“Die, witch!”

  The goblin’s screech was an irritating drill in Milly’s ear. Lazily dodging the goblin’s knife with an agile sidestep, Milly drove her fist into its stomach. Its ribs shattered as it rocketed into the air and splattered into the side of the mountain. Its corpse slid down the rocks and left a thick trail of blood behind.

  Did these things talk before? Luna must have added that feature. I liked it better when they didn’t say anything.

  A spark of magic flowed from her fists into her magic reserves as the goblin died.

  These Obsidian Fists are pretty good. That magic absorption was enough for a blast of fire or two. Now, where are those other two?

  The goblin’s companions came at her from behind, their rusted spears thrust forward. Leaping six feet into the air, Milly jumped over the two goblins, clearing their heads by a foot. They stumbled as their spears passed through the empty space where Milly once been. She landed behind them and smashed their heads together before they had time to recover.

  Two more sparks of magical energy flowed into her.

  They move so slowly, as if they were trudging through molasses. Or are they moving at a normal pace, and I’ve grown accustomed to my new strength and speed?

  The goblin’s leader shrieked in anger as it charged at Milly, its bone club raised above its head to strike.

  “The last time I fought one of you goblin leaders, you hit me in the head with a rock,” Milly accused as she waited for the goblin to reach her. It felt agonizingly slow, and Milly found herself distracted by the knee-high wooden chest in the middle of their camp, as if the goblin leader were unimportant.

  I hope that chest contains better stuff than the last one. I swear, Luna, if I get one more goblin loincloth as a reward, I’m going to dump them all over your bed once I find a backdoor. Then you can deal with that stench.

  The goblin finally arrived, and Milly blocked the club mid-swing with one palm. There was a sharp slap as the club struck, but Milly didn’t feel any pain. It was as if she had caught a foam pool noodle swung by a toddler.

  Grabbing the goblin by its tunic and yanking it off its feet, she hurled it against the mountain beside its splattered companion. By the time she heard the sharp crack of its neck, she was already kneeling beside the wooden chest.

  “God damn it, Luna,” Milly swore, but she couldn’t stop a small smile from forming she pictured the child in her control room, giggling with childhood mischief.

  Milly opened the chest, tilting her head slightly to avoid the poisoned dart that shot from the latch. Even the dart felt like it moved slowly.

  These monsters around the Castle aren’t a challenge anymore, and Luna doesn’t seem to be rewarding players whose levels far outstrip their enemies. I need to get further away if I want this to be worth my while. Cally and I can start this afternoon.

  Milly peeked inside the chest and sighed.

  “Yay,” she said with heavy sarcastically. “Another one.”

  She held up the small brass ring and read its description.

  “Sorry, Grock,” Milly sighed as she added the ring to her inventory alongside the six identical rings she had found that morning. “No recognition today. When I first got here, that ring would have raised my strength by fifty percent, but that’s feels like a lifetime ago.”

  So much has changed in three weeks. Am I even the same person I was back then?

  She picked up the chest and turned it upside down over her inventory screen. The thirty gold coins inside cascaded into her screen and were added to her total gold.

  “Huh, no loincloths this time,” she said. She carefully sniffed the inside of the chest, which smelled of cedar and metal.

  “Finally! One that doesn’t smell like goblin nether regions,” Milly beamed as she dropped the entire chest into her inventory. “Cally will love this. It’ll fit perfectly at the foot of our bed.”

  Look at me, picking out stuff for my home. Our home. With my girlfriend. Three weeks ago, I was just drifting through life, with a dead-end job and a dilapidated apartment filled with recycled furniture I’d found in dumpsters. Trapped, without love and without purpose. Now? I… I think I’m actually enjoying my life.

  “Although,” Milly laughed as she left the goblin’s campsite and continued down the canyon. “I guess now I’m still finding furniture on the street, in a way. Some habits are hard to break. It is a nice chest.”

  The mid-morning sun had just crested above the eastern mountain, its light flooding the mountain to the west and down into the canyon below. She had left at first light, through the Arena of Choice Waypoint Pillar, and headed north into the mountains to explore. She had spent the morning crisscrossing through canyons and valleys and along animal trails that led through thick pine forest.

  She could cover the distance much faster than she could when they had first defeated the Arena of Choice, but the paths beyond the Arena were so meandering that it was hard to keep track of where she had been. Even after all the exploration of the morning, she knew she was no more than half an hour from the pillar.

  “I need to push further out if I want better than these shitty items and experience,” she mused, thinking on the collection of useless rings, boots, tunics, and an absolute heap of goblin loincloths that had found their way to her inventory that morning. There were goblin encampments and patrols all over the mountains, though none had proven to be a challenge for the Witch of the Castle of Glass.

  The items she collected were completely useless, save to give to those players who still, after three weeks, had not ventured beyond the Castle of Glass. She had hoped the items could fuel her Oracle’s Divination, but she quickly learned the talent’s effectiveness was proportional to the strength of the item she sacrificed. She had tried to divine the location of the closest back door with one of Grock’s Pitiful Rings, but all it had told her was that it was not beneath her feet.

  At least I can sell them at the Emporia for some gold. We… oh, for fuck sakes!

  She reached the end of the canyon, where a tiny waterfall trickled down the cliff. It was her fifth dead end that morning.

  These mountains are a maze. No wonder no one has explored more than an hour beyond Pillar yet. It’s just dead end after dead end!

  The early section of the mountain terrain – the forested land between the Castle of Glass and the Waypoint Pillar, had been easy to traverse, as if it had been a normal mountain range. However, beyond the Pillar, it became far more complex. A natural – or unnatural – range of mountains stretched from east to west, so tall that the mountains’ tree line only reached a fifth of the way up their slopes. Their summits, which pierced the clouds, were covered with thick, icy blue glaciers. Avalanches crashed in the distance as fragments of glacier cracked off and hurled down the steep mountain slopes.

  "All things are difficult before they are easy."

  Thomas Fuller, English Clergyman

  Milly had tried to climb over one of the mountains to avoid the maze of passageways altogether, but as she moved past the tree line, an unnatural storm had come out of nowhere to drive her back. Her magic had been useless against it, and she had been forced back the forest – back into the maze.

  “I hope that means there’s something good beyond those mountains, Luna,” Milly mumbled as she stared up at the high cliffs. “Unless Hephaestus designed it just to fuck around with the players.”

  Or perhaps it was Cizen. Shit, how much of this world did the decayed god create? We need to find more of Oracle’s memory orbs. We need to know the story, so we can find out how to win this contest. And what awaits us in the wilds.

  Milly pressed her palm to the stone wall of the canyon and used her magic to shape the stone into a series of handholds. Pulling herself up the cliff like a master rock climber, she hauled herself onto to the top of the canyon and looked around for another way forward. She spotted an animal path heading north through the forest and decided to follow it.

  “I’ve got time for one more before I meet up with Cally,” she said, undeterred. “Maybe this will take me where I want to go.”