MaxDamage24’s eye twitched in sync with the discordant sound of a harp having its strings plucked in random order.

“You’re doing that on purpose, aren’t you?”

Kirabell didn’t answer. Instead, she continued to walk ahead of him in a comical manner, raising her legs higher than necessary and plucking away at the small instrument with each step. It reminded Max of an old cartoon. She wasn't so much playing a song as she was adding background notes to her movement.

Max kicked at the dusty ground, knocking a small rock off the edge of the wide ledge they traveled. An echo sounded as it bounced down the wall of Hunter’s Canyon. "Could you knock that off? It's annoying."

She glanced back with a mischievous grin. "It wouldn't be fun for me if it wasn't.”

He retaliated by dragging out a loud groan for as long as he could, his voice droning on for almost a full minute.

Kira plucked her next few notes louder.

Unsatisfied with her reaction, he gave up trying to beat her at her own game and turned his attention to his journal, holding the book at an angle to catch the light of Noctem’s eternally full moon. "I have a message from someone that needs help with the Fire Tomb. We're way over-leveled, so we could pop on by and do a quick run through to give them a hand." He raised his eyebrows and held his journal to face her as he pointed to the message like it was a prize on a game show.

"Nope," Kira chirped without even looking back.

Max flipped the book back around and tried again. "We haven't done that last quest for the Devil Born expansion yet. We could check that out,"

"Nope," Kira plucked another string louder than the rest.

"Or maybe we could—"

"Nope!" She cut him off. "Tonight, is farming night, and we have northern cavefangs to murder."

Max let out another groan and dragged his feet in protest, allowing his arms to dangle limply at his sides. "But they suck and take so many bullets!" he complained, putting in as much effort as he could to sound like a guy who had been forced to go shopping. Kira was his sidekick after all, so he wasn’t used to following.

She stopped short and turned to face him, forcing him to stop as well. She held her harp at her hip with one hand and poked him in the chest with the other. "You'll wish we spent the night farming cavefangs when I get killed by something stupid because I don't have the materials to craft bone charms. But at least I'll have the comfort in knowing that I won't be alone in my grave - because your ass will be joining me soon after if I'm not there to keep you alive. So, to avoid that, we will need the Bones of Predatory Beasts and lots of them."

"Yeah, I know." He craned his neck to look down at her finger stabbing at him and held in a laugh. The fact that she was almost a foot and a half shorter than him hindered her attempt to seem intimidating.

She spun back around, her silver hair flipping around her head so that a few locks landed across her face. She blew them away with a huff and shoved the rest behind a slightly pointed ear bearing a pearl earring. "Might I remind you that this arrangement was your idea."

"Yes, dear," he said in a tone appropriate for responding to a nagging girlfriend, just as a cavefang shot out of a small opening in the rock wall to the side of the sloping path that they traveled. It's scaled form, the size of a large dog, lunged at Kira, its eyes trained on her throat. The creature's mane of feathers fluttered as it moved, making it look like one of those renderings of a dinosaur based on the theory that they were related to birds.

On reflex, Max drew his pistols and pumped three rounds into the beast before it could make contact. Smoke and flame roared from their muzzles as the cavefang landed with a thud at Kira's feet. He swept one gun around the scene, following its iron sights with one eye to secure their perimeter while making a point of keeping his other gun trained on the dead beast just in case. Satisfied that they were safe for the moment, he slid his weapons back into the drop leg holsters he wore strapped to his thighs.

Kira released a breath she’d been holding almost as tightly as she clutched her harp against her chest. "I knew I kept you around for a reason.”

Max watched her for a moment as she glanced around at the other openings in the canyon wall further down their path. "Maybe you should put that harp away and pay attention to your surroundings," he jabbed as if to say ‘I told you so’.

She groaned as she tapped a small tattoo of a keyhole that sat just below her caster on the underside of her left wrist. From it, blossomed an elegant design of filigree that spread, wrapping around her forearm to form what most players referred to as their stat-sleeve. The design varied from player to player depending on what they had chosen. In Kira's case, she had picked something delicate. Max, on the other hand, had chosen a skull surrounded by flames that he thought looked badass. Either way, it framed their party's status readout with style. Kira ran her eyes over the numbers.

MaxDamage24

Hit points: 2,960 out of 2,960

Skill points: 275 out of 275

Kirabell

Hit points: 50 out of 50

Mana: 1,420, out of 1,420

She frowned at the readout and flipped her arm to the other side where her menu options ran down her forearm woven into the pattern of curled line work. Her class emblem, a small feather, capped off the design where it ended on back of her hand. She tapped an option that read, inventory, and the design shifted to display a short list which showed everything she carried on her person in the small item bag she wore attached to her belt. Below that was a longer list that contained everything stored in her virtual inventory. At the bottom, near her elbow, she touched a word that read, transfer. The harp she held in her other hand dematerialized as if it had been made of nothing but air. The words Harp of Ending appeared on the list. Afterward, she continued walking, only glancing back to Max for a moment. “You coming?”

