“You’re sure this is it?” Asuna asked, she and her small party of three standing before a grand bookshelf in the library-themed zone. Today Asuna was in an unusual party, neither with her guild nor her on-and-off partner Kirito, but instead with two acquaintances of his, the cheerful pigtailed Silica and the usually cautious blacksmith Lisbeth, who had approached her out of the blue, Silica claiming to have discovered a hidden boss all on her lonesome, and was looking for a bodyguard to accompany her and Lisbeth. They had wanted to take Kirito, but he was hard to get ahold of sometimes, and so they had settled for Asuna. Asuna had asked why they didn’t simply assemble a larger party, Lisbeth shamelessly claiming that she wanted to keep as much of the loot to herself to sell as possible. Apparently approaching a high level player as their backup had been Silica’s idea, wanting to rush in before somebody else discovered it and took the glory for themselves. Asuna had agreed, figuring that she would be enough in a lower level zone to cover for the two of them, and so before long they had made it without incident.

“Yep, this is exactly where I remember it! I marked it and everything.” Silica said proudly. She ran her finger alongside a number of books before pulling out one, causing the bookshelf to slide open, revealing a secret passage as promised.

“Come on, come on, somebody’ll beat us there!” Silica urged, practically pushing Lisbeth through the secret tunnel she had discovered.

“How did I end up in front!?” Lisbeth whined, nervous that she was out of her depth as she had hardly fought anything stronger than common enemies since she started her shop, but had somehow been talked into it by Silica appealing to her greed and the promise of selling exclusive items and materials at premium prices. Well, everything would be fine with Asuna around, at least that was the plan.

“But I’ve never been the first to beat a secret boss before!” Silica pouted. “There aren’t even any enemies up ahead, it’s a totally safe run to the arena!”

“Are you sure you didn’t just blunder past them before they could aggro?” Lisbeth said sarcastically before Asuna pulled the two apart and stood well in front.

“Keep your ears open, you might have just gotten lucky the first time.” She said, rephrasing Lisbeth’s words in a more diplomatic tone. Silica pouted, but agreed to take a slower pace, although she was the first to gloat when it turned out that she was right.

“I’ll just stand back and focus on keeping you two healthy, okay?” Lisbeth said with a nervous laugh.

“Come on, we’ll be fine!” Silica said, although it was mostly bluster. Anything could happen, and the group was ready to flee as soon as something went wrong. Most hidden bosses were levelled appropriately for their zone, but you never knew.

“I’ll take point like we discussed.” Asuna said, drawing her sword and leading the two in. The arena resembled the foyer of a large mansion, the boss surprisingly small compared to the usual towering figures they had come to expect. It resembled an ordinary woman only a little taller than themselves, vampiric in appearance with pure white skin and a blood-red gothic ballgown, long, scarlet hair to top it off. Asuna relaxed a little, confident that a duel best suited her skills.



The boss’ health bar appeared in their vision, the three approaching cautiously as the woman pointed a clawed finger at them and laughed haughtily, signalling the beginning of the battle. However, its level was below their own, well below Asuna’s in particular, and the three engaged with confidence.

“This thing’s kind of a letdown! I guess the developers got lazy with this one!” Silica called cheerfully, easily dodging its slow swipes with its claws and getting in a few slashes before retreating back safely for Asuna to push in, deftly swaying between its attacks.

“Never let your guard down when you don’t know what you’re dealing with!” Asuna yelled, dancing backwards as she realised the boss was charging up an attack. It held up its hand, a string shooting out at high speed. Asuna decided to block it, figuring that whatever damage it could inflict would be negligible. However, the string went through her guard, penetrating her chest and causing her to freeze up on the spot. Silica jumped in and slashed the crimson woman, causing it to retract its string, but her aggressive attacks faltered when she realised that Asuna still wasn’t moving after being released, nor had she said a word since.

“Asuna? What’s wrong?” Lisbeth called fearfully, as she stood in place, Silica rushing in to help her. She recoiled as she saw Asuna’s look of surprise frozen on her face, but more than that, her face had turned deathly pale, and had a strange glossiness to it, as did her bare shoulders. It reminded Silica of an old-fashioned doll. She assumed that she had been petrified, but she couldn’t see a status effect indicator anywhere!

“Hey, find something to fix Asuna while I distract them!” Silica called, thinking quickly as Lisbeth fumbled through her menu.

“I’m trying, I’m trying! What status effect even is this? Paralyse doesn’t work like this!” Lisbeth cried, starting to panic with their ace seeming eliminated seconds in. She hadn’t taken any damage, but her status didn’t display anything to tell them what was going on at all! She didn’t have a single item that seemed like it would help, and began to shrink back, recoiling as she became well aware that the three of them might have bitten off far more than they could chew.

