The encounters are getting more dangerous as we brave the last ten floors. Each of these floors is structured like the interior of a hospital, sterile white with the scent of antiseptic. On our current floor, a Headless Horseman roars, his steed leaping out from behind a bed, knocking over a cart of medical equipment. It all clatters to the ground.

  I can’t help but wonder why the really scary ghosts are coming out now that we’ve conquered the spirits of Halloween Past, Present, and Future. Shouldn’t cursed beings be more common before the balance of the holiday is restored? Or is the holiday allowed to exert its full influence over us now?

  “Яagnarok, don’t fall asleep now!” Thagomizer says, shoving me out of the way so the Headless Horseman’s sword narrowly misses my head.

  “Yikes!” I take my whip out and finesse it around the horse’s legs so that the monstrous beast topples to the ground.

  “Nice going, you two!” Marie♥ cheers.

  Why is Thagomizer getting any of the credit? All she did was push me aside. But I’m not bitter. It’s actually kinda funny watching her try to take compliments from Marie♥.

  Bruce screeches, sending a sonic attack directly at our enemy. The horse whinnies, and the human atop it clutches at the air as if trying to cover its nonexistent ears. It rolls off the floor-bound creature but doesn’t seem to know how to stand up on its own. With another crack of the whip, it’s gone!

  “Creepy,” Thagomizer says, visibly disturbed.

  I guess she can sometimes be a little girly after all. Not that I disagree. It was the first properly spooky thing in this whole tower.

  As we continue on, I browse our school wiki briefly, reading comments that speculate about the identity of the Grim Reaper:

  lol I think he’s gonna be an orange-haired kid.

  No way, everyone knows the grim reaper is a hot chick with pink hair!

  Ya’ll are both wrong, he’s got a big goofy skull mask, duh.

  These are all oddly specific choices. I can feel the spirit of copyright breathing its last breath.

  Next, I tab over to the live rankings board. I don’t see Marie♥ or Thagomizer within a few places of myself, but I’m at— nineteenth?! That’s so much better than I’d hoped and so much worse than I’d dreamed. But it’s better than the thirties. I still have plenty of time to keep up this pace and, hopefully, to speed it up too. There’s such a massive candy bonus for hitting the top floor, I’m practically salivating thinking about it.

  My stamina’s low, so I sit down on the nearest hospital bed for just a moment. Thagomizer looks at me like I’ve lost my mind.

  “That’s gotta be how they get you,” she says. “First you sit down, then the next thing you know, you’re being strangled by the sheets.”

  “Thagomizer, it’s just a bed.”

  But the bed goes bump in the night as something underneath it rears up, knocking me flat on my back.

  “Woah!”

  A hand creeps up the side, decrepit and clawed, reaching blindly for me. I leap off the bed with a shout. Nope. No way. The classic “monster under the bed” is enough to make us all draw our weapons. We fire bullets, crack whips, and blast magic at top speed. Three critical hits in succession! Our fear lends our strikes power, and the monster is unable to resist our combined forces.

  “Just a bed. Right.” Thagomizer holsters her gun.

  “I stand corrected,” I mumble as we trudge on.

***

  The Grim Reaper, as it turns out, is a young girl with blue hair. She’s dressed in a tattered black robe. Although she can’t be more than eight, she still carries the Reaper’s Scythe, nearly twice her size, with no effort at all. When she sees us across the room, she quits her pacing. In fact, she puts the weapon down gently, letting it rest against the wall.

  “Mortals,” she greets us in a nasal, childish voice. “You’ve made it to the top of my tower! A Hallo-winner is you!”

  We stare.

  “XD?” she asks.

  How the hell are we supposed to pronounce that?

  “Orz,” she sighs.

  I have never said this about an NPC before, but I think I actually hate her. As we look on, somehow her face actually warps into a cat emoji. Her eyes are the colon. Her mouth is the three. This is absolutely unreal.

  “uwu?” Marie♥ asks.

  “OWO!” Death agrees.

  They’re... oh god, they’re communicating.

  “Lololol,” Death continues.

  It goes on like this longer than I ever thought possible. After an ungodly amount of time, Marie♥ speaks real words once again. “Well, that sounds easy!”

  “Wait, you actually understood that?”

  “Of course,” she answers. “We just need to play a game of chess.”

  My face is in my palm before I know it. Thagomizer is watching with an unreadable expression. I think we’ve both left parts of our souls behind in this tower today.

  “Three against one?” I ask out loud. “This can’t possibly be hard.”

  Famous last words.

  Two hours later, Miss Death (as she’s instructed us to call her) looks at me and smiles. “Checkmate.”

  That’s our sixth loss.

  “One more game?” I beg.

  “Aww, Яagnarok!” The little girl clings to my leg. I think she’s crying. “You’re the best! But we have to let other tower climbers have a chance too, okay?”

  “No, I—”

  What the hell kind of argument do I have against Miss Death? Why would she give me another shot? Do I deserve it because I’m better than all of them? I’m clearly not. I’ve gotten my ass kicked at chess six times in a row. After the first two games, Thagomizer and Marie♥ actually went to sleep to wait for their stamina bars to refresh. They’re even sharing a blanket. My jealousy knows no bounds.

  But I have to let it go. I’ve made it to the top. I’ll still rank in the top fifteen, maybe even the top ten if I’m lucky. I hope. I pray. Please, RNGesus—

  “Яagnarok,” she says again. “You’re the best friend Death could ask for.”

  She collects her scythe from its resting place and holds it out to me.

  “What?! But I lost!”

  “Don’t be silly! Nobody can beat Death! But nobody’s ever played with me that long. You weren’t even scared of me!” She smiles a real smile this time, not an emoji. “For that, bestie, you definitely deserve this!”

  I stammer my thanks. I take back everything I said about her. I’m the one crying now. I swing the Scythe around and it feels like I’m king of the world. Underworld? I casually check the bonus on the item, just for fun, and holy crap it’s a 600% multiplier?

  Scythe of Besties (Unique Item)

  No way. A unique item? That’s a one in a million chance! Maybe more!

  I give Miss Death the biggest hug I can muster before waking Thagomizer and Marie♥. I can see a version of the Reaper’s Scythe is in each of their inventories, too, but mine appears to be the only one with the obscene multiplier. I can’t believe it.

  “Play with me again sometime?” Miss Death asks. “If I ever show up in your school again?”

  “You better believe it,” I promise.

***

  The three of us toast our victory with potions and use our refreshed stamina bars to cross the length of the floor. The ghosts are few and far between, and each step is exhausting. But with the multiplier on each of our Scythes, we rake in the candy. Our backpacks and inventories grow heavy, unmanageable. And the first half of the event comes to a close just like that, with us perfectly situated for additional grinding.

  The second half speeds by, too. There’s more candy than we know what to do with.

  Thagomizer comes in seventh. Marie♥ comes in fifteenth. And me?

  I take first place. The holy light of tier one shines down upon me. It’s something I’d never even dreamed of, and it’s so, so beautiful.