You might think a novel about a computer game wouldn’t be very engaging, and I’m sorry to say that you are very, very wrong. What happens when our online life outshines our physical life by leaps and bounds? This is the concept behind “For the Realm,” and it’s a winner. Our narrator, Ian, teaches at his old middle school. He lives alone. He can’t bring himself to call the cute neighborhood barista. As soon as he logs online, however, he is a leader, a warrior, a king who commands the respect and loyalty of legions of diehard gamers. The relationship between Ian and his closest lieutenant is heartwarming, surprisingly so considering that they have played together for years without knowing each other’s real names. When the lieutenant announces her retirement from the game, we feel Ian’s loss as a staggering hole in his life, giving us the strong sense that Ian’s online life and “real” life are about to merge. The writing is a careful blend of humor and tenderheartedness, not taking itself too seriously, while at the same time giving Ian the exact amount of attention that any of us deserve. — Guest Judge, Nick Fuller Googins
Every Sunday, Ian’s dad sent him three dollars to play the Powerball. When he lived with his parents, the two of them would go together after church, Dad’s way of avoiding the battlefield that was his wife’s Sunday kitchen and Ian’s way of holding on to ritual as long as possible. To play the lottery, for Ian, was not about winning, any more than joining his parents at Saint Michael and All Angels Holy Comforter Episcopal every Sunday for 9am service was about salvation. It was the comfort of routine delusion. The lie that if you only loved the thing enough, it would one day reward you beyond your ken.
Now that he was on his own again, Ian didn’t go to church anymore, but he still grabbed his car keys and headed for the Marathon when his phone rang at eleven o’clock.
“—and some of the neighbors are coming over later to watch the game,” Dad said from five hundred miles south in Tallahassee. Ian could picture him in his old pickup, rattling through their neighborhood, his arm probably hanging out the window, maybe dangling a cigarette even though he swore up and down to Mom he didn’t smoke. “So your mama’s making I guess enough food for every football team in the state. We miss havin’ y’all here to eat. She still ain’t adjusted to cooking for just me. You oughta see the fridge, we’ve still got leftovers from Thursday even.”
“How’s Knox?” Ian asked, content to listen for clues in Dad’s circuitous monologues but also aware that if he didn’t prompt for specific information, he could be on the phone until well into the evening, and he still had his daily quests to do once he got home. He wasn’t looking forward to it.
“Shit,” Dad said. “You tell me. That boy can’t answer a phone to save his life. But you know how it is, senior year. I’m sure he’s fine, just busy as all hell. He’s got a soccer game comin’ up, we’re gonna drive over to see him play. Kate and Ezra, too, if he can get off work and she’s feelin’ up to it.”
Ian made a note to text Knox, make sure he was all right. He and Kate, his older sister, talked more regularly, their four years’ age difference less of a divide at this point in their lives than Knox’s as the baby, and in the last year while Ian was at home, they’d spent more time together as adults than they’d been able to before, with Ian away at school and Kate, until recently, living in another state. She and her husband moved back to Tallahassee to be near Ian’s parents when they realized Kate was going to have a baby.
“Anyway, how’re you, bug? You settling in okay?”
“Classes start in a few weeks.”
“You nervous?”
“Not really.”
“Good. And what about outside that? You made some friends? Girlfriend?”
Ian grimaced, turning into the gas station parking lot. “Dad, come on,” he said. “I just moved here.”
“That ain’t a no.”
“Yes, it is.” He parked and adjusted the phone in his hand. He searched for things to say about his life that weren’t about Realm. Ian did his best to avoid discussing Realm with his family. Memory lived in the body, he knew. It was tied to adrenaline. He still remembered his teenage years, the fights he’d had with his parents when he wouldn’t come down for meals, when he didn’t wake up for school or when he did but came downstairs zombie-eyed, shambling, irritable, when exhaustion and preoccupation made him prone to lashing out. He would lose track of time, forget things, not just chores but important things like picking Knox up from school. It wasn’t because of the game, but it was easier to blame the game than to admit their son might have some defect, might have an imperfect brain. We never see you, his parents begged. You’re not well. They sent Kate to talk to him, reason with him, but he’d known she was a plant, couldn’t trust her. They tried to take his computer and he stole it back out of his dad’s gun safe. Seventeen, then. That’s when they sent him to Dr. Heather, who later sent him to Dr. Holzmann. After that, things got better. Things were better now and had been for a long time. The family was ambivalent about “Ian’s game” now that he’d grown up fine, no noticeable quirks, despite the PC that hummed twenty-four seven in his room, his apartment.
