I was trapped in nothingness, floating in an expanse devoid of all sensations. It was strange, and a bit of a relief, to be free of the body dysphoria that had been my constant companion since character creation, but at the same time the lack of any of my senses was maddening. There was nothing but empty blackness; no sights, sounds, scents, or even touch to tell me what was going on and, after getting used to a Fae’s enhanced senses, that absence caused a panic in me. If I had had a sense of my own pulse I’m sure that it would have been racing.

With no way to tell the passage of time, and only my own anxiety-induced thoughts to keep me company, I couldn’t be sure whether that non-existence had been mine for mere seconds, hours, or days. Then all perception returned in an instant, battering me with the sights, sounds, and scents of Haven, the feel of the breeze on my skin, the taste of the sea air, and of course the feeling that my body felt horribly wrong. The sudden shift was both gut wrenching and orgasmic as I tried to figure out what happened and adjust to that sudden wondrous influx of data from the world around me.

It was Pete who first recovered enough to ask, “What the hell just happened?”

“I… I don’t know,” Denise the deer Beastkin replied uncertainly. “I would have thought we had died if I hadn’t already gone through the horrors of death and resurrection in this game.” She shuddered visibly at whatever memories that brought up. The others who had died gave a similar shudder, a haunted look in their eyes.

It was then that we all had a message scrolling across our line of sight. “We apologize for the brief interruption in gameplay. This was due to a power outage and it took a moment for the backup generators to kick in.”

“Well, I guess that explains it,” Venika said with a shrug from where she sat on Lissany’s shoulder. Then she looked at our new crafter friends and asked, “So… ummm… what was death like? From what one of the developers told me they’re going to change it a bit in open beta, but for the closed beta they wanted to give us an incentive to not die often. Then he gave a maniacal laugh, so I’m a bit… concerned.”

“You do NOT want to die,” Hadrick the Dwarf said simply. “It was unspeakably horrible.”

Laesa apparently decided that her fellow Sprite, and the rest of us, needed to know more details though. “I guess that, in time, players like Priests and Medics will be able to learn skills to bring people back to life, because you have the option of waiting for up to six hours for someone to resurrect you. I tried that for like ten minutes before I got bored and decided to just wait out the game’s one day automatic resurrection at the nearest safe zone. I should have waited around longer, at least then I could have been entertained by watching the action for a while.”

It seemed that when you died in game you could wait around for a fellow player to revive you, or go straight to the waiting room, or Hell as our new friends had referred to it. If you decided to wait for another player to revive you then you could move around and explore in a spirit form until revived, but you were basically a ghost, nobody could hear or see you, and you couldn’t physically interact with anything. I guessed that if someone revived you then you would be returned to your body. If you weren’t revived within six hours though, then you would be automatically moved to the waiting room to wait out the remainder of your time until the automatic resurrection kicked in, and that was where the true horror was.

The waiting room was just that, a waiting room. First Laesa had had to get in line behind all the other people who had showed up before her, as each filled out a stack of forms for automatic resurrection that was nearly as thick as the Sprite was tall, in triplicate. Then, once she had finally filled out those forms herself and gotten her number, came the waiting. Waiting for a whole day for your number to be called so you could return to playing, while the worst elevator music imaginable played in the background.

Comfort wasn’t really high on the priority list for dead people either apparently, since all the chairs were uncomfortable wooden ones, some with splinters no less. There was a vending machine and a soda machine, but even if you did happen to have money when you had died, the selection was limited. The soda machine, which proudly proclaimed ‘Mountain Dew!’ on the front was all out of the popular flavors and only had raspberry cream soda. The vending machine was equally bad, with all the chips, gum, and sweet snacks gone, leaving only a single row of cranberry and pistachio yoghurt covered granola bars.

It wouldn’t have been so bad if there had been something to do, but there was one Sudoku book and all the puzzles had been solved. There were a total of three magazines available to read, but all of them were from the eighties, and the snarky lady at the counter would shush anyone who tried to make conversation. If you actually made a complaint, or even looked like you might, she would kindly suggest that you don’t die in the future if you don’t like the way she runs things.

“Tha… that’s diabolically evil,” Nishalle said, looking completely aghast as Laesa finished telling us of her far too long sojourn in the waiting room.

“Remind me not to die if I can avoid it,” Reiko added with a groan.

“I would think that would fall under common sense sweetie,” I teased, “especially since you’re our healer.”

“Yeah, trying not to die seems pretty obvious to me Reik…” Lissany started to say before she paused with a frown on her face. “Oh… kay, you know what, it feels really weird calling you that while you’re a guy. It’s kind of a girl’s name.”

