As I clicked on the "Connect to the Internet" icon on the screen of my Pentium computer I noticed the lighting of the room I was sitting in had changed. It seemed that my study was now illuminated by the computer screen. I logged in and double-clicked on the "Pueblo" icon.The familiar white screen came up, listing the worlds, or muds, on my personal list. I entered "Ancient Anguish". But as soon as I entered my password the room started to spin before my eyes. I sat up in a daze. I was in a large room with oak walls, three large booths on the right wall and a large door to the south. I shook my head dazedly and looked around. In the room were two other people. One man in about his 20s and a man who looked to be in his 30s. There also was a woman who was standing stock still by the wall.. like a statue. The other people looked as dazed as I was. The older man stood up and walked over to help me up.
"Hello", he said, "do you know where we are?"
The other man looked scared. He joined us.
"Where were you before you woke up here?" he asked me.
I smiled at them both... relieved i wasn't alone.
"I was in my study.. logging onto the internet," i replied, anxious to know what was going on. "So was I", the older man said. "And I was too!" cried the younger man, looking more frightened by the minute. The other guy looked confused. "What were you logging into? I was logging into a mud called-"
"-Ancient Anguish," I finished for him.
The boy’s eyes widened. He ran over to the woman, who had now un-statued and had collapsed to the floor. He helped her up.
"Where am I?" she asked, upset.
"That’s what we’re all trying to figure out," I replied. Then suddenly a man appeared. Then another man. Then a woman. Then a young girl. They popped up one after another, looking confused. Soon the room was almost filled with frightened people. Suddenly something dawned on me.
"Everyone please be quiet!" I shouted over the noise. The room hushed. I put my blonde hair behind my ears and stood up on a chair that was south, by the door.
"I think I know where we are", I announced.
The room turned into chaos, questions flying at me from every direction.
"Where?"
"How do we get out of here?"
"How do you know?"
"Who are you?"
I raised my hands. "Please!", I cried, "Be quiet!"
The room silenced.
"When you all popped up here.. were you all logging into AA?" i asked the crowd. A shock went over the room as they all nodded in agreement.
"This may sound crazy", I said, "But I think we’re all in AA.. like inside".
There was laughter and some shouts. I raised my hands again. The room quietened once more.
"Truly!" I cried, "Look around! Doesn’t this remind you of the Ancient Inn in Tantallon?"
Cries rang out across the room as people realised that I was speaking the truth.
"How do you think we got here?" shouted out a young woman. I shook my head.
"I honestly don’t know.. but i’m sure we’re in AA".
Everyone nodded. They agreed. A man came towards me.
"Shouldn’t we get everyone to say their AA char-names?" he asked me, smiling. I nodded. "Good idea," I said, grinning. He stood on a chair beside me.
"All of you," he shouted, "sit down in a circle. If we’re going to be stuck here together we might as well get to know one another". Most people were co-operative. A young man cried out, "What about the bears? Some of them login to the bear guild.. and what about the ogres, monsters etc?"
That one hit me, hard. I swallowed. I put my hands in my pockets. Suddenly I realised I wasn’t in my normal clothes anymore. I was in a robe. In the pockets were some strange coins.
"All look in your pockets", I said, "You all have coins.. we’ll have to buy weapons and kill like we do when we mud.. and we'll have to go get the bears."
I sat down in the circle with everyone else. It seemed the room was large enough for all of us to sit this way. Everyone seemed okay with that.. it seems they had adopted me as their leader. I grinned and tightened the hairtie around my hair.
"Well," I said, "I play Stargirl". Many voices spoke at once.
"Star!"
"Stargirl!!"
"Star?"
Then I recognised one.. very distinctly.
I turned to look to my right. The woman beside me was grinning, her smile lighting up her beautiful face. Her dark hair fell in little waves and her deep brown eyes sparkled with joy. She hugged me very tight to her. I knew immediately from her voice and smile that this gorgeous woman was my best friend, Lissa/Celyia.
"Cel!"
I threw my arms back around her and squeezed her tight. Everyone was watching, smiling. She grinned at me.
