Chapter Five: Life Choices & Santa Claus

  I ate my protein bar and contemplated my life choices.

  Jack Francis was waiting for me back in that clearing, presumably still unconscious, still suffering incredibly if he wasn’t. Nothing in the small first-aid kit was going to make a difference to his quality of life.

  Z, though, had gotten some scratches from the goblins’ sharp claws, and I did want to wipe the antiseptic cream on her. I didn’t want her to promptly lick it off, though, which meant using some of the gauze as well.

  I was absolutely fine with using the entire first aid kit on my girl. Priorities, people. As long as Z was okay, the world could continue running, even in its current state of insanity.

  But I was thinking about doing something that she would really, truly hate. That spool of thin rope could work as a tether. I could tie her to Jack Francis, maybe his ankle?

  It wasn’t that I didn’t want her with me. Of course I did. But if I was actually going to go hunting goblins, not just wait for them to appear, but seek them out with the intent of slaughtering them, I wasn’t sure she was the best assistant I could have. If Bear was with me…

  But Bear wasn’t, and there was no point considering how much damage Bear’s sharp teeth would have done. The fact was, Bear outweighed Z by a solid fifty pounds. And Bear was not mean, but fierce. Bear was a killer at heart. Z was not. Dragging Z along to kill goblins was putting her at risk.

  I couldn’t believe I was actually thinking of going hunting. To kill things. Living things. So not me.

  But we needed a healing potion. And the way to get it was to kill shit. And the shit that needed killing was those nasty little green things.

  I picked up the pink water bottle and shook it. It felt full. I unscrewed the top and took a dubious sniff. It smelled fine. Like water.

  I was Floridian enough to flinch at the thought of drinking from an unknown water supply.

  Want to know how many killer microbes breed in tropical water? More than you can count, that’s for sure. Bacteria, protozoa, brain-eating amoebas… Florida’s standing water was basically a death lottery. I never let the dogs drink from puddles, even if it was the freshest possible rain.

  Still, it wasn’t like I was choosing between the pink water bottle and water straight from a modern treatment plant. If I didn’t drink this, the alternative was going to be water from a stream or a pond or something equally suspect.

  And even though I was deeply, deeply annoyed at the whole scenario thing, what kind of reward would it be to hand out toxic water?

  I shrugged and took a deep gulp.

  It tasted so good.

  It was water, yeah, but it was the freshest artesian well water you’ve ever tasted, straight from the purest, coldest, most pristine spring. It was water that was better than water. Water that was like the Chateau d’Yquem of water.

  Zelda sniffed at my knees, so I poured some into my hand for her. She slurped it down eagerly. I screwed the cap back on the bottle with a touch of regret.

  Dogs aren't picky. Even Z would be perfectly happy with toilet water. It felt a little like I'd wasted something precious. But she needed to drink, too, and if twenty-four ounces of gold-plated water was all we had to make it through Hour 72, I wasn’t going to complain about sharing.

  I looked at the small pile of stuff before me, wishing the backpack had survived. The roll of duct tape slid over my wrist, while I slung the spool of rope over my shoulder. I loaded up my pockets with protein bars, and slid the knife into one, too, regretting that I was wearing jeans instead of cargo pants. At least I wasn’t stuck in pocket-less capris.

  What the heck was I going to do with the socks? I eyed my feet, but even though the thought of clean socks had its appeal, I wasn’t taking my boots off here when more goblins might pop out of the woodwork any second.

  Before eating the protein bar, I’d taken off my hat, my mask, and my gloves. I stuck the mask, the gloves, and the socks into the hat, then tucked the first-aid kit in, too. I then stuffed the hat down the front of my shirt.

  Yes, it was undignified, but I only had two hands, so what else could I do?

  That left the stick lighter and the sunglasses. I stuck the lighter down my shirt with the hat—it would be uncomfortable, but I’d survive until I made it back to Jack—and put the sunglasses on the top of my head.

  Water bottle in one hand, shovel in the other, I was ready to go. I turned in a slow circle, looking for my starting place.

  Why the hell did every tree in this forest look alike?

