Chapter 3

We figured that having disposed of the Hydra, we had used up our luck for this day. Almo showed me how to teleport back to Trillium, and that was what we did. We were both so tired that all we cared about was food and sleep. It was well after noon, and we had been so busy that we had missed lunch. We managed to talk the tavern manager to giving us an early supper. Following that, we staggered off to bed. Almo and I stripped naked and lay down on the bed. Both of us were so tired that we were practically asleep before we had fully stretched out.

The next morning when I woke up, it dawned on me that this was two nights in a row that I had spent a night in a bed with a man, and both of us were naked. For the first time in my life, I had spent such a night with no thought of sex, and I had done it two nights in a row. Maybe I was becoming a superhero, defined as someone who did not engage in sex?

I rolled over and punched Almo, “Come on, super Barbarian warrior, it’s time to get up and go after more monsters.” He looked at me and frowned, then he laughed and got up.

“Jill, I just had a thought. I simply can’t understand how I could have spent two nights in bed naked with such a beautiful woman and had not engaged in sex. Is that a measure of how much I care for you?”

I laughed as I finished dressing. This time I dressed without putting on my panties or jeans. I was using a piece of cloth as a simple loincloth. Maybe I was getting more deeply into this fantasy existence? “I just had the same thought about you, Almo. Possibly, we are getting more attuned to each other.” Almo got another of his sour looks, and I laughed again.

We ate breakfast and decided to take up our hunt where we left off yesterday. Almo showed me what to do to jump back to where we had left the Hydra’s den. We had our weapons ready just in case it had magically revived. I sincerely hoped that it had not done so. Everything was okay, the Hydra was nowhere to be seen.

Suddenly, Almo said, “By the gods, how stupid can I be? I forgot to check to see if there was a chest of money and valuables left by the Hydra.” At my blank look, Almo continued, “Usually when a hero kills such a fearsome creature as the Hydra, he is rewarded with a rich supply of money and magical items. Let’s look around to see if there is such a chest in this chamber.”

We looked around and discovered what I considered to be a monster chest off to one side of the room. Almo opened it, and we were drenched by showers of money and all kinds of magical items. There was a total of 5,897 gold coins in the chest, four rings, two swords, a pair of boots, and another pair of gloves. We looked at the items in that order.

The four rings were quite remarkable to me. They all had the settings to accept gems, and Almo was ecstatic over that. One of the rings was 100% effective against poison. Another was good for 63% increase in damage quotient. The third ring produced a magic beam that I thought was similar to what one got from shooting a machine pistol. The fourth ring was similar to Almo’s magic cure charm, except in the form of a ring instead of a charm. That meant that it was always in use as long as a person was wearing it.

The amazing thing about the rings was that one could wear one on each finger and thumb. That meant that one could have 10 magic spells at his constant disposal. Hey, could a person get the same effect if the ring were worn on the toe? That was something that I was going to check on as soon as possible.

Almo insisted that I take the boots. He was appalled that I was still wearing my canvas shoes. I took the boots and tried them on. I guess that it was the magic that permeated this world that made them a perfect fit. These boots were resistant to fire. Almo speculated that the jerkin and the boots combined would make me impervious to fire.

The swords were next up for examination. The first sword we looked at was rated for poison. Both Almo and I were dubious about how much good that could do for us, so it was set aside. The other sword was ensorceled as an instrument of fire. According to the charm for reading magic attributes, the fire sword was a stronger killer than my lightning sword, but I liked the way my current sword was able to attack more than one opponent. After due consideration which lasted all of about two seconds, I decided to stick with my current sword. Beside, I now had that ray gun ring, so I figured that I was ahead of the game.

Almo decided to give the fire sword a trial run in place of his mace, but he was going back to the mace at the first sign of trouble. That sounded reasonable to me, so he dropped his mace into his belt pouch and took up the sword as his active weapon. He dropped the poison sword in his belt pouch for later sale.

I was anxious to try out my ray gun ring, so we hurried outside to see what we could find for me to shoot at. I sheathed my sword and went with the combination of shield and ray gun. Almo was there to back me up if I ran into difficulties.

The first monster we encountered was what I chose to call a lion dog. It looked to me like a huge dog, something like a Great Dane, but more muscles, and with the head of a lion. Let me tell you, it sure looked dangerous.

There were three of those lion dogs staring at us, and they looked to me like they were cranking themselves up to attack. Well, I didn’t wait for them to decide what to do. You know how kids do when they pretend to have a gun—they point their first finger as if it were the barrel and crook their thumb like the hammer on a flintlock, well I did the same without even thinking about it.