“I won a costume contest the other day.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. For that Sauron armor I built. It was at the movie theater.”
“You get any money?”
“Free membership at the theater. It’s an independent thing.”
“Well,” Dad said. Ian heard him open his truck door, close it. The jangle of a doorbell. “That’s something.” Ian held in a sigh. He listened to Dad chat with the cashier on his end, muted his microphone but kept his phone under his shoulder as he went inside and played Dad’s numbers. When Ian moved away, Dad passed the numbers on to him like a sacred flame, an ancient rite. Dad continued, as he had since she passed, to play Nana’s old numbers.
“And you’re doing all right?” Dad asked as Ian got back in his car. Familiar strained, meaningful undertone. “Your… y’know, your thing?”
Like the game, the family also avoided direct conversation about Ian’s visits to Dr. Heather, Dr. Holzmann, his prescriptions. Once the school year officially started, Ian’s “thing” would settle out, but it was a rough start. He’d lived alone before. In college he was an RA so he got a single. In grad school, he’d rented a mother-in-law suite from a woman in her sixties who grew tomatoes in her backyard and boarded pedigree German shepherds. But for the last year, he’d been at home, taught at his old middle school. His parents both drove him up to Tennessee last month and helped him move in, and when they left he spiraled for a few days in the newness of the world around him. He’d gotten good about keeping Realm between three and four hours a day, but the first thing he did when he was alone in his apartment with the books piled by the empty bookcase in the tiny living room and the desk in the corner with the PC box blinking blue under it was decide he was going to play until his eyes melted out of his skull.
“I’m fine, Dad,” Ian said. “I’m doing just fine.”
“Well hey,” Dad said. “That’s good, that’s real good to hear, boy.”
That evening, Ian wrote the challenge.
But first he drove home, his mind drifting, scuttled. It got like that a lot, even when he remembered to take his Adderall in the morning, which he was almost positive he had. Just in case, and because sometimes when he started to spiral he liked to just dive into it, he stopped and bought a coffee. It would be better, he thought again, when the semester started, when he was back in a routine, when he’d unpacked his boxes of books, set up his sewing station. But that would come later. For the night, he’d fall back on the first and surest cure he’d yet to find. Put the headset on, turn the volume up, and he was gone.
“Thank you,” he told the barista, sat down to wait and got lost. He called it “getting lost,” the thing he could do in his mind, the way he could go there and not know where “there” was but be there so completely he noticed nothing around him. The place was dead and the barista brought the coffee to him at his table. She was a girl, maybe his age, maybe a little younger, and when she set his drink in front of him she smiled shyly into his eyes. She said his name, “Ian,” said it like a secret though he’d told her and it was written on his cup—against all odds, in the Gaelic spelling, Eoin, which made him think of knights, Owain Glyndwr, King Arthur, tales of chivalry that pulled him inevitably down towards the part of himself that lived always in the Realm. The girl was pretty. Ian wrapped both hands around the cup, thanked her again. It was only when he left to cradle his drink in his car and his thumb slipped to a new grip that he saw she’d written her number on it, her name. He indulged a quick stop-motion fantasy of going back inside, talking to her, or of getting home and calling the number, dating, falling in love, feeding ducks at a pond, drinking coffee in an apartment somewhere—Paris, Amsterdam, New York, Savannah—kissing all different kinds of kisses, their wedding with his brother Knox and his brother-in-law Ezra his best men, Kate’s baby tossing petals or holding a little pillow with the rings, a mortgage, years of marriage, a yellow nursery, child or children or no children, messy divorce, amicable divorce, no marriage in the first place, a car crash plane crash motorcycle crash cancer freak accident no house no apartment no ducks, no nothing at all. Ian finished his drink on the drive back. When he got home, he tossed the cup in the trash. He put the headset on.
