(Now with actual dialog! Sorry for the formatting issue. Thank you for reading.)
"You spent the check on VR gear," Sandra accused.
Thera hesitated.
"I knew it! You bitch! You promised you'd spend some of that on a night out."
"They were having a deal on the memory," Thera protested. "I got twice as much as I thought I could afford. The extra memory means the processors can work more efficiently and the experience is so much better."
"It's immersive VR, Thera, as real as real."
"You know that's not the case. If you're going to wander around Third Life and hang with toons then a standard rig is fine. For real VR you need to tweak the system. And it's totally worth it," Thera stated.
"If you prefer virt to real," Sandra rejoined. "So it's making your new sim a lot of fun?"
Thera hesitated again.
"It's not? You wasted your money?"
"I didn't waste my money! The sim is just... It's not as fun as I had hoped."
"No! Your dark-web, invitation-only, kink sim isn't the best thing in the world?"
"Sarcasm is ugly, Sandra," Thera pointed out. "It's a very cool sim but the players... They're kind of jerks. Look, it's invitation only and the first avatar is free. But if you want to upgrade beyond the basic you have to pay. Everyone has upgraded. They're all playing souped-up humans and elves with custom skins and improved AIs and I can't afford that. See, I *can* make responsible decisions."
"That doesn't... That only counts a little. A very little. So no one wants to play with you?"
"No. I dressed up a half-elf because that was the best I could do with the free options. But I dropped into the elven lands and everyone there looks and moves like a supermodel or an athlete. I'm plodding along in a basic skin with a basic AI. I'm less noticeable than most of the bots. I'm pretty sure no one has recognized me as an actual player. I've been working in this castle for the past month. In the kitchen. I haven't gotten to play at all. I was thinking about bagging it but thought that I'd try to escape and see if that did anything. The escaped slave being hunted by her elven masters."
"It's a nice image, Thera. Is it going to work?"
"Not a chance in hell," Thera admitted. "But if I'm going to quit the sim I might as well go in style."
"Classes?"
"I'm ahead, mother."
"Ew! Take that back."
"Sorry," Thera apologized, genuinely contrite. "That was low."
"It was. Your punishment is a night of Netflix. They have the new Cumberbatch film. Tomorrow. My place. I'll get an Uber for you."
"Deal. 7pm?"
"Done. Be safe and have fun escaping the castle."
*************************
Thera settled the headset around her temples and then settled herself in the chair. She took a deep breath and slowly exhaled, sinking back into the chair.
"Shall we play a game?" she asked.
There was the moment of disorientation as the 'memories' of her avatar filled her mind and then she was there. The kitchen was a large hall with multiple alcoves. Some were filled with fires or ovens and others held food, counters, plates. It was busy, loud, and smelly. They were exotic and delicious smells, though, because elves. She was apparently scrubbing dishes, again, because she was standing by the washtub with her hands in the water. She pulled them out and dried them on a rag. The action caught the eye of Lesha, the supervisor of the kitchen.
"I'm going to pee," Safi/Thera told her. The elf looked dubious so Thera twisted the knife a little. "I might have diarrhea," she added.
The elf's look of disgust was a thing Safi would cherish. She smiled as she walked out of the kitchen.
The pit toilets were located well away from the kitchens because, assholes or not, the inhabitants were still elves. The service hallways were filled with people, mostly slaves, entirely bots, and none of them gave another slave any consideration at all. Safi walked into the laundry and picked up the nearest pile of clean linens she could find. Then she turned and walked out as if she owned the place. The armful of linens provided her with an excuse to leave the service passageways and she went up two flights and into the guest quarters.
"Master told me to bring these," she informed the only upstairs maid that challenged her. The bot didn't know which master and probably wasn't bright enough to realize that was a problem that should be solved and, in any case, had probably been conditioned to obey without question. Master wants, master gets. The assholes liked that. Truth be told she would have liked that if they had just let her play.
She stepped aside and lowered her head as a pleasure slave glided past. A full elf (expensive) with a custom skin (pricey) and a top of the line AI (monthly expensive) that made every movement elegant. 'I'll bet she looks good picking her nose,' Safi thought, but carefully did not say. She wasn't sure what room would be best but it had to be against the outer walls and the elf slave had just walked out of one of those. 'Carefully made up and not disheveled.' Safi thought. 'So there's probably not a master in there cleaning himself up.'
Taking a breath she opened the door and walked in. The rooms were empty and, hurray, a window looked out over the outer walls. No pleasant views of the inner garden for guests. She walked into the second room and began to ransack it. Anything that looked useful she put in a pile but it wasn't until she found the jewelry case that she finally found what she was looking for.
The collars were enchanted and allowed the masters, and a few mistresses, to administer painful shocks and track the whereabouts of the wearer. They were also the kind of collars put on bots. They were, not to be too unkind, cheap shit. A bot thinking about escape could probably figure out how to open one of the collars, but then they'd be killed. So evolutionary pressure had produced bots that didn't think about taking their collars off. You just needed two hands, something to help apply pressure to the collar to compress it a little, and a thin piece of metal wire. Such as a pin.
Safi dropped the collar on the floor and began tying sheets together. Square knot, tug, knot, tug, knot, tug, square knot, tug. The book had recommended knots every few feet and Safi had carefully included those because breaking a leg was not her idea of fun. When her rope was finished she tied it to the convenient rings on the enormous bed and tossed it out the window.
"This is probably not going to work," she reminded herself, and then crawled out the window and down the rope.
Using the castle to orient herself she headed East into the forest. That was roughly the fastest way out of the forest and into the human lands. In theory the goblin lands to the North were closer but weren't a good idea. Safi wanted to be captured by a hunting party and dragged back to be decently ravaged, not killed and eaten. She didn't take any particular care in keeping on course. Once she was into the forest she was certain to get lost; she'd used all her resources on making herself physically appealing rather than on things like a keen sense of direction.
Despite the almost certain fact that there was no actual pursuit she kept to a good jogging pace for the next hour and at least made an effort to continue East. If she did happen to make it to the human lands maybe she'd have better luck there; even a basic half-elf would stand out from the basic human bots. But no, she'd wanted elves to enslave her. Handsome pointy-eared archery studs. Mysterious and brooding. Masterful.
"Ow! Fucking forest!" she swore. The underbrush had been scratching her legs up and her feet frankly hurt but that branch had caught her ass and it stung. She came to a stop and contorted herself, trying to assess the damage. Her hand pulled a thin metal dart with feathers at one end out of her flesh. She looked at it, trying to identify it, knowing that it meant something but unable to put words to the idea, unable to think at all. She didn't feel the fall to the forest floor and the green feet that appeared in front of her were so ridiculous that she tried to giggle.
*************************
{..can't scream if she isn't awake,} Dart explained for the fifth time.
{If we fuck her she'll wake up faster!} Ripper countered.
{Remember what happened to Snap-Finger?} Dart growled.
{You killed him,} Ripper said. {What does that have to do with fucking the meat?}
{If you don't shut up Dart is going to kill you, too, Ripper. If you don't shut up then *I'm* going to kill you.} Slash-Throat explained.
