Shell felt blinded. Not just because she had lost sight in the weird fungus, but because it took away her hearing. Muffled noises could rumble through at first and then there was nothing. She started to whistle to calm her nerves even when she knew something had gone wrong.

  Judging by the distance of where the portal had spawned above them, it would have taken them at most two minutes to reach the destination. She had seen the red light briefly before feeling movement under her from the pathfinder meaning she was safe. For all she knew, she was the only one that made it and millions of thoughts stemmed from that. What would she do? Would she go back home? Could she?

  She felt weightless for awhile like she could float off and never touch ground again which told her that they had made it into space. Then things became confusing and her whistling got louder. Jerky movements, pressure around her like she was being grabbed, and then a feeling of being warped like they had experienced when coming from the last floor. Finally, there was stillness. Not even a notification to reassure her.

  She laid there in the dark silence whistling her favorite tune until a string of notifications made her stop. 5607 death notifications. What is happening out there?! Do they need me? Panic started to rise within her, and she couldn’t seem to keep a tune. Her heart was beating incredibly fast and she thought it might pop from her chest.

  Then she was free. The fungus was gone. Light and sound returned like one of Kumo’s intense blasts of wind. Intense blue light coming from a small star in the sky above nearly blinded her. Murmurs of confusion, and a distant rumbling filled her ears to the point she had to press her hands over them until she could handle the stimulation once again.

  When she opened her ears and eyes again, she was met with the sight of her friends and most of the prisoners/pathfinders. She couldn’t help but smile even though she knew there was a lot of life lost. Sitting around them was a square of epic proportions and it was glowing. Beneath them was a glowing word that she somehow knew was “START”.

  Welcome to Floor Three!

  Main Objective: Complete the game.

  Bonus Objective: Win the game.

  ***

  Synexus and Dancer entered the portal to the next floor together and were instantly sent into a stumble with their pathfinders. Intense gravity took them by surprise and sent them hurling to the ground where a group of people sat.

  A small blue star hung in the sky bathing the entire world in a calming color. In the distance, Synexus could see a volcano erupting with a purple lava-like substance, but other than that the landscape was one of serenity. Orange leaves on white trees. Fields of bluegrass. Streams of green water. All of it coming at them fast from below. Right at the last second, the pathfinders pulled up and they all stumbled to the ground together inside of a glowing square.

  He didn’t skip a beat and started to recall the fungus into his garden. Zuls was laying on the ground next to a cackling Pioneer, and he felt relief knowing she made it. Vorin, Kumo, Shell, and Prith were all near each other somehow. Gene was caught in a nearby tree. The rest of the now free people were all relatively in the same place. Only 44 survived. Less than half, but they still had excitement on their faces.

  “Synexus, Dancer, what happened?”

  Vorin’s words brought the various conversations to a close and pressure fell onto the two class chosen. Dancer answered first.

  “Battle. Glorius battle. Our enemies thought they had us, but they were wrong. Synexus is a deadly tactician indeed. Using their own weapon against them was brilliant!”

  Vorin looked from Dancer with questioning eyes.

  “What is she talking about? You killed all those people?”

  “We were surrounded. Frigates popped into existence all around us. I made sure you all had gotten through the portal and then I hatched a plan. Inside my garden, I put the mana mirrors back together into a sphere. We hid inside when they fired their beams of mana at us. It all reflected back and they—”

  Vorin didn’t make him finish. He put his hand on his shoulder and nodded in understanding.

  “Death is heavy. You can’t let it weigh you down. Maybe I seem callous, but what you did was a victory. You will be honored by my people. Bards will sing of it for generations. The Story of Ash they will call it. 5607 against four. Amazing.” Dancer finished her praise and then walked towards the crowd of gathered people retelling it in a fantastic way.

  “She’s right, Synexus. They are hunting you, and you showed them you won’t be their prey.” Zuls believed solely in nature and sometimes in nature, the weak perished.

  “I wish I could have seen it. Imagine the look on those smug faces when the red light came back at them. Don’t let it get you down, you did what you had to do.”

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  “That’s an easy justification to do the most heinous acts, Kumo.”

  She simply shrugged and started to look around.

  “Well either way you look at it, it’s in the past now. Maybe we should work on the next problem. What game are we meant to be playing?”

  Of course, Vorin was right. Class chosen see death nearly every day. It’s best to keep moving forward and not get bogged down by the past.