My fiancé nodded, a faint flush painting his cheeks. “I was in a girly mood when we were deciding on our characters, and again when we did the character creation. I really should have thought ahead and picked something more gender-neutral. I guess that, despite what I was told, I never expected to be able to just switch gender at will. I’m so used to having to change characters in games based on what gender I feel like at the time. You can all just call me Rei for short, I’m pretty sure that can be a guy’s or a girl’s name.”

“There’s a name change option, under the character settings menu, I discovered it while in Hell. I was exploring the menus and stuff, since I was bored to tears and there was nothing much else to do,” Ashura pointed out from where she was sitting across from us beside her fellow Atlantean. “I think it can only be used once per character though, maybe they were expecting this problem with Kitsune players, or just the regular second guessing that some people have after making a character.”

It took him a few minutes to find it and make the change, but once I brought up the ‘show usernames’ option it showed his name now being Rei, which seemed a lot less awkward for everyone involved. With that matter out of the way, we finished our stew and the conversation returned briefly to possible shops and scavenging for materials. We had come up with wish lists for each of the crafters and prospective merchants by the time we set about our afternoon tasks.

We spent much of the afternoon doing quests. There seemed to be even more repeatable quests available now that I had managed to work out an agreement between the Fae and the village. We started out by scavenging materials and helping to begin construction of a defensive wall around the village. It was a quest that our whole party could do easily enough, even Venika with her small size. The village and the Fae Glade may have been a safe zone, but they could still be attacked during events and it made sense to secure them as much as possible against monsters, the undead, and whatever other dangers might be waiting out there.

There were also the ‘help out the villagers’ quests all over the village. Finding lost items, helping to repair homes and fishing boats, and even playing games with the local children took up much of the afternoon. It involved a lot more socializing than I was really comfortable with, but my dysphoria had died down significantly since I had changed out of my Autumn Court finery and into some regular clothes and my combat gear. It was still there of course, always gnawing at the edges of my mind, but it was at least at a level that I could manage without breaking down again anytime soon.

Not many of us had the skills needed to work on the hunting and gathering quest, but Venika was able to take charge there, tracking some wild game birds and a pair of deer and helping us to find some ripe berries and nuts with her ranger abilities. She and I took down the game birds with our flash freeze spells, while Nishalle used her sniper skills to take the deer (both bucks, much to my relief) down from a distance. I felt an unexpected pang of guilt and loss at the taking of those lives and made sure to say a prayer to Danu over the corpses. It was just a game right? And hunting quests were pretty standard fare, so why did I feel so guilty?

The answer was of course my knowledge of Fae culture and the ‘memories’ that had come along with it. Monsters were one thing, it was the Fae’s duty to maintain the balance of nature and magic, ingrained in them since their creation, and out of control monsters and the undead were a threat to that balance. Other living creatures, on the other hand, were to be nurtured and respected and the loss of any such life was felt keenly by the Fae.

I was sure that if Venika or Nishalle had taken Fae culture, they would have felt much as I had. It was a skill they both planned on taking with their next skill point since they could already speak Elvish, but found the Fae NPCs, particularly the Nymphs, a little unsettling. This was making it hard for them to relate to other Fae or really immerse themselves in their characters. I on the other hand had that knowledge and ‘experience’ that they didn’t and, as uncomfortable as I was with my own body, I found myself not even batting an eye at the thought of casual public nudity or sex. In fact, I had defended it the night before when Rei had freaked out about my Nymph attendant, Naerysse.

Once we had bagged the second deer, and fulfilled our quest quota, Lissany hefted the carcass over her shoulder and we followed the game trail back toward the road where we had parked the truck. Since the northern forest surrounding the estate was now the domain of the Fae, doing village gathering quests there was now an issue, so we had been sent to the southern woods for the quest. Unfortunately this meant that we were outside of the safe zone, so we needed to be on our guard.

I sent Venika ahead to scout the path back to the truck from the treetops and we all kept our senses peeled and stayed alert. Thankfully my Fae senses were very acute, as were Lissany’s, and even though Nishalle may not have been able to see well in the bright afternoon light, her nose and ears were just as sensitive as my own. I think we all heard it around the same time. There was something moving through the trees, making its way toward us, and whatever it was, it was really big.

“We need to get moving,” I said, an idea that was quickly met with the agreement of my pair of protectors. We began to quicken our pace, but it was then that Venika rejoined us, much sooner than we were expecting her.

“We’ve got trouble,” she muttered with a grim expression on her tiny face. “H3lls-Pwn is waiting to ambush us. I saw them planning it behind an outcropping of rocks less than fifty meters ahead, Razor reaaallly doesn’t like you Taelya.”