"Knowing you to take the leadership role, Star".
I giggled. The man beside Liss was the man who has shouted a few minutes before to arrange the introductions. He smiled and looked out to the circle.
"I’m Malire", he said. There were many high-fives and hugs going on. I put a finger to my lips. The next woman was twirling a strand of RED hair around one finger.
"I play Cionna," she said. Many greetings from her fellow chaosers. The circle went around swiftly. I hugged many people.. there was Nikki, Bluebell, Kylearan, Starlett, Asitoth, Vengance, Kitrina, Puccini, Pheobe, Whoami, Claire, Djelibeybi, Opie, Krq, Reba and many others. The man I had first met was Edog and the young boy introduced himself as Sargon. The woman who was statued turned out to be Silverbrook. I was surprised as I received hugs from people I didn’t know that well and people who I don’t think i’d ever met on AA before. I kept close to Lissa, not wanting to leave her side. I stood up.
"Everyone," I said, taking on a more serious tone, "I think we should split up and try and find weapons and other people who may have arrived early.. eg bears.. people stuck in Snag Creek etc. We all know where to go so take a good look around.. don’t get too hurt though, and all come back here by..", I checked my watch, "3pm.. 2 hours from now".
Everyone nodded and agreed. They split into their groups. I went with Lissa, Ky, Asi, Bluebell and Nikki to Dalair. We found 3 men crouched down by the dalair square. They looked very happy to see us. I approached them.
"We are in AA...inside the mud," I explained to them what had happened and answered their questions. One of the men looked shocked but the other two just laughed it off.
"Are you serious?," one of them asked, his eyes meeting mine and seeing my serious expression. I nodded solemnly.
"Yes, I am very serious," i added.
"What? is that possible?" he asked, his eyes widening.
"It obviously is. I don’t know how we got here, or when or how we’re going to get out but I can tell we’re in AA. This is dalair.. see? The kobold trader".
I pointed to the man behind them. They ceased laughter. They stood and I walked with them back to Lissa and the others. They introduced themselves as Kitarro, Sindssyg and James. Apparently they had tried to login to AA and had had dizzy spells and woken up beside a goat, a cow and two strange men who repeated the same sayings over and over.
"NPCs," I grinned. We walked south and to the east back to Tantallon. We found a distressed woman at a large town square which I guessed was the crossroads. She ran over to me when she saw us.
"Stargirl right?" she smiled, hugging me.
I was taken aback. "How do you know?" I asked.
"From your webpage silly.. I’m lizzy!"
I laughed and hugged her. I introduced her to Lissa, Asi, Ky, Bluebell and Nikki. There was a lot of hugs and shrieks before we calmed down. I checked my watch. It said 4pm.
"4pm!" I cried.
"What?" Lissa asked.
"We were meant to meet at 3pm!" I cried.
"Uh-oh," said Ky.
"But we’ve only been out for like, half an hour" Bluebell added, puzzled.
"Game time," Asi piped up, "your watch has gone into game time".
I groaned.
"We better get back to the inn.. people might be worried," I said.
We hurried there. When we entered we saw the room was full with worried people. I raised my hands for silence. "Your watches are now in game time", I said, "That’s why we were only out for a short time.. come back at 4am.. that’s 3 hours or so real time".
There was a murmur of voices. Then the people spread out...leaving the inn. Someone caught my arm.
"Star," a female voice said, excited. I turned around to look into the eyes of a dark-haired girl my age.
"I’m Razzle.. I just logged in.." she said.
I hugged her close to me.
"Who told you what was going on?" I asked her.
"Oh, Sindssyg did," she replied, smiling, completely relaxed, unlike me who suddenly didn’t feel as safe as I used to in AA.
"Kat!" Lissa called from the south, "let's get going!"
I pulled Razzle by the arm out the door. We met up with the rest of my group and we walked slowly to the crossroads. I told them a plan I had thought of. We would all go to Elmor's weapon store and get some weapons and also some armour from Myrtae's. We’d all go out into the forest, far north, and try and reach Hobbitat to find some more people. It was a simple plan, but I wasn’t sure about the killing part.. I currently on AA was only level 6 and if we met up with anything too ugly I didn’t know what I would do. Lissa squeezed my hand, as if she was reading my mind.
