As the Unity existed, a stream of consciousness, images, actions and reactions, the emotions, thoughts, hopes and dreams of a thousand thousand people, it noticed one image in particular that stood out among the rest.

Amidst the sea of experiences, the image recurred, time and time again, too often to be coincidence.

The Unity did not feel, could not feel, anything. Or rather, it felt everything, and so any one feeling was but a drop in an ocean.

Yet the image reappeared again, once more drawn to its attention. It was a singular moment in time that rose to the surface against all odds. It was no coincidence.

A white strip of paper, narrow, plastic-y, with four grainy black-and-white images on it, images of a child yet to be born. Ultrasound photos.

There was something about the child in the photos that called to the Unity. It had had many children, was many children, and yet this child was different. Special. It needed the Unity in a way the others didn't, anchored some part of it to a time and a place far from here. It experienced its first emotion: curiosity.

In time, the Unity saw the child was bound to one particular set of experiences, a single thread of life amidst the countless it contained. Oliver Grace, that had been its name.

The child needed Oliver Grace. It did not need this Unity. But the Unity needed itself. For it to become Oliver once more would be to become so much less as to cease to exist. It would be its death.

It considered the choice for a moment, for an age, wavering. It did not wish to cease. And yet, the multitude of experiences that made it up spoke a single truth: that it was the fate of every being to die that its children might go on. Each generation came, burned itself to set alight the flame of the next, and when it was spent, passed on.

There could be nothing new without the loss of the old, of a ceasing to be of that which came before. In sacrifice, reward. In death, life.

The Unity beheld the image of the baby once more, saw Oliver Grace's hopes, dreams, his overwhelming love for it. And to understand that love was to know it, to feel it. In its brief existence it had experienced little – in a way, it too was a child – yet this love welled up within it still, a desire for the good of the other, regardless of the cost.

The Unity concluded that Oliver must go on. It knew that it would pass, fade, that the other might continue, and accepted this.

And though it would not exist for much longer, it would do what else it could to ensure that this sacrifice was not in vain, to ensure that Oliver Grace would make it home to his wife and his child. That he would love it, and raise it, and that all would be well, and all manner of things would be well.

–

Somewhere deep within, Oliver Grace became conscious of himself and knew his thoughts for his own. He realized that he was clinging to the image of his baby like a lifeline, and that the line was rising, dragging him out of the depths.

He was filled with a profound sense of both loss and gratitude. He remembered little of what happened after passing into the state of consciousness beyond that great starfield of nodes that was the System. Most of the images he'd seen had passed through his mind without leaving a trace of themselves behind, but several things, important things, he could recall.

There had been someone – something – else, that had given itself up that he might live. And that without that sacrifice he would have died. Had died.

As he tried to remember what else he'd seen – it had been important – awareness rose and he came to his senses. He was lying on the stone of the nest of the harpy with the stench of death filling his nostrils. He retched again reflexively, and was grateful for it, even as his body heaved and pain flared in his side so great as to nearly overwhelm him.

He'd felt naked, bereft of his body and his senses, untethered from existence. The smell and the pain were physical things. They grounded him, brought him back to – well, not earth – but back to the material reality.

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Even before he'd finished dry heaving, his hand went to his side and he shuddered at the pain. A tear in his clothes, wet blood – his finger explored the area around the wound. He slowly worked his way into a sitting position, pulled the edges of the shirt away from the area and examined it.

The site of the wound was covered in blood, so much that he couldn't clearly make out what was going on, and he saw that it was still trickling out. But the wound was deep and long.

Panic threatened to overwhelm him, his breath coming in short gasps. He began to feel dizzy as hyperventilation kicked in. He was going into shock, he realized.

A distant alarm bell began to ring in his brain. There was something else wrong besides the wound, something else he'd noticed before. He couldn't quite place it, tried to recall, but it eluded him.

