"And the devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are also; and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever."

Even as Lauren Elizabeth Meyers Hastings had pronounced the words, she knew that the fire which would engulf her enemy, the vampire mage Tubrok, would probably take her with it.  She felt the heat grow, and saw the light of the flames even as she closed her eyes.  It was happening.

Then it all seemed wrong.  Tubrok had slipped from her grasp.  She tried to seize him afresh, but suddenly vampires descended upon her from all sides.  Someone was chanting against her, "miss, miss, miss."  She struggled, and called to her friends for help.  Her attackers were trying to find a way around her armor; it protected her arms, her neck, her head.  Then one of the beasts bit her unprotected hand, and everything went dark.  She might well have wondered whether she was being changed into a vampire; she might have wondered whether her companions had rescued her.  She might have wondered whether Tubrok had lived or died.  She wondered nothing.  She fell from a dizzy euphoria to a dreamless unconsciousness.  Perhaps she should have known that her death would once again send her to another world; whatever had happened to her prevented her, for the moment, from thinking about anything at all.

There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with twenty other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #275:  Versers Reorient.  Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter.  It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.

As to the old stories that have long been here:

The Online Games

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