Rua had let go.

  It was the only thought echoing through Otter’s mind, after seeing her disappear into the mud. She’d been holding onto the wire, pulling with all her might to get Rua out, and then had fallen backwards. The only reason that would’ve happened was if Rua had let go.

  Betedly she realized she was wasting time, thinking about what had already happened, and not acting. Her brain chugged along like an old engine revving to life, and she stumbled forward on hands and knees to the spot Rua had sunk into. She forced a hand into the mud as deeply as it would go, but it was thick, and not as yielding as she expected.

  Rua had sunk into it as if it were only a little thicker than water, but this was far more solid. Otter hammered her fists into the mud, making strangled noises, and while they sunk a few inches, there wasn’t enough give to reach down and grab onto Rua.

  Who knew how deep she was. Just inches lower? Feet?

  She was probably suffocating, the mud filling her nostrils, her mouth, blocking off all air.

  Otter grabbed clods of wet earth and threw it to the side, trying to dig. When that wasn’t fast enough, she got on her feet and began to scrape with both hands, throwing mud behind her like a dog would.

  She didn’t realize she was screaming – in pain, in frustration, in terror – until she was out of breath, drawing in ragged gasps just so she could scream again. Tears were in her eyes, blurring her vision even more.

  She managed to dig maybe two feet deep before she colpsed. The mud was constantly sliding back into pce, and her mind couldn’t put together a better pn, not with a concussion blocking every attempt to gather her thoughts into something coherent.

  Somewhere in the distance, she heard Sunny scream.

  Panic hit Otter. Should she go to Sunny? Leave her for now? The armour wouldn’t hurt her, would it? Just… put her back inside. Something Sunny clearly feared, but something she could survive.

  But what if Rua was already dead? What if…

  Otter didn’t know she’d fallen unconscious until she woke up.

  It was dark. Not the kind of dark caused by the shadows of the tree canopy. The kind of dark that only truly came when the sun had fully retreated, and even the moon and stars were blotted out.

  Otter braced herself for wooziness, and realized it was gone. Her head was clear. She steadied herself, putting her hands on the ground to brace herself and rise… and found no mud. Only smooth, polished bck stone flooring.

  “Oh fuck.”

  Otter looked up, and saw an endless expanse of bck, broken only by a single silhouette in front of her, a woman sitting in a chair. But this time, it was not the form of Sami, it was Rua, a perfection ruined only by a pair of yellow eyes.

  “Hello, dear,” the Dreamer said.

  The Dreamer looked as Rua normally did, in casual clothes, in a self-assured, almost cocky, pose. Not quite smiling, but a sense of being pleased radiating off her.

  Otter flicked herself across the nose. “Snap back to reality.”

  “This is reality.”

  “Ope, there goes gravity.”

  “Ah, a song. Simir to a story, but without the meat.”

  That brought Otter up short. Would a Dreamer be able to do their heinous fuckery with the lyrics of a song? She didn’t know, and she was too afraid to ask.

  “Is there something you want, Supertramp?”

  The figure of Rua crossed her legs, gently bouncing one of them up and down. Otter watched it, and had to remind herself that this wasn’t actually Rua. But godamn her girlfriend was hot.

  “Only to help, of course,” the Dreamer said, sounding entirely too pleased.

  “I’ve seen what your help is like. Send me back. Wait, can you just pull me here whenever you feel like?”

  “If only it were that easy. Sometimes I can touch upon your realm. And sometimes, you can touch upon mine. This would be the tter.”

  “What, me being unconscious brought me here?”

  “Not quite. You being brain damaged brought you here.”

  “Me being what.”

  “Brain damaged. Yes, I know. Who can hardly tell the difference with you. You took a very nasty hit. You’re positively bleeding out of the ears right now. Honestly, if not for my intervention, I suspect you won’t wake up from this.”

  Otter tried to stand. She didn’t want to hear this. Hear how this monster had saved her. Because she knew where it was leading. There was only one reason why monsters saved people.

