I was about to open my mouth to tell Glimmer just that, but she cut me off. “The winds are slowing down. Get ready.”

  “Get ready for what?” I asked, hoping against hope that the answer would be a child’s birthday party or maybe surprise tickets to the Grammys.

  Not so much.

  “This is where we fall,” she answered, and even though she wasn’t here in the same way I was, I heard her take a deep breath in preparation.

  As the words left her mouth, the wind left the air.

  Immediately, I could see that we were somewhere completely different. The desolate plains had been replaced by rolling hills and patches of greenery. Out of the corner of my eye, I could even see what had to be the river of fire. I mean, it was a literal river made of fire, after all.

  “Barry,” I muttered. Inside my head, I was hoping against hope that this was the only river of fire in the Lower Levels.

  All of that left my thoughts as the falling began. The ground rushed to meet us quickly before I had a chance to steel myself.

  The Energy Blockers were still up so that when I hit the ground, it didn’t kill me instantly. Falling damage was considered environmental damage, after all. Still, the fall hit me hard, taking my Energy from full to blinking red in one violent crash.

  I screamed as the agony ripped through me.

  I let go of Glimmer, who must have been hurt just as badly, and we rolled away from each other.

  My eyes went bleary, and I could taste blood as I stared up at the black matte sky overhead. Everything hurt. Everything was on fire and, worse than that, I knew I’d have to wait for Glimmer to fix herself up before she could do anything about the pain.

  Well, if the fall hadn’t killed her. I had no idea how her Energy was.

  “Glimmer,” I said, choking at the dryness in my throat. “Are you alive?”

  “Just peachy,” she answered. “Give me a minute, and I’ll be right over.”

  “Okay,” I said, breathing hard and trying to keep myself calm through the hurt.

  “Jack? Glimmer?” a voice said directly into my head. “Where are you guys?”

  It was Ember. I could hear him, and he could hear us, which meant he was close. Suddenly, my heart felt a lot lighter. We could find him and be a step closer to getting back to the surface.

  “Ember,” I answered, my voice more determined. “Where are you? We’ll come to you.”

  “No!” he answered quickly. “Don’t do that. What I mean is, you don’t want to be where I am, Jack.” He took a deep breath. “I’m in trouble, guys. Really bad trouble.”

  10

  With Ember’s voice to spur her on, Glimmer healed herself and then me in near record time. Once again, I felt the cooling, awesome rush of being healed all through my body. A guy could get used to a thing like that.

  Standing, I surveyed the area. This place was completely different than the stretch of empty, barren land I had been deposited on or the living mountain I’d found Glimmer trapped within. This place was hilly with patches of green and even a line of trees off in the distance. It wasn’t open and flat, which meant it wasn’t without its secrets.

  I took a second to consider that while Glimmer tried to talk some sense into Ember for the second time. “Just tell us where you are and we’ll come and get you,” she huffed, obviously upset with him.

  “Or you’ll get yourself killed trying,” he replied. “You know how things work down here. You die, then we all are stuck down here forever. I’m not risking that.”

  The frustration in her voice grew even as her avatar went through the canned dialogue animation. “You’re already stuck down here, Ember.”

  “I can get myself out,” he claimed, more than a little trepidation in his voice. “It’ll take me a little while, but I can do it.”

  “Which means you think I can’t,” Glimmer shot back, newfound anger dancing across her eyes.

  I looked at her as she stared off into the distance, every bit of her attention focused on her anger toward Ember. I couldn’t help thinking about what we’d just been through, about the way she felt pressed up against me, and more than that, about the way she’d sort of opened up (or tried to) when we were being thrown around in that tornado.

  Glimmer was deeper than I thought, and that made me feel good and bad at once somehow.

  “That’s not what I’m saying at all,” he said. “You’re a healer, Glim. That’s a really important job.”

  “He’s telling the truth,” I agreed, moving my newly healed fingers around as a testament to that fact.

