After the meeting with Dara, things moved quickly. She proposed that a portion of the Bck Lions serve under Caleb provisionally, so that he could finally defeat Sofia for good. Apparently, that meant he would need to defeat or ally with the Kingswood and with the Mountain Peoples.

  The Kingsgaurd had recently made advances into Caleb’s territory (Zandria, as he’d named it after his first born son) raiding towns and supply chains to support an Elven king on the move. At the same time, the Mountain People saw this as an opportunity to regain nds Caleb had taken as a young man. His kingdom was being eroded from both ends.

  Maybe with the Bck Lion’s help, he could get the wins he needed to reestablish a final counteroffensive.

  As for how Bernadette and I fit into all this, we were Caleb’s aces in the hole. Having Pyer Character csses meant we could learn and grow much faster than an NPC. Getting us to Caleb’s level was a top priority. To this end, Dara and G’nash became our trainers.

  Berryhop joined the Academy.

  What the Bck Lions got out of this was a huge amount of money. Caleb had given some of his cash to Mark for safe keeping, and Mark was not a poor man. The Bck Lions stood to earn a lot for themselves if they made it out of this intact.

  When Dara secured the deal, her smile reached wide across her face. But her eyes seemed sad, like maybe it wasn’t enough. She’d lost something more than just that bar. I could tell, because her smiles from back then were small and confident, so different than now. I wondered what it was.

  Rachel’s arm continued to be a problem. She stopped hiding her fsk from Braelyn.

  Dara had the bright idea to switch her to rapier, a one handed weapon. The one we’d gotten off of Princess Mia was very good, and she was a fast learner. Her barbarian css didn’t lock her into certain weapons past the melee restriction so she still had all her abilities at her disposal too.

  Without the belt even, she was a fast and aggressive fighter, and not to be trifled with.

  I took the belt. G’nash proved to be a surprisingly good teacher, with knowledge of both his people’s fighting styles, and Caleb’s, as he’d met the former Knights of the Word on the battlefield back when they were just Caleb’s shock troops. He had a healthy respect for them.

  I was trying to make a two handed fighting style work, but it was slow going. I wasn’t aggressive enough. You really had to swing that thing around to threaten your whole area, but I was more of a ‘wait and test’ kind of guy. G’nash sort of just threw people at me, and let the bruises teach me as much as his gentle coaching.

  Certainty was a joy to use though, and that made all of it worth it. The fact that it was our hated enemy’s weapon didn’t really seem to bother any of us, from what I could tell.

  During all this, I was finding new ways to make Bernadette ugh, new ways to surprise her. Each moment was the greatest achievement, greater than any of the battles I won. And I got to do it over and over again.

  When you’re 25, oh I’d had a birthday, you think you know everything about love and romance and what it’s like to be with someone, but love struck me down and showed me that I had so much more to learn.

  I’d done this before, we both have, but also everything we did together was new.

  One day, I decided to visit Helena for dinner. They’d stuck her with a dy guard. Rachel was at a chessboard, studying it intently, and rotating her bad shoulder absentmindedly.

  “Cari?o,” Helena said, staring at the ceiling, hands folded behind her head on the pillow, “I have you.” This next part she said almost singsong. “You may as well just call it quits.”

  “Only thing you got is hubris,” Rachel replied, staring at the board.

  I looked over her shoulder at the state of the game.

  I didn’t know a lot about chess but I could tell they were in the endgame. Rachel was down to a couple pawns, a knight, and a rook, desperately trying to keep Helena’s two queens at bay. She’d trapped her in a way that any moved she made would sacrifice a high value piece without the chance of an immediate counterattack. I was never one to think very far ahead in chess, but even I could see that any one loss would start a downward spiral of losses.

  I leaned against the bars.

  “I didn’t know you were good at chess,” I said.

  “?Chale!” She said, not bothering to look. “I don’t py chess. I py her.”

  “She’s full of shit,” Rachel said.

  I noticed a ck of Braelyn. That was happening more and more these days as she spent time with Caleb.

  This was weird. It almost seemed friendly.

  “Is she pestering you?” I directed at Helena. “She probably needs to do her PT anyway.”

  “It’s fine,” Helena replied.

  “I’m going stir crazy at this magic pce anyway,” Rachel said. “Despite her probably evil nature, she’s alright.”

  Helena scoffed.

  “You’re not gonna find a way out,” She said, bringing the conversation back to the game.

  I shrugged, and scooped Rachel’s new Rapier.

