[Rimbaud]

Polarity of the neutron flow, eh, thought Hal glumly, as he hacked methodically at some regenerating orc pieces. Polarity. Neutron flow.

Nope. Still didn’t mean anything. He tried again. Enemies that come to life again after you have killed them. This was more like it. He could sink his teeth into this, although the problem was not a tasty morsel. And the infinitely regenerating Bad Guys are bent on destroying the Battle-ship, and more pertinently me. The mouthful of problem became somewhat more acidic, and he fancied not swallowing it.

Why are you staying? asked his mind, somewhat unhelpfully. You only joined the Whateveritis-ship for the most tenuous of reasons.

“Um, chaps?” enquired Hal, attempting nonchalance as he stabbed awkwardly down at the top half of an orc that was busy both reattaching itself to a nearby pair of legs that did not seem to be its own, and gnawing on Hal’s thigh. “Chaps?”

“What?” enquired Orogarn, tersely, as he deftly flicked his Daayv L’Roth haircut out of his latest victim.

“I was wondering…you know, just musing on…” said Hal, more uncertainly. “I was thinking perhaps I might, you know, slope off? Find a coffee, that sort of thing?”

Orogarn turned to face him, stony-faced, and Hal sheepishly returned to the slaughter or the not-so-much-lambs-as-evil-dudes. You can’t ask permission to leave heroic battles! sneered his mind, bitterly. You really are a poor excuse for a hero. True enough, mused another voice in his head. You’re doing a pathetic job of living up to your brother’s legacy.

“Who the hell are you?” stammered Hal in some confusion.

“Orogarn,” said he, for it was he, and he it was whom Hal had addressed. “We have been fighting together for several pages.”

“No, not you,” snapped Hal. “The voice inside my head.”

It sounded bad, and Orogarn threw him a suitably exasperated look so Hal tried to explain.

“Not the normal voice in my head,” he said, parrying a pike thrust with his fish-guard, and attempting a triple pike of his own to avoid a sword chop. “There’s a second voice, a different…”

it sounded worse and he tailed off. The battle split him from Orogarn then, and he wasn’t too sorry.

Then, something rather unexpected and horrible happened to Hal at the back of his head, and he fell to the ground as insensible as a weasel in a pickling barrel of brandy.