I climbed the steep incline and paused to hike up my burden. A rap on the top of my head was followed by Old Fang’s querulous voice, “Rau’dajal, stop bouncing me like an infant!”

  “If you hit me like that again, I’ll drop you,” I growled, but slowed my pace from a jolting stride to a slower walk.

  The old man weighed less than a backpack loaded with a laptop and manuals. Alright, lighter than that in my old body. He’d started out by holding onto my hair like a horse’s mane. I made sure he cut that out right quick. I wasn’t his goddamn mount.

  The mountain pass was treacherous, but we had finally reached the ledge where a little rest stop perched. From there, we could see the shining ocean. I was just admiring the view when Old Fang grabbed my ear. Always the same ear. The one the rat tore. Did it have a ‘Grab Here,’ tattoo I didn’t know about?

  “Why?” I barked as he yanked harder, forcing me to turn my head to look up the steep slope.

  The trees shuddered. The crumbling dirt and cracks in the schist trembled. Sprigs of scraggly weed and grass clung there, shivering. I heard rhythmic thumping before I saw what it was through the shuddering underbrush, my stomach clenching in a knot.

  Large green forms bounded frantically down the mountain towards the pass. Dozens of them. A shriek pierced the sky, a shadow passing over us. The giant hawk, with HP that made district lords look like child’s play flashing across my HUD kicked my heart into overdrive.

  Old Fang bounced on my back, arm clamping around my neck. I gagged at the press of his bony arm on my throat, but I got the point. Run, dumbass.

  I dashed along the path full tilt across the oncoming swarm. I didn’t know if these bug-things were related to the people down by the hives, Zeke’s cousins, or something else entirely. The World Boss Hawk liked to eat insects. Old Fang and I were busy being green right next to the bug buffet. It was a bad situation to get mixed up in.

  Dirt flew under my feet. I leapt a deep crag and came down running, splitting my attention between the oncoming herd of insects, the sky, and the terrain. To my left, the cliff dropped; the painful, likely deadly way down. To my right, the impossibly steep treed hill with the oncoming swarm bursting through the underbrush.

  I ducked and swiveled as a grasshopper about my size bounded past me, wings bursting from its carapace. Wings whomping like helicopter blades, it leapt off the cliff.

  Lucky them. When they got to the ledge, they could just fly down to the trees below to regain cover. At least, that’s what I thought.

  The bird divebombed after the first one to break the cover of trees, shooting past us with a downdraft hard enough to buckle my knees. I glanced at it, then snapped a look back at the hill as the dozen or so grasshoppers pinged and skittered right at us. I dropped to the ground and rolled, curling up. Something slammed down onto me, punching the wind out of my lungs, but it was gone as quickly as it hit.

  Old Fang held onto me the entire time. His silence was what struck me after the moment was over. If he hadn’t been choking me to death, I would’ve worried that he got hurt somehow. After the grasshopper herd had passed, the last straggler bounced off a few hundred feet down the path before disappearing into the undergrowth of the mountain path, I lay on my side, considering the brevity of the moment.

  And breath. Being able to breathe again would be nice.

  I hooked a hand around Old Fang’s wrist and pried his arm free enough to escape him. Rolling away to my knees, I faced him and asked, “Did you break a hip in that fall, or are you alright?”

  He elbowed up and scowled at me, then spat to the side.

  “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  He’d been wiping his lips with the back of his hand when I spoke. He paused and snorted, “You don’t speak when danger is near. You roar at it, or you stay silent. You know so little. How are you still alive?”

  “I come from a—less dangerous place,” I sighed, looking at the ledge. If the boss bird reappeared, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to snap up Old Fang and get to the trees before it got us.

  I got to my feet and offered him a hand up. The cane he’d been carrying on a strap over his shoulder swung as he stood, and he turned to inhale the salty air, then slammed his palms into his chest with a grin.

  “Ah, yes. That’s the stuff. Feel it?”

  I frowned, head tilting with confusion.

  “That heat! Get’s the blood flowing,” He pointed a gnarled finger at me. “Warrior’s blood surges with it.”

  “Adrenaline?” I said, using the English word, because I didn’t know the Orcish equivalent.

  He spat again when I used a foreign language. “Bloodrage, idiot! Do you feel nothing?”

  “I thought that was just for fighting,” I muttered, turning to kneel so he could climb back up on my back.

  “It’s for life, Rau’dajal.” His arm went around my shoulder, and I caught his legs, lifting him.

  “Life?” I tried to wrap my head around it. Most people avoided the rush of adrenaline unless it was in pursuit of something they thought of as fun. Subjective experience kind of thing.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “Life.” He said with certainty. “You know you are still alive when you feel bloodrage.”

  Were we alive?

  In a System construct, with everything we encountered—everything we were—was crafted in code…

  Were we alive?

  I carried him down the path. He felt heavier than before. Or, maybe it was just my thoughts that weighed so much.

  At the base of the mountain, where the ground changed from rock and loam to earth and sand, I set him down. Old Fang hobbled along, cane tapping with a dry thunk, like a metronome. I shifted my attention to my HUD, which I’d gotten used to ignoring when not in party chat or a fight. Funny how a couple of weeks with something so constant turned it into background noise. At first it was too much, and I couldn’t take in everything it gave me. Now? Ignorable.

