“Enhanced Healing Touch!” I yelled. I poured six Magic Points into the spell, along with all my will and fear.

The divine energy flowed from my heart, down my limbs, into my hands…and stayed there. I didn’t feel that release of energy like every other time I cast the spell. It was like the energy in my hands was waiting for me to tell it what to do.

“Heal her!” I screamed at the energy.

It didn’t move. Then it vanished, and my hands felt cold.

“Why isn’t this working…?”

My forearm itched, and I turned it over. A pop-up in glowing red letters said:

Warning: Ancestral healing spells only work on living creatures.

I swiped the pop-up away and screamed again, “Enhanced Healing Touch!”

Again the energy stopped in my hands, and my forearm itched. I ignored the itch and said, “Constantine, get over here and—”

“I told ya, brother,” he said with a catch in his voice. “I got no more Magic Points left. Not for another hour. I… I can’t help her.”

“Stephen?” I said, feeling the panic in my voice and the tears forming in my eyes. “Come on, man, you got to have something.”

He just stared at her and slowly shook his head. “I don’t have anything that can bring her back,” he whispered.

Even Mace’s instincts told me there was nothing we could do now. Sonja’s half-closed eyes seemed to stare through me. When I looked at her, I didn’t see Sonja; I saw Melony. The same brown-haired girl that Barney had brought to one of our RPG nights twenty years ago. The one who showed me that people who loved nerdy things like Dungeons & Dragons were beautiful and fun and didn’t need to hide it. The one who taught me how to stand up on rollerblades for the first time in my life. Who got me to try sushi. Who I’d tried kissed at our five-year reunion. She’d pulled away from me, but later told Alec she wished I had tried again.

“Come on, guys! We’re in a fucking RPG world! There’s a spell for everything!”

Stephen and Constantine didn’t say anything or even flinch when I screamed at them. My friends could only stare helplessly at Sonja’s body.

Melony’s body, I corrected myself.

“We have to go back to the Spawn Room,” I said. I started making my way through the debris toward the hut’s exit.

Stephen and Constantine still didn’t move.

“You all coming or what?” I growled.

“It’s no use, brother,” Constantine said. “That was her last life. Sonja can’t regenerate.”

“Her name is Melony! And enough with that stupid Scottish accent! You are Tom and you”—I pointed to Stephen—“are Alec and I’m Chris. So you either come with me, or I’ll go myself.”

Constantine began, “Barney told us that—”

“I don’t care what Barney told us! How do we even know he’s right? All we have is the word of a hologram. And why isn’t he here with us anyway?”

Stephen put a hand on my shoulder.

“Chris,” he said quietly, and I heard Alec’s voice coming from Stephen’s thin lips. “We won’t find her in the Spawn Room. You must feel it, too.”

I did feel it. Mace’s instincts had been telling me since the moment I saw Sonja’s pale face and the blood pooling around her. But I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it.

“You don’t know that,” I said, with far less conviction than a second ago.

“She got three lives,” Stephen said. “Maybe…maybe she’s back in the cabin? Barney never said that if we died here, we died for real. Maybe she’s safe now.”

I thought back and tried to remember exactly what Barney said. And then a small measure of hope returned. “Barney said that we could only regenerate in the Spawn Room three times. He never said anything about only getting three lives. Right?”

Stephen glanced back at Constantine, who stood up straight now. The dwarf looked shaky and had to steady himself against some wrecked furniture. Both of them seemed to be thinking hard about what exactly Barney said.

Stephen chewed his cheek in thought. “That is what he said. I just assumed he meant we only had three lives.”

“Even if we can bring her back,” Constantine said, “how would we even do that? I have no spells that can raise the dead.”

“I do,” Stephen said. I looked at him hopefully but quickly realized the type of spell he meant. “Yeah,” he confirmed, “we don’t want a Sonja zombie no matter how much we love her.”

I felt instant revulsion from Mace over Stephen even joking about his necromancy magic, which was matched by my disgust at thinking of a shambling Sonja zombie.

“I might be able to help,” came a small voice behind us.

I turned and saw a battered female gnome standing in what was once the doorway to the building. Her gray hair was swept up into pointy curlicues on top of her small head. Soot covered her face, and a trickle of blood ran down her right temple. She wore dirty overalls made of gaudy, mismatched colors. A belt encircled her waist with leather pouches that looked similar to what Stephen wore. She looked like a munchkin grandma straight out of central casting from Wizard of Oz.

“How?” I asked.

The gnome bowed at the waist and said, “First, an introduction. I am Nissa Understump, Regional Director of Water Reclamation and Distribution. I am also a Grand Master of Up-dweller Lore and Divinity.” She nodded toward Sonja’s body. “Would she, by chance, be a Warrior of the Crimson Leaf?”

I looked at Stephen and Constantine, but they both shrugged.

“We don’t know what that is,” I said.

Nissa frowned in irritation. “Does she have a mark on her body somewhere? It looks like a triangle pointing down to a horizontal line?”

“Yes!” I said, remembering Sonja’s tattoo on her right thigh. “What does that mean?”

The gnome gave me an exasperated look. “It means she is a Warrior of the Crimson Leaf!”

“Does that mean you can help her, Director?” Constantine asked.

Nissa gave us a shrewd look and folded her little arms, suddenly looking like a crime boss about to shake down a restaurant for “protection money.”

“Perhaps,” she said. “If you agree to a bargain.”

“Name it,” I said. Even Mace cringed at my lack of wariness.

“If she is a marked Warrior of the Crimson Leaf, her gods will aid her spirit’s return to her body if she died in glorious combat. It takes quite a lot of expensive materials and magical will to perform this ritual, though. Quite expensive.”

“What do you want?” Stephen asked with the wariness I should’ve been projecting. “I have many components to use for payment—”

Nissa shook her head vehemently. “I have no use for your components, Krait wizard. I have all the components needed. What I want is for you to perform a task.” She narrowed her eyes and said, “I will call back your companion’s spirit…if you swear you will kill Trox and his goblins.”