"Does anyone need healing?" I asked my teammates.

"Not me," Kreff responded. "I'm fine."

Raven added, "Same. It wasn't much of a fight, was it?"

"Not really," Leah agreed.

It was another Saturday night and I was having fun. I made a point of meeting up with my online friends a couple times a month to get some gaming and adventuring in. I had the office to myself and my headphones on so I wouldn't disturb Tess. She was in the living-room watching something on TV, but we'd both head to bed around midnight.

For now I was focused on the game and my fellow adventurers. I was happy the four of us were still friends, still playing together.

Over the past seven or eight months we'd all got to know each other better too. They knew I went by Amy in real life, but I still hadn't let on that my game character looked exactly like the real me. And by now my friends knew I lived with my girlfriend in a smaller community north-west of Toronto, and that I was a college student taking an EMT training course. They all found that fun and cute, like I was the group's healer and I was training to be a healer in real life too.

Leah told us she was eighteen and lived with her family near Manchester in England. Her real name was Caroline but she hated the name and wanted to change it so she could be Leah for real. She was still in school, and planned to go to university next year. She was going to take a course in computer and network security.

Kreff was a bit more secretive about their real life, but they did confirm they were on the west coast. They lived in Washington state, somewhere north of Seattle. They hadn't mentioned it and I wouldn't ask, but I wondered sometimes if they might be trans. I noticed over the last couple months the way they talked on voice chat was changing. Like they were taking voice training or something, so they were gradually sounding less masculine. At the same time they'd been making small changes to their character's appearance. They were still non-binary, but perhaps leaning a little more towards the femme side of the spectrum.

And Raven was still the most mysterious of the group, she refused to talk about real life at all. Still, we could piece together some things. I was almost positive she was in the same time zone as me, but her accent kept me guessing. Age-wise her voice sounded about the same age as me and Tess, like early-twenties. But then sometimes she'd make comments or references that sounded more like things my parents might say. And she still freely mixed both North American and British terminology.

The four of us had just finished off another random encounter, but it didn't look like any of us were hurt in the skirmish. We were on a dungeon quest, and after all the months we'd been playing together we were all pretty high-level now.

Kreff recovered their arrows and the four of us gathered up the loot our foes had dropped, while the system doled out the experience points.

When we were ready we all started moving again. Leah and Raven were up front, our tank was ready to take any sudden attacks while our agile DPS was prepared to dodge and strike. Kreff and I took up the rear, they had an arrow ready on their longbow while I had my enchanted staff in hand.

Our quest had us walking through a fairly large dense forest to get to the dungeon, and that gave plenty of opportunity for random encounters like the one we just finished. We followed a trail, but it was narrow and the woods were pretty thick on either side.

The four of us talked a bit while we walked, we were kind of relaxed and not taking things too seriously yet. According to the system map it was going to take us another few minutes to get to our destination so odds were we'd have at least one more random encounter first, but we'd deal with that when and if it happened.

And sure enough it happened about two minutes later. Except it probably wasn't that random, but it was an unexpected surprise.

The trail widened into a meadow, and when we entered it we found ourselves facing six enemies who seemed to be there waiting for us. They weren't part of the quest, and they weren't NPCs either. This was another group of players.

"Took you long enough," Dorn stated. He sounded scornful, and a bit angry.

Leah responded in a friendly tone, "Hi Dorn. We haven't seen you in months, what have you been up to?"

Our former friend and teammate seemed to be leading this other group. While him and Leah were talking I quickly right-clicked everyone in his party, and found we were outmatched. They had two tanks, an archer, Dorn was a DPS, the last two were a wizard and a cleric. In terms of appearance, all six of them were fairly boring standard human guys.

The tanks were big beefy muscular brutes loaded down with heavy armour, the archer and Dorn were both muscular and athletic but not as beefy as the tanks. The wizard was a tall guy with the obligatory long hair and beard, and the cleric was another beefy-looking bearded guy. And all six of them were at least a half-dozen levels above the four of us.

Me and my friends tried to avoid fighting other players. None of us liked the idea of hurting real people, even if it was just digital make-believe. It felt like we were about to get into a PvP fight though, whether we wanted it or not.

When Dorn answered our tank the tone of his voice made it easy to imagine he was sneering at us. "I teamed up with some serious players. Way better than you losers. Anyways, enough talk, let's do this!"

That must have been their signal because as soon as he said it all six of them sprang into action. The two tanks brought their big shields and weapons up as they engaged Leah. One of them was swinging a battle axe and the other had a huge sword. At the same time Dorn lunged at Raven, with his sword and dagger flashing. And in a move that caught all four of us by surprise, their archer, wizard, and cleric all targeted me at the same time.

I fell to my knees as the three simultaneous attacks hit and my character's health went from full to critical. I had an arrow in the chest, and I'd been burned by both fire and lightning.

It was unbelievable but it seemed like Dorn still held a grudge against me from last summer. I'd swear he arranged this whole encounter just for the chance at killing me, and maybe the others too.

Leah was falling back under the combined onslaught of the two opposing tanks. She hadn't been hit too badly yet, but she was focusing entirely on defence and she was outmatched. Kreff immediately fired on the other archer, and Raven... I had no idea what she was doing.

I didn't waste a lot of time watching but she seemed to be flickering in and out of existence, and every time she appeared she was in a different place. I'd never seen her do that before, I didn't even know she could. But when Dorn came at her she appeared behind him and landed a slash across his back. Then she was behind the mage, slashing at him too.

Still, the four of us were outnumbered and underpowered. We needed reinforcements, so before trying to heal myself I cast a monster-summoning spell. The random number generator must have been on my side because my spell rolled the magical equivalent of a critical hit. Suddenly a dozen giant spiders appeared in the clearing around us, and the instant they arrived they attacked the other party.

