A group of people wake up in a video game world and are forced to work together to survive and find out how to escape.

The truth will set you free.

Chapter 27 recap

The wind picks up, icy and relentless, whipping my hair into my face. I close my eyes, steadying my breathing.

“I can do this,” I whisper to myself, trying to summon even a shred of determination.

I was a twisted lump of metal caught between the hammer of Abuela’s relentless, immigrant ambitions and the anvil of my parents’ broken dreams. I had no power to outrun my dark memories, nor any way to keep them buried. They were part of me.

CHAPTER 68
“Oh hell, Mike! Really? She must be…”

He stopped abruptly, looking directly at me, slowly collecting his next words.

“I know about your own loss, mate. The two of you must be in much the same head state, or am I wrong?”

“You have it just about right, Neil. We have had a few moments, to be honest. Memories, that sort of thing. Lots of stuff, baggage. Left overs, hang overs from the past”

“But you love her?”

Queen Dana of Highwinds the Elf Kingdom inside the Empire has a problem. One that she cannot fix personally. The problem is with a small minority of her population. A problem that has been brought to her attention by the half elf son of a problematic Duke. What is a Queen to do? She calls on help from a friend. The question now is does she realize what she is letting loose on her kingdom?

I had assumed until this talk that to become an adult I was going to undergo a metamorphosis where I grew another torso and a vulva, but now I learned I am going to get those parts by merging with a girl here.

Chapter 14: School Clothes
The mall was alive with the buzz of summer shoppers, its cool, air-conditioned halls offering relief from the sweltering heat outside. Yuqi walked confidently alongside her mom and Kelly, her purse slung across her shoulder. The air of excitement around her was undeniable—this was no ordinary shopping trip.

Chapter 17
I leveled my gaze at Hannah and Brian, my patience wearing thin. “You know, I don’t care what you think about my life before,” I said, my voice steady and cold. “But I’ll be damned if I let you say anything bad about my wife.”

The room fell into a tense silence. Brian shifted uneasily under my glare, and Hannah’s fake smile finally cracked.

A group of people wake up in a video game world and are forced to work together to survive and find out how to escape.

“I should’ve gone back home when I had the chance.”

Chapter 25 recap

Suddenly, a tendril shoots out faster than I can react, wrapping around my waist and yanking me off the sled. The ground slams into me hard, knocking the wind out of my lungs as the world spins violently.

Medical:
Beverly looks at her wife’s x-rays to see how bad the damage was. She couldn’t believe the damage to the body armor when she saw it. Whoever squeezed her wife’s leg, had some strength to them.

Wendy watches her wife as she looks at the x-ray of her leg. The nurse had given her a shot for the pain.

“Well, how bad is it?”

“I’m going to need to rebuild your femur, sweetie. Whoever you fought, broke your upper leg and the pieces are digging into the muscles and tendons.” Beverly puts the X-ray down and looks at her wife.

CHAPTER 67
Life took a turn for the bloody busy after that evening. We were both working full time, of course, and there were our combination recreation and social sessions at music nights and at the climbing wall, but there was so much else to deal with. Australia has a very relaxed approach to marriage, in its own way, barring a few slightly irksome formalities. We could indeed marry just about anywhere, but that choice had been sneakily covered by Murdo. We could always say no, of course, but given what he was offering to us a refusal would have been more than rude.

A group of people wake up in a video game world and are forced to work together to survive and find out how to escape.

The group begins their journey to the Nexus and faces a new terrifying threat.

Story is finished and I’m currently working on a sequel while cleaning up the last chapters should be about 8ish more.

Chapter 24 recap

I’m a horse-like creature with the ability to stand on my hind legs and use my front legs as hands. But my parents are centaurs!

Marla looked at the photo again. It wasn’t her grandmother; she knew that right away. Yet the pain and loss she sensed in her Grandfather’s expression were foreign to her understanding of him. Softly, she asked, “Who is she?”

CHAPTER 66
The tears followed once again, of course, but this time they weren’t entirely driven by grief. I switched sides on the bench seat so that I could hug her, and she could use my shirt to soak up her tears.

“Ey, you all right, love?”

It was one of those women Maz had described, who came down to walk laps of the park for their daily exercise, so many thousand steps app-based thing. Maz waved a hand at her.

Not being at work first thing on Monday morning felt like a step down a path I did not want to take. Abuela’s path. “You must take care of this,” she’d told me. “Of him.”

Well, screw that.

Persuaded
A Short Story
By Maryanne Peters

Lord Brett Sinclair drove his Aston Martin up to the front portico of the Hotel Barrière Le Majestic in Cannes and threw the keys to the valet, Maurice.

“Welcome back, Lord Sinclair,” said Maurice, opening the door for the British peer, a regular visitor in the past

After getting punished for a fight he didn't start, Taylor's life has taken a turn for the weird. First it was strange dreams then it was a bizarre feeling that something isn't right. Now he's constantly cold and can't figure out why.
But these things are just the beginning of his problems.