I perused the skills for some time. There was an armorer skill that certainly captured my imagination. I could make armor from just about any found materials and they would have armor class based on my skill and the material used. It cost twenty-four soul points to open a new skill slot though, so I kept looking.

I was pretty positive Goar would choose the gunsmithing master for himself, so I cruised past that option. Another interesting option to me was bomb tech. I liked the idea of making bombs from scrap parts and decimating hordes of enemies. There were sticky bombs and bomb launchers and even amateur missiles. I wondered about the odds of finding a master that could teach me how to make a missile.

I received report of the available masters in the city by mid-afternoon. Shia and Goar were most eager to follow through with my plan. Based on the report I narrowed down the list. There were no programmers available in this city. There were also no tailors, not that I was interested in obtaining one. There was however a particularly peculiar engineer. He was an A-grade Master of Engineering.

As I received no report of a higher-grade master in the city, I made my choice. It could help in other skills I figured. Maybe it would make me a better bomb tech or armorer later. I spent the twenty-four soul points leaving me seven.

"You have seven soul points remaining." Tootsie said.

I looked through my attributes on my data pad. "It seems most of the attributes are linked to skills and needs," I observed. "What skill has the best effect on engineering?"

"Intelligence will make you more creative in the skill, while strength will make it easier to tool the parts you need for your vision." Tootsie answered.

"My strength looks pretty good. How about I use the six points to get another two points of intelligence." I said.

"You could use it." Tootsie mocked.

"I don't understand Toot whatever do you mean?" I allowed myself a smile.

I mentally accepted the prompt for two intelligence points. I felt a calmness wash over me. A rationality. A clarity. Like waking up. The observable difference in my thoughts was akin to driving out of a fog bank and seeing the road for the first time in miles. It was then that I truly began to grasp the gravity of the citation I was in.

I was in debt to the creator of the universe in which I existed. I owed him a lifetime of money. He had the ability to create creatures to hunt down and devour me. Oh, man. He could stretch out time itself upon me. Trap me in loops of horror I could hardly even comprehend. Here, in this place, he was God, and I was the ant, the plaything. I was playing with fire.

I stepped back until my back struck the wall. He was the creator of the pit. He had such overwhelming power that I could feel it radiating over me when I met him. I hadn't understood it then but now I was able to scratch the surface. He had power even over my intellect. What else was he throttling in me? The idea sent tremors through me.

"What is it?" Mia asked rushing over and placing a hand on my bicep to steady me.

I was swooning and pale. My mouth was dry, and I painted for air yet felt as if I were suffocating. I couldn't speak. My mind was racing. The shade, the three-headed dog, and the blanket of power I felt when Hermes was near all crashed into my mind like a boulder dropped from a cliff. This was not my game. He was in charge. He could do whatever he wanted with me, and I was just a boat with kiddie paddles in a white-water river about to careen off a cliff.

I felt like I would vomit and dropped to my knees. How do I get out? How do I stop this? Is there any way to quit, to pause this horrifying game? What was I even doing in this game? Why had I decided to play it? Did I even like games? I tried to remember what had led me to the decision to enter this reality, but my mind only offered up fragments of a broken life from someplace far away and long ago.

"I want out Tootsie." I crawled across the floor toward the hovering hummingbird. "Get me out of this game."

"You can't go up yet. You are too heavily sedated. You won't be able to wake up." She held her hands up defensively and back peddled.

"Get me out Tootsie. Get me out now, Dab it!"

"There is only one way." Tootsie ran backward into the wall and slid down to the floor.

I scrambled toward her growling.

"You have to go through." She covered her head with her feeble hands. "It's the only way." She cried.

I collapsed on the floor. I was too defeated to even crush the creepy bug. The debt was too much, my insufficient strength too glaring. It was the first time I had adequate reasoning to realize I was in over my head. I would never be strong enough to keep barreling through this game. Not alone. "I can't do this. I can't do this alone. I need you, Stella." I sobbed.

Mia placed her head on my chest as I lay sobbing. Goar grunted and sat down on the floor near me. His eyes grew red, and he stared down at the floor. The elves knelt at my sides and Thurnar put his hammer down and forced his boys to kneel beside me. Agatha Millie and Verim each stood to my side somber. Khan whimpered and crept toward me on his belly. Shia was the last to enter the room with the look of just waking up. She looked us over confused her hound at her side.

"If you are alone Barker," Mia whispered in my ear, "then we are that much more alone. We are here with you, for you. We have followed you through pits and bloodshed. If you don't see us here with you, then oh how lonely our existence is."

Khan licked my face with a tongue that washed me from neck to forehead all at once. "Aggh." I shoved the enormous dog back. I shook myself free of the depressing spirit and pushed myself up to lean on the wall. "The only way out is through. If you are with me, I see no other way forward than following through."

Goar lifted his head. "Broken bones and missing limbs couldn't keep me from the Rage Orc."

I rolled my eyes. "I'm not the rage Orc Goar."

"Ha!" Goar laughed. "And I'm a bull!" He slapped his leg at his joke.

"But you are a bull." I chuckled.

Goar stopped laughing and leaned toward me, "exactly."