Catching up with Kenver, I asked "So what's attacking the village? Assume I don't know anything about it and tell me from the start." He looked into my face briefly, as if wondering if I was making fun, before staring back ahead of us.

"It all began about two months ago. Animals started attacking people for no reason, not stopping attacking even if they were so injured they could barely move. You had to kill them to get them to stop. First it was wolves, then bears, and now it looks like owls have started getting it. Luckily it's fairly obvious to spot, because they're coloured grey in patches. With wolves and bears the paws go first, and with owls, they get grey wings."

"Vicious things though. That's what happened to my ear." He pointed, and I followed his finger up to his ear, or rather, what was left of it. Most of the lobe had been ripped away, and what remained showed deep scratches. "Had to smash the thing with my hammer. Made me bleed into the furnace, so now I've got a blade no one wants because they think it's cursed, but that I can't melt down because it's an Item." He gave the word a slight intonation, and I could feel its importance. I wasn't surprised when his next words were "Well, you could have it. You're a Hero, and a Hero needs a weapon. Let's go to my smithy before we see the cellar."

He pointed down a path, and we skirted around the edge of the village. People sneaked glances at us, but no one could summon up the courage to come and talk. The Mayor hurried up behind us, puffing slightly. Jenefer followed a little way behind him, matching pace. "Where are you going? I thought we were going to have a look in the cellar."

"She needs a weapon, and I've got a sword going spare." Kenver didn't stop walking, and I matched his stride, though it wasn't easy, with his 6'4" height giving him a significant advantage over my tiny 5'4".

"Don't you have your own weapon?" asked the Mayor. "Or magic? The Heroes used to summon fire from the sky and send lightning from their fingers. Can you not do that?"

I stopped and turned to face him. "Listen, I'm here to fix your problem, you don't have to worry about it. You just go and be a Mayor and we'll meet you at the cellar soon." I hoped a bit of peace and quiet would allow me to work out what I was now capable of. He looked about to argue, but I turned away and he didn't give chase. Kenver and I walked in silence for the remaining two minutes until we reached the smithy and entered its wide door.

It was a beautiful brick building, with black tiles rather than the typical thatch, and a wide chimney. The fire was dead, and there was a surprising chill in the mostly empty room. It was worst in the far corner, where a matte black sword leaned against the wall. "That's it," said Kenver. "It's yours if you want it."

I picked up the sword and the parchment reappeared. "What is that?" Kenver asked, staring intently at the parchment. "I can see it's got writing on it, but I can't read it."

"It's information about what I need to do to fix your problem." The parchment looked like it contained information similar to most item descriptions in various games I'd played. At least this experience was familiar.

'Kenver's Blooded Sword.

This longsword has been infused with the blood of the smith who made it, giving it extra power. +5 to damage.

This sword cannot be used by your class.'

I looked at the parchment and then down to the sword in my hand. I adjusted my grip to something that felt comfortable and took a few experimental swings. As I was making what I considered to be a rather stylish cut through an imaginary opponent, I lost my grip and the sword vanished behind me. Turning, I was rather taken aback by the fearful look on Kenver's face, as he stared at the sword point that punctured the wall two inches from his ear.

"Sorry. I'm a druid, and it looks like I can't use swords."

He grunted and leaned away from the sword. "If what I know about druids is true, you can use swords, but only if they're made of Edgewood. In the meantime, perhaps you'd be better off with this." He reached into a cupboard and pulled out a quarterstaff, approximately six feet long, with a dark ball of iron riveted to one end and a cruel looking spike on the other. He tossed it towards me and I caught it, twirled it in my best impression of a marching band leader and flourished it into a stabbing position, tip first towards Kenver.

Then my brain caught up with my hands and I realised I was pointing a weapon at the poor man's head for the second time in as many minutes. He looked more surprised than frightened, and I quickly pulled back the staff and planted it beside me. The parchment dutifully unrolled. 'Basic staff.' Helpful. Still, it looked like I could use it without impaling an innocent bystander, which was a significant improvement. I could feel an awareness of the staff in the back of my head, directing me towards the movements that would allow the most effective attacks.

"Alright, I'm armed. Let's go and have a look at this cellar."

"Are you sure you want to face battle like that? Should you not wear some armour?" His gaze flicked downwards, and mine followed. Apparently jeans and a thin cotton T-shirt bearing the uplifting slogan "Books are like people, except interesting" didn't count as defensive wear. Except possibly against the slower of my book nerd brethren who didn't quite understand how a girl reading alone wouldn't be overwhelmingly interested in their advances.

"You might have a point. Have you got anything I could use? Please?" He headed over to a large wooden chest and began to pull items out of it. Clanking and tinkling sounds cascaded from the bulky parcels until he paused and held up an especially noisy example.

