Josh stared at the old woman in disbelief. She was about four and a half feet high, and wore a ragged homespun dress shaped like a sack, with a coarse woollen shawl around her shoulders. She had a rush basket over one arm, with a couple of wizened roots in it. Her hair was bundled up in a messy bun which made her look like a demented witch.

She had to be a witch, surely, because nice old ladies didn’t wander around abandoned ruins in the middle of the night. If it was a disguise, however, it was a good one. Her face had a mild, sheep-like expression, with a button nose, and the rest of her features were wreathed in wrinkles. She looked more like someone’s grandmother than a hag.

Besides, Spiralia didn’t really have hags in their lore. Sometimes there were aged wise women who lived in the wilderness and gathered herbs and spoke to birds, but they were rarely inimical. They gave out quests about restoring the balance of nature and things like that. Maybe she was one of those.

“She a witch or anything?” Varian asked Frenxy, who shook her head.

“I’m not gettin’ anythin’. Totally human.” She raised her voice. “Go away, old woman.”

“If you’ve got a quest, give us the damn quest,” Varian said, bored. “If you haven’t, then fuck off.”

Josh was genuinely shocked. That was not how people spoke to elderly women where he came from. And it was doubly important in a game. Josh would have thought it would be obvious that you were never, ever rude to a sweet and doddery old lady who approached a campfire full of hardened adventurers in the middle of the night. She would invariably turn out to be a powerful sorceress. How did these guys not know something as basic as that? It was Game Questing 101.

And even if she wasn’t, common decency demanded that you at least speak to her with a minimum level courtesy.

Frenxy had said the old woman was human, and a local. How sure could they be of Frenxy’s magic sense?

“I dinnae ken what that means,” the old woman said in reply to Varian, sounding shaken and bewildered.

“Then what the fuck are you doing here?”

“I ... I ... I smelled the cooking ...”

Was she hungry?

“Can you spare some of the venison?” Josh asked Mistrz quickly.

“You can’t feed her!” Frenxy objected. “How will we get rid of her then? I don’t want to watch a crone with no teeth trying to suck on meat, eww gross.”

Holy shit, these people, Josh thought.

Mistrz hesitated, then wrapped some of the latest slices in one of the leaf plates, secured with a thorn so that it made a small green parcel, and handed it to Josh. The old woman looked at Josh worriedly as he climbed the steps towards her. He plastered a reassuring smile on his face.

“I’m sorry about that,” he said. “Please don’t listen to them.” He proffered the parcel. “Can I offer you some venison?”

“Oh!” she said, sounding breathless “Oh, so kind of thee! I don’t get to eat it very often, as it happens. If thou woulds’t...”

She held out her basket. Josh carefully put the parcel in. He could hear her breath wheezing in her thin lungs, and noticed she was holding herself up with a hand on one of the pillars next to the steps.

He looked around, and saw a stone slab nearby which was about the right height for her to sit on.

“Would you like to sit down?”

“I don’t want to be any bother...”

“No-one will be bothered if you want to have a seat for a bit,” Josh said, hoping very much that this was true. The others had been rude, but not aggressive.

She only took a little persuading. Josh seated himself next to her and set himself to finding out as much about the ruins and the local area as he could. As he’d suspected, she was a local herb woman, and made her living by gathering medicinal roots and herbs, which she sold to the nearby villages. There was a particular flower, she said, which opened only in moonlight, so she had set out to gather some, not realising that some folk had made the ruins their camp.

It was just as well Shuriken wasn’t around anymore. He might have killed her.

But the rest of Varian’s group were murder hobos too. Maybe they hadn’t started out that way. Maybe the game had twisted them into this version of themselves, with its encouraging little chimes for gaining experience and levels, and its rewards for killing, until they’d started doing things they would never have been willing to contemplate originally.

That was Josh’s future. No, he would never be like them.

“Penny for thy thoughts?” the old woman said, peering at him curiously.

Josh gave her an automatic smile.

“Sorry,” he said. “A lot on my mind recently.”

