Fizzbarren being inside Sammi was a new form of violation, both for Sammi and me. I had to think some more. I had a power here that changed the whole game. I’d beaten Fizzbarren without this power, but with it, I had breathing room. I needed to rethink my strategy. I’d been thinking that I didn’t want to bring Kat here, but maybe I did. Maybe I wanted Kat here just long enough to talk to her, hold her, and remind myself what this was all about. I pushed the button; progress on the Eroomtsim dungeon wasn’t as important as seeing my family again, even if I couldn’t keep them.

Instead of going into the dungeon to avoid Sammi, I walked into the forest and waited for Sammi to show up. I didn’t challenge anything. I played nice like a good little girl who was still afraid of Daddy coming home in a bad mood. As I sat in the forest, I thought about everything. My primary skill was being able to think outside the box. I needed that. I needed to stop being in this rut of thinking I had to do it one way. I could do it any way over and over.

When Sammi showed up, I started to talk, but then I pushed the button and took some more time. I didn’t know why at first. When Sammi got close, I did it again. Sometimes it took my mind a few days to process information. I wanted Kat, but something was essentially wrong with her coming here. I needed to know if it was my fear of her dying again, or if it was something bigger. I needed more data.

“So, who do you want to bring from your world?” Sammi popped in.

“I want my husband,” I told Sammi, finally deciding that, of all my choices, Dom was the least likely to cause the catastrophic problems that my mind conjured. I wanted information. Dom might have more than anyone else I knew to summon.

“Not your daughter?” Sammi eyed me.

“Not this time,” I answered carefully, hoping that Sammi would get the double meaning.

“Granted,” Sammi shrugged.

I hadn’t known how empty I was until Dom materialized in front of me. Dom stood almost a foot taller than my five foot, eight inches of lanky teenager topped with a curly mop. I’d never known him as a teenager, and while I’d known he’d been awkward, I almost chuckled at what I saw. His lips and nose reflected his African American heritage, but he had the long face and skin tone of his mother’s Germanic American mutt mix.

When his brown eyes settled on mine, it was like that first night we’d known that meeting each other changed everything. His head cocked to the side, but his eyes bored into mine. He knew me, but he was processing whether I was real. I knew him so well. I knew how his mind worked and how to read his stoic feelings. I smiled and the logic of his knee-jerk first reaction broke.

Finally, his eyes slid lazily down my leather clad body with a blooming grin.

I cocked my head to the side and narrowed my eyes.

His eyebrow quirked in a mix of Spock and Dexter that made my stomach lurch.

“If you don’t hug me, I’ll divorce you,” I growled at him.

He opened his arms and I wrapped myself around him and felt peace for the first time since I’d come to Fizzbarren’s world. With Kat I’d felt home, but with Dom I felt peace.

“You have no idea what I’ve done to get you here,” I whispered into his ear and held on like he’d disappear if I didn’t.

“Ready for the next Nemesis Quest?” Sammi prodded after we’d just stood there holding each other for what was probably uncomfortable to anyone watching. My husband and I had an intensity that was disconcerting to almost everyone but our family. Well, it was disconcerting to Kat too, but that was just a teenager’s natural reaction to parental affection.

Dom turned his head toward Sammi but didn’t let go of me. “Who are you?”

“That’s a really long explanation.” Sammi looked at their wrist as if they had a watch, “And I don’t have the time to explain so how about we get the nuts and bolts taken care of now and then your lovely wife can explain it all to you after you have crazy monkey sex or whatever you two do to get reacquainted."

“Monkey sex?” I asked, mildly offended.

“Do you have something I can kill this guy with?” Dom ducked his head to ask me, his tone light even though I knew he was serious.

“Don’t be rude, love,” I muttered back. “Sammi is not our enemy.”

“Damn,” he chuckled, his breath on my neck only half the excitement.

“Shortcut explanation is that this is a LitRPG world.” I laid my head on his chest to hear his heart beat. “You should choose a class, but you can make up anything.”

“And you should initiate another Nemesis Quest,” Sammi insisted, looking at everything but the two of us.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“A class? Like what?” Dom asked me, ignoring Sammi.

“Hmm,” I thought out loud. How had I not taken some time to figure this part out. I hadn’t been able to think past him getting here and that wasn’t like me at all. It didn’t matter much since I could just reset, and we could choose something else. “Something off the wall so that you can define the class instead of being trapped in a standard mold. That’s what worked for me.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Dom responded. I was surprised that he wasn’t freaking out more. Dom wasn’t good with surprises. He liked his world nice and orderly. “So more than Assassin?”

A shiver rooted me at the way he said it. I was struck with how the time loop worked and who exactly it effected. He couldn’t know that Kat had been an Assassin, could he?

“First tell me that Kat is okay,” I pulled back to look Dom in the eyes, hoping to read more than what he was saying.

“Kat is fine,” Dom told me firmly, his words full of meaning. My heart wanted to think the best, but my mind conjured the worst. “We’ve been playing a lot of DnD since you’ve been gone.”

“And initiate another Nemesis Quest,” Sammi interrupted with a cleared throat.

“I’m thinking maybe Serial Killer,” I suggested, watching what Dom’s eyes were trying to tell me. Kat was fine. That was the important part.