  “Don’t start,” she said, staring at me for a split second before diverting her attention back to Ember. “You’re the leader. You’re trapped somewhere. That means that we have to try and get you out. It’s not complicated,” she fumed. “Now will you just tell me where you are in this godforsaken place and let’s get this over with?”

  “Under normal circumstances, I would, Glim,” he explained, “but these aren’t normal circumstances. You really want to play around here, Glim? Do you want to risk all the work we’ve done for the past couple of years? Because that’s what it would be. If you jump the gun on this and fail to save me, then the Avenging Angels are done.” He sniffled, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he was getting all emotional about it. “Sure. I mean, we could create new characters, but we wouldn’t be us. We wouldn’t be who we are, and there’s no guarantee the team would even get back together if that happened.”

  I heard Glimmer gasp and realize this more important to her than I thought. “Is that what they’ve been saying? That they wouldn’t want to get back together if this was the end?”

  There was real, legitimate hurt in her voice as she continued, “That’s not fair, Ember. I know you guys have been talking about me. I know the conversation we had wasn’t the start of it.” She sighed heavily. “I just want to prove I matter to this team. That’s all.”

  “You do matter,” I said instinctively. I was so Team Glimmer on this one. She might not have been a friendly person, but that didn’t mean she was a bad one. She wanted to do what was right. Hell, so did I.

  Besides, Ember wasn’t making any sense. If he’d gotten himself trapped, then he obviously was in no position to get himself ‘un-trapped.’ He needed help, and that was what the guild was for. Besides, I couldn’t get out of here without him, and I sure as hell didn’t have the time to wait for him to slowly craft an escape plan.

  “You’re awesome,” I continued as I looked at Glimmer. “I mean, you’re not nice. You’re downright mean to be honest, but you’re right. That is our thing,” I shrugged, “the ribbing like you said. You know, being nice might be overrated anyway. The point is, you’ve always been there for me when I needed you, and I don't think there’s a person on this team who could or would say otherwise.”

  Screwing up my courage to make a stand against our fearless leader, I concluded my little speech by saying, “So, Ember, we are going to help you, whether you like it or not, because we’re more likely to die apart than if we work together. That’s what teams do, right?”

  There was a long moment of silence before Ember let out a sigh of resignation. “Very well but when you see where I am, you may figure out you can’t help anyway.”

  11

  “What the hell?” I asked, my eyes narrowing as I stared up at the rather ordinary-looking beehive near the center of the equally mundane-looking tree.

  Now, I knew the Kingdom of Heaven like the back of my hand. I knew the ins and outs of the game like it was my own little world because, in a lot of ways, it was. I spent hours and hours online, playing with my friends and exploring the world created by Neon Cross. To that end, I could tell you pretty much what was behind every hill up on the Surface Level. I could tell you about artifacts, spells, and the like. I could tell you what they did and what they were used for.

  This wasn’t the Surface Level though, and I was as lost as I could possibly be. No matter how normal these things looked, I had to assume the worst.

  “How the fuck did you fit in that thing, dude?” I asked, shaking my head. “It’s about the size of a shoebox of something.”

  Ember was a big guy, big enough that he took point to people like me and Ice (Barry’s barbarian avatar). The idea of him squeezing himself into something like this was insane to me, but then again, this was an insane place.

  The Lower levels worked with different rules than what I was used to. The fact that we couldn’t speak to each other without being in close proximity was one. The swirling tornadoes which whipped you through various parts of the area was another.

  Now there was this: tiny beehives that somehow sucked up people much bigger than themselves.

  “Maybe there’s a size-changing portal,” Glimmer suggested, settling beside me and looking up. It was as good a suggestion as any.

  “It’s not a portal,” Ember said. “I’m not stupid. I wouldn’t go running toward a portal in a land where I don’t even know how the sky works.”

  “Does a sky work?” I asked, furrowing my brow.

