Zeke lay on his stomach, his head barely peeking over the slight rise, as he studied the scene laid out before him. Without looking away, he whispered, “How many do you think there are?”

“I stopped counting at three-hundred,” Abby said, lying prone beside him. “That was maybe half of them. Conservatively. There might be as many as a thousand.”

“Damnit,” Zeke muttered, backing away. They really were lucky that the veritable army of drachnids had gathered in a depression. It made it far easier to scout, then retreat a couple of miles back to where he’d left the cottage summoned. An itch at the back of Zeke’s mind told him that if he went much further, it would de-summon on its own.

The pair of adventurers remained silent as they quickly traversed the uneven ground of the ravine, and even though neither got into a hurry, Pudge still had to push himself to keep up. It was good for him, though. He needed the exercise. More, he needed to know his limits; if he didn’t, he would put himself into a situation he couldn’t handle. And Zeke wasn’t so certain that he’d always be able to jump in and save the stubborn cub.

When the finally reached the cottage, Abby didn’t waste any time before she used her [Makeshift Camp] skill, which synergized with the cottage’s aura to keep monsters well away. In the meantime, Zeke retrieved some snake filets he’d stored in the cellar, and before long, they were sharing an unappetizing meal that tasted like a blend of fish and chicken, and not in a good way.

“I would kill for a freaking hamburger right now,” he muttered. “There was this place back home called Stan’s Super Burger. I didn’t really appreciate how good they were back then. And the milk shakes…God. I’d jump in the middle of that drachnid horde if it meant I could have one of their shakes again.”

Abby snickered. “You act like that’s not precisely what you’re going to do anyway,” she said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.

“That you have two speeds,” Abby said. “You’re either preparing to risk your life against unreasonable odds, or you’re wading into a sea of monsters. That’s pretty much your thing, as far as I can tell.”

Zeke frowned. He knew Abby didn’t mean anything by her statement. In fact, there was a playful tone to her voice. However, it was still mildly offensive because it painted him as a dumb, battle-mongering brute. Which, if he thought about it, might have actually been kind of true. Still – he didn’t appreciate her pointing it out.

“I fight when I have to,” he said, tearing a piece of snake off a stick that served as a skewer. He popped it into his mouth, adding, “I’m just trying to survive.”

Abby rolled her eyes. “Oh, please,” she said. “Don’t even try that crap. You and I both know that you’re doing more than trying to survive. You’re addicted to this. The fight, the leveling, everything. That’s not a horrible thing, though. In fact, you’re in pretty good company, because I am too. It’s gotten easier over the past couple of years when I’ve been stuck at fifteen, but I still feel it – that need to improve, to fight, to win. It’s why I’m out here in the first place. It’s why I didn’t leave you behind when you decided to march into Nightweb Ravine with nothing but me and a bear cub as backup. But you know what’s really funny? I think you’d have done this even if you were completely, utterly alone.”

To punctuate her statement, she bit into a particularly charred hunk of snake. He knew just how horrible it tasted, but Abby kept her expression neutral as she chewed. Finally, she swallowed. “Well, that was horrible,” she muttered. Then, she grinned in spite of herself.

“What?” Zeke asked.

“Just thinking,” she said, her voice suddenly wistful. “I had alligator once. You know, in the old world. My…my husband and I, we went down to Louisiana to visit some of his family, and they insisted I try it. This snake kind of tastes like that. You know, if the restaurant had cooked it for way too long and hadn’t used any spices.”

“You were married?” was Zeke’s next question.

Abby nodded. “Didn’t end well,” she said. Then, obviously wanting to change the subject, she asked, “What are you planning to do when we get to Beacon?”

Zeke had certainly given it a lot of thought, but the reality was that he didn’t know enough about this new world to make any lasting decisions. The only thing he really knew was that he wanted to keep progressing. He hadn’t asked outright, but Abby – and by extension, the rest of this new world – had no idea that there was anything past level twenty-five. To them, that was the end of the road. The pinnacle of power. Zeke knew differently, though. Oberon had told him that he would get a class at level twenty-five, which implied that whatever else the Radiant Isles were, it was only the beginning of the journey.

More than that, Zeke knew that there was a war going on between the forces of light and darkness – a war Oberon expected him to help fight. Before, when he had been in that mysterious white room, Zeke had dismissed that as a possibility. He wasn’t a warrior, back then. But now? He’d been fighting for more than two years, and though he didn’t want to admit it, Abby was right. He’d grown to crave the action. That moment of triumph when his enemies had fallen before him. That flood of experience. The sudden influx of power when he gained a level. It was intoxicating.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Can I join your guild?”

