“Now?” Sammi prodded, but I held up a finger to belay them, panting for real as the adrenaline drained out of my body.

I just couldn’t help thinking how much Kat would have loved this place. It was huge. The graveyard was classically spooky with blackened trees dripping some white gauzy plant-like stuff that I fully intended to collect when I was done killing the undead. Marble tombstones were inscribed with what was supposed to be witty things like, “Here lies Dusty, loving husband of Busty.” I could imagine Kat helping me rewrite all the tombstones. I wanted to hate it, but aside from the fact that there wasn’t a bowl of snack sized candy, it was something I’d have done to our front lawn for Halloween.

The mansion was better than the yard, painted black or charred black and both falling apart and somehow elegant. At least three stories high, I could see through the half boarded up windows that there were purple curtains and flickering crystal chandeliers that hung half-broken. I could imagine vampires, spiders, ghouls, and maybe even a lich or two. I wanted there to be dungeons of screaming ghosts almost as much as I wanted there to be a soft bed for another good night’s sleep.

“Now?” Sammi prodded me out of my musing.

“Okay, Sammi,” I assented reluctantly, casting heals as I could. Terra leapt up next to me and let me pet her to help regenerate my mana.

Healer +1

Exp +10 (7276/13669)

“You’d think a person would be more eager to get quest rewards,” Sammi complained.

“What rewards?” I stalled, pushing with one foot to set the swing in motion. It soothed me. I needed it. Even though I could rewind all this if it went badly, I wanted to get it right the first time.

“You get to choose someone from home to join you here,” Sammi announced as if I was a little dense. That was okay. I was playing the part well enough to not mind.

“Anyone?” I asked. What a creature of habit and fidgeting I’d become. One hand healed. One hand petted a purring cat. One foot pushed the swing. If I could find something to do with my other foot other than to brace myself, I would have. And that was resting.

“Of course,” Sammi replied, their big arms spreading wide. If I didn’t know them, like they thought I didn’t know them, would I have noticed the tension in the almost smile of their mouth? “I know you miss your daughter.”

“Yeah,” I said it slowly, drawing it out, “but she isn’t safe here.”

“What?”

Healer +1

Exp +10 (7286/13669)

“She isn’t safe,” I repeated, my eyes on my feet. It took every ounce of determination in my very soul to go on. It was harder than I’d imagined. If this turned out badly and I brought her here? Wait. I could bring her here long enough to see her, at least.

Will +1

“You’re going to protect her with your two thousand health and mana.” Sammi goggled at me, at a loss for finding my rationale. Just fifteen minutes. Then I’d reset and start again. Just to see her. It pulled at me.

“I’m in a level twenty dungeon,” I pointed at our surroundings. “Wouldn’t she come right here? With her basic little ten health points? Really?”

“Uh, I suppose we could wait until you cleared the dungeon to have her show up.” Sammi gave me a sheepish look.

“Look, Sammi, you have your agenda and I have mine.” I took a deep breath and let it out.

“You group up,” Sammi suggested.

“Stats won’t get up fast enough with me doing all the work.” I considered it. I really did. “And will you give her a class right off? You didn’t do that with me, and I was stuck at ten health and mana for over a day. If that happened here in this dungeon, I don’t trust that I could leave her anywhere on this world that you wouldn’t... Never mind, Sammi. It won’t work.”

“You seem good enough at these dungeons.” Sammi leaned back against a rotten pillar of wood as if it could hold their weight. Then again, it did. “You could catch her up to you pretty quickly.”

“What about you, Sammi?” I asked, changing the subject like a pro talk show host. “What are you good at?”

Sammi just gave me that baffled look that Geraldo guests get when he asks that question they should have known he had up his sleeve.

“I want to know about you, Sammi,” I used their name to keep it personal. “Is that so hard to believe?”

“Yes,” Sammi stated simply.

“Wow.”

“You just want to stall some more,” Sammi turned away to kick ineffectually at the post they’d been leaning against.

“I do, but I’ve wondered about you,” I admitted, casting a repair and clean on the pillows under me. “When else can I ask about it?” I actually knew more about Sammi than they would believe. I knew they had been an animated bench in Fizzbarren’s workshop and that they were basically no more than a slave.

“Not much to tell,” Sammi hunched their shoulders. “I was born a bench. Are you still interested in anything about me after that?”

“I am,” I replied without a blink of hesitation.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“I didn’t wear a tutu when I was a bench,” Sammi admitted, and then they told me about how his clothes were a form of protest against the fairy godmother label. They told me that the quill had been a pestle, cracked and stained. They didn’t mention Fizzbarren or the master and that left gaping holes in what I knew of their history. I hadn’t let them tell the tale since the first time loop. Without Kat here to challenge the cross-dressing thing, there had been no reason for the revealing backstory. Sammi sat beside me on the swing and told me all they could without mention of the master.

“Are you going to bring Kat over this time?” Sammi asked very quietly, leaning their shoulder into mine. This time? My mind scrambled. Did the animates remember the loops? If so, I needed desperately not to think about that or the button or all the things that rushed to my mind.

“Don’t think about purple elephants,” I muttered. It wasn’t a stupid thing to do for Sammi to tell me in such a way. If something went wrong, I could restart and Fizzbarren would be none the wiser.

“Why not?” Sammi asked, his soft brown eyes so innocent of deep thought. They wanted, no they needed me to save them again. They had faith in me. The whole workshop did.

“Don’t think about purple elephants,” I repeated. “It’s an old saying and it means that the harder you try to not think about something, the more you think about them. The trick is to think about something else.” My mind obediently thought about the purple elephants that it wasn’t supposed to think about which was better than the other thing I wasn’t supposed to… Nope.

“What if we did things just a little bit differently?” I asked loudly to get my mind back on purple elephants.

