Tyler found himself on his hands and knees, looking at a patch of red grass, flecked with touches of green. It felt slimy beneath his hands and carried the scent of rusted iron. Lifting his left hand, he stared at the thick, cherry liquid that coated his palm and dripped between his fingers. Before he could process what it might be, something hit the grass ahead with a wet thud, and rolled towards him, leaving a glistening trail in its wake. The ball gently bumped his right arm and came to a rest.

  Except, it wasn’t a ball at all. It was someone’s head. Without the body. The face was frozen in terror, teeth smashed in its open mouth, eyes bulging as if to escape their sockets.

  Tyler let out a scream, guttural and harsh from the very depths of his throat as he scrambled backwards. He looked up, searching for the body that was missing its head. He found it several feet ahead of him, slumped against a tree with blood spurting from the shredded remnant of its neck as it slowly slid down to take its final rest.

  Standing over the corpse was a tall figure. Too tall for a man. Skin that looked like the charred remains of a tree was stretched so thin across its body that it seemed impossible it hadn’t torn. Gnarled ridges and rough edges covered every inch of the thing. It turned its head in his direction but where eyes and ears should have been, there was only grooved skin. The thing had massive nostrils though. Three of them, stretching across the centre of its face, flaring as it sniffed its surroundings. It’s mouth was open, revealing sharp teeth, like black stalactites hanging inside a cavern.

  Tyler’s heart beat against his ribcage, wanting to escape whether Tyler followed or not. His breaths were shallow, swift, like his beating heart. Every instinct, every fibre of his being was telling him to run but he forced himself to stay calm. Forced himself to stay still. The thing continued sniffing, twisting its head this way and that, eventually settling in his vague direction.

  Given the lack of eyes and ears, Tyler reckoned it was dependent on smell. Like a cat or dog. And if that was the case, it would likely be able to discern his scent. At least, it would know there was something here that was not like the other smells. As if to prove Tyler right, the thing began moving in his direction.

  If his heart had been beating fast before, now it was trying to set a world record for beats per minute. His breaths were struggling to keep up, his lungs failing to draw air fast enough. He glanced frantically around him, searching for a place to hide, a place to flee to but the forest offered little cover, like it had not to the headless corpse before him.

  The headless corpse?

  The headless corpse!

  He looked to where the head had fallen. The red grass. The glistening trail of blood it had left behind. He leapt forward and grabbed the head, holding it above himself so what blood remained would fall from its severed neck and drain over him. Then he put the head back, rolled in the puddle of blood that soaked the grass, and stood as the thing was almost upon him. Cautiously, carefully, he crept past the advancing creature. The thing turned towards him as he passed, but Tyler ran as quickly as he dared and positioned himself against the headless corpse that lay against the tree. He hoped it would work. That the creature would think he was the corpse and leave him alone. The thing looked in his direction, sniffed the air several times but then stilled. It turned back to the head, walked over to it and crouched down, where it opened its mouth impossibly wide and consumed the head whole. Tyler silently gasped. He had thought, or rather, he had hoped the corpse was nothing more than a hunter’s kill.

  He watched from the corner of his eye as the thing returned, its massive nostrils flaring again as it sniffed around Tyler. It leaned in closer, its head hovering above Tyler’s right shoulder, then against his face, then to his left. It sniffed across his torso and stopped over his heart. Did it know? Could it sense him some other way? Tyler thought back to his words to the old man and grimly smiled. He better not die? He hadn’t even lasted five minutes.

  The thing began to open its mouth but then stopped. It turned its head, looked into the distance and stood abruptly. Tyler carefully shifted out of the way, and lay a few inches from the headless corpse. The creature began to walk in the direction it was looking, but as it did so, one of the gnarled ridges on its bark-like skin detached with ferocious speed, shooting into the corpse, where Tyler had been.

  His heart still pounding, Tyler watched as the creature walked away before letting out the breath that he had been holding. Above him, the black leaves of the forest trees shuffled, as if they too were glad to see the creature leave. Slivers of sunlight danced through gaps in the canopy. He looked down at the drying blood on his body, its stench thick in his nostrils. Only then did he realise he was naked. But he didn’t care. The most beautiful girl in the world could walk upon him in this moment and he wouldn’t care.

  He was alive.

  Suddenly, white text floated into his vision.

