Reeve looked back to the ledges toward which she had directed Nyx and found them crawling with kobolds, at least a dozen more than before, the reinforcements having appeared from small shadows in the rock she now realized were miniature caves or entrances to a larger cave. Some of the kobolds were leaping into the air to swoop toward her and her group. She flipped her naginata and drove the blade into the dirt, unshouldered her bow, and pulled an arrow from the quiver on her back. Nocking the arrow, she made a quick check of threats in her immediate vicinity before raising her aim and loosing a black-shafted, black-feathered, onyx-headed arrow that found the underside of the rope-gnawing kobold’s jaw, disappearing through the top of its skull and into the darkening sky. The kobold went limp, and its body fell, spiraling on limp wings like a propellor seed from a box elder tree. It crashed onto the top of the cage, which fell a sickening half-yard as another strand of the rope failed. Both half-elves looked from the crumpled body on top of their cage back down to Reeve, their expression suggesting they were less than impressed with their rescue thus far.

“Dad, get your pants up and find your knives. Mom, ohmagod, leave Dad’s butt alone. Where is your ax? Never mind. Stay here. The honey badger should offer some protection. I’m going to have to speed run this.”

Walter was pushing himself onto all fours.

Wanda’s right hand also came to rest on her waist, and she frowned at Reeve. “Well, it’s good to see you too, mija.” She paused and looked Reeve up and down. “But, actually, I’d forgotten how you looked in this game. No wonder I was having trouble finding you before I found these little fellows to follow. I thought they might lead me to you. And I thought they looked kind of like your…” Wanda gestured to take in Reeve’s towering half-orc avatar. “I guess not so much. Now, what did you say about going for a run? You know that getting too worked up triggers your asthma.”

Reeve stood for a few seconds, her lips slowly parting and closing a few times, then shook her head, slowly at first, the shaking becoming somewhat frantic before she turned, pulled the naginata from the ground, and ran toward the first ledge, willing Nyx to follow. As she ran, she heard what, based on the shrieks, was the honey badger finding the legs of another kobold that had approached her parents.

The cliff face looked alive, kobolds moving angrily along the ledges, some jumping into flight, the air increasingly filled with the beating of their ragged, purplish-green wings, a beating that Reeve felt in her chest more than she heard in her ears. Glancing toward the cage’s rope, she saw that no kobold had replaced the first, so she shouldered her bow and grasped the naginata’s staff with both hands. As she ran, she tried to avoid engaging the creatures that bounded or swooped toward her, each one she slowed to slay a delay she couldn’t afford.

As she approached the first ledge, which was only waist-high, Reeve thought, I’m sure a bunch of players have figured out how to speed run this. They just probably died over and over finding the best route. I don’t have to set a world record, I just need to do a decent job. On my first attempt.

She glanced back over her shoulder and saw her mother fiddling with her father’s left suspender as he tried to do something with his hammerspace and the honey badger bounded in an ever-shrinking circle, tearing into kobolds with a ferocity that caused Reeve envy, even as she turned to attempt something similarly ferocious.

Not slowing, she reached the first ledge and threw down her naginata flat on the ledge’s lip, swinging her legs up and then spinning as she pulled the naginata off the rock and around in an arc to decapitate the first kobold of the climb. Charging forward, she could see rising above her the next few ledges—a giant, steep, kobold-infested flight of stairs. She heard Nyx’s light pawfalls on the ledge behind her, and reaching out to the cheetah, she received a mental image confirming that Nyx had her back. Nearing the next kobold, she pulled back her naginata in her left hand, ready to launch it forward like a javelin, but, seeing the threat, the kobold jumped from the ledge and took a few ascending flaps with its wings before swooping back toward Reeve.

“Really?” She leaned forward and accelerated her pace. “I can work with that.” There was one more kobold before she’d need to vault onto the next ledge. She repeated the wind-up to spear the kobold and, like the previous, it leaped from the ledge and then circled back toward her, but its angle of attack was cramped by the previous kobold, who was still turning to claw at her from above the thus-far insubstantial drop to the ground off her right-hand side. Reeve swept the naginata through the air to her right, and the two kobolds she’d displaced, as well as others who had been flying toward her, scattered.

“Got it,” she said under her breath. As she vaulted onto the next ledge, she mentally directed Nyx back to aid the honey badger in protecting her parents, since the cheetah wouldn’t be able to defend the airspace off the ledge in the same way Reeve could. Reeve feinted at the kobold ahead of her, causing it to leap from the ledge, and then carried through the swing of the blade out away from the rock face, again scattering the half-dozen kobolds now jockeying for position to attack her from the side. If she could just flush them off the ledges and then keep them back using her naginata, she could make it to the top quickly.

Taking a rushed look back toward her parents, Reeve saw at least four kobolds in a writhing heap on the ground, the honey badger presumably somewhere under the attackers. Nyx was almost there, but she’d need to focus on a pair of kobolds flanking Wanda, who was working on Walter’s other suspender strap, while Walter frantically grasped at his hammerspace with one hand, a diffuse cloud of smoke surrounding him as he waved his bee smoker defensively with the other hand.

A rock as large as a bowling ball impacted the ledge in front of Reeve, sending stinging shards into her shins and requiring a reflexive jump that had her land awkwardly only a few yards in front of the next kobold, which, when she thrust her naginata, did not take flight.

“Ohno—“ Stumbling forward, Reeve’s blade plunged into the kobold, which, despite being impaled, stretched forward to grasp at Reeve with its claws.

