Chuck shrugged, and his eyes darted back and forth between Allison, TJ, and the pouches of gold. “C’mon, you guys. You know I’m not any good in a fight. I can barely hold this thing without stabbing myself. That’s not my job—I’m the Bilbo of the group. I’m here to get you in and out safe and sound.” Jimmy’s face softened into something resembling acceptance—if not agreement—but both TJ and Allison continued to glare at the little man until he was forced to break eye contact.
“That’s not my job either, Jimmy,” countered Allison. “But I didn’t run. I did what I had to do to keep us alive, unlike you.”
“OK, fine,” Chuck conceded. “Well, I’ll be over there trying to see if there’s anything else we can use.” He trudged away and let himself through a door into one of the camp’s small buildings.
When he was out of earshot, Jimmy said softly, “He’s right, you know. It’s better that he did. He’d probably just end up getting himself killed in this sort of situation, and we don’t have anyone else with the same skills if he did. This wasn’t that stupid wolf-man attack back in the woods. This is the real deal.” He paused. “And it’s not like he could have done anything about Simon anyway. I don’t know if there’s anything that any of us could have done about Simon. That arrow hit him pretty much in the worst place possible. I don’t think he felt much.”
Allison sighed loudly. “Maybe you’re right. But I still wonder. What if I had known then what I know now? Could I have done something?”
“Well, I don’t know the answer to that,” Jimmy replied. “But the truth is, what’s done is done, and we can’t go back and change it. We should worry about what the future holds. And whether we like it or not, our future isn’t the one we were expecting it to be this morning.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” said TJ. “But then, you weren’t nearly stabbed to death just now. Looks like you came through pretty well unscathed. Maybe I should have taken your lead and put some points into my combat skills back in the real world. Because it looks like they apply here, wherever we are. I can still feel that knife sliding into me.” He gave an involuntary shudder. “Maybe you can show me a few tricks I can use to keep myself alive in the future, Jimmy?”
“You bet. And, well, I’m really sorry about your getting stabbed like that. I guess I should have known better than to go charging off, leaving you squishy ones unprotected. I don’t know what came over me. It just felt . . . right. Like I had been training my entire life for this one moment, and there it was, and I ran into action. And those bandits we were fighting? I know it didn’t seem like it to you, ’cause you got stabbed and all, but to me they were nothing. It felt as if they were acting in slow motion as I moved through them and cut them down. I guess all those weekends of gaining experience, and increasing my ranks and my ability scores, really meant more than just little cards and stats and stuff. We’re the real deaclass="underline" I’m Conan, or Aragorn, or both of them and then some all wrapped up into one. My sword feels alive in my hand, and the armor I’m wearing is weightless.”
Stu spoke softly, and yet everyone jumped. He had been so quiet that they’d all forgotten he was there. “I know what you mean, Jimmy. If you’re Aragorn, I’m Legolas. You know, I’ve never picked up a real bow and arrow in my life. Why would I have? And what would I have shot at? I live in the suburbs. But when I saw that guy in the woods, I knew I had to hit him. And when I reached down to grab an arrow from my quiver, my fingers found one instantly. And I placed it in my string and drew back and let it go as if I’d been doing it all my life. You didn’t see where I hit him. It was in his throat. And that’s because that’s where I aimed. If I had aimed at his arm I would have hit him in his arm, and if I had aimed at his leg I would have hit him in the leg. And if I had been aiming to miss him, I could have grazed his ear with my arrow as it flew past.
“And I could do it again. I know I could, as simple as breathing. That’s the amazing thing. And you know how I’ve got that ability to hit something behind a shrub or something, like I did with that wolf man earlier today, but can only do it twice a day? That’s not what I did just now. I can feel it. Hitting that guy in the throat is just what I do. And I do it well.”
Jimmy nodded. “Exactly. Like that was what you were meant to do.”
Stu gave a quick look over his shoulder and back through the gate, but then looked back at Allison and TJ. “What about you two? What do you feel?”
Allison shrugged and said, “Well, you already heard half of it out by Simon’s body. I can sense things like that now. As for the other half, well, I don’t know what to say. When I reached out and struck the guy who stabbed TJ, it was like I was channeling all my hatred into a little beam, like a laser, and focusing it on one person. And the healing, it was the complete opposite. All of my compassion, all of my caring, all of my will was focused on making him better. At the time, I was just making a fairy-tale wish over and over. But in retrospect, it was much more than that. I wasn’t wishing it to happen. I was willing it to happen.
“And you know what? I should probably be lying next to Simon right now.” TJ’s face contorted, and he reached out to comfort her. She pushed his hand away gently, then continued, “No, I don’t mean that in a guilty ‘it should have been me’ sort of way. I mean that I got hit by an arrow too, but it seemed to bounce right off me.” She raised her hand, and the glint of metal was visible on one of her fingers. “Look what I’ve got. No more three-by-five note card for me. One honest-to-goodness Ring of Ancient Triumph, sitting here on my finger. Power number two, increasing the effectiveness of my armor rating by something or another. A magic ring just saved my life.”
TJ took her hand in his and squinted at it. He swooned momentarily as a rush of memories flowed through him. He closed his eyes and shook his head briefly. “Yup, that’s what it is all right. And you know all those details on the card about its backstory and such? That barely scratches the surface of this ring’s true history. Names, dates, places; I know them all. And if I were to fill you in on it, we would be talking all night long and into tomorrow.”
“So you’ve got all that lore in your head now? Do you really have room for it all?” Jimmy smirked.
TJ returned the smile. “Yeah, I really do. For instance, that sword you’re carrying? I could tell you its full history as well. I bet you didn’t even know it has a history, but it does.”
“Really? How is that possible? This is just the sword I took when I created my character.”
“Think about what you said before. You are a hero in this world. Not one of the fifty that showed up at the reserve this morning. But the one-of-a-kind hero. Of course your weapon is something special. And of course that’s the sort of lore that we would have studied back at the academy. Understanding what its powers are, and how those powers were infused into it . . . that’s important stuff to know.
“Its original name translates into our tongue as ‘Lightning,’ though that ancient language has long since fallen out of use. It was crafted at the request of a giant of a man, perhaps seven and a half feet tall and weighing in at three-fiftyish. Think Shaq. But bigger and angrier. So this guy, whose name has been lost, didn’t want one of those puny swords that everyone carries around. Oh no. He wanted a bigger sword. He carried it one-handed, and it had a shield that went with it. The shield, unfortunately, was splintered by the axe of a minotaur in some cavern somewhere. That’s where he died too, having learned too late that while a sword of that size is great when fighting out in the open, it’s not so helpful in tight quarters. Anyway, he was something of a lumbering beast, and the sword granted him magical agility. That explains part of why you move so much faster than others. It was also infused with magic as the edges were ground and as the blade was quenched and tempered. This resulted in a razor-sharpness that is unmatched by anything else known to man. Can you remember sharpening it?”