I was drunk, tired. I’d just gotten my ass beat. But I had to do something about this. How was I gonna stop her? Was I gonna punch a girl? I’d just clobbered my friends with a wooden sword, so maybe. Was I gonna summon Edge?

  No.

  I decided to talk. Because, unfortunately, that was what I was best at.

  “Howdy?” I said as my first offering.

  “Howdy,” she replied, typing in her ste. Her fingers closed around a kitchen knife with her free hand. “Do I have to stab you?” she asked.

  “Not yet,” I said.

  She didn’t put down the knife. I noticed, now, a pile of butterknives, forks, and kitchen utensils next to her.

  I suppose that was how she’d escaped, how she escaped every night. She just had to throw something, and teleport out of the bars. How did I miss that?

  She had spellcasting, so she probably charmed the guard too.

  “Okay, baby boi, you have my attention now,” she said. Her smile was wan. She put the ste on the table next to her.

  I sat up on the bench.

  “Uh, before we get into it, why are you here, and not, like, hiding? I presume you have help coming.”

  “I do,” she said. “I didn’t want to risk you waking up, or waste time. Needed the message out first.”

  “Makes sense,” I said.

  We studied each other for a bit. She was beautiful, stocky but womanly enough. Not that I noticed such things. There was a weariness to her though. I think, even with the company offered by Rachel, the imprisonment was starting to take its toll.

  We’d gone about this all wrong, I realized. We hadn’t trusted her enough. We hadn’t treated her right.

  It’s not like she was going to run 300 miles through the freezing cold mountains on foot to the next town. We had her ste.

  We could have done better.

  Didn’t matter. For now, I just had to keep her occupied until my friends showed up.

  “You could have killed me,” I stated.

  She shrugged.

  “Maybe I’m an optimist.”

  “That you won’t need to?” I asked.

  “That maybe we’ll someday be friends.”

  “Shit. Wow,” that floored me for some reason. “I think that would be pretty cool.”

  “I think you’re alright. I like Raquel even more. But it’s kind of fucked you kept me locked up.”

  “You did try to kill me,” I reminded her.

  “True.”

  “Since we aren’t going anywhere, want to talk about Manga? You didn’t talk to me as much as Rachel. I feel like I never got to know you.”

  “I hardly remember that stuff,” she said, sadness coloring her voice. “I’ve been here too long. I know more about Strife Among the Stars, or Love Flies Before Morning.”

  “Shoot. I don’t know those very well. Or well I know Strife well enough but not the other one.”

  She hopped down off the table, and sat next to me on the bench.

  “LFBM is the pinnacle of Versperalian satire. Chick named Candaria wrote it, kind of like this pce’s Shakespeare. Brilliant stuff. Even the title is a double entendre. Strife is how I connect with my pop, and Elle-Eff is what I read after my first breakup.”

  “Shit,” I said, “that happened here, huh?”

  “Lot’s happened here,” she remarked, her eyes holding some kind of intense feeling I couldn’t pce. “Long as it’s just us,” she said, “maybe we can swap stories. What has it been like for you here? Most of the others don’t make it here long.”

  I thought for a moment.

  She kept the knife in her p, running her finger along the dull back edge. The light from the moon that refracted from the snow outside the windows lit along the skin of her bare shoulders, highlighting her muscuture. She reminded me of Rachel, so tough, with a hint of masculine swagger. But then her long bleached blonde hair gave her a hint of femininity. There was something about the set of her shoulders. She seemed resigned to the violence she could do, like it was just a part of her, outside her control, and always just under the surface.

  Where was the cackling maniac I’d fought in Swordfall?

  I can’t imagine what things had been like for her. Hell, I had a hard time thinking about what It’d been like for me.

  “I like it here,” I said, “one day. And then the next, I’m running for my life under falling ash, dragging the body of my friend behind me, not sure if she’s gonna make it. One day I’m flirting with a beautiful elven woman, the next I’m fighting this crazy fucking undead deer. The good and the bad here are so stark, so much more contrasting than going to the job you hate every day, just living your life for the two days a week you get to be yourself. But… I also miss that life.”

