Elijah had made a serious mistake. At least that was what Rose had told him the next morning when she’d come in to check on him and found the Elven barmaid asleep in his bed.

  He’d wanted to scream at the psychoanalyzing cleric, to tell her she wasn’t his mother and didn’t get to tell him what he could or couldn’t do, but then he noticed Sasha standing in the doorway. The hurt on Sasha’s face stopped him in his tracks as the elf woman collected her clothes and left his room.

  He felt it was unfair that she felt hurt; they weren’t a couple. Elijah didn’t owe her anything. He didn’t belong to her by virtue of his interest.

  That thought stopped him in his tracks. He knew, logically, that he was being defensive and lashing out. That wasn’t fair to Sasha or to Rose.

  And it wasn’t fair to himself.

  He waited in silence as Rose shut the door and returned to the chair beside his bed.

  “Your actions aren’t unique, Elijah,” she said in that soft, motherly tone. “It’s common for those who have experienced severe trauma to look for outlets. Whether someone to give them a feeling of control, or to be vulnerable with.”

  He started to answer her, but she cut him off with a raised hand. “I don’t need to know the details of what happened; that’s between you and Kara.”

  Kara.

  Elijah hadn’t even stopped to consider asking her what her name was.

  “I’m going to do something a bit atypical because we aren’t in a normal setting. When I said you made a mistake, it wasn’t because you slept with someone. You know what the mistake was?”

  Elijah thought about it for several moments. He came up with several answers. None of which felt correct inside Elijah’s gut, so finally he shook his head.

  “As players, we respawn. Yes, the pain and trauma stay with us, but physically we are made whole no matter what happens. Functionally, that makes us immortal, and the way we play this game or live our lives reflects that. But non-players?” Her words were quiet, forcing Elijah to listen closely to hear them. “Their lives are fleeting. They live and they love, just like us. But when they die, they don’t come back.”

  Elizabeth’s face flashed in his mind. The fear on her face when she thought Tom was going to slit her throat.

  “Before we form attachments, we have to consider who and what we are capable of protecting. We can’t be everywhere at once, Elijah. And now Tom knows he can hurt you by hurting them.”

  “Are you saying I should stop caring about the NPCs?” he asked quietly. He meant to keep the defensiveness he felt out of his voice, but doubted he had succeeded.

  “Caring for, and having personal attachments to them are two very different things.” She stood to adjust his pillow as she had during their session the day before, but this time she took his hand. “I worked and lived in Nethy for thousands of in-game hours. I knew the NPCs who made that town their home, but I was incapable of protecting it. In this game there is always going to be someone stronger than you, and unfortunately they won’t always be benevolent.”

  “Did you…” The words caught in his throat, but he forced them out. “Did you know Elizabeth?”

  “I knew of her. Based on the description you gave us, I am fairly certain I saw her in the temple a few times.” She squeezed his hand slightly tighter. “But I learned the lesson years ago that it’s better to be very careful with who you form personal attachments to. And it was just as hard for me then as it is for you now.”

  Elijah’s eyes drifted to the dark wood of the door, Rose following his gaze. “You’re worried about Sasha?”

  He nodded his head.

  “For the record, she wasn’t hurt that you’d chosen to sleep with Kara. Sasha’s a smart woman and understands what happened. She was hurt because she saw her best friend hurting, and had no idea how to help him.” She squeezed his hand again before letting go and moving to leave the room. “I’ll talk to her. Get some rest, and I mean actual rest this time, or I’m going to have Benjamin teleport you somewhere Nicholas and Bo can’t reach you.”

  Elijah shifted in the bed to get more comfortable. The room felt empty now with no one here, but he had too much to think about now to even consider getting up.

  His thoughts turned inward as he felt a weight in his inventory. Normally he could just think about an item and call it out into his hand, and he even had a list view in his menus if he wanted to check what all he had. There were currently only three items on that list. His Batwing Blade, which was soul-bound to him, the Reaper Mask, and what he assumed was the item that he had received from his reward chest.

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  He could feel that the Reaper Mask didn’t have the option to call it to his hand, only to equip it directly to his face. And he wasn’t about to do something that stupid; he didn’t know what effects that would have on him. Considering the mask was somehow connected to Arturus’ main mask, he figured it couldn’t be a good thing.

  The last item was something that disturbed him. There wasn’t an item name or even a description. It just sat there in his inventory like a heavy weight in his pocket.

  He tried to pry into it with his Reality Awareness perk, but even that just returned garbled code. He couldn’t understand why the game would reward him with something so broken as to be completely unusable by him, even with his ability to modify the code of his items.

  So instead it sat within his inventory, a constant weight and reminder of his failing. The pain from this item adding itself to his inventory had incapacitated him and, by extension, led to the death of Elizabeth. If nothing else, it would serve as a reminder of what Rose had warned him.

