April 1st, 2032

“Holy crap that’s bright!” 

Rhys lifted one hand, covering his eyes against the bright light that assaulted them. “What the hell happened?” he muttered. “I thought I was gonna play Firewind.”

“Welcome, Player,” a computerized voice broke in. “You have entered the staging area for the Fully Immersive Virtual Reality MMORPG known as Firewind.”

His eyes, which had been squinted almost completely shut behind his hand, shot open and he sat up, jerking upright as if someone had just sent a jolt of electricity through his body. 

Body. His body.

“My body,” he muttered and looked down at himself. He was wearing a simple pair of brown boots and pants and a loose, black shirt. The kinda stuff you’d imagine in a fantasy book. That aside it didn’t look like regular clothes. The colors were… bright… vibrant in a way he just couldn’t explain. Even the room around him looked different. 

“It’s like I’m living in an anime,” he muttered. “Everything’s brighter than the real world.” He scrambled to his feet and looked around him. He was in a relatively plain room, maybe fifty by fifty feet square. He had been laying on the ground in the exact center of the room and on the wall directly across from him stood two doors.

He studied them for a moment and considered what the computer voice had said. 

“Character creation?” he muttered. “OH! I have to create my game avatar!” He walked over to the doors and noticed that although both looked identical in nearly every way there was one distinct difference. Each door had a round plate in the center, and on that plate was a male or female figure, much like you’d see on a public restroom. 

“Guess that’s how you pick the avatars gender?” he said to himself and with a shrug pushed open the male door and stepped into another room.

The second room was nearly identical to the first save for a single small pedestal standing in the exact center of the room. On the pedestal stood a figure that he realized was wearing the exact same clothing that he was, and as he got closer he was able to make out a few more details. “Whoa,” he muttered as he came to within a few feet of the motionless figure. “That’s me.” 

The figure on the pedestal was an exact copy of himself. It was like looking into a mirror in three dimensions. He walked around the figure, looking at it from all angles. “How the hell did they get such an exact scan?” he wondered.

“Records indicate that you have chosen to play as your real life gender,” the computer voice said again, seeming to come from every direction at once. “Standard procedure is to offer the player the option to play as themselves when they have chosen their own gender. If you would rather not play in your own body than you may make adjustments to your avatars in game appearance, if you like.”

“That’s so weird,” he said with a laugh and bounced up and down on the balls of his feet for a moment. “Man this is nuts, it really feels like I’m standing here. I mean, I know I’m lying in bed at home right now but… it’s so real.”

“Please indicate if you will play as yourself or if you will change your avatar,” the voice asked and he frowned. 

“Kinda pushy for a computer game,” he muttered but he walked over to the center pedestal and looked at the figure of himself. After a minutes thought he shrugged. 
“Why not. Might as well play as me.”

There was a flash of light and he cried out, falling back slightly with his arms up in front of his face to ward off the glare once again. When the light faded, and he was able to lower his arms, he blinked several times, not sure at first if what he was seeing was actually there. 

Instead of a single pedestal with a single figure there were now several. Each with an identical copy of himself standing on it. But now each figure was holding a different weapon. Giant battle Axes, Broad Swords, one handed long swords, cross bows, and on and on. He moved from left to right, and as he did the figures shifted, sliding along as if they were on a conveyer belt. He stopped before one figure and held his hand up in front of him, palm facing the figure. A small menu appeared in front of him and he started tapping at the buttons floating in the air. 

“Jeez, this is gonna take some getting used to,” he muttered but carefully read over the information. “Ok,” he muttered. “So different weapons belong to different classes, and different classes get different skills. Skills are how you can be most effective in combat. Weapons skills are like special attacks… Ok, nothing I didn’t already read in the manual…”

“So, Rogue, Warrior, Archer, etc. All the classics. And a bunch of others that are more specialized.” He walked to his right, watching as the figures slid by him while he seemed to stay in the very center of the room. Finally a figure landed in front of him and he grinned. In one hand it held a slim long sword, simple and elegant with a straight, double edged blade, and in the other a shorter blade. He reached out and opened the menu again and just before he touched the button to select the Dual Wielder as his class the short blade in the figures hand seemed to flicker. 
Then his finger touched the button and a wash of warm light flowed over him. 

A moment later the agony hit and he started to scream.

April 1, 2032

“Oh my god. Oh my god, holy crap, god dammit…” Rhys muttered to himself over and over and over. He wasn’t even aware he was speaking, really. Not for a while at least. It took some time for him to come to his senses and when he did he found himself lying on the ground, the grass scratching at his cheek and the exposed skin of his arms. 

“Holy… what the hell happened?” he gasped and pushed himself shakily to his hands and knees. He was wearing a simple pair of brown boots, brown trousers and a dark green shirt. The kind of clothes you’d imagine in most fantasy books or games and he lifted his head, groggily. It took a lot longer to do so than he thought it really should have as he kept having to fight the almost irresistible desire to just fall over and go back to sleep. 