  [Quest Complete: Survive an Encounter with a Demon Tree Sprite]

  [+176,000 XP]

  He sprang upright, legs still resting on the forest floor, but the text followed him, fading out when it reached the top of his sight, before more text faded in at the bottom.

  [Level Gained!]

  For the briefest of seconds, a brilliant burst of golden light enveloped him like a miniature supernova, before dissipating in a flare of flickering sparks.

  +1[INT]

  +1[RES]

  +2[WIS]

  +1[CNV]

  That’s right. What had the old man said? Cytheria was a game-world. He tried to think back to the last time he’d played a game but nothing came to him. The memories of his old life remained missing.

  Perhaps he should have chosen the simple tutorial. He’d thought an advanced tutorial would take him through every aspect of the game. Be more comprehensive than the simple one. He hadn’t considered that it would force him to learn or die. Though now that he thought about it, it couldn’t really get more advanced than that. What better way to learn than by doing, and what better motivation than having his life on the line? And he had to admit, it had been effective.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  He looked at the headless corpse to his right. Perhaps not effective for everyone.

  He wondered briefly who the person had been, what dreams they might have had. Whoever the person was, it was over for them. There would be no going back to make a better choice. There would be no living a new life. Tyler burned the image of the headless corpse into his memory. It would be his first memory – a reminder of what could happen if he wasn’t careful. A reminder that dead men have no purpose.

  Speaking of purpose, he’d been here too long. He needed to move. That creature – the Tree Sprite, he guessed – could come back at any moment. He recalled the old-man’s words on accessing the user interface but he needed to get to somewhere safer first. He could figure out what it all meant then.

  He stood and looked around him, gathering his bearings. The forest floor was littered with dying leaves and fallen branches, the vibrant golden glow of a setting sun scattered across its surface. Dark tree trunks, looking thin and sickly, rose to the black canopy above in all directions, their long shadows cutting across the dark roots on the ground. Not a sound could be heard. He looked to the right, the direction the Tree Sprite had walked, and thought it best to head in the opposite way.

  He turned to do so but stopped himself. He had no idea if there were more of those things out there, or whatever else could be lurking in the shadows. But the Tree Sprite had been drawn to something. There would be others here. Others like him and the headless corpse who had chosen the advanced tutorial. Billions of souls across billions of worlds, the old man had said. That Tree Sprite had to be heading towards something. Perhaps it was heading towards someone.

  He looked back in the direction the Tree Sprite had gone. How far ahead was it? He looked down at his naked body, still covered in blood. He started grabbing leaves from the forest floor, slapping them onto the blood and sticking them to his body. Where the blood had dried, he wiped more from the corpse beside him, feeling revulsion every time for violating its dignity but what choice did he have? He was alive and he planned to stay that way.

  Before long, he looked like a budget version of the Tree Sprite, small twigs hanging off the leaves plastered to him. He felt a little relief that his important bits were covered. If he did run into someone else, he wouldn’t be completely embarrassed.

  He crushed some more leaves between his hands, rubbed his face with it, doing his best to cover every inch of himself in the musky scent. He hoped at the very least, that the smell of the leaves was more powerful than the blood. It smelt that way to him.

  Text floated across his vision again.

  +1[WIS]

  +1[CNV]

  He chuckled quietly to himself. Seemed the game agreed with him. He turned to the direction the Tree Sprite had headed in, took a deep breath and started walking. Well, he tried walking. His legs seemed to be as useful to him as they were in the hospital bed he had left behind. During the rush of adrenaline, they had been eager to do his bidding but now, they were staging a quiet mutiny, as if they had more sense than to be heading towards the thing that almost killed him.

  “You will do what I need you to,” he said, looking at his legs like a parent to their child.

  If he wanted to survive here, he’d need to learn to do things he might not want to, like with the blood, and not always under the influence of adrenaline. His mind and body would have to get used to it. Moving one foot in front of the other was difficult but he forced himself forwards, one step, two, three. He got into a rhythm, the adrenaline reduced, his heartbeat slowed down, his breathing normalised. Before long, he began to jog lightly.

  He followed a parallel path to the one the Tree Sprite had taken. He didn’t want to be right behind it when he caught up. The leaves that covered his body rustled with every step, a few occasionally falling away, the odd twig snapping under his feet. He wondered where in this forsaken forest, he’d be able to find some proper clothes.

