The rally point structured itself around being highly defensible and easy to retreat from. On three sides, there were buildings, with the fourth side allowing for a line of warriors to defend the rally point. Several other sets of tunnels intersected here. One of the closed sides featured an alleyway that led deeper into the city, toward the government buildings. Players could move in lines two people across to retreat.

“Don’t blow up at her,” Taylor Lynn cautioned. “It’s not going to solve anything.”

Jay stared at his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend smiling wide across the rally point. He didn’t want to yell or scream—his soul weighed heavily with disappointment. Truthfully, his surprise wasn’t about being betrayed. It was a solid move to get the Demons acting against Jay. Getting his girlfriend on their side had been an even more decisive move. The part that weighed, the hard part, was it being her.

“I’m not going to yell,” Jay promised quietly, though he hadn’t firmly landed one way or another on the issue. To him, what was one more lie?

He sidled past Taylor Lynn and stopped to speak with his sister.

“You okay?” Jay asked.

“I’m looking much better than you,” Sarah stated bluntly. “Are you okay?”

Jay shook his head lightly. “But I will be once I get this over with.”

“Get what over with?” she asked. Her gaze followed his own, which still lingered on Claire. While he no longer stared, it magnetically drifted to her. “Ahhh. That doesn’t look good. Are you going to break up with her? What’s going on?”

“I’ll explain the whole story to you later,” Jay promised, pulling his little sister into a short hug. “People are going to be getting restless as it is. If you would, go around and tell people to keep their eyes peeled but be ready to move.”

“Sure thing, O captain, my captain,” she quipped, releasing the hug and punching him in the shoulder. She meant no offense, but the words sunk into his mind and recalled a recent memory. Claire had said the exact same thing to him.

Jay groaned in frustration. “Don’t use that word: captain.”

Sarah was surprised but let him walk away from her without complaint. It was time to face the music and face Claire. For the moment, he tried to keep himself on business. It was difficult. Doubts lingered across his mind about what their whole relationship had meant to her. He wondered which parts had been authentic. He thought to himself: was the story about her dad, the thing that had initially connected them, even real?

Jay stopped in front of Claire, gesturing for her to follow him away from the others and gazing more intensely than intended.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Claire asked as she followed along. She looked concerned, and her legs fidgeted nervously. Her eyes darted back and forth between Jay and their guild members waiting in the distance. A guilty conscience, he assumed.

His following action was utterly immature, but he felt little desire to be helpful and poised. “Looking at you like what?”

“Are you being serious right now?” she asked. “What’s going on?”

Jay suppressed the childish desire to lash out and mock her. He believed the Elvish faction would be able to recover from the loss of Ilra, even if it came to that. The Queen was waiting in the capital, and the capital would be an even more difficult battle. The Demons and their allies were everywhere, but they would need to do better to take the capital. The Elves would not yield.

“Don’t think you think it’s a little strange?” Jay asked. When she didn’t immediately offer an answer, he continued without determent. “The Demons come prepared to distract us. Not a single one of the traps our Trappers set up yielded any damage. They were completely disarmed from the outset. The magical charges were exactly strong enough to break through our walls.”

He left the other part unsaid. Claire was the only new guild member who had access to such plans. Everyone else had been operating independently on their assigned tasks. It was already clear who was culpable, but he wanted to hear her admit it. Jay was filled with the self-destructive search for answers, like watching a train wreck or staring at the sun.

“Well, obviously,” Claire agreed. There wasn’t a single sign that she was uncomfortable with the situation. Her lies were pervasive, and he knew she was prepared to lay the blame elsewhere. “Someone leaked the information. We need to figure out where it’s coming from, but finishing the scenario comes first. We need you to make a call. Do we defend the rally point, wait for others, or continue to the Mayoral residence?”

There wasn’t any need to stem his anger since Jay couldn’t even reach it, wherever it hid. Her boldness implied she had fulfilled her role to such a degree that she didn’t even recognize what a lair she was. Or perhaps, the lies tumbled out so effortlessly that they meant nothing to her. She could have even convinced herself of her innocence with that much dissonance. He was incredulous.

“That’s not the issue here,” he mustered together, struggling to express his feelings through the shock.

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She frowned. “What’s the issue here, then? It’s not like there’s looting to do. It won’t be long before the enemies enter the city. Our fort is only a few blocks away. We need to reach the rest of our allies before they catch us in the street. There’s no way to really run a defense from here.”

“Right now, the issue is how they found out our plans. More specifically, who gave them that information.”

“I don’t understand. We don’t really have time for that, do we? I guess, if you really want to, I have some ideas about who it was.”

“I bet you do.”

Jay instantly regretted those last words. Claire’s face completely fell. Even though he knew she had sold out the guild, it tugged on his heartstrings to see her suffering from the conversation. He truly believed she deserved the rudeness. But giving her what she deserved bothered him anyway.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Claire asked. She wasn’t as quick to anger as Taylor Lynn, but he could see she was offended. Her reactions weren’t as clear, but he knew her. He thought he did.

