The last time this happened, Arheis awoke to find Mira standing over him, tending to his many wounds.

It wasn’t like that this time.

When consciousness came back to him, it was almost like it had been forced into his body kicking and screaming. He couldn’t feel anything physically, but emotionally he was overwhelmed by a cascade of emotions that hit him all at once.

Horror. Sorrow. Anger. Each pierced him straight through, opening up holes in his consciousness that let the light in, as though a shroud had suddenly been removed from his eyes.

The edges of his vision were hazy, but he saw the lake, clear as day. He saw the Morditul rolling, thrashing, an incomprehensible tangle of limbs trapped in its maw. He heard Zindar’s voice, somewhere to the right.

“He’ll come back! We have to finish this.”

That son of a bitch…

Mira. The words were shaky, but he heard them inside his head like they were his own. The sound of a crossbow bolt clicking into place was nearly as close, and he finally realized he wasn’t seeing through his own eyes right now.

He was seeing through hers.

She steeled herself, resolve firming as she settled the stock of the crossbow against her shoulder and readied herself to fire. The Morditul thrashed out of the water, a leg hanging out of its mouth with the boot still on. His leg, he realized. And while he couldn’t really feel his own sense of disgust, he felt the pain of it all within Mira.

Her arms were shaking, her crossbow moving unsteadily. He tried to do something, to lend her some kind of strength through their bond, but it didn’t seem to work.

“I’m going to draw it back out of the water,” Zindar said, the words distant and hazy.

Mira’s gaze was unfocused, and Arheis could feel the sudden wash of nausea as though it were his own.

“Mira!” the Pruvari called again. “I need your help with this. We’ll only have a few moments before the mud hardens.”

“Right,” she finally said, letting out a breath.

Lightning arced through the air as the Fulcorn raced along the edge of the lake. It ducked its head and every bolt merged before hitting its horn and being directed into the water. Electricity skittered across the surface, and the Morditul—not directly impacted like it had been by the shock-rock—looked for the nearest exit.

Zindar was waiting there, and when the beast finally emerged, Arheis saw his own handy work. The spear was still lodged inside the Morditul, and every time the creature moved, it wrenched it even deeper. Blood and viscera colored the creature’s skin, staining the water red. Zindar pushed off from the bank and twisted his body in midair to come down on the back of the beast, his blades finally able to open it up in earnest. He sliced from the shoulders down the back, and Arheis heard Mira’s crossbow fire as she shot bolt after bolt directly into the jagged wounds the Pruvari opened up.

It thrashed, spinning and rolling, trying to toss Zindar from its back. By the time it finally succeeded, the damage was done. It was weakening, growing slower and slower until it finally stopped, its body heaving with convulsions.

Mira walked closer, and Arheis was granted a prime view of Zindar’s sudden, rage-filled flurry as he turned the beast over and drove his blades into it again and again. He yelled while he did it, and Mira’s free hand clenched at her side, anger rising in her as well. Arheis got the distinct impression hers wasn’t directed at the Morditul.

“You don’t want to see this,” Zindar grunted as his blades opened the Morditul’s belly, exposing its organs.

“I saw it plenty with Brahdek,” she said tersely, her voice wavering.

Zindar looked up at her, his yellow eyes softening along with the rest of his expression. “This is different, Mira. You didn’t—”

“Just get it over with.” The words came out in a rush, followed by a “please” that even Arheis barely heard.

It took Arheis a moment to realize what was happening as Zindar sliced open the beast’s stomach. Digestive juices gushed out, but so did a partially-eaten limb. Then another. Then parts of a body that didn’t look even remotely recognizable aside from the armor. His armor.

He was seeing his lifeless body pulled piece by piece from the Morditul’s stomach.He couldn’t look away because Mira’s eyes were his eyes right now, and she held steady until the very last moment despite the fact that she was shaking. Her gaze fixated on the glowing Destiny’s Eye, the amulet that marked a player from NPCs—the item that allowed Arheis to essentially respawn.

