Matt watched from the bushes as the scimitar-wielding man approached the cave. He wore thick gambeson armor covering his body to just above his knees. He wore a leather helmet with a peak at the top from which flowed a plume of black horse hair that moved with each of the man’s heavy steps in his steel boots. His hands were protected by metal gauntlets and his shoulders were protected with spiked pauldrons, albeit much smaller than most pauldrons Matt had seen in the game. There was something on the man’s left wrist, a kind of bracelet encircling the gauntlet, which gave off a bit of blue light. There was no way of knowing whether the bracelet was magical and available to all players, or if it was instead a piece of equipment only the management got to use.

Given the portal that had just opened up for the others, Matt was betting it was company equipment.

“Come on out, little one,” the scimitar-wielder said.

I don’t think so. Matt wasn’t about to move an inch, unless he saw an opportunity to strike that wouldn’t result in certain death. If only Stoffel were here!

“The longer you make me wait, the more they’ll interrogate your friend,” the man said as he peeked into a nearby tent.

Matt’s blood chilled.

Would they interrogate Garfumel the same way they had questioned him? No. Not Garfumel. His name, his real name, was Ben. He wasn’t some wizard with actual powers. He was a seven-year old in way over his head and completely defenseless against the kinds of powers the management would use.

“Come out, or they’ll get him to talk about you. Either way I’ll know where you are soon enough. You can’t hide from us!”

Matt closed his eyes. What could he do? He was a level three nobody with low level spells and a pair of cursed pants that would suck the stamina out of his avatar faster than any gym class had ever winded him in real life.

Matt’s mind conjured a single image of lightning striking Ben.

He knew they wouldn’t stop. They’d push for information about the shards and the hackers. They’d never believe Ben’s protests. As far as they were concerned, Ben used the shard at the Red Tower. Now Ben was here gathering a second shard.

Gone were the thoughts of getting caught. Banished were the fears about management retaliating against Matt’s actual body in the real world. Only one thought remained.

Matt was the only rescue that could reach Ben.

Matt was moving before he even realized it. He leapt down from his perch, stealth mode still active, and summoned Mythic Dagger into his right hand and a fireball in his left. He fell gracefully, colliding into the scimitar-wielder’s head with his feet and using his weight to drive the man to the side just enough to sink his Mythic Dagger into the exposed neck.

“GARGH!” the man cried out, but Matt wasn’t finished. Matt let the fireball loose atop the same wound. There was a brief eruption around him and the two men were thrown in opposite directions. Matt went into the cavern while the scimitar wielder flew out toward a tent.

Matt rolled as he hit the ground and quickly ran deeper into the cave so he could reengage stealth mode.

“You’ll pay for that! I’ll cut you from one end to the other, and then I’ll really start to hurt you!” The man’s heavy boot steps sounded through the cave, giving Matt a decent idea of not only where the man was, but how fast he was moving. He quickly calculated his attack and waited for the man to come into view just around a small bend in the cavern. Matt dashed out and struck the man in the back with two quick jabs followed by a slash at the back of the man’s knee. The third strike missed as the man spun around, his scimitar arcing for Matt’s face.

Matt somersaulted backward, just out of reach, and came up with a second fireball. Again he used the explosion to mask his retreat and he moved into the heavy shadows near a few tents and crates further in the tunnel.

“You think you’re clever!?” the man shouted. “Two can play at your game.”

Matt felt his heart quicken when the man turned completely invisible.

This wasn’t like other games where you could see a faint outline or shiny silhouette. No, this was total invisibility. Matt froze, crouching down even lower to stay in the darkest shadows.

There was a slow, soft crunch of dirt just a foot or so away from where the man had disappeared and Matt smiled. If he was very quiet, he could focus in on the footsteps. The man might be invisible, but he was still wearing steel boots, and he certainly wasn’t able to dampen his sound.

Two more soft crunches, then a third, and then there was silence.

A tent nearby was sliced in half and the fur fell to the ground while the tent poles skittered outward.

