I checked my messages

My face again pointed towards the sun, I spoke, “There we are, for a second there, I wondered who was in charge around here, things were actually looking up. Thought maybe you were going soft.”

I pull the ring out of my inventory and put it on, hardly looking at it, so I can stay focused, just enough to notice something unexpected. It’s the wedding ring I lost one day at work, the actual one my wife put on my finger on our wedding day. The one I thought lost in a landfill forever.

The water of the river splashed up and soaked my speedos, I looked around and the water was perfectly smooth.

Yamina giggled, un subtly.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, Divine dignity blah blah blah, I get it….” I said waiving one hand in the air.

I pulled the 2nd divine letter out of my inventory. It literally just had a big blue arrow pointing across the river. On a hunch, I held it out flat and spun it in a circle. The arrow didn’t change. I put it back in my inventory, turned 90 degrees, and pulled it back out , the arrow was now pointing straight ahead, down river. “Now I can’t decide if you’re a show off or a penny pincher…” I pulled both letters out of my inventory, stacked them together and put them back. I peeked, “A stack of Divine letters(2)” Nice magical ebay here I come!

I walked, ok I waded, across the river to some young river cane, cut 3 of them off with Shape, and then fused them together at one end laid flat. I quickly, if not deftly, braided them together, wrapped it around my waist, the waster under one arm. Then I fused the ends together to make a crude belt and slipped the wooden waster through it at a jaunty angle. Then went back and grabbed my staff out of the water, triumphantly.

I looked at the sky and said, “No’ is that a sword in your speedo or are you just happy to see me’, jokes for you young lady. Take that!”

In a tittering voice, Yamina said “Momma says if you were wearing pants instead of a speedo, she’d have given you a point for that”.

“Yeah, yeah, everybody’s a critic.” I turned, my back towards the altar.

I walked out of the river on the far side, as directed, and sat down, winked at the sky, and said, “Yamina, we need to spend our points. Can you get any crowd control spells? Mez Stun, Root, that kind of thing, we’re not very tanky so we need something.

“With my magic race bonus, sure, but I can get several spells under the healing school for the same money.”

“Take a look around see what you can find that you think will help us out. I’ll look at what I can find under my Shaper school of magic, it’s not flashy, but it’s been kind of handy.” I concentrated on what I wanted.

Dart: 400cp, 200cp after discount, pinch off a small piece of mundane material and quickly form it into a dart and shoot it at a target at a high speed. If you pre make the darts you can shoot 2 at once. Damage is based on the material used , Dart level, Shaper level and character level .

Shape: Upgrade to next level (3) for 300 Cp, 150cp after discount.

Concentrate: 400cp, 200cp after discount, you can use you shaping powers to concentrate small amounts of materiel spread over a large area, into a single piece. Quantity is based on your shaping level, area affected is 10’ x Concentrate level x Character level. You cannot form more of the material than is in your radius. Requires Shape: 5.

>

“Why is Concentrate listed as available, my shape skill is only 3? Oh, I see, if I buy 1 level of Shape, Plus 1 from JOT it’s a net 5 , I can still afford it. That’s a pretty smart GUI, much better than expected. I wonder if that’s a hint. Or if it’s always that smart?” I say, still nodding along as I talk.

I’ve got 850 Total CP, I can get 1 utility spell out of my class specialties. A couple points in a stat, or upgrade shape, and a new shaper spell. Ok so Dart, or assume divine GUI-dance. I really do want concentrate, I can think of several really good uses for it, but they are non combat uses, at least for now.

“Aaagh, Idiot,” I bonk my self on the forehead with the heel of one hand. “I’m using the full price totals, I can afford both with an extra level, with my discount, eazy peezy done, covergirl. Apparently, I really need a pencil so I can do math, not in my head.”

And let’s bump that Con up by one.

Okay ready to go Hunting.

I try to line up looking at where I was when I first got the letter, do a 180 and we head off into the wood.

I catch Yamina’s eye and say, “Okay Speedo boy here is tanking, what did you get for buffs?”

