The rest of the surprise round played out in an approximation of real time that was becoming so familiar that Booth barely noticed the tiny hitches and pauses of game time. Arra, holding her greatsword in a single hand, used her free hand to yank a table just inside the door onto its side. Lora and Karon dived into the provided cover.

The air thickened, holding Booth mostly motionless. On the tactical view map, a square across the room lit with red.

A Scourge came running from the back of the room, waving around a crossbow. He stopped and aimed.

[Scourge Enlisted uses Ranged Attack on you. Miss!]

Booth shifted his shield, blocking the bolt before it could reach him. The Scourge’s frantic motion settled into stillness. On the mini-map, red shifted to blue on their side of the room.

From the impromptu shelter of the table Arra had upended for him came the heavy whisper of Karon incanting and the odd muddy gold of his aura. Frost shivered through the air, confirming Booth’s assumption that Karon was a magic class of some kind.

The rest of the fight unfolded in neat turns, never taking as long as it seemed to Booth like maybe they should, if people were taking as long to figure things out as he did. He didn’t understand a lot of things about how that all worked, so he just went with it.

Lora’s voice, musical, created a flash of silver light at the edge of Booth’s vision. His own gaze remained fixed on the enemy, though. His weapon led him forward into their onslaught, and his world became pinpoints of focus—their weapons, his shield, his flail. Something the narrator had placed in his codex came back to him, now.

The work of a Tilier. Breaking the soil. Removing the weeds.

Number-filled messages faded in and out at the top edge of Booth’s vision until the combat was over. Booth stood between two bodies, Arra over another, both breathing hard. With every sense heightened, Booth scanned the room.

A second door at the room’s back stood exactly opposite the one they’d come through, closed. Booth gathered himself to stalk toward it.

Arra was already there. She tilted her ear toward it, glanced toward Booth and shook her head, and then leaned very solidly against it. Booth imagined it would not be as easy to open as the first had been for them.

“You’re bleeding. Hold still.”

Still coming down from the high of the fight, Booth stared at Lora for a moment. Only when she pressed a length of cloth against his forearm did he feel the pain. As Lora bandaged, she hummed. A mist of shimmering colors drifted from her hands, soothing cool against the sliced edges of the gash in his arm.

“There’s no need,” Booth started. “I’m a Tilier of Voshell. I can—”

“Save your Voshell, for now. You may need her later.”

The rainbow mist flattened against the bandaging on Booth’s arm, flashed a blinding silver, and sank into the cloth. A not-unpleasant tingling soaked into the flesh beneath.

Lora patted Booth’s arm, graced him with one of her enigmatic smiles, and stepped back to look at the room surrounding them. Booth was left with the faint sense of owing her a favor, although she hadn’t said so.

“They must have hauled the tables from somewhere else into here. Don’t you think?” Lora didn’t seem to be speaking to anyone in particular.

Karon closed the door they’d entered through and stepped around bodies and pooling blood to join Lora. He squinted past her at the carvings around the archway.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“I concur. Based on the arrangements, I think there aren’t too many of them. Possibly this was the last of them.”

Despite Karon’s words, Arra remained beside the other door. She didn’t speak or visibly react any more than she ever did, but something about her seemed more vital, as if the danger of the situation enlivened her.

“Perhaps they didn’t need more for whatever it is they’re doing in here.”

Nildeyr moved among the Scourge dead, stopping at each one in turn. His darting movements reminded Booth of a squirrel’s, although he couldn’t tell if Nildeyr was anxious or just excited. He checked each body for signs of life and then emptied any pockets or pouches they had on them. Not much, judging by the rare clink of metal, and Booth couldn’t bring himself to care, either way.

Murderers.

“This doesn’t seem a large place.” Karon had left off gazing at the archway and now glanced around the room as a whole. “And with the pews… A temple? Shrine?”

“Does it matter?” Nildeyr piped up with what Booth had been thinking.

“Possibly. That depends upon why these Scourge are here, I should think.”

Booth reached back to touch the small bundle containing the golden scythe which he’d tied to his pack, to reassure himself it was still there. He’d been to this point worried mostly about the Scourge themselves, but Karon raised a fair point.

Dorri, who’d remained on guard near the door they’d entered through, frowned absently and strode across the room toward Arra and her door. Their entire journey from Diairm, Dorri had reminded Booth of a deer convinced she was surrounded by predators and on the verge of fleeing. With a bow in her hands, she transformed, far more like hunter than prey.

Booth abruptly recalled the moment along the road when Lora had talked about The Drowning Grove and Dorri’s startled reaction had prompted Booth to believe Dorri was not an NPC but a fellow player like Booth. He’d thought a lot about that, at first. It had been exciting to realize he wasn’t alone in a world filled with fictional characters.

A lot had changed since then. Wondering about who was or wasn’t “real” had been forcibly pushed from his head with the Scourge attack along the road. After that had come the emotional fallout of being in Traton and meeting his family-not family. And as Booth had come to accept that who he’d been before this world no longer mattered, it had also mattered less to him whether or not Dorri had also started elsewhere.

Everyone here is as real as everyone else, whatever they were or weren’t before they became code in a game.

“I don’t immediately recognize this symbolism.” Karon had returned to the archway. “The statue upstairs seemed familiar and yet not. Does anyone else recognize them?”

“Perhaps.” Lora didn’t immediately elaborate.

Arra straightened from leaning against her door. In the same moment, Dorri drew an arrow from her quiver and lifted her bow.

Pulse immediately pounding, Booth lunged to his feet, shield up, and stepped in front of Karon and Lora.

The door slid open. Two men entered, dressed as roughly as all the others, with the same dumb symbol of curves and lines hand-drawn on their tunics. Their steps never hesitated. They walked all the way into the room before their gazes focused on its current occupants and their eyes widened in equal measures of understanding and alarm.

Seconds later, two more dead enemies joined the others. Grim satisfaction tightened Booth’s jaw.

“I think it’s fair to judge that the Scourge as a whole are indeed unaware anything is amiss,” Karon remarked.

“Or were.” Arra nodded toward what lay beyond the door the two latest had entered through.

On the door’s far side, a hallway sloped steeply downward toward a doorless opening. Light spilled through the opening and onto the stone tiles just inside. Shadows danced with the light.

One shadow grew larger and became a man standing in the open doorway.

Booth raised his shield and ran at the emerging enemy. Urging his body into working with the shifting of his armor rather than against it was comfortingly like moving in full football pads and uniform. Booth got his body and armor weight moving and then let momentum to do most of the work.

A bottleneck wasn’t the ideal way to work if you were on the wrong side of it. Booth put every effort into turning the narrow doorway into the right side.

Another scuffle later, filled with the clang of weapons on shield and flashes of silver and dull gold magic and the plink and whisper of bows firing and arrows falling, and another Scourge was down while Booth remained standing. All the elation of back-to-back winning plays pumped through his veins and went straight to his head.

Slamming aside the grazing blade of a falling attacker, Booth pushed forward into the room on the doorway’s far side.

One more Scourge lurked there, pressed to the wall on the door’s opposite side. The curved blade of a great-axe fell.

[Scourge Enlisted uses Melee Attack on you. Hit!]

[You take 10 damage.]

Every muscle screamed as instinct born of training slanted Booth’s shield and moved his arm at just the right angle to shove aside the blow. Instead of tearing past Booth’s guard and into his flesh, the massive weapon dented Booth’s shield and glanced aside.

But as it bounced, the blunt side of the axe blade crashed against Booth’s shoulder. Numbing pain streaked down his arm and loosened his fingers.