“I got an ability called Wild Sanctuary,” I told Jack. “It lets me ‘improvise defenses’ to create a safe space.” I put the air quotes around the words myself.

  Zelda stood and stretched, up dog first, followed by downward dog. Dogs would be so good at yoga, if there were only classes for them.

  She padded over to me, and sat before me, setting a single paw onto my leg. Dinner, she suggested, as clearly as if she were speaking English.

  “What, that kibble wasn’t enough for you?” I asked her, mildly indignant.

  I had a moment of worry for poor Riley and Bear, who would probably be looking for their dinner, too, and then reminded myself of that temporal displacement protocol. I still didn’t really understand how those words fit together, but I was trusting Jack that it meant no time was passing.

  Also, there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it, so why worry?

  Zelda expressed with a twitch of her ear that she would prefer some chicken.

  I opened my hands. “Can’t do it, love. Maybe that next goblin will drop some.”

  And then I realized that I was talking to my dog.

  No, no, really. Like, not talking to myself in a thinly veiled persona of my dog. But communicating with my dog. She was expressing herself to me; I was understanding her; and then I was expressing myself to her. And she was understanding me.

  I stopped hating the System.

  Okay, I didn’t love it or anything. I just didn’t… hate it anymore. I stopped being sure it was evil.

  Meanwhile, I said to Jack, “Hey, are you hungry? I’ve got some protein bars.”

  “I am, yeah,” he said with a sigh that held some unexpected relief. “Starving, actually.”

  “Sorry, should have thought about it sooner.” I dug the protein bars out of my K9 companion pouch and looked through them. I dropped all the ones with chocolate on the ground next to Jack, then opened a ‘Lemon love’ and held it out to Zelda.

  She gave me an offended look and literally turned her back on me. I laughed and took a bite of it myself. Okay, yeah, it was never going to be anybody’s favorite meal.

  “So, Wild Sanctuary,” Jack said, around a bite of protein bar.

  “Yeah.” I read him the actual description around bites of my own bar.

  Wild Sanctuary—Improvise defenses in any location to claim it as your own. For a limited time, the designated area becomes resistant to intrusion. Anyone crossing the boundary is entangled or takes damage. While inside the boundary, you, your companions, and your allies heal faster, resist damage, and can sense threats. Time spent improvising determines time claimed in 1:10 ratio, i.e. ten minutes of improvising grants one hundred minutes of safety.

  I finished with, “I was thinking I could maybe build a little wall?” I tapped my shovel to show him what I meant. “Or maybe we should start by searching for a safer place. This clearing might not be the best place to set up a camp, really.”

  “The regular visitors could be a problem, yeah. Especially if they get worse.” Jack looked thoughtful as he opened another protein bar. “You know that trapping skill might be pretty useful with that ability.”

  My eyes widened. “Oh, of course. A trap’s such an obvious improvised defense. I should have thought of that.” I slid my hand into the top of my pouch and thought, skill book.

  It slid into my hand like it was meant to be there, and I pulled it out. The title still said, Basic Wilderness Traps & Snares: A Practical Guide, but I knew it wasn’t a real book. I mean, not a book the way I thought of books, anyway.

  I wasn’t wearing my sunglasses, but I knew if I put them on, words like [Skill Book – Wilderness Trapping (Basic)] would magically float above it, before expanding into more details. Those details, though, hadn’t included instructions on how to use it.

  They’d just included frankly terrifying words like “direct neural integration.” But I tucked that fear away like any other bad memory. Not worth considering. No further processing needed. Direct neural integration for the win, right?

  Right.

  Maybe I just needed to read the book.

  I flipped it open.

  I would have liked some nice 1950’s style Boy Scout manual, maybe with some helpful diagrams. Instead the page was blank, with words appearing as I looked at it.

  Basic Wilderness Traps and Snares.

  Use to unlock the [Trapping] skill.

  Direct neural integration will overwrite conflicting intuitive structures.

  Estimated time to complete integration: 3 minutes.

