“All I’m saying, Evie, is that maybe they got sidetracked, and we should go find the food ourselves.” Walter stared down at the water of the pool, which had shown no signs of activity since the twins’ departure with the three robed elves.

Reeve paced, still mulling over the implications of the updated, more open version of the story mode, which seemed profoundly different in many ways, yet unchanged in that she still couldn’t find a way to log out. “Sure, Dad. Give it a try,” she said without thought, her focus on whether they should continue pursuing the twins’ storyline, which now seemed to be a dead-end, or look for some other objective.

As Reeve kept walking, mumbling to herself, Walter’s stomach grumbled, and he decided he’d quickly pop downstairs using the water elevator and see what he could find in the way of a snack. He’d already consumed everything edible in his Inventory, and he knew all too well how often his little body needed to eat lest he start feeling weak and shaky. He inched to the edge of the pool and cautiously extended one bare foot to place weight on its surface like the twins had. Met with only the negligible resistance of water tension, his foot slid straight through, and he fell face-first into the pool with a suddenness that startled even him, despite his growing résumé of fall-related accidents.

Roused from her ruminations by the splash, Reeve spun to find a head already rising out of the water, but it was not her father. It was the male elf who’d accompanied the female boss elf during the earlier visit. He was smiling giddily, and as he rose farther Reeve saw that he was holding Walter’s sputtering halfling under one arm while in the other carrying a wooden platter covered with fruits and nuts. The elf and the food were dry, Walter was not.

The elf stepped out of the pool and reverently placed Walter on legs that were already starting to shiver. Walter’s wet robe clung tightly to his tiny frame, and Reeve thought he looked something like a halfling hourglass—the robe wrapping around bulging arms then narrowing to a tiny chest and thighs before flaring back out unexpectedly around his lower legs, all perched over large, hairy feet. Reeve squinted at Walter’s lower legs. “Whatcha got going on there, Dad?”

Walter looked down and crossed his arms, the shivering beginning to migrate up his body. “I have leveled a few times.”

“You’ve been putting it all into Charisma and Strength?“

Walter nodded and bent to peel his robe up from massive, muscled calves. “I’m still getting the hang of how to apply the Strength points.”

Reeve sucked at the gap in her teeth. “What’s your Charisma now?“

“Forty-eight.“

“That would explain your not-so-secret admirer here.” Reeve gestured to the elf, who was staring adoringly at Walter, waiting, it seemed, to be graced with the halfling’s attention.

Walter looked at the subject of Reeve’s gesture and said, “Oh, hi there.”

The elf performed a full-depth bow, keeping the platter steady throughout. “Compliments of the Council,” he said, extending the platter, and then bowed again.

“Oooh, snacks!” Walter said. Turning toward Reeve, he mouthed, “Natural charisma,” before focusing his attention on the platter. “Just what I needed. How considerate.”

“Yeah, except we still don’t know where we are, what this camp is, where our weapons are, and how we’ll get out of this room, which amounts to a cell.”

“Who’d you say these are from?” Walter said as he ate a plum, juice running down onto his shivering chest.

“The camp Council, Sir. Though, I admit, I may myself have added a few embellishments to the usual ration.” The elf pointed to a couple of small loaves of bread that apparently were the standard fare for guests of the camp.

“Well, I’m sure you’ll give them our thanks, won’t you?”

“No thanks are needed, Sir, though it’s extraordinarily gracious of you.”

“Because we’re their captives, Dad,” Reeve said.

Still chewing the plum, Walter started collecting a handful of almonds from a wooden bowl. “Was that other elf, who came earlier during my death double-step, one of these Counselors? Either way, please thank her for us too.”

“Eh, fine,” Reeve said to herself with a dismissive wave, resuming her pacing and trying to remember her line of thought about the twins angle or other options they might explore.

“Helia, our Daïymie, leads the camp’s Council, as well as its scouts, guards, and troops.”

