The sight of the town wall broke through the trees ahead of Faye and she allowed herself a careful sigh. It was all she could do to put one foot in front of the other.

The gates were fastened securely, obviously, and for a panicked second Faye froze.

How do I get back in? she asked herself.

When she’d escaped the town earlier that night, she hadn’t really thought this far ahead. As far as she’d known, she had needed to escape the town and level up. There was no thought to coming back, food, shelter, or even letting someone know where she was going — obviously, they would have one hundred percent tried to have stopped her if she had.

Forcing her feet to shuffle forward again, Faye put thoughts of past mistakes aside. What was done was done and they couldn’t take her levels from her.

She stumbled.

They can’t take my levels, right?

She had no answers, and it wasn’t as if her system would give her anything. It hadn’t ever before now. She swallowed and shook her head. She’d burn that bridge when she got to it.

The gate towered above her. There was no way she could scale the wall, the gate, or break through.

She stewed on it for a full minute before the solution popped into being.

“Hey there, on the gate!” she shouted. It was as loud as she could make her voice. It came out wavering and much weaker than she’d thought it would. “Open up!” That call had been better.

Not by much, but better.

Just before she was about to give up and slide down to settle at the base of the gate, a helmeted head appeared over the parapet.

It took her in with a single glance, then disappeared again as fast as it had appeared.

The next second, a small gate within the full gate opened. Faye was certain it had a name, but she couldn’t think of it. Whoever it was that had emerged brought a torch with them, which was bright enough to blind her. Squinting against the flare of flames in the person’s hand, she shaded her eyes with a hand.

“Do you mind?” she said. “If we’re going inside, can we make it quick?”

A hand grabbed her and hoisted her up in a single, effortless motion. She wasn’t sure when she’d ended up on the floor, but she was soon inside the town walls once more.

The guard’s shoulder, she assumed it was a guard anyway, wasn’t very comfortable but it was solid and secure. She promptly fell asleep.

Someone jostled her awake.

“Faye, oh by the gods, what happened?!”

She swatted away the hand fluttering in front of her face.

“No, stop it, I’m asleep.”

“Faye, what happened to you? Are you okay, are you healthy?”

She ignored the questions. Why wouldn’t they let her sleep?

Some kind of warmth entered her body, driving away a small modicum of the deep-seated weariness that was assaulting her, but it wasn’t nearly enough.

Opening her eyes, Faye tried to take in her surroundings, but everything was blurry, and she couldn’t focus on anything.

“Get some help, will you? Stop standing there and do something!”

Rushing footsteps and harried voices echoed all around her. She wasn’t sure what was going on, but it seemed urgent.

She realised she wasn’t moving any longer. In fact, she was on a rather uncomfortable bench, it seemed like. At least that bright light had been put out.

The moment she thought that a light source was raised near her face. She cringed back from it.

“Ow, that hurts.”

“Faye! Gods, why do you keep getting yourself into these situations?” a young, feminine voice said. Something about it jogged her memory but she couldn’t place it. “What happened to her?”

“I heard something outside the Southern Gate. Wasn’t sure what it was, but when I looked and saw her, half dead on her feet, I opened the gate and brought her here immediately.”

“The Southern Gate? Were there any signs of monsters nearby?”

“No, miss, none at all. It looked like she’d just wandered in after days walking through the woods.”

Faye let the voices waft over her. She was sure that she should pay attention, but it was hard to concentrate.

A cool hand turned to pleasant warmth as it was placed on her forehead.

“I’m not sure, they’re fetching a healer. Did you use a Skill on her?”

“Not me, miss, but those adventurers cast something.”

“Of course they did, don’t they remember the last time?” the woman hissed. “Faye?” her voice said, getting closer to Faye’s ear. “Faye, can you hear me?”

Faye tried to say yes, but it didn’t come out. Instead, she nodded.

“She’s incoherent,” the voice said.

That’s Maggie, she thought. I remembered.

She wasn’t sure what Maggie was doing but Faye stopped trying to listen and drifted off into the darkness once again.

