Page 22 of Ravaged Devotion

He met Illya’s eyes. “I understand why Ares and Zar are the way that they are. Being killed and brought back? That does something to you. Strips something away. Something vital. Every time it happened, it was like we lost another piece of ourselves. It got to the point we no longer even realized it when it happened.”

“You said you’re sent back to an earlier stage of the game when you’re killed,” Ryker frowned. “But you two are separate players. Doesn’t that mean—”

“Yeah,” Uriel confirmed without him having to finish. “I have no idea when I lost the real Ryder, but I did. If I died without him, or he died without me, we were separated. The first time it occurred was early on, when we were still trying to figure things out. For a while, we agreed to die together to avoid it.”

“So if he was murdered, you’d kill yourself right after so you’d end up in the same place?” Nyoka asked.

“Exactly.”

“How’d that work out for you?”

“Good for a while,” he said. “There are several game plays. Different maps, different scenarios. We played through them to a degree for a bit, but there are triggers that can end one version and send you into another game.”

“What triggers?” Ryker straightened from the wall he’d been leaning on.

“I don’t remember,” he admitted. “We were figuring them out when I died again. Someone tore my guts out. It fucking sucked. I woke up at a past save and waited for Ryder but he never showed. I spent fifty years waiting, trying to find him. By the time I did stumble on his character, it…wasn’t him.”

“What do you mean?”

“The system downloaded us. Our images, our voices. Some of our mannerisms. Basically, if you’re there long enough, eventually it creates a skin of you. Creates a character. This NPC and the real player can’t occupy the same game play though.”

“You think the game tricked Ryder into hanging out with an NPC version of you?” Ryker surmised.

“I don’t know for sure. Once I figured it out, I killed myself to jump through the different games. In each one, I found him, and if it turned out he was an NPC, I redid the process.”

“And you found him?”

“Eventually.” Uriel ran a hand through his hair. “By the time I did, I’d forgotten what the point was. All I knew is that I was looking for my long-lost friend. But when I saw him again, the real him, it all came flooding back to me.”

“You woke yourself up,” Illya concluded.

“Without him,” Ryker added.

“I tried to convince him,” Uriel said. “But he refused to go. I spent years trying, Ryk. He killed me himself, a dozen times over, and I still kept trying. Then I must have hit the limit, ran out of lives, so to speak, and was moved to another version of the game. That was it for me. I chose to exit. Even if that meant doing so alone.”

“How did you exit?”

“There are no controls or headsets when you’re in there,” Uriel explained. “You have to use voice commands. Player Archangel Activates Exit.”

“What’s Ryder’s handle?” Nyoka asked.

“Four Horsemen,” Ryker answered.

“Ryk,” Uriel seemed uncertain. “There’s something I have to do. A message I have to give.”

“To me?”

“To Rue.”

Ryker froze, the air in the room turning sour. “What?”

“Before Ryder and I lost ourselves, there was something he wanted me to tell Rue if I ever decided to exit the game,” Uriel said.

“Tell me.” What the hell could his brother possibly have to say to Rue? And would it help explain what happened that day?

Uriel hesitated.

“You don’t know about this,” Illya came to Ryker’s defense, “but Rue didn’t stick around after you two entered Belladona.”