From Worse to Worst

… OR WTF:

What. Just. Happened? I am trying not to be scared but it ain’t easy. I just got interrogated for 5 hours and it only took 15 minutes. Somebody is watching us, that much is clear. And the other parts of our mission are crazier…or worse than our initial assignment depending on how you look at it.

As we walk to meet Malkin for dinner, I am still trying to wrap my head around this afternoon’s events. Chip with his typical cavalier attitude, feels that this is not such a big deal. And of course he would, his life perspective is quite different from mine. There is a very good chance I could die in this realm. That I could never see Luci again. I am not so attached to Earth but I am going to be really bummed if I don’t ever see her again. Maybe this is why I am acting so cautious. Because I really,REALLY want to get out of here. I have only been here for a coupla days so far but it already feels like a month…

I had some leave time coming up. I was gonna see if I could take a jet back to the mainland so I wouldn’t have to babysit company property and it would maximize the amount of time I could spend with her. I wanted to try to make a real play for her. You know, take it to the next level. She is precious to me and I think she feels the same way but it is hard to express or substantiate these feelings when the two times a year we get together, we get hammered and screw. There is no normal time for us. Work, drink, sex. that’s what we do. I wanted to change that. Maybe see if she can pull some strings and get me stationed back at the Mexico Base. Switching from pilot to mechanic would be a boring career change but it would have been worth it to be with her. And now that may not be possible anymore. She was pretty upset when I told her what we were attempting. She has heard a few stories about our time with Elanu, but I never got too much in depth because I was still skeptical of this Church…

And now here I am diving headlong into a non-IHA assignment, based on an old relationship with some dude whose ideology I don’t fully agree with. Yeah that went over real well. It sounded like a break up session except we never said those actual words. I told her that we were doing this for the greater good, that if we didn’t do this, that the forces that we are fighting against could grow in strength, come to our planet and make the fight against the Coalition look like a game of kickball in comparison. She didn’t want to hear it. It didn’t have to be me. Her exact words, ’You’d BETTER come back. Because if you don’t, when I reach the afterlife and I see you, I’m gonna kick your ass!’ Click.

So here we are. Our objectives are, trespass on the lands of a cantankerous old dragon and his svengali monkey, travel down to a realm where the ghost of a pirate lies, and find a statue of Osiris. All of which seem like intense traps. This business of a pirate who used to employ a water bender bothers me as much as this dragon. The operative word is USED to. I don’t know why my teammates think we are just going waltz in there, rummage through a few treasure chests and return with what we seek. And there is no reason to not expect a ghost or ghosts of some kind down there. We ran into some as soon as we beached here! A dead pirate with magic friends? Ok sure, you keep smiling…I’m bringing my armor. Even trying to get a piece of Osiris from some monks who just_got_it seems like a nasty bit of politics, even if it doesn’t involve some sort of physical altercation… I’m only 23 and I’m getting too old for this crap already.

And to top it all off, I now have to tell the one guy who has been super straight with us that some how by my fumbling of the elven language or something, that I have mistakenly alerted our enemies to our mission. I hope to Isis that he can fill in some gaps in my understanding of how this Library is administrated. And this dude Goose keeps going on about changelings. What the hell is the big deal with changelings?! We have were-creatures all over North America in our realm back home and those guys are at the bottom of the totem pole of nasty. In a realm where we have to fight pirate ghosts and dragons, I think ‘thropes would be the least of our concerns. At least those are our relative size and they bleed just like we do. Maybe somebody in Goose’s family ancestry was abused by a changeling or something. Maybe HE thinks he’s got changeling blood in his blood lines or something and he is hoping it doesn’t happen to him at the most inopportune moment… Agh I can’t even think straight. I wish I hadn’t given Jaxson my iPod before I came here, I could use some music to relax me before we go to this dinner/meeting. I just can’t shake this feeling that what happened to me was out of the ordinary and that I just made our quest that much harder. I’m the guy who tripped the alarm breaking INTO somewhere. Dammit! And I forgot to buy some more clothes so I could blend in better, I hope somewhere is open. But walking around with International Male over here we STILL stick out like a sore thumb…

Maybe this was inevitable. Here we are newcomers poking around their Library, asking crazy god questions in our offworlder threads and maybe one of them just said, ’Let’s begin to get to the bottom of this’… The part that bugs me is this human. Why a human? All I’ve seen are Wolves running that place, why send a human security guard to fetch me and then have a Wolf ask me two questions? Why cast a time speed spell on me while this is all happening? Or was that chamber spell bound? But that doesn’t make any sense either. If you were going to spell bound a room where one would sort and organize books, wouldn’t you want toslow_down time to be able to get more work done? If I could slow down time every time I needed to make a ship repair, we’d have the most well maintained fleet on Earth!

sigh I hope Malkin can give me answers and not more questions. Either way I think I am going to have a significant amount of dwarven ale tonight and hopefully I can wake up with something pretty tomorrow morning. If I am to perish in this realm, let me at least sample some of it’s best before I am vanquished by some of its worst….

Forgive me Luci.

Posted by Bexx

Art by AZ-Rune Art, commission him at artist@agodrebuilt.org