“Or you could wish for your daughter and be happy,” Sammi suggested with a thin smile.

“Or I could just hold off,” I considered carefully, as if the thought had just occurred to me.

“What do you mean?” Sammi’s brows scrunched up in a way that made me remember how afraid I’d been that first time I’d met them.

“Maybe I could do another Nemesis Quest first,” I offered, giving a shrug like it was nothing. I knew that, purple elephants, Sammi would try to make this happen, purple elephants, but could they make it happen, purple elephants?

Healer +1

Exp +10 (7296/13669)

“You don’t want the reward?” I only dared to peek up to find that Sammi’s mind raced behind their eyes. Something momentous was happening and my finger hovered over that purple elephant button.

“I want it.” I looked up at the dilapidated roof of the porch of this magnificent Victorian mansion and my eyes misted. “I want it so bad, I almost can’t breathe through the feelings.”

“Then take it,” Sammi reasoned, his eyes wide under furrowed brows.

“I want it but all at once,” I pushed the words out quickly, ready to reboot. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I’d rather bring my whole family over at once. Like after I do several quests. Like when I have a home for them.”

Healer +1

Exp +10 (7306/13669)

I held my breath as Sammi just stared, head tilted.

“I’ll do two more Nemesis Quests and then I’ll cash them all in at once,” I offered, trying to be clearer.

Sammi’s expression didn’t change but their head tilted the other direction.

“It’s just,” I tried some more, “that if I die, they’re stuck here in a very dangerous place. I’m lucky I’ve managed to find my way, but they’re probably falling apart back in my old world without me there to hold it all together. Imagine them here without that.”

“Two more quests?” Had Sammi’s tone changed?

“Yes.” I got up off the swing with some instinctual need to pace away from Sammi.

“Will you please stop rocking this swing,” Terra licked at a paw, the only show of her nervousness. “It’s making me feel like I’ve got a hairball.”

“Sorry,” I told her mentally, but she leapt out of the swing and disappeared under the porch. I wished I could join her. It was probably safer under there even if it was crawling with three-foot-long spiders. Yeah, spiders got my mind right into purple elephant land.

Sammi considered. Was there a war going on back home? Had Fizzbarren read the pages of my fight with Beau yet? I wasn’t sure. They’d told me what happened last time, but I didn’t know if I’d changed too much. My mind raced to find a reason that Fizzbarren wouldn’t accept the deal. Don’t think about purple elephants. I didn’t dare think these things, but my mind would not stop thinking about it.

“You want to do two more quests and not get any rewards until the last one is finished?” Sammi didn’t seem to be getting it.

“Mostly,” I hedged. “I want my whole family at once. I’ll take any other rewards you’ll give me until then for taking more quests, but I don’t want the main prize until I’m sure we can all survive together.”

“Beau was such an easy conquest,” Sammi pointed out, not as dumb as they looked or acted sometimes. “You didn’t seem in much danger. Why the concern that future battles will be the death or loss of a family you don’t even have yet?”

I tried not to think it. I tried really hard. Don’t think about purple elephants. It doesn’t work.

Healer +1

Exp +10 (7316/13669)

I saw the moment in Sammi’s eyes as they read the truth behind my seemingly noble offer. It was just a flash, and it was gone. The world stuttered, like a glitch in the Matrix. I stopped healing and held my breath. It was harder to play chicken with a little dictator of a godling than it had been to do it with Beau. That dictator had my life in his hands. It all happened between one breath and another, but I had a suspicion that time had stopped for the world while my fate was determined by a madman. What good was a little button if he could freeze time in the second before I pushed it?

“I don’t see why not,” Sammi gave an agreeable shrug, turning away from me as if I was a boring little bug. “If you initiate another Nemesis Quest, we will make it double or nothing.”

“Double or nothing?” I asked.

“Sure,” Sammi called back over their shoulder. “If you win the next quest, you can choose two family members to bring over to this marvelous world where sickness is banished, and youth is restored. If you lose, you get nothing.”

“That’s hardly to my benefit,” I could have swallowed my tongue. I was getting what I wanted. I should have left it, but something in me felt the need to push back. “I’d get two if I completed both quests anyway.”

“Yes, but if you choose to defer the reward one more time, I’ll double it again,” Sammi turned back, their boots not even getting dirty from the mounds of dirt they kicked up with their stride. “That would give you four family members. Wouldn’t it?”

“I suppose,” I answered with suspicion. “But I only need three.”

“Then again, your mother hasn’t been in the best health lately, has she?”

I blanched. Fizzbarren and the workshop of animates had never known about my mother before. “Leave my mother out of it,” I blurted out too predictably. I told my mind to shut up.

“Everyone has an ailing parent or friend, like Shirley,” Sammi taunted in a very un-Sammi way. “A person worn down from the world back there. A person who might appreciate this wonderful world of magic and imagination, where a grateful person can create their own class, spells, and even their own destiny.”

That wasn’t Sammi, I tried impossibly not to think. I did some math instead. If he was willing to double it again after the first four, who would I bring? I could have Mom and Shirley. I could have a whole city of my favorite people. People who loved me and people I loved. I took my mind there.

I thought of a school run by my mother, a church run by Naida, an herb garden cared for by my grandmother, a restaurant run by a purple elephant. I thought of a candy shop run by Willy Wonka. I ran out of people I could think of on the spot, but I made some up and thought of a few who were already dead. I didn’t have a lot of friends. I had family that I loved, but I was a hermit at heart. I made myself think dreams of being mayor of the little town of Stars Hollow. I infused each thought with hope that twisted in my guts.

“I see we understand each other,” not-Sammi said to me with a final arrogant nod as the form of my not-fairy-godmonster faded away.

Nemesis Engine engaged… Nemesis found… transporting…