“What the fuck was that?” My whisper came out harsher than I’d intended. I stopped just short of the cliff and stood behind Angie. It was too dark to see anything below, but the steady hum of the nearby waterfall provided a strange sense of comfort. “Well? Are you gonna talk or do I have to keep asking?”

She shrugged. “That Damien guy suffered a complete break. His sanity was already so low and I think he was already in a minor break or maybe a major one, so he just lost it. I think it’s permanent.”

Great, so Jade and I talked Damien into a fate worse than death. “But what was up with that fucking smoke monster from Lost bullshit? What, he just takes his glasses off and suddenly his face turns into Cthulhu’s ass? And what’s up with his glasses anyway? You notice how he has two titles?” All of my suspicions came out rapid-fire. “Why the fuck does a guy who spends less time here than you have a vampire sword? And he didn’t even open the first treasure chest! Angie… You get it, right?”

I could tell by the way she tilted her head to me she’d already had those thoughts stirring in her mind before I even knew his name. “Yeah.”

If only to finish my point, and because I was in dire need of some serious ranting, I continued. “And what’s up with this weird fucking act? Why does he fit in so well but seem so out of place at the same time? This douchebag is an OP murderhobo and you and I both know it. Do you want me to show you Mercy? Seriously? Press ‘X’ for his fucking catchphrase. Jesus Christ. And you know what else? He isn’t here the same way you and I or anyone else is here. I think he’s here because he wants to be here. He wants to be on Killjoy Island. This party is led by a psychopath. And… shit, I’m part of it now.”

I stopped to let out a breath that was as relieving as it was exaggerated. I quickly checked my vitals, seeing that my sanity was hovering above fifty percent and slowly regenerating after the break had been removed, but it didn’t feel like it.

Angie kindly sat in silence while I ranted. She lifted her leg and fanned out her toes in response to a wind from below, and I saw that the flowers around her ankle had wilted.

The question came to mind then, and I cursed under my breath. I didn’t want to know the answer, but I feared I already did. I lowered myself onto the cliff edge next to Angie and let my feet hang over. There was no point beating around the bush, I supposed, so I turned to her. “How did Keith die?” I asked.

She winced at the pointedness of the question. A tear welled in her eye, but she blinked it away and looked over her shoulder to see if anyone was listening. “He uh… Kiril let him…” The words escaped her with a sob in tow, but she fought it back, swallowing hard. “He let Keith die.”

I placed a hand on her back, this person I’d known for all of sixteen hours. I didn’t say anything, and she didn’t fight it.

“Keith was hurt real bad and we didn’t have the potions to save him,” she went on. “A regular one wasn’t going to do it, but an elixir would have. Jade had been fighting for us to buy some, but Kiril didn’t want to waste the favour. He said it’d be better to exchange it for higher levels so we wouldn’t get hurt in the first place. So Keith died because we had nothing to heal him with. Or so Kiril said.” Angie wiped furiously at her eyes. “I did some snooping later and I found it hidden in one of his pouches. He had an elixir the whole time.”

As we sat in the silence that followed her story I remembered the metaphor of the frog. It was one of my dad’s favourites. The frog, sat in a pot of slowly boiling water, can't sense the minuscule changes in heat, so before he knows it, and after it's already too late, the frog burns to death.

He used it for everything, even when it didn’t make sense. More budget cuts and buyouts at the newspaper? Frog in boiling water. Another Democrat in the Whitehouse? Frog. Kids these days and their blue hair and pronouns? Ribbit.

I wasn't convinced my dad entirely understood the metaphor, but I did.

And I wasn’t going to be the frog.

Angie grabbed my wrist as I stood. “Where are you going?” She asked.

“To get Patrick and Jade so you can tell them what you just told me.” I said. I started for the cave, but her grip tightened.

“No,” she urged. “Not yet.”

“Not yet? What if we go out there tomorrow and one of us is bleeding out in the woods? Do you really want that to be your end? Or what if he turns that halloween shit around on you cause you accidentally put one favour into constitution instead of fortitude?”

She had me with both hands, and tugged me to my knees. “Please, Ben. I want to tell them too. But not yet. Please.”

“Then why did you tell me at all?”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry, I was going crazy with it. I wanted to tell someone who didn’t know him.”

I sighed heavily and looked back to the cave. Orange light flickered around the entrance, and the unintelligible murmur of voices leaked into the night. “Then what do you want me to do? I can’t just be in this party with him.”

“Find out what his second title is,” she said, shaking my wrist. “You’ll need to get your bond to level two or three or something, but you’re good at talking to people. You talked us out of getting killed today.”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

“Well…”

“You are. Please, Ben. Right now we need him. In the short term he’s our best shot at not dying, but if we can find out what the extent of his abilities are, then when we don’t need him anymore…”

She let the words hang like a noose between us. I looked her dead in the eyes. “Then what?”

Her silence told me everything I needed to know. She gulped, and looked down the side of the cliff. I had to admit I was taken aback by the shrewdness of someone otherwise so bubbly. Real Lady Macbeth, here.

“Right, so I just play the ‘Become Best Buds With Kiril’ minigame, an undertaking I’m not convinced anyone has ever beaten, and then what? Mutiny? Like pirates?”

Angie let the hint of a smile creep through. “I’ve always wanted to be a pirate,” she said.

“Of course you have.”

Her fist grazed my shoulder.

Player Bonding

- Angela Macgregor -

- Friendship I -

Your close bond to another player allows you access to certain information unavailable to other players. You are notified when they are suffering from status effects within your proximity.