  A woman stepped from the crowd. She was playing with her hands in front of her not able to keep them still. Her fur was the color of caramel and her three tails swished behind her.

  “I—I may know.”

  “Go on.”

  “On my uh world, we have these things. They are made from wood and paper, but they look similar to this square we are in. It’s a game on a sort of board. We roll dice these cubes with little dots on them to determine how far to move. Each one has uh different rules.”

  “You think this is a world using the rules of one of these board games as it’s laws?”

  She nodded while keeping her eyes glued to the floor.

  “Have confidence. Your idea sounds no more outlandish than a planet trapped in an ocean or the fact our last 24 hours have been basically a children’s story gone wrong. If this is correct, how does one determine they go first in one of these games?”

  “Each person uh rolls a dice normally.”

  As soon as she said her sentence a pair of dice materialized into her hands. Each one had twenty sides. She squeaked like a mouse before throwing the dice out of fear more than anything. They hit the ground and continued to roll away until finally both stopped. Projections of numbers appeared in the air. She rolled a sixteen. Her name appeared in the sky next to the number before both moved to the top of a floating list.

  “That seemed to work. Dice.” Vorin said the word with conviction, and they materialized into his hand. He rolled them like the girl did and his numbers projected into the sky before adding together into thirty-one and moving to number one on the list.

  One by one the survivors rolled the dice and got their position on the turn order list. People had mixed emotions about playing a game after what had just happened, but some people welcomed it. One person decided they didn’t want to play and tried to walk off the square only to be electrocuted. That’s how they all figured out that the rules of the game were the rules of the world and they would have to play if they wanted to get to the next floor.

  1-Skala

  2-Prith

  3-Gene

  4-Lolli

  5-Sekra

  6-Ky Lu rea

  7-Dancer

  …

  14-Vorin

  …

  27-Synexus

  28-Shell

  …

  42-Zuls

  …

  50-Kumo

  Kumo rolled a two making her last on the list. Her impatience made her try to Cloud Walk only to be immediately grounded again. With a sigh she accepted defeat and sat to wait for everyone to go. For some reason, the pathfinders weren’t part of the game, and they were flying all over the place to explore. Most stayed with Zuls and Pioneer though.

  Player Skala please take your turn.

  30 seconds remain.

  29.

  28.

  Skala, a feathered man with a tremendously colorful beak, had rolled a perfect forty making him first on the list. The countdown didn’t get to twenty-seven before he said “Dice” and then threw them once more. This time he rolled a twelve and an arrow pointed him in the direction he needed to walk. At first, they thought each space would be as big as the start square making the board unbelievably massive, but the feathered man only needed to walk 600 ft out making each square 50 ft long. When he got there, an emblem of dice appeared in the sky followed by a notification.

  Player Skala has earned an extra dice to be used on a roll of his choice.

  Most of the group simply nodded that it was a pretty simple space. No one was quite sure what would happen when they started playing, but if they could just keep moving along peacefully then it would be okay. It’d be a nice vacation floor in a way compared to the last one.

  Prith rolled his dice and got a thirty making him nearly out of sight for most of the class chosen. A booming voice filled the air.

  “Slay the poison toads for thirty seconds!”

  As the voice ended, a horde of toads came from the trees on the space that Prith was on. His sword flashed out and the entire group was gone in twelve seconds.

  “Congratulations! You slayed twenty toads! Move twenty more spaces.”

  With that he was out of sight, and no one could see what he landed on. A projection shot to the sky of him walking until he stopped on the correct space. The emblem of a house appeared in the sky.

  Player Prith has been awarded a deployable shelter!

  This item can only be used once and will stand up to any damage. It can only fit four.

  Gene went and landed on a food tile which provided them with sustenance for one full day. Lolli had another event tile like Prith’s except hers was to catch fish in a pond and she failed which caused her to get sent back to the starting square. Sekra was the first person to roll a twenty on one of the dice while playing the game and that’s how they found out it would double their total roll. That threw him into first place in terms of number of tiles travelled in the game. He then arrived on a tile that made him hang from a tree until his next turn or until someone landed on his square. Dancer got a square telling her to pick a player to skip a turn. She chose Zuls so they could put off moving Pioneer as long as possible.

  By the time it got to Kumo, they had seen it all. Effects that targeted other players, events that tested your meddle, rewards, punishments, and even a space that did absolutely nothing. What none of them found or had any idea of was where the last space was or when the game would end.