Azma

Azma was in danger and she was losing her troops. Neither of those facts were acceptable, but what she was the least pleased about was that both were the result of the best plan available under the circumstances.

“We’ve lost contact with the expeditionary squad in Graph-7.5,” Ryschild said, continuing a steady stream of pulse rifle fire as he spoke.

“Kill order is prepped and active, awaiting command confirmation,” Grenslaw side, maintain a similar stream of fire to Ryschild’s.

“Confirmed,” Azma said, hating the waste of what were becoming scarce resources.

She had the loyalty of the troops she’d preserved in the [High Beyond] largely because she had preserved them. That loyalty could withstand sacrifices like kill orders she’d been forced to give a dozen times over as many hours. Azma knew that but she didn’t want to count on it. 

Her troops might prefer a instantaneous death to the horror of being hollowed out by the foe they were locked in a life and death battle with but given the option to flee, an option which the Consortium was slightly late to offer, even if the offer would be an invention to a much messier and more prolonged death.

It was for that reason, and several other ‘optics’ related ones, that Azma had to lead her troops against the [Hungry Shadows] personally.

“I’ve got [Commander] Bukinar requesting permission to join the offensive and replace the terminated squad,” Sergeant Fiori said.

It was a good sign. The [Commanders] of the remaining Consortium forces knew what was at stake – everything to be blunt about it – and they knew Azma’s plan. She didn’t need to be secretive about it, couldn’t in fact. Her position was too precarious with the troops for her to leave them with any misunderstanding of what they needed to do and why. Also, and somewhat more importantly, the more she obfuscated her plans, the easier it would be for the inquiry hearing to insert all sorts of supposed malfeasance into the fuzzy areas in the reports they’d be reviewing.

The inquiry panel would do that anyways of course. It was a cheap and effective tool her enemies would be imbeciles not to deploy. She wasn’t certain yet what tack their constructed narratives would take, whether they would try to paint her as simply allowing her greed to produce a deadly strain of ineptitude, or if they’d dig deeper and invent motives that could connect her other failures.

Since she had, repeatedly, sabotaged the efforts of rivals and false allies alike, there were plenty of skeletons they could animate against her, and while any actual evidence of her wrongdoing would be nonexistent, trials within the Consortium were less concerned with uncovering the actual truth and more with defending the bottom line no matter from all threats real and imagined.

In a sense that was Azma’s saving grace. Despite being monumentally guilty of crimes against the personnel and equipment of the [Consortium of Pain], she produced results which exceeded the damage caused by a sufficient margin that “justice” would have negative profit implications, which was the closest thing to an invulnerable shield one can wield in the arena of Consortium politics.

“Have Bukinar hold position for the moment,” Azma said. “The Shadows cost us an scouting team. That’s not going to be allowed to stand, of course, but before we collect on our losses with interest, we have some infrastructure to put in place. The scouting party didn’t lose that struggle, they traded themselves to provide us with confirmation of our enemies location and minimum force strength. They’ll receive posthumous commendations for themselves and their associated units.”

Commendations came with no direct reimbursement in most chains of command within the Consortium and many commanders treated them as little more than shiny gold stickers to dole out for amusement value.

Azma knew the review boards for the common troops. She’d investigated them thoroughly in an effort to ensure that her standard troops composition was as well selected as possible. What she’d discovered in the process was that while the review boards were openly disdainful of the commendation system and frequently ignored highly commended units in favor of assigning profitable missions to less decorated squads, that was because they had an appraisal system in place for not only the troops but for the entire command staff who directed them.

Those of Azma’s peers who casually tossed out commendations were assigned precise numerical coefficients to diminish the weight of each junk commendation. Conversely the leaders who rarely gave any commendations also had their rewards decremented in effectiveness since history had proven that such rarely awarded honors tended to be the result of personal or political considerations rather than any sort of accurate reflection of the troops capabilities.

Azma had done that research early in her career and had been surprised to discover that the people in charge of the review process were quite open and willing to discuss their entire procedure. None of it was secret, but since the common troops were considered of negligible expense, value, and utility, relatively few people of Azma’s rank saw a reason to care.

“Bukinar confirms holding and asks if the hold is confirmation that his forces will be deployed?” Fiori said.

“They are to retain a ready state and be ready for deployment with all haste. The expected mobilization window is thirty seconds,” Azma said.

Ryschild’s rifle ran dry one second before Grenslaw passed a new power cell over. For the five seconds Ryschild needed to replace the [Pulse Rifle’s] power supply, perform the required diagnostics and cycle in a fresh charge, Grenslaw focused on providing carefully placed beams of stellar hot material down the corridor Ryschild had been keeping secure.

The [Hungry Shadows] massed around the bend of Grenslaw’s corridor had take the respite Grenslaw’s absence provided to surge forwards towards the beachhead Fiori’s team had setup, only to find that Azma was every bit as good a shot as her subordinates were.

“My team reports they’re inbound,” Fiori said. “Due in two minutes.”

“We can hold out for that long easily,” Azma said. “Tell them to drop to sweep and clear speed. I want them moving as though there is an enemy around every corner from there to here. Cover all flanks. Assume the enemy will attack at least twice before they reach us.”

Fiori’s response was to immediately communicate Amza’s order to the soldiers who were supposed to be acting as her bodyguards. 

As [Supreme Commander], Azma was supposed to be protected at all times while in a combat adjacent environment. Since Azma had elected to leave the “combat adjacent environment” and was at the literal epicenter of the battle against the [Hungry Shadows], standard protocol didn’t have specific requirements for how her personal defense forces should be arrayed. 

[Supreme Commanders] were, ideally, meant to be several planetary diameters away from any direct fighting, and it wasn’t uncommon for [Supreme Commanders] to direct the efforts of their troops from different planetary systems, in different dimensions. 

Azma had used to ambiguity in the official protocols to repurpose her personal guard into a surgical strike force, providing the rational that they would be providing the greatest degree of security for her person if they stabilized the area around her.

Basically if the [Supreme Commander] wasn’t supposed to be in a combat zone and they couldn’t be removed from the area, then the area had to cease being a combat zone at all.

“Local enemy forces are falling back,” Grenslaw said.

“The retreat was uniform. They were responding to orders,” Ryschild said.

“Not orders,” Azma said. “There’s a single will behind them. We still have only one enemy despite the army we are faced with.”

“The enemy movements are not as coordinated as our [Artifax] forces,” Ryschild said. “Does it suffer from a communication lag with its subjects?”

“I don’t believe so,” Azma said. “When they retreated they all stopped and began moving away at the same instant. I think it’s fine detail control is lacking still. It’s no longer [Transdimensional] so it’s limited by the physical constraints of this reality more than ever before.”

“How quickly will that change?” Grenslaw asked.

“That will depend on the pressure we exert against it,” Azma said. “The more resources we remove from its control the greater the incentive will be to learn to properly control the ones it has remaining. Also the fewer forces it has, the less its attention will be split.”

“This won’t be the first time the fight’s gotten harder the closer we get to victory,” Fiori said. “Can we still proceed with the plan though or do we need to accelerate things?”

The plan was a reasonably simple one. Azma was using herself as bait, trying to keep the [Hungry Shadows] focused on the area of the [Ruins of Heavens Grave] she’d led her forces to secure. 

She’d made a multi-pronged attack into the Ruins at first, and had brought a supplemental force to the prong that had experienced the greatest resistance. It had been hard and costly work, but her troops had broken through the [Hungry Shadows] assaults and pushed onwards as the Shadows began to mass in ever greater numbers to stop them.

By spreading outwards, plunging into the worst fights the Shadows offered them, Azma had made her team and herself impossible for the Shadows to ignore, which had in turn allowed her more offensively focused teams to have free reign tearing into the straggling pockets of Hungry Shadows. 

Azma didn’t know if the [Hungry Shadows] were led by one special entity or if they had some other resource they needed to guard, but from the reports painted a clear picture that there was some asset they were desperately trying to protect. There was no chance that the asset would be as valuable as the [Transdimensional] entity the [Hungry Shadows] had been crafted from, but that didn’t mean Azma didn’t need it anyways.

The path back to the Consortium’s good graces for both herself and the troops under her command lay in a simple equation. There was still value that could be extracted from the scenario before them. In end, satisfying the Consortium’s naked greed was the beginning and end of victory. Failing to do that was where the complex strategies for shifting and dodging blame came into play, but with a debacle as large as the present operation had become, there would be unacceptable long term consequences even if Azma could survive long enough to have to worry about them.

“We stick with the current plan,” Azma said. “The enemy will develop to meet our capabilities. That will make the battles to come more difficult, but also increase the value of each corpse we can produce. Once the Consortium clears the command protocols and sends in the extraction forces, we’ll be able to provide proof that [Xenobiology’s] expertise is no longer required and that the projected profits still exceed the threshold boundaries for mission continuation.”

“You can pull all that off with what we’ve got here?” Fiori said.

“It’s a still a disaster by my standards,” Azma said. “Once the [Transdimensional] appeared, I should have been able to make this operation a centennial high point on the trend lines. Instead of career defining, we’re going to be struggling for exemplary in comparison to the best run campaigns this year.”

“What place will we need to achieve on the yearly review to regain control of the operation?” Grenslaw asked.

“How do you gain a place for an operation that’s not finished?” Fiori asked.

“Projections, and for the top end of the list, the confidence interval of the projections,” Azma said. “For reinstatement, being projected to be in the top five is likely sufficient, though first place will offer significantly greater security both during and after we complete the work here.”

“I am glad we have you to work that job,” Fiori said. “It sounds like a chaotic sea of backstabbing. I’d much rather just shoot people.”

“Management in the Consortium is often appear chaotic, but there are clear and predictable lines of self-interest, narcissism, and basic greed which make it far more orderly that it wishes to admit to,” Azma said.

“Incoming transmission from the fleet,” Grenslaw said and then frowned, with a puzzled expression creeping forward like a mask.

“They’re less late than I anticipated,” Azma said. “What orders are they giving now?”

“I don’t know,” Grenslaw said. “The transmission was cut off by my security gear. There was corruption in the signal.”

The world sank out from under Azma.

Grenslaw wasn’t saying that the quality of signal was degraded or that the data had been lost.

The command signal from the fleet was carrying Corruption. 

The same sort of Corruption the [Formless Hunger] had used.

It probably didn’t count as bloodlust when the things you were fighting didn’t possess any blood in their withered undead bodies. Right? The funny thing was that it wasn’t Tessa who asked that question of herself. 

“I mean, its good that we’re enjoying ourself,” Pillowcase said. “I’m just wondering if the chuckling is entirely healthy?”

“Oh, this isn’t healthy in the slightest,” Tessa said. “Damn fun though.”

“Should we be more worried about that?” Pillowcase asked as she pinned one of the [Cursed Walkers] that Rip had blasted full of holes against two others that Matt was in the process of tearing apart on a spiritual level. 

She didn’t need to parry anyone for a moment so she took the opportunity to draw more attention to herself by bashing the first Walkers shoulder into pulp.

Several of the Walkers who were struggling to tear Obby apart, pivoted and joined the crowd that was seeking to devour Pillowcase’s juicy stuffing? Their motives were sort of questionable, but puddings had more brainpower than the Walkers – literally.

The one she’d de-shouldered, by virtue of being at the front of the horde continued its attack with the maw of teeth edged with necrotic energy its undeath had gifted it with.

“I think that’s why this is so fun,” Tessa said, watching as Pillowcase hit the Walker with enough force to spin its head around backward. “Can’t worry. No time. Zombies will eat us if do.”

“Can’t run either I guess,” Pillowcase said. “Just have to give into the mayhem.”

“It’s not how the Consortium fights is it?”

“Not even close. It’s odd too. I don’t have viscera but there’s a visceral thrill to this anyways?”

“I think it’s cause we feel safe,” Tessa said.”And we’re getting to cut loose. It’s like primal scream therapy but with more xps and loot.”

“Leveled again!” Rip shouted on the party channel, the sheer glee in her voice making the quasi-zombie apocalypse they were fighting the most joyful thing in the world.

“Me too!” Matt said, his usual quiet restraint cast aside to join Rip in her delight.

“Amp it up then!” Obby said. “If you’re resources are full, run ‘em down. You’re not going to pull hate off Pillow and me.”

“Sounds like a challenge!” Illuthiz said.

“If they attack you, I am not saving you,” Hermeziz said, as though anyone present believed that was even vaguely true.

The farming run had seemed like a potential disaster at the start. The first pull from the [Barrows] had drawn a force twice as large as the one Rip and the damage dealers had blundered into. Tessa and Obby had been ready to pick up the incoming horde but it was quickly apparent that even using every ability they had there was no chance they were going to be able to hold the attention of more than half the enemies against them.

And the rest of the team surviving over a dozen even leveled foes was laughably unlikely.

