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focusing his eyes on the wagon. He stepped deftly over or around the corpses and bits of corpses strewn in the dirt, crouching down as he reached the side of the wagon. Pulling aside a broken-off shard of wooden planking, he revealed the injured man lying half underneath the overturned wagon. He had been hidden by the piece of wreckage, but now they saw him curled in on himself and clutching his side with one blood-slicked hand. Kari rushed forward, pushing Jake aside to kneel beside the hurt man on the ground.
    “It’s very bad,” she said, tearing some cloth from the wagon’s covering and pressing it against the man’s injured side. “How long have you been lying here?”
    “Not long,” the man whispered, and it was clear from the rasping weakness of his voice that he would not last long enough to tell them much. “A few minutes only, my Lady. My name is Ixus Rites, a merchant from nearby Rivertown.”
    “I am the Lady Alista,” Kari told him, speaking very seriously and giving no indication that she was only playing a role. “These are my friends, Sir Xend and Des the Hand. We’re going to get you out of here, get you some help.”
    “Thank you, kind lady,” Ixus Rites said sadly, wincing at a sudden sharpening of the pain in his side. “But I fear the wound is too deep, and too much of my blood on the wrong side of my skin. I know when I’m done for. Please, kind lady, bear a message to my loving wife in Rivertown. Tell her of my love, which shall have lasted to my end.”
    “I’ll do no such thing,” Kari snapped at the merchant, shaking her onyx staff in his face. “Let’s see, elemental sorceress. Seems to me something simple like a healing spell shouldn’t be any kind of a problem.” She waved her staff over the bleeding wound in the merchant’s side, and willed the injury to heal.
    Ixus Rites jerked, every muscle spasming at once. He gasped like a man who’d had cold water dumped over his head, and then he slumped back against the dusty ground. His hand fell away from the wound, carrying away the makeshift cloth bandage to reveal smooth, pink skin beneath – still smeared with blood, but unbroken. The merchant blinked his eyes and stared down at his healed stomach in plain amazement.
    “My lady!” Tears shone in his eyes when he lifted them to look thankfully at Kari. “Thank you, thank you, my lady. I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t come.” He broke off, frowning. “I’d have died. They’d have killed me, those terrible beasts.”
    Ixus had climbed to his feet, pulling himself up the side of the wagon as he spoke. Suddenly he froze, and looked all around with madly darting eyes. “Why, they could return,” he cried. “At any moment, they could come back!”
    “Fear not,” Jake said, stepping toward the man. “We’ll see you safely back to town.” He nodded to Des, and together the two boys broke the wagon seat away from its fastenings. It was quick work, thanks to the damage already done in the crash. Kari smirked at them, and stepped back a few paces before lifting her staff with a look of concentration on her face.
    With an astonished cry, Ixus Rites found himself lifted off his feet and turned up on end. Guiding him with her magical staff, Kari lifted the man and held him in place as the two boys slid their makeshift stretcher beneath the merchant’s back.
    “How do you keep doing that?” Des asked, sounding annoyed. “Jake, you didn’t sneak her in here before me did you?”
    “What?” Jake shook his head. “No, of course not. But the way the program works, your character is who you are. Her character knows magic, so why shouldn’t she be able to use it?”
    “So, what, how is my character awesome?” For the first time, Des looked down at the outfit he had chosen for himself. He hadn’t really taken Xaloria seriously, but now he found himself very much getting into the story. He also realized he looked a little clownish. He held up his