Nico’s shoulder felt about to pull out of its socket. Bright spots of pain sparkled, partially obscuring the sky he peered up at. That sky was cloudless pink fading to lavender. It was also blurred and swaying.

What was under Nico’s feet, not over his head, worried him more. Coral-colored canyon walls surrounded him, shot through with striations of dark crimson crystal. The floor of that canyon had to be at least fifty feet below. Nico had made it almost to the top before a bad roll on his climbing check lost him his grip on the rope.

He’d discovered that fear tasted like blood.

“Just stay calm.”

Flat on his stomach and outlined against the sky above Nico, Adan braced with one hand against the rocky overhang Nico had been trying to reach. The bronze discs of Adan’s breastplate scraped against red stone, and his long black hair hung forward around his head.

Adan’s other hand clamped around Nico’s forearm in a death grip tight enough that Nico could feel the bruises forming. Every time Nico tried to move, agony screamed through his probably-dislocating shoulder.

Don’t look down. That’s the tired line every movie uses, right? Like that will make me not scared.

Nico had no intention of looking down. He fixed his gaze on the rope dangling alongside him. One of his feet remained tangled in it, so it was close enough. He just had to ignore the rope burn inflicted when he’d slipped and get his free hand back onto that rope.

I shouldn’t have slipped to begin with. Everyone else succeeded on their roll. Why couldn’t I?

In his head, Nico heard his father’s scoff and witnessed the disgusted roll of his eyes. Weak boy. Put away your books and your games and go do real things. That’s the only way to become strong.

The last thing Nico wanted was to prove his father right. He gritted his teeth and hung on.

There was the remote possibility that this game didn’t give falling damage, of course. Not all games did. But Nico wasn’t ready to test his newfound potential immortality just yet. The Neuroconnect Initiative which had uploaded him into this game hadn’t promised eternal life, after all—just the avoidance of certain death in the real world.

“This is not part of our plan, Nico. Climb!”

Jenae leaned forward, hovering behind Adan. A leather headband held her mane of long white-blonde hair off her face. Fading sunlight sparkled on the cloud blue scales of her armor. As Jenae cheerfully snapped the command at Nico, she thrust one hand forward, just as if she was trying to cast a spell on him.

Whatever Jenae might have been trying to accomplish, it must not have worked. Nothing whatsoever about Nico’s situation changed.

“Just reach for the rope, Nico. I know you have it in you.” Adan made no magical gestures, but Nico heard a faint thump and shake, as if the little drum and the rattles Adan wore on his belt were playing themselves.

[You have received the Inspired condition.]

Nico took a breath and tried to calm his nerves.

I get to add an extra die roll from the Inspired condition. I can do this.

Nico tried to move his free arm slowly, but as his weight shifted, Adan’s grasp on Nico’s right arm pulled harder. That shoulder shrieked anew with agony.

Adan’s grasp slipped, just a few millimeters before catching again, but Nico’s stomach lurched. Terror crashed through him. Instinctively, thrashing like a drowning swimmer, he snatched frantically at the rope.

The ghostly sound of unseen dice rolling rattled around Nico.

[Gymnastics Roll: 1 (1d20) + 1 (1d6 from Inspired) + 3 (AGI) + 2 (Proficiency)]

[You rolled a 7 for Gymnastics.]

In his thrashing, Nico’s tangled-up foot jerked the rope away from his reach. Then his lifeline fell free from Nico’s foot entirely and drifted several feet to the side, far beyond the reach of Nico’s hand.

“Fuck!” Nico’s voice echoed down the jagged cliffside toward the canyon floor below.

Adan grunted and spat out what were obviously a few obscenities of his own, although in a language Nico didn’t know. He must have rolled better than Nico, though, because he didn’t let go of Nico’s arm.

“Retrieve the rope,” Adan shouted without looking back. “Jenae!”

