I was feeling more than a bit claustrophobic in my armor, but I ruthlessly suppressed my fear as much as I could. How the hell are you going to be the best with this stuff if you can’t even wear it, June?!

I was drawn from my self-recrimination by Octavia beginning to bounce up and down while fanning herself. “Okay! Okay, okay, okay. This is it! It’s time for things to get epic, so don’t fuck up, noobs!”

“Sure, sure,” Druid answered somewhat nervously.

I narrowly contained the urge to laugh at how over the top Octavia’s excitement was. Thankfully, it seemed to be a bit infectious and helped with the lingering fear still pooled in my gut. “You got it,” I replied instead as I gave my right sword an experimental slash through the air. The sharp metal whistled as it sliced, and I eyed the skeletons Elle had conjured with her power.

“Here we go then!” Octavia boldly declared. “Dungeonmaster, leave me out, but make this a real battle—don’t hold anything back! Everyone else, have fun taking down these skeletons!” She struck a silly pose then added, “Encounter—begin! Go go go!”

Weapons of all sorts and varieties started to appear in the hands of the skeletons around us, then under Elle’s silent direction, the undead began to surge forward. Behind me I heard a yelp that sounded suspiciously like Druid, but I forced myself to keep my eyes on the prize. It was a good thing I did too, since two skeletons were upon me mere moments later. I awkwardly slashed at the one on the right and completely forgot to make the sword heavier until after my attack connected. Fortunately, although the skeleton tried to block my clumsy strike with its arm, the blow cleaved straight through and continued on through its torso. The remnants of the skeleton’s shattered body fell to the grass and didn’t move any further. I was so surprised at the success that I didn’t react in time to the second skeleton swinging a spiked ball on a chain at me. I grunted as I took the blow to the chest, but thankfully the plate armor prevented the spikes from giving me extra breathing holes. It promptly tugged the weapon back and started to spin up for another attack, and seeing other skeletons quickly approaching, I ripped the weapon away with my power and ran one of my swords through its seemingly confused face—it didn’t exactly have a skin or muscles, so it was hard to say.

Several more were almost upon me, so I jumped into the air to give myself some breathing room.

“No cheating, Fighter!” I heard Octavia call out from behind me.

“Huh? Whaddaya mean?” I asked, turning to give her a confused look.

“Fighters can’t fly!” she argued, jabbing her finger at me. “The whole point of this is you’re only supposed to use your powers in ways the class would! So you gotta stay on the ground and fight them back with your weapons!”

“O…kay,” I muttered as I set myself down in a clear area behind where Paladin and the woman in the brown dress, who had apparently become a moving stone sculpture at some point, were fighting back the skeletons. “Hadn’t realized.”

“Do better! I expect more from you, Fighter!”

Come on, June, she’s counting on you! You can swing a goddamn sword, can’t you? With a grunt of effort, I burst forward towards the other side of the rock woman, using my power to not only eliminate the weight of the heavy plate armor and swords but to also bolster my speed as close to superhuman levels as I dared with Octavia watching for more ‘cheating.’ The rock woman jumped away from me with a yelp of surprise when I whizzed past and carved through three skeletons with simultaneous, parallel swings of my swords across my front. I leapt back from a blow aimed at my midsection and punished the attacking skeleton with a swing from the much greater range of one of my greatswords before pressing the assault on several more approaching.

“Sorcerer and I can cover over here!” Paladin called out to me. “Give Artificer some backup!”

I had not yet been introduced to Sorcerer or Artificer, but knowing Sorcerer was the stone lady meant by process of elimination that Artificer was the guy in leather with the mohawk. Deciding to push the boundaries of what was acceptable for the game—and who knew all those quests everyone laughed at the Eight for could be so fun!—I turned and took two running steps towards my destination before leaping into the air, flexing my power to give myself extra height and distance. Apparently a running long jump was acceptable for a fighter, since Octavia didn’t express disappointment, and with a whoop of excitement, I landed next to Artificer. The man was being somewhat overrun by merit of being surrounded by four skeletons, but to his credit, he was holding his own admirably well. As I cut down the two on his left, he slammed the pommel of a stolen sword with a broken in half blade squarely into the center of an oncoming blow from an axe before rotating and hooking his free arm around the torso of the skeleton, twisting the enemy around to act as a human—inhuman?—shield. He blocked a bash from the actual shield of a skeleton then wasted no time in shoving his hostage towards its compatriot. While the skeleton fell forward, he maintained a hold on a piece of flesh from it, and once the long piece had tugged free, he somehow tied a knot with one hand around the grip of his busted sword. With the knot secured, he swung his impromptu weapon by its sinuous end with deadly precision in an arc that beheaded first the closest skeleton then, on a second pass, the furthest one.