“That’s not a class,” Sammi complained.

“Neither was Mage-ish,” I argued, unphased by Sammi’s attitude. I happened to know that the more Sammi got flustered, the more they could promise me before I agreed to the quest.

“Serial Killer has a nice ring to it,” Dom nodded his head. “Okay, Sammi, let’s make my class Serial Killer.”

“Would you settle for Killer?” Sammi baulked, though I wasn’t sure why.

“No, I don’t think so,” Dom said, firmly. “My wife has suggested Serial Killer as a class, and I think she’s on the right track.” Again, there was some meaning under his words, but Dom had a knack for saying things that didn’t explain the whole of his thoughts as if everyone around him should know exactly what he was thinking by the single word that made the most sense to him. I was normally pretty good at that game, but we’d been apart for a while. I was out of practice.

“It would be a subset of Assassin,” Sammi warned.

“No, it wouldn’t,” I turned to Sammi and gave them a hooded look that made them gulp.

“A serial killer works alone,” Dom explained. “An assassin works for others and from a guild. I won’t be a murderer for hire. I work for myself, and I call my own shots. I kill who I want to kill, not who someone tells me to kill. I want that clear. No guilds.”

“Fine,” Sammi grumped. “But then you have to initiate the Nemesis Quest, right Karma?”

“Karma,” Dom purred with approval. “Nice.”

“Probably,” I told Sammi.

“And I have a class,” Dom stated, snaking one hand out from behind my back to swipe at the air and slide through some screens. “I have ten hit points?” He raised both brows in mild alarm.

“Not for long,” I snickered.

Dom narrowed his eyes at me and focused until he broke the gaze with a whistle. “Looks like we’re in for a bit of power levelling.”

“The Quest,” Sammi prodded again.

“Are you sure I can’t kill him?” Dom whispered in my ear, and I could feel his lips smile.

“With ten health? I doubt it!” Sammi scoffed, finally getting miffed at Dom’s attitude.

“I’m sure.” I stepped out of Dom’s embrace but kept his hand gripped in mine as tight as I had when Kat was born.

“Weapons?” Dom spoke in his signature shorthand as if full sentences were too much work.

“Later darling,” I purred, imitating Morticia Addams. “You know I don’t like an audience.”

“This is disgusting,” Sammi crossed their arms and pouted, but that just made me chuckle.

I’d missed this. I’d missed standing next to someone who knew me so well that I didn’t have to say anything significant out loud. He knew my mind.

“I’m going to need duct tape, rope, some plastic sheeting, and maybe some lye,” Dom joked with me, watching Sammi.

“I can get you the rope, but there’s no need for the body disposal kit,” I explained innocently as if we were talking about what to have for breakfast. “The bodies here dissolve upon looting.”

“Nice,” Dom nodded, his smile growing wider.

“The QUEST!” Sammi shouted.

“Kat’s really okay?” I asked Dom, all playfulness draining from me.

“Kat is home and safe,” Dom answered just as seriously. “She said to tell you that she’s sorry.”

For what? My mind raced.

“She remembers, but the rest of us don’t,” Dom mumbled out in a way that only a person who had focused on learning his almost indecipherable mumbles could understand. He continued with a little more clarity and volume. “She and Cliff will be fine until…”

“QUEST!!!” Sammi shouted so loud that if they’d been a corporeal human being they’d have shaken the trees. I was glad that Sammi was being distracting, but my mind was having trouble sliding these new variables into the equations. I knew I could just restart and think about it again, but so far it wasn’t hurting to hold onto Dom just a little longer.

“What will you give me for taking the quest now?” I demanded, unruffled by Sammi’s bluster. I didn’t care about much, but it gave me a chance to shift those variables around. These were good answers to some of my most pressing questions. Even if I restarted, this loop had told me so much that I needed to know.

“A cottage and some serial killer clothes?” Sammi rolled his eyes at me.

“How do we group up?” Dom changed the subject again.

“It’s in this tab here,” I tried to show him, laughing at myself when I realized that he couldn’t see my screen. “Um, fourth tab holds the grouping stuff, though it might be the third tab since you don’t have a familiar.”

“Second tab,” Dom corrected. “Why didn’t they label these tabs?”

“My second tab is my spell book and my third is Terra. You don’t have a spell book?” I asked.

“No,” and we both turned to Sammi with expectant looks.

“Serial Killers don’t have spells,” Sammi stuttered out, having trouble keeping up with our minds going off in odd directions. The whole situation was just making me feel at home.

“This one does,” I protested. “I’ll take the cottage, but he needs a spell book.”

“Unless you want to give me the heat-sensing night scope technological equipment instead of spells?” Dom nodded to Sammi as if we were being completely rational and reasonable.

“If I give him a spell book, you’ll initiate the quest?” Sammi shook their head in a tiny way like they were clearing some numb part from their frontal lobe.

I looked at Dom and we had a conversation with our eyes that only parents learn how to do really well. After a few expressions passed by, we nodded and turned as one to Sammi in a way that was obviously creepy to Sammi.

“Sure,” we said together. Sammi visibly shuddered through their whole big-framed body.

Nemesis Engine engaged… Nemesis found… transporting…