Colin POV

The shattered fragment was in a den carved into one of the enormous violet hexagonal pillars. The pillar itself stretched up over our heads until it blurred into the purple background. I was getting a little tired already of this Protoss hell and hoped we'd get some different landscapes soon. What sort of good strategy game only has one kind of map, after all?

We stopped outside the hole. "What's in there?" Sage asked. "I'm not going in after it. This is where we need my brother. He'd charge in using his Call ‘em Out skill and get it on him."

I sighed. “I’m going to have to get my timing exactly right here,” I said. “Be ready.”

Sage eyed me. "What do you have in mind?"

"I'm going to rush in there, get its attention, and get it out." I pointed at the entrance to the lair. "Put down your Mucking Out the Stalls right in front of the cave just as soon as I'm inside. Everybody ready?"

Sage and Rok'gar nodded, weapons in hand. I didn't even bother to pull out a weapon for this. I just winced, took a deep breath, and raced straight in.

The inside of the cave was dark, and then it was very, very bright as the creature inside woke up and looked at me with glowing eyes. Seconds later, a beam of light stabbed out from its eyes and incinerated me on the spot. I'd been expecting that, and my passive ability, 13-Second Rule, activated as I died. Now I respawned right outside the cave where I had started a few seconds ago.

Sage was staring at me in horror. "What the fuck? You've been spending way too much time with my brother, Colin."

I had no time to react because the shatter roared and emerged from the cave right into Sage's Mucking Out the Stalls. It was like a 15-foot-tall baby Godzilla. Spikes everywhere. Long tall body dragging a tail behind it. It was dark as midnight.

Its eyes flashed. We scattered to the sides, and the beam passed harmlessly where we had been. It took a step forward and was sucked down with the muck.

"I really wish we had some real ranged skills," I yelled as Rok'gar and I converged on it. Rok'gar flanked it, raising his energy weapon and cutting down across the creature's leg. I threw a bunch of multi-mode grenades. At least back home, they hadn't counted as weapons until they detonated, which meant that I didn't suffer my usual debuff to using weaponry. Seemed like the same rule held true here. The grenades soared along the arc I had envisioned, impacting against the side of mini-Godzilla's face. They exploded in a shower of sparks. The creature reared up on its hind legs and roared, clearly in pain. A blinking health bar appeared over its head, showing him about 20% down from max.

Sage pulled something out of her inventory and tossed it. A small army of skeleton pirates appeared, surrounding Godzilla and hacking at it with cutlasses.

"What the hell are those?” I shouted, distracted momentarily.

"They're from Phase Two. I never got a good chance to use them," Sage said. "They're one-use, inflatable mercenaries." She tossed out her Cowgirl Cheer, buffing us and the temporary adds. The pirates bit into Godzilla's health pool. He roared and started stepping on them, one by one. Meanwhile, Rok'gar was dancing in with his polearm. I threw another round of grenades. Sage had an RPG-like weapon out now, her t-shirt cannon. She launched projectiles at Godzilla, one hit it square in the mouth and knocked it backward. Its eye beam stabbed up toward the unseen ceiling, passing harmlessly.

We danced and fought, and when mini-Godzilla fell, Sage ran in, whooping. "All right!" she yelled. She touched the corpse, and it dissolved in a shower of sparks. A loot box appeared in front of me.

[You have received one mental controller capable of controlling eighteen worker or combat units. Do you wish to equip this in one of the minion slots?]

I selected "yes."

[You have received forty units of ethereum. Willpower density increased by one percent.]

From Gambler’s data dump, I knew that Will could increase in density, which allowed it to resist attacks longer.

I whooped. "All right! Now we're going to need a base. Any suggestions?"

"In this place, the natural defenses don't exist," Gambler told us. "Pick anywhere you choose."

I stepped out and looked around. We were still standing in that enormous, flat purple Protoss hell. Spires rose around us. "I guess this is as good as anywhere," I said. "Right, Gambler. You've got the interface I asked you about ready to go?"

It popped up for me, a simple RTS control interface. It had two tabs, “Build" and "Research." I opened up “Build." There were a lot of empty slots I hoped we'd find later, and three options. [Build Headquarters. Headquarters is required. If Headquarters is overrun, fragment will be exposed and vulnerable to absorption by larger fragments.]

I selected that building. It had an ethereum cost of 20. I pointed, and the building appeared. It phased in, top down, in a haze of purple sparks, and helped the grin spreading across my face. Cool.

Next, I built a Barracks, which would allow us to train up worker and army units. That cost 15 ethereum. I hesitated. The third building we had access to was a Crafting Hall, and I wanted one, but it would use up most of our available ethereum.

"I think we're going to need to wait on this until we've got some units,” I told the team.

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Rok'gar and Sage shrugged. "You're the expert on this," Sage declared. "I've never even played one of these RTS games."

"You mean, other than Phase Two of your exploit?" I said, teasing her.

She rolled her eyes at me and I got a glimpse of the kid she’d been. She was loosening up a lot now that we were in mortal peril. I guess that made sense, considering the rest of her family. “Right, but they weren't letting me make any strategic decisions, Colin. I was 12, and too busy thinking that I liked the noises the elves made when they died." Her face softened as if at a fond memory. "Which I did. And do. Damn it. College was supposed to help me tame some of those impulses. And now here I am, right back at it." But there was a sparkle in her eyes.

I grinned at her. "You've missed this, haven't you?"

"Only because I've got some weird form of Stockholm Syndrome that has me thinking risking my life like this is a good idea," she said, as we watched the barracks phase into existence. I had ordered it to build just as soon as I had looked at it but it had waited until the Headquarters was complete before starting. That was an interesting limitation.

