When Josh woke, it was with a parched mouth and a splitting headache. He was lying in Mother Gwyn’s little lean to, and there was a scratchy blanket covering him. From the light filtering through the wicker door he could tell it was already day. In front of him sat a glazed earthenware pot, with ashes heaped around the base to keep it warm, and to one side was a parcel wrapped in waxed cloth.

There was no sign of Mother Gwyn.

She had to be a witch, Josh thought. But his memories of the previous night were uncertain. He must have fallen asleep—had he merely dreamed the conversation the outlanders had had, about harvesting his player core? No, because he wouldn’t have been able to make that detail up.

He had some pressing needs to attend to, but when he got to his feet he winced, because once again his body was stiff and aching all over. Was just one pain-free day too much to ask?

He hadn’t applied his experience. He didn’t want to lose it, but what if he ran into the other outlanders today, and they saw the pending levels and realised what had happened? Or maybe they were suspicious already. They wouldn’t have been able to find Shuriken and, oh god, there were the bodies of Gerill and Hold My Beer just lying abandoned in the forest. Josh felt obscurely guilty about that, even though there was little he could have done at the time.

He pushed the wicker door aside warily and blinked in the bright daylight. There was still no sign of Mother Gwyn, or of Varian’s gang. This corner of the ruins was thickly overgrown, with vines creating a lattice overhead that shaded the narrow paths between the stone columns in cool, dim greenness. Josh found a quiet corner that he hoped wasn’t used for anything, and relieved himself, but when he retraced his footsteps he must have taken a wrong turning, because he came out into a wide circular space, ringed by columns, with a stream running through it.

The water welled up through a natural crack in a boulder, and followed a narrow, purpose-built channel, which wound its way to a small pool in the centre. In the middle of the pool was a statue of a woman, or rather three women, or perhaps the same woman at different stages of her life. She had three heads, each facing in a different direction, and three arms, arranged so that each aspect had the use of two.

One aspect was a maiden, joyful and slender, one was a mother, with a graceful bulge to denote pregnancy, and one was a gimlet-eyed crone.

The statue obviously represented a goddess, and this must be her temple.

Then Josh felt like he’d been hit by a heavy, belated brick.

Gods, he thought. There were gods in this world. He’d even heard one mentioned yesterday—the Paragon of the Havenites—but he’d been distracted with other things and hadn’t thought through the implications.

Were the gods responsible for Josh’s abduction? Were they genuine creator entities, or merely immensely powerful spirits? Were they wise and benevolent, or jealous and judgemental, or maybe even quarrelsome and capricious? There had been gods in Spiralia, now that he thought about it, six of them, one for each spire. Ciandar had been the primary deity of Celespire, a sort of Sun God-themed version of Zeus, except without all the incest and rapine. He granted Celespiran clerics their powers.

On the rare occasions Josh was asked about his religion, he usually described himself as an atheist, and, like most people raised in a largely agnostic household, had never found any compelling reason to change his mind. The idea that he was now living in a world potentially full of immensely powerful beings with a penchant for interfering in the affairs of mortals was less than reassuring, particularly given that Spiralia Online had taken a lot of its inspiration from the Greek, Roman, Norse, and Celtic pantheons.

Josh approached the pool. It had been recessed into the floor, with three sets of stone steps leading down to the poolside itself. The stream flowed over a tiny, artificial waterfall at one end, which kept the water constantly circulated and fresh. Josh was very thirsty, so he cupped his hands under the stream and drank his fill. The water was tooth-achingly cold, but sweet, and he felt a little better.

There were murals around the low walls surrounding the pool edge. They were faded and many of the tiles were chipped or missing, but the fragments that remained depicted people engaged in various ablutionary activities, some of which Josh would not have expected to find in a temple. He craned his head at the antics of a particular couple, and then realised the odd position was because the male partner was a satyr.

That meant it wasn’t some kind of special holy water you weren’t supposed to touch without the permission of the priestess. Josh could probably bathe in it without defiling it, and therefore without subsequently getting blasted by a bolt of lightning for his pains.

