My Running skill was getting a lot of use right now. I sure hoped I could level it up.

  I didn’t hesitate to bolt past the giant woman. She was a Celestial, which in Seven Keys meant a very magical giant. Celestials were everyday people that had mastered their magic to the point their body had to expand to fit their power, or so the story went.

  Most of the Celestials in the game were Acolytes, mini-bosses, or even the gods themselves. The Acolytes kept players from passing into new areas, while the gods and other mini-bosses were scattered throughout Ostium, mostly to be used for experience farming.

  I wasn’t about to farm experience with Wapum. I was about to get squished.

  Level 99 against 18, shit! I kept thinking as I ran. A lightning bolt ripped out of the sky and struck the ground beside me. Only luck had saved me from the strike. Only luck.

  The entrance to the Slain Crags was up ahead, a gap between two massive boulders. There was no loading haze, though. The one I’d seen before had come from the lure, not an actual load screen; I knew now that no load screens would protect me from now on. If Wapum wanted to follow me into the Slain Crags, she could.

  “Uh oh. Now you’re really going to die,” Dave said.

  “Shut up!”

  “Wait. Will lava hurt her?”

  There was lava in the Slain Crags. My heard surged with hope.

  Then a second bolt of lightning struck.

  I flinched as my world went purple-white, and I waited for pain, for the blackness of death, but nothing came. Instead, Wapum roared in agony behind me. I glanced back.

  Her health bar had dipped to two-thirds.

  I blinked. Hadn’t that happened with both golems, too? Right. My You’re Bigger Than I Thought You Were skill. Any enemy’s first attack against me got reflected onto them at half damage.

  But… that didn’t look like half damage. That looked bigger.

  “Dave! Check my Bigger Than I Thought skill! What level is it?”

  I was about to reach the boulders. On the other side, there would be lava rivers everywhere, and if I could get Wapum to step in them, I could whittle her down.

  “Holy bathroom stall holes,” Dave said. “It’s up to 10!”

  “Upgrade it!”

  Apparently he had the ability to do that, because the next moment, he said, “It skipped to level 2 of the next tier!”

  “What’s it do now?”

  “Now, you store up an enemy’s first attack on you. You can release it later on anything by punching it. Also, it makes the person who attacked you Afraid, whatever that means.”

  The status Afraid was basically a stun, except the player could still attack. They just couldn’t move for a couple of seconds.

  I threw myself between the two boulders. One of them exploded behind me as another lightning spell hit it. Wapum had to be an Astral mage, meaning she had power over teleportation and invisibility. She would have several instantaneous spells, and they would all kill me in a single blow.

  “FATE,” I said. “If a skill gets upgraded, can the same enemy trigger it again?”

  I slowed down. The Slain Crags was built like a river delta, only the river was lava and the rock was glassy black obsidian The obsidian formed dozens of stone islands, small enough to jump between can run across in a couple of seconds. On the far side of the delta, the landscape changed to twisted black rock, dark green in places, losing the lava. That’s where most of the mobs would be, although I’d have to watch out for Lava Nagas between here and there.

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  I can’t find mention of this in the handbook, FATE finally said. However, in the comment section on the Skills FAQ page, someone wrote that it would work. It’s just a random user, though.

  It wasn’t a risk I wanted to take. It also wasn’t a risk I could decide not to take, because there was no way Wapum wouldn’t be able to hit me again. She just had to wait for her mana to recharge.

  I came to the edge of one of the little stone islands and stomped on it, casting my Rock Tumble. The edge broke apart and began to crumble away. I leapt across the gap to the next island, then the next, as Wapum’s shadow fell across me, stretching all the way across the delta. In the magical moonlight, her shadow burned blue, marking her as the near-deity that she was.

  I heard a distant, familiar cry, and whipped my head around to see a fire naga slink up from the lava river and slither toward me across the face of one of the stone islands. I must have aggroed the half-snake, half-human mob on my flight from Wapum.

  Great. Now I have to deal with that, too—

  Wapum took another step, squashing the naga flat. It died instantly.

  Oh. Never mind.

