The shouts were coming from that girl, the one from Dvorak’s pod. Avina? Something like that? “What’s going on?” Kyle shouted.

“Fire!” She replied.

“Well yes, but how! Why? What… What happened?”

“I… I don’t know!”

Annoyed, Kyle stumbled to Mason’s home and pounded on the door. While waiting for the man to respond, he looked back at the village, taking stock of the situation. The tannery, apothecary, and one of the houses were all on fire. Those buildings didn’t even border each other. How did they all catch on fire at once? Was this some sort of event programmed by the devs ahead of time? Did the devs object to their decision to band together and hit a “set fire” button to break them up? Did somebody else start the flames?

Moments later, Mason opened the door. Kyle simply motioned behind him at the flames. “Any ideas?”

Mason stared at the conflagration thoughtfully for a moment, narrowing his eyes. “Bucket brigade? We’ve got a well now.”

“Thank goodness for that,” Kyle said. “You grab Dvorak and Braden. I’ll wake up Mia, Jacob and Lumen. Avina is… aware of the situation already.”

Mason nodded, and stumbled out the door, cursing.

Lumen grinned when he opened the door and saw the flames. Kyle explained the plan. “Can I be the guy on the end tossing the water?” Lumen asked. “I’ve got great aim.”

Jacob, on the other hand, was quietly angry at the development, muttering about his hard work going to waste.

“Can we start with the apothecary first?” Jacob asked. “Crafting all the furniture it took to make it count as an apothecary was a pain.”

“Sure,” Kyle said, “But first can you craft some more buckets? We’ll need at least one per person.

“Yeah, sure, I always leave wood in my inventory.” Jacob left his home and walked towards the well with measured, methodical steps, compensating for his slow movements better than anybody else. Must have been the practice he got working on the library at night. Kyle made a mental note to start acclimating himself to the effects of the fatigue.

Mia, surprisingly, was nowhere to be found. Her cabin was locked, and no amount of banging would bring her to the door. Kyle tried to text her using the social menu in his crystal’s display, but he’d never texted anybody that wasn’t in his party before. He sent a brief message and hoped it went through.

At the well, Mason was already instructing people on how to fight the fire; they’d form an ant line, and pass buckets from one person to the next. The buildings were far enough from the well that they’d need to run (or more accurately, hobble) a little to get the bucket to the next person, but it still worked better than having everybody run all the way to the well and back every time they needed to fill their bucket.

Despite their efforts, the fire on the apothecary didn’t seem to be getting any less intense. Worse, the fire on the one cabin was starting to spread to the adjoining cabin. Kyle, second to the front behind Lumen, started having his doubts about the bucket plan. Others seemed to as well.

“I’m gonna lose all those flowers!” Dvorak shouted. “Some of those, I’ve only ever found one of! Think of the potions! The potions!”

“Any ideas?” asked Jacob, glancing at the fire encroaching on the second cabin. “If our cabins burn down, we’ll lose the stuff in them, right?”

“I know, I’m thinking, I’m thinking!” Kyle understood why they would be counting on him to come up with a solution, but it wasn’t fair. It’s not like there was an article about how to fight fires in the help text. Kyle suddenly had an irrational urge to demand an answer from Mia, given that she acted like she knew everything about everything. It’d serve her right. She wasn’t even there, though.

Kyle kept laboriously ferrying buckets back and forth on his sluggish limbs. If there were a help file on fighting fires, what would it even say?

This was a game, right? Then he should act like it was a game.

He dropped his empty bucket, making Jacob scowl and dart in to grab it to keep the line going. Kyle hit his crystal, went to skills, and selected Examine, staring at the flickering flames.

The circle filled up agonizingly slowly, but when it finally did he got more than he expected.

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The flame had an HP bar.

He watched Lumen throw a bucket of water on the fire. The fire’s HP bar decreased slightly, but it seemed to be regenerating, gaining HP only slightly less quickly than Lumen was “damaging” it.

The fire also had a crafter, but the overlay informed him that he needed a higher tracking skill to find out who it was.

He switched targets, hitting examine again, but this time looked at the apothecary’s walls. Its HP bar appeared as well. It seemed to be falling at the same rate the fire’s HP bar was rising.

“Guys! The fire’s draining HP from the building!” Kyle shouted. “the water counts as an attack, but we aren’t dealing enough damage to to overcome its regeneration!” The others paused their bucket line. Kyle could almost see their minds switching over to a game paradigm. Some of them started navigating their menus. “This is a game, guys. We need to think! What attacks would you use to deal HP damage to a giant fire!”

“Cold attacks!” shouted Dvorak.

“Uh… smother it?” guessed Jacob.

“Think about the mechanics, guys,” Lumen shouted, lowering his bucket. “It’s regenerating, right? How about dispelling its regeneration buff? It’s like free damage!”