Faye was in her childhood home. The TV was on in the background, its low droning noise too quiet to interrupt the conversation.

She hadn’t been paying attention, but suddenly she realised she could hear her mother’s voice but not the words. It was as if she was speaking a different language.

I don’t understand.

Faye looked up and saw her mother and her aunt talking together, laughing at a shared joke. The table between them festooned with half-empty plates with triangles of sandwiches littered across them and still hot mugs of tea carefully manoeuvred as each woman talked, plumes of smoke rose from the ashtray and the cigarettes in their hands, creating a small haze near the ceiling.

You haven’t smoked in years, mum, she said. Why are you smoking again?

Neither her mother nor her aunt turned to look at her. They carried on speaking in a language she couldn’t understand.

There was a noise behind her, and for a moment Faye was paralysed. She knew what that sound meant and she couldn’t face it. She heard something else. Turning to look she—

Light, fire, and uncontrollable energy slammed into Faye’s chest.

She sat up straight on the bench, crying out.

“Ahhh! Oh my God, what the bloody hell was that?!”

From the shouts of surprise around her they hadn’t expected that reaction from her. Faye felt like her heart was about to burst, her heart was flying at a million miles per hour. She jumped off the bench that they had laid her out on.

She flapped her hands, trying to bleed off some energy. She shifted from foot to foot.

“Okay, that is not pleasant. Please don’t do that again. Who did that? I feel all… what’s the word? Fuzzy? Bubbly. No, no… electric?”

Maggie came to stand before her, she was holding her hands out as if to try and contain Faye’s movements.

“Faye, hello, hi? Are you… what are you… how?”

Maggie’s face was crumpled in confusion, which, Faye thought, mirrored her own feelings rather accurately when she really examined herself.

She had no idea where she was, how she’d gotten here, or what they had done to her.

“Hi, Mags. What did you do to me?”

A man in an immaculately clean set of white robes stepped forward from the edge of the room. He looked a little shell shocked.

“That was me, I’m a Guild healer,” he said. “You weren’t responding. We were worried that you were seriously injured. The spell I cast has never had this kind of reaction before.”

“You need to work on your apologies, mister, ‘cause that was the worst one I’ve ever heard,” Faye said. She turned back to Maggie. “Alright, so it feels like you hit me with a thousand volts of electricity and gave me a shot of epinephrine to the heart for good measure.”

Faye turned around, dancing on the spot, throwing her arms around as if she were getting ready for a gym session.

“I — man this feels gross — I really need to run.”

“That’s probably not advisable,” the healer started, but before he could say much more Faye held up a finger to her lips.

“Shush, mister healer man.”

The healer stared at her, then turned to Maggie. “She is obviously not in need. Can I return to the adventurer and guard?”

“Of course, Kyrk, thank you for coming.”

The healer didn’t reply but stalked from the room. Faye scoffed.

“Rude.”

Maggie rolled her eyes. “Kyrk is a very pleasant person, normally. Not their fault that you reacted to the spell like you did.”

Faye was walking from one end of the room to the other. She was inside the Guild again; she was fairly sure.

“Did the guard bring me here?” she asked. She couldn’t remember anything past getting to the wall.

“Yes,” Maggie said, frowning. “Faye you—”

Maggie’s words were cut off suddenly when the door opened again, and the Administrator stalked inside. With her were Arran and Gavan. They both looked grim, until they saw Faye walking from one side of the room to the other.

“Hi guys, where’s Ailith, she okay? Did you get the guards back? What was it that was out there? Did anyone get hurt?”

Arran spluttered. As Faye walked around them, giving them a close inspection, she noticed that their gear was wet. They had obviously been outside. They both looked like they had been fighting. Gavan’s face was drawn and haggard. She wasn’t sure what it was, but he was obviously in a little pain.

“Gavan looks peaky. Arran what did you make him do? You know you shouldn’t treat your teammates this way.”

