Kids, just say no to World of Warcraft. That's all I really have to say. Oh, and reviews, of course!
Shadowdragon06: Thank ye kindly. I too, wish to see how this story pans out.
Bigcat: You flatter me, my friend. No, I'm not professional... yet. Here you'll see a little something that Fate's done to Jon, if you look hard enough.
Now let's get on with it, yes?
"Pass me the marble paste, will you?" Lidda asked Shellie.
Shellie picked up a small can of grey sludge and passed it up to Lidda. The dwarf was twelve feet in the air, inside the giant maw of Offler's statue at his temple on God's Street. One of the trio's steady contracts was with Offler's temple, where they repaired the statues and walls.
"Do you have those new teeth, Shellie?" Lidda asked after she got the paste.
"Right here," said Shellie, passing a small bag up to the dwarf in the crocodile mouth.
Opening it up, she saw five hexagons of marble with a tooth growing out of each. Shellie's surprising proficiency in fine detail work along with a troll's innate understanding of rock allowed her to do some amazing sculpture. With the precision of a surgeon, Lidda gouged out a perfectly hexagon around each of the cracked and broken teeth surrounding the statues stony palate. Taking out the offensive teeth, she smeared the marble paste in each of the six-sided holes and placed each new tooth in. She then spread more of the grey gunk over the nearly invisible crack where she had replaced the teeth. The paste instantly hardened, and with some careful sanding, the teeth looked as if they were sculpted from the original stone.
"Alright Shellie, I'm coming out." With that, Lidda hopped out of Offler's maw and into Shellie's waiting hands.
Jonathon was managing a team of golems he had rented from the Golem Trust fund to clean the front wall.
"Axe three, can you get that bit to the left of you?"
"Of Course, Mr. Kimmel," came the voice of the golem as he moved to the left.
Jonathon smiled. Golems were amazing. Axe three was standing on the shoulders of another golem who moved to the left without an order so that Axe three could fulfill his order.
"How's it coming along?" Shellie asked.
"I tell you, these golems are a wonder. They practically do all the work themselves. I'm barely needed. Can you guys just imagine if we had one at the workshop?" He didn't notice the knowing glance that passed between the girls. "All right, you guys. We're done for the day." With that, all the golems departed. That is, all save for the one that Axe three was standing on.
"Um, I don't know your name," Jonathon said, looking curiously at the golem. He knew that the free golems were able to disobey orders as they saw morally fit, but he couldn't think of why the golem wouldn't want to go. "Don't you want to go to your next assignment?"
"I Am At My Next Assignment, Mr. Kimmel," said the golem, "And My Name Is Izshrkenthanna, Mr. Kimmel."
"Wait, did the temple employ you?"
"No," said Lidda smiling, "we did."
"What?!" Jon exclaimed disbelievingly. "How much did the thing cost us? I know that golems are pricy. We're lucky that we can put the golems we use for cleaning this place under our expenses!"
"Relax," Shellie said soothingly, "Da golem's part of our deal with Miss Dearhart. Lidda asked her for one, and she's providing us with Ishken, Ishkar, da golem."
"It's completely paid for, and the extra hands will help us with our projects," Lidda said. "We even got a new contract. It's quick and the money's good. We should be able to get it done and organize the party still."
Jonathon finally nodded. "As long as we're not paying. Welcome aboard, Ish, Isher, Iz, look, do you have a nickname or something?"
"I Seem To Remember Miss Dearhart Calling Me Anna, Mr. Kimmel."
Now that Jonathon actually looked at the golem, it was obvious that it was a bit more feminine than most. It still was fairly asexual, but it was more slender and the lines of its form seemed to flow more than the average golem. Anna seemed to be fitting.
"Anna it is then. Welcome aboard. You can start by carrying me back to my apartment."
"Just Climb Onto My Shoulder Then, Mr. Kimmel."
"Geez, can you get much lazier, bro?" came a voice behind Jon.
He looked behind him to behold a tall fellow in the vestments of an Offlian priest, complete with braided beard and ceremonial flail stuck in his broad cloth belt. The flail was made of resilient black walnut wood though. It had a few nicks on the slightly longish handle, possibly from parrying knives and swords. As to the man himself, he had slightly curly hair and brownish skin and his stomach hung over his belt a bit. His physique could have been described as "rather well fed", but he was naturally large, so he didn't look fat. You could even go so far as to say he was "cuddly".
"Good to see you too, Simon," Jonathon said, beholding his big brother. "And you're one to talk about laziness. Have they caught you sleeping while you were supposed to be meditating?"
"I was intoning a prayer in the mysterious tongue of Offler," Simon said haughtily.
"You were snoring, bro."
