The goblin trap city burned in a multicolor conflagration under the afternoon sun, the rainbow flames resembling the prismatic sky.

  It was over, for now.

  The last goblin had died and the valley was empty of vectors except for the vectors of the team, which were lively but slowing down. In the surrounding land lay the hibernating vectors of the plants that the goblins had clearcut to make way for their home. One final sweep went out through the immediate area, with Mark and Isoko working in tandem with Barba, checking the ridges with her gun, with Aaron blinked in and out of the Union as he looked for anything else nearby. There were no more targets. Samson leaned against his mace, simply watching the flames.

  The lizard dragonoid remained atop his stone prominence, a valley away, overlooking everything with a distant ambivalence. His vector had pinged on the fires and on the slaughter, but he was not interested in fighting…

  And Mark fell out of the flow, just like that.

  It was a tension snapped.

  The world relaxed, with Barba’s arms shaking a little as she lowered her rifle, Samson groaning out a nonsensical sound, and Aaron sighing. Isoko’s Full Platinum fell away and then came back, looking softer than before. She was tired, too. Not astrally. Mentally.

  They were all a little mentally sore.

  Mark settled onto the actual ground, his feet touching stone in a relaxed sort of way for the first time in a few hours. He had needed to physically move fast sometimes there, using his actual limbs to move, but for the most part he had been flying around and slaughtering all of the goblins that proved to be too much for conventional weaponry or an offensive Union, or for others to fight on their own.

  Breathe in the good, breathe out the bad.

  Mark relaxed just a little. And then he got his head back in the game, back to the moment. Mark tapped his helmet. “Status on the others.”

  Eliot said, “Ah, good. You get really focused on the battle, you know— Anyway! Team Tartu took down the beaming goblins about 30 minutes ago. Lee and Franston cleaned up the dragonoid-riding Shaman at about the same time, when the dragonoid shaman tried to run. That Shaman had turned the dragonoid into a birthing pod and he tried to hasten the birthing to overwhelm the teams with Stonemover goblins, but Lee’s team killed the shaman while Franston’s team paladin was able to clear that infection up and send the dragonoid back into the canyons. The only goblins missing are the Lightself goblins, which includes the 3-horn leader. Barba took shots at him while you killed the city, but the guy never actually committed to a fight at all.”

  It was good to know about the other teams.

  Mark asked, “So we’re down to 10 Lightself goblins? Something like that?”

  “Something like that, and I already know what you’re going to ask and no, we don’t know where they went. Want me to send a hovercraft? You can ride it around and try to sense them?” Eliot added, “That’s what Lee is going to do, and Lee is itching for you to say ‘no’. He’s a strong flier, too, so… he and his team can find the Lightself goblins just fine, and probably better than you can, too. You guys don’t have to keep going.”

  Mark almost scoffed. He was ready for more of a fight…

  But then he looked at his team, and he felt what they wanted. They were done. They had just spent several hours killing goblins, and though Mark had killed 90% of them, 10% of 45,000 was still 4,500 goblins. When given the offer to stop, Aaron and Samson were ready to take the out, but they looked to Barba. Barba looked inward, and at the ground. Her need for vengeance still flared in her vector, but as she stood amongst the blood and bodies, where green goblin phlegm floated in pools of fresh blood, Barba’s fire of vengeance was a small thing. Sputtering and tired.

  Barba looked up from the blood and death, and said, “I need to see Akailah’s corpse. I need to kill the blue one. I may never see the corpse, but I will see the blue one again.” Her flame reignited into a cold certainty as she said, “I am a Hunter and he is my prey.”

  It was a tense moment.

  Isoko cut the tension with a solid, “Sounds good to me, but break first.”

  “Let’s take a small break, first,” Mark said, and then he looked to Isoko.

  Isoko joined with him rather easily, their Unions meshed with each other and the world.

  And then they beat their hearts with purity, wiping away the grime from all of them, and connecting to the nearly clear-cut forest beyond the flaming goblin city. The tops of the trees might have been turned into firewood and crossbows and spike pit traps and door traps, but the roots of those magical trees still existed, and they were hungry. Roots quested out of the ground, wrapping around bodies, as the bodies vanished into the world, and then into the starving roots. Trees bloomed in the flames of the goblin bubble city, killing some of the weaker fires and weakening some of the larger ones. Some Fire Pines blossomed in the deepest fires, like they were at home there, because they were.

  When the forest was still nascent and it could grow on its own, Mark and Isoko switched to sustenance and deprivation, feeding their team from the plants that had eaten the goblins. The team started to look better in a few beats of their heart. Eyes less sunken. Weakness in the arms less present.

  Barba’s flare reignited to full.

  Aaron breathed easier.

  Samson shivered, grinning as he said, “That’s a shot of coffee and a good breakfast all in one!” And then he paused. His grin faltered. Quieter, he asked, “We’re not… uh, eating the goblins, are we?”

  Mark laughed. “No! We’re eating the trees and stuff. They ate the goblins. We’re eating from the trees.”

  Samson gave a terse nod. Aaron was ambivalent.

  Barba said, “I tried goblin once, on a dare.”

  “Oh my gods,” Isoko said, scandalized. “You did not!”

