You know, sometimes, life can be a little funny. Like reaching to grab an umbrella just before it starts to rain. Or opening a chat with someone on your phone only to discover they’re already typing to you. One minute you’re minding your own business on the precipice of death, standing in front of an open magical doorway being blasted with nuclear death rays from a sword you left plunged into a one-hundred-foot-tall monster by an uncomfortably charismatic, super-muscular hyper-ape; and the next, someone surprises you.

I learned right away what it was to be a Volteface.

As my vision recovered from the blinding flash of Crowmoon’s special screw-you Spell, I saw Garth. The tiny creature was standing in the center of the blast, his mouth open as a cackle of pure delight escaped from him. What was more, he seemed completely fine. His hands weaved around, churning the energy encasing him and—what I hoped was—containing the magic. Then, even more amazingly, his weave became a wide sweep—reminding me a bit of Tai Chi. This caused the volatile nuclear beam to diminish, until the glow was only about the size of a beach ball. It continued following his movements until finally, the tiny man thrust his hands up in the air like he was swoonin’ for Jesus before slamming both of his palms flat against his own chest. Garth’s torso absorbed the blue light from his hands and a ripple the same color flashed through him. Eyes closed, he took a deep breath as a satisfied smile spread across his face.

He opened his eyes and nodded at an astonished Crowmoon.

“Right, then,” Garth said. “Thanks for that, cobber.”

Crowmoon didn’t have much to say in response. Instead, he remained standing in the doorway, his surprise attack rendered ineffectual by the resident miniature power vacuum, and a dumb, perplexed expression on his face. However, in order to really showcase the sort of pounding we were trying to ambush him with, he’d need to cross the threshold into the actual cabin itself. But, it seemed like he was a bit too cautious at the moment, deciding that loitering in the ankle-deep stomach sludge was the better move.

So, it’s a stalemate… I thought to myself, trying to weigh our options.

I supposed he could keep firing blasts from the sword he’d commandeered, but I wasn’t sure if that was necessarily his style. He probably would have figured now that Garth would continue to let his personal predilections chow down on his energy every time, and that wasn’t going to be a good call for the overall longevity of his side of the fight. But, I had to figure out a way to coerce or force him into taking a step in. Everything we could do rested on that balance. Especially considering we had a finite timetable on doing anything at all considering the chest would kill Jes in very short order. Rua seemed to think she had a backup, but, at her measly Level—hardly worse than mine—I wasn’t as convinced.

“Hey, Crowmoon!” I said, adopting my friendliest tone and waving at the man. “Looks like you found us. Uh-oh. Whatever will we do?”

Crowmoon chuckled.

“I can see you thought to bring out an absorption specialist, not a bad play. You—”

“Yeah, you’re fucked now!” I shouted, smirking. I knew I had to figure out a way of keeping him from doing something that would ruin the vibe, so maybe…

“Guess you should probably run along, then,” I said, trying to do my best to sound like I was nervous but trying to give the impression…of pretending to sound confident. Man, that was hard to do—plus it was a gamble. “Unless you, uh, want me and my pals here to lay down a beating that sends you screaming back to that pile of ash that used to be your buddy.”

His grin grew wider.

Is this going to work? Fuck, I hate suspense.

“I see,” he said, squinting his eyes and glancing at each of us. “So your plan is to what? Convince me to leave by rolling this—what are you, a Sealer?”

He’d directed the question to Garth.

“Voltface,” the tiny man answered simply.

“I see—rolling this Voltface out so that I am…intimidated? Your bluff is abysmal at best. I can tell by your tone, orc, that you are hoping I believe you are capable of tempering my power and therefore not worth engaging. Yet, I am not a fool. I know well that you are not strong enough to best me, and this last stand will do little more than mildly delay the consequences.”

“That’s not it at all!” I protested. “We just want to give you a chance to live. But…”

I let a crack enter my voice with my next words.

“If you want a f-fight…it’s your funeral.”

You know what I really fucking hate? Pretending to be unconfident. It’s really not in my skill set, but I suppose it’s a small price to pay for total annihilation of your enemies.

