Every damn time I come in here, I read something that makes me upset. Every single time. Not to be all whiny, but what the actual Hell? Can the Devs just chill for once in their unnatural lives? Can’t they just emphasize the positive? Like, I could totally see a…

  My imagination fritzed. I could not, in fact, think of any summons who has a happy background. In fact, I had long since decided that extreme personal bravery and actual tragedy were both mandatory factors for recruitment. Not sure if Judith and Marci were very brave, but Judith at least was active enough in her community to rate a hit by people working for monsters.

  Which is just DAMN. I mean DAMN. I never met a construction worker who rated an assassin. A lawsuit, sure. But not an assassin.

  I forced myself to read Othai’s sheet, directly skipping over the stats. The important bits were at the end.

  Special Abilities: ???

  Friends: ???

  Rivals: ???

  Elemental Alignment: Earth

  Part of the Genuda Defense Force Set.

  Othai is a big believer in contracts. And polearms. Contracts, polearms, and combined arms warfare. Contracts, polearms, combined arms warfare and the healing power of revenge. That’s what Othai believes in. With those things, she can look after her soldiers and even, with luck, and assuming nobody does anything stupid or crazy, she could even protect Genuda!

  Likes: steak, playing cards, loyalty.

  Dislikes: pacifists, monsters. HATES TRAITORS HATES TRAITORS HATES TRAITORS HATEHATEHATEHATEHATEHATEHATEHATEHATE

  The word “hate” repeated without interruption until it ran off the end of the floating tooltip. A few dozen lines, it looked like. I didn’t bother counting exactly. I got the point. What, exactly, happened in Genuda? What could have been so bad that a hate of traitors became the defining national characteristic?

  I mean, treason, obviously. But specifically what and how?

  Steaks, playing cards, acts of loyalty. I hope that last one isn’t something that can be bought in the shop. But I bet it is. I gently put down Othai’s figurine. I didn’t know her well enough to get a feel for just how badly the Devs had screwed her over. Contracts, weapons and revenge. No mention of religion, or family, or music. Why separate out polearms and “combined arms warfare?”

  Were they like the… oh damn it who had good mercenaries? I can’t think off the top of my head. All the anime mercenaries were lone wolves or worked in small teams. I mean, technically the crew on Black Lagoon were couriers not mercenaries or pirates, but they were the only ones who leapt to mind.

  Wait. Naruto. All those missions, commissioned by interested parties willing to use violence to solve their problems. A whole civilization built around mercenary work.

  Was Othai basically Naruto? Was Genuda the Village Hidden in the Leaves for her world?

  I mentally compared the two.

  “She would have beheaded Sasuke the second he ran off with Orochimaru. The whiny little emo prick that he was, is and will likely continue to be. Three cheers to Masashi Kishimoto for showing that the ‘cool kid’ can be an emotionally damaged prick that goes on to be incredibly toxic to everyone around them, and does not, in fact, get better with age.”

  Not that I’m still holding a grudge against the cool kids I went to school with. Absolutely not. Especially the ones that seem to have been annoyingly financially successful. I am happy and at peace with them living their best life. I put down Othai’s figurine with a firm click, and picked up Mrs. Hungry.

  I mean, I don’t think it would have been too much for Andy Hammel to die falling into a woodchipper that would spray the blood and mangled flesh into the polar bear enclosure of the Central Park Zoo while a horrified Sue Dekins watched on, helpless to save her Birkin bag that Andy was holding on to when he fell in.

  I think I would be even more at peace if that happened. And isn’t that what we are supposed to want? To be at peace with ourselves?

  Special Abilities: Family Meal, Grand Feast, ???

  Friends: Yoko, ???

  Rivals: ???

  Elemental Alignment: Air

  Part of the Hunters of Hidden Moon Mountain Set.

