“Whatever you’re doing, do it fast. We’ll be there in few seconds.”

Lucy continues to rattle off orders, but I’m not listening. I have to bust down a door that Winston created. Seems easy, right? No. Winston, the clever little shit, is almost as paranoid as I am, and way more skilled with the game’s magic system. More than that, where Dad and I concentrated on designing builds for long-term survival, with an emphasis on self-sustentation, Winston makes battle fortresses. There are no gardens, no living quarters beyond the first-floor barracks, and every room is like a mini-dungeon.

That door is enchanted, at the very least, and likely reinforced. Not the sort of thing you can punch into submission though the meaty thunks echoing up the stairs inform me that Mikah is trying. I consider pointing out the waste of his time, but… no. Mikah is better off having something to do. Maybe he’ll look for the key once he realizes brute force isn’t working.

Two flights up, I try the door to Winston’s laboratory. Locked.

Biting back annoyance, I try to remember the layout of the tower.

I haven’t spent much time at Jenga. Winston finished this build four months ago, and I’d eschewed the first few tests of her defenses to work on the castle. But if you’re around a person long enough, as I’ve been with Winston, you start seeing certain patterns to their building style. Armory and barracks were always closest to the entrance, then the forge, laboratory, kitchens, refinement rooms, etc. in order of precedence. That means the kitchen should be directly above this, and if memory serves, kitchen shares a fireplace with the floor below.

I bound up another flight of stairs, and ram my avatar against the door. Unlocked, it pops open, spilling me onto the floor.

I’m glad Mikah stayed downstairs.

The fireplace directly across the room is huge; large enough to roast one of the game’s oversized boars, easily. I scramble up and run to it, pulling the grate aside to peer at the fire still burning in the room below. Thankfully, the space is large enough to fit my avatar.

I could jump into it; my respawn is set downstairs in case of accidents but I prefer working smarter, not harder. A quick glance around finds me a pitcher which I fill in a water barrel and pour down the flue. The fire sizzles out. It’ll still be hot, but it won’t whittle down my HP if I get stuck for a minute.

Feeling not unlike Santa Claus, I slide feet-first through the short passage and land clumsily in a pile of embers and soot. Ignoring the mess, I scramble back to my feet and out of the fireplace.

The lab resembles a marriage of Dr. Frankenstein’s and Dumbledore’s aesthetics. Walls of bookshelves are interspersed with specimen jars and chemistry equipment. Half-finished experiments litter every surface alongside scrolls, books and yet more specimen jars. I pass by it all, going for the elaborate chest system built into the back wall.

Again, Winston is a creature of habit—not unlike myself. Having lived with man as long as I have, metaphorically speaking, it only takes a few seconds to gather the components I need. There’s a crafting table in the corner; a basic one. That’s fine. This is a relatively low level project.

Three sticks should be enough. I make six for good measure. Filching a set of flint and steel, and a fuse spool from a nearby table, I unlock the door from the inside, and race downstairs.

“Took you long enough,” Mikah says without turning from the door. There’s the tiniest scratch in the finish from his punching; otherwise, the situation hasn’t changed.

“Move.” I shoulder him aside so I can set my burden at the door’s base.

There’s no reason to connect the fuses at this proximity. I grab the spool I’d brought with me, tie it to the middle stick, and unwinding it as I head back downstairs. Mikah lopes along behind me, ducking around the stairwell’s entrance to protect himself from any debris.

“Hey—” He stops, then asks more sharply, “Is that dynamite? Where’d you get dynamite?”

“Lab.”

“That wasn’t locked?”

“It was,” I say as Lucy whoops in the background. They’ve been talking this whole time, but I haven’t been paying attention. It seems that was mutual.

Mikah follows me downstairs. When we reach the bottom step, I gesture him to the other side of the room, then bend to light it. That’s when it finally hits me: what was the point of locking the armory? Sure, it’s harder to get the weaponry needed to save the base. I guess that adds a little fun to the game. It definitely makes it more of a challenge. But something doesn’t feel right. Winston’s ideas are rarely this straightforward. But there doesn’t seem to be any other motivation here, and I am nothing if not paranoid.

“What’s the hold up?" Mikah says, as Echo yelps in the background.

I shake the ice from my hands. I’m wasting time.

The last thing I hear as I click the flint and steel together is Winston’s smarmy voice saying, “Blame Ms for this.”

“Excuse me?” I snap, eyes glued to the little spark traveling up the stairs.

No one replies. No one can.

RESPAWNING IN 5…

4...

3…

2…

1…

1…

1…

1…

My world narrows to that single, flashing digit. I don’t breathe. I barely think.

The ellipses continue cycling, ticking in and out of existence as the game tries to figure out what happened.

What did happen? I don’t know. I remember the fuse disappearing around the curve of the stairs. The dynamite exploded. I’m sure of that much. But it shouldn’t have generated a blast strong enough to kill us from upstairs. Even if it somehow had, there was no way it’d destroy our respawn points. Not on it’s own.

“Guys?” My voice is weak, even to my own ears. No response. Did my connection get hit?

