Bernadette had left me alone in the tent, and I was just sitting there wondering what the hell I was supposed to do for several minutes before I drew my sword, and swung it a couple times to test its weight. It alleviated some of my boredom. The sword was still pretty new to me.

I left my original one back at the Squirrel. This one was listed as ‘dwarven sword’ in my inventory. It was probably a centimeter or two shorter than my original one, but much better balanced. The steel shone with substrates of lines across it like the sentiment, and the crossguard was a little short but thick and sturdy. I supposed it was kind of like the ‘Damascus style’ knives my dad liked, but instead of swirl patterned, it was incredibly even lines perpendicular to the edge.

I didn’t know one way or the other but Dwarves were known for their craftsmanship, right? I’d only ever used it against the skeletons and that was mostly just to keep them at distance, so who knew?

“Nice sword,” said a man I hadn’t noticed come in.

He wasn’t very tall, maybe half a foot shorter than me, but his bearing radiated confidence and competence.

His piercing red eyes seemed to shine in the dim light, and he had long braided hair that flowed like a dark river down his back. He gleamed in head to toe plate armor, like the guards out front, but I could tell this armor was supposed to indicate a higher rank. It was heavily embellished with colorful enameled flowers.

The handles of two swords jutted from his belt.

He smiled. I sheathed the dwarven sword.

“I’m sorry,” I said, pulling the monocle out of my pouch and putting it in, “I can’t see very well without this thing.”

The monocle displayed his name as Taldinar -- Knight of Flowers, and then had two skull-and-crossbones next to it, with no further information. So, that’s what that looked like then.

“I’m sure,” he said in a way that told me he wasn’t convinced, but was too polite to call me out on it. “My lieutenant tells me a woman spoke our code word, and said she had something of great importance to speak to me about.”

“Right,” I said, pocketing the monocle.

“I’m not sure what to believe about that, but I am very curious where she learned the codeword. It’s information privileged to Kingsgaurd and not something bandied about just to gain entrance into one camp.”

He stepped closer. I got the feeling he wasn’t very happy about this turn of events.

“What can you tell me about this woman?”

Bernadette walked in at just that moment.

“Captain Taldinar,” she said. “I was just looking for you.”

Suddenly she became very small, and very pitiful looking.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, genuine concern crossing his face.

“I’m so scared,” she said, approaching him. “They said that you were the only one that could help me.”

“My dear girl, who said?”

Bernadette stumbled forward and Captain Taldinar caught her. She reached her hand up to cup his face.

“You’re so beautiful,” she whispered.

“What can I do?” he asked.

A flash of lamplight was all I saw of the dagger as it came up. She drove it through his jaw to the hilt. He staggered back, whimpering but unable to scream, blood pouring from his mouth.

He drew his two swords. I drew mine.

Bernie, what the hell did you get me into?

She ducked just out of his reach as he slashed at her with both swords — his movements incredibly precise and elegant, one sword following the other. Bernie had a long dagger in each hand and only parried when she absolutely had to.

I rushed in and attempted to shove him to the ground with my shield, but he settled his stance. It was like running into a brick wall. I could not move him. He hooked a sword over my shield and stabbed me in the neck.

Immediately, my chest ran slick with blood under my gambison.

“Focus on defense!” Bernie hissed. “I’ll finish him off!”

He immediately whirled on her, slashing. The mirth of a trick well played lit up her eyes. A smile hid at the corner of her thin lips.

Whoosh went my Adrenaline Rush skill as soon as he turned.

I leapt forward, and stabbed into the open space behind his knee, feeling the point slip between the plate and punch through mail. His legs buckled. Bernie pushed forward with a kick and he toppled backwards.

I stabbed down into his face over and over until he stopped moving. My ability expired after he did.

Bernie stood over him. She looked to him first, then to me and raised her eyebrows questioningly.

The victory fanfare played and a ding echoed from my slate.

I dropped my sword and fished it out. Two small notifications were displayed.

The first said that I only had one hit point remaining. The second said that I was now level 3.

“Yeah, I leveled up,” I said.

“Good!” Her face softened in relief, and she sheathed her daggers. “Now drink that potion.”

“What? Why?”

