Tarra keeps fighting, but I already see her slowing down. From the look of a long trail of dead goblins, she must have been at it for quite a while.

But, there are just too many goblins still around. Too many ugly black goblins on white snow for that story to have a happy ending.

And it's already happening. Tarra is bleeding. Bad. The snow gets red anywhere she runs, and the way she is holding her left hand, I can see she has been cut.

I drop in. Spreading my wings wide, showing off to her as I land.

So happy to see her I jump straight toward her. But… she swings the sword at me! And takes a few of my feathers off as I can’t get out of the blade’s way fast enough!

I have to jump to a side as she advances at me more determined, ready to slice me again, and I have to fly up just to miss her taking my claws off.

I fly up, turn around, and come down again. And she dives down, rolls over the ground, and swings with her sword, almost clipping my toes off.

“Would you freaking let me help you?” I scream at her. But I’m not sure my voice registers with her at all.

So, I drop the scroll, turn my claws forward, and fly to the nearest goblin. They all stare at me frozen, not knowing what is going on. I show them really fast what is going on by grabbing the nearest goblin by his shoulders.

He screams in horror and wants to wave his sword at me, but I twist and throw him onto another goblin that is staring at us, and then dive down to pick the one who is looking very scary, covered completely in black armor with a helmet covering his face. He also has an idea to strike me with the long blade he is holding with both hands. So, I drop him down, and as he’s falling down, I nudge him upside down and he lands straight on top of his head, the rock on the ground smashing everything that was in that helmet.

Hearing the bones and neck break only invigorates me more. The next goblin I go after, ducks down, offering me his back. And I take it.

Claws going in, my beak knocking through his goblin neck, his blood spraying out as a broken water pipe. Then I turn around and zoom on the largest of them. His upper body is all naked. Muscles overpouring out of him on all sides. He’s waving this huge club that is the size of a small tree trunk. All naked, all unprotected. What a mistake. It’s too good not to go for.

He is even screaming something at me, thinking that maybe that would scare me?! Or is he daring me to go after him? It does not matter.

He tries to defend himself by putting his unarmed hand up, the other one tilting back to hit me with the biggest sledgehammer I ever saw. But I expect that. What does he think? That I have a brain of a bird. So, my scalper-blade-sharp claws go into his weapon-holding shoulder, and up we go. Up and up I take him, watching his limp hand drop the weapon while with the other one, he dares to strike my underbelly.

A good punch. I'll give him that. I flip him in the air before he can club me again. As he is going down, head first, I grab his leg, poke my beak into his chest, holding him while I bring him down and slam him into two goblins that have circled Tarra and were looking to attack her from behind.

Two of the other goblins standing by their side think that they can just drop down and lay on the snow and that I will not bother them then. What a mistake. I jump on one’s back and drill my beak through his neck.

The other one gets the message, gets up really fast, and starts running. But he does not get far as I pick him up and take him to meet a big tree trunk fifteen feet in the air.

I don't watch him tumble down as I turn and go back to Tarra.

And stare at her, half upset.

“Now, would you stop goofing around, and let me give you a lift? Or do you want to hang around these guys?” I ask her, landing about three meters away from me, still not sure if she would try to slice me.

“Oh… it is you,” she finally says, looking at me with a surprise. “You look a bit different… with all those feathers. Can I call you 'Birdy' now?”

“Funny girl. Can you pick that scroll,” I tell her as she moves toward me, nodding toward the paper that fell about a few feet away from her.

She picks it up and jumps on my back, and I feel as if someone is wax-stripping my back hair as she grabs my feathers. I run toward the clearing, spreading my wings, and flapping them as hard as I can so we can take off.

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That’s when it hits me. The sharpest stabbing pain in my left wing, so fierce it instantly makes me tilt to my left, and Tarra falls off into the snow, and I have to stop and turn around to pick her up.

I’m not sure if she had just been hit as well, but I know I have. And I have no time to cry.

It’s one of the times when the big size does you more harm than good. Three arrows are coming my way, but I see them and can duck down and out of the way as I run pick up Tarra by her belt, and flap my wings, taking in the pain that shoots from my left side, just flapping it and running as fast as I can away from those nasty goblins.

I make it about ten meters in the air and am looking to go higher, but the wind is going the wrong way, and I have to practically fly next to goblins to make it out of there.

The arrow flies just next to my beak, and I suddenly feel very vulnerable. There are two things I know cannot happen. No matter what hits me, I can’t drop Tarra, and I… can’t squeeze my claws on her enough to tear through her flesh and bones.

