Peter took his tablet out to his mother and showed her that he had completed all the homework that had been assigned that day. Artfully concealing that there was much more from previous days was a challenge, but in her irritation he was able to gloss over that fact. He didn’t even need to feign exhaustion to escape, she pointed out the bags under his eyes and sent him to bed early.

Well, goodnight to you too, Peter thought, shoving the door to his room open more forcefully than he had intended. Bugger going to sleep though, I’ve got places to be and monsters to kill.

Peter stripped off and dived into bed. Then climbed back out of bed, turned off the light and swung the door half-closed and dove back in again. A few moments later he settled into his now comfortable digital body and opened his eyes.

For a moment he couldn’t figure out what he was looking at. Slowly his brain processed the information and spat out a result, it was an eye. A very large eye. It filled the entirety of his view. Peter threw himself backwards as hard as he could, whacking his head against the bedhead and throwing DB off his face. “Pfbfbt!” he spat. “DB, what the heck?”

The rat gave him a glare from the folds of the duvet where he had fallen. His expression said, louder than any words, “what the heck yourself, I was comfortable.”

“Sorry buddy, you scared me,” Peter apologised, scooping up his companion and sliding off the bed. “Come on, we’re off to meet the wizard.”

Leaving the mystery of how to maintain the house for another time, the duo swept out the door, through the chapel and into the rainswept street. Gusts of wind ruffled the feathers on his back and the downpour immediately drenched them both. Peter flicked up his hood and pulled the high collar up as far as it would go and leaned into the wind. Fortunately, they didn’t have far to go. Less fortunately, they were only halfway there when they were barreled aside by a hulking form dragging a dray covered in bolts of cloth, pitching Peter into a puddle, though DB managed to leap clear.

“Oi, watch where you’re going!” he shouted after the receding figure. Something about the incident prodded a memory, but he couldn’t put a finger on it. He shrugged, retrieved DB and continued on to the inn.

Pham was sitting outside at a table wolfing down a massive plate of food. As Peter approached, he waved him over to an empty chair. “Glad you could make it this time, Petey. Would you like a drumstick?”

“I sure would,” Peter tried to take the chicken from Pham’s outstretched hand.

The drumstick was jerked back out of reach. “Good, get your own. These are mine. Mmmm. Delicious.” He took a massive bite, savouring the meat.

“You’re a real jerk sometimes, you know that right?” Peter plopped down into his seat.

“A jerk with a plate full of yummy food though,” Pham grinned.

Peter opened his inventory and checked where he had stashed his coins. “How the heck do you even afford all of that?”

Pham took another huge bite, chewed and swallowed. “How can you not? The first five levels take, like, a week to plow through and by the end of it you should have a full basic kit, a trade set and more than a gold and a half. What have you been doing?”

“Dying.”

“Oh, yeah. I forgot. Hey, pull up your mark and show me what you’ve got. Maybe we can find a way around this life allergy you seem to have picked up before everyone else gets here.” Pham scooched his chair around to get a better angle.

Peter closed his inventory and dropped a scroll on the table. “I’ll go you one further. I copied out all my stats onto this, earned some decent skill points in Calligraphy in the process too.”

Unrolling the scroll, Pham gave a low whistle. He tapped a section and hummed. Then ran his finger down even further and scoffed a bit. A frown creased his forehead and he dropped the scroll on the table and he hummed to himself.

“What?” Peter demanded.

“Oh, you’re screwed,” Pham shrugged. “You’re still level two, your skills are all over the place and you’ve got no money or gear. If it wasn’t for the sweet ass scythe and the geas, I’d say ditch this character and start again.”

Peter picked up the scroll and looked it over. “That bad?”

“Okay, maybe not that bad. You’ve managed to develop an affinity for an Avatar I didn’t even know existed,” he flicked the back of the scroll. “How did you do that?”

Peter rolled up the scroll and laid it on the table and looked longingly at the plate of drumsticks. “I have no idea, honestly. How would I even find out?”

“Fine, you can have one. One. And, I couldn’t really say,” he continued as Peter gratefully tucked in. “Everyone picks up a bit of affinity for the various usual Avatars, usually in traumatic situations though. You know the skill tab on your Mark is interactive though, yeah? Try tapping on the skill and see what happens?”

Polishing off the drumstick, Peter wiped his hands on his pants instinctively even though there was no oil on them, and scrolled through his Mark to the appropriate place. “It’s a list,” he whispered hoarsely. “Every time I’ve died. There’s some in here I don’t even remember. What the heck?” He looked up at Pham, questioningly.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Pham returned the look. “You’ve got me. Plenty of players have died. It’s part of the game. Is there anything special about the list?”

Peter scrolled through the entries, searching for something unique. Then it hit him: they all were. “There’s no double ups. I’ve managed to rack up nearly twenty deaths in two weeks, every one of them to a different reason.”

Sucking in a breath through his teeth, Pham clapped Peter on the shoulder. “Dude. Harsh.” He thought about it for a minute before continuing. “Look, it’s a game, you have to start treating it like one. Everything you see is based on rules and numbers. We can fix this. Look,” he picked up the scroll again, “you’re not bad with the scythe. You’ve got some armour, sorta. You have the startings in Herbalism, so you’ve started on the trade skills. It’s not a total loss.”

Peter heaved a sigh of relief. “Okay. So where do I go from here?”

