For a few heartbeats, with his pulse thudding in his ears, Booth merely stood there. Blood splattered his armor, but only a hint of pain lingered, as if he’d been punched in the nose days ago and it was still a little tender. The solid thump of his flail tearing into the enemy had dispersed some of the blinding rage that had sent him charging down the hill to begin with. He stood still and breathed and waited for the rest to dissipate.

Some part of Booth’s slowly cooling mind noted the arrows which had fallen all around him and helped take out the attackers.

Attackers. Murderers, more like.

That part of his mind also noted that he’d been right about the Riddles. They hadn’t dropped any overpowered attacks, but they were definitely at least the same level as Booth and knew their ways around a dps class. Lora had dropped a buff and a heal on him. Arra obviously knew her stuff, and someone had cast a spell that frosted over the enemy—Karon, Booth assumed.

The entire party had backed him up when it mattered, even without the knowledge which had prompted Booth into action. That was being on the turf with a team levels of good feeling, despite the hatred still roaring through Booth’s veins.

If you’d been alone, you’d have lost. Big-time.

They had a solid start. Once they cranked through a few levels, they could become a real force to be reckoned with.

A half dozen bodies, dead when they’d arrived, remained behind Booth on the blood-muddied downhill stretch of road. Two more much more recently deceased now lay at the bottom of the hill, one in front of him and another in front of Arra, who scanned the area much as Booth did as she returned her sword to its sheath and slung it once more around her shoulder.

The golden scythe relic gleamed in bright afternoon light through the grasses at the center of the pond’s muddied gray surface. Lora waded without hesitation into the shallow pool, aimed directly at where the man there had fallen beneath its surface.

She might need help—backup in case the arrow-shot man somehow survived.

That thought cooled the rest of Booth’s anger. He gathered himself to go after Lora. But Arra turned her head in a quick glance-check toward the hill behind Booth and then headed toward Lora herself.

Instead of duplicating Arra’s efforts, Booth also looked up the hill behind him. Karon led the way down the mud-slicked path, with Dorrias a few steps behind. While Karon looked at his feet, Dorrias had her head lifted and scanned the surrounding tree line with the alertness and unselfconscious grace of a skilled hunter.

Nildeyr was coming down the hill, too, but he stayed to the grass at the road’s edge. When he reached the spill of fallen bodies on the hillside, he stopped and crouched beside the first person he came to. Nildeyr rested one hand on the chest, and his fingers touched their throat. Booth could have told Nildeyr that he’d find no signs of life, but the gesture brought a swell of sudden tears to Booth’s throat, followed immediately by a heated flare of returning anger to his face.

They died for Traton. But why?

On the heels of that came another thought.

They’re not real. None of this is real.

Wasn’t it, though? Wasn’t this his reality now? If he never considered this real, then what would be?

Karon cleared his throat as he approached Booth’s position. “I presume you have some insider information which explains your actions?”

Booth stared at the other man. Twigs and leaves and other bits of detritus clung to Karon’s coat, and he looked less intimidating than usual.

Looking past Karon toward where Nildeyr worked methodically from one body to the next, Booth inclined his head in that direction and summarized the combination of things he’d experienced for himself and new things the narrator had told him just before the fight.

“After Meres-folk raids a few years back, Traton formed its own militia. They have a uniform, of sorts. When volunteers take up arms on the town’s behalf, they wear the shields and sashes which are property of the village.”

The sashes were golden yellow, but Booth glimpsed only traces of that original color on the fallen soldiers. The bucklers were bronze, dented and still in the mud.

Not even soldiers. Just volunteers.

Booth kept staring at the bodies, but in his peripheral vision, Karon nodded. “And the scythe? A relic? That’s also property of Traton?”

The relic is from Traton’s Voshellian chapel.

“It’s from Traton’s Voshellian chapel.” Booth waited to see if the narrator had more for him.

You have no idea why anyone would want to steal it.

“I have no idea why anyone would want to steal it.” Booth spent another few seconds formulating thoughts of his own. “But I guess someone did, and the village sent militia to take it back.”

