White-hair was effusive in his disgust, but I didn’t bother to listen to him, tuning it out like I tuned out so many people over the years. I blinked rapidly. My mouth tasted of sour acid and chunks of…I didn’t even remember what my last meal had been. I couldn’t know. Because…hospital, right?

  The panic hammered at me, and I just couldn’t let it. Deep breaths, Teddy. Tomorrow Teddy could figure out what was happening. Today Teddy just had to survive. I’d said that to myself so many times already, but it was the only thing that allowed me to shove that fear right back out into the ocean, far away from my current awareness.

  “What the fuck?” I whispered for what must have been the umpteenth time that…what, day? I didn’t feel it had been longer than a day in my memory, but who knew?

  “Your insistence on using words outside of their accepted definitions because you lack sufficient creativity or vernacular skill--”

  Yeah, tuning that out again. Orange text was floating in my vision again--and I saw it. HP: 20/20. The snowflake was gone, and another icon had replaced it. It was…I didn’t know what it was supposed to be. Pixelated, flashing blue and white and purple, it flickered violently in place. I hesitated, but gritted my teeth and imagined that same sort of mental cursor.

  ??? - STATus effECTs frOM ENVIRONmeNT NEGATED

  The letters swapped from lowercase to capitalized as I read, barring the last, bold “negated.”

  So White-hair had helped me. I felt better. The wind was cold, but my cloak was dry again. I could breathe easier. The air didn’t hurt my face, and everything was less frigid. My thoughts were…well, still a bit jumpy, but following a recognizable pattern.

  “…You helped me,” I said aloud. “Thank you?”

  “Managed to realize that, have you?” White-hair snarled. “A measure of the ability to process action and consequence? The lot of you are supposedly so gifted at pattern recognition, and yet--” He leaned down, taking my measure, “--your skill is so very lacking.”

  The lot of us? I opened my mouth, closed it, and shook my head. Not important right now. “Do you know where the inn is?”

  “Of course, what sort of creature do you take me for?” White-hair demanded. “I will tolerate no insults from you and yet you insist upon them--have you no care for consequence?”

  I didn’t respond, instead just looking at the man. The hypocrisy here was pretty epic, but ultimately it didn’t matter. He’d found, helped, and healed me. And he knew the way to the inn. I struggled to my feet and found my new snowshoes worked perfectly. Snow crunched beneath my feet, but I didn’t sink.

  “Where to?” I asked.

  White-hair sniffed with something like disdain, flicking a gloved hand at me in irritation. “Come along, woman. Follow closely. If I have to locate you yet again due to you frittering away into the forest, I will be most displeased.”

  He turned, walking into the forest with grace. It was an unsettling amount of grace--he moved so smoothly I had the oddest idea that my eye was lying to me. As I waddle-trudged behind him, he talked. To be quite honest, I didn’t know if this man was capable of shutting up.

  “Of all the places for you to spawn. Deep within a cursed, frozen woodland, a mere half hour from expiry. It makes so little sense that I am half convinced that you must have wandered away from safety.”

  He paused in his speech, hitching the creepy elegance of his stride so I popped up alongside him.

  Those gold eyes were narrowed at me, glowering through his spectacles. I crossed my arms and frowned back.

  “I require an answer,” he said, sharp and demanding.

  I closed my mouth and blew air, puffing my cheeks before releasing the breath. It billowed out, a cloud of steam in the freezing air. “I don’t know what’s happening,” I said.

  A white eyebrow snapped upward. “Pardon?” he said. “Did you sleep through the basic tutorial?”

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  “I’m dreaming, I think,” I said hesitantly. “I’m in a hospital and probably on a lot of drugs.”

  White-hair came to a halt so suddenly that I stumbled in my attempt to stop. He stared at me, harsh and unblinking.

  Oh, no. Was I giving my imagination an existential crisis? Guilt surged in me, but I took a deep breath. I’d face this head on.

  “…I’m sorry,” I said. Did I tell him that he was a very interesting hallucination? He was, along with being a dick, but that likely wasn’t the right thing to say. I opened my mouth, closed it again, and shrugged. “I’m sorry,” I repeated.

  White-hair moved fast, his gloved hand snapping out and grabbing my chin. It was a hard grip that verged on painful. He didn’t blink.

