Now that Regina's divine anger buff has expired, all that she still has active is the life link spell making her slightly harder to hit and shunting half the damage she would take towards me. I do not plan to waste this spell at all, and unless Regina gets some critical hits in, I plan to drink a potion. I have 20 health left, but that can go very quickly if One Eye is able to pin Regina down for even a moment.

Regina seems to realize that her buff has expired but does not hesitate, devoting herself entirely to her attacks, landing another light strike against his leg, though she stumbles when trying to reverse her grip. At the same time as she connected with the electrical end of her bow, his axe met her shoulder, this time cutting through the armor and dealing me an additional 9 damage. Now you know why she stumbled. Neither of them were able to seize a second attack this time around.

Considering the damage Regina and consequently I took, I praise myself for having the vision to have already pulled out a healing potion, and I drink it immediately, recovering 9 health and bringing me back up to 20 health. Even now I am still feeling like a yoyo, continuing to need healing just to avoid taking a long nap.

Regina grits her teeth against the pain of his last strike and attempts to swing her bow in a figure eight. I… I did not realize people would actually do that in a real fight. It's actually a terrible offensive technique, you spend more time with it out of alignment than presenting a viable threat, and Regina of all people is the one doing it? Wow.

He ignores the windmilling staff and swings his enormous axe in an overhead arc, smashing through her guard and dealing another 9 damage to me. Yeah not gonna lie that aligns with my expectations for the effectiveness of a figure 8 staff technique. Pretty to look at, but it's only impressive looking, not actually good for fighting. I chug another potion, this one only heals me for 6 damage. As sad as it was to lose Joaqim and Bucky, consolidating all the potions crafted on the way up here is saving our lives right now; if we hadn't had their potions to use, I would've already run out.

Regina's swings are getting more and more wild, and I think she must have lost her calm. She should still be about half health, I think, though it is hard to say. One of her wild swings hits, dealing a moderate amount of harm, though he still does not seem to be in as bad of shape as we are, and that is without accounting for his ability to heal. I might have to use my touch of the ghoul much sooner than I would like. As his axe once more digs into her belly, causing me an additional 8 damage, I decide that this will be my last healing potion. We are not going to make it more than one more exchange, 2 at most. Oh wow, I just healed 13 health from one potion. Why? Why are magical effects so ridiculously inconsistent?! Why are ALL of the system managed things so damned inconsistent?!

Regina is looking rather battered, and is being pushed around easily at this point, she has clearly become pain averse, and One Eye is easily reading her attacks and avoiding them, while positioning himself to get ever better retaliatory strikes. Yep, like that one. As she attempts another lunge, he cleanly sidesteps it before dropping his great axes onto her exposed back with so much force it slams her into the ground.

I took 10 damage from that strike, and I do not even think it was a critical strike. Ok Elliot, do or die. Literally. I really wish we were able to cause him more damage before I went to try this, but I do not have a choice. He had better be affected by this or we are both dead the next time Regina gets hit.

I run forward towards Regina, arm extended, doing my best impression of panicked concern even as I activate my right glove, and when I am just beside Regina I attempt to slap One Eye. Anywhere on his body. It doesn't matter where I hit him, but it's critical that I make contact with him and not air for the magic to have a chance of success.

If you were curious, if you’re willing to do a suicidal charge against an armored opponent who is built like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime and who does not deem to you be a threat but considers someone else right beside you a threat, it is pretty easy to get a slap in. He only realizes that I was only pretending to do the anime “our hero has fallen oh no!” drama routine a fraction of a second before my glowing magical hand connects, and his roar of rage is cut off almost as quickly as it began.

I had not discussed this ahead of time with Regina; I was too busy concentrating on casting every imbuement I could in preparation for this fight, and he arrived before my preparations were completed. But she is a smart girl, and she was planning to continue attacking him even before I'd said anything.

I scramble around to his back so as not to interfere with Reginas targeting and I start scratching, clawing, and biting him everywhere I see skin. It's not many places, but… Regina stands up and begins raining down blows of her own. With him unable to move, this feels downright unfair.

If Regina feels that it is unfair, she does not show it, instead she puts her bow to work smacking him from the left and the right again and again and again… We do not stop until he is obviously unconscious.

One Eye you were a truly worthy adversary, but today you met your match because you ran into me!!! BWAHAHAHAHAHA! Sorry but I really had to get that out of my system, ever since this guy entered into the fray it has been one mad gamble after another, and that ended up making for one hell of an adrenaline high. I think it would be more than obvious to anyone watching that we got very, very lucky. We had no business winning that fight. But we did anyhow.

The immediate result of our victory is that, while I know we are not free and clear yet, the mere fact that we survived such a tough fight is kicking off a rather potent euphoric effect, and the dopamine receptors in my brain are working overtime. A mere glance can confirm that Regina is similarly lost in the moment.

