The next morning, Rua and Otter set about their morning routine as if it were something they’d done a thousand times together. Otter set about doing her wretched, vile, filthy cardio while Rua made breakfast. Then came the interrogation, followed by a few kisses which Rua tried to keep chaste and failed utterly at.

  The training was brutal, and yielded little gains beyond getting Otter used to the odd feel of how real everything was, which only made a part of her worry. Some portion of her mind had long held onto the belief that she was still in a video game. That, despite everything, Rua was some kind of AI, and the world around her was generated.

  But the technology wasn’t there yet. Nothing could pass the Turing Test so well. This entire world was real. Which meant, she wasn’t in a video game at all.

  The thought didn’t bother Otter as much as she thought it should. If anything, she felt relieved. It meant that what she had with Rua was real. It meant she had a future here. An actual future.

  How long since she’d thought she had one of those?

  Rua was practically whipping her to run another p on bance beams through the mud, and breathing was beginning to hurt. She’d always hated cardio. It was getting difficult to concentrate, but her mind was on the edge of something.

  She jumped off one log, and ran barefoot through the mud to the next. When she jumped on this one, Rua leaned in and smacked her on the ass. She nearly fell off the log in surprise and shot her a look.

  Rua waved her hand along, and Otter got back to running.

  Her girlfriend – was Rua her girlfriend now? Labels were so weird – was growing out of her shell more and more, and Otter couldn’t be more proud.

  The wet bark of the tree wasn’t pleasant to run on. It simultaneously felt both gross and ouchy. So many virtual reality games didn’t try to make up experiences like this, so much as just pull from your memory and simute from there. But Otter had never run barefoot on wet, dead trees before. Older gen VR games would just give that value a question mark, and make it feel like normal ground. Not Fell Champions.

  It was the real thing.

  But how’d Holt do it? This couldn’t be virtual reality. This was something else.

  How had she come here? She’d gotten the invite. An e-mail sent to her via her manager, who technically didn’t work with her anymore. Promises had been made. Wild ones. She’d been tempted to just ignore it, but the lure had been set. She’d driven to the location it’d told her to go. And then…

  Otter was eating one of those tasty peanut butter ftbreads Rua had made for lunch, trying not to give her ‘fuck me’ eyes and failing.

  “I am a slut for these,” she said. “What’s this called again?”

  “You’re a slut for a lot of things. And it’s called sarru. Better enjoy it. We don’t have a lot left.”

  “What dragon must I sy to procure more? What mountain must I climb? What pervert wizard do I have to suck off?”

  “There will be no sucking of pervert wizards in my house.”

  “Is this even really your house?”

  “I live here. No one else can get here, short of dropping in from another world out of the sky. Ergo, it is my house.”

  “You literally have a comatose woman living a few hundred metres away that might have a better cim.”

  “No Criobani has a cim on this house. She’ll be lucky if I let her sleep on my stoop when we pull her out of the armour.”

  Something filled Otter’s chest. “You just said when.”

  “Of course I did. Didn’t I agree to your very stupid pn to rescue the Criobani?”

  “And then we’ve done everything but that since. Well, that and sex.” Did she really just say that? She had to py it cool. She couldn’t come off as desperate. “We should do that again. I’m really good at it.”

  Godammit.

  Rua blushed faintly, and looked away. “I want to. I do. But we have two weeks before the migration begins to happen. We need to get off the isnd before then. It’s why I’ve been pushing you. We need to be ready, or we’re stuck here for another six months.”

  “There’s a time limit? You should’ve mentioned that sooner. I can work with crunch. Wait, what migration? Don’t tell me the death swamp isnd is about to be infested with more problems.”

  “No. The opposite. In two weeks, winter ends, and the soo-meng migrate north.”

  “Wait, this is winter?”

  The weather had felt like early fall, at most. It’d been downright warm during the afternoon most days, and with all the trees, they weren’t exactly getting a lot of sunlight bearing down on them.

  Rua blinked, her expression confused. “Yes?”

  “Sweet Buddha at a buffet table, do you mean the Siyan Isnds are tropical?”

  “If that means we have very warm weather compared to other parts of the world, yes. The Mikovians always compin about our summers.”

  “Fuck. We need to get out of your country before that hits. I’m from Canada. I can’t be in some tropical isnds, I’ll die. Where’s Mikova? Somewhere filled with snow, right?”

  “Snow isn’t real.”

  “It is too real, and you have a lie detection skill, you can’t possibly believe it’s fake.”

  “I refuse to believe that water can turn into a white crystal and fall from the sky. It seems silly.”

  “And my girlfriend rejects actual evidence she knows is true. She’s a science denier. This day is getting worse by the second.”

