By the time Ava and Bach exit the woods the sun has gone down and twilight is the mood. A muted sunset; shades of rose and plum. The rock boar does not pursue them beyond the edge of the forest and neither does anything else.

They find the cart where they stowed it and Ava would feel relief if this wasn't still also the same clearing where Uri had been incapacitated by the Scum-bat right before Javors was sucked into an alternate dimension. Those recent and traumatic events paint this place in a different light as the darkness encroaches.

“We're going to have to spend the night here,” Bach says, “the forest is too dangerous to attempt a crossing at night while pulling the cart.”

“Should have asked Darby about his alternate route,” Ava surmises.

Quick to the point, Bach truncates his colloquialism, nodding, “in hindsight.”

They start a fire the old-fashioned way. No spark from the finger-tip – this time it's tried-and-true flint-and-steel. Its the same fire-pit where Ava shared a fish with Uri and Javors, and as the last light fades and only the flickering fire is left to illuminate their faces it all starts to feel too familiar. Ava can't relax.

“You okay?” Bach asks. He's roasting mushrooms on an improvised twig-kabob.

“Just thinking.”

“'Bout what?”

“You think I'm a bad-luck charm?”

“No such thing as luck.”

“Sure,” she begins, “but doesn't it seem like everyone I form a relationship with ends up getting hurt – or worse? Uma's gone and Uri might not make it, Javors claimed under cherry wine hypnosis that he was only here because of me and then I let him get sucked into some other world or something, Sawyer died the first day we met – and then there's... you. Somehow only Ellie seems to have escaped my curse. Probably because her defenses are so sturdy.”

Bach sits quietly for a moment. Maybe he's thinking about what he's lost. Maybe he's seeing things her way. But then he just says, “nah that's all bullshit. Forget about it.”

“I'm worried.” She looks at the sky and silently wishes on some shimmering space trash. “What if this doesn't work? What if I've convinced these people to take on a fight they can't win and they all get hurt or killed?”

He's quiet again. He slips a shroom off his twig-skewer and pops the morsel into his mouth. It sizzles on his tongue and he chomps into it with his bullet teeth. His eyes water from the pain but he keeps on chewing. He offers her the kabob and she declines.

“Not really hungry, thanks.”

“More for me,” he grins.

Working by firelight, they crush the nettles with a broad, flat stone. Bach supervises, guiding Ava through the process – for the most part it's a two-handed job. And terribly itchy.

“You're gonna want to wash off in the river when we're done,” he says.

He has her snap off the stalks and pull the harder outer-casings apart. Next she separates the fibers inside from the rest of the flesh. The fibers come out gunky and she has to strip them clean using a second, smaller stone with a sharper edge.

“This shit is prehistoric,” she says.

“No lie detected,” Bach laughs.

When the gunk is finally stripped from the first batch of a dozen nettles, she has shockingly few fibers to show for it. And they are thin as corn silk. She peers closely but the fibers are too thin or perhaps too primitive for her to find a label – she won't be able to summon the rest of what they'll need. She'll have to continue processing the nettles by hand.

“I better have some of that grub after all,” she says, “this is going to take all night.”

“I suspected you wouldn't be able to automate this part of the process.” He passes her a shroom-kabob. “That's why I had us gather up arm-fulls of the nettles.”

“How'd you know, though?”

“Just a hunch.”

By the time Ava is done stripping out the fibers an unbearably itchy rash has crept all the way up to her armpits. She has to strip off everything to go dunk herself in the freezing river. Bach builds the campfire higher and laughs.

He gives her his poncho and sits shirtless beside the fire. Ava shivers. She has never seen him this way. He's all scars. Stab wounds. Bullet holes. And worse: thickly-scarred brands, too numerous to count, numbers and letters and symbols all seared into his flesh some time in the distant past. She can't even ask.

He places the processed nettle fibers directly upon the stones forming the boundary of the fire-pit.

“We'll let them dry out overnight,” he says, “easier to work that way than when they're still green. In the morning I'll show you how to make a rope-tool and we'll use all these fibers to fashion a single bowstring.”

“Are you kidding me?” Her words come out stacatto on account of her shivering. “We did all this for just one string? And we're relying one-hundred percent on me being able to summon more?”

“Yep.” Bach winks. “Sure hope my hunches continue to be right.”

Ava falls asleep in the dirt beside the fire. Whether or not Bach even sleeps she doesn't know. When she awakens at sunrise he is already up and the fire is roaring.

Ava stretches and sits up and there's something completely different about waking up this morning:

>>>>YOU have ONE HOUR to select your LOADOUT before the Action Bar is LOCKED.

She hadn't considered this type of limitation, but from a gameplay perspective it's almost as though the Invisible Arbiter is balancing the game around her, specifically. Here she's been, assuming that her weird set of powers existed outside any rule structure, only to find out the opposite.

She thinks back to yesterday when she looked in the river to glean zone information and how when she saw the nearby beaver pond it felt like cheating. How it had saved her and Bach hours of wandering in the woods.

