Solarversia: The Year Long Game by Mr Toby Downton, Mrs Helena Michaelson

boundary, the players around her disappeared. It was a phased zone; numerous people could inhabit it simultaneously, but it would appear to them that they were there alone.
    Like Corona Cubes and Teleport Machines, Tweels of Fate were everywhere. They were modelled on Banjax the Dodectopus, and looked like the kind of roundabout you might find in a children’s playground.
    Nova grabbed hold of the tentacle nearest to her — which, rather than tapering to a point, ended in a bulbous sphere — and gave it a big push.
    The Tweel spun round its axis for ten seconds or so, then came to a shuddering rest. The turquoise tentacle that landed closest to her began to squirm and writhe, like it been rudely awoken, and then looked up at her. Its spherical end, which had the face of a wizened old man, opened its puckered mouth and spoke.
    “Your fate for today is to receive three teleport tokens. Use them wisely.” The tokens registered immediately in her headset, while the tentacle lowered its face and solidified once more. It wasn’t a bad outcome for her very first twist of fate.
    Pleased with her progress, and keen not to use too much of her birthday credit in one go, she volleyed an eye back to Fragging Hell and glanced around until she spotted Burner back in the main room hunkering over a plate of a chips and a burger. Realising that she was pretty hungry too, she located the nearest Corona Cube, logged out, and sauntered over to join him.
    “I picked up Flynn, a handful of speed points and four teleport tokens. Pretty good, huh?”
    “Still miles behind me then. Not that a mere mortal like yourself should ever compare themselves to the Master of the Solarverse.”
    “Whatever; it’s a marathon, not a sprint,” she said, trying hard to feign nonchalance. “How’s your revision going, anyway?”
    “Maths and further maths should be alright. I could probably do computer studies with my hands tied behind my back. Electronics is awesome — did I tell you, Jono’s asked me to send him the aerial drone I built for my coursework, reckons his professor wants to take a look? Physics, on the other hand. Don’t talk to me about bloody physics. What about you?”
    “Let’s just say I’m doing enough to get a place at Hull. Nottingham’s looking unlikely. Sometimes I wish I was a total geek like you. Although revision’s a bit overrated, don’t you think?”
    A better poker player than Burner would have spotted her bluff a mile off — the brush of the hair behind her ears, the lack of eye contact, and the try-hard laugh. She hadn’t even opened her books.
     

Chapter Seven
    Arty looked down at the sword in his hands. He loved the way that the jewels in its handle sparkled; sometimes he thought he’d like to own one for real. It was an item known as the Sword of Sadism, and as one of the most powerful objects within Solarversia, only a few hundred of them would ever be in circulation at any one time.
    He moved his thumb from the yellow topaz up to the blood-red ruby, circled it back across the string of pearls and ended up on the pink sapphire. This was the combination that initiated the weapon’s power move, the one that could defeat the toughest of monsters.
    As his thumb came to rest on the sapphire, the jewels glistened brighter and a melody played. Now the sword moved, rotating Arty’s avatar on the spot until he became a human whirlwind. When he finally came to rest he gave a series of commands that allowed him to enter third-person perspective so that he could watch his avatar perform the move in front of his eyes. He knelt down and studied the power move from below, zooming in and out, cocking his head to one side or the other.
    He removed his goggles and found himself back in the office. Twirling a clump of shaggy hair round his finger, he pondered the problem. Something looked wrong with the whirlwind from that angle — it looked more like a grey fuzzy beard than a scary tornado — but he struggled to