The Third Save Slot

Wren had read every word of the manual before she ever touched a controller, and that was the only reason she was still alive in the Sunless Keep. The manual was a real book, leather-bound, that had appeared on her bed the night she fell asleep mid-level and woke up inside the game. She had stopped being angry about that around day four. Anger spent stamina, and stamina, the manual said in its small precise type, did not regenerate while afraid. So Wren had decided to stop being afraid and start being correct instead, which suited her temperament better anyway. By her count she was on the eleventh floor. The corridors were grey stone that smelled faintly of cold candle-smoke, lit by torches that never burned down and never warmed your hands. Goblins shambled the lower halls; on the upper floors came the armored things that spoke in riddles. Wren beat them all the same way — not with the heroic flourishes the game clearly wanted, but by reading the rules and holding the rules to their word. When a riddle-knight declared *none may pass who cannot answer thrice,* Wren answered twice, then refused the third, and walked through the gap in the logic while the knight stood frozen, waiting for a question she had simply declined to invite. When a chest demanded *a worthy soul,* she pointed out, aloud, that worth was nowhere defined in the manual, and the lock clicked open on a