“I’m upset,” Jay admitted, deciding to keep the conversation cordial and hear out her own theories. “It slipped out. You didn’t deserve that.”

A lie. Claire did deserve it. But lies beget lies; that’s how things go. Jay was okay with that for the moment.

Claire looked far from pacified, but she continued despite herself. “Are you sure you aren’t going to be mad? I don’t think you really want to hear what I think. I mean, I’m scared.”

Jay had heard something like that before. It was precisely like what Taylor Lynn had said to him about Claire.

“The only thing I’m interested in is the truth,” Jay promised. Claire wouldn’t notice his punch in the face since she was still pretending to be innocent. “Tell me what’s on your mind, and in exchange, I’ll promise you that I won’t get mad.”

Her uncertainty was evident, but she spoke anyway. “I think Taylor Lynn has been plotting something. It isn’t just the weirdness earlier with the magic circles. She hasn’t been treating you well since you turned her down. You can’t see it because you’re so close to her. But I can see it. She’s been ordering everyone around since you gave her the power. I don’t think she cares about the guild… or you.”

Claire let the words hang in the air. She’d spoken her mind. The seeds of her lies were sewn; all she needed was for him to water them. He wasn’t going to because the truth was already apparent. Taylor Lynn made a convenient target, but Claire was the one with something to gain.

Jay cleared his throat. He would keep his promise and avoid anger, even though he wanted to get angry because it was better this way. “That’s convenient.”

Claire was thrown, looking at him like someone had struck him on the head with a shovel, and he was still recovering from the concussion. “What’s convenient? None of this is convenient.”

Undeterred, he stated, “It’s convenient that you point at Taylor Lynn, since you know I spurned her advances. I had my own reasons for that, but beyond them, I did so because we were together. That’s a motive, but she wouldn’t be my first guess.”

“It makes sense you wouldn’t want to believe it was her. What is your other idea? Maybe I’m—” Claire cut herself off before she finished. Recognition dawned, and her voice grew weaker as she continued. “You used the past tense.”

“The past tense?” Jay asked. The specifics of his words had slipped his own notice, but it hadn’t escaped Claire’s notice. “I used the past tense for what? Don’t be obtuse. There’s a lot going on.”

“Our relationship,” Claire pointed out. “You said we were together. Part of the reason you refused Taylor Lynn is that we were together.”

The situation clicked into place. Jay had said that, though he hadn’t meant to tip his hand. His decision was already firmly rooted in his mind, so he had unintentionally exposed it.

“That’s the part you took from what I said,” Jay sighed. “You’re not concerned that I think Taylor Lynn is innocent. Not the least bit curious who my other suspect might be.”

“I think it’s clear what you’re getting at, whether or not you come right out and say it,” she said. Her subsequent words were pleading, “Jay, I didn’t do anything. I didn’t leak plans; It wasn’t me. Please, don’t do this. We can talk this out after the siege.”

“I never said anything about that,” he said. Without a trace of anger, he added, “Dealing with a guilty conscience, are we?”

Jay couldn’t keep the sarcasm from leaking into his voice, but at least he wasn’t angry. That was something. He couldn’t stop the desire to twist the knife a little bit so that he wouldn’t be the only one hurt.

Claire started to cry. In a sense, it was what he wanted. Although Jay wasn’t acting from any plan, instead following his instinctual reactions to each moment, the intent wasn’t to take it that far. He watched the virtual tears trailing down her face, mirroring tears in the real world, and he felt angry for the first time.

But Jay wasn’t angry at her. He was angry at himself for being childish and emotional. His actions were insidious, designed to injure her and bring Claire down to the level of pain he felt himself. While retribution sounded alluring, it only brought further distress to a situation that was already wrong. He should have broken up with her and left it alone.

He reached out his hand for Claire, but she turned from him. The agonizing moments passed as she pulled herself together to return to the conversation.

“That was wrong,” Claire accused. “It was cruel and wrong.”

“Yes,” Jay agreed, not denying it.

She stared at him blankly. “You’re not going to apologize for being cruel?”

He was still weighing what to do. Some piece of him still screamed to be the better person, even though she’d betrayed the guild. For all he knew, she’d ruined the entire plan, pulling the third trial dungeon below Ilra forever from his grasp. At least, reaching such a place would be difficult any time soon.

“No,” Jay confessed. “I’m not going to apologize.”

“Fine,” Claire raged. When it didn’t provoke a reaction, she grew even angrier. Jay let her have the last word. It didn’t matter. He didn’t care anymore.

“Fine,” she repeated, her anger melting to resignation. “But I’m warning you. When you realize you’ve made a huge mistake, make sure you’ve already lost my number. Don’t call me. Don’t message me on socials. And for good measure, don’t contact me in-game either.”

Jay didn’t respond. He thoroughly planned to abide by her words, whether she wanted things that way or not.

“We’re done,” Claire reiterated, making the implicit conversation explicit. Then, she logged out.

It was better this way. Claire had disappointed him in a matter of weeks, while Taylor Lynn had spent years doing so.