A long backstoryFollow

The next day went rather well. During the morning, I managed to take out four people attacking our stronghold from my hidden position underneath a bunch of debris. In the afternoon, when it was our turn to attack, I took out several defenders guarding the base’s weak side before getting taken down by a paint mine. While I was disappointed that I didn’t see Samantha during the game, it didn’t upset me to be out of the game since the mine gave me a great excuse to go hit the showers before my date that night.

The campsite showers were heated, thankfully, and I was glad to be free of all that dust, sweat and paint. I shaved as well, leaving a well groomed goatee. As usual, the aftershave burned like hell on the couple spots I’d nicked myself. Once again more or less fit for polite company, I headed back to camp.

Once I arrived, I had a quick snack and pulled my spare pair of boots out of the trunk. They were black leather military surplus and quite comfortable. Looking at them, I had an idea. I decided that since she was wearing all black when I met her, I’d dress to match. Then I thought about that line from A Knight’s Tale and almost had to go back and take another shower, this one cold. I muddled through changing by chanting a Homer Simpson mantra – “Think unsexy thoughts. Think unsexy thoughts.”

Once finished changing, I evaluated what I was wearing. Awesome black boots, heavy duty black cargo pants, tight fitting black t-shirt. I didn’t have a mirror, but I didn’t need one to know I looked good. I mean, I didn’t have the washboard abs, but I wasn’t bad looking either. I’d always had an easy time putting on muscle, so my shoulders, pecs and arms looked good, I’d just never been able to lose those last couple percentage points of body fat needed to show off the abs. Since I figured that losing that extra fat meant giving up my Dr. Pepper entirely, well let’s just say I could live without the washboard stomach.

I put a knife in each boot and hid another one under my belt, once again because I would be walking through the forest at night and I wasn’t taking any chances on bears. Then I grabbed my black duster and wide brimmed fedora. I know, you might have expected a cowboy hat with that coat, but that obviously means you don’t have the same taste in anime I do. Sure, it should have been red to match the character, but I preferred black. I also had some yellow shades to match, but since it would be dark, I stuck them in the coat pocket.

Finally, I put on my silver pendant. Made it myself by melting down old silver coins in a mold. Needed it back in high school to dress up as a video game character for a Con. If you’re surprised that I cosplay, you haven’t been paying attention.

I grabbed my spare messenger bag, the other one being covered in paint, and stocked it up with the essentials: First aid kit, bear repellant, a flashlight, a digital camera, my MP3 player and some MREs, since I thought I might be expected to bring dinner. I also left my collapsible shovel inside, since it might make a handy tool against bears. I know it sounds like I’m obsessing about the bears, but better safe than sorry, right? I also grabbed my violin in case she wanted me to play for her.

I secured my campsite and headed off in the direction she’d told me. It occurred to me that I hadn’t gotten any specific landmarks to look for or anything more than “two miles west”, but I decided to go for it anyway. Almost three hours later, it was dark and I was prepared to head back to my camp. I figured it must have been some kind of joke someone was playing on me. I was sure that somewhere nearby Samantha and her boyfriend were having a great laugh at my expense. As I turned to head home, however, I heard her voice.

“There you are,” she said to me as she stepped out of the brush. “I didn’t think you were coming.” It could have been hopeful thinking, but she sounded relieved to see me.

“Of course I came,” I said, trying to sound smooth. “I just got a little turned around in the woods is all.”

“I’m glad you made it. Come on, we have to go find Courage and get going. We have a long trip ahead of us.” Confused, I asked her who Courage was. “Our noble steed,” she replied. Oh, so she had a name for her car. I was cool with that.

We walked for half an hour or so. She led me through the woods like she could see as though it were the brightness of day. I noticed that she walked a bit funny, as though she had hurt her hip, or perhaps because one of her legs was a bit longer than the other. It slowed us down, but I was too polite to say anything. Suddenly, a rustling of nearby vegetation set me on high alert. Something big was just ahead of us. I’m sure you know what I thought it was, so I’m sure you understand why I grabbed my knife and put myself between Samantha and whatever it was.

She just laughed. “I appreciate your desire to protect me, but mine’s bigger.” She held out her hand. In it was a large painted ball. “Oops,” she said. “Wrong one.” She showed me her other hand, which held an everloving ******* sword. Where in God’s name had she been hiding that? And the ball for that matter. I mean, she was well endowed, but she certainly wasn’t stuffing her bra with that thing.

The thing that burst out of the woods wasn’t a bear. I wasn’t sure what it was. It looked like a cross between a horse, a bird and a reptile. It was bigger than most bears, hell, as large as an elephant and had giant slimy wings. If I hadn’t used the facilities before heading out this way, I would have messed my pants.

Samantha, however, calmly stood her ground, blade at the ready. She seemed to be staring down the charging monster. Suddenly, it screeched to a halt. She walked up and thumped it on the nose. “What did I tell you about charging? Next time I pull out the riding crop.” The thing shrank back. My fear addled mind perked up at the words “riding crop”.

I wanted to ask her a million questions, but all I managed to say was “Bwuh?”

“This is Courage,” she said. “He’ll give us a ride through space to find my homeworld.”

My mind raced. Only two possibilities existed in my mind. The first was that someone had slipped me some LSD, probably mixed it in with the paint in that mine. The other was that everything she had told me the previous night had been the honest truth. In one, none of this was happening. I was probably back at camp tweaking out. In the other, I had the opportunity to go into space with an amazingly beautiful girl.

“Alright,” I said. “But how are we supposed to survive out in the cold of space with no air, food or water?”

“Oh, right,” she replied. She reached into a small pouch on her belt and pulled out the same ball she had been holding earlier. “Hold this.” I stared at the ball, trying to figure out how it had been stuffed in such a tiny bag. She rummaged around the pouch for a bit before pulling out a necklace and a ring. “The necklace will deal with the cold and lack of air, while the ring will make it so you don’t have to eat or drink while we’re out there.”

I was about to protest, but then realized that I was planning to get on the back of a beast that could supposedly fly us through space. I decided that if the ring and necklace were the point where my credulity broke, I had bigger problems. It was either believe it all or believe in the acid trip theory. The acid trip theory had zero chance of leading me to getting laid, so I just shrugged and put on the jewelry. She took the ball back and stuffed it into the far too small pouch.

I did ask one question. “What’s with the ball?”

“In case of emergency.” I decided that I was probably better off not knowing. She vaulted up onto the back of the creature, into a saddle I hadn’t noticed before. She held out her hand to help me up. I took it and she yanked me up behind her.

I didn’t think too hard about the fact that she was clearly stronger than I was. Instead, the only thing that went through my mind was Hank Hill’s voice saying “the spot behind the driver is called the...er...’***** seat.’” I’m not sure why.

“Put your feet in the stirrups and hang on. It’s a bit of a rough ride until we clear the atmosphere.”

“Hang on to what?”

“Me, silly,” she said, reaching back and booping me on the nose. No, seriously, she said “boop”. I wasn’t going to judge. She had just told me to put my arms around her. If this was a dream, I didn’t want to wake up.

On our flight through space, once in a while we would stop on habitable planets to give Courage a chance to get some food and for us to stretch our legs. While stopped, we often would find things to do to get some exercise. Often, this included teaching each other about different fighting skills we had learned. She taught me proper techniques for fighting with a knife. I taught her everything I knew about martial arts. Sure, my highest belt was a yellow belt, but I had six of them. That’s right, I started and dropped out of five martial arts before I was eighteen. The sixth, judo, I had taken almost two semesters. I would be taking a third next fall, but that was only if I was back in time to register for classes.

Other times I’d show her various games from Earth. She always had the right ball for the game, or at least something similar enough. Even knowing what I know now about Bags of Holding, I’m still not sure how she had so many. And I definitely don’t know why she carried that many.

