Briana acted first, spinning from where she faced me and dropping to one knee, unleashing a volley of her long arrows right at the leader's chest.

The impact knocked him off his feet, sending him flying. The other three charged in. Lexi zoomed at the closest one, her little fist glowing as she ignited dazzle in his face. The hob screamed as his world went dark. He swiped his sword in front of him, trying to land a hit on something he couldn’t see.

Daisy charged forward at the remaining two, leading with her shield. She deflected a curved sword off her round shield and stabbed out with the gladius, slicing into the hob’s bare arm.

Briana had to discard her bow, pulling her two razer sharp short blades from her back and crisscrossing them in front of her to absorb the blow of the last hob as he swung his sword at her.

Then I heard it—

Chanting.

There was someone behind them, casting a spell. I had no idea what it would do, but it couldn’t be good. I ran back the way we came, ducking under the hob fighting Daisy as he tried to take a swipe at my head.

“Nick?” Daisy yelled.

“Hang on,” I said over my shoulder.

To my surprise, the hob that Briana had shot was getting up. The arrows popped out of his chest like they were pushed out.

“Regenerate this,” I muttered as I swung my sword at his unarmored head. The blade cleaved his skull in half, sending a fountain of grey matter splashing against the stone.

I heard a shout of pain from close by. It wasn’t from my party... it had come from the wall. Was it an illusion?

A glance back at the girls told me they could handle the three remaining for a moment. Briana expertly deflected the bigger hob’s blows by using her swords like a shield. Daisy clashed with hers by not giving an opening. Lexi simply buzzed around hers like the world's most annoying firefly, zapping him with dazzle whenever her cooldown was up.

The best I could hope to do in the fight would be to get in the way. However, in the game, warrior bands had support casters, healers, and whatnot. If these hobs had a shaman supporting them, he could cast some kind of a healing spell that kept them up, even when wounded. In the game, we trained ourselves to ignore the front line mobs to take out the casters. Daisy and Briana had their hands full with the mobs in front of them and couldn’t break free.

“Aha!” I heard Daisy yell as she punctured her opponent's chest. She hit him so hard the point of her gladius came out the back of his armor.

The hob stumbled back, pulling her gladius with him. Then, to her horror, he discarded his own blade and pulled hers out. The wound closing behind the sword.

“Nick!” she yelled. I counted on her to hold on for just a minute more. She had plenty of armor... I hoped.

Using the tip of my sword, I poked along the wall, looking for either an illusion or a false wall. It clinked off the rock, then I moved a few feet over and tried again... clink.

Maybe I was wrong?

“Nick, I need help!” Daisy yelled.

I glanced over, and she was down on one knee. The hob slammed his stolen sword against the shield over and over with both hands, trying to overpower her. Briana was doing all she could in the confined space, deflecting and dodging her opponent's lightning quick blows. Clearly these hobs were higher level than the bandits we fought.

Briana, fighting silently, knocked the hobs sword aside and stabbed both her blades into his chest. She yanked them out in a spray of blood, dropping back down into a defensive crouch.

The hob stumbled back, shaking his head, and just like the guy she ‘killed’ first, his wounds closed and he went right back to swinging at her. Even with all her strength and agility, it was only a matter of time before the hob got lucky. This was why, in the game at least, it was so important to take out the mob support.

I tried again, praying I was right.

The sword swished through empty air.

“Aha!” I leaped in through the “rock” wall. There was a moment of disorientation, and then I saw him. Hunchbacked and wearing a series of animal, and disgustingly, people, skins, ears, and feathers. He had on greasy, dirty red robes and a bone armor vest. He looked like a witch doctor from a B-Movie. His voice hiccuped as I came through the illusionary wall and he screamed, startled, stepping back from me.

He raised his hands and shouted. Sparks crackled in the air before me and spread out like a wall of static. It hit me, flinging me back through the wall to land on my butt. My eyes hurt from the sudden moister loss and I had to blink several times just to see.

I guess I should have attacked when I had the advantage.

“They aren’t healing anymore,” I yelled at the girls.