“Or die trying.” Nildeyr rose from his crouch and eased down the hill toward Booth. “I’m not seeing anything remarkable about the bad guys. Just traveling clothes and standard weapons. Big and sharp but no special weaponcrafter’s mark or anything identifying on any of them.”

Nildeyr looked down at one cupped hand and, as he fetched up in front of Booth, held it out between them. His palm contained a few pieces of silver and a single bronze slug with lines dug into its surface, two wavy and crossed by a straight third.

Organizational insignia of some kind, possibly?

Ghostly clattering filled Booth’s head.

[You rolled a 7 for Lore.]

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

You do not recognize the symbol on the token.

Booth frowned. He might have failed to recognize the symbol, but something about it was important enough to roll dice over.

“I emptied their pockets, too. Doesn’t really make up for what they did, but…” Nildeyr shrugged.

“It can go toward reparations for the militia volunteers’ families, perhaps.” Karon’s tone remained crisp and detached, but Booth couldn’t fault his logic.

“It can go toward reparations,” Booth echoed. Mostly he was reconsidering every mean thing he’d ever thought about Nildeyr. He could’ve just as easily kept the handful of coins for himself. Booth would never have known the difference.

“Keep his hands behind his back!” Lora’s shout punctuated a sudden outburst of splashing.

Booth whirled, lifting the flail he still held in one hand.

Arra had dragged the fallen man from the water. He thrashed, kicking up freshets of mud onto the surrounding grass, but Arra held his arms behind his back with one of her hands. Her other arm wrapped around the man’s shoulders, holding him securely.

Something red flashed in Lora’s hands as she reached toward the pinned man’s face. She crammed it into his mouth, and Booth realized it was the scarf she’d been wearing as a belt since before Contha.

“Gagging him is good.” Karon said it with as much excitement as a man requesting cream for his coffee. “Unconscious would be better.”

As if Karon had issued a direct command, Arra loosened her grip enough to thump the man in one temple with the heel of her hand. Booth’s fists clenched in empathetic appreciation for the blow. The man dropped immediately. The only thing that kept him from falling face first into the pond once more was Arra’s grip on his wrists. His arms wrenched behind him with a force that Booth also found gratifying.

Karon raised one brow and nodded. “That’s one way to do it. Bind his hands behind him, so he cannot gesticulate.”

Arra tossed the man facedown onto the pond’s edge. Lora sloshed further into the water, toward the grasses where the thrown relic had landed.

From Karon’s other side, Dorrias glanced sharply toward the rumpled nobleman but said nothing. Booth couldn’t begin to guess what that might be about.

“Or we could just kill him,” Nildeyr said.

The force with which he wanted to agree slammed into Booth and sucked the breath from his lungs.

Arra paused in the act of winding rope around the man’s wrists and looked up at Karon. Karon in turn raised one eyebrow at Booth.

Booth waited for the narrator to chime in, but it remained silent. He had to logic through his emotional reaction all by himself. Hatred bubbled deep in his gut, and he knew instinctively it contained things that had happened longer ago than the few minutes the fight had lasted.

Stop leading with your fists. Try thinking your way out of situations.

That had been his mother’s advice—delivered as she applied an ice pack to the latest black eye or bruised knuckle.

“He might know something.” Booth despised the words as he spoke them, but it was true. “Until we know what happened here, exactly…”

Karon nodded. “He should be questioned.”

“Then I should see to his wound, so he doesn’t die on us along the way.” Lora, returning from her errand to the islet in the pond, splashed up the nearer embankment. She held up the golden scythe toward Booth. Her skirts were a sodden mess plastered to her legs.

Booth accepted the relic. In his hand, it felt no more meaningful than a toy. Then he slung his pack off his back and onto the ground. “I have a blanket you can dry off with.”

Lora waved him off. “We’re sheltered down here from the wind. And the sun’s warm enough. I’ll dry.”

Booth glanced toward Arra, but she was paying no mind whatsoever to him. He suspected she’d decline his offer, as well.