“I’m allus willing to lend an ear to a canny lad as thou,” she told him.

Josh glanced at the campfire, and the four outlanders around it.

“I don’t want to burden you with my troubles,” he said.

“A trouble shared is a trouble halved.”

“Well.” Josh hesitated. He wasn’t about to tell her what he was thinking, but maybe she could help him in another way. “I’ve been travelling a lot recently, but I don’t know anything about living off the land. How do I find things to eat?”

She brightened up immediately—in Josh’s experience older people liked to be asked for advice—and she was a genuine font of information on the subject, to the extent Josh desperately wished he had a pen and paper, because he ought to be taking notes.

She was telling him a recipe for snails when Varian approached.

“...and if ye get some milk ye just put them alive in a pot with the milk for several days, which they eat the milk and get plump, and ye sieve off the scum as forms and then...” she broke off when she saw Varian, and shrank into herself. “I’ve outstayed my welcome,” she said, a tremble in her voice. “My pardon, milord, I’ll be out o’ thy way...”

Varian whipped his sword out. Josh yelled in alarm, but Varian was fast, and he had the sword at the old woman’s throat before Josh could do anything, even supposing there was anything he could have done. The old woman froze.

“Fren says you’re human, and she should know,” Varian mused, looking down at her. “But. But. What if you weren’t? If that were the case, you would be worth a shitload of XP. All I have to do is kill you, and if you are just an ordinary old bat, then I’ve not lost anything but a bit of karma. But if you aren’t...” his smile widened. “Then it’s all profit for me, isn’t it?”

There was a trace of moisture on the old woman’s cheeks. Tears, Josh thought, with a sick lurch. She said nothing, but just sat there, like a rabbit in headlights. Josh noticed that her hands were shaking.

I have to do something. It’s up to me. But what could Josh do? What if Varian tried to kill him too? I can’t die, Josh promised himself. I can’t die, and Varian doesn’t want to kill me yet.

He edged himself slowly in between Varian and the old woman until he was staring Varian in the face, an arm’s length away. He put his hand on the blade, and gently pushed it away from the old woman’s neck.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Please don’t do this,” he said.

Varian looked at him, a little smile kicking up one corner of his mouth.

“You don’t tell me what to do,” he said, and moved again. There was a blurred moment, and Josh was lying on his back on the ground, winded by the fall, with Varian straddling his chest, and Varian’s sword point only millimetres from his eye.

He doesn’t want to kill me yet, he doesn’t want to kill me yet, Josh repeated to himself frantically. It was lucky that he had hardly had anything to drink in the last few hours, bar the mouthful of wine from the jug, because if he had he would have pissed himself.

“Sorry,” he said, his voice wobbling helplessly. The word just popped out, and he wasn’t sorry, not one bit, but Varian seemed to relax, and bounced to his feet.

“Just you remember who is in charge around here,” he said. He looked speculatively at the old woman. He still had his sword in his hand.

Think like a bard, think like a bard. Bards were twisty, devious, and persuasive.

“If she is a witch, she’s powerful enough to hide herself from Frenxy,” Josh said. He sat up, edging warily away from Varian, who shook his head.

“It doesn’t work like that. It doesn’t matter how powerful she is, you can’t cloak magic. The more powerful they are, the brighter they shine.”

Josh scrambled to his feet.

“Then she's just an old lady. Please don’t do anything to her,” he said. “Please.”

He could see that Varian liked it when Josh begged, because he smiled again, and after a moment he slid his sword back into its sheath.

“Get your wrinkly old carcass out of here,” he told the old woman, and strode back down the steps to the amphitheatre, not bothering to look back and see if his commands were being obeyed.

They were. The old woman pushed herself to her feet, and shakily started to make her way back out onto the path that led into the ruins.

“Wait a moment,” Josh said.

He felt nauseous and light-headed, and he didn’t blame to old woman for her shakiness one bit. He stumbled down the steps to the fire, where his walking stick still lay propped up against one of the tree trunks. He grabbed it, and then laboured up to the top of the amphitheatre again. Every joint still ached, and all he wanted to do was keel over and sleep for a week.