  “Stay focused, Jack,” Glimmer said, which was a welcome change of pace to the usual ‘dickweed’ or ‘jackass’ that would usually accompany one of her commands. Maybe she was feeling a connection to me as well. Maybe she was playing it super safe in front of Ember if his insinuations and her reaction to them were any indications. Still, I was hoping for the former. I had few enough friends as it was, less now with my current ‘stuck in a game’ situation.

  “If not a portal, then how did you get in there?” Glimmer asked.

  “I drank the water,” Ember said, his voice shaky.

  “Water did this to you?” I asked, my muscles tightening as I looked up at the beehive and tried to understand how A could lead to B in this particular scenario. “What water?”

  “The water in the lake,” Ember answered. My eyes did a quick scan of the area and came up empty in terms of lakes, streams, or rivers. Still, Ember was talking, and I needed whatever information he was about to give me a lot more than I needed to know the exact location of a shrinking lake. So, I held my tongue.

  “My Energy was low,” he lamented. “I had burned through all my healing potions and Glimmer was nowhere to be found. I saw the lake and figured the water would help me recharge like it would up above.” He stopped for a beat as if to recall a memory. “I knew something was wrong the instant I drank it. The world started going crazy. The lake expanded to a huge ocean. It was everywhere. I couldn’t find my way out of it. I kept swimming and swimming, but it was no use. I looked ahead though, and that’s when I realized the truth. The lake hadn’t expanded. I had shrunk.”

  “What?” Glimmer gasped, and her obvious shock was just as prevalent on me.

  I had never heard of anything in the kingdom that affected an avatar’s size. This wasn’t freaking Wonderland, after all. Tea and crumpets weren’t supposed to turn you into an uber hobbit. Still, this wasn’t the surface, and things worked differently down here. If I didn’t keep that in mind, it was curtains for me and maybe the entire world.

  “Yeah,” Ember said. “I hadn’t been swimming leagues and leagues. I had been swimming centimeters.” He sighed. “I was exhausted. I knew I wasn’t going to make it. My Energy was too low, and I was almost out of Swim Strength. I’d be drowning and dead before I would even get close to dry ground. All I could think about was how I was going to be letting everybody down. Everyone was going to be stuck here. All our characters, all our work, it was just going to be lost.” He took a deep breath. “Then something happened.”

  “What happened?” I asked, realizing I was so enthralled in this story that I was leaned forward on the balls of my feet.

  “Bees,” he said simply.

  “Bees?” Glimmer asked, obviously not nearly as taken by the events as I was. “What the hell does that mean? What did bees do?”

  “They offered me help,” Ember said. “They flew over me and in some weird buzzing tone offered to get me out. I just had to complete a quest for them. I figured it was better than sure death. So, I took them up on it, and they saved me.” He sighed again. “But things weren’t as cut and dry as I thought they were. The quest wasn’t exactly the way they advertised it.”

  “And how exactly did they advertise it?” I asked, a flash of the most uncomfortable sensation running through me. I knew a thing or two about being manipulated and lied to. It was what caused Aaron’s death. I wasn’t going to let it also screw me out of being able to help Ori and Hecate.

  “They said I had to help the queen,” he said.

  “The queen bee?” Glimmer asked, sarcasm and amusement plain in her tone. She snickered as if to drive the point home.

  “I didn’t have a choice,” Ember answered, defending his decision. “I thought maybe the queen was in trouble. Maybe she was being held by some creature, like that time we freed that elf from the demon horde up in the Badlands.”

  “And that’s not what she wanted, I’m assuming,” I said, tightening my hands into fists at my sides. This was a delay I didn’t need. All I could think about was what was going on with Ori and Hecate, with the Shadow and the Surface Level.

  “No, dude. Not at all,” Ember answered. “They kidnapped me and threw me into this stupid hive. They put me in some room and told me the queen was going to mate with me.”

  “She wants to screw you, dude?” I asked, narrowing my eyes again. That was just wrong, no matter how you sliced it.

  “Yeah. She wants to screw me…and then she’s going to eat me.”

