“That’s nice, Ghimli” I’ve said, getting up from the bed. “And what kind of god have you chosen to worship this time? Remember that time you were a Spider Queen worshiper?”

Amanda started to laugh. “You thought you could fool Fabio to let you play Spider-Man! It was awesome!”

“Look who’s talking, Doc!” Andre dropped down from his bed. “I remember that you created a fake god for an entire campaign. What was his name again?”

“Wee Wee” I said, with a chuckle. “The God of life and fertility. I couldn’t believe Fabio let me play a bard posing as a cleric.”

“And his symbol?” Amanda asked, with a frown on her face.

“It was two orbs on an obelisk base. Why?” I answered, getting worried.

“Just like that?” Bea pointed at my shield at the base of the bed.

“Yeah, just like that… WHAT THE FUCK?”

The other three burst out laughing while I took my shield and examined the new symbol on its center. It was a dick, I couldn’t deny it, I designed it to look like a dick, I named the god to be a dick joke and I acted like a dick on that campaign, and it came back to bite me in… well… in the proverbial ass.

“What this symbol even means?” Amanda said, finally able to catch a breath.

“One orb is to represent the greenery and the other the animals, and the obelisk is to represent the divine…” I mumbled.

“Yeah, Dude. You made a penis, and now you’re stuck with it” Ghimli said, pressing down on my shoulder.

“I know…” I sighed. “Plenty of time to make fun of my poor choices on the way to the forest. It’s goblin season!”

We exited our room and went downstairs to have breakfast, other adventurers were already eating and laughing when we entered the room, and a voice came from behind to greet us.

“Good morning, sleepy heads” Fabio greeted us. “How was your first night in a whole New world…” he sang the last part.

“It was fine” I responded. “Ghimli had a busy night with Gods and stuff, oh, speaking of Gods, What the hell is this?” I pointed at my shield.

Fabio started to laugh “Oh My Gods, they really did it!”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’ve told the story of your bard / cleric and they found it hilarious and started to worship wee wee. Now he’s a real god, and I presume that you’re his first paladin”

“That’s not funny” I said angrily.

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“It’s kinda funny” Ghimli said and Amanda nodded.

“Okay, kinda” I said “but still, I don’t know how this will affect me and our journey”

“You worry too much. Come on, there’s a few things I need to get over before you leave”.

We sat down and the same waitress took our order, she flirted with everyone at the table, Bea included. We tried our best to ignore enough for her to take our order and waited for Fabio.

“They have good ale here don’t they?” Fabio started sitting on the table.

“Yes, they do. Now, please, get to the point, we’re losing sunlight.” I said.

“uhhhh… touchy…” When we didn’t react, he conceded. “Fine! We came to a conclusion last night after some… uhn… incidents, that we must give you guys some form of measure your resources. Your Health and Mana especially.”

“Incident? Never mind that, and how we’ll measure that? Some kind of visual interface like a videogame?” Ghimli said, hope in his voice.

“No…” Fabio laughed. “Nothing like that, you’re watching too much anime, Ghimli. It’s so much simpler than that.” Fabio waved his hands on Ghimli’s forearm and the giant orc squirmed in pain.

The rest of us got up, weapons ready, but Fabio didn’t move.

“Relax! It’s just a tattoo.” He said, lifting Ghimli’s sleeve. We could see two bars across his forearm, where Fabio touched, one was red and the other was blue. “This is the representation I was talking about.”

"Why it's always me to get a tattoo first?" Ghimli said annoyed, looking at the new marks on his forearm. We ignore it.

“There’s no numbers, Fabio. How we would know…” Amanda started, but was cut off.

“There’s no numbers in real life, Amanda.” Fabio said, looking disappointed. “We already did too much, just take it”

"You keep saying We, who are ‘We?’ " I asked.

“We the council. Look around, Doc, there’s more than one party summoned, and every one of them needs a GM, and I have a GM above me. But we don’t have time to delve into it right now, nor the clearance for that matter. Now shoo, you’ve got goblins to kill!” He said with a smirk and vanishing again in front of our eyes.

As soon as he left, Bea, Amanda and Me felt the pain in our forearms and the bars appearing.

“I just hope that this pain is just for now. It would suck if I felt pain in every magic I cast” Amanda said, rubbing her fingers across the bars.

“I didn’t think about that.” I said, doing the same as Amanda. “I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”

Our tavern was right next to the exit gate, the line to enter Jhorn was huge, and we heard the merchants gossip while they waited.

“I heard that a Goblin Colony started to spread north from here”

“You’re right, they killed one of my horses, but I was able to get away.”

“You’re kidding, they’re already attacking on the roads? What this good-for-nothing king is doing? Where are the royal guards?”

“Do you think that this has something to do with… you know… the other king?”

“Nah! It’s just a story that our folks told us to scare us. It worked, though, I was never able to play in the woods after I’ve heard this story.”

“I Guess you’re right…”

We listened in silence, our heads down.

“That’s convenient” Bea said. “We’re out to hunt goblins and merchants gossip about goblins.”

“That’s a staple of RPGs” Amanda said “It’s foreshadow for what’s to come.”

“And what is that?” she asked while we approached a crossroads.

“AMBUSH!” I yelled as an arrow flew from the tree lines and hit Ghimli right in the shoulder.

Ghimli yelled in pain and ripped the arrow in one single move, his eyes were fixated on the area where the arrow had come and a dagger flew past our ears, hitting something that let out a low shriek.

The blood poured from Ghimli’s wounds and the bar on his arm dropped, we needed to keep an eye on our health bars constantly. I could see the bloodlust on Ghimli’s eyes, his mace at the ready and his breath short and angry.

“CHARGE!” he bellowed and took run to the woods.

We stood in shock for a second or two, I looked at Amanda, that shrugged and took her scimitar out of the sheath. “Charge, I guess…” And we took off running.