Between all the healing I have had, I am back up to 22 health, with my heal over time still in effect. I know it will not last long. One Eye laughs and pulls 2 javelins from his hip, tossing them on the ground in front of the shaman, before saying “They plan to wait us out. This should be funny.” Before drawing a great axe clipped to his back.

Well, I did say that talking in combat was stupid. It is. I did announce the plan to them, after all. But it was a tactical update, and I don't have a better way to communicate something like that… And more importantly, Regina understood the rest of the plan, while One Eye thinks we think simply delaying would be enough.

The truth is that while One Eye was handing out Javelins and drawing his axe he was rather exposed, and I believe I could probably have tried to hit him again, but my claws are insufficient to be effective on a target with such good armor, and I know better than to think he would be completely unprepared for me to attack one of his few exposed areas. Whether I hit or not, I could not do enough damage for it to matter.

The shaman picks up the Javelin and throws it, and the 2 regular orcs continue to take their swings. I was too focused on identifying the moment, and the second orcs falchion glances off my head, blood is now running freely down my face. I cannot see how bad the damage is, but despite hitting a pretty important area, it was a glancing blow. Oof. My health is down to 8 from that. Even with that having been another poorly delivered blow, these guys are ridiculous.

Reginas arrow finds the Orc who got the hit in, throwing him violently to the ground. That was what I was waiting for. I jump on the collapsing Orc and dig my claws deep into his eyes, shredding the brain behind them. He will not be getting back up, not without powerful enough healing to revive the recently deceased.

His partner reflexively reaches forward with his hand, and I take the chance to give that hand a nip. It does not do much, but pain is pain, and I do not want them to get too comfortable around me. Bad enough that One Eye finds me a joke, if even the regular orcs think so lowly of me, it will be a real hit to my own ego.

Ok, great. I don't mean that sarcastically this time, or at least, not as sarcastically as I normally would. We only need to repeat the process 2 more times before we get overwhelmed. One Eye, furious, swings at me with his great axe, dealing 8 damage to me, and to my surprise quickly snaps the axe back from the other side, having fully reversed its course in an instant.

0 health again, right on the nose. I am probably lucky that the first attack hit me, because looking at it now, I am pretty sure that was supposed to be a feint before the big attack. My mobility is just so lackluster that I managed to get in front of and hit by the feint, which knocked me out of line from the real attack.

I duck slightly as a javelin sails past me, that was mostly poor aim, if he'd gone for my torso it likely would've hit, and the Falchion strike was spoiled by the backswing of the great axe. Skill had nothing to do with making it through this exchange, that was 100% luck. Well, luck and my heal over time effect combine to keep me standing even at 0. I see my health climb back up to 1 as Reginas arrow takes down the next normal Orc, who I immediately pounce on to repeat my brain soup technique.

It is considered a cowardly tactic to finish off unconscious enemies. And it is. It's not that killing foes is a problem, but ignoring the active participants to target the ones who are helpless is highly frowned upon… But this is a battle to the death should they win. I am not afraid of being labeled a coward; that's much less of a problem than what will happen if we lose this fight.

Seeing me end another of his comrades right in front of him, One Eye begins spitting in fury, swinging his Axe at me; knowing that he is fast and strong enough to attack multiple times in each exchange, I’m able to dodge his first swing, but the second one sees the Axe dig deep into my chest, and I go down.

Honestly, I stayed conscious much longer than I expected to. Normally, I would be worried about passing out on a battlefield after making someone as angry as I angered One Eye. But this time? This time it is ok. Why? Because he was dumb enough to run his mouth.

One Eye thinks I am a heretic, and that my death needs to be slow. He will not want to miss out on the opportunity for some torture before he kills me. It's a pretty sadistic viewpoint, but mostly it just marks him as an idiot in my book. The knowledge that I am more safe unconscious than if I were standing but with few enough health that he might accidentally do too much damage and kill me is multiplied by the knowledge that my healing spell is still running.

I’m down to -7 health now. I do not have enough healing remaining to bring me back to consciousness, but the most dangerous of injuries will recover and I will stabilize, because magical healing is awesome. Now I just need Regina to…

Yep ok, there it is. I feel the warmth of a healing potion entering me, and I am back up to 3 health.

“How long 'til they get here?”

“Seconds, follow.” She says, taking off back towards the Orc encampment. I get up and run after her. She stops once One Eye and the Shaman have come down the escarpment so that they are on the same level. As I had guessed, she took a few shots at the shaman or one eye or both while they ran around and worked their way up the escarpment, only to slide down and heal me with a potion once they were fully committed to the act to going around, needing to then follow her right back down.

“Which target? What is the plan from here?” She asks.