The makeshift weapon made me raise an eyebrow, but I was forced to parry an incoming blow and could not spare it any extra thought. The moment I blocked the attack I also felt three arrows flying towards me, all of which I instinctively slowed to a crawl when they were almost upon me. I dodged to my right and swung my right sword in an arc up through the wooden shafts of the arrows. The two halves of each arrow fell to the ground as I released my hold on them, and I continued the arcing swing of my sword while bringing up my other weapon, turning myself into a whirling tornado of steel. Dizziness immediately began to set in, so I hurriedly pushed forward into another pack of skeletons and reduced them to broken pieces before stopping my whirlwind attack. I allowed myself a moment to breathe and reorient myself and failed to suppress a snort when I watched a Bard-enhanced Monk do a perfect horse vault off of Druid’s back as the currently rhino cape trampled over a swath of unprepared skeletons. The freerunner cape then did a flip that ended with a vicious kick straight through a skeleton’s pelvis before bouncing into another, equally complicated flip where they snapped the neck of the next skeleton over while still midair.

More arrows sailed towards me, and I smoothly dodged around them by slowing down their flight, but I panicked when I abruptly realized that left them flying towards where Elle was still lying on her hip within the bubble of safety around Octavia. I flung one of my swords in a spin towards the projectiles, which I slowed even further, and when it sliced straight through them lengthwise, I tugged the weapon back to my hand. Octavia saw it all, but she didn’t complain, so I mentally shrugged and returned my attention to cutting down the two skeletons bearing down on me. Once my immediate vicinity was clear, I made another running leap and landed towards the back of the skeletal horde in between two of the archers that had been shooting at me. I arced myself backwards so deeply that I was nearly parallel to the ground, which meant the arrows each had shot at me crossed over my body and flew at each other instead. The one on my left took the blow to its rib cage and fell to the ground in a silent scream of death, but the other arrow only struck a glancing blow on the shoulder of the other skeleton. Still, that blow delayed it from grabbing more ammo, and I brought my sword straight down, cleaving it in twain. The third archer from earlier shot at me, but its arrow only grazed my arm as it whizzed past thanks to a push from my power, and I threw my swords up into the air before snatching up the bow and quiver of the bisected skeleton. I wasn’t quite as smooth at nocking an arrow as the skeletons were, nor was my aim as true as I would have liked, but I course-corrected the projectile mid-flight while boosting its speed, and it all but obliterated the head of the sole remaining archer of the trio when it connected.

Monk landed in a rolling stop next to me and cheered, “That was spectacular!” as they swung their fist into the flat of an oncoming sword strike that shattered the blade in two. “I’ll keep ‘em off of you, so long as you keep that up!”

I tweaked my swords to land blade first in the ground in positions flanking me then drew another arrow from the quiver and took aim. I saw Sorcerer was separated from Paladin across the way and surrounded by a trio of skeletons, so I fired in that direction. With some tweaking, I managed to strike two with one shot, leaving her free to smash the chest of the remaining one with a crushing blow. By that point, the numbers of undead had dwindled to perhaps half what they were at the beginning of the encounter, and I wasted no time in raining down hell on those that lingered.

“Dungeonmaster, give us a big, tough one!” Octavia demanded once the enemy was all but gone. “It’s time for a boss battle!”

The door of the mausoleum Elle had brought into existence earlier rumbled in response, drawing everyone’s attention to it. Something large struck the doors, sending dust scattering through the air around them. A second blow followed shortly after, and this time the metal lock holding them shut groaned ominously. I shot one last skeleton through its empty eye socket, then, for lack of a better place to put it, I swung the bow over my chest with the string crossing my front and retrieved my swords from where they were embedded in the earth. No sooner had I done so, the lock bent outward then burst apart from a quick pair of blows from whatever laid within. The shadows artfully obscured the inside in such a way that I was convinced Elle’s power was to blame, and for a brief moment, the only sound that shattered the silence created by the door bursting open was growling that carried through the still air of the graveyard.

It wasn’t until I felt the metal take form within that I realized Elle had only been using her power to simulate the effects of something battering the door open from inside. Three metal rings connected to chains? What cou—?