Once in a while, we’d encounter some kind of threat. Some of these threats were simply beasts. I was actually relatively helpful against these. Other times we encountered what can only be described as monsters. Samantha handled these on her own unless she thought it would be more amusing for Courage to handle them. By far, however, the most dangerous encounter we had was with the spaceship.

We were entering a system to look for a place to rest a bit when a laser beam shot past us. Based on the violet color, I suspected that they were using krypton as the lasing medium, but I might have been incorrect. It really doesn’t matter. What does matter is that Courage was at a reduced speed, which meant that we probably couldn’t get up to faster than light speed before they shot us since he took so long to get up to speed.

Since they didn’t fire again, I assumed it was a warning shot. I convinced Samantha to slow Courage down further so we could try diplomacy. A smaller craft exited the larger one and the pilot motioned for us to follow him. We did so and ended up in some kind of cargo bay. Samantha, in a bit of foresight unusual for her, cast a spell on both of us so we could understand our hosts.

They arrived with heavily armed guard. Their uniforms violated at least two or three rules on the Evil Overlord list, so I suspected that we might not be dealing with good people. Surprisingly enough, however, I found that they were human. They seemed as startled by our shared race as I was. They demanded to know why we had entered their solar system. I explained that we simply needed a stop to feed Courage.

They didn’t buy it. They separated us and took us to different interrogation rooms. The inquisitor who came to visit me was a humorless sort. He seemed to think that we were advanced scouts for an invasion fleet. I made the decision that I couldn’t give these paranoid nutjobs any real info about Earth, so I lied. Not only that, I nested a lie within a lie. I knew that if they dug deep enough, they’d manage to unravel my hastily constructed lie. So I made the first one seem outlandish. I claimed to be a famed writer within the United Federation of Planets(yes, I was cribbing from Star Trek to help my lie) and that Samantha was my half-Vulcan bodyguard. I told them that we were a warp capable civilization from the far reaches of the galaxy and that I was researching other cultures for a book I was writing. It was exactly the kind of lie that one might think up on the spot and I left it full of holes for him to pick at.

And he did, but he didn’t pick any that I had considered. He scoffed at the notion that anyone could break the faster than light barrier with a ship. He told me that only a shantak like the one we were riding could truly go faster than light. Besides, if we did have FTL ships, why were we on the back of a shantak?

My mind reeled at hearing that word. I’d read about shantaks in something Lovecraft inspired, plus I’d seen one on that anime, you know, the one where all the horrors of the mythos are instead portrayed as schoolgirls(and one creepy boy)? Also, the lead, who had a pet shantak, kinda reminds me of Samantha, now that I was thinking about it. That thought sent a chill up my spine.

This was the part of the lie where I was supposed to fumble around and finally “admit the truth”. My performance was aided by the fact that I was genuinely flustered by that revelation. Finally, I “broke down and admitted the truth”. I told him that we had taken a shantak because they were a lot harder to track than a warp-speed starship. I told him that we were running from our people because Samantha was the daughter of the Vulcan ambassador, engaged to be married to a Vulcan of high standing, but instead she had fallen for one of the groundskeepers at Starfleet Academy(me, in case you hadn’t guessed) and that we had run away together. I swore that everything else I had told him was true.

My performance must have convinced him, because he began asking me more about our culture. I told him that we were a peaceful people, but could be provoked to war if other races insisted. I told him about our recent war with the Dominion(Sisko is the greatest captain ever and to hell with anyone who says different).

Thanks to remembering something I saw on Burn Notice once, I did my best to use the questions he was asking me to determine what I could about him and his culture. As far as I could tell, his culture was more or less xenophobic and, for lack of a better word, ****-tastic. It was imperative that we escape.

It was only when they put both of us in a force-field protected cell that I considered that Samantha couldn’t have possibly told the same lie I did. I cursed myself for not working out some kind of shared lie beforehand. Turns out that it was unnecessary.

She spent the entire time she was interrogated talking about pancakes.

That day changed the dynamic of our relationship. Not completely, but enough to make a difference. It wasn’t that she viewed me differently. What had changed was me. I had become less passive about expressing my feelings to her. From that point on, when I took her hand she held mine as well. When I kissed her, she kissed back. She smiled whenever I called her by a pet name or whenever I told her that I loved her. All in all, things were pretty great.

Don’t get me wrong, we didn’t sleep together. Well, okay, in the literal sense, we shared a bedroll a few times, but in the more biological sense, it never happened. Not that I didn’t want it to, I just never made a move in that direction. I was still afraid of rushing her. Looking back, I suspect that she probably wouldn’t have minded if I had, but to a kid head over heels whose relationship was progressing, it wasn’t worth jeopardizing our slow and steady progress to rush it. Those few months were bliss.

During our year or so together, I had heard stories from her about her friends. She told me about her old life, about the hardships she had endured. She even told me about how she had been taken by the dimensional shambler, only avoiding the horrifying fate it had planned for her because it had already been wounded by her friends, allowing her to kill it after waking.

There was one story she had asked me not to ask about, however. She wasn’t comfortable telling me about how she had lost her faith and ended her time as a paladin. I had chalked that one up as too painful and let it be. I was surprised when she brought it up. (Since you’re reading the English version of this, you’ll see the full story within. I’m marking the parts that won’t show up in the other version in big “XX” marks.)

We had landed once again to allow Courage a chance to feed. I set up camp while Samantha did some scouting, hoping to find some locals who could tell us where we were. I cleared a spot for camp and began gathering wood for a fire. As I set up the tent, I began singing again. A few words into the song(Something from the nineties, had been pretty high on the charts. Not telling you anything beyond that. It’s my memory, dammit.) Samantha’s voice sang out as well. We sang together until the end of the song, then I could see on her face that she was excited about something. I asked what it was.

“We’re on the planet Castrovel,” she said. “That means we’re only a few hours from home.” I offered to strike camp so we could continue on, but she shook her head. “It’ll still be there in the morning. Might as well start out fresh.” She produced a bundle from within the pouch at her belt. “Besides, I got a new ball.” I nodded sagely.

We played what can only be described as Calvinball. If you don’t know what Calvinball is, well, just imagine a game where the rules are ill defined at best and change whenever a whim strikes a player. I never knew who was winning, but after about an hour, Samantha told me that I had, in fact, been the victor with a score of Q to Twelve. I’m still not sure whether I had the Q or the Twelve. What I am sure of, however, is that Samantha declared that the winner deserved a reward.

She made me promise to close my eyes and not open them until she said I could, no matter what I heard. I agreed. A few moments after closing my eyes, I felt her lips pressed on mine. What I didn’t feel was the familiar touch of cool metal. She had taken off the gold mask that always covered half of her face. I desperately wanted to open my eyes, but I had promised not to, so they remained shut.

A few moments after the kiss, she let me open my eyes. She had replaced the mask. On the side of her face that I could see, she wore a wistful smile.

I started a fire, one of man’s oldest sources of comfort, and we sat together next to the flame for hours, just enjoying each other’s company. After a while, she asked if I remembered asking about why she was no longer a paladin. Unsure how to answer, I simply nodded. She asked if I was still interested in knowing. I nodded again.

She told me the story, reminding me first of how she had become stranded far away from home and spent years wandering through various planes of existence before finally making her way back onto the Material Plane(which is where our physical universe is located). Upon returning, she realized that she was nowhere near home. In time, she found a shantak and convinced it to carry her home, promising to protect it from the many things it feared in exchange for safe passage. That’s what led her to the place where she lost faith in the one she worshipped.

