Someone called Dorri’s name.

Nildeyr. He’s right beside me.

Dorri clenched her fist, clinging desperately to her bow. She wanted to drop it, wanted to press her hand against the place where it hurt, but everything hurt and she still couldn’t move.

And I need my bow to fight back. And I need to fight back, because it’s just me looking out for me, that’s how it’s always been, I need my bow.

The stony beak rumbled across the floor toward Dorri, following the tail.

[Corrupted Terberis uses Beak Attack on you. Miss!]

Dorri stumbled backward, out of the beak’s path.

Don’t fall. If you fall, you’re done.

A hand, on her shoulder, from behind her. Not catching her but steadying. Just enough to regain her balance.

Nildeyr stepped in front of Dorri. The slender line of his rapier flashed. Its point drove toward the beak and into one of the dark bleeding fissures between solid stone.

[Corrupted Terberis takes 12 damage.]

A high-pitched rasping filled the air, and the creature shuddered back. The beak’s point ticked toward Nildeyr.

More voices called out from the room’s far side. A flurry of sound happened behind Dorri, but whatever any of them might have tried to do on their turn, nothing happened to the monster Dorri was facing down.

Booth’s hand left Dorri’s shoulder as he lunged past Nildeyr and strafed around to the creature’s far side, slamming his shield against the thing’s rocky surface.

“Not them! Me! Hey!” Booth swung his flail.

[Corrupted Terberis takes 7 damage.]

Another rasping cry. The spiked tail slow-motion lifted and curved. Its point wavered toward Booth.

Dorri’s marker on the tactical map lit up, but pain darkened her vision. She could move, but not much more easily than in turn-based limbo.

Something’s wrong. That thing hit me hard, but not that hard.

She must have missed some important combat message in the shock of the moment. Despite an instinct to hurry, even knowing the combat was turn-based and she had all the time she wanted, Dorri glanced to her upper right. Her combat log opened.

There. Right after the Tail Strike that had dropped her health by over half.

[You have gained the Afflicted Touch condition. You have disadvantage on attack rolls. At the end of each turn, you take an additional 1d6 damage. Lasts for three rounds.]

She only had 7 hit points left. Odds were really good that condition was going to kill her, even if she didn’t take any more hits.

Maybe if that thing dies, it will end the condition early.

Dorri closed the combat log. The very real sensation of pain was not fading, but she tried to reason through what play she should make just like she always did.

If she tried to move, the monster would get an opportunity attack on her. Given the amount of damage it had done in that first hit, she couldn’t risk it. Trying to shoot it from melee range would give her disadvantage.

But I have that already from the Afflicted Touch, even if I did try to back away.

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The gist of it was, she was screwed no matter what. Gritting her teeth, Dorri tried to bend her bow and string it, anyhow.

[You use Ranged Attack on Corrupted Terberis. Miss!]

The bow snapped away from her efforts. Frustrated tears stung Dorri’s eyes.

This is my fight. I want to fight it.

But she had no remaining lit indicators. Seething with helpless fury, Dorri ended her turn.

[You take 3 damage from Afflicted Touch.]

A wave of dizziness washed through Dorri. Her body twitched like it wanted to double over.

A strangled, angry cry rang out. Nildeyr leaped forward and planted his feet directly on the base of the hooked beak. Lifting his rapier in both hands, he stabbed it down, between rocky plates and into the tarry goo beneath.

The creature’s scream rattled the walls. Dust shook loose from the ceiling in clouds.

His own yell mingling with the thing’s, Nildeyr twisted his blade, shoving it deeper into the stone. Green-black blood gurgled, spilling across Nildeyr’s feet.

[Corrupted Terberis takes 8 damage.]

[Corrupted Terberis has died.]

The lifted tail shuddered and fell, no longer more than falling rock. Beneath Nildeyr’s feet, the hooked beak crumbled into a pile of rubble. The creature’s rasping scream ceased. Nildeyr stood over it, rapier upraised and face contorted, glaring at the inert stone like he hoped it would reanimate and come back for more.

