Something was wrong. My eye snapped open. The only light was the moon, and the glow from the magic on the door. The fire had gone out, and I was shivering.

  Shadows moved across the floor. I snapped up. There were fingers pressing at the window panes, pushing at the glass.

  “Have you elected to be useful?” White-hair spoke from to my right. He looked terrible. Deep circles rested beneath his eyes, and his skin was somehow paler. He still sat in the chair, his staff across his lap. He didn’t look at me, his focus riveted to the window. “Or do you intend to sit there and lament as you are slain?”

  I didn’t respond to him, instead moving to stand up. My chest ached, likely due to healing ribs. I grunted. My HUD snapped into my vision.

  HP: 16/20

  There were no icons in my top left, though a new Quest had appeared in my log. TALK TO THE INNKEEPER ABOUT THE PROBLEM. Wonderfully vague. Was the would-be intruder the problem? Would White-hair know?

  I crouched over to my armor. I had no idea how to put it on. I hefted one of the gauntlets, the array of straps and buckles dangling. They looked tangled. Fuck it, I could figure that out later, I didn’t think I had the time to learn how to strap it on now. I reached for my shovel, hefting the weight of it in my hands. It was becoming comforting to hold surprisingly quickly. “Is this for a Quest?”

  “Now she speaks.” White-hair’s contempt curled his words. “And to proffer nothing of any particular value. No, this is not for the quest. You wish the creature at our window was something as innocuous as a mobile object.”

  “Mobile object?” I asked. I gripped my shovel, taking a shaky breath. Why couldn’t the man just be straight about it?

  “The more common term is ‘mob,’ but I do so despise abbreviations. Creatures or entities in the game that are not controlled by a human soul.” White-hair was still staring at the window. Fingers pressed harder against the glass, and purple energy flashed around the edges of the pane. The hands abruptly retreated.

  I waited. A long minute passed, then two, but the fingers didn’t reappear. I frowned, straightening up, and turned to look behind me, shovel held loosely at my side.

  White-hair hadn’t moved, and his unblinking stare had focused on me. One side of his mouth curled upwards, unpleasant and self-satisfied.

  “..They can’t get in.” I said.

  “One day, you will learn how not to state the obvious. Until then, I shall suffer the affliction of hearing your observations.”

  Yeah, alright. He could’ve mentioned that a while back. No doubt he’d taken petty satisfaction in watching me prepare myself for a confrontation that wasn’t going to come.

  “If that wasn’t a mob, then what was it?” I asked, walking over to the fire, grasping a log, and tossing it on the embers. I poked the embers with the tip of my shovel, and it sputtered back to life. I could feel White-hair watching me, and resisted the urge to hunch my shoulders.

  “The only creature worth fearing, for the weakness of its will and the violence of its intent. Man.”

  This man had to have been a philosophy professor, or some similar dramatic, pain-in-the-ass profession when he’d been alive. Because he was dead like me, wasn’t he? White-hair’s attention had turned back towards the window, and he resumed his intense wait.

  “Why’re you waiting if they can’t get in?” I needed to know if I could rest easy for the remainder of the evening or not.

  “I am not,” he said.

  My brow furrowed. Except he was absolutely waiting. He sat there in that chair, back straight, staff balanced across his thighs, hands grasping the wood. There was a tension in his narrow shoulders. For all of his exhaustion, he leaned forward, hooked nose pointed to the pane like a foxhound.

  Okay, so that was a blatant lie. But why? I cocked my head. His chin was raised, mouth in a displeased line, eyes hooded with distaste. There was something in those eyes I couldn’t place. That gold-white combination was very unsettling. Maybe that was it. Because those weren’t brown-amber-hazel eyes--that was definite, actual gold. I remembered the ability to change my appearance. Would I have been able to pick gold eyes?

  I doubt I could’ve done that. I resisted the urge to rub at the burned side of my face. If I’d known…but then again, maybe not. Well, I’d have at least gotten my missing eye back. The rest of it was a connection to a past that was trying to vanish beneath me without me realizing. And I’d never been a pretty woman to begin with, so I wasn’t losing much.

