The butterfly was likely the goblin we killed, the one with the cryptic message about where to find the DM. So he was back. Maybe. How?

  For a moment the unreality of the situation threw me outside of myself. It was just my body standing at the bottom of the hill next to this cart, this impossible butterfly sitting daintily on it, and the butterfly is talking to me, and my mind is spinning off into the unknown. It’s a deep voice, masculine, and impossible. Butterflies don’t have lips, and vocal chords, and all the things needed for this kind of voice. I knew this was a world of magic, but this somehow seemed too far.

  But then I was back. Maybe the voice is the heart of a person, maybe the body changes but you carry your voice with you?

  No, that didn’t make sense. You could change your voice pretty easily. Especially if you go on T or something. Had a coworker that did that. But maybe that reinforced my theory?

  You know what: It was just magic.

  I remembered that I’d been asked a question.

  “I forgot to tell him,” I said.

  “That’s bad, kid,” the butterfly said, flapping its wings slowly. “But maybe for the best if you’se guys ain't ready to do anything about it.”

  “What would we do? And who are you anyway? First you were a goblin, now a butterfly?”

  “Well, I was hoping you would do what you can, bring this whole place down on his ears. But that’s for later I guess.” The butterfly hopped onto the other side of the cart, slightly closer to me. “And as for who I am, I hardly remember. I just know I can make it out of The Well with a little bit of effort.”

  “What well?”

  “The Well of Souls.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “I can’t be your exposition fairy, kid, some stuff you’ll have to figure out on your own.”

  “Well, what else are you here for?”

  “To prompt you to action! To do something to end all of this, not just what you’re told,” the Butterfly said, taking flight and flying in circles in front of me.

  “We have to level up,” I said. “We’re tired of getting our ass kicked all the time.”

  “Of course you do. But you also got to pay attention. Listen to the world. Listen to the people. There is so much you’re missing.”

  “I don’t have time. We have to move. Always the next thing to do.”

  “I get it, you’re in love with your new girl, but that’s how he gets you, he gets you caught up in the romance, dazzles you with spectacle, so you miss the pillars holding up this place.”

  “The DM didn’t have anything to do with me, and Bernadette.”

  “Oh really? Would you two have gotten together if you’d been back where you came from?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. But what do you mean ‘pillars,’ like the whole system of PC’s versus NPC’s?”

  “No such distinction in the end. We’re all trapped here. Can’t even die like we should ‘til we escape. No, I mean the literal pillars — the four towers that anchor this place under the bones of the world.”

  “What does that mean? We’re headed to a tower on a lake. Is that one?”

  “Good! That’s good! Yes! That’s one of them. Not his tower, but maybe you’ll find clues to how this place works.”

  “That sounds too convenient,” I said. “I doubt we’ll find out anything good in a side quest.”

  “Don’t discount the sidequests, kid. Learn a lot from smelling the roses.”

  “So which is it, we’re either wasting our time leveling up, or we’re ‘smelling the roses.’ Which should I do?”

  “It’s not what you do, it’s how,” he said, alighting back on the cart. “You think I escaped the Well of Souls by keeping my head down? I paid attention.”

  “I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” I stated.

  “Ah, shit!” The butterfly took flight. “It’s a bird!”

  A swallow swooped in, and caught the butterfly, zooming off with it.

  “He’s eating me! He’s eating me!”

  Was all I heard. And then nothing.

  Well, shit. I learned basically nothing from that. Other than that we were on the right track. And that apparently this guy believed we all had souls, and that we were all trapped here. Which didn’t much change things in my mind.

  We already wanted to get home. The idea that we could be trapped here even if we died, didn’t really change that for me.

  I met up with Bernadette, and recounted what I’d heard. She was silent for a time, then said ‘let’s just be careful on this next quest.’ I didn’t mention the thing he said about the DM bringing us here being responsible for our relationship. I wasn’t sure that was true for one. And for two, I didn’t like the implication that our choices were out of our hands. She didn’t need to be saddled with that.

  Besides, she’d already admitted she thought I was cute at the game table. Maybe we would have hooked up anyway.

  I wasn’t sure I believed in destiny or anything, but we were compatible, and I couldn’t have gone on pining for Sofia forever. Right?

  Back on the road again, Cal led us through a shortcut across a game trail. He’d grown his hair out some, his hair sticking out from under his green cap, and his beard filling in a bit under his thick mustache. He looked good, older, with the hair grown out. I sometimes forgot that he was in his early twenties, just a little younger than me.

  He’d kept the axe we’d gotten from the ogre all those months ago, and had it shoved through his belt. He’d also added a long dagger to compliment it. Said it was a gift from Caleb. Wouldn’t elaborate on if it was magic or not, but it would have made a poor gift if it wasn’t. He hadn’t been forced to use them but I wondered how practiced he was with them. Maybe we should do some sparring when we get some down time.

  Out here we were in his element, but I made sure I kept my eyes open too. Nothing about this world was safe.

  My eyes scanned the low brush and the scrubby grasses.

  But then my mind started to wonder.

  Maybe it was the ADHD, or maybe my Zach-brain just wasn’t good at this kind of thing, but after some time I focused less on the threats beyond, and more on my inner thoughts. First, it was that fight with the kobolds, then it was those good kobolds who had served me my first fantasy tacos, then it was that time I’d gotten tacos with Sofia in the early hours of the morning because she’d wanted help grabbing a box of her stuff from her ex’s house, and my car broke down and we’d had to walk with the box twelve blocks to find cell service, and at that point we were starving.

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  Not wanting to think about her too much, my mind went to the particular shape of my girlfriend’s ass, when edge lit by the moonlight. Then, so on and so forth until I realized I had fallen well behind Cal, and I was walking next to Rachel.

