Corbin laid out just the bare essentials of the situation to Kyessy: coming through the portal, getting ambushed by Denspire infantry, and him flying away.

“And… look, she stole my card.”

“You’re a familiar. You belong to a master.”

“Look, slavery is not okay, okay? Consent is a thing. It’s important.”

Kyessy stared off south toward the swamps and the portal. “You are not wrong. Plus, this infernal window thing has explained that experience points are a reward for setting your slaver free. Experience points are nearly as necessary as bread and water these days, so we engage in your quest.”

Achievement unlocked! Quest giver

You’ve put people on the path as you have set. Feels almost… godly, doesn't it? Don’t let it go to your birdy little head, all right?

Reward: that superior feeling of getting people to do what you want. Oh, and 100 XP.

In another ten minutes, the healer gave a frustrated snort and stood, complaining about using up valuable mana potions and never getting peace and quiet he needed. Hale the tanky paladin chuckled, and sheathed his friggin enormous sword. He had the sort of shoulder pads most MMORPG players salivated over, the huge ones with the gold trim. These ones were either painted white, or they’d been magically treated somehow. They each had a holy symbol… or just protection runes on them, in the shape of a triforce from that video game. He then hefted up a shield that probably weighed as much as the dwarf.

“Let’s go and save your lil lady,” he told Corbin, and gave him a friendly pat on the head.

They traveled in companionable silence, broken occasionally by clear inside jokes. Dane Goddamnit would’ve understood instantly. Corbin learned that the dwarf was named Drell, or at least nicknamed Drell, and the fellinian was called Rinna.

“Is Kyessy your real name or is that short for something?” he asked.

“Can you run some intel?” she asked. She waved her hands erratically. “Just, fly about, make sure enemies aren’t on approach, and don’t. Talk. To me.”

“I have True Sight,” he offered.

“Wonderful. That should keep you from blathering on about your true destiny as a human for at least ten minutes.”

Corbin didn’t care what he had to do, he was going to get this tiefling to help him. Undaunted by her words, he took to the sky and swooped around. He soon found another detachment of the infantry crouching down behind a hillock to their left, and headed down to relay this to Kyessy.

“Numbers?” she asked.

“Probably twenty or twenty-five. Most level five to seven, but their commander is a level nine.”

“They’ll be expecting a larger force. They shouldn’t come screaming over that hill just for us.” But they turned away from the group of Denspire soldiers regardless, to give them even longer to run before deciding to take on this mercenary group.

Another hour marching brought them very near the portal, to where the Denspire infantry were skirmishing with some of the Fellwroth soldiers and mercenaries. The whole thing had devolved into smaller melees the closer to the portal you got.

They were all in awe of the thing. That was one of the first lessons he got from these four. The next was that they all had game menus and stats like he did, but they had no idea what they were. Whatever had happened to open the ‘nexus’, it had created the game UI for everyone on both sides, magic unnamed land and earth.

As much as there was a story going on with the Five, Corbin was coming to the realization that the story might have originated in this world.

Denspire, according to Hale and Drell, had been part of the Fellwroth empire/coalition for as long as most people could remember. Suddenly, with the nexus opening up, Denspire had had enough of living under Fellwroth control, and wanted either autonomy, or supremacy. It wasn’t clear which. And this was why, according to Hale, both cities were assembling armies, hiring out mercenaries, and sending delegations through the portal after allies.

Corbin laughed at that. If he understood anything about the Five in his second time being alive, it was that the Five were, at most, in their early twenties. They were probably closer to late teens. Sure they might have the power to rule a city (badly), but only that Rico was actually doing anything with any level of competency. Other than repeatedly kill Corbin. He’d already taken on the creation of laws and a system of punishments, which he clearly had inherited from Hyacinth the Benevolent.

Apparently Corbin had removed the queen from the Five’s chess board when he’d teleported the fae girl out into the real world.

Hale talked almost ceaselessly. He and Drenn didn’t seem to take any of this war business very seriously. For a massive guy with a tiny head sandwiched between those huge shoulder pads, carrying an equally massive shield, he was carefree, while the ranger who should’ve been one with the wild was the most dour of the four.

“How about Corbin?” Rinna asked. “What’s your story?”

Corbin fluttered over to the healer, and shouted over at Kyessy. “Would you kindly translate, Ms. Kyessy?”

“It’s Kyesiara to you, bird,” the ranger grumped.

“Kyesiara, bestest ranger in the whole world, could I prevail on you to translate for these good people who have asked an honest question?”

“Oh come now,” Hale said, and clapped a companionable hand on her shoulder. “The bird has so much to say. Why not share?”

“Seconded!” Drell said.

“Gods above,” the ranger muttered. “What can a bird possibly have to say worth listening to?”

“I’m simply asking,” Corbin said, with entirely too much sass.

“As you will,” she said.

“I woke up to a nellwynian bard, level 75, trying to kill me.”

Kyesiara (not Kyessy) rolled her eyes and translated.