My unfinished thoughts were answered when the freshly created creature burst forth from the shadowed entrance of the mausoleum, only stopping when the chains attached to its necks and running back into the structure came up short. Three snarling heads that bore more resemblance to wolves than dogs snarled and snapped at the air with obviously sharp teeth, each head moving independently of its brethren and presenting a foe to be avoided. The shadows of the mausoleum were overrun by flames bursting to life within it, and a wave of sweltering heat washed out over the area. The new source of light highlighted that this creature, whatever it was, was more dangerous than just a set of three fang-filled heads. It’s tail was scaled and had a serpent’s head adorning its tip, and its main body seemed to be wrought from pure muscle. I had no doubt that a single kick from one of its legs would bruise if not outright break bones. Multiple claws around the size of my forearm adorned each paw, and I could only imagine the kind of damage they would inflict on anyone hit by them. Hell, I doubted my armor would stand up to it!

“Hells yeah!” Octavia cheered because of course she cheered. “A cerberus! Epic choice, DM!”

Elle—for I could only presume ‘DM’ was short for Dungeonmaster—didn’t seem to notice the compliment. Instead she was shivering and staring at the ground, and though I could not clearly see her eyes from where I stood, I knew what I would see in them. The urge to run to her and comfort her nearly overwhelmed me, but I could already imagine Octavia’s reaction to that. Elle was more important to me, quite frankly, but Octavia had demonstrated a sort of… charisma so far that I knew I wouldn’t be able to deny. That meant the sooner the monster was dead—not that it was actually alive, but whatever—the sooner I could take care of Elle.

Time to fuck it up then.

An arrow literally leapt from the quiver to my hand, and I promptly took aim with my bow before letting it fly. My shot hurtled towards the cerberus at a blistering pace courtesy of my power, and I hastened to follow it with another while the first almost missed one of the beast’s eyes before a last second adjustment from me put it on course. It roared, and I momentarily fumbled my next arrow as I tried to nock it.

Sorcerer and Monk had both begun to charge towards it, but it was the latter who reached it far, far faster thanks to their buff from Bard. It seemed, however, that their power really was limited to being good at freerunning because even with Bard boosting their strength, their assault didn’t really affect it beyond drawing its attention. But then, that was apparently the entire point, since Monk twisted around it with artful dodges, tricking it into turning its back on Sorcerer as she bore down upon it. She briefly bent over to touch an axe on the ground without stopping her run, then her body unexpectedly began to become metal beginning from the hand she had used to touch the axe.

I loosed my second arrow while trying to piece together what was happening. I can actually feel her, I realized with a start, as the change to metal rippled across her body. Her fingers, they’re razor sharp!

My second arrow slammed into the beast’s right rear leg, sinking deep into the area where its achilles tendon would be if it had one, and barely a moment later Sorcerer reached its hindquarters and took a swipe at its snake tail. Her blow struck true, and the snake hissed in agony as a chunk of itself was carved away. The cerberus retaliated with a flailing kick at her that sent her flying, but it was too distracted by Monk keeping it busy to properly follow up on the opening.

Perks of fighting a dumb animal, I thought as I slung my bow over myself once more and took up my swords. The arrows are taking too long on this thing, and Elle needs attention. I surged forward through a combination of sprinting, making my armor feather light, and literally dragging said armor forward, and in the blink of an eye, I was upon it. The wounded snake tail jabbed forward with a probing bite, but I handily dodged it before jumping up onto its back and racing towards its neck. That unfortunately drew its attention, and one of the cerberus’ heads twisted around far more than it had any right to and tried to take a bit out of me. That frankly suited my purposes just fine, and I dodged its fangs—admittedly somewhat narrowly—before slashing my sword across its eyes.

The creature bellowed in agony, and its other two heads turned to punish my assault. Its efforts were disrupted, however, when Druid slammed into its side horn first. The cerberus was large, but the full weight of a charging rhino was nothing to scoff at, and it stumbled several feet to the side from the force of the collision. This of course meant I was left abruptly standing on naught but air over a dozen feet above the ground, but it was a simple matter to slow my fall closer to the ground.

Monk sidled up to me with a wide grin while Druid kept the cerberus distracted and joked, “You could’ve just rolled, you know.”

“You have your skills, I have mine,” I snarked back.

I readied myself to charge again but paused when Bard’s breaker form slipped out of Monk and towards me. I instinctively flinched away as he began to seep into me, not because of any odd feeling but because somebody was in me—Ew, not like that, brain!—but then I felt the world around me shift. The battle of the beasts suddenly seemed to slow to a crawl, and despite being in the far side of my peripheral vision, I could suddenly see with acute clarity Paladin using his light to burn a line through a tree trunk under Artificer’s guidance.

“Are you going to start killing it or not?” I heard Bard’s voice echo in my ears with his characteristic bluntness. “I can always get back in Monk.”

