“I wore the clothes you wanted. I took your name.

  If there was some confusion as who’s to blame.”

  - M. Stipe, I Took Your Name

  Vimala was becoming increasingly concerned that this was her fault.

  Not all of it, obviously. No way could she have done all of this.

  Yes, it’s possible the trojan horse she’d uploaded in Bask’s throne room had caused a glitch or two. Maybe it created connectivity issues so no one could logout. That might be on her.

  But it didn’t explain why she still couldn’t quit. That had to be an issue with the update. Her code couldn’t have infected the entire game, right?

  Right?

  Besides, no way—no possible, conceivable way—could she have caused this.

  She stopped her aimless wandering and faced one of the many full-length mirrors that lined Castle Voerhaven’s halls. A familiar face stared back at her, attached to a relatively familiar body. Vimala had looked into those eyes many times.

  But never as her own reflection.

  Somehow, impossibly, she was:

  She’d watched Bask stomp Char into jam. Getting killed by a Leyline Guardian should have deleted the character, not dropped him to first level. And it definitely shouldn’t have virtually reincarnated her in his body.

  But there he was, in the mirror. A leaner, slightly shorter version than Vimala was used to seeing, with shoddier armor and a duller sword. But it was definitely him. The cocky Royal Champion of New Le Guinn in the trappings of a squire.

  Could this really be her fault?

  It was the question Vimala had been asking herself ever since waking up in Char’s bed. She’d woken up in that bed many times of course, but it had always been beside him, not as him.

  And every step through these halls brought her closer to the unpleasant idea that maybe, just maybe, the answer was yes.

  “Sir, the troops are ready!” The shout startled Vimala out of her musings. A solider in plate mail with a crest at its center of a six-legged lion—the seal of New Le Guinn—was standing at stiff attention a few feet away.

  The man was the quintessential NPC; not even dignified with a name. It took her a moment to realize he was talking to her.

  “Okay,” she said, shrugging. He was the only person who had spoken to her since she’d appeared in the castle, and she liked it better when she was being ignored. For the first time, it occurred to her that she’d passed plenty of other NPCs as she’d wandered the castle—maids, butlers, the occasional guard like this one—but no other players.

  Fortunately, thanks to her visits with Char, she knew her way around Castle Voerhaven.

  And Vimala had played hyper-reality games as a man before, so the physical sensation of walking around in a masculine body with these, ah… parts wasn’t novel to her. But she’d never played as a man that she’d slept with, which was a whole different level of surreal.

  “Shall I tell the Baron you’ll join them shortly, sir?” A pause. The soldier considered his next words carefully. “After you’ve prepared for battle?”

  Vimala looked down at herself, noting the thin steel links of her armor. The utter lack of any crest. The missing flair of a grandiose cape. And a noticeably average blade at her hip.

  Composing herself, she said the most clever thing she could muster on the spot. “Uh, what?”

  “Grimlins have been spotted to the south, sir. The swarm threatens to destroy the firemelon fields. My apologies, I’d thought you’d been notified.”

  Crop destruction was the last thing she cared about right now. She closed her eyes and gave ejection one last try.

  “Logout.”

  >> ERROR INSTRUCTION NOT RECOGNIZED

  The wording of the prompt was alarming. “Instruction not recognized” suggested the game didn’t even have a logout option. This had to be an issue with the update. Nothing she’d done could have removed the option to quit playing.

  Right?

  Dammit. Fine, might as well join the fight. What else was she going to do around here? Stare at her/himself in the mirror? Maybe she’d find some other players on the battlefield, at least.

  “Sir?”

  “I said fine.”

  The soldier, smart enough not to argue, nodded and scampered off, leaving Vimala to wonder if she even knew how to swing a longsword.

  Checking first to make sure no one was watching, she retreated back to her bedroom—well, Char’s bedroom—closed the door and drew the blade. She swung it with a sure hand, feeling its balance shift naturally from attack to defensive positioning.

