The final puppet burrowed into Laura’s skin. Blood started to trickle down her side and her health bar decreased to 80%. Its creeping fingers continued to grow towards her stomach.

  With a click Laura flicked on the kitchen torch. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you it’s tacky to touch a pregnant lady’s belly?” She shot a warning jet of flames near the puppet.

  The puppet only dug in deeper in response, causing a real jolt of pain as Laura felt her stomach harden. Panic started to set in. She shoved the fingers of her left hand under the puppet’s arm, and felt her fingernails rip, but she couldn’t budge it away from the tight grip it had on her.

  Nate and Brett were also still trying to dig it off of her while Graham was checking on Caroline, but as fast as they pried bits of the puppet off of her, more grew to take its place. Laura set off the torch again, then held it to the puppet’s face. It shrieked as its face burst into flames, but it still clung to her. The flames spread fast through the dry wood, causing even more pain to shoot down her side, along with the sickening smell of burning hair as the ends of her hair caught and then went out.

  Warning: Health at 75%.

  The puppet smothered the fire by shoving its head under one of the folds of Laura’s shirt. Then it craned its head to glare up at her with its one good remaining eye, as half of its face caved in and turned to ash.

  Laura didn’t back down. She held the torch near the puppet’s legs while Nate kept pulling. He grunted as the tips of his fingers skirted against the edge of the fire, but he didn’t pull his hands back. “Come on you little fucker,” he grit through his teeth, breaking off more portions of the puppet that had started to imprint into Laura’s skin.

  Brett snatched up a copy of Goodnight Moon from where it was displayed on the top of a shelf and wedged it between the puppet and Laura’s stomach like he was using a pizza peel. He ineffectually pulled at it a few times before Nate shouldered him aside. Nate put all his weight into levering the book. The puppet began to tear from her skin. Bits of wood shattered and stung her hands and face. Laura screamed.

  Just when the pain intensified to an almost unbearable level, to the point she was worried Nate was doing more damage than the puppet itself, the puppet popped off of her and fell to the ground next to Goodnight Moon. Laura opened full blast with the kitchen torch. The picture book went up in flames along with the shrieking puppet. Its face and body collapsed into ash.

  Notifications flew past:

  CONGRATULATIONS!…

  LEVEL UP…

  LEVEL UP…

  Nate stomped out the flames around the smouldering puppet, leaving a large portion of the alphabet rug scorched and melted.

  Caroline still lay in a heap on the floor. Laura ran over to her. “Is she…?” Her health was so low it was a sliver of red.

  “She’s unconscious,” Graham said, still checking her pulse. “She pushed it very very close.”

  Laura pulled a pick-me-up bar out of her inventory. She tried getting Caroline to eat it but it just fell out of her mouth.

  “Here,” Nate said, coming over. “Try this, it might be easier.” Seemingly out of thin air he materialized a drink out of his inventory. It looked like a caffeine filled soda. “It’s from Charlie’s. Oliver suggested we stock up. Should restore her HP.”

  Laura smoothed Caroline’s hair away from her face, and made sure to lay her on her side so she wouldn’t choke. She tipped her face slightly up and poured the soda into her mouth. Most of it dribbled out, but Caroline swallowed reflexively, catching some of it. Eventually her health bar started to rise.

  Caroline’s eyes opened. “Holy shit,” she said, staring up at them. “I’m a Level 4. I went up 3 levels.”

  “And you almost died,” Brett said. “But yeah, congrats.”

  Laura herself had gone up two levels to a 5, largely due to the puppet incineration. But that still left them a few levels shy of being able to even think about tackling the maze. Plus the more they leveled up, the more experience they needed to get to the next level.

  Caroline tried to sit up.

  “Hang on, give it another minute,” Graham said, applying gentle pressure to keep her lying down.

  Caroline lay on the floor a little longer, her eyes darting back and forth as she looked through her various notifications. “Hey, I got a skill! ‘Death Defying Magic’—my constitution goes up by 25% whenever my health drops below 25%.”

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Caroline’s health bar was finally almost completely refilled. She flexed her foot. “Thank god that’s better.”

  Then she pushed herself to her feet. “Oh man, is this what it’s like to feel old?” She stretched and several joints popped. “I feel like a rice krispy treat.”

  “Heads up!” Brett threw a book at Caroline. He had poked his head back into the puppet master’s office and was rooting through the shelves.

  “Hang on,” Caroline said, “don’t touch that stuff! Let me take a look.” She shoved her way into the tiny space and began looking through the books and items like a kid in a candy store.

  Laura went to take a closer look as well. The side of her stomach stung as the fabric of her shirt brushed against her burnt skin.

  Caroline pulled book after book off the shelf. Her nose scrunched. “I can’t look at most of these,” she said, pulling a few into her inventory. “My charisma isn’t high enough yet. I mean I can guess at what some of these are from the titles, but that’s it.”

  Laura saw an opportunity. As soon as Brett and Caroline had their backs turned, she stealthily pulled the tarot cards out of her inventory and placed them on the desk in front of her. “How about these?” She said, picking up the velvet bag and holding it out to Caroline. “They look important.”

