“I was on a cruise with my family when someone pushed me overboard,” Jade was saying as the two of us carried sticks and twigs back to our clearing.

We had decided to return to the rest of The Completionists in the morning, so that Jade and Patrick could show me the ropes before I met their leader. Kiril, they called him. Kiril the min-maxer. Kiril the power gamer. Kiril who would be a bitch to convince. And I was not an optimized build. I wasn’t a build at all, really, with my lowly constitution.

“Someone pushed you overboard?” I asked. My darkvision had expired and the two of us fumbled our way back to camp, tripping more than once in the underbrush.

“I didn’t see who it was, but I think I know. I was with my boyfriend and his friends,” the way she said boyfriend told of hour long arguments and make up sex that was only worth it while it was happening—something I found easily relatable. “We wanted to have one last blow out before going back to school so I was pretty drunk, and this older woman introduced herself to me.”

Suddenly our stories were becoming all too similar. I swallowed my excitement to exclaim about the strange old person I had also met shortly before arriving on Killjoy Island.

“She was Asian, too—Mandarin-Chinese. I’m Vietnamese, but I guess she felt like she had the go-ahead to come over and tell me I shouldn’t be partying a week before school and that my parents would be disappointed. Stereotypical stuff. And my parents already knew and were okay with it. Anyways, she started talking to me about how much potential I have. I honestly thought she was coming onto me after a while, but maybe that was just the bourbon. She introduced herself as Madame Rouge, and then she just left. It was the weirdest thing. And then I was by myself on the side of the boat, looking out over the water. I dropped a bracelet my boyfriend gave me, and I stupidly stood on the railing to look overboard when I felt a hand on my back. I heard a voice say ‘good luck’, and then they pushed. I swear it was her.”

Alarm bells were going off in my head. After hearing the Piña Colada song while dangling from the side of a cliff, I was almost certain Mr. Pink had something to do with the plane crash, but after hearing Jade’s story about another chromatically named individual, I was sure of it. I told her my story—punctuated by Jade’s exclamations of no way, and her sharp intakes of breath—just as we arrived back at camp and began setting up our campfire.

I was about to whip out the flint and steel when she pressed her hand against one of the logs. The entire thing burst into blue flame.

“Thank you, dear,” said Patrick, who approached the fire with one hand sweeping the air in front of him. He was almost blind, I learned.

Unlike Jade and I, Patrick was nowhere near the ocean when he had his last memory before Killjoy Island. He was driving somewhere in upstate New York when he picked up someone on the side of the road. And this someone was, you guessed it: a strange old man. Mr. Orange, he was called. It wasn’t long before Patrick dropped off Mr. Orange in a small town, and then when he pulled back out onto the road—well, deer crossing signs are there for a reason. He swerved, skidding onto a bridge and smashed through the railing. He remembered hitting the water before blacking out.

His glasses were shattered. Turned out he really needed them. Patrick said he’d be dead on his first day if he hadn’t run into Jade, a fact she strongly agreed with. The first ability he discovered was Superior Perception, which most smaller birds on the island have. So they stuck together. Jade would hunt birds for him so he could see, and Patrick—who was a doctor and avid outdoorsman—would show her the basic necessities of not dying in the wilderness.

“What’s your constitution at now?” Jade asked as the three of us huddled around the fire. They used logs as seats. I used Gnome.

“Thirty percent,” I said. I almost didn’t catch the bird wing Patrick threw at me.

“You’ll see what I mean,” he said.

After eating for a couple minutes, it was like someone had slipped a pair of glasses over my head without me noticing.

Ability Discovered

- Superior Perception -

Tier 0

Con 1

Con -1%/min

Didn't think you needed glasses, did ya? You're welcome. You have the sharpness of a bird's eye.

It was no darkvision, but everything illuminated was brought into alarming focus. In the gloomy firelight I could practically make out individual strands of Jade’s hair.

I must have been making a face, because Patrick spoke up. “I guess when you’re only here a couple days, something like that is impressive. Nine days doesn’t sound like much more, but eventually the curiosities of the island become banalities, only to make way for new curiosities.” He nodded to Gnome.

“Can confirm. Been here eleven days,” chimed Jade. “First time I ever met an object that talks.”

Stolen story; please report.

Gnome cleared a throat he didn’t have. “We of my kind prefer animate object, at the very least. Arcane infusion or magical item is standard terminology. I, however, prefer to be referred to as my given name. Gnome Chompsky.”

“Sorry, Gnome.”

I went for my canteen when I realized it was empty. I hadn’t had anything to drink in hours and my throat was beginning to chaff with every breath. “Fuck,” I whispered.

“All out of fresh water?” Patrick asked, noticing the canteen. I rattled it in reply. He smiled and produced a small pouch from his belt. He pulled it open and began carefully sifting through its contents, but then kissed his teeth. “Jade, would you mind heading out into the woods to look for more of the Cleansing Caps? They should be around this area, at the base of a tree. They’ve got the green and white—“

“I know,” Jade said, standing. She lit a stick with her fingers and trudged off into the dark.

Patrick smiled. “This is why I keep her around. Here, have this until she gets back.” He reached over and handed me his own canteen. I thanked him and gingerly took a sip. He laughed. “You can finish the entire thing. I’ll make some more later.”

Shit, if they could make water out of mushrooms, I was in good hands. “Thanks,” I said and gulped down the most refreshing litre of water my body had ever consumed. After it was down I wiped my lips and returned the canteen. “You two seem to make a good team.”