We're hurt. We're very hurt. But we lived, and we shouldn't have. Why wouldn't we be manic and giddy? And… There it is. Also, exhausted. It doesn't take long to feel the crash when your fight or flight response has been engaged for so long.

We chug some healing potions to get ourselves back to fighting shape, and then strip the armor and weapons from the shaman and the… What exactly IS this guy? Is he like Fork, the high priest from my lizardfolk tribe who ended up getting class levels as a druid? He fights like a fighter, but also heals like a priest, and that arrow defense spell is something I thought only Mages could do? I guess it doesn't matter right now, we're on a timer.

We strip him of his armor and weapons, and I notice that he is wearing a necklace, a rune carved stone with a hole drilled through it, with braided leather cordage going through the hole. I take that as well; it does not serve a clear purpose, but it might be magical. I can investigate that later. I bind his wounds so that he doesn't die, then I check the shaman, who was also still alive though clearly in need of medical attention. Nice. I bind and treat his wounds as well.

Finally, I grab the Falchions from the others we have killed. Those Falchions are the most valuable piece of equipment that the standard Orcs are equipped with, by a significant margin. After that I drag the shaman while Regina drags One Eye. We are both struggling to move so much weight, but frankly it is all good loot and we do not expect a search party to come for at least a few hours. Probably.

It would not matter if we were wrong about the search party taking a long time, One Eye alone would be enough to slow our progress to a relative crawl; and leaving without him would make the entire mission pointless. Grabbing the extra loot does not slow us by an appreciable degree beyond what carrying him alone would have done, so it doesn't actually matter that we are trying to be a bit greedy here.

Huffing and puffing, taking several breaks along the way, and yes obviously using tricks such as putting them on cloaks that we treat as stretchers to make it easier to keep dragging them using different muscle groups, we make it back to the Carriage as nighttime approaches. We load the Orcs we kidnapped into the carriage, tie Regina's horse against the back of the carriage, and Regina starts us on the long trip back to Diamond Lake while I bind the prisoners as well as I can.

I strip them completely naked so that they will not have material components, stuff gags in their mouths so that they cannot use any verbal expressions, and loop leather cords through their fingers so they cannot perform complex gesticulations. Oh and of course I bind their hands and feet. As soon as they are conscious, these Orcs will be walking.

Once the task of securing the prisoners is complete? It is time for me to to sleep. I am still cold blooded, so I end up laying between the two prisoners in the carriage and sleeping there. They are stronger than me, but I have claws, teeth, and full health. If they wake up first and try to harm me, even I should be able to handle a naked, near catatonic orc.

This is not earth, and I do not believe they will be able to kill me in my sleep. Probably. But I also do not think they will wake up so soon. Probably. We really do need to get distance though, and I need my imbuement slots back, so I should sleep while I can and relieve Regina when I wake up.

We cannot push the horse’s hard day after day. Doing so would kill them, and we would have a much harder journey back if that happened, but we also cannot remain just a few hours away from the Orc encampment when they are likely to realize something went wrong soon. I want to give Regina a break too, but if you want to survive doing dangerous things, you have to do everything you can with cold blooded rationality.

We both need rest, but we also require distance which means someone has to keep us moving, and if only one of us gets to rest… Having my imbuements back is going to do more to recover our maximum potential strength than letting her get a few hours sleep would. If we'd had to fight One Eye without those imbuements up and active, rather than a close fought battle pulling out a lucky win, it would've just been another inglorious ass kicking.

The way I view things, for at least a few hours after our fight, those Orcs going missing is unlikely to be noted. The shaman’s business is known by the chief, and presumably One Eye also said something to the effect of how he would follow the Shaman and make sure everything was on the up and up. Without knowing the details on what was being investigated or even where, they should have no reason to be concerned. A few hours are nothing. But by night fall? From this point on we are living on borrowed time. Maybe the continued absence of One Eye and the shaman won’t be discovered missing until morning, but we cannot count on that.

We need to open a gap between us and the Orc encampment, and we need to get back to Diamond Lake before their trackers can catch up to us. So, we start the trip now, and we will travel through much of the night, at least until the point that I wake up with my imbuements refreshed, and then she will sleep while the horses rest and I keep watch. I cannot be counted on to drive at night anyhow due to not having a heat source while driving the carriage; but I can keep Regina safe and give the horses a rest. It will have to be a short rest, only a few hours until daylight, and then we will be back on the road.

I must confess that, although using the orcs for body heat is more efficient in this case; using Regina for warmth is a far more pleasing experience. One eye might be cute by Orcish standards for all I know, it's not really an aesthetic I'm accustomed to and capable of making a fair judgement on, but Regina doesn't snore the way One Eye does.