  Elegance +4

  Made specially for the Princess Mia to commemorate her eleventh birthday. Intended to be something she’d grow into, this weapon was always by her side from the day she got it. A rasher, sloppier fencer than her older brother, she nonetheless used this weapon well, and had few equals at the castle.

  Successful paries with this weapon have a 11% chance to reset a random ability cooldown. Drawing blood has a 100% chance to reset a cooldown. This ability can work on character abilities gained from items.

  “Hey guys, what are you…” Berryhop’s voice trailed off as she saw the group assembled.

  “Now who are you?” Helena asked.

  Berryhop ignored her, climbed onto the chair, then sat on the edge of the table. She stared at the chess game intently.

  “Come on,” I said, talking quietly, leaning against the bars. “You don’t have to make a pass at her too.”

  “I wasn’t making a pass, baby boi.”

  “Then what was that?”

  “Passing interest. Twenty years in this hellhole, and you learn to pay attention to a good thing when you see it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, by the way you look at her, I’d think you hit that.”

  “No. She called it off when she figured out I liked Bernie.”

  “What do these beautiful women see in you?”

  “I got no idea, Helena.”

  She smirked.

  “You can still win this,” Berryhop said.

  “Yeah?” Rachel sat back.

  “Sacrifice one or the other, doesn’t matter. Go for the other queen and you stalemate.”

  “Stalemate isn’t a win,” Rachel said.

  “Winning doesn’t win, only protecting the king wins. Stalemate leaves the king untouched. If she fails to win her prize you get to keep your kingdom.”

  Rachel moved a piece. Helena called back her move.

  “Your move,” Rachel said.

  “I don’t have one,” Helena said with a smile. “Gnome girl is right. It’s a stalemate.”

  “My name is Berryhop,” the gnome girl said with a smile.

  “And such a nice name it is. Wonderful to meet you.”

  “Why are you locked up?”

  “I think I just like it here is all,” Helena replied.

  Suddenly the guard brought Helena her food. The three of us grabbed food from the mess, picked up Bernie and G’nash on the way, and sat to eat in the dungeon with Helena.

  The prisoner was pleasant company all things considered. Our pn of winning her over through charm hadn’t yielded much results, but it certainly helped that nothing we did in the dungeons made it hard for us to sleep at night.

  It was weird, but I trusted that Rachel knew what she was doing.

  Berryhop usually ate with her new friends, cssmates from the Alchemy school, so it was nice that she was with us too. Bernie was mostly pretty chill with her, but I also made sure not to do anything that would make her doubt me either.

  “You’re pretty strong, huh?” Berryhop asked Rachel. G’nash ughed. I felt my eyebrows raise.

  “Less so with my shoulder,” Rachel replied, “and without my belt. But, uh, yeah I’m pretty strong.”

  “You know if you tossed me into the air,” Berryhop said, “I could shoot potions over the tops of cover.”

  Bernadette snorted with ughter. Rachel smiled.

  “G’nash is strong. Why haven’t you tried this already?”

  “G’nash refuses,” Berryhop replied, rolling her eyes. “Said I could ‘twist an ankle.’”

  Bernie chuckled to herself as the conversation continued, and plugged four digit codes into the ste absentmindedly.

  “Birthday not work, huh?”

  “No,” she said, taking a bite of cooked beets. “Could be a number with no connection to a date at all.”

  “Hmm, what if her dad set it up?” I said, keeping my voice below the general conversation.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look,” I continued, “she’s like, what, in her early thirties?”

  “Maybe younger,” Bernadette replied.

  “I don’t think so. Mexican women age well.”

  “Do they?”

  “That’s not the point,” I said hastily. “She let slip earlier that she’s been here for twenty years. If she’s in her thirties now, how young would she have been when she got here?”

  Bernie’s eyes went wide.

  “Her dad set up her ste, locked the messages in her phone because she was just a kid.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “At least that’s my current theory.”

  Bernadette got real quiet.

  I did some thinking too. If she was 32-33 like I thought, that would mean she was just a 12 year old when she got here. That’s the prime age to py The Game with your dad. This girl had been pying a TTRPG with her father then got tricked into coming here.

  What kind of life had she lived? What kinds of choices would a father have made to get his daughter home?

  “I think I have an idea for how we can reach her,” I said.

  Before Bernadette could respond, the sound of yelling came from the stairs.

  We all stood. Braelyn rounded the corner first, an annoyed expression twisting her lips. Dara followed.

  Braelyn tossed her braid over a shoulder and said, “just because you’ve managed to earn some small amount of authority in your mercenary band, doesn’t mean you have any concept of the vast perplexities a king must consider.”

