The grove was still and silent, the faint rustle of leaves sounding in complaint of a passing breeze.

Pan was becoming surprisingly accustomed to waking up to many aches and pains in the middle of a picturesque grove, and the familiarity was making him uneasy.

“Did we win?” he asked groggily. His head hurt. Though, it hurt in new and interesting ways.

“You tell me,” Apollo said.

Pan sat up and instantly regretted it as the world – to him at least – had been possessed by the spirit of a mischievous washing machine. It spun in jarring ways. So he laid back down and looked at the sky for a while.

It was daytime, and the light streamed down through the leaves. This, of course, happened further away from Pan in many directions, as that was where the remaining trees were. Over Pan, however, there was no gently streaming light, just great torrents of morning sunlight, unimpeded by gently rustling leaves.

It was now that he noticed there was something wrong with the light. There was no fiery eye in the blue heavens above. Instead, there was a sun-bright glowing line stretching almost three-fifths of the way across the sky. It was as though someone had glued the sun to the horizon and stretched it.

“Did you hear me, Pan?” Apollo started.

Coming back to himself, he realized Apollo had been talking while he was trying to understand the mysteries of the cosmos. “Uh, no. What was it again?”

Apollo sighed and said, “Athena seems to think that you might be the cause of that attack last night.”

“Pfft,” the faun said. “As if.”

“But now that she mentioned it, I seem to recall a purple haze about those monsters. I certainly don’t remember seeing those particular species in these woods before, and we cleared it out at least once already.”

Pan put his fingertips to his chest as though wounded by the accusation. “I would never-…It wasn’t me, ok? You think I’d do this to myself?”

He rolled over on his side, which somehow didn’t trigger his vertigo, and looked the boy in his eyes. “That thing ate me.”

For the first time, he saw Apollo was tending to another body. Athena was laid out on the ground before him.

“Is she going to be ok?” he asked. The defensive tone in his voice had vanished.

What if it had been my fault? he thought guiltily.

“Yeah. We only brought the one campfire. It was going to be a routine farm, and we can take the usual fare out here. Her natural regeneration will have to bring her back to consciousness.”

“Another Hoplite class feature?” he asked, trying to do so mockingly, but didn’t have the heart for it.

“What? No.” Apollo suddenly sounded like he was addressing an idiot. “You know how you regain HP passively when you’re outside of combat?”

Pan decided to construct a lie to save face, but looked blank a fraction of a second too long.

“Did you play the beta?” Apollo probed knowingly.

Pan just shook his head.

“Gods save us,” he muttered. A bit more loudly he said, “It’s a miracle you survived that fight. Those monsters, as far as I can figure, were randomly generated.” He stood up from kneeling at his sister’s side and came over to Pan. He took the unresisting faun by the left arm and rotated it to show him the bracer.

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“This is your interface. It’s got your deck list, character stats, action count…everything.” He tapped the cluster of red gems Pan had seen light up and go out over the course of his time in this world. Something like a card, though taller and wider, and which didn’t come from the embedded deck box, flew from somewhere about the bracer like magic and floated in front of him.

“Do you see the menu screen?” Apollo asked as though blind.

“Yeah, I do. What? You can’t?”

“No, I can’t,” he said flatly. “I can’t see your cards, I can’t see your stats. All I can see is the design of your bracer, your race, and if I look closely, I can see your remaining actions.”

Pan was reading the screen.

He saw his own name at the top of the table, not Pan, but his real name. The one he used when he made his account.

Below that, he saw a line that said-

“Unnggh”, came a groan from behind Apollo. He reacted immediately, impromptu tutor lesson over.

“It swung you against that tree pretty hard,” he said, kneeling over her. He had his back to Pan now.

For Class, it just says “Cursed”. That’s a class? he thought to himself. And all my stats but HP are a 1. Lady, he thought, referring to the woman from the pool, you are some kind of messed up doing this to me.

“What…rewards…?” came Athena’s weak voice.

“There were none,” her brother said. He made no attempt to conceal his own disappointment.

“…sucks…” she replied.

“Are you well enough to walk? We’re losing daylight.”

“I’m in the teens now,” she said. Her voice was coming back.

“We’ve only got a few hours until the critters spawn again.”

Pan spoke up, “Hey, I’ve got a question,” he started. “What’s up with the sun?”

Athena groaned, then pulled Apollo in closer. The two whispered a sharp dialogue which Pan’s ears weren’t equipped to pick up. Though, he could tell he was the subject of the conversation.

The matter decided, and Athena apparently having lost, Apollo said out loud, “Alright Pan, you’re coming with us to town.”

“…I don’t get what that has to do with the sun,” he said carefully, “but I appreciate it?”

****

Working together, they were able to shoulder the injured Athena for a while as her HP returned. Eventually she was able to walk on her own, despite Apollo’s hesitancy to let her, feeling she was pushing herself too hard.

Freed of their load, Apollo eventually deigned to answer Pan’s earlier question.

“It’s just the way things are in this world,” he said. His tablet was in his arms again, and he seemed distracted as he drew on it with the stylus. “There’s a centerline in the sky, you see. Gradually, by parts, it lights up. The line of light creeps along the sky until the part at the beginning dims again.”

Pan nearly blinded himself trying to see by what mechanism the light was generated. There was only blue and brilliant white.

“I have no reference by which to measure the line,” Apollo continued. “But the part that’s lit up has never stretched the whole way across.”

“When do you think they’ll respawn?” Athena asked.

“They’ll be repopulating…oh…in maybe half an hour.”

“Let’s try not to get in a fight.”

She must not have made a full recovery yet, Pan thought.

“I want to know something, Pan,” she said. He almost stopped walking, the comment came at him so suddenly. “What do you know about what happened back there?”

The air seemed to grow thick. I honestly don’t know anything. I was sleeping, then there were monsters.

But instead of that, he said defensively, “What’s the running theory right now?”

“I think,” Athena said carefully, “that they weren’t just a random encounter.”

“Oh?”

“I think you might have done something to bring them to us.”

“I already said I didn’t do it,” Pan retorted a bit more grumpily than he meant to. We didn’t get much sleep last night, so emotions are high.

“I remember,” Athena replied. There was a noise not accounted for by their own movements and everyone stopped. A light rustle and impact, almost like a footfall.

“Fruit,” Apollo said. One of the trees had shed a ripe something or other that Pan couldn’t see. The three began moving again.

“I remember you said it wasn’t your fault, but I don’t believe it. Apollo vouches for you, so you’re with us.”

“Believe it or not,” Pan said graciously, “I’m appreciative.”

“It’s tenuous at best, so don’t presume.” Her tone, no more pleasant than it had been so far, was petulant.

Apollo, attention pulled from his tablet, spoke up. “I tell you, I saw him beat the mimic. Plus, it was actively eating him.”

“Thank you,” Pan said, the grace in his tone evaporating.

“That doesn’t matter,” Athena cut back. “It could have been a failed attempt at taking us out. Or it could have been…I don’t know.” Pan felt her attention shift to him, despite her leading the way and not looking at him. He stared at her back. “I don’t trust you. You’ll have to give me better reasons, is all I’m saying. When we get to town-“

Apollo spoke up. “If we get to town, we’ll see how it goes from there. How’s that?”

“If? Why if?” Athena asked. She turned around, causing Pan to turn around. Apollo had stopped.

“Because it hadn’t been fruit.”

There, holding Apollo from behind and pressing a bronze knife to his throat, was a black clad and hooded centaur.