Arkady laughed at it. So right. He was a tsar all right. A young tsar to all these punters here. Oil money. That’s where his royalty came from. He was here to suck the marrow out of this country, buying up rights to the offshore gas deposits that remained for Gazprom Bank back home. A conqueror. Oh, he’d conquer this place, with its beaches and drugs and women and gas. He’d make it all his. Better than fucking Moscow.

The music reached a new peak, and Arkady bounced with it, manically shaking his body, feeling the dancers around him revel as he did.

[Calibration Complete]

The message scrolled across his vision.

[Rabbit Hole Ready. Wanna Enter?]

Arkady grinned. He’d heard of this. The VR app this club had built. Yeah, he wanted to try it.

[Y]

Controls appeared at the side of his vision, layers he could toggle on and off. The first layer was enabled already. Arkady spun around, and laughed.

The dancers around him were sheathed in silver and gold, auras glimmering. The ocean was liquid silver, spilling onto a beach of crushed iridescent diamonds. The stars above were suddenly far brighter, shining brightly through the smoke and lasers, wheeling as he watched. A huge full moon loomed in the sky. Arkady turned further, and saw the go-go dancers. Their auras were crackling sheaths of energy, snapping and popping. They held out their hands as they danced, and lightning flew from them, arcing out over the crowd.

Arkady screamed his approval, dancing harder, pounding his feet against the sand. He felt the whole crowd respond, felt the ecstasy of the moment pounding through them all.

Fucking outstanding!

Then a burst of wind hit him from behind. Arkady turned in time to see something huge flying at him, winged and fanged. It dove down from the star-filled sky, from out over the liquid silver sea, a predator closing on the crowd, its enormous mouth open. He saw flames inside that cavernous maw, and then the dragon exhaled, and a river of fire surged down at the beach.

Arkady threw himself to the sand. Intense heat beat at his back. The downdraft from the dragon’s wings pummeled him as it flapped over them, and then the thing was past.

Arkady looked up and saw the beast rising towards the brilliant Milky Way, pounding the air with those leathery wings. Around him, partygoers sheathed in their multicolored auras were crouched or cowering. Others were still dancing, smiling and laughing at them, not unkindly.

Holy fuck! Arkady thought.

He reached out with his thoughts to the controls across the side of his vision, flipped off the layer that was on, and looked up. The dragon was gone, nowhere to be seen, the stars were masked by the smoke and lasers. He scanned around him. The auras were gone. The sea was water, crashing onto ordinary sand. The go-go dancers no longer threw electricity.