But Jenae dropped onto her stomach alongside Adan. “By the Dawn’s light, stop your messing about and get up here, please.” Jenae’s reach wasn’t as long as Adan’s, but she stretched enough to clasp her fingers around Nico’s wrist, a few inches higher than Adan’s grip on his forearm.

“Espy?” Adan twisted his head to the side.

Esperanza wouldn’t help, Nico already knew. She’d be standing and watching while Nico struggled. If she responded to Adan at all, Nico didn’t hear her.

Adan’s expression turned grim. He stared directly down at Nico.

“This might hurt. Help as much as you can.”

Adan’s plentiful muscles bulged. The cords on his neck stood out. He gritted his teeth and dragged on Nico’s arm. Nico’s shoulder, predictably, wrenched painfully.

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Oh, shit! Help how?

He was supposed to be good at this agility stuff.

So when will the dice rolls start making me look like it?

Nico dangled like a caught fish and waited for the dice to decide whether he’d live or die.

[Gymnastics Roll: 13 (1d20 Advantage from Jenae: Help) + 3 (AGI) + 2 (Proficiency)]

[You rolled an 18 for Gymnastics.]

Nico’s heart leaped. He had no way of knowing what difficulty he was rolling against, but 18 was good.

Good enough, surely. Come on, game. Let me have a win.

Nico also had no way of knowing what Adan had rolled, but it must have been good, too, because Adan pretty much free lifted Nico, one-armed, up to the clifftop where the others waited. As soon as the edge was in reach, Nico slapped his palm onto it, then levered up his arm and a leg. Eventually, Jenae helped drag him all the way over the side.

Nico collapsed onto the ground. The rock beneath him was hot enough to burn his bare hands and cheek and even through his clothing.

He didn’t care. He hugged the solid ground and focused on not sobbing in relief. The dry air he sucked into his lungs tasted like oil and stank like asphalt, but he took deep breaths, anyhow. If nothing else, he could use the excuse of catching his breath to avoid facing the rest of his party for a few seconds.

“We still have a long way to go,” Jenae said from somewhere above Nico. She didn’t sound angry—Jenae never sounded angry. But brisk efficiency was kind of her thing. She’d be itching to keep moving.

She wasn’t wrong. Nico just hoped he’d gotten all the bad dice rolls out of the way right up front. He flopped over onto his back and stared up, at that same flat sky that was growing less pink and more dark purple by the minute. Against it, a spire of blood red stone rose so tall that the top point dwindled away to nothing.

It wasn’t like this quest was going to get any easier from here.

Nico dragged himself to an upright position. By the time he got his feet under him, Adan was standing with his hands on his hips and alternating a frown between Jenae and Esperanza.

Although Adan was a big guy with a hooked nose and square jaw, his thin lips were usually quirked in a vague smile, like he knew something no one else did. If not for that, given Adan’s massively muscular build and the pure black falcata on his hip, he’d have simply looked terrifying.

Adan wore a little hand drum and a couple of rattles on his belt, as well. Much as he looked like he should be a berserker or warrior, Adan was more like what Nico would’ve called a bard or a skald. Adan himself just said he was a vagabondo.

“Even if we don’t agree with each other all the time, we must have each other’s backs.”

Although Adan didn’t address either of the women directly, Jenae immediately stood up straighter—which was no small feat, because her posture was already perfect. Nico had known her a little longer than the others, but only a little. Both Nico and Jenae came from the City of the Dawn, the nation of Soleon’s capital, and belonged to the Golden Bough, the city’s governing organization.

Their similarity ended there. Jenae was an Arm and Nico a Fist. She was responsible for deciding what needed to be beat up, and Nico was the one who was supposed to deliver the beating.

When I’m not screwing up a perfectly simple climbing check.

“You are absolutely correct, of course.”

Jenae’s physical appearance was highly militaristic—enameled scale armor of bright pale blue, with a stylized sun in brilliant yellow at its center, a shield painted in matching colors, and a metal cudgel with the figure of a flying serpent carved around its handle. But she never raised her voice in anger or even sounded disagreeable, really, even when she was, in fact, disagreeing with you.

