Joe:

I say a quick prayer to any benevolent deities that are listening and I crush the skull in my right hand. The subtle lights deep inside rise out of it and then flow into my arm. The feel of the energy gave me a thrill somewhere between that first kiss with someone you really -do- like, and being punched in the face. I didn’t immediately crave more, but neither did I disappear into sleep. Gar told me to get my skills before leaving the safe zone. I look about me, I’m in about a 10-foot dirt clearing, surrounded by forest on all sides.

I was firmly on the point of a dilemma. If I followed orders, I was stuck here in the clearing, but safe. If I followed the spirit of the orders, get out there and get stronger, I was heading out, ill prepared into danger. Most of the people here don’t have magic either, and I was in a noob zone. Travelling should be safe. Now the question was where?

I pulled one of the 2 button compasses out of my survival kit from the pack, and figured out which way was east, and tucked it into the secure inner pocket with my gold rings. Ms. Agatha said the river was east, and the town was a couple days downstream. Of course, the grey lady, long may she burn, said she had me sent somewhere else, so that made the directions useless. I decided to climb a tree to get a better view of the land. It clearly rose to the west and fell to the east. The old BSA rule of thumb for self-rescue was downhill to water, and then downstream to civilization. While that rule doesn’t work in the plains of Africa, I didn’t appear to be -in- Africa, or Plains, more temperate forest foothills if I had to guess. The forest was mix of common trees evergreen and deciduous, and frankly could be just about anywhere temperate, but one place I wasn’t was on the Serengeti. When I got back to the ground, I put my pack back in my inventory and stuck my sword through the belt. I headed east, as it was as good an answer as I could find.

As I moved, I snapped small tree branches breaking them to hang straight down still attached to the tree by the bark. This way if I needed to, I could follow the trail of branches back to the clearing. Every once in a while, I’d climb another tree at the top of the rise, and look ahead to scout the terrain. After a couple hours and a half dozen climbed trees, I saw a large clearing not that far north off my path. I began to make my way there. As I approached quietly, I was able to see a small stone building, covered all over in vines and looking long abandoned. I was hoping Ms. Agatha still had my back spawn location wise, and it might be useful. Perhaps a temple I can dedicate to Gar. I moved to where I could clearly see the doorway. There were 2 shields above the door, but I couldn’t make them out from the edge of the clearing. I sat there a few minutes, just listening, trying to see if the building was inhabited, but I heard nothing other than the sound of the wind playing in the tops of the trees.

I pulled my sword, its weight, a comfort in my hand, and crept moving slowly to the door. The tall grass swished at my pants as I moved. Using the blade, I reached up to the lintel above the door and scraped of the weeds and vines well enough to see the shields. One was Gars black shield with a grey tower, but next to it, slightly overlapping was another shield, also black, but in place of the grey tower were 2 grey fists pointing straight up, surrounded in flames. Both shields were outlined in silver. Swinging my sword, I carefully hacked away and cleared the door. Then I began pulling it slowly open towards me. I grabbed the largest light stone in my left hand and I advanced carefully and quietly into the dark interior.

I squeezed the light stone and nothing happened. I slid my thumb back and forth, nothing. Next, I concentrated on the stone and thought “Light” and the stone turned into a blazing ball of light in my hand. Maybe blazing is wrong, as there was no flame, but like I had a fist full of super bright shining LEDS. I tried thinking at it to dim slowly and it worked, soon I had a light that would let me see without blinding me. I cupped it in my hand, and held my hand out before me to prevent the light from hitting my eyes. I really needed to hang this on a cord or make a headband for it or something.

Inside the temple, or church, it looked as you’d expect, 3 rows of narrow pews, leading to a raised area with an altar on it. It was all covered in dust, but otherwise tidy. Kind of like a neat well-organized attic in an old house. I started moving forward to check out the altar. Suddenly I froze, I heard rustling above me. I looked up and the ceiling was just a mass of webs. Like the worlds champion colony of tent moth caterpillars had set up shop and made it all one giant mass of cobwebs. With a flash of thought, I turned the light stone back to full power and tossed it on top of the altar. Then I swapped it for the largest of the firestones. The rustling got louder, and a half dozen shiny black spiders the size of my torso with huge butts bigger than my head, came scuttling down the walls all about me, the sound like 8 dozen sets of nails on blackboards. You could just see the red hourglass of a black widow peek out from beneath as the spiders scuttled moving straight at me.

