Warning upfront for: Major character death and some violence, but nothing too graphic.

"Places, everyone!" Harrow called. "We're going live in five minutes!"

Rayla sighed, pulling her knees up to her chest. "I don't know why we bother," she muttered. "It's not like anyone is going to choose our game, anyway."

Runaan nudged her gently, making Rayla sit up straighter and draw her blades into her hands. "You never know what each day will bring."

It was a nice thought, but since The King's Champions had only had three players this week, Rayla could take a pretty good guess as to how this day would go, too. Still, Runaan meant well. She whacked a branch with one of her swords out of boredom. The tree branch reset after every hit. The environments were supposed to take damage from the player characters' weapons, but a glitch in the code somewhere meant that the damage only lasted a few seconds.

The sounds of the arcade's customers began to filter into their box, large shadows passing in front of the window screen as people walked by their game… like always.

Rayla's entire arm shuddered as her sword bit deep into the tree, leaving a scar of pale wood that disappeared with a burst of static a second after she pulled her sword out.

They were going to have the plug pulled on their game soon, she was sure of it.

Thwack.

It was just a matter of time. Their game had been rushed to release and full of glitches when it came out, of which the lack of semi-permanent environment damage was just a small and characterful piece, but they still used to get some players every day. Enough to keep them ticking over. She wasn't allowed to go to Tapper's like the others, so she'd heard the proprietor muttering away to himself about the numbers.

Thwack.

That had all changed when the studio who built their game released another, The Dragon Prince. After The King's Champions was a flop, the studio had taken more care with their next game. There was a real buzz about it, even amongst the other characters in the arcade. From what Rayla heard, the combat was smoother, there were 'inventive' puzzle sections, and there was even a cute little dragon mascot who guided the player character through each level, giving them tips and sometimes extra lives.

Meanwhile, Champions was slow to respond to input, making the combat extremely difficult, and worst of all...

Thwa—

Suddenly, the tree branch shimmered and Rayla's blade passed right through it for a split-second, just long enough for it to get stuck in the wood when the branch reappeared.

"Dammit!" Rayla snapped.

Runaan shushed her, but their little assassin's grove was way in the back; nobody would hear them.

Worst of all, Rayla thought bitterly, shuffling away from the weapon and waiting for it to respawn at her side, we're the glitchiest piece of crap out there.

Nobody played the game that day. Rayla's brush with the glitchy tree was the most exciting thing that had happened for weeks.

"There was a new game introduced to the arcade today," Runaan said, in a moment of forced cheer. "It's probably—"

"I think we all know that isn't true," Viren interrupted gently. He had an advisor position within the game, delivering the tutorial to the players, and he seemed to have taken that role in their group as well. Rayla liked him; he was practical. "We've been losing players since The Dragon Prince released."

Harrow sighed. "It's as you say, but what is there to be done?"

Rayla wondered if she could replicate the branch glitch if she hit it hard enough. Was it all the tree branches, or just that one? It was supposed to break in a cutscene, so maybe that was why...

"We could try seeking assistance from the other games," Viren suggested. "A temporary outage in The Dragon Prince, for example, or Sugar Rush—"

Runaan's ears twitched. "You're not suggesting…?"

"Well, why not?" Viren gestured towards the exit to the main power box. "We're all part of a community here. The more popular games wouldn't suffer if they were offline for one or two days."

"I don't know if that would solve the problem," Runaan said.

Rayla stood up, tucking her swords behind her back. "Well, I say it can't hurt to try! It would at least bring some excitement."

Harrow rubbed his chin, frowning. He left the crown off when they weren't on duty, since he wasn't really a king—but they all looked up to him anyway.

"Think about it, Harrow," Viren pleaded. "We still have things to offer the players! The depth of the story and lore in The King's Champions is unmatched. They just need a chance to realise it, without the distractions of these newer… characters."

"It's very… unorthodox," Harrow said carefully. "But—well, I suppose I can put the idea forward at a grid hall meeting. There are a few other underplayed games that would benefit too."

Viren nodded, satisfied.

"In the meantime," Harrow continued, "we should relax! Have some fun!"

Rayla folded her arms. Sure. Fun. Even though she wasn't allowed to visit most of the games unsupervised. She wasn't actually younger than the others! She'd just been programmed with a little less maturity. But her stats were much better than everyone else's so it wasn't like she couldn't take care of herself!

