“I think you should give it a rest,” Josh said.

He was sitting beside Rob on the marble floor of the Great Hall. Charral’s frozen form stood by them, Rob’s sword still in her chest. The Queen had vanished—not in a dramatic puff of smoke, or anything, but at some point Josh had realised she wasn’t there, and hadn’t been for some time, yet without ever seeing her actually leave. Many of the courtiers had gone too, but perhaps a quarter still remained, ringing the edge of the hall and bearing silent witness to Charral’s impending true death.

Josh had been trying to persuade Rob to give up his murderous plan for a while now. He didn’t really care about Charral himself. What he wanted to do was to prevent Rob from committing murder. He was operating on instinct, and half-formed ideas that he hadn’t been able to articulate, but he felt that allowing Rob to kill Charral permanently was a bad idea.

Rob scowled stubbornly in reply. Even if he had been willing to concede at any point, now that he had hit a challenge, his competitive instincts had gone into overdrive. Josh could see that he was going to keep going even if it killed him.

Rob wasn’t going to die from extracting Charral’s core—at least Josh hoped not—but it was a visibly traumatic experience.

Josh had asked Rob to try to describe the experiences he was reliving, but Rob had declined, saying that Josh didn’t want to fooking know. Which he probably didn’t, but Josh had been hoping to use the discussion to make the point that, if Charral had suffered at the hands of outlanders, then it was perhaps understandable that she had subsequently launched a murderous crusade against them, and that surely there was a compromise to be had, such as demanding that she be imprisoned instead, assuming the Queen could be persuaded to agree to such a course of action.

As Rob stood up once more, his teeth gritted with determination, Josh decided he needed more back up. He had to find the Queen.

He walked towards the throne. It was currently empty, but he thought that if he called for her, she would hear it.

“Your Highness?” he said, under his breath, so that Rob wouldn’t hear him. “Your Highness, may I speak with you?”

He felt a slight breeze on his cheek, and turned towards it, but then it died down. Was he supposed to follow in the direction it had indicated? He took a step, and then realised he was suddenly somewhere else completely. He was at the end of a stone corridor. Standing a few paces away, with her back to him, was the Queen. In front of her was a wooden door, bound in brass, the kind of door which suggested that a treasure room or a dungeon lay behind it.

Josh looked around him. There were no windows, and there were torches on the walls, with a stairwell at the other end, leading up. Were they underground? He wanted to ask where he was, but did it really matter? Rob might permanently kill Charral at any moment. Josh had limited time to make his case. He also didn’t want to owe the Queen a favour by asking for information, but if he phrased it very carefully, he might get away with it.

The Queen had half-turned, and was looking at him over her shoulder.

“I was wondering if there was any way to save Charral.” Josh said. He was working on the assumption that the Queen would be interested in saving her own Champion. Maybe she would have some ideas.

He was rewarded by a smile that seemed to acknowledge he had done something right. Naturally the Queen didn’t do anything so simple or obvious as answer the question.

“Perhaps you have heard,” she said, instead, “that when outlanders are killed, sometimes they don’t return.”

“Yes?”

Where was this going? Some of the outlanders were permanently killed when they had their cores extracted, either by each other, or by the Order. Their classes stayed in the world of Six Spires and were given to other people.

But Josh remembered the Guardian talking about those who were lost to the mists. In those cases, the player permanently died, and their core returned to the list of classes at selection. It had happened to Kenway the Assassin. He had been walking around Six Spires, and then shortly after that his class had been available to Josh. Except Josh had been busy over-analysing things as usual, and had lost his chance, and Rachel had got Assassin instead.

Josh had been wondering if Charral was the one responsible for the death of Kenway, and others like him, and said as much to the Queen, careful to phrase it as a statement, not a question.

In answer, the Queen gestured and the door ahead of her opened by itself, swinging soundlessly on its hinges.

“Come,” she said. Josh followed her into the room beyond. It was a treasure chamber, of a sort, no more than twenty feet square, with shelves anchored to the walls. There was only one thing on the shelves. Directly ahead, opposite the door, sat a chest.

The Queen made an elegant beckoning gesture with long, white fingers, and the chest lifted off the shelf, and floated towards them. She twisted her hand, and the lid opened, displaying the contents to Josh.

It was full of glass globes, each no bigger than a golf ball, with a twist of silvery metal inside. Josh peered at them, and saw that the twists of metal had long tendrils which split and branched multiple times, until the ends were thinner than a human hair, and barely visible. Even as he stared at one, he saw the closest one twitch and unfurl slightly, one of the tendrils reaching towards him. He recoiled, but it was safely contained within its little glass prison.

“What are they?” Even as he said it, he realised what they must be, and his mouth went dry, and he answered his own question. “Player cores.”