“The feeling is mutual,” I replied with a very un-princess-like snort. “Much as I hate to admit it though, at the moment we may have bigger…” That was when I saw it approaching through the trees, a massive monstrosity over thirty feet tall. It looked like a large human, or rather a parody of a human, with grey skin, patches of matted black hair all over its body, a head like a Neanderthal, and a large flabby stomach hanging over a loincloth which covered its groin. That wasn’t even the worst of it. The smell was absolutely foul, almost worse than the zombies had been up close and a whole lot more potent, making my eyes water in protest.

“Ogre! Everyone find cover!” I called out, before making for the cover of a large tree. Even as I moved I was gathering mana and trying to figure out my first spell. I needed to try and use my AOE spell, before it could get too close and I wouldn’t have the chance. Once I had made it behind the tree I began tracing the sigils in the air and calling them out, directing the mana and my will and then throwing the spell at the charging behemoth. “Tierre liantuir hannira!”

A blazing storm of fire engulfed the ogre and it screamed in pain, but when the smoke cleared it was still standing. Sure it was a bit blackened and burned, but now it was also really pissed off. Everyone who could started hitting it at once; Rei and Lissany opened fire with their shotguns, Pete was peppering it with his AK-47, Grell had his Glock out, and I was about to draw my own guns as well, until I saw how little effect they were having against it.

It was going to take too long for Nishalle to set up a decent sniper shot, and at that point I wasn’t really sure that it would do much good anyway. We needed a plan, but not many of us could dare get too close to it, especially when it uprooted a small tree to use as a club. One good swing and it could likely crush every bone in our bodies. “Umm… Taelya, maybe we should have tried to reason with it, I mean it is human…ish,” Pete’s voice called out from some nearby bushes.

“Yeah Pete, I’m sure that would have worked out real well, except for one problem, ogres eat people of our size for breakfast, literally. They especially love the taste of Humans, if the lore is correct,” I pointed out as casually as I could with my heart feeling like it was going to jump out of my chest and run away. “Would you care to remind me who among us chose that species for our characters? Feel free to go have a chat with him if you like though.”

“Your sarcasm is duly noted Your Highness,” his voice called back with a grim sounding laugh.

The ogre was seriously pissed off and heading straight for me, swinging its tree club in a violent arc and generally ignoring the gunfire. The smaller tree in its hands hit the one that I was hiding behind with enough force that it exploded into splinters. My cover remained rooted and standing, but the furious giant was far too close for comfort now, reaching around the tree to make a grab at me. I quickly rolled aside, trying to keep out of its reach, but it angrily snapped the top off the tree and brought it down toward me in a violent arc.

I silently thanked whatever Gods that might have been listening that I had decided to take gymnastics in addition to Kurinshal, as it was a combination of that skill, the elvish marital arts training, and my inherent Fae agility that prevented me from becoming a very dead Fae princess at that moment. My instincts, skills, and body took over at that point as I performed a double back flip and kicked myself off the side of another tree as the ogre’s new weapon hit the ground like a massive whip and snapped in half. By that point I was in the air, and safely out of the way, as I grabbed hold of a low branch and used the momentum to flip myself upward to land on it in a crouch.

Slightly astounded at what I had just done, that I was indeed still alive, and the fact that I didn’t even seem to be short of breath, I quickly drew in mana and cast my beginner fire spell. “Tierre liantuir!” I didn’t think it was going to hurt it since my much more powerful one had only pissed it off, but I was really hoping to distract it for a minute so I could get some space between us. I needed time to think of a proper plan and didn’t want my party-mates to worry about hitting me with friendly fire.

While my opponent was more concerned with putting out its flaming eyebrows than looking for me I made a quick dash for cover, behind another tree with Lissany and Venika for company. I had a plan of sorts, but if I was going to give the others a chance to complete it I needed to do more than set the ogre’s eyebrows ablaze. I would need to cast something that was actually going to hurt it, and keep its attention off us for long enough for it to work.

I needed to try one of the newer spell ideas that I had come up with, but I was going to need a few minutes since it required four sigils and I had never tried it, or any spell that powerful before. “Venika, try flash-freezing it,” I told the Sprite. It was another one of our beginner spells, so not very powerful and I didn’t think that it would last long, but it might buy us a minute or two. “Everyone get ready for close combat as soon as it breaks free! Pete and Liss, go for its legs! Nishalle, as soon as you can, go for the throat! Everyone else, cover them!”

Venika’s hands were in motion and she was chanting the sigils aloud as soon as I’d finished issuing the orders. “Aes’Suvas liantuir!”