“Hit the shaman with arrows. Make One eye use his spells, let his buffs expire, then you take him on in melee. Speaking of, the ones that will expire quickly should have done or are about to do so. I think he has a spell protecting him from nonmagical arrows, and if it's the one I think it is, it will run for hours unless you can do a ton of damage, but even then it is an easy spell to reactivate. To win this, it has to be melee.”

She does not say another word stoically firing at the Shaman, but one eye jumps in front of him and absorbs the hit on his behalf, roaring in anger even as the arrow disintegrates against the magical barrier protecting him from ranged weaponry. I chug a potion, coming back up to 20 health, then grab my crossbow and a case of bolts that she had been carrying for me.

I will not get to use my crossbow for long, but it will be nice to use a weapon without getting slapped for it. Immediately, at least. The 2 Orcs approach quickly, but we have time for another shot. I line up on the Shaman, but miss. Regina's arrow does not miss, but although it wounds him greatly, it does not knock him out. Damn, I was hopeful this time.

One eye and the Shaman reach Regina, who by this point they are also annoyed with, and the great axe comes down in a terrifying chop, which Regina is not quite able to avoid entirely, grunting as her armor dents from the sheer kinetic force of the impact, but she has no problems dancing away from his return sweep.

The Shaman has pulled out a mace, and swings it ineffectively; I will be amazed if at any point he is able to cause real damage to her since she is wearing Joaqims repurposed quicksilver full plate armor. The shamans mace is high quality just like the rest of his equipment, but he is not as proficient with it nor is he as strong as was would be required to be able to tear through that armor the way the wolves did. One eye can, he's an absolute monster, but even when he hits I doubt the Shaman will be able to cause her much more.

Regina surprises both One Eye and the Shaman by not retreating, and instead switching smoothly into a melee stance and driving the electrical end of her bow into One Eyes chest, followed by sweeping into his legs with the adamantine end of her bow. I am not idle, and lodge a bolt into the Shamans chest, it was a clean hit that went deep, and was more than enough to send him down to the ground either unconscious or dead, most likely unconscious for now as that was only a gut wound. Those usually take a while to kill a person.

Now it's just One Eye versus me and Regina. To be honest, we are still at a massive disadvantage. Even with my crossbow, and even if most of his spells expired, I would have trouble penetrating his armor, and all my spells take a ridiculously long time to cast.

This is a battle between Regina and One Eye, and One Eye is definitely higher level and probably has more health to spare compared to her, despite their initial exchanges seeming to have resulted in similar levels of damage. I have a plan for when Regina falls, I can only hope that she goes unconscious instead of dying outright, and that my ploy works.

What now One Eye? You are prone, and you are alone.

Well, he stands up, taking a smack to the head from the adamantine side of Reginas bow for the effort. And he roars, having used the act of standing to disguise the beginning of a massive uppercut which connects, directly against her helmet, hard, launching her into the air and sending her several feet back where she lands in a crumpled heap. I can't say that she's really moving anymore, it's more like she's twitching.

Ho. Lee. Shit.

Regina's class seems to give her health in line with that of a conventional fighter, and while I do not know if she is level 4, or 5, but she is definitely not a pushover when it comes to her health pool. And he dropped her like it was nothing. That had to have been a crit… I truly, truly hope it was, because if that was a regular hit even with his ego we are both royally screwed.

I started moving away when they closed on Regina, and I continue to do so, firing another bolt at One Eye. If she is still alive, which is likely, I do NOT want his attention landing on her. To my surprise, his attention was entirely on her, and he did not dodge my crossbow bolt. Did I also get a critical hit?! Of course not, because he is not worried about missile weapons. He does look at me as I fall back though, then glances at the shaman, and decides to heal him rather than chase me down.

I plink a quarrel into the freshly healed shaman as he begins to stand, once again resulting in a pretty major injury. He's standing, but it was a good hit. One Eye decides to stop trying to heal him and follow me after all, while I continue over to a nearby forested area. I shoot at the shaman along the way, and manage to knock him out again before I get to the tree line. One Eye is not far behind, but I never planned to be here for him to find. After using some trees to break his immediate line of sight, I cast my invisibility schematic and loop around to Regina, where I feed her a healing potion.

When the light of consciousness returns to her eyes, I ask her, “Do we want to kill One Eye? I am not sure if we can but getting away will be a lot harder if the Orcs find out about us this quickly. Your call.”

Shaking the stars out, she asks “How long do we have?”

“Not sure, might be seconds, might be a couple minutes. If it's more than a couple minutes he's coming back with friends.”

“You managed to lose him? Well done. Prep one or two of your spells while I chug potions. We need to kill him, we can't outrun those wolves while we're on foot. Where will he be coming from?”

I point at the forest, where we can expect to see one eye returning from very soon. Maybe I should try and stabilize the Shaman but… I do not care if he lives or not. If we capture One Eye he will serve the same purpose. If we do not capture One Eye, it is because he killed us. I get behind her and start prepping imbuements.