Crowmoon laughed again, lifting the Behemoth Blade so that it was pointing straight out at me.

“Unfortunately for you all, a battle would be a particularly unsound stratagem. It would not be prolonged, nor in your favor,” Crowmoon said. “Are you not aware I have felled the beast that consumed you and put you into this predicament at the get? Your meager abilities are—”

“Oh, fuck right up a tree you big fuckin’ blabbermouth,” Stinky suddenly interrupted. “Do whatever you plan to do, already. I’m tired of your self-sucking. You’re not fooling no one with your mummering-agreeable, bilge-licking behavior!”

“I apologize,” Crowmoon said, looking a little bothered. “Why is the orc naked? And what is mummering-agreeable? Did you invent that yourself, or—”

“It means you’re making a bad go at a pretense, you fuckin’ backstroke,” Stinky continued, undeterred by this man’s raw power and threatening aura. “So, either you’re all talk, and you’re actually afraid of this shrimpy nisen, or you’re going to step inside here and figure out what it’s like to be on the losing edge of a battle.”

Did Stinky just call Garth a…Nissan? That would be a hilarious insult. I’m going to remember that.

Crowmoon regarded Stinky with…was that respect? That was odd. It was suddenly as though he was seeing someone worth not immediately trying to kill. But, was that right?

Congratulations! You have raised a Skill!

Insight [E-Rank Level 4]!

Holy piss! I’m a people-reading wunderkind! I should start a career as a cold-reading psychic and make all sorts o’ stacks!

“You draw an irrefutable point,” Crowmoon said to Stinky. “How about if—”

“Ken oath!” Garth suddenly exclaimed. “This guy loves to do more talkin’ than killin', doesn't he? Just goes on and fuckin’ on. Mate—rule of thumb—if you’re gonna try and impress us with your mighty strength, maybe do something—I dunno—strong? You’re just standin’ there jabbering. Top tip: the blokes who blow hard about bein’ tough, usually aren’t.”

Crowmoon, attempting to salvage his brand of polite, murderous atmosphere, pointed a finger at the tiny creature.

“That is an excellent—”

“Ach! Yoor right!” Frida chimed in. “Had plenty of opportunities to strike us lowly pawns asunder, an’ there he goes—not doin’ the killin’ he said he’d be doin.’ Well spotted, Akiva. Man’s a right bit o’ mummer.”

Crowmoon stood there, unmoving from the doorway, looking all stupid and confused as the gang inside the sanctuary cabin made a full frontal assault on his character. But, I wasn’t one to let anyone other than me have the upper hand in the Insult Olympics—so I figured I’d add the coup de grace.

“Yeah, what a fuckin’ piece of trembling—”

FWOOM!

The whole place was blue again, and hot as the dickens—whatever that means. I didn’t have time to finish my sentence, let alone protect myself, as the blue flames he’d hit us with swallowed every available bit of empty space inside. But only for a moment. Garthy-boy, he really came in clutch.

His hands were the first thing I saw in the blaze, swirling, chopping, guiding as a small hole appeared in the center of the flames. The little creature was standing in the eye of this hurricane, weaving his limbs around like a backup dancer in a Steve Winwood music video. The energy coalesced around him, churning violently like a magical money booth tornado as he continued, ripping the burning sapphire haze away from me and the others with his ‘roided-out interpretive dance. I’d thought I was a goner, but the fact that the attack hadn’t even reached me led me to believe that Garth had started his counter the moment Crowmoon had moved against us. One thing was for sure, though: this tiny Aussie bastard was making this angry blue storm his bitch.

But that wasn’t all.

I saw a flash of green to my right, precisely where Stinky had been a moment ago, and heard the chitter of the egg boys on the other side of the cabin, prepping. I was thankful for Garth’s assistance—to be frank, Crowmoon instantaneous lighting up the inside of the room was not on our “things likely to happen” bingo card, but it really came in clutch knowing a bonafide Nissan Volterface was batting for our team. To be perfectly fair, we’d only had a few moments to strategize, but I was as I was starting to learn, it seemed we had an ace up our hole. Wait—that doesn’t sound right…ace in our sleeve? Hm. Whatever—we had a secret weapon. Regardless, it could have gone much, much worse had Garth not been there. However, there’d be time to wipe our dewy foreheads over our close calls later. For now: executing said plan.

