The Open Field

The sun rose over Gem City, but it didn't bring warmth.

It brought hunger.

It brought ambition.

It brought the smell of blood just waiting to be spilled.

By mid-morning, the city square was a riot of noise —
players shouting over each other, brandishing steel, slinging weak magic spells that cracked against stone walls.

"Quests unlocked!"
"Goblin camps! Easy loot!"
"I'm gonna be a god by the end of the week!"

Ray stood with his brothers at the edge of it all, arms crossed tight across his chest, a sour taste in his mouth. Ray was now dressed in a black button up long sleeve shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Brown cargo pants and black boots.

Trey had his greatsword slung lazily over his shoulder, scanning the job boards. Somehow he had found a leather jacket to wear over his red shirt. He wore a metal helmet and a pair of blue jeans with metal knee pads sewn into them.

Marsden bounced on the balls of his feet, already imagining the glory they could attain in this brand new world. Marsden was wearing a black short sleeve tee and his blue skinny jeans; were often the center of jokes between the brothers. In the real world he needed glasses to see 10 feet in front of him. But not here. Elysium runs in his mind.

Dean stood apart, half in shadow, eyes colder than the others realized. His zip up jacket had the sleeves rolled up to show off his tattoos. Baggy black pants were a staple of his nonchalant nature.

Dean saw it first.

This wasn't excitement.
It was a feeding frenzy.

Across the sky, black ravens circled.

Silent.
Patient.
Watching.

One could be forgiven for thinking they were part of the scenery —
just another fantasy backdrop for this broken world.

But in the real world — in the cities, the homes, the surviving families —
The ravens were cameras.

Broadcasting every moment.
Every death.
Every betrayal.

People back home watched the players trapped inside this hellscape like it was their new favorite show.

Cheering.
Weeping.
Betting on who would live and who would die.

The players would never know.
They weren’t meant to.

The ravens would never tell.

They were just eyes.
Black mirrors hanging in the sky.

Ray watched the first group form up near the gate.

Six of them —
young, cocky, all fire and no wisdom.

Two women, four men.
All armed, all smiling like it was still just a game.

One of the women held a staff in the air, laughing.

"First to kill a goblin chief gets free drinks for life!"

The crowd cheered.

Marsden turned to Ray, grinning wide.

"We could beat ‘em there. Easy."

Ray shook his head.

The pit in his stomach only got deeper.

"Let them go," he muttered.

Trey grunted in agreement, slinging his sword higher.
Dean just narrowed his eyes and watched the six disappear into the horizon.

The fields beyond Gem City stretched wide and green and wild —
beckoning like a siren song.

The players rushed into them like rabbits set loose in an open field.
None of them noticed the wolves sharpening their teeth just beyond the tall grass.

The goblin camp was easy.

At first,

Goblins ran screaming into the woods, dropping rusty spears and shrieking in terror.
Their huts burned like paper in the noon sun.

The players laughed.
They strutted.
One man danced around swinging a goblin’s head like a trophy.

"Too easy!"
"We shoulda picked a harder quest!"

Fireballs lit up the sky.
Blades sliced through straw walls.

They never saw the trap.

The first arrow came screaming through the trees —
tipped in black iron.

It slammed into the shield-bearer’s arm —
and detonated.

BOOM.

The shield — and most of the boy’s arm — vanished in a spray of red mist.

The world shifted then —
the air going colder, sharper.

The goblin warriors emerged from the trees.

Not children.
Not peasants.
Soldiers.
Armor stitched from human skins.
Axes that gleamed wetly.
Eyes that burned not with fear — but strategy.

The goblins didn’t roar.
They didn’t charge blindly.

They moved in flanking patterns —
boxed the players in —
cut off escape routes before anyone knew they were caught.

The slaughter was clinical.

The dagger fighter took two steps back —
and fell into a spiked pit.
The mage tried to conjure a fireball —
an arrow buried in his throat before the spell finished.

The two women were dragged screaming into the woods —
hands crushed.
Cages waiting.

The last survivor — a skinny boy with cracked armor — dropped to his knees, sobbing, begging in a language the goblins didn’t understand, and didn’t care to.

