All three of my friends came back together, ughing about something.

  The ughter stopped when they saw me, slumped in my own human form on one end of a couch, my gift-house-box resting on a table next to me.

  “Nathan?” Serru said, in sudden arm. “What happened?” She hastened over to sit next to me, one leg tucked up so she could face me, a hand on my shoulder.

  “It’s more like what almost happened,” I said ftly. “It’s almost certainly dangerous to be anywhere near me, and I don’t want you in danger.” My hands knew on their own what to do with my begleri-ish toy, which kept them busy and channelled at least some emotional energy outward instead of inward.

  She blinked. “What? Where did that come from?”

  “One step at a time, please,” Aryennos said, sitting on the opposite couch, or at least perched on the edge of it. “That’s a huge leap that is going to need something underneath it to support it.”

  Terenei joined him, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees in a swirl of bright fabric that shimmered between gold and red. “You’re being very dramatic,” he observed. “I haven’t known you as long as Serru, but that seems out of character.”

  “I’m not trying to be dramatic,” I said. “The zombie from st night came back, with two others. The Zombie King intended to raid Ottermarsh. Steal some things, steal some people. I’m guessing that’s the kind of thing you found in the history that you didn’t want to talk about.”

  Serru’s eyes widened, and Terenei flinched.

  “Yes,” Aryennos said. “He used to do that a lot, according to the records. Reading first-hand accounts from survivors is seriously uncomfortable. It’s a rare event now, no one’s sure why.”

  “Boredom, would be my best guess. You guys don’t fight back enough to keep the game challenging. I don’t know, maybe there was something else too. But he was going to do it here, where I am, with the zombie he sent to talk to me st night.”

  “He was going to,” Serru repeated. “He intended to. But if he was in Ottermarsh, people would have run to the school, and we saw nothing out of pce, and I don’t think you’d be just sitting here if people were in danger.”

  “I stopped them. After the second Quincunx site, my centaur healing abilities got stronger and I got new ones. One of them is a Purification spell that says it removes everything that doesn’t belong.”

  “So presumably a combined Cleanse, Antidote, and Panacea,” Terenei said. “As far as I know, that can’t be a stable potion, because they have an unfortunate tendency to neutralize each other. And it does have to be swallowed, since two of three only work that way. A personal skill version can be used against zombies?”

  I nodded. “They died properly. But given the way he’s following me and behaving... well, if I’m right about the kind of person he is, this could go two ways. If he sees me as potential competition, then it would be a fun new challenge to goad me into a contest and prove how big and bad he is by defeating me. Given the things he said about me having healing magic and a female centaur form, he might also just get aggressive because he’s offended that I exist and I’m breathing the same air. It’s...” I sighed. “I don’t know how to expin this?” I’d tried when I was alone. Words for gender identity and orientation didn’t transte. There literally was no terminology for it—and while that could be a bad sign of intense social repression, it rather obviously wasn’t.

  “Concepts from your world are often strange,” Serru said, “but I’ve so far always managed to grasp the general idea eventually, although rarely the mindset behind them. Do what you can.”

  “There are... there are old and stupid and rigid rules about men and women being absolutely different. Which anatomy you’re born with is supposed to define who you are. What jobs you can have, who you can be sexually attracted to, what you can wear, which emotions you can express, and ultimately what your status is since it assumes that men are superior and women should basically belong to one man and stay home to support him and raise his children. People lose jobs or get rejected by their families or are targets of aggression and violence for not following those rules. It’s a frustratingly fundamental aspect of the culture I was born into.”

  “That doesn’t sound pleasant for anyone,” Terenei said.

  “I’m with you on that, but there are a lot of people fighting tooth and nail to force a very extreme version of that into reality, more extreme than it ever actually was in the history they’re ciming as justification. They can’t stand the fact that recently, more and more people have been rejecting those rules and deciding on their own who they want to be and how they want to live. Don’t ask me how some people demanding the freedom to be themselves somehow means less freedom for the people who are insisting on tradition. The only thing they lose is permission to be cruel and violent towards people who are different. I’m fairly sure that I know which group of people from my world the Zombie King is from. Most of the people who py games like him are fine, just regur folks, but there’s a minority that are... bad. They’re all male, they consider women inferior and useful only if they’re sexually attractive and silent and submissive, and they can be very aggressive. They’ve done some pretty appalling things.”

  “That isn’t exactly a surprise,” Aryennos said. “About him, I mean.”

  “He’s already aware that I have healing magic. Anything involving healing is usually associated with women except for some limited high-status skills historically exclusive to men. In the games he pys... you haven’t heard about those, Terenei.”

  “Serru mentioned them,” he said. “When we saw people pying a board game she said that you had told her that some games from your world involve pretending to be someone else and there are many rules and they often include a lot of simuted violence.”

  “That’s a reasonable summary. In the games he pys, to the people in his social group, as far as I understand it which isn’t very well, you get the most respect if you have a character who is aggressive and fights enemies at close range. You get some respect for a character that has... who can stay at a distance and throw objects or magic, because at least you’re doing some damage. The least respect goes to support csses, which includes people who do healing. He already thinks he’s living in a game world where no one is real except him and maybe the Moss Queen. He knows I’m real but to him, I’m a support css.”

  “And your centaur form is female, as well,” Serru said.

