“Hey!” I heard Feather yell, and then she and the alien were well out of earshot. I was falling.

  I was about to die.

  I reached back over one shoulder to swap weapons, and the game mechanics automatically swapped my two-handed spear for my one-handed Leafdragon Shield and my one-handed Gravity Condenser, the weapon that Ol’ Slimy had used on me.

  Apparently, it hadn’t been out of charges.

  I aimed below me, fired, and shouted like a madman as the gun procured another gravity well and sucked me into it. I arced past for a moment, slowing, and then the well yanked me back up.

  I was now hovering in midair about fifty feet below where the battle was currently taking place. I could see shapes and the flashes of a few names along the cliffside, but on the right side of my HUD, I could see Feather’s health draining away.

  There was a roar, and a black shape hurtled out into open space, tangled up with the stick alien. I cursed and put my shield up, somehow managing to avoid damage as the panther and alien both pummeled into me.

  This gravity well wasn’t going to last. I needed a way out. As the panther tore into the walking stick and I did my best to keep the shield between me and the many sharp appendages I was tangled up with, I fumbled through my menu and somehow got my Slowfall Orb into the same hand as my gravity gun. I smashed the handful of objects against the panther’s hide, and the Orb shattered, making the big cat glow light blue.

  The poor guy was taking damage, and I spent my next ten seconds hammering into Walking Stick with my shield. Since I had Constitution, I could actually do meager damage with the thing. Walking Stick hissed and threw his arms around me, clinching tight.

  My armor screamed with the sound of stone on metal, and with a painful thunk, one of his pincers sliced into my arm.

  Then the gravity well disappeared.

  Walking Stick gave a chittering cry as he fell, but I had already thrown my arms around the panther’s thick neck. I was sprawled across his back, and he bucked and writhed and spat as we both slowly fell toward the ground.

  I seized the moment between the panicked cat’s spasms and aimed the gun above us. The range was about twenty feet, and by my guess, the thing lasted twenty seconds. I fired.

  The well yanked us upward as soon as it materialized. I had one more shot. I aimed again and fired quickly, right near the cliff’s edge.

  Another Hunter, this one dark blue, hurtled into it.

  “Shit.” That hadn’t been my intention. The panther bucked, nearly throwing me. “Will you calm down?” I shouted at him. “I’m getting us out of here, damn it!”

  The panther slowed its flailed, then made a rumbling noise. My heart thudded in my chest. Had it—had it just listened to me?

  Our well suddenly vanished, and with a grunt, the third and final well got a hold of me. I gripped the cat hard, towing the midnight-blue creature along with me as the last gravity well pulled on me with all of its might.

  This had been the last charge. And now we were flying toward an alien stuck to a gravity well that was seconds from expiring. I had hoped to use it to propel myself up and over the cliff, but now this guy was in the way.

  Now that the panther was clearly caught in the well’s orbit, I let go and kicked it away. I swapped back to my spear in the next moment, using a gesture.

  The alien hadn’t noticed me. The blue, tentacled creature appeared to be frantically flipping through his own inventory.

  I impaled him clean through with the spear.

  To my left, the panther went sailing, overshooting the well and clearing the cliff edge. The gravity well disintegrated, losing its hold on him.

  The cat was safe, at least. But not me.

  Fire suddenly erupted around me, and the alien hissed as it burned. I caught a glimpse of Hergvor with his eyes glowing. He wasn’t dumb enough to leap off the cliff after me, but he was still ready to fight my enemies.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Too bad I was about to die anyway.

  Before I could squeeze another thought in, our fall stopped abruptly. Blue expanded above my head, wreathed in fire. I barely kept hold of the nearest tentacle as the creature inflated itself to slow our descent.

  But even I could see the thing was wasting away. So when our shaky flight slammed me against the cliff, I took my chances trying to find a handhold while the flailing blue spaghetti monster flapped past me, trailing purple smoke that smelled of seared tuna.

  I slid for a dangerous moment, then caught the fingers of one hand in a thin crack. I swung, twisting my arm, groaning as the move pulled at my injury.

  My Strength stat held me, however, and on the back swing I found another handhold, then a foothold.

  Next thing I knew, blue spikes peppered the wall around me. Two hit their mark, piercing me in the backs of my legs. The spaghetti monster must have used his Oneiric magic to summon them in a last-ditch effort to kill me. They vanished an instant later, and the tally at the top of my screen now read Targets Remaining: 1.