“You’re different!” Reeve shouted, voice heightened by surprise. She used all her agility and core strength to alter the angle of the shaft as she kept rushing forward, the kobold’s clawed feet slipping across the ledge until it was pushed out over the now substantial drop, its body weight immediately pulling the shaft down and forcing Reeve to grasp it with both hands as she struggled to pick up her speed. “Get…off…” She gave the shaft a quick jerk and the kobold slid off.

Remembering the rock that had started the ungainly dance with the now-departed kobold, Reeve looked up just in time to dodge another dropped rock, this one nearly the size of a microwave. “Not good,” she said, looking from the kobolds swooping over her to those flying in from her side. She was only on the second ledge and she already had half the camp in a cloud around her. She glanced at her Combat Log.

You impale a Level 6 Kobold Warrior with a naginata for 15 points of damage.

You drop a Level 6 Kobold Warrior for 6 points of fall damage.

That one wasn’t even dead yet, she thought. Would their level keep going up with the ledges? Probably.

She reached the next kobold, which also didn’t take flight as she brandished her naginata. She thrust and nearly lost her balance when the creature dodged and grabbed the shaft with both claws. At the same moment, Reeve sensed growing fear from Nyx. Jerking the shaft of her weapon toward her, she pulled the kobold off balance and kicked it in the forehead as it fell. Her Combat Log scrolled longer, but she didn’t have time to check it. She ran a few more steps and scrambled onto the next ledge. Two kobolds stood side-by-side near its midpoint.

Reeve swept her blade in a wide arc through the air to ward off the cloud of flying kobolds that followed her. As she did, she looked back to see Nyx and the honey badger crouched, back to back, inside a circle of more than a dozen kobolds. Between them stood her parents, also back-to-back. Her father’s pants were again around his ankles, and as quickly as he could he was flinging random items from his hammerspace toward kobolds in the circle, his ledger being the item currently fluttering wildly through the air toward a confused target. Her mother appeared perplexed, hands back on hips, no apparent plans to contribute to the group’s defense.

If her dad died, he’d respawn not far from their current location. But if her mom died…

“New plan!” Reeve continued running along the ledge toward the pair of kobolds that blocked her increasingly unlikely speed run. They crouched and quarter-extended their wings, creating a barrier that spanned the width of the ledge. “Catch!” She heaved her naginata toward the captive half-elves, rolling the shaft from her fingers as she released it so that it spun about its axis and remained vertical as it rose high into the air.

The standing half-elf reached out from the cage and deftly caught the weapon by its shaft.

Almost to the kobolds, Reeve lowered her shoulder into position for a direct rush of their barrier, but, two yards short of colliding, she jumped and grasped a rough rope that hung down from a ledge some thirty feet up the cliff. Swinging through the air, she arched her back and then brought both boots forward and felt a satisfying crunch of bone as they connected with the two kobolds’ faces.

Continuing to ignore her scrolling Combat Log, she climbed the swaying rope as quickly as she could, hand over hand, legs flexing and extending as she gripped the rope between the arches of her feet. She made a mental note to work on Climbing, which had lagged some of her other general dexterity and strength skills.

“Evie! Not that way!” Walter’s voice found its way through her grunts of exertion and the frantic wingbeats of the cloud of kobolds that was rising up the cliff after her.

“Not now!” She didn’t turn toward him and instead looked up the cliff to the ledge, which was still fifteen feet away.

“It’s a dead e—” Walter’s warning terminated suddenly with a sound like a large book being dropped flat on the floor.

Reeve hazarded a glance over one shoulder but didn’t find her father. Instead, she was face-to-face with a kobold that slashed at her with its claws. She jerked her head away but took two deep gashes to the cheek. “Now is not the time!” She kicked the creature in the stomach, producing a whoosh of air from collapsing lungs, and was pleased when the kobold’s eyes widened and it plummeted straight down. She smiled, but only for a second, as the fallen kobold was quickly replaced by others, through all of which she saw her father rising from the ground, the honey badger next to him, dispatching whatever attacker had interrupted his previous shout.

He pointed above Reeve’s head. “Reeve, it’d a dead end! You won’t be able to go anywhere from that ledge!”

Reeve turned back to face the rock, hoping the incoming kobolds didn’t do too much damage before she reached the ledge. “I know!”

“It doesn’t connect to anything else!”

“I know!”

“If you come back down to the one you were on, you could keep going up. It’s kind of like a staircase.”

“Dad, I know!”

“Do you want us to come—“

Reeve whipped her head over her shoulder, able to scream only “Stay where you are!” before a kobold kicked her in the bridge of the nose, cackling when it saw its blow land.

Lights flashed across Reeve’s vision, and she smelled and tasted blood. “Not the time!” She took one hand from the rope and punched the kobold in the eye. She followed its cannonball descent for a moment before turning and climbing further. “Stay where you are!” She didn’t turn away from the rock, and shouted as loud as she could, hoping he’d hear her.

“Now,” her father shouted back, “if you can go back down and then up and to your right—“

“No!”

“Do you need us—“

“I need you to stop talking!” Reeve reached the ledge and was relieved to find that it was still empty, as it had been when she noted it in her original survey of the camp.

She turned and leaned back against the cliff wall, hoping to catch her breath, but immediately had to raise both arms to either side of her face to guard against the kobolds that rose up around her. Looking past the throng of furious creatures, she found herself several yards away from, and a couple yards above, the caged half-elves.

“You needed us to mind this for you?” The standing half-elf said, gesturing with her free hand at the naginata she held outside the cage. “Would you like it back now?”

“Nah. I’ll come get it.”