So Glimmerglass stepped in and erased half the enemies.

It didn’t take long, and it didn’t take a particularly high level spell.

“[Casting spell: Solar Rays],” she’d said and a dozen bolts of light had sprung from her hand and reduced the [Cursed Walkers] she’d targeted to dust.

Then the fight had continued.

The remaining Walkers made no changes to the absolute lack of strategy and were entirely undeterred by the instantaneous obliteration of their compatriots. There were living people. Living people were to be killed. Try to kill them. Processing complete, no other inputs requested or needed.

A wave of a dozen Walkers became a rolling sea of them as others Walkers shambled or raced in, ambulating however they could, to fill the spots as the previous ones fell and discorporated.

Pillowcase wasn’t afraid during the melee. Combat was the environment she’d been made for after all. Either as a result of integrating those memories better, or because of Glimmerglass’s presence, Tessa hadn’t been afraid either and hadn’t pulled back as she had in previous fights.

Pillowcase executed a beautiful shield block and swept a Walkers feet from it to send it stumbling back onto Obby’s waiting blade, and Tessa cheered. She could feel how light and easy Pillowcase’s body was to maneuver and knew that was far more a reflection of Pillowcase’s growing strength than of any lack of mass in their [Clothwork] body.

If Pillowcase had been as light as she felt, the Walkers would be overrunning her with sheer numbers, but no matter how many piled up on her shield, the [Soul Knight] didn’t give an inch of ground.

“You seem to be having fun,” Lisa said on their private channel.

“Kind of hard not to,” Tessa said. “This is a really good party.”

“Having Glimmerglass around is making a big difference,” Lisa said. “But I think you’re right. We brought these folks in here with no prior experience at working together and they’re doing a shockingly good job. Like, I’ve seen guild teams that are more disorganized than this.”

“It’s because we’ve got a good leader,” Tessa said.

“Yes, you are,” Lisa said.

“I’d just in front, you’re the one they’re listening too,” Tessa said.

“It’s because Glimmerglass and Yawlorna are telling them too,” Lisa said.

“Sure, that helps, but you’re working with them,” Tessa said.

“Have to, screaming at people just makes them rage quit,” Lisa said.

“That’s something I seem to recall only the really good leaders seem to understand,” Tessa said. “And wow do I remember a lot of bad ones who didn’t.”

“Yeah, those ones tend to stick with you,” Lisa said. “To be fair too, this really isn’t all on me. The dps seem to be following Rip’s lead well and she’s watching the two of us to coordinate who they go hard on.”

“Starchild’s doing some solid work too,” Tessa said. “Obby and I have solid hate on maybe half these things at any given time. The rest are a bit shaky and she’s doing a stellar job of picking them up with they get interested in someone else and buying Obby and me time to grab their attention back.”

“Oh cool, I didn’t even notice that,” Lisa said. “She’s got enough self buffs and self healing that I’m not needing to tend to her much. I think Lady Midnight is helping her out here and there, but, honestly, this is pretty easy on us.”

“Should we be pulling more in then?” Tessa asked.

“I don’t think so,” Lisa said. “We’re not target starved at the moment. If we roam around any faster we’re just going to increased the crowd you and Obby are facing without adding to the number of them that we can take down.”

“Matt has a bunch of crowd control abilities he can bust out still though,” Tessa said. “Should we push more so he needs to use them?”

“That’s be good training,” Lisa said. “We know we’re going to get hit with hordes that are bigger than this in some of the dungeons, and we’re not going to have Glimmerglass there to thin them out if we need.”

“Or she’ll be there but sunk down to our level,” Tessa said.

“Probably not good to risk her like that right?” Lisa said.

“Probably not, but I’m going to go out on a limb and guess she’s going to want to see the new dungeon at some point,” Tessa said.

“Yeah, I’d be the same,” Lisa said. “Maybe after we’ve cleared it the first time and we know what to expect?”

“I’m sure she’d be ok with waiting for that,” Tessa said. “Or we could pull her in if the dungeon divides into sections for teams of four. Matt will need to know how to handle crowd control even more if we run into things like that.”

“I’m still iffy on putting that kind of pressure on him though,” Lisa said. “Grabbing up another twenty Walkers is going to mean if he messes up it’s going to be real obvious.”

“We could ask him, but he’s having so much fun now, I’m afraid he’d either just say yes to keep the fun going or say yes because he was afraid of disappointing us.” Tessa said.

“What if we don’t add more Walkers, we just have him focus on controlling the one’s we already have?” Lisa said. “That’ll help you and Obby keep them locked down right?”

“That and we could switch to an offensive stance. Starchild probably can too,” Tessa said. “It won’t be much extra dps, but every bit helps right?”

“We’ll have to see if you three can match the loss from Matt switching to less damage dealing spells, but even if you can’t, I still think it’s worth it,” Lisa said.

“Agreed, want me to talk to him or do you want to handle it?” Tessa asked.

“Will it be too distracting for you?” Lisa asked.

“I don’t think so,” Lisa said. “Pillowcase has got this handled.”

“Not a lot of surprise tactics to worry about here,” Pillowcase said.

“Okay, go ahead then,” Lisa said. “From you it can be a question. From me it’ll probably sound like an order.”

Tessa did the mental gymnastics needed to set up a private channel to Matt and send him a quick, “Congrats on the level, got a sec?”

“Sure,” Matt shot back, a trace of panic in his mental voice.

“I’ve got an idea we could try out,” Tessa said. “But I wanted to see what your thoughts were on it first.”

“Oh, okay. What is it?” Matt asked, panic ebbing into a mix of curiosity and confusion.

“[Soul Knights] have an offensive stance,” Tessa said. “I can add a bit more damage with it, but I’ll lose control of some of the Walkers I’m holding if I use it.”

“You need me to kill those too?” Matt asked.

“Not kill them, control them,” Tessa said. “You’ve got a couple of spells that shut down enemies now right?”

“Yeah, I’ve got a [Sleep] and a [Disorient], but the [Sleep] stops working if they get hit, so I didn’t think I could use it here. And the [Disorient] is just for like ten seconds or so,” Matt said.

“The trick with those is coordination,” Tessa said. “In any other party I wouldn’t be suggesting pulling them out, but we are doing so well here, I think it’s worth a shot.”

“Cool! Okay, so tell me how I should use them,” Matt said, confusion falling away to reveal a renewed excitement.

“The [Sleep] is pretty simple; just target one of the ones at the far back of the pack and let the effect spread inward from there,” Tessa said. “Some of them will probably get hit and wake up but as long as some other stay asleep that frees up some room for me and Obby to  cut back on our defenses a bit.”

“That sounds easy.”

“It is. It can also be super frustrating when the tanks ignore it, or when the other dps blast the enemies at random and wreck the spell before it does any good.”

“I can tell Ro…Rip. We’ll be able to focus on the one’s she’s targeting so the others stay asleep,” Matt said.

“Having a good relationship with the other dps can be a huge help,” Tessa said. “Don’t worry though if people mess things up. You can always recast, and we can handle it if they wake up.”

“How about the [Disorient]?” Matt asked. “That one doesn’t break but it’s really short.”

“That one’s the opposite in a sense. Target the nearest enemies with that one and let us know when you’re casting it,” Tessa said. “Obby and I can save up our heavy hitting abilities for the windowa you provide. If everything near us is staggering around useless for even ten seconds? We can totally unload and then turtle back up. Sound good?”

“The sounds amazing. Thank you,” Matt said.

“Thank you, I’m so glad you and Rip chose to join us, you two make this team so much better,” Tessa said.

Matt didn’t have an answer for that, but the silence glowed with the happiness of an honest affirmation received by someone who definitely needed it.

As Tessa pulped another [Cursed Walker], she smiled. This was how the [Fallen Kingdoms] was supposed to be.

No horror of lives disrupted and real death chasing their heels. No trauma of violence shattering their lives. No interpersonal feuding. No misery heaped on to of misery.

Fun.

The [Fallen Kingdoms] were supposed to be fun, and while there were problems out there, terrible, horrible problems, she didn’t have to face them alone. 

All hell very rarely breaks loose. If it did, whatever problem that was occurring wouldn’t be able to get worse. All the hell would already be there, and if there’s one thing that’s universally true, it’s that things can always get worse.

Tessa had her mace drawn and her shield ready as she, Lisa, Obby, Starchild, and Lady Midnight charged over the first hill outside of [Dragonshire]. In the game, all the characters ran at the same rate, regardless of size or athleticism. In the real version of the [Fallen Kingdoms], Tessa could see that Lisa was only staying with them because she was sensible enough not to charge into a melee first when she was a healer.

That bit of well earned wisdom meant that the tank team managed to slam into the dozen  [Cursed Walkers] with Tess and Obby in front to start collecting the mobs attention properly. Unlike the damage dealing team, who’d been more or less instantly overrun.

“[Bastion of Blood],” Tessa called out, invoking one of her newest abilities.

An aura formed around her and wrapped dark tendrils around everyone in range that she recognized as a friend. The tendrils shielded the damage Rip and the others were taking at the cost of nibbling away at Pillowcase’s health. As tradeoffs went it wasn’t terribly enjoyable, but it was quite effective since Pillowcase took only a fraction of the damage that the others would have. 

“[Stalwart Shout],” Obby called out, her [Guardian] ability magically demoralizing the enemies to reduce their damage even further and lock the Walkers attention away from anyone who didn’t have a tanks enmity skills.

“What part of ‘wait for us before engaging’ wasn’t clear?” Lisa asked over the party channel as she and Lady Midnight began patching up Baelgritz, Rip, and Matt, each of whom was doing to less than half their health.

“We didn’t!” Rip said. “These things weren’t here two seconds ago!”

“They were, you just couldn’t see them,” Tessa said. “We’ll explain after the fight. And I’m going to lodge a complaint with the beta testers. They never mentioned the Walkers were ambush mobs!”

“The screaming has stopped. Are they okay?” Yawlorna asked. Telepathic conversation was a new things for space travelers, but they were adapting to it as quickly as Tessa and the rest of her team had.

“We’ve got the Walkers under control,” Obby said. “This is a big spawn of them, but I think we can manage it without Glimmerglass’s help. Maybe.”

“I’m watching you’re health bars. So far so good it looks like. I’ll hold off on tainting the fight unless you or Pillowcase drops below a third, or if anyone get knocked into critical health,” Glimmerglass said.

“Tainting the fight?” Yawlorna asked.

Tessa wanted to answer but six [Cursed Walkers] who were all equal level to her had decided that she was obviously the tastiest treat on the field. Their numbers were a serious issue, but their mindless ferocity was less a problem, largely thanks to Pillowcase’s reflexes and calm demeanor.

For Tessa, having a monster growling with rage six inches from her face was unnerving. For Pillowcase it was day that ended in ‘y’. The one’s she couldn’t block, she parried, the one’s she couldn’t parry, she trusted her armor to save her from, and the one’s her armor didn’t deflect managed to rip bits of her apart, but nothing so significant that Lisa couldn’t put her back together before the cumulative destruction became a problem.

“If Glimmerglass joins the fight, any enemy she touches will yield experience as though someone of her level had beaten it,” Obby said, unperturbed by the eight Walkers who were menacing her. 

To be fair, Tessa observed, [Guardian] abilities tended to reduce or eliminate damage to the tank, which probably made it much easier to fight and hold a conversation. It also sounded like a much more pleasant form of tanking than the one Tessa had chosen for Pillowcase. In theory that was balanced out by Pillowcase doing more damage than a [Guardian] would but neither tank really compared to a true damage dealing class.

“You’re holding up great,” Lisa said on their private channel. “Not much difference between you and Obby and she’s got five levels on the rest of us.”

Tessa knew Lisa was just being kind, but that kindness still gave Tessa a warm sparkle in her heart.

That she got to keep her heart firmly anchored in her chest was a pleasant surprise too, one that was largely driven by Rip rallying their damage dealers so that the [Cursed Walkers] began having a very bad night and would have regretted their life choices were they not both already dead and incapable of even basic sapience.

Lightning arrows, deadly illusions, and an enchanted oak staff were joined by the spears Baelgritz, Illuthiz, and Hermeziz wielded and all of them proved devastating to the Walkers.

Tessa was particularly impressed with the demon spears. She’d seen a fair portion of Rip and Matt’s growth, but watching Hermeziz fight was like meeting a new person.

The space travelers were big, not as tall as Yawlorna, but still impressive physical specimens. In their natural form, they moved with the surety that great strength brought. With levels to back their natural abilities up they’d gained an alarming amount of speed and a starkly beautiful sort of grace.

“Is it bad that watching Herm plunge a spear straight through someone’s head seems kinda pretty?” Tessa asked Lisa privately.

