I CAN SMELL THE ROT IN YOUR VEINS.

Heather shuddered as her body finished healing, trying to forget that thing’s accursed voice.

A CORPSE. A WALKING CORPSE. YOU MOVE AS THOUGH DEAD, AS ONE WITH DEATH.

“Shut up,” she whispered, spasming as her arm snapped back into place.

MADNESS LURKS BENEATH YOUR FLESH, A LOOSE CANNON. WHAT A FUN PLAYMATE YOU MAKE.

She squeezed her eyes shut. There were no words she could use to describe the battle she’d just survived. She most certainly hadn’t won—that monstrosity had gotten amusement out of watching her struggle. It chose to keep her alive as a plaything until she was no longer entertaining.

Her survival had hinged on LIGHTNING letting her see through its darkness and on being completely unorthodox in her tactics. Deliberately taking near fatal strikes for a single shot at its core was a heavy gamble, but it paid off in the end.

There was also the LEVEL she gained during the fight, which increased all her STATS by five percent. She would’ve died without the slight speed boost that allowed her to evade the creature’s final, desperate strike.

MY PURPOSE IS FULFILLED. SIGHT HAS BEEN HIDDEN, REALITY A LOOSER GRASP. PRAISE TO BLACK.

Groaning, she forced herself to sit up, her muscles sore and raw. At least everything was stitched back together again.

It took her far longer than she would’ve liked to stagger back to her feet, Paul helping support her. She leaned against him heavily, her muscles still spasming.

Jamie pushed herself off the wall, shaking some dust out of her hair. Heather made to speak, but then paused, her mouth closing. Jamie’s eyes were cold and dark, her every step the picture of aggression. No words were spoken, but Heather understood.

Paul tried to say something when Jamie started making her way towards the next floor, but Heather grabbed his arm to stop him. When he glanced back at her, she shook her head, and he sighed.

She could see the questions burning behind his lips, feel the tension in the air as he struggled to suppress himself. His attempt was admirable, and she appreciated the effort. He was a decent guy, if a little naïve at times.

Whatever Jamie’s thoughts were about Paul, Heather’s reservations had been blown to the side when he saved her life. She would’ve died without his healing magic, and even though he didn’t treat things with the same level of caution that she did, he wasn’t stupid.

Sending him a short nod, she followed Jamie up to the next floor, Paul trailing behind her. She was starting to understand him better now that she wasn’t trying to scrutinize his every move, which helped her notice how uncomfortable he felt being the last person in line.

It took her a moment to trigger on why he was uncomfortable. He wants to take the hit if things go south. He must’ve used the same logic on Floors 1 and 2…

He jumped from her “Barely worth talking to” category to her “Would share a sandwich with” category. A respectable advancement, give him a gold star.

She snorted to herself, trying (and failing) to contain her mirth. He looked at her a bit funny, but shrugged it off, fingering his hammer as Jamie shoved the doors to the next floor open with a grunt.

A skeleton oozing puss with its mouth stretched in a grin dove towards her, and she flicked her staff to the side, obliterating it in an instant. Letting out a puff of air, she shot forward, decimating skeletons left and right as they clacked towards her.

Heather leaned against the entryway, subtly signaling for Paul to do the same. He raised an eyebrow.

“She needs to decompress a bit. Probably best to stay out of her way for a while.”

“Ah.” He nodded, his posture relaxing slightly. She watched him swipe his finger through the air before tapping on an invisible keyboard, probably surfing the internet or something.

Taking a few deep breaths, she closed her eyes, her mind flashing back to the creature she’d just fought. She’d be having nightmares about it for at least a month, maybe longer if something else didn’t manage to take its place as the most horrifying thing she’d ever encountered.

The words it had whispered to her played on constant repeat as she struggled to grasp their meaning. It had spoken of death and madness, of purpose and sight. The first part she understood, but the second was incomprehensible. Hopefully she would eventually be able to understand what it meant about purpose and sight, but for now she would focus on what she did understand.

Death was a constant presence at her side, and her searing and bubbling flesh was a permanent scent in her nostrils and noise in her ears. She’d killed herself over and over and over again just to have the control of a broken light switch over LIGHTNING, and half the time she felt more dead than alive.

She chuckled softly. Perhaps the beast describing her as “a walking corpse” was more apt than she’d hoped.

And then there was the madness, the constant rage screaming in her chest. She knew how Jamie coped with her demon (or really kinda didn’t cope whatsoever), the way that she locked it deep in her psyche and prayed for a miracle, but Heather had taken a different approach. She’d almost merged with the thing, submitting it to her will instead of acting as its slave.

