Note: This story takes place during Book 3: Finding Audrey

I waited a full minute for the Dark Pantheon screen to finish the loading sequence and I kind of sighed; it had been taking forever lately and I really wanted to know what was wrong. It definitely wasn’t on my end; this wasn’t even my computer. No matter, my character loaded into the city of Wertheral and I was finally able to survey my surroundings. Though I had become increasingly disinterested in the game over time I still felt very much at home here with my character. Creating Audri was really the first time I’d actually managed to present as a girl without feeling embarrassed about it. Now, here I was sitting in a room in the Tri Pi sorority literally wearing a dress, hose, and heels like it was normal. Alicia had done my makeup and Melanie placed a warm compress on my sprained ankle. I’d told them over and over again that I could just go to the hospital, but they insisted I let them help me. Weird, right?

I began to move my character, but then I noticed that the mail icon in the upper right-hand corner of the screen was blinking. I almost didn’t check it; nearly no one uses in-game mail which meant it was probably from the system. Maybe an even reminder. Who knows? For whatever reason, I decided to walk my character over to the mailbox and take a look. It wasn’t a system mail, just a single letter from ‘GreyGirl17’. What the hell was this? I double clicked to open the letter and saw the following:

‘Meet me over by Everburning Mines.’

This was a recent message, sent maybe twenty minutes ago, and Everburning Mines was a high level zone. In fact, it had just come out with the recent expansion, so whoever I was dealing with was a pretty decent player. I was a little wary, I’ll admit. This was a full PVP game after all. Whoever it was, maybe they planned to shank me and steal all my gold. Just to be sure, I dropped all of my gold and extra items in my bank before catching a mage portal over to Everburning Mines.

As soon as I dropped out of the portal I saw her standing alone next to the dungeon entrance. She was a brigand class, sporting a black cap with a round brim, dressed in pirate long-coat and sporting a rapier tucked snugly into a scabbard at her hip.

“Um…hello??” I typed. It took her a second, but she finally sputtered to life and typed back.

“Sup Audrey?” She replied.

“Who are you???” I typed back, making sure to put extra question marks so she’d know I mean business. Then, it suddenly occurred to me that she’d spelled my name ‘Audrey’ instead of ‘Audri’. Who was this? Did she know who I was.

“It’s Tiffany, come on, don’t you recognize me?”

Tiffany? Really? In ‘Dark Pantheon’? Come to think of it the avatar definitely LOOKED like Tiffany. Why was she here, and why did she have a high level character?

“I don’t believe you,” I finally typed back. “Tiffany doesn’t play games, especially not Dark Pantheon.”

“Right,” She replied. “How’s Tri Pi?”

What the hell.

“Okay, why are you IN this game, and what’s with the high level character???”

“I’ve been playing this game since it came out,” She replied nonchalantly. “You just never bothered to ask me what my hobbies were.”

“Um, boys and makeup?” I took a jab at her.

“Among other things. Okay, so I need to talk to you about a few things, first um…there’s a sub-floor in this dungeon, if we beat four of the bosses, I get a new class hat that boosts my starts. I can’t do it alone. Second…I’m worried about you…”

“Why are you worried about me? I’m fine.”

“No you’re not,” She replied. I had a hard time gauging what she was thinking; the game didn’t allow for facial expressions. “Look um…I…we…the whole house. We haven’t really been fair to you.”

“Tiffany to be fair you caught me breaking into your house. I kind of deserve it.”

“No dammit,” Tiffany quickly typed. “Look, tying you up was…that was probably necessary. I mean we didn’t know who you were and we’re women, we can’t be too careful. I think after that we went overboard.”

“Overboard how?” What the hell was she talking about?

“Look it’s not…normal. What’s happening isn’t normal. I’m not really a soft person, but I’m super worried about you. This isn’t right.”

“Tiffany, I literally have no idea what you’re talking about,” It was like she was losing her mind. What did she think the problem was? I was getting to hang out with sorority girls and I was getting to be ONE of them. What could possibly be bad about that?

“Ugh fine,” She said. “Just know I’m worried about you and if you need to talk, I’m here.”

“Don’t you have a hat you need to get?”

“Yeah,” She replied. “Let’s go get the stupid hat.”