They were classes. All the people that Charral had killed, and then extracted the cores from. Each glass globe represented the final death of a person from Earth.

Part of Josh was horrified.

Another part of him, a quiet little voice in the background, suggested he could simply take one for himself. It was bound to be a better class than plumassier. Would it just … sink into him, and overwrite the plumassier skills? Would he forget how to manipulate and enchant feathers? Or would he get a multiclass?

He couldn’t imagine what the reaction of the Queen would be if he tried to steal a player core from her. He could ask her for one. The power that having an actual combat class would grant him—would it be worth the price she would inevitably demand?

She hadn’t offered him one. Was she expecting him to ask? Or … perhaps she was showing him the players cores for a different reason.

Abruptly, Josh remembered he had been asking about Charral. Showing him the player cores had been the Queen's answer to his question on how to save Charral.

He wrenched his mind away from the power and wealth the cores represented, and tried to force his brain to focus, but it was hard. There were so many.

Actually, how many were there? He tried to do a rough count. Close to a hundred, he thought. Had Charral killed all these people?

No, she couldn’t have. She only had forty-five kills logged on her character sheet. Did killing a player permanently mean you didn’t get a kill count? Could Charral have killed a hundred and forty-five people instead? That didn’t feel right, though.

Someone else must have slaughtered the remaining fifty-five or so. Even as Josh had the thought, an icy wave of revelation washed over him, and he looked up to meet the eyes of the Queen, cold and blue and utterly merciless.

He swallowed.

It wasn’t Charral who was the serial killer. It was the Queen. This was her doing. Her plan.

“Are you…” his voice cracked so he tried again. “Are you trying to eradicate all the outlanders?”

He could have slapped himself the moment the question left his mouth. Information of that nature would come with a hefty price tag. But he had to know.

The Queen tilted her head consideringly.

“Outlanders?” she said. “No. Some of these individuals these cores came from were native to Six Spires.”

“You’re trying to reduce the number of players in the world,” Josh stated. His armpits felt damp, and he was torn between fear, and the discomfort of sweating heavily in front of a beautiful woman.

The Queen shook her head in response.

“Not quite.”

She stretched out a hand—Josh had time to notice just how long and pointed her fingernails were—and made a rotating gesture, as if tracing the edge of a ball. A selection of the glass globes drifted out of the chest and spun lazily in the air in front of him.

“Do you know what happens to players when they die?” she asked.

Josh’s mouth was as dry as paper.

“No,” he said. “I haven’t myself … yet. Just that it takes a week or two to come back. And that some of them don’t come back.”

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

“Precisely. Do you know why some of them don’t come back?”

Josh went to shake his head, and then remembered something Rob had said. They had been talking about Kenway the Assassin, and who had been permanently killed. The Guardian had referred to Kenway’s type of death as being lost to the mists. What had Rob said about it? The ones that get permed are always absolute fooking raving loony fooking bastards.

“They’re crazy in some way?” Josh hazarded. “Or bad? Worse than the others, anyway?”

“Souls steeped in sin,” the Queen agreed.

Was permadeath some kind of punishment? Josh had never seen the System as an arbiter of justice. It was completely screwed up—you just had to look at Varian the Psychotic and his dysfunctional gang, or the nasty little conspiracy the Dendral nobles had cooked up to kill outlanders and take their cores for the sake of immortality.

Josh tried to imagine the System as some kind of weighted test, where it gave people the motivation and the tools to act like arseholes, and then killed them when they inevitably failed to resist the temptation to become arseholes. Whatever the reasoning behind it, he doubted very much that it had the best interests of either outlanders or Six Spires denizens at heart.

With a jolt he remembered the demon class. The Queen had directed him to that tattered little book in the library, which had told the tale of the Demon War. The demon class gave its bearer the ability to eat human souls–how that worked. The people who were lost to to the mists were bad or crazy in some way. The conclusion, now that he thought of it, was obvious.

“The Demon class ... eats the souls of players who become evil,” he said, once again making it a statement.

The Queen inclined her head.

Josh felt a cold flood of horror wash through him as a cascade of realisations tumbled through his mind.

“That’s what the System is for,” he said. “It encourages people to be their worst, so the demon will eat them. It’s … it’s making demon food.”

“Succinctly put,” the Queen said.

“So … you’re trying to … starve it?” Josh asked, in horror.

A wry little twist of her mouth suggested he hadn’t quite got it right. He wracked his brain, and then recalled that she had said the arrival of the Outlanders heralded the end of the world.

“When the demon eats its fill … it means the end of the world,” he said, testing out the words. “You’re trying to stop that.”

“I’m not sure that’s possible,” she corrected, then shrugged slim shoulders. “I’m merely trying to delay it.”

