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

It wasn't only the light that had her feeling wrong. Returning to the game world was odd. It all felt a bit disjointed, like the world was off a few degrees to the left of what she had become used to.

Gwen shook her head, the hair that had escaped her helmet whipped at her cheeks. It made her feel a little better.

"Everyone alright?" She asked. The twinges from her middle were back, her organs reminding her that they were back in a world where not long ago they had been precariously close to falling out. At the very least, the alert about being in a High Necromantic Energy area was gone.

"Oooft," Marina said, shaking her own head. "That's something I am not getting used to in a hurry."

Gwen stepped forward, the other three Adventurers were clustered in front of her. Pretty much where they had been when they had left the cairn. Wylla, however was a few steps ahead, leaning on a staff that hadn't been there the last time Gwen looked.

Wylla gave them all a dismissive look, like a cat, Gwen was starting to realise, that wants you to be aware that you are being ignored.

Leaning more heavily on the staff, Wylla bent, running her hand over the ground. Carefully, she plucked a single thin grass root out, before rolling it between her fingers. There was a spark as magic coursed along its short length, then kept going, and going, turning into a long vine. As the vine thickened she wrapped it around the knee where her leg stopped, and the vine started to twist. In a moment the vine had become a prosthetic leg, similar in some ways to the body parts of the monsters they had seen, but far more elegant and, when Wylla put weight on it, the vines bent without breaking.

"I am ready to return to the village when you are," Wylla said, settling her weight on her new leg with a few experimental tilts and bends.

"Could you do that before?" Theo asked, confusion filling his voice.

"No, but as Dove told you I am now able to use many of the advantages of being an adventurer. One of them is using a class and I have chosen Druid, it means I can make use of several skills I stole from the monsters," she smirked, "They are going to regret kidnapping me. I intend to make sure of it."

Gwen nodded. She could see that Wylla was not someone you wanted as an enemy. She stumbled at the next bit, unsure of what to say. They had spoken before. But back then Gwen thought Wylla was an ordinary local. And Wylla hadn't known there was a way to not be an ordinary local. Gwen didn't think she had been rude. But she could have been, perhaps that was why Wylla was so angry.

"I suppose the sooner we start the sooner we will be back at the village," Gwen settled for. "Do you need any help?"

But Wylla shook her head, "That's unnecessary." She said with a sneer that somehow made it clear the request for help was unwanted from the Adventurers specifically.

"Oh, I guess you don't need us then," Gwen snapped.

"No I don't," Wylla said bluntly. She looked over them all with no attempt at disguising her annoyance.

"We rescued you from the monsters," Marina exclaimed.

Wylla shrugged, "By the sounds of it I wouldn't have been caught by them if you hadn't come to the village. If you "Real World People" had decided you wanted to live in a perfect land of milk and honey, then I would have been living there. But instead I got this one." She looked around. "So I think I'm entitled to blame whatever the hell I want on you lot."

That was probably true and stumped Gwen's twin.

Wylla huffed out a breath, then started to speak, "You know, before the attack I was going to ask my mum to send me to one of the cities. I wanted to become a priestess, I thought that would bring me closer to the powers that built my world. Do you know what it feels like to find out all that you've ever known is bullshit? That nothing is real, not even you?" She turned to them, her face was blank of emotion. It was as if she had felt so much that it had made it impossible for it all to be shown.

No one said a word, not in answer and not in disagreement.

"And yet," she held up a hand, examining the back of it, "my world is real enough to cause me pain. For my family to die. So I'm going to have to protect it, with the tools that I've been given."

She shook her head again, "Come on. My mother will be worried, there's no need to prolong her pain." Wylla started off in the direction of the village, the massive, scar like road the monsters had carved out of the forest a clear enough sign of where she should go.

Gwen sighed, this was one of those moments where you had to accept that you were at fault. She didn't like them, she preferred the ones where she could argue her innocence, or someone else's guilt. But, no, humanity as a whole had fucked up here. And Gwen in particular had messed up too.

She ran a hand over the back of her neck. She had done a lot of dodgy things over the years. And she hadn't felt particularly guilty about any of them. But in this new world things were supposed to be starting anew, weren't they? She started after Wylla. Well, I guess escapism has to come from somewhere. The whole world's different, we've got elves and half-plant monsters. Guilt might as well be a part of it, too.

***

They walked further into the forest, until Gwen nearly banged into the back of Wylla who had stopped short.

"What in the names of all the hells happened here?" Gwen exclaimed, looking around the gobsmacked girl at the carnage in front of them. They had reached the point where Gwen and Jin Ae had left Theo and Marina up a tree. The tree wasn't standing there any more. It wasn't the only one.

"We fought the monsters," Marina said with a shrug.

"With what, the entire forest?" Wylla asked waving a hand at the devastation in front of them.

"I mean, kinda, yeah?" Theo said with a shrug. "I can enchant weapons with better aim and to do more damage."

"And I have an axe!" Brandishing said axe, Marina spoke with a grin, it slipped off the side of her mouth as she saw the shock from Jin Ae, Gwen, and Wylla. "There were a lot of monsters!" She justified, "It took a while."

"You, you, ecological vandals!" Gwen said in amazement. Most of it was horror. Some of it wasn't, but that was something she pushed down as best she could. It did not feel appropriate.

The smell of sap and freshly churned earth hung heavy in the air. Boughs were scattered across the forest floor, to the point where there was little forest left, and scarcely any floor left to see. All the trees around them seemed to be bereft, single pillars stark against the sky.