The ogre had turned around as I called out orders and stomped its way furiously toward the sound of my voice, but the Sprite’s spell was quick and effective. She had managed to encase our opponent in ice, but that ice was cracking quickly, so I knew that I wouldn’t have much time. I drew as much mana as I could hold from the forest around us, wanting plenty on hand in case I needed to cast multiple spells. Then, as quick as my hand and lips could manage, I started drawing the sigils in the air and calling out their names, focusing very clearly on my intent. “Tierre kiara tala-aeluine utaera!”

Seven balls of screaming blue flames shot from my outstretched hand, peppering the behemoth’s face one after another, causing it to shriek in pain. The sound seemed to shake the woods, probably scaring off anything else alive nearby, but to us it was a call to arms. Rei started throwing balls of foxfire at it as Grell opened fire and Venika followed up with another simple fire spell, all of them aiming for its face as my scattershot spell finished its work. By that time the others were in place and Lissany brought her war hammer down on its gargantuan foot with a sickening crunch, even as Pete got in behind it with his colossal claymore and slashed at its Achilles tendon.

The moment it had fallen to one knee, howling in pain and clutching at its foot, Nishalle was in motion. Her katana slid free of its saya without a sound as she ran up the creature’s arm, going straight for its throat, the steel cutting deep and ending the massive creature’s life in a spray of crimson. Before the creature could fall to the ground and give its last twitching breaths she was at my side, half covered in red ichor.

We didn’t even have a chance to catch our breath before the first shots were fired from some brush to either side of the game trail about twenty meters away. Lissany, once again, managed to place herself and her shield between me and the hail of bullets from Ak-47s before I realized what was happening. There were too many bullets flying though, and Lissany couldn’t cover me from all of them as we were getting peppered from two angles. I had already felt like I’d been kicked in the chest twice, as bullets hit the Kevlar vest I was wearing over my leather armor, and a there was a searing white pain in my left shoulder.

Nishalle screamed in pain beside me and I could hear Razor telling his men from the left side of the trail, “C’mon guys, pour it on and kill the redheaded whore and the girl in the armor! The others will be easy once we take them down!”

I gritted my teeth against the agony in my shoulder and raised my right hand to cover the wound. I thought that I was bleeding badly, but it was getting hard to tell. I was suddenly having trouble breathing, I was shaking, my vision was getting blurry, and the pain in my shoulder was starting to fade to numbness as I tried to figure out some sort of counter-attack. I wasn’t the only one hurt either from what my blurred vision could see as I fell to the ground, as Nishalle was on the ground beside me clutching her leg. I thought that the others had gotten to cover, but I couldn’t see them to be sure.

When I hit the forest floor I felt the strangest sensation wash over me. My hand felt so warm and beneath it I could feel… life. It was really hard to place, but it was like I was connected to the mana in the earth beneath me. Not just in the earth either, but all the living things in it as well. My awareness of this mana expanded outward slowly, reaching out to encompass the trees, leaves, birds, forest animals, and the entire life of the forest, there within my grasp, I merely needed to reach out. All of it was bright, alive, and part of me, all but the intruders.

Had I wanted, I think I could have expanded that sense even further, but this was not the time to do so. The life l was feeling was answering my call, filling me up with an energy that no caffeinated beverage could ever compare to. I got to my knees, and my instincts told me that this was life of nature, mine to draw on if I needed, mine to command. Yes the forest was my home, an extension of myself and Razor and his cronies had intruded uninvited, defiled it with their presence, and attacked its very heart.

They needed to be taught a lesson. I reached out with that new sense of mine, telling the forest of my need, my desires. And the forest responded in kind, unleashing the vengeance of nature upon the intruders. The very brush that H3lls-Pwn were hiding in came alive, entangling them, growing thicker and sprouting needle-sharp thorns. I walked toward them in a daze, their screams becoming louder and louder in my ears as, one by one, they were torn to pieces.

As I approached, I was dimly aware of my party-mates joining me, Nishalle holding on to Lissany for support as she walked. By the time we got there the only one who hadn’t been torn to shreds was Razor himself. He wouldn’t be alive for long though, as he had already started bleeding profusely from a number of deep wounds. “Razor, you have intentionally attempted to kill a princess of the Autumn Court. Are you really so stupid that you would court the ire of my entire people? You’ll be dead very soon, but while you’re in Hell I would like you to think about one thing. I have merely killed you, your suffering has been short... this time. When you return, you will likely face whatever justice that my mother and my people feel is appropriate. I guarantee you they will not be so generous, the Fae have a history for making punishments both long and painful. We live such a long time and we like to enjoy it, you I’m afraid will not.”