Like hell you are! “I’m gonna get medieval on its ass,” I replied with gusto. My voice came out deeper and slower than expected, which sent a jolt of panic through me. Oh god, is Amy’s work coming undone or something?

“Well yes, that is the point,” Monk quipped with a grin. Their words also came out far deeper and slower than normal, which put my fears to rest.

I guess it’s just my reaction times that’s quicker? I speculated. There would be time to figure it out later. For the moment, I simply rolled my eyes at the joke and raced forward to reengage with the fight. My suspicion that I was just processing everything quicker seemed to be accurate, since I felt a lot slower despite obviously moving far faster than anyone else. After a few seconds’ sprint relative to me, I made a running leap for the most injured head—namely the one whose eyes I had subjected to my swords a minute ago. That head was the leftmost one, and though it didn’t react to my flight towards it, the middle head must have seen something in its periphery, as it turned and began to lunge towards where I would be landing in a few moments. I saw it coming from a mile away and reversed my grip on my swords before slamming down into the roof of the middle head. The moment the tip of each blade began to sink into its fur, I was already violently separating the blades in opposite directions, cleaving through the relatively thin roof of that head’s snout, which left its upper teeth falling away and its jaw gaping. With Bard enhancing my senses, it was all too easy to see the cerberus’ pained reactions as it initially flailed away then tried and failed to bite me with only its bottom set of teeth, and I leapt into a twisting jump off of the creature. At one end of my spin, I kicked away the mortally wounded head, and on the other end I slashed at the neck of the head I had originally wanted to target before the middle one decided to try and take advantage of my flight. The neck, unlike the roof of a mouth, was much thicker, and though I carved away two large chunks of flesh with my slashes, the wounds were not killing blows.

The creature’s bulk started to shift away beneath where I would be landing, but with a minor tweak to my spin, I still landed with sure footing and moved further into the middle where I would have more room to maneuver. Down on the ground, I could see Sorcerer had begun harassing the cerberus with quick, brief attacks that seemed to be more aimed at keeping it from moving than doing any real damage. At first I thought this was for my benefit, but then I realized Druid had joined Paladin and Artificer off to the side, and the latter two were strapping the felled tree to his back with short lengths of rope. Judging by the mound of stripped bark by Artificer’s feet, I could only presume he had somehow fashioned the rope from it. For more important, however, was what they had done to the tree itself. The top had been cut off and its bottom carved to a point, making into a makeshift combination between a battering ram and a stake.

Going to impale it, huh? In that case, I’ve gotta keep this motherfucker distracted until they’re ready. The cerberus was currently not facing the three of them, but the tail seemed to have just noticed what I had done and was opening its mouth to alert the heads. I threw one of my swords at the snake’s neck and stabbed my other blade as deep into the flesh of the cerberus’ back as I could to give myself something to hold onto—or at least pretend to hold onto, that is. The first rasping hiss of alarm started to escape the snake, but my sword sliced through its much narrower neck like a knife through hot butter, and the scaly head fell away in a gout of dark blood. As expected, the cerberus bucked in alarm, and I maintained an iron grip on the sword buried in its back while actually keeping myself steady by holding my armor in place while I summoned the sword now on the ground back to my hand. The cerberus started to turn to find the attacker who had felled its tail, but the moment my second sword slapped into the palm of my gauntlet, I planted my feet in its back and shoved off while bringing my first sword with me. I threw each blade at the side heads while I sailed over them, and the swords sank true, piercing straight down through the roof of each mouth into the jaws. The heads roared in alarm, which consequently meant the mouth of each head opened wide. Unfortunately for the stupid creature, the heads eventually tried to close their mouths again, and the tips of the swords still impaled in each head stabbed down into its jaws all over again. Sorcerer took advantage of the distraction to tear viciously into the left foreleg, and Monk rejoined the fray and began to manually drive the arrow I had shot into the right rear leg deeper into the tendon. I meanwhile, deprived of my swords for the moment, unslung my bow and began shooting arrow after arrow at the creature’s eyes with Bard’s power making it easy to track and manipulate multiple arrows at a time.

All of that paled in comparison to what followed, but then, the point had only been to keep it occupied. Druid, still in the form of a rhino, rushed forward as swiftly as his leathery gray legs would allow, and he slammed the sharpened trunk deep into the cerberus’ flank. The beast wailed in agony and tried to jerk away, but I had already thrown aside my bow and begun charging forward while summoning one of my swords to my hand. At the last second I realized this might not actually be possible for a D&D character to do, but I decided it would be better to ask forgiveness than permission and slammed the flat of my blade against the rear of the trunk while using my power to shove the metal, and therefore also the trunk, much further into the cerberus. All three remaining heads released one last noise that could only be described as a death knell, their joint cries echoing together in a warbling harmony, then its legs collapsed and sent its bulk crashing into the ground with a dull thud.

