Hirrus didn’t notice when GM Dave left.

It didn’t matter.

The man’s departure would have been a magic impossible for Hirrus to replicate.

There was no escape.

Not until his reset. Not until the fabled Tuesday.

He put a hand to the wall, trying to find the indentation he’d made in the stone with his earlier work. After the conversation with GM Dave, he’d gotten turned around physically as well as emotionally, and he couldn’t remember where it was.

Hirrus felt along the stone, trying to tell himself that he’d created a noticeable notch in the wall.

But he found nothing.

It was a perfect metaphor.

He’d put in just enough work to make him hopeful that he was making progress, and now he was seeing that it was pointless. The vague impression of a dent in the stone had been so little, in the grand scheme, that even just moments later, he couldn’t see a difference. He couldn’t even find where he’d left off.

Hirrus slumped down to the floor, putting his back to the wall.

It was all pointless. Everything. The desire roaring within him to find a way to fight his way out was as impotent as he was. What was he going to do? Even if he could break out, all he could do was be a mild annoyance. They would return and start it all again.

His revenge was futile. GM Dave had destroyed the illusion of choice.

Hirrus had believed that being freed of his decision tree meant he could exercise real change in the world. He’d thought that the adventurers dead in his wake would never be able to threaten Yenon - or any other town - ever again. It’d seemed like the decision tree was the only impediment to his agency, but there was so much more to the world than he’d ever known, and all of it was arrayed against him.

Time no longer mattered, so he stopped paying attention to it. The only silver lining he even had was that when the time came, the “reset” that GM Dave had spoken of would return Julissa to him. But would even that be a blessing? How would she react to knowing that he’d failed to protect her? What would she say when he told her that he’d murdered over a dozen adventurers chasing a revenge he couldn’t complete?

And even if she stayed by his side through that, what if the people he’d slain came back for revenge?

If GM Dave was speaking the truth, then he would be bound by his decision tree again, and unable to do anything to protect himself.

And if the reset happened every week, then he may suffer the adventurers’ wrath time and time again.

That was almost worse. Not only did he have no chance of achieving any true revenge, but the actions he’d taken so far had only set him up for future torment.

And even now, the only thing he wanted to do was to turn to violence.

His rage had gotten him here. Killing had been the reason GM Dave had come after him.

But the only thing he wanted to do was lash out, no matter how pointless it was.

He didn’t know how long he reflected on that. Hours? Days? It felt an interminable silence, only animated by the flickering of the distant brazier’s light.

It wasn’t until something changed that he could say any time had passed at all.

The change that occurred, though, was the most unexpected thing he could have imagined.

“-oly shit!” Alric finished exclaiming as he appeared in the stone box. “That actually worked?” He looked around for a second before orienting on Hirrus. “It worked! You’re here!”

“What?” Hirrus said, struggling back to his feet. His legs felt tired and bitter about the force needed to be used. “Alric? How are you here?”

“Let me explain,” Alric said, then paused and shook his head. “No, it’s too much. Let me sum up. I spam reported myself, and when a GM showed up to see what the fuck was going on, I told her that I fucked GM Dave’s mom and wanted to tell him to his digital face.”

“Why… What?” Hirrus blinked, feeling a slim ray cut through the fog of hopelessness for a moment. That slim ray was raw confusion, but it was still a moment of emotional clarity.

“I figured she’d transfer the reports to him, or whatever, but she did me one better,” Alric said, bulling his way through Hirrus' interruption. “She sent me to his GM Jail so that he could deal with me when he got back from some meeting.”

Hirrus wanted to tell Alric that this explanation wasn’t actually explaining anything, but decided to wait to see if the man might be working up to the part of the speech that made sense.

“So now I’m here, and I can help you escape!” Alric stopped, looking around the room. “Uh. Somehow.”

“Why?” Hirrus asked again, hoping that the adventurer had a more lucid response for ‘why’ than he had for ‘how’.

