I wasn’t wrong.

  Emma was, of course, the only one of us who’d seen the acid-spitting stalker in action and maybe that was why she was so completely freaked out by the idea. “Completely freaked out,” though, was that Uncanny Insight ability in action. On the surface, she argued against the idea very reasonably.

  From her perspective, these were the pros versus cons.

  Pros: None.

  Cons: Instant death if the lizard came within spitting distance of us.

  That was the big one, but she was creative enough to add a few more when Jack and I weren’t immediately convinced.

  Like: how would we actually do it? What if we got trapped between the lizard and the goblins? Maybe Participant 4, wherever they were, would take advantage of the chaos and steal the win.

  And maybe—she threw this in like she was just musing, but I could tell she was grasping—maybe the System would think we were cheating.

  That one was a desperation move on her part, because really, cheating? By adopting the completely reasonable strategy of “the enemy of my enemy is my ally for a minute and a half”?

  I didn’t even play games, and I knew that was fair play.

  Her last suggestion, though, was clever, and aimed straight at Jack. If we drove the lizard into the goblin stronghold, it would be the one doing all the killing. Did he really want to end the challenge scenario early and miss out on all that XP? He’d be heading back to the real world still at Level 5, instead of using every possible minute of this opportunity to gain power.

  I could see Jack being swayed. And while I wasn’t all that sure about this idea myself, I wasn’t going to let it go quite so easily.

  “I’m not sure that’s true,” I said. “I got XP from the goblin that died after we ran away from the lizard. I don’t know how it would have died if it wasn’t the lizard that killed it.”

  “You think the stalker counts as a weapon?” Jack sounded delighted.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. But it might. And hey, if we win the scenario early, maybe we’ll get bonus points. Maybe there’s a speed prize.”

  “Guys, I don’t think we have time to talk about this anymore,” Emma said, jittering with tension. “It’s getting close.”

  “I wonder why.” Jack started picking up his own dropped loot. He hadn’t found anything as cool as the picnic basket or my canine companion pouch, but some mid-level goblin had left behind an ordinary backpack for him, and he’d filled it with protein bars and assorted junk. Okay, useful junk. Spools of wire, a handful of sharp-edged metal shards, some pellets that claimed to produce non-poisonous mist, that kind of thing. But he’d also gotten two nice daggers, one with a built-in poison bonus, and a single sheath.

  “In fact…” He stopped moving and stood, motionless, in the middle of the sanctuary, blinking. Some artist had a sculpture called the Thinker that I’d learned about eons ago and Jack’s posture was absolutely nothing like that. He was standing, he wasn’t resting his head on his fist, he wasn’t staring at the ground. But he had been so blatantly struck by inspiration that the artist should have done a new sculpture. I mean, I was pretty sure the artist was long since dead. It was an old sculpture. But if he’d still been alive, he would have tossed that one out and started anew.

  “Why is it coming straight toward us? And how can we use that?” Jack asked rhetorically, before turning toward me. “Light or scent, it’s got to be one or the other. It’s either the roses or it’s the way they glow. That’s how we can lure it without getting too close.” He turned to Emma. “I know you don’t want to risk the acid. I hear that.”

  Huh. Jack’s perception stat might be getting pretty high, too. And if anything was more uncomfortable than the insight Uncanny Insight gave me, it was wondering if Jack had the same clear view into my own inner workings.

  Not that it should bother me. I’d worked with plenty of therapists over the years and the good ones had the ability naturally, without the System’s helping hand. Still, the difference between a good therapist seeing inside my head and an eighteen-year-old kid seeing inside my head felt… significant.

  Fortunately, the impending death by lizard meant I didn’t have time to worry about it.

  “If it’s attracted to the wild sanctuary, we can lure it to the goblins without ever getting too close,” Jack continued, still focused on Emma. “Would that make it worth it to you? If no one was getting anywhere near the stalker, would you want to try to get it to the goblin stronghold?”