“Here,” he panted, when he reached the old woman again. “Take this.” He held out the walking stick.

“Ye sweet boy,” she said. “I cannae take yer stick.”

“I can get another one.” He proffered it again. “Please.”

“Well, if ye insist, thank’ee kindly.” She glanced down at the campfire and lowered her voice a bit. “Walk w’ me a little way, lad, if ye please.”

Just because she looked harmless didn’t mean she was. On the other hand, Josh had the choice of escorting a nice old woman out into some mysterious ruins, or spending more time with a group whose only use for him was as a source of experience points. Josh glanced down at camp, and saw that none of the other outworlders were paying him any attention.

Besides, he was curious about the old woman.

He came to a decision.

“Of course,” he said, and offered her his arm, hoping it wasn’t the last thing he ever did.

The old lady’s name was Mother Gwyn, which she’d given when Josh had told her his own. They didn’t say much as they walked, partly because Mother Gwyn was sparing all her breath for the exertion, and partly because Josh was keeping an ear out to see if anyone from Varian’s group decided to follow him, not that he was confident of his ability to detect them if they did.

Mother Gwyn lived in a small lean-to, created when a whole wall had slumped over onto the next, creating a narrow, triangular space, rather like a tent made out of stone. She had secured it from inclement weather using a crudely fashioned wicker door, which she heaved open with much huffing and puffing.

“Come in, come in,” she said, shuffling into a dim interior that smelled of peat smoke.

Josh hesitated, then mentally shook himself. This constant paranoia was ridiculous. He ducked his head, and followed her into the nook. There wasn’t much inside—a small campfire thick with ashes, a sheepskin rug in the corner for sleeping on, a low, crude bench covered in earthenware pots of different shapes and sizes, and bundles of dried herbs hanging from the ceiling.

Mother Gwyn immediately got a stick and poked at the dead ashes, revealing dim, glowing embers underneath. She took a brick of peat from the stack beside the door, threw it on the fire, and proceeded to get shakily to her knees so she could blow the embers back to life.

“Would you like me to do that?” Josh asked.

“Ah, yer a kindly lad,” she exclaimed, getting to her feet. “Nay, it ull catch. Have a seat, will ye?”

Josh nodded, and sat cross-legged on the opposite side of the fire, wincing at the burn of lactic acid in his muscles. He wondered what he should do now. Mother Gwyn’s little hut was only a few hundred yards from the campfire, and if he stayed away too long Varian’s group would probably come looking for him. Despite the danger facing him, he didn’t think he had it in him to find his way out of the ruins tonight, let alone walk all the way back to the village. His escape plans would have to wait.

“I should get back to the others,” he said, reluctantly.

Mother Gwyn tutted. “Ach, bide a wee.”

She fiddled with the fire again, which was now giving out a comforting glow. Josh stared into it. His eyes prickled with tiredness, and he rubbed them wearily, wishing he was back home and sleeping in his own bed, with its sprung mattress, smooth cotton sheets and warm, comfortable duvet.

Between one moment and the next, Josh was hovering over the campfire in the centre of the ruins, above Varian’s group. His mind seemed to accept this as perfectly logical, as if it was natural to be hovering overhead without a body. One part of him was dimly aware that he must be dreaming, but he dismissed the thought and looked down at the scene before him.

Wook was passed out, spread-eagled on a sleeping mat with the jug lying on its side, not far from his hand. The remains of the deer haunch had finished cooking, and Mistrz was slicing it up and wrapping it into leaf parcels. Varian was walking back down into the amphitheatre, leading Ophala by the hand. Ophala had a leaf in her hair, and they had the rumpled look of a couple who had been enjoying a quiet moment alone together. Frenxy had her arms wrapped around her knees and was staring into the flames.

“Is he out?” Varian asked.

