She was talking to a tree. Just talking to a tree. Totally normal. People probably did it every day here. They’re only trees. She fought an insane urge to laugh.

They’re only trees. Only trees. Whose afraid of lonely trees?

I’m the one who makes the rules so you have to do what you’re told.

How strange, Royce thought, that, after emerging victorious from more than a hundred real battles, the greatest moment of triumph he had ever known had come to him on a mock battlefield where he’d stood...