Ian always kept three tabs open on his computer. The first was Ragnar0k’s player profile, where he could quickly run through his statistics and organize his build, see what needed to be changed, brainstorm what could be done better. He also kept his RelicRealm inbox open, Realm’s system for contacting players outside of gameplay. It functioned, for the most part, like an email. He deleted almost all of these letters. He received, sometimes, hundreds a day. Random spam from gold-sellers and other scammers, which he moved to a folder to report en masse at the end of the week; messages from strangers asking him for special favors or shout-outs or invitations to <Blood Meridian>, which he invariably deleted; requests, sometimes, from e-sports teams offering him sponsorship—these he read, and saved to another folder, but he never replied; updates from his guild officers, other players who helped him run <Blood Meridian>, these he’d flagged as priority so he could always see them as soon as they came in, and did his best to reply within the hour.
The third open tab was the RelicRealm leaderboard. Every once in a while, Ian would refresh this tab, and that action would soothe him. The players below him would shift, a familiar set of names tiptoeing up and down the leaderboard, but always Ragnar0k at the top. Number one. The best.
Actually, the best player in the game was someone named [cheese], all lowercase, who played on a German server, although they were locked in constant battle for the number one slot with a Japanese player named [Kanin]. Technically, Ian was between third and seventh on the worldwide list, depending on the day. But on his server, <Blood Meridian>’s server, he was number one and he had been number one almost since he started; this was his true feat, the thing that gave him notoriety on his server, not just the fact that he held the top spot but that he had for so long, going on a decade. It was hard work, but he was used to it—the work, but more importantly, the success of the work, the reward.
It was his name at the top of the leaderboard that Ian was addicted to now, not the game. The game had its draw. It could wipe him clean for hours and hours and leave his mind abuzz like his brain licked a battery, all it took was the right combination of keystrokes, the right collected pattern of colors flashing lights baubles trinkets gold coins experience points cartoon bloodsprays click chime daily bonus weekly bonus final kill animation victory screen repeatable quests find the goblin’s loot liberate the town slay the ogre beat the local bullies teleport to Beckoner’s Reach Harper’s Gully the Exalted Steppe Sundermount Valley of Kings q-e-w R q-e-w 1 2 4 q 3, 3 q-e-w, q-w 3, R 1 2 4 all quests complete claim your prize. Repeat tomorrow, the day after, every day after.
The game was like candy, and it was good, but he could turn it off. He could walk away. The leaderboard stayed with him no matter where he was. No matter how bad things got, nothing in his life was ever worse than the half-second pinch of dread before he refreshed the page, nothing better than the counterbalancing rush of pride and relief at seeing his name still at the top of the leaderboard, a beacon there. He’d thought, years ago, the first time he finally made it to number one, that its luster would wear off. It didn’t. Every time he saw it, it felt just as good. Better. As long as his name was still up there, everything else in his life would be okay.
Ian sorted through his inbox while he waited for the game client to load. There was a letter from Wallace, his senior guild officer, but—Ian checked the time—she was usually online about now, he would just message her in-game. On a pad of paper by his keyboard, he made a to-do list of daily quests to run that day. He had a system. Years ago his mom bought him a decorative leather-bound notebook that worked better as a shelf-piece than something functional he could carry around; in it, he’d long ago drawn a directory of each quest in the game that could be repeated and how many experience points each earned. The dailies, he chose a random handful of every day so he wouldn’t get bored, suffer burnout. Some only reset once a week; these gave the most experience, and he’d organized a weekly calendar that allowed him to rotate through them. He had the quests all memorized, he didn’t need to reference the notebook directory, which in his mind he called his Spellbook. But it helped to have it on paper, to know it existed. He wrote out his to-do list. When he finished, he went through and totaled up the experience points to make sure he would meet his quota. He hadn’t been able to level up for several years since he’d hit the level cap, but he could still earn experience points. Earned experience points were how they calculated the leaderboards. Keeping a regular schedule was usually enough, but on the weeks when whoever held the number two and three slots slipped close, Ian would add a few hours of PvP tournaments to his rotation for an extra XP boost.
