In a swift movement, Talinia fired a wave of arrows at once towards the leaping rattlecobralls. Three arrows met their predisposed destinations, two striking their targets in the tail and one striking a rattlecobrall in the head – impaling through its eye socket. The rattlecobrall that has been struck through its eye fell to the sand twitching, snarling.

But there was one more rattlecobrall that had narrowly missed Talinia's arrows. It hissed and leapt again towards Talinia and Mipsy, fangs bared and ready to bite. Mipsy held up her wand, eyes focused upon her target.

"Obliterate!"

The attacking rattlecobrall in mid-air combusted from the inside, leaving behind a trail of organs and venomous fluids as its dismembered head continued to fly towards Talinia via momentum. Talinia held her bow and swatted the fangs-bearing head away from her. It landed behind the eyrie and acara, plummeting down next to where Rohane stood – still carrying an unconscious Velm.

Rohane placed Velm onto the ground and drew his sword. He pulled the bandage from his sword arm. He could not afford to be held back right now. He took a few steps forward, and then charged.

One of the two rattlecobralls that has been shot in the tail has tackled Talinia to the ground. Talinia was on her back with arms outstretched, holding the rattlecobrall's mouth open and far from her face with effort as the creature's fangs dripped venomous fluids onto her fur. Rohane sliced his sword through the back of the creature's head and swiped down, slicing part of the creature in two. Talinia tossed the spliced rattlecobrall away from her before quickly scrambling to her feet, wiping the chunks of rattlecobrall fluid from her fur and leather armor.

The other rattlecobrall shot through the tail was attacking Mipsy swiped its body towards Mipsy's legs. The sharp contact knocked her legs out from under her and she fell to her side, wincing. Before the rattlecobrall could draw its head back to bite, it was impaled to the ground by one of Talinia's arrows. Mipsy raised her wand from the ground and gave the dying creature one last zap, and it lay still.

Just as Rohane thought that the battle had been declared, he heard a loud and dull thump from behind Talinia. As Talinia turned around in shock, she saw that Velm had gained back consciousness, grabbed ahold of his staff, and taken out the rattlecobrall with the penetrated eye socket that they had erroneously presumed to be dead. The creature had been on the verge of sinking its fangs into her wing.

"Hey, what? I didn't get enough of my daily exercise yet." Velm gave a painful smile, and then slowly doubled over as he put a hand over his wounded middle again. "Oh shit… that reopened quickly…"

As Talinia quickly stepped forward to catch the techo from falling, Rohane ran over to Mipsy.

"Mipsy… Are you hurt anywhere?" He put his sword back into his sheath and quickly knelt by her side. He wanted so badly to hold her in his arms, but he did not permit himself.

Mipsy lifted the hem of her robe to over her knees. Rohane tried to avert his eyes from looking further up. There was a purple bruise on her leg from where the rattlecobrall had swiped her legs from underneath her. "I'm fine. It didn't bite me. I can totally walk. Let's get Velm back."

"It's getting late." Talinia looked up towards the darkening sky. "We may not able to get close to the city by the time night falls. When night falls, it will become too dangerous to travel."

"Damn rattlecobralls." Rohane stood up and helped Mipsy up by her arm, trying hard to ignore the bolt of electricity that shot up through his body the moment he touched her.

"Let's set up camp."

An hour later, they had set up camp within a rock formation that Talinia spotted within the endless sand dunes. They found a concave area of the rock formation, and Rohane and Talinia sealed up the opening with large slabs of stone after they entered. Mipsy set a fire in the center of the makeshift cave. They laid Velm close to the fire, but he was still shivering underneath his tore clerical robes.

Rohane volunteered to be on watch that night. He was not particularly in the mood for sleep anyways. Talinia said goodnight, and went to a corner of the makeshift cave to sleep. She was weary from the day's battles and exploration.

Mipsy stuck her wand at the fire and spoke a few magical words to make it burn brighter. Rohane sat on the ground, removing his uncomfortable armor plates one by one and observing the orange glow of the fire reflected against the acara's bubblegum blue fur. Then suddenly Mipsy reached down and pulled her robes over her head, displaying to Rohane every curve in full view. Rohane's eyes widened and his throat subconsciously gulped.

Mipsy draped her robes over Velm as a cover, and turned to Rohane with one eyebrow raised. "It's so that Velm doesn't pass away from hypothermia. What are you looking at?"

Rohane reached down and took off his brown cloth vest from over his green long-sleeved peasant shirt. Mipsy stepped back a little, almost defensively, until Rohane handed it to her. He tried his best to look down and not at her body. "Here… wear this. Cover yourself up, damn it."

"Th... Thanks." Mipsy put on Rohane's vest. It draped over her small body like a sleeveless dress. Rohane wondered how long it had been since Mipsy wore a dress in the real world. Apart from in these computer simulations, he had never seen her in anything except for her generic Virtupets gray work uniform.

He remembers how her body had felt like against his, the night in the Meridell simulation – at the inn in the Village at Seaside. They were a white blumaroo young hero and a blue acara wizard, both having forgotten that they were in a simulation and convinced that they were the characters they played. There was only a guest room with one double-sized bed in the small inn ran by the pirate scorchio innkeeper. He had sat on the bed as she stood over him, applying a bandage over a shoulder wound that he had received from the dire lupe they just defeated, and then he had pulled her into himself and kissed her. He could not describe the courage that suddenly drove him to take the bold and unwarned step forward, but she had stared into his black eyes for a second and then kissed him back, sitting on him and straddling his waist. Later that night, both her hands were held tightly in his as they made passionate love.