They cut his Achilles tendons.
Left him crawling in the dirt, screaming.

And then they vanished back into the woods, dragging their new prizes.

Far away, in another corner of the fields, another kind of horror unfolded.

Ray and the brothers had been foraging for herbs along the ridge when they heard it —
the unmistakable sound of something big roaring.

They moved fast, crouching low in the high grass.

A goliath bear —
thirty feet long, a mountain of rotting black fur and jagged teeth —
had cornered a group of players near a small hill.

Eight adventurers stood between the monster and safety —
barely holding it off with magic and shields.

One player — a boy barely older than Marsden —
fell behind.

A leg shattered by a misfired spell.
Crying out for help.

The others looked back.
Hesitated.

Their leader — a tall woman with a blue half-cape and a silver axe —
shouted something Ray couldn’t hear.

And then they ran.
Left him.
Without a second glance.

The boy tried to crawl —
dragging his body through the dirt.
Tears streaming down his face.

The goliath bear stomped once —
and crushed half of him into the earth.

His bones shattered with a sound like snapping tree branches.

Blood sprayed across the grass.
The bear roared in triumph as he slowly ate the boy while he begged for his life. The boy was trying to scream through the blood flowing out his mouth. Being eaten alive as he pleaded for his group to come back.

The party didn't stop running.
They didn’t even look back.
That night, the brothers sat around a small fire near a crumbling stone wall.

No songs.
No boasts.

Marsden poked the fire with a stick, eyes empty.
Trey stared off into the darkness, greatsword laid across his lap.
Dean leaned back against a rock, toying with a pocket sized tornado in the grass, lost in thought.

Ray stared into the flames, feeling the world get smaller and meaner by the second.
Across the hills, other fires flickered.
Tiny islands of warmth in a sea of cold death.
Somewhere in the darkness, players whispered about what had happened.

About the goblin camp.
About the goliath bear.
About how the open fields had become graveyards.

A new term floated from fire to fire:

"Jackrabbits."

The ones who ran straight into this world without thinking.
The ones who scouted the world of Elysium. The first adventurers.
The ones who never saw the wolves coming. The rabbits that just ran into the open fields with no cover.

Jackrabbits became a slang term for Totem hunters who ran carelessly into this world of death.

Above them, the black ravens circled, watching everything.
Beaming every death and betrayal back to a real world that could do nothing but watch.

And maybe...
maybe some of them were starting to realize...
There was no saving the ones trapped in Elysium.

Only watching.
Only remembering.
Only mourning.

Ray didn't sleep that night.

He sat by the fire until the wood burned down to coals,
watching the stars wheel overhead like slow, indifferent gods.

"Why? Why did you make this world?"
The answer was there, bleeding into the soil all around them.

Gem City never stood a chance.

The walls were just hope nailed together with fear.
And when hope rots, only death remains.

After the Jackrabbit massacres, players scrambled to fortify the city. Players realized that this world was cruel and could strike the city at any moment.

They built crude barricades.
Stacked broken wagons into walls.
Sharpened fence posts into crude stakes.

It wasn’t enough.
Everyone knew it.

They were just dressing up their own funeral.

The brothers worked silently at the southern gate.

Trey hammered shadow-forged spikes into the ground, the darkness oozing up to reinforce the crude defenses.
Marsden zipped around the field in blurs of lightning, carrying supplies faster than the eye could track.
Dean stood atop a splintered tower, the wind coiling around him like a serpent, his silver wings glinting under the grey sky.
Ray stitched time into every crack he could find — strengthening beams, slowing crumbling walls, repairing what little he could.

It wasn’t enough.

And when the woods fell silent that evening —
not a bird, not a whisper of wind —
they all knew. An attack was coming.

The Mauler broke the tree line first.

Fifteen feet tall.
A nightmare of stitched flesh and rusted metal.

It swung a sharpened tree trunk like a hammer, black acid dripping from the wounds stitched into its arms.

Behind it came the Reavers:

Twisted humanoid monsters.
Bone spears protruding from their wrists.
Eyes empty of anything human.

