The icebear went down with a final blow of Blight’s club.

Apex approached to reclaim as many of his arrows as he could; Battlerage let out a whoop and made gestures in the air—allocating points after a level-up, clearly.

Uxium pulled out a dagger. “Anyone mind if I grab all the claws? They’re useful components.”

“Go to it,” Blight said. “No use to the rest of us.”

“What do they sell for?” Apex asked.

“Worry about it later,” Blight said. “I’ll make up the difference myself if you aren’t happy, all right? This isn’t the time.” He scanned the area, looking for any other threats—mate or offspring were a possibility, since the game devs liked realism even in their fantasy wildlife.

All he saw was Jessamine and Elavetha, on the unicorn and the bay roan respectively, the donkey trailing dutifully behind, following the road below them in no particular hurry. Blight’s party had taken the high road at a fork a short way back. There were other quests in the area; a relatively low-level one was the retrieval of a stolen hematite scepter that had been lost farther along the low road. The dangers down there were weaker than the ones up here, although still a challenge for a newer or casual player.

Battlerage whistled for his warhorse; Apex fed his drake something from his inventory before climbing back on it. Uxium gestured, and his magic carpet reappeared on the ground, allowing him to sit down and then float gently into the air.

To Blight, the game flickered briefly, then froze. Sounds ground to a halt, and suddenly, no one else was moving.

Oh, just what he needed: a glitch while he was trying to impress a sponsor!

A text box appeared in front of him:

Error reading file for character 14263974#BlightTheBloodied

Reloading user account

Loading character 38954405#Iphis_Windhoof

What?

Attempts to cancel had no result at all, and a heartbeat later, the fuzzy light-headed feeling of swapping characters in-game swept over him.

It wasn’t a sensation he liked. If switching, he usually logged out, got up to stretch and move around a little, then logged back in with the second character. For that matter, when switching, one was normally moved to the location at which the new character had last been used, effectively preventing anyone from swapping between classes and races constantly on a single quest. But nothing was responding, so he just closed his eyes, kept breathing, and waited for it to finish.

This was not good, though. He really hadn’t wanted to let anyone connect other characters with his main public one. If the game moved him, he could just interrupt the stream and plead technical errors. If not... he’d just have to brazen it out somehow with the trio who were right here.

The world wound itself back into proper sound and motion.

“Bro?” Apex said. “What the hell?”

“Game glitch,” Iphis said, shaking himself. This character always took some reorientation, possibly it was the hooves. But then, going from massive Blight to wiry Iphis was guaranteed to be a shock. “Bounced me into a secondary character.”

“Why do you even have a character that looks like that?” Rage asked.

Iphis looked down, and shrugged. Slender hairless youthful-looking male body, goat legs with hooves, a simple vest mostly as protection from the straps supporting quiver and bow and small pack. His skin was a sort of olive-brown. If he reached up, he’d find cute little goat horns peeking through curly dark hair. “Scout. Fauns get sweet bonuses on wilderness tracking, pathfinding, and survival skills. Including some first aid and some trap detection. Not so great at fighting, and tends to be a bit too appealling to a certain kind of guy, so I don’t use it often. But I’ve never been able to create a better scout character in Anterra.”

“I... guess,” Rage said doubtfully. “You look like a total...”

“Don’t get my stream shut down over hate speech, would you?”

“Whatever. You know what I mean.”

“It’s a game glitch. Let me see if I can make it change me back.”

He paused the stream, sending it briefly to an Away screen, and brought up his list of characters.

BlightTheBloodied was greyed out, with a flashing red “Error” next to it. He wasn’t worried about losing his status so far: Anterra did thorough backups. It looked unlikely that he was going to get his orc back right away, however.

He restored the stream. “No luck. It’s just a glitch, it’ll sort itself out eventually. Meanwhile, we can spin this. We’re just that good. It’ll mean a bit more fighting for Rage and Apex, but you guys can handle that, right? And with this character, I can find us the right route, keep us from hitting any ambushes, do some basic healing if anyone gets hurt, and watch for traps once we get to the Temple. My armour isn’t much better than my attack but I’m fast as hell, and I still have all my own skills and knowledge.”