XX After some time together, she and courage landed on a small planet that the locals called Serenity. She landed in a squalid town just outside a large marsh. After some investigation, she learned that this town was one of many that had recently lost its independence after an invasion from a nearby nation. Seeing how these people lived broke her heart.

That evening, she was approached by members of the local resistance movement. They asked her to join them in fighting off the invaders and winning their freedom. She agreed. To her mind, this place was why Ragathiel had allowed her to be dragged away. She was meant to help these people. This is where it all made sense.

Unfortunately, she was wrong. She fought alongside the resistance for months, leading up to a final confrontation between the resistance cells throughout the nation and the occupation force in a rocky valley whose name she never learned. They were outnumbered three to one, but Samantha was sure that they had the gods on their side.

The resistance was slaughtered in that battle. Samantha was the only survivor. She was furious about what had happened. As cliché as it seems, she found herself standing upon a precipice in the rain, raging against the heavens. She even cast her holy symbol over the edge, though she kept her sword since it was a useful tool in addition to being the blade of a paladin. XX

After she completed her story, I thanked her for telling me and we sat in silence for a bit. All in all, it had been a good day, topped off by her telling me perhaps one of the most intimate secrets she held. When we fell asleep together next to the fire, I was content. Or perhaps, I was elated. I was just plain happy. I was…

Really surprised when she left me the next morning.

The wizard we visited was old, aged in the way elves age. Which is to say, gracefully. We talked for a bit and I learned that he was well over four centuries old, but he looked to be around middle age. He had been studying magic for at least three centuries and had attained a level of mastery exceedingly rare in the world. I was lucky. Had I found myself anywhere else, it’s quite possible that I never would have found someone who could send me home.

We haggled on the price for a bit. The magical effect I was looking for was a powerful one. It would even normally require him to cast it twice, once to get me where I was going and once to get him back from there, so that would double the cost. Thankfully, he had discovered a way to imbue a relic made of gold with the magic, so that he would not have to travel with me. The amount required ran about half the cost of the second casting, so it was economically feasible. I would even get to keep the depowered gold afterwards, so it was even more economical. All in all, it worked out to about twenty-six hundred gold pieces.

As you can imagine, I didn’t have that much money. I was certain that the family helping me wouldn’t want to spend that kind of money either. So I started haggling. I didn’t have much in this world’s currency, but I had a few gadgets this world had never seen. I was able to reach an agreement that the wizard would perform the spellcasting and supply the gold in exchange for my MP3 player and the solar charger that went with it.

That’s right, I was getting a trip home and gold worth over three hundred thousand dollars in exchange for two objects worth a combined total of less than one hundred and fifty dollars. To be fair, I had over six billion dollars worth of songs(mostly legally purchased) on the MP3 player by RIAA math. So I guess it was an even trade when you think about it.

He told me that it would take several days to prepare the artifact, so I spent that time with my hosts, singing for my supper as it were. I also spent a lot of time thinking about how things would be when I got home. I mean, I would be the first earthling to have traveled so far and returned. I’d be like Travis Walton, except people would believe me once the evidence I’d left on the moon was recovered. I’d be an overnight celebrity. I think there’d only be three or four more recognizable stars than me…and Oprah would probably be two of them. Certain phrases kept swimming around in my head. Book deals, movie rights, Nobel prize(I figured that since they gave one to a guy just for getting elected, I would certainly be eligible for crossing half the galaxy and returning)…all were mine for the taking when I returned.

Two days later, I met with the wizard once again and he made the final preparations for the spell. He needed to know as much as he could about the destination. I told him the major basics about Earth: Third planet from the yellow sun, a blue planet, one moon. He then needed more specifics on where on the planet I wanted to go. Made sense, didn’t want to go home only to end up in People’s Republic of Best Korea or whatever they were calling themselves now. I told him I was from a small town named Marana originally. I figured that would be the best place to end up since I still had family near there. He nodded and input the information into the spell as he cast it upon the small gold sun statue.

Let me tell you something I know about powerful wizards that I didn’t know back then. They generally have a number of permanent magic effects on them at all times. This wizard in particular had a permanent enchantment on him like the one Samantha had cast upon me to allow me to understand and speak other languages. This effect works by converting the words as they pass between your ears and brain into something you understand and as they pass from your brain to your mouth so that you speak the appropriate language that you’re trying to speak. All you hear is the language you’re used to communicating in.

So it was that “Marana” became “Thicket” to his ears. Thanks to a fun number of coincidences, it was enough to keep me from going home. Instead I ended up in a forest on Golarion. Turns out Golarion is also the third planet from its yellow sun, is a blue planet and has one moon. Turns out there used to be a village named “Thicket” in the country of Isger in the Inner Sea Region of Golarion. It was wiped out during some trouble with local goblinoids. Had the translation error not occurred, I would likely be on Earth right now, since I haven’t found a Marana here.

But it did. And that’s how I found myself in a burned forest, face to face with a hungry goblin.

Despite our somewhat off-putting introduction, I also came to call the soldiers friends. That’s why I winced when the captain told me that this was his last tour before retirement. Sure enough, he took a shot to the throat two days later. And that was just the beginning of what shaped up to be a very bad day. It was also the first day I ever killed someone.

We were moving along a road between a small village and the larger town where I was to leave the group to seek out any knowledge of a wizard who might be able to help me get home. The attack came out of nowhere. First indication we had that something was wrong was the crossbow bolt embedded in the captain’s neck. The soldiers and Calais drew their weapons immediately and we were swarmed by bandits.

I’m not a professional soldier like these people, but I’ve always been a gamer and have taken lessons in numerous martial arts, though as I’ve mentioned before, never sticking with one long enough to really master it. So I drew one of my knives. I got into a fight with a guy wielding a short sword and, while I didn’t manage to beat him, knocking me down distracted him long enough for someone else to embed an axe in his back.

The woman who had saved me, Emily, had been one of the people I had spent the most time talking with. I knew quite a bit about her. I knew that she had two younger brothers. I knew that she had a fiancé waiting at home. Her favorite flower was the lily(I’m still amazed at the fact that not only does this world have humans, but it has many of the same plants as back home). She would eat shepherd’s pie every day if allowed to, though she liked to top hers with goat’s milk cheese.

She knew about my distrust of clowns and that the first girl I had ever asked out had turned me down when we were thirteen, but agreed when I asked again when we were fifteen. She knew that my violin was given to me by my grandfather, who had died when I was young, and that it had belonged to him, relegated to a shelf after his arthritis had made it impossible for him to play until the day he found out I was interested in learning to play. She even knew that I enjoyed putting cottage cheese seasoned with garlic powder on my pizza, even though she had never heard of pizza before I mentioned it.

She was like a sister to me(In case you're wondering, I have three sisters back home, a younger brother and a trained ape-man who my parents insist is my older brother). Which is why it upset me so much when I watched her die. She had offered me a hand to help me up after killing that bandit when a bandit came up behind her. With a sickening crunch, his blade bit through her armor and emerged through her stomach, splattering me with her blood. I still remember the look of surprise and pain on her face and the startled cry that escaped her lips.

Now, I need you to understand something about me. I’ve always been a big guy. You know, tall, fairly muscular, that kind of thing. In part because of this, I had always been one to stick up for my friends. I’ve gotten into a fair few fights because someone I knew had been the target of a bully. Something primal in me just can’t stand to see someone I care about hurt. So, it was completely in character that I jumped to my feet and grabbed the nearest object available, which happened to be the folding shovel in a pocket of my messenger bag(I always wore it, though my violin case was in the wagon). With a flick of my wrist, the shovel was locked into an open position. I struck at the bandit, intent on wiping the smug smirk off of his face.

