“Elizabeth Agee,” Rose told Elijah as he lay down on the bed in his room at the inn. “It took a lot of asking around, but Sasha was able to find her name. Now, will you let me help you?”

  Elijah had explained to his friends what had happened, the full story, after he’d respawned within the Temple of Fate in Klade. He’d been ready to get back on the road, to grind out more levels. Anger and hatred had bolstered his determination, wanting to inflict the same pain upon Tom as the man had done to him. But they forced him to rest.

  “I don’t know that I can be helped, Rose. Or more importantly, that I want to be,” he whispered through a dry throat.

  She handed him a glass of water and made sure he was sitting comfortably. His physical wounds healed from his resurrection, but her treatment made it seem like he was still recovering.

  “It might surprise you to hear that many of my patients feel the same way.” Her voice was soft, yet still carried an almost motherly firmness.

  “Why do you do it, Rose? Why spend all day helping people, then help people while you are playing a game?”

  After his respawn and his friends’ insistence that he take the time to relax, they revealed Rose was a psychologist and had volunteered to help Elijah through the trauma. He wasn’t certain how she’d found out about Tom torturing him, but she was adamant that she could help him.

  She leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs. “Why do you do what you do, Elijah? Why do you keep pushing yourself despite the physical and emotional trauma you’ve endured?”

  He gritted his teeth, instinctively wanting to react with a snarky remark, but he bit it back. “Because I’m the only one who can.”

  Rose nodded her head at him. “Then you can understand why I do it. Because if not me, then who?”

  “They told you I was a psychologist?” She asked, and he nodded his head. “Did they tell you where I worked?”

  He shook his head. Based on her general mannerisms, he would have guessed in some rich neighborhood, psychoanalyzing the rebellious children of the rich and famous. He told her as much, and she laughed.

  “No, no,” she chuckled, wiping a tear from her eye. “Sorry, I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing at myself, apparently I have a much different appearance than what I expected.”

  She took a deep breath to right herself and smiled. “No, I work, or I guess worked, at a maximum-security federal correction facility somewhere in the United States. I’m not going to tell you exactly where, but that was my job.”

  His eyes went wide. Working with convicted felons was far off what he had expected of her.

  “My clients, the convicted felons, were some of the most troubled individuals in the country. Convicted murderers, violent assaults, those sorts of people. But do you know what all of them had in common?”

  “No, what did they have in common?”

  “They all needed my help, and I was in a position to help them. Just like I’m in a position to help you. If you’ll let me.”

  Elijah stared at the ceiling for several minutes. Rose, for her part, sat quietly and let him think.

  “So what?” he finally asked. “Are you worried that I’m one mental break away from becoming like him?” He didn’t need to say who ‘him’ was; they both knew.

  “Elizabeth Agee,” Rose repeated the woman’s name. “You wouldn’t let me help you until we found out her name. Why?”

  He had to think about that. At first, it had just been a stalling technique, a way to prevent having to talk about what he had endured. But the longer it had taken, the more adamant Elijah had become that he needed to know her name.

  “I didn’t want her to be forgotten, I guess,” he finally answered.

  “Even though she was just an NPC?” There was no bite in Rose’s words, but Elijah’s anger flared all the same.

  “She wasn’t just an NPC; she was a being with genuine emotions. You didn’t see it, Rose. You can’t fake fear like that. Or the pity in her eyes as Tom tore me apart.” He yelled loud enough for it to echo around the room.

  Rose held up a calming hand. “She was real. At least in all the ways that matter.”

  Elijah settled back in his bed, the anger coiling tightly in his chest. But he didn’t know if he was more angry at Tom’s actions or Rose’s tone.

  “To answer your question; No, I don’t think you are one bad day from becoming like Tom.” Her voice was soft as she spoke. “But I know you are angry—the type of angry that doesn’t need to be evil to be dangerous.”

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  “So what?” he asked. “You’re saying I shouldn’t be angry at Tom for what he did to Elizabeth?”

  “Not at all. But anger is a tool and a weapon, just like a hammer. You can be angry, but you have to avoid letting it become who you are.”

  Elijah nodded his head; he felt she was right, but knew it would take time.

  “You don’t have to change right now, you can be angry,” Rose told him as she stood up and smoothed down her robes. “I’ll be back tomorrow, but I want you to rest. Nicholas and Bo are out front, and Sasha and Benjamin are nearby as well. You are safe here.”

  Elijah nodded his head and thanked her as she walked out.

  He leaned his head back on the pillow and tried to close his eyes. Every time he closed them, he could see Elizabeth’s face in his mind. The fear in her eyes, the way she struggled when Tom threatened her with his scythe. His hands clenched his sheets, as if that act alone could keep her safe or reverse the course of history.

  After twenty minutes of lying in bed, fighting to sleep. Finally, he got out of bed and went to the door.