Josh opened his mouth to ask why before he remembered not to ask questions. He hesitated, trying to work it out for himself. Even as he did so, the Queen held up a hand to forestall him. With her other hand, she gestured, and the chest snapped shut, then floated back to the shelf.

Josh couldn’t stifle a tiny, shameful regret that she hadn’t offered him one, even though the cost would have been astronomical and likely not worth it.

Meanwhile, he had some things to explain to Rob. Assuming he could get back to the Great Hall in time.

“Um …. I’ll just …” he pointed at the door. “… I’d better get back.”

She nodded, so he bowed hastily and retreated backwards. Lady Paleyne’s lessons on etiquette stipulated that you should never turn your back while in the immediate presence of a monarch. Did that mean he had to back all the way along the corridor? But as soon as he went through the doorway, the world tilted slightly. He staggered, and when he regained his balance, he was back in the Great Hall, beside Charral’s frozen form.

Rob was kneeling on the floor, slumped over. His face was grey and he was sweating. He didn’t seem to have noticed that Josh had gone anywhere. The fox was sitting near him, watching solemnly with her tail wrapped around her paws, rather like a cat.

“Er, mate, I’ve got some things to tell you,” Josh said.

“Bit busy here, mate,” Rob said, tiredly. “Can it wait?”

Josh ignored this. He sat down next to Rob, and explained everything he had just put together with the Queen’s prompting. Rob listened, his face scrunching up in anger and disgust. When Josh finished, he swore long and fluently, then leaped to his feet and started pacing.

“Why the fook did the Queen tell you all that?”

“She didn’t,” Josh protested. “Well … she’s been hinting at it for a while. She got me to work it out for myself.”

Rob rubbed his hands over his face, then ran them through his hair.

“I liked this fooking place,” he bit out.

“Uh, let’s not talk about Six spires in the past tense,” Josh said cautiously.

Rob ignored this.

“I mean, yeah, it’s fooked up, but tell me a place that isn’t. Fooking Earth weren’t no fooking paradise. But here, I could make a difference, right?”

“We still can.”

“Are you off your head, mate? It’s fooking toast now, innit?”

“The Queen said she was trying to delay that. So there must be some hope.”

“Fook me, a fooking optimist!” Rob exclaimed in disgust.

“How about we start with not permanently killing Charral?”

Rob did a double take, as if he had temporarily forgotten Charral’s existence.

“If this is some fooking trick—” he began.

Josh shook his head frantically.

“It all makes sense,” he said.

“You can’t trust a bunch of fooking fairies.”

“I’ll try not to take that personally,” the fox interjected. The tip of her tail was twitching now.

But Josh could tell Rob was giving in.

“Let’s go and look for dragons?” he suggested.

Rob stared at him.

“You are fooking nuts. Fine.” He waved his hand at Charral. “Alright, she can live.”

“Your forbearance is appreciated,” the Queen said. Both men jumped, not having realised she was present. Charral’s form unfroze, and she staggered back, before crumpling to the floor. She choked, and her limbs thrashed, before falling limp. Josh watched as her body disappeared.

But she would be back in a week or two.

“It seems I am without a Paladin,” the Queen observed, and her large blue eyes turned to Rob.

Rob did a wonderful impression of a thoroughly confused man glancing over his shoulder to see what the Queen was really looking at. There was no-one behind him, however.

“What?” he asked suspiciously, as he turned back.

The Queen’s mouth turned up in a smile.

“Not my fooking problem!”

“As you say,” she agreed.

“Let’s leave, before we end up owing any more favours,” Josh suggested drily.

“Right!” Rob turned and marched towards the great doors. Josh bowed hastily to the Queen, backed away—how did you know how far away you had to be for it to be socially appropriate to turn your back on a monarch?—then gave up and hurried after Rob.

“Do you know a way out of here?” Josh asked, low and urgent. He nearly ran into Rob’s back when the latter came to an abrupt stop.

“Are you fooking kidding me?” Rob turned to face him. “We’ll go back the way you came, mate!”

“Ahhh…”

“What the fook does that mean?”

“I came through some kind of doorway next to a creepy tower, and I don’t know if it will work the other way round. I really don’t like the idea poking around that tower. Also, the Queen’s coachman brought me through several different landscapes. It kept changing without warning. Uh, I don’t know if we can do the same thing in reverse. I don’t know how fairyland works.”

“You plonker,” Rob said roundly.

“There must be a way to get to Dendral from here!” Josh protested.

As one man, they turned to the fox.

“Well?” Rob demanded.

She flattened her ears, and hunched down.

“What are you looking at me for? I spent ages trying to get back into the fey lands,” she pointed out defensively. “Why would I want to leave?”

