“That! What is that?” Urda barked, jabbing a finger at us.

  “Vassh—” I wheezed.

  Dag blinked at Loogie. His fist loosened, lifting as if to swat it. My eyes went wide. I gasped, twitching, raising a hand to make a futile attempt to stop him from touching Loogie.

  “No, idiot!” Urda shouted, “Don’t touch it! That is Vash’Ora!”

  Dag looked at Loogie, and then at the Chief with a slackjawed gape. Then he looked at the little mustard-furred critter thrashing as it desperately tried to bite through his thick skin.

  “That?” Dag asked, looking at Urda for confirmation, even though she’d already said.

  “It comes first as a worm—small and needy. Yes, bone brain! That is Vash’Ora.” The Krual slashed a hand at him. “Put him down. Carefully.”

  I coughed when my feet touched the ground. Ah, dirt. I missed you. Loogie released Dag and crept back to my neck. I wobbled but managed to stand. What I wanted to do was curl up in a tight ball around my pulverized insides—but standing, I felt better. The Stun Strike warning aura disappeared from my HUD.

  Injured, but no longer immobilized, I put a protective hand over the soft, fuzzy body huddling by my collar and snarled at Dag. The rage that had been absent before? Was on full display. I probably looked like a rabid marmot to those veterans, but whatever. Dag could choke on my weak, skinny, puny fist for threatening my Vash’Ora.

  I’d taken a step toward him before the Chief’s voice reined me in. “Child! Get over here.”

  “Not a fucking child,” I mumbled, stalking to her side, lips twitching with the desire to tear into anything that came at me.

  “That is Vash’Ora,” the Chief said, gaze on my hands. “Let me see it.”

  I knew she wouldn’t hurt it, yet I was slow to open the cage of my hands, cautiously turning my palms toward her. She leaned toward my hand, her hard look carrying an edge of curiosity. Loogie crept to the tips of my fingers, bold little eyes staring back at her. As foolishly fearless as I was.

  “It comes first as a worm, small and needy. Kin of moth and butterfly, and so it makes itself a coffin of silk. Then, as a child, it becomes a pest and companion. Again, it weaves its silken coffin. When it breaks out, Vash’Ora is as thunder in the clouds, its breath blue fire from the sky. I heard a story about Vash’Ora, once,” Urda murmured, gaze locked with the bold floofpillar.

  “Three times, huh?” Moth and butterfly. The story must mean like a cocoon.

  The Chief nodded, gaze flicking briefly to me and pausing, before returning to the yellow fluff worm in my hand. I figured she was wondering why, of anyone, I was chosen. I didn’t want to ruin it by saying it was probably just a System decision, designed to bind me close to the clan.

  “We’re bonded. Voj’Kasak said that it brings change,” I said, watching her. Hoping that she knew more about it, or at least took it as a sign to accept me.

  “To think it came here, to this mockery of a world,” Urda said, a weary tone in her voice.

  The other warriors got up to look as well. Dag stroked the finger that had been bitten, with a far off gaze. Bitten by a legend. Kinda cool.

  Lugar grunted, his lip curling. The Chief caught it, and narrowed her eyes at him. Her voice was sharp, her words blunt. “The spirits choose the bonding, not you. You couldn’t lay your hands on this half-blood whelp. Get rid of your jealousy, or I will.”

  “It isn’t fair! This child isn’t worthy—” Lugar snapped, until the Chief’s low rumbling growl cut him off.

  “Don’t make me stand up and teach you what death is like by my hands. I won’t speak on this again.”

  Part of me wanted Lugar to start something. Not to see Urda kill him, but a punch like she’d given me? I’d feel pretty damn vindicated.

  Urda lifted a finger to touch Loogie’s soft back, the corner of her mouth twitching. “This is good news. The spirits have blessed you. You will not weaken our clan. I see, now.”

  I started to smile until she struck me with a hard stare. “You will sit with the spirits for three nights without food or water. When you are done, you will return here. Go to the Lone Rock.”

  My smile faded.

  I knew what it was, and where it was, not far from the invisible city wall. Just a rock in the grass. It was a big rock, but nothing particularly amazing about it. Not quite large or flat enough to lie on. A good place to go stargazing.

  “Will there be other tasks, after?”

  Urda looked me over, then her gaze strayed to Loogie, who’d taken to climbing up my arm.

  “No. The spirits have vouched for you by the bond-gift. But, you will receive a message from them if your desire to be one of us is pure. You will bring it back to me.” She frowned, and jabbed an accusing finger at me. “If you lie, I’ll know. Go.”

  “Now?” Fuckity fucksticks, I haven’t eaten anything in hours. I was already hungry.

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  She didn’t say anything, just brushed me off with a gesture.

  With a sigh, I looked at Loogie and turned toward the open plain. I slipped through the shadows between the yurts and out into the grass. It was a short walk to the big ol’ rock. I climbed up onto it and sat down.

  Loogie cuddled up against the curve of my neck, in a hollow between muscle and collar. I sat on the rock and watched the stars.

  When dawn came, I wished for rain. My mouth was dry and sticky.

  Rain didn’t come.

  My mind wandered. First, to my problems, and then to the discomfort of the moment. Thirsty, hungry, not comfortable enough to sleep. I distracted myself by scratching doodles on the rock with my fingernails.

  Spirits. Oh, yeah. The whole reason I was flattening my ass on this rock. I had to commune with the spirits of the Salt Spears. Technically, there were a lot of them here, just locked up in stasis. Probably because they couldn’t stop fighting until they ran out of lives. Were they in the whiteroom? Or were they somewhere else? Like, dead?