“Because,” she said, loading a crossbow bolt into the breach and pulling back the crank. “Reinforcements.”

She trained the crossbow on the tent flap and yelled “help!”

I had never been more angry at a person in my life. I could feel my face start to get all splotchy.

“What the hell are you doing?” I hissed.

I could hear commotion outside and shouts of ‘fire’ and ‘get the buckets.’

“I think I can get you to level four.”

“Why these people?!”

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

“We weaken the King in the Wood; it takes pressure off of Caleb.”

I could hear the roar of a fire close by, which answered my question about what she had been doing while I was alone.

The potion bottle was tiny in my hand, more like a vial, and I tossed it back like I was taking a shot. It was cool and went down smoothly. Slightly fruity. The wound in my neck itched.

Bernie yelled again.

“Help! Something is wrong with the Captain!”

I fished one of Taldinar’s swords from the ground just in time to see an elven man run in. The loud thwunk of a crossbow cracked through the air. A bolt turned his face into a mess and he crashed to the ground next to his captain.

A second elven man ran in and I pierced his neck with a lunge. He crumpled.

A slash opened the tent from the opposite side.

“Attack!” the man screamed as he saw the bloody mess. “Assassins!”

Bernie leapt atop the table and kicked the lamp, splashing burning oil all across the man as it exploded across his armor. He fell into the tent and suddenly it was ablaze.

Two more ran in from the original opening, and I dashed back. I turned the first sword swing aside with my shield, and parried the second with my new sword. A crossbow bolt slammed into the face of one. The other backed away from me.

“I don’t even need the backstab bonus on these guys!” Bernie yelled above the sound of the fire roaring behind her. “Just tie them up, and I’ll pick ‘em off!”

Four more arrived. I backed up to give them just enough ground. As soon as two fell behind I rushed forward, keeping the pressure up with swipes of my sword but not really going for the kill. Three knives landed into the soft exposed parts of their bodies one after the other.

Two fell immediately. I stabbed through the neck of a third. The fourth turned to flee. A crossbow bolt sunk into the base of his spine and he fell.

We had precious seconds. I dug the monocle out and shoved it in place over my eye. Turning back to Bernie, I saw her drop down from the table and rush to me in front of three more advancing elves.

She was bleeding from her shoulder and had 10 hit points.

I was still mad at her, but I didn’t like that.

Fully half of the tent was on fire. I didn’t like our odds out of the tent and into the open, but the longer we stayed here, the greater chance of us breathing in that smoke and that could be deadly on its own.

“Not today,” I said to myself, the activation phrase I had entered for ‘second chance.’ I could feel the healing magic doing its work on me. “We gotta move!” I yelled as she reached me.

She just nodded and ran out of the flap in the tent. I followed with the three men not close behind.

Outside was chaos. A full unit of eight men held the front entrance. So, that was a no-go. Other men ran to and from the three fires she had started in addition to the tent behind us.

Bernie pointed with a dagger back toward the common tents and we ran. I had left my pack in the burning tent so I was actually able to keep up for once.

We rushed into the first tent we could see, a man in a state of undress as its only occupant. I stabbed him through the chest and kicked his body to the dirt, before whirling and meeting the three that had followed us.

Bernadette moved like a pouncing cat, leaping back to avoid a swing and diving in to drive the point of her fighting daggers into something soft. That was one down.

I was starting to get the hang of fighting two men at once. But I was starting to gas out. I’d never done anything as stressful as fighting one after the other like this.

The two men left weren’t particularly strong, having the titles of ‘guard’ and 7 hit points a piece, but trying to keep up with both was difficult. I generally just focused on one at a time, keeping my shield up and hoping it did its job, as I focused on parrying just the guy in front of my sword hand.

Bernie ran her dagger over the throat of one. The other got through my sword hand and punched right into my stomach. He’d overextended. I stabbed him through the eye and he crumpled.

Glancing down at my stomach, I saw that the chainmail had done its job, barely, as he’d made it through the chain but not the gambeson. Who knows how many hit points I had left but it had to be few.

We didn’t have time to breathe.

I was just able to see an elf with a bow from the open flap. The head of an arrow appeared from Bernie’s chest. She dropped the crossbow and crumpled to the dirt.