“Say what?” Reeve said, stopping, her attention snapping back to her father’s conversation with his doe-eyed admirer. “Keep him talking, Dad.”

“Are these figs?” Walter said. “I never could figure out figs.”

“About the camp,” Reeve said.

“Those are dates,” the elf said.

Walter looked up and froze in Reeve’s glare. He looked back at the elf. “Do you like to camp? And what’s your name by the way? I always do better when I have a name to put to a face.”

“Not camping,” Reeve said, “this camp we’re in.”

“I am Starling, and I have lived most of my life in the woods. And, you, Sir?”

Walter was now crunching loudly on a mouthful of almonds. “Walter, though the twins insist on calling me Wurmslayer. Dawn at least; Dusk seems to be calling me Walter now too. In terms of where I’ve lived, the longest address I’ve lived at was a house on Broadford, where I grew up in Detroit, but now we’re over on—“

Reeve quickly approached her father, gripped both sides of his head, and turned his face toward hers. “We do not need his life story, and he may want to hear yours, but we don’t have time for that. Ask him questions about this Helia and about the camp. What they’re doing, where they came from, why we’re here, when we’ll be let out. Capeesh?”

Walter nodded, swallowing the almonds. Reeve gently but firmly turned his head to face Starling, then released it.

“Who’s this Julio?” Walter said.

Reeve hung her head.

“Helia, Wurmslayer, is the warrior who led us against the ice-orc tribe. When their numbers threatened to overwhelm us, she brought us south to safety, in search of a new land in which to settle.”

Walter looked at Reeve, who nodded encouragingly. He looked back at Starling. “And, is this where you’re settling?” He looked around the room, then up at the light shimmering through the ceiling. “Uh, under this…between the dragon forest and the, um…” He circled his pointer finger through the air, eloquently evoking the local world.

“Oh, no,” Starling said, “this is simply the home of operation the Daïymie has established as we finish preparing the soil of our new homeland. Once that task is complete, we will rise from the river and build our empire in the ruins of Ase Thhia. Would you like more plums? I can fetch them.”

“That would be fantastic, Starling,” Walter said.

“Uhhh,” Reeve said, “timeout.” She gripped the elf’s cuff, as he was already half-turned toward the pool.

“Did your people have anything to do with the fall of the Royal House? Of Fellgrave? Ase Thhia?”

Starling turned a cold expression to Reeve. “And you are, half-orc?”

“Dad,” Reeve said.

“More almonds would be nice too.”

Reeve widened her eyes and stepped hard on Walter’s hairy foot.

“Ow! Um, did you…something…the Royal House? And when can we leave? And…,” Walter squinted at Reeve, who pantomimed slashing her naginata through the air, “…do you play baseball?”

Reeve’s eyes bulged wider. She tried miming thrusting with her naginata.

“Do you want to play tug of war?”

Reeve grunted and tilted her head to the side in disbelief. “Where are our weapons?” She said in a whisper-shout.

“Right. Where are our weapons?”

Starling smiled at Walter. “Yes, of course, you would want to make sure we were taking care of your blades, Wurmslayer. They are being held in the armory. As to when you might be leaving…,” the elf’s expression became apologetic, “…now that Helia has learned how to reset to this room the location at which you regenerate, I gather that she is in no hurry to see you free. The half-humans with whom you travel bear some significant interest for her, but you are—in her eyes only, you understand—expendable.” Starling looked legitimately pained to share the news. “However,” the elf’s eye’s brightened, “that means that we will be able to enjoy your company indefinitely!”

Reeve nudged Walter.

“And, the Royal House?”

“I have heard tell that it was Helia’s private guard that lead the attack on the Royal House. Our scouts hunt the few survivors yet.”

“Dad, a minute?” Reeve said, grasping Walter by his thick upper arm and walking him backward toward Leaf’s bed, where the fallen elf had been sitting, observing the exchange.

“This is not a refugee camp…,” Reeve said quietly once they were standing next to Leaf.