  I hadn’t been religious—way back in time, now ??? days ago—when I’d been someone else. I figured we just stop being when we die. Like a sleep with no dreams. Done-ski. Forever.

  This whole yoinked from home thing got me thinking, as I watched the giant hawk fly circles in the distance. Probably over the insect hives, like a world event boss.

  I should kill that motherfucker. So much XP, flying up there. It was probably an NPC. What if it was… no. What if it was Ashwynn? I chuckled to myself, and watched the breeze sweep across the grass, bending it in waves. Eh. If he turned into a bird, it would probably still have the stag horns.

  Anyway. Spirits. Yo, got water? Some rain would be nice. I mean, I wouldn’t say no to it raining fried chicken, either. Just sayin’. In my head. To myself, since I don’t know where you are, or if you’re listening. Or if you’re real.

  The wind was all I heard. It was close, wrapping around me, cooling the warmth of the sun. By noon I realized I’d felt okay, earlier. I could go without food for a while, but the water? Liquid of some kind became a fixation. I wanted water so bad, I imagined tasting it.

  I could have got up off the rock to get some. Any time I wanted.

  Fuck this.

  But… I turned away from camp, from the sight of Fist’s Home, from everything but the mirage of an endless plain. These urges were an illusion—rules set upon the skin that I wore over a wireframe that I drove in this intensely realistic environment.

  The thirst was the conditional aspect of a program.

  What I wanted was real. I wanted this place to vanish. This mockery of a world, as the Chief called it. This fake breeze. Fake grass. Fake life. I will make the System admit its failure, and make Archive send us home. I would. Had to.

  I closed my eyes as I sat there, hands in my lap, pretending to be like some monk in a murim or xianxia story. Breathing through my nose to conserve the precious virtual moisture in my digital body. My head started to throb as the sun kissed the horizon.

  I fed Loogie by giving it my blood. The Vash’Ora didn’t take much. It was just a little vampire. Just a cute baby vampy.

  My second night on the rock, I dozed a little, head bobbing in my monk’s position. By my third night the thirst had become, if not bearable, familiar. The hunger faded entirely. Things got weird. I’d dream while my eyes were open, reliving a battle, or a conversation that never happened.

  Then I’d snap to, and realize that I wasn’t sitting in the Colosseum, and Jake wasn’t talking my ear off about the contents of his med kit. I hallucinated Akilah showing me her workshop. For some reason it looked full-on steampunk, with gears on things that didn’t need gears and steam wafting from pipes that went nowhere.

  I wasn’t sitting with Elora, looking through the stacks of books in her bookshelves, the gauzy draperies fluttering in the breeze. I could almost smell the air of Verdance, until I realized my eyes were only seeing waving grass, and I smelled the faint stink of buffalo lizards.

  Time became malleable. I could spend what felt like hours in a mental tide, only to come back to ‘reality’ and see the clock on my HUD, and the last message I sent before I closed my communication channels. Only a few minutes passed.

  I remembered to bring Loogie out, fed it with a quick jab of my knife to my palm, and let it play between my unfeeling fingers.

  As night drew close and my time on the rock was coming to an end, I worried about the spirits. Maybe they weren’t there, and what I believed was true, after all.

  I wasn’t focused enough to try to make something up.

  What would I tell the Chief?

  Betrayal exploded, raw and sudden. I snarled hard enough to make Loogie squeak and curl up in a defensive ball. I pet it, murmuring apologies—in English, because Orcish sucked for that sort of thing. No idea what words came out of my mouth. Just. Words.

  My time on the rock would end, and I would drag myself to the yurts when twilight fell. A failure. It made me sad, but in a detached way. Would I have to leave, if I failed?

  My mind wandered paths of the recent past. Slipped backward.

  Voj’Kasak teaching me the spear, the Orcish way. The Ghost Step. I closed my eyes against the stars and recalled that day, those dancing moves, Snake in the Dust, Stone Cracks Bone…

  Old Fang paused in his instruction, sitting on the stool. A gruff humph escaped him, and I turned around. Two people, orcs, were walking towards us from the plains. The male was tall, leaner than Urda’s warriors, but no less scarred and tattooed. Black feathers adorned his braids. He wore the fangs of some animal around his neck.

  Beside him a young female strode. But not together. They weren’t together in the sense of mates. They only came from the same place. That much I knew. I also knew they wouldn’t stay long. They walked between stars, between blades of grass, between pebbles in streams.

  Travelers.

  “Father,” the orc woman said.

  Old Fang smiled warmly. “About time you showed up.”

  “Why do you wait for me?” She laughed and went over to tug at his scraggly hair with affection.

  “What else is there to do, besides watch this one?” He shook his pipe in my direction.

  I had to ask her something. Old Fang had said to ask…

  Lifting my spear from point down to vertical up, I crossed the distance. Crossed the dusty ground in a breath. Like a wormhole within another, echoing across dimensions.

  “I don’t know your name,” I said, at a loss.

  “Sho, but I know what you want to call me,” she murmured.

  Something reached into my chest and squeezed my beating heart tight. I stood up straight; had to do this right. I said, “Mother.”

  And she nodded. She gave Voj’Kasak’s hair a last, teasing tug and kept walking. The warrior who had walked beside her glanced at my spear. Suddenly, it wasn’t the simple, flimsy spear I’d practiced with. It was Ro’Fatoft.

  “Take care of it, Rau’dajal. Tell Alga that Nujol says he hopes she lives well,” he said, and then fell in beside Sho. They walked as if they were just strolling through camp, but I knew. They had a long journey. The longest there was.

  My head snapped up.

  The yard was gone. The sky was empty and vast.

  Grass flowed like water in the wind.

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