“That hurt. I mean that really, really, hurt. It wasn’t supposed to hurt was it? I thought playing a game wasn’t supposed to hurt. It’s just a game. Why did it hurt? What the hell happened?” As he continued talking he realized he was starting to sound more desperate, bordering on hysterical so he clamped his jaw shut tightly against the rambling words that still wanted to spill out of him and fought back the panic rising in his chest.

He pushed hard, falling over onto his hip until he could roll onto his butt. Finally seated on the grass he looked around and for a brief moment nearly forgot the agony he had experienced just moments before. 

In the distance, maybe a ten minute walk from where he stood, stood a massive city, the likes of which he had never seen. Stone walls surrounded it and towers stood at regular intervals along the wall. The surrounding countryside was rolling grassy hills and gentle valleys, scores of monsters roaming about. Wolves, and creatures he couldn’t identify. Excitement flooded through him but it was tempered by the weakness and residual pain he still felt.

“Ok. I’m in Firewind. That’s obvious enough. But what the hell happened?” He crossed his legs and propped his elbows on his knees, chin dropping into his hands a moment later as he frowned and considered the situation. 

“I logged into the staging area,” he muttered. “Created my character, and then I officially logged into the game itself.” Everything appeared to be ok up to that point. “Next thing I know I’m in the worst agony I’ve ever experienced in my life and I’m waking up out here.”

He looked around again. The sun had risen in the distance, still hanging low toward the horizon and a few people could be seen leaving the town and making their way out into the fields. Within minutes the sound of battle could be heard, people yelling and the clash of metal.

“Alright, that hurt, we’ve figured that out. Next order of business, what’s my current condition?” He stood and took stock of himself. He still felt a bit weak but every minute that passed had him getting stronger and the pain was slowly receding. He was still wearing the simple outfit he’d had on in the staging area but now he also had a brown cloak and a leather strap wrapped around his chest. Reaching up and back, he found the hilt of a sword protruding over his right shoulder but he found now secondary weapon. 

“Looks like I’ll have to buy myself a short sword?” he mused.

Lifting his hand, he swiped it through the air in front of him. A moment later  a menu opened and above that a single green health bar appeared. He frowned immediately as he took a closer look at his health bar. 

He had one hundred hit points. But his bar was at ninety. The last ten points in his bar were blacked out. Checking his inventory he found a health potion and downed it but his health bar stayed exactly as it was. “What the heck is going on?” he muttered. 

“Ok, how long was I out?” He searched through the menu until he found a clock. “7:20 in the morning?” He shook his head and looked at the time again. It hadn’t changed. 

“How the hell did I sleep all night? Is it even possible to sleep in a game? I’ve gotta log out and I haven’t even done anything yet, dammit.” 

He reached for the menu icons again to log out when one of the buttons on his menu started to flash and he blinked, staring at the simple button marked ‘messages’. With a shrug he pressed the button and another window opened, a small wall of text scrolling by slowly as he read. 


[b][i]Welcome to the fifth anniversary celebration of Firewind! I'm sure some of you might have noticed by now that friends that have died in game haven't respawned. I am sorry to tell you that they're dead, :) They won't be coming back. Firewind has become a much more realistic game than ever before. Dying in game  will result in real world death.

Also, no one can log out of the game anymore. Removing the FIVR gear from your physical body in the real world will also result in death. Noticing a theme here peoples? We're going to have so much fun!!

In other news, here's what's happening. Six servers were affected with twenty-five thousand players logged onto each. If you're doing the math at home then you know that you're trapped in this wonderful, beautiful, ever evolving world with 150,000 of your closest friends. Well... except for those that have died already.

Getting to the beauty of it though, you'll be noticing some changes to the world around you as time goes on, I don't want to spoil the surprises so I'll leave them for you to discover. Otherwise there's only one other thing that you need to know. There IS a way to escape this world. There is a quest that can be completed, or an artifact that needs to be found, maybe a specific boss to destroy. If someone discovers the key, the virus I uploaded will be destroyed and you'll all be able to log out of the game. 

In the meantime, have fun, and try not to die! :*[/i][/b]

The more he read, the colder he felt. By the time he reached the end he was sure he had ice water flowing through his virtual veins instead of blood.

“Holy crap.” He closed the windows with another swipe of his hand and looked out over the gentle grassland again. About a hundred feet away a small group of new players were attacking a pack of wolves. Four players to half a dozen monsters and the chill he felt grew even colder. One of the players, a young looking man, swung at the lead wolf and scored a hit with his mace. The beast shuddered and a moment later shattered into a thousand shards of light.

Through the glittering cloud of virtual debris a second wolf lunged, its teeth flashing bright in the sunlight and closed on the mains throat. His HP bar dropped all the way to zero and his body shattered, just like the wolves had. 

“Aw, damn it, Ryan got himself killed already?” one of the players yelled and the other two laughed.

Rhys swallowed hard, turned his back on them, and started running as hard as he could toward the city gates.