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A voice I… thought I recognised?

One of the players drew their bow again, and I saw them equip their “tainted arrows” as the arrowhead turned glowing red.

I huffed and pressed the button to turn on my mic in-game. “Bro, there’s like six of us. You won’t take us all out.”

They ignored me. The player loosed their arrow, and I didn’t get my archer to dart out of the way in time. He grunted, and my health bar dropped sharply, then kept dropping in tiny increments, quickly draining it.

“The fuck,” I snarled, hearing my voice echo through my friends’ headsets. “Don’t be a dick.”

The pair snickered and started scaling the rock face to reach us. Abed threw some orbs at them, and Suki drew her daggers, but they weren’t deterred.

“We’re just messing around, bro,” the voice replied, and it was definitely familiar, but I couldn’t place where I knew it from.

“Hey, Lark,” the other player said, and my spine shot straight as I stared at the screen. “Take this.”

“Lark?” I echoed in disbelief. “Larkin?”

The elf character with bright pink hair flung a noxious gas orb at our group before that familiar voice returned. “How’d you know my name, bro?” His voice got fainter. “Seb, this dude in the game knows my name. You might have to protect me from a stalker with your big werewolf muscles.”

I clenched my jaw. “It’s Rafe. From work.”

“Rafe?” There was an excruciatingly long pause. “Oh, shit, new guy? IT guy?”

“Yes,” I gritted out.

“Oh shit, man, didn’t know it was you! Oh… oops. Hans, bro, you prob shouldn’t have hit him with that—”

My archer suddenly dropped dead on the screen, the tainted arrow having depleted all my health while I was distracted.

“For fuck’s sake!” I snapped.

Was this it now? Goliaths had me trapped in its maw, and it was going to infiltrate every part of my life. I wouldn’t be able to escape.

“Sorry, bro,” Larkin said sheepishly. Then, after a pause, as my buddies’ characters watched on in silence, his elf stepped forward and began crouching repeatedly, directly over my dead archer’s face.

His friend Hans cackled. “Noice. Classic teabag, bro.”

Chapter Four

Bratwursts and Nachos

Rafe

I’d been working at Goliaths for a month, and I’d managed to avoid seeing a single wrestling match.

I wasn’t interested in watching it. I didn’t want to see Ewen in his stupid cowboy getup, prancing around the ring and showboating for the crowd. I literally couldn’t think of anything worse, and because I was still setting up everything we’d need to start streaming the matches online for pay-per-view, I’d managed to escape watching any wrestling. For now.

It actually wasn’t a bad place to work. Mainly because day-to-day, I rarely if ever saw any of the wrestlers. They didn’t come to this part of the building much, except to sometimes speak to Hector.

And I stayed in my office, never venturing out to check out the arena when the shows were on, or watch the wrestlers rehearse or whatever. I wasn’t interested. I usually just worked through my lunch break and ate at my desk, which I’d done at my old job too. There wasn’t a break room here anyway, so Taylor and I used the small kitchenette just down the hall to make coffee and put our lunches in the fridge.

I liked Taylor well enough, but we didn’t have much in common. He was a bit older and seemed like a pretty average guy, to be honest. The boss was completely smitten with him. He seemed good at his job though, and he’d poked his head into my office a couple of weeks ago to thank me after noticing that I’d sorted out all of Larkin’s atrociously organised folders. I’d been itching to do it since the moment I started here, and I’d finally caved. I was pretty sure Larkin hadn’t even noticed.

I didn’t talk to the fae or his big werewolf boyfriend much. They mostly hung out in the office attached to Hector’s, where Larkin’s desk was. But I’d gotten into work at the same time as Seb one morning, and we’d ended up walking through the upstairs lobby together. The conversation had been brief—

“Hey, how’s it going?”

“Yeah, not bad. You?”