Lily knows she's not in London anymore when she opens her eyes — she's standing in unfamiliar terrain, wearing a hoop skirt and a corset that constricts her chest. Around her, people stand conversing about —

"Prince James is so handsome," one girl gushes, fanning herself. "I hope I'm the one chosen."

"Ha, don't make laugh," her companion says scathingly, "we all know who he's going to choose. Lady Evans has him wrapped around her finger."

Evans?

"Excuse me," Lily says as politely as she can manage, walking through the pair. The two girls, heavily perfumed and layered with cosmetics, gape at her openly. But Lily is too absorbed in examining her surroundings.

Where am I?

But she doesn't have long before her vision is blurring and her body is tugged backward.


She's falling. Falling, plummeting through a bottomless tunnel, and it's so, so dark —

— and she lands hard on her feet on the cement ground. She's still in her hoop skirt, so it's a softer landing, but her left ankle throbs.

Gritting her teeth, she hobbles forward but lets out a cry as pain shoots up her ankle, through her leg, and bloody hell, it hurts. It's sprained.

Lily isn't a paramedic or a doctor. She doesn't know to splint her ankle. She can't go on without hurting her ankle further, but she has to continue; this is a survival game and she can't lose.

She knows what's going on now, because the first game had belonged to a royalty RPG she'd played when she was younger. This is one of her newer exploits.

Limping forward, she ignores the flare of agony from her ankle and follows the dark tunnel. She hates the dark, but then again, when she'd purchased the game, she hadn't thought she'd be the main character.

But she will survive. She has to.


310 words

Written for:

Sci-Fi September Day 22 - Books and videogames have both been replaced by interactive virtual worlds filled with fascinating characters