There were many upsides to this arrangement. She had actual control over the rage and anger bubbling beneath her veins, which was nice. Also, she never felt cold anymore. If she ever needed to warm up, she could just let her rage simmer for a while to simulate heat. Foolproof plan, A+, don’t try it at home.

The main downside was that her rage was forever present. She could always feel it lurking beneath her skin, begging to be released and wreak havoc across the world.

She didn’t suppress her emotions, but it was a near thing. Instead, she let them loose in short bursts, often in the form of snark or sarcasm or childish whims. Skipping, doing little dances, humming tunes under her breath; each of these was an outlet, a way to manage without blowing up on everything around her.

“Fudgenuts.” Her knives were in her hands before she could blink, pointed towards Paul’s throat. His chin bobbed as he swallowed, glancing down at the blades before cocking an eyebrow.

She felt her face warm, jumping back as she slid her blades back into the sheaths around her waist.

“…Sorry…”

“Heh, all good, all good. Startled ya, no worries.” She frowned, searching his face for any sign of deceit.

She was surprised to find none. He really did have no issues with her reaction. Maybe he was just an understanding person or didn’t care all that much about social conventions. Either way, she was grateful for it.

“I found something interesting, though,” he said, moving closer and making his menu visible. “Take a look at this.”

Leaning forward, she skimmed a post from some forum that Paul seemed to frequent. The post was about the TOWER, specifically about the first boss, and her eyes narrowed as she continued reading.

“That’s not right,” she whispered, focusing more intently. According to the post, the boss on Floor 10 was an undead monk with telegraphed attacks that were easy to dodge. She wasn’t sure how this post still existed, considering that the GMs were apparently removing anything that remotely involved the TOWER from the internet, but the information seemed suspect.

“Yeah, I was confused too,” Paul said, “but then I had a thought: what if things are different depending on what mode you’re playing on?”

“Hm…” Heather considered it. Based on what they could find, it made the most sense. But…

“From what we could find, the first few floors were pretty much the same between modes. Everyone agreed on the difficulty of the floors and the character builds needed for each one, although they didn’t describe anything. That helped get around the GM block.”

“So why did only the boss change?” he questioned, and she nodded.

“Yeah, that’s my question…” They mulled over it for a while, Heather’s thoughts interspaced with the shouts and clacking she could hear in the background. It sounded like Jamie was enjoying herself.

Eventually, she sighed, drawing a blank.

“I’ve got nothing. Maybe we’ll figure it out later, but for now we can chalk it up to the GMs being sadistic shazbats.”

Paul barked out a laugh. “Ah, that was a good one! But yeah, I agree. We’ve got more important things to worry about.”

She nodded, her eyes narrowing as she watched Paul’s shoulders tense. His smile faltered, shifting into a grimace.

“We gotta talk about what happened,” he said, and Heather shuddered slightly, the madness beneath her veins surging. She hummed a merry tune under her breath, flashing Paul a smile as his forehead creased in worry.

“You deserve to know at this point. If you’re gonna be traveling with us for much longer, we can’t leave you out of this.” She knew that the flatness of her voice contrasted greatly with the cheer on her face, but she didn’t care all that much. Even as Paul flinched back, she sent him another happy smile, feeling the madness ebb as she forced it to conform to her whims.

Feeding the madness and rage into an almost passive-aggressive happiness worked wonders for her psyche.

“Yo!” Heather and Paul jumped, spinning away from the entrance. Jamie strode towards them, blood tricking from a gash in her cheek. Her eyes glinted dangerously.

“You good?” she asked, and they both nodded. “Come on then, time for the next floor.”

Heather frowned, the cogs in her mind firing to life as she took in Jamie’s attire. Her clothing was scorched and burnt, but other than the gash on her cheek she looked uninjured. Her breathing was surprisingly steady, her lips quirked up in a genuine smile.

It was for that reason that she followed Jamie to the next floor, and the next, and the one after that. She pointedly ignored the brutality Jamie fought with, the hisses of anger and the liberal use of magic. Many monsters died the moment Jamie could lay a hand on them, blowing apart from the force of her strength.

There was very little conversation as they continued climbing the TOWER, easily clearing all the way through Floor 19. Most of the floors were based around fighting, something she and Jamie excelled at. There was only one puzzle this time, and it was one that Paul figured out after just a couple of minutes.

Heather groaned as she let LIGHTNING fade, feeling her muscles stitching themselves back together. An undead ogre had snuck up on her, and she’d needed to push past the limits of her STATS to avoid the blow from its war axe. She needed to find a better way to control her speed.

