I tried to attack the giant wolf while he was distracted by Aech’s fusillade, but he somehow sensed my approach, and before I could land a hit with my sword, he craned his neck around and bit me in the shoulder. My avatar took over a hundred points of damage, and then a message popped up on my HUD, informing me that the wolf’s teeth were covered with some sort of venom, and that I would keep on losing more hit points every few seconds from poison damage. Carcharoth’s venom had also temporarily immobilized my avatar, leaving me wide open for another attack…
Aech and I had faced a lot of formidable enemies over the years, on a lot of different planets. The two of us once took down a Tarrasque on Faerun in less than five minutes. We livestreamed it. It was a cakewalk. But after less than thirty seconds, Carcharoth already had both of us on the run and hemorrhaging hit points.
I took a Potion of Cure Poison out of my inventory and swallowed it in one gulp. But to my horror, I saw my hit-point counter continue to fall. I was still taking poison damage. The potion was supposed to cure it, but it wasn’t working. Just like Aech’s sleep spell hadn’t worked on the wolf. Clearly, I had missed something…
Just as Carcharoth began to slink toward me to make another attack, I saw Aech’s enlarged avatar leap off the stairs behind him and onto his back. As he began to whirl and thrash around, Aech somehow managed to flip up and over the beast, land with both feet on the bridge of its nose, and stab it directly between its fiery red eyes.
Then, as the beast howled and reared back in agony, Aech did another somersault and landed on the ground directly in front of him. While he was temporarily blinded, she put everything she had into another volley of attacks with her sword.
Aech had saved me for the moment, but I could see that the bite to her leg had seriously weakened her. She appeared to have been poisoned by its venom, too, because her movements had slowed considerably.
She dodged desperately as Carcharoth continued to swipe at her with his massive black claws—but after just a few seconds, the giant wolf knocked her off balance and clamped his jaws shut on her avatar’s midsection. I cried out Aech’s name in anguish, because I knew the beast had struck a killing blow.
Aech turned to lock eyes with me just before she went limp and fell to the ground. Then her avatar slowly disappeared, leaving behind a pile of spinning items—all of the weapons and armor in her inventory.
I stood there in shock for a second, wondering if I’d just lost my best friend forever. But I couldn’t let myself believe that, so I lunged forward and scooped up all of the items Aech had dropped, adding them to my own inventory, with the hope that I would be able to return them to her later.
Then I took up the sword I had given her, Andúril, and equipped it in my left hand, so that I could wield it along with Glamdring in my right. Both of the Elven blades continued to glow bright blue as I turned to face Carcharoth. （I may have looked a bit silly wielding two such large swords at the same time, but my avatar’s combat stats made it effortless, and I had double-weapon proficiency and ambidextrous attacks, so I got three attacks per round with each sword, with each hand.）
Carcharoth glared at me with his glowing red eyes, and as he did I noticed that they matched the hit-point counter on my HUD, which was flashing to remind me that my avatar was just a few seconds away from being dead. And when my avatar died, I wasn’t going to respawn and wake up in a brand-new virtual body. I was going to end up just like Aech and Shoto and all the others. Trapped in an ONI-induced coma, with little hope of ever regaining consciousness.
Carcharoth kept advancing and I kept retreating, until he had me cornered at the edge of the plateau. He moved in closer and prepared to make his second kill, spreading his massive jaws in a rictus grin as he approached me. I raised both of my ancient Elven swords in an attempt to defend myself, but I knew it was hopeless.
This was it. I was about to die a very real death, and my quest was about to end in total failure—a failure that would likely result in the deaths of millions of other people, including my two best friends. And I would never have the chance to make things right with Arty. To tell her that I loved her more than any other person who had ever come into my life…
This was not how I wanted to die. Not even close.
And then my ex-girlfriend fell out of the sky.
First, I heard the insistent squeaking of a bat as Carcharoth snarled and closed in on me. I caught a brief glimpse of the bat’s wings, flittering across the edge of my peripheral vision. Then I heard a familiar transformation sound effect—one I knew had been lifted from the old Super Friends cartoon—and a split second later, Art3mis made a superhero landing on the rocky ground directly between me and Carcharoth. Then she rose to her full height and faced off against the Wolf-warden of the Gates of Hell, her long black cloak whipping out behind her in the wind like a cape.