“Duck!” Ben shouted, the group throwing themselves to the ground, where they drew their weapons and tried to crawl out of the way.

  Chloe went straight for Tommo and Rex, the only ones of the group not to duck. She chased Tommo, the onslaught of missiles slowing her down as he sped into the brush and disappeared. Rex, frozen to the spot, lasted no more than two seconds against Chloe’s sword as she took off his head in one fell swoop.

  “Rex! No!” came Tommo’s voice from somewhere nearby.

  Chloe struggled to find him, instead turning her attention on the other dwarves as she cast Healing Hands to bring her health back up to max.

  Meanwhile, Tag and Ben had found refuge behind a tree, Jessie between them. Ben was shooting with his bow, landing decent hits on the stocky dwarves. Their health was high, many of them surprisingly nimble as they closed in on the group.

  “Oh, ter have ter hurt me own kin,” Tag said in a feeble attempt at a Scottish accent.

  “Really? That’s the best you can do?” Ben chuckled.

  “I’m under pressure. Forgive me.”

  Tag ran out, engaging instantly in a close-range fight with three dwarves who sprang at him. Talbot was off the ground, a short sword in his hand as two dwarves began to spar with him. At a lower level than the rest of them, Chloe ordered Gideon to go and help, drawing the attention of several more dwarves as he created electricity and managed to paralyze a few of them.

  “Are these all blessed?” Ben called to Chloe, who tried to sweep her Creature Identification across the lot of them, surprised that it near enough worked. Bar one or two, she could now see dozens of name tags and information in her vision, the dwarves ranging from level 2 to level 4, only a few of them as NPCs.

  “Looks that way,” Chloe called back, grimacing as an arrow found its way into her thigh. She folded her leg, teeth gritted, wrapped her hand around the arrow, and pulled it out of her skin. Quickly casting Healing Hands, she looked for the perpetrator and saw the gleeful look of a dwarf just poking out his head above the top of a rock.

  Chloe grinned as she summoned an Ice Shard and pushed her hands toward the dwarf, waiting until the satisfying moment when he fell backward and vanished from sight, a cry of pain coming from his direction.

  “Always nice to remove a little—,” beep. “Argh! Help me out here, KF.”

  Prick?

  “Bingo.”

  Chloe pulled herself back to her feet, casting a succession of Ice Shards at the dwarves. She managed to pick off four of them until she realized that, in her eagerness to get the upper hand on the never-ending tide of tiny humanoids, she had spent all her magic.

  “Crap,” she said, drawing her sword, a sinking feeling in her stomach as Gideon bravely fought on with Talbot, more dwarves adding themselves to the fray as they got closer.

  Not too far from them, Ben was now in a knife fight with several more, occasionally pausing as he’d spin and struggle to remember which one Tag was so he could avoid him. Jessie was nearby, using a branch she had found on the floor to try to bat the others away.

  “Cry of the Valiant!” Tag yelled as a pulse of blue light found the party, the adventurers feeling a surge of strength accompanied by a short timer appearing in their vision.

  Chloe laughed triumphantly and took out three nearby dwarves, then she heard an enemy dwarf nearby shout those same four words. Then another. Then another. Before long, at least two dozen dwarves had sent a glowing red pulse around their own kind, powering them all up.

  And then things started to turn sour. Gideon raised his hands to push lightning but was knocked to the ground, several dwarves leaping on top of him. Talbot was next to go, folding and disappearing out of sight.

  Chloe began to run toward them but saw something else on the far side of the forest. She heard a roar as something large began to crash toward the battle.

  “Chloe! Jessie!”

  Chloe’s attention was pulled toward the tree, where Tag and Ben were now blocking Jessie from attack, their backs to the tree where she cowered, playing with items in her bag. Chloe paused for all of a moment before she heard a triumphant laugh and something smashed into the back of her head.

  Her world began to spin, and white stars exploded in her vision.

  “What the…” she said, turning slowly and feeling the back of her head, where warm blood flowed. She looked for her enemy, and Tommo smiled devilishly up at her, a hammer in his hand. She went to swing her sword but realized she had dropped it on the floor in her shock.