“I’m sure they’d take you,” she said. “If that’s what you want. It’s not my choice, though. And even if they want you, you’ll have to pass a trial of some sort before they let you in as an outer member.”

“What kind of trial?” Zeke asked.

Abby shrugged, then took another bite of the horrible snake meat. After swallowing, she said, “With me, it was a tournament. Top five got in. But I’ve seen them assign other tasks. It should be well within your capability to complete, though.”

“Is there any reason I wouldn’t want to do it?” he asked.

“Lots of reasons,” Abby answered. “Maybe you want to go solo. Some adventurers do that, and a lot of them are reasonably successful. They work like sub-contractors for the various guilds. The rewards aren’t as good, but you can pick and choose all the guilds’ missions. Plus, you don’t have to deal with anyone telling you what to do.”

Zeke nodded, but Abby went on, gesturing with her own skewer as she spoke. “You could also join a different guild,” she said. “The Champions of Light are one of the best, but the Ruby Warriors are just as good. And there are a couple of others that are better in almost every respect. They have a bigger rosters and a higher average level. There are also some other guilds that specialize in certain areas. Like the Holy Crusade, who focus on undead threats. Or Maurice’s Minions – terrible name, by the way – who hunt down rogue adventurers. There are almost a dozen others, all with their own sales pitch.”

Zeke didn’t know much, but he knew he’d never become anyone’s minion, even if it was just a meaningless name. He was also a little surprised to find that there were undead, so he asked, “There are undead here? Like vampires and zombies?”

“Mmhmm,” Abby murmured. “Specters, banshees, and draugr, too. And a hundred other kinds of unliving creatures with varying degrees of sentience. There are even some people who have taken skills to control them, to certain degrees. Needless to say, all the guilds hunt them down. I did a mission about a year ago to fight an undead horde that a lich had raised. That’s why I took [Cure Disease] as my level fifteen skill. As much as I hated not getting something more universally useful, it let me save a few lives when our Priest of Purity got jumped by this undead demon-dog thing. Otherwise, we’d have all turned to zombies.”

Zeke nodded along as she told the story; apparently, zombies and other select undead carried a disease that was transmitted via their bites. Like in the movies, this disease turned the zombies’ victims into undead themselves. But it wasn’t a death sentence. Anyone with a disease curing skill could get rid of it, so long as they caught it before the transformation into undead truly began. However, those skills weren’t available to everyone, so anyone who had them was a hot commodity when it came to any mission that dealt with the undead.

He shook his head, dispelling thoughts of undead. None of that was important right now. Instead, he focused on the problem at hand – specifically, the horde of drachnids a couple of miles away.

“We’re sure the queen’s in that direction, right?” Zeke asked.

“Complete change of subject, huh?” was Abby’s response. “Sure. I mean, I guess? I don’t know any more about this place than you do at this point. When we took the mission, our intention was to pick them off at the edges, not charge straight through the middle of the canyon and murder every drachnid we saw. We never even considered going after the queen herself.”

“Why not?” he asked.

“Other than the obvious?” she said, arching one delicate eyebrow. “Our estimates were way off when it came to their numbers, but we knew we’d have to go through a lot of monsters to get to her. And even if we came out the other side, the queen’s probably level twenty-five. Probably even an elite.”

“Uh…what?” Zeke asked.

“An elite,” she repeated. “Like, a boss monster. You played video games, right? Think of the queen as the big bad at the end of a level.”

“And they’re harder, I guess,” Zeke said. Abby nodded, confirming that they were, indeed, more difficult to kill, but Zeke cast his mind back to his previous encounters. Had the warlord been an elite? What about the harpy queen? So, he asked, “Is there any indication when you’re dealing with an elite?”

“You’ve got an inspection skill, right?” she asked. He nodded. “Well, there will be an (E) beside its name. I’ve heard there are other, higher designations, but I’ve never seen any of them.” She shook her head. “I’ve never even seen an elite, if I’m honest. Not a live one, at least. So, I’m just as much in the dark as you are.”

“That’s great,” Zeke muttered.

“You know, it’s not too late to turn back,” Abby reminded him. “We’ve already killed enough drachnids to satisfy the mission. We don’t have to –”

“And what about all those people they killed?” Zeke asked, remembering the desiccated bodies they’d found wrapped in spider silk. In addition to that first cave, they’d discovered four more along the way, each larger than the last. “You know as well as I do that we’ve barely made a dent in them. They’ll keep raiding caravans and killing people unless we do something.”

Abby turned away. In the time since they’d gotten back the cottage, the sun had begun to dip below the lip of the ravine. There was still some daylight left, but with the orientation of the canyon, the shadows made it seem like night came a lot more quickly than it really did. As a result, it was already getting dark. The light from the campfire flickered across the woman’s face, throwing her distinctive features into shadowy contrast as she lost herself in thought. Zeke couldn’t help but stare; he had grown used to her beauty, but every now and then, it still hit him like a sledgehammer.