“I’m trying to tell myself that this feels great because the [Cursed Walkers] are definitely not people, and not because I’m losing it to blood lust,” Lisa said. “And I really hope I’m not lying to myself.”

“Are you starting to get hungry again?” Tessa asked, remembering Lost Alice making a meal of Mikkonel.

“Oh, this has nothing to do with me,” Lost Alice said. “I’m still nicely full. This is just my battle experience being a little corruptive. I think?”

“Or not,” Lisa said. “Alice makes this tolerable, but it’s not like I was all about the mass slaughter as a player.”

“Right there with ya,” Tessa said.

“Heh,” Pillowcase laughed. “You should see what the Consortium’s live combat exercises are like. Trust me, you’re all angels by comparison.”

It was darkly amusing that one of the Walkers left them open enough for Pillowcase to punctuate her point by crushing its head clean off its head with blunt force.

“Be not afraid, indeed,” Lost Alice said, repeating what angels seemed to say fairly often when they showed up. On reflection, Tessa felt like she was beginning to understand that sentiment, being both largely benevolent and terrifying at the same time.

“Was that the last one?” Rip asked.

“I think so,” Matt said.

“Stay still,” Obby said.

“How still?” Baelgritz asked, as he and his partners froze in place.

“You can relax,” Lady Midnight said. “Just don’t walk any farther away from town. You could trigger another ambush.”

“Okay. Good to know,” Rip said. “Could anyone explain what the hell that was. You know, for those of us who don’t want to get eaten again.”

“It was an ambush,” Starchild said. “It’s not something you usually see outside of dungeon areas, or exceptional monsters though.”

“Ambushes just appear out of thin air like that?” Illuthiz asked. 

“Unless you have special perception abilities, or you can bait them into revealing themselves before you’re within their perception radius,” Glimmerglass said.

“That will make this hunt a bit more challenging,” Obby said. “We could easily wind up engaging one group and triggering another one in the process.”

“It’s weird that the beta testers didn’t mention anything like this,” Tessa said. “Ambush zones aren’t unheard of, just rare, and they’re big news since they can turn into either great grinding spots or horrible murder machines.”

“Fortunately, we seem to be strong enough to weather the added challenge,” Starchild said.

“Oh, I bet that’s it,” Lisa said. “Most of the beta testers who do the low level content play through it solo right?”

“Yeah, but what does…oh, damn, you’re probably right,” Tessa said. “The beta testers didn’t see the ambushes because they probably only spawn for bigger teams like ours is now.”

“Does that mean we should break up?” Rip asked, a crack in her voice betraying her unhappiness with the idea.

“No. Not in the slightest. This is a good thing. Great even.” Tessa knew she should fight to keep the evil cackle out of her voice, but under the circumstances it was hard to deny the manic glee bubbling up within her.

“You’re thinking we turn this into a proper farm run, aren’t you?” Obby asked, delight bubbling in her eyes as well.

“I mean, we’ve got two tanks, two healers, a high level backup with healing, and a bunch of dps who are clearly unafraid of charging it devouring maws at the first opportunity,” Tessa said. “Are we missing any of the ingredients we’d need for success?”

“If we’re supposed to have a clue what you’re talking about, then I’d say we’re missing that,” Yawlorna said.

“What my girl here is suggesting is that we fight in a highly aggressive manner,” Lisa said, and Tessa felt a trill of joy at the reference to herself as Lisa’s girl. “Our original gameplan was to set up a static location, a camp, outside of the range of the Walkers. We’d then send someone in to attract their attention and lead them back to where we were all waiting.”

“That’s a standard monster clearing strategy,” Starchild said. “My [Grove] did it all the time when our woods were invaded.”

“It has the benefit that a lot of monsters, especially mindless ones like the Walkers, don’t notice that they’re numbers are being steadily thinned out,” Lisa said.

“Also, there’s less chance of fighting more than want, or more than you can handle,” Lady Midnight said.

“And ‘farming’ throws that idea away?” Yawlorna asked.

“Farming takes the opposite approach,” Obby said. “Rather than trying to limit the number of monsters we fight at once, we try to pull in as many as possible, or, in this case, as many as we can take without everyone dying.”

“I notice you said ‘everyone’ and not ‘anyone dying’ there,” Hermeziz said.

“Farming is more dangerous, at least when you’re doing it for xps like this,” Tessa said. “If we were all Glimmerglass’s level and just killing these things for their loot, then it would be safer than riding a bike.”

“More dangerous but the rewards are higher because you’re defeating more foes in less time?” Yawlorna asked.

“That and, in the game, and maybe here too, there were bonuses for killing monsters in quick succession,” Tessa said. “Those can be worth more than the initial defeat if you string together enough of them.”

“And if things go wrong?” Yawlorna asked.

“Then I’d have to step in,” Glimmerglass said.

“Okay,” Yawlorna said.

“Uh, what?” Balegritz said. “You’re fine with this idea?”

“You’re not?” Yawlorna asked, as though even the possibility of Baelgritz turning down a chance at mayhem was unthinkable.

“Oh, we’re all for it,” Baelgritz said.

“No. Not all of us,” Hermeziz said.

“Don’t worry, we’ll keep you safe,” Illuthiz said.

“Not if I keep you safe first,” Hermeziz said, scowling  but moving closer as Illuthiz mussed up his hair.

“Then, as I said, I’m in favor of the idea,” Yawlorna said.

“Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but weren’t you really worried about us getting Ill and her guys killed?” Rip asked.

“Yes. And I’m not necessarily looking to test out our supposed immortality, there not enough control measures in place for a proper experiment, but I’m satisfied that we’re in potentially less mortal peril than we were previously.”

“Yeah, that’s not the only reason though boss, is it?” Baelgritz asked.

“If this should give me a chance to study our new friend Glimmerglass in action, I admit I would not be disappointed,” Yawlorna said, and on her crimson demon skin, the blush was virtually unnoticeable.

People puzzled Tessa. It wasn’t confusion, or irritation, at least not in this case. 

She could see why Yawlorna would want to have Glimmerglass’s powers. Tessa had spent years working on developing those powers and while Glimmerglass had progressed beyond where she’d been the last time Tessa had played as her, Tessa was still quite proud of Glimmerglass’s achievements.

She wasn’t upset that Yawlorna had chosen to join them either, or that Yawlorna was basically taking up all of Glimmerglass’s time. Okay, the last bit was slightly irritating. In theory, Tessa should have gotten her fill of talking to herself when she was alone in her apartment after her breakup with Crystal. And it was a little weird to talk with Glimmerglass after they’d shared a mind space when Tessa had bonded the three of her selves together to rescue Lisa. Despite all that though, the idea of chatting with her favorite character ever still seemed kind of awesome.

“No offense,” she said, speaking to Pillowcase, who laughed in response.

“I am horribly offended,” she said. “How terrible, that I like me, rather than myself, or I.”

“I guess I haven’t gotten my fill of talking to myself yet have I?”

“I mean, we are pretty awesome.”

“We’re just saying that because we’re in love aren’t we?”

“Probably. My brain doesn’t have happy juice to bath in like yours does, but it seems like love transcends bodily limitations.”

“I know this stage doesn’t last forever. Or at least it hasn’t before.”

“All the more reason to enjoy it, right?”

“Yeah. I think if I’d been just myself I would have sabotaged the hell out of this.”

“I’m surprised adding me into the mix helped. I mean ‘emotionless soldier drone’ doesn’t seem like a winning ingredient to add to a relationship from what I can see in your memories.”

“It’d be terrible. Thankfully you are neither emotionless or a drone. And the soldier bit is kind of misleading too.”

“How so?”

“You’re not following orders at the moment, or living by any particular code except the one you choose for yourself.”

“How am I helping then?”

“You’re brave. So much braver than me. I’d mess this up because I’d pull away rather than risk being hurt again. Some of my breakups sucked on an epic scale. Okay, may not epic. I need to recalibrate basically everything to a new scale given all of this stuff we got dropped into. But they’ve still sucked, especially where I exposed myself.”

“Am I brave then, or ignorant? Maybe I’m just luring you into repeating previous mistakes because I don’t know any better?”

“Sure. You are. But the thing is they’re mistakes that should be repeated. Because they weren’t my mistakes. I trusted Crystal, and she hurt me, and it is so very easy to feel like that was my fault. Seeing my own memories through your eyes though? It’s incredible. It makes all the difference! Could I have done things different so she couldn’t have hurt me so much. Sure. It’s easy to wall yourself off. I could have kept her at a very comfortable distance, and been very safe from her doing more than lightly bruising my feelings.”

“But that wouldn’t have been love. You would have gotten nothing out of being with her beyond there being a warm body in the room.”

“Yeah. And that can work for some people. Sometimes emotional openness isn’t what a relationship is founded on. Heck sometimes it’s just sex and that works for everyone involved. And sometimes there’s not even sex in the equation. Everybody finds their happiness on their own path.”

“Yours takes an open heart though, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah. Lisa’s probably going to hurt me too. And I’ll probably hurt her. We’ll make mistakes, and get careless as we get comfortable. It’s inevitable. I know it is. But, in this moment, I still want to take those hits. And I want to make amends when I make those mistakes too. What we’re feeling now is delightful. I’m still buzzing from the fact that we’ve slept together! But that’s the sexy, mind blowing kind of love. It’s fun and wonderful and a lot more satisfying than I remembered. But the kind that comes after – the kind that I hope comes after – the kind based on making the choices to hold together even when it’s not fun, even when we’re not at our best? I think, I hope, that kind of enduring love is what will help us both become stronger, become who we want to be.”

“I can see why you reach for it.”

“It’s a nice dream isn’t it? I think it’s the dream I’ve been chasing my whole life. As Tessa, and as Glimmerglass. I don’t even really know if it’ll work out. Maybe I’m putting too much pressure on what any relationship could be. Maybe it all needs to come from me. Maybe I believe love can help change me because I’m afraid to try on my own.”

“Maybe. I don’t think so, but what do I know? The only introspection I was build with was a self-diagnostic routines to make sure all of the spells woven into me were functioning properly. I shouldn’t know anything about love, or relationships, or even what I want. I wasn’t supposed to want anything. Or have a relationship with anyone. Or love at all.”

“Oh wow. But you did.”

“We did. You. Me. Glimmerglass. We’re all the same. I mean even when we’re separate and limited to just our own memories. I didn’t have the words to understand what I needed, I couldn’t even form coherent thoughts on what was missing, or what the constraints on me were holding me back from pursuing. Through your eyes though? It’s so easy to see. I needed the same thing you’ve fought for. You took blows I couldn’t even conceive of and you’re willing to take more. So I stand by my original assertion. We’re awesome.”

“I can’t tell you how scary it feels to try to agree with that.”

“We should probably try to work on that too.”

“Probably.”

Tessa felt a hand on her shoulder, and found Lisa nodding towards the road ahead of them where Rip, Matt, Baelgritz, Illuthiz and Hermeziz had formed a little mini-party that was steadily increasing the distance from the others.

“Think they’re a little eager?” Lisa asked on their private channel.

“Can you blame them?” Tessa asked. “This is the first time they’ll get to use their new abilities in a real fight.”

“Well, sort of a real fight,” Lisa said and nodded back towards Glimmerglass and Yawlorna who were still deep in their own private conversation.

“Is it weird that I’m kind of jealous of Yawlorna for talking with my other me?” Tessa asked. She felt a twinge of embarrassment to even ask that, both for claiming someone like Glimmerglass as herself – Tessa was still convinced she’d never been as cool as her old character was – and for revealing that she was even ‘kind of jealous’ which seemed petty and silly.

“It’d be weird if you weren’t,” Lisa said. “I’m resisting the urge to chat up your other self just to learn all I can about you.’

“Aww, that’s sweet. On both sides,” Tessa said.

“A bit stalkery though. I mean if I want to know something, I should just ask you right?”

“If you want to know something, you are always welcome to ask me. I like sharing like that with you,” Tessa said. “But I know it’s not always easy to just believe something because I say it. I mean I have biases too. Even if I want to tell you everything, I’ll probably forget things, or leave them out without thinking about them, or color things so I don’t look entirely terrible. So if you want to talk with Glimmerglass, please do. At the moment she’s got a different perspective on things than I do, so she can probably give you a good sanity check on anything that seems too out there about me.”

“It seems unfair though,” Lisa said and Lost Alice added, “You’re always talking to both of us when we chat, and none our other selves seem to be available like Glimmerglass is. You don’t have the same ‘second source’ to fact check the things I say.”

Tessa’s first reaction was to downplay the problem. She didn’t need to fact check Lisa. She loved Lisa. She would just trust this wonderful, beautiful, amazing woman and everything would work out fine because Love Conquers All!

A single breath in was all it took to dispel that particular nugget of love drunk lunacy.

To accept that inequality wasn’t fair.

And it was unnecessary.