No. I’ve been through this too many times to not recognize a server convulsion. We died. Something killed us. Something so bad the game can’t handle it. Something that’s Winston’s fault.

I knew it was too easy. Just like I’d known this was a bad idea from the start. Robert kept insisting they wouldn’t fuck the server, and then this—

My throat clogs with grief as anger sizzles like a hotbed of coals deep in my core.

There’s one way to know for sure. I don’t want to look, but my fingers find the keyboard all the same. A box appears in the right-hand corner of my HUD, and expands to cover most of my screen. No point paying attention to a game that doesn’t want to load… right?

Echo must have switched the stream to Robert’s feed. It’s a silly thing to notice, but it’s the only detail that doesn’t provoke the rage threatening to consume me. Rob’s viewpoint is from high above the remains of Jenga. Several admin-only features are displayed around the edges of his HUD. Things like spawn macros and time shifters. The latter button flashes, but the game world doesn’t respond to Rob’s command. It’s still night, and Jenga is still burning.

Fire consumes everything: the meadow where Jenga sat, the tower itself, the walls, the handful of demons still running around the area. All of it.

It looks like the tower imploded along the central staircase; there’s hardly any of it left standing. What few parts seem attached are disappearing in chunks every few seconds as the frames refresh. More and more of the tower is eaten away by time, reappearing seconds later as rubble scattered across the grounds.

There’s no way a few sticks of dynamite did this.

Garbled words cut through the silence. Several voices, I think, though it’s like listening to a broken radio. It’s only when Jenga is little more than a burnt husk of a stairwell left sentinel over a field of debris do the voices clarify.

Lucy’s voice is robotic but intelligible as she says, “That’s totally going to sinkhole, isn’t it?”

“Yeup,” reply Rob and Winston, simultaneously.

My HUD goes white. I shrink the stream pop-up back to a corner as my respawn kicks in.

Since my respawn point was lost in the explosion, the game should randomize a spawn somewhere away from this nonsense. Instead, the world pieces itself together around me, smack in the explosion’s epicenter. Chunks of broken stone and stuttering fire pop one-by-one into existence before me. Just as the ground resolves itself from white nothingness, to muddled half-textures, to proper high-def, my perspective shifts. My avatar falls, sinking into the game’s architecture.

I slap a hand over my mouth, trying to muffle the sob that forces its way past my lips.

“Sinkholes,” more technically called “null cell errors,” are a semi-rare but unmistakable issue in highly editable game worlds like DUSKFALL. I don’t really understand the specifics—that’s more Echo’s area of expertise—but he told me once it happens when the server’s overwhelmed and “loses” a cell or two while accommodating for collapsed geometry. I don’t need to understand ‘why’ to grasp the result: once a sinkhole starts, it spreads. It’s like a virus. You’ll be walking along and suddenly the world drops out beneath you. The only way back is for the admin to fish you to a safe area. If you return to the last safe space you walked, and you’ll fall into the expanding hole. Inch by inch, second by second, the game state is rendered unusable.

Above me, the backside of the world’s geometry fades away. I’ll fall forever if Rob doesn’t notice. But I can’t speak, to cry out, to ask for help. I’m too consumed with restraining the messy sobs begging to be unleashed. I’m not going to cry. I’m not going to. I’m not.

Rob swears and my display jerks. A second later, I’m floating in the night sky alongside several other avatars.

Most of the fires surrounding Jenga have died. Rob must have kill-commanded the last few spawns. I blink, and sudden light blinds me.

“Dammit, dude,” Winston complains, “You could warn a guy.”

“We don’t need anything else spawning,” Rob says. More softly, he adds, “Lex, honey, can you port to the Castle?”

Bewildered, Mikah asks, “Lex?”

My voice is stuck behind all the other things clogging my throat: the accusations, the venom, the heartbreak. But Rob is right. If I can get to the castle it’ll be fine. Jenga and my Castle are leagues apart. Even if they weren’t, I no longer feel the need to finish the thrice-damned antechamber. I’ll get my video now like I should have done before the fucking funeral this morning. I’ll say my goodbyes properly, then move on from DUSKFALL and all this bullshit.

I hit my teleport macro for the Castle’s courtyard.

“What’s going on?” Echo asks as my screen jumps again, pulling me back across the map to my home base.

“Give me a minute,” says Rob.

My screen goes white.

Once again, the world resolves itself in fits and starts. The cobblestoned courtyard stretches out around me, lined with topiaries and overhung by a columned pavilion leading to the Keep’s entrance. There’s the apple orchard to the left, and the kitchen gardens to the right. The barracks leading off the main wall, just south of the gatehouse.

I don’t know why it’s lagging out, but everything seems to be—

The textures resolve and suddenly I understand. Cracks appear in the cobblestone, and burns mark the columns, and the gatehouse… the gatehouse doesn’t exist anymore.

My father’s castle is a smouldering heap of rubble, not unlike the ruins of Jenga.

“No, no, nonono…” I barely recognize the croaky moan as my own voice. But it’s all I can say as I fall.

“So...do we all get to blow our bases, now?”

Mikah. Fucking Mikah.

