Before me stood a figure, cloaked in dark brown with a cowl covering its head. Tozk’s black blood dripped from the edge of the sword in my savior’s hand. A quick flick and miraculously the metal was completely clean. Even in the dim torchlight it shone, almost with its own inner light. Delicate tracings were etched into the blade. They looked like some kind of script, but I couldn’t read them.

The hood was pushed back, and friendly brown eyes regarded me with a warmth I didn’t understand.

“Ah,” said the man. “It has been quite a search, but I’ve finally found you!”

Brown hair peeked out from a strange hat atop his head, and laughter lines bracketed his lips. Those friendly brown eyes were keen and filled with intelligence, and the corner of his mouth quirked up in a half smile.

How odd. Why did he wear a hat underneath a hood? The hat was form-fitting and covered his head tightly. The front of the hat curved into a brim over his face, presumably to keep it shaded in the sun. A strange sigil that ended in a sharp point at its peak was sewn into the front of the hat. Was it meant to be an odd-looking mountain?

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing to the front of the hat and immediately wanted to slap my hand on my forehead. Of all the things I could have said, I asked about his hat. What was wrong with me?

“Well,” he answered, “it’s a sort of symbol.”

“What does it signify?”

He laughed warmly, “It shows that I am sympathetic to the weak and downtrodden.”

He chuckled again as if at a joke.

With a shake of my head, I asked the things I should have asked in the first place.

“Who are you? Why did you save me? Who am I? Why am I here? What is this place?” The questions came faster and faster, urgent and fearful.

The man’s brow furrowed for just a moment, and he looked at me carefully. He blinked and looked closer. It took me a moment to realize that he was Analyzing me.

“Well,” he said slowly. “This is quite unexpected.”

I tried to Analyze him and received the same message I had received from the man with the rapier.

Human. ???

Why couldn’t I see anything about him?

He murmured, “This may be for the best. They won’t recognize you like this. Of course, I recognize you, but then you could hardly expect to hide your identity from me.”

“Why?” I asked. The more he spoke, the more questions I had.

He grinned at me. “Because more than anyone else, I see you clearly. I see you for who you truly are. I see your heart.”

He reached his hand out to me, and I clasped it. The man in brown pulled me up with a quick yank and then looked critically at the side of my head. In the shock of everything that had just happened, I had forgotten that I was missing an ear. I reached up self-consciously to cover the side of my head. With a quick slap, he redirected my hand and peered hard at what must have been the stump of my ear.

He tsked.

“That won’t do. Not at all.”

He touched the side of my head gently and whispered a word, and suddenly all the pain was gone.

I jerked my head back in surprise and reached up. This time, he didn’t stop me, and I was amazed to feel my ear attached to my head, just as it had always been. I glanced around the floor and found the chunk of flesh that had previously been my ear.

“Better on your head than on the floor, isn’t it? Well, assuming you can keep your head off the floor.”

Tozk’s surprised face looked back up at me, blood trickling out of its neck. A huge gush of blood had shot out of his body when he was beheaded, but without the heart beating, the blood flow had dwindled and black viscous liquid merely dribbled out from the orc’s remains.

He reached down and grabbed a battered, rusty short sword from the belt on the smaller orc’s corpse.

Tossing it to me, he suggested, “I think you’ll be more comfortable with that than any of the other weapons in here.”

I caught it by the hilt, and he was right. My hand felt RIGHT, holding a sword. Though the club and the dagger had served me well, using them hadn’t felt like this.

You have learned the skill Swords, Level 1.

What? But I hadn’t done anything!

“All right! Now it’s time for us to get out of here!”

He pulled the hood back over his head--and the strange hat--and spun as if to leave.

“Wait!” I said, perhaps a bit too loudly. “You haven’t answered any of my questions! Please, at least tell me who you are and who I am. You clearly recognize me.”

He stopped on his way to the stairs and then said quietly, “It might be best if you didn’t know those things right now. That ignorance might be your best protection until you’re stronger.”

All these cryptic sayings! They were driving me crazy! If he hadn’t just saved my life, I’d have been tempted to tackle him and squeeze the answers out of him.

“Come,” he commanded. “It won’t be easy to escape from this place. Speed is our ally in this.”

Frustrated, I demanded, “I don’t understand anything of what is happening! At least tell me what these words mean that keep appearing before my eyes!”

He froze at the base of the stairs and spun to face me.

“Words?” he whispered. “What words?”

I stammered, “I see words. They appear before my eyes, usually when I’m in the middle of doing something. When you handed me the sword, they said, You have learned the skill Swords, Level 1. What does it mean?”

The man closed his eyes for the briefest of moments, and when he opened them they were shining in excitement. He opened his mouth once. Shut it. Opened it again. Shut it again.

Finally, he said quickly, “There is much that you will need to learn, but our circumstances give me no time to teach you here. The words that you see will tell you many things--about yourself and about the world around you. When we are free of the castle, I will explain. For now, if you want to know more about yourself simply think ‘Status’ to yourself and a description will be given to you. Careful examination of that description will reveal much.”

He paused and then his voice sharpened. “You say you learned the Swords skill when I gave you that?”

He gestured to the rusty blade he had tossed to me, and I nodded.

“Have you ever used a sword before?”

I shook my head.

His brow furrowed as he mused softly, “That...is very interesting. Very interesting indeed. Do you know any other skills?”

I thought back to all the text that had been appearing before me.

“Analyze, Identify, Small Blades, Stealth, Hide, Backstab, Blunt Weapons. I think that’s all of them.”

“And when did you learn all of this?”

“In the last half hour.”

His eyesbrows rose in surprise. He considered for a moment and then smiled broadly.

“We will have to explore this. I have a theory, but it will require testing to confirm. For now, we must go.”

With that, he climbed the stairs without a glance back. Not knowing what else to do, I followed him.