  But no matter how she shifted her weight, how she tried to move, she always found herself seated on the ground. It wasn’t as if she fell. It was just as if every movement were a road that led to the same destination. In defiance, Otter turned herself around, sitting away from the Dreamer, but frustratingly, that thing was rooted on her chair no matter which direction she looked.

  “Finished yet?” it asked, arching an eyebrow in a way that definitely wasn’t sexy at all.

  Why was she thinking like that? Otter had always had a healthy libido, and since joining the game and becoming a stupid penoa – even if that had its perks – it’d been amped up to 11, but this was just getting ridiculous. It was like she was a hormonal teenager again for the first time. Focus. She had to focus.

  “Yes, you can say whatever it is you want to say, and then I can go back to drooling in the mud or whatever it was I was doing. I have a girlfriend and a kid to save.”

  “Ah yes, young love.”

  “What? I’m not… who said anything about love? Labels are dumb. I barely know her.”

  The Dreamer made a little titter, which sounded odd coming from Rua. She covered her mouth with one hand. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to embarrass you. Really, it’s your best trait. To love so freely and easily, to be willing to fight for a person you met… how long has it been? A week? Your concepts of time are so silly. First, you have to perceive it as linear, and then you break it into pieces? How does one keep track?”

  “You’re asking the person with a concussion to expin how time works?”

  “Listening to you attempt to expin temporal phenomena to me would be the same if you asked a raccoon for culinary tips. While I am certain you’d have fascinating insights, they’d all just end up being stewed garbage.”

  “Can we just get whatever this is out of the way already so I can leave? I’m still angry over our st encounter.”

  The Dreamer waved a hand dismissively. “You don’t even remember what I did to your mind. I literally excised the event. If anything, you should be grateful. I introduced the idea of you to your lover before you met, ensuring your retionship would come to pass, while simultaneously giving you the power you would need to escape the isnd you both find yourself trapped on.”

  “Yes, because you’re not getting anything out of the arrangement at all.”

  “Oh, I most definitely am. Your… Dark Raider is fascinating. I look forward to seeing where his story goes.”

  “You’re not bound by linear time. Shouldn’t you already know?”

  “Of course I do. But I also do not. My temporal existence is very simir to that of your kind’s Schrodinger’s cat. I both exist at all points in time and do not. As such, this is the both the first time I’ve had this conversation with you, while also being an event I am currently repying in my mind for the infinitieth time. So, yes, I already know where the Raider’s story is going. And yours. But I am also surprised at the first time it happens, even if there never truly was a first time.”

  “I’m confused.”

  “Stewed garbage. Don’t worry. I wasn’t really expecting you to keep up.”

  She looked smug at that. Otter tried not to scowl, but didn’t have a lot of success. “Just tell me what you want already.”

  “I’ve already gotten it. Or will get it, from your point of view. The terms were set when we made the Pact.”

  Terms? That was the first time Otter had heard that. She knew there was an agreement, something she would do for the Dreamer one day, but that no one ever had knowledge of what it was.

  “I don’t remember an agreement.”

  “I excised it, snip snip.” The Dreamer made a motion with both hands, as if they were both a pair of scissors, and then mashed them together in a lewd dispy and tittered again. “Perhaps not the correct anatomical dispy, given you are one of mine.All I am doing now is facilitating you keeping up your end of things.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that while you’re here, I’m holding together what passes for a mind in your head together while your Tenacity does the work of repairing the fracture to your skull and the concussion you resulted by trying to stop an Ashborne Cutting’s fist with the side of your head.”

  “What?”

  “The damage would have been permanent, if not for my intervention. Your kind always underestimate concussions. I believe you said something about drooling in the mud, which shows a remarkable about of self-awareness you normally do not possess.”

  The Dreamer sounded entirely too pleased with herself. And that kind of pissed Otter off.