Things started out okay. I knocked the sword from his hand pretty easily. A smack to the leg through him off balance, causing him to stumble. The third, however, bounced harmlessly off his helmet, at worst causing a bit of a ringing in his ears. Turns out those shovels aren’t meant to be used as bludgeons against men in metal armor.

Gauntlets versus unprotected faces, on the other hand, well that’s a weapon that works just fine. One blow sent me spinning to the floor. The only thing that saved me was the bandit seeing that his fellows were having trouble against Calais. The paladin had slain several foes already in one on one and two on one combat. Surrounded as he was by multiple foes, the outcome was less certain. Still, he was likely to take most of them with him, that’s how good he was.

My opponent ran off to help bring down the last of the friends I had just made and I was left on the ground, my head spinning. I half watched as I tried to regain my bearing. Calais cut down most of his foes, but a lucky strike from my former opponent had finally brought him down. I’ll never forget the sound of that man’s voice as he laughed at my fallen friend.

“It is over, paladin. Die quickly so I can rifle through your belongings for something of value.” He flipped his sword and prepared for a two handed downward strike, intent on ending Calais’ life once and for all.

Things seemed to go into slow motion as I lumbered to my feet, drawing my boot knife as I stood. I’m not sure if it was the blow to the head or gift from on high, but I suddenly heard Bonnie Tyler singing “Holding Out for a Hero” in my head. I started charging at my foe and threw the knife as I did so, aiming for the gap between his helmet and his mail shirt. Of course, as awesome as it would have been if I had managed to hit my mark, I instead managed to hit him in the helmet. The knife bounced off, doing little more than startling him. But it bought me the extra second I needed.

I impacted him with the force of defensive lineman sacking a quarterback. The force of the impact sent his sword flying and the two of us hit the ground. In the superior position, I pulled the helmet from his head and began striking him repeatedly in the face, determined to crush his skull with my bare hand. He hit me square in the chest with his gauntlet, sending me tumbling off of him. We both leapt to our feet. He drew a backup dagger and charged at me.

Now, I wish I could say what happened next was that I pulled something from my past martial arts training and sidestepped his attack while putting him into an arm lock. Or maybe that I had dropped low and tripped him with a leg sweep. But alas, in that moment, my martial arts dabbling abandoned me.

What did stick with me, however, was years of television. So I did the only thing I could. I swear that I’m not making this up, though I wish I were. With a mighty cry of “That’s my purse! I DON’T KNOW YOU!”, I acted. If you have the same TV watching background I do, you probably know what happened next. The bandit, however, had never even heard of television, much less watched it. So it came as a big surprise when my foot struck him in the manly bits.

You always hear stories about how adrenaline affects you in moments like these. For instance, there’s that one time the mother lifted the burning car off of her children. Or the time the guy rolled the helicopter off of the pilot to save his life. Now, you can add “the time this one guy punted another man five feet into the air with one kick” to the list.

His eyes rolled back into his head and he collapsed to the ground. I then kicked him in the crotch a few more times. Okay, so it was more of a stomp than a kick. Then, deciding that it might not be possible to kill someone with kicks to the nuts, I stabbed him in the face with his own dagger. Then, remembering an episode of some show about real stories from the emergency room where a guy survived sticking an ice pick in his hear, I grabbed a nearby weapon and decapitated him to make sure. Somewhat fittingly, it was Emily’s axe I used to do the deed.

Satisfied that he was dead, I surveyed the scene. All my friends were down, the only one possibly still breathing was Calais. All the bandits were dead too. I rushed to Calais side to survey his injuries. Things weren’t looking great. If I didn’t do something quickly, he was going to bleed out.
I cut the straps from his armor and got to work tending his wounds. I used up pretty much everything in the first aid kit in my bag and still had wounds to tend to. I ended up cutting strips of cloth from a blanket I found in the wagon and using those(thoroughly sterilized by soaking in alcohol, of course) to dress the remaining wounds after I stitched them up.

Satisfied that I had done all I possibly could for him, I carefully moved Calais into the wagon. I didn’t want to move him, but I figured it would be better than leaving him on the cold ground. I covered him with another blanket and then started searching for my shovel. Someone had to tend to burying these bodies. Might as well be me.

About the time I located the shovel, the adrenaline wore off and the realization of just how close I had come to death sank in. I dropped to my knees and vomited, even though I had nothing in my stomach but acid to vomit up.

We headed to the city of Elidir. It was small by our standards back home, but for this world, it was a fairly large city with a population of over ten thousand. The city had a few interesting sights, but the one that was most memorable to me was the slave market. Apparently slavery is legal in many of the nations of this world.

I watched as a convicted criminal was put up for auction and was sickened by the way that they treated the poor man and others like him as cattle. At my request, Calais looked into the nature of the man’s crimes. Apparently, the crime that had led him into his predicament was simple theft. I made a note to myself to familiarize myself with the local laws as quickly as I could.

We first located some Chelish soldiers to deliver the news of what had happened to their patrol, then found an inn. It was a clean sort of place, which was good. I was still going to use up the last of my DEET spray before sleeping in the bed, but at least I didn’t have to eat the food and risk any kind of illness.

It was also a time I could finally relax and wallow in self pity. While on Castrovel, I had been upset that Samantha had left me and certainly had enough time to mope about it. However, the city I was in was so full of wonder and I was so excited at the prospect of going home that it hadn’t really hit me. Now, I had not only lost her, but was unsure if I’d ever get home.

I’ve never been a fan of beer, but the taproom in the inn had a supply of mead, so I tried that out. I have to admit that it wasn’t bad. Those ancient Germanic folks had a great sense of taste for folks who dressed in animal furs.

The Innkeep had noticed my violin case when we rented our rooms(by the way, the fact that Calais had sprung for two actual rooms is indicative of the wealth he carried. Most patrons slept in the common room on spare furs). He told me that it had been a while since they had been visited by a bard and offered to give me next drink free if I’d play something for them.

Calais had offered to pay for anything I drank that night, but I didn’t want to rely completely on him. If nothing else, doing this would help me feel like I could make my way in the world, so I agreed. I took a minute to tune my instrument, then finally decided on what to play.

As I’ve mentioned earlier, I mostly know music from video games(also a few anime themes). Most people back home wouldn’t take playing of those very seriously. However, I wasn’t back home and these people had never heard the music I was about to play. “I’m going to play for you an arrangement of two pieces of traditional music from Skyrim, a land very far from here.” I began to play, first performing The Dragonborn Comes and following that with Dragonborn, complete with the lyrics. Yes, I know the full lyrics even though I don’t know the language(“Dovahkiin, Dovahkiin, naal ok zin los vahriin, Wah dein vokul mahfaeraak ahst vaal!” and so on and so forth.). Hell, I know the lyrics to at least a dozen anime theme songs and I don’t speak Japanese beyond knowing how to curse a bit and ask how to get to the bathroom.

The real problem was playing the violin and singing at the same time. It’s a bit difficult to hold the instrument with your chin and sing at the same time, but it can be done if you’re willing to practice at it. What’s important is that the patrons apparently enjoyed the performance and the Innkeep handed me a drink with the offer of another if I’d perform more after I finished my current tankard. I announced my next arrangement as a tribute to friends who had fallen recently and performed Celes’ Theme(complete with the melancholy refrain when she tried to kill herself) followed by Aeris’ Theme(I refuse to call her Aerith). As I played, I thought of everything that had happened recently and the profound sense of loneliness I felt. It was all I could do not to tear up. Thankfully those pieces didn’t have any words.

Calais had remained at our table and had been joined by a small group of religious looking folks when I had gone to retrieve my violin, so I took a seat at an empty table after my second performance and drank my next tankard in silence, surely looking a bit sullen. Now, I’m a fairly large guy, so the alcohol was just barely beginning to affect me after I finished this third tankard. I didn’t suspect I was hallucinating when an extremely beautiful young woman came and sat across from me, but I’m sure no one would have blamed me if I had suspected that she wasn’t real.