“I started with 790cp out of 1650cp total, I got Flight3: 350cp Per our agreement, Hearty:1 +1 con per (skill+lvl) 100cp, Haste:1 5% increased attack speed per (skill+lvl) 100cp and I bumped Heal to Heal:3 (200CP), so I can heal 6hp per second while my mana holds up. That leaves 40cp, I know the buffs aren’t great yet, but leveling them and leveling up will build them quickly”

“Okay here is the plan, I tank, like the fool I am. If the enemies are Melee only, you fly above and behind me. Keep my HP up, and do what damage you can afford while staying above half mana. That half mana is reserved for healing. If I tell you the mob is hitting hard, no damage unless you can burn all of them down in 1 shot, otherwise 100% mana for healing.”

“ok, what if they fly or have range?”

“Range, keep Bubble shield up, fly at max speed, if they fly too, you’re going to have to dog fight and drag them near to me so I can shoot them with dart. Watch my health, same mana reserves. If they have range but no fly, you fly to natural cover, and pop up to heal to take your shot, then pop back behind cover, never pop out of cover in the same place twice… Too easy to get caught that way.”

“Ok that’s simple.”

“Yeah, simple plans work, what we need to be flexible, because the enemy likes to break our plans. Keep your eyes and ears open in case we have to change it. So far 4 plans, Melee, Range, Fly and Burn are their names. 2 more important plans. First one is Bound, you blast them, I move 5 to 10 feet forward, then I hit them while you do the same, Bound can be forward or backward, forward I move first, backwards you move first. The idea is to maneuver under suppressing fire. The next is Flank, Same as range but they are taking cover. You move off to the side, and shoot them from an angle where they are open to be hit. That’s called shooting them in enfilade.”

“You forgot one” Yamina said seriously.

“Oh yeah, what’s that?” I look back at her questioningly.

“Run, we both haul ass back here to the safe zone”

Smiling I say , “Ok good point, if I say run though, if they are not melee, you fly to the safe zone, leave me behind, I’ll catch up if I can. Only if melee do you stick with me.”

Yamina parks herself over my left shoulder, and begins seriously, “Melee, Range, Fly, Bound Forward and Back, Flank and Run” I can handle that.

“You’ll be surprised how much harder it’ll seem if we have to do it for real, there’s a reason they call it a sticky situation. Klauswitz referred to it as’ Friction’, in combat easy things become hard to do, only things you’ve drilled in to habit are easy-ish to do.”

“Then why aren’t we practicing and practicing first?”

We probably should, but we’re super fragile while low level, think about it, from lvl 1 to lvl 2, our hit points doubled. Then they increase by a third and so on. I’m trying to rush us out of the danger zone. Secondly there are 2 of us and we’re level 2, I’m hoping the mobs are lvl 1 or 2 and we can handle them easy. Then they will -be- the practice. If there are big numbers, and we can’t pull, we’ll have to retreat and find new prey.” Seeing the look on her face, I said ” Oh Pull means to go and get a safe number of enemies from a larger group and bring them back to a safe place to fight them where the rest of the party is waiting.”

Yaminas optimism blended into a serious expression. “Okay, my head is starting to get full, but I can handle it.”

“Tell you what, when you’re digging through earth pop culture, do me a favor and start digging into mmorpg and gamer culture, we’re going to be using that slang a lot, oh and look into the popular version of the Armed Forces culture. We’ll be using some of that too, not the real stuff, because I wasn’t there and only know what I picked up. Being a mil-brat only gets you so far, but that might help us out too.”

“Let’s move forward, you pop up high and use party chat to alert me if you see anything before I do.”

Yamina popped up in overwatch, her face serious and her posture focused and I tried to move as silently as I could. I realized it wasn’t very silent. I suddenly wished I’d gone hunting with my dad the way he wanted me too when I was a kid. I always stayed home and read books. I moved slower and kept my head moving to see as much as I could, the proverbial ‘head on a swivel’”.

Yamina in party chat: “I cant’ see anything but I hear something up ahead, sounds like chewing”

Bill in party chat: “Rodger, err OK, I understand”

Dad’s jargon got me again, must be because I was thinking about him..

We moved past the ring of trees on this side of the river and into a more sparsely wooded and brushy area. The further off we looked the drier things seemed to get. Prevailing winds? Or a moist valley in an arid landscape?

We moved carefully up and Yamina reported in again, her posture relaxing. “it’s only a giant tortoise”.

“OK, what level?”