  Silverdawn really was the pinnacle of immersive gaming. Right now, thanks to being a warrior class, her body moved like it belonged to a professionally-trained soldier. The sensation was a big shift from her previous time as a mage, when every weapon felt like a hundred pounds in her hand. By contrast, this longsword might as well have been made of balsa wood.

  On her last practice swing against an imaginary opponent, the floor sagged beneath her weight. Curious, she rolled back the eclipse tiger pelt—a gaudy rug that she’d always hated—to find the mortar around one of the floor stones had been removed.

  She dug her fingers into the edges and pulled it up, a relatively simple task in her new body, to find a second layer of wood, which she also removed. Beneath all of that was a hole.

  How deep the hole went was impossible to tell, because it was filled with broken pottery. Strange runes decorated their surface, impossible to read but somehow compelling all the same.

  What the fuck was going on here? Why would Char have been squirreling away busted pieces of clay?

  To her surprise, the shards flashed briefly with a golden aura. Had she just been given a quest?

  She pulled up her stats again to find out.

  What the hell was a Shuvala? The word was strangely familiar, flitting around her mind just out of reach until it was gone for good.

  Whatever. Not her body. Not her secret trash hole. Not her problem. She put everything back in place, including the tacky rug, and caught her reflection in the mirror beside the canopy bed.

  She had seen her reflection there plenty of times before, of course, but always as Quartz and usually while the body she was in now was fucking her. But it also wasn’t just a mirror. Char sometimes used it to teleport her home after a booty call.

  Getting back to her cottage seemed like a pretty good plan right now, actually. Certainly better than getting into some battle. If she had caused all these glitches—and she wasn’t saying that she had—then the fix would be somewhere in her journals.

  Stolen story; please report.

  Feeling confident for the first time since waking up in this new body, Vimala touched the mirror and held her breath as it shimmered within its brass frame.

  “Where shall I send you, master?”

  “Oh, you talk!” Apparently only Char could hear its voice. She always thought he just was having a one-sided conversation with his reflection. Now she was flustered. “Sorry, I mean, of course you have a voice. Obviously. No need to call me master, though. Just ‘Char’ is fine.”

  “Oh, thank you!” The voice was joyous. “I’m free! FREE!”

  And the shimmering stopped.

  “What? No! That’s not what I—”

  But now Char really was just talking to his own reflection.

  “God DAMMIT!” She punched the mirror, cracking the glass and splitting a knuckle.

  Guess she’d be joining the army after all.

  She wound her way down the halls in the direction of the courtyard where Char usually gathered his garrison before a raid. And there were so many raids. Vimala had asked him once why he was so preoccupied with roaming the countryside, picking fights with the other Kingdoms and he’d gotten very quiet—one of the few times she could recall him looking uncomfortable—and simply said he didn’t want to talk about it.

  The memory was chased away by the smell of food as she passed the dining hall. Like all the rooms here, this one had a formal name, but without Char around—well, the real Char, anyway—she had no way of knowing it. She stared at the long table, lined with all manner of bread, meat, and fruits. In the real world, Vimala was vegan, but inside Silverdawn, where the animals were just fancy representations of ones and zeroes, everything was on the menu.

  Servants bustled around the feast, sliding chairs into position and placing silverware.

  Suddenly ravenous, Vimala poked her head inside and tried to figure out the sneakiest path to steal a few bites before anyone noticed. Accidentally ruining an enchanted mirror worked up quite the appetite.

  “Would you like me to fix you a plate, Captain?”

  Vimala jumped at the appearance of a young boy, no more than sixteen, dressed in the loose white clothes of the kitchen staff. Why did everyone in this damn castle feel the need to sneak up on her?

  But his question reminded her of an important fact: no need to sneak food when you were the head of New Le Guinn’s military. She was used to being the bottom rung of the corporate ladder; might as well enjoy the perks of authority while she had it.

  She nodded at the boy and clapped in delight at the platter he brought back. The ham was tender and covered in thick gravy, which she sopped up with fresh buttered bread in between bites of boiled potatoes and cherry cobbler.

