Dream Read Free Page A

of those five. If you refuse, well, you are subject to the same powers as are we, and pose no threat to our realm. I chose you because unlike the others you were all warriors in your realm.”
    “How much time do we have?” Shad asked grimly.
    “The rest of your lives. If you do not eliminate them you will remain here. If you die here, you are dead.”
    “So I take it we’re on our own? No help from you?”
    “It is, as I said, a problem your realm created.”
    “No real point in our trying then.” Shad folded his arms. “We’ll have to hike all over this world, so by the time we get back home our lives will have been ruined.”
    “Not so. Time passes differently here-a lunar cycle here counts no more than an hour in your realm.”
    “Campaign hook,” Fred said a bit smugly.
    “Bite me,” Shad shook his head, trying to think. “So that was what we heard in the library before we were in the hut.”
    “Yes. None of you listened.”
    “I don’t believe this,” Derek abruptly announced. “If other gamer groups were suddenly going missing we would have heard about it. Where we are from news travels very fast.”
    Yorrian smiled, and not in a pretty way. “I doubt news travels sufficiently fast for you to have heard, but in any case an outlander’s body goes home if they die. Not right away, and I suspect it looks different than what actually happened to them here.” She rose and tossed a thin stack of folded parchment bound in a green silk ribbon on the ground at their feet. “There is what you will need to know. We will be watching you.” A sudden dazzling flash hid her, a single strobe-pulse of light, and when it faded she was gone.
    “What….the…hell,” Jeff said slowly.
    “A strip map, and five sealed notes,” Derek examined the packet. He pushed up his sleeve. “Yep. Each letter is sealed with a mark that matches a tattoo.”
    “Dossiers,” Shad sighed and walked over to the stump. “So: seven came through. Five are left. We have to kill them to get home. Good news is, we can spend a couple years doing it and still not miss work. Bad news is, we could easily get killed.”
    “I’m not sure about being somebody’s assassin,” Jeff observed. “Iraq was one thing, but this is different.”
    “Maybe,” Shad shrugged. “Let’s find out what they’re like. If we have five would-be Stalins, I’m OK with it.”
    “Fair point,” Jeff conceded. “I never lost any sleep over the Iraqi shooters we dropped.”
    “We have a problem,” Fred muttered.
    “You think? Just one ?” Jeff shook his head.
    “Our world affected theirs. The rules changed,” Fred ignored the sarcasm. “Look at the library. The half-belief. Gaming affected this world. It reshaped itself to adhere to the laws of gaming, fantasy books, video games, MMOs...an entire genre.”
    “Crud.” Derek sighed.
    “So?” Jeff threw out his arms. “Big deal. We’re gamers-we understand the rules and conventions.”
    “But they fixed the loophole in the defenses,” Fred plugged on. “Guys…. we start at the bottom-that’s what she meant. We’re level one.”
    “We’re screwed,” Shad sat down on the stump.
     
    “OK, OK,” Shad raised his voice to drown out the deep discussion over the implications of a level-based learning system in a medieval fantasy world; all three of the others were occasional GMs and the debate had been enthusiastic. “That’s at least an hour we won’t get back. End result is this: we’re first level in useful classes. Great. We’re here to kill five Earth-types who broke the rules and are now boss-level. Worse, other gamer groups have tried and failed. Or even worse, succeeded enough to really get the Five’s attention. We have to consider that we have five powerful baddies interested in finding and killing us before we get to level two.”
    He had their attention. “We need to get organized, get gone, and blend. We need to find out what’s what around here, how things work, and