  Rua coughed. “What did you just call me?”

  “Oh. Right. We haven’t, uh, had that talk yet, have we? I mean, if you don’t want to put a bel on it, that’s fine, it won’t bother me.”

  Rua tilted her head, and flicked Otter’s nose. “Lie.”

  “Okay, I do want to put a bel on it. I like you. A lot. I like our talks. I like how you scare the hell out of me some moments, and make me want to protect you others. There isn’t a moment of the day when I just want to hug you. Well, except when I want to clear this table off and pin you to it and fuck you like crazy. So, yeah, I want you to be my girlfriend. I want you to know this isn’t just a fling, and I want to see where it goes.”

  Otter was used to Rua’s blushes, and was in no danger of becoming immune to them. But she didn’t know what to make of her face going absolutely white. Was that good? It was probably bad. People did that when they were afraid. She didn’t want Rua to be afraid, she wanted her to be happy. That was like… the opposite of what she’d intended.

  She was about to stammer out an apology, an expnation, just fill the silence with mindless noise. And then Rua growled at her. Absolutely snarled, like an animal.

  “Uh, Rua?”

  “Well?” she said. There was a wild look in her eyes. “Is my penoa going to take me, or do I need to be in charge?”

  There was an urge to just clear the table by shoving everything off, but the crockery was very fragile, and they weren’t exactly well-supplied to repce any of it. Instead, Otter hurriedly stacked the ptes and cutlery and ran them to the counter. It felt awkward and a little unromantic, but there was a look in Rua’s eyes. A hunger. And Otter was more than eager to match and return it.

  She circled around to Rua’s side of the table, who was still seated.

  “Are you gonna get up?”

  “I’m waiting for my penoa to stop talking and start taking.”

  Otter knew Rua would beat her in any contest of arms, but that wasn’t the game. It was a challenge of authority, and while Otter wasn’t sure why this particur game was happening, she was more than happy to py it.

  She grabbed Rua by the shoulders and pulled her to her feet. Rua opened her mouth to say something, probably taunting, but then Otter smmed her into the table face-first. Maybe a little too roughly.

  Something in her lower belly was stirring, and it wasn’t just her cock. She could feel something bubbling in her, something that wasn’t just the usual lust. It felt weird and foreign and it made itself completely at home as it spread across her nerves.

  “Mine,” Otter growled directly into Rua’s ear.

  Rua made a hum of approval. It just spurred Otter on harder. She dragged Rua’s pants down, jerking them to her knees, and then pced a hand at her entrance. She was absolutely soaked.

  “How long have you wanted this?”

  “Since… since minutes after the st time we fucked.”

  “And poor you deprived yourself. So I’m going to make a new rule, and you’re going to agree to it, because you’re mine.”

  Otter slipped a finger inside, and Rua sucked in a breath.

  “What… what rule?” she asked.

  And then an emergency message window triggered, opening up in front of them, Holt’s face smiling at them until he realized what he’d just interrupted. He had the grace to look embarrassed, and looked away.

  “Son of a bitch!” Otter yelled. “Fucking cockblocking, blueboxing son of a gutter fucking whoremonger!”

  “Ah, there’s a thing,” Holt said. “You really should check your messages more often. I made an announcement an hour ago and everything. Make yourselves presentable, I will be transporting you momentarily.”

  The window closed, and Otter swore some more.

  “Do you think we have time?” Rua asked.

  “No, knowing him, it’ll happen any second now. What’s your thoughts on exhibitionism?”

  Rua pulled her pants back up, and shook her head. “Not in one of those arena settings. You might have enemies looking for weakness, and… well, sex is very distracting.”

  “Especially the way we do it.” She held her hand up for a high five, and then remembered Rua still didn’t know how to do those. She was really going to have to teach Rua basic Earth interactions at some point.

  “We’d do well to try to make a good impression. We could use the allies.”

  Otter theatrically sighed. “Fine!”

  Rua stood on her tiptoes, and gave Otter a quick kiss. “But… when this is done, I don’t want you to hold back. At all.”

  “What happened to my shy little Rua? It was just a few days ago, you couldn’t even think of sex without blushing.”

  “No. I couldn’t think of someone caring for me without blushing. I always enjoyed the idea of sex. Maybe even just as much as you. I just never had opportunity.”

  Otter didn’t know how to respond to that with words, so she let her lips and tongue do her speaking for her. But then, those already were used for speaking, weren’t they?

  Focus. She had to focus.

  She sank into a very thorough kiss with Rua, reality blurring all around them, and felt as if there were something else she had to be focusing on. Something she’d forgotten.

  And then they were in the colosseum again, and it no longer mattered.