It was two hours of hard riding before Annria spoke to him. Two hours away from the outpost, going faster than Tav thought mules were supposed to travel, taking odd shortcuts and side paths that Tav assumed were some sort of Traveling Merchant secret. Finally, Annria stopped the mule.

"So, 'Tav,'" she said. "You've let me try and pull my tricks. I know they can't be that effective, but I'd rather die with a little dignity. You mind doing it now? The mule's just about to keel over, so it's not much good to you any more."

"Huh?" said Tav, eloquently.

Annria shook her head. "I appreciate you not murdering Rutherford—the old geezer's done me a few good turns and he deserves better than to be some delver's fodder. But you don't have to keep playing with me. I know what's going on, you know I know what's going on, and I already told Ford into the bargain. I'm not taking you to Brightben for whatever skyforsaken evils you're planning to do there. So now you kill me, I hope I've gotten us lost enough you can't find your way there on your own, and Ford, Rod, and Mar send up the alarm about a Perrigenese madman hungry for blood. It's out of my hands. Get it over with."

"Uh," Tav said. "I really don't think either of us know as much about 'what's going on' as you seem to think we do."

"I told you to stop playing," Annria said, leaning in close. "The game's done. You're a delver."

"Oh!" Tav said. "So you did realize. I didn't think Rutherford noticed, but I guess I wasn't doing a great job of hiding it."

"You weren't," Annria said. She was ragged and sweaty from her travels, but very close. Tav hadn't had a whole lot of experience with sweaty women outside of sparring at the Academy. It was different when they weren't pointing a sword at him. "So get it over with. Just kill me."

It was also different when they were asking you to murder them.

"I—seriously, what?" Tav shook his head. "Uh, no. I don't know where you got lost, but I don't kill people."

"You're a delver," Annria said, with the air of someone explaining something very simple to a very stupid child. "Of course you kill people."

"No, I kill monsters," Tav said. "I know the Karmeri think we're all basically monsters ourselves, but there is a difference."

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Annria quirked an eyebrow. "You might be better off claiming to be a monster. Saying you're a human doesn't help your case when your most recent achievement is [Cannibal]." She looked him up and down. "Sorry, [Cannibal 2]. I hear delvers hate it when they don't receive proper credit for their accomplishments."

Tav's heart sank. He popped open his window, not bothering to hide his hand motions, and checked that his recent achievements list was still set to private. It was. "I, uh. You're not supposed to be able to see that? And I don't know how I got it anyway."

"What, did someone feed you campsite stew and you didn't notice the other party members were gone until after the achievement popup?"

"No, I—" Tav raised his hands. "I'm sorry. I set my achievements to private to try and avoid awkward questions. How are you able to see that, anyway?"

"I'm a good judge of character," she said. "Also, I don't have to tell you anything. Murderer."

"I don't know how anyone, much less a Karmeri, can see that list. Wait, can you see [Kinslayer 1]? That's the achievement for killing other humans, but it's only at rank 1! It'd be higher if I'd killed lots of them." Tav realized that this was, perhaps, not the best defense. "Also, I haven't actually killed any humans. My achievements are messed up. Everything's messed up, really. Something's wrong with my System."

"That's your best defense?" she asked. "'Something's wrong'? I would have expected a better lie."

"That's all I've got," Tav said. "Sorry if I can't be more convincing, but I really don't know what's going on. When I told Rutherford I'd gotten separated from my group, that wasn't actually a lie either, just not the whole truth." He took a deep breath and tried to explain. "You're right, I'm a delver. Er, delver-in-training, sort of. I was just about to graduate from the Academy when an Dungeon entrance opened up in the middle of the field." Tav tried to keep it together, knowing his voice was shaking. "It was... bad. I didn't see much, but monsters came out and I fell in. Now I'm hundreds of miles and at least two countries away from my home, and my System's all screwed up, and I have an Achievement that says I've eaten people. I don't want to hurt anyone, I just want to get home, and I'd really like some help. I can—okay, I can't pay you, actually, not now, but my family has money. Do you people do ransoms? And I'm going to be a delver, even if graduation got interrupted by a monster attack, so you'd have a delver who owes you his life. That's got to be worth something, right? Um, wait, maybe that isn't persuasive, since you're Karmeri and all. But please. I'm desperate."

Annria wrinkled her brow. "Do you have any way to prove... any of that?"

"Um, not really. My stats are weird? They're higher than they used to be. I've gotten a class evolution three levels before I should. Does that count as proof?"

"Even if you want to share your statistics," Annria said, "I don't know the details of delving classes anyway. Why would I bother learning something like that?"

"Because you..." Tav paused. "Some sort of 'know your enemy' thing, for killing delvers?"

Annria's forehead wrinkles were going to be etched deep by the end of this conversation. "We don't kill delvers," she said. "We just don't want them here."

"We don't really want to be here either," Tav said. "I'd like very much not to be here. I'm trying to leave, actually. Like I've been saying."