“How on earth do we do that?” shouted Mason. “Order the fire to stop spreading?”

Lumen shrugged. “Just saying. That’s how I’d think about it.”

Lumen’s thought gave Kyle an idea. “Everybody, go home to your storage and get all the rocks you have.”

“Why?” Braden asked, confused.

“Wait, we have rocks?” asked Dvorak.

“We’re gamers. We compulsively hoard things. Yes, we have rocks. Give them to Jacob.”

People stumbled off to their houses as quickly as they were able. Dvorak stood there for a moment, before finally shrugging. “Okay, fine. Guilty as charged.” He began hopping towards his building. Kyle rolled his eyes and went to get his.

While Kyle was gone, the fire grew to an even larger size. The apothecary started showing signs of the damage it was taking; its walls were blackened and charred, and one corner suddenly caved inward, sending embers into the sky.

Kyle and the others all unloaded their inventories full of rocks onto the ground in front of Jacob. Jacob looked at the pile of stones in confusion.

“Jacob,” Kyle said. “I need you to upgrade the apothecary to a tier-two building.”

Jacob looked at the stones. Then he smiled. “You got it.”

He started touching the stones, one by one, putting them in his inventory by tapping the crystal while pressing his hand against them. Once he had most of the pile, he stepped forward, placing his left hand on part of the wall that was free of flames. He tapped on his left crystal with his free hand, and navigated through his menus for a bit, before stepping back and smiling.

After a moment, a spiral of blue light started circling the apothecary. A bright flash caused Kyle to avert his eyes. When he looked back, the apothecary stood firm, sporting new stone walls.

It was still on fire though.

Kyle scowled, and looked at the HP bars of both the building and the fire. The building’s max HP was much higher; being made of stone must have given it a significant boost. The fire’s HP bar was still increasing, but much slower than it was earlier. The stone wasn’t feeding it like the wood was.

“Guys! Buckets, now!’ Kyle shouted.

They resumed the line. This time, though, the fire reduced in size with each bucket thrown, until eventually the fire and its HP bar disappeared, leaving the apothecary a smouldering, wet, smoking mess.

But it was still intact.

“Booyah! the day is saved!” shouted Dvorak, jumping in the air.

“Not yet, two fires left to go,” Kyle said, looking at the tannery and two flaming houses.

“That’s a problem,” Jacob said. “I don’t have enough rocks left to upgrade anything else.”

Lumen’s axe appeared in his hand. “Think of it like a boss in an RPG, guys,” said Lumen, “If the boss is out-sustaining you by draining health from its adds, you gotta kill the adds. I hate to do this, but…” He shot Jacob an apologetic look and shrugged, before hobbling on his digitigrade legs towards the more damaged of the two houses and hacking at it with his axe. Kyle Examined the house so he could see its HP bar drain. Lumen’s thought made sense; every point of damage he dealt to the house was one fewer point of damage they’d have to deal to the fire later.

“My house…” Avina said sullenly, watching Lumen chop at the wall.

“I’m sorry,” said Jacob, “but we don’t want the fire to spread to anywhere else. I think if we collapse the house, the fire will die out. Don’t worry, I’ll build you another one tomorrow.”

“It’s… it’s fine.” Avina said. “All that was in there was junk anyway.” Her tone was more downcast than her words.

“Guys, the fire’s not as big on the house next to it,” Kyle said, pointing. “Maybe we can save that one if we hurry.” They reformed the line and went back to it.

As it turned out, larger fires drained health from their buildings more quickly than smaller ones; their buckets were perfectly capable of dousing the smaller fire on the adjoining house. Avina’s house completely collapsed under the damage from Lumen’s axe and the fire itself in just a few minutes, becoming a cheery bonfire they put out next. The tannery was completely consumed in flame, but it was far enough away from everything else that it didn’t do any more damage than that.

After pouring the last bucket on the smouldering remains of Avina’s house, Kyle sat down and sighed in relief. Lumen fell on the ground next to him, putting his hands behind his head and smiling. “Pretty intense, huh?” Lumen asked, turning towards Kyle.

Kyle still found Lumen’s smile disconcerting. No carnivore showed that many teeth in real life unless it was about to attack. He fought it down and returned the smile. “Yeah. Intense,” he said. “But hey, at least we got a little more experience working under the effects of fatigue.

“Speaking of experience,” Lumen said, sitting up, “how much XP do you think we’d get from defeating three massive fires? Y’know. If this were a normal game?”

“Four fires!” Dvorak called out. “My house was on fire too, y’know!”

“Yeah, but that was just a little wussy fire!” Lumen shouted back, sitting up. “It doesn’t count!”

Kyle chuckled. Being on the tail end of a harrowing situation was making him a little punchy.

It was just then that Mia showed up, lugging a young man in his early twenties over her shoulders. She dumped him unceremoniously into the ashes where he lay, unconscious.

“Found our arsonist.”