Garth was still being the baddest bitch under four feet tall, and because of his expertly executed pop ‘n lock, I could now make out Crowmoon. The large, lumbering motherfucker had remained perched on the porch right inside the entrance, though not entering the sanctuary. I suppose he hadn’t gotten to as high of a Level as he had—nerfed or not—without being a little clever about his battles. He wasn’t taking much in the way of chances, and already queueing up another attack of some sort.

“Plan adjustment!” I yelled, pointing at the shifting mist where Garth happened to be hurling his limbs around. “Aussie-man, you said your power was—”

I interrupted myself, realizing I didn’t want to reveal our hand if I didn’t have to.

“Uh, scratch that! I hope your description means what I think it means! Can you…do that, uh, backward?”

God damn, looking back—what a stupid way to try to speak in code. He’d mentioned his power was redirection, but how did one properly imply that without directly fucking saying it? Someone a lot more intelligent than I was could have probably figured that out, but as it turned out, we didn’t need it. Our little flailin’ Straylin was a bonafide smarty-pants, and picked up what I was putting down.

“Mate…” I heard him grunt, his tone heavily implying that I was stupid for suggesting anything otherwise.

“Alright—everyone, do the thing! Darryl—lights out!”

In less than a second, Darryl’s other fist was in the air and the fireplace in the corner suddenly winked out and the room went black. Well, save for the bright swirling vortex of blue that made up ninety percent of Garth’s current mass and the pale amber illumination from the weirdly luminescent stomach acid creeping through the open doorway. But it was enough that I figured we could make a splash.

As my Darkvision activated, I saw Rua. She was barreling across the hut with grim determination, her sword out and heading directly for Crowmoon. The massively muscular murderer himself was busy wincing from his sudden plunge into mostly darkness with a single focal point of bright, intense magic to sear the ever-loving dick out of his retinas. Because of that momentary lapse in his carefully articulated, piercing bad guy gaze he didn’t see her coming.

This needs to work!

I wasn’t sure if it would, but it needed to. As has been established many, many times: I’m not great at cultivating and executing a sure-fire scheme intended to go off without a hitch. It wasn’t my strength. I was learning that my area of expertise was causing riotous chaos to explode around me while improvising a way to save my own ass—or from the arrival of suspicious providence-y, deus ex machina. However, in this instance, there was one thing that gave me confidence. This swiftly button-together shoestring plan had not been devised by me. Someone much smarter and more savvy in terms of utilizing RPG-logic into success: Rua.

The elf got within a few paces of Crowmoon just as Garth finished absorbing the death ray into his torso. Rua leaped into the air, a sparkling trail behind her as she executed her cool new Ability she’d been so jazzed about before and then…

It happened without me being able to really understand it. One second, Rua was flying at the unobservant Crowmoon, and the next, she was standing in the doorway facing out toward the stomach and the big man was in the air, flying in the opposite direction toward the center of the room. I noticed his body was in the exact same position Rua’s had been.

Holy fucking James Hettfield! That’s not a phasing Ability! It’s a goddamn switcheroo mechanic!

Whatever dope ass stunt Rua had done, it had swapped their positions, and seemed to work despite the vast disparity between their Levels.

However, we weren’t out of the woods yet! Crowmoon, shamelessly powerful as he was—I mean, it was really fucking obnoxious that he was so strong—twisted his body in midair and landed on his feet facing the door, the big-ass Bastard Blade already pointed at Rua’s back.

Fuck!

I moved on instinct, my haladie out and flying in Crowmoon’s direction before I even had time to think about what I was doing. But I shouldn’t have been worried.

