[System Alert: Team Yellow Wins! Congratulations, Team Yellow!]

  The message blared at a distance, bright and cast across the green canopy, bigger than the slurmopillar. Jumbotron massive, the hologram glittered in the green jungle air.

  Elora cheered from her tree branch, waving her bow. I grinned up at her, glad she didn’t choke when it came to murdering people in the competition. I glanced at Jake, who grinned back, all teeth and a wicked red gleam in his eyes. Fig was serene, hands clasped together, and Frag was the same as ever: a silent stoic with emotionless violet eyes, cradling his plasma rifle to his chest.

  As the world faded from the jungle to what I thought of as the loading screen, I checked in with myself. Didn’t have anything else better to do until we were transported to… wherever.

  I liked it.

  Part of me hated that I liked it, but it was just a game, right? The pain was as real as anything in Convergent City. Bearable. It’s not like they were really dead. Knowing the other teams had signed up for it willingly undercut my faint moral pinings. I’d killed, blood slicked my hands, and it should have been more… Awful. It wasn’t.

  I only wished I could have gotten my hands on that smirky satyr.

  Pale blue sunlight blared, forcing me to close my eyes against it. Wherever we’d been, the jungle had muted the light. Behind the dimness of my lids, my inventory tab flashed. I toggled it and saw 10 diamonds and a disc-shaped thing with a chain.

  I slowly opened an eye, then the other, to find we’d been put back in the same place we were taken from. I turned in a slow circle, looking at the imposing Labyrinth entrance and the raucous town beyond. With a sigh, I put my back to it. I’d had enough of that place for a while.

  “What the hell happened? Fig and Frag disappeared, and then I couldn’t reach you, but I could see your HP bars lighting up. Are you guys okay?”

  I scratched the back of my neck and sighed. The feeling that something could come barreling out of nowhere to ambush us wasn’t easily shaken. My head came up quick, I kept scanning the area.

  Everything seemed normal.

  “We’re fine. Let’s meet up.”

  The three of us started walking toward the mountain road that would eventually take us to Akilah’s workshop.

  They found us before we got there. Akilah and Frag rode on the back of a massive centaur with a cheerful face, and Fig on a smaller one with obvious feminine features. Fig hugged her mount from behind and swung down, promising to give her a makeover later. Akilah and Frag paid their ride.

  Had Fig gotten her ride for free? Probably. Bard skills.

  “Booty!” Jake cackled, his demonic voice rattling with glee. He held up what looked like some kind of weapon attachment, showing Fig. The green-haired sylvan bounced over. She’s had time to wash her face, but her hair was still singed and lopsided, armor scored with plasma burns.

  “Your booty is my booty,” Fig murmured with sultry heat, tugging playfully at his belt. Her tone shifted when she shook a bone and skin tambourine, studded with crystals that caught the light. “My booty is my booty. It boosts my song range. Neat!”

  “Mine boosts healing and resistance of all kinds,” Jake countered. “And, bonus, I hit the level where I can fly. I’ll be practicing that for the rest of the day.”

  Fig squealed and latched onto him, rising on her toes.

  “Fuckin’ awesome!” I said, right before I looked away. No need to witness their PDA.

  Akilah looked me over with a critical eye, her robes pristine. She nodded at me and glanced back at Frag, who’d taken the time to swap into another white jumpsuit. Like, the guy had a closet full of them. That wouldn’t have surprised me, actually.

  I willed the mystery item out of my inventory. The disc was on a chain to be worn around my neck. The metal looked like iron, but its surface felt smoother. Darker than iron, it lacked the familiar metallic scent. Slick, as if oil could be a metal. Something we didn’t have on Earth, maybe. Two bear claws were wired to it with the same metal as embellishments. I didn’t recognize the symbols etched upon the surface.

  I put it over my head. Its weight rested on my chest, cold but comfortable. I glanced at my stats. My resilience went up two points, along with a small 2% resistance to all negative effects. Not terrible. Better than nothing.

  Once we’d taken stock of our wins, we walked toward Heartland Park.

  We were all still covered in blood. Slashed up. Bruised. Singed. Our armor and clothing were still ravaged from the fight. I looked at the dark blood still drying on my fingers and scowled. The few people we passed gave us a wide berth.

  “D-Do you think we’ll be taken again soon?” Elora asked, her wide green eyes fixed on my bloody hands. She wrung her hands and glanced around, as if looking for something.

  I shrugged. “Check your HUDs, see if there’s a timer for it buried somewhere. Do you not want to go back?”

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  “I do,” she said, shaking out her hands. “I think I have post-game jitters or something. When we were there, it was like, you know, just shoot. Now it’s… oh gods…”

  “We should ask someone,” Jake said.

  “It is probable we won’t be summoned while injured,” Frag suggested.

  “Good,” Akilah said, her voice sharp. Let’s all get cleaned up and go to the Tanglepot? Celebrate.”

  “We can wash up at my place… Just watch the neighbors,” Jake offered.

  Fig and Frag agreed. My lip curled up. I hesitated, trying to think of a good way to say it. “Uh, I’ll skip.”

  Elora made a disgusted face. Akilah blurted, “Uh. No, you’re not.”

  I looked at myself again and—yeah. Too gross for social interaction. I glanced down the path toward the plains and the well-cold baths there, not really wanting to be alone with my divided thoughts. The fight hovered in the wings of my consciousness, like my brain had a kind of peripheral vision. A greasy, sickly feeling lurked there. Waiting.

  Mostly, I felt fine. I attributed the distress to the girl I’d left behind when I made this avatar. I felt sorry for her. The main part of me was alright with the gore, the violence. Not great, but alright. The orc me was proud of it all.

