any injury might hurt my body back in the real world. I yanked the iron plate up as a shield. The Lurcher slammed into it, forcing me down to one knee. The iron sizzled against its mottled skin, where it touched suddenly turning back to shadow. The pressure let up. I sliced into the dark where the iron had touched. The thing screeched.
The other Lurcher loomed behind me, its talons sharp as knives. I twisted and swung my sword into its chest, then I knocked its head off with my shield. It spun off the thing’s shoulders, crashing into the wall, and dissolving like a ball of smoke.
The iron could hurt them.
Edvarg and the Lurchers disappeared.
Dagney stood in the boots. “The boots don’t work!” She stomped her feet. “They aren’t even showing up in my inventory.”
I checked out my inventory. Traveling Boots. I wasn’t wearing the item, but I was the one who found them. “They’re in mine.”
A Lurcher and Edvarg reappeared. The headless one was too injured. Edvarg lifted his hands, and green mist began to form.
“Hurry,” Dagney said as she tried to pull the boots off her feet.
There was no time. “Trade me for them.”
She dropped her foot and then looked at the axe in her hand. “Catch!” She threw the axe, and I caught it. I turned with a grin and I ran for Edvarg. I swung the iron shield into the Lurcher that blocked my path and knocked its head clear off, then, while Edvarg raised his mist-clouded hands above his crown, I slammed that gorgeous axe into the glowing circle on his shoulder.
He dropped his hands, his bar of health dimmed to a speck. I shoved the shield into his chest, and Edvarg fell back to the ground. I stood over him.
“I’ll kill you for this,” he said, trying to push up to sitting. I stepped on his chest and held him down.
“Not this time.” I slammed the iron plate into his neck and trapped him down to the floor. His body shuddered, arms flailing, fingers outstretched and then curling upward. The damage bar drained to empty. His body disappeared in a flash of green gas, sharp and acidic. My axe clattered to the ground.
My skin lit as I leveled up. Yes! I defeated a boss! My hand lifted, but I dropped it. My dad wasn’t here to give me a high five.
This was why I never played video games anymore.
My lungs tightened as I breathed in the rotting green gas. My skin flashed cold, and I coughed. Once. Twice. I couldn’t breathe. The gas was poison. “Stay away!”
Dagney’s face paled. She rushed into the gas. I flinched. She should stay back; I could find a way out on my own. If I could only breathe. She didn’t listen to my pleading thoughts. Instead she grabbed my jerkin and pulled us backward.
The witch-made boots teleported us out, like a tunnel of multicolored lights. Warm electricity surged, binding us tighter together. But Dagney didn’t stop. Her golden boots stepped backward again.
Her skin glowed as she leveled up. The spark of energy heightened my senses—the sweet smell of sweat at the base of her neck, the taste of sunshine on my tongue, the purple-and-red nova of lights behind my closed eyelids. My foot hit solid ground, and a flash of stinging heat burned my shoulders as we stilled.
We’d moved about five miles away from the King’s Crypt, to a long open stretch of sand and desert heat. I coughed again and green vapor released from my lungs, like a dragon snorting. I gasped a long deep breath of air. My shoulders wound tight.
I stared at her, at the round curve of her cheek, the light in her eyes, her dark hair wild. I wanted to take a picture of her, remember the way she looked for the rest of my life. “I can’t believe you ran into poison to save me.”
Her lips were tinted with a soft green powder. “Of course I did, you d—”
I rubbed her bottom lip with my thumb, wiping off poison like I was wiping off her lipstick. She broke off before she could land whatever devastating insult she had planned.
“Are you certain you are all right?” I wiped the poison on the shoulder of her dress.
“I’m okay,” she said, her eyes wide. “We’re okay.”
Now perhaps I could breathe. No monster was about to kill us. We had the boots and we weren’t locked inside my mother’s crypt. Dagney was standing on her