“Well… there he goe-”

“Pi!” Bright-Solemn beeps in surprise and joy as it smacks into Kell’s head and rubs along the shiny surface.

“Y-well, nice to see you too, Bright-Solemn.” Kell looks down to Gulrin, who’s still salivating and going on about old lovers.

“Is… is this one…”

“Pipi, pipipipi pi. Pi… Pi pipipi pi.”

Kell nods. “I see,” he says with a condescending tone. “The more the merrier, I suppose. How far is this in the story?”

“Pipipi, pipipi pi. Pipi pi.”

Kell nods again as he looks about the surrounding swamp; the water’s churning all around them.

“And these are.”

“Pipipi.”

“Really? Scary.”

“Pipipipi.”

Kell reaches for Gulrin’s crossbow and brandishes it facetiously. “Ready to kill.”

“Pi,” Bright-Solemn says just as the first group of killer lizards break the surface. They’re dark green, the size of vans, and with at least a thousand teeth.

“Pipipiiiiii!” Bright-Solemn adds in horror as it floats up a few meters to avoid getting eaten.

“Thanks for the help. If only Night Winter or…” Only now does Kell spot the piece of paper that he’d emerged from.

There’s a pen folded into the page. The second he spots the pen and page, Kell drops the crossbow and takes up the written word. “Ahh, nevermind.”

Just before the first gator-drake vaults for Kell, he scribbles a few choice annotations to the paper’s backside. Just as the creature snaps for him, Kell flips the piece of paper into its snout. With a shockwave spreading across the murky waters, the reptile flies aside in a tailspin, soaring away three hundred meters before hitting some other dismal part of the swamp.

“Pipipi!?” Bright-Solemn demands as it fires a bolt at another gator-drake.

“Oh, see for yourself,” Kell says as he dangles the piece of paper in front of Bright-Solemn. The notation reads:

“Exception user weight: 0.1 kg. Common weight: 10,000 kg.”.

“Pi,” Bright-Solemn says with an impressed tone.

“Thank you,” Kell says as he slaps the piece of paper across another charging croco-dragon, flinging it far away to the swampy depths elsewhere, “I thought it up when I was outside.”

“G-…guhhhhhrannieeee,” Gulrin mumbles in a senseless stupor.

“Looks like he’s coming to,” Kell says as he slams a leaping gator-dragon back into the water with a flick of the paper.

“Pipipi, pipi: pipipi pipi pipi,” Bright-Solemn says with a very naughty tone.

“I’m not going to tell him that for you. That’s very unkind.”

“Pipi.”

“I’m not your insult translator. If you’re really that angry you could try blasting a message in the ground or something.”

“Piii…,” it says as it blasts out three of the lizards in a row as more and more emerge from the depths.

“Wh-where are we?” Gulrin asks with a sleepy tone.

“Good day to you, dwarf,” Kell starts, slapping his hyper-enchanted paper across another of the ‘gators. “We could use your help!”

Gulrin spots his crossbow on the ground next to Kell and in a jolt of movement takes it up and points it into the analyst’s ribs.

Kell doesn’t even raise his hands, but looks Gulrin square in the face. “Now, easy there, my… short friend,” Kell says, trying to be polite, or at least something moving away from hostility.

Bright-Solemn fails to hold in a few telling “pi”s when it notices that Kell isn’t all that much taller than the dwarf.

“The hell’re you?” Gulrin demands just as a maelstrom of water below betrays the presence of another beast right behind him.

Kell nods between Bright-Solemn and the point of the beast. It obliges and shoots a bolt into the water just as a charging evil leaps up for Gulrin’s skull. The beast explodes utterly, one of the super-long damage annotations popping cutely over its head before entering its state of vapor.

“I am your friend,” Kell says. “This little blip up here is Bright-Solemn, one of my… assistants.”

“Pi.”

Kell turns to Bright-Solemn, which is turning away huffily. “Well that is what you are, technically speaking,” he says before looking back to Gulrin. “I assume you’re here to help Hero?”

The dwarf nods, blowing out some of his unkempt beard that got in his mouth during the rather chaotic engagement. “Aye, and we don’t trust offworlders like you.”

Kell scoffs as he spots Night-Winter exit the woods a ways off and dive into the fens, making its way to them. “And yet I do trust you, Gulrin. My goal is the same as yours: The destruction of Exeranoth.”

The dwarf squints a stony eye. “That dragon’s a problem for you, even from your world? You one of those players?”

Kell shakes his head. “I’m from another realm. I’m attempting to remove the players.”

After a moment’s consideration, Gulrin lowers his crossbow, but keeps it at hand. “Lead the way, then.”

In a dramatic fashion far more cool than Kell is accustomed to, Night-Winter leaps up from the swamps and entangles the analyst back into the form of a hood and cloak.

“Nice to have you back,” Kell says in a professional tone.

“The assassin boy has your utensils,” Night-Winter rumbles like an ink-black cloud of muscle and death, causing a sharp, shocked-stupid “PI?!” from Bright-Solemn.

Kell looks off to the tower. “So he does. I guess we’ll have to pay him a vi-”

“Pipi PI?!”

Kell sighs as Gulrin looks between the three nervously. “Yes, Bright-Solemn,” Kell says. “Night-Winter can talk.”

“Pipipipi! Pi! Pipi!?”

“Honestly I’m kind of shocked. I always assumed that you two, having been in the Magistrate’s Armory for so long, would at least have exchanged some chit chat.”

Bright-Solemn turns away huffily. “Pipipi.”

“Wow,” Kell says with insult.

“That hurts a little,” Night-Winter says. “I am not...that creepy.”

Bright-Solemn peeks at the two out of the corner of its eye, and turns just a tad to speak again. “Pi, pipipi, pi pi pipipi, pip-” At once, a bolt of lead soars past Bright-Solemn, causing the little golden card thing to scatter about in the wind from the gust.

“PI!?”

Everyone gets low to the ground, which isn’t very helpful considering its all flatland.

“Ein… and friends,” Kell says, peering across to the rim of the swamp. Scribe Ein’s reintegrated into the serverworld, and with him he’s brought an O.E.L. strike team, a crew of four each with their own future-tech rifles.

“What the hell are they?!” Gulrin screams over the gunfire zipping overhead.

Kell sighs. “This will be rather challenging.

“Want me to break them?” Night-Winter asks with a tone like cut ice.

Kell hums as a shot goes right past his shoulder. “Yeah, let’s go for a swim,” he says, grabbing Bright-Solemn and taking it along as the three dip into the water, leaving Gulrin.

“Wh-… but are you sure it’s safe?” Gulrin, his eyes glued on the horizon to the oncoming fire, doesn’t quite realize in time that they’ve already slunked into the fens to make their approach.

“…Lads?” He finally looks back, and sighs. “Of all the selfish bastards….” With only a cautious glance to bloodied, scrambled waters below, Gulrin rolls into the mirk to lower his profile and begin the miserable swim up hundreds of meters to get closer to his obviously outmatching opponent. He considers briefly to hide, but he is a dwarf after all, and his good late father wouldn’t much care for a son that would hide away.