  When my Rock Tumble recharged again, I stomped on another edge, degrading it, and then jumped across. I turned around to see Wapum stepping right over the first Rock Tumble I’d caused. She was raising her hand in the universally telegraphing move that said, I am about to smite you with something.

  No, not yet! I thought, just as Dave swooped down over my shoulder. He grabbed my suit and pulled.

  Lightning struck the spot where I’d just been, as I tripped over myself and toppled into the lava, shouting an obscenity.

  “You’ll thank me later!” Dave cried.

  I barely heard him over the painful heat all around me. Luckily, lava here was only as deadly as lava in the game. It splashed up the way soup might, bright orange and thicker than blood. It caused a Burn effect that rapidly began to deplete my health, but I was able to scramble out the other side and climb onto stone again. The Burn effect persisted for several seconds, but I knocked back a health regeneration vial and turned around.

  Wapum was advancing again. Waiting for her lightning spell to go off cooldown. Relief swelled inside me as I backed away. Bosses usually had at least three attacks they could use at any one time in battle, but Wapum was being predictable and using only one. That might mean she had close-combat spells, and the lightning spell was her only option at range.

  I have to keep away from her. I have to time this right.

  I turned, leapt across the gap, then spun again. Counting seconds. Counting her steps.

  I stomped out another Rock Tumble, then repeated myself until she raised her hand once more. Lightning gathered in her palm as she took another step.

  “Dave! Again!” I shouted.

  He swooped. Grabbed. Hurled me into the lava. I might have low Dexterity, but he had 90 points of the stuff.

  “You owe me for this!” he cried out.

  “Arrrgghghg!” I replied. “This shit is fucking hot!”

  I managed to escape again, burning through my last health regen vial as I did it. I might survive doing this one more time by taking a health potion, but only barely, and I was short on those, too.

  I crawled out of the lava and looked back.

  Wapum’s foot came down on a patch of rock I’d turned to scree.

  She slipped, one foot going into the lava, but I was already running back toward her.

  “What are you doing?” Dave shouted, his voice so loud beside my ear that I thought I heard ringing afterwards. “The exit’s the other way!”

  He didn’t realize there was no exit. Not when you aggroed a Celestial. They either killed you, or you killed them.

  I didn’t have a choice.

  Wapum growled, as it to herself, as she looked down at the lava she had stepped in. The Burn effect showed above her health bar, but it was making barely any dent in her HP.

  She was about to lift her foot free when she jerked her head up and looked at me.

  I had gotten near enough to trigger her close-range attacks.

  Ignoring her depleting health, Wapum brought both hands together. The ground underneath me vanished completely.

  I slowed. It was like walking on sky. I looked down, and I could see the endless starry cosmos beyond and beneath the floating world of Ostium. The ground still felt solid, but I couldn’t see it. One wrong move, and I could fall into the lava—

  My whole body flickered like a candle flame, invisible for a half a second. I blinked. I knew this spell… Cosmic Spark.

  It should have done damage to me, though.

  I looked up.

  Wapum stood frozen, her pretty blond valley-girl face stuck in a rictus of rage. The Afraid status pulsed above her head, already running out.

  And she was still standing inside the lava.

  I gathered my courage, and ran, using instinct and memory to know when to jump off first one island, then the next. I missed one jump, leaping too soon and slamming into the side of the next island, but I clambered out with only a splash of lava on my foot.

  “Dave! Throw me at her!”

  I heard no response.

  “Dave!”

  Nothing.

  The Afraid status faded. I tried throwing a pear at her. It didn’t work. Throwables usually didn’t work against bosses.

  “Return my box to me!” Wapum roared. “That was a gift! I need to fix it!”

  I could have cried. The voice line, triggered by my closeness or maybe by her lessening health, had bought me the few seconds I needed. While she raised her foot out of the lava to come toward me, I reached her. I leapt out over open air.

  I punched her in the foot.

  100% of her own attack’s damage came down on her, taking her to zero, just like that.

  And then, I was falling. The ground became visible again—so that now, I could see the lava coming.

  “Dave—” was all I said before I landed in the stuff.

  But I heard no response.

  Dave didn’t come.