“What?!” Arran exclaimed. “You! You went outside the town, again, Faye! Without us, this time. Celestials above, what is wrong with you? At least Gavan had me and Ailith there with him.”

“If you keep doing this,” Gavan said, “you will get yourself killed.”

His eyes bore into hers. He was deadly serious. Unfortunately, whatever the healer had done to her just wasn’t letting her stay still. She nodded and bounced around them a little more.

“Well, you’re both looking okay… Ailith must be with the guard, right? Who was it, are they okay?”

At the mention of Ailith, the other’s faces dropped into guarded expressions.

Before they could say anything, or Faye could ask them what they were so angry about, the Administrator coughed.

Faye spun around to look at the woman. She was standing ramrod straight in the centre of the room, looking Faye in the eye.

“I am not used to being ignored quite so thoroughly.”

Faye shrugged. “Sorry.”

“It seems that our town’s newest resident is no longer unclassed,” the Administrator said. She raised an eyebrow. “Ordinarily, I would offer congratulations.”

Faye shrugged again. She wasn’t surprised. They were pissed. She would have been, too, if she’d been in the Administrator’s shoes. Some woman not paying attention to the rules and doing what she wants? Yeah, recipe for anger for sure.

“But this is far from ordinary,” the Administrator continued. “You disobeyed our direct orders. You defied social convention. You ignored the thoughts and feelings of those around you. You ran into the forest in the middle of the night. What possessed you to do such a thing?”

Faye walked to stand before the Administrator, with her perfect posture, imperious tone and regal bearing, looked her straight in the eye and pointed up at her own face.

“I am not stupid. It was a dangerous thing to do, but it paid off. You said so yourself. I will not stay locked up in this town for years whilst waiting for the world to naturally decide I get to level!”

There was silence in the room.

Faye realised she had started shouting, but part of her didn’t care.

“You keep talking about rules, about convention and protecting the weak. Well, good, you’re doing what you know you should be and you’re keeping literal kids safe. Good for you. You all grew up here. In this world. Doing whatever it is that you do. I didn’t. I grew up somewhere where you didn’t know what you were walking into because there was no system telling you things.”

She spun away and looked at the other three people in the room. Maggie looked stricken and kept glancing at the Administrator as if she was watching a dangerous beast. Arran and Gavan were just shocked.

“I still don’t have a system that tells me things. I’m figuring this out as best I can from the scraps of information that I can gather. You’re not making this easy for me. And I can’t for the life of me figure out why. Part of me thinks that you don’t want me to level. Why else would you refuse to tell me how it all works?”

She turned back to the Administrator, her stony expression hadn’t changed since Faye had started speaking, though she’d lowered her head a little, and didn’t seem to be looking down her nose at Faye anymore.

“This world is obviously dangerous. Last night I saw a guard get dragged away from the gate by something, and then watched one of the only friends I have run out to stop whatever it was. Where I come from, that’s things that only superheroes do. They wield mighty power, save the innocent, and get loads of praise. The problem with that? They’re bloody well made up! In my world, heroes are regular people that do amazing things against all odds. They don’t get magic powers.”

She tapped her arm.

“Whatever that healer put into me before? It’s jazzed me up so much that I can barely think straight. I went from half dead from exhaustion to feeling like I should be running around the town walls all day. That’s not normal. And you want me to sit in here, silently, barely able to understand what’s going on… for years? Well, I have news for you, lady. Fuck that.”

In the silence after her tirade, she stared at all four of them in turn. Daring them to say something. Anything.

“You’re level five now?” Arran said. He was watching her carefully, though he glanced at the Administrator as he said it.

“Yeah, level five. I have my class, too. I’m a swordfighter, though… duh. Of course I am. I’ve been a swordfighter for years already! That’s what your stupid system doesn’t seem to understand.”

Maggie, Arran, and Gavan’s in-drawn breaths made her pause for a moment.

“What did I say?” she asked.

“Your class,” Arran asked, “Is Swordfighter?”

She even heard the way he capitalised the class name when he said it.