So despite what Jenae said to Adan and the sweet way in which she spoke, Nico was pretty sure she was telling him to fuck off. Which was fair, Nico supposed. She had helped.

Esperanza was, as always, the exception to everything.

Their assigned quest was to chase down a lead on a cult allegedly inhabiting a natural stone spire known as the Tower of Dust. They’d left the City of the Dawn three days ago and quickly discovered that travel through the bleak arid highland known as the Bloodlands was no simple thing. Nico had been first impressed by how realistic the game made conditions—the air was thin and dry, and he could feel it as difficulty breathing. Daytime heat and nighttime cold were extreme.

By day two, Nico would have turned the realism settings way, way down, if he’d been able to access them.

They’d started sheltering during the hottest and coldest hours of the day and night and traveling during the slightly less grueling in between times. Now, with that final climb behind them, only the Tower of Dust’s formidable height loomed as their final challenge. Here on the ground at its base, the setting sun cast long, red-tinted shadows in heavy strips emanating from shorter rocky spikes and boulders.

Esperanza stood in one of those shadows. Petite and eternally wrapped in a robe and deep hood of misty gray, she nearly vanished altogether.

Even when she wasn’t standing in darkness, there was something about Esperanza that made her hard to look at. Nico had never seen her actual face, but sometimes inside the shadows of her hood, her eyes seemed to glow faintly, like reflected moonlight. Or her features seemed unfixed, as if water rippled across them.

Frankly, she gave Nico the creeps.

Now, although everyone present knew Adan had been talking to her, Esperanza merely stood there and said nothing. Eventually, Adan sighed and turned away.

“Have you pulled yourself back together?” Adan looked Nico up and down, as though assessing the answer for himself.

Instinctively, Nico patted his hair. Braided and pulled into a topknot as it was, it remained tidy. He straightened his sleeveless, dark gold tunic and the deep maroon sash that matched his hair. The golden sun clasp had remained in place, as had the blade-tipped staff lashed to his back before he started the climb. The rope burn on his hand and ache in his shoulder had faded already.

No hit points lost.

“I think so, yeah. Thanks.”

Adan’s frown finally relaxed into his usual wry smile. “It’s what I’m here for, yeah? We can’t win this fight if we allow our resources to be depleted before we even get there.”

Resources. He thinks of me as just a “resource.”

“There need not be a fight.” Esperanza’s voice was like quiet rain. She moved in her usual odd, hesitating way, like water lapping at a shore, as she emerged from the shadows and glanced skyward. “Darkness will help to hide our approach. That was the plan.”

Sure. Now you’re interested in what we’re doing.

Nico managed not to say anything out loud. Adan was weirdly protective of Esperanza, and Nico had no grudge with Adan. He had just saved Nico’s virtual life, after all.

Nico’s real life had, of course, been over for quite some time, now. When a pandemic had swept the world, something called the Neuroconnect Initiative had used experimental gaming technology to upload as many people as it could before the killer virus could get them. To say that had been a traumatic experience would be an understatement.

But he’d survived. He was here, now. And, unlike in his real life, where he’d been sickly even before the pandemic, in this life Nico was healthy and whole. In this life, he didn’t have to escape into the fantasy worlds of books and games—he was living in one.

Everyone Nico thought he’d had to prove something to was dead, except one.

Himself.

He’d been a Fist of the Golden Bough for four levels, now. Every new quest gained him more experience, every XP point brought him closer to new levels, and every level made him more powerful—and less likely to so horribly fail ability checks like he just had. Who knew, maybe in this new world, he could even attain true immortality.

End game forever.

“Point made. Perhaps we shouldn’t wait until full dark, however.” Jenae stepped briskly forward, and fixed Nico with a bright smile. “If you’re quite ready?”

Nico opened his mouth to say that he was.

That was when the dragon showed up.

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