I moved to put the door to my back, ready to exit if I needed too. The first of the giant black widow spiders got to me by crawling along the top of one of the pews on my right. Not wanting to damage my sword on the stone pews, I swung my blade horizontally, and smashed it into the spiders’ legs with a snap of my wrist and a twisting motion for max speed. With a crunching and crackling sound, and a wet screaming noise like some kind of insane demon baby, the spider was knocked off the pew back and into the corner where it twitched feebly. The legs on one side twitching clearly broken. Wishing I had something better, like a .45, I dropped the firestone into a jacket pocket, and pulled the metal scabbard of my sword out of my belt and hefted it my hand. I decided I needed low defense more than an untested fire attack, and slid my hand up to just below the top lip of the scabbard. This would allow me to stab downward with the tip at any spiders coming on the ground.

It was about then, that the next spider skuttled up the pew on my right, and 2 more of its friends joined on the left. I was now outnumbered 3 to one. I threw a feint at the one on my right, then jumped left, fending the far one off with the tip of my scabbard, and smashing the nearest with my sword right into the thorax. My right arm was now twisted across my body, so in a move I’d laugh at in a movie, I stepped across and behind with my right foot, heel out as if for a crescent kick, and spun on the balls of my feet and pulled the sword in vertical and tight, the classic Gunthar spin. Then as I came around, I lashed out horizontally smashing the sword at high speed into both spiders with a phwwt noise. The first spider opened up like a water bottle at a cutting demonstration, splash! Ha! I must have had my blade at the perfect right angle. The second spider, which I’d hit once already, was smashed off and hit the side of the right pew in front of me with a crackling sound. I pivoted to the spider on the far-right pew and leapt forward into a thrust, my sword held hand upside down with my knuckles pointing upwards, skewering it. Flinging it off my blade with a quick spinning of my wrist, I stepped back into the doorway, glancing behind me just in case.

The coast behind was clear. There was a pause in the action, and I glanced about, checking everywhere for the other 2 spiders, seeing only the 4 I had slain so far, then checking to see if more had come from the webs on the ceiling, but not seeing any there either.

Suddenly I had a creeping, shivering feeling of the skin on my upper arms and back. Without thought, I leapt forward and followed with 2 more quick leaps to put the altar to my left. Spinning about when I arrived, the two missing spiders were above the door, and had been about to drop on me. I took a pair of small fast steps, and lunged at the spiders with both hands. Thrusting hard with my scabbard, but carefully with the sword, not wanting to damaging the tip smashing it into the wall. I crushed into the torso of the spider on my left with the tip of the scabbard the impact jarring up my arm and twisting my shoulder it hit so hard, ruining my balance. My sword though only managed to push the last spider out of the way, and onto the floor, where it disappeared in the shadows with a noise like a broom sweeping a stone floor. The spider I’d crushed with my scabbard fell off wetly with a plopping sound when I returned it to a vertical guard position.

I’d lost track of the second spider, in a near panic, I turned about to check in all directions looking for it. I felt the weighty thump as the spider leapt on to my back, clinging to my jacket. I spun again, breathing hard and awash with goose pimples, hoping to fling it off, but it held on tightly chittering at the back of my neck. I tried stabbing clumsily over my shoulder backwards with my sword, also moving the sword about to try to scrape the spider off. While I was bumping the spider about, I wasn’t getting it off of me. I quickly thanked the gods, that I’d traded the army jacket for leather, Else I’d have been bitten a dozen times already. I spun in place, pulled my sword up and out in front of me again. Then I clenched myself tightly and smashed my back into the stone wall of the church. With a sick crunching sound my shoulders pressed the spider against the stone. At the same time I crushed it, I also pressed it upwards. I felt its fangs stab into the base of my neck on the right side, going deep into the muscle.

“Fuuuck!” I shouted from the pain, and afraid of the venom with which I’d almost certainly just been injected. If a tiny black widow can make you sick, what can one the size of a dog do to you? I slid sideways along the wall to smear the now crushed spider off of my back. Thinking frantically about what I could do. First off, I was going the let the wounds bleed, hoping it would clear some of the venom out of the wound. I put my scabbard back into my belt and started throwing the spider corpses into my inventory, thinking I didn’t know enough to loot the good parts, but at least this way I’d have them for ID if I found a healer.