"Rayla," Runaan said sharply, probably reading her expression. "I know it's frustrating, but things aren't always safe for a character of your age. There's still plenty to do!"

"...Sure," she replied. She made an attempt to smile. It wasn't like anything better was going to happen by staying home. "I'll see who's free."

Maybe she could spar with Zangief again – that was always fun!

Out in the power box, things were busy as usual. Rayla got off the train and waved everyone else off. She started to wander around, but it didn't look like Zangief or anyone were there today. Folding her arms and tapping her feet impatiently, she scanned the crowds for anybody interesting.

Then something clamped onto her leg.

Rayla shrieked and kicked out, which sent a glowing yellow blur sailing into one of the caution signs. It hit the sign with a loud thump, sliding down and ending up in a heap of squat, ugly-looking… thing.

"Ahh! Be careful with Bait!" a voice called. "We're outside the game, he could die for real!"

Rayla was shoved aside as a young character with dark skin and hair ran to pick up the ugly bait. "He shouldn't have surprised me!" she retorted.

"...Woah," he said suddenly. "Your accent!"

Rayla scowled. "What about it?"

But he only grinned. "You're from The King's Champions! We share lore with you! That's so cool!"

"Ezran!" another strange voice yelled before Rayla could answer. Another character, about her age with pale skin and brown hair, stumbled towards them, then bent over wheezing. "Oof, don't make me run like that. Sorry if he was bothering you."

Rayla hadn't known there were any characters close to her own age in here. "It's… fine," she said. "What game are you guys from, again?"

"The Dragon Prince. I'm Callum." He stuck out a hand to shake.

Rayla stared at it. How stupid of her; of course he was from The Dragon Prince. The game that was taking away what meagre attention they'd already possessed.

After several moments, Callum withdrew his hand. "Oookay. Uh. Maybe a wave instead?"

"Can we go inside your game?" The other one—Ezran—said, clutching the ugly bait to his chest.

"Why?" Rayla snapped. "So you can laugh at how bad it works?"

"Wait, you're from The King's Champions?" Callum's laugh was strangely high-pitched as he turned to stare at Ezran with wide eyes. "That's… nice?"

Ezran looked between them with a frown. "Why are you acting weird? I just want to see the castle and the woods. We don't have those, you know, they're only in our backstories."

"What are you talking about?" Rayla demanded.

"I told you! We share lore!" The bait in Ezran's arms started to glow an alarmingly eye-blinding shade of yellow. "Our game is pretty much a sequel to yours. Didn't you know?"

"How would I?" Rayla said bitterly. "It's not like we get updates. Or else they might've fixed all our glitches."

Ezran's little face fell and even the ugly thing stopped glowing and turned blue, which made her feel bad for being so crabby.

Callum jumped in—literally, he jumped in front of Ezran's sad face in a starfish-like pose. "Well… we could show you! It's kind of a sequel to what you guys are doing anyway so uh… it would make sense, right?"

Rayla softened a bit. They were obviously trying to be friendly. But… "It doesn't really matter. I'm just one of the bad guys. Just a bloodthirsty—"

"No!" Ezran shouted, which startled Callum so badly that he unbalanced from his starfish position and fell over.

Rayla peered down at him. "Are you… okay?"

Callum sat up, rubbing the back of his head. "Don't worry! This happens a lot."

Very reassuring.

"You should be more careful when we're not in the game," Ezran said, hiding behind his weird pet.

"I just bumped my head, Ez! Geez..." Callum pulled a face at Rayla. "I apologise for him. He's programmed with abandonment issues."

"So are you," Ezran said in a loud whisper.

Rayla hid a smile behind her hand, but it didn't go unnoticed. Callum pointed a finger at her and grinned. "Aha, we got you! I knew we would eventually!"

She snorted and then she knew the gig was up.

"And you're not just a bad guy! The moonshadow elves are really cool, ans there's lots of backstory I found in the dummied out codex bonus levels..." Ezran shook himself and the far away look in his eyes was replaced with determination. "Come on, I have to show you!"

Rayla smiled and let herself relax. It wasn't their fault The King's Champions didn't do so well these days, after all. "Alright then. Show me this 'sequel' of yours."

