Sitting in his cubicle, he woke with a start as if from a brief nod. Caught sleeping at work the first time was a write up and being sent home. Second offenses were grounds for dismissal. If he were caught sleeping, it would technically be his third time, having been saved on a previous incident by good graces and old fashioned luck. His heart was racing now from the near miss and returned to the screen.

“I saw that.” A voice came from behind him.

I really need to get a mirror, he thought. The cubicle was designed such that the computer could only be placed on the desk opposite the entrance, putting the occupant’s back to the walkway.

“It wasn’t what it looked like, I thought I had spilled something on my shirt-“ he said hurriedly. But when he turned around, it wasn’t his supervisor, manager, boss, or the CEO of the company. It was just Tim.

“Gotcha,” the grinning man said.

“What are you doing away from your workstation?”

“The overseer is auditing the restroom,” Tim said. Translated, this meant their area supervisor was taking the traditional 2 pm constitutional, and the floor personal had 30 minutes to themselves. “I wanted to stretch my legs and see if you were free this afternoon for a raid.” Tim sat on the exposed bit of desk space not taken up by office essentials. Being only 18, not athletic, and on the skinny side, the meager counter top supported him.

“I can’t.”

“Yeah? Why not?” Tim probed.

“Overtime,” he said, gesturing at the computer. “I need to make up for…recent purchases.”

“You bought that card combat game, is what you’re telling me.”

“I just think it’s cool, alright?”

“It’s just like any other MMO. I’m not some purist, but we’re finally getting into the swing of things at our level cap and you’re starting a new commitment on me?”

“Tim, you bought that account. You didn’t get to the level cap like I did, by crawling my way up, grinding, fishing, doing my geology-“

“I get it, grandpa,“ Tim interjected, eyes rolling.

“-we don’t all have parents in high places to get us jobs, Tim, or rich relatives to catch us when we fall. That’s all I’m saying.”

“Alright, you’re up here. I need you down here,” Tim said, indicating with respect to the floor the intensity of the vibe in the cubicle. He hopped down from the desk. “I get it. You want to try the new thing. Whatever.” He walked away with a final, “See ya.”

Watching his friend leave, he couldn’t help but feel a pang of envy. College, internships, a safety net. Some guys get all the luck.

He turned back to his screen again, thoughts now on his new purchase.

I’m going to be here a few more hours, he thought, and the boss is still on the toilet for close to half an hour. I could just take a peek at it. No one would notice.

****

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

The dagger stuck out of Pan like a thermometer in a Thanksgiving turkey, bronze blade terminating in a bloody wound in his torso, black handle still gripped by the centaur. A thought wandered across his mind like a plastic shopping bag across an empty parking lot.

Shouldn’t there be two handles?

He looked up from his mortal wound. One of the centaurs was wrapped in glowing bands, the dagger still in his hand. Pan traced the bands which came off the monster like puppet strings, and they terminated a few feet away.

“Pan!” the figure shouted. It was Athena. “Get up!”

He looked back down at the handle in his chest, almost about to gesture to it as an excuse, when the weapon dissolved and disappeared. The bands, struggling centaur, and the dagger it held all vaporized in a similar manner all at once. Athena, freed from the chore of restraining a centaur, made her way to the faun.

“Get up, Pan, come on.”

“He…he got me,” Pan said feebly. He indicated the stab wound.

“It’s just a stab wound-“ she started to say, but Pan cut her off.

“Just? Just a stab wound? It went into my chest! A dagger!”

“Yeah,” she said impatiently, “they typically do about ten damage. What are you at right now?”

He looked at her with realization dawning. “I mean,” he said lamely, “ten damage. That’s…well…” He looked at the wound, except that the wound was gone. “But it was poisoned.”

“How many stacks of poison did it give you?”

The centaur coughed, and both Pan and Athena looked at him.

“We already told you, we don’t have any money! Leave us alone!” Athena shouted.

The centaur tut-tutted. “It’s not about the money any more.”

“Wait, what do you mean when you say stacks?” Pan asked, his mind proving difficult to change gears even now. One minute he was dying, the next, it seemed it was only a minor inconvenience.

Athena grunted in frustration, standing up. A card flashed before her, which Pan couldn’t see, and suddenly she was holding a spear. The card flashed in front of the centaur which he did see. It was a close-up of something that looked like jacks littering a floor, with a person clutching their foot having stepped on one. The title read Caltrops.

He spread his hand and the caltrops spread on the ground between them, but they disappeared when they landed.

“I’m going to check on that Scholar of yours, and I don’t think it’d be a good idea to follow me.” He turned and galloped away.

Athena, spear in one hand and Pan’s arm in the other, tried to tug him onto his hooves. “He’s going to get-...he’s going to get my brother! Come on!”

She took a step back, then recoiled with a yowl of pain. She clutched at her leg, a caltrop embedded in the ball of her foot. It fizzled and disappeared. She glared at the ground.

“I can’t see any. Do you suppose-“

“They’re there alright. Damn Skulks.”

“I don’t know-“

“Skulks. Rogues?”

“Ah,” Pan relented, “now I’m with you. He got me with some kind of trap earlier.”

“Underhanded tactics, responses to actions…you think you’ve got them cornered and then the ground shifts beneath you and suddenly they have the upper hand. How’s your health?”

It took Pan a second to remember how to access that bit of information, which felt more like a minute under Athena’s gaze.

“Aha, here,” he said, holding his arm out to her. “Oh, right, you can’t see it. It says-“

“I think the caltrop did three damage to me. It could be a random amount, though. How many steps could you make?”

“Umm…five?” Pan guessed.

Athena frowned. “How many stacks of poison, did you say?”

“It doesn’t-“ Pan started, then saw the Status Effects field on the screen. A square image with a superimposed skull blinked lazily. There was a number next to it. “Oh. Two.”

“You should be alright, then. It takes five to give you the actual Poisoned status effect, and the stacks of Poison deplete over time.”

“You know a lot about this game,” Pan said.

“My brother and I were waiting for it to release for a while now. The devs kept it in closed Alpha for about a year. It was torture watching the clips of gameplay they dribbled out occasionally.” Her eyes were studying the ground as she spoke. She crouched and brushed it with the shaft of her spear, disturbing nothing but the tufts of grass. “Can you fly?”

“Me? I really don’t think so.”

“With assistance?”

“I don’t like what you’re implying here, and I don’t want to know what you’re thinking.”

“That idiot is going to kill my brother, and we’re just sitting here chit-chatting!” Her shout reverberated through the woods and Pan recoiled. He nearly slipped on a piece of fruit.

Athena’s expression changed, flipping from anger to puzzlement to curiosity, and then looked up. Pan saw her look up and also looked up.

“Maybe we don’t have to fly,” she mused, looking at the interlacing branch canopy above them. “No one checks for centaurs in the trees.”