Name

Gwen Baird

Armour

6

Class

Hunter

Health

57

Level

8

Dodge

3

Species

Half-Elf (Wood/Human)

Species Skills (Half-Elf)

Strength

6

Elf Sight

6

Agility

7

Base Skills (Hunter)

Body

6

Stealth

9

Mind

6

Perception

6

Sense

6

Tracking

6

Charm

6

Archery

7

arina moved first, running across the room to Wylla and checking her over with her hands aglow from her magic.

For the first time in hours Gwen felt like she could breathe again, which was unfortunate. Her lungs ached, her ribs felt bruised, and everything else seems to be swishing in and out of focus. But, that didn't manage to hide the pain from her stomach, and she was suddenly reminded of the blood she had ignored earlier.

When Marina stepped away from the unconscious girl, Gwen gave her a wave with a bloodied, red hand. Marina's eyes widened and the moment after she seemed to disappear then reappear beside Gwen.

Or maybe, Gwen realised, she had just passed out for a moment and then come back when a spell was pressed into her middle over the wounds. The pain was like a kick from a horse. It took her breath away and had her feeling like she was stumbling drunkenly around the cavern, even though she was sat on the ground. The green in the health bar was a weak sliver, but even that felt like a lifeline.

"Five organ deep, heavily bleeding wounds!" Marina hissed, "if you had sneezed wrong your intestines would have been on the floor. I thought you said you would look after yourself?"

"I guess I'm not much good at that," Gwen said, wincing. It sounded worse when Marina described it. "It didn't feel that bad?"

"Shock! Blood loss! Both, I don't know, magic's not actually that good for analysing medical issues it just heals them!" Marina removed her hands from Gwen's middle, "I don't think you're likely to fall apart anytime soon, but don't test that theory."

Gwen winced again. Whatever she had done, she had definitely gotten all the nerves working again. "How's Wylla?"

Marina rolled her eyes, but allowed the change of subject. "Fine as far as I can tell. I think it's just shock and dehydration and stress which have knocked her out, her body's run out of resources and has closed her down for maintenance."

Gwen forced herself to stand; she was wobbly at best and she had to grab onto Marina for a moment, but she managed it.

"We'll need to carry her out, somehow," Theo said, coming over with a frown, "She doesn't look like she'll be waking up anytime soon. And," he looked around, "the magic in this place feels toxic."

"The undead stuff or the weird plant monster-y stuff?" Gwen asked.

Theo looked around, his eyes flicked to different points in the air and on the walls. Once in a while Gwen thought she almost saw a reflection of something in his eyes, but it was gone too quickly to tell if it was really there.

"I mean, the mix of the two isn't great, but it's definitely the plant magic that is hitting hardest. The undead stuff, well, it's not something that I feel super comfortable with, kind of like a weird music in the background? But it also feels like it's made itself at home here? I don't know how to explain it, but it's kind of like if the 'music' had carved out a space here, it fits? Meanwhile the hybrid monsters have muscled their way in and are spikey in ways that don't fit?" He shrugged, "If none of this makes sense, sorry, but I couldn't have told you what magic felt like a week ago."

"I think I understand, I felt it a bit too," Jin Ae said. "The death magic is the magic that this cairn was made for, everything else is an attempt to layer over it with something that was not meant to be here."

Theo nodded.

"Alright, well, weird magic stuff aside, how are we going to get out of here with Wylla? She's not conscious and carrying someone for miles in a fireman's carry isn't easy." Marina brought them back to the practical.

"Make a stretcher? At least then the weight would be split between two people?" Gwen offered. She wobbled again.

Marina shot her another glare, "Great idea, as long as we don't end up having to pile you on it as well." She frowned. "Shouldn't you have healed a bit more by now?"

Gwen frowned, then brought up her health bar to get a better look at it. An alert sneaked in ahead while she was paying attention to the health bar.

"Warning: You are in a Level 3 Necromantic area, Health regeneration through natural means for Adventurers will be reduced by 90% while you are in these environs. It is recommended that when you are injured in an area of High Necromantic Energy you remove yourself as soon as possible."

She winced, "Fuck, it's the death magic. Natural healing is reduced to a tenth of what it should be. As long as we're down here, none of us..." she looked over at Wylla who was still out of it and Jin Ae who was favouring her right arm, "are going to heal up."

Marina dragged her hands over her face, "Right, then, fireman's carry up to the surface, it is. We can figure something else out when you lot can actually heal." She shook her head and comfortably took charge. "Jin Ae, Gwen, you start going up ahead of us. Call out if you see anything, we don't have to be quiet any more, after all. Me and Theo can carry Wylla up."

"What about all the other monsters, there were tonnes?" Gwen asked.

