Chapter Six

Zarathel's POV:

Dantenar looked exhausted all over again. She shuffled instead of walking, looking at the floor in front of her with unusual concentration. She broke open an urn with her spear, fed the health potion inside to Fiddlestix and kept walking. Er, shuffling. She turned a corner and gasped, and I heard her jump back in surprise. I hurried forwards to see what had startled her.

There, standing in front my my sister, was a green snake-like thing. It had the head and shoulders and arms of a man, sort of, but the rest of it was like a serpent. It was green and carried a long sword. Kile started forward, but I held him back.

"It's Dantenar's quest, let her do it."

He fought me for a second, but then stopped as Dantenar raised her spears, put her feet together, and bowed. Surprisingly, the Naga did the same thing, minus putting his feet together. (I'd decided it was a he. It just looked like a guy)

With surprising speed, Dantenar dashed forwards and used her spears quite effectively. The Naga didn't even have time to react. He was dead within the minute. "School-girl trick," Dantenar panted, addressing the dead Naga.

She took two steps forward, stumbled, and fell. Kile ran to her side immediately, feeling for her pulse.

"Not good," he muttered. "She's very weak," he told the rest of us as he picked Dantenar up. He held her like a baby or a young child, one arm under her shoulders, the other under her knees. He stood and turned to Jaron. "Do you have a town portal scroll?"

Jaron, who looked very worried, shook his head. "Sorry, I used my last one last time we went to town."

Kile looked at me, his eyes hopeful. I shook his head, sorry to see the hope leave his gaze. "I only had one and I used it fairly early in the game. I haven't had time to buy a new book."

Kile squared his shoulders. "Well, then I'll just have to find one. Well, you will. I've got my hands full."

Jaron looked panicked. "But what if we run into a whole bunch of monsters again? You're on level forty-nine, remember? We need you to help fight. You're the strongest out of all of us. And the best at fighting."

Kile bit his lip. "Uh...okay. Jaron, you carry her," he said, gently putting Dantenar in Jaron's arms, and continued, "Zarathel will walk behind you, I will walk in front. The pets can take care of the sides. As soon as we find a town portal scroll, we'll use it to get back to town and get Dreya to heal her."

I heartily approved of this plan. Jaron, who was looking like he didn't know what to do with himself, agreed in his soft way.

We set off at once, Kile in front, me behind. Juute, Fiddlestix, Trouble and Kaos followed orders as well, two pets on each side. For once they stuck close, and didn't run off as they usually did. I was glad of that. They at least could tell when they were needed.

Jaron, who was holding Dantenar as carefully as though she was made of porcelain, was pretty strong. He didn't act as if she was heavy or anything. Not that she was. The doctor said that she was below the average weight for our age group. 110 is pretty light.

Dantenar groaned, her head moving, and Jaron almost dropped her in surprise. "What's going on?" She asked. Her voice was low and raspy, as if it hurt to talk. "Why are you carrying me?" She looked at Jaron in confusion.

Jaron looked away. "You just collapsed back there. We're trying to get you to Dreya."

Dantenar snorted, sounding like her old self. "Nonsense. All I need is a health potion. Do you have one?" she raised an eyebrow.

Jaron, looking at Kile for permission, gently set her down and groped around inside his inventory. He pulled out a green bottle, and gently handed it to her. "One swallow. It should restore you to full health."

Dantenar swallowed and gave the little bottle back to him. Her color improved rapidly, but she was still weak. "What was that?" She looked at the bottle, which Jaron was putting back inside his inventory. "Some sort of charm?"

Jaron nodded. "Super healing charm. It will do practically anything." He helped her up, and she tried to walk, but ended up almost falling. Jaron had to help her in the end, not that she looked happy about this. "Oh, come on," Jaron told her. "You were very sick. You won't be able to walk right off the bat, you know. It's pretty foolish to think that, no offense."

Dantenar humphed. "None taken, I guess," she said, sounding forlorn. She had to lean on Jaron heavily, which was probably making her uncomfortable. She'd never been comfortable around boys in the first place. Unless they were a couple years younger, like the ones at the home.

Home. That thought almost made me cry. Suddenly, I couldn't wait to get to level fifty-three and kill that...thing with the impossible name. Yahz'rod the Emperor Abomination.

Kile opened a door, walked into a large room and stopped short. Dantenar tried to quicken her pace, to see what it was, and almost fell. Jaron put an arm around her waist to keep her up. "Careful, young lady," he cautioned her.

Dantenar glared at him. "I'm not young. I'm seventeen, I'll have you know." Her eyes shot daggers. Unexpectedly, Jaron started to laugh. "What's so funny?" Dantenar hissed. She was getting angry. I could see the signs a million miles away.

