Chloe smiled, hearing a victory shout from Gideon as he completed his spell. She craned her head back up the mountain and saw the tiny outcrop she was after.

  She narrowed her eyes and bent all her will on the climb, hoping against all hope that this would work.

  Chapter Eight

  Every time that Chloe felt her grip weakening or her muscles growing tired, she cast Healing Hands on herself. She worked into a great pattern with Ben of revitalizing them both while keeping an eye on the titan as they climbed ever higher up the inside of the volcano.

  She could hear Tag and Jessie down below, calling and distracting the titan. After a quick look down (which Chloe only did once after realizing that even just a short glance gave her vertigo), she saw that Tag and Jessie had climbed into the bubble and the magic sphere was providing protection for them all right now.

  Good job, Gid, Chloe said, impressed.

  And me? the shaman asked.

  Sure. You too. If I could pat you on the head, I would.

  The outcrop was damned close now. Just a few more feet, and… Chloe wrapped her fingers around its edge, clambering onto its safety with wheezy breaths.

  She turned and helped Ben up, the elf looking paler than she’d ever seen him. Although he was tough, she guessed that he kept most of his worries on the inside. Perhaps heights weren’t his favorite things to tackle either.

  “We’re…here…” he panted. “Now…what?”

  Chloe sent forth a wave of Healing Hands for both of them, turning and pointing. They were now at eye-level with the titan. “There.”

  Ben squinted ahead, then saw what Chloe had seen.

  “Is that a weak spot?” He asked.

  “A weak spot?”

  Ben nodded. “Every game puts in a weak spot for the monsters, something that’ll give every player at least a chance to take them down. A dragon might have a missing scale, revealing the flesh beneath. A sandworm might have a digestive system weak against fire.”

  “Nice. There’s generally something to help a player in the darkest of times. Maybe that’s the weak spot,” Chloe mused. “Whatever it is, it’s glowing, so I want you to take it down.”

  Ben grinned, already nocking an arrow. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

  “Just don’t miss,” Chloe said, jumping in before he could fire. “We don’t want to attract its attention from up here if we can help it.”

  “Don’t worry,” Ben said, and Chloe was surprised to see the arrow begin to glow. “You’ve got your special abilities, I’ve got mine.”

  His tongue poked out the side of his mouth as he lined his eye up with the shot. The titan bucked as it threw another rock down below, and he waited patiently to fire.

  “Here…we…go!”

  He released the arrow, sending it in a perfect line straight toward the nub of horn.

  An eruption of sound came from the titan’s mouth on impact. Its hand flew up to its head and it began to fold forward, its massive bulk coming straight for the wall by Chloe and Ben.

  “Now’s our chance!” Chloe said as the sea of lava came toward her, the nub of rock lining up beside them both.

  “What—” Ben exclaimed, his words stolen as Chloe grabbed his hand and jumped onto the nub, clinging to several small pocket-sized holes in the rock.

  They both shouted in alarm as the titan’s head crashed into the wall before it straightened back up. It looked around for the source of the pain, but couldn’t apparently feel the two adventurers now standing on its head.

  Thinking that somehow the three below had something to do with the attack, the titan increased its ferocity, raining down rock after rock at the bubble.

  “I’m not sure how long that bubble will last,” Ben said.

  “Then we better hurry,” Chloe said through gritted teeth, seeing that the place where Ben’s arrow had landed had fissured the rock, creating small cracks around the nub of horn. From inside, she could see the green-gold glow of the armor and hear the familiar twinkling sound.

  “It’s inside?” Ben asked, incredulous.

  Chloe didn’t answer. Instead, she drew her sword and began stabbing into the rock, trying to widen with every hit. Ben got to his knees, stabbing and digging with his knives, the two desperate to get to the prize beneath.

  But the titan did not like that. With every stab, a jolt of pain surged through its body. It reached for its horn with arms that were far too stubby, its mouth hanging open, dribbling fiery saliva.