Each one was bigger than a large wolf, the things stood about two feet tall and must have been at least five feet long, not including all the legs. Their exoskeletons were coated in thick bristly spines that refracted light and gave them a shimmering rainbow appearance.

If the situation weren't so serious I might have made a joke about our cavalry being big sparkly gay spiders.

Half of them went straight for the enemy tanks, and suddenly the two heavily-armoured brutes had a lot more to contend with than just Leah. Four more went for the cleric, which kept him occupied so he couldn't focus on healing his teammates, and the last two went for their mage.

I still needed to heal myself but before I got the chance Dorn was on me. He swung his sword for my head and I only just got my staff in position to block the attack. My trusty staff that I'd had since almost the beginning saved my life, but my former teammate's sword cut my enchanted wooden companion in half. At the same time Dorn reminded me he also carried a dagger, by burying it into my side.

My character collapsed, my health points were down to single digits, and my attacker probably could have finished me off with one well-placed kick.

That's when Raven appeared, and she was on him like a banshee. She blocked his attacks with her buckler while slashing and thrusting with her curved katana-like blade. Her intervention gave me the chance I needed to partially heal myself, and I scrambled to my feet as I checked how the rest of the fight was going.

One of the enemy tanks was down. He was covered in messy spiderwebs and there was some blood seeping through the white silk. The other tank was dealing with three giant spiders and one angry Leah. The enemy archer was dead, Kreff must have scored a lucky hit. The enemy mage was injured, and dealing with one spider. He also had Kreff's arrows to contend with. The opposing cleric had two spiders after him as well, he was swinging his mace but the beasts weren't giving him a chance to call upon his magic.

Half the summoned spiders were dead, their bodies lay scattered about the clearing. They'd done their job though and for now at least, me and my friends were holding our own.

Dorn was still facing off against Raven, who was on him like she had some kind of berserker thing happening. He was a dozen levels above her and shouldn't have had too much trouble but she was relentless, and her onslaught was keeping him away from me so I had time to figure out what to do.

Through the whole thing we were shouting and cursing while the sounds of battle raged all around us. It was all really exhilarating and my heart was racing, I could feel the adrenaline coursing through me as I treated it like a real life and death situation.

After a moment to assess things, I cast healing on both Leah and Kreff since they both obviously needed it. Then I landed some divine retribution on the enemy cleric, in the form of a lightning bolt.

He was still dealing with a pair of big gay spiders, and my spell was enough to knock him off balance so my buddies pulled him down. In seconds he was completely entangled in web while they filled him full of their venom.

Whatever was possessing Raven finally seemed to end, and she started falling back as the tide turned in her duel with our former friend. Dorn was forcing her backwards, he looked like he'd forgotten about me for now as he wanted revenge on our cute dark rogue.

He scored a critical hit on her and Raven went down, but I was ready with a healing spell. And Kreff was ready too, as soon as Raven fell clear they released one of their enchanted arrows. It hit Dorn in the face and he dropped like a rock.

Then the enemy mage launched a fireball spell and my monitor went black. At the same time the sound of the battle and my friends' voices also cut out. Blood-red text started scrolling up my screen, informing me of my gruesome death by fireball.

"Crap," I sighed as I pulled off my headset.

There was nothing I could do but wait while the game went through the death routine. My character hadn't died in about six months, but I knew the drill. It would take a minute or two, then I'd respawn back at my save point in town. I'd lose a few levels and some experience, some gold, and some random equipment. The only gear I cared about was my staff though and that was already gone.

More importantly I wouldn't be able to get back to my friends in time to be any help to them. I just had to hope the three of them could get out of the fight ok.

"That looked pretty intense," Tess said behind me.

I startled slightly and turned around in my chair. My cheeks coloured as I asked "How long were you watching?"

My girlfriend smirked, "The last few minutes. I heard you shouting and came to see what was going on."

"We got attacked by some other players," I sighed. "Six of them to four of us, and they were all higher level than us. We were lucky to hold out as long as we did."

Tess frowned, "That doesn't sound very sportsmanlike of them."

"Yeah," I shrugged. "Some guys are like that? They gang up on weaker opponents just for the fun of it."

I finally respawned in the town and immediately received a party-message from Raven, apologizing for letting me down. She seemed really upset that my character died, as if it was her fault and she was taking it personally.

Party-messages were basically like group text chat, a way for teammates to keep in touch when we were too far away to just talk on voice.

I texted back that it was fine and asked if the others were ok. Leah and Kreff both confirmed they were, and that they'd managed to win the fight after I died. Leah was especially grateful, she was acting like I sacrificed myself for the team. Mostly because I summoned those spiders instead of healing myself after that first hit, and that turned the tide of the whole fight but left me vulnerable.

We exchanged a few more texts, according to Leah and Kreff our dark rogue went into that berserker attack mode again after I died, and cut the mage to ribbons. Meanwhile Kreff and Leah finished off the others. It left me feeling kind of awkward, like I wondered if Raven maybe had a thing for me. Or maybe she took the whole teammate thing more seriously than I thought. She flirted with all three of us, so maybe she'd have done that for the others too.

They offered to come back to town so I could rejoin the group since they didn't want to continue the quest without me. But I needed to get my level back up again first, and that would take time. In the end we all agreed to call it a night. We said our goodbyes over text then I logged off and shut down my computer.

Tess was still watching, she gave me a sad look and said "Sorry your game wasn't as fun tonight."

"It's fine," I shrugged. "It's just a game, and we don't always win. And I'm glad my friends are ok."

"Maybe I can help?" my girlfriend suggested with a naughty smile. "C'mon cutie, let's go to bed. Tell me everywhere you got hurt and I'll kiss it better."

That put a smile on my face too, and before long I'd forgotten all about the game.

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