As I was coming to this realization, I heard a loud crack and the door splintered inward. I looked over to see my bedmate’s brother. He had kicked in the door and had his sword at the ready. Either he was up standing watch or he had slept in his armor.

I’m pretty sure he would have cut me down if she hadn’t jumped in between us. I suddenly found myself desperately searching for a window as she tried to explain to him that I hadn’t done anything to her, but was suffering from illness of some kind. I think the fact that I vomited again helped prove her point.

She put on some clothing and helped me get dressed as he examined me for any normal signs of sickness. While inundated by his barrage of questions, I started crunching numbers in my head. I remembered reading somewhere that nine hundred milliSieverts was around the high end of expected radiation dosage for about a year in space for an astronaut and that you would need an exposure of around twice that to end up with the symptoms I was experiencing. I could be wrong on that as I was only reading about it out of curiosity after watching an episode of 1000 Ways to Die, so I can’t say I was really looking at it in a truly scientific light. I wanted to say that wouldn’t result in the effects I was experiencing, but I could be wrong on that.

Nonetheless, I was experiencing the effects of moderate exposure, somewhere in the two to six Gray range. I think. Haven’t had access to the internet or a doctor who understands the concept to confirm it, so I could be off. All I knew was that I needed some kind of treatment.

I tried to explain to them that I was suffering the symptoms of a known illness, but their language lacked the words for the concept I was trying to explain. I settled on calling radiation “Bad Light” and explained that it had a poisonous effect on humans. The girl suggested that magic might help me, but they didn’t know anyone who could magically deal with poison.

Calais, roused by the commotion, came to see what was happening. After being briefed, he told us that he had heard of a witch that lived outside of town who might be able to help me, but that help would likely be costly. I said, “I can pay for it. After all, I still had that golden artifact that the wizard had used to contain the spell that teleported me here…” As I spoke, however, I came to a realization. I had been carrying that in my hands when the goblin had attacked me. “Crap. Nevermind. I dropped it when fleeing the goblin.” Well, I still had the amulet and ring from Samantha. Perhaps I could barter one of them for the cure.

The witch was much kinder than expected, though she lacked social graces as one accustomed to being alone might. Explaining to her that I had been exposed to a poison over time that might also lead to further disease thanks to the long exposure and that I might have inadvertently exposed my female companion to the same poison, she told me that she did indeed have the magic I would need to cure us. She told us the cost in gold and I blanched. It was far more than any of us had. Thankfully, her interests included planar travel, so I was able to convince her to take the amulet that protected its wearer from heat/cold and allowed them to breathe in any environment in lieu of a gold payment. As I understand it now, one spell purged me of any remaining radiation and another cured the damage caused, hopefully putting my cancer risk back to normal.

Cured, we returned to the inn a few hours before sunrise. I was surprised when I was joined once again in my room by my lovely companion. We were too tired to continue what we had been doing before, but she informed me that she still wanted to fall asleep in my arms. I certainly wasn’t going to argue.

Awaking around noon, we headed down to the common room(well, not immediately, if you catch my drift). Calais and my companion’s brother were discussing their plans when we approached. The other group was continuing on their journey to help those affected by the Goblinblood War. Calais mentioned that he had an uncle in Absalom who might be able to get me into the Arcanamirium, a prestigious school for wizards and that he was willing to travel with me there if I wanted, since it was likely my best shot at getting home.

We had to make a choice. I could either stay with the beautiful young woman, she could travel with us to Absalom, or we would have to part company here. I was torn, but ultimately I decided that I couldn’t make the same mistake that had gotten me here in the first place. I had to go with Calais to Absalom rather than following the beautiful woman. Unfortunately, she made the same decision. She also had to continue on her journey. Leaving her goddess’ service to follow me wasn’t an option. Both our parties decided to wait one more day before departing, partially out of the practical consideration that our little adventure with the illness had cost us the travel time afforded by the morning’s light and partially to allow us to say goodbye.

The second night was bittersweet, enjoying each other’s company but knowing that when morning came we would be departing, possibly never to see one another again.

The next morning, they left early. Calais hadn’t woken when they parted, so I ended up with some time to myself. I used that time to shave my head, since bald was certainly a better look for me than having some patches of hair missing. Then I sat around wistfully thinking about the beautiful young woman I had just let go. Thinking back, I still wonder what she’s up to, which brings up an interesting thought. It’s not like we used any kind of protection. I have to wonder if somewhere there’s a child out there who looks a lot like me. That might be something to look into once my magical ability gets good enough to do that kind of search.

When the paladin finally awoke about an hour later, we departed, heading southeast towards the Andoran capital Almas, where we hoped to book passage on a vessel to Absalom.

Our trip to Almas was pretty uneventful, aside from a group of bandits that Calais handled easily. Once we arrived, we booked passage on a ship bound for Absalom. The boat was much smaller than I had expected and we ended up without a room of our own. I spent some time trying to explain the benefits of citrus to a sailor who appeared to have advanced scurvy, but he didn’t seem very interested.

The first thing that struck me about Absalom was that I had never seen a city of that size(For reference, I learned later that the city had a population of almost 304,000.) that didn’t have any skyscrapers. Sure, it had a number of large buildings, but nothing like the skyline of a similar city at home. The view of the nearby Kortos Mountains, however, gave me some great scenery to enjoy.

The city is comprised of fourteen smaller districts, each governed by its own district council. Calais’ uncle kept a modestly large home in the Ivy District, named such for its tree lined streets, so we headed there, passing through several other districts on our way. It struck me just how different each of the districts was.

The three story house we approached wouldn’t have looked too out of place in a well to do suburb back home. From the outside, I guessed that it was approximately the equivalent of a seven bedroom home with spacious kitchen, dining and living rooms. Considering that I wasn’t sure they’d have running water, I was uncertain as to how many bathrooms they might have.

The door was opened by a gentleman whose race I didn’t recognize. He looked almost human, but had an inhuman beauty to him. Calais introduced him as Wyran, his uncle’s dedicated manservant. I later learned that he was an aasimar, a race of beings with mixed mortal and celestial ancestry. He recognized Calais immediately and led us to the master of the house.

Calais’ uncle was a man of strange contradiction. He was at once fat and bald, yet also somehow wispy and had flowing hair. Let me explain. He was overweight, to be certain, but there was still a slightness to his frame. And his head was visibly balding, yet his hair was long and pulled back into a ponytail that seemed to flutter ever so slightly in a wind despite the fact that we were indoors. Combined with his glasses and the robes he dressed in, it made him look like a cross between a wizard and an aging hippie.

Calais introduced us and I learned that his name was Hanuun. I was invited to tell him more about myself, so I related to him the story of my trip to Golarion and then to Absalom. He was a jovial sort of man and laughed often with a deep, bellowing guffaw at the more entertaining parts of my tale. After my tale, Calais asked him to help me find a wizard who could get me home, or if barring that, he would help me get into the Arcanamirium so I could learn how to get myself home.

Hanuun shook his head regretfully. “Alas, m’boy, I don’t believe anyone here knows the magic you would need to make your trip home. And I’ve had a bit of a falling out with my old colleagues at the school. Lord Gyr, especially, would block my efforts to sponsor anyone right now.”

“Surely there is something you can do, Uncle,” Calais pleaded.

“There is one option, perhaps, but it’s not a guaranteed success and will require a lot of hard work on your part, young Kyle. Are you interested?” He looked at me pointedly.

“I’m not afraid of a bit of hard work. Just as long as you aren’t going to ask me to fight bandits or something like that. Eventually they’re going to get wise to my groin kicks and I’m afraid of what will happen at that point.”

