In the beginning, there was the darkness.

  In a dark space, far beneath the earth, a man lay. He lay on a floor of stone bricks. The floor had once been clean and fine. Each brick was perfectly formed and well placed. Yes, time had seen them crack and chip, but there must have been a time long gone when this was a perfect path or roadway.

  There was light from a single lantern on the dirty walls of the passage. Again, the huge stone blocks of the wall were carefully carved and had once been proud. Now they were forgotten and bore the disgrace of being abandoned.

  The man stirred.

  He had been still. Deathly still.

  A trickle of blood ran from the corner of his forehead. It bled as head wounds do, more vigorously than their severity might really suggest.

  The man stirred, eyes still closed, and a hand lifted to touch the injury.

  He was dressed in spiked leather armor. A heavy wooden club lay on the ground not far from his reach. A stone band bearing three sigils wrapped his forearm.

  Suddenly, the man lurched, rolling onto his side, curling up. With a violent heave he vomited. The old stones of the floor, that had once been proud, suffered yet another indignity as he emptied himself. Only water escaped. No food, little bile, but a flood of water.

  “The fuck…”

  His eyes flickered open. He had the body and the face of a big, rough man.

  “The fuck are you saying?” he said to the passageway that contained nobody but himself.

  He rolled to his back, scanning queasily with his eyes. “You’re fucking here! Who are you?”

  His voice was rough, deep.

  “My voice isn’t…”

  He rose suddenly to a sitting position. He scanned around himself with sudden confusion. The strong weathered face melted to a look of fear and panic that did not match the hardness.

  “Holy shit, what the hell is happening? Who are you? Where am I?”

  He looked around, his head turning faster, gaze darting, as if he were seeking something he could hear but was just out of view.

  A crack broke his voice, a suppressed sob. “Where are you? What are you doing with me? Please, shit, I have a family!”

  Then he rose to his feet. He wavered obviously; that blow to his head had more consequences than simply drawing blood.

  Suddenly finding the heat of anger he shouted, “Show yourself!”

  The shout echoed along the passageway.

  He looked around, seeing that the passage stretched far in both directions. Lanterns lit the way, but they were dim and sporadic. Deep patches of unknowable darkness lurked between them. Then there was the sound of rustling.

  “I don’t hear any… wait. Shit, what the fuck is that?”

  He turned in the direction of the sound, a leathery dragging noise and the scrabble of quick feet.

  Maybe it was the darkness, the concussion, the disorientation, but he suddenly felt the need to bear a weapon. Spotting the cudgel he snapped it up and faced the approaching sound of slithering and scrabbling.

  A little less loudly, his eyes fixed on the darkness from where the sound came, he said, “Seriously. This isn’t funny. Whoever you are, stop it.”

  He glimpsed movement, something low to the ground, darting in the light of the lantern about fifty yards distant. It was just for a moment. But it was coming towards him.

  “I don’t see… oh shit! What the hell is that?”

  Again it flashed in the light of the next lantern, only twenty yards distant.

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  Desperation and panic wet his voice. He gasped, hoarsely, “Please… Who are you? That you bury? This isn’t fucking funny.”

  Then it was before him.

  He took a step back, his eyes growing wide in disbelief.

  A little humanoid creature, four feet tall if straightened, but shorter now, body coiled close to the ground. It was covered in rough leathery skin. Reptilian. The face too was reptilian, a long jaw baring savagely sharp teeth. The arms and legs were thin but sheathed in small strong muscles. A small axe, like a tomahawk, was grasped in one hand.

  A kobold.

  “A fucking… that’s D and D shit… this isn’t happening.”

  It very much was happening. The kobold took a threatening step forward, its feet scratching the stone, its tail dragging through the dust behind it. The muscles coiled; the pounce was approaching.

  “The pounce…” The man took another step back, his grip tightening on his crude weapon.

  Then all was action.

  The kobold leapt, soaring into the air, something glowing on its wrist as it did so.

  The man reacted, barely distracted by a light glowing on the band at his wrist. He danced aside with a skill he couldn’t have imagined he possessed. The kobold missed, the tomahawk slashing the ground, sparks flaring in the dim light as stone axe met stone floor.

  The man did not flail. At least the signals his panicked mind shot down his neurons should have produced a flailing. Instead, two lights glowed on his wrist, and he executed a rather perfect swipe. The kobold dodged back, but the tip of the cudgel struck the monster a glancing blow on the chin. A small spray of blood erupted and the monster staggered back.