“I’ll find you!” the man promised.

Matt swallowed the lump in his throat and tried to concentrate. His stealth would keep him silent and hidden. He just had to keep hold of his nerves until he could get another shot.

KRACK! A barrel was cut half way through as the man yelled again. “Where are you!?”

Matt inched toward the man as he turned his back to Matt and walked toward another tent. The soft crunches slowed, and then a third swing took down another tent.

Matt started to creep forward but then stopped to listen.

The soft crunches were gone.

WHOOSH!

Matt felt the rush of air strike his face, but thankfully the scimitar missed. The enemy had expected an attack in the back and tried to preemptively fend it off. Matt stayed motionless, waiting for the crunch of boots on dirt. It was several seconds before the scimitar wielding man moved again.

“Maybe he went farther in,” the man said. The soft crunches moved away from Matt and toward a third tent. A second later there was another crash as the third tent was hacked to bits. “Or maybe you’re in here!”

One of the bits of fur fell to rest on the man’s shoulder, the spiked pauldron holding it up like a marker.

Matt saw his chance and went for it. He didn’t summon another fireball just yet. There was no way to know where the man’s head was facing and he didn’t want to risk casting light at him. He crept up to him with the dagger and made the best strike he could, placing the dagger a foot down and to the right of the fur pauldron.

The blade met heavy resistance, but the subsequent groan told Matt he’d struck home.

Matt smiled and summoned his fireball to make his escape.

“Not this time,” the invisible enemy shouted.

A purple mist exploded around Matt and devoured the fireball, leaving only a harmless wisp of smoke. Matt, not ready to give up, stabbed out with his Mythic Dagger twice more, but missed both times.

His ears alerted him to the incoming scimitar. He dropped down, but the enemy must have expected it, for this time the blade cut through Matt’s left shoulder. Sharp, icy pain ripped through him just before something heavy slammed into his back and threw him sprawling face first to the dirt.

His left arm went dead, failing to respond to his mental commands.

Matt managed to turn himself face up just in time to see the scimitar wielder become visible again.

“They said to bring you back, but they didn’t say it had to be in one piece.”

The scimitar came down before Matt could move. A flash of orange was all he could see for a second or two, and then came the fiery pain coursing from his left shoulder. He glanced over to see his arm was now lying on the ground nearly half a foot away from him. Despite knowing it wasn’t real, Matt focused on his lost arm, ignoring the blood spilling out of his body. He panicked, unable to bring his mind back to the fight at hand.

“It was a valiant effort,” the enemy said. A metal boot stepped down into Matt’s line of sight and then the man crouched down in front of him and smiled with shining white teeth from under the helmet. “You almost had me,” the man admitted. “But you and your friend are now going to go through so much more pain because of this. You really should have just kept running.”

The allusion to Garfumel brought Matt back to his senses. His HP was critically low, but he wasn’t dead yet. Game physics. Game Biology. Matt told himself. I don’t have to be in shock. Matt lurched out with his Mythic Dagger and struck the man in the groin.

The scimitar wielder sucked in sharply, emitting a strange kind of backward scream, as the dagger drove inward. His scimitar fell to the ground and then the man toppled backward.

Matt snatched the weapon up and moved quickly. He kicked the man in the side of the face, exposing his neck for one final chop. Matt couldn’t see this man’s HP, but the body went lifeless and the fight ended as the head rolled away to stop against the stone wall.

Matt went to work looting the body. First he took the blue bracelet, which didn’t prompt any sort of message for him or show up in his inventory. Next he found a healing potion and quickly quaffed it. It only restored half of his HP, but he would take any help he could get. He glanced to his severed arm and wondered if he could get it back somehow, but the priority would be getting to Ben.

“So,” a familiar voice called out in the darkness, “Matt has finally found his fighting spirit it seems.”

Matt wheeled around and peered into the shadows. “Stoffel?”