Rob’s fished me from the void once again, bringing me back to where the group hovers over the ruins of Jenga. For that small mercy, I’m grateful. If I had to have this conversation while looking at the Castle I think I’d—I’d—

I don’t know what I’d do. Cry, probably. Cry harder. There are tears rolling down my cheeks in a ceaseless stream, but I’m not sobbing. I’m barely sniffling. The rage pooling beneath my skin keeps all that in check; bubbling and burning and begging for a target. I dive into it, letting it eat the last of my hesitation and weakness. Normally, I’d fight that impulse. Not tonight. Tonight one of these fuckers has betrayed me.

“You think this funny?”

Slowly, with every ounce of condescension he can muster, Mikah says, “I think it’s a game?”

“Ohhh, I get it. You think because you don’t give a shit, none of us should, either. Right? Just ‘c’est la vie’ and move the fuck on because ‘nothing matters, anyway.’ Am I close?”

Mikah sucks in a breath, but it’s Lucy who whistles and says, “Wow. That’s a load of assumptions. What the hell, girl?”

“Hey, now,” says Rob, moving his avatar between me and everyone else. Like that’s gonna do shit. “Let’s all back this train up.”

I take a deep breath. Rob’s the only one who saw the Castle. He’s the only one who knows. And I don’t care. This is the problem with my anger. It’s hard to think through it. The words seem to take a life of their own, leaping from my mouth the way they never will when I have control.

“Who did it?”

“Did what?” says Echo. “Calm down and—”

My voice is a ragged mess. “Who fucking blew my base?!”

Silence.

I wait for what feels like an eternity, wishing for once that I could look each and every one of them in the eye. I want to see which one of these assholes destroyed my father’s legacy.

No one steps forward.

“You’re all a bunch of cowards,” I say. “At least have the guts to admit it.”

The tides of war within me change. With no front to unite against, anger wanes before the ravages of grief. I press a hand over my mouth in a vain effort to muffle the first sob. But just as I reach for the disconnect button, Winston opens his mouth.

“It was me.”

Rob sounds almost as betrayed as I feel. “The fuck, man?”

“Oh come on, ‘dad’.” Winston laughs. He actually laughs. “Like Mikah said, it’s just a game. One we’re not allowed to play anymore, apparently, because Ms drama queen will have hysterics if someone touches her precious base.”

His amusement scrapes like sandpaper against my skin. “This isn’t funny, you asshole.”

“Isn’t it? You’re a grown ass woman having a meltdown over a pile of digital legos. It’s pretty fucking funny. Sad, but funny.”

“You are way out of line,” Rob says. “I told you we weren’t doing that tonight. It wasn’t the plan.”

Winston huffs. “Come off the high horse, old man. I know you got a weird ass 'thing’ with this one, but what exactly are you gonna do about it? Boot me? The server’s done. It’s roast. Excuse me for wanting it to go out in style.”

Mikah ‘hmphs’ in agreement.

“That’s not the—” Echo begins, but Lucy cuts him off.

“Look, I’m not condoning this—like, at all—but Ms… Neither of you gave us a reason to hold back. And you have to admit that was pretty great. Two bases trapped to go at once? From that distance? I kinda wanna know how he even did that.”

I want to punch her stupid, unblinking face. It’s a struggle to keep my fingers off the buttons. Lucy might be siding with the asshole, but her point hits home. I didn’t tell them. I purposely hadn’t told them. Was this my fault? My gut twists.

“Oh man,” Winston says. His usual, braggy tone is back as he explains, “So there’s this chain spell that people have rigged to automate farming equipment—”

“Hey, hey, hey,” Echo says, “Look, I’m just as interested, but maybe later, guys? Ms was going to tell us what’s up. Right?”

Logically, I know he’s trying to keep the peace. His assumption still rankles, and that’s enough to pull me back from the despair threatening to consume me.

“Why should I have to explain? I asked Rob to give me time. He agreed. Why can’t that be enough?”

Mikah scoffs. “Gee, I don’t know. Maybe because you were ruining it for the rest of us?”

“How?! We were having fun. We held the race. Everything was fine—”

“Everything was boring,” Winston says. “Same old BS. We could have been tearing shit up, spawning dungeon bosses; really stressing the system out until we killed it. Instead, we do the same old thing because you are being a special little princess.”

“I don’t want to agree,” Lucy hedges. She doesn’t say “but.” I still hear it.

And that’s it. All the rage, all the anger, drains away as quickly as it’d come. Mikah clearly agrees with them, though he’s actually kept his tongue for once. Small miracles, I guess. But Echo’s barely said anything, and Rob has fallen silent. There’s no one here on my side. Per fucking usual.

“Is that how you all feel? Is my presence that much of a burden to everybody?”

“No,” say Rob and Echo.

“Speak for yourself,” says Winston.

“Christ. Be more of a drama queen why don’t you?” says Mikah.

“Guys,” Lucy starts, but I’ve made up my mind.

I’ve already lost everything else; might as well lose them, too. It’s not like I ever needed them, anyway. I never needed anyone.

“Fine,” I say, and disconnect from the server.