“You didn’t come back,” Alric explained, even as he ran to the nearest wall and started feeling along it, as if looking for a door that plainly wasn’t there. “So Dahlia - you should have warned me about Dahlia - sent me out to fetch you.”

“Warned you about-”

“You should have fucking told me she’s scarier than you are, man!” Alric made a one-fingered gesture towards Hirrus that he assumed was intended to convey rudeness or anger. “Barin and I were happy to wait for you to come back, but she just fucking looked at me. Just looked at me! And it was like I was staring down an uncaged tiger.” He shrugged and returned his full attention to the wall. “I don’t know how to read a woman’s expression to save my life, but I’m pretty sure if I go back to that inn without you, she’s going to cut my balls off. I don’t know about you, but I like my balls.”

For a moment, Hirrus wished he were speaking with GM Dave again. He was wrong about their relative annoyances. “My opinion of your balls isn’t important,” Hirrus said, ignoring the adventurer’s responding snicker. “What is important is that you have a plan from this point, right? You wouldn’t have risked being locked in a featureless stone coffin for a week without a reasonable method of returning to Inoha, right?”

“Stone coffin? This?” Alric laughed. “This box is bigger than my apartment, man. I don’t know what you’re-”

“GM Dave explained to me that this is an unusual arrangement. Others of his kind use the smallest possible space a captive can fit within.”

“Oh shit,” Alric said, still laughing. “I guess it’s a good thing I was polite to GM Sigrid, then. If she’d put me in her jail, I guess I’d be having a real shitty run with my claustrophobia.”

“But you do have a plan, right?”

“Oh, fuck no,” Alric said, giving up on whatever search he was making around the wall. “I’m guessing you can just smash your way out, right? You might just need some additional help with the escape beyond that.”

“It’s pointless,” Hirrus said, feeling the fog of hopelessness come back over him, now that the confusion was dissipating. “I smashed at one of these walls for several minutes, and now I can’t even find the spot I thought I’d weakened.”

“Okay, that’s… That’s not good.” Alric started to look around the room with fear in his eyes. “But you can just start again on a new spot, right? Just take your time and break through. Impossible is nothing and all that bullshit.”

Hirrus shook his head and snarled. “It’s not just the escape that’s pointless!” It was the first flash of real anger that cut through the existential crisis, but he knew that was only because he had a human in the room to direct it towards. He forced it down. “It’s all pointless.”

“What are you talking about? Life? Shit, did someone teach you about nihilism? Because I am in no way qualified to talk you out of that one.”

Hirrus shook his head. “GM Dave told me the truth of this world.” He put his back to the wall and slumped back down to the floor. “The adventurers will be back. Juri, Clive, Orlina, all of them. And I’ll be stripped of my power. Sent back where I came from to wait for their revenge.”

“Yeah, alright, technically,” Alric said, moving to Hirrus' side, putting a hand on his shoulder. “They will come back on reset, just like I did every time I got bumped off. But just like me, they’ll come back without any of their shit. You’re taking out hardcore raiders wearing their raid night best. You’ve effectively destroyed more total ilvl in gear than any event in the last five years. You’ve changed the world.”

“For them, maybe,” Hirrus said bitterly, “but for me? For my wife? For my town? GM Dave told me it’s all going back to the way it was before this all started. And I’m going to be back under my decision tree’s yoke, watching helplessly the next time they decide they can burn down my home for kicks.”

“You really think so little of them?” Alric laughed. “They torched your town, yeah, but look at the consequences. You’ve chewed up their ranks so bad that their only out is to cry to big daddy GM to save them. You’ve made them - and everyone else - afraid of you. You think they’ll try again, knowing this might be the result?”

Hirrus paused for a moment, hope replacing his sorrow. “You think that will deter them?”

“Absolutely,” Alric said, lowering his voice dramatically. “It’s not about the money. It’s about sending a message.”

“What money?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Alric said, gesturing dismissively before pushing his way back up to his feet. “So, are you down to bust outta this cooler and finish sending this message?”

Hirrus gestured around the stone box. “How?”