“Level 5, but we’re not going to kill it are we?” her voice sharper in my head, ”I like turtles, especially giant ones.”

“5 is right at the edge of what we can handle anyway, let’s go around. We need some easy ones first. But your mom did send us this way.”

We circled around and tried our best to get on the same vector, we entered some trees again, and I had Yamina drop in closer to the ground so we didn’t get separated. Both of us were focused on what we were doing.

This time we heard it together, something that sounded, for all the world like a cartoon cow, and something screechy-hissy like.

We crept up on the noises, a large limestone rock between us for cover. Come on stealth skill! There was a group of 4 foot long lizards attacking a giant Tortoise. They were in a small clearing in the brush, It was maybe 10 foot across, the clearing, not the tortoise. I took one look at Yamina’s face, and I knew we were going to the tortoise’s defense. I cast ID,

Perfect. I held my hand up to tell her to stop, and I grabbed at the rock and used shape to make a couple darts. Then a couple more. Fool, I should have made as many as I could stacked in my inventory before this. I was so busy looking at the trees, I forgot the forest.

Then I said in party chat [stay here, I’m going to pull. They are level 2. if we get 1 or 2 of them, we’re good, if we get 3, we’re going to have to run, give me a thumb up if you are good]

She gave me a tiny thumbs up… Yeah that’s not going to work at the kind or range I was hoping. Lets use party chat, it was basically telepathy anyway, if we played attention and thought instead of saying. That was probably a good skill to practice. Begin as you intend to go forward.

Hunched over, I moved up to the trees surrounding the fight. I leaned around one of them and cast Dart at the nearest lizard. Each dart hit for 5 damage. Two of the lizards peeled off and advanced on us, the one that the tortoise was attacking back stayed. Ok typical aggro mechanics so far. I started backing up towards Yamina, I checked the lizard I’d hit, looking at his bar, if he took 10, he’s got about 15 left. From the noises the fast little bastards made, the cartoon cow must be the tortoise.

I sent “Range , I repeat plan Range”, and launched 2 more darts, this time the darts did 4 and 5, the lizards are faster than I am moving backwards. Glancing around quickly, I put the rock we were centered on at my back. I positioned myself on the balls of my feet ready to move any direction, and slid the staff up into a high position. My hands were 18” apart at the bottom of the staff, holding it like a great sword above my head. Left hand on top, right on the bottom. Yeah, I know, I fight great sword left-handed, I always have, I like it because it uses the same footwork as sword and board, my main style. I crouch and my eyes are open wide and unfocused, taking in everything at once.

The lizards moved quickly towards me, with that flicker, flicker, waddle of iguanas and other big lizards.

I mentally focused on my range, floating in the empty place where I’d always fought my best. Calm and calculating, not hot, not cold, almost bored except for the razor precision of my brain. The concentration of my brain processing, thinking and seeing at lightning speed, empty and silent. my eyes seeing everything around me at once. I leapt forward, taking 2 explosive steps forward and smashed the staff down on the first lizards head, the one that was almost dead. Right as I hit it, I saw Yamina’s Haste spell take on me, a small Golden Fist appearing nest to my status bars.

I smashed the tip of the staff onto the lizard right where its head met its light brown scaled body. CRACK! The first Lizard dropped dead, okay. Instead of Retreating back to the rock, I move forward and diagonally right, so the dead lizard is between me and the 2nd lizard. Using my momentum, rotating on my front foot, I swing my body to face it like a wheel. I kept the tip of my staff down like a spear, so I can keep it at bay if it rushed me.

Yamina’s heath buff hit me, a little read valentine’s day heart icon this time. We really should have done that ahead of time. God, I’m dropping the ball left and right, what’s up with me. I’m acting like a total noob.

Thankfully, while by brain was distracted with self-recrimination, my 25 years of Geek Fu reflexes triggered. I dropped the tip down and to the left, then making a fast tight circle, smashed it around, up and then down on the front left leg of the lizard, twisting at the hips for power. I looked for the combat log at the bottom of the screen, and it wasn’t there, because I’d never asked for it. Dammit. I glanced at the health bar, just above half. The lizard seems to have stumbled from my hit on its leg. A snare or root?