“How about you introduce me to Cease All then?” Tessa said. “You two have been friends for a while right?”

“Sure, but it doesn’t seem quite the same,” Lisa said. “Cease didn’t mind meld with me, and, you know, isn’t another aspect of me.”

“At the moment, Glimmerglass is basically just a really close friend,” Tessa said. “The memories we share are a bit dim since we don’t have immediate access to the same mind space Pillowcase and I share. Plus Glimmerglass will probably share more of my biases than Cease will with you. So I’m getting a better deal here in a sense.”

“Might want to wait till you meet Cease before you feel to sure about that,” Lisa said.

“What’s she like?”

“Probably a little different than I remember,” Lisa said. “I’m used to dealing with Michaela. You’d be chatting with her and with Cease.”

“You’ve talked with them both several times now though right? Is Cease much different than Michaela?”

“I suppose not? Or maybe not with me. I think Michaela basically patterned Cease after herself pretty much. She can be a bit sarcastic though, especially with new people.”

“Oh no, not a sarcastic gamer girl!” Tessa said. “I can’t imagine running into one of those.”

“Oh great, you two are going to get along. This is terrible,” Lisa said.

“Better start pumping Glimmerglass for info then, or Cease and I will get ahead on the ‘conspiring with each other’ curve.”

“Think I can get a word in edgewise between her and Yawlorna?” Lisa asked.

The two had drifted far enough back from the main body of the party (defined as the group that had both of the tanks) that they were officially lollygagging.

“Glimmerglass always loved helping train up fledglings,” Tessa said. “I know it’s weird to think of Yawlorna as a newbie but if she’s serious about leveling up as a healer, then she’s basically level 0 at the moment in terms of what she needs to know about the role, and I’m guessing Glimmerglass hasn’t gotten to train anyone since I quit playing, which was like a century or more for her. Huh, I hadn’t done that math till now. I owe her such an apology.”

“She hasn’t seemed like she’s holding a grudge,” Lisa said.

“She might not be. But I bet it still hurt to be without her [Inspiration] for so long.”

“Talk to her then,” Lisa said. “After we get back obviously. We should be getting out of town in what, a minute or two?”

“Sooner if Rip manages to find trouble and we’ve got to run ahead and save the five of them.”

“Didn’t we promise we’d keep Balegritz and company safe?” Lisa said.

“That was before we knew that we could rez them,” Tessa said. “I mean, we should still try to keep them alive, but if I lose aggro I’m not going to have a melt down like I would have before.”

“That’s good. I can kind of picture you having a Tank meltdown. You actually care about the job.”

“Perils of working with people you like,” Tessa said.

From farther ahead than they had any business being came the inevitable cries of surprise and sounds of combat that set Tessa’s feet into a full out sprint.

“People you like and people you’d like to strangle,” Lisa said.

“Were we any better when we were starting out?” Tessa asked, feeling charitable largely because she’d foreseen the moment coming from the instant Rip’s crew starting pulling away from the pack.

“Oh I was much worse,” Lisa said.

“Same here,” Tess said. “Come on, let’s go pay forward some old favors.”

People are always capable of surprising themselves. In Tessa’s case, being surprised by Glimmerglass was a little weirder than usual.

“You can bring them back?” Tessa asked. “But they’re…”

And she stopped herself right there.

Yawlorna and her people “weren’t [Adventurers]”. That was true. Or it had been. But then they’d started gaining levels. Like an [Adventurer] would.

“I was working with Kellsgrith,” Glimmerglass said and then raised her hands in a calming gesture as Yawlorna’s shocked expression. “Nothing dangerous. Don’t worry. Just some analysis spells and a few very tiny wounds. Which Kellsgrith was fine with. I had her administer them to herself so that there wouldn’t be any danger of someone overdoing it.”

“You had her wound herself?” Yawlorna asked as though the question was so far beyond believable that it shouldn’t have been able to surprise her.

“Only a little bit,” Glimmerglass said. “Just a few small cuts on her arm. And a tiny little stab into her leg. We stopped before we tried the throat cut or the heart stab.”

Yawlorna drew in a deep breath. And then another. And then a third.

“Do go one,” she said at last, her face assuming a chiveled expression of only mild interest.

“Thanks to Kellsgrith’s help, I’ve been able to prove that our healing magics are more than superficially effective on your people,” Glimmerglass said. “I’m not sure if landing here converted your basic biological processes to be compatible with this world or if they always were, but your bodies follow all of the same physio-arcane laws as an [Adventurers] does.”

Yawlorna stared at Glimmerglass, waiting for her to continue. Tessa though recognized Glimmerglass’s pause for the anxiety Tessa knew all too well.

“I think you’ll need to break down what you mean by that,” Tessa said. It was so much easier to keep the gears in her head turning when she wasn’t the one who was on the spot. She wished she could bottle the feeling of clarity she had and guzzle it the next time she went too in depth on something technical and her brain froze up.

“Ah, right,” Glimmerglass, shooting a smile at her other self. “The short form is our spells that raise the dead should fine on you folks. Did you want to hear the longer explanation?”

Though she was vastly more powerful than Yawlorna, there was still the same nervous hesitation in Glimmerglass’s voice that Tessa knew must have come from her input to Glimmerglass’s personality. 

Or maybe self-esteem was something that didn’t necessarily increase as you improved?

“This may surprise you, but yes, yes I would,” Yawlorna said. “Especially since I was able to get one of these from Mister Pendant.”

She drew a notebook and a fine quality stylus from her pack and leaned forward on the chairs they’d assembled into a cozy circle, a (Mad?) scientists gleam in her eyes.

“I’m not sure how much you’ve worked out or what people have explained about the basic nature of our world, so just tell me to skip forward if I’m covering ground that’s old news to you,” Glimmerglass said.

“Oh I find listening to primary sources worthwhile no matter what topic they’re covering,” Yawlorna said.

“Okay, well to start then, this world has magic, obviously. That isn’t something that’s true of all worlds though, which is something we’ve only recently learned, thanks to Tessa and the other alternate selves who’ve joined us recently,” Glimmerglass said. “I could go into the theorycrafting that’s been spawned by that particular revolution for the next several years if we had time, but for the purpose of this topic the important thing is that we’ve been able to make some significant leaps forward in our understanding of the core rules that govern magic here because we now know that magic’s not a requisite part of reality.”

“And who is ‘we’ in this context?” Yawlorna asked.

“I can directly speak for the high level casters who are working with Penswell and the [Grand Coalition] focused on the mystical defenses of the [Fallen Kingdoms]. I’m sure other high caliber casters and scholars are reaching many of the same conclusions we have but with the world being under existential threat there hasn’t been much time to put together conferences and write up the proper academic papers.”

“I believe I have some notion of what that’s like,: Yawlorna said. “I would sell body organs for a chance to publish even one damn paper on the things we’ve found here.”

Tessa noted the wording and wondered if Yawlorna was limiting herself to her own organs or whether she’d offer any that were on hand that didn’t seem to be sufficiently needed by their present owners. Probably the former, but “publish or perish” was possibly a real thing in places other than Earthly academia.

“The principal insight that’s relevant here is that we always believed [Adventurers] responded to healing spells, especially life restoring ones, differently than regular people because we’d been switched on a separate magical paradigm,” Glimmerglass said. “Since magic is everywhere in this world, we believed that normal people must have their own set of magical rules they were bound by, while [Adventurers] worked under a different and disconnected set. Learning that it’s possible for people to exist without any ties to magic lead to several of us investigating whether [Adventurers] might not simply have some extra enchantments that allow things like [Resurrection] spells to work on them where they fail on normal people.”

“That sounds nice than presuming that the regular people lack souls,” Yawlorna said.

“That was a theory that was floated for years a few centuries ago. One of the good thing of encountering soul stealing demons though is that is proves very quickly that everyone has a soul, no matter how mundane they might be.”

“If you already knew that mundane people had an <eternal aspect>,” Yawlorna said, the word ‘soul’ translating oddly from the Nezzparin language Yawlorna was speaking, “what stopped you from simply fixing their bodies and reclaiming it?”

“Normal people’s souls are less bound to the material world it seems,” Glimmerglass said. “They can sometimes linger as the [Disembodied] but far more often the soul passes on down a road we can’t follow, and leaves behind at most an after-image in the ectoplasm which is what people often call a ghost. Those aren’t the people who died, just more or less distorted reflection of who they were at the time of death.”

“Why do I feel compelled to believe that your people have tried sticking those into revivified bodies already?” Yawlorna asked.

“Probably because you’ve talked with us for more than five minutes,” Tessa said.

“It tends to turn out as horribly as you might imagine,” Glimmerglass said. “The best case scenario is that the revivified person appears just like the original but fades out and ‘dies’ again in a few days as the ghostly impression on the ectoplasm of the [Dead Lands] fades away.”

“The worst cases dive right into the realms of body horror and nightmare,” Tessa said. “If those things linger they wind up as boss monsters that [Adventurers] need to destroy, and those storylines are messy.”

“But this won’t be our fate,” Yawlorna said. “If the worst comes to pass I mean.”

“It won’t be your fate if we have to resurrect you,” Glimmerglass said.

“I note that you didn’t exactly answer the question I asked,” Yawlorna said.

“If the worst comes to pass, you won’t be resurrectable because your soul will be bound in a [Torment Realm]. That’s a nightmare and a half, but until you’re fighting much higher level dungeon bosses, that’s not a scenario which should ever occur.”

“Of course. It was silly of me to assume that death was the worst thing this world might have to offer. Foolish really,” Yawlorna said, her notetaking not pausing or slowing as she spoke.

“There’s a lot to take in here,” Tessa said. “I’ve literally read the manual on this place, and all of the forum posts and wiki articles I could find, and it’s still a constant stream of surprises.”

“That’s comforting, or terrifying,” Yawlorna said. “Maybe both?”

“Well, the good news is that for as alien as this world may feel to you, you’re not intrinsically removed from it,” Glimmerglass said. “Once you started leveling, a lot of the same enchantments and metaphysical qualities that [Adventurers] possess began to manifest in you as well. You didn’t need to become something else, something like the rest of us, you just needed to have the same ‘extras’ added to you that us [Adventurers] got.”

“How sure are you that they got all of the same magical add-ons that the rest of us have?” Tessa asked.

“Oh, they don’t have all of them,” Glimmerglass said. “But then neither do you, or anyone else here. Heck I’m missing some too. The key is that they have the core set that every [Adventurer] shares no matter what race, job, or level they are, and that includes the response to restoration spells.”

Tessa could see the magic in her head as code. There were method calls like “pass through a level 50 gate” that she couldn’t hear or answer yet. On the other hand “pass through a level 20 gate” was a privilege she’d gained without even being aware of it.

“So you can resurrect us. Maybe. Probably. Does that mean you know what happens to us if we die here?” Yawlorna asked.

“In general terms, yes,” Glimmerglass said. “When you die, you’ll find yourself in the [Dead Lands] standing over your corpse. It’s a little surreal the first time it happens, but you get used to it pretty quickly.”

“It helps that while you’re dead, you’re not stuck like that,” Tessa said.

“From there you’ll want to find a [Heart Fire]. That’s where you can collect the power to resurrect yourself. Or, in this case, you can wait near your body and allow one of my spells to put you back in it.”

“What happens if we run off?” Yawlorna asked.

“My spell can bring you back to your body as long as your spirit is still available,” Glimmerglass said. “Which will be true as long as the [Hounds of Fate] haven’t gotten a hold of you.”

“They destroy souls?” Yawlorna asked.

“As far as we know, nothing can destroy a soul,” Glimmerglass said. “The Hounds carry them somewhere else though. Somewhere beyond. Somewhere we can’t contact them.”

“Can they be fought?”

“We don’t have any of our abilities as ghosts,” Tessa said. “You’ll hear them well before they get to you, but if they catch up and you’re not in the safety of a [Heart Fire Chapel] or back in your own body, that’s pretty much it. You’re done.”

Yawlorna sagged.

“I suppose that means there isn’t any hope for bringing back the members of my crew we already lost then?” she asked.

“I could tell you that nothing’s impossible, but the reality is probably that they either passed on to whatever afterlife you normally go to, or that the Hounds got them long ago and brought them to wherever they bring our people,” Glimmerglass said. “There’s usually time to resurrect dead [Adventurers] but not that much time.”

Yawlorna sighed.

“I’m not the first field promoted captain to lose crew members on a mission like this,” she said. “If there ever was a mission like this.”

“It wasn’t supposed to be this dangerous, was it?” Glimmerglass asked.

“A survey mission,” Yawlorna said. “Good for the students to get some practical experience under their belts before they started doing serious work.”

“We’ll help keep them safe from here,” Lisa said, putting a hand on Yawlorna’s massive clenched fist.

