I picked up my pace. “How much farther?”

  Sync perched in the seat and faced backward. “We’re getting close. There should be a bridge coming up…”

  The car engines grew louder, and the headlights grew brighter. I hoofed it with everything I had down the wide packed-dirt road. Gunshots rang out, and bullets thumped into the trees around us and ricocheted off the ground near my feet. A few shots actually hit the rickshaw, causing minor damage, but far less than before thanks to the Fjorst’s Fidelity buff.

  Sync flung fireballs and force blasts back at the pursuing cars, but it wasn’t enough.

  At only 25 MPH for my top speed, I couldn’t outrun the vehicles since the road was open with no obstacles. One of the cars swung wide and pulled up alongside us. Its suicide doors opened, revealing bird heads and human suits like before.

  How do I keep ending up in these awful situations?

  At the sight of two Tommy guns rising to open fire, I knew I had to take action. The rickshaw’s buff was good, but if I didn’t do something, they would definitely gun us down—plus I doubted that buff covered my avatar along with it.

  “Oh, flag this!” I yelled, unwilling to get shot again or sustain more damage on the rickshaw. I swerved off into the moonlit forest and its thick clusters of trees. Gunfire rattled behind us, thumping into the rickshaw but only doing minor damage.

  “Ah! What are you doing?” Sync yelped as she struggled to stay in her seat.

  The road was bumpy, to say the least, and I had to duck under several low-hanging branches so they didn’t knock my head off. Even so, they reached for me like dozens of claw-tipped Karjok tentacles, scraping and scratching my bare arms, legs, and face. I gritted my teeth and kept running.

  “Rickshaw-offroad fury! Rickshaw-rampage!” Silas roared as we careened through the foliage and brush. “Rickshaw-questionable decision-making!”

  The Godfeathers swerved off the road to pursue, but they couldn’t navigate the forest as well, giving us some much-needed breathing room. Their headlights flashed between the deciduous and conifer trees, casting severe shadows throughout the forest. Bullets still sprayed everywhere. Within the dense canopy at night, it got harder to see, save for small clusters of fireflies.

  CRACK.

  “Ah!” I ran right into a giant tree and took damage—15% of my health dropped away, just from that one stupid mistake, and the rickshaw stuttered behind me. “Son of a glitch! Sync, light!”

  I got us going again, but I felt the hot sticky sensation of glitter running down my face from my forehead. I must’ve gashed it open pretty good.

  Sync shifted toward the front of the rickshaw as much as she dared and let her hand blaze with fire like a beacon. Now I could see.

  And so could the Godfeathers, since we had a giant magic-flaming fireball marking our exact location.

  They swerved through the forest toward us.

  With several slaps in the face, Silas took care of my damage, topping me off to full health.

  We played cat-and-mouse in the forest for what felt like an eternity. Weaving between the foliage was the only thing keeping them from straight-up running us down. Sync would kill the light at strategic moments, to allow us to disappear, then reignite it before I cracked my skull again.

  Silas bobbed on my shoulder, quietly composing his own nonsense action theme. “Hmm dum da dum, it’s the Karjok kicker, the Karjok kicker—gonna kick you outta tooooown. He’s riding shoulder on Big Shaw Rickroll, gonna roll all over these cloooowns. Oi, what’s that sound? That’s Silas n’ Rickroll coming ’rooooound!”

  Somehow—I don’t know why—the game even generated some old-time background music to accompany him. It made me feel like we were filming the opening credits to a rickshaw-themed western.

  Of all the improbable occurrences since I’d been marooned in this digital wasteland, the biggest must be that I didn’t hate his tune, even though I sincerely wanted to. I would never tell him that, though.

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  Slowly, we pushed through this million-acre woodland. The sky began to lighten, and dawn approached. We would soon lose the cover of darkness, but that also meant we no longer needed the fireball, and I was far less likely to crash again.

  Ahead of us, the forest yielded to large ponderosa pines and dry grass highlands.

  “There! We’re close!” Sync hissed.

  “Hmm, ground, pound, bound, found… any more that rhyme you can think of?” Silas muttered.

  “Kinda busy, pal!” I hissed back.

  “Right, right,” Silas said. “You drive, I’ll think of it.”

  The Godfeathers were still fighting to maneuver their big wide Lincolns through the forest behind us, but when the first rays of dawn appeared, I knew we wouldn’t have long.

  Sure enough, the Godfeathers were soon on our tails again, shooting and hollering threats. Bullets struck my rickshaw but pinged off and did very little damage, thanks to the buff our bare-buttocks blacksmith had bequeathed.

  I did, however, notice a countdown timer for it; we only had about an hour left before the buff went away. It hardly felt like I’d been running for an hour, let alone doing it while hauling a heavy rickshaw behind me. I wasn’t tired at all, just on edge and irritated that we couldn’t seem to get away from these guys.