  Or, maybe it wasn’t through the appearance selection at all. Maybe humans had just naturally gotten those hair and eye colors in the last two thousand years. Genetic manipulation? Who the hell knew? Guess it didn’t really matter.

  Anyway, White-hair was waiting and lying about it, and I couldn’t really be bothered to figure out why.

  And ultimately, that distracted from the greater point--someone had been trying to get in, probably for nothing good. Why? Two injured people were easy targets? Were there any kind of rules or laws within this Resurrection Raid?

  I didn’t know so much. Did I want to know?

  I crawled back to bed, taking my shovel with me. I pulled back the quilt and crawled beneath it, pulling my shovel close, like a misbegotten teddy bear. I turned my back to White-hair to look in the direction of the window. Everyone I loved was dead. I couldn’t even sleep through a night without someone trying to break into where I was resting and hurt us. Did I care if I was hurt?

  I watched the window through tired eyes. Sleep didn’t return. Instead, I allowed myself to fall into a comfortable numbness. I’d died in that fire. What had become of my family? Had they lived long and happy lives?

  Before I’d had to leave college, there’d been a lot of discussions in my classes about immortality. I’d never wanted it. Death wasn’t that scary. The way you died could be, but passing on hadn’t been a great fear of mine. What was the point to a life where you were alone, without anyone you loved with you?

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  And now, I was here.

  I hadn’t seen an answer then. I didn’t know how to find one now. My entire life had revolved around my family, and friends, and people in my community. I loved helping people. I could still help people, I suppose, just no one that I knew.

  My grandmother. I still didn’t remember her name, but along with her waiting, and her warning me against letting doubt fester in my heart, I remembered conversations. She’d wanted me to have my own life, and to go do what I wanted to do.

  I’d told her what I wanted to do was be there for her, for my siblings, for my dad. There was honor in service. Which was such a weird fucking thing to say in the modern age--or was it ancient age, now?--but it was true. I’d found it comforting to be needed, and it’d given me a lot of purpose.

  And, of course, I loved them. And they were gone.

  Death was a part of life, but this? Whatever this was, nothing could have prepared me for it. Though even in my time--God, it felt insane to say that--there were terrible car accidents, with only one survivor, and everyone else in their direct family dead. Some killed themselves, others pressed onwards.

  I was in a car crash like that, except crazier, because I didn’t have the blessing of a familiar world and a community.

  What was I going to do? Call it quits, or press onwards?

  The sun was rising. Or, well, the virtual reality sun. But even with that thought, it felt pulled directly out of my memory of what the real sun was like. The window fogged, warmth and cold colliding, and I could see the pink-orange light of dawn, banishing the dark.

  I didn’t really have any answers, except one. I wouldn’t just lay down and die. I could always call it quits another time, always sit down and allow the Raid to kill me another day, as it was evidently going to try to do. There wasn’t any rush, it wasn’t like I was going to miss my chance. If I wanted a ticket for my last ride, I could take it any time I pleased.

  But for now, I’d live, and I’d try to remember. The tears burned, but I took a deep, steadying breath. I buried the fresh grief with the practice of habit--I had neither time nor space to give it the free reign it would require.

  Right. So that meant playing this game and learning what I could, and dealing with everything else later--much later.

  That also meant figuring out what White-hair felt inclined to share, as well as who the man was and why he was here--and if he intended to be leaving soon. For the moment, he hadn’t hurt me. I didn’t like him much, but I didn’t like a lot of people.

  I pulled myself up, quilt pooling around my waist. I balanced the shovel across my knees. The man didn’t acknowledge me. He was still breathing in that even, steady way, like I could’ve counted a watch by his inhales and exhales, and his attention was still tied to the window. Waiting, even as he said he hadn’t been. He’d been waiting for hours.

  “Don’t you need sleep?” I asked. He cocked his head, but didn’t respond for a long time. I crossed my arms over my knees and placed my chin down, staring at him.

  At some point, I closed my eye, feeling myself drift off into a light doze. Of course, that was when he talked. Dick. No doubt he’d done that entirely on purpose.

  “Do not simper after me with the conceit of caring for my well being. What I do is of no concern to you.”

