Welcome back!

I come to you today with a report on Convergence Point’s annual “Face Yer Fears Day,” straight from the pen of our dear Typhon Garlic. Let’s get to it!

26.02.13

I did it — I faced my fear of snakes!

I’ll start from the beginning. I left my motel room at seven o’clock for breakfast downstairs. I heard quite a lot of noise outside, but I didn’t bother to check what was going on, since I suspected it was just another of Quarrelsome Bert’s pranks.

Boy, was I wrong! Turns out a bunch of guys were cheering on Joe as he drank from the horse trough. After breakfast, I headed over to the saloon (the owner’s liquor shipment still hasn’t come yet — not that I care, anyway) where I asked my friend Zhonn Anderson what on earth could have possessed Joe to do such a thing. “Well, it’s a holiday today,” he said, “Face Yer Fears Day, to be exact.”

“But what does that have to do with Joe drinking from the horse trough?” I questioned. “Well, I can’t say for sure, but I’d guess that he, and most of the others,” he gestured to some fellows running off to the abandoned mine to ride the “hainted” mine-carts, “are just making up lame fears instead of facing their real fear: disagreeing with Quarrelsome Bert.”

I laughed, but Zhonn said, “I’m not kidding! Most people are really quite terrified of contradicting him. He’s administered some pretty harsh verbal lashings in the past.”

Just then, Nob came upstairs. “What you guys talking about?” he asked. “Face Yer Fears Day!” Zhonn shouted, making me laugh. Then Nob looked at me funny and asked, “What did you do to your hair, Typhon?”

“My hair?” I had no idea what he was talking about. “Why did you dye it?” Now I was sure he was either seeing things, or messing with me. Or both. “What are you talking about? I’d never dye my hair!” Zhonn interjected, “Well, I didn’t say anything to you about it, mostly because it looked terrible, but your hair is dyed, Typhon.”

Eventually we figured out what had happened. Quarrelsome Bert had a  fear of dyeing someone’s hair without their permission. How ridiculous. I just hope the darn stuff washes out!

Our conversation soon returned to normal and Nob asked, “So what’s this Face Yer Fears Day thing about?” After explaining the holiday to Nob, Zhonn asked him if he had any fears he might want to face, since it was Face Yer Fears Day anyway.

Nob thought a moment, then replied, “Well, the main one is probably looting. I’m pretty scared of looting because I don’t really know how to do it. I’d hate to do it wrong and get laughed at.”

Zhonn almost laughed at that statement himself, but caught himself in time. He then asked me if I had any fears, and of course I had to tell him about my fear of snakes. Zhonn thought a moment, then said that he might know a place where we could both face our fears. Nob and I were reluctant at first, but then Zhonn mentioned that it involved a cave of gold.

Well, Nob and I made the obvious and adventure-ly choice: we followed Zhonn to the cave of gold. We had to walk quite a distance from the town, but we had the occasional accompaniment of Zhonn’s wandersome dog. Nob brought his cart at Zhonn’s urgings, so we could transport the treasure back to Convergence Point. For some reason I didn’t think to bring my car, and this was a minor problem later on.

At last we reached the mouth of the cave. Zhonn stopped suddenly. “What is it?” I asked. He looked absolutely petrified. He was barely breathing. “Zhonn, what’s wrong?” persisted Nob.

Eventually we managed to drag out of him the fact that this cave was his fear. Apparently one of Zhonn’s friends had died there, but I didn’t say as much to Nob. We soon restored Zhonn to his former brave self, and we entered the ominous cave.

There was a death skull just inside the entrance, which I did my best to ignore. We crept along “oh-so-slowly” (as Nob put it), because Zhonn had warned us sternly about the cave’s many booby traps.

Suddenly Nob shouted, “Wow! A diamond!” Zhonn barely had enough time to yell, “Nob, NO!” before a big section of the wall came out and slammed against some spikes on the opposite wall. Luckily neither Zhonn nor I, closest to the slammer, were injured, but we noticed some bones and rotting clothing on the spikes.