I went back to the altar to grab the light stone, and heard a soft tearing noise from above me. I looked up and a spider 6 to 8 feet across was tearing its way to me through the webs. Looking at me with cold glassy eyes and making an angry shuddering noise way too deep to be chittering, closer to a Velociraptor than the smaller spiders I’d just faced. Flashing back to an incident in my childhood, I grabbed the large flame stone out of my pocket. I thought “Flame on, Full power”. The fire was a lance coming out the top of my hand like an oxy acetylene torch. I threw the stone up into the webs aiming for the spider sized hole. The giant momma spider squealed like an 18wheeler with all the tires locked up, and jerked out of the way of the flaming firestone. With a whoosh like a firework, the webs caught fire and burned freakishly fast, almost an explosion of fire just as they had as a when I was a child. With a horizontal wave of combustion, the spider attic was a huge wall of flame. Just as fast as it went up, flaming bits started to fall from above. There were dozens, maybe hundreds, of tiny spiders up to about the side of my hand. Bigger flaming chunks fell next, a half dozen of the ones the size of my torso, all aflame, making a crunching splatting sound when they hit the ground. Dammit, I wish I was living in a game world where you got XP, this would be a freaking bounty.

About halfway through the inferno, so just a second or so, the giant momma spider fell too, not so much aflame as covered in scraps of burning web, landing hard on the stone pews. The spider was still for a fraction of a second, and I leapt in, ignoring the fire and started chopping as hard as a could at the head area. I figured no eyes and no fangs, I’m safe even if it is alive. I honestly don’t remember if it was moving, or screaming or what, I just remember hacking the living crap out of it. After, perhaps longer that I strictly needed to be there. Where I was clearly not panicking, at all, nope, not me. I stepped back out of the church to let things calm down heaving great gulps of air in and out of my chest with each breath.

I was hoping that the roof framing of the church wasn’t made of wood. I didn’t need to replicate Notre Dame in miniature. When the flames were all down, I went back in and stomped or stabbed any spiders still moving. In the process of that I found my fire stone and turned it back off and stuck it in my pocket. The whole thing was super-hot to the touch, almost burning my fingers.

Once I was sure the spiders were all dead, and there was no more risk of fire. I inventoried up all the corpses and any bits of webbing left. After that, I went up to the altar, put my hand on it and prayed to Garabal, and got a popup.

[As a Disciple of Garabal, do you with to rededicate this altar to Garabal, the Elder God?]

I thought “YES” at the popup as hard as I could and it worked. As soon as it was gone another message popped up.

[This altar was also dedicated to The Architect, God of Builders and Engineers, though you serve Garabal, do you wish to rededicate this alter to The Architect as well.]

God of Builders and Engineers, sounds like my kind of guy. Again, I said/thought Yes. And it went away. The whole church started to glow brightly, and then there was a flash and the sound of Trumpets.

[All Hail, the god Garabal the Elder God is worshiped once again!]

Then the temple went back to normal, except I could feel an energy coming off the altar. Like if was holding my hand near it, was warm, but when I put my hands actually on it, it felt like cool stone.

I prayed to Garabal, for healing and purification of the venomous wound in my neck, but in 30 minutes or so, I stared to really feel like garbage, hot, my muscles all getting stiff and sick to my stomach. My neck was starting to swell up in an alarming way. I felt a fluttery feeling in my chest on the left side. It was way too low to be my heart, for a second, I thought I was starting to convulse, but it was way too steady, like a cellphone ringing silently in my pocket. I reached in a grabbed everything. On my palm sat a tiny button compass and 2 gold rings. One of the rings was glowing slightly, and vibrating. I slipped the vibrating one onto my right ring finger hoping it had a good reason to act that way. The non-glowing non-vibrating one I slid onto my left middle finger on the hunch it too was more than it seemed. They both just sat there, back to being just a ring. Then feeling like a fool for not doing it earlier, I tried to ID the rings.

Fix0 was the one that had been vibrating. I noticed I was feeling a bit better. Hoping it wasn’t placebo, I sat down my back to the altar to wait. In half an hour, I was back to feeling normal, and not long after the two big holes in my neck were healed over good as new.

I looked at the ring and said “Hey Fix-0 apparently you are a ring of healing, regeneration, or something. Thanks a lot, I appreciate your help”. The ring continued to just do its ring thing and I felt slightly silly.

I then extended my right arm in my best Hal Jordan pose and thought “Burninate!” at the other ring, in my best mental Trodgar voice. A lance of fire, hotter even than the Flame Stone at full blast shot out about 3-4 feet from my hand, scaring the crap out of me, even though I called it, and then winked out I manfully jumped in shock, totally emitting a deep manly noise. No really, DEEP!

I ran my fingers over the ring, it wasn’t even the tiniest bit warm.

I concentrated again thinking “Burninate!” and the jet came back and stayed as long as I focused it.

Score! I try ID again focusing really hard on getting more detail, but I get nothing new.

Now I just need to fight some monsters made out of dried grass and napalm!

I got back up to search the church, now that I wasn’t in a hurry, and saw sitting on the altar an ever so slightly glowing scroll. I ID’d it and it came back Focusing hard on getting more information, It added to the end. Great, sarcasm was just what I needed.