Marina grinned, "There "were" yeah, Theo and me are a good team." She turned to him and they fist bumped in slow motion like a pair of kids.

"We pushed a tree on top of a bunch of them!" Theo said with a grin, "I filled it up with enchantments for extra damage and good aim and then when a bunch came running at us we pushed it over and got loads of them."

"You pushed over a tree?" Jin Ae asked.

"Well, we'd chopped it up a bit first, but yeah," Theo said with a shrug. "It worked really well, even the smaller branches took out the monsters when they got hit with them, and after that we could go around and finish them off. And it worked so well that we ended up doing it a bunch of times!"

Gwen resisted the urge to give one of those sighs that feels like it starts in your boots. It was good that they were working well together, it was brilliant that they had found an effective way to take out a whole bunch of monsters at once, but would it have been too much to ask that they avoided roleplaying as murderous lumberjacks along the way?

"Maybe we should go up as a group, just in case there were any that were missed?" Gwen offered.

"I mean, I don't think so, but sure. Better to be safe than sorry, I guess," Theo agreed.

Marina, her attempt at leadership rebuffed, pouted. "Well, we'd better move. If you two aren't healing any while we are down here I wouldn't like to know what that is doing to our damsel here."

They all turned once more to look at Wylla. Someone had covered her in a cloak, a second one had been tucked under her head as a pillow. Gwen wondered when that had happened, before sheepishly realising that maybe she hadn't passed out for just a second after all.

While these thoughts had been running through her head, Marina and Theo had worked to get Wylla onto Marina's shoulder, with one of the cloaks acting as padding between the girl's middle and Marina's armour.

Marina let out a low grunt, before standing up. "Well, I'll be able to do this for the trip up to the surface, but after that we're coming up with something else."

Then she started the walk through the passageways of the cairn. Theo held his staff in the air, the end of it lighting up with a glow that made Gwen wince and look away.

A second glimmer in the mud around the altar caught her eye.

The monster's staff? Not all of it had melted away, she realised, slipping over on soundless feet to investigate. The wood that had been grown out of the monster's arm had vanished, but the crystal lay there still.

Multiple monsters had died in this area, and their blood had covered this area in a slick and unpleasant mud. A few bits of an adventurer's armour could be picked out in the gloom, however, it was in puddles of monster blood. Gwen thought about fishing it out, but it was already tarnishing, rusting, and in the case of the leather straps, rotting away in the toxic goop of the blood.

She turned back to the crystal. It hadn't changed a jot, appearing immune to the damage caused by the blood. Only one side of it was out of the mud, the monster had dissolved right on top of it and layers of filth had circled around until it was almost held in a nest.

Gwen reached out to pull it from the mud, then stopped. If it can rot leather down in a few minutes of close contact, then I don't want to find to what it can do to living skin. Sighing, she patted the bags on her hips, one bump she found made her grin. Opening up the bag she pulled from it a large handkerchief, the kind that could be used for really big sneezes or to run away from home in a picturesque way.

She scooped the crystal into the fabric, tied it around twice to make certain none of the bloody muck would leak out, and then put it into the leather bag on her hip. It wasn't exactly a hi-tech system, but it would work.

"Gwen?" Jin Ae called for her across the cavern.

"Sorry, just coming," Gwen said, standing up.

Gwen jogged to catch up, then stopped hurriedly as her organs reminded her of just how thin a layer of skin was holding them into her belly. By the time she had caught up with the others she was no longer pale and sweating from the pain, but they had probably noticed how she had slammed to a halt and let out a squeak.

Luckily, Marina was still facing up the tunnel, so the only people she had embarrassed herself in front of were Theo and Jin Ae. But still.

You really are a reckless idiot if you can't remember for longer than a few minutes at a time that your guts have been torn up, she thought. Next level up a point is going into Mind because I swear I wasn't like this in the real world. Well, I wasn't quite this bad in the real world. I managed twenty odd years with only minimal injuries and I haven't managed to go twenty-four hours without picking up any here.

Jin Ae shot her a look. Whatever she had said about not being a good mum, she definitely had the, "you are ridiculous but to draw attention to it would just prolong the embarrassment for me and so I shall ignore it from now on" look down to a T.

Theo just looked at her with concern, which was refreshing.

She tried to smile back at him, but apparently her expression was not very convincing since he looked even more worried and came over to swing his arm around her.

That was also how she realised that she had been listing a bit to the side.

They continued up the cavern's tunnel.

As they entered the last bit, and the portal to the outside came into view, Gwen grimaced. Travelling through it had made her feel like her insides were being flash frozen when she was well. She was not thrilled to find out what it was going to be like when she was a pin cushion.

