1

Damon’s crew reached the western group just before sundown, crossing north over the flooded valley. By then, Zack and the Alabama orcs had woven the foliage into the tent skeleton. Harper and Kylah had a fire blazing a safe distance away. Ironically, after helping build the tent, Hammer had drawn the short straw on the sentry duty. He accepted the role quietly and without complaint.

The team huddled around the fire for twenty minutes, trying to warm themselves before settling into the tent. Damon told the team he expected they’d reach the tower the next day. “From there, I want to move quickly to the second tower.”

“Or dungeon,” Harper clarified then added. “It’s too bad the valley got flooded. We could have collected those hair samples we found in the snake’s lair. And there were bodies around the perimeter too.” She sighed. “But it looks they’ve been washed away.”

“Or eaten by the bunyips,” Angie replied.

Silo criticized the veterans for not collecting the DNA samples earlier, but the teammates were too tired to challenge him and decided to call it a day. As the team shuffled toward the tent, Zahra gazed at the stars and said, “I wonder how Keshon, Jordan, and Emma are doing.”

A few members paused, but no one answered.

2

Madison “Hammer” Hayes stood perched at the top of the small hill, scanning the dark blue landscape. He wasn’t high enough to peer over the treetops, but he could see enough of the perimeter to grant him a head start if anything attacked.

The night was quiet except for the occasional howl of a bunyip from the nearby river. Hammer prided himself in being an accomplished outdoorsman and knew that the bunyips likely only howled when they were attacking or were in danger.

As he clutched his gladius sword, he surveyed the surrounding territory. Loads of water had seeped up through the land, transforming what was once a dry section of forest into an extended bog. Moonlight shimmered off the large pools of water scattered throughout. The Alabama orc shook his head at the sight. Even with their boots, he knew the team had a miserable trek ahead of them and they were going to be slowed down slogging through all that mud.

He cast Basic Heal on himself. Harper had informed him of how the spell could alleviate his fatigue. He chuckled, thinking about his new reality and the notion that he was actually performing magic. He heard twigs snap behind him and whipped around to see what was approaching.

Sierra was tiptoeing out of the tent. “I can’t sleep. In fact, I don’t know how any of them can. Your buddy and Zack are snoring like a pair of elephants.”

Hammer chuckled as the dark-haired Grimalkin mage pulled up alongside him. Before he could stop himself, he gazed down at her cleavage, and she caught him. “That’s not very southern gentlemanly of you,” she remarked at the towering orc.

He laughed nervously. “I’m sorry. I just think those tattoos are outstanding.”

She drew her loose jack of plates armor tighter around her chest. “Outstanding, eh?” she asked slyly. Hammer smiled but said nothing more.

3

As the night wore on, Hammer and Sierra sat near the fire and chatted about their lives back home. She told him that she was a physical trainer working out of Los Angeles and mentioned the few big names she had worked with. He told her what it was like in the Navy.

“And now we may never get back to either,” she muttered.

Hammer nodded. “I reckon that’s a strong possibility.” He leaned on his elbow and drew closer to Sierra, something that didn’t go unnoticed by the blue-furred Grimalkin mage. “So, what else makes you tick?” he asked.

She glanced at the gray-eyed orc, studying him. “You and Jackson are pretty different,” she commented, not answering his question.

Hammer laughed. “Yeah, we go back to high school. He’s a trifle loud. He can have a temper, which you haven’t seen. But he’s game for anything.” He paused. “He’s a good friend and has helped me through some difficult times.”

Although Sierra was intrigued by his response, she sensed he didn’t want to discuss the matter any further. “Martial arts,” she said.

Hammer had been picking at the grass and glanced up at her. “Huh?”

Sierra winked. “You asked me what I’m into.”

“Oh… oh yeah, hmmm, that’s interesting,” he stammered. “Which ones?”

“Ah, mostly taekwondo and kickboxing,” she answered, then added, “I can take care of myself.”

The blonde-haired orc chuckled. “Yeah. I’ve noticed.”

Sierra grinned and peeked at him for a bare moment. Then she leaned away and tossed more kindling into the campfire. Sparks surged upward toward the midnight sky. “And you?” she asked.

He gazed at her, confused for a second. “Oh, yeah, I love construction work, but you probably figured that by now. My other hobbies are hunting, fishing, and playing guitar.”

Sierra raised her eyebrows. In the moment before she asked what he liked to play, she imagined the tall orc strumming an acoustic guitar, kicking out bluegrass or country with Jackson and a bunch of hillbillies. She chuckled discreetly, then asked him the question.

“I play lead guitar,” he said. “Mostly metal, and a lot of Zeppelin.”

She smiled at the mention of the band, which had performed its last concert almost a century before. “You’re really turning back the clock on that one.”

Hammer grunted. “Yeah, but no one’s ever played like Jimmy Page before or since.”

The Grimalkin mage laughed. “You’re not like any southerner I know.” She paused. “Well, except for the hunting and fishing part.”

The traces of a smile graced his features, but as she was already becoming accustomed to, Hammer reserved further comment. She leaned back on the grass and gazed up at the night sky while sneaking peeks at the chiseled orc. They didn’t speak for the next twenty minutes, taking turns yawning. Then Heinrich emerged from the tent. The healer said he couldn’t sleep either. Another victim of the two snoring orcs.

“If you’d like,” he said, “I can take over the sentry duty. See if you catch a few winks.”