“Speaking of bonding,” I said.

“Yeah, I just got it too.”

“So level one gives me basic information. What do the other levels get me?”

Angie pulled her legs up and brought her knees to her chest. “Level two lets you see most of their character sheet, their levels in their stats and all their vitals. It also tells you what their titles do. The ones you know about, anyway. As far as I know, level three lets you see everything. Even the titles you don’t know about.”

With a goal in mind and feeling the proverbial water begin to bubble around me, I stood and limped to the cave, my joints still aching from the day’s adventures.

“Where are you going?” She asked, her voice small.

“Gotta start kissing ass sometime,” I said. “Might as well be now.”

----------------------------------------

“Tank, striker, support,” Kiril was saying as I pressed my hand against the Anchor. His voice faded to the background like my ears were tightly wrapped in cellophane. “Each of those roles have subcategories. Support can be buffing, debuffing, and striker can be close quarters or ranged.”

My world darkened beyond the already dim cavern lighting, and before long I saw the character sheet in my mind’s eye.

“So your role will have to be determined,” he continued. “Patrick and Angie fill the support slots, Patrick with buffs and Angie with debuffs. Jade is a ranged striker and I’m the tank.” He announced his own role with all the pride of a twelve year old who was on his third Dark Souls playthrough.

“So with that in mind—“

“You need another striker. Close quarters,” I said.

Kiril’s brief pause struck a careful balance between mild annoyance at the interruption and lukewarm satisfaction that I’d guessed right. At least I hoped I did.

“Yes,” he said.

“So with fifteen favour, I’m thinking I should dump it all into constitution and leave fortitude alone. That brings me up to six con, which is tier two, right? That would leave me at an even zero favour.”

Another pause. Even with my hampered senses I could feel Kiril’s eyes boring into the back of my head. “That’s correct,” he said. “I didn’t realize you’ve given this some thought.”

Step one of ensnaring Kiril was the easiest. All I needed to do was relate to him on his level. As I exchanged my favour for the promise of sweet level ups, I explained my reasoning. “Out of the four of you three work best at range. Maybe they can handle themselves up close, but that leaves just you taking the brunt of combat, so you need someone else to deal some high DPS while you soak up all the aggro. I’ve played my share of MMOs, Kiril.”

I pulled my hand away from the Anchor to gauge his response to my next remark. “Keith was a striker, wasn’t he?”

As I predicted, the stone-faced boss man betrayed nothing. Not a twitch. Not a tendril of smoke from the eye sockets. “He was,” he said. “You should focus on getting your constitution to tier three. Once you do you’ll be able to choose a tier zero ability that can be active at all times.”

“That’s pretty sweet. Is that where you are? Tier three?” Maybe the bait was a little obvious on that one, but I threw the line anyway. With any luck, he’d bite.

Kiril’s eyes narrowed. “I’m doing okay,” he said before quickly changing topics. “We’ll see how you do once we're in combat. For now you should rest, I know today might have been a little traumatizing for you.”

It was difficult to discern if that was a barbed jab or just his usual tactlessness. Either way, I let it go. He left soon after, informing me my level ups should be arriving by pouch along the stream that dribbled out of a small hole in the wall. After they did, I touched the Anchor again. I thought of our party and summoned the information in my brain, feeling it coalesce into a list of all the members of The Completionists. Kiril’s name was at the top.

I focused on it, thinking of him and trying to open whatever mental lock shuttered his character sheet away. I recoiled at the quick stab of pain that followed my attempt, tearing my hand from the Anchor.

- Only the party leader has access to this information -

Didn’t hurt to try.

Well, it did hurt. Literally.

Jade was asleep when I returned to the campfire, and Patrick and Angie were nodding off. Kiril had gone out to collect more firewood, giving Gnome a chance to release the barrage of conversation he’d been holding in all day.

“I must say someone should sweep this dreadful place. Dust has begun to settle on my lid and if I am left to collect much longer I might sneeze at an inopportune time,” he said. “Ah, Benjamin! I was just telling your allies here about my friend Giordano Broomo. If we could somehow make his acquaintance he would be most enthused to clean the place, though he may bore you with his musings on celestial bodies unprompted.”

Gnome rambled on for the next twenty minutes or so until Angie warned us Kiril was coming back. The leader spilled a handful of sticks onto the ground next to the fire and informed me I had first watch for the night.

Great.

Once everyone had settled in, I grabbed Gnome and headed outside. I set him down on the cliff next to me where I let my feet dangle, just like I had with Angie.

“You can talk now, but quietly,” I told him after he was silent for a while.

“Ahhh, it’s good to be out in the air again,” he said. “New allies, strong leader, a promising quest. I think the future looks bright.”

I scoffed. Briefly the counterarguments stirred in my throat but died before they left my tongue. I didn’t have the energy to argue with my lunchbox.

A wind stirred up, carrying the scent of salt and the low whispering of swaying trees. Between the cliff and the moon-freckled ocean the island was an inseparable mass of darkness. Except for a single point of light, lower than any star and higher than a campfire. It was slowly expanding and, if I wasn’t mistaken, it was humming.

“Gnome, am I losing my mind or do you see that?” I pointed.

“Yes, I am seeing as you are. It appears to be a turtle on a bird,” he said as though nothing could be more obvious.

The ball of light grew nearer and as my eyes adjusted to the halo it cast, I saw behind it was, in fact, a turtle on a bird.