“It’s fine, I’m sure it’ll wear off any second now!” Silica tried to sound as optimistic as usual, but found her voice faltering as she dived desperately out of the way of the boss’s string attack, her heart racing as she realised that she might be doomed in a single attack if she wasn’t careful. “Just don’t get hit by that attack, and-”

Silica didn’t have a chance to finish before she was tackled from behind, grabbed and pulled off her feet by someone or something, wriggling helplessly as whoever it was was far too strong for her to break free of.

“Let me go, let me- Asuna?” She said in confusion as she turned her head to see Asuna, her expression unchanged, holding her in a bear hug and pointing her directly towards the smug boss. Silica realised that the glossiness of Asuna’s skin wasn’t just a visual effect, but she was hard as rock, transformed in some way by the attack.

“What do you think you’re doing!? Let her go!” Lisbeth yelled, but was unable to bring herself to attack Asuna, knowing that she could die if she screwed up.

“Get off! Let me-” Silica shouted and struggled until she felt a painful thud in her chest, staring down to see the boss’s string embedded in her chest. She felt a chill spread through her body, finding herself unable to change her contorted grimace, her mouth hanging open and caught mid-yell. She saw the bare skin on her shoulders turn white like Asuna’s, then go glossy and stiff, as if… No, there was no as-if, between herself and Asuna it was clear what was happening. The boss was somehow turning the two into dolls! She was utterly unable to move under her own power, but when Asuna finally released her, she found herself moving unwillingly, silently protesting as she couldn’t even warn Lisbeth to run as she began to slowly walk towards her along with Asuna. The crimson woman was doing this, she could tell that it was her instructions that pushed her towards her allies not with the intent to save, but to ensnare.

“G-guys?” Lisbeth began to shrink, looking around desperately for a way out as the two became mere puppets of the boss, dancing . Her fingers trembling, she dropped her weapon and screamed, turning tail and rushing for the exit in hopes of some escape. But Asuna was faster, cutting her off while Silica grabbed her before she had time to react.

“No, no! I don’t want to-” was all Lisbeth had time to cry out before she too was hit by the string, her face frozen mid-cry and the porcelain infection spreading across her body from head to toe. And just like that, their fight was over, before they ever really understood what was going on. It had all happened too fast, doomed the moment Asuna had been caught and turned into the boss’s thrall. Silica let go of the new Lisbeth doll, the three obediently facing their mistress and bowing subserviently, the crimson woman simply smiling.

And so, what now? That was the question on all three’s minds. The boss didn’t seem to be attacking them, so they wouldn’t die, at least. But it didn’t seem to be releasing them either, and they could see no signs of the effect wearing off. Silica held out hope that this boss would be lenient and somehow let them go, but they all knew that this deadly game wasn’t so kind. The crimson woman beckoned them with a finger and they all followed, hands together in a submissive ladylike fashion.

The three were alone with their thoughts, but all held deep regret for how they had ended up like this, whether it was for making a fatal error, for impulsively pulling their friends into a doomed expedition, or simply for letting themselves be talked into coming in the first place.

If only she hadn’t tried to block that attack, Asuna said despondently in her mind, frustrated more than anything that she had made a single wrong call that had doomed them all. She could have easily avoided it, not taken the chance, and now here she was, her only chance of getting out seemingly being to wait for somebody to possibly rescue them, if the boss didn’t dispose of them first. He would find out where they went and come save them, Asuna thought longingly, he would never make the same mistake she did. But who was “he”, anyway? Asuna kept thinking about a saviour, but just who was it she held so deeply in her heart? For some reason, she couldn’t even remember his name!

If only Pina had been here, Silica wanted to yell in frustration, getting even more frustrated that this bizarre status effect wouldn’t allow her to do even that. If she still had her familiar, she might have had a chance of doing something about this boss. Yes, if Pina was here, she could… hang on, who was Pina again? She was sure she knew what this Pina thing was a few seconds ago. It was something to do with her class… but what was her class again? Her head was all foggy, her memories a blur. Just what was going on?