  “You’re outnumbered, she-witch,” Tommo said. “A thousand low-levels can brave the mightiest monsters. I can’t wait to reap the rewards and grab that beautiful armor you’re wearing. It’s going to look so good on me.”

  Chloe tried to respond but found she couldn’t, the concussion too much as she wobbled on the spot. Several more arrows flew into the small patches of exposed skin on her body, and she watched her health fall.

  And then a strange thing happened. Chloe’s mouth began to move of its own volition, the voice one she recognized but couldn’t understand how it was coming from her. “You’ve definitely got the tits for it, short stuff,” KieraFreya’s voice said. “You’ll have to pry it off my corpse first, though.”

  Tommo looked suddenly panicked. He shouted for the others to help him, and a wave of dwarves came at Chloe. All except the dwarves keeping her party pinned turned their attention to her, sprinting at an alarming speed, firing as many projectiles as they could.

  They were on her in seconds, her health making it all the way down to zero. She heard her party around her, shouting her name.

  With her final breath, her body stood back up by itself, the others in her party watching her with amazed looks on their faces as her vision went white.

  Well, this will be one to tell the doc and Mia, Chloe thought, preparing herself to enter the white room. She waited to plop uncomfortably into the single chair, ready for the phone call from the doc.

  Instead, the strangest thing happened. Chloe could see the white room below her as she fell through the ether, the image of the room coming in strobes as if the very fabric of the game was glitching.

  One second she was falling, the next she could feel her body tugged to the left.

  Then to the right.

  Between the glitches of the white room, she could see the battlefield in flashes of dark green. She felt as though she were underwater and someone had pulled the plug, and she was spinning around as she fought for air, her mind in two places at once.

  “Chloe!” she heard someone call. The voice sounded like Gideon’s, only far away and spoken through an old AM radio.

  She tumbled on, fighting to reach the white room, her feet moving of their own accord, her arms trying to swim. A flash of white, another flash of green, thoughts in her head confusing and compounding until she didn’t know what to believe.

  I’m coming for you, Doc, Chloe said, for the first time terrified of what was going on. Was the game breaking? Had the code Mia inserted messed with something in the function of her immersion pod? What would happen if something glitched out and went wrong? Would she be able to rejoin the real world as she was? How did the game affect her physical brain?

  She held the swirl of questions tightly in her head, ready to ask should she get the chance. Hating, at that moment, the fact she hadn’t been more diligent when entering the pod. Knowing that her hedonistic nature had gotten the better of her when she had signed the contract and plunged into Obsidian.

  The white room came closer. Chloe squinted, grimacing because she felt as though she had been torn into two. The white room came closer still. Another shout; this time it sounded like Ben, followed by a terrible roar.

  They would all be with her. Soon. All in the white room, their own personal waiting areas. They’d reunite and go through the forest once more, traveling to the Heartwood and taking the forest trail once more.

  KF would be pissed at the time wasted in having to retrace her steps, but that would be okay. As long as they were all back together, it’d be fine.

  She was surrounded by white now, feeling herself descend toward the chair. Floating like a hummingbird toward the seat as her butt touched the cushion. The room stopped warping, and the game stopped glitching.

  When the phone rang, Chloe paused for a moment, then reached forward to pick up the receiver.

  Before she could touch it, there came an almighty sound of faulty electronics and the room glitched into a thousand slices. Chloe let out a yelp and felt packed earth beneath her feet, the white replaced with dark. The smell of trees and blood.

  “Chloe?” The voices were familiar and friendly, each member of her party asking after her with a strange curiosity. “Chloe, are you okay?”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  They stood over her in a circle, eyes unblinking, choked with concern.

  “Wha…where am I?” Chloe said, the memory of her journey to the white room coming to her in stutters.

  She tried to sit up but found Ben’s hand on her chest. “You should rest.”

