The others were asleep. Magnuus whiffled a bit through his big nose. Aleesi sighed several times from her place on the bedroll, in ways that were quite… distracting. Even Webster had curled up next to the orc girl and seemed passed out. Everyone was getting a chance to rest their exhausted, beat-up bodies but me.

Of course.

Who needs sleep? I grimaced. I can sleep when I’m dead. But the old saying struck a little too close to home.

I scanned the darkness warily.

Nothing. Not that I’d been given great instructions on what to watch out for. I blew out a breath and rolled my shoulders. Something I’d learned back home: every waking minute can be turned to good use.

I prioritized information, trying to wrap my head around Thorr’un and this absurd situation. I didn’t get a tutorial, apparently. And I’d never really played videogames. But I had spent the last year absorbing staggering amounts of information. Languages. Science. Hunting. Everything I could in order to follow Kyle’s instructions.

If I was smart enough to figure out physics and chemistry in real life, I thought, I should be smart enough to figure out Gamernerd Fantasyland.

After a couple minutes of practice, I started to get the hang of using those visual information blocks that tried to blind me whenever I was in a life-or-death scenario. A couple of thoughts pulled up the notifications I hadn’t read yet. The ones I’d been instinctively ignoring and brushing aside as they popped up.

They read like a stilted summary of what had happened to me. My Thorr’un CV.

Uh-oh. Looks like you’ve been bitten by a Giant Spider.

You are Poisoned (Strong).

You are Paralyzed.

Strength and honor!

You’ve killed a Giant Spider (Level 2 Spider).

You’ve earned 150 xp!

Mana dangerously low!

Your Mana is rapidly approaching 0.

By circle, star and staff!

You’ve aided the duergar Magnuus Thorgrimsbrekt in casting the healing spell [Duergar Gotrek ????] on Aleesi ????.

You’ve earned 100 xp!

Mana dangerously low…?

I checked under the Statistics tab in my character sheet. Mana: 1, it read, and I wondered what that meant.

Magnuus had drained me like a battery in order to heal Aleesi, that much was obvious. But I had no frame of reference for how much power one point of mana represented. How much had I used in my attempt to stabilize the dying girl? I vaguely remembered my Mana score sitting at around 15 when I’d first skimmed it. Was that a lot? Not very much? I had no way of knowing if curing Aleesi was a difficult task or an easy one. Apparently, as far as experience points went, it was about as difficult as killing a car-sized tarantula.

Since my sheet was open anyway, I checked my Attributes again. Nothing seemed to have changed, which was probably normal. As I scanned down the list, I hesitated on the last entry.

Luck: 17.

How’s that been working out for you? I frowned and blew out a sigh. In the moment, after what amounted to an incredibly unlucky day... I may have prioritized Luck a bit too highly. Especially given the fact that I had no idea what such a generically-named Attribute actually did.

My frown deepened. Doubt I can change it now…

Another survival skill: don’t complain about the things you can’t change. Work with them. Probably a general life skill, but especially appropriate when dealing with things like daily mutant encounters, dwindling food supply and the ghost of a past life that seems so close but is eternally out of reach. The lurking pain of dozens of poor choices would cripple you if you let it.

I speak from experience.

I brushed away the character sheet with another thought, imagining I was closing All Tabs in my Internet browser. It was odd how easily everything was coming to me. I almost didn’t trust it. Things didn’t come easily to me. Things came after me.

Usually with lots of teeth.

Speaking of which… I reached down, fingers curling around the smooth metal shaft of my spear. I hefted it, staring down the long bar to the glinting spearhead. This, at least, I already knew how to use. Ironic, since my weapon was one of the only things to come with a relatively useful set of instructions.

Thorn, I thought, remembering the lore block that had flashed in my face. Forged by a giant. For a hero.

I wanted to laugh, hollowly. I didn’t feel like a hero. I didn’t feel like much of a survivor anymore, even. I certainly wasn’t acting like it. My eyes went to the bedroll where Aleesi was sleeping. Saving the girl in the castle had been almost instinctive. I had seen someone about to be raped and I’d tried to stop it. But after, in the spider’s lair, I’d helped her intentionally. And then I’d flipped a coin with my untested magical prowess and nearly died trying to save her a third time. Back home, I had things under control. Here, chaos reigned. I was trying to make new choices, better decisions. I suppose, in some way, I was trying to turn over a new leaf. But I didn’t understand the system. Nothing I knew seemed to apply, and the things I didn’t know… It was evident that those were the most important.

I hefted the weapon and focused on it, imagining—

My fingers abruptly closed into a crumpled fist. I blinked. Circling around my middle finger was the cold, dark ring of twisted iron strands. Well…

At least I knew how something down here worked.

I looked around. Still nothing.