  “I know my people are dying!” Dara shot back.

  G’nash stood.

  “And that’s a terrible thing, but the region’s instability actually makes our bargaining position greater.”

  “You’re sending them to the Orcs? What can they provide but stick huts, and superstitions?”

  “Hey!” G’nash interjected. He was at her side in an instant. His face softened. “We’ve talked about this—” he admonished gently.

  Dara frowned.

  “Sorry,” she said, then turning back to Braelyn. “This wasn’t the agreement.”

  “No,” she replied, stepping closer. “This is exactly the agreement. The king has final say on logistical matters.”

  G’nash stepped in front of Dara, but stopped short of stepping between them.

  “This isn’t logistics!” Dara said. “This is death by abandonment.”

  “What’s this about,” I asked.

  Braelyn sighed and replied, “Caleb has requested your presence with the Mountain People. He wants you to participate in some kind of tournament to get us a foothold on the Council of Mothers.”

  “The Contest of Three Flowers?” G’nash asked.

  “I don’t know their word for it,” Braelyn admitted.

  “Fymeskerg has complete control over the Kingswood,” Dara said. “Every day he’s allowed to live, the elves’ suffering grows.”

  “It’s a 14th level quest,” Rachel added.

  “Woah! I thought he was level 10!” I said.

  “He was,” Rachel replied, “sleeping in his ir. He was basically a DPS check then. Now he’s got an army.”

  “He’s got an army?” Bernadette asked.

  “Yes,” Berryhop said, staring forlornly at her mashed potatoes. “Those who didn’t flee with the king, are now required to collect tribute from the rest of the Kingswood, and feed his horde.”

  “That sounds bad,” I said.

  I felt a twinge of guilt. I knew that some of this camity y at our feet.

  But then again, without us, things would have gotten much worse at Swordfall. Yes, the city still was ransacked, but without our chasing Mia off, who knows how many more of Caleb’s kids would have been harmed? Without us protecting the nobility at the Opera, who knows how many more would have died?

  Caleb himself could have died.

  We’d made the right choice going to Swordfall. It still sucked that the pce we’d first come to had been entirely overrun with monsters.

  “We’re not high enough level yet,” I finally said.

  “Fuck your stupid crystal game,” Dara said.

  G’nash put his hand on her shoulder. She looked to him with an expression I couldn’t pce.

  “Rachel?” I asked. “How fast do you think we can level up?”

  “Leveling up happens faster with quests, than training. And the higher level we get, the more experience we need to cross the next threshold.”

  “Could we hit quests on the way?” I asked.

  “Possibly,” she admitted.

  “We’ve fought higher level monsters before, and won,” Bernadette admitted. “But I’d like us to over prepare for something like this.”

  “What? No. You aren’t going off to fight a dragon,” Braelyn butt in. “The King has pns for you. You don’t have time to go off and get eaten.”

  “Technically,” Berryhop added, “our greatest struggle was his fire, not his teeth.”

  “Brandon didn’t fall to his fire,” Dara reminded her.

  “Hey, not cool,” Berryhop said, sadness knitting her brow. “But like I was saying: I think I have a potion to take care of the fire.”

  “How good is it?” I asked.

  “The one I made previously gave us a tolerance for heat. I think I can give us immunity.”

  “You’re very clever aren’t you?” Rachel remarked, leaning her elbows on the table.

  Berryhop put her one pink curl behind her pointy ear.

  “It’s honestly not that big a deal.”

  “I’d fight the dragon,” Helena cut in. “Probably has some sick loot.”

  “You are all forgetting,” Braelyn said. “That King Caleb has the final say on major quests.”

  “Caleb can’t tell me to do shit,” Bernadette replied, nonchant.

  “Guys!” I cut in. “Cool it! We’re not doing anything until we really take a look at our options.”

  There was silence as everyone looked at me. I rushed through the awkwardness.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I continued, “Caleb’s judgment is important but it’s our asses on the line, so he can’t do much more than suggest things. That said, as far as we know the Dragon quest has better rewards and is on a tighter timeframe. G’nash, can the date of the tournament be pushed back?”

  “It happens when the Council says it happens.”

  “Good,” I said. “Then it seems clear we should probably tackle the dragon first. But we won’t do anything until we think we can actually pull it off. And if things get too hot, we can always have Mark teleport us out.”

  “Fair point,” Rachel said.

  “The king will not like this,” Braelyn said.

  “I’m sorry, Braelyn,” I said. “But Caleb will have to get over it.”

  She turned on her heel, and left in a huff.