I stepped offline diagonally to the right again, and swing the tip of the staff down along the outside of my left leg, out at an angle to miss myself and the ground. Just as my staff came up around and reached vertical, I squatted down, lowering my stance and clenched my abs and curled my back to put the absolute most power I could into the blow. The noise I made was less of a proper Kiaa, more of a coughing “huh” noise. I connected, and hard, the lizard made more of a crunching noise than a dull thud, and dropped in its place, dead. Nice.

As I turned to face the lizard fighting the tortoise, I shouted, “Get high and wound that lizard”, to Yamina. I brought my staff back up to high greatsword position and ran in, feeling like a total badass samurai.

I saw Yamina’s magic hit the lizard, its bar was almost empty. I did a beautiful 1 2, cross legs, leap 3, land back in stance, running-leaping-floating move with my feet, the Classic “Kein Leap”. I started to smash the lizard dead. I say started, because just about then, I smashed my staff into the tree branches above both our heads, and my staff came to a stop like it’s been caught in a net. “Fuck” I shouted; The lizard turned to me. I was stuck in place looking like an idiot.

I haven’t done that since before I was a squire, my first year of fighting. I dropped my stance as low as I could go and slid the staff straight down like I was slicing the leaves, pulling my bottom hand back and up, and sliding my top hand up the shaft, and towards the ground till I was in an overhead spear blocking position, back hand high, front hand low, staff diagonally blocking me from the front. Ready to thrust with the tip of my staff.

It was about then, that the tortoise, no cartoon cow noise at all this time, leisurely reached out and snapped its jaws on the lizard’s spine, and then turned to look at me with wise old eyes, that frankly seemed to be judging me… And finding me wanting.

“Hey, I tried, and we got the other two.”

Then, I swear to God, Hell I swear to all the gods, that tortoise looked me in the eye, nodded and went back to eating, turned his back to me, plodding away. It was like a judgmental Eeyore with an RV on its back.

ZOOOOOOOMM Yamina went by.

“Yaaaaaaaaay, we saved Tooooommeeeeeey!”

I cast Identify on the tortoise,

[Giant Tortoise, level 5, neutral]

Turing to Yamina my face clearly dumbfounded. “Where did Tommy come from? Could you hear him talk or something? You speak giant tortoise?”

“Noooo Heeeee juuuuust looooks liiiike aaa tommyyyyyyy!” Yamina said, zoomingly.

Yes, Zoomingly is a word, it’s an adverb, I just made it. It’s real.

I crouched down to loot one of the lizards, and nothing happened. I put my hand on it and said “loot”, nothing.

“What the heck, what can’t I loot?” I directed at the Iota of a godling.

“You didn’t get the perk ‘System Looting’.”

“Okay, then did you get it?”

“I didn’t get System Looting either, it should be half price for you 250cp, because of your Adventurers pack.”

“Why the hell isn’t it in the Adventurers pack!” I asked sharper than I meant to. Dammit, Bill, get your shit wired down. I know you died today, and all the rest of it, but she’s still a kid, tone is of Primary importance.

I took a deep breath, and let it back out.

“Sorry about that, do you know why it’s not in the adventurers pack? I just assumed it was part of Magic Inventory.”

“People with harvesting skills can get more from a corpse the hard way, some of them prefer it.”

My shoulders slumped, and I dropped my head a bit. “Well, there I go, proving once again, that assumption make an ass out of you and umption”

“Who’s Umption?” she asked quietly.

You’re not just an adult Bill, you’re a -giant- adult and she’s stuck alone with you. Quit dropping the ball.

“In this case both you and Umption, are me, I’m a double ass, 4 butt cheeks and everything.”

That made her smile. Thank God for booger, butt and dong humor, teens love it. Mid 50s geeks too, even if they look younger now.

Let’s drag the bodies over here by the rock, so we can find them again, if we need to, and lets check our XP gains”,

“30, 10cp per level, un modified, we got 60cp divided by 2 of us, that’s 30 each.” Yamina said, still small. OK smaller, she’s always small.

I turn to her trying to look calmly Socratic. “Okay, before we move on, what did we learn?

“Watch out for trees?” she smiled shyly at me.

“Yeah, watch out for Trees, also I need to set up a combat log window” I concentrated and a short wide window appeared at the bottom of my screen. “What else?”