I thought to myself, “Shoot!” I must have done the right thing because a pulsing beam formed at my finger and headed directly toward the nearest lion dog. The first few pulses hit the lion dog in the chest, and it collapsed where it stood. As soon as the lion dog died, the pulses stopped. Okay, that was reasonable. I aimed at the second lion dog and repeated the command to shoot. Again, the pulses jumped from my finger toward the lion dog and stopped when the creature fell. The third lion dog was killed in the same way, and I was impressed at what the ray gun could do.

We picked up the coins that had fallen to the ground and went looking for more monsters to kill. I was so pleased at my ray gun that I was not sure if I would ever again use a sword. I guessed that time would tell on that.

We were now on a plain with a few hills and some trees here and there. For no particular reason but curiosity, we walked toward a low hill. We got about a third of the way around the hill and saw a cave entrance. The smell coming from the opening telegraphed that the cave was occupied. That was all of the invitation we needed, and we entered.

We could see small fires scattered about the cave, but we saw none of the occupants, so we really didn’t have any idea what we had wandered into. Well, we were not kept in ignorance for long. A massive creature came toward us. I was not sure what to call it; I guess that it resembled a huge boar more than anything else, but whatever it was, it was disgusting. Dammit, I nearly vomited just from the sight of the thing, and it had the most foul smell that I had ever encountered. The stench was much worse than that emitted by the Hydra. The sight and the smell of the thing were almost enough to be fatal!

At least I didn’t forget why I was there. I pointed my finger at the boar and called for the shooting to start. The thing completely ignored the ray hitting it. I had the strong impression that it was like a pea-shooter firing at an Abrams tank. Okay, I had found something that my ray gun was not going to kill any time soon, so I canceled the shooting and pulled out my sword with lightning. Both Almo and I closed on the foul creature and lay into it with our swords.

This didn’t seem to be a time for finesse, so both of us were hacking at the creature with all of our strength. Meanwhile, the boar was trying to cut us with its fearsome tusks or knock us down so that it could step on us. After we had hacked at the boar for a while and made sure that we would not be caught by its tusks, we realized that we were caught in a no-win situation. At last it dawned on me, “Almo, switch to your poison sword.”

He pulled out his poison sword from his belt pouch while I kept the boar occupied by pounding on it with my lightning sword. It took Almo about 10 seconds to have the sword ready to use, and we noticed a change in the boar’s actions and attitude almost immediately after the first strike with the poison sword.

The boar slowed down and began to labor as it tried to use its tusks on us. There was no way at this point for us to know if the first strike with the poison sword would have been sufficient, but Almo kept chopping at it. The boar collapsed to the ground about 15 seconds after Almo’s first strike with that sword.

Okay, now we knew what the poison sword was good for, and Almo was intrigued enough to decide to stick with the poison sword for a while just to see if it was generally useful.

Suddenly, the boar erupted with a shower of coins and other goodies. We picked up a total of 987 gold coins and three beautiful gems. There were two rubies and a diamond. Almo’s fire sword had a place for a gem, so he mounted one of the rubies in that setting. His charm of identification said that he had just tripled the damage quotient of the sword. All of a sudden, Almo had a remarkable killing weapon that sure would have been helpful against the boar.

I put the diamond and the other ruby in the settings on my kilt. That made my resistance to any sort of magic attack go up noticeably, and my damage quotient also increased. We were now even more anxious to pick up some more gems. Almo didn’t know how often gems were dropped, but we were both very hopeful. As soon as I could find another ruby, that was going into my ray gun ring’s setting.

We figured that we could go farther into the cave. We couldn’t figure on anything being more difficult to kill than that boar, so we were back to being cocky again. That could well mean that we were in trouble, and we just didn’t know it yet.

A few more steps into the cave and we were rushed by a gang of 13 satyrs. Some had swords and some had stabbing spears. Almo said, “Jill, you use your ring weapon on the enemy with spears and I will concentrate on those with swords.” I immediately agreed and began to fire on the satyrs with spears. There was such a compressed crowd of attackers that I could not reliably aim at their chests, so I tried to hit them in the head.

As usual, a single head shot was enough to put a satyr down, but I did miss my shot much more than I liked. We moved to a very narrow section of the cave so that the satyrs could not flank us. Almo was ahead of me, and I was shooting over his head. He was doing a good job of killing the satyrs that he could reach, but, of course, I didn’t have that kind of a problem. There were more satyrs with swords than with spears, so I had shot all of my primary targets before Almo was through with his satyrs with swords. I began shooting at the satyrs with swords, and we eliminated all of them in a minute or less.