“No!”

I stabbed my sword into the ground point first, grabbed the crossbow and fired the bolt she’d loaded. It struck the elf in the chest, and he fell.

I closed the tent flap, and went to my knees, pulling her into my arms. She had zero hit points left. Blood soaked into my pants and pooled around us.

“No, no, no,” I heard myself say. “Where’s your potion?”

“Gotta travel light,” she said, sardonically.

“Shit.”

“I don’t want to die, Zachary,” she said, eyes wide with panic. “But it hurts.”

“You’re not going to.”

I returned the monocle, and fished my slate out of my pocket.

“Don’t let go,” she said. “Don’t let me go.”

“I got you.”

I pulled her in tight with one hand, and swiped to my character sheet with the other. I slammed my finger on the plus sign next to my name. It took several tries. Blood smeared on the screen.

A list of possible class levels I could take appeared. At the top was fighter. Through the blood, and panic I struggled to see another. First was barbarian, grayed out with a ‘STR 13 required’ next to it. Then was bard. Then was cleric, also grayed out with a ‘WIS 13 required.’

I mashed on the cleric listing but nothing happened.

“It hurts,” Bernie said, really quiet.

“I’m gonna fix this,” I said, my voice quivering as I shook. “Just wait.”

“It hurts so much,” she said, squeezing her eyes shut and her face contorting in pain. “Momma please — momma — it hurts.”

“Goddamn it,” I cursed.

I mashed the bard listing. A ding rang from the slate. My character sheet changed. I had spells now.

Bernadette's face went slack.

I scrolled through my spells. One of them was called Healing Phrase.

It said ‘a simple sung phrase that lifts the spirit, and restores vitality.’ It listed it as a first level spell, whatever that means. Just like Second Chance, it had a spot to type in an activation phrase. I typed in the first thing that came to mind, through the panic, through the fear.

I took a breath. I sang the words.

“I need you.”

Bernadette’s eyes flung open. She sucked in a breath that caught. She tried again, but couldn’t seem to breathe.

I grabbed the shaft of the arrow sticking out of her chest, and pulled. She screamed. I only got it half way out. I yanked upwards again, pulling it the rest of the way out until I saw bloody feathers, and tossed it aside.

“Get up,” I said.

She coughed blood until she could breathe again.

“I can’t!” she said.

“We gotta get out of here. I need you to get up.”

“I can’t,” she sobbed. “I can’t. It hurts”

“Yes you can,” I said.

Then, I cleared my throat and sang, again.

“I need you. I can’t do this without you. Please don’t go.”

I heard, actually heard, the flesh in her chest knit together. She sat up.

“It doesn’t hurt,” she said.

“We have to move.”

“Okay,” she responded, “follow me.”

We ran past flaming tents and soldiers helping each other into armor. Arrows whizzed past us.

Soon we reached an opening in the palisades. The two guards in front of it first crumpled to my sword, then to her daggers. We slipped through.

Our feet pounded on the forest floor as we barreled through brush and piles of leaves. We weren’t being stealthy. We just needed distance. After what felt like an hour of running, but couldn’t have been longer than minutes, Bernie stopped.

I crashed into her but wrapped my arms around her so I didn’t dash her to the ground.

“Get off me!” she hissed.

I let her go.

She fell to her knees.

“I can’t keep running,” she gasped. “I can’t. I can’t keep —”

I looked around to see if we had been followed. We hadn’t.

I put my back against a tree, and pulled her into my lap.

“Don’t let go of me,” she sobbed, tears streaming down her face.

“It’s okay, Bernadette, I got you.”

“Don’t let go.”

She cried, hard. I fished a blanket out of her satchel and wrapped it around us. It was all we had since I’d left my pack behind like an idiot. We were both soaked in blood, and the blanket helped fight off the chill.

“It’s adrenaline dump, remember,” I said.

“No it’s not,” she said through the tears. “I died.”

“No you didn’t. Death saves remember? Remember the game? Zero hit points is nothing.”

“So, I was dying and you bought me back.”

“Yeah, I took a level in healer.”

She stopped sobbing, and looked up at me with those huge brown eyes.

“You really do have a nice voice.”