“Oh, wakey wakey moldy bakey”. I wake up in some kind of void in the void there is neither darkness nor light. The chaotic nature of everything is oddly calming. Then all of a sudden, a blinding flash covers the entirety of the void. I rub my eyes and see a guy sitting in a green beanbag chair. He doesn’t seem to notice that I’m here, he is fiddling with some kind of odd multi-colored cube. The mechanism seems to be able to rotate on multiple planes. Eventually, after standing for a minute or two he looked up and said, “oh, you actually woke up usually it takes a day or two. Anyways, hello I am Achul and I need a favor.”
“Okay.”
“Wait, really you're just going to, I’m not gonna complain, wait aren’t you of the lawful sanction, wait did they already start that,” he continues to babble for a few minutes.
While he is ranting, I look around trying to figure out where I’m at. Out of nowhere there is a loud bang and the Achul disappears and now there is a similar looking man sitting at a desk, he seems to be tapping on some kind of plastic tablet. In front of him on the Mahagony desk is an odd-looking box that projects light. I assume it is some kind of magic and move on. He looks up and, in a calm, yet stern voice says, “ah yes Timothy sorry I had planned to make this easier on you, but he was taking an awful amount of time to even figure anything out.” He stops typing and swings his chair in my direction, “now I will warn you this might abruptly end, or I may switch back randomly. I’m still not sure how this works. I need you to do something for me. Now just so I don’t get in trouble again, you do agree to this don’t you?”
Assuming that this is the lawful half of Achul I think about it for a second, “what would this entail?”
Almost with a smirk, as if he is getting through a huge loophole, he slyly remarks, “morally I don’t have to tell you that. All I am required to do is make sure I have your consent.”
“And I assume I don’t really have a choice?”
“No not really, since they already put the implant in, however if you would like to go mad you could say no.”
“Hmph shame, oh well why not what is it you want.”
With this comment he seems to have an impressed and mortified look on his face. “It’s already working? That’s not great, oh well. So, with this war there has been quite a lot of stirs in the balance of holy places and avatars, especially with the more prevalent gods like me. So, because of this I need you to first find an applicable avatar if you don’t want to be my avatar. Second, I need you to make sure the central church does not fall. Ferrumaleator has been a real pain in the troll toe and has been bragging about how he has an army charging straight towards my main church.” I begin to wonder why he is just now telling someone about all this. However, he interrupts my thought, “Ever since my last patron died, I haven’t been able to communicate with the mortal world much, besides basic communes and a few little blessings.”
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He then stops speaking almost as if he is expecting me to say something. After a minute or two of me processing everything Achul checks his watch, “Ah it seems this has gone longer than expected. I just ask that you go to the central church and relay what I have told you.” All of sudden everything implodes, and I wake up in my tent. I get everything ready for the day and head out to the sparring pits. Once I get there, I see Aesir working his gambling business, and Qysik is in the pit sparring with a human wizard. I walk up to Aesir to place a bet down, “15 on the wizard Aesir.”
“Ahh Timothy, I didn’t expect you to be betting today. Not much confidence in your friend I, see?” He chuckles to himself and takes the gold, writing on his notepad he looks back up again, “what’s that on your back?”
“What do you mean?” I grab my back and feel a scale, when I try to take it off it doesn’t budge. After pulling it for too long my muscles and head start to ache. “I’m not sure I know it wasn’t there last night. “Oh, there was something I wanted to tell you about. I had some kind of weird vision with Achul that told me I had to go to the central church to defend from Ferrumaleator’s army.”
“That’s very odd are you sure it wasn’t just a dream of some kind?”
“Well, he did seem to be trying to hide something, saying that someone started something, or that something had started working.”
“I’m not sure about that let’s wait a little though, if it was Achul he will send some kind of physical sign.”
After this I go back to watching Qysik’s fight. The wizard is unarmed with nothing more than a spell tome, Qysik however is trying to dodge everything. His hammer starts to slow him down and eventually he is hit with a fireball.
After a few more matches I step in, a few more people come around to watch. I can tell that Aesir likes the extra business. I stand at the top of the incline this time. My opponent is also an orc. He stands in a defensive stance with two morningstars. I summon the buckler from my gauntlet and charge forward. When I bring my blade down towards his head it seems lighter than usual. He parries my sword though; I lose grip on my longsword, and it flies into the wall. He then starts swinging his morningstars at me. I managed to parry a few times but caught a solid hit to the jaw. I can tell it is broken. I start to feel lightheaded and barely manage to dodge his incoming attacks. After a minute of sidestepping, I regained some sense of where I am. When I try to cast darkness, a different spell comes out. A mysterious jet black being is expelled from my body, and it grabs onto my opponent's neck dragging it to the wall. Immediately the head priest who, usually doesn’t like to hang around the fighting pit, happened to be their casted something and it Immediately disappeared. C’mon man you know I can’t have you losing fights already I know the whole sword being lighter was weird, but seriously dude.
He turns to me with a surprised expression on my face and says, “go to the central church immediately, you’re not in trouble. However, if my last commune with Achul was correct you are needed there.”
“Wait you got something like that too?” I respond bewildered that what I experienced wasn’t actually a dream. I rush to my tent, packing everything up.
Aesir and Qysik showed up at my tent. “The priest said that since we are the only two who know you well enough, we should make sure you don’t die.”
Instead of giving a sarcastic response I decided to just continue packing.