  It took much longer than it should have, but when Z and I made it back to Jack (70 hours, 18 minutes to go), he looked much the same.

  Still unconscious, still burned.

  I guess I hadn’t really thought he’d change. At most, I’d been worried some goblin would eat him while I was gone. But… well, despite the goblins’ crushed skulls and smashed bodies, Jack’s burns were still the most horrifying thing I’d ever seen.

  I unloaded next to him, leaving my miscellaneous possessions, including most of the protein bars, in a pile by his side.

  Now came the hard part.

  I looked down at Zelda, who was sitting alert beside me, brown eyes bright with interest as she watched me arrange our supplies. Her tail gave a little wag when she caught me looking at her.

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  “Okay, sweetheart,” I said softly, pulling the rope off my shoulder. “This is going to suck for both of us.”

  I tied one end of the rope around Jack’s ankle, making sure the knot was secure but not tight enough to cut off his circulation. The other end I tied to Zelda’s collar.

  She gave a tiny whimper. We’d gone camping at enough campgrounds that required dogs to stay on tie-outs that she recognized what I was doing.

  “I know,” I told her, crouching down to scratch behind her ears. “You’d rather come with me. But Z, I’m going looking for trouble, and I can’t... I need you to be safe.”

  She tilted her head, ears cocked.

  “Stay with Jack, okay? This is the den for now, and you’ve got to guard it. That’s your job. Guard the den.”

  I stood up, picked up my shovel, and took a step away from her.

  She woofed.

  It hurt my heart, but I didn’t look back. Dogs don’t do well with indecision or wishy-washiness. If you show them your uncertainty, it just makes them insecure. Kind but firm, that was always the rule. Dogs thrive with clarity, struggle with confusion.

  I wished Riley and Bear were here to keep her company, though. Well, Riley could stay with Z and Bear could come with me to hunt goblins. That would’ve been ideal.

  I pulled the folding knife from my pocket and flicked it open. Much better than trying to hack at tree bark with my shovel. I walked to the nearest tree and carved a quick 'X' into the trunk at eye level, deep enough that it wouldn't heal over anytime soon.

  There. Now I had a starting point.

  I chose a direction more or less at random, but away from where I'd found the first batch of goblins, since if there’d been more goblins there, they would have found me already.

  The knife made quick work of marking trees as I went. I didn’t score them with anything fancy, no numbers or full-fledged letters. Just a big enough slash in the bark that I could find my way back to Z and Jack eventually.

  Slash, move forward, repeat.

  But how was I supposed to find goblins? After a dozen trees or so, I crouched down and examined the forest floor, looking for... I don't know, tiny footprints? Broken twigs?

  I felt ridiculous. What I knew about tracking could be summed up in one sentence: let a dog do it. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a tracking dog with me.

  I stood up, frustrated, and smacked my head on a low branch. The sunglasses perched on top of my head tumbled down and settled across my nose.

  The world exploded into information.

  Suddenly, everything had floating text above it. The tree I'd just graffitied showed [Marked Oak Tree: Trail Marker]. The branch that had hit me read [Oak Branch: Common Wood, Crafting Component: Woodworking]. Even the moss on the ground had a label: [Forest Moss: Common Plant, Crafting Component: Alchemy, Cooking].

  Cooking? With moss? That did not sound delicious.

  I slowly looked around, letting my gaze slide over everything in view. These sunglasses must be like some weird augmented virtual reality glasses. Hadn’t Google been working on something like that?

  I really didn’t think I needed to know absolutely everything about everything, though. I wondered if there was some way to fine-tune what they showed me, so that the important items stuck out and the trivial disappeared.

  It would be so nice if this stuff came with a user manual.

  I didn’t like the idea of actively trying to communicate with this complicated and persistent hallucination. Best case scenario when dealing with hallucinations was always to ignore them. But…

  I picked up my shovel, feeling frustrated, and floating text popped up above it.

  It didn’t say [Old Shovel: Useful tool formerly stashed in Olivia’s shed for a few decades] or anything like you’d expect. Instead, it said [Warden’s Edge: Legendary Weapon].