I checked my menu. Now I could access that Barracks menu. We had two kinds of army units available to us: spearmen and archers. Spearmen cost one ethereum each. Archers cost four. The archers were ranged, and had fewer hit points than the spearmen. Classic setup here. Hopefully we could equip them with decent gear or learn to summon better units, because I didn’t think spearmen were going to cut it.

I did a quick calculation and built us a squad of eight spearmen and a archer, training two of the spearmen first, then the archer, then the rest of the spearmen. It was going to take a little bit of time for all these guys to pop out. I was already noticing jackals sniffing around near our perimeter. Not literally jackals. They were purple and about two feet tall with long fangs and hairless bodies. But they reminded me of jackals, so that's what I'd call them.

As soon as the first spearman spawned, I pointed to Sage. “Ok, Sage, your turn,” I said. "Take command of the spearman and point him at one of those jackals."

She squinted. "You mean those ugly rat dog things?"

"Yeah, those."

The spearman was three feet tall and wore primitive leather armor with a flared skirt and bronze shinguards. I was pretty sure Gambler was pulling all this imagery straight from my memories. It was fine with me, whatever made it easier for me to figure out.

Sage ordered him to attack the jackal. He saluted. “At your command!” Then he marched over to the jackal and started stabbing it in the side. It yipped and whirled on him, biting, but he’d taken out nearly half its hit points while it had barely scratched him. It took three good stabs to drop the jackal, then Sage ordered the spearman to loot. A box appeared for us.

[Skill seed fragment. Combine eight of these to create one skill seed]. I groaned. My best ability let me take multiple skill seeds and combine them into one uber-skill. I had been hoping to start picking up skills a lot faster than this.

When the second spearmen spawned, I told Sage to take him on patrol. "Look for jackals. Don't get very far away in case we're attacked or you find something you can't handle."

She saluted. "Aye, aye, Captain Colin." But her grin made it clear she was listening to what I had to say.

"What am I supposed to do?" Rok'gar asked, folding his arms.

"You're going to help me read the manual and make sure we understand the rules," I told him. "We don't need any surprises coming our way. Sage is going to be our offensive general here, so let's let her get some practice in. You and I will be managing base building and outfitting tasks."

His scowl got even deeper. "It is not honorable for me to stand back and let her do all the fighting."

"This isn't because Sage is a girl, is it?" I asked. I was getting weird vibes off Rok’gar. He was clearly very protective of Sage. I was starting to wonder if he had a crush on her. Was that even possible? I’d seen some really, really cute space elf women — I could see going for one of them, even if we weren’t the same species. Maybe Rok’gar felt that way about Sage. But I couldn’t let it get in the way of the mission. “There's no physical differences inside a reality engine simulation,” I reminded him.

He looked surprised. "No, why should I think that? My mother is one of the most accomplished warriors in our clan, and my sister is likely to succeed my father as First Warrior to the chieftain. But it is still difficult to sit and watch a friend put herself in danger while I do nothing."

"I get that," I said. "But we're not going to be doing nothing. This is going to take all three of us, Rok'gar."

"What exactly is the goal here?" he asked, and I pulled up short. I'd been so focused on understanding the rules and my resource limitations that I'd forgotten why we were here.

"Well," I said slowly, "we need to grow Gambler strong enough to stand up to the other fragments and then find a way to communicate with our people. I don't want to be stuck in here forever."

He nodded. "Good. As long as you and I are agreed on that."

We got our squad of troops trained up, and Gambler located us another shatter. The jackal attacks were getting a little more frequent, and the jackals themselves were larger.

"They are attracted to me," Gambler explained. "Eventually, larger, more sentient pieces of the engine will sense me and begin attacks, but we should have some time until then."

I told two of our spearmen to stay behind and guard. Sage had figured out how to set them on a patrol and had them waddling back and forth around our base.

We all set out. Despite what I'd said to Rok’gar earlier, there was no way I was letting Sage take on one of those shatters without backup. Not until our army was a lot better equipped.

By now, we'd acquired enough skill seed slivers to make one entire skill seed. My Analyze skill let me see what that skill would become if added to each of our classes. It was an unimpressive little thing, offering to let Rok'gar choose what color items he crafted were or to change the appearance of Sage's mucking out the stalls. I kept it, hoping to find something else to combine it with later that would be a better skill. I was worried that we'd need to take on much more dangerous enemies to get what we needed.

The next shatter was right out in the open, a 10-foot tall, six-legged dog creature with two heads, one on each end. It was snapping and snarling at itself.

"Let me try something," Sage said as we approached, and she tossed out her lasso, catching one of the two heads. Abruptly, it turned green and started snarling and snapping at the other head in earnest. Sage laughed. "It worked. I've Tamed it!”

She ordered the squad of warrior units to attack while Rok'gar and I hacked away at the dog creature's legs. With the two heads busy fighting each other, we dropped it pretty fast, gaining another controller to fill up our last slot and, more importantly for now, 95 ethereum as well as an entire skill seed. This one was much more promising—a crafting-based skill that looked like it'd be great for either me or Rok'gar. I hesitated, then combined it with the cosmetic one. As I analyzed the result, I grinned.

“Perfect.” [Customized Defense Matrix. When setting up defensive structures, allow customization of their damage type, range, and speed.]

That went right into my Book of Possibilities. I didn't have any defensive structures yet, but once I did, this would be important.

We went back to the base, and I built the Crafting Hall. Then, I immediately upgraded it to a research compound. It would still let us build gear for our soldiers, but now we could also research building upgrades. Those would take ethereum and time, and if Gambler's Will fell below 50% while we were researching, the research would be canceled.

I was starting to feel pretty good about our setup. Which is, of course, when it all went pear-shaped.