Chapter 11

I walked into John’s shop, and he greeted me warmly, as usual. John really knew how to treat his customers. Anyway, the first thing he said was, “Jim, I am glad to see you, but I must know where and when you got such a strikingly beautiful amulet? Please give me the story.”

“Hi, John, this amulet is one of the reasons that I am here. I need for you to identify it for me. So far, I have been wearing it for a short time, but I have not seen anything to come from it. Is it anything more than decoration?”

I told John how it was found, and the demon had not been wearing it, so I had no clue as to what it was good for. I couldn’t even tell if it had a socket or what kind of gem was appropriate for it.

Jim examined it carefully and even dug out a book to help him decipher the runes that were inscribed on the back of the amulet. He studied the amulet and referred to his book several times before a great smile adorned his face. “Jim, you have struck a horde of gold again! This is an amulet crafted by another of the ancient Wizards who is only a legend now. This amulet needs a ruby to bring out its capabilities, but it is an offensive weapon of magnificent proportions. Wizard Joltie Westford was reputed to be the strongest combat Wizard of his time. He is credited with fighting back the invasion from Hell nearly singlehandedly for close to 40 years. This amulet was one of his most forceful weapons.

“With the addition of a ruby, this amulet, shoots out a lightning bolt at the enemy. Look right here; that is the socket for the ruby, and it is large enough to accept the most powerful ruby in the world. There is evidence that the ruby was removed by a less than highly skilled craftsman, probably because he saw the opportunity to sell the large gem. He undoubtedly was even less skilled than me at reading ancient runes, so he did not know what he was holding. All this amulet needs to return it to its original is a ruby of sufficient power.

“Unfortunately, I do not have a ruby that would take the power of this amulet this high, but any ruby would fit into that setting and would give it a small fraction of its original power. I have just acquired this square-cut ruby that should do a reasonable job of reactivating the amulet. The price will be $23,000 for the ruby; do you have that much available?”

“Dammit, John, I don’t. I am having to conserve my gold right now to cover my share of the cost of a house for my friends and me. However, I do have a small ruby that I can put into the amulet to give it some of its old power.”

“Give me back the amulet, and I will do that right now.” John handed me the amulet, and I put the largest ruby I had into the amulet. That seemed to bring it to life, and it started to glow with a white aura. That made it even more attractive to me to wear, and I slipped the carrying chain over my head immediately.

“Thanks, John, for the help. I expect to get a lot of use from this amulet. Meanwhile, I have another amulet for you to look at. This one belongs to Ed. What, if anything, can you tell me about it?”

“Hmm, that is also a valuable amulet, but not for its fighting capability. With an emerald installed, it will greatly increase the amount of gold that the wearer will find as a result of combat. Ed should become very rich if he lives long enough to install a large emerald in its socket. You can tell him that I envy his luck. He will become the richest Monk in Isbardia if he can find an emerald large enough.”

That kind of finished the good news. The socketed ring I had to sell was a weak companion to the diamond ring that I wore. A large diamond mounted in its socket would produce about as much overall protection as the minimum size diamond would provide in my ring. Nevertheless, it was worth having because any magical protection was good. Okay, I would offer it to Ed or Bill. Ed would be the most likely one to have a use for this ring because Bill had that curative amulet that has already helped him once. It was what cured his broken arm. The other rings netted me only $272 from John, but we already had more than what they could give to us.

The news from Bill and Ed was just as good! Bill had found a house that he was ready to recommend, and Ed had already lined up a housekeeper/cook. The house had four bedrooms, so we were good there, and its kitchen was fully in line with what the modern Isbardia housewife wanted in her kitchen. There was running water from an artesian well and a water heater that could handle a least three showers before it needed time to catch up. The house was already furnished, and we could buy it with what the three of us had from our trips into the field. What more could we ask for in a house? Ed and I were going to take a look at it tomorrow after work.

Meanwhile, Ed had found us a housekeeper/cook who had excellent references. She was available because her former employers had died of old age about six months ago, and she was looking for a new position. She was young enough to be attractive to all three of us, and she had a healthy desire for sex. There was no word in the Isbardian language for a female virgin, and Ellet had been sexually active since she had reached puberty. She already had one son who was six years old, and she was looking for another man to help her make another one.

It was considered the highest of honors for a woman to bear the son of a successful Hero, and she expected us to provide her with three opportunities to achieve that status herself. She did not know the identity of the father of her current son, but she did not care who he was. All she knew for sure was that he was not likely to be the son of a Hero.

