The woman, Helena, cursed in Spanish, and leveled her massive two hander axe at me with one hand while gesturing to her friend with the other.

  “You think that’s them?” she asked.

  “Watch your language,” the man, Hank, said.

  The haft of the axe rested on her shoulder, and she shrugged. It was a beautiful weapon, the haft wrapped in inlaid copper, and the axe blade twice as large as I’d ever seen in real life.

  “Papa isn’t here,” she said. “And anyway, what are you gonna do?”

  The man in the dark cape shrugged back.

  This had to be the Marauders. Or two of them at least. Where were the other two?

  “We don’t have to fight,” I said.

  “Oh yeah?” Helena asked sarcastically? “La neta, I wouldn’t want to fight lookin’ like you. Baby boi, you are fucked up.”

  How old was this woman? She seemed my age, but she didn’t talk like it. And she mentioned her father? Or was it her ‘daddy?’ I’m not good at figuring that stuff out.

  “Wait,” I said. “Are you also from earth? I’m from Texas!”

  “Yeah? Helena, from Chihuahua. Hank here’s from Wisconsin.”

  So she was Mexican. I’d failed Spanish class in high school, and I took ASL in college. I knew enough about Mexico to know where Chihuahua was though.

  “Hey!” Hank remarked, seemingly upset she’d given that information up.

  “Then why are you working for the Queen of Darkness?” I asked.

  “Quest says we take out the Tyrant King, and we go home.”

  “Well our quest says we need to defeat the Evil Queen.”

  “She’s not evil!” Hank said incredulously.

  “?Qué wey estás!” Helena said, slapping Hank on the shoulder. “Papa’s marching with a hundred skeletons, we look like the bad guys.”

  “Then this is all a misunderstanding!” I offered. “Why don’t we work together?”

  “Mal pedo, baby boi. Different quests mean you are on the wrong side of boned.”

  She put both hands on the axe. Bernadette raised her bow.

  I twisted the sword in my hands enough to catch the moonlight.

  “Am I boned? This weapon hungers for blood,” I said. “If it tastes flesh, I don’t know if I can stop it from consuming you in dark fire.”

  It was a bluff. Or at least I hoped. I had no idea what this sword did. Didn’t seem like the evil cursed type, but you never knew in a world like this.

  “?A huevo!” Helena replied. “That just means you got sick lutz. Not making your case any better, sunshine.”

  Bernadette laughed. I’m not sure why.

  I shook my head in frustration.

  Hank removed a coil of rope from his pack.

  “I’d drop your weapons, and let us tie you up. Save you all kinds of trouble.”

  “Hell no,” Bernie said.

  “Wait,” I said.

  “Too late,” Bernie cut me off.

  She dropped a globe of darkness on the two Marauders, and ran forward. Bernie was fast. She reached the edge of the globe in seconds. I motioned for the guards to take Rachel back around the corner, and they picked her stretcher up.

  The hooded man stepped out, and immediately lost his head as Edge lopped it right off.

  Helena’s huge two handed axe twirled end over end through the air, right to where I was standing. I had enough time to sidestep it. It buried the blade into the cobblestone.

  I was about to consider that maybe this woman was not very good at fighting, before I saw the shine.

  A shimmering green spray of sparks and energy swirled around the axe handle, and with a pop, Helena was right next to me, lifting the axe up for a downward blow. I thrust up with the sword, hoping to skewer her, but she just spun her body out of the way, raised the axe, and tried again. I didn’t have enough time to get the sword point back, and I couldn’t slice at such close quarters, so I pulled the sword up for a block.

  The axe crashed down, and I felt the shock run through both my arms. She was strong. Not Captain Wen strong, but stronger than me.

  The patter of feet revealed that Bernie was on her way. Helena disappeared into a spray of emerald sparks. Bernie's sword point came dangerously close to me as she stabbed where Helena had been.

  I looked around. I couldn’t see her.

  Laughter rang from the darkness. She’d teleported back to the place she’d thrown from. Clever trick.

  “Your guy is dead!” I said. “Give up.”

  “I barely knew ‘em,” she said. “We just worked together. I think I still have you beat. Why don’t you surrender?”

  “Helena!” came a stern voice.