  “That too. He’s tracking me somehow, even though he didn’t know until today that I have a female centaur form. I’ve been...” I took a deep breath. The others waited quietly, as attentive an audience as anyone could ask for, and clearly doing their best to grasp what I was saying despite the alien concepts. “I have... I’ve had problems before with people like him. I can’t remember how long ago I figured out that I really don’t care if someone is a man or a woman or identifies somewhere else on the scale, that isn’t one of the things that determines whether I’m sexually attracted to them. That’s considered unacceptable by some people. Not my family, at least, they’re fine with it.” My parents and sister had all liked Lee a lot, and it was mutual. “And when I was a teenager, I started questioning what it actually meant to be male, or not. For a while I experimented a bit with clothes and jewellery and makeup that are usually associated with women, and that was... that felt right. Not restricting myself to either gender, just pying around with whatever colour or style caught my eye and suited my mood that day. But that got me into some really unpleasant confrontations, although I managed to avoid any physical fights.”

  Terenei started to say something, paused, then closed his mouth, forehead furrowed.

  “I don’t even want to think what would happen to you in my world,” I told him. “The right friends would appreciate you and the right pce to live would be safer but there would still be people who would never accept you. Which would be their loss but not a lot of fun for you. Okay. There is a reason I’m trying to expin something this huge and complicated right now. He said things about the Quincunx... about what it sees inside me. I think he’s going to take the fact that I have healing magic as being inferior, less than... not the way a male should be to get respect, and use the other forms I have as proof of that. My centaur form is female and my felid form is small and slender and definitely not what he would consider strong. So either he’s going to see me as competition to test himself against, which I think is less likely, or he’s going to target me because the kind of person he is feels more powerful by saying and doing bad things to the kind of person I am. Either way, it is very probable that he’s also going to attack anyone close to me and that means the people travelling with me and helping me, and I really desperately do not want that to happen.”

  “I guess that means,” Terenei said, “that you’re going to try to stop me from coming along when you leave Ottermarsh.”

  “What? Yes, it does mean that! Adding more people is the exact opposite of my whole point. You’re supposed to be staying here for a few days and then going home!”

  “Nurea doesn’t need me. I didn’t really think she would, but promising to stay nearby made her feel better. I expected a short vacation, really. But I like you and I’d like to help any way I can and it’s a better reason than some to actually do a little travelling, and you can get pces faster if you have a wagon and a couple of ornithians. Well, somewhat faster, at least, depending on the roads and terrain. Less walking, at least.”

  “And it puts you, and the ornithians, also in danger! I’ve learned enough from Serru about gathering that I can probably manage well enough to keep buying travel food and tents and stay fed by myself, long enough to reach the rest of the Quincunx sites. There are maps, there must be one that shows where they are. I can get in and out of towns fast so it doesn’t draw his attention. It would be a lot safer for you if I just go alone, because if you get hurt trying to help me, I’m... I just... just no.”

  “I am not leaving you alone,” Serru said calmly. “I promised you I would help you get to the five Quincunx sites. I will do exactly that. I am no more afraid of the Zombie King, or of the Moss Queen, now than I was yesterday or a month ago. Those two simply exist. They are extremely unpleasant, but they always have been. If you intend to stay out of settlements, then you certainly need someone who knows how to find paths and survive in the wilds.”

  “If you have a skill that can unzombify zombies,” Aryennos said, “then the safest pce to be is close to you. Besides, I’m not giving up on the chance to keep a record of all this. To help future newcomers, remember?”

  “It sounds like the best solution,” Terenei said, “is to get through the sites quickly. My family is responsible for a dey, but it should be possible to make up for that, at the very least, and likely more. If there’s some danger, well, we all know that. I’ve seen paramedics and wardens risk their own safety to help someone who needs them, and I wouldn’t believe you if you told me that you never have and never will again. Others can make the same kind of choice, that some risk is worth it.”

  “You are not getting rid of us,” Serru said firmly. “You are a good person who deserves to get home to your family and your girlfriend and your life with as little dey as possible. So your friends here will make certain that happens, no matter how badly we’ll miss you.”

  I sighed. I didn’t really want to be alone, but the thought of harm coming to them because helping me brought them onto the radar of someone who, back home, almost certainly was the sort of person who made male gamers look bad... that made me physically nauseous. Honestly, I should have just left while they were out—sold the house-in-a-box and anything else I didn’t immediately need, stocked up on tents and travel bars, bought a map that showed the Quincunx sites, and left them a note. I had a reasonable grasp of how things worked.

  But if anything unexpected happened, odds were high I’d have no idea how to handle it. ‘I’m lost, I was born near here but I’ve spent my whole life far away and I died, I need to get home’ would only go so far and it would start leaking fast if I had to fill in any details.

  And what if the Zombie King went after them behind my back? Pulled a bad movie plot twist by confronting me with my friends, zombified, outside of a Quincunx site?

  “You’re absolutely not going to listen to me on this, are you?”

  “Only insofar as the need to be alert,” Serru said. “If you try to leave alone, I can and will track you and follow you.”

  “I’d rather have you where I can see you.” I wrapped my arm around her, and she let her hand fall so she could lean on my shoulder. “All right, I know when I’ve lost, but please, please, be careful.”

  “Staying out of reach of zombies and mosslings is a lot like not putting one’s hand in a campfire,” Terenei said. “It isn’t something we’re likely to forget. And it’s easier when not alone.”

  “I’ll do my best to stay out of trouble,” Aryennos said. “I promise.”