  I held it up to my face and stared at it.

  Legendary weapon? It was a shovel.

  As I stared, the text flickered, then changed. More information flowed beneath the name.

  Name: Warden’s Edge

  Type: Improvised Weapon

  Grade: Legendary

  Bound to: Olivia [First Defender]

  Durability: 94%

  Attributes: +10 Sharpness, Reflective Core, Feral Bond

  Abilities:

  Rebound (Active): Reflects incoming damage (2-4x multiplier)

  Piercing Force (Passive): Attacks ignore basic armor

  ??? (Locked)

  ??? (Locked)

  Status: Soul-linked. Evolution in Progress.

  Note: Crafted in crisis, claimed by action, shaped by intent.

  I laughed in total disbelief. My shovel—my shovel!—was a legendary weapon.

  It had been years since my relatively brief foray into World of Warcraft, but not so long that I didn’t remember a few details. Was legendary purple? Or maybe orange?

  Okay, I’d forgotten a lot. But I did know that legendary meant raids and guild tempers flaring and much gloating.

  And my shovel was legendary.

  I kept laughing. It was ridiculous. The moment I made it back to Zelda and Jack, I was going to look at my pink water bottle. The Yoga-Lady Special. I bet it had some cool name, and I bet…

  I sobered up fast.

  I bet it had some great ability, too. Like supplying me with fresh water, which could mean that I had a decent chance of not dying here.

  In the back of my mind, I’d known I was doomed. But it was a thought that I couldn’t look at, because if I was doomed, so was Zelda. So was Riley, so was Bear.

  So was Jack, too, but he was low on the priorities list because he’d pretty much doomed himself with that stupid fireball. I was going to try to save him, but he wasn’t my responsibility.

  My dogs, though, were.

  And they deserved better. I’d had every intention of pushing myself until I dropped, but I’d also known, deep-down inside, that our chances were pretty close to nil. That marginal viability statistic was realistic, grim as the thought was.

  Safe water, though, might have pushed that viability percentage up.

  I braced my shovel against the ground, blade down, still staring at that stream of text, but no longer seeing the words.

  You know what else could push that percentage up?

  Information. In the right circumstances—in fact, in almost any circumstances—information was a valuable commodity. And I had a source of information in my head.

  A creepy source of information, though.

  A frankly nightmarish one.

  Did you ever have a moment when you realized that Santa Claus is an old white guy watching every move you make? He knows when you’re sleeping; he knows when you’re awake. He knows when you’ve been bad or good, so you’d better be good.

  Come on, that’s a warning, not a promise.

  If your behavior doesn’t please him, he’s going to punish you. Most of the world adores him, anyway. Not me, though. I think Santa Claus is creepy.

  And I hated the idea of some construct in my brain judging me, deciding which of my actions were good and worthy. Killing goblins, yes; keeping my dog alive, eh; trying to save Jack’s life, probably not.

  That was going to be how the XP went, wasn’t it? Points for killing a squirrel but no points for saving Zelda from the squirrel. That XP notification had implications. I didn’t play a lot of games, and I’d never played a classic role-playing game in my life, but I wasn’t completely ignorant. XP stood for experience points, and that meant… well, I wasn’t sure exactly what it meant.

  But information was power. And my only source of information was that creepy-as-fuck, text-message-sending interface in my head.

  I took a deep breath and looked around the quiet forest. No one here but me and the [Marked Oak Tree: Trail Marker]s and the [Oak Tree: Common Wood, Crafting Component: Woodworking]s.

  Yep, just me, the trees, and the digital Santa Claus living in my brain.

  “User manual, sunglasses,” I said aloud.

  Obviously, nothing happened. I know you’re not surprised.

  “Help file, sunglasses,” I tried.

  “Assistance, sunglasses. User interface, sunglasses. Sunglasses, help. Sunglasses, assist. Identify sunglasses. Oh my God, you goddamn annoying asshole, tell me how to use these things!”

  This chapter was updated on February 17, 2026. I tightened the Santa Claus section and mildly edited her thoughts about experience points, plus made some formatting tweaks for consistency.