Frenxy unfolded herself, and went to a sixth figure, who lay curled up on his side on the ground. Josh realised that it was his own form. His face was hidden, but he could see curls of dark blond hair sticking out from beneath the medieval hood. In the way that everything always made sense in dreams, he wasn’t surprised to find that he was apparently in two places at once. Three, if he counted his out-of-body bird’s eye view. He wondered idly if he was really in Mother Gwyn’s hut, or really back at the campfire, but it didn’t seem like something to worry about just now.

Frenxy shook his sleeping form’s shoulder, and when he didn’t respond bent in close and tried peeling back an eyelid.

“He’s out,” she said, sitting back down. “That was the last of my night-night potion. Anyway, what you reckon? There really a broodmother up in the moors?”

Varian slung himself onto his furs, pulling Ophala next to him.

“It doesn’t sound like the kind of thing he would have the brains to make up,” he said dismissively.

Ouch, Josh thought.

“So we check it out?”

“Yeah. But carefully.”

“You think he’s a spy for Harrow?”

Varian pursed his lips.

“No,” Mistrz said. “If Harrow got him they would do same as us. Power-level and farm for XP, then harvest player core.”

Wait, Josh thought. What? Player core? Was that was gave him his class and his skills? There was something inside him that allowed him to see all the floating menus and enchant feathers? And, apparently, it could be taken from him? What would happen then? Would he die?

“This is a unique opportunity for us,” Varian said, but Frenxy spoke over him.

“He’s a plume-ass or whatever, no-one is going to want a shitty class like that.”

“Don’t fucking interrupt me!” Varian roared suddenly.

Frenxy flinched.

“Sor-ree!”

Varian glared at her with a tightened jaw, and she looked away. Josh was still trying to unpack what they had meant about harvesting his player core.

“Ophala will get the core,” Varian said.

What? Josh thought, again. His own incredulity was echoed by the two others, although for different reasons.

“Core is valuable, even if shitty class,” Mistrz pointed out.

“You’re gonna give a player core to your fuck toy?” Frenxy asked.

Ophala spoke up for the first time.

“I don’t want plumassier,” she said. “I want assassin.”

Frenxy gave a disbelieving laugh.

“Everyone wants assassin, you stupid slut. Get in li—" she bit off her words with a scream as Varian lunged for her, grabbing hold of her hair.

“I put up with a lot of your shit,” Varian growled while Frenxy squealed. “But there is a limit. You keep that big mouth of yours shut unless you’ve got something useful to contribute.” He shook her, then threw her away from him. She staggered, and fell to the ground, gasping and sniffling and clamping her hands to her head protectively.

Mistrz hadn’t reacted at all.

Varian sat down and said, deliberately, “Ophala will get the core.” He turned to her. “And when we get a better core, I promise you will be the first to benefit, baby.”

Ophala smiled, as if he was offering her a box of chocolates or a bunch of roses, instead of vowing to rip something out of Josh and embed it in her, instead, like a ghastly second-hand parasite. That was how players—outlanders—permanently died here, Josh realised with rising horror.

“We don’t know how to put a core in a non-player,” Mistrz said carefully.

“We know it’s possible,” Varian told him. “We’ll go to the Old Man if we have to.” He added, without looking at Frenxy, “Fren, go and find Shuri. I’ve had enough of him roleplaying fucking Assassin’s Creed out there.”

Frenxy got up and walked out of the camp without a word.

“Shuri will want assassin if we find it,” Mistrz said.

“He can stick with ranger and like it,” Varian snapped.

Shuriken was a ranger, not an assassin? It made sense, though. If it was possible to steal other people’s classes, there was no way this group would have let their lowest-level member keep a class as rare as assassin, given that there could only be five of them in the world at any one time. Varian would have sacrificed him, like they planned to with Josh. He was surprised that Shuriken had managed to hang onto his ranger class this long.

No wonder Varian's gang were half-psychotic, if outlanders went around farming each other for experience and cannibalising each other’s classes all the time.

And Josh was in grave danger. It was far, far worse than he’d feared.