The current plan was for Ellet’s son, Alon, to sleep in the fourth bedroom and Ellet to cycle through our beds, spending a night with each of us except during her menstrual period. Then she would sleep with Alon.

That was great news, especially as I was feeling the lack of female attention. Both Bill and Ed had local girls to use for that sort of thing, but I had been lax in looking for the same kind of relief. Now it was going to be part of the houses accessories, and I was very pleased with that prospect. There were no sexually transmitted diseases in Isbardia—the medical Wizards had taken care of that.

Just thinking about the prospects of living at home with my friends and a live-in female attendant was enough to make it hard for me to get to sleep that night. I finally got to sleep and had to be shaken awake by Bill when it was finally time to get up for breakfast. Okay, I struggled out of bed, but was fully awake and going on all cylinders after two cups of the Isbardian equivalent of coffee.

Pete sent us back to level #5 for more practice there. I didn’t care where we went as long as I was going to get a chance to try out my amulet under battle conditions. Okay, I was stunned when we were transported to level #5. There was a bunch of the little demons armed with javelins waiting for us, and there were two of the bosses along to revive any that were killed.

The little demons were embodied with some sort of magic spell that made sure that they were never out of weapons. Another javelin appeared in their hands the moment they released the one they were currently holding. Of course, that meant that we were inundated with javelins the moment that we arrived in the familiar meadow.

Well, my amulet began showing what it could do the moment the first javelin was hurled in our direction. I happened to be standing up and facing the demons when they began casting their javelins, and that was when my amulet went into action. It shot out seven bolts of lightning so close to the same time that I could not detect any spacing between shots. All seven shots hit demons within about 20 yards, and there was suddenly a change in the tone of the shouts of derision coming from the demons. Seven cries of terrible pain were included in the taunts, and seven demons dropped dead.

The two demon bosses looked like they were taken completely by surprise by the release of the lightning bolts. I was, too, but for a different reason. As soon as a demon fell, a boss began the routine of bringing it back to life. That looked like a complicated procedure and not something that took less than about 30 seconds.

Well, that half-minute before the resurrection of a demon gave the amulet plenty of time to slay seven more. Thus, the bosses were not able to keep up with the rain of death that was falling on their minions.

Normally, I would have thrown one or two grenades at the bosses while they tried to revive their minions, but I was curious to see what the amulet did when all of the actual javelin throwers were eliminated. Two lightning bolts were launched at the boss demons, but they were too weak to overcome whatever it was the bosses were using for protection. I reacted quickly and wound up having to use two grenades on the boss demons to get rid of them.

Naturally, I fully believed what John had told me about the amulet, but I was a bit taken aback by the fact that the lightning bolts were only fully effective against their minions. Then it dawned on me that the amulet needed a larger gem to do its best against more targets, targets at a more distant range, or demons with a better degree of protection. There was only the smallest of gems currently installed in my amulet, so I was anxious to swap that out for a larger gem. Unfortunately, that could not be done until I returned to Truth at the end of the shift.

Well, at this point the demons began to vaporize, and their fanny packs went with them. As I said before, that was to our advantage, and we now were ready to start picking up the loot that had fallen from the vaporized fanny packs. The job was made easier because the demons had been more or less in one spot, so we did not have to search all of the grass around us.

Ed had been wearing his amulet since before we entered the hiring hall, so its effect was sure to be apparent as we picked up the money fallen from the fanny packs of the demons, both small and large. Well, Ed’s amulet had been as effective as mine, if in a different way. We found so much gold lying around that we had trouble stuffing it into our three fanny packs. In fact, we had so much gold that we had to skip some of the silver and all of the copper coins. Man, let me tell you, that was a pleasant problem to have! If this kind of thing continued, we were going to have to snatch more fanny packs to keep up with what we expected to find.

We finally cleaned up all of the loot that we wanted, and that included six rings with two of them socketed, a wand, and several gloves. The gloves turned out to be well received because I was the only one with gloves, or actually gauntlets. I had the gauntlets to protect against accidents with the poison. The shielding of my skin by my sleeves did not extend to my hands, and that was where I had been hit with the drops of poison a few weeks ago. Therefore, I wore the gloves which could be snatched off if they were splashed by the poison. So far, that was all of the protection offered me by the gloves, but I had heard tales of more protective gloves, so I was on the lookout for them.