  The rock began to break apart, Chloe not even pausing to wonder what would happen if the rock disappeared and they were plunged back into the lava.

  “It’s beautiful,” Ben said, as the rock widened enough for Chloe to sink her hands in.

  She grabbed the corner of the armor, feeling a little bit of pull. Gripping tightly, she yanked hard, the armor slipping free and emerging into the open air. There was a bright flash of white, and the armor found its way onto Chloe’s body.

  It was the strangest sensation then; she felt not one, but two changes. The first was the shoulder pads she now sported, the metal light and shaped to her figure. The second was the length of material that had somehow snaked around her body and fixed itself across her mouth. She could feel the soft material on her lips and wondered what the hell was going on.

  KF? Care to explain?

  Maybe later, KieraFreya said, her voice almost orgasmic as she synchronized her armored pieces on Chloe. Maybe deal with the problem at hand first while I work on this.

  Problem at hand? Chloe turned and saw Ben staring wide-eyed at the ground—which was now fast rising toward them.

  “What’s happening?” Chloe shouted, feeling the rock now crumbling beneath them, threatening to fall into the lava.

  Gideon, Tag, and Jessie called through cupped hands, their platforms rising to meet them fast. “It’s going to blow!”

  And then Chloe could see it. Although it looked as though the titan was sinking into the lava, it was actually the lava building up, getting ready to explode out of the mouth of the volcano.

  Chloe grabbed Ben’s hand and jumped onto the platform with the others, her legs bearing the brunt of the landing as it continued to rise into the sky.

  “If this is the end, know that I loved you all!” Jessie screamed, holding Tag tightly.

  Chloe frowned as the sky came to meet them, and their stomachs simultaneously rose into their throats as they were propelled high into the air. While the others shouted and cried out in fear, Chloe gritted her teeth, seeing the object of her attention swing closer. The idea was so idiotic that she couldn’t quite believe she was about to try it.

  “Tell my mum I loved her!” Tag shouted.

  “Dude, you’ll see your mum in, like, five seconds after you die!” Ben called back.

  They were up in the air in seconds, the lava kissing the volcano’s lip before spurting into the air. The lava pushed the platforms higher and higher until they were almost at the clouds.

  Chloe trained her eyes, watched one of them swoop past, then chose her moment to run off the edge of the platform and swan-dive into the air.

  The pterodactyl-like creature squawked in protest as Chloe’s legs planted themselves either side of its torso. She leaned forward and hugged its neck, trying her best to calm the beast.

  “Come now, bird… dino…thing. I need you…”

  The bird protested, sweeping left, then right, then turning back on itself. Chloe gripped it even tighter, grabbing a protruding mass that spiked out of the back of its head and using it to steer.

  She could hear them now, her comrades, plummeting toward the ground. They were small dots in the sky. Forcing the bird to adhere to her control, she poured her will into making it fly higher, circling and sweeping toward Tag, Gideon, Jessie, and Ben.

  “Chloe! Help! Chloe!” Gideon cried, rolling through the air. His cloak had wrapped around his body as he fell.

  Chloe ignored Gideon, hating the fact that she was doing so. She knew her priorities lay with the one person who had no backup plan. The one person for whom dying meant not coming back.

  Jesepiah’s arms flapped wildly as Chloe came to meet her, the added weight of Jesepiah’s arms hooking around Chloe’s neck threatening to throw Chloe off at the same time that the bird threatened to fold its wings and collapse to the ground.

  “Get your body straight,” Chloe choked. “Please…”

  Jesepiah, managed it, somehow and the bird adjusted, able to fly but struggling under the added weight.

  “Quick, get the others!”

  “You think this bird can take it?” Chloe shouted over the roaring wind.

  “We have to try.”

  Dammit. She was right.

  Chloe kicked the bird’s body, yanking its head around and sending them into a diving spin. They darted through the air and approached Gideon, Tag, and Ben, lava still spurting around them.

  The three adventurers plummeted toward the magma, the gap growing dangerously close. Chloe lowered her body, streamlining them to pick up speed.