"And then castle after?" Ezran said hopefully. The ugly thing started to glow slightly as well.

Rayla didn't have the heart to say no.

The Dragon Prince was… not that much different to Rayla's game, actually. The trees looked the same and when she squinted at them, even the texture looked more or less identical. Then again, she'd heard players say that The King's Champions had obviously spent more time on graphics than gameplay.

If they were the same as her trees, that meant they would also be really fun to climb!

Rayla grinned and leapt for one of the lower branches with her swords drawn as hooks. Using them to spin around the branch, she launched herself upwards, kicking off another tree limb on the way, before she stood on one of the highest points of the tree.

Up there, she could see the landscape of the game spread out before her. It seemed extensive, nothing like the hodge-podge group of settings that they used for The King's Champions. Fields and forest and rivers spread out before her all the way to the horizon, tiny squares of colour. She guessed they must be different stages with their own colour theme.

"It's nice up here," she called down to Callum and Ezran. "Why don't you—"

"Aha!"

With a flick of her wrist, Rayla's blades straightened and became two short swords, which she held in a defensive cross position as she whirled around, prepared to move in an instant.

The small dragon didn't seem bothered by having Rayla's swords in its face. "Oh, your reflexes are very good! They should've made you a playable character!"

"Zym!" Callum shouted from below. "She's visiting from The King's Champions!"

"Well, obviously," the dragon, Zym, said. He curled his tail around him and sat up proudly like a cat.

Rayla decided it was safe to put her swords away. "So… Zym?"

He bobbed his head. "They can't climb up this high, you know."

She glanced down to Callum and Ezran, who were discussing something. "I could give them a wee hand. I'm stronger than I look."

"No, they literally can't climb up." Zym snorted and a puff of smoke flew out of his nostrils. "They put a block in the coding, I guess so players couldn't come up with creative solutions or accidentally wander into a different stage." His tail wagged suddenly. Is he a dragon or a dog? "But now I've got someone I can share the treetops with! Isn't it nice to be up high?"

"Sure," Rayla said. But she looked down at Ezran and Callum, still stuck on the ground. She supposed there were advantages to being in a poorly-coded game. It was hard to railroad her into only doing what she was supposed to.

It was easy enough to hop down through the branches—they sprang up under her feet, allowing her to spin into a graceful landing.

"...Wow," Ezran said. "That's really neat!"

"Your movement is really fluid," Callum said thoughtfully.

Ezran shook his head at Callum. "Don't make it weird just because she's a girl."

"What—? I was not! It's a comment on the programming! The design."

Rayla watched them in bemusement as they continued to bicker and Zym alighted next to her. "We're a puzzle platformer," he explained, "so we don't need any complex movements like that. Although..." He fluttered his wings and raised his chin a little higher. "My animation is top-notch, if I do say so myself."

"Oh, I wanted to ask, what is it like up there?" Ezran asked suddenly, totally abandoning his conversation with Callum. He gave Ezran a look of dismay behind his back. "Zym says it's really nice, but I'm not sure if he's just trying to show off that he can fly."

Zym drew his head right back and smoke started to pour out of his nostrils. The effect wasn't that intimidating; he looked more like a novelty kettle than a scary dragon. "Excuse me?"

"It's pretty cool," Rayla said. "Your game is enormous."

Ezran nodded his head. "Oh. Well, I guess I'll go fix the block then!"

He turned and ran into the bushes without any further comment.

"Wait, Ez! No!" Callum shouted, running after him.

Zym snorted and took to the air. "He's going to get us all in trouble."

Rayla was totally clueless, but it seemed a bad idea to linger about on her own in a strange game, so she ran after them, following Zym's pale blue underbelly. She caught him to Callum within a minute – he really wasn't a very good runner.

"What's he talking about?" she said to Callum. "'Fixing the block'?"

"How do you—" Callum gulped down air like he was drowning. "—manage to—talk… and run..."

He was really bad at running. "Nevermind. I'll just catch up and ask."

"No, wait—!"

Rayla barely heard him as she pulled away with long, loping strides. "What? Why?" she yelled over her shoulder.

Suddenly her foot met empty air. She put her hands out to break her fall or grab something, but there was only a pit with smooth sides and a vicious-looking purple acid at the bottom. Rayla shrieked and tried to fumble for her swords, but there was no time, and—

And her arm was nearly wrenched out of the socket as something grabbed it, bringing her to a sudden, painful stop.