  A knock on the door pulled him from his introspection. He looked up as Sasha peeked her head inside. “You're still awake, Elijah?”

  “Yeah, I’m still awake,” he responded. He admittedly felt uncomfortable with her presence after the hurt she had shown earlier. His actions embarrassed him, and he hoped she wasn’t here to talk to him about it. Their relationship—their friendship—was important to him, but it was in an uncertain place and had been for a while.

  She came over and sat down in the chair that Rose had vacated just a short while ago. “It’s okay, Rose knows I’m here so you don’t need to worry about her making Benjamin take you off somewhere hidden.”

  Elijah snorted. “I don’t know what she expects that would accomplish considering I have my own ability to teleport. I could just come right back.”

  “I think it’s more the thought that counts right now than anything else,” she said with a shrug.

  “Sasha, this morning I—” he started, but she cut him off.

  “Stop. Elijah, I know what you did, and it’s fine. I know there is something between us, but we’ve been so distracted by the game that we haven’t had time to discuss it.” She wouldn’t meet his eye; instead, instead staring off at the far wall. “And to be honest, I think it has to be that way for now. The party dynamic has to take priority. So the two of us, it can’t happen like this.”

  He tried to keep the disappointment from his face. “I know, Sasha.”

  She leaned in and grabbed his hand, locking her fingers into his. “Not that I don’t want you to come out to California after you get us all out of here. I think I’ve had about enough of anything to do with FIVR after all of this, so meeting in person would be the best chance.”

  Elijah looked down at their intertwined hands. He could barely believe what she was telling him.

  “California,” he whispered. “I’m not sure I can afford to move out there.”

  Sasha laughed. “Elijah, you are stupid sometimes. You know that, right?”

  He glared at her, but she just gave him a big smile. “Do you think that after having spent all this time in game with you and the others I could stand to not have any of you in my life? Especially if it was just a matter of throwing money at the problem?”

  “That would be a lot of money to throw at the problem. Especially since Benjamin is in Germany.” Elijah wanted to believe her, but online friends who said they’d keep in touch after a game ended and never did had burned him in the past. Though none had ever been quite like those he’d made in Lordship of Sorcery. Those friends had never felt this real.

  Elijah’s mind flashed back to something Tom had said. He pulled open his menus and found the screen for his nutrient tanks. They all still read zero. “Sasha… I’m worried that I might already be dead.”

  Her eyes went wide at his comment. “What makes you say that?”

  Elijah told her how Tom had known his tanks were empty. How he had told Elijah that it had been that way for a week. He watched Sasha’s reaction closely; he expected fear or for her eyes to glaze over as she checked her own tanks. But she just stared at him with those same caring eyes.

  “I know, we noticed the tanks shortly after you went missing. Benjamin about had a meltdown over it, but it isn’t just a few people. It’s everyone. At least everyone we’ve talked to. Bo thinks Shardline activated a contingency program and hooked everyone up to supplementary tanks.”

  “He doesn’t know?”

  Sasha shook her head. “No, remember he was a balance dev. Yes, the scope of his job grew as the Midwest team shrank, but he was never involved in high-level decision-making or risk management.”

  “Then he’s just guessing that they didn’t unplug everyone.” Elijah was feeling disheartened, but the smile on her face bolstered his spirits slightly.

  “Yes, it’s just a guess. But it’s a good one. Benjamin being in Germany and seeing the same thing is a good sign. They have some of the most comprehensive protection of life laws in the world.” She tightened the grip on his hand. “We have to hold out hope, Elijah. If nothing else, Bo’s ‘guess’ gives us that hope.”

  Elijah closed his eyes and leaned his head back on the bed, focusing on the feeling of her hand in his own.

  He squeezed her fingers tighter and looked her in the eye. “Hope, right?”

  She nodded.

  ”Then I’ll hold out hope for California.”

  She got up and leaned in to give him a hug. “I should get going. Rose told me not to stay for too long. She does actually want you to rest. Since you apparently didn’t get much last night.”

  Elijah couldn’t help but chuckle at her words as she turned away and headed towards the door. “Can you send Bo in here for a minute? I promise I’ll rest after I talk to him for a minute.”

  Sasha turned back towards him and rolled her eyes. “Fine, but if you get yourself into trouble, I’m not coming to save you.”

  ”Duly noted.”

  A couple of minutes passed before Bo finally arrived. “What’s up, man?”

  ”I need to know about the different kinds of bosses. Specifically world bosses.” Elijah told him.

  Bo stopped. “Nope, nope. Rose will kick my ass if I let you worry about crap like that.”

  ”I’m just trying to plan, Bo,” Elijah groaned. “I’m going to rest and relax as long as Rose tells me to, but I need something to keep my mind busy and off of what happened.”

  Bo considered his words for a moment before finally shrugging his shoulders. “Alright, man, what do you need to know?”