“Yeah well, that’s why Kiril keeps us around.”

“You’re really hyping this guy up. I feel like I’m prepping for a job interview with a resume written in crayon,” I said.

Patrick waved his hand dismissively. “I wouldn’t worry too much. He’s intense, but he’s solid. I bet you opened the newcomer chest your first day here.”

I nodded. “I was kinda dying.”

“Me too. Same with Jade. I’m pretty sure everyone opened that chest, except for Kiril.”

Of course he didn’t. I didn’t know whether to be impressed or intimidated by this figure I had never met. Either way, I knew with a gamer like that the Completionists was the party I wanted to be joining.

“Shit, that’s hardcore,” I said.

“Literally. He’s got the title to prove it.”

Patrick dumped the contents of his pouch into his hand. A miasma of fungus and dirt besieged my nostrils. Quickly he changed topics. “Here, let me show you some things before Jade gets back.” He sorted through the dried mushrooms and gnarled roots, carefully picking out a dark stick with many smaller protruding arteries. “My gatherer title allows me to identify food and what powers they might give you. This one is fascinating. It’s called Vampire Root, but I call it Doughertus Nosferatus. It’s rare, only found at the base of trees that have those vein-like lights on them, but what it does is steal liquid from other sources, draining the life from plants and trees.”

Patrick proceeded to explain to me the powers it gave, how you could transfer the vitality from another creature to yourself in close contact. It might also have the ability to extract poison from allies, he said, but hadn’t gotten around to testing his theory yet.

The next item was a yellow flower with tiny green stalks hidden within a sweet-scented fanged trap, the Sun’s Kiss, or Doughertus Icarus, as he called it. Another mushroom, this one a pale grey with spots of midnight blue that appeared like bruises after anything more than a delicate touch, which was called Pale Gaze (Doughertus Afflictus). There was Spotted Ravenous Cap (Doughertus Locustus), Red Lip flower (Doughertus Sephorus), and Fingers of the Grave (Doughertus Cemeterus).

I skipped too much of eleventh grade biology to know most of the terms he threw around, but I was transfixed. As he led me through his floral tour, his voice took on a melodic tone of highs and lows that was matched by his wild gestures, as if he were conducting the symphony of his own passions—Patrick’s ode to botany.

“Guys…” Jade’s voice broke my trance. She stood away from the campfire, still holding the stick she’d lit. Even in the bubble of blue light she looked pale. “There’s something you should see.”

*

All three carts were smashed. Totalled. Splintered wood littered the ground amidst what might have been wheel spokes. The bodies littered the ground, too. As Jade crept closer and brushed her torchlight over the wreckage, the shadows peeled away, revealing the scene in all its fucked up glory.

Event Chain Started

- The Smashed Caravan -

Broken carts. Dead bodies. Missing gold. Something nasty must’ve dealt this blow to these travelling merchants. But who? Or maybe… What?

“Did you guys just get that prompt?” Jade asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s that event that’s been advertised in my sleep. Guess it starts now.”

Patrick shifted closer to the wreckage and knelt next to a body slumped against the skeleton of a cart. “It’s gotta be something big that did this,” he observed. He gently cupped the chin of the deceased, tilting their head from side to side.

“Just seems kind of weird,” I mused, slowly approaching the cart that led the other two. “There aren’t any permanent towns here. We’re not even on a road.” The carts were arranged as if they had been travelling down a path, but in front and behind them the forest was impenetrable for anything with wheels.

“It doesn’t have to make sense. It’s the quest these fucked up game makers want us to play,” said Jade, who slowly approached a body that was lying face down. She made a sound of disgust. “There’s something like… growing on the bodies.”

I leaned in close and ran my fingers along the shattered cart. it was soggy, and growing in the crevices of the broken wood was…

“Yeah, I see it on this one too,” said Patrick. “Looks like it could be—“

“Moss,” I interjected, turning to the two of them. “The trolls.”

“I was going to say fungus, but you might be right. It’s hard to tell in this lighting. The wounds are fresh, though.”

Gnome, who was under my arm, began to stir. “I don’t like this,” he whispered. “I’m getting a whiff of the arcane.”

Jade screamed. She dropped her torch, the fire illuminating the body she had turned over. She took a step back. “Patrick, is that…?”

Patrick shifted over to the body without delay. “Oh, goodness.” His arms were already coated in blood up to the elbows. He pressed his fingers against the dead man’s neck, his wrist. “Yeah, I think it is.”

“You know them?” I asked.

Jade’s mouth was open, but she looked unprepared to answer. Patrick nodded without taking his focus off the body. “This is…was our fifth member, Keith. He died about four days ago, but…” there was a gash across Keith’s stomach that Patrick had no qualms about putting a hand against. The moss-like substance crusted around the edges of the wound. “Looks like he’s been dead only a few hours.”

“We buried him, Patrick. Did they fucking dig him up?”

Patrick’s stoic demeanour was terrifying. Flowers were enough to get him going, but dead bodies seemed almost blasé. “That’s what it looks like,” He said.

My gaze fell to the other bodies. All of them assumed a macabre pose and fresh wounds that suggested they were killed on the spot. They were all previous players, I realized. Just like the catacombs. Whoever was in charge of level design for Killjoy Island would make an excellent halloween decorator. I shivered, and in my grasp Gnome was getting restless.

That’s when the trees began to laugh.