Wind whistled through her hair as she looked up and saw Zym, flapping his wings rapidly to stay airborne. Rayla's stomach turned over.

She heard Callum's voice as though from a great distance away, even though she could see his hand as it moved through the air, forming a strange symbol in blue. "Hang on, I'm coming!"

He touched his hands to the symbol and the earth flowed like a river, forming a bridge across the gap. Callum dashed across as it was moving, throwing himself flat. His hand reached down, open wide, and it seemed to Rayla that she could see the individual circles on the pads of his fingers.

Her hair flew in front of her face, obscuring her vision, as Zym groaned and beat his wings even harder. She rose higher in the air. She couldn't see Callum's hand, but she knew it would be—

A chilly hand clasped hold of her wrist. Another grabbed her upper arm, near her elbow.

—there.

Callum heaved and Rayla swung her leg up, managing to hook it over the side of the earth bridge. Her shoulder was screaming and she was suddenly aware of tears streaming down her cheeks, but she was built to be tougher than this. She gritted her teeth and, with Callum's help, hauled herself over the edge.

Rayla collapsed onto her back, panting and sweating, staring up at the perfect blue sky.

"Uh, sorry," Callum said. His voice shook a little. "I should've told you about the hazards."

"You're lucky I was here!" Zym added, almost angry, but he poked at her with his nose and made a high-pitched squeaking noise until she patted his head.

Rayla sat up and immediately regretted it as her vision went black for a moment. "I... am definitely not doing that again."

Callum cracked a small smile, eyeing her arm. "Good. Because you're really heavy and I don't know if I could do that again."

"It's all my strength stat," Rayla said, and he actually laughed.

Zym tickled her ear by sniffing it, but then hopped back a few steps, apparently satisfied. "We should get you home."

"But what about Ezran?" Rayla said. Callum pulled a face. "Where did he run off to?"

Callum and Zym shared a look.

"...Will you promise not to tell anyone?" Callum asked quietly.

"You just saved my life, so—" Rayla shrugged as best she could with one working shoulder. "Whatever you want."

"Pinky promise?"

Rayla stared at Callum's extended little finger. On his right hand. To match her right shoulder. That was currently not working.

She pointedly raised her other hand and he laughed nervously, swapping hands. "I forgot. Sorry."

They pinky-promised. Rayla had never pinky promised anything before. She stared at her little finger. It was… underwhelming.

"...Ezran has gone to mess with the game's code," Zym said.

"What?!" Rayla scrambled to her feet. "But—then we have to stop him—"

Callum waved his hands at her frantically, shaking his head. "Nonono! It's okay! He's not… going Turbo or anything. He just likes to, uh… tweak the code… a bit… I'm not making this sound better am I?"

Rayla shook her head.

"Ezran is a little weird, but he means well." Zym bobbed his head. "In his character profile he has a gift for understanding animals, and for some reason, that means he has a natural talent for understanding the code, as well."

"—Please don't tell anyone nobody else knows," Callum jumped in to say. Literally jumped in; he was now standing a few inches from her face.

She scowled at him.

He took a step back sharpish. "Grouchy elf warrior's personal space. Yep. Got it."

"I still want to see what's going on," Rayla decided. "Make sure he's not going to blow up the arcade or anything."

Callum shrank a little. "C-Can he do that?" He turned to Zym. "He can't do that. Right?"

Zym sighed, which turned into a cough on a tiny puff of smoke. "Let's just go find Ezran," he said.

Zym led the way this time, taking Rayla around the hazards. Callum had to use his magic to make a few more bridges or clear some other hazards.

"How does Ezran get to this place?" she asked. "He can't do this magic stuff, right?"

"Ah, no. That's all me!" Callum scratched the back of his head. "Well, he just charges through? I think sometimes he just drops into a pit or something and respawns on the other side."

Rayla stared at him. "You mean he just… dives into the acid?"

"It doesn't actually hurt for us, we just kinda turn purple."

"It's to be kid friendly," Zym added sagely.

"...And you can't die inside your own game, so why not, I guess?" Callum finally caught on that Rayla was unimpressed, and he sighed. "Yeah, Ez is a bit weird."

