“Alf!” Blix flung a broken limb at the wolf dragging her friend by his leg across the ground. “Put a point into constitution! Do you hear me? Put a point into constitution!”

Alf didn’t respond. He’d gone completely limp. She shouted again as the wolf thrashed its head back and forth, digging bloody gouges into Alf’s calf. He wasn’t moving. At all.

She tore at the other branches, but they were all to thick to break. “Go away!” she screamed out her rage.

And then she jumped.

Flashing leaves, whipping limbs, pain jolted up her spine as she crashed into the beast’s shoulders, driving it to the ground with a chest-deflating thunk.

Time slowed to a crawl as she fought to expand her traitorous lungs. Her back, thighs, shoulders, everything burned with electric pain, but that was nothing compared to the terror of not being able to breathe.

Her body jolted as a fresh wave of pain bit into her side and flung her against the base of the tree.

Dog food. If she’d been able to breathe, she might have even laughed. Dog food. Ever since she was a toddler, people had wanted to know what she would be when she grew up. And now she finally knew. Dog food.

A shadow blotted out the last golden rays of the dying sun. She clamped her eyes shut and waiting for the chomp what would finally put her out of her misery.

Blix and Alf sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G. God, what an idiot she’d been. She wasn’t in kindergarten anymore. She should have talked to him. For real.

A loud crack rang out. If she’d been at a ballgame, it would have been a 450-foot home run. Another crack, this one even louder than the first.

She opened her eyes and blinked against the blurred shadows. A dark figure was silhouetted against the setting sun. “Alf?” Her voice was a rasping gurgle. Her lungs were heavy as lead. It felt like she’d inhaled half the sea.

A giant wolf darted forward, biting at the shadow’s legs, but Alf spun his club in a tight circle, smashing it into the side of the wolf’s head. Another wolf attacked from the right, but a melon-splitting thunk sent it smashing to the ground. Another wolf and another thud. It was too unbelievable. This couldn’t be Alf. The real Alf had almost gotten eaten by a rat, and now he was holding his own against three wolves?

She closed her eyes and focused on each breath. Either she was dog food, or she wasn’t. It was out of her hands now. Her job was to keep breathing.

The growls and howls and thwacks and thumps ran together, blending into a creamy peanut-buttery blur. She was so freaking tired. Couldn’t they shut up and let her sleep?

“Hey…” A soft voice sounded by her ear. “Hold on, okay? I’ll get you fixed up in a jiffy.”

“Shut up.” She managed a pretty decent growl, all things considered. “I’m not stupid. I’ve got a partially collapsed lung and my abdomen is hamburger. It would have been better if you’d left me to the dogs.”

“But the dust… The nanites can fix this. If they can turn an accounting major into an orc, they can fix a few bites.”

“The stupid aliens didn’t pick me, remember? The nanites don’t work on leftovers.” Leftovers go in the dog dish. Her lungs spasmed. She was so pathetic, she couldn’t even laugh at herself.

“You’re not a leftover. You’re an exotic. And I—”

“Shut up!” she tried to scream but it came out as a whisper. “I’m sick of your pansy ass voice. Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

A tug sent a spike of pain through her ribs. The sound of ripping fabric. “Crap.”

Blix pressed her lips together. She was done with talking. Done with him.

An arm snaked beneath her shoulders, lifting her head from the ground. Another one eased under her lower back, and then she was hoisted off the ground, pressed against a warm chest as he set off at a fast walk.

“Put me down.” Her voice gurgled. “Here is as good as anywhere else.”

“I know a place with clean water. I can at least wash out your wounds. Maybe if I do enough, I’ll be able to earn a healing skill. I have over seven hundred points of mana. They have to be useful for something.”

Blix’s gulped down a breath. For a heart-stopping second, the spark of false hope bloomed in her chest, but she snuffed it out immediately. If she gave into fantasy now, everything she’d spent so long building would be lost. “It doesn’t work that way,” she ground out. “To do magic, you have to have a special class. Usually. Almost always.”

“My class is blank. Maybe I can choose healer?”

“That’s an option?” She snapped to full attention, holding her breath as his expression turned inward and then twisted into a frown.

“Don’t worry,” he finally said. “We’ll figure it out. Maybe I need to be a certain level. Or maybe I need more mana? I reached level three while I was fighting the wolves. But I ran out of health so I had to put two points into constitution. And then, because there were so many wolves, I spent a point each on dexterity and strength. And I put all three skill points into cane fighting.”

“You ran out of health?”

Alf nodded. “Everything went dark. I couldn’t even breathe. But when I focused on putting two points into constitution, everything started working again, and suddenly I had 48 points of health.”

Blix closed her eyes and tried to think. If Alf’s health had reached zero in a video game, it would have been game over. The nanites were obviously healing him. And he did have mana points. Maybe a healing spell wasn’t such a far-fetched idea after all.

“Alf, put me down. I want you to try something.”

“Just a second. We’re almost there.” His breath was coming in blasts now. He seemed to be climbing a steep hill. “One more second. I just need to get us through some thorns. Sorry if I scratch you. I’m trying to be careful.”

Blix tried to nod, but her brain was too muzzy. Healer, the word was all wrong. Healers weren’t a class. What kind of class did healer’s take? Pre-med? That wasn’t right either, but she was so sleepy. Maybe it would come to her in the morning.