“I know,” Yawlorna said. “And I’m grateful for what you’ve done for my three chief idiots over there. And for offering us a place with you tonight. I think there’s only one more thing I need to know.”

“What’s that?” Glimmerglass asked.

“How can I learn to do what you do,” Yawlorna said, looking at the healer sitting before her.

Sometimes celebrations are well planned affairs with detailed guest lists and intricately arranged menus and events for the guests to enjoy. 

Other times the party just can’t wait.

“I would not have guessed that Hermeziz could lift Yawlorna off her feet like that,” Tessa said, taking a pull from the mug of ale which had less-than-mysteriously appeared in her hand at some point after her team arrived back at the [Great Hall].

“I would have bet a pile of gold he wouldn’t have dared to try,” Lisa said. She’d acquired a glass of wine from the same less-than-mysterious Baelgritz source as Tessa’s ale had come from.

Wine for the [Vampire], because of course Lost Alice was classier than Pillowcase.

Though, as this was the first ale Pillowcase had ever drunk, it wasn’t clear what her drink preference should have been. Flavor-wise, Tessa was pleased to notice that either the ale was very mild or Pillowcase’s taste buds were something of a token afterthought on a combat unit that technically didn’t need to eat.

Elsewhere in the [Great Hall], the infectious energy radiating off the new leveled up trio of space demon scientists had spread creating an impromptu festival for everyone.

Or everyone who hadn’t gone sprinting off to the chapel to take advantage of the [Sister of Steel’s] last few sparring practices of the day. Quick and easy leveling proved to be a popular passtime for [Adventurers] it turned out.

“Is it bad that Yawlorna’s looking over at us?” Lisa asked, offering the giant lady a friendly wave of her hand.

“We’ll find out in about five seconds I think,” Tessa said. 

She didn’t brace for impact, or shift to a fighting stance despite her instincts telling her that doing so would be a good idea. Yawlorna was a friend. A new friend who she couldn’t necessarily predict the reactions of. A very large, very muscular, very scary looking friend to be sure. The important part though, the part Tessa forced herself to focus on was the ‘friend’ bit. 

Tessa and Pillowcase had a shared experience set with authority figures and being fearful of their wrath but, with them both together, she knew it was something she needed to work on, and the big demon commander seemed like a fine place to start.

“You did this didn’t you?” Yawlorna asked without preamble as she pushed through the crowd and made it to where corner Tessa and Lisa had gravitated towards.

The truth was that it was Rip who’d been the most directly responsible but neither Tessa nor Lisa were even microscopically willing to throw their quasi-kids under that bus.

“Credit goes to your people,” Tessa said. “They worked hard for what they got today. We just let them know there was an opportunity they might want to try out.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Yawlorna asked. At her full height she loomed over Tessa like a mountain and Pillowcase’s estimation was that it would hurt roughly the same being hit by either one.

“We didn’t know they needed your permission to be off experimenting,” Lisa said.

“Permission?” Yawlorna sputtered. “This isn’t about permission! Do you have any idea how insufferable those three are going to be thanks to being the first ones to figure this out?”

“So, you’re not mad that we invited them to the sparring match?” Tessa asked.

“Mad about…? No! I’m mad you didn’t invite me first!” Yawlorna said. “It was hard enough riding herd on those three when I could at least put them all in the same headlock together. Now?” She shook her head in disbelief.

“You could go visit them tomorrow,” Lisa said. “They said they’re planning to hold a few extra sessions since the demand will be high.”

“Oh, I’ll be there,” Yawlorna said. “The problem I hear is that the lessons cap out pretty quickly?”

“Around level 20,” Tessa said. “Which is still fairly low for this area.”

“What level did they get to?” Yawlorna asked.

“They were about to give up at 10,” Lisa said.

“Then we congratulated them about leveling up,” Tessa said.

“And they kept at it till they hit 20 didn’t they?” Yawlorna asked.

“They tried to go farther than that but the rewards hit a huge diminishing returns at that point,” Tessa said.

“And what level am I in your weird system?” Yawlorna asked.

“You’re classed as a Boss,” Lisa said. “That means your levels aren’t quite like the rest of us. I think Bosses usually have between a 1.1 and 1.35 factor for their powers from what their level would normally suggest.”

“That’s at max level,” Tessa said. “Low level bosses get more swing since the base values are so small. Yawlorna’s probably at 1.5? Or maybe 1.8?”

“Oh yeah. Probably 1.8. Huh, which is weird now that you mention it,” Lisa said. “Look at her level. She’s level 16 now right?”

“Yeah. Oh, yeah, that’s new isn’t it?”

“What are you two talking about,” Yawlorna said. “What’s wrong with me?”

“”Nothing!” Tessa said. “It just looks like you’ve already been leveling up.”

“I’ve been what?”

“You’re level 16, and with the Boss modifier that’s closer to level 29 effectively,” Lisa said.

“So I can still handle my crew?” Yawlorna said, casting a dubious look at Lisa.

“Three on one odds wouldn’t be great but I’d put my money on you still,” Tessa said. 

“What’s more important, is that I’m pretty sure you weren’t level 16 when we first met,” Lisa said. “That would have been overleveled for the area you were camped out in.”

“Overleveled?”

“In the version of this world we saw as a game, everything is grouped up according to level. Even bosses will be around the same level as their troops so that the players know what they’re getting into when a fight starts.”

“And in the game, fights always started,” Lisa said.

“Where you were the things you were fighting were in the vicinity of level 10 if I remember right. A team that was challenged by those would barely be able to make tiny scratches on you as you are now,” Tessa said.

“I’m not disliking that idea,” Yawlorna said.

“In real life like this it’s pretty excellent,” Tessa said. “In a game though, not so much.”

“It’s still good news though,” Lisa said. “It means you can level the same as we do, even without special tricks like the [Sisters of Steel] sparring sessions.”

“But going to them is still the fastest option?” Yawlorna asked.

“Oh, absolutely. Especially given that everything here is calibrated around [Adventurers] being level 20 to start,” Lisa said. “You’ll have a much easier time if you skip up to 20 and then start following the usual leveling paths.”

“Huh, or will she?” Tessa asked.

“What do you mean? Am I going to be blocked somehow?” Yawlorna asked.

“No. Just the opposite in fact,” Tessa said.

“Oh, right, the Boss modifier still applies against non-[Adventurer] foes too,” Lisa said.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Tessa asked.

“If you don’t ask her first I will,” Lisa said.

“Ask me what? Yawlorna looked from the [Clothwork] to the [Vampire] and grabbed a passing drink without looking.

“It’s going to be night in a few more hours,” Tessa said. “There are undead monsters that come out on the hills to the east once darkness has fully fallen. We’re planning to hunt them.” 

“We had thought we’d need to do so very carefully,” Lisa said. “As a team of level 15s and below, we should have been able to handle one level 20 [Cursed Walker] at a time.”

“The problem with that approach is that its really easy to pull more mobs, or enemies, than you intend, and two or three Walkers would probably have eaten us,” Tessa said.

“So you’re mad then?” Yawlorna asked.

“By some measures, probably, but that’s fairly typical for [Adventurers],” Tessa said.

“When you can run right from being eaten alive and get immediate revenge on your killers, you approach problems somewhat differently,” Lisa said.

“Okay. I can see that,” Yawlorna admitted. “Still seems mad.”

“Thanks to the [Sisters of Steel] it’s become considerably less mad,” Tessa said. “With the whole party at level 20, it will be the [Cursed Walkers] who need to run from us. Except they’re not smart enough for that.”

“Why bother fighting them then?” Yawlorna asked.

“Two big reasons,” Lisa said. “Fighting them will provide the experience we need to level up more, and the higher level we get the more things we might be able to survive.”

“Then there’s the loot,” Tessa said. “Leveling up is one thing, but an [Adventurer’s] strength is also largely derived from their gear.”

“Why would the undead have gear you would want to use?” Yawlorna asked.

“As an incentive to fight them,” Lisa said. “It doesn’t make a tremendous amount of sense, but this world seems to have been crafted with a lot of the game related effects built into it.”

“Crafted?”

“We met one of the dead gods,” Tessa said, though her memory of it was from Pillowcase’s viewpoint only. “Apparently this world was something of a group project for them, which seems to be why parts of it resemble the game we were playing.”

“So this is all someone’s fault,” Yawlorna said. “That’s good to know.”

“They’re inconveniently dead at the moment,” Lisa said. “So any complaints may not get you many answers.”

“When do they ever with gods?” Yawlorna asked. “You had something you wished to ask me though I believe? You want to take Bael, Illu, and Herme with you I’m guessing?”

“And you,” Tessa said.

“We thought it would be too dangerous since a [Cursed Walker] would have been able to one shot you all if things went wrong. With Bael and the others being level 20 now though, and since you’re effectively level 28 or 29, you shouldn’t be in that much danger unless something really unexpected shows up.”

“Like a group of people with a rag doll, a blood drinker, a metal man, and a overcharged cat girl showing up out of the blue?” Yawlorna asked. “Or would it be more like the lava snake you came riding back up from the depths of the Abyss?”

“To be fair, riding the lava snake wasn’t our idea,” Tessa said. “It was just that we needed to get back in a hurry and Darren insisted on helping us out.”

“That you know the lava snake’s name illustrates my point I believe,” Yawlorna said.

“So, does that mean you don’t want to come with us?” Lisa asked, a crestfallen note in her voice.

“Want to? Absolutely not,” Yawlorna said. “I have every confidence that going anywhere near danger with you will end in unforeseen disaster. Unfortunately, that disaster can probably land anywhere in a hundred mile radius and being near you seems to be the most likely option we have for surviving it.”

“Oh so you will come then!” Tessa said, bumping shoulders with Lisa.

“Whether or not I do, I know Bael, Illu, and Herm will tag along with you,” Yawlorna said. “So, yes, the four of us will join you – but only if I have your solemn oath that they will make it back here alive.”

“We’re going to have a team strategy meeting before we head out,” Tessa said. “Part of that is going to be specific plans for how we retreat. Keeping the four of you safe will be a key element of that.”

“The rest of us can all afford to die. We know you can’t,” Lisa said. “If we hit something too difficult for us to handle, we will absolutely buy you time to escape.”

“Yeah, just because we can’t beat something, doesn’t mean it’ll have an easy time killing us and getting to you,” Tessa said. 

“And, worst comes to worst, I can always bring them back,” Glimmerglass said.

War is hell. War games on the other hand can be quite a different story.

Since they had several new sparring partners to work with, the [Sisters of Steel] had set their next session up as an unusual castle defense scenario. 

One area of the room was sectioned off by a ten foot high wooden picket fence with a single entry point. Inside the fence, a raised walkway behind the fence allowed the defenders to fire upon the attackers while enjoying a fair bit of cover.

For a normal town defense scenario, the attackers would have some goal inside the ‘castle’, anything from simply getting enough bodies inside before the defenders could repel them to needing to wipe out all of the defenders and claim the castle for their own.

In the version the Sisters setup though, things were a little more complicated.

“I understand the castle walls but why do the attackers get their own wall?” Rip asked, pointing to the smaller, four foot high barrier the Sisters had put up.

“Aggressors will most often enjoy the benefits of their own defenses,” Mother Graymourn said. “In this case, they’ll need them in order to deal with the defender’s allies.”

“Allies?” Lady Midnight asked as she strapped on a [Heavy Iron Chestplate]. Tessa wondered about that but a quick check of Lady Midnight’s normal gear revealed that she hadn’t found an updated robe since the tutorial which meant she was missing a significant amount of defense. The [Heavy Iron Chestplate] offered none of the spellcasting support a healer would want but it would at least reduce the blunt force trauma she was about to endure.

“The castle’s defenders will need to do more than hold out against a simple attack,” Mother Graymourn said. “In this scenario, the defenders have won the support of a local member of the nobility who has come to break the siege they’ve been under. The Noble and their forces will setup on the far end of the room. Their goal is to get the noble to the castle alive and, ideally, unharmed. The attackers can win either by eliminating the nobleman or by taking the castle. The defender’s earn their victory either by securing the alliance with the noble or by using the distraction of their arrival to eliminate the attackers.”

“How many fighters will each side have?” Obby asked.

“We’ll vary it up,” Mother Graymourn said. “That and the composition of the three forces. Mixed teams I think for the first battle though. That’ll give us the best view of where you all are starting at.”

“How many of them can you take in one battle?” Lisa asked.

“I think we’ve got room for eight,” Mother Graymourn said.

“That’s perfect. Lost Alice and I can spectate. That should help us plan out our battle strategies for tonight,” Tessa said.

It was an honest and true sentiment. Tessa was sincere in wanting a chance to evaluate her team’s combat prowess outside of a battle that she was directly involved in. That it also happened to allow her to remain cuddled up with Lisa and spared her from the inevitable beatdown the [Sisters of Steel] were going to deliver was really only a happy coincidence.