“Who else?” Stoffel said. “It took me a while to track you down after the Red Tower fiasco but I have to say, we won.”

“We won?” Matt echoed. “What do you mean?”

“I mean we struck such a hard blow against management. The Red Tower is completely gone. It’s fully shifted the balance of power. Of course, we’ll need to lie low for a bit.”

Matt shook his head. “We aren’t lying low,” he said. “We have to go after them.”

“After who?” Stoffel asked as he gently beat his leathery wings and cast a glance down to the headless man.

“You didn’t see the others?” Matt asked. “One of my managers was there with this massively large dude in red pauldrons. They took Garfumel and then there was this big portal. They took him through it.”

Stoffel rubbed his chin. “I might have seen that, but not in person. We picked up the energy signature back at the hideout. I thought it was a decent guess that you’d be involved because it didn’t register as normal game play.”

“So you just blindly came out after it?” Matt said.

Stoffel nodded. “Well yeah. I figured I might find you. Or, I might find a shard perhaps. Best case scenario, I find you with a shard. I was thinking about how you almost set one off once by accident and-”

Matt raised his hand. “I get it,” he said. “Truth is there was a shard here.”

“Aha!”

“But they took it through the portal.”

Stoffel’s grinning face turned sour and he floated down to light upon a barrel. “You let them get a shard?”

“Let them?!” Matt scoffed. “These guys were no joke. They took out a pretty powerful character like it was nothing and then they sent this guy after me.” Matt then looked at his arm once more. “By the way, how do we get this back on?”

Stoffel glided down to the headless corpse and began inspecting the body. He then turned around wide-eyed and pointed at the scimitar. “You need to be very, very careful with that.”

Matt frowned. “Magic weapon?” he guessed.

Stoffel shook his head. “Hacked weapon,” he said. “Made by management to take down unruly players. Whatever it severs, stays cut off. You might be able to replenish your HP all the way, but that arm is gone for good.”

“So no more dagger in one hand and spell in the other?” Matt commented.

“Sorry, Matt. That arm is lost.” Stoffel then glanced back to the headless body. “Actually, that’s probably the only reason you won. You used his weapon against him, and that head is not going back onto that body.”

“He can re-spawn though right?” Matt asked.

Stoffel whistled through his teeth. “Probably. So I guess we should get out of here.”

Matt held up the bracelet. “Any idea what this is?”

Stoffel’s eyes went wide. “That is what I’ve been looking for,” he said. “It’s a key, the key, to management’s office.”

“So this can teleport me to where they went?”

Stoffel nodded. “Yup. We can storm their castle so to speak. Of course, we’ll want to go back to our own headquarters and gear up first. I’m not about to charge in with a one armed third level enchanter, no offense.”

Matt’s frown deepened. “Are you able to teleport us back or use one of those quick routes to get out of here?”

“No, I used up the last of my favors with the others just getting them to conjure me a dragon and fly me over here as fast as they did. They were pretty clear that the dragon would have to use a random route after dropping me off, and then search out an enemy and die fighting it in order to avoid suspicion.” Stoffel shrugged. “We will have to take the long way back this time I’m afraid.”

Matt almost asked why he would call in that big of a favor if he only thought the energy signature could lead him to Matt, but then he dismissed the question in favor of moving things along for Garfumel’s sake.

“Listen, Stoffel,” I know you have this big plan and all, but they took a kid.”

“What?”

“The player that was with me, he’s only seven years old. You know they aren’t going to be gentle. We don’t have any time to waste.”

Stoffel grew silent and folded his small, muscular arms. “A kid?” he asked.

Matt nodded. “I heard them say they were going to take him back to Falchor for interrogation. We have to get there.”

“You said they also took a dragon shard, right?” Stoffel asked.

Matt nodded. “Yeah, I found one here and Garfumel had it on him when they captured him. They said they were going to take him to the queen.”

“Then I have an idea,” Stoffel commented wryly. “Looks like you and I are going to have a chat with the queen.”