“Whuuun urth rrrruuu duuun ihnnnaa plahzz luhhheyyy ihhhsss?”

Reeve scrunched her face and tried to mentally turn down the base in the twiceling’s voice. “W-what am I doing in a place like this?” Reeve said. “What are you doing in a twiceling? And how did you find us? We’re three weeks travel from the kobold camp.”

The twiceling’s response was just as deep, but it was now easier for Reeve to decipher its words. “I didn’t start in the woods this time, but under the gate into this town.” Wanda waved a hand to take in Werfendale, knocking splinters of wood from an already unsound-looking crossbeam as she did.

“Oh, right. I saw there’s an automatic spawn update checkpoint. The game must have spawned you at the point nearest the party. But a twiceling?”

“When I’d decided I should come back into the game, I couldn’t figure out where my little hairy-lady character had gone, so I looked through all the choices and thought I’d try this.” Reeve was pretty sure the sound her mother then made was a girlish giggle on the inside, but on the outside the twiceling emitted a thunderous rumble that caused the table of gnomes behind her, only just settling down after her passage, to turn and wave fists while cursing loudly and at length. One threw an empty flagon that bounced off the back of Wanda’s head without her seeming to notice. “Between this and your father,” the twiceling winked at Reeve, “we make a wholeling.”

“Ohmagod, Mom. It’s been bad enough dealing with Dad’s jokes for the last three weeks. Do you know how many Lord of the Rings puns he’s come up with? It’s ‘Frodon’t mind if I do,’ when the twins offer him something at dinner, and it’s ‘look who’s a half-cling’ when I have to piggy-back him.”

“Your papá is the best,” the twiceling said.

Reeve’s eye twitched, and she wondered for the thousandth time whether being trapped in this world would leave her with a permanent tick IRL. “But you managed to get yourself back into the neural interface, that’s good.”

“Get back in?”

“Yeah.” Reeve looked at her mother for a moment. “No?”

“I never left it. I was looking at the different people you can choose.”

Reeve’s eyelid twitched again. “You spent the whole time you were gone,” Reeve glanced at her UI, “something like forty minutes—which was three weeks for us in here—in the lobby, looking at different character races?”

“That’s how I chose this twiceling.”

“And in all that time you didn’t try logging us out?”

“Do you need me to?”

Speechless, Reeve looked away from her mother and found herself looking into the darkness of the fallen elf’s cowl. “Oh, right, sorry, just give us a minute.”

“Of course. Family comes first, twiceling’s offspring.”

“Oh…good, now you too,” Reeve said and turned back to her mother. “Yes, I need you to log out—but wait! Before you do it, listen. When you’re in the lobby, under the avatars of the members of your party—me and Dad—there’s an option to ‘Recall Party.’ I need you to do that, OK? It’ll give us an option to join you in the lobby, and if we don’t respond you’ll eventually be able to force us to come out.”

“Recall party,” the twiceling rumbled.

“Exactly. Wait! Before you go, give me anything you have in your Inventory. Even if you’re pretty quick, since the lobby runs at real time, we may be stuck in here for several more hours or days. Your inventory could be useful to us.”

The huge twiceling nodded. “Like your father showed me?”

“Yes, like that. Think of what you want, reach back to your hammerspace, and then grasp and pull forward.”

“Mija, let me figure it out. Otherwise, I won’t learn,” Wanda said. With confidence, the twiceling reached behind her, firmly grasped the head of one of the gnomes sitting at the round table, and whipped the surprised creature forward to hold, upside down, above the table at which Reeve sat.

“Mother of pearl,” Reeve said jumping up, her chair hitting the wall behind her. She found herself face to face with the gnome. Or, almost face to face, as her mother’s twiceling hand was wrapped entirely around the creature’s head and shoulders, engulfing its face as its rigid body held its tiny pointed shoes toward the ceiling.

“I didn’t know I had that in my inventory,” Wanda said with the heavy twiceling accent. The tavern was silent. A muffled howl seeped out of her closed hand and the gnome’s legs began to flail.

“No respect!” A gnome behind Wanda cried.

“For gnomedom!” Another shouted, and the table of gnomes went berserk.

Dusk just managed to rise from her chair before the gnomes began landing on the twiceling, some bouncing off to tumble to the table at which the fallen elf still sat showing no signs of concern for the fray, save for leaning back and drawing the steaming mug away from the precipitating gnomes.

“Mom! Log out! Log out now!” Reeve thrust her naginata into the corner, its length a liability in the close-quarters brawl that was spreading out from the table of gnomes like waves from a rock thrown into a pond. Two gnomes were hanging from her mother’s arm, which still clasped a third. Three other gnomes were now on the table between them, and, as those gnomes stood, they turned with murderous eyes toward Reeve and Dusk. Even while standing on the table, they rose only to Reeve’s waist. Confronted by the tiny creatures, Reeve felt ridiculously Over Powered. She didn’t want to fight these undersized mites. She raised her palms. “Listen,” she said, “there’s no need—“

“Prepare to die, filthy orc-blood!” One screamed. In unison, the three drew from almost invisible scabbards the thinnest rapiers Reeve had ever seen, like six-inch hypodermic needles.

Like her father, Reeve really did not like needles, it being one of the few phobias she’d inherited from him. She felt less OP. “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” She said, and she and Dusk both pressed back against the chairs that blocked their further retreat.

One gnome lunged at Reeve, and she threw her hips sideways to avoid being pierced. The other two thrust at Dusk, who fell back into her chair to remove herself from range. The gnomes advanced toward the edge of the table.

Reeve and Dusk looked at each other.

“Neutrality will not serve us well,” Dusk said.

Reeve looked at her mother, whose thick skin the hanging gnomes were attempting to pierce with their teeth or wrestle loose their rapiers to attempt the same. Beyond the twiceling, enraged gnomes on the other side of the round table, those who couldn’t quickly get at the primary source of their anger, had thrown themselves at the nearest tavern patron they could accost. Once the gnomes left their seats, they were generally not visible above the level of the tables or the seated or standing patrons, and so Reeve could only gage their progress into the crowd by the dancelike maneuvers the tavern patrons were using to, like Reeve and Dusk, attempt to avoid the gnomes’ rapiers.

“Mom!” Reeve deepened her voice to be heard through the tumult. “Log out, now!”

The twiceling looked up, a gnome hanging from her nose by one hand as it tried to grasp the hilt of its blade with the other. “What about my inventory items?” Wanda said. Before Reeve could respond, Wanda swung her free hand behind her, where she grasped an abandoned flagon and swung it forward to hold upside down above Reeve’s table, the flagon’s contents quickly emptying onto one of the gnomes that had been threatening Dusk.

“Now!” Reeve yelled.

“Now give me a chance,” Wanda said, dropping the flagon, which fell onto the drenched gnome like a wooden straightjacket, covering it to its thighs and causing it to begin weaving unsteadily around the tabletop. Wanda swung her free hand behind her again and, with a huge bucktoothed grin, produced from her Inventory a large burlap bag within which something struggled against the rough cloth.

“What is that?” Reeve shouted, jerking her hips in the other direction as the gnome attacked again.

Wanda’s eyes appeared to lose focus as she looked at her UI. “Bag of teeth.” Her grin faded. “And two undead ferrets.”

“Out now!” Reeve yelled again.

Wanda William’s twiceling avatar suddenly disappeared, dropping confused gnomes and a bag containing teeth and undead ferrets, presumably also confused, to the planked floor.

Wanda has left the game.

“Good,” Reeve said to herself with a release of breath, “I wouldn’t want her to see this,” and she looked down at the nearest gnome and punched it in the face.