From the faint smile which rippled across Lisa’s face, she harbored similar feeling regarding the arrangement.

“Eight? So that includes us?” Baelgritz asked.

“Unless the years and the miles have addled this old noggin, I’m pretty sure I can count correctly still,” Mother Graymourn said. “Presuming you’re willing to step into the arena that is.”

Baelgritz shot a worried glance to Hermeziz, who passed it along to Illuthiz. Illuthiz answered with a roll of her eyes and a resigned shrug of her shoulders. Tessa suspected Illuthiz didn’t have much hope for the whole ‘leveling thing’ to apply to them, but the three of them at least seemed willing to prove the point out like the scientists they were.

“Wonderful,” Mother Graymourn said reading their silent acceptance for the confirmation it was. “We’ll form up into the first set of teams in two minutes. Make any plans you want and check your gear. Keep in mind though, you’re not going to be on the same side once the spar begins.”

“If we die, I’m going to haunt you both,” Hermeziz said.

“Exactly!” Baelgritz said. “Even death won’t part us!”

“They’re not going to kill us,” Illuthiz said, her amusement at their posturing tempered only by the need to deescalate the other two before they got completely out of hand.

“They won’t,” Lisa said. “As a warning though, they’re not going to hold back much either.”

“Are you used to sparring matches where magical healing is available?” Tessa asked.

“That sounds unpromising,” Hermeziz said. Tessa had originally pegged him as the most belligerent of the three, but time and exposure had changed that view. Hermeziz bristled the most easily of the three, but his concerns didn’t seem to be unfounded. That he was as open as he was about his reservations seemed to be a strange sign of trust. Tessa suspected that if Hermeziz had decided anyone around them was an immediate danger he would have said absolutely nothing to alert them to his awareness of it. 

It wasn’t fair to analogize a sapient being with an animal, but, despite that, people shared more behavior patterns in common with supposedly “thoughtless animals” than they usually cared to admit.

In Hermeziz’s case, Tessa wondered how good a model a dog might be for predicting his reactions. He seemed to have a fierce and protective loyalty to Baelgritz and Illthuziz, and he seemed to prefer the threat carried by barking to escalating to actually biting. As long as he was grumbling, Tessa was willing to hazard the guess that they were still in safe waters. If he went silent though? Even with several new levels under her belt, she didn’t want to see what that would look like.

“Would it be wrong to make some wagers on the first battle?” Lisa asked on their private channel.

“Only if we tried to bet on our team winning,” Tessa said. She believed in her friends. She would fight and die with them. None of that changed the fact that she knew they were doomed. 

Oh, they’d be on separate teams, so one of their teams would win, but the chance that any of them would still be standing once the final victory was secured was effectively zero from Tessa’s perspective.

Lisa wiggled a little closer as the first spar got going.

Mother Graymourn had split the eight evenly between the defenders and the attacker, but had let them choose who they wanted to fight alongside. Rip, Matt, Lady Midnight, and Starchild had chosen to play as the attackers, while Obby, Baelgritz, Illuthiz, and Hermeziz assembled in the castle. 

To those teams, Mother Graymourn added a eight of the [Sisters of Steel] each, and setup another six as the allies. She took role of the Noble for herself, though she warned that the Noble was a noncombatant and so she wouldn’t be fighting and even a single attack against her would be enough to win a victory for the attackers.

Rip tried to take advantage of that the moment the battle began, firing a [Training Arrow] at Mother Graymourn for an instant win. It was a good idea, but also far too obvious to have a hope of working. One of the nuns near Mother Graymourn yanked the arrow from the air and hurled it back narrowly missing Rip only because Matt tackled her to the ground taking the both of them out of the fight for the first few moments.

That let them survive longer than Baelgritz and his crew though.

Rather than attack Mother Graymourn directly, the other [Sisters of Steel] among the attackers elected to make a frontal assault on the ‘castle’. Baelgritz, Illuthiz, and Hermeziz were defending the gate, and trying to take advantage of the full cover the position afforded. That prevented the first round of missile fire from targeting them, but when Sister Cayman burst through the gate, the three of them fell to a single spinning strike from the nun’s spear.

A minute later, the three plopped down on a spectator’s bench beside Tessa having removed themselves from the battlefield after the attackers were driven back. For authenticity they could have lain where they fell, but the prospect of being stepped on after losing so quickly didn’t seem to appeal to them.

“Well, that was worthless,” Hermeziz said.

“Also, not conclusive,” Illuthiz said, plopping down to sit between the other two.

“Yeah, we weren’t ready,” Baelgritz said. “We should play defense again next time.”

“Next time? We have to do a next time?” Hermeziz’s frown was audible in every syllable as he rubbed his collarbone.

“Want me to fix that up?” Lisa asked, beginning one of her healing spells.

“Can we stay on the bench if you don’t?” Hermeziz asked.

“You can stay, I’m going back in there,” Illuthiz said.

“Fine. Go ahead then,” Hermeziz said.

The next battle did see them on defense once more, but it did not see them last all that much longer. 

They opted to defend the gate again, but only the presence of one of [Sisters of Steel] with them preventing a repeat of the first round when Sister Cayman once again pushed through into the castle.

“How is she so fast!” Baelgritz complained, and Tessa felt all the sympathy in the world for him. 

“She’s higher level than us,” Tessa said. “But she’s not using raw speed. It looks like she’s doing what she did when I fought her. She makes really fast distracting movements but when she strikes, she’s slowing down her blows just enough to give her the control to move around your defenses. You had a good block there, it was just in the wrong place.”

“We should change up our order,” Illuthiz said. “Herm, how would you feel about taking point?”

“Terrible,” Hermeziz said. “I can’t keep up with that monster as it is. Being the first line of defense isn’t going to make that easier.”

“I know,” Illuthiz said. “We normally let Baelgritz take point, but you were on the [Fencing] team. I think we need your speed here.”

“I can’t fence properly with these clunky things,” Hermeziz said, gesturing with the [Blunted Long Sword] in his hand. “And even if I had a proper sword, I’m still not as fast as that woman is.”

“You won’t have to be as fast as her. Not if this idea works,” Illuthiz said.

After a quick question was tossed over to her, Mother Graymourn supplied Hermeziz with a practice weapon more to his liking. He wasn’t thrilled with it, the weight was wrong, the length wasn’t ideal, and against plate armor, light blades were a terrible idea. He had a whole litany of complaints, most of which seemed fairly reasonable, but despite them he still trod out onto the field.

And returned a couple of minutes later, once again defeated.

Tessa was pleased to see that they had survived Sister Cayman’s initial charge this time. In part that was because two of the other [Sister’s of Steel] had been there to help blunt Cayman’s attack. In part though, Illuthiz’s plan had worked. 

Hermeziz wasn’t a threat to Cayman, but that was only because she was able to disarm him fairly quickly. Even a fairly quick disarm however cost Sister Cayman a precious second in her attack and broke up her momentum. None of that was enough to allow them to steal a victory from her. Not that time, or any of the next half dozen until the teams got rearranged and they switched sides to try going on the offense. 

Offense proved to have it’s own headaches, with the trio being alternatively overrun by the allies in one round and then the defenders in the next as they surged out of the castle.

“This is the definition of insanity,” Hermeziz said. “We haven’t survived for even sixty seconds in any of these fights.”

“That’s true,” Lisa said. “But you are surviving for longer.”

“It feels like luck,” Baelgritz said.

“It is,” Tessa said. “But it’s luck your making for yourselves.”

Luck that was on course to turn into something much more from what Tessa could see.

They weren’t progressing despite their failures. Each failure was teaching them, and helping them learn. Beside their names, new numbers had appeared. 

Levels.

Just like an [Adventurer].

‘Sitting on the bench’ gets a bad rep Tessa decided. She’d been able to stow Pillowcase’s armor away and was lounging on one of the spectator’s seats watching Sister Cayman provide the same sort of instruction to Sister Hecte as she had to Tessa. The spectacle of the combat was far more amusing to watch from a position where she wasn’t being dunked in the water every few minutes, but the real joy was feeling Lisa leaning against her in relaxation.

Pillowcase’s cloth skin was several thousand times less sensitive than Tessa’s vastly more fragile human skin, but Tessa’s enjoyment of being in contact with Lisa came less from the tactile pleasure it provided and more, far more, from the the sheer joy of Lisa’s existence. 

Pillowcase had no reference point for being drunk on love. [Clothwork] didn’t have biological imperatives towards procreation, or any threads in their design to capture an understanding of emotional connections. As far as the Consortium was concerned, bonds between soldier units were handled under the auspices of the command and control spells which ensured their troops loyalty. 

Delving back into Pillowcase’s memories yielded a treasure trove of surprises though. She’d never been in love and she’d certainly never dated anyone, or been physical with another sapient being outside of combat exercises, but she had developed crushes. Lots of them.

Where romantic love was something that existed between people, a sharing each person gave part of themselves to, crushes only required a single, yearning heart. The Consortium was able to suppress unwanted behaviors in their troops, but the loyalty spells hadn’t been able to touch the deepest corners of who Pillowcase really was.

And so she’d loved. On her own. From afar. But even bound up in every sort of enchantment she’d loved.

“Resting with you like this is a balm to my soul,” Tessa said, though for Pillowcase the feeling was even more true.

“I just wish this wasn’t so fun,” Lisa said. “I want this to be super boring so it will feel like it’s lasting forever.”

“Fun does seem to go by too quickly doesn’t it?” Tessa asked, thinking blissfully back to the ‘fun’ they’d had before she switched back to Pillowcase’s body. 

It was very good that [Clothwork] couldn’t blush. Vampires could though and Tessa spied a delightful reddening of Lost Alice’s features.

“Maybe we should have more fun in our lives,” Lisa whispered. It was a private telepathic channel, but the whisper still made Tessa’s knees buckle.

So it was good that she was already sitting. Flopping onto the group as the result of a conversation that was inaudible to everyone else would have been weird even for her.

“Now?” she asked, a unexpectedly large part of her hoping for an affirmative.

“We shouldn’t,” Lisa said. “But god is it tempting.”

[Clothwork] stomach’s didn’t come equipped with butterflies, and yet Tessa discovered they turned out to be capable of spontaneously producing butterflies by the bushel with the right prompting. The right, lovely, [Vampiric], sensual prompting.

Like, for example, the soft hand that was tracing a path down from her ear to her collarbone.

“You have no idea how much I want to run to the [Heart Fire] and change back right now,” she said.

“You have no idea how much I don’t want to even let you get that far,” Lisa said and then sighed. “But the others will be here in a few minutes.”

“And I should probably stay with Pillowcase’s body until we’re done with questing for the night,” Tessa agreed, releasing her excitement and accepting her current fate.

“Something to look forward to then, right?” Lisa said, her voice less sultry but still wonderfully warm.

“Something to fight for,” Tessa said. “I feel like it’s getting easier and easier to forget we’re doing dangerous stuff here. Or, not forget. More like…”

“Like ignore?” Lisa said. “I think I know what you mean. It’s not confidence exactly. I’m still deeply aware of how tiny our powers are compared to nearly everything in this world, but the idea of running into an [Elder Sand Worm] or something doesn’t seem as frightening as it did when we landed here.”

“Denial maybe?” Tessa asked. “We’ve run into some awful stull and survived it so far, well most of the time, so maybe that’s making it easier to pretend the threats aren’t as bad as we rationally know they are?”

“I didn’t get a degree in psychology, but it sounds fine to my layman’s ears,” Lisa said. “Maybe not super healthy, but at the moment, I’ll take it.”

“Huh, you know, that’s an interesting idea,” Tessa said.

“What? That we should indulge in unhealthy behavior because this whole situation is ridiculous and we’ll snap otherwise?” Lisa asked.

“No, although maybe, I mean what’s healthy in one environment may be terrible in another right? Adapt and survive and all that. What I meant though is that there are a lot of people who played [Broken Horizons] and who had all sorts of backgrounds. We’ve lost contact with our Earth, but there’s still people here with skills that you’d primarily find on Earth rather than in the [Fallen Kingdoms].”

“Skills like counseling and therapy,” Lisa said as she made the same leap Tessa had.

“They’re probably already working with the people they know, but there are hundreds of thousands of players. The vast majority of us will probably never run into them. But they could help so much if we could find one!”

“I’d be afraid of them being swamped with work, but metal health isn’t something I’ve heard anyone else talking about,” Lisa said.

“Our world could use a lot of work there,” Tessa said. “Though to be fair, at least we have psychologists, and counselors, and an entire profession devoted to it. When was the last time you saw a psychiatrist in a game who wasn’t the ‘crazy evil villain’?”

“Fair point. I’m guessing [Clerics] generally fill that role here, but they don’t exactly have a Cure Mental Wounds spell to work with.”