They spent three nights in each other's arms before they defeated Ramtor and both woke up in separate rooms of their spaceship, suddenly realizing that they were only characters in a simulation. They quickly returned to work, this time ensuring that they were not forgetting who they really were. They had never talked about what happened in Meridell - in fact, they were mostly silent from then on.

Rohane sighed and threw his head back, staring at the ceiling of the makeshift cave. Perhaps they will never talk about what happened in the Meridell simulation. Not as long as they were hopping through all these other simulations.

"Good night, Mipsy."

"Good night, Captain Rohane."

Mipsy went and laid down close to Talinia, and soon her breathing became soft and regular. Rohane continued sitting there with his head leaned back, then gradually pulled his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around his legs, leaning forward.

He had never felt lonely before. In fact, it was like he never experienced loneliness before. He had lived in solitude for all his life with no true friends other than his large social network of "connections" mostly for academic, internship, and work purposes. Back in his university days he would occasionally attend college parties to drink and attempt to de-stress, fuck some usul wearing too much blue eyeshadow and red lipstick from the community college nearby for the night, and then leave the morning after without saying goodbye or leaving a note. But since he met Mipsy, he realized how lonely he truly was – how he yearned to evict that loneliness, how he needed none other than her to fill up his emptiness. And the worst kind of loneliness, he realized, was to have Mipsy in his arms for a moment and then to let go.

He really needed a fucking Neocigar.

"How's the watch?"

Rohane sat up straight immediately. Velm was lying awake next to the fire, draped in Mipsy's robe and curiously observing the white blumaroo on night watch. Rohane had thought that Velm was either asleep or passed out the entire time.

"God fucking damn it, Velm. If you were awake you should have just said so. Mipsy just took off her fucking robe in front of you to cover you with it, because she thought that you lost consciousness again or something. If you had seen-"

"Hey, now, shouldn't you be asking me how I'm doing?" Velm smiled. "Wasn't it so cool how I finished off that last rattlecobrall without anyone expecting it?"

Rohane sighed. "You know Velm… when I kill something off, nobody gives me any credit for it. And when I get hurt, nobody treats me like a delicate little Princess Fernypoo because I can actually take a hit without bleeding all over the place and collapsing…"

Velm chuckled. "Very hilarious, Rohane. How do you have friends again?"

"I don't."

"What was all that about with Mipsy?"

"Mipsy…" Rohane sighed again. He lowered his voice slightly, not wanting the sleeping Mipsy to be awakened, then suddenly remembered something. "Wait, Velm. What did you mean earlier by... the mistake you made, which I shouldn't repeat?"

Still lying on his back next to the fire, Velm stared solemnly at the ceiling of the makeshift cave.

"A few missions ago, I was with a different crew." Velm said after a moment of silence, his usually cheery and dismissive voice now lowered. "One of my colleagues I had known for quite a while previous to this mission. There was nothing particularly going on between us, but I had… loved her from the sidelines for a long time. We were on a final test-run of the simulations system, but something went wrong… and the two of us were stranded within the simulation. We were frightened and convinced that it was the end, but… we ended up falling in love. I thought that there might not be another day to tell her that, so I did."

Rohane breathed in hard. He remembered hearing something regarding a similar incident two years ago. Was Velm actually the one who survived that simulation?

Velm stretched one arm up and covered his eyes.

"Her name is Elaine. She was that pink aisha who… passed away in that famous training accident from a while back that you probably remember. Virtupets was so busy that nobody set aside any time to properly mourn." Velm's voice finally cracked. "I was there when she died. She… fucking died in front of me, while protecting me. I could only play this passive, secondary cleric in battle that has to be shielded by others. I couldn't heal her, because… she was already fully gone. When you die in a simulation, nothing actually happens to your body in the real life, but your mind is just… gone. When I managed to leave that simulation, and I saw her body being transported out under a white sheet… I realized… I had never truly touched her while she was alive in the real world, not even once. It was as if none of our love ever even happened, because it all took place in some crazy simulated world like this one, one which took her away…"

Velm sat up, his vision clouded over. He covered his face with his hands.

"I tried losing myself in work, I tried religion and spirituality, I tried alcohol. I got all this useless pep talk about how I am one of the only in-simulation mage clerics and how fucking important that role is supposed to be, but in the end I failed at my job." Velm breathed in deeply, then winced and held his stomach. "I just want some… confirmation from the universe that our love did happen, but there is none. It's literally all in my head, because it all occurred within a simulation. I fucking hate this job, but I know I can't quit because there is nothing else for me in the world anymore besides my job…"

Rohane scooted over to the techo, and gently pushed him back down. "You need to lie down before you reopen that wound a second time…"

Suddenly Velm grabbed Rohane by the neck and pulled Rohane down to the ground, halfway on top of the red techo. Not letting go of Rohane's neck, he whispered directly into Rohane's ear.

"Do not make the same mistakes."

He let Rohane go, and rolled onto the side to face the fire, his back now turned to the white blumaroo. Rohane rubbed his neck, and slowly shifted himself back to where he originally sat on night guard.

He was already part-way inside that mistake.