The pain in my wing is real, and I do not even dare to look at it, but we make through the first fifty meters and I decide to take it sharply to the North, not going home directly, but letting the wind take me with it.

A few more arrows shoot past me, one even going over my head. But in a few seconds, I get in a current, and it takes us out of there.

Then, it’s a race to get home.

Tarra’s limb body is not showing any signs of life, and I’m trying to recollect the scene of her falling down, trying to remember if there were some big boulders around, something that she could bang her head against that would have knocked her out. But then, the ground is hard enough with the snow cover not deep to offer any cushion and protection.

The flight back home proves brutal. Nothing relaxing, or enjoyable. Just the opposite. I feel LightsOut struggle. Pain in his wing where the shaft went through.

“Don’t let go, LightsOut, don’t you let her go,” I beg the eagle as I feel his pain.

I’m looking at her, constantly worried I will still drop her. She is not a featherweight and my leg feels tired, afraid it may start cramping on me.

I’m not sure we have the strength to fly over the mountaintop, so we pick a wind current that swoops us around it.

When I finally bring her home, not a second too early, everyone circles me, worried and concerned. I leave her inside the Great Hall and jump out of LightsOut and into Oollie.

She does not come around as I call her name, and I press my hand against her wrist, trying to feel her pulse. One thing that relaxes me is knowing we are inside my Dungeon and at least I can gather her soul here. Makes me think, what would have happened if she had died out there in the mountain? Where would her soul go then? That is a million coins question, but I need to help her out now and look for the answer later.

Her wounds are numerous, the worst and deepest cut on her forearm where I think I can see the white texture of her bone. But her leg is not doing any better with a shaft that has gone through her calf. How she could move at all with all these wounds, I have no idea. She is still bleeding, and I have nothing to stop it with.

So, I take her to the Core, let the Constructor repair her body, and fix her all up really good. But she is too heavy for little me, so I put her in a wheelbarrow and take her inside that way.

“Do the body repair,” I give instructions to the Constructor straight away as we enter the Core and I place her next to it.

Soon, she is cocooned in a thin membrane, and the Constructor deducts the energy needed from my balance and gets to work.

“SAMS, how long will it take?” I ask.

SAMS does not give me an answer right away, and I start to worry, but before I can ask the question again, it lets me know.

[Estimated time of the Constructor to finish is 30 minutes.]

Half an hour? That’s not too shabby. Hopefully, it will all go well. No hiccups. Don't need Tarra to start talking Ewokish to me.

I'm thinking that, but I feel my pulse rise up, worrying if things don’t work out. What will happen then? Could I just go on? Thought that I might have been able to save someone but I did not because… I… I just wasn’t good enough.

What the hell was she doing there all alone? She might be dressed as a Wonder Woman, but she certainly is not one. There must have been like fifty goblins there. Why didn’t she just run away from them? Why face them?

I do not know. Do not know anything. I just know that minutes are passing way too slowly. And LightsOut comes limping to the Constructor.

I look at him, and the pride of an eagle is nowhere to be seen. He looks more like WhiteHead when he is sorry and sad.

“You did good, LightsOut,” I try to cheer him. “As soon as Tarra is finished, the Constructor will help you out. It will fix you up good.”

“Fix up, fix LightsOut good, Mister Master,” he mumbles very softly out.

Finally, half an hour later, the cocoon gets disintegrated and Tarra lays there without a scratch on her body.

Peaceful. Like an angel with red hair.

Her chest is raising up and down, slowly, and I know she'll be just fine.

While I'm looking at her lying there and remember how many goblins she took down, I get an idea. Maybe she can be my Master Fighter. I will need one for that game, I bet. The thing with the kid did not work out, but maybe I have a chance to get her to help me. That might be even better.

So, I take an empty fighter card and try to enter into her mind.

I see the window that I know I should enter, but then the bright lights blind me and I twitch back.

When I open my eyes, I see her staring straight into me.

“Were you trying to card me?” she says, then smirks, and starts smiling and frowning at me at the same time, as if I am so childing that I just don’t know any better.

“Oooooh… I was just…”

“You can’t card me,” she says and picks an amber-glowing card out of her chest.

“Oh,” is all I can mutter out, feeling as if I did something I was not supposed to.

I can hardly wait for the explanations but all my inquisitive stare Tarra brushes off as she says, “I think I’ve been a LIP Corp agent a bit longer than you, buster. So, no, you can't card me.”

“I see,” I say, lost to say anything else.

“Nice try though,” she says, smiles, and winks at me. "Maybe I should call you 'Slick'."