Daisy screamed a roar of rage, charging forward and knocking her hob back with a shield bash. Bouncing off of him, she dove into a roll and picking up his discarded sword before turning around slashing his Achilles’ heel with a fast swipe. The hob roared as he fell backward. She braced the hilt of her sword on the ground and he literally fell on his sword. The sharp point went right through his armor and cracked his chest open like a nut.

I leaped back up and ran through the illusion, this time holding my sword like a spear. I wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. The wall vanished as I entered, revealing the shaman fumbling for a red potion he wore on a bandoleer filled with potions.

Using my momentum, I rammed the sword into his chest. The magically sharp blade went right through his gut and out his back. He looked at me with yellow eyes, his mouth trying to form words as he slid off the sword, and died.

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I smiled in victory...

This is not a game Nick. These are real creatures, with souls and families...

That thought sobered me. In my head, I reached back, back to when I was in Afghanistan fighting insurgents and terrorists, back to when I had the same revelation after calling in an air-strike on a mortar position.

Funny enough, it had been Lamar that set my head straight. “No one forced them to lob mortars at a village full of women and children. You’re just here to give these people clean water, and they don’t want that. It doesn’t make it easy, but it does make it right.”

I still had nightmares about that night, but they were few and far between. Lamar’s words were just as true today. No one made these hobs ambush us. I won’t say they got what they deserved, but it was us or them, and I chose us.

With the shaman dead, the illusionary wall vanished. The sound of gurgling death filled the little cavern, and I ran back out to make sure it wasn’t one of my girls.

Briana rode a hob down to the ground, her short blades buried deep on either side of its neck.

Daisy had discarded the scimitar stuck in the hob she killed and recovered her gladius and killed the remaining blind one with a slash to his throat. He dropped his weapon, clasping both hands on his wound in a vain attempt to stop the bleeding. Ten seconds later he collapsed and died.

...Alissa!

I ran to the edge, looking down to the bottom floor now that the dust had cleared. It was at least forty feet down to the bottom. There were bits of wood and debris jutting out from the wall, and plenty of hand holds. I just didn’t know if I could make that climb.

Briana stood beside me, leaning over the edge. She pulled out a thin green rope from her small pack and tossed it into the hole. Once it was all the way down, she tied her end off on a sturdy-looking beam next to the hole. I was amazed because the rope looked far too small to be strong, but it also was knotted every three feet, making it much easier to climb up and down on it.

She gave me a brilliant smile as she ran by. Grabbing the rope she ran down the side of the wall until she hit the bottom, flexing her knees absorbing the impact. Before she was done recovering from the stop, she had her swords out.

“Lexi, go last, okay? Once Daisy and I are down, untie her rope and let it fall,” I said to my faerie-dragon.

“You got it, Nick!” she said excitedly, spinning little spirals in the air.

“Daisy, you go next,” I said.

She looked down the hole, eyes going slightly wide before taking a step back from the edge.

“Daisy?” I asked.

“Maybe I should go last. You know, watch your back while you go down?” she asked. Her eyes flashed from me to the edge and back.

“It’s okay, Daisy. The rope is really strong, and so are you. I seriously doubt you could fall unless you wanted to,” I said soothingly to her. I gathered she wasn’t a fan of heights, or climbing, or both.

She dragged her huge backpack over and dropped it down the hole, watching it fall until it his the bottom next to Briana. The elf looked up with a start, a snarl on her face as she moved out from the bottom out of sight.

“But what if I slip?” she asked. She sucked on her bottom lip, backing away from the edge again.

I put my sword down and walked over to her. She sheathed her blade and switched her round shield to her back. I took both her hands in mine.

“Daisy, you're agile, fast, and strong. You have skills that you’ve worked hard for your whole life. You can do this. Forty feet only takes one minute to descend at an even pace. Don’t look down, just focus on moving one hand over the other until your feet hit the bottom. You can do this.”

She continued to chew on her lip, looking at the rope, then at me. “That rope won’t carry my weight, what if—”

“Daisy,” I said, squeezing her soft hands and pulling her attention to me. She looked up at me with those big green eyes and the fear on her face was plain in the way it spread her freckles out. “It’s one minute out of millions. You’re strong, you can do this. Besides, if I go first and fall, who will be down there to heal me?”