He barely recognised his reflection in the water. His hair was sticking up in all different directions, he had four days of beard scruff on his chin, and the stupid clothes really did make him look like something dragged willy nilly out of the pages of a medieval history book. He’d been walking around feeling like he was playing dress-up the whole time, but he looked like he fitted right in. It was not a comforting thought.

He flinched at the biting chill of the water, but persevered, scrubbing himself with his hands in lieu of soap. By the time he was done his skin was pink with cold, but he felt revitalised and refreshed, the cool purity of the water flushing out all the shame and disgust and regret from the previous day. He had no towel, and had to drag his clothes back on over wet skin, but even so he felt a hundred times better once he was done, his mind calm and focused with a strange sort of clarity.

Goddesses could grant prayers. Josh didn’t know who this goddess was, or if she still existed, or really if any of the Six Spires gods existed, but what did he have to lose at this point? He padded around the pool, wondering which aspect to pray to. The mother, he thought. She had the kindest, most sympathetic face, and would probably be most receptive to the nature of his plea.

He felt absurdly stupid, because he’d never prayed in his life before.

He got down on his knees before the statue.

“Um,” he said. “Hi. I hope you don’t mind me using your temple. It’s a very nice temple. Thanks. Er ...” he paused. “I don’t know if you can help, but if you can ... anyway ... what I really want, first of all, is to let my parents and Ben know that I’m okay. They must be besides themselves with … you know … and Ben must be feeling so guilty, but it wasn’t his fault. Just some way to contact them, if that’s not too much to ask? Even if I can never get home. I mean, obviously, if you can help me get home too, that would be amazing. I would be really grateful. But failing that, a way to speak to them would be really appreciated.”

He stopped and looked up at the face of the mother, whose expression hadn’t changed from calm, serene kindness. After a while he felt awkward, so he got to his feet, and yelped in fright when he saw Mother Gwyn sitting on an overturned column near the temple entrance.

She must have heard the entirety of his inarticulate little prayer, and oh crap, had she seen him stripping off to bathe too?

“How long have you been here?” he asked, trying not to cringe openly with embarrassment.

“Ah, just a minute or so,” she said, which meant she must have missed the bathing spectacle.

Josh still hadn’t been able to make his mind up as to whether she was a witch or not, and if the conversation he had dreamed by the campfire had been real.

“I had a dream last night,” he said hesitantly.

Mother Gwyn nodded, unsurprised.

“’Twas a hidden moon last night. ‘Tis when Her power is strongest.”

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“Hidden moon?”

“Didn’t ye know, lad? There are seven moons, but only six that can be seen with mortal eyes. When the seventh moon is out, that’s when Mayad sends dreams. Did ye fast aforehand?”

Josh hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday morning, and he’d drunk very little, which was probably why he had woken so dehydrated.

“Yes.”

Mother Gwyn nodded again.

“She guided my steps toward the old theatre, though I knew what fell creatures nested there, but I put my trust in Her, as I allus do, and She saw me right.”

“Er ... what?” Josh said. “But you could have been killed!”

“Aye, but there was a saviour at hand, was there not?”

Josh stared at her.

“You mean me?”

“Who else, lad?” She seemed amused.

Josh scratched his head.

“Well, I suppose I helped a little, but really I think you saved me, because I was able to get away from them.”

Yes, and how had she done that? With hindsight the only reason Josh had walked out of the amphitheatre was because either Mother Gwyn or the Goddess had cast an illusion of Josh by the campfire for Varian's gang. The illusionary Josh had drunk whatever Frenxy had offered him, and slept while the gang discussed him. He wanted to ask more about the illusion, but there was a more important matter to discuss first.

“Where are the others now?” Josh asked.

“Searching the ruins,” Mother Gwyn said placidly. “They found your two fallen companions, and they know something happened to their fifth.”

“What?” Josh looked wildly around him. “We need to hide!”

Mother Gwyn shook her head.

