There were too many sounds at first, and it hit like a wall.\u00a0 My brain did a fairly good job at trying to separate the earth-shattering kaboom from the screaming of something that wasn’t human, and the other assorted noises of wood cracking and stone shattering and glass and other materials pushed by kinetic force to pieces.\u00a0 My eyes watched as time compressed.\u00a0 Artur fell over from the shockwave, Nikolai and I pressed ourselves even deeper into the dirt, trying to avoid splinters and shards as they rocketed towards us.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Under all of the sound, a name.<\/p>\n
My name.<\/p>\n
What?<\/p>\n
Things continued to split and snap, until the Rice Krispies metaphors were quiet like a bowl that sat there during your shower.\u00a0 I don’t recommend it – leaves you with soggy cereal and that’s no fun.\u00a0 (Well, unless it’s Cream of Wheat.\u00a0 That’s designed to be soggy.)\u00a0 Nikolai made a whine I could barely hear.<\/p>\n
Artur was still down.<\/p>\n
“I’d offer you a hand up,” I said, in the silence.<\/p>\n
“No, no, I’ve got it.”\u00a0 He twisted something, just like he was stretching his back or straightening his legs, and there was the change, tree trunks into legs, knees, all of that anatomy stuff.\u00a0 I turned around – it made me feel uncomfortable, like I was watching someone dress…or undress… or something like that, and it wasn’t a cute girl and I wasn’t invited.<\/p>\n
Nikolai made that same noise, and I looked at him.\u00a0 Nothing had punctured him, but he wasn’t happy.\u00a0 I couldn’t tell if it was a warning.\u00a0 How much was the spell, well, spelled to be doglike?\u00a0 How much of it was just a function of the things the spell did, like hunt?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Wizards made my head hurt.\u00a0 Trying to figure out what they could do was as bad as trying to figure out what they couldn’t do, and it seemed to be more of a matter of imagination than limit of power.\u00a0 I didn’t want to believe it – it seemed to go against some kind of internalized gut-feeling of physics I had.<\/p>\n
Speaking of physics, I stood up and looked over the ridge.<\/p>\n
There had been some kind of structure there – a yurt?\u00a0 A sweat lodge?\u00a0 A 5 star Hilton?\u00a0 I couldn’t tell anymore, well, except that on the latter there were no carpet remnants and I think there would have had to have been the detritus of a chandelier.\u00a0 Maybe even a piano, and the piano would have still been burning.\u00a0 No piano, no chandelier, no leather sofas, so it was probably something a little less grand.\u00a0 Lots of wood, most of it still smoking, lots of stone, and a stairwell deep into the ground.<\/p>\n
“We need a cleric and a thief and a fighter,” I said aloud.<\/p>\n
I heard a grunt from Artur.<\/p>\n
“You’re the wizard and probably the backup warrior.\u00a0 Nikolai’s the scout.\u00a0 I’m the henchman, I think.”<\/p>\n
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, unless it’s a bad fantasy novel.\u00a0 Which, if you don’t mind my opining, is most of them.”<\/p>\n
“Sturgeon’s Law hits fantasy at more like ninety four percent, I know,” I responded.\u00a0 “I was making our adventuring group before we go down into the dungeon.”<\/p>\n
“Under the lake.\u00a0 The hidden city.”\u00a0 He stood up, and he was wearing shorts.\u00a0 They didn’t quite match his T-shirt, being more of the underclothing variety.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Echoes of Ys?\u00a0 Is Nellie a water dragon after all?”<\/p>\n
“You are a strange, strange man, E.”\u00a0 He laughed and dusted himself off a little.\u00a0 “Too much fantasy rots your brain.”<\/p>\n
“My brain doesn’t have teeth.”\u00a0 I didn’t add the “steel trap” metaphor.<\/p>\n
“Something we can both agree on,” he snorted, walking up to take a look at the wreckage.\u00a0 “So, did we trip something or is it the welcoming party?”<\/p>\n
“I thought I heard my name.”<\/p>\n
He paused, absorbing this information, then shrugged.\u00a0 “Then we’re expected.”<\/p>\n
Nikolai stood up and near me, pressing his head into my hand.\u00a0 I scritched him absently behind the ears.\u00a0 “Well, ready to go, boy?”\u00a0 He was shaking. “Let’s see if we can get some nice juicy dragon steaks,” I told him.\u00a0\u00a0 I moved after Artur down the ridge and to the standing stones, charred as they were from the blast.<\/p>\n
Nikolai sniffed the air and then followed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“You first?” I asked, hopefully.<\/p>\n
“You’re the one with the invitation,” he pointed out, as I was afraid he would.<\/p>\n
“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered.\u00a0 “It looks dark in there.”\u00a0 I fished out my phone and switched it to flashlight mode.\u00a0 “This won’t last for long,” I warned.<\/p>\n
“Or you could pick up one of the burning splinters and make a torch,” he pointed out.<\/p>\n
“Oh, yeah.”\u00a0 I knew how to do it in, well, abstract.\u00a0 Artur was in his 15-year-old form, and barefoot.\u00a0\u00a0 I downgraded him from fighter\/magic-user to halfling, but I didn’t say it out loud.<\/p>\n
I did have some self-preservation instincts, after all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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