Reeve, Walter, Wanda, Thomanji'yheri, and Leaf sat in a tight semi-circle on one side of the fire watching Dusk, Dusk, and Dawn stare at each other where they sat on the other side of the fire.

“Maybe we should tell them about the name thing,” Walter said quietly.

Reeve shook her head. “Dusk’s already blown their low-level AI minds enough. Just give it a minute.”

“I’m just trying to help, Honey.”

“I know, but there’s nothing…” Reeve turned to look at the halfling. “Actually, maybe you can.”

Walter raised his bushy eyebrows.

“Tell them everything Dusk just told them is true.”

“That’s it?”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

Walter shrugged and cleared his throat. The triplets looked across the fire at him.

“It, uh, it’s all true,” Walter said. “What Dusk said.” He pointed self-consciously at one of the three half-elves, identical save for two being dark of complexion and one pale. “That Dusk.”

“That did it,” Reeve said quietly, leaning back as Devon’s Dawn and Dusk became doe-eyed while the Level 4 AI Dusk rolled her eyes. “No AI upgrades there.” Looking at Devon’s twins, she said, “When is the last time you saw the Cleric, Devynyty?”

“She was with us on our travels until a few days ago,” Dawn said. “She suddenly disappeared. We’ve been waiting here for her return.”

“They must have unpaused when we entered the world,” Reeve said quietly to her parents, who looked back at her with blank expressions. Sighing, she looked back at the twins and raised her voice. “Doesn’t matter, just curious. I didn’t think she would be here. But, now that Dusk has explained what’s going on, will you help us try to get back to our world, find Helia, and rescue our Dawn?”

From the darkness just beyond the fire’s light, a musical voice said, “Child, why would you not think that I would simply follow you here and save you the trouble of finding me?”

Everyone seated around the campfire, save Walter and Wanda, stood and turned toward the voice. From between the flickering trunks stepped Helia. Behind her followed Dawn and a dozen whitewater-robed enslaved souls.