  Technically, none of this provided an ounce of nourishment. Not a single vitamin or calorie was entering her physical body, currently connected to a content cube in her apartment. But as far as her brain was concerned, this was the best meal she’d ever eaten.

  Vimala worked her way down to the last bite of crust, trying to savor the perfect mix of cinnamon and powdered sugar, but now she couldn’t shake the image of her real body wasting away from malnutrition while she was trapped in the game. Her bio-support rig was fully loaded with nutrients, and time in Silverdawn was stretched, so she had at least a week inside the game to get things sorted.

  But still…the food had kind of lost its flavor.

  “Will that be all, sir?”

  The boy’s question redirected her thoughts to the soldiers standing at attention outside, waiting for their Royal Champion to lead them into battle. For better or worse (worse—it was definitely worse), that fearless leader was her.

  Reluctantly, she returned the platter and resumed her journey to the courtyard, diligently ignoring any other open doors along the way. A pair of barrel-chested men turned a wooden crank to lift the side gate as she approached.

  Outside was a cobblestone square surrounded by watchtowers and stables. In times of celebration, like after Char had sent a particularly nasty Guardian to meet its maker, the yard would be filled with drunken partygoers.

  But when a battle was nigh—and for whatever reason, when Char was around, battle was always nigh—the chaotic revelry was replaced with fastidious columns of players hoping to make a name for themselves in front of the game’s most famous storm guard.

  What Vimala saw as she stepped into the courtyard, however, sent a wave of unease through her. Every one of these soldiers, pikes and shields at the ready, were in the generic armor of New Le Guinn. Not a unique piece of gear among them.

  Which meant they were all NPCs.

  An impressive array of noses, jaw lines, facial hair, to be sure—Silverdawn rendered each of its inhabitants with distinctive features—but NPCs nonetheless.

  What the hell was going on? Even on a slow night, at least half these soldiers should be low level players looking for the easy experience points of a raid.

  “Glad you could join us, Captain. The little shits have swarmed the southern fields. They need to be put down before they spread.”

  Vimala turned to face a woman in thick plate mail, lined with sliver trim. Her pronounced brow, visible even through a full helmet, had earned her the nickname “Hammerhead;” a name only uttered in snickering whispers behind her back, of course, lest the speaker find himself on the guillotine.

  At least, that’s what Char had told her, and anyhow Vimala certainly couldn’t call her that. Instead, she pulled up the woman's ID block.

  Neutral status instead of loyal? Interesting. There must be some history between them.

  “Thanks, Olga. I’ll take it from here.”

  Olga squinted up at the twin suns, then back down at her. “As you are?”

  Reflexively, Vimala inspected herself again. Or Char, rather. A beefy man, to be sure, but hardly decorated like a Captain of the Royal Guard.

  “I wanted to show the troops that armor doesn’t make the man,” she said, proud of how much better she was getting at playing the part.

  Olga smiled, pleased with the answer. “The Queen was right to appoint you. I’ve always said that.”

  Something about her tone suggested she very much had not said that. Probably quite the opposite. Whatever Ogla’s intentions, a flash of yellow briefly outlined her body.

  Great. A hour in the game and already she’d picked up two quests. In some games, it wouldn’t matter. Hell, in most RPGs, a player would walk around saddled with a hundred side quests that they could ignore.

  Silverdawn, though, had a way of…steering things toward your quest. It wouldn’t outright force your hand, but Travelers had a way of stumbling onto coincidences that made it increasingly difficult to avoid.

  “Kill the fuckers or drive them away,” Olga said, helpfully explaining the terms of the quest she’d just bestowed. “So long as the crops are safe."

  And you’ll receive a big pile of experience points for your trouble. That part was unsaid, but it was the reward every gamer actually cared about; although it had admittedly been a long time since Vimala had needed to level up. Once Quartz hit 99, she was capped there until Mammon died.