“Yeah, why? Is that bad?”

In answer, Arran just looked at the Administrator. Who sighed, then lifted a hand and suddenly a tablet of some kind appeared in it.

“Swordfighter,” the Administrator said. “We, fortunately, have a lot of information on that class. It is obviously a combat-focused class, using any form of blade — though the link with any sword is clearer and stronger.”

“Are you really telling me that the class called sword-fighter is better with swords? Do I have to tell you again that I’m not stupid?” Faye said.

“Faye,” Arran said, “The Administrator is doing her job. You said you wanted to know more about the system? Well, listen to her. She knows more than anyone else in the town.”

Faye glowered, tried crossing her arms, but couldn’t contain that wild energy that had been flowing through her since she’d opened her eyes. She danced on the spot.

“Alright, sorry, go ahead.”

The Administrator simply inclined her had a fraction.

“We don’t know what the attribute growth is like for the class, but we can assume it is physically oriented.” The Administrator glanced at the tablet in her hand again. “There are no special restrictions placed on the class. You will be granted entry into the Guild at priority status, particular here in Lóthaven. And, lastly, we have someone that can train you in the class skills.”

Here, Arran made a face, but when the Administrator turned to him, he smoothed it out into a blank mask.

“As for your previous orders, consider them rescinded. You now are given secondary training duties for our newest recruit. We cannot allow this opportunity to go to waste.”

“Hold on,” Faye said. “What are the rules for joining the Guild? Do I have to agree to something? Is it a contract? A job? A… I don’t know, am I being press-ganged? Can I say no?”

The Administrator looked, for a second, shocked. She then carefully said, “I’m not sure anyone has asked whether they were able to turn down an offer to join the Guild before.” She pursed her lips for a moment. “But, in light of your earlier… comment, I can understand it in these circumstances.”

“Ma’am, if you don’t care to explain everything, I’m sure I can handle Faye’s questions,” Maggie said. She bowed her head a little when the Administrator looked at her. “I will need to speak to Faye regarding the basics as part of my duties anyway.”

The Administrator considered Faye for a moment, then nodded. “Very well. If there’s nothing else?”

At Faye’s shrug, the Administrator nodded again, then swept out of the room.

When the door swung shut, they all turned to Faye again.

“By the Celestials, you’re going to get me fired,” Maggie muttered.

“Never mind being fired, she’ll burn us to a crisp,” Arran said. He shook his head, then he pointed at the door. “Let’s go see Ailith. Tell her the news.”

“Hold on a second!” Faye said, and the others all stopped to stare at her. She huffed and put her hands on her hips, then the energy running wildly through her body made her throw her arms out and jog on the spot again. “So, what, everything changes now, just like that? That’s kinda messed up. Last time she spoke to me she treated me like the muck on the bottom of her shoe, all brown and stinky and messy… she treated me like shit, guys, and suddenly it’s different? I don’t get it. I shouldn’t complain but—”

Maggie held up her hands, “Faye, I know it’s hard but try and calm down for a second.”

“Tell healer man he went and messed up; this isn’t going away.”

“Kyrk was doing their job, Faye. As for the Administrator…” Maggie looked askance at the door. “She is a mystery at the best of times.”

“The short of it,” Arran said, “is that your class is very valuable. Especially in a place like Lóthaven.”

“Valuable?” Faye asked, raising her hands above her head. “How valuable? Will I get paid? How much will I get paid? I still don’t understand your currency much.”

“It will take some explaining…” Maggie said, pointing at the door, “but really, let’s go see how the guardian is doing?”

Faye nodded and bounced toward the door.

The electric feeling running across her body just would not let her move normally. Arran and Gavan struck up the tale of the fight as they went at Faye’s prodding.

Maggie followed them from the room, listening as eagerly as Faye to Arran’s story. Each step of the way, Faye felt a little lighter, a little better.

She had been right. Results mattered here, probably more than they ever had, back home, as long as she levelled up and proved to them that there was something she could do other than sit around uselessly.