"You are about to depart on a mission of the utmost importance. You, our top agent, will be sent to another dimension to retrieve eight magical amulets. These amulets will not be easy to find, and it will take all of your willpower, strength, wits, and ammunition to retrieve the amulets and make it out alive."
AGENT is taken to the portal. He is outfitted with a submachine gun, a shotgun, a sniper rifle, 4 light pistols, and of course an extradimensional bag containing supplies, ammunition, and grenades. He folds into his green camouflage suit, places the goggles firmly around his eyes, and steps through.
A palace. Throne room, in fact. AGENT suddenly realizes that he is standing on someone. He looks down; someone richly dressed. Oops. Guards are scrambling around, and an old man with a beard sitting on a throne is shouting orders. AGENT sighs, and calmly loads his submachine gun.
Prowling outside the palace, Gurrick suddenly pauses. His extra-large ears twitch as he squeezes tight to the amulet around his neck. An alien presence in the throne room! He cannot even read its thoughts. He hops over the wall and speeds towards the king. Death! The guards are dying like cooramax being trod on by dracons. As he nears, he realizes that nearly continuous small explosions are propelling small objects at incredibly high speeds within the room. He pauses outside the door, then bursts through and charges straight for the evil presence standing atop the crown prince's back. Suddenly, the presence turns towards him and a series of small objects issues from the end of a long tube and then too fast TOO FAST-
AGENT watches the strange creature slump to the ground. Massive hind legs, green scaly skin, extra-large ears: a goblin, it seems. A fairly large goblin, but AGENT has seen much larger. He activates his goggles: the goggles confirm the species, but show an incredibly high power rating. He begins to search the goblin, which is not very difficult, because it wears no clothing. It is wearing a belt, but AGENT finds nothing of interest there. He is about to glance away when he notices that a snapped leather string, splattered with blood, lies around the thing's neck. Of course. He pries open the dead thing's hand and finds a very old, very magical amulet. A closer look reveals it to be one of the eight amulets he is searching for; this being the one of enhanced senses, telepathy, telekinesis, and clairvoyancy. Very useful, if one happens to be looking for the other eight amulets. AGENT sighs, and ties it to a string, which he loops around his neck. One of these missions.
The Author is suddenly confronted by a large group of guards, led by a fairly large goblin. The goblin shakes his finger at The Author and yells out, "You created us! You gave me a name! Yet you killed us off right away! We didn't even get a significant part in the story! You� you� you disgust me." As Gurrick walks away, each guard steps forward and carefully spits in The Author's Face. The Author is stunned.
AGENT walks forward, quickly yet cautiously. Super-speed, super-strength, and near invulnerability was contained in the second amulet, and the third allowed him the ability to summon and control undead and elementals. This one, the fourth one, will allow him the use of force blasts, of a combination of fire, electricity, acid, and pure magic. After this, he will be unstoppable in combat. Of course, he already is.
The dracon knows that AGENT is approaching. It never even dares to think its own name anymore, not after the Corozan City disaster. What an embarrassment. Even more embarrassing is that AGENT has been able to approach this place at all. Oh well, thinks the dracon, I'm getting old. Even with three amulets, though, he won't be able to take me down alone.
AGENT, however, is not alone.
As AGENT approaches, the dracon realizes that he has a minor air elemental with him. Practically useless, air elementals. Something, however, is nagging at the back of the dracon's mind. He looks down, and remembers. The bones. He stares in horror at the bones.
AGENT walks in and yells out. The air elemental swoops down to infuse itself into the layer of bones carpeting the ground. The bones rise, and assemble skeletons. The skeletons march towards the dracon, who stares in paralyzed horror. He tries to blast acid, but it just slides off the horrible marching bones. The dracon is too fearful to even cry out as the clawlike fingers begin to tear off his scales and pierce the flesh beneath
The dracon spits flame at The Author. "I won't even waste the words."
The Author is confused. "What did I do?" he shouts at the fading figure.
AGENT thinks back. Number five was mind control, number six was planar travel and teleportation, number seven was flight and invisibility. And now number eight. AGENT is already unstoppable, but the eighth amulet will prevent any of his equipment - including the amulets - to be removed from his possession without his permission. AND it will prevent his mind from being infiltrated. All he has to do is kill thirteen dracon-mages backed up by a god. Well, and he has to break an unbreakable spell set in concert by all of the above. Not too bad. He takes a deep breath, and scouts the area.
Oh shit.
AGENT is enveloped in a glowing field of magic. The dracon-mages' harsh laughter fills the air, as a glowing god appears. "You fool. Now I will crush you like the bug you are." The field shrinks. The screams stop suddenly.
AGENT appears before The Author. "Fuck you! You created me, and sent me on this great adventure, just to fail because I didn't look ahead to make sure that the stupid things were actually there, guarding the amulet? I HATE YOU!!" AGENT pulls out an amulet and begins to blast The Author with magic. The Author is flung backwards through infinite space until the magic is too weak to push him further. In the distance, he vaguely sees AGENT dissipate.
"That's bad. I'm not supposed to feel real pain in my imagination. I wonder if I should be concerned." He pauses to think, then proclaims, "I don't care." He begins to write anew.
Copyright 2003