"BEPO."
"BEPO."
"BEPO."
Zhang, Diego, and Andre yelled it together like a summoning ritual, which, it turned out, was exactly what it was.
The pixels assembled themselves in the cold air and BePo appeared, sunglasses on, sitting on a small couch that had absolutely no business existing in the middle of a dark fantasy forest. The couch rotated slowly toward them like a villain's chair reveal.
BePo lowered his sunglasses slightly. "Huh. Oh. It's you guys." He pushed them back up. "Why have you summoned me so early in your journey?"
"GET US—" Andre started.
"THE FUCK—" Zhang continued.
"OUT OF HERE." Diego finished.
BePo looked between them.
Connor held up both hands. "Wait, hold on guys, we just got here—"
"Who cares bro." Andre pointed back at the tree line with genuine feeling. "I am not getting my balls eaten. Halle Berry? Uh uh. No way. Absolutely not."
Zhang stepped forward. "Plus I thought this was supposed to be like, lighthearted fantasy. Big boobs elf ladies. Hobbit stuff. Nice and cozy." He gestured broadly at the Dark Forest behind them. "Not Berserk. Not whatever that was. Hell no."
Diego nodded firmly and turned to BePo. "Also. Is this dark fantasy."
BePo paused. "...Yes."
"See—"
"However," BePo said, straightening on his couch with what remained of his professional dignity, "on the matter of leaving — you can't. You silly boys."
All four of them stared at him.
Then all four of them yelled "WHAT."
BePo winced slightly at the volume. "Look. I know this place is scary. I'm not going to sit here and tell you it isn't." A pause. "Ok it's actually terrifying. But you have each other and—"
"Man forget that," all three said simultaneously.
Diego crossed his arms. "Look. I'm fine with fighting Tiger Woods' drunk ass. Maybe Will Smith, weak slaps and all. But fighting a big black—" He stopped. Glanced at Andre.
Andre looked back at him. "It's fine."
"Fighting a big black shadowy monster," Diego continued, "is not on my bingo card. That is not a square I was prepared to fill."
BePo tilted his head with the slow sympathy of someone delivering bad news to a golden retriever. "Oh, you silly Mexican. If only you knew the true horrors this world contains." He paused. Then giggled once, quietly, to himself. "Hahah. Anyway. You cannot leave. But you can survive. That is all you can do for now, at least."
Zhang shook his head slowly. "Ok. Fine. If we have to stay on Jeffrey Island Forest or whatever this is—" he pointed at BePo— "can I switch classes? Because being a rogue was boring and I didn't even get to fight anything. I just got hit and laid on the ground."
"Reasonable," BePo said. "What did you have in mind?"
"Archer."
BePo considered this for exactly half a second. "Sure, sure. Just please, under any circumstances, do not yell—"
"THIS IS FOR KIM JONG—"
"DO NOT yell that."
Zhang laughed. "Ok ok, that was actually funny."
BePo cleared his tiny throat, aimed carefully, and threw up directly onto Zhang.
Blue. Luminescent. Warm looking, somehow, though that did not make it better.
Everyone lost it immediately.
"BRO." Zhang stood completely still, arms out, covered in glowing blue slime, staring at BePo with the expression of a man who had been betrayed at the highest possible level. "WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU—"
BePo burped. Blinked. "Wait a moment." He burped again. "And... now."
The slime dissolved.
Zhang's outfit shifted piece by piece. The black leather armor faded. In its place, a deep green robe settled across his shoulders, a quiver of arrows appeared on his back, and a sleek bow materialized across it with a soft click like it had always been there and was simply returning home.
Zhang looked down at himself. Rolled his shoulders. Tested the weight of the bow.
"Let's go baby."
"Just be thankful it wasn't Hawkeye," Andre said.
"Or Aloy," Connor added.
Diego's entire body shuddered visibly. "Especially her. And don't say that name in front of any girls or they'll think we're misogynists."
"We kind of—" Connor started.
"Don't."
BePo clapped his tiny limbs together once. "Welp. I'm off. The Smurfs won't watch themselves." He adjusted his sunglasses. "Byeee. Oh, and one more thing." He paused, already beginning to dissolve back into pixels.
"Make sure to look behind yourselves."
He disappeared.
The four of them stood in the cold grey air of Valdenmoor and did not look behind themselves for a very long and extremely tense three seconds.
Then they all looked behind themselves at the exact same time.
Nothing was there.
"I hate him," Zhang said.
"I like him a lot," Andre said.
Diego sighed the sigh of a man who had accepted something deeply unfair about his life. "Dark fantasy, Connor." He looked at him. "Dark fantasy. Are you kidding me."
"Look," Connor said, pushing his glasses up with the energy of someone who had rehearsed this defense, "I've played dark fantasy before. I can handle this."
"That's the thing Connor." Diego spread his hands. "We haven't."
"Yeah," Andre said, nodding slowly. He paused. Looked down at himself briefly. "Plus I ain't ready to pee myself." Another pause. "Which I kinda already did. A little. Back there."
Nobody acknowledged that. Which was the kindest thing they could do.
"Ok," Connor said carefully. "I understand that. I do. But you heard BePo. We can't leave. So we might as well focus on getting out of this forest. That's literally the only move we have right now."
Diego turned to him. "But you don't even know how to get out."
"I know that—"
"You BUILT this place Connor—"
"I KNOW—"
"Guy's"
"You drew the MAP. By HAND. You wrote the LORE. You had CHARACTER SHEETS—"
"DIEGO—"
"HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW YOUR OWN FOREST, MAKE IT MAKE SENSE—"
"HOW WOULD I KNOW, THE FOREST IS SO BIG—"
"THAT'S NOT AN ANSWER—"
"IT'S THE ONLY ANSWER I HAVE RIGHT NOW—"
"Guy's."
Zhang had been trying. He'd opened his mouth twice already. Both times the argument had rolled right over him like he wasn't there. He tried again, quieter this time, which was the wrong approach.
"Guys."
Nothing.
"HOW COULD YOU NOT KNOW," Diego continued, voice cracking slightly at the top, "YOU MADE THIS ENTIRE THING AND YOU DON'T KNOW, THAT DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE—"
"WELL SORRY I DIDN'T DESIGN A MAP LEGEND FOR ESCAPING THE WORLD I ACCIDENTALLY CREATED—"
Andre stepped between them both and held up his hands. "Ok ok, everybody calm down—"
"Then tell Diego to back off," Connor said, breathing hard.
"MAKE ME," Diego said.
"GUYS." Zhang's voice came out different that time. Not louder exactly. Just wrong. Tight in a way that made everyone stop.
All three of them turned.
Zhang was facing the tree line. His new bow was half raised, arrow not yet drawn, arm not yet steady. His finger pointed into the dark between the trunks with the specific stillness of someone who had stopped breathing without deciding to.
"Guys," he said again. Very quiet. "For the love of all my people."
They followed his finger.
It stood at the edge of the tree line, half swallowed by shadow, one hand braced against a trunk. Humanoid but wrong, the way things in this forest were wrong, its limbs at angles that didn't quite resolve into sense. It moved with a lurching, dragging gait, like something that had learned to walk from a description rather than practice. Its whole body listed slightly to one side, head low, shoulders uneven.
One hand was pressed over its own eyes.
Not covering them in fear. Deliberately. Like it was searching for something it couldn't quite see. Like light, or the absence of it, was how it found things.
Zhang's voice dropped to almost nothing.
"What," he said, "is that."
Nobody answered.
The thing at the tree line tilted its head slowly in their direction.