  Out of the opposite alley walked a distinguished looking man with a grey streaked beard, robes over chainmail, and a massive kite shield in one hand and a flanged mace in the other. He pointed his mace at the space between us and the globe of darkness, and a scintillating, spectral wall of spinning blades chewed into the cobblestone.

  The monocle read: Hector, level 17, and 152hp.

  A skinny ginger man in wizard robes walked next to him and pointed his wand at the globe of darkness, dispelling it in an instant. He didn’t read in the monocle correctly. He just had broken pixels where his name should be.

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  “Papa!” Helena said, then sighing in frustration. “I have these losers. We don’t need to —”

  “Boss’s orders,” the man said. “órale!”

  Bernadette nocked and loosed another arrow that shattered against the wall of blades.

  Helena gestured at Bernie as if to say ‘see!’ The man turned, expecting her to follow. Helena rolled her eyes, and marched off into the alley, and away.

  We stood there for a moment, unsure how to proceed with the spinning blades of death in our way. I told the guards to sit, and take a break. I turned to Bernie and Rachel.

  “There are other people here, like us!” I said.

  “Yeah,” Bernadette replied. “And they want to kill us.”

  Rachel just groaned. She was too messed up to really contribute.

  “That is weird. Either somehow they’re being misled or…” I trailed off. The idea that the DM could be assigning competing quests to others was kind of frightening.

  “Good thing we’ve never trusted the DM,” Bernie replied.

  I’ve killed plenty of people at this point. It was honestly kind of unsetting how many, and how easy it was. But the idea of killing someone who also just wanted to go home, someone that presumably had a father here too, didn’t sit well with me.

  “Are you okay?” I asked Bernie.

  “Huh. What?” she asked, snapping out of her introspection. “Yeah, I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  I just motioned to the corpse on the other side of the blade wall.

  “I’ve killed a bunch of people,” she said. “And honestly, I had this huge bruise,” she motioned to her stomach, “where I got punched, but with this sword’s free castings of bloodfeast I’m feeling much better!”

  “Right, but,” I started to say.

  “Drop it. This changes nothing.”

  “I mean, it sort of changes everything.”

  Bernadette motioned behind me. The blade wall was over. I should have taken that as a more ominous sign, but hindsight is 20/20.

  “We’re talking about this more later,” I warned.

  “Sure. Let’s get the fuck out of this hellhole first.”

  We got moving again. A couple of skeletons tried to menace us as we did, but Duerte and Bernadette shot them down before they became a problem.

  Duerte was actually a pretty decent shot.

  Soon, we arrived at the barricade.

  Assembled from furniture and siding and window shades, the barricade was a ramshackle fortification some fifteen feet high. Bones and corpses bunched around the bottom of it, and it shone with some kind of oil or slick.

  Sticking his head out of a door, Cal waved us toward him. He took us through a side passage, through someone’s home, and around the barricade.

  “Where’s Caleb?” I asked.

  “He’s with the others,” Cal answered. “A big mass of skeletons stands between us and the castle, so he’s martialing a counterattack to break through, and ferry people to the safety of the walls.”

  “Good idea,” I said.

  “It’s fine,” Cal replied. “I tried to get him to come with us to the Academe Arcane with Ailmer, but he’s—”

  “Stubborn,” I said.

  “Stupid,” Cal corrected.

  “Do you have any healers?” I asked, gesturing at Rachel.

  “Warden’s balls!” Cal said. “She is in bad shape.”

  Rachel’s arm, shoulder, and neck were entirely purple. Her breathing was shallow, and sweat shined on her brow.

  “I think we have a cleric somewhere,” Cal replied, “I’ll run ahead.”

  By the time we made it to the courtyard, a man in robes met us. He frowned at the state Rachel was in.

  I glanced around the plaza. A statue representing the Queen, but with Caleb’s sword held high, dominated the square. Dozens of men in armor ran to and fro, from the battlements to elsewhere. A myriad criss-cross of boot prints ran through the ash that coated the cobblestone like cracks on ice.

  Duarte, Martim, and Ivone gave us our thanks, Ivone even giving me a hug, and then sat at a table with other guards. Martim immediately hit the ale. Ivone put her head on the table, and looked to be asleep. Duarte disappeared into a crowd.

