The beach, the edge of the safe zone, 14 hours into the 24 hour monster horde event.

  Tara and Arinya were resting after their shift of fighting, Stevens and Audrey swapped in for them just a few minutes ago. They decided that an hour on and an hour off was best since it allowed for more magic regen and more healing in between fighting. The expectation had been grim, Ghost had put them in the middle, responsible for a quarter mile in each direction of the beach. The thought was that they were going to end up funneling monsters towards them and when they got overwhelmed, it would appear as a weakness to the other people and give Ghost an edge on Eli. However, it turned out to work the opposite way, they were covering almost a full mile now, since Ghosts people were tired and not rotating properly.

  The biggest shock was how weak the monsters were, without Eli’s shenanigans making everything harder, the monster horde was pretty easy. This one didn’t have waves either so it was a slow and steady trickle of monsters that died to Tara and Stevens attacks in one hit. Because of this, the other people fighting looked at them like they were gods as they struggled to defeat anything alone and usually had to have three of them per monster to win without taking injuries. To top it all off, Stevens and Tara began trying to out-do each other when they switched out, burning a big chunk of magic to show off before they got their rest. It started off small but since they were past the half way mark, Tara’s last display involved her throwing 15 axes in under a second, with each one killing a monster, then she yanked them all back at once killing another seven more.

  The people fighting cheered at this display and took their own rest while they could. Despite the constant monsters and miles of beach to cover, spirits were high as they had yet to let one monster get past the beach yet. Tara looked troubled, the kind of troubled you get when you have to make a choice but all options lead to problems.

  “What’s on your mind?” Arinya asked. She had been mostly quiet since the event started, focusing on incoming monsters using her earth sensing. She couldn’t sense anything until they were out of the water, but she was able to feel almost the entire beach so she kept up to date with how things were going for everyone and then let Tara know. She assumed that her apparent foul mood had to do with her latest report that the edges of the fighting near the cliffs was getting rougher and a monster almost got through a few minutes ago.

  “I’m not sure what to do, as it stands we will end up coming out of this event looking like royalty among peasants. But the edges will give in about two hours if something isn’t done.” Tara explained.

  “Do you want to know what I would do, what I think Lord Ash would do, or what I think you should do?”

  Tara raised her eyebrow at Arinya wondering how long she had thought about this response. “All three please.”

  “Well, if it was my choice, I would stay here, keep doing what we are doing. Then head back after the event, regardless of how others are faring. We don’t owe them anything beyond this and I’m not the type to risk myself for no reason.” Arinya cleared her throat loudly and continued. “I think Lord Ash would do something over the top that solves one problem but creates another one. Something like sending Stevens and Audrey to each end and telling us to fight without breaks.”

  Tara nodded with her guess and motioned for her to continue.

  “And then, there is what you should actually do, I think you should talk to Ghost, make it his call.” Arinya said, then sighed and laid down on the blanket they used for a rest area.

  Tara sat quietly for a moment, clearly pondering on what she would do, her first instinct was to save face for Eli, but she no longer trusted her instincts when it came to him. She wasn’t sure when she stopped trusting herself but it was becoming clear to her that this was his new world. Not that he owned it or ruled it or anything but that it was going to bend to him, the fact that this event was so much easier than previous ones was a very unsettling revelation. He had mentioned that this might happen but she thought that was pure hubris, that he was letting his powerful nature go to his head. But now, sitting here, realizing how he had been right, she wished he was just arrogant, because if he's right then everyone else is just a pawn in a game being played with him.

  Taking a deep breath she let her mind go down the scary road of where that put her and her new friends. For the sake of argument she supposed that Eli was the center of the system's focus, which meant that she and her friends were close to that focus, very close in her case. What did the system want from him and how did it plan to get it? He had eluded that his guess was that it wanted him to get stronger, so did that mean that their lives would be harder if they stayed around him? It was entirely possible that the system would arrange for one of their deaths to motivate him or get him to choose a specific path. It could even set up thousands of deaths, millions maybe, if it served its purpose of getting Eli to do what it wanted.

  This line of thought was scary, but she stopped herself from spiraling and relaxed her body, breathing slowly, then she brought into her self discussion what she knew about Eli. Would he follow the systems poking and prodding without questioning it? How far would he go to get the power that it promised at the end of that road? She really was pushing her imagination to the limit to follow this line of thinking years into the future, thinking about how he would react. If he was still the same person, something she wasn’t sure about, then he would already have a plan to mitigate how this affected others. An example of this was him going into the dungeon during this monster horde event instead of facing it himself and getting the rewards.

  Although, she could not be sure since she didn’t know what the rewards were for the dungeon he was in, admittedly she doubted he knew either, but it was still a point she had to think about. Another thing the old Eli would do was plan ahead, he would have a plan for when the system tries to push him into something he doesn’t want to go along with. This seemed likely since he was already making moves like recruiting more people and letting himself get further involved with Bethany. These could be tactics to subvert the systems meddling, or he could just want more followers and more sex. She knew this is where this line of thought would end up, it all came down to whether or not she trusted him, her heart said yes, her mind logically said yes, but something in her soul kept pulling her away from him.