  One guy. There was only one left.

  “Curry turds on a cold Tuesday, you are hard to kill,” Dave said, banking next to me and landing on an exposed root about five feet out of my reach. “Hold on. Feather is finding some vines to haul you up.”

  “The—the last Hunter?” I grunted, my arms straining. My Bleed effect was still active, draining me. I started hearing the low-health warning pulse.

  Before Dave could answer, though, everything slowed around me. There was an eerie silence, and then the Game Host spoke:

  Achievement: Falling Up!

  You fell off an edge that should have killed you, but you survived! You have officially gone to battle with gravity itself, and won. I don’t even know how to make that sound sexual. Something-something I fell for you hard, but not hard enough to die kinda thing. Rewards now, hot antigravity sex later.

  Reward: An Orange Opposite Day Drop.

  As soon as the Host finished speaking, time sped up again. Sound resumed.

  “What the fuck is going on with the Achievements?!” I gasped.

  Dave turned his head to peck at something under his wing. “Damn, I think I picked up fleas from the hippies,” he muttered, before straightening. “You mean the dilation? Time seems to slow?”

  I groaned and climbed higher. “That’s what dilation is? It’s time dilation?”

  “Yeah. What did you think it was?”

  I didn’t know, but not that. “The Conduit are able to do that? Slow time?”

  Dave took flight and landed on the cliff edge above me. He patted his head with his wing.

  “Just your perception of it, up here,” he said. “It’s the qubins. They get in your head and mess around.”

  “Wonderful.” I craned my neck to see past him, then gave up. “Well, if I’m getting achievements, that means that the fight is over. But there’ still one Hunter left. I take it they ran?”

  “Feather bopped her good with her spear. Brought the Hunter all the way down to half health. I pecked at her eyes while she was reeling from the spear blow. The Hunter’s eyes, not Feather’s. Almost got her, but she used a blink spell to get away.”

  For a moment my brain got stuck on the fact that the final Hunter was female. Then I got stuck on the words pecked her eyes.

  “You—you did what? You pecked her?”

  “Pecked her eyes. Damn fine-tasting eyes, I gotta say. She was an avian something-or-other. I forget the scientific name. Remnant just called them roosters. Everything on them things tastes like fried chicken.”

  I wanted to scream from pain and frustration both.

  Remnant: Since when can you do damage to people?

  Fuck You Dave: Since always? I’m level 90. I hit kinda hard for a chunk of flying broccoli.

  Remnant: If you hit so hard, then why haven’t you done it before?

  Dave cocked his little green head. “Uh, because it’s dangerous? Game Guides only get one stat per level. I put all mine in Strength. That means no Constitution.”

  My fingers tensed in their holes. “You have ninety Strength?”

  “Yeah. Comes in handy sometimes.”

  And he’d never once used this to help me? I could hear my teeth grinding together.

  “Fuck. You. Dave.”

  “Yeah, I get that a lot.”

  The low-health klaxon was impossible to ignore now, and I swallowed my incandescent rage and gritted out, “Pull up Hergvor’s menu. Set him to heal me.”

  Dave sighed dramatically, but I started getting heals even before the sigh was done. He might be an asshole, but he’d be a dead asshole if I died. I could count on him having self-preservation, at least.

  Another minute passed before a vine appeared to slap the wall beside me. I counted every second, nervous that the third and final Hunter would reappear, but he didn’t.

  “Not with that panther up there,” Dave had assured me. “He was only level 12. Flower’s 45, Feather is 40, and Hergvor is 20. Or at least, they were, before you killed a bunch of shit together.”

  My eyes widened, and a surge of hope washed through me as I grabbed for the vine. I tugged, and it held. Feather tugged back so hard that I lost my grip on the cliffside entirely. I dropped my full weight—and my life—into her hands.

  She pulled me up so easily that I felt like I was the one tripping. She hadn’t even broken a sweat by the time she pulled me over the edge and planted her spear in the ground.

  “Well, that was interesting,” she said. I just breathed, shaking there on the ground. I’d been close to death before, but it wasn’t something I’d ever gotten used to.

  I had a feeling that was going to change.

  When I finally dared to look up, it wasn’t Feather I looked at. I met eyes with Flower, and the panther twitches his ears at me, his eyes sparking silver.

  Please, I begged the universe as I slowly raised my gaze. Please….

  And there it was, above his head: Nightpanther Juvenile.

  And his level, increased after our battle:

  Level 46.