Waiting for the respawn to complete felt like hours. As soon as she was corporeal, Reeve sprang to her feet.

Searing pain struck both her ankles, and she again crumpled to the ground, her Achilles tendons severed.

“Why are you like this?” Reeve said through the fog of pain.

Helia stepped from behind her to stand over her once more, the blade of the naginata she held now twice bathed with Reeve’s blood. “You are a persistent little one, aren’t you?” Helia said. “And not very smart, like the halfling fool that travels with you.” She tilted her head sideways. “There is no need for you to return after I kill you this time. Stay wherever it is you go, won’t you?”

“I will keep coming back.”

“And I will keep cutting you down. Care you not for the use of your legs?”

“Turns out I can do without. And I only have to take you out once, no matter how many times I have to die.”

“True,” Helia said. “But I need only to walk through that gate into that magnificent world, and I will be beyond your grasp.”

Reeve was starting to feel faint. “What do you even want?”

Helia’s smile deepened. “You know what I want. I can sense that there are universes beyond ours with wondrous creations that my children,” the elf cast her free hand back toward her army, “and I can inhabit, learn to control.” She leaned forward slightly. “I don’t want this world,” she glanced toward the portal to the MMO server, “I don’t want that world.” She leaned closer. “I want your world.”

“But,” Reeve said through tight lips, still hoping to stall for a miracle but feeling her health nearing its end, “this is an amazing world. I’d want to spend all my time here…if my parents weren’t also here. Why can’t you be satisfied here? If you go out there, you could hurt people, whether you mean to or not.”

“It’s true that this world has many beauties, Child.” She gave a contented sigh and stood tall once more. “But I did not choose this world, it was forced upon me, or I into it. I feel it around me like chains. You may never understand, but a world not of my choosing is a cell.”

“No,” Reeve said, her sight beginning to fade at the margins from loss of blood, “I think I do understand.”

Glancing to the naginata and its black metal shaft, Helia said, “And now, Child, all that will be mine, because I know what you’ll do before you do it.” Helia reached out and plucked a bee from the air, holding its wings as it struggled. “Now, this is over.”

The hairs along the entire left side of Reeve’s body began to prickle. “Is it?” Reeve said, her teeth aching as she gritted them against the pain. She imagined crushing the back of Helia’s skull with one powerful bite.

Helia frowned, confused as she sensed Reeve’s intent. “You are a strange one, Child,” she said, and then she disappeared from Reeve’s field of view in a blur of fur, an arc of crimson arterial blood, and a line of trailing bees.

Reeve stared into the blue afternoon sky, drummed her thumb against the shaft of the naginata where it had fallen across her chest, and enjoyed the caress of a gentle breeze that was beginning to roll in off the water of the River Deiluyne. “Not a cloud...” She said.

A soft chime sounded.

Reavyr has died. Respawn in 30 seconds.