But is that really the case? What if all her special tricks are to be accounted for in the challenges to come? What if her presupposed advantages are features and not bugs? It's not a fun thing to think about – she might have preferred being overpowered.

Furthermore, while she evidently can only slot six abilities for use, more than half of hers are completely useless right now. Without bullets [Quick-Draw] is simply unusable and [Aimed Shot] would require at least a bow. And the abilities she's learned from Scums—[Acid Spray Mark IV(Paralyzing Agent)] and [Sanguine Extraction]—are worse than useless. She barely recalls learning the former, but her memory is jogged when she recalls the corresponding description:

Shoving the data back down, Ava thanks herself for having forgotten this ability. She flexes her cold, metal hand. Using the acid-spray ability she learned from the antlion Scums in Canon City would have caused something called a 'Thoraccic Replacement(Pump)' to grow inside her.

And [Sanguine Extraction] sounds like it would give her a face like the one on that Scum-bat. Hard to say if she'd even still be human after that.

So it's a simple choice – those skills needs to go inactive to prevent their accidental use. She'll swap them out for [Taunt] and [Intimidation]. Ava simply closes her eyes and wills the change and:

Well that looks a little better. At least she's no longer at risk of accidentally replacing her own throat with an acid-filled pump.

Time Remaining: 25 hours 36 minutes

Bach teaches her how to fashion a [Rope-Tool] and explains how she will use it to create a [Bow String] from the dried nettle fibers. Both recipes become instantly incorporated into her existing knowledge base.

The rope tool is a weird little contraption, very crudely constructed, essentially just a hunk of wood with sticks jutting out. Looking at it, Ava has no clue how it works, but once she sets her mind to creating the bow string her hands operate automatically, winding the nettle fibers around rhythmically, weaving them together into a tight cord.

Bach takes the finished product and tests it, putting one end beneath his boot and tugging at the other to create tension.

“Perfect,” he smiles, but then turns more serious. “Now for the moment of truth.”

She knows what he means. He passes the bow string back to her and for a moment she can't bear to look. What if she doesn't find a label? What if she's unable to summon strings by the dozens? They'll return to Cripple Creek with a single string, in that case. They'll ready for battle by crafting a single bow.

“Here goes nothing,” she says.

It only takes a moment for the label to appear:

Eureka, she thinks, and without a word she visualizes the ItemID in a magnitude of one-hundred. The strings materialize in her hand—stiff as uncooked spaghetti until the moment they become fully tangible—and then they suddenly flop in her grip, perfectly pliable. Bach shows her a huge smile.

“Eureka,” he says out loud and Ava does a double-take. Can he hear her thoughts?

Time Remaining: 24 hours 19 minutes

This beastman Bach takes up the yoke and drags his burden through the woods. For whatever reason, Ava is less anxious this crossing. Whether it's due to exhaustion, familiarity, or some newfound confidence – she does not know. Maybe it's easier this time because she has faith in Bach? Or maybe it's simply because he and the cart look like the largest creature in the forest and they're keeping all the littler critters back.

Still, the task of dragging it through the thick brush is laborious and they have to stop and rest more than once before they finally reach the wagon ruts. Bach cracks his neck – once to the left and again to the right.

“You could have put some padding on this yoke.”

Ava laughs. “You gave me the recipe. I just followed directions!”

“Yeah yeah, likely story,” he jokes, “but seriously, I'm comin' 'round to a newfound respect for all the plow-beasts out there. They need to form a union.”

They travel downhill but with spirits uplifted. Yesterday they set out to equip the people of Cripple Creek with at least some crude means of self-defense and they've accomplished the first part of that task in spades. They can only hope the villagers have had similar success with their preparations for war.

But before Ava and Bach even reach the rotten palisade surrounding town they cross paths with carts and wagons fleeing in a train. They are returning not to a hero's welcome but to contemptuous glares. An old woman curses and spits on Bach's shoes as she passes by.

“You two can fuck right off,” a man tells them while leading his burro-drawn cart, “not getting me killed. This is suicide; your stupid wooden weapons. Toys! And besides, there's no way you can arm the entire town. Horst is coming back here in less than a day and that's if you take him at his word. Could show up any minute to wipe this place off the map. Naw, you two can fuck right off.”

He tugs at his burro's tow-rope and they rejoin the procession of refugees. There are a dozen families, easy. It might be a quarter of the town's population, just giving up and getting out. Watching them go, Ava can't help but recall the miles of dead travelers stuck on the highway back in Canon City.

A hopeless exodus, she remembers Bach had called it.

“We've got to rally these people.” She watches them passing. “Have to show them it's going to be worth resisting.” But deep down, she has serious doubts. Deep down, she thinks maybe if they convince these people to stay and fight, they will all die.

“If we convince these people to stay and fight,” Bach begins, eyes gleaming, “they might all die alongside us.”

Chills course over Ava's entire body. Bach has read her mind again – but he doesn't appear bothered by the thought. Instead, he seems excited.

Time Remaining: 20 hours 26 minutes