"You two are not allowed to be alone anymore, not if this is your reaction to it," Jin Ae said, her eyes wide and her whisper like she was at the back of a funeral.

"It seemed like a good idea at the time," Theo mumbled.

"Maybe wait for a second good idea next time," Gwen said, slowly starting to pick her way through the forest.

***

Without so much worry over something jumping out of the shadows at them, they were able to make pretty good time and made it back to the village before the sun had slipped under the horizon. The awkward silence clung to the group until they reached the outskirts of the village. Gwen broke it as she paused, shaded her eyes with her palm against the red toned light, and said, "Is it just me or does that look like an entirely different town to the one we left?"

The others stopped around her, Wylla was the first to react. It was with an impressive cloud of swearing.

"...fucking Dove!" She finished, after running through a linguistic obstacle course that turned the air blue and possibly alight. It was hard to tell with magic users, Gwen was learning, cursing could have a very literal meaning.

She watched a rabbit run for it out of the grass nearby. Yep, I get you buddy, she thought.

"Why are you swearing, what are you seeing that we don't get?" Gwen asked, "Dove said she couldn't just shove the level of the village up. So what's the matter?" Gwen could see that there was something wrong. You didn't get reactions like that over a change of decor.

"She's changed the class of the village, it's still a village but now it's a Sharp Point of Light rather than a Warm Point of Light." This didn't give them much more information and she could clearly see they were just as clueless as before. "Ugggh, you're all useless if it doesn't involve a fight!"

As complaints go Gwen couldn't see a reason to refute it. But somehow it was the thing that broke what gossamer strings were holding her temper together. She managed to fall through all the fires of her anger and straight into the cold and bitter temper that only came to the fore when things were truly desperate. The world had fucked her over, she could not fight the world. Ergo, it was time to rebuild and make ready for the next salvo.

"Sure, you're right, we're murderous idiots from another world. We haven't got a clue what's going on," she pressed on, "so tell us."

This seemed to catch Wylla off guard. She took a breath and started to explain.

"Every village and town in Cairnshire, the bit of the world we are currently in, belongs to one of three classes: a Warm Point of Light, where you Adventurers come to relax and recover; a Bolstering Point of Light, where you learn and train and buy things; or a Sharp Point of Light, where you come to fight." She turned to look at the sharper lines of the village, where once things had been made out of curves now they were square and regular. "Starlingrise just went from being a Warm Point of Light, to a Sharp Point of Light, which means we're going to have bloody Adventurers popping up all over the place. As if there aren't enough here already!"

"Right, got you now," Gwen sighed, "And what is the likelihood of anyone in the village recognising that anything has happened?"

"Nothing," she scoffed, "Dove's tidy like that. You don't remember if she upends your life. You just have to live with it."

Gwen nodded, took a breath, then nodded again. "Alright, how are we going to play this, then?"

"What?" The question came from multiple directions.

"Well, we don't know what it's going to be like, do we? But you have a better idea of it, tell us what we should do. Do we go in all conquering heroes back from the war with honour and glory leaving out everywhere, or we do we go back as the beaten down defenders who just want a bowl of soup and a soft bed for the night? What will get us better treatment?" She shot the words out at Wylla.

The AI blinked, her mind on pause as she raced to catch up. "The... the latter," she said slowly, "Nothing's going to change that much that anyone would respect the kind of arseholes you were describing in the first version."

"I would also appreciate being the second rather than the first, I don't know if I have the energy to be that happy," Theo said from behind them.

"Great, sling your arm around my sister's neck, look like you've been beaten up and less like you're going to smash someone's kneecaps in, and let's see if we can find out what's going to happen next!" Gwen looked down at herself, "Well, I'm still covered in my own blood so I guess that should do as acting on my end." She turned to Jin Ae, "Break a leg? You're the one with acting skills?"

Gwen could have sworn for a moment she heard Jin Ae mutter, "I did not sign up for this." But she showed no evidence of this moments later, as she started to trudge in the direction of the village.

"Hello there!" Jin Ae shouted towards the village, "We could do with a hand!"

"Hmm, blunt and yet humble, a good choice," Gwen said, sending a smile to Wylla, she was still scowling. "Would you prefer to be carried?"

"No, I can manage," she said scowling.

"But you were just kidnapped by terrible monsters. You should be shaken and scared out of your pretty blonde head. Sometimes being underestimated is the only advantage you get," she hissed, cutting in close to Wylla's face, "take it while you still can."

Wylla looked at her then took a step over to Marina and held out her arm. Marina ducked under it and, after a look at Gwen, started off after Jin Ae.

"Terrific, Theo get over here, I'm going to lean on you like you're the only thing holding me up, if that's alright?" She asked.

Theo nodded, "Um yeah, are you okay?"

"Nope." Gwen said bluntly, she smiled like she had eaten glass and poison for lunch. "Everything's about to catch up with me and I am going to need to hide in a dark room for a lot of hours. So it seems like a good idea to get as much done before hand as I can! Woohoo, let's go!"

She slumped inelegantly against Theo. It wasn't acting when she let him half drag her into the village.

She barely acknowledged anyone as they walked beside the half-ruined barricades. She didn't raise an eyebrow when a large crowd of villagers came up to the group, exclaimed over them, and one portion of them whisked Wylla off.

She did catch Wylla's eye as she left. The other woman's glare promised retribution for having to put up with the unnecessary anxious solicitations.

There weren't many damns left for Gwen to give: somewhere along the way she had been stripped of every single one, much like the poor trees in the forest had had their branches stolen off them. So she just gave a mental shrug and ignored all the many, many alerts that were now trying to catch her attention.