I pulled back the bands of my slingshot, taking aim at the target over the door once more. The muscles in my arms cried out in protest, the memory of the last time still fresh.

This time, however, I couldn’t afford to miss hundreds of shots first. I had only one steel ball, one shot. If I hit the button, the door would close on the worm-drake, either killing it, or at least getting it stuck and unable to continue any further into the room. If I missed, it was all over.

The world seemed to move in slow motion. Cadoc was running through the door, the worm-drake snapping at him. It was time to shoot.

I was shaking, and nervous sweat was getting into my eyes. It stung, and I wiped it away, tried to calm my nerves.

I focused everything I had on that one shot. Tried to remember how I had done it the previous time. Same ball, same distance, same target. Should be simple.

Almost before I made the command to my fingers, I released. I watched as, still in slow motion, the ball soared through the air. It flew up to the target.

And bounced uselessly off of the wall, missing the target.

I immediately slumped down to the ground, falling to my knees. The steel ball bounced back into the room, but it would be impossible to find it in time for a second shot, a waste of energy to scour for it among the abandoned bones and weapons. I hung my head, defeated. A rush of thoughts washed over me in an instant.

I knew I couldn’t do this, I thought. I knew it from the very first moment I got here. I’ve been deluding myself, thinking that I could make up for a spark with drive, with anger.

I thought back to that day Tom had shown me my mistake in Social Studies, how I had given the right answer, but not the answer the teacher wanted to hear.

I’ve known it ever since then. Would I have passed those tests if I had tried harder? Gotten angrier? Taken the tests over and over and over, refusing to fail? No. Of course not.

What the hell am I doing here? I’m about to die just trying to get something to eat. How did I ever think I could survive in this world? I’m too weak, too helpless, too much of a failure. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before, but this world makes it so obvious who is special and who isn’t. The higher of a Ring you are in, the more special you are. And they wouldn’t even let me inside. I’ve only made it this far by leeching off of the skills of other people, like I’ve been copying someone else’s answers on all my tests. Eventually, that stops working. Either the teacher switches your seats, and the new guy next to you ends up being just as fucking stupid as you are, and you both fail, or you end up one day not sitting next to anybody. What then? What do you do when you end up alone? Do you scribble nonsense, bubble in random answers, and hope for the best? You may as well turn it in blank.

It felt like the entire rest of my life, the decades I would have lived if I wasn’t eaten, all the years I had remaining until a natural death, were all coming to inhabit that one moment, me on the ground, head in my hands, dreading my death and hating myself. I spent more than half of a lifetime there.

Why did I even try? Mom told me way back then everything I needed to know about life: some people aren’t meant to succeed. Why did I think I could escape my fate?

I realized then that I’d always been stubborn. I’d thought that my resolve I had found after Berenguer’s manor was new, but it had been a part of me for years. I wasn’t some genius, some fluke, some miracle, the conscious NPC; I was just a sore loser. I followed Tom because I couldn’t accept that I was a loser.

I was so unbelievably stupid. I knew that copying Tom didn’t work, not really. There would always be something I was missing - and maybe it wasn’t an action I didn’t take. Maybe it was just a character trait I didn’t have, and I could go through all the motions, but still not ever win. It was like I had been over at Tom’s house, seen Tom flip a lightswitch on, and tried to make the same movement in my own house, when I got back home - but my Mom hadn’t paid the electricity bill. I could copy him him exactly, every last detail - the speed, the angle, the expression on his face while he did it - but I simply didn’t have any electricity.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

He was living a life, while I was an actor on stage, pretending to live, all of my days filled nothing but props and lines.

And now I’d lost my lines. Even if it did work, even if it would have worked, how was I supposed to copy Tom without Tom around? How was I supposed to know what he would do when fighting a giant fucking worm with arms? That wasn’t in the script. I couldn’t have memorized those lines if I tried.

Without Tom, I wasn’t a second Tom. I wasn’t even a cheap copy of Tom. I was just me, and that wasn’t enough to do anything.

I looked up. Time seemed to have screeched to a near-halt. Cadoc was moving so slowly that he looked frozen, that manic grin still plastered on his face. He’ll probably die here, too, I thought. But he’s happy. Lucky bastard.

I looked back over my shoulder. Amaia was there still, just beyond the doorway, shouting something, Naomi laying on the floor next to her, propped up against the wall. Amaia will survive, I thought. She’s more special than any of us. Maybe that’s why I never understood what the hell she was thinking.

And Naomi - well, she’ll live for a little longer, anyway. Who knows what her deal is.