"You're only seventeen," Jaron managed. "That's young."

"Young!?" Dantenar said in an indignant voice. "Well, then how old are you?"

"Twenty-one," Jaron said quietly, his laughter gone. "I think. I don't know, I've been trapped here, like Kile, for quite some time. Not quite six years. Maybe closer to two."

Dantenar's anger disappeared. "Oh, I'm sorry." She sounded truly sorry, too. "I didn't know, I shouldn't have asked," she stopped talking as Kile beckoned us inside.

I entered the room last, after the two I was starting to think secretly liked each other. Probably not. Kile was standing a little to one side, and he whispered, "Don't move to quickly, look." He pointed to a couple of Trolls on the other side of the room. "They don't have good eyesight, just good hearing. Don't move fast, stay quiet, and they should be easy."

It was nice having a guide who knew his way around down here. Dantenar almost gasped when she saw the Trolls, but put a hand over her mouth instead. Jaron tightened his grasp on her, obviously trying to protect her. It was a sweet thing to do, even if it didn't really help her calm down.

Kile started forward, moving very slowly and keeping the sound of his breathing down to a minimum. The Trolls looked around suspiciously, but didn't look threatened. I took a deep breath, quietly of course, and slowly followed Kile. Kile pulled out his swords, carefully, so that the metal didn't rasp against his armor, and held them at the ready as we got closer.

Dantenar started to follow, still weak but able to walk. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jaron grab her arm and pull her back, pointing to a Large Basilisk coming towards them. Dantenar grinned, her eyes lighting up. I could just imagine her thinking "finally, something I can beat easily."

When we were right behind the Trolls, Kaos and Trouble zoomed up and started attacking. The Trolls turned and Kile and I froze. The dogs teamed up on one of th Trolls, leaving the two others for Kile and myself. I held my Cludrip and Crystal Mace(which I had acquired in level seventeen) up and whirled into action.

The Troll I'd chosen to fight was taken by surprise. I had him half-dead before he'd even realized what'd hit him. I rolled my eyes at the things stupidity. Not like they were actually known for their brains, but the time he'd finished looking around for me, I'd nearly finished him. He hit me once, taking away one meager health point or HP for short.

I finished him and saw that Kile had already killed his and was helping the dogs with theirs. I started back to Dantenar and saw that she and Jaron had teamed up to kill some Goblins. They must have been the Naga's minions. Odd that they weren't in the same room as it. But then I realized that I was wrong as a Naga named "Pencileater the Bloody" glided into the fight.

Jaron took over the Goblins as Dantenar started on Pencileater. The monsters had such odd names in this game. Pencileater put up quite a fight, his red glow pulsing as he attacked my sister. Dantenar finished him off quickly enough, helped by her Military Spear and her other spear. I actually had no idea what it did. By the looks of it, ice damage. Hence the white cloud, probably.

"You have completed a quest," the creepy voice said. Dantenar ignored it as usual.

Kile turned to me and the other two, not even breathing hard. Kaos and Trouble were looking very pleased with themselves, and I took that to mean that they had beaten the thing without Kile's help.

I was impressed with Kile's fighting skills. I guess being trapped in a game for six years lets you level up a whole bunch.

Speaking of leveling up, I was able to do that now. I touched the red cross sign on my left shoulder and assigned my points, then saw that Dantenar was doing the same thing. Jaron smiled at me as I glanced at him.

"You two are something else," He told me.

I didn't know what he meant, and said so.

"Never mind."

I accepted his answer and looked to Kile for guidance on what do do next.

"We should probably return to town, get ourselves healed and get our quest items," He said. "Does anybody have a town portal?"

Dantenar nodded. "Yeah, I have a whole book of them."

Kile slapped his forehead. "We didn't think to check in her inventory, did we?" Jaron and I shook our heads no. "Oh well. Let's go to town. Almost halfway there," he said encouragingly.

Dantenar looked disappointed at that. "I'm actually beginning to like this. What if we stayed forever? Beats living at home. We could always leave when we got bored..." her voice trailed off as I looked at her in alarm.

"Dantenar, what are you saying!? You actually want to stay?" I felt my eyes widening in shock at her statement.

She looked uncomfortable. "Well, our lives at home weren't the greatest, if you remember. Sure, Ms. Sharitin is nice and all, but we didn't have any parents, never got adopted, our schooling isn't all that great and that'll be a problem when we try to find jobs." She shook her head. "Still, I do miss taking baths," she said ruefully.

I laughed at that.

"Come on," Kile said, opening the town portal, "Let's go."