  Nothing makes Mrs. Hungry happy like feeding people. When she was young, food was hard to come by. That’s why she cherishes it so much, and why the opportunity to serve the powerful Lord was so wonderful. Preparing meals for the heir? Unheard of for a widow. It was always such a delight to prepare lavish banquets for him. No matter how much he ate, he always seemed to want more.

  Likes: cookbooks, ghost stories, comfy blankets.

  Dislikes: picky eaters, parrots, and being helpless.

  Not a ton to unpack there. I already got a chunk of her backstory when we conquered Hidden Moon Mountain. That last one was kind of interesting- hating being helpless. I could see the connection.

  She was presumably a peasant, got married off to another peasant (who she probably didn’t choose to marry) then the husband died and she has to survive with her daughter on her own. If her world was anything at all like feudal Japan, their story probably would have ended with both of them in a brothel or dead.

  Somehow she got a job working for the Lord, feeding his dirtbag heir. Watching as he did whatever he wanted to whoever he wanted. Trying to keep her daughter out of sight. Knowing that if and when something went wrong, she would be helpless to change her fate.

  Interesting how, on the mountain, she became one of the Empty. An avatar for an endless hunger. Hollowed out by the world and not understanding why everyone acted like she was the monster. How could she be the monster, when she was just acting the way she saw everyone else act?

  And she was strong. Even before her transformation, she was dreadfully strong. Worth remembering, that.

  I sighed and put her figurine back on the shelf. I didn’t want to read any more backgrounds. Just too damned depressing. Then I had a happy thought.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  “It’s a new day. Time for me to have a nightmare!”

  I got comfy in bed. Which wasn’t as easy as it sounds- the bed had zero foam, and definitely no pocketed coil springs or firmness adjustment, nor the ability to raise and lower parts of the bed so you could sit up while lying in bed without having to sit yourself up. Zero basic bed stuff. Just a platform where you could sleep.

  It’s no wonder I had nightmares here. I wiggled a little bit. I will get used to it. Maybe I could make a mattress? Somehow? I didn’t want to imagine what fleabags Gradden March had for mattresses, but I saw futons on Hidden Moon Mountain. As a proper, dignified weeb, I know I should blindly support the futon, but that is actually where I draw a firm cultural line. I like my foam.

  I closed my eyes, and settled down for my nightmare.

  The endless black wrapped around me. A void, but somehow tarry. A void that forever tainted anything it touched and sucked everything in. Spitting out bones hundreds of thousands of years later.

  “Hiya Jackie!” I waved. “I remain creeped out that a skeleton has curves, but let’s not let that get in the way of a good night’s sleep.”

  “That is far from the… only… curves? Curves creep you out?”

  “Oh no, it’s specifically a skeleton having them. You standing up, talking, moving around, it’s odd, but I’m culturally able to accept that, you know? TV has been preparing me for spooky walking skeletons my whole life. But a skeleton that is really filling out her flapper dress and making those shoes work is a whole different thing.”

  “You like my shoes?” Her empty eye sockets filled with wonder.

  “I appreciate the way they coordinate with your dress and hat. I love costumes.”

  “Ah.” She looked away, fidgeting slightly. “I have to send you to your nightmare now. Unless you want to spend your Fragments of Truth?”

  “I don’t have enough to buy anything. Send away.”

  “I don’t control the nightmares.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. Or my nature. Beware.”

  I was in the jungle. I was so thirsty. I haven’t been thirsty since I came to the Tower. Parched, irritable, dying to find a stream or even a leaf that had caught and cupped a mouthful of blessed water.

  There wasn’t a trail. It was just a jungle in every direction. I heard a cute little chirping noise and looked right. There was water caught between three branches of some tropical plant and a pretty little blue frog sitting in it.

  “Nope. I’m not that easy.” I started walking.

  Jaguars. Pythons. Ants. Spiders. Blow Dart Frogs. Alligators? Those would only be by the river, right? Assuming there weren’t actual, literal monsters in here too. The heat and humidity braised the water out of me. What little I had left. I was thirsty. My vision was narrowing and I had a headache. I needed water.