He’d described this process to Kate last summer. She said it looked miserable. “This is fun for you?” She gestured at his desk, upstairs in their childhood home, his childhood bedroom, which was for the last year his adult bedroom. Ian shrugged. Fun had nothing to do with it.
The client loaded. Music played, a haunting, ambient loop. A familiar death knight avatar spawned outside the last dungeon Ian had entered, took a grand stance as he sheathed his blade and nodded, as if to salute Ian through the screen, as if to say, Hello there, before settling into his idle animation. Ian finished checking his list and set aside his pen, relaxed into his chair. Within seconds, a DM notification chimed.
Whisper from [Wallaceand]: hey boss
Whisper from [Wallaceand]: permission to TP?
Wallace had been a member of <Blood Meridian> almost since the start. The last of the old guard, Ian thought of her in his head. She’d known him before he hit the level cap. She was the only one from his early days who still played.
Whisper to [Wallaceand]: Granted.
A moment later, Wallace appeared in front of Ragnar0k in a blue shimmer. Wallace was a goblin rogue assassin. She came up to about Ragnar0k’s knee. Her dark green hair was styled in two spiky pigtails on either side of her head, and two bandoliers of daggers criss-crossed her chest. Red warpaint adorned her small, toothy face, three broad stripes from brow to jowl. The little creature bowed.
Whisper from [Wallaceand]: did u get my message?
Whisper to [Wallaceand]: I didn’t get to read it. I assume it’s about the raid Tuesday? I’m sorry to hear Gundark’s sick, but we can sub Melon for main assist. Melon’s good. I’m thinking we should promote them soon.
Whisper from [Wallaceand]: no, um. not about that.
Whisper to [Wallaceand]: ?
Her reply took a long time for how short it was in the end.
Whisper from [Wallaceand]: i’m quitting, boss
Ian sat back hard in his chair.
Whisper from [Wallaceand]: i’ve been waiting for you to come on so i could say goodbye properly. i’m leaving the game.
“No,” said Ian to no one. He rubbed a hand down the lower half of his face, scrape of day-old stubble against his palm. Returned his hands to typing position.
Whisper to [Wallaceand]: Oh.
Whisper to [Wallaceand]: Why?
Wallace was too important to leave. She was his Lancelot, D’Artagnan, Edmund Pevensie, Samwise Gamgee, Naib Stilgar, Adolin Kholin, Sandor Clegane, Jorah Mormont, Sancho Panza, his Wiglaf, Athelstan, Murtagh, Moonglum of Elwher, Dandelion, Sallah, Chewie. She was his Wallace. He needed her. He needed her a lot. Why would she leave?
Whisper from [Wallaceand]: it’s not easy, but it’s been a long time coming. i love the game. i love the guild. you know that.
Whisper from [Wallaceand]: but it’s too much work, and i just don’t have time. i can’t have something that’s supposed to be relaxing feel like a job. my wife’s about to have a baby.
Whisper to [Wallaceand]: What if someone else takes over officer duties?
Whisper from [Wallaceand]: i’ve thought about that. it won’t work. i like it too much. i have to quit whole turkey. or i’ll just keep playing. you know what it’s like, you have to. i mean, i dream about this game. i never stop thinking about it. it’s just not good for me anymore.
Whisper from [Wallaceand]: maybe i’ll come back one day. maybe i won’t be able to stay away. maybe it’ll be more like a break.
Whisper from [Wallaceand]: but i don’t think so.
Whisper from [Wallaceand]: for now, anyway, this is goodbye.
Whisper to [Wallaceand]: I don’t know what to say.
Whisper from [Wallaceand]: yeah man. same here. this fucking sucks lmao. im like, crying
Whisper to [Wallaceand]: It’s been ten years.
