After one of our sessions, as I lay next to her happy and limp, she spoke quietly as if to herself:
“I think that’s enough.”
Then I died: she cut my head off with her blade of air. Ten seconds later, I died again. Another hour and Beta dragged me into the castle grounds and killed me once more.
She didn’t take me to bed again. Worse, she didn’t say a single word for many deaths to come, or let me say anything.
Deaths, deaths, deaths… More deaths, more silence. I tried to say something, of course. Again and again I offered to help her open a Greater* Rift. And each time, the reaction was the same—a blank look, death.
As soon as I revived, I died again. When she wasn’t around, I tried to run. Then I screamed with burnt vocal cords as I choked on acid in a Sand Worm’s stomach. Once, I badly angered her. She placed the Undying buff on me and threw me to a Living Sieve.
Hundreds more deaths with that interminable wait in the great nothing.
While I was between worlds, I had time to rest, and I thought of options for fighting back against the preventers in case I ever got out of the Nether. I built models in my mind of the various ways that events might go in main Dis, in my life, in the clan. I mentally drew connections between the individuals involved that I knew of. I tried to predict what would happen to Dis if the beta testers got there with their hundreds of thousands of levels. Would they overturn the gods? Kill everyone? Would Nine continue harvesting skills out of sheer habit?
On the rare occasions when I wasn’t killed right away, I tried everything from my inventory that Beta hadn’t shaken loose. The items she gave to me on our memorable night together turned out to be useless. Their bonuses were measured in astronomical numbers, but none of them were anything useful like “Kill everyone.”
In despair, I tried swallowing the random-effect Explosive Lollipops that I’d gotten from Defiler outside Kinema. The dumb effects did nothing useful at first. Until one lollipop turned me invisible.
As soon as I realized what had happened, I ran as fast as I could out of the castle. I had three minutes—that was how long the effect lasted.
Successfully running past Rainbow Unicorns— beautiful and at the same time nightmarish creatures with tentacles and pincers,—I ran past a pack of Magnetic Toads, but fell into view of a Living Sieve. The creature saw through my invisibility.
I’d punished myself yet again. It took a long time for Beta to return, and the Enchained debuff made me revive in the same place for several days, each time landing on the same Living Sieve.
On the fifth day, I was already praying to the Sleepers to bring the girl back. The damn beast had brought me down to level one, and my experience was melting away. I was risking permanent death.
Nine appeared just in time. Another couple of deaths and that would have been it. Once she returned, she found where I’d died, cleared it, then waited several hours for me to revive. She didn’t kill me right away. First she grouped up and leveled me back up by killing a pack of mobs, then took me to the castle. Even there, death didn’t reach me right away—first the girl magicked up two bottles of strong dwarven hooch and handed one to me. She drank her own down in one gulp.
“What happened?” It seemed I was getting Stockholm syndrome. I was worried about Beta, not just for my own sake or because of the night we had together. “Where were you?”
“Dealing with problems,” she answered, glancing at me and gritting her teeth. “Nine-Six has joined with Seven-Tw^o. They attacked Three. They dropped him almost a hundred thousand levels by the time I got there. Twelve and I had to weigh in, but we did it. Three is saved…”
Beta let me finish the bottle and get drunk and only then killed me. Then once more. When I revived again, the castle was empty.
I wandered the grounds, not wanting to hurry’ to escape this time—if Beta was delayed again, there was a non-zero chance that I’d die forever. Then it was all over:
Emergency exit activated: external immersion capsule command interface in effect!
Exiting in: 3… 2… 1…
As the intragel receded, I felt like I’d just woken up. All the events of the Nether lost their color in mere seconds, and everything that had happened before it took on new freshness and clarity. The Nether felt like a nightmare.
Dry throat, elevated pulse, shaky legs, rattly breath… My head was pounding so hard I thought it would explode. Everything around me was murky. But even that didn’t stop the voice I heard from getting through to me from my nearest and dearest: “You scared the hell out of us, Alex.”
Seeing only vague shadows in front of me, I moved forward and my hand caught Ed’s broad palm. I couldn’t hold back my tears as I pulled my savior of a friend into a hug.
“Woah-woah, easy, bro! At least get dressed first!”
“No way! Come here! You don’t even know how much I love you, asshole! Oh, Hung! Malik! Hairo, you’re here too? Let me hug you…!”
The only thing that stopped me from hugging all my dumbfounded friends was the fact that my legs folded beneath me and I fell down. That brought some blood back to my brain and the pain lancing through my knee seemed like nothing at all. After Living Sieve, it didn’t