Why had she even come here, Lisbeth wondered despondently, in the depths of despair already with her mental defences causing the secondary effects of her transformation to wash over her much faster than the others. What reason could possibly have been good enough for her to put herself in such danger? It wasn’t a rhetorical question either, she quickly realised. She genuinely couldn’t remember, only that she had decided to come along with… what were their names again? The two dolls next to her, mistress’s servants. They had names, but she simply couldn’t recall them, nor could she remember where she had come from. She’d had a job, hadn’t she? Some kind of job that kept her safe, that she normally wouldn’t have abandoned to go chasing after silly secret bosses and hidden challenges. Come on, think Lisbeth, think, she tried to force herself to remember. She’d had a business back in… what city was it? Was there even a city to begin with or was she just imagining it? It was getting hard to remember anything outside of this room and her mistress. Was there anything else?

Reaching the boss’s end of the arena, the boss looked them over, and with a wave of her talon-tipped hand, the three found them following the motion, not quite realising what she was doing until they opened their menus, then their equipment submenus, then with a few taps were nearly naked, stripped of their equipment. All three were mortified, but more scared than embarrassed. Once stripped it became clear that they had changed far more than it had seemed at first, with doll joints at their elbows, shoulders, and hips to make it clear that they truly were puppets to dance at their mistress’s commands.

 The boss added something to their inventories and instructed them to equip it, and in a flash of light the three were wearing completely unfamiliar outfits that suited the boss’s tastes, all in the gothic lolita style. Asuna was wearing a rose red dress with a flower theme and thorny stockings, a rose-adorned bonnet on her head, while the embroidered bodice exposing her porcelain skin down to her cleavage, and was completed by a short ruffled skirt that was well-suited to her swift swordplay. She actually quite liked it, she realised. It was quite a change from the uniform of… whoever it was she had been in a guild with, and she wondered if he would like it, whoever he was, no longer able to even recall his face. Soon she found herself hardly caring about what this supposed person thought about it, whether they be a man or a woman. The important part was that her mistress liked it and thought it looked good on her. Strangely, her hair began to change in colour, turning from orange to a deep red that matched her dress, in the same way that the crimson woman’s hair matched the exact shade of her dress.

The next was Silica, place in a frilly black and lavender outfit comprised almost entirely of lace and frills, with platform heels bumping her height up to Asuna’s. Her hair fell out of its pigtails as it too turned lavender, but she didn’t mind, as her long, free-flowing hair seemed much more elegant and suitable for serving her mistress now. Sure, it didn’t really fit her old image, but who cared? Mistress’s opinion was all that mattered. Finally, Lisbeth was placed in a cute, girly purple dress with a wide skirt and fishnet thigh-highs, hardly having an opinion on it herself by now, her will almost completely gone and her hair turning purple almost as soon as the dress was on. As long as mistress willed it, she would wear it, and that was all that mattered. Her frozen face finally moved, shifting from terror to a broad smile, her eyes longingly directed at her mistress.



The sight of Lisbeth giving in gave Asuna a sudden burst of resistance, struggling against her fading memories and the increasing feeling of love she felt towards the monster that had transformed her. She couldn’t give in… but why not? Her energy didn’t last long without a cause to rally behind, and her moment of panic found itself with nowhere to go. Why was she resisting anyway? She had come here to serve mistress, hadn’t she? She glanced over at Silica, who had similarly reached the conclusion that she had brought these two here to meet her wonderful mistress, and as such, no longer had any reason to feel guilty or distressed, her face morphing into an identical smile as Lisbeth’s. Asuna held out only a few more seconds before she too forgot why she was fighting in the first place, and finally gave in, her expression of surprise turning into a devoted, obsessive grin that surely would have been off-putting to anybody who saw them.

Mentally resigned to their fates, the three found their names floating before them. Asuna, Silica, and Lisbeth, in the usual blue font that denoted players. The text began to turn red, the colour of a common enemy, and the words shifted before their eyes. As mistress’s dolls they no longer deserved their own names, and were reassigned appropriate ones for her helpers, simple mobs to attack anybody who came to challenge it after them. Asuna became Amy, Lisbeth became Elizabeth, and Silica became Sophie, and between their outfits, names, and distinctively coloured hair, it was nigh-impossible to tell that any of them had once been players, short of staring them in the face and seeing past their new appearances. The three stood obediently and silently, hardly a thought in their heads besides that they should wait for instructions from mistress.

And there they stood from that point on, as simple enemies, no longer having a will of their own. In time others discovered the hidden boss, and found out the hard way that it was designed to become more difficult the more players failed to defeat it, hijacking their avatars and adding to its own forces. While not strong on its own, Asuna alone was enough to overwhelm most hapless adventurers, and soon the boss’s collection of dolls grew and grew until finally players were warned away from approaching entirely, deemed an impossible boss. Perhaps if the crimson mistress were defeated its victims might return to normal, but they would never get the chance, mindlessly waiting to follow orders for the rest of their time spent in Sword Art Online…