  I cracked open my eye to squint at him. He still wasn’t looking in my direction. He looked very dignified, and also like I’d dunked him into an exhaustion blender at the same time. It was a weird combo.

  “You won’t stay, then?” I wasn’t sure if that made me nervous, but I knew that it should make me nervous. White-hair clearly knew what was going on, and I definitely didn’t.

  He finally deigned to glance at me. His lip curled, which I was beginning to think was a reflexive expression every time he had to take me in. Maybe it was the scarring. Funnily enough, I didn’t think that was all of the reason why--his face seemed perpetually stuck in an expression of “you have just vomited across my shoes, plebeian.”

  “Our party can not be divided,” he said after a pause. “I would not make that attempt.”

  Okay, so, odd. “I can’t decide I’m sick of you and just leave?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “We had no choice in its making, and we shall have no power to unmake it.”

  So, I was stuck with White-hair for the foreseeable future, then. At some point, I really should’ve asked the man his name--then again, wasn’t it Cato? The quest had implied it was Cato. It was also the least important of the questions that I had.

  “What do I need to know?” I finally said.

  His laugh was a bark, a snap of fierce noise that held no real joy. “What do you know? Have you any knowledge whatsoever?”

  “Nope,” I said.

  The glower he shot me probably could’ve cut steel. I just waited, patting my shovel. It was a good shovel.

  After a moment, his attention turned from me back to that window. “I shall educate you on the most basic and fundamental knowledge that you require. The Raid is divided into nine parts. The Attunement, and eight Wings. We currently need to complete the Attunement, which is an elaborate, difficult Questline that generally slaughters roughly half the Raiders before the First Wing begins.”

  “…How do you know this?” He’d mentioned a Tutorial, earlier. Why hadn’t I had one?

  “The decay of your memory is egregious, then. The Raid has been broadcast to the galaxy at large ever since its first iteration. Admittedly, they are not the most common of occurrences, but every soul bears witness to several in their lifetime.”

  Sounded kind of like the Olympics. But, uh, yeah, definitely hadn’t had any Raids in my lifetime. When had the Raid started? Y’know what? Didn’t matter. I vaguely recalled there being a massive Roman numeral right before I’d been dumped into the snow.

  It’d clearly been happening for a while.

  Speaking of which, I’d been called something odd there, too. What was it? My brow furrowed.

  “I didn’t have a tutorial,” I said, “But before I popped into the game, it told me that I’d been designated something.”

  White-hair clicked his tongue. “I presume you were proclaimed to be a Raider, like every other creature.”

  My brow furrowed. “No, not that. Began with an L.”

  “Limiter.” White-hair’s voice was soft, but sharp, and the hair on the back of my neck rose. “You were designated Limiter. I suggest that if you retain an interest in breathing, you never utter that word aloud again.”

  My shoulders hunched, and I crossed my arms, bracing my palms against my biceps. “Why?”

  White-hair cocked his head, appraising. “Limiters are meant to curb the worst of the Artificial Intelligence’s excesses--with minimal success. Other Raiders will take their discontent out on you.”

  “Curb the worst--how?”

  “It matters little. It is an archaic position that is granted more out of habit than any real power. You are incapable of bending the Intelligence into restraint--all it does is offer you up as a sacrifice for your fellow players.”

  I rubbed at my upper arm. “…Are you one, too?”

  “Indeed,” he said. “Let us not discuss this again. There is a variety of useful information to bestow upon you without the very act of conversing about it being an immediate threat to our lives.”

  I nodded. “About Attunement Quests--”

  I was very rudely cut off by a scream. It was a long, drawn out caterwaul that was clearly coming from out the door and down the hallway. It was a sound of absolute, all-consuming terror. A notification popped up into my vision. QUEST FAILED: TALK TO THE INNKEEPER ABOUT THE PROBLEM. 2/3 QUESTS FAILED.

  I blinked. “Uh…”

  White-hair stood up, the motion of it eerily smooth. He smiled, thin-lipped and grim. “The most important lesson of this conversation is thus: if you do not engage with the Raid, it will engage with you.”