Many things converged at once, showing me that there was a certain benefit to gaining Levels and Experience over just fuckin’ winging it all the goddamn time. First, and most importantly, my haladie toss missed by a mile, the blade spinning past Crowmoon and sticking into the magical wall. However, just then Jumpy, Slappy, and Mortimer hit Rua in the back and sent her careening through the entrance, rebounding back into the room to fly directly at Crowmoon. At the same time, Garth pivoted in place, his hands in the air sparkling with blue madness. Stinky suddenly appeared, the green glow of his Kameas still rippling over his body as he slammed his shoulder into the side of Crowmoon’s borrowed blade, while at the same time I heard Frida’s terrifying shout of anger.

“Slipknot Sepulcher!”

Stinky’s move, while not nearly strong enough to stop Crowmoon, was able to divert the direction of the weapon’s blast just enough to cause it to fire too high through the doorway to hit Rua’s tumbling body. The Kameas he’d used beefed him up by fifteen Levels, bringing him into the upper twenties—not enough to outmatch Crowmoon’s own strength, even as crippled as it thankfully was—but enough to nudge him.

That was when the silvery strangulation string exploded from Frida’s chest and latched itself around Crowmoon’s throat, his body yanked backward by the neck like a dog that mistakenly thought its leash was long enough to lunge with. His legs went into the air as the Guardian’s super power took effect, the noose zipping into the floor with Crowmoon attached. I didn’t think it would hold long—but it didn’t need to. Just then, my three egg boys reached their target. It wasn’t Crowmoon, it was Stinky. They latched onto his back just as Crowmoon’s leg shot out and—while still being yanked to the ground—he drove down with his heel in a hammer drop kick to Stinky’s neck and shoulder meat. The attack sent Stinky crashing to the ground, but Jumpy, Slappy and Mortimer’s bouncy bodies kept him from fully connecting. Instead, he did what I’d done in my moment of genius in the Crypt and sprang right back into a standing position.

The matau, bewildered, turned and dove out of the way as Frida did the same; the former crashing against the wall and using the roe to bungie him toward the doorway, while the latter performed an impressively agile somersault in the same direction. This was because it was Garth’s take-two to be a badass. As Crowmoon ripped himself free of Frida’s snare, the tiny creature pointed his palms at him. He smirked before quickly shouting something that seemed a little extra, but was still cool as hell.

“Reflection: Double Damage!”

KABOOM!

Crowmoon’s former attacks had apparently been sitting inside the miniature man’s body just gathering energy, because the light that erupted from his hands was several orders of magnitude brighter than their original flash and instantly dissolved my Darkvision. It was like staring at those old grainy videos of World War II-era nuclear testing sites. I mean, for a hot second—emphasis on the hot—I could see through my own elbow as I brought my arm up to shield my eyes.The full force of it hit Crowmoon right in the chest, and I watched as sections of the energy splashed off of him and ignited the ground and furs nearby. But I didn’t wait to see what else was going to happen. As Crowmoon was engulfed by his own attack, I ran. I reached the door just after Garth, the nisen having turned tail the moment he’d fired, pedaling through the portal.

Quickly, I turned, looking back at the swirling sapphire flames and smirking.

Guess I didn’t need to prepare my backup anyway, I thought, feeling the lightweight object pressed into my…waistband-belt.

In the thick of it all, I’d forgotten that I had gone completely naked before the fight, and I was kind of glad, because, I reasoned, I might have gotten them all burned off anyway from the intense heat of redirected atomic death.

FWOOM!

The azure blaze parted and Crowmoon—albeit a bit burned—flew from the center of the fire, directly at me. In one hand was the Behemoth Blade—still tight in his grip. The other was empty and—

Before I even had time to register my mistake of gloating at a downed enemy, Crowmoon’s fingers were clamped around my throat. He lifted me into the air with a crazed expression, blue flames still flickering in his hair, shoulders, and back. My head smacked into the top of the doorframe and I winced, flailing my limbs wildly in an effort to get Crowmoon to relinquish his hold on me. It was useless; he was too strong.

Well, fucking gulp.