  “Well…” Emma hesitated. She licked her lips, looking in the direction of the lizard. We couldn’t see it, of course. It was probably somewhere around 3AM and outside the sanctuary, it was full dark. We’d been fighting goblins by the light of their own torches, and we might not have survived if they hadn’t been carrying them. “Yeah, I guess.”

  “All right, let’s move.” Jack took charge immediately. “Emma, you lead the way back to the stronghold. Use your map and take Olivia and Zelda with you. Move as quickly as you can, but in, say, twenty minutes or so, maybe halfway there, stop and build a sanctuary. Olivia, make it as good as you can. I know it takes a while to get the roses, and the whole—” He gestured at the webbing of vines around us, wordlessly summing up the light, the magic, the fragile beauty of our little safety zone, glowing with its unnatural warmth. “But do your best, in case it’s the light that’s pulling it.”

  “What are you going to be doing?” Emma asked, suspiciously.

  He pulled out one of his daggers and waved it at the vines.

  Emma took a step back. Understandable, under the circumstances.

  “Cutting roses,” he said. “I won’t be too far behind you, but I want to leave a trail of flowers just in case it’s the scent that’s attracting the stalker.”

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  We were going to leave a trail of roses, sweetly scented and lovely, to lure a giant acid-spitting lizard to a nest of goblins? How romantic. Roses were never going to be the same to me after this.

  “But you guys need to go,” he said urgently. “Olivia’s got to have time to get a new sanctuary up. We need a real one, not the little temp shelter.”

  The longer I worked on my defensive measures, the more elaborate the sanctuary became, but I’d used the ability to create places where we could stand and fight to give us a little bit of a home-field advantage—improved regeneration, ground cover that would grab at the feet of our opponents, and a damage resistance boost that was almost like wearing light armor. Those sanctuaries did not glow in the dark, however, nor did they smell like weddings and memories.

  “Yeah, okay.” I waved at the vines to open the sanctuary as Jack started slicing off roses with his dagger.

  The vines peeled back with a reluctant shiver, and we slipped into the forest’s waiting dark. Zelda stayed close to my side, silent but alert. Her shoulder brushed against my calf with every other step, a steadying presence.

  Emma moved quickly, not quite running, as the night pressed in around us. No moonlight, but stars glimmered faintly beyond the canopy. The forest, though, was shadow layered on shadow.

  My sunglasses were still set to show allies, so it wasn’t hard to follow the floating, bobbing label above Emma’s head, but I still stumbled now and then on roots and uneven ground. Zelda adjusted her pace to mine, never out of reach, although never seeming to stumble either.

  Eventually, Emma stopped and turned. “Here, you think?” she whispered, as if the darkness might hold ears listening in. “I can see the stronghold on my map now, but we’re still pretty far away from it.”

  I listened. My perception stat wasn’t telling me a thing about where we were, what might be near us. I couldn’t even hear Jack, although he shouldn’t be far behind. “Okay.”

  I drew a deep breath, contemplating the Wild Sanctuary ability. I could use Warden’s Edge. Digging defensive moats was what I’d done most often, simply because it was easy. But the mundane pleasure of digging had worn off fast when I was doing it while also desperately trying to stay alive, and I really didn’t feel like spending the next hour digging more pits.

  The duct tape might work just as well. If we had time. Theoretically, it might even get the vines to show up sooner, if I created a trellis-like structure while envisioning it as an obstacle to dangerous enemies.

  Decision made, I tapped Warden’s Edge into my pouch with, as always, a little silent prayer to the universe that the pouch would keep working as advertised and I’d be able to retrieve my shovel when I needed it. Then I pulled out the duct tape.

  As I started winding it around trees, I wondered who I was praying to, really. The multiverse? Definitely not the System. Except sort of the System, since it was probably responsible for the pouch. But definitely not the System, because what I was really hoping for when I made my fervent wish-slash-prayer was that some higher power would stop the System from screwing me over.

  Was there a higher power than the System? I didn’t believe in God with a capital G, but surely there must be some court of appeals if the System made a mistake. When the System made a mistake. Mistakes were inevitable. Who cleaned up after the System when it screwed up?

