“I said sorry,” Samantha said.

   “And I could have died,” Jackie said. “Sorry doesn’t quite cut it.”

  “Knock it off you two,” I said trying to restore some semblance of calm to the situation.

  “No, I will not ‘knock it off.’” Jackie said. “She is a danger to all of us out here, she should stay behind.”

  “I said I was sorry,” Samantha yelled. “It was an accident, they happen.”

  “Calm down both of you,” I said. “Emotions are pretty high right now, so calm is necessary. Mistakes were made, now we have to learn from them. Samantha, your first mistake was hitting Jackie with your ax. Combat awareness is super important, you need to know exactly where your enemies and allies are at all times. Understand?”

  “Yes,” Samantha said. “You said that was my first mistake. What was my second one?”

  “You turned your back to the enemy to try and help Jackie,” I said. “Good on you for thinking about your ally, bad on you for turning your back to the enemy. That was a huge mistake, and mistakes can cost lives now. My mistake was not anticipating the chances of one of you going down and preparing you for it. So if one of you goes down the other one stands over them to cover them while their partner drags them back to me so I can administer a potion.”

  “Oh that’s right,” Jackie said materializing a Puny Healing Potion into her hand from her inventory and handing it to me. “Here’s the potion back you gave to me.”

  I took the potion and put it into my own inventory. “Thank you, but I’m not too concerned with whose potion is whose,” I said. “I think a communal pool of resources is prudent, but time is of the essence right now so we’ll talk about that later. Speaking of potions everybody check your HP, is anybody down HP?”

   “I am,” Melissa said. “I’m down 2 from a scratch one of them got on me.” She pointed to a slight scratch on her outer left thigh. “Think I should drink a healing potion too?”

   “Not for 2 HP worth of damage,” I said. “Jackie what did your Lay on Hands do again?”

Jackie closed her eyes and after a moment started reading. “Channel divine energy to heal others, uses all available healing until out or targets HP is full, does not work on undead. 10 of 10 HP left for today.”

I thought about it for a second. “Judging by the sounds of that you can use it over multiple uses a day instead of all at once like potions. Try healing Melissa for 2 HP.”

   “OK,” Jackie said moving over to Melissa. “What do I do?”

  “Well best guess is it starts by touching Melissa, probably on the wound would be best,” I said.

   “May I?” Jackie asked Melissa.

   “Sure,” Melissa replied turning her wound towards Jackie.

   Jackie put her hand over the wound, “now what?”

   “Focus on activating the ability.” I said.

   “How?”

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

   I resisted the urge to say something along the lines of ‘how should I know I don’t have any abilities that I can activate?’ “Try thinking Lay on Hands,” I said.

   Jackies hand started glowing bright, after a moment it faded and she removed it. “Did that hurt?”

“Not a bit,” Melissa said looking at the area. “Actually felt kind of good, and not even a scar.”

   “OK,” I said. “Ninety nine percent of my reasoning for doing this now was so we wouldn’t have to figure this out in the middle of combat if it came to it. Now on to the next mistake, Candice, why did you dive under a car after a goblin?”

   “Because he was there and you said he needed to die before he came back with reinforcements,” Candice said.

   “Although the risk was small, it was also unnecessary.” I said. “The proper course of action would have been to surround the car and have Samantha flip it over revealing him.”

   “Wait,” Samantha said. “I’m strong enough to flip a car?”

   “I don’t know,” I said. “You certainly look it though.” I turned back to Candice. “Anyway I’m glad you’re OK, but try not to do that again.” I turned to Jackie, “are you and Samantha going to be OK?”

   “Yeah,” Jackie said with her arms folded across her chest in a huff. “As long as she watches where she’s swinging her ax.”

   “Yeah that was partially my fault for not realizing she had a huge swinging arc with her ax,” I said. “In the future, you stand on the left and she’ll stand on the right, that should about take care of that problem.”

A sudden loud sound of metal crashing onto concrete echoed through the parking lot and off the building. I turned around to find Steve sports car on it’s roof and Samantha standing over it striking a pose with a massive grin on her face. “51 Strength score baby!”

   “You think maybe you could make some more noise?” I asked her. “I think some goblins on the moon didn’t quite hear that.”

   “Ops,” she said sheepishly covering her mouth with her hands. “Sorry.”

   “Alright, Let’s figure out these crystals we got.” I said looking at the ones that Candice held in her hand. They all looked the same, about 3 inches long, half an inch wide with 3 sides and flat tips on either end. I couldn’t see anything too strange about it. “Does it say anything?”

   “Loot Crystal Level 1 goblin scout,” Candice said.

   “Oh great, they were scouts,” I said. “That means there is probably more around somewhere. Anyway, open it up. It probably doesn’t physically open, try mentally focusing on opening it.”

   Candice closed her eyes, and I made a mental note that we needed to work on being able to do things with our eyes open soon. The crystal disappeared from Candices hand. “It had 3 copper pieces and a Throwing Dagger in it.” Everybody else opened their loot crystals as well, they each had anywhere from 2 to 7 copper pieces in them and between the lot of them they also had a Puny Healing Potion which they gave to me, a Puny Stamina Potion, and a Scrap of Ruined Fabric. All in all a fairly typical assortment of low level mob drops.

   After we finished checking the loot we walked down the drive way to the main road. “Now we have a choice to make,” I said. “Where too? The nearby office buildings probably won’t have anything to help our transportation needs in them and I can tell from here there are no pickups in the lots. I think our best bet would be to head down the main road here to the corner where the Outdoor Center is. I think that’s our best bet for solving our transportation needs.”

   “Oh,” Melissa said. “They do a haunted hayride during Halloween, I remember bringing my kids there last year. If they store the wagon they pull you around in there, I’m sure we could hook it up to Beth and she could pull it.”

   “NotrunningitbyBethonetwothreenotit,” I said putting my finger on my nose.

   “Not it,” Melissa said putting her finger on her nose.

   “Not it,” Samantha and Candice said in unison also putting their fingers on their noses.

   “Oh no that’s not how this works,” Jackie said. “What are you five? That’s not how we decide things in the adult world.”

   “You’re right we shouldn’t decide how to do things like that we’re adults,” I said. “You’re the leader you do it.”

   “I’m not the leader you are,” Jackie said.

  “No,” I said. “I am a consultant. I recommend solutions to our current problems and you agree to it.”

   “You’ve been bossing us around like a leader,” Jackie said.

   “You said when you came to get me in my office and I quote ‘I am the leader around here and if you have a problem with it leave.’ To which I did not argue so that is my acknowledgment of you as the leader.”

   “Fine mister consultant,” Jackie said. “You’re helping me though.”

   I suppose I walked into that one.