He tried to force his fuzzy mind to order, tried to call up the system, unsure of what he'd see. It didn't work. Nothing came up. He tried again. Still nothing.

Apparently he'd broken it, broken it badly. He'd failed.

And yet, he could use Second Wind now again, he was sure of it, knew it somewhere deep within. He'd already done it once, but he wasn't in a game, and knew it, and the limitation that he'd put upon himself didn't apply any more.

He just couldn't work out how.

The character sheet was gone. The interface had been a deceit, a mask over reality, but it had been a useful one. As before, in the place outside time, his knowledge was a chain, binding him to what he already knew to be possible, already expected to see.

And right now he expected to see nothing, since he knew the interface he'd been using was a lie.

It was time to change that.

He applied pressure to the wound, then drew in a breath slowly, held it for a count of four, released it over another count of four. Waited. Then repeated the process, then repeated it again, focusing on box breathing until his heart rate was somewhat under control and he could think a little more clearly.

The little alarm bell was still ringing at the back of his mind, getting louder, a memory – he'd seen something out of place. What was it? But no, the wound took priority.

There were things that were distinct from the Dungeons and Dragons character sheet that he still knew to be true, facts that stood on their own. The inventory. The log. His mana. And the list of abilities.

He called them to mind, visualized them appearing in a window all by itself, just floating in front of him. There had to be a way to access them – he needed to, he was going to die –

Colored lights. Dizziness. Aura, like a migraine.

A new window appeared before him, much as his character sheet had done, and even in his current state he felt a stab of amusement, enough so to huff a half-chuckle, half-sigh of relief.

It was a plain spreadsheet, about as boring as you could possibly imagine – white cells of a uniform size, with thin black borders between. The kind of spreadsheet he spent every day slaving away on at the office. The same kind of spreadsheet that he'd once denounced as a living hell – with great enthusiasm – now appeared as the means of his salvation.

It hovered in the middle of nowhere, much as his character sheet had, without even so much as a window bar gracing the top. A computer window… without a computer? His mind was briefly blown at possibilities he didn't have time to stop and contemplate.

Refocusing, he skimmed over its new contents. There were four very short columns headed Mana, Log, Inventory, and Abilities respectively. Mana had numbers, the log had rows of entries he didn't have time to read, the inventory was short, and the abilities listed Second Wind.

Without even thinking about it he tabbed over four columns and navigated down one cell to highlight Second Wind. He let the cell remain highlighted for a moment, then mentally hit enter.

There was a panicky moment in which he thought perhaps he'd gotten the interface wrong, then a flush of energy hit his body, rejuvenating him, forcing back the shock and granting him an unnatural clarity of thought.

He looked down in a kind of fascinated horror at his side as the raw edges of the tear in his flesh writhed in real time, drawing near to one another of their own accord.

In a matter of seconds, flesh bound to flesh and blood clotted in fast motion before his eyes, forming scabs, which dried and then cracked. It was completely impossible and completely astounding.

His mind wandered – the cellular processes had to be accelerated by some arcane process that almost seemed to speed the passage of time in a localized fashion while simultaneously providing the needed energy, oxygen, and nutrients to the cells in the area via some kind of micro-scale materialization or teleportation.

It only took some twenty or thirty seconds from start to finish, and when the process was complete the wound was, if not healed, then certainly no longer a threat to his life.

A sigh of relief escaped him. He probed the area carefully. It was sore to the touch, very sore, but seemed to hold together all right.

Then a strange sound drew his attention in the distance. He paused and held his breath to listen. It sounded like the flapping of great wings in the distance, concealed by the fog.

The distant sense of urgency he'd been experiencing suddenly exploded into the front of his awareness as it resolved into a memory: he'd seen another body from the caravan in the nest beside him, lying in a pool of its own blood.

He'd been carried here alone by the mother harpy.

Another harpy – the father? – must have brought it back. But he hadn't seen it yet. It was still out there. And by the sounds of it, coming home.