With a groan, I shuffled to the wall of Magnuus’s home and leaned back, sliding down to the floor. I realized, as I did, that I was still shirtless. Rough stone scratched my back. The pain was dull, though, distant. Maybe because I was dead on my feet with tiredness. Hunched on my heels, I turned the ring around and around on my finger.

It made me think of another ring. A simple band of gold. Annie… My chest ached.

Don’t complain about the things you can’t change.

I sniffed, felt the thick, hot mess of regret and pain that tried crawl up my throat and choke me. I settled back, pressed to the stone. My hands gripped each other tightly and my eyelids drifted down to slits. Only because I was tired. Definitely not because hot, angry, frustrated, helpless tears were prickling at my eyes.

No matter how much I tried to figure everything out, I felt I was like one of those 250-piece LEGO sets that some 8-year-old had put together while only skimming the instructions. It might seem like everything was fitting together, but just wait…

Everything was going to fall apart at the worst possible moment.

My eyelids drifted lower.

* * *

It was the kind of sound you make when you’re stumbling through the early morning dark, before you’re quite awake, and you stub your toe. Maybe after a party night with friends, when there are beer cans and pizza boxes strewn about and even your own home has suddenly become a foreign landscape. Somewhere between a screech of pain, a strangled curse and a muffled shout of anger. Muffled, because your mate is still passed out on the couch and you’re trying not to wake him. Or maybe that was all just in my head, my mind reaching for normalcy in a situation that no one would ever describe as ordinary.

It was the sound of a goblin tripping over a broken teapot.

My eyes flew open.

I knew it was a goblin immediately, because for the first time since arriving something matched my expectation. Face like a bat, with a flat skull and wide, floppy ears. Black, beady eyes that gleamed as it snarled and spat at Magnuus’s broken black kettle like a petulant child. When it snarled, its lips curled back to reveal a mouth full of jagged shark teeth. Between them, a long, slobbering tongue tasted the air.

My feet scrambled on the stone. My sleep-filled eyes jumped, picking up the important details. Teeth. Slab of sharpened metal attached to a handle. A primitive machete? Fingertips like hooked talons. Teeth.

A now-familiar text box unfurled over its head.

Goblin Warrior

Level 2 (Aberrant) Lurker

Aberrant, I thought, searching my mental thesaurus as I ripped Thorn from my finger. I shoved myself off the wall. Isn’t that like… deviant? But I didn’t have time to wonder about the goblin’s deviant sexual behavior. Because beyond the creature, clambering over the lip of the bridge out of the thousand-foot crevasse was a swarm. They were rising like a tide, curled claws hooked into the stone, gripping with ease.

The goblin choked, looked down and saw four feet of iron sticking out of its albino-pale chest. The other two feet were already beyond its field of vision. My booted heel came up and I kicked it off of Thorn, the spear heavy and strong in my hand.

The goblin gurgled, flailing and cursing and dying. Its thin, knobby, stick legs kicked up. From its knees to its feet, its shins were far too long.

I wasn’t quite sure what to yell to sound the alarm, so I just yelled. And ran. The wrong direction, as was becoming my habit. Forward.

The ambient light of the false stars never wavered around me but the air seemed to bend and warp. Things filtered to my eyes through a different lens. Enemy. Weapon. Target. A bat face with a hooked nose took Thorn through the eye as it peeked over the edge. Another one clambered up beside me, a shape in the corner of my fractured vision, and I wrenched the blade free in a spray of dark ichor. I kicked the second shape in the chest. It was nimble, swinging itself onto the ragged edge of the shattered arch with a gangly grace. It even managed a half-dodge, so the flat of my foot only caught a glancing blow to its narrow rib cage.

Survival tip: Doing half of something counts for nothing.

The goblin spun and twisted as it fell, screaming, into the depths. I didn’t hear it for long. There were too many growling, spitting monsters leaping up over the broken stones all around me. I swung my spear like I was chopping trees and the heavy blade thunked into a neck, sticking. I ripped it back, jugular blood spraying like a hose as the goblin toppled. But there were a dozen more all around, stringy arms pulling them over the edge, hooked claws at the end of bony fingers wrapping around the hilts and handles of primitive weapons that hung from leather thongs on their backs.

A sea of floating, bobbing text boxes.

Goblin Warrior.

Goblin Warrior.

Goblin Warrior.

Where the hell did these things come from? But the thought whipped past, along with a short, chopping sword that cut the air mere inches from my chest. My body was already evading, dodging before I even knew I needed to move. My feet went where I intended, despite the fog of sleep that clouded my brain, and my muscles twitched with unharnessed energy. It was a strange, alive sensation, and I didn’t recognize it. My body was my own, but not quite. Like I was faster than I should be, more agile.