I supposed that, following the line of thinking that said Amaia was more special than any of us, then Berenguer - whatever Ring he was in - was the most special person I’d met in that world. That’s what special looked like. Ruthless. Scheming. Angry.

I looked back down at the ground. A skull smiled back at me, a fellow traveler. Some other loser who had died here. Probably hadn’t even gotten as far as I had, had starved in that room, unable to shoot the target. The remnant of a thin sword was still in his boney fingers, blade rusty but still sharp in parts, above a cross-guard, a hilt, and a round pommel.

I considered if it was sharp enough, still, to end a life, but I wasn’t sure it would be any less painful than being eaten.

For some reason, I couldn’t stop staring, even as I resigned myself to death. The skeleton. The sword. He had been holding his sword even as he died. If he had starved to death in there, then it had obviously been pointless. Perhaps he had killed himself with it, but I didn’t think so. The sword had been gripped facing the other way.

I kept staring at that sword, thinking about the pointless struggle of this dead man, wondering why he had bothered swinging his sword at all. Maybe I was wrong, and he hadn’t starved in here. Maybe he had done exactly what I had, and gotten stuck in here with an enemy he couldn’t defeat. And he had died fighting.

Still staring at the sword, still fearing my death, my hand begun to move on its own. Before I had even realized what I was doing, I had pried the sword out of the skeleton’s grip - easy without the resistance of muscles - and held the sword aloft, upside down. I turned, and it was like another mind was working inside my head, and another voice took over my vocal chords as I shouted out to Amaia.

“Amaia!” I shouted. “Disarm this sword! Take the pommel off!”

A rapid series of emotions ran across her face in succession, but she finally held up a hand. The sword twisted and warped, and finally the round pommel snapped off. I grabbed it in my other hand and returned the sword to the skeleton. Then I looked at the pommel. It was a counterbalance to help move a sword’s center of gravity, a simple, mundane part of most swords, and this one wasn’t fancy. Just a little steel ball.

A second shot.

I loaded it into the pouch of the slingshot, pinched it between my knuckles, and stretched back the bands. With the calmness of death, I took aim.

Cadoc was well into the room now, approaching my position quickly as time began to resume its normal course. The worm was inside, too, barely able to wriggle its way into the doorway. It was a tight fit, and that had slowed it down enough that it was still only a few feet in.

If I was stupid to think I could escape fate, I thought. Then I was just as stupid to think I could change this basic fact. I am stubborn. I am a sore loser. And so why the hell did I think I was going to give up? I’m going to struggle and strain and fight with every last breath, every ounce of mana, of energy, of life. I’ll be a parasite if I have to be, same as always. But it doesn’t stop there. I’ll do whatever it takes. In the end, someday, I’ll lose. But I will push back that day as far as I can.

I thought about that house out in the country, the beautiful wife, the dream. I didn’t think I would ever get there, but I had to try anyway. Not because I thought I would win. But because that’s who I am.

I’m a sore loser.

I released.

The shot flew, and in a blink, it hit the button.

The door began to descend on the worm as it continued to pull itself forward. It was too far in, now, to retreat - if it could even go backwards at all - but still much too far from getting it’s whole body into the room. It shambled forward, still mindless with hunger.

Cadoc had reached me now, and stood beside me, facing the worm-drake, sword in hand. We watched as the stone door slowly descended.

The worm-drake had gotten almost halfway across the room, close enough I could almost reach out and touch it - before the door finished shutting, crunching the worm-drake’ss thin spine as it came down. The door got stuck, unable to close completely, leaving a gap a foot or two high. But the worm was stuck. It thrashed and writhed, trying to free itself, but it was unable to. The door was too heavy.

“Well done,” Cadoc said, placing a hand on my shoulder. “I believed, for a moment, that we had reached our heroic end. But you continue to prove me wrong.”

“This mean you got over the duel thing?” I asked.

“No,” he said, sternly. “There is more to be said. But I have put it aside for the moment. Because we are teammates.”

I smiled grimly, watching the worm struggle.

Then another hand fell on my shoulder.

I turned, and it was Amaia. She must have scrambled inside when she saw the door closing.

“I thought guards were supposed to listen to orders,” I said.

“Well done,” she said, mimicking Cadoc and ignoring my comment. I let it slide.

“Hey,” Naomi said, groggily, from where she hung on Amaia’s neck. “Did we do it? Are we eating soon? Cause, y’know, I’d really like to eat soon. I’m starving over here.” And as if on cue, her stomach growled, and the worm-drake seemed to growl back.