He chortled at my remark. “Nothing so dangerous as that. No, I was thinking that perhaps I could teach you the basics of wizardry. You could stay in one of the guest rooms and study with me for the next six months or so, then take the entrance exam. If you do well, they would let you in regardless of your connection to me. I don’t know how successful we’ll be with so little time, but it’s worth a shot. Are you interested?” I nodded my agreement. The next day, studying began.

Hanuun was pleased that I already knew how to read and surprised at just how quickly I learned what he taught me. His pessimism quickly turned to optimism over the first few weeks as we worked.

My concerns about restrooms were unfounded. They did indeed have three of them, though they housed only baths and not other essentials one would find in a modern home. The baths were filled using a magical bottle that conjured endless water from nothing, then the water was heated by tossing in rocks heated in the oven. It all seemed kind of labor intensive, so I began drawing up plans for a better system in my spare time.

I showed my plans to Hanuun and he was intrigued, to say the least. After considering it for a few days, he asked me to help him construct the system. Over the course of the next three months, we spent approximately six hours a day on studying, then Calais would come over and we’d spend the next six hours working on installing the home’s new centralized plumbing system.

It wasn’t too difficult, considering my twenty first century knowledge, Calais’ strength and Hanuun’s ability to shape the stones of his house with magic to allow us to run pipes from the attic to various tubs and sinks as well has his ability to use magic to fabricate any part we needed as long as I could give him an adequate description. It was also made simple due to the fact that there were no electrical wires running through his walls either.

When we finished, Hanuun had plumbing. It was a fairly simple system, to be honest. Two tanks in the attic would be filled each morning using the magic decanter. One was placed next to the oven’s chimney, which we altered a bit to allow the rising heat to warm the water. We also used the light of the sun to heat the water further. The other tank was filled with water that was allowed to remain cool. Pipes from each ran down through the walls to the two bathrooms and kitchen. Gravity does the work of getting the water where it needs to go.

Of course, Hanuun bragged about it to some of his neighbors. I wouldn’t be surprised if half of the houses that own one of those decanters have similar systems by now.

What’s probably most important, however, is that Nerina could both sing and play something called the mandolin(it’s like a soprano version of the lute, in case you had never heard of one either). Scott was also a singer and could play the piano. Kerric had a way with the trumpet that could set your hair on fire. And Auris could play drums, though he had never seen the setup I proposed to him, in the style that many bands use back home.

So I found myself with a band, but I needed to adapt things so that we could make use of the songs I knew from home. I got together with an instrument maker and between my knowledge of the instrument and his skills, we had an acoustic guitar for Nerina put together rather quickly. Putting together a set of drums followed after. They paid for their own instruments, of course, since I was the only person in it for the money.

Thankfully, my time in the school orchestra(It was an experiment to see if there would be interest in that sort of thing at the request of our new band teacher from back east.) had been supplemented with an elective in Music Appreciation and Classical Music Studies(We just called it “Music”) that had taught me how to compose and pick out notes just by listening to them, so it wasn’t too difficult for me to create sheet music for some songs I knew(Of course, I had to adapt the music to some different instruments). About five weeks later, we had practiced enough for me to feel confident that we could do well.

Our first gig was at a bar of some kind, playing for tips. It had a bit of a rocky start, but we really hit our stride during “Devil Went Down to Isger”. We made something on the order of several silver pieces each. It wasn’t bad, but it wouldn’t be enough on its own, even with weekly performances.

Two things worked together to improve our fortunes greatly. The first was that quiet, unassuming Kerric was an extremely shrewd manager. He booked us weekly gigs all over town. Eventually, as taverns saw that business boomed with live entertainment more energetic than the average bard, he managed to work that into a bidding war between a couple taverns. This resulted in a contract to play once weekly for four gold pieces each at one of the largest taverns in town.

The second was what kept us that contract. People in town loved the influx of new music. Just like back home, anything from far away was considered exotic and worth checking out. And, of course, you can’t get more exotic than music from beyond the stars. Add in the fact songs can actually form an addiction-like response in people to the fact that I come from a world where we recognize this and can mathematically predict which songs have a high chance of scoring said addiction to the fact that I’m unscrupulous enough to use this and you have cover band that plays almost nothing but chart toppers, even if the set list contains a ton of one hit wonders. People ate it up.

Not to say there weren’t any snags. Special mention goes to the time that we performed our cover of “Love Bites(So Do I)” and the crowd thought Nerina was confessing to being a vampire. I barely managed to head off a fatal case of lumber to the heart for her by convincing the crowd to use sunlight to prove or disprove her status as a member of the undead. It was an awkward night and we retired that song from our rotation immediately.

We became pretty famous in the city. After a year of playing, we even got the attention of the patron of a large orchestra. We ended up agreeing to a joint show with them, which meant six months of preparation to allow the adaptation of songs I knew into a larger scale performance.

During the time we prepared for the big event, we still performed at the tavern, and that’s where one of the most interesting events of my life began to unfold. It was three weeks before the big concert when, after a particularly energetic performance when some guy in the crowd started hitting on Nerina. It wasn’t just that he was hitting on her, but that he was being a self-entitled jerk and a bit of a pig about it. So, seeing as how I’m not the kind of person to let that go unchallenged, I jumped down from the stage that they had erected for us and told the guy to knock it off.

He looked familiar, but I thought nothing of it. Our confrontation escalated until it came to blows. I’m not sure who threw the first one, but I threw the last. He went sprawling to the ground. Another man, much larger, rushed at me. I recognized the clothing he wore as similar to that worn by bodyguards of nobles. I realized that I must have just knocked out his client, so I tried to apologize, but he’d have none of it. Since this man was larger and reliably much more competent a fighter than I, I did the only sensible thing. I kicked him in the jewels and he crumpled to the ground next to the man he was protecting. We then took off since we didn’t want to deal with those two once they recovered.

Naturally, we didn’t get paid for that gig.

I didn’t think much of it for a while and the week was more or less normal. Then, the day of the next performance, I received a package. The attached note read “From a fan.” I opened the package and found a belt inside. It was an elegant item and matched my coat rather well, so I tried it on.
Immediately after putting it on, I felt really dizzy. I managed to recover after a moment. I looked to the ground in case the room started spinning again and noticed something new. Well, two somethings. I rushed to a mirror. Staring back at me was a beautiful woman. I looked down to confirm, checked on certain things to see just how far it had gone and then took off the belt to see if removing it would revert the changes. Glancing at the mirror after removing the belt, the same stunning woman stared back at me.

I saw the figure in the mirror’s mouth move and heard myself say, in a sweet and feminine yet utterly horrified voice, “Aw, ****.”

When I reached the area, I approached the weasel faced man and plainly declared what I wanted to know. He sneered at me and lewdly told me, in graphic detail, what I would have to do to get that information. Now, in apparent proof that the mind is at least partially the plaything of the body, I had in fact suddenly found myself checking out men, but I was still uncomfortable with that whole thing and it was going to be a cold day in hell before I was going to indulge this man in particular. So I made my threats. I’m not going to go into too much detail about what I said, but the words *******, glass and rock salt were involved.

He didn’t budge. So I left to formulate a new plan. Deep in thought, I bumped right into someone. It was Kerric. “The hell are you doing here?!” I asked.

“I ran into Calais. He told me you had asked him to be in the area, so I suspected you might need help.”

“You idiot! We can’t be seen together…” I trailed off as a deliciously evil thought occurred to me. “Scratch that. Let’s go find Calais.” With the puzzled look on his face, I just grinned. “You happen to know of any abandoned warehouses near here? I think I have a way to make this guy talk.”

“Yeah, I know of one.”