  “My girlfriend is currently drowning in the mud. If…” She drew in a breath, steadying herself. “if I can’t get her out… I will burn everything you hold dear down. I will find out what you love, and I will tear it to pieces.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about that. Ashborne has her. She’s not in the mud, so to speak. Not anymore. She was pulled through the swamp from one pce to another. The Cuttings had no interest in drowning her, only taking her.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I implied to Ashborne that I wanted it to happen. I told him there was a threat on his silly little isnd, and he assumed I meant Rua because I took her form. Now he doesn’t know whether to present her to me dead or alive as tribute.”

  Otter ground her teeth. “Why?”

  “Why not? I am praised as an unknowable entity. Perhaps I did it to motivate you to become stronger. Perhaps I did it to motivate Rua to become stronger. Perhaps this is just another domino that has to fall in the series of events I have set up for you. Perhaps I did it to send the two of you even closer together. Or perhaps…” She leaned forward in her chair, a twisted smile coming over her face, the features morphing and shifting until it was no longer Rua’s, but Sami’s staring at her. “I did it because I’m a bit of a cunt.”

  Otter lunged forward, and while she didn’t quite get off her ass in her seated position, she did raise maybe half an inch. Her body actually listened to her, actually understood what it was to stand for a second, before failing and going back to sitting.

  The Dreamer’s smile widened even further.

  “How long do I have to be here?” Otter growled.

  “Your Tenacity, low as it is, will require two Midnights to fully heal.”

  “Why midnight?”

  “Soul power is tied into the world of Fell. Every part of it influences your power, from its rotations to its tides, to the stars that stare down at it at night, to the shifting of fault lines. Soul power does not belong to you. It belongs to Fell. You are just its keeper, for a time.”

  “What, it goes back to the pnet when I die? Is this some kind of circle of reincarnation thing?”

  The Dreamer took on a distant look, as if seeing something far on the horizon. “No.”

  There was an awkward pause. The Dreamer seemed to have no interest in continuing her banter or showing Otter how much smarter or more powerful she was. Otter tried to fidget, tried to stand, tried to do anything, but apparently the Dreamer wasn’t interested in letting her move. Or do anything.

  So Otter meditated.

  She sucked at it. Her attention span wasn’t great. But Sami had drilled it into her, and Everett, and Il-Su. Less out of a desire to teach them spiritualism or inner peace, and more self-discipline. One of many things Otter had enjoyed about Sami at first, until she began to resent it, resent the chains and the expectations and the demands.

  Resent what Sami had ultimately done to her.

  Oh, how she wanted to throw that into Sami’s face, especially whenever she wanted the ‘truth’ of why Otter left. But she’d never been a petty person. Not in that way, at least.

  Otter let the anger flow through her, and let it flow out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Anger in. Anger out. Her hands remained still the entire time.

  It felt good. Letting it take over her, and then wash away. She probably should’ve done this sooner. But she hadn’t been ready before. How much of a mess had she been when Holt had gotten a hold of her? How many empty bottles had decorated her apartment, how many half-smoked joints stubbed out on things she’d once cared about?

  Otter could almost feel that wretch again, that person she’d been for a few months.

  In, and out. Peace. Nothingness. She let it all go.

  “Your story grows,” the Dreamer said.

  There was a hint of respect in the words. Weird, how that sounded. Almost nice, like a distant parent finally acknowledging you after years of abuse and neglect.

  So of course the Dreamer immediately ruined it.

  A crushing force, like the hand of Buddha gently pushing down, came down on Otter’s shoulders and head. She resisted, trying to push upwards, keep her back straight, but quickly found her face pressed to the polished bck floor.

  “Ow.”

  It didn’t threaten to push her any further, but apparently she was no longer being afforded the ability to sit up.

  “Are you having fun?” she asked through gritted teeth.

  “Always.”

  “Care to let me up?”

  “No. Do it yourself.”

  Otter sighed. Of course. She struggled, flexing her muscles and trying to rise, but it was just like earlier. Her body refused to do what she wanted.

  “Well,” the Dreamer said with a sigh. “It looks like it will be a long two nights.”