  There were snakes, almost impossible to see. I nearly stepped on one, missing it more by luck than skill. I still jumped back wildly, stopping just before I hit a nest that sure looked like wasps to me. I moved away quickly, and as carefully as I could.

  This was different from the nightmare hotel. In the hotel, you were on a fixed path, more or less. You had to run forward, and occasionally choose a direction. Here, you could move in any direction but you would never know if you were any closer to getting what you needed. Worse, every step might land you in trouble.

  Couldn’t stand still, but every step was torture, and you couldn’t know if you were walking in the right direction.

  I heard screaming from up in the canopy. High, high above me, hidden in the dense green and brown was something screaming. Staccato barks were mixed in, but most of all there was screaming, klaxon loud. I hurried away, but more screams came from the tree tops. Loud and scared and hurting. Something was up there. Something dreadful, and moving fast.

  I tried to move fast. But there were trees everywhere, and bushes. I didn’t know what was poisonous. There was a tree ahead, it looked like it was soft with green moss and as I ran towards it, reached towards it, I realized that it was covered in caterpillars, fuzzy green caterpillars, writhing and crawling and eating up the living wood of the tree. I yanked my hand back and kept running.

  There was a hissing noise in the woods now. I could hear things crashing through the undergrowth. The screams were spreading, and they weren’t all in the tree tops. Some were on the ground. Some were quite close by. The hissing was getting louder. I kept trying to run. I might not know where I was running towards, but I could figure out where to run away from.

  Branches whipped me. I felt the cruelty of it, the meanness of it. I wasn’t just hitting them as I rushed past, the whippy branches lashed me, tore at my clothes and skin. Every touch was loaded with fear- is there a scorpion on this branch? A hornet waiting to sting? Is the tree poisonous? I didn’t know. Couldn’t know. And I didn’t have the right to chose to avoid it. I had to run. Something was making the jungle scream and I had to run and I was still dying of thirst.

  I was dying of thirst.

  Beneath it all was that endlessly repeating thought- I was dying of thirst. I was so thirsty. I wanted to drink. I would do anything to drink some water. I could see it. Could taste it- cool and clear, pouring down my throat, soothing the fire and healing the cracked, parched land within me. I would have to choose. I knew I was being forced towards a choice- do I drink, and be eaten by what’s coming behind me? Or do I let myself die of thirst before I can be eaten.

  This place wasn’t kind enough to provide a third option.

  The inevitable happened. A branch slashed my face, and I felt something land on my cheek. I tried to brush it off, but it stung me or bit me or something. The pain made my vision go white. I desperately slapped away the whatever it was, but touching my face sent a new wave of blinding fire through me.

  I had stopped. I had to keep moving. But the pain crippled me. I had to keep moving. I stumbled forward, trying to see through the white fire. Trying to breathe through the pain. Trying to remember that this was a dream, that I couldn’t die here, that pain was a trick of the mind.

  It was a good trick. I believed it one hundred percent.

  Stumbling forward, pushing through the branches, the fear so much more real now. The hissing noise was louder behind me, the screams all around me, different animals were screaming, screaming, screaming and there was some sound ahead of me. Splashing. I broke through some bushes and fell, splashing in muddy water.

  I was on a river, in a river. The biggest river I had ever seen. Not clear, clean water- it was muddy brown and I still drank as I waded forward. I could swim. I had learned how to swim. I didn’t see anything that looked like an alligator.

  I flopped forward and swam, drinking as I went. The coarse grit irritated my mouth. It crunched unpleasantly between my teeth. I still drank. It wasn’t enough, but it eased the fire. I swam. I wasn’t a very strong swimmer. The hissing got louder behind me and I risked looking back.

  The jungle had turned a shimmering black and brown. The leaves torn from their branches and eaten. A boiling mass was gathering on the river, building and building and then rolling into enormous balls it made it’s way across the slow moving river. Millions and billions of… they were very close now, I could see them now. Ants. The dreaded army ants. A plague only birds could escape from.

