Reeve felt Dusk shift her weight as, back to back, they sat on the ground, ropes cutting into their wrists.

“I must say I am not without regrets, Reeve,” Dusk said quietly. “What choices have I made that I am here, betrayed by my mother and sister? Witness to the coming fall of not just an empire but a civilization?”

Reeve leaned her head back slowly until it found Dusk’s, and they rested there together. What choices, Reeve thought, have I made that this is how I’m spending the entirety of Tuesday night and Wednesday morning before the most important math test of the year, trapped with my father and mother in a game they barely comprehend even after weeks and weeks of game time, also possibly about to witness the coming fall of a civilization—an actual civilization?

“Yeah, I get it,” she said to Dusk.

A hand hard as steel fell on Reeve’s shoulder and dragged her to her feet by her robe. She heard Dusk being pulled to her feet by another enslaved soul. Reeve was shoved toward the smokey ring Dawn—the Dawn Reeve used to think of as ‘our Dawn’—had cast. An enslaved Soul standing on the other side in Reeve’s story mode reached through and grasped her arm roughly. Reeve stumbled through the ring and was pulled a few feet before being shoved back to the ground. She fell hard on her knees on the bank of the River Deiluyne. A moment later, Dusk fell to her knees next to Reeve.

Feeling numb, as though she were watching a movie instead of actually living her only available reality, Reeve watched the whitewater-robed enslaved souls drag Leaf then Thomanji’yheri through the ring before forcing them to the ground near her and Dusk. On the other side of the ring, the enslaved souls dragged her parents to their feet, and as Reeve stared vacantly at the halfling and human fighter, she felt for the first time a pang of regret for what her parents had endured over the preceding weeks. Yeah, it had stunk for her, but at least this was a world she usually enjoyed being in. What had all this been like for them as, confused and inept, they floundered through this increasingly grim story arc?

Walter was shoved from one gloved hand on the other side of the ring into another on Reeve’s side. The halfling was quickly deposited next to Dusk. Wanda was shoved through next, but her avatar disappeared as soon as it was through the ring.

Fighter (human) has left the game.

Good for you, Mom, Reeve thought. You might as well go take a break, you don’t need to see this. Reeve looked back down and found her father’s face, which was twisted in pain from the rough handling and tight bonds. She watched the twins of Devon’s world forced through the ring and to the ground next to Thomanji’yheri and Leaf, and then Bunce, gagged and tied by her paws to a long pole from which she hung, was carried through by two enslaved souls who were careful to stay far from the snarling honey badger. Another set of enslaved souls carried through a long, low chest, in which Reeve knew her naginata, bow, and all of the party’s weapons were locked

“Hello, Daughter,” Helia said, and Reeve turned to find the elf standing over Dusk.

“This is how you treat a daughter?” Dusk said.

“Only if she is foolish,” Helia said. She made a gesture to someone behind Reeve and Dusk. Dawn circled them and stood next to Helia’s elbow. Dawn’s face was placid. “Your sister now understands that.” Helia squatted and reached over each shoulder to adjust her helical braid. “So too will you.” She extended her hands to Dusk’s face and cupped it in her palms. Dusk scowled at her for a moment, but Reeve watched, confused, as the scowl slowly relaxed, becoming as serene as her sister’s.

“No,” Reeve said, leaning forward, pulling her arms against the bonds at her wrist. “No! Leave her alone!”

Helia turned to look at Reeve. The elf smiled.

“Evie?” Walter’s voice startled Reeve out of her anguish. Hands still bound, the halfling rose to his feet and took wobbly steps toward Reeve, placing himself between her and Helia.

“She did something to Dusk’s AI,” Reeve said to her father. “I don’t know what, but...I think it’s what happened to Dawn too.”

Walter frowned. “Now, wait just a minute,” he said. He turned and looked at Helia, who, with a quick motion of one hand, speared him with a flash of light.

A chime sounded.

Reeve glared at Helia, who gazed back, face impassive, for half a minute until a light began to glow between them.

When Walter reappeared, he sank slowly toward the ground and fell backward to sit, legs extended, large hairy feet lolling outward, a queasy look on his face.

Unable to exact any retribution from Helia, Reeve turned on her father, feeling disgusted. “Dad, how can you possibly die so many times trying to look out for me?”

Walter sighed and closed his eyes tight, fighting the death debuff. “What else am I supposed to do, Evie?”

