Chapter 1: Live Combat Is In First Person.

You know, staying up all night playing videogames is never a good idea. For one it's bad for your eyesight and for two it can put some really weird thoughts in your head while you're trying to sleep.

While I'm not one who usually thinks up a nightmarish scenario in which I get pulled from reality and into a videogame, I must say I am taking my current situation quite well. I even give a little hum as I pull out the sword I just moments ago plunged into the chest cavity of one of my pursuers. It wasn't everyday you could act out your most base and homicidal tendencies since, hopefully, you are like me and adhere to a strong moral fiber that restrains you from evil in all of its shades.

Yet, everything around me feels so light and airy as if I was the only solid object and the man who I just skewered and is currently bleeding out on the ground was made of tissue paper. Heck, the sword I am holding wasn't even mine to begin with. I just pulled it off a fellow who tried to stab me with it after I struck him with a gauntleted fist. In fact the longer I hold the sword in my hand the heavier it feels, so I promptly drop it, and relish the sensation of blood rushing to my fingertips.

My heart rate quickens as I unconsciously pivot on my left foot and an arrow whistles by the space adjacent to me. I blink and turn to see an archer a couple yards away knotting another arrow to his bow. Now I can clearly see the cavalrymen approaching from behind him, and for a brief moment I also see the entire battleground like a map in my mind.

The whole area is a rolling field, strewn with cultivated plots of land. In the distance I see mountains and behind me is a dense forest which I promptly run into. I hear another arrow embed itself in the bark of a tree I dart behind and dash deeper into the woods. I keep my head low until I spot a large tree with thick enough foliage and swing into it using one of the lower branches.

My heart beats wildly in my chest but my muscles are taut as I crouch on a concealed branch. As my arms and legs burn with tension I wonder at my drastically different than before physique, quickly silencing these thoughts when the archer appears out of the brush. Before he could realize my trail ended at the tree I land on his shoulders with the undersides of my boots. He crumples to the ground in a cry of pain and I hear a snap that could either be a branch or his bones. I roll back onto my feet and swipe the bow from his loosened grip as well as three arrows from his quiver.

I don't kill the archer, he was disarmed and making sure he was dead would have taken time, and with the sound of galloping hooves drawing closer I don't want to stick around.

I hasten through the woods until I emerge out of the tree line, panting heavily. A grassy plane opens before me and in the distance I can see a wooden structure. My heart sinks with the realization that I will not be able to outrun the horsemen when they emerge from the wood, but I still feel a pull toward the fort as my mind casts a vision of comforting blue auras inside and around it. I don't question this gut feeling, and my legs burn but I push through the pain and with a second wind, make a break for it.

I hear the cavaliers break out of the forest but I don't stop running until I am just within the reach of the invisible blue field around the fort. I turn to face the two horsemen galloping towards me and notice a third hanging back at the opening of the forest.

Without a quiver I hold the shafts of two of my pilfered arrows in my mouth while I draw back the other and shoot. The arrow flies past the rider closing in with his sword drawn but strikes the other one in the shoulder; thankfully on the side he was holding his lance.

The first rider goes to slash me across my chest but only barely cuts through the hardened leather vest I'm wearing before I take a five foot step back and loose another arrow, edging my way closer to the fort. The arrowhead embeds itself in the thigh of the sword wielder for what can only be minor damage. Like the stolen sword from before, the bow begins to feel heavy in my hand and I drop it on impulse. I'm now standing in the middle of a grassy plain unarmed and with an arrow between my teeth. What a complete moron I must look to these blokes.

The lancer sees this as an opportunity and lunges forth to plunge the spear head into my chest, but it lacks the speed and precision required to do me in. I take hold of the pole-arm and my grip is like a metal vice. Blood rushes and pounds in my ears as I pull the weapon and its wielder, sill attached, off his horse. He drops to the ground, one foot still caught in the stirrups, and I drive the last arrow into his throat with my bear hands. Gruesome, I know, but I don't have time to think about it, or how the man gurgles his last breath, before the horse runs off scared with its rider dragging beneath it.

I hold my newly acquired lance at the ready, but the other cavalier is still watching his dead companion's body be dragged away through the dirt. The look of pure horror on the sword bearer's face nearly makes me freeze up, but the look of vengeance and anger that replaced it puts me back into the fight for my life. His steed reared up and before I realize it my left arm is cut open by his blade. Any deeper would have cleaved bone. The iron gauntlets that covered my forearms helped to shield the full brunt of the blow and keep my arm from being completely crippled.

I respond to the attack with the same amount of ferocity and my whole body feels like lighting just coursed through every muscle.

"Stand and deliver!" An unfamiliar voice issues a cry and it is not until the cavalier is on his back that I realize that it was my own.

I don't recall ever speaking in such a low octave and I don't have time to recall as the third rider charges in with a javelin razed above his head. Quite cunning, if not a little gutless, to stand back and wait until the enemy is weakened even at the cost of a few men, men who had homes and families no doubt. I steel myself for the oncoming assault, trying to ignore the sting and growing numbness of my left arm. That is until a throwing axe is lobbed from behind me and splits my attacker's head open.

The horse still gallops towards me but slows to a stop when its rider slips out of the saddle motionless.

I look over my shoulder to see a large bearded man with a tawny mullet and another hand axe standing but a few feet away. Two other men with faces obscured by scarves flank him each holding a spear in one hand. The axe man approached me and surveys the damage on my person and on the two warriors that fell by my hand.

We lock eyes. I was now leaning on my borrowed lance with my good arm, my heart is still pounding and my thoughts can barely keep up with what's going on.

"Hi." The unfamiliar baritone voice speaks up again.

The greeting I received in turn is the flat of an axe against my temple. Darkness quickly overtakes me.

…Next thing I wake up to the ceiling of a dingy cell in a bed that was not my own with manacles strapped to my hands and feet.

Once again the voice that I do not remember ever possessing broke the silence.

"Crap."