“Maybe Glimmerglass could help us get in touch with one?” Tessa said. “She was working with Penswell during the big battle, and, I think, is still reporting in. She should have a channel to any global efforts the players apart from the fight with the Consortium.”

“Worth a shot. My guess is that a lot of those efforts are on hold until the Consortium’s invasion is sorted out. If we were higher level, we’d probably be getting drafted to help too.”

“Worst case we could get an update on how things are going I guess,” Tessa said.

Lisa giggled, and Tessa shot her a quizzical expression.

“Sorry, I was just picturing us getting hooked up with a substance abuse counselor and having to sit there going ‘Hi. My name is Lost Alice and it’s been 20 hours since I last drank blood.’ Probably not that funny, but it seemed silly in my head.”

Tessa heard the echoes of emptiness in Lisa’s words. It wasn’t being a [Vampire] that bothered her. It was what being a [Vampire] had led her to do. 

Lost Alice was a killer. All [Vampires] of her bloodline were. The actions a newly risen [Vampire] undertook when the world was nothing but a bloodrage and they couldn’t form coherent thoughts couldn’t be held against them though. 

Lisa, however, had killed of her own volition.

Mikonnel had been a traitor to the [Fallen Kingdoms]. He’d be holding the two of them captive in the [Sunless Deeps]. He’d planned to do horrible things to them. The world was no poorer for his loss. And she’d been ravenous.

None of that kept the choice she’d made from weighing on her though.

And nothing Tessa could think to say would change that.

But maybe she didn’t have to.

“I mean, you could have made it two hours ago instead,” Tessa said. “I did have liters and liters of blood to spare then. Now you’d have to be content with fluff.”

“Eww, I don’t want to drain my girlfriend,” Lisa said, that gloom that had wrapped around her forgotten at least for the moment. “And you do not have liters of blood to spare. Don’t even lose one if you can help it. You need your blood.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Tessa said. “I’m just saying that I don’t mind the idea of being a tasty snack.”

Lisa stared at her for a long moment.

“Oh my god. Seriously? That’s the line you went for?”

Tessa tried to waggle Pillowcase’s eyebrows and knew she was failing miserably. That was okay, cheesy pickup lines delivered with both full and absolutely no sincerity had a magic that transcended facial expressions.

“I should bite you for that, but then you would win!” Lisa said, incensed at the unfairness of it all.

“I’m clever like that,” Tessa said. “I’m kind of hoping we can find a child counselor though.”

“Feel like regressing a few years?” Lisa asked, her words honeyed with sarcasm.

“Not for me,” Tessa said glancing over towards the door where the rest of their party was finally arriving.

“Ah, yeah, them,” Lisa said spotting Rip and Matt at the forefront of the procession. “That could be pretty good. Assuming we can talk them into it.”

“Lead by example maybe?” Tessa said. “I don’t mind sitting on a virtual couch and talking about all the stuff we’ve been through. Or, I guess, in a virtual support group circle?”

“Given the circumstances, I’m guessing the support group model would probably work the best,” Lisa said. “It might even be something we could just do with the whole party even before we find an official counselor to lead us.”

“That’s a good point. We could do an ‘after action wrap up’ with the whole team and try to make sure everyone feels comfortable enough to talk about the deeper stuff that’s bothering them.”

“Right. Make sure everyone knows they’re not in this alone.”

“Not even our space demon friends I guess,” Tessa said as Baelgritz, Illuthiz and Hermeziz came in at the end of party’s train.

They didn’t burst aflame the moment their feet touched the chapel’s floor, which Tessa took to be a good sign.

A better one came a moment later as Mother Graymourn stepped forward.

“Hail travellers!” she said. “The [Sisters of Steel] offer welcome to all who come with goodwill and brave hearts”

She addressed the gathering in general but the bow of her head at the end seemed to be directly most clearly towards Illuthiz.

“I think our…friends are here?” Rip said, pausing as though paging through several options on how to describe Tessa and Lisa.

Tessa waved, catching their attention.

“Yes. They’ve had quite a good sparring session already,” Mother Graymourn said. “If you’d care to join us for a round too, we’ll be resetting our arena shortly and you’re welcome to stay for that.”

“I really want to see the nuns vs demons battle,” Lisa said privately.

“It does seem kind of iconic doesn’t it?” Tessa asked.

“That and I’m dying of curiosity to know if Baelgritz’s crew can actually level,” Lisa said. “I mean what would they even level to? They don’t have classes like ours. Would they gain one? Would they rank up in species type to one of the bigger demon types?”

“I’m going to bet they can, and they’ll just get better stats, no species change though,” Tessa said with nothing to support her guess beside her personal sense for how she’d design things. “It’ll be fascinating to see though either way though.”

Baelgritz seemed to have a similar thought and raised his hand like a student requesting permission to speak,

Which Tessa remembered he sort of was. Yawlorna had described her crew as effectively a bunch of grad students who she’d taken along on a research trip that went horribly, horribly wrong. Despite his appearance, it finally clicked for Tessa that Baelgritz might be even younger than she was.

Tessa measured her life in segments broken up by what seemed like the usual milestones everyone else did. Going to school for the first time. Having her first period. Learning to drive. Graduating high school. College. Getting her first job. Moving out on her own. Those had all felt normal in part because of how spaced out they were. 

Hitting level 20 though? After no more than a few days from being “born” in the [Fallen Kingdoms]? 

On one level she knew she shouldn’t have been surprised. The low levels in the game had been accelerated over the years to allow players to catch up more easily. It wasn’t like she was the first person to reach the lofty height of 1/5th the level cap. Glimmerglass was still more than four times Tessa’s current level.

All of that paled though before the whiplash of finding herself at what had once been one of the most significant level breaks in the game.

Originally, the first ten levels had been setup so that the players could largely solo them. Then [Broken Horizons] took the kid gloves off and the enemies started getting quickly more difficult.

Level 11 through 19 were the early partying levels, which various much bemoaned locations where players would gather and die en masse as newcomers worked out the basics of fighting as a team.

By level 20, the theory went, those early growing pains were done and the players were ready to start taking on more focused challenges in the form of the games first group dungeons.

[Broken Horizons] design philosophy had shifted over the years, but Tessa had joined early enough that her low level experience was still informed by the original designers mindset and they’d had some wild ideas on what sort of challenges were appropriate for beginning players.

In their defense, they were clever enough to make the challenges ones that taught the players how to overcome them, which was part of [Broken Horizons] initial success. Rather than being a byzantine nightmare of random events that lead to complete failure after hours of effort, the torments the [Broken Horizons] dungeons put the players through were ones that had pretty clear paths to overcome, and even the failures often came with some reward that made future attempts more likely to succeed. They were still ridiculously difficult in many cases, but since that was something of a standard for the industry at the time, [Broken Horizons] had the distinction of being the most approachable of the MMOs on the market by far, and as a result it prospered where other games floundered. 

From Tessa’s perspective, those early, tortuous dungeons had been more than a series of ever higher hurdles to leap though. They were touchpoints she’d shared with BT and all of her other close friends. They were experiences that united her guild, and were shared by everyone who played the game at that point. They became the cultural landscape that all her fellow [Broken Horizons] players understood and which set them apart from those who weren’t a part of their society.

And it had all started at level 20.

She knew [Broken Horizons] had progressed beyond level 20 being such a defining milestone. Later expansions had added earlier, and easier, group dungeons in at lower levels to get people into the “fun” sooner, and had toned down the difficulty on the hardest content either directly or through simple power creep of new abilities and items being stronger than the ones that came before. That had made the game accessible to a far wider range of players, and had been something that Tessa had argued in favor of in more forum threads than she could remember, even as she felt the  twinges of nostalgia for surviving the early brutal encounters that some of the players claimed was the lynchpin of the game’s existence.

“This doesn’t seem real,” she said, marveling at not just her own stat screen but the shiny ‘20’ that was sitting beside Lisa’s name too.

“Now imagine if we’d been using XP scrolls or potions,” Lisa said, a mirthful gleam sparkling in her eyes.

“Wait, did you know this would level us up this fast?” Tessa said, detecting a hint of knowing mischief lurking behind Lisa’s smile.

“Not at first,” Lisa said with a shake of her head. “After the first time you took a swim though, I noticed how much our xps bars had gone up.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Tessa said. “We lost all of those earlier rounds, and I basically lost this last one too.”

“Ah but there wasn’t any winning or losing here,” Sister Acroghast said. “This is training. The only important thing when your training is that you’re learning, and you two caught on a lot quicker than most that I’ve seen.”

“But, it can’t be that easy can it?” Tessa asked, still astounded at how fast she’d progressed without ever being in any real peril.

“You’d prefer it to be harder?” Sister Cayman asked.

“Oh, don’t worry, it will be,” Mother Graymourn said. “You’re still relatively unskilled. You have the basics down, but you’ve got so much more growing to do. The more you do, the longer and harder you’ll need to work to progress. I dare say there’ll come a day fairly soon when we won’t have much to teach you and you’ll need to search out other teachers or tougher challenges if you want to continue improving.”

“There are other places we can level like this?” Tessa’s mind boggled at the idea. Leveling in [Broken Horizons] had always meant walking through oceans of blood and climbing mountains of enemy corpses, at least figuratively, though a few dungeons took a stab at making that literal. Giving out levels willy nilly seemed like madness.

“Didn’t the beta testers mention this?” Lisa asked. “I thought they called out [Dragonshire] as having a bunch of different leveling mini-games.”

“They did, but somehow none of them thought to mention that the mini-games were a rocket train for fast leveling. That was unbelievable.”

“Weren’t they mostly over level 20 when they got here?” Lisa asked.

“Ohhh,” Tessa said, understanding dawning on her. “The training programs here are to let people who played the [High Beyond Tutorial] area catch up to the ones who chose to buy the [Quick Start] option?”

Gamers, being among the least patient people on the planet, were often willing to pay for convenience benefits and, once Egress Entertainment understood that, the option of buying a higher starting level for a character had quickly been rolled out. For enough money you could be a character at the level cap who was equipped with a decent enough set of gear to take on the the lowest tier of the end game [Raids]. 

In practice, there were enough quests and unlocks that characters needed that it was more practical to simply bypass the “tutorial levels” and start at level 20 once the “real game began”.

Tessa had never seen the point of throwing money away to skip new content, but given that some people created alternate characters like they were trying to single handedly populate the world by themselves, she could see where the five hundredth time of being a lowbie might get a little old.

“Hey, would we be able to have some friends come by to join you for sparring, or do you need to work on you own training for a while?” Tessa asked.

“We’re here for everyone,” Mother Graymourn said. “It’s our [Holy Mission] you might say. We’ll probably do some more round of [Walk the Plank] then take a break and switch it up. Good training needs to cover all the basics after all.”

“You’re thinking we get the kids, and the others here?” Lisa asked.

“Yes, definitely, before a thousand other [Adventurers] show up,” Tessa said.

“That’s a good idea. If we can get everyone up to level 20, we’ll have a much easier time with the [Cursed Walkers].”

“That’s what I was thinking. We were planning to use the lowest level [Undead] out there to work up to level 20. If we can start at 20 though, we’ll be able to handle bigger groups out of the gate and even take on some of the boss spawns.”

“You say boss spawns, and I hear enough rare loot to pass them out as party favors afterwards,” Lisa said and then switch to the party’s telepathic channel. “Hey folks! How fast can you get to the [Chapel]?”

“We’re not far! What’s the matter?” Rip asked, fright dancing in her voice.

“It’s not what’s wrong. It’s what’s right. Check your party list. Notice anything interesting?” Tessa asked.

“We’re all still alive it looks like,” Matt said. “And nobody new on the list.”

“But you’re listed as ‘Pillowcase’ again,” Rip said.

“And you’re level 20? When did that happen? What did you find?” Lady Midnight asked, the greedy longing for experience points of any sensible [Adventurer] plain to hear in her voice.

“We found the [Sisters of Steel],” Lisa said.

“Okay, that sounds badass. Are they literally made of steel?” Rip asked.

It wasn’t a particularly unreasonable question given the world they were in.

“Nope. Flesh and blood,” Tessa said.

“Awww,” Matt, the [Metal Mechanoid] said.

“They’re wearing plenty of steel though,” Lisa said. “And don’t really care if you drop them into a ten foot deep pool while they’ve got all that platemail on. So Rip’s pretty much correct on the badass front.”

“We’re headed towards the [Chapel] now then!” Obby said.

“Is it okay if Baelgritz and his crew come with us?” Rip asked.

Tessa had the strangest sensation that Rip had decided to adopt the three space travelers as though they were a trio of adorable pets. Given that Rip had been the first to pick up an actual pet so far, and that her first thought had been to name it after a mind numbingly dangerous chemical, Tessa couldn’t rule out the idea that Rip was intending to add the demonic looking trio to her menagerie.