  The whole time I was thinking my not-exactly-deep thoughts about the intricacies of the new world order—well, multiversal order—I was also winding duct tape around trees. I only stopped when Zelda gave a gentle woof. I waited, and a moment later, Jack staggered into view.

  “Oh, no, did it get you?” Emma rushed over to him.

  “I’m fine.” He tried to wave her off, but she grabbed his arm and half carried, half dragged him into the still-vestigial sanctuary.

  “You don’t look fine,” she scolded. “What did you do?”

  “Illusion. Just to see. Lured it into the sanctuary, but that acid…” He was gasping for air between words.

  “I know.” Emma’s eyes glazed over for a second as she looked at her map. “It’s so close. Damn it.”

  “Lure’s working.” Jack grinned at her.

  “We’re not getting near it, remember?” she snapped at him. “No taking stupid risks.”

  “Yeah.” He nodded, his smile fading. “We’ve pulled it, Olivia, so let’s keep moving.”

  Was I annoyed that I’d wasted my duct tape? No, because it was an endless spool of duct tape and I could use as much as I wanted.

  Was I annoyed that I’d been building a sanctuary to attract the lizard while Jack had been getting it to follow him using illusions? Okay, yeah. A little. It was stressful to try to create a wild sanctuary in a hurry. But I tucked the duct tape back into my pouch, pulled Warden’s Edge out and nodded that I was ready to go.

  Moving through the forest in the dark while trying to escape from the lizard gave me an odd sense of unpleasant deja vu. I loved the forest near my home with its scrub plains and springs, its mix of swampy wetlands and barren pine prairies. It wasn’t my happy place or anything like that. I’m not sure happy places were my thing, really.

  But I’d spent a lot of hours there, usually walking with my dogs, and it was comfortable. Familiar, peaceful, a place where I felt like I could breathe easy. It felt like home.

  This forest was denser, greener, thick with deciduous trees and a tangle of undergrowth. It did not feel like home. The stumbling through the darkness trying to get away from something that would like to kill me was starting to feel uncomfortably familiar, though.

  “Why is it moving so fast?” Emma hissed from ahead of me. “It used to be slower.”

  “Maybe that’s part of the mechanics, too,” Jack responded. “Or maybe it’s leveled up?”

  “Or maybe—” I started and then stopped myself. Not every thought needed to be blurted out, especially not this one.

  Emma stopped and turned. “Maybe what?”

  “Nothing, sorry. Just a thought.”

  “Say it.”

  I winced. “Um… maybe it’s actually hunting now? Like, before it was just roaming? Random pathing or whatever. But if it has our scent now, if it knows we’re here, it could be tracking us.”

  It had also occurred to me that the lizard didn’t have a handy picnic basket. The participant count had held steady at four for nearly thirty hours, which meant the lizard was probably close to a day and a half without a meal. Maybe hunger was motivating it.

  Not that giant lizards should need to eat every day. Alligators could survive for months without food. Okay, technically they weren’t lizards; they were crocodilians. But maybe this thing wasn’t really a lizard, either. The System had called it a stalker. Maybe that was a type of crocodilian.

  And maybe I was just trying to convince myself that a giant freaking monster wasn’t chasing to eat us, which was somehow more horrifying than just chasing us.

  I glanced down at Zelda.

  At home, I was always on the alert for stray alligators. She was the perfect size for a gator snack.

  Back in the day, before we moved back to my dad’s house, I used to take her to dog parks occasionally, but never the ones with waterfront. We used to joke that they should be called the gator buffet.

  Crazy northerners sometimes let their dogs play in the water. In Florida. Demented, I called it.

  Well, okay, maybe not Bear- and Riley-sized dogs. They’d be a tough mouthful for an average gator.

  Zelda, though? A delightful breakfast.

  But that was not going to happen. Not then, not now, not ever.

  I picked up our pace.

  The outcome of that lousy decision was practically inevitable.