The trio all looked uncertain.

“C’mon, guys, work with me here. I really want to make it to that Temple and its treasure today. I promised all the folks watching that we’d do it. If I’m not just hitting everything and it falls down, all the more glory and experience for you guys. We can absolutely do this, and prove that a really brilliant player can beat the game regardless of what character race or class.”

“It’s going to be seriously weird looking at you like that, bro,” Apex muttered, but shrugged. “Worth a try, I guess. I don’t really want to give up.”

“Keep trying to get back to the real you, huh?” Rage said.

Uxium shrugged. “There are advantages to skills other than brute force, but some tradeoffs aren’t worth it. But whatever. Lead on, boss.”

Technically, Blight was the head of the Guild. Iphis wasn’t even a member.

He wasn’t sure he wanted to admit to himself, and certainly could never admit to them, just how much better he liked Iphis’ boyish agility over Blight’s oversized raw power.

Iphis did have a mount available, and after a heartbeat’s indecision, he called it up so he could get ahead of the others and scout the trail properly.

In seconds it trotted into sight: a young stag with a moderate but not impressive rack of antlers, wearing a lightweight saddle and modified bridle of oak green and walnut brown. He greeted the stag with a pat and a treat cube from his inventory, swung on, and nudged it into motion.

“Scouting ahead,” he tossed over his shoulder at the others. “I’ll stop and wait if I see anything out of the ordinary.”

“You’re the boss,” Apex said.

The ground was rougher up here, more rocks, more steep slopes, the road deteriorating into something more like a goat path. It crested a ridge, then dipped down into a forested area. That would be quite a likely area for ambushes or predators. He slowed the stag, affectionately named Dasher despite being the wrong kind of deer, and scanned the area, all senses alert. Invoking his [Tracking] ability showed him trails of hares, squirrels, foxes, deer, several kinds of birds, a raccoon, but nothing dangerous.

Farther in, he saw the glimmer of something larger, and dismounted so he could crouch and slink closer.

It turned out to be the ranger woman, Elavetha.

She straightened from gathering mushrooms, and greeted him with a nod. “This is a busy area today. I thought this was normally a pretty forsaken part of the map.”

“I’m... with others.”

Her green brows drew together and down. “I hope you’re not with that orc and his crew.”

“What? Um... why?”

“You hardly seem like their type. They’d eat you alive. My money is on homophobic slurs and generally bad behaviour. Fauns are good scouts but bad fighters, and it would suck to be out here alone. If they get too unpleasant, track my friends and I down. Jessamine’s a blue-haired cleric on a unicorn, our new friend Neon is a Cambion on a nightmare, and I’ll be on my big bay roan mare.” She shrugged. “Or maybe you’re into that or have reasons, whatever. Just don’t get trapped, eh? It’s an amazing game but it’s just a game.” She spotted something on the ground, and strode off, pausing half a dozen long strides away to pick something.

“Neon?” He heard his voice climb towards a squeak. “NeonLavender? You know her?”

“Just met her. Why? You’ve met her?”

“Um... heard of her. She’s, uh, she’s great. Absolutely has your back if she’s travelling with you.”

“Good to know.” She moved on to pick something else.

“Seen any monsters or dangerous wildlife?” he called after her.

“Spotted a pair of dire eagles circling,” she called back. “Won’t go after a group. Saw signs of derrows in the area, but if you leave them alone they’ll leave you alone.”

“Thanks!” Derrows were a nuisance: the few scavenging on the surface were only a small fraction of the enormous mob that would swarm a threat, and they were small and fast and very difficult to hit. Like a beehive, they were best avoided.

Elavetha waved dismissively, not even bothering to turn around.

Iphis returned to Dasher and turned him back towards the rest of the party.

* * *

“Which part of ‘don’t pick a fight with the huge swarm of derrows, we can walk right by’ did you guys not understand!?!?”