1

The teammates woke early the next day, all within thirty minutes of each other. Kylah rose with Harper while Hammer and Sierra stayed in the tent the longest.

The veteran mage glanced at Zack. “Wasn’t Hammer supposed to do the overnight?”

The orc frowned and stomped into the tent. “You two, get up! Hammer, I thought you were guarding!”

In the background, Jackson cackled at the Marine’s brash wake-up call while the two rookies shambled out of the tent. As they rubbed the sleep from their eyes, Kylah touched Harper’s hand. “Someone’s missing.”

Harper surveyed the members and could sense the same thing, but she couldn’t immediately pinpoint who was absent.

“It’s Heinrich,” Sierra said as shocked revelation bloomed on her face. “He relieved me and Hammer in the middle of the night.”

After attempting to telepath him, the teammates scanned the surrounding landscape, which was covered with a thick layer of morning mist. They shouted his name, but there was no reply. Zack looked at the campfire, which was still burning but low, and could tell that it hadn’t been tended to for hours. “Oh, man. This is bad,” he said.

The team scampered down the knoll and dispersed into a wide circle, twenty feet apart. They spread out in an increasingly larger radius, searching for the German nurse. Ten minutes later, Rachel screamed from the western side of the forest.

2

“What happened to him?” Zack asked as the teammates gathered around Heinrich’s corpse. After seeing the body, Nevan corralled Kylah before she could get close to the remains. They stood forty feet away.

Heinrich floated face-up in a shallow and muddy pool. Seaweed had been wrapped around his swollen corpse, which was already turning blue. His pale, opaque eyes stared vacantly at a sky he would never see again. Something had ripped apart and eaten much of his thighs and calves. Veins, still loosely attached to his body, floated like dead worms in the brown water.

“Was he attacked, or did he drown?” Lorenzo asked.

“That’s barely enough water to drown in,” Zack groaned.

Sierra glanced at the veteran orc. “I think it was the nøkken that killed him. The creatures that looked like dead bodies in the river.” She pointed at the seaweed that covered Heinrich’s corpse. “They had that stuff all over them.”

Harper nodded. “Yeah, they also had the strangest stats I’ve seen yet. Very uneven with a huge amount of mana. They must have used some kind of magic to kill him.”

Zack waded into the water, pulled Heinrich’s corpse out, and grimaced as he held the dead healer in his arms. Seaweed slipped off the body and splatted into the muddy water. Heinrich’s swollen skin pressed like rubber against the orc’s arms. “Let’s give him a decent burial,” Zack said.

3

They buried Heinrich at the top of the knoll, then divided into the same eastern and western search groups. Zahra was added to Damon’s crew to balance out the two eight-person units. Before they separated, Harper warned the two groups that they were likely to run into the Dryads that day. “Their spell sounds like Song of Distraction, except it’s a lot more subtle,” she informed the team. “So, if you hear music, watch out.”

“How will we spot them?” Lorenzo asked.

Harper glanced at the Grimalkin hunter. “You probably won’t. At least not until they start moving. They’re camouflaged as trees.”

While the two groups clambered down the small hill, Lorenzo lingered at the top. He knelt beside Heinrich’s grave and seemed to mouth the words to a prayer.

Zack strode up to Harper. “Is he doing what I think he’s doing?” he whispered.

Before the veteran mage could answer, Lorenzo made the sign of the cross on his chest. Then he stood and walked down the slope unassumingly. He looked at the members gathered at the bottom of the knoll. “Sorry, I should’ve done that earlier. I didn’t mean to make you wait.”

4

While Damon’s group headed east, Harper led her crew north. She and Zack were the only members of her crew with MPR rates high enough to use Mana Reject. They cast it on themselves, knowing it would protect them against the Dryad’s entrancing spells. Then they dispersed into a wide row again, still searching for human remains, but the group’s enthusiasm had waned with Heinrich’s death.

Harper had Kylah and Nevan positioned next to her in the line-up. The young girl had taken the morning’s events hard, sobbing uncontrollably at first, then completely shutting down and not speaking to anyone. Harper didn’t know how to help, but she wanted to stay close to Kylah as she muddled through the wet terrain like a lost soul. Nevan would occasionally glance at Harper, silently communicating his concern for his daughter.

As they trudged through the swamp, Kylah gazed at the veteran mage. Harper, I don’t want to be here, she telepathed. Why did they force me into the realms? What am I going to d—

“I never thought I’d see someone die like that,” Thao said from Harper’s left, distracting her.

The veteran mage looked at her, incensed. She quickly peeked at Kylah, but the young girl was back in her shell again. Harper wanted to scream at Thao. This is what we fucking warned you about. Then she remembered what it had been like for her, as a former gamer, in her first days. The veteran mage had gone into the mission with a considerable amount of hubris. Then she’d felt the early pressure of being pigeon-holed as a team leader. Miguel, another gamer, had helped her deal with those pressures. He’d helped her focus on her role amidst the profound dangers that existed in their new world. Still, when he died a few days later, Harper couldn’t believe it. That was when the realms became real for her.

She glanced at Thao, knowing that the Vietnamese recruit was a gamer as well. “It can happen to any one of us. It may be harder for you because you’re used to none of this meaning anything. You die in any other game and you get to start over.” Harper took a long step to avoid a deep pool of water. “You can’t do that here,” she finished, feeling trite for have stated the obvious.

Thao pushed the red hair from her eyes. Harper could see her tears gleam in the early morning sun.

“It’s going to seem surreal,” the veteran advised her. “But hopefully, this will make you stronger and more prepared for what’s ahead.”

Thao smiled at her but said no more.

Harper’s group continued to hike north through the flooded terrain, but it was a wretched ordeal. Each member was soaked up to their waist. She considered suggesting the rookies start hunting. There were rabbits and birds in plain view, waiting to be had, but she understood it was more important to not push the members. They’ll have lots of opportunities to level up when we get to the tower, she thought.

Sierra called over from her far left. “Ugh. How are we supposed to find DNA in this gunk?”

Harper sympathized then checked on Kylah again. The teenager plodded through the woods with an expression of utter despondency.

“I won’t let anything happen to you,” Harper told the young girl, who looked up at her and forced a smile, but the hopelessness remained.

Harper’s group pushed through the woods silently for the next twenty minutes then Damon telepathed her. He mentioned that they had recovered human bodies near the valley’s ridge.

Did you get the samples? Harper asked, and the orc general confirmed that they had. Okay, watch out for the Dryads. We encountered them on your side of the forest.