  Sync resumed her magical offensive while I dashed through the towering pines, along dry grasses, and over tan boulders. We’d ended up in the same situation as before: more or less in the open without as many trees and fallen logs to obstruct the vehicles pursuing us.

  We were exposed.

  We couldn’t do this forever. I couldn’t do this forever. Even though I wasn’t tired, I knew I’d eventually get myself killed if I just kept running.

  We needed a way to lose these peons. The pines became even sparser, the land more arid. I kept juking and weaving through the trees as best I could.

  Sync nailed the windshield of one of the Lincolns with a force blast, shattering it and embedding the shards into the bird men. It swerved and crashed into a tree, issuing smoke from its crumpled hood.

  Still, six other vehicles continued to pursue us, each packed with armed Godfeathers, each of them almost constantly shooting at us. This whole thing was just so ridiculous.

  Silas groaned. “The air here is getting dry… too dry…”

  “We’re getting shot at and you’re worried about the air quality?”

  “Not worried so much as just bothered by it,” he explained. “It portends a desert, and as a people from a planet whose surface is 99.721% covered in water, Karjok are not fans of arid regions. I don’t like getting shot at either, but desert air is a close second on my top ten dislikes.”

  “What’s the other two-point-whatever percentage?” Sync asked.

  “It’s an enormous pile of shells that starts on the ocean floor and rises above the waterline. We call it Shell Mountain, although it’s really more of a hill. But ‘Shell Hill’ doesn’t sound as majestic. Anyway, every year, each clan nominates one Karjok for the annual Karjok-of-the-Hill competition, and that’s where the competition takes place. I’ve competed three times already, and—”

  “Skip, skip!” I yelled, both to get him to shut up and because the land had suddenly dropped off in front of me.

  I jumped down a small escarpment and crashed onto the pavement below. It hurt, but I managed to get us running again, and Silas gave me a few smacks to heal me up.

  We’d found an actual road again, which was a blessing and a curse. It would take the Godfeathers a bit to navigate their bulky old cars down to it, which was good, but once they reached it, they would overtake us even faster.

  Sync jostled in her seat and pointed. “Look, the city!”

  Ahead of us sprawled a city that looked suspiciously like a phoenix nestled in the desert plains between several jagged mountains.

  The only problem was the Grand Canyon-esque gorge that lay between us and the city. …I mean, aside from the horde of angry bird men on our tail feathers.

  “Where’s the bridge?” I asked.

  “Not close,” Sync replied. “According to the map on my WHIM, this road runs along the canyon for several dozen miles before crossing the canyon.”

  “Great,” I muttered.

  The sun crested the horizon and ascended faster than usual. While night and day lasted for even lengths here, dawn and dusk seemed rushed. The sun hurried to rise to a morning position, then it resumed a standard rate of movement.

  “Ah!” Sync shouted. I glanced back and saw sparkles trickling down her jacket. She’d been hit in the shoulder.

  Gunfire rattled ahead of us. Three Lincolns cruised toward us, each of their windows flashing with lights. The Godfeathers had found their way down to the road.

  What were we gonna do now?

  “Run to the canyon’s edge and jump!” Sync shouted. “I’ve got a plan.”

  Silas and I exchanged worried looks, then we both stared at her.

  “Not a great plan,” we said in unison.

  She grimaced and clutched her sparkling shoulder. “Just do it!”

  The other three Lincolns zoomed in behind us, crashing down onto the road, also swerving and shooting. Ahead of us, I noticed the same black-eyed owl man from before hanging out the window of the car closest to us. He aimed a revolver at me specifically and fired.

  His shot hit true and struck my ballistic vest, taking its integrity all the way down to zero. It stung, and I took some damage, but I didn’t slow down. Better than my ribcage.

  The vest automatically unequipped and disappeared, and I was bare-chested again. Another shot like that might kill me.

  “Go!” Sync cried.

  I scrambled over the guardrail and hurried across the rocky terrain. Against all better judgment, I ran full-tilt toward the canyon’s edge.

  The Godfeathers busted through the guardrail behind us in relentless pursuit.

  If only these losers went after their real-life goals with this much intensity…

  “Sync! We’re running out of land here!” I yelled as the canyon yawned open before us.

  Silas clung to my neck and face tightly. He’d topped off my health again, but in about ten seconds, that wouldn’t matter.

  I kept my eyes ahead as a magical hum sounded from behind me.

  “Mate!” Silas roared as I ran out of ground.

  We all screamed as I leaped off the edge of the canyon.

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  Dungeon Crawler Carl Audio Immersion Tunnel for Soundbooth Theater, and he's the lead writer for the Dungeon Crawler Carl Role Playing Game.