The dead, even your enemies who have perished in battle, deserve your respect. Do not disrespect their corpse, and the corpse will not disrespect you… - The Creations Chapter 30, Verses 25-26.

I watched passively, at first. I only had a dagger, while these men had swords. Some were longer swords that were held by both hands, others were shorter and could be held with one hand. The ones who held the shorter blades also had a shield.

I must admit I knew nothing about weapons. Unless you were specifically bought or raised to be a bodyguard or in the army, Gar’shan were not allowed to wear weapons. We were not even allowed to hold them or learn about them. My ignorance of weapons showed and Kingsley, the night before, had promised to teach me of them as we made our way to cross the border.

The man who had been on patrol was engaged in fighting with Kingsley. She seemed to have him under control, as every time he came near she was able to dodge his advances and respond with delivering a light wound. It almost was a dance. In her hands were a pair of sai, a dagger like weapon that had a smaller prong on each side of the middle, longer blade. I had learned of it the night before, in Kingsley’s first list of weapons she mentioned. She used hers because they could be hidden, unlike a sword, and were good for defense.

Grimshaw ran into the middle of the campsite near the fire and tried to get the attention of the four newly awakened men. His walking stick now became a deadly stave, which he wielded with scary dexterity, surprising for someone who was always so calm and seemingly peaceful. Though barely awake men responded quickly to the alarm, they were still groggy. I worried about Grimshaw, him being alone against 4 people.

I then realized I had to do something. “Tal’Lal!” I yelled. A white light shot up from the ground and like mist, the light wrapped itself around Grimshaw quickly. Grimshaw cursed when he saw this.

“Kingsley, we can’t let any of them escape, they have seen the power of God”. Instantly, I knew I had made a mistake. Magic was rare, exceedingly rare. The only magic the Taurons had was with their high priests who could cast magic if they prepared it for days in advance. Not on a battlefield. It was our magic that had caused Taurons to hate us in the first place. Showing magic in a fight would just inflame their hatred. If any of them survived to tell the tale, that hatred would be placed solely on the shoulders of the slaves, and they would be questioned about how we had strong magic.

“Do not worry. These men are dead anyway.” Kingsley responded. With that I shouted “Tal’Lal” twice more and shielded both myself and Kingsley. That brought me down to 4 Zeal. It would take me three days to recover it.

I knew that in some ways, I was invulnerable for two health points. I didn’t know how to use the dagger that I was given other than how to hold it properly and the different ways to use it- stabbing and slashing. I supposed I did do some butchering for Palion, usually pigs. He knew that Gar’shan were disgusted by them, but he made us butcher them anyway. Maybe I should act like I am taking the heart out of the pig and slip the dagger through the ribs.

Because I was a teacher- I couldn’t die, not really- and because I had a shield that would soak 2 damage, I decided to engage the enemy. I ran to one of the men who had their back to me while fighting Grimshaw and stabbed my dagger into his back. I could feel it go through his cloak and hit resistance in his leather shirt, but I pushed even harder and felt it go through the ribs.

You inflict .1 damage against a slave hunter.

You gain a skill in Daggers!

He turned around and looked at me. I had luckily been holding on to the dagger for my life when he had turned, and it came out smoothly, though I almost dropped it with the force of him moving sideways.

When he turned on me, I got scared. He was taller and way more muscular than I was. He probably had a health of 7 or 8 or something. I was in trouble. Wishing I hadn’t been so brave moments ago, I tried to back away from him. He followed. He lifted his longsword with both hands and made a massively powered downward thrust aimed for my shoulders. I moved, but not quickly enough but my shield seemed to cause the sword to block the trajectory of the shield, and the sword glided right off.

Shield absorbs 1.25 damage from a slave hunter’s attack.

Tal’Lat, was I in trouble! I whimpered and moved back some more, and he raised his sword once again, but then his menacing expression dissolved into surprise as the deadly end of a sword bloomed out from his chest. He died instantly, and Kingsley looked at me sternly. She commanded me to stay out of trouble while I watched as blood spurted out of the wound and onto me. She left what must have been one of the dead slave hunter’s swords in the man’s chest and the man dropped to the ground.

I nodded and backed away. I decided it would be better if I stayed out of combat. I looked at Grimshaw, though, to make sure he was OK. I had to blink my eyes. It looked like there were two of them in the campsite. Each one fighting an individual slave hunter. Was that a spell?

I then saw Kingsley engage the third living hunter. She whirled around the man, easily ducking and diving, weaving around as if she were made of water instead of a living body. It was a thing to behold. In seconds, the man was dead with dozens of small wounds on his chest, arms and shoulders.

The tide of the battle was firmly in our grasp, and I breathed a little more easily. I looked at the slaves, whose mouths had dropped open. It did not look like they understood that we were on the good side. They had just seen magic for the first time. I am sure it was pretty jaw-droppingly frightening. I, myself, was surprised enough to see two Grimshaws in the fight and to see Kingsley move supernaturally fast.

I walked towards the slaves, with my palms out. I spoke in Gar’shan to them, quietly and respectfully. “Let me help you.” I had whispered this, and they could barely hear me above the grunts and moans of the dying men at the campsite. I spoke more loudly.

“Let me help you. I am Gar’shan. I was recently freed a week ago- I am going to be, well, I am a teacher.” They seemed to calm down a little, though I noticed a couple of disgusted looks at my nearly bald head. They must have still thought I was faithless.

The fight is over, you have earned 5 XP for your role in the party.

The moderately injured man spoke up. “I am Cas. This is my friend Horace and niece, Shalin. Can you unchain us. The slave hunters have the keys?

I looked at one of the dead Taurons and went to him. I was going to look through his pockets when a window popped up. The window held a few boxes, and in one of them was a key. I thought about grabbing the key and it went into my inventory. That’s convenient, I thought. Being a teacher and knowing the system had quite a few perks.

I ran back to the slaves and slowly unlocked their chains. Kingsley came over and gave them cloaks taken from the dead slave hunters. After I had unlocked the chains on the girl, Shalin, she started crying and went to Kingsley who held her uncomfortably. Together they left to clean Shalin up. Kingsley said this in a chilly tone. None of the men followed. We all knew what had happened. Taurons were disgusting people, and slave hunters were notoriously amongst the worst.

Cas went to one of the dead bodies, kicked it and spat upon it. Grimshaw let him, and even comforted him after despite the fact he had disobeyed scripture. The act invited the unrestful dead to want to get revenge on us… even more than normal, since we caused their death in the first place. I understood how Cas felt though.

We cleaned up the campsite a bit and looked for equipment. We found some that the slaves, ex-slaves, could use. We promised them that we would stay with them until Solom. Eventually, Grimshaw healed the man with a spell, and Cas praised God for the miracle. It is a miracle, I thought, as I watched the tear in the flesh knit back together in a matter of seconds under the tender care of Grimshaw and his spell.

We had to make some distance from the camp in case the last patrol knew where it was, so we quickly ate and then departed. We had a few hours until dawn.