“She must be slain!” Malworth called from behind us. He must have entered once the fumes cleared.

Emma spun with her staff into a ready stance, legs slightly bent and ready for anything. She swept the goblin staff overhead.

“No!” Both Slade and I yelled in unison.

There was a half snarl on her face, but no lightning shot from her staff.

“She is a friend of mine,” Slade told Malworth while hefting his battleaxe. “You mess with her. You mess with me.”

Malworth drew a nasty-looking sword. He was dressed now in bits of plate armor and thick leathers. Behind him were two giant goblins, almost as large.

Our group was now facing the tent entry, with the brazier and Grissarth behind us. Max had his hands out in mock surrender but was retreating backward, probably to go into stealth. I looked around frantically, trying to figure out what to say or whether I should get my bow out. I decided more weapons wouldn’t help defuse the situation, so I held my hands out in front of me, showing everyone I wasn’t armed.

“She consorts with the corruption.” Grizzarth said, “And they consort with her. All are vile. None can be trusted.”

“Wait a second,” I said, trying to think of a way to defend Emma. The problem was I had the same doubts the goblins did, but there was no way I could say that or stand by and let them kill her.

Slade seemed to share this notion. He yelled, “I said she’s my friend, and you’ll need to go through me first.”

Malworth raised his sword, holding it over his head with the blade pointed down at Slade’s feet. “The witch must die.”

“Wait!” I screamed. Grizzarth said I needed to find my way, I thought, well, here it was. “She speaks to them. She’s trying to find out what they want and what they are. All she does is speak to them.”

Grizzarth sneered, “And in speaking to the corruption, she’s become corrupt herself.”

“But we can vouch for her,” I implored. I didn’t want Emma to die here, but I didn’t want all of us to die, either. “She works for us in hopes of understanding their nature.”

Max, who had been edging backward in the corner of my eye, vanished into the flickering shadows cast by the flames.

“Step aside, human. Her corruption must end!” Malworth shouted.

“No, wait!” I yelled over him.

Grizzarth yelled over me, “Slay the corrupter.”

The three of us were yelling at and over each other at once.

Slade, who’d been growing more tense with each moment, flung his axe, burying it between the feet of Malworth.

“Silence!” Slade roared. It was a trumpeting yell that could not be ignored. I was stunned into quiet. My pleading yells drying instantly in my throat. The tent went deadly quiet.

Unarmed, Slade stepped up to Malworth and fell to his knees. “I bow before you as king of the humans. My life is in your hands, king of the goblins. To slay her, you will first need to slay me. And if you do, all humans will unite to oppose your every move. You will have enemies on both sides, crushing you in a vice you can never escape. It will be the end of your tribe and of your kind.”

I held my breath. Slade, if nothing else, was far braver than I ever could be.

Malworth stood over Slade. The goblin’s wicked blade pointed right down at Slade’s chest. I could see the gears spinning in Malworth's head, weighing Emma's threat against armies on both sides of his people.

One shove of the blade was all it would take to end Slade’s life. He knelt there, palms up and spread, wholly exposed to the blade pointed at his neck.

The heavy silence lay like a wet blanket smothering the tent. Malworth finally spoke, “You vouch that you will not let this witch’s corruption spread? That she is a friend and your tool in the destruction of corruption?

I breathed for the first time in what felt like years. That Malworth would even ask such a thing meant he’d weighed the odds and decided working with us was his best option.

Slade said, as if he meant every word of it, “I swear this.”

Malworth eyed Slade over the blade, still pointing to the exposed neck. The sword swept away, returning to its scabbard. “Our deal remains as is. We will be watching closely for any signs of spreading corruption.”

He said nothing more, just stood there glaring for a moment, then stormed out. Grizzarth followed the goblin king. Finally, the largest goblin guards followed him, leaving the half-dozen original goblins guarding this tent alone with us.

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“Well,” Slade said. “That went better than I thought.”

We all laughed, including Slade, who shot me a wink. I was glad to see he wasn’t serious. It struck me as a little odd that we’d be laughing at coming so close to one disaster after another. I wished I’d taken more psychology electives, but that ship had already sailed.

“Better than what?” Max asked.

“Getting stabbed in the neck for one,” Slade said.

The journey back to the fort was done in silence. Slade strutted along like it was just another midnight stroll. Emma and Max seemed a little distant, and if they weren’t talking, I wasn’t going to risk getting Slade to start telling us glorious football yarns.

The unfamiliar stars still shone down on top of the keep. When I lay back down on my bedroll, the exhaustion hit me. I was asleep instantly. Which just led to being startled when Max woke me to an already-risen sun.

“The goblins are ready to go.” Max stooped down to tell me.

“So, we’re still doing this,” I yawned. “Half expected something to happen that would put it all in jeopardy again. A meteor from the sky. Return of dark gods. Me, sitting through a Super Bowl without complaint.”

“Or Slade showing humility?” Max joked.

“Jeez,” I said. “I just meant something that would stop our adventure. Not a world-ending cataclysm.”