Thorn speared through a gut and a wet, bloody cough erupted from the toothy mouth, staining shark teeth red. I tried to tear the weapon free but a gaunt hand dropped its short blade and wrapped around the shaft, resisting. The goblin snarled at me, veins standing out in its neck as it tried to stretch out and snap at me. It was pitifully far away. But its weight slowed my jabbing spear.

“Fuck!” I’d gotten too close, the tide rising around me.

My eyes twitched left, behind. A spear with a wicked stone point was drawn back, and I felt a surge of fear. Like my muscles were silently warning my brain they weren’t fast enough.

Only then there was a bellow. An axe cleaved down with a hollow thwock. It split the goblin’s collarbone after a brief journey through its skull. Blood spattered across my face and I spat, shaking my head. White hair whipped around my eyes.

“Magnuus?” I shouted, my voice loud and grating over a sea of slavering goblin screeches.

“I told you to keep watch, elf!”

Maybe it was odd timing, but that was the moment I decided I would give up on trying to correct the duergar about my race. Then again, maybe it was just neighborly. Someone who saves you from a shanking deserves a little leeway. My response was less adroit than my usual banter.

“Oops!”

The axe swung again, severing a bony arm at the elbow and sending arm and associated stone-bladed hatchet spinning through the air. I grunted, whipped the skewered goblin from the end of my weapon. I sent the one gaunt figure stumbling into two more and knocked all three back like bowling pins. Clawed fingers ripped at the air in an attempt to keep climbing. There was nothing to climb three feet off the edge.

“Back!” The duergar’s rumbling voice was a deep battle bellow, and a part of my mind filed it away for later reference. I mean, who doesn’t want to sound like a badass while they’re splitting skulls and planning a desperate retreat against overwhelming numbers? Because the numbers were overwhelming. I couldn’t have said where they were all coming from — they must have been clinging to the underside of the bridge like barnacles — but the creatures kept on rising from the depths like a nightmare swarm of weaponized house elves.

Even through the haze and blood mist, what struck me as odd were the tactics of the hunched, pale-skinned warriors. Most of them charged past Magnuus, dodging outside the range of his massive axe, just so they could come after me.

I lashed out, blade punching through an open, slavering mouth. Or maybe I’m just egotistical. Not everything is about me.

Back seemed like the right direction.

Oh shit. Especially now, as a monstrous goblinoid half again as large as its brethren vaulted the crumbling edge with ease. No primitive tools in its clawed grip. Just bristling spines six inches long, jagged fangs and a suicidal gleam of bloody red in its beady eyes. The goblin spread its jaws and screamed, spittle flying. It raised one bony finger, pointing dead-center at yours truly, and its smaller kindred sprang forward.

Jondalar, out.

I didn’t bother to retreat with grace and style. I turned and sprinted. Luckily, it seemed that Magnuus had the same idea. The duergar was speeding toward the gaping door in the crumbling wall as fast as his short legs could carry him. Aleesi, however, was crouched by the remains of the fire, dark green skin flexing across her taut, athletic figure. The orc girl had the cooking knife in a reverse grip, fingers wrapped around the bone hilt with its three or four glittering inches of blade.

Brave, I thought. But also stupid.

Her eyes met mine. There was an instant of silent communication — Ah, you’re awake and Weren’t you supposed to keep watch? — and then she spun on her heel and dashed ahead of me. I guess that’s one of the benefits of magic. No need for post-op bed rest.

I flew through the doorway at a dead sprint, following my two companions. My booted feet scarcely seemed to touch the threshold. Down the arch of the bridge I followed them, toward the flat stone plain beyond. The slope made my legs churn even faster. A sudden flutter of anxiety in my stomach was quelled by the fluttering sound of wings. Webster swooped low over my head, chirping anxiously.

Stupid cat, I thought with a glow of gratitude.

I was beside the springing orc, her dead sprint making her body bounce in all the right ways. Like one of those fit jogger babes, from back when people ran to get in shape and not just to get away.

Definitely the wrong time. I scowled at my Cro-Magnon brain and focused on following the squat figure of our duergar guide.

A quick glance over my shoulder revealed a veritable river of goblins, a pale torrent that bottlenecked in the doorway as the creatures practically fought among themselves to chase us. I tripped over a broken cobblestone, somehow kept my feet, and sprinted ahead. The survivor part of my brain cursed my lack of focus. The insane part of my brain hoped Aleesi hadn’t noticed. The logical part of my brain wondered where we could possibly be going.

I had no idea where Magnuus was leading us, but the stocky warrior turned at the foot of the bridge and away from the only path I knew. As he trundled across the floor of the huge stone cavern, questions jockeyed for position at the forefront of my awareness.

Another glance back. A desperate mob of scrambling pursuers.

Where did they come from?

Screeching, weapons aloft at the ends of stringy limbs. The low slap-slap-slap of dozens of pairs of bare feet.

And why were they so into me?