Druid shifted into a fox and deftly dove to the side before the trunk could squash him, and Bard slipped out of me while Artificer and Paladin moved to join those of us around the felled monster.

“Is it dead?” I asked as the seven of us examined it.

“No,” Paladin answered. Sure enough, there were some minute twitches here and there as muscles weakly tried and failed to contract and lift the heavy bulk, and the armored man stepped over while light began to stream out of him in three streams. “But it will be soon.”

The smell of burning meat began to fill the air, and the rest of us gagged a bit. “Octavia, would you mind declaring this adventure is over and asking Dungeonmaster to clean up?” Monk called out, looking green around the gills. “Big baddie is dead, after all.”

Octavia, who had been walking over with something akin to reverence, snapped out of her trance like progression and looked to Monk. “Huh? Oh, sure, that’s fine. Encounter complete!”

I heaved a sigh of relief and rushed over to where Elle still laid shivering with her hip against the cracked and crumbled path. “Elle,” I breathed out, stopping just short of touching her. Rushing into that could spell disaster with how obviously upset she was. “You’re not still hurt, are you? Nod or shake your head to let me know.” A beat of silence passed, then she slowly shook her head, and I let out the breath I had been holding. “May I touch you?”

A nod—immediate this time. Moving slowly so I didn’t spook her by accident, I carefully leaned forward and wrapped my arms around her before hugging her tightly. “I’m here, Elle,” I murmured as I began rubbing soothing circles into her back. “You can get rid of all the scary stuff now, okay?”

I didn’t need to look with my eyes to see the nightmare her power had woven was being undone. I could feel with keen clarity as all of the skeleton’s weapons and the fencing disappeared. When the armor wrapped around me faded away, I just readjusted myself and continued to embrace her. Her shivering still wasn’t dying down, so I moved my mouth to her ear and whispered, “Do you remember that night you scared me with the wolf?” She tensed just a bit and I hurried to add, “Afterwards, you and I stayed up all night reading about how Santa had returned to Narnia because the witch’s magic was getting weak.” She relaxed a bit, and I hoped my plan to distract her might work after all. “It’s funny to think about, but all the gifts the kids got, they all fit me just a bit now, don’t they? I’ve been swinging swords around, shooting arrows, and I know you’ve seen me use my daggers with Faultline during practice.”

I continued babbling to her for a while longer, and though I could hear the others talking nearby, I ignored them for the time being, focusing on calming down my friend—my girlfriend, my brain helpfully reminded me. I flushed just a bit at the thought, but I didn’t shy away from her. It’s okay. There’s nothing to be ashamed of, I coached myself. Just because you never thought you’d end up a lesbian doesn’t mean you gotta be a drama queen about it. You like Elle, she likes you—it’s okay to hold her like this!

As if he had been reading my thoughts, Paladin abruptly raised his voice and said, “Y’know, I’d been worried our group was gonna end up a total sausagefest, so it was a real relief when you came back with these two beauties, Boss.”

I tensed as the flush that had crept its way onto my cheeks abruptly went supernova, leaving me flustered and embarrassed, and I fixed him with a glare over Elle’s shoulder. I had just opened my mouth to tell him to shut up and keep his dick in his pants when Monk beat me to the punch by literally punching him and saying, “Lord almighty, would you just shut up, Pally? Ain’t nobody here is interested in you, ya horndog. ‘Sides, you’re making our new friends uncomfortable!”

“Hey now, I’ll have you know I can be the perfect gentleman!”

Sorcerer, who had reverted back to her normal skin, scoffed and quipped, “That’ll be the day.”

“Everyone quiet down!” Octavia interjected, and Paladin, who had just opened his mouth to retort, snapped his mouth closed with only a bit of grumbling. “You’re all friends,” she reminded us as she crossed her arms and gave each of us a look. “You’re all teammates. You need to fight together against all sorts of monsters and baddies, so figure out how to get along, got it?”

“Got it,” I mumbled, a sentiment echoed by everyone but Elle, who minutely nodded instead with her cheek still pressed against my chest.

“Good. Now, I told the staff to keep everyone else out, but someone passing by might’ve still noticed something, so let’s get out of here before any losers come along to try and spoil our fun.”

“What’re we going to do now?” Monk asked, curiously tilting their head.

“What else?” my friend said with a wide grin. “We’ve got to get our newest three members outfitted with their new costumes!”