“Giant Tortoises are nice?”

“Maybe, certainly neutral, and they look inscrutably wise. Do you think we should buff before combat instead of during next time?”

“Oh yeah, good idea. Also I should keep bubble up always, and you should pile up some darts.”

I bent to the large rock, my hands working, and started making darts with shape, and putting them in my inventory as we talked. “Yep and what else”

“We need system loot, at least you do, I don’t have much carrying capacity outside of inventory”

“Excellent.” I said thinking we were done. “Anything else you can think of?”

“You could put the lizards in your magic inventory”.

“Okay yeah, Good one, point Yamina, 2-0 your favor. “ I said stashing them away.

Rising from my crouch, I started again “Oh, one more, I’m not running on 100% brain wise today, my brain is literally not braining today. We need to take it slow, and see if I can recover some of that capacity as we practice. We need to be extra careful not to over pull.”

I stood up, striding back to where the lizards were attacking the giant tortoise, and crouched carefully looked for tracks. The tracks were pretty clear, right down the game trail in the direction we’d been heading the whole time. Feet prints splayed with claws, and a swerving path between from the dragging tail. While I was there, I looked for the darts I’d shot, two of them were there on the ground. I put them in my inventory and checked how many I had.

Huh, I must have gotten lucky on the damage, or I had a lot more range than I thought I did. I paused raising one hand to my chin. I thought about the speed the darts were travelling, definitely faster than I could throw them. Nodding in understanding, I moved on.

I looked at dart and thought about the dart spell, really focusing what brain power I had.

I tried to focus, ok short, medium, long, extreme? Extra-long? I just don’t have the brain for this. Best guess 30 feet is my, no plusses no minuses range, that’ll have to do for today.

We trailed the tracks through the scrub and trees that started to look more like the Texas hill country, definitely drying out fast, big patches of dirt and gravel between the grass, stunted but green trees scattered about. Eventually we found a large nest, like a termite nest, but sized for lizards. In large nearly circular area of bare dirt that looked scoured clean and well packed down. Huh, I didn’t’ know lizards did that. Maybe they don’t on earth, but they clearly did here on…. Where ever I was.

I cast ID several of the lizards both the ones outside, patrolling and sniffing for, I don’t know grubs? Sniffing and scratching either way.

All the ones on the outside were level 2, closer in they level were3. I had Yamina go up way high, and scout, she said there were some trees with a dirt pile behind to off to the left. Well outside the lizards’ apparent wander radius.

We set up there, I used Shape to cut and move branches to make a good blind with clear lanes of fire.

I told Yamina to Buff me and she did, yellow hand, red heart, nice. 24hp and 10% haste.

I waited till one of the light brown scaly lizards wandered away from the others and pulled with Dart. Aiming carefully for the chest area.

Thump! Thump!

Looks like max damage, just over a 3rd of their health. The lizard Hissed and whirled. It began to run at us with those floppy legs to the side gait, most big lizards seem to have. At 30 feet out, I got another 2 dart casts in. It dropped, skidding on the dirt, well outside the blind. Okay that seemed to work, time to grind out some XP. We ground out a few more pulls, sometimes 1, sometimes 2. Steady but slow CP. Me pulling Yamina wounding. Pretty consistently we were dropping them well clear of our blind. We were getting our strategies down, well pull and melee. So really only 2 strategies, but still, it’s an improvement. We worked more like a team than before.

After about an hour of mind numbing grinding, I pulled mini boss of some kind, a truly big lizard twice as big and twice as fast as the others burst from the hive and rushed us.

Yamina went to over watch, I put a couple cast’s of dart into it, but it’s health was barley scratched.

I glanced at the combat log to see why.

Crap, armor apparently absorbs straight damage of each attack. Darts were never going to be effective, as it’s 2 small bursts of damage, so 2 applications of armor.

I sent [Yamina, concentrate on the eyes.] and pulled my staff. I quicky used a shape cutting field to lop one end of at an angle, making a short chisel shaped cut. I could see the huge lizard was angling for me around the right side of the blind. I stepped so he’d be coming blind at me around the last bit of brush. I grounded the end of my spear, and set my foot on it in my best Braveheart fashion, dropping low with the tip to aim for its underside. The plan was for it to rush me, running itself onto the improvised spear. I need max damage per hit to get through the armor.

