“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” For a few seconds, Reeve didn’t even realize she was screaming, until she looked down at her father, who stared back up her arm, eyes wide, his tiny hands gripping her wrist with white knuckles. “I cannot believe this is happening!” She screamed. “We’re going to die, all of us, you for the I-don’t-know-how-manyieth time, and everyone’s going to watch, and then the nex is going to get hacked, and then my life will be over, and I’m only thirteen!” Reeve glanced up and saw they didn’t have long till she was close enough that Helia or the twins would be able to cast an accurately aimed offensive spell at them.

“Evie,” Walter said, “I’m sorry if this hasn’t been going well. I’ve been doing the best I can.”

“I don’t want you to do the best you can!” Reeve was starting to cry as she screamed at her father. Her steps faltered and she slowed to a stop. She put him down on his feet. “I want you to leave me alone and not ruin this world for me. I had this place, a place I loved, and I’m going to lose it, it’ll be just another thing I’ve lost, and then I’ll be trapped in my body IRL with you and Mom where I’ll have to live at home forever after I fail the math test and don’t get into college, and I won’t be able to get a job, and I won’t be able to leave the house or go online because everyone will know me from this.” She gestured at the world collapsing around her, her hand coming to rest pointed toward her father’s ridiculous little avatar.

Walter straightened his robe and brushed unseen dirt from its front. He looked up at Reeve and took a deep breath. “I am sorry, Reeve. I know this hasn’t been fun for you, and that’s been really hard for me to bear…partly because, even though we’re stuck here, it’s been nice for me to get to spend so much time with you. See you happy, some of the time, and able to do so many amazing physical things.” He looked away from her, first toward the advancing columns of elves, then the remnants of their party encircled by enslaved souls, and finally toward Helia and the twins, who had begun to form a tight triangle as they neared him and his daughter. “And I know I haven’t always been able to do what you needed me to in here,” he glanced at Reeve, “well, because I stink at this game. But, I’ve always tried, and everything I’ve done has been to try to help you.”

Reeve closed her eyes.

“Is there anything I can do, Honey?” Walter said. “Try to do?”

Reeve opened her eyes and squatted to look into her father’s face, tears running down her own creased, pewter cheeks. “You know what, I don’t even care. I can’t worry about it anymore.” She waved an arm through the air. “I’ve spent the whole time I’ve been in here worrying what you’re doing and how it’d look if anyone ever saw my feed. The whole time it’s felt like I’ve screwed up and the whole school is watching.” She glanced at the triangle of casters almost to them. “Well, I’m done! Done! Over! You do whatever you’re going to do. Everyone’s already watching. I can’t stop them. This is all a nightmare, but I’m going to at least try to stop Helia so that I’m not also the kid who let the nex be destroyed. Why don’t you just stay out of the way and try not to die too many times and pretty soon we’ll probably be locked up in a dungeon in Helia’s new empire, and then, at least for a while, I won’t be able to learn what’s being said about me IRL. And you,” she stared at him, “will have all kinds of time to spend with me.”

Reeve wiped her face with the forearm of her robe, stood, and turned toward Helia, who slowed and stopped a dozen yards away, the twins—Reeve’s twins—at her side. Both twins had already begun some sort of cast and held it ready, but Reeve didn’t know whether it was offensive or defensive, and, either way, she was outmatched—solo against three casters, at range, without her bow. There was no chance she’d get close enough for melee without them getting hits in on her. Probably fatal ones.

Light blazed on Reeve’s right side, and she flinched as a fireball passed. With a small frown, Helia made a gesture with one hand and the fireball was diverted toward the ground, where it clanked loudly and fizzled, the bee smoker at its core rolling noisily until it came to rest near the hem of the elf’s robe.

Reeve glanced back at her father, who stood behind her a few paces. He was wearing his bee veil, and his expression was disappointed but determined. She looked back to Helia and raised her naginata.

“You,” Helia said to Walter, mirth in her voice, “will need to do better than a little—“

A shadow buzzed past Reeve toward Helia and the twins. Not a shadow, Reeve realized. A cloud of approximately thirty-thousand bees. Reeve’s own eyes widened and she glanced again at her father, who held a hive-tree pointed toward Helia like a wand.

“I still really, really do not like bees,” Walter said.

“Then what are you doing?” Reeve stamped a foot and felt tears warming her cheeks again. “Just let me do this by myself, and you go somewhere where you can keep your bees safely in your Inventory. I just want you to leave me alone!”

“My Inventory,” Walter said, seemingly to himself. He looked up at Reeve, his eyes making rapid little motions as he thought. “I have almost three million bees in my inventory.” With his free hand, he whipped another hive-tree from his Inventory and sent a cloud of bees past Reeve.

Following their trajectory, Reeve saw that Helia and the twins were, with obvious annoyance but no sign of panic, finishing sculpting a spherical shield, around which the first swarm of bees was ineffectual bouncing.

“Three million bees is a lot of bees,” Reeve said quietly. “Even if you sent a few more at Helia, you’d have—“

“Approximately two million, eight hundred and fifty thousand,” Walter said. “Considering the one hive we left in the armory.”

Reeve looked past her father toward the line of elves approaching both them and her party, who still fought the enslaved souls. “Even if Helia’s camp has five thousand elves—“

“That,” Walter said, “would be five hundred and seventy bees per elf.” He nodded once. “I…am an Accountant.”

”An innovative Pyromaniac Apiculturist Accountant,” Reeve said. She looked back at Helia, who was slightly hard to make out through the sphere of frustrated bees, now that the second hive had spread itself over the shield. “Send two more at her, then do what you can with the elf army, OK?”

“I’ll do my best, Evie,” Walter said.

Reeve looked down at her father. “I know.”

Walter dropped the two hive-trees he held and pulled two new ones from his Inventory.