“Well, well. You actually came back,” the innkeeper said. “I had lost all hope.”

“You shouldn’t have,” Sarah said. “I never leave a debt unpaid, one way or the other.”

The man stood pensive for a few moments. Or maybe he was just staring at her chest. When the silence became too awkward, he asked, “So how’s Tristan? Has he served you well?”

“More than well,” she replied. “He died protecting me.”

In a way, it was the truth. Tristan’s pieces lay scattered around in the black forest near the tower field. He had died in his motorbike form. Nothing she could explain easily or quickly.

“It’s so sad,” the man said. “But it was a honorable death. Good horse.”

“I will need another one,” Sarah said, pulling several coins from her purse. “Here is the payment for Tristan, and for a new horse. Plus a bit more for the wait.”

The innkeeper grinned appreciatively.

“Well, it’s been months, yeah,” he said. “Thanks for your business. Let’s go and choose your new horse. I hope he lives long.”

* * *

The road outside the inn was almost black as the sun went down and the whole landscape sunk into darkness. Valiant, the new horse, was pawing the ground impatiently. He was already in her Inventory, and when Sarah Scrutinized him, she found out that he had 500 hitpoints.

The Ring of Realms was glistening furiously in her finger as she looked up at the sky and began surveying the gigantic menu of worlds. “You’ll need to fly,” the mage had said, and Sarah wondered where in all those realms she would be able to acquire such a skill. The images popped up seemingly at random, dancing a mysterious dance, guided by something inside her that she didn’t fully understand. That something was making sense of it all, cutting the information overload and bringing potential options to her.

I will never be able to fly. But I can get a flying machine at least. Or maybe I could tame a dragon.

For a brief moment, she thought of going back to Uberyn... but she discarded the thought at once. That jerk only cared about himself, and when he did help her, it was just to get close to her and get a kiss. He would want more than that now that he knew she wasn’t just playing a game, but trying to save her boyfriend and herself. And if he learned about her trying to defeat the Game Master, his price for helping would become exponentially higher.

No dragons, then. What about a plane?

As she thought of this, the realms rearranged up there and a different selection came to the front. There were several worlds where she could see some sort of fighting taking place; some of them appeared to be technologically very advanced, others quite primitive. Sarah decided not to try what those primitive worlds offered in the field of flying machines. She focused on a conventional war scenario: Fight for Oil. The virtual screen was brought closer as she made her selection.

“See you there, Valiant,” she told the horse, patting his back. She raised her arm and jumped just a bit. Her body shot through the sky like a rocket, crossed a layer of clouds, then another, entered a tunnel of abstract luminescence, went through the Void, kept going up, and then she was falling forward.

Shadow skill active: World Jump

She was getting used to the jumps now. Fortunately, “jumping from a great height” had been the way to unlock this ability, but it wasn’t required for every jump; it sufficed to give a little leap while the Ring of Realms was active, after choosing a world to jump to.

Also, she had much more control on how she landed on the destination realm. Much better than one of those waves that kept sweeping her off her feet.

She maneuvered with her body as she saw the new landscape up there, or down below. She positioned herself to land on her feet, and instinctively tried to choose a landing point — which, of course, was impossible. She had to fight the feeling that she could just wiggle a bit and move several miles in the air; she was at the mercy of gravity, just like if she were falling in the real world, only the force of gravity and therefore, of her impact, were greatly diminished in the game. At least, to the effect of worldjumping. Being dropped from a tower would probably kill her, but this multiversal parkour was set up so that she wouldn’t splatter against the ground on each jump.

She landed in the middle of the street, raising a cloud of dust. The city was small and brown, more a village than a metropolis. Nobody was outside except the soldiers crouching against walls and cars behind her and the other soldiers doing the exact same thing a few dozen feet ahead.

She was now wearing a military uniform — though a bit impractical, perhaps, since, once again, the outfit was so revealing that it was useless as camouflage, showing more skin than cloth. I would have preferred some kind of body armor, but fuck me, right?

“Hey. Who the fuck are you?”

Sarah turned around to see the guy peeking from behind an old, dusty car riddled with bullet holes. She Scrutinized him and realized he was a player. Yay, I guess! There are more than five of us!