“Excellent.” We reached the paladin and I explained my situation. I told him a bit about what I had planned.

“I can’t condone torture,” he said flatly.

“I’m not asking you to. I’m asking you to help me make the guy so scared that I’m torturing him that he believes I might actually be doing so. Come on, no one’s actually going to get hurt, aside from maybe the headache he’ll have when you guys knock him out and detain him. After I’m done, we’ll turn him in to the paladins of Abadar so he can get punished for his smuggling. Think of it as doing our civic duty with just a small detour along the way.”

“You’re running dangerously on semantics here.”

“Yeah, I know. But it’ll all work out. Trust me.” I found out where the warehouse was and asked them to detain our subject and take him there. I then went looking for an alchemist’s shop, since they would have the ingredients I’d need. After that, Hanuun was able to fabricate the props to my specifications and freeze enough water into ice for my needs.

I met them at the warehouse. It was a bit dank and certainly dark, perfect for my needs. The subject was tied up and sitting in a chair in the center of the room. “I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me what I want to know, would you?” He responded by spitting at me. “Alright, we’ll play it your way.” I turned to my companions. “Leave his hands bound and hang him upside down from the ceiling while I set up.” Once the guy was hanging, Calais looked at my equipment and seemed alarmed. I grabbed a piece of ice and pressed it to his skin. “Trust me,” I whispered. “This is all he’s going to feel.” The paladin nodded.

“You can’t do this to me!” the man screamed. “There’s a paladin here! He’ll never condone torture!”

“Well, that is a conundrum. Calais, what do you have to say to that?”

“I have pressing business elsewhere. Do I have your word that you won’t harm this man?”

I held up my hand. “Scout’s honor.”

“Well then, I must leave,” he said. He walked away, the interrogation subject screaming for him to come back the whole while. When he was out of sight of the subject, he stopped and watched from a vantage point shielded from view.

“Now, we’re all alone. Let me show you something.” I opened a canister and showed him the powder within. “This stuff here is called thermite. It burns hot enough to turn steel into butter. Watch.” I used the thermite to burn right through a steel bar I had brought. “Since you lack the benefit of coming from a world where medical knowledge has reached a fairly advanced level, let me explain to you how pain works. Within your body is a complex system of nerve fibers which allow you to feel things. Like if you cut yourself, your nerves send a signal to your brain that you’ve been injured. Under certain circumstances, however,” I emphasized my words by lighting the blowtorch I had gotten Hanuun to make for me, “your nerves are destroyed before they can send that signal. A thermite blowtorch, for instance, burns away the nerves before you can feel any pain. You’ll go into shock and just feel cold. You’ll smell burning meat. Then, only then, you’ll begin to hurt. Isn’t science fun?” I walked behind him. “Care to tell me anything?”

“Go to hell! You can’t do this to me!”

I shrugged. “Well, I tried. You saw it, didn’t you?” I asked Kerric. He nodded in full view of the man. I pulled the sheet off of the table sitting next to the man, just out of his field of vision and grabbed a piece of ice. “Here goes,” I said. I turned the torch on a piece of pork sitting on the table. It began to sizzle and I poked him with the ice.

He screamed in anticipated agony. “I’ll talk! Please, just stop!” I pulled the blowtorch from the meat and stopped touching him with the ice. “I sold the belt to Chadwick Voidstrife! Please, just don’t hurt me anymore!”

I turned off the torch and replaced the sheet over the table. “Calais, you can cut him down and turn him in to the paladins of Abadar now. He had enough contraband on him to ensure several months in prison. Don’t forget to heal his wounds first.” I walked around to the front of the man. “Once you get out, I want you to use your skills to earn an honest living. If I ever find out that you’ve been smuggling cursed items again, I will find you and we will continue this discussion at length. Understand?” He nodded. “Good. Have a great day!” I said with my sincerest smile. He just babbled incoherently.

I later found out that he had tried to tell the paladins of Abadar that we had tortured him, but Calais’ word that he had not been harmed aside from the blow he’d taken while resisting detainment was enough to convince them that the man was lying. Sometimes I really love semantics.

Now that I had a name to work with, I began researching. The man we were looking for was indeed the man I had punched. He was also the son of one of the richest families in Absalom. They even had a large estate in the Petal District(The wealthiest district in Absalom). He had resources. But I had the rules on my side. He couldn’t do a damn thing until I actually returned fire. That was how I would win.

I worked through the night. The next morning, I gave Kerric music for the songs I wanted the group to play and asked him to tell the others I had hired someone to fill in for me while I was ill. I had the bartender send a letter of apology to Chadwick, offering him a free bottle of wine if he came to our next performance. Then I waited.

On the evening of the next performance, I donned my special made outfit, laced up my boots and checked myself out in the mirror. The dress went down to about mid thigh and the socks went up almost that high, leaving the barest hint of skin. The whole outfit was trimmed with black lace and I had a scarf tied under the collar. I looked like I belonged in a manga. It was perfect. I donned a velvet hooded cloak I had purchased and used a tiny bit of magic to turn it red. I headed to the tavern.

I took a seat near the front. As my friends prepared to play, I looked through the crowd. He was here. I smiled a bit to myself and motioned for the bartender to snuff out most of the lights. All that was left was a single candelabra by the bar and some magical lighting on the stage.

The group began to play and Scott started singing.
“Hey, who’s that in the woods?
Why, it’s Little Red Riding Hood!
Hey there Little Red Riding Hood,
You sure are looking good.
You’re everything, a big bad wolf could want!”

He let out a howl and I illuminated myself with a light spell. My red hood was drawn up. The performance as I walked onto the stage and began to play with them electrified the crowd. After the cheers died down from the song, I approached the center of the stage and introduced myself.

“My name is Fleur de Lis, and I’m glad to be here!” The room filled with applause and more than a few catcalls. “Now, I’d like to sing a special song for a special someone. Please be a great crowd and make a path to the man the lights choose.” I cast a spell to summon a number of small dancing wisps of light and directed them around the room until they settled around Chadwick. I motioned for Nerina to follow me. As we walked, she began to play the song I had designated as the second song of the night to Kerric. If you’ve watched the same movies I have, you’ll recognize the song(It’s called “In Time” and it’s by Mark Collie, assuming I recall correctly).

“I can hear what you're thinking,
All your doubts and fears,
And if you look in my eyes, in time you'll find,
The reason I'm here.

And in time all things shall pass away,
In time, you may come back someday.
To live once more, or die once more,
But in time, your time will be no more.

You know your days are numbered,
Count them one by one,
Like notches in the handle of an outlaw's gun.
You can outrun the devil, if you try,
But you'll never outrun the hands of time.

In time there surely, come a day
In time all things shall pass away,
In time you may come back some say.
To live once more, or die once more,
But in time, your time will be no more.”

After the song, I waited for the applause to die down once more. “Chadwick Voidstrife,” I said imperiously, “You have sinned against me. Look at me and know that this is a declaration of intent so that you won’t be confused. One. ‘Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum.’ Latin. Particularly hard *** paintball team captain made us recite it like a prayer. ‘Si vis pacem, para bellum - If you want peace, prepare for war.’” I gave him a second to try to begin responding then cut him off. “Two. Kyle O’Halloran is dead. He died the moment he put on that belt. Three. In certain extreme situations, appropriate responses are inadequate. In order to shame their inadequacy, one must engage in measures far beyond the scale of what is appropriate. One must pursue… natural justice.”

“W-wait,” he stammered. “You’re…”

“Yes, I am Fleur de Lis, born of your treachery. What’s funny is that I am not really all that upset about what has happened to me. In a year, I’ll be back to normal. This won’t even be the strangest year of my life. It’s hard to top the year spent traveling through outer space atop a nightmarish creature. No, what upsets me is that you had the gall to believe that you could get away with this.”

