Thank you, BloodHeron and Aditu, for your reviews. (I can't say how many times I've said this already, but it's still true! Thank you!)

Aditu: Comment in chap1: well, the slow walk of the hero IS maddening… but I played D1 back when it was released, and before the fantastic boots of speed of D2, so… I recently replayed it and was so fed up walking around and getting hacked at that I just installed a good old "God mode" hack lol, when I came up with the idea of this story. Just to read the tomes again and see the game through the end now that I can actually understand English. Comment on chap 3: hm… read on.

BloodHeron: On walk-through-ish: it was my calculation that not many people here actually played D1 (unlike, for instance, BG2, of which conventional run-through-the-game stories rain in all places (yep, even tried one once myself…)) and so I could be "allowed" to write one. I'll still try to make it more than an account of game events, however.

So, here goes. This is kind of a two-part chapter, and it's rather short; I can't help writing short chapters for this story at the moment, it seems.

Chapter IV. The adventure must go on

It took Liria three days before she was able to use her hand again, and another day before she could remotely efficiently fire an arrow. Shurvi spent a lot of time distracting her as she had done for him before.

Shurvi also took a while to think some things through, which was uncharacteristically self-analytic of him – must be the Red head's influence, he mused to himself. The morning following their ambush by hidden found him standing at the window of his room, looking through the thick, tainted glass; Ogden could not pay for glass of a better quality even for his finest rooms. So Shurvi stood there, bathed in the bright and warm morning sun, trying to figure out what he would do now.

He sighed, running a hand through his brown hair. He acknowledged to himself that he was growing attracted to her. He knew what he felt for her was not burning passion or perfect love, but judging from his experience, the first one never led very far, and the second never happened. Still, she was cute, she was bright, and she was a fighter. He had never fought besides women before; this one was skilled and courageous, twice worth now the better archer he had ever known. And she had a way to answer to his brash manners with mischief of her own, and it was endearing to him to be called "Burnt head".

Shurvi felt something very peculiar then; he slowly obeyed an unseemly desire to lift his head, and then he thought he understood why he must look outside. Glooming in the warm morning sun across the field and first trees of the nearby forest was the entrance to the catacombs. A grim expression settled on his face, with a fierce determination in his heart. Now was not the time. Not in the middle of this mess of a seemingly endless maze of downward-spiralling dungeons crowded with demons. It was hardly possible to consider anything else than their quest now. Shurvi trusted her and she was his friend; but anything more emotional than that required time and involvement, and he was not at ease among those concerns. He was just a warrior, worse yet, a soldier, and he had never been seriously involved with anyone. And somehow… somehow Liria seemed to deserve more than the half-hearted attention he could give her now.

Shurvi sighed again. Maybe afterwards, if they found a way to stay together, but not right now.

The previous day, he had been taken by surprise. He had been startled by the ambush, impressed by her skill, worried by her injuries; he had talked too fast, but this mistake had already been erased of her memory. And, to be perfectly honest, he was not sure he would have talked if she had not been in so much pain in the first place.

And so the matter was settled. It was surprisingly easy to fall into that path of behaviour and justification, he found. He distracted her while she recovered, walked her to Pepin so he could check on her arm, trained a while with her as she was getting used to flying arrows with her new arm, and they headed down once more.

ooooo

They found Arkaine's valour in one of the catacombs. Both stared in silence at the magnificent armour, as Liria finished to identify it. They had split up the spoils easily up to this point. There they stood in silence, knowing how both wanted very badly this powerful armour. Finally, Shurvi shrugged the matter off.

"I guess we will find heavier armour soon," he said. "We have been finding more powerfully equipped monsters in these levels. A heavier armour would be of no use to you, and you need the boost of your vitality more than I do."

She looked at him, considering refusing or discussing for a while, then she accepted his gift, smiling almost as bashfully as him.

"Thank you, Burnt head. Can you help me to put it on? I've never wore a chain mail before."

He smiled, and moved to help her strap the armour on. He stood behind her as he straightened the straps of the part covering her chest, as she buckled on the bracers. He let her adjust the hip straps and such, while he adjusted the legs. Once his work was done, he straightened up. He looked at her.

"You look formidable in that, Red head," he said, really impressed.

"Well I'm still the same me, so I'll still only be following behind you and not take any hit… except in cases of failure of tactics, in which case my Mana shield will take the hits… except in extreme cases where I would end up on Pepin's torture bed. See, nothing formidable, Burnt head."

He smiled, and they went out of the crypt guarding Arkaine's valour back to the catacombs.