  Bernadette and I sat by Rachel’s side. The cleric, Luca, a balding man with nonetheless handsome features, chastised us for our shoddy work on her finger and arm.

  He had to break the finger to reset it correctly. The arm, he said, would need more sophisticated surgery than he could manage. But he did say that we had saved it, though even with surgery it probably would never be the same.

  He spent one of his precious healing spells on her, and her eyes fluttered awake.

  The first thing she said was: “was I hallucinating, or did y'all fight some chick from Mexico?”

  “Uh, she said she was from Chihuahua.”

  “That’s in Mexico, stupid,” she said, then passed out again.

  I was so glad she was alive. It hurt to see her like this. In that moment I hated this place. I know the people here were good people, that they needed our help, but in this moment I hated them too. My friend was hurt. She was really hurt, and as much as it was my fault for not being there, it was this place’s fault too.

  And Captain Wen. Every time I faced her she took something from me. First it was that stupid magic crossbow, now it was my friend. Rachel was good, she was too good to be hurt like this.

  Would she ever be the same? Could she come back from this?

  I felt wetness run down my face and I wiped it away. Couldn’t be tears. I was too manly, and tough for that. I swallowed the lump in my throat. I had to be good enough to get her to safety.

  Suddenly, a ringing came from the distance, like the sound of an alarm bell. It was faint, and though it didn’t stop, was drowned out by something else. I couldn’t tell what that something else was, but it almost seemed like a white noise, or rushing water.

  “Cal?” I asked, “what is that?”

  “The sound of feet,” he said, pulling his bow from his back.

  And then after a moment, a louder ringing came from back the way we came. And then more of that same strange sound.

  “If that’s feet, it’s a lot of people.”

  “Not people,” Cal said.

  “Then what is that ringing sound?” I asked.

  A woman with twin tails, and half plate fell as if from the sky, and landed right on our side of the barricade. She must have jumped.

  “You want to know what that ringing is?” Helena asked.

  “Damnit. Why are you here?” I asked.

  Bernie threw a dagger. Cal shot an arrow.

  Helena parried both in succession, with her vambrace. She didn’t even take her axe off her shoulder.

  “Go ahead, and say the thing,” I said.

  “It’s the dinner bell, bitch.”

  At that moment the skeletons, a thousand of them, slammed into the western barricade. Cal ran off to try and keep them at bay.

  “We led you right to them,” I said. I put both hands on my new greatsword, and swung right at her face. She tossed her head back, and voided the attack easily.

  “Yep. And I’m just the distraction.”

  Screams from the Western barricade. Someone lit it. Then the next round of skeletons hit the Southern barricade. I looked to the East. Caleb rallied the men there. But I knew that they wouldn’t hold long. Caleb had maybe a hundred fighters here. The rest were refugees, a liability.

  Somehow, that evil Cleric had been able to rally the skeletons, thousands of them.

  “Bernie!” I said, swiping at Helena to keep her on her toes, “I’m getting Rachel, you distract, twintails!”

  “Leaving?” Bernie said, tossing a kitchen knife.

  Helena caught the knife and tossed it at me. It bounced off my chainmail, but actually kinda hurt. Bernie led with Edge, purple energy trailing behind it. Helena gave ground, but she had plenty of it.

  “Of course we’re leaving,” I said. “Let’s go!”

  Grateful for the belt, I hauled Rachel over my shoulder. She screamed in agony.

  “Careful with her!” the cleric said.

  “Yeah, Luca, you’re coming with us,” I said.

  Luca looked around frantically.

  “I’m needed here!”

  A skeleton ran up to us. Luca threw his hands forward, blasting it with a burst of light that sent it tumbling to the ground.

  “Not up for debate,” I said, kicking a table over to give us some cover from skeletons that had made it to the roofs. An arrow pinged off my boot.

  Helena landed a kick on Bernie that sent her flying, but she managed to land on her feet. She leapt back at her before Helena could capitalize on the momentum.

  I ran for the clocktower. We had less than three minutes to get up there.

  My adrenaline Rush kicked in. Everyone around me turned a glowing red.