“Then you plan to take revenge.”

“No. This is not vengeance. Revenge is not a valid motive, it’s an emotional response. No, not vengeance. Punishment.” I turned and walked past the gaping Nerina. I motioned to the stage and the drums began, followed by the others. I began to sing again.

“I’ll put a spell on you.
Your *** is mine.
You won’t know quite when,
you’ll receive punishment
divine.

No, you can’t run,
And you won’t find a safe place to hide.
Because this doom will be yours, yours, yours!
And justice mine!”


He fled from the tavern about then. I smiled as I sang. This was going to be fun.

The day of the duel, we found ourselves in an arena, standing across from each other. One of the instructors, a bit of a bloodthirsty man with a talent for evocation magic(You know, the magic that goes boom), was officiating, along with a cleric of Abadar, who was present to heal any wounds that might occur.

The rules were fairly simple. You start off with a few moments of trash talk(It’s tradition.) while magical barriers are set up to protect the crowd. Once that was over, you could only fight with your magic, your wits, your bare hands, your familiar and your bonded item. You were supposed to try not to kill each other since it costs a fair amount of gold to resurrect someone, but accidents could happen and there was no penalty for accidentally sending someone to a temporary grave. It just lacked style.

Duels between more advanced students are something to see. Magical energy will arc through the stadium as each tries to counter the other’s spells. I once saw the sky over the stadium ripple with multicolored lights while the ground trembled with the steps of a tyrannosaurus.

Less advanced students, like myself, were left with much less spectacular magical options. I had a few brute force options at my disposal, such as missiles of force, small gouts of flame, etcetera, but those weren’t the winning options. What often decided these lesser fights was who was just a bit faster in casting a spell that would temporarily disable their foe. Sadly, I hadn’t yet learned any spells that would do that. So, lacking a familiar, I was left with brute force and my bonded object, since the only other spell I had was for helping me craft things.

You can tell a lot about a wizard by what choice he makes for a bonded object, and if you know enough about a wizard, you can conversely make a good guess at what he has chosen. A wizard that favors either the security provided by complete concealment of the nature of his bonded object or the value of having it always in hand will choose a ring or an amulet. This is important because it is very difficult to cast a spell without your object already worn or in hand.

Other wizards favor tradition, and as such, they choose for their bonded items a staff. They’re handy for use a walking stick or to bludgeon someone. They can also be used to store some rechargeable magic if you’re advanced enough. A little bulky, however.

Some other wizards favor a wand. Unlike the finesse of a staff, a wand can only hold a single spell at a time, but it can hold enough magic to cast it around fifty times before needing to be infused with a new spell. This makes wands the favorite of those who prefer the ability to brute force their way through situations with repeated application of a single spell. I don’t like this choice because when all you have is a hammer, every problem begins to look a lot like a nail. Now, that isn’t to say I wouldn’t carry around half a dozen wands with various spells, since sometimes your problem really is a nail. I just wouldn’t limit my options like that.

Chadwick, as I had learned, was the exact kind of person who would wield such an item. As part of my campaign to mentally destroy my opponent, I had looked into his activities. He had recently purchased the materials required to enchant his wand and, if my information could be believed, had enchanted it with a spell that produces a bolt of magical force meant for striking foes directly. I had tested whether I could weather a blast from that spell, and could take one direct hit, though it left me wobbly enough that a second might bring me down. So if he chose that as his first action, I could win it if I could end the fight in a single move even if he was faster.

Finally, there’s one last class of bonded items. Sometimes, someone with an attachment to a particular weapon will choose to forge their bond with it. You see this most often in elves and half-elves, who carry one of their ancestral weapons. There’s something touching about forging a magical bond with a sword that may have been carried by the last three generations of your family. Sometimes someone with military training will seek to study the magical, and will choose a weapon that is simply familiar to them. Nothing wrong with that.

I had chosen a weapon to bond with, but it wasn’t some ancestral weapon, nor was it a weapon from training I’ve had(Can you even bond with a paintball gun?). No, my weapon is a reflection of who I am, a statement of my origins, perhaps even more than singing that anthem had been. You see, I’m an American. Not hard to guess what I bonded my magic to.

Chadwick started the trash talk. “I hope that you’re prepared for more humiliation. You know, I took your manhood away, perhaps after this is over, I’ll take you somewhere quiet and make a woman out of you.”

I wasn’t going to let that slide. “I doubt you’d even know how. I’d bet that a real woman is a quite a bit different from your pillow.”

“You dare speak to me like that? Me, the descendant of the great wizard Maerin Voidstrife?!”

I had been waiting for that. It was apparently a point of great pride to him that he descended from some wizard who had saved the world or some such hundreds years past and had been given a noble title. “I’m glad you brought that up. I did a little research. Did you know that not one of your ancestors since Maerin has done anything of note? Not one has done so much as saved a damsel from the predations of her terrible uncle. Not one has saved a king from his court’s intrigue. That’s in fifteen generations. Yet it seems that still you all trade on Maerin’s name, secure in your knowledge that in your veins flows the blood of greatness. Blood that you. Are. WASTING!"(If only I’d had a pit to kick him into.)

He was shaking with anger at what I had said. “How dare you speak to me like that! I shall put you in your place. No commoner, much less a woman, has the right to talk to me like that! You speak of what I have done, yet I bet that one such as you could not possibly have any accomplishments of your own.”

I laughed dismissively. “That’s where you’re wrong. Many people in this city live with conveniences the likes of which they never dreamed thanks to me. Sure, I based much of that on things that I had seen before elsewhere, so my success is owed to standing on the shoulders of those who came before me. You, however, have been given everything you need to be great, some of the tallest shoulders to stand upon as you reach up for a brighter tomorrow, yet you can’t even be bothered to stand on your own two feet much less reach for your dreams. You’re a puffed up, pompous, self important, petty excuse for a man who will likely go to his grave having never accomplished a single thing. So go ahead and comfort yourself with your lineage. It’s all you have.”

The crowd had gone silent as I had spoken. “I’ll kill you!” Chadwick screamed, reaching for his wand.

I glanced at the instructor and saw his quick nod and I was off. Now, you can’t say Chadwick was slow, but he had never had a PE coach who forced him to run wind sprints until he threw up three days a week for a year of high school. Nor had he ever spent over fifty dollars in quarters in an arcade getting every single high score on one of those quick draw games.

I dashed straight at him, reaching under my skirt to the leg holster I had strapped to my right thigh. I drew my weapon and noted that he was chanting a spell. I identified it as a spell for disabling a foe. I knew I had to stop it, so, upon reaching him, I smacked him in the face with my gun. (In case you’re wondering, I wield a pepperbox, a type of pistol that has six individual muzzle loaded barrels that you rotate in order to fire the next one. I’d use a revolver, but no one has apparently figured out how to make proper bullets around here yet. Unfortunately, I’m also not all that familiar with how to make them either, so I’ll just have to deal with this.)

If you’ve never been punched in the face while you’re talking, let me tell you something. You’re going to bite your tongue, hard. And if you’ve never bitten your tongue like that, you need to know that it’s going to hurt like hell and bleed like a faucet. And if you’ve never bitten your tongue while casting a spell, you should know that it’s really hard to keep concentrating on a spell when you’ve done that.

He looked at me in disbelief and tried to bring up his wand, but again I was faster. I took aim at the right side of his chest and squeezed the trigger. I figured that as long as I didn’t hit his heart, magic healing would be able to fix him up before he died with little trouble. I didn’t figure on it going a bit far to my left and somehow blowing his arm clean off.

Either way, one shot and he was down. I had won. God created men, but Samuel Colt had indeed made them equal.