Eventually, they came to a set of bushes which looked blocky and unreal compared to the others. Rayla squinted at it. Maybe it was the uncomfortable thought of Ezran messing with the code, but Rayla was pretty sure that she could make out the individual ones and zeros.

Callum pulled the bushes aside and revealed a black space that seemed to have no walls or floors. Ezran was sitting cross-legged on the floor, the ugly bait sat on top of his head and glowing brightly. Words and numbers streamed past his face with seemingly no reason or logic, but he suddenly reached out to touch one and it popped out of the stream and bloomed into a web of numbers and words.

It was meaningless to Rayla, but Ezran slumped, disappointed. He pushed the bit of code away and it disappeared back into the stream. "I can't remove the block without taking away all the stage boundaries and messing up the game." He pouted. "That's dumb."

"Oh. So no tree climbing?" Callum said.

Ezran shook his head.

Callum suddenly turned to her and waved his hand at Ezran and Bait. "See? I told you he's not going Turbo or anything! He kept it in because he doesn't want to ruin the game."

Rayla tried to fold her arms, remembering her bad shoulder too late. A wave of pain flooded through her and she had to blink tears out of her eyes. Even with the slightly blurry vision, she could see that all four of them – boys and creatures alike – were peering at her in concern.

"Are you okay?" Ezran asked. "What happened?"

She didn't want to talk about how she'd nearly died by being careless in someone else's game, exactly the reason why everyone in The King's Champion didn't want her going to other games unsupervised. Stupid, stupid.

Rayla shook her head. "I'll be better when I get home. It doesn't matter."

"—running after you and that's why you can't just dash off without telling anyone!" Callum said, talking over her.

The ugly creature went red and stopped glowing. Ezran's face fell. "I'm sorry. I was just excited. I didn't really think..."

"It's fine," Rayla insisted. "It was my own stupid fault for not looking where I was going."

"But don't run off anyway, Ez, okay?" Zym added. He tapped Rayla gently with his tail. "We've been trying to break this habit since the game got plugged in! You're not helping with your denials!"

Ezran's pet had settled back into an orange-ish colour, which Rayla took to mean that he wasn't feeling so sorry any more. She decided to change the subject. "What is this place, anyway? I've never seen anything like it."

"I don't know," Ezran said. "I think it's a backdoor someone left in the code or something? I'm not sure why they would do that, but it's useful. I can fix lots of things from here. And you can find out so much! Like did you know—!"

Callum cringed, and Rayla raised an eyebrow at him. "Are you sure he's not going Turbo?"

Ezran tilted his head curiously, like a bird. The ugly pet grumbled as it nearly fell off. "What's 'going Turbo'?"

"Remember, orientation? When we first got plugged in…?" Callum prompted, facepalming when Ezran stared at him blankly. "Please tell me you didn't sneak out the back while no one was watching."

"But it was boring!"

"He snuck out the back when no one was watching," Callum mumbled into his hand. "Of course he did!"

"Turbo is someone who used to live in the arcade," Rayla explained. "He got jealous when a new game took attention away from his, so he started jumping into the new one, which only got the plug pulled on both of those games. We thought that was the end of it, but it turned out that he'd been manipulating the code of another racing game to make himself the main character..."

"Oh, he sounds terrible," Ezran said. "But I'm not going to do any of that stuff! I love The Dragon Prince! It just… needs some fixing, sometimes."

"Still, you be careful." Rayla shook her head. She couldn't believe she was even agreeing to keep this a secret. There was just something about Ezran that seemed painfully genuine. "And maybe… don't mention this to anyone else, okay? They'll probably just think the risk of going Turbo is too high."

"Oh. Okay."

He still looked a little sad. Rayla cast about for something to say. "But if you want to do a wee bit of tree-climbing… why not come to my game? I can show you!"

"Uh, won't that be dangerous?" Callum asked.

Rayla waved a hand dismissively. "Naw, it'll be fine. I'll be right there to catch you!"

"I'll come too!" Zym said, his tail lashing about like an excited whip. "I'm good at tall things."

Ezran's face had burst into a bright smile. "And we can see the castle! And the forest! I wanna learn about all your backstory!"

"Sure," Rayla said. He was a strange one. He's probably more excited about my game than I am. "There'll be plenty of story time."