"The tongue of Offler requires you to roughly draw air through your nose and between your tongue and palate. At any rate, brother Loan said he was impressed with your dental work, as always, and it's worth paying for those overgrown flowerpots, seeing as to how you keep the place so clean. The money will come in three days."
"Good seeing you too, bro. Say, are you going to be at the Drum tomorrow night? Adam's going to be over there."
"I'll be there," Simon said grinning. The three Kimmel brothers didn't drink much, but most of the patrons of the Mended Drum knew that beneath their less than perfect physiques were three boys who knew how to scrap if not well, than dirtier then a white cloth in the Shades. "Now shove off. You're sullying this hallowed ground with your presence."
The brothers smiled at each other and embraced in a fierce bear hug. "See you tomorrow night then," Jon said amiably.
"Bugger off, bro," Simon said equally as good naturedly.
As his brother and friends walked off, Simon trudged back to his cell. Offlian priests lived pretty simply, though Simon's small but comfortable cell would have made an Omnian sniff scornfully. It had a soft bed in one corner, a simple but well build desk, and an armoire where he kept his robes and clothes for when he was out on the streets. Beside the bed was a small altar to Offler, complete with a stove and skillet. Simon opened one of his desk's drawers and brought out a small bundle of sausages.
He put the sausages in the altar's skillet and started to fry them up. The heady smells of the spirit of the sausages ascending to Offler filled his cell. As this sacrifice to Offler was being prepared, Simon prayed.
The game had been stopped for lunch. Offler was tapping his new teeth while watching as sausages started to materialize on his plate. Countless types of sausages were fazing into existence. There were small grey things from Ankh-Morpork, the big plump Uberwaldian tubes of meat, even a haggis from Lancre. "Thothe kidth at Ankh Morpork did a good job."
"So you actually do get the sausages that are sacrificed to you?"Michael said interestedly. He was going to be the crocodile god's opponent, so he decided to watch him. Besides, watching Offler eat was an amazing entertainment.
"Nope," the crocodile headed god said as he viciously snapped up another bundle of sausages he'd tossed into the air. "Thith ith the thpirit of the thauthageth."
"Oh. Does the spirit taste like the sausages that it came from?"
"I honethtly wouldn't know." Offler was now savagely attacking the haggis. "I've never eaten a real thauthage."
Over to the other side, Io was sipping punch with Fate. "So, Offler took the big one, eh?"
"It's no real surprise," Fate said as he took a small drink from his cup. "He is his disciple, after all. Besides, I have faith in Offler. He's an old god. He's crafty."
"Speaking of which," Io said as a few of his eyes squinted at Fate. "Was that really necessary, what you did? I mean, you could kill the skinny one."
Fate's eyes looked at Io coldly. "I couldn't help it. It was his Fate. We'll see if he doesn't believe in me after this."
Io just looked down into his punch and took another drink from it. Fate was a very powerful god, but Io had nothing to fear of him. In all honesty, Io realized a while back that there really wasn't any reason to unduly fear other gods once you've made it to Dunmanifstein. Once you've got here, you're pretty much set for eternity. Yet Fate, who claimed almost as many followers as he did, always played as if he was about to lose. Most gods were willing to gamble in a rather irresponsible way, but Fate always made every move so deliberately, as if each was a matter of life and death.
"You never enjoy yourself, do you Fate?"
"We all have our flaws, Io."
"Mmmm."
Simon now seated himself in front of his desk, and brought out a leather bound book. The others would soon arrive.
"Simon, you in?" came a voice from outside his door.
"Yeah, is that you Mike?" he called out.
"Me and Chauncey both. You coming to the library?"
"Just give me a second." Simon pulled out two other books, a cheap notebook, and a few pencils.
He opened the door and beheld two other fellows in vestments similar to his. They were both a bit larger than the average priest, and their ceremonial weapons looked functional. The one called Michael was an Ankh-Morpork mutt like Simon, with muddy brown hair, green eyes, and a freckled face. While Simon was well fed, Michael was rather chubby. Despite this, he moved with the grace of a dancer, or an assassin. Tucked into his belt was a ceremonial sickle, though it was steel when most others were copper or bronze. The normally blunt edge had been honed razor sharp. The boy who Michael called Chauncey was tall, only slightly shorter than the titanic Simon. He was also broad, and though his vestments didn't show it, he was very well muscled. The deep black of his straight hair and dark complexion showed him to be from western Klatch. He was leaning on a not-so-ceremonial scythe, a typically pagan weaponn As if to compensate for this, it had pictures of crocodiles etched onto the blade and Chauncey had also plated the blade with copper.