  Helena smiled.

  “That’s interesting,” she said. “I never had a real job. Sometimes I wonder what that would have been like.”

  “Right! You were 12?”

  “I’d just turned 13,” she shrugged like that wasn’t tragic as hell. “But I don’t get what you said really. Growing up, I saw a boy my age spttered on the concrete in front of the mission because he was trying to talk to some guy at the wrong time. Oh don’t give me that look, acting like you don’t have pces like Detroit. I saw violence all the time, kind that don’t make no sense. But here, here the violence comes from me. And no monster survives an axe to the face. Here the violence makes hel sense.”

  “I can see why you’d like The Game. Why your dad wanted to py it with you. What does he think of all this?” I asked.

  She scoffed.

  “He wants me home. But the longer this goes on, the more he realises that I can’t go back, at least not how I was. This is me now. I’m not his little girl anymore. So, we’re trying to put things right.”

  “Is that what Inara’s doing?” I asked. “Setting things right?”

  “As right as they can be. I’ve been telling Racquel this. This pce doesn’t need ‘freedom.’ It doesn’t need ‘reform.’ It needs safe roads, quiet vilges. It needs a queen that can inspire them, a Queen For All the World.”

  I chewed on that for a bit.

  “Then what the hell was happening in Swordfall? How was she supposed to be a queen to those people?”

  “That’s not on us,” she said, crossing her arms and leaning away from me. “That’s on Caleb.”

  “Caleb wasn’t the one lopping folk’s heads off in the street with an axe.”

  “Oh, because when they’re our people, and he used a sword that makes him different?”

  “They weren’t anyone’s ‘people.’ They’re just people. We’re all just people.”

  Helena wore a smile that said she didn’t agree but that the argument amused her anyway. I took that as a win.

  “Oh yeah?” she said with sarcasm. “I know Raquel would agree, but what about your partner? What about Bernadetta?”

  I thought for a second. I didn’t want to admit she had a point.

  “Two things about Bernadette — she doesn’t lie to me anymore. And she has a fat ass.”

  Helena ughed and spped me on the back. I damn near fell off the bench.

  “Boy, she got you cuntmatized.”

  I felt the red creep up my neck.

  “I would prefer to say that we’re just very much in love.”

  “I’m sure that’s true too, but you got it bad. I knew y’all were boning, but she’s got your ass.”

  “Yeah, pretty much. What about you? You seem to have a thing for Rachel. Why leave when maybe you could make that happen.”

  “My papa says so for one,” she admitted. “And for two maybe this is the ‘long game.’ Maybe I don’t want it to look easy.”

  “Fair. Hey, did you teach a bunch of kobolds how to make tacos?”

  “That was my pops, actually. Said they’re all wrong, but he tried.”

  “They’re great! Good on him. First bit of home I’d had in a long time.”

  Helena was easy to talk to. My pn to stall her til the others showed could be working, but then again I also just liked talking to her. Maybe I was too naive, maybe I had people all wrong. But I wanted to be right. I wanted to believe that we were all in this together.

  “You know,” she admitted, “I had this idea of what my type was, that I liked the high femme girls. I dated Princess Mia for a hot minute st year, you know.”

  “No shit!”

  That almost broke my brain. She had to be lying.

  “Yeah. She was on a break with her husband. Least that’s what she said.”

  “Wow.”

  “So,” she continued. “I thought I knew what my type was, then in walks this girl. And fuck man, I just know that my type is now whatever the hell she is. Because damn does she have it. Like, I don’t know what it is, but Raquel’s got it, man.”

  The look on her face was unmistakable. She was in love. Man. Now wasn’t that fucked up?

  I’d have to ask Rachel how she felt about all this.

  “Wait, wait, wait,” I said. “We’re getting sidetracked. Back to the Sofia, Innara thing. I get why you want her to win. She’s a pyer too.”

  “Right.”

  “And your quest is to help her win?”