  I tried to pull back, but he wouldn’t let me, digging his fingers into my skin. His nostrils flared, his brows furrowed. “Now is not the time for pitiful attempts at humor, Paladin,” he seethed.

  “Uh…” I said again. My mind went blank in that convenient and predictable way. To be fair to my brain, this sort of thing was really far out of my wheelhouse. Who went around grabbing people’s faces? Theater kids, maybe, but I couldn’t think of anyone else who would pull that move.

  I wasn’t great with saying the right thing to begin with. Everything I could think of in response would definitely make whatever was happening worse.

  I reached up with one hand and tried to pry his fingers off. They didn’t move--not an inch. I might as well have been trying to pull apart two pieces of wood that had been super glued into one smooth block.

  I grabbed his wrist and yanked. “Stop, please.”

  He still hadn’t blinked. “Define Resurrection Raid to me, immediately.”

  “I don’t know,” I repeated, gritting my teeth. “Please let go.”

  He’d definitely saved my life, but that didn’t give the hallucination the right to manhandle me. I owed him, but not that. But because of the whole life saving nonsense, I didn’t really wanna jump immediately to knee him in the balls. Y’know what? I’d warn him. That seemed fair.

  “How did you die, Theodora Smith?” White-hair’s voice had turned clipped and harsh.

  I’d definitely not told him my name, but if he was my imagination, he’d know, anyway.

  “It’s Teddy,” I said. “I’m injured, not dead. Please let go, or I’ll knee you in the balls.”

  “Do not threaten me, you reduced fleshbag--“

  A long, mournful howl cut through the night. And then another. And another.

  White-hair released me immediately, snapping his head behind him.

  I stepped back, peering into the dark. The snow glowed under moonlight, and the pine trees curled dangerous claws, so those were definitely wolves. Maybe the dream would only end if I got eaten. With how realistic the cold had felt, I didn’t particularly enjoy that thought.

  The moonlight dimmed. I glanced up. It was full. Oh, that never boded well, for one, but secondly, it was somehow growing darker. The shadows beneath the trees grew longer, inching towards me and White-hair. The man was oddly silent, and I was really regretting not taking that sword. Sure, I wouldn’t have known how to use it, but shit, it would’ve made me feel better.

  The howling was coming closer. Could we run? I wanted to run. These snowshoes were absolutely not conducive to sprinting. I pulled out my shovel from my belt, gripping the base with both hands and sinking into a crouch.

  The shovelhead was glowing faintly in the dark, a soft, warm light, like sun at dusk in the summer. Guessing that was whatever had blessed it.

  White-hair glanced back in my direction, and then did an honest-to-God double take. His spine somehow became straighter than it had been already, which was pretty impressive. “Is that a shovel?”

  “…Yeah?”

  “You chose a shovel for your blessed weapon?” he hissed. “Had you no other option proffered to you? Neither sword nor mace?”

  I could hear the wolves thundering towards us, but the howls sounded like they had surrounded us utterly. It was coming in front of me, to my right, to my left, behind me. The shadows grew longer still, almost like they were stalking us. They crept towards us on dark bellies, waiting for the chance to pounce.

  The wind had stopped, and the stillness was somehow colder. I gripped the shovel tightly and shrugged. “Dunno how to use either of those.”

  White-hair had stopped paying attention to the wolves entirely, which seemed like a bad idea. He stared at me in that same intent, unblinking way. His glare was so sharp I felt my shoulders beginning to hunch up on themselves. “No one comes into the Resurrection Raid having any concept of martial skill. It is something that you absorb naturally with your class.”

  “…Shit, really?” I blurted. “Nothing said that--”

  The howls stopped.

  My head swiveled. Perfect, utter quiet. Oh, that was most definitely really not good--

  The tree in front of me was changing. I held my shovel like a baseball bat, watching in open-mouthed horror as the pine tree shrank, twisting in on itself. Great, curling wooden jaws formed, bristling with needle-fur and branch claws that seemed more like stakes.

  Light lit in the place where eyes would be, in gaping knots in the wood, blue and bright and biting. It lifted its head, opened its wooden maw, and howled.

  The trees around me howled back.