Unable to contain his fury at the audacity of these Immortals, Xander fought to remain silent. Chosen by the gods? Of all the arrogance... These people came from another world, thought it was all a game, destroyed countless lives, and justified it how?

Astra stopped and turned to face him. “Is something wrong?” she asked, looking genuinely confused.

He’d intended to stay silent... intended to brush it off as nothing.

But then she smiled.

“I am astounded by the arrogance of your people,” Xander said. “That you would transport yourselves to our world without knowing a single thing about us and claim to be chosen by the gods! Have you any idea what the gods even represent to us?”

Astra’s ears folded down. “I—”

He cut her off. “Even if you had been chosen by the gods, your people’s behavior was a disgrace to their name. You came here with the sole purpose of destroying or building our world to your liking, for your own entertainment! Simply because we could not fight back!”

“You signed up to be a Porter!” Astra shouted, finding her voice.

“Because I saw no other option that would keep me alive!” Xander shouted. “The first time I died was when I stepped out of the Guild Hall with you!”

“So, it’s all my fault?” she demanded. “I’m to blame for all Players?!”

“Your fault is in participating in the system—”

“Then why don’t you leave?” she demanded. “You’re free to! Nothing is making you follow me around! Here—I’ll send you back to Aesir!” Astra pulled out her Menu.

Snatching it from her hand, Xander struggled to get his emotions under control.

“Then send yourself back,” Astra said and turned away, stalking off into the woods.

Pinching the bridge of his nose as he allowed his blood to cool, Xander focused on breathing.

The sky opened up in a sudden downpour that almost immediately drenched him. Shoving the Menu into his pocket, Xander started walking, following his Directional Sense of where Astra was. He knew he wasn’t wrong in being angry. But that didn’t make him right either. It was just... now that he had the opportunity to confront an Immortal for all the things they’d done, rationality had simply left him.

Astra hadn’t gone into villages and slaughtered everyone. She’d mostly spent her time exploring and crafting, taking on requests that weren’t out of her way. In most regards, she had been one of the better Immortals. He did recall her casting Cure on people they passed with no benefit to her...

The problem was the blame. Where did hers start and end? What use was it to blame her now? His family had been dead long before the Immortals came to the world. Others were made orphans by the Immortals, though five hundred years had passed, and the only ones left alive to remember that time was the couple hundred Cursed Ones. Who was he angry for?

Himself, Xander decided. He could only be angry for himself. Everyone else’s anger was their own burden to carry and most of them were dead. The only thing he could do now was get her to acknowledge the things she’d personally done.

Xander scowled at the soggy path as his boots splashed through the mud. She’d already said she couldn’t change the past, just work towards being better in the future. “Gods,” he muttered. He was going to have to apologize. For better or worse, he was stuck with her, and while he had her Menu, she couldn’t perform a lot of tasks. Did she really expect to get far without it?

On that thought, how was she moving so swiftly?

Opening the Menu, he carefully went through it, finding her Skills. She did have Cavalry and Summoning. Perhaps she’d used one of those?

He sighed. “Really? How petty,” he muttered. He would catch up with her eventually.

Her health took a hit. Seconds later, she had none.

She was still getting further away despite being dead.

Xander shoved the Menu into his pocket and started jogging.

* * *

Astra used the back of her hand to wipe her eyes, sniffling.

“What’s he expect me to do?” she demanded. Admittedly, running away from him wasn’t going to solve the problem either, but he’d probably teleported back to Aesir by now.

As she’d expected, it began raining. A rolling wall of water tore through the canopy, soaking everything below almost instantly. Folding her ears down, Astra continued slogging forward. It wasn’t like she had access to her Inventory to pull out a poncho or something, so she dealt with it.

The path she followed came close to the stream again, but this time, the waters had gotten considerably rougher. She kept a healthy distance from the bank, but kept sight of it, since she couldn’t smell or hear it over the sound of the rain.

Where am I even going? she wondered. What was the point?

Except if there was a Soul Stone in the Southlands, then she could attune to it and never show her face in the north again. That would prevent Xander from being in danger from other Porters wanting to make a Pact with her.

She pushed her hair back from her face, knowing she was still crying.

“Yeah, I joined something I thought was a game. It turned out not to be. How was I supposed to know? It wasn’t like Xan could tell me.”

Shuffling from the bushes made her stop. Looking over, she found a Razor Boar. Examining it revealed that not only was it targeting her, but it had a much higher level.

Astra turned and went in the only direction she had available. Xander’s Shelter had worn off a while ago. She needed to go somewhere the Boar couldn’t easily get to. Clambering up onto a fallen log, she scooted out over the rapidly flooding stream and yelped when the Boar struck the base of the log. A sickening crack told her she’d made the wrong choice, just before she hit the water.

Struggling to the surface, she gasped for air once, then took the broken log to the face and was pushed under. It caught a buckle on her armor, dragging her beneath it as the rushing water pushed them both downstream.

Astra fought with the buckle, trying to get it undone, trying to break the branch she was caught on. A sudden drop brought her face out of the water. She let her breath out, intending to catch a fresh gulp of air. The rocks at the bottom of the fall knocked the wind out of her.

The rushing water rolled the log over again, scraping her face against the bottom.

In a panic, she flailed, trying to get to the surface. Water rushed into her throat.

She coughed; sucked in more.

Vomited, sucked in more.

