By Corina

So there I was, minding my own business, and then this stupid death knight like spits this fireball at me and….

What? Where is “there”? Well, I was at the Green Dragon Inn—you know, the one in Tarana with that barmaid who’ll give you milk for free if you ask real nice. But believe me, I was only there because I was waiting for Amroth to get back from wherever it was that he disappeared to and he told me to wait for him there. It can be kind of mean place if you don’t know it, but I mean I didn’t see the thing because he was invisible. How fair is that?

Right. Back to the point. I had just gotten back from that other village, the one between Tarana and Angorost that has all the pretty horses, and on my way back I was camping out. Yes, I was all by myself. I’m six. I can take care of myself. So I was camping and these zombies or something attacked me! It was completely pointless! I was just sitting there, trying to fix dinner which of course blew up in my face because I can’t cook like Ari-sama can, and this ugly, dripping zombie thing came up and whacked me over the head! It was gross! It started moaning and trying to grab at my throat so that it could eat me or drink my blood or something icky like that, so I grabbed this stick out of the fire and smashed his hand with it. It broke the stick, and it must have worked because he started whining or something and all of a sudden there were like a million of the stupid things.

Of course I ran away. Duh!

So I ran as fast as I could back to the inn to see if maybe Amroth had got back yet. Of course, he was still gone. Then some weird lady started to ask me why I was all dirty and breathing hard and stuff, so I told her that I had narrowly escaped certain death from a bunch of zombies or something, and how all undead are just so stupid and I wished they would all just die except that they’re already dead. (Which is true, and I don’t care what Koishi thinks.)

Which was, of course, when the stupid death knight decided that he wanted to kill me, too.

I was not having a very good day.

Okay, do you know how much a fireball hurts??

So I’m lying there dying and it’s just laughing this stupid hollow laugh that might have been scary if I wasn’t almost dead, and then I hear this chanting. The death knight stopped laughing, and then the next thing I knew there was this really pretty white light and I felt a lot better, like maybe I wasn’t going to die after all. Then this deep voice says to me, “Child, dost thou wish to be able to avoid undead in the future?”

Like, duh. “Um, yeah.”

“Then simply dedicate thy soul to Paladine, in action and prayer and this mighty god shall protect thee if you are in need, for Paladine loves the innocent such as thee.”

“How do I do that?”

So he opens up my eyes—they were still closed from when I was being all burnt up and stuff—and he makes me sit up and he takes this medallion off his neck. He puts it around mine, and I grab it, and I feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

“Search for acceptance in all ways of the world, and Paladine will be thy guide. Judge people by their hearts, and thou shalt never lack in friends. Search for the good in everyone, and the evil of the undead will never touch thee again.” He smiled, and I could see that he was like a knight or something. He got up and began to walk away. “And most of all, child, remember that Paladine loves thee.”

Then he was gone.

So that’s how I became a cleric of Paladine.