  Side effects may vary.

  At the bottom of the page was a button, labeled Use.

  “Great.” I sighed. “Warning labels. Just what I needed.”

  “What sort of warning?”

  “Side effects may vary.”

  “It should work really well with that ability of yours,” Jack said slowly. “Long-term, it’s a great skill for you to have. But if you want me to use the book instead, I will. So far I’ve been pretty useless, I know.”

  This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

  “Ha.” I snorted. “I’d still be ignoring my messages if it weren’t for you. I’d be completely confused. Knowledge is…”

  I looked down at the book in my hands and sighed again.

  Heavily. Dramatically. Even, perhaps, melodramatically.

  “Knowledge is power. Okay, here goes.” I swallowed and pushed the button.

  The page shimmered, like ink dissolving in water. Then the whole book disintegrated in my hands, fizzing away into nothingness.

  Knowledge wove its way into my brain.

  Deadfall trap: use a heavy log, balance it with a trigger stick, bait with food. Spring-loaded snare: bend a sapling, tie off with slip knot, position trigger. Punji stakes: sharpen sticks, angle toward approach, camouflage with leaves...

  Spring poles, forked sticks, trigger sticks, snare loops, toggles, anchors, pegs, wires…

  If you learned a second language later in life, not as a child, you probably remember it as word after word of painfully memorized vocabulary. Hearing sentences and decoding them, step by painful step. And then one day, hearing a sentence and simply understanding it. Knowing what it meant without having to think about what it meant.

  This was like that. Suddenly, the language of traps, the vocabulary and the grammar, was part of me.

  I shook my head a little, breaking free from a daze, and looked around the clearing. My +10 Tracking ring had already changed the way I saw the world, but now the Trapping skill added depth and shading. I could see the spots where traps made sense and I could see the materials that would be useful. Not just any branch, but that specific forked branch over there, and not just any tree, but that one, with the low-lying branches.

  “You okay?”

  I nodded, flexing my fingers. “That was deeply weird. But definitely useful. We should start with snares along the goblin approach. Simple, effective, and they won't hurt us if we forget where they are.”

  “Do we want to stay here, though?” Jack asked. “I’m not sure sticking around the starting zone is the best long-term strategy.”

  The starting zone. I might have rolled my eyes, just a little.

  “Tough to have a strategy when you don’t know what the game is.” I stood, testing out my bad knee. Complete recovery. It felt fine. Better than fine, even. I bounced on my toes a little, both to confirm and just because… well, I felt good. Really good.

  “It can’t just be survival,” Jack said.

  “Why not?” I asked as I made my way around the clearing, picking up sticks.

  Zelda perked up at the sight. She picked up her ball and brought it over to me, dropping it at my feet. Play? Throw?

  “Why not just leave us where we were, if that’s all it wanted? The game of survival is happening out in the real world right now. Or, you know, will be happening soon, depending on what kind of temporal displacement we’re looking at.”

  I scooped up Z’s ball and tossed it to the other side of the clearing. She bounced after it, tail wagging. “Is it some kind of training? To teach us what’s going on and make us stronger?”

  “If we were in a tutorial, then yeah, absolutely. That’s what would be happening. No question about it. But we’re not in a tutorial. We’re in a challenge scenario.”

  Jack emphasized the last two words as if he were underlining them.

  I picked up another stick and considered it. It had a nice forked branch, good for hooking a snare wire around, but when I tried to bend it, it broke immediately. Too dry. I dropped the pieces back to the ground and kicked my way through some leafy debris, trying to find a better option.

  “So what do you think that means?” I asked.

  “I think it means there’s some kind of problem we’re meant to solve. Or at least to try to solve. A scenario is a situation, a series of events. A story, even. What’s the story of this place we’re in? And the challenge part—we’re meant to think, and problem-solve, and… and do stuff. Not just hide out in a bunker in the safe zone.”

  I paused. “Do you not want me to build traps?”