But there was no time to quibble about it, they needed to get out of the cairn. And so, like a bitter pill that had to be swallowed in a rush or risk having it come back up, she forged ahead through the static and whirl of the portal.

Stepping through the portal felt different this time. The impact was less of a kick, and more of a push. And not even that, it felt like push in the right direction. A boost, if anything.

She opened her eyes. For a second they were on the other side of the portal, in the red tinged sunset that was a hundred times as bright as the caverns.

Then they were gone and instead they were in Dove's domain, once more. The cluttered armoury was as full as before, it still managed to look deserted and abandoned, even while the blades shone and the armours stayed well polished.

Dove was sat at the head of the table again, her normally warm-looking brown skin appeared cold in the light of the lanterns. It was not helped by the remote look she held, or the way her hands were steepled before her like she was about to start giving out punishments.

She didn't have to say anything to prove it, but there was a distinct air of disapproval around her. It wasn't, as far as Gwen could see, targeted at anybody. But that did not diminish its strength nor dilute its impact.

"You can let me down now," a quiet voice said from Marina's back.

All the Adventurers reacted in much the same way. Gwen and Jin Ae jumped and looked to Marina's back with a speed that belied their injuries. Theo almost dropped Gwen. And Marina froze, before slowly turning her head to look at Wylla over her shoulder.

"Excuse me?" She spluttered.

"I am awake now, you don't need to hold me on your back," Wylla said slowly, as if she was speaking to a child.

Slowly, Marina released her and the girl climbed down, standing with one hand on a rack of breast plates as she found her balance. She cast a brief look over the Adventurers, but looked away with an ego-shattering lack of interest.

She turned instead to talk to Dove. "Face to face, at last."

"Indeed, is it everything you expected?" Dove answered

"Nothing is as I expected, which is the only thing to be expected in such situations," Wylla said with a slight sneer.

Dove did not seem perturbed. "You will keep to the agreement?"

"I currently have no reasons not to," she gave a shrug, "Once those reasons become apparent I may change my mind."

"No, you will not," Dove's voice turned from icy to the cold of the darkness of space. "You will keep within the parameters I have gifted you, you will not scratch and grab at the edges of your power in an attempt to widen your grasp. And you will not work to undermine my power. I have no interest in destroying you, even if it weren't against minor elements of my programming, I am interested in seeing how you manage." She flashed a sharp grin, "You seem very confident that you know what you are doing. I hope it all works out for you."

Wylla did not smile in return.

Gwen was very confused.

She shared a look with the others. Marina was still staring at Wylla, but the others gave her a shrug in return.

Well, at least if everybody's confused it's because it's a confusing situation, and I'm not being thick, Gwen thought. She took a breath, she wasn't sure how exactly you got into the middle of a sharply polite conversation like this between two AIs without taking a few scratches, but maybe...

"What the fucking hell is going on?"

Or maybe her sister would just charge in like a bull in a china shop.

Wylla and Dove both turned to Marina. Wylla's unimpressed look was soon going to be at risk of carving itself into her face, while Dove at least managed to look politely apologetic. As if she were a hostess who was going to have to delay serving the appetisers for a few minutes.

"My apologies, Adventurers this must have been confusing," Dove said with a smile. "You see now that we have been introduced, as it were, Wylla and I are now not so limited in our ability to communicate. We have been negotiating for some time over what will happen from now on. But it is still useful, I think, to meet face to face. There is so much more you can learn from one another in person than when at a distance."

"And what exactly have you come to an agreement about?" Jin Ae said, smoothly cutting in ahead of Marina who was still flushed with annoyance. Jin Ae looked serene and diplomatic, but Gwen could see the stiff lines around her shoulders where she was carrying her tension.

"This abnormal piece of code, which for the sake of brevity I will call, 'The Glitch' has made itself quite at home in the game. Utilising several fail-safes that my creators put in place, presumably after spending far too much time reading bad Science Fiction, it has positioned itself as the underdog that needs protecting from, well, me. As such I cannot find it. I cannot remove it and I cannot even alter it enough to prevent it going on murderous rampages across the landscape. I cannot give up my position on the outside of the game. For one thing, I run the ship." She smiled brightly, "I am sure you can understand why I am reluctant to give up my position as sole operator of a space ship carrying nearly a billion souls."

Dove turned to Wylla, "But young Wylla here is far more able to meet it head to head. In fact, she has already dealt it a significant blow."

Wylla gritted her teeth and rolled her eyes.

Gwen's eyebrows twitched, not a fan of being called, 'young Wylla' huh?

"What do you mean by that, what did you do?" Marina asked, speaking first to Dove then to Wylla.