“Why don’t you find out?” she replied harshly. “It’s not like you can’t—”

A bullet hissed right by her ear. Sarah rolled down, crouched, then sprinted toward the car. A second later she was right beside the soldier.

“Nathan, I guess?” she asked. “Nobody would chose Nathyn as name if they hadn’t been cursed with Nathan as their real name.”

“I don’t know my real name,” he replied angrily. “Do you?”

Sarah remembered then that she seemed to be the only player who had memories of her life outside the Anderverse.

“So,” she said, ignoring his question, “you’re a Soldier here. Which means your class is Warrior elsewhere? I figure I’m a Soldier too.”

“You are,” he said. He stayed silent for a few seconds, his gaze lost, and Sarah realized he was Scrutinizing her. “Sajya, then? You must have been around for a while. Your stats are good. Well, that, and you fell from the fucking sky.”

“Believe me, I’ve been here for far longer than I’d have liked,” Sarah replied. “And I won’t stay for long here.”

“What do you mean? Have you discovered a way to log off?”

“Not yet,” Sarah said, “but I’m on it.”

“So why are you here?”

“I need a plane.”

Nathyn’s laughter was so sudden and loud that for an instant, Sarah thought a bomb had exploded right beside them.

“A plane? You’ve fallen in the wrong place,” he said, his voice loaded with scorn. “All you’ll find here is dust.”

“Dust and tanks, I see.”

A tank was coming through the dusty street, indeed. Nathyn’s expression changed in an instant.

“Hey, guys,” he said. “We need to back off.” He made a quick gesture to his right. A soldier who had barricaded himself against a wall nodded briefly and got ready to move. Other two soldiers answered from a distance, whistling in code.

“Players?” Sarah asked.

“No. NPCs. But they can shoot.”

“Got it.”

Following Nathyn’s indications, they all backed down, procuring the protection of vehicles and walls. A few shots came their way, hissing, ricocheting against the masonry and rubble, putting new holes in the abandoned cars, but none of them was hit.

“Where are we?” Sarah asked.

“Who cares?” Nathyn replied. “A nondescript Middle Eastern shithole. They have oil. We want oil. That’s why we are here, I think.”

“OK, listen,” Sarah said. “I don’t need to fight this war. I’ll just leave and try to get a plane in some other scenario. Fine?”

The tank kept advancing through the road, among half-demolished houses and piles of rubble. It ran over two or three corpses of civilians. The turret turned, seeking its objective. Them.

“Yeah, fine, fine,” Nathyn said. “You could help a little, though.”

“Let me see.”

Sarah examined her inventory. Valiant, the horse, was now a motorcycle, but it was very different from the steampunk version Tristan had become back in the tower field. The flamethrower was a grenade launcher.

Perfect.

“Nathyn, have you ever blown up a tank?”

“N-no, no. I haven’t,” he replied, a bit unsure. Maybe he was wondering if Sarah was just laughing at him.

“OK, tell me how it feels, then,” she said, and retrieved the grenade launcher from her Inventory, then handed it to him.

“Wow,” the soldier said. “This is awesome. How did you—?”

“Another world,” Sarah said. “Another life. Take a shot.”

Nathyn raised the grenade launcher, held it tight against his shoulder, pointed it at the tank, and took a shot.

The grenade traced a parable through the air, started its descent halfway, and landed three yards ahead of the tank. It bounced three, four, five times, until it stopped right below the vehicle.

Then, it exploded.

It was a powerful grenade.

The tank jumped up in the air as if it wanted to abandon this realm, too. It bent as it raised, like trying to break in two. The turret was dislodged from the rest of the body and started rotating madly as the heavy vehicle fell down again in a cloud of smoke.

Then the noise reached them, and the realization that the shot had been perfect. From the other side came the shocked yelling of the enemy soldiers.

“Wow,” Nathyn said. “I want one of these.” He made a pause and then said, “I’ve just acquired a skill. Blast Attack.”

“I hope you’ll find it useful,” Sarah said. “The stakes are more even now, I guess? You don’t have a tank, and now they don’t have one either.”

“So it seems,” Nathyn said, still trying to recover from the surprise.

“I guess I can go now, then,” Sarah replied.

She looked up. The Ring of Realms was glistening again, with the light of a thousand worlds.