He shrugged and got moving.

The path they traveled ran down the side of Hunter’s Canyon - the bottom of which was lined with a number of caves to explore. Most were filled with northern cavefangs, obviously. Max used to like the place back when his level was down in the mid-forties. It had been a great area to grind. But ever since Checkpoint Systems had decided to add an event called The Culling to the area, it had become more of a pain in the ass. Sure, it had been fun the first few times, but considering that the event called every cavefang out every two hours to attack anyone on the canyon floor, it had gotten old fast. Not to mention that it spawned an annoying boss named One-Eye, who was missing one of his eyes, again, obviously.

Kira stopped short and spun around. “You hear that?”

Max held his breath and listened. The sound of shouting mixed with growling drifted up the stone walls toward him. “The hell?”

Together they stepped to the edge of the path and peered over the side to find a party chipping away at a pair of cavefangs that they had lured out into the open.

Kira blew out a low whistle. “That’s kinda risky. Didn’t the message boards say that The Culling was overdue? The place should be empty.”

Max whipped out his journal. “Crap! We better not have missed it. I’m so not waiting another two hours.” He flipped to his inspector in the back, bringing up a simple text screen without bothering to remove the glass window from the cover. He exhaled a second later. “Nope, still says overdue.”

Kira looked back down at the party below. “Maybe they’re here to farm like us.”

“No way. Look at their gear.” Max pointed down at a man wearing a set of plate armor covered in golden spikes. “No self-respecting high-level would be caught dead in something that flashy.”

Kira tilted her head for a second, then shrugged. “Maybe they just don’t understand fashion?”

Max looked at her sideways, pointing with his eyes at her outfit. It consisted of a gray dress with high slits on the sides that would have displayed her hips if she hadn’t added a pair of short pants that covered her legs down to her knees. The mismatched garments left her looking like she wasn’t sure if she was trying to be elegant or punk rock.

She glowered back at him, clearly receiving his nonverbal jab. Then she looked down at her outfit and nodded, accepting his point. She shrugged it off and spun back to the scene below, her item bag bouncing on the heavy leather belt that hung from her waist.

Max rested his hands on the butts of his guns. “Well, fashion sense or not, they’re going to die down there.”

Almost as soon as the words left his mouth, a low growl echoed through the canyon, followed by a dozen shorter growls emanating from the caves that lined the rock walls. Then, in unison, dozens of drooling mouths emerged from the shadowed openings and closed in on the unsuspecting party. The Culling had begun.

Max watched as the players below were forced into a tight group, its members taking hits left and right. Their healer began panic-casting their strongest spells to keep them alive, which never ended well since it painted a target on the mage’s back from the overuse of their magic.

“Yeah, they’re doomed.” Max nodded, folding his arms across his chest.

Kira spun back to him. “We can’t just watch.”

Max attempted to hold his ground, her huge blue eyes glistening at him in the moonlight. He let out a sigh. “Fine,” was the only word he could get out since she was gone before he even had time to close his mouth. A swirl of lingering sparkles circled around the spot where she'd stood as a faint trail of magic followed behind her. “Don’t get yourself killed!” he called up to her as she darted twenty feet into the air above him.

She redirected and shot back down past him without saying anything.

“Show off,” he mumbled to himself.

It would have been easy to mistake her for a run of the mill flight magic user, but Max knew better. Her agility and the sparkling trail that followed her every move as she plummeted toward the ground made it clear what she was - a fairy. The difference between the average flight spell and hers was that it wasn't a spell at all. The soft hum of wings was barely audible, and they were only visible during brief moments where the moonlight caught them at just the right angle. Max remembered her telling him once that learning to use the four individually controlled dragonfly wings had been like learning how to use a set of new appendages with no instinct for them. But now he had to admit she’d been getting good, especially considering that she’d spent her first few weeks after unlocking the ability, crashing into everything from the ground to other players. Hell, thanks to the learning curve, few in Noctem had even seen a fairy in flight.

Max shook his head and stepped away from the edge. There wasn’t time to hang around and watch. Kira’s fifty hit points weren’t going to go far down there in the fray. He had to get moving. That was when a low chittering came from behind him. His breathing froze as quiet footsteps approached his back, the ruffling of feathers meeting his ears. It wasn’t Kira he should have been worried about. He was just as good a target as any.

“I don’t have time for this.” He spun, drawing his pistols on reflex as a pair of reptilian jaws streaked towards him in the dark.