  Honestly, I wasn’t exactly delighted with my available trap-building materials. I could make a couple snares with what I had, but they’d be more suitable for rabbits than monsters.

  Maybe I should consider pitfalls. A decent one would take forever to build—digging a serious hole in the ground wasn’t a five-minute job—but that might be all to the good considering Wild Sanctuary’s time limits. An hour spent digging a hole would be an entire night’s worth of potentially peaceful sleep if it worked the way I thought it should.

  Not that I felt like I needed ten hours of sleep. I wouldn’t mind a decent meal, but I was as revved as if I’d had a third cup of coffee.

  Or—I thought with sudden, unexpected concern—as if I was entering a manic state.

  That would be… bad.

  I mean, maybe it wouldn’t matter. Mad bursts of creativity, delusions of grandeur, unstoppable energy, racing thoughts, reckless behavior… maybe all that would be useful in this challenge scenario.

  Okay, probably not the reckless behavior. But all the rest of it might come in handy.

  Here’s a thing many people with bi-polar disorder are only too willing to admit: a good manic episode can be a hell of a lot of fun. You’re invincible. Hyper-competent. The rules don’t apply to you. The whole world unfolds like a secret you were meant to solve. You’re not just alive—you’re magic.

  And then one day you wake up inside the wreckage of your own life.

  Because here’s a thing you only learn the hard way: a good manic episode can ruin your life.

  No, seriously.

  A good manic episode can Ruin. Your. Life.

  I took a deep breath. I tried to remember the rules about centering myself that I’d learned over the course of a much too lengthy hospital stay.

  And then I paused.

  Um, the world was collapsing. Magic was real, monsters were invading, creepy Santa Claus was taking over all our brains, and somewhere around eight billion people, give or take a million, might die.

  How exactly was I gonna ruin my life worse than that?

  The apocalypse was underway.

  Zelda dropped the ball at my feet. I picked it up and tossed it back toward where Jack was still sitting.

  He was still talking, too, not that I’d been paying attention. “The thing is, are we competing against the game or one another? Because that might be important. Not that it matters for us—for you and me, I mean. I’ve been accused of being a self-absorbed jerk, and I didn’t argue, but I’m not—I wouldn’t—look, I’d rather lose than be a back-stabbing asshole, you know what I mean? If it’s winner-take-all or last man standing, well, I shouldn’t even be in the game anymore and I know it. And I’m not gonna… yeah. Your dog would hate me and anyone who is hated by a dog doesn’t deserve their life, you know?”

  Zelda’s ball was next to his foot. She nudged it toward him. He picked it up and threw it.

  “Was it a girl who called you a self-absorbed jerk?” I asked.

  “My sister, actually. I hope...” He let the words trail off.

  I shot a glance his way. His face was still such a mess. It was impossible to read an expression through the burns. But I’d heard the concern in his voice.

  I thought about saying something reassuring, but I couldn’t think of anything, and the silence stretched out between us until it was flat-out awkward. Finally, I said, “No time passing in the real world, right?”

  He jumped on my conversational lifeline with alacrity. “I hope not. Yeah, we should get back really soon after we left. At least I’m pretty sure that’s what that thing about temporal displacement means. And yeah, when we do, we want to be as tough as possible. Which means kicking ass in this challenge scenario.”

  “Which means figuring out what kicking ass looks like, right?” I asked, mildly.

  He thudded his head against the trunk of the tree. “Yeah. The hard part.”

  “How about this?” I said. “I’m gonna dig a hole. A big hole. A pitfall trap on the path in the direction that the goblins have been coming from. The whole time I do it, I’m gonna concentrate on Wild Sanctuary. Hopefully, it’ll kick in and make us a safe zone. We can stay in the safe zone until you’re completely healed. You can take out any goblins that come our way, maybe fireball ‘em while they’re in the hole. You can sleep if you need to, and I’ll keep watch. And when you’re healed up, and we’ve seen how Wild Sanctuary works, we’ll figure out our next steps. Sound good?”

  “Sounds great,” Jack said with a sigh of relief.