“Should we be worried about Rip imprinting on space traveling demons?” Tessa asked Lisa on their private line.

“I think they’ve already imprinted on you,” Lisa replied privately. “I’m more wondering if our demon trio is imprinting on her.”

“They’re adults though, aren’t they?”

“They are, I think, but they’re adults who’ve been in a rough situation for a long time from what Yawlorna said. Then we show up and show them just how much worse everything they were dealing with could be. And then we show that we can deal with it and keep them alive. That kind of thing leaves an impression.”

“And Rip was the one leading the team when they went to [Sky’s Edge] wasn’t she?” Tessa asked.

“I think so. She’s got a lot of drive. I don’t know how much of that they were there to see, but she leaves an impression quickly.”

“Think we should check with the nuns to see how they’ll feel about three demons joining the festivities?” Tessa asked.

“Probably not the worst idea we could have,” Lisa said.

As it turned out, and Tessa decided it probably shouldn’t have surprised her, Moth Graymourn was all too eager to meet Baelgritz, Illuthiz, and Hermeziz. Granted she’d been told that they were ‘travelers from a distant world who appeared similar to the [Underworlders] we know’ but Tessa was sure none of the nuns had missed that she was saying ‘they look like demons, but they’re really not’. 

“You say they may not be able to learn from sparring though?” Sister Acroghast asked.

“We’re not sure,” Lisa said. “We’re familiar with a fictitious version of them. In the fiction we know, they’re basically static. But these aren’t exactly like the versions we know. They’re lower level than we are, so it might be that they’re stuck there and can’t progress.”

“If they’re people like you say, I don’t believe that will be true here,” Mother Graymourn said. “They may not want to, they may have a terribly difficult time with it, but the one thing that’s true of any person is that they’re always able to change.”

Tessa could not, it turned out, ‘do this’, where ‘this’ was overcome an opponent who was twice her level. Giving herself over to Pillowcase’s reflexes helped a little. Practicing Lisa’s advice didn’t seem to help at all first, but after Tessa’s fifth dunking things started to change.

“I think I see what you did that time,” she said as Sister Cayman helped her out of the pool. “You’re not using that much more speed than I am, are you?”

“Nope. I’m moving slower than you in fact.”

“But you’re capable of moving much faster aren’t you?” Tessa asked. 

She’d done as Lisa had suggested. She’d put together a strategy for each match. 

Her first one had been a disaster. 

Too many thoughts, too much planning. She’d pictured a nine step process through which she would partially disarm Sister Cayman, unbalance her, feint for a heavy blow and then shield bash to knock Cayman off the plank. The plan had gotten as far as ‘begin trying to disarm your foe’ before Cayman had swept Tessa’s feet out from under her completely. 

Tessa’s second plan had simplified things a bit, trying to a more straightforward disarm. It had failed just as quickly.

Reflecting on her failures had brought her plan down to “block and attack” with the idea that the attacks needed to be real without overcommitting herself so that when an opening presented itself for an unbalancing strike she’d be able to take it without thought.

It was a good plan. It had failed, but it was still good.

“Speed isn’t everything,” Cayman said. “A fast hit thrown at the wrong target is worse than useless.”

“Being too slow isn’t working out all that great either,” Tessa said.

“That’s not what you’re having problems with.”

“I’m barely able to parry or block your attacks,” Tessa said, but she knew Sister Cayman was right. Jerking her arms and body around faster wasn’t going to make up the gap in skill between the two of them.

“You were doing better in our last exchange,” Sister Cayman said. “And it looked like you were slowing down there too?”

“I was. I thought if I stayed loose and kept my movement more constrained I’d be able to keep up with you better,” Tessa said. 

It was one of the early lessons that had been sewn into Pillowcase. Don’t waste motion. Spend the force you can exert as efficiently as possible. Ideally, which each defense, make the attacker pay. 

The Consortium saw combat as basically the same as any other business transaction. Both parties wanted something, and the goal was to make sure you spent as little as possible achieving your objective  while ensuring that your opponent lost everything they had.

“You’re on the right track,” Sister Cayman said. “Do you want to keep going?”

Tessa glanced at Lisa and then at the other nuns who were waiting. Lisa was a bit soggy as well. Even [Vampiric Reflexes] weren’t enough to keep her from being pitched off her plank, though Tessa noted that the team healer was having a better time keeping her footing than the team tank was.

“I’d be happy to, but should the other people get a turn too?” she asked.

“Oh watching this is much more fun than going for a swim ourselves,” Mother Graymourn said. She was passing around a ceramic jug which seemed to be holding tea based on the cups the nuns were pouring the contents into.

It sounds like you noticed something? Lisa asked privately.

Maybe? I think I know what she did to me this last time, Tessa said. She’s mixing up her heavy hits with her quick ones, but the ‘quick’ hits aren’t really any quicker than the solid ones. It’s disorienting and it’s making me focus on the wrong things. I’m trying to shift my block at the speed I’m perceiving her moving, but that’s not lining up with her real attacks.

So what’s your game plan to deal with that? Lisa asked, climbing onto her plank once more.

I can’t just slow down. If I’m too sluggish, she’ll land a regular old normal hit on me.

That’s what you can’t do. Think about what you can, Lisa said.

Pillowcase had several ideas on that subject, including calling in close air support, retreating to rearm with some long distance plasma bolters, and deploying mines along the planks. That none of these ideas were feasible wasn’t lost on Pillowcase, the Consortium simply had fairly specific ideas on how superior foes were to be dealt with.

What I can do is go more on the offensive, Tessa said. I leave more openings when I do that, but just like I can trust to my armor to protect me from the blows, I need to start trusting my dexterity to help me regain my balance. 

Sounds like its worth a shot, Lisa said. Remember; picture it working. Then stop thinking.”

Turning off her mind had been something Tessa was never good at. Sitting quietly had been impossible for her as a kid, and meditation had never accomplished any more for her than providing time for her to obsess over whatever anxiety was chewing on her mind.

Pillowcase was able to help there, fortunately. Fighting required a special kind of awareness, not empty headed, but empty, a distinction which Tessa didn’t immediately grasp.

With the plank beneath her feet though it started to come to her.

Cayman was on her own side of the pool, waiting for Mother Graymourn to call for them to begin. She looked interested but serene. This wasn’t anything of monumental importance to her. It was just training with a new fighter.

A tightness in Pillowcase’s chest released. Ego could be a terrible master, as could buying into the narrative that showing weakness or failing a test revealed unforgivable flaws.

In theory that bit of anxiety should have come from Pillowcase. She was the one who’d faced the constant threat of being recycled for parts if she couldn’t meet the Consortium’s strict testing standards. Pillowcase knew that wasn’t an idle threat either. Several of the [Clothwork] in her original production lot had been deemed defective and been instantly scrapped when their combat performance reviews came down.

Tessa felt the anxiety that had vanished wasn’t derived from Pillowcase’s memories though. It was derived from her own.

Pillowcase was used to trials overseen by severe, stone faced proctors, where each subtle flaw was noted and judged secretly. A [Clothwork] only discovered they had failed the tests when the command word was given for the them to shutdown permanently.

The [Sisters of Steel] were the polar opposite of that, with their jovial banter and a shared and open review of each bout that seemed to be focused on helping the loser improve rather than placing each failure on a scale that would eventually seal the loser’s doom.

Social failings weren’t an issue for [Clothwork] since they were built to work in whatever groups the Consortium saw fit to assign them to. Another solider was always welcome, where Tessa’s experience with groups had been far less welcoming at pretty much every stage of her life.

In Tessa’s world, it felt like, if they weren’t ostracizing her or belittling her then people were looking to take advantage of her, usually for things she was too naive to know to look out for.

But Sister Cayman didn’t seem to be like that. And neither did Mother Graymourn, or Sister Acroghast. The nuns in general seemed to just be interested in having fun. Tessa could see it in Sister Cayman’s smile and the easy, eager way she walked down the plank. 

She wasn’t holding back, when they fought, Cayman was fighting to win. She respected Tessa’s skill, even if it was less than her own, and as a result she was using their battles as a chance to solidify the basics, which was something Pillowcase knew even the most advanced fighters needed to work on pretty much constantly.

Did Cayman have special moves that would have completely overwhelmed Tessa? Probably. 

Was she trying to humiliate Tessa and demonstrate much more powerful than Tessa she was? Absolutely not. 

This was training. It wasn’t about being perfect, or being able to dominate everyone else. It was about learning.

Tessa smiled back at last.

She didn’t have to be perfect. She didn’t have to win. All she needed to do was understand. 

She might not get even a single hit better than she was in this session, but that wouldn’t matter. She would carry everything she did, and everything Sister Cayman did, with her. She’d turn each blow, each block, and each fall over in her mind and draw out from them everything she could to make herself better and stronger.

But first, she had a fight to win.

More offense, she thought and Pillowcase breathed in bringing the world into focus.

Everything was now, and everything was here.

Cayman threw a triple thrust to start.

Same as their last fight.

Block.

Block.

Block and miss.

Hit to the head.

Dip and move into rising mace swing.

Miss.

Spear thrust to the left shoulder.

Off balance, but correct with a knee bend.

Use the bent knee. Surge forward. Offense. Shield bash.

Blocked by the spear.

Push through.

Cayman gave a step.

Overextended. Shift back. More offense. Mace swipe to the knee.

Blocked.

Hah. No surprise.

Spinning strike from the spear.

Very overbalanced.

Catch the spear with the shield and pull.

Cayman’s solid. Good for her. Also good for recovering balance.

Cayman kicked high. Shield caught part of it. Armor soaked the rest.

Reply with a high swing. Ring her bell with the mace.

Nope. She is too damn fast.

No. Don’t try to match her.

Not fast. Ready for the mace.

Spear strike to the back of the right knee.

How?

No. Don’t ask. Just attack.

Kick the spear. Straight punch.

Connected! Right to the face!

Oops. Gah. Head butt. Not expected. Balance not great.

There goes a leg.

Drop? No! Jump!

That’s higher than…

Spear hit, right in the gut, right after reaching the top of the leap.

No balance. No leverage.

Going in the pool.

Land in a handstand on the plank.

How was that possible in armor? 

Do. Not. Think.

Spear right in the back.

Face down on the plank.

Flip backwards and up.

Balance restored. Ground lost.

Also the mace. Where? Bottom of the pool, probably.

Spear to the head? Nope, dodged.

Shield charge!

Blocked.

Cayman’s stronger. A lot stronger.

Fall back. Literally fall. Trying to slide between her legs and get passed her.

Nope. Plank’s too small. She stops that with a boot to the chest.

She jumps back.

Jump back too.

Lots of space. Good for a spear user. Bad for a mace and shield fighter who’s lacking a mace.

Cayman nods towards the pool. An invitation to jump in and save her the trouble?

Yeah, hell no.

Turn with empty left hand forward and give her the ‘Come get some’ gesture.

Cayman laughs.

Laugh with her. Can’t help it.

Spear strike.

Blocked.

Spear slam.

Interrupted with a shield charge.

Shield charge interrupted with shoulder strike.

Falling back from the shoulder strike.

Grab the haft of the spear.

Going off the plank. Taking Cayman too.

Splash.

Fight’s done.

Or…

Is it?

Cayman’s swimming back up to the plank.

She dropped her spear there.

But…

Wait…

Mother Graymourn said the winner was the first person to step onto the other team’s side.

She didn’t say the fight stopped when someone fell into the water.

Swim!

Not for the plank.

For the other side!

Tessa pulled herself up from the water on the opposite side of the pool to find Sister Cayman a foot behind her with the most amused expression on her face.

“That was really good!” she said. 

“Does this count?” Tessa asked. “It’s not cheating is it?”

“Of course it’s cheating!” Sister Acroghast said. “That’s exactly what I was hoping you’d learn here.”

“I believe what my second-in-command means to say is that, finding a path to victory outside of the constraints that seem to be imposed on you is the lesson she was most definitely failing to mentor you in, and congratulations on picking it up on your own,” Mother Graymourn said. “Also, no, it wasn’t cheating. I never said you couldn’t swim around your opponent.”

“Not a great plan in general, but you totally got me with it,” Sister Cayman said. “I thought you were just going to come up like the other times.”

“Then I believe you’ve learned a lesson too,” Mother Graymourn said. “Opponents don’t stop being opponents until the battle is completely done, and sometimes not even then.”

“Yep, and if I learn it another hundred times, maybe it’ll stick,” Sister Cayman said with a bashful smile.

“I’m grateful for all of this,” Tessa said. “This kind of experience is invaluable.”

“More than just experience,” Lisa said. “Check your xps.”

Tessa glanced at the head ups display for her own basic stats. She’d been so focused the display, the chat log, and everything else had faded away completely, so she’d missed a few important things.

[Soul Knight Level 20 Achieved!]