The fear overtook Zhonn again, at least momentarily, when he realized that they were the bones of his friend. He whispered to himself, “So Fred got crushed by a wall. Horrible, just horrible.” Again, Nob didn’t hear. I’m not positive whether he understood the gravity of the situation. After Nob was once again warned of the danger represented by booby traps, we continued down the cave.

Nob saw a golden staff up ahead, so he decided to run and grab it. “NOB, STOP!” we shouted in unison. As I ran up to stop him, a section of the floor that I stepped on moved downwards, and a spear suddenly shot out of the wall, nearly impaling me! Nob turned around and said, “Hey, Typhon, you ought to be more careful. Haven’t you been paying attention? There’s dangerous booby traps in here!”

Zhonn began telling Nob (for the umpteenth time) that it was he who was being careless, but I didn’t hear what they were saying. I had just realized that the golden staff was guarded by snakes. I knew what I had to do: it was time for me to face my fear.

I don’t know how, but I somehow managed to keep myself from screaming like a little girl. Though I wanted to flee for my life, I forced myself to walk into the midst of the slithering snakes. I then grabbed the golden staff right off the wall.

I turned to the others and shouted, “I did it! I faced my fear of snakes and they didn’t even bite me!” Zhonn looked at me in shock. I guess he was surprised that I faced my fear without his help.

Just then, Nob found the treasure room. “Look, guys!” he exclaimed, “It’s the treasure. We just have to walk down this narrow hallway.” The hallway was actually so narrow that we had to walk sideways at some points. That made it hard for Nob, since he was wearing his huge backpack.

I followed close behind Nob. As I reached a very narrow section of the hallway, Nob bumped some trigger (or button). Before I knew what had happened, the floor opened up! Zhonn caught me by my sword and pulled me away from the lava pit just in time to save my life.

We then set up a system to pass the treasure from the treasure room to the exit: Nob threw the treasure across the lava pit to me, I threw it past the spear trap to Zhonn, and Zhonn tossed it past the crushing wall trap to, well, his dog.

It worked pretty well, I’d say. Occasionally there was something a bit large that was slightly difficult, but in general it was just pass-and-catch. We were probably at it for twenty minutes. After a while there was a pause in the previously constant flow of treasure.

“Hey, Nob, is that it?” I asked. “Well, Typhon, uh, there’s just one last thing, but it’s really heavy or,” he stopped, and the I heard the turning of monolithic stone gears, “Oops,” came Nob’s voice. “What’s wrong?” yelled Zhonn. There was no answer for a time, then as a thunderous rumbling began, we heard came Nob shout “Run!”

I did as instructed and ran for my life. Traps exploded all around me. It was like the whole place was collapsing, and I don’t think I could have run faster if Ramses himself were behind me!

I finally reached the exit with a few dozen scratches, but nothing worse. After panting for a few seconds, I spun around quickly. “Nob?!” I shouted. “Nob, are you okay?” I heard what sounded like screaming coming from the cave. Zhonn joined in the shouting. “Nob!”

The screaming slowly became less muffled and distant. I realized it seemed more like a fear-scream than a pain-scream. Then suddenly Nob appeared in front of us. After he had set off the monstrous trap which started emptying tons of rubble into the treasure room, he had run most of the way back to the entrance, but caught a ride on a chunk of stone near the end. Needless to say, Zhonn and I were greatly relieved to see him.

It turned out that Nob’s cart was much too small to carry all the treasure, so I’m dragging my share of the treasure back to town on a makeshift sledge. It’ll take a few days to get back, but Zhonn gave me some dried meat he said was “jerky”.

I can’t figure why he’d call it that, though. It hasn’t moved even once.

Thanks for reading! What’d you think of “Face Yer Fears Day”? Do you have any fears that you might have faced in that scary … d-d-daaark … c-c-caaave? :S

Let me know in the comments, and I’ll see ya’ll next post! 🙂