Whisper from [Wallaceand]: the best. i feel like
Whisper from [Wallaceand]: i feel like i’ve known you my whole life. i don’t even know your real name or anything about you but i really do think of you as one of my closest friends
Whisper from [Wallaceand]: i’m gonna fucking miss you, man
Ian had to keep swallowing around his dry throat to keep down the burn behind his eyes, at the back of his nose. He felt like he did when he got lost, except only in his body, the fuzziness at his edges, the tunnel vision, but his mind was clear, his mind was clear and he knew what was happening in perfect detail. He typed and deleted a series of confessions, I don’t know what I’ll do without you. / Stay, please just stay. / You’re my friend, you are my friend. / I’ll miss you too, so much. He sent:
Whisper to [Wallaceand]: Ian. My name’s Ian.
Whisper from [Wallaceand]: ha. okay
Whisper from [Wallaceand]: i’m allison
Whisper to [Wallaceand]: It’s gonna be hard to play without you.
Whisper from [Wallaceand]: it better be. but you’ll do alright. you’re awesome, ian. yuo’re fuckin badass
The typo made him choke a laugh behind his palm, still pressed hard over his mouth. He typed one-handed.
Whisper to [Wallaceand]: You too. Congratulations on the baby.
Whisper from [Wallaceand]: thanks boss
With no idea the distance between them or the shape of the person on the other end Ian could feel Wallace—Allison—like there was a miles-long thread pulled taut between them, felt the other end of it start to tug. All to be said had been said. In moments, she would leave.
Whisper to [Wallaceand]: One last dungeon?
Whisper from [Wallaceand]: no. no, i better go now
Whisper to [Wallaceand]: Okay.
Whisper from [Wallaceand]: okay. goodbye, then
Whisper to [Wallaceand]: Goodbye, old friend. Ride out.
He tacked the last on as an impulse, <Blood Meridian>’s battlecry, something he came up with when he was an overzealous teenager, something that he cringed at every time the guild used it to charge into a raid, but now, for the first time, it felt right, like all those years ago whatever had whispered it to him and compelled him to use it had known, all along, that he would need it eventually, that he would need it for this moment. On screen, Wallace’s avatar clicked her heels together and saluted with one clawed, green hand.
Whisper from [Wallaceand]: ride out.
[Wallaceand] is offline.
Ian’s friends list was over four hundred players long. At any given time, twenty to thirty percent of the list was lit up, showing they were online. When a player was offline, their username was dark in the list. There were names on Ian’s list that were always dark. Ian scrolled way down to the bottom of the list and stared, for a long time, at [Wallaceand].
(guild only) [Ragnar0k] [Leader]: Which guild officers are online?
It was rare that Ian messaged directly in the guild chat, which was typically so busy that he had to close mute and ignore the chat window and rely on an officer—usually Wallace—to fill him in on what he’d missed. His guild was two-hundred strong. He watched with forced patience as the flood of messages came in, the majority of them surprised and excitable [Recruit] or [Veteran] ranked players who Ian hadn’t interacted with enough to recognize. Eventually, a highlighted message popped up. As leader, Ragnar0k’s guild chat messages were highlighted in red; the officers’ were highlighted blue.
(guild only) [mcflubbers] [Officer]: Me and Dragon. Ready for your command, guild leader!
(guild only) [buffDragon] [Officer]: o7 yessir
Ian was usually charmed by his guild officers’ enthusiasm, their put-upon awe of him, but something about it made him sigh and pinch the bridge of his nose, push his chair away from his desk. He wasn’t a person to them. He was part of the game. His attention was their leaderboard. He liked that when there’d been someone beside him, someone who’d seen behind the curtain. Now, with Wallace gone, all those names were dark. Not all had said goodbye. Some just left.
(guild only) [Ragnar0k] [Leader]: I won’t be joining the Tuesday raid. Flubbs, you’ll be acting raid leader. Dragon, you take main tank. I know Gundark is out. Is [melonenjoyer] online?
(guild only) [mcflubbers] [Officer]: Understood, sir! Thank you for this honor. I won’t let you down.
(guild only) [buffDragon] [Officer]: likewise, guild leader.
(guild only) [melonenjoyer] [Veteran]: i’m here, my liege! what is ur command?
Ian grimaced, forced his hands out of his hair where they’d brought it to new and dangerous heights.