  Rachel didn’t notice because she was texting someone on her slate. I glanced around. I saw Berryhop asleep under a tarp she’d thrown between two barrels in the back of the cart, but also Bernadette shading her eyes with her hand, and scanning the brush, so that at least two of us were keeping vigilant.

  Who was Rachel texting?

  I glanced over her shoulder. Rachel instinctively turned the slate away from me.

  “Woah,” I said, “who’s that?”

  “None of your —” she stopped angling the slate. “I mean, I guess you can know. It’s Helena.”

  “What?”

  “We all got chess apps on our slates a couple days ago.”

  I hadn’t noticed. My downtime had sort of been spoken for by a woman who couldn’t seem to keep her hands off me. A problem that wasn’t really a problem so much as a ludicrously fortunate gift from God. If he still existed out here.

  “We did?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Rachel replied, as if it should be obvious. “And Helena came pre-installed as an opponent. We’ve been playing off and on. Our Slate IDs are right under our usernames. She must have gotten it from that. Texted me out of the blue. Been going back and forth for a bit.”

  “You think you can turn her?” I asked.

  “Maybe,” she admitted. “But I don’t know. Or maybe she lets something slip that gives us a leg up. Or maybe she hesitates the next time she fights us, and that gives us the win.”

  “Or maybe you think she’s cute,” I said.

  Rachel gave me a sly smile that soured into a grimace.

  “Is that bad?”

  My eyes cut to Bernadette, and the sway of her shapely hips, and the delicate pale hand on one of her daggers.

  “I don’t have much room to talk,” I admitted. “The love of my life is a remorseless assassin, and the previous girl I was obsessed with is currently plunging the realm in bloody misery, so… yeah flirt with the crazed battleaxe wielding maniac. At least she’s honest about her murders.”

  Rachel sighed, tapped the send button on her text, then turned to me.

  “Yeah, I wasn’t really listening. But you approve?”

  “I don’t know about ‘approve,’ so much as ‘remove myself from judgement.’”

  “Fair enough,” Rachel said with a laugh.

  “What’d she say?” I asked.

  “Here,” Rachel said, handing me the slate.

  “Rachel!” I exclaimed. Berryhop opened an eye to see what the fuss was about. I dropped my voice low. “You kissed the axe murderer?”

  “Just once!”

  “And you invited her to see us?”

  Berryhop seemingly went back to her nap.

  “It’s just banter!” Rachel said defensively.

  “That wasn’t banter, that girl is smitten.”

  “Nah.”

  I pointed to the first part of the text chain.

  “That’s poetry,” I said.

  “You can’t read Spanish,” Rachel accused. She was right.

  “Bernie can,” I said. Gesturing to Bernadette. She grabbed Cal, who stopped the donkey. Soon, we were all gathered around Rachel’s slate.

  “Oh my god guys,” Rachel said, “this isn’t that big a deal.”

  “I couldn’t care less,” Cal said, glancing around. “But let’s hurry up.”

  “This is the biggest deal,” Bernie said. “Give me a sec.”

  Her eyes scanned the texts.

  “Yeah,” she said gravely, “it’s as I feared. Sor Juana. Mexican love poetry. Vaguely queer Mexican love poetry. May as well be quoting Sappho.”

  “Really?” Rachel asked.

  “What’s it say?” I asked.

  “Shackled by the chains of love, a slave yearning for freedom, yada yada, she wants you carnally.”

  “Well, I know that,” Rachel said. “The kiss was pretty intense.”

  Bernadette slugged her on the good arm.

  “She wants to kill us!”

  “Not me, apparently,” Rachel said.

  “You were serious about dropping a pin!” I accused.

  “We are about to fight a dragon, and its army of elves besides,” Rachel reminded. “If there is even a chance her feelings are genuine, shouldn’t I try?”

  “What about Braelyn?” Bernadette asked.

  “What about her?” Rachel said with a shrug.

  “The woman loves you,” I said.

  I can’t pretend I didn’t have a dog in this fight. Braelyn was the clear best choice for the party. Not having a dedicated mage was the one weak point of our group. We didn’t need another melee specialist. But I liked Helena enough from what I’d seen.

  She just also seemed like a lost cause. At least in the direction we were going. If we were getting her on our side, we needed to go after her father first.

  “Maybe,” Rachel said. “But she hasn’t admitted to that fact. And she wants to fix me.”

  “Is that so wrong?” I asked.

  Both Rachel and Bernadette gave me a look. Not sure if they were coming from the same place, but they seemed united in distaste of the idea.

  “I have a preference for folk that have their shit together,” Cal said, “but maybe that’s just because I’m a mere mortal, and not a Promised Champion. You guys seem absolutely ardorous for chaos.”

  “You go after Helena,” I said, “this probably closes the door on anyone else,” I said, meaning Braelyn, but also being vague enough it could mean someone else. I’d seen how Berryhop looked at her. Not that Rachel would treat her right either. Poor girl.

  “If Braelyn wanted me,” she said, “she’d be here.”

  “Let's get back on the trail,” Cal said.

  When we next set up camp, Bernadette turned in early. She wasn’t cut out for extended periods of this kind of travel, so she wisely hit the hay. We were still a couple of days out from the next town, and several days after that was the lake with the tower.

  I had time to think, and time to wonder. I opened the new chess app on my slate. The interface was clean and simple, just a list of opponents, and an input bar to add new people to the list. I clicked on a name that seemed new to me, some guy named Hector.

  Since I was the one to initiate a new match, I was given white. I opened with a king-side knight. Let’s see how he responded.