  The man did not seize the opening. He stepped back, his chest heaving with near hyperventilation, his knuckles bone white as he squeezed the handle of his weapon like the last grip keeping him from a deadly fall.

  The kobold recovered and snarled. Strings of saliva connected the teeth of upper and lower jaw, glimmering in the light of the lantern.

  It came again.

  Again the man struck out like a surprised wraith might lash at a savage dog. But his action was not flailing. It was the strike of an experienced soldier. His own eyes widened in surprise as his whole body twisted in a way he hadn’t intended, driving the kinetic force of his moving body into the motion, twisting and driving through the hip. The cudgel struck with perfect and terrifying force. He felt the impact shake his arm and rattle his elbow. He saw the way the skull of the monster deformed at the point of impact. The sound of the world’s thickest eggshell crunching rang to him. Again with the blood, spraying from the point of impact, the kobold’s body sagging and drooping mid charge.

  Then it was tumbling on the dusty stones and he was left with nothing but the sound of his own heavy breathing.

  “What the… did I… is it… oh god.”

  He looked at the body of the kobold with a strange dread.

  Glancing around as though seeking something, “Is it… god, this better not be some kid in a costume… I didn’t mean…”

  He ventured a step closer, prodding the corpse with his cudgel. It was very much dead. It was also, very much, a real live monster from fantasy.

  “The fuck is happening…”

  He took a deep breath, and his expression lightened somewhat. “I’m fucking dreaming. That’s what’s happening. And you’re my dream narrator. That’s what’s happening. Holy shit, this is scary as hell, but that’s a relief. For a second there… well…”

  He stood in silence, his expression becoming less and less frightened, more and more at ease. He closed his eyes and squeezed his face. Was he trying to focus?

  “I’m trying to lucid dream. In two seconds I’m going to be in a hotel room with Anissa Kate and Madison Ivy.”

  He opened his eyes but was disappointed to find no A-class porn stars striking lewd poses and panting for the kind of brief and disappointing pleasure that only he could provide.

  “Hey! Fuck you!”

  You think you can give Anissa Kate the kind of treatment she needs? You think you can stack up to the action she’s used to?

  His eyes drifted down. He said, “Okay, I guess I can’t lucid dream. But damn, this is still okay. I love some sword and sorcery. Let’s see what else we can beat up.”

  He looked down at the dead kobold. Its only possessions were a loincloth and the small axe. He picked up the axe, grimacing as his hand brushed the cold dead flesh of the creature.

  As he looked at the axe in his hand, his eyes were drawn to the stone band on his wrist. Three marbles rested there. Each one glowed dimly. Two emitted a soft faint grey light, the third a dirty reddish orange. One bore the image of an array of weapons and armor. Another showed the image of a sword, this being the brighter of the three. The last showed a straining flexed bicep.

  “What are these? My skills? Something like that? I guess that means I’ve got a fighting skill. Explains how I was able to move like that. Wonder if the sword one means I’ve got a sword skill or if it’s more general? What the hell did I eat last night. Too much cheese from the farmer’s market. She’s always telling me it will give me nightmares. The bicep means strength I guess…”

  He flexed his own bicep as he said this, glancing at it then doing a double take.

  “Shit! I’m ripped.”

  He flexed the huge muscle again then glanced at the ceiling. Weird how they always look up.

  “Anissa Kate would sure like this I bet? Hang on.”

  He pulled out the waistband of his pants and peered in.

  With a twisted grin he chuckled. “Nice.”

  Then another sound and he was whirling. This sound was different. A strange humming, whirling noise. Two blue lights glowed in the darkness, drifting towards him.

  “All right, fuck it. Let’s kill some shit.”

  But he paused as the next contestant emerged. This was something different. It was formed of what appeared to be stone, but shaped like something out of WALL-E. The body was segmented, none of the segments quite touching, held together by some unseen field. The face was a rectangle of shining black marble, the blue eyes seeming to glow from beneath it.

  It was shorter than he, maybe four feet tall. But it was more massive than the kobold. And its body was thick and hard.

  He looked down at the weapons in his hands and gulped. Neither wooden cudgel nor stone axe were going to put a dent in this being.

  He glanced once more at the ceiling, a nervous look on his face.

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”