And slowly—so very, very slowly—it did its job. Just… not in the way Arheis expected.

Instead of something game-y happening like his body disintegrating and then respawning whole and unharmed, Arheis had to watch as his bones fused, his muscles reformed, his skin repaired itself, and his body was almost stitched back together piece by tiny piece. Destiny’s Eye continued to glow throughout the whole process, and when it stopped, he felt relief coursing through Amira.

And then he felt nothing. The blackness returned, taking his cognitive awareness with it as he was transferred back to his very unconscious body.

***

The next time Arheis awoke, he was greeted by the sight he’d been expecting. Mira was looking down at him, brown eyes shimmering with unshed tears, brow furrowed in concern. He could see the canvas roof of the encampment beyond her and felt one of the hard cots underneath him. The smell of freshly-pressed herbs filled his nose, and he could hear the bustle of Lacerda in the distance.

He was alive and whole, which was definitely an improvement over watching his dismembered body piece itself back together.

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Arheis tried to move, but his joints were stiff and his muscles tight. He let out a soft groan and tried again to sit up, only for Mira to place a hand on his chest and hold him down.

“Staying put is the least you can do right now,” she said tersely. Arheis thought he caught sight of a tear falling before she turned her head to call over her shoulder. “Vellis! Come here.”

The boy from earlier hurried over, and Mira instructed him in what to do to ease the pain and promote healing. Arheis had assumed Destiny’s Eye would take care of that, but it hadn’t put him at 100% after the Nepondus Queen killed him, either. This was part of the punishment for death. That and the serious cold shoulder he was getting from the woman who felt incredibly closed off compared to the things he’d glimpsed just moments ago.

“You killed the Morditul,” Arheis managed, his gaze still on Mira even as she walked away from the cot; away from him. “I saw it. After I was—”

“After you were ripped apart, limb from limb?” she grated out, her back still to him, shoulders bunched together. When she finally turned, he saw she was trying very hard not to cry. “After you were devoured right in front of us, all because you refused to run?”

“We wouldn’t have made it—”

“You don’t know that!” her voice was raised, and Vellis jumped in the middle of packing one of Arheis’ wounds.

“You saw the way it was moving through that mud,” he fought back, feeling the sudden need to defend himself. The herbs Vellis haphazardly stuffed into his open gashes burned, but he ignored them. “I had to do something.”

He’d acted under pressure. He’d done what needed to be done. In any other game, he would have been rewarded for taking such a bold, decisive action. It bothered Arheis that he was being derided for it here, when they both knew he had a lot less to lose than either Mira or Zindar.

“So you what? You throw your life away?” Her arms started to fold over her chest, then wrapped around her instead.

“Because this,” he gripped Destiny’s Eye with one hand, “means my ‘life’ is expendable. Yours isn’t. Zindar’s isn’t. I saved both of you by doing what I did. Why am I being raked over the coals for it?”

Arheis hadn’t even realized he was yelling until the skittish man who was working on him stood back, well out of reach. People passing by stopped in the streets, too intrigued by the outburst to keep moving. Mira’s jaw was held tightly, and she stalked back toward him with fury in her eyes. Fury and pain and something that only hit him once she got close enough for him to see it; once she let down her guard enough that he could feel it.

She was hurt. Deeply. It was there in her eyes, in the way she was still shaking, and not just with anger. Arheis remembered what he’d felt from her as she’d watched him die, and the weight of it settled like lead in his stomach.

“You asked us to trust you,” she hissed out, the words breaking on a sob that she barely got under control, “asked me to trust you, and I did. I trusted you enough to watch you die, Arheis. To realize that you and I may be bonded, but it’s obvious that trust doesn’t go both ways.”

Her words hit him harder than the Morditul had, cracking something deep inside of him. He never thought he’d lacked for empathy, but in the heat of the moment, he’d been careless. He’d looked at the outcome, the fact that he was still here instead of what it took to get here. He’d done what needed to be done, and even now he wasn’t sure he would have done it any differently.

