There was something uncanny about the guards who stood at regular intervals along the battlement, staring through the crossbow grooves at whatever lay beyond. Reeve couldn’t put her finger on it exactly, but their posture, the way some of their shoulders slumped a little unevenly, an odd elbow or knee angle here and there, the fact that their plate armor didn’t all match and some sets seemed to be missing pieces, and their absolute stillness—it gave her goosebumps.

OK…, she thought, trying to force some positive thinking, …there may be a lot of undead here, but, good news is, they’re not actually zombies. They were raised by a necromancer. Or, necromancers. So, it’s not like they’re contagious and out to eat brains.

Reeve’s positive thinking took a nosedive, and she started walking as quickly as she could while still remaining silent. She felt like she was probably walking like her mom Wanda did when she wanted to get ahead of a crowd, or through a crowd, or out of a crowd without seeming like she was rushing—forearms level, tight little arm swings, short and quick strides. Fantastic, Reeve thought, looking like my mom. Her mood dropped further. I’m a half-orc who’s channeling a middle-aged IRL mom. Nothing to see here, Reeve thought. And, really, as long as they don’t see me, I’m all set.

Reeve turned the corner of the inner wall and came face to face with one of the undead guards. That he was undead Reeve was fairly certain, based, one, on the fact that his eyes were jaundiced and pointing in very different directions and, two, on the even more eye-catching small, very angry-looking bird staring at Reeve from a nest atop the raised visor of the guard’s rusted helmet. With the height she’d inherited from her orc parent, Reeve was closer to being eye-to-eye with the bird than with its wearer.

A high, uncomfortable “auhhuhaauw” sound escaped Reeve, embarrassing her both when she first noticed the unconscious sound and again when she found it impossible to stop.

The guard’s expression did not change, but he raised a hand toward her.

“Nononono,” Reeve said. She took a half-step back and swung her naginata down to meet the hand coming toward her. She watched the hand fall to the grass.

The guard stared at the hand-free end of his wrist, from which no blood welled. Despite the eyes, which made it hard to tell where exactly the guard was looking, and the bird, which kept drawing her attention, Reeve had a very strong feeling that the guard was looking at his truncated arm with some degree of disappointment and surprise, but nothing else.

Reeve took a full step back to a distance that made her more comfortable.

The guard took a step back to a distance that apparently made him more comfortable as well. Safely distanced, he raised his remaining hand and began moving it through a series of slow but clear gestures.

Fearing that she was facing an undead caster, Reeve swung her naginata to an offensive position, ready to strike again. But, there her blade stayed as she watched the guard’s hand motions.

“You,” she said, “you know sign language?”

The guard interrupted what he’d been signing and bobbed, “Yes,” then resumed signing.

“You are signing to me?”

As though he couldn’t believe Reeve could be so dense, the guard used his stump to point at his hand as it again clearly bobbed “Yes.” He resumed what he’d been signing.

“You need me to come with you?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah, I don’t think so.”

“Please come.”

“You’re acting polite. Which is only sketching me out more. Why do you need me to come with you?”

“Reclaim your skunk.”

“My…” Reeve leaned to the side to see past the guard’s nest-capped helm.

Three other guards stood some dozen yards away. Two were looking at the third, whose unarmored arm was extended horizontally from the ill-fitting breastplate he wore. Bunce was partly hanging, partly climbing the extended arm, her teeth heavily involved in both activities, which threatened to sever the arm from its silent, uncomplaining owner.

OK, Reeve thought. I now know that my parents are about as good at identifying wildlife as the undead are. She looked back at the guard two paces from her.

“You want me to take the honey badger off your…friend.”

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“Yes. Please.”

Reeve furrowed her brow as she looked at the polite undead guard. “Then what will you do to us?”

“Present you to our King and Queen.”

Reeve squinted. “You mean, like, kill us and take our bodies before them as trophies?”

“I assumed you would just walk.”

Reeve snorted and walked a wide circle around the guard to approach the other three guards, coming up behind the one from which hung Bunce.

“Whatcha doin’ there?” She said casually to her father’s companion, even as she kept her naginata ready should she need it.

Bunce paused her gnawing, which had progressed through the guard’s definitely-not-fresh flesh down to rusty-brown bone.

“First, Helia’s mostly non-corporeal Enslaved Souls. Now, these things. Must be frustrating for you, huh?”

Bunce released her grip on the arm and dropped to the ground, landing on all fours. She looked up at the guard for a moment, then turned toward Reeve.

The first guard Reeve had encountered joined the group and motioned for Reeve and Bunce to follow.

“Please follow me, and please have your skunk heel.”