  It didn’t take long to catch up to the thing. It hadn’t gotten farther than a few hundred metres from where Tyler had first encountered it. It didn’t seem to be in a particular hurry, moving languidly towards its target. As Tyler got closer, within thirty metres of it, it abruptly stopped and turned its head, nostrils flaring, sniffing the air around it. Tyler ducked behind a tree for what little cover it could offer and watched carefully. His heart beat faster but not like before and his breaths came naturally. After a few moments, the creature lowered its head and continued on. Tyler gave himself a pleased smile. It seemed his camouflage had worked. Maybe outfits made of leaves was the way to go. With a bounce in his step, he followed at a distance, off to the right, matching the creature’s pace.

  As he followed, the unnatural silence in the forest was broken only by the rustling of his makeshift outfit and the crunch of twigs beneath his feet. No birds chirped in the branches above. No excited chitter of squirrels leaping between trees. Even on the forest floor, he saw no signs of life. No sign of ants building a colony, or the webs of spiders between branches. No slimy trails through the fallen leaves.

  The leaves themselves and the grass were merely touched with green, the rest tarnished in black. The bark of the trees surrounding him had blackened, with layers peeling away in places, revealing a soft pulp beneath, with an off-colour amber hue. Even the roots sprawled across the ground looked infected, their surfaces dotted with puffed-up boils leaking black pus.

  Before he had time to ponder further, he noticed the trees ahead began to thin, the space between the sickly trunks growing ever so further apart. He took a chance and sped up, staying on the parallel path but getting closer to the Tree Sprite. He could see the edge of the forest, dark orange sunlight bathing large grey pebbles where they met the last of the rotted grass and dead leaves. He got even more closer, ducking behind a tree, right at the edge of the treeline, so he was no farther than ten metres from where the Tree Sprite stood.

  It had emerged onto a bank that gently sloped down to the edge of a stream of clear water. Smooth river stones of various sizes spread from the forest’s edge right to the turquoise-blue water, disappearing beneath its surface. On the far side, another bank rose to meet another swathe of forest, but even in the fading light, it looked healthier, more alive than the one Tyler was in.

  At the water’s edge, no more than fifteen metres ahead of where the Tree Sprite stood, ripples of waves lapped against the river bank as something swam towards it. A moment later, a woman emerged from the water, fully naked. Long silver hair framed a face with high cheekbones, and large, alluring eyes. Her golden brown skin glowed in the light of the setting sun, while her silver hair, like a waterfall of liquid moonlight, flowed past her shoulders, over her body and to almost halfway down her thighs, protecting her honour from his gaze.

  He knew he shouldn’t stare but he hadn’t seen someone so beautiful. Not that he would remember if he had, but he was sure he hadn’t.

  She moved with delicate grace, stepping lightly across the stones beneath her feet, her eyes firmly on the Tree Sprite. Her lips curled ever so slightly.

  The creature didn’t hesitate. Projectiles flew from its body with incredible speed, aimed at the silver-haired woman, but they never reached their target. Tyler’s eyes widened as the sharp pieces of bark bounced off an invisible barrier and fell to the ground. Almost in the same instant, flames erupted from the Tree Sprite’s body, engulfing it from head to toe. Reflections danced across the wet stones as the Tree Sprite writhed in agony yet it didn’t move. It didn’t try to run to the water that could save its life. Tyler realised then that it was trying to, but just as there was an invisible barrier protecting the woman, there was something trapping the creature in place. In mere seconds, the Tree Sprite crumbled to the ground in ashes, its screams unheard, like the person it had killed earlier.

  The ashes settled on the wet stones, absorbed into the water as Tyler turned his attention back to the woman. She gave the creature less thought than he did, having already turned away towards her equipment, gleaming by the water’s edge. Tyler knew he shouldn’t look but he was mesmerised by the curves of her body, the flawlessness of her skin, the confidence with which she moved. The power she had displayed was both terrifying and stunning. He needed to speak to her. If she was another one on the tutorial, she was clearly ahead of the curve. He just hoped she’d be willing to help him. As he made to leave the cover of the forest, he felt something sharp press against the nape of his neck.

  A female voice whispered into his ear.

  “Move, and you die.”