  But it was no good. There was no way they were going to close the gap.

  “Forget about us!” Tag called up. “Save Jessie!”

  Gideon managed to free his head from the material of his cloak long enough to add, “It’s fine! Honestly! Remember? We’re on fire—” He stopped as his mouth was flapped shut.

  Ben caught Chloe’s eye, winked, extended his arms, and rotated into a perfect dive, body sinking straight into the fire.

  Gideon was next.

  Then Tag.

  Jessie screamed in Chloe’s ear, not used to the death cycles of the blessed as Chloe yanked back on the bird’s head at the last minute, its body scratching the surface of the lava. She veered upward, turning across the blackened landscape, looking for the sun.

  “Oh, Tag,” Jessie sobbed behind Chloe. “My dear, sweet Tag.”

  Chloe rolled her eyes, saying, “Quit your crying, girlie. Your precious Tag will be back in a few hours—which is just long enough for us to make it back to where they’ll resurrect.”

  She heard Jesepiah sniffle. “You mean…”

  “They don’t call us the blessed for nothing,” Chloe said. “Now, the only question is, which way is west?”

  When Jesepiah didn’t answer, Chloe took her best guess, steered the bird that way, and gave it a small kick to get it moving. Behind them, the volcano bubbled and exploded, topping up the pools of magma that decorated the land of Bahrum.

  Chapter Nine

  The sun stung their eyes as they flew across the desert.

  The smoke-fueled clouds had broken away some time ago, making way for bright blue sky. The earth changed from black to grey to golden, and the dunes were a welcome sight for Chloe and Jesepiah.

  Or at least, for the first few hours they were.

  Chloe couldn’t count on her hands the number of times between them they had said, “Goddamn, this is too hot.” The sun was relentless. Chloe wondered whether it would have been better to have just stayed inside the volcano rather than ride through the endless heat on a quest to find her friends once more.

  The bird wasn’t helping much either. Having flown miles and miles away from its home at the insistence of its rider, the bird had begun to sink lower in the sky, wobbling every now and then as its tired muscles began to spasm.

  They had talked about giving it a rest at one point, but neither Jessie nor Chloe could guarantee the bird would not just abandon them where they stood, and the last thing the girls needed was to be stranded in the desert after everything they’d been through.

  The ride hadn’t been all miserable, though. Along the way, Jessie and Chloe had had a chance to talk and catch up, realizing they had never spent much time alone in each other’s company.

  They impressed Chloe no end, the stories Jesepiah told. At times, she forgot that she was even talking to the construct of an AI, the girl’s backstory so rich and deep that it could have been real.

  Jessie told Chloe all about the trial she had conquered in the volcano. She had told Chloe that, once they had passed through the doors, she had been faced with total darkness. As she had blindly walked through the tunnel, she had heard the whispering ghosts of her ancestors calling her through the shadows.

  She had then found herself wading through a substance she couldn’t see, thick as treacle, creatures flying above her and attacking her head. She thought that they might be bats, but it was impossible to tell.

  These she had to catch and kill with her bare hands during their relentless attacks, distractions flooding her head from the whispers and familiar words her ancestors called to her. A mixture of pain and mental and emotional torture were her only guides through the tunnel.

  “It seemed to go on forever,” Jessie said. “Every time I thought I was done, more would appear. Do you know how hard it is to catch flying creatures like bats?”

  Chloe shook her head. “I caught a fly once. Well, not so much caught it. It flew into my mouth.”

  “Oh,” Jessie said sarcastically. “You’ll know exactly how this felt, then.”

  “Hey, less sass,” Chloe said. “You remember I saved your ass, right?”

  Jessie hugged Chloe’s waist tighter. “I know. Thank you.”

  As the bird threatened to topple with exhaustion, the girls’ mouths dry from the constant sun, they saw what they were looking for—a small sandstone village near the horizon.

  “That way—woah—!”

  Chloe had started to point ahead when the bird suddenly took a nosedive. When it was almost on the ground they hopped off, and it let out a feeble squawk before its beak dove into the sand, leaving a short trench behind it.