* * *

Night had fallen and Astra was still moving farther away, heading in a generally southward direction. Xander only paused long enough to pull out something he could eat on the run and kept going.

The rain continued, although it had gotten less torrential as the sun went down.

When darkness descended fully, Xander stopped again. It had been a while since he’d run like this, but he didn’t feel too exhausted. Looking through Astra’s Inventory again, he found a lamp. Tying it to his belt, he started moving again, the enchanted light bouncing and throwing strange shadows on the ground. It almost made the trek more dangerous. It was hard to tell how deep each shadow was until he stepped in it and nearly twisted his ankle.

Forced to slow, Xander could feel the distance to Astra’s corpse growing. How long would she wait for him before returning to Aesir’s Soul Stone? It had already been hours, but now she was several miles away and showed no signs of stopping.

What happened to her?

Around midnight, he tripped over a branch he could barely see in the dark and hit the mud, leg screaming in pain. Xander lay there a moment, knowing he’d broken it, but having also hit his head on something and seeing stars. He couldn’t continue jogging. His stamina had run out.

Once he caught his breath, he cast Cure to fix the physical damage and checked his Directional Sense to find that Astra had finally stopped. But she was thirty miles away now.

“I can travel that distance on flat land pretty fast,” he muttered, still on his hands and knees in the mud. “But the terrain is not ideal.” It would take him at least another day to reach her. She hadn’t sent herself back to Aesir yet, which was reassuring.

However, he knew firsthand what being dead for hours felt like.

“Just... stay there, Astra,” he sighed and got to his feet to start walking again, trying to be careful of the slick rocks and branches. The terrain had become quite steep, leading down as he followed the stream. Maybe she’d fallen in? That was the only explanation he could come to that made any sense. But surely, she knew how to swim? He’d seen her swim before.

When dawn broke, the sky was still overcast and drizzling.

Staggering to a stop, Xander dropped to his knees in the mud. He’d barely traveled seven miles in the dark, but it had been rough. His path hadn’t been straight down. Downed trees blocked his path, boulders, the stream itself had flooded sections and he had to go around.

Astra still waited.

He pulled out her Menu and searched through her Inventory for something to eat, deciding to take something hearty and eat sitting down. Xander pulled his sodden hair out of his face and tried not to feel guilty. Astra had never left him dead for more than two or three hours. That had only been because they were in a battle zone, and she couldn’t afford to take the time from protecting herself. She’d never left him behind.

“I’ve been worse to her than she ever was to me,” he muttered, failing in warding off the sinking feeling in his chest. At this point, he wouldn’t have blamed her if she went ahead and sent herself back to Aesir.

A momentary death consisted of intense pain, then darkness with residual pain upon revival. Longer times came with the feeling of being chewed apart, piece by piece, losing yourself to that darkness. Did it feel the same to Immortals, though? Xander suspected the suffering he and others endured was the soul itself losing purchase on the body. He had come across corpses several days old before and could see white sparks floating off them. He could tell how old they were by the glow and whether it was possible to bring them back. The sparks staved off animals and maggots from settling in, but only for up to five days. By then, the soul was completely gone, and Resurrect would have no effect.

Finishing his meal, Xander staggered to his feet and started walking again.

He would make better time today. He was determined to.

A break in the trees allowed him a view of the terrain ahead. The stream he had been following did indeed empty into a massive lake at the bottom of the slope. However, the trek down was going to continue to be grueling.

Not seeing an easy way down from the boulder he stood on, Xander turned back the way he came and started trying to find a new path. The sidetrack added another mile to his journey before he could zag back on course.

Further ill luck found him when he stumbled into a pack of Rush Thorns. The mobile plants with thorny vines were highly aggressive towards other creatures and immediately attacked as he pushed through the foliage.

“[Shelter],” he cast after the first strike hit him. He’d not taken much damage, all things considered, but he didn’t think they were going to leave him alone unless he gave them something else to worry about.

“[Raise Undead],” he cast, calling the fifty meat Golems from the earth. “Attack,” he ordered his army.

The Rush Thorns turned to take on the creatures that were actively attacking them. Xander pushed through the pack and left them behind.

He felt his Undead collapse one by one and knew that they’d not done much damage to the monsters. His summons had only made one kill out of the twenty monsters there. Thankfully Rush Thorns weren’t fast, and they did not come after him. They weren’t the only monsters he encountered along the way. He ignored those he could and killed the ones he couldn’t ignore. He ended up with three Razor Boar carcasses and a Treefoil in his inventory before he hit the rocky beach of the lake in the late afternoon.

Staring out at the water, he could feel that Astra was some distance still, but he didn’t see her.

Xander followed the shore as far as he could to get closer. Once he was within five hundred feet, he waded into the water and started swimming towards the log flow that cluttered near the end of the stream he’d been following all night.

Exhausted, he threw an arm over the first log he got to for a moment of rest. Still, there was no indication of where Astra’s corpse was. Pulling himself onto the log he clung to, he straddled it for a slightly better viewpoint.

In the distance, he spotted a spark of light off something tall and shiny on the shoreline, but the sun dipped below the mountains surrounding the lake, leaving the whole area in gloom.

“Where are you...?” Xander muttered. He needed to lay eyes on her to cast. But if she was underwater and he did that, she ran the risk of dying again.

Scooting along the log, he climbed onto the next entangled one.