“…it is a war camp,” Leaf said.

“And Helia has us trapped here, weaponless. Plus, she has the twins who knows where.”

“I regret my transgression,” Leaf said, “and I am resigned to walk the world for the remainder of my days as a Fallen, but I feel no responsibility to stay here and suffer at the hands of these elves with a hunger for power and delusions of grandeur.”

“So, if my dad and I—“

“—and Bunce,” Walter said.

“—and Bunce were going to get out of here, you’d come?”

“My pledge was to guide you to the northern lands,” Leaf said. “Whether or not you still seek that as your final destination, I will see you out of this river before deciding where next I journey.”

“What about Dawn and Dusk?” Walter said, wiping his hand on his robe.

“Well…,” Reeve thought back through the various options she’d been weighing, “I don’t think they’re going to be trying to go to Fellgrave anymore. And, you know our goal of wrapping up their mission quickly, Dad, so that we could, you know, move on, get back home?” Reeve looked pointedly at her father.

“Yes?”

“It seems like that’s probably a dead end now. So, I don’t know if there’s any point. I don’t even know if they care whether we stick around.”

Walter looked at Reeve, his expression one of disappointment. “Reeve, we’ve come a long way together, and we told those girls we would help them find their magic man.”

“I know, Dad, but, number one, it’s mage—don’t ever call anyone in here a magic man—and, number two, he’s probably dead. The city we were going to look for him in has been destroyed, by, it turns out, our current hosts.”

“But we don’t just walk out on people without even saying goodbye, Evie. That’s not the William’s way.”

Reeve’s shoulders slumped. She looked at Leaf and raised a finger to request patience, then led her father across the room, past Starling, whose smile as they walked past appeared directly proportional to how close Walter was to him.

They stopped beside Dusk’s vacant bed. “Dad, these are not people we’d be walking out on, they’re characters in a game. They only exist inside my VR system that’s sitting next to my school desk in my bedroom. That’s where all of this is happening. There, and in our heads. I,” Reeve pointed to her half-orc’s face, “am currently in my VR hammock where you left me. You,” she poked the halfling in the plum-juice-moistened robe, “are laying across my beanbag chair. Probably drooling. Whether we escape this camp and find a way to log out soon or stick around in this room for months and then eventually get logged out by the safety feature, all these characters are going to be suspended sooner or later. Not just the basic NPCs, but our Level 4 frien…,” Reeve took a deep breath, “…party members too.” She put her hands on her waist and looked at her father, willing him to understand.

Walter’s brow furrowed. He looked across the room at Bunce, and Leaf, and Starling. “I know all that, Evie. But, still, it doesn’t sit right with me.” He gestured at the twins’ empty beds. “They’re counting on us. They have been counting on us. Maybe they still are, maybe they’re not. But I don’t think we should just ghoul them.”

“Ghost them.”

“Ghost them. We should talk to them. You said the Level 4 AIs—some people think they deserve rights and legal protection like the higher level AIs?”

Reeve nodded slowly, her expression suggesting she did not like the direction the conversation was heading.

“Well, I understand that they may get paused when we eventually leave this world, but in the meantime, while we’re here, this is where we are. You said so yourself at the cobalt camp, that as long as we are trapped in here this all might as well be real. And it‘s the only world they’ll ever know, so it is real for them, and it seems like we should treat them the way we’d want them to treat us if the roles were reversed. It’s—”

“—don’t say the Golden Rule.”

“—the Golden Rule.”

Reeve and Walter stared at each other in silence.

“You’re killing me,” Reeve said.

“And,” Walter said, “while we’re waiting for the twins to come back, Starling has offered to get us some more snacks.”

Reeve placed a huge hand on Walter’s shoulder, which was shivering violently, and looked back at the elf, who seemed constitutionally incapable of not staring at Walter at all times. After half a minute she said, “OK. But we’re going to have him get us more than just snacks, Dad.”