  Chloe and Jessie wiped the sweat from their heads.

  “So close,” Chloe said, looking desperately at the village.

  “Think the sherikans will come get us?”

  Chloe shrugged. “I wouldn’t count on it. They’re not mindreaders, and we don’t want to be waiting out in the open hoping they just arrive.”

  “Good point.”

  “What about the bird?”

  Chloe stood by the bird’s head, its sad eyes looking up at her. She sighed, then knelt and patted its head. “It’s taken us this far. We should repay the favor.”

  Jesepiah moaned.

  Carrying the bird took a hell of a lot of their remaining energy, but that made the shade more than worth it when they dragged the bird inside the first hut they came to.

  Chloe summoned three ice shards, handing one to Jessie, feeding one to the bird, who crunched it greedily in its beak, and one for herself. The bird asked for more by knocking against Chloe’s leg and she gladly obliged.

  “You’re a cute thing, aint’cha?”

  The bird cawed quietly, busying itself with its second ice shard.

  “What is it?” Jessie asked. “It doesn’t look like the other birds I’ve seen before.”

  “In my world, there are birds just like this. Well, were birds like this. They’re extinct now. We call them pterodactyls.”

  “Terror-daxils?”

  “Close enough.”

  Jessie thought for a second. “Why don’t you scan it and find out its real name?”

  Chloe slapped her head. “Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?”

  She focused on the bird, which had now made its way onto its feet again.

  Terrordaxil (Lv 14)

  490HP

  “Well? What’s it called?” Jessie asked innocently.

  Chloe sighed and told her.

  “You’re kidding?” She sucked in air. “That’s got to sting.”

  “No, not at all,” Chloe said uncertainly, finally having a proper chance to check her notifications.

  There was a long string of messages waiting for her. Not only had Chloe increased her acrobatics skill in the volcano, but she had also developed the Climb skill, and had gone up the first two tiers in that. Thanks to her plan of jumping onto the top of the titan’s head, she had also upped her Reckless skill to the next level and gained some nice boosts.

  “No experience for defeating the titan, though,” Chloe complained.

  “Well, I guess technically, we didn’t defeat it, did we? It’s probably still in the volcano.”

  “Good point.”

  Chloe grinned as she scanned the info about her latest pieces of armor, hoping as she read through the text that she’d have some kind of explanation about the piece of black material that cloaked her mouth like ninjas from old movies.

  Item obtained: Gardbrace of KieraFreya

  You’ve found the lost gardbrace of a fallen goddess. Made from metals forged by the gods, these are virtually indestructible, though some say that they have a mind of their own.

  Bonuses: +10 strength, +5 dexterity, +5 etheric potential

  Rarity: Mythic

  Item obtained: Ninja Mask of Silent Judgment

  You’ve found the Ninja Mask of Silent Judgment, the fabled mouth cover of the Goddess of Retribution. By wearing this item, you will be able to hide your emotions at will from your enemies, erasing fear and striking it instead into the hearts of your foes.

  Bonuses: +5 strength, +5 dexterity, +5 endurance, +5 etheric potential

  Rarity: Mythic

  “Ninja Mask? Nice!” Chloe said, running her hands across the soft material over her mouth. The sensation of the mask covering her mouth was strange, her lips pressing against its surface. Despite the cover, she found that she could breathe perfectly fine, as if the material was hardly there at all.

  She spun on the spot and put her hands on her hips, copying the poses she’d seen runway models during Fashion Week use. “Well, what do you think?”

  Jessie, who had been busy picking thick chunks of dirt from under her fingernails, turned her head. “Er, what?”

  Chloe exploded into laughter. “Yeah, I’m not much of a fashionista myself. But seriously,” she whirled, her hair splaying behind her, “what do you think of my new look?”

  “Shoulder pads and a gag. You’ve got it all going on.” Jessie winked.

  “Hey! This is more than just a gag. According to my updates, this will hide my emotions at will.”