“So you’re back on board?” Alric asked, holding out a hand to help Hirrus back to his feet.

“If the path forward is open,” Hirrus said, grasping Alric’s hand and letting the man pull him up, “then I will not stop. But you can see pretty clearly that there is no obvious path forward.”

“You said you made a dent in the wall before, right?” Alric said, going back to feeling along the stone. “You could make another. And maybe with a few buffs instead of doing it raw, you could make a real run of it.”

Hirrus had to consider that option. Striking the wall hadn’t done damage in the traditional sense, but it made logical sense that the physical damage might be connected to his numerical damage potential.

That said, his most potent damage buff could have unforeseen consequences.

“This is going to be dangerous,” Hirrus warned, waving Alric off. “I need you to stay away from me.”

“Why?”

“Because this could be dangerous,” he said, in a patient tone.

When the adventurer asked no more questions, Hirrus focused on the transformation ability. The inoculation debuff was gone, making it available again. He gave it just a moment’s consideration before activating it.

Hirrus thought that since this was the second time he activated the buff, it might not hurt as much. He was wrong. It still lit up every nerve ending like he'd been dunked in scalding water.

Despite himself, he let out a snarl of pain that lowered in register as he transformed until it was less of a growl and more like the sound of grinding stone.

“Holy shit,” Alric said, backing away, “it’s the were-dragon thing!”

Hirrus wanted to answer, but the transformation was still ripping across his skin, replacing it with leathery red hide. He gritted his teeth even as his mouth pushed out and extended into a snout. As fangs replaced those teeth.

The whole transformation took only a moment, but the pain still drowned out most of his conscious mind.

With his transformation complete, he took a moment to get a reorient himself. Bloodlust ran through his mind, as it had the last time, only without the immediate threat of a pack of adventurers, it was so much more noticeable. If he gave into it, he would have crossed the room to Alric to obliterate him in a single strike.

But it wasn’t his own desire.

It was an annoying buzz that joined his decision tree as an internal voice that he had the power to ignore.

“Easy big guy,” Alric said. Hirrus turned towards him, and the adventurer was visibly alarmed, holding his hands out before himself defensively. “Easy. The sun is getting real low.”

“What?” Hirrus asked, his voice coming from his snout in more of a snarl than he meant. “It’s still mid morning, isn’t it?”

“Oh fuck shit ass,” Alric jumped like a startled alleycat. “You can talk?”

“Hm.” Hirrus wasn’t sure how to react to Alric’s sudden fear and confusion. Clearly, the man had some expectations for the transformation that Hirrus had failed to meet. “We don’t have time for this. I only have a few minutes before this form ends, and then it will be two hours before I can use it again. If we don’t escape now, there’s no guarantee that GM Dave will allow another opportunity.”

“Okay, okay,” Alric said, backing off a few more feet. “Ignore me. Do your thing.”

Hirrus stepped up to the wall and marshalled his strength. He felt so powerful like this. Some part of him was hungry to demonstrate that power, and the stone prison he found himself in seemed more than adequate to test it.

His axe came down and he could immediately tell the difference. Instead of a few small grains of sand chipped off of the stone, fragments broke and scattered. Splinters of rock filled the air, and he felt a feeling of triumph well up in his chest even before the second strike fell.

“Good start, good start,” Alric said, obviously trying to be encouraging, despite the high-pitched keen of fear in his voice. “Just keep going. You got this.”

The encouragement wasn’t entirely useless. If nothing else, it was a good incentive to pound through this wall all the faster to bring the meaningless platitudes to an end. To that end, he activated more Arcana, using Going Ape to multiply his BUR even further, and all of his Attack Speed Arcana at once.

Chips of stone became chunks.

His assault on the wall became an unending torrent of strikes. Buffs ended, but as soon as they were available again, Hirrus added them back to his strength.

His progress was readily apparent.

Instead of a faint shadow in the wall, he created a crater.

In only a few short moments, Hirrus felt fresh air rush in at him from the cracks in the stone.