“How was your sleep?”

“Surprisingly good,” I said, realizing there wasn’t any mental fog this morning. Actually, there hadn’t been the whole time we were in this world. In this game, I reminded myself. The moment I forgot this was a game is when I would be lost entirely and possibly never walk away from it. Back in my world, outside the game, that is, it had always taken me a while to rouse. I wondered if I didn’t feel lethargic because my body was in a tube somewhere, getting all the sleep it needed.

“Mine was good, too,” Max said. “Thanks for asking.”

“Wow! How did you know I don’t care?”

“Ouch,” Max said. “Dick much?”

“Yeah,” I said, “I really should save it for the goblins.”

“There’s Slade, too.”

“Oh, I have ample reserves on that front.”

It took me less time than a breath of air to pack my sleeping roll into inventory. Not having to make the bed? Priceless. We descended the stairs to find Slade and Emma waiting at the keep door. Slade just nodded and exclaimed, “Tallyho.” And off we went.

“Princess!” I exclaimed when we got into the stables.

“Now you’re happy to see me.” She said. “You leave me in here with these animals all night, and that’s all I get? I‘d trample a man to death for an apple.”

“So sorry, I got no apples,” I said while petting her nose. “But you know what I do have? Hugs!”

I threw my arms around her neck while she complained. “Lovely. Hugs will keep the endurance up while fighting off trolls or slaying dragons. How do you plan on risking my life today?”

I looked her in the eye; she was fun. “It's still morning. We hadn’t planned the day out that far yet. Me? I’m hoping for grumpkins—a big ole horde of them.”

Princess knickered, “That’s not funny. My grand uncle on my aunt’s side was mauled by grumpkins.”

“Fine,” I said. “We’ll try to stay out of trouble today then. We got a long ride ahead.”

"Oh, wonderful, more saddle time. Just what my sore back needed."

I patted her head and saddled up. Together with the others, we rode out of the fort, leaving it lonely and empty to guard its little foothill. Around us, the goblin army was on the move, kicking up a vast cloud of dust. Slade charged to the head of the column where Malworth rode on a huge swiftscale. Around him was a swarm of mounted attendants, trying to shade him with parasols. Slade rode next to the goblin king, chatting with him while we hung back. The goblin lieutenants weren’t terribly interested in talking with us, so we rode silently.

After a few hours of this, I asked Princess what life was like as a horse. She spent several hours talking about the many types of grass to eat and how humans wouldn’t let her enjoy it, ever. Such was the life of a draft animal, she exclaimed.

At some point, Slade fell back to hang with us, but we still were all in our own heads. Honestly, I was a bit freaked out that he didn’t seem to be freaked out that he had no way to deliver on the promises he made to the several thousand goblins behind us. Not to mention that the people of Springfield might freak out that there was a massive goblin army in their front yard. I didn’t ask him about any of this. I’m sure whatever plan his two brain cells rubbing against each other thought up would suffice.

The road was a welcome relief to riding around without any sort of trail. Princess seemed to like it. She complained slightly less as we marched out of the badlands, and the hills softened and shifted from red to green.

When the sun began to set, Malworth announced that we would be camping for the night. As the news rippled down the column, goblins began setting up tents—big ones for the king, his lieutenants, and shamans and smaller individual-sized ones for the rest. As the sun touched the horizon, I saw a sea of tents stretching back hundreds of yards. So that’s what several thousand goblins camping looks like—good to know.

Slade wanted to build a campfire, so he wandered off for a bit to gather wood. I was so happy not to be on horseback that I just staggered around like a zombie trying to get the numb out of my legs and ass.

Eventually, we had a small campfire with the four of us huddling around it. Slade broke out his guitar and started playing some sort of pop music tunes. I didn’t know them at all. He insisted everyone did. Max agreed with me while Emma sided firmly with the Slade camp.

Emma pulled her beige sweater out of her inventory and looked at it for a bit. She didn’t try putting it on, just stared at it while Slade plucked at his guitar. I was about to ask her if everything was okay when she just wadded it up and tossed it into the fire.

“Whoa!” Slade yelped as his guitar protested.

“What was that?” I asked Emma. “I thought that was your thing from home.”

“It was,” she said. “But it's no longer me.”

Max shot me a weird look. I felt uneasy about Emma’s sudden destruction of the one thing reminding her of home. Had the game gotten to her? Was she deciding she’d rather be here than go back home?

“Heck, yeah!” Slade said and held out a fist to Emma. “Checking out that growth and development.”

Emma gave him a shy bump back. Her fist tap was weak, but her eyes were different. She looked directly at Slade when she returned his bump. The Emma from a few days earlier would have averted her eyes instantly.

“Was that a growth moment?” I asked, trying to ride on Slade’s line.

She looked at me. Her eyes did not wander. They did not dart away. It was a very un-Emma-like thing for her to do.

“It is.” She said. “I think things are different here. The fires told me to stand on my own. And that’s what I’m going to do.”

“The fires?” I asked.

Emma smiled and pointed to our little campfire.