“Hang on… trying?” Hale asked.

“Seventy-five? Level 75?” Drell asked.

“Yes, seventy-four plus one, and yes, trying.” He tried to press one wing against his breast. “Bird, see? I’m pretty fast, maneuverable.” And very lucky. “Then lost my hyper rare holo foil card, had it stolen by Priscilla, felinian cat lady. The rest, with the monsters and the dungeon crawling, doesn’t matter as much as the Five all being very high level. They run the other side of the portal, or at least one city.”

“Level 75,” Drell breathed. “All of them?”

“Correct,” Corbin told them.

This gave them a lot to mentally digest on the way to complete their quest. They were utterly astonished to learn that earth didn’t possess magic, though people could accomplish magic by means of ‘devices’. This led Drell and Hale to the conclusion that all the people of earth were gnomish folk, and enchanted all the loot from their monster kills to create gadgets. Corbin gave up trying to explain about earth, mostly because they just decided he was a gnomish in a human’s body, and so were the rest of the people of earth. Another half hour on, he did another reconnaissance, and figured out he could find Prissy by the sudden telepathic klaxons she was sounding out. They went like this:

“CORBIN! YOU PROMISED! CORBIN! CORBIN! COME BACK YOU BLEEDIN’ CROW! COOOORRRRRBIIIIIIIIN!”

He was able to pinpoint her location not long after that, and relay the troop numbers to Kyessy, Hale, Drell and Rinna.

“They’re at a small encampment on the other side of this rocky thing right here. One prisoner transport wagon with the bars and the wretched people with the blue cloaks–”

“Those wretched prisoners would be the Fellwroth army units who were captured,” Kyessy said, leaving the others to wonder what Corbin had told her. “And their rescue means coins.”

“Yes, anyhow. They have a pair of guards on them with those magic spears, but another twelve infantry units around a campfire a good thirty feet off. There are some crates here and there–”

“Draw up a map.”

He snorted, fluttered to the ground to where they were hunkered, and began to scratch out the locations of the crates, the one tent that had been set up, and the troop locations. They supplied acorns and pebbles and other bric-a-brac for him to situate until he had a viable map. The beasts of burden weren’t horses, but he labeled them horses anyway. They looked more like yaks had somehow mated with peacocks: silken blue feathers on most of their bodies, but shaggy like a yak, tiny heads with teensy feathery crowns, but also nine feet at the shoulder and long ostrich necks so they could graze. Hale and Drell seemed to find it terribly amusing he didn’t know what to call these things.

“Don’t tell him,” Hale whispered, and laughed so hard he fell on his butt.

They debated strategy for a few minutes. Various ideas were put forward, including a rushed full-frontal assault by Hale, but this was shot down by Rinna, who hadn’t recovered all of his mana and uses of some of his ‘weird cards’. The second idea was to get the prisoners free of the cart, arm them, and even up the numbers, but this was also shot down: Corbin had thought they looked pretty badly beaten or malnourished or both. The last option, put forth by Rinna, was the one they went with.

The plan had unfolded pretty well at the beginning, with Kyessy drawing their attention to her by shooting one of the soldiers right in the head from the top of the butte. Corbin watched his health bar drain from full green almost all the way down to empty, where the little bit left went bright red. Hale and Rinna waited at the base of the gigantic rock formation, but on the south side, more towards the prisoners. When the soldiers all took up their weapons (and tried to evade her arrow fire, which was consistently on target), they found themselves with Drell appearing from behind one of the larger boulders and diving over their formation. Before they could reorient, the skirmisher had already engaged and downed one of the soldiers, while Kyessy took down yet another who had turned to face their new opponent. Before even the first of attacks came against Drell, they’d dropped three out of twelve nearly out of the fight.

Hale and Rinna crept out toward the prisoners, with Corbin in tow. With him there, he suddenly had access to all of Prissy’s abilities. He stabbed down into the first with a pair of Spectral Blade attacks from behind, while the soldier stared up at Hale’s gigantic armor, gigantic shield, and gigantic grin. He too fell a few seconds later, when Hale brought out his gigantic two-handed sword (one-handed) and crunched down through his shoulder and into his torso. The second guard, half his health gone from the Spectral Beak attacks, took one look through the bars of the cart at Hale and ran.

From here, Corbin took off and gave the signal for Drell to retreat, and Hale to come reinforce them. The stout little skirmisher suddenly leaped and twisted in the air, evaded a pair of attacks, landed with a tuck and roll, and ran off toward the huge man with the shield and the protection buffs.

“Nerf me,” Drell said. The word ‘nerf’ was clearly a curse, and Corbin was on board. His job was now to retrieve the keys off the guards and release the prisoners, except… the cowardly guard was the only one with a set, and this lock was apparently enchanted, though probably not by Harriet.

Prissy stood up in the cart. “You came back.”

“I keep my promises,” he said. “Now give me my card so I can get you out of there.”