Max thought about dropping the broken axe a few times as he made his way deeper into the woods. His mind raced back and forth with the deadline of the story prompt rapidly approaching. The axe seemed extreme. The offensive magic supply was all used. The tool was already broken. Hatchets exist for a reason. There were alternative ways. Like what? Fists? Chalking up the growing hesitancy to sleep deprivation, he kept a strong grip.

  The yellow runes blinked a few more times before going out. No more magic for dryads. It wasn’t long after that the pink runes did the same. No more maps. Isolated in a fight, Max felt some of the pressure from the community, who had been resisting all night.

  The sky was beginning to change colours.

  The sounds of birds beginning to chirp and a waterfall made it all feel worse.

  Seeing a figure in front of the running water made him pause.

  It was eerie.

  Cy was waiting calmly in front of the waterfall. Max couldn’t place why seeing him there looked so unsettling at first. Was it because he was about to kill him? Or because he had tormented the people who raised Cy while looking for him? Maybe it was simply the sting of an upcoming betrayal for a system that had been tormenting him for years with a deadly penalty? Eventually, Max settled on his appearance. It wasn’t often that he saw him without his cloak.

  “I take it Haiddeck still has your cloak.” He pointed out when he felt sure Cy could hear him over the waterfall. There was no reaction. Couldn’t he hear? “Aren’t you a bit cold? Being next to a waterfall isn’t the warmest of places.”

  Cy’s eyes squinted before he began to look a little pale. Did he finally notice the axe? Still, he said nothing.

  Max stopped his approach. There was still about three hundred meters between them. Unaware of the time, the sun could rise at any moment. Despite this, he felt the need to address their awkward situation. “I’m sorry. You’ve probably been listening to the broadcasts all night… Just… This isn’t personal, you know?”

  Cy’s face remained grim, but he didn’t say anything.

  “Let’s make this quick-”

  Cough.

  A cough?

  There shouldn’t be coughing here. Max instinctively moved before the pressurised wave could hit him. The wheezing beefcake stood out amongst the now broken trees. “Darius!? The fuck are you doing here? You should be rest-”

  “Get out of here, Cyrus!”

  Max looked over at Cy’s direction to see… That he wasn’t moving? It was strange seeing him be oddly still. Was Elder Obi right about him abandoning orders and procedures? Or was there something else going-

  The coughs distracted Max. “Stay on the damn blue lines and go back to where Elder-”

  “Fuck you.” Darius crept his way forwards as he meticulously stepped over each line.

  Max started to march his way over towards Darius before sprinting in Cy’s direction. Cy was acting weird. He still wasn’t moving. Was this another one of their plans? While he was unsure about his target, Max felt overly confident about what to do with Darius. He dodged a couple more attacks in his direction from the community’s Elder before throwing Elder Aris’s broken axe at Cy.

  It hit.

  “CYRUS!”

  It hit?

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Max felt himself freeze in shock from the impact as Cy grunted from the sudden wound to his waist. It should be real, but it didn’t feel that way. Why did it hit? Max was semi-certain the strangeness in his behaviour was from a filter, or an imposter, or something else. It really was Cy? And Cy was now severely wounded as he laid on the floor?

  But he wasn’t dead. Yet.

  There was a hard impact, and Max found himself knocked to the ground. “You son of a bitch.” Darius spluttered between bloody coughs. Several landed-on Max’s face.

  His senses struggled to come back as Max tried to wrestle Darius off of him and onto the blue lines. “You need to stay on the goddamn lines-”

  “I ain’t got to do shit. You don’t know anything, boss”

  Max struggled to keep the maddened father pinned down. The wound he gave Cy should be fatal since he was left to bleed out… So why wasn’t the prompt cancelled? “Stay-” Max’s voice got caught in his throat as he looked over to Cy lying on the ground.

  He couldn’t tell from this angle, but was he on a blue line?

  Didn’t Elder Charaka mention Cy stole Max’s blood?

  The same blood that forced the blue runes to increase in power?

  Was this their plan from the beginning?

  Waste time, take the hit, and heal when Max was distracted?

  The sun was going to rise at any moment.

  Max winded Darius again before dragging him to a line. “Stay here. I mean it this time.” He broke out into a sprint to where Cy lay. It had been unsettling to see his injuries from afar. It felt even worse to see them up close.

  “Sorry,” Max murmured, as he pulled a severely injured Cy away from the blue line he landed on. Max was grateful Cy wasn’t looking in his direction until he realised his eyes were focused on a few vials of red liquid clutched firmly in his hand. “I’m sorry,” he muttered again while trying to pry it out of Cy’s hand. “I can’t let you have-”

  The blue lines stopped glowing.

  It didn’t matter anymore. Cy wasn’t going to be healed by them… Neither was Darius. At least one of them could be helped when the prompt was gone.

  The sky was getting brighter.

  “I’m really sorry, but I don’t have time anymore.” Max knelt to remove the axe causing the wound to gush blood. There was another moment of hesitation before he looked away and brought it back down again. Unable to stomach the sight of his actions, Max looked away to see Darius staring in their direction.

  There were no words getting hurtled in their direction. No movement in his chest. No more coughs. Just steady drips of blood leaking from the side of his mouth.

  If there was any more magic in the tanks, Max would’ve seen some illuminated red runes.

  …

  …

  Time to finish what the system started, so it wasn’t for nothing. Max closed his eyes for a second, as his hands reached towards where he left the axe. It wasn’t there?

  When he opened his eyes, the revelation of his situation was devastating. Cy used a teleporting spell on him.

  He was back in the middle of Tsujuma.

  The prompt had vanished.

  The HUD was visible.

  Max had failed.

  He could feel a laugh threatening to bubble up. All that excitement and effort, and he had failed to deliver on time. The story prompt was now activated.

  It was all for nothing.

  Letting Juniper be abducted by aliens. Slaving away at Bessie’s farm. Avoiding Adelaide in the village. Being evicted. Completing piles after piles of paperwork. Destroying the moral of a community. Getting Darius killed. Keeping Cy alive. Gravely injuring him.

  None of it mattered now.

  Cy was probably going to bleed out in those woods too.

  Nothing he could do about it now.

  Before he had a chance to interact with the HUD and reveal the redacted parts of the prompt, he felt someone slap the back of his head. It was a harsh hit, but the voice that followed was an instant relief.

  “You fucking asshole,” Cy shouted down to him as if he was scolding a child. “You could have killed me.”