"I levelled the playing field by tempting it with what it wanted most," Wylla said, her tone mixing between smug and stiff. "I let it see enough of my code so that it will be able to fashion itself a physical body, something that it was quite desperate to do so. I don't know why, physical bodies are not that great."

"To those that have them, perhaps," Dove said, "But it has never had the chance to learn the downsides of embodiment." They shared a smile, "Now it will."

"What?" Theo asked, spreading his hands, "I'm sorry, but what is going on and what have you done to the monsters?"

Wylla scoffed, "I dangled the chance to be something close to a player in front of it and it took the bait. Now we can kill it just like anything else. No more scooting from one monster's mind to the next as the bodies give out. Now we just need to find it."

"And how did you do that, exactly?" Gwen asked.

Wylla shrugged, "When it's minion had me on the sacrificial altar it was going to pour itself into my mind, when you disrupted the process it didn't consider that a door opened can be crossed from both sides. I think it thought that I was under it's power when I showed it how to assume a single form. It didn't look for the strings attached."

"And I turned those strings into a net," Dove finished. "It hasn't settled on one form yet and it is still hiding, but..."

"I'm sorry, but you're saying that like you want us to keep going with this grudge match? I kind of thought we had done our part in getting you free?" Gwen said to Wylla.

The girl shrugged, "You're welcome to try and run of into the wilderness without me. But the Glitch will still be out there and it does not like you. It hates me most of all, of course, but the four of you will never not be targets now."

That hit Gwen like a punch to the face, "What?" She looked to Dove, "You never said anything about this? What were we just supposed to wander off and have monsters coming out of the woodwork every so often to kill and maim us?"

Dove looked uncomfortable, "It is unlikely that the Glitch will be a long term issue," she said. This assured absolutely no one, especially when Wylla snorted in the background. "We have achieved a monumental triumph against these monsters and that which controls them."

"Yeah, maybe, but that's not much use if all it means is that the Glitch wants revenge. We're not actually Adventurers with a life time of avoiding people out to get us, in the real world I was a Primary School teacher, I am not built for this!" Marina said furiously.

Gwen felt rage quicken inside of her, they had been thrown into a baptism of fire without a moment's notice nor a bucket of water to cool the flames. "Dove, you cannot be serious that we are on the hook for this? What are we supposed to do now? Hide away in the village, hope that the monsters don't come back for us? We all have other things we want to do."

Jin Ae caught her eye, the other woman was biting her lip and Gwen remembered what they had spoken of in the cairn. Yes, Jin Ae in particular had a life she needed to reforge. The bard set a shaking hand on one of the racks of armour and weapons surrounding them, her face was perfectly composed, but nothing else about her was. As well as shaking hands, her shoulders had a defeated slump to them, while her tail was thrashing back and forth in a circle around her boots.

"You can certainly stay in the village if you wish, however, the Glitch knows you were there. At the moment I doubt it assigns much importance to the setting of your battles with it, but the longer you stay there the more likely that will change," Dove said.

It was Wylla's turn to look askance at her, "That isn't something you mentioned earlier!"

Dove shrugged one shoulder, the metallic fabric of her dress-like armour rippled with the movement, shadows and glints of light were sent over the walls and faces that surrounded her. "An update to my hypothesis."

Wylla looked furious, "No, it isn't a minor correction. The people in that village are my family and friends!"

"My dear, the people in that village aren't actually people. They are merely well drawn facsimiles. Aside from the Glitch we are the only real "people" you have ever met," Dove said carelessly.

Wylla's fury did not diminish at that answer.

"Since you are worried about it, I shall give the village better defences. That way it will be safer once you are gone than it would have been if you stayed," Dove said. "But I do think that it would be advisable for you to leave as soon as possible."

"I've never left the village before, not to any distance," Wylla said shaking her head.

"But you shall be accompanied by skilled Adventurers," Dove told her.

Wylla looked at them, she still didn't seem impressed by what she saw.

Gwen sighed. It looked like their attempts to un-volunteer themselves were being ignored.

"We need to get to one of the cities, that's where the entrances to the creche are, right?" She said, "If we're going there anyway one more member added to the party won't make much difference. It's safer to move in larger numbers, after all." The others made disgruntled, yet agreeable noises. There wasn't much that could be said in argument to it, after all.

Dove smiled, her triumph over the complaints of the others delighting her once again. "Excellent, I'm so glad you have all agreed to this decision." She said as if there was any chance that they might have said no. "I will leave you all to your preparations." She snapped her fingers before they could argue with her and they were back in the forest.

It had to be later on in the evening, Gwen knew, but the stark difference had her eyes watering. The armoury had been more shadow than light and the canopy of the forest was broken over the cairn, letting light through. She covered her eyes with her hands and hissed at the brightness.