The players at the gate froze.
One screamed.
Another turned to run.

The Mauler roared —
and the massacre began.
The brothers reacted instantly.

Trey vanished into a shadow, reappearing in the Mauler’s own shadow —
his massive greatsword slamming into the beast’s knee, forcing it to stagger.

Without hesitation, he reached into the darkness and summoned black chains —
wrapping them around the Mauler’s arms and legs, trying to slow its advance.

"You’re not getting past me, freak," Trey growled.

The Mauler roared, ripping free —
but Trey flashed into another shadow behind it, chains already lashing outward again.

Marsden crackled across the battlefield —
He dashed, like a thunderbolt unleashed.

Every movement broke the sound barrier.
Every punch was an explosion of electricity.

He crushed the skull of a Reaver with a single strike.
He shattered another’s spine by blitzing behind it before it could react.

Marsden laughed like a lunatic the entire time,
even as blood splattered across his face.
His youthful energy twisted into something feral, something unstoppable.

Dean ruled the skies.

He wasn't just a player —
he was a storm given form.

Dual swords whirled in his hands, carving patterns into the air.
A heavy wind-forged shield formed at his side, absorbing blasts and redirecting them back tenfold.
A long, jagged spear materialized in his hands, spinning through the sky like a drill of death.
He shifted seamlessly between weapons, between attack and defense, ripping apart the Reavers from above with machine-like precision.

He was everything the brothers couldn’t match yet.

He was a god of war — as if he was made in this game himself,
raining death from the clouds.

Ray fought differently.
He didn't strike.
He didn't slash.
He controlled the battlefield itself.
Slowing the Mauler’s hammer mid-swing, giving Trey the seconds he needed to dodge.

Yanking Marsden sideways through time to avoid a crushing blow.
Healing players dying from shattered ribs and slashed throats before the pain could even register.
Ray wasn't the strongest.

But without him,
they all would have already been dead.

The battle turned vicious.

The Mauler smashed the ground, cracking the very earth under their feet.
Trey’s chains whipped wildly, binding the monster’s ankles, buying Marsden the seconds needed to deliver crackling, devastating punches to exposed joints.

Dean swooped low, hurling a spinning wind blade that carved into the Mauler’s chest —
only to shift into a shield again just in time to block a Reaver’s surprise strike from the side.

Ray blurred across the battlefield, patches of slow time forming around his brothers like invisible shields.

They weren’t fighting separately anymore.
They were a machine.
But even machines bleed.

The Mauler learned Trey’s pattern —
it tore its own flesh to shatter the chains and lunged for him.

Marsden grew reckless, charging too deep into enemy lines —
a Reaver’s spear glanced off his ribs, cutting deep.

Dean’s focus slipped —
a thrown bone javelin ripping across his thigh, forcing him to land rough.

Ray barely kept up, burning magic faster than he ever had before.

This was survival by a thread.

The final strike came from all sides.

Trey shackled the Mauler’s arms and legs simultaneously, locking the beast in place.

Marsden blurred forward, fists crackling, landing a three-strike combo at lightning speed — each hit sending shockwaves across the field.

Dean dive-bombed from the heavens, twin swords leading,
burying them both into the Mauler’s skull with a howl of roaring wind.

The Mauler exploded into gore and acid.
The Reavers fled, shrieking.

Gem City was saved.

But it was dead, too.
The walls were rubble.
The streets ran slick with blood.

And the surviving players...?
They looted the corpses —
stripping armor, taking coins, leaving the dead where they fell.

Trey leaned against his sword, breathing heavily.

"This world ain’t broken," he muttered.
"We are."

Marsden laughed,
but there was no joy in it anymore.

Dean knelt in the mud, his weapons disappearing in thin air, staring blankly ahead.

Ray watched them all,
a weight growing heavier and heavier in his chest.

Above them, the black ravens circled.

Watching.
Recording.
Silent witnesses to the fall.

Somewhere, beyond the broken fields,
beyond the twisted woods,
Sparks himself might have been smiling.

After all...
This was the world he had given them.
And it was only just beginning.