Chapter 9: I Hate Spiders, Too

Synergy is when two factors that work together also each reinforce the other, so together they are far more effective than their effects would be if simply added up. I’m not sure if there’s supposed to be an element of surprise in there, or if it’s something that you should have realized would happen.

As soon as we could see the forest I could tell that our goal was somewhere vaguely in front of us. However, Eric asked Cindy to ‘Bless’ us, and as soon as she did I felt a lot better, of course, but my sense of direction got a lot more focused, too. I hadn’t noticed the connection before.

Now, I could tell that our goal was just a little to our left, while the path in front of us led a little to our right. Also, our goal was probably a little short of a mile away.

I had everyone stop while I described not only what I knew, but also how what I knew had changed with Cindy’s ‘Bless’ spell. No, Cindy isn’t one of our fighters, but she makes us all more effective and powerful in so many ways that it would be insane to replace her with another fighter.

Since we were just standing around wasting time on the ‘Bless’ spell, Eric told us to all check our status and our skills and see if anything else was enhanced that we hadn’t expected. I had all the usual stuff, strength, endurance, pain resistance, yeah, but only three of my four skills got the ‘+1’ added. ‘Mace’, ‘Shield’, and ‘Goal-Oriented’ were all ‘+1’. My ‘Collection’ skill was still at Level 1.

I had my ‘Steadfast’ benefits, too, as long as I was holding my mace. Both my Endurance and my Will Power were +1, so when I was ‘Blessed’ and holding my mace, my Endurance was effectively 10. If I added my next stat point to Endurance to make it 9, would it be 11 when I was ‘Blessed’ and fighting?

Matt and Cindy both reported that their ‘Quarterstaff’ skill was ‘Level 1 (+1=2)’. Matt admitted that he hadn’t even had the ‘Quarterstaff’ skill the last time he’d checked. That had to have come from our training with Cindy’s father and his daily practice at home. Cindy said that she’d noticed it before, but hadn’t thought to ask anyone else about it.

Margie grumped that she didn’t have the ‘Quarterstaff’ skill yet. She clearly needed to actually, you know, pull it out and practice every evening like we all were. On the other hand, both her ‘Throw Fire’ spell AND her ‘Fire Staff’ were enhanced, so whenever she was blessed not only did the spell do more, when she used her staff to throw the spell it got double adds.

Matt added that, yeah, that seemed to be right. Margie’s spell still did more damage than his did, though. It went further and was more accurate, too. Margie smiled and said ‘Practice, practice, practice’. Matt retorted that his Dad got mad when he threw fire in the back yard. And his Mom got really mad when he did it in the house.

Yeah, we needed to get those guys somewhere to practice. Like, maybe, the Birmingham Practice Facility? The place used to be a steel foundry! Surely it had places that wouldn’t be damaged by a couple of lousy fire spells.

“Y’all remind me when we get out, that we need to set aside some time down in Birmingham when you Mages can practice your spells. The place used to be a foundry, so it ought to be able to handle what you guys do.”

I didn’t have the ‘Quarterstaff’ skill yet, either, although I didn’t practice with it every day like Matt and Cindy probably did. And, when I did come up with the time to practice, I put more time into my mace than I did my practice staff. So, sure, I guess I hadn’t earned that level-one skill yet.

Cindy said that, when she was blessed, her healing spell was enhanced. But, she still only had nine Mana, the ‘Heal’ cost three, and the ‘Bless’ cost four. We’d have to run some tests to see if it was better to cast her healing spell three times and then once every twenty minutes as her Mana recovered for as long as needed, or if it was better to ‘Bless’ herself and then cast the healing spell once, wait a few minutes, cast it a second time, and then a third time right before the ‘Bless’ expired.

Thinking about it, I thought that minor wounds would be best taken care of immediately, but something major might benefit from the bless adds. How the hell could we test that? It didn’t occur to me until later that the ‘Bless’ spell might also help people heal on their own. That would also count as doubled adds, if being ‘Blessed’ gave Cindy more healing power as well as letting the injured person heal faster.

We’d spent long enough talking about it that Eric declared a break, to end when the ‘Bless’ expired, the five-minute cool-down was done, and Cindy could cast it again with her full Mana. Then, we’d head down the path looking for trouble.

Meanwhile, we’d all been looking around but we didn’t see anything worth talking about. There was a trail going the way we needed to go, and behind us it went the other direction. Other than that, it was just Mirkwood.

We all felt it when the ‘Bless’ wore off, of course. This time, though, we also felt a general feeling of unease, like we shouldn’t be here. We didn’t belong here, and maybe we should be trying to get OUT of here. It wasn’t that strong and we could all resist it, but it was there.

Margie said it was like a weaker version of the thing the skeletons did. She’d been in a Blue once, down on the other side of Montgomery, and she admitted that she’d failed her ‘terror roll’. She’d been completely useless. Her group had had to take care of her like she was a prisoner, and it had made the whole Portal harder for everyone else. She hadn’t recovered until the last skeleton had been smashed and the rest of the team was searching for loot. It had been HELLA embarrassing.

She’d been a level one Mage at the time, though, and now she was only a few hundred experience away from level three. She wanted to stay with us until we’d all gotten at least one level and then take us back in that same Blue. Meanwhile, she was going to practice with her staff until she could bust all the skeletons’ heads with it.

By the time Margie was done telling us about her first Blue Dive, Cindy had all her Mana back and the ‘Bless’ spell’s cool-down period was over. We all got ready to go.