But this cost was… not what he’d expected.

Mira shook her head, swiped at her eyes with the heels of her hands, and turned to Vellis. “Finish packing his wounds, bandage him up, and give him something for the pain.”

“O-okay,” Vellis stammered, “but you’re… you’re going to be here, right…?”

Arheis realized right around the time the young healer did. She was leaving. “Mira, wait.”

He tried to push himself up, get to his feet and go after her, but pain shot through his battered body. A system message appeared shortly after—the game’s version of kicking him while he was already down.

> Your relationship with Amira has worsened. Bond abilities may not function as intended.

That was the last thing he needed to hear, and his anger came back as he minimized the message—and any others that might try to follow it—in his mind. Mira was already out of the encampment and heading for the Hackleback, though, and Arheis was left with her apprentice whose hands were shaking so badly he could barely hold the bundles of herbs.

***

It took Vellis at least an hour to pack and dress all of his wounds, and that was only because Arheis relied on his First Aid ability to help. The apprentice had tried to pick at his curiosities, asking what happened with the Morditul, but Arheis’ near silence stopped him from continuing that line of questioning.

By the time the apprentice was finished and Arheis was blissfully under the influence of a pain-killing potion, all those feelings he didn’t know how to even categorize had gnawed a hole through his stomach. It was frustration most of all. Helplessness. There was something about all of it that felt like it should be in his reach, but it wasn’t.

Mira was hurt enough that it was upsetting their bond. He hadn’t even seen Zindar yet, but could assume the Pruvari wasn’t exactly his biggest fan right now, either. And the only person besides Vellis who was even still around was…

Higrem.

He’d been in earshot when the disagreement over Arheis’ actions turned into a shouting match. He must have been, because after Mira left he’d come over with a smirk on his face and sat himself down on the edge of a nearby cot. All the glowering in the world hadn’t gotten the man to leave, and when Vellis asked, he’d just said he was “doing his mayoral duty and checking in.”

That had made the apprentice’s hands shake all the more, which was the point when Arheis had taken over.

Now that everything was done and Vellis was free to go throw up or whatever he intended to do after this, Arheis was left alone with the only other player he’d met in Apex so far, that smug expression still on his face.

“Trouble in paradise?” he asked.

Arheis felt all of that helplessness fuse into anger. His fingers curled into his palm, his fingernails digging crescent shaped gashes into his skin. “You sat there this whole time, and all you have is a lame-ass one-liner?”

“Oh, I’ve got more, if you want to hear ‘em,” he taunted, “but I figured you’d want to cut right to the chase.”

“I’m not in the mood, Higrem,” Arheis said through gritted teeth, finally pushing himself up.

He wobbled a little, his head feeling lighter than he expected. Searching around, he was able to find his shirt draped over a chair and he pulled it on over his head, thankful his shoulder at least had full range of motion back.

“Yeah. It’s a raw deal not being able to use game logic with them, isn’t it?”

Arheis had been prepared to walk away, but that made him stop and turn back to the man. So far Higrem had given him nothing but vague nonsense to go on. If he hadn’t seen the amulet around his neck, Arheis would have thought the man was just screwing with him.

“They’re never going to understand it,” Higrem continued, his look of smug satisfaction changing into… something else. Something Arheis couldn’t place. “This world doesn’t run on that kind of logic. The sooner you get that through your head, the better off you’ll be.”

The man’s eyes looked almost haunted, and some part of Arheis was tempted to ask. He still had no idea how Higrem had managed to be in this world long enough to have an adult child, and he wasn’t any closer to understanding what the man had meant by the “choice” he was going to have to make.

But right now, he wasn’t exactly in the mood to untangle the web Higrem had woven around his secrets.

“Spare me the cryptic bullshit,” Arheis muttered. “Just for today.”

Higrem shrugged, pushing himself up from the cot. “Suit yourself. Not like you won’t learn it the hard way eventually.”

And then he left, just like everyone else, leaving Arheis alone to try and figure out how he was going to fix this mess he’d apparently made.