“Wait… I…” he pleaded piteously.

“You will do nothing but die. I’ve gotten some satisfaction, but you hurt my sister as well, I’ll leave it up to her whether she wishes to kill you quickly or let you suffer a while longer.” I turned to Nishalle in concern. “Are you okay sis, he’s all yours if you want him?”

“I’m okay Taelya,” she quickly assured me. “They grazed me a couple times, nothing I can’t heal from, and who better to help me with that than him.” She turned to grin at Razor, showing the fangs that were the mark of the Tokh'dhraí racial ability, Thirst for Life. “I see that you’re pretty scared of my sister right now, and that’s understandable, but I’ll tell you a little secret… you should be far more scared of me. I’m an assassin, and if you ever cross us again, you’ll never hear or see me coming. The first and last thing that you’ll feel is my blade, my bullet, or my teeth.” With that she sank her teeth into his jugular, draining him of what blood and life force he had remaining to heal her wounds, giving a slight shudder as the last light of life drained from her victim’s eyes.

“Are you okay?” Venika asked, carefully approaching my sister.

Nishalle shook off whatever it was that she had been feeling. “I’m fine now. That wasn’t quite as gross as I had been imagining, it had a slightly fruity bouquet. It just felt weirdly good, like the biggest adrenaline rush I’ve ever had.”

“Good, I’m glad you’re feeling better sis,” I managed to say with a genuine smile as I fell again to my knees, my eyes blurring and my head spinning. The energy rush from whatever it was I had done had faded, and I had barely managed to keep up my intimidation act until Nishalle had finished Razor off.

“Taelya!” my companions all shouted at once before Rei caught me and laid me gently onto the ground.

My fiancé chanted a prayer to Inari in Japanese, his eyes closed as he held his hands to the bullet wound on my shoulder. “Shit, she’s lost a lot of blood and there’s a bullet lodged in there. I can’t heal her until we get the bullet out,” he said with a look of concern to the others. “The first aid kit I’ve got doesn’t have any forceps or anything, I really need to scavenge a hospital for some better medical tools. How the hell are we going to get the bullet out?”

“V… venika…” I called out to the Sprite, trying to steady my breathing, but not really succeeding. “K… kaida Siashe. F… focus on pulling the bullet out.” I carefully drew the sigils in the air for her with my good arm.

A look of determination settled over the Sprite’s small face as she watched me and then nodded. She took a deep breath and I could sense her gathering mana before drawing and speaking the sigils. “Kaida Siashe!” I could feel something moving inside my shoulder briefly before the agony caused me to scream out and, mercifully, I passed out.

I didn’t wake up in Hell, so I decided that things might be looking up, for the moment. I remembered the events before I fainted, but it was all a bit hazy, especially the specifics of how I had done whatever it was I had done. I almost thought it was a dream, before I went to sit up and searing pain erupted from my bandaged shoulder.

Rei was suddenly right there with tears in his eyes, pushing me back down into a lying position. “Don’t move yet babe, I just finished bandaging the wound, and the healing prayer, and it will take a few hours before you’re healed up properly. You lost a lot of blood too, I was afraid that we were going to lose you for a bit. Don’t you ever scare me like that again!” He turned away, I thought maybe to wipe the tears from his eyes, but he quickly produced some painkillers and a bottle of water, helping me to tilt my head up a bit to drink.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I offered, trying to give him a smile. Then, once I had swallowed the pills and a healthy amount of water, I wondered aloud, “How long was I out?” I risked a quick look around to find that Nishalle was watching over me with a worried expression on her face, but nobody else seemed to be around.

“Grell and Pete went to take the deer carcass to the truck and Liss and Venika are scoping the perimeter so we don’t get any more surprises,” my sister explained, not taking her eyes off me.

Rei gently lowered my head again as he looked down at me, the look in his eyes reminding me of just how much he loved me, and how much I loved him. “You weren’t even out half an hour, which is why I want you to lay still and recover for a bit. I don’t care if another ogre attacks, you don’t move until I say so.”

I thought of teasing him about just who wore the pants in our relationship, but I figured that wouldn’t go so well for me given how many dresses I’d worn in the last two days. Instead I teased, “Hey, I’m the princess here, I should be the one giving the orders.”

That was when Lissany ran into sight with Venika flitting close behind her. The Beastkin girl was slightly out of breath, and it really wasn’t surprising since she’d been running in her armor. Thus it was Venika who said, “Ummm guys… I hate to break up this touching moment, but we’ve got company coming.”