Bright, burning pain shot through, causing her entire body to convulse.

  Guin looked down at her stomach. Red. Dripping. A spearhead pushed clean through her.

  Had she been so close to the other fighters? Had Othren managed to keep BronzePaw from holding agro? Had BronzePaw fallen? Guin suddenly realized she had never turned her comm back on. Shouts began to grow around her. Voices echoed, but it was as if they were underwater. Her vision went white, then blurred into artifacts of color that she couldn’t quite make out. Sounds from her heartbeat in her ears. Beat. Bum. Bu-dum.

  Then, the spear was pulled from her in a single, powerful jerk. Pain flashed again, and a guttural cry escaped from her throat and into silence as her body arched back. Falling forward to her hands and knees, tears streaking down her face as she gaped and gasped, wheezing, struggling for each shuddering breath she took, she focused on the ground below and the dirt between her fingers.

  I will not fall, she told herself while she gritted her teeth. I will not fall.

  The gaping hole that the spear left began to stitch itself together quickly. It felt different than the healing process that she had undergone before. Flesh and organs stitched themselves together bit by bit, thread by thread — and time seemed to slow to a crawl.

  The archer, she realized, was no longer underneath her. He must have pulled himself away.

  Dazed but strong enough to lift her head, she sought the ongoing battles. The archer. The spearman. BronzePaw. Captain Othren. She expected anything other than what she saw.

  Clear, though the world around her was a blur, stood a girl.

  The girl shouldn’t have been more than 12 years old. She was thin; Too thin, Guin could tell by the way the light shone through her seafoam-colored robe and her bare feet. Too thin and too pale. Ashen, even. Her dark hair was done in a messy pixie style that stuck up around her ears and the back of her head. Her sunken blue-gray eyes were large and pretty but pained. And sad.

  Very, very sad.

  Upon closer inspection, Guin spotted a name scrawled on the breast of the girl’s robe: The Yidarian International Institute of Healing and Medicine. Confused, she looked around. Though the world seemed blurred, she was definitely still in the game—but this girl looked like she should have been on the ‘Bergs.

  “You...” Guin asked, surprised that a voice came out of her at all. Kneeling on her knees in front of Guin, the girl poked Guin’s nose and then stroked her face. She looked at Guin with such wonder—such an affection—that Guin started to blush. “Do you... Know me?” she asked.

  The girl smiled. “Of course I do,” she said. “You know me, too. Now, yes, but then, too. Then, too.” The second repetition felt almost hollow, and Guin shivered.

  “Then?” she questioned. “Now?”

  “Now, I am The Lady,” she said, the shine returning to her eyes as she continued, “Now, you are Guin Grey. But sometimes, you are Hadassah Graydon.” Guin’s eyes welled with tears as the child before she spoke her name, but she didn’t know why.

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  The sounds of her heart turned into Ibraxis’s drums, echoing louder than she had ever heard before.

  Bum. Bu-dum. Bum. Bu-dum. Tak. Bum, bum. Bu-dum.

  “Is it you, Lady?” Guin asked in a quiet voice. “Are you the reason for the dreams?”

  The Lady’s smile was soft as she went, “Am I? No, I don’t think so. But maybe. But I don’t control anyone, really. I don’t control you. I don’t control who you are or what you see. Those choices are yours, conscious or no. I am just... who I am.”

  “Why are you... why me?” Guin asked. “Is it because I am a Candidate?”

  “I am I, and you are you,” The Lady told her, touching her forehead with a knowing look on her face. “And you will find who you need to find in order to meet your destiny.”

  Scoffing, Guin told her, “You can keep your ‘destiny.’ What is it—that I am to become some sort of queen or leader? I don’t want that. You can take it away and give it to someone else.”

  “What if I told you that your destiny was to fall in love and live happily ever after, just like all the fairytales you love so much?” the girl asked.

  Narrowing her eyes, Guin answered, “There is more to life than love.”

  The Lady’s smile faded a little as she looked down. “In truth, it isn’t something I can give or take away. Destiny. I control the world—but everyone still has free will.”

  Hissing through her teeth, Guin demanded, “Send me back.”

  And the girl was simply gone.

  The shift in the moment caused Guin to stagger as the feeling of healing overtook her again. What seemed like more than a few minutes in her mind’s eye was mere seconds—seconds in which the fight had continued without her.

  Dazed but strong enough to shift her body, she watched through blurred vision as BronzePaw, trying to hold the attention of both the spearman and Captain Othren was assisted by... the swordsman that had been defeated earlier?

  Maybe I really have gone mad, she grunted and tried to put enough force into her arms to push herself up. They shook, but she managed.

  “Guin! Are you okay?” That was probably Star, Guin registered. Her hearing was there, but like her vision, it was impaired. The sounds were still somewhat rounded, muffled, and warped. Guin managed to just barely open her mouth, let alone get words out.

  Why? It had been so easy when she was talking to The Lady. Could it all have been her imagination?

  No. She had no time to dwell on that now.

  “She’s still dazed.” Ibraxis, she identified. “Severe loss of health like that causes a disordering sort of shock status,” he explained, then, in the same breath, ordered, “Tea, send that risen puppet of yours after that damn archer that ran. Drakov, you too—get that archer down. Star, concentrate fire on that spearman.” On the ground, Guin felt foolish but hardly able to see or move; she could do little else than wait for at least the debuff to wear off.

  “G-Got it!” That was Tea’s voice, pure but uncertain. The swordsman, which, with her vision starting to clear, Guin could tell had a peculiar color and manner about it. A hail of magic missiles fell on the spearman, causing BronzePaw to jump back with an angry hiss.

  “Guin,” came Ibraxis’s gravelly voice again. Deep. Calm. Controlled. Guin’s hands groped at the sticky earth below. Get a hold of yourself, she thought, as if she could overcome the game’s debuff with willpower—yet as if it were true, her eyes snapped open into clarity. The status ailment was gone, and her hit points were at 75%.

  “Where do you want me?” she asked, wiping some splattered mud and blood off her face with the back of her wrist. It didn’t do much, as it was covered in the same combination of grime. She chuckled.

  Whether or not she had some kind of grand destiny before her, she wasn’t about to be defeated by such a small thing. She would fight—and they would win.