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  This was the crux of all her problems, she didn’t know which one of those things the system was manipulating, she had never been the indecisive type though, which is why she knew something was off. However, as with every time she chased this line of thinking to try and decide how she felt, she lost focus due to a distraction, two groups to their left were having trouble with their monster fights. Everyone was in groups of three or four and would draw the attention of a monster if they didn’t have one to fight. The problem came when one group got a second monster while fighting one and their neighboring groups were already busy and the back-up group was nowhere to be found.

  There were only two possibilities to why this would happen, they were dead, or they were moved to somewhere else. Either way, Tara got Arinya’s attention and they cut their break short, moving to help. After clearing several monsters giving some people a rest, Tara and Arinya joined Stevens and Audrey to talk about what to do next. They had about 8 hours left, maybe more, and the monsters were coming faster and they were getting stronger. This had been happening the whole time, but now it was more noticeable as groups of three were struggling and groups of four were taking much longer to kill them.

  “Arinya, I need you to tell me how much longer you think the line will hold before monsters start getting through regularly. Audrey, I need you to go find Ghost, sneak up and eaves drop for a bit before letting him know that we think he should commit any reserve troops to fighting in about an hour.” Tara said. Audrey vanished right away and Arinya closed her eyes and was obviously concentrating hard on trying to get the information Tara wanted.

  Arinya was sweating after a few minutes and then opened her eyes and looked at Tara. “We have about two hours until the edges give out and most of the other people start moving closer to us. They have been slowly moving closer to us for awhile now, we just keep pushing them back, but when we get busy, they will get scared and run to us for cover.” Arinya explained. She gathered this from checking where everyone was every few minutes and making a map of it in her head. Being secretive about the extent of her ability, she hadn’t explained how it worked other than saying that it required massive amounts of focus. No one pressed her for more information, but it made some in the group skeptical of what she could actually do which led to mistrust.

  Tara frowned and tapped her finger on her lips in thought then said, “Any ideas on how to not have them collapse on us and cause the monsters to run into the safe zone on the edges of the beach?”

  “I have three but you won’t like any of them,” Arinya sighed a bit but then got encouraged as Tara motioned for her to continue while still making her thinking face. “First, we do nothing, screw 'em. Second, we take our two groups and cover the wings letting Ghosts men cover the center. The third option is to just spread out ourselves, put about a mile between each of us and we do our best to help.” She looked sad then finished, “I would need one of you around since I’m not strong yet.”

  Tara snapped out of whatever daze she had been in and grabbed Arinya's face softly. “You are strong. Not everyone has to be a big guy with a club or a stealthy girl with a dagger, the information you can gather is better than having another simple fighter. We have enough muscle, you are the eyes, we need you just as much.”

  Arinya was blushing deeply at this point and couldn’t muster a response, she just kept eye contact and tried not to look at her facial scar, which was difficult since it was glowing. Tara scars always glowed when she was getting intense, she didn’t seem to notice but everyone else did. One time, Arinya swore she saw the eye above the scar turn bright purple when she got upset. No one knew for sure why she had been so upset after Eli and the others left, but everyone guessed it was because Bethany would have him all to herself. No one commented on it, nor did they try to interrupt her when she screamed at something and punched it into nothingness.

  It took longer than she meant, but Tara released her and turned away, she had been distracted trying to resolve memories of Eli with him now. The memories would come up every once and awhile and something in her felt wrong when she thought about how she loved that Eli, like past Eli wasn’t the same and present Eli. She shook it off and sighed so long and loud that she thought she might pass out, but then Audrey returned and her focus returned to her. She didn’t say anything at first, Audrey held a finger to her lips in a silencing gesture. Audrey and Arinya were staring at each other, then Arinya’s eye flicked to the side and before Tara could even react or try to figure out what was happening, a dagger appeared behind Audrey.

  It was seemingly floating in mid air and had materialized in place, but then a woman in black appeared and the dagger was stuck through her shoulder. It was all the way through her shoulder, sticking out her back by a good nine inches. She dropped to her knees in pain and seemed to be asking how they had found her with her eyes, but before words could be exchanged, she ran back in the direction that Audrey had just come from.

  “Bad news first,” Audrey said, “Ghost’s commanders aren’t going to help, they want us to look like we failed.”

  “What’s the good news?” Tara asked.

  “That,” Audrey pointed a thumb over her shoulder at the woman running away. “Was their best assassin and I knew I was being followed immediately.”

  “So Ghost wants us dead? Is he suicidal?” Arinya asked.

  “Oh no, Ghost has nothing to do with it,” Audrey explained, “His commanders want us to die so that ghost takes the blame, then they can take over and use Ash to keep other lords away.”

  “That,” Tara paused and thought about it, if they could give up Ghost to Eli to placate his rage, they could develop a relationship with him. “That plan might actually work, assuming Ash doesn’t just wipe the safe zone off the map.”

  “They seemed desperate, the Lord system doesn’t really allow them to take matters into their own hands.” Audrey said with a smirk, she was enjoying her status with Eli, especially seeing how others are with their own lord.

  “However that plays out, I don’t want to get involved with Ghost and his people. What do we do though, just stay in the middle and let the edges fail, that way it's harder to blame us?” Tara asked.

  The other three looked at each other and nodded together, then Stevens and Audrey sat on the blanket.

  “Your turn out there,” Stevens said.