ew ew ew

Maybe next time Elan should play his song on the kazoo so he can have a free hand. For now, he'll switch from lute to sword as fast as he can… which is apparently fast enough that he can try to skewer the eyeball like a big gross cocktail olive. Neat!

It is stabbed! In retaliation, it attempts to slam its entire bodyweight into him. This isn't very effective, because its entire body is considerably smaller than his head. 

And Elan can re-retaliate!

"Take that, slimeball!"

Now he has a winged eyeball kebab skewered on his rapier. 

While he was briefly distracted from the rest of the fight, the undead have pushed forward. The front line is closer to him than it was before, and if he doesn't do something about that, he might end up in melee with some non-flying monsters in the immediate future. 

Oh, right, the part where there are a whole bunch of enemies. He flicks his rapier in the direction of the horde, because in his opinion it would be really funny if the eyeball bonked a skeleton on the head, then glances back for a free spot to retreat to because he'd rather play his song.

He can find a safer spot to stand and play his song! 

The defenders push the undead back step by step. (Or, in the case of the slimes...squelch by squelch?) A few of them pick up the lyrics of Elan's song enough to sing along with the chorus when it comes around; this doesn't do anything to boost the magical effect, but it does seem to have a nonmagical effect on morale. 

And after a while there are no more undead left standing! (Or flying, or squelching.) Not all the defenders are still standing either; the Guardians start coordinating efforts to help them drink healing potions if they're conscious or carry them back to town for healing if not. 

It is literally the best thing ever when people start to sing along. Maybe he can learn some more local songs so the next time something like this happens he can get even more people to join in!

He makes a beeline to one of the people helping the unconscious defenders.

"I have a spell that can probably get up to thirteen people back on their feet!"

"That would be great! What do you need us to do?" 

"Get the people you want me to cast it on together so that nobody's more than 30 feet away from anyone else. I can cast that specific spell once—and mana potions don't change that—but I have some other healing spells that work on one person at a time."

Sure, they can direct people to bring the unconscious adventurers over to Elan instead of back to town, it's closer. 

Yay, he's helping!

After the first batch, he counts his spell slots. He can cast Cure Critical Wounds three times, Cure Serious Wounds four times, Cure Moderate Wounds four times, and Cure Light Wounds twice, if anyone needs that. He's probably going to bed after this anyway, after all.

Some but not all of that healing will be very much appreciated! Casualties were pretty light overall and nobody seems to have died. The adventurers seem to need a low-level-adventurer amount of healing, a bit more than the Oaklore knights but noticeably less than Elan's party members might. 

And then they can all head back to town under their own power! The other adventurers are mostly in good spirits, even the ones who were previously badly injured. 

One armoured fighter is showing off a kind of evil-looking axe with a skull on it. "—and even though it does Darkness damage I was still cleaving through skeletons like they weren't there!" 

"Where did you say you got it?" 

"From the inn in the town square! It was expensive, but absolutely worth it, this thing is crazy powerful." 

Wow, being able to provide more help than needed (and not have this be a euphemism for "tried to help in a way that actually interfered and now the other guy is annoyed at him") is exciting! It's also good because it means everyone's doing okay!

That axe guy sounds significant! Elan lurks in an attempt to eavesdrop some more.

He's not the only one crowding closer to get a better look. A few people saw this guy fighting and can confirm that his axe seemed to do pretty well against the undead. 

"Did it come from, like, a mysterious figure in a dark corner with a hooded cloak?" someone asks. 

"Ha, good one. No, it was the innkeeper. Sarafina or whatever her name is." 

"Sabrina?" 

"Yeah, her." 

"Oh, I got mine from her as well!" a mage puts in, waving a staff with a skull topper. "I was sceptical when she offered me a Darkness weapon for fighting undead, but it worked fine! And if it does that well against undead, I'm definitely making it my main weapon from now on, 'cause it'll be even better against everything else." 

Hmmm.

The more Elan listens, the more significant it sounds. He should probably find out more about Sabrina the innkeeper, especially since he'll probably be staying at the inn tonight.

"Darkness is usually bad against undead, right?" he asks someone who hasn't yet proclaimed that they got an extra-special Darkness axe.

"Yeah, undead are Darkness aligned, so they tend to have resistance to it. The best thing to use is a Light weapon like mine." She holds up one of her glowing crystalline daggers. "Most people don't have a full elemental set, though; I'm lucky I had these. A Darkness weapon could easily be someone's best option if they were unlucky." 

Elan nods.

"I wonder why these guys' Darkness weapons did so good, then! We probably weren't fighting… weird secret Light-aligned undead… maybe the weapons are just good enough that they overcame the undead resistance? Or maybe they're regular weapons that just look like Darkness weapons…"

"I think the story is they do more damage than other weapons, by enough that it cancels out the resistance? They can't secretly be some other element, you'd notice as soon as you used them. Just like we'd have noticed if the undead were attacking with Light instead of Darkness. Are you new to this or something?" 

"Yeah!"

He's also generally quite silly, of course, but as long as it's true that he's new to this he doesn't see anything wrong with admitting it. It makes sense that you can tell the difference between weapon types, though, just like how Static felt static-y.

"Huh, okay. Well, you should get the hang of telling damage types apart soon. They're obvious when you use a weapon or see someone use it up close, and you can usually tell just from picking one up once you know what to look for."

Elan nods.

"That makes sense. Do stronger ones ever hurt to touch? I mean, if you're not being attacked by them. Obviously a weapon being used to attack you hurts."

"I don't think I've ever even heard of that. Who'd design a weapon that hurt to use? And who'd buy it?" 

"That… is a good question. Where I come from sometimes mean people put curses on weapons as traps or just because…"

Shoot, did that make him sound suspicious?

"Oh, where are you from? You don't have an accent or anything..."