“Well, it’s either that, or we owe the Queen another favour,” Josh said. He looked back. The Queen was still in the centre of the hall, watching them with amusement.

“But you’re expecting me to do it for free?” the fox demanded haughtily. She turned her back on them, and sat on her haunches with her tail defiantly curled.

Josh looked at Rob.

“She’s your fox…”

“I don’t belong to Rob!” the fox announced.

“Oh, for fook’s sakes! What do you fooking want, you little terror?”

She turned back round immediately.

“Oh, I’m glad you asked! I want you to make me your familiar.”

“What?” Rob stared at it blankly.

The fox rolled her eyes.

“Why can’t this dummy understand the simplest sentences?” she asked Josh.

“I’m not…” Rob groped for an explanation. “That’s like a witch thing! I don’t have a skill for that.”

“It’s actually quite easy,” the fox said scornfully. “It’s a simple magical bond. You agree to protect me, and I agree to help you in magical ways. Even a simpleton like you can manage that, surely.”

“Oi, watch it!” Rob protested. He added, “I’ve been doing that anyway! I saved you from those rats when you poke your nose where you shouldn’t, didn’t I?”

“Precisely. This would merely make it official.”

Rob scowled at the fox, who gazed serenely back. Eventually, Rob swore and said, “Fine! How do we do this thing?”

The fox swished her tail, and stared into Rob’s eyes for a couple of seconds. Rob blinked.

“Oh!” he said. “That was easy.”

“And now we can go,” the fox said. Josh noticed that she now had three tails, but two suddenly vanished as soon as she caught him looking.

Servants arrived bearing Rob’s pack, which had been kept for him in the bathing room, and Josh’s quarterstaff.

“I’ll bid you adieu, my dears,” the Queen said. The servants flung open the great doors, leaving Rob and Josh to follow the fox as she trotted rapidly out of the castle.

Whichever way the fox took them wasn’t going to be the same as the carriage ride, or the Queen’s habit of flinging people through mirrors or coins. They had to walk out of the castle on foot, and along the entire length of the causeway. Josh kept expecting the land to flicker to something else, but it stayed still. On the shore of the lake was a forest of slender trees which had, Josh realised, leaves of gold, silver and copper foil, and branches that dripped with star-studded diamonds.

“Don’t touch anything,” the fox warned, following the direction of his gaze.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Josh said fervently. He wasn’t that stupid.

The fox led them further into the forest, where a great oak tree stood, festooned with acorns of polished jade. At the base of the tree, amidst a coil of roots, lay a narrow tunnel leading down into the earth.

“How the fook am I going to fit down there?” Rob protested.

“The fox wouldn’t take us this way if we couldn’t get through it,” Josh said confidently. The Queen had told him that the magic of the fey lands worked from intent. He was surprised, however, when his staff shrank obediently in his hand, until it was little more than a heavy handle. That would make it easier to crawl.

Although the entrance to the tunnel was small, beyond that it widened out, enough that Rob and Josh only had to duck a little as they walked. The walls were of packed earth and sand, with tree roots twisted through them. There was no light, beyond the blue glow of the fox fire.

Several times the fox stopped, and whispered to them to be silent, or to press themselves up against the sides of the tunnel, while she muted the fox fire, leaving them in earthy darkness. A couple of times, Josh heard something moving only inches away from them, and once something large came to a stop and he heard heavy breathing sounds above him, even though the tunnel was only a few inches above his head. Whatever it was moved on after a few heart-stopping moments, and when the fox's light bloomed again, the corridor was empty again.

And then they turned a corner, and there was a small wooden door.

“Here we are,” the fox said. “Through that is the human world.”

“Specifically, we want Dendral,” Josh said in a hushed voice, glancing cautiously over his shoulder.

“The door will take you where you want to go."

“I don’t want to go to Dendral,” Rob whispered furiously. “You know what the Order does to players there.”

“Oh shit!” With all the relevations about the demon and the System, Josh had completely forgotten that Rob wouldn’t be able to hide his character sheet.

“We can go to the nearest shrine instead,” the fox suggested. “We’ll go through in stages. Josh, you first. Just think about where you want to be.”

Josh very much hoped that legends of time dilation in fairyland had been grossly exaggerated, because he had left Rachel all alone for most of the day already. He didn’t want to get back to Dendral and find he’d been away for days or weeks. But when he mentioned this possibility to the fox, he got a snort in return.

“The Queen wanted you for something,” the fox said. “It’s only people she doesn’t like that get messed with in that way. They find themselves getting deeper and deeper into the fey lands, and losing their way.” She slid her eyes slyly to Rob, before glancing at Josh again. “You should find only a few hours have passed.”

He opened the door. Beyond was more earthen tunnel. He took a deep breath, and walked through the doorway.