“This place is a sanctuary still,” she said. “A weak and hidden one, perhaps, but there are times when subtlety and misdirection win the day.”

A sudden suspicion took hold of Josh.

“Are you ... a priestess?” he asked.

Mother Gwyn let out a croak of laughter.

“The lady Mayad ain’t one for big temples and fancy priestesses and all that. Me, I’m just what you see, an old woman with more curiosity than sense. But I cleared the weeds away from her shrine, and I unblocked the spring, and she sees fit to guide me when I need it. Sometimes she guides others to me.”

Josh shivered, and found he had nothing to say.

The rest of the morning was sent sitting in Mother Gwyn’s hideout. The pot she had left in the ashes had been intended for Josh, and was full of a nourishing broth of wild onions and herbs. The waxed cloth packet held several cakes made from a mixture of pressed seeds and nuts, bound with an egg and sweetened with honey. Josh devoured it all, and then they shared the slices of venison from the previous night. He spent the time enchanting feathers, listening to Mother Gwyn’s tales and, because it couldn’t be avoided, checking his character sheet.

He had gained a point each in Endurance, Strength, Resilience and Chi, and was finally able to steel himself to apply the experience. There was 500 in total from the two achievements, and 539 from killing Shuriken.

He was surprised the amount was so low—after all, he was level 3 and Shuriken had been level 18. But in Spiralia, experience you got from killing another player was reduced by half compared to the amount you got from killing monsters, plus it had presumably been shared between Josh and Reiner, since the latter had done most of the actual work.

At that thought Josh had to sit and take deep, slow breaths for several minutes until the vivid mental images of the attack went away.

Even with the reduced reward, applying the experience pushed his pending level all the way up to level 8, and while most of him felt nothing but distaste, there was a very tiny part of him that couldn’t help feeling a sense of accomplishment. Was that how it had started for Varian’s gang?

That part of him that had celebrated the gain in levels shrivelled utterly when Mother Gwyn announced that the scourge had departed from the ruins heading south—towards the broodmother, Josh hoped—and they would now be able to deal with the bodies.

It was a grim task, and of necessity Josh did most of the heavy lifting. Mother Gwyn set up a travois, onto which Josh loaded the bodies of Gerril and Hold My Beer one by one. After that he dragged them to the temple, where he was instructed to lay them out on two flattish pieces of rock, and then roll them over while Mother Gwyn washed them, and then bound them in strips of cloth.

“I never even asked his name,” he told Mother Gwyn, when it was Hold My Beer’s turn.

She nodded, neither absolving him nor reproaching him, and that acceptance helped. There was no excuse for Josh not to have asked for Hold My Beer’s real name, and the one Josh had given him seemed ridiculously cruel in hindsight. But the villager had made his own decision to come here. All Josh could do now was respect that.

Eventually it was done, and by that time the shadows were lengthening into late afternoon.

“Where you headed now?” Mother Gwyn asked, as they stood at the edge of the ruins, looking out over the moorland. She had helped him extract a purer form of the venom, and given him a tiny pot, sealed with wax, to keep it in, claiming the pickle jar for herself as payment. She had also kept the stick.

“Back to Haven, to give them the news, and make sure they’re alright,” Josh replied.

She nodded, satisfied, and patted his hand.

“Yer a good lad.”

“Will you be okay by yourself?”

“Me? Oh aye, I’ve lived here many a year. Thoughtful of ye to ask.” She paused. “A word o’ warning, though.”

“Yes?”

“Ye should be careful what ye pray for. The gods give, but they also take.”

The hairs on the back of Josh’s neck rose.

“I appreciate the advice.”

She gave a snort.

“The young never do, although I’ll grant ye have a little more patience than most yer own age. Off with ye, now, lad, may ye find joy in that which ye seek.”

It was an improvement on the Fey Queen’s, blessing, at least.