“Nowhere, Mother Goose, you’ve got a tale to tell. What’s the down low on the geas? Is there a big pile of loot at the end of this rainbow? Are we going dragon hunting?” Pham leaned forward in excitement.

Extracting a suddenly restless DB from his hood and placing him on the table, Peter took a deep breath. “DB, settle. Do not touch the food, it’s not ours. Pham, I… I don’t know how it happened. I had just died, again, but instead of waking up in Jacob’s workshop I woke up in the clouds?”

Pham held up a hand. “First up, who the heck is Jacob?”

“Jacob? The cryptkeeper?” Peter asked. “How do you not know that?”

Lowering his hand, Pham made an ‘I don’t know’ gesture. “Maybe because I don’t die often enough to be on a first name basis with the guy running the graveyard?”

“Point. Ok, so I woke up in these clouds and a door opened and a glowy lady ushered me through. I…” Peter paused as Pham raised his hand again. “She was the Avatar of life. She said her name was Fjor. We good?” Pham’s hand lowered again. “Ok, she said that her husband had died and his castle was fading away.” Pham’s hand was going up again. “Bani, Avatar of death. No, I don’t know how death can die. The Avatars are supposed to be AI.”

Pham whistled again. “Intense. Dying Avatars. Okay, go on.”

“Right, so she wants me to ‘restore his legacy’, and gave me the key to the house. That’s it. No instructions, no nothing.” Peter pulled the key out of his pocket and laid it on the table.

A hand reached over Peter’s shoulder and attempted to pick up the key, eliciting an flare of light and an anguished yelp. Peter looked around and saw the crew that Pham had been with the other day, Danny sucking on his fingers and whining. The one that drew his eye was the hulking member in the suit of armour. Last time Peter had seen him he had been slumped over the table, passed out and in a very different armour outfit. This time he was in a much more familiar getup, cape included.

“You!”

“You!”

The hulk turned to Pham and pointed at Peter. “You never said it was this freak. I’m outta here.” He turned and started stalking away in a huff.

Pham picked up the last drumstick and bounced it off the back of Woz’s helmet. “Oi, ijit, get back here. Have I ever steered you wrong before?”

“Once,” Woz said, taking off his helmet and turning it over in his hands. “And you were the one who paid the price for it. Fine. Let’s give the black eyed bastard a chance.” He turned around and walked back, taking a seat at the table with everyone else.

Danny was still complaining about the pain in his fingers while Pham flagged down a passing waitress to order more food. Woz sat directly opposite Peter, his emerald green eyes boring into Peter’s own. Blaise sat off to the side in a lotus position, looking weird doing so on a chair.

“Righto you lot, listen up,” Pham stood up, leaning forward and resting his weight on his fingers on the tabletop. “Peter here is the one who triggered the geas. Danny, stop freaking out, I made sure we’re the only Traveller party here,” he pointed without looking at the fancy pants who suddenly looked shifty when Pham started talking. “Now, we’re working on limited information. The quest giver was the Avatar of Light… what?”

Peter lowered his hand. “Life. Fjor is the Avatar of Life. She’s the one who makes the respawn shrines work.”

“Right, as I said, the Avatar of Life. Now, the job is to ‘restore Fjor’s castle to its former glory’. What that entails, I don’t know. Apparently, Fjor is not the explaining type… what?”

Peter lowered his hand again. “It’s Bani’s castle. He is, or was, the Avatar of Death.”

“Do you want to do this?” Pham demanded.

“Yes.”

“Well, you can’t. So stop interrupting.” Pham stopped and coughed. “Please. Sorry, I got caught up in a moment.”

Danny stopped fidgeting with whatever he was playing with under the table, that everyone had been pretending to ignore, and raised his hand.

“This isn’t school Danny. You don’t need to raise your hand,” Pham facepalmed.

“Everyone else seems to be doing it. Anyway, are you saying we get to go to Death’s Castle? How cool is that?”

Peter put his head on the table and covered it with his arms. “It’s more of a cottage at this point,” he muttered, his voice muffled almost to obscurity.

Pham frowned at the interruption again, Woz shook his head and Danny leaned closer to hear better. Blaise cracked one eye and arched an eyebrow before closing it again.

“Whatever, Death’s cottage then. Still cool,” Danny enthused. He gave Blaise a gentle backhand tap. “And you were just going to ditch Pham for hanging out with a loser.”

Bristling at those words, Peter lifted his head and glared. “It’s my house now. You don’t have to come.”

Blaise cracked the same eye and shot a murderous look at Danny. “Don’t lump me in with your idiocy. That was your idea.”

“Whatever. I’m not a loser.” Peter sttod suddenly, tipping over his chair. “I shared this information with Pham because I thought it would be kept confidential. Clearly that was not the case. I trusted you Pham, and you bring in this jerk,” he waved at Danny, “who insults me and my house, and this jerk,” he gestured at Woz, “who stuck a flaming sword through my chest the first time he met me. If this is the company you keep, you can keep them.” He turned on his heel and began stomping away.

“I told you this was a bad idea,” Woz rumbled.

Blaise hit Danny in the shoulder with an open palm strike, sending him flying to the floor with a small thunderclap. “Moron.”

Slamming his hand against the table, Pham yelled after Peter’s receding form. “Petey, this is your last chance. If you walk away I can’t help you anymore.”

“Fine,” Peter yelled, pulling his glove back on. “I’ll do it myself.”