These three fellows were the grounds keepers for the temple. Each was a junior priest, and they needed to help around the temple until they were promoted. So, the three of them trudged out of the temple's cells to its main wall. The architect had been nice enough to put the library right beside the main gate, so the three had come up with the idea of two of their group standing guard at the gate while the third could stay in the warm library and work on their holy mission thesis.
You see, in order to become a senior priest, a junior priest must first draw up a project of adequate holiness to be presented to the really senior monks. If they accepted the thesis, the priest worked on their project, and at its completion they were deemed senior priests.
Chauncey and Michael took first watch, so Simon went into the library. The warm dry room was like the rest of the temple and seemed to exude oldness. The walls were sandstone and were lit by old fashioned oil braziers. This was a library where people did just as much sleeping in as they did read. Fighting back his own drowsiness, he fell into one of the squashy old chairs and brought out his big thick books.
He was researching the Fang of Offler, one of the church's most holy relics. It had been the crocodile god's first tooth, which had fallen onto the Disc about two and a half thousand years ago. It was said that the fang had hidden inside its cavity ridden core the secret of prophecy. And not the metaphor heavy double talk of the priests around Ephebe or some such, but the secret of the ability to clearly know the future. Like to know what would be the next big thing to invest in, or where Chrysoprase's guys would be tomorrow so you'd know where to slip off to for a few years.
The senior priests had dismissed the Fang as a myth as they often do, but this didn't deter Simon. It wasn't that he thought it was real, he knew for a fact that it was a myth. It was for this reason he knew that he could find it. Anytime that a senior authority dismissed something as a myth or superstition, it became real. The fact it's nonexistent is unimportant.
So Simon was sitting at the desk, calculating the currents of the Circle Sea, sifting through weather reports from two thousand years ago, and looking through the inventories of fishing ships from almost as far back. It was slow and boring work, and it was for this reason he rather enjoyed it. Kimmels enjoy work that you can eat and doodle in the margins and not actually lose too much time on the project.
He was using his Offlian bible to chart a starting point. It stated that Offler had spat the fang widdershins of the ancient mountain of Akab Nijiag and into the Circle Sea. After two weeks of looking through the library, he had finally found that the ancient mountain was about eighteen miles from the town of Badass. So he had finally found a general direction for the calculations to start with. Simon wasn't the best mathematician, but his brother Adam had access to someone who lived to do sums. But not really lived, as it was in fact just a mess of ants, hamsters, umbrellas, and some other parts that language fails to describe.
It was of course, HEX, the brainchild of the fellows of the High Energy Magic Building. All Simon had to do was to find as many variables as possible, Adam would give it to the super thaumophiles at the HEMB, and they would create an equation to give to HEX.
This doesn't mean his job was easy, however, merely possible. Simon had been puzzling over this for two weeks just to find a starting point. Now he had to sift through about ten million pages of weather reports to give Adam's friends the necessary variables.
He took a look at a ratty old piece of papyrus talking about how it rained blue cats twelve hundred years ago and wondered if it was a legitimate variable. He shrugged and put it on the paper anyway. The weather reports weren't all that hard, he just had to transcribe mountains upon mountains of text.
About two hours later, Chauncey came in and told Simon it was his turn to make sure the gate didn't get stolen. He and Mike stayed out, and it was fairly uneventful. The night was cold, and only young heroes tried to steal Offler's stuff nowadays, so the priests would often take a weekly visit to the Ankh Morpork Young Men's Pagan Association and collect any gold or jewels that went missing.
No such thing happened on that night, and as the clocks in the city sporadically struck six in the morning, the three friends adjourned to the priest common room for a cup of tea before they went to their cells to sleep.
No one had noticed that Simon's notes were fattened by five pages while he was guarding the gate.
"You really must forgive us, but it's never happened before," Fate said with the slightest amount of delight in his voice. "But we have no idea where to put you three. We've never had guests before." He said the word "guests" as if it tasted bad.
"I've got a few utheleth roomth at the houthe," came Offler.
"Thanks, sir," Michael said, grinning as Fate's face contorted into various forms of disgust.
"Don't thank me," Offler said with a literal crocodile smile on his face. "You'll each owe me if you win. And if you lothe, you'll be rubbing my feet for the first thix hundred yearth of your punithment. My rough, thcaly feet."
Fate nodded. He wondered what Offler had slipped into the boy's notes. Offler was keen on simple, straightforward intervention, he was quite old school in this way. Whatever it was, it would definitely have an impact on everyone's game. He adjourned to his rather squat and squarish mansion. He had some preparations to make for tomorrow.
Well, hope you all think it was worth the wait. If you're going to blame anyone, blame those dudes at Blizzard for making such an addicting game. Now excuse me, my level 12 tauren warrior beckons.