  Her face lit up. “Oh yeah, let me see!” She opened the bag and titled it until 5 cards slid out into her hand. “Tarot cards. They’re single use, but they’re not like the spell books where I need ingredients, the magic’s in the card itself.” Her head bent closer to peer at the card faces.

  The bell on the front door rang as it rattled closed and everyone looked up and froze.

  “Hello?” Brett called. Caroline whacked him on the arm. The tarot cards vanished as Caroline pulled them into her inventory.

  Oliver poked his head into the kids area. He raised an eyebrow at the melted rug and puppet ash. “So that went well, huh?”

  “That was supposed to be easy?” Caroline said, gesturing around the room.

  “To be fair, it was marked easy-intermediate on my map,” Laura said.

  Agnes followed Oliver into the children’s area, rolling up her sleeves. “Anyone hurt?” She had her backpack ready to go.

  “Caroline was unconscious for a little while,” Laura said.

  Agnes waved her over and pulled a flashlight out of her backpack. She plunked herself and Caroline down at a tiny child-sized table and chairs near the fake fireplace. Agnes used the flashlight to check Caroline’s pupils, then she took her pulse and used a small device to check her blood pressure.

  “Took you a little while,” Laura said to Oliver, who was still standing off to one side, arms crossed and surveying the scene.

  “I wanted to let you do your thing. Wouldn’t do you any good if I rushed in and did it for you. You needed the experience.”

  “We could have gotten experience either way if we joined parties.”

  Oliver made a noncommittal sound.

  “Wouldn’t we stand the best chance if as many of us work together as possible?”

  “Do you know what I do now? Before we were here?”

  “You coach, right? Tennis.” That made sense.

  He nodded. “That means my job is to tell people what they need to do to achieve their personal best. It also means I have to be honest with people about what their limitations are. ‘No, you’re not going to win that grand slam like you always wanted.’ ‘No, you’re not going to rank this year.’”

  “And you think some of us will just slow you down?”

  Oliver shrugged. “Maybe. You have to admit the potential issues.” Laura wasn’t sure if he meant her situation or something larger. “If you all get in each other’s way too much you could become a liability.”

  “But you need us to get through that maze, right? That’s why you’re still here? You couldn’t get through when there were more of you.” Laura brushed the puppet ash off her shirt. “We could always join parties now temporarily, at least until we get through the maze. You can always undo it later.”

  Oliver shrugged again. “Maybe.”

  A flash of irritation went through Laura. They were already succeeding at doing things his way, blindly following his suggestions for how to level up even though it had already nearly gotten one of them killed. (Although more charitably that was really on Caroline. She probably would have found a way to do something like that regardless.) What more did he want from them?

  “Okay,” Oliver said, clapping his hands, “so next let’s circle back to the candy maker mobs. Those are easier and now that Caroline has some magic items and has leveled up you should be able to work together and take them all out easily. So I expect a bloodbath. You should each be able to get a good amount of experience by mowing through them.”

  Caroline looked at him like he was nuts. “Are you serious? Like that wasn’t enough for one day?”

  Oliver’s eyebrows drew together. “What part of the urgency are you all not getting?”

  “Trust me,” Laura said, resting a hand where her stomach was streaked with burns. “We get it.”

  Agnes came over to check on her. “Let me look at that.” She eased the side of Laura’s shirt up to reveal patches of red painful skin streaking several inches down the right side of her stomach. Agnes applied some medicated cream on the burns. “The last thing you’ll want is scar tissue as your stomach expands,” she said as she dabbed the cream on Laura’s skin. “Scar tissue doesn’t stretch.”

  Laura winced.

  “Don’t worry,” Agnes said. “This hurts like a son of a bitch, but they’re surface level. Trust me. Eat another pick-me-up bar and soon you’ll barely notice them.”

  “If there’s something to be done, you do it without rest,” Oliver continued, talking to Caroline.

  “It’s a marathon, not a sprint,” Caroline said.

  “Yes, and I would know nothing about endurance in my work.”

  Agnes clapped her hands. “Okay, you two. Let’s split the difference. This is life or death, not Wimbledon. Food and rest are first priority to refuel, and then we can see about tackling more this afternoon.”

  After eating both a pick-me-up bar and a plain bun back at the Rest a While, Laura excused herself. She lay alone in her room, examining her stats.

  Constitution: 3

  Strength: 1

  Dexterity: 3

  Intelligence: 3

  Charisma: 1

  There was also a note. “Warning: Your stats in dexterity and intelligence are falling behind for your class (long range fighter).”

  She had two more stat points to spend. She could continue to build up dexterity and intelligence, and gain the ability to wield stronger long-range weapons and be able to deal more damage. But at the end of the day they had a gap. Oliver was their only short range fighter. That made Laura nervous.

  A new system message popped up:

  WHAT TO EXPECT: Your baby is now the size of a grape! Have you ever thought about how easy it is to crush a grape between your fingers?

  She dismissed the notification.

  After a few moments more thought, she put one point into dexterity, and the other into strength.

  Warning: Strength is not a necessary stat for your fighting class. Attempts at multiclassing will cause you to fall behind for your level and undermine your ability to deal damage as a long range fighter. Select strength anyway? Y/N

  She selected yes. Then she turned over and went to sleep.