“I found Alissa. She’s okay,” Briana called to us from below. “She looks like she wants to kill someone, but she’s okay.”

“Great,” I yelled back, then turned my attention on Daisy. “Come on, you can do this.” I held her hand as I walked her to the edge. I took the rope and showed her how to hold it and what to do if she loses her grip.

“Nick, I...”

“Daisy, focus on your hands, look up at them and nothing else. I’ll be right here as you go down, okay?”

She nodded. Fear of heights was the second most common phobia behind spiders. Thankfully, we didn’t do any spider training in the army, but we did a lot of repelling. As an officer, it was always my job to help the people with that particular phobia make it down the wall.

She yanked on the rope a couple of more times to make sure, then she started shuffling her feet backward. I was right next to her, so when she instinctively moved her head to look down behind her I reached out and stopped her.

“Focus, right here,” I said.

She nodded, taking in a deep breath and letting it out slowly. She started letting the rope out as she stepped out over the edge.

“Ahh,” she screamed as her foot slipped. She turned sideways against the wall and fell a few feet before stopping. She clung to the rope like a baby clings to her mama.

“It’s okay, Daisy,” I said as I laid down on my chest, with my head sticking out over the hole. “It’s okay. Focus on your hands.” She looked up at me, her face red from exertion and her eyes wide with fear.

“F—focus,” she repeated as she started moving her hands, one over the other, as she descended. “I can do this,” I heard her say.

“You are doing it,” I told her. She gave me a faint smile as she continued on. It took longer than a minute, but she finally made it to the bottom and almost collapsed from exhaustion.

“Oh, Alissa!” I heard her exclaim. She jumped up and ran out from the stairwell, and I couldn’t see where she went. After a few seconds, I heard her singing, which meant she was healing Alissa.

Okay, my turn. I stood up, dusted myself off, and froze. I slapped my head out of idiocy.

“You okay, Nick?” Lexi asked.

“We were in such a hurry to go down and check on Alissa. I forgot the most important part of the battle!”

“Isn’t that winning?” she asked.

“Nope,” I said with a grin. “Phat lewt!”

She gave me a raised eyebrow and shrugged. I pulled the food pack Camilla had made for me and opened the flap. There was more than enough room.

I went to the hobs, dragged them next to each other. Then I went and dragged the shaman out. Damn if they weren’t heavy. I was breathing hard from the effort when I was done.

Three of the four had damaged armor, but the one Daisy had sliced through the throat had a perfect black leather cuirass that looked like it could fit me. I undid the buckles on mine and cast it aside. It only took a minute of struggling to get his armor off and on me. It fit better. The leather was smoother, as if it had been worn a lot more. I tightened the last cinch and went back to searching.

I checked their feet, since the hard boots I wore were starting to leave blisters, and I really wanted to avoid that. Lucky for me, these guys were all as tall or taller than me. I found one with a good match, yanked off his boots, discarded mine, and slid his on.

Excellent fit!

The swords were too big to carry, so I just tossed them into a pile. Each of the hobs and the shaman had a handful of coins. I wasn’t sure about the conversion, but I might be close to ten silvers with all the coper and silver coins combined.

Finally, the only other thing I found of worth was the potion bandoleer on the shaman. It had four potion vials in it and space for ten. I unstrapped it, folded it over like a gun belt, and gently stuffed it in my pack. No need to accidentally blow myself up?

Satisfied, I turned, retrieved my sword from where I had laid it down, and grabbed the rope. I slid the sword home into the scabbard as I walked backward to the hole.

“Okay, Lexi, thanks for sticking with me up here,” I said.

“Of course, now, don’t fall on your way down!” she said as she zoomed around the room. I swear, she couldn’t sit still even if she wanted to!

Climbing down the rope was actually the most normal thing I had done since I arrived in Mystaria.

As soon as my boots hit the bottom a message flashed in the corner of my vision. I wrapped my fingers around the sword and activated the magic of the gem. Fireworks flashed before my eyes and I heard trumpets.

LEVEL UP!