"Here, try this haubergeon. I think my standard hauberks may be too big for you, but hopefully this will fit. I've got the gambeson I made for the cooper's son here somewhere, which should go under it." I nodded along, hoping that when he got the armour out, all of those words would make sense.

"You might need a little help though. Jenefer!" he called, "come and assist Felicity with this armour."

Jenefer appeared through the door, where apparently she'd been hiding for the last five minutes. Moving quickly, she took a thick fleece jacket that Kenver was holding out towards her and came to stand behind me. She held it wide and I slipped my arms backwards, then settled the warm jacket on my shoulders. It smelled vaguely of sheep, but was unexpectedly soft on my exposed skin. I turned back to Kenver, who gestured at the thick laces that trailed down its front. I began to tie them off, and was more than a little taken aback when Jenefer began to help at my waist, working her way up.

We met in the middle, fingers brushing briefly, and she stepped back hurriedly, watching her shoes. Worried she might be struck down by some god or other for touching the hero? Interrupting my thoughts, Kenver held up the haubergeon. Oh, it's chainmail. He should have just said. "This is heavy. Make sure you get it balanced properly and buckled up before you start moving around. You don't want a swinging weight." I wrestled the mass of clanking rings onto my body, and started buckling myself into it.

I was only halfway done when I felt a strange twitching between my shoulder blades. I rolled my shoulders, and the twitching moved down my arms. I reached out and picked up my staff, and tried to perform a few of the basic jabs I'd become aware of when I picked it up. As I was attempting a more elaborate sweep, the twitching reached my wrist and I dropped the staff. "Can't wear full armour either", observed Kenver.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

My choice of the druid was looking suckier all the time. A quick check of the ever-unhelpful parchment menu showed me that the 'RESET CHARACTER' box was still grey and unresponsive, so it looked like I was stuck. "Alright, this is no good." I shucked off the layers of metal and sheep and stood once again in my relatively flimsy feeling T-shirt. "Now what?"

"Well, I've got wood." I stared at Kenver. He stared back. I looked down. At his hands. Which were holding more armour.

"Armour. You've got wooden armour."

"Yes?" He looked confused, so I decided to just skip the whole thing and took the armour off him. It was smaller than the mail. A lot smaller.

"Kenver, is this a wooden bra?"

"Elfwood. I received it in a trade for a pair of matched daggers. It's enchanted, so it will provide nearly the same level of protection as the mail coat. And here is the matching fauld and tasset set." He passed across a wide belt, which had interlocking wooden panels laced to it that looked like they hung to protect my thighs.

"So it's an armoured skirt. To go with the brarmour." Yay for magic universes created by teenage wizards. I looked around the smithy, and failed to find anything I could protect my modesty with. "Turn around, Kenver, you don't need to see this."

"Should I also turn my back milady?"

"No, you're fine Jenefer. I might need help with this." Feeling more than a little self-conscious, and keeping my eyes on Kenver's back, I quickly stripped down to my jeans and wrapped the brarmour around me. Luckily it fastened in front and I did a few stretches checking it for fit. The wooden sections were riveted to a leather base, with pleasantly wide straps that kept it solidly in place. I spent a good half minute looking for adjustments, and realised that it both didn't have them and that it didn't need them. "Okay, other than my sudden fear of splinters, I think this is the best fitting bra I've ever worn. Thank god it's my size."

"It's not," said Kenver, still facing the wall. "It's magic, which means it automatically changes size to fit whoever wears it." Handy. I wondered if I could get it home with me. Grabbing the skirt, I bent over and slipped my legs through. Rising, I pulled it over my hips and straightened, immediately smacking my head on the unfurled parchment which had appeared above me. I dropped the skirt, which clattered to the floor.

"Son of a... Right you, get here. Menu!" My shouted command shocked the parchment into obedience. Digging through the menu, I found the usual options, such as difficulty, tooltips and subtitles. Subtitles was pretty damned odd, making a few test words appear in the bottom of my view, no matter where I shifted my eyes. Still, nice of them to offer accessibility options. The colour blindness setting was even weirder, as everything suddenly had its colour written on it in friendly blocky text.

Of course the difficulty option was greyed out, and nothing else actually useful to escaping this world was visible. Looked like the debugging system was strict. Thankfully, however, I was able to set all the notifications to audio only. An unnecessarily breathy female voice whispered "Changes applied" into my ear, and the thrice-damned parchment disappeared, hopefully for the last time.

Returning my attention to my armour, I decided to stop standing around with my skirt around my ankles and got it looped into place on my belt. Outfit complete, I received my first announcement through the audio system. "Wooden armour. +1 to defence. You look good in it." Well that wasn't at all creepy.

Taking a few steps up and down the smithy, the armour moved on me smoothly, with no annoying clanking. I did a few more thrusts with the staff, with which I was apparently now competent, and I felt none of the difficulty I had with the mail. "Can I turn around yet?"

