Stroking Nyx with one hand in an effort to soothe her tense companion, Reeve strained to see any signs of danger in the lightning-rent night. She started as a chime sounded.

“Reavyr Two has…wait, what? Dad?” She twisted to look past the twins’ legs. “Ohmagod!”

The gnomes were almost on them. Reeve and Leaf had time only to stand before a shrill roar rose from the horde. Stepping between the twins, who crouched and raised their hands to cast, Reeve lowed her naginata to a horizontal defensive position and saw from the corner of her eye Leaf pull a short silver cudgel from within her cloak. Reeve’s perception of time slowed as the first gnome, who was leaving a smokey trail, reached her and thrust his rapier toward her shin. Raising the sole of her boot as a low shield, she felt the rapier pierce its bottom and pass between her first two toes.

Will not be doing that again, she thought, as she stamped the boot down.

Quickly lost in concentration, Reeve moved in concert with the twins, Leaf, and their animal companions, magic glowing around the six as the twins’ hands flew through the air, Reeve and Leaf striking in equal measure with their staffs and boots, and Nyx and the honey badger matching rapiers with teeth and claws.

When Walter fully respawned, sitting on the trembling pony, his perception of time stretched and contracted like a weight on a short spring. Looking first at the wide-open world outside the cave and then behind him at the sea of little, very unfriendly, very pokey, and, it seemed, very judgemental creatures that had attacked him, he shouted, “Reeve, this way,” gripped the pony’s reins, and spurred it straight into the unseen but still intact defensive shield Dawn had laid over the cave’s mouth.

Stunned as equine face found unperceived barrier, the pony reared, throwing Walter before itself losing its balance and rolling sideways and backward onto the halfling.

Reeve did not notice the chime, lost as it was in the cacophonous sounds of the fight echoing in the cave.

Once respawned on the now extremely skittish pony, Walter doubled over for a moment from the double-death dubstep before forcing himself upright to look around. He spotted the stone shelf on which Reeve’s bow still lay. Standing unsteadily on the saddle as it jerked with the pony’s movements, he leaped and grasped the lip of the shelf with his fingers. To his great surprise, he easily pulled himself up onto the shelf. “Thank you arms!” He said, turning to sit on the shelf and take in the full extent of the carnage beneath him.

Reeve and their friends were in a tiny knot surrounded by bobbing heads and flashing blades. “Come now, Walter,” the halfling said aloud with as much encouragement as he could give himself, “you’ve been in this game a while. You’ve had some hard knocks, and there have been a few misunderstandings, but you’re learning. You have transferable skills. Time to contribute to the team.”

He grasped the hilts of his sheathed bladed but then shook his head. “I’m an Apiculturist. An innovative Pyromaniac Apiculturist Accountant. Need to know my strengths.”

Reaching back toward the cave wall, he pulled from his Inventory the large accountant’s ledger and let fly toward one of the creatures below. The ledger flattened the wee thing so completely that Walter would not have been able to guess there was anything between the book and the floor if he hadn’t known better. Reaching back again, he brought forth the inkpot and, with a hard flick of his wrist, sent it down directly into the face of another creature, ink splashing across its tiny eyes, blinding it. Reaching back once more, Walter spun the bee veil, with its rigid round brim, like a flying disc into the back of a little head, knocking the creature forward onto its face, its whole body then disappearing as the honey badger pounced upon it.

Checking his Inventory, Walter found only the quill left and decided to leave it unflung, as it seemed unlikely to travel more than a few inches from him before it would drift to the ground harmlessly. Tucking his chin, he looked suspiciously at the sheathed blades suspended from his suspenders.

“Well…,” he said, drawing the iron dagger. Aiming at one of the creatures near Reeve’s feet, he threw the blade with the same technique he’d used for the ledger and watched it instead fly almost straight down into the shoulder of one of the creatures immediately below his shelf. “Not bad,” he said to himself, confidence blooming. Unsheathing the wooden knife, he again aimed at a creature near Reeve’s feet, this time thinking of how she’d had him practice throwing to the side of the target, and he let the weapon fly, safely away from Reeve and to her left where it planted itself firmly in Dusk’s previously uninjured left butt cheek, the half-elf falling to a knee as her leg gave beneath her.

Walter’s overwhelming regret barely hit him before tiny fingers clenched one ankle and jerked him off the shelf.