  Nicholas and Bo got up as he exited his room. “Hey dude,” Nicholas said, coming over to make sure he was okay. “Everything alright?”

  Elijah nodded. “Yeah, I just need to do something other than lying in bed, pretending to be asleep.”

  Bo nodded his head as he came over and patted him on the shoulder. “I hear you, man.” Bo looked up at Nicholas and smiled. “We need to get this man a drink.”

  Elijah shook his head. “I don’t drink alcohol.”

  “Heh, that’s actually perfect then,” Bo smiled and started pulling Elijah towards the stairs. “You can’t actually get drunk in this game.”

  Elijah stopped. “What’s the point of drinking then?”

  Bo turned to face him. “Well, the AI can get drunk and it was part of some of the first storylines. So we had to code bars and alcohol. But because of laws in other regions, we couldn’t let players get drunk.”

  Nicholas shook his head. “I still don’t get what the point of us taking Elijah down to the bar is then.”

  “You guys don’t really get out much, do you?” Bo laughed. “The point of going to the bar isn’t to get drunk. It’s sitting around and bitching about life while hanging out with friends.”

  They sat together at a corner table in the downstairs bar of the inn. It wasn’t as busy as Elijah feared, mostly just NPCs sitting at the bar, drinking or eating whichever was their preference. The alcohol tasted wrong, though Elijah wasn’t sure if that was a bug in the game, or just his incorrect memory of a time when he was much younger.

  There were a handful of players, but they mostly just kept to their own little groups, just like Elijah and his friends did. One player, a Bard named Richard, sat with the band and was playing a haunting melody. Elijah had heard the song before, but he couldn’t quite place exactly where. Possibly it was something outside of this game that the player had taught to the NPC band.

  One player got up from his table and slammed a fist on the table. Instinctively Elijah formed his sword in his hand, but Nicholas grabbed his wrist, holding his hand beneath the table to stop him from making a scene. The player, a tank named John, turned to the bard and yelled at him. “Damnit Rich, I’m so sick of that tune. C’mon and play something more upbeat. We aren’t celebrating a funeral here.”

  The bard scowled at the tank, but then shrugged his shoulders and turned to the band. Elijah couldn’t hear what he had told them, but after a moment they started playing something much more reminiscent of what he expected to hear in an in-game tavern. The upbeat music actually made Elijah feel much better and really lightened the mood in the bar.

  It was as if something had shifted and the bar was suddenly much livelier and energetic. Normally Elijah would have hated it—he didn’t normally like noisy, crowded environments, much less one where booze was involved—but in this instance he found himself enjoying the atmosphere. It helped to know that none of the players were actually drunk, and it was a rare occurrence for NPCs to be a problem for players within inns and taverns. It was almost like a safety net in a place that would have felt dangerous to him in the real world.

  The band finished their first song and went into the next, a fast-paced song that had half the bar pounding their fists and stomping their feet in rhythm with the beat. As the barmaid—an elven woman in a long, flowing dress that reminded Elijah of something he’d see at a renaissance fair—moved through the room, the same man, John, stopped her and asked her for a dance. Elijah watched them closely. Even if the man wasn’t drunk, that didn’t mean that he wouldn’t make a pest of himself, and Elijah would not fail to protect another woman.

  He saw her wicked grin as she looked him over, “Sure, if you think you can keep up.”

  They moved to the center of the floor, and she grinned in Elijah’s direction—though he realized quickly she was signaling the band. They broke from the tune that the bard had been leading them in and began playing a new song. The beat they set was intense, but no less energetic than the first.

  The elf moved with such grace and precision that her feet seemed to blur as she spun around. Her clothes and curves flowed like water, showing off her grace as the tank tried to keep up with her.

  Less than a minute into the song, the tank’s footing got screwed up, and he tripped over his own feet, landing flat on his back. She reached down and helped him up with a smile, and then sent him on his way. Elijah at first was expecting her to go back to work, but the bartender hollered over the music as she went back to dancing. “Who's next to try to tame the dancing elf?”

  The bard got up after the band left him far behind. No doubt he expected his charm to win her over, but he too soon fell. This time managing to lose a shoe that went flying off through the air and knocked over several player’s glasses. Elijah once more expected a fight, but the energy of the place was too high, too fun, to get mad over spilled not-booze.

  The bartender made his call again, but none of the others stood to take the dare. The Elven maid’s eyes seemed to focus on Elijah as she danced. There was no fear, pity, or expectation in her gaze. Only a dare to see if he could match her. He wasn’t a dancer and shook his head.

  She rolled her eyes and danced to the beat, moving closer to the three men. This time when she locked eyes with him, she also held out her hand. “Dance with me,” she said to him in a sultry voice. There was a slight hiccup in the music, almost like a poorly looped recording had started over.

  The challenge in her eyes was all that he needed, and he took her hand.