguishable from reality without the interface. I could see why the other player I had talked to before I had entered the game, had told me to turn it off. Yes, this wasn’t the kind of world you could easily “game out”. It was so much like reality that you had to think practically, less like a gamer and more like a survivor.

I could see the bits of decayed leaf matter, rocky soil and loam in my fingers as I studied it and smiled. I hadn’t ever felt so alive as much as I had here in the few days I had been in this game. It really wasn’t much of a life being tied to a life support system, either in a mobile chair, or prone on a bed. When I had gotten really bad, I had sometimes been sealed into recovery capsules for weeks at a time. In the past, I had used other VR games as an escape before, but they were nothing but a mere shadow compared to this.

I really did feel like I was talking to a little girl when I talked with Kai, she wasn’t like any other NPC I had ever talked to in a game. She seemed to express emotion, she lived and worked with other players seamlessly. I thought about what she had said and frowned.

“Gloria was teaching you?” I asked and she nodded.

“She found me… my parents were killed last year and she’s been taking care of me. She said I had potential as a magi, and that she was going to send me to the Royal University in the spring.” Her voice trembled as she spoke and I crouched before giving the girl a hug. “You can do magic?” I asked and she nodded.

“Not much, but some small stuff. My da could do more, call winds and work the forge with a really hot fire.” She demonstrated as she wrinkled her brow, her fingers trembled for a second before she seemed to warm for a moment and then a pale red foxfire seemed to cover one finger as she waved it in front of me. I studied the foxfire in fascination. It wasn’t quite like a flame, it was more like a pulsing light, but it had heat and warmth to it. After a few moments she began to tremble and I felt her sway in a very familiar fashion.

“Put it out before you get a headache.” I said and the foxfire snuffed out. She took a few moments to recover before she perked back up.

“I saw you use water, glowing water! You can do stuff too!” She said pointing at me as I nodded.

“Yes, I think I can work with water, lightning and, maybe wind.” I thought about the combinations I had used my power and it made sense a bit if I could work with winds. I doubted I’d be a champion of a storm god if I didn’t have some sort of ability with some sort of wind magic, even if I hadn’t tried to use it yet.

“The honored ones of Apollo called you a dark one though…” She gave me a studying little pout before a mischievous smirk crossed her face at my frown.

“I’m not evil or anything, and I don’t think my own god is either. So, what if he’s the god of the tempest? I don’t think he wants to cause misery or suffering.” I said and she nodded.

“There are other gods like that, like the god of death! Hades!” I frowned. Why would the god of death not be an evil god? I asked as much and she laughed.

“Silly, the god of death makes sure there is balance, it’s not evil for him to help people after they die! He came for my da, and said so when I asked him at his altar!” She piped up in an innocent way. I froze.

“Er is it normal to just talk with gods?” I asked and she shrugged.

“They will talk to you sometimes, mostly only people that they like or feel like talking to though.” She said in her innocent way that made me frown. Gods in games, didn’t usually get so vocal with the players, but as I had found out it was likely not the case here in Endaria.

It did make sense though in some ways. This game did seem to be one of extremes, where death was just part of trying to survive here, gods probably played with mortal lives in much the same way the stories said ancient Greek gods did. It hadn’t escaped me that the gods were named after familiar gods I had heard about like Apollo. It was odd for a fantasy game, where typically the creators didn’t like to use well known god names.

We passed the time as we walked, and kept an eye out in the narrow strip we could see out of the forest canopy from the riverbank. When the sun rose up past midday, we stumbled down the bank and washed up in the icy water. Afterwards the girl pointed out edible plants along the river.

I wasn’t familiar with any of them. There was this root that she dug up along the riverbank slicing pieces for me with her knife, and there were some berries and nuts she pointed out to me which we gathered in abundance.

She also picked up rocks and rotten logs and showed me various insects that were edible, but she didn’t seem any more interested in eating them than I did.

“They are best fried and seasoned with sauce, honey or tasty gravy.” She explained, and also described which ones were poisonous if eaten raw or eaten at all. My stomach churned and I felt sick at the thought of eating wriggling worms or beetles.

“Gloria said that they are good for… protein! Donno what that is, but she told me I needed to know how to find them and eat them!” She said and I paused as I thought about it for a second, she was right I remembered some of the stuff I had read about insects.

“Gloria is the best cook ever! She’s been teaching me how to cook stuff from the forest, and also how to make traveler’s food!” She then described a recipe that she had been taught that sounded suspiciously like pancakes.

“She makes the best cooked dire boar… calls it bar-bee-cue” She said, proudly and I nodded, suppressing a laugh. Had Gloria really introduced Endaria to barbecue? That was something I would have to get her to demonstrate when we next met. Now that I could actually eat solid food, it would likely be a novel experience to eat well here.

The talk of food, was a good diversion, and helped relieve the tension a bit, as we seemed to be going deeper into the forest, the canopy over the river began to solidify, turning almost into a thick tunnel, the trees cutting off the light little by little.

We were quickly descending downhill, the water roaring into a heavy torrent with the speed and power from the slope, and I was very glad we had wrecked when we did, as it would have been quite terrifying to navigate this section of the river. Suddenly the ground flattened out and the tree cover broke open again, to reveal a massive forest lake.

As we left the dense foliage where the river met the lake, I had to gasp. In the middle of the lake was a massive fortification and, it was under heavy siege.

What seemed like a sea of crude rafts were swarming around it like a surge of ants. The enemy was having a much harder time trying to get anywhere near this fortification, as it had a small fleet of airships and flying creatures harrying a large enemy airship flying black banners and launching creatures up off its decks.

However, the defenders seemed to have been cut off by land, as the bridge connecting it to the shoreline was badly damaged. I wasn’t sure if that was intentional or the enemy’s doing. The bridge was heavily fortified so I had to assume it could have been a failed assault on the enemy’s part.

Looking just below us, where the water entered the lake, I saw a town in ruins, watermills along the entrance of the river into the lake shattered and burning, with screams and fires raging below. The enemy was camped out on the far bank of the river, and were felling trees to make their siege rafts. As I watched, the looming shadow of an airship descended and deposited a war machine of some sort on one of the rafts. It whirled and clanked into position, metallic feet sinking into the timbers as some sort of magic users casted a black shield over the raft and began to propel it forward.

The banners flying from the castle in the lake were different from the ones I had seen from Fenwick, and when I asked, my companion explained that this was the Dutchy of Glenlake, part of the League of Silvania.

It did seem that the League favored airships rather than giant birds and the like I had seen Fenwick using. They were also very organized, flying in formation and focusing fire, carefully working together, the smaller airships screening the two larger ones I could see.

They were, however massively outnumbered. The sky was dark with flying creatures, and it seemed to be a desperate battle of maneuver as the ships dodged swarms, and fought their way clear so they wouldn’t get bogged down and targeted by the single enemy airship harrying them.

It was like nothing I had ever seen in my life. The sheer scale of the battle unfolding over the lake made me feel like I was less than nothing, that everything I could do in this game mattered little when there was such a force trying to slaughter everything. I had no idea what to do, or what I could do other than turn around and start running for my life.