  We all made our way to Heartland Park’s viney arches. Elora paused under it—but when we started off on our separate ways, Elora lunged after me, grabbing my arm.

  “Wait.”

  I stopped, raising a brow in a silent question. Jake, Fig, and Frag exchanged a look and kept walking. I watched them go, then turned back to Elora. The blue sun beat down on us, the cobbled road beneath our feet warm beneath my boots. Convergent City moved around us, ignoring the shaking elf and the half-orc that watched everyone.

  “I don’t want to be alone yet,” she muttered, looking at her boots. One of them was blackened in a stripe, probably the Fire Incarnate’s doing.

  I shrugged. “Sure. I can go with you.”

  That small part of me that thought what we did was awful was relieved. I just couldn’t hear her so well since the fight. At least this would fix my problem of being alone with myself.

  No. Since before that.

  “Okay,” she exhaled the word with relief. “I just want to clean up, drink some wine, and relax. Sound good?”

  “Sounds perfect,” I said, starting for the path to Heartland Park. I still felt that wound-up energy. The thing Old Fang called heat in the chest. The urge to tear apart everything in front of me had faded, but the anxious, implacable hunger to do something physical remained.

  “Oh, I’m so pulling out that bottle I squirreled away,” Elora said, her voice still breathy—like something was squeezing her. Probably the same residual anxiety I had.

  My lips pressed against my tusks with an understanding grin. We meandered down the deceptively idyllic paths of Heartland until we reached Verdance. Every rustle in the bush turned out to be a squirrel, or a sprite, or some flower folk wandering around. Heartland used to feel subtly threatening after Ashwynn’s quest chain. Now?

  There were greater things to be wary of.

  I faltered on the path beside the little spring pool in the village square, looking at my hands.

  “Where does everyone wash up?”

  “There’s a hot spring and a pool where the runoff flows. It’s not far.” Elora explained. She stepped into her little house of boulders and woven vines. I crouched and scrubbed at the blood on my hands in the runoff of the spring in Verdance square.

  The change of clothes in my inventory taunted me, and I was itching to change into them. Literally itchy. Other people’s blood and my own had seeped into the crevices of my armor, creating sticky bonds between my clothes and skin.

  While Elora fetched her things, I inspected the half-closed wounds. I didn’t even remember getting most of them. In hindsight, the whirlwind of the fight had refined itself to hunt, evade, and kill. Pain? A little blip in my laser focus.

  She padded out with a basket in her arms. I held out my hands, and she placed the basket in them with a quiet, murmured thanks. She gestured toward a narrow path between honeysuckle bushes and slipped between them. Her bare feet tapped a soft tattoo on the exposed stone, worn smooth by centuries of use.

  Or was it always that way? By System design?

  I wove through leaning branches and out into a hollow in the forest. It was even more beautiful than she described. A swirling breeze carried puffs of pollen, glimmering in the sunlight. The pale sun’s rays filtered through the leaves above to sparkle on the gently rippling water of a pool. Water spilled from it into a babbling brook.

  Elora scrunched her nose and rubbed an elbow, looking around. “It’s not very private.”

  No one was near. She’d been going to the Onsen with Akilah, so it’s not like she was shy. Did she think I was? Heh.

  “I don’t care,” I said gruffly, unbuckling my chestplate. In the past month, I’d lost most of my modesty, thanks to VR life’s slings and arrows. The sticky clothes and carrion reek had to go.

  She shuffled, and I turned away to make it less uncomfortable. I pointed at the shallower end of the pool. “I’ll wash up there.”

  I dropped my chestplate to the ground, still favoring the arm with the scored deltoid. That shoulder barked when I moved my arm upward. Bracers clung the worst to my bare arms. Greaves were added to the pile. The one I’d lost had reappeared on my shin, which was good. I’d have hated to lose part of the set.

  My clothes needed a good bonfire. I threw those aside and, avoiding looking at Elora, I waded into the pool. It was warm, but not hot. Perfect. The cold baths at Bauring Tok Kraup Patarshan had nothing on this. I knelt on smooth stones and dunked my head to wet my hair, my flesh crawling as soon as my vision was obscured.

  I whipped back up, glancing around the woods. The battleground and its fighters hadn’t followed us here. I just had to convince myself of it.

  A little splash told me Elora had gotten in. I still didn’t look her way, politeness and all that. The water fluttered against my skin. Then—her hand, holding an herb-scented bar on a cloth near my shoulder.

  I sighed. “Thanks.”

  I reached for it, but she pulled it away. I glanced over my shoulder, toward her face. Her gaze flicked nervously over my bloodied back. My wounds. My hair.

  “Do—do you want me to wash you? Your hair is gross. Can you get all the slurmopillar chunks out by yourself? I mean…if you don’t want me to…”

  Why was she so nervous? I could be a little scary sometimes, sure, but we’d always been tight. Close. Trusted each other. From the start. Had to be the overall anxiety.

  I nodded and shifted to ease the pressure on my knees.

  “Hold this?”

  She reached over my shoulder, lathered fingers brushing my skin, to hand me the soap, and I took it. Closed my eyes as her fingers did magic. Birds twittered above. Water whispered around us. Her hands worked my scalp, then moved to my shoulders and back, eased every ticking muscle, soothed every aching bruise.

  Her hand pressed gently on my back. “Okay, dunk.”

  I leaned forward and thrust my head in, palms skating over the flat stones of the pond bed to fully submerge. That time, with her hand on my back, I could let go a little. My hyper attention eased. I came up, pushing my mess of wet black hair back with a grin and a sigh, eyes still closed. I meant to thank her.

  Until her arms went around my neck. Her soft body molded to mine. Elora’s kiss seared my lip, just beside my right tusk. My eyes flew open.

  Tan’Fukshan. Why?

  -ARCHIVE-