  They were coming towards me. A fish could swim under the floating balls. I felt the breath burning in my lungs. No doll body in this dream. I tried to squeeze a little more strength from my body, one stroke more was one more chance for a miracle, a chance to find something, anything, to protect me or to let me escape.

  I wasn’t fast enough. Billions of stinging, eating ants in my eyes, my ears, my mouth, drowning and consuming me as I thrashed in the water…

  The Nightmare Realm of Trials was a somewhat optimistic place. Here, the nightmares always came to an end. Soon enough, Jackie was standing in front of me in the void, long cigarette holder in hand.

  “Do you regret surviving longer this time?”

  “Haaah. I know what you mean. But no. Even with… that. Even with all that.” The cooling energy was pouring on me like a waterfall, and it helped, but some part of me knew I was going to be okay even without it. It really was like I had just been through a nightmare. Now that I had woken up, it was fading, becoming unreal.

  “You suffered. Your flesh… suffered.” She smiled as only a skeleton could.

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you any wiser?”

  “Let's find out.” I tapped my storage bag and whistled. “I’m smarter than Solomon and twice as handsome!”

  “Oh? I’m surprised you got so much.”

  “Oh yeah, I’m up to ten whole fragments now.”

  It turns out skeletons can choke on their cigarette smoke. I offered to pat her on the back but she waved me off. “As many as ten, is it?”

  “Oh yes.” I nodded. “Flensing power is getting closer by the day.”

  “Yes.” She looked torn. “You wouldn’t want to… cry, or something? Curl up in a tight little ball and clutch your knees, shaking, letting the pain of the memory course through you. Not realizing that you have formed yourself into a fetus, wishing you could unmake your whole life and return to the womb rather than have endured what you endured?”

  Jackie’s painted skull cocked to the side as she stared at me. I stared back.

  “That seems really specific.”

  “Yes.”

  She didn’t elaborate.

  “No.”

  “You were-”

  “I know.”

  “It was agonizing.”

  “It was a dream. This is all my nightmare, right?”

  “Yes…”

  I smiled. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Jackie. Be well.”

  “Alright, Tower laws be damned, I am clawing your eyes out.”

  “Petty, petty, petty. Just like your mother. A tiny, greedy, stupid, cowardly-”

  “You’re DEAD!”

  Carousel and Versai could be heard in perfect surround sound as I exited the map room. Which was worrying as they were on an entirely different floor.

  No sounds of violence, though. Just vicious words. Surprisingly PG, actually. Versai hadn’t called Carousel a whore even once. I shook my head and yelled for them to join me in the Throne Room.

  “Alright, you two are rivals, I get that, but-”

  “Respectfully, Tower Master, we aren’t rivals. We dislike each other. Intensely. For a lot of very good reasons.” Versai glared at Carousel.

  “Oh yes. Rivals would imply competition, and you hate that don’t you? Versai?”

  “She was the Queen’s bodyguard. A job that involves a lot of competition, as I understand it.” I kept my voice mild.

  “Not with anyone she cared about, or for anything she cared about. Just mindless thuggery. Running away from her responsibilities to her people.” Carousel’s voice was dripping with spite.

  “Yes, why did I run off to the capital? With all my sisters? Could there be a problem at home? Hmm? My mom was never the smartest woman, but she was loving and kind when I was a girl. I wonder what could have changed? I WONDER WHO COULD HAVE BROKEN UP THAT MARRIAGE!”

  Jesus Christ!

  “OKAY! We are putting a pin in that! Holy-” I shot out of my recliner like I had been electrocuted. I instinctively felt I had to resolve this, and then another part of my brain sat the first part down and explained why getting in the middle of this was the single dumbest thing I could possibly do.

  “Was there anything in particular that started this blow up?”

  “Yes. Versai stole my music box.”

  “I bloody didn’t! It was loot, you stupid cow.”

  Oh God damn it. I buried my face in my hands and groaned.