Mary was in the Zone. She just knew this would be the run. The very last song on the game Rhythm Blade was going to fall. Expert + difficulty. She'd already cleared every other song available in the game; no matter how much it cost to get the track, she bought them all and crushed them. It was within her grasp; she could feel it.

  The last block was perfectly cleaved in half. "YES! Oh my God, YES!! I did it! Every song, crushed! You saw it here, folks!" She jumped for joy, doing a fist pump, but when her foot came down, she slipped on one of the cords and fell backwards right into the tangled up cords of her rig. Those cords wrapped perfectly around her throat, and cinched tight as she landed hard on the ground.

  She panicked, unable to breathe. Scrabbling at the cords, which were too tight to allow her to get purchase with her feet to stand again. All too quickly, her vision went black, and soon her struggles stopped.

  The next thing Mary knew, she was gasping in a breath. Her eyes flew open, and she saw a forest with what looked like a stone wall in the distance. Looking down at her body, she saw clothes she'd never have worn. "Ugh! Who wears a Skirt in a dream?!" This had to be a dream; it couldn't make sense any other way.

  "Well, if it's a dream, I may as well get up and look around." She got up with no pain whatsoever, more proof that it must be a dream. All the Rhythm Blade she played had given her no end of aches and pains. The Doctors told her to slow down and take more breaks, but she was persistent in her goal to clear every song, and she'd finally done it, ON A LIVE STREAM, no less.

  It took a surprising amount of time to reach the stone wall. Considering it was a dream, she'd have expected to move more quickly. Her shoes were lacking, too. As she finally got within shouting distance of the wall, she could see two men, each with a colored saber, slicing at blocks exactly like the game, only they constantly got in each other's way. Soon, the two fell, seeming out of energy for some reason. Bystanders grabbed their arms and hauled them out, with a grim look on their faces. They looked... defeated.

  "Oh, this looks cool, wish the game had stages like this!" She stepped onto a square where the men had been and picked up the two sabers. A moment later, someone noticed and tried to yell at her, but it was too late. A flash of light surrounded her, and looking across the field, she saw an old man wearing robes with a wicked grin on his face. A moment later, he raised his hand, and the first block came hurtling at her, before the third block flew, she already knew what pattern this was. "Bring it, Gramps!" She shouted.

  ***

  Queen Altarreese Ellorewwen stood stunned as a woman picked up both sabers and was caught in the defender's square. "That poor girl. Why would she do such a thing?! I respect the desire to defend our home, but this is pure madness. There are meant to be two defenders, not one girl!" At least she would watch this valiant attempt at a defense; it was the least she could do.

  As she watched, her expression went from stoic acceptance to utter disbelief, and a glimmer of hope that couldn't be trusted. Only the sharpest eyes, and those of her closest confidents could have seen this subtle change, but it was there.

  This girl positively danced through the pattern cast by the Empire's greatest caster. The queen could see his grin falter as the girl with seemingly no effort at all cut every single block. The city's walls were nearly fully repaired through this girl's effort already. "Who IS this girl?!" Altarreese asked nobody. With the final block of the pattern cut down, the Caster crumpled, clutching his chest. A young female caster pulled him out of the caster's circle, checking him tenderly. Then she looked at the girl with rage, marching forward into the caster's circle, she reactivated the glyph, and sent a high complexity pattern.

  ***

  "Really? This is the pattern you're going with?! Oh well, I don't mind easy mode." Mary commented, further enraging this girl on the other side of the field. Yet the sabers cleaved block after block effortlessly. "I'm not even getting winded here!" Dancing from foot to foot, moving forward and backward in time with the Rhythm she could hear in her mind, she tore through the pattern. "Hope you've got something better for the next round."

  ***

  "THIS GIRL! SHE'S TAUNTING THE CASTER!" Altarreese was beyond astonished at this point, as were all who watched, as entire walls' worth of bricks flew in all directions to repair or reclaim other towns, villages, or cities. The speed of reclaimed bricks only compounded with each successive block sliced correctly, and the girl had cleared two whole patterns already. The caster didn't stop, though she cast again, an even more complex pattern. The girl, though, was unfazed. She was even crossing her sabers and twirling them in between segments of the pattern. "What audacity!" The Queen said with a huge, for her, smile. As the pattern ended, with not a single block missed, her third pattern in a row, the young male caster leapt into the circle, a desperate rage which to Altarreese's eyes seemed born of an unrequited love, and began to cast, only the cast he used was a multi-pattern cast.