  Chloe eyed him curiously. “What are you talking about?” Her eyes snapped open. She tried to sit again, but it felt as though someone was sitting on her stomach. “The dwarves. The… Are they… Where did they…”

  “They’re gone, Chloe,” Tag said softly. “You...don’t remember?”

  “Remember what?” Chloe could feel her frustration now. What was going on?

  “Don’t tell her,” Jessie said. “She needs to rest first.”

  “Rest, schmest,” Chloe snapped, screwing her fists closed. “Will somebody please tell me just what the—” beep “—is going on?”

  Ben looked at the others for a moment before giving a curt nod to Gideon. He closed his eyes, using Healing Hands on Chloe, and she felt the pressure on her chest ease.

  “That’s better,” she said, pushing herself into an upright position. The others backed away slightly, letting Chloe see what was in front of her.

  The area was littered in the bodies of dwarves, all of them destroyed and down on their faces, their digital forms slowly disappearing and leaving behind only marks on the ground where they had once been.

  “I’ve never seen what happens when the blessed die,” Chloe muttered to herself. She turned back to the others, “But how did you all escape? When I died, you were all in dire straits. The dwarves had the upper hand. I…”

  “Chloe?” Gideon spoke softly, as if he were approaching a wild animal. “It was you. You killed them all. Don’t you remember?”

  “Remember? Me?” Chloe wracked her brain, trying to think. She had seen flashes of green. Heard her friends shout. She had felt her limbs pulled here, there, and everywhere.

  And then she remembered the words coming out of her mouth, KieraFreya inhabiting Chloe’s voice box as she spoke to Tommo.

  “No…” Chloe fell backward as the realization dawned on her. “It’s impossible! I died!”

  Tag shook his head. “If that’s what you call dying, I’d say it’s pretty damned impressive. It was like you weren’t you, but you were. You were there, but your body was possessed by something else.”

  “You kept shouting words,” Ben added. “Obscenities. Things the game usually blocks. You babbled something about justice and retribution and the old gods, and then you collapsed.”

  The pieces of the puzzle were coming together for Chloe. She just couldn’t understand how it could be so. KieraFreya had saved her before, shifting her body away from danger when she should have died. She had done it after the enormous insects in Nauriel. Had she done it again now?

  That was the only logical answer she could think of, and yet it made no sense at all. How could KieraFreya control her words as well as her limbs?

  You’re in a game, dumbass, she thought to herself. Anything is possible.

  Chloe refocused, the rest of her group staring at her. She clapped and forced a laugh, swinging her arms in an attempt to raise the mood. “Well, it’s nothing, I guess. Just a little extra use of the gods’ energy, haha! Now, which way are those damn falls?”

  Before she could turn, Gideon caught her eye. She paused, their eyes locking.

  “You should tell them,” Gideon said, his face deadpan.

  Chloe sighed, unaware she had been holding a breath. She returned to the others and told them all about KieraFreya, right from the moment she had collected the first piece of armor through to now. Every single detail about the goddess and her possession of the armor. The fact she could talk, the fact she could move Chloe’s limbs. And, most importantly, the fact that this was a secret that needed to be held within the party to their graves.

  When she had finished explaining, there was a moment of silence, broken, of course, by Tag.

  “That. Is. So. Cool!” he said, starting quietly and growing in volume. “I mean, totally unfair because of all the bonuses you get, but that’s awesome!”

  “Yeah, pretty cool,” Ben said, face reflecting awe. “I can’t believe you held this back from us for so long.”

  “You’re not mad at me?” Chloe said, head still lowered.

  “Mad at you?” Tag exclaimed. “Do you realize how awesome this makes our party? Every teenage kid living in their mother’s basement is going to be watching us on our feed because of how friggin’ cool this is!”

  Chloe breathed a sigh of relief, glad to see they weren’t mad at her for keeping the secret.

  “I’m sorry, guys. I just needed this mission to be safe, y’know?”

  “Does that mean I can finally talk out loud in front of these losers now?” KieraFreya said, the party taking a step back in surprise.

  “Is that her?” Ben mouthed, pointing to the armor.