"Oh yeah, sorry Kenver."

He turned, and gave me a quick once over. "Will the armour suffice?"

"Well, I can move in it, even if I look like Xena the Warrior Knockoff, but it's hardly protective. I mean, look at this!" I gestured downwards to the run of stomach between my belt and the bottom of the bra. "It might allow a decent range of movement," I said, carefully not looking at my slight muffin top, "but it's hardly going to stop a sword."

"As I said earlier, it's magic armour. It will defend even parts of the body it does not cover. Allow me to demonstrate." Kenver grunted as he pulled the black sword from the wall I'd previously tried to murder, and advanced on me. Following some lifelong instinct I'd possessed for the last hour, I circled round him, preparing the staff to defend against an attack. He sighed, and pulled back. "I'm not going to attack you. I just need to gently push the sword towards you. Please stand still."

Gritting my teeth, I drew the staff back and planted my feet. Holding my breath, I spread my arms and let Kenver come towards me. He held the sword in his right hand, and supported it with his left. The sword tip came within an inch of my navel and then stopped. Kenver applied a little more force, and the sword slowly progressed, until it gently dimpled my skin. I very carefully avoided breathing out, feeling the tension in my stomach muscles, which weren't really used to avoiding stabbings. I looked across at Kenver, and was amazed to see the strain on his face, as the sword resisted his efforts.

With a grin, he leaned back, no longer threatening me, and everything sagged. "As you can see, the protection extends beyond the wood. With more force, I could break through, but you'll want to avoid being put in that position during a fight. It will protect you well enough from glancing blows and weaker strikes. And it's likely the best you'll see for a while. You will eventually want to replace those," he indicated my jeans, "with a pair of leather trousers or wooden greaves if you can find them, but the armour's magic will shield them from light blows."

"Now, if I'm remembering right, heroes who came to our world would always go and talk to Jeffra before they set out to explore. He would give them some useful things, like a magic bag and a map of the world. Unfortunately, the wolves took him several weeks ago, so you'll have to make do with what I can give you." Kenver reached into another trunk and pulled out a battered cloth bag. "That should hold anything you find."

As I took the bag from him, the voice re-appeared in my ear. "Acquired bag. Good for stuff." Deciding to ignore the voice, I thanked Kenver, stuffed my t-shirt into the bag and slung it over my shoulder, appraising myself now I was fully loaded. I had a weapon, I had armour, I had a cold navel and I had a bag of holding-not-very-much. I was as ready as I could be to go fight a bear in a cellar.

Which, when you came to think about it, was ridiculous. Why the hell was I here? How had this universe picked me to fix its problem? Okay, I've read a bit too much of the genre I'd found myself suddenly living in, but being a nerd should not qualify one for universe saving duty.

And how did this world even exist? The ones I'd read were all built on either sufficiently advanced VR or handwaved with magic. Given I didn't remember getting into a VR rig, it looked like I was in a handwave universe. Someone must have made it, but that required a third universe, with people who could actually use magic to create this universe and build a system that could snatch people from mine. And then force them to act as tech support when it went horribly wrong. Still, there was one final possibility.

"End program! Halt program! Pause program. Show exit." All that achieved was to get Kenver and Jenefer to take a step back, and give me some very peculiar looks. Definitely stuck. Not much to do but run with it then. Breach the castle, save the world, find the way back home. Probably defeat whatever boss was undoubtedly waiting in the throne room. Which I would presumably need to level up to do. Which reminded me.

"Character screen?" I attempted, which handily rewarded me with the parchment again, showing a worryingly detailed ink drawing of me and all my various stuff. It was fairly typical for an RPG. I had my four basic stats, spells, skills and a mention of that falcon I'd picked. 'Unlocked at level 3.' Typical. Still, at least I could probably manoeuvre my way through the system enough to survive. Especially with the front and centre quest menu. Dealing with that bear was probably a good first step. It'd let me learn if I was any good in a fight.

"Okay, you'd best show me to this larder. I'm sure the Mayor is going crazy by now."

"Jenefer can take you", said Kenver, sweeping his arm at the mess of steel now littering the smithy. "I've got to tidy all this up." He turned away and began to collect the dropped items, and I looked at Jenefer.

"If you'll follow me milady, I'll take you to the Mayor." She opened the door and held it for me, and I strode purposefully forward into the daylight, immediately smacking my staff into the doorframe.

Smiling sheepishly at Jenefer, I tilted the staff and finally managed to leave the smithy. Jenefer shut the door behind us, and I indicated that she should lead the way. Moving a little further away from me, with a final glance at my staff's point, she set off towards what looked like the centre of the village. Leaning my staff over my shoulder, I followed her.