  "The boy is mad with grief; only the casting will keep his body standing. If she doesn't miss two patterns' worth of blocks, that idiot will die. Not that I'll be overly sad about that, I suppose." The girl was still unruffled, Altarreese could tell from her cheeks alone, that she was smiling, grinning. The boy, though, as the moments passed, and not a single block managed to slip past, nor did the girl hit a single black mana spike, which would have hurt her if she had hit them, his expression became more grim with each passing moment.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  As the final block of the fifth pattern in the multi-pattern cast fell in two pieces, the boy fell lifeless right beside the female caster, who was still breathing. The old man had been teleported back to the imperial capital, along with every imperial loyalist. "She did it, she ended this war, all by herself. It's... a miracle... it must be!" Altarreese stood stunned for a count of five before she forced herself into action. "Regalus... see that young caster girl fitted with a slave collar, and make the defender her mistress. Then I want her brought to me at once." The timid man bowed in respect and ran to do her bidding.

  ***

  "Well, that was fun, but why did the guy collapse?!" Mary watched as a man in a suit of some kind, looking more or less like a butler, rushed to the girl on the far side of the field, grabbed her arm, pulled her out of the circle, and put a collar on her neck. Then he hoisted the girl onto his shoulder and brought her straight towards Mary. "Um, Hi, what's with the girl?"

  "Pardon me, miss, but her Majesty, the Queen, has decreed that this prisoner become your personal slave."

  Mary raised her hands frantically. "Whoa, no way, I can't become someone's owner! That's like totally illegal... isn't it?!"

  The man tilted his head slightly in confusion. "Certainly not, consider, if she hadn't still been inside the caster's circle when you vanquished that lad, she would have been in a much worse situation. The entire Empire's population is now inside their Royal Capital, with no food sources. She'd have starved to death with everyone else. She's going to be a slave no matter what you do, so consider also, if she's your slave, you determine her treatment; if she were somebody else's slave, they would have that role, and not you."

  Rather than argue any further, he took her hand, pricked her finger with his dagger, and touched it to the collar, which glowed green for a moment. "Now do please order her to wake."

  "Um... Wake Up!" She didn't think it would do anything, but the Caster's eyes flew open, and her hand flew to the collar. She looked at Mary with terrified wonder.

  "The Queen desires your presence. I shall guide you."

  The man put the Caster down and began walking primly towards the gate. "What?! Why do I have to meet with a Queen? I didn't do anything!"

  The butler paused. "Miss, to say you didn't do anything, when you singlehandedly ended the war with the Empire, and in fact the Empire itself is quite ludicrous. Ah, where are my manners? You've surprised this old man too much today. I am Regalus, Head Butler to her Majesty the Queen. Might I know your name, Miss?"

  "My name is Mary Tanner. I'd say it's nice to meet you, but under the circumstances that you want to take me to a Queen, I can't quite mean the words."

  "I shall not take offense, as I imagine for you that meeting with any Noble, let alone her Majesty, is quite the ordeal, however I imagine it will be something you must get used to. I expect you yourself shall be made a Noble of some rank, after your deeds today, it's unavoidable, I'm afraid."

  Her slave followed behind her, silent, mulish, but forced to follow. She herself followed equally silent, somewhat mulish, but too afraid not to follow. Mary had the sinking suspicion that this was not, in point of fact, a dream after all.

  "Your Majesty, may I present Lady Mary Tanner?" Regalus stepped aside, having led Mary into an ornate structure near the center of the City. It appeared to be a Church.

  "Do pardon me, I felt inspired to pray in gratitude to the Goddess for sending you in our most desperate hour of need. The Emperor had nearly conquered the entire continent. Aside from our Queendom, there are only three smaller countries remaining. Now we shall have to manage all the lands formerly belonging to the Empire, as the countries that once ruled them have long since fallen, even as the Empire itself shall fall, I suspect, within a month's time. We are Queen Altarreese Ellorewwen. T'is fortunate that you have a Family name, though Tanner seems a might bit... Common. I suppose it would appease the current nobles, showing that you know your place, at least in their eyes, but future generations might not appreciate that name so much. Is it well enough that we leave it as such?"

  "Um, it's my name, I've had it since I was born. I couldn't change my name, that would spit in the face of my family back... home."

  The change in Mary's behaviour caught Altarreese's attention. "Whence do you hail? Is there ought of ill to speak of?"

  "I... I think... I think I died. At first, I thought I was just dreaming after my accident. I thought I'd wake up in the hospital with a sore neck. But... the smells, things I have never smelled, but somehow I know are right. Even... even this girl here, she... she wet herself, and I can smell it. That kind of stuff doesn't happen in dreams. I... I'm never... I'll never see my Mom again! Heh, I'll never hear her complain I don't have a boyfriend yet. She just never accepted I'm Gay!"

  "What does Gay mean in this context?"

  "It means I like women, not men. I can't ever marry a Man, so you can't make me a Noble, cause I can't get pregnant without marrying a man, and I'll kill myself before I let that happen!"

  "Why should you need to marry a man simply to have a child? One doesn't even need a man to conceive. The Goddess, in her infinite wisdom, has provided magic to allow two women to conceive a child. Admittedly, the resultant child will always be a girl, and her blood will only consist of her mother's family, but the child will be healthy. You needn't even marry; you can order your slave to do the honors instead."

  "Say what now?!"