Paul slumped against the wall, not even bothering to study the door leading to the Floor 20 boss. Heather barely glanced at it—an old, worn thing made of rotting boards and rusty nails. Not much help.

Glancing at Jamie, Heather winced. Her hands were shaking, barely able to grip her staff. There was a dullness to her eyes that hadn’t been there earlier, and her clothing was soaked in sweat.

Not for the first time, Heather thanked whoever made Leveled Plane that the clothing was auto-repairing. She didn’t know how they would’ve functioned if their clothes were permanently torn to shreds every time they fought something.

She watched as Jamie took a swig of water, her throat bobbing as she swallowed. At least she seemed… mostly better? Heather couldn’t be sure, but the tension in her body had dissipated, so that was probably a good thing.

Paul cleared his throat.

“I’ve waited all day for this, and I think it’s about time we talk about things.” Jamie’s head moved to look at him, but other than that she didn’t acknowledge that he’d spoken.

Heather’s shoulders slumped as she realized that Jamie didn’t want to take point with this conversation.

“Fine, let’s just get this over with,” she grumbled, sitting down on the stairs leading to the lower floors. Paul opened his mouth to speak, but she waved her hand at him, and he stopped.

“I’ll explain, just… listen for a bit, alright? We still don’t like talking about it if we can help it.”

He nodded, staying silent as he let her gather herself. She took a few deep breaths, focusing her eyes on a crack in the wall, hoping it would make things easier.

“For starters, you should probably know our CLASSES, since that’s kinda important. I got BERSERKER and Jamie got DARK DRUID. They’re decent, and there should be some nice perks that come with them, but then we realized that Realistic mode was a thing. That kinda put a damper on the whole CLASS situation.”

She glanced at Paul, trying to sort her thoughts into something coherent. He was nodding along to what she was saying, although she could sense some lingering confusion on why any of this mattered. His emotions tasted like a sour lime on her tongue.

“Not sure if you know about it, but there’s an old theory about Realistic mode. Something about CLASSES affecting your personality or some other shnaz. Ask Jamie over there for specifics—I don’t get it all that much myself. Either way, you can probably see where I’m going with this.”

With the way his eyes widened and the flavor on her tongue shifted closer to raw potatoes, he was getting the message. She sighed.

“Yeah, it wasn’t fun when that yayhoo stabbed me in the chest on a whim for the first time. Second time wasn’t any better, or the one after that. Those kinda sucked. Then I did it back in a fit of rage, so we were pretty much even after that, ya know.”

She made sure to avoid looking at him, keeping her gaze trained on the wall. Her hands were shaking.

“It… took some time to adjust. Still adjusting to it. For me, there’s a constant pressure beneath my skin, boiling me from the inside out, begging to be released. I’m always angry at everything, and I gotta control myself to keep from lashing out.”

She chuckled bitterly, wringing her hands in front of her as her voice shook. Her vision was blurring, and her cheeks were turning wet, but she continued all the same.

“Sometimes… it gets the best of me, or I let it out for a bit, or something or another. I- I- I try to control it, but it gets away from me sometimes a- and I just can’t think anymore. It feels so good to just let it all go and I just… I… oh god what am I turning into…”

Sobs wracked her frame, and she pulled her knees to her chest, struggling to hold fast in the hurricane of turmoil and sorrow and grief and fear. She heard Paul say something, but she couldn’t hear him over the dull roar of static in her ears.

She’d never allowed herself to think about what Leveled Plane had done to her. What it had taken from her. The loyal, logical girl who had entered the game was eaten by the system and someone else was spat out. Parts of that girl still existed, yes, but they were buried beneath so many levels of trauma that there was almost nothing left.

Sometimes she took time to mourn the life that she’d lost, but she’d never once considered the parts of herself that died and were born within Leveled Plane. When had she become so cold-hearted? Such a raging cynic? When had she started enjoying the feeling of digging her knives beneath someone’s skin? The agony she put herself through as her body was—

Nope, not going there. Even with her mind whirling the way that it was, she still had just enough control to filter out some of the thoughts that she wasn’t ready to consider. Maybe someday, but not yet.

And yet… she wasn’t done explaining. Forcing her thoughts into some semblance of order, she rubbed her eyes with the backs of her hands, trying to stem her tears. It didn’t work.

Someone grabbed her hand, and she saw Jamie plop down next to her, her gaze dark. It gave her the strength to continue, and she turned back towards Paul, flashing a shaky smile at his pale, horrified face.