  Mark was aghast and amused, while Aaron shook his head and Samson softly spoke of what was proper, and what was not proper at all.

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  “They eat us so I figured I needed to eat one of them,” Barba said.

  Mark asked, “What part did you eat?”

  “Some of a heart.”

  Mark laughed.

  Isoko threw her head back and gave a great, “Ha!”

  Barba said, “Absolutely disgusting. Would not recomme—”

  Mark felt it the same moment Barba did.

  A presence lifted up from the lizard dragonoid on the stone tower; a mirage of light in the afternoon sun. It hadn’t been there, and then it had. It was the blue tri-horn, and it briefly turned solid, to stare right down at Mark.

  Their eyes locked.

  Black lightning was already crawling out of Mark, into the air, to connect to the goblin leader, but there was no connection.

  Brilliant white light surrounded the goblin and the goblin vanished in a flash of decoherence that Mark had seen many times on the news and in vids, mostly in documentaries, and never in person. Never like this. It made him sick to his stomach.

  That was Tutorial light.

  “That fucker just took the Tutorial, didn’t he!” Isoko spat.

  “Yeah,” Mark said, “He did.”

  Barba stared at the spot where the goblin had vanished, saying, “I will wait here for him to come back.”

  Mark almost told her that would be futile, because the goblin might come back here, but if he was smart at all he would ask to be returned to Earth. Some random spot on that planet would probably be better than coming back here, exactly where he left off, where they could make a kill box for his return. Which they were going to do anyway.

  Aaron said, “We can chase off the dragonoid and build a killzone.”

  Samson said, “There are other Lightself goblins to get, Barba. We could—”

  “No,” Barba said. “That one. Tri-horn.”

  She was focused on the dragonoid in the distance, on its tower. The thing was about 700ish meters away, and it did not seem to care right now about anything.

  Down here, the goblin city still burned.

  Mark made up his mind, and then Mark tapped his helmet and said, “Change of plans, Eliot. Tell Lee we appreciate and accept his offer of hunting down strays. Thank you. We need a kill box for post-Tutorial, too. We know exactly where.”

  Eliot said, “Yeah, we’re already talking about that. Chase the dragonoid away? I’ll send Lee after the strays.”

  Barba lined up a shot and fired. A spark flickered off of the dragonoid’s head, right above its eyes. The dragonoid turned and looked at Barba, and it remained right where it was, doing nothing. Barba pinged it a few more times, and then again and again, and finally the thing roared and slipped down the side of its tower, into the woods beyond. It was annoyed, but it did not come out for a fight. So not that annoyed.

  It simply left.

  And soon, drones started building the killbox.

  Mark, Isoko, Samson, and Aaron stayed with Barba, on the ground, while up above spiderbots crawled over the top of the stone tower. The ‘box’ was enchanted ammunition and blades and walls that would not easily break. And Mark was pretty sure it was useless.

  He didn’t say that, though. No one said that. Not yet, anyway.

  - - - -

  Mark, Isoko, Aaron, and Samson stayed with Barba for 12 hours, well into the night, when the blue ice auroras began to crowd the heavens. Winter came in slowly, frost creeping across ponds of black tar, and across trickling streams behind the burned goblin village. And then winter came in suddenly, with snow falling from the illuminated sky and frost spreading from the tips of leaves.

  Mark’s armor had been shredded slightly by all of the fighting, but his Repair ring had fixed it up in the last few hours, so he felt fine. Aaron was wearing a coat and a new set of armors, while Samson was simply shielded and doing fine. Isoko was platinum and freezing, but a few breaths of warmth kept her going. Mostly, it was boring, but not for Barba.

  Snow began to collect on Barba’s hair as she sat there, still as could be, staring at the kill box, waiting for something to happen. The cold didn’t bother her at all.

  But that was the 12 hour mark, according to Mark’s visor, so Mark prepared to say—

  Isoko softly said, “It’s been half a day, Barba.”

  Barba didn’t respond.

  Isoko added, “5 hours is enough for a person to be declared Missing in Tutorial, or assumed to be on the other world. We might never see that tri-horn again.”

  “Correct, and also vastly incorrect,” Barba said, speaking and moving for the first time in hours. Barba smoothly adjusted her rifle, putting the safety on and then putting the strap onto her shoulder. “We’ll see him again. He went in strong. Stronger than any goblin had any right to enter Tutorial. We won’t have to hunt for him, though. When he shows up again it will be as an Elder Goblin.” She looked up at the killbox still sitting up on the stone tower’s peak. She asked, “Someone sent a warning to Earth, yes?”

  Eliot answered, “We sent a warning to Crystal Tower, yes. The systems flagged it as priority and they thanked us for our warning, but they don’t think much of goblins on Earth.”

  Barba huffed. “They never do.”

  There was a story there about Barba and goblins, but it wasn’t the story that had happened today.

  Isoko asked, “We going back, then? Lee cleared out the other remaining goblins without issue.”

  “Yes,” Mark said. “We’re going back.”

  Barba sighed a little, and then she stared at the killbox again.

  Eliot said, “We’ll leave it up, but you guys should come in from the cold. I’ve got birthday cake! Much better than goblin meat.”

  Barba cracked a smile. “I don’t remember what it tasted like and I hope to never repeat the experience.”