Sierra and Hammer welcomed the gracious offer. They slipped into the tent and found an open space to the right of the huddled bodies. They lay beside each other, whispered their goodnights, and fell asleep within five minutes.

4

Heinrich had been a young, fair-haired, and fair-skinned nurse when he transferred to the realms, and he’d retained many of the same features as a healer. After Cloud Nine had tweeted a vague post about the Epiphany job, the German nurse from Tampa had seized upon the opportunity. When they’d selected him and ordered him to report the very next day, Heinrich had thought it was a stroke of much-needed good luck.

Five months before Will Harris got himself smuggled into the banned game world, Heinrich had been diagnosed with a rare form of macular degeneration. “You’re one of the point-zero-zero-five percent, my friend,” his ophthalmologist had informed him. The prognosis got worse from there. He was told that he’d be legally blind before his thirtieth birthday. At that point, his career in medicine would be over.

But the same technological marvels that allowed humans to transfer into a quantum game world had also applied to other disciplines. A leading biomedical firm out of Germany had developed an implantable retinal lens interface that would send visual cues to the back of his brain. Out of Germany, of all places, Heinrich thought.

“I wish I had a cigarette,” he sighed as he scanned the midnight landscape. He had slipped past the basic physical exams Cloud Nine had arranged for the new recruits easily enough. The disease was in its early stages and symptoms hadn’t yet developed. They wouldn’t have detected it even if they knew what to look for, he mused derisively of the C9 med crew that barely passed as doctors.

So, Heinrich had signed onto the realms adventure, hoping it would give him the cash to get a brand new set of eyes. Instead, like the other rookies, he’d been stranded in a digital landscape with the same gloomy prognosis.

“Fuck,” the blonde healer scowled. He stepped up to the fire and breathed in the smoke. His nostrils filled with the aromatic scent of burned wood, but it didn’t satiate his need for a cigarette. He circled the tent to relieve his boredom. The woods that surrounded them were black silhouettes as the pools of water reflected a dull, moonlit blue. He stared up at the stars, wondering how Cloud Nine could make a digital construct look so real. He turned to go back to the fire when a whisper reached his ears, stopping him in his tracks.

5

“You’ve got to help us,” Jordan and Emma pleaded from the edge of the woods. Injured and leaning on each other for support, they staggered into the clearing that surrounded the knoll.

Heinrich walked down the incline. “What’s going on? Where’s Keshon?” he asked as he continued toward his teammates.

Emma nodded to the trees. “We couldn’t carry her anymore,” she said breathlessly. “She’s back there… about a hundred yards.” She stared at him. “I think she’s dying. We have to hurry. Please come help her.”

The German nurse looked back at the tent and considered waking the other members.

“Come on, man,” Jordan pressed. “We don’t have time. Let’s fucking go!”

Heinrich’s instincts took over. He bolted into the woods ahead of the two hobbled veterans, easily outpacing them. “Which way?” he called to them.

“Just keep going straight,” Emma replied from behind him.

As he ran further into the forest, the swamp got deeper and water ran into his boots. But he could see Keshon now. She was unconscious and partially submerged in the muddy water, but her head and shoulders were propped against the bulging roots of a tree. Still running, Heinrich glanced over his shoulder. Jordan and Emma were right behind him but they were hobbled by their injuries. Even in the muted moonlight, the German nurse saw crimson stains on their armor.

“What happened?” he asked.

“We were attacked,” Emma cried, and just then her eyes turned black for an instant.

She still has that glitch inside her, Heinrich thought.

He reached Keshon and saw that her stomach had been torn open. Her leather armor was ripped to shreds and blood squirted steadily from the circular wound.

Keshon opened her eyes. “Help me,” she gasped and started trembling fiercely. “Puh… please, help me!”

Heinrich pressed his hands against her stomach to suppress the bleeding, but the wound was too large. He cast Mana Heal, draining his reserves.

Jordan and Emma arrived, leaned against him, and pressed their palms against the injury too. They cast Basic Heal, but the spell appeared ineffective. Vaguely, Heinrich felt the weight of their bodies against his chest. He slid on the mud deeper into the pool, but he kept his hands pressed against the injury and waited for his mana to replenish.

“Don’t let me die. Don’t let go,” Keshon howled as her eyes swelled with fear. “Don’t let go.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he urged. “Hang on. I’ll get you through this.” He cast another round of Mana Heal, and Heinrich saw the wound close even more. If I can just minimize the bleeding, we can get her back to the tent, he thought.

Although the German nurse never saw it, the apparitions that held him down in the water were wrapped in seaweed. The nøkken’s flat, green eyes shone against the dead gray skin of their bloated faces.

But the Keshon illusion never changed. Heinrich clutched the chewed remains of a long-dead bunyip and saw only the teammate he was trying to save. The real Keshon lay asleep, miles away, under a wooden arch.

The nøkken pushed his body below the surface of the muddy water. The German nurse registered it as a brief shortness of breath, which he attributed to the stress of the event. He never stopped trying to save Keshon, even as the life was drained from his body.

As the last bubbles of air left his depleted lungs, Heinrich drowned under less than three inches of water. The water spirits that held him down drooled as their razor-sharp teeth gleamed in the gloomy swamp.

Heinrich had no knowledge of his own death. His mind seamlessly transitioned from the panicked scene to gray nothingness. Soon after, the nøkken removed his brigandine armor, wrapped his body in seaweed, and feasted on his flesh.