We had no water mages anymore. So we helped wipe Vampress clean as best we could with the water we had in our waterskins. We didn’t really need to drink, and letting your teammate be covered with her husband’s exploded body seemed wrong.

  “I — I want to log off,” she was saying. “But Pal would be disappointed if I left you. But I need to know he’s ok. I mean, I know he’s ok. But I can’t get the image of him, of.. That out of my head. I need to know that … that wasn’t real, that he is whole. And ok. You understand, right?”

  She kept asking us if we would understand. We all said we would. Even though so many of us had died in that room. Even though it was just a game and we all knew he was fine. None of us would have blamed her if she had logged off to go hug her husband after that.

  “This game is too fuckin real,” Vyper said beside me, his eyes looking haunted.

  “Yeah, it is,” I replied, watching Vampress shiver slightly as people tried to convince her it was ok to log off.

  “But if I log off and don’t get any loot, then all that effort was for nothing? I mean, I should stay, right? His death isn’t real, but I should still matter. So I shouldn’t go.”

  Shock. She was in shock. This game had traumatized her. I wished she would just go, as watching her distress was making me distressed. Did that make me a bad person? I wasn’t sure. But I had to walk away.

  “I wish we could rest,” Barry said as I joined a group talking in hushed tones.

  “That would be good, but we don’t have the time,” Satan said. “We have what? A few hours of in-game time left.”

  “Yeah, about that much,” Barry agreed. “But we have the last key now. That ghost thing dropped it on Vampress. Poor woman…”

  I sat down on a stone bench and leaned my back against the cool stone of the mausoleum behind me. Why did people pay to play this game? Was this supposed to be fun? Watching your friends die in horrible ways. I mean, people had been playing video games where people died for more than half a century now. But this was different. It was different when you were inside the avatar you were playing.

  I sighed. I was glad other people were playing. It was much better for me now that there were other players to talk to.

  “OK, everyone,” Barry said to the much diminished and beaten group of us. He barely had to raise his voice for all of us to hear him. “Let’s take a quick break to do some level-ups, check ourselves, and our gear.” And if you need to, to consolidate parties.

  Looking at upgrades was a good idea. I had been putting this off. I had a skill point to allocate. I had a feeling I knew where it should go, but I also knew where I wanted it to go.

  The Barbarian tree had two branches I could see. Berserker and Beast Master. Now even I knew that Beast Master wasn’t normally a barbarian thing. If I remembered correctly, it was something rangers got. Though there was a certain vibe of a barbarian with a large, vicious beast friend. So, a barbarian beast master class also made sense, right?

  But berserker. That just fit. You didn’t need to know much about games to know that a barbarian berserker just made sense. That felt like what this had been building to. And as much as I didn’t want to think about it, I kind of enjoyed being a total bad ass. But what if Beast Master let me connect even better with Dekka?

  I looked down at Dekka, who was taking a break from hellhound form and was having a nap at my feet. Actually, on my foot, the one I couldn’t feel. I knew which one I wanted. And if we didn’t have a big fight coming up with so few players, I would choose Beast Master without a question. If I died, I could come back to this point and choose it.

  I tried to stare down the label [BERSERKER] in my HUD, but it glared back at me.

  Even with my limited gaming knowledge, I knew this was the “correct” choice. It fit the build. It was the logical evolution of a woman swinging a tree trunk at monsters. This promised power, efficiency, and the kind of raw strength that kept people alive in a place like this.

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  But I couldn’t get past the definition.

  Berserk. To go berserk. In the real world, that wasn’t a career path or a cool title; it was a breakdown. It was a news headline involving a tragedy. It meant frenzied, out of control, destructive.

  I thought back to the fight with the bats. The way the world had grey-scale-narrowed until there was only the target and the swing. It had felt good in the moment. I had felt powerful relief from the constant, gnawing anxiety of my situation, but the aftermath terrified me.

  I remembered looking at Rose—my friend, the person literally keeping me on my feet—and for a split second, my brain hadn’t supplied her name. It hadn’t supplied Rose or even Neil. It had just supplied the information that I shouldn’t hit her. A variable in an equation, not that I could have told you in that moment what an equation was. I likely couldn’t have done much more than one plus one is two. It had turned people into things either to be protected or smashed.