“A- anyways, yeah, um. LIGHTNING happened, I- hic- I guess… blew myself to p- pieces trying to use it for so forking long. An- a- and this whole time, I barely gave it any thought! What the fluffernutter’s wrong with me?”

Hysterical laughter bubbled up from her chest, and she could feel her eyes burning as they began shifting back to red. She let them, her pain subsiding as it merged with a euphoric madness that filled her veins with pleasure.

“DO YOU SEE ME?” she screamed, her voice breaking, feeling her lips stretching in an uncomfortably large grin. “YOU SEE THIS? THIS IS WHAT I REALLY AM!”

Paul’s back was pressed against the wall, his entire body trembling. His right hand had a death grip on his hammer, ready to draw it at any moment.

Like a splash of cold water, Heather came back to her senses. She closed her eyes, the burning subsiding to a dull throb as her rage buried itself back beneath her skin.

Deep breaths, girl. Deep breaths. Slow and steady, in and out. Her racing heart slowed, and she could feel her eyes shifting back to normal as she opened them again.

“…So… there you have it. The answer to your question. The reason we’re so distrusting, prone to flying off the handle, whatever. I’d say we’re at least sane, but half the time I barely trust myself, so yeah. Whatever you do from here… just… thanks. For helping out a little. It was nice feeling human again.”

She trailed off, staring at the stone stairs before her. Jamie squeezed her hand, neither of them turning to face Paul. They both knew what would happen.

Paul wasn’t the first person to find them in the TRAINING ROOM. A party of five, two pairs, and a party of four all within the last year. And every single one of them were either disgusted or terrified of her and Jamie.

The party of five had caught them while they were sleeping. Heather had tried to stab two of them on instinct before Jamie stopped her. With glares, the five had brushed off Jamie’s pleas for help and entered the TOWER, not once glancing back.

The pairs caught them during the time they trained their magic, and Heather knew that her exploding avatar was probably not a pretty sight even with the gore censorship. And the less said about the party of four, the better. Hopefully they had a therapist they could talk to…

Either way, they knew how this would end. They’d given Paul a chance, a small one. They’d wanted to feel human again, even for just a short while, so they’d brought him along through the TOWER since he seemed like a chill dude.

But he wouldn’t stick around. Nobody would. They were volatile beasts underneath a guise of human flesh, two people that threw their morals out the window in a bid to survive. They could barely even call themselves humans anymore, so–

She felt an arm wrap around her shoulder, squishing her against Jamie’s side. Paul’s voice whispered in her ear.

“Remember what I said?” Tears blurred her vision again as she heard how soft his voice was. “Anything I can do to help, I’ll do it. I don’t care what you are, you’re still two kids in desperate need of help. I can’t just sit by.”

A choked laugh escaped her throat. “You’re a moron, ya know?”

She turned to look at him, smiling genuinely. His face was still pale, his arm trembling as it wrapped her in a halfhearted embrace, but his eyes held a fire to them that burned brighter than a star.

“Don’t think I didn’t see you trip over your feet last floor. Hypocrite.”

Wet chuckles came from her left. Jamie’s eyes were red and her nose was snotty, her face a complete mess. Heather felt affection rising in her chest for her surrogate sister. She’s always been such an ugly crier…

“Sorry for doubting you,” Jamie whispered. “I was trying not to get my hopes up.”

“No worries,” Paul said. “Don’t get me wrong though, you both still terrify me. Gonna have nightmares for a while. But I’m not gonna let you die if I can help it.”

Heather choked back tears, trying and failing to force herself back in working order. Even the rage in her chest couldn’t combat the fleeting hope rising within her. That they weren’t alone, that they had a chance, that someone was hearing them. They’d tried for so long…

“Don’t worry, we’re gonna make it outta here. If it means I gotta take the hit so ya live through this, I’ll do it. Use me as a shield, whatever. It’s what I’m here for.”

She heard him take a deep breath, his arms tightening as he held them.

“I’m not one ta let kids suffer, but it seems I’m just gonna have ta put up with it. Only thing I can really do ta help is keep climbing with ya, so that’s what I’ll do.”

Heather wiped her eyes, nodding along with his words. She wanted to stay like that for a while longer, but they’d already wasted enough time.

She groaned, forcing herself to stand, shrugging off Paul’s arm as she pulled Jamie to her feet. Her eyes still burned, and there was a slight lump in her throat, but she was at least coherent again.

“Paul… thanks. It… means a lot. You won’t get it, not completely, but… thanks.” He nodded, his eyes softening.

"Anytime." She smiled, turning towards the wooden door ahead of them. It was only midday, after all, so they weren’t done quite yet. Maybe they’d climb another few floors before calling it a day.