With a hungry grin, Jeremy raised his sword and took a stride forward, making Acorn growl. Saffie knew Acorn was trying his best to appear intimidating, but Jeremy just let out a bellowing laugh and raised his sword higher.

Saffie had to think fast.

“Shatter!” she cried, as Jeremy began to swing the broadsword down. It was one of her newer spells that was supposed to break apart hard in-game objects, and she hoped it would be powerful enough to break the sword. But as the spell hit it, the only thing it did was cause Jeremy to pause. Suddenly the sword glowed and the magic particles of the spell got sucked into it.

“Your puny magic is no use against me, mage,” Jeremy roared. “My sword absorbs EVERYTHING.”

A sword that absorbed all magic? Without magic, Saffie was defenceless. She made to run, but between Jeremy, his panion, and the tiled wall behind her, she was completely flanked.

“You can’t just strike me down,” Saffie said desperately. “They’ll know you did it! Even in here!”

“And how will they know that?” Jeremy said with a smirk. “Once you’re outta Overworld, you can’t be scanned. When they come in here and find you eliminated, for all they’ll know you got sent outta the game by a bog-bloater that came up outta one of those toilets.”

Saffie gulped, and Jeremy raised his sword again, higher this time.

“Nighty night,” he snarled.

But before he could bring the killing blow down, there was a sharp thunk from behind him and his eyes widened.

He looked upwards at his sword, which began disintegrating into metal sand, and the thick armour he was wearing began tearing itself into nothing, leaving him in just a pair of shorts and a stained white vest. With a confused look, his eyes drooped shut and he fell to a large crumpled heap on the dirty floor.

Standing behind the heap, his dagger gripped firmly in his hand, was Nate.

With tears in her eyes, Saffie leapt over Jeremy’s unconscious body and wrapped her arms tightly around Nate, almost toppling him over.

“Whoa!” he said, holding his dagger out to one side. “You nearly impaled yourself as well!”

Saffie unwrapped her arms and took a step back, feeling her cheeks get hot.

“Sorry- it’s just- he was gonna- and I was about to be- you saved me!”

She tried to catch her breath.

“How did you know I was in here? Where have you been? And… how did you eliminate him with one stab?”

“That’s a lot of questions in one go,” Nate laughed. “To answer the dagger question…”

He spun his blade between his fingers, then threw it into the air and caught it again.

“I enchanted it with a Severstab. It increases assassin damage by seven hundred percent. Looks like that was just enough to take him out in one hit. I won it for saving a Thames Tredger from being trampled by a Bouncing Bogey.”

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Saffie raised one eyebrow.

“Yeah, don’t ask,” he said.

They both turned to look at Jeremy, who was snoring away on the dirty tiles, deep in Morrowsleep.

“What do we do with him?” Saffie said. “Should we tell someone?”

Nate grimaced.

“I’ll be kicked out of the guild if they find out I’m the one that did it. We should get out of here. Someone will come across him soon enough.”

Jeremy suddenly let out a curt fart.

“Yep, that’s our cue to leave,” Saffie confirmed.

As they re-entered the bar area, Saffie stopped in her tracks.

“What’s the matter?” said Nate.

“The woman- I mean the… ephemeral.”

She was no longer sat on her stool by the bar, nor was she anywhere to be seen.

“If you’re looking for that ephemeral of his,” said a scrawny looking warrior, “she just vanished ‘bout five minutes ago. Must have been her time up. Jeremy’s gonna flip out when he gets outta the bog.”

Nate turned to Saffie with a grave look on his face.

“You don’t think I…” he lowered his voice to a whisper, “killed her when I… you know?”

Saffie struggled to come to any other conclusion.

“I think ‘killed’ is the… wrong word,” she said, as much to convince herself as to convince Nate. “She was an ephemeral, that’s all. She wasn’t real. We just have to remember that.”

A guy suddenly burst out of the toilets, shouting:

“Jezza’s on the floor in there! He’s been eliminated!”

The bar suddenly went eerily quiet, and Saffie could hear her own breathing. A moment passed before there was a single cheer from one table, followed by a few more, and then shouts of “Yes!” “Good riddance!” and even “Serve’s him right, the ‘orrible oaf!”

The merriment was cut short when a stern looking woman strode into the tavern. Saffie was in no doubt that this had to be the guild master.

She stopped right next to Saffie and Nate, and gave Nate a sideways look.

“Hey Kristina,” he said.

“What happened to Jeremy, Forrester?” she replied sternly.

“Bog bloater,” said Nate.

Kristina eyed him up and down suspiciously, then, with a glint in her eye, she said, “Well, that bog bloater did us all a favour.”

She strode into the centre of the tavern and addressed the crowd.

“Does anyone know where Jeremy lives?” she shouted.

A guy at the back of the tavern raised his hand.

“Take him home and put him to bed, will you?”

It took three people to carry Jeremy out of the building, and even then, they dropped him a few times on the way. While the rest of the crowd celebrated, Saffie and Nate ordered the Tavern’s speciality - Tinkersbrew, and found themselves an empty booth to sit in.

“Me and four other warriors went on this group errand called ‘The Cave Dweller’s Demon,” Nate explained, wiping the drink’s froth from his upper lip. “It was one of those quests where it strips you of all your belongings, status effects, and enchantments. Included in that was the messaging function. It didn’t want us communicating about the main puzzle. As soon as the quest was over and all our stuff and abilities came back, I got a bunch of messages from you in one go.”

Saffie felt her cheeks warm a little once again.

“Sorry,” she said. “I thought you were ignoring me. Does that mean you were never mad? Even when I said sorry the first time?”

“Oh no, I was mad at you back then,” Nate said. “Fuming actually.” He gave her a playful smile. “You’re lucky I’m not the kind of guy who holds a grudge.”

Saffie realised she was extremely lucky. If he had been that kind of guy, she would have been the one deep in Morrowsleep right now instead of Jeremy.

“So you think Ruben was the one who put your uncle in the coma, huh?” Nate said curiously. “That sneaky rat.”

Saffie nodded and told him everything that had happened since she’d last seen him - her encounter with Cora at the library, casting the ineffective counterspell on Dax, and overhearing the words ‘Bultras, leap’ in Duke of York Square.

“I need to confront Ruben, find out exactly why he did it, and how the effects of the poison can be reversed. Where was he going on this ‘secret’ foraging trip you mentioned?”

“Open map,” said Nate, and the London city map folded out of thin air in front of them. He pressed it down onto the wooden table and traced his finger north east from the river Thames until it landed on a large patch of dark green. Hovering above it was a 3D ancient looking tree and two words next to it.

Epping Forest.

“The problem is,” Nate said, “Epping Forest is huge. Look at all this land. We could spend an entire day searching the area and never find him. What we need is some kind of locating spell or device. Do you know anything? Or anyone who can help us?”

A grin crept up the side of Saffie’s mouth. Someone with powerful scanning abilities? She knew just the person.