The lizard rushed me as expected, but instead of getting under its neck as I’d planned it attempted to grab me in its jaws. I leaned into the grounded spear and aimed for all I was worth. The spear hit in the roof of its mouth way back near the throat, but off to the side. I missed the brain and the spine completely. The lizard was rushing up my spear towards me. I leapt off the spear at the last moment, leaving it half sticking out of the lizard’s head, half out of its mouth.

Just as I leapt the lizard started thrashing it’s head trying to dislodge the spear, and its head and my spear both slammed into my side, throwing me into the brush of the blind.

I landed hard into the springy branches, saving me from getting slammed into the trunk of the tree next to me for even more damage. I tried to roll out and pull the wooden waster, Crap I was tangled up. My feet didn’t reach the ground. My hands didn’t reach the ground. I was stuck. I had no leverage to pull myself out. The waster was in my hand but all I could do was point it at the thrashing lizard helplessly.

I saw Yamina land a good wound onto the lizard’s eye, making it thrash its head even more. Smashing the spear into the branches above it, ripping the hole in its head open wider, blood gushing out of the hole and its mouth both. That gave me an idea. I spent 10 precious seconds concentrating and used a cutting field from shape to drop a big bough off the tree and onto the lizard tangling it even more. Yamina hit it again, and the lizard health bar was below half. I spent another double handful of seconds I’d never usually have in combat and used shape to cut away the brush holding most of my weight. It leaned, falling outward and I and rolled out on the far side of the brush towards the nest. The huge impaled lizard was thrashing and hissing like mad. Fighting the big branch, I’d dropped on it and the spear both. I grabbed my waster in both hands, one on the hilt holding it high, one about halfway down the blade. I ran around to the right so I was behind the lizard. I jumped its thrashing tail and literally flying at it with my whole body. I plunged down with my waster point down, slamming it into the lizard’s torso behind the ribs and in front of the legs. I was laying on it’s tail and legs, getting tossed about as it tried to thrash under me.

I pulled myself to my feet using the waster, raised it again, and began to stab it into the lizard’s torso again, and again, In a frenzy of panicked blows.

I don’t’ know how many times I stabbed it, but after a blank period where all I remember was stabbing and stabbing with both arms. Yamina flew down and said “Bill, it’s dead you can stop.”

I turned to look at her, taking huge heaving breaths, the waster still in my hand. Still covered with the lizard’s blood. It took me some indeterminate time standing astride the lizard’s hips, and heaving wind in and out, before my brain caught up, and I knew we were done.

I was just too exhausted; my brain was mush, I had nothing left in me, I stored the waster and the pointed stick into my inventory, and we headed back to the safe area in a daze. Leaving the corpses where they lie, not risking face pulling more lizards. Maybe I should have looted them, or put them in my inventory, but I’m completely out of Spoons or Care Points whichever you called it. I was running on fumes. I had nothing. Yamina lead me, I just followed her light, only enough mental capacity left for that.

We staggered back to camp, okay I staggered and she flew, heading towards the lusher terrain, and just outside the safe area on the near side of the river, was that Ironic looking Tortoise again. I think. Who knows, how do you tell giant tortoises apart?

“Look it’s Tommy, Hi Tommy!” Yamina said, zipping over to hover near the tortoise.

The tortoise walked right up to where I was and got some scratches from Yamina, who was clearly in love. I mutter, “I’m not walking it, not my pet.’ The ancient and futile chant of dads everywhere

Then the tortoise picked something back up in its mouth, walked right up to me and dropped it at my feet. Looked me in the eye, nodded again, and walked off, heading back into the woods.

After staring at the tortoise again in amazement, I picked up what it had gifted me and looked it over, expecting a rat. Cold, heavy black on the outside and red where it had clearly broken off another piece.

It was a chuck of meteor, the size of my freaking fist. “Okay you win Yamina, Tortoises are friendly, not just neutral, and smart, maybe people smart.” I tossed it into my inventory, and staggered the rest of the way back to the safe zone.

I headed to the altar to lie down and get some sleep, in the soft short but lush grass, Yamina zoomed WAY UP, crying, “three, three I’m ahead by threeee!

I was asleep before my head hit the sand.