With the deep crimson of firelight extinguished, only the faded yellow of Lora’s lantern remained. A stink of old earth and burning and blood raged through Dorri’s senses.

More urgent was another wave of dizzy cold, as if a seed of ice had affixed to her spine and was spreading outward. Her vision contracted, leaving behind the sight of Nildeyr and Booth panting over the creature they’d killed, and drew a veil encompassing only her.

[You take 2 damage from Afflicted Touch.]

One more tick of the condition remained. She was down to 2 hit points.

Dorri dropped her bow and pressed both hands against her stomach. Except it didn’t feel like her stomach usually felt. It felt like raw wound and sticky blood and pain.

Something’s wrong, she tried to say. I need help.

No words left Dorri’s mouth. The room wavered.

I can’t pass out. They need me.

But no. That was a splinter of memory from another time. A different room, and the blood hadn’t been hers but that of others.

And even that wasn’t a true memory.

Origin scenario. Not real.

A gauntleted hand once more braced against Dorri’s shoulder.

“Steady. I’ve got you.” Booth’s voice faded in and out. Dorri’s consciousness slipped with it, the room she stood in wavering between a modest hut filled with smoke and ash and wailing grief and the current one, stone and cold and pain.

And a third room, which was chronologically the first room. That room had been her mother’s bedroom—her real mother, the one who was too sweet and too supportive and let people walk all over her in order to avoid conflict of any kind. The mother who’d been flighty and disorganized and clueless but had tried harder than anyone else Dorri knew.

In that life before this one, when Dorri hadn’t been at classes, she’d been locked in her room, lost in coding or gaming and oblivious to the real world outside her door. Even after the onset of TRP, that hadn’t changed, except that Dorri hadn’t needed to bother with classes or freelance work anymore.

The day before Dorri had uploaded, her mother had come home from her waitressing job early because she wasn’t feeling well. She had to have known she was sick. Maybe her perpetually rose-colored outlook had kept her from acknowledging the truth. Dorri would never know, because by the time she emerged from her own room, it was too late. She’d discovered her mother’s body tucked under a pile of mismatched blankets and afghans in her bed.

I was right there, right on the other side of the wall. She died, and I wasn’t there. I didn’t even know.

[You take 4 damage from Afflicted Touch.]

[You gain the condition Unconscious.]

Bleeding out. Maybe I’ll die now, too.

A gray veil fell more heavily around Dorri. Against its canvas, the hut she’d shared with her in game mother painted itself. That mother had been dead already by the time Dorri got to her, too. That mother had been a charred corpse in a burned village.

Dorri hadn’t been there when the bandits came. She’d been off wandering in the forest, avoiding people and enjoying her solitude unbothered by the fretting of a mother who cared entirely too much but didn’t really understand Dorri.

Dorothy Mason hadn’t been able to track down her mother’s killer. It was an untouchable disease, impervious to arrows or blades. But Dorrias Greymantle had tracked the bandits who’d killed her mother.

In the falling darkness in the present time, Dorri’s wound flared with fresh pain.

It hurts.

Was this what they’d felt, those who’d murdered Dorri’s mother before Dorri had in turn murdered them?

Them, and then some. That last was the part which really haunted Dorri.

A hand moved at the edge of Dorri’s fading vision. It pressed over the top of hers, clutched against the wound in her stomach. Booth’s hand was large over the top of hers and bare of the chain glove he normally wore. An aura rippled around his fingers, red-gold like Booth’s hair but deeper, brilliant.

“Voshell, grant your comfort.” Booth spoke reverently from just beside Dorri’s ear. The light around his hand flashed. A deep warmth radiated from his touch and burned through Dorri’s hands and into the wound beneath. An unsettling sensation of knitting flesh and staunched bleeding rolled in its wake.