  I reached out to the others in party chat.

  Hey. I’m in Shardshore with Voj’Kasak. Heads up, in case anyone comes to Tidesong. He’s old af and racist as hell. Not too bad for a Salt Spear orc, tho.

  Elora: He can’t be too bad, if he likes you. I want to meet him.

  Akilah: I’m sorry, Akilah can’t come to the party chat right now, busy creating genius!

  Frag: Also busy creating genius.

  Jake: OMW

  Fig: OMW2 (also snacks)

  I stopped walking. Old Fang took a step past me and turned with a frown.

  “Woolgathering?” He clucked and started off again, cane tapping as he shuffled through the sparse trees towards the Queen’s house.

  Shit. I needed Frag to come. I had no translator. The hell was I thinking?

  Frag, I need your help, buddy. Please? I can’t talk to the Queen without you. All our future plans will be ruined if I get stuck in Shardshore. The Arena plan will fall through if she can’t understand what Voj’Kasak tells her. You can go back to helping Akilah after.

  I remembered most how Hythsaa clung to me the second I sat down. I could not envision the script the System had set for me. Didn’t want to. The more it pushed me, the more I wanted to fight my way out. It drove me to Zayan, to Ashwynn, Hythsaa, and even Urda, trying to make me align with a Convergent City faction on its terms.

  So far, I’d rewritten every script it forced on me.

  Old Fang had gotten a few dozen steps ahead of me by the time I started walking again. Waiting on Frag’s response, I caught up to him in a few strides. Was Akilah keeping him there, or did he just not want to get in the middle of this? He’d helped me out before, but he didn’t owe me anything.

  Skaama.

  I scrubbed my face with a palm and let it go. Either Frag would show up or he wouldn’t. I’d figure out a way, regardless. Trees thinned to reveal the vista. With each step the ground turned sandier. The grasses flowed in a dry, ever-present whisper in the breeze. I inhaled the ocean air rolling off the crystal-studded shore. Like Heartland, Shardshore had grown on me.

  The people were less tricksy in the ocean district, but it wasn’t home. Though Bauring Dath felt closest, it could not be. I would not forget that—could not forget the place I’d come from, the place where I truly belonged.

  “Her house?” Old Fang asked, squinting at the long, low teak building. Its wide windows were large enough to see the ocean through them from the mountain’s side.

  I nodded grimly, the breeze pushing my hair back, catching in the gaps of my armor, whispering warm promises. There was an energy to the air that I hadn’t sensed the last time I was in Shardshore. Maybe there was something to Tidesong, something deeper. I hopes it wouldn’t be something like Magara the Blood Hungry, though I wouldn’t have been surprised at this point in the System’s game.

  Wasn’t even about the System. It was people. Didn’t matter what they looked like, they all had something twisted going on under the surface. Stuff they’d brought with them from their cultures, stuff the System continued to allow them, for whatever reason.

  I led Old Fang down the slope to the house and to the wide open doors. A shell windchime rattled beside it, and, not seeing anyone, I grabbed it and jangled it.

  “Hello? It’s me. Dathai, and my grandfather.” I said it once in English, then repeated it in Orcish.

  One of the reptilians came and hissed what I guessed was a welcome.

  Old Fang eyed the reptilian, taller than his hunched form, green-skinned and scaled, with a tail like those of crocodiles. It stood upright as we did, with its blunt, slitted nose and nictitating yellow eyes. I’d seen them the last time when we caught Shivrith. It was pretty cool to watch them swim, sleek and fast with spears and nets, their long, thick tails propelling them through the water.

  The reptilian led us to mats and brought refreshments on individual tables. Old Fang lifted a cup and sniffed it. “What’s this?”

  I picked up my own and tasted it. “Coconut water.”

  “Sounds awful,” he grumbled, setting the cup back down, untouched.

  I’d sat cross-legged, back straight, until his words made my spine slump. I scowled at him. “Do not offend the Queen, old man. I’ll kill you myself.”

  That lit a devilish spark in his faded eyes. “I’d like to see you try, whelp.”

  I bared my teeth at him.

  Old Fang was not intimidated. He picked through the fruits and made an ugly face until he found the small plate with a spicy mix of radish and raw fish—that he picked at with his hands, despite the chopsticks on the table. I sighed and tried to ignore him.

  The System notes had little explanation about the Tidesong ritual because it was a great big tease like that. In a Shardshore synopsis, the System notes mentioned that Tidesong was a monthly ritual of song and appeasements to the ocean.

  Whatever that meant. Probably tied a virgin to one of the half-submerged crystals and let a giant sea monster eat them. They couldn’t sacrifice fish. The ocean already had those in abundance.

  I glanced at Old Fang, contenting himself with the fish salad, and tried not to imagine all the ways things could go wrong.

  Maybe the Queen would be understanding.

  Maybe I’d just been blowing this whole thing out of proportion.

  It would be alright.

  ….

  Why had I even imagined this was a simple fix?

  I should have let Zayan arrest me when I had the chance.

  It was too late to pretend I died four more times in a row and was permanently unavailable.