“I am definitely not going to repeat any of that to her. Just let’s go.”

The nest-wearing guard led Reeve and Bunce down the bailey, the other three guards following. Turning another corner of the inner wall, Reeve found they were heading toward the gatehouse that provided the only access through the inner wall to the inner bailey. To the left of the gate stood a one-armed guard wearing no pants but—Reeve was very grateful—a pair of rough, calf-length underpants, and to the right stood a full set of unmoving plate mail, visor lowered and the whole ensemble so still it could’ve been empty as far as Reeve could tell.

They passed through the main gate and then two smaller gates before coming to the inner bailey, which they crossed diagonally to reach a single massive door. Their guide reached for the door’s pull, but Reeve stopped him with a tap of her naginata’s shaft against his shoulder.

“You’re going to let me just walk in there with this? Are they going to be OK with that?”

“You pose our rulers no danger.”

Reeve couldn’t decide if she should be offended or afraid. “How do you know that?”

“We will protect them. We will protect you. We protect all of the living. It is our purpose.”

Reeve stepped back out of the door’s path. “OK, can’t complain about that I guess.”

The guard pulled the door open, its action surprisingly silent given its weight. He gestured Reeve through, and she took a step inside.

Reeve immediately stepped back out the door and looked at the guard. “That,” she said, her voice not quite under her control, “is a room full of z—.” She took a deep breath and rubbed one of her calloused palms against her broad forehead as she collected herself. “Maybe I can complain, just a little. There are a lot of guards in there. Not the living variety. Is that really necessary? Am I safe?”

“Yes.”

“That’s great. Good detail. Very convincing.” She took a deep breath. “Well, respawning back in Thhia would just save some time over waiting for the portal to reappear to get back I guess.”

Reeve stepped through the door into the cavernous hall in which she conservatively estimated were a bajillion undead guards milling around. The guards were in two groups to either side of a path that, due to some unspoken agreement, remained clear as it ran from the door of her entry to a raised platform upon which sat two large, vacant chairs carved from dark wood. The ends of the armrests were shaped like the heads of serpents, mouths open, fangs bared, eyes of inset red gems shining.

Reeve heard the click, click, click, click of Bunce’s claws on the stone floor as the honey badger entered the room and came to stand next to her. Reeve looked down at Bunce. Bunce looked from one side of the room to the other, taking in the sea of undead guards, then turned and trotted back out the door.

“Thanks very much for your support,” Reeve said to Bunce’s disappearing haunches and turned to again face the room.

Agitated chirping let Reeve know that the original guard had joined her.

Glong, glong, glong, glong, glong!

Reeve ducked to her right and spun, her naginata swinging up to protect her torso and head as the rapid, thunderous sound rang out and then echoed through the room.

The guard who’d guided her was releasing the thick rope he’d used to swing the massive clapper of the compact-car-sized bell that hung above and just to the left of the door they’d entered.

“Was that necessary?” Reeve said loudly, hoping to be heard over the still-echoing din.

“Please wait,” the guard, whom Reeve was starting to think of as Finch, signed.

Having been so startled by the bell as to forget for a moment her surroundings, Reeve’s heart skipped a beat when she turned and found herself facing the packed room of undead guards. They stared at her, so still they could have been frozen.

Reeve cleared her throat but then couldn’t bring herself to break the eerie silence. “Hello,” she signed with her free hand.

The room erupted into nearly silent but energetic signing from every guard Reeve could see, sound coming only from the occasional clanging of one set of armor bumping against a neighbor’s or feet shuffling as their owner sought a better view of their visitor.

Reeve checked that her feed was still being recorded. I don’t remember seeing any posts about this online, she thought. Could be first here. Then a different thought arose, and she facepalmed.

This world, this story mode—the world in which she and her dad had been stuck, the world in which Viv had to intervene to fix the glitched low-level AIs and create sapient Level 4 AIs, the world now being used as a testbed for pre-release features and mechanics, the world that had deviated from the story mode so that not even the devs could predict what’d happen next, the world that had now had eight years of game time to evolve—this world might be entirely different from any other version of the story mode, full of firsts that no other player had ever seen. She was the alpha tester for a whole world, and her friends—Dusk and Dawn and Leaf and Thomanji'yheri…and Nyx—would all be affected by how she handled what she came up against. Including, Reeve thought uncomfortably, one or more Level 4 AIs, maybe even melióδin, who might be trying to escape onto the nex.

“Welcome, welcome!” A deep, jovial voice boomed from somewhere on the other side of the throng, followed by a higher but similarly friendly voice saying, “Oh my goodness, you’re still alive, are you? How delightful!”