(guild only) [Ragnar0k] [Leader]: I’m promoting you to officer. Can you sub in Gundark’s main assist on Tuesday?
(guild only) [MrBroski123] [Recruit]: omg can i get promoted too?
In one smooth motion, Ian clicked on the recruit’s username and selected [Remove from Guild].
Remove [MrBroski123] from <Blood Meridian>. Are you sure?
[Yes]
(guild only) [Ragnar0k] [Leader]: No. <3
(guild only) [buffDragon] [Officer]: f
(guild only) [mcflubbers] [Officer]: f
(guild only) [melonenjoyer] [Officer]: f
A series of consolatory “f”s spammed the chat for a while, easy enough to ignore when Melon’s highlighted message came through.
(guild only) [melonenjoyer] [Officer]: thank you for this honor, lord [Ragnar0k]. i pledge to serve you and the guild with all diligence and pride.
(guild only) [melonenjoyer] [Officer]: tuesday works for me, i’ll be there.
(guild only) [mcflubbers] [Officer]: Sad you won’t be joining us, guild leader!
(guild only) [Ragnar0k] [Leader]: I have business of my own to attend.
The truth was, Ian couldn’t stomach a raid without Wallace, not yet. The thought of calling shots alone, without her at his side, it was too much. He needed time to let it sink in, to compartmentalize, to reorganize. He could have said as much, he was almost sure they would have understood. But it would ruin the illusion for them, the illusion of their fearless leader, loyal but cold, a foot apart from the rest. It wouldn’t be right for his character.
He muted guild chat again. The officers would whisper him if something important came up. His checklist beckoned. He sighed.
When people asked why Ian wrote the challenge—and eventually, people would—they would expect his answer to make sense, but it was Ian’s reason, his in particular, he couldn’t put it to words but he understood it and he was the only one who needed to understand it and how dare someone ask him to explain? There was no single, neat reason. Nothing to report. He could walk through the day that led up to writing it, though he suspected it would take more than that, to really understand, someone would have to hear the ten years that walked into that day; more than that, they would have to live those years, they would have to have his hands, the tactile sense-memory of the keyboard, the mouse under his fingers, the keystrokes as much a part of them as his fingernails. Ian wrote the challenge because of the call from Dad. Because of the girl at the coffee shop. Because he was left alone in his new apartment. Because Wallace left. Because Garth, Sidion, Baldur left four, seven, eight years before her. Because he was the last person alive. Because over the summer he read the fantasy romance series, the one about the fairies, that Kate pressured him into finishing with her. Because he walked Ragnar0k through Markettown on the way to a quest marker and a message caught his eye, a pathetic refrain he’d seen more times than he could recall, some mid level asshole soliciting, Buying gf, 200g, no noobs.
Who would want such a thing? The allure of two-hundred gold, Ian could understand; though he had far surpassed the point where wealth was an issue or a necessity for him, he could remember the days of scraping up coppers, silvers, gold pieces. But the aftermath for the poor woman, who now had to live with this mediocre, salacious creep in exchange for a finite resource. Maybe if the guy was worth anything, things would be different. If the gold prize was equal prize to the man who tendered it. Like some archaic dowry.
If it was someone like Ragnar0k, girlfriends would line up to be paid for. They’d fight each other for it. Visions, as Ian got up to pour himself a glass of water, of grand tourneys, the age of chivalry, single combat. The challenge wrote itself. It was just something silly, something fun and out of the ordinary, something new to do in the game. He really didn’t think about what it would mean. When he wrote the challenge, no part of Ian could picture a Realm where someone really won it. In his mind, it was just an endless contest, a pyre burning, swords shields staffs bows maces daggers axes gleaming, ash in the air, a long long line of people who wanted to claim him, people who wanted him as far as the eye could see.
Dakota Edwin Collins (he/him) is a fiction writer from Nashville, TN. His short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Swing, Foglifter, Cult Mag, and elsewhere, and his unpublished novel, For the Realm, was shortlisted for the 2024 William Faulkner — William Wisdom Prize. He holds an MFA in Fiction from The University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His website is dakotacollinswriter.wordpress.