  KieraFreya scoffed. “Hey, jackass, I can see you.”

  Ben blushed.

  Chloe turned her attention to her armor, wanting to now fill in the blanks. “Since you’re now out and about, KF, mind telling me what the hell just happened out there? I should have died.”

  “That’s right, you should have,” KieraFreya said, thinking her words over carefully. “And I would have died with you, which is something I didn’t want to happen when surrounded by a load of ambushing dwarves. So, I stepped in. Made a difference. Helped the situation.”

  “When you say, ‘helped the situation,’ what do you mean?” Chloe said, turning it over in her head. “You can now control my health? My stamina? You can now stop me from dying?” Chloe gasped, hands to her mouth. “Does this mean I’m now immortal?”

  “Hell, no,” KieraFreya replied. “At least, I don’t think so.”

  “Then what did you do?” Gideon asked, taking a step closer and kneeling on the ground in front of Chloe like a school kid awaiting reading time.

  “Um, well, the truth is, I don’t really know,” KieraFreya replied. “Was I pissed at those dwarves? Hell, yes. Did I take over Chloe’s limbs to attack them? Hell, yes. Do I know how I held her back from the brink of death and took over her body? Hell-to-the-no.”

  But once I do work this out, I’ma be all over driving this thing, KieraFreya chortled.

  “Hey! Stop talking about me like I’m not here, and remember that I can hear your thoughts too,” Chloe said, annoyed.

  “Shit,” KieraFreya cursed. “Look, the reality is, I don’t know what happened there. Can’t we just say ‘Thank you’ and move on?”

  “I’m still having trouble processing this,” Ben said, a far-off look in his eye. “You’re literally living with a goddess inside you?”

  “Woohoo!” Tag winked.

  “Ew,” Talbot uttered.

  Jessie patted Talbot’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, they’re always like this.”

  “Well, kind of,” Chloe replied, ignoring the others’ comments. “Until just now, I thought that she only inhabited the armor, but apparently now she’s able to control my body and words, too.”

  Gideon ran a hand through his hair. “Jeesh, that’s scary stuff.”

  “I know. Now I don’t know what to think anymore,” Chloe mused.

  “Here’s a question for you,” Talbot said, his logical brain lighting up. “Does that mean that for every piece of armor you get, KieraFreya is going to have more control over you? Won’t that mean that, eventually, you’ll just be a slave to a goddess?”

  Chloe’s eyes widened, and her mouth fluttered a few times before she was interrupted by KieraFreya.

  “Hey, wise guy, you’re scaring the poor girl. Look, you think I want to be trapped in this vessel forever? No. Of course not. What I’m offering you all is a kickass, badass journey across a world you’ve never been on. And what’s at the end of the rainbow? Well, for you all, it’s sweet, sweet experience. I’m talking a ree-dic-yew-luss amount of experience. You’ll boost up several times, and that’s a guarantee.

  “For me, my reward is that I’ll finally get to leave this stinking armor and become one with my whole self again. Hey, maybe I’ll work out what the fuck happened to me and take my place back in the heavens. You really think I want to spend my days controlling a mere mortal?”

  “Not to mention that she can’t actually control me half the time.” Chloe winked. “On a normal day, I overpower her easily.”

  KieraFreya suddenly lifted Chloe’s hand in an attempt to slap her. Chloe had been prepared for it and forced the hand back down with a slight wobble.

  “See?”

  But all the guys could see was a woman miming that she almost hit herself. They couldn’t feel the struggle on the inside.

  “Maybe it’s just a protective thing?” Gideon said. “You’ve been with KieraFreya for, well, weeks now. Maybe you’ve learned to love each other, and she was just trying to protect you.”

  “Ew, no,” KieraFreya retorted, but there was a hesitation in her voice.

  Is that it, KF? You loooove me?

  Oh, fuck off.

  “That would explain so much.” Chloe grinned. “She wants nothing more than for me to be alive all the time so that she’s never lonely. That’s why you got super-peeved and went crazy on those dwarves.”