The sun on Booth’s skin did feel warm. The air held the scents of humidity and tree sap and blood. In the trees all around them, as if they’d grown directly from the bare black branches, crows beat their wings and cawed impatiently.

Scavengers, waiting for us to leave.

Booth thought about the world he’d left behind and about the people who’d be the last to die and have no one left to care what happened to their bodies. His parents, maybe, would be among those. Had been among them?

How long has it been?

And in this reality, of course, he was a Tilier. Things like fighting bad guys was his job, but he felt like other things probably were, too.

“We should cover the bodies.” Booth left his pack where it was and looked around him. Rock would be more difficult to come by here than along the river, but fallen branches might be good enough. “So that the crows and whatever else can’t get to them. We can send someone back from Traton to collect them for a proper burial.”

The fury that had been boiling Booth’s blood settled into a lower simmer. He wanted to get to Traton, now. He wanted to question their prisoner, find out what that token meant, discover why these people had stolen and killed for the golden scythe relic from Voshell’s chapel.

He wanted to know if the town from his Origin story was still standing. He wanted to see his family, real or not, and know they were safe.

He wanted to go home.

#

Galen Arien stood in the gore-streaked mud of Gastusad Manor’s ruined courtyard and wished he was someplace else.

Even home might be OK. If home had still existed, of course.

In one hand, Galen clutched a loaner spear. Over his flimsy starter armor, he wore a green and brown tabard that marked him as one of Chanford Falls’ citizen’s militia. Redemption Wars’ highly-touted System had apparently believed that because he’d been in the midst of enlisting in the U.S. Army before TRP screwed everyone over, that must mean he’d wanted to be a soldier.

Fuck my life.

In truth, being part of a pretend militia was nowhere near as difficult as reality would have been. The opening snippet of Galen’s Origin tutorial scenario had been pretty gloomy—the System had lifted a lot of things about his real family that Galen would’ve been OK with skipping over in his new make-believe life. Whatever weird trick of brain chemistry they’d used during the transition between reality and game had at least left him emotionally detached enough for all the shit he’d been through not to feel as devastating as it maybe should have.

Good stuff, whatever the hell they did. They should bottle and sell it.

Then the game had fast forwarded Galen into his militia stint and played him through a training montage. He’d settled into the avatar that looked more or less like him—short dark hair, long skinny face, hazel eyes. He’d learned the basic interface and mechanics of the game and met his fellow recruits.

That part had been fun—the whole appeal of Redemption Wars when he’d impulse pre-ordered it had been how it promised to wed an ultra-real experience of the world with the crunchy mechanics and dice rolls of a TTRPG. The game had absolutely lived up to that promise. Galen had even managed to forget, for a while, that he wasn’t just playing the game.

He was living in it. That realization still felt like a double-edged sword.

Now, here he stood, knee deep in his first official quest. If the game’s world insisted a little harder on reality, he was barely qualified to even be wearing that tabard, let alone be where he was.

One short training mission. No real person would be prepared for this.

That was probably part of the game design. When you were level one, you were supposed to feel level one. Galen most definitely did, although his nervousness mingled with excitement at being out in the Redemption Wars world. He hadn’t spotted any Dragons or Radiants yet, but the Neuroconnect tech lent the game world a vivid sense of reality—even if some of the details were almost too real for comfort.

Thick black smoke shrouded what would otherwise have been a bright autumn morning. The manor’s roofs, a mix of wood shingles and thatch atop the string of buildings which formed two sides of a square wall enclosure, had already been aflame when Galen’s commanding officer, Macond Chanaw, led his unit—Galen and two others—from Chanford Falls’ Northgate guard post to the manor house. The four of them had ridden out immediately, horses’ hooves pounding first the River Way’s paving stones and then a packed-earth side road.

We weren’t fast enough.

Of course they hadn’t gotten there in time. No self-respecting game would independently solve the problems it wanted you to spend hours beating your head against. Its job was to actively make things worse.

Which meant, of course, that however bad this situation looked, it was absolutely about to get even more complicated.