Finally, she said, “You’re right. We have to do this. We could go back to Beacon and gather more adventurers, but that would take time. How many caravans could they hit in that time? How many people would die while we played it safe?”

“Too many,” Zeke said.

Abby nodded, “On that, we agree. So, what’s the plan?”

“Uh…”

“Don’t tell me you just want to rush them,” she said. Seeing his expression, she hung her head. “That’s it, huh? Just run in there, mace swinging while I shoot them from that ridge?”

“I’m open to suggestions,” Zeke said, looking sheepish.

“You’re really bad at this, you know,” Abby teased.

Zeke shrugged, saying, “It’s worked so far. Why change?”

Abby sighed, then said, “Okay – so, here’s what we’re going to do. We don’t have a lot of options, what with there only being two of us –”

Pudge snorted.

“Okay, two-and-a-half,” she said. “But we can still be smart about this. You don’t happen to have any ranged skills, do you?”

Zeke almost said he didn’t, but then he remembered his tactics in the fungal forest where he’d first fought the troll shamans. There, he’d used his superhuman strength to launch lethal rocks at the monsters. And given the rocky nature of the canyon, Zeke had no reason to think that he couldn’t do the same here.

“I have a pretty mean throwing arm,” he said. She narrowed her eyes, and he said, “Baseball, remember? And I’m pretty strong, now. I bet I can chuck a rock hard enough to at least knock the drachnids senseless. Maybe even kill them.”

Abby said, “I suppose that’s a start.”

Then, she started laying out her very simple plan. Zeke felt a distinct sense of relief that he didn’t have to shoulder that burden. He wasn’t stupid. He could grasp strategy well enough. However, Abby had the benefit of seven years of experience under her belt. More, where Zeke’s plans always hinged upon his ridiculous constitution, Abby knew how to play it safe. And given the sheer magnitude of the threat arrayed against them, that was a necessity if they wanted to survive.

“Well, I think that’s the best we can do, given the tools at our disposal,” Abby said. “If only we had a holocaust cloak…”

“Or a wheelbarrow,” Zeke said, grinning as he caught the reference.

“Wait – you know The Princess Bride?” she asked, obviously surprised.

“It was my mom’s favorite movie,” he said. “I’ve probably seen it a hundred times.”

Abby returned his grin with a smile of her own, saying, “I knew I liked you. All that monster-killing and traveling together aside, I don’t think I could’ve trusted any man who wasn’t a Princess Bride fan.”

The two spent the next few minutes talking about the classic film, quoting their favorite lines. After a while, with the ghost of a smile still spread across his face, Zeke said, “It’s hard to believe I’ll never watch a movie again. I mean, movies and stuff were never a huge part of my life or anything, but…I don’t know. It’s still going to take some getting used to. I’ve been dead for over two years, but my time in the troll caves were…I don’t know – they kind of blended together, I guess. It didn’t feel like two years, even though I somehow know that’s how long I was down there.”

“You’re still grieving the life you lost,” Abby said. “It happens. Some people never adjust completely.”

“Did you?” Zeke asked, absently scratching a spot on Pudge’s neck. The bear had found his place at Zeke’s feet, a position from which he pleaded for “scratches”.

Abby rubbed the back of her neck, saying, “I don’t know. Mostly? A lot of it just fades away. Like, I remember the important stuff, but the details feel like a dream.”

“Honestly, I hope it’s like that for me,” Zeke said. “Most of it, I don’t want to remember. I just want to start fresh and live this life on my terms.”

And he meant it, too. Back on Earth, his entire life had been lived according to someone else’s whims. Specifically, his father had controlled everything about him, had molded him into whatever it was he had become. But now he was free. Now, he could be his own man. He could forge his own path, heedless of what anyone else wanted. It was a comforting notion, even if it was more than a little terrifying.

But the first step was to deal with the drachnids in the morning.

“Let’s get some sleep,” he said, standing and stretching. “Big day tomorrow.”

Abby looked up, her face bathed in firelight as she said, “As you wish.”

They pair shared a laugh, but even as Zeke found his way into the cottage and to the corner where he usually slept, he couldn’t quite escape the meaning of those three words in the movie. Obviously, he didn’t think Abby loved him. They barely knew one another. And from what she’d said, despite looking like she was of a similar age to him, he guessed that Abby was old enough to be his mother. So, there was no way she was flirting with him, was there? No – she was just being a good adventuring partner. A friend.

Rationally, he knew these things. But that didn’t stop him from dwelling on it until unconsciousness overtook him.