  “Those aren’t bees,” Glimmer opined. “Those are Praying Manti, at least how they act in the real world.”

  “Tell that to the ogre who’s fucking head she bit off in front of me,” Ember groaned. “I finally got out of that stupid holding room, but that’s as far as it’s gotten. I’ve tried to get out, but it’s a maze. There are a million lanes, one after the other. I can’t keep track of where I’ve been, and I don’t know how to get out. I’ve been able to hide from the bees thus far but if they find me-”

  “Then the queen will turn you into a one-night snack. I get it,” I said, shaking my head. “There’s only one thing for us to do,” I said, turning my eyes back to Glimmer. “We gotta get tiny.”

  12

  “This is a bad idea,” Glimmer said to me as we followed Ember’s instructions toward the lake where he’d slurped up some of that shrinking water.

  Having already walked far enough away so that we could no longer communicate with him, we were left to follow the vague instructions he gave us before we left.

  “I don’t see where we have a choice,” I said, shaking my head as I cut my way through a series of vines. I felt the energy from my sword flare up as I used it and grinned a little. Even for all the strife I’d been through, even for all the struggle, there was something about this place and this character that I truly loved.

  Iron Jack was and had always been the best of me. No. That wasn’t right. I was giving myself too much credit. He wasn’t the best of me. There hadn’t been much of me in there before I got sucked into this place. Iron Jack was brave and kind. He was badass and regal. He was like freaking Lancelot, and I certainly had not been. He was the person I wanted to be, the person I wished I could be.

  The strange thing, of course, was that since I’d been here, regular Jack had become a lot more like his Iron counterpart. And here I was risking life and limb to save Ember, the Avenging Angels and, with them, hopefully, the Surface Level and everyone on it.

  Ori came to my mind, as she often did lately. I thought of her lips on mine. I thought of the braided hair which hung down her back. I thought of her killer armored bikini and all the glorious curves that filled it. More than that though, I thought of the way she pushed me, the way she pissed me off, and the way she believed in me at times when I didn’t even believe in myself. I had to save her. I had to get back to her. I had to do this thing.

  “I’m just not sure putting ourselves in the same situation as Ember is the best strategy,” Glimmer said, yawning loudly. She was obviously tired. “We haven’t even tried to figure out another way yet.”

  “Is it late there?” I asked, looking over at her. Her avatar’s face practically glowed with refreshed perfection, but the voice that came out of it didn’t sound it.

  “Late enough. I had a ridiculous day at work,” she said, and I suddenly realized I had no idea what she did for work. We had never had that sort of relationship. Up until now, our normal conversation consisted of that sort of Kate Hudson/Matthew McConaughey type bickering; albeit without the obvious sexual tension.

  “I know the feeling,” I said simply. If she wanted to open up to me about her life, she could. I wasn’t going to push her away this time like I had before.

  “I bet.” She yawned again. “I know I give you a lot of shit, but it’s probably not easy doing what you do. I can’t even imagine having a kid at this point in my life. Yesterday, I locked the keys to my apartment inside of my car and the keys of my car inside of my apartment. I couldn't get into anything. It was ridiculous. So, yeah, a kid isn’t a great idea.”

  “I guess not,” I chuckled.

  “You’re changing the subject though,” Glimmer answered, stepping beside me and using her staff to push through some of the vines.

  Watching her, I wondered if she felt that rush too. I wondered if, in the real world, she was the kind of person who wished she could be the kind of person her avatar was. Maybe I would ask one day but now wasn’t the best time to do so.

  “Yeah. I know,” I grimaced. “There’s a reason for that. This might be a piss poor idea, but even after ten minutes of brainstorming back there, it’s the only idea we’ve got. So, I say we do it anyway.”

  “Fair enough but I still say you should have tried to cut the hive open at regular size,” she retorted. Glimmer wasn’t the ‘sit still and look pretty’ type. Oh no, if she thought she had the right answer, she’d push for it, even if it got her in trouble.

 

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