"That sounds good Star, we should be fine".
They all knew I was the lowest level of the group.
"I’ll protect you Star," Ky grinned.
I nodded.. feeling a little bit better.
"Shouldn’t we get going?" Bluebell asked, breaking my thoughts.
"Yes," I said, "but we need to stop off at the bank first".
In the bank I withdrew 5000 coins, and the others followed suit. We walked a few metres south on Shoreline Road and around the corner to where the western marketplace was. We entered Elmors and looked into a large bin of weapons. I tried out a large sword.. but Nikki handed me a large club which she said was better for clerics. I nodded and swung it a few times to test it. Lissa chose a silver club and the other four chose large swords. We walked out with our weaponry and walked northeast to Myrtaes. Inside we all picked out some sturdy platemails. When we had paid for our armour a woman walked in with hair the colour of fire. She looked lost.. and worried. I waved to her.
"Hi," I said, smiling to put her at ease, "It’s Stargirl from AA".
"Oh!" she cried, "Hiya!! I’m Pinkie.. is it true we’re really inside AA?"
"Yup!" I replied.
"Don’t worry ," Lissa said, coming over to us, "we’ll be fine. We’re going to round everyone up and try and figure out how to get out of here, right Star?"
I grinned at her. "Right".
Liss linked arms with Pinkie and we set off for Hobbitat. It seemed to take forever. When we were less than halfway we met 3 ogres.
"Uh-oh", said Razzle, taking her sword from her belt.
"A big Uh-oh," I added.
Asi squeezed my shoulder. "You’ll be fine Star.. use your cleric wound spells".
Of course! Knowing Asitoth to remember that. I concentrated hard. The first ogre jumped back, struck by my attack...even though I had only used my will. Nikki cheered. It slapped me across the face. Then it hit me in the stomach. None of these hits gave me much damage but I felt them.. boy did I feel them. Ky stepped in, slashing the second ogre’s arm. Then Nikki, Razzle, Bluebell, Pinkie, Lissa and Asi stepped into action, firing blows left and right at the beasts that stood before us. The next blow I received sent me flying backwards, knocking Nikki down behind me. Lissa rushed to help us, abandoning her fighting. I shook my head.
"Lissa get back there! Ky, Raz, Bell, Pinkie and Asi can’t do it all themselves!" I cried. She gave me one last worried glance before she rushed back to help kill the ogres. One of them fell to the ground at Ky’s feet, it’s blood flowing over the ground. Bluebell looked disgusted as she saw the head of the ogre roll elsewhere. Ky looked proud and turned to me, grinning, before he went to the second ogre which Lissa, Bell, Pinkie and Nikki were fighting. I kept my attention fixed on the third ogre I was fighting with Asitoth, but I had the corner of my eye fixed on Lissa.. looking out for my sis. She looked tired but she slashed away, ducking and diving to dodge the attacks. As Asi knocked the third ogre dead I side-stepped to help Nikki, Bell, Pinkie and Lissa out, even though at my low level I wasn’t much help against these beasts. When the third ogre was dead, (decapitated proudly by Kylearan) we all collapsed on the ground in a heap for a rest. We were all breathing heavily. I checked my watch: 12am game time. We had less than an hour real time. 10 minutes later I rounded up the group, getting them on their feet to keep going. We walked further north where we met another group of people coming from the ghost ship. It was Djelibeybi with 3 others. She introduced them as Nauvot, Bluesmok and Cowchip. I gave them all a hug and they joined us as we entered the Hobbitat gate and walked into the north-east tunnel. Lissa, Dj and I left east to the shop, but the others carried on to the barber shop, square etc. In the shop we found no new people. Starlett, Cionna, Reba and Krq were inside, buying weapons and armour. They left to go to Neville and the monk temple to check for stray players... if you could call them players anymore, now that it wasn’t just a game. No, this was no game... it was real.. it was a fight for life, a fight to get out.
Give me more!!
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