  Or until she inserted her own code and swapped rankings with the bone bender right as the update happened.

  It had been a good plan. Thoroughly researched. Foolproof and fair. After all, she should have been chosen as the next level 100 player after Cerberus had died, not Mammon.

  Fuck. All of this was her fault, wasn’t it?

  The soldiers glanced at her—at Char, rather—and waited for an order.

  Deep breath. No need to be nervous. “It’s like taking the boys out for dinner at Ginger Bliss after work, right?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Olga said, hands folded neatly behind her back.

  “Me neither, actually.”

  Now was probably not the optimal time to mention she had no idea how to give orders. It wasn’t like she’d ever participated in these fascist parades. Quartz wasn’t even a civilian of New Le Guinn and certainly didn’t care about its military’s strength. Not outside of the bedroom, anyway.

  “March, uh, after me. On my…I wanna say, mark? Command? You know, follow along!” Guess she didn’t have the hang of this yet, after all.

  It didn’t seem to matter; the soldiers’ muscles tightened as she spoke and their eyes followed her every movement, waiting for her to lead them into battle.

  Which, more or less, is what she did. First, out of the rear gates, where archers with crossbows watched from twin towers. Then down the well-worn road, cobbled at first and gradually shifting to loose gravel and, finally, packed dirt.

  As the castle disappeared behind them, they were flanked on one side by the Pinstripe Forest, named for the white streaks that harvest slugs left along the trees’ ashy bark. On the other, an endless procession of crops. Unlike the Zalinsky Coast, the plants of New Le Guinn were generally edible, which made them valuable trading fodder for the Coast’s more utilitarian vegetation. Bristlegrain, for example, which grew only in the Field of Sorrows, couldn’t be digested but was valuable to fletchers.

  Generally speaking, Vimala didn’t concern herself too much with commodities, but some players dedicated the entirety of their time in Silverdawn to establishing trade routes and business operations. Those players were really fucking boring.

  The twin suns were hot, but not oppressively so, although that would change as spring gave way to the brutal glare of summer. At one time, the suns had been named for the twin gods, Vill and Ang. But after both were slaughtered in the Olympus Purge, their names had been stripped away, along with their temples. Now, they were simply suns, or sometimes, if a player was feeling superstitious, the “Twins.”

  Gradually, the crops became more colorful as they shifted from vegetables into fruit and soon after that they reached the firemelons. Despite their flamboyant name, there was nothing explosive about the melons, although their rind was spotted with flashes of pink and could be used as kindling in a pinch. They grew on short stalks, rarely more than waist high, and stretched away from the road’s edge in neat lines.

  At the far edge of the field, the stalks swayed and a satisfying chewing sound arose, like the first few crunches of cereal before the milk turned the flakes soggy. The tell-tale sound of grimlins.

  Oh man, now she wanted cereal.

  One of the soldiers behind her cleared his throat.

  Fine. Best get this done.

  “Sir? Your orders?”

  “I said fine.” When no one reacted, she pointed vaguely in the direction of the noise. “I mean, charge, or whatever. Go kill those things.

  Inspired by her rousing speech, the knights raised their swords and stormed the fields, stomping firemelons into juicy pulp as they rushed their enemy. After a moment, Vimala remembered her place was no longer on the sidelines, casting spells into the fray. She sighed and drew her own weapon.

  As it turned out, the reaction came just in time. A grimlin popped up from behind a particularly plump firemelon and chirped excitedly. The weird little rat-thing was covered in leathery scales, not unlike an armadillo, with a mouth that wrapped too far around its head and scrawny legs that might almost have been cute if it weren’t for the hooked claws.

  It’s mouth was dripping with what Vimala at first mistook as blood before recognizing the bittersweet pulp of a firemelon. It hesitated, eyeing her sword.

  “Come at me, bitch. I can’t explain why or how. And maybe it’s my fault. But I’m Char now.” Vimala steadied herself. “And Char’s a goddamn hero.”