Magda barely heard the doorbell ring over the sound of her mother’s lecturing. She moved to answer it, her mother grudgingly cutting off mid-rant. It was Jack; he smiled lopsidedly when the door opened, as though embarrassed. Magda smiled back.

“Hi, Jack,” she said, standing aside to let him come in.

“Hi. Hi, Mrs. Pretorius.” He wiped his feet before slipping off his trainers and slotting them under the shoe stand beside the door. Magda’s mother nodded approvingly.

“Hello, Jack. Would you like something to drink?”

Jack shook his head, still smiling. Magda took his hand and tugged on it lightly. “Do you want to go upstairs?”

Jack nodded this time. As they passed, Magda’s mother gave her a meaningful look; Magda knew the lecture was not over yet. She didn’t care. This was the first time she and Jack would be alone together at her house; her parents were extremely protective of her, and were of the school of thought that ‘boys only want one thing.’ But tonight they had agreed to let Jack come over to keep Magda company while they were at a friends’ party, on the condition that Magda allowed nothing to happen. Having assured them that she had no intention of doing anything stupid, they reluctantly agreed.

Magda slid into the swivel chair in front of her computer as Jack sank onto the bed. As usual, he looked totally out of place in her room; her posters were all of bands he hated (she suspected that subconsciously she did this on purpose, just to annoy him), her pink fluffy pillow brushed his elbow, and he moved her teddies off the end of her bed before lying down, as though afraid of them. As she clicked the ‘on’ switch, he leaned over to kiss her gently.

“So. What do you want to do?” Jack looked at her, face full of mock curiosity.

Magda grinned back. “Gee, I don’t know,” she answered, as cheekily as he had asked, “how about we play Devil’s Domain?”

“Oh, that’s a great idea. Because we, like, never do that.” Jack sat up and swung his legs off the bed, shifting over to be near the computer. Magda clicked the icon on the desktop that would start the game loading, and turned to face him. She studied his face, his eyes; she still found new things she loved about him every time she did this. Jack reached over and slipped his hand round the back of her neck, pulling her close so he could kiss her. When he pulled away a few seconds later and looked into her eyes, he was smiling.

“I love you, too,” Magda said. Jack’s grin widened, and his hand on her neck tried to pull her in again, before he glanced at the computer screen and blinked, suddenly surprised.

“Hey- what’s wrong with the game?” Magda followed his gaze. The computer had stopped on the loading screen which showed a picture of the portal players passed through when they first started to play Devil’s Domain to get to the world where the game was based. Usually, the portal (which was shaped like two enormous, ivory tusks curved to form a roughly oval-shaped door) stood dark and forbidding on a cliff, which dropped sharply away to let the player see a vast expanse of bleak landscape miles below and a grim, tumultuous sky full of swirling clouds. This time, it was… different. The portal glowed dimly, as though it were the entrance to a long tunnel with a dim light pulsing at the far end. The charcoal clouds swirled and ran together, lightning forking down to the rock around the portal from the vortex the clouds formed. Suddenly, there was a particularly violent flash, and the portal glowed so brightly that it was painful to look at; Jack and Magda threw up their hands to shield their eyes from the light that streamed out from the screen, enveloping them in tendrils that seemed at first only half-real, but more solid every second (and how could light be solid?) until there was nothing but the light. It pulsed again, impossibly bright – and vanished. They were gone.