“Come, Daughters,” Helia said. She walked beyond the guards who were maintaining a cordon around Reeve and her party. Dawn and Dusk followed.

Reeve watched the twins walk away, and for a moment she forgot her frustration with her father. “She must have given their AIs a virus,” Reeve said quietly.

“Someone’s sick?” Walter whispered back.

“Or replaced their AIs altogether.” Not knowing whether the twin’s sapient AIs were gone forever, Reeve’s eyes watered. “They better not have been erased.” After a moment, her eyes narrowed, fear replaced with intent. “We have the time,” she said to Walter, her voice still low, “we’ll just have to be patient.”

“You have a plan?” Thomanji’yheri said from behind Reeve.

Reeve examined the positioning of the enslaved souls, who seemed far enough back that they weren’t listening to the whispered conversation. “We’ll wait for a moment when we can get our weapons, then we’ll focus on Helia.”

“I take it you’ve come to understand the power of your naginata’s new staff?”

Reeve turned to the dwarf. “No. I haven’t. It’s just metal. And a little shorter.”

Thomanji’yheri shook his head. “When you wield it, have you not found that you can anticipate your foe’s intentions?”

“No, I…” Reeve saw before her a host of gnomes, moving as though in slow motion, their next attack painfully obvious. “Wait…” She remembered fighting the enslaved souls, and how she’d been able to sense their next move before it even began. She pictured the engraved black shaft. “It lets me sense my opponent’s next move?”

“Aye.”

It’s feasible, Reeve thought. The game could just feed information from the AIs running the NPCs. Like playing chess against a computer, but the game shows you the next move the computer’s algorithm has chosen. Would it work against a Level 4 AI? “We’ll still have to be patient,” she said to Thomanji’yheri. “It may take us a while to find an opening to get our weapons.”

“Wowzers,” Walter said, the seasick tone he tended to carry during the death debuff momentarily lifting, “it’s like a clown car, but…,” Reeve looked at her father and found him staring into the distance, “but it’s elves instead of clowns, and…”

Reeve followed her father’s gaze. “And a river instead of a car,” she said.

Columns of armed elves were marching through the churning river, their orange robes creating the impression that the whitewater was afire. The first companies were climbing the bank a few hundred yards upriver of where her party sat, and more kept rising from the center of the river to begin their march to the northern bank.

“Well, that’s not good,” Reeve said.

“And what are the girls up to?” Walter said.

Reeve again followed his gaze. “Uh.” The spinning ring she saw in the distance, drifting away from the twins as they stood casting side-by-side was already large enough for a bus to drive through. Or a tank. “Or an entire army of elves,” she said. The ring grew further, and the twins became tiny silhouettes before the bright scene within the ring, a scene that Reeve recognized. “Oh. No.” Reeve said, rising onto her knees to better see what she knew to be the MMO server on which she usually played. The village visible on the other side of the ring was the location she’d been visiting last time she was in game.

Walter looked between the twins and his daughter. “Still not good?”

Reeve shook her head. “Helia’s used our twins to hack the MMO server. If she gets in there, with her thousands of elf troops, whatever level AIs they might be, she’ll have millions of VR setups she could hack into, and from there…”

Walter watched his half-orc daughter for a few seconds. “Reeve, are you going to finish that thought, because I really can’t guess—“

“We’re not going to have time to be patient,” Reeve said. She looked at Thomanji’yheri and Leaf. “We need to stop Helia and her elfin army before they get through that ring or, well, other worlds will be in danger. Really in danger. Real worlds, really in danger.” She shook her head. “We need to get our weapons.”

“How would you suggest we…” Leaf furrowed her brow as a light began to illuminate a spot between two of the enslaved souls standing watch around them.

Oh, this could be bad, Reeve thought.

The dark-skinned woman in the white fleecy gown and white feather boa slowly materialized as the two whitewater-robed guards turned to appraise her. Although perfectly still as she materialized, the moment she was fully present she contracted implosively, and a hammer-headed bird extended its wings and took a few steadying steps where the woman had stood.

The cowls of the enslaved souls tilted down toward the bird, and the bird raised an eye toward the nearest of the two.

“Ohmagod,” Reeve said, “duck!”

Reeve, Thomanji’yheri, Leaf, and the twins of Devon’s world had time only to flatten themselves against the ground, and Walter had time only to say, “That’s not a du—,” before the impundulu pecked the base of the guard’s robe.

Lost for Reeve in the thunderclap were two soft chimes.