  A shiver that had nothing to do with the damp dungeon air raised goosebumps along my arms. If I clicked that button, if I leaned into the rage, how much of Elizabeth would be left? Would I eventually forget Dekka’s name too? Would I become just another monster in the game, only distinguishable from the goblins by the fact I had only two eyes?

  I wasn’t really a fighter or soldier. I was a grad student. I had been once. I didn’t want to lose my mind; I wanted to keep it.

  I looked at the other option. [BEAST MASTER].

  It sounded softer. It implied connection, not isolation. If Berserker was letting go of the steering wheel and letting the adrenaline drive, Beast Master felt like holding on tighter. It meant looking at the one other living thing in this universe that truly knew me—my dog—and choosing her over the violence.

  “Fuck efficiency,” I whispered to no one. “I’d rather be sane.”

  “Hey would should get going.” Rose was standing over me, blurry behind my HUD.

  “I am tying to make a decision.”

  “New skill?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Just pick the one that seems the most fun.”

  Fun?

  This was a game … so why was the idea of fun so ludicrous?

  She wasn’t wrong, though. Impulsively, I clicked [Beast Master]. That showed the next two branches. [Dominance] and [Friend] What odd skill names. I looked down at Dekka and wondered if she would bite me if I tried anything labeled ‘dominance’ at her. She rolled over to get more comfortable.

  “Come on, lazy dog. We have one more room to clear.” She looked up at me to see if I could be persuaded to not go do more things. Unless they involved eating. She would like to do the eating.

  How did I know that? Was that the latent part of the skill? I hadn’t activated it. Or was it just that I knew my dog and that she was always down to eat?

  “At least one more room. Though I am hoping this is the last. We are running out of time,” Rose said as we joined the group gathering around the last unopened door.

  “And people,” I whispered, looking around.

  “One more time, guys, then we can get the loot and log off. I know I could use a beer after this,” Barry said.

  Tiredly, we nodded.

  The wooden door unlocked the same as the others. It swung in, and the cavern before us was dark. I assume it was a cavern as we could see nothing. Ayerelia conjured her mage light and floated it forward. There was a wall a few meters out from the doorway. We couldn’t see into the room. Barry walked in, turned around and looked at us.

  “The door is blocking the way into the room. The only way we can see what this room is, is to close the door.”

  “Must be pretty terrible, like if we see it we will just log off.” The normally taciturn Zorgan said.

  “Well, let’s get on with it.” I walked in and joined Barry, with Dekka right behind me. Turning to look back out into the foyer, I could see the hesitation of the faces of the others. Rose followed a moment, then Ayerelia, and Satan. The others filed in until only Vampress and Vyper were left.

  “Are you sure you want to come with us?” he was asking her, his tone gentle. She was nodding. But I wasn’t sure she was in any condition to keep playing.

  They joined us, and we swung the door closed.

  As soon as the door clicked and locked, I could see the faint reflection of a light. Barry, Vyper and I took point and stepped around the corner.

  There in a spotlight on a stone outcropping was a little reddish orange lizard. That wasn’t a spotlight; it looked like a beam of sunlight streaming through a crack in the ceiling. The little creature was basking in the sun.

  “Its just a little guy,” chuckled a voice down by my waist. “Just a wee little lizard,” said Copperbeard as he walked past us.

  Barry reached out to stop him, but his arm fell short as the bard walked towards the little reptile. It was very cute, even with the extra eyes. It reminded me of the little creatures I would find under rocks up at my grandmother’s cottage. They weren’t this vibrant, though.

  The little creature blinked its eyes and tipped its head to look over its shoulder at the dwarf.

  Was this the big bad? Wait, was this a baby? Was there like a momma dragon around here that was going to show up from the shadows? I studied the shadows around us, my fingers gripping the handle of my club ready to swing at the slightest movement.

  Nothing moved in the shadows. No sounds other than our feet on the stone and the sound of our breaths.

  Copperbeard was still moving closer to the little lizard. I was just about to open my mouth to tell him that maybe walking alone to the middle of the boss room was a bad plan when the adorable lizard blinked again and opened its mouth.

  Salamanders! That’s what those were under the paving stones I would flip over as a kid. Not reptiles but amphibians.

  Salamander? Wasn’t that a thing in medieval times?

  Then, a wave of heat knocked me off my feet.

  Demographic questions. You can answer one age and one gender.