Haven had considered Josh dead, and if he thought there had been a crowd surrounding him on his first arrival, it was nothing to the one that gathered on his second. They pelted questions at him from every side, until Goodwife Benton’s son-in-law came striding through and made them all step back to give the lad some air. And behind him, hobbling with a crutch, came Reiner, followed by a woman haranguing him, who demanded that he get back into bed this instant, mister, if he knew what was good for him. Josh looked at Reiner’s pallid skin and hollow eyes and felt wretchedly unprepared for the news he had to impart.

How did you tell a man his fiancée had gone off with monsters willingly, so that she could be one of them?

“It was too late,” Josh blurted out to him. “It was too late before we even got there. Even if you’d set off from Haven straight away, it would have been too late. She’d already...”

Reiner flinched back.

“Dead,” he said hoarsely, and Josh did not correct him.

“It was quick,” he said. “She didn’t suffer.”

The sympathy veered immediately from Josh to Reiner, and Josh was happy to let it flow past him to a more worthy recipient. Quite a few of Reiner’s closest sympathisers were young unmarried village women, and if Reiner wasn’t exactly encouraging the attention, he wasn’t discouraging it either.

Josh dined with Goodwife Benton’s family—they had even saved a portion of chicken stew for him—and he apologised for the loss of the stick, which the son-in-law dismissed with a wave of his hand. They knew of Mother Gwyn, and would set out to retrieve the bodies in the morning.

To Goodwife Benton and her son-in-law, Josh gave the truth, that Ophala had gone willingly to become one of the scourge. He thought someone ought to know.

“Ye did right not to tell him,” Goodwife Benton said, referring to Reiner.

“I felt so sorry for him,” Josh said. “I just couldn’t bring myself to say it.”

The son-in-law sucked in a slow breath between his teeth and Goodwife Benton shook her head.

“I doubt it was for love o’ her that he set off on this mad quest,” she said darkly. “It were about his pride more’n anything I’ll wager. Prideful foolishness. That’s what got our Ulman killed. A bad business all round.”

The village held a sort of wake for the dead, presided over by Elder Tharn. Josh had initially dreaded it, because he’d been sure that Elder Tharn would use it as an excuse to be patronising and sanctimonious, but Josh had underestimated him.

Elder Tharn chose to tell the tale of the scourge.

“Tylas the Undying,” said Elder Tharn, “He who had slain Good Queen Halina, and her oathsworn, the Tigerlily Knight, had been long imprisoned by the Chains of Weyland…”

Weyland? Really? Josh thought. Why was there so much of Earth in Six Spires? It wasn't a wholly alien world. What had come first? Had Six Spires always existed, and informed not just Spiralia the game, but Germanic mythology from thousands of years ago? Or was Six Spires a created world, its history derived from Earth legends?

While Josh was considering that question, Elder Tharn described how the Undying had plotted in the darkness of his prison, and escaped by treachery.

“…driven to madness by his desire for power and arcane knowledge, seeking out unholy magics and delving deep into the mysteries that belong to the sphere of the gods, not to that of men…”

The Frankenstein complex, Josh thought. He’d written an English literature essay on the archetype of the mad scientist who put the pursuit of knowledge above all else, to his ultimate downfall. He’d been quite proud of that essay. He’d referenced Pandora’s Box and everything.

“…devised a ritual to summon such power unto himself as would set him above the gods themselves…”

And probably tore open a gateway to hell or something, Josh thought.

“…and in the void between the stars, poised in the firmament, was the Dreamer, the link between our world and theirs. And the Undying travelled through the dreams of the Dreamer, beset by many perils, but at last he found the land of the scourge, a hell so pitiless that its denizens were consumed by desperation, eager to escape its burning fires…”

What, now? Josh snapped to attention. Tylas the Undying had performed a ritual which allowed him to dream his way to … that wasn’t a very flattering picture of Earth.

“…and they came, the scourge, a mighty crew, shining like the sun, but their hearts were corrupted with greed and hatred…”

Josh let the remainder of Elder Tharn’s sermon wash over him unheard. He knew what he needed to do. Maybe Mayad had sent him his sign after all.

He had to find the Dreamer.