  “More or less.”

  “Then why did the DM give us the quest to defeat her? She’s from our gaming table.”

  Helena reached behind her, grabbed a gss of water, took a sip, and handed it to me. I drank some too. I was so dehydrated.

  “Here is something I’ve learned. The DM gives all kinds of quests. I’ve met something like ten other people like us, pyers. And they always have a quest to defeat either Inara, Caleb, or the Elven King. Damn near always.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. And if I was to try and figure out why, I’d say it’s because the DM doesn’t want stability, doesn’t want any one faction to win this game. Stability ruins the game world. With stability there’s no bandits, no war, no monsters on the road. There is no adventure to be had.”

  “There would still be dragons,” I offered. “There could still be quests to go off and fight goblins.”

  “Would there? The only reason somebody hasn’t put the goblins down for good, drive them back to their birthing pools, is because we’re all too busy stabbing each other.”

  “Birthing pools?”

  “Yeah, they’re pests born from muck, barely sentient. Nothing like the orcs, who are basically just, like, indigenous people.”

  “Really?” I asked. “I thought orcs were from across the sea?”

  “Not what I heard. And not sure it matters where they came from. Elves act like just about every colonizer ever.”

  “Sure, but it matters where people are from, Helena.”

  “I’m from Mexico, think any of the people here care?”

  “I care.”

  “Because you’re a sweet baby boi, too soft, too pure for this world, that’s why.”

  “I’ve killed people.”

  “Of course you have,” she said, “and so has a badly constructed railing, but I wouldn’t consider that especially spooky.”

  I found Helena to be someone I would have greatly enjoyed spending time with. But she was the enemy. I couldn’t put it past her to be this personable just for the sole reason that she wanted me to hesitate when next we fought.

  But it didn’t feel like that. I wasn’t trying to get in her head. I just liked that she was talking to me.

  “What are we going to do, Helena?” I asked. “Next time we meet, we have to fight. And if I want my friends to be safe, I can’t hold back.”

  “I wouldn’t want you to,” she said, suddenly serious. “If this life here is gonna matter, if what we do here is gonna mean anything, we have to give it everything we got.”

  She stood. I stood. I offered my hand to shake. She shook it.

  Just then, her ste lit up. I heard feet pounding down the corridor behind me.

  I scooped the wooden training weapon from the tiled floor, and tossed it to her. She caught it. I scooped the other one with my toe and tossed it up and caught it in a motion that was honestly way too cool for me.

  “En garde?” I asked.

  “Vámonos.”

  I swiped at her foot. She raised it, and attempted to stomp on the sword. I retracted my sword into a low guard. Her sword came down for the top of my head. I dodged, then brought my point up for her lower body.

  We both spun away. I retreated. She leapt into the air, crossing the space with blistering speed. Not knowing what to do, I gave ground again, and was far away when she nded.

  “Longsword isn’t really my weapon,” I said.

  “Me either,” she admitted.

  I ran forward, and she began to glow red. As soon as I reached her, the glow vanished in an instant. How? What?

  She struck first, forcing me to parry wildly to protect my face. The wood cracked, but both our weapons held. I unched my riposte immediately after, but she slipped to the side and lunged for my face again. I threw my face out of the way at the st moment.

  How was she still faster than me?

  We’d used our Adrenaline Rush abilities at the same time. She’d canceled out my advantage. How had she known I’d use it at that exact moment?

  Our next exchange had me backpedaling wildly. She smiled. Was she holding back?

  Suddenly the world went back to it’s snails pace, and before I could get used to it, Helena swung at my torso with such speed that I couldn’t move in time. I tried to parry but when our swords met, they exploded into splinters, and I was left with just a stump and wooden handle.

  She kicked my hand, and even